#legionfall

The appearance of the Sun King’s retinue, in lieu with conversations had in the past week, only served to unnerve her further, and though she’d stood tall at Telchis’ side, drenched in the colors of a brilliant dawn - the colors of her fresh-forged lineage - stalwart and proud against the oppressive air that seemed to ensconce the throne room, the armor she’d encased herself in could not uproot the anxiety that thrummed through her veins. Though the meeting with the so-called-King’s retinue was short, throughout the tense moments she often found her sea-green eyes wandering to the place where Tyril Sunspear should have stood, clad in gold and sable, a statuesque figurehead of justice and honor, and to see his space filled - even by familiar faces - made her heart ache.

Released from the tense meeting with the Sun King’s courier, Caeliri picked her way through the rubble-wracked streets of the Dawnspire, plated boots picking a careful path in elsewise aimless wandering. She could have retreated to the infirmary, her home away from home, where she was Dawnward Dawnsworn, a skilled mender and a steady, hopeful, helping hand to those who had seen better days - but being in those hallowed halls required an attention to the weak and wounded that she could not give, and she would never stand to offer those who suffered less than her whole, undivided, unmuddled attention.

Instead, the upheaved streets gave her an avenue to attend her thoughts where there was little chance she would be bothered.

What would they do, if the Sun King came to demand the Lord of the Dawnspire and all his vassals take a knee and swear their allegiance?

What would she do - betray her oaths and take a stand, or fall in line to preserve her words, and sacrifice her beliefs for a promise made? Which was worse; to be an oathbreaker, or to compromise the beat of her heart and see injustice flourish due to inaction?

Parapets once proud and stalwart littered the lower reaches of the Citadel, destroying homes and business in their fall; an irony, perhaps, but one lost on the woman of twenty-one summers.

She had no faith in this would-be King or the future he seemed keen to forge; a future of isolation, cruelty and oppression that promised no deviation from the current course, where those in power spat pretty lies upon the citizenry to veil their own misdeeds. Caeliri did not believe this man whose blood bespoke some supposed right to rule would free them from corruption; the key to the shackles that bound the people of Quel’thalas would simply change hands, and never find use or offer freedom.

“HEY!”

Her head snapped up, sending a sea of cinder-colored hair right into her light of sight; in the space of time it took her to lift her hand and sweep it away, her path was blocked by a shoeless sin’dorei whose ruddy, freckled cheeks were flush a shade of scarlet that put the streets of Silvermoon to shame. His lips were pulled back in a near feral flash of teeth, and there was no kindness in their bearing.

Already her mind was wheeling, trying suss out what she’d done to offend the stranger who barred her path, and the words that left her lips were bright but hesitant, struggling out beneath the wave of frantic thought, “Can I… help you…”

“Yeah, you can help me -- by getting off your ass and getting to work,” the man snarled, drawing in air to force his chest to seem broader, his shoulders higher; they were of a height, Caeliri and this stranger, but he was thicker built - his only option to be imposing was to puff up like a peacock.

“I’m… sorry,” she ventured, caught off by the anger snapping on every syllable - but she didn’t get to finish.

“You’re sorry?” His words became harsher, honed down to a vicious, venomous edge, bitterness and mockery both shining through the sharpness,  “Doesn’t look like you’re sorry, galavanting around the city in all your fine clothes while we’re sitting in our own shit, starving.”

Caeliri’s lips moved wordlessly, eyes wide and blinking as she fumbled for words-

“Sorry doesn’t put food in our bellies or roofs over our heads.” There were eyes on them now, a dozen, perhaps more, from dirty faces on the roadside, perched atop downed parapets or crouched in the shadow of the ruined monoliths, exhaustion tugging at their eyelids. Their drooping lids, however, could hardly hamper the bitterness that swam in the blazing green sea of their gazes.

Her belly churned quite suddenly, every set of eyes upon her forming a craggy, sharp stone in her gut. They plunk, plunk, plunked into her belly, sending bile foaming up along her innards and Caeliri could feel herself shrinking back.

