How Edanna Kal'es survived the Fall of Quel'thalas Part 1

Focus...
Focus, focus, focus...
Noises. Why noises? I need peace and quiet, I'm working here!
Focus...
Shouts. Parade? Nevermind. I have a difficult potion to make. You wouldn't BELIEVE how difficult to make can a simple constipation curative be.
Now...
Shouts turn into screams. Uh-huh. Something nasty is going on but sadly, this Magus is following the unwritten rule of all people without any imagination and gets things at hand done first.
I am perfectly focused, noises are still there but I'm not hearing them, I can keep watch over the mixture without –
Oh, they are gone.
Justamomentjustamomentjustamomentjustam-- now, NOW!
Edanna, bent over the beaker, quickly jolted to an upright position and poured a precisely-measured amount of the last ingredient to the potion. The liquid hissed angrily but took on a milky yellowish colouration. She'd done it! For the first time she made such a difficult mixture without help.
She sighed with relief, straightening her back and casting a glance towards a thick tome. Right after creation the mixture is extremely acidic, she read, to the point where it could eat through most known metals and all organic matter. It should now rest for a while, she read. It will become clear, darken to an amber hue, lose this most unfortunate trait and become safe to use.
Jolly good. I have some free time.
Edanna sighed with joy and rushed towards the cabinet where she held some of her better vintages. She picked a decanter and poured the rosy liquid into a glass. It was a good glass. She ordered it from a master glass-maker. It was clear like crystal and cut to resemble an opening rose flower. And now, with a job well done she could drink some elverquiss out of it, enjoying the perfect silence.
Silence. In the ward where she lived, vis-a-vis the Opera House no less, silence was something unnatural and unwelcome. Even with superior insulation, one could always hear the low murmur of the conversations of the café patrons below, the commerce outside and finally the rehearsals at the Opera. Now the world was silent, not even a bird sang.
A crow cawed. Edanna made her decision and started moving towards the window in her workshop.
John Two Blows was unhappy. As a fallen Paladin in service of the Cult of the Damned, he practised swordsmanship diligently, learned evil necromantic utterances and kept his lust for blood in check until the chance for the big bloodbath came. And it did came! Under the leadership of no less than his own prince Arthas! From what he heard, they went to Quel'thalas to get something they had and would not give willingly. John Two Blows approved. For things to be not in possession of Humans was an unnatural state of affairs and he was happy to help correct that. Besides, the long-eared buggers deserved being wiped out. Not for any particular reason, just because they were so bloody perfect! They were more graceful, more beautiful, more intelligent, wiser, lived for longer... And now they would all die, ending this injustice. John Two Blows approved.
The one thing John Two Blows did not approve was that despite his best intentions he was assigned to the army's rear guard. As the marauding Scourge rampaged tWe've reached Silvermoon, John Two Blows noted as the area turned slightly more urban. What a silly, silly elven name for a city. Silly. Our own Human cities had much better names, like Stormwind, Pyrewood, Highcoast, Bearkeep and Southshore. Much better names than this elven village. Silvermoon, pfaugh! Well, at least he could hope for some back alleys and dead ends in which Elves hid, frightened and trembling... Maybe he could get an elven child? He heard killing a child was the ultimate sin. He really wanted to get to kill a child. Or maybe find two, even. One to kill and one to give a necromancer for some hocus-pocus, he'd be rewarded accordingly.
And there it was, near a silly, silly Opera, an elven invention. A door which had not been broken in yet. There was no blood nor dead Elf in front of it, a strange sight in this town, where blood flew through the streets like a river and you'd have to be very careful not to step on a corpse. John Two Blows wasn't careful. At all.
Edanna was about to look through a window situated directly above her alchemy table as she heard the door of her workshop bashed in. She turned to see a human male entering. He was in full plate decorated with a tasteless skull design. His greaves were stained with blood and smeared with other bodily fluids. On his neck hung a necklace made out of elves' ears and there was a macabre smile on his face. The Death Knight began to move closer...
John Two Blows quickly approached the door and, upon consideration, decided to open it quietly rather than bash it in. He wanted to see that mixture of terror and surprise once the long-eared git who lived there noticed him. He used a special sense he had learned to find out where the lodger was. He crept quietly to the door his sense pointed him towards and gave it a good kick. The female – for the Elf in the room was decidedly one – turned around and gave him an analytic look. John's heart soared, it had been a long time since he felt the body of a female next to his own. The Death Knight began to move closer...
As most acquaintances of Edanna know, she has many faults but overlooking an obvious threat happens not to be one of them. There was a man in her apartment, he was armed, he killed her kin and he wanted to get her. She knew how to remedy the Humans' eagerness and she had just the right thing at hand. Her hand clenched around a vial and she made a violent motion with it. The Death Knight began to scream as the acidic mixture dissolved his face, bones and brain. The High Elves scored a tiny victory on the dark day of the Fall.
She glared at the headless, twitching corpse in her study, then through the window, then at the dead knight again. Edanna felt something had to be said.
“Interesting.”
There. She was never good at witty post mortem one-liners and she had no time to think of any. Besides, something very bad was happening. Edanna looked at the dead body laying in front of her once again and focused her mind...
...Her mind soared. Around her an infinity of stars, planets and celestial bodies engaged in a perpetual dance. She could feel the celestial harmonies tugging at her blood, at her very soul and, Sunwell be blessed, she knew how to tug them in return. Her mind turned in just the right direction and she struck just the right note. A surge of power went through her body as the celestial resonance returned the tiny push a hundredfold, the Nether powers now at her fingertips entering through the gate blessed Sunwell was. She welcomed the magic as one would a long-awaited guest and old-time friend and gently steered it towards matters at hand...
...Hand. A small cloud of flickering flames escaped her hand's grasp and flew towards the ugly dead body. The flames began to consume, overlooked and steered by Edanna. Soon the body was gone, not even a speck of ash left.
Edanna touched her forehead. Magic was bliss and she knew sooner or later she would decide to abandon the fragile prison of flesh and explore worlds of light and shade as a nether spirit. Alas, it was not the time and it would be long till it came; the mundane world held too many mysteries and wonders.
The next few minutes passed under a sign of a frantic search for her staff. She found it finally, serving as a coat rack. She examined it. It was a good staff, long and slender, made of sturdy oakwood, specially treated to give it a bright, gold-orange hue. It was adorned with flowing, spiralling motifs that appealed to her sense of beauty. The staff was topped with a piece of blue crystal in a delicate, artistic setting. She heard the crystal came from a rock that fell from the sky many millennia before present day. Edanna shrugged, took the staff and then spent some time casting enchantments upon windows and doors of her apartment to make sure her home and belongings would be secured from wartime looters.
Finally she stood at the front door, the fear and anxiety that had been subdued by the work she'd been engaged in now flourishing and presenting her with unpleasant thoughts. Stay here, they said, turn your house into a fortress and pretend nothing had happened until they find you. There's food in the pantry, you can make fresh water with ease. Who knows what you will see once you exit the safety of these wonderfully thick walls? Father, gutted, his intestines trailing behind him as he almost reached her house. Mother, mutilated in unspeakable ways. Bodies of her friends, put on a pile and desecrated. That Aelar Silvermoon who had shown so much interest in her, beyond common friendship and to whom she was a little inclined to...
Look, she told her imagination, if you're going to keep behaving like that, I'm leaving you here!
Edanna turned the doorknob and pushed the door.
Category:Story