He entered from backstage in a shower of applause. He sported his usual black jacket, but under it, he seemed to have worn a suit with elegant shoes. His face was, of course, invisible to everyone.

There were four black obsidian crystals put at the edges of the stage. Staccato stood right in the center of their diagonal lines and spread his arms wide, with his hands opened to the sides. He tilted his head a bit. And started to sing.

Everyone stood silent, thinking that the exhibition had started, but the words and the chanting weren't the kind they'd expected. The music was dark and fast-paced, with a creepy game of minors chasing one another, as he slightly battered one of his feet on the wooden stage.

The four crystals started to lighten up, at first just dim violet lights in their cores, that became brighter and brighter as the song went on. Staccato abruptly jerked his hands upwards, and a light violet smoke erupted from the crystals, thin at first, then becoming thicker and thicker, twirling on volutes all around him and for the whole stage. When the smoke settled everyone stood astonished.

The smoke had turned out to be a choir. An at least thirty-people choir. Elysials, pale and transparent in their gloom grey appearance. Their faces were unknown and serious, their clothing varied from historical to modern, they were men and women, already organized in the four sections of a choir.

Staccato lifted a hand, like an expert conductor, but still facing his audience and not the choir beside him and made a swift gesture.

The whole choir erupted in a perfect harmony of notes. Their voices were clear and wonderfully harmonized, as they sang the overture to a song without words. And after some seconds, Staccato's voice joined them, shrill and definite, dominating over them like a true soloist.

To heed our story, we shall go back

Unto those days of old

When peoples brave and roguish knaves

Were true kings of the world

No valiant knight, no princess bride

In our song will shine

But the true and saddest stories

Of Windstrike and Valentine.

The ballad was a well-known historical one, especially precious to the Order. And for Staccato to have chosen it, it was preciously ironic, since it was the first written proof of the existence of the Pandora's Boxes.

The song talked about two people. Valentine de la Neige, a French nobleman turned professional soldier turned soldier of fortune, and Windstrike, Valentine's faithful soldier

They went in the search of a Pandora's Box, trying to find it, hoping its prodigious content would help them live their lives, and their loves, peacefully and happily. But as it was a ballad and not a fairy tale, their endings were not happy.

It was a very long song and hadn't Staccato been such a marvelous singer and the choir so perfect, the whole room would have fallen asleep at minute three.

But Staccato's voice was something incredible. It felt like liquid bliss pouring directly in the hearts of the listeners, so different from the howling, disquieting notes of his battle songs.

There were very few dry eyes in the whole room, and even the plotters, for some minutes, completely forgot their plan and their hate for the singer.

A long, thundering applause greeted the last notes of the song. Staccato bowed with unparalleled elegance, as someone who was long used to such homage.

The applause died down as Staccato raised his hand again, ready to give his ghostly choir the signal to start singing again. As soon as the room went completely silent, he did.

But this time, it was different.

The high notes of the choir were silent, contraltos and basses started creating a saturation background that made the floor under everyone's feet tremble. And from those voice depths, Staccato started to weave his notes up, chanting in perfect synch and harmony with his choir. Every now and then, the high silent notes erupted in rapid, desperate acute punctuations that sent shivers down everyone's spine.

Everyone felt that something was happening. Magic crackled in the air, but it wasn't coming out of Staccato. It was coming from all around.

The leaves on the vases on stage started, slowly but visibly, to wither. They turned not a warm brown, but a sick, putrid blackish green, and dried up until they fell, half turning into ashes before touching the wood of the stage.

The wreaths and garlands followed the same fate. Out of nowhere, big, furry flies started to buzz around, in perfect sync with the music, like an orchestra, rapidly joined by the fastidious scratching of locusts and grasshoppers.

The insects dispersed all over the room, flying and landing on the audience. Very few could move, and even who could remain still, probably thinking they were a very good illusion or just part of the scene. Many women put on disgusted faces, but nobody wanted to be the first to seem rude enough to leave what had become a contemporary artistic performance.

That wasn't the case of the three plotters. As disgust built on, Garaham decided that he had enough. Francesca was mesmerized by the performance, so, it was high time to act. He discreetly teleported to the bathroom.

This was the signal.

Vopros and Chico were keeping Garaham in their sight. As he disappeared, Chico stood up and left, slowly. Luckily, Carlos had fallen asleep after the first six minutes of the ballad.

Vopros followed him after some seconds. Irissa was in the same state of Francesca: in complete adoration of Staccato.

They all found themselves up, on the walkways, paying attention not to make the slightest sound.

