Drifting -writing.
I've been in a cocoon for a year. I've been relatively happy in my clouds of fantasy and pleasure and sleep and cats.
Now I'm peering out of the webbing at... something new.
School starts next week, and I've the usual introspective terrors of.. who am I? What the fuck am I doing here? Where IS here?
Having roleplayed daily for up to 12 hours or more, led others, and interacted with voices and faces from around the world hasn't helped my sense of reality.
And what if the "world" I see from my cocoon is... just the inside of another cocoon?
That's some scary shit yo.
Here are some stories about some of my characters. Why? Why not.
Some background first, I guess. In WoW, warlocks are mages who have fallen to demonic forces, and made pacts to attain greater power. Magic is an addictive substance, and once you start, it's hard to stop. As my main character, Aktarin of House Shadowsong, I met a warlock, named Ythfas. Now, a night elf or Kaldorei knows exactly what sort of depraved magics such a fiend uses, and as such, Aktarin considered killing him out of hand. However, she had a task at the time, which was to strip him verbally bare, and reveal the squirming coward he doutbless was. The fellow playing him turned out to be one of the finest roleplayers I have EVER met, and I genuinely enjoyed his company over the all nighter roleplaying sessions we had of verbal sparring and repartee. I rolled a character named Swallowtail, an amoral shamanistic human from the depths of the jungle, and combined the Atani from Eddings, Maori and Masaai concepts, and a bit of other indigenous lore and culture to create a very unique and interesting character to put in Ythfas' guild and enjoy further interaction with the player and character.
So here are Swallowtail's various tales, a combined series of forum entries I put together and really haven't smoothed as yet. A lot of her tale happened in long conversations with Ythfas or in the guildchat, and her character formed into one of a blend of complexity and utter simplicity.
I am granted these things because I ask , with respect in my heart, and I am willing to offer something in return. At times, I ask great things, but only when the cause is good... In return, I thank these powers, knowing they are borrowed only, never bought. They come to me because they choose to, not because I demand it! These are not slaves, but are powerful entities who come of their own free will, who are companions in my magic, not my servants. -Drek'Thar
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The throb of deep-voiced drums sounded… a cry as wild and primal as a cat's eerie shriek of pride over a craggy mountain.
At first a low thrumming… bright black eyes of bright plumaged birds blinking, head tilting, heavy beak a flash of brilliant yellow. Then the lone drummer was joined by a mighty chorus, each drum hand-made by its player, each as unique as their voices as that mighty song arose.
A thundering of wings briefly drowned the frenzied pounding drums as gemlike birds winged wildly from the emerald and dripping trees.
The sun slowly inched upward over the sleeping rain forest... mist rising like a woman from a sweated bed. Beneath the canopy, the shrill screams of monkeys as they searched for their morning berries and fruit; the hissing cry of the raptors a metallic counterpoint.
The drums throbbed like the pulse of the steaming jungle as the sunlight poured like thick gold over the treetops. Far below the swaying fronds, a dappled gloom reigned supreme, pounding slowly with the struck drums as the tribe began the hunt.
Suddenly, the drums fell silent. In the absence of the wild sound, even the chattering of the monkeys took on a pregnant pause... waiting.
Like shadows beneath the trees, like the spirits they worship, the tribe flowed like a river between the trunks. No gleam of metal to betray them; sharpened rock does not catch light easily.
Last night, like lightning jagged across a reddened sky, the tribe had danced before the roaring bonfire, sparks leaping as if to challenge the stars themselves. Angular spinning black figures against the orange glow of the fire; seeking the tribal spirits' blessing of the next day's hunt.
Among them, her fingers flying to pound out the rhythms pulsing in her blood, a slender girl, as savage as her tribe. Her father the Chief, mother one of many women he had taken. It did not matter... rank meant nothing to her people. Only prowess in the hunt, in the ways and trials of strength, or the wisdom to hear the spirits mattered. She had excelled in all of the trials, and bore the raised scars about breasts, belly and calves to prove the spirits' blessing.
Six months ago she had lain, a thong about her head, stick between teeth as the shaman had pierced her mahogany flesh, carefully cutting in the shapes the spirits dictated to his dreams. Her strength and skill had earned her the marks.. favour of the spirits. A blessing to children yet to come.. a scarring to make her more beautiful, and show all the tribes her strength.
Pride and honour and dedication pounded in her drumming fingers; spinning figures before her, the hunt to come. As always, she would show her strength, and bring honour to the tribe as she returned, the bloodied form of a deer slung across her strong young shoulders.
Six months ago she had been a spinning girl; dancing the purest dance.
At the games held within the tribes, a brief short time when the people of the tribes could walk safely among one another without fear- or at least without much fear. Of course, what the Northerners would call rape still happened... but after all, in a culture where love was a near impossibility, that particular vice was more of a day-to-day lifestyle choice. If a woman were taken by a warrior against her will and the spirits’ dictate, she had a duty to kill him or herself by the laws of the people. And it was her right to kill any who touched her save the one the shamans directed her to lie with.
The tribal understandings still existed. If a strong warrior walked beside another, and the other let his shadow fall upon the stronger- well, it was understood that killing him out of hand was necessary to propitiate the spirits.
The girl the shamans’ eyes were on now had been dancing the dance of the tribes for a long time now. The sun had edged from the trees until it was overhead, and still she danced. Her obsidian weapon a blur as she blocked, smoothly parried, and cut low. Her forearms ran rivulets of blood, but still she danced.
The girl was extraordinary; clearly the spirits had marked her. The shamans nodded wizened heads, wispy hair like tufts of fur catching the sunlight. The previous day she had endured the test of endurance longer than any; standing with her arms outstretched, holding twin baskets, each with heavy stones in it. The other young ones had eventually dropped theirs, but, arms shaking, sweat pouring over her body, the girl had held hers until, awed, the shamans permitted her to let them loose.
