#the shadowbeast

[dawnsavant]

"Don’t fight me, come quietly and I won’t have to hurt you."

Non-intrusive, subtle, and quiet, the elf who had stopped next to him murmured casually, “Don’t fight me, come quietly and I won’t have to hurt you.” Their every cloaked move spoke calm confidence, and they bore a voice that gave virtually no hint of gender. Considering he lurked near the apartments of Silverhome in a recess from the shaded streets of the Row, the approach rang as positively courteous.

He had no doubt they could knock him out or worse before he could cast or shout.

Filo? The priest’s first reaction was to reach out for his shadow. No answer came.

It was the third time something like this had happened within the last three years. Twice that he had been accosted directly in front of a place he considered home, no less. Andreo needed to be even more careful, though he was not entirely sure how to go about being so.

At least this one did not hold a weapon to him like the last.

He looked aside from the book he had been skimming through, his back to the wall and legs stretched across a step. After a warning from Reme, once, he almost always kept his back to a solid surface when anywhere remotely near the Row.

The priest rolled his wrist out towards the street, gesturing loosely with his book which flipped shut in the same motion. “I do love a good walk. To where shall we tread, my fine new friend?”

The snap of the book caused a flash of silver in the figure’s hand, and the robed elf stilled. In a slow motion, he left the volume on the steps where he had been seated.

He was made to walk ahead.

Internally, Andreo’s mood turned sour despite the jovial tones. Nyaeiph promised him a cupcake if he stayed put right near the apartment for just an hour or two while the poet ran through a quick list of errands for Filorian that had stacked up recently.

He truly had his hopes up over that cupcake.

Quiet indications from his all too polite abductor led him from alley to alley, past the edge of the Bazaar, and to the derelict paths that bordered too close to the scar ripped through what once had been the city’s heart.

Four people awaited him in the abandoned, corrupted building to which he was herded. His guide made five. A big welcoming party, for one slender healer.

"Ah, Alaen." A fellow with a lovely, ringing tenor stepped forward from his companions. "Or should I say Eidan? I never would have guessed you masqueraded as some pretty little priest. Tell me, mister Laddry, do you remember…"

Oh, Light, the waifish caster thought, attention divided as the man who took point talked. I can’t handle this many.

Incapacitate or kill? A voice rolled through his head like the distant thunder accompanying a spring rain, wholly serene. Relief washed through him so abruptly that he exhaled a rush of breath, prompting a laugh from the tall elf before him.

"Scared? Eidan, we just want to repay you for Shattrath. Oh. Right. Maybe you should be scared."

Incapacitate, Andreo answered automatically. Person behind me, first.

What person behind you? Filorian’s response dripped with amusement.

One down, four to go.I’m rather curious about what happened in Shattrath. The cleric inquired silently as he rose behind one of the other four like some specter, stepping out of their own shadow.

Fingers hooking in and hand lifting to ready another spell even as he sent one of the assailants screaming in abject terror, Andreo hesitated. His attention turned to a man who rounded on Filorian with a blade in hand, shadows whipping upwards from the ground to tangle the lackey’s legs and sword arm.

It’s a long, mostly ridiculous story.

[dawnsavant]

Visit Original Link

( Live - Forever May Not Be Long Enough )

I have a will, but I'm lost inside your time. If you could, would you come with me to the other side?

[dawnsavant]

if i could see the stars with you

Kalren Hools. It was a name that Andreo did not know, and perhaps never would. A sacred thing that he dared not sully by asking after so directly, he had spent long enough dealing in pieties to recognize the sacrosanct. What he did not know was that it was a name he had skimmed past in records, passed by unrecognized. Another genius of Dalaran among many, a mage, a keen human intellect which came and went in years before his own, and one whom he did not know he owed a great deal to. He knew nothing of persistent letters that had chased Filorian with unabashed tenacity, nor of the teasing taunts and minds shared through song, and poetry, and prose. Those records gave no mention of the human's life beyond his achievements and publishings listed. Maybe if he had read any of those volumes, known at the time of skimming what he found out later on, but even his memory was not infallible. Just another name. Not just another man.

