Chapter Text
“Alleria is missing.”
Jaina startled as one of her guards unceremoniously threw her study room door open hard enough to rattle the shelves along the wall. Her words didn’t register as she could only look open mouthed at the woman for her gall in intruding into the Lord Admiral’s private space.
Wait… She recognized this woman… But she couldn’t put a name to the face. She knew everyone’s name in her guard. It was a fact Jaina prided herself on. Still, this woman was certainly under her employ-
“Alleria. Is. Missing.” Navy blue eyes bore into hers with a snarl as the shorter woman stalked up to her desk and slammed a fist down on it.
Still stunned, Jaina locked eyes with this person as an intense rage came off her in waves powerful enough for the mage to feel it physically. Then she really understood those punctuated words.
“Missing? What?” As she floundered, she finally saw it. Barely contained violet flickered like little stars inside those eyes. All at once it crashed into her. “Xal’atath?”
“I don’t have time for you to come to terms with your inability to detect me, Jaina Proudmoore. I’ve been here for longer than you want to know. That’s beside the point. Alleria is gone, and not a single shard of mine across the entirety of Azeroth can sense her. I can always sense her.” Without anyone near it, the door slammed closed on its own and suddenly it wasn’t a Kul Tiran standing before her, but the Harbinger herself.
“Could she simply be off-world?” There were plenty of places technically not within Azeroth that the Windrunner could be hunting. Though, it would be odd for her to do so without checking in.
It was a foolish question, and apparently the wrong one to ask as the inkwell on her desk floated before smashing into the wall behind her, shattering into tiny shards and splattering ink everywhere.
“That I cannot feel the binding I placed on Alleria means that someone is blocking her presence from me using an astronomical amount of magic.”
Jaina watched as the levitating entity turned and seemed to need to find a way to busy herself to keep from throwing more objects. An ancient lady of the void, reduced to a tantruming-
Oh.
Alleria was missing. That meant Alleria was likely taken.
Taken meant being alone, or guarded.
Kept away from herself and Xal’atath for an unknowable amount of time.
If they didn’t find her, she was going to drown in her own blood. The nightshade stems the two of them had held in some kind of stasis would surge, and reap their vengeance for all the sustenance that had been denied them.
Of course Xal’atath was panicking. And Jaina needed to be too.
Alleria Windrunner was the one thing keeping this almost-god from decimating large swathes of the world in an attempt to keep cosmic balance.
It had seemed wild at first, this plan to warn world leadership against over dependence on the light, but Alleria had been approaching it tactfully. She’d started with the races of the Horde least likely to balk at her, testing the boundaries of what she could achieve without Xal’atath’s direct involvement.
The Undead had been the simplest. The Desolate Council constantly faced the threat of the Scarlet Crusade and their use of the light to ‘cleanse the unholy’. They saw examples of that misuse daily, and agreed to keeping a closer eye on their priests the same as they did their warlocks and mages.
Even Calia Menethil had taken her initial misgivings and put them aside for productive conversation. While she had wanted to be brought back to life as a Lightforged Undead, it was still something that warranted further scrutiny. Why were those like the void elves and forsaken cast out of their homes while light infused beings were heralded as some sign of good fortune?
If there was more balance, perhaps the dark of the void wouldn’t feel the need to lash out at the light.
From there, the orcs hadn’t been much more difficult to deal with either thanks to Thrall being their speaker. Nor the Trolls and Tauren, despite their own light based gods being so prevalent in their cultures. Their people understood the need for balance amongst nature and the spirits. Why would light and shadow be any different?
The goblins were likely to go along with anything the rest of the horde did, just to keep profits from falling. And the Horde’s allied races were still so new, they were a group to be considered, but would not weigh as heavily on the overall balance.
None of it was a promise of action. That wasn’t what Alleria needed out of most nations. Just a promise to be aware. Their world was not critical as it stood. It just couldn’t get any worse.
The Blood Elves were going to be a hard sell. So she’d instead been planning to begin on the Alliance. The Night Elves in particular had very little ties to the light outside of their worship of the moon and how Elune tied into the whole cycle. Their reaction could also possibly influence the Nightborne, with their long history.
That had been her next point of call. The Dragon Isles, to meet with Shandris and potentially the Aspects themselves.
Quickly Jaina stood, pacing over to a mirror in the corner and pulling out some spell components as she walked. Various vials and powders floated over to her as she looked down into a basin of water that sat beneath it on a table.
