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redisaid · 1 year ago

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Beneath the Blue Moon - Chapter 8

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Oh hi. I missed the girls. I’m back on the train of this bullshit again.

Expect a new poll for choices on chapters 9 and 10 in a few days.

7052 Words

Read it on Ao3!

When the wind bends the branch to softly touch me, When the band plays your song, I feel strong enough to keep dreaming, Even when I'm all alone, Our love goes on and on.

Sylvanas decided that there was no worse idea ever had than that of trying to host a luncheon across the span of two ships tethered to one another. And as painful as the creaking of rope and wood and canvas against one another was to her elven ears, the fact that Jaina was just a gangplank away from her, and had been this entire time, yet still would not look at her, was far worse.

Otherwise, the summit was going well. As well as could be imagined, really. Horde and Alliance alike were enjoying tea and finger sandwiches on a sunny day in the harbor of an offshore island deemed too far away from Dazar’alor to pose a threat. Both of them were digesting Sylvanas’ words with their food, her explanation of the threat that faced them all, and the price she feared the world would pay for the theft of her soul.

Her selfish dooming of Azeroth. Nothing unusual, really. Old news before it was even news.

Just as the situation was with Jaina. The only time she’d looked into her eyes in over a decade was across the throne room in Lordaeron—when Jaina had come to save the Alliance’s bid to take her city from her.

And succeeded.

She was powerful, a ball of stress that was honestly only more beautiful for it. She looked incredible in her Kul Tiran uniform, even today, sulking with a greatcoat draped over her shoulders, unbuttoned otherwise for the heat of the Zandalari sun.

Just because she wouldn’t look at Sylvanas didn’t mean Sylvanas couldn’t look at her.

And honestly, over the years, in the scant times that they’d shared space since, all she could ever do was look at her. To look at her, going on, changing, becoming something without her. In the absence of her.

Sylvanas wondered if the emptiness had gnawed at her? The lack of what once was? Their connection, bone deep, severed even as Sylvanas still walked this world. Maybe it was the years of having had time to process it properly, as Sylvanas didn’t, that had hardened Jaina to her. To this need.

It was a need. Like the living needed water and air and food and shelter. Sylvanas was dead, still, and needed none of these. But she needed Jaina. She needed her like withered elves needed mana. Like—

“Warchief, a moment of your time?”

Anduin Wrynn. A lad of annoying height that he’d only gained in the last few years, loomed over her in his ceremonial lion armor, a polite smile tugging at the corner of his beardless lips. Last she’d seen him wear that armor, it was when she’d run from him, defeated at Lordaeron, wondering after the apology that seemed to echo in Jaina’s eyes.

Still too broken to understand it, but questioning all the same.

“By all means, High King,” she said with a nod.

In all her life and thereafter, Sylvanas had never imagined she would be nodding to a king. A boy king besides that, but even so, she had thought she would remain nothing more than a General, still giving a full bow to Anestarian, hoping he’d hold on a few more centuries and spare her from doing the same to Kael’thas.

Anduin came to stand with her on the aft deck of the Banshee’s Wail, mounting the stairs with a plate of tiny sandwiches still in hand.

“I have to admit I was rather fascinated by your tales of the Shadowlands,” he told her. “And what you’d experienced there. I was hoping you might answer some questions for me, about the nature of death.”

He would be disappointed to know how little she knew. How little she cared to know. Sylvanas could tell him exactly what death was. Unfair. Broken. A thing that ground one down, bones to dust. Souls to anima. A transformation to smaller parts, in which, along the way, the whole was lost forever.

A thing that made the decay and disgust of decomposition seem kind.

But instead, she said to him, “You may ask what you wish. I will share what I know, but I would hardly call my knowledge of the Shadowlands encyclopedic.”

“You mentioned there being other realms of death, besides the place you called the Maw. I was wondering…”

Wonder away, she almost wanted to tell him. Sylvanas herself had only seen glimpses of them as the Jailer’s servants had escorted her through a tour of the unfairness of death—the great separation and unending that awaited all living things.

Beautiful Bastion, its angelic embrace a front for a great lie—consuming the souls of heroes to turn them into willing servants and ferriers of yet even more souls. Malevolent Maldraxxus, where the souls of the warlike could play at war for the rest eternity, never satisfied with an end to their violence. Repentant Revendreth, whose aesthetic honestly didn’t miss, but otherwise enslaved the souls of the evil to extract from them in exchange for the slim hope at a better fate.

