Seven Dances

You see the following people here:
Cooper, Aegoth, Emiya, Elizabetha, Leorea, Ysela, Palusa, Ailea, Elyon, Kiet, Kei, Cecelia, Drefan, Keorin, Santar, Cyzhar, Koi, Arin, Shokufeh, Argwin, Mezghar, Stheno

As you enter the ballroom, warm light spills from the chandeliers overhead. Torches flicker along the walls, burning with a hotter white flame.

Wooden observers' benches are pushed up against the southern wall, clearing the centre of the ballroom for dancers.

Littered in a wide circle around the space, a variety of cushions in all colours and textiles are placed on the floor, like the middle of a souk.

A jagged voice sounds from above, reverberating through the chamber. "Take your seats! The Seven Dances will soon begin."

"Cease your idleness, open your minds, and beware," rumbles the disembodied voice.

"Once begun, the Dances cannot stop. They cannot falter. These mortals are bound to the Seven and must dance their way out."

The ominous echo of those words lingers long after the invisible speaker has fallen silent.

Suddenly, the crystal chandeliers dim below the domed ceiling. Shadows fill the room and creep into your periphery, forcing your eyes to rapidly adjust.

As the room is plunged into darkness, a low bass thrum resounds through the hardwood floor and judders through your body.

Cyzhar tilts his head to the side as the shadows take hold, morbid curiosity etched into the gaunt hollowness of his cheeks.

It thrums again, and an answering orb of golden light throbs into existence within the centre of your circle of cushions.

In that brief flash, you see the faces of those across from you, lit by curiosity and apprehension.

The bass growls a third time. Light blazes into a huge golden sphere and glows throughout the room, backlighting the dark silhouette of Stheno. A bevy of shadowy figures hang in the background, frozen in carefully held poses.

With her arms poised and fingers delicately curled in the air, Stheno resembles the waiting pose of the lotus, a form soon to be lost among the classical dancers.

Standing, crouching, or hunched over their instruments, dozens of faceless dancers await their cue. Too many to have slipped in unnoticed.

A quiet, snaking music reaches your ears, so faint you could be imagining it. It slinks from the dark corners of the room and coils in your mind.

On the fourth bone-shaking boom of the Infernal drum, Stheno steps forward. She is nigh unrecognisable in an insidious hooded cloak of webs, its deep hood drawn up over her face. You know her by the sound of her anklets and her purposeful walk as she comes forth.

Someone bangs a timbrel and shakes its bells, underscoring every step Stheno takes. When she arrives in the foreground, a line of dancers scurry in behind her like mice fleeing from the torchlight.

Garbed in the same black cloaks, theirs are clearly more tattered and worn. They slump into position along the floor and hold out empty bowls in their hands.

Sparking before your very eyes, fiery letters shape themselves in the air, penned by an unseen hand. They appear one after another in flowing script.

Like the afterimage of a waving candle, they form an impression on the backs of your eyelids. The letters spell: INIQUITY.

Stheno's dainty steps bring her to the edge of the crowd, where she kneels down by Mezghar. Thrusting an empty beggar's bowl towards him, she shakes it expectantly. She taps her fingers against the rim twice, then brings them to her mouth to beseech her benefactor in a universal symbol for hunger.

Mezghar frowns at Stheno.

Boom! The drumbeat heralds another blaze of light, which illuminates the shape of a tall black monolith against the backdrop of red velvet curtains.

The carven head of a giant daemon leers out of the dark, its tongue unfurling between bared fangs.

Cyzhar affixes his gaze upon the visage of the daemon expectantly.

While Stheno is distracted by Mezghar's lack of wealth, a black figure rises to its feet against the shadow of the daemonic figurehead. Armoured in the distinctive, bristling plate of the Maldaathi, he stalks forward and looms behind Stheno's turned back, a portent of dread.

A few soft gasps scatter through the audience as blood runs cold.

Sizzling out of existence and back, the floating letters reform before you to spell: BRUTALITY.

Without warning, the clawed gauntlet reaches out and seizes Stheno by the scruff of her neck, yanking her back onto her feet in the ballroom. She gasps and drops her bowl with a clatter, then turns to writhe away from her captor.

The towering knight tosses her away from him and sends Stheno spinning across the dance floor. Music screams to life, as a group of musicians sitting cross-legged on the floor lift black pipes to their mouths and play an angry, blaring salute.

Stheno twirls out of her cloak, the fabric left clutched in the Maldaathi's closed fist.

A contingent of armoured dancers march onto the stage and file into two uniform lines. In their mailed fists, they grip what look to be real greatswords.

Stheno completes her pirouette and staggers for effect. Decked head to toe in gold cloth and dripping jewellery, she glimmers where she stands, looking between her aggressor and his battalion with something like terror.

