Their bodies were pulled through the shadows into the Sanctum, whisked away from sight and left to stand before the altar. Bowls of liquid sat before them with an orchid bloom resting across the surface; gray and black swirled together in the liquid, offering up a sweet scent that deluded what would transpire. From behind the altar, his voice came out hollow as his body flaked into view.

"To die in service of those we seek to protect, to honor, is the greatest of sacrifices… But before sacrifice can be given, one must be able to have their will tempered, to allow themselves to become Perished to the world and what it considers the lust of life." He stood before them, hands drawn out to point to the bowls before them.

"To become Perished, you must embrace your death… Drink deeply from the bowls, cross the threshold into the Shadowlands and face your death. Conquer your fear, conquer your life, take the next step."

Like a phoenix, like a phoenix
Gotta die to come alive

Falling just to rise
Born just to die
Gotta die to stay alive

Hurting just to burn
Burning to ignite
Gotta die to stay alive

Like a phoenix, like a phoenix

Aranya could feel the breath in her body more acutely than she could ever recall in her life. Feeling how it filled her, how it left her… and then how it never came back. Like those last few breaths were the last slow, draining breaths that she would ever need. There was nothing that filled her lungs now, and her mind swam, but it didn't feel like being suffocated. Just like… slipping into a blank space. Back into that oblivion that Kurel had once found her in and urged her away from.

"So, a little bird flies into my garden, eh?" The voice that filled Aranya's mind sounded thick, infinite, and surprisingly familiar. It chuckled darkly. A ghastly, grinning, trollish face coalesced into the elf woman's vision. The face of the loa revered by all trolls as the keeper of the dead.

"Bwonsamdi," uttered Aranya, detachedly, her own voice feeling strange being spoken with no breath. The shadowy god grinned all the wider.

"I know why ya here, elf," said the loa. "Ya be here to prove ya worth, dat ya can face ya death." Space began to manifest itself into bleak surroundings, and Aranya could see forms take shape from the oblivion, including herself. "It is what ya must do, before ya can serve." Bwonsamdi's form circled Aranya, pacing with his hands behind his back. "But for ya… death is unique." He stopped, narrowing his eerie golden eyes at her. "It be ya task, then, to undahstand why dat is so, and to embrace it once ya do."

"How is my death unique?" Aranya couldn't help asking, her whiskery eyebrows furrowing.

Bwonsamdi smiled, like a grandfather or an uncle who smiles at child that doesn't understand something in the world. "Because, little bird, ya have already died before," he said. "And it is ya destiny, ya fate, that ya shall die again a thousand times, in a thousand diff'rent ways, and each time will always be pain." He shifted from a smile to a solemn expression. "Ya must re-live ya first deaths here, to undahstand, before ya can face all ya deaths and prove ya be worthy to serve."

The surroundings shifted into the Ghostlands, and Aranya felt a lurch of gravity as her form was ripped into a corporeal state that felt familiar and wrong at the same time.

Unwanted.

She felt a hard, carpeted floor beneath her. Blearily, her flickering eyes took in the ramshackle surroundings of the wrecked Thalassian room that she lay in. She heard voices, too, distant. They sounded like Magistrix Aminel, her old mentor, and the priest Ennas, speaking to each other with concern. But what overwhelmed her was the

pain.

The aching withdrawal,

gnawing

her bones, blood, and mind. Even her

skin

ached!

She was re-living the aftermath of losing the Sunwell. The despair, the lethargy, the hate of sleeping for having no comfort in dreams, and the much deeper hate of waking for feeling nothing worth waking up to anymore. She wanted to cease to exist. She wanted oblivion. There was nothing worth living for like this, and there never would be ever again. Her will to fight, to live, was utterly gone, her spirit eroded into nothing. She had lost herself completely.

The scene dissolved, Aranya became weightless, breathless, herself again, no longer living her past moments. The angular features of Bwonsamdi, watching her placidly, remained neutral as he asked, "Do ya undahstand when ya died, and how?" Aranya tried to gather her thoughts to form words, but the loa pressed with another question, "What did ja feel, girl? What ya last moments were, what were dey to you when dey happened?"

"I felt despair," answered Aranya. "I lost myself… I lost everything worth having. I wanted an end. I would have gladly embraced it."

"Ya died in da way dat mattahs most," said Bwonsamdi. "Ya became dead in spirit."

Aranya had nothing to say to that. What could one say to the truth?

"Ya been touched by death in da flesh as well," the shadowed god went on. "I be sendin' ya dere now."

Before Aranya could ask any questions, she was running hard and fast through snow. The cold bit into her flesh all the way to her bones. Her lungs and legs burned, but behind her were the Scourge. At her side was Sorrenan Sunstriker, her tragically unliving friend, once a paladin, and now a death knight. He was running as hard as she was. It was during the war in Northrend that brought the downfall of Arthas Menethil, a mission Aranya had been sent on with her companions gone wrong. They were nearly overwhelmed, even as they fled. Sorrenan and Aranya had escaped only to be backed into a corner, but at the last moment, he summoned a death gate. Grabbing Aranya around the waist, he pulled her through with him.

Cold, far deeper than any mortal chill, viciously stabbed through every inch of Aranya. Her breath was instantly stolen away from her, she couldn't even scream. The souls of the dead howled in her ears and pierced into her mind. The shadows blinded her and tore at her her flesh. The tremendous pain surpassed anything she had ever known before. She couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't do anything, she was utterly overwhelmed and crushed by this conduit through death into which she'd been pulled.

It lasted for eternity… Or so it felt like.