There was no better fate. Not even in Ardenweald, among the eternal forest, caring for slumbering gods. The Jailer had taunted her, telling her this was where she’d been headed before Arthas had rent her soul in twain and damned her to undeath and her eventual bargain. But even in her kindest end, Sylvanas now knew she would have become nothing more than a nymph of the woods that did not remember herself.

Or Jaina.

Or Lirath. Or Mother and father. Their souls too, were already lost in this machine of death. One that still very much deserved to be broken.

But not at the costs she had already paid.

Sylvanas waited for him to seem to finish his question, though she did not truly listen to the rest of it. “I’m afraid I’ve seen little outside of the Maw.”

She lied through simplicity. Much as she wished Anduin to enjoy his little sandwiches and hear out her request for peace, she was not here for him.

She was here for the woman who wouldn’t so much as set foot on the Horde side of the ships, and had all the reasons in the world to stay where she was. The Alliance side was made up of one of her ships, actually. Her flagship was larger, but sat lower in the water overall to the point where such side by side anchorage was possible for them. Still, it made Sylvanas nervous. All canons and teeth.

Jaina had a right to every one of those guns.

“I just wondered if you might know where my father went. Where a man like him would go to his eternal rest?” Anduin asked.

The porcelain plate in his hands reflected sunlight dully up at her amidst an array of cucumber, mayonnaise, and white bread. King Wrynn could not look her in the eye as he asked.

Bastion? Perhaps. Varian was a hero, certainly, and Sylvanas remembered well the time they fought side by side, deck to deck on different ships in the sky and not at sea. The way it made her thick black blood seem to race again to fight beside a warrior of equal skill, despite their opposite factions. It was only recent, very recent to one with both an elf and an undead’s lengthy perception of time. She would not soon forget the feeling.

But Varian was headstrong. Willful in the way Alliance men seemed to excel at. A warrior through and through. Perhaps he fought in the endless battles of Maldraxxus.

But death was infinite and terrible. Its realms expanded on and on, like the twisting tower of Torghast. It was not for mortal comprehension. It was not meant to make sense, or to be fair.

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” was the most honest answer she could give him. “But, as you do, I would hope he rests peacefully, and remains as such. I cannot recommend the alternative.”

Anduin Wrynn had never heard her make a joke before. That occurred to her as he stared at her, one bushy blonde eyebrow cocked in disbelief.

Not many people from the other ship had heard her make a joke before, actually. Or even on her side of the gangplank.

Among the many disservices of her death and the loss of her whole soul was that the world had forgotten she was funny.

She used to be very funny.

“Right,” Anduin eventually said, catching the gape that his mouth was starting to form and closing his teeth with an audible click. “Perhaps I might draft up a letter with a list of questions, or put you in contact with a scholar to chronicle your knowledge.”

“No doubt many will be interested. I’ve already been approached by the Reliquary and my own Apothecaries since my announcement to the Horde,” Sylvanas informed him.

She had no doubt that she would be made to recount her singular experiences a hundred times over. If Azeroth survived to care about them, that is.

“But,” she continued. “My priorities at the moment are ensuring that we work together to protect the world of the living and my people alike from that which may threaten us.”

Diplomacy never felt right to her. Even as successful as she had been at it here and there. She was a creature of trails and trees, not of contracts and meetings.

Or graves and the ink darkness of night. Lingering fog and dripping horrors. Teeth gnashing at rotting flesh.

Reconciling the two was still too difficult to keep in the forefront of her mind. Both parts of her had known a life of duty and objectivity coming first. That, at least, Sylvanas could focus on.

Even as her eyes tracked the deep blue of Jaina’s greatcoat from across the deck.

“Right,” Anduin said again, nodding along and picking up a tiny sandwich in meaty hands that must have come from his father. “If you want to discuss anything in specific about the draft agreement I’ve put forth, before we bring it to the table here, let me know.”

It was good, for a draft. Sylvanas had nothing to bring up. She knew that the other leaders of the Horde would be happy to squabble about the particulars and pick it apart. She was only concerned with setting a limit on the time they could do so. Dread and anxiety were her constant companions, even as she didn’t settle her thoughts on her disparate existence. Time, she felt, was a borrowed luxury they did not have to throw around, though she could not say why exactly.

