When I quit WoW at the end of Legion, I wrote a fairly self-indulgent fan fic to say goodbye to my warlock/demon hunter. Since my unexpected return to the game, I’ve been thinking I needed to do another fic to explain her return to the adventuring life.

It took me longer than expected, but with Midnight looming and all eyes on the Blood Elves, now felt like the right time.

* * *

Light and Wonder

She donned her armour.

It was not a simple process. Like all the works of her people, it was almost excessively intricate, a work of art as much about making a statement as it was about practical purpose. Every layer, every material, carried with it the crushing weight of meaning and history, both of the ancient lineage of the Highborne and of her own painful life.

Layers of bright red silk. The red of blood. The blood that been spilled in the futile defence against an unstoppable enemy, the blood of the loved ones they had lost.

She remembered the slaughter of her friends, the erasure of her family. Nearly everyone she had ever known gone in a matter of days. In many cases she had never learned how they had died, but from the deaths she had witnessed, she knew none of them had been merciful.

Those losses had broken something inside her, something that would never heal. She saw that same aching pain in the eyes of every one of her people. It was their burden, and their bond. No one could understand them as they understood each other. No one else had lost so much.

They were Sin’dorei. They were the Children of Blood.

Interlocking sheets of black leather. The black of mourning, of the grief that defined everything her people did.

For her, grief had not just been a matter of tears. It had burned within her as a furious rage, a quest for vengeance that had led her across worlds. It had led her to cross almost every line, to pollute her soul with the dark hunger of the fel, to turn herself into a living weapon of unbridled destruction. No price had been too high to pay if it brought her family’s killers to justice.

In Icecrown, her rage had burned its way into the cold heart of death itself. On Argus, she had turned the demons’ own power against them, bringing doom to the ultimate architects behind the evil that had despoiled her homeland.

Then, at last, when every monster involved in the ruination of her people had tasted the pain of true death, the anger within her had guttered and died. And she had found that without it, there was nothing left. She had become an empty husk, without purpose, gnawed constantly by the hunger of the fel and the grief that no amount of screaming vengeance could soothe.

Plates of strong steel, enamelled in brilliant gold. The gold of the light of the Sunwell renewed, of the eternal sun that guided them still.

Following the last battle in Antorus, she had retreated from the world. She had taken up residence in an isolated corner of Eversong Woods. Alone, without love nor purpose, the pain had threatened to swallow her whole. Then, at last, the tears she had longed denied had come, flowing until they threatened to drown her.

The hunger for blood and violence was with her always. It would never leave her, not through all the long centuries she had still had to live. The knowledge had almost broken her. She had turned herself into a weapon, and that could not be undone.

Slowly, as the years passed, she had learned to live with the pain. It never left her, but she gradually came to learn she could fill her heart with other things as well. She began to see the world around her – really see it – for the first time since undead had taken everything from her people. She heard the birds sing in the morning, and saw the way the light shone through the crimson leaves of the trees. She smelled the perfume of spring flowers, and felt the cool waters of mountain springs upon her skin.

Then had come the visions, the Radiant Song. And then, at last, she had realized that there was still something to fight for. Not to avenge the past, but to safeguard the present, and the future. It had taken her so long to see the beauty in the world again, and the love for it filled with a purpose as urgent as the searing hate she had once felt.

She had made herself into a weapon, but a weapon could be used to protect as well as destroy.

She had rejoined the world, had seen the wonders and the terrors of Khaz Algar, and now she had returned home again, as darkness came to Quel’thalas once more.

Her intricate armour in place, she stepped forth into the streets of Silvermoon City. Her name was Dorotaya Duskfury, and she was ready to fight for her home.

The sky above was dark. No natural clouds these, they flickered with violet and azure lightning, the touch of a power beyond this reality. An unnatural chill beat down from that otherworldly sky, like some cruel perversion of the sun’s heat.

The streets buzzed with activity as other Sin’dorei joined her in making their way to city’s battlements. There were mages and warlocks, who like her had risked wielding powers that might consume them. There were Farstriders, sworn to defend the fragile remnants of the forests that even now still healed from the wounds of the Scourge. There were sombre Blood Knights, sworn to honour the memory of the god they had murdered.

Among such company, Dorotaya could walk free of judgment. They saw the horns upon her brow, the cracks in her skin that crackled with green fire, her lank hair and sickly skin, and they did not look away. None among them had not made desperate choices in the years following the fall of Quel’thalas, and now they were united in purpose, all making the same silent promise: We will not let it happen again.

She ascended the battlements of Silvermoon, joining the ranks of her people in their resplendent amour, so much like hers. The red of what they’d lost, the black of the grief that weighed heavy on their shoulders, and the gold of their spirit unbroken. She looked south, and saw the growing darkness in the sky, the fathomless hungry evil that came to take everything from them once again.

But she also saw the forests below, the trees with their leaves of red and gold. She saw the faces of her people, some hopeful, some terrified, all determined. She saw all they had rebuilt in the last few years, the glorious monument to triumph over impossible grief that was Silvermoon itself, and her heart swelled with a love she had long feared she was no longer capable of.

Her mind went back to her time in Pandaria, to words spoken by one of that land’s gods. She hadn’t understood their meaning then. She hadn’t been ready to hear it. But now, she felt the true depth of them.

“Someday, you may also be called upon to defend all that is dear to you. When that day comes, seek all the light and wonder of this world, and fight.”

A cry of defiance, of joy, rose from her lips. “Anaralah!” By the light.

The cry was taken up across the battlements, becoming a chant as dozens of Elven voices joined as one. “Anaralah! Anaralah! Anaralah!”

A cold wind struck her face, and she greeted it with a smile.