Oh, young prudes, 'tis a shame that you know not the delights of silence's perversions! Woe ye who wallow in the solace of critical thought alone.

—EXCERPT FROM A TRANSLATED SIOPIAN POEM, THE AUTHOR OF WHICH REMAINS UNKNOWN, AS CITED BY THE EDITOR OF MORBID MAGAZINE (APPRENTICE EDITION).

A blond girl in her early teens had been eyeing two women behind a secluded cone of silence in a routine check of her spell's integrity. Their words were a mystery, as expected, but as she gave an ear to the Mystia's intricate vibrations, her interpretations of their voices assaulted the girl's ears.

Where her silencing spell might have perplexed others by the sheer complexity of multiple waveforms out of phase, she heard meaning: laughter, sorrow, glee, regret… the girl went red, looking away.

She wasn't supposed to eavesdrop longer than she needed to. Lest the noise check became a perverse distraction. But this was too good! Would the ex-lovers rekindle an old flame? She couldn't say, but this telling of the terrorist attack in the Mohabi Desert promised far more intrigue. The girl loved a good peeling of the onion, but the burn was too slow with old politicians and their propaganda.

She bit her lip. But before the girl could peer back in--

"On your feet, Sonata, Fugue," her father's haggard voice cut through the noise.

"Father?" asked Sonata, a dark-haired boy of about thirteen, incredulous. Sonata reluctantly tore his gaze from the daring Madders Burnswitch as he cursed his limited viewing options in the public gallery. His father's words seemed to have caught Fugue unaware all the same. Her face was rosy. Did she ruin the spell? What did that have to do with him?

The boy's face still burned with excitement. Madders's words on the podium had set Sonata ablaze. But his father threatened to turn the boy's frustrations to anger the moment his reverie ended. Sonata knit his brow in a glare aimed at his sister. She sighed.

"Father," Fugue said in a whisper, as she craned her neck towards the man's stiff figure, tucking her short blond hair behind an ear. "If the noise bothers you that much, perhaps you should cast the silencing spell instead?"

"No need. The noise here will not bother me any longer, darling. Now do as I say," said the children's father. The girl found his rare smile eerie on sunken cheeks and purple-stained lips. "We're in concerto from this point on—there's a soloist in our midst."

"A soloist? Here?" Asked Fugue.

She met her brother's blue gaze for a moment. The boy held his breath at that word. Soloist. Sonata seemed lost. There, but not quite. All the excitement had left his face. With a heavy heart, Fugue made bizarre hand signs in Siopian—a silent hexing language. Then… her ears went deaf. She had silenced all the noise. Before long, all Fugue could hear were the trembling strings of Mystia.

There was an addictive harmony in the twilight between silence and sound where all strings of Mystia trembled. The lords and ladies of sorcery in the public gallery each had a unique tempo to their Mystia's flux. Fugue heard heavy notes, forced, oppressive. Others were delicate, flowing with ease, yet relentless. Here were sorcerers who had attained mastery to its extremes. Yet no sound was flawless. Not hers, not her father's.

Perhaps the closest Mystian flux to flawed perfection, Fugue observed, was her little brother's. Sonata missed the same note at the same time every few thousand waveforms. It was jarring. Everyone missed notes, but not like clockwork. Not like Sonata did.

Father went too hard on him too early. He's hit a bottleneck at the first tempo. The first! Even commoners can reach at least the fourth. Such a waste of talent. Fugue thought.

But as she looked over the balcony at the 167 representatives, her green eyes widened. The young girl felt a chill when she realized at the center of it all… was an eerie silence. Where Madders Burnswitch stood. Fugue couldn't hear his Mystia flux.

"Father, what tempo is he at? Is he the soloist? No… there are others like him in the oval chamber."

"As silent as hanged men, aren't they, darling?" Her father asked. "But none are true soloists. It's not a concerto if the audience can't hear the notes, after all."

The dark-haired man mustered every ounce of strength in his bones to meet eyes with either child. A hassle, as the contraption he was strapped to, kept the man from moving his neck, or any other part of him, really. An intentional design constraint. It wasn't as if he needed to look at his children to see them. Still, was he that eager for this welcome surprise Madders had orchestrated? The man couldn't say.

Has Burnswitch finally realized he makes a better conductor than a performer? All he ever wanted was to be a soloist, that one. Ah, if wanting was all it took. The man found himself oddly amused at the thought, so much that it was surprising even to himself when he dispelled the cones of silence Fugue had cast, with much effort, in a strained snap of his bony fingers.

