A/N: This story will mostly follow OCs. It's basically a footsoldier's view of the void elves' creation and finding their way into the Alliance, as well as a coming-of-age story of sorts. If that sounds good to you, keep reading! Reviews are always appreciated :) Enjoy!

I. Ghostlands

In the course of her short life, Elloria Hallen had so far managed to accrue just one piece of good advice. And, well, it was so specific that it might only be applicable to maybe one hundred people over the whole course of time, so she wasn't even sure it could be called good advice, since it was so marginally useful. In any case, the advice was this: never take a security job with a bunch of shady magisters, no matter how much they say they're gonna pay you.

It'd occurred to her almost immediately after the eggheads had gathered everyone together and announced that they'd been exiled by order of His Lordship Lor'themar Theron that the money that had felt so solid weighing down her pack these past few months had as good as vaporized. Where would she spend it? Exile from Quel'Thalas was essentially exile from the Horde, and it wasn't like the Alliance was about to take in a few ragtag sin'dorei studying perverted magics. Why would they bother? As far as she could tell, the crackpots weren't getting any closer to their goal, whatever it was. And yeah, okay, maybe she could sneak out of camp one night and somehow get to Booty Bay or Shattrath or somewhere they didn't ask too many questions, but she'd have to pass through enemy territory, a term which now, thank you so much Magister Umbric, covered most of Azeroth and beyond. So most likely they were all just gonna die out here, slowly, picked off one by one by Scourge or Forsaken or night elves or their own kin or even the stupid spiders and bats.

Elloria sighed deeply, rubbed her eyes, stretched, and continued her vigil. Her eyes swept indifferently over the gloom of the Ghostlands: dead grass, crumbling buildings, the vague light of An'owyn creeping around a hill. The land around the Sanctum of the Sun was flat and not very elevated, so not a great vantage point, but it didn't matter too much. The Scourge hadn't even left stumps of the trees that had once grown thick on this land, so it was possible on a clear day even to see one of the Runestones several miles away. There was practically no cover, nowhere to hide except maybe in one of the ziggurats fringing the edges of the Scar, and you were unlikely to find any of them unoccupied by Scourge. She could see a spider, huge and swollen and glowing violet with bad magic, digging its nest into the ground. There was nothing much to string their webs on that hadn't been claimed already by the nerubians, who were bigger and stronger, so the mutated creatures had learned to hide and trap, had started using their webs like nets. Of course more often than not whatever prey they snared was already dead, devoid of any nutrients, polluted. She looked away.

Mostly there wasn't much point in keeping watch. The Ghostlands were still dangerous, sure enough, but they mostly got left alone these days. The runners from Silvermoon carrying supplies had stopped coming ages ago, so they were subsisting mainly off of conjured mana buns (which, she noticed, got more tasteless and less filling the more you ate them), which meant there really wasn't much point in raiding their camp. Sometimes marauding bands of Scourge or mana-hungry elementals came through, but they would wander away soon enough if you just hid. The animals, feral and corrupted though they were, usually didn't bother them unless they were starving, in which case it was easy to make quick work and a quicker meal of them. Sometimes she wondered if it was dangerous to consume the meat of an animal that had lived on such blasted land, but she knew that she hadn't lived the kind of life that permitted her to turn her nose up at any form of nourishment. She snorted. Well, if she'd been the choosy type, she wouldn't be here, now would she?

#

She'd started in provisions, which meant that she would go out into Dawning Lane, always during the daytime because the Wretched weren't out so much then, and she'd forage for anything that might still have a drop of arcane power in it. There wasn't much, but sometimes there was enough to distil into a mana crystal and sell to people who couldn't afford anything else. She'd gotten by that way for a while. And then when the Sunwell was reborn, she'd started to diversify. Thieving for hire and dabbling in the bloodthistle and manathistle trades. Got a minor reputation for herself as a fixer, someone who could do what needed to be done. No killing, but finding things and people that had gone missing. There was a huge market for that amongst the orphans and widows of Quel'Thalas, and amongst the higher-ups who wanted to reclaim their ancient heritage. She'd even done a job for the Reliquary once.

