II
"No matter how high the wall, knowledge will always be your window to the world," is what father used to say. The house would always smell of books. Old and new alike, filling the shelves top to bottom. It was a small library, compared to the one he worked at, but it almost seemed the man was never not at work. And the house was always so quiet. So very quiet. Deathly so, especially after mother... wasn't there any more. With her, there was at least some warmth, as if the crackle of the hearth was louder, and the embers in it more fiery and vibrant in colour. Without her everything turned colder, sadder, and more quiet. Father, too.
Being virtually alone became a natural state of mind for her. Loudness was distracting and irritating. Sometimes to the point, where even her peers at school reminded her of a bunch of raving apes, while they were simply energetic Gilnean children, enjoying one of those rare, clear days, playing outside the school grounds during the lunch break.
It was an odd memory, she thought to herself, gazing at the waves crashing on the shore. The part of her that still held on to hope and life needed that moment of reflection, the quiet contemplation of nature's beauty, of life's roundabout order. It was like a breath one would take before diving, and in that situation, it was rather understandable. The beach housed a wreckage of a large Kul Tiran ship. She wasn't sure whether it was a galleon or a man-o'-war, as the navy and its peculiarities were never particularly interesting to her.
What was important, was that the vessel had been big enough to make quite a literal and metaphorical impact when crashing during an ill-fated storm. The damage opened up a cave, perhaps even a system of caves beneath the old, abandoned monastery of the Tidesages. Whether the two were connected in terms of causality was unknown, but the local farmers were reluctant to talk about the place as anything else than where the cursed wind howls. Poetic, she had thought.
The hull of the ship was old, damp, and darkened, at least from the outside. A tapestry of barnacles adorned the rotting board as if it were a negative of a blank canvas, creating something of an abstract landscape, with starfish where stars shouldn't be, at least if one was to follow the logic of child-like paintings. Stars were up, grass was down, the sun was a fragment of a radius tucked away in the corner of the parchment. Well, not at the same time as the stars, obviously.
It was another odd memory. Drawing. Glancing whether mother was looking. She'd always smile and nod, pat her head. Her hands were always soft, and her blue gaze patient and loving. And sad. Distant, but in a way she didn't want little Aly to see. Father never looked at her pictures. Especially after Mother was gone. But even at that moment, more than two decades after her death, she still couldn't understand what was the demon that pushed her mother that far. Far enough to find herself on the other side of the rope. She wasn't a soldier, she wasn't even subjected to the horrors of the Cataclysm, the Worgen tearing the city apart... What was it? No matter how familiar the sensation of poorly concealed sadness was to her, instead of bringing her closer to the ghost of her mother, it would sow dissent instead, even if they had no way of arguing about their suffering in any way. Soon, perhaps, but not just yet.
For now, the wreckage, and what had been hiding below were waiting on her. There was no time to waste, as the low tide would likely make it accessible enough to enter... but once in the tunnels, she'd either have to drown, find a pocket of air, or wait out the high tide to get out again. It was the only hint she had on the shadowy presence that had been haunting her for way too long.
A long, gnarled purple finger, with an equally uncultured sharp, jagged nail. It was beckoning her from the darkness. It promised a reckoning. It promised relief. It wanted her to come north, to the very last shores of Stormsong Valley. It felt like a pilgrimage of sort. An ironic farewell, as she walked through the rolling plains, recovering from Horde bombs and fire, once again able to grow food and flowers alike. She decided to not take a horse with her. It would have been cruel for the poor animal to await her return, and the probability of it waiting until starvation or a predator came first was not something she wanted to entertain. After all, a horse could not be held responsible for her nightmares, for the morbid curiosity of all things shadowy, forbidden, and draining one's sanity.
But she had sworn. To herself, to rid the world of as many of those as she could, to the best of her ability. She was no hero of legend, capable of using artefacts of old to slay gods and titans alike. She had a salt-stained long-coat, two enchanted daggers of elven make, and her unreliable wits to guide her through. Oh, and a lamp. The lamp was a big help.
Whatever was left of the wreckage was either flushed out into the sea by the high tide or had been meticulously plundered by the local scavengers. The inside of the overturned hull was like an empty husk. The low tide started some time ago... but not that long for the air inside to feel heavy, warm... and dry. Perhaps it was a testament to the Kul Tiran art of shipbuilding in all its glory, but it didn't stop an unpleasant shiver from running down her spine. She could hear her own snarl, almost getting startled at how unexpectedly it came from her throat. Her own instinct was warning her. She looked over her shoulder at the opening in the hull. Judging from the colour of the sky, the sun was almost laid to rest for the day. It made her stop and gaze at the darkening horizon. If she went further down, would she ever see the sun again? She had to find out. She had to know. She had to. What was the point of looking at the sun, if there was no respite from the nightmares that kept plaguing her? She bid the sky goodbye with a brief smile. A dorky gesture, for sure, but there was no other face around to exchange pleasantries with.
