Breath by breath, millimeter by millimeter, the Lightning Butcher’s screaming sawteeth chewed through the impossibly tough black stone that made up the Sister’s sword. She struggled against it, tried to twist her weapon free, but it was stuck. Even when she managed to pull it back a tiny bit, one of the sawteeth suddenly grew in length twice over to trap it further.

“What is that?!” the Sister questioned further, still trying to free her blade as best she could, pushing and pulling, twisting and yanking. They were stuck, neither willing to risk breaking the balance - even if her blade were to be cut, it was better for the Sister to have a shorter blade than none at all.

“It was an Ikesian Captain’s Cleaver, once,” Zelsys smugged. “I’ve used it to butcher a rot-bear, the Necrobeast it turned into, a wendigo, even the Living Storm’s own lightning, and only the Dead Gods know how many of your kin. What makes you think you’ll be spared?”

The response she received was an abhorred stare that flickered between her eyes and the Lightning Butcher, followed by a choked question.

“T-that’s the form a Captain’s Cleaver took when you picked it up?” the traitor asked, hesitantly.

Zel gave a slow nod, now having cut two-thirds of the way through her opponent’s sword.

“I’ve seen dozens of these things meet their owners,” the Sister continued, growing increasingly disturbed with each word. “Not one’s had a fucking saw. We even tested one with a composite homunculus, it just turned into a huge saber! What in the Emperor’s mercy are you?!”

“Does it matter?” Zelsys asked. There was no opportunity for a response, for the sawteeth of her cleaver finally ripped through the last of the greatsword’s girth. She followed through, guiding it in a downward arc towards the Sister’s left side. A thrum radiated through her arms and a horrendous screeching echoed as the Butcher’s sawteeth changed direction altogether from a push-saw to a pull-saw. With a breath and a spark of will they came alive once more, ripping right into the Sister’s armor and shredding it to pieces, swiftly progressing to raw meat.

Amidst the Sister’s pained grunting and growling, she could feel the massive motion of her good arm raising what was left of her sword. She readied herself, pushing her right lung to its uttermost emptiest to fuel the Butcher’s sawteeth so that she could burn the left lung’s full capacity on a Rebound Pulse.

But it never came down.

Suddenly, both the floor panels she was standing on shot upward, so abruptly and forcefully that it ripped the Butcher from the Sister’s flesh and sent her spinning backward through the air. She just barely managed to reach out for one of the Sister’s red armor plates before she fully lost footing, but it came off as easily as the other ones she’d ripped off.

The Sister made no noise. None at all. She just stood there, frozen stone-still, her eyes darting back and forth full of panic. After that, all of Zel’s focus was redirected towards avoiding the lethal part of a long drop and sudden stop. She took the care to use her left arm to diffuse as much of the initial impact as possible, then rolled across the uneven ground into a standing position. Even with this care taken, she already felt bruises forming all across her body, but it was of no concern.

At this very moment, she pointed her attention at the Sister. Pillar after pillar, a cage-like structure rose up around the wounded, paralyzed Locust Noble, her eyes searching for something. With each pillar in the cage, more of the chamber’s many lightgems flickered to red.

“No! This is not how a duel ends!” the Sister howled. Then, suddenly, just as the cage started to become a triangular box, her eyes found Zel’s and locked on. Struggle audible in her voice, she shouted without hostility or deception, for the first time speaking with true honesty. The only emotion that came through was spite for one’s superior.

“I intended on telling you this if… No, when you defeated me, but it appears I am being rescued against my wishes,” she began, disdain dripping from every word. “This will be the last time we can speak without the Queen hearing our every word, so know this! Azoth Stone Cultivation is a dead end, for the Azoth Stone is just an egg that must be hatched through resolving one’s inner conflicts. The Divine Emperor spread falsities about self-cultivation to prevent anyone from ever rivaling him, as the Dead Gods once did!”

Pillar after pillar, the gap became smaller, and word after word, the Sister’s spiel became more frantic. She visibly grasped for every thread of forbidden knowledge she possessed, trying to decide which revelations she had time to expose.

“The War of Fog was meant to ensure the Sage’s knowledge of the truth could never taint the status quo! If those lines on your skin mean anything, you’ve already surpassed the Azoth Stone!”

