#sildre lummeth
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Moonsong [Wandering Stars Pt 1]
Lady Anarah Lummeth brought the panflute to her lips as she walked barefoot through the large entertaining garden of her family's estate. The moon rose in full, visible through the slowly flowering trees that marked the central alcove. The estate was not as large as some; though incredibly old, the Lummeth’s line was not as prosperous as other families. They bartered in wine, magic, and secrets - commodities equally powerful and rare. Yet most of that wealth and power vanished when her dear father turned Felborne and Elisandre fell from grace. Now she fought tooth and nail to regain even a small amount of what had been.
The notes from her panflute turned sour and she took it from her lips. She fought, and fought and fought, because she'd been left the responsibility of the house, by the one person she was sworn to protect. She felt no ill will to her sister for her choice, but Anarah did not feel joy either at her name.
She stepped under the Moon Gate, hand touching the ancient stone in greeting. A long lost relic of their Highborne roots, layers and layers of runic wards had protected the sanctum within for millennia. Her touch flared magic through the stone and allowed her passage. The gate shimmered as her hand slipped from the stone.
Anarah shared almost all of her features with her elder sister, save the runes scarred into Sildre's dark skin, and Anarah's white feline eyes. They were so close in age, they were treated as twins. A paultry five years separated their births. She was the Heir's Protector, her Nightprowler (though -that- title was saved for their lost sister Lyewen) and she would do anything for her sister.
Even becoming the head of the family.
She stepped out from under the small ivy covered path into the sactumn proper. Moonlight lit the small space with an ethereal glow. The sactumn was about thirty feet across and round, barriered by hedges of starlit roses. A fine carpet of moss stretched from side to side, broken only by the white stone statue at the North end of the space. Standing several feet taller than Anarah was a perfect replica of her mother.
In front of the statue was a small altar and plaque. The plaque read
'Blessed be is our Mother Moon,
She who lights the way in the dark.’
Anarah crouched by the altar, lighting a candle at the East and West sides of the altar. The flames flickered and steadied, two beacons of light against the dark. The common story of her mother's death was that of withering. That her father cast her mother out of the fold for not taking the Fel and left her to die. That was the story Sildre had been told.
That was, however, not the whole truth.
She settled between the candles in front of an offering plate. The druidess bit her thumb, drawing blood. She drew a rune on the plate in broad strokes of red. The stone hummed as she finished the sigil of the Lummeth House.
“Blood to blood I call to thee,
Mother Moon, show thyself to me.
Blood to blood I summon thee,
Mother Moon, shine thy light upon me.”
Anarah thrust a dagger into the middle of the sigil, finding home in a hidden slot in the stone. The sigil flared to life, shining bright with moonlight. She stepped back, the moonlight beginning to coalesce in front of the statue. Panflute to her lips, she began to play a soft tune. Magic hung on the notes and the air felt heavy with it. Gathering this much energy in one place was always a risk, but Anarah was not who she was by chance.
The music steadied the magic, brought order to it, and the light solidified into a woman the mirror image of the statue. She was one solid color, except for the dark runes covering her white skin. Like Sildre, she too bore the weight of her magic upon her skin, and like very true Mother Moon before her.
Their mother did not die as the stories suggested. She and every other Matriarch before her became one with the Leylines upon their death. Though, she had not died. Not truly.
“My Crescent Moon…” said her mother, voice echoing and full of power. Anarah bowed deeply.
“Mother Moon, I thank you for gracing me with your presence this eve. I bring---” Power touched her chin, guiding her up until she looked at her mother's glowing face. It unnerved her, the sheer force of power humming against her skin. Her mother had always been a power magistrix, but this was… unheard of. Had she really gained so much power in the few short years she'd been gone? How had Anarah not noticed the other times she'd called upon her mother for guidance?
Her mother had never touched her before, she realized. Never felt the touch and power seeping into her veins and mind.
