novelraw Act 3, Chapter 24: His music played for me
Act 3, Chapter 24: His music played for me
Day in the story: 7th January (Wednesday), around 6.00 a.m.I rolled over, dodging his frenzied punch. With it came an aftershock of a soundwave tearing the street apart and sending the debris flying into the air, just to be scattered like stray bullets when an echo of the sound hit.
Robbie went ape-shit crazy.
Blood was flowing from his eyes and ears as he focused all of his rage on me and ending my existence. His powers, though, became completely uncontrollable—attacking random places all around us as he tried to get close to me.
I filled Usagear with my Authority once again and quickly scurried away, once again able to summon my things and move around the battlefield unbothered. I reached for the sword beside Caroline, summoning it into my hand and extending shadowlight from within myself to coat it with rainbow hues.
I took something else too—from my Domain—and put it directly onto me. It was a robe I received on Christmas Day from Joan, made to look like flowing water. It had its power, but it would be unusable here. I, however, had my own purpose for it that might become useful here.
As it materialized around me, covering my arms, chest, and thighs, it extended immediately to reach my ankles, changing its shape to accommodate my needs. One of my minds focused on it and asked it to become the bottomless lake.
I dodged in the meantime while my power was still settling within the cloth, teleporting away when the ground beneath me cracked with the power of reverberated sound hitting from within the concrete. My soul was almost done, wrenched dry from the Authority I’d been using, but I had access to reach for my Tattoo and call for the power of my Domain directly if needed.
Appearing next to him, I took a swing with my sword, cutting across his back from a shoulder blade toward the backbone. I wasn’t good with swords, but it must have hurt, sending Robbie into a staggered fumble forward.
He was determined, though, despite the noise I created for his brain. He slid across the asphalt that looked like it had been bombarded by mortar shells, right as another sonic boom exploded to his left, sending fragments of the wall away from us.
His bloody red eyes, were full of rage as he looked at me. He shivered, shaking uncontrollably as the air cracked with blue and purple lightning all around and the music changed.
An army of one, by Offspring.
I wasn’t idle.
I jumped closer to him, trying to impale him with the blade. He was lucky, though, as one of his random sound explosions knocked him away from my path.
I used the moment to drop the sword, asking it to become a flying one and ordering it to kill that guy. The Rhythm, at the same time, attacked me with an open hand, trying to swipe me away with one powerful move. But as his arm met my body, it hit the surface of the lake instead, disturbing the water that absorbed the impact. His hand became shiny and wet right as I hit him with my own fist into his stupid face—sending him down.
My sword used this moment to make a whirlwind in the air, reorient itself, and fly downward to go right through his chest.
“No!” he shouted as I jumped back, reaching for my explosive card and sending it right at his body. The sword wiggled within him, trying to dislodge itself, as the card left my hand and went soaring toward the Rhythm.
Before it hit, all the Authority within my eye-cards evaporated, expelled by Robbie’s own, and instead of blowing him up, the card hit the shield of sound-force that suddenly surrounded the man.
I was hit with a note too, sending me toward the doors of his house. I struck them with my left shoulder, and the muscles in it finally gave up. Something was wrong—I couldn’t move it at all.
He stood up as the song seemed to renew him, making him whole again despite the blade sticking out of his chest.
He made a move toward me, jumping forward and leaving my sword locked inside his afterimage while the music changed once more into that Interstellar soundtrack. Ever-increasing beats, faster and faster. His movements borrowed that tempo, letting him get to me in a second. He reached for me, trying to grab me by the coat, but his hands had troubles catching onto the fabric, as if he was trying to grab he water.
“Fuck! So many fucking toys!” he shouted as the wave of force hit me instead, blowing his front doors into the house and sending me with them. I slid across his floor as he came in close. “Can’t touch you? It don’t mean shit. I will pummel you into a poodle!”
And the hits followed the declaration.
Each one harder and harder.
I reached for the tattoo of my Domain, choosing it as my destination, asking it to be around me once more.
I was opposed, though. He didn’t let me.
“No more runnin’, bunny.” This song somehow gave him authority over space too. “And I mean it!” he shouted as the soundwave exploded onto my legs, and despite all the noise around, I heard it—heard it clearly. My bones shattered with a jolt of pain running all throughout my back.
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Panic began rising within me.
The tempo of the song increased.
Hit after hit pummeled me, sending me farther into his house and destroying his walls and flooring.
“You ain’t living through this masterpiece!”
I pointed my fingers at him in desperation. My Authority surged into the nuclear reactors, which flared to life in a vibrant blue glow that raced through the cables etched along my arms and converged at the laser on my middle finger. The animation gave the whole display a theatrical edge. Despite the barrage of blows coming my way, I managed to fire a single, sustained lance of razor light meant to cut him in half.
Instead, he slipped aside, leaving behind a fading afterimage as he launched another wave of attacks. The onslaught forced my arm down.
Hit, hit, and ever-increasing tempo. The crescendo was coming quickly.
Inevitable.
Funny how, in my last thoughts, as I clung to consciousness my other brains provided when my own gave up, I realized that songs could have an identity too. A flow, or a process. An ever-increasing rhythm that culminates in a violent crash—in the case of this one.