“It’s a longshot, but let me see if I can reach out to Shandris now. Alleria was headed to Bel’ameth next before turning possibly to Valdrakken. I never did get word she arrived…” Jaina had a sinking feeling. Alleria had been reliable about checking in through her travels and progress just to keep Jaina from feeling the need to travel alongside the void elf.
Were it even weeks prior, the hovering wouldn’t have been necessary… But Alleria was hardly able to hide how tired she was lately. Even as they kept back the worst of the symptoms with a newly improved combination of void and arcane the Harbinger had helped her synthesize, it couldn’t halt the toll that all of this was taking overall.
Having so much raging inside of her just to keep her lungs from flooding, her heart beating… Eventually Alleria’s body would simply give way due to overexertion.
Projecting directly so close to Amirdrassil was nearly impossible with all of the protective wards woven near the world tree, so Jaina had been taught how to scry using water as the Night Elves did in their pools.
Xal’atath’s agitation was palpable as she worked slowly through the process, seeing if she could reach the priestess assuming she was available. Minutes passed, magic flowing off Jaina in agitated waves.
Just as she was about to give up, something connected.
“Jaina?” The accented voice of Shandris Feathermoon drifted through the pool as her visage formed on the surface.
“Shandris! I am so sorry for the sudden call. I hope I didn’t interrupt you in anything.” At her words, an actual snarl came from Xal’atath in the corner of her room and it made Jaina freeze. Hopefully her battle sister hadn’t heard it.
For a woman so practiced in patience and planning, she certainly doesn’t show it when it comes to Alleria.
The thought made her smile as Shandris seemed to continue as if it were just the two of them.
“Not at all. I was just finishing up a meeting. What can I do for you?”
Jaina took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She already had a feeling of how this was going to go, and needed to prepare for what it would mean.
“Alleria Windrunner was supposed to be coming to seek an audience with you about something of serious importance. It’s past time for her to check in and I wanted to see if you’d heard anything of her arrival.” When she opened her eyes again, Shandris’s brow was creased in slight confusion, ears pointed up in what she recognized was alarm.
“No. I’m afraid there’s been no news of Lady Windrunner in the area. Would you like me to have her reach out when she arrives?”
There it was. A cold dread formed at the pit of Jaina’s stomach, more frigid than any of her spells.
“That would be wonderful. Hopefully something just caught her attention in the Isles. Still so much to see in those newly rediscovered vistas.” It was hard to keep calm in her voice, but there was no reason to spread worry just yet about someone so well known being snatched away on Night Elf lands. She might not have even made it to the Dragon Isles.
Shandris’s eyes shone with an ancient wisdom that gave away little, but seemed to suggest she knew she wasn’t being told the whole story. Still she gave a polite nod. The two exchanged a few pleasantries before giving a cordial goodbye and the magic cut like a thread.
“Fuck.” Jaina braced two hands on the surface in front of her, body tensing as she knew she was about to turn to a storm. “Alright, Xal’atath. You said you have feelers all over Azeroth. I take it you mean like whatever the hell you did to hide right in my own guard?” She was still kicking herself for that one. Adelise! That was the woman’s name. She’d spoken with her more than once. She was one of the few who would guard her study as she worked… How the hell had that been the Harbinger this whole time?
Sure they’d been working together for a few months now… But Adelise had been present for far longer. A worry for another time, but one that she couldn’t ignore.
“Indeed.” The gloat in her tone was smothered well by a restrained anger that Jaina understood all too well. “Though nothing has been widespread about what she’s been up to, rumors have started to get around. It’s been an interesting variety. People are questioning if it’s someone impersonating Alleria, or she’s gone mad. Some have started to note her… Frailty… And pose it as the void deteriorating her from the inside. Foolish. Some few actually believe what she’s saying. Most think that it’s all made up.”
Jaina turned and really looked at Xal’atath now. The Harbinger had landed on the stone floor, body rigid where she usually gave off a relaxed air of confidence. This was really getting to her. The idea of losing Alleria.
Whatever the two women were to each other, the dynamic had been slowly shifting over the months since Xal’atath had first saved the grumpy ranger from dying. Not enough that the flowers had wilted… But Jaina held some kind of sick hope that maybe Xal’atath would one day learn what it was she was missing to just click that last bit into place.
Or that Alleria could somehow join the realm of whatever being Xal’atath was.
