#ellasha

Once, the movement of such armies along this route between Quel’Thalas and its Dawnspire whether in war or peace was a regular occurrence. Now, the flow of migration that met Autumnvale has trickled to near-nothingness beyond the most bold, or desperate, of elves.

So unique this sight is, the marching host observes the quick withdrawal of the labourers specked all along the soon-to-be-harvested green of winter-wheat towards the disrepair of the village.

Allowing no pause, the army draws ever-steady to the very edges of the farmland surrounding the village buildings within. And that is when the leading figure releases their grip on the reins of their companion. Their unoccupied hand raises high and flat into the air. A succession of shouts and the two hundred come to clean halt in moments with the thud of feet and the ache of wagon wheels.

Once the din of noise settles, the low feminine that had been in quiet discussion to the woman to her right raises to a high thunder that carries over the army and to the ears of the villagers already beginning to gather in the square ahead.

“Harthen! Establish the company’s encampment along the plain. Lynxfury, Dragonsroar, Hawkspear Platoons - you are with me. Assemble behind me in phalanx as the others disperse. Gather the supplies we spoke of last night, the wagon marked with yellow paint.”

The Captain’s vision lolls lazily to regard her partner; a feat that is, by no means, done easily with the weight of her greathelm. her volume lowers to something only heard to Bricini.

“Get the fuck out of my sight. I don’t need you.”

“Oh, Light, you’re such a romantic. Say it again. Once more. With feeling.”

“I mean it - you can’t fuck this up. Go take a nap in one of the supply wagons.”

“I! Want! ...to see my girlfriend, my partner, in her element. Is that so unbearable to deal with?”

“Yes.”

“I’m gonna be in the crowd.”

“Get off the horse, then.”

“But–”

The Phoenix Guard presses her knees into the bare flanks of her mare and bends her head to murmur into its ear. A slow, precise, walk of its hooves commences with another flourishing wave of left hand towards the gathered thirty-six behind them.

Flowing around the dismounting Dawnmender, the soldiers make their way to the center of Autumnvale: where, already, about half of its population has gathered in curious interest towards the seemingly paused army. Worry, hope, fear, caution: she catches all of these murmured sentiments through the whispering people. Very few seem to have recognised her from past days.

The soldiers move in quiet succession around the barren market stalls and prominent statue that make up the core of the square. Ultimately, presenting themselves to where the crowd has condensed the most, towards where the square bleeds into the majority of the sprawling buildings.

From there, one squad breaks from the three-platoon-strong phalanx and quickly establish themselves a large, empty, space behind the Duskward. Unslinging their packs from their shoulders, they work to establish a framework of wooden pole and stake in the earth interspersed between the pieces of stonery below - displaying the reason for the long roll of fabric that spanned the length of the phalanx before it.

In the meantime, Thanidiel pulls herself from the saddle of the dirt-slicked and pale horse below her. Clutching the reins of the placid animal in her left hand, she steps forward towards the crowd. She continues her silent march, closer and closer, to the growing citizenry. Until the phalanx’s backline steps backwards over the tarp to heft it up in smooth coordination and the whole of the formation strides to cover the space made between the working six.

Only then, she brings herself to a squared halt. From her slitted visor, the newly-instated Kin’taris gazes upon the sampling of her wards before her. Many are too young for work, with disproportionate bodies and stringy muscles to their bones. Some are too old for work, with curled, shriveled, bone and hair of fading pigment. Few of those who do not take to the sides of either caretaker or charge possess the weight of true adulthood, even their ears lack length. She could not even call what she had to work with here as ‘scraps.’

The doubled standard raises overhead, the noon-sun catching along the lengths of weighty fabric, and crashes down towards the earth in one beat (of course, it had cantripped an hours’ time before to cut through and settle in the soil as well as it does: thank the Sun for the unsuccessful arcanists ‘mongst the men). Her hand goes for the lip of her greathelm shortly after, already unstrapped from her head before they had entered village, and pulls away the heavy metal.

In the woman’s grip, the armour-piece fall to clatter against the golden steel of her chausses. Easing the ache sparked down her muscles from a motion more theatrical than based in her usual practicality, she hefts the same shoulder in a rolling motion. The draping mantle of a once-great lynx shakes around her in the process as Thanidiel lofts the strong of her imperious chin upward, flicking aside loose curls of her platinum hair. Her one eye falls upon the approach of Sir Reval through the villagers.

She thunders.

“Hail, People of Autumnvale!

