Side A – Nia
Nia felt a fluttering wings of exhilaration lifting her from her seat. She was finally able to let the restraints fall away. Finally able to join in fully with the combined drumming of the Gray Rift’s newest members. They’d build a clear edifice of song together for one purpose; to destroy her and Nia could not be more proud of them.
She also had absolutely no interest in being destroyed though of course, so from her position as lead drummer of the song she began to add new beats to it.
“Be stronger!” she said and her drummers, because they were mostly assuredly hers now, surged together, eager for to live up to the encouragement of the song which had gripped their hearts.
“Be Faster!” she shouted and dozens of drummers picked up speed, slamming beats out louder and faster than they’d ever dared before.
The music was sloppy. It lacked all sorts of precision and grace. A true Shatter Drumming aficionado would have ranked it as the most amateur of efforts.
There’s a thing about amateurs though; they can love the craft they’re learning with all the passion in the world and, if they can find a place beyond all the self-doubt and shame at their lack of skill, somewhere that they feel supported and accepted as part of a community, they can produce something truly wondrous.
Riding the wave of that high, Nia saw she had in her hands a dreadful and terrible power. With a magic that went beyond drumming, she’d ensorcelled all the players who’d been intent on her destruction. They would follow, all unknowing, wherever she lead, even if that was to their own destruction.
Turning the song back on itself shouldn’t have been possible. She didn’t have the power to overcome so many opponents at once, but she didn’t have to. Her enemies were so focused on following the song which had drawn them together that none of them could see what it was building to any longer, in part because Nia herself couldn’t.
Betraying her drummers wouldn’t kill them. She could easily make sure the song struck each with no more force than it took to dump them on their butts, the same as Margrada had done to her countless times during their practice duels. That would have been supremely instructive and taken the unlawfully added drummers out of the battle so that the proper drummers could resolve the competition like they were supposed to.
That had been her original plan.
But along the way, she’d rejected it.
She wouldn’t let them destroy her and she wouldn’t destroy them.
A betrayal would sting their backsides but it would do far greater, possibly even irreparable, damage to their hearts.
And no one was going to break her drummer’s hearts. No one was going to take the wild, transcendent joy these fledgling felt at being part of such a magnificent song and turn it into bitter regrets and memories of shameful foolishness.
Her drummers weren’t lesser beings of no worth.
Their hands had called forth magic just as hers had.
Their hearts had beaten with hers and found the same rapture as hers in playing free and unconstrained.
They deserved better.
All of them.
“NOW LET’S WIN!” she screamed and from the edges of her fingers, and around the edges of her drummers’ hands, pure fire blossomed.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid took a moment to gather her strength as her newly recruited Troubles raced away searching for others to convert to her cause.
Elshira would know what she’d done soon enough.
Elshira would not be happy about it. Not at all.
Elshira would move against her, finally unable to pretend that Yasgrid would come around if simply given enough time.
All of that was what lay in the future though. In the moment that she stood within, a village was burning, and people were going to burn with it.
There were those she couldn’t save. Those who would need to be mourned, and those who would need to be remembered.
First though came the ones in pain, and the ones shuddering in terror, or helpless rage.
She found the the closest of them on her own.
A family of three, huddled at the back of their burning house. A mother, a daughter, and a son. Not the whole family, but the whole of what remained.
Between Yasgrid and the three of them lay perhaps a half ton of wood or more. The solid logs of a home which had been cast down by Ruin and set ablaze by Flame.
“Can you move those on your own?” King asked, tilting his head at the crackling flames.
“No. Not alone,” Yasgrid said, breathing in and out once again to find the strength to take the next step.
“Will you call for aid then?” King turned to regard Yasgrid, favoring her with as curious a look as he’d given the fire.
“If there was anyone else close enough to this town to help, they would already be here,” Yasgrid said.
She fought back her trepidation against doing what she knew only she could do next. It shouldn’t have been hard to take another step down the path she’d started walking. She’d trespassed on one of the Darkwood’s greatest taboos. She held dominion over the creatures who were responsible for the suffering and death she saw before her, and she wasn’t going to allow them to be destroyed for the actions they’d taken. She could save everyone in the village and they would still, perhaps rightly, consider her a monster.
It was an argument for allowing everyone to burn. With no witnesses, no one would be able to testify to what she’d done. No one would be able to call her a monster.
It was an argument, but it was a profoundly stupid one.
If she let the village burn she would truly be a monster rather than being mistaken for one, and in the end what mattered more than her reputation was the truth of who she was.
“You will destroy yourself in the attempt to help them?” King asked, perhaps sensing where her thoughts were trending.
“We destroy who we were all the time,” Yasgrid said. “It’s how we become who can yet be.”
Around her hand a nimbus of golden fire bloomed as she called forth another of the sleeping Troubled Hearts from within and chose to embrace the role she shared with Elshira.