#fynnrandi

As such, the first one barely got her attention.

One of her soldiers had intercepted a letter, but its contents were not ones she’d expected. She had come all of this way, followed the Sun Prince she was so loyal to, in hopes of obtaining some kind of providence for their people. She understood desperation and she understood service. But she also understood that if they were granted even the mere chance at salvation from a fate she otherwise didn’t care to imagine, it had to be pursued. But the letter she held in hand implied that perhaps they were all there for the wrong reasons.

That she was there for the wrong reasons.

As her stomach began to turn and twist about, the same voice from before, and then joined by another broke into her thoughts.

“Commander—” The second started again. “There’s been another. Come. Quickly!”

She looked up from where she’d been standing, her attention so focused on parchment and ink. Looking towards the entry to her tent, she crushed the missive in her hand, knowing very well her conflicted feelings would have to be addressed later. Much later. She followed after, quick steps with a great deal of strengthened resolve. She wasn’t sure she could call it a war, but it certainly felt like it, some days. In her time where they were momentarily camped, completing a list of objectives given to them by someone above her, it hadn’t been uncommon to have her soldiers fall or even those found during scouting missions. She’d seen so much death already that she wondered if she had grown desensitised to it. 

She didn’t want to think that. The hardest part about killing was that it was the first one that cut the deepest. The more one killed, the easier it became. They became less faces and more nameless moving masses of opposition that needed to be cut down. More bodies for the slaughter, a numerical trophy of countless victories, but at what cost. Military sometimes bred that out of someone. If she questioned her humanity, maybe it meant she still had some remaining. Or maybe she was simply delusional.

The two soldiers led her to a high cliff face that overlooked a valley of towering mountains and lakes of glowing green fel. Where thunder and lightning crashed and crackled and kissed the ground. Where the sky always looked ominous and overbearing, like the weight of so many worlds rested upon proverbial shoulders. It was a frightful place. But would Netherstorm have been any better? Based on what she’d heard in various correspondence passed this way and that, she didn’t think so.

Already they’d collected bodies that some of the mages kept cold whilst graves were being dug. The one she was meant to look at and confirm was set aside, though it was much the way they had treated everything else they’d done. There was no way they could have known what they were bringing her to. Even she had to stop and pause as she stared down at it. On the ground, laid out as respectfully as possible, a sickly pale man with dark hair. So long that it pooled beneath him. She would have known him anywhere. She had known him anywhere.

Fynnrandi simply stood and stared, caught in a frame of time that, to her, went untouched by the mortal hands of mankind. As if what she found there before her simply could not be real. Questions trickled into her mind gradually, one after the other. Where had he been? What had he been doing? They hadn’t served together in the same regiment and that had been for the best, but why was he out here? Wasn’t he supposed to be stationed elsewhere?

“Did he have anything on him?” she asked, her voice harder than it needed to be, but hard enough to hide the strain in it. No matter what she was feeling, she was still the commander. Her soldiers could bend and break, but she could not. She had to remain as she was, a tower of strength, a walking image of wrath and scorn and spite.

“No, Commander. We’ve already examined him thoroughly. Could’ve been starvation. That’s what we thought it was, but that’s not it. Siphoned of his mana, maybe. Something else got to him.”

Something else. Fynnrandi released a short, rough breath. Something else. Could have been anything, really. These lands teemed with so many beings and entities that she’d thought it wiser to avoid. And yet it seemed like they were walking into the arms, embracing that which might ultimately destroy them. She wondered how many times she’d done exactly that, blinded by some otherworldly amount of hope.

“Leave me,” she finally said. The two soldiers that had led her said nothing, merely watched her, as if they weren’t certain they’d heard right. After an awkward shifting of one, Fynnrandi nearly snarled, “Now! Get out of my sight!”

It was all the encouragement they needed to scurry right past her and down the mountain path they’d led her up.

Left on that precipice, Fynnrandi found her gaze unable to leave the dead man before her, trying to take in every feature about him that she could. The tuft of black that grew on his chin. She’d remarked on it in the past. Each time she’d thought he’d needed a trim, he’d grown it out even more just to get on her last nerve. And she’d let him because they’d agreed that though they were wed to one another, they would not interfere in the wants and wishes of the other. 

It hadn’t been love. It had been duty. But they had certainly liked one another. She would have called Rydallar a friend, and undoubtedly he would have seen her much the same. Perhaps they would have grown old together. Not that the thought mattered in the moment. There was no moment in which she entertained the thought of dropping to her knees in grief. No moment in which she thought even a lone tear would do anything to assuage her. All she felt was righteous fury.

He didn’t need to come. He wasn’t a soldier. He had come for her. So that even when they were apart, she would not need to feel so alone. That they could still write to one another and know that they were living and experiencing the same hell. Together and yet apart. But this hadn’t been his battle. He could have waited back in Quel’thalas for her. Should have, perhaps.

Looking between him and the parcel she’d been clutching ever tighter in her hand, she found herself once again questioning every step she’d taken in this world, following the footsteps of a man she had been adamantly loyal and devoted to.

What have you done, my prince.

The same thing, perhaps, that he had done to the rest of his people. Bitterness touched her tongue, spreading bile before she wordlessly choked it right back down along with everything else that threatened to rise. Perhaps the Sun Prince hadn’t been directly responsible for Rydallar’s death, but if this had all been a fool’s errand, something she was beginning to feel was distinctly the case, then he was responsible. And even if he wasn’t, Fynnrandi wanted him to be.

She’d turn on him. She’d turn on them all.