Aria Dawngrace - Homecoming
In the Weeks Leading to Midnight
“Regarding the mountain pass south of Quel’Danil, Sir. It’s sensitive - urgent.”
---
It wasn’t that Aria made a habit of eavesdropping, particularly. It was just that the Farstrider grounds were open to the public, and watching the initiates at their drills was a source of ready entertainment.
And free. Which was handy, as she had already blown through most of her coin scrounged through her journeys in Khaz Algar. Indeed, she’d blown through most of it almost immediately upon her return to the city - but it was worth it to live the high life for a few weeks. Enjoying the best of Silvermoon hospitality; hot baths, cold drinks, soft silks and bedding like clouds.
She had a feeling she wasn’t going to get another chance to enjoy it for a while.
The nobility that had turned their noses at first, disappointed at the presence of a gutter elf soldier in their fine establishments, were relieved when her coin finally dried and she relegated herself to the Row and other less exclusive haunts.
Settled in with a flask at the base of the Farstrider Enclave, the voices carried down from the balcony. And if they didn’t want to be overheard, they shouldn’t have been giving their reports where she could hear them, anyway.
---
“The - ‘void-pulse’ - that the Magisters detected. We tracked the source to a Stromic outpost. Human settlers quarrying in the mountains unearthed a - remnant of the Black Empire. A N’raqi. We do not know if it was the result of their digging or related to these - other disturbances that have been reported of late. It appears an isolated incident, but still almost too much to be coincidence.”
Calloused hands twisted around the wrapped report he was carrying, in far too tight a grip. Surrendering it to the Ranger-Captain, he continued:
“A bank of black fog engulfed us on approach. Whispers, hallucinations - we fought it off, but Ranger Lysarian was lost in the retreat. I - understand the difficulty, but we need to send another unit - perhaps two. We must deal with this swiftly and with finality. We cannot leave this aberration unchecked.”
The Ranger-Captain weighed this for a long moment, unfurling the scroll and scanning it with bright golden eyes. His expression grew from stern to gradually wearier.
“You are aware that the Sunwell itself is under imminent threat? Regent-Lord Lor’themar is taking all reports seriously. The Ranger-General concurs, and I… have no say in the matter,” he said, without lifting his eyes from the page. “We are on the highest alert, stretched beyond thin - we will not be sending another. Your unit is being reassigned to Eversong, effective tomorrow. Until the Sunwell is secure, we cannot afford to waste our rangers on the far fringes.”
There was an audible sound of disbelief, a sharp breath, and the immediate rumblings of protest:
“They’ll be slaughtered, the creature will gorge itself! And Ranger Lysarian - we can’t just -”
“- We stand to lose everything. Listen to me. You know I do not ask this lightly. We cannot afford this. We will send for him once the threat is past.”
---
Once the threat is past.
Aria’s face soured instantly, leaving the junior Farstrider she’d been ogling up to that point - who’d been meeting her eyes with something akin to invitation - wondering exactly what offence they’d given.
And the distraction left them open to a clap across the temple with a training stave.
But her attention was long lost. N’raqi. She had faced these before. “Faceless Ones”, they were called - though she did not know why, for she could very clearly make out their disgusting tentacled faces, from which they freely spewed their gurgling cockroach language.
It was an evening’s work, and if the Farstriders would not grant their own the vengeance they deserved, then she would. Jamming the empty flask back into its pouch, she stormed her way up to the dragonhawk roost.
There waited Cinder, a veteran dragonhawk as scarred and stubborn as her rider, who for twenty years had borne her unblinking into countless battles across Azeroth and beyond. No few other privately-owned steeds had already been commandeered by the Convocation for Silvermoon’s defence - but Cinder was so furiously resistant to any hand but Aria’s that it was deemed neither worth the effort nor risk to conscript her.
Just like her rider.
She strapped on her chestplate and bracers in the saddle, in familiar routine, then drew the reins to kick Cinder into flight. Up and away from Silvermoon, the very jewel of Azeroth itself, and toward darker, more miserable climes.
