#ilandreline

[edmund-valks]

Interlude - The Maw

A blacksmith would have taken different steps.  Forge the blade, give it a handle, wrap the handle.  Something like that, at least.  Thankfully she was able to skip most of that by designing a mold and taking extraordinary care in its production.  A perk of being smart, as she figured it.

The metal was nearly ready.  It wasn’t the colour of anything she’d seen back on Azeroth, instead shedding four different glows at once.  They overlapped and intertwined because nothing here was ever simple.  Ilandreline wasn’t one for metaphors, but even she could recognize this one: four ores, wildly distinct, that could only be properly alloyed through the use of a fifth.  Naturally the alloy was stronger than any of them independently.  Also it was a bastard to work with.

She fed the ingots into the crucible, watching as the forge’s heat quickly liquefied the elethium.  A pull of the lever and it drained into the waiting mixture, which one more movement injected into the waiting mold.  That had been the real work, creating the exact negative space needed inside a block of solid stone.  Not just any stone, of course, but the kind that wouldn’t melt in a furnace designed to bind souls to metal.  Getting pieces of the Black Empire was hard enough even before one crossed into the realms of the dead.

Once the mixture had filled the block, Ila grasped it with the tongs she’d liberated from the soulforger whose workspace she now used.  Steadiness was required to keep the metal from sloshing out or the whole thing from upending.  Her movements were slow and deliberate, never jerking.  A device was only as good as its craftsmanship; she intended this one to be her masterpiece.

Typically one would quench using a specific liquid.  Fresh water, salt water, olive oil, certain beverages made by the dwarves… what one used depended on the desired outcome and the materials involved.  For this it was something a bit more unusual.  The Maw had recently become the destination for a great deal of anima drawn from the spirits being repented in Revendreth.  This made for a sharp, hungry quench, which was precisely what she needed.  She lowered the discomfiting block of slick stone into the roiling crimson, listening to the violent hissing as the alloy took shape.

Once the soul-steam had cleared and the little barrel was minutes removed from its moment of boiling, she fished the mold out with her borrowed tongs.  "This better have worked," she muttered, mostly to externalize the worry.  Better out than in, that sort of thing.  "Only one way to find out."

Placing the black brick on the anvil nearby, she inspected every side for cracks or gaps.  The only one she could find was the little hole where she'd added the molten metal, so… maybe it had happened?  Picking up the hammer she'd made for just this purpose, Ilandreline closed her eyes and sought the resonance.  It was so much easier now than that first time.  That was how she'd survived the darkest path into the Shadowlands, and ever since she'd found herself increasingly aware.  Now it was almost as easy as making saltpeter; not necessarily fast, but a simple task for the experienced.  She felt for her core, dove into it, releasing her perceptions through the nightpurple veins bordering reality.

The Black Empire remnant was anything but dark now.  Even the Maw's dolorous half-light caused a reaction, oil-slick scintilla flaring across the infinitesimal pockmark surface.  In a way, it sang.  Not like a voice, but a tuning fork, a frequency of sensation manifesting multitudinous waves into singular tone.  Where her family's faith resided she felt the echo of kinship.  Reaching through herself, she grasped the thread of the stone's structure and pulled.

In a sweater, such an act would have been the destruction of order that caused its unraveling.  The bedrock of those who dwelt between the stars was made differently, however.  What she had done manifested as an ordering matrix, leaching the inherent structural chaos out, snapping the minerals into some kind of grid.  Gripping tightly through the depths of her soul, Ilandreline raised the hammer high and swung.

The hardened shadowghast strikeface tolled as it impacted the ruthlessly ordered block.  The sound was brutal in its discordance, an archetypal resonance of shattered chains.  What was held tightest become most undone; the black stone crumbled to dust, its forced structure inverted until it could no longer hold together.

Ilandreline felt her entire self ringing as she set the hammer aside.  The reverberations rattled through her bones, trying to unmake her as thoroughly as she had the old gods' relic.  But she was a Glimmerbow, born of those dark blessings, the ancient primordial unmakers' essence suffusing the deepest fibers of her being.  The resonance traveled through her, unable to find an outlet to erode, equally unable to escape until she opened her mouth.

She didn't scream; this wasn't pain.  Instead she had become an accidental echo chamber, an acoustic amplifier not unlike the elegant curves of a bell.  From inside her structure rang the peal of uncreation.  Open-mouthed she exhaled it into the stygian plains, unable to cease until the note was spent.  Unable to hear, she could still feel the rigid structure of forge beside her eroding beneath the reciprocal action to what she had done.

As suddenly as it began, the moment ended, buckling her knees.  Reflex alone allowed the elf to catch herself, weak-legged and bent over the anvil, eyelids only now able to pry themselves apart.  Unsteady, Ila exerted her focus once more, willing herself to stay standing.  As she did so, refusing to acknowledge the possibility she might collapse, she examined her work.

Atop a fine pile of utterdark sand lay a blade.  It was a single piece, cast-forged, with a tapering, triangular blade emerging from one edge of a metal-wrought vertebra.  Opposite the blade extended the cylindrical smoothness of bone, flaring into a double-knobbed pommel.  It was far more beautiful than she'd expected, or perhaps that was the wrong word.  Elegant?  Fitting.  This was a blade made with purpose, for someone very specific, and such certainty was apparent in its aesthetics.

"Almost done."  Her voice was hoarse though she didn't realize it.  She hardly knew she'd spoken, what with the ongoing ringing in her ears, and the way structures sounds such as speech fell apart in the fading wake of the hammer blow.

Ilandreline forced her legs to stillness, stood straight atop them once more.  Grasping the weapon's handle -- she would wrap it with aged linen later, to give it the feel of something found in an ancient mausoleum -- she turned its stiletto point toward herself.  Her other hand moved to expose an expanse of pale flesh, against which she set the blade.

"Freely given," she murmured, the spoken fraction of a larger recitation mostly contained within her mind.  "A gift for another, made with intent.  A part of me to carry with you."  It was almost embarrassing to say it.  Hearing herself speak so openly brought heat to her cheeks, but it wasn't so bad to shake her from her plan.  Not after coming so far.  

Shutting her eyes, Ilandreline exhaled slowly.  Her free hand rested along the cold curves of the pommel.  Freely given.  Lungs fully empty, she braced herself and pushed.

The blade slid in more easily than she'd expected, quickly piercing through skin and fat and muscle.  Farther and farther she guided it until the change in resistance signified she'd reached her goal.  Just the barest movement more, pricking the exterior of her still-beating heart.  Now the hard part.

Pulling the blade back out was the most excruciating experience of her life.  It was a tool of purpose, to pierce through barriers and bring an end.  To remove it without having killed was to deny it that fulfillment, and so the blade fought her every fraction of the distance.  Blood -- her blood -- flowed over its pyramidal smoothness, slicking everything, trying to undo her efforts and allow the blade to feast on her life.  Gritting her teeth, she looped a finger through the hole in the center of the guard, using the extra leverage to force the dagger out of her flesh entirely.

