“It isn’t a who, is a what.” Kurel said from the floor in the clinic, with nothing but a cloak wrapped around his shoulders. Safely in the current, present, right fucking here and now of Stormwind City.
Eilithe was disoriented, the spatial shift– or was it temporal. She remember in flashes. They had been fighting, screaming…she could not recall about what. Or had they just made up?
Walking.
Then cold.
Then dark.
As the visage of horrific face materialized before her, Eilithe heard echos of ramblings. “ We eat the weak. Teeth. And Blood. And Bone.”
Wherever the Sleeper had taken them, they had beat their way out. But not without putting extra holes in Eilithe. Even as life energy pressed into her, she relived it…
The voice was female, and she had deemed to make them play, of all things, a game of seek. Seeking weapons, armor, and trinkets that belonged to them. Eilithe was certain that she had seen the Sleeper’s visage, so who now, was Dead Sun’s jailer in this space between spaces. Stark naked, it was only her and Ay’lysae.
Somewhere. The rest of the family was searching.
“Press forward.”
“Keep walking.”
“Find your mother’s daggers.”
Eilithe could still hear the three that haunted her ear, which meant– she hoped she wasn’t dead. Naked as the day she was born, she tore along a cold and damp path, overturning barrels– digging through disturbed dirt.
The anklet. You have to find the anklet.
The daggers were almost easy to find, which made her look hard for the thing that mattered most to her. In all her frantic searching, she hadn’t noticed how the Jailer’s traps had weakened her. She did not cease panic until Kurel’s gift was tightly secured around her ankle.
She could leave without the rest of it. But Ay’lysae was still searching. It happened in seconds. A snap of a spike made of black rock pierced her skin and black veins stretched from the wound.
If she had died, she did not know how long she was such. What came next was searing pain as Kurel’s hunting knife went hot blade to wounded flesh. Her scream was bloodcurdling.
In the clinic, Eilithe drew her first breath that wasn’t labored. Tuning back in to Barirn’s heavy footsteps, Kurel’s petulant ‘I’m fines’ and Yurissa’s increasingly impatient ‘sit the fuck downs’.
Eilithe was sure of one thing– and that was they could not continue fighting what they could not see until it was too late. What they didn’t understand. The night was spent pulled against Kurel in the small space between a wall and a counter top.
Kurel’s capacity for stupid ideas never ceased to amaze her. And his ability to convince her that his stupid idea was a good one, was something she’d never admit to. It ended in an exchange.
She would let the small rock creature they had captured bite him, and risk releasing the beast inside of him– in exchange, he allowed her to do this alone. His last words before they left in different directions to put out separate fires was ‘fine’.
The state of Eilithe’s personal relationships was laughable. Clarcius was busied and loyal, but not constant. Reveria and her had yet to fully forgive each other. Velerodra was..mostly mist. But the worst, was perhaps the relationship with her Quartermaster.
She could not quite figure out if Hillier was jealous of Kurel’s return, because it meant Hill would never make good on the many passes he’d made at her or because the Kul Tiran merely thought Kurel an unworthy asshole.
Either reason might have been fair, though she grew increasingly frustrated by Hillier’s avoidance of her. Two month ago they were close– not close enough to be anything like what she and Kurel were– but close enough to cry with each other over lost children.
With her attempts snubbed, she was prickly sipping bourbon when Kurel came in. Hillier left for a walk and never came back and the tension in the air was so thick even Kurel saw it. She never lied to Kurel.
“He saw me in my loneliness.. made offers when you were gone. I didn’t take them. I can only guess he’s jealous or just doesn’t like you.”
“He in love with you?” Kurel had asked her such a thing before. It was in a calm tone that wasn’t actually at all, it was a loaded shotgun and his temper the trigger.
She didn’t know. She just knew it didn’t matter.
“Old Town is on fire,” the voice of Mairdrin came over the Comms. Of course, it was. Old Town was always on fire, this time literally.
The argued on the way to Old Town, all the way from the Mage District. With the tea house and clinic there, they stood to lose a lot of coin. Kurel said a lot of things, but all Eilithe heard was ‘before he sneaks into your quarters’. A pang shot through her stomach, when she realized of what he was afraid.
“I’m serious, Eilithe. It’s dangerous.”
“He would not do what you are insinuating.”
“I’m puttin’ a stop to it.”
“Black smoke..” Eilithe said, as they rounded a bend with Old Town in the distance. It rose up into the sky, but at her range it was impossible to tell where the smoke was coming from.
“Before it does become a problem. Before–”
She was glad he didn’t finish. Her feelings were raw and easily forced to her eyes in the form of tears. They got closer to the smoke before he carried on. It wasn’t about that, which was what he called it. It was about ‘us and what we’ve built’.
Clarity came then. When people turned on him they turned on her. And when they turned on her, both of them ended up shot by traitors to Dead Sun and with a whole mountain of problems.
On the bridge between the Trade District and Old Town, she stopped. Flame and smoke raising beyond the stone she stopped and faced him.
"The day that letter came I fought with Reveria in the Reach’s court. Velerodra left nearly in tears and Clarcius could barely look at me. Do you know why?“
She paused, but not long enough for him to answer. ”Because I vetoed the vote to oust you as a Sun Speaker on a technicality. And I knew it was a technicality. When you were gone.. there were times when I was angry. When I was so alone that other things looked good. But when I got that letter, it all hit me in every word within that letter that I love you. I love you in a way that I cannot stop. There is nothing. Nothing you could do. No amount of time you could leave. No line, no rule, no nothing. That would make me reconsider. How appealing a gentler man might look in my loneliness is nothing when held up against you. I cannot love another, I will not. I tried and we both know what happened. It’s only you. And the fucking lot of them can hate you, they can hate me, they can kick and scream but nothing will ever change us. This. Or what we have built together.“
She struck him with every word– and she knew she had, because he was as quiet as ever. His lips came to hers needy and firm against hers. Eilithe savored it, because this was his I love you. It was not long after though his lips mumbled against hers, “Our town’s on fire.”
She had nearly forgotten.
@kurel-andiel @velerodra-valesinger @revthepunchbear @deadsunharbor @clarcius-blackbirch @raven-scorned @barirnshadowwind @xollowalliance (source of said fire)