Filorian had granted him the keys to find out. The right name, the right places, even an address and an allegory of time span. Andreo did very little in depth research into specifics of Filorian's life, even so. He wanted to know. Sometimes he chanced across things. A fable here, an intact record there, but he did not truly dig after a point. Unable to deny his curiosity, the priest intended to give Filorian all the time in the world to share the things that made him who he was. Or to not, if that were the way of it. The poignant contrast between knowing where to look and the active choice of sharing made all the difference in the world. Andreo respected the power of choice, and respected people revealing personal stories on their own time. What Yeven had said to him of living so long that eventually nothing compared to what one experienced in times long past made loops between the rolling storms of his mind. Nothing compared to the people, the friends, the lovers, she had murmured. The priest had not talked to many with so much time behind them, but had seen hints of the same in others. It made sense for it always to be the case in anyone long-lived. So, he respected that, too, or attempted to. (The thought made him sad.) There was so much he could not know if only due to his age and the analytical, disconnected avenues by which he processed information. What the Dawn Priest did know is that every year on the same day, Filorian attempted slip silently away before the crack of dawn, only to return in the evening a sobered man trying to act normal. Often it was the case that his Shadowbeast traveled, quietly stole away to chase a mark, took to business, or even dove into the Other Side and nearly disappeared at times. This rang differently. The first instance had only been noticed by a quirk of timing and circumstance, a slip of silvered tongue delivered too smoothly. Filorian's penchant for telling stories that were almost-true betrayed his thoughts to Andreo more than once, particularly there. The second year, he hazarded a guess upon the day that fell, and presented a gift, proven correct by again catching the cleric in rare formal attire.

This year it could not be the same, no inevitable attempt to slip away unseen was expected, but he would try to make it adhere to the pattern. At the very least, he could attempt to ensure Filorian would be awake and relatively alert before his lonely day. It was important. Andreo rest on a seat in the barely lit, dark bedroom tucked into a corner of the Lan'dal estate, a board before him bearing flowers and decorative tidbits of all types. That formal attire he had seen the year before lay neatly nearby. The relatively heavy, violet cloth had been stored safely - and well away from prying eyes - but the priest found it. This time everything needed to be perfect. Some gut instinct, some divining premonition demanded attention to detail. Details he had no knowledge of their significance were necessary, seemingly trivial things that same driving urge forced him to include. Violets were the theme. No less than two dozen flowers of varying tone and form comprised the bundle, all grown on the Lan'dal Estate. Many of then had been stolen from Dalaran seedlings, cultivars that once graced the foot of the Alterac mountains. Pale gold threading laced a pattern across the delicate, dark silk which bound them together, and hanging teardrops of black opal wove through leaves and stems like falling rain. Something lacked, and the priest regarded his arrangement with a critical eye. Black or Golden Lotus certainly suited the man who would carry them, but the implications written in the blossoms seemed too bold, unbecoming. Brighter gemstones were too lavish, metals beyond the threading too opulent. No, no, these would not do. A few smaller blossoms were added, climbing flowers of arcane blues and delicate greens, the occasional golden accent alongside. It still lacked. His gaze skimmed upwards from the board he worked upon, crossing the bedroom from curio-strewn shelving to star-studded veils which usually were the dark room's sole lighting... Andreo stared intently at the veils. That gave him an idea for exactly what he needed. He did not wish to add them simply to satisfy his own aesthetic? He quite loved stars. No, he decided, led to the conclusion by some pattern he could not piece together and understand. They were necessary. Carefully, so carefully, he spent hours building the most miniscule enchantments into the arrangement. A scattering of nearly imperceptible arcane pinpoints dusted the edges of the blossoms and lit the opals. Subtle, ethereal, and transitory, the starlight would fade in the light of mid-day and reappear in darkness. In the relative darkness of the bedroom, the violet flowers took on a ghostly semblance, like a star had been crushed and scattered across the petals, fragments falling with the rain. Perfect. The enchantments, and the flowers, would last for weeks. Gathered and bundled in more dark silks trimmed with violet, the bouquet was plucked up and carried with reverence, placed so carefully atop the formal regalia that once had belonged to Eyuril. His walk through the Lan'dal Estate proved a quiet one, shadowed by a slender empress who fell into quadrupedal step with the caster. The halls themselves warped and turned on him once in transit, the house having a mind to recreate something reminiscent of a twisting alley between skyscraping spires where there should have been still halls and runed sconces. Catarina, unperturbed by this development, led him along to the doorway of the western tower without a hitch, her tail crooked contentedly the entire way. She twined about his legs fondly at the heavy door of the tower, and disappeared through a flower garden building itself up from the stone floor. Once inside, the disconcerting warp of senses and surroundings ceased, replaced by tricks of the eyes and subtle, tidal shifts of dark powers. He wasted no time making his way upwards to the very heart of the space, where the only shadow of import - as far as he cared for the moment - rested. The arrangement and regalia he carried were laid out again on the chair he had dragged into Filorian's study weeks before, close enough to the cleric's cot to touch. Andreo gathered a book edged in gold from elsewhere in the room, as well as a void crystal slightly larger than his head, careful not to directly touch the latter. He set the crystal to hovering over the cleric, and dug two vials from a pouch at his hip. One could hardly be seen for the pitch black, sloshing contents it contained, while the other was a crystal clear fail safe so carefully handled. His voice lilted and rose, starting slow and building into a melody that sent arcane sparks dancing on the air as he drew feathery, wispy shadows in lines over the pale form. The void crystal drew a slow torus of darkness to itself, goaded by his ringing tones, and resonated a harshly discordant note in counterpoint. It was going to take a while.

