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rainbowfic2025-12-14 03:01 pm
Iridium #1 [Everyone Sings and Explodes]
Story: Everyone Sings and Explodes (AKA Nano Novel 2025)
Colour: Iridum #1: best tool for the job
Styles and Supplies: None
Word Count: 1023
Rating: T
Warnings: Strong language, some violence, blo
Characters: Wesley, Max, Milo, AJ (Mentions of Grey)
Summary: In urgent need of a new Singer for his band, Wesley lays his sights on a mysterious man who may or may not be dead.
Wesley Rice replayed the video for the seventeenth time. The quality of it was abysmal, the camera work shaky and blurred. It should never have gone viral. Yet he watched it again and again. It had taken him hours to find the original video, unedited and uncut, in which the cameraman descended upon a young man while screaming about theft and stupidity before the Beast appeared. The Discordant creature was nothing more than a curious smudge in the corner before it bellowed and the camera swung towards it.
It vaguely resembled a moose, but infinitely larger, snow white, covered in the sharp lines of the fungus that coated it. White framed it; shelves of the same fungus climbing up the trunks of ancient trees and laid out across the ground leading to the road where the two men stood.
It bellowed again, the sound terrible enough to make Wesley’s heart pick up and his hands break out into a sweat. The camera man, who the other man called Max, screamed as it lowered its massive rack and charged. Steel sang in the background like peels of thunder, and when the camera turned to the terrified young man, he’d ducked low, his hat falling from a head of wild black curls.
Wesley paused the video to study him. He looked to be in his early twenties, stubble peppering his jaw. He had brown eyes, low, thick eye brows, and dimples that flashed when he grimaced at the beast. A neck tattoo crept up from under the collar of his coveralls, but the quality was so shoddy Wesley couldn’t quite make it out.
Metal groaned in the background and Max shrieked and began running. There was laborious breathing, the sounds of boots clomping through the thick network of white mushrooms coating the ground. The camera slipped down toward the earth as he slid, then jerked up, and the viewer hit the base of one of the monstrous trees and began to scrabble upwards. There was huffing and swearing, and more than once the man’s hand slid across the shelf and cut into the skin, leaving a sickly trail of red on the snow-white mushrooms.
The bellow sounded again and Max scrambled up, at last turning to catch an unobscured view of the Beast from above. It ran at a speed that could rival a car, plowing directly into the tree and shaking it violently. The man began to sing. His voice was old and gruff, ugly and inefficient. It shook with terror. He was clearly not a gifted Musician, no Golden Ear or training to save him. He should have died, but the “dirty no good thief” joined him with a voice that was rich and smooth, and as he hit the chorus, light began to form before them. It took shape slowly, uncertainly, faltering as it filled out into the shape of a glowing bird. The camera did poor work of capturing the look of it, but it did catch the bird’s assault on the Beast. It drove it back by flying at the Beast’s face, scraping and pecking at the vulnerable skin while it waved its antlers around wildly.
The singing grew higher and higher and the bird picked up speed, zigzagging through the branches of the tree, then tore down with a vengeance. The crow cut through its neck like a bullet and the cameraman “whooped” in response, but his elation didn’t last. The Beast righted itself and when it opened its mouth to loose that horrible bellow, it swung, caught the bird in its mouth, and crunched. The Musician screamed then fell silent and Max swore.
The Beast backed up to charge the tree again and Max slid towards the edge of the shelf. The man below slid from his perch altogether, hitting the ground with a dull thud and a puff of white dust.
Defeated, but not dead, the boy began to make sound, and Wes realized it was a hum as the Beast backed up again. It lowered its head, clearly meaning to skewer him, but his humming rose, solid as a wall, and the bird reappeared with a screech and shot through the Beast’s head, from forehead to the back of its throat. It erupted with a sickening crunch and a spray of the white dust.
The Beast fell to the ground and began to dissolve into the powder.
But any moment of delight or relief was ruined by a distant bellow.
The one that stepped out of the treeline was easily twice the size of the first. Its antlers were nonexistent, but somehow more terrifying in the length and depth of its mouth and the sheer number of eyes dotting its face.
Max screamed as it charged, and the video cut off.
The comments were a riot of people asking for information- who was the musician that felled the first Beast? Where was this video from? And most importantly, had they survived?
It seemed unlikely, but unlikely was not impossible. Wesley pressed replay. He would solve this mystery, find the musician if he was still alive, and convince him to join the band as the new lead singer. Fuck Grey for thinking everything would just fall apart without them. This kid had everything they needed; intrigue, online notoriety, and a Golden voice. If he was still alive, he was the best tool for the job.
Wesley cut through the clubhouse to find AJ, who was staring at his drums instead of playing them. “I’ve found our new lead singer,” Wesley announced.
“Shut up, man.” AJ sunk lower into the couch.
“Pout all you want; we need someone new now if we want to get them trained up in time for the tournament.”
“Why? Grey’s coming back.”
Wesley bit his tongue. Grey wasn’t coming back, and he wouldn’t let them in again regardless. PRANA was done, disbanded, the lead singer off on some new solo venture just when Wesley and AJ needed them the most. Fucking asshole.
He didn’t have another choice.
He was going to find the mystery singer. Hopefully the guy was still alive to sing.
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Ooh, interesting. The found footage thing reminds me a bit of the description of the video at the beginning of House of Leaves, actually. Is this power of a "Golden voice" a pre-existing known phenomenon here?
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