WTT: [RP]

Even if they were not visible to any eye, there were distinctive lines to all things in life. Some people had a natural ability to cross them with grace, while others simply blundered through or crashed unknowing, casting invisible markers into the air with their recklessness. Yet, almost everyone knew that the lines were there… even if they didn’t know the precise location, or if they didn’t care. It was in the nature of consciousness to know them.

Lines. Nykkolaia knew much about them. For eleven months, she had dutifully remained inside the narrowly defined corridor of abusively drawn lines. After that, she had learned about the magic lines that existed all through out the world, and the lines between arcane, fire and frost. The lines on her body – all too visible – greeted her each morning when she looked into the mirror, on those days she looked at all. Everywhere there were lines – sometimes to keep things in and sometimes to keep them out. Their success was subjective, but that didn’t negate their existence.

The mage sat within earshot of Tarquin ap’Danwyrith’s speech and the response of the Riders. She heard the words and felt the emotion. Yes, even so cold as she might seem to be, she felt it. Young though she was, she knew the pain of her nation. Taborwynn might have outlined her removal from it the night before, but even if she had not been witness, she had felt the brunt of the blow. Her scars had not come by the same hands as the others, and yet they were almost worse for the removal – for what else had been robbed from her.

She had never had the chance to say good-bye, or even know it might be needed.

Outside the edges of the gathering ap’Danwyrith and the Riders, Nykkolaia stood and listened. She lingered and she observed. As she moved through life, so she stood here at the doorstep of her death. How many might perish today, she wondered, and yet… her mind, even in its cynicism, could not picture any of them being taken under. They had one another and that would see them through. The words of common, and the accents of the North. The song of the Kal’dorei and its echoes in druidic forms. The shouts of the Dwarven tongue. The roar of a battle impending, shared. It bound them.

Nykkolaia could almost see it as a plainly clear line, stretching from each one of them to the next. Linked. They would see one another through the day… She did not know any of them well, despite her willingness to confess a portion of her past the night before, but it didn’t take knowing them, or calling them friend, to see what she saw. It only took watching this one moment in time to understand the binding between each of them, as they faced the morning.

It only took one who knew she was on the outside of those lines to see it.

Deep within the chills of her heart, tears never cried from years past sat silent and still. Waiting. Lingering within as she did from without. She would not let them come. Now, even though she might have the chance, there was no one to say good-bye to. No lines drawn between her and any other living soul.

“Let’s get to work, Riders.”

The words were not spoken for her, but she knew that it was time for her to get to work none the less. The expanse between her and the rest of the world never seemed so large as it did right then, and yet she would do what she could. For a world she didn’t think she could ever feel a part of again, she would work. Fight. Die. Mayhap this will be mah death at las’, came the unbidden and yet not unwelcome thought. Luckeh, ‘e called mah. Jolstraer’s words rang deep within.

How could this be lucky? His pain seemed to bind him to others who would see him through. Hers isolated her from them.

The powers of the arcane were placed where they could best target the oncoming forces and yet be removed enough to minimize direct danger. Those who practiced the same arts as she had no plate armor to fall back on, nor the swift steps of some others. No one had placed her there, for she had no one that gave her orders, but she went to that place all the same and made herself as ready as one could.

Nykkolaia looked out over the snows, seeing lines of fighters and then the Riders move to their places. The wind was blowing gently and the sun was cold. Light, but little warmth… as was expected. Sitting quite alone upon the slight hill that seemed best suited for her task, never before had Nykkolaia cursed so vehemently something so simple, and yet so complex, as lines.

——

Illithias

Illithias wiped her face dry with some discarded black-and-red cloth she’d found near the fire. Moving stiffly, she was sore from sitting upright and crosslegged all night. She hadn’t slept – she’d merely kept watching the bonfire as it gradually ran out of fuel and dwindled, as the assorted folks sitting around it left in their ones or twos. My the dead of night, she was left alone with the cold, the embers glowing with each breeze like a heart beat, and her thoughts.

She’d washed her face in the snow, the harsh cold helping to bring her to full alertness. Drying herself face with a discarded rag, she blinked wide a few times and ran her fingers through her bone white hair. The camp was awaking with her rising, people and noises and activity gradually filling the space between the white ground and grey sky. Chewing a bitter swiftthistle root, Illi strode through the paths and gaps between tents, long strides helping the blood flow unimpeded once more. A quick circuit of the camp had warmed her enough to function normally, and brought her back to her perch by the fire, and her assorted packs and weaponry. She smiled ferally to herself.

