In Dreams She Lies
Ice blue eyes surveyed a haunted land, winter-white knuckles locked hard around frozen steel. Auresta had gone from the crypt in her full death-plate, to a land that had showed her many things, and whispered many more.
Close to her she kept a crystalline teardrop, hardened forever in shining perfection, dropped from the eyes of a despairing Drust and found ages later by the Bloody Snowflake. It was a sweet friend, this shiny treasure she kept. She felt that she ought to do what seemed only right, find whatever was left of whoever had made the Drust weeper cry... and make them cry and cry, and cry.
~*~*~*~
Two men and a woman in armor surrounded another woman on her knees in a dress. The moist earth made her dress messy. Her situation made her black hair even messier. They had her limbs wrapped in chains of silver, barking questions at her. Not a terribly curious or strange scene for living humans, but the way that the Snowflake’s crystal teardrop reacted to it made her stop and watch.
With every strike that landed on the bound woman from her interrogators, the teardrop’s inner light pulsed in protest. Finally one drew a sword, its edges gleaming with silver, and the crystal wailed in Auresta’s mind. She had seen enough.
A swift yank of her outstretched hand brought the one with the sword flying through the air to roughly land right in front of her. Her icy, wild-eyed grin bewildered him for only a moment, before one of her swords went through his gut and the other displaced his head. As the carcass slid from her blades and slumped to the ground, she drew a fist and threw a punch in the direction of the other two armored humans, standing in front of the woman on the ground. An icy wind howled through the trees to blast them in the faces with the motion. They were not long in succumbing to the bite of her frost and and her steel.
The silver-bound woman lay panting on the ground. Auresta’s crystal teardrop pulsed a light that... matched her breathing? What? The Bloody Snowflake brought forth her treasure, lifting it in the palm of her hand towards the woman’s face, and then away again. Twice. Three times. Sure enough, every time it came closer to the dark-haired human on the ground, the teardrop grew brighter, felt happier, as if it had found home.
Auresta stared for a long while, ice-blue eyes regarding her silent human companion, processing... Until her face split into a grin, and she hugged the woman close as she squealed, “I found you!”
~*~*~*~
It had been about three weeks that Auresta had stayed with Dyan. She only knew this because living humans had a need to measure passing time, apparently. The delightful witch was a good friend to her, full of bitterness towards her enemies and even to her own family, and it was Auresta’s great pleasure to wreak havoc on them all in her name. She often brought back their corpses to Dyan, and they would carve up the flesh and bones together.
The Snowflake had smiled as she watched the witch bind some of their souls into woven wicker servants, with stag-skull faces which Auresta had brought her. (Actually, she’d brought her the whole stags, as Dyan had the tedious need to eat for sustenance and not just pleasure, poor thing). The Kul Tiran had noticed the smile. “What? You like them?”
Auresta’s fond smile widened a little, “They remind me of the dolls he makes.” She didn’t explain who he was, just that he was gone for now and had promised to come back for her. That he was changed, but it didn’t change that he loved her. She couldn’t wait for him to come home so he could meet her delightful new witch!
~*~*~*~
“Do you know what you were before?” Dyan asks.
“Before what?” Auresta replies, confused.
“Before you became what you are now.”
Auresta frowns. “I was me,” she answers. “I’ve always been me.”
“I mean before you were you,” tries Dyan.
This was getting frustrating. “That makes no sense!”
Dyan chuckles warmly, patiently. “Here, let me try something,” she murmurs. Trustingly, Auresta inches closer to comply.
Ancient words flow from the Drust-descended’s lips, calling on the earth and shadows, weaving their energies to reach gently in to her undead elf friend’s being. Two work-weathered fingertips touch the center of her snow-white forehead, and the magic peels away at the fog of darkness...
Until Auresta screams.
Broken images, feelings, and voices froth in the elf’s head. Names and faces she doesn’t know, but does. She sees herself, but not herself - a sun-touched Thalassian beauty, with honey-gold hair and eyes like the ocean.
It’s not me... It’s not me! ... What am I?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!
The pain in her head threatens to burst out her eyes and ears. Stabbing shards of things she knows but doesn’t recognize, too unbearable in their jaggedness to even begin to piece together.
Kill me! End it! I don’t want this!
Her fingers scrabble blindly for something, anything to make it all stop...
KILL ME!
... and then oblivion takes her.
~*~*~*~
Dyan Witherstead stood on the glacial ground, her face solemn, stony, but her heart full of sadness and regrets. On a sled, she pulled the body of the unliving elf who had rescued her, made her life less bleak, her ritual dagger sticking out of the poor thing’s heart.
It was the only thing that halted the magic Dyan had called upon to try to help heal the undead elf’s memories... not knowing that the damage done from the decay to her mind after her first mortal death made such a task insurmountable. Not knowing the confusion of trying to repair them would bring agony rather than clarity.
The witch came to a stop in the center of Gol Koval, ancient capital of her Drust ancestors, and one of the few ruins still left standing in peace. She incanted a greeting and a summoning to the spirits residing here, asking for their counsel. Some came as figures of twisted Nature, others as wispy wraiths. They listened.
“What can be done for her?” Dyan pleaded. “She has saved and served your daughter, faithfully, unconditionally. What can I do?”
The Drust spirits regarded their descendant and the lifeless, winter-white elf. “Oblivion would be kindest,” spoke one. “Let her sleep,” said another. “Take her to the glacier, in the mountains above,” rumbled the nearest. “There, she will be undisturbed.”
“What of her soul?” Dyan had to ask.
“What soul?” Was the answer the spirits gave. “Her soul has been in the Shadowlands since her first death, her soul is not here.”
“Where?” Dyan felt a rising panic. “Where in the Shadowlands is it?” She had to know. She could not let her friend be lost.
The spirits sighed between themselves, but ultimately decided to indulge their daughter. “You may come to fetch it, if you wander the woods of Thros. She will sleep well if you keep her in one of the charms we bless and curse for you.” Dyan nodded, and began her trudge up into the mountains, pulling Auresta’s form behind her.
~*~*~*~
Dyan sat, weaving thread, wicker, feathers and crystals into what looked like a dream catcher to the night elves.
It was a soul catcher to the people of Drustvar.
She glanced up every so often to look at her friend, Auresta, in repose, the witch’s ritual dagger still embedded in her heart, letting her physical form sleep. The elf was encased in purest ice now, summoned by Dyan’s petition to the spirits of the mountain, preventing her from being disturbed, or the chance that the lich magic which animated her the first time would seep and drain away over time. Couldn’t allow that, to have her fade away, decay further. She looked glorious, like in a story.
Dyan briefly clutched the crystal teardrop that hung from her neck. She had divined through her dark arts that it was a tear that had been shed by herself in a former life, when the ancient Gilnean settlers had made landfall in Kul Tiras at Drustvar, and assimilated the Drust into their people after conquering them. Her past Drust self had wept and wailed in despair as her home was desecrated... and somehow destiny twisted and turned to place the manifestation of that agony and sorrow in the hands of this exquisite risen elf, to find her again.
I found you!
Dyan took in a long, cold breath and sighed, laying her cheek on the ice block over Auresta’s face. “I go now to Thros to find you, and when I return, you will rest well forever,” she promised in a whisper. She truned her head and placed a soft kiss upon the ice. “Sleep well, Snowflake.”
~*~*~*~
@lokkiir @drustvarhardrock
