#velerith

The front doors open, and a buffeting, freezing wind tears through both elves’ clothes and hair. Fenrin secures a hand to the back of Velerith’s head and presses on, flanked by a pair of residence guardsmen.

“Is Lady Embereye’s apprentice safe?” one asks him.

“Yes, she is well—please, take us from here.”

“At once, Sir Seabough.”

Velerith watches the dark and cold isle. She hears magic and screams, and she knows the fighting has reached the Isle. She is not afraid.

“I can help,” she tells Fenrin.

“I know you can, seabird, but first we must go.”

“But they need us here!”

“Lady Serawyn is helping. It’ll be all right.”

Velerith is sated. Her grandmother is powerful. Surely she can calm this raging ice storm.

They board a ship, guarded heavily from the carnage. Fenrin quickly ducks into one of the cabins, dropping himself into a cot and hugging Velerith tightly to himself. Velerith tucks her head under his chin, listening to the fighting and the storm outside.

“Daddy?” she calls to her father. “Will Dad be here soon?”

Fenrin only breathes a ragged breath. Velerith pulls herself from his chest, looking up into a face soaked in falling tears. She is not afraid.

“Daddy?”

“Dad is...” He sniffles, groans at his own weeping. “Dad isn’t coming, seabird.”

She doesn’t understand why, but she sees hopeless fear in Fenrin’s crying face. So after a moment of thought, she tells him, “I’ll protect you.”

He smiles miserably, for just a moment, and then drags her back into the hug. Velerith listens to him as he tries not to cry, and just lays silently in his hold. She isn’t afraid, but she wishes she could make him unafraid too.

Time passes. Then there is commotion above deck, sailors scrambling to raise the masts and shove off the Isle. Fenrin stirs, his eyes full of fear. Unwilling to leave Velerith’s side, he carries her back into the storming open, searching feverishly for something.

“Excuse me!” he calls to one of the sailors, decorated nicer than the rest. A firstmate? A captain? “Where is Lady Serawyn?”

The sailor’s face falls. “I—I’m sorry, Sir Seabough. She...”

Velerith can tell they will not be specific with her right there. She can also tell that whatever’s happened to her grandmother is horrible, because Fenrin’s grief comes crashing back.

“Oh, Light,” he cries. “I...—“

Velerith’s ears prick up. “Daddy! Daddy, I feel her!”

“What? Seabird, shush—“

“I feel Lady Serawyn!”

As Velerith shouts it, the entire ship lurches with a horrible groan. Fenrin falls, shielding his daughter from the crash. As he looks up, ice crawls over the deck, creeping in from the edges of the ship. His heart sinks.

“It’s Lady Serawyn!” Velerith says. “It’s her magic! I feel it!”

“Seabird—“

“Look!!”

Velerith Blinks herself free, stopped from running to the edge of the ship only by Fenrin’s mortified scream. She stops and whirls back to him, a flicker of shock and apology on her face. She didn’t mean to make him scream like that—

“Oh, no,” a sailor wheezes.

“Arthas—he took—“

Velerith turns around, and walking over a landing of ice is—her grandmother. But not. Something is wrong. She’s too cold—

“Gramma?” Velerith calls.

Their eyes meet, for a moment, and Velerith swears she feels ice crystallizing within her. The next thing she knows, Fenrin has retrieved her, fleeing back behind the remaining soldiers on the ship as they mournfully raise their weapons.

“Wait!” Velerith cries out. “Don’t hurt her!”

“Lady Serawyn,” one soldier musters, his voice weak with grief. “It cannot be. Please—“

More people climb upon the ice landing. Elves, humans, dwarves—all with the same dead, haunting eyes.

When Serawyn speaks, Velerith hears it as one would see their reflection in broken glass. A dozen voices, all hers, all slightly not hers.

“Surrender,” she coldly orders. “This vessel is to be delivered to the Cult of the Damned. There, your fate awaits.”

“Gramma??” Velerith calls, distress at last piercing her heart like the ice infesting her veins.

Fenrin immediately hugs her tightly to himself. She trembles—not quite afraid. Confused; upset.

