Nissa sighed as she stepped out of the shade of the forest and into the pale blue moonlight, drifting down to the water's edge she stared deep into the stars. Nath was very persuasive, but utilizing dark magic brought deals to be made and debts to pay. She searched the sky for any alternative to repel the dark menace even now running rampant through her lands, slaughtering her beloved people. Her native powers encouraged growth and nurturing, not decay and death, yet she knew the forest was suffering, and that decay and death was all that remained for her homeland if she continued to resist a more dangerous path.
She must train, but to practise for the slaughter of a planeswalker with black magic, she had to kill. A snap turtle crawled its way along the sand, it walked right up to her clearly drawn by her nurturing spirit. Nissa held out a hand towards the fragile soul and shed a tear, snapping her fist shut she crushed the heart of the hatchling and watched it bleed out on the shore. As her single tear gave way to floods, she heard a cry of pain far out on the water. Yet when she looked up she was no longer the only one weeping on the beach.
"How did it die?" asked the distraught young Merfolk standing before her. She looked down at the fragile creature and whispered to herself. "It was horrible, I felt its pain."
Nissa could not bear to tell her the truth, though giving way to black mana let her conscience skew it, she didn't tell her who killed the snap turtle, but who was to blame for it.
"The vampire Sorin Markov…you, felt it's pain? You're not normal, are you?" The merfolk threw her arms around Nissa and sobbed, her arms were trembling with anger and her skin glistened in the moonlight.
"My name is Kiora, I am like you…"
"Beautiful?" Nissa interrupted.
"…gifted", Kiora whispered as she looked up into Nissa's eyes. The blackness in her was already taking hold, twisting her thoughts in ways she never imagined, manipulative ways, selfish ways.
"Once Sorin is done with my people he will come to the water, his thirst is never quenched, I can help you to stop that, but first you must do something for me."
The Merfolk was caught in her gaze, hypnotised by her soothing tones, Nissa didn't even need but ask. As Kiora closed her eyes Nissa indulged in a private smile, before moving down to meet her lips. Nath had pressured her into exploring dark magic, he had indulged in it himself, if he was cheated now it was surely his own fault. Besides, Kiora held all the beauty of the ocean, and more power than a mere mortal elf could ever dream of wielding, let alone of understanding.
With each soft kiss the waves crashed innocently and softly on the shore, accompanied by a foreboding rustle among the treetops. The minutes felt like an eternity, and Kiora raised her thigh to press into Nissa's groin through her cloak, and as their embrace became more frantic and passionate, so too did the crashing waves.
"Nissa! We must leave, now!" The cry came from the edge of the forest; it was Nath, barrelling down the beach toward them atop his great stag. Then he saw Kiora in her arms and tears rolled down his face, muddying his war paint and dashing his spirit. He slowed to a stop some distance from them and dropped his bow in the sand and hung his head.
Nissa felt a pang of guilt rip through her as Kiora held out a hand to her cheek to catch a tear. Nissa pushed her violently away, and strode on up the beach; she had to go to him. As she walked away a torrent of rain fell from the night sky.
"Nissa, don't go" Kiora cried over the storm, as she saw the brush below the trees begin to rustle and sway, some twenty Joraga elves appeared from the undergrowth. Kiora whistled on the wind and a bulge began to rise in the water. Kiora took a last wistful glance up the beach but froze when she saw Nissa draw her staff and summon vines whipping out of the undergrowth to trip the elves as they advanced down the beach. A mutiny? Elves they were, but they didn't move like elves, they were more awkward, but somehow faster, as the first handful approached the pair a dozen more emerged from the forest, Nissa was frantically, knocking them back with her staff and retreating towards the shore, Nath turned about his stag, heart broken in two, and rode into the oncoming swarm.
"Nissa, run! Come back to me!" Kiora cried, as she backed up into the water. Nissa stowed her staff, turned and ran as fast as her legs would carry her, though she had no idea what she would do when she reached the water.
A shrill voice echoed through the whipping wind as a tempest lashed the shore, driving the attackers back yet somehow shaping itself around Nissa, keeping her in the eye of the storm the whole way down the beach. Kiora, ankle-deep in water continued in tongues as she began to rise, not on the air, not on the water, but on a tentacle as thick as an oak. She extended her arms and snatched Nissa up from the beach as the tentacle shot backwards carrying them swiftly out to sea.
When they were at a safe distance, Kiora held Nissa from behind in her arms. In the distance they watched a swarm of dark figures cowered around Nath's corpse. A larger shadow standing by them unleashed a fierce growl and sent them scarpering into the undergrowth, before kneeling to the corpse for several seconds, until both stood and walked off into the forest.
"Your people are not themselves" Kiora said solemnly. "You belong to me now, I will take care of you and together we shall avenge them and rescue the survivors."
"Revenge sounds good", Nissa replied, monotone and despondent. Until Kiora stood up on the tips of her toes and found her neck with her lips.