She hadn’t bothered to go into descriptions of the Jailer’s forces to great degrees. “The Scourge, but worse,” was approximately what she had told the Alliance to watch out for. But her vision had been clouded by the black feathers of Mawsworn. The dull gray metal of armored constructs. The sharp bone of skeletal horrors.

“It is a fine agreement for the time being,” Sylvanas told him. “One that I will work to ensure the Horde honors as we face this threat.”

“I will tell you there is some skepticism on my side that there is a threat at all,” Anduin said, still holding the sandwich. “Not from my part. You are quite obviously changed to my eyes, if you don’t mind me saying so. Something has happened to cause that, and I believe you there. But others aren’t so quick to trust.”

No, they would not be. Not Genn Greymane, his silvered fur bristled as he stalked the deck of Jaina’s ship, one of the many not to leave it. In fact, the only ones to cross the gangplank thus far were Anduin and Baine.

As Sylvanas’ eyes flitted briefly away from Jaina, they noted her sisters were nowhere to be found on the Alliance ship. Neither, it seemed, had the courage to face her, or represent their factions of stolen elves. Stolen names.

“I honestly hope that I’m wrong, Wyrnn,” she told him. “I hope that nothing happens. But I fear that we will feel the Jailer’s wrath and fear we will feel it soon. My promise remains regardless of whether that happens or not, though. Azeroth has spent too long at war, and I no longer wish to be the cause of it.”

“What changed your mind?”

Sylvanas was hardly prepared for the question.

A dead body, dripping salt water on her table in the cabin just below them, was the root of the answer. But Derek Proudmoore’s rotted corpse was mostly a symbol. A message to her from her. From beyond her.

You are better than this. You are better than a pawn in someone else’s game.

Sylvanas knew what she wanted, and knew then, as she stared down a decision she did not want to make, that it wasn’t that. She wished she made this long ago, honestly. At the peak of Icecrown Citadel. Over Vol’jin’s dying, fel-ridden body. Before the flames were launched at Teldrassil.

Early as she could go back, honestly, but it would never be enough.

Her hands were already stained with blood from the moment they’d become her own again. From the first flex of spectral fingers that was her will and hers alone, after her death. But before then, they’d been used to rip the faces off of elven children. To rend the land that had birthed her so deeply that it was still scarred to this day. Bodiless, monstrous, and broken beyond repair—she had been irredeemable from the very start of her unlife.

Even now, soul restored to wholeness, hands corporeal but still stained with that blood and so much more, there was no fixing it. There was no forgiveness. No justice. No redemption to be sought.

There never would be.

Sylvanas’ eyes still tracked the blue greatcoat across the deck of the Kul Tiran ship. No doubt it was hot, but Jaina kept herself beneath it as if it were a shield that protected her from the foulness of the very air.

Foul, perhaps, because of who it was shared with. Truly, all Sylvanas could get from her over their renewed bond since the ships both docked was a feeling of general annoyance bordering on aversion. It pulled at the bottom of her stomach and tightened her chest.

Only then, as he waited for an answer, did Anduin’s eyes follow hers and land on the real answer to his question.

How could she explain that to the boy king? That even in her undeath, her brokenness, her grief over her own life, she could not violate the bond that had once tied her to Jaina. She could not bring herself to attack her directly. The thought had repelled her, like one magnetic pole to another of the same charge. It was never an option.

And even Jaina, in all her disgust, had looked sorry at Lordaeron for being willing to do what she was not.

A memory stirred in Sylvanas’ mind, so vivid now with her newfound ability to connect to the fullness of its emotions. Once, she and Jaina had sat on the beach outside of Windrunner Spire, an outing prompted after their recounting of similar childhoods spent by the seashore. The beach outside the Spire was mostly rocky, and only had a small strip of smooth sand on which they’d laid out a little picnic.

It had been the day before they had to leave one another. Jaina laughed and teased and loved her. She smelled of mana wine and pomegranates and honey pastries. She leaned in for a kiss, on that perfect afternoon, and asked as she pulled away, “But where will we live?”

