Clarissa took a deep breath and let herself go. The person who turned the corner into the alley would not have been recognized by her closest friends and associates. She her carriage and mannerisms were all different. Her voice had a new timbre and an accent that said her home was a long way from here. But the bum seated on a dented trash can didn't know that.
"Quiet night, ain't it?"
"Piss off," the grimy man said, dismissing her by tossing down a smoke and lighting another.
"I can hear that in any shithole around here. Gimme a real Dis."
The man shifted in his chair. The hilt of a blade appeared between the folds of his vagrant getup. In some ways he was as fake as her. Turning his head left and right, he exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke all around his head. Satisfied, he tilted his chin at something behind her.
"Barrel," was all he said.
Clarissa turned and saw a large liquor cask behind her. The bottom was still damp, probably bootlegged this morning and brought from the harbor down the street. It was capped on top and she pulled on the oversized cork. The top rotated smoothly up on oiled hinges. Instead of a bottom, there was a rope ladder. She hopped in as the lookout hissed a warning. Closing the hatch behind her, she descended into the earth.
Small signs with arrows gave directions and the vibrations increased in strength. The show was already in full swing. She turned left at a fork as the sign indicated. Looking right, the pathways looked the same. Getting lost down here was nearly a death sentence. No one had fully mapped these tunnels and element cults patrolled their territories. Clarissa had no idea how organizers cut out and scouted these pockets of underground safety, but it was rare for Dis shows to be interrupted by outsiders.
She came around the next bend into the venue. The air was crackling with energy and she immediately felt pulled toward the stage. There were distinct pockets of revelers amid the throng. The boundaries between them were subtle, perhaps only centimeters, but they were real. All the Dis bands split their audiences like this, but Wrhythm was special. She drifted somehow to a place that felt right as the imbued instruments sent the fractured essence of the band out into the crowd.
Clarissa had to admit that when she started this mission, she had thought the Dis scene was just a bunch of punks making noise. Her first concert had been a revelation- there was something to this. Juvenielle and shallow, yes, but nonetheless the energy was undeniable. Sometimes she caught her self getting lost in the performance and had to bring her mind back under control.
Her crew was there in the group, which did not surprise her. This was how they met- they always gravitated to the same areas near the stage. It was uncanny.
She DisGreetingTK to her crew and slipped into her role. Something felt different tonight though. She watched the band on stage, especially the lead man, LeadSingerNameTK. All three of the band members played imbued instruments, but she always found herself drawn to his parts of the song. Maybe it was the singing, the way his voice mixed with the music (Air + Water). Maybe. The other two didn't sing, but moved about the stage. She found this more distracting that anything. They switched songs to something she had heard about, but not heard in person yet.
Wrhythm's new song, "I Don't Care About You," started off with a surge of energy. Clarissa found herself swept away from her crew with this new energy, like the crowd suddenly crossed an uncharted ocean current and was swept in a new direction. New faces, new feelings.
For some reason she thought of Pali and her vision blurred. The events of a few hours ago swam through her head, she tried to breathe but something caught. The world moved in slow motion around her and the crowd disappeared as the music pulled her in.
She felt panic for some reason, like for her this was an undertow. Then she looked up and Pali was gone. LeadSingerNameTK was looking right at her. His face was contorted in anger, but his eyes were calm. The lyrics he screamed at her were, "I don't care about you," but the energy channeled from him through the instrument said the opposite.
She floated forward into open space that was worth more than life itself that close to the stage. She touched the natural rock of the stage edge, suddenly grasping at it like a protruding stone in rapids. LeadSingerNameTK bent down, his eyes holding her in place as he hit every syllable, reached down and touched her forehead with a fingertip.
The effect was electric. Almost passing out, not from pain but from the shock of new awareness. She could feel all the people around her, knew what they were going to do a split second before they did. She stared in awe as ropes of multi-colored energy, assuredly the three elements, swirled from Wrhythms three members. A wild, deep blue dominated the whole underground arena with only accompanying whorls of greyish yellow and mottled green accenting the flood.
She moved with the previously unseen, but not unfelt, currents, navigating the crowd with an ease even a Dis veteran would envy. She found herself moving through the troughs, finding the low points and slipping through the crowd. She saw her crew on the crests of the energy, trying, she knew now in vain, to see as she now did. All at once, she was free of the press. A lone tendril of blue curled off into the darkness behind the stage. She followed it.
The trail of Water ran around the stage and back behind it, into the private space set aside for Wrhythm. A guard stood as she approached, a huge man in a vest with long utility pants and heavy booted feet. She felt some part of her mind urge caution, but her newfound sense was wiser. The man simply opened the cordon and let her pass, nodding his head slightly to her.
The tendril wove through the floor stones and stalagmites a short ways before petering out in the midst of Wrhythm's equipment boxes and back up gear. There were various take out meals, libations, and other distractions on a table nearby, legal and illegal, but these went almost unnoticed. There were three figures in robes so dark a blue that they appeared black. They turned as she entered the backstage area and smiled, beckoning to her.
There were two women and a man. They smiled at her and took her hands in turn saying, "Welcome sister" and pulling back their hoods. All had eyes of deep blue and, with her new sight, she could see thin lines of the same blue crossing their bodies like lay lines (check Chinese medicine for locations in illustration). For the first time she looked down at her hands and arms. She had them too. The three smiled as she noticed this. "Yes," said one of the women, "you see the world as it is now. You are a bit out of alignment, but nothing that cannot be balanced."
This shocked Clarissa. Out of alignment? She must know more. For some reason, she was drawn to these people in ways she could not have imagined an hour ago. Connected in ways she had never been before (connect to Pali TK).
"Who are you? What are your names?" She said this dreamily, as if speaking to a still pond. The pond responded.
"Who we are is less important than our meeting," said the man. "For now, know that we are devotees of what you are experiencing now. Do you feel the connection? Not just with others, but with yourself?"
Clarissa paused. She felt foolish now, looking at these people. She saw the currents on energy flowing along their skin and the life in their eyes. What use were names when you could see the flow of a person's true self? And as she turned her gaze inwards, she felt a peace that was alien, like biting into a familiar food and tasting another.
The man smiled. "I see that you do." He looked at one of the women and she nodded. He turned to the second woman and she pulled a tiny bundle out from a pocket in her robes. Unwrapping the object, a ring, she held it out with both hands to Clarissa and bowed her head. Clarissa, not knowing what to do at the unexpected ceremony, inclined her head to at least show an attempt at reverence, and took the ring with both her hands. The other two robed figures simply watched.
The ring appeared to be iron on the outside, but razor thin lines of blue on the inside drew her attention. Her eyes widened in surprise. The ring was forged with tralaticon, the rare metal able to contain raw elements, and imbued with pure Water. Rings like this were as uncommon as they were expensive. In the Census Office, soldiers were gifted rings and other items such as these only for the greatest of deeds or as badges of office for the highest ranks.
The man spoke again before she recovered. "We can see you know what that is. Three days from now Wrhythm will be having a private show. From tonight until then you must where this ring, for its influence will guide you to the location."
Clarissa stared at the ring as she slipped it on. She immediately felt a slight tingle as her body reacted to the flow of Water into her body. She had never worn one of these; it was a bit underwhleming considering their rarity. She looked back up at the trio.
"This is quite a risk you are taking. What is stopping me from selling it? I could set myself up in the country with this."
The small smiles on their faces told her they had heard this question before, perhaps every time they handed the ring over. How many people had worn it, Clarissa suddenly thought. Her thoughts were cut off by a quiet whisper from the man.
"You won't."