Immolation, Annihilation
Immolation
…She’d volunteered.
She’d slipped a tiny golden ring onto her finger and imagined the feeling of her eyes flickering from emerald to sapphire.
Armont stood in the portal room alone, a single entity in a towering vaulted room. He held the white staff tightly in the grip of both hands, leaning his weight forward against it. His attention was turned to the permanent portal fixtures, his back at the stairwell behind him. Any tap of his staff or movement of his heavy boot seemed to echo for an eternity. An overwhelming sensation of silence and the uncertainty of what awaited him. His expression grew solemn, focused. He wouldn’t wait a moment longer.
Avada entered at a dignified pace, the tap of her boots echoing in the empty room. She didn’t speak, knowing that he heard her. Instead she waited a few paces behind his right shoulder, stock-still and coiled like a spring. Despite her normally upbeat demeanor, she now appeared solemn, appeared a soldier.
Her echoing footsteps pulled Armont’s attention, drawing his gaze over his shoulder. Pivoting the staff to lean back, he left his weight on his good foot and raised one hand ahead. The sleeves of his robe bad been pulled up just past his elbows, giving a clean flow for the arcane to draw forth. Streams of vibrant purple mist flowed along the twisted muscles of his forearm, out his fingertips, and drew into a single straight line. In a flash the energy connected to an unseen point, and the small rip in space began to tear its way forth.
Avada followed his lead. One foot slid behind the other in a fluid transition to a spellcasting stance. Hands raised, she plucked easily for the tendrils of magic she felt in the air. Upon making contact, the familiarity of a portal clicked into place and she simply pulled. Hair rising from her shoulders and arms thrown apart, she widened the rift that Armont anchored.
An outburst of sweltering heat flew from the newly formed portal. The streaming, crackling sound of trebuchet fire flew past the rift Armont had focused, crashing and shattering into flaming streaks just beyond the sight of the portal.
Avada hissed and drew back defensively, her lips pulled into a grimace. Her hair blew back from her face, alight in the glow of the fire, and she stared into the sudden heat the way only a fire mage could. A twinge of pain pulled at her chest but she had no time for sorrow. Armont similarly reared back, lifting an arm to guard himself from the hellscape that should have been Darnassus. In his shock he lost his focus, and in an instant the portal closed. The remnants of calls for war and cracking earth echoed in the chamber before all fell silent again.
He stared unblinking, even long after the echoes had dissipated. Swallowing, he stepped forward again, the arcane flow beginning a rift anew, and he awaited Avada’s aid a second time. His confidence wavered, sweat forming at his brow, but his focus stayed true for another beginning rift.
Wordlessly, Avada followed his lead again. She sank into a lower stance, drawn back as if ready to lunge forward. The ember in her spellblade’s hilt pulsed wildly; its trembling light flickered against her scaled legguards.
Arcane lightning spit and crackled out of the new tear in dimensions. The connection grew volatile, unstable. Armont’s dark hair flew back wildly as the energy fought against his will. The other arm flew forward. He grimaced away what pain he could, as the hollow clunk of his staff hit the ground behind him. A smaller stream flowed forward from his new guiding palm, swirling into the chaotic rift. It was recognizable as a message, an arcane encryption, an attempt to communicate or control whatever was fighting them on the other side.
Avada braced herself on her hind foot, cloak snapping in the sudden wind. She paced forward in a controlled stalking movement to halt alongside Armont. Outstretched hands, fingers curled and stiffened, met the yawning portal with a tendril of the most stabilizing energy she could muster against the crackling resistance.
Whatever Armont had conjured seemed to work. Like a passing storm the lightning subsided, and slowly the portal stabilized into an open rift. A towering kaldorei statue met them, raising her bow high in an eternal quest for the silent blessings of Elune. The image was serene, peaceful; moonwell water flowed from the height of the pillared dome and cascaded to the basin at the statues feet. The sounds of war were distant here, nearly muffled by the soft pattering waterfalls of blessed moonwater.