“My dear Crescent Moon, you need not be so formal. Now… tell me what has happened,” said her mother with a smile that did not quite reach her eyes. Anarah took a small step back, if only to disable the connection between them. Her mind cleared; she hadn't even noticed it was clouded.
“Our Wandering Star has gone dark, my Lady. Moreover the whole of Quel'thalas has gone dark. I cannot scry in, nor find the leylines connecting it to the rest of the world. It is though… it's vanished.
Yet we know that forces moved towards the home of the Sin'dorei, and more still move north via the sea. I fear she and the company she is keeping is in danger.”
Her mother was silent as she spoke, the only indication she was even real being subtle changes in her brow and lips. Once, Anarah could read her mother like a book; now it seemed the Leylines had changed beyond even that.
“... Yes,” said the Mother Moon after a moment, refocusing on Anarah. “I too have lost connection with our Wandering Star. I believe it is time we remind her of her place in the cosmos, Crescent Moon. You are to find her and bring her back into the fold. You have done a commendable job, but you are not the Heir.”
If she'd expected the words to sting, she was mildly surprised. They rolled off of her like water, and Anarah felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Her mother understood that much, at least.
“It is time our Black Moon reclaimed her birthright.”
Power thrummed in the air and Anarah shivered.
“Find her, and if she does not come willingly, make her. By any means necessary,” commanded her mother. A hand of power pressed against her face. Magic poured into her, setting her nerves on fire. It filled her up, up up until she felt like she would burst. She cried out in pain, and her mother let go.
“... I forget how fragile we are as flesh…” said the Mother Moon. She floated back and smiled again, not reaching her eyes. Anarah fell forward, body still humming with power. Stars it felt like she was burning.
“May the Moon guide and protect you, my Crescent Moon.”
Light flashed and Anarah found herself alone in the sanctum. The moon drifted behind the trees and left her in darkness before she could rise off the mossy ground. Her body ached with one purpose.
Find her sister.
Remind her of her duty.
Bring her home.
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[War of Thorns] Safety
Sildre watched from the safety and warmth of her chambers in the Dawnspire. She watched the horrors unleashed upon the world over a simple material and a dormant sword from behind a simple arcane scrying crystal. She watched, safe and protected, as countless died under the choke of the Banshee Queen's noose.
Sildre was safe, and thousands were dead.
The Arcanist looked up from the crystal. A large bound tome, almost as old as she, rested on the desk in front of her. It was one of many items she'd transported to her chambers after her initiation into the Sunguard, and by far the oldest. It was open to a large family tree, one that lifted off the page to expand to its full size. The Lummeth family began long before the Shattering, with countless branches and offshoots that sent it growing this way and that. The magic within it knew when someone died, or someone was born, regardless if that person knew they carried the Lummeth blood within them. A divide split the tree almost in two, giving the impression of a tree growing over a ravine or canyon.
A great swath of the tree was dark and dormant. The upper boughs perpetually stood dark, several generations long since gone before even Sildre’s birth. Those descended from Highborne were long lived, but not immortal. Many of the Highborne became Nightborne, as she did, and there were dark spots here and there.
It was the other side of the divided tree that concerned her.
Here, newly darkened sections of the Starborne side - the Night Elves - kept cropping up. As the minutes passed, more and more flickered out until it resembled less like a galaxy and more like specs of dust. These were never people Sildre had ever spoken to - or knew at all - but they still carried her bloodline within them. Yet she felt a sort of… sadness, at their deaths. She sat back in her chair, lips pursed. Why would she feel remorse for a people that supposedly she was at war with? There was no attachment to them, there was no legitimate reasoning behind this emotion.
Yet she felt it.
Sildre turned back to the small scrying portal above the crystal on her desk. The tree burned in the night sky, an angry red column of smoke and rage. A fire burned in her belly as memories came to her of houses and fields consumed by fel fire. Innocents died when the Felborne came calling. Be it by sword or fire, no one stood in their way. It struck fear into the lower classes of Suramar, kept them in check, for it was never a whole quarter or neighbour hood at once. Besides at the end.
