The Ballad of The Euphonist
“Element #29.5: Treblium (Tr)
Once used to make swords, this metal is now used in brass instruments. It mourns its past, enriching the music.”
The girl had been heralded as a prodigy since age 4, when she had miraculously wielded the instrument larger than her with ease and played a haunting melody of such pure sorrow that her caretakers were not able to stop crying for months. Orphaned during what many believe was a botched Changing exchange, she had spent the first few months of her life listening to the sound of the wind over the Irish moors. Her background, coupled with her natural melancholy disposition made her and ideal player for her particular instrument; a Euphonium crafted of pure treblium, melted down from the swords of a particularly incompetent knight. The girl played the tragedies that had found her and sunk into her bones, and the euphonium added its dismay for its current lowly status into each note that swelled from its glistening belly. The resulting concerts were said to bring even the most joyous of souls into a deep gloom, and to have led to more than one despair-induced leap to the doors of death. Naturally humanity, in its quest to find sadness and misery in its purest form, flocked to hear the euphonist in droves.
After years of witnessing the pain and tragedy her music wrought, a day came when the euphonist vowed to only ever play music that would bring good. With only that vow and her instrument, she set off on the quest that would be the rest of her life.
All kinds of stories are told of the euphonist’s travels. Some say she slayed a dragon by playing it a song that caused it to shed the tear that put out its inner flame. Elsewhere, a village claims she saved them from starvation by playing a song her euphonium remembered from its days of glory, a march full of vigor and pride that enriched the soil and inspired the crops to rise higher than they ever had before. Still others tell of ancestors who watched her run with spirits in the shape of wolves, her and her instrument echoing their call with glee and urging them to battle with a horrifying demon. But no tale is as well-known and well-repeated as that of her final endeavor.
Her last adversaries were the moor winds, the very same who had sung her their song when she was but an infant. They had never expected the child the danced and sang above, abandoned and alone in the peat, would not only survive, but surpass them in musical ability and fame. Full of resentment towards her success, they challenged the euphonist to a duel; she was to play with her euphonium her song of sadness while the winds howled their own mournful tune, and the winner would be the one whose song was most unbearable to the creatures that heard it. But the euphonist refused to break her vow.
Where the winds blew sounds of anger and violence, she followed with melodies peaceful and soothing. Where the winds descended on towns with a cacophony of hate, she appeared with loving cadences. Each time the winds set out to prove their fierceness the euphonist would be there, her music stronger and determined to undo their work.
This served only to fuel their fury.
As the euphonist began to play a song to reverse the strongest of the winds’ pieces, one that had stripped a huge swath of land of water and robbed it of life, the winds fell upon her in utter rage, swirling around her with their jealously and malice and trying to quite her. As the winds roared harder and harder, ripping at her flesh and wearing down the smooth metal of the euphonium, the euphonist never stopped. She played her song, of life and joy and rain and sun while the wind whipped at her, her music soaring above the noise of the wind to restore the land. On she played, and on the winds accosted her, until the land she stood upon was in glorious bloom. Then, after she played one last note of apology, the winds finally succeeded in stealing the last of her breath. She did not play again.
Having ended the euphonist and satiated themselves, the winds dispersed, leaving her body and her instrument lying on the lush grass she had urged up. As the people approached, solemn with loss but grateful for her heroism, they were surprised to hear a lonesome and mournful voice. The euphonium, grieved and bereft with the loss of its musician, the girl who had wielded it with passion and brought it to the nobility it craved when it was first forged as a blade, played a final song, a goodbye that told of all that its master had done and been. It played until her final rites were held and she was laid to eternal rest, and then it too fell silent.
But the people did not. To this day, they still talk and sing of the hero, the euphonist, who with her instrument of fine treblium swore to only bring good to the world.
