this is like 3 zillion months old but i still come back to it, wanting to add onto it and never really succeeding. but i always come back because i like the first bit so here’s a summary of what al’ara’s up to post-legion
Al’ara remembers Silvermoon as bright and golden, like the sun.
It is, when she sees it again for the first time in over a decade. It’s tall and beautiful—different, as so much of it has been rebuilt from the ground up after the war that tore it all down... but yes. This is the Silvermoon she expects.
But she only gets to see it for a short time, and only through the barred window of a thoroughly enchanted, covered wagon. One of the sin’dorei’s finest modes of prisoner transportation. It is etched wheel to hood in runes that fortify its walls and silence even the smallest motions of magic within it. It is flanked by mounted Blood Knights and arcane constructs. The roads are cleared of civilians yards before the wagon passes through.
“Is that her?”
“I don’t believe it...”
“I thought she was dead!”
Al’ara can so faintly hear the voices.
Only for a while. Then the wagon is led up into dark halls. Al’ara peers out her window; the constructs are gone, but these new halls are swarming with Blood Knights. She suspects this be their headquarters within the city then. She finds herself right; when they unload her from the wagon at last, the banners she sees are black with red phoenixes upon them.
Her wrists and ankles are shackled together, as is her throat. These too are runed thoroughly; no mana can move within her, and no words can leave her lips. The once fierce felfire pouring from her eyes has dimmed to embers under the enchantments’ heavy restraints. The Blood Knights lead her down, down, down... Deep into a prison she wonders if was ever here before the Scourge came, or if it was built after to contain monsters as powerful. There isn’t so much as a crack for the sun to peel through.
Al’ara, chains and all, is placed in a cell meant to contain the most violent and determined forces of magic. The bluish runes pulse faintly along the walls, the ceiling, the floor... They and a single torchlight on the wall outside her cell provide the only sources of light. She has a bed, a table to eat at, and a place to relieve herself. She is put in plain linen clothes. Guards are posted at her cell, they cycle four times each day, every six hours. Al’ara memorizes the first two, so that every time they return, she knows it’s morning.
This becomes her life. She despises it; some days she hides it well, and others she is screaming her soundless throat raw, cutting her hands as she tries to rip the bars out with only her magicless strength. She is ignored; not even sneered at, but never spoken to, never acknowledged. On her better days, she knows these are their orders. On her worse ones, her sanity cracks under the feeling of distinct nonexistence. Her only validation is the fact someone keeps coming back to slip a meal or a change of clothes into her cell.
She counts the days. Not on the walls or in her skin, only in her mind—that brilliant mind Silvermoon once praised her for, now scorned and countered in every last way. Smart as she is, she eventually loses track. She only knows it’s been months. She can still vaguely track time by how much her hair has grown.
Mostly, she’s left to think. To regret and regret and regret. To marvel at the fact she’s still alive, that the son that has forsaken her directly, specifically, personally—still left just enough of a mark on his Order that they chose to keep her. Was that it? Some kind of tribute to Raein? Is that why she’s alive?
She almost died a good death in Argus. Defending her home, the way she’d always thought she was. Instead, her life is spared. Why. Why? She is too proud to beg for death, even in the solitude of her mind. But she wonders.
One day, someone more decorated than the errand runners stands in front of her cell. Al’ara only knows it, in the darkness, because the firelight glints off his armor. She watches him there for what feels like forever; standing between the two guards ever posted at her cell. Is he really silent that long? Or has her grasp of time truly become so lost?
“Open the cell,” the Blood Knight finally says.
One of the guards does as bided, first dispelling a magical lock before physically inserting a key. The cell door opens with a whine, and the decorated Blood Knight steps inside. Al’ara does not sit up from where she lays curled up in bed, but she watches him with her dim, starving eyes. She has not drank of any sort of magic since her capture in Argus. She feels like she could disintegrate any moment. Perhaps he will make the mistake of touching her, and she’ll crumble to dust.
He does touch her, and to her misery she does not perish. He sits her up himself; too weak to struggle, she can only groan and whine at the sheer pain of it, her voice barely coming through the magic shackle around her neck.
—Wait. She knows this kind of chain, has tried to speak or scream through it for months. How has she made a sound now? Her vision focuses by force, and in the Blood Knight’s hand is the shackle. She touches her neck to find it bare.