"Tomorrow we seek revenge, tonight, let us find the passion we need to succeed", she whispered as she rose her hands from Nissa's hips to cup her breasts, letting anger succumb to pleasure, Nissa turned and took her by the hand, the pair walked side by side down the Kraken's tentacle and stepped off onto its body as it idled through the water. Its ancient hide was covered in dents and depressions; Kiora lay Nissa down in one and stood above her. The crustaceans and sea life that formed her dress peeled away at her bidding and crawled down her body and back to the water.
The sea water gifted Kiora skin as supple as it was blue; she was enchanting, her curves shaped to perfection. Unfastening her robe and loosing her hair, Nissa's raven black curls fell down about her breasts, she raised a knee and arched her back, running a hand down her thigh and reaching out to her lover with the other. Kiora took her hand to kneel between her legs and gently eased them apart, licking her sapphire lips with anticipation. Nissa moaned with desire and took her hand again, gently pulling her down onto all fours and pleading with her eyes. As Kiora lent down Nissa looked up at the stars for a few eternal moments, before cocking her head sharply and gasping with pleasure at the mercy of Kiora's electrifying tongue as it ran along the crease between her labia and her thigh; and for this night, she forgot the name Sorin Markov.
The next morning she remembered all too well, being haunted by dreams of the turtle dying and the swarm of vampires devouring Nath; although strangely in her dreams Sorin never raised him…he was never there. Neither, she realised, was Kiora. As Nissa went to fasten her robe about her naked body, she realised it was soaked through, and the divert in the kraken's back had essentially turned her bed into a large puddle. Seething that she could have left her like this Nissa rose and picked up her staff, moving her robe aside from the divert to try in the morning sun. She spotted Kiora high in the air atop one of the beast's great tentacles, covered once again with barnacles and crustaceans of the deep arranged in an ornate bodice and skirt, speaking out of earshot with another figure he did not recognise.
The pair spied her and stopped talking, as though they were unsure if she could hear their conversation, the second figure then appeared right before Nissa's eyes, as if he'd planeswalked instantly no more than 10 feet, not possible, surely! Too accurate, too fast! The newcomer said not one word, he tilted his head and admired Nissa's form, before cocking it the other way and summoning her newly dried robes back about her, raising a fist above his head his gauntlet began to extend and transform until a small thopter floated above him in mid-air.
"I hope your love of nature extends to the sky, I can't teleport you to shore and she's pissed, which doesn't put us in a good position standing on top of her giant pet…"
With that he shot into the air carried high by his thopter, Nissa glanced at Kiora and saw that she was full of rage, lifting her hands towards the heavens and beginning to fill the air with her shrill cry. Nissa was lost in confusion, but there was no time to figure it all out, it was fight or flight, and she chose to fly with him. Nissa thrusted her staff into the sky and let her instinct guide her, a carrion hawk circled above, too far from land to have made it there without Nissa's bidding, she ran towards the edge of the Kraken's back as it's tentacle's soared up into the sky. Nissa tapped the monster's back with the end of her staff with each step as she ran, planting seeds beneath its skin which shot up in her wake into carnivorous plants to snap at the tentacles and tear chunks from the kraken's back where they couldn't reach – it was the best distraction her magic could muster this far from the forest. She rolled to avoid the few tentacles that made it through her defences until one caught her unawares and sent her flying into the air.
As a tentacle closed in to grab her, Venser focussed his mind, he couldn't move the attacker, it was far too large, instead he focussed on Kiora herself and teleported her into the air above the great maw of one of the plants, instantly the Kraken abandoned its assault in favour of whipping Kiora up to safety, and Nissa caught her senses and somersaulted with all the agility her kin bestowed upon her, closing her eyes to guide the carrion hawk below her. She landed on it and swept up to join her saviour.
"She was supposed to help me defeat Sorin! What happened?"
"I have good news and bad news, the bad is that I happened upon you here and she filled me in. I was trying to help when I told her seafood was not on a Vampire's menu!" He yelled across the crashing of the waves. "Trying to reassure her but she went into a shitfit about you betraying her over a turtle and black magic! Let this be a lesson to you, black mages are lonely, hated."
"So why did you save me?"
"There's still hope for you yet, killing a turtle isn't raising an undead army!" He smiled a tender smile at her, but her mood fell as she remembered the suffering of her people. "Usually I only have faith in machines, less fallible, but your people need you"
"I can't do this alone" Nissa cried.
"Yes you can. Those plants you summoned? They're less fussy than Vampires with what they eat, and Sorin's gone"
"Gone!" Nissa repeated as he hawk began to tire and faltered in the air.
All of a sudden Nissa was clinging to the thopter and her companion stood atop the hawk. "One more thing about Vampires, they hold grudges, now he's back up to strength seems he's more interested in settling a score than wiping out your people, take the thopter back to shore and let the hawk go home once I'm gone"
And with a wry smile, he closed his eyes and began to focus, seconds before he slipped into the Blind Eternities Nissa heard him one last time "remember, nature will always outlast disease". He was gone; dismissing the hawk Nissa set her eyes to the shore, where a small group of Joraga fiercely held back the onslaught of vampires on the beaches with volleys of arrows. Grasping the thopter with one arm and her staff with the other, Nissa smiled, but her eyes filled not with her natural, glorious emerald green, but a putrid sickly green that hungered for vengeance.
"These Vampires will die, and then, so too their creator"