They sat in the top of the hill, overlooking the destroyed, corrupted treants. Her hair had stood on end at first, but her father insisted that any demons or fel corrupted beings wouldn't attack him, and that if they wanted to attack her, he'd sense them coming. He was virtually invisible to the atrocities summoned by the Burning Legion unless he struck first.
Once she'd suppressed her anxiety attack, she'd been able to sit next to him in the leaves, her eyes closed as she just tried to process the admittedly small piece of information. He didn't interrupt her, sitting next to her silently as she mentally tumbled through the stages of denial, acceptance and everything in between. Doubt crept into her mind, begging the question if she herself was corrupt from birth and simply didn't know it yet, and of how society would view her if she was to forever be known as a heretic's offspring.
She didn't even bother asking him if he was sure, or quizzing him about her mother to see if he was lying. She knew the truth when she saw her face in his, as much as he did from the moment he'd noticed that exact shade of emerald hair.
"How did you find me?"
Slowly, she opened her eyes to look at him, finding that he was still staring straight ahead. His hair was blue like Lilith's, but highlighted by grey starting at the roots. His horns weren't that long - not like those of the Betrayer, from what she'd read - but were obvious enough to denote him as...very different, to say the least.
When she remembered that he was waiting for an answer, she felt rude. "Lilith told me...she's still at the Oaken Glade."
His eyebrow seemed to raise from beneath the bandages where his eyes had once been. "Where is that?" he asked.
"Sorry...I mean, the Cypress Pallisades. They changed the name a while back."
Faraldor hummed as he thought to himself. "I haven't seen my niece in a century...not since the last huntress patrol swept through here."
Even if she'd known him only for a few minutes, the big question still begged Amandil to ask it. "What did you do?"
Not an ounce of suspicion radiated from him. As much of a shock as their meeting was to her, he seemed to offer his full trust already, as if he'd always been there in her life. "I killed another man, not too long before I met your mother," he replied, any remorse his voice had once held suddenly gone. "You must believe me when I say that it was necessary."
"How was it necessary?" Amandil asked, wanting so badly to believe him but not comprehending how this heret- her father could possibly justify murder.
Taking a deep breath, he began to retell what she had expected to be a much longer take than it was.
"A long time ago, I was a barrow den guard...one of the few men in our society who weren't druids. Since I wasn't sleeping in the Emerald Dream, I was quite useful as a defender who could be moved around easily. Like a pawn. But I was also unwanted for the most part, since women and men were really supposed to live separate lives back then. So I was sent to a few different places...first to where your cousin is now, but later on I was moved again.
"I began to notice something wrong in one of the rooms of the den...there was noise. As if the druid inside was waking up. I'd go check as was my job, and I found nothing for decades. Eventually I realized that he'd been corrupted, and that he was planning to destroy the entire den with the druids in it, across the long term...the Burning Legion is very patient. I tried to warn our commander, but he threatened to have me arrested for slander since I couldn't prove it. I tried to find ways to prevent the corruption from spreading...that's when I happened upon another one of my kind."
"A demon hunter?" she asked.
"Yes...not near here, much further away but still not far from Felwood. I wasn't even supposed to be that far from the den, but very little ever really happened around such places. I hadn't thought of it before, but...when I saw him, he was dying. He'd been attacked by furbolgs, and was too hurt to fight; so I asked him. I asked him, is it true that their class was understood? That they only intended to fight fel fire with fel fire? And so he gave me his glaives before he died, as well as his old grimoire...he didn't have time to teach me, but I learned on my own, albeit slowly. I thought I was skilled enough, maybe half a century later, when the corruption had possessed an entire room of the den, unseen by all and only noticeable if one spent enough time patrolling the den at all hours. Like me, and only me.
"But I hadn't been ready. I thought I was, but I was wrong. I entered his room, and tried to burn the corruption out of him, and it was too intense for me to control. I lost my eyes - as a demon hunter was supposed to anyway - and these runes were burned onto my flesh, marking me, though the horns didn't grow until later. My entire body was wounded, and the corrupted druid died in the fel fire...that WAS the proof. That was the evidence. Had he not been corrupted, he would have been wounded but alive. The demonic possession in his soul, that he'd willingly accepted, burned him to the very core.
