“Sora, Sora. I need you to pay close attention. Look into my eyes. Hold on now-stop pulling” Oaken gently took hold of Sora’s rotting hand as she repeatedly yanked strands of white hair from her scalp.
“There.” He said, smoothing down her hair once more. Each day there seemed to be less and less of it. “Alright Sora, we have to get this right. Many lives depend on it. You are needed and I truly believe in you. I believe in us.”
“Yes.” Sora replied simply.
“Here are the show cards, all in order. Remember, flip one down when we reach the next talking point. How’s that?”
“Yes.”
The angry hurt beast clawed inside Oaken’s inside. Fury ripped through him-heated his ears-made them pound.
Not knowing where to direct the all too familiar rage, Oaken brushed it aside-replaced it with an alphabetical list of pre-sundering flora.
Seeing Sora’s mental state reduced to below that of a child's, made the Kaldorei’s skin feel too tight and claustrophobic to hold the growing hatred inside him.
Hatred at what? Hatred at whom?
He was not certain. No...that wasn’t true. He knew. But to pretend otherwise was the best thing he could do for Sora and him.
“Alright. I’m going to hop on that barrel and begin. Stand to the side of me with those cards. Do you feel ready?”
“Yes.”
A couple bounds gave him the momentum Oaken needed to make the leap. Up into the air he went.
Crash
One leg broke through the barrel’s lid, throwing him off balance. Next to him. Sora raised the show cards high above her head.
Many, many eyes were on them.
“Citizens and passerbys of Bogpaddle!” Oaken laced his voice with authority while trying to shake the barrel from his leg. “You love this land and all it holds.I know it...that is why...why...why-” despite the furious shaking, the barrel remained. “Why you are here.”
Sora dropped one show card, the next revealed a long purple fish. She began to sway.
No, no Sora-too soon!
Giving up on his practiced rallying speech, Oaken improvised, struggling to keep up with the show cards.
“You know who else loves this land? Yes. The Misty Reed Mahi-Mahi. That fish you see there on that card. You also see them on your plates...way too often. You also see them dead by the pounds being shipped off to-”
Someone shouted. “Fish don’t love the land!”
Accepting that the barrel was now a part of his life, Oaken straightened up. “Yes. Yes I know that! Yes you are right! But the point is they are being used up faster than they can reproduce and-”
“You got a barrel on your leg.” Some Goblin yelled in common.
Sora dropped another show card. It revealed a sketch of a Goblin staring at the ocean with inspired tears in its eyes as a Misty Reed Mahi-Mahi leapt from the surface.
Oaken stammered on. “Which is why you, as inhabitants of the land, guardians of the estuary, and sharers of the coast, must acknowledge the suffering of the Mis-”
“We’re all suffering listening to you!”
“Hey-you still got a barrel on your leg.”
Sora dropped another show card.
Seven Minutes Later
They rowed in silence along the coast of the Swamp of Sorrows. Sora stared blankly at water lapping against the boat while Oaken manned the oars, looking defeated.
Shaking himself from his gloom, Oaken spoke gently. “You did well Sora.”
“Yes.”
Fury. Disappointment. He focused on the ache and tautness of his back instead. It hadn’t been the same since the meteor.
“Look.” Sora pointed toward the shore as they neared the root hut.
Another Kaldorei stood waiting. His deep blue hair, usually standing out in all directions, hung limply-framing his face. The humid swamp air had had its way.
“Baeither?” Oaken called. He stopped rowing. The little fishing boat bobbed along with the waves.
“You left the city very suddenly.” Baeither called back. “Is that why?” He pointed at Sora.
“Why are you here?” Oaken backpedaled, keeping the boat in place against the fighting waters.
“We need you back Oaken. There is growing suspicion. Unwanted attention is being pressed onto us by the city guard.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“I think there is.” Baeither waited a moment, looking to see if Oaken would row to shore. After seeing that he would not, Baeither continued. “When you came to us-back melted to the bone-you slipped into fever and slept many days. There are things you whispered.”
