Four stood on the stage they had set up in the town's centre. The noon summer Twins were beating down on them and she was tasting the sweat on her lips. They were surrounded by buildings of equal elevation, the town square being the one place in the city which had sloped highways leading to-and-fro the most varied of places. They were facing the south where the buildings were shorter. The stage designer said it was to reduce the amount of distorted echoes from the music. The taller buildings behind them were to reflect the cheers from the crowd while the cut dome of a stage was designed to amplify the volume of the music that otherwise could not be enhanced.

She had never thought that architectural designs could extend into music. The point at which the two trades intersected had once seemed so obscure, but now, she could not imagine having never known it. She was sure to look out for structural and location designs now that she understood the basic concept. It was one of those things that will forever nag at the back of her mind as she pursued her craft.

“Hey!” She turned to find Seks standing at the edge of the stage, a crate in his hands. “I know it's mystical to be on stage for you and all, but we've got a job to do by sundown.”

“Yes. You're right!” She picked up her tools and followed the drakin off stage.

The pair worked with the crew for the rest of the early afternoon. The stage's dome was eventually filled in with panels of mirrors, an artistic design that boggled the mind when viewed from the front due to its varied and confusing reflection. It was an effect which Four could appreciate as it drew in light and colours from all around.

When the set-ups were completed, the stagehands were asked to simply wait around the stage but to always be within reach in case something should happen. Seks was briefed that Saix liked to walk into the crowd mid song, and that if the musician was to do that, Seks would act as a bodyguard.

Four on the other hand was waiting anxiously. It had been years since she had heard Saix play. She worried that the music might have dulled with age. That the electricity of his style had faded. She worried that the same would happen to her one day.

“Four-Chan. Seks.” She looked over to the stage where Saix stood. He beckoned them over. “Come 'ere, I want to show you something.”

The teens went over. Placed before them was a black box, the front of which was meshed with a form of grill. The side up had buttons, knobs, and switches that they've only seen in books depicting the steam technology of Eltar. Although the versions on the box were significantly sleeker, coloured the same black as the rest of the container.

Saix explained, “This is a bass amplifier.”

He held out his arms and in a flash of purple electricity, he materialized his weapon.

“That's...” Seks' words faded. “A scythe?”

“A scitar,” Saix corrected.

Indeed, with the way the man held the tool, it looked more guitar than a scythe, though the instrument was in a form Four had never seen before. The violet body was thin and flat without a sound hole. It had white knobs along the side of the body along the edges of the pick rest. The line of the body itself curved and winded, ending in the form of half a flame before the start of the neck. The blade of the scythe itself extended below the bridge and curved the length of the body, the spine of the metal reinforced with grey steel. A two pronged spearhead protruded from the bottom.

Saix strummed a blank cord and the blade snapped into the body of the guitar with the spearhead retracting in. With the transformation complete, it finally took the classic form of the instrument Four had come to know, albeit still with a protrusion of the sharp end of the blade near the neck.

“Geared,” she let out, dumbfounded.

Saix snapped his fingers, pulling their attention back to him. “Focus.” He pulled out a black cord-line that ran from the amplifier and attached the copper end of it to a slot where the spearhead vanished into. He then told Seks, “When I'm out there, you're to make sure this wire doesn't disconnect from either the amplifier of the guitar. Follow behind me and make sure to keep it lose, understand?”

Seks nodded in acknowledgement.

“What about me?” Four asked.

Saix smiled and held out his instrument. “Do you want to give it a play?”

Her eyes popped out of her face. She wasn't sure if it actually did. But it was very likely to have happened. She speechlessly took the guitar from Saix. When she held it in her arms, her heart quickly calmed to the rhythm of readying music and she prepared to pluck a tune.

“Give it some magic juice,” Saix explained. “That's how the amplifier works here, since there's no power outlet.”

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She was not entirely sure what the man said, but followed the instruction scrupulously anyway. Her right fingers lit up in white as she gave a charge of her magic circuits. Then she plucked a chord.

The sound reverberated out of the amplifier, coursing through the air and turning the heads of those around them. It continued to echo and shake the world. But for Four, her mind lit up. The world was in the middle of an electric storm. It was coursing through purple, violet, magenta, and other colours she did not know a name to. She continued, playing the tune to an old bass melody. She was watching waves of electricity surround her as if she was in an ocean of music. When the last chord was struck, the tone lasted for moments longer as the world slowly returned.

“Wow.”

“Not bad, kid,” Saix complimented. “You want to play with us tonight?”

“Yeah.” She took the information through a ride on her addled brain before exclaiming, “What?”

Saix smiled. “Our guitarist bailed on us. You won't be playing this piece, just the classic wood, but you'll be on stage jamming.”

Four did not understood half of what the man said but the general message was clear. She was going to play a concert with her hero, and that was all she needed.

“Yes! Oh please! Yes to everything Titans!”

“Great,” he handed her sheets of music. “I trust your talents to join us for rehearsal at twilight?”

