Darnassian:
Quel'dorei: Children of noble birth, also slang for Highborne.
Anath'ashar: Old dialect. May translate to "Face your demise". It's said when engaged or about to engage in combat, as a warning or a taunt.
Min'da: Mother.
A heavy dizziness overtakes him before he can even drift his eyes open, his stomach clenching and churning, his head feeling like spinning. With wobbly limbs, he searches for some leverage to stand and straighten, only to find that everything trembles around him.
Some sense of adrenaline kicks in when his ears twitch, hearing what seems to be a horde of stomping foot coming behind him, streets of concrete and cobblestone shaking in their path. As he rises and takes a look around, a crowd of more than a dozen kaldorei comes into view, men and women carrying sticks, torches and stones as they stride to the old roads leading to Suramar's harbor.
What's going on? What's all this fuss? He wants to ask, but no voice comes from his lips and neither his presence is acknowledged, the crowd running past him as if he never is there in the first place.
For a mere moment, he's left half stunned, growing slightly offended—unaccustomed to not getting the main attention as he's used to when he arrives in this hellish place—deciding to take a look at himself when curiosity perks at him. With no small surprise, he finds an ethereal glow washing over his skin as he brings his hands and arms into view, his body lacking any color.
A female elf rushes through him in the next second, shouting and carrying a big torch as she follows the crowd into the harbor, and he feels nothing except a small gust of wind waving among and around.
What's this? What's happening? This isn't like any dream I had before…
A sense of confusion mixed with cold trepidation clings onto him way sooner that he's used to as well. His very small knowledge of the realm he's trapped into, how useful could it be if he doesn't even have the chance to, somehow, predict what could happen next?
Am I dreaming, at all? The usual pondering resurges, the voice of doubt coming to be the only familiar resemblance he can, somehow, amount and recognize in that unknown setting.
Is he ever going to stop having that shallow feeling of hopelessness and uncertainty, that near sense of emptiness he gets every time he's forced to visit that dreadful realm?
At first, all he can hear is the resonant howling and screaming coming from the next corner of the street, the enraged crowd bellowing words he can't come to understand, their language unknown to him yet holding some similarity to the ones he knows—different slangs, dialects and accents from a way past time. The very few words he can grasp are Quel'dorei and Anath'ashar as he can't do anything but approach to the multitude, his feet leading the way as if having a life of its own.
The crowd gets on assaulting an opulent transport cart, its four bearers carrying a Highborne Lady with what seems to be her daughter inside. The child cries and clings tightly to her mother's neck after the bearers stop short, nearly dropping the cart in sudden shock. The elder woman jumps outside the vehicle before the multitude comes to reach them, cradling her daughter as close as she can.
Where are the Lady's guards? He can't help but wonder, the scene looking quite bizarre and strange given the place they seem to be, making his way among the crowd. Because this is Suramar's harbor… isn't it?
He can't grasp the words she barks back, a sharp set of canines showing menacingly as she's cornered to the end of a bridge, but his attention easily shifts to the woman's appearance, her features looking very familiar. A bright curtain of violet hair elegantly tied up, a curvy silver crown adorning the top of her head, sharp golden eyes glowing angrily behind two vertical violet stripes painted from forehead to cheeks.
He's consciously aware of what the woman is about to do as she raises a palm, glowing and shimmering in dark shades of purple—some tints of azure revealing as her spell takes form, spreading along and around, seeming to swallow and poison whatever it comes to its reach.
No, Mylenne…! Your daughter is there, you monster!
Despite the fearsome display, he struggles to move past the crowd enclosing him, panic overtaking whatever sense of self-preservation he may have, his hands reaching desperately for the little sobbing girl; her small face soaked in tears, contorted and teeth clenching as if in agonizing pain.
The brightest arcane explosion he has ever seen follows, the whole scenery trembling violently with the force of her magic—his ears ringing painfully and eyes shutting close, leaving him unable to react as the blast strikes him and sends him flying, just like the rest of the multitude around.
He can still see white after his eyes drift open, a growing fear settling in and sheer cold running down his spine after thinking he may have been left blind—yet as his senses adjust once more, a burning surrounding then appears before him, the setting changed drastically.
What…? Where am I?
Just as quickly as his thoughts come, they are brushed aside just as fast when a younger woman comes into his line of sight, running past a sumptuous garden half settled on fire. Then again, he can't answer for his own body as his feet get on the move, following the girl into the thick forest, jumping over a broken silver fence. As the city's outskirts start disappearing from sight, for a moment he loses her tracks as she delves deep into the woods—yet it's her long curtain of violet hair what gives her away, waving sharply as a whip from his periphery as the woman speeds up in her sprint.
He runs after her for what it feels like hours, crying Mylenne's name from the bottom of his lungs—his voice and thoughts, the only thing from him he can have some control of—not finding the will to stop doing so, even when not a single sound comes from his lips in his attempts.
Not a breath, not a pant, not even his steps are heard, and the sheer silence only works for his unease to run deeper through him.
