Life Story
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Linaria's earliest memory was of taking a pair of fine shoes belonging to a village child and hiding them under her bed. When her parents eventually found the shoes, they confronted her, but she denied the theft. Though her parents went to return the shoes and the village children branded her a thief, still Linaria denied she had done anything wrong.
Linaria's family was well-off, so there was no need for her to steal. Nevertheless, her thefts continued. "It's not fair that she's the only one to have one of these."
Linaria had become hated by those around her, yet she paid them little mind.
As Linaria grew older, she came to see that stealing from fellow villagers was more trouble than it was worth. And so, she took to stealing from travelers instead. Stealing but a handful of curiosities, she took only what a traveler might lose without raising an outcry.
One day, hearing that an elderly traveling mage possessed a rare musical instrument, Linaria stole a look at his belongings just to catch a glimpse of it. Finding the rare instrument-a lute-her heart began to race. Even knowing that the disappearance of such a prize would cause an uproar, she could not stop her hand from reaching out toward it. Linaria took the stolen lute and concealed it within the woods on the outskirts of the village.
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Seemingly unconcerned by the lute's disappearance, the elderly mage soon departed from the village. For seven full days Linaria watched and waited-but the mage never returned.
At long last, Linaria made her way to the forest and retrieved the lute she had hidden there among the trees. When she tentatively plucked the strings, a sound of otherworldly beauty intoxicated her.
"What a beautiful sound! It is like the voice of an angel in song."
Linaria became completely captivated by the lute. Day after day, she retreated to the woods to immerse herself in the lute's melody in solitude.
Then one day, as she plucked a melody with her usual halting touch, a hazy plume of smoke drifted up from the lute's center, gradually coalescing into a humanoid form.
"I am the spirit of this lute. I shall guide thy hands through a most wonderful song."
Though taken aback, Linaria longed to play even more beautiful music, and she accepted the spirit's teachings. Her mastery of the instrument grew by leaps and bounds.
"It is high time you graced the masses with a performance, don't you think?"
So the spirit whispered once Linaria came to master the instrument.
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"Shouldst thou but strike these lute strings, they shall fall helplessly into thy thrall."
Linaria was a pariah in her village. Ordinarily, people would give her a wide berth whenever they passed. Yet with this lute, she was certain they could no longer turn a blind eye to her.
That evening, Linaria made her way into the village tavern, the lute in hand. Initially, the crowd met her with dubious glances. 'There's that little thief,' they murmured amongst themselves, certain she was plotting some new mischief.
Yet, the moment Linaria struck her first notes, the tavern went still, and every eye in the room went wide. All eyes were fixed upon Linaria as they stood spellbound by a melody more beautiful than anything in this world. The entire crowd fell utterly under the spell of Linaria and the music of her lute. When the song ended, the room erupted in cheers, and they clamored for her to continue.
For the first time since her birth, she found herself encircled by the villagers' smiles; she played with joy, yielding to their every plea for more. She played on, drunk on their praise, never noticing that as the hours bled away, the light in the villagers' eyes was beginning to curdle into a frantic, jagged madness.
Night after night, Linaria struck the strings of her lute. The people rejoiced. Adored and lauded by all, Linaria stood upon the heights of bliss. It was on the seventh night that the change began.
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The innkeeper, who had been clapping along as he listened to the lute, stabbed the woman beside him with a fork, laughing all the while. The young woman, from whom Linaria had once stolen that fine pair of shoes, turned upon her own fiance and struck him, a look of pure joy upon her face.
The villagers fell upon one another-beating, stabbing, strangling, and crushing. Immersed in the tones of the lute, they seemed utterly enraptured, as if they wehaving the time of their lives. Though Linaria stilled her hands, the lute continued to play on of its own accord. Voices that could be taken for either shrieks of terror or roars of applause echoed throughout the village, all muddled into a great cacophony. Once every soul save for Linaria lay perfectly still, the lute's melody at last came to an end.
Her parents, who had cherished the little outcast-her grandparents, who had been her constant protectors-Linaria stood motionless before their lifeless bodies, unable to look away. From within the depths of the lute, the spirit manifested once more, its face breaking into a vile grin for Linaria.
"I must render thee my thanks for these many sacrifices. It is that which has allowed me to walk free once more." And with that, the spirit and the lute itself, vanished as if they'd never been.
The sole survivor in a village of the dead, Linaria turned her back on her home and set out on a journey. Her path led her in search of the elderly mage, the man who had first carried that cursed lute into her life.
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In the course of her journey, she obtained a proper lute, free of any spiritual influence, and busked in taverns to pay her way. At long last, she finally cornered the old mage, demanding the truth about the instrument.
"That lute was bound to a demon-it was the lute of the demon. It was you who were played by him, to his own ends."
The demon would fill the air with hauntingly beautiful melodies, and any who might listen paid with their very lives. The mage had been on a journey to exorcise the demon bound to the lute, but once the instrument had been stolen from him, he chose to wash his hands of the matter entirely.
"If you hadn't brought that lute with you, none of this would've happened!"
Rousing the mage into action, Linaria forced him to accompany her on a quest to hunt down and destroy the demon. The duo made their way across the land, bickering incessantly. So they traveled from place to place, Linaria playing her lute and singing the tale of her doomed village and the demon of the lute to gather information.
The ballad of 'The Doomed Village and the Demon of the Lute' remains in every corner of the continent. Yet, within a single frontier village to the south, the verses of 'The Demon of the Lute and Its Undoing' are the only ones passed down. And so it is said by poets of old that in those distant frontiers, the wandering minstrel finally brought the demon to its knees.