Slamming the bloodied weapon back on the anvil, Ila scrambled to the forge.  There she snatched up the last of the prepared tools, a length of featureless iron, brilliantly glowing from the infernal heat.  "Fuck, this was a stupid idea."  Laughing at herself, she pressed the white-hot implement against the triangular piercing in her breast, allowing her rasping scream to drown out the sound of flesh cauterizing.

She didn't know how much time elapsed between keeping herself from bleeding to death and when she was able to stand again.  It didn't matter, not really.  The important thing was Loira's gift was finished.  Complete, even.  Totally worth it… but if she loses it I'm gonna kill her.

Chuckling at that, Ilandreline scraped herself together.  Time to get out of here before the Covenants' assault wavered and the Jailer's forces had time to look for things like wayward elves with bad ideas.  She took another quick look at her handiwork as she vacated the premises.  There was no trace of her blood any longer, though she didn't remember wiping it clean, and every now and then the faint ghost light would reflect off a fleck of gleaming darkness.  Sand in the blade?  No, not sand; the dust of the Black Empire.  Absorbed somehow following the sanguine consecration.  Curious, but probably not a big deal.  She hadn't felt anything strange, and her instincts were usually good about that sort of thing.

"Thanks for the help!" she told the forge's previous user, stepping over its hollow corpse.  The spiked helmet that had been something like a head was mangled beyond recognition, as if repeatedly bashed by some kind of heavy blunt object.  Ilandreline hefted her oversized wrench, rested it on her shoulder, and set off.  Hopefully the blood loss wouldn't slow her down too much.  It would be a shame to die before she could actually give Miss Winford her present.

(( Tagging for mentions of @ms-winford ))

[edmund-valks]

Ilandreline - The Call

"-and that's how you can extract wickedness and disorder from a wayward soul, drawing into a crystalline matrix to use as a power source," the gnome explained, briefly glancing up from the workbench to smile at her.  The expression normally would have made Ilandreline uncomfortable but for whatever reason, she was into it.  In fact, she found herself leaning over the unfinished power pack to clip her grounding cable next to Dresindra's.  Her hand brushed against the gnome's, causing the latter to look up again.

"I can think of something else I'd like to perform detailed analysis on," Ila began in what was her most seductive voice.  "Why don't we slip into something a little more antistatic and-"

Lina!  Come home!

Her vision shattered as the voice tore through her consciousness on a tide of dark power, breaking the dream into countless mirror shards.  Her grandmother’s voice lingered, like the breath of some hulking monster.  Closing her eyes again didn’t help, so Ila sighed and dragged herself out of bed.  “You win, Granny Laine,” she said around a jaw-splitting yawn.  “See you soon.”

The message wouldn’t carry, it wasn’t that kind of spell, but the Eldest had ways of knowing what her kin were up to.  She’d know well enough that her favourite grandchild was on the way.  Still… Ilandreline didn’t want anyone to worry.  The Fence had always made her feel welcome, and sometimes even understood.  A note was definitely in order.  Three, thinking about it.

The first was easy enough, folded and unsealed, though she addressed it specifically to Remington:

Boss Thornbolt,

Family matter came up unexpectedly.  Don’t know when I’ll be back or if I’ll be able to chat the normal ways.  Some of that stuff acts up when I’m back home, you know?  I think it’s something to do with the convergence of transplanar matrices and some other stuff I just realized you probably don’t care about.  Anyway, I’ll be back in touch soon as I can.  Take care of yourself!

-Ilandreline

The second was similar, though she had to scrounge around her workbench for the crystal that would accompany it:

Miss Winford,

I’ve got to see my grandmother, apparently.  I’m guessing everything’s okay, but whatever it was sounded urgent.  I’ll be back soon, I think, and able to help out with any special projects you might want.

There’s more in my workshop, but the door’s trapped to hell and back, so I recommend entering the magic way.  The crystal in this letter’s envelope should be able to let you in if you use it like a focus.  It’s like a key, except it actually will make your portal really unstable in addition to drawing it to a specific endpoint.  You’re good with portals, though, so I’m sure you can figure out a way to make it work.

Your friend,

Ila

The last note she saved until she’d constructed the aforementioned destination funnel.  It was a simple enough circle -- the runes weren’t difficult, merely delicate -- with most of the heavy lifting being done by the crystal shard at its center.  That was where the little piece she’d left for Loira had cleaved from, so it would call to the keystone, at least based on all the theory she knew.  Once satisfied, she began writing again, this time in a simple cipher.

Loira,

My grandmother’s message was a little alarming, but I’m sure she’s okay.  What I don’t know is how long I’ll have to stay at home to handle whatever came up.  She wants me to follow in her footsteps someday.  I’m worried that day might be coming sooner than I want to consider.  If it’s happening now, I don’t know when I’ll see you next.  Sorry about that.  I’ve enjoyed helping with your special projects.  You always have the most fascinating problems to solve.

Anyway, feel free to use my space (the one you’re in now) for whatever while I’m gone.  I wasn’t kidding about the door being trapped, so I recommend entering only via translocational magic.  I also left out a couple of the other things just in case someone else took that letter.

One: Do not start the forge/furnace without emptying it!  I put a lot of explosives in there along with a couple bricks that will release highly acidic gases if heated.  Please don’t melt yourself!

Two: There’s a small stash of preserved meat in the top drawer of my workbench.  Help yourself if you’re feeling peckish.  I’m pretty sure it works with your metabolism.

Three: If you move my bed, you’ll be able to find a trapdoor of sorts beneath it.  I recommend magic to open it (because it’s heavy and a pain in the ass, not because it’s dangerous).  I’ve got an assortment of reagents there you might have use for -- bones, preserved organs, teeth, etc.  Take whatever you like and don’t worry about replacing it.  I don’t use them as much as I thought I would.

Hopefully I’ll see you again soon.  Please take good care of yourself!  The Respite’s been feeling a lot like home to me, but I don’t know how much that would remain the case if you weren’t around.

Warmest regards,

Ila

The envelope was addressed in simple print to “Miss Loira Winford, Apothecary”.  Beneath that she wrote “From Ilandreline Glimmerbow”, with the initials of their first names aligned in a column.  She put a single box around the two letters, giving her friend the key to the substitution cipher she’d used.

Satisfied that all was in order, Ila tossed two more changes of clothes into her pack and headed out.  Home -- and Granny Laine -- were waiting.

(( tagging for mentions of @ms-winford and @thornbolts ))

[edmund-valks]

Ilandreline - Just One Cookie

(( Part I: The Call ))

(( Part II: A Compound Beginning ))

If you listened closely enough, you could hear the emptiness breathing.

It was fascinating to consider, or would have been if it weren't also slightly terrifying.  There was no reason for this space to sound like the lungs of some unutterable beast, yet it did.  Everything she knew about the Shadowed Path said it was empty, that nothing dwelt here and nothing could.  Perhaps nothing did.  What if the very substance of the Path was alive in some fashion?  The implications were-

Not important right now.  That was her mother's voice, reminding her that there would only be time for later speculation if she lived to do it.  Smart folk did not dally on these roads, even those who knew how to walk them.  They were treacherous, and Ilandreline did not mean their terrain.  She'd lost a distant cousin to them more than a century earlier, and supposedly even the one who'd known enough to open the First Tree to the darkness at its roots hadn't known enough to come back.

