#belore

Belore and Elune

(several years ago)

"What? Do you not remember? You must be there for me, I am the one you swore to protect the moment I was born and you are the one I swore myself to the moment I became a man. You CANNOT leave me!"

"I can leave you whenever I please, young strider." Her voice grew louder. "You will be forsaken, no god will offer you their guidance ever again..."

"I don't need no god, Belore!" He giggled, sounding wrong, crazed. "I need only blood and mana and you never offered me enough of either!"

"My child, you aren't betraying the Betrayer... you aren't betraying your people... You're betraying your whole purpose!"

"What is my purpose? You never said... I kept asking and asking you, but you never answered... Tell me- what. is. my. purpose?" He smiled, or more so smirked, his smile all crooked.

"You needn't know, Kael'thas... If you wanted to know, you would have chosen the right way, not the easy one..."

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?" He yelled, his voice breaking. "I kept choosing the right options, never the easy ones and I still came out hurt!" He breathed in, gasped for air. "I did everything and all I got in return was pain and suffering! With father, with Arthas, with Garithos, with you and with- with the Betrayer... I SPIT ON YOUR RIGHT PATHS!"

"Prince Kael'thas!" She frowned. "This is the end... I will never help you with anything ever again, young one... You're alone..."

"I'm alone?" He giggled again. "I am? Aren't you the one cursed with never meeting your lover again? Each of you floating around Azeroth, parallel to one another, never ever seeing one another's shadow? YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS ALONE, BELORE! NOT ME!"

Daily Writing Challenge 2021 Day 1: Afterlife/Reunion

Warm breezes rolled across amber fields and ruffled the fine feathers on their cheek, rousing them from comfortable slumber. The sky was alight in glorious pinks, reds and golds, and this was most pleasing, so that they stretched their wings and let out an exultant cry to greet the morning, and the morning answered in kind with another strong gust of comforting heat across their chest.

As they launched from their perch to join the morning sky, surging and rolling in simple joy for the sun and the warmth and the open air, the first cry was followed by another, and another, until it became morningsong that shimmered like sunlight on the sea. It was only proper to give praise to the brothers and sisters of Belore alongside him, as they had the grace to stand aside for him in the day.

A sharp crack of cold struck them like a whip, stalling their voice and leaving them beating their wings in rhythmless confusion. A moment later, silver-edged black feathers fluttered across their vision, and a tiny black body tumbled from the air, flailing one wing pointlessly as the other, limp, was at the mercy of the air whipping past it in its descent.

They tucked their own wings and dove, only to be struck a second time and with pain behind it, leaving them tumbling for a moment as well before they righted themselves and found their quarry. The dive began again, and again, the cold stung ever more brutally in response. Still, they crept ever closer, until finally great talons could wrap around the miniscule crow with the broken wing and bring both to a landing in the rolling fields.

Before they could speak to the weakened thing, it shimmered and morphed, bulging and writhing in sickening undulations as it took a different shape entirely, and the sky darkened in revulsion above it. Frost blue light coiled from empty sockets and a cold metal shell encased it as it stood, towering over them and speaking in the creaking of rusted iron, the screeching of clashing steel. Chains erupted from gaps in its skeletal armor and whipped forward of their own accord like striking snakes at legs and face and wings, forcing them to back away but preventing them from taking flight.

The voice of the cold, lifeless thing as much an assault as the chains that threatened at any moment, they almost failed to comprehend anything but the increasing volume of their own desperation for escape, for altitude, for warmth. For help.

A shackle came together with a final, baleful crash around one leg, and they shrieked once more to the blackened sky as they felt themselves dragged at once toward the beast and into the dirt. From what felt like worlds away, an answer finally came, not the roar of a flame, but the ringing of a great bell stampeding across the universe until its sound crashed into the beast and sent it toppling.

Verdant green twined with shining gold in a grand pillar of rage and defiance that tore a hole through the darkness above them, and slammed into their assailant again and again, pummeling it to pieces in the stalks. When the deed was done and the field was silent save for the soft rumble of receding thunder in the parting clouds, they saw not a crow, but a human carved from stone and frozen in a defensive stance without an ounce of fear on its chiseled face.

The warm morning air finally tickled across their feathers again, but carried with it the faint scent of fresh rain, and both quietly implored them to stand, to find the falling bird, to catch it and see the deed done. As green and gold voiced their wordless pleas, the phoenix watched the stone begin to wear away, pitting, growing moss, cracking, darkening in patches, shearing off bit by bit to expose that baleful blue light underneath.

Hurry. Hurry.

As a steel gauntlet broke through the stone of the man's fist, the cold shot through them straight to the core, and Caythaes woke up.

If the dull ache around one ankle hadn't been enough to convince them that that dream had meant something, the tattered black feather stuck in their hair certainly did.