#voidwalkwithme

The whispers were relentless: a sibilant, dissonant chorus that clung to her, close and constant as her shadow. Most of it was unintelligible. Licks of distorted, incomprehensible Shath'Yar crashed into her native tongue, robbing her of understanding. Sometimes, she felt haunted by a singular entity speaking with many voices. Most of the time, she felt dread — sensed knowledge in the cacophony, prophecy to be untangled from the weave. 

They weren’t just in her ear, they were in her skull, myriad tendrils of shadow that probed the dark recesses of memory and pressed at the edges of sanity. Their invasion was so utterly complete that they were part of her now, as immutable as… well, was there anything immutable about her? Not her identity — certainly not her body — a soul? 

You're never getting out of here.

Eyes squeezed shut, she strained to hear something, anything else — the ticking of a clock, the scrabbling of a quill, a ghostly creak of the house — but in that moment, she was alone in the dark (alone, but never really alone). “Fuck you,” she snarled, freezing despite being tightly wrapped in layers of bed linens. 

Never, never, the chorus rose, roiling to fever pitch, rattling her very bones, and she roared in answer, her voice hollow and reverberating with that dark echo it had imbued in her. She whipped around, covering her head with the oversized pillow, her baying muffled by it and the firm mattress beneath — her baying and hers alone, the whispers unabated. 

A mockery of a voice she knew came into focus then, not a whisper at all but cold and controlled:

“Not a shred of discipline.”

“Fuck you,” she spat through gritted teeth, the curse a harsh bark, the latter word something much closer to a dragged out, keening whine. 

It was going to be a long night.

@daily-writing-challenge

“Ah, ‘tis the loathsome trollop, come to sully the floors of my sanctuary with her most impractical shoes,” she mockingly imitated the voice of the lord of the manor as she gently coaxed the second floor window open with the blade of her dagger. It wasn’t her first or even second time gaining entry in this fashion, and yet he’d done nothing to secure any of the windows. 

It’s Friday, Jaeness, the voice rang in her mind — singular in both clarity and tendency to annoy — and she rolled her eyes. Master granted you access to the library on Wednesdays and Thursdays, what if he’s entertaining?

“He’s quite boring, actually,” she hissed as she slipped inside the window, dagger still in hand. 

Entertaining company, the voice corrected with some anxiety, the engravings on the truesilver shimmering in the dark. 

Jaeness scoffed at that. “Then she’d better cover up and he’d better mind his coinpurse,” she continued to whisper, gently closing the window behind her. She was no fool — she had no doubt that if he was home, he knew she was there before she’d even started climbing. If he truly didn’t want her in the library, it was unlikely she’d make it in… but not impossible. The house had a mind of its own and a history of welcoming her inside.

She tread softly, her eyes adjusting to make out the shapes of the furniture. The quiet had a weight to it — so heavy, in fact, that even the most careful of footsteps felt loud to her ears. It’s not too late to— Jaeness slammed the dagger into its sheath on her boot, silencing the voice that spoke through it. That was quite enough of that.

She wasn’t sure if the dagger itself possessed a spirit or if a spirit had been trapped inside of it; in any case, the entity — whatever it was — was irritatingly fearful of the man she’d stolen it from (and extended no such respect to its current wielder, in spite of the prowess required on her part to secure it). It spoke to her only when she held it, and seemed bereft of consciousness whilst sheathed. She’d stolen it without knowledge of its… intelligence, having coveted it for the priceless metal it was forged from and the intricate engravings on the blade. Now, she kept the thing on principle, though the desire to return it was ever growing. 

Her first step onto the staircase was rewarded with a creak that made her wince — every sound that should have been utterly unremarkable cut through the silence like a brick through a window. Frozen, she listened for the usual signs of life: a scratching quill, paranoid muttering, restless footsteps — but there was nothing. Still, she made her descent cautiously; if she allowed herself to be taken by surprise, it wouldn’t be forgotten.

There was no flickering light cast over the staircase from below, no warm air to suggest the first floor was inhabited. She took the last few steps more quickly, peering both ways before moving on from the bottom step. Was she really alone? Well, not alone… that was the problem with this damned house.

The whispers buzzed inside her skull. It was a sensation she’d learned to not quite ignore, but to push down — to confine them to a less bothersome space in her mind — but they always grew louder here… louder, and more demanding. She closed her eyes, sifting through the voices, familiar and not, until she heard it:

We’ve been waiting for you.

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She was born with blue eyes, vibrant as sapphires and full of life, as deep and mercurial as the sea her father sailed. Ever had they always been dazzling blue, until they burned green — not cool emerald, but glimmering, sour peridot. Jaeness feared no magic, and concerned herself not with the consequences of taking. She had always had more than her fill, not just of the Sunwell, but of anything that piqued her voracious appetite. 

Now, her eyes burned no longer. Her reflection met her gaze with cold light, faintly flickering. It was an ephemeral, otherworldly glow, like the feeble beacon of a signaling firefly, or bioluminescent shimmer rolling in and out with the night tide. The color was not unlike aquamarine, but pale, pale, pale and unpolished — and unlike before, when true blue was merely obscured by the taint of fel magic, the irises beneath the glow were faded, nigh colorless.

Releasing the mirror from her white knuckle grip, she knew she was lucky: lucky to be alive, lucky to still have eyes at all, to have physical form and her free will intact. She’d always had that kind of luck, always been reckless with it, always, and now… now she was something else. She had been stripped, hollowed, infused with the impossibly cold and dark, and left haunted. 

She held her hands in front of her, turning them over. Her flesh was no longer pretty porcelain, but cyanotic blue. This thing she’d done — that’d been done to her — there was no undoing: the consequence of nearly a century of taking. 

