Eleeria Silverwing

She returned to the woods in the mountains overlooking Arathi alone, with only her own tumultuous thoughts for company. Loam and underbrush crunched underfoot, but Eleeria did not bother to try to remain silent today. A year, and yet – she was still so angry. The names had changed, the people different, and yet everyone really remained the same. More lost to the brutality of others; more lovers dead for reasons beyond their hands. Erinius has been killed for money, Weleria to SI:7 looking to capitalize on Ysrathil’s weakness. Neither had been the direct cause of their own reckoning, and yet, it hadn’t mattered to any of those who had killed them. Eleeria’s anger had not diminished in a year. It had only grown stronger.

A year ago she had walked this path through the forests in the middle of nowhere; a year ago, she had come upon the same broken bridge, the faint game path she’d been following trailing off into the ravine below.There stood the table – the bottle exactly as she had left it, faded note still upon it, where she had sat it down last year. Only one sip. Last year, she had hesitated to touch it. Today, Eleeria swept the bottle up into her hand without a second thought, putting it to her lips. The liquid inside chilled her to the bone, her fingers growing numb almost immediately as tiredness swept down on her small frame. Eleeria moved to the edge of the ravine, sitting down a foot away from it; by the time her body fell backwards against the earth, her spirit had lunged forward, across what was now a whole bridge, as she passed into the Shadowlands.

Eleeria Silverwing was walking among the dead.

Stay on the path. She did not need to remind herself. To lose her way in the Shadowlands was to watch her soul drift off into death along with Weleria’s; today her will had to be iron, hand gripped tightly around the magic of the Sunwell that coursed through her even in this ethereal state. When she had walked this path before, she had been nothing but a shade. But today, she was a flame: flames were wrought in her footsteps, light magic weaving behind behind her as wings flaring from her shoulder blades. In her hand, Eleeria carried the blade of light she had seen only in her dreams: forged from holy fire, it surged with every footstep, reverberating with anger. She knew there were monsters here in the Shadowlands – things drawn to doubting souls – but no longer would she run from them. Eleeria was ready to fight if they approached, but the light seemed to ward everything off, those shadowed creatures staying at the edges of her holy aura.

The walk seemed shorter this time. With no companions to follow her steps, the shades of the dead seemed to gather in swarms. They were not sentimental remnants of loved ones past any longer. Instead, the shades were malevolent – people Eleeria had killed and sent to the Shadowlands by her own hands in centuries of work as an assassin. We remember you, foul bitch– you shot me! Ten times! – I never got to live to my wedding you monster of a woman! She ignored the screeches and cries, marching ever onward down that winding path without daring to step foot outside of it, until the shaded necropolis came into view.

She remembered that the time before, it had struck her as impressive. Now, it only stank of death and wrongness to her senses. How could people live here, somewhere between the land of the living and the dead? It always baffled Eleeria that such a thing was possible – and yet, here she stood, soul pulled away as her mortal form slowly fell into death itself. The longer she wasted on staring, the more danger her proper body was in; she tore her gaze from the scenery and continued inside with a deep breath.

“We did not expect to see you again.” There they stood: a semicircle of necromantic power. All of them frail, all of them human – somewhere between life and death on their own terms. But even in their home of power, Eleeria felt confidence in the pit of her stomach: should it come to it, she could burn them alive. “We had thought you gone to where those who follow the light go, their afterlife of ease and comfort.”

“I am not here to die.” Her voice was sharp, and she brought her weapon forward, pointing it at the centermost necromancer. “I am owed a life debt, necromancer. I’ve come to call it in.”

The old man laughed, his voice paper-thin and reedy. “My dear, we owe you nothing. Put that sword down before you put out an eye.” He still thought of her as that uncertain child, then – that woman seeking purpose and meaning in the hands of death. But Eleeria was no longer so wanting; she had found her purpose, had found love and cherished it. She was not about to lose it again. A flick of her wrist and light magic surged for his form; the man leapt back, his robes catching fire. He rushed to put it out with a shriek of pain, as if she had struck at his very soul.

“I gave you Tellarian.” She took a step forward, and then another; the semicircle of the half-dead hovered, uncertain if their attacks would even reach her as sheathed in magic as she was. “I gave you thousands of souls. And you never brought to bear your own part of the bargain!” Eleeria lunged into melee, dodging a necromantic spell cast for her midsection – the light shield around her cracked and splintered, and the men dove to dodge its pieces. She grabbed the head necromancer by the neck, lifting him to the air. His fingers found hers, her hand going numb; still she held on, refusing to let go, even as death crept into her being ever so slowly, halted by the magic in her own veins.

“What–what do you want, then, child…?” He struggled for air, and Eleeria knew if she wanted to, she could end him where he stood. Instead, she continued to hold onto him, staring him in the eye for a long moment.

“I never want to come back. Promise me, Eleeria– promise me you won’t let them bring me back–”

She couldn’t keep that promise, after all. It was selfish; she was drowning in her own grief again like a bad recording of time and space, but unlike Erinius, this time, she could fix it. She could make everything right.

“Bring back Weleria Dawnsteel.” It was a dark pronouncement. “Bring her back to me. Tell no one who sent you to resurrect her.”

“You know that she will not be as she was…surely…?” Despite his imminent peril, the man smiled, cruel and unforgiving. “You are damning her to eternal unlife…can you live with yourself, paladin…?”

“I’m not a paladin.” Her hand clenched tighter, and he struggled, gasping. “I’m a fucking Blood Knight. The Light doesn’t own me; the Light doesn’t tell me what to do. So don’t sit here and try to moralize at me, because it doesn’t mean shit. Now…” Eleeria threw the man backwards, letting him slide across the ground. “Are you going to resurrect her? Or do I have to kill you off, one by one, until you comply? Bring her back and I’ll leave you in peace; deny me and I’ll make your half-lives a miserable hell.”

The men looked between one another in silence. To a man, they nodded. “It will be done. Leave us. You came to us with barely any time, and we must go to work.”

With a breath, Eleeria woke in her own body, staring across the broken bridge and the ravine below.

And somewhere, a pyre started to burn.

Belore, what have I done?