graceintheshadows

[graceintheshadows]

That scream you hear

As if every dream has shattered

As if every hope has died

And every prayer gone unanswered

That scream you hear

Is me

[graceintheshadows]

Roiya, Keydyn, Aeka, Nikus…

Anon-Day!

~ Ask my my character anything you want ~ Confess something you would never say to my their face ~ Send them an anonymous letter ~ Give them unsolicited advice you think they need ~ Tell them one thing you like about them ~ Tell them one thing you hate about them ~ Tell them your favorite memory of them

Anything is welcomed on Anon-Day, as long as it’s on anon!

[graceintheshadows]

Lucky ones - Part 2

[see @lordaeronslost for part 1]

The dagger gleamed on the coverlet, polished gunmetal with the smallest hints of blued steel showing through, like stars in the night sky.  The moonstone in the pommel glowed dimly, like Elune set high on a winter night.  The pieces that matched it were laid out to either side and she stood at the edge their bed, staring at the weapons laid out across the blankets.

“Roiya.”

She nearly flinched at the gentleness in her husband’s voice, wondering how many times he’d said her name before she’d heard.  The distraction—no matter the source—that had swallowed her whole was unforgivable.

I’ve gotten soft.  Perhaps dangerously so.

Of course, that had been by design.

“We’re sure they’re safely settled?”  She half-turned toward Keydyn, her brows knitting.  “That nothing will—”

“Siryn will be with them this time,” her husband said, setting aside his whetstone boot dagger.  “And Lord Sam and Lady Mina will be there, too.  They’ll be fine while the rest of us—”

“That’s what we’ve said a dozen times,” the priestess said with a deep sigh.  “More than that, even.  And sometimes it hasn’t been that way.  It hasn’t been fine.”  Her lips thinned slightly as Keydyn’s hands settled on her arms.  For a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut.

“What’s really bothering you?” he whispered.  “It’s not as if you’re actually capable of staying retired.  You’ve tried three times and it hasn’t stuck.”

“This could have been the time,” she said with the barest trace of wry humor.  A lump built in her throat and she stepped closer, leaning into his chest and inhaling the scent of woodsmoke and leather.  “I just thought—I thought it would be different.  This wasn’t in my plan.”

“What was?”  Keydyn rested his cheek against her temple, wrapping both arms around her as her head settled against his shoulder.  “Were you intending to go out hunting for—”

“Yes,” she whispered.  “No.  I don’t know—maybe I was.  Maybe I was going to make a request of someone to—to do it.”

“We knew that something bad was going to happen,” he said softly.  “The minute Jude got that letter, we knew.  I suspect you knew sooner than that.  Did he...?”

She nodded slightly.  “He did, but the warning wasn’t as stark.  I don’t know why.  Maybe he expected me to be able to glean more information from what wasn’t in the note than I did.  Perhaps he thought Elune would grant me insight.  Damned if I know.”

“Do you think he’ll join us?  Be called up like we are?”

Roiya took a slow, deep breath and shook her head.  “I don’t know.  Based on everything I know, I’d assume that he has duties that will keep him closer to home and considering that we don’t know exactly what kind of situation we’re going to be walking into...no.  No, Keydyn, I don’t think they’ll be calling him up soon.  Not unless he comes as a volunteer.”

“While the rest of us are voluntold.”  He shot her a grin and pressed a kiss to her jaw, then feather-light one to her lips.  “At least we get to go into this with family.  Speaking of, are you ready to eat?  I heard a rumor about one last big meal tonight before we have to finish making ready.”

“A last breath before the storm,” Roiya said softly, glancing back at the weapons laid out on the coverlet.  “Hopefully they’ll be able to see us off from Stormwind.”

“I’m sure that arrangements are already in the works,” Keydyn said, squeezing her one more time before he released her.  “Does she know?”

Her eyes fluttered shut and she sighed.  She knew who he meant.

She shook her head.  “No.  But by morning, she will.  Would you like me to...?”

“I’ll have something to send with yours just after dinner.”

Roiya nodded, letting one hand trail down his arm until their fingers wove together.  “We’ll make time,” she said softly.  “To make up for it.  The three of us.”

“And then the five of us,” he said softly, fingers tightening for a moment.  “This time, you’re stuck with me, Roiya Shadowpaw.  Whether you like it or not.”

The ghost of a grin curved her lips as she stared back at him.  “Bold of you to assume that I’m the one stuck, Keydyn Silverstag.  I am far more of a handful than you are.”

The ranger laughed and dragged her close again, slinging his arm across her shoulders.  “We’ll see about that.”

