Blood of My Blood (Vale, Annie)

Apologies that this is such a short beginning, but I'm not actually sure how the rest will go - depends on current RP! I will be writing more, though, probably in short bursts such as this one. I'm a little rusty, but I hope you enjoy the read. Comments / criticism are always very welcome.

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I.

'Remember what I said, Garthen--'

'I know, I know. No spiders.'

'If that child has a single scratch when I return, I swear to you that the pain you felt on that shore in Uldum will be nothing compared to the--'

'Vale.' The mage held a finger up, and for a moment silence clung to the air between them. 'I am taking this seriously. You have my word on that.'

Vale fixed her gaze on him - a lioness taking the measure of her intended prey - before nodding once. She had entrusted this man with her own life, she could entrust him also with her son's. And yet...

The door behind Garthen was slightly ajar, and soft lamplight spilled from the crack out into the shadowed stones of the corridor. For a moment, the desire seized her to run to the door, to fling it open and to snatch her child away with her - away from the violet city and into the thorny and rain-drenched paths that she must travel. He was hers, the blood of her blood, of the sap and sinew of the forest--

But no, he belonged to the lamplight for now, to the warmth and safety into which no child of the forest had ever before been born. The darkness would come for Adrian Revan Caan soon enough - tonight he was seven weeks old and belonged here, in the care of a homely nurse and under the protection of Garthen Raelas, who was a lion when he chose to be. And besides, she would be back so soon...

The shadow awaited. She needed to find Ledgic.

Without a second glance to spare for either the mage or the bedroom doorway, she fled for the stairs, making her way out into the silent city with the grey folds of her travelling cloak fluttering in her wake like a nightmoth's wings.

Part two, based on RP events a few days ago! Let me know if anything isn't clear - it was a lot to condense into a few paragraphs, and narrative clarity is one of my weak points.

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II.

The slumbering leviathan had awoken.

She knew it even before he spoke; knew it in the moment that she saw the dark-clad man slumped against the trunk of an ancient walnut tree. Those of her blood had a curse; she had always felt its presence, though unnamed and unknown, in the lives of her kin. What power must such blood possess when stirred by the divine shadow?

'Ledgic Caan. I've been looking for you.'

'Good fer ye.' He didn't lift his head, but his voice grated like steel carving into stone. 'Look at ye, walkin' in 'ere wit' yer fancy accent, after runnin' off wit' whate'er bloke struck yer fancy a'th' time.'

She saw him opening and closing his hand, and through the stench of char and rot that rose from the undergrowth, she heard the murmur of a voice. The music of the shadow hummed through the corrupted air, becoming one with it, telling the wordless story of the ruined, fire-wracked ground beneath them.

'Ye 'ave th' shadow, Led. I can 'ear it singin' in yer blood...' Vale lifted her hands, a tongue of violet flame wreathing her fingers. 'Yer th'same as me.'

Ledgic groaned. 'Th' same as ye? This is poison.'

The ancient walnut behind the man creaked and swayed as a wind penetrated the forest, rattling the skeletal branches. Yet still Vale could hear the shadow's hum.

'Let me look,' she said quietly.

The forest whispered. After a long moment, the man's head drooped forward. 'Yeh,' he muttered, and reached out toward her as if his arm were iron-heavy.

She knelt beside him among the gnarled roots, and as her fingertips touched his skin, his gloved hand lit up with a bright violet fire much like her own. And then as Ledgic gripped her hand with a ragged breath, a second flame began to wrap itself around the first: black and gleaming as obsidian, choking itself around the natural shadow...

'Th' same as ye? This is poison.'

Vale filled her lungs with air like a diver before the plunge, and leaning forward to embrace him, she began to peel away the layers of his thoughts. It was a magic she had not exercised for.. ah, so many years. In this moment she had no choice.

And surrounding the two figures, huddled against the black walnut that had seen generations of their clan rise and fall, the shadow breathed its wordless song.

Warning: This section is about Annie, so there's lots of swearing. Enjoy xD

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III.

Meanwhile, Annie Caan was not having a good day.

As she opened her eyes, light slanted into her pupils and she snapped them shut again, groaning. She felt as if she'd fallen from the upper branches of a damn tree into a pit of spikes, though actually she was, uh-- She opened one eye and squinted at her surroundings. Lying in a ditch. Charming. She rolled onto her stomach and wiped away the mud and rotting leaves that had somehow caked her face while she slept. The last thing she remembered...

