Standing on the shore
The wind off the northern seas was cold, tugging wisps of white-blonde hair free of the bun and braids she bound them in every day, leaving strands to whip around her face. She stood on a rise above the plateau, looking north over the sea, north toward Northrend rather than south, toward the Eastern Kingdoms and the Isles.
The journey back there would come soon enough.
Her glaive hung against her back, a comfortable weight—more comfortable than a simple staff these days. She wasn’t sure at what point she’d begun to travel so well-armed, but it had happened somewhere along the line. It had progressed beyond the throwing knives hidden in her hair disguised as stick-pins to a pair of daggers in her boot, another in her sleeve. A sword usually replaced the glaive when the latter wasn’t practical.
And then, of course, there was magic—arcane and the Light.
When people looked, she wasn’t sure what they saw. Perhaps it was a girl playing at being a soldier, a noblewoman playing at martial games, at making war. Did some see the spy, the whisper? Did some see her as her mother’s daughter, one whose secrets would make or doom whole Houses?
Perhaps.
Perhaps someday they would see a Blood Knight, a deadly and tempered blade with the Light at her call and a few more tricks up her sleeve, a healer and warrior and defender.
She had come here last night, after finalizing the last of the paperwork, things that had been on file for months but had been missing a few last signatures, a letter or two for her files, mostly certifications of her fitness to serve. Now it was done and official where it had previously been quietly assumed.
What would Talindar have thought? Would he have understood?
Wyn closed her eyes and exhaled.
Quel’danas was a familiar place for her, the plateau becoming increasingly familiar. She had gone to the Sunwell, sat for a few hours, losing herself in thought and meditation. Now the sun was rising over the northern sea and soon she would return south, out to the Broken Isles and the war against the Legion. There would be one more stop for her before she went to Dalaran and back to war, though. She would visit the estate where her family had died, where she had watched her mother murdered.
Perhaps the stones there would have more to whisper to her than the Sunwell had. Perhaps there were more secrets to know before she returned to the war. There could be something there that her mother had left for her, had hidden away that remained safe, still lost.
Then again, perhaps it would be a fool’s errand that would simply bring on more nightmares and visions of the past.
Even then, though, it would not have been for nothing.
Wyn Ilthyrii exhaled a sigh into the wind and opened her eyes. The sun had cleared the water in the east. It was time to go.
The would-be knight turned and walked away from the shore. Day had come, and there was much to be done.