Professor Gemstone is on the case! part 5 (32)

Ezera was nervous around musical instruments.

It would be perhaps more accurate to describe the phenomenon as 'awkwardness'.

Most of the skills he had accumulated in life, he had been taught and encouraged in their learning by the people who had raised him.

But there were quite a few things that had been forbidden to him, either thought to be a waste of time or something that would result in him harming people.

Among these, were music, as well as being around other children. There were others, of course, but these were at the top of his head.

For some reason, his guardians had thought his being was far too brutal to play any kind of music, which required softness, and a lot of care. All in all, they didn't think letting him learn how to play it would give any result as such. The explanations were similar regarding children, first his peers then his juniors.

Of course, he had outlasted his limits. He had, indeed, been nervous around children and teenagers, at first. But he had managed to overcome that difficulty by himself, and he was proud of it.

As for music...

"I'm not afraid! Are you perhaps stupid? How can one be afraid of an inanimated object! I'm offended."

...It was still somewhat an awkward notion to explore.

"Then why won't you show me?"

"It's-! You-!" Ezera sighed. "It's just a bad idea. No one has ever trusted me with an instrument. And for good reason!"

"Prove it," Ilya provoked flatly, Ezera would call him petty.

He didn't waste any time to reply.

"Every time I touched one it ended up in pieces and often on the floor."

The thing was, his guardians, might not have been wrongs in their predictions of his destructive behavior around instruments. When he was nine, he had taken his chance with a flute. He just held it, admired it, it had been so small, but long, elegant and shiny, all metallic. He had hesitated, but he ended up distracted and he hadn't known what he was doing with his hands until the beautiful thing crashed to the ground, rather violently.

The same happened with a violon when he was fifteen. The scoldings he got for his trouble both times left him straying far away from any music related theme. It was beautiful and attractive, but music wasn't for him.

Ilya leveled him with a deadpan look.

"This organ could not possibly go any lower."

He was probably hoping to be reassuring. Ezera didn't find him to be.

Ilya came closer, acting as though Ezera was a terrorized mouth and was very much afraid of the thing, what an absurd idea! At any rate, he approached, until he could raise his hand toward Ezera, inviting him to take it.

Seeing the look on his face, Ezera had the strange feeling that if he didn't take this hand, he would wound up being manhandled right to the thing.

Well then, he thought warily, feeling forced. He might as well walk there with his own two feet.

Once he stood in front of the organ, he couldn't help swallowing nervously.

"This..."

"What?" Ilya said, probably meaning what is it now.

"This makes noise."

Ilya would have raised his eyebrow had he been less polite.

"So?"

"It's very noisy."

"I placed an insonorizing spell on the chapel," Ilya reminded him.

Right, that.

Ilya's gaze softened somewhat.

"If you can't do it..."

"I can!" Ezera hurriedly assured him.

He was already standing there, wasn't he? This wasn't a big deal. What was the worst that could happen? It would break, and maybe they'd try to repair it, but it would be impaired the next time the high priest would use it for anything. Yay.

Ezera wet his lips. He had a mission. He was investigating. It would be stupid to withdraw potentially important informations because he was nervous around an overgrown steam piano.

"Let me just..."

He pressed one of the tiles, almost flinched when it emitted a note. Awkwardly, he experimented a bit with the notes, then with chords, until he had a clear image of the chords that matched his memories.

"Here, I think there was this one."

He pressed his fingers down on the organ, very carefully. Then, he moved on to the second chord. He fumbled his way through the five chords, adding notes he remembered Hortensius to have played in his melody. But mostly he remained on the main chords of the tune.

Ilya gestured for him to play them in a loop, then individually. He observed the air around them. Ezera could only guess he was feeling the 'movement of the energetic flux in the air', he hoped this was actually going to be useful.

His hands slipped. They both winced at the strong dissonant notes his mishap created as he stumbled.

"Sorry!"

"Don't worry about it," Ilya remained calm. "Rather... I think I understand now."

With a sigh of relief, Ezera hastily stepped away from the organ. Thankfully he hadn't broken anything this time. Only played wrong a lot.

"What is it? Is the music really doing something?"

"It is. It is summoning dark matter. I do not know how precisely. But it reacts to the notes."

"Where does it come from?"

Ilya pointed at the ground.

"From bellow."

From bellow? Ezera's gaze sharpened as he examined the possibilities.

"Obviously there is something in the underground network, a source of some sort. Could it be a monster?" he inquired.

"Unlikely. Monsters are attracted by firelight, it acts like a drug upon them. They would have already attacked the humans above ground."

"But what if the humans in question had captured them?"

Ilya frowned.

"...They ought to be very strong and to have powerful wards."

Ezera shrugged.

"Well, it is not the only possibility. But that does keep us on the trail that Luversten is experimenting with dark matter. The question is, what exactly do they experiment on, and for what purpose."

The men's eyes locked together, as they thought on the same wavelength.

"Exploring the tunnels should become our new priority."

That was more likely to offer results than following Hortensius around in case he revealed the answers on his own like a badly written villain in videogames. Because if anything, the man's cleverness clearly equaled his audacity.