Side A – Nia
The Trouble hiding behind the tree had the look of prey that had finally been run to ground. Yasgrid was no closer than she had been a moment earlier, but she’d woven a net of words around the Trouble tighter and more binding than any net could have been.
“You won’t listen to me,” the Trouble said, speaking through the projection it was casting near Yasgrid.
“No. You tried that before,” Yasgrid said, advancing on the image of the Trouble which towered over her. “There’s no running away from this. You’re hear to deliver a message. You’re meant to convince me to trust someone. And you can’t leave until you do.”
“You know nothing of what…” the Trouble began, but Yasgrid cut in again.
“Nope. You tried that too,” she said. “Stop hiding and make your pitch.”
“Not until you’re ready,” the Trouble said.
“Why?” Yasgrid said.
The Trouble offered only silence in return, the projection looming expressionless and unreadable in front of Yasgrid
Nia could see the Trouble’s real expression though, the one it wasn’t thinking it needed to hide as it crouched out of Yasgrid’s sight behind a tree.
It was shaking.
For all that there were ghost stories and tales of horror focused on the Troubles, Nia had never seen one in person prior to Yasgrid becoming the Bearer. They were thankfully rare in day-to-day life, bound by strange constraints even Endings couldn’t provide clear insight into. Despite her lack of experience with them though, Nia was certain that the Trouble before her wasn’t supposed to look as terrified as it did.
Troubles were predators. They existed to cause misery and suffering. New ones were mindless forces of mayhem and destruction, and even as they aged and gained language and cunning, those attributes were only put towards creating greater depths of cruelty.
Monsters weren’t supposed to be terrified. They were only supposed to hunger for destruction and the screams of agony or despair from their victims.
Nia looked closer at the Trouble. At their heart, she knew there was a kernel of something else. Something that could become more than what they were if it was given the chance.
She’d managed to help one blossom in her fiery walk across the stages were the Shatter Bands had battled. Drinking in magic and standing against a nightmare had transformed the spark she’d pulled from Yasgrid’s heart into something Nia didn’t understand beyond the certainty that what had once been a Trouble had become something unbound from its old pain, and washed clean of the malice that had born it. Something, she suspected, that was entirely new to the world.
The same spark lingered in all of the Troubles. They didn’t have proof of that, but Yasgrid had believed it even before it had been proven true with one of the Troubles, and Nia saw no reason to begin doubting her.
What sat behind the tree though wasn’t one of those unformed sparks.
It was a monster.
Nia could see it’s claws flexing and writhing, suppressed anger and fear filling them with a palpable desire to hurt, to destroy, to make suffer slowly.
But it was afraid.
Of Yasgrid? Certainly, but there was anger towards the Bearer that could have seen it past the fear of Endings’ blade.
The Trouble wasn’t moving.
Couldn’t move.
Something else was terrifying it more than the destruction the Bearer offered.
Or not something.
Someone.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid could see the shape of the forces that were hiding in the Trouble’s shadow.
There were no other Troubles present. No dangers waiting in the woods to join the Trouble before her in an ambush.
It had no backup save the eyes watching it from afar.
Yasgrid didn’t know who or what those eyes belonged to but the silence sketched a compelling picture that they must exist.
The Trouble wanted to be anywhere but where it was. Its refusal to engage with Yasgrid coupled with its ability to evade both her and Endings’ detection spoke clear volumes that its presence was being compelled.
Except Troubles were limited creatures. They couldn’t be controlled because their existence was directly tied to the misery they stoked and fed upon. Commanding a Trouble was all but impossible because they wanted nothing except the destruction they were inevitably already causing.
And yet, someone had. And still was in control of this one.
Yasgrid saw her phantom adversaries hand in the attack on Blue Falls and in the first Troubles they’d encountered.
Troubles didn’t work together, or so everyone claimed, and yet in Yasgrid’s brief tenure as a Bearer, that had proven to be repeatedly untrue.
Yasgrid had no delusions that she was exceptionally lucky, for good or ill, and luck couldn’t explain an army of solo terrors banding together.
Despite the devastation of the battle though, Yasgrid began to see that it had never been about overwhelming Blue Falls. It hadn’t even been able slaying the Bearers.
It had been a test.
A pass or die test, but one that had provided far more information about who she was and what her capabilities were than had been apparent before.
Her ability to work with the Fate Dancers was unusual to unheard of in a Bearer, for all that it hadn’t lasted the full length of the battle.
How she’d ended each of the Troubles too had been revealing. Which ones she’d prioritized. How many she’d engaged together and how she’d maneuvered around them.
And, most importantly, what she’d done with them when Endings was finished with them.
The Trouble hadn’t spoken at all, but Yasgrid knew its master was aware of what she’d been doing with the hearts of the defeated Troubles.
Knew that the Troubles’ hearts slept within Yasgrid.
That was why she was being tested like no Bearer before her had been.
That was why the Trouble’s master ‘loved’ her.
Though Yasgrid suspected that ‘love’ was nothing like the warmth and joy between Nia and Margrada, or even the unspoken familial devotion Naosha felt towards her daughters.
Not all love is kind, and not all love is good.
The elves understood that.
In their language there were many words for love.
Even one for the love that destroys, that twists and consumes.
Staring at the Trouble, Yasgrid caught a glimpse past it of the roiling, laughing, screaming chaos in the heart of the one who truly stood against her.
The one who had seen Yasgrid’s heart first and who coveted it, likely with or without the rest of Yasgrid attached.