What Zelsys felt at all these revelations, at this situation, was not bewilderment, surprise or even any sort of satisfaction about the affirmation of her beliefs. She might’ve perhaps felt one or more of these things, but all she felt at this very moment was overwhelming frustration and disdain for the Queen.

“I understand making attempts on my life, but I draw the fuckin’ line at cutting a duel short!” she shouted into the deep-red chamber, hoping that the Queen could hear her, but aware that she likely didn’t if the Sister had told the truth.

There came no response, no indication that she’d been heard, partially to her relief. From her previous encounters with the subjects that the Sister had spoken of, any mention of the secrets surrounding them would prove to be a grave mistake on the Sister’s part if one of her superiors were to find out about it. Moments later, the lightgems returned to normal and all the pillars that had risen up around the Sister descended back into the floor, the Locust Noble nowhere to be found.

The panels that the box had enclosed were perfectly even now, betraying the fact that she had likely been carried away by the dungeon’s arcane mechanisms. With a deep sigh, Zel holstered the Butcher, made her heartbeat return to a normal resting rate, and stopped Fog-breathing. The pain of her battle wounds instantaneously came flooding in, and she reached for her Tablet to retrieve some Viriditas elixir.

“Vitamax… Sure, why not,” she mumbled to herself, slowly walking across the chamber towards the door. Perhaps it was an overpowering herbal flavor and a high concentration of Viriditas that she needed - after all, what better to drown out the smell of blood and burned chitin than the fragrances of mint and one’s lover?

While she downed most of the bottle on her meandering, slow path towards the door, she couldn’t help but wonder about the Sister’s real allegiance. On one hand of the scales weighed her treason and all the things she’d said. On the other sat the fact that she had obviously worked alongside the Sage, and perhaps been in his inner circle. That is not to mention the fact she for some reason had decided that if Zelsys were to defeat her, it would be good to divulge secrets that implied a greater conspiracy on the Divine Emperor’s part, that the entire geopolitical state of the world before the war had been engineered to stop anyone from ever challenging the Emperor’s reign.

In the end, it served to solidify Zel’s promise to the Sister, only perhaps in a slightly different light than she had initially envisioned. She would, indeed, go out of her way to work against the Pateirian Empire, and she would, indeed, make damn sure to exterminate every locust Queen she came across. After that, going after the Emperor was a given… But how?

She had no chance to do it alone even if she became as powerful as the Emperor himself - that much of the Sister’s words was true. The only logical step, then, would be to spread her knowledge to as many Ikesian patriots as possible, to help Ikesia rise beyond what had been achieved by the Old Powers and their Heroic Families. Already she knew it would be a hell of an endeavor, and reconsidered whether she was willing to even risk ending up in a leadership position.

The feeling of doors slamming shut behind her ripped her out of this introspective state, and she realized she’d checked out of reality for long enough to cross the door to the next intermediary chamber. It had the same shape as the previous one, being just a small rectangle with doors on either end. It even had the same glyph on the wall, control handle and all.

With how slowly the next door’s glyph looked to be lighting up, Zelsys knew she’d be in here for a little while, and so decided it would be pertinent to try questioning the dungeon core itself. At worst, the Queen would lash out at her again and she’d get the opportunity to let loose a more concerted mental assault against the horrendous creature.

Gripping the control handle brought no such thing, the glyph merely lit up and showed her its rather pretty but uninteresting attribute readout. She had to admit that it did have one advantage over her Tablet, this being the fact she could entirely operate it with mental commands alone, rather than finagling with a mixture of mental commands and hand gestures. Willing it to let her speak with the dungeon core had no apparent effect, at first. It was a good half-minute before anything happened, the only indication that she’d done something being the fact that the glyph wouldn’t respond to any other commands - it was frozen still

Then, the attribute readout vanished, replaced by a series of three statements.

I understand you have questions.

I would not be at liberty to answer,

were this any other circumstance.

Ask.

“What are you, and what answers can you give?” came the first cautious questions, an attempt to discern what she could actually find out.

Fewer than I wish I could.

As with your personal device,

I am just a Fog automaton.

An incomprehensibly complex one,

but just an automaton nonetheless.

My answers will reveal no new knowledge,

but they might offer a new perspective,

on what you already know.

“Does that mean everything you say is drawn from my own mind?” she queried.

Not in the way you imply.