“Al’ara Embereye,” the Blood Knight says.
Her eyes struggle as if heavy to look up at him. She may be able to use her voice again, but it is destroyed with neglect and abuse; it’s hoarse and raw and it hurts her greatly to speak. “What... do you want...?”
“You will be coming with us.”
“Where...?”
“To Silithus.”
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
adrideus steelblaze, at the beginning of bfa: were it not for the fact you’re the most demon-educated son of a fuck silvermoon knows i would have slaughtered you
al’ara, on month 7 with no feeling in her mana, looking like she’s going to keel over dead any second and hissing at the light adrideus has let in through the door at the far end of her prison cell: i will bite your throat out
Vyana's eyes flicker off the file and the hand of nails she's presently grating against it, crossing Adrideus's face for a splinter of a second, then flashing to and locking on the boy's next to him. Look at that baby face, he must be thirty, why is Adrideus walking around with children.
"Who's this," she deadpans.
"Raein Dawndwelling," Adrideus answers, resisting a sigh. He gestures briefly from the baby to Vyana. "Dawndwelling, this is Knight-Adept Vyana Sunstorm."
The baby nods politely. Vyana doesn't even blink. "Cute." She looks at Adrideus again. "Who is this."
Adrideus stares. She stares back, but with much less visible cracking in her stoic expression, so Adrideus rolls his eyes and gives up. "He's something of a cleric, and he's under my command. He's coming with us to the Isles in a week's time."
"We're sending babies to the Isles?"
"I'm twenty-seven," the baby blurts out.
"Oh Wrynn's chin, you're not even thirty," she says, in something like performative concern.
The baby squints. "Rinschin? Is that... Common?"
"Sure." She goes back to filing her nails. "We must be pretty fucked if we're sending babies to war."
"He'll be an asset."
"Of what? He's soft and he's got a bum leg."
"I—"
Vyana raises her finger and the file folded in her hand to the baby, prompting him to shut his mouth, and examines the work on her nails. "If you miss your nephew so bad, get a dog."
"Are you done," Adrideus asks.
"No," she says. "At least get him a baby harness. You're gonna make him march around those Isles with that leg? Abhorrent."
"Now are you done."
"I think so."
"Great." Adrideus breathes in, and then he breathes out. "He's Al'ara Embereye's son."
The baby, in turn, stops breathing completely. Vyana looks at Adrideus. Then looks at the baby, and stares, and stares some more.
"You're shitting me."
"I am not."
"Son of a bitch." She gives a sudden, dull laugh, her eyes briefly flashing with an amused glint. "Haha, get it—"
Adrideus rubs his face in a hand. "His job is to draw her out. She's proven reluctant to approach anyone but the Illidari, and even they're on rocky terms with each other. But Dawndwelling—"
"I got it," Vyana says. She resumes filing her nails. "So he's an asset because he's a baby."
"Yes. I guess."
She shrugs agreeably. Fair enough.
"Will you please move now," Adrideus groans out.
Vyana looks up at him, then down at the large wooden box she's sitting on. Wordlessly, she kicks her legs out of their cross and gets to her feet, filing throughout, and focuses on that as Adrideus goes about cracking the thing open in her peripheral. The baby politely stands out of the way.
He's gonna die out there. What a shame.
"What are you even doing down here," Adrideus huffs at her, as he begins pulling armor out of the box.
Smallish. Not Vyana small, but smaller than Adrideus. Must be the baby's. What's it doing in a box?
"Picking up my gear," she answers without looking. "Fucked it up squashing initiates. Gettin' it fixed."
"Of course," Adrideus says. "I don't know what I expected."
"Want me to get that baby sling while I'm here."
"For you?"
Vyana's eyes fire to the baby. The one who just spoke. When she does, he looks like he'd swallow the words and his whole tongue if he could.
"I just—" he blurts out, and shrinks. Vyana's still staring at him. "Sorry."
"Steelblaze," Vyana says, "you're gonna hate this kid."
"He's mild enough," Adrideus shrugs. "We have a mission. We'll tolerate each other."
"You're gonna fuckin' LOATHE this kid." She sounds oddly delighted. The baby looks worried. "This'll be fun."
