It didn’t take long for the frost to melt, for the wind that blew through the trees to rustle leaves instead of cut to the bone. It took longer for the thawed earth to be strewn with seeds again, for the first caravans start to leave the haven of Silvermoon. It would take longer still for the presence of the Broken Blades to be wiped away, but then, perhaps it was fortunate she no longer needed to sleep.
She left those closest to the City for the Crown to deal with, they had enough resources, and a show of strength needed to be made. No sense attracting unwanted attention. Instead she made her way to the southern towns, the hamlets and outposts that still held scattered brigands and scavengers. The approaching caravans would find them deserted, the bodies stacked into a neat pyre. There were rumours, there, that the ghosts of the bitter war had returned to retake what was theirs. They weren’t untrue.
It was all too easy to escape the notice of others. The dark and the forest provided her with all the cover she needed, all Lirelle had to do was keep walking. One foot in front of the other.
She did not stop until she was made to by things beyond her reckoning. It began with darkness. The path before her disappeared as the sun went sour. Shadows coiled and writhed. Enveloping, drowning, until there was nothing but the choking cold. But then came light, like the slightest of shimmering over the surface of an empty black ocean.
“Hey Lirelle.” A man spoke. His form was familiar, his voice was warm.
“I always thought that I didn’t dream, not after I made my peace with what happened in Northrend. But I realize, now, that it wasn’t blackness that I saw in my sleep. It was this place.” The man touched the sky, putting pin pricks of light into an infinite sky.
“It’s funny. Because deep down I think I knew. In some ways, I feel like I have always been here. One foot in the world of the living. One foot in the world of the dead.”
“Sederis.”
Lirelle flicks her gaze beyond him, then down, noticing the unmarred skin of her left hand. “Where is this?”
“The threshold,” he said, as if it explained everything. “The Realm of Lady Death. Where the souls of the ones you’ve ushered, pass over to the otherside.” Sederis drew a circle, forming an island of starlight amidst the waves of a black sea. “It’s a half-way house of sorts. A place of rest. Something you clearly need but don’t know how to do.”
“How- No, why am I here? You were the one who asked me to return for your funeral, and that hasn’t happened yet.”
Sederis takes a seat on his island of light and pats the nothingness beside him. “When’s the last time you’ve just... sat?”
She turns behind her, seeking some sort of passage back to the woods where she came, but she knew she would find none. Reluctantly, she took the place beside him.
“There isn’t the time for that. I’m living on borrowed time, you and I both know that. Already I’ve lingered for far too long, there are… There are slips of time that I’m missing, but I almost can’t even tell that they’re gone, it’s like looking for black in a sea of nothing. You know how much damage was done to the kingdom so you know it isn’t going to be fixed so easily, and I need every second if I’m going to able to do anything at all.”
He takes her hand, made whole again in this place beyond places. “Not everything can be fixed,” Sederis says as he laces his fingers between the ones she had lost so long ago. “But you can’t fix the things you can if you’re falling apart as well.” He leans back and stares into a non-existent sky. “Also, your time wasn’t borrowed. It was given. To help carry on what I did.”
“Everything can be fixed, one way or another.” She curls her fingers around his hand, bringing it to rest in her lap. “Do you remember when Azriah… left? When I let go of her arm, it wasn’t her face I saw, it was my own. That is what awaits me, the longer I stay. Even if it is given, as you say, more was asked of me, and I refused. Intentional or not, it still seeks what it’s ‘owed’.”
“And can you, my Lady of War, ‘cheat’ a deity of what it’s owed?” He points to the stars he had placed in the sky. “A deal was struck, a bargain made, by powers that can undo our mortal coil. But remember, all power is built upon belief.” Sederis brings up a pale crescent shaped moon, twisted into a mocking smile. It was inert, dead, and wounded with craters. “Much like how a Feudal Lord’s loyalty from his subjects is decided on the belief that he will protect them in times of war. A Void-God’s tethers to our world depends on the belief of his followers. Both may appease the rabble with gifts, powers, and attention. But ultimately, as powerful as they are, they are but one being in a universe of many.” He plucks the stars from the faux sky, one by one until only the lonely sliver of a moon remains “Alone, Lords may be lynched by a mob. Alone, even Gods may be slain.”
“And what are you suggesting Sederis? That instead of being consumed by it, I consume it first?”
“No…” He laughs, and his smile twists into a smirk. “I’m just saying that you need to… Consider all your options.” Sederis looks her in the eyes. And just for a moment, it was as if all the weight of the world was carried by his gaze. “When have you ever played by the rules Lirelle?”
“Fury Company goes in to open the way to Wintergale and Keyes. Command unit and the Crows will extract.“
Something more silent occurred, then. Rippling through the lines. An old phrase. One the Captain had spoken before - before everything burned bright and a dark haze fell over all of their eyes henceforth.
One, two, three, twelve, sixty, one hundred, five hundred, six hundred whispers in the darkness:
The remaining brightness, it all poured outward in din, and glin, and lances, and tal’dorei.
Evening shifted into blackness.
Only the White Crow remained.
“Th’People didnae come ere t’die.”
