He was taken aback at first, expecting the bright-eyed and cheery girl who he had spent his off-time with in Dalaran. But the sensation quickly passed. He understood. Times change, and so do people. Light knows that he had. "I do," he replied, low and even. "I do have a great need of the cards, and so does the realm. More than ever."

Elleynah nodded, two shining lights glowed from beneath the hood the woman wore. "Fate-filled times. Much is needed." The voice, hollow and unalive seemed to shift. "Speak, soldier, seeker. What would you ask, of fate?"

Sederis gave himself a moment to think. Of some things he was certain, but of others... Old and eldritch like the copse of trees he stood in, or the... Thing, that handled a deck of little windows into the unknown before him... Perhaps it was time to indulge an old belief. One that Sederis had thought he forgot. "How do I best venerate Lady Death. I am done appeasing her, slowly bleeding my life away, living in remorse for sins I can never atone. How do I best pay tribute?"

The Lifespeaker paused, and her fingers moved over the cards. "Oh, a worthy question. Worthy indeed." There was a thread of something in the tone, and then-- the woman's body shuddered, as though something was struggling within her flesh. Something made her flinch, and then... its over, and she is still once more. Her hands moved to the deck, and lifted it, sending the cards rolling through her hands like fluid. "Tell me when to stop."

Sederis waited, and waited until the forest is still. Silent. As if a predator had stalked amongst its ancient roots of the wood. "Stop," he said at last.

The girl seemed to shimmer before his gaze- hands too fast to follow- cards flowing like liquid shimmering light, and then at the word, they stopped. The world stopped. Everything; his heartbeat in his ears, the rhasp of breath. Cards exploded in every direction, catching alight, flames raining down around the pair like a storm. All cards, save five, which glowed in his face, floating, before rotating around him. He could see them, for a moment, and then- he was washed in bright and brilliant light, the forest fading into a battlefield; the undead charged against a line of bannermen, and then- on another flank, the elves of Teldrassil and Stormwind against the Sin’dorei, and on another flank- there, infernals and demons of all kinds against the Deathseeker. Chaos- confusion- every war. Every battle. Before Sederis, was Riah; she wore red and white, a wedding gown and banner both. She held Stenden in her arms; he was bleeding from a wound in his brow.

Suddenly, Elleynah was at his side, and her words were somber, soft. “You are drawn in too many directions- overcommitted to each act and war, to every part of what you have broken and forgotten.” Her voice wove, and the fighting stopped- freezing as a moment in time. “You will learn to choose your battles- or perhaps you have. But was it soon enough?” Riah crumples, Stenden with her, but before Sederis can so much as reach for them, he is swept into the Dawnspire halls.

He stands next to Telchis, and there is a wartable in front of him; across, Lor’themar and Kaelthas nod as the pieces move- a living Sylvanas lays a hand over the shifting map. Sederis feels the weight of his mantle and cloak; the age of him now. He hears Elleynah, but cannot see her. “To satisfy death is to feed death. To give it what it wants; to consume. Destroy. The end of living is a force that can be woo’d, can be turned in the direction of your foes for great effect, but she is a monster.” The table changes- Sederis stands with none but the wounded, ancient veterans and fresh-faced youths. The doors reverberate with the sound of the enemies that pound at them. Sederis is not himself; he is a young man, lost, alone, knowing that those gilded halls and great elven lords have set this fate upon him. The walls are breached, and he is then on a familiar hill.

He turned, expecting to see Riah, but instead it is a fairhaired woman. It’s Lirelle. She turns to him with her gleaming smile, but it is Elleynah’s voice that pours out. “You rely too much on those who wish for your life to continue. You have promised too much to both the living and the dead. You will never keep your promises. You must learn to accept you cannot be everything… not even to those you wish you could be. A lesson offered many times. Never learned. Choose truth; true clear sightedness. Choose what it is to be both man, and to be leader, but know you cannot always hold both masks.”

Lirelle shifts, and the starry night begins to burn again, the stars falling in flames like the cards had, until suddenly he was alone in the black. Alone, and the world was silent. For ages- aeons- it was nothing. And then, a single star broke from the nothing, and he once more beheld… someone. She was lovely; she was Elleynah, and Keltressa, and Lirelle, and more than that Riah, Caeliri, Azriah, Thanidiel- every woman. Her eyes glowed. She radiated heat. She spoke. “Death above all, is peace.” Her hand reached out, and she placed a fingertip on his brow. “Death is quiet, in the end. It is the peace of the battlefield, a hundred years after the dying is done.” She dimmed, a moment, and collapsed into his arms.

Sederis caught her, and the world dropped out from beneath him; he turned, inverted, and saw that this was a Lirelle as he had never seen her before. What she was- and all of the changes he bore witness to- were lost to him. For now he saw the war, the battles, the golden room and the starry hill in a new light; and understood everything. Then he saw himself, upside down.

