Side A – Nia
Nia did not make good on her escape.
She tried at first. As a surge of panic shot through her, brought on by the sight of what seemed like several thousand Shatter Drummers converging on her (but was in reality merely a few more than a dozen), she turned and tried to flee with all her might. For as strong as her Stoneling body was though ‘all her might’ was considerably less than Horgi and Grash’s.
Horgi and Grash, for their part, wisely, chose to restrain her since a running pursuit would simply spread the mayhem around the city, and, more importantly, put the Shatter Drums in peril.
“You’re the one, aren’t you!” one of the Greyfall Shatter Drummers said, a woman with seven scars on her face, each one more obviously part of a story than the last.
“You don’t need to ask her that! She was on fire like we were! She had to be the one!” another said. Nia glanced over and saw the second speaker was a painfully thin, beardless fellow – not a boy from the wrinkles around his eyes, but possessed of an almost Elven willowy quality, at least in comparison to his fellow Shatter Drummers.
“Oh, wait, you were in the song too?” Nia said, turning from what she’d assumed was a small army of disgruntled senior drummers to see instead the drummers she’d led into their transcendent song.
And a few disgruntled senior drummers.
In place of answering, both of the drummers who’d spoken began tapping out a beat on their own palms.
There wasn’t any special magic in rhythm they made but there didn’t need to be. Nia could hear the parts they’d played in the song as if they were still hammering it out loud and clear.
The smile that lit her face up was one part surprise, on part shock, and about a thousand parts wild joy.
Without thinking or asking permission, she starting playing with them, slapping the first one’s palm and then the second as they jammed out a purely mundane rendition of the song for half a minute or so.
“Sleeping Gods! It is her!” another said.
“It’s you all too!” Nia said, unable to believe that the people she’d played with were real and not just figments of music she’d been lost in. “I can’t believe what you did! You were amazing! All of you!”
“Wait, no, that wasn’t us. That was you. We never played like that before. We couldn’t,” Gracella, the many scarred woman said.
“You did though! You absolutely did! Look at this place. Do you think one drummer could have done all this?” Nia asked.
“Maybe if she was a gods-be-damned maniac,” Pelegar said. “And had someone very smart as back up to call her home.” She nodded to Margrada who nodded back.
“For the record, I had no idea she was going to try anything like that,” Margrada said, giving Nia a smile that said while she loved and supported Nia, she was going to enjoy watching Nia squirm under her new found celebrity.
Side B – Yasgrid
The Darkwood wanted to hold Yasgrid, and keep her, and sink it’s roots into her to make her one with it. It also wanted to turn away from her, and cast her beyond its borders, and never allow her entry or any touch of its magic again. Yasgrid felt the war in the heart of the wood echoing in her own and that posed risks none of them could fathom the depths of.
It was possible that the Darkwood’s inner conflict would simply tear Yasgrid to pieces. For all the magic Yasgrid could wield, the Darkwood was an unimaginably more vast entity, a single living being by some measures, crafted by divine hands, and left to run as an eternal testament to the vision they had for the world. If it brought even a small fraction of its power to bear on her, it could swallow her whole and turn her corpse into a run of new shrubbery, a small tree, and a flower or two.
That was one of the better possible results.
They grew steadily worse as they approached the possibility of waking up the slumbering Troubled Hearts which were no longer bound by the limitations the Elven gods had placed on them.
The Hearts didn’t have the power to match the Darkwood as a whole, but like many invasive species, the Darkwood – and much of the rest of the world – had no particular defenses against unbound Hearts.
At best the Hearts would wake and take whatever action they could to fend off the Darkwood’s ire. An unreasonably large amount of acreage would not survive those actions.
At the worst, Yasgrid sensed, the Hearts would find a means to claim Endings for themselves and in so doing would unbind its nature as well. The devastation from what would not be limited to the several acres, or even the whole of the Darkwood.
Nia might survive that worst case scenario, but only because a gathering of Shatter Drummers might be able to hold back the force the Hearts would smite the world with. Yasgrid, and everyone else within the blasts horizon would not be so lucky.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered to the slumbering Hearts. “You can still rest. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Starflame and the Shining Heart bobbed around her, curious at the plan they could hear lurking behind her words.
Yasgrid didn’t think it was anything of noteworthy brilliance. Barely even worth the title of ‘plan’.
“The Darkwood is worried. It doesn’t know what to make of us,” she said. “It’s seen something like us before, but we’re not like Elshira.”
Before her, a path had been walked through the Darkwood, people shaping the wood as it shaped them in turn. Yasgrid knew she could follow it to the next town over, and then back to her new family. Naosha, Kayelle, and Marianne would welcome her in with open arms, no matter how strange she’d become.
Yasgrid chuckled at the thought – Nia had prepared them for having a strange daughter in a very convenient manner.
Despite that, Yasgrid didn’t return to Blue Falls or the people she knew.
With careful, soft steps, she walked off the path and into the forest having no idea where she was going or how she would ever get back.