Previous – Next

Side A – Nia

Nia had thoughts. Many thoughts. With even more questions crowding those out and demanding answers. It was a sign of her substantial growth and maturity, or at least she felt it was, that she closed her mouth and said precisely none of them.

“This isn’t something a drummer can help with,” Horgi said.

Which Nia didn’t understand. In her experience, drumming helped with everything. 

She’d spent enough time with the Roadies to know they weren’t the drummer’s servants or anything like that. They had their own culture, social mores, and beliefs.

Would she have considered those beliefs superstitions half a year earlier? Probably. She’d always considered the Fate Dancers to have at best a passing connection to rationality, but then Kyra had pulled Yasgrid into a space outside the world which sort of proved that their beliefs were founded on something, even if Nia still found their conclusions suspect at best.

With the Roadies, she was able to be more charitable, largely because she’d seen how much of what they believed stemmed from a deep and abiding love for not only the drums they were focused on but the people who worked with them, both other Roadies and the Shatter Drummers. 

It hit her, as she spent a moment thinking about it, how there’d been real horror underlying Grash’s claim that she must be a ghost. The Roadies knew how powerful the Shatter Drums were. They knew what a bad Resonance state could do to someone. Grash and Horgi hadn’t been surprised about the drum being broken. They’d known about that for months. The thought of what it could have, or rather should have, done to her though? That was the kind of nightmare their entire belief system had been created to prevent.

Regulations are far too often written in the blood of those they would have saved had they been in place when they first needed. The Roadies entire society had grown from that, and Nia had no idea where the edges of it really were.

So she kept quiet and listened. There would be time for questions later, but first there was a lot she needed to understand, and understanding, in this case, started with respect.

“What if we found someone who wasn’t a drummer?” Marianne asked. “Someone with magic that wasn’t Shatter Drumming.”

“I don’t know,” Grash said. “There are rites, observances…”

Things that only the Roadies would understand? Or things that only someone who’d worked with a Shatter Drum would understand?

“This has happened before,” Margrada said. “There have been other accidents with Shatter Drums. Other drums that were lost.”

“Yes and no,” Horgi said. “We’ve lost drums before. Early on, a lot, but these days its rare. This last Calling was the worst its been in as long as I can remember,” Horgi said. “We spent days cleaning up, and we would have taken longer if the Battle of the Bands trip hadn’t been pushed up like it was.”

“I know the Band expected you to push back more,” Belhelen said.

“We should have. If we’d known, we would have,” Grash said.

“That’s on us then,” Margrada said. “On me. I knew what had happened. I don’t know if anyone else did.”

“No. It’s on us,” Horgi said. “You’re not supposed to know. We are.”

Nia longed to scream “know what?” and “what are you talking about?”, but she could see in her Roadie friends eyes that those answers, the real ones, weren’t meant for Shatter Drummers.

Fortunately, she knew someone who wasn’t a Shatter Drummer, at least not any longer, but who understood them nonetheless and just might be able to make things right.

Side B – Yasgrid

Yasgrid definitely needed Nia’s help. 

Or more precisely, the Fate Dancer who’d coma’d themselves needed Nia’s help. Yasgrid was certain Nia could help them, at least as far as they could be helped. What was less certain to Yasgrid was whether she wanted Nia to help them even a little bit.

“You’re pondering something,” Kyra said, as though she wasn’t perfectly aware of exactly what Yasgrid was thinking.

“Wait, can we go back to the bit where Nia doesn’t need a gods-be-damned SHATTER DRUM?” Osdora looked ready to jump out of her seat and fight someone over the mere idea, except that there was no one to fight.

“She doesn’t need a Shatter Drum to drum,” Yasgrid said with a bland shrug. It was difficult, truly difficult to keep the delighted smile off her face at driving her mother instance, but, honestly, Osdora had earned it. “Happened several times, so I’m pretty sure it’s not a fluke. It’s how we met King in fact.”

“King?” Gossma asked.

“Yes?” King said, hopping on to her lap.

“That…” Osdora started to say, her eyes wide with both confusion and concern.

She was going to finish her sentence with “is not a cat.” Yasgrid definitely didn’t want to get into that particular discussion though, so she cut in.

“They are King. Not ‘that’.”

“Indeed.” King didn’t look troubled by the potential faux pas, though Yasgrid couldn’t remember ever seeing King look troubled by anything.

“I believe there is a story to be told there,” Naosha said. “Though perhaps less urgently than acquiring assistance for the stricken Fate Dancers?”

Which wasn’t exactly where Yasgrid wanted the conversation to turn. She was still debating whether rescuing the Fate Dancer was worth the risk it would entail. That she wasn’t sure if the Fate Dancer deserved to be rescued was something she grudgingly forced herself to confront as well.

They’d hurt Kyra. 

And they were just terrible people in general.

She was still angry with them for a variety of reasons.

But they still deserved mercy and compassion.

She hated that, but with a sigh and a grumble, she accepted the decision she knew was the one she wouldn’t hate herself for in the future.

“That’s true. I can explain the no drum thing later. It’s not quite as crazy as it sounds. For now we should get Nia and have her take a look at the Dancers. They probably need her more than anyone else.”

Previous – Next