Side A – Nia
Drum Master Pelegar’s challenge to Nia was a simple one. Nia wanted to play her way through the trauma she felt by touching a Shatter drum again. Doing so would expose everyone present to a deadly risk if Nia really couldn’t handle the Shatter drum. The sensible thing was to walk away and wait until she could be sure that she could play without any risk involved, and yet Nia wasn’t willing to do that. All she had to do was justify why. To an audience who had nothing to gain from letting her try, and everything to lose if she failed.
Drum Master Pelegar’s challenge to Nia was a simple one. Nia wanted to play her way through the trauma she felt by touching a Shatter drum again. Doing so would expose everyone present to a deadly risk if Nia really couldn’t handle the Shatter drum. The sensible thing was to walk away and wait until she could be sure that she could play without any risk involved, and yet Nia wasn’t willing to do that. All she had to do was justify why. To an audience who had nothing to gain from letting her try, and everything to lose if she failed.
“There’s nothing wrong with the drum,” Nia said. “That reaction I felt? It came from inside me. If I turn away from it now, if I let it grow, it’s going to haunt me. I’ll hear that laughter and it’ll eat away at me. I won’t be able to find any peace until I face it again, and the next time I’ll be even more scared of it than I am now because I’ll have been under its shadow for longer.”
Pelegar stared at her, their eyes meeting in a gaze that burrowed into Nia’s soul. Nia felt like she should have been afraid of Pelegar seeing who she really was. Or rejecting her because she wasn’t worthy. Just like she’d never been worth as an elf.
Something in her had changed though. She wasn’t Yasgrid, but she wasn’t asking the people around her to accept her as Yasgrid. Osdora still had hopes of her daughter “returning to her senses”, but even she had accepted that the person behind Yasgrid’s familiar face was new to them in many senses. So she wasn’t afraid of being discovered.
And rejection? Well, she’d been fighting rejection her whole life, and here, that kind of fighting was practically encouraged. If she had to battle for a seat at a drum, then she’d show them just how badly she wanted it.
“Who’s laughter was it that you heard?” Osdora asked, her voice tight and concerned.
“The volcano gods,” Nia said, her gaze shifting back to her Shatter drum.
It wasn’t haunted, but it drew immediate concerned glances from everyone present. Except from Pelegar.
“You’ve heard them before.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Nia admitted. “During the Calling. They laughed at me then too.”
There was a general buzz of hushed conversation that cut off when Pelegar spoke again.
“When you finished playing, you were playing against them?”
“I…” Nia thought about her answer for a moment. The final struggle to complete the musical narrative of the Calling had been such a violent whirlwind that no one explanation seemed to fit. Words themselves felt too limited, but they were all she had until she got her hands on the drum again. “Yes. More than them too, I think, but that laughter in particular, I remember wanting to shove it so far down their throats it would shoot out the other end.”
Pelegar narrowed her eyes, tilted her head, and then let a small, pleased smile grace her lips.
“Let’s see what you can do then,” she said, and released Nia’s arm.
Side B – Yasgrid
Time was running out for Yasgrid and Kayelle. The Trouble they faced was clever which meant its allies wouldn’t be small, nuisance Troubles. Those seemed to flee from Endings general vicinity, leaving only the more potent and dangerous variety for the Bearers to encounter.
Even the regular forest creatures had fallen silent, or were scurrying away from the conflict. The only natural things that weren’t in motion away from the conflict were the trees and even those rustled with a grim awareness of the event they overlooked.
Endings had thoughts on that. Yasgrid could feel a mental pull from the blade as though it had instructions to give or wisdom to share. In any other circumstance she would have been delighted to listen to Ending’s counsel but give the speed the Trouble holding Kayelle had shown, Yasgrid was reasonably certain that if she allowed herself to be distracted for even a moment by a side conversation, she wouldn’t survive to see the next moment arrive.
“You see your fate,” the Trouble said. “No changing it. So soon it comes to you. Give us the blade and you will lose your horrid destiny.”
It was strange that it was still talking, Yasgrid thought. All it had to do was keep her from escaping and the threat Endings posed for the year would vanish almost as soon as their quest had begun. If anything it seemed like it would make more sense for the Trouble to stay quiet. It would be creepier and frightened opponents were often worse at formulating clever plans to turn the tables. More than that though, there was a desperate quality to the Trouble’s speech.
Yasgrid flinched as the sound of something large crashed through the forest, much closer than she’d hoped the Trouble’s reinforcements would be.
Fighting multiple opponents had never gone well for her in the past, and she had no reason to think her current circumstances were likely to turn out better. On some level though, the Trouble holding Kayelle didn’t seem to share that evaluation.
Was there some hidden victory condition she asked herself. Some choice that could still turn the tables?
Or was it about failure? The Troubles were effectively immortal until a Bearer finished them. What would the one in front of her be afraid of then? Phrased like that, Nia knew exactly what the Trouble was trying to avoid.
“I could always run away with Endings though, couldn’t I?” she asked.
As she did so she ran her thumb along Ending’s edge, testing a theory that felt right on an intuitive level more than a rational one. The Trouble didn’t see the cruel smile that crept across her face but Kayelle did and offered her a confused expression as a silent question.
“You wouldn’t do…” the Trouble began to say.
The moment it started speaking Yasgrid launched herself forward, taking everyone but herself by surprise.
All the more so when she drove Endings through the center of Kayelle’s chest.