Dead mage, floppy hat

There is more to Davien Stonemantle than her iconic floppy hat. While she is the Loremistress of Noxilite and she has connections to the Riders stemming from other major RP events, she is also the de facto caretaker of her (still breathing) niece and nephew.

Long before Yva Darrows associated (willingly) with the Riders, she was a close confident of Davien. Being incredibly adept at Arcane magic, Davien makes up the Trifecta of magi who were supposed to deliver a massive blow to the Lich King…

Auntie Davien, where are you going?” The little girl perched on the edge of the bed, watching her aunt twist her long black hair into a bun. Implements of the dead woman’s trade were laid out in neat rows on the bedspread — books, crystals, a finely wrought dagger, vials of moonwell water, a pouch filled with runestones, another filled with sand, rings, trinkets and scrolls — all waiting to be tucked into a saddlebag for the journey. Kyree Stonemantle sat amongst them all, tracing a silver rune embossed onto the cover of a musty-smelling book.

Davien placed the last of the pins and glanced at her niece in the mirror. “Away, sweetling, just for a few days.”

“To the north?” The girl’s voice faded out a bit, her eyes going slightly unfocused as she ran her finger along the symbol’s path once more.

The mage turned slowly, frown-lines creasing her forehead as she bent to see what had Kyree so captivated. Magic had always fascinated her niece: Kyree spent hours peering over her shoulder at books she’d brought home from Silvermoon. She’d asked for the meanings of words and symbols so often, Davien had started reading to her from them — so much so that she’d joked once to Pill that the girl could hold her own in a conversation spoken in Thalassian… provided, of course, that the person with whom she was speaking could suss out the archaic verb forms.

But this was different than her regular curiosity. The air thrummed with the familiar feel of the arcane. It was everywhere, always, even when Davien wasn’t channelling it herself, but it was never this… assertive… when it was unwielded. She reached out to touch Kyree’s shoulder.

The thrum grew louder, now a nearly palpable vibration in the otherwise silent room. On the other side of the house, Thrall let out an uneasy bark.

It is bein’ wielded. Clumsily, aye, but it’s respondin’ t’her. She kept her voice pitched low, not wanting to startle Kyree out of her trance. “Aye, t’the north.”

When the girl spoke again, her voice was hollow, expressionless. “It’s dangerous up there. There’s a bad man, and–” The rune flared, turning from silver to bright blue before it subsided. Her eyes went wide and she jerked her hand away from the book. The arcane fled, reverting back to its normal background hum.

Davien gathered her niece into her arms, holding her the way one might cradle a frightened bird. “Shh, love, I know. I’m goin’ t’help make the bad man go away. I’ll be home before y’know it.”

After a moment, Kyree’s frightened breathing slowed. Davien held up her hand and uttered an incantation; her silver hairbrush floated from the desk to her palm, and she began brushing out the girl’s fine black hair and weaving it into a braid. When it was done, they stood before the mirror, examining their reflections.

Davien leaned down to kiss the crown of Kyree’s head. She’s shot up at least two inches since last I noticed. She’s goin’ t’be as tall as me when she’s full-grown. The thought came with a pang of its own: If the world survives the Lich King, that is. She kept her voice from trembling as she straightened. “Now, be good for Lady Nane, an’ take care o’ y’r brother, aye?”

The girl held her eyes in the mirror for a moment, then twisted around to peer up at her for true. “But… who will take care of you?”

Davien smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “Old friends, Kyree-love.”

Two sets of eyes, one golden, one green, fell upon the folded parchment that sat on a silver tray atop the nightstand. It leaned against a glass of water Davien had taken to bed the night before.

Tendrils of frost crept up towards the rim of the glass. A film of ice covered the water’s surface.

“Old friends.”

Genise Crownsilver is a founding member of the Wildfire Riders and socialite within Stormwind. She is also the Sorceress of Elwynn, a powerful fire-based magus who learned her skill while studying in arcane libraries. While Genise makes her living as the proprietor of the Silver Feather, a house of burlesque, she also continues to push the possibilites of her fire-magic.

week earlier…

“Yva Darrows and Davien Stonemantle?” The soft, mousey voice of Genise Crownsilver questioned as she eyed the small parchment in her hands. Lips pursed and eyes narrowed as she dropped a few coins in the hand of the young messenger, who barely even noticed. His eyes were much to distracted by the clingy, and quite showy light blue robe that could only barely be considered legal clothing. She paused for a moment, and smirked; it wasn’t as if she was never aware of such things.