“Will we?”

“Certainly.  And so will any damn spider that tries to come between us.”

“Hell.  Any fate that tries to come between us.”  She reached up to run her fingers along his cheek and jaw.  “I love you.  You know that.”

“I know,” he agreed.  “And you know the same of me.  I came back from the dead for you.”

“You came back from the Dream for me.”

One corner of his mouth kicked up into a smirk.  “A little bit of both.  At least that’s how Nikus explains it.”

“Speaking of—he’s coming with us, isn’t he?”

Keydyn frowned, glancing toward the door.  “That’s the impression I got, but you know him.”

“I certainly do.  We both do.  But this—”

“I know.  We’ll have to see.  Have to find out.”

“Yes,” she said softly.  “Yes, we will.”

She didn’t like the idea of the druid staying behind.  They’d need both he and his daughter both in the field as healers at the very least, regardless of the magnitude of what they’d end up facing.  That was still an unknown beyond knowing that it would be nerubians.

To what end and what fresh war they were walking into, the priestess-assassin known as Shadowgrace wasn’t certain.  All she knew was that after three attempts at retirement, she was headed out again to war.

[graceintheshadows]

online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't think anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.

[graceintheshadows]

Argents Lost - Summer Winds (part 3)

The former Ebon he’d met on the trail still hadn’t given him her name, but she’d told him enough to win enough wary trust for him to return to the outpost with her.  The enterprise had been aided by a sudden ache that began somewhere deep inside his knee and a shift in the wind.  He’d lived in Northrend long enough to know what those two things together heralded.

Stormclouds swept down onto K3 as they reached the inn, led by biting wind that stung his face and made his eyes water.  The inn at K3 was decidedly worn, weather-beaten, but in good repair.  The windows looked like they’d been replaced recently and the floors and tables in the common room were decidedly clean, though they still carried a timeworn, hard-used charm, battered and scuffed as they were. Its warmth and shelter—and the smell of venison stew and cider—were a welcome comfort after so narrowly dodging the storm.

The table his newfound companion led him toward was tucked into a shadowed corner and was already occupied by a figure tall enough that he guessed it must be another Kaldorei.  The figure had both hands wrapped around a mug of something steaming, beringed—and there was something else, something he didn’t quite see until the figure lifted the mug to drink, a glint of silver.

His heart slammed into his throat and he stopped in his tracks.  His companion put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently.

“She won’t harm you,” she said softly.  “You have nothing to fear from her.”

“There are—”

“Yes,” she said.  “But something tells me your face will strike her familiar.”

“I’m not—”

“It has nothing to do with your resemblance to Ildanan Sunstar.”

He swallowed bile, but started walking again.  The figure—a woman, and unless he missed his guess, the woman called the Mistwraith—was looking at them now, argent eyes gleaming in the shadows of a drawn hood. He swallowed again as he carefully drew one of the chairs out from the table and sank into it, glancing back over his shoulder to see where his companion was going to sit—and found her gone.

“She’ll be getting you something bracing,” the hooded woman said.  There was a faint rasp to her voice but the familiarity was unmistakable. He nearly swallowed his tongue.

“I—”

“You’ll be needing it, Lord Kyvare.”

He rocked back, eyes widening.  In the shadows of her hood, there was a flash of a smile, almost but not quite feral.

“Yes.  I’m aware of who you are.  I’m also aware of what you were taught.”

“How—”

“I’m not certain the answer to your question matters overmuch, but if you really want an answer, I’ll give you one in exchange for an answer to a question of my own, first.” She leaned back and he could feel the weight of her gaze hanging heavy upon him.  “Why are you, of all people, seeking them when you have a family and responsibilities that should preclude a mission like this—one, I might add, that has been forbidden by the organization that saw you bound to them? Of all the sorts seeking those lost, you were among the last I would have imagined to see here.”

“What of you?” he blurted. “Why are you two looking for them?”

“Because she is my mother,” she said.  “And they are her family and I should think, with all that’s happened, I should owe her that much.  And you?”

“Because I didn’t think anyone else was and I wasn’t about to ask my family to come unless—unless I knew.”

“Whatever goes into that gully doesn’t come out,” she said.  “But they’re not dead.”

“No,” he confirmed.  “No, they’re not.”

“You’re certain?”

“Your cousin is.”

She fell silent.  The former Ebon returned to the table, setting a mug slowly down in front of him as she looked between him and the hooded woman.

“Well,” she said dryly. “I see you’ve gotten started without me. I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

The hooded woman reached up to push back her hood, smiling up at the Ebon.  “One time.”