Among the people, a girl-child was given one single choice in her life.
When first she gave her moon's blood, a girl was taken to the tribal shaman. Or witch doctor, if the tribe's spirits desired to be coaxed by such. There she would speak her wish; either to walk the path of a warrior of the people, or to accept her destiny as one of the mothers.
The quieter girls, the ones who knew what the warrior's path held, generally whispered the latter. They were then taken to the tribal Chief, who would with the shamans’ advice send them to one of his warriors, and, usually with cries the spirits forced from them, the girls would give up their spirit blood, and obey the Chief in whomever he sent them to at the spirits dictate. It made the tribe stronger.
Others through, the brave, foolhardy ones, would speak with firm strength, and name themselves warriors. Then were they taken to begin their training, as brutally as any of the young boys; their gender did not matter in this save that if a male touched them, they could kill him, for they were not spoken of to lie with any. It was understood that the spirits had moved them, and they were tested harshly for it. At any time, should they falter and cry, beg for their choice back, they would be made slaves of whomever the Chief ruled. After all, they had presumed to understand the spirits, and had failed. Such beings were not worthy of more than menial duties, and like the boys who failed as warriors, they would serve both the pleasures of the tribe, and their whims, until they died. It didn’t take long usually.
Two years ago, a lean brown monkey of a girl had stood before the shamans of her people. In a clear, unwavering voice, she had named herself a warrior.
Now she stood in the sun, sweat pouring from her, dancing the dance of sword and axe, sparring with the champions and the young alike. Many were the males who ached for the whipcord creature there, beads in her hair clacking loudly with each spin and thrust. All knew that until a warrior woman decided to swear herself to a tribe, to touch her was to invite their swift death… either by her hand, or the spirits who had called her to walk the path of pain and combat.
One of the beauties of the tribe. One of their favoured. This girl, it was said, listened to and heard the voices of the spirits as few save the shamans ever could. It showed in her calm face as she fought in the hot sun, in her sure-footed movements.
Her mother had seen a bird, they said.
Thus her name.
As a babe in her mother's arms, she had been held out to the shamans, while the woman had whispered what first she had seen after the screams and agony of childbirth had ebbed.
Swallowtail.
Her childhood, such as it was, had been a happy one. A squadron of laughing dark children running naked through the underbrush about the village, chasing monkeys and waving sticks - not a bad way to experience life. As she grew past the toddler stage, she had sat, wide eyed, at the tribe's rituals. Screaming prisoners from internecine wars dragged before the dark-stained altar of the spirits' sacred place, their heads bent back as the tribe watching with uncaring eyes; the flash of polished stone, and the welling of bright blood.
Sometimes the spirits were thirsty.
Other times, as a child, she would wander to stand at the sacred place, and half close her eyes, smelling the sickly-sweet scent of rotted meat... the heads always decayed in time, no matter how carefully preserved.
The spirits needed the heads to see and hear from.
Looking at the wrinkled things, tufts of hair remaining on dried scalps, Swallowtail could almost hear the whispers of an unseen world.
As she grew older, she partook in the strange brews the shamans fermented. Each child given a hollowed-out shell filled with the foul-tasting stuff to drink; it was important to step from their bodies.
A child of the people needed to know who she was. If she did not, she would die when doubt took her at the panther's maw.
The drink bubbled in her, and for the first time she saw. In the dappled shadows between the creepers, the chatter of birds, the hidden shadows of something… other. The wispy forms of the spirits sat grinning back at her. She could see them.
And with that sight the knowledge some killed themselves to avoid.
When you can see.... you can be seen.
The world is filled with spirits, but once consecrated and given to them... you can forever be seen by them in return. No way to hide. No way to block out the spirits who would forever smile and watch, whisper advice, or grow angry when you erred.
It was a truth some had slain themselves to be free of.
It was a truth she stared full in the face of, hazed and mazed by the drugged brew... standing beside her own soul, staring at the impish faces of the spirits of her people. Knowing they stared back. Knowing they knew her.
She raised a shaking hand, and drew the knife of the ritual over her arm, letting spill the blood... promising herself to them as her people had done for ages.
For her life they would come at her call. They would drink of her blood.
And when she died, if she be worthy, she would become a spirit herself, to fly to aid her descendants.
Wiping flecks of blood from her face, Swallowtail straightened. The damp air almost felt like home... almost.
Since she had left the Vale, her muscles had grown harder... her reflexes catlike. Her hair still swung with the beads her people believed protected against the evil spirits that haunted this world, and her eyes still held that odd strength and poise, fuelled by the boundless energy of youth and her limitless faith in the spirits.
But she had changed. This much she knew.
The Northerners and their ways had finally managed to worm their way into the untroubled heart of the girl, and she had at long last learned the lesson of how to love one being above the rest.
A curious thing, love.
It remained to be seen if this would change her soul for good or ill... she found it interesting, but her faith in the spirits and their choices for her was such that she had thrown herself into the winds of fate and destiny, trusting in their power to hold and carry her, and lend her wings. If the spirits had led her to this tribe of the Eclipsed Sun, and the Master she obeyed without hesitation, then they had reason.
Reason... she smiled. She now carried three items of great power. The spirits' design for her grew clearer as her eyes grew stronger when they stared into the strange world her people knew existed alongside their own. The twin blades, thought lost to the sands of the desert, were now hers. Sang'Thraze the Defender had come to her first; pulsing with power, whispering sweet words of longing and loneliness. Then Jang'Thraze, the stronger, brother to the blade she held. Jang'Thraze the Protector, whose lulling words in her dreams urged her nightly to let the two blades reform into what they had once been. They protected her now… though the first battle of wills had not been easy.
