Blood on the Flower

[aleithia]

The armoured Draenei towered over her, huge and blurry, like a blue giant from a dream. From this angle he seemed as tall as mountains. Her ears were full of thundering water, and the air was thick with mist.

"Hah," he rumbled. "She is tiny little girl, but she bleeds like wild elekk."

Beside her head, one of the white graveflowers bowed its head, and murmured to her in Darnassian, "Can you hear me, little sister? Stay with us." There was blood on the flower. She wanted to tell the Draenei, to take some water and wash it clean, but the words, and the breath, wouldn't come.

The giant knelt down, and she felt his huge, cool hand across her forehead. He let out a huge sigh, and her mind plunged into a sea of clarity. Then the pain hit her like a wave.

"Gah." She spat out some blood, turned her head, and saw the hunter kneeling beside her, his silver eyes dark with concern. "Remind me." Elune, but that hurt. "Not play catch. With boulders." She looked around for Roxianna, then remembered she had left earlier, wounded by the lizards and too weak to continue. The other mage was over by the water, studying pieces of the Elemental. So much the better.

She clawed her hands into the earth, drawing up the healing forces that surged through this place like the river, and felt a little strength return. Then she took a deeper breath, and a thousand needles of pain stabbed into her chest.

"She needs help," said the hunter, in Common, to the blue giant. "Can we carry her back to the Elves?"

"To run, with elekk, is not far. Is long way to bleed."

Aleithia tried to shake her head, gathered another stabbing breath. "Moonglade," she coughed, "faster. I can travel. My Shan'do." She reached beyond her clawing fingers, deeper into the earth, and felt the Dream, like a blessed release, starting to envelop her. "Should be fine. You ok?"

The hunter smiled, and answered in Darnassian. "Our work here is done; the way home will be easier. Go safely, little sister." Her hand clasped his; only the Draenei noticed her other hand, at his feet, closing around something that lay on the ground. Then she was gone.

[aleithia]

Tracking the disturbances in the Dream, Serinde had brought her to Loreth'Aran, which would have been gloomy enough without the chill of the abomination still stealing through her veins. It was a miserable, lost place, where the shades of long-dead Dragonriders walked raging, or lay, sleeping, or just plain dead. Perhaps it was easier to think of them that way: the chill wind was simply a chill wind; the ancient ruins only lumps of stone; perspective, and history, just pictures and stories. Better that than the dread.

Kestrel lay there, at the water's edge, half way dead and white as a ghost. Aleithia felt the cold settle in her stomach like a stone as she ran to Kestrel's side, to hold her hand, to pour life back into her too-frail flesh, to coax her back from the edge. The cuffs and collar of dark iron, glinting with fell runes, were shocking enough, but worse still were the slack, naked muscles; the calloused skin turned pale and pasty in the gloom and the salt damp; the angular, once-glaring face drawn with pain and vulnerable as an infant. She had lived millenia, and she was hours from death.

Serinde stood as Aleithia wrestled with Kestrel and with death, watching, contemplating, frowning slightly, with that calm steady gaze of older Druids that made her want to weep, or scream. "A Druid," her mother had once whispered, "is like a book that will tell you the truths of eternity tomorrow: in the here and now, he's useless." She remembered other eyes, looking through her as if seeing her whole life, her future, a thread in the tapestry of Dream; remembered wanting to yell, "Look at me!" - but simply murmuring, "yes, Shan'do," and waiting, as usual, for wisdom. Too much wisdom, she thought, is a cold and bitter thing.

***

A storm kept them out at sea, and it was almost two days before they brought the old huntress, delirious and fading fast, to Auberdine. The call had gone out, but most of the Guardians were days away; at a loss, she gave Kestrel the Anointing of Tranquility. Serinde sat very still at the end of the bed; Aleithia could no longer tell whether she was thinking, or Dreaming, or still looking for a way to break Kestrel's bonds. After two days of near-silence, she felt very alone. It was strangely comforting to intone the ancient, familiar words of healing once again.

She had scarcely finished the ritual when the room was filled with the too-sweet stench of death. Of all the Guardians, of all the Kal'dorei, it was the abomination that had come - to help, it said. She wanted nothing more than to smite it with the wrath of the Moon goddess whose name it blasphemed, make it pay satisfaction for the honoured dead whose memory it mocked; but she and Serinde were desperate, and Kestrel's life, just now, was more important than justice, more important, even, than the Balance. So they let it help.

***

She felt strangely comforted, as she lay half-submerged in the Moonwell, her arms wrapped tightly around Kestrel, thrashing with pain in the seething water. Perhaps she was glad to hear the abomination scream. Perhaps she knew already that they had won; that the cuffs would break, and Kestrel would live, and the sick fear was about to end. But it was hours later that peace came, after the long, exhausting flight to Nighthaven, when Aleithia, as a bear, finally crept into the nest Remulos had built in his grove, and lay down next to Kestrel. The smell and touch of the animal hair seemed to comfort her in her still-fevered sleep, to calm her shivering and help her breathe. Aleithia, feeling the gentle touch of the ancient Guardian on her back, watched the stars over Moonglade until she, too, slipped into an exhausted sleep, and dreamed of simpler times.

It was a good dream.