[dawnsavant]

crumpled strings

"Does he know you're doing that to him?" Usually Nyaeiph's observations were silent, but he could not keep the question to himself.

Andreo quelled the urge to flinch and jump, having no idea the sneak had let himself in. His normally sensitive hearing had failed to warn him, but the tower was often oppressively silent or plagued with the sounds of creatures that made no true sound. He hoped his voice flowed as smoothly as he wanted when he answered: "I'm sure some part of him is vaguely aware."

"That is, none the less, spectacularly creepy. It's one thing to do it to someone capable of awareness, but even with everything he's done, I can't imagine..." The poet leaned his shoulder to the entryway casually, eyes on the cleric rather than the priest. [cut for length and vague bits of creep]

That was not true. The Dawn Priest indeed watched Nyaeiph keenly now, but not with his own eyes. At least he talked with his own mouth.

Nyaeiph ran a hand through his streaked hair, his long ears canting, then he folded his arms over his chest. "Where? What does the tower have to do with that?"

The waifish caster slacked where he sat, relaxing in a deep cushioned chair. Speaking extensively and his puppeteer act were hard to maintain at the same time, but he needed the practice. "It's bad for me to be in here for extended periods, bad that I've been here as much as I have. This place, this power, this magic is such a temptation for me, Kitty. I can't even begin to describe."

"Are you taking those temptations out on him because he can't fight back?" The young man flipped a hand towards Filorian, whose shoulders and back rolled fluid as he dipped and stretched, reaching to touch a distant point on the floor. The cleric's muscles quivered taut, and only when a bead of sweat rolled off his flushed nose did he rise to ease into a different set of dancer's motions.

"No." Andreo's head lifted, eyes turning towards Filorian, and the deathly pale elf briefly met the gaze. It created a disorienting moment for the priest. He did not enjoy seeing himself through the eyes of others, and studied the limp fall of his own auburn hair, the places where his thin robe made it too obvious he had been skipping meals again, the dimmed eyes. "Were he awake, there would be nothing but open invitation... a game if you will, relaxation and play, and yes, an outlet."

The Dawn Priest's hand rose to block his eyes from locking with his displaced gaze, and he sighed. "As it stands, this is instead a necessity, a kindness. I'm not letting years of conditioning waste from atrophy, of all things." His tone turned thoughtful, analytical. "I don't think I was supposed to have noticed how he cheated, though. Trying to work on that, too."

"Cheated?" Nyaeiph's head tipped to the frame of the doorway, a perfect picture of boredom, but his attention was too obviously piqued.