"But nobody believed me. I'd been trying to tell them for years, but they accused me of being mad, that the druid in question had been a student of Staghelm himself, that I was the one who'd fallen to corruption and gone crazy. They dragged my good name through the mud, put up wanted posters for me that looked more like some satyr or dreadlord, and forced my family back at my ancestral village to publicly repudiate my character. Even Lilith went into hiding, since her commanding officer in this province was sympathetic toward her personally. They sent her to work at some lodge in the Pallisades instead of on patrolling the forests, essentially protecting her from the outside world. She snuck out and visited me during the daylight hours a few times, but otherwise...I've been hiding here. In this place.
"For a demon hunter wanted for murdering a noble druid in his sleep, there is no clemency. I will always be a wanted man, until I die out here. Only Lilith's visits to her crazy old uncle in the woods once a decade kept me sane...until now."
Both daughter and father fell silent, a sort of depressed silence wafting between them for a few minutes. Not for one split second did she doubt his story. She didn't know why; by all measures, he was a monster that society would tell her she should feel ashamed of. But just like she knew when a rainstorm was approaching or a wrestling match with the other women in training would end in her favor, she knew that she could believe what her father was saying. Even if he was legally a traitor, even if he was an outlaw, even if he'd made a literal pact with devils for the sake of fighting other devils, she believed him. But his situation caused her heart to sink.
Her cousin visited him once a decade...and he'd obviously been living on the lam for a very long time. Alone, in such a decrepit place, his life must have been even lonelier than guarding a barrow den had been for him.
Aware of how exposed they were, theoretically at least, she realized that there was a place where they could possibly be safer, and where she could also learn more about the man than merely what he said about himself.
"Lilith told me you have a hideout nearby...I was going to see you there. I've been trying to find you. All my life-" She cut herself off. Although she trusted him fully even after mere minutes, the reality was that he didn't know her or her temperament, and she didn't want to show weakness so early. "I mean. I've always been curious, and I came here intending to visit you."
Though he didn't smile, he hummed positively, and he obviously knew what she meant. "My treehouse isn't far from here...I'd be honored to have my only child visit me," he replied slowly, looking rather humbled as if he half expected her to just stand up and walk away after his story.
Without another word, she stood and shifted back into panther form, her robes, backpack and staff morphing into her fur due to the natural magic. The partially corrupted leaves around her paws glowed and became healed, and the runes on her father's weapons crackled as if perturbed by the presence of their opposite so close by. He laid it no mind, and held both blades in his hands, having no baldric or sheathe to keep them in.
"Keep your wits about you, and follow me exactly," he said, and this time she found it much easier to accept an order from him.
He leapt from the hill, sailing downward until he landed among the brambles without incident. Taking a deep breath, she followed, halfway expecting them to come to life and attack her. Thankfully, they didn't, and the confusing path he led her on left the two of them undisturbed as they wound their way toward the place she remembered seeing on her map.
Follow him exactly...most night elves told that to visitors, since the small groves and glades that most of them inhabited were often hidden from plain sight and difficult to locate without help from a native. Some were booby trapped, especially if there were harpies, centaur or quilboar nearby. In her father's case, however, there weren't traps so much as there was just very difficult terrain. Beyond her view in that bleaker part of the forest, she wondered if there were horrors waiting other than corrupted treants. Truly, he was a very different man from what she'd expected; never would she have imagined herself as being a descendant of someone who walked among demons.
Prior to stumbling upon his hidden watch post, she'd actually been closer than she'd thought; although the path was convoluted, it didn't lead that far away, and soon enough they'd ended up on a plateau where a certain measure of the canopy was actually below them. That plateau itself was still heavily wooded by both corrupted and pure trees and shrubs, as if the balance battled fel corruption right there. Surrounded by another glade with still water and cypress trees was a typical Kaldorei treehouse growing out of a depression in the soil. The back of it faced Felwood and led to a sheer drop into a lower part of the plateau where the water ran off; the front faced Ashenvale, and its endless hills of trees. The contrast couldn't have been sharper.
He slowed down as they neared the treehouse, and she shifted back to her normal elven form. Her lungs were a bit raw, and she wondered how her father, with greying hair, was able to outrun her even when she was in panther form. He set his dual glaives down, unlocked the rather thick door and ushered her inside before bringing his glaives in with them. The door shut with a rather heavy thud, and he locked it casually as if the security didn't seem odd or paranoid to him. Most night elves merely kept cloth tarps over the entryways of their homes; the balance of nature would dissuade passing predators from attacking their settlements, even the creepier ones like giant spiders.