The shamans had trained her well though, and through sheer mental strength, and the stillness even now she held inside her, she had mastered the swords, and bent them to serve her instead of their old masters, the Sandfury Trolls. There was a peace about the savage warrior earned through the scourging of agony, the deprivations and hardships of her childhood, and the simple harsh truths she had grown knowing.
Few soft Northerners would have the strength to hold the seductive whispered promises of the powers in the swords at bay. She would wait, and not give in to their desire until she knew the time was right, or the blade she made would master her, and not the other way around. In time, she would permit them what they longed for... when she was even stronger and could bend the mighty sword to her will also. Sang and Jang were but halves of a whole. The Sandfury had rallied to the god-blade, the Lasher, Sul'Thraze, and swept from the desert until it seemed none could stop them. Only the destruction of that powerful blade, and its reforging into the shadowy halves, had saved those non Trolls who called the desert home.
In time she would hold Sul'Thraze herself, and hold it in strength, and skill, and peace. And use it against the Trolls, as the spirits of her people sang their songs in the charged air around her.
She stared around the dankness of the Sunken Temple, eyes tracing the twisted corpses of the Atal'ai trolls she had slain. One hand rested on the soft curve her belly had recently taken, protectively. She had borne three things of power into this place, two formed of pain and power, one of love.
She recalled the touch of Ythfas when he had first taken her... rough, desperate, needing to lose himself in sweet limbs and the body of a female. Eventually, directed to give his mate the child she could not bear herself, her had come to her again, and again, and in time learned a kind of joy in her young body. Now when the savage awoke, she did so beside him, and each morning, though she now swelled with his child, he took her again, gently, tenderly, amidst kisses and soft touches. She had learned love in those mornings, in his arms, held by him, claimed by him, and bathed in the light of his eyes when they smiled into hers.
The three items she bore... two of metal, one growing within her... all would learn the will of the spirits.
The savage rested one hand on the wire-wrapped leather of the long grip. Two days prior, she had let the spirits fuel her; she had lifted her hammer on high, and freed the bound forces within Jang'Thraze and Sang'Thraze, her skill and her own strength controlling the swirling energies.
The swords had poured forth the twin halves of the godblade as she had hammered the metal on the forge, the hissing sheets of rain steaming off the hammered stuff before even touching it. The energies had moved like sinuous snakes curving through the soaking air, then had fought her as she reforged the blade that had been broken. Howling and screaming through the air, they had turned on her, seeking to assert their ancient strength, to dominate their wielder as they once had, united into a force few mortal minds could withstand. The green power of Jang'Thraze had snarled at her like a wildcat, clawing at her mind. Fear, terror, weakness... all found and exposed to be used against her.
Only one problem did the sword's trapped force have.
Long years under the shamans, enduring the strict discipline of the Vale's tribes, through agony and pain, had forged the girl hammering no less than she now forged the runeblade.
The claws of Jang raked up spiritual sheets of sparks, but neither her mind, nor her soul. Sang, like a snake, sought to inveigle her way through lust, through greed and envy - to find the savage's desire to rule, and rule her using it.
Thwarted again.
The twin forces screamed in unison as they realized their error. They had allowed this savage to wield them, knowing her mind worked like a Troll in its acceptance of spirits, and in their contempt for her kind, assuming her mind would break easily when they unleashed their true might and she foolish enough to seek the Lasher. Now they knew that they had instead placed themselves into a position to be controlled utterly by this poised girl, despite her youth.
As her lips chanted the Call of Sul'Thraze, the sword took form... huge and black, the runed length of it coruscating with ebon power, swirling forces about the mighty blade like tiny green skulls.
Now, two days later, the tremendous toll of the spiritual battle and the forging were finally replenished with her own body's strength. Blue eyes narrowed, she held the blade, soothing it as the mistress of a vicious dog might the tremendous beast. Her mind controlled it completely, the spirits of the Trollish godblade serving her with hesitation now, but serving her nonetheless.
The harsh winds whipped across the barren desert. A low moan came with them, the cry of the wind spirits. The sun was like a hammer, beating upon the heads of those who dares sit beneath the dry, dark sky. The rolling dunes stretched as far as the eye could see in one direction, in another only rippling to the curiously shaped, wind-scoured stones rising like reddish clawing fingers from beneath the heavy sands.
Only the moan of the wind echoed in this mournful, hot land. Empty and arid, Tanaris, to the civilized visitor.
But if you could see with different eyes... you would see spirits.
A line of grotesque faces sat perched on incongruous bodies, perched in a ring about the quiet figure of the girl whose eyes could see them, sitting atop a sand dune, in this still, peaceful place. To eyes unused to them, they would be worthy of weeks of terror-laden sleep. But to her they were... friends. Guardians. Advisors. Comfort.
Above her whipped the various spirits of this place, going about their business, whether it be tormenting the hyenas scouring old bones for lingering mummified flesh, or the ogres to the south, grumbling in their fear, not knowing what voices chattered in the rocks and shifting grains of sand.
::Your Northerner fell, Shaw'shaw. Do you still think he is worthy?::
The little face speaking was gnarled and wrinkled almost out of recognition, but vaguely resembled the parrot it usually rode.
The girl turned to regard it. Her plate mail was piled carefully beside her slender body, only the bulge in her belly distorting her sleek frame, the wind moving her beaded hair, soft clatter.
I know he is, Owaissa. You yourself and the others rode in him once. You know what merit he has. You know his strength.
The words fell like soft rain in this parched place.. liquid and musical, her voice almost gentle as she spoke in her own tongue.