And with a fluid turn, giving the boy one last moment of bliss as she strolled away – the door suddenly closed in his face; shut tight by an unseen hand and a whisper on the wind, “Thank you…” No one would ever know that she stumbled and nearly broke her neck moments after the door had closed…

Something important was on the scroll; something important enough to keep her distracted as she strolled through the estate towards her library. It perplexed the near-naked Aryk as he stood by her door, wearing very little more than a grin – only to have her pass by without any sort of acknowledgment of the pool boy.

A soft breeze pushed into the library as the doors swung open without touch, and just as deftly closed behind her. The parchment rolled in her fingers and floated away as she tossed it, lifting said hand and speaking softly. “Fire… Frost… Arcane…” Fingers wiggled with each word, and a thick book dislodged itself from each shelf, gliding seamlessly across the air to follow to her desk.

“Circle magicks, wizardly trinity, mass warfare…”

She flopped into the padded chair at the desk, hand waving out before the sorceress as the books came to a stop in the air above her, pages fluttering open and stopping at a point of odd, arcanic diagrams and writing. “Cinderash, Winterthorn, Wyrmblood…” She spoke absently, eyes downcast on the desk as her hand waved and pulled, sending small, sealed jars about the library hurling to her desk. Were one to witness these feats, they’d perhaps wonder where such legs did, in fact, get their exercise.

Her opposite hand reached forward, and fingers clenched, making a pulling motion as a moderate-sized bowl hovered from a far desk and dropped on the desk before her. The three hovering jars popped lightly as their lids came unsealed; and one-by-one, she reached to take hold, and turn their fine-grain contents upside down into the bowl.

“Cinderthorn, Winterblood, Wyrmash…” She mumbled in a chanting voice; words confused and waved her hand in a stirring motion over the bowl and sending the dusts into a whirl within their confines, mixing and mashing together to form a single, gold-flecked dust.

“Winterthokreth, vivadu rukki-sath; Kreth reth – sora, nilazi tuluk…” The words flowed seamlessly from common to arcanic as she pushed her hands outward, and the three books shot away and found their former home on the shelves. A wild smile had formed upon the young woman’s lips now, and her hands returned to their stirring motion. Slowly as they lifted, the dust followed. It began to glow a bright, fiery hue, compacting itself slowly as the stirring motions had went from wide and rapid to thin and slow.

“Tol-kirin, vishna!” She squeaked out, and clenched her fist. The ball of dust wavered, and suddenly exploded as her fingers splayed open. It sent the room into a shower of gold and fire; and the majority of the dust somehow had found it’s way to her body. It hit like a faint snow, and melted upon touch to her flesh. At first, the change was invisible, but gradually, her skin and hair glowed with the hue of the dust…

—-

Slowly the door of the library opened, and sent Aryk into a quick backpedal – as if he wasn’t caught already. Genise stepped through, the glow still about her as she smiled at the handyman, her pretty blue gaze roaming his form. A single bead of sweat trailed down her cheek and to her chin, and dropped down upon her collarbone. She was burning up.

“Mmm… Well, hello there.” She grinned, and advanced. He didn’t question; after all, why would he?

By morning, she had returned to normal in appearance at least, but her body still radiated an unusual warmth. Aryk stood quietly at the exit to Genise’s bedroom, wearing little more than shorts, and a ridiculously goofy grin.

“I’ll return within the week,” Genise spoke as she stepped close to the door, covered in a thin, showy robe of white, and her hair pulled back into a high tail. “Make sure Atera has her medication, and Rusanni will be picking her up to visit the Amberstill Ranch tour.”

Aryk blinked, eyeing the gown – a gown that would not be favorable at all to the harsh climates of Northrend. “You’ll be going dressed as is, madame?” He quietly asked, offering her a heavy coat, which she casually slung over her arm, before she lifted a palm to his cheek. She was still heated.

“I’ll be perfectly fine… I have a hot idea,” she quietly answered, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, before she calmly strolled past, heeled shoes clacking on the marble floor.

*****

Death in large numbers. My specialty.

She drew another line in the circle, connecting the glyphs with red chalk and music. No, not music, humming. A song. The song, her song.