"Go get your armor," the knight-lord snaps, waving her away with an arm.
She glances the baby up and down, and he looks so painfully confused, and if she hadn't seen him look so mortified and apologetic with her own eyes, she'd sooner believe she imagined his slip up.
"Kid," she says.
"My name is Raein," he replies, very, very quietly, with a little furrow to his brow—there.
There, she sees it. He's not mild at-fucking-all. "Are you Suncrest's medic?"
He looks very concerned about this guess. "Yes?"
"Oh Light above." She doesn't even laugh this time, but the glint is back. "Good luck, Steelblaze."
"Armor. Scram."
She flicks her file out, then back to her nails, then resumes her work as she walks away, leaving the baby bewildered beyond reason and Adrideus nervous.
I SAID I WAS WORKING ON IT and i cut a lot of stuff which was simultaneously exposition and excess so this is, uh, vaguer than it was, but i think it improves its pace, so!!! there!! i’m still working out the details on this lovely, made-up subzone called quel’finaar anyway!!!!
anyways, the stormheim bit to accompany val’sharah and azsuna :3c because if you think reintroduced mana struggles & shitty warlocks was enough strife on this kid’s plate, you just don’t know me at all
    1. Sanctum of Light
Adrideus presents him with a missive. Fine parchment, though the handwriting suggests... arthritis, Raein speculates—its broken seal is a wax sigil of the Horde. The contents are quick to set his heart and all its wires racing, as its writer recounts minute but promising rumors of a Lady Embereye. Her name comes up consistently in each report summarized, denoting her as a focal point in a range of activity in the northeastern highlands of Stormheim. Horde scouts overhear locals speak of her as they would an ally; adventurers recognize her name and recall the favors she and her people have asked of them. Though not quite where they congregate.
"She's in Stormheim?" Raein asks Adrideus, that same heart pounding, afraid to believe it.
"According to the Forsaken," the knight-lord says, his voice very close to smooth without its usual frustration to lace it. "Windrunner's forces were kind enough to forward us the intel."
All at once, Raein suddenly realizes the cause of rickety handwriting, and is prompt to push the death-touched missive back across the table. Adrideus doesn't question it, pocketing the letter and turning to leave. For once, Raein isn't hesitant or bitter to follow, lunging to his feet and hurrying after the knight-lord with a limp so easy to ignore in place of a loud drumming in his ears.
"She's in Stormheim," he says, no longer a question, but disbelieving still. "My mother—"
"Get a mage out here," Adrideus snaps into the front chamber of the Sanctum, and there again is the way his voice grates in his throat. "I want to be in Stormheim half an hour ago."
Paladins scurry off, as Raein pivots off to the side to find and strap on more than the leather and tabard he otherwise walks the Sanctum in. His hands shake, and the steel gripped in them—Adrideus returns quickly, glances him over, and nods.
"We leave in ten," he says. "Get to the chapel. Bring a mount."
"Yes sir," Raein manages.
"And when we find her," he continues—confident in his choice of words, to Raein's worry; "you'll be wise to remember that you're here on the Order's behalf. This is not Firewing Point."
Raein meets his eye with a little scowl, but daren't say a thing. Adrideus doesn't like the silence any more than he'd like resistance—he's smart enough to realize, to Raein, they can be the same thing.
"Remember that," the knight-lord says.
That, Raein can answer. "I will."
    2. Amberfall Mesa
"Dawndwelling."
That's the first sound he understands, but not the first one he hears. Before it, there was something brief, sharp; there and gone before Raein could ever hope to register it. A gunshot? Snapping fingers? Thunder? Maybe even just a crack of the fireplace in front of him. He doesn't know, and never figures it out, but it serves to snap him out of a severe haze, heavy and light at once, where the red-and-gold woods around them couldn't penetrate whatever black fog had seized his mind.
He can't remember anything after stepping through the portal. No, that's not true—he just won't. Not the Landing, not hollow gold eyes or decrepit dark rangers. Nothing but the words that serve as his reminder not to think about it, rasping voices through wicked teeth, cracking bones through weathered skin.
(Dark Lady watch over you.)