Once inside, she set her backpack down, noticing the drab interior of her father's isolated dwelling. The furniture was in tact since it was naturally grown, but very rudimentary; he had a simple table on the bottom floor and no bookshelf, and the only reading material he owned appeared to be the old grimoire that he'd told her about as well as a stack of old newsletters (actual newspapers were a recent import from the outlanders) that were dated to eight years prior, likely a gift from Lilith's last visit. Goddess, her father spent all of his time here alone...during the Long Vigil, life had been monotonous as the womenfolk all patrolled the forests endlessly. How boring was it for her poor father out there with nobody?
"Come along," he told her as he started to walk up the ramp leading to the second floor. Strangely enough, his ramp was inside the house rather than winding around the tree's trunk like most night elven treehouses. "The second floor has a chair."
"I'm coming, let me just set my staff so it doesn't fall," she called after him. In truth, she'd wanted to snoop around for a bit - even a few seconds could reveal-
"By the night," she whispered to herself, feeling a bit of a tightening in her chest. On his table, next to dried fruit he'd harvested from the Ashenvale side of the border, was an old sketch pad mostly full of pictures of her mother. The thought of her introverted, domesticated mother having a romantic aspect to her life almost caused Amandil to feel a bit emo, but she bit down on it so as not to arouse her father's suspicions.
Upstairs, her father's living space appeared even more pitiful. He had two windows, one facing each of the two regions in front and in the back, and sure enough, a chair. He'd seated himself on a pile of old blankets on the floor, right in front of a closer cracked open just barely enough for her to see a dozen pairs of the same exact baggy pants. His home almost seemed like the kind of place where fun went to die.
Since he was obviously ceding the chair to her, she sat down and looked around as he remained cross legged on what appeared to be his bedroll. Here she was, knowing a little bit more about the man she'd pondered over for so long, but not that much. She felt sad for him, seeing where he lived; his materials needs were all taken care of, but it couldn't possible be a happy place. When he seemed content to remain quiet until she felt like talking, she tried to dig deeper into her past. If she'd come all that way, she'd at least stay for more than a day, and she wanted to get answers to the big questions before anything else.
"D...dad," she said for the first time in her entire life, not knowing whether to laugh or cry upon pronouncing it. "We have time, right?"
Although he was patient enough to wait for her to start, he had an answer ready. "My door is always open for you...just make sure not to attract too much attention when you pass through the region," he replied. "I've noticed an increase in patrols over the past year, including by irregular, non enlisted soldiers."
Yes, the guild. "You saw those people?" she asked incredulously.
He nodded. "I've been hiding here since before you were even born...just as the sentinels have been learning every path, I've been learning every hiding spot. I see all who pass through...I even saw you over an hour before you reached my perch."
"Well, I don't think that they'll find you...they aren't as impressive as they think they are. But if we have the time, then I have to ask: how did you meet mom? You told me how you became an outlaw, but I don't know what came after that."
As seemed to be his habit, he hummed as he thought about it, his stubbly face usually blank and unreadable. "Your mom is a...very special person," he sighed wistfully, the distortion in his voice diminishing when he was indoors for reasons unknown to her. "We only spent a few years together. Those were the best years of my life."
Fighting off the urge to coo, Amandil maintained her composure, still cautious when he didn't know her that well yet. "But you were already a wanted man by then...I know she'd been on rotation at the Oaken Glade, but how could you possibly have met her?"
"Well, I was already in the area since I knew that your cousin was here. She's really the only person I had all these years; she was my only connection to the world. I spent a good two centuries or so alone before your mom came, just receiving Lilith every decade and busying myself in work maintaining this place. I'm no druid, so I can't grow furniture or other amenities in my own; I spend almost as much time doing manual labor as the outlanders do just to maintain ths place. That was my life.
"But Vindra..." he murmured, his voice softening when he said the name in a way that made Amandil brow furrow in a mushy way. "She was so different. You know that our women aren't soft, not like the women of the Queldorei; I can see that roughness even in you. I've passed myself on to you perhaps more than she has." For a few seconds he paused as if remembering times he'd shared with her mother before continuing.