They were, all of them, refugees from Summerglen; they had come to the Citadel in panic and pain as Baal’s armies carved their dreadpath through the Dawnspire, and here they had remained, among the ruins of the capitol, eager for the remnants of their ruined lives. She recognized them not by the patterned vests and simple, bright clothing they wore, but by the loss that haunted the edges of their eyes, and the burning hot guilt she felt gush through her veins. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as the man carried on, all of his anger and helplessness and loss and grief boiling over on to her in a roaring wave she could not run from.

“Some fuckin’ Kin’taris. You abandoned us. You left us to die!”

She hadn’t.

She hadn’t meant to.

She was following orders- the Archon’s orders - to remain where she was stationed in the Citadel proper to fend off the oncoming assault. Summerglen should never have been a target of the demon’s warpath, it had seemed safe enough at the start, when Baal’s forces drove hard against the Evergrove and the Anchorage. She’d sent word to her soldiers to rally, to guard the borders, to evacuate the citizenry and they hadn’t left. They’d been too proud, too stubborn, too untested against the looming tide of violence; Summerglen had never seen war come to its shadowed vales, and like the lady who led them, they were blinded by their ignorance.

What more could she have done?

“Where the fuck have you been?! Not a person, not a single one, seeking their Kin’taris has heard a peep from you from since we came! You came sweeping down from your high tower like some fairy-fucking-tale princess, with all your pretty promises and platitudes, and then what?!”

Caeliri winced - hard. Her face contorted into a grimace, and her shoulders rose as if warding off an oncoming blow, but it had already been dealt. Pretty promises, platitudes, it was the same thought she had of the Sun-King and the noblesfolk of Quel’thalas, the very people she’d swore to oppose.

That was how this man saw her; that was how the people of Summerglen saw her.

Ice and fire took turns running rampant through her veins, the sickness in her gut seeming to fuel the flashes of disparate temperature as they raced from ear-tip to toe-tip, causing sweat to stipple on her lower back and scarlet shame to flare across her cheeks. Her eyes were eager for the ground, for the tips of her polished boots or the uneven stone below, but she held them even - and blessedly held the tears she felt begin to prickle behind her eyes at bay.

Caeliri had allied herself with the Reformers, stood against the Imperialists, gave her heart and soul to seeing the corruption of Quel’thalas at last be brought to heel, and those who abused the weak and disenfranchised pulled down from their high, lordly perches -- for what? What did that matter if her own people sat in stasis, surviving on the scraps of the Citadel’s generosity, eeking out a half-life in the shadows of their once-great capitol while she played hero halfway across the country?

“Then--” she interjected at last, though her voice was soft and meek, a mouse’s squealing against the man’s roaring rage, trying, desperately, to offer some defense, to make him understand her thoughts, her desires, her intentions, “--I joined my countrymen in assuring the nobility--”

“We’re your countrymen! You left us to suffer!”

She hadn’t.

She hadn’t meant to.

She had been ashamed, awashed in grief, for the lives lost, for the damage done, for all the dreams - hers and those of the townsfolk of Summerglen - that died the day Baal’s army diverted their path through the wood, keen on wreaking as much havoc and devastation as their wicked hearts desired. There had been nothing she could do -- she’d rode out to try and join the fray, but it was not a battle to be won.

It was a massacre.

And in the aftermath, when she passed into the smoldering vale to view the ruined remnants of her home -- she saw the bodies, broken, buried, bled, their blood swimming through the spaces between the cobbles, like crimson fingers reaching desperately through the veins of the city. She’d smelled the sulfur, the scorched skin, the burning hair, and seen the festering fissures carved into the earth. Agony was hot on the air still, the remnant sounds of spirits caught in their final moments echoing in her ears like a thousand nails drawn against slate.

“Do you even give a shit?”