What's the point of all this if there's nothing I can do against it? What's the meaning? Is this only meant to torture me?
Many miles after, the girl stops running, past the forest and before the sea shores, giving him some sense of relief as he's finally able to approach her. A spectral hand travels to one of her bare shoulders, hesitating at first, considering his options. Is it wise to touch her? Nothing good ever comes to happen when he does so…
Regardless of his ponderings, his hand stops midway after a swift gust of wind rushes through them both, her slender form shifting, changing all in a sudden and before his eyes.
As like the most delicate opening of a flower, wind, mane and clothes wave past and aside, revealing an adult woman within the next blink of his eyes. He dares coming closer, looking to meet her face, but he's left half-astonished and half-confused after glancing at one single detail not according to the woman he knows as Mylenne.
Her eyes are adorned with her ever so elegant violet markings, still big and bright as the very Moon… gleaming in delicate shades of gold.
He steps closer and to her personal space, opting to brush aside the knowledge of Mylenne staring at the sea and through his translucent form, coming with a crushing need to touch her, cradle her beautiful face, just stroke her skin. Her panting breath fans between his collarbones and for a very long moment, there's nothing he'd want more than for her to just see him. It's nearly overwhelming to see her like that; her glossy golden eyes so fitting, her markings bright and beautiful as they're caressed by the moonlight, her violet mane waving high, with such grace, so grandiose.
Mylenne looks so real and his heart aches for her. Why can't you see me?
Once more, the only thing he feels is a gust of wind rushing as the woman walks through his form, his hands grasping only air as her gaze keeps transfixed at the sea before them. Her voice is soft as always yet distant and muffled, heard as if she's talking from many miles away. "Min'da, please…" She only whispers, voice trembling.
His breath hitches as he turns around, words and thoughts alike caught in his throat, unable to do anything but stare at what Mylenne's facing.
An ethereal figure stares back from the middle of the sea, ghostly and delicate feet nearly touching the water, mists of dark purple and azure shaping and giving them a form. Mylenne doesn't seem to have eyes for anyone else but them as she approaches, her sobbing more loudly, her face narrowed by despair as she keeps chanting the same plea over and over. "Min'da, don't go! Min'da, please…"
He walks beside her and closer to the shore, searching for a face among the twisted shadows surrounding the figure, floating softly above the water and so very still—looking impassive, emotionless, their form haloed by the huge Moon dangling over the horizon. Mylenne's cries don't seem to have an effect on them, two azure orbs that could pass for eyes idly looking around at everything and nothing in particular.
… Until that azure gaze lays directly on him.
He flinches back in an act of reflex, a cold shiver running down his spine as the figure's eyes gleam heatedly at him, mists and shadows shifting and contorting until the enraged face of Aedriel Stareye takes form. She never speaks a word—doesn't seem willing to and doesn't seem to have a voice at all—but as her fangs are shown, a deep growl resonates around them, the surroundings booming and shaking violently, winds changing their course.
Could that be for Mylenne's despairing state or for his presence in this realm, he can't really guess. Still, and despite all his doubts, he's completely sure the ghost of Conjurer Stareye it's not pleased with the sight of him in the slightest.
Yet, somehow, it's been the only one who could really figure his presence in there.
And at the same time when Mylenne falls to her knees, arms outstretching to the ghostly form before her, realization falls on him as heavy as a rock. She is the only one around with a voice of her own, with a body, with a face that looks as real as in the mortal plane—with bright golden eyes just as fitting, perhaps even more than the woman he knows and cares deeply for.
This isn't my dream, it's hers. I'm just an observer.
He can't help but drop himself down next to Mylenne, his heart clenching and aching so very bad with the miserable sight of her, hurting and longing to make his presence known in some way. He wishes so much to make her know he's there, that she doesn't have to walk alone in that dreadful realm; needs so much to comfort her, to hold her in his arms until she awakes once more.
"Min'da, don't go, I beg you!" Mylenne keeps crying but the figure doesn't seem to care, an incensed roar coming from the forest, from the sea, from everywhere and nowhere in particular. If anything, the figure's face contorts deeper, their azure gaze boring and utterly engrossed on him, not acknowledging nor sparing a glance to the woman next to him—the only real and tangible one.
When their ghostly feet come in contact with the sea, the once calm waters start shaking violently, disturbing waves taking form—the twisted figure slowly seeming to melt and become one with the sea. Poisoning mists and shadows in shades of purple and azure spread among the expanse of the sea, tainting the waters as if being thick ink.
He can't help with holding Mylenne's shoulders as she screams in sheer despair, deep down knowing there's no use for it and she still can't feel his presence. Yet is all he can do, whispering soothing nonsense close to her ear, holding her as best as he can as she buries her knees and hands in the sand, thick tears streaming down her cheeks like a flooding river.
Tears thick and gleaming in shades of azure, mirroring the expanse of sea before them, staining her beautiful pale face and tainting all they touch. Polluting, contaminating, cursing…
Just like the arcane within her… and within me.