Above all, I provide to you condolences concerning the passing of Besari Vella. The most deep of sorrows gripped me the day it was discovered that the efforts of your’s, Kin’taros Reval, Serdari Truefeather, and myself, failed to preserve the life of your own.

As we all know well, however, we, Children of the fallen Blood, must push on with the clockwork of the seasons ahead of us no matter the grief that clutches our breasts. We must honor the memory of not only the late Besari, but those that fell around her, as the Sun and Earth return their bodies to the wheat. Thus, your Serdar has assigned me, Thanidiel Highdawn, to warden these lands under the charge of Kin’taris.

From this point forward, Sir Reval and his troops are dismissed from garrison. His Lord has greater needs of his talent in regions beyond here.

The absence of his skill and the absence of his soldiers emphasises the gaping void that these foreign wars have exacted upon Autumnvale. In exchange; I bring you not only replacement, but I promise you growing respite of the burdens felt here.

Here is a fraction of the able-bodies I have brought you:”

In practiced unison, the thirty soldiers planted behind the Captain all remove their grandiose phoenix helms from themselves - all daring to throw the priceless armour forward with the lob of Thanidiel’s own signature of battle. All displaying the vibrant youth in their taut skin and seafoam eyes staring out to the Citizenry.

The winged gold falls in a rain of metallic racket, rolling this way and that way to strike either stone or the rims of the crowd’s well-worn boots. The Phoenix Guard allows the din to fall down to creaking hints, though not long enough for the people to recover from stupour.

“—the largest misconception suffered by the World is that soldiers eke their livelihoods on the sole spill of blood. We come here to alleviate such falsehood. We will work. We will perform our duties to not only the protection of Autumnvale, but its succour as well.

Aye, People of Autumnvale, we will harvest the ready bounty of your fields alongside you. We will repair what the Broken Men have razed here and more. We will take your ill and your hurt into our camps with open arms. We will assure that there is always bread in your bellies and a fire for your bones. And never shall we ask of you of anything but to live your lives as you ought to live them, anywhere where the Serdar’s Sun strikes the grasses.

Not only will we assist in the going-ons of the village, but we will work to revive the trade route that runs here from Dawnspire to Western High Home. The Broken Men that we all once called siblings terrorise our livelihoods. Telchis Truefeather, as both Serdar and Archon, possesses little patience for Oathbreakers, especially those who would exert their sorrow with ill upon their former loved ones.

It is his Will and, thus, mine to provide security to this region once more and reestablish the flow of trade. We would have Autumnvale’s square and streets filled to the brim with merchant stalls and first-privy to the goods that flow between this province and beyond - as the days of past prosperity.

So it all shall become and be.

I will make myself available here, in this square, for the People as long as there are troubles to plague us; I refuse to spend a single copper of your funds nor hour of your time to repair Sunvalor Estate, a pointless indulgence that benefits only myself.

I want all remaining businesspeople and those you call leaders to speak with me in orderly fashion during meal or passing times over the next week. I wish to evaluate what we are missing here in terms of resources and specialised labour to better my judgement of Autumnvale’s needs going forwards.

Please disperse and return to your days. The army beyond your fields will make rounds starting on the morrow to find and make work with you. Step forward if there are words to be passed.

Belono sil'aru, Tel rea Belore’dorei.”

Having refined to good time in the days prior, Thanidiel’s speech commences right as the crimson and gold tarp is completely fastened and secured to the Commander’s tent established. Pushing out a lengthy breath of repose from her lips, the woman passes off her reins to one of the soldiers now breaking from formation to recover their helmets. She accepts trade of her distinct helm, with its engraved horses into its fore, in return.

The Duskward pulls on the standard she had plunged into the earth minutes ago, turning away from the din of cheering younglings. She notes the squad from before, periodically jogging in and out of the tent with her needed furnishings in the wagon that had followed some distance away: table and stool, bed, armour-and-weapon stands, maps, papers, inks, quills. Their Captain drives her standard back into the ground where it near brushes against the pulled-back tent flap behind it.

The hours drone on in the aftermath of her introduction in a flurry of countless conversations hunched in stool, and painstaking notes generated by the new Kin’taris - a library of cross-reference birthed in a days’ half and promising much more in the length of this evaluation period.

By the time nightfall truly engulfs the village - the woman’s eye strains in throbbing pain, not to mention her spine and backside. She drains her waterskin like she had escaped the heat of Hellfire once again with the exit of the last tradesperson (a carpenter lamenting the lack of lumber for needed reconstruction) into the darkness beyond.