A lump had long formed in her throat, a thousand words she wanted to spit back at him held at bay, balling around one another, over and over, until they were a tightly wound mass of writhing words and withheld sentiments. All of her defenses, all of her fear, all of her own perceptions, she held them behind her thinned lips, kept them captured and subdued, and forced a phrase up through the thicket in her throat, until it came hard and fast onto her tongue and leapt from her lips, steadfast and true; “What would you have me do?”

Silence swelled between them, tense and awkward, and the man who stood across from her clamped his mouth shut, both blonde brows diving down into deep furrows just above his fel-green eyes.

“...What?” The word was warbling on his tongue, steeped in uncertainty and confusion.

“I can not undo what has been done.” Drawing in a deep breath, Caeliri lifted her chin a fraction of an inch, staring the man down. She was aware of the glimmer that glinted in the sea-green spanse of her irises, but it was all she could do to hold the tears at bay; she could no more undo her expressiveness as she could unmake all her mistakes.

“I can not turn back the hands of time and stop Baal’s armies from marching on Summerglen - I can not ride out to the village and drag every man, woman and child from their home. I can not unspend the days I have spent making allies with men and women who have the means and the morals to put their gold to good use in efforts of restoration and revitalization. So tell me - what would you have me do?” There was a waft of anger at the edge of her voice, but the question was not mocking or cruel - it was frustrated, but earnest.

“I want you to do your job,” he spat back, bristling now that words were finally coming back his way.

“My job is to serve the people of Summerglen, the people of the Dawnspire, and the people of Quel’thalas -- tell me, what ails you most? What can I do, in this moment, to serve you?”

Her response caught him off-guard, left him standing there, his anger dampened - but not extinguished - and his face cycling through a spectrum of emotions that were hard to place. Another silence passed between them, interrupted by the swelling murmur of the attention they had drawn, but Caeliri was unrelenting; ever the first to speak, the first to strike down silence and fill the air with whatever words she could fathom, regardless of their needs or purpose, she held fast, waiting for his response.

“We just… want to go home,” he conceded at last, the heat in his voice reduced to a simmer, “we want to rebuild our lives, bury our dead, and just… pick up the pieces. Your soldiers won’t let anyone past the city gates.”

“Summerglen is …. Unsafe, still,” she ventured, voice even and calm, “but if that is your desire, I beg you wait a few weeks more -- once the village is safe… we will begin to rebuild. This I swear to you,” she lifted a hand, crossing it over her heart, and bent neatly at the waist into a deep bow the left her hair sweeping against the stones at their feet.

Rage reduced to a rumbling from a roar, the man sucked air in through his teeth, flicking his eyes away; when she rose up to her full height once more, his face was screwed up tightly, his shoulders tight and taut, and his hands wormed their way into his pockets. “Believe it when I see it,” was all he added, before skulking back to the others, whose attention slowly faded from their Kin’taris, returned to their own internal affairs.

Drawing in a deep, quaking breath, Caeliri turned from them, back up the path from whence she’d come, strides long and powerful and swift, eager to be away from the sharp bite of shame still snapping at her cheeks, and to put her promise into motion.

Returning to her rooms, in the Citadel, Caeliri slammed shut the door in her wake, moving with purpose to the small writing desk pressed against the wall below the window. The sound startled her phoenix from her reverie, making Grace swivel her head to scrutinize Caeliri with one glowing, white eye. The crest of feathers along her head rose up, curious and agitated all at once; she could feel the tense that twisted through Caeliri’s guts, and she did not like it.

More so, she did not like whoever made her mistress feel that way.

Caeliri slid her fingers over the upturned feathers, smoothing through the licking flames unburnt, smoothing and soothing the phoenix all at once. No more comfort was offered, though - her hands were quick to grab parchment and paper, pulling the pale sheet into the shaft of light the window let splay across the deep cherrywood desk. With a breath, she put pen to paper, and wrote:

“Citizens of the Dawnspire, Soldiers of the Sunguard, Once more I must beg you to aid me…”

Out of the corner of his eye, Koramm kept watch on the Doom Lord, Baal. Where before he had been across the room, he was slowly getting closer, each step shaking the ground around him. Even so, Koramm kept himself focused on healing those around him. If they fell, Ball wouldn’t be the only demon that Koramm would have to worry about.