Avada’s grimace of effort faded to one of soft wonderment as the stone-faced sentinel appeared in the rift, lit with the soft, ethereal glow of moonwater. Her hands fell to her sides, gaze locked into the serenity of the portal. “The Temple of Elune,” came her whisper, breaking the newfound silence. She flickered her eyes toward Armont and they shone the color of the moonwell.
“My portal was set for the edge of the city.” Armont returned her glance with a knowing fear in his eyes. “The temple was the best I could think of next.” Swallowing back his dry pant, he took the first step forward. “They should see an allied face first.” he commented solemnly, his attention fully left to the portal they’d created.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
…She’d followed her friend through that portal to hell, where embers fell like rain.
An ember never falls, said her father in her head.
Teldrassil burned, and Avada’s heart along with it. The sharp crackles of burning wood and the dull roar of a thousand flames could not fully drown out the screams of a dying people. Gold and silver eyes seemed to huddle in every shadow and Avada knew the forms streaking across the corner of her vision belonged to those fleeing.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
…She’d fought.
A Forsaken’s poisoned blade carved a jagged line of agony into her thigh, a stark contrast to Felo’dracon’s retaliatory entombment into the shriveled grave of a long-dead heart. Energy spent and wound screaming with pain, Avada fell to her knees among the convoluted footprints the fleeing kaldorei left in the ashes. Her world spun and someone, no, Armont knelt at her side and curled her fingers around one of the violet mana crystals from his pauldrons. “Can you clear the fire?” He pressed her, voice tense. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
The defensive flames at her fingertips flickered out. Avada glanced up at him and blinked into focus. Reflections of fire danced in her glassy eyes, a dull mockery of the real. “I can clear it,” she told him wearily, gripping the crystal against her chest. Blood loss and pain added a ringing to her ears and a weakness to her limbs, a strange coldness to her core. But, sheltered from the flames beneath Armont’s form, Avada squeezed the crystal tight and pulled.
A torrent of energy crackled up her arms. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as if electrified by the tingling in her nerves. Avada hauled her injured leg beneath her and rose to her feet. The pain still screamed but she chose to ignore it and her nerves obeyed, rejoicing in the arcane instead. Closing her eyes, she remotely plucked at the nearest flame, testing its heat and energy. With a backwards step and a wave of her hand, she beckoned it closer, sensing the magic pulse through her arms as the flame separated itself from the tree on which it gnawed. Avada spun around and the familiar pressure of concentration and restraint built behind her eyes as she spooled another flame into the rotation, leaving behind a trunk of charcoal.
Her dance continued. Eyes open now, the mage twirled and stepped, wove and pulled, funneled the inferno from the trees to her own body where it enveloped her in an ever-shifting shroud of radiant armor. The pressure built; holding such a massive scale of combustion in check tested her limits. She clenched her teeth, pushed aside the flames above her head to gain a clear view of the open sky, and —
The flames unleashed, the crystal depleted, and Avada’s consciousness slipped away. She blinked, swaying on the spot, staggered, and fainted into the ashes below.
Armont dropped to his knees as Avada did, wounded, spent, but still conscious. The sound of her knees hitting the ground drew the turn of what little energy he had. There was no glow to her illusionary sapphire eyes, the color long since replaced by the destructive fire it reflected. He scrambled; just before she could collapse to the scorched earth his arms reached out to catch her. He was only quick enough to prevent her head from impact.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
…She’d fallen.
A burning leaf twirled, dreamlike, through the air and landed on her upturned chest. She stared at it a moment, a peculiar fuzziness in her head, then remembered. Remembered the image of a hippogryph charging panicked into the flames, shedding burning feathers as it fled. The scourge, no, the Forsaken at her back, then rotten hands at her throat. The earth-shattering bellow of a bear as it burned. Fire was warm and precise, comforting and brilliant, and destructive. Her hands shook, hands that had cupped flames and tended seedlings. Hands that had traced delicate petals and wrought meteoric rain.