The thrumming relief in her breast is palpable when, minutes later, the smell of just-cooked beef wafts in through the tent opening. Followed by a characteristic smirk and wild of black hair.

It takes only three hours into the night before the restlessness thudding through her breast overwhelms her desire for company; like a shaking fist snuffing out the fire’s wick against its palm. Both careful of her tender wounds, yet impulsive nonetheless, the former Blood Knight presses the heel of one bandaged hand against Bricini’s shoulder - and pushes.

She watches carefully as those glowing eyes pull open in the darkness, noting the fashion in which the other was faking her groggy tiredness. ‘Patiently’, Thanidiel allows that oh-so inconvenienced sigh to break through the Dawnmender’s lips, then cuts her off. Her words come in a slash of teeth - contrasting with the low quiet of their conversation earlier.

“What, Th–”

“Get the fuck off of me. I want a smoke.”

“...That’s too bad, I’m comfortable right here. Might even turn the lights back on and get back to reading now that you’ve woken me up.”

The Duskward emphasises such as she props herself up just a bit; her vision glancing down to the now-crumpled magazine spread along Thanidiel’s stomache, crushed when the doctor had grown bored and drowsy an hour’s half earlier. The light from the streets outside just barely catch the glossy surface.

“Hold on, let me clarify; that wasn’t a request. Get the fuck off of me, or I’ll shove you off–”

“No. No, you wouldn’t. Because you’re burned to shit. Because you could still very well tear up your wounds and bleed out. Because you wouldn’t dare to make yet even more work for your dearest mender - right, Than?”

“If you think I’m beyond killing myself and ruining your apartment furniture to make a point; you’re dead wrong.”

Bricini’s face takes on a flat, peevish, quality with her ears pinning just slightly back.

“And if you think I’m beyond finishing you off to rid myself of such a melodramatic headache; you’re dead wrong.”

“Get off.”

“I’m tired.”

“The bed is over there. It’s high time we moved from your shitty couch anyway.”

“It’s not shitty, you backcoun–”

The soldier heaves a deep sigh from her chest. The fatigue wears away any and all pretense of their harsh play. It shakes the air like something discordant, like a stone crashing along a blade’s edge and taking away whole slivers. The once-Blood Knight observes the ever-brief pause it summons before the Mender, as always, rolls over it with a tight, lopsided, grin.

“...well, you, and my couch, have been a good substitute for the bed. Regardless! Fine. I’ll be off, have fun brooding about your lost purpose or whatever is up your ass tonight.”

Bricini lingers, leaning forward to press her lips to the corner of the Lightward’s mouth. Thanidiel has a hard time deciphering if it were to stir another ember of annoyance with a continued presence or a genuine urge of affection. Perhaps it is both.

For once, it is unreturned. A gloom unlike any gloom that the elf has experienced in many years hangs over her. It buzzes in her blood, her muscles, her thoughts: it is like a black miasma settling over everything. She has it not in her to respond. The warmth she had possessed, just earlier this night, drained the whole of the well, leaving it droughted. There is no more stirring urge for the Duskward. The other finally slides off and saunters for sleep. Thanidiel, for some minutes, struggles to raise herself.

It is not the injuries: the quiet, constant, agony where acidic ichor seeped into her flesh. It is the heaviness. Every throb of blood that courses through her body contains malaise. She could suffocate in its weight. She only moves when her restless frustration boils back to the surface in the way hot magma erupts from the shiver of the suddenly snapping earth underneath.

From there, Thanidiel moves with as much of her frenetic energy as her wounds would rightfully allow. She slips over a long-sleeved shirt, something she had left here weeks ago over the back of a chair, over the bandages that enwrap her. A silent note is written down to take stock of what is her’s in the items strewn about the apartment. She spends too long on her boots - something mastered in its swiftness now made fumbling, interspersed with seconds of pause and weary, pained, breath. She exits. Or–

Or–

…

Bricini’s tabard hangs over the door knob. The red-black shine of the Blood Star glints. Something spills, then. It roars, it gushes, it rushes all along her. Frigid and biting, the way the ocean fills shattered hulls. It is reminiscent to the way her wounds burst and bled when she was putting herself into that fucking ceremonial armour for that farce - how it trickled and stuck into every crevice.

She reaches out with more force than she had ought to, feeling the scabwork on her arm pull painfully. The heavy commendation slams down with the fabric trailing behind it, cracking sharply against the ground underneath.