“What do you want Baeither?”
“You know what will happen if we are thoroughly investigated. We need to turn the guards' attention elsewhere.” Baeither kept his eyes glued on the boat. “You whispered of the Emporium and its...occupants. You whispered things that could demand the watch’s attention.”
An especially big wave lurched the boat forward, Oaken fought against it. Pain arced through his back. “You wish for me to hand over the members of the Court to be your scapegoat?”
“Our scapegoat Oaken. Our. If anyone has the most to lose from an uninvited discovery of Tel’althora Grove it is you. I don’t wish to put you in this position.”
Oaken snorted. Bleeding thumbs, you are loving it Baeither. You’ve always wanted to watch me fall.
Baeither continued. “Surely you can see it is them or us. Come back to Stormwind. Take your accounts of the Court to the city guard. We can salvage our reputation before it is ruined.”
The boat lurched violently.
A moment passed by in which Oaken imagined the ocean turning the boat over and claiming him. He’d drop slowly to the ocean floor, weightless. He’d open his eyes and take the sting of the salt to watch the last of the day’s light bend through the water. Then everything would go black.
“Yes.” Sora’s voice sounded more excited than usual.
Baeither called out. “At least row to shore and let’s talk about it further. Looks like your friend has caught dinner for us.”
Oaken turned in time to see Sora bite the head off a struggling Misty Reed Mahi-Mahi.
“Just a little…” Jerimoth wriggled on his knees, arms aching as he reached towards the sky. “Yes, that’s—No, no that’s too high!”
Wind rushed past his ears, white hair blowing madly this way and that. He tried not to think about how the benches in the garden below looked like children’s dollhouse furniture from up here, nor his quite sudden fear of heights.
Another gust of wind and a rumbling growl later, he found himself beside the Emporium’s second story window. The goal was nearly within reach, and his fingers curled around his pot of dirt of their own accord.
Wisps of steam filled his vision, and all at once he realized the soles of his shoes had begun to melt. Shoes that he rather liked, actually. He wiggled his toes to stave off the burning sensation, more annoyed than anything else. He could feel the Fel that circulated under his feet, just underneath the skin of his Shivarra’s massive palm.
Inside the Sagelight Emporium sat a small bundle of leaves tied together with long strands of plant fiber. Upon unfolding the leaves, a charred snail shell awaited. Growing from the inside of the shell were thousands of fine roots wound together to form the shape of a measly snail. Under the roots lay a note with tiny scrawled letters.
“Jerimoth,
Some time ago I had meant to give you this snail I found in the Caverns of Time. It helped me when I needed to make a choice.
But then you very much died before I could properly place it in your hands. And then...I made more choices, choices that a good friend perhaps should not have made.
When you lived again Jeri, I did feel happiness. I was set on giving you the snail then...but I was hit by a meteor and the snail very much died.
So, I have made the choice to use the charred remains of its shell to hold something very dear to me. These roots will need deeper soil Jerimoth. Please, plant this shell within sight of the Emporium.
I have seen the tender care you put into your snails, and Rommy, and your friends. You are the right person for this task. I will attach a list of the needs of the seed that lies within this shell.
Thank you for what you have taught me about making choices. The choice I make now to part ways is not easy. But it feels right to me, despite how it may look. I make this choice out of tender care, and I hope that proves itself over time.
I suspect there are great choices that lie ahead for you. May you choose the choices that bring you peace. Look out for the others, keep them safe.
-Oaken”
Behind the note lay another piece of parchment tightly folded. Instructions on the care needed for the seed. Included in the instructions was encouragement to speak to the seed every day, bond with it. Teach it the common language. Use Kyndolin’s finest soil to plant it. Have Kyndolin visit the seed as well and speak the Darnassian language to it. Tell no one else of the seed. Not even Ellnara. See that no harm comes to it.