[aleithia]

Of the five Orcs in the patrol, three never knew what had hit them; one moment they were creeping along the treeline, then next they were seized from below by the roots of trees as the moonlight turned to fire, and lightning fell from sudden clouds in the night sky. Then the cat was among them, airborne, her claws tearing the scout's head almost clear of his body - but the paws that touched the ground again were those of a huge bear, that roared as the last Orc turned to flee. He ran ten paces before a bush wrapped itself around his legs; he turned in time to see a slender elven girl standing over him, before her heavy staff met his skull with a wet crunch.

Aleithia stood there among the burned, slashed and battered Orcs, a spray of blood across her cheeks, and a vicious grin on her face. She rested her staff on the ground for a moment, and grasses grew around and over the carnage, reclaiming the bodies of the fallen for the roots of the forest. Then she turned; one step, two, and then only the silent trees remained.

***

A pall of dread had descended over Splintertree Post. The guards still stood guard, the scouts still scouted, but the banter and jokes had stopped. Patrols left in silence, their comrades looking the other way as they crept out of the camp and into the forest. The commander had grown harsher, angrier; none of the soldiers now would meet his stern glare. In five days, three patrols, twelve Orcs in all, had gone out and simply not returned. Every one of the remaining garrison was counting the days until the reinforcements arrived.

High above them, the slender Kaldorei stood hidden on a branch of a mighty Elm. There was blood on her hands now, and spattered over her clothes; she had stopped bothering to wash it off. She too was counting days, wondering how long it would take a messenger to make the return journey to Stonetalon, or Orgrimmar. Sooner or later, reinforcements would come; worthier opponents than the lowly grunts who garrisoned this outpost. And then there would be a reckoning.

Aleithia was still grinning.

***

Hanging back at Sarama's call to attack, Aleithia had thought herself hidden, but a Troll standing guard had seen her, and come for her, and was too fast for her. As his blade bit deep into her shoulder she sprang backwards, tumbling down the bank in a shower of leaves and twigs and her own blood. He stood silhouetted above her, and for a moment she thought he would come to finish her, but he turned, hearing the cries of his comrades inside the compound. Trying to blank out the pain, Aleithia dug her fingers into the earth, and breathed as deeply as she could bear. "Come on, come on," she growled, as the unseen tendrils of the forest reached up - too slowly, painfully slowly - to her touch, and remade her shoulder. Staggering to her feet, she felt drained and sick, even as she heard the screams of fleeing orcs; the attack was almost over, but her work was not yet done.

As she dashed through the compound, springing over corpses, dodging flames and the last desperate defenders, she felt her stomach turn. She had seen dead orcs before, and been glad at the sight, but this was chaos. She gritted her teeth and ran into the cave. There were Orcish ancestors to disinter and cremate, a shrine to dedicate; after her abject failure as a scout, this at least she would carry off.

It took all her willpower, then, deep within the roots of the forgiving forest, to still her mind and let the ancient words come back to her. Fae, the elder Druids and the Draenei priestess watched her, their pale, solemn faces spattered with Orc blood, as she gathered the words out of her childhood like an old friend, and tried to forget that she was herself still a child.

"Blessed watcher of the Night, walk among your loyal children this night, and accept our dedication of this place to you. Shine your light on us, here in the womb of your holy forest, and give us hope to walk in your ways.

"True guardian of the forest, shine your light on this place; grant your tranquility to this earth and this air and these your loving children.

"Mother and lover, be with your children who cry out to you this night, let us shine with your light; grant us your peace."

She opened her eyes, saw the faint, almost invisible silvery glow in the close air of the cave, and knew that the blessing had been granted. Elune was with them, and it was time to go.

She showed plenty of contrition for her sloppy scouting, when they regrouped at Silverwind Refuge, but laughed off the jibes readily enough. After all, she thought to herself, she had been wrong to accept the assignment, but Sarama should have known better than to send her and Fae scouting in a forest they hardly knew. She joked back with the others, let Shan'do Jarob see to her shoulder more thoroughly, and watched proudly as a new Guardian was initiated. She kept her smile together, but struggled all the while to forget that moment, when Sarama had shouted the ancestral battle cry, and the Kaldorei had streamed away from her, to bathe themselves in blood once more.

The knot of fear in her stomach had not yet begun to unwind.

[aleithia]

Never, until the mankind-making, bird- beast- and flower-fathering and all-humbling darkness tells with silence the last light breaking,
And the still hour is come of the sea tumbling in harness,
And I must enter again the round heaven of the water bead and the temple of the ear of corn,
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound,
Or sow my salt seed in the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder the mankind of her going with a grave truth,
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath with any further elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies Reme'en's daughter,
Robed in the long friends, the grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret, where the unmourning waters wait for unknown ends.

After the first death, there is no other.

((-- after Dylan Thomas))

((Aleithia's story has ended, but has not yet been told. I plan to continue adding episodes to "Blood on the Flower" on the wiki:

scarteleu.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_on_the_Flower

I'll post here whenever I add an episode. Please do post with your comments on anything you read; I want to get the lore right, and I value your feedback.))

((EDITED to add: And the new instalment is up, an "origins" story of Aleithia's first meeting with her teacher, and the day she was given permission to begin her training.))