The men and women in the public gallery stood wide-eyed, as their perception of sound returned to them in frightening depth. Laughter, woos, sneers, secrets spilling as fervently as champagne glasses slipped out of panicked hands. The Father's hoarse drawl grated at their ears, over it all, as if he whispered to each one, saying,

"Only in name were these old monotone walls hallowed before now!"

"Father! What has come over you?!" Sonata said, regaining his senses somewhat. The manner in which his neck craned in that instant would've made any owl jealous. The boy's face went pale. "Do you wish to damn your own children with you? Fugue and I shall take no further part in your madness! Mother was right. This has gone on long en--"

First, a vibration, then the air rippled, and the sound bounced back softer, clearer—Sonata could feel the sound course through his very being, like the blood of his veins; he felt lightheaded, a tingling in his loins.

Not a sound had graced the boy's ears of such untold clarity and beauty. It was like a symphony wrapped in notes too angelic for words—that was no sound of human making—it was flawless. Sonata's mouth went wide as he met Fugue's piercing green gaze; she swallowed hard to moisten her now parched throat. Fugue's hands trembled as she held her father's stiff arm.

"Do you... hear the notes now, children?" asked the man, tears rolling down his face. For a moment, he wished from the depths of his soul that his were eyes that saw light and not sound. "These trembling strings of Mystia... a great sorcerer is here!"

Like an oscillating wave, as Sonata and Fugue shot up to their feet, so did the other sorcerers in the public gallery. Then, as if at a conductor's cue, all 167 representatives in the hallowed seats surrounding the podium followed.

The giant bailiff's large muscles flexed as he pushed open those mighty runed doors. In walked a small, unassuming, but rather... cheerful, middle-aged black woman. Silver was her hair with curious golden eyes that darted all around like she was looking for a naughty child. Hers was the gentlest of smiles, the kind Sonata saw on his mother's face when he finished all his vegetables, the kind that brought a smile to his lips, too.

The only things... peculiar about her, Sonata observed, were her somewhat... pointed ears, the heavenly sound of her Mystia fluxing at the first tempo, and a jaunty skip she had to her step. Her name—he would learn and remember all his days—was Elizabeth Baffleme.

***

In a piss-pot alley far removed from the opulent Sorcerers' Assembly, a ginger-haired man tossed a golden coin with a symbol of a hanged man on one side, and a pot of gold on the other.

A skinny little girl, covered in grime, watched wide-mouthed. She stood with her cracked feet in the muck. They'd be sore later, but it'd be worth it. A loose-fitting tank top, yellow at the pits, hung clumsily on one shoulder, her ribs peeking. The girl didn't blink as the coin flipped in the same spot, caught in the air just above her head, a mere jump-and-snatch away.

"Smokes!" said the little girl, her fingers itching. "How d'ya pull a pentacle out me ear an' make 'er spin like so?"

The ginger-haired man snatched the coin in a swift motion, showing the girl his palm. The girl held her breath; she brought her hands to her freckled face, the girl's long fingernails stuffed with all sorts of nastiness. She jumped up and down, giggling. Finally, the coin had landed on the pot of gold on her turn. She couldn't remember winning at anything else in her life. The ginger-haired man tipped his patchwork top hat, covering his eyes as he smiled through purple-stained lips, saying,

"You're a very lucky girl. There's a trick to it. Wanna know what it is?"

"Ya bet! Me's be rich when me can pull pentacles out me ear!"

The girl licked her chapped lips—a single pentacle would feed her for months! But as her eyes went lower, she saw her own muddled reflection in the hundreds of golden coins that lay at her feet. How many years of food were they worth?

If only the girl could count past twenty in twos, she'd know for sure—that said a lot. It took all of her self-control and then some for her not to grab a handful and dash off.

This rich fool was pushing the girl's patience. He was... but right next to the ginger-haired man lay the dozens of other idiots who did just that—unconscious, if they were lucky. But who'd choose a mere handful over learning the trick that made countless? A fool, that's who. But the girl was no fool. She'd learn the trick first, then make her getaway.

"Yes... but first, let's make this bargain with pentacles in good faith, shall we?" asked the ginger-haired man. "Tell me your name."

"Me's be called Sophie."

"That's a lovely name." The ginger-haired man said. And as his contagious smile grew wider, he covered more of his face with the top hat. Sophie caught just a glimpse of his somewhat… pointed ears. "Very well, Sophie, since you asked... here's a trick just for you."

***

To be continued.