And that was probably how Umbric had heard her name. Probably one of those ungrateful bastards had drawled it over a glass of wine, with the unspoken words wafting through the garden: and who'll care if something happens to her? Well, she cared. A lot, actually. She really didn't want to die out here.

"Hallen! Look sharp!" Elloria whipped her head around to face Captain Dalrend Brighthammer. She really didn't like him, and he knew it. He was holding the point of his spear right to her neck with a grin so shit-eating it could've been the septic system for a whole city. "I could've had you dead in another second."

Elloria rolled her eyes and smacked the spear away. "Whatever, jackass. I'm almost off shift anyway." Dalrend narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, she jumped to her feet, grabbed hold of the spearshaft, and shoved hard, knocking him to the ground. "Happy now?"

The captain grunted. "Understand that the only reason I'm not hitting you back is that I need you to be on watch for another five minutes."

Elloria poked his neck with the tip of the spear. "One more word and I'm keeping this thing." Dalrend merely grunted again, but Elloria wasn't paying attention to him. She flipped the spear around, lifting the tip close to her face so that she could inspect it. "Looks new. Is this from An'owyn?"

Dalrend rose and tried to take the spear back from her, saying, "All right, all right, that's enough, Hallen—" but she whirled away, scrutinizing the weapon. The tip was plated with gold and red. As her eye moved across it, she suddenly saw the crest right at the base of the spear-tip. She froze as realization dawned. "It isn't, is it."

Dalrend sighed. "No. It's not." He shifted uncomfortably and added, "Farstrider Enclave."

Elloria thrust it back into his hands as though it had burned her. "You're a bastard."

Dalrend snorted. "Why should I care what you think, cutpurse? We have to survive out here somehow."

Elloria didn't look at him. "Yeah? Cutpurse I might be, but I wouldn't kill my own kind for a fancy spear."

He snorted. "Ah? So there is honor among thieves. That's adorable. And in case you forgot, the rangers of Quel'Thalas are no longer our kind."

"Leave me alone."

"Fine." He turned to go, but before he faded into the dead land, he growled, "Please yourself, Hallen, but I don't intend to die out here."

The nice thing about that, Elloria thought, is that it probably was not going to matter what he intended. Jackass.

#

"Drink, Hallen? I swiped some wine from the knife-ears on the last raid," said Corin. He waved the wineskin under her nose with a grin.

Elloria shook her head. "I don't drink." Spend enough time around addicts, and you either became one yourself or learned to avoid any mind-altering substance.

"What? That's against the rules of mercenarying, you know," he said jovially. Corin Ferion would know. He'd been in the business for years, and it showed. He was by now a huge mass of muscle and scar tissue, but he was surprisingly… nice. He'd been her first friend among the other mercenaries, and she still spent most of her free time with him.

Elloria just smiled a bit tight and shook her head. "'Salright, Corin. Spider legs are tasty tonight."

He laughed and said, "For a rogue, you're a really terrible liar, Hallen."

Elloria shrugged. "I don't usually have to lie, in my line of work. Don't have to lie to people about what you're doing if they never find out you're doing anything in the first place." She shoveled the rest of the spider legs down her throat and added, "So how was the raid, anyway?"

Corin scratched the back of an ear, sighed. "Usual. We didn't lose anybody, so that's nice."

She was quiet for a moment. Corin was a warrior, and a damn good one, so he usually got taken on the larger raids of surrounding camps. "Um. Did you know we raided Farstrider Enclave?"

His face darkened. "Yeah. That blustering idiot Brighthammer took a few of us." Seeing the questioning and slightly desperate look in her eyes, he added, "I didn't go with him. Even I have my limits." He was quiet for a few long seconds, taking deep draughts of the wine.

Elloria nervously wound the end of her ponytail around her fingers. "I mean… it's one thing to fight back if they attacked us. But they haven't yet, so…"

"Right. And, by the way, they might not have known about us before, but now they do. So." He raised the wineskin in a sarcastic toast.

They were silent for some minutes, leaving each other alone with their thoughts. Finally, Elloria burst out, "I mean what is his deal? He bothered me today at the end of my shift and he said he didn't intend to die out here, but then he goes and gives the Farstriders a reason to come here and kill us all? AndImean he was a ranger-captain himself! Aren't they all supposed to be brothers of the wilds, or something?"