“Great magic is needed. Greater still if I can . . . “

She thrust the chalk away and stretched. It was growing hot in here, it always grew hot in her ritual rooms, and the office which had once been fine carpets, a finer desk, and shelves of books had been stripped for her work. The rugs were rolled, the desk was now in the master bedroom, placed in front of the cathedral windows to overlook Dalaran. The books were on other shelves in other rooms. She’d made this place a sanctum. The walls were covered in runes and wards, each meticulously placed to optimize the flow of her magics and to keep her safe. Relics and oddities occupied the rest of the space. She peered at a Faceless One’s tentacle, a bone from a frost wyrm, the tusk of a troll shaman, the pendant of a Winterfall High Chief.

“No, no, no, and no.” It needed to be something else, something greater than small trinkets and old, tired foci. She reached instead for her ritual dagger, one she’d taken from a vrykul witch. Its ruby hilt gleamed in the gaslight. She peered at her reflection in the steel – all of her reflections actually. The way the blade was cut, she could see three of her own self in its gleam.

“Jak, darling?”

She lodged the dagger into the wall at eye height and walked into the living room, sweeping her heavy hair to the side. “Would you help me undo this?”

“Hmmm?” He looked up at her from the chair by the fireplace. His feet were propped on an ottoman. His chest was bare, his legs were covered in comfortable pajama bottoms almost the same blue hue as his eyes. A snoring felhound was wedged in the space between chair and footrest, beneath his knees, though he didn’t seem to pay it much mind.

“This bloody dress. Would you free me, please?”

“I suppose.” He put his book aside and padded across the room, taking his time with the intricate laces. His fingers brushed over every patch of exposed skin. “Whenever you wear this I have to help you out of it. Such a chore, really.”

“Laborious, I know. But there’s work to do, so you’ll just have to suffer.”

“Oh? What have you wrought his time?” He let go of the robe, pressing his lips to her bare shoulder. It fell to the floor and she kicked it aside, now wearing nothing save for a black slip that flitted around her knees.

She led him into the room to show him the new circle on the floor, with its red and purple and white lines. There were tiny glyphs in each segment, drawn and colored with painstaking care. She stepped across the outer band and into the center of it. Her fingers flitted and a soulstone appeared, the cold glass a solid weight in her palm. She placed it in the middle.

“Hand me the dagger, would you love?”

He nodded, jerking it from the wall and handing it to her hilt first. As she turned it over in her hands, the blade aimed towards her palm, he frowned.

“Have a care, would you?”

“Of course. It’s just a little blood, Jak. Honestly.”

“Mmm.” He eyed the runework, his mouth forming the old, arcane names of the shapes he recognized. Some he’d helped her craft during Jolstraer’s ritual, and he smiled at the artful weaving of his ways and hers. “All frost work this time?”

“Yes. Looking for a maelstrom, a storm. A witch storm for the Wrathgate.” She pulled the blade over her palm, watching it flay her skin open, all pink and red and white on the inside. Blood filled the wound and then trickled down, slithering over her fingers to drip onto the steel.

One drop became three in the reflection.

Witch storm of ice, three fold the power of a blizzard. Imagine what you could do with fire and arcane. A storm of that proportion would be beautiful, nigh unstoppable.

“Possible,” she rasped, watching the blood on the blade. “So very possible.”

“What is?”

She dropped to her knees, an enormous grin splitting her face. One bloody palm touched the trigger sigil, and the circle began to glow as she fed power into it. She amassed her magic, and with a few carefully uttered words of an incantation, it flared to life, so bright it was hard to look upon.

“Imagine,” she licked her lips, beginning to laugh. Magic flowed up her arms and over her chest, casting dancing lights against the pale porcelain of her flesh. Her back arched as it sizzled along her spine. “This circle integrated with one of fire and one of arcane. Imagine it, the storm and what it could do. Imagine that magic.” The feedback from the circle surged into her, and she collapsed forward, now on her hands and knees, her breathing ragged.

“I imagine that would be impressive, but how?” She swung her eyes up at him, and they were glazed and unfocused. The purple haze swathing her body became blue and white swirls as the shadows gave way to frost and winter.

“Stonemantle and Crownsilver,” she managed, crawling across the circle to him, her bloody palm leaving smears on the wooden floor. “We could do it, we could . . . it’d be . . . “ He helped her stand, and when her knees began to quake from the magic drowning her, he swung an arm around her waist and held her upright against him.

“It’d be what,” he said, sweeping a lock of hair from her forehead.

