Eleeria Silverwing

The Sunwell

I may have stowed away for awhile. Well, not really. More like: I may have gone to Shanks and asked for more lessons in sailing.

I am -- quite frankly -- tired of all the dour attitudes. I lied to Lilliana, of course; I have no concrete idea how to fix this, any of this, other than to do one specific thing. I have locked my anger away for years. But the Light, if I follow it, always leads back to one place. Unlocking the box has consequences -- memories flashing before my eyes and of course, I was never Eldriana to begin with; how could I have been so foolish as to think otherwise? The rest of it is inconsequential, to me, to Eleeria -- I discard those feelings of unease and unrest and decide I have no more need for them. I will be decisive. Will it fix things? I don't know. I barely know why it is that my anger seems to feed itself into my magic so much to begin with. This is part of the path, supposedly; I will walk it until I bleed and yet, there is something...

I imagine it's a bit like eating but feeling unsatisfied with what you ate.

Fuck Lilliana for being right. And while we're at it, fuck Siildore for being right, too.

But I don't want to think about her or them right now, and I don’t want to think about their preachy speeches. I am enjoying being Eleeria, I am enjoying the freedom of knowing who I am and what I'm about, and right now...I want to be on the sea, with Shanks. And I definitely do not want to think about any of their pitying glances and saddened faces that make my stomach churn.

So when my mind pieced itself back together and I had flipped through the catalog of memories I no longer needed or wanted and discarded them as such, I went sailing. Am sailing? I left on Sunday and didn't look back. I am still tan from the last few weeks spent on a ship; the sunburn hurts less this time, the freckles more prevalent across my shoulders and nose. Shanks laughs as I attempt to sing with him -- I know I don't understand the notes correctly, but I try anyway. Consider it something I wish I could do, but never will quite understand.

I enjoy sailing because there's no one that can run away from me, on a ship. No people to understand, really; just the wind, the sea. The weather patterns. I can focus on work and the scent of Shanks' skin against mine, salt and sweat and the familiar hint of thistle curling together to make something wonderful. But more importantly, it gives me time to think -- think about the Light, I suppose, forever at the forefront of my mind these days. For every hour of work I do with a broadsword or warhammer, there are three hours spent working with magic. It’s tricky, with a mind of its own sometimes. The Light requires so much more willpower than any other magic I’ve encountered; to falter a single time means it takes control instead of me at the reins. That keeps happening, you know? I get angry and then it’s as if I lose the magic between my fingers. It shatters outward into a million angry pieces, hurting people around me. San’leria. Lilliana. It’s gotten to the point where I’m not sure who it will hurt next. What if I slip and hit the wrong person — or worse, what if I kill someone who is meant to be my ally?

(We will not deign to say the word lover — I know where her eyes are perpetually fixed, yes? I’m not foolish enough to try that.)

Fuck that. I won’t have any more of it. The Light doesn’t tell me what to do. With the hesitations of my fake personality summarily discarded (Eldriana has, as always, been a doubting soul but I have no need to lie to myself), I turn my attention to control. I spend hours wrapped up in my own mind, sitting on the deck of the small vessel we’d stolen and tanning (burning) in the bright sun. Letting the magic move outwards — and then pulling it back in. Coalescing in my palm. Channeling it into my sword. Ensuring that it goes nowhere I do not want it to go. When Ethalarian first gave me this magic, he explained it in terms of willpower. Me versus my own magic. (And it is mine now — not borrowed. Mine.) But I find as I work through the routine of stretching and shaping the Light with my will, pushing it out of myself and then pulling it back in, it is more of a unity than anything. Ethalarian’s magic was angry. It speaks to a part of me that I have, for so many years, tried to deny. That is why it was eating me alive, Erinius! That’s why it hurt so badly: it wanted to move parts of me I wasn’t ready to touch. And the friction of me versus it was tearing me apart. Lily said it was eating me alive, and I suppose that is almost true — but really it was pushing at a rock that I refused to move, and hurting me as a result.

I am an angry person. I tried to hide that — lock it away, in the dark — but I can’t. Anger moves me more than any other emotion. I struggle to empathize; my sympathy and reassurances are learned things. I’ve never been one for kindness. But anger has carried me through four hundred years of life and will take me four hundred more. The Light knew, of course. It knows that I have never been so sure of myself as when I was vindictive. It fed into that resolve, calling it out. I tried to shut it back and it nearly killed me. I won’t deny my negative feelings any more. I’m selfish. Angry. Fueled by a sadistic desire to enjoy others’ suffering. Oh, I try to hide it behind pretty smiles, but I exist in a world of monsters and I am a monster too. I have killed for the pleasure of it; killed for the power you have when you hold a man’s life in the movement of your dagger against his throat. I enjoy watching lives end with a flick of my wrist. I revel in blood splattered across my face and live for moments where I witness someone’s face crumple in defeat. I am all of these things and more. The tiger, gaining satisfaction from trapping a creature in a place where there is no place else to run. A spider, spinning webs of lies and waiting for flies to fall into them unassumingly.

The Light, to its credit, does not flee from me at this acknowledgement. It still burns — warm and steady. It doesn’t judge. It accepts. I hear your soul and take it as mine. We burn brighter as one. There is no pity here, no fervent prayer for my redemption. If I wish to cleave the world in two, it will aid me, if I am strong enough to reach out and hold it.

I love it more than I can possibly explain.

I love it more than gold, maybe.

Shanks gets tired of watching me sit in one place doing absolutely nothing and asks if I’m dead. I reply with a rude gesture that sends his laughter echoing across the waves.

“I’m going to toss you in and feed the sharks!”

I open an eye, glancing down at my arms as they rest in my lap. All this work with the Light over the past few days has been...strange. The sunburn does nothing to hide the fact that my skin glows with power brimming just under the surface. I no longer radiate heat unbidden — it lives just beneath my skin, I think. Waiting, like a hound, for its master’s call.