“Then you were naive. The only reason to enter a war is to die for it.”
“Two heads’are nae worth th’undreds that joined this war for -you-, Ighdawn. Th’People ave nae reason t’fight for Theron.”
“Wintergale’s worth one thousand heads. The Alliance Commander was six-hundred, if not more heads, that would kill twice their worth another day. I made… a calculation. Four hundred of our’s to gain, and save, thousands later.”
“Ya killt everyun, ya dumb bastid. That wasnae worth it! They was family— alluh them. Ya didnae kill them for th’war. Ya killt them for th’Crows. For ya dumb fuckin sensa sponsibility t’a dead woman. Th’fuck are ya gonna do after this? Come back an try t’act like ya some landowner? Like th’People can really make it there? Naena us gonna want to follow someone who uses us up like firewood.”
“I’m not expecting an ‘after.’ And our People can stay in our mountains.” comes out level - distracted.
She hadn’t been listening to Ciril - not really. There was other things to do. Too much dead or gone to pile their names. So she was working backwards. Counts of all of the units that survived were coming in from the diminished campfires of her army. Taking those, striking the names from the whole of the lists - the remainder would constitute those that required word sent back to their loved ones. Dead, or M.I.A.. Basically dead, at this rate.
The blood and ink kept gluing the pen to her skin. Difficult to shift from line to line. Annoying; grating. At least what was on her hands, was old. She could feel fresher crimson oozing through her chaussures.
“Donae say ‘our.’ Ya donae ave that right. Ya ain’t one’a—”
Thanidiel looks up.
“I’m not one of you? Why? Because you’re angry at me? Because you think I’m some ruthless prick?
Get the fuck in line.
They all hate me too, and I’m still one of them, and one of you, no matter how much you hate me too. I don’t give a fuck about how you react as long as I win this war.
Bugs you?
Get the fuck out of my face then, too. Get out of my camp, and get down onto your knees in front of whoever else is wailing tears about all of the bad things I’ve done in this war then. I did what I had to do with what the job, and my job, was.
The objective was to extract. We extracted. The Crows are our charges. We protected them. Everything else is useless semantics.
You don’t sign up for war unless you would die for it. And they all did so gladly. ”
Her eyes flit back down to the papers, another soldier, a Crow, places another scrawled status-update on the army remnants onto the table.
“We sign out then. Th’People are out. We made a mistake ere.” The diminutive other, her Kinswoman, had stood there for some time before saying that; all wild orange hair and clenched fists. Building up her little thunder.
Thanidiel looks up.
She squints.
“Then you are out. Equipment issued by the Thalassian military is to be returned by tomorrow’s dawn. The rations stay - we aren’t surrendering that for goodwill during such a time.
You all leave that same night. You all find your own ways back to Home. The rest of us will commit to this war one way or another.
Get out of this tent.”
She thinks she sees something akin to shock flitter across the dark skin of the woman’s face. Like Ciril wasn’t expecting that - the decisive apathy applied to the orders, not orders. Demands. Those didn’t qualify as orders anymore between them.
She didn’t have time anymore, for anyone who questioned the necessities of this fight - of sacrificing now for truer victories.
It is not as though she and the Lieutenant were not bonded comrades before. It was Ciril who ran and jumped over roots and brush with her, in the nights before the war, preying on the little foxes that once filled the woodland southeast of Autumnvale by plenty. And it was her and Ciril who spoke of lifetimes and things well beyond the punier worlds of the others.
But she didn’t have time for this anymore.
The sacrifice, after sacrifice, and after sacrifice, in the constant roll of the cyclic curse at her back.
It all had to pay off to something. It would pay off to something.
Those who didn’t believe; didn’t belong here anymore.
They all had to devote themselves to the art of dying, and war.
Tal’dorei.
She takes in a sharp breath at the same time as the mountain elf parts the flaps of the command tent - a pain ripping through her thigh as she stands. Still, Thanidiel performs the whole of the action and some with her chin held in that unending imperiousness.
Following after, she holds the felt high and open, her vision unseeing of Ciril as she catches Oridren and Harthen’s attention nearby.
“We need to send word to the main host for their cavalry reserves. From here on out, we’ll be replenishing the ranks under this banner with Sunguard personnel.
Fury Company is… retired, until we return to Autumnvale to rebuild.”
Another soldier approaches. Another count of those among the living in the spread-out camp-circles over the horizon passes into her hand. This one does not return to fire and food so easily.
“You have a new assignment. Go to the Crows. Let Garris know he’s ready to be seen.”
The land was dying, and there was nothing Esheyn could do about it.
She could only watch helplessly as the gilded terrain of Quel'Thalas, deprived of the Eternal Spring that had blessed its sprawling forests and rolling hills for thousands of years, languished in Winter's unyielding grasp.
It had been a slow, but steady decline—first felt in early morning, before sunrise crept over the camp of crimson tents, when the Knight's breath left her lips in clouds of frozen fog. She noticed how the grass, glistening with frost, crunched under her boots as she marched alongside her comrades, the sound deafening in the chorus of a soldier's footsteps. Her upswept brows furrowed as bright yellow leaves descended from above as though a golden rain was falling, though there were no riches to be had in this, the death throes of ancient trees that had known only the gentle kiss of everlasting warmth from the time they had been planted so long ago.