"I found her while going for a run one day, in order to stave off my boredom. She'd strayed from the village and was going for a walk, apparently to pick herbs. She had no idea how dangerous this region is, and she was...she was singing. She had a voice like an angel, and it had been so hard since I'd heard anybody singing, much less a woman who wasn't a huntress singing off key about blood and guts...I'd never seen anything like it. She was so different, almost soft, that I felt as if it was an illusion for a trickster at first. But when she made the mistake of picking an herb that was actually the eyelash of a corrupted ancient, I saw that it wasn't a front; she really was the only night elf woman I've ever seen who didn't know how to fight.
"I didn't think...I just jumped down and killed the ancient, and then realized that I'd revealed myself to an outsider. She knew what I am from the moment she saw me, yet she didn't run or report me. For her, for someone so home bound, I was the one who was different. I was an outsider, perhaps dangerous in her eyes. And...well...all you need to know is that she stayed with me, for a time. Right here in this house. Lilith knew, and only Lilith, at first.
"Eventually, the questions started. Vindra would return to the village to keep up the front, and she told me of how it was becoming difficult for her to visit. Sometimes I wouldn't see her for months at a time as we continued our affair, and Lilith came in her stead occasionally. We both knew we couldn't continue like that forever...we tried for months, and then years, and eventually you were conceived.
"I panicked...I was afraid. It was the most joyous day of my life when I heard the news, and also the scariest. The life I'd helped to bring into the world would be ostracized because of me, or even worse, I feared that you'd be at risk of infanticide; our people have no shortage of fundamentalists. To be the bastard child of a promiscuous mother, as the village was likely to assume about her, was better than you being known as a heretic's daughter. And so I sent her away...I told her how much I loved her, but that we had to put your life before ours. That's the responsibility of a parent: to provide a better life for the children than we had for ourselves.
"I know the life we gave you probably wasn't easy...even in a matriarchal society, where most of the men are asleep anyway, people still talk about lineage. Lilith told me your mom promised her, on the day that she returned to your village, that she'd speak to nobody of what had transpired; that she'd claim she'd had a drunken tryst with a drifter, and that she was your only family member. If the goddess willed us to one day be together again, then so be it, but we couldn't risk ruining your future because of my mistakes."
Faraldor stopped talking after that. His voice hadn't cracked and his face was controlled, but Amandil noticed a certain tension in her father's shoulders that spoke of ages of guilt and loneliness spent there. She wondered how many times he'd laid awake at night, imagining what she must look like and what her mother was doing at the same moment. She wondered if he knew that she'd imagined the same things about him so often, even before she had any idea who he was.
When he tilted his head up to meet hers, his lips were a bit tighter. In one of the more melancholy moments of her life, she almost sensed vulnerability radiating from him despite his prowess, despite his experience, despite the strength she could see in that strong jaw covered in stubble that was almost sharp.
"Was I wrong...for the choices I made?" he asked, his voice almost wavering in a way that made her heart hurt.
Anxiety welled up inside of her as she fought to answer and to stay quiet. Every second that ticked by without her speaking felt like she was stabbing her father in his soul by leaving him to fear that her answer would be affirmative. But she was too afraid that her own voice would waver, that she'd end up sniffling. In the end, she ignored her own fears and spoke.
"No, dad," she nearly gasped out. "Not from the beginning to the end. I don't..." She cleared her throat before continuing. "I don't think you've done anything wrong at all. You're not bad...you're misunderstood. Even by me, when I first found you."
Nodding for a few seconds, he almost seemed self conscious about the fact that he hadn't been in her life. "Thank you...Amandil," he replied, waiting a few more seconds as the two of them calmed down. "Do you plan on staying long? I'm sure you still have a life to return to at the village."
She laughed at how easily he'd switched to a lighter topic, and a great deal of the tension left her chest. "Actually, we live in Moonglade now, for my training. In fact, I have a hearthstone that helps me return there fast; they give one to each novice when they're formally accepted for training. Returning won't be hard...mom will be worried, but I have a few days before classes restart. She'll understand. I...I'd like to stay here as long as I can. Then...when I go back...I'll tell mom. I'm grown up now; I'm free to come and go as I please, as long as I can sneak out. I'll visit as often as I can...if you think it's safe."
Pausing as if he'd been hoping for her to say more - perhaps about her mother - he hummed again, smiling for the first time. "Then let's make the most of your next few days here," he replied.