::Sul'Thraze held his heart for a second.. do you not think it will again, little Shaw'shaw, little bird?::
I wish to know which of you let Sul'Thraze out. You must have wished him to fail. The blade was secured, as you all taught me. It is bound, and bound to me. My compassion, my soul, binds it tighter than ever before. Whomever freed it.. you know few can stand against its call. It dominated a race of Trolls. It will be used for their downfall. You have taught me this.
Her words fell like cold water now... fast and sparkling in the dry air. Her gaze was on the bound being lying beside her in the sand. Untrained eyes would see a sword. Hers saw a man, slender and shifting with each gaze that fell upon him. Only his eyes, virulent green, stayed the same. He lay snarling as if bound by chains, and when her gaze fell upon him, his eyes flashed with impotent anger, and his face became that of Ythfas, long black hair pooled in the sand, lips forming words of fury. Rising, the girl paced to the sword and knelt, one hand tracing the face so like the one which kissed her, spoke to her, claimed her for his own.
I suggest you remember who of the two of us rules here. You are mine, Sul'Thraze, and if you submit at last fully... you will have a harvest of souls like you could not have imagined in your poor shattered imprisonment.
Her words now rang, speaking the sword's own tongue- Trollish -as the bound man stared up with eyes suddenly hungry.
Yes, Sul'Thraze... you should begin to believe, or so long as you pit your will against me and mine, you will be chained as a slave.
Rising again she turned and regarded the spirits who fluttered like birds, moved like monkeys, writhed like snakes.
Spirits, you know me. Aid me as always, and cease to wish ill to the Northerner, and the child he has placed in me will grow as you wish, to become the greatest champion of the people save for her mother than this world has known. She will wield magic, as her father does, so you say. She will see you, as I do, so you say. She will understand the trees and kill with precision, as her foster mother the elf-spirit does.. so you say. But if you act again to set the Lasher on Ythfas, she will learn NOTHING of you, though your claws rend me to damnation and I never take my place among you.
She regarded them with eyes as bright as the sun overhead. They had willingly given her a piece of their power - each one of them - and infused her to ensure that the child she carried would be a name to fear one day. Now she stood, pulsing with this light, forged of her own strength, and of theirs, given freely, and controlled readily.
She sat down again. The sand crunched softly. She steepled her fingers and closed the gleaming blue eyes, and let the peace course through her again. The sword beside her muttered, but no longer complained. The spirits rustled, but offered no word.
Powerful warrior, strong with the spirits.
The savage knelt by the crone. The hunched form of the old woman was a mass of wrinkles, and the lank yellowed hair hanging from her walnut-brown head swung with darkened beads.
Her half-toothless mouth whispered words that seemed to hum in the air.
In Swallowtail's arms, cradled in the crook of it, was a tiny babe, her little head crowned with wispy silken black tufts of hair. Her pale blue eyes seemed to stare up at the crone as intently as the girl holding her. Though born but the day before, the tiny child seemed to hold a lightness in her that was entirely the result of the small cloud of spirits both women could easily see, all playing with the baby.
For the rest of her life, promised to the spirits, she would never be alone.
Though the savage had been drained past even her own endurance by the birth, the old shaman had shown her the way of growing strong once more, by finding the pulse of life and matching her own to it.
Now the crone moved hands in the air, little motes of what looked for all the world like the flickering cinders of a fire... save that no fire lay beneath to form them.
Swallowtail watched carefully, blue eyes studying the words spoken.
"Spirits of Fire, come to my call. I, Shadowed Leaf, call to you, and beg your aid in teaching my student how to better serve you!"
The sparkling motes whirled as if in an unseen wind, and shivered into forming the likeness of a roughly humanoid face, which spoke back in the tongue of the spirits.
::Child of Light, Child of the Vales, we come to you at your call, and ask what gifts you offer for our aid?::
The shaman smiled, the mass of wrinkles on her face creasing in the warm smile of a friend greeting an old companion.
"Spirits of Fire, I offer the blood of my heart to you, I offer the thrice cut feather of the Washugah, the heron, I gift to you the ochre of the river's edge."
The face seemed to smile.
::We find your offer pleasing, Shadowed Leaf. We also are pleased by this student, for she holds in her arms the future, and at her back she binds death to her command. Her crude understanding of the spirits her tribe has bound will not be enough to preserve her life against the coming storm. We accept her and your gift, and will aid you in teaching her the ways of the spirit-call, the way we taught you once long ago.::
The crone grinned at Swallowtail, who blinked back tears of pride at the spirits' words. She was to become a shaman also. Her fingers traced the Cord of acceptance, of the Elements she would one day converse with as her allies and friends. The blade grumbled on her back, but held its peace, no longer able to even sway her soul.
After the birth, she had faced the truth of her life, and realized once more the peace in her young heart. She was a woman of the Vale. She spoke to and saw the spirits. She would never be of the North, and love was a thing of the North. Therefore she had thrown it away, the turbulence that had nearly left her defenses vulnerable to the Lasher's subtle dream images, when it came to her as Ythfas, and whispered sweet words, or cutting words to wound and slash at her.
She was of the Vales, and a warrior. Now she would become a comrade of the Greater Spirits, and learn to work the powers they offered, if they agreed.
Ishkoodah snuffled and smiled in the girl's arms, staring at the face of flame, unafraid.
"I am ready to begin, Teacher."
Swallowtail sat by the edge of the water, Shadowed Leaf behind her. The girl had mastered her lesson for the day swiftly, as the crone knew she could. Now, already a deep bond between student and teacher, she sat, staring at the water as the shaman sat behind her. It was not a surprise to see such strength, such beauty, such dedication in the young warrior for the old shaman. How could she not know her great grand-daughter sat before her? The girl did not know.. it was not the way of the people to know parents or lineage... unless the spirits told them. Once called to become one of their speakers, their comrades, a shaman quickly understood the complex plan for the people, and the intricate lines of lineage. The easier to instruct a chief on which girl should be sent to which warrior. It was vital the breeding start early, before natural attraction should lull a girl into permitting a young man to spread her, when he could in fact be a cousin or brother.