The pain abruptly stopped and Aranya's form was once again in the Shadowlands, with Bwonsamdi at her side. The rest of the vision played out with her in the here and now, as a spectral bystander to witness what more happened back then. It carried on exactly as Sorrenan had told her afterwards: he emerged in Acherus, carrying her in his arms, limp and unresponsive. He was chided up one side and down the other by Lord Thorval and Saeryn Dusksorrow, calling him reckless in this attempt to save them from being taken by the Scourge, and saying, "Only those who walk the path of the dead may enter." Because Aranya had been living, the passage through the death gate had mortally brutalized her. There was only the faintest flicker left in her form to give any hope of reviving her.

Sorrenan was sent down on a skeletal gryphon with Aranya to Light's Hope, where she would be restored by the paladins of the Light.

The visions of the past dissolved, and Bwosamdi again posed his questions to the blood elf sorceress, "What did ya feel den?"

"Nothing," replied Aranya. "I felt nothing." She thought for half a second and amended, "Nothing in mind or in spirit, anyway. I couldn't. Nothing else existed but the moment, the sensations of death, of being torn apart by it." The elf woman's brows furrowed and her odd-feeling voice turned softer as she uttered a realization, "I have never been more physically present in a single moment, in any other moment of my life, as I was in that moment of death."

The dark loa smiled, as if this answer pleased him greatly. "Ya be ready now," he said. The surroundings shifted once again, and now Aranya stood in the Netherstorm, at the edge of one of the floating islands in the crumbling wastes. Below her was infinity, fathomless nothingness. She looked to Bwonsamdi. "Dere will be no catching ya'self, dis time," he said. The elf nodded that she understood, and leaped from the edge.

Down she plummeted through space, stars, and darkness, far further than she had ever fallen before. She began to feel her nerves waver as she went longer than she had ever gone before catching herself with a spell of slow fall, but still she went down, down, down, with no end in sight. It seemed to go on forever. But what would that end be like? What would happen to her? She forced her heart to slow to a calmer rhythm, closed her eyes, and she would have taken a few slow breaths, but this was still the Shadowlands, and no breath passed through her. She had to let go of anticipation. She had to accept this, there was nothing else she could do now that she had jumped. This wasn't a freefall, this was a deadfall.

Impact sensation radiated through Aranya's form, and yet she kept falling… Falling…? No… Sinking.

She was in deep, dark water, well over her head. It took a minute for the dazedness to pass, and then Aranya began to swim around in all directions. There was no light to see by, so she could only know which way was deeper and which way was up by the feeling of the water pressure. By the time she found the right direction, her lungs burned and her head felt light. She wanted to breathe… But as the realization came once again that she couldn't, she stopped herself.

With or without breath, she was still experiencing death.

A realization clicked in her mind just then, and for a while she closed her eyes and let herself sink… Until the tight, burning feeling in her chest peaked and subsided, and the wooziness in her head settled.

Aranya opened her eyes then, and began to swim up. Her arms and legs moved steady, sure, unhurried. Up, up, up to the surface.

"Ya came here to embrace ya death," the voice of Bwonsamdi spoke in her mind. "So, why do you rise?" He sounded very calm, patient, as if he knew the answer already and only wondered if she did.

"I rise, not because I want to live," answered Aranya. "But because it's what I do."

The dark loa's laugh echoed through the endless depths. The darkened waters ebbed away and Aranya was standing in the company of Bwonsamdi again. He was grinning, laughing, clapping his hands, and looking very pleased. "Well done, girl, well done," he applauded. "So tell me now, do ya undahstand why death is unique to ya?"

Aranya nodded. "I will die a thousand times, in a thousand different ways, and each time will be pain," she said. "Because each time I die, I am re-made. Whatever I was, whoever I was, dies because it must, so that what I need to be can rise." Her green eyes smoldered in the bleakness of the Shadowlands. "Because death is an end, not the end."

Bwonsamdi smiled, though he seemed to be more proud that his guidance had taken, than to have any true pride in Aranya herself. "Da phoenix undahstands now," he remarked. "Ya undahstood life and light, da will ta go on. Ya undahstood dat before," he said. "Now ya udahstand death, and why ya must die to live again."

Aranya said nothing to that, but smiled gratefully, glad of his approval.

"I be sendin' ya back to da one who sent ya now," said Bwonsamdi.

"Wait," interjected Aranya. "Why was it you that helped me? Why help an elf, when your blessings are bestowed on trolls?"

"Da elves be heathens and enemies ta many trolls," replied Bwonsamdi. "But I have not forgotten dat da blood elves be bruddahs and sistahs of da Darkspear. Vol'jin honored me well." His voice went a little lower, and seemed to fill only the immediate space around them, rather than fill the vastness as it did before. "And dere is another in my care who speaks of da one who sent ya. Ya be of value ta him, and in a way, he be of value ta me. It be my right and no other's, den, to have guided ya."

The last thing Aranya heard as breath - real breath - filled her lungs again and she opened her eyes on the world of the living, was, "Do not forget."

Author's Note

This began with a prompt for theperished-wra

As per the story here , this is the second part of the process, the initiation of Arcanist Aranya Ver'Sarn, the phoenix-mage, into the group of Chosen who protect and honor the spirits of the innocent dead as much as the living. Much is revealed about her ultimate fate, and her ultimate death.

It was a real challenge for me, writing this. I had to think about how I would make it fit with Aranya's character, because she's usually all about never giving up without a fight, unbreakable spirit, etc, etc. It really made me think about the *death* aspect of the phoenix, when I had focused so much on the *immortality* aspect before. So not only did this help develop Aranya as a character, it also helped ME develop as a writer. I was ver glad for the challenge!

Song lyrics from Phoenix by Molly Sandén.