But they were fast.  She'd used them to get to Kalimdor in a few days, or to get from Tirisfal to her family's lands in an hour.  Time and distance worked differently here, or perhaps they worked exactly the same and locationality was the odd one.  There were multiple frames of reference to choose from, but they all boiled down to the same result: travel here was vastly more efficient than on Azeroth.  Which is why you need to get moving instead of standing around!

Her feet started moving again, picking their way over what she assumed counted as "the ground".  It was definitely dirt-like, and there were… grassish things… to either side, but it didn't smell quite right.  Not for nature, at least.  Most plants didn't smell so strongly of iron.  No, not iron.  She sniffed again, trying to place it.  Ah, right.  Blood.  Fresh blood, at that, before it dulled to a brown stain on the stones.  She wondered what this place would look like in sunlight.  Would its appearance match the sharp scents?  Could it even exist under such harsh light?

Despite carrying no torch, Ila was grateful for the sun's absence.  Her sensitive eyes could remain free of the goggles for a little longer, taking in all the subtle variations of shadow that were lost in the harshness of day.  She hadn't noticed how much she'd missed living with naked eyes until she'd started visiting with Granny Laine.  The Respite was a lot of things, but even Silverpine gloom didn't compare to the tranquil shade of their forest.  When she’d left the Ghostlands a few years ago, she’d felt like she had no home; now it seemed she’d found two.  Ilandreline smiled at that, letting her mind wander as much as her body.

Time definitely didn’t function normally in the space.  The pocket watch she’d made in her early days with the Fence told her it had been an hour, but her legs said it was much longer than that despite only feeling like fifteen minutes had passed.  She pushed on, digging into her snack bag to put some energy back into her muscles.  An hour later by internal reckoning -- and half that by the watch -- she stumbled out of sheer exhaustion and decided maybe it wasn’t time to get back up just yet.  Had it been two hours or twelve?  How far had she gone?  Why were her first days’ meals gone already and how was she still hungry?

Her eyelids were heavy, far heavier than they should’ve been.  “Fuck it, nap time.”  The words came out slurred.  It was a struggle just to move her pack beneath her head, to use it as a pillow.  Before she drifted off, Ila stuffed one of her grandmother’s cookies into her mouth, figuring there was no better time for some homemade coziness than immediately before passing out to sleep entirely unprotected in the nightmarish wilderness-phase running tangent to her plane of origin.  Aurelaine often joked she’d baked quite a few dishes with a lot of love in her younger days, where love was a euphemism for any number of exciting poisons.  As she swallowed the last of the cookie and drifted into the deeper darkness of sleep, Ilandreline was quite positive she could taste some of that same love now.

***

Waking up felt surprisingly pleasant and not at all terrifying.  Granny Laine was there, looking amused, and a vine had grown over her, but otherwise everything seemed… fine.  Good, even.  Ila stood and stretched, yawning, considering the last time sleep had left her so refreshed.  Never?  That sounded right.

"Couldn't help sneaking a treat before bed, eh?"  Her grandmother's voice was mock-chiding, the only good kind of chiding to receive from her.  "I should've known."

The vine tried to slither back around her leg, so she kicked it.  "You didn't give me cookies to not eat them.  It was lonely and I thought a taste of home would be nice.  Didn't expect it to, I dunno, summon you or whatever."

"Is that what you think they did?"

The young elf shrugged, gathering her gear and preparing to get back on the road.  "You're here, aren't you?  Shall we?"

Her grandmother made an indeterminate noise in her throat but began walking beside her nonetheless.  It was nice, really.  They'd gone for a few strolls back home, but there were always people around to cause trouble.  Not here.  It was just the two of them and an entire ecology built on what sure seemed to be carnivorous plants.

They walked in silence for some time, only pausing for Ilandreline to sip the water she'd brought, trying to get the leftover tastes from the night out of her mouth.  Everything, even the air, had an unusual taste; not of decay as she'd expected.  Instead it was something remembered from childhood, one of those memories that hid if you looked straight at it.  She'd have to sneak up on it by pretending to be interested in something else.

"So is this one of those things where we walk and you point out little things I need to know to survive or grow or whatever?"

She saw the cryptic smile from the corner of her eye.  "Something like that, perhaps.  Do you still need me holding your hand?"

"What?  No!  I just… not all of this comes easy, you know that.  I'm fine with making things up as I go, but that's really dangerous with… this stuff."  Ila gestured broadly, encompassing their entire surroundings.  "I like to have the numbers on my side.  There aren't any numbers here, no science.  It's all, I don't know, epistemological gradients or something."

Aurelaine laughed, a gravelly sound bordering on coughing.  A chortle!  That's what one sounds like.  "You're not wrong, child.  I'm only along to observe.  Maybe I can point something out that helps; maybe I even will.  This is your journey, though, not mine.  I've had my share already, paid the prices."

That made sense.  They continued, once more quiet, moving too fast and too slow at once, causing everything around them to be in perfect detail as it warped under the effects of tunnel vision.  The metallic taste remained in the back of her throat, tickling the corners of recollection.  She refused to focus on it, knowing that to do so would ensure she never remembered the answer.

Everything changed from one blink to the next.  The landscape was even darker now, near blinding to her gifted sight.  Her nostrils flared, the distinct aroma of blood foremost in the air, enough to make one hungry.  Or perhaps that was unrelated; journeys required food.  As she went for her trail mix, something caught her wrist, stopped it entirely.  Frowning, she glanced down to find a rubbery tendril wrapped around her arm.  "Fuck off," she said, getting no reaction.  The next best idea would be to cut it, but the only knife she had at the moment was not one she was willing to risk on a simple tentacle.  She looked over to her grandmother instead.  "Any chance you can do something about this?"

Grey eyebrows arched as eyes flicked from Ilandreline’s face to the appendage and back.  “Of course I can.”  She paused then deliberately added, “I won’t.”

Should’ve expected as much.  “This one of those ‘your journey, your problem’ moments?”  When Aurelaine nodded, she sighed.  Time to figure it out then.  There was a way; she was supposed to find it.  Trial by fire and all that.

“If I go solving your problems,” the predictable lecture began, “you’ll keep expecting me to give you the answers.  We both know that’s not how you learn.  You want to see the whole process, derived from first principles.  That way you can extend the logic as far as it goes, come up with your own hypotheses.  It also ensures you aren’t limited by the pace of your teacher, doesn’t it?”

The fraction of her consciousness paying attention laughed.  “Sure does.  Saves them the trouble of trying to answer all my ‘why’ questions, too, so it’s really a service when you think about it.  Don’t have to ask why if I’ve already done the math.”

“Yes, yes, I’m well aware that you’re infuriating, Lina, you don’t have to remind me.”  Dry humour ran in the family even if it skipped a generation.  “Getting back to the matter at hand, I’d simply remind that little pest about the order of things.  It’s a remnant, a cast-off, a weak afterthought of a failed god’s stray thoughts.  A pale imitation of the majesty to be found in the Great Dark, yearning to be more than it ever could.  I’d simply banish it and move on.”