Shanks inquires if I’m going to be offering my services as a flashlight any time soon; I lunge at him and press my lips against his, silencing the complaints. (And making louder a few other things, for a few hours at least.) I love that he puts up with me, my tendency to disappear inside my own head for hours and hours on end. I couldn’t tell him that, but I do.

But there is a limit on how much I can do with this magic I love -- a limiter created by the finite amount of magic I can hold within me. It is not particularly connected to anything; a self-contained entity, generating more to fill a well with time and will. But I’m not certain that I could ever work a great feat of the light with what I have roiling in the pit of my stomach. Like eating but being unsatisfied with what you ate. Like...perpetually wanting more. There is something unfulfilling about only having the finite. And, like the monsters with pretty faces I surround myself with, I am nothing if not ambitious. I want more. I deserve more.

There is only room for moving forward.

My brief lessons with the arcane taught me that magic comes from somewhere: there is the magic contained within you, certainly, a natural predisposition. But then the arcane — there are the ley lines, the undercurrent of thrumming power. When I focus, I can feel them shifting beneath me. It is harder on the sea — deeper down — but they exist across the world as a torrent of power that you can learn to tap into. I brush my awareness over the nearest line and feel a whisper of power arc down my spine. But that is not what I’m searching for today. I had Shanks sail north from the Cove -- north, to Quel’danas. The traffic here has increased significantly since people were allowed to make pilgrimage to the Sunwell; I had noticed the uptick in sailing traffic because of the number of people who then made their way to Fairbreeze Cove, of course, but had not considered that I would ever actually make the journey, myself.

The Sunwell. The words are strange, and I take a breath as I step off of the small vessel, telling Shanks he’s welcome to come if he really wants to -- he shakes his head and goes back belowdeck, murmuring about something something religious nonsense best left to Blood Knights and not ‘simple ol’ sailors.’ So be it, then; this is a journey I have to take alone. I am not the only person to grace the Isle today, but I am the only one that I can see wearing the traditional red and black, tabard cleaned and pressed across my chest declaring me to be one of the many who draw their power from its existence. The crowd parts for me and I lift my chin, trying not to waver. I belong here; I repeat the words to myself as I make my way through the pilgrims. This is my birthright, too -- and more than that, this is what I promised to defend, to uphold, when I took on the symbol of the phoenix emblazoned across my chest. My people. I’ve never called myself a Sin’dorei with any sort of patriotism before. But there is something electric, standing on this Isle, staring at the remnants of the Prince’s palace and the power I can feel in my bones as I make my way closer. I think of Ethalarian -- for once, not his memories, but my own. The look in his eyes as he explained the history of the Blood Knights. My history, too, now. My plate boots make an audible clank across the flooring, and the guards who check the authorization of those who choose to make this pilgrimage nod to me as I take my turn in the small queue (earning no less than two whispers about how they’ve never seen a Blood Knight stand in line before -- they have to be from Silvermoon) and offer my name.

“Knight-Initiate Eleeria Silverwing.” The title rolls off of my tongue and I grip onto it with confidence. It is my title. I earned it; I worked for this. It is...the first time I have ever felt so proud, to hold a title and be able to announce it to someone without artifice. The magister stationed to such duties checks my name and -- yes, I am officially a Knight-Initiate, I am exactly who I say I am. No lies, no artifice. They allow me to pass.

Gods, the feeling of it hits me square in the chest, causing me to stop and stare like a child. I am sure my eyes are as wide as saucers, hands pressed to the arcane barriers that prevent people from throwing themselves in to the brilliant light below -- and yet they do nothing to stop the Sunwell’s power from radiating through the space. It is one thing, to feel it as a constant warm companion at the back of your mind. Another thing entirely, to stand mere yards from it -- it is beautiful, it is...I don’t have words for it, I have no words for anything but the feeling that I was meant to come here. Where Light’s Hope felt uncomfortable, edges and the push and pull of light against light, everything here makes me feel….at home. I see you, it seems to say as I stare and stare, and I accept everything you are. The murderer. The killer. The weapon, the spy, the Blood Knight.

I…

Wow.

It takes me a long…..long moment (probably longer than I think it has been, considering others have come and gone and come and gone and I am still here) to gather myself up again. Gather myself -- and reach out with my own feeble magic to touch the near-blinding waves that flow from the Sunwell. It is like reaching out for that man’s magic in Light’s Hope. The Sunwell is offering; all I have to do is mentally reach out and grab it -- before I would have been afraid of such a thing, but I am certain now-- and admittedly, some small part of me rears its angry head and screams about how this would be the perfect ‘fuck you’ to those pitying glances from weeks before.

I reach, unafraid--

We connect.

Holy shit.

It does not burn. It is not sharp -- none of the headaches of trying to commune with the naaru with Aeleara. None of the grating feeling in my mind from those men at Light’s Hope. It’s…

Nice. Kind of. In a weird, sort of ethereal way. I’m still not sure what I feel about all this change but it’s sort of comforting, connecting to a larger whole. I’ve worked alone my entire life. This is...change, connection, in a way I’ve never considered before. I should be scared, but I’m not.

But I

can't find the words for it.

It takes me a long time to gather my bearings and leave the Sunwell behind me. Shanks is napping when I get back to the ship; he wakes with a start and asks where we’re going.

“Stranglethorn.” When he asks why, I simply smile -- I feel the flicker of Light curling in the pit of my stomach as always, responding to my simple joy. My response is nearly feline: perched on the railing of the ship, holding onto the ropes as we leave port, I am balanced on near impossibility

NOW this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky,

And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die.

Ithranicus’s words.

“I’m going hunting.”