Corin shrugged. "Wouldn't know about that, Lori. But apparently Dalrend was a bit of a black sheep even before he ended up here." He took another swig and looked at her gravely. "Gossip 'round the camp is that he was about to be expelled from the order when he joined up with us."

Despite herself, Elloria was curious. "Really? 'Spose it's not that surprising, given that he did join up with us. What happened?"

Corin shrugged, took another drink. "I've heard a lot of things. Some say it was to do with something in Northrend. Others been saying he was involved with that business with Theramore. Kerin Northwind said he was involved in some shady dealings in Stormheim, up in the Broken Isles. Some top-secret stuff with the new Warchief." He leaned closer, lowered his voice. "All we know for sure is that Felinara Desidris overheard him talking with Umbric once. They were arguing, and apparently Umbric said some things. Said he had enough dirt to get that court-martial completed in Silvermoon. Threatened to write a letter to Halduron Brightwing about 'that business with Malina.' And apparently that shut him right up."

Elloria raised her brows. "Malina? Sounds like a human name."

Corin smirked darkly. "Yeah. No idea what it means beyond that, though." He lay down on his cot. After a short silence, he sighed and said, "You know, Hallen, we're all shady characters, or we wouldn't be here. But I really don't like that Brighthammer. Something really fishy about him."

Elloria remembered his expression the other day. The dark determination in his voice. "Yeah. He's a creep."

Corin smiled, raised the wineskin from his supine position. "I'll drink to that."

#

Elloria was jolted out of her troubled half-sleep by the sound of a commotion outside her tent. She crawled out of it to see a group of her colleagues crowded around Magister Umbric's tent. The atmosphere seemed tense, uneasy. She walked over and spotted Corin at the edge of the crowd. "Hey." She gave him a light whack on the shoulder, their traditional greeting. "What's up?"

"Flameblade's got everyone worked up," he muttered from the corner of his mouth. "She's demanding Umbric come out and speak to us. People are angry, want to know what the plan is."

Elloria crossed her arms over her chest and coughed up a disgusted laugh. "Plan? What plan? We're fucked, end of story. We were fucked from the second we signed up with the good magister."

Corin rolled his eyes. "I know. It's stupid. But I'm curious to see what he comes up with."

"Come out, Umbric! We want answers!" Flameblade yelled, raising her fist. She was a paladin, with every ounce of self-righteous fury the title implied. According to her, she had not yet been inducted to the Blood Knight order during the time they'd tortured a naaru for their powers, but nobody believed her. She was from a noble family and she claimed that she'd signed up with Umbric "in order to fulfill my mission to bring the Light to dark places," but everybody thought she'd probably done it to piss off her overbearing mother.

Elloria rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. "Oh whatever, I really can't watch this, her voice gives me a headache. I'm going back to sleep." She turned to go, but Corin put a hand on her shoulder.

"Nah, wait a second, Hallen. This could get interesting. And I don't want to have to tell you the whole yarn later," he said with a quick grin.

Elloria just rolled her eyes and punched his arm, her eyes already trained on the front of the tent.

"This is inhumane, Magister! We're honest people and you're keeping us in the dark!" screeched Flameblade.

"Oh yeah, bunch of thieves and thugs, most honest people around," Corin muttered from the side of his mouth.

"Who are you calling a thug?" Elloria quipped back sotto voce.

And they weren't the only two muttering. Flameblade was tapping her foot and glaring at the tent in lieu of breaking down its door, and everyone else was flicking their eyes from face to face, expectant and unsure of what they were expecting. There was something odd about the crowd and it took her a few minutes to figure it out: no magisters. One or two warlocks, the ones who weren't members of the Magisterium, or at least hadn't been for decades, but none of the magisters were anywhere you could see them. She tugged Corin's sleeve. "None of the eggheads are here."

His eyes darted back to hers. "Think they scarpered?"

