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Their hands know the organ by heart.
Phantom sways back and forth as they play, humming along. It’s the same mournful, wailing melody. Pushing, pulling, swelling with the pain that pulses in each fingertip.
Their throat aches. An easy fix, a common one, had they the silk to spare.
There had been a time when Phantom’s silk was the same pristine shade as a pearl. The beating heart inside them helped spin silk anew, healing their voice, strengthening their fingers, soothing their joints.
It had made their performances all the more entrancing. Pieces that mortal bugs could never hope to play, flawless under their skilled hands. Augmenting their form, sharpening, honing, perfecting.
Now, unraveling as they are, the silk that once aided their performances was better saved for keeping them alive. They refuse to let themselves waste away to nothing, decaying until there was nothing left, when still there was a warrior’s way out.
Even if they lost parts of themselves in the process.
Phantom’s eyes had started failing countless measures ago. They can’t recall the specifics– only that their vision had begun to blur, then wane, until one day they hadn’t been able to tell the difference between their eyes being opened or closed.
They press down a pedal. The sound rings out, deep and clear, a distant hissing sound telling of the steam being expelled. As is their duty. As is their prison.
When Phantom first opened their eyes to that inescapable darkness, they had grieved. How terrible a fate, they’d thought, that they unravelled so far as to lose such a major part of themselves. Yet they had still been grateful; rather their sight than their hearing, their eyes than their hands, their vision than their heart.
(Their heart, which the Grand Mother had ripped out to form Lace. A truth that caused a rift between them and their sister, despite the fact that Phantom would never, never, hold it against her.)
Perhaps Lace would’ve been able to fix them. Not that Phantom would ever ask her to. It would’ve taken an incredible amount of silk, and a skill in weaving besides. Neither were things Lace had, and any attempts from her would likely only result in failure.
No, even if there was a chance that it would succeed, Phantom would never ask that of their sister. The risk of failure was too great. They knew their sister would never forgive herself if it didn’t work. If it had gone wrong, and Phantom ended up unravelling right before Lace’s eyes.
Worse, if the amount of silk was too great, and Lace ended up unravelled right alongside them. Neither of these endings were something Phantom could bear to imagine, so they kept quiet.
When Lace visited, they kept their eyes trained on the music they knew was in front of them. Not that they could see it, but because they didn’t want her to look them in the eyes and see something they no longer could. To see what they looked like, to notice something had changed, to know through some physical means that Phantom had lost their sight.
Phantom hadn’t been able to tell, when they’d first started losing their vision, if anything had changed about their appearance. They had no idea if that changed with the complete loss, or if they just hadn’t been able to tell.
No matter. They kept their back turned, and could track Lace’s movements by sound. She would never have to know.
(She was no child, though the Grand Mother desperately wished she’d be. Still, Phantom would protect her from this, allow her this peace, if nothing else.)
Less easy to cover up in the beats and measures following their blindness, Phantom stumbled over notes. Only occasionally, following larger jumps between chords, would they misjudge, or a finger would slip, ringing out dissonance that they had not intended.
They learned. They learned, as any musician would, and adjusted.
No more did accidental dissonance ring out through the pipes, echoing through the mist it expelled. Every chord, every jump, every rhythm was perfect. Not in the way the Grand Mother and her Choir would’ve wanted, with how the music swelled with emotion and pain, but perfect to Phantom.
Music was their love. Their life. Their prison. Shouldn’t it sound out the agony in their heart? Shouldn’t it bare to the world their deepest feelings?
What use was there for perfect fifths and sweet-sounding harmonies when they were dying?
The music swells. Phantom presses down on another pedal, moving through the chords as if they were the song’s beating heart. The melody cascades down from the higher notes– like rain, or tears– before beginning its ascent.
Phantom thinks of the pilgrims. What would the poor creatures think upon reaching the Citadel? Upon finding that there was no true salvation waiting for them? Their god was uncaring as their very pilgrimage, and what remained of the fabled holy place was haunted and breaking down, much like Phantom themselves.
The pitiful children of a heartless god. In that way, Phantom and the pilgrims were the same.
Phantom leans back, still swaying, still playing, humming to the melody that they draw out of the organ with their hands. The hissing of the expelled mist fades into the background as they play.
They miss Lace.
She’d stopped visiting as frequently, busy with her duties or something else. Perhaps the spider that she’d told Phantom about, the one that the Grand Mother had sent an entire chamber for.
Phantom hopes Lace hadn’t gone off to challenge her. The spider sounded fierce, and Lace wouldn’t have been able to avoid injury had they clashed. Their sister is stronger (and smarter) than she looks– and Lace would laugh at them for thinking that– but Phantom worries nonetheless.
That’s what they do, Phantom supposes, as the older sibling. They worry.
If Lace was injured by the weaver-spawn, then she’d need the Grand Mother to repair her. And that would bring admonishments, chiding words, and attention. The latter of which Phantom had once longed for. Still longs for, in some deep, repressed part of themselves.
The Grand Mother was their mother no longer, but Phantom sometimes aches for the time when she was.
Phantom’s thoughts drift back to the spider. Lace hadn’t bothered to mention her name, only that she was cloaked in red (useless, to Phantom’s unseeing gaze) and that she cut down any who stood in her way.
The warrior’s way out.
She approaches through the Mist. Phantom feels it in the shift of the air, hears it in the cries of the wraiths. Anticipation bubbles in their empty, unravelling chest, as their absolution draws near.
No, not absolution. They would never be absolved in the Grand Mother’s eyes, in the eyes of the Choir. They would never take any deliverance granted even if it killed them. And it would. As it has been.
This, Phantom thinks, will be their freedom. The spider approaches, her needle the key to their cage.
They’ve been playing the same passage over and over, they realize. The same simple melody, the same chord repeated over and over like a heartbeat. They press down on a different pedal, change the chord, and start a more complicated melody. Their once-mother’s lullaby almost makes it into the music. They change the last two notes to ascend, and continue playing.
Phantom’s fingers ache. Their throat hurts. And their eyes, unseeing, gaze down at the keys.
Something moves.
Phantom pauses.
It’s not Lace.
They smile, straighten up, and strike the keys decisively.
The spider went through such lengths to get to them. It was only fair that they give her the show she’s been expecting.
This is a fight Phantom will lose. But they will not give their life away easily, no matter how pitiful it has become.