AN: I'm going to be ceasing my author's notes here and keeping them mostly to my blog, which you can find on my profile page. I ramble freely, there.

It felt like they had been running for hours, and he wasn't even sure that they were going the right way any longer. The screams of those who had perished in the room still rang in his ears though they had been silenced long ago, and there was no other sound but that of their slippered feet on the ground. He had nothing to go on in the massive tunnels they passed, and as fear gave way to despair and loss, every turn seemed to be the same that they had just taken. Except for her breathing becoming labored, Leybright was oddly silent as they fled.

When they finally broke free from a tunnel and found themselves in a cavern that could have easily housed an Aspect, Kalthor finally released her and ran his hands through his hair, feeling the coarse grains of sand and dirt that had lodged themselves in the fine strands. A glance back at his companion to make certain she was alright gained him nothing; Leybright had wandered to a large pool of groundwater, and was slowly sluicing the liquid over her hands in a deliberate fashion. Even from where he was, he could see that the slender fingers shook. He didn't blame her.

Never before had he seen the destruction that had happened in the room they had only recently fled. Against demons he had stood, working the arcane that came naturally to him, and in time the fel that it had been corrupted into. The Scourge had fallen beneath his hands like all others. Dragons, wights, nerubians... but he had never witnessed the rage of the elements first hand. They had been nothing more than fish in a barrel, easy targets just waiting to be killed. Here he had spent his life believing there was nothing worse than being alone, when the fear was truly in losing it all at something one could not control.

Leybright had screamed, as had many others. It was thanks to her that he was even alive now. Her cry of fear had torn him from his astonishment, and the most he could think of was to hug the wall as best as he could, and pray that they would emerge whole and unscathed even as the earth came down around their ears. Even so, he could still hear her laughter over the slaughter, could still feel his throat as raw as it was from screaming her name.

He had seen none of the others escape. If Triadae was one of them, he didn't know. A small part of his heart hoped that she had been killed, after all that she had endured. Another part said that death would have been too merciful for her; that she deserved all of the pain for the hurt that she had caused him. Yet another part told him that he was the one who had deserved to die on that rock, chained and helpless.

Things would never be the same again. Even if she lived, even if she forgave him as they had promised one another that they would, there would always be that horror between them. No, it was more than just the torture now. He had seen all of it in her eyes when she had forced his hand, pushed him to the point that he was beaten her. No... he had wanted to hurt her. It had been love that stayed his hand, but he had wanted to see her hurt the way he had hurt.

His head tipped back, eyes closing as mineral-rich droplets struck his face from the ceiling. 'I'm a fool. I was not the one hurting the most. I was not the one turning a blind eye to the other in blind hope. Promises, Tria. You hurt me, yes... but I turned my pain back on you ten fold without care to what you were doing.' There would be a better time to mourn, in the future. Now, time was something they seemed to have little of.

The cavern they were in seemed to be a safe point, regardless of how uneasy he was to be surrounded by rock. Never one to pay attention to minerals as Triadae had been prone to doing, he couldn't tell if it was an old cavern carved by a lava flow, or simply one that had been formed from water. A river of sorts curved through the room, and the surface of it glimmered with a gentle glow that he had seen once or twice deep in the night on the ships that he had traveled on. He could see, though he didn't care, the forms of uncut and natural gems embedded in the stone itself, enough to make a dwarf wet himself with excitement.

"I'm afraid I'm more than a bit lost. Without any of our things, I'm as helpless as a babe in the woods." His voice echoed back at him, and he cringed just slightly. "We'll need to find our way out quickly, or perish here in the caverns." He watched as she sat back against a large stone and opened the tome she kept with her at all times, connected by chain to the belt around her waist."Reading? This is hardly the time for such a thing, Leybright. We've got to move."

Her silence unnerved him, but not as much as her voice when she spoke. "I am not moving from this spot until I have read all that I need to." Her slender fingers flicked towards the water in a disinterested manner. "Bathe your wounds. You stink of blood and guilt." There was a degree of sadness to her voice, or perhaps it was only weariness. Regardless, it set him on edge. He was used to the manipulative manner that Leybright spoke and operated in. This was something different, akin to the firm instruction of a mother.

His curiosity piqued, he strode to the edge of the water and proceeded to strip his bloodied clothes from him. Contrary to what he might have thought at first, the cavern was warm beneath his feet. The water, however, was not. Kalthor's breath was torn from him as he jumped into the water, actively regretting his choice quite quickly. Even remaining above the surface was a chore, until his body stopped acting as if it had curled in on itself and loosened up. Unable to contain his curiosity for too long, he bobbed nearer, his green eyes only barely above the edge of the pool as he watched her.