And the flowers. Once vibrant in their endless array of colors, painting a masterpiece across the landscape, now faded to dull brown as they crumbled beneath the burden of a relentless chill. Try as she might, Esheyn could not restore them to their former glory, though she remained as stubborn as ever in her attempts to bring them back from their icy graves. What little energy she had that wasn't dispensed in blood and steel and Light on the fields of battle, was spent in the warmth of her tent, where she knelt on hardened earth to scrutinize the decaying sprouts that tried, and failed, to overcome such dire circumstances.
Nature was waging a war of its own in tandem with the Sunguard's armies, and both entities were becoming all too familiar with the bitter taste of defeat.
The Knight had maintained her composure despite these setbacks, these losses, of both her fellow soldiers and her seedlings. But she was left stunned, speechless, when the Rider came, brandishing a notice of grim tidings that she wasn't expecting; news of the untimely deaths of two comrades who she had been proud to call her friends. The tears that ran down her cheeks in that moment stung with an intensity that was made over-harsh with the cold, and in her grief, she brought clenched fists to the ground to send brittle soil flying in torrents around her.
Esheyn knew that Lirelle and Sederis had gone to fulfill a more urgent purpose, that they were more than ready to die for the sake of their homeland. So too was she aware that few others were as capable of emerging victorious in the face of adversity that only the Alliance could bring upon them—they needed to step up, because who else would? But a part of her, ashamed in its selfish desire, wished that they had not heeded the call, that they would have remained with the main army to fight another day.
And as her bleary eyes gazed upon the remnants of her botanical folly, there in the semi-darkness of her tent, Esheyn wondered if Lirelle could have made a breakthrough in this endeavor, where the Knight had fallen short.
It was a question that would remain unanswered, swept up in a sobering tide of things that would never be.
No more afternoon teas.
No more gardening.
No more spars.
They were gone.
She choked back another wave of tears as she rose to her feet, turning to reach for her well-worn leather bag—the one she was scarcely seen without, half-open and overflowing with the seeds that she had tried, in vain, to grow in the frozen earth.
Esheyn would honor her friends, and their deeds, in her own way.
With trembling hands, she rifled through her satchel's numerous pockets, until she finally found what she was looking for. Two seed packets, unmarked and sealed shut, but she knew what they contained. She held her breath as she labeled each one.
Cirsium 'Lirelle'
Lilium 'Sederis'
A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she tucked the packets away. Perhaps she couldn't grow anything while Winter bared its fangs, but if—no, when—the time came for Quel'Thalas to bask in the glow of Eternal Spring once more, she would be ready to cultivate new life in the name of those who had made the ultimate sacrifice.
There's a grief that can't be spoken,
There's a pain goes on and on.
Winter did not kiss; it bit with angry, icy teeth.
Winter ravaged Quel’thalas, consumed the countryside with voracious hunger, stripped the trees of their fire-wrought canopies, and browned and buried the verdant fields in heavyset slopes of snow. Quel’thalas was not equipped for vicious frost or the screaming gales of arctic wind; there were seldom few doors in Silvermoon that could be closed against the cold, and great spans of gilded lattice work that had served well enough for walls while their climes were temperate were worthless now. Snow and sleet shot through the arabesques and archways, leaving the inside of homes as exposed as the city streets.
No where was safe from the cold.
Gossamer cloths were exchanged for once decorative fur rugs, blocking off doorways and windows, sectioning off singular chambers of once open air businesses and homes as the sole reprieve from the wailing winds.
Silvermoon City Inn was packed, all it’s patrons crowded on the bottom floor, where the wind had been successfully blocked off at either entrance. Fires burned in every brazier, bathing the bar in an orange glow that betrayed reality; there was still an ever present chill wafting down from the upper floors, which had been entirely abandoned. The room was packed with rum-blurred figures, little more than smudges of color that Caeliri could not fully fathom.
Exactly as she wanted it.
Caeliri was three deep in a tankard of rum, something cheap that tasted of clove and seared the inside of her nostrils with every sip - or had. Her ability to taste the swill had been burned away, along with any ounce of caring. She was seeking the numb oblivion of intoxication, scrambling behind it to shield herself from the slough of sorrow that crept ever closer.
They were dead.
Lirelle.
Sederis.
They were
g
o
n
e.
The Archon’s words had sent her to her knees.
Her heart had been clenched for the headsman’s blow, and these loses had blindsided her.
H
O
W
?
How could they fall? For all of Sederis’ devotion to death, he was battle-hardened and resilient, always prepared. And Lirelle, Light above, she burned with the intensity of the Sun itself, with ten-fold the determination of any one Caeliri had ever met.
How could they be gone?
There were presents sitting in her tent for them, wrapped and ready - as they had been for months - for delivery.
An armored belt for Lirelle, with leather loops for hitching blades and pouches for plants or bugs or whatever else she might find on her journeys and desire to keep, and a handful of crude, nude sketches of the Ranger-Captain in lieu of the promised painting he’d never delivered on.
