Side A – Nia
The prospect of bringing another drum into the mix filled everyone involved with trepidation. Well, not the Elf. As little more than a hapless bystander, they were technically involved while also being blissfully unaware of the lengths Nia was planning to go to ‘rescue’ them.
“And you think they’re going to be okay with this?” Pelegar asked as she set a drum nearly as tall as she was down beside the one which currently had the tiny statue of an elf sitting beside it.
“Strangely? Yeah, I think they will,” Nia said. She couldn’t be sure of course, and basing a life altering decision on a first impression of someone gained in an ethereal otherworld was probably not the surest of propositions, but she still felt good about it.
Or maybe she just wanted to drum some more?
From the ache in her fingers, there was at least a little bit of that in play.
But she knew she could do this.
She knew that they could do this.
All of them.
Even the elf.
“How will we know when to start changing the song?” Margrada asked. “You probably won’t be able to speak anymore this time than you did on your last trip.”
“I’m figuring that too,” Nia said, her heart racing already at the thought of what she was going to have to attempt. “That’s why I’ll have to be the one to start changing the song.”
“From the inside?” Margrada asked, not needing to explain how incredibly badly that might go. Nia was well aware that if she messed up, she would almost certainly be joining the Elf in being a statue until the mountains were ground to dust.
“And this is one of your girlfriend’s rhythms,” Pelegar said. “You’ll need to play like she does if you want to lead the song that’s in there back to the Returning one she put together.”
“Not necessarily,” Nia said. “All I should need to do is get close to what Margrada put together. If I can change the song enough for you two to hear it, you’ll know that I’ve made contact again and I’ve got our guest in tow.”
“Ah, right, and we can take over from there,” Margrada said, relieved that Nia’s idea wasn’t the most hairbrained of possible plans they could have cooked up.
“And if we can’t go it then we all get turned into statues forever?” Pelegar asked.
“We could always break the drum and then spend our lives on the run from the Roadies,” Nia offered, not insincerely.
“No, no, no. I’ll take my chance with eternal petrification before I take my chances with them, thank you very much!”
Nia understood the feeling. She’d partied with the Roadies, drunk herself into a stupor with them, and been nursed back to health (in part) by the care and ministrations. None of that left her doubting their passion for the equipment they zealously guarded or what they would do to her should she excommunicate herself from their good graces by harming a drum intentionally.
“Are we ready?” she asked, her heart beating at the exact pace of the rushing torrent of the song she was about to dive into.
“Ain’t getting any younger or more capable,” Pelegar said.
“Let’s work a miracle then,” Margrada said and struck the first new beat against her Shatter Drum.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid stood in the ruins of a building which hadn’t sheltered anyone for longer than she’d been alive.
“This was the site of her first encounter with a Trouble?” Yasgrid asked, holding Endings halved blade in one hand while she picked through the wreckage which the forest had all but completely reclaimed.
“This was her first encounter with a Trouble while she was the Bearer,” Endings said.
Yasgrid noticed the phrasing of the answer immediately.
“She fought Troubles before you choose her as the Bearer?” she asked, surprised the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “Was she a Fate Dancer originally?”
“She was not,” Endings said.
“How did she fight them then? I thought only the Bearers could really defeat Troubles, and the Fate Dancers mostly managed to ward them away from places.”
“The magics of the Fate Dancers are not part of my domain,” Endings said and Yasgrid detected a hint of disgust or disdain lurking in its words.
Which was interesting.
Endings wasn’t speaking any differently, but Yasgrid was learning to listen for the unvoiced words which carried tone and a meaning all their own.
“It seems odd that you don’t have dominion over those as well,” Yasgrid said. “Do the Fate Dancers never spawn Troubles? Or are they able to suppress their own Troubles with their magics somehow?”
“My Bearers have put down Troubles spawned from every group and division of people in the Darkwood, including the Fate Dancers,” Endings said. “Though, it is rare to see a Trouble spawn from them.”
“So their magics can probably help with that,” Yasgrid said before another idea occurred to her, “Or their community does. With tighter knit social structure, they’d have more support and between that and their magics, they’d have more methods of resolving issues before their became overwhelming. But there would always be the people for whom the social structure was the problem, or the magic and the costs they pay for it.”
Another thought occurred to her as she brushed leaves aside from a small rock that had been carved in the shape of chunky cat. A child’s toy. Not the kind of thing she wanted to see where a Trouble had been fought.
“Were the Trouble that came from the Fate Dancer’s worse than normal?” she asked.
“All Troubles are the worst,” Endings said. “But my Bearers did have significant difficulty with the Troubles spawned from the Fate Dancers.”
“Is that what Elshira fought here?” Yasgrid asked, looking at the devastation with fresh eyes. “A Trouble the Fate Dancers had produced?”
“No,” Endings said. “She fought a Trouble she had created.”