“Fucking hells, Than! Wh–”

The thud of the door locking into its frame muffles the rest of the other’s indignant husk. Thanidiel pauses then, and she tells herself it is more to breathe, that she found herself suffocated within that room like any fire when it is contained; certainly it is not the agony of protesting muscle.

She lurches against the nearby wall, staring out into the hallway. As usual - she senses Renalyas. The ward remains, then. In the shadows of the building, the Mark of the Inquisition is something felt than seen. It hangs over the air in a curious sense of alarm, like the eyes of predators glinting in and out of the darkness. Or perhaps its presence is much more incorporal and unfelt to the world, and the woman, who was once Hand to the dark organisation, is merely attuned to a familiar energy.

Thanidiel allows herself more moments of rest to think on that: that it remains. That Renalyas’ services have remained open to her old companion. She knows, truly, that it stems from the unspoken fondness held by the Inquisitor. Still, the thought itches that this is another way of keeping tabs from now on. The hound’s collar, so caked in Blood, had been snapped clean from her throat and replaced with a slithering noose, the woman feels.

Such a thought only doles out more weariness to press onto the Lightward’s shoulders. She pats at her trousers. She forgot to take her cigar tin on the way out. Fuck. She cants her head just a bit, to fix the bad eye back towards the apartment. The door is all a fuzzy, dark, blur against the white of the wall around it. She should have taken her eyepatch, too. The once-Knight is unsure if she will return later tonight, or at all.

...she doesn’t want to disturb Bricini’s night anymore than she already ha–

No, Bri doesn’t fucking care.

She’s projecting.

She cares. Uselessly. Unnecessarily.

She’s placing more weight, than ought to be put, into the earlier requests that her partner had murmured against her skin.

If she had done this, to have rejected their presence, to–...

Or–...

With–...

Bri isn’t V–...

Or R– ...

Or C–….

…

Bri isn’t… any of them.

…

Thanidiel will come back.

She just needs a walk to clear her head. She makes her way out of the complex and onto the City’s streets. She walks.

WHERE WALKS PURPOSE THERE IS A DEARTH.

Thanidiel is alone.

Not in the apartment; not in the City’s lights. She is alone somewhere dark, in the belly of this plagued city, the air pressing in and frigid with cold and sharp.

The chill numbs; she barely understands the compulsion that sends a hand outward towards a browline, dragging her to her knees.

Before her, an elf forsaken; the dead eyes of the Sin’dorei seem bright in the darkness.

There is the sense of acute, infinite loneliness; this disquiet goes on forever.

The dark is endless.

There is no more purpose in this elf.

All these things are dead.

The hand simply seals what has already been done.

The sickly sweet of rotted flesh is something that permeates more than a handful of the many nooks and crannies of the Murder Row. Little surprise thrums in Thanidiel’s breast; a mixture of warning and lack of care towards this District in particular makes it common place, for what would take an hour’s half to wipe away in the rest of the Capitol, to take much longer. With recent affairs, it is logical that this remnant of the Riot remains days after.

Such fact does not make it easier to push down the tidal waves of aggravation rolling in her gut. It does not ebb the ache tightening the muscles of her ribcage. It does not quell the sweltering disillusionment choking in the base of her throat.

Astute as always, Thanidiel had begun to conceptualise and learn well of the Capitol since her first winters: of its wickedness, of its depravity, of its disease, of its farce. She has always known. And she had always tolerated it like hound and prey-property of those above. She can no longer be so blindly obedient.

Where this had changed, she had struggled to pinpoint in earlier days. The work did not change. The duties she had sensed behind the appointment to the Watch: none of it was new. She knew. She knew the moment that Lightfury and Mace had approached her, that their goal was to awash the streets of Silvermoon in blood. She had razed estates, families, villages, provinces. What was a City’s culling, to several lifetimes over of dutiful reaving? Yet, it still caused grief to shake through her.

The night Elanya died was the first time Thanidiel had ever, truthfully, regretted her silence. She saw it, then. She saw it in Truefeather and Dawnstalker’s ignorance. She saw it in the Archon’s shock. She saw it in Autumnsong’s sorrow. She saw it in Lightfury’s hand, blazing with the Light as blood and melted flesh surged along his digits in outpour.

She had permitted it.

All of what had occurred.

She had permitted it as she has always permitted it; glancing the other way, allowing the story to be rewritten. Letting the shadows crawl and envelop what was truly there. She let the labels fall where they would from the Magisterium’s hands, wreathing what she had been.