The young apprentice shaman, though, sat frowning. Shadowed Leaf understood the forces working in the girl, though as abstracts. She was afflicted by love, and in all her slender form, it was her only weakness. In her arms the young Ishkoodah, Fire-Hair or "Comet" to the Northerners, was held, quiet for a babe her age. Shadowed Leaf knew the infant would not have lived, born so early, had not the spirits taken a direct hand. It startled her, for rarely did they plan for one warrior, and one child so obviously.
Perhaps this girl and her child were the price the tribes must pay for protection. If the spirits demanded their futures, then the spirits would have them.
Her old face wrinkled in a worried sigh as she rested a hand on Swallowtail's shoulder, and the girl's face twisted in pain.
It was not normal or easy when one of the tribes fell in love. Bred for centuries to be loyal and dedicated, to be fierce and determined, and endure physical pain as few others could...
The old woman let herself remember the vision the spirits had shown her, of the first Shaman, Raven, pleading to the spirits for protection against the Trolls. The spirits had agreed, and had instructed him on the slow process of centuries, to breed individuals like Swallowtail. Strong, proud, yet able to bend to harsh duty and truths, to possess the coiled strength of a tiger, and the wisdom of humanity, welded with the obedience the spirits desired. Beauty came with it, for the strength of the people made for fine straight-limbed children. So too a deep sensitivity that few outside the tribes ever knew. It came through in their songs, their dances, in all the savage passion the people freed when they sang. In love, it could be destructive, as many legends showed.
Now, turning rheumy eyes to the girl bent before her, staring into the swells of the turquoise ocean, Shadowed Leaf gripped her shoulder again.
"Tell me"
"He.. I am torn, my teacher. I feel as I did when I met the spirits.. as if I belong with him.. to him.. I swore not only to obey him, but in my heart when I knelt, I swore to be his friend. There was.. something in his eyes that I felt I was needed for.. felt this was why the spirits sent me North. When he took me first, I did not kill him, though his ways were not our own. I have given to him the first fruits of loyalty and my body, even telling the spirits to preserve his life or lose me for their plaything."
The shaman blinked as the girl's low-voiced words poured out like shining stones in a waterfall.
"Yet how can I be as I am, and what he wants? He has told me I must raise Ishkoodah.. that is not the way... he brings a cradle for her, made of Vale-wood, and carved with our sacred symbols. He tries so hard, teacher.. but he is of the North. The love I feel, it is not a thing of the Vale. I tried to cast it away after Ishkoodah was born, but it only came back when he held me as I wept. How can I serve as a warrior and lie beside him as his woman-chosen-by-the-spirits? How can I live as one of our people, yet love as one of his? Were I one of his I could hate that pale spirit he has sworn himself to. As one of ours, I understood his need for me.. that I was to give him ther child they could not have. It... was a thing of the Vale to accept. Now though, the river is muddied, and he has told me he loves me, and spirits help me I love him back."
Her head bowed, and droplets betrayed tears.
The shaman sighed to herself. The people did not cry, but she did not need to tell anyone.
"Child, I will tell you one thing. Life is not easy, and love is not a thing the Vales know well, but it is a thing they have learned in places. You must break your own path in all matters of the heart, and find with him a place of truth, and of honour to the spirits. Do not let this weakness in you stay as a weakness; make it a strength to add to your many. Do not let it turn you from the spirits, for they guided you to him first. Teach him to be as strong as you, that Fire-hair will have the understandings she must as a girl of the Vales. And do not see his pale spirit as a woman to wish curses on, but remember she is a spirit, and even as you revere the spirits above him, so will he revere her above you."
Another gentle grip to her shoulder, and the shaman hauled herself up, and turned to stare at the black sword leaning against the side of her hut.
"We will have to deal better with this one also... it has a part to play before this tale is done."
The girl frowned, watching Shadowed Leaf work. The sun was as heavy as a mallet, but the heat mattered little to her, raised and bred in this place. The light sparkled on the slow swells of turquoise green sea, lapping at the gleaming beach, darkening the margins of land and sea.
The shaman repeated the exercise, and Swallowtail's lean brown hands mirrored her teacher's this time, the ritual gestures to call and speak to the spirits, to plead with them for their aid, the specific ways to stand and think.
Once more.
This time for truth.
Lightning arced from the girl's hands to ground into the sand, hissing and humming through the air.
The girl grinned broadly; flash of white teeth in her burnished face.
Again.
Blue-white crackles across the sand.
The child in her swaddling clothes within the shade nearby smiled at the light. The shaman clasped her student's arm.
"Good work, child. Very good"
Strength and power now.. to serve her people, and serve their spirits.
Swallowtail moved slightly in her sleep. Yshka had been given for a time to the spirit elf, mate to the man sleeping fitfully beside her. His black hair pooled over the pillow, mingling with her own sunbleached pale locks. Finally, giving sleep up, she sat up, and regarded the room. The large bed, with its four posts and hangings, was opulent and comfortable.
The room was simple but elegant. The polished wardrobe, the great window, the mirror with its gilt frame... the trappings of a man once a noble, a time once of decadence and pleasure in luxury.
At the foot of the bed, the cradle he had commisioned for the daughter he had from her. Her dark face creased into a warm smile. She regarded the empty cradle, her thoughts in a far off elven hall where the child of her body lay sleeping under the watchful eyes of beasts and spirits.
Though it was unpleasant to be parted from her daughter, the girl in the bed smiled yet. She trusted the spirits, and the elf Ythfas loved so dearly was clearly a spirit. She had learned the different kinds of spirits in her training at the crude hut.