Immolation.
Avadriath, said Calia’s voice in her head. Avada… Avada… “AVADA!” Her consciousness shifted and a new lens of focus shuttered over her world. “Anar’alah belore — nngh,” she rasped eloquently and scrabbled at the bed of ashes beneath her. Armont’s teal eyes and tangled hair hovered just above her face. “I’m okay, I’m alright…” She was not, as she reflexively tried to assure him, alright. Felo’dracon flickered lazily at her side, its blade inert and dull against her hip. Its flames had snuffed out with her consciousness.
Armont’s attention snapped back as she stirred from unconsciousness, his eyes and shoulders sinking in relief. “You’re not alright,” he argued exasperatedly.
Avada sat up. She stared at Armont for a long moment, her head haloed by flames and her cloak tattered like broken wings. Her hand scrabbled for his and she squeezed it, dimly aware that she had started to cry.
As her smaller hand slid into his, Armont looked into her tear stricken eyes with mournful regret. She was barely recognizable as the bright cheery woman that stepped foot in his shop. Beaten, cut, eyes darkened, complexion stolen by poison, she was a ghost of her former self, a shadow of ash left by fire. His brow furrowed tightly in anger, in himself, in broken treaties…in the Horde. One arm slid behind her back and held tight to her war-torn cloak, the other grasped her hand reassuringly in return. With a slow stumbling heft of weight he forced one boot to the ground, then the other, letting her weight fall against him as he made their way for the portal.
Avada rose with him. Sounds seemed dull, muffled by the blood roaring in her ears. Her vision tunneled and she swayed, holding her breath against the wave of sickening cold as what little color she had drained from her face. She leaned on Armont, tried to take more of her own weight, and then staggered back against him.
She took one last, mournful look over her shoulder, squeezed his hand again. Teldrassil itself splintered, its heart consumed by the flames. Burning leaves tumbled from the sky like rain upon a desperately dry and blackened field. “From ashes, we only rise,” came her whisper near his pointed ear. And she fought the urge to tear the ring from her finger as she stepped into Dalaran’s beautiful window.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
…She awoke with the early sun in her eyes.
It happened slowly, like the thick, fluffy clouds floating lazily above Dalaran’s ivory spires. Her head felt fuzzy and her mouth like it was full of cotton. She took a great, shuddering breath and pressed the heel of her hand to her pounding forehead.
She dressed in the clothes she’d worn the day previously. She removed her illusory ring before entering Silvermoon’s portal, so her eyes flickered back from sapphire to green. She walked all the way home, despite having to stop and rest at several points along the way.
Eversong’s eternal spring caressed her with soft grass and birdsong. The setting sun painted the canopy with radiance and Avada fixed her eyes to the ground. Its gentle light felt far too hot, its brilliance too much like fire. Her sunlit meadow whispered softly in the evening breeze and Kirin raised his horned head from the grass as she approached. Fireflies lazily began their nighttime wandering, tiny lanterns swaying in tune to the crickets’ orchestra. Luminescent beacons, just as green as her eyes.
Her favorite color, but her eyes’ association threatened to steal that from her too.
Avada stood on her porch and looked out over the home she’d built. Her homestead, her little cocoon of peace; idyllic in a world where genocide existed and where homes just as beautiful could be destroyed.
She slammed her fist into one of the mahogany cedar beams, sank to her knees, and sobbed.
Annihilation
Each morning dawned with agonizing slowness. Sleep poignantly evaded her, chased away by the ache in her leg and the phantom firelight flashing behind her eyelids. Avada often found herself wrapped listlessly in her duvet, waiting on the porch for the sun to rise.
As the pink fingers of dawn reached across the horizon, she rose stiffly from the chair, eyes red-rimmed and body feeling bruised. Neither Summer’s happy chirps nor Anar’s conciliatory trill received much acknowledgement. She fed them robotically, no interest in food herself, and for the first time in days departed her home. The door clicked shut with finality behind her.