((Mentions @everyone-just-calls-me-jeri and @kyndolin))
Raylend Wads always visited the herb shop on the first day of the second week of every month. The time had yet again come to restock on Adder’s Tongue. It was the only thing that eased his persistent dry cough and made his day to day life bearable.
He twisted the knob to the shop and found it locked.
Odd, truly odd.
Coughing into his elbow, Reyland walked to the window and pressed his face against the pane. The shop front was void of life. But there, far in the backroom, shadows flickered on the wall.
Odd, truly odd.
Reyland didn’t like odd. He liked predictability and schedules. This was, after all, the first day of the second week of the month. The shop should be open.
Feeling irritated and determined to get his Adder’s Tongue, Reyland moved around the building. Stepping on a crate, he rose to peer into a window framed within the backroom.
Baeither, the shop owner, stood over another Kaldorei who lay atop a cot on his stomach. The Kaldorei was bare down to the waist. What should have been skin on his back was instead a heap of melted flesh puckering up into blisters and glistening rivers of mangled muscles oozing red.
Reyland bent over to let up sickness on the ground. Wiping his mouth, he pressed an ear against the wall. A string of words spoken in a foreign tongue sounded through the wall. Every so often a word was uttered that struck a familiar chord. He heard “Sagelight” as in the Emporium? Within the same breath, Azshara’s name came up laced in venom.
Silence followed for a time.
Peeking through the window once more, Reyland saw the injured Kaldorei had buried his face in the crook of his elbow and was grasping the cot side with whitened knuckles. Where is Baeither?
In answer to the man’s unspoken question, Baeither moved in the shadows of the far corner. Pushing and pulling aside a few crates. Baeither bent down to grasp something on the floor.
Odd, truly odd.
With a grunt of effort, the elf lifted up a trap door. Jagged icicles hung from its underside and a strange pulsing blue light emitted from the opened floor. Odd, truly o- Reyland’s thoughts were cut off as two more Kaldorei heads popped out from the trap door. One female, another male.
Most odd.
Low inaudible murmurs filled the room as the small group of elves gathered around the one with the splayed open back. The two newcomers lifted his cot, and worked gingerly to lower him into the pulsing blue light of whatever was hidden below.
By this time Reyland’s nose was squished against the glass as he held his breath. Baeither closed the trap door behind the group then paused, his spine stiffening. He turned to look directly into Reyland’s eyes.
Reyland pushed back and leaned into a brisk walk away from the shop. He didn’t make it far before fingers wrapped around his arm.
“Reyland, you’ve come for your Adder’s Tongue. Is that it?” Baeither asked.
“Err...it’s not important Baeither, I can come back next week, really.”
“Oh no, we can take care of you now I think. After all it is the first day of the second week of the month. How irresponsible of me to forget.”
Reyland was guided back into the shop. Later that evening he returned home with his Adder’s tongue in tow. Though in the coming days he’d wonder how it had come to be in his possession. He never recalled visiting Baeither’s shop. When he searched his memories of the past few days, he ran into a wall of fog where two thoughts could barely be put together.
Ellnara Sagelight wiped the sweat from her brow as she surveyed the ruins, albeit difficult to do so in the scorching, unrelenting beams of Light. There was no sign of her wayward Court member anywhere, save for the maddened writings on the walls and the tattered, open journal. But mad or no, Jerimoth was her responsibility. Her Court, her rules. She had been the one to ask him to join in the first place, by the Stars. And she would be the one to bring him home.
The Highborne — half-Highborne, as her arcanist peers were so eager to remind her — ran a gloved hand over the makeshift altar. Her long, violet eyebrows pinned together at the sight. Perhaps it really was an altar once, but its original purpose was lost to her amongst the dust and embers that coated its surface. She brought her hand away and shook it off, pointedly not looking at the writings that covered nearly every surface of the ancient stone. She knew not what they said, but anything in Shath’yar was best considered dangerous by default.
