Side A – Nia
It began with a heart beat. The end of all things. The end of them. It was a heartbeat that heralded the collapse of the storm and Endings’ power finally being freed from the constraints Yasgrid had placed on it.
Against the power of divine dissolution, Nia had nothing to offer, so she gave Endings’ power nothing to fight against. Within the fading fragments of Yasgrid’s dream world, the thunder of their shared heartbeat held a magic even the Shatter Drums couldn’t match.
No sound could escape the bounds of the world. The stars were forever silent in the vastness of the cosmos, disjoined from the perils and triumphs of mortal life by a gulf beyond reason and understanding. Despite that, the beat within them carried Nia, Yasgrid, and Kayelle beyond the edges of the universe and past the bounds of time itself.
In the timeless instant, the Resonance of their last heartbeat, Nia reached out to grasp galaxies and strange nebula in the palm of her hand, only find that for the first time she didn’t need to bear the weight of all existence alone in the silence. Joined with her were two other pairs of hands.
“…” Kayelle said, no words being large enough to capture the eternity which contained and which surrounded them.
“You are not alone,” Nia said, her hand eclipsing the light of a thousand galaxies as she stretched it out to take hold of Kayelle.
“I am no one,” Kayelle’s voice was a whisper of imagination only. “I am nothing.”
Nia could remember all too well how overwhelming it had first been to exist in a Resonance and that had been one that was filled with only the power of a beat she’d drawn from a Shatter Drum. Months of training and a lifetime with Kayelle had left her uniquely prepared for the moment before her though.
“You are nothing and you are everything,” she said. “You are Kayelle M’Kellin.”
In the vast emptiness and silence, Nia felt the warmth of Kayelle’s hand and heard the gentle rush of her breath.
“And you are my sister,” Nia finished, declaring that as immutable fact to the cosmos at large. Had she still wanted to escape from Kayelle, to sever their bonds, she couldn’t have made that claim. Having staked that claim though she could now never be free of it. Which was exactly what she desired.
“And you will both get through this,” Yasgrid had, clasping both of their hands as an eternity passed them by. “This was my vow to Endings, and it will honor that vow no matter what others bonds it has shed.”
“That’s not the only vow it will honor,” Kayelle said.
“You’re not wrong,” Nia said. “Endings is unleashed now. We hold it within this moment but once it is released the first thing it will do will be to scour the Darkwood. You vowed to end all of the Troubles? There won’t be a place they can run to that Endings won’t find them.”
“That’s not the only vow I made,” Kayelle said. “I also swore that I would protect my sister at all costs.”
“That’ll be fulfilled too. I’ll make sure Nia will be safe,” Yasgrid said.
“She’s not the sister I vowed to protect,” Kayelle said.
Side B – Yasgrid
What was spoken was the truth. Not because the magic they’d become one with rewrote the world to make it true, but because in their present state their words were their identity.
And Kayelle had chosen to name herself as Yasgrid’s sister.
Even though there was so much less of Yasgrid then there had been.
Wasn’t there?
She’d tried to keep from the others how much holding in Endings’ power had cost her. How close she was to simply drifting away as a memory on the wind.
But had she been the one holding Endings in?
Yasgrid felt for the parts of her soul that had grown steadily more numb in the dream and couldn’t feel the cold, uncaring edges anymore. Not because those parts were missing. She felt more alive and whole than she had in ages, or possibly ever.
That was what helped her feel the ties that bound her still.
Her mortal life. All the limits that held her back from the majesty around her.
In condemning the Elven Gods for what they’d done to Endings and the Troubles, she’d suspected the truth that lay before her.
They were all divine.
Endings.
The Troubles.
They were all sparks of the divine, every bit as glorious as the gods who’d crafted the realms, every being who called her world home.
And it could be just that.
Hers.
The shackles of mortality were a part of an identity she was so much vaster than. She’d seen how the world was broken. She could see the cheats and shortcuts the gods, Elven, Stoneling, and all the rest, had taken in their crafting of all that was.
They hadn’t cared about the costs of those cheats.
But she did.
And she could fix them.
In the moment of Resonance, she moved with the cosmos and it moved with her. All she had to do was embrace that and she could change everything. She could save her sisters. She could save Kyra and put her people on a better path, one where the Fate Dancers would no longer abandon their children and cast out the best among them.
All would be as she willed it to be.
Perfect, sensible harmony.
Everyone dancing together.
And over all of them, the drum beat which kept them from ever falling back into their terrible stupidity, would be a new god. One whose justice was undeniable and all-encompassing.
Who held all of the strings of the puppets and made them dance only and exactly as she chose.
Yasgrid had touched on Resonances before, but none had ever offered her so much. There’d never been the opportunity to end all that was and replace it with something so much better.
So much emptier.
So much lonelier.
In her hands, Yasgrid had the power to create her perfect world, but in being all and everything in it, in allowing no failures, no mistakes, no ideas except the ones she supported her perfect world would hold nothing but a reflection of who she was.
Within her lay a spark of the divine, but it was on the canvas of her mortal life, and within the frame provided by her limitations, that the divine found expression and meaning.
As a god, she could build a world, but as herself, as Yasgrid the daughter of the Mountains and the Woods, she could build something so much more.