Innocents died in that tree, in that command.
And Sildre was safe, housed within the ‘winning’ side.
She was still safe when the Alliance retaliated.
South they marched, burning a path from the coast to the doors of the old castle of Lordaeron. She found a certain irony that the path the King of Stormwind took mimicked that of Arthas upon Quel’thalas. Especially, given what the history books told her, since Arthas too stormed into Lordaeron to murder his own father. An amusing irony, had the circumstances not been so dire.
Sildre sipped on a glass of arcwine, watching the aftermath of the siege. It had been brutal; the Alliance routed the Horde at almost every instance, except one entrance of Brill. For every Horde soldier, there were two Alliance. All the while, the Forsaken scrambled to evacuate it’s civilians. Somewhere along the way the Translocation Orb into Silvermoon was destroyed - a necessary precaution to the Alliance suddenly showing up in Regent-Lord Lorthremar’s lap. The Horde was backed into a corner, behind crumbling walls and impossible odds.
The Banshee Queen had an ace up her sleeve.
Plague.
Sildre also read about this concoction, a substance so toxic it primed the body for reanimation almost immediately. It did not discriminate, it did not distinguish sides. At the Wrathgate, the relatively newly freed Forsaken used this creation to push back the Scourge. In doing so, they destroyed the forces of both their own allies, and that of the Alliance. Former Warchief Thrall, and Garrosh, banned the substance almost immediately. Sources told her that it had not stopped the Forsaken from quietly creating more.
Then testing it on the Gilneans in Silverpine after the Cataclysm.
Sildre watched in horror through her arcane scrying portal as the green mist choked the life out of their own soldiers… and let Sylvanas raise them as undead. The Alliance too.
A ship sailed over the trees in the distance, and her feed cut out.
It returned several tense minutes later.
Lordaeron sat below a haze of thick green mist, not a moving soul in the courtyard except those immune to it.
Shivers ran down Sildre’s spine and she terminated the spell. The Arcanist stared out the window to the bright fields of Quel’thalas outside the Dawnspire.
Sildre was safe.
For now.
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[PW] A Letter Sent In Need
For the first time since coming here, Sildre wished she was back in Suramar. The dampened magic weighed on her, and the most recent events sparked simmering fear within her chest again. She missed the spires, the gardens – the arcwine. Most of all, she missed her family. She missed her home, her baubles, her younger siblings and their children. She missed mundane things like reading, and doing Anarah’s hair. Even locked away from the world, slowly withering away, at least she was home and around family.
A penned letter sat in front of her, addressed to the oldest of the younger sisters, Anarah. She’d handed control of the Lummeth Estate and House to her when she’d left Suramar; Anarah had a good head on her shoulders, and Sildre had left copious notes. In any other scenario, she would just open a sending to her dear sister to speak with her. With Quel’thalas cut off from the world’s leylines that was impossible. Now all she had was parchment and a quill, and too much to say.
“Everything is falling apart, my Crescent Moon,” she said softly, fingers touching the non-descript letter talking about her Starlily and plans for Yule. Safer this way; if it was intercepted, no harm would come of it. Should Anarah receive it though…
“We have four nations seizing land, starving citizens and bent on removing the Sin’dorei and the Shal’dorei from the continent. We cannot contact the outside world, or portal, and much of our magic is limited. Winter is quickly falling upon the land of eternal summer, my Crescent Moon. We will not survive it.
“Our fleet is gone, it’s commander captured. They’ve boxed us in with the force of tens of thousands. Worst yet…” Her breath caught, unable to bring herself to speak the words aloud.
“We have been betrayed.”
Sildre did not know Aurelian. She had seen him, passed by him, perhaps spoken to him once or twice, but she only remembered a high brow Sin’dorei in overly fine clothing and a less than pleasant disposition. A would be king, now that she thought back on it. Perhaps. Potentially.
