Side A – Nia
The Roadies were glad to see her. Nia had to blink and shake her head to make sure her ears were hearing things correctly.
“So it’s okay if all of us come in for the party?” she asked a second time.
“Yeah, we’re honored to have you here,” the Roadie at the entrance to their encampment said. Nia had met her before. Kalgi had pulled her off another Roadie and held her in a remarkably effective chokehold until Horgi had socked Kalgi in the face and dragged Nia free.
Good times.
“Uh…okay,” Nia said and waved the others to follow her.
‘Honored guests’ was not what Drummers were to Roadies. ‘Interlopers’ or ‘punching bags’ were supposed to be the two options, with a secret third choice of ‘grudgingly accepted barmate’ if you could hang with them long enough.
Of course that assumed one was walking into a Roadie camp. Gazing around, Nia wasn’t sure if she’d made some kind of wrong turn and wound up in some alien recreation of the Roadie encampment she’d previously been to.
“You know I always pictured a Roadie party to involve a bit more singing,” Belhelen said.
“They do,” Gossma said. “Usually you can hear them, and smell ‘em, from farther than you can see ‘em.”
That would have earned her a punch if they’d wandered into a proper Roadie party, but the Roadies they were passing by as Nia navigated them to Horgi and Grash’s tent seemed to be too locked into their own conversations to pay any attention to the four drummers walking amongst them.
“I expected more drinking too,” Margrada said. “I seem to recall you stumbling back with more alcohol in your blood stream than blood from one of these?”
“You’re not wrong. The last couple of times, they didn’t even let me step into the camp with a tankard in my hand,” Nia said.
The itch to play something to snap the Roadies out of whatever the hell this was sang along Nia’s fingertips. Fortunately, her last erg of sanity was more than enough to pull her back from that particular cliff of idiocy.
Yeah, probably good to hold off on drumming for a bit. We seem to be escalating things every time we do, Yasgrid said sensing Nia’s victory of reasonability and cheering her on for it.
Speaking of escalating, it feels like something’s happening with you? Nia could hear the tension and feel the quickening of Yasgrid’s pulse but without manifesting beside her wasn’t sure what the details might be.
Eh, some Elves tried to attack us, Yasgrid said, concern the furthest thing from her mind.
Attack? Do you need a hand, we can be there in…oh, wait…Nia remembered who was with Yasgrid.
Yeah, no worries there, Marianne’s got it sorted, Yasgrid said and Nia could feel the amused grin through their bond as brightly as if she’d been standing right beside Yasgrid. She, uh, dealt with them faster than I could even call on my magic. Your friend is kind of terrifying.
That’s probably why I wanted to date her, Nia said casting a glance at her terrifying fiance and noticing that she apparently ‘had a type’.
Side B – Yasgrid
Yasgrid had no trouble understanding Nia. Marianne was the definition of exceptional. Take, for example, the assassin she’d left so neatly neutralized and waiting for questioning? Who else would have been so thoughtful?
Well, okay, Kyra probably would have done the same.
In fact Kyra probably wouldn’t have needed to question the assassin in the first place.
The fact that Kyra was special too did not by any means diminish how remarkable Marianne was though. In fact considering Marianne, Kyra and herself together, Yasgrid had to chuckle at just how bad the assassin’s luck had been in the victims they’d been assigned.
“You know, I have to wonder what they were thinking?” she said, turning to glance at Kyra as they crossed the clearing to where the first assassin was sagging to the ground, his legs no longer enjoying supporting both his weight and the knives which were lodged in them.
Yasgrid hadn’t been expecting a response from the assassin, and hadn’t been addressing her question to him at all. His answering glare spoke volumes about what he perceived his mission to be though.
“We’ll want to check his pockets and his collar,” Kyra said. “One of them will have some Sonna leaves in them.”
“Poison?” Yasgrid asked, wondering if the attempt had been even more serious than it had seemed.
“Mildly. The Fate Dancers used it to induce a slumber which scrambled memories though.”
“Why would you want to knock yourself out when you were fighting a Trouble?” Yasgrid asked, imagining far too many scenarios where that could make a bad situation even worse.
“We didn’t always fight Troubles,” Kyra said. “The Sonna slumber was useful against some Troubles too though. Ones who were focused on deceptions or illusions and lacked a physical presence might prove too strong and it was better if the overwhelmed Fate Dancer could take themselves out of play before the Trouble tricked them into doing something unpleasant.”
“Interesting, that must be what the last one managed to take,” Marianne said, cleaning off a particularly shiny knife as she rejoined them in the grove.
“How many were there?” Yasgrid asked, wondering in how many sense the past tense applied.
“Six altogether,” Marianne said. “We have four to collect in the woods. We’ll probably want to bring them back to the Darkwood, the healers there are probably better at sewing up small wounds than the Stonelings are.”
“The sixth got away I presume?” Kyra said.
“I never saw them, but given the direction the others fled in, I’m reasonably sure we’ll find a hastily assembled base of operations not to far away. Probably scavenged by now, but people in a rush do make mistakes.”
“People with time to plan make mistakes too,” Yasgrid said, “like our new friend here. Let’s see if he’ll tell us a little about this one. Which of us do you think he wants to talk to the least?”