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"She really likes this kind of thing. Don't worry too much about it, though. We'll all walk out okay. That being said, it does hurt, so you probably want to avoid it, but we will be alright, if maybe psychologically scarred." They reached out to give the Musician a reassuring pat, realized they really didn't know her that well, and withdrew their hand.

"Sorry," the Musician said, "I'm... this is not what I expected from a birthday party, you know? I came dressed for dancing, not... repeat homicide."

"Yeah, she probably is. Even if she's not around here somewhere, she probably has cameras set up."

"If I were to guess, I'd say she's watching us from somewhere." He glanced up at the balcony, wondering if it was worth it to look around.

"You're just mad I solved the cipher, aren't you," they said before reaching down and picking up the card before putting it in a pocket. "See, she's not staying dead. Maybe we should go find whatever body she's inhabiting now? Or we could try and find out why this one is rotting."

Blaring up at you is a black skull and poison-green text:

Doom.

You suppose she might be sullen at you.

"I don't know if this is normal. I haven't attended any of her parties before, but I'd be willing to bet that we'll all be corpses a couple times over by the end of this party."

"Really? You gave one to him?" they grumbled. Then, they sighed. "It's a Homestuck Class. I'm not sure what it means if she hasn't given you an Aspect, though."

"Is this... normal, for her parties? Should I be worried about ending up a corpse myself?"

He appeared next to Ghast, curious. "I found one as well. Less fancy because it just says witch."

Then they started giggling to themselves. Goodness, Cal. What on Earth do you have planned for us? And what the heck are you doing? they thought, and then quickly sobered up as they answered their own question, No doubt it will involve a good deal of death that is a lot more real than whatever just happened. They sighed and wondered why they ever agreed to coming to the party; this was clearly going to be one wild night.

"Not in your ability to stay dead or not kill us, at least."

He wondered why it said what it did. Oh well. He considered it payment for a song well played. Or not.

In barely-neat writing is the message:

Vfp hmsv io rxzoh uk dz, dmocdns.

Face-up this time, it has blackened text in loopy letters:

Witch

Oh boy. This was bad. Really bad.

The birthday girl shouldn't die on her birthday. Sure, people should end off on a high note, but this was just wrong.

Overcoming his fear of dead bodies and excessive amounts of blood, he made his way over to where Calliope had fallen. Who in their right mind would put a spear right where the birthday girl would fall? That's some bad interior design, right there.

"Whelp. Only one thing to do at a time like this." He pulled out a violin and started to play a sad tune. Ok, sorta sad. It wasn't rapidly turning into a happy song. That's just your imagination.

"Either this is a fake corpse she's had for a while, or else she killed herself a while ago to use this, or she's doing something weird, like warping time. I wouldn't put any of them past her."

The Musician was not an expert in dead bodies, but she did know her way around a gawking crowd. She was in the front in short order, looking down at the Ghast and the now former-Hostess.

"That can't be natural," she said. "Doesn't it normally take a while for decay to set in?"

Cautiously, they step back from it, then pick up their sword and gently prod the body with its tip.

Unlike the original scene, it did not dissolve. The mouth does open slightly, and... um. Somefin about this looks wrong somehow. A little more decayed than it ought to.

She looked around, a black butterfly mask on her face, neck hair standing on end and prickling as her long brown curly hair brushed against them. A white dress with black in the front and chest featured white gemstones, so small they looked like snowflakes in the black cloth. Black high heels completed the look. Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh HELP was all that was running through her head in this moment, aside from the fact that their hostess was dead. What was this, a sick reenactment of CLUE?

"Very funny, Calliope," they said, before vanishing and reappearing on top of the balcony. Their sleeve rustled, then a sword slid out of it. With a quick slice, Calliope's body was falling. They vanished and reappeared beneath the falling corpse, holding their arms out to catch her.

He looked at the body. "Pity no candy came out," he muttered. "Anyone have a clue what happened?" He inspected the body more closely. "Huh. Definitely dead."

This time, instead of the lights coming back on like the flick of a switch, a fog dissipates from around the fixtures. Once things become visible again - which was about half of the normal light level - you can make out the figure of a body, a female. When the light returns to normal, well…

It’s Calliope.

That… that cannot possibly be right. She was just doing a circuit of the room, wasn’t she?

Wait, no. She was dragging the Cryptographer to the Garnet Ghast.

Or was she laughing at Sapphire?

No, she was messing with Mister Turkey.

No, wait, it was Yatagarasu.

Oh gosh. Where was she? She couldn’t have been in five places at once. It just wouldn’t have been possible.

But you look around and you don’t see her anywhere save for over the railing of a balcony, not only hung but impaled on a spear of some kind. The lights couldn't have been obscured for that long... and you heard nothing.

So what happened?