Elloria narrowed her eyes, scanning the crowd and all the tents she could see from the center of the camp. Some of them were closed, and the ones that were open were either definitely empty or belonged to people she could see amongst the crowd. "I—I don't know—"

Corin clenched a fist. "If they did—" She didn't catch the end of his sentence, because finally she caught sight of a flash of red robe and the corner of a green eye. She moved her gaze away from the tent at the edge of camp where she'd seen them, but kept it in her sights, just at the edge of her vision. "Where are the magisters? They got us into this mess, and now they've disappeared!" Flameblade was yelling to the crowd, but Elloria had shut everything out except for the little movements at the corner of her eye. Someone was meeting her gaze from behind the tent-flap. She kept her gaze on that of the hidden watcher for a long moment. She could not quite read the expression in the gaze, but it seemed… searching. Which offended her, a little. After all, the other elf was clearly the one with something to hide. She felt a little ridiculous glaring at the edge of an eye several feet away, with no clue who it belonged to, but she narrowed her eyes and glared anyway.

The noise around her mounted, but she did not break the gaze. After several long seconds, something suddenly changed in the other elf's eyes, or at least in the one eye visible to her. Before she could determine what it was, the eye flicked to the right and to the left, as if making sure that no one was watching, which in Elloria's opinion was ridiculous, because obviously, she was. Then the other elf stepped forward so that she could see just slightly more of his face, enough to identify him as male. She could see high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, but the face was too thin to be truly handsome. Were it not for the color of his eyes and the slight pink of blood under his skin, she could have taken him for one of the Wretched. She could see the edge of his thin mouth, curled up in a strange smile.

Elloria's brow wrinkled in confusion. Who the hell was this guy, and why was he looking at her like that? Should she go over and ask him? As she debated what to do about this strange person giving her this strange look, a hand emerged from the gloom of the tent, then the edge of a sleeve of a red robe. A magister. His grin grew wider, and he waved to Elloria. Then, in a flash of magic, he disappeared from sight.

What the hell? How weird was that? She could understand the desire to hide from the mob gathered by Flameblade, which was now growing pretty heated, but what was all that? Confused and vaguely panicked, Elloria moved to step forward, intending to sneak over to the tent while the crowd was occupied with Flameblade's spectacle and investigate, but Corin grabbed her arm and hissed, "Not now, are you stupid?" She turned her attention away from the strange magister and back towards Flameblade and her cronies at the front of the crowd. Flameblade was holding her sword over her head, poised to strike at the cloth of the tent in order to rip it open.

"Bad fucking plan," muttered Corin beside her, "doesn't she think they'd have set up wards against us common rabble, not to mention the hordes of monsters just wandering around this place?"

"Flameblade doesn't think," Elloria answered absently. She watched as Flameblade brought the sword down; and just as Corin had predicted, a burst of arcane energy knocked her back, thrusting the sword from her hand. But Flameblade was not deterred; eyes flashing, she growled, hauled herself up, and retrieved her sword. She stepped back a few paces, and the crowd made room for her; then, blade glowing with holy Light, she ran towards the tent and struck again—again, to no avail. The wards thrust her back even farther this time, straight into the body of Ellistian Rath, another mercenary, and they both fell back with a resounding "ugh!" But now others were starting to draw their weapons, unconsciously agreeing that perhaps if they could do enough damage to the wards at once, they would break under the strain. Elloria backed up and tugged an unresisting Corin along with her in anticipation of the magical blast.

But just as the elves at the front of the crowd were about to connect their weapons with the tent, they were all thrown back several feet from the tent with a violet explosion of arcane energy. Elloria and Corin lunged to the side just in time to avoid the sudden rain of their comrades' bodies.

As everyone was catching their breath, the tent flap finally opened, revealing Magister Umbric. He dusted off his robes in a way that subtly suggested that this was necessary for effect rather than cleanliness and announced, "My apologies, colleagues and friends. I understand your distress, but it was imperative that I prevent you from doing something in ignorance that you would regret in understanding." Impossibly, the level of tension, which Elloria had thought was already at breaking point, rose. She rolled her eyes. Gotta hand it to those eggheads: for sure, a dullard like herself could hardly attest to the great feats of intellect these men were supposedly famous for, but they sure were talented at pissing absolutely everyone off simply by opening their mouths.