I reached for it, for this masterpiece, as he himself called it. If paintings were art defined by space, music was art stretched across time instead. It could not become an object, therefore, but something that occupied the same medium—time. A process, then.
I used my tattoo and opened the floodgates, filling myself with Authority from within my Domain, giving me power to overcome his claim over the song he projected into the world.
Become a violent explosion.
The crescendo hit, and with it half of his house unraveled, thrown aside with the force it represented, amplified by my direct access to my Domain. It didn’t hit me, though, as it was centered around him—the source of the music whose identity I changed. Walls were obliterated, exposing the sky above us, and his charred body went sliding away from me across the destroyed rock, concrete, metal, and wood, taking it all along in its wake.
And when everything thrown up by that outburst hit the ground again, the air went almost silent. Just a quiet rush of water spilling from a broken pipe. A bit of crackling electricity and dogs barking in the distance.
No music, though. No shouting, no cursing, no talking.
I lay unmoving for a while before my original brain came back to its senses. I couldn’t move my legs at all. Each twitch sent waves of pain through them. My left shoulder was badly hurt too, but the arm itself still worked. My whole body was bruised, but somehow, luckily, nothing beside the legs seemed broken. Maybe because of the lake that protected it. I had a view of the early winter morning sky in front of me and half of his shattered house behind me. I used my good arm to force myself into a sitting position against the wall that was still standing.
It was slow and painful, but I wanted to see—to look at him lying there dead—so I dragged myself up until my eyes found him among the wreckage.
“Enjoy,” I coughed blood, trying to speak. The silence, you fucking brother-killer, I finished in my mind. I knew it wasn’t what Malik would have wanted, but he was an idealist and I was a realist. The brother he loved was long gone, so maybe now, freed from the confines of the physical world, both their souls could find the solace he hoped for. In that reunion, I believed love was still possible.
“Fuck…” I heard a quiet whisper that jolted me awake from my drifting thoughts. “Fuck.” Louder now—and movement ahead—as Robbie’s body began raising itself to sit across from me. He was entirely charred, from the soles of his feet up to his face. His hair burned off, only one bloody red eye looking back at me.
“You…” he coughed blood too. “…did me good…” He finished, looked at me for a second, then somewhere to my right.
Then he began crawling through the wreckage, and all I could do was follow him with my head and eyes, unable to stop him. I wanted to summon Noxy to shoot him, but I couldn’t. I reached for a card instead—any would do.
I filled it with the will to become steel. Took aim with my right hand and sent it flying toward him.
Missed.
My arm was too tired.
I scanned with my aura and found the sword lying on the ground.
Become the flying sword. Kill him. Please. I asked, and my power reached the blade. I heard it clunk against the ground as it levitated into the air. It soared toward my position, but Robbie reached a farther doorway and shadowlight poured out of him.
The sword shot past me, but the doors were already open—into his own Domain.
Kill him! Please! For fuck’s sake! Do it! I kept shouting in my mind.
**********
“Jess!” I heard Caroline shout. Her face was right next to mine for some reason, and my cheek hurt. Bloody fucking hurt. Then the rest of the pain came flooding back.
“Car-rol?” I stuttered.
“Help is on the way. Don’t move, please.”
“What? What happened?” I asked her, every word spoken hurting.
“You’re asking me?” she replied, and I noticed Loki at my side, lying against my body, keeping me warm or something. “I woke up to see both the shapeshifter and the Rhythm gone, and you lying in the wreckage of the guy’s house.”
“Gone? Both gone? No…” I looked to my right, toward the door he used. My sword was stuck in it. “Fuck…” I said in disappointment, and tears ran down my cheek. “Fuck. I almost got him.”
“Who? The Rhythm?”
“Yes. Blasted his ass, but he went there, where my sword is. To his fucking soul’s kingdom…” I said, sobbing.
“You did good. Don’t worry. We will get him later. I can’t believe you survived that. You need to get to a hospital.”
“No!” I shouted, forcing her to move back, surprised. “Can’t go to any hospital.”
“Jess, identity is not that important. Your health is. Your life is.”
“Lebens can fix me. My friend can fix me. They’ll do it faster than any medic can.”
“Okay, okay. I get that. Tell me what happened here exactly so I can relay the story to the response team.”
“Seriously?”
“What did you expect?”
“You forcing me to go along. Freezing me with Loki, or something.”
“Jess, you saved my life tonight. I am sure of it. You almost died for it. That means more than laws or hierarchy.”
“You wanted to run. I went in.”
“That’s a battle call. I can understand that. You fight differently than I do, and you didn’t force me to do anything.”
“Yes,” I replied, and told her everything that happened. I asked her about the lightning she used, and she told me it was an artifact she possesses, not her own power. When I was nearing the end, each time I opened my mouth a jolt of agonizing pain was running through my jaw. She looked at me with intense eyes.
“I will ask only once more, to be sure. You want to go?”
“I can’t go… to a… hospital,” I replied against the will of my face’s muscles. She stood up and walked toward the door Robbie used to get out. She reached for the sword and pulled it free from the wood.
“Go to your Domain, get well and better do it quickly, as you look like shit. Call me when you are ready. We will hunt him down again,” she told me fiercely, placing the hilt of my weapon in my right hand. I smiled at her in my mind, as my face disobeyed my order and wished to go home.