“I am at a loss my Crescent Moon. I came here to escape the chaos of home and now… I am hunted again. My home is in danger, those I care for are in danger. I wish to rage and scream and hurl myself straight for this man and his new alliances and tear them from him. I wish to move earth and sky and pull on every dreg of power I can and eliminate his entire existence from the world.
“More than anything, I wish to run away. I wish to take my Starlily, find those of our kind in Silvermoon and run. I wish to escape certain death, and I feel ashamed.” Sildre hung her head, fingers clenching against the parchment. The world was falling apart around her, and once again all she wanted to do was run away. A lady of the House of Lummeth should not be cowardly; they were strong and fierce, and fought till the end.
Sildre was none of those things.
She once told Ameniel she’d left her House to another so she could see the world, that she was an ambassador for her house to the world. After millenia trapped behind the barrier, who would not want freedom to learn of the world, to go where she could not?
Yet, it was a lie.
Sildre left to avoid the weight of her family’s history, it’s downfall and it’s rebirth. She left to escape the ridicule of her father’s allegiances, to escape the station waiting for her. To escape the family looking to her for guidance, for leadership, and scrutinizing her for flaws and her Chronomancy. She ran away then, scared and terrified of her future.
Now she wanted to run for her safety. Shal’dorei etiquette and ten thousand years of masking her motives may show a woman posed for battle, for the end, yet in the end it was just that – a mask. Beneath it all huddled a child who grew up too fast under the thumb of a terrifying lineage and equally terrifying man. Nothing but a coward lay beneath her shield of nobility, and here, she didn’t even have that.
“I...” Her voice broke on the word. She cleared her throat, trying again. “I, should you receive this letter, request whatever aid House Lummeth and the Shal’dorei loyal to us can provide. Call on the old alliances, the old accords. You know of the ones. Bring the constructs, all of the ones that still function.
“We – I cannot do this alone, my Crescent Moon. I’ve not the strength, nor the resources here to muster forces to aid the Sunguard, let alone Quel’thalas. We cannot contact the outside world through normal means, nor can we teleport ourselves outside. I send this request-”
Sildre took a breath, steeling her voice. “-Nay, this plea, if you receive this then come by sea to the north and send a spellwing once you enter the dead zone. If you do not come…” She looked at the emblem of her house, hung from her staff on a piece of cloth. Outside her small tent, the armies of the Sunguard began to muster themselves. Shouts, hoofbeats and running feet filtered in through the cloth around her. They were moving again.
“If you do not come, then I know where the House stands and I hate you not for it.
“Erana-dora isil, my Crescent Moon.”
She signed it with a rune. The parchment shimmered for a moment then went dull. A dull ache curled around her forearm, as the rune inscribed itself in her flesh. It was an angry color, but did not bleed and would heal in due time. Sildre folded the letter up quietly, packed up her things with a flick of her fingers – and another rune drawn into her skin – and made for the nearest hawk courier. She spoke in a low voice, inscribing runes for speed and stealth upon his shoulders, and watched him disappear into the chaos.
Her arms ached now, one rune oozing blood, but if her letter did not reach her sister in time…
“Ru shanna, Sildre, ru shanna...”
Even if it meant running.
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On Violet Wings
“Mages, hold that barrier until the line reforms!” Sildre watched as the Suncasters under her command strained under the effort of keeping the half a mile long barrier up as clerics and medics dashed around the wounded soldiers, trying to keep as many alive as possible. The shield wall reformed, slowly, and even she panted in sympathy with her cohort. They had the benefit of valley walls to keep their enemies from charging around the barrier, but that was little assurance against tide of battle across the plain from them.
The Alliance had come.
They’d come not a week hense, their armies dwarfing the combined forces of the Shal’dorei and the Sin’dorei. Come to evict the last bastion of Horde from their continent, burning another swath of death through the great land of Quel’thalas. They held the line against the onslaught for the first few days, meeting them blade and spell for blade and spell.
Yet as the days past, where the elves forces faltered, the Alliance gained inch and footholds. And now….