A voice called out behind him, the words of the Archon drowned out by the ever present booming of Baal. Koramm turned, his face instantly filling with the sight of the Doom Lord standing just to his left, the demon’s hand raised high over his head.Before he could blink, Baal’s giant hand came crashing down, sharp claws slashing along Koramm’s body. The tauren collapsed, not a word was able to pass his lips as his head swam and the world faded to black.

***

Koramm’s eyes opened to a void. All around him strands of power surged, easily felt but invisible to the eye. The tauren floated in the blackness, even his own body not visible to him, as he tried to get his bearings. Somewhere, Koramm felt sharp shooting pain on his left arm, but it was as if it were a dream; distant, fleeting, and easily ignored. It was much simpler to float in the void, disconnected from reality, from the pain of the body, and the pain of the mind.

A fleeting image crossed his mind, filling the tauren with an overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction. Startled, Koramm looked around, seeing for the first time that he was not alone in the void. Off, in the distance, was a small earth elemental flecked with green stone, and beside it a rather tiny water elemental. Although Koramm could still not see himself, the strands of power continued to surge, now visible as flickering lines of red and orange, blown about by whips of grey. With some focus, the tauren seemed to move closer to the two small elementals.

“Emerite, Raidriss, what are you doing here? Where am I?”

Pictures of his body laying against the earth, his arm torn to shreds, as blood began to pool around him passed through Koramm’s head. “Oh. I’m dying.”

Distantly, even further off than the sharp shooting pain of his arm, Koramm felt the world shake. The pulsing red strands of energy grew brighter as the swirling gusts of grey faded. With a resigned sigh, Koramm sat between the two small elementals. Well, as much as he could sit without a body with which to do the action. Even so, it felt as if the elementals were right next to him, a comfort of sorts. “I can’t say that I thought I would go this soon, there was plenty more I had hoped to do with my life. At the very least, I wished that I would fully reforge my connection with all of the elements, and that my end would see me laid to rest back in Mulgore.”

A sharp spike of green flashed through the void around him before the red flared up once more, completely overpowering the green. “You never did tell me where I am. I mean, I’m dying, but this is certainly not what I expected to happen to me before my spirit passes on.”

No specific images passed through Koramm’s mind, but even so, the few glimpses he did get filled him with a sense of comfort. If he had had arms, the tauren would have set a hand on top of each elemental. “I do miss when you would talk to me in words, not just images. I can never know what you mean anymore!”

The two elementals each raised an arm, pointing to an area in front of Koramm. After a few moments, a single dreamleaf began to grow from the ‘ground’ of the void. As Koramm reached out to touch it, he saw his own hand come into focus once more. To his sides, the elementals disappeared, and all around him, the red strands of energy and the grey swirls faded once more to black.

“If this is how I am to meet my end, I hope that my sacrifice was not for nothing. I hope that we managed to hold the Legion, to stop their destruction of our home.”

At first I feared I could not complete the trial.  How could I? Stepping within the Heart would most certainly have meant my death.  Throughout all of my existence up to that point my life had followed very hard, very simple rules, the most important of which was: Do not encounter the Light.  It was my counter, the very literal Light against my Shadow.  To invite it was to invite suffering and pain like the kind I visited on others to survive.  Stepping within the Phoenix’s Heart was suicide.  

A Knight is Clean.

A Knight is Honest.

A Knight is Merciful.

A Knight is Brave.

…

A Knight is Brave.

And I am a Knight.  A Knight of the Broken Blade, A Knight of the Ebon Blade.  And if I were to do this, to commit myself to the Light in service of more than myself, A Kintaros.  A Knight of the Dawnspire.  A Knight of the Phoenix.  

