#siildore

“...you will be made to endure every moment of it while you contemplate your actions.”

“...you will be made to endure every moment of it while you contemplate your actions.”

The same Story has begun. An Upholder, a Dissenter, a Weapon: the Triad. What is important, has all been laid out. A Weapon has been placed in the hand of the Upholder, to learn the Dissenter and learn them well. A good Weapon. Purposeful, immaculate, strong. To strike dreadfully and true to the will of the Upholder, to bleed all resistance from the Dissenter.

“At your call, Sentinel.”

“At your call, Inquisitor.”

The details - irrelevant. Muddled. The Weapon cannot tell where the different renditions of this Story begin and end. The only constant is the Weapon itself, something not living and thus transferable. The features of the others phase in and out in dizzying tides. The eyes, so violet, so blue, so green, so furiously alight, so there, and so not there. A storm, so wild and chaotic, belting with its flurry of different shapes, skin, faces, insignias, armour, people.

“Highdawn, when you are ready, please summon as much Light as possible…”

“Highdawn, when you are ready, please summon as much Light as possible…”

Highdawn. A designation; something like a name. A label. Something that does not sit right but serves practical purpose. The Weapon sees more than it feels the churning of its own power. The stirring of that twisted shard of Light under a heavy-handed will, manifesting into brilliant, roiling gold. It sees the press of it, like viscous metal folded into form. There is something that tells it that the splendid roar of heat (a fragment of what was before the Story) has given way to the most unnatural chill (an element of what is only to the Story), though the sensation lands not.

The energy radiates, like a snaking rope. It coils. This version of the Story differs. It does no harm - not yet, not without the express will of the Upholder. And yet—

It can see the way the blood vessels lyse so quick and violently from intense concentration of Light languidly licking down the skin. The flesh transmutes black more than it grows, black like when blood and shit pours out of the mouth of the soon-to-die. It splinters, coming apart in no way that a body should - like the way an axe tears apart fibrous wood when lodged and given a hard twist by the handle. The surrounding tissues crack open. Chilled, venous blood pours slow around the devastated roadworks constructed by the Weapon. It is too cold to drip. It pools and rolls sluggish on the surface until it ceases to move at all.

The Weapon’s punishment continues to amble, to jaunt, to trickle, effortlessly. There is something graceful to it - graceful in the way that something is Other; beyond flesh-and-blood, and inherently cruel and insensitive in the nature of all things Holy.

It senses the almost irrevocable agony that it has lashed into the Dissenter. It knew, somehow, that its bite has sank deep into the body, freezing not only the meat and blood but brittling the bone underneath. There is only one hope for the Dissenter now. Submit. Submit to the cold mercy of the Upholder and be treated under their magnanimity—

“Thank you, Highdawn. I am glad I can count on…”

“Thank you, Highdawn. I am glad I can count on…”

“Your will is mine, Sentinel. As long as I serve.”

“Your will is mine, Inquisitor. As long as I serve.”

Its unfeeling cannot halt the screaming when the Weapon strikes the Dissenter.

Its unfeeling cannot halt the screaming when the Weapon strikes the Dissenter.

The screaming.

The screaming.

Something feral, unthinking, base. Something born of only the greatest torment.

Something born of only the greatest torment. The screaming.The screaming.The screaming. thescreamingthescreamingthescreamingthescreamingthescreamingt hescreamingthescreamingdifferentfacesdifferentpeopledifferentmasksdiffeentfac esdifferentpeopledifferentmaskssameStorysameStorysameStorysameStorysam eStorysameStorysameStorysameStorysameStorysameStory—

A memory stirs. Something unique to one of the retellings and yet beyond. The First of the Story. The Weapon could not slough off the skin of the Self as easily as it did in future mythos. Towards the screams, she ground her teeth until they cracked and her mouth filled with blood. Hot blood. Not cold like the Dissenter’s. It dripped from her maw like something terrible and slavering and very bestial.