Sensing that he was in immediate danger of decapitation, Umbric quickly added, "I see that you deserve an explanation, and I am happy to deliver. I have good news for you, if you will but stay your hands for a few minutes." He cleared his throat uncomfortably, but he had everyone's attention now. They could still, after all, strangle the pompous fucker after he'd finished speaking; no harm in hearing him out. Seeing that he was in the clear, albeit for now and on extreme sufferance, Umbric began, "We have, after many long months, finally achieved a breakthrough. We have discovered a safe haven that will allow us to escape at last the monsters and the blades of our former kin. And this safe haven will allow us to delve deeper than ever before into the mysteries of the Void, empowering ourselves as well as whoever among you will follow us!" With a flourish, Umbric snapped his fingers, and the tent disintegrated into thin air, revealing a portal unlike any Elloria, or indeed any of the elves present, had ever seen.

It looked like a hole in space. At its violet edges, it seemed to be sucking the world around it into itself, just slightly blurring the surrounding air. She could sense the sickening hunger of the Void energies that composed it gnawing at everything around it, including her. In its black center she could see nothing… no, something more than nothing, deeper than nothing. Her very flesh recoiled from the sense of elemental wrongness emanating from the portal, and yet… yet she felt drawn to it. She could hear something, the edge of a voice or the ghost of one, whispering, though she could not make out its words. Over and above the flood of new sensations threatening to overwhelm her, Elloria could not shake the feeling that her life was going to change. She'd been through a lot, to say the least, multiple changes of profession and stretches of poverty and starvation, but she'd been able to live through it all because no matter what troughs of privation or crests of success she encountered, she had always been herself, one and unchanging. Whatever her circumstances were on top, she had always been able to sequester and protect her true self, like the violet spiders who hid underground and survived, like a seed under the earth protected from the harshness of winter, like the very last breath of unstale air that keeps the drowning man alive long enough to reach the shore.

But she felt that if she followed these insane magisters through that portal, she would experience something completely new to her. That she would change. And she was not sure what that would mean. Curiosity and dread, fear and hope, repulsion and desire swirled in the battered soul of Elloria Hallen, now blending, now breaking ranks, like paints mixing uneasily in water.

"Welcome, my friends," said Umbric, "to Telogrus."

Torn from her thoughts by Umbric's voice, and, quite frankly, too exhausted and in shock to control herself, Elloria yelled, "What in the thundering fuck is a Telogrus?"

#

The idea that your life could be completely and incontrovertibly altered via badly-written memo felt unfair, absurd, and above all offensive to Elloria. "They," she announced with assurance, arms akimbo, "have gone completely round the bend."

Corin, leaning against the wall behind her, snorted. "And you're just realizing this now?"

Elloria waved an irritable hand, scrunching her nose. "No, for real this time. Look. It's still addressed 'citizens of Quel'Thalas.' Which, uh, we've not been for three weeks." She poked at the magical image floating above their faces, which flickered then stabilized in response to her touch. It was indeed still addressed to "our esteemed colleagues, Citizens of the Kingdom of Quel'Thalas." They all knew by now that the magisters used a pre-formatted memo spell, but they usually put in some effort to alter the format to reflect small niceties such as the correct form of address used by the recipient(s) and the current political situation in Silvermoon. But this memo had been edited only hastily, such that you could easily see the ghosts of words removed or replaced floating above the living text of the message. Thus, it read:

Our esteemed colleagues, fellow (subjects) citizens of Quel'Thalas,

Now is the time! Now is the salvation, finally, of the elven races!

We have at last opened the way to the broken planet Telogrus, whose secrets we shall claim (for the Crown) (for the Regent) for ourselves! We will gain new insight into the power of the Void, which we believe will make us stronger and heal our ancient wounds.

Of you, (citizens of the Regency) faithful colleagues, we ask only that you prepare your hearts and minds for what is to come. With regard to practical concerns, however: we are now three hundred elves strong. Most of you will join us on the opposite side of the portal, to aid us in exploring this brave new world. Some fifteen of you will stay behind to guard our camp from lingering monsters, in case we should need to return.

Prepare for the birth of a new age! Long live (the King) (our Prince, Kael'Thas Sunstrider, long may he reign) (our Lord Regent) our mission!

