III. Lion's Pride Inn
It was dark, and her head was hurting. It was cold. She raised a careful hand to the back of her head and felt something liquid. Not a good sign. It was so black in here that she could not see. She tried to drag herself to a sitting position and slumped back down, the pain drowning her senses. The pain ricocheted between sharp and dull and all-consuming. She was confused and tired and hurting just, so much and she wanted to cry.
And now there were footsteps coming from somewhere outside. Her hand went to her hip and she could not feel her daggers or their sheaths. Paralyzed with fear and frustration, she waited.
"Oh, Elloria. You fell through the bed again. Just a moment—"
The voice had been familiar.
#
She woke up again. She remembered that the last time she'd touched her head, she had felt something that was probably blood. She tried to sit up.
Someone she could not see appeared from somewhere and felt her forehead. The hands were cool. Very cool, like they had just been in the cold. "Sleep now." She did.
#
Again it was dark. Had she gone blind? She waved her hand in front of her face and she could see the movement, just barely, so no, she had not gone blind. Once again she tried to sit up. Pain, and dark, and silence.
#
She could hear voices.
"Is she going to wake up?"
"Magister Lightblood, we're doing all we can. Her… previous exposure to the Void took a toll. Her… change… was further along."
"Well, just, keep working, okay?"
The air moved, and someone took her hand. "I miss you."
#
Her body didn't feel right. Ache after ache. She tried to shift position but she felt herself changing. She tried to look over and saw her hand passing through the bed into the mattress in the blue moonlight. It was impossible, she was dreaming. She withdrew her hand, then tried to grab the mattress again, only to have her hand pass through. Oh god. Oh god.
She panicked and she began to fall. Her head cracked against the floor and she lost consciousness.
#
She woke up. The first thing she saw was the ceiling, which felt anticlimactic. The light in the room was warm. She was in a bed and the sheets were cool. Nice.
First she tried to move her arms. She ran them along the sheets, and when this did not bring a terrible surge of pain with it, she decided to try sitting up. Slowly, she started to slide up the head of the bed. Her muscles felt weak and creaky.
She was almost upright when the door opened. It revealed—well, not much. The person who was now walking into this room was wearing a capacious grey cloak with a long hood that concealed their features. Her hand went to her hip again, and again she felt nothing but cloth, but the person suddenly stopped and cried, "Elloria!"
Before she could react, the grey cloak rushed toward her and enveloped her in a hug. She began to struggle, but there was something she recognized in that strange, echoing voice. She could smell the familiar scent of old books and that horrible cologne Cyranos used—"Cyranos?" she asked, her voice hoarse and small.
"Yes!"
"Cyranos." She dragged him closer and hugged him tight. It felt like it had been ages since she'd spoken to another person, trapped for so long in that world of impenetrable blackness, impenetrable pain. She whispered, "Cyranos, what happened to us? Why was I hurting so much?"
He looked pained. "All I can say for now is that everything is—all right, Elloria. You are safe and you are getting better."
Elloria nodded weakly and pulled away from their embrace to rub at her mucky eyes. "How—how long? How long was I… sick?"
"You have been semiconscious for a week," he said gravely. But his expression shifted rapidly to one of joy and he added, "But you are awake now, which is wonderful because I have decided that I love you! We must get you some food, see if you can keep something solid down—"
Elloria put up a hand. "Wait, wait, wait. Stop. You have… decided that you love me?"
Cyranos nodded excitedly. "Yes!"
At a loss, Elloria closed her eyes and started to massage her temples. "Okay," she breathed. "You love me. Cyranos, has it occurred to you that that is not the kind of thing people just kind of say outta nowhere?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. I only ever said it to my parents, and there did not seem to be any special time for such words."
"Right," said Elloria, trying to be gentle, feeling slightly insane, "but I am not your parents, Cyranos. So it's not really clear, when you say that, what kind of love you mean."
"Okay…" he said in an expectant tone, urging her to continue explaining.
Elloria took a calming breath and continued, "Do you love me in a—a romantic way? Or just, like, in a friendship way?"
Cyranos tapped his chin thoughtfully beneath the hood of the cloak. "I'm not sure. Perhaps there is something of both in my love for you. I wish always to be near you, and I believe there is very little I would not do to ensure your happiness. But romantic love is possessive usually, is it not? I don't feel possessive of you."
