Side A – Yasgrid
Off the beaten paths and away from the clearings and encampments, it was easy to see where the Darkwood had gotten its name from.
“You’ve been going for a while, haven’t you?” Nia asked, plopping down on a tree stump beside where Yasgrid was resting.
“I don’t know,” Yasgrid said. “I’m following…I don’t even know what I’m following anymore.”
“You’re looking for Kyra still right?”
“I think so? I thought Elshira would have her staked out as bait for me. I thought I could sense something…saying it now makes it sound weird.”
“It’s not,” Nia said. “I think I know what you were feeling.”
“Really? That makes one of us then.”
Yasgrid wanted to call Endings back to her hand. Her Elven eyes could see through the gloom of the deep forest but the colors of the world were almost completely desaturated and shadows hemmed her in on all sides. Endings light would be a welcome relief, even if it might doom her and the one she…
“You feel something when you think of Kyra. Not an emotion, or not exactly an emotion, but more like a pulling. Sort of a gentle yearning in a vague direction?” Nia hopped off the stump to sit closer to Yasgrid.
Within the Darkwood they both appeared as Elves, though Yasgrid was distracted by the thought of whether this really was the Darkwood or not.
“I did, but I don’t know if it was real. I’ve been walking so long I’m not sure if any of this is anymore,” Yasgrid said, which wasn’t strictly true. Nia was real. Yasgrid was more sure of that than she was of herself being real anymore.
“It’s sort of not?” Nia said. “You fell asleep. This is your dream, or ours maybe?”
“Wait, I’m asleep? I can’t sleep. I need…”
“You need rest,” Nia said. “You’ve been pushing yourself for the better part of a week now. I missed it at first because Pelegar has been pushing me too. Tonight’s the first night I completed her training regime and fell asleep rather than passing out and waking up when dawn smacked me in the face, followed by Pelegar smacking me with a drum.”
Yasgrid had to laugh. For as dire as her circumstances were and as drained as she was, she knew all too well how hard of an instructor Drum Master Pelegar could be. Nia was having the rare sort of ‘fun’ that young drummers spend years wishing for only to, almost uniformly, spend the rest of their lives shuddering at the memory of.
“Oh yeah, you’ve met Pelegar,” Nia said. “She sends her love.”
“Her ‘love’ is thirty sets of twenty impossible songs,” Yasgrid said.
“She’s up to fifty now,” Nia said.
“No thank you. I’ll take the terrifying undead sorceress instead please,” Yasgrid said, intending it to be a joke and surprising herself with how true it really was.
Hardcore Shatter drumming wasn’t in her blood. Stopping Elshira though? Sure, she might have no idea how to do it, but taken just on its own, with no worries around Kyra or Kayelle or the Darkwood’s Troubles in the picture, basically a clean battle between the two of them?
Yasgrid’s resting spirit was so very low on energy but she still felt it rise to that challenge.
Side B – Nia
The thought of a forest creature, or worse a Trouble, tearing into Yasgrid’s body wasn’t absent from Nia’s mind. It was, in fact, eating up more of her attention than she could spare.
Yasgrid needed her though. There were things they needed to talk about. Support Yasgrid had been in need of for far too long. Saving her body wouldn’t make any difference if Yasgrid’s spirit was lost.
But teeth and claws and so much worse could end things just as easily.
So Nia started playing.
She didn’t have a Shatter Drum, but this was a dream and dreams could be what you needed them to be. Especially in the depths of the Darkwood. With that taken care of, she turned her attention to what mattered.
“You described what I was feeling pretty well,” Yasgrid said. She was resting against a fallen tree like a discarded rag doll. “Is it something you’ve done too?”
“A few times,” Nia said, searching Yasgrid’s features, dream cast though they were, for signs of how bad things had gotten.
Had Yasgrid been eating? Had she even had any water?
She must have. Elven bodies can be hardy beyond belief in some cases, but Nia had never put in the work to gain that level of stamina. She liked food and her mother had always wanted her to stay healthy.
“It’s not exactly something you ‘do’ though, Nia said. “The pull you’re feeling is one of connection. If you’re feeling it when you turn your thoughts to Kyra, it’s because she’s whispering your name.”
Yasgrid twitched in response to that, her eyes opening fully with clouds of disbelief rolling in them.
“Whispering my name? Why would she…” Yasgrid trailed off, disbelief crashing against a dozen other emotions.
“Not whispering with her voice,” Nia amended. “The kind of pull I described comes when someone is holding your name in their thoughts. It shows up in a lot of stories and ballads and people make it out to be a lot more than it is. My friends and I tried it when we were kids and even then we kind of managed it.”
“Oh, so it’s just a kids game?” Yasgrid said, sagging back against the tree.
“No. It’s something we can do with people we’re deeply connected to,” Nia said. “It only works when one side is holding onto the other, and the other is listening for them, and not even then. Distance, either physical or emotional, or distractions, or denial can all through it off. When I tried with my friends, it only worked for a few of us. If we just wanted to see it work, it never did. When the other person really meant something to us though? Then it worked maybe half the time.”
“So she’s really calling to me then?” Yasgrid asked, stirring back up to a sitting position. “Why though?”
“We can probably invent a hundred different reasons but if you really want to know you’ll have to do the most frightening thing of all,” Nia said. “Ask her.”