“What’s wrong with her?” she asks him. “Why is she so cold?”

She knows the face he makes when he doesn’t know how to explain. Serawyn ushers the—the prisoners?—down into the lowest level of the ship.

There, they are held captive.

Days pass at sea. The breeze steadily gets colder, colder than Velerith has ever felt—and dark. Fenrin’s skin grays with hunger, as do many of the few elves trapped with them. But she is eight, and when they ask her to eat what little food they can scrape out of the supplies around them, she does.

People with the haunting eyes come and go. Velerith sees a few humans, and one elf with skin falling apart, no eyes at all in her head...

“She looks dead,” Velerith whispers to her father. Fenrin only hugs her tightly.

Slowly, elves disappear, and always with commotion. Screams and pleas, and bloodshed if the knights with the haunting eyes grow irritable. Fenrin shields her eyes each time, until the night he can’t. Until the night they try to take him.

“No!” Velerith screams, held back by another prisoner. “No, that’s my daddy! Give him back!!”

The knight ignores her, or tries—Velerith is hungry, tired, and gone ignored for countless days. She snaps, and when she does, fire explodes from the hand she throws out.

It scorches the knight’s eye, causing him to shriek and drop Fenrin. He scrambles away, quickly pulled in by the other prisoners, as the knight whirls on Velerith.

She stops. Beyond all his decay are scars, burns older than the one she’s inflicted on him.

She thinks she understands what her father felt when he saw Serawyn now. “Dad?”

Daurian sneers, and grabs Velerith by the collar of her tunic. She screams and thrashes, but she is small, and he cuts off the other prisoners from helping with a wall of blue, dead fire.

He drags her above deck, and to one end of the ship. Effortless, he hauls her whole body over the edge, as she clings to his arm.

“Dad!” she cries. “It’s me, Dad! It’s Velerith! It’s your seabird!!”

And he hesitates. Velerith’s heart bursts with hope.

“You’re in there,” she weeps. “You’re still my dad—“

“Silence,” he orders.

“Nuh uh! My dad never says ‘silence’!” Velerith punches his steeled arm. “Who are you?! The weird voice using my dad’s body! Who are you!”

“I will throw you to the sea, girl!”

“Then do it, dummy! You can’t, can you? My dad is too strong for you, huh? He’s the strongest ever! I knew he’d come ba—“

Suddenly, Daurian yanks her back onto the deck, and throws her across it. She yelps, shielding her fall with the burst of a frost barrier, like her grandmother taught her—

She looks up to a blade of blue fire pointed between her eyes. Daurian’s hand trembles as he holds it. “Kill her,” he says, but it sounds even less like him now. “No mercy. Kill her. Kill her!”

“Dad,” Velerith hushes. “It’s okay. I’m protecting Daddy... I’ll protect you too.”

She has seen grief on Fenrin’s face so many times in the last weeks; it’s easy to recognize how Daurian’s angry, struggling face still cracks with hints of it now.

“It’s okay, Dad.”

For a moment, the haunting blue in his eyes flickers. Velerith’s ears perk, sitting forward a little—

But the tremble in his sword arm has vanished. The cracking grief seals back up behind a stoic mask. He brings the sword back, fire crackling against the sea breeze—

Velerith shrieks, shielding herself with her arms, but the blade does not land. Daurian cries out, the spellsword exploding into motes across the deck, a mix of the dead fire and—frost? Velerith scrambles backwards a few feet, and bumps her back into a pair of legs.

Her eyes dart up, and above her, with an outstretched hand swirled in ice and rime, is Serawyn.

“Daurian,” she calls. Velerith can hear one voice, stronger than all the echoes. It’s her. It’s her grandmother.

Daurian sneers, shaking the clinging ice from his sword hand. “You are... weak. Unfit to serve the Frozen Throne!”

“Shut your mouth, princeling,” Serawyn growls back. Then her voice is soft again. “Daurian, my dear, you must fight—“

Daurian lashes out in a flurry of blue hellfire. Velerith screams again, clinging to Serawyn’s leg, but the fire is squashed by a wave of the woman’s frost magic. She throws up a wall of solid ice when Daurian attempts to march closer, and then scoops Velerith into an arm.