...was spurring a 'borrowed' mare along the road that led from Eastvale toward Duskwood. Then a shout and a crack and crashing, as if a tree had fallen into the road, and the horse had screamed, reared, bolted... And then something had hit her in the back of the head.

Annie spat and then swore, the taste of ditchwater strong in her mouth, scrubbing a sodden sleeve across her face. When she had most needed speed, when she had actually been riding for something bloody important, she, Annie Fox - Annie bloody bleeding Caan, had been careless enough to be surprised by some son-of-a-slut of a horsethief--

Her hand went to her neck and she swore loudly enough to make her head spin all over again. The chain was gone, of course, with her wedding ring and Ledgic's pendant. She raised herself up painfully on an elbow, and then sunk down again with a scrap of laughter sticking in her throat. They had even taken her bleeding boots.

'I liked 'em fuckin' boots,' she muttered, pushing herself onto her bruised hands and knees and crawling out of the ditch, nothing left to her but her filthy shirt and trousers. Annie Fox, once a name in the Stormwind underworld, bested by some third-rate mugger...

'Righ', yeh, used t' be less 'n a third rate mugger m'self.' She swayed to her feet, and as she laid eyes on the half-lit forest and caught a glimpse down the dirt track of the westering sun, everything else snapped from her mind.

'Shi'... a whole.. day.'

Stringing together a knotted rope of curses as she stumbled forward, Annie ran unsteadily down the narrow road; back the way she had come the night before, when she had been careering down the dusty track on the back of a stolen mare.

IV.

Vale knelt in the sand, and with one pale finger, traced the first line.

'Even once is one time too many.'

The mage's words hovered at her ear with the persistence of a stinging insect.

'Even the strongest can succumb to temptation.'

The white grains parted at her touch as she drew the pattern's central arc. She had known temptation, and she had known fear. But tonight, she had time for neither.

She sought strength to save that which she had promised to save. As she closed her eyes, the image of a small boy, crouched beneath a broken window and wreathed in the magic of a blackened shadow, returned to her - the image that she had drawn from Ledgic's mind three nights ago.

She could not fight the obsidian gleam of that corrupted shadow by her own power, and yet Ledgic - not yet understanding the ways of the divine shadow - could not fight it without her. It was too long since she had delved deeply into another's mind, yet that was what she had to do. And for that, she needed--

Opening her eyes, Vale breathed in deeply of the desert air. The scent of nightblooming hibiscus drifted to her nostrils, mingling with the nearby tang of the sea. The sands shone silver beneath a luminous moon, and a breeze stirred the loose knot of her hair.

A smile tightened the corners of her mouth. The circle had been drawn. Tonight, on the shores of Tanaris, she would finish what she had started.

'Blood of my blood,' she whispered, 'blood of the forest' - and then as she continued, her voice rose in an unearthly chant that was almost a song.

You who are accursed, you who made me
Sylvia and Kalec, Vanith, Iriden, Kaden
I am your daughter, child of your hatred
And in these next moments, as I ravage and take
May your strength rise in me - the blood of the Caans
The blood of my fate.

As she stood, the few grains of sand that had been pressed beneath her knees fell from the silk of her gown. She raised her hands, and words in a harsh, ancient tongue parted the night air with the violence of a serrated blade.

The intricate circle at her feet, which before had been only indentations in the sand, began to gleam with a violet light, the same light which was now pouring from Vale's hands.

'Who... summons... me?'

The question came, as if the words had been dragged from an unwilling throat, from a nebulous form that wavered, mirage-like, in the centre of the glowing circle. Voidwalker.

'I do not only summon you, demon,' replied Vale, moving into the stance of a swordsman, violet flame still spilling from her hands. She smiled. 'I command you.'

A curved dagger appeared in the woman's grasp, shining as if it had materialised from the brilliance of the shadowflame.

'I am Valerias Caan, and your power is mine.'

Her battle had begun.

I loved this last chapter, for some reason it made me think of the series Rome and the curses the character Servilia chanted. And an excellent response to the witless voidwalker, I might add. It's a 'realistic' warlock and that's pretty hard to pull off.