Valkorastrasz awaited her in the front field and his unforeseen presence startled her. Wings half-raised and neck curled into a statuesque arch, he swung his reptilian head toward her, scales glittering like rubies in the morning sun. “Do you know what has happened?” His voice emanated from his chest like steam hissing from the depths of the earth. Noble yellow eyes narrowed; a cloud floated over the sun.
Avada let the air escape her lungs in a long breath. “I was coming to find you.” Her voice, roughened by lack of use, surprised her with its rasp. She coughed. “I was there, Valkoras. Tel…Teldrassil is gone.”
Black claws sank into the earth and the drake curled his lip over a row of pointed teeth. “The Temple knows. A world tree cries out as it burns; Nordrassil did, too.” His teeth clicked shut as he paused.
“ — So did they,” Avada spat bitterly and ran her cupped hands down her face. Red-rimmed eyes, too dry to shed further tears, seized Valkorastrasz’s reptilian gaze. “Hundreds, maybe thousands, burned with their home. And there was nothing I could do.” A dry sob emphasized the word, hitching her voice in a staccato step.
The drake’s form shimmered and vanished like a mirage, leaving the armored silhouette of an elf in its place. Valkoras disdainfully plucked a lock of his crimson hair from his shoulder and tossed it behind his back. “Avadri — Avada, that’s not the only thing. There’s been a new development. Mother is furious and I’m sure many others are too.”
The skin around Avada’s eyes blanched pale. “And?”
“She,” Valkoras spat the word as if it tasted bitter, “deployed the plague…she killed her own soldiers. And then she pulled their corpses up by their strings and used them to continue her battle.” When he snarled Avada had the distinct impression that he needed more practice creating a convincing mortal guise. “She defiles life just as Arthas did. And perhaps she is even more of a threat. Because she was one of you, and she now leads your — ”
A high-pitched ringing filled Avada’s ears, preventing her from hearing the rest of it. She leads my people…my people… — “They’re not my people,” she hissed. “Not if they fight for her. Not if they stand for this…they’re not — I can’t be one of — ”
He reeled, taking a step toward her, and seemed to realize he’d sounded accusatory. “Avadriath, you had nothing to do with — ”
Avada’s slender shoulder thumped into his as she surged past him, air crackling in her wake. “Sylvanas’ Horde are no people of mine. Sylvanas Windrunner is no leader of mine!” Her voice rose shrilly and she swallowed hard to rein it in. “And these?” Avada whirled back around to face him, stepping backwards as she pointed emphatically at her welling green eyes. “These were no choice of mine. They’re becoming a curse! They’re tying me to her crimes!”
Valkoras called after her but his voice garnered no response. Such trivialities mattered little to Avada now. Even later, she could scarcely remember her trek to the Dead Scar or how she knew the perfect path to reach it. Only that its blighted discoloration soon marred the land in the distance and she wrinkled her nose against the cloying stench of decay. Even after a decade the corpses remained, a foul reminder of upheaval and ruin…and of the woman who seemed to forget what she’d died for.
One of them, some long-forgotten vessel that once housed a soul, swiveled its disjointed neck to look at her with a hollow lack of eyes. Avada met the empty sockets and watched, frozen, as a maggot wriggled free and dripped into the rotten earth.
Ignition roared from the very heart of her, exhaled like her breath, thundered like her pulse. Her training begged her to restrain but she ignored it in favor of an open valve to the torrent of magic she leeched from the world. Her jaw wrenched open and she screamed until the rawness in her throat matched the fire that boiled from her. She screamed until flames replaced breath or sound. She screamed because it hurt, until it didn’t.
Shambling scourge buckled beneath the onslaught but within the flames their silhouettes just looked like people. Horrified, Avada recognized the scene from memories of kaldorei fleeing the very same radiance she found beautiful and life-giving. She had come to love something cataclysmically destructive and for the first time in her life it disgusted her. Desperately she tried to fill the scorched earth with blooms, like she’d seen Caliastrasza do dozens of times, but nothing came. Ashes begot ashes.
