Waverly immediately liked the song that Ssseth had chosen.
It was a very soft kinda song, which she liked because it calmed her down a little. Sure, she had expected something more dramatic, and in general the crowd felt a bit subdued, they were all just sitting there, nodding along, but she could deal with that, it just added to the mystery.
And then the first guitar hit and her ears perked up. She’d never, ever heard anything like that before. Sure, Country had some guitar solos, sometimes, but it was all smooth and calm and kinda boring.
This, though… this was different. The guitars thrummed with a sort of energy that kept her wide awake and soothed her mind at the same time. The more she listened, the more she felt them draw her in. And then came the lyrics and her mouth formed a small ‘o’ as she listened to the singer tell a story about water and fire, and cold and hot, and having lost something super precious to him. It was just pure poetry, but not the spoken-word kind that always made her feel like she was tripping over her own thoughts, and that felt like someone was trying to manipulate her into feeling what they thought she should be feeling.
No, this guy meant what he sang, and that added a layer to the lyrics that she hadn’t even thought possible. It was one thing to read about loss, and another to hear it vibrate in someone’s voice. It made her heart wrench itself in her chest as if it tried to wring itself dry. Her ears didn’t know what to do, either. Even when the guy suddenly threw in some old-school rap, Waverly was hooked, because the guitars just carried that weird, energetic calm, and that never let the song sound dumb.
And then, at the end, the screaming.
Everything stilled, and it was just her, in the eye of a storm that protected her forever.
Waverly’s lips parted in perfect synchronization with her eyes widening.
“What in the fuck was that?” she breathed.
—
Victor listened and he yearned.
From the first three notes, he understood that this song was about missing something precious, but when the piece got going, it drew him in and under. He got lost in the search for that ephemeral feeling, but never once did he despair. The piece was as deep as the ocean, and just as powerful, grinding entire continents to dust, in time.
And that power felt like his to take.
The song drove him forward, always pushing on, increasing in tempo and scope and scale and might until finally, the singer screamed his frustration even as the music faded, as if he could keep that going eternally. This search, Victor understood, would never stop.
He was left with a feeling he couldn’t even name. It was persistent and aggravating, calling him forward and onward. It stayed even as he tried shaking it off, and only when he accepted it did it fade, like advice you didn’t know you needed.
In the end, when the track finally faded away and Ssseth pulled out the disc to put it back into its box, Waverly whispered “What in the fuck was that?” While she sounded as curious as ever, there was also a bit of intimidation swinging in her voice. In the moment, it sounded to Victor as if she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to feel what she was feeling, or worse, that it might go away and never come back. But maybe that was just him imagining things.
“Yo,” he said, and he could feel that single word brimming with the same energy, and knew he wasn’t imagining things after all.
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Waverly’s and his eyes met, and a quiet understanding passed between them. Whatever had just happened, they needed to know if they could get that again.
“Kinda cool,” said a Centaur whose arms were covered in tattoos. “But I mean, is that even still Metal? There was Rap in there, and it even sounded kinda pop-y at times.” He sounded genuinely curious as to what the others thought.
“Try playing it at the auditions for Hellfest and see if they let you in. Then you’ll know,” Genevive the Genie said with a piercing-accentuated smirk. The collected monsters, including the Centaur, laughed at that.
“What’s Hellfest?” Waverly asked, and everyone turned to them. Usually, his best friend kind of shrunk in these situations, so he was surprised to find her as calm as ever under the collective stare of a roomful of semi-strangers. Was it the bar that calmed her down? Or something else?
“Biggest music festival in Hell,” said a Gnoll from beside the kitchen entrance. “How the fuck you don’t know?”
“Relax, Greg,” said Jim.
Waverly, still as calm as Victor had ever seen her, shrugged. “Never heard of it, but I also thought I didn’t like music, so I never really paid attention, I guess.”
“Caw!” quoth the crow, like he was trying hard not to sound smug, and failing. “You thought? So we changed your mind?”
Waverly nodded, with her usual enthusiasm this time. “Ohmydevs, yeah, I guess? I mean, it was just one song, but I actually really liked it. Like, it made me feel… it was… uh… I… Fuck, it was great!”
“Hey you didn’t tell us anything about bringing in a newbie!” said the Centaur. “We should have started her with the classics, not this postmodern interpretation bull…” he eyed Jim where he stood in the entryway of the kitchen, and went for a different word. “… angelcrap!”
Jim’s huge teeth gleamed in the half-dark. “Cedric’s right. Give ‘em the Doom Soundtrack.”
“The Doom soundtrack’s not a classic, Jim. That’s Norther, Inflames, fuck no, even earlier, Manowar, AC/DC, Metallica!” someone shot back out of the dark. A revenant, perhaps?
“Motörhead!” yelled someone from the rafters, and everyone nodded.
“The Doom soundtrack is a modern classic, and we will listen to The Only Thing They Fear Is You, or the next FightNight will be a greasy-floor special.”
“Oh please no,” the Gnoll said, and everyone laughed again.
In the meantime, the crow hopped over the table, floated a USB device into the stereo, and pecked the "play" button with a loud “CAW!”
“Oh look, the randomizer selected exactly what Jim wanted, what a surprise!”
There was some grumbling from the crowd, but The Host just stared them all down and said “CAW!!!” which was roughly translated into: “I’m not spending another night scrubbing grease out of the floor ever again. Also get the fuck up this is a Metal party, not a literary circle, what are the new kids gonna think?”
Then he pecked the volume control and turned it to the maximum.
Someone had taped a sticker that said “11” over the “Max” button.
Victor only had time to see that small detail before the crow slammed its beak onto the “Play” button, and the first ten notes thrummed from the speakers. Then there was a stutter in the song, and the bass hit.
Every single monster in the bar got up, kicked their chairs aside, and started banging their heads to the music. It was absolutely bizarre to see, especially since one of them was a headless ghost. This song was much the opposite of the previous one, violent and loud and in-your-face.
For roughly a minute and a half, Victor could only sit there and watch. At least Waverly did the same, so he felt not completely out of place.
However, just when the strangeness came to a boil and threatened to morph into insecurity, Genevive the Genie rushed over to them, grabbed them by the hand, and pulled them into the throng of people.
“Try it out, just do whatever feels natural!”
Then the guitars dropped again, and Victor decided that after cleaving someone in half, he might as fucking well, and started bouncing his head with the music. He must have looked strange, but Waverly was next to him, doing the same thing, and she looked fucking cool, so it didn’t fucking matter.
----------------------------------------
Waverly felt like she was fighting, even though she was not. The music washed over her, bathed her, drowned her, thrummed in her blood and her mind and her soul, and each heavy note shook her core with the gentle caress of musical violence.
There was no more room for doubt. There was only the music. No tomorrow, no yesterday. Just now. The bassline pushed her mind out of that storm that kept tossing her thoughts around, and into the deep, roaring calm at its center. There, the melody held her attention in an all-powerful stasis, crackling with lighting-sharp focus.
So Waverly threw her body where it wanted to go.
She banged her head.
And when people wanted to dance with her, she let them.
It wasn’t until after the fifth song, when she was drained and tired and flopped her back against the bar, panting, that she realized that she had been crying.