The edge cut a whistling silver path through the flake-laden zephyrs. Illi stood with her leading arm extended, great axe in hand describing intricate helices and spirals as she danced and spun and thrust and swung at invisible enemies. Keeping balance with a hand held upright in half-prayer before her breast, she moved in her own space, eyes closed and smiling slightly, away from the activity of the camp. Back and forth, through steps long since memorised, Illithias choreographed the brutality of the coming day.

*****

“Ey. Sungale.”

Varenna opened her eyes after a pause, and turned to her right. Standing in the tent doorway, the kal’dorei reaver stood leaning inside the opening, one arm leaning against the metal pole helping to keep the tent upright. The right side of her face was lit by the morning sun, three smears of blood and soot marking lines down from brow to grin.

“Yes miss Illithias?”

Varenna was kneeling on the cold loam, having been in meditation and prayer until all but half a minute ago. Diffused sunlight played over her golden battleplate, which appeared to be subtly glowing from within. Loose locks of hair framed either side of her face as she craned her neck slightly to look up at the elf in the doorway. Green eyes blinked, and her hands unclasped.

“I came to see if you wanted to get up and out for a bit. Can’t spend all day prayin’, can you?”

The paladin’s brow furrowed as she looked up at Illi, but she didn’t say anything.

“The day’s starting, and we’re going to need to be ready for what’s going to transpire today. Was wondering if you wanted to go out by the camp clearing and spar a bit. Warm up. Practice. After all – we’re more than likely going to die today.”

Illi’s grin had dropped a little, and the kal’dorei had offered a gauntleted hand to Varenna to help her up. Varenna looked back down for a second, mind retreating deepening, before she turned back to Illithias and grasped her hand.

“Alright then, miss Illithias.”

Illithias’ grin returned in full force as she helped pull Varenna upright.

“That’s my girl.”

*****

The two warrior women circled each other, dragging divots through the snow. Illithias pirouetted and brought an axe around in a back-hand swing. Varenna brought her body down low and angled her shield back so the blade deflected off it.

“Y’ see, Sungale, the trick to good battle-shouts is having them so that they’re short, sharp, and intimidating. No good being too long, or ineffectual – oof.”

The paladin stepped into Illi, using her shield as a bulwark and shoving the elf backwards in the snow. A second’s imbalance was quickly righted, and Illi stepped back to Varenna.

“‘Specially important if’n you’re going to be yelling it in the face of something that doesn’t understand what you’re speaking. Language barrier can be a bit tricky in combat.”

Seeing a gap in her stance, Illi let go of her axe in midair, flashing her fist forward in a punch that passed between shield and sword, close enough to make Varenna’s head flinch back minutely, before pulling back and catching the half of the axe again at it’s apogee.

“My favourite is ah-” leaping over a low sword swing, the elf caught the edge Varenna’s shield in the ribs, stealing breath from her.

“As, ah, I, ah, was, ah, saying… my favourite is ‘Bandu thoribas’. Means, roughly, ‘Prepare thyself’. It’s short…”

Illi swayed first left, then right, then ducked under a flurry of well executed, stopped-short swings.

“… Short, to the point, it gets the message across. Now you try it.”

Varenna parried an axe swing with her sword, and the two of them pressed their weapons together, flickign back and forth trying to sneak theirs’ past the others’.

“Ban… du… thoribas!” she gasped from between clenched teeth.

“There, you’ve got it. Strange accent for a human though…” Illi lost the parry struggle, and dropped and spun to avoid the incoming blade. Rising back into a crouch, her cheeks flushed and axes hanging reach by her sides. Her breath steamed and curled in the frigid air. Her face broken into a lopsided grin once more.

“Now that you’ve mastered the basics, let’s move onto something a bit more… vulgar…”

The sun continued to claw it’s way higher into the sky with greater difficulty as the warrior and paladin circled each other at the small camp nestled in the snow. Angrathar loomed heavy in the distance, and as it’s shadow grew, the heavy tension in the air thickened.

–

Fells

He’d gone in the morning.

He took with him her druid, as well as the whole contingent of those she’d designated as hers. Left behind would be the farm and the daughter and the girl sick in bed and the Dreaming baby, all under her watchful eye. An’ what if’n this’s all tha’s left, after?

This family intended on returning. There was no doubt in her mind as to that. There was too much love there, too much drive and dedication and stubborn will to permit anything else. Fells simply had to trust again that they would be back. So she went about the work of making the stables and fields and house into a home, preparing it for their inevitable return.

There was little choice but to again be the one who waited. She discussed it aloud frequently, under her breath when no one else was close enough to hear. Each muted conversation ended at the same conclusion: if any of them dared die up there, she’d outright kill them. She already should, for the worry they were causing her. Maybe she would yet.

She’d decide as soon as they came home.

Tags: wfr, World of Warcraft, Wrathgate, wrathgate wednesday