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Originally posted to my tumblr. Posted here with some cleanup to spelling and grammar typos. Kurel's letter to Aranya was written by kurel-andiel.
Characters mentioned belong to kurel-andiel, roewyn, mrblaque, safrona-shadowsun, bralynaeversong, and wolf-queen of tumblr.
Aranya,
Most of the time I had no idea what it was you were speaking about. I was never gifted with the ability to manipulate any magic. I was only ever cursed by it. There were a number of secrets in you I was interested in uncovering. None of which I will be able to now. Unfortunately, I will not get the opportunity to help with your endeavor at Sunspire and the work I hired you to complete has become obsolete. However, your time spent is still of value and with this letter will be an agreeable payment.
Seek out Lady Demytrya Wintersong of the Scions of Antiquity. You met her briefly at the party. I believe your interests are of the same nature as her and her organization. She and her people would be fortunate to have you in their ranks.
~ Captain An'Diel
Wake up.
No.
Wake up.
I don't want to.
You don' want this, arcanist, believe me.
Your voice… Who's talking to me…?
Wake up, Aranya.
Heaviness returned to Aranya's bones. Cohesion seemed to pull at sounds, images, and sensations flitting in her brain, forming memories and thoughts again. Breath rushed into her lungs. Her muscles stretched - and by all the gods, did they ache!
Aranya lifted her hands to rub her eyes open, and felt the gauze of bandages brush at her cheeks.
She immediately pulled her hands away and saw the dressings wrapped around her wounded wrists. The memories of her fight with the Twilight hold-outs and securing the Deepholm quartz for the miniature runestone system that she had designed for Sunspire Port returned as if those same quartz blocks had just been dropped on her from out of the sky.
Aranya cursed. She would have to make time to have the shackle-shaped marks on her wrists erased, once they had healed into scars. She looked almost mournfully at the one where her phoenix emblem tattoo was. She would have to get it redone.
Her green eyes took in the room where she had awoken…
She was resting on a surprisingly comfy cot in the clinic of Sunspire Port.
How did she get here?
Faces and voices flickered through her mind, trying to remember. Whose was the hand that had touched her shoulder and that she had smacked away when she teleported back with the stones? Was it the Vengeance gunner? Or was it Safrona the courier? She thought she remembered her voice nearby, or something like it. Had Blaque been the one that had caught her when she practically collapsed and then blacked out? It was all a haze of faces, voices, and pain, and she wasn't sure of anything.
A rustling sound caught the sorceress' attention off to one side of her.
Glaring at her was the all-too-familiar vulture of Kurel An'Diel, with another sealed letter attached to his leg.
Aranya and the bird just stared at each other in silence for a while, finally she arched one whiskery black eyebrow at it. "You know this is only going to go one of two ways," she said. "Either you're going to give me the letter, or-" the atmosphere in her palm became charge with sparks of arcane. "I'm going to make you give me the letter." The bird squawked at her, but she only narrowed her eyes at it. "Don't test me."
That seemed to get the vulture's attention. Perhaps it remembered what had happened the last time that he had been sent to the arcanist and she had said those words. Whatever the case, it obliged her as she slipped the letter from its leg, broke the seal, and read...
She read it several times before the realization of what the captain could even possibly mean finally hit her.
Your voice… Who's talking to me…?
No.
No!
HOW?
What happened?
A hand came up to Aranya's mouth automatically, trying to hold back and contain whatever sound threatened to spill from her mouth.
No…
Your time spent is still of value and with this letter will be an agreeable payment.
"To the Nether with that! I don't want it!" Aranya spat out loud in a hushed breath. Almost angrily.
So… What did she want? What was her reward in agreeing to work for him in the first place?
I have a challenge for you. When the time finds you, find me in Sunspire.
That was it.
Challenge.
What other thing so appealed to her as the reward of encountering a challenge and exceeding it?
The feeling of bringing down a mighty foe? Of creating something new that no one else had considered before? Of stretching her horizons and experiences further? Danger and victory. Accomplishment. Coming to the other side of something and triumphantly saying, "I did it."
He challenged her, and she flew at the chance to go above and beyond it.
Fel, even when she was just in conversation with him, he challenged her. In a simpler way, but in a way that she was not at all averse to.
Aranya liked to speak of magic in terms that people could understand, she saw no point in talking over someone's head, or talking down to them, like children. Telling Kurel what she needed to tell him in terms that he could understand - speaking his language - had been a slight challenge at first, but she had found it. She related the threads of magic as being like knots in the rigging of a ship. He understood that. It made better sense to him when she put it like that…
What other challenges would there have been in her future, maybe, if…?
Damn it.
Turning to glare at the vulture, Aranya ordered it harshly, "Get out."
The bird was only too eager to oblige, and when it had flown away, the arcanist didn't bother trying to hold back the droplets that spilled from her burning eyes and ran down her cheeks. No one was around to see them.
It just didn't seem fair. The world was unfair, she knew, but knowing that didn't make it any less hard. Kurel had gone and endeared himself to her just like everyone else she had kept seeing around the port, all of them without even trying. And now…
An agreeable payment.
No. It wasn't.
Aranya remembered once again how the blind captain had smiled the day that she met him. That smile when they were just talking about nothing important.
That had been worth more than gold.