Zalinara

Whispers in the Darkness

Do you dream while you sleep or is it an escape from the horrors of reality?

It never ceases; the whispers, the half-heard voices, the incessant monotonous susurration punctuated by distant screams. Concentration may cause the whispers to fade,  ecstasy may blot them out for a moment, but they are never truly silent.

Sometimes she answers them.

All that you know will fade ...

“It already has. This world is not the one I remember. It is shattered, broken; nothing is the same. And no one remembers me.”

Ny'alotha is a city of old, terrible, unnumbered crimes ...

“And so is Silvermoon. Is the Sleeping City so different? What madness walks there that does not walk here?”

She arises from her pallet and considers the blasphemous drawing that covers one wall of her room in the ruined house. Lines swoop and swirl in confusing arcs that baffle the eye, connecting odd shapes labeled in strange characters. She contemplates her work with a frown. Something is missing.

There is a little lamb lost in dark woods …

The whispers have been more insistent than usual. The same mad phrases repeated over and over and over. Her masters are beckoning, she knows the signs; she is being called. Soon it will be time to leave her refuge and move among people once more.

The game begins, the pawns move …

There is a game afoot, some vast and ancient plan. Its culmination might take years or centuries. The players are infinitely patient; as vast and incomprehensible as their plots. This might merely be the movement of a few pawns, or a distraction, or, perhaps, something more.

There is no escape ... not in this life ... not in the next …

They are all linked, but how? It is maddening, or it would be if she weren’t already. Her lips quirk in amusement at the jest. The chalk in her hand moves, marking an impossible angle that turns her stomach when she looks at it. Perhaps?  No, there was something more. She scrawls a character next to a shape as a reminder.

You will be alone in the end ...

“I was a lady once. I had a home, a husband, a son, servants; they’re all gone now. I still have the whispers.”

The stars sweep chill currents that make men shiver in the dark …

She contemplates the drawing, not minding that the shapes seem to crawl slowly over the wall or that certain of the lines disappear if she moves her head.

An innocent remark from the Baker; she draws a short line.

Something overheard in an Orgrimmar tavern; she makes a mark and adds a glyph.  

Better, she decides, still incomplete, but better.

You are a pawn of forces unseen …

“But even a pawn may someday be queen.”

Y'knath k'th'rygg k'yi mrr'ungha gr'mula ...

In the sunken city, he lays dreaming …

“But for how much longer?”