An overflowing bag of dried meats for Sederis from every corner of Azeroth, from every kind of creature, something practical and delectable all at once. She’d never really known what to get him for Winter’s Veil.
Caeliri had been unable to unwrap them, unable to get rid of them, unable to disturb the undelivered gifts. So she’d left them where they lay, with several other gifts that would never be delivered, and committed herself to the duties demanded of her.
Once, she might have been proud of how well she’d severed her Self from her Station, how she’d faced the familiar horrors of the infirmary - the scent of blood and perforated bowels, the weeping, the death knells of those would not make it through the night, the glassy, pleading eyes of those she could not save - without a thought spared to the aching chasm in her chest, but this was no time for pleasure, no time for pride. She was only ever a step ahead of the pain, only able to keep it snapping at her heels, never gaining any real distance from it.
Across the bar laughter wrung out, loud and bright and barking, and Caeliri’s attention pulled across the dancing colors of the inn towards the sound. Across the bar, someone threw their head back, golden hair fanning freely with the motion, catching in the fire’s glow and erupting with gilded light, and Caeliri’s world was
S
H
A
T
T
E
R
E
D
into a thousand, screaming points of light, a hundred, million erupting stars.
It burned.
Caeliri pressed the heel of her hand into her eye, hard, hoping to quell the whirling of her vision and the popping lights that flashed in the darkness. At last the blazing settled, the burning ebbed, and she pulled her hand from her face and creaked her eyes open.
Across the table from her sat Sederis, head half-bowed towards an overflowing plate, hastily shoveling food into his face, faster than Elleynah could dole it out.
Caeliri’s heart plummeted to the soles of her feet. When it struck ground, it erupted with such intensity that the vibrations rung out in every inch of her body, in her fingers, in her toes, in the tips of her ears. Cold crept painfully through her chest and her rum-bloated stomach began to churn.
The other mender reached out to grab a handful of scarlet hair just before he hoovered it into his mouth, tucking it behind one long, scar-dabbled ear before moving onto to the next plate with a half-hidden, wholly-fond roll of her eyes. Beside him Lirelle snapped her head back up, golden hair swishing forward over her shoulders as she pointed an accusing finger at Arrenir, across the table and one chair down. Smooth laughter was the only response, and the gentle clink of a fork brushing a plate.
Lirelle slammed an open palm on the table, sending all their silverware leaping off the polished mahogany, and it was Vaelrin’s turn to cast his head back and let loose a thundering laugh as fury creased Lirelle’s features. Elleynah’s freckled hand shot out to steady a glass that almost tipped, saving Arrenir’s plate from being doused in pale champagne, and Sederis - his cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk - laughed, and gagged, and for all his war-hewn reflexes could not lift a hand fast enough to keep from spitting half-chewed food across the table on to her plate.
Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone
She was supposed to squeal, supposed to reach out and shove her plate across the table, relenting her meal to Sederis now that his half-chewed food was floating in her stew, and Elleynah was supposed to rush off towards the kitchen, and Lirelle was supposed to follow her, demanding the ginger-witch sit her ass down and eat and let her get Caeliri another dish.
Arrenir was supposed to offer her his plate, safe from Sederis-spit and spilled champagne both.
Vaelrin was supposed to take a smug drag from his cigar and waft cinnamon-rich smoke over the table.
But Caeliri did not move.
She did not squeal.
She did not shove her plate away.
She sat, statuesque, and let the memory move around as the tears swelled up in her vision, until there were nothing but colorful smears shifting in her vision.
Someone was calling her name.
Someone was pulling on the tether of her attention.
Someone tried to draw her from the phantom faces, and she did not want to go. Caeliri blinked hard, letting the tears stampede down her rosy cheeks, waiting for her vision to clear and the room to right itself.
"Dawnsworn.” Her name was murky and a thousand miles away.
Lirelle was pushing Elleynah back through the doorway, shoving her towards the seat she’d not yet occupied, and Elleynah was digging her heels in, freckled face flushed at the admonishments Lirelle peppered over her.
“Dawnsworn.”
Stop it.
Vaelrin’s hand subtly snuck up on to her knee, giving the bony protrusion a secretive squeeze.
“Dawnsworn.”
Go away. Leave me be.
Arrenir was swapping plates with her, and Sederis was muttering apologies from behind his hand as he tried to choke down the last of his food.
A hand fell on her shoulder, shaking her with enough might to wobble her entire torso, and she looked up at the offending force, at the face that had torn her from her dream delusion.
Anokirin Sunstalker was hovering over her, not that she could actually see him. His face was a blur of colors bent by firelight, only identifiable by his voice. “Dawnsworn. Are you deaf, girl? How many deep are you?”
Caeliri pulled her eyes from the barely-familiar man, shrugging her slim shoulder out of his grasp, glancing back to the empty chair across from her.
“Another storm is brewing in the south. We need to leave by daybreak if we’re going to make it to the Ridges. You gonna be okay?”
No. “Yes, I’ll be okay to ride.”
The answer was sufficient.
