Kosh’harg. A time of camaraderie, peace, celebration. Most of all, rest, a time to relax and simply enjoy each others company. Even more so for Srelok Grimtide now. He’d gotten so close to the edge a week ago that he was happy to be alive. Happy to even still be able to celebrate this festival with his clan, his family.
They were not done yet. There were still some things to do, but most of the danger had passed for now. For now, he could simply enjoy the celebrations.
Sinking back into his furs one evening, a smile on his lips as he fell asleep…
Pandaria. A land of hope and dreams since the Sha were defeated. They’d been living here for a while now, away from the clan. Not that she was really a part of them to begin with, but she noticed Srelok missing them often enough. He had a place there, a family, even so he’d chosen to go here instead with her. The outcast, the stranger. Being a half blood had never been easy. The clan accepted them well enough, but for many the feeling remained of being the odd one out either way.
The lands they’d seen were beautiful, recovering after everything that been done to them in the past years. It was a good time, together. Finally they had the time and chance to focus on each other, and only that.
Yet, things never stay the same.
It started in the Vale. Darkness fell over the land once again. But not a natural darkness. No, this was something else. A darkness so deep and corruptive that the land itself suffered, and everything inhabiting it as well.
A small seed was enough. They fled, but she felt her mind slowly starting to slip. Some moments she didn’t remember what she’d been doing just minutes before.
Slowly he watched her change. From that sharp, witty person to a hollow shell of what she’d been once. He tried to help her, desperate, his love, his life withering before his eyes. But it was all for naught.
She slipped through his fingers into madness, and there was no way to reverse it.
The cave. The ending of a bond made for life that lasted way too short. The last moments as she attacked all those dear to her, as they harmed her. Every wound he felt on himself, double as badly. Was it his fault it had come this far? They never should’ve gone to this place.
The life that faded from her eyes as she looked up to someone she didn’t know. Why hadn’t it been him? Why were the last arms she felt around herself not his, but a strangers?
Slipping, slipping, ever further into the dark.
Finally the voices were silenced, blessed quiet. No more promises, no more hurt. Yet she could still see the faces of them all. She’d still been in there, pushed away, but looking on as they came to murder her.
The silence didn’t last very long. A new noise made itself known, the world gone red. This should’ve been a new beginning. Panic gripped her in its ugly claws as she fell, kept falling. No! Where were the eternal plains? This wasn’t right!
Struggling, but to no avail. She was lost once again. From the frying pan into the fire, as one would say. This fire hurt more than anything else. She had no body to burn, so it burned her soul, her very essence.
Slipping, once again. How much time had passed? How much time of being in this agonizing pain, memories slowly fading away, burned away, until nothing was left…
Who was she again…? Faces swam in front of her mind, faces she’d once known, but who were strangers now.
Strangers. The last thing she saw again, before everything disappeared. Entirely. The pain, the noise...She.
Blessed silence.