Side A – Nia
Nia was having a hard time believing Margrada’s claim, not because it was one she didn’t want to be true but because she felt like she wasn’t even close to deserving it.
“Osdora barely even knows me,” Nia said. “All she really knows is the girl who pretended to be her daughter.”
Nia was ready to refute any of Margrada’s well-intentioned claims to the contrary but support for Margrada’s theory came from an unexpected source.
“Don’t sell yourself short kid,” Pelegar said. “We talked about you. A lot. After you accident.”
“Which one?” Nia asked, thinking back to the beating she’d taken and the wreck her hands had been.
“The first one, at the Calling,” Pelegar said. “After the first time she heard you play, she knew you were different. ‘It’s like I’ve got a whole other daughter on my hands now’. Those were her exact words. So I asked her what she was going to do about it.”
“She was going to train me, right?” Nia asked.
“Pah, training wasn’t the question. You could obviously we play. We’d all seen that. Worse you could play like she did.”
“How is that worse?” Margrada asked.
Pelegar chuckled at the question for moment before breaking into an open laugh.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “That’s a really good one. I’ll tell you what, ask me that again after you’ve had to lead the band with one of those two maniacs in it. Or better yet, both of them!”
Nia cast Margrada an apologetic glance, unsure what sort of nightmare Pelegar was suggesting would befall them.
“So if training Nia wasn’t at stake, what was she going to do with her?” Margrada asked.
Pelegar hesitated a moment, and Nia saw her wrestling with the question of whether to share Osdora’s actual private feelings or just allude to them.
“She said she was going to, and I quote, ‘be grateful I’ve been blessed with a second daughter and try to do better with her than I did with the first one’,” Pelegar said.
Nia shook her head. Osdora couldn’t have said that. Or she hadn’t meant it literally. Yeah, of course. It had been a metaphor. The moment she’d had confirmation that Yasgrid still existed, she’d lit out on a continent hopping adventure to reunite with her.
Hadn’t she?
Something niggled at the back of Nia’s mind on that but she couldn’t quite catch it.
“So you think this will work then?” Margrada asked.
“Oh, I didn’t come close to saying that,” Pelegar assured her. “I think this idea will in all likelihood do nothing but give the two of you colossal migraines, if you’re lucky.”
“That seems like a risk with taking,” Margrada said. “Don’t you think?”
She addressed the question to Pelegar but Nia cause the glance Margrada shot over soliciting her thoughts on the matter.
“You’ve raised a good point about it being the only option we probably have,” Pelegar said. “I just want to make sure neither of you gets your hopes up too high.”
“This feels like the kind of thing we need all the hope we can muster in order to pull off,” Nia said.
“Nonsense,” Pelegar said. “Put too much into this and you’ll project yourself out alright. All the way out of this world with no way to ever make it back.”
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid opened her eyes and emerged from her quick conference with Endings. Marianne was examining her with the eyes of Drum Master inspecting a new instrument for the first time.
“She wants Endings back,” Yasgrid said without preamble. Marianne was brilliant and Yasgrid trusted her to understand why that conclusion was all but inevitable.
“You mentioned that she clasped Endings during your conversation with her though?” Marianne asked.
“Caught it in mid flight,” Yasgrid said.
“And is that something you would be capable of?” Marianne asked.
“If Kayelle were to throw Endings at a Trouble near me?” Yasgrid said. “No, I don’t think so. Once committed to the strike, Endings is much too fast. At best, if we were close enough, I could, maybe, block Kayelle’s release of the Blade. Falling that, Endings would have destroyed the Trouble by the time I was aware it had been unleashed.”
“So Elshira has been control over the Blade than you do,” Marianna said, her gaze growing distant as she added that piece to the puzzle they were building.
“Not better control. Faster reflexes,” Yasgrid said. “If Kayelle were throwing Endings to me and I was ready, catching it like Elshira did would be easy. It’s doing it when there’s no time to prepare that is beyond me, and I believe any other living person.”
“Being dead does not tend to make one faster,” Marianne said. “It might however make it easier to lie in wait for the proper moment though. Elshira clearly knew you would attempt to destroy the Trouble at some point, perhaps she simply waited for an opportunity to arise?”
“From how she joined the conversation, she’d clearly been listening in to it before she appeared, so that’s certainly possible,” Yasgrid said.
“In either case, the same important question arises,” Marianne said. “If she’s after Endings, and she was able to take hold of it why did she let you have it back?”
“I’m not sure,” Yasgrid said. “Perhaps because she wouldn’t have had all of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Kayelle and I are both the Bearers at the moment, so we both have hold of Endings, together. She can call Endings to her hand the same as I can, either as we need it. Elshira caught Endings when I released it, but that didn’t mean that Kayelle had lost her grasp on it. What we hold, what Endings truly is, is not a Blade, or a crystal artifact or any physical thing at all. It’s not even quite accurate to say that I’d ‘released’ Endings when I threw it. Until I complete my vow or lay down the burden, I will always be carrying Endings.”