I can read parts of your mind and soul that you let me,

then offer counsel based on my own logic.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Straying from this line of questioning, Zelsys requested the dungeon core to, “Show me the map projection with my location highlit, please.”

A smaller version of the dungeon map showed up in the glyph projection’s upper half, small enough that there was enough space for the dungeon core’s answers. It had changed since the first time she saw it, many chambers moved about. It highlit the intermediary chamber she resided in, showing that there was only one more chamber before she reached the next Fog Transit chamber. The chambers she’d already traversed were also directly connected, her path sticking out like a sore thumb among the tangle of myriad chambers.

There were three other recognizable paths, each saddled with the same number of chambers and each very obviously straightforward.

A question naturally arose, “Are you shortening our path?”

Out of necessity, yes.

Partly because I wish to be rid of the Parasite,

partly because I have been starved of time and resources.

I am using what few resources are available to me,

to replicate my usual functions as best as I can.

Your rewards for this floor will be much lesser than they would otherwise be,

but the perils you face will be equally diminished.

“I wouldn’t exactly call the Locust Nobles a diminished peril,” Zel thought. Despite the fact it wasn’t meant as a question, the dungeon core still answered.

A Locust Noble cannot be adjusted to best challenge any given individual,

thus they are an inflexible cog that jams the mechanism.

The one you faced was meant to kill you,

if the Parasite’s screeching is to go by.

“I thought you could not provide new knowledge.”

You already know she was meant to kill you,

the Parasite said so explicitly.

She glanced off to the side towards the door glyph, and saw that it had lit up almost two thirds of the way. While it wasn’t a hard timer, Zelsys felt an urgency that drove her to pass through the door as soon as she could. Thus, she tossed out the last of her questions.

“Very well, last question,” she began. “The Sister said Azoth Stone Cultivation is a dead end, but she also said the Azoth Stone is an egg that must be hatched through resolving one’s inner conflicts. How, then, could the Heroic Families never come upon the revelation?”

One: The formation of an Azoth Stone is achieved twofold.

Through deeper understanding of an essentia,

and through inner reflection on this understanding.

Therefore, the Azoth Stone could be misunderstood as the repository,

rather than an egg that must eventually be broken.

Two: It could seem that because another’s Azoth Stone can be consumed,

the possession of an Azoth Stone must be a necessary part of cultivation.

If ‘hatching’ the Azoth Stone requires one to resolve their inner conflicts,

then indulging in contradictions and growing conceited,

could foster further, tumorous growth in the stone.

Thus, the Heroic Families would naturally create an environment,

conducive to this false path of pseudo-cultivation.

Their stones would become larger,

as they grew conceited and malicious.

The larger the egg,

the thicker the shell,

the harder it is to crack.

In pursuing Azoth Stone Cultivation,

it becomes more difficult to pursue another path.

Each line, each word, she took care to remember, that she might think on them later, when she had the time. She soon noticed that the door had already grown fully lit. Curiosity still burned at the back of her mind, but the urgent need to keep moving forward burned brighter.

So it was that she moved on, passing through the door to be faced with another suspiciously long, winding corridor. Right, left, right, left, straight, right, straight, left, left, down, down, down, left, left, down, right, down… Looking back often faced her with a solid wall, the dungeon making no effort to hide that the corridor was changing as she moved through it.

It took so long, she even remembered the watch that the governor had given her, using it to track how much longer it would take her to reach the next chamber proper.

“Only seven minutes?!” she questioned out loud in disbelief, standing before what she assumed to be the real door to the next chamber. With a heavy sigh, she stowed the watch and approached the door, only to find herself in a small chamber with a square layout and another door at the other side.

There was an altar in the middle, a square button protruding from its top. It also had the expected proximity glyph and a Fog-writing nozzle on the front. Before she went as far as to approach the altar, she took care to observe the chamber. There was exactly one other standout feature.

A projection glyph above the door, much simpler than any she’d ever seen. So simple, in fact, that she could make out individual numbers carved in its pattern.

Approaching the altar of course triggered the proximity glyph and the nozzle spouted words written in Fog. Suspiciously, the glyph briefly lit up in red before it turned the usual pale blue.

The button resets the countdown.

The moment she read that line, the chamber’s lightgems faded until it was as dark as a starry night, just barely bright enough to see after her eyes adjusted. Then, the glyph above the door lit up a bright green. At first, it just read the numerals for thirty. Then, twenty-nine. Twenty-eight. It was counting down from thirty, second by second.