There were Great Spirits, the kind she invoked when she called upon the powers of Lightning to crackle through her foes. Or the forces of Winds to immobilize them. Those spirits were mighty and forceful, but only small compared to the vast Spirits like the one she could sense pulsing in the bug lands. Its touch made her mind hurt.
There were the helper spirits of small things, which smiled as she smiled at them. They lined the room as she regarded them. Little faces on grotesque bodies, wizened forms grinning at her. These were the spirits she had once invoked, and still named her friends.
There were spirits housed in flesh, like Owaissa, who perched sleeping on a wooden clothes-rack in this very room. Their power was in thought and speech, giving their experience to others.
Also, clearly, the elf was one such.. perhaps a spirit of vengeance. The savage wasn't entirely sure.. but it was clear that she and her race had once been spirits indeed, housed in immortal flesh. Her drumsong had shown her their great tragedy.. losing a Great Spirit to the raging green skinned creatures she now knew were called orcs. That trauma had shaken the race of spirits. That much was clear. In some cases, it had apparently torn loose their spirits, and now the hollow flesh walked the lands, desperate for the pleasures of a sweated bed, or emulating the Gurubashi Blood-drinkers.. all actions the young warrior knew were an attempt to fill the holes in their spiritual forms. In time perhaps they would return to their immortal flesh, their spirits at peace as guardians of their forests.
She looked thoughtfully at the northern sky, spattered with stars. Her wandering gaze looked down at the man lying beside her. Her Master, yes, but also her friend and lover. Pity shone in the clear blue gaze for a moment as she regarded him. He, like the others of the North, had lost much.
When the golden-haired boy she had seen in the visions brought by smoke and drumming had slain his father, the Chief of the tribes of the North, he had unleashed great sorrow. Ill spirits coursed down from the icy waters of the far north even now. It was due to the coiled thing she had seen in his belly as he had walked to that fateful meeting. Watching with wide eyes, far from her body as it sat drumming, she had seen the empty hollow in his heart, the coiling snarling monster inside. And the blade at his side.. so like the Lasher, but better forged, more effective, and far, far more potent. He had lost his battle of wills with it and he was its tool.
Her glance moved to regard the huge blade leaning against the wall. To her strange eyes, it was the form of Ythfas, posing seductively at her. Sul'Thraze no longer tried to wrest control form her. It had learned that the souls she fed it in battle were quite tasy and enjoyable enough not to warrant a battle for mastery. Rather than trying to break her now, it took a form it knew mattered to her, and purred its pleasure.
Ythfas' simulacrum leaned against the wall, superimposed over the runed blade. His eyes were a virulent green, his long raven hair loose and spilling about his shoulders, expressive lips curled into a look of truly vile satiation akin to the sort worn by sadists when they were truly delighted by some new torment. The Lasher had flayed a soul that prior evening, and drunk it screaming down. He pursed his lips in a silent kiss blown to her, and she sighed and glanced at the real man beside her. Looking at Sul'Thraze when it was pleased wasn't always a wise choice.
She sighed, surrounded by beings, surrounded by life, and hugged her knees to her chest. For a moment she remained in that pose, then looked up, her eyes brilliant with an inner light. She was no longer a child to wish for comfort.
She stretched slowly, burnished, scarred skin moving over defined and lean muscles, and let her mind ease again. Curling to her Master once more, she closed her eyes and let the spirits lull her to sleep with their whispers.
As she rode from the Tower, the runeblade slung across her armoured back, the girl sighed. It was snarling its dissatisfaction. Not permitting it to drink Zilenoz' soul, the Lasher was feeling thwarted and rebellious again. That would mean the dreams again.
She frowned. This would end tonight. She knew it was past time for the spirit within the sword to be barred from touching her mind. It favoured the form however of the one thing she was sworn to obey with a spirit Oath - Ythfas. When it took his form, it took all her will not to obey and fall to its blandishments. It was her one weakness, and she knew now that she could by no means give him up to protect herself.
There had to be another way.
She directed the horse southward instead of to the harbour leading to Kalimdor and then Feralas. Shadowed Leaf would aid her in this thing before she retrieved Ishkoodah.
In a short time, cross-legged on the warm sand as the sun set, the savage looked into the shaman's eyes as the old woman held out a drink to her. It would send her into sleep immediately, and dreams. There the Lasher would do as it wished, and she would do as her teacher had directed. It made her stomach churn to think about what she must do, but she gritted her teeth and drank the bitter brew with one gulp. Time to face the tiger head on, and let this hunt end for good.
Swallowtail dreamed.
She stood in that familiar room once more; hung with rich tapestries, lit by a thousand candles it seemed. Each hanging woven in emerald thread, chased with the gold of a noble family's excesses. The wood where visible was polished, ornate, and carved in elven designs quite unlike those she had seen in Aktarin's rooms. As always, her eyes moved to the two figures on the bed. A woman, bound by her ankles and wrists to the bedposts, spread eagled. Between her legs, the familiar form of her Master, his hips moving sinuously, muscles in his back flowing with each motion. His hands were busy.. and with each little gesture a yelp came from the bound elf, her golden hair spilled across the pillow. Gleaming pins driven through tiny folds of her fair skin, the savage noted. Never once ceasing in the sinuous dance, he reached for a whip, and the elf's eyes lit with anticipation, dark with lust and pain. He raised it.. and the warrior looked away as the first strike came. It made her physically ill to watch this.. which was of course why it was of late the favoured torment of the godsword for her.
Shadowed Leaf had informed her bluntly that it was a spell of sorts... mind magic. If she did not halt its insidious spread through her mind, in time she would be the one bound as the simulacrum of her Master moved upon her, either so warping her perception of the true Ythfas that she became numb to all things good and whole, or twisting her until she desired only the twisted delights of this perfumed place.