I wholeheartedly approve, and would definitely like to see more. When hell breaks loose, I want a front seat.

Thank you so much Morgeth! As you play a 'real' warlock rather than a desperate one-time dabbler, I do appreciate hearing that I haven't cocked it up. (I haven't seen Rome, but I hear it is well worth watching!) I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed that part.

Chapter five brings us back to Annie, so, more dirty language. I'm not sure whether the Annie sections are too much of a break from the Vale ones, but Annie is a part of the story RP-wise so, hm, I'll have to think about that. Comments and suggestions are always very very welcome!

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V.

'Eothan Daaaaawn!'

Annie stopped short before the door of the sprawling two-story house. The place was tucked away at one end of the village of Eastvale, but even if it had been in the middle of a bloody city square, shouting was the easiest thing for her to do. Her head was throbbing, and for once she wasn't doing too well at keeping upright, but she could still kick up a racket.

'Eothan Da-'

The door opened. Eothan stood on the threshold, a knife in one hand, the corner of his chin covered in shaving lather. Dusk had settled over the valley and firelight filled the space behind him, but Annie caught the surprise in his posture.

'Nevermind that I wasn't expecting you to return yet, but... nice feet,' he said.

Righ', maybe it weren' only surprise, th' smug git.

'Jus' 'ad some, er... trouble on th'road. But tha' ain' th'poin'. Ye ready t'go?'

Annie folded her arms, her battered muscles protesting, and focused on not swaying. She knew that the ditch-mud had dried in her hair and caked her skin, that her shirt and trousers were barely recognisable as cloth, and that her feet were lacking boots, but he didn't have to bring it up.

'I can be. But you're not in a fit state to travel... let me at least get you a pair of boots.' Eothan wiped the drying lather from his chin and turned back toward the interior of the house.

'Damn me feet!' Annie's frustration erupted into a bellow as she threw her hands up in the air. 'I've wasted 'nough time a'ready. Ye know we got t'get back t'Led - I tol' ye wha' kind of a state 'e were in, an' far as I can think ye're th'only bloody bleedin' person who can 'elp 'im with tha' shadow. Jus' get yer fuckin' 'orse sa' we can go.'

She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the hammering inside her skull.

'I'll get my horse in a minute, but just take the damned boots, Annie. I'm not going to have you keeling over on the ride. And there's a well to wash behind you.'

He turned and disappeared into the house, and Annie was left rubbing her face and catching her breath. Right, fine, if that's how it was, that's how it was. She turned to the well, and hauling up a bucket with deep breaths, she stripped off her rank clothes and began to scrub her limbs.

It had been a whole day and a half since she had left Ledgic at the Caan village in order to find someone to help, and who knew what state he was going to be in when she got back. She had never seen him hopeless like that... she'd never seen him up against an enemy that he didn't know how to fight. Annie splashed water over herself, scrubbing away the caked dirt with an energy she hadn't known she had left. She just couldn't leave Led sitting in a burned-down old village full of ghosts, and that was why she'd come to Eothan. She had to find a way to help--

'You know, you could have warned me.' Eothan's voice came from behind her and Annie turned, shooting him a glare as muddy water dripped from her hair and into one eye.

'Oh jus' get th' damn 'orse,' she snapped, and dumped her clothes into the bucket of foul water, kneeling down to wring the ditch-mud out of them. She knew what Eothan was like - that he was one of those blokes whose eyes tended to glue themselves on lasses - but at a time like this you'd think it wouldn't bloody matter.

Eothan dropped a pair of boots on the ground and then turned toward the stables, shaking his head. 'If Ledgic knew what I'd just seen...' he muttered.

A few minutes later, Annie was dressed again in soaking and slightly more recognisable rags, with an old pair of men's boots on her feet. Eothan, seated on his bay gelding, leaned down to offer her a hand.

'Righ,' Annie said, hauling her bruised body up onto the animal's broad back. 'S'get back t' Led. We ain' got na' time t'lose.'

This sequence is going to have a few parts to it - probably three chapters' worth - so if it seems confusing, there'll be more to it!

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VI.

There was no path, and yet somehow, she knew the way. The silver sands rippled behind her, a landscape of ridges resting softly beneath a moonless sky. Before her, a coastline drowned in shadows, and a dark bluff rising along the shore. She could smell the deep brine of the tidepools, though she could not yet see the sea.