"I have found one who has proven useful in a few ways. In one, he is an all too willing companion for basic lusts, and he performs admirably in such activities. In another, he is a true example of how far one can fall and yet still cling to another. It is amusing to see his shame when I watch him beneath my heel. He actively works to please me, yet the simplest grazing of his mind shows nothing less than my replacement; the frigid girl who all but drove him into my arms."

He sank lower as Leybright read from the pages he had watched her write in every day since they had joined together. She flipped through more pages, sometimes reversing and filtering through past memories as if visiting them for the first time. Her expression remained neutral for the most part, but no matter how he peered at her and tried to understand what was going on, she never answered his silent questions.

"Kalthor and I have spent more time together as of late. I care little for the repercussions of such a thing – it is not as if the others who share this cave with us do not feed their own desires often enough. If I dared to hazard a guess, I would assume that the only ones who do not do so on a consistent basis, or at all, are the other three who accompanied us into this pit of despair.

In questioning Kalthor of his friend, the one who 'leads' us, I have discovered very little that I could not already guess. She is a prideful being, much like myself, who has become jaded to the world. I admit that I easily play Kalthor's resentment to my own ends. His... coupling... becomes much rougher when he is upset, and I confess that I have begun to actively push those buttons that I know will bring him to that point, if only to serve my own needs.

He carries a bitter resentment and jealousy for Miss Gildedsun. It has been many years since we have seen this girl or her family, but I see in her much of the mannerisms of her parentage. I remember little of the younger sister, but Kalthor has told me that she is little more than a stain on the life of the elder sister, even if she will not say as much. In my own observations, I have seen this young woman not act until she is sure that her steps will not falter. I cannot say if she is entirely fit to lead us, but she has the strength to do so, regardless.

It is her martyr complex that worries me, if I were to express the truth to anyone. She does much for the sake of others and the good of her people, and it is this that has started the void that grows between both the woman and Kalthor. I feed this void. If it is wrong of me, I cannot see the downside. They must be tested."

Leybright finally looked up from the journal, setting her eyes on Kalthor as he bobbed in the water. After a few moments of uneasy silence, she turned her attention back to the book, turned a few more pages, and began to read out loud again, ignorant of Kalthor's clear embarrassment.

"It was not my intention to have it come this far. In our mission to infiltrate the Twilight ranks, I'm afraid that we have begun to lose connection with the others. I see the way the bull and the troll watch myself and Kalthor, as if afraid we might turn on them at any moment. I see hope still flickering in Gildedsun's eyes, that inescapable bond that she has with her friend that refuses to die, even if they do not speak as they once did, but I am not ignorant to the way it dims. Soon, we will be forced to make a choice, and I'm not entirely certain that even I can keep the ruse up."

Another page.

"Never have I given myself over to the Shadow. Not when we were created, not when things came tumbling down. We are two sides of a single coin, you and I. Our faith might be different, and I may not believe you exist as much as you claim it in those brief moments that you take control, but never once have I ever considered that darker path that we both have every right to travel.

But now, I wonder if it might have been better to have taken it. The wisest of us know that there can be no Light without Shadow, and it holds true for the opposite. The most naïve consider the Shadow to be something evil, that only the most dark of hearts can access. Only that could explain what I have done.

Kalthor and the others toss in fitful sleep while one of our own is caged. It is my doing, I will admit this freely. I could not convince Kalthor of my reasons, and it was all that the others could do to keep from killing me where I stood. Only the fact that two more of us, perhaps all of us, would be caged as well as she kept them from doing me in.

She was seen by one of those who was well known for his cruelty. He kills without question; why they allow him to remain I do not know, but I do know that he would have stabbed her a thousand times without asking question. I drew attention to her, to me, to keep him away. I had hope that she would be able to talk her way out of it, but I did not expect her to run. I didn't...

… oh, what a sorry state things are now. All this time I have reveled in the touch of one, played him for a fool, and now I lay cold while he burns with resentment. I have done wrong."

She turned another page, her head tilting just so as she scanned it. "You are a curious thing, aren't you? You're obviously quite intelligent, yet you've allowed her to warp and twist you until it has all come down to this. A silly girl, she is." Her eyes went back to him as he lifted himself from the water, and then she continued her reading.