More Fog-writing came from the altar.

Do not let the countdown reach zero, or the floor will rise and crush you. There is a way out, if you can find it.

Even the Fog-writing looked off. Between the arrangement of the text and the shape of the letter, it looked less like smooth cursive and more like the handwriting of one accustomed to using an entirely different writing system.

She just didn’t trust it.

Allowing the countdown to go below twenty made the projection change to orange, but nothing else.

When it crossed ten, it turned bright red and began flashing. The floor did, indeed, begin to rise, but it was slow. It would take far longer to even remotely threaten her, unless it suddenly shot up all at once when the countdown hit zero. Somehow, she didn’t feel like that would happen.

Nevertheless, she pressed the button to see what happened.

The countdown reset to thirty, and the floor fell back down.

Zelsys sighed, walking over to the floor panel right in front of the door.

She took the Butcher out of its holster and held it against the floor that it might serve as a pillar if the floor did indeed try to crush her, and waited.

Twenty. The projection turned orange.

Ten. It began flashing and the floor began rising.

Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five.

It had now risen nearly a third of the way towards the ceiling.

Four. Three.

Closer and closer to the ceiling, even the lightgems turned red and began flashing in a strobing pattern as the rising of the floor sped up.

Two. One.

There was nothing.

The countdown froze at one. It flickered to zero in dark red, then flickered back to one, now in blue.

Zero. One. Zero. One. Zero. One.

The door slammed open, and Zelsys knew it was now or never, slipping through into the next intermediary chamber. The moment she hit the floor, the previous chamber’s floor did indeed slam into the ceiling with such force that it shook the walls, the door closing shut behind her.

Looking about, cleaver in hand, she saw that this chamber didn’t even have a door or a glyph. It had a Fog Gate, and that was all it had.

The Fog Gate came alive at her approach, and she stepped through. Once the familiar sensation of Fog transit washed over her, she saw a huge chamber sprawl out before her.

It was a square floor plan, easily twice as large as the Sister’s arena, with three doors on every wall. In its center was a wide, squat altar entirely covered by a projection glyph that projected the dungeon map. Bizarrely, the map showed that she was in the first floor’s Fog Transit chamber, even though she had barely traversed three chambers, four if she counted the Sister’s arena as a separate chamber.

You saw through the Parasite’s deception, well done.

“Wasn’t it you at the end when the countdown flashed and the door opened?”

Not directly.

She can never exert the control,

to directly kill a challenger using my works.

That is why she tried to starve you,

and to use her children to do the job.

It is a safeguard put in place,

specifically to prevent what she tried.

A raised eyebrow, a mental question of, “Why would that be the case? And aren’t you supposed to never provide new information?”

As for your first question:

The first time I was active,

the first so-called hero to reach my core,

tried the very same gambit.

My builders were still alive then,

and put that precaution in place.

As for your second question:

That restriction has similar roots,

and a similarly specific jurisdiction.

I may not provide any new information,

that could directly aid one’s cultivation.

“I can't remember our last victory, was it the past, or just a dream?” Strolvath sang as he walked amidst the collapsed bodies, the ebb and flow of his emotions having carried him to the shores of nostalgia. Anger, or melancholy, even the weeping, volatile mixture of rage and sorrow - it mattered not what emotions fuelled his performance, only that he took the care to channel them appropriately.

He knew not how long he’d been going at it, how long he’d walked through these halls using his voice to fell dozens of malformed meat golems. Time quickly got away from him when he really got into a performance, but all he needed to know was that he was making progress.

Drones, Warriors, Doormen… He’d seen worse. This hive was all too large, all too prolific for the utter lack of specialization among its drones. No flyers, no jumpers, no ranged drones besides the Twitcher. He considered that perhaps this hive was underdeveloped, but further consideration led him to another idea. If the Queen couldn’t directly use the Fog Transit system to anywhere other than the dungeon entrance, then the locusts on the first floor had to have reached the upper floors by traversing the entire dungeon bottom-up.

What few exceptions there were, could be explained by the possibility that perhaps she could strongarm the dungeon core into transporting a few locusts to certain points in the dungeon. After all, the core needed warm hostile bodies to fill its halls, so that it might provide an appropriate challenge in the absence of its own black stone golems.