Flight was meditative. Even as the pristine autumnal oranges and reds gave way to the grey-brown gloom of the Plaguelands, and the air turned from crisp to rot-touched, she found time to focus and sharpen. Prepare herself mentally for the violence to come, as she had so many times before - as she would so many times again.
Thalassian blood does not run free. Any who would dare to draw it must pay its price. In the decades that she had nursed it, in the decades since the Fall of Quel’Thalas, this sense of vengeance and its underpinning anger had found its way into her bones. It ran deeper than sheer oath - it was axiomatic. To harm a child of Quel’Thalas is to invite retribution, and Aria the instrument to deliver it. The power of the Sunwell that burned through her body, that surged when called - surged to this singular, holy purpose.
“Low, Cinder. We dive.”
She murmured in her native Thalassian, urging her six-winged steed into descent as the first glimpses of sickly purple-black fog became visible. As speed picked up, she unclipped her flight harness from the saddle and drew the greatspear into her hands. She aligned it against the wind, and her piercing green gaze sought out the location of the creature below.
The N’raqi seemed to be gorging itself within the quarry. Seemed to. The entire place was choked in black haze, but the aberration was so offensive to the Sunwell’s light as to be itself a beacon in Aria’s senses. Though the other details were obscured, the monster itself had nowhere to hide.
“Off here. See you soon.”
She coiled, then leapt - off Cinder - and straight into freefall, point-first toward the earth.
Mother. Father. Another, for you.
---
It had been two days since the miners of Greystone village had unearthed the monstrosity. With the only route out of the mountain pass cutting across the quarry’s entryway, there had been no way to dispatch a rider for urgent reinforcements. The armed escort that set out to contain the threat had been slain to a man.
And the Rector had no wish to see further death.
“Stromgarde will take notice of the fact our shipments have not arrived on time Redoric - if we wait -”
“Then they’ll come up here to discover our bloody corpses, Rector. Listen to yourself. Six are dead already. We have to get someone past, or it’ll be all of us.”
“They were trained for this and it tore through them like harvest!”
“I saw. We all saw. But that thing’s odious cloud is growing toward us, not away - it knows we are here. We can’t just wait and die.”
The appearance of elven rangers an eve past almost felt like salvation, but they too had been ultimately routed by the beast. Worse, even they’d been forced to leave one of their own behind.
“Eden is ready to ride. We just need to pull it away from the pass, buy her enough time to slip past. It is the only way out. Do you dispute this?”
“If this is the course - this is the course. Light’s mercy, Redoric.”
“By Trollbane, we’ll see it done.”
---
The stables were quiet, but for the apprehensive neighing of Old Grainy, set up with a riding saddle for the first time in months. The others had frenzied and bolted when the monster emerged. The ostler reassured her that it meant Old Grainy was loyal and true.
Eden was pretty sure it meant she was too slow and aged to do anything.
“They’re going to die, old girl. They’re going to die so we can escape. So we can get help. We have to succeed. We have to. Do you understand? We have to get past. You can’t stop, or get scared, or we’ll die too.”
She spoke softly and gently, and the horse didn’t answer. Not that Eden was expecting her to answer. She wasn’t even really sure who the words were for.
Light. How can we do this? How can they ask me to do this?
She led the old mare out into the dwindling daylight, darkened even further by the encroaching gloom. Mounting onto its back, she tried not to let her fear show, to hide it behind all of the courage and conviction of her nineteen years.
The Light guides our steps and illuminates our path. The Light will deliver us.
Outside in the town’s makeshift armory yard, the able-bodied who were still willing to fight - which was damn near all of them - had assembled into a militia. Blades and shields had long since run out, but pickaxes were still plenty.
Redoric, the old veteran himself, had taken it upon himself to lead the diversion. ‘A matter of duty’, he’d sworn, against the protests of the rest. ‘The blood of Strom bleeds from the front. As it was in Thoradin’s time, through till now.’