Anokirin haunted her no longer, the heat of his frame dying as he moved away, leaving Caeliri to her rum, to her vacant table, and to the empty chairs she’d arranged around herself in a facsimile of a family dinner.
Empty chairs at empty tables where my friends will meet no more.
[[ Hey @retributionpriest @thepilgrimofwar, I hate the both of you so much for making me feel things about RP stories again. Big dislike. I’m going to miss your characters so, so, so much. I’m going to miss the times we RPed all together out in Suramar last year like you’d miss a limb, but I can’t wait to write new stories with you both.
Same for the rest of you. @forever-afk @stormandozone and @jonathan-nevermore-smith since your dude showed up for a couple seconds in this story.
@thesunguardmg]]
Captain Maria Thorpe rested her hammer across her lap as she sat near her campfire. Her troops either rested or milled about the camp, sharing their exploits of recent battle. She moved a lock of hair from her eyes as she glanced back at their recently acquired prisoners. They had captured more desperate refugees from the ruins of a nearby village - blood elves looking to escape from the Alliance’s wrath. They laid near the back of the camp, shackled together, their eyes filled with hopelessness and defeat. The corners of Maria’s mouth twitched; these would make excellent bargaining chips against Quel’thalas.
The sound of rumbling came from the far distance. Maria dismissed it as coming of a thunderstorm. Strange - she didn’t think it would rain tonight. As she continued to gaze into the fire, her mind delved deeper into thoughts about the war.
The rumbling came closer.
The Alliance had their setbacks, but they were winning. The Sunguard’s commanders were being captured or defeated, one by one, like chess pieces being taken off the board.
The rumbling was coming even closer now, but she paid it no heed.
What’s more, their ally, Merik Morningstar, was winning the people over. Already the nobility was turning against each other. Their soldiers were losing heart. From Maria’s time in the Scarlet Crusade, she knew that fear was a powerful weapon. It was only a matter of time until all hope was shattered.
Shouts of alarm from within the camp conjoined with the rumbling, and by the time she noticed, it was too late.
Maria looked up to see a kodo beast, the largest she had ever seen, rampage through the camp. A banner carrying the Sunguard’s colors flew from its saddles. Alarms were already rung to alert the soldiers to defend themselves, but Maria saw several men get trampled. The rider, an equally brutish tauren, pulled on the reins, and the beast shifted to swing its tail. The spiked metal ball grafted to its tail crashed into a nearby wagon, causing it to fly end over end into a tent, crushing the unfortunate souls still inside.
A half dozen other tauren wearing heavy armor and carrying greatswords and battle-axes erupted from the nearby treeline, bellowing war cries in their native tongue. They crashed into the beleaguered Alliance defenders, headbutting and slashing and chopping. Behind them followed common Horde citizens - mostly blood elves accompanied with a few orcs and trolls - wearing padded wool and leather, and carrying wooden shields and iron swords. They reminded her of their captives, but they lacked any sense of fear - they had been driven into a bloodthirsty frenzy.
Maria fought for her life, bludgeoning anyone who came near, but it was all for naught. There were simply too many, and they had been caught completely off-guard. The kodo rider had dismounted and charged towards her, his axe aimed for her head. Maria dodged the blow and swung her hammer, grazing the tauren’s head and knocking his helmet off. The tauren barely flinched and glared at her, his piercing blue eyes contrasting his pitch black fur. He swept his tower shield at her, swatting her away like an insect. Maria landed on the ground, feeling something break in the process, and as she tried to rise to fight, she realized she could fight no more. They had lost.
-
Muroco strode over to the knight and grabbed her by the neck, lifting her up to her face. Despite their defeat, she looked at him defiantly, a sneer of contempt coming from her. Around the camp, the last few remaining defenders were being cut down by his dreadnaughts and followers he had acquired over the past two weeks.
“Damn you, beast,” Maria spat, “damn you and all your wretched kind. More of us will be coming, and soon enough your fel-sucking masters will be--”
The knight’s string of curses were cut short as Muroco crushed her neck with his hand. He nonchalantly threw her battered corpse to the ground as he walked towards the captive refugees. Breaking them free of their chains, he motioned them to move towards the center of the Alliance’s camp. They obliged, but whether it was out of gratitude or fear, it was hard to say. They were given food and water as Muroco climbed to the top of an overturned wagon.
News had reached Muroco’s ears, and none if it was any good. Lirelle and Sederis were gone. Thanidiel’s army got crushed. Cowards were allying themselves with humans. Most of his comrades didn’t have the same yearning for battle like he did. They were going to lose heart.
“You can never know bravery and strength until you’ve understood fear and defeat.”
He wasn’t about to let ape-plowing humans, their void-sucking elves, and lapdog mutts get away with this.
“When the world pushed you, you pushed back.”
The only people who ever accepted him as a brother needed his help.
“The Horde needs that kind of people, now more than ever.”
“I don’t make speeches,” Muroco shouted to the gathered crowd, “I’m not some elf in a robe hiding away with his books in a tower. My time is better spent killing worthless humans.” He pointed to the liberated refugees. “The Alliance is responsible for burning down your homes and putting you in chains. If you want to come and kill some humans too, then follow us. Otherwise, get lost - we don’t need you slowing us down.”
