#aneyah

Day 6: Harm / Useful

It had been some time since Aneyah had seen either Theras or Telivathus. In fact, it had been some time since the two men had seen one another either, both having been directed by Magister Dawnwing to aim their talents towards the threat of the Twilight’s Blade. Back at the estate though, for the moment, the pair were more focused on the chess pieces on the table between them.

Although both were former Farstriders—one the youthful idealist who had left the formal structure of the military to pursue his own horizons, the other forced into retirement for his disregard of command—their respective approaches to their task differed greatly. Their game reflected this as well: Theras played black, and always seemed a few steps ahead of Telivathus’ white, although only defensively; he did not readily strike back, while Telivathus displayed an almost reckless aggression, as the graveyard of lost pieces attested. Still, Aneyah observed over her book, he was likely to win.

Theras carefully charted suspected cult movement in the wilds of southern Quel’Thalas and proposed routes of escape for Thalassian populations nearby, or choke points where the porous mountains and forest could be better defended. Telivathus, on the other hand, was the blade; his information was gained through targeted violence. Aneyah shivered, despite her proximity to the fireplace. The harm the older man had done in his life weighed on his shoulders like a heavy black cloak, a darkness shrouding his otherwise vibrant spirit. And yet, he seemed at peace with it all.

“What do you make of Father’s situation, Tel?” Theras asked, breaking the silence of concentration that had settled over the three.

Aneyah was an outsider, surely, the deep blues and gold-embroidered symbols of the Sacred Flame adorning her clothing in stark contrast to the bright whites, reds, and emeralds of Silvermoon and the Sunwell Plateau proper. Her ears were shorter, features elven and angular, yes, but smoother, rounder, more human after generations of Arathi ancestry.

Even so, she was permitted to pass across the great bridge from Silvermoon proper and welcomed as any other elf who had made the pilgrimage to the Sunwell. The golden glow of her eyes, she was certain, contributed to such trust—the hue of the sun, the hue of the sacred heart of Quel’Thalas itself.

As she neared the well, guards stationed all around, watchful eyes on the pilgrims present, her heart swelled. Magister Dawnwing had been right, it seemed, for in the depths of the Sunwell, she felt something truly akin to the Sacred Flame, but rather than reaching for it in her mind, a meditation on its mysteries, here was something like it pooled before her, its brilliance nearly blinding her.

Others, she knew, were similarly overcome. Young and old, Sin’dorei and Quel’dorei pilgrims, all looked upon the shimmering pool with a mixture of awe and fear. Fear? She felt it radiating from many present, not least the guards; a quiet, creeping dread, the lingering what if? What if the rumors are true, and Quel’Thalas comes under attack once more? What if the Sunwell is lost a second time? What if all the recovery the Sin’dorei have accomplished comes to nothing? What if…?

She could feel the worry especially acutely from a father standing nearby, a hand clasped protectively on his daughter’s shoulder. The child, though, simply stared beatifically into the depths of the well, the peace of the waters reflected on her face. She lived without fear, Aneyah thought, for her father had taken that burden upon himself.

He noticed Aneyah’s gaze, and blue-green eyes locked with gold, and in that moment, the Arathi touched the elf’s mind as well. A momentary widening of his eyes, brows rising in shock, and then a change: his taut shoulders slackened, the simmering anxieties calmed, present, but lessened. He bowed his head and let out a quiet, relieved breath before turning away from Aneyah and rejoining his child in contemplation.

Aneyah, though, felt none of that relief. While the stranger’s fears may have lessened, the cleric herself bore a new tightness in her stomach. The pain did not need to be his burden.

As she stood from where she had knelt by the waters, she thought she saw a flash of violet-black within the well, a maw hungering to swallow the light, to swallow hope, to replace it all with the same fear she had taken from the man.

When she looked closer, though, it had gone, and only her unease remained.

"How can any of our people have given themselves over to such cruelty?" Aneyah asked. She spoke in hushed tones as she sifted through the recovered belongings of a Nightfall cultist. Theras shook his head, the rasp of whetstone on the edge of his glaive offered in reply before the younger man spoke, "Father would say they are fools who have looked too deeply into the Void. That they believe its lies, and have become something else."

The Arathi's lips turned down at their corners, fingers tracing the delicate ornamentation of the cultist's befouled tinderbox, "But he is not here, is he? Tell me what you think, Ther."