He focuses above the distortion of the fireplace, on Adrideus' face. The paladin looks exasperated, and gestures out to the side; Raein is slow to realize he's meant to look. When he does, it's with a flickering glance between there and back, bewildered, dizzied by the rapid shots of one moment after the next.
Finally, he hears a mess of snorts and nickers, and his attention locks at last on one dark, anxious mare. "Quell your mount," Adrideus gruffs out.
Raein wobbles to his feet, abandoning the light and warmth of the fire to join Athala in the dark outskirts of the camp. He's hushing her several feet before he manages to lay his hands on her face, bringing her eyes to meet his and shushing her still, stroking her nose as her ears still flicker urgently, for a moment, before pointing just as alertly right at him. She nuzzles him, huffing and grumbling, and Raein finds comfort of his own in being able to rest his forehead atop her long snout.
He turns and presses a cheek to her nose as he tries to look out into the dark. The leaves are autumn-shaded, exceptionally bright considering the time of night, but the nearby firelight still drowns out much detail. "What do you see?" he murmurs to Athala; the horse snorts heavily and pushes at him with her face.
Lifting his head offers no better view of the wilderness, but she's momentarily satisfied with his investigation. Still, the woods look tranquil to him, and Athala is beginning to settle as well. He looks at her again, and her butting her nose into him is softer now.
"I trust you," he says. She sighs, lowers her head and pushes against his chest, earning herself all the more pets and scritches for it. "You've never let me down."
At this, she snorts loudly—he likes to think it's a bratty 'of course' or something of the like. Whatever she sees, or thinks she sees would be trampled to death under her weight long before it did any lasting number on him. That's her way. It's been her way as long as he's known her.
"Stay with me," he mutters against her brow, "when we find her."
    3. The Runewood
It's been her way as long as he's known her.
The Forsaken, Raein is reminded once they're gone and he's thinking straight, have been helping in pointing the Order regiment the right way. Word and recognition of this so-called Lady Embereye becomes more frequent, a game of hot and cold befitting of the once-famed fire mage they're looking for. But she isn't the only thing the Forsaken warn the paladins of.
Their search took them many a mile north for days, drifting farther and farther east until they're headed nearly due so. Windrunner's troops are well-acquainted with Stormheim after this long, and just as aware where Greymane's dogs make camps of their own. The two have managed to dance around each other so far, and for the most part, so have their respective forces.
Athala is not the only one to swiftly become unnerved. The whole regiment is equipped with horses trained for combat, coursers and destriers who are as smart as they are strong, calm as they are alert, loyal as they are unforgiving. Each and every one turns antsy at near the same time, and this close to the worgen's Greywatch, there's no room to wonder if they're not just spooked.
The worgen waste not a second more, and in moments, it's a battleground.
Athala veers from the initial ambush, as Raein doubles overtop her in the saddle to mitigate any chance of whiplash while she evades the lunging Alliance beasts. He can't find the resolve to release her rein to reach for the sword at his side, and it'd probably be a worthless endeavor anyway—he has no experience swinging a blade on horseback. Shortsighted, perhaps, but he dares doubt even the warrior that taught him could do much better on that front.
Weaponry might be a no go, but magic certainly isn't. In place of silver steel is fiery gold, blazing spells he slashes through worgen soldiers sprinting across the ground, or raising shining barriers in front of the paladins they make grabs for. Blurs of black or brown dart around the scene, their fur dark against the midday forest terrain, yet so fast Raein can barely see them anyway. Athala is a brilliant and very old warhorse, and he means it when he says he trusts her, doesn't doubt she can and will and does do everything in her power to keep them both beyond the reach of any claws.
But there's one of her and dozens of them, and all it takes is one wrong move and one missed dog. A force crashes hard against Raein's side, tearing a sharp pain through his neck he knows is that whiplash. The forest blurs, the ground is just one of two unyielding forces he's smashed between, and it's only the luck of a million draws across centuries of circumstance that the worgen curse and the Light don't get along.
Raein's hands burst in spell magic, red-gold, holy power interlaced with bloodline fire, and the wailing howl the worgen lets loose rips into his own mind. The soldier's weight disappears off him, but Raein barely notices as he shuts his hands around his ears, willing the deafening pain away and his senses back. There are hot spots across his body, wet and scalding—bruising, he thinks, if not external bleeding. And never has a brutal fall done anything kind for a disfigured leg.