The elf cried out again and again, and the man moving over her smirked, whispering that she had to be punished for making such noise.. and as she nodded desperately, the Ythfas-twin reaching for a wax-brimming candle, the savage stepped out of the shadows and cleared her throat. It required a confrontation.. a denial. That much the shaman had said.
Well, she would see what she could manage. Disobeying one to whom she had sworn obedience was almost impossible... but her will was thorium.
The man between the elf's legs paused in his slow thrusts, and turned, face identical to the one she had smiled at in the Tower - with one exception. In the dreamworld, no being can truly hide their nature. THIS Ythfas' eyes glowed that virulent green, sign of the Lasher. He drove his hips forward as he spoke, making the elf under him moan in ecstasy.
"What is it, my Swallowtail? No longer content to watch? Sorry, pet, but your turn isn't up yet... trust me though.. it will be soon."
He spoke Trollish.. of course. He moved his free hand in a complicated gesture, and she slammed backward into the wall, iron manacles snapping from recesses to hold her in immobility. Turning his focus back, with a low laugh, he began to apply the hot wax to the writhing body impaled upon him, thrusting as he did.
Swallowtail growled, mustering her will, and flexed her strong body within the pinions.. muscles straining. One of the manacles cried a protest, and once more the similacrum turned his face to her.
"You are no match for me in this place I have found, my Swallowtail. Your lover showed me how to hurt you, and now I shall. And in time you will come to love it as this one did," Another hard drive of his hips, another sobbing cry of pleasure. "and then, at long last, I will be the Master and you the slave... but of course.. you are the slave anyway, aren't you, little broodmate?"
His words struck her with the force of spinning axes, and she flinched. Again that low, maddening laugh of cruel pleasure, and he returned to his delights.
Forcing the gleaming bodies locked in a bliss of pain and pleasure from her mind, the apprentice shaman examined her bindings. This was.. wait. She smiled suddenly. By fighting the manacles she only strengthened them. By accepting the reality he created, she only gave him control, for she agreed that HIS reality was true.
She looked at the bindings, and winked. They vanished. In HER world, how could anyone pin the Valewoman? It was not possible.
He growled, withdrawing from the protesting, blood-streaked woman under him, and stood rampant before the savage as she approached the bed. Gleaming body, glowing green eyes, that twisting of Ythfas' face into a cruel, grossly sensual expression.
"Still you defy me. KNEEL, Swallowtail! Kneel before your Master and obey the spirit's Oath you swore!" He demanded, voice resonant, commanding. Her knee buckled under her, and she found herself kneeling, cursing under her breath. This then was the true contest. She could not break her Oath, nor violate their strictures. And yet she could not let this.. entity.. destroy her mind and soul.
He stepped forward, virile, potent.. a spirit taking the form of a man she could not disobey. Pacing around her kneeling form, he laughed under his breath.
"So easy. You are a simple enough creature to break, my Swallowtail. Shall I force you to hands and knees and take you now? It might be amusing to take your body... amusing to think that his form can control you so much."
As the man walked slowly around her, the savage warrior gritted her teeth, closing her eyes as she built her will. No spirits could reach her in this place.. save one.. and it was not the one she could coerce into aiding her. Only her own energy could break the jaws of this trap. Her skin shivered as she felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder. A step and he straddled her kneeling form, heat between her shoulders. A low whisper in her ear, breath hot.
"You. Are. MINE."
As he spoke, her will faltered.. the intensity, the voice so familiar; something in her ached to give in, to let him do as he willed - the obedient part of her that kneeled willingly, that obeyed readily. Astonished to find this part of herself, Swallowtail saw that it was the part bound by the Oaths, and that it was her weakness, unless she turned it into strength. This was the part that bound her to kneel, that held her there by clinging thoughts as strong as a druid's vines.
She summoned his face to her mind.. focusing on the eyes. It was the eyes she had to see.. NOT her Master's eyes.. they were the eyes of the spirit named Sul'Thraze. She drove that fact into that weak, obedient part of her. This was NOT the man she had sworn to obey, this was NOT the man who had claimed her spirit-blood, this was an imposter. The weakness in her stiffened, then rose amid flames of wrath. The laws of the Vale were simple: if a man not permitted touched a woman, his life was forfeit. No longer weak, she kneeled, whole within herself.
As he pressed on her shoulders to push her forward, she smiled slightly, and he pushed harder, expecting her to take the pose he desired, so he could mount her like a beast.
She resisted.
Then said in level tones, "No. I am MINE."
With that her head slammed backward, striking the stiff manhood behind her, bringing a scream to this similacrum's lips.
She rose, turning to face him as he stood, covering his crotch, face contorted in anger and pain.
"I choose to obey Ythfas. I CHOOSE to love him. I chose to swear the spirit Oath to him. And though he may have wallowed in the doling out of pain, the man I love and obey is the one I know.. and you... are NOT.. he. No longer will the snippets of his past haunt me.. because I choose love above obedience, Lasher. I choose the will as a shaman to deny what is wrong. And you, runeblade, are wrong."
He snarled at her, green eyes blazing, then let his face assume a sensual expression, kneeling before her in a sudden, artful pose of servitude. It was repulsive to watch.
"Ahh.. you want to control him? Come.. punish me for the sins I have committed.. let the rage in you build, and fill you, and do it.. do it, slave, little animal he lies with, ruts with, DO it.. hurt him for what he-"
The stream of words was cut off as she smiled, eyes glowing with a white light.
"No. I think I'll just destroy you and keep you out of my mind for good, sword. Stay in my hand. Never again in my mind."
Her eyes flared to a hot white, and her raised hand boiled with the flare of lightnings. They struck the kneeling form so like Ythfas, and with a scream, he exploded into hot white sparks behind her eyelids.