“The world we grew to love has crumbled, with my own efforts losing steam…” Strolvath continued with his mournful tune, strumming out a slow melody that could only be heard over the screeching of his foes thanks to his own amplification of its volume.

There was no struggle here. Second chamber in a row, and it grew no more difficult. His foes grew more numerous, that much was true, but numbers meant nothing when their sheer mass wasn’t sufficient to drown out the sonic assault that was his weapon. It was an entirely different case when he purged this chamber, however.

His mustache still smoldering and his body still burning with the steady, well-controlled flame of Victory Echoes, he crossed the precipice to the next chamber, ignoring the utility glyph on the wall. The veteran knew himself well enough to not need such aid, and more importantly, didn’t want to risk disturbing his own concentration.

In the next chamber he was faced by not an army, but by three Locust Nobles.They looked… Unremarkable, at first glance, with pretty par for the course mutations. Mandibles, chitin plating visible through the holes in their clothes, eyes replaced by bulbous black orbs, yet still set as a human’s eyes would be. While the arena was visually unremarkable, he knew he had the advantage. It was circular with a domed ceiling, and every little sound seemed to echo a dozen times before it faded out. A smile upturned the corners of his mouth at that gift, fully aware that the dungeon was trying to help him with enhanced acoustics.

They wore tattered Pateirian uniforms, one even had a salvaged Ikesian chest-plate, dirtied and tarnished, but nearly pristine in terms of battle-damage going by the lack of bullet marks save for the one that proved it could stop a bullet at all. A couple scrapes, some rust, but it was in good condition. Good enough that Strol actually considered taking it for himself. This locust’s hands had been twisted into hammer-like lumps of chitin, perfect for crushing.

Another one had an Ikesian war-knife, in equally good condition, whilst his left arm had been turned to a heater shield, his hand doubtlessly folded away under the massive plate of chitin.

The third one held a pair of dented, tarnished bayonets. It didn’t wear any notable armor, but its body shape suggested it to have been a she before the mutations. It wasn’t that she was small - to the contrary, she was taller and bulkier than either of her allies. Strolvath just knew what to look for in the torso shape, and either this had been a woman, or an unrealistically full-bodied young man.

Then again, he wouldn’t have put such barbaric practices beyond the Pateirians. He’d lost count of how many stories he’d heard of young men who had castrated themselves to try and get into a prestigious eunuch-cultivator order, only to be rejected and forced to turn to wearing fake testicles and consuming Rubedo-based elixirs to maintain their masculine outward image. No, he wouldn’t lose focus to a mental tangent. Not like this. Not here. This was bad. When he felt himself mentally slipping like this, he knew he was running out of Rubedo to burn. He had to get himself riled up, and fast.

Beyond their obvious appearance, there was something a little off about the coloration of their chitin - every plate a little different from the last, almost as if they were walking mosaics.

“Which of you fuckers wants to get head-exploded first, eh?!” he taunted, shifting his strumming from mournful nostalgia to a fast-paced flamenco. They charged at him all at once, even though they should’ve frozen still. The scarred veteran was forced into a frantic dance of dodging and kicking his enemies out of the way, smashing both them and their weapons out of the way using his artificial leg.

He dropped the lyrics altogether and started throat-singing, cycling through sound frequencies until one worked. It was fast, but the result was a worrying explanation for why the three Locust Nobles looked like their chitin was a patchwork - it was. Every plate reacted at a different frequency, as if the Queen had specifically changed these three just to counteract his abilities.

Of course, this was far from unexpected. There was a reason for the cold-iron spike inside his artificial leg, and it wasn’t just so it could be used as a glorified boot-knife. The prosthesis contained a simple mechanism designed to allow for the engagement of a kinetic redirection glyph that fed directly into the spike, in practice letting him transfer all the force of a kick into propelling the stake out the bottom of his foot. Moreover, the stake itself could resonate at a particularly violent frequency.

It wasn’t exactly convenient, but it filled the biggest gap in Strolvath’s combat style, and could be concealed effectively enough to be functionally undetectable unless someone went out of their way to break his leg open.

The first one he dealt with was the Shield-bearer, for this locust was the most aggressive. Whilst the one with daggers kept using her wings to jump around and try to catch him off-guard, whereas the armored one kept trying to fight him in hand-to-hand as if this were a boxing match, screeching incomprehensibly whenever Strolvath just punted him away.

