[ Co-written from Discord with @sylirae ]
There was only a brief sliver of time that might be called the dead of night in the Harbor - patrons of the Hanged Man at the tavern until the late hours, porters and quartermasters making their way to the docks well before sunrise. It seemed sound echoed up to the Hanging Apartments at almost all hours, despite the ever-present white noise of the nearby falls.
It was during that lifeless fragment of time that Seraanna awoke in Sylirae’s bed with a soft gasp of breath. She took a few moments where she laid, close to Sylirae’s warmth, to calm her breathing - then carefully extricated herself from the bedsheets. The priestess did her utmost not to wake the rogue, padding on bare feet to stand at the large window and look out over the briefly-sleeping Harbor spread below. Seraa’s breathing remained even, but her shoulders were drawn close, her hands held before her chest as she worked her thumb across the still-healing burn on her right palm.
Eyes the color of an empty sky peeped open as Seraanna’s soft tread stilled at the window. Sylirae remained quiet, tense beneath the bedsheets as she watched.
Her back to the bed, Seraanna’s breaths grew deeper, slower, until with one final exhalation her breath ceased entirely. Several heartbeats passed... then several more... the cessation of breath slowly reaching a point at which Seraa should have drawn breath. Needed to draw breath. Must draw breath.
For the most fleeting of instants, Sylirae was glad that their link had been muted. Dread curled in her belly, drew muscles taut. By sheer virtue of decades of practice, the rogue remained still and maintained her slow, steady breath, maintained her guise of slumber, all while her pulse thundered in her ears. Yet, she watched on. And that moment when Sylirae was certain Seraa might fall, unconscious, to the floor, the priestess gasped a great shuddering breath.
With that moment, Shadow fell upon Seraanna.
It was not the evocation of Shadow which Sylirae had seen in times past, no gentle coalescing of inky wisps and tendrils about the smaller ren’dorei’s shape. No, this was as unexpected as an eruption - Shadow emerging from Seraanna’s form as though it would fill the bedroom, a brief glimpse of distant shapes that moved wrongly in that darkness - before it abruptly drew to the priestess as if compressed by enormous, unseen hands. Or, and Sylirae could not be sure, Seraa drew it to herself.
At that moment, the shadowed link in Sylirae’s thoughts woke - cold words spoken by no elven or human mouth echoing distantly in her mind:
Bwixki amala zal qulllll.
Understanding fell upon Sylirae. The rogue had considered herself passable when it came to twisting Shadow and bending it to her will, but now, her strength and her control seemed as ephemeral as gossamer. While the shadows condensed, shifted, Sylirae forced her fear back down, sealed it in that far corner of her mind. Just in time for those words to slither through her head, affricate, aberrant, familiar.
Seraanna stood in front of the window - her breath even, hands held before her chest as she worked her thumb across the still-healing burn on her right palm, her form encased in the inky wisps and tendrils of Shadow that Sylirae knew. Only a sensation of cold within the room, quickly fading, remained.
Seraa slowly turned, lambent eyes visible amidst the night and Shadow.
“I’d hoped you... would remain sleeping.”
“Ins-” Sylirae paused, stilled, the word dying on her tongue with a faint stir of guilt. After a moment she shook her head slowly and pushed herself to sit, legs crossed beneath the pale sheets. It was some beats before she tried again, eyes on the priestess wreathed as she was in a more familiar layer of Shadow. Comforting, in its own way.
“I have yet to sleep. I... was unsure if I would be needed, when it returned. If I would need to… No. If I could help,” Sylirae murmured. Some distant part of her was surprised when the words did not come with a puff of frosted breath.
Seraanna’s breath came slow and even as Sylirae spoke. In time, she stopped rubbing at the healing scar on her right palm - her hands dropping to her side even as Shadow fell away from her, twists of blackness drifting downward, seeming to fade into the small gaps between even these well-crafted floorboards.
“The way is again... opened,” she murmured, moving from the window and padding with almost-fluid steps back to the bed she had shared with Sylirae that night. Seraa slipped beneath the bedsheets, hewing close to the rogue’s warmth.
“For... all that you would offer, in this there is no comfort or... aid to be accepted.”
Seraa gave one last, deep breath.
“...sleep,” she whispered.
Sylirae nodded slowly, her eyes dropping to the faint shadow she cast on the bed while Seraanna crossed the room. Thin as paper.
“I can make no promises of that. Merely that I will rest as I can,” Sylirae replied. The one thing she could promise was an embrace as she pulled the priestess close, her eyes drifting shut.
