Side A – Nia
Hadn’t expected to find her drummers anywhere near a Shatter Drum.
Not that they didn’t belong behind one.
But Shatter Drumming wasn’t their lives. Before the Battle of the Bands, they’d followed all different professions. They’d been bakers, and masonry workers. Hunters and coin counters. Playing the drums had been something they’d flirted with as youngsters, just like almost all the other Stoneling kids. Some had stuck with it longer than others, but none of them had made drumming their primary passion in life.
Nia was perplexed why anyone would make that choice, but she had to admit that most people didn’t seem to connect with the music like she did. For an average Stoneling neophyte, playing the Shatter Drums was a vastly less intense experience than it had been, and still was, for her.
So drifting away from it was, Nia had to admit, sort of reasonable. And healthy for the Stonelings overall, since bakers, and hunters, and tavern keeps were rather useful to have as well.
Which made it that much harder to understand why the first group of her drummers that she managed to stumble across were gathered around a Shatter Drum and locked in furious debate.
Eavesdropping for even a moment made her question whether “debate” was the right word though.
They weren’t arguing.
It was more a case of being excitedly in violent agreement.
“My parts still in there,” Gracella said. Nia remembered her, vaguely, from their performance. Gracella was also one of the two drummer she’d sent out to “discover” that it had been Margrada’s drumming that had brought everyone home.
“You aren’t listening to what’s still in the drums are you?” Margrada asked, precisely as on edge at the idea as Nia was.
“Hey! Didn’t think we’d see you two again so soon!” Pomdrin said. “Pull up a chair”.
The “tavern” the group of Stonelings had gathered in was a makeshift tent with seating that had been ransacked from one of the taverns which was in the effect zone. There was a lonely table standing nearby which was nearly devoid of chairs. In the center of the circle of the absconded with seats, stood an old and large-ish Shatter Drum, which Nia noted no one was laying a hand on.
She nodded to Margrada who snagged a couple of chairs for them.
“I thought all the Shatter Drums were on lockdown?” Nia asked, her fingers itching to tap on the drum’s surface.
“All of the ones in town, yeah,” Pomdrin said. Nia was glad he was the spokesman for the group of six Stonelings since he’d been the other Stoneling she’d sent on a quest to discover Margrada’s participation in bringing them back, and the one who’d ultimately been successful. “This one belongs to Old Jurdy.”
“Jurdy lives up at the first Watch Station on Snowdown Peak over there,” Gracella said. “She used to be a drummer before she retired to ‘get away from it all’.”
“How did you get her drum?” Nia asked, wondering if she should change her plans and make a play for the drum in front of her.
“They didn’t,” the shortest Stoneling Nia had yet seen croaked at her. “And you’re not going to either Kaersbean.”
Side B – Yasgrid
There were tricks to treating with a divinity. Maxims to keep in mind. Words never to say. Challenges which were unwise to place before them. Unfortunately for Yasgrid, the gods she knew were entirely alien to the one looming over her.
That Ilia was laughing could have been a good sign. Keeping people amused often led to better outcomes.
But that wasn’t how Ilia was laughing.
“You would change even me?” Disbelief danced around her words. “You think you have that power?”
Yasgrid could hear the knife edge in that question.
She did not want to match powers with a god.
For a variety of reasons.
But she couldn’t lie to one either.
“Why would I need the power to change you?” she asked, feeling the web of moonlight tighten around her as Ilia’s patience started to run thin.
“Don’t,” Ilia said, her voice dangerously flat. “Don’t try to play word games with me. I have waged war with the words on which creation is built. Even the thought of bandying words with you is tiresome.”
“Don’t hide from me then,” Yasgrid said, a flutter stirring in her heart which was not her own.
“What?” Ilia loomed ever larger. “What did you say to me?”
“Don’t hide from me,” Yasgrid said, undeterred by the highly apparent threat of annihilation Ilia was offering.
“You want to be destroyed?” Ilia asked, her appearance shifting into something indescribably otherworldly.
“I want to dispense with these illusions,” Yasgrid said.
“You are not bound in an illusion,” Ilia said. “Here’s what is real is mine to control.”
“That’s not the illusion that binds you,” Yasgrid sad. “You believe no one will listen to you. No one will take your side. No one will believe you. You are cut off here. Alone and all but forgotten. That is not how you should be living.”
“You dare!” Ilia said, purple fire kindling on the moonlight webbing.
“Why does that surprise you?” Yasgrid asked. “You can see what I’ve dared so far. You can guess what I’m still going to dare. Why would you think I would not dare to include you?”
“What do you think I am?” Ilia’s voice was venom and steel.
“That doesn’t matter,” Yasgrid said.
“I will burn you to ash. Answer my question, or I will burn you to ash,” Ilia said.
“No.”
Defiance, Yasgrid has already guessed was not a calming answer. As a sheet of divine flames washed over her, she woke the one of the formerly Troubled Hearts.
You’d asked if you could be the next to bond with me, but what would you think of bonding with her? Yasgrid asked and felt a bounce of glee at the notion.
The wrath of the divine flames burned the webbing binding her but Yasgrid was left untouched as the Heart devoured every spark of the fire and danced to show it was eager for more..