Disclaimer: I do not own the DOTA characters referred to in this story. No one owns DOTA (maybe Blizzard does but well…)
This story is inspired by and adapted from Makoto Shinkai's Voices of a Distant Star (Hoshi no Koe)
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I
Fire: swaths of glowing orange flickering and waltzing and burning to grey ash. Rylai's head jerked from left to right, bloodshot eyes squinting, fighting the pain of invading dust and dry heat. She could go nowhere, for fire was like a behemoth from ages long past, treading unknowingly upon the long gone habitants of the Mortalwind with its mammoth feet. It marched only onward, undoing all upon the tracks it would never turn to see.
Rylai wheezed laboured breaths. Beads of hot sweat hung loose upon the tips of her moist, blonde hair. Under her cape, she carried the bird whose mind was already dim from the pungency of smoke and blood. She shook the creature until it opened its eyes slightly, and in them she saw only a void where colour should be. She pleaded with the bird to stay awake in silence. She knew that if sanctum could not be found, it would pass on, murdered by the roars of brutes, the clangs of steel and the heat of strife.
Three blasts of the horn pierced the cacophony of battle, all staccato save the last—the call for retreat. She turned around, pushing herself toward what remained of their settlement on a pair of legs begging to collapse. A wave of men in iron rushed passed her, reaffirming the order in screams of different tones. Some hinted of madness, some detached and dreamy, others in a kind of relief, as one would make after successfully climbing a tree to escape from vicious mountain cats. A sword picked her up by the waist, hauled her on his back and ran with the crowd. She felt her sweat mingle with his, and the rough texture of his helm as her cheeks touched metal. It was stained crimson from what was left of his fallen comrades. A frightful gash decorated his right arm, made vivid by an oval of purple tint which spread from it, covering the skin. It was the symptom of an infection, one in their ignorance of its cause everyone had simply termed 'Blight'. He was doomed, but he did not care. There was no route of escape, no hope for salvation. They could see only the end.
He brought Rylai to the Commander's tent still erect at the end of the ridge where the survivors, whom numbered a fraction of a hundred, met. Most sobbed in a dreary silence, others laid helplessly on the sand, rigid and numb from exhaustion.
Rylai raised her hand, uttering a scant of barely audible words, and a wall of ice rose from the ground, separating the soldiers from their pursuers like a cage separating a songbird from the dangers of the world. She said no words to her saviour, and he responded in kind, dropping his body upon the granite and unfastening and throwing away his mail and spear and armour.
She walked past the many canvas pavilions until she found her commander's tent. Inside, a map of the East and quills and broken cakes of ink lay sprawled across a table which was a plank risen from the dirt with three hefty stones. In ecstasy, she tore off a piece of the map. She picked up a quill and a piece of ink and cleared the table of everything else with a swing of her arm.
She hovered her hand over the dusty ink stone and with a word of power it melted into a liquid blot. She laid the piece she tore off the map on the plank and began to write in a frenzy, sparing no time even to punctuate. Outside, a loud crash like the sound of an iron gate buckling after a final ramming told her her wall of ice had collapsed, and the terrified cries of the men whom collapsed with it. When she finished she rolled up the scroll and tore off a piece of lace from her blouse which she used as a tie, and then she extracted a small brown package from her pocket, and fastened both to the leg of the bird.
A pack of corpses tore threw the tent canvas and rushed at her, eyes red from an insatiable desire to kill. She waved her hand at them and froze their feet to the floor, but she knew her magic would not last long against their fervour. She ran out the tent and made for the top of the cliff, her strides widening with teach step she took. As she ran she yanked her necklace off her neck. She pulled the red jewel out forcefully from its socket and fed it to the bird. The bird's body warmed up against hers.
She reached the apex of the volcanic ridge. Waves crashed violently against the jagged stones below, and the hands of the walking dead drew hither. She caressed the bird, fully awake now, and kissed it on the head.
"Go find him," she whispered, and with the last of her strength, launched it into the air. It faltered for a moment, flapping wildly to adjust to sudden flight, and then it soared, disappearing into the horizon which chaired the setting sun.
Hot tears flowed down her cheeks. She closed her eyes and turned around to face her pursuers, and then she drew a long breath. It was filled with the salty perfume of sea water, made fresh by a tinge of sea-breeze and distorted by a hint of burnt flesh. She could feel it swirl in her lungs, tickling her throat, relieving her of the pain caused by her throbbing head.
She fell backwards, diving into the sea with a smile on her face. And then, she felt no more.