I first met the Dharayid here, Vale thought, brushing a hand across a weathered outcropping of sandstone. This is where I began to understand.

She could not remember her arrival in the desert tonight - she had simply found herself walking between the dunes, sand rushing beneath her sandals - but somehow, she knew where she was bound. This cliff, which the Dharayid, the wanderers who other Tanarisi dismissed as the goat-people, had called the Mas'aqal,* was a rock to which she had set her feet before. She looked up at the crumbling red bluff and began to climb.

A wind stirred from the vast expanses behind her, driving her upward, whispering in the harsh and unknown tongues of the shifting sands. She remembered the desert, she had known the desert, had come to understand why the Dharayid spoke of the Lady, the spirit of the land. There was no kindness in the wasteland, but it was their wasteland, so they had loved Her all the same.

At last Vale reached the summit, her breast rising and falling as she reached for breath. Waves crashed against the sandstone far beneath her, where over the years the water had eaten away at the soft sandstone, leaving an inversely sloping cliff over which jutted a wide and flat-topped promontory. She stepped forward onto this rock, looking out over the inscrutable sea, which beneath the distant starlight gleamed as black as a rare pearl.

Why had she come here? What awaited her in this place?

And Vale, who had before known no fear, felt the finger of death against her spine.

--

*Language note! I'm (blatantly) making up a bit of Tanarisi here, but among my imagined Dharayid people, when introducing themselves to strangers they call themselves either '<name> Mas Dhari' for a man, or '<name> Mir Dhari' for a woman, meaning 'son/daughter (or male/female heir) of the Dharayid.' So Mas'aqal loosely translates as 'son of the ages' or 'heir of time,' as it's a very old and prominent landmark.

I'm afraid this may be a winding, twisted section - please let me know if there's anything that needs clarification. And thank you, as always, for reading!

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VII.

'Do you not remember me, Valerias Caan?' A murmur beside her ear, then, and the chill of fear that had reached the marrow of her bones became instead a warm breath on her neck and she felt the gentle pressure of a body leaning against her back.

'What... who?' whispered Vale. A finger slid across the nape of her neck and into her hair. Lips brushed her ear, and the only reply was soft laughter.

A shiver gripped her spine and Vale wrenched herself away, whirling to face whatever shadow or demon would have the audacity to prey upon her so. Well she would fight--

Vale stopped, one hand upraised. There was neither shade nor demon, only a girl who stood crossing her arms, lifting a small, pointed chin to face her. Though in the dark Vale could observe little more than the outline of her form nor make out the colour of the hair that fell around her shoulders, she knew who it was.

'A... Aya?' Her own voice seemed hollow in her ears.

'You used to be more gracious,' said the girl, curling her lips. 'Tonight, especially, you should treat me kindly, as I have been sent to release you from your shadows.' The apparition tossed her head, while Vale struggled to extract meaning from her words.

Aya, daughter of Khemen, of the tribe of Bashalad. The first mind that Vale had explored, six long years ago; the first person whose dreams and memories and she had tasted, toyed with, savoured. Vale tried to speak, but her throat was as dry as the sandstone cliff, and her tongue felt like clay against the roof of her mouth.

'I taught you to dance the shamarah. Don't you remember?' The girl's thin mouth turned, and then, as the wind began to stir again, whirling about the two figures on the promontory with a great rush of sound, she lifted her hands and began to dance.

Vale's head began to spin as she watched the slim figure sway in her perfect dance, her dress whipping in the harsh winds. She tried to focus, but thought eluded her. This scene was impossible. She remembered the last time she had seen this girl - Aya, with the silken scarf she always wore and the deep copper hair that had given her the look of a flame. She remembered the scent of fear, the scorching heat reflected in the desert sands, and she remembered Aya's face: that of one who had met the hour of her death.

'Aya!' she mustered up the strength to shout over the rising gale, wrenching herself from her stupor to grasp one slender arm. 'This is impossible. You... you...'

The dancer paused, the dance ceased, and Aya gave Vale a slow, sideways look. 'Died? Yes. But, ah... Vell-a-riy-ess... this is only the beginning.'

She turned, laying a hand over Vale's own, and gestured toward the horizon. The moon, which had before been unseen - a newborn crescent in the making - was rising from behind the sea as a pale silver disk drenched in red.

