Kestrelwing

While I've never really managed to RP my night elf hunter, I actually really like her as a character and have put some thought into her background and motivations. My night elf lore's pretty poor, but I always thought the WC3 night elves were awesome -- hard and wild and determined.

So yeah anyway, I decided to piece together a story from Kumari's past and see how it went. And here it is.

==

'Kestrelwing'

Kestrelwing is an old name, stretching back to the days before the War of the Ancients, before the Highborne and the Lowborn were at odds, when the vaulted ceilings and graceful masonry of the elves stretched from Feralas to Winterspring. Kestrelwing is an old name, but the family thought more of themselves than others thought of them; the name was spoken on few lips save those of tradesmen and peasants. Yet for all that, the Kestrelwings had one distinction. The eldest child of each branch of the family was born to become a protector of the forest.

The forest had many protectors in the sentinels and, when they could be roused from their slumber, the druids; but the Kestrelwings, tall and proud, wandered the woods until they knew every mossy boulder and lichen-wrapped oak. No earthly hand had appointed them, not that any could remember; their guardian path was woven by the threads of tradition, maintained through secrets carefully sheltered, bound in the unquestionable language of duty.

Parent passed to child the knowledge of the calls of every bird and the cries of every beast, the properties of each herb, and the names of all things living. These they observed and protected, spending most of their years isolated from society from youth until grave, until death took them in the course of their duties.

It was into this family that Kumari, her countenance as cold as the night sky and her feet as swift as the waters of Azshara, was born some two hundred years before the coming of Archimonde.

**
A woman of the kal'dorei crouched beneath the supple branches of an elm at the edge of a forest glade, resting a hand against the trunk. Her ears quivered in response to the night whispers of the forest: the skittering of spiders and the whirring of wings, the far-distant call of a nightingale and the rustling of the heavy summer leaves. She knew them all as intimately as she knew the beating of her own heart, but tonight more than other nights, she sensed every note of their feral symphony.

Lifting her head with the infinite care of a huntress, she turned her eyes to the branches above and signaled to the figure settled among them: a second woman, her skin the same dusky colour, her face decorated with the same intricate, tribal markings.

The woman in the elm returned the signal, her eyes darting about the glade as she peered into the night-gloaming. She was called Kumari, and tonight, as on many nights, her mother had brought her into the forest to instruct her – her mother, who leaned below against the slender trunk. Aradestris, the finest of the Kestrelwings, the oldest, 'She Who Knew.' Aradestris had borne her daughters late, but in the timelessness of the kal'dorei, she had as many years left to her as did the sun and the moon.

The sound of stirring grass brought both women immediately to attention in their positions.

'Light of Elune,' murmured Aradestris, and the words were almost a prayer.

A great nightsaber, its coat a pale and luminescent grey, almost white where most were as dark as the shadows, padded to the edge of the clearing. It was a noble specimen of its kind, shaped to perfection in its sleek head and chest and limbs. Ke'sharal, Aradastris had called him ever since she had first spotted his tracks in the deep loam; ever since, she had sought him.

It was a characteristic of the Kestrelwings, as with some other families of the forest kal'dorei, though not all, to tame a companion to prowl beside them in their guardianship for the years of the animal's life. The power to create such a bond was an ancient magic, affecting both mind and spirit, and further twining the fate of the elf with the nature of the forest. In her long years Aradastris had bound several such beasts to her, breathed her spirit into them and theirs into her, crouched and hunted beside them. Always, she waited to find perfection before she chose; and here, in the flesh, was beauty.

The nightsaber's ears swivelled as it paused, its tail swishing through the heavy night air. Ke'sharal was hunting.

Aradastis smiled. She, too, was hunting, and the end there would be not blood but the great ecstasy of the beast-tamer. It was the most delicate work, and the most dangerous, into which one would willingly and knowingly place themselves; but she knew every moment of the ritual, and she felt already that she knew the movement of every sinew in the cat's body, that she could already touch its arrogant spirit.