When he blinks his vision back into his eyes, the worgen is feet away and already struggling to her fours, and almost makes it, almost leaps to pin him down again—until Athala's full weight comes crashing down atop her instead. Raein doesn't hear it, but his mind fills in all the blanks of a shattered spine, a strangled cry; Athala jumps and stumbles off the worgen's corpse with a vicious look about her. Another approaching soldier has his skull smashed open when her hind legs strike out at his sneak attack, but it leaves her open to a third, lucky dog, big and angry and barreling down on her with a rabid force Raein, in his terror, thinks fatal.
Athala is fearless, but she's gigantic and steel-bound. The way she hits the ground might just be the worst thing he's ever seen, a combination of sight and sound and cold-blooded terror, and it's all her, it's all his brilliant and very old warhorse. It's like his mind snaps when her armor is very suddenly the wrong color red.
And then there's fire. There's blazing flame and singing steel, a blinding line of radiant metal, vicious and harmonious and both loyal to his trained hand, that goes slashing through the worgen like he's nothing. Once, twice—the second strike has the beast vaulting off Athala, stumbling on his fours, unable to recover entirely for when the third comes ripping into armor and fur. Raein's knee buckles hard over the worgen's resistance, and he's forced to shove off and back, just as he's blinking rapidly and realizing he's not still prone on the ground, and the sword's burning red and gold, and for just one second he wanted to kill that dog—
Adrideus runs a blade of his own through the worgen's shoulder, shattering his collarbone and opening his throat. He crumbles right after. Raein wobbles and drops to a kneel, bloodline fire suddenly cold in his heart, razor sharp steel silent and crimson; he can almost feel the wires shaking in his arteries at the stress, for a moment, before a miserable whine hits his ear and it doesn't matter.
He whirls at the waist, spots Athala's off-red shape in the dirt, and damns his smarting knee in favor of a struggled dash across the clearing. He doesn't drop his sword, but he spears it in the ground as soon as he reaches her, collapsing at her side and collecting her head in his hands. She neighs, kicks, there's blood and steel and then soft gold, white gold, holy gold. The kind he knows. The kind she found him in Northrend with. It dances across her urgently, rallying to cuts and gashes all over her.
"Athala." He murmurs to calm her, but this is a wheeze; this is terror unchallenged. "Shh, Athala, it's okay. It's okay. I've got you."
Her voice is strained, every noise this frantic and ugly sound he's never heard from her before. He pours his mana, uncaring of the consequences; the Light swirls and fogs around the both of them, so abundant without his guidance that not only does the gold fill all her cuts, but his too, until they all but disappear in the autumn leaves. She gets more quiet. He gets more afraid.
"You're okay," he says, as her struggling slows and softens. "You're okay, Athala, it's just me. I'm here for you. I'm here."
This place doesn't look like a snow-caked Icecrown, but his words are the same ones he told her then.
"I'll stay with you."
    4. Quel'Finaar
"Raein."
The world snaps back into alignment. Raein breathes, blinks, and sees violet-blue eyes staring up at him. The priest—she told him her name and it's escaped him—she looks worried but calm, confused and understanding. He forgets why she'd have to, except that he impulsively looks away, up at the settlement around them both, and he sees them.
He sees the eyes, hollow and yellow, curious and cautious and very, very dead—
Raein lurches, staggering over a badly smarting leg and tangled further in the priest's grip on either of his arms. He tries to fight her off, but not only does he fail, she even finds the time to strike out warningly at Adrideus' intruding hand when he reaches near.
"Pull it together, Dawndwelling," Adrideus growls out. "You survived Dreadwake—"
Raein just yanks away from the priest again, who briefly loses her grip, but his buckling leg nearly takes him to the ground and she only barely manages to right him. "Back off!" she snaps at Adrideus. "High or 'blood' elf, you must know fear of the dead when you see it!"
"These dead elves are your allies, aren't they?" Adrideus says, no kinder to her. "Then I'm sure he has nothing to fear."