Okay. Good start, Elloria thought, but what I really want to know is if he's sitting there having... thoughts... about me. She found it hard to imagine Cyranos doing such a thing—she had never heard him even make reference to desiring someone—but you just never could tell with men. She opened her mouth to continue, but he continued speaking, adding, "But I do feel protective of you. I was very frightened when it seemed like you might die. I even changed your bedpan. So—"
Pushing past the horrifying thought that she'd had a bedpan, and that this man that she had known for all of two weeks had been responsible for changing it, Elloria finally blurted out, "Do you want to have sex with me, Cyranos?"
He blinked at her, slightly bemused. "Uh, no."
Elloria closed her eyes, breathing a sigh of relief. "Good. That's all I wanted to know."
He shook his head and said fondly, "You are so strange." Then he clapped his hands and added, "Food. I will fetch you some soup! They have this delightful one made out of peanuts downstairs, I'm sure that will make you feel so much better!" He darted abruptly out of the room, presumably to go and fetch the delightful soup.
It did not occur to her until much later that there was something wrong about his voice, and that beneath his hood, the glow of his eyes appeared blue instead of green.
#
It was sometime in the small hours of the morning and Elloria woke with a mighty need to piss. She stumbled over to the en-suite lavatory (an indoor bathroom! Had she ever seen such luxury?) and did her business without even turning the light on, navigating by the rich shadows and moonlight so as not to sting her eyes. Looked like a bright night, she noticed. The moonlight made her skin look bluish.
She finished up and she couldn't find the hand soap after pawing around for a good few minutes, so she snapped her fingers. At any inn in Quel'Thalas, this would have alerted a magical signal to light any lamps in the room. But this time it didn't work. So, she thought, we're not in Quel'Thalas. It was an unlikely possibility, seeing as how none of them appeared to be in prison, but Cyranos had not actually mentioned where they were. He hadn't really told her much about what had happened at all, claiming that the healer had told him, "If you get her thinking about anything other than soup for at least the next several hours, I will personally tear your throat out." "And," he'd added gravely, "I don't think that it was one of those play-threats you like to do."
She finally noticed a gas lamp on a little shelf to the left of the sink, and turned its little switch. She washed her hands and rubbed her face once her hands were clean. As she finished and looked up at the mirror, she stopped cold.
Her skin was purple. Like she had bruised every inch of herself. Her hair, which had been mousy brown, was now a medium blue so intense it stung her eyes. And her eyes… her eyes, which had borne the fel taint of the sin'dorei, now glowed blue instead of green. It had taken her a full minute to recognize her own face in the mirror. Shocked, she stroked a hand against her cheek. The image in the mirror did the same in reverse.
Perhaps this first inkling of the profound changes her time on Telogrus had wrought should have brought something eloquent and profound to her lips. But at bottom, Elloria was just a little thief from the slums, so she said in a shaky voice, "My fucking hair is blue. My fucking hair is blue." Panicking, she jerked away from the mirror and dashed out the lavvy door. She yelled, "Cyranos? Cyranos!" When no answer from her friend seemed forthcoming, she ran out into the hall, head lashing wildly back and forth for a few long seconds until she realized she had no idea where Cyranos's room was. Deciding she would just knock at every door until she found the right one, she dashed up to the door next to her own and rapped hard against the wood, yelling, "Cyranos! Cyranos, are you—"
And then her body dematerialized, and she fell through the door.
#
"Hallenwhatthefuck?"
Still woozy from her sojourn out of incorporeality, Elloria blinked up into a scandalized blue face. After another few confused moments, she recognized the face of Dalrend Brighthammer in the strange blue skin and violet hair. She coughed, noted that he did not appear to be wearing a shirt, and said, "Brighthammer, I'm really sorry, I—"
He took a big breath and said, "I know what happened. I was just surprised." He rubbed his forehead and added, "I didn't know you were… awake, yet."
Elloria crawled into a sitting position, drawing her knees to her chest, and said, "Well, I'm glad you know what happened, because I sure as shit don't." Unable to contain herself, she blurted out, "I just woke up yesterday and I have no idea what's going on and I am really, really fucking scared."
Brighthammer looked down at her for a moment, his expression unreadable. Elloria looked back up at him, more than faintly horrified that she had confided this way in Brighthammer of all people. Then he sighed and said, "We'll start with some water."
#
It was like this. The magisters had been working on that puzzle-box that Cyranos had shown her when they sensed someone passing through to Telogrus. It had turned out to be Lady Alleria Windrunner and a hero of the Alliance, some little human witch, that she'd suckered into following her around the Ghostlands as she searched for Umbric and his ship of fools. Excited to have among them both the mortal who currently knew the most about the Void and arguably Quel'Thalas's greatest living hero (a designation which carefully skirted the issue of Alleria's younger sister, current Warchief of the Horde) in the person of Lady Windrunner, Umbric had ushered her over to the box to show off their work. The surge of power provided by Alleria's nearness and Umbric and the magisters' efforts had released the entity which had been bound by the box. And upon being freed, the entity had immediately begun to tear everyone's souls from their bodies, attempting to turn them into Void remnants like himself: incorporeal always-hungering beings who existed to destroy all life.