Time slipped by her as she pushed to memorize the music. It was not hard. They were short pieces and she had learnt to read musical notes before she even knew the common language. Rehearsal shot by quickly, though the group did it without the aid of Saix's magic black box in worry that it might draw a crowd before the show. The band consisted of Saix himself, a drummer, and now Four.

By the time the curtains were drawn and she was standing behind Saix, it felt like only seconds had passed. She thought that musicians of his kind lived fast, and she liked the speed of their routine.

Looking off stage, Seks gave her two thumbs up and a sharp-toothed terrifying grin that only drakins could make. She nodded back, glad to know someone had her back.

She turned back to the crowd and the drummer counted them down. Then the first chord struck the air.

It was fire. It was wind. It was the earth trembling beneath their feet and the dark sky lighted with electricity. It was nature itself quaking with energy. It was time slowing down and speeding to the tune in a way that only music could bring.

Can't you tell me where I need to go.

Can't you tell me what I want to know.

Red and blue spun the outer rims of the music. The immediate area danced with shock drums and dumb awe. From Saix, colours amplified became violet. From the drummer, each beat hit with a red burst. From herself, each light chord faded into a the background a gentle teal. The crowd cheered wild flowers, the world a painting.

At the end of everything we just come and go.

Life comes sickly rock and roll.

Saix stepped off the stage and into the crowd. Seks ran out from offstage and followed behind the man, lifting the cable attached to the amplifier over the heads of the swarm and off the ground, careful not to get the equipment entangled. They played the final chorus from the centre, the music blasting out of the amplifier on the stage. Purple and yellow churned into steady chaos.

The last beat and tune hit the air, staying with a loud clash of percussion. The crowd went wild, their cheers filling the air a fierce hunter yellow as Saix and Seks made their way back to the stage.

Then a streak of white cut through her visuals. Her ears picked up nothing but her mind's eyes saw the white smoky trail clearly. It was a sound beneath the sound. Background noise that would otherwise go unnoticed. But not to her, and not to that colour. She had ever only seen one thing in life made that pure white a sound and it stiffened her up.

Slowly, she set her guitar down on a chair at the back of the stage and pricked her ears to the line of the sky. Saix and Seks had returned and were staring at her quizzically. The crowd was still cheering the end of the opening act.

“What's wrong?” Saix asked.

“I saw something,” she half-mindedly replied. “It's a colour...”

When Saix looked confused until Seks explained, “She can see sounds as colours.”

“Chromesthesia? That's rare.”

But she ignored them. Instead, she noted, “I saw a scream. Seks, get our weapons. We're not Spellblades without them.”

The drakin did not even question. He ran off the stage and around back to where they had kept most of their stuff at, including their arms.

Saix was more sceptical. “Are you sure? I mean, we are at a concert. People are cheering.” But the cheering had died down as the crowd began picking up on the discrepancy in the atmosphere between them.

“No,” she retorted, still keeping her ears up. “Cheers of joy are 'sunflower yellow'. What I saw was 'death white'.”

A shriek filled the sky and turned the attention of everyone to the south. Shortly, the skies were stained by the screams of those in need. By that time, Seks had already returned, fully armed with his revolver-axes tucked into the sash of his cloth belt. He passed Four her weapons.

They were a pair of front bladed gun-swords. The pistols were made of a series of moving parts that formed a long 'T'. The centre of balance led to a rasp coloured sword that extended from the straight grip up. A black clip below the grip held the ammunition to the firearm of the weapon.

Saix turned to his crew and began pushing out orders for evacuation. By then, Seks and Four had leapt off the stage and were running through the crowd. They commandeered the first bicycles they saw and rushed off towards the highway.

The sloped road proofed invaluable in that moment. They turned at each junction, and though unfamiliar with the inner workings of the streets, they made for the main road which they knew headed south. With a few calls for direction when things got confusing, they were largely on track. Within minutes, the were across the vast city and riding one of the smaller geyser elevator up to the southern main platform station where the initial screams came from.

“You ready?” Four asked her partner.

“No,” Seks replied annoyed. “This is not how I thought the day was going to turn out.”

“You and me both.”

As the elevator rose up and above the platform, the pair came face-to-face with a bloodbath. Bodies littered the station floor. Guards, workers, travellers, citizens, men, women, drakins, and children. None were spared.

The two wished they had not gotten used to carnage like that so they would have gag reflexes to react with, less seeming inhuman. But they were children born in war. Peace was not the norm for them. Their early lives were filled with blood and brim smoke.

Seks asked, “Who could have done this?”

She turned to survey another side of the surrounding. The platform was the tallest structure in the land, overlooking the rest of the city. Black smoke were rising from the south-central, followed by another white hot scream. What ever had attacked the people had already moved into the city.

Four turned to Seks, “They're heading further–”

But Seks was not where she last saw him. His body had been flung half way across the platform and was hunched over in pain on the ground. She held her weapons up, ready for an attack. But she saw nothing but the canyon walls and the night sky. Then, her vision blurred and she felt the impact hit her square in the chest.