"And I'm sure we all wish we could be as well-adjusted as you, 'knight-lord'!" She turns to Raein again, barely managing to catch his eye. "Hey—hey! Relax. They—"
"Dead," Raein blurts out, looking up and then promptly down. "They're dead, they're dead, they—"
"I know," she says. "I know, but we're all on the same side—they're my neighbors, my friends—we all remember Quel'Danas, Silvermoon, we remember it like you do. They aren't your enemy."
His breathing doesn't improve, but he stops outright resisting, eyes flickering between hers and theirs. None of them approach. In the tiny slivers of clarity, he realizes none of them so much as glare. When he stops looking back and forth and starts to fixate on the onlookers, scattered all across the town square, the priest pushes her way back into his line of sight, and succeeds in stealing his eye.
"Raein," she says, soft and urgent. "We're all just elves fucked over by a war."
It's... crass. But he manages a numb nod. Her grip finally loosens, though doesn't let him go outright, and he takes it as the reassurance she means it to be. The older elf—the man she listens to, the one Raein suspects is the leader of the little scouting group that found them—has disappeared deeper into the settlement.
Quel'Finaar, he recalls. Raein is used to kal'dorei architecture at this point, curious of it when he's in it—but this is not that. This is distinctly high elven, the kind Silvermoon still echoes, even if it's so much more red than these blues and purples he knew as a boy. It's... eerie, a little, like he's standing in a memory. Familiar and gilded towers, open doorways that welcome the seaside airflow. If he stares a little too long, he forgets he's not hundreds of miles across the sea or a dozen years in the past.
The yellow eyes help—in a word. There are other living high elves interspersed between the dead, and Raein isn't sure who outnumbers who, tries not to think about it lest the answer not be the one he'd prefer. The priest stays near him, and he feels just a little twinge of shame in all his terror. Not enough to fight it—these dead elves are strangers and he's as readily distrustful as they come—but enough that a knot forms in the very bottom of his throat.
His eyes sharpen on Adrideus, as the knight-lord's hand flies to the blade at his side, but not fast enough. A polearm points at his throat, wielded by cursed hands and guided by those hollow and yellow eyes—Raein's panic kickstarts, lurching backwards, stopped by the priest.
"It's okay—" she insists, but her voice is drowned out.
"Faendris!" Adrideus snarls, and Raein briefly spots the high elven scout leader as he approaches the group. "You think we can't smite half this settlement?"
"I'm being cautious," Faendris responds, and the furrow in his brow is distinctly that—wary, and a twitch apologetic. "What do you want with Lady Embereye?"
"You've got to be kidding me," Adrideus says, in what almost could be a laugh. "I don't know what she's told you, or what relation you have to her—you seem a little, let's say, out of the loop this last decade—but she is not the nobility you remember."
"How would you know?" the priest beside Raein snaps in, earning both a scathing look from Adrideus and a scolding one from Faendris. She ignores both. "Maybe it's you who's been out of the loop—"
"Velerith," Faendris warns—
"While you were all hiding away on these shattered isles, quel'dorei," Adrideus growls at her, "we were struggling tooth and nail against our very own Prince Kael'thas, and all his traitorous leeches—"
Raein's head impulsively ducks down. The bewildered look the priest—Velerith—momentarily casts at him makes him feel sick.
"And in case the lying witch hasn't told you," Adrideus carries on, "Al'ara Embereye was integral to Sunstrider's efforts—"
"Al'ara?" Faendris snaps, stunned and very confused. "Her daughter?"
Adrideus and Raein whip their attention to the elf at once. The latter speaks. "What—"
And a voice rings out over him. "I think there's been a misunderstanding."
A stillness seizes the settlement. Adrideus' anger twists to a profound confusion of his own, both Faendris and Velerith tense with recognition. Raein just stares ahead, at the woman that appears from the same central building Faendris must have. Calm, high elven, very old—and when she says her name it echoes, beating in his mind in time with his racing heart, until he daren't forget it, daren't so much as doubt it—
She lifts her chin to the Blood Knights standing in the square. "I am Lady Serawyn Embereye," she says, "and you have my attention, Knight-Lord Steelblaze."
i kind of started this on a whim but i like.... the idea of extremely vaguely summarizing raein’s legion experiences as i figure them out? so uh. here’s almost all of what i’ve got so far. (or like the cool kids do, “three times raein was in azsuna and one time he wasn’t”)
    1. Illidari Stand
"I don't—what if someone recognizes me?"