The shield wall stabilized and her cohort fell back to provide covering fire. The arcane golem beneath Sildre’s feet lumbered forward with several others, to flank from the left. A cry went through the regiment of defiance and survival that Sildre understood even if the Thalassian sounded foreign to her ears. Her voice joined the chorus and the shield wall moved, shifting as one giant unit to slam into the Alliance forces in front of them. The Alliance pulled back, disoriented by this renewed charged and for a moment, Sildre saw triumph.
Sildre drew a rune in the air, charged with arcane energy, and let the bolts fly into several Alliance just beyond the wall. She prepared another rune, this time circling it and adding several smaller ones, and cast it towards the spell casters in the back.
The earth rumbled and exploded in the middle of the shield wall, knights and warriors flung into the air and landing with a sickening crunch. Several large forms of earth wrenched free from the ground, swinging heavy arms this way and that. The wall crumpled as men and woman tried to get out of the way and the Alliance poured around the giant golems. Beyond, glaive throwers and ballistas slowly rolled forward.
Sildre yelled, commanding her golem to turn and back up. A ballista bolt shot through the air and slammed into the golem’s heart with explosive force. The explosion threw her into the air with enough force to knock the wind out of her. At the last second, she meddled with her own timeline so instead of breaking her neck in the fall, she landed heavily on her shoulder and hip, sliding several feet.
Someone was talking as she came to, her left arm throbbing with the new time rune. Hundreds of rune scars lined the insides of her arms all from different spells and casts. This one bled though, and she cursed. Of all the bloody times to go too far back in time…
Sildre looked up at the speaking voices as the heavy smell of broken magic reached her. She was backed into a corner. A wall of Alliance spell breakers surrounded her (when had they gotten so close) and the body of a dead mage lay at their feet. One of hers. One of her brightest, even. She reached for her staff, her foci and her font of power and found shattered pieces of wood and crystal.
The Starfire lay broken on the ground, destroyed by the fall, or maybe the blow back from her spell. She’d always been told never to tamper with time too much. Ameniel cautioned her--
Ameniel.
White eyes frantically looked around, her ears straining to hear anything over the communication link. Everything was muffled and quiet, as though magic had been nullified around her. Sildre barked a laugh. It most likely had. They were spellbreakers after all. What a time to not have a selection of daggers or fold out swords.
Fire burned in her chest, fear and defiance warring for dominance. Ameniel was still out there, she had to be. Her Starlily was not so easily felled. Sildre had to find her, had to make sure she was alright. But how? The staff lay broken, she couldn’t muster magic, she had no power…
Power… The Shal’dorei Arcanist glanced at the foci of the staff, a fire opal melded with azerite. The gem and crystal still glowed, still pulsed with energy. It wasn’t nullified by the anti-magic field.
Sildre lunged for it, fingers closing around the foci.
The spell breakers charged.
Sildre turned towards the Alliance and screamed in defiance as she slammed the stone's point into her chest.
Power rushed through her and exploded outwards, all but consuming her. It burned through every rune scar on her body, through every pore, and every joint. She felt on fire and freezing at the same time. Sildre saw leylines, was the leylines. It was as though she was everything and nothing all at once. It changed her, morphed her as arms turned into wings, feet into claws and her face into that of a hawks. The explosion of power forced the spell breakers back, shields raised.
There was a screeching sound and the violet spellwing surged through the ranks of Alliance, leaving husks burning with arcane energy.
Ameniel… I am coming...
…
Sildre woke with a gasp, heart pounding. The room surged around her and she gulped air as though she’d been drowning. The battlefield faded as her books, her clothing, her tapestries came into focus. She was in her chambers. Her arms were unscarred and her staff stood in the corner, whole and intact. Next to her, Ameniel slept peacefully without a care of what had happened. It had been a dream. Intense but just a dream.
Something caught her eye on the bed as she made to lay down again.
The bed was covered in iridescent feathers, shifting from blue to violet all on their own.
Just a dream… right?
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