Only more blood for Eden’s sake.
By the time they had all assembled at the village’s threshold, and all said their well-wishes and farewells - taking everything out of her to pretend they weren’t final - everything inside her was screaming to refuse to go through with it.
Hands tightened on the reins, and she choked in the attempt keep her breathing steady.
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
---
A dragonhawk’s scream lifted the resigned soldiers’ eyes to a blazing comet piercing the edges of the gloam. A shining streak of gold, descending at terminal velocity from the heavens.
It tore through the artificial night that the N’raqi had brought over the mountain. A radiant bolt of purest Light cutting through the nightmare, silent - utterly silent - right up until the moment it made landfall, deep in the quarry.
Then the mountain shook, and the shockwave of this collision sent an explosive crack echoing down the valley. Almost at the same time, an unnatural shriek of defiant agony rose, deafening, felt in the head, more than even heard, that made Eden’s teeth ache, dizzied her.
A miracle?
The afterflare from the comet burned the fog away, and the pervasive hopelessness burned away with it. Visibility cleared, and the path down the mountain was unveiled, blessedly clear.
The Stromic militia rallied to secure the path.
“Go, Grainy! The Light - the Light delivers us!”
The renewed hope in her voice was enough to lift the spirits of all who heard it. She kicked her heels into the mare’s sides, and the old horse surged forward.
But as they passed the threshold of the pass and she caught sight of what was happening in the quarry, she pulled back on the reins so hard and so suddenly that Old Grainy reared into a halt in the frozen mud.
It was like nothing she had ever seen, like nothing she could have imagined.
An angel, wreathed in glorious gold, with radiant wings of Light unfurled behind her. Righteous Light that poured into every strike from her divine spear, that even at this distance Eden could feel washing over her in waves.
Though the angel was dwarfed by the towering, thrashing mass of violet-black flesh, the monster had a vicious opening carved stem to stern across its massive bulk, its caustic black blood spraying and searing deep gouges into the stone floor. Burning - hissing - where it landed upon the angel’s skin. But she remained undeterred.
The angel just took them - each titanic strike, each pulverising blow. Each time, the radiant wards around her flashed. In response to each strike, rhythmic golden hammerbolts tolled, impacting like shots from a cannon where they burst against the beast, blowing flesh from the mass in great chunks into so much shimmering ash.
More detritus littered the grounds than there was monster left, but the angel’s wards were visibly weakening under the sustained punishment: at first blinding gold, to burning yellow, to dim ochre. Then - somehow - renewed in bright blue and violets.
As the wings vanished into sparks, the angel drove the holy spear deep into the monster with violent finality. A blinding glow pulsed into it, and light shone - bled - through the cracks of its expended material form. With one final raging psychic scream, its still-disintegrating tentacled arm shot out to coil around the angel.
And it crushed her.
The sound of breaking bones echoed through the valley in dull staccato cracks that forced bile and terror back into Eden’s throat, even as what remained of the beast gave way into ashen embers. Lying grounded and motionless upon stone, only the angel was left.
Not even an angel. An elf?
Ignoring all else, Eden leapt from the saddle and ran toward her.
---
Aria was accustomed to pain.
Like many things experienced too often, it could be ignored. Even the searing cauterisation of the Light suffusing her. The energies of the Sunwell that rose from within her as conduit, which snapped bones and nerves back into place, purged disease, knit flesh.
Pain was all that occupied those first few flickers of her consciousness returning. Then the smell of damp pine, the scratchiness of a woolen blanket wrapped around her legs.
Someone had stripped her bare. Laid her in a bed. Covered her in stinking poultices. The pain she could ignore. Less so the distraction of someone else’s amateurish interference.
Up to and including the someone who was bent over her, a holy symbol clasped in her hands, words of prayer spilling relentlessly from her lips.
“Stop it.” She rasped at first in Thalassian, then Common, “Wasting your energy.”