"The first night, he cried. He would not let me near him, only barely remaining still as the bull cleansed the blood from his hands and took his robes to burn them. Perhaps you would understand his grief better than I, you who have been in the place that he has. I could not understand it. But he wept quietly in the corner we had made for ourselves, his fingers twined about the scrap of hair he had managed to steal from them before they sent it and her sword away as a warning.

He will not look at me any longer, and he shudders under my touch. I want him to believe I did not do what I did with maliciousness, but I have made this bed and now we both must lay in it. We hear her screams on the surface, and every day that he comes back, he seems as if he has aged an eternity more. I see the damage when I am made to tend to her wounds. I am forced to keep her alive, but she has never once begged for death.

I wait for her to give up, and turn us all in. I fear it more than I fear anything else, and I cannot explain why this is so. Merely that I wait, and yet she will not break. Four days have passed, and I silently beg for her to just die. I wonder if they would hate me, if I let her bleed. When she loses consciousness when her life is in my hands and I know that I could give her eternal rest, I can't find the strength to do it.

Do I fear losing him, I wonder? I view him as a toy that is amusing to play with, as I have played with all of my toys before, but his undying faith in the one he will not let go is... attractive. I do not wish to be her, Light knows that I could never be, not in the eyes of others or myself... but I wish to understand what it is within her that has kept him from turning away completely. He dreams of her, he worries for her, and he has never stopped loving her. It is that love which makes him so malleable under my hand.

I wonder, friend. Am I the one being used? All this time, I thought I was twisting him to my own ends, but now that I am the one who is caught yearning, now that I realize that he feels regret for his actions, and hate towards me...

… I wonder."

"Stop." His voice was quiet as he cleaned his shredded robes in the water, watching the dirt and blood flow downstream. "I thought that you were merely noting prayers in that book. It is such a thick thing, I thought it to be a holy book for your studies. It is only a bastion for your thoughts, a place where you can be as cold as you want with no one to stop you."

Leybright watched him for a time, but he did not speak again. When she was certain that she would not be interrupting him, she flipped to the final page, and read it aloud.

"Tomorrow, she will die. It matters not that I pray for her now, pray for something to save her from this darkness that we have unleashed on her. My faith in the Light has been mostly because of you, and I admit that it has been shaken severely this past week. Such a strong spirit, and yet she endures such pain. Only you could understand. I wish...

Wishes are pointless. We four sat silently around a fire, looking at the place where her things once were. They took them, all of her gold and the other items that she brought with her. There was only one little trinket, one little item that managed to escape, and Gandret has not let go of it since it dropped from her satchel. It's a tiny thing, the metal slightly worn, and I don't think it has been worn around her neck in years, but I recognize the symbol.

Her faith had been shaken, her ability to channel the Light taken from her, yet she still holds the mark of the Holy Light. Somewhere in her mind, I believe that she still has some small amount of faith in something that she cannot see. I often wondered how she could push Kalthor from her so often, even though she must have known how he felt, but now I think I understand. In our time, we learned of the Three Virtues, but I see them so little, it is hard to remember that some still follow them.

She has forever shown an innate respect, even for those she dislikes. I am a prime example of this. Never has she slighted me, no matter how coarse I have been towards her. The races of Azeroth are equal in her eyes, and she shows the world a degree of respect that is absent among all but those who revere nature and the elements on their own.

They describe tenacity as something that takes a lifetime to gain, but I am beginning to believe that a lifetime can be attained day by day. She is fierce and loyal, a stubborn character who does not bend as easily as many would think. She is the bond in this motley crew, though I think we've only recently come to accept this.

Compassion... this has always been the last Virtue we are taught, and it is this one that I believe she has gained all on her own. We have seen her throw aside joy for herself, and foster hope where it must be coaxed into being, for what reason? She could take Kalthor as her own, but her guilt would make such a thing a sorry treat for him, and she knows this! Perhaps she believed Kalthor to be happy with me, and thus attempted to stand by him even in silence, so that his pain might be lifted.

How many times has she done this? We have spent decades studying the teachings, you as the avatar of Discipline and myself as the wrath of the Holy Light, and yet... we have missed something. How could she comprise the Virtues so strongly, and be abandoned by what she so sorely needs? We have no way to help her without risking ourselves, and it is not for a selfish reason that we hesitate.

If we were to die, we would destroy all that she is doing for us right now. Blow for blow, Kalthor has suffered beside her. He is not permitted the bliss of unconsciousness as Gildedsun has been able to get, and these past days have choked him of what I craved most. We hear her screams, but none so clearly as he. In my heart, I know that I should cease the things I do to him, stop using him as I have been doing... but I cannot. I need him, even if he does not need me. The one he needs lays bleeding beneath us, dying for us.