That was one possibility then, banishment.  And how did banishing work?  Ila tried to dredge up the memories of mostly futile arcane schooling, seeking the bits that had remained.  Summoning circles… banishing circles?  An inversion of process, though the commanding nature remained constant.  How did that work for her, though?  She knew how to draw the runes, but had never been able to power them independently.  Blood would work, of course, had she prepared the circle already.  There had to be another way.

She rolled back through the words, sifting through them more by “feel” than analysis.  Hunches were the backbone of discovery; you felt something would be the answer, so you thought through the possibility.  What else had been hinted at?  Remnant.  Afterthought.  Failed.  Imitation.  Yearning.  Afterthought-Imitation-Yearning.  Was there something there?  She ran her tongue along the backs of her teeth, tasting iron and arsenic and something more as her mind kicked into gear.

The order of things.  These paths were bored through the near-realms of Azeroth by the so-called Old Gods, the entrapped dwellers-between-stars her grandmother held in such low esteem.  A trapped god was no god at all, for a proper god could not be limited.  That meant any of their leftovers were inherently inferior to the powers receiving her family’s offerings.  Not that creatures spawned from the lesser entities recognized Glimmerbow authority, but they should have.  There was that connection, like distant cousins where one is heir to a throne and the other is a cast-off from some hedge knight.

Oh, is that it?  Connectivity?  Like to like?  The tendril tightened, squeezing her bones.  It was starting to hurt.  If she waited too much longer, she might have to finish her trip with a shattered wrist.  Time to see if I learned anything.

Ilandreline focused the entirety of her consciousness on the wriggling mass, willing her vision to bore through the layers to see down to where it was no longer a physical appendage.  Deep down, it was a thoughtform, a psychic remnant, a projection, and she needed to see that.  How long it took to finally happen, she didn’t know.  She was drenched in sweat, and shaking from the effort, but she could see it clearly.

Banishment would require antithesis, but… that’s not what this is.  We’re the same, aren’t we, cousins from the same blood?  I can’t banish myself.  So what if…  She turned most of her attention inward, leaving only enough out to keep firm mental grasp on the essence of her assailant.  There was this dead-end creature left behind by one of the Four… and then there was her.  They were different, except where they weren’t.  Similarity was what she needed now.

She burrowed into herself, pushing through the layers of supposed sophistication.  On the lowest level she was not an elf, or even something shaped.  She was an extension of the universe’s primal forces, a conduit of the Eternal Dark.  At that point, she was what the tentacle thought itself to be.  Letting herself dwell entirely in that space, she lost her self and called out to this distant cousin.  See me, her mind cried, know me for what I am!

Their sameness was her focus, to establish communion.  Something resonated -- somehow -- drawing the psychic echo toward her.  She could feel its alienness, the oil-slick of fractal madness in its relict consciousness, just as surely as she knew her own essence was vastly more potent.  What others would call the taint of her heritage was a strength here; she formed a pseudopod of self, vibrating midnight purple, and whipped outward.  The sensation of startlement rippled across her mind, followed immediately by the primal panic of something being drawn to its inexorable demise.

The tendril was swallowed within her, its corrupt form dissolving within her purity of faith.  A priest of the Glimmerbows was an architect of dissolution, a bringer of endings to foster the chaos of the new.  What she hadn’t expected was the way it became a part of her.

Ila had never been at war in her own mind before.  This severed piece of a dead un-god struggled with all its might to avoid being broken down, flailing every which way.  For a moment she worried she might lose and end up a prisoner in her own flesh.  Then reason reasserted itself, and the flexibility of mind her grandmother had praised made clear its value.  She bent without breaking, absorbed the harshest assaults, returned to form without permanent deformation.  And then she swallowed it whole, allowing the thing to be torn apart and joined with her essence.

Shaking so hard she couldn’t have written a single legible letter, the elf opened her eyes.  Her grandmother faded from sight, though her approving gaze lingered.  The overlapping flavours of multiple poisons lingered, dancing over her taste buds and scratching at her throat.  She had no idea where she was, though she knew she had been walking all this time.  The ligature marks of the tentacle remained on her forearm, though, proof that something had happened, that she had conquered the smallest challenge.

Several deep breaths later, the shivering stopped.  Her whole body still tingled, the aftereffects of an adrenaline overdose, but that was manageable.  She took a swig of water to put moisture back into her body, then pulled the “map” from her inside jacket pocket.  It was more algorithmical than cartographical, but she read it as easily as Thalassian.  There was… a place to be, and she was much closer now than when she had started.

Through an act of will, Ilandreline set her legs in motion again.  There would be others, she knew.  This realm was made from the dreams of god-corpses, an afterimage of what they’d tried to make real.  But she had proof they paled before the strength Aurelaine had cultivated in her.  Let the dead gods try their worst.

Stretching out through the mental channels her hallucinations had opened, she tasted the planar gradient and turned toward her destination.  Plum was home and nightmare was the enemy, but blood and bone and leaf and light showed the way.  Not entirely certain the poisons had actually left her system, Ila climbed toward her destination unaware of the horrific grin on her face.

[edmund-valks]

A Special Delivery

A small package is placed at the Respite’s door, neatly wrapped in plain brown paper.  There is a label on the outside addressing it specifically to Miss Loira Winford, ℅ the Fence Macabre.  Beneath the outer wrapper is a wooden box and an envelope.  The former has clearly been touched by the arcane -- a sigil of nightblue and starlight pulses gently upon its surface, indicating either ward or lock.  The envelope is much less impressive, being mundane paper with Loira’s name on it in an unfamiliar hand.  There is no detectable magic about it; the seal is plain wax, pressed with a featureless disk.

Within the envelope are several items: a letter folded into thirds; a small square of paper with a runed diagram; and what appears to be a business card for ‘Soq’amun’s Parcel Service’, presumably the delivering party.  On the back of that last is a note in the same hand as the address but much smaller to fit its message: Sender said to use the same key as her last note, but backwards.

Once deciphered, the letter reads:

Miss Winford,

I’m afraid I’m somewhat indisposed at the moment -- nothing to bother yourself over, seriously, please don’t do anything ridiculous like try to find me -- but didn’t want you to worry.  Getting this message out was a huge pain for reasons you’ll understand if you use the unlocking seal that Sentua was supposed to include.  She’s the one who rewrote this for me, by the way.  Delivered it, too, she’s pretty good with travel magic.  (If you want to know more, ask her about her work on near-material demiplanar coordinate mapping and non-regular intraplanar geodesics.)

Anyway, all that out of the way, I was just wondering if you had access to any reagent-quality examples of shal’dorei tattooing.  Something occurred to me recently that needs testing I hope to take up with you next chance I get.  More details then/later; don’t want to cramp someone’s hand by forcing her to copy a bunch of experimental nonsense she’s not interested in.

The box is locked because the contents may be unpleasant for you to touch directly.  Didn’t want to take any chances, you know?  I hope Sentua did what I suggested and showed off her spell aesthetics with the ward; she doesn’t do that enough.  Anyway, yeah, you can always relock the box yourself after you’ve opened it.  There’s nothing that’s going to burst out of there or something, but I think you’ll get it if you look.  You don’t have to, obviously, but maybe you can find some use for it?  It’s probably hard to get some of those components.