Two things that seemed equally impossible. But if anyone had asked her last year if the Harbinger and her would share notes on magical theory she’d have called that equally impossible.
The ancient texts and scriptures that had been translated from Xal’atath had allowed for the progress on Alleria’s countermeasure. Without the void entity, their friend would have been lost already. That had to count for something.
“Well then, Harbinger.” Jaina slowly made her way back to her desk, sinking heavily into the chair. “We have a search to begin. And not a lot of time to see it done.”
Not again.
It burned. Across her skin. In her muscles. Through her bones. It was everywhere, and there was no escape.
Light.
Alleria had been resting in an inn when it happened. Just as she’d fallen asleep, feeling she was finally in a place where she could let her guard down… They’d taken her. A struggle in the night she’d been unable to fight back against. Too groggy from being taken by surprise. Too worn down by the poison she hid in her body.
It had been too easy to knock her out. To keep her under until she was somewhere entirely different. Too disoriented to know where. Blinded and bound and weakened by the presence of something her void lashed out against making her insides boil and squirm.
More. Goddamn. Light.
It was the Vindicaar all over again. A prison cell made to try and sear the very force from her bones. Now that she had L’ura inside of her, it was one hundred times worse. Like a branding iron going over every inch of her body being pressed only one millimeter at a time.
“Are y… re about this… gh e…” Unable to open her eyes against the burning pressure, Alleria heard the sound of a voice somewhere nearby.
“Get back!” An even sharper, angrier voice was loud enough to cut through the haze. The sound of a thud as something collided with something else.
“It… your own… ty.” A third voice. One her heart told her she should know, but there was too much pain to process it.
She couldn’t process anything. All she could do was curl into a tighter fetal position. The sensation of irons on her wrists and ankles adding another pressure to the ever present chorus. Her neck throbbed. Chest ached. The sigils there from her two allies pulsing to try and keep her body together. A fight that would end quickly under this persistent assault.
She was too tired to panic about even that.
All she could think was one name.
Xal’atath…
A wet cough racked through her body, but compared to the rest of her agony it was almost a nice reprieve.
Xal’atath hurled a glass against the voidstone floor of her spire, watching it shatter into dozens of tiny black shards. Her mind was working overtime puppeting every piece of herself on Azeroth with complete focus and precision. A depth of control she hadn’t had to exert over them before now.
Someone had taken her Alleria. They dared to risk her life by secluding her with the disease in her lungs.
Curse the void elf for keeping it hidden. At least if her captors knew of their folly they might be more likely to slip up in some fit of foolish sympathy. But Alleria had kept that secret under lock and key outside of only a few people.
Of all of them, she only knew about Jaina Proudmoore. The mage currently working double duty putting together a plan and keeping Adelise from blowing a hole in her keep. She’d considered restraining the rage of that particular shard… But it helped dull the anger she felt in her own body to allow another piece of her to experience it separately.
Briefly she sent a command to check with Jaina if she knew of any others aware of the soul sickness in the angry Windrunner. Perhaps some fool thought it funny to cross Xal’atath herself by going through the one who was dying because of her.
That was still something she didn’t know how to reconcile with.
The entity had eons of data available to her in her spire, deep within the voidstorm. Since calling her ceasefire on Azeroth, the echo of it had faded from the sea leaving her fortress alone in this dead landscape.
A dead remnant of a world whose resources gave her no more insight to what she could do than her own mind.
Soul sickness as her people knew it came from intense emotional feelings. A belief so strong that to not see if fulfilled would literally kill a person. It had brought about some of the most radical changes of her world’s life cycle. Some would do anything to stem the tide of death. And many more would rather cause revolution than cut out the drive to see it through.
Perhaps that was why she’d allowed Alleria to begin her foolish plan. An idea that could change the entire world if it was executed correctly. A worldsoul in complete balance between the more volatile forces acting upon it.
It wouldn’t be a perfect solution. Light and void were only two sides of a coin that had far too many edges. But if they were ever in balance? The forces of those moronic paladins and priests tempered on one side and Alleria and herself on the other? Anything that tried to shift the balance they’d made from the other forces would meet a swift end.
Her spine tingled pleasantly at the idea. A world where she and Alleria would control half of a scale that could keep the whole cosmos from splitting into utter disarray. The power they would wield.
If only Alleria would accept ascension to something beyond her frail, mortal form. Then perhaps the laws of this world would stop trying to bog her down. A trail of thought that wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t find her.
