Elysium

7:00 P.M.

That was real fame, Tantalus thought. He and FullDan were famous in the way politicians or generals were famous. People recognized their importance to society and their skill in combat, but they wouldn’t gather in the thousands to watch a recording of Tantalus butchering an Orc.

“Wait, where’s Synth?” Elias asked, looking around.

“Oh,” Redgrave chuckled, “you’ll see.”

Tantalus looked around. Elias was correct, one of the members of Squad T1 was missing. Realization dawned on Tantalus as he looked at the stage. A figure clad in grey clumsily climbed onto the stage. He approached a stand holding a bass guitar and wrapped the strap around his shoulder. He fiddled with the strap a little bit as it got caught on his cloak.

“Oh no,” Tantalus muttered, horrified. “He’s Cordelia’s bassist?”

“Isn’t he drunk?” Elias exclaimed.

“Surely he had Riemann remove the alcohol before he went up there,” Tantalus said, hoping that one of his soldiers wasn’t about to ruin Ferrum’s first live concert.

“Nope,” Redgrave smiled, “I saw him walk straight from here to the stage.”

On stage, Cordelia grabbed the microphone as Synth prepared the bass guitar. His hood was still up, so most of his face was hidden from the crowd.

“Hello, Revenants of Osiris!” Cordelia called out to the crowd. A raucous cheer came from all corners of the crowd except for the nineteen soldiers clad in grey cloaks. Seeing one of their number step onto the stage caused them to become more worried than excited.

The guitarist, a woman with a mohawk, had subtly walked up to Synth. She was clearly speaking to the Indonesian man, and she didn’t seem happy.

“We have a few songs for you tonight,” Cordelia continued to speak. “Usually, we wouldn’t be able to prepare these songs in five days, but the four of us already knew these songs beforehand. This concert wouldn’t be possible without these three amazing people.”

Cordelia turned to the three other band members on stage. “First, give it up for our drummer, Akuma!”

Akuma raised his two drum sticks high into the air. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his long hair had clearly been bleached blonde. Without hesitation, the crowd cheered loudly. Tantalus winced at the sound.

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Synth and the guitarist had separated as Cordelia continued speaking. “Our guitarist, Mozu!”

Mozu, the woman with a mohawk, responded with a short five-second guitar riff. Based on the guitar riff alone, it was clear that she was very skilled.

“Our bassist, Synthwave!”

Synth, like Mozu, played a short riff on his bass guitar. Tantalus was amazed at the level of skill Synth displayed in just a few seconds. Beyond that, the bass riff was steady. It was frankly amazing that he could play that well after downing so many shots of vodka.

“And me, ConcreteBeats.” The applause was predictably the loudest when Cordelia reached the end of the list.

“Anyway, I think that’s enough for introductions, let’s get straight to the music. This first song is called ‘Crescent Glass Moon,’ and it was made by the band Heaven or Hell.” Cordelia introduced the first song.

The song Cordelia introduced was a Japanese song. It was created to be the intro song to a Japanese RPG, but it gained significant popularity on its musical merit alone. In 2035, many people knew the song but didn’t know the video game it was created for. Tantalus had heard the song, and he knew that it was hard to perform.

Cordelia gave a signal, and the band began the performance. The bass was heavily used early in the song, and there were several points where only the bass could be heard. Despite this, Synth performed perfectly. The bassline held and remained steady throughout the whole song.

The way Cordelia performed the song, it started out slow and quickly rose in energy to the point where it was almost as if she was screaming at the top of her lungs when she reached the end of the song. Tantalus couldn’t speak a lick of Japanese, but he figured her pronunciation was good. Tantalus knew that the original had a male vocalist, and he was impressed how Cordelia had adjusted the song to meet her vocals.

Then, just as quickly as it had started, the song stopped. Tantalus covered his ears a moment before he was hit by deafening applause. Unexpectedly, they were actually really good. Even with five days of preparation, a limited pool of people, and a drunk bassist, they were able to deliver a great song. Of all sections of the crowd, the one populated with soldiers in grey cloaks cheered the loudest.

There were five songs in total. Two of them were classic rock, and three were Japanese. All five were covers of incredibly popular songs that most people had heard of before.

Between songs, the nineteen Greycloaks split off into smaller groups in order to get away from the huge mass of people near the stage. Tantalus ended up a few hundred feet away from the stage with Redgrave and Eska. They found a place populated with relatively few Revenants. They had some difficulty seeing the stage, but they could hear just fine from this far away.

Over time, more people came to sit in the area occupied by the three Greycloaks. They were forced closer to one another, and Eska’s shoulder ended up against Tantalus’s. This contact could have been attributed to the crowd or general drunkenness, but Eska did not pull away.

The fourth song caught Tantalus’s attention. It was called “The Silent Observer,” and it was another Japanese song. Tantalus had never heard the song before, but it was right up his alley. The drums, guitar, and bass came together to produce an apocalyptic sound. Then, Cordelia began to belt out a powerful lyrical performance. The song evoked in Tantalus the same feeling he felt whenever he was in a life-or-death fight. Everyone seated got to their feet soon after the song began, and the contact between Tantalus and Eska was broken.

Soon after, the concert ended, and the crowd began to disperse.