Side A – Yasgrid
Many things which are impossible for mortals are within the a god’s easy reach. To witness a god transcend even their limits, to watch the bare nature of reality shred, die, and be reborn, should have been terrifying on a fundamental level, but that wasn’t what filled Yasgrid as Ilia caught fire and blazed bright enough to make the Darkwood light.
“You’re so young.”
Ilia was older than the woods, older than the mountains, older than the stars, and yet…and yet, she looked so young to Yasgrid. Ilia had seen the forging of the world, and knew secrets which Yasgrid would never even think to wonder about. But she was just a fledgling, a child who had been so proud of her work that she hadn’t been willing to part from it even though to remain had bound her in chains which made a Trouble’s seem like gossamer ribbons.
And she was burning.
All fire consumes and transforms. Fuel becomes light, and heat, and ashes.
Ilia and the Heart were something brighter than light though, and hotter beyond measure. With gentle hands of flame, they gathered their ashes and laughed.
“They will call you God Slayer,” the memory of Ilia said. “And they will be right.”
“You are not slain,” Yasgrid said.
“I am joyously slain,” Ilia said. “Gone and returned. Once more what I never once was.”
More than the Ilia’s personal reality began to fray under the blazing light of the beacon she’d made of herself. Within her was the power she’d once wielded, the authority to remake the world as she was remaking herself. Authority she’d been given only in small, measured quantities. A borrowed position to enact the will of those still older and the wiser.
In the solar inferno Ilia had become there was no one older, no one wiser, no one who could hold her in check.
“You are what you always could be,” Yasgrid said. “And you are still faced with the choice of what that shall be, as you always will be.”
“I could start over,” Ilia said. “Take what I’ve learned and build anew with the lessons of a thousand thousand lifetimes in mind.”
“You could,” Yasgrid said. “If you wished to lose this world.”
The goddess smiled at her.
Somewhere in the far distance of beyond the arm’s length circle Ilia and Yasgrid stood in, a Fate Dancer had gone silent, unconsciousness mercifully swallowing him before his senses grew so overwhelmed that the only other refuges would have been madness or death.
“That is the catch, isn’t it?” Ilia said. “I can be anything I want, but so many of those choices will not fit in this world. Were I to take the place I thought denied me, claim dominion over the Woods and all the rest of our workings, I would stretch and distort it into something unrecognizable. This world is not for me, it can never be mine.”
“This world is for everyone,” Yasgrid said. “And it is all of ours, even yours if you wish it to be.”
“Let’s see if that’s true,” Ilia said, as the blazing light she wore flared, blinding Yasgrid’s eyes and drowning the rest of her senses.
Side B – Nia
Nia could see how she was going to make a miracle happen, but that was okay, she’d gotten her drums.
“You’re not going to say you need to be alone now are you?” Jurdy asked.
“I can say it all I want but we both know our Roadie friends over there aren’t letting these drums out of their sight,” Nia said.
“And if we can’t make good on what we told them, they will beat us to a pulp,” Margrada said as she inspected the drum Horgi had procured for her. It was one she’d played often in practice so she knew it’s weight and texture. That didn’t stop her from treating it like a foreign substance which might only be masquerading as a drum though.
Nia didn’t know as many things to look for as Yasgrid did, but Pelegar had been exceedingly clear in her instructions about how important it was to always, always, always make sure you knew the drum you were about to play.
“An audience won’t be bad,” Nia said. “What we can’t have is any other performers though.”
“Even having the two of us together is dangerous,” Margrada said, “but we’ve done this before. If anyone else joins in…”
She didn’t have to finish that thought. Grey Rift was in the process of being converted into a crystal forest because Nia had taken some other players along on one of her wild drumming rides.
“We won’t let anyone else anywhere near a drum while you’re playing,” Pelegar said. “Even though this doesn’t really seem worth the risk.”
“You don’t think Osdora is going to be able to help?” Nia asked.
“Able to? Willing to? Anywhere even vaguely near enough to help? Those are all very different questions with, I suspect, very different answers.”
“She’ll help,” Old Jurdy said. “I’ve met her too remember. The woman’s a beast when it comes to the drums. Just tell her you don’t think she can do it and she’ll get here with time to spare.”
Nia wasn’t sure Osdora needed to join them in person, but she kept that suspicion to herself. She’d shared her idea with Margrada, but there were too many unknowns for either of them to hazard a guess at.
“All we need to do is contact her again,” Margrada whispered to Nia, a reassurance that the task before them wasn’t going to require a miracle.
Nia knew better though.
Oh, Margrada was correct that even a short contact with Osdora would give them countless new tools and paths to try, but they were going to need more than that.
The problem before them wasn’t a simple case of drumming gone awry.
The problem was one whose roots ran far deeper and to fix it, Nia was going to need her mother’s help.
And for a change, she didn’t mean Osdora.