A few scoffed and looked at Muroco with exasperated contempt, but he continued. “The Alliance wants to come for a fight? They’ll get their fight - more than they can handle! Raise your heads high and kill them all as true warriors!” Muroco roared and raised his axe to the sky, and his dreadnaughts followed suit, followed by the the rest of the group. Most of the refugees joined them, the fear and hopelessness they felt melting away.
The urge of battle surged through Muroco like a raging volcano. He was going to snuff out the ‘Reborn Kingdom’ in its infancy. He was going to find that backstabbing little peacock and snap his neck like a wishbone, then use his body like a club to beat down anyone else who was dumb enough to betray the Sunguard. He’d crush their agents, tear down their banners, burn them to cinders, stomp on their ashes, then come back north and finish off the rest of the worthless Alliance cretins looking to get smashed in the teeth.
They were on the losing end, but all of that was about to change.
When this war was over, the Alliance would know Muroco’s name for decades to come.
This story takes place in the near future, after various events in the Phoenix Wars.
They were supposed to come visit.
They were supposed to come see the Isle.
Ithanar reflects on this shattered promise, this broken pledge. It isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.
There’s some solace in knowing it isn’t his fault-
No, that’s bullshit. The fact that it isn’t his fault doesn’t matter. There’s no way to spin this otherwise.
They’d never have the chance now.
His frustrations spring forward in the form of a cigar tossed angrily to the ground, to the dirt, and he stomps on it to keep any sort of blaze from roaring to life. It’s a hard and rough motion, one that ends with a grunt and a well-placed word:
“FUCK.”
The trees flicker and flutter, and there’s the caw-caw of crows flying away along with other birds, some more silent than others. His scream is a ripple in the pond that is the war camp, but it is something that was coming for some time whether it was Ithanar or another. The old elf decides to not interrupt any further and retreats to the safety of his tent, pushing through the canvas and just looking about.
There’s a helplessness to the way he looks, to the way his form trembles.
This shouldn’t bother him. This shouldn’t-
Bullshit.
Two years of knowing Lirelle and Sederis.
Gone. Just like that.
It’s hard to reflect on the good times, the moments they had all shared together as friends, in the wake of their death.
Perhaps he hadn’t known Sederis too well, but they had nearly always been cordial with one another and in agreement on most martial matters. The red-haired elf had been Ithanar’s sort of person as a fellow soldier, someone he could trust and fight alongside even in harrowing situations.
He had considered him a friend.
Lirelle was…
She had been a friend, someone who had seen him battered and bruised and always able to bring him back, to help him in her own fantastic way. Perhaps she chided him for brash actions here and there, but it was worth it.
She had always been right.
Such rationality often is lacking in times like these, and now-
She’s gone.
He’s gone.
It eats at Ithanar.
He collapses down to a stool in the tent, just staring down at the ground.
Tears don’t come. They haven’t for years.
It’s just a hard and long look at the dirt and grass below, his form shivering.
This shouldn’t bother him.
It eats at his very being.
He’s nearly six-hundred years old and most of it has been spent in wars.
On the front lines.
Cradling the corpses of dead friends and family with bare hands.
But this is different.
Lirelle? Sederis?
They were supposed to come visit.
They were supposed to come see the Isle.
Now everything burns.
Ithanar knows death won’t be his armageddon. It comes for every soldier, every warrior.
No.
It is the loss of friends, of such magnificent lives gone whether in a blaze of glory for their grand kingdom, or in vain as Quel’thalas crumbles.
I meant to grab you this week. I meant to, and I didn’t -- I ran out of time, I guess. There’s a lot of things I’ve run out of time for in my life, and this is maybe one of the more important ones. I hope you’ll forgive me for not finding you in person. Understand when I say that if I had any more time left in my waking hours in which to visit you, I’d do it. But I don’t, and you don’t, and life moves on.
A few months ago when we spoke rather seriously about truths and what we do to reveal them, I told you I was working on something. Something I couldn’t talk about. I still can’t really talk about it -- not yet, but soon -- but in order to do what I was planning on doing, I’ll need to take a brief leave. I assure you, I’ll be back and ready to go when the Sunguard sets its feet back down on Broken Isles soil -- it may take me a few weeks to get back to you, but I promise I’ll return. I took an oath, after all. I don’t take a lot of those. And I actually like some of you, so. There it is. No more secrets, after this. I think we’re due for an honest conversation.
You’ve been a great friend, Captain. More than I care to admit, really. I don’t like talking about sentimentality. Neither you nor I are really the type, right? The words are all wrong; the timing is strange, and by the time I wrap my head around them they’re gone, or too late to say.
Take care of Sederis and Lirelle while I’m gone. Don’t let them do anything too stupid, okay?
When her boots touched the black sand of the desert beyond the City of Memory, Elleynah lifted her thumb, opened the jagged scab, and let the blood fall. The needle formed from the sands pointed, and off they went towards their destination. A way out. A way home.
Now and again, she glanced at her defender, the dead and yet whole Sederis. Her eyes skimmed his features, the warmth in his face at the adventure they were undertaking, the freedom from consequence he enjoyed in this place. Whenever she felt herself stare too long she dragged her eyes back to the sand, suppressing the things that felt and twisted in her belly.
