Once her world was bright. A life of joy and wonder. Songs and colors. How amazing things could be in the time of youth. Innocence. Freedom. Love. All things were taken for granted when life is fresh and new. Unstained by burdens and blood. Untouched by loss or death's cruel bone-white hands. She was born noble a half-elf to a family united under a strained marriage. Lady Aleira Farshaw of Amn. But she left home young before she turned sixteen. A stowaway on a pirate ship, one who had the fortune to be gifted with both a silver tongue to calm the Captain's ire and a sharp enough mind to aid the old quartermaster with the books. She also had a talent for magic. Not traditional in any sense. No, she wasn't blessed with a natural connection like a sorceress nor given books to study like a wizard. She attracted attention. Attention from things best left alone some might say. Azmeodel was not so bad though. He was confusing yes, protective and possessive to the extreme when he made himself known but she could never figure out just what kind of being her patron was. He never showed himself to her. He was there. A voice in her mind, calm and soothing, male. But never visible. A strong presence. Powerful and real and dark as night but not physically solid.

As time when by she went from crew to crew, loyal to her first crew the longest. They gave her the name Stormfeather. She was a light thing, as delicate as a feather but with a temper and spells as powerful as a tempest when provoked. Aleira had been sailing for years and was nineteen when she met him. Braxas was a bard, a Shantyman who joined the crew of the Bloody Dahlia, her current ship where she served as quartermaster. He wasn't like bards she had met before. Bards were charmers, flighty and whimsical. All flash and no substance, with a different love every night. Braxas was calm and composed yet his songs were passion incarnate, they came from his very soul. He wrote them himself. He took time, got to know her, and she him. Drawn together like two pieces of a puzzle, like two birds seeking safe harbor in a storm. They sought each other and they found love. Braxas was a mystery to some, passionate, traditional, and set in his ways but he loved her fiercely. It was Braxas who took a poisoned crossbow bolt aimed for her when an assassin sent by a rival warlock who objected to her patron came after her. She held her love in her arms, watched the light leave his eyes as he sang to her one final time. The color faded from the world with his last song.

Now? A singer without a voice, a song without music, words or melody. A sad thing. Nothing, pure emptiness. A void in her very being. Thats what it felt like. Death would be a mercy. But she could not claim her own life. That would be a cowrdly thing, a disgrace to the sacrifice he made for her. And for all Alera's flaws and toments she would not disgrace his memory. It was all she had left. It kept her steady and sane. It occupied her thoughts, kept her afloat when all she wanted to do was sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown. Yet she sailed on, the Bloody Dahlia's sails carrying her away each time with everyone else on board. Her crew thought she was either mad or going mad. But they didn't care. Pirates never cared as long as they got paid. As thier Quartermaster she made sure they got paid well. The Captain liked even her, most thought he pitied her. But Aleira knew the truth. Captain Velcan Bloodmane saw in her what he would one day become. It wasn't pity, not really. It was something worse. Empathy. It stung that she needed it but she did. She had not spoken to Azmeodel in months now. She needs all the comfort she could get.

Every time they made port Aleira found herself at the nearest beach like she was now, floating in the waters of the blue seas. Singing softly. His song. She was not a bard. That was him. He was the music in her world. The color. She found logic in books and numbers and could weave arcane runes, summon things with ritual magics. But she was cold, logical. He was her passion. Her fire. He was gone. And her light. Her fire. Her warmth was gone as well. It was all grey. Always grey. His song was her memory. His face. His scent. Her way to not forget. She could not forget. Her eyes would close, the water would lap against her skin as she floated there. Darkness would take her and for a moment...he was there. In the shadows behind her eyes. Her paradise is found only in darkness now. Only in dreams. A tear hits the water mixing with the salt of the sea. Unseen. Then a shadow. Passing overhead. The golden-haired half-elf, lost in her dark thoughts, her memories of a love lost does not notice the peril passing overhead. It's too late. She is taken.

Now she floats in a different kind of water. A strange sensation. Her mind swimming as much as her body. Her eyes flutter open as the prison that carries her cracks open as well...wait. What? When was she...where is she? A Mindflayer?! Yet she cannot scream. She cannot move. For all her thoughts, all her confusion the young warlock and pirate has no ability to move. Paralyzed by some powerful hold the creature has over her very mind. Orage eyes glowing with malice as they lock onto her own storm grey eyes. She is confused, paralyzed, and yet calm. Death comes for her perhaps? This does not scare her. She welcomes it. Stares the mind devouring beast dead in the eyes, letting it see her for what she is. Broken. Shattered. Half of something that will never be whole again.

"Do not fear. You shall be made whole once more. You shall be made...better." The feeling of the monster in her mind is subtle, a caress of thoughts it makes her shiver, wondering if perhaps there are fates worse than death. But she has no more time, the monsters hand opens and something is pressed gently into her left eye, she cannot see it and before she even registers what it is or what has happened. Those storm hued eyes close. Dark paradise awaits her. Once more. Yet this time feels different. More vivid. Her love's face is seen again the memory sharp and clear, his eyes ocean blue, his long hair like a raven's wing catching the sea breeze as he laughs running through the shadows singing out to her as he runs, daring her to chase him. Then he is gone, his song lingering in her mind leaving her head throbbing.

That is how she wakes.

The cold ground is nothing like Aleria has felt before. The wet slime of her watery prison runs across the surface that is unforgiving as any stone, rough and uncomfortable yet with a strange texture to it...like veins running through its very surface. Her head pounds, eyes no longer able to stay in blessed darkness as they fly open to the sight of a destroyed burning room she does not fully recognize. She rises, staggering to her feet. Dim memories fly back to her half there. Floating in the sea singing for her lost love. Floating in her prison. The Mindflayer. The voice in her head and the pain before and after it. Now this..had mindflayers taken her? Logical, or as close to logical as she will get today it seems. She walks checking her gear as she goes. Reagent pouches? Yes. Her old dagger? Yes. Worn leather armor? Yes. Braxas's token? She touches the tiny silver hourglass filled with ocean blue sapphire dust that hangs on a thin chain about her neck. It's there. Her sanity remains in place. Now she needs to get out of here. Wherever here is.

She has only just left the room and has yet to escape the smell of burning fire when she sees the corpses. Imps. Devilkin. Well, that's...not good. That is actually quite bad. Stepping over the dead imps she slips through a hole in the wall, only to find the strangest thing. She is on a flying ship! A flying ship sailing through the Hells, controlled by mindflayers that is currently being chased by Githyanki astride red dragons?! Can her day really get more strange? Or amazing. If only everything wasn't so dark. It's even darker shades of grey here...as though Hell is determined to leech even more color from her life. Sighing she leaps over a gap in the path and keeps moving. Movement from above has her going still, dagger lifted on instinct not that it would do any good. It's a Githyanki. Fully armored. With a sword almost as big as Aleira herself is. Today has just managed to get even more dangerously lethal...imagine that?