Previous – Next

Side A – Nia

Nia wasn’t alone as she marched over to the Roadies encampment. She didn’t have an army with her, which was what Kayelle had suggested might happen, but she did have Margrada, Belhelen and Gossma (of all people) along for what promised to be a surreal evening.

If they were lucky, Nia felt, a fight would break out the moment they tried to enter camp. Maybe Gossma would say something particularly drummer-ish to the first Roadies they saw? That wouldn’t be unreasonable, right?

Nia waved the thought away with a sigh. While a nice brawl that spilled out through the city might allow her to dodge thinking about Kayelle’s assertion that people were following Nia like they followed Naosha, it could just as easily make things worse too. All it would take would be for one side of the other to turn to her for leadership and she really would have an army at her back.

Which was as ridiculous as it was unlikely to happen – just because people knew her and were intrigued by some of things she’d done, didn’t mean she had their undying devotion or even a solid hold on their respect.

Or at least she certainly hoped she didn’t.

She had barely grasped the most basic of tools for Shatter Drumming. She had so much further to go before she could even reasonably claim to have a legitimate place in the Shatter Band, much less be the leader of anything.

“You still worried there’s going to a fight when we get there?” Gossma asked, which was a relief, even if it was kind of, sort of, exactly what Nia had been worrying about in terms of people looking to her as though she knew what she was doing.

“Oh, uh, nah, I’m not worried about that,” Nia said, attempts to envision not just the coming evening but where the next few days would lead her distracting a fair portion of her attention.

“Apparently it pays to make friends with people,” Belhelen said.

“Nia, you might want to explain why you’re not worried about there being a fight,” Margrada said, giving Nia a gentle nudge to focus Nia’s attention on the current moment a little more clearly.

“What’s that? Oh, about the fight? Yeah, there’s no need to worry about that. There’ll definitely be fights. We’d only have to worry if there weren’t,” she said. Somehow that hadn’t sounded as strange when she was putting thoughts together in her mind but when her ears heard them she caught how they might not have been what Gossma and Belhelen were quite expecting.

“Roadies fight. Drummers fight too. It’s a thing we do. They’re not any more serious about it than we are, so long as its a fight amongst themselves,” she added, hoping to explain her calm in a more sensible manner.

“We’re not exactly Roadies though.” Belhelen wasn’t afraid, just concerned, which Nia felt was good since they didn’t need to be afraid of a fight.

The lack of a fight on the other hand? That was a chilling prospect.

Side B – Yasgrid

Yasgrid wasn’t afraid. She was calm. She was peaceful. She was choosing to ground herself and not poke at the magic she felt within her because poking at magic to see if it came from a gaping hole in her psyche was not something she was ready to address whatever the outcome might be.

So she was meditating.

It had been Marianne’s idea, and with Kyra backing her up, Yasgrid’s protestations died on her lips before she could voice them.

Was it peer pressure when your peers were among the smartest people you’d ever met and you knew disregarding advice they both agreed on could only be coming from a place of fear and foolishness?

The three of them sat in a circle in a grove not terribly far outside of Gray Falls. They’d spent the better part of the afternoon hiking out to it at Kyra’s suggestion. The change of milieu from city to nature appealed to Yasgrid’s growing Elven sensibilities but the choice to remain in the Stoneling lands spoke to her Stoneling soul.

Elven eyes saw the mountains differently than her Stoneling eyes had. The trees were familiar but so much larger in scale that observing their fine details took no effort. The rush of the birds and the song of the winds sounded in Elven ears differently than they had as well. 

All that, plus the exertion of the hike, had left Yasgrid more aware of her body than the whirl of questions which stormed in her mind. The fatigue of the climb hadn’t banished all thoughts from her head however, which was why they’d turned to the meditation.

Meditation which would have been much easier without the odd gurgling cry from the edge of the clearing.

Yasgrid’s eyes snapped open to find an Elf with both arms dangling limply at his side.

She almost managed to catch sight of where Marianne vanished to, but she did not miss the distinctive gleam of Marianne’s knives which were lodged in the Elven interloper’s arms.

“You know, I was wondering when they would show up,” Kyra said, rising to slowly to her feet and dusting her pants off.

The injured Elf seemed to want to respond to that, but settled for glaring at both of them.

Yasgrid wasn’t sure he wasn’t running away if he didn’t want to talk until she noticed a third and fourth knife embedded in each of his legs.

“Do you think she wants us to question this one?” Kyra asked.

A pained cry from the twilight shrouded forest delayed Yasgrid’s answer and changed the tact she decided to take.

“Not sure she’d going to leave any of the others in a speech-capable state,” Yasgrid said, holding the injured Elf’s malice-filled gaze evenly before adding, “Not that that’s much a problem.”

She didn’t make her eyes glow. She could have. She could wreathed them in flames or sunken them into shadows. Instead she simply let them reflect light like a cat’s might.

Another cry from the forest suggested that whoever had orchestrated the night’s entertainment had sent at least three assassins and Yasgrid found herself to be very interested in what else they might have in store for her.

Previous – Next