"That is the point."
Raein outright scowls at this, but Adrideus remains as unimpressed as ever. And about one more second away from snapping at him if he keeps stalling, which Raein knows, because Raein has worked with him just long enough to decide he is in every way the worst. (Maybe he just misses his old structures. Everything about this is wrong and wrong and wrong.)
And, well beyond the point wherein he cares about disrespect—because Adrideus certainly doesn't, he hasn't expected anything from Raein from the moment they met and simply orders him around until he gets it right—Raein thusly rolls his eyes incredibly hard and marches off into the depths of the Illidari Stand. Adrideus follows behind him, but not so close as to breathe down his neck, aware or at least cautiously testing that Raein can indeed be the proverbial bargaining chip the Order needs him to be.
As well as aware (or cautiously testing) that he can prove it. Raein's experience with the Illidari is limited to crossover encounters when Sunstrider and Stormrage were allies—he is aware Al'ara, for a time, served the Illidari alone, severed from Kael'thas' service by way of violently diverging objectives, but by the time this happened, Raein was in Shattrath. Still, the demon hunters dragged out of the Warden's Vault remain the Blood Knights' closest link to Al'ara—and Raein remains their only bridging point.
And too aware Adrideus will, Light forbid, open his mouth again should Raein dawdle and waste time, he resolves to suffer through introducing himself and asking demon hunters about Al'ara. It only works if he calls himself Embereye, and he knows this, and he loathes it fiercely. But the Order needs him to find her, and he needs them to find her—so he clenches his jaw and tries.
Several of the demon hunters give pause, for one tense moment, when he makes this connection—Al'ara and her long-lost son—but they don't know her and certainly not him well enough to decide on the spot if humoring him is worth the time and effort, or if they would be angering an ally more than helping her. Most brush him off. Raein expects Adrideus to snap sooner or later, but realizes he only will if Raein starts ruminating on the hopelessness of this stupid, painful endeavor—and, annoyingly, the threat of that snapping on top of everything is just enough to push Raein forward without Adrideus having to do an actual thing.
Raein seldom hates people so unerringly.
There is, however, just one demon hunter who strays so very far from the pattern. A night elf, easily twice his height; one Raein does not so much as open his mouth to before her head turns to him, eyes masked but face still intense with recognition. She... considers him, for a moment—however he should interpret the way demon hunters 'regard' things—then lifts her chin when it clicks. For a moment too long, he thinks he knows her too.
"You," she says. "Embereye's blood. You burn of it."
Raein breathes as if the air itself is comprised of needles. "I'm looking for her."
     2. Azurewing Repose
He doesn't think about the mana.
He doesn't think about the whelplands all around him; the Blood Knights bringing hatchling dragons to him and the other healers, laying bludgeoned and tired bodies at his feet and his glowing hands. He doesn't think about their glazed eyes and weak resolves, how even the ones that want to fight him can't find the strength, how they have been robbed of their magic in a way scarily close to home.
And he doesn't think about those that invade the whelplands, beyond this secured little grove in the depths of the dragon's Repose. He doesn't think about decrepit skin and starving hands, doesn't think about the whispers around him that gossip of madness and addiction and what they call Withered.
He can't. He just heals the whelps brought to him. He just thinks about the problem.
And when they bring back a truly frightening husk of an elf, and when that elf keeps his head only because he swears he can help these dragons, Raein tries so very hard not to think about his starving hands.
     3. Ley-Ruins of Zarkhenar
He thinks it's pretty.
Azsuna in general, of course, but maybe the cities especially. Maybe this one especially. This ancient kal'dorei architecture, structures built of a people that've claimed his endless fascination since his father's little incorporations of their traditions in his magic; the stories he told Raein as a boy, on the not-often-enough nights he was home.
He saw some of that architecture near Faronaar, but not enough, not to sate his life-long curiosity. Maybe that's why this city, this once-city in particular, he thinks is pretty. He thinks the spires and the temples are pretty, the towering buildings and intricate roads. The deep river to the northeast. The wildlife that has exploded across the stonework.
And the mana veins, the ley lines, the blood of the very earth—exposed. Like a severed artery, spurting up into the city. Hemorrhaging. Bleeding out in bright, brilliant color. It's pretty. It's... very pretty.
