#alaroth

There is the most miniscule of cants as Irai’el raises her head, finally meeting Rei’ann’s eyes with her own. Again, the impeccable calm. A demeanour fitting for a priestess. Of good stock. Perfection: what her own grandfather wanted from her but was never happy with.

“I believe you know why, my Lady.”

My Lady. How dare she? After what she did? Rei’ann would have sent an ice lance through her throat if she had less self control at this point. But she knows and recognises the tools Irai’el is using. The more Irai’el unnerves her, the more she shows that she has won.

“Is this about the Everbough case? What you had to do? What Magister Sin’oriel ordered later? He held my old position while I was out of action on Argus! I was not the one responsible!” Regardless, her hoarse voice is raised in protest. “He removed all evidence of your involvement. I didn’t even know you were in any way tied to it until Dorielle Nightwhisper told me!”

“Liar.” Even the tone of voice has not changed. Irai’el’s voice is husky too, but only because of the alto timbre spoken barely above a whisper, as Rei’ann remembers. 

“Sin’oriel is dead, Irai’el. He was transferred out to the frontlines on the Broken Shore when I was deemed fit to resume my former post. There is nothing on Everbough except for one single case file, and every agent involved in it has gone with him.”

“Because of you.”

Rei’ann stares. “What?”

“You had to conceal the mess-up. You had to get rid of me. I was involved only because I was in the Sun’s Fury. Lyzande Fairdusk let me witness what he was creating. And then I was suddenly transferred to work as Inquisitor under Everbough. I barely joined the Thori’Belore missions, because I was unwittingly already undercover. It would have been a mark on your pristine track record if you were shown to have used me, an untrained agent, for your own purposes in the Spire. And when Nivendi’en chose Taryane, there was no more use for me, so you did what you had to do.”

Of all the conspiracy theories she has ever heard, of all the complicated intrigue she had to deal with in her position in the Spire, Rei’ann had never had such accusations brought against herself. 

“No, Irai’el.” Her voice trembles from the effort to keep her anger controlled. “I did not get involved with the Sun’s Fury until Magistrix Windblaze was out of commission. After that, I was thought dead on Argus. I was technically dead on Argus. I would never involve you in anything that would put you at risk. Nivendi’en was going to marry you! You were to become my own daughter!”

“Nivendi’en.” Irai’el lifts her chin up. “And Irelia Sunglance, and her husband Sylvarys Sunglance-”

Rei’ann frowns deeply. What have the Sunglances to do with this?

“- are the worst kind of rats that are bred out of your household.”

Rei’ann stares, lips parted, as Irai’el tells her of how Sylvarys found her in the field, and offered her his protection and his staff in apparent pity. How Irelia and Nivendi’en later attacked her to take the soul fragment of Illethiann’s that was needed to trace him in the Twisting Nether, thereby negating Sylvarys’ promise. How Nivendi’en spat on her and backhanded her, accusing her of being a traitor. After Irai’el did the noble thing and backed out of what she always knew to be the love Nivendi’en had for his childhood best friend.

Her heart turns cold. “Is this what this is all about? You wanted revenge on Nivendi’en? He didn’t know you were scapegoated! How could he have known? I didn’t!” Irai’el shakes her head slowly, pale and colourless under the illumination of the ambient arcane lamps. “I was only the woman he wanted to marry. I was only going to be your daughter-in-law. Funny how little trust you and your family place in people who are going to join it, isn’t it?”

She lifts her chin slightly as she peers down the length of her nose at Rei’ann now, like a Lady herself. A noblewoman of the highest caste regarding nothing less than the dirt under her foot. “So different from my own.. Did your parents ever teach you that there’s nothing more important than your own family? That everything you do must always  be with them in mind? Sacrifice yourself for your blood and kin, Lady Firestar. It is the way of those who are born like we are.”

Rei’ann mutely watches Irai’el, unblinking. With each word, her heart sinks even more, unable to respond as Irai’el continues.

“I lost my own family. We served the royal court. After the Fall, I even killed my own Matriarch for turning felblood, and lost my brother in the process. I had no more family, except for the rest of us who remained. Everything I did, I did for them. I did for you. 

“But you did not appreciate any of it. Not you. Not Nivendi’en, for whom I would have done anything if it meant he could be happy.”

She understands now. Rei’ann understands why. But it does not change the fact that Irai’el is wrong. Her fists tremble as it is her turn to shake her head.

“If I had known, I would have done something. I did not. I wish I could turn back time so that I could have intervened, Irai’el. If you’re angry at me because you thought I caused your suffering, direct it at me. Why Nivendi’en? Because you hate him for what he did?”

“Because if there is a fate worse than death, then it is to suffer in grief over losing those you love.” Irai’el is motionless. A living statue of alabaster and storm grey shadowed in twilight indigo, as she speaks with preternatural calm. “I know it too well.”

“It is our choices that define us, Irai’el!” Rei’ann is inches away from the barrier now. She can step in if she wants to: it is her enchantment, her spell, but she holds back still. “You have chosen to be no better than what you think Nivendi’en and I are!”

“On the contrary,” Irai’el’s lips appear to curl into a smile. Rei’ann has never seen her smile. “I am free, my Lady. Freer than I have ever been my entire life.”

She has seen it once too often. One does not need to be inflicted with whispers of the Void to turn mad, or to lose all sense and sensibility, Irai’el Starflare is not delusional from the corruption of her body and soul. She is a victim of circumstance, and she has turned down the wrong route, to the point where she can no longer be helped. 

“Where is Nivendi’en.” No more questions.

Irai’el cants her head to the side. Her surprise appears genuine, which infuriates Rei’ann even more. “What do you mean?” “You know exactly what I mean.” Rei’an almost spits out. “His body is gone! Where did you move him?”