He noticed her gaze upon him and pretended not to see. Not wanting to bring up any uncomfortable memories of his untimely death. He wondered how many mourned him. His friends, obviously. His family, probably. But his people? The citizens of the Emberglades that he had died for? The Lords of the Houses who despised him? What of the councilmen he imprisoned? But he dispelled the thoughts- Though they did not hurt him in his state, they were no more than just time wasted on doubts. Time was better spent in the present. Especially in this place.
The sands went on and on. Now and again she would check their progress with spilled blood, and alter their course accordingly. Eventually, though, she felt the weight of living.
Slowing her steps, she huffed. “I have to stop.” Elleynah glanced at him side long. “I know you could keep going until the stars burned out, but unfortunately I’m still… alive here, and that means I get tired.” Her tone was almost defensive, as though she expected chastening. “Can we make a short camp?”
“I… Forgot about that.” He said sheepishly as Elleynah admitted her limitations. As sheepish as a dead man could sound. “Of course we could make camp. I could probably help with that as well.”
He upturned Zin’jang, stabbing in deep into the sands beneath him and from its hilt sprouted leaves of blackness, draping downwards. Like sheets of a pavilion. They were not perfect, nor did they serve much purposes in a windless wasteland in these dunes. But they would trap heat from any fire- and most importantly, would feel like shelter.
She watched him use the magic of death as easily as wielding his spear, and Elleynah looked away, worrying her lower lip with her teeth until she tasted copper. Ignoring herself, she rubbed her lip, smudging the red, turned her attention to her pack, thumbing through her deck idly.
In death, the mundane was often turned complex and inscrutable-- the difficult however, became commonplace. Under the leaves of the summoned pavilion, she laid out a small bag. When she opened it, the scent of ash and dry wood and lightning storms emerged; and with a quick dribble of blood, fire bloomed from it in a small but warm makeshift hearth.
Elleynah breathed in the smell, but it did little to relax the tenseness of her shoulders. “It’s absolutely insane how much power living blood has here. It’s little wonder all those dark campfire tales involve creatures seeking living flesh and blood. Just a drop of it and…” She motioned to the flame, and the sand, and the darkness beyond.
Sederis nodded. “It is plied by those of intelligence here, like currency. I suppose it is why Lady Death had me spill and have had me spill so much of it in her name. It turned a simple idea- an ideological seed- into a God- and all her realm.” Sederis joined her by the fire, snapping away the armor pieces that made his silhouette. Was this how he acted in times of rest? He had been relentless in his hunt until now. It felt good, he supposed, just to stop.
“I theorise that is the reason why I walk here with such powers. There is a blood price hanging above my head, paid for in the thousands. Every life taken, every death given in offering, every life that was ended in my name. Just as I had in life- in my own way- I now carry them all within me in death. Their memories and names etched into my mind’s eye.” He gave a thoughtful look and considered the rules of this realm. “If I have a mind- I’m not entirely sure if I do in this place. I’m not even sure how much of me I’m made of- Or if I’m actually mostly made of everyone else.” The Deathseeker implied, and made sense in the same way riddles did.
Elleynah frowned, raising a hand to the flame. “I was told too that it’s catalyst, in a world that hungers. Blood can be so many different things; inside you its vital, outside its grisly. Blue blood, noble blood, innocent blood. It’s all the same, to a mender. Magic seems to operate outside of theoretical similarities.” She let the light burn through her flesh, rendering her hand red to her eyes. “Every culture I know assigns some value to it. So, little wonder in death it’s a precious as gold is above, or more so.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest, looking into the fire. “You aren’t the same, Sederis. I don’t know if it’s your Lady or the world here or the blood and souls you carry but you’re different.” Her voice goes small. “Everything here is alike-but-not-the-same as things above. It’s maddening and terrifying. I was so sure if I called upon the Hanged Man he would have your face and now I wonder what he’s doing, bereft so of one to Patron.” She snorts. “He will find another, but… to me, it should have always been you. And now it’s not. And you’re not. You’re dead. Lirelle is dead, but she’s not even here she’s up there and I’m down here.” The words tumble from her in a deluge of exhaustion, and only now in the relative safety of the pavilion can he see the desperation in her. “Death means change, I’ve always known that, but I hate what it’s done. I hate it so much I could rip the card apart even knowing who he Patrons and what it might mean because I am so angry.”
She has been hunted for months, unable to trust in any familiar thing. The weight on her shoulders has taxed even her steel-spined resolve, and Elleynah the Oracle is closer now to Little Leyna than she has been in decades; the wide eyed, fractured girl child who only ever meant to fix the broken things around her.
Sederis kneeled opposite her as she pulled her knees to her chest, and after a moment of deliberation, he wrapped Elleynah in his arms. Pressing the nape of her neck to his shoulder, he encouraged her to cry, if she needed to.
He was cold to the touch, barely material, but the warmth of the embrace remained. He didn’t know if he had the right words for his friend, but knew it in his being that it was the right thing to do.