"I... I. Oh. Er. Not mine to tell-- perhaps. Perhaps, oh, worded like this, since you've seen it for yourself. The shadows moved with Filorian. Filorian moved with the shadows. Tied together, inexorably, they flowed more like liquid and lightning than man and magic." A quiet laugh bubbled from the Dawn Priest, the first cheerful sound he had offered up in two weeks' time. Even with the man he spoke of essentially comatose for well over a month, Andreo could not help but sing his praises. So thoroughly had he tied the bare chested dancer's strings to his own that a smile crooked Filorian's lips upwards in echo.

The pallid elf now balanced on one leg, lifted on his toes, arms curled to the side. That leg shook subtly, and Andreo was forced to ease the tall elf's weight off it earlier than he would have liked. This routine was so simple, compared to the rounds his shadowbeast worked through regularly. He found he simply could not have Filorian do anything that resulted in gripping or putting his full weight on his hands, either.

Years, and he had never noticed... No, he had. It has been filed into some cabinet of mental notes which passed easily from awareness. He knew how magic was supposed to lace around tendons and through those bone white fingers by heart. He just never questioned it because it worked - and now it did not.

"Saw that. Man's damned impossible to hit, with how he pulls and slips through shadows." The thief at the door dipped his chin forward with an almost begrudging agreement to the praise.

Unseen, an ugly, fading bruise bloomed across the cleric's leg, caused by a spill into stone flooring in a session some few days beforehand. It came from attempting to put his hands to full use, and nearly ran from hip to knee. His long, dark slacks hid the discoloration. Andreo paid so much more attention to the areas that pulled taut now, learned how to listen to a body that was not his own in manners far more subtle than anything he attempted previous.

"Yeah," the priest replied in a moment of minor distraction. His thoughts remained soundly on the scars that pierced Filorian's hands and either leg. Aches and pains scattered across the cleric's torso. The slow burn of muscles protesting this workout made themselves known, just as they had in the week before.

At least the muscular elf would not have to actively suffer the soreness which would invariably result from changing the routines and experimenting.

"And that's not what you meant." Nyaeiph tipped his attention from the cleric to the priest again, a slight darkening of his glowing eyes betraying their narrowing in study.

"No, you're right on the mark." Nonchalant dismissal colored the ruddy elf's words. Andreo called a silent end to the workout, directing his beloved's steps to ease him into his cushioned bunk.

His dark haired employee regarded him blankly, not sparing a look aside towards Filorian's surprisingly animated motions. "You're a bad liar."

The cleric found a comfortable position and stilled, suddenly boneless, relaxed, and ever so abruptly asleep where he lay. The strings now cut allowed reality to show through. Comatose, nary a whisper, hardly an active thought, save a hiccup of questioning with the fall the other night. Subconscious, a fragment roused in self defense, not conscious awareness. Andreo soothed and sang until even that lapsed back into restful quiet, and all had been silent since.

It would be another week and a half before Andreo intended to attempt purposely wake him.

"Am I? Not many seem to notice." Andreo breathed a sigh and blinked, once more only seeing through his own eyes instead of primarily by his shadowbeast's. A strange sensation. Filorian's vision proved subtly different from his own, so much more sensitive to sources of light, his focus better, color spectrum just a little cooler.

After rubbing at his eyes and turning to properly face Nyaeiph instead of the books and study materials laid out before him, the priest shook his head. "The answer to what you ask was given plain, even not being mine to give, and I cannot repeat it. I'm a little easier to wiggle information out of than he ever is, but I can't just go throwing the curtains of mysteries open willy-nilly. Takes all the fun out of it."

The corner of the slim caster's mouth tugged upwards in a faint smirk, but his brow creased. "Though on that thought, talking... may I come down and lurk around you, once I finish here? I really did mean it when I said being in here for extended periods is incredibly bad for me, and..." He trailed for a moment as though the last few words were some horrid admission of weakness. "And I'm hungry. Come plot dinner with me?"

"Why, I think that's the first time you've actually asked me, yourself." The lithe poet's tone mocked the priest in a manner playfully sincere. He jested, not trying to make light of the circumstance that required Andreo to ask such things for himself. "Yes. Yes, it's fine. Surprised you didn't just drop in sooner."

