STARTER CALL
↳ @lightsblade ‹ accepting ›
It’s been some time since she’s strode the pavement of a city as majestic as Dalaran, that majesty visible not only through the sight shared among the species native and foreign to Azeroth, but also through that shared more exclusively by its returned children. The opulent spires and glittering domes of the mage city, bisected by orderly, carmine streets, become luminous founts of arcane power with a blink, proof ( as if any is required ) of the magic saturating the rock floating over the Broken Shore. The pleasure den of the Black Temple, contrived to cater to the decadent taste of Kael’Thas’ sin’dorei, cannot compare, the greenery of the capital, scant though it may be, perhaps the among the most striking of the differences to the asperous terrain far below, and far behind in Outland.
It is not only the sights that enrapture, however, but the humanity enmeshed within them. The manifold races, accents, and languages, the tidy dresses, the mirth. All reveal fragments of existence consigned to the past, to before, to a reality without the Burning Legion, to life with motive other than the avoidance of annihilation —— even now, with Sargeras’ army here. Abrupt yearning nigh eclipses thought of her purpose here, of the Illidari’s mission, but falls short, galvanizing instead, until——
Her mind stutters with her steps, throat constricting even before a cohesive thought is formed. It can’t —— the armor, the thickness of her limbs… But the face, the hair, her voice, somehow elevated above those of the others she converses with…
Liadrin. It is Liadrin, standing as if she belongs in the streets of Dalaran, her features wrought in determination harder than Valeera recalls on her, which extinguishes the demon hunter’s own instantaneously.
Her lifemate stands as if she belongs in the streets of Dalaran, and shock prohibits Valeera do anything but gawk, slack-jawed and ears drooping, eyebrows drawn above her blindfold in hopeful consternation, guilt and shame and apprehension blooming in her chest and longing antithetically rooting her boots to the ground.
never has she imagined she’d find herself in dalaran, much less conversing with paladins of the alliance who, until this point, have looked down their noses at her and her people as though they are somehow less worthy of their relationship with the light. she can tell some of them still feel as much, the icy chill of their judgmental gazes laid upon her as though their disdain alone can drive her away. were the circumstances different, she would simply laugh in their faces as she has in the past, but with azeroth endangered by the forces of the burning legion once again, she chooses to rise above it and simply ignores them. she opens her mouth to offer her expertise to the conversation at hand, a challenge of where they should convene and accept new members into their combined ranks for the war ahead, but a peculiar sight caught in the corner of one golden eye cuts her off. she turns her head to find one of the . . . illidari starring at her, slack - jawed and dumbstruck. at first, she’s confused ; but there’s something ( . . . ) SOMETHING FAMILIAR ABOUT HER THAT
liadrin’s eyes narrow, not in anger or irritation, but rather . . . is that? could it . . . could it be? surely not, not after all these years. but . . . the sin’dorei among them were once the followers of their traitorous prince into the outland. it is possible. there’s a tightness in her chest, an iron fist seizing her heart in its grasp as the conflict between desperate hope and the fear of wishful thinking bring rise to a suffocating lump in her throat. “ excuse me, ” she manages, so used to masking her own inner turmoil from others that hiding the fact that her blood washes through her in waves of boiling hot and freezing cold comes as second nature. she gives no one a chance to protest her departure as she turns away from the congregation of paladins to approach the demon hunter instead.
her armor feels heavier with every step, with every feature her eyes find on the illidari that matches what she remembers of her lifemate ; her boots like lead and her pauldrons likening themselves to an entire world placed upon her shoulders. it feels like the first time she ever suited herself up in leather and plate, back when the heaviest thing she’d ever carried was a truesilver mace made for someone much bigger than she. when she finally reaches her, liadrin feels as though she’s walked across the whole of the eastern kingdoms and all she can muster with a gasping breath, hoping against hope, is : “ VALEERA? ”