There was no conceivable way that I would shirk from that responsibility.

So I stepped within it, knowing that I would die, and found my rebirth.  More than my rebirth, I found my salvation.  Whatever it did, I am not what I was before then.  I am changed, to something that even I do not recognize.  Whatever I am, I feel unshackled; I finally feel truly free.  Because Ser Tyril gave me a chance, I can truly be more than what I was.

And now he is dead, sacrificed to defeat the Legion.  He said he had a plan, and a part of me knew that it would involve his death, but I could not conceive of what it might be.  Nor that it would involve the Heart.  When he took the Windfury and flew to it’s center, I barely had time to call out to him.  I knew when he was burned within it, he would not return.  The Phoenix summoned from within the Heart had consumed him to live, consumed him for us to live.  

I am still processing this.  My heart misses him dearly, but I know he would not want me to dwell on him overly much.  He would want me to fulfill my oath, to stand by the declarations I made the night I was reforged.  That I would pledge my life, word, and honor to the defense of Quel’thelas, that I would be clean, honest, merciful, and brave.

I am still processing this.

Thirty Days, Ten Hours from incident: I cannot stop thinking about that moment, when Alazar rose from the Heart.  It was not Tyril, I know that.  But his rise gave me a feeling, something that I cannot really describe.  It was...warm.  Loving.  Like an embrace, but not.  I cannot...I need to think on this.

Thirty Days, Ten Hours, Six Minutes from incident:  The best way to put it is that I felt something.  

That is no more clear than before.  

Come on, Siildore, you can do better than that.

Thirty Days, Ten Hours, Fifteen Minutes from incident: It had to be the Light, but it was so...beautiful and warm.  Like holding my daughter in a hug, hearing her gush about a recent lover, the voice she makes when she holds frosty or silver.  A kiss shared with Feyrintha, leaning against her after making love, the smiles we share when we are alone.  My brother calling me Tannis or Siily, when I call him little Ithy right back.  The hug we shared when we first spoke to each other after learning about our connection.  It is in the way Faervell prods and plays, flirting just up to the line before Esme rolls her eyes and sighs.  It was a smile passed between Catriah and myself, the laugh I hear in Daxxle’s jokes, the ludicrous things he says about his factory.  The advice he gave me so long ago.  The tables we all used to sit around, laughing and talking for hours on end.  The drinks we shared at the Faire, when Zalin taught me to poison them so I could get drunk.  It was the fire that Caeliri made for me when I was paralyzed, the dawn we watched from her cottage window.  It is the way that Zalin looks at Elleynah, and the way she blushes and reddens when she looks back.  The announcement of Ellasha and Telchis’s child, and the rounds of congratulations and well-wishes that came after it.  When Feyrintha and I moved my things into our apartment, and we stood on the balcony, together, looking out into the city.  It was the way a mother carries her child, close to her breast and protected from the world; When Ith and I held hands as Tarianna advanced on us.  

When Caeliri was born, and I heard her first cries.  She was pressed into my arms, and I cried right along with her.

Thirty Days, Ten Hours, Twenty-Six Minutes after incident:  I keep trying to find a way to put into concrete terms what I felt, and nothing ever does it justice.  I cannot put it single terms, or even a very descriptive sentence.  How do you describe holding your daughter as she cries over her lost love? How can you put words to the simple act of holding a lover’s hands? I cannot…

Thirty Days, Ten Hours, Thirty-Four Minutes after incident: Love.  It was love, real...real love.  The Light is love, it is compassion, it is...real.  Not the facsimile emotions I felt from before.  It is...something.  I need to think a moment longer.

Thirty Days, Ten Hours, Fifty-Five Minutes after incident: It is clean.  It is honest.  It is merciful.  It is brave.  It is love.  That is all I can say the Light is.  It is the closest way I can describe it, what I felt.  What I feel now.  

I need to speak with Caeliri about this, with Elleynah.  They need to know.