The question was a loaded one. No answer was correct. The first difficult to navigate strait in the sea of their union. Sylvanas wanted to answer that here at the Spire was good. But Jaina was an agent of the Kirin Tor, based in Dalaran. Sylvanas hated Dalaran, and was the Ranger General of Quel’thalas. But Jaina was also technically heir to the Kul Tiran admiralty, and would presumably need to return there or name her younger brother heir instead some day. Back then, her father still lived and was still young enough to the point it wasn’t the forethought on anyone’s mind, save maybe Sylvanas’ as she worried for them. And then there was the Alliance, based in Lordaeron and not Stormwind back then, that called to the loyalties of both of them.

Sylvanas had listed all of these in a panicked tirade of sorts, wanting to find the answer.

It was Jaina who had arrived at the real answer with a smile, “Don’t worry so much. We’ll figure it out.”

They never got to even try.

“I see,” Anduin started. “Well if—”

“You wretched beast!” A Thalassian screech came from just below them, causing both Anduin and Sylvanas to lean over the railing to see the source.

That happened to be Velonara shaking an offending pest off of her boot. The offending pest being a small pink dinosaur that was clinging onto the black leather, gnawing at the laces.

Nathanos ran over from where he’d been entertaining Gallywix and his goblins, prying the creature off with a desperate whisper of, “How did you get out?” before carrying it back into the aft cabin with a huff.

He was successful in that at least, despite the creature’s protesting squawk and sharp little teeth that no doubt left a few tiny holes in his gloves.

“Fascinating wildlife here in Zandalar,” Anduin noted as distraction was removed.

“Yes, fascinating,” Sylvanas agreed dryly.

She’d have a talk with Nathanos about smuggling his newest pets onto diplomatic missions later.

Thankfully, as Anduin seemed to be following her gaze across to the other ship again, another distraction was provided in the form of red hair and golden armor. Lady Liadrin stood on the last step up to the aft deck, seemingly waiting to be invited to join them.

Still a stickler for decorum, after all these years. Sylvanas hadn’t spoken to her since, save to grant orders. Once, she had considered her a friend.

They even went on a terrible date once, centuries ago. Absolutely awful. Liadrin had tried to order for her at the restaurant, and it had only gotten worse from there. And now here she was, waiting to be acknowledged. It must have physically pained the control freak that Sylvanas knew lay beneath all that armor.

“Matriarch,” Sylvanas said with a nod in her direction.

Liadrin still looked like shit. Like she’d been run over by a goblin trike and left in the streets of Orgrimmar to die for it. She did her best to hold it together and bowed gracefully and appropriately to Sylvanas and Anduin, but the signs were there. Something was wrong. Deeply wrong.

And Sylvanas was struggling with wanting to actually ask what that was, when she was owed no such answer.

“Warchief, High King,” Liadrin said as she rose.

Anduin was respectful in his own nod to her, offering a greeting, “Bal’a dash, Lady Liadrin.”

His pronunciation was not terrible, for all it was worth. And while Sylvanas expected Liadrin not to have any interest in his attempt, her golden eyes only settled on the young king. A question burned in them. A question she did not ask.

Her gaze instead flitted around the boy king, left, then right, then back to him. Searching for something.

There was nothing up here but Sylvanas, Anduin, and the ship’s wheel. Maybe it was some Light thing? That, at least, Sylvanas had never understood in any of her lives. Nor had she cared to. Especially now. Religion was not the realm of the dead.

“It’s no rush,” Liadrin began, finally, “but I was hoping I might borrow a moment of your time before we reconvene, King Wrynn.”

“Certainly. We have not spoken since the Legion’s invasion, and I treasure any opportunity to speak to a sister in the Light,” was Anduin’s very warm and seemingly genuine answer.

Only he didn’t get to continue on to the point of turning Sylvanas’ undead stomach with his religious drivel.

The afternoon sun flickered strangely out of the corner of her eye. Sylvanas banished the thought, just another vision of dread. Another fantasy of what could come for her, for all of them. The price she would pay for the faint blue glow of the moon she kept hidden on her wrist beneath her clawed gauntlets, matching that which would be similarly hidden by the golden gauntlet on Jaina’s casting hand.

The price she’d paid to be ignored and shunned yet again. Sylvanas was coming to the conclusion that she did indeed deserve it. Her best hope was this peace, and buying herself a few years of good behavior, of attempted redemption where there could truly be none, just to be heard. To be seen. To be looked at, even, with anything other than pity or silent apology.

