Elyrin Wintersprout

9 years ago. The remnants of the battle at Mount Hyjal.

Nordrassil was gone. I couldn't believe my eyes but it was true. I never truly gave it much thought because I've always believed that as much as stars and moons in the sky it will always be there. But the great tree was gone as well as what looked like a better half of the forest.

"Are you hurt, child?" The hooded figure came closer, distracting me from the sight.

"I'm fine." I answered, trying to look stronger than I was.

"Do you know where your parents are? Or other relatives?"

The wound was too fresh. Even if I hated myself for this, I couldn't stop the flow of tears.

"I'm… I'm sorry, young one." The startled stranger tried to comfort me. After a few moments of hesitation the staff that he was carrying disappeared in a flash of blue light. An emptied hand was almost put on my shoulder and retracted back sheepishly. He clearly didn't know what he should do in this situation.

His awkwardness made me chuckle internally and helped me regain my composure a little bit.

"Thank you! I'm fine…I'll be fine." I answered, trying to wipe my eyes.

I took a moment to look at my surroundings: at burnt and poisoned plant life, at the bodies of my kin. Then I looked at many more numerous corpses of monsters scattered around us through the power of sorcery. I suddenly realized that the man in front could kill me as easily as one squashes a bug. I immediately chastised myself for that thought.

"What should I call you, kind sir?" I finally decided to ask.

"My name is Cathidan Veilgazer of Shen'dralar and I am one of the few remaining Highborne in this world."

xxx

Present day

The headache was unbearable. The last thing that I could remember was falling into a newly emerged pit right on top of a sharp piece of splintered board. Fortunately, my Prismatic Barrier saved me from being impaled. Unfortunately, it did not do the same for me slamming into a wooden floor with my head since the initial impact was enough to disperse the spell.

My return to conscience was accompanied by a coughing fit born from my smoke-choked lungs. So sudden were my body's convulsions that I accidentally hit something metal with my chin. That something turned out to be the armored back of someone carrying me on their shoulder.

"You awake? I have to put you down for a moment." A woman's voice echoed underneath the steel plates.

When I was on my feet I surely did not expect to see a death knight from before as my rescuer. Though, my coughing and current circumstances did not give me much time to be surprised by anything.

The death knight then sent a torrent of chill wind which drowned the flames barring our path in ice. In fact, those were the only flames remaining on this floor, I noted. The crackling of burning could no longer be heard around us.

The undead woman led me through the remaining smoke. Once we were back on the deck I tried to express my gratitude but my body decided to meet the return of fresh air with another coughing fit.

"Easy there! Try to cough it out before you talk!" The death knight said while letting me lean onto her.

"Thank you!" I still answered and prayed that neither suffocation nor being rescued by a stranger won't turn into a recurring pattern of any kind.

Nonetheless, I decided to stand on my own a little bit further. Regardless, of how good the person underneath is, death knights are known to have untamable bloodlust. Being near one I've just met still felt a little bit risky.

I surveyed the surroundings once more and things seemed to be as bad as I had feared.

We already began to have first casualties but what is more important our wooden bastion looked like it was about to collapse. Considering that protection given by defensive spells could not be maintained forever, we were about to become targets without any meaningful cover.

Without cover… Akin to lightning an inspiration struck me. After a few more seconds of search, I found another clue for the riddle: one of the taller beach rocks was barely showing from under the fog. I knew what needed to be done.

I continued coughing at a renewed rate in hopes of getting rid of what smoke was left inside. Then I made as many steps as the available space would allow.

"What are you…" The death knight was trying to ask a question when I was already running towards a place where the taffrail was broken off.

The jump just gave me barely enough distance for my Blink to reach the rock. The concealment granted by the fog turned out to work both ways since no attacks came my way.

Just in case, however, I cast invisibility and spent a little bit of extra mana to do it silently. After that, I only needed to slide down and reach the enemy's backline. I was lucky enough to not bump into a single naga before exiting the fog.

Then I saw my target - a line of scaled mages that had cast the fog wall originally. They were hidden behind a considerable number of armed protectors and there was enough space between spellcasters that it prevented the possibility of more than one being hit with a single blow. To be more precise, that was the case if one assumed that all attacks would come from the direction of the ship. However, flanking the serpentine mages would put all of them in a clear straight line. That revelation filled me with mischievous anticipation that I hadn't felt in a long time. The conditions were perfect.

The place I chose for an attack was closer to the sea. I strode towards the chosen spot carefully. Not carefully enough, as it turned out. My foot hit a small pebble which fell into the water. One male naga guard was alerted by the sound, and a dozen more turned their heads following his example.

Then one of them suddenly received a crossbow bolt to their neck from behind. Or was that a throwing dart?

Everyone turned around to see the attacker. There was no point in pondering about who that was. I couldn't allow myself to miss my only chance.

I knew that my invisibility would disappear the moment I began to use another spell. That is why I increased the speed of my casting by spending more energy. An Arcane Orb was summoned forth and hurled towards the naga.

There wasn't any time to waste assessing the results of my attack as I rushed back towards the fog.

Author's note: Even though RAW it is not allowed to cast spells onto unseen targets in D , I would argue that with everything that creates a projectile it should be possible to fire blindly. Also Elyrin used Metamagic (Subtle Spell and Quickened Spell) in this fight.