The Shield-bearer at last tried to charge him head-on, in response to which Strolvath threw himself into a front kick to the locust’s shield and willed the mechanism in his leg to activate. There was a word associated with it, a word that shot through his head every time he did it. A word that he had no choice but to say out loud, even if he was singing. It annoyed him to no end.

“BUNKER!”

He felt himself instantly lose the vast majority of his forward momentum, a violent buzzing pulsing through his stump in the moment when the cold-iron stake slammed forward with all the combined momentum of his own body mass and the mechanism’s amplification.

There was a crack followed by a meaty impact, yellow blood gushing out from under his foot. He’d hit a vein, it seemed. Perfect.

Now, it didn’t matter what frequency each individual plate resonated at. Hemolymph and organs had a uniform-enough consistency that he could just use the stake as a probe and shake the bug to pieces from inside out. It only took moments before the bug froze in place and began frothing at the mouth, then dropped to the ground as its own bodily fluids leaked from every which orifice.

Strolvath managed to pull his leg free just in time to dodge, stomping on the bug’s head to both finish it off and force the stake back into place without having to dedicate time to engaging the retraction mechanism.

Once again, the armored one was trying to smash his head in with its bare hands.

Once again, the winged one had dropped right behind him and lashed out.

He could’ve dodged, but he waited. He waited until the boxer fully committed to a haymaker, then sidestepped out of the way so that the Locust Noble decked his ally instead. Spinning around on his heel, he used the centrifugal momentum to drive his right foot into the boxer’s back at full force, once more exclaiming, “BUNKER!”

Three crunches in a row. One when it penetrated the boxer from the back, one when it came out the front, and one when it punched through the winged one’s front. Her wings began buzzing like a motor as she struggled to lift off, but Strolvath raised his leg to point the stake downward, making it act as a barb. It wouldn’t hold them long, with both of them twisting about and his own balance slipping, but it would last for long enough.

When he took a breath and resumed throat-singing, they only began convulsing even more violently, struggling against the death they both knew was imminent. So violent were the vibrations of his stake, that he needn’t even pull it out. The weight of their bodies made the stake carve right through them as they slowly slid to the ground.

A stomp on the boxer’s head to force the stake back in, and one more on the winged one’s. It looked like she was just about to deliver a death-rattle prophecy, but Strolvath obliterated her head well before that could happen.

Making his way towards the other door, Strolvath shifted to strumming a more energetic melody, only to notice the squelching of hemolymph in his right boot. Convenient and concealable as it was, the pilebunker in his leg had one gigantic flaw - it punched a hole in any boots he wore. All he could do about it right now was hope that the dungeon’s Fog Gates would clean him up, but it still upset him.

Trying to distract himself from the annoying noise, he started belting out vocals as loud as he could, shaking the very floor he walked on.

“Aging warrior, looking back at the life that you've led, can you say with confidence that you would do it again?” he howled to the uncaring walls, venting the question he feared to ask himself. He was far from old, barely in his fifties, but how much longer would his body hold out? Even with the power of elixirs, Strolvath could feel the wounds of his many exploits taking their toll.

He walked through the intermediary chamber, counting out that the next chamber absolutely had to be the last one in this Trial of Solitude. To his relief, it was not an arena with a single powerful foe, or a trap chamber, but a sprawling hall barricaded by one huge hive, from whose doorways were already pouring drones and warriors alike. The ideal field of battle for him.

“For one day you'll be gone, and all that lives on, is the honour of thy name and the deeds that you've done!” he continued, fully aware that he had no reason to be ashamed. He’d done more in a decade than many would do in a lifetime, and he still had the strength to compare himself with many of the heroes that had died in the war. But it didn’t matter, here and now.

All that mattered was his emotions, that he kept stirring them up. Right now, as he traversed the dungeon, Strolvath knowingly stirred himself to the weeping, seething fury of a dying man, that he might better slaughter those who would dare threaten his beloved homeland. And indeed, he did - his mustache smoldered, his eyes blazed with the unfettered conviction of a dead man walking, and he marched into the fray with the song of desolation thundering from his mouth, his fingers dancing across the strings of his instruments like the fingers of death itself on the bowstring of fate.