But then the sun flickered again, this time catching the hard gold of Liadrin’s eyes enough to rouse them from the dark bags that sunk beneath them. Enough for Sylvanas to follow her gaze to the west.

“Mawsworn!” she shouted.

No one but her knew the meaning of the word, of the dark silhouettes that flocked toward them, shading out the sun with a mass of black feathers. They looked not too dissimilar from her Val’kyr, but larger. Fiercer. Intent. Whereas the Val’kyr waited on orders, inert but for the occasional flap of wings, Sylvanas had never seen a Mawsworn that didn’t have some terrible mission on their mind, always flying toward something.

And now they were flying toward her, and her peace summit.

Deathwhisper was in her hands in an instant. No Thas’dorah, certainly, but she could make it work. No doubt things would be better if she’d accepted the Jailer’s gifts, the chained arrows he’d promised in exchange for more and more dirty deeds.

Only now did she regret not taking him up on the offer.

“That’s what they look like? I don’t under—”

Anduin was cut off from his confusion by Liadrin drawing her sword and standing between him and the western sky.

“Arm yourself!” she ordered someone she had no business ordering, gruff voice grated even deeper by her apparent exhaustion.

That was enough to shake Anduin out of his questioning, though he muttered, “They look like angels,” as he drew his father’s famed sword.

They were not angels. Angels lived in Bastion and forgot themselves. Angels carried the dead into the machine to chop them up at the behest of yet even more masters. Nowhere could anyone be free, even in death.

Not, at least, if they didn’t fight.

Sylvanas knocked an arrow and looked to the combined forces of Horde and Alliance leadership on the decks below her, scrambling to her warning call. Satisfied that the Horde ship had a suitable amount of Dark Rangers with bows drawn as she had, even Nathanos, and plenty of Orcish axes and Tauren totems alike joining them, she cast a look over to the Alliance ship.

And to a blue coat beneath which hands were forming to host an icy spell. Jaina’s eyes glowed with arcane, visible even from this far away, as she stood between most of her own people and the new threat.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” Sylvanas shouted over the water and wood. “Watch for their chains!”

And then they were upon them. So fast did their black wings carry them across Azeroth’s sky that it was seemingly unnatural. No time to think of where they could have come from or how or why. Well, the why Sylvanas was certain of, at least.

They’d come for her.

She fired the first shot, an arrow that ripped through the black feathers of the winged skeleton, slicing just the corner of its dark cloak. Wide and misaimed.

The product of fear. A deep fear that Sylvanas had not felt in years. A fear not for herself, but for those around her. For Anduin. Liadrin. Even traitorous Baine, who didn’t think she’d known of his dealings with the Alliance. And Jaina.

Of course, Jaina. But she shot second, and her ice lance hit true, striking a Mawsworn from the air and into the ocean with the force of it.

Truly, what an honor it was to be destined for such a powerful woman, who had only grown into that power and beauty over these last hard years. What a privilege, even if she wouldn’t deign to look at the broken creature that was Sylvanas Windrunner.

Sylvanas knocked another arrow. She fired. She hit deep into an eye socket this time, causing another Mawsworn to fall. She listened as Liadrin and Anduin whispered blessings under their breath, laying hands on one another to trade them.

She knocked a third arrow, but didn’t get a chance to fire before a chain shot out toward her.

Liadrin dutifully deflected this with her shield, offering Sylvanas cover to fire behind. The fear dissipated, and suddenly her dead heart was full of a feeling of ancient camaraderie. Of memories of Liadrin when she still wielded the mace of a priestess, and was no less fearsome in her white robes than she was in her golden and crimson armor. Of times when she’d done this before, standing between Sylvanas and an Amani troll. An Alliance footman. A shambling undead horror. A massive, horned demon.

This was just another enemy. Another in the unending chain of threats that Azeroth seemed to face. And as shaped by war as Sylvanas was like no one else, she had to remind herself that she was not the only one so molded. Maybe not to such a degree, but she wasn’t about to debate that with Liadrin.

She was grateful, she realized, as she fired over her shoulder with a little smirk on her face.

“Ready yourselves!” Sylvanas delivered one last final warning as she made a fifth shot over Liadrin’s red ponytail.

