Music Puppets

When plague swept Pangzhen, most of the town's musicians fled. A few had nowhere to go; they held to the instruments they lived by and waited for a man who had promised to come and lead them out. The zither in their arms was the one thing no one had taken from them, and the one thing that still answered them. He never came. What came was Soul Displacement.

Others walked in on their own. Wulin folk taught them a trick or two of Phantom Art so snow would dance off the strings and lend the show some color; then came a little silver, enough to buy songs composed for the Lady; last came a prescription and a bowl of medicine — drink this, and you will not catch the strange illness and become a puppet. They drank it. The illness never took them, but neither did they stay.

They still play, day and night. The music is meant for killing now and will not hold its harmony, and wherever it reaches, frost and killing intent arrive together.

• Puppet Zitherist: A graceful figure with a zither in her arms, clear notes over a killing intent, the sound waves running blue; music meant to please cannot hold five notes together once it is meant to kill.
• Songstress Puppet: A horrific hole torn from cheek to throat, left by the cries for help as she was sealed in; her voice is a rasp now, and she reaches again and again for a throat that has nothing left in it, then turns to tear at someone else's.
• Frost Zither Maiden: White robe and white hair, cold mist curling about her; the snow that once danced on her strings for show now comes off them as a weapon.
• Frost Songstress: Dressed in snow-white, quick to lunge with her claws, her scream carrying a cold that freezes the blood in a man's veins; the tricks and dances she once lived by are all means of killing now.
• Grand Director of Music: A musician's shape cradling an instrument of ice; at a touch of the fingers the notes turn to frost blades and the ground freezes over. The mind inside once belonged to a famous player, and now it sits in a shell of ice, playing slaughter over and over.

The blue sound waves can be blocked, and a blocked wave rebounds on the one who played it. Raise the blade rather than eat it, but plant your feet for the block: the rebound comes half a beat late.

Close range is the thinnest part of them; a zither and a song both fail at arm's length. The waves come in a broad sheet, so step aside rather than back away. The frost line will slow your hands and feet, so do not stand still in it.