The void elf looks almost amused. “I have no idea what you are talking about. But it is a brilliant idea to take his corpse away. I wish I was the one who had thought of it.”

Rei’ann does not know which is worse: the fact that Irai’el genuinely appears not to know, or the fact that she is relishing in her pain. 

“I am very sorry, Lady Firestar. I do not know where he is. I wish you all the best in finding him. He does deserve a funeral, as does any elf.”

And then, as if a final slap to her face, Irai’el leans forward, keeping her gaze locked onto Rei’ann’s.

“Tal’anumen no Sin’dorei, Lady Firestar.”

There is no ice lance. There is no burst of flame. There is no blast of arcane. No magic for the undeserving. There is only a fallen body. A dripping blade, and void tinted blood pouring from the clean slice across the front of Irai’el’s neck. 

Judge, jury, and executioner: this is her role as Magistrix of Quel’Thalas. 

But Rei’ann knows - as did Irai’el - that this will not bring Nivendi’en back. 

He dashed forward before Eliendre could react. To what he just said. To what her spectral sight saw. To what Vellidan did next. which was to land a flying kick at Lord Illethiann Firestar towards the large tree that sheltered the famous grave of the Lord’s deceased second born daughter. 

Eliendre had seen carnage of every kind, from the mass slaughter of the Scourge in the Fall, to the hellhole that was the Antoran Wastes, and everything else in between. For her, each scene was always taken in all at once, without any detail missed. It was the same here: the battlemagi and spellbreakers encircling the little area by the grave; the pale, bleeding, very dead body of Nivendi’en Firestar, son of the Lord. Remnants of void encircled his form, particularly concentrated around his head and his neck, from where a severed artery bled as if it was impaled upon an invisible spike. Narindiel with her hand raised, surrounded by fel, at none other than Alaroth Voidstorm, twin brother to Vellidan who now stood in front of the ren’dorei in a protective stance. 

And Lord Firestar, angrily pushinig himself up from being kicked against the tree as his spellcasting was interrupted. While Lady Firestar cradled the body of her son, hysterically screaming at the healers, who were trying to remove the void taint in order to reverse the damage. To no avail.

Her heart turned cold. The horror of frontline battle was one thing, but the senseless murder of an innocent being in the very place where they were supposed to be the most safe, was a different kind of trauma. 

None of it made any sense.

She parsed as much as she could make out from the shouting, and from what was happening before her as she kept out of sight behind a copse of trees. Illthiann accusing the twins of being traitors. Rei’ann’s crying. Narindiel’s loud interrogations. Alaroth’s protests. A name. Priestess Starflare? Vellidan defending his brother. The ground was illuminated as fire was summoned, scorching the earth. Narindiel being stopped by Vellidan, and then going towards Illethiann only to disappear before she could touch the grieving Lord. To the naked eye, she would have stepped into thin air. For Eliendre, she saw the arcane spell matrix of a rapid teleport, casted by Illethiann Firestar himself towards Narindiel.

But his was not the only one. Where the body of Nivendi’en Firestar lay, a similar matrix, with a pattern completely different from any of the spellcasters present, surrounded him, as the healers that tended to him backed away from the immense heat surrounding the area now, and Rei’ann suddenly rising to stalk towards Vellidan and Alaroth. 

She wanted to say something. Someone is teleporting the body away. But Nivendi’en disappeared in the second she deliberated.

The outcry was horrific. 

It all happened quickly afterward. Rei’ann shouting for which of the mages around them was the one responsible for taking Niven’dien away, to which none of them owned up, because none of them did it. Rei’ann raising her hand, as Illethiann did. Powerful spells of arcane and fel respectively, ready to launch towards her Shan’do and his brother. Vellidan’s warglaive flying to his hand, the tip of which he then aimed towards Rei’ann’s throat, while Alaroth denied knowing where Nivendi’en was. 

Eliendre moved. She would not let anyone attack her mentor, her teacher. Her foster father.

But Vellidan, astute as ever, casted a sharp glance in her direction, the fel energies saturating his empty eye sockets burning in his eyeless glare. 

She was not to let herself be seen. No matter what happened.

And just as quickly, Eliendre witnessed, as if time now decided to slow down, the unstable fel portal that appeared behind Alaroth. Vellidan kicking his brother backwards into it before it closed. “Get her here.” He said to Alaroth before he disappeared, as Rei’ann flicked her wrist, and a powerful lance of ice, launching as sudden and quickly as a bullet fired from a gun, flew towards the portal, striking the tree as it closed. Then, the warmage was pulled back by her husband, as the meteor of fel flew straight down upon Vellidan Sunstorm.

Her hands flew to her mouth to muffle her scream.

___

She took Vellidan’s glaive after the guards roughly handled his limp, broken body, intact only because of a last split-second metamorphosis, maybe, that probably saved him. She brought it, hands shaking, to their weapons rack, where their warglaives were always stored.

She kept to the shadows, not letting herself be seen as she stood by the pillars where they shackled and hung him, a warning to those who would dare to be traitors to the house of Firestar. Eliendre wanted to let him down and bear him away. But she did not know how to, without help, without causing more harm to him by moving him.

She did not know how long she stood there before Narindiel arrived, looking with despair at what they had done to Vellidan. But, unlike Eliendre, she managed to magic away the shackles and gently hover him down. Alaroth appeared afterwards, reporting that he did find the killer and brought her to the Firestars.

Later, at Whisperwind Grove, she waited outside the old tauren druid’s cottage as Vellidan was brought inside by Narindiel and Alaroth. None of them could convince her to leave.