Velerith hugs her neck. “I knew you’d come,” she weeps.

In a blink of arcane power, the pair teleport below deck. Immediately, Serawyn seals the entrance to the ship’s bowels with even more ice.

“Velerith!!” comes Fenrin’s cry.

“Daddy!” Velerith wiggles, and Serawyn lets her down without hesitation; she runs to her father and hugs him. “Daddy, I saw—“

“Don’t you ever ever scare me like that again,” Fenrin scolds, no hint of anger surviving his tears. “It’s my job to protect you!”

“But Daddy, I saw him!” Velerith says, pulling back to meet his face. “I saw Dad!”

Fenrin looks heartbroken. “Seabird, that isn’t—“

“No, no, under the bad man’s voice!” Velerith insists. “I saw him! He didn’t want to hurt me, but the bad man was making him. I saw him.”

Fenrin is clearly at a loss, but before he can argue more, he hears the motion of makeshift weapons. Looking up, he spots three elves blocking in Serawyn with a semicircle. She does not move, but her hands are unarmed and raised, and her face is twisted with what, were she alive, would be tears.

“And Gramma—I mean, Lady Serawyn!” Velerith says. “She saved me!”

Fenrin sees it too. He bundles Velerith into his arms, wobbling to his feet. “W-wait, hold,” he tells the elves. “... Lady Serawyn?”

Serawyn’s eyes meet Fenrin’s, and her face glows with a happiness he’s never seen the undead bear. “Fenrin. Velerith...”

“See! See!” Velerith cheers, pointing wildly. “It’s her!!”

“How?” Fenrin rasps. He takes a step closer, as the elves lower their weapons completely to let him through. “H-how—you broke free?”

“I cannot explain it,” Serawyn says. “But the vice the human princeling’s master holds over the undead has weakened. I am not the only one to break away from its control.”

Fenrin laughs in disbelief. “Th-that is... C-can we free the others? Can we—“

“I am trying,” Serawyn says. “Some are... unbreakable. But some are fraying.”

“Dad,” Velerith says with serious eyes. “Dad tried to stop. I saw him.”

Serawyn smiles, almost miserable. “As did I. I can try t—“

A battle cry roars above deck, a million fractured voices at once. Daurian’s is mixed somewhere in the middle. Velerith pins her ears back, as Fenrin hugs her tight.

“You’re going to save him too, right?” she pleads to Serawyn.

The woman’s face has gone stony with purpose, but she still musters a flicker of a smile for Velerith. “I will try. I will send some of my allies below to protect you. I hope to return with more—Daurian included.”

So Serawyn parts the ice blocking the stairs, and several more undead are ushered in. Mostly elves, a few humans—Velerith recognizes the one with no eyes.

And they wait. Battle rages above them, and even Velerith knows not all survive or can be saved. It isn’t until dawn when all has gone quiet, and no one below dares to move.

The ice barricade thaws, the armed dead ready in case it’s one of the Scourge. But it’s Serawyn’s face that appears, and as the ice melts away entirely, more faces are revealed. Citizens of Quel’Thalas and of Lordaeron, wrenched from death during the Scourge’s northward march...

Here, now. Dead, but with something more than death in their eyes.

And at the back of them all, as they file in with awkward but relieved welcome, is Daurian. Head hung low, slouched. He looks tired, and ashamed.

But Velerith only feels joy. “Dad!!”

It startles him to look up. At the same time, Fenrin has leapt to his feet, daughter in tow. He hurries a few steps forward and stops, as they stare in disbelief at one another.

Daurian fractures first. He cannot look away from his family, but it leaves his guilt on full display. “Fenrin,” he rasps; and like Serawyn, there are several voices, but his own is the strongest. “I...”

He can’t finish, because Fenrin throws himself onto the man in a weepy hug. Velerith, lovingly squished between them, hugs Daurian’s neck while Fenrin cries into his chest.

“It’s okay,” Velerith says, when all Fenrin can do is cry and Daurian stand shock still. “You’re back.”