Still, she was ravenous.

CONTENT WARNING: Intoxication, manipulation, dubious consent, smut, bloodplay — I am an unrepentant sinner and it’s all going under a cut.

Jaeness stared at her reflection in the vanity mirror, the hollow recreation of a version of her she could never get back, and took a long drag from her bloodthistle cigarette. The smoke filled her lungs, the burn becoming a buzz that spread through her chest and head. 

Zariya leaned in, resting her chin on Jaeness’s shoulder, and plucked the cigarette from between her lips to take a drag herself. Beneath the scent of the smoke, Jaeness could smell her perfume: bright, mouth-watering red fruit and a whiff of vanilla, the sweetness tempered by sharp ginger that tickled her nose.

They’d smoked a few, and drank a few more than that. The room was dim, and the warm haze of the cigarettes they’d smoked gave the air a sensual sort of weight. It was luxurious, plush, stylish — it was Zariya’s. She ran her free hand through the Ren’dorei’s hair, painted almond nails dragging gently across her scalp. “I envy your volume,” she purred, blowing smoke. Her own hair was smooth and silky but sleek in contrast to Jaeness’s thick waves. Their hair colors were similar: icy platinum against creamy pearl — the color was fake, of course, but not the hair itself. “Was your hair this color before?”

“Was yours?” She countered, the corners of her mouth curling into a cheeky grin, and the other elf playfully jostled her head in answer before perching the half-spent cigarette between Jaeness’s lips once more.    

While Jaeness gazed at some version of her past self, Zariya stared straight through her own reflection, wondering if her memory of her past self was true.

@daily-writing-challenge

@ungentle-love

Their glasses touched with a gentle clink, and they sipped from them. The blush-colored wine was dry, medium-bodied, with a rose aroma and hints of citrus and pepper on her tongue. The woman across from her was gorgeous by any standard, an icy blonde with the most brilliant felfire eyes she’d ever seen — but it was her impeccable sense of style that’d drawn Jaeness into her orbit. It was the opposite of avant garde — timeless, classic, unimpeachable — and yet there was something inexplicably, brazenly rebellious about it, about her.

They met at a party, one thing led to another, and now they were enjoying wine and hors d'oeuvres on the terrace of a rather exclusive restaurant after a rather financially damaging shopping excursion. Ah, how she’d missed Silvermoon City. She moved through it as a phantom of her former self by way of a clever enchantment — a trick of the light that left her nigh indistinguishable from any other Sin’dorei — but Zariya Sunwhisper saw right through it and cared not. That was part of her appeal: her fearlessness of the forbidden and terribly dangerous.

Zariya saw the irony in Jaeness’ choice of eye color, not fel green but the molten gold of the so-called Holy Light, and found it wickedly amusing. She knew that Jaeness wasn’t a wise choice of associate, but there were some whispers she was willing to endure in the name of a good time. The late afternoon sun was warm on their shoulders, and cast the pair in light most flattering as they sipped and snacked and gossiped relentlessly in conspiratorial tones.

Jaeness wondered if perhaps it wasn’t just a night, a weekend, but the beginning of something akin to friendship. Allies were in short supply these days —  trustworthy ones even more so — and while Jaeness wasn’t fool enough to trust a warlock, she couldn’t help but consider the possibility that they had just enough in common to become recklessly entangled.  

“Tell me how you make it last,” Zariya demanded, bewitching eyes pointing at the jewel pendant that dangled beneath Jaeness’ collar bone on its gold chain, and the Ren’dorei smirked.

“Coming for my secrets already, are you?” She teased, setting her glass gently on the table. “It’s a bit like a phylactery,” she admitted readily, “without all the death. There’s plenty of magic here for me to funnel into it.”

It was an indirect admission of siphoning on a scale most wouldn’t dare cop to, and certainly wouldn’t approve of — but it was clear to her that Zariya wasn’t “most”. 

“And if you don’t wear it?” She pressed, taking another sip from her glass, eyes narrowing with predatory curiosity.

“You really want to know how it works, don’t you?” She straightened in her chair, not sure why she was even a little surprised. Zariya was also an enchantress, and her ambition and competitive spirit were readily apparent. Jaeness let her smile reach her eyes. “Why don’t you try to work it out for yourself, and I’ll let you know when you’re getting close, hm?”

Zariya scoffed at that, but seemed to regard Jaeness with no less warmth, a response Jaeness had anticipated. Nothing like a little challenge between “friends”.

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((TRIGGER WARNING: BLOOD))

Jaeness winced. On her ass in the dirt, the first thing she did was not check her head for wounds or her clothing for tears, but frantically reach for the hilt of her dagger. When her hand found its grip, she exhaled with relief and pulled the thing free from her boot. 

Where are we? It asked, ever curious and anxious enough for the both of them.

“... Not sure,” she admitted, scrubbing her face with her other hand. As the wave of adrenaline passed, clarity returned to her, and she was suddenly terribly sore. With a groan, she labored to her feet, dusting herself off as she rose. Her clothes were intact, but she was not quite. Watery, sticky ichor coiled around her forearm, a ribbon of shocking violet against chilled blue. She held her arm in front of her, staring.

You’re bleeding, Jaeness.

It was her blood, in the sense that it oozed from her wound — but it didn’t feel like hers, not anymore. Before it could spill upon the earth, she dragged her purplish tongue over it. It was an automatic response, one the thing in the dagger did not like. It shrieked and babbled unintelligibly, and Jaeness nearly dropped it in a panic, shoving it back into its leather sheath with a shaking hand. 

She was going to have to talk to Castinus about the dagger eventually.

In the meantime, she needed to figure out where her rift had taken her. 

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@monster-of-master