Your friend,

Ilandreline

The container is plain but well-made, mundane wood stained dark and polished.  A dispelling would take care of the locking ward with relative ease, though not nearly as much as using the provided diagram.  Within is another letter, so bright it seems to be nearly glowing, messily folded atop the box’s purple velveteen lining.  The paper positively reeks of Light, with an aggressive undercurrent of Order.  Opening it -- best done with tongs or tweezers, if one is sensitive to these things -- shows the same letter as provided, but this time in Ila’s unusual style.  The ink appears to be pure gold, though that’s quite impossible.  Whatever it happens to be, it is certainly not native to anywhere near to Silverpine, and probably not to Azeroth at all.

(( tagging @ms-winford, clearly the recipient of this questionable package ))

[edmund-valks]

Ilandreline - A Compound Beginning

(( Previously: The Call ))

"There's a hole in the world, dear girl, and not the good kind.  It leads to a place the living shouldn't be, and lets them get there in a way that shouldn't happen.  I hate to send you off, but you're the only one I trust to be adaptable.  Everyone else is too sure they understand everything to realize they're fools.

"The whole situation is a puzzle -- a deadly one.  Examine the pieces, Lina, find the edges.  See how they fit together, how this world connects.  Learn the rules that govern there, figure out how to break them.  Stay alive, too, and come back safely."

She'd never seen the older woman so uncertain.  It warmed and scared her at once.  "Is it really where the dead go?"  The specifics of her family's cosmology were still hazy, and Ilandreline didn't know which had been verified versus assumed.

"Only some of them, child.  Enough, I think, to make it difficult."

"Will I see family there?"  The possibility was very mixed given the number of relatives she'd had to avoid in the interests of personal safety.  Having to kill the already dead seemed… difficult, even -- or especially -- in the place where souls went.

"Not if they were sent off properly.  The Great Dark calls us home, not some bizarre 'afterlife'."

"But isn't there a cycle of things?"

"Of course there is, but it's not that literal.  We don't die, hang out a bit, and then come back.  We become a part of the Endless Night, our souls rejoined to the very fabric of all creation.  Perhaps pieces of us will once again be spun into a new person, but it will not be us."

Ilandreline considered for a moment, nodding only once she'd worked through the implications.  Their gods were creatures of ending and dissolution; it made sense that souls gifted to them would not be returned in a recognizable form.  She wondered what that might be like, to be unravelled to one's components.  It was recycling on a cosmic level.  Fascinating to think about, even if she had doubts about wanting it for herself.  "I hadn't thought about that.  Kinda neat.  There aren't any papers on that already are there?"

Aurelaine chortled.  "Not the kind you want.  You'll have to gather the data yourself, I think.  Good thing you'll be closer than any of us have ever been, eh?  Should be enough to keep you from getting bored doing the rest of what I've asked."

"Good point."  Someone else might've argued their commitment to family always came first, but she had no delusions on that front.  Sure, she didn't want to disappoint her grandmother, and wouldn't have wanted to even if that wasn't an often fatal experience, but she needed mental stimulation to do her best work.  Sounded like she'd have plenty.  "I guess the only thing left to ask is how I'm getting there.  I don't think anyone in Icecrown wants me there, and Orgrimmar's portal network isn't exactly open for tourists right now, so…"  Ila trailed off, waiting patiently for the answer she was sure was coming.

"Ah, that.  Yes.  Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to do part of that work yourself."  That was her self-amused smile showing now, not the happy one.  "I've acquired a diagram of the circle used to tap into the breach atop Icecrown, but we'll need to know how to adapt our own paths to reach there."

That perked her up immediately.  "Really?!  That's wonderful!  Where is it, I want to get started right away and-"

"Lina.  I know you're excited but I need you to stop for a moment.  Look at me."  Granny Laine's gaze was at its most piercing.  "This is extremely dangerous, all of it.  Start to finish, none of this can be taken lightly.  We can't afford to lose you.  I can't afford to lose you, either.  If something happens to you out there… you're on your own.  You'll be beyond my reach.  Understood?"

Solemnity draped itself over her enthusiasm, a damping force as efficient as a rubber grip on a wrench.  She'd be more on her own than ever, possibly with no way back until she could make one.  Ilandreline chewed her lip, running through the possibilities.  Finally she nodded.  "I understand.  And I won't let you down."

"I know, dear girl, but I need more than that.  I need you to promise you'll come back."

She grinned then, hiding the trepidation she felt behind the warm love she had for her grandmother.  "I will, Granny.  You have my word."

***

There were paths only a select few could walk, and of those even fewer did so safely.  One such path was that of the Eldest's Apprentice.  Another was found in certain shadows that were far deeper than they let on.

The latter was where Ilandreline's feet found themselves.  She stared up at the peculiar tree, an imbricated mass formed by many trunks twisted into one.  Oh.  That's a metaphor, isn't it?  The thought hadn't occurred to her before.  Not much had, in fairness; she'd grown up with the old tree as a fixture of life.  They'd all learned not to play near it if you ever wanted to come home again, but she hadn't connected that with why its fruit was reserved for very specific uses.  At its base, veiled behind its gnarled roots, was the beginning of the darkest road.

She'd traveled it before, of course.  There was no faster way to travel great distances unless you could make your own portals. Which she could have done if only she'd had the slightest sensitivity to the arcane.  Not that she was bitter or anything but…  Stop that, she chided herself.  Sure, a portal was beyond her to create, but she knew more about planar geometries than anyone else in her family, probably more than most mages in the world.  And after days of nonstop work, that knowledge had prepared her, brought her here.

Ilandreline couldn't stop herself from grinning at that.  She'd started with only three knowns and had made a map.  Where others would use portals already made, she had built her family's passage to the Shadowlands, a place none of them should ever end up.  She'd drawn up the requirements for an activating charm and with the Eldest's backing had received a ring that would do the job.  As far as she knew, no one had ever tried to map the void gradients of three coterminous planes, much less with the intent of using one to pass between the other two.  Maybe she'd publish it someday, after scrubbing the specifics out entirely.  The general solution wouldn't open her family to uncomfortable questions if she did it right.

"Here we go, I guess."  It was more to herself than the small audience gathered to see her off.  Still, she found herself looking back to take in what might be the last time she saw her home or family.  Granny Laine was there, of course, radiating confidence and authority.  Ilandreline's mother, Mellura'thel, stood to her left, coldly distant, possibly worried.  And there was Von on the other side, the only one smiling, though she seemed uncertain if that was the right expression for the moment.

"Don't worry," she told them, struggling to project her normal confidence that everything would turn out fine, "I'll get this sorted soon enough.  Just don't tear the gate down on me, okay?  I don't want to have to revise the whole trail while I'm walking it."

Only Aurelaine responded, striding forward with an energy at odds with her venerable appearance.  "Don't worry, child.  So long as Darkness remains, so will we."  She stopped very close to Ila, straightening up with visible effort to look her in the eye.

"I can see you're beginning to understand now," she spoke softly, barely loud enough for her granddaughter to hear.  "You thought you'd started on your way already, but now you see this is it.  You already know I trust you'll do what needs doing, just as you know I've demanded your safe return.  But now I need to say just one more thing."

