Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels.
This is my first story, so please be gentle.
The thick, spongy moss that covered the wide paths of Eldre'Thalas compressed slightly beneath Varya's feet as she drifted through the ruined city once again. Her outline shifted in the fading light of dusk, growing more intangible with the coming darkness.
She hardly noticed. She hardly ever did, having seen it happen time and again in the ten thousand years since the Sundering, since her death.
The city had fallen to shambles over the course of ages. Nature had reclaimed much of it. Vines encircled the marble columns lining the walkways, and gigantic roots had forced their way through the walls, leaving piles of rubble littering the stone paths beneath her ghostly feet.
Back and forth roamed more mobile manifestations of life. Towering treants loomed, and around their massive trunk-like legs scurried much-smaller lashers. Varya grinned as she saw two such lashers snapping at each other, vying for a few more minutes in the last of the sunlight.
She traced her hand over one's petals and affection welled up in her chest when, just for a moment, she almost felt the texture of the creature under her fingertips. The feeling was fleeting, but the affection lingered.
For millennia she'd tended the gardens of Eldre'Thalas, seeing to the ebb and flow of Nature's energy that allowed life to flourish there as it had. In her own mind at least, each and every natural being in the city, from a single blade of grass to the mightiest of the treants, was her child.
Varya descended into the depths of the city, down the spiraling tunnel lined with blue-flamed torches. Few of her children ever ventured here, into the lair of the resident satyrs, not since they'd learned of the danger the demons posed, but Varya held no such fear.
The descent reached its end and Varya passed into the cavernous room that housed most of the satyrs. Some of her lashers wandered here and there, quite fond of their neighbors. It must have been mutual because the satyrs rarely if ever turned on the lashers, unlike the treants, so Varya was content to let the friendship be. The satyrs certainly treated her children better than that blasted imp, singeing them with demonic flames whenever they came too near.
The satyrs did have another thing winning them her favor, of course. Even after millennia, she still felt butterflies when she thought of Alzzin, her Alzzin. If she'd still been alive she was certain she'd be blushing, just like she had so often ages ago.
She glided over the skeletal remains of some beast the satyr had felled, the glow of the pyres lighting the room lending her pale, translucent features and orange tinge. Biting her lip to stifle an excited smile she continued deeper into the city, where she knew she'd find Alzzin hard at work.
By the time she reached him though, Alzzin was stretched out on a bed of moss, fast asleep, snoring occasionally. Varya felt a stab of disappointment, but it faded quickly, replaced by gratitude. It wasn't uncommon for him to work himself to exhaustion, and she knew it was for her, always for her.
Just a few yards away from where he lay grew the Felvine. Once the Fruit of Fertility, tended by the druids of Eldre'Thalas before the Sundering, Alzzin had twisted it over decades, centuries to serve his purpose. Now the Felvine grew thick, sharp, no longer its original verdant emerald but dark, almost-dead brown. Its energy had been sapped, as it often had been, to fulfill Alzzin's ultimate goal: to return Varya to life.
Varya ran her palms over the deep lavender silk of her dress, smoothing away the slight wrinkles being seated had caused. Whether from the exertion of the short trek into the forest or the sight of Alzzin next to her, warmth suffused her cheeks. He looked so handsome in the moonlight, and the nervous way he ran his fingers through his long tresses, eyes wide, was adorable.
He supported himself with one arm and turned to her, sitting on the blanket where they'd consumed their light meal of bread, cheese, and wine. "Varya," he started, his voice trembling as he dug his free hand into his pocket.
"Alzzin…" she teased, giddily, when he didn't continue.
Alzzin swallowed hard and tried again. "Varya," he repeated. But again he failed to speak, this time through no fault of his own. Before he could force out the words a deafening bang split the air, sending the pair reeling as their eardrums burst. They clutched their long ears to their heads, screaming silently.
Varya shook her head clear, forcing the pain aside long enough to call upon the blessings of Elune, granted to Her faithful, and sent a wave of healing energy at Alzzin. The ground lurched beneath them, quickly intensifying, until it seemed like Kalimdor was trying to shake itself to pieces.