The decks became crowded with black feathers and magical chains. They were just as soon filled with broken bones and battered pieces of dull gray armor. While she didn’t like being caught off guard, the place to do so was certainly around the best and brightest that each faction had to offer, as it seemed none of them had a problem with this initial onslaught.

Nathanos had hopped up on the aft deck to join them, and flashed her a grin as he buried one of his axes into a screaming skull. Midship, Saurfang headbutted another skull with such force that it cracked loudly enough to draw her attention a moment later. She caught sight of Genn Greymane with a fibula in his wolven mouth. Maybe an ulna. The area around Jaina was just coated in ice, several Mawsworn either frozen within it or shattered by it.

They were many, but they were fragile. They were not meant to be here in the living world, and it seemed to be a weakness to them. Their bones were brittle, Sylvanas realized as she cleaved yet another skull near in two with a close range shot.

This was a battle that could be easily won.

Even Anduin was holding up next to her, green boy that he obviously was. He’d made a good run of it at Lordaeron, and had shown courage then, but his heart was not in it. That much was clear to Sylvanas. He didn’t have that streak of joy in the kill to him. She doubted he’d even enjoy a good hunt, and would weep instead for the animals.

But, he still cut clean through a ribcage. A leg. An arm. A haze of black feathers.

And somehow missed the chain that wrapped around him.

His grunt of surprise was what alerted her as he was lifted into the air. The Mawsworn that had tangled him made haste to fly up, up, and then off.

They weren’t here to fight. They were here to take. Zovaal didn’t care how many of his abominations he lost in the process. He only needed to rob Sylvanas of one of her allies, or her own freedom, to prove that his vengeance was not to be trifled with.

And she wasn’t about to let him win another battle. Never again.

She rolled out of the cloud of Mawsworn that had descended on the aft deck, up to the rail that stood between her and the sea. She took aim, willing the necromantic magic that bound her to unlife into her arrow until it swirled with darkness, hoping that would be enough. She fired at the chain that held Anduin aloft, slowly raising upward to bring him into the embrace of the Mawsworn that was carrying him off.

Her shot hit true, determined as she was that it would. It snapped the chain, but left the boy king falling rapidly toward the ocean.

Sylvanas didn’t hesitate. Much as she hated her banshee form, and the memories she still carried of those days where she watched its clawed hands move against her will to aid Arthas in destroying Silvermoon, she slipped into it without lingering on those thoughts. There was no time for it.

She shot forward at speed that almost matched that of unnatural Mawsworn, managing to catch him just before he hit the waves. He would have hit them hard, covered in that ridiculous plate, and sunk below them immediately. There was no other choice.

Even though he shied away from her and the scream that echoed from her spectral mouth unbidden as it must when she was this way.

Sylvanas wanted to warn him to cover his ears, but she couldn’t speak when she was like this. She could only scream.

No wonder Jaina wouldn’t look at her. She was still dead. Broken. Monstrous. A war criminal on her best day. An abomination no different than those that attacked them at her worst.

As she soared back upward to the aft deck with him in her arms, Sylvanas couldn’t help but notice the blue glow on the wrist that curled around Anduin. Even temporarily banishing her physical body, and the mark that contained that fire, she was not without it.

But she didn’t have time to contemplate that either. She surged upward with one last blast of a scream, reminding herself to beg forgiveness from Anduin later, and summoned her corporeal form once she had him dumped safely onto the deck once more.

A little bit unceremoniously, perhaps. A little rougher than necessary, surely.

For the Undercity, Sylvanas thought to herself as she took up Deathwhisper again, and went back to filling Mawsworn with arrows. For the Undercity indeed, she stood over Anduin as he got to his feet and got ready to continue the fight. She made sure to turn around at her earliest opportunity, and shoot down the one that was coming back from the sea, having realized its prize had been stolen from it.

As easily as they fell, their numbers were so great. So much so that Sylvanas lost count of how many she’d downed quickly. She was also busy keeping her eyes on the sky to ensure that no one else was being taken, but it seemed only Anduin had been caught unaware by the chains thus far. She’d dodged more than a few of her own, grabbing him by his tabard to drag him with her up to the railing overlooking the lower deck. Large as he was, she was stronger. Yet another point for undeath today.

What she saw there was nothing short of disappointing. Most of the Mawsworn were clustered on the aft deck of her ship, and between her, Anduin, Liadrin, and Nathanos, had mostly been dispatched. The Horde below had dealt with nearly all that assailed them already.