She pressed her hands to his cheeks, forgetting her bloody palm, forgetting everything but the magic and the possibilities and the man standing in front of her. “Amazing,” she said against his mouth a moment later. “Bloody amazing.”

The wind was blowing as Nykkolaia made her way into the encampment, or more appropriately said the encampments.

Nykk’s hood was pulled close around her face. It was a blue cloak, made of a fine Lordaeron wool; the only other thing to go into that cellar that came back out. The back trailed over the rump of her horse – a lovely and even-tempered grey named Halliah; the edges flickered quietly on the breeze as the horse moved forward through the crowds; scattered outcroppings at first that became more congested the further in she went, eventually forcing her to dismount and lead Halliah onward on foot.

She wasn’t entirely sure why she had come. Yes, the news not just whispered on the wind but seemingly screamed for blood; at least for those who knew how to listen, and listening was something that she was good at.

There was no one here that she had alliance to. Nykkolaia Zeran was not a woman of alliances. Yes, perhaps she was working to change this, but nothing had happened yet. She was still on her own, and she was alone in coming here as well… even without allegiance, she was here. She would fight, like everyone else and do her part… for whatever it was, in the end, she was doing her part for.

“Halt!”

There it was. She had known that someone was going to notice her one at some point. A hooded figure gliding through the crowds, bearing no colors of allegiance and not looking like she was moving towards any one group, was bound to be noticed. She pulled herself to a stop. Halliah whickered softly and the mage could sense her horse’s discontent with the number of people around them. They were both used to less populated areas.

Nykk turned her head towards the voice. From within the shadows of her cowl, she could see a young soldier. Perhaps older than she by the count of the land’s years, but she saw his youth in his eyes.

“Name?” The young soldier had a ledger book of some sort.

“Nykkolaia Zeran,” she replied smoothly. She didn’t move. She waited on the soldier with the patience that death waited for them all.

Finally, he frowned and lifted his head from his reading of the ledger. “Who are you with?”

Now there was the next part. Who was she with? “No one,” she replied. The emptiness within whispered loudly. “Ah’m heah on mah own, tae do what Ah can,” she added, although she wasn’t sure why she said it. That was obvious, wasn’t it?

For a few moments, the soldier eyed her. “Remove your hood,” he said, suspiciously.

“A’right,” she replied, turning her body to face him and straightening to her not-exceptional height. She knew that she didn’t look like a soldier. Her hands rose and dropped her hood away from her face. Her mouth curved into a slight smile upon seeing his expression. “Nae tha face yeh were expectin’, eh lad?” she asked.

He stumbled for a moment, but then gathered himself. “What’s your occupation?”

“Mage,” she replied.

Looking her over, he seemed to accept this as a likely truth and nodded. “All right,” he said. He nodded in a vague direction. “Set yourself up with the other irregulars, there’s some making camp that way.” With that, he turned back to his ledger, writing down important things and heading off on new important business. Idly, she watched him go and then clicked softly to Hallia, leading her in the direction the boy had nodded.

Wha’ are yeh doin’ heah, girl? she asked herself. Yeh know no one. Yeh have nae frien’s. Yeh have nae familah. Yeh have… nothin’. Sae wha’ are yeh doin’ heah? Fightin’ some fight tha’ be nae yer own? Wha’ group are yeh goin’ tae fight wit’? Who will watch yer back an’ make sure tha’ a blade ain’ stuck through ‘et?

Nae one. Sae wha’ good in tha bloodeh feckin’ ‘ell d’yeh thank yer gonna do here?

The viscous little inner voice was ignored. As were the people who looked at her strangely on her way through. There weren’t many, really, because everyone had their own business to worry about. In crowds like this, her scars – while unique in shape – weren’t cause for staring like in ‘civilized’ society. It was the ones there in battle-scarred and hardened armor that looked at her with the ‘what do you think *you’ll* do here’ look.

As she drew closer to the group of other ‘peripheral’ soldiers, as she inferred them to be considered, she realized that she recognized a few faces from some recent visit to the Pig. She realized, suddenly, that the Wildfire Riders were here…

Strangely, she felt a skip to the beat of her heart inside the cool space of her chest. She didn’t entirely comprehend the cause of it. Her steps paused for a moment and then she kept walking up to where the rest were, and set herself up near where the Riders were camped. Nykk didn’t presume to invade their staked out turf, but even for how little she knew them, they were still probably the closest something to… anything she had here.