“Now, you see.” The other Sederis spoke. “Welcome to perspective.” It offered him a sketched salute… and then he was in the dark forest, and there was no Elleynah, and the dream began to fade. Later, when waking finally caught him, he would remember this, in parts. But for now, waking from a daydream within a dream, he shifted to move, and a single card flittered to the ground; a man, suspended, seeing the world in a brand new way.

Sederis blinked once, twice, and then called out into the darkness. "Elleynah?" He never used her first name.

Whatever had been there was gone; though an echo in the wood followed, just a moment; like the girl was crying out from far away... and then nothing.

Sederis reached out into the darkness. Leaving the card behind him, turning his back on what the fates had revealed to him. True. False. It did not matter. Not to the man who had forged his destiny and the destinies of others with the edge of his sword. Lady Fate could wait, and if she was truly who he thought she was, it wouldn’t matter. They’d always come back to her in the end, whether they liked it or not. So he stepped into the darkness, deeper than anything he had ever known. "Elleynah," he called again, travelling through woodlands undone; the world was trying to steal him awake before he could find her, evict him from the dream. But his Patron was already too clever, too quick, and he slipped the reigns of the dream, pulling himself from the magic by knowing where it began, instead of ended. And he... found her.

Unlike the creature in the woods, this was Elleynah as she was; her face scarred, empty socket black and open, caul-covered frame a litany and hymnal of scars and freckles. She sat alone, staring into nothing, shaking. Her fingers bled, and they bled onto cards- her palms cut deep, strange and alien runed burned into the backs of her hands and up her arms.

Sederis approached, slow and cautious as if approaching a wounded animal. The girl he had sought out the find, the girl he remembered, was here. Beyond the waking world, trapped in a dream wreathed limbo of blood and darkness, here she was. Alone. A conduit- no- a vessel to things both great and terrible. "If I cheat Lady Death of what she's owed. If the fates allow it. I'll come back for you. But for now, this is all I can do." Sederis whispered, taking her bloodied hands into his, in the same way he did long ago when the dream had first begun to take hold of her in Shallowbrook. Just like he did then, he placed his hands over her rended palms, and channelled whatever he could into her. Chi. Life. Whatever the gods and mortal men gave names to things older than hunger itself. He shared it.

Elleynah had been still as he spoke, still as he neared. But as he touched her, her face jerked upward, and he could see the tears running down her face. She looked at him- really looked- and he saw the moment she realized. "You're real." Her voice broke. "You're real. You aren't-" She seemed to break down, bowing over their hands, the magic he gave her; it was and was not his own; he had tricked the Dream, and in so, taken some of it with him. It flowed into her, seemed to push her away- the more he gave, the less she was caught in this hell. He saw her skin clearing, cuts closing, burns fading.

Feeling her slipping away from the dreamscape, and unsure of what it meant, his grip softened. But she grabbed for him with ephemeral hands.

"No-- stop, don't go!" She cried, and he saw the torture; she did not know she was asleep. She did not know she could wake. She was alone, when the magic took hold; unknowing when it would ever let her go again.

So Sederis stayed. Determined to stay as long as the Dream allowed. Mending what wounds he could. Wounds of her dream wreathed flesh. Wounds of her dream addled mind. "I don't think it's up to me," he began, looking out into the darkness like he had done many times before. "But I'll stay with you. As long as I can." Sederis gripped harder, continuing to bleed into her. "You're in a dream," he said, in an attempt to calm her.

Elleynah 's cries grew weaker as he healed her, brought her back from this hell and pushed her out of the Dream. She gripped at his arms though her fingers grew translucent, reached for him, her sobs almost whispers as she tried to hold on to the only real thing she had ever seen here. The only thing that wasn't the magic, the whispers, the visions and sights. “Sederis!” Her voice was a scream, turned so low as to be only a breath in the silence. “I’m sorry, don’t leave me…” Pain, fear, it etched her features, and then… she was gone. Awake, somewhere far from here.

And yet… a voice remained. “She is young. She will learn.”

Sederis looked up and around him, not fully comprehending it all, but understanding that the voice belonged to something old. Older than anything he could imagine. "She will learn if she chooses to. Actions can be forced, but knowledge cannot," he spoke into the darkness. "She isn't yours to claim."

The dream vibrated with some emotion between laughter and indignation, huge and uncanny. He felt it roil, and a shadow appeared to him, briefly- so much like Elleynah, and yet not, her hair long and tangled, body softened by motherhood. Her eyes were empty, shifting, myriad colors within. "Some fates cannot be changed, Deathseeker. You will see." The being smiled, and smiled, too wide, too many teeth... and then in a thunderous roar came, tore the world, tore the woman, and the Dream was done.

Sederis stirred, disoriented. But as he stirs, the card that was Chosen- or had Chose him- slipped from his bed and to the floor.

A Hanged Man, seeing the world... in a brand new way.