I wish that I knew how to bring you forward. You let me stay out, you let me live your life, because you are so very afraid, but I fear that I need your help in understanding. How can I understand loss, when I have never before given myself the chance to actually lose anything? You, though... is that not how I was created? We would not even know the other existed were it not for these senseless scribbles, but it has been years since you were allowed to live.

Would she become like us, I wonder? If she should, by some saving grace, be allowed to live... would she be so broken that she becomes one side of a coin, as we are? I pride myself on being the one who gets things done, but in this I am completely helpless. I can sit here and try to wrap my mind about it, but I simply cannot.

Would that you were here, you could do something. Anything. More than I can do.

Tomorrow, she dies. We can do nothing more than mourn. The screams... they will not leave."

Her voice died, but it seemed that the echo took far longer to vanish from around them than anything else. Sometime into the reading, Kalthor had ceased his cleaning and simply listened, and now his shoulders shook with the weight of it all. Whether or not he understood the intent behind the message that had been left, he still felt the loss of his friend keenly. He did not hear her move, nor did he move himself when she knelt beside him and placed her hands on his bare shoulders. If he had shied from her touch in the weeks prior, he did not do so now.

"Who are you?" More than anything, he wanted to understand that much. There was no love between he and the priestess, and he knew it deep in his heart. If she needed him, it was a one-sided affair that he would have ended in a heartbeat. The reading had hit him strongly in that manner; like he had been used, so he was using. For comfort, for security, for the feeling of being worth more than what he was. But it brought into crystal focus everything else.

"I am simply one side of a coin."

"That doesn't make sense."

"It doesn't? A shame, you seemed smarter than that. Suffice to say that a great deal of trauma, not unlike that you and your friend have suffered recently, forced me to adapt." She stood, brushing her hands down her skirts, smudging dirt from her hands to the fabric. "Two minds in the body of one. We were not aware of it until trouble started, and we had a hard time controlling who was dominant. The smallest trigger would flip us between the other, making us quite difficult to control. Between me and my inability to cope, and her and her rash behavior, we were a nightmare incarnate. In time, I became the submissive personality. It has been thirty years since I last walked in mind and body together. How things have changed."

"You're insane."

"Near enough to it."

"Leybright will come back?"

"Tired of me already?" The smile she leveled on him was simple, and sweet. Too much unlike the malicious grins that he was commonly receiving from the priestess normally. "Yes, she will. We can't simply force one or the other to the front. Judging by your own fear, I would assume that the change happened when her own fear triggered a trauma response. Difficult to understand, even more so to explain. However, we have no need for her rash behavior. Our steps must be careful and quick, and her mind was degenerating greatly even prior to the events only a few hours past."

Already she was moving, her hand lifted and softly glowing a silver-chased gold as she wandered the cavern. Kalthor watched her for a time before he pulled his breeches back on, tossing the robes aside. "Then you are not Leybright."

"No. I abandoned that name long before you were born, but she chose it because she is an aspect of me. I am simply Oria."

"Do you... hear her in your mind?"

"No. The only reason I know she exists at all is because of the journal. She had begun to write in it as a way to channel her aggression many years past. When I was pressed to the front – quite afraid and disoriented, as it was several days after I remembered being 'awake' as it were, I found it. The journal had my name in it, and so I wrote in it when I was conscious, as she did when she was."

"So she will not remember?"

"Correct. A switch these days happens rarely, and it has become even more disorienting because of it. The last I remember, I was in elven forests. Now I am here. Her last memory..."

"... is not a happy one." Kalthor muttered under his breath as he paced around the cavern himself, pausing before an opening that seemed the most likely, though it would require them both to crouch in order to walk through it.

"Consider yourself warned, friend. The less of a show you make it, the better for the both of you." Oria murmured her warning beside him before stepping up to the opening and crouching into it. "In fact, I'd be appreciative if you made it out that it never happened. Tell her that she fainted. You're capable of lying to yourself. Lying to another should be easy."

Kalthor frowned at her backside as she moved, but said nothing to the contrary. Glancing back over his shoulder, he paused a moment and then followed. Several hours later, they broke through to a setting sun, atop a mountain that held no sign of Twilight. Below them stretched the camps of the Guardians of Hyjal, though the races that scurried between the tents seemed as small as ants from their level. With nothing to lose, and both feeling the need for food and drink, they began their trek down the mountain, only barely managing to walk into the camp on their own two feet.

Sleep came quickly, though Kalthor's was light and easily disturbed. They were alive... but at what cost?