Alleria and the human had managed to stop the transformation from being completed, but they had been too late to reverse it entirely. The Void had left them some, and it had taken much from them: it had given them the ability to walk through walls without the ability to control when they dematerialized into Void energies. Alleria Windrunner had promised them knowledge and control of these strange new abilities, in return for which they, the "ren'dorei," would agree to use them in service of the Alliance. "Which," Dalrend finished, "leaves us as these strange mongrels. Not quite elves, not quite creatures of the Void. Definitely not members of the Horde anymore, tolerated among the Alliance only on sufferance. Something more than sin'dorei, and a great deal less."
Elloria was quiet for a long moment. In the course of telling his tale, Dalrend had come and sit on the floor with her, leaning against the edge of his bed while she leaned on the door. She didn't notice that somehow over the course of their conversation their feet had moved from being almost a foot apart to barely an inch apart. She was aware that this was still the man who'd killed his former brethren for a spear, but honestly, she needed comfort so badly that she didn't totally care who it came from. And Dalrend was being patient with her, albeit in a kind of distant way. He refilled her water and answered her questions as best he could in a calm, carefully neutral voice, even joking with her a little to try to ease her tension, which he did now, adding with a grin, "And a lot of us have blue hair now."
She reluctantly smiled back, picking up a piece of her own hair and waving it whimsically at him.
He raised a wry brow and said, "For what it's worth, that shade of blue does look rather fetching on you."
Elloria raised a brow of her own and replied, "It's worth nothing, since I didn't ask you to comment on my appearance." She made a show of tapping her chin thoughtfully and finished, "And purple really is not your color."
"Point taken, cutpurse," he said, a shade disgruntled, like he was trying to take the joke but her words had gotten too far under his skin.
Speaking of jokes that got too far under one's skin: "I really wish you'd stop calling me that, Brighthammer. Should I start calling you 'Beastfucker'?"
Dalrend snorted, tense expression dissipating. "Like to see you try to make it stick."
Elloria snickered. "Think I won't, Beastfucker? Because I will, Beastfucker."
He waved a hand dismissively. "It doesn't roll off the tongue. Poor cadence. It'll never catch on."
"Fair point." Silence descended between them again as Elloria found the question she'd been avoiding and considered whether she wanted to ask it. In a slightly strained forced-casual voice, she asked, "Did everyone survive the change?"
Dalrend's face abruptly lost its expression of wry good humor. "No." He sighed. "Flameblade is dead. The Light magic in her body decided she was better dead than Void. Some of the magisters. All of the mercenaries who were guarding the portal on the other side."
Elloria's hand flew to her mouth and tears sprung to her eyes. "Then—Corin—?"
He nodded once, gravely. "Yes."
Elloria bit back a sob. "Oh, Corin. Oh god."
"I know," Dalrend said simply.
"But, listen, I mean, he could have escaped—he wasn't stupid, maybe he even left camp—"
But Dalrend was shaking his head. "They found bodies, Hallen. I'm sorry."
She wanted to hit something. She wanted to scream, but her voice was still hoarse. So she settled for saying, in a small, hard voice, "I hate this."
Dalrend shrugged. "It is what it is. We're here now, not much we can do about it for the time being. Lightblood says that once we're all better we'll go back to Telogrus. Lady Windrunner will teach us." He looked at her uncomfortably and added, "Things will… be all right, Hallen. For now, you should sleep. Heal."
Having no other real choice, Elloria stood, her legs shaky. "Okay. Okay." She turned towards the door and sighed, her hand on the handle. "And… thank you for this."
"Of course." There was some emotion rippling under his words that she couldn't place, but it wasn't as though that was anything particularly new. The man always had some kind of brood going. She left and before she knew it she was in bed, waiting for sleep to descend on her. At least its darkness was familiar.
#
A week after she woke up, Elloria was feeling antsy. She wandered the hall of the inn's upper floor looking for Cyranos, but he seemed to be out. She stopped in front of Dalrend's door with a sigh. Well. He might be a snobbish morally suspect ranger who called her names, but he had been nice when she was freaking out. Probably because he thought she needed him and he was getting off from it, but nonetheless. Having lived a life that did not offer terribly many opportunities for it, she believed in gratitude. She knocked.