There were three satchels. One was Garaham's, and it contained a single vial of vis siderea and a notebook page with a thick handwriting. Vopros's and Chico's contained each two black, roundish objects that looked incredibly like old WWII frag bombs.

And, incidentally, they were.

They ripped the needle off the hand grenades and kept their levers down with their fingers. They could only hope that Banshee wasn't distracted. They would have had a window of maybe just some seconds, and she was the key.

Garaham opened the vial and downed it in one sip. The familiar taste of the potion was nauseatingly sweet and oily. He immediately felt the all too familiar rush of power surging from inside him, passing through his veins like a sudden high tide of his own blood, and reaching his brain.

He focused on the words of the spell. He could clearly see all the fluxes used to upkeep something magical inside the room below him, especially the very deep purple ones flowing all around Staccato and his jacket.

On them, Garaham unleashed his Dispel magic, like a cleave thrust, amplified by the vis siderea boost.

The instant Garaham cast the spell, Chico and Vopros launched their bombs down. They fell on the stage, bounced once and then immediately exploded. It was a silent, discreet explosion, with just a simple flash of light. But its effect was devastating: a quadruple amplification of Garaham's Dispel spell, created by the blasting of four equivalent Dispel spells, bottled up in the bombs themselves.

Vopros had found a way to bottle up a single spell, that Garaham had cast while under the influence of a single vial of vis siderea, in a hand grenade, magically crafted with the same kind of incantations the werepeople had used for their cuffs to contain the power of the spell.

The whole energy of four empowered Enforcers right there in their hands.

The effect was the most discreet and invisible one. Sure, anyone could feel the burst of Dispel magic, but just on the sides. Thanks to Vopros's perfect blast control, the bombs had been limited to the stage area, and the ramifications of the spell didn't even pass the front stage. They concentrated the peak of their power on Staccato, and of course, violently dispelled the entire choir. In a moment, Staccato's voice was the only one audible in the room, until he got hit by the abnormal spell, making him miss a breath and the further notes.

Garaham looked down from the walkways.

It had worked.

Staccato was paralyzed, at the center of the stage. And his jacket was now the most normal jacket in the world.

Banshee reacted immediately. Taking advantage of the darkness and of the general stupor at Staccato's sudden silence, she raised a hand and sent her best wind blast forward, topping down a lot of hairdos and a couple of toupees.

The windblast, in all its violence, hit Staccato like a truckload of punches. And even if he had the immediate instinct of raising an arm to protect himself from the wind, it wasn't enough to stop his hood to slide off his head.

Banshee sucked her breath in, as Staccato's face was finally revealed.

He wasn't Jägermann.

He wasn't Jägermann, at all.

He was short. He had regular features, pleasant but somehow distorted by something dark crawling under his own skin. More a sensation than a visible detail. He had big violet eyes, opened wide in shock, completely different from the grey, transparent one he had shown her when he was trying to convince her that he was her brother, and a thick head of perfectly kept and combed blond hair. But the most evident detail of his face was the scar passing through his left eye.

Egon Brunswick.

He was the man who was with Grasshopper at Eva's party. At the hospital. A surgeon, who worked at strange hours, for long and different amounts of time. A surgeon, who could operate on a friend's fiancé, and then know how to leave a treble clef in her heart. A surgeon, who knew enough about anatomy and its mysteries to try and create the perfect undead.

She lost the whole content of blood in her face and had to reach for her seat to not fall down. River, still completely lost beside her, looked at her with no words, as she almost fainted.

But right at that moment, they both had to bring their attention back to the stage. Because a nasty wind started spreading from Staccato, like a sandstorm of which he was the eye. Over him, right above the walkways, a violet smoke started to collect and formed a swirling vortex. From the vortex, a giant clawed monstrous hand fell down on Staccato and dragged him up towards the whirlwind. In doing so, Staccato found himself at the same eye level of the three still in their places, for enough time to see them, recognize them, and promise them a slow and painful death with just one glare.

Then, he disappeared, the smoke dispersed, and the room fell silent and still yet one more time.

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Hi guys!
Finally, THE BIG REVEAL! Staccato's unmasked, and the book's nearing his end. Two chapters and then the Pollos will go on a little holiday, but let me assure you, there's much more to tell.

Since it's Christmas before I'll post the next chapter, I'll take this occasion to wish you all the best of festivities, whatever religion or belief you're following, I just hope you get to spend time with your loved ones, whatever the reason may be, it will always be the most worthy time of your lives.

As usual, thanks for reading and commenting, talking to you is our favourite thing... and we may try to make it an even stronger habit! We'll see what the new year brings!

Lots and lots of love,
Daniel.

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