“Near unmitigated disaster one time,” the Ebon said, seating herself.  “And a lesson learned.  What have you told him?”

“Likely no more than whatever you did to get him to come back with you.”

He coughed politely and wrapped his hands around the mug, letting the warmth bleed into his fingers. “My apologies, ladies, but I think we’ve missed a few things.”

“You already know who I am, Lord Kyvare, and I know who you are,” Mistwraith said, studying him.  “Unless it’s not pleasantries you’re getting at.”

“I—well, it was, yes, but also no.  How—how long have you been looking?”

“Long enough to know there are two sites of interest,” the Ebon said.  “You stumbled across one.  The other is a frozen waterfall and a river that don’t seem quite right.”

The mug between his hands shattered.

[graceintheshadows]

Argents Lost - Summer Winds (part 2)

The trees thickened as he followed the game trail up into the foothills, a trail that doubled back on itself twice to take a more easy grade.  That was enough to make him begin to wonder if perhaps it wasn’t a game trail at all but an old patrol route or a hunting trail.  The ground was hard, though there was little snow on the path as the trees grew thicker, blotting out the light as much as the weather as he climbed higher into the foothills.

His leg ached, though ignoring it was easier than usual.  Perhaps it was his level of focus, or knowing that perhaps he was on the right path.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that no one back home knew he’d come here, that the Crusade didn’t know he was here, that if something were to happen to him, it could be days or longer before someone managed to sort it out if Arius didn’t find the note amongst the bottles on his workbench.

But he trusted that Arius would find it soon enough if it came to that.

Wind worried the treetops above him, setting needles and branches rustling.  He exhaled slowly, squinting upward for a moment, then into the gloom of the path that continued onward, upward, for at least a hundred yards before it curved again.  Somehow, the mile described by the trapper seemed longer than any mile he’d walked before.

But they, too, would have come on foot.  The trees were too thick and they would not have risked missing anything by attempting to teleport or fly.  Perhaps they would have deployed some aerial patrols later—or had scouted from the air before starting their trek—but looking at the branches above him, even with the change of seasons, he couldn’t imagine that they would have been able to see much from above the treetops.

No.  No, they would have walked this same trail.   He was sure of it.

There was a small clearing beyond the bend in the trail, one where he could see the sky.  A few rocks jutted up from the snow and he sat down on one of them, stretching his bad leg for a few seconds and taking a water bottle out of his satchel.  He watched a few fair weather clouds drift through the blue sky as he drank, taking slow, deep breaths of the cold, clean mountain air.

It was so, so quiet.

“About two hundred more meters down that way, there’s a switchback.  Beyond it is a gully and anything that goes in doesn’t come back out.  I can’t let you go any farther.”

It was a woman’s voice, her Thalassian carrying a slight accent and the weight of age.  He twisted toward it, saw her emerging from the trees behind him, far enough from the mouth of the trail that he knew she hadn’t followed him along it.

“Why’s that?” he asked softly, studying her for a few seconds.  A kaldorei dressed in armor reminiscent of the Watchers and Wardens of old, complete with the glaives strapped against her back.  Her hair hung long and loose but for a pair of thin braids that kept it back from her face and there was a pallor to her flesh that he recognized. A Death Knight—or a former one.

“I won’t have the death of one of Sunstar’s brood on my conscience,” she answered, resting her wrist on the hilt of the blade at her hip.  “No matter how many generations removed.”

He stood slowly, capping his water and putting the bottle away.  “You knew him.”

“Not as well as some,” she said.  “But yes. I knew him.”

“I came looking for the Argents—”

“—that vanished along this trail.  We thought perhaps you had.  Come. We’ll go back to K3 and tell you everything we know.”

“We?” he echoed.

She smiled.  “Yes.  We.”

[graceintheshadows]

Argents Lost - Summer Winds (part 1)

Snow crunched beneath his boots and his breath steamed in the frigid air.  The air was still this far down in the valley, but as he glanced up toward the cliffs above, he could see the pines bending against a stiff wind. He adjusted his gloves and scanned the area, then tugged the map out of his pocket.

I’m close, now.

He folded the hand-sketched map again and resumed walking.  The trek from K3 had been less arduous than he’d expected and so far, he hadn’t run into anyone but a grizzled trapper who’d smirked at his trimmed beard and clean hair and asked if he was on vacation.  It wasn’t until he’d told the man why he’d come that his demeanor had shifted.  Teasing had faded and in the end, the trapper had been able to give him a better idea of where he needed to go.

Apparently, the remains of their last camp had still been visible long enough for some trappers to come across it.