Aurelaine, Speaker of the Great Dark, architect of their family's faith and power, drew a small pouch from within her robes, pressing it into Ilandreline's hand.  "I made these for you.  Think of me when you eat them, and remember your dear old granny loves and misses you.  You've always been my favourite, little Lina.  Be safe."

The sudden sting of tears took her by surprise.  She hurriedly stuff the bag of cookies into a pocket, blinking the wetness away before someone else might see.  "I will.  And I promise to make you proud.  I'll-"

"That's enough, dear.  You don't need to say anymore, and it'll just make it harder if you do."  Her wrinkles and creases deepened until she was smiling.  "Now stop dilly-dallying and get on your way.  The rest of us have work to get back to."

Off-balance, Ilandreline failed to say anything at all.  She did manage to return the wink, though.  With a nod, the youngest of the assembled Glimmerbows turned away, putting one foot in front of the other until the darkness beneath the greatest voidplum tree swallowed her entirely.

[edmund-valks]

Ilandreline - Soul Food

(( The Call - A Compound Beginning - Just One Cookie ))

She had nothing left to eat, a realization prompted by the sensation of fingernails scratching in an empty pouch.  A giggle escaped her.  There was something comical about running out of food in this vast wilderness.  "I could eat the plants."  That was her voice, wasn't it?  "They won't feed me, though.  They're made of nightmares and failure.  That won't do."

After realizing again her food pouch was empty, Ilandreline looked around.  Something about this place… She shook her head.  "Too hungry to think straight."  Her fingers wrapped around nothing in the little bag where she'd kept the last of her cookies.  "Wish those plant-things could help."

She reached for her water, settling for a drink now that there were only crumbs left to eat.  Squeezing the last drops into her mouth, she wondered what it would be like to die of dehydration at the end of her journey simply because she'd become so disoriented from a lack of food that she hadn't bothered to leave the Paths.  "Hah!  That would be some serious chump shit, wouldn't it, Granny?  Granny?"  She looked around, frowning at the emptiness where Aurelaine had been.  "Where'd you go?  Oh, there you are."

The old elf said nothing, merely sighed.  That was probably fair.  Ila wasn't exactly doing the family proud at the moment.  "Look, I know it's sad -- pathetic, even! -- but you have to admit it's funny.  Me dying, I mean.  Like this.  Right at the door out.  Hilarious!"

Maybe it wasn't that funny, now she thought about it.  More disappointing than funny.  That hurt, in a strange way.  She was used to disappointing her mother, but disappointing Granny Laine was something else entirely.  Maybe she should find a way not to do that?

"Would it be better if I, you know, left?  That way you wouldn't see it, right?"  She was beginning to suspect that wasn't really her grandmother at all.  Maybe it was a ghost.  Maybe it was a hallucination.  But would either of those be able to mimic the displeasure on her face so well?  She didn't know, ghosts were a Von thing, not an Ila thing.  "Whatever, it should work, I guess.  Or something.  Better to die where the dead go than here, where I'm like ninety percent sure they're just eaten.  Better than dying at a door I forgot to open then."

Again, the nagging feeling that there was an answer she was missing.  And again if fell away quickly, drowned out by the rumble of a stomach and the ridiculous situation she'd found herself in.  "Fuck it, let's just do the blood thing, plenty of that around here."  Someone laughed aloud -- it didn't sound like her, it was a bit high-pitched, kinda manic -- while Ila looked around for a plant to chop open.  There weren't many, for some reason.  This area seemed strangely barren, like if someone had cleared it intentionally.  That was odd.  Or was it?  She couldn't remember anymore.

Oh well.  No plants didn't mean no blood.  She had plenty.  Not just in her body, either!  Chuckling to herself, Ilandreline grabbed a large bottle from her pack, removing the stopper.  The iron-tang of its contents filled the air, tickling her nostrils with warm memories of a full belly.  Delicious.  Maybe if she drank the whole thing then-

No!  You're supposed to be doing something with this!  Nodding at the voice in her head, she stumbled around, emptying it as carefully as the wobbling terrain would allow.  Who authorized such an unstable plane?  She wanted to have words with them.  Or she would later, once her thoughts cleared up a bit; this haze was frustratingly hard to shake.  

She blinked bleary-eyed at her handiwork.  A circle… and now what?  Oh, right, some symbols of… uhhhh… similarity, right?  Making here like there and there like here and something big in the middle to represent an open conjunction of adjacent planes.  The blood was a perfect reagent because it was also a pun -- the places were joined because they started to bleed into one another.  A cackle from somewhere, probably her grandmother, who had decided to be invisible again.  That was her right, of course, but it got frustrating to be laughed at by someone you couldn't see.  Seemed rude somehow.

"Whatever, let's light this candle and uh… wait, there aren't any candles.  I… what was I supposed to use to…?  Oh, right!  Obviously."  She positioned herself over the central rune, giggling like a girl at the absurdity of everything.  Knife in hand, she opened her jacket and lifted her shirt out of the way.  While activating a circle normally didn't take too much, this wasn't a usual sort of rite.  Muttering something untranslatable in her family's Shath'yar dialect, Ilandreline slid the blade into her side.

The pain brought unexpected clarity.  Hissing through clenched teeth, she had a moment of recognition, one she did her best to cling to.  The life she gave to this work had to be placed here and here, with the proper invocations.  The words spilled out with only minimal slurring, the extensive practice Aurelaine had insisted on paying off in her moment of need.

This was indeed the exit, her planned destination and point of egress to the Shadowlands.  Despite being mostly delirious, she felt the work forming around her.  Through her?  Yes, that.  Black fire froze her arteries, leaving the pins-and-needles of lost sensation in its wake.  The symbols written in blood -- hers and others -- blazed holes in the non-space she’d traverse, like projector film melting in the lamp’s heat.  There was screaming somewhere, her throat sympathetically echoing the rawness of the cry.  Colours inverted around her, scintillating motes dancing in her vision, the darkness agonizing in its brilliance until-

There was light all around her.  Even with her eyes squeezed tight, she could feel its insidious heat trying to burn its way in.  But there was a certain firmness of ground around her, perhaps to all of reality, and that was what mattered.  Sightless, her fingers grasped at her belt to where she’d left her goggles hanging, exhausting what little energy she still possessed to replace them on her head.  Only then did she dare look to see what had happened, where she was.

Despite the smoky blackness of the cut-crystal lenses, there was more brightness than she would ever be comfortable with.  It didn’t hurt, not yet, but it ached.  She found herself staring at an endless blue sky overhead, with vague awareness of white stone around her, glinting gold.  Blood -- her blood -- pooled around her, providing a coolness the horrible sunlight never could.  Did she need to stop that?  Had she cut too deep?  It didn’t matter, she didn’t have the strength to cauterize herself at this point.

Wild laughter bubbled up from somewhere.  No, not somewhere, from inside her.  After a moment of wrestling with it, she stopped, though the inclination remained waiting behind the barrier of self-control.  “What a fucking joke,” she said, voice weak even inside her own head.  “Travel a billion non-miles or whatever only to die alone in a sun-scorched hellscape of a temple plane.”

