Side A – Nia
Nia felt a surge of glee at Yasgrid and Kyra taking an undeniable step forward. Then she she felt a surge of terror as her song fell apart and her drumming went wild.
With a last desperate beat, she cast Kyra back to her own dreams and leaped to grab Yasgrid’s hand.
“What’s…” Yasgrid started to ask but the dreaming sky ripped open and pure chaos poured in.
Nia was too far to reach Yasgrid and the magic she held was in tattered, silent shreds. She could feel it coiling back inside her, scorching her mind like a whip of fire. She pushed against it, trying to regain control by pure force, but that only fed the backlashing magic more power and sent coruscating rivers of pain racing down her body.
She’d done something phenomenally stupid in messing with esoteric powers and ephemeral places that she hadn’t really understood in the slightest.
And she didn’t regret a second of it.
She was tumbling into what was probably an endless darkness, her body and her world completely lost to her but if given the choice, she would have played every note again.
Yasgrid had needed that. Had needed her.
And she knew she didn’t have to panic.
Yes, she was helpless.
But she wasn’t alone.
In the endless darkness, a hand grasped hers.
“What happened?” Yasgrid asked, the light of her being illuminating the darkness they were falling through.
“I sent Kyra back to her own dreams,” Nia said. “She’s safe.”
It wasn’t what Yasgrid had asked her but it was what she’d most needed to hear.
“Safe?” Yasgrid asked.
“Safe from this,” Nia amended. “Still in all the danger she was in before.”
“What happened?” Yasgrid asked again.
“I lost control of things,” Nia said. “The beat I was playing kind of blew up.”
Yasgrid chuckled.
“I’m not surprised. How did you do any of that?”
“It was a dream. I figured it didn’t have any rules except the ones we gave it,” Nia said. “I may not have been right about that though.”
“That’s…and you just started playing? And it worked?”
“I don’t know, does this count as ‘working’?” Nia asked, gesturing the darkness around them.
Except it wasn’t all dark. Staring at any spot for more than a moment called forth shapes and movement that Nia knew she wasn’t supposed to be seeing.
“What is this place?” Yasgrid asked.
“I was hoping you’d be able to tell me,” Nia said. “I take it this isn’t a common problem Shatter Drummers run into?”
“I’ve never heard of a Shatter Drummer managing to drum in their sleep before,” Yasgrid said.
“Maybe this is why,” Nia said. “I think I broke our dreams. I used the last bit of magic that would still do what I wanted to throw Kyra back into hers, but I didn’t have anything left to save us.”
“You made the right choice,” Yasgrid said.
“So did you,” Nia said.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid felt a blush rise in her checks and shook her head to cast it off. She and Nia were in serious danger, she didn’t have time to get distract by…by pleasant memories.
“Will Margrada be able to sense that your missing?” Yasgrid asked, remembering that Nia had her own ‘pleasant memories’ to draw on.
“We’ve been sleeping like the dead lately,” Nia said. “I’d try calling to her, but I don’t have anything to drum on here, and I don’t know that I’d want to drag her into this.”
“She might feel differently if she wakes up and you don’t,” Yasgrid said.
“Yeah. I’m hoping if we can’t fix this by then, that she’ll grab Pelegar or Belhelen or someone else with enough experience to be helpful,” Nia said.
“No one’s going to have experience with this,” Yasgrid said. “Although, my Mom might be able to figure something out.”
“Can you reach her?” Nia asked.
“I don’t think so. Like you said, there’s no drums here.”
Nia frowned and Yasgrid saw her gaze go distant.
“No drums, but there weren’t any before either,” she said, working on an idea.
“You said you played the ground because we were in a dream and things in a dream could be whatever you wanted them to be,” Yasgrid said. “Are we still in a dream?”
“We’re not awake,” Nia said. “So at the very least, this isn’t real. Or, hmm. Maybe it’s just not real as we understand it.”
“And how does that help us?” Yasgrid asked, not as a rebuttal, but as an invitation. Nia’s thoughts were winding in a useful direction and Yasgrid wanted to see where they led.
“I was wrong before. There are rules to this. What’s happening to us is real, at least in some sense. Our bodies aren’t falling in an endless void but we are.”
“That seems like a safe assumption to work with,” Yasgrid said. “At the very least we have to deal with what we’re experiencing somehow.”
“I think that’s the key,” Nia said. “We have to deal with this. Not Margrada, or Pelegar, or your Mom. None of them are here. None of them exist in this space. There’s just us.”
“So what do we do?”
“We play,” Nia said and with her free hand tapped a trio of quick beats on Yasgrid’s shoulder.
There was no magic in any of them, but when Yasgrid tapped the same trio back on Nia’s shoulder light blossomed.
“Oh wow, the whole world is ringing,” Nia said. “Keep going.”
She payed a longer pattern, walking it up and down Yasgrid’s arm.
When Yasgrid repeated the arrangement, she felt the magic of a drum answering her back.
“Yes! That’s it!” Nia said. “We can get back this way!”
She placed her hand against Yasgrid’s open palm and began tapping a much more complicated rhythm from her fingertips to Yasgrids.
Yasgrid saw where she was going and started meeting the taps with answering ones of her own.
And that was why their world exploded.