“You’re right. I am not the same. At the end of everything, I knew, at last, what it all had meant. The meaning of sacrifice. To be reborn. To see death in a whole new light. That my life of war, had been a search for my own peace,” he spoke softly, letting the words hum through his shadowed form. “ In death I grew past what he was, and he can’t be my patron when I no longer need him.”
Death, in a way, had made him whole and he spoke of his patron as if he were a guardian angel. Keeping him from straying but the one path he was always meant to take.
“Change is… Inevitable. Nothing remains the same. Not even in death. But if there’s one thing to tell you, one thing I’ve learned after all the time I’ve spent in this place, is this:
Whenever you despair about those golden days in the sun, lost to time- stolen by death- as I once did. Do it well. Mourn their passing. Honor it with all your heart. But be glad for them too. Be glad that they happened. Be glad that they gave you memories that are worthy of weeping over. Then when the tears are done, hold them close to your heart where the march of time cannot touch them.”
Perhaps this was the secret of his form. Why he hadn’t too become a blood hungering beast of the shadowlands. Perhaps it was because he cherished the life he lived. All the pain. All the joy. He cherished it all so much till madness and death held no hold over any of it.
Anger like she had never known gripped her; caught her in coils of heat so intense it felt like flame, and whether she knew it or not they whipped off of her like solar flares, visible in the sands of death because of their vitality. He wrapped her in his arms and she gripped him, tight enough her nails broke, tight enough he would have bled if he had yet lived.
She remembered--
Tossing cards off the edge of a floating city, and how she had thought that moment would be the beginning of forever and the end of her history and how she had failed everyone. Everyone. Dying was supposed to be an escape from this weight but she found it was even harder to bear when faced with the plain, unglossed consequence of her failure to be good enough.
She grit her teeth to keep the primal scream in her throat, and she swallowed it down with her tears and her admissions and everything she had held inside for years. Years she had born these sorrows and years she had carried the guilt and she never allowed herself to mourn because--
“I can’t let go of what was never really--” It escapes and she lifts a hand to her mouth, pressing her knuckles into her lips as she swallows her own blood from bitten lips.
It hurt him. Not in the way that claws and teeth did as they tore into his new form. But deeper, sharper. In ways that were beyond what mere damage could do. But he held her, tighter still, receiving her fury and taking it away to the places beyond it.
“Hold them to your heart too. All of them. Things undone, things unsaid. Things that never could be. Though it makes reality harder to bear, there is merit to fantasies- Of what could have been- Of doing things left undone- it is what keeps us going. They inform us of what things could still be,” Sederis speaks from the depths within himself. His own failures rising to the surface. Things unsaid. People unsaved. Frozen bodies of refugees in Light’s Hope. Lazing on a sunny afternoon upon a couch in their Dalaran apartment. “Hold them to your heart. And when the fires die and the tears are spent- Use them to build a better future.”
Like he had. In the form of a manor, and a beach that waited for Lirelle across the gap.
Everything felt too close. He was Sederis and he wasn’t and she was Elleynah and she wasn’t really, was she? Not anymore, not the way she had been. Things changed by time and trauma; double time, double duty she had sworn back on a ship and it had put muscle on her and years around the lines by her mouth. Elleynah was a girl swearing an oath-- Elleynah was a novice mender bearing too much weight on freckled shoulders-- Elleynah was a sister who faltered and a friend who failed and a lover who had been too scared to love until it was almost too late.
She sucked in a breath and the tears that spilled on her were hot with anger and disappointment and frustration. Her arms wrapped around herself, through Sederis because in this land of ash and smoke and memory, she was alive and real and he was made up of nothing but what-ifs and promises fulfilled. She had never ever once been enough and--
Her fingers brushed the leather pack where her cards lie, and something ripped through her in a current. Gasping aloud, she sat up straight, fingers scrambling for purchase on the leather.
“My-- my deck--” She hissed through clenched teeth. “Somethings--” Her hand seemed to struggle against the effort of opening the pouch. Gritting her teeth she finally forced it open, and like a cloud of locusts, the cards erupted around them in a flury of painted paper and magic. Threads of blood seemed to connect them in a web, pulsing around the pair and overcoming the pavilion in a flood.
Elleynah’s frame stiffened in his arms-- she looked at the cards, and they had all changed to share a single form, a single card thronging them where it should have been the whole of the deck.
A heart, with three blades piercing it, a storm brewing under it, blood seeping from the metal into a pool of black. The Three of Swords.
In words like buzzing, it spoke.
You have called on the useful, the necessary, but not the needed little Oracle. The cards swirled around them, and Elleynah remembered. She had bitten her lip, and it had bled, and she had reached for the deck and--
Unsummoned, the Three of Swords pulsed.
You would call on Illusion and you would call upon Will, but not on Truths? You have Spoken for us, but always inside you nurse the Hope that we may be undone. The Devil. The Tower. The Swords. You use us but do not listen; will not ask for the fate for yourself for fear of incurring the Blood Debt. You will Listen now and Feel all that you have Denied.
Elleynah grabbed for Sederis’ hand, her other crept over the sand, towards the fire he had made, surreptitious.