The empty hull was, quite fortunately for the intrepid explorer, embedded into the foundation of the monastery at a gentle angle, making the descent safe, for the time being. She moved quietly, her training adjusting the steps before she could even consciously think about how to put her feet forward. She decided to put off the shifting for as long as she could, especially if the passages were small and winding, easier to slip through in her human form. Perhaps there was a grain of truth in what her father had said to her, all those years ago. But he was mistaken about one tiny detail. Knowledge was a trapdoor. Or an old, brittle board. A wrong step could lead to a painful fall. A fall into a deep, dark place where hoping for the presence of a window was a laughable display of naivete.
She knelt down by the trapdoor and set her lamp on the oddly dry floor next to her. Her ears perked up, making her tilt her head to the side as she put her head to the ground, but not directly on the hinged, moving part that could easily be used from the other side to bludgeon her. Skittering. Clattering. Another shiver ran down her spine. Still kneeling, she drew one of her daggers, a beautifully made, slightly jagged, silver and blue blade with a dark red handle. It always made her feel just that tiny bit more at ease. She was so used to them that they truly felt like extensions of her hands, or claws, depending on the situation.
With a blade in one hand, she slowly began lifting the trapdoor, expecting a horror to reach out from it and try grabbing her the moment she gave it even a tiny bit of quarter. Yet no such thing took place. Alystoria frowned and retrieved a rather large crab from underneath the wooden hatch. It looked lost, the pincers moved slowly, as if the animal was weakened, hungry maybe. The woman set it to the side and shooed it away in the direction of the hole in the hull, "Go, go before whatever lurks down there turns you into an unholy mass of tentacles or something..." she hummed, taking a moment to watch the crab depart in the desired direction, clicking and clacking as it moved sideways towards the dying light. It was probably smarter than her in taking that direction, and that was a thought that made her frown deeply.
She stabbed the sand collected underneath the trapdoor a few times, it quickly gave way under the blows and began to flow down and away from the hatch in a smooth avalanche, creating an opening she could move through to explore it further. She sheathed her blade and grabbed the lamp, readying herself to close the hatch behind her – leaving it open would only invite the tide in... and that would probably only complicate things. Trap her here horribly, for example.
There were pieces of wood scattered all over. What used to be the ceiling of one deck upper from the bottom one – her point of entry, had now become the floor. It was riddled with iron hooks for lamps, she had to mind her step. Broken barrels, chests... She wondered, why was this level so full of items seemingly untouched since the time of the crash?
The scent of decay lingered in the air. Numerous fish bones were a clear hint as to at least one of its sources. Since the locals were extremely unhelpful in providing any details on the history of the wreckage, it could have been older than her, or quite the contrary. It wasn't bad enough that a mainlander was asking. She kept asking about that one wreckage, making the farmers lock up in silent fear and push their hats on their eyes as they cut conversations short. Silly superstitions. Yes, of course. A Kul Tiran ship crashed into a monastery of the Tidesages, it wasn't just a disaster, it was sacrilege in the eyes of those under the dark green banner of the Admiralty... still, the entire stigma around it did not convince her. How could they know what she knew? How could they be afraid of the place if her nightmares were beckoning her there?
Then again, she found the Tidesages to be a suspicious bunch. Starting with their very finery, to the worship of the depths. They were incredibly hush-hush about everything. Hush-hush to the point where you start hearing very loud whispers of questionable content. To Alystoria, it made perfect sense that the entire cult was a convenient disguise for the worship of all things deep and eldritch. Hiding in plain sight, they called it. It didn't take a one-in-a-generation mind to figure out that the bold imagery of eyes and cephalopod limbs, with some anchors added for a bit of maritime balance. To show that civilisation still had a grip on what lurked below. Perhaps it was her oiled grip on sanity that gave her those ideas. And yet, ever since she had made Boralus her place of residence, the nightmares didn't just make her sleep a chore. They began guiding her, only lending support to the hypotheses on the true nature of the Tidesages.
The further she moved, the creakier the boards of the upturned ceiling became. Every step was a gamble, a game of potentially losing or keeping one's limb, even if she was taking the precaution of carefully poking every board with her toes and heel before deciding to put more body weight on it. Unfortunately, the boards were not known for playing fair. The floor beneath her feet ceased to exist with an echoing roar and the last thing she managed to register before losing her consciousness, was the painful thud of her body against the stone floor.