Its color is pretty on his eyes, and its hum on his ears, and its energy on his skin. It catches his eye like nothing else, and it beckons him, like artwork does a hapless admirer. He doesn't think about the elves with the starving hands, removes himself from their proximity and, by extension, his regiment. He feels safe in the quiet, in only the hum of the bleeding ley line—like the rhythm in Dalaran's cobblestones. A song, dancing in his energy instead of his ears, and it pulls him to its edge like a siren does a sailor.
His hands burn. White hot, as if fire ants were biting down on every individual nerve, and he knows this feeling, knows it so well, has been incapacitated in bed so many different nights by it. Sick, miserable and starving—dying—praying for morning or relief, whichever comes first, whichever his company asks of him first. His hands hurt, razor sharp, like shards of shattered mana crystals stabbed into every pore.
Until they touch one of the gigantic quartzes. Without doing anything more, just resting his shaking hands upon the crystalline surface, there's a flush of intense and blissful relief. As if every inch of his body cries out at once—this is it, this is what we need, what we're dying without—he holds his breath just to bear it, only to let it out in an overwhelmed, thrilled gasp all at once. His hands still shake against the rock, but he feels the mana pouring off it, drowning out the very air, but he thinks he needs this more.
It'd be so easy. The spell the Scryers taught him on the floor of their Tier so many years ago, and after years of practice it's only gotten easier. It's very nearly thoughtless. He could just draw, just a little, and all this razor sharp, white hot, starving pain would be gone. His breaths are ragged, noisy, a constant fight between steady and rattled—it'd be so, so, so easy.
Every little twitch in his fingers sends another spiking rush through him. Promises sung by the ley line's hum, and he doesn't know, he doesn't know what he'd do if he wasn't stopped.
He hears a snarl and reels, guilt-struck and mortified—but what throws itself against the crystal is one of them, the elves with their starving hands. Raein balks, staring into a face he doesn't know but could, could because he saw them in Outland, could because there was so little stopping it from being his own reflection once. For one moment, he wants to believe he can help, that he can reverse it just like he wanted to believe he could reverse everything else, every starving elf that showed up in that infirmary, even the one in his mirror—
The Wretched makes a warning lunge, hissing, and Raein flees.
     4. Dalaran
"Where's Soralis?" he asks.
It's the first thing he's said since last night. A night neither he nor De'lana slept through, and it shows in the weight of his voice, hoarse and heavy. He doesn't look at her, curled up on his side with his back to her, eyes staring at something between him and the wall, maybe, he's not sure. The hand she's been rubbing up and down his arm pauses, surprised by his voice—even though it's barely his voice, really—and resumes with a cautious start.
"Putting Steelblaze on the longest goose chase he can, I reckon," she says.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." The rhythm of her hand is back to normal. "You need a break."
And they've gone to every length they can to get him just that. They're hunkered down between two of the cots in a Horde-controlled sickbay, on the far side of Dalaran, where Adrideus won't think to look for a few more hours because, mainly, Soralis probably has him thinking Raein is still in Azsuna. He'll get an earful for the retreat, but it's De'lana's hope he'll be better fit to take it—unlike now, where he'd still get the earful from fleeing Zarkhenar.
She's lost her steam now, but in the earlier hours of the night, he had to plea, quite pathetically if only once, that she not so loudly spurn Adrideus when his entire body hurts this much. He'll be happy to listen to her curse his name all she likes when he feels better—when the withdrawal imposed by just standing in that city fades—to which she may question, to no one who can answer, who in their right mind thinks to bring someone like Raein to a place like Zarkhenar.
Until then, she rubs his arm, and lets him lay his head in her lap with his back to her, and she hopes the encroaching morning will let the quiet of the sickbay last a little bit longer.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
That is, for all intents and purposes, a new name to add to the long list Raein doesn’t really like. It comes with a footnote, cited in the back of his mind, that details he only really doesn’t like it when Adrideus Steelblaze says it.
He’s been practicing how to imitate the little trace of venom in the knight-lord’s voice. “Sir.”
He must be getting better, because Adrideus sneers at him more often. Raein is only a little proud of himself.
