Side A – Nia
Nia’s first Battle of the Bands began with a drummer being knocked out on the first beat. In theory that should have been one of the Frost Harbor drummers, specifically her. The Gray Rift Shatter band was packed in shoulder-to-shoulder on their side, their overwhelming numerical superiority involving at least that sacrifice. With that many players though it should have been trivial for them to focus half their force on the ‘weakest’ drummer in the Frost Harbor band and blast her away the moment the battle began.
Nia was ready for that ploy of course, it was such an obvious strategy she was sure even the least competent among the Gray Rift band would be able to figure it out. It was sort of disappointing when all her careful defensive plans sat there unused though.
She didn’t even need to launch an offensive. The better drummers on each side launched into their songs and more-or-less balanced each other out, but the weaker drummers wound up stepping all over each others music. The one who’d ‘scored a hit’ on her during the warmups was the first to get blasted off his chair and into unconsciousness as his too-rapid beats bounced off the cacophony of sound his closest compatriots were knocking loose from their drums, rebounded back on him and hit his body with the force of a charging moose.
Nia didn’t want to take any joy in a fellow drummer’s misfortune. She had been raised better than that. Her smile was for something else then. As was the quiet cackle that escaped her lips. Nothing to do with the hysterically silly look of shock the unconscious drummer still wore.
A pair of quick beats from Margrada reminded her that she couldn’t afford to ignore her own drumming completely. Despite their initial clumsiness, the Grey Rift drummers were figuring out how to work together.
Which was perfect.
If they defeated themselves, Nia would lose out on a wonderful opportunity.
With hands lightened by the promise of future joy, she began to move from copying the central rhythm Pelegar was laying down to embellishing it for her own purposes.
Beside her, she heard Margrada doing something similar but with a substantially different end in mind. Unlike Nia, Margrada wasn’t being obvious about her changes, and if Nia hadn’t spent more hours than she could count training with and against Margrada it might have been impossible to hear the variations Margrada was weaving into the Frost Harbor band’s central rhythms. To Nia’s ears though they were the most beautiful accents the song could have had.
Nia had decided that she was going to tangle with the overflow players, and though they hadn’t discussed it, Margrada obviously knew that. Nia wasn’t the only one with that plan in mind. Belhelen and Jarben had similar ideas, but they couldn’t make dealing with the weaker half of their opponents their sole focus. The Grey Rift band did have a solid assortment of skilled players and the veterans of the Frost Harbor band would have been hard pressed to hold out without the support of the first years who’d played in the other Battles already.
Nia suspected Margrada alone would have put Frost Harbor over the top, which was what made Margrada’s song even more beautiful. She was tailoring it against the song the Gray Rift elites were playing but it wasn’t a hammer to shatter them with. It was a veil.
Nia’s talents lay in volume. With Margrada’s song in place though, the Gray Rift elites would have no idea what Nia was doing.
Side B – Yasgrid
The licks of flame on Yasgrid’s cloak snuffed out as she rose, largely because she wanted them to.
“I don’t suppose if I take you apart there’ll be any bits of Elshira left in you will there?” she asked, looking slowly from one Trouble to the next.
Blood, Flame, and Ruin were not the talkative sort of Troubles. They were, for a moment at least, the confused sort though.
Yasgrid could have used that opening to attack.
Or to leap away.
Most people would have fled from three Troubles working together.
Everyone knew that wasn’t how Troubles behaved.
Everyone was wrong, as everyone frequently is. Yasgrid couldn’t see the shackles Elshira had placed on them, but it was too easy to see the marks they’d burned into the Troubles’ unnatural flesh.
She fought back a wave of anger which surged forward at that sight.
The Troubles weren’t good creatures. They didn’t have a place in the world, and their purpose was malevolent nearly to their core. So many people would have been happy to see Troubles bound in service to someone, even if that someone had no mercy and saw no value in others.
“You wanted to do this,” Yasgrid said, gesturing to the burning village. “But it wasn’t your choice to do so. Was it?”
The Troubles shook off their shock and began circling her, their predatory nature reasserting itself even as a thread of uncertainty wormed through what passed for their awareness.
In the light of the raging fire, Yasgrid caught sight of the bodies, all the bodies, slumped and burning, in too many broken houses. Most of the town had fled in time. Most but painfully not all.
She hadn’t been early enough to save them.
And she couldn’t be.
Elshira was an undead sorceress. She could move through the Darkwood faster than nightfall. There would always be innocents she could prey on and Yasgrid could only think of one plan to prevent that.
In place of innocent villages, she had to force Elshira to focus on something, or someone, more important.
Someone who was a real threat to her.
Someone who could do the things she could.
There were lines Yasgrid was not willing to cross. Actions she refused to take, compromises she would not make. Whatever Elshira thought, they were not the same, and Yasgrid would not give up the element which separated them from each other.
Other taboos though? Actions which the residents of the Darkwood might condemn her for in a heartbeat? If they would prevent another village from burning as this one had? For that, there was very little Yasgrid would not do.
“Wake please,” she said, speaking to the Troubled Hearts slumbering within her.
Elshira had enslaved the Troubles to her will. It had been one of her deepest sins. Standing in the center of a steadily rising inferno, Yasgrid smiled as she decided to fight fire with fire.