But the Alliance ship didn’t fare as well. Only Jaina seemed to be a deadly force enough to leave her icy corner of the Kul Tiran flagship fully clear. Otherwise, it was still a haze of black feathers and battle cries.

“Horde, what are you doing?” Sylvanas questioned of idle axes and swords, arcane and Light alike. “Protect our allies! We must work together!”

With one last quick check to make sure that Nathanos and Liadrin had a handle on the remaining Mawsworn on the aft deck, Sylvanas turned to Anduin and told him, “I’m afraid your little papers must wait. Allow me to prove the truth of my words. Fight with me.”

“I didn’t doubt you in the first place!” Anduin protested as she led the way across the gangplank to the deck of the Kul Tiran ship.

The Kul Tiran ship, where it seemed the Mawsworn had realized who was to be feared there. Who was to be prioritized. Or perhaps, who the Jailer had sent to target.

Whose capture and subsequent torture in the bowels of hell itself would hurt Sylvanas most.

The remainder of them were closing in on Jaina, chains lashing out only to meet wave after wave of ice, shattering them each time. Impressive as it was, Sylvanas knew she couldn’t keep it up forever. Mana was a thing in limited quantities, even for one of Azeroth’s most powerful mages.

Certainly its most beautiful, eyes aglow with magic, greatcoat forgotten and frozen to the deck beside her, white braid whipping in the wind.

As much as Sylvanas enjoyed looking at her soulmate in her battle fury, she was here to help her, wanted or not. She took aim and fired at a Mawsworn that was getting too close, and nodded to Anduin as he ran to assist the woman he apparently would refer to as his aunt, despite their lack of blood relation.

Bones clattered to the polished wood of the deck, darker and slicker than that of her own ship. Ice smashed and shattered into crystalline explosions that tingled Sylvanas’ sensitive elven ears. A dwarf threw a thunder-laden hammer that whizzed past her. Genn was snarling off to her left, but at the Mawsworn he was biting at and not her. And finally, the Horde followed. Saurfang crashed into a skeletal figure that was flanking her right. A spectral dinosaur came across the gangplank, summoned by the muttered words of Talanji to assist. A goblin rocket was aimed with surprising care and managed to hit only a pack of Mawsworn that were cutting off the aft deck of the Alliance ship from the rest of the fight.

In her efforts to get to Jaina and help, Sylvanas hadn’t realized how close they were. Suddenly, it seemed, they were nearly back to back—Sylvanas facing west to keep an eye on the sky, and Jaina facing east to blast the last big group of Mawsworn with a cone of ice wind, freezing them in place for the coming rush of melee fighters to smash to bits.

Only when she heard the panting breaths of Jaina thrumming against her ears, did she realize this was the closest she’d been to her in over a decade. The last time she’d heard her this winded, this close, it had been for much better reasons. Much more pleasant, at least.

Sylvanas turned to the east to see if there were anymore enemies, but was only met with blue eyes.

Blue eyes, looking at her for the second time in all these years. This time not begging for an apology Jaina would not give. Could not give.

This time, they were regarding her as if she’d never seen her before. Curiously. Cautiously.

Almost like the first time Sylvanas ever saw them, when Jaina came through the portal with Vereesa in tow, chattering to her about how excited she was to have potentially found her sister’s soulmate for her.

How beautiful she’d been then too. Young, but knowing. Her hair shining gold to match the leaves of the forests of Quel’thalas. She’d been a vision in the purple and white livery of the Kirin Tor. With her curious blue eyes, and the smile she’d given her after that first cautious look.

Sylvanas hadn’t been what she expected. Jaina hadn’t been what she’d expected either. But somehow, they’d been perfect for each other.

But this time—thirteen years and countless tragedies later, Jaina did not smile. She turned away, searching for Anduin before asking him, “Anduin, are you all right?”

He wasn’t in the best shape. Sylvanas could see blood dripping from one of his ears, likely the fault of her banshee wail. The foul magic of the chains that had wrapped him had left a nasty red mark in their pattern across his cheek. He was far more winded than Jaina, even, but was able to give her a nod.

Still, she checked him over, pushed at his breastplate to stand him up straight so she could confirm he was otherwise unhurt.