She stepped forward from beneath the elm, lifting her scarred and beautiful hands. The saber's head turned; it crouched. Aradastris began to sing – it was a melody untaught by elven knowledge, wordless and eerie – it was the song of the forest itself, and the notes dropped from the woman's lips to reach out and wrap themselves around the nightsaber, caressing, soothing, inquiring, commanding...

Perhaps Aradastris' song was imperfect; perhaps the great, pale saber was too swift for the magic; perhaps it was merely that fate had drifted in and decided to have its say. But the cat, the beast she had already named and loved and chosen, bounded across the clearing and leapt upon her throat.

Aradastris, the oldest of the Kestrelwings, fell beneath the nightsaber's heavy weight, and her song ceased, the last notes drifting away into echo and memory on the fickle breeze. She gasped, but there was no time to draw breath again.

'Aiiiiiiiiiieeee!'

A shout ripped itself from Kumari's lungs, the length and pitch of the cry rising and wailing – the despairing notes of a wounded beast. Her ashen bow was in her hands and she loosed her arrows as though in the throes of a fever.

Hiss, thud. The first of her shafts struck the great cat's hide in the hollow just behind its foreleg. It screamed, its cry matching Kumari's own, and arched its back. Blood stained the luminous white of its fur, cascading from the slashed artery. Hiss, thud. The second shaft pierced the heavy fur of its chest and the saber stiffened and twisted, clawing at the wooden enemy driven into its flesh, the prey beneath its paws forgotten.

Hiss, thud. Kumari loosed her third shaft and, with another short and reckless cry she leapt from the branches, throwing her bow into the forest loam and wielding nothing but a whitesteel knife. But the arrows had done their work – the cat growled and thrashed once more, and then collapsed, its last movements feeble, soaking the forest floor with the last drops of its lifeblood. Aradestris' daughter had learned the craft of archery well, had sent her shafts flying near to perfection, as befitted a Kestrelwing. As befitted one taught by She Who Knew...

And with a great intake of breath, Kumari threw the whitesteel knife to the ground and dropped to her knees beside her mother, ready to stay the gushing tide of her own wounds, to bind them up and to finish the rescue that she had begun– but where Aradestris' eyes had once burned with cold light, they were hollow. Her throat and chest were torn open to the bone; shreds of her dark, forestscarred skin littered the ground beside her, and black blood was everywhere, soaking the ground and the nightgrass, Aradestris' hair and face and clothing, Kumari's hands.

**

Some time later, before the night was gone but in the cold hours long after midnight, Kumari shrouded her the remnants of her mother's body in the fresh and bloodsoaked hide of the great nightsaber. The skin was her mother's last trophy, ruined and ripped; it would join her in death where the great cat should have padded at her side in life.

Slowly, with more care even than she had ever put into the handling of a bow or the soft treading of her feet, Kumari bent and tucked the corners of the hide around the body, then lifted what was left of her mother over her shoulder. It was now hers to bring back the news to her father, her sister, and her kin; it was hers to begin the mourning.

Her dusky face was set as she began the slow steps home, and in her heart was only the cold knowledge that this was the way of things. But for the first time that Kumari could remember, the forest only smelled of death.

Ab-so-lute-ly wonderful. With every word that I read, I was just left hungering for more and more! I truly and really love reading your stories, and I am so glad that you've decided to write one about night elves - I had no idea you role-played one! Personally, I really hope you keep writing more because I think you're an extremely brilliant writer and you shouldn't spare us of your wonderful work or it'd be selfish of you!

Aniane wrote:I always thought the WC3 night elves were awesome -- hard and wild and determined.

100% agree with you! I completely fell in love with the WC3 night elves <3. So much more than your stereotypical "hippie" elf that you normally see in fantasy novels.

By the way, I noticed somewhere you wrote, "[...] the notes dropped from her mouth". I think you mean dripped from her mouth? If not, then never mind! Oh and on a final note: it's kaldorei not kal'dorei! But once again, another beautifully written story. Well done, well done and well done!