PeaceMaker

Annabeth sat down at the harp and her arm rose up immediately, her shoulders up, pulling her harp towards her and placing it on her shoulder, elbow down and her hand pointing at a 45-degree angle at the strings. Slowly, she pulled her hand closer to the string and played a note.

The note echoed in the air for a moment before she played it again and again and again. There was a simple melody forming as she involved some of the other strings and played in a very slow tempo, dragging out in which the notes echoed in the air. 

There was this sense of calmness in the note, a tranquil aspect that really let the people listening into the song. It felt like something that would have been played in the house of a rich nobleman who liked to have the 'melodies of beauty' playing throughout all his halls, or a classic played over the act of murder during live-action shows. 

It was calm and relaxing but there was also this air to it. Like a cloud of eeriness in the air as the long steady notes hung in the atmosphere and a deep sense of foreboding integrated into the notes. In the midst of the calmness, the notes held a building fear of what was to come next, a gradually increasing awareness to every note she played, like she was holding them on a thin thread with every note, the suspense strangling all the room.

Slowly the notes start to gradually go down and up a few letters in a scale, sounding perfectly normal on their first round, and then go down another few lines and one perfectly normal note gets twisted into a sound that was not pleasing to the ear. It reeked of danger and every time her arpeggios would be played, more notes would seem to get corrupted, a normal pattern-breaking into something that brought goosebumps to the skin. 

Annabeth dragged the notes out, seemingly playing the notes to a low and deep level elevating the serene silence that was yet so threatening in every way. Every second the notes got longer, the more dread it had interwoven into its sound. It all came to a slow end and Annabeth let the last note ring out and echo in off the walls of the room.

While everyone sat quietly, still in a trance of the long note, she seemed to freeze, hesitating. It was like she was holding back something she should let forth, the tension going flying through the roof. Her hands hovered over the strings as if she was in deliberation as to whether or not to continue. 

Then in the blink of an eye, her hand descended on the high notes, her fingers plucking them so quickly as she ran down from the shorter, tighter strings down to the longer, deeper ones, purposefully turning a few notes dark in her transition. From there the piece took the weirdest turn, it turned bright. 

There were multiple notes of the carefree nature of a human being played on the harp, the mood in the room elevating a bit as the notes got a bit brighter. It sounded so light, so peaceful and beautiful, like in the story the music painted all the characters were in the field with their family, having the best time together. 

It was the most soothing notes being played, like a relaxing ear session for the ears to simply listen to something, restful, for its first time that day. There was nothing romantic about the music she was playing, yet it was just so relaxing to the ears and to the mood as they watched her play intensely. 

There was silence that hung in the air. A harmonious one, one that seemed to calm the tension in the room and let people's minds rest easy. At least it was, until Annabeth snuck a chilling note in there, plucking the last, longest line on her harp. It's sound echoed through the room, bringing shivers down people's spine. 

It was like a rock being thrown into the steady waves of a stream. The long, deep, eerie note disturbing the peace in her notes. 

The note didn't seem to be returning anytime soon after a few seconds but once again, it slipped in, completely destroying the peace again.

'It was so captivating,' Ciergo thought to himself. 'Her playing is simply… majestic. It feels like one was on the ground, in the city, or just in a field, running around, minding their own business. It was not an air of excitement in her playing but rather an air of relief in the things that she played. Not that the people listening envisioned in their minds that they were doing extraordinary things like flying through the sky or running through an endless field or walking on water. It was the ordinary things like walking into a favorite restaurant and getting the order one always ordered.'

He looked up at Annabeth with a newfound respect and simply nodded his head. 'It was finding peace through routines, finding calmness through the things in everyday life.'

Annabeth continued her way playing light, fluffy sounds, only for it to get interrupted again by the ringing of the long string. 

Ciergo stared at her with awed eyes. 'I don't know what's the best about it, the song, the way she plays the long deep note like she accidentally slipped it in, and the way her fingers seemed to bounce off the harp-like it was her home instrument. Or the fact that in just a matter of seconds, this piece that she was playing was composed by her in her mind without even needing a sheet of paper.'

Ciergo was marveled at her.

Annabeth continued to play, the intervals between the long dark notes starting to get shorter again and building up another cloud of tension. There was an abnormal wait in between one of her notes that everyone caught. They shivered. That irregular sound, that inconsistency she was forming was the utmost frightening. 

She began her normal calm arpeggio again, this time starting really quiet to build up. Her high notes were quiet but gradually increasing in sound, As the people in the room prepped themselves for the long deep plucking of the longest string, that was when it took a huge U-turn. Rather than the long note, her arpeggios increased in speed and got to lower notes, faster and faster until it reached the last string on the harp. 

She plucked it in a very swift way like she was releasing all her anger on that one note, like she was planning to destroy them with her music. 

Destruction. That was what came next. 

In the uncanny silence came the ghastly leftovers of the note that echoed through the room after the string was done vibrating. 

Annabeth simply sat in it, feeling the impatient, worried eyes all around her. She raised her hand to continue but right before she hit the string, her hand switched to a palm and slammed it into her harp's strings near the middle of the harp. 

The sound was like a whole whiplash, slashing at people and slamming into them almost like a wave. They jumped when the sound reached their ears. Almost at the same time, hands in the room rose to their ears to hide from the disastrous sound and the after-images or feels that it gave after. 

It felt like a trigger and sounded like a trigger. A trigger for the war. 

Annabeth's hand, with no delay, descended on the notes with such power and force that their sound sent the people into the audience in a panic of their own. Her fingers slammed into the strings in a manner that was so elegant yet so terrifying that everyone was pulled into its sound. 

Her fingers began to make a certain melody, one loud and rich, making goosebumps crawl up the arms of those in the audience. It was a melody that wasn't the calmest but it seemed to have this air of conflict, like in the story the piece was painting there was something going on, something big, something explosive, something life-changing. 

Her fingers danced on the stings, plucking 2 at times but even more, 4 times. It sounded so abrupt, so quick, so rushed, so much panic could be expressed in her voice and even her expression. 

What was happening became ever so clear when one hand will travel up to the high-pitched strings and plucked some, creating a loud sound, buried in the sound she was creating, but just enough to hear it. Her palm would bang into the side of her harp once in a while to signify another thing in Dominic's theme. 

Her piece was so chaotic but at the same time, click in this distorted harmony, each part fitting so painfully into each other. It was dreadful to see how the sounds fit together, painful to hear it being played aloud, and to recognize the elements in her sound. 

There were some in the audience that was reduced to tears by the sounds they were listening to that she played. 

It was a tragic scene really. With the confusing and distorted sounds of Annabeth playing and yet finding a way to piece together to perfection. She couldn't really remember where she was in the piece but it sounded terrifying, so beautifully terrifying. 

She was terrifying.