God: Apollo
Hero Level: 2
Current Inventory: Poisonous Dung (1) - Vial of poisonous bird dung. It can thrown at an opponent once to poison them, dealing 1 damage for 3 turns. After this it is consumed and leaves your inventory forever.
Moly Flower (1) - Small white flower with a dark root. It can be used once to replenish 3 HP, at which point it is consumed and leaves your inventory forever.
She's exceptionally sensitive to the emotional impact music has on the listener and performer, and the connections it can form. She grew up using the piano as an escape, later transitioning to computer-made music.
As a DJ, she employs a laptop and a pair of ipads to create and play her music. She can read and write music, but its not as common these days.
The lights in the club pulsed to the beat of the music that poured out of the speakers. Heat rose above the moving bodies on the dance floor in almost visible ripples, but there was cold ice in the liquor and a lightness in the hearts below her.
Above them the Technicolor Butterfly fluttered on a breeze made of booze and something she had taken a little bit ago that erased life’s harsh edges and opened her soul up to the caress of the melody. The base beat in her chest, but it was hard to tell now if it was the beat that set the rhythm or if it was her heart that echoed out of the speakers. It didn’t really matter though. Maybe her soul sang for the crowd or maybe it was just in her head, but either way, they were drinking it up like water on parched earth.
The base dropped and she swayed, her dark eyes sweeping over the crowd of faceless bodies. She carried them on invisible, rainbow wings, wrapping them in ribbons of color. But there… someone caught her eyes. It was just for a moment… just a flash of a sunny smile and tumbling curls, toned body moving along to the beat, and then the crowd closed around him and it was a sea of indistinct faces again. She gave a mental shrug as she let herself fade back into the music, her fingers swiping across the surface of her tablet to raise the drum levels till her skin shivered, but the moment caught in her brain. It was like a snag in your nail, mostly ignored, but reminding you it was there every time you touched something and threads caught on it.
It was just a guy. What did one guy matter? She was surrounded by guys, and if she wanted one, all she had to do was offering him a sweet smile. She didn’t even know him, even if his face seemed familiar.
The world settling into a hazy, happy blur again as she performed, even with that nagging feeling. By the end of this set, she was more than ready for the drink that waited for her at the bar, and the DJ dived into the crowd like a fish into water. She swayed and moved with them as she waded through, Taller heads and shoulders blocking her few and hemming her in with a comfortable darkness. Perfume and sweat and alcohol assaulted her nose, but it was normal, expected even. This is what a club was like, in the thick of it.
A sudden surge around her and she felt herself thrown against a body, arms closing around her in a way that was more than just to steady her on her feet. She could feel the shift of muscle under her fingers through the thin jersey of a shirt and when she looked up, she caught another of those sunny smiles and eyes that seemed to know her, even if she didn’t know the man that held her now. Did she know him…? But then another surge and the arms were gone. She stood alone, or as much as one could be a crowd, with no sign of the smiling man. He couldn’t have left that fast, not in this press, but there were no bright curls around her, no laughing eyes.
The music poured over the crowd in a wave of sound, her set up running through the playlist she had left to hold everyone over while she took a break. She knew this song, had mixed it herself, and knew the girl singing was doing so in Japanese. She remembered being in the little make-shift recording studio and working on the translation with her so the lyrics were right, since she didn’t speak Japanese herself, despite where she got her eyes from.
They were in Japanese… but she understood them as though they were sung in english. And the words had changed, though they still lilted to the melody line.
I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows it is divine;
Sidney James stood still as the crowd moved like the tide around her, lost in the music.
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine, is mine,
The voice of the singer changed, growing deeper, more masculine.
All light of art or nature; - to my song
Victory and praise in its own right belong.
It swelled, blocking out everything else, and in her drug-induced haze, Sid couldn’t seem to fight her way out of it. But… did she even want to? The song was seductive and full of promise. She’d never fought these feelings before… why start now? All she had to do was let go and maybe she’d finally break free… the music would wash away everything and she’d be clean again, shining with light and color the way she was meant to be.
I am Apollo. A voice whispered in her ear. Or sang. She couldn’t be sure any more. Everything was blurring together. Was that a flash of the stage lights, or someone smiling at her?
You belong to me. Your life is going to change. Someone is coming who will explain. All you have to do… is say Yes.And then, suddenly… the world snapped back into focus and the thrum of the music faded down to its usual chest-thumping level. Sid darted a glance about, but no one was paying the slightest attention to her. No more sunny smiles or tall young men with curling hair. Reality, as harshly edged as ever and only slightly dulled by what was running through her body.
What… what was that?It was too easy to pass it off as the drugs she had taken, but something still nagged at her when she considered it. Something had changed, and Sid wasn’t sure just what.
* Hymn of Apollo by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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