Such permissiveness had brought sickness to her like bad air and bad grain, she realises now. A sickness that had always been there, like a plague wrought beneath scarring; flaring up like an ache on winter nights, then falling into dormancy with only a remnant feeling of what was there. The former Blood Knight feels as though this sickness had reached its apex, that something had rotted for too long in those old wounds, that it had burst through her blood.

That something had died.

Something, that had allowed the wolf to be masqueraded as a hound. The sword to be passed off for the kitchen’s knife. The Blood Knight Order is no Protector to Quel’Thalas. Neither was the Blood Watch. The City learned keenly of their truer roles as Headsmen. Killers. Butcherers.

She was not freed by her resignations. There is no redeeming qualities to be said on the matter, on her. She let Elanya die. She knew the woman would never leave the cells below the Hall of Blood alive the moment that little Phoenix flew from the Sunfury Spire, catching the eye of her and Lightfury that night.

The People lauded her as a hero for stepping away from the madness of it, and every warm smile and nod and ‘Lady Highdawn’ sunk into her heart like pins. There was nothing brave to it. Nothing heroic nor noble.

She walked away.

As she always does.

As she always has.

She just… didn’t want to do it herself. Personally.

What does passivity make of anyone, but as a useless bystander?

The letter from Captain Sunstorm came in just this morning, to the Infirmary itself where she had been. The word of the Archon Truefeather and his Uncle supplemented her extensive record of service. She had been accepted. Once her wounds had healed - it was off to basic all over again for her.

Thanidiel is more than unsure of how much she deserves such a thing. To distort reality once more. To allow the story to be retold. To continue to be retold. She is no defender, no hero. Nothing that constitutes a proper member of the Phoenix Guard.

So what is she?

…

...perhaps, the question is in the answer, as Ithanar might put it if she had asked him.

The Dragonsworn urged her to embrace this opportunity of rebirth; that all things burn and begin new. That the natural order relies in the deathly metamorphose of life from one form to the next. She would never admit it to the woman, but those words stuck to her breast and to her mind for days afterwards. Apparently, they still do.

Dawnstalker told her to find her own way, free of any of the bonds or shackles that have enwrapped her. Perhaps there was something envious there, in the perceived opportunity to do as such. He has never been one to see the nooses trail around the necks of others, so obscuring the shadows are.

Or, perhaps, she has never been one to notice when the restraints have all fallen away, so well she had once been trained.

The words of the Oracle revisit her, images swirling to the fore of her mind once more. The cavern. Ithanar, with the humour always at his lips. Bricini, wreathed in warmth. Varric, split apart. Cayvia, on her knees. Elanya, consorted in a scream. The Phoenix, dying. The hydra-beast; all things that sunder Quel’Thalas. The blood. The blood hanging from the exposed points of Varric’s ribs. The blood dripping from the blade through Cayvia’s body. The blood of the Phoenix. The blood coating the streets. The blood seeping from her bandages. The blood rolling in a fat, trickling, stream from Elleynah’s raw eye socket.  

“You bear chances now that none have yet seen; you, Breaker of Wheels. What was fate was overturned, violent in its death and birth. You are devoid of purpose, and must build. You must stand for this, with this choice made. You are interlocked into change.  Do not let the blindness of others blind you. Do not let the coldness you feel rot your feelings for what you once defended. Where you stand, change will come. Embrace, deny; it shall be. Be wise where you lay loyalty.”

So what is she?

…

Nothing. Empty. Lost. Devoid.

…

New.

Something to rebuild.

Truth rings to the bone on that: that Thanidiel Highdawn, as it stands, is nothing that constitutes a true member of the Phoenix Guard. She is no true defender. She is no true hero.

And what she was, detracts even further from the matter. The Lightward was the dark murmurs that would vacate entire streets when her banner hailed the sky, that would silence and darken homes when her footsteps would push towards residences. Over a century later, and still, she had heard the whispers of her moniker of Terror amongst the Order.

But there is room to change. The Wheel has been broken.

Embrace, deny; it shall be.

The sword had been driven through the Phoenix, and Thanidiel would see it reborn.

She would step into the new dawn shining before her.

The once-Knight takes in one last breath of the chilling night air. She, with as much quietness as she can muster, steps back into the apartment.

( Appearances - @jessipalooza @stormandozone Mentions - @rivendork @captainswingbeard @azriah @trained-trainwreck @felthier @erilihn)