“Sylvanas saved me,” he blurted out when he managed to catch his breath.

“I saw,” Jaina told him, speaking under her breath, but not quiet enough to avoid being heard by an elf.

Sylvanas watched as she flexed her casting hand, and the other one briefly came to touch it, shaking. She turned and looked at Sylvanas again, still seeming to be undecided.

But across their bond, weak as it was, Sylvanas felt a tug. A pull. Magnetic in the opposite way she’d been thinking of before. A draw that demanded they be together. The very laws of physics itself would not allow for anything else.

The deck was soon awash with activity that swept Jaina from her vision before they could connect. Leaders gathering, now all on the Kul Tiran ship for the first time—examining remains of their enemies, wondering at the suddenness of the attack, the strange chains, the purpose of it all. Some mutters, too, of how convenient it was that this had come just after Sylvanas had warned them. Of how it could be another one of her tricks.

Again, she’d not given them reason to suspect otherwise. It would not take one battle, one rescue of an enemy leader, to prove her intentions.

Sylvanas knew this would take years, if she was lucky. Restoring even the smallest amount of trust in her among the rest of Azeroth would be a near impossible feat. But, at least they would all understand what to watch out for now, if nothing else.

She was about to look for Nathanos or one of her Rangers to ask for a report from them when a hand reached for her upper arm. A gap between her pauldrons and gauntlets that all Ranger armor had, to allow for the movement of one’s arms. A gap one would only reach for if one was familiar with it, and looking to make contact with skin.

A gap where Jaina Proudmoore’s hand started a feedback loop that Sylvanas hadn’t felt in thirteen years. Even through the cloth of her glove, Sylvanas could feel her feeling her feeling her feeling her. The coldness of her skin. The curiosity. The hesitation. But still, she was touching her. Trying to get her attention in only the way she could.

Sylvanas turned to face her, wordless, only feeling. Only feeling her and Jaina’s sensations of one another mingle and merge until they were indistinguishable. Was that her shock or Jaina’s? Was the cloth on her skin or Jaina’s? Was she surprised at herself and how she reacted, how much this took the wind out of her sails, or was that Jaina’s Kul Tiran expression leaking through her thoughts.

It was too much and not enough at once. Sylvanas wanted to run. She wanted to pull away. She wanted to pull Jaina to her, cover her skin with hers, regardless of how cold and dead it might be, and lose herself in this heady feeling. She wanted the true completeness of her soul that was only found in her arms. She wanted to rewind time itself, and forget all these sins that had kept them apart, had kept her desperate enough to commit them in the name of the hope of this.

“Tomorrow, Theramore,” Jaina whispered to her, hand still on her skin. “I will meet you. We can talk. I…”

Sylvanas’ eyes traced down from Jaina’s own blue eyes to her lips. Lips she could still remember kissing. Lips that she remembered setting alight the mark on her wrist with the sweetest kiss anyone could ever receive.

The kiss that marked a life that would no longer have to be lived alone. That meant she would have a partner, forever. For as long as this chaotic world of theirs would let them both live, at least.

And perhaps beyond that.

She watched as those lips mouthed a word, seemingly running out of breath and will to speak it.

A world Sylvanas had taught her.

“Rea’anath,” she’d said once, cradled in Sylvanas’ arms in her bedroom at the Spire.

“Bonded soul,” Sylvanas had translated for her. “In case you hear anyone call you that in reference to me.”

“Should I call you that?” Jaina had asked.

“You can if you’d like,” Sylvanas had told her before leaning in to kiss the word out of her mouth before she could say it again.

But now, on the deck of her ship, surrounded by shattered bones and ice, Sylvanas could only stare after her as Jaina’s hand left her arm, and she ran to catch Anduin again as he surveyed the damage. She could only chase after the echo of their looped feelings. Of a touch she didn’t deserve and wasn’t ready for, even if it was what she’d wanted most, killed and died again and again to get back. Of a word she was so certain she’d never hear her say again, not fully voiced, but still attempted.

A bond renewed. A flame fed to roaring. A longing that consumed her as emptiness once had.

#sylvaina #Sylvanas Windrunner #Jaina Proudmoore #fanfic #beneath the blue moon #sorry for the months long hiatus on this #but damn if it wasn't a treat to write catty sylvanas again #i missed her so much

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