The door swung open, revealing one blue-glowing eye. Elloria felt herself start. She still wasn't used to their new appearances. "Hallen? What do you want?"
Elloria shrugged. "Stretch my legs. See what passes for a town among the Alliance dogs."
Dalrend rolled his eyes and opened the door completely so that he could lean on the frame. "Okay, Hallen, two things. First, I'm pretty sure your Common is at the very least a little… rusty? And second, they're not letting us leave."
Annoyed, Elloria shoved at the door, causing Brighthammer to lose his balance for a moment and glare at her. "They who, Brighthammer? Anyway I'm not saying we gotta talk to them or anything. I just wanna walk."
"They the humans, Hallen. Our presence here is classified."
Elloria folded her arms and raised a defiant eyebrow. "Fuck do I care about classified? And who's gonna stop me?"
Dalrend jerked a finger past her shoulder with a pointed look. Following his gaze, Elloria turned and saw something move in the shadows. Narrowing her eyes, Elloria entered stealth. Her vision of the shadows enhanced, but she didn't need sight to know that another was hidden with her. She crept closer to the stairs, where she sensed the presence. Even if it was another rogue there, if she got close enough, she would be able to see him, if only briefly. The challenge was to get close enough to see without being seen herself.
She thought she saw something shift. A muscle move, or a hair slide out of place. She moved quicker now through the shadow realm—
"Fuck's sake, Hallen, what are you thinking?" Dalrend hissed, snatching the edge of her shirt.
"Ow!" She twisted herself out of his grasp and demanded, "How'd you see me?" kill him kill him kill him insolent he is a murderer—
"I'm a ranger-captain of Quel'Thalas, idiot. I watched you go into stealth and all I had to do was keep watching you. But that's not the point!" He yanked her close again so his mouth was to her ear and growled, "If you try anything with their guard, you risk getting us all killed! What are they gonna think? We were Horde a week ago. We are here on extreme sufferance. Most humans worship the Light, do you think they're happy having a bunch of void-addled sin'dorei about the place?"
killhimkillhim take his power for your own "I thought you said they didn't know we were here—"
He shook her a little and snapped, "The ones who do know, you ridiculous girl! Including, by the way, that guard."
"You stop shaking me," she growled back, and whirled out of his grip once again. Insolent She rubbed her arm, which ached where he'd grabbed it. he is vile he is a betrayer kill him now and end his threat "Wasn't gonna do anything," she added sullenly. kill him
Dalrend rolled his eyes. "Oh of course not. I'm sure you were just going to politely ask the gentleman where the nearest powder room is, right?"
join us do not fight She shoved him again and muttered, "I know where the damn lavvy is, Brighthammer."
Whoever had been watching them materialized out of the shadows, revealing a youngish fair-haired human with an eyepatch. He looked between the two of them and asked, "Is there a problem here?" in surprisingly fluent Thalassian.
Elloria turned the most unconvincing smile in recorded history on the human and shook her head. "Oh of course not, thanks for checking in!" she said in a bright voice. "The Captain and I were just having a friendly little discussion."
The human looked at her dubiously. Actually, not just dubiously… there was real fear in his eyes. "Okay, well, just… keep a lid on it, all right?"
"Of course, sir," Dalrend answered smoothly, dragging Elloria into his room. "The young lady and I will sort ourselves out."
As he shut the door behind them Elloria was ready to kill him claw his kill him drink his power take it for your own we will guide you face off kill him. "What the fuck? Where the hell do you get off, Brighthammer—"
He clapped his hands down on her shoulders, hard. "Hallen. Hallen. Elloria. Listen." He yanked one of her hands and put it in front of her face. Her hand was glowing black-violet with Void energies. As was the rest of her. "Oh," she said dully. As she watched, her Voidform dissipated, her skin returning to its now-normal violet. The voices ordering her to kill Brighthammer faded, becoming a mere mutter on the edge of her consciousness. Dalrend let her go and sighed. "Elloria, we don't understand these powers that well, but we know they respond to our emotions. When you are angry or tired or threatened, the Void takes you over. It empowers you, but it also makes you more susceptible to the whispers."
Elloria nodded, shaking a little. "I—heard—it told me to—"
Dalrend's glare melted and he rubbed her shoulder. "I know."
She hugged herself. "It wasn't ever like that before. I could hear them but it wasn't ever, ever like that."
"I know." He sighed. "Also, I dragged you in here because I had an idea. If you're feeling that stir-crazy, maybe we could spar. That should let both of us work off some energy."