The whetstone stopped for a moment. In the weeks they had spent rooting out Order of Night activity among the Sureki remnants, the cleric had gained his trust. Only in recent days had she started calling him something so familiar, and it still caught him off guard.

"You know how a lynx gets when it gets backed into a corner? I think they're scared." The ranger added quietly, "I don't think they're doing what they're doing out of malice. I think they're just...so, so frightened."

The tinderbox flipped open, revealing a darkened shard of crystal embedded within. Aneyah shuddered, clapping it shut once more, "What fear could do this? Could..." She choked. Months had passed since Wenren's murder, but the wound was still fresh, the embers the cleric once held within her breast yet warm.

"People will do a lot to avoid facing the unknown alone. If Renilash really is approaching, like you think, Aneyah, they...probably don't have the heart to face it alone." He eyed the edge of his weapon with satisfaction and stood, placing it with great care of its rack.

"Ther? If something should happen? If I ever lack the heart to..." She rasped a sigh, her shoulders trembling with it, "Please do not let me face it alone?"

The young Dawnwing nodded solemnly, though he found himself, as often, at a loss for words.

Theras kicked his feet, tapping his heels against the stone wall upon which he perched. The hour had grown late, and shadows crept long across the open space of the Exchange. Enchanted lanterns began to emit their evening glow, and shopkeepers and their patrons began to filter out and head towards home, or their other evening plans.

Charcoal swept across the page held across Theras’ lap, sweeping shadows on the page, for all the accuracy for which he strove, a pale comparison to the reality before him. No image could fully portray the movement, the moment the sun dipped beneath the buildings and shone upon white-paved streets no more, plunging all into twilight.

Though, he reflected, the city was often as static as its likeness on the page; the routine of sunrise, sunset, and the rhythms of its people, all remained. They flowed through the streets like lifeblood–reliably, dependably present. If he were not here, perched upon the wall surrounding some business or another’s courtyard, committing it all to page, he could easily have created it from memory.

Having returned from the Dragon Isles, from Khaz Algar, from K’aresh, he understood at last why his father had left, why he felt so stifled by the walls. Perhaps it is why grandfather Selius, too, had preferred his home on Dalaran’s outskirts and why the Dawnwing estate lay so far from Silvermoon proper. Theras had been cursed with wanderlust from the beginning.

The grounds of the ruined Dawnwing estate were growing vibrant. Though the stone remained pockmarked by the decay that once gripped the lands, blooms had returned at last to the sickly trees, and the sun illuminated the ruins through new leaves, their shadows dancing over the skeleton of the manor house and its grounds.

Luminash strode around the perimeter of the courtyard, gloved hands clasped behind his back. While the structure of the home remained, it had been gutted by the twin depredations of the Scourge attack and time itself. Scarce evidence remained of his mother’s garden on the south side of the grounds, and only a husk of his father’s tower remained. It had survived even the Scourge’s ravages only to be destroyed by the surge of power that had come through its portal on Dalaran’s fall.

Theras and Aneyah stood, the Arathi resting her shoulder against the ranger’s, before the memorial Luminash had placed many years ago, its eternal flame glowing yet, even if the sun seemed to dim its light.

“What is he looking for, Ther?” Aneyah asked, peering up at him. The pair had arrived after the magister, and their brief time at the memorial had seen Luminash circle the courtyard thrice.

Theras shook his head, “I can’t say I know for certain. Jaskian might be able to say, but Father hasn’t said a thing. I thought we were only here to pay our respects as always.”

Magistrix Dawnwing née Clearwater had not arrived yet, but Luminash had said she would arrive later to view the grounds as well.

The younger pair watched as Luminash knelt before the ragged field of grass that had once been the estate’s garden, and pressed his hands onto the soil. Theras moved to speak, lips already parted, but stopped as Aneyah shook her head. She sensed something, it seemed, the younger Dawnwing did not.

There came a flash, like a spark, from Luminash’s hands, the brilliance of the Arcane tinged with something else. Then, a warm golden glow from the grass as flame began to spread; it was not the red-orange of a natural fire, but the same comforting yellow as Theras had seen in Hallowfall.

He looked to Aneyah, his surprise evident on his face, “Is that…?”

She nodded in reply as the Sacred Flame began to swallow the grass and creep across the field.

The magister stood, raising his hands to his side, looking for all the world like the conductor of an orchestra as he guided the dancing flames to an unheard tune. The growing light of the fire illuminated his silhouette, golden hair shining like the flames themselves, even as the shadow of the leaves above danced about him.