And to come up with ghost stories about what lay a mile beyond it.

He wasn’t sure how much of the story he’d believed, but there was an air of truth to enough of it that he’d known that it bore checking.  Even though the air was cold, the sun was high and bright, no hint of coming storms.

He’d picked a good day to take Lumeal’s advice.

It was another half an hour of walking before he reached their last base camp.  Rings of stones and patches of ground cleared for fires and tents lingered here, freshly used, bearing out the trapper’s tale of some of the area’s hunters and trappers making use of the abandoned camp long after the last time the missing Argents had last used them.  The only sign that this had once been an Argent camp—was a pennant hanging limply from the branch of a fir tree at the north edge of camp, marking the beginning of a game trail that started a winding trek up into tree-shrouded foothills of the Storm Peaks.  The pennant’s colors were marred by months in the weather and wind, dulled, but occasionally there was a glimmer of gilt or argent, a flicker of deep blue against dark wood and bright snow.

It was an old style of pennant, the pennant of the old Argent Dawn rather than the silver and white of the Argent Crusade.  No, this was the dark blue and silver with white and gold, the pennant he remembered clearly snapping in the wind above Light’s Hope, the tabard he’d worn for years. His throat tightened.

This wasn’t just a camp.  This wasn’t just the camp where one of the three lost units had been.  This was where the last lost unit had been.

And he remembered that exact pennant snapping in the wind over the barracks at Valiance not terribly long ago.

This had been their camp.

“Light help me,” he murmured under his breath.  “Please still be alive.”

He turned for the trail and kept walking.

[graceintheshadows]

A Hint of a Rumor

“Did you learn anything?”

She flinched.  The weight in her companion’s voice was one she hadn’t heard in a long time, a gravitas that was enough to instill concern in her unbeating heart.  But even more concerning was the weariness and worry she could hear half buried beneath the weight.  “Kaede—”

“No.”  The priestess turned away from the window, arms dropping to her sides as she did.  “Tell me.  What did you find out?  Leave nothing out.”

“What makes you think—”

“You have a bad habit of trying to protect me from things.  We both know I don’t deserve that.  Now tell me what you found out.”

“Nothing’s certain,” the Death Knight said slowly.  “But there is a rumor.”

“From the Crusade?”

She nodded.

“Then what is it?”

“They were dispatched to check on a disturbance.”

“In Northrend?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I’m not entirely certain,” she hedged, watching the priestess’s expression slowly shift.

“It’s somewhere we’ve been.”

“Yes.”

“Recently?”

“No.”

Brow furrowing, the priestess turned away, back toward the window.  “What else?”

“No one seems to be sure where the initial report came from.  I’m trying to get my hands on it.”

The priestess sighed.  “Don’t burn all the capital you still have for it, my friend.  We both know what we need to do.”

“It could be nothing.”

“It could be,” the priestess admitted.  “What are you thinking?”

“We check on your brother and sister, first.  We decide after that.”

A wince.  “They’ve not seen me—”

“I didn’t say talk to them,” the Death Knight said softly.  “I said check.  Assure ourselves of their safety and then we’ll do as we must.”

“To the Eastern Kingdoms, then.  First.”

“Aye.  First.”

[graceintheshadows]

365 Days of Prompts #photos #imageprompts #365daysofprompts #writingprompts https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm5nxXzOKcz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[graceintheshadows]

365 Days of Prompts #photos #imageprompts #365daysofprompts #writingprompts https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm5nnrzO2wF/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[graceintheshadows]

Dragon Rider - Dark Legacy Comics #844 (Via)

(keydar)

[graceintheshadows]

That time of year again...

Holiday cards!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfLFBgXyiACD2fkqXKTtYuZQc8w2gI9mOqaH4bdk9fSUPYA5g/viewform?usp=sf_link

[graceintheshadows]

North end of Grand Rapids just before 8am 11/20 #lakeeffectsnow #lakeeffectseason #snow #puremichigan https://www.instagram.com/p/ClLx50NrVWF/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[graceintheshadows]

North end of Grand Rapids just before 8am, 11/19. #lakeeffectsnow #lakeeffectseason #snow #treesandsnow https://www.instagram.com/p/ClJPkXbraqC/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[graceintheshadows]

North end of Grand Rapids just before 8am, 11/18. #lakeeffectsnow #lakeeffectseason #snow #treesandsnow https://www.instagram.com/p/ClJPbwuLB-3/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[graceintheshadows]

#moonshot #playingwithmycamera https://www.instagram.com/p/CkpAYioLOc3/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=