She listened to the howls and wails from the patrolling Ash Ghouls both above and below the stone nook. A chill ran down her spine, despite the blistering heat. Could one of them be him? His mind burnt to a crisp by the Light, doomed to wander in this Ward for the rest of eternity? She wasn’t sure if she even wanted to comprehend such a thought. But what she was sure of, however, was one thing.
Jerimoth — and his soul — would return home, no matter the cost. Even if it meant she would die trying.
The soul felt… lighter. Something had changed. Beyond the crystal wall that marked the end of his world, everything was glimmering. Blues and whites and even more blues danced across his eyeless vision. There was a certain calm in the air, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Where on Azeroth was this? He longed to visit it again sometime, when he had real eyes to see it with.
[ It had been hours. Days, maybe. They’d be back soon, right? They didn’t forget about him, did they? ]
The Caregiver was moving. Somewhere beyond the watery blues and just in between the whites, he could sense her. He didn’t know her name or what she looked like, but she seemed nice. She brought the pods inside when it rained stars, and soothed their worries with a song on her harp. He could sense magic working near the tips of her long antlers, and vaguely wondered why the concept of antlers made him feel uneasy. Luckily, the harp’s song quelled those fears for the time being.
[ They told him not to worry. They promised they would fix him soon, they just had to find him. Not him, the other him. The one that was far away. ]
Arguing. Voices cut through his flow of thoughts like skipping stones disturbing still waters. A familiar voice rose above them all — All… Ellie… Ell-something… — and she was angry. Hurt. Disgusted. As if a wave of fury had crashed over her in the time she’d been away.
[ Are they back already? Hadn’t they just left? ]
The murky, yet familiar voices plotted and planned, until they departed just as quickly as they had arrived. They grew fainter and fainter until only Ell-something and the Caregiver remained. Curiosity trickled in his mind, aching to lend a hand in whatever they were up to. But without a mouth to question or comment with, there didn’t seem much he could do anyway.
[ They’d be back soon, right? How long had it been? ]
So instead, he watched the dance of blues and whites once again.
He stepped distractedly into the path of a rushing carriage driven by the reins of a lazy eyed dredger.
Dredger: “WAAA-”
Oaken: “OHHH-”
Throwing himself out of harm’s way, Oaken grabbed his lurching stomach and began reciting extinct flora in alphabetical order.
“Dredger, stop the carriage!”
A bald Venthyr’s head poked from the halted carriage’s window and took in the sight of a hyperventilating Kaldorei.
“Mine eyes don’t deceive me.” In seconds he was out the door waddling about excitedly. “A living soul from Azeroth! Come, come inside my carriage and share news of my homeworld!”
In a daze, Oaken watched the heavy set Venthyr take him by the elbow. The carriage rocked as he was pushed inside.
“I will say this, you should look both ways before stepping into the road. Always carriages running to and fro to the next big party ha ha! Where is it you need to go?”
“Umm...Oribos.”
“So be it.” The Venthyr rapped his knuckles against the front window. “Dredger, Pridefall Hamlet.”
As the carriage lurched into motion, Oaken watched the dark and dreary scenery of Revendreth pass by. Feeling eyes on him, he glanced over to see the pudgy Venthyr watching expectedly.
“Well? How is Azeroth? What is happening?”
“I am sorry...I do not have it in me to tell tales at this moment.”
Oaken watched the Venthyr’s delighted expression melt into dangerous folds of someone who wasn’t used to being told “no”. Those folds were quickly replaced with a wide false smile.
“That is...rude. I find myself...disappointed.” A long finger tapped irritatingly against the window pane.
Feeling too numb to recognize the rising tension, Oaken looked out the window and whispered, “me too”.
The Venthyr had spent eons with broken souls. The defeat he heard in the Kaldorei’s voice was a song often sung in Revendreth. A song that often came with profit in one form or another. This broken soul happened to still own a body. That made him a harbor of tangible profits.
