Side A – Yasgrid
So there was a way to finish Elshira for good. No wraith-like return from beyond the veil. No special magical tricks. Just an ending. All Yasgrid needed to do was to help Elshira claim the power she wanted most in both life and death.
“Did she know that was your intention?” she asked the sword which she cradled in her lap.
“Yes. She believed she would transcend beyond the reach of my power,” Endings said.
“She didn’t know then,” Yasgrid said. “What you are. What you’ve become.”
To be fair, Yasgrid acknowledged, she herself had only the ghost of a suspicion as to what Endings truly was. If she was right, and the gods be damned if she was right, Yasgrid wasn’t even sure if she should be hinting at that truth much less asking Endings to admit to it.
“She did not know many things,” Endings said, acknowledging nothing, which all but confirmed Yasgrid’s suspicions.
“For example, she apparently was unaware that if she succeeded in becoming a Trouble herself, or something worse, she’d lose the quality of ‘Bearer’ that she still possesses.”
“I believe she imagined it would transcend with her. Perhaps becoming something more akin to ‘Owner’.”
Yasgrid shook her head and suppressed a chuckle.
“She certainly didn’t lack for a sense of self-importance did she?”
“She never once doubted her position or the choices which she had made,” Endings said, which wasn’t exactly public information, but also wasn’t exactly something who’d spent more than two or three breaths in Elshira’s presence would fail to notice.
Would Elshira ever understand that though?
Was she even capable?
With an answer to the problem of Elshira’s existence literally laying in her hands, Yasgrid found herself looking for the other paths which might be open to her.
“Can you find the Trouble that Elshira created?” Yasgrid asked, an uncertain and not even half baked idea dancing around in the back corners of her mind.
“No,” Endings said. “Finding Troubles is the Bearer’s role.”
“Of course,” Yasgrid sighed. “If you could find them yourself you wouldn’t need a Bearer would you?”
“I am weapon,” Endings said. “Weapons need a hand to wield them.”
“Do they?” Yasgrid asked, breathing out a gust of killing ice over her hand and then flexing her fingers to ignite the ice into brilliant blue flames.
“I am not like you,” Endings said.
But could it be? The question haunted Yasgrid. A part of her was reluctant to so much as lift Endings much less use it for its intended purpose.
Elshira would laugh herself silly at that. To turn away from power for any reason was ridiculous, but to reject as supreme a force as the one Endings offered on a suspicion and a general distrust of the motives of the divine? If Elshira had ever consider Yasgrid something close to an equal, learning of Yasgrid’s hesitation would thoroughly disabuse her of such illusions.
Which was exactly what Yasgrid needed.
“Come on,” she said, “Let’s go find some Trouble.”
Side B – Nia
Nia’s situation wasn’t hopeless. And she wasn’t about to give up.
But she had to be subtle.
And she hated being subtle.
But that was okay.
Just because it wasn’t her forte didn’t mean she hadn’t been training for it more or less since birth. Nia-the-Shatter-Drummer might not be ideal for gently coaxing a song the size of the cosmos into doing what she wanted, but Naosha M’Kellin’s daughter had a few ideas on how to go about it.
The first step was to make sure she didn’t leave her quarry behind. She’d come to rescue Elgi, and even if all the trees fell down tonight, she was going to get back to Margrada with one, perhaps slightly rumpled, Elgi in tow.
If they’d been in a physical space, Nia would have reached out a hand to grab Elgi with. With only the song to manipulate though, and even that only in the slightest degrees, she instead reached out with the strongest link she had, weaving the name ‘Elgi’ into the rhythm of her beats as the faintest of after-echoes, introducing the song to the elf it had held captive unknowingly for the span of a night.
Nia hadn’t been sure how well that would work. The song could easily have failed to notice her addition, or ignored it as too minor and irrelevant a change to take up. It had let countless other ‘mistakes’ drop away in order to focus on the main themes the drummers had created.
That was not what happened with Elgi’s name though.
It was like the song had met its new Best Friend Ever.
“Oh my!” Elgi said, swept up into the swirling rush at the heart of the song along with Nia. “What is happening here?”
“We’re becoming part of something a lot bigger than us,” Nia said and repeated Elgi’s name in her drumming over and over again. If she lost her grip on that she wasn’t sure there would even be an Elgi to save afterwards.
“Is that good for our health?” Elgi asked, beginning to dance along with the beat without conscious intent.
“I make no promises,” Nia said, “except that this is going to be fun!”
And she let herself go.
Nia wasn’t needed anymore.
She could fade away. Step into the background. She’d seen her mother do it so often. It wasn’t invisibility. It wasn’t a diminution. It was a quiet, soft detachment. It was standing a step apart, a step beyond the need to speak and control, a step of distance that left those around you free to speak and do and be, while your presence filled all of the space and silence which was outside and within their words and deeds.
Naosha, when she wished to, could become the world in which all around her existed, and whom all around her were bound by.
Nia was not her mother. She could not fill a space with her sheer presence. She would could be overlooked as easily as any other quiet child might be.
Against the might of the song, she was only a tiny whisper, but even as no more than a single note in the grand chorus, she held tight to three things she knew irrevocably to be true.
For as vast as the song was, there was a world beyond it.
Against that vastness, Nia might be able to throw no more than a single note, but a single note, a single voice could change everything if it sounded out at the right moment.
Most importantly though, Nia knew she was not alone.
With all the skill she could muster, she reached forth, not with her hands, but with her ears and listened, searching to find the woman she loved.