And then a switch flipped in her chest that she’d never felt before. The heat of her own body poured into her fire, sloughing from her like an incandescent gown, and the flames felt as a part of her as blood. She became as a comet, shedding her form and raiment in favor of one downward streak toward cataclysm. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered if she would disintegrate before she left a crater in the ground.
Annihilation.
Ashes pillowed beneath her, softer than clouds in the sky. Heavy eyelids encouraged her to stay there, curled in her own cinders, and wait for sleep to decide her fate. Eversong’s canopy eerily, magnificently resembled flames when the sun touched them…Avada could scarcely tell the difference, and she wondered if it would burn the way she couldn’t. The way she’d tried to, for the second time in her life.
She felt herself rising from the ground and only then did she register the strong arms coiled beneath her. Valkoras’s crimson hair trailed around her face. Avada decided she preferred his arms to his claws.
“Avadriath? I understand why mortals weep now.” His reptilian eyes didn’t fit the comely face of an elf, and certainly weren’t supposed to glisten beneath a film of tears. “It is because sometimes there is naught else you can do.”
Before her consciousness drifted away, spent and exhausted, Avada noted with satisfaction that her charge had learned something important from her.
Cauterization
They are your family, he’d told her. You can’t keep running away.
Such friendships were the closest thing Avada had to family, though not by blood. On a hill in Stormsong Valley, sapphire eyes wide, she’d looked up into Valkorastrasz’s face and thought of Felo’thore’s tight-lipped smile and Cassiopeia’s chubby little hands; Adrianal’s serious expression and Velianor’s ever-jaunty confidence; Avie’s wild curls and Esheyn’s patience and Ithanar’s easy laugh.
The Sunguard called her home to war, and she never expected a red dragon to provide the encouragement she needed to heed it.
As a scout, Avada could travel alone. She knew the forests of Eversong like the back of her hand and in the absence of arcane’s brilliant touch, the trees whispered to her all the more clearly. Her perception of life’s breathy signature grew more potent when unclouded by such magic. Caliastrasza’s scale seemed heavier around her neck with the weight of one oath beginning to eclipse another. Warfare always called for difficult choices, but she had never been obligated to contest her own neutrality.
As a scout, Avada could avoid orders she might not be able to obey.
Her choice to investigate Port Seahawk had been her own. If she hadn’t, the Sunguard might have tried to take it by force. The Spectre’s necessity to the fleet warranted as much. The thought of such bloodshed, assured on both sides, drew her to the port with the very same illusionary sapphire eyes.
Avada scarcely knew the Spectre and only scarcely more her husband. But when Faervell lashed out, giving nary a thought to sneaking past the guards instead, she still found herself in absolute shock. Hands nearly shaking with fury at his brazenness, she forced herself to create an image of her home under siege: anything to fuel a fire she wasn’t sure she could ignite.
Her heart burned, then so did she. She leapt, and something carried her over the heads of Faervell and the guards. Something erupted beneath her as her feet touched back down, painting the hall in flame. Something shimmered around her like ruby scales, scales as red as blood, and she tensed herself like a viper. Her cloak fluttered about her — or was it wings that enveloped her? Behind such brilliance, nobody could notice the pain on her face.
She swung her head back down the hall, eyes blazing for the first time with sun-touched gold. Life answered her call like it never had before and vines burst from between the cobbles, lashing viciously in a sea of tangled thorns. Blossoms sprouted from crimson rain as if mourning what life had lost. The gruesome, violent, beautiful display paralleled the desolation of Angrathar and how the Red Flight ignored fire’s promise of destruction. Avada, slight of form and bright of spirit, became as a dragon herself: fierce and noble and terrible.
Her hands shook. Golden eyes, reptilian eyes, darted around. Scarlet splattered the walls, the floor, the vines that retreated into the earth. Blood held the precise color of Caliastrasza’s scales, how had she never noticed it before? Even as her form blurred Avada’s tears remained.