“Oh. Oh you poor soul.” He lowered his voice into that of imitated empathy. “You have seen something hard. Tell me. Tell me everything. I can help you.”
Half an Hour Later
The carriage pulled into Pridefall Hamlet.
“What you are asking of me will cost you greatly. I’m sure you understand.” The Venthyr smiled pleasantly.
Oaken rummaged through his satchel. The Venthyr shook his head at every item the Kaldorei pulled out. Finally, he lifted a finger.
“That bag seems to be able to hold more than it should. It is enchanted, yes? I will take that.”
Oaken ran a finger over the stitches. “My satchel is...of great worth to me. Is there nothing else?”
The Venthyr wore a sad mask and shook his head.
“If I give you this satchel...how can I trust that you will hold up your end of the deal?” Oaken asked with a heavy voice.
“Hmm, interesting. I don’t know. How can you?”
Oaken remained in his seat as the door opened and the dredger waited.
“There are merchants within the group. They are looking to open trade routes within the Shadowlands. They could help you obtain certain items only found in Azeroth.”
“I will hold up my end of the deal Oaken Evenshade.”
Shrugging out of his satchel, Oaken passed it over with a forlorn gaze. As he stepped out of the carriage, he glanced over his shoulder. “One more thing, when they find Jerimoth’s soul...if you could-”
“Ah. I know what you would ask. No no no. That is not in my jurisdiction.” The Venthyr leaned back into the shadows of the carriage. “You did the right thing. The Shadowlands is no place for a soul with a mortal.”
The door shut. The Venthyr’s voice called from within, “Dredger, to the Ember Ward!”
Happy to post our 2020 Christmas gift made by the lovely @geborroarts , feat Ellnara, @kyndolin, and @oaken-evenshade . Go check out their stuff, they did an amazing job capturing their personalities :D
Thanks for a fantastic year of friendship, you troublemakers! 😊
The first thing Jerimoth wondered when he slowly roused from slumber, was how he could feel cold without a body. Or more importantly, how his nose could itch. He didn’t even have fingers to scratch it with. Nor eyes, nor a mouth… how did he get here?
He sensed movement on the other side of… wherever he was. Where was he again? He tried to concentrate, scrunching brows that he didn’t have, but anything resembling focus slipped away from him. Brief collections of memory passed through his mind - one floppy ear and tousled green hair, a creature of shadow who was and wasn’t an elf, cockroaches and a seamstress - none of it seemed to make sense. With his limited concentration, he clung desperately to the few fragments of memory he managed to retain.
A burly woodsman with a spear had called his name and reached for him. His demon was by his side, who… whose name escaped him at present, but he did remember the ghouls. Swarms of them. Scrambling up the sides of the shop to the roof, attacking his friends. Something screeched in the sky above, and a pair of sinewy, skeletal wings descended upon him. A talon ripping open his chest, then… nothing.
The pane of glass that was his mind fogged again, and an easy haze filled his senses. Fragments of memory lazily hung in the nothingness - Red eyes. A blue hat. A half-troll’s baked brownies, and a golden pair of goggles. Half-memories, each more confusing than the last. He felt fractured, incomplete. The thought made his nonexistent head spin, and he felt himself sink lower into the darkness.
Within moments, the soul slipped into slumber once more.
They had been coasting not far from the shore for several hours when Akenna let out a small gasp and pulled Oaken to her side. Her little hand pointed at a school of silver mackerels weaving in and around one another. Their silver scales caught the glint of the sun and revealed dazzling blues, yellows, greens, purples, and pinks.
“Oaken!” She had said with delight. “I think those fish are hiding all the colors of the world!”
“Hold on Akenna, they aren’t hiding the colors. It’s more about the structure of their scales and how the light ref-”
“Shh! No, none of that. These fish are magic and we have stumbled upon the very rarest of discoveries!”
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