Side A – Yasgrid
Yasgrid knew Nia wouldn’t be able to touch Endings power. Only a Bearer could do that. Nia, however seemed to neither know, nor be bound by that particular rule as she clasped a hand around one of the crystal shards that was blowing in the storm and drew it to her chest.
“What? How?” Were both reasonable questions Yasgrid felt, despite how unreasonable the scene before her was. “You can’t do that.”
“Any Bearer can take up Endings,” Nia said. “Isn’t that what the problem with Elshira is?”
“Yes, but you…” Yasgrid started to say before the impact of Nia’s words hit her.
Nia had been there when Endings had made them choose whether they would accept the role of Bearer. Yasgrid has thought it had been speaking only to Kayelle and herself but from what she could recall, it had never called them by name.
In fact it had barely recognized that they were separate individuals.
“All this time? You could have called for Endings too?” Yasgrid asked.
“I have no idea,” Nia said. “Taking Endings outside the Darkwood is probably a bad idea, and who know how it would have responded outside a dream like this?”
“Probably poorly,” Yasgrid agreed, trying to imagine the worst interaction she could. It wasn’t hard. “It’s a divine tool intended to destroy problems the gods didn’t feel like dealing with. If it had gotten close enough it could have shattered the volcano prisons the Stonelings stuffed our gods into.”
“Oh. Wow. That’s even worse than I was thinking,” Nia said. “I was just afraid it would reverse what happened to us.”
“If it can it might still do that,” Yasgrid said, as the storm blew through both of them. “Or there may not be any ‘us’ left to tell apart anymore.”
Nia was silent, listening to the wailing of the storm for what seemed like an hour but had to be less than a heartbeat.
“I don’t think so,” she said at last. “I still feel the mountains in my blood. And your song is still a graceful and growing as its been since we switched.”
“Is it?” Yasgrid asked. “Why can’t I hear all of that?”
“Because this storm isn’t all around us,” Nia said. “It’s not out there. It’s inside you.”
“As are we all,” the Darkwood said.
“This is your dream,” the Soul which had been Endings said.
“But you’re all real? I can feel that,” Yasgrid said.
“Of course they are,” Nia said. “The Darkwood is a part of you, just like Endings is.”
“But I’m not really….”
“You are most definitely a daughter of the Darkwood,” Nia said. “You always have been, but maybe I’m a bit too close to you, let her tell you.”
With her free hand, Nia turned Yasgrid away from the storm to face the Darkwood’s incarnation.
“You are both my daughters,” the Darkwood said. “My song flows through you as surely as the beating of my brother’s chorus.”
Side B – Nia
A storm raged around Nia’s soul. Power vast enough to reach the heavens was building around her body. She stood in an impossible place, at the center of a moment that dwarfed everything she’d ever imagined she could be.
But it was the Darkwood’s words which blew her away.
“What? Me? But?” she started to sputter but memories of her mother rose to bring her the eloquence which had almost escaped her. “Am I truly yours as well? I have wondered if the calling of the stones and the drums was showing the path I was truly meant to have walked my whole life.”
“You were never a mistake Nia M’Kellin,” the Darkwood said. “You have a had a place within me since you drew your first breath of my air. That my brother’s realm offers your heart a home as well does not mean I am lost to you. No more than his realm is lost to Yasgrid Kaersbean.”
“We can be whoever we choose to be then?” Yasgrid said.
The smile on the Darkwood’s copy of Yasgrid’s face was one which Yasgrid had never worn but which looked perfectly appropriate there.
“You have journeyed the length and breadth of my domain,” the Darkwood said. “And what have you told everyone you encountered? Elf, spirit, god, even me!”
Yasgrid winced.
“That you could be who you chose to be,” she said.
“And, in all that time, in all those conversations, it didn’t occur to you that the same truth applied to you?” the Darkwood asked.
“No, not it did,” Yasgrid said. “I just…I didn’t know myself I guess. I thought that this was meant to be my life. I thought I was supposed to be the outside perspective that shed a new light on the snarl of old problems that faced you.”
“And which part, exactly, of unsnarling the oldest and deepest of problems in my design do you think does not suggest that’s true?” the Darkwood asked.
“I thought it was why I’d been chosen to switch with Nia,” Yasgrid said.
“It was,” the Darkwood said. “Or I presume that’s why you made the choices you did. You are as much a mystery to me as any of the lives within my domain. It’s what makes you so delightful.”
“If this is all my doing, then I’m the only one who can fix it, aren’t I?” Yasgrid asked.
“Oh that’s not even vaguely true,” Nia said. “Wait till you hear how I broke things in Gray Rift, and you know whose helping fix it? Everyone. All the drummers, all the Roadies. Even both of our mothers. Trust me, you do not need to carry this burden alone.”
“Indeed,” the Darkwood said. “If you wish to use your mortality, you can resolve this by giving the power of the blade its own ending, but there are other choices, other paths you can walk.”
“But they’re not ones you should walk alone,” Kayelle said. “We started this off as together and that’s how we’ll save everyone.”