Like a carnivorous tenebrous maw, the forest’s presence loomed dangerously close to Lisette in the final moments before she brought the motion of her violin’s bow to a climatic screech—in part punctuated by Weiland’s premature retreat from the train’s fore. He, accompanied now by a woman and obvious foreigner whose attire and bearing elevated her far above his low station, hurried again toward the maudlin mass of peasantry. The expression worn on his haggard face suggested to Lisette that the mystery in which they were presently all ensnared was no more plumbed than when she began her performance. That projected fault fueled within her an irrational antipathy toward Weiland. As long locks of jet hair cascaded in lines before her pale face, she jutted forth her chin, bowed her back, and savagely leered at the sellsword as he trudged on by. The words she spoke, equally audacious, were unleashed as a half-shouted, half-moaned accusation,

[i]“Uuuuuuseleeeess. Impotent! You save none, scurrying to and fro as a sewer rat addled by a plague unknown!”[/i]

Her taunt emphasized by a barely subdued cackle, her compulsion toward self-expression nevertheless, no matter how vehement, seemed yet insatiable. Lisette’s long thin fingers shifted on the delicate cords that plunged from the neck of her violin and she transitioned the tone of the night from a somber, yet not unpleasant, dirge to a [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAwSxtaD4II]deeply discordant strain[/url]. In reaction, the pair, too dignified to deign her with anything more, partook of incredulous sidelong glances in her direction, remained silent, and became, a few paces later, a trio, augmented by what was obviously a priest given his garb and various accouterments. Furthest from Lisette’s desires were the unsolicited afflictions of a holy man’s remonstrations, thus, in the prelude of her secondary performance her spittle struck the ground in her own repulsed and repulsive acknowledgment of the priest’s self-insertion. Then she turned her back on the trio and wandered from them toward the front of the train—that is, its remnants. This was, more specifically, done in defiance of Weiland’s entreatment and wild assumptions about what constituted her safety, but by now she was certain his attentions were otherwise enjoined.

As an ominous figment, she drifted alongside the train, her mantle nigh-indistinguishable from the night mist that crept weirdly forth in convoluted postures from the roots of the trees. Behind her, the screams of the flame-damned and urgent discussions of those fortunate enough to thus-far go unscathed became muted and indistinct. Around her, the crowd of quasi-nobles, insufficiently moved to help their fellow man, let her pass unhindered, their only trace of acknowledgment rendered as whispered rebukes of Lisette’s performance—all politely contained behind gloved fingers. They did not concern her, as they posed no impediment to her advance. However, as she walked, it appeared she engaged in a steadily belligerent congress with things unseen. Truncated utterances and scornful chortles clarified her position—she would not halt, in spite of the fear these beings expressed at venturing onward; rather, enslaved as they were to her music, she compelled their continued presence.

Inevitably guided, in her mind, by arcane fate, she arrived at the locus delicti. Shards of metal and wood were strewn round about, but in insufficient abundance to explain the locomotive’s absence. There she saw clearly what was not there to be seen—between the tracks the darkness was acute, not merely in terms of visual presence but also the spiritual. Not content to be a mere observer, she stepped between the tracks and into absolute obfuscation. There, unable to see her own hand before her face and veritably invisible to lookers-on, all she heard was her music and all she felt was the caress of darkness. From without, it seemed as though her malignant music emanated from a pool of sinister oblivion. Augmented, even, the melody grew louder than the physical laws that constrained such an instrument as hers would ordinarily allow.