Not now. Not yet. There was no time to mourn.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Muscle memories of violence twitched through her nerves as Avada huddled in her tent. Quel’thalas’s unnatural blizzard swirled outside, reminding her very much of Dragonblight. She wished she could be there for the Red Flight’s presence if not for the weather. Her magic refused to chase the chill away, and it seemed barbaric for her to use fire for warmth when it had such power to burn.
Her mouth tasted of ash and the blanket felt as heavy as the mantle of guilt she bore. Avada wondered if Caliastrasza could feel it, too. Somehow her mentor’s scale seemed to hold more of her presence than it once did. Perhaps she’d imagined it, but the pendant grew hot when the strange new power had risen in her chest. Had it been Calia’s righteous anger? A red dragon’s fury that her student had wandered astray? Such violent beings as mortals did not belong in association with the Wyrmrest Temple.
The tent flap fluttered open, buffeting her with a frigid wind. Avada darted forward to snatch it closed and froze. Honeyed curls and golden eyes greeted her with a presence so warm it felt as though a sunbeam shone through the entrance rather than winter’s bite. A sudden fear eclipsed Avada’s initial joy and the word reckoning welled up in her mind.
“Life-Mother…”
The woman smiled. “Avadriath. My, my, how you’ve grown.”
In utter disbelief, the mage’s mouth dropped open. “G-grown? Life-Mother, I — how did — why have you come?” Her lip trembled.
Caliastrasza seemed amused. “You called me, of course. A dragon does not bestow her scales lightly, for they always remember when they were a part of her.” When Avada voiced no reply, she closed the distance between them and settled herself cross-legged alongside her. Her gently curved horns nearly brushed the roof of the tent. “You have grown. Life magic has taken root in you, scale-daughter. You become more like us every day. Haven’t you noticed?”
The mage’s face fell. She stayed silent for a long time, fumbling over words that sat like lead on her tongue. “I…I killed people, Calia! Humans! Dwarves, elves, it doesn’t matter! They died by my hand, burnt in my flames!” Avada looked down at her hands in horror and shook her head. “I failed you.” Her voice cracked, split by the word.
The wyrm listened in her patient way and mused to herself as Avada bordered on anguish. “My daughter…Look at me.” A gentle finger tilted Avada’s chin upward to capture her attention. “Does a talbuk protect his herd? Does a grizzly protect her cubs?”
Avada swallowed thickly, unable to look away. “Yes.”
“Would a tiger kill to defend his territory, even if he has no need to hunt?”
“Yes.” The blizzard howled outside.
The dragon’s eyes took on a flinty luster that Avada had never seen before. It almost frightened her. “Did the Red Flight go to war against Deathwing’s brood, even though the Black Flight nears extinction? Would Alexstrasza decimate the Dragonmaw clan to protect her clutch?” Her caramel voice dropped to a low, dangerous thrum. “Would I kill for Valkorastrasz and for you?”
Avada didn’t reply; she didn’t need to. She simply nodded at her mentor, eyes round and sorrow momentarily forgotten. For the second time she felt burned by the realization that what she considered warm and comforting, what had become her perception of life’s very essence, had a very strong potential to destroy. Teldrassil’s pyre burned with flames just as bright as her own.
Caliastrasza blinked calmly and laid a hand on the side of Avada’s face. “Scale-daughter. The nature of life is balance, and it is not without violence. Your actions to defend your people and your home speak of your integration in life’s continuous circle.” The wyrm smiled mournfully and angled her horned head slightly to one side. “But the pain in your heart speaks of your character. Find peace, scale-daughter, that my choice would have been the same. And I would feel just as much pain as you.”
Avada made a cracked, broken sound and Calia gathered the mage into her arms. “It is the reason I’ve come here. As you protect your people, I will protect you. In what little way I can.”
Cauterization.
“It is supposed to hurt, my daughter. That is the burden we bear.”
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