“No, you will not die here.”  The words came from somewhere she could have seen if she’d been capable of moving any longer.  “You have not journeyed in vain, stranger.  There will be questions for you, when you are well enough to answer, but not until then.  Rest easy, child, knowing that the Kyrian will not let further harm befall you.”

The who?  She got as far as saying “What in the Endless Dark is a Kyr-” before her consciousness gave out entirely.

[edmund-valks]

A Practical Examination

"Just… right here then?"  She waited for the elderly woman's nod before driving the thin metal spike in.  The body they were working with seized up for the smallest moment before relaxing again.  Its eyes remained open, occasionally twitching to focus on details no one else could see, but there were none of the normal signs of pain.

Aurelaine patted her arm.  "Very good, dear.  I prefer to work this way when possible.  They've volunteered themselves to become a part of the Great Work; that devotion is far more powerful than the suffering we could wring from them."  She pointed to the fresh wound, moved her finger in a slow arc to the opposite side of the prone elf's head.  "You can technically go through either side for the same effect, but I've found that establishing a specific pattern strengthens the rite.  Remember, we control nothing but the shape of the channel.  Build it properly and the flow of power will do what you've planned."

Ilandreline nodded, making several notes in her book.  "Right.  Failure to provide a sufficiently robust channel will result in something like trying to force an entire ocean through a coolant line -- the weakest parts will give, with predictably messy results."

Her grandmother chuckled, expressing agreement with another pat.  "I told you you're better suited to this than you'd thought.  You know how to build, how to establish equilibria.  The only real difference is we're not using machines here."  The praise was enough to make the engineer flush pink to the tips of her ears.  "Now!  Draw it out for me.  We've got our willing supplicant here beyond the ability to feel pain.  What's our next step?"

"Let's see…"  Ilandreline consulted her notes, chewing the end of her pencil.  "The circle is drawn, of course, we've already prepared the offering, which means now we have to… oh!  The calling and opening!"

A nod.  "Do it.  What are you looking at me for?  This one is yours, Lina.  Show me what you've learned."

The younger elf reviewed the setup so far, making sure she had the right details.  Willing offering was this set of rites, the protective circle they'd created would be effective against those emissaries, she had these materials on-hand… All that taken into account, there were still several possibilities even before she considered rebalancing the energies.  Worry about that later, she reminded herself.  Start simple, get practiced.  Build the foundation before the house.

She retrieved an obsidian blade from the nearby tool bench then positioned herself at the offering's right elbow.  Strange, thinking of him like that; she'd played games with him long ago, back before he'd found the rich vein of faithfulness within himself.  He'd simply quit other pursuits one day a few decades back, taking up a sort of hermit's lifestyle, spending most of his days mentally exploring the places you could get with the right kind of specially treated fruits and mushrooms.  She hadn't understood back then, wasn't honestly sure she did now, but that didn't matter.  The important thing was she was going to help him get where he wanted to be, and he was going to do the same for her.

She started etching the ritual on the wrist closest to her.  It was a point of vitality, she'd learned, like the heart but different.  A small complex of delicate runework, one that would provide fuel and focus.  That was why they used obsidian, despite it being relatively difficult to acquire; nothing else made such perfect, easy lines on flesh.  The work took minutes, eventually climbing half up the forearm.  Ilandreline double-checked her work before moving on.  A mistake could be salvaged if you knew about it.  Satisfied, she moved to the next limb.

By the time she'd finished, her eyes ached from focusing and she'd dulled a handful of blades.  It was done, though, and pretty decently if she was any judge.  Things had only gotten awkward when she'd been working the offering's face and he'd started talking to her.  Turns out he was more aware than she'd realized.  He also remembered her and wanted to discuss her faith.  Not the most comfortable conversation when one was carving sigils into a forehead, especially when she was still trying to understand what she believed these days.  Her answers had been enough, apparently, as he'd eventually subsided again with a sort of pleased sigh.

"I… think we're ready, Eldest."  Ila looked at the blood on her hands, frowning.  It had gotten under her nails and was starting to dry.  She'd have to trim them to get it all out.

"You think or we are?  Which is it, girl?"  Aurelaine's tone was harsh.  Of course it was; she despised the uncertain and those who lacked confidence.

"We are."  Her voice didn't waver this time.  She'd gone over all her work twice as she'd done it, a third time after finishing the whole.  Everything was in order.  "With your permission, Eldest, I will begin tonight's Calling."

"You have it."  Just enough of a pause for Ila to start moving before she added, "Remember, you will pay for your mistakes.  I'm here to watch over our family, not to save you."

Real confidence builder.  Then again, that was probably the point.  Granny Laine knew what she was doing.  "Thank you, Eldest."

Ilandreline took her place at the center of the small circle, careful to avoid disrupting any of the delicate symbols she'd laid in silver.  She lit the candles and waited.  Minutes later, as the moon slipped below the horizon, she began to extinguish the flames.  Four drops of blood per candle, as always, accompanied by the invocation.  "Four for four," she recited, "given by one.  Less than five, but greater by far.  After life, beyond death, the Long Night comes.  We kill to serve.  We bleed to live.  Through our sacrifice, the light shall die at last."

The darkness that settled over them was more than night.  Anyone else would have found it oppressive, smothering perhaps, but a Glimmerbow's eyes saw the truth.  This was the deep expanse of infinity, a churning space where Titanic order had been unable to find a foothold.  Here was the counterforce that allowed life to exist beyond programmed parameters, that which created consciousness and free will.  She shivered, not from fear but awe.

You call out.  We hear.  Speak.

The speech was in their minds, she knew.  You didn't hear it, couldn't hear it.  Instead it resonated through your being, rippling through muscle and bone, darkening your body with reflected splendour.  Ilandreline had to take several breaths before she could focus properly.  "Tonight we offer one of ours to the Great and Endless Dark.  A cousin in blood and service."  She crossed from the calling circle into the one for offering, drawing her knife.

This voice means nothing.  Is nothing.  Shall receive nothing.  Shall become nothing.

Four times they said the word, each time impacting her more viciously.  The last was meant to force her to her knees, but Ila refused.  Her grandmother was watching, after all, and her punishment would be worse than whatever cruelties the Dark could inflict at this distance.  "I am Ilandreline, daughter of Mellura'thel, daughter of Aurelaine.  I speak in the Eldest's stead this night.  We are bound to the Endless Night and so is it bound to us."

Prove.

She bent down, placed her lips against the offering's forehead, living breath freshening the bloody etchings thereon.  "Our gift to you, this living blood, and a reminder of our bonds," she continued, sliding the ancient blade into flesh at the little notch in the collarbone.  "Our sacrifice is your gain, your whispers our knowledge."

Put to its true purpose, the knife felt alive in her grip.  With steady hand, Ila drew down, away from the neck, expecting resistance.  Instead the bones parted smoothly, clavicle and sternum offering no more resistance than skin had to obsidian.  "All in service to the last fading of the light."  She withdrew the blade, placing it reverently aside.