Stheno makes a bid for escape at stage left. Immediately, the ranks close around her in perfect lockstep. A gauntlet of steel swords cross their blades an inch from her face, ringing out in a peal of metal as they clang together.

Helpless, Stheno falls at their feet and slams her open palm against the ground in desolation.

The flaming letters seem to dance with glee before they warp into another form, rearranging vowels to say: SUBJUGATION.

A mournful cry issues from the mouth of a long, twisting warhorn, sounded by the powerful lungs of a Xorani hornblower.

Stheno trails her fingers along the polished hardwood, carving out a circular space for herself on the floor. She rises to her feet with new determination, her back straight beneath the aureate silk of her choli.

Dancing forward in a series of finely controlled steps, Stheno stands her ground and claps her hands once. A cloud of red vermilion billows from her hennaed palms when she brings them together.

An armament of drums begin to pound loudly. Swarthy mhun percussionists twirl their sticks theatrically in hand, then strike the taut drumheads.

The greater battalion fades into the background, as Stheno faces off with her sole circling adversary.

Other dancers join the fray in dazzlingly bright costumes. Lithe women and limber men, bodies honed by months or years of athleticism.

Again the roar of the drums, and again the percussive clap. This time they all clap together, sending a large cloud of crimson dye gusting into the air.

It scatters down around you like powdered blood, clinging to everything.

Her anklets chiming, Stheno backs away from the menace of the advancing knight. Without taking her eyes off him, she reaches out to the crowd. The elegant extension of her arm ends at Palusa, whom she beckons. Her palm lies open and waiting.

Hand resting on her terrifying tooled scabbard, Palusa steps out from the viewing circle, manoeuvring as carefully as a large troll may amidst the onlooking crowd.

Unseen Lights rings out brightly as Palusa rapidly draws it from a terrifyingly tooled leather scabbard.

Palusa walks toward Stheno, the crimson edge of Unseen Lights catching the light as she holds out the blade to her, hilt first.

Stheno draws Unseen Lights into her grasp and points its deadly edge at her foe.

Halting his advance, the Maldaathi cocks his helmed head and swings his greatsword in a haughty ceasefire. He steps back, receding into the rank and file.

Killing off the unnecessary letters, the burning script truncates in mid-air to spell a simple word: CRUELTY.

Taking care not to cut herself, Stheno holds the blade by its hilt and flips it up in a fluid motion. She catches it by the point before it leaves her fingers, balancing the razor's edge on her fingertips with expert pressure and precision. A trickle of blood slips down her wrist.

All but a few of the red-dyed dancers whirl away.

Those that remain start to weave drunkenly on their feet. Their skin ripples beneath their bright clothes.

Stheno curls her tongue behind her teeth and hisses a command word to her dancers. They respond in kind, as pattern after pattern of serpentine scales erupt from their skin in a unique sheen. Garden snakes and king cobras, green and black and brown.

Something silken brushes against your leg.

Death adders slither in underfoot, called to the dance by their sibilant masters.

Ysela looks down curiously.

With a sharp crack, a volley of lashes snap out from stage left and right. One arcs over your head without harming you, splitting the air with a hiss.

Koi shrieks quietly.

Cyzhar twitches slightly at the sound of the cracking lash so close, his body tensing for the briefest moment.

The snaking tune returns at full volume. Hissing string instruments interweave with the time-keeping pulse of the drums and the pipes' haunting ululation.

Undulating, the dancers' movements are as unseemly as they are entrancing. Bones pop, slide, and dislocate while they contort their bodies with inhuman allure.

With Unseen Lights still balanced on her fingertips, Stheno uncoils the golden chain of her lash in her free hand. She cracks it across an unfortunate dancer's face, drawing a stark red line of blood. Ignoring the startled cry, she reels in the chain with a flick of her wrist.

Stheno strides up to meet her audience, as cold and self-assured as any Nagarani.

Burning a sickly scarlet, the floating letters thicken into a bolder word: STRENGTH.

The snake charmers and their snakes don't visibly leave the stage. They just vanish into the interplay of light and shadow.

A pure note filters out from one of the pipes, clarifying the mood.

With a triumphant shout, the ballroom now echoes with the twang of sitars and the familiar sounds of a training room.

First one, then two, then many monks somersault over the audience and into the ring. They flow across the floor in a frenetic show of action and violence.

Dressed in loose cottons and plain blacks, they display a full range of movement as they punch, kick, sweep, and flip their way across the stage.

A leanly muscled man throws his fist at the jaw of a woman who could be his younger sister. She catches it and sidesteps, throwing him neatly to the ground.

While your watching eyes are split between her and the other dancers, Stheno entices whoever glances at her for more than a second. She paces around the inner circle of cushions, pausing before Arin with Palusa's blade in her hand.

Demonstrating physical control over her body, Stheno places Unseen Lights lengthwise against her right hip. When she rolls her hip, it traps the blade between the bottom of her ribs and her hip bone, holding it in the small roll of flesh that forms with her movement. It should fall at any moment, but the blade stays fast.

