Advisory: Prolonged exposure to Brigid Firemix’s flame oscillator may result in nostalgia loops, auditory mirages, and unintended summoning of spectral trumpeters. Consult a local guide or tavern philosopher before continuing.
The Steamboat Dispatch
April 3, 1925
By the Steamboat Pirate Syndicate Correspondent
Chateaugay Lake, N.Y.
The night air, thick with suspicion, clings to the mist of Chateaugay Lake like a terrible secret, one whispered to us by the lake’s undisturbed surface. And yet, it is neither the darkness nor the mist that now disturbs the stillness. It is the music. Not of mere melody, no, but a sound that transcends, shapes, and dissolves the known boundaries of reality. I speak of Brigid Firemix, a name that may as well be carved into the ether, for she is not truly of this place.
You see, Brigid Firemix does not play music. She becomes it.
When first I encountered her, the very fabric of space seemed to bend under the weight of her presence. The air itself shimmered, as if recoiling from the burn of an unseen flame. Her device—a curious arrangement of what one might call “future technology,” though I suspect the term is too inadequate—flickered, hissed, and pulsed with an energy beyond understanding. The sound that issued from it was neither harmonic nor chaotic; it was a thing both living and dying at once, a song born of fire and dissonance.
Her flame oscillator—a contraption both alien and sublime—does not merely amplify sound. No, it shapes it. It pulls warmth from the very air, remolding it into liquid basslines that ripple across the skin, sending tremors through the bones. Those who have borne witness to her performance speak not of sound but of sensation, of waves not only heard but felt, leaving behind an undeniable imprint. As if the mind itself is reshaped, momentarily undone.
I sought to understand this phenomenon, this fire—this essential disturbance in the world we know—by consulting the only man who might have insight: Old Veritas Eugene Miller. His response was, as expected, cryptic, a reflection of the cosmic uncertainty that seems to plague those touched by Brigid’s otherworldly influence.
“She is fire,” he muttered, his eyes wide with a fear that seemed to burn from within. “And she will burn you if you let her. But it is not just your skin. No, she will burn something deeper. She is not of our time. She is from somewhere before and somewhere after, and she calls to us from the flames.”
I turned to others for an explanation. Some speculated that Brigid’s talents were borne of an occult heritage—a goddess of fire, of inspiration, a creature of flame who transcends both time and space. Others believed her device, the flame oscillator, was a mere trick, a product of some forgotten science masquerading as magic. I remain unconvinced by either theory. There is a third explanation, one far more unsettling: she may not be from here at all.
The first time she played—truly played—I watched the fire. Not the flames in the hearth, nor the torches flickering around her, but the fire in her eyes. There, I saw something ancient, a spark not unlike that which first ignited the stars themselves. Her fingers, delicate yet purposeful, caressed the oscillator, coaxing it into life. The sounds that followed were not of this world. The walls of the tavern seemed to breathe. The floor beneath me shifted imperceptibly, as if the very ground on which we stood was no longer quite real.
As she played, the air thickened, heat rising in suffocating waves. The notes—if they could be called notes—moved like molten rivers, carving through the space between us. I felt myself drawn to them, as though pulled by an unseen force. But there was no joy in the music, no relief. It was as if the universe itself was unraveling with each beat, the delicate threads of existence snapping one by one.
I cannot say how long I stood there, suspended in her creation, for time no longer held meaning. I was, like the others, caught in the current of her sound, uncertain if I had fallen into madness or had stumbled upon the truth of something far larger than myself.
No one can say for sure where Brigid Firemix comes from or where she will go. Perhaps she is a goddess, or perhaps a visitor from a far-flung time. Maybe she is a warning, a signal of some approaching cosmic event we cannot yet fathom. And yet, I suspect her true nature is even darker than any of these theories suggest.
What is certain is this: her music is not something you simply hear. It is something you become. To stand before her is to stand at the edge of the void, where the self fractures and reconstitutes with each note. If she were a goddess, she would not be one of comfort or light. No, Brigid Firemix is the fire that consumes. She is the flame that gives birth to stars and then burns them from the inside out.
The question remains: is this a gift, or a warning? Is she the herald of a new dawn, or the last breath before everything burns to ash?
Perhaps, in time, we will know. But I fear that by then, it will be too late to return from the flames.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?