The druidess sat silent in a quiet and reclusive home deep in the woods of Feralas. The building sat in a state of disrepair, roots growing in through the windows and door frame. The chimney long ago put out by time, now little more than a collection of loosely fitting bricks. The building was cracking and had long ago given itself to the negligence of time. As the hours ticked by, the druidess seemed to be chipping away at a wooden block, each piece carefully crafted and cared for. Her silvery eyes dim in the light of the day, her expression weathered and beaten.
She could count all the faults of the year that were beginning to run through her head. The loss of her relationship with Hafu, the abortion of the child that preceded it. Her time and injuries with the Devilclaw and the roller coaster of emotions it brought with. From meeting Baelali, to his burning down of her home. Alnarra’s experience with Araane, only to discover that love was more complicated then she had remembered. The hopes and dreams that she had placed in Inodraen, only for him to hide away in the mountains of Winterspring. The acts of a woman driven to sadness, and the investment of care she had made in a strange Sin’dorei huntress, the same huntress that now sat driven mad and under the protection of fae magics.
The druidess didn’t come here to dwell though. Alnarra had grown tired of dwelling, of spending her nights wiping her eyes of the tears that came with the pouring out of her heart. The months that had been nothing short of a spider web of failures and successes, all driving the relatively young Kaldorei to a state of absolute misery. She could hide her emotions in front of the others, pretend that what had transpired had not driven her to such a deep sadness, but not here. In this place, there was nothing Alnarra could hide, not from herself, and not from the world.
Setting the wood piece down, the woman returned to the familial room where she had spent her youth, going to sit on the bed, she pulled out a piece of literature on the priestesses of the moon. It was something her mother hand meant for her to become, but she was never quite practiced enough, never trained enough to take the position.
Instead she could only laugh as she turned the pages slowly, her eyes drawn to the unique drawings and passages. Each one written in an ancient Kaldorei manuscript, one the druidess was becoming less and less accustomed to seeing. Pulling her glasses from her satchel, she discovered that in this time they had been broken. The frame twisted and bent, the lens a shattered wreck. It took a roll of her eyes to dismiss the luck, just another item in a long list of things that had been broken in this travel.
“Figures doesn’t it Kykona?” she asked in a tired voice getting up and setting the book back in its place, amongst the cobwebs and dust. The sprite darter remained quiet through all of this, knowing that the fact that Alnarra had withdrawn this far did not bode well. Even in the darkness of losing her children Kykona had never seen this home, a sanctuary to a past that Alnarra had tried to forget.
“Why we here?” it asked quietly, afraid to disturb or move anything, it fluttered quietly next to the woman, it’s eyes sharp and its usual appetite for shiny objects diminished by the heavy weight of this place.
“Needed to think,” the druidess responded with a firm, almost uplifting voice. She pushed her way to a rear entrance going to look upon what was once a lush garden of vegetables, lavender, and so much more, now only sitting as a hollow and reminder of what it once was. With that there was a simple smirk as Alnarra began to call upon powers the circle thought it had been able to lock away in her trials. The roots that made their way through the soil seeming to react, as if ripples of druidic magic were passing through them. The very air seemed to become heavy as a laugh escaped her. “I think that’s about enough time in the forest of Feralas don’t you?”
With a scream of pure and unadulterated release, the ground around the shook, the trees and the roots all seeming to react, the silvery eyes of the Kaldorei burned with a ferocity now as she focused her attention, weaving the roots of the garden into position, curling them into a tight bundle. “The enemy sits at the gate, we have lost contact with countless outpost, and even now the Alliance is mustering a force to push through to the other side.” The smirk on her face grew brighter, “What do you think Kykona? Do you think they could use a bit of help?”
Confusion marked the face of the sprite darter, “Help?” it asked softly, its eyes meeting Alnarra’s own, “What you mean help?” it seemed to gulp a bit at the implications.
“The Green Skins killed Dathans, I feel like they should feel the burn of that mistake, and all the other mistakes they have made. I am tired of sitting idly by while the world turns. Even if the circle doesn’t seem to trust me, I don’t really care anymore. I am Alnarria Elslora Stargrove and I have far more important things to do then to sit and weep” there was a passion in her voice, a clenched fist as she once again commanded the root bundle “Wish they had told me back in Moonglade that this was all little more than glorified shamanism” she smirked a bit before forming the root bundle into a treant, which she proceeded to draw her weapon on.
The moon rose and set before she was done with her training, hours spent fighting at her absolute peak, and every blow seemed to only invigorate the fire that burned within her belly. Growling in a proud manner she ran at the creature again and again, trading blows, an almost feral nature about the usually more stoic druidess.
“Time to stop crying” she laughed fighting with her sparring dummy, “Time to get things done”
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