Shocked out of her attempts at healing - shocked that they might have worked - Eden dropped the symbol onto Aria in surprise. She gasped for the ensuing panic, immediately apologetic - immediately deferential.
“Begging your forgiveness, you-your exalted Radiance - I - you are alive! I -”
Aria reached over with a jittering hand to pull the symbol off her stomach, casting it to the wooden floor like so much trash. Breathing - wheezing - heavily enough that she sounded almost like death, she waved off whatever else Eden was about to say.
“The ranger. Where is the ranger?”
“O Divine Saviour, I - the - ranger?”
Aria pushed herself up slowly, back pressing against the headboard, into a seat.
“You - cut that saviour shit out right now. The other elf that came here. Where is he?”
Eden turned white. She had watched over this beautiful, scarred warrior while she slept, poured her everything into trying to heal her. Imagined what she might be like, what incredible lessons she would be able to teach her - to teach them all - in the ways of the Light.
“I - I - I - we - if I have given offence, I am - so - truly - sorry -”
The sheer terror on display was enough to soften Aria’s manner. Just barely.
“Focus, girl. What you know of the elf, please?”
“We - collected all of the bodies from the quarry. They are on ice. In the chapel undercroft. Until we can perform the rites - but - please-don’t-do-that-you-have-to-rest-”
Aria had already kicked the blanket off, twisting slowly to rise, ignoring the screaming of her nerves. She liked to be admired, normally, but she was here with a task. And this extended a few steps beyond admiration into simpering.
Which she also liked, at times. But this wasn’t one of them.
She reached for her clothes and gear, which the townsfolk had cleaned and set upon a display in that room. Like holy relics, more than the deeply weathered equipment that it was. With a hand still quaking she grasped for her underclothes, lifting them for the priestess.
“Help me with this. Then take me to him.”
Every hope Eden had nursed about the ‘angel’ had vanished. The dream that she had been sent to them by providence of Light, or some ancient oath, the dream that she’d stay.
“Yes, your - yes. Of course.”
---
It was a slow journey to the undercroft, made slower still by Aria’s refusal to let Eden help her down the stairs. Slow, heavy bootfalls alerted the Rector long ahead to their guest. He turned from his work, offering a deep bow of gratitude. There could have been many more bodies here, today.
“Greystone - owes you a debt we cannot pay, Sin’dorei. On behalf of our people -”
Aria silenced him with a grunt, moving to inspect the one elven body that had been laid out - or what remained of it. Large pieces had been torn off by the beast. But the head had remained intact, for a mercy. Fingers still trembling reached out to push the frost from the fallen ranger’s face, into a sharp intake of breath.
Fuck. I know this one.
She’d trained with this Lysarian, in the wake of the Fall. A lifetime ago. He was a friend, whatever passed for friendship. Not enough to have retained his name, but still enough to know his face. Enough to mourn.
Behind her, Eden and the Rector were whispering to one another - but it was background noise. All she could focus on here was the familiarity in that face. The absence of warmth in it. The weight of the loss. Another child of Quel’Thalas taken before their time.
She slid an arm in under his ruined torso, and lofted the mangled form across her shoulder. Ignoring the fresh flare that bloomed across her ribs, she turned back toward the stairs.
“If there is anything which we can provide,” the Rector ventured again, nervous for the price that the Sin’dorei had yet to extract. “We are grateful. Many of us have family in Stromgarde - we can see you rewarded -”
“Don’t bother. We are leaving.”
That was the last she had to say to them. She simply ignored the humans from there: not acknowledging the dwindling offers of thanks, of promises of repayment. Nor acknowledging the bitter whispers that followed.
A sharp whistle called Cinder down from the skies, into the cold clearing that lay beyond the chapel.
“Rest, brother Lysarian.”
She murmured, strapping the ruined body to Cinder’s back, with all of the somber dignity she could muster - that could be mustered - in this moment, before climbing on, herself, with Cinder’s soft, crooning help.
“We will bear you home.”
