Friday Fiction: Another Adventure, Another Beginning

I hadn’t put much thought into playing a Death Knight, wasn’t sure what kind I’d like to play or what his/her story would be.  So when Yva asked if I’d consider playing a character who had, until that point, been one of her NPCs, I thought I’d give it a try.  I haven’t played her all that much, but each time I’ve logged her in I’ve been able to get more of a feel for who she was.  Writing this bit of backstory for her was partly an introduction for everyone else, but was mostly an introduction for me.

—

The runeblade thunked into rotted flesh, severing the ghoul’s spine.  The grotesque thing fell to the ground, not quite split in two; its hands dragged it along while its legs kicked feebly, not quite getting the signal that they were no longer useful.  “No, you don’t, sugar,” the woman muttered, her blade whistling as she drove it down once more, relieving the creature of its head and thus its life.

Sugar.  That’s Amarra’s word, not mine.

…who the hell is Amarra?

She paused, cleaning gore off of her blade with a scrap of her late opponent’s tattered shirt.  The flashes were coming more often, now that the fog that had clouded her mind these last months had lifted, now that the voice that had filled her every thought with twisting echoes had fled.

The Argent Crusade had put her to work, after the battle.  Where else did she have to go?  Darnassus?  The humilation she’d suffered during her one trek through Stormwind had been quite enough; she had no desire to watch Kal’dorei recoil from her, too.  For a people who held life so sacred, the return of one of their own in this unnatural state could not possibly be looked upon with kindness.

What else was there?  She had a name, one that meant little enough to her and nothing to anyone else who heard it.  If I was such a great champion, why hasn’t anyone heard of me?  Maybe it’s this Amarra he meant to take.  Or maybe I am Amarra, and the names just got jumbled up in my head after death.  But no, that didn’t feel right, either.  Of all the lies she’d been fed since awakening in Acherus, the name she’d claimed was the only one that tasted of truth.

She sat on an outcropping of rock and pulled off her helm.  Fetid air lifted her hair from her neck, drying the sweat she’d worked up over the past hours.  Her deathcharger had long since declared it lunchtime; he was face-deep in a patch of weeds, tearing mouthfuls of sickly-colored grass out of the ground and munching noisily.  She had to whistle three times before he came, dragging one last clump out of the ground and chewing as he approached.

Her mana biscuits had been flattened by the other contents of her saddlebags.  Now, they were little more than a handful of bland-tasting crumbs.  Not very appetizing.  “Here,” she said, holding the disappointing mess out to the horse.  “You can have it.”

Dignity was not one of his better qualities.  He snuffled and snorted into her hand as he ate, greedily nudging and questing for more when he was done.  She laughed, picking stray bits of grass from his mane and untangling the knots the wind had twisted in.

Her fingers paused, holding a long-leafed plant that was one of the horse’s victims.  It looks familiar.  Why?

Sometimes, she could feel one of the flashes of recollection approaching, could reach out and snatch it from the air, drag it close enough to examine.  This was one of those times.  She turned the leaf over, crushed it to let the fragrance out.  Sniffed.

…silversage…

That was all at first, just the name and nothing more.  Like me.  Just a name, nothing to it.

“Fuck that, sugar.  Right, Amarra?”  She said it to the air, but maybe Amarra’s ghost was listening.  If I don’t know her, how do I know she’s dead? But it was a question she’d have to come back to.  She smelled the leaf again, crammed it into her mouth and chewed, summoning something long-buried as the flavor shocked her tongue.

There was a teacup.  Fine Darnassian porcelain, a chip in the handle from when… someone… had knocked it off the table in a fit of awkward teenaged exuberance.  She was dancing around the kitchen, because she’d seen the first crocuses peeking through the snow, and that meant spring was on the way.  It had been a long, hard winter.  She took my hand and twirled me around, and she bumped the table.  She spent the next hour apologizing, even though I said I wasn’t mad.  Because she’d broken something I loved, and she took it to heart.

“She brought me a tiny bouquet of crocuses to make up for it,” she whispered.  “And she pulled the broken cup from the trash when I wasn’t looking, and glued it back together, and gave it back to me for my name-day.”

But who was she?  Not Amarra.  That much she knew for sure.

She slipped another leaf into her mouth, rolled it around on her tongue.

