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[isryael]

Lucky ones - Part 5

[See @tenebreashember for part 4, @wynilthyrii for part 3, @graceintheshadows for part 2, and @lordaeronslost for part 1]

Isryael looked up from tending the fire as Kaede dropped heavily into one of the chairs in front of it.  The priestess stared blankly into the fire, a sheet of parchment dangling from two fingers, seemingly in danger of slipping to the floor.  The former Warden sat back on her heels, regarding the other woman for the space of a few breaths, then asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“They need me to check on the children,” Kaede said.  “On my brother and sister and Nikus’s grandson and the rest.  Make sure they’re not finding trouble while they’re away.”

There was something about the way she said it that set Isryael’s teeth on edge.  “You don’t mean while they’re on-post at Valiance.”

“No,” Kaede agreed softly.  “The rumors were true.  About Dalaran.  They—” she stopped, taking a slow breath.  “Another few days and they might have been there.  They might have been part of—part of the tragedy there.”

The ancient priestess stared into the fire.  Isryael watched her, seeing for the first time in what seemed forever the child that she’d once been, the girl raised in the midst of war by a mother and uncles struggling with their own grief and still actively involved in the fight—and more than that, involved in something that Isryael didn’t understand and probably never would.  She saw the girl that was given over to the Temple and shaped into a weapon that her mother had been intended to be.

Molded by a woman that Isryael had given her life to protect.

She pushed to her feet.  “Kaede.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” she countered softly, moving to stand in front of her friend.  Kaede’s brow furrowed as she looked up to meet Isryael’s gaze.  “They’ll be all right.”

“Their luck will run out at some point,” she whispered.  “It can’t last forever.  They should have died a thousand times.”

“We all thought your father did,” Isryael said softly.  “And then last year—”

“You’re just providing more evidence that at some point, their luck will finally run dry.”  Kaede took a shaky breath, glancing down at the letter in her hand.  She folded it carefully and slipped it into a pocket of her robe.  “We’ll leave in the morning.”

“Where are they going?”

“They were mustering in Stormwind for immediate deployment,” Kaede said, the words sounding as if she’d quoted the letter directly.  “They’re likely already gone.  But we’ll ask that friend of yours in the Argent encampment for a portal.”

“He won’t be able to send us directly to Stormwind.”

“Then we’ll walk from Redridge,” Kaede said.  “And we’ll find out what’s going on—what’s really going on.”

“You think there’s more to this than the whispers?  Than what’s in that letter?”

Kaede caught her gaze and held it, something grim in her expression.  “I don’t think it, Isryael.  I know it.”

The chair creaked as she stood, slipping past the taller woman to disappear back into one of the cottage’s tiny bedrooms.  Isryael watched her go and sighed softly.

“Tomorrow morning it is.”

[isryael]

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.

[isryael]

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.”

[isryael]

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.

[isryael]

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.”

[isryael]

“In the Grass” (a Star Wars snippet)

“In the Grass” (a Star Wars snippet)

“You didn’t come to bed last night.” She shifted her shoulders, drew the shawl tighter around her shoulders. The yarn was soft against her fingers as she tangled them through the knots of its pattern, the garment smelling of laundry soap, faintly, Dalsuna’s cologne. The patch of grass between the house and the edge of the water was small, but large enough for them to play with their son without…

[isryael]

Well, setting up direct purchase of my ebooks was easier than I thought it’d be? https://ko-fi.com/embklitzke/shop

[isryael]

Isryael or Kaede

Anonymously send me what characters you ship my muse with!

Bonus points for why!

[isryael]

Anonymously send me what characters you ship my muse with!

Bonus points for why!

[isryael]

💭 💭 for Corey!

From Isryael: Without a doubt, he changed us.  He changed us forever.  I hope he’s okay. From Kaede: I can’t let Isryael know how much I miss having him around.  I don’t know what Her plan was for him, but I hope it ends happily.  Somehow.

[isryael]

For every 💭 I receive, I will write one thought my Muse has had about yours.

[isryael]

Reblog if your inbox is ALWAYS open for random asks, even if you haven’t reblogged any meme

[isryael]

Badly describe my muse in my inbox

[isryael]

eventyr: This is Arctic

[isryael]

Send “⚠️” plus a warning label for my muse.

(If you cannot see the emoji send “Warning”)

[isryael]

Reblog if you RP on Discord and it's okay for people to PM you for a plot.

[isryael]

For those who don’t know, I’m running a celebration for my Patreon anniversary this month.

This is a new goodie added on to that celebration!

Event ends on June 30. Join me on the rollercoaster that are the worlds I create and the lives of the characters in them.

Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/ErinKlitzke #amwriting #justwriterthings #writing #fiction #writersoftwitter #writersofpatreon #writersofinstagram #writersoftumblr #writersoffacebook #creativelife #anniversary https://www.instagram.com/p/By3EEQigeUO/?igshid=1f2x8n08vh7y4