Side A – Yasgrid
Yasgrid was sure she’d heard Endings correctly, and there wasn’t any rational reason she had to disbelieve its story, but she still found herself struggling to accept what it had told her.
“She created a Trouble? And then she wanted to kill it? But, why? What was troubling her so badly that she managed to spawn one of her own.”
“This isn’t something that’s recorded in the public records,” Endings said, meaning it wasn’t sure it was free to share the information with her.
“There’s all of zero chance that Elshira didn’t share this with someone though. Someone who likely recorded it out of either concern for her, or fear of her,” Yasgrid said, hoping that would be a persuasive enough argument to convince Endings. Otherwise she would have to look for a long lost diary or something equally difficult to find to delve deeper into the story.
“Why would she have done that?” Endings asked, its voice as plain and even as always but with an unspoke undercurrent of curious ambivalence which suggested it wished to tell her, if only she could work around the safeguards the Elven gods had left in place on it.
“It fits her personality,” Yasgrid said. “She’s no different now than she was before her ‘death’. We’ve seen that with how she’s still focused on pursuing the same goal of personal power at the expense of all else that she was pursuing before. She could have made the play she’s making now with any of the Bearers in between her tenure and mine but she waited for me because she believes I’m a kindred enough soul to understand her and in understanding her provide what she needs. If she was willing to wait all the years between then and now, it says that having someone understand her, and agree with her, is one of the core needs of her psyche. There’s no chance that she was different in life, and no chance that she didn’t have someone she was working on the same as she’s trying to work on me.”
“She did have someone like that,” Endings said. “But would they have betrayed her confidence? Could her story be known by anyone else?”
Yasgrid could hear the hopeful notes that Endings was forbidden from expressing. She was so tempted to rush to reassure it, to claim perfect knowledge and a certainty which even the gods couldn’t gainsay.
But Endings would know those were lies.
Given the depths of the bond they shared, Yasgrid could have almost forgotten that what she was building was as much a relationship of trust with Endings, largely from the ground up, as a view into the secrets of her enemy, and of the two, learning Elshira’s secrets was likely the less important.
“I can’t say for certain,” she said, opting for truth in place of convenient fantasy’s. “We know Elshira can be both persuasive and terrifying. And she’s shown no restraint in using both of those qualities. She might easy have enthralled some weaker willed person to serve as her confidant. Someone who would never imagine or have the first spark of courage to betray her.”
“Then her secrets must remain her own.”
“Except for one other thing,” Yasgrid said. “While she could have confided in someone weaker willed than herself, she absolutely never would. What she craves is understanding, and vindication, and those can only come from someone she believes is at least her equal.”
“That person might still have chosen to keep her confidence,” Endings said.
“They could have, but I don’t believe they did,” Yasgrid said.
“Why?”
“If they had, she wouldn’t need me to tell her she’s been right all along.”
Side B – Nia
The ephemeral world inside the Shatter Drum twirled around Nia like a maelstrom of song, and shadow, of green growing things, and the molten roots of the world.
She was deeper in it than she’d been before.
Lost in a way she hadn’t ever been while drumming.
Her Stoneling body was more distant than any time she’d projected out from it.
But ‘more distant’ was not the same as ‘too distant’.
She’d walked beyond the bounds of the world more than once. She’d walked away from her first body and could still revisit it. She wasn’t much more than a fledgling drummer still, but she’d crafted a song that had wrought a miracle between the Darkwood and the Stoneling mountains. In her heart beat all of creation, and from her fingers the magic of her passion flowed forth.
“Oh! You’re back!” the Elf said, gaze focusing on Nia as she coalesced back into having a body. She’d chosen her Stoneling body this time, rather than her Elvish one, but that didn’t seem to present any barrier to the Elf recognizing her.
“I am, and I think I have an answer to how to get you out of here,” she said.
“Were you able to work out where ‘here’ is?” the Elf asked, not sufficiently troubled by the question in Nia’s opinion.
“I don’t have a name for it, but I think you’re stuck in an Inbetween Place,” she said. “You’re not in the woods or the mountains, and you not in the world or fully lost to it. You’re Inbetween.”
“It’s not uncomfortable here,” the Elf said. “But it does seem to be missing, well, everything I suppose.”
“I think it’s supposed to be missing both of us too,” Nia said. “Which is sort of the gameplan we have setup.”
“I’m not terribly good at games. Except for number games. I excel at those,” the Elf said.
“This isn’t a game you’ll need to play fortunately,” Nia said. “You’re more the prize that we win if we play it well enough.”
“And if you don’t, do you lose me?”
“If I mess up? Yeah, we lose you and me, and hopefully that’s it,” Nia said.
“Then you shouldn’t mess up.”
“I can promise I won’t, but you don’t know me and don’t have any reason to trust what I say.”
“I have no reason to distrust you either, and a rather scant number of other choices it seems.”
“You could wait here,” Nia said. “It’s not uncomfortable, as you say, and in time the song that’s binding you here might fade away.”
“How long would that take?”
“Unknown. Could be moments from now, could be millenia hence when the mountains have been ground to dust. I don’t think either of those extremes are likely though.”
“Even if not, I believe I’m better suited to trust to your good will and skill. What do you need from me for all this?”
“Just one thing,” Nia said. “Your name.”