The attentions and magicks that the Upholders poured into treating her were grand and unsettling. Anything to keep a champion, an exemplar, a paragon, (a Weapon), of Quel’thalas in the most perfect of conditions. The Self remembered keenly of the faceless others who failed to curry her same favour; their blackened, rotted, teeth. The leaking pus and crimson that oozed from their gums and enlarged their jaws. The deaths that found them afterwards. The capricious luck that distincted the Self from them.—

Something rings out amidst the Dissenter’s screaming. The sharp authority of the Upholder, more clean and precise than any blade,

Something rings out amidst the Dissenter’s screaming. The sharp authority of the Upholder, more clean and precise than any blade,

“Thank you again, Highdawn, you, as always, prove to be exemplary.”

“Thank you again, Highdawn, you, as always, prove to be exemplary.”

“That is all I will ask of you this evening…”

“That is all I will ask of you this evening…”

“Aye, Sentinel. Sun at your back.”

“Aye, Inquisitor. Sun at your back.”

The Weapon is sheathed.

The Weapon is sheathed.

The Story has been retold.

The Story has been retold.

The Upholder, Dissenter and Weapons have played their roles in full.

The Upholder, Dissenter and Weapons have played their roles in full.

The Weapon pulls the grisly hide of the Self back on.

The Weapon pulls the grisly hide of the Self back on.

She fits more loosely than she did before.

She fits more loosely than she did before.

She does not feel it.

She does not feel it.

The roar of her sadness was gone in a moment, fingers that were still intertwined with Siildore’s squeezing her hand lightly.

Gods, I-- her internal thoughts stopped, forbidding the rest of the thought. No, she couldn’t lose another person like that. She couldn’t let her heart rend a fourth time.

There was work to be done today. If she wished to head to southern Quel’thalas before the end of the day, she would have to leave now, or soon. There was so much ground between her and her objective -- there were so many miles to cross, where she would be alone with her thoughts. Reluctantly disentangling their fingers, trying her best not to jostle Siildore, Eleeria left the infirmary behind.

Later, beneath the comfort of a different blanket, in another corner of a different unfamiliar space, she pulled out the stolen paper and pen and began to write.

Siildore,

There’s so much I want to tell you, and I feel like -- there isn’t enough time, in this life, for me to explain anything I want to. There’s so much to say. I don’t have the ability to say it -- I just feel so sad. It’s not just you.

I wish we could both be around forever, or as long as forever can mean, you know? There’s all these things I want to tell you, about myself -- about where I come from. We’ve talked before about how we thought of ourselves as weapons. Just yesterday, even. I tell you this because my father thought of me as a tool: you sharpen, use, and dispose when they become flawed. I was just a tool, for his use. I wasn’t a person, any more than the plants he favored that grew in his room. I was just a pet assassin.

The Sunguard wants a pet assassin, too. But I’m not sure if I want to blindly kill people for anyone any more. I’m not sure if I want to sit there and wait my turn in line to be punished -- wait to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. I am tired of waiting for my turn to finally say everything that has been clamped behind my mouth for so long.

I am tired of existing in a world that doesn’t want me to think, just be.

Maybe that means I’m tired of being a weapon. I want to be a person -- I want to live! I’ve never wanted anything more in my entire life; the idea that gold could somehow compare to a single breath as someone who owes absolutely nothing to anyone. To be free of oaths and people who want to use me for something, and just...be me, unfettered, released.

I don’t think this decision is exactly that -- but it feels better than chaining myself to a place that would do this to you. To anyone. I can’t do that any more. I am tired of watching my lovers be thrown into the ocean and told to learn to swim against the current. I care about you too much to watch that happen. I have to be stronger than that -- there is no other option than to leave all my fears behind and learn to just...be Eleeria. I’ve never been her before. I don’t know what she’s like, but maybe I’ll find out. I could be terrifying if I wanted to be. And I want to be, but I don’t want to be beneath anyone any more.

Personally I am hoping she really likes knives because I have a lot of them. (That’s a joke. I know you said no humor, but you know -- I have to.)

I wish you were here. Please feel better. Please don’t die I’ve got a lot more to show you at the Cove, you know. You should come over some time, when you feel up to it. We can sit on my balcony and watch the ships come in.

L-- Miss you,