There was a cottage, tucked away deep in the forests of Ashenvale.  Some days, she thought the only thing that kept the long path from the door to the road a half mile distant from getting overgrown was the girl, racing up and down to fetch the mail, or to trek into Astranaar on errands.  Even then, she was as likely to veer off the path and run through the woods instead, fleet-footed and wild. But she’d walked that path, too, and if she thought on it…  If she closed her eyes tight and willed the memory forward…

The woman trembled with the effort of it, a new sheen of sweat breaking on her brow.  The deathcharger whickered with uncertainty and nuzzled, but she didn’t acknowledge him.  It was so close.  It was right…

There.

She opened her eyes, triumphant.  The nervous horse got a reassuring pat and a piece of carrot for his distress.  He didn’t have long to enjoy it, though.  His mistress strapped her helm back on and swung up into the saddle.  “Come on, friend.  We’re going on an adventure.”

—

They rode by the path three times before her eyes finally found the place where the greenery was just a little thinner than what surrounded it.  She’d been close to giving up, to declaring the memory a false one, and casting all the other flashes as delusions planted by the Lich King or mere wishful thinking.

But no, there it was, and now that she’d seen it, it seemed so obvious.

She clucked her tongue and got the horse moving, every few strides urging him faster and faster, until they were galloping down the path, churning up the overgrowth beneath his ghostly glowing hooves.

Throughout the long journey, while the boat creaked and rocked its way across the sea, she’d imagined this homecoming.  Other bits had come to her — the way the setting sun fell across the bedspread, the flowerboxes she’d filled with herbs outside the kitchen window, so many things, but never the girl’s face, never her name.

She’ll be there, in that house.  Maybe alone, or maybe she’s found someone to stay with her.  It might hurt, to see me on the doorstep like this.  She might not throw her arms wide when she gets a good look, and if she wants me to go, I will.

And maybe it won’t be awful.  Maybe she’ll ask me to come in, and tell me all the things I’ve missed.

Either way.  All I want is to know her name.

She didn’t know what she’d expected, truly — smoke billowing from the chimney, a cheery fire inside?  The smell of something delicious cooking on the stove, or even the simple scent of silversage tea?  A neatly swept doorstep, curtains billowing from windows left open to let in the evening breeze?

The deathcharger stopped short as she sawed at the reins, and she just barely kept her saddle.

Whatever she’d imagined, it wasn’t this.

The cottage still stood, but just barely.  The leaves of at least two autumns piled up against the neglected door, whose paint was pristine white in her memory, but now had begun to chip and curl.  One of the windows had broken in a fierce storm; the branch that had smashed through it still stuck out like an knobby finger.  No cozy ribbon of smoke drifted from the chimney.  In fact, a magpie’s nest covered the top of it, and even that seemed long-abandoned.

She slid out of the saddle.  The groan that escaped her throat when she hit the ground wasn’t solely caused by muscles sore from the ride.

The door was unlocked.  It swung in on silent hinges when she gave it a push.  She didn’t bother calling out.  There was no one here to answer.

There was a mound of leaves beneath the broken window, and a scattering of them had migrated across the floor, but aside from some water damage where the storms had come in, the damage to the cottage seemed relatively minor.  Oh, a thick layer of dust covered every surface — the table, the mantel, the rocking chair.

That belongs outside.  On the terrace.

It felt like the right thing to do.  She dragged it outside, leaving a trail through the dust and debris.  The view from the terrace took her breath away, the land behind the cottage dropped off sharply, the forest spreading out below her and allowing what would be, in the morning, a spectacular view of the sunrise.  I watched it come up on my last day.  I sat here, drinking my tea and saying goodbye.

She set her runeblade down, let her armor fall clanking to the flagstone, and sank into the rocker.  The old wood creaked as she rocked, but the chair itself was solid.  It should be; she’d spent hours caring for it over the years.  So very many years.

Images came to her, not flashes anymore but a flood, her whole life piecing itself back together as the rocking chair creaked, creaked, creaked away the hours.  Faces came to her, and names that brought tears to her glowing blue eyes.

Amarra.  Her sister.  Seven feet of Sentinel and swagger, and a heart bigger than the mace she lugged around.

Seylon Jh’talith, her oldest friend, her sister’s lover.  Mother to the daughter she’d raised as her own.

Skyborne.

Dancing around the kitchen, a ball of barely contained energy, leaves in her hair, the smell of spring trailing in her wake.  Her wild girl.  The girl with sunshine in her smile.

Xiarra Mistweaver, Xia to her loved ones, sat in her favorite chair, in her favorite place, and remembered.

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