Disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft or any of
the stuff associated with it. In fact, my priest isn't even named
Kera, so any familiar names are purely coincidental.
Chapter 1 - Prologue
Kera shivered as she pulled her ragged brown cloak tightly around her and squinted into the snow that now stung her cheeks and forehead. Her dark blue hair, which she had desperately been struggling to keep underneath the cloak, was covered in small white crystals, and the hair that had not been frozen together into large dark-blue icicles was flailing out behind her as she pushed into the malicious white wind that threatened to freeze her where she sat. Below, snow crushed underneath her elegant frostsaber's paws as it sprinted further and further without as much as a moan of complaint to its determined master. Like its rider's hair, its meticulously-groomed fur was frozen in clumps, and its deep black stripes looked gray under their blanket of snow. However, despite the aching numbness of its paws and the feel of ice touching its skin through its thick coat, it was just as determined as its rider to move onward.
Through the air before her, dense with snowflakes plummeting to the earth, Kera managed to make out a small rock formation. She smiled inwardly and buried her icy fingers in her frostsaber's mane. It immediately spotted the place she was aiming for, and its pace steadily increased. Kera leaned forward, desperate to stay as warm as possible and at the same time to keep her mount safe from the snow that was now bombarding her face with even greater force, filling her nerves with searing pain. This was of no importance to her. She had a promise she needed to keep. If she valued her own life over that promise, she would have died back there at the Undercity gates, at the threshold of despair and euphoria...
She leaned forward against her frostsaber's back and tears flowed out of her eyes, and her icy flesh cried out as they trickled from her eyes, down her cheeks, and into her frostsaber's fur. Then, as though a savage orc had just charged into her mount's left flank, the frostsaber's legs gave way and she immediately felt the rush of movement beneath her that she had become so accustomed to. For that moment, her heart lurched, everything seemed to move in slow motion, and she watched and felt with despair as she was thrown from the back of the magnificent creature that had been carrying her. She was falling.
She watched through frozen, blurry eyes as her beautiful frostsaber slid a few feet forward in the deep snow on its sides, chancing a glance back at her as she continued falling. Then, with a soft thud, she fell helplessly into a bed of light, puffy snow and continued rolling, unable to help it due to the velocity at which she had been thrust from the creature's back. When she had finally stopped moving, she looked upwards through her tears, through the snow to the vast gray-blue sky and blinked a few times to clear her eyes. She was in excruciating pain, and she could not move her right arm out from under her. Her staff had gotten tangled up inside of her cloak in the chaos and was jabbing into the back of her right leg, right through the precious white robes that she had made, the robes which they had collected the legendary materials for, that he had regarded her in with so much love and compassion when she had made the last few stitches...
When she fell, she realized, she had landed first on her head. Now it was throbbing with undeniable pain and she bit her tongue, trying to suppress a scream. While she could cry out for help, she knew that the next town was many miles away, and even if someone had been camping within range of her desperate shouts it might be one of them. She blinked a few times and sighed, scanning the snow a moment for her frostsaber. She could feel her own scarlet blood seeping into the fabric of her robes, and she could taste bitter, salty blood filling her mouth as she lay there, gazing at her surroundings in a daze. She attempted to move her left arm and found that she could move it, though with an incredible amount of pain. Slowly, she slid it under her cloak and delicately pulled out a long parcel in brown cloth that she had unfortunately landed on. She placed it on the snow before her and gently unwrapped it, and, upon examining the contents, smiled and wrapped it up again, holding it tightly to her chest.
Her head was dizzy from the impact, but she decided that she had might as well try to get up a little bit, at least so she could find her frostsaber and repair the damage that she had obtained from the fall. However, she found upon the painful effort of sitting up that she could not, and, as she exerted herself further, that the blow to her head was growing worse and worse in magnitude. Snow and night blended together in a waltz of death and solitude as her eyes closed, and she fell to the ground in a swish of brown and white cloth.
As she slowly faded away, the last thing she saw was a human's face, his brown hair falling gently around his eyes, and in the back it was draped into a ponytail that draped over his neck. His hands were gently holding one of hers and his blue eyes were looking into her glowing elf's eyes with utmost concern. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Only one thing, an oath that she had made long ago, repeated over and over in her mind as she was pulled toward the dark void by Death's long, white fingers.
"Someday I'll come back," the voice whispered. She was too delirious to recognize that it was her own, "and when that day comes, Azeroth will open up its windows to all those who fought and shower them with praise and admiration that they rightfully deserve. And when that day comes there will be no 'horde' and no 'alliance'...just a world in which we can both find happiness."