'This is the hour of the blood moon, the hour of fate. Do you remember when you first saw it, in your dreams, those years ago when you first set foot on these shores?' Aya turned, and the smile that dripped from her lips was one Vale had never seen her wear: the smile of a hunter. 'I know your mind, as you know mine, and now it only remains for you to seize what is yours.

'Come with me,' the girl whispered suddenly, urgently, and then facing the savage winds, she gave a cry of laughter, the cry of a hawk, and threw herself from the precipice.

'Aya!' The scream wrenched itself from Vale's throat and she darted to the top of the cliff, but there was nothing. Before her, the blood-moon had been birthed fully, and loomed upon the edge of the sea like a triumphant god of war.

Come with me. Seize what is yours. The hour of the blood moon, the hour of fate. I was sent to release you from your shadows.

The words rose around Vale as if they were born on the rising gale itself. She did remember the first time that she had dreamed of the blood moon; when she had first begun to taste the power of exploring and controlling the mind. She remembered - and her feet drew closer to the edge of the crumbling sandstone cliff.

Come with me. The words echoed in her ears, rang in the depths of her mind, travelled through her veins--

And then, somewhere across the storm-tossed sea, she heard the jarring sound of laughter.

This is actually the continuation of the last two parts - the end of the sequence. So it takes place two 'n some weeks ago. I just didn't get to writing it till now >> Do enjoy, and if you have any comments about how it could be better / go smoother / anything, please post away!

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VIII.

As the storm crashed against the cliff below, bitter salt spray whipped up from the roaring waters, its fingers lashing at Vale's ankles, drawing her forward. She stood as if mesmerised, with the sudden unearthly laughter rising in her ears even above the torrential winds.

Come with me-- And then her foot slipped on the sandstone made treacherous by the sea.

She screamed.

And then, before she tumbled over the edge, the roaring winds ceased. Her hands scraped cold stone and she felt something solid against her shoulder. Slowly, even as echoes of the ferocious gale spun inside her head, she forced her eyes open. Pale clouds spun across the moon like wisps of silk, and before her feet lay the violet city, its soft outlines barely visible through the night and its graceful spires each rising to a point far below.

Vale's stomach roiled, and she dug her fingers into the mortared crevices of the stone beside her. She stood upon a narrow railing carved of marble, clinging to the wall at her side. Nothing lay between her and the gaping chasm of the skies, and so close seemed the golden streaks that lit the northern horizon that she might have reached to touch them.

The citadel tower... how... Her thoughts revolted as the clouds began to spin about her, and she started backward, half-falling and half-jumping from the treacherous railing into the safety of the balcony behind. I nearly leapt from the citadel tower.

What strange dreams had moved even her feet while she slept? She shivered as the clouds drifted around her, enveloping the pinnacle of the tower, grasping for some understanding of the dream - it must have been a dream - of Aya and the blood moon. She had dreamed of a blood moon before, years before in the desert. Yet she remembered every detail of the climb to the top of the Mas'aqal, of Aya's face, of the precipice and the storm.

She sunk down against the stone face of the tower at her back, and sat, crouched, as she tried to calm her shaking limbs. Each moment since she had summoned the voidwalker, since she had fought for and consumed its power, had been a struggle for control; her own shadow sustained her, but the had always feared the power of the fel. And the demon had seen her fear, and had mocked her even as she drained its essence.

And as she sat huddled against the balcony, enshrouded in clouds, the laughter that she had heard in her dreams began to ring out from the swirling fog around her. A low, hollow laughter, nebulous and impossible to pinpoint--

Vale fell forward onto her hands and knees and then scrambled for purchase as she swayed to her feet. She knew that laugh, now; this was no nightmare of her past or her future, no whispers of her blood or her fate. This was the fight that she had chosen for herself.

'You haven't destroyed me, demon,' she shouted into the mists. 'Your laughter is nothing, as long as I retain my will. I bent you to my control and your power along with you, and no fel essence will force me into death or madness!'

She would conquer this; she would tear her veins apart to find the strength to return to Ledgic and to do battle against the corruption that threatened him. Vale raised her hands, no longer shaking, to the heavens. As she began to laugh, the mists parted before the leaping shadows of a violet flame.