Her prayer did its work, soothing Alzzin's suffering. He looked up sharply, eyes going wide and mouth opening to issue a warning. But before she could try to question him something punched her square in the back, driving her down and pinning her to the ground.
Seconds later a fresh wave of agony rolled over her, centered on her gut. Varya struggled for breath as a massive weight pressed down. She clawed at the dirt, trying to pull herself free but failing.
Beside her Alzzin had called upon his own gifts to help her as she had helped him. Muscles rippled under the thick, shaggy coat of brown fur, driving hard against the tree that had fallen in the earthquake.
After an eternity to the pinned priestess the tree gave way before Alzzin's ursal fury. Varya gasped as the pressure released, not from relief but from new torment. A branch that had pierced her was violently torn free, taking with it blood, too much blood.
Then Alzzin was there, tears in his eyes as he begged her to hold on. The world swam around her as he lifted her in his arms, taking off running for home.
Varya was barely awake by the time they reached Eldre'Thalas. Blackness pressed in at the edges of her vision, promising relief from her suffering. Only Alzzin's continued pleading kept her from passing, kept her praying silently to the Goddess. She lacked the strength to heal her wounds, but she managed to stave off Death for her beloved.
Even that strength failed eventually. She faded in and out of consciousness, catching snippets of Alzzin's pleas upon bursting into Elune's temple.
"Please…hurt! I can't…"
"There is nothing…too badly…"
"Try harder! She's a…one of Her own!"
Varya was hoisted again, though she didn't know it. Out of the temple they went, rushing towards the druids' enclave, when the blackness became too much, and she surrendered.
When Varya woke there was no pain. She marveled at the relief for a moment, taking in the sun shining bright overhead, the breeze rustling through the trees. It was only when she noticed the grave markers around her that she realized she didn't feel the sun, didn't feel the wind. She wept, and wept all the more when she couldn't feel her tears on her cheeks.
Her sobs faded to nothing as the sun set and the moon took its place overhead. She wandered away from the graveyard, following streets she'd walked many times in life and finding herself back at the temple of Elune.
"There must be something you can do!" the familiar voice of her beloved Alzzin sounded inside. The desperation in his tone was almost tangible and stabbed at her insubstantial heart. She almost entered through the archway and into his sight, but a wave of shame washed over her at the last moment. He couldn't see her like this, couldn't know what had become of her.
Varya listened as the priestesses rebuffed first Alzzin's pleas, then his threats. He stormed out of the Temple, and she followed him discreetly, only to hear him similarly denied at the druids in their grove. Renouncing them as he had Elune Alzzin fled the city, unaware of his otherworldly pursuit.
For days, weeks, months, Varya followed him, her heart breaking more and more as he descended into grief and rage. Endlessly he drove on, hardly sleeping, hardly eating, until finally she showed herself to him.
Alzzin collapsed to his knees, eyes wide at the sight of her returned to him, and scrambled to her on all fours. Only after he passed clear through her in an attempted hug did he realize what her appearance meant.
The pair spoke for hours, reunited after a fashion. Finally Varya understood what had caused her death and what had happened after she'd fallen. Their queen had betrayed them, demons had invaded, the world was broken…and Alzzin was hunting down the remaining invaders, hoping they would aid him where their people had failed them.
Alzzin wouldn't be swayed from his course, desperate as he was, and so Varya journeyed with him. She was there when he tracked down a demon lord, there when the demon lord, always willing to corrupt a Kaldorei, promised him the power to steal her back from Death itself.
She stood by his side as years passed and his power grew, twisting his handsome features, his entire body, into something unnatural. Still she loved him, and she returned with him at the head of an army to Eldre'Thalas, where his plan would someday come to fruition.
The city was all but empty by that point, only a relative handful of elven inhabitants remaining. Driving them back and taking the majority of the ruins was no difficult feat for Alzzin's demonic force.
Alzzin set to work immediately, imposing his twisted will on the Fruit of Fertility and syphoning off every ounce of energy that could be spared, using Nature's magic in an effort to resurrect Varya. It was slow work, as Death was not as easy a foe to overcome as the elven remnants, and the Fruit constantly rebelled against Alzzin's corrupted essence. At times, progress halted altogether.