"I thought you might have just been enjoying being paid for free time to write pretty words - and for being a nosy little shit in peoples' offices when you don't think they can notice from across the home." The mocking went both ways. Andreo plucked a book and pen up and stood, turning to a clean page in order to finish out the duties his healer's training demanded of him in dealing with a patient in such poor state.

He still could not really think of Filorian as a patient. It required a level of disconnection that he could not manage.

"Indeed. Reflections over the sum of gold my time in the pisser earned me was an enlightening experience." Nyaeiph's delivery came flawlessly deadpan, breaking Andreo away from his abruptly dour line of thought.

"Light, get outta here." The priest snorted. "I'll be in the kitchen soon."

"I shall gladly wile away the moments and count amassing coinage for each passing second. Thus I must encourage you to take your time, despite waiting to be so graced by your presence." The poet sketched a bow to match his sudden over the top formality, and slipped out of the door frame. His leaving footfalls quickly gave to silence.

Andreo leaned on Filorian's cot, eyes on the vacated doorway. "Filo," he breathed in forlorn, if not amused confession, glancing down to start his painstakingly detailed notes of the cleric's condition and minor changes therein. "I'm either going to hit him or hit him, and I really don't know which is going to happen first this time."

[dawnsavant]

feather fall

((posts things out of order like a boss)) The Dawn Priest curled on a dark seat in a dark room in a dark tower in a dark house on what he considered a rather dark morning. The skin under his fingers, impossible to see, contrasted ghostly pale.

Numbers ran through his head in agitating repetition, distracting him from the chakral design he recreated in shadows for the third time. If he could figure out what went wrong, maybe he could fix the whole system he worked on in one fell swoop. It was a perfect theory. It SHOULD have worked.

One hundred and thirty nine years, eleven hours, plus a smattering of minutes, he thought, distracted.

139. Almost exactly three thousand years difference, he guesstimated. Maybe give or take a decade. The records he had found had been doctored. He figured it was pointless in asking what year his test subject had been born. It hardly mattered to anything save his curiosity and need for exacting detail.

Three thousand one hundred thirty-some... and five months, twenty days, probably a few hours.

What would he be like in three thousand years? Would he live that long? Would he still have a cause so just?

He ran his fingers against the hollows of Filorian's eyes, felt in clear relief, over crow's feet and lines of age. Sunken skin, cheekbones and the line of the temple rose like landmarks on a map defining ages past.

Filorian Xenoril the Fair had no such discerning marks. Filorian Ophrenos the pallid had lost his golden hair, but kept his debonair looks and clever charm. Filorian his shadowbeast still should look in his prime, but here he lay, without seemingly either the shadow or the beast, and hardly any prime remaining. Filorian Lan'Dal the always dying, never dead. Ever running, full of dread. Black sand's falling, all hope's fled. Trilled iambic sing-song verses fluttered in the back of his mind.

Shadows wisped to life around his fingers as they crested from Filorian's creased brow over his dull hair. Andreo went to lengths to keep that hair perfect, but no matter what he did... Brow, crown... Brushing the top of Filorian's head, he pulled the power he had drawn out together. Nothing happened. The spell failed, inexplicably, as though it had never been there at all.

Andreo made a strangled little noise, somewhere between incredulous surprise and frustrated rage.

His spells didn't FAIL. They never failed repeatedly. The Dawn Priest started again. Root, sacrum, stomach...

<Andreo,> a voice whispered in the star-strewn void behind his eyes. So faint that he wondered if it were not one of his own thoughts, his constant doubts chiding him for obsession again.

Could he be blamed?

... torso, throat, brow, crown...

Nothing happened.

<Andreo, please stop crying. Go out today. Do something nice. You deserve a break from working on this.> The voice, barely existent, so tired he could feel it himself, tugged at him with a thread of purely serene harmony.

No, that certainly rang unlike any of his own thoughts. Wait. He cried? Andreo hurriedly lifted his hands to rub his eyes with the sleeve of a grey robe. Crying indeed.

"It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to," he grumbled back at the cleric aloud, petulantly.

