OOC: Just prose this time, no Discord RP transcription. A note of dark thoughts going on within this characters’ mind due after recent RP events. No gore but trauma is trauma. Read with that note of caution in mind.))
—
Night in Stormhaven was different than Azeroth. What normally was a familiar star-studded sky tinged with the glow of two moons was an entirely different set of stars laced with colored ribbons of faraway galaxies. Instead of moons, rocky hulks of planets hung close, too close, making an endless expanse of sky somehow feel claustrophobic.
She walked alone, eyes on the sky, no mind to the dry, alien dirt beneath her feet. Like the sky, it was unfamiliar, its hue a mixture of arid reds and black instead of lush greens and brown. The air, at least, felt welcoming and cool to her skin, but it lacked the lulling sound of Azeroth’s night symphony: the insects of Outlands were of the monstrous, flesh-eating variety, not tiny long-legged accompanists intent on delivering a little night music.
Cloaked against the wind, Idella walked in the dark. The camp was calm at night, its denizens tucked into their tents. Only the night patrols walked streets worn and declared by repetitive footfalls, not paved in any type of stone. Night made everything feel still, on pause till the fervor of morning. At night, she could open herself to thoughts she did everything to avoid during day.
Her legs still stung from lashes from the creature she conjured into the ill-prepared sanctum of her room. Days later, and her left hand was still numb from wrist to fingertip, making everything from spell work to tea pouring a clumsy effort. Every time she closed her eyes, the creature was there, lurking behind her, its whispers taunting. Breath on her neck from something not there, pain on her skin from slithering shadows drawing blood… the very sight of the inn and the thought of her room within it tightened her chest. Her every path avoided it, took to the beaches lapped by a body of water that streamed off Outland’s edge, whatever nether haunted the space between worlds. It was unnatural, unsettling, but when compared to the alternative of revisiting the site of her nightmares: preferred.
Retreating to the beach, she sunk her bare feet into the sand and stood before Outlands’ abyss. Every event of recent days felt like its own colossal storm, dwarfed by the next torrent that came after it. Azeroth corrupted, the refuge attacked, days of lost time to a coma she couldn’t remember, a lover leaving her, finally learning her payment to her teacher was an assured death, inviting said death in order to introduce herself, and being plagued for days by wounds, numbness, and nightmares.
It was enough to walk into the watery abyss till it swallowed her whole then drained her from Outland’s edge.
But her feet remained on the sandy shore, feeling the water lap at her bare skin, her eyes watching the water surface glisten with the alien light of Outlands’ night sky. Standing inert against a relentless unseen tide, wrapped in a cloak suited at best for cold and light rain. It made her laugh as much as want to cry. What was to come, at the edge of oblivion? What next, after so much already?
What now?
Comments
No Comments