Stheno bends backwards at the waist in a severe curve that reaches fifty, sixty, then seventy degrees. An angle too painful to hold. The muscle in her flat stomach tenses with the effort, and she trembles, but doesn't fall. Nor does the sword.

Stheno waves her slim arms above her and describes an artful shape in the air with her hands, the gold of her many bangles clinking together. Burnt umber vines crawl over her knuckles in the dark red stain of her henna.

Perspiration gleams on the biceps of a backflipping Tanjinn stand-in. He showboats for the crowd once more, before the monks dance off.

The focus narrows on Stheno, as she rolls her svelte body to the thrombotic beat of the drums, the wailing pipes, the plucking strings and hissing woodwind. Her muscles are a ladder, bunching at her shoulders and flexing all the way down to the bottom of her spine, liquid and hypnotic. She doesn't pause for breath, only manipulates herself to the music -- or manipulates the music with herself.

A gout of fire streams from the leering mouth of the daemonic figurehead, followed by an unearthly howl.

The fiery letters shudder out of alignment and profess: HARDSHIP.

Stheno snaps to attention, straightening so quickly the blade slips off her hip. Ready for that eventuality, her left hand drops open and catches the tang.

Stheno tosses Unseen Lights back to Palusa in a lethal overhead arc.

Palusa grips her sword, a brief expression of triumph as her gnarled hands close over the hilt.

Palusa positions a terrifyingly tooled leather scabbard on her hip with a look of determination.

Stheno throws her arms wide to summon the cadre of slaves, slavers, and dancers to her side. They pour in from around you, the serpents hiding in the audience, the knights standing sentinel by the doors, the snickering jesters in their bell-capped hats. Everyone but the instrumentalists. Big and small, vile and beautiful, they all come to don their black cloaks.

As the performance builds to a climactic finish, the malevolent hum of a daemonic chorus overwhelms the pounding, bittersweet music.

Those chilling voices rise and rise, as the Congregation raise their hoods and draw something from the deep sleeves of their cloaks.

Twenty silver daggers glint in twenty hands.

Only Stheno remains uncloaked, shining in her golden finery. Her breath comes harder and quicker, chest fluttering with exhaustion and the sweat beading on her skin.

Stheno goes into another relentless, whirling dance as the cloaked figures converge on her. She slips the veil off her shoulders and dances with it as a partner. Jingling in her coins, she points an ankleted foot, leaps, and lands in a graceful arabesque.

Undeterred, the cultists all raise their thin daggers above their heads. Then they plunge the blades into their prima in turn.

Stheno winces in pain.

Stheno gasps at each fresh blade that sinks into her body. Blood wells to the surface of her lips, brought by a dagger that enters her lungs. She gives a harsh cough as slowly, falteringly, she dances from one knife to another to another, too transfixed by the Seven to stop.

Entranced like her, the dancers keep stabbing.

Flickering and waning, the final word threatens to wink out before it can make itself known. The letters tremble and stretch.

Finally, they spell the word: DOMINION.

Cyzhar remains grimly entranced by the sight of bloodshed, his seaborne gaze aglimmer with intent from his seat at the bench.

As one, every dancer goes down on bended knee. Together they pile into a mortal pyramid, like the body of a great black leviathan leading back to the monolith.

They drop their bloodied daggers and interlock their fingers, offering their hands to Stheno. In supplication? In contrition?

The daemonic chorus howls for blood, unsated by the deluge.

As Stheno's life drains away from her many wounds, it dyes her sari red and leaves a slick pool on the floorboards to ooze towards you. She blinks to bring her glazing eyes back into focus. She sways on her feet, but there is enough life in her yet to accept the proffered hands.

Stheno steps up onto the staircase of linked hands and fingers. Bleeding profusely, she is lifted up into the top of the pyramid by a dozen hands at once, ascending. The ecstasy of pain is writ clear on her features.

Shaking the crystals in the chandeliers, the drumming reaches its crescendo. The chorus chants a prowl of unholy words.

Stheno manages to climb that peak of supine bodies, with strength taken from her very last reserves. She manages to descend, step by step, hand by gently lowering hand.

Stheno's bare feet touch the floor. She walks, swaying, towards the monolith and reaches it at last. There she collapses at its base. The breath rattles in and out of her lungs, just barely present. Her arms lie outstretched past her bloody hair, her fingertips still twitching.

Blinding crimson light pours from the open eyes and snarling mouth of the daemon, bathing the dancers in its dark approval.

The music abruptly cuts to black with a discordant moan. A funereal silence falls over the chamber.

[Applause.]

The Infernal knight saunters out to collect Stheno from the ground, cradling her lifeless body against his breastplate.

The tired dancers line up to accept your applause with a short bow. They then fan out to mingle with the crowd.