Elloria looked up at him and smiled grimly. "Sounds good. Especially 'cause I really wanna hit something right now."
#
"Holy shit," Elloria wheezed. She hauled herself off the floor and avoided Dalrend's smug gaze. Her whole body was sore. She wandered over to his lavvy and turned on the sink, letting the water pool in her cupped hands. "Fuck they teach you at those farstrider enclaves?"
"How to fight," said Dalrend, a smirk in his voice. "I will admit I threw in a few extra moves I learned in the field. And that a few of your little bar-fight moves caught me off-guard."
"How do you know and why do you assume that I learned those moves in bar fights?" asked Elloria, splashing water on her face.
Brighthammer laughed. "Just figured that temper of yours would have gotten you in some trouble a time or two."
"Temper? What temper?" said Elloria in a singsong voice. "I am a perfectly equanimitous… person," she finished lamely, sauntering out of the bathroom.
"Right," said Dalrend, raising an amused brow at her, "and do you know that almost every time I've touched you, you've tried to hit me?"
Elloria flinched. "You'd strike first too if you'd spent your time in the company I've done," she muttered darkly. Answering the question she saw in his face, she added, "Look, bloodthistle fiends and mana addicts are not exactly the most reliable people, nor are they particularly good at keeping their hands to themselves."
"Right. And who was it who was selling them the drugs in the first place?" Dalrend replied, his voice light.
"Excuse me?" Elloria marched right up to Dalrend, radiating anger. "You got some kind of point you wanna make?"
Dalrend shrugged, his face carefully neutral. "Just that one should take responsibility for one's actions."
"I'm sorry, what? I do, Brighthammer, believe me. What the hell was I supposed to do? Starve?" Her eyes narrowed to slits and she murmured, "And what about you, eh? Nobody knows your story. What'd you do to get settled with Umbric and his lot, hmm?"
Rage spasmed across his features, but it was soon replace with a sarcastic rictus. "You really want to know, Elloria?"
"Yes!" she hissed. "Since you're so keen to judge, let's see your dirty laundry!"
"Fine. I was at Theramore." Elloria paused, wrong-footed. The name sounded familiar, but, well, before she'd left for the expedition, she hadn't really followed the news. Anything that happened outside of Quel'Thalas usually escaped her notice, to put it lightly. Seeing her confusion, Dalrend heaved a disgusted sigh and said, "I helped Garrosh Hellscream drop a mana bomb on a city full of innocents." Elloria didn't move, still trying to process his words. They wouldn't fit in her head. Dalrend's face changed. She thought she caught a fleeting expression of—hurt? Grief? Offense?—before it twisted into a mask of sinister pride. He grinned hauntingly at her and he said, "I spied for the Warchief. I mapped the isle's defenses. When the time came to kill, I helped to spirit Thalen Songweaver, who created the bomb, onto a goblin vessel. We stabilized the bomb and then we flew over Theramore and we dropped it. We killed thousands." He leaned in close, an eerie light in his eyes. "And you know what? I regret none of it. I—"
Elloria slapped him. They stared at each other in silence for a long moment. Finally she said, "I don't think that's true, Brighthammer, that you don't regret it, but you're a creep for saying it anyway."
Now he was furious, his nostrils actually flaring. "I don't! And I paid for it, oh yes, I paid. The Regency actually put me on trial. I had to go and justify serving the Warchief to Lor'themar Theron. My career—"
Elloria closed her eyes and said, very deliberately, "I'm not surprised, Dalrend. And I don't blame you. You're a coward. You don't have the spine or the balls to defy Garrosh Hellscream." Then she turned around and left the room.
#
"Elloria, you must take more care," said Cyranos, munching on his slice of brie. He had returned from Telogrus, as it happened, and brought her some Stormwind brie to share. Still unsettled, she'd related the tense moment between herself and Dalrend.
"I know, I know," she moaned, "I know, but it's just—sometimes I think I could almost, like, tolerate him, and then he goes and says something nasty, and—!" she threw her hands in the air.
Cyranos shook his head. "No, sincerely, Elloria. If either of you loses control for just a moment too long—and that is likely, given that neither of you has had much training—you risk not only your own lives, but the lives all around you." He popped the rest of the cheese into his mouth, steepled his fingers, and stared at her thoughtfully for a long moment. "In fact, I think it may be time for both of you to return to Telogrus."
Quietly, Elloria asked, "And what will happen when we get there?"
Cyranos smiled beatifically. "The best thing. You'll learn."