With a wave of a hand, a map unfurled across the darkwood table nearby. Small pinpricks of void blinked in and out of phase along where she had her eyes and ears. She poured just a bit more power into the one representing the night elf lass who had seeded her way into that society. Another wave went into those at the Exodar and Stormwind.
She’d had to split another human form off to keep an eye on that light loaded nightmare hold. Adelise was sticking close to Jaina now that she’d revealed herself.
“Where are you, Windrunner.” Her nails tapped an erratic pattern along the paper. “We’ve too much to learn together, you and I. I’m not letting a little kidnapping get the better of you. You survived my stealing you away. You can survive this.”
“As far as I know, the only people who have the exact details of Alleria’s condition are myself, and her sister Vereesa.”
Jaina glanced at the raven haired Kul Tiran who had resumed her disguise and was peering over the map she had laid out to the side of the room. Adelise whirled around, eyes wide.
“Her sister? And where is she now?” The predatory void swirled in those eyes, so poorly hidden now that she had revealed herself to the Lord Admiral. While Jaina didn’t doubt she would go back to the picture of professional the moment another entered earshot, she couldn’t help but feel a pinprick of worry for when the two were alone.
this was just some fragment of the Harbinger, she was not to be trifled with.
“I…I don’t know. Vereesa and I haven’t spoken in some time. Since before Alleria told her, even. But she couldn’t possibly be a part of this.” Despite her words, a small drop of doubt rippled in her heart. Alleria told her about how she’d fled from Vereesa’s home in an addled panic when she’d let the truth out before she’d been ready to. An unfortunate side effect of the version of the countermeasure she’d taken.
Had Vereesa panicked in kind? Worried it was some kind of trick of the void?
Had she told Turalyon?
“Shit. Okay. Step one is to find Vereesa. I don’t think she took Alleria. But I worry that she might have told someone who would overreact in a less than graceful way. And he would have the resources needed to block your attempts to sense her. We both knew it was the light, even if we weren’t saying it.” Jaina pulled out a new inkwell from her desk, having not bothered to clean up the one Xal’atath had smashed earlier. “And we need to find Arator. He would never involve himself in something that would harm his mother. He may be able to help us.”
Adelise slowly walked up to the desk, running a finger along the old surface in contemplation as she listened to everything the Lord Admiral was saying.
“You think that Turalyon took Alleria.” It wasn’t a question. It was the solidifying of a fact, but she answered in kind anyway.
“I think that Turalyon took Alleria.”
Time held no meaning in this cell. It could have been hours. Days. Years. The constant, burning pulse of light around her never changed. Never faltered.
Sometimes hands would be on her. Guiding food and drink to her mouth. But she would never open her eyes to see who it was. She was too afraid she would go blind. The darkness behind her eyelids was the only comfort she could grasp here, even if it was tainted by that burning backdrop of searing brilliance.
The people would say things to her, but she never bothered to make out the words. She took far more solace in the whispers of her mind. The void, raging against the cage of her soul. It wasn’t even strong enough to seize control anymore.
A pity. Because she would have let it.
Anything to blanket herself from this all encompassing light.
This is what she’d been trying to warn the world about. This was the danger that was posed by letting one force run rampant through society. A driving belief that their way was the only way. These people wanted her to renounce the void. To let this pain become pleasure as she was reshaped how they desired.
Her pride would never falter. No matter how bad it got. That was the one luxury of already being one foot in the grave. The light wouldn’t save her from the nightshade. She’d rather cling to those petals. They were the last reminders of Xal’atath she had that they could never take away from her.
Alleria also refused to give them the privilege of seeing those petals. The coughs desired release, but she choked them back. Kept the building garden deep inside. Sometimes she would retch up blood, but the nightshade stayed contained.
She hoped it scared her captors to come back to a puddle of blood. Good. Let them be scared. Let them know that she was dying under their watch and their precious light couldn’t stop it.
Nothing could. No one except one woman. More than a woman. One force of nature.
If Xal’atath decided she was important enough to find, then these people were in for a very bad time. Normally Alleria would feel some kind of remorse at letting the void entity sink into that kind of rage. But the truth was, the visual of it was a balm to her burning soul. Fantasies of the absolute revenge that would be wrought danced on that void stage behind closed eyes, and for just a moment, the pain was numbed.
Of course, that would only come to pass if she was important enough to Xal’atath.
Despite that anxious thought, with a smile on her lips, Alleria knew without a doubt that it would come to pass.