#zindra

DWC May 2025

Day 6 - Negative /Relic

The party was an image of wealth, the kind of decadent largess that festooned charity with gold leaf. Lady Orialyene Silverthorne, Ori, to those who knew her in rooms not wallpapered with gossip, moved through Lord Cal’endeer’s estate like she owned the place. The elite caste of Quel’thalas nobility saw her, and that was the point.

Ori wore her emerald-green gown as naturally as shadow follows light. elegant, concealing nothing. She wore it with the same comfort she had in leather and shadow, or lace and lies.

She wasn’t there for the wine. Or the seductive invitations whispered by voices that left guilt buried centuries before. Though, depending on how dull the night got, she might say yes to both. She wasn’t even tempted by accolades for the generous depths of her philanthropic nature.

She was there for the jewelry.

Ori was a beauty born of black hair, verdant green eyes, quick fingers, and a quicker mind. Finding what she wanted didn’t take a hint of finesse. The mistress’s private rooms were a monument to indulgence: necklaces displayed like offerings, rings fat with old gold, tiaras resting in velvet trays like holy relics.

It was all a joke, really. Wealth pretending to be power pretending to be taste. Ori stole not out of need, but out of boredom and disdain. She had her cousin, a talented jeweler with absolutely no idea how the jewelry was obtained, melt down the pieces. Then she wore them back to the same houses she took them from. Subtle, glittering mockery. A secret joke told with precious metals and perfectly cut gemstones, and only she ever got the punchline.

Alexandrite rings? Diamond tiaras? The black diamond and sapphire collar displayed next to an absurd little crystal vial labeled ‘Arthas' Tears infused oil’. None of it held her attention.

What stopped her was the statuette.

No taller than her hand. A woman, arms outstretched not to greet, but to embrace. Carved from obsidian so dark it swallowed light, laced with veins of emerald and opal. The eyes of twin garnets, glowing as if they’d been watching her since before she walked in.

It wasn’t just beautiful. It felt impossible, the kind of thing that shouldn’t exist outside a dream. Fragile. Eternal. Sacred, maybe. Enticing? Definitely.

Ori took it without hesitation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not long after she returned home, her front door opened, slicing a blade of light across the dark foyer. Ori didn’t flinch. She sat entranced at a desk in her study, idol in hand, turning it slowly, reverently, like it might bless her with the secrets of the universe. She didn't need to look up.

Zindravara Dawnblade’s voice cut clean through the dim room, low and exacting. “What, exactly, did you bring home, Ori?”

Ori didn’t look up, but a smirk tugged at her mouth. “You felt that all the way from next door? How delightful.” She wasn’t expecting Zindra so soon, or at all. The mage usually kept to her converted mother-in-law cottage, communing with her father’s journals, or creating new little alchemical concoctions that were used to make life’s little distractions fade away.

Zindra stepped inside with caution, not fear. Her damp red hair, streaked with violet, clung to her back in a dark crescent, the mark of a bath abandoned in haste. Dark glasses shielded dull green eyes no longer suited to bright light but still sharp enough from magic to see what others had missed in this acquisition.

“I felt it the moment it crossed the threshold,” she said, voice low and clinical, like she was reading off a medical report. “It’s radiating. Layered enchantments. Ancient. Possibly sapient. It doesn’t belong here.”

Ori tilted her head, amused. “You make it sound like I dragged in an uninvited house guest.”

“You did,” Zindra said, without missing a beat.

Ori held up the statue in her palm, delicate, playful. “It’s just a little trinket from Cal’endeer’s mistress’s boudoir. Genuinely surprised he had given her owned this tasteful.”

“You know better,” Zindra said sharply. Then, quieter: “You feel it, don’t you? The pressure behind your eyes. The sense that it’s listening. Waiting.”

Ori’s smile thinned. “I do love an attentive audience.”

Zindra didn’t reach for the idol. Her hands stayed flat at her sides. “It’s cursed,” she said, flatly. Not a question. A diagnosis.

Ori rolled her eyes. “Oh, obviously. It's not my first time pocketing a naughty bauble, Zindra. But this one’s… different. It wants something. And I'm curious.”

Zindra’s mouth tightened. “Curiosity is how people end up as footnotes in someone else’s cautionary tale.”

Ori looked at the statue. Its eyes gleamed with quiet, crimson delight.

“The real question is,” she said slowly, “can you break the malison?”

Zindra drew in a breath through her nose, steadying herself. “Put it on the floor. Clear a space. And for the love of the Aspects, do not touch me while I’m working.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zindra knelt, her fingers dancing through practiced gestures, forming three glowing circles of arcane magic that intertwined on the gold laced marble flooring. She whispered the spell that warded the circles first then she began to unmake the curse that buzzed like bees at Ori’s teeth.

The air thickened. The shadows deepened. Then came the flash. A crack of light and flame burst from the idol, golden, searing, blinding. Zindra screamed, clutching her head, dropping to her knees on the floor. The smell of burnt silk and old magic filled the air.

“Zindra!” Ori scrambled to her side, but the mage’s hand shot up blindly.

“Don’t, don’t touch me,” she gasped, voice shaking. “It… it fought back. That curse wasn’t just laid, it’s alive.”

Ori stared down at the idol, which now sat calmly in the center of the ward, its gem-eyes glowing faintly, as though pleased. “What the hell is this thing?” she whispered.

Zindra, still on the floor, wiped blood from beneath her glasses. “Something no one should ever have touched.