[WoW] Light’s Mercy

Note: To make the Keleosha journals a tiny bit less confusing, I’m referring to the two characters by their in game names: “Keleosha” for the paladin from alternate Draenor, and “Keleoshaa” for the priest from the main timeline Outland.

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Keleoshaa was out of breath and her muscles ached. She often walked between her home on Azuremyst Isle and the Exodar, but today she had to run. Because today, her brother had come for a visit.

“You had a brother.”

The echo of her mother’s voice rang in her head as she ran. When her parents set her down to tell her about the son they had lost to the Legion millennia ago, she felt for them. The pain in their eyes as they told her about Khafras who had barely been a man when the Draenei were forced to leave Argus. How he had been brave and tried to fight back rather than flee with Voran and Nurtaa. How Nurtaa had tried to go back for him but became overwhelmed by the demon hordes. While they hoped that Khafras still lived, they were afraid he had fallen.

But he hadn’t. He was here now, on the side of the Legion, hunting Keleoshaa. He had appeared weeks ago, first attacking her on the road, then attacking Keleosha, her paladin counterpart from the other timeline. Keleosha didn’t know about Khafras, her parents had never told her, and Keleoshaa hadn’t told her until after the attack. That hadn’t gone over well. But she helped Keleoshaa get her family to safety – somewhere Khafras couldn’t find them. Keleoshaa should have gone with them, now she might not see them again.

She hid behind a tree to catch her breath. The Exodar was close. If she could make it there she would be safe. Though the swirling dark clouds in the sky made her worry that nowhere was safe. Something about those clouds felt off. They appeared hours after the other Keleosha had left for an assault on Argus. She didn’t know what it meant, but it was definitely unnatural. Everything felt wrong, the temperature, the air, and…

She finally noticed how quiet and still everything had become during her rest. The only sounds she heard were the wind and her own labored breaths. No birds, no insects, and no sound from the eredar that had been chasing her. She had to move.

Quickly moving around the tree, Keleoshaa went back into a sprint toward the Exodar. She worried about running in there with a member of the Legion behind her, but there were armed guards at the gate who were prepared for exactly this sort of thing. She also didn’t have a choice – Khafras may have toyed with her before, but she knew that he would kill her this time.

Searing pain hit her back as felfire connected. The force caused her to tumble to the ground in agony. She clawed her way forward, trying to get away and ended up rolling down a hill and stopping next to a fallen tree. She climbed over it, or more accurately fell over it trying to stand up, landing on her back on the other side and crying out in pain again from the burns.

Reaching her shaking hand over her shoulder she healed the burn on her back as best she could at the moment. The blinding pain became more manageable, enough that she could keep moving. Not far now. But as she raised her head she saw a pair of armored legs in front of her. Her gaze raised further up to look at the grinning red face of her brother.

“Hello, sister.”

Khafras was over eight feet tall and built like a gronnling. His skin no longer had the blue tone of his sister, rather it was red and fel-scarred, perhaps from years of torture at the hands of the demons he now served. His armor was minimal, leg plates, bracers, and a shoulder mantle cast from dark gray metal that appeared almost black thanks to the dim light from the overcast sky.

There was no more running. She had to fight. She tried to stand but as soon as she was on her hooves, Khafras punched her jaw, knocking her down again. She could taste blood in her mouth so she spat it at him in defiance. In this moment she thought that she wouldn’t have cared much for him even if he hadn’t joined the Legion and had been there when she was growing up. Filled with anger and a desire to live, she called upon her darker talents and a sickly purple glow emanated from her hand, striking Khafras square in the chest. The eredar lurched as the shadow damage coursed through him. It wasn’t going to be enough to kill him but it was a start.

Keleoshaa used the opportunity to rise on her trembling legs and use her mind flay on him, “To hell with you, you man’ari piece of shit.” she growled in a voice with an otherworldly echo to it. She couldn’t keep this up for long. She shouldn’t. Her control of shadow magic wasn’t great, but it was better than her other option. She barely had time to dodge as through the pain, Khafras attempted to throw a fel fireball at her. She was forced to break her concentration as she narrowly avoided the attack.

Her brother laughed at her, “You have our mother’s foul mouth. I wonder, will you plead for your life like she did before I killed her?”

Through her pain and exhaustion, Keleoshaa laughed at the attempt to anger her, “My mother died when the orcs attacked. Light, you are terrible at this.” she used the free moment heal herself a little as she taunted, “Let me guess, you broke Draenor apart too? You crashed the Exodar? Oh, are you the reason I hit my leg on the coffee table some mornings?”

“No, but I’ll be the reason your daughter becomes an orphan. Don’t worry, the Legion will take her in. If she lives, she might make a good warrior someday.”

In a fit of rage, Keleoshaa pulled her dagger from her belt, ran at her brother and sunk the blade deep into his shoulder, inches from his neck. She paid for her mistake immediately as Khafras wrapped a large hand around her neck, “Looks like I touched a nerve. Tell you what…you tell me where your wife, daughter, and your duplicate are and I might spare one or two of them.”

“FFF-…ck you,” Keleoshaa sneered. She tried to kick out from Khafras’ grip when a flash of light in the sky caught her attention and her eyes widened in horror. The clouds had parted, and a massive bearded demonic being was looking over the planet. A sword appeared in his hand and plunged into the surface miles away, but with enough force that the ground trembled with enough force to make Khafras stumble and loosen his grip. Then the demonic giant was pulled backward into the void of space and the portal to Argus suddenly closed.

Keleoshaa looked back at her brother who was staring at the sky with a mixture of fear and confusion, and suddenly she knew the meaning of what she had seen. Her throat burned from where he had been squeezing it moments ago but the laugh that came from it eased the pain. A joyous laugh celebrating the day she never thought would come, and the fear of mortality in the eyes of the eredar who still held her in his grasp.

“Heh heh heh….you lose.”

Khafras screamed in rage and his grip tightened once more. Keleoshaa’s vision began to darken. She struggled to catch a breath through the iron grip, but it was futile. As she faded, two thoughts comforted her: her family was safe, and she was dying in a world where the Legion was no more.