Side A – Nia
Nia’s beat was failing. Because she was failing. Because she had failed so many times already.
Failure wasn’t where she stopped though. Failing was where she began. Failure was what she learned from. Her drumming wasn’t a triumph of virtuoso magnificence. From the first time she’d played, her drumming had been a shout of refusal, a stubborn unwillingness to let the last beat she struck be the one that crashed down on her. If a beat, a series of them, or a whole song was wrong, she kept going until it became something else.
Not always the something else she’d wanted or planned for, but something wonderful nonetheless.
Horgi and Grash had asked her to play like herself so they could hear what an Elf’s Shatter Drumming might sound like. As the ringing sound of stone and joyful defiance boomed from her drum, Nia had to wonder how disappointed them might be.
She couldn’t play like an Elf, not because she wasn’t one, but because in touching the drums she wasn’t anything but herself.
Into her numb hands, warmth began to spread.
She was tired, and she’d played herself out the night before, played more than anyone else could fully understand. She’d stood between two world and played for them both. She’d stood outside the world, in the Resonance, and played in a realm without time or sound. She’d played for herself and she’d played for the world that was and the world that could be.
Yasgrid and Kayelle had risen to similar transcendent heights, but in their own ways. Only Nia had been playing a Shatter Drum at the time, and if she’d ever had doubts about really being a Shatter Drum, the last ones were silenced by that cacophonous storm.
Without her doubts there was more to her song than the angry screams needed to rise above her uncertainty. Gentle beats mixed with bolder ones.
She was tired but in the rhythm she was building she wasn’t bothered by it. The beats of the drum thrilled her blood along and woke her to even greater effort. She knew she’d find her limits sooner than she normally would, and she had no desire to push them. Her song wasn’t about breaking herself. Not anymore.
With a last rising set of beats, she knew she could rest and lay the song down. The song had been hers and anything Horgi and Grash were looking for they’d either have already heard or would be forever listening for.
But there was one thing she was curious about.
A bit of extra credit.
The Darkwood.
It had been her home.
And it was still a part of her.
It didn’t move in a beat though. It’s music was one of flowing harmony and sharp discordant notes.
Did she carry any of that within her?
Or had she let go of her past completely in embracing the woman she’d become?
Nia thought she knew the answer to that, but her fingers were just too tempted to discover if she could express that in her drumming as well.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid knew how her claim sounded, but she’d been there and so also knew it wasn’t anywhere near as grandiose as the people around her were imagining.
“It’s not wrong to say we fought the gods, but it was really more of a conversation,” she said. “The Resonance made it a lot more, uh, possible I guess?”
“She’s not wrong about that,” Kyra said. “I couldn’t, and can’t, really understand what a Resonance is. I think it’s too far outside the realms of Fate magic, but even from a distance it was clear that the laws of our world as we understand them were different there. I could sense the malice of your gods, and they seemed unlimited in scope, but where Yasgrid was I think she was too.”
“And Nia and Kayelle?” Naosha asked.
“Yes. And all of the rest of us too,” Kyra said. “The Resonance wasn’t somewhere outside our world, but somewhere inside them, and inside all of us.”
“Resonances are one of the most dangerous things a Shatter Drummer can fall into. Short of damaging a drum, its the most likely means for a drummer to be lost while drumming,” Osdora said. “We all fall into them once in a while, but its a brief thing, a flash where you can feel the yourself and the whole cosmos expanding as one.”
“That sounds like it would be disruptive. How do you continue playing?” Naosha asked.
“Sometimes people don’t,” Gossma said. “Understand though that when she says a ‘flash’, Resonances are usually over so quickly its more accurate to say that you remember them happening than that you actually experience one. To stay in one long enough to form a coherent thought is exceedingly rare, and by ‘coherent thought’ I mean something like ‘oh, what is this, huh it’s gone already’.”
“And you had a conversation in one?” Osdora asked.
“Several,” Yasgrid said.
“It wasn’t an unpleasant experience,” Kyra said.
“Wait, you were there too? How?” Osdora asked.
“I’d spent several months in the custody of an undead abomination,” Kyra said. “That was in part because the undead abomination was hoping to lure Yasgrid into a trap and in part because I was collecting strands of Elshira’s fate to tie off and finally end her properly. When Yasgrid confronted her in the Resonance, I was able to follow those strands and put her in the grave she was supposed to be in decades ago.”
“But a Resonance is a Shatter Drumming construct,” Osdora said and turned to Gossma, “Isn’t it?”
Gossma went to answer but paused and narrowed her eyes.
“Okay, first, no. Just no!”
“No what?” Osdora asked.
“No, you are not going to research Resonances. We’ve been parted by foolishness with Shatter Drums for long enough, I’m not losing another thirty years to you following a perfectly reasonable question into some perfectly unreasonable decisions.”
“You followed me to the Darkwood,” Osdora protested weakly.
“Yep. Which should tell you something about the line I’m drawing here.”