The runes in her cousin's flesh began to glow.  First with the brilliance of blood, then darkening through the midnight violet of the family's eyes into a blackness that melded with what surrounded the rite.  He was still alive, of course; that was what it meant to be an offering.  Dead meat meant little.  She wondered what it felt like, to have your chest opened like that, to be offered to the Whispering Dark at your own insistence.  Judging by the rapturous expression on his face, it was significantly less painful than she'd expected.  He's getting what he's always wanted.  The thought made her smile.  It felt so good to bring someone that kind of happiness.

This voice is known.  We welcome it.  Give and become known.

The Whispers seemed in no hurry.  The offering was beginning to blur at his extremities, the writings she'd placed there in the Dark's own language flickering in and out of sight as they anchored the ritual transferrence.  She waited until most of him was no longer distinguishable from their surroundings before picking up her grandmother's old blade again.

Once more she positioned herself by the body's head, but this time the tip of the knife rested against the runic focal point.  "A single light," she intoned, "flickering weakly.  This life -- the last remnant of a dying sun.  This body -- full of terrible promise and beguiling lies.  A so-called gift, this tyranny of ill-advised order."

She inhaled deeply, exhaled.  "Never meant to withstand the endless dark, we give it freely."  The blade drove through skull, brain, skull again, until she could feel its point pressing into the altar's pitted stone.

We accept.  You are known.

Shuddering with exultation, Ilandreline withdrew the knife, resheathing it without wiping away any of the blood.  She would not deprive it of such precious seasoning.  As the comforting weight of the Endless Night began to lift, she turned to see her grandmother's proud smile.  That would have been enough all on its own.  Returning a grin of her own, she took two steps before falling into an entirely other darkness.

[edmund-valks]

When the Blooming Ends

The air was warm and humid, though the sun had set hours ago.  She appreciated the darkness, incomplete as it was with the lemon-wedge moon dangling overhead, but the breeze wasn't enough to keep her from sweating.  That was part of why she'd chosen an outfit without sleeves and enough open space to get air where it could do good.  The brilliant turquoise vest had been an impulse acquisition a while back; she liked the thought of having gold cobras on her torso.  She'd also meant to look into finding a way to have it enchanted so the snakes could leap out to bite anyone who got too up in her space, but that idea was mostly forgotten by now.

And now… Ilandreline stared out over the Jade Forest with the rhythmic pulse of music behind her, thinking too hard.  The last three days had been something of a whirlwind, plus she hadn't bothered to sleep in a responsible fashion.  Her body was sore from dancing too much, her head ached from being awake for more than sixty of the last seventy-two hours, and her spirit… wasn't ready to stop yet.  It seemed to be feeding off the high of the trade she'd made, or perhaps the recognition of a kindred soul.  That shal'dorei had expressed a number of thoughts she'd long worried we're unique to her family.  Is this what it's like to feel understood?  No wonder people are always on about it.

Two nights in a row now she’d found herself outside of her comfort zone and both had gone… surprisingly well?  There were two common factors between them, and although two points were a line rather than a trend, she trusted her ability to interpret incomplete data sets enough to develop a hypothesis.  All things being equal -- an assumption good science often started with -- the possibilities were: she liked dancing far more than she’d ever expected; or that she was so fascinated by the frightfully tall Nightborne that she was more interested in exploring their common ground than bothering with boring necessities like sleep.  Previous dancing experiences suggested the first option was a matter of correlation without causation.

Frowning into the darkness, she cross-examined her poorly-supported conclusion.  Not out of doubt -- Ila was confident it was the right one, even knowing there could be other possibilities she hadn’t accounted for -- but a lack of understanding.  She had a slew of relatives who recognized the same things she did, who knew what it meant to crave the embrace of total darkness.  Plenty of them were equally aware of the usefulness of what the living left behind.  Waste not, want not, after all; though large for a family, their community was still a small one and had to take care with its resources.

But that wasn’t what she talked about, was it?  A long moment of silent consideration followed, then: no, it certainly wasn’t.  The shal’dorei had spoken of the memories that clung to fragments of the dead, the precious and fleeting nature of what slivers of soul remained within them despite countless years.  There was a certain thrill to the concept, beyond the simple practicalities of usefulness in repairing a reanimated servant.  She’d watched Von interrogate a spirit before, working to pull lost knowledge from it.  In typical family fashion, it had been efficient rather than gentle.  That was probably why a number of the more cautious of her relatives had laid out very specific rites to be performed when they died.  Most of them didn’t want to get ripped out from the Great Dark to be tortured for information that might be used against their descendants.

Maybe this was what Granny Laine had been trying to lead her toward all this time.  There was a difference between what the family did and what she did.  Ila’s grandmother had seemingly implied that her real power had nothing to do with centuries as an arcanist.  She worked as the conduit between the family and the Endless Night, ensuring the bargain made so long ago was maintained.  Perhaps her methods were more similar to those of the shal’dorei than Von?  Wouldn’t that be a fascinating coincidence?

Ilandreline smiled for the first time since her trade partner had departed.  Miss Winford would get copies of the recipes she’d acquired, of course, as well as all the help a non-alchemist with no arcane acuity whatsoever like Ila could provide.  But regardless of what they discovered (or didn’t) together, she’d still have to take them back home.  Mother would have opinions, naturally, but also insight.  Perhaps she even had a starlight rose analogue she’d carefully bred over the centuries that could be used to derive new creations.  New knowledge would please her, too, remind her that Ila was more than a wayward child of extremely limited use.

Aurelaine, though, was who she really wanted to talk to now.  The family matriarch loved leaving breadcrumbs of philosophy on the path so she could watch her granddaughter pick them up.  Wouldn’t it be nice to surprise her with something like this?  Almost as nice as what she’ll reveal in return.  That was the proper treasure.  The things she didn’t share with anyone else, the secrets she’d promised to Ilandreline alone.  Oh, that next trip home would be an exciting one, to be sure!

She stopped then, corners of her mouth drooping.  But then what?  She’d know more, yes, but would she be any closer to knowing what to do with herself?  What could one do with secret knowledge, knowing that very few people could ever comprehend the deeper truths?  Or, more importantly, since speaking most of it aloud was a great way to get inaccurately labeled as some kind of cultist?  Luck and extreme caution were the only reasons she hadn’t ended up in very hot water when she’d first left home, and people had only become more suspicious with the recent events involving the last of the Four.  Good old N’zoth, always ruining things for the true believers.  It was hard to respect the so-called old gods after everything they’d done.  She had to believe the whisperers between the stars were more competent, if only because she couldn’t imagine Granny Laine making a deal with something as clumsy or lacking in subtlety as C’thun or Yogg-Saron.

No matter.  She brushed the whole subject away, refusing to let it consume more of her energy.  There was a plan now, that was what mattered.  Step one: learn the intricacies of these new recipes and test what they produced.  Step two: go back to her family again, to share this knowledge and trade it for more of Granny Laine’s secrets.  Step three: write back to the shal’dorei and arrange another meeting.  It would be nice to put a smile on the Nightborne’s face.

Mind made up, Ilandreline hopped the stone wall she’d been leaning on and headed back for the Fence’s wagons.  That was enough thinking for one night.  Besides, it wouldn’t do to miss the portal home in the morning!