But the centuries wore on and Varya held on to hope. Indeed, when the sun shone on the Felvine, as it had come to be known, and Alzzin fed her its power, she became more and more corporeal. After ten thousand years she was almost flesh and blood again, and she knew Alzzin would find a way to make it a permanent transition.
The morning after finding Alzzin asleep, Varya started another round of the ruins, tending to her gardens. But something was wrong. Her children, who she'd all but come to sense through the Felvine, were diminished.
A sensation she'd not felt in millennia assaulted her and she had to search the deepest recesses of her memories to name it: pain. It started as a dull ache in her gut, intensifying when she found the first of her fallen children, a hacked and charred treant sprawled across the marble path. A trail of similar scenes led her deeper into the city and she dreaded what she already knew she would find in the end.
Varya retched as she flew past her fallen children, not sparing them a second glance. The pain of their loss was drowned out by the worry for her beloved, and she prayed to a Goddess who had abandoned her ten thousand years earlier that Alzzin would defeat whatever force had found them.
The satyrs had fallen, slaughtered to a one. Her lashers were gone as well, wiped out. Deeper she ran, bursting into Alzzin's sanctum to hear an anguished cry from a familiar voice that cut deep into her heart.
Varya rounded the bottom of the ramp to the ground floor, catching sight of a portal fading away, and Alzzin lying broken in a spreading pool of black blood. She was at his side in an instant.
Alzzin gingerly grasped her hands in his massive claws. "I didn't-I didn't let them take it," he choked out through spasms of agony. Varya tried to shush him, tried to call upon her healing spells like she had a lifetime ago, but he kept on.
"I wanted to…give you…this…on that day," he explained, slipping warm metal onto her finger. She knew without asking just what day he meant, and she sobbed as she squeezed his hands. "Varya…I-I love…"
Alzzin's strength failed him and his dark eyes turned vacant. For an eternity she wept over him, until feeling began to dwindle. Alzzin's murderers had disrupted the Felvine. Before the opportunity was lost to her forever Varya pressed her lips to his. Already cold lifelessness seeped into him. Her ethereal heart twisted painfully in her chest but she guiltily savored the icy sensation, knowing it would likely be the last thing she ever felt.
All too soon it was over, and she was as insubstantial as the day she'd first returned from death. Varya rose over Alzzin's still form, lost and afraid for the first time since she'd revealed herself to him, unable to force herself to leave him. Time slipped by unnoticed, and she remained as light and darkness came and went, rainstorms gave way to dry spells gave way to rainstorms. What were days, weeks, years to her? Her love, gone. Her children, gone. Her hope, gone…
The latent chaotic energies that had warped Alzzin's flesh into the monster he had become for her fought against the ravages of decay, keeping his once-handsome features untouched until they too passed away, no longer fueled by his rage. As they faded so did he, and Varya had to watch as Alzzin returned to the earth in a way that had been denied to her millennia before.
When all that remained were his bones Varya screamed. All of her pain, all of her loneliness, all of her guilt for the past and fear for the future tore their way out of her, echoing off the tall stone walls and rising to the stars. She turned her face to the sky and screamed louder and louder, needing no breath, until Elune herself would be forced to listen, forced to share Varya's anguish.
She didn't know how long she screamed but her fury eventually played itself out. She descended into silence, lowering herself to the stone and closing her eyes, willing an eternity to pass by but knowing it wouldn't.
A familiar chirp brought her back to her senses, forcing her eyes open. A lasher! The small plant stood over her, watching intently. It chirped again, almost expectantly, and Varya felt the first smile in ages tugging at her lips. The lasher was small, too small to have been alive for the raid that had claimed Alzzin. Her children were being reborn!
Varya rose, smiling down at the lasher and passing her fingertips over its petals, feeling nothing. That fact couldn't steal her enthusiasm, though, the first hope she'd had in far too long, and with the lasher shuffling along behind her she moved forward to do her rounds of the city, to care for the life returning to her garden.
For those of you who made it this far, you have my thanks. What did you think?