They stood in silence as they watched the fire encircle the magister, though it never so much as singed his robes, only for that silence to be broken by Luminash’s own voice.

“Theras, Aneyah. This is but the start. Will you join your efforts to mine to restore this place? The time has long since come to let the pain this ruin holds end.”

He turned towards them, then, eyes shining with radiant purpose, the Sacred Flame around him searing away the dry grass and leaving behind only a clean slate, a hopeful smile spreading across his face, “Today, Dawnwing is born anew.”

The landscape of Eversong was hazy, shifting and wavering, its details never the same; at times, a tree would be young, others ancient, its branches hanging over its own deep shape. The light always remained the same, a calm golden glow from above, cast not by the sun; rather, it was the omnipresent light of dream.

The runestones rose and fell, flames flickered in and out of shaded thickets, burning them to ashes and disappearing as quickly as they appeared. The Amani surged from the gates of Zul’Aman, a sight unfamiliar to the dreamer’s mind; just as quickly, they faded away, replaced by shambling hordes of the undead, their eyes as cold and dead as those dredged from the Undersea by the kobyss.

Then, it calmed, the bleak scars carving through the forest giving way to new, green growth; broken spires in the north rose towards the sky once more, a people renewed, bathed in Light from the Sunwell.

The soft light from above faded abruptly. The sky grew black, and even the brilliance of the Sunwell from Quel’Danas faltered. The spires began to crack and topple into a swirling darkness erupting from the south, carving a new scar through marbled streets.

A moment of dread, and a scream from the depths of the world. The Radiant Song, shrieking in terror, and so the dreamer awoke.

Day 3: Twitterpated / Primal

The space between Theras’ shoulderblades graced him with a tingling as he became keenly aware of Aneyah’s gaze on him from somewhere behind. She had made it a habit, it seemed, to watch him while he worked. She watched while he pruned overgrowth in the Oasis, knees pressed into damp soil; she watched while he culled energy parasites from the dome itself, spear whirling and ichor spattering across his fair skin; she watched now while he examined a slateback for injuries sustained in a territorial display. He only wondered what she saw.

Once he had completed his careful study of the beast and sent it on its way, back into the verdant depths of the dome and away from the broker’s cold instruments, and cleaned his hands in the cool and crystalline water of a pond, only then did Aneyah approach.

Day 2: Layer / Wither

While his father had followed other mortal to Tazavesh and K’aresh for a personal pursuit–whatever it might be, for the elder Dawnwing was tight-lipped as to specifics–Theras had been cajoled by Aneyah’s insistence that they could begin the project of hope in this most desolate of places. The Eco-Dome project was a natural fit, and he found himself absorbed in the day-to-day activities of the Oasis; something as simple as stabilizing this new habitat offered hope for an entire world, and he readily embraced it.

While the blood elf busied himself with the care and feeding of slateback, his Arathi companion stood a ways outside the protective barrier of the Oasis, feet bare in the Void-blasted sand, golden eyes closed, the only sound reaching her ears the astral wind that whipped K’aresh’s marble-white sand around her. She held her cloak closely, hood pulled over her dark hair, and simply listened.

While she physically was buffeted by the wind, she held herself apart, let her mind reach out from her body. The wastes were desolate, hopeless, but they held such life still. On the surface, the Wastelanders, hostile and otherwise, or even lingering and skulking oathbreakers; beneath that, the beasts that had managed to survive, whether Void-born or invasive, or even the rare native species; beneath that, the pulse of something enormous, hungering, and yet to be born. Dimensius. The Void pervaded all, through every layer of what remained.

There is no hope here. The thought was unbidden, though seemingly a statement of fact. It was wrong, though, Aneyah knew. The Void pervaded all, but life remained resilient. She had seen the splendor of the Empire, the majesty of the wide open sea underneath her people’s airships, and the calm and beautiful radiance of Beledar; her entire life had been lived under the sun’s rays, the glow of the Light and of life. She had believed them entirely entwined, but seeing it now, feeling it all around her, there came a visceral understanding: the Void may be a poison, but not all things withered upon the vine–hope bloomed even in the deepest of shadows.

She leaned down, running a hand through the sand, letting it sift through her fingers. This dust, the foundation of a dead world, proved the Order of Night wrong, and all who held that the Void was the last refuge for the hopeless, a final dark to shroud the eyes of the dying; for K’aresh, truly, was not dead.

For the first time, Aneyah–with eyes closed and heart open–looked into the Void, and was not afraid.