<You're missing your favorite part of Midsummer. Go try to have some fun, Scamper.> Andreo's shoulders sank and he let the partial reiteration of the spell he had started over again go. "Okay," he answered mildly. "Okay, but we're having tea when I return, and I'm going to get you so many orange blossoms. So many."

A mental chuckle rolled smoothly from the pallid elf, and his body gave an accompanying, seemingly relaxed sigh.

The moment he passed out of that wing of the Estate, Andreo was in tears again, but quite resolved on at least going to get flowers and... And... maybe candy. And those little toasted things the vendors sold... and...

[dawnsavant]

beasts and birds (part 7, rp collab, filorian and andreo)

Filorian was still alive in a sense. He looked a spectre of death, but he wasn't living an unlife quite yet.

Why was it unbalanced? The Light caged in the aspect of the Priest had been the same, hadn't it? It was too pure, too sterile, and hurt; not the kind of power elves tended to hold.

This Shadow was also too pure, too primal, in a sense? The shell of Andreo's form shattered like glass, the everpresent power the priest kept contained and so tightly warded flaring free. That break manifested in the library as a pulse of unfocused arcane energy and Light that washed out from around them and fell to useless sparks of magic. Something made it all too easy for the shadows to even just incidentally break through him to the very core; a combination of open access to Filorian and the scars that a soulbound curse left on the priest. Virtually no defense roused, save the make-up of his being. A shifting, chiming, ringing melody bled out of him: his precious music, his numbers, his magic, mind, and soul, all falling apart. The sun sang to and fed the cold of space, until it eventually collapsed upon itself to an intensely dense, humming glow. Was he dying? He didn't want to put Filorian through a situation like that - again. Maybe there was a way to divide the beast from his Shadowbeast, if it was not supposed to be there in that form. Free it back into the flow of shadows and magic, or better integrate it into the system, like the Priest and his painful spark of Light. Perhaps Filorian was meant to become like this in time, but it didn't seem to fit. The attunement with the Shadow wasn't right? The magic was woven through every bit of the cleric, but something about this was all wrong? He wanted to help fix it. But Andreo couldn't keep his thoughts straight. The shadows were lovely, dark, and deep. Everything mulled together, and the priest clung to one little idea. He had come to play with the Artist. Filorian drew him patterns of stained glass and ink. It made him happy. On the grounds of the Estate, Mistake rose from being a little loaf of sleeping, snoring bunny somewhere in Nyaeiph's general viscinity. He staggered drunkenly with a rather awful high-pitched keening set of squeaks, the kind of noises one might expect had he been caught by a lynx. Bad dream? The brown scruffball hopped, swayed, and fell into a still lump again. The poet's ear flicked to the noises, spying the rabbit with a look of concern. Oh yes he was aware of the rabbit's significance to Andreo. Though not exactly how. Carefully he moved to gather him up in his arms, peering as he gently pulled an eyelid back on the critter. Something was off. Rising from his lounge in the meadow, Nyaeiph hauled the rabbit and himself back toward the estate proper, determined to get to the bottom of this oddity.

The Monster devoured those thoughts, musings, as if they were the finest meats. In return, it gave more. A machine of Maker design. A memory the cleric could not even fathom, the source of those harsh burns that had covered him in Uldum. Attempts at excision of the shadow within him resulted in a condensed portion being shuttered away, unable to be removed. It'd only one way of surviving, and that was to fuse with the host's personality.

It was him. It wasn't. The priest's shattered shell was left be, the maw drawn from his shaking manifestation. Alive, and... well, unharmed wasn't quite right. Not sliced and diced or digested at least. The Monster consumed the magic, letting it sear over his flesh, but had remained strangely unaffected. Filorian on the other hand... The cleric's body jolted, gasping at the sudden outpour of light that left him crying out. Yet that, in and of itself, woke him. The Monster, its message delivered, turned to stalk its way through the halls once more. It was no one's prisoner, no pet. "A-nngh..." Filorian steadied himself as his vision blurred. It felt like one hell of a drug trip gone bad, honestly. His fingers groped blindly for a head of silken hair, and he sifted through the pain in his skull. "Andreo? A-Andy?" (reposting this since tumblr seems to have eaten the last one, hmm.)