#raivenn

Long were the days as Kaiar Ashwind toiled over his magical forge. The hefty sum of gold and rare metals that Priestess Fairlight had supplied him with were enough to pay his expenses for two months, once the metals had been crafted into the fine weapons and armor he created for the nobility and the Blood Knights.

A strange staff, another strange staff, a mostly-normal sword and shield set, and a warhammer and shield set had all been completed and given to the Priestess’ friends. They had supplied the materials - strange things. Demon bone, shards of a dead Naaru’s purified core, metals infused with various magics, and then there was a mote of pure, unadulterated void magic. Unlike the balance given to the Priestess’ staff, that meant for her lover’s wicked sickle held no balance.

At first, it was like any other weapon. Even the twisted, otherworldy schematics Ashwind had been given could not confound him once he’d drawn on his magical expertise to understand how something could exist and yet invert upon itself all at once.

Then...as he began to infuse the black metal with that mote of pure Void, into the twisted and occult runes he had etched into the surface, the thing began to whisper.

The first time it happened, he thought it might have been the echoes of passing travelers. There was a road not too far from his forge, after all, and a path leading right to it. Perhaps he would have a customer?

No customer came, no patron.

But the whispers continued. Terrible things, secrets no mortal should know, and the seductive, almost irresistable call of that which lay beneath. 

To stave it off, a good shot of whiskey did the trick, at least at first. For a few days, whenever the blade began whispering to him anew, Kaiar would take a swig of his bitter, smoky liquor of choice. And for a time, it would numb his swift mind enough that he could concentrate on the tedium of his work instead of the hypnotic call of the Void whispered not into his ear, but directly into his mind.

From inside his own mind, it began to seem.

The unpronounceable names of the runes chanted themselves into his brain, in a tongue few mortals could speak, and the very sounds of those syllables twisted his guts and made him feel as though he might vomit. It took every ounce, every minutiae of his training as a Spellbreaker to resist the horrifying impulses that arcane chant sent swirling through his mind.

More than once, he wondered if drowning the thing in a bucket of water would silence it.

Or, even better, tossing the whole thing back into the forge and allowing it to melt away. Such blades and such knowledge were not meant for mortal hands, and even the promise of so much gold and so many carts of rare metals were barely enough to dissuade Ashwind from canceling the project and handing an unfinished weapon over to Lord Greybane.

He’d had a modicum of respect for the man before, when they had first met. There might have been a kindred spirit of sorts there.

But now...

Now, he never wanted to see that tall, gaunt, silvered figure in his forge again. 

No amount of gold would be enough to persuade him to spend more time than necessary with a man who was not only capable of drawing up the plans for this weapon that should never have existed, but who was destined to become its wielder. 

When the final rune was infused with those swirling, writhing, living tendrils of void magic that never stopped moving even after they had been set and baked into the metal, Kaiar Ashwind covered the disgusting thing with a blanket and a sheet of hammered steel. He hoped that such a barrier might provide him with some relief as he send word to Priestess Fairlight that the final two weapons were ready. 

Then, as the whispers continued, he left the comfort of his forge and sat on the shoreline of the river nearby, watching rivulets of silt as they flowed into the sea and downing great swallows from his jug of whiskey.

Even this far from the forge and the thing sitting on his work bench, he swore that he could hear its whispers on the breeze.

“Come quickly, Priestess,” he whispered back. “Else you’re gonna have a floater washing up downstream in a day or two.”

-----

First, a chunky crystal decanter of moonwell water was left upon Illapa’s desk. It glowed, luminous in the dark before dawn, and the contents seemed almost alive as they swirled lazily within their crystalline shell.

Then, a stack of inscribed runes on sheets of parchment was sent to the chambers where Raivenn and Kuerani’s family had been staying. Affix these to the doorways inside the framework, read the note on the top of the stack. I attuned them to our guest’s biology, but it should work against blood relatives as well. 

Finally, the Priestess clad herself in deepest violet before her figure shimmered and became translucent, like the shadows into which she slipped intermittently as she made her way through the darkened streets of Silvermoon. 

Their deceased Magister had a small vault within Silvermoon’s central bank, it turned out after careful research.

Unlike the vault belonging to Julian, into which she had charmed her way in order to retrieve the deed and records to the property where their house had been built, she would not be able to access this one so easily. The owner was deceased, and the contents bequeathed to a name that had apparently not yet claimed their rightful inheritance.

One of the since-departed vassals to House Bloodsworn, Leareth, had been absolutely terrified of the shadowy arts, and Solarine knew that the poor woman would have been horrified if she’d been there to see her Lord and his Lady so easily calling forth their power to do the impossible. 

Like sinuous filaments of incense smoke, Solarine’s form disintegrated and pooled on the ground as they flowed languidly through an air vent leading from the inside of the bank to the outside. Unlike the doorways, this entryway was neither sealed nor warded against intruders, and it would be as easy to get out as it had been to get in. 

Once inside, the shadowy Priestess wasted no time. 

Shadowy tendrils worked better than any lockpick when it came to deciphering a combination safe, moving the tumblers into place and allowing the door to swing open as easily as if she had known the combination by heart. No alarms were set off because nothing had been tampered with or broken into, and it took only seconds to remove the briefcase and a sack of smaller items from the small vault’s interior.

The bigger-on-the-inside satchel Solarine carried at all times easily swallowed both the briefcase - after some creative repositioning - and the sack of smaller items.

After only a minute or two spent inside the bank, Solarine quietly closed the door to the safe and dissolved once more into wisps and curls of violet smoke.

The entire operation took no more than an hour, from leaving the Estate until returning, and once she had returned and opened the briefcase atop the writing desk in the bedchamber she often shared with Illapa, the risk manifested its worth:

There, disguised in the middle of a pile of dry legal documents and uninspiring magical formulae, were the last six pages of a well-scoured, thoroughly-read ancient Highborne tome.

And in the contents of those pages, it quickly became clear why the feared and beloved Queen of the lost Highborne community wanted them back so very badly.

Raivenn Sol’arian, blood elf mage/warlock on Wyrmrest Accord.

My friend and I challenged ourselves to do a piece of art to start off 2016, and at the end of the year we will do the same piece again to see how much we’ve improved. There are things I need to improve on here (clothes especially), but other things turned out better than I’d hoped, so 2015 was a good year for me!