The Magisterium

Corin spat. "Pathetic. Seriously. How old is that spell? Must be completely rancid."

Elloria bent forward, exaggerating the arch of her back, and waved her hand under her nose as though she was trying to coax a wine's bouquet into her nostrils. Corin laughed and she shook her head, scrunching up her nose and recoiling, saying in a haughty voice, "I couldn't sell that on Murder Row!"

A sudden silence dropped between them as they began to consider what these words really meant, snuffing the humor as a short sharp gust snuffs a weak candle-flame. Neither of them reached for the tinder-box just yet. Elloria was thinking, I don't want to go. I hate them for using all these fancy words and exclamation points, talking of discovery and adventure. Adventure. Hah! Maybe they're scientists but the rest of us are just a bunch of luckless worthless know-nothing fucks. We ended up here because we were too poor or too stupid or too hopeless to end up anywhere else. This isn't a fucking adventure for us. It's a last resort.

Corin was thinking, Teleporting makes me really sick. He was also thinking, I know bullshit when I see it. And this right here isn't just bullshit. It's kodo shit, a lot of it, and it stinks to high heaven. Then he thought, What am I going to do about Amelline? and crushed the thought so fast that the aggressive silence in his head rattled his teeth.

At last, a light. Elloria breathed a rough sigh through her nose and asked, "Are you staying, or… or going?"

Corin pursed his lips and shook his head. "I really don't know, Lori." He ran a hand through his long blond hair and shrugged. "I'm no damned scientist, and a couple hundred years of being a mercenary kicks the curiosity right out of you, sure enough. Tried and true'll see you through, that's my motto." His gaze floated anxiously towards the black portal, still standing stark in the center of the camp. In a quieter voice, he added, "And I'm old. Could be they're right and our salvation lies with the Void, but I don't like it and I never will. Period, end. I were paid to guard 'em and to sit outside and do the real fighting while they tinkered, not to be a damned mana wyrm."

"Mm." Elloria's gaze was trained on the portal as well. The blackness in the middle seemed to swirl and shift, seemed to contain, if such a thing were possible, different shades of black. She was constantly aware of its presence these days, keeping it always in her peripheral vision like an ex-lover across the room.

She realized Corin was staring at her. There was a strange, defeated look in his eyes that she didn't understand. But a second after her eyes connected with his, his face split into his usual sardonic grin. "Well. On the other hand, nowhere else to go, eh?"

"Right," said Elloria absently, her eyes drifting back towards the portal. "Nowhere else to go."

#

Some years ago she'd had this friend. A fellow skulker, one of the shadow people of Quel'Thalas, just like her. Celeste had also been a rogue, good enough to get noticed by Zelanis himself. Even though only idiots thought Zelanis the true king of Silvermoon's underworld, you couldn't deny his skill with blending into the shadows, mixing poisons. And then one day Celeste had started looking strange. Her eyes always seemed to be looking elsewhere, to a point far in the middle distance. Not like she was searching, but like she'd found something.

She'd started swearing less and drinking less. Elloria had asked her about it one day, and Celeste had said, "I don't know. I just… I feel like I've been called." Elloria had asked, "Called where? By what?" And Celeste had shrugged.

Some days after that conversation, Celeste made the pilgrimage to Quel'Danas. While she was there, she applied to become an acolyte at the temple there, and been accepted. She became a priestess, a front-lines healer of no small renown.

Elloria had been taught that the Light could call you at any time, at any stage of life, even if your faith had previously been weak, even if the last time you'd set foot in a church or a temple had been your naming day. Supposedly the Light could call you and then that was it: everyone else you'd been, everything else you'd wanted, just melted away in the face of its brilliance. Until she'd seen it happen to Celeste, she'd never believed it. People don't just flip on a copper piece that way, she'd said. People are who they are. It's all a bunch of wonky nonsense the priests say to get us to respect them, so we think they know something we don't. But then she'd seen it, seen the way her friend had been there, struggling with her, surviving day to day, and then suddenly had gone somewhere utterly else. It was eerie, but she supposed it had to be respected. After all, the Light was good, right? It was The Good. So of course it didn't matter if it yanked you away from yourself. That was all right and proper, yeah?

It had never occurred to her that you could also be called by something else.