Gasping, she sat up. Sand crunched beneath her.
The shaman crouched beside her. The huge black sword lay quiescent, a band of braided leather about the base of the hilt, a single feather tied to it.
Swallowtail half rolled to her side, retching, shaking.
"I.. k-killed.. him.. I killed Yth-"
She gasped, and Shadowed Leaf grasped her shoulder.
"No, child. You killed the poison in your mind. When you struck him, I bound the sword as it should have been bound when forged. Had you been a shaman then, you would have known to do it. As a warrior, you trusted in your half-knowledge. Go, little Shaw'shaw. Go and fetch Ishkoodah. Your lessons are done for this night. You have learned to drive out a wicked spirit within your own mind. Return home, and go to your man. And know that I am.. very, very proud of you."
He old face creased in a warm smile as she helped the still-shaky girl to stand. At first, Swallow moved her hand hesitantly, but under the motherly gaze of her teacher, she grasped the hilt of Sul'Thraze firmly, and slung it across her back. No more mutters sounded in her ears, nor snarls. She stood proudly, and raised her hand as she had been taught, calling the lightnings to shield her body. Shadowed Leaf smiled approvingly.
"Go, shaman."
Turning, the young shaman walked up the beach to where the horse was tied.
Power filled her now.. the strength of the storm.
When she moved, she could feel as if she walked through the middle of roiling clouds.. yet it was not an addictive feeling, no.. simply one of great strength. The Lasher was bound upon her back, and finally, it was truly bound, and would obey her.
She felt.... strange.
The Troll's attempt to harm Ythfas, and the resultant strange gift of her daughter... somehow made two.. somehow given thirteen or fourteen years.. it had confused her. Shadowed Leaf had simply shrugged and told her it was the spirits' will.
But Swallowtail, while accepting this, wished she could understand why the spirits would will her daughter.. daughterS... to be twinned, and almost her age.
She shook her head slowly where she sat. Her head felt far too big. She was on a rocky pinnacle she had felt a need to climb. Maybe.
The sun beat down, and the sweet scent of the grasslands around this curiously smooth rock filled her with light.
Shadowed Leaf had sent her to this land.. Mulgore.. to learn more of the spirit the bull-men called the Earthmother. That name had been brought up by both the wicked troll spirit and by her daughter. Daughters.
She had been sent to a bull man shaman.. Oak was the name he gave her in his rumbling, snorting voice. He had told her to follow the call of the spirits, and had given her a drink much like her people once had. Closing her eyes, sitting cross legged before the small fire, with the bull man across from her, and the odd musky smell of him.. as she sat, letting the brew move through her body, she felt light.. then heavy.. as if her head was ballooning. The being opposite her shifted from a bull man to Ythfas to a radiant light filled being to a woman to a cloud... she blinked.
Listen to your heartbeat, Shaw'shaw.
She half heard the deep voice.
It is Her heartbeat also, Shaw'shaw.
She concentrated through valleys of plunging storms and screaming birds. And then.. like a distant drumbeat.. she felt her own heart driving the blood through her veins. She almost felt each surge of that vital fluid in her body.. first this way.. then that.. pulse.. thud.. thud.. boom.. pulse.. surge.. each pulse a delta swept by the flooding tide, bringing life, each pulse sending flights of birds crying through sheets of rain..
Deeper, Shaw'shaw. Go deeper.
She frowned, and then felt something.. something drove each pulse in her veins.. something called each thud of her heart.. the muted thunder.. the power.. building.. that thing which sent the waters rushing in the flood season, that thing which brought the sun to rise each morning.. had left an eye in the sky.. the moon...
She rose suddenly, like a puppet on strings she had once seen at the human city of Stormwind.. was she human anymore? Maybe she had horns like Oak.. maybe she had wings like Owaissa.. Stumbling, she did not see the look of surprise at the human's sensitivity that crossed the bestial face by the fire as she stumbled off, moving to a sound that sang through the world itself.
The echo.. it pulsed through the land! She collapsed again, this time placing her head against the sun-warmed grass... she could feel it, like the rumble of distant animals rocking the packed rich soil.. boom... boom.. boom... yes.. yes!
She cried out in ecstasy. It was transcendant.. like staring at a tree and realizing it was an eyelash of an eye.. and the eye was the world.. and the world was the smallest part of a universal creation and reality. Her body trembled in wonder, and she sobbed with this new knowledge, while jagged bolts of lightning wreathed by clouds of butterlfies danced before her eyes.
The spirits sang in a paeon of triumph around her.. was this real? Was this illusion? She knew it for truth veiled in the images of the drink.. and knew that even as the first shaman's brew long ago had changed her, had let her see the spirit world.. that this too had changed her.. and she knew a greater truth about this world.
Time passed, the sun rose and fell and rose and fell.. winter came and passed and rains swept across the world.. land baked and heaved and still she lay, absorbing this great truth.
blink.
blink.
blink.
The sun beat down on the rock.
She wasn't entirely sure where it was, save that she felt it was still in Mulgore.
And she was filled. As she stared at her dark skinned hand, she saw the truth that within it flowed blood the same colour as that in Oak's paw-like hand.. the same blood as any other living being.. all bound as life. Life all was Hers.. the Earth Mother, whose creation this world was. Yet unlike Ythfas' poor Northern understanding of such things, which denoted possession.. it was Hers in that She had made it and let it walk this world freely, to choose for itself, and Her great love had been such.
She could feel the storm in her heart. Lightning bubbled in her nerves. The earth's tremors sang in her veins.
She felt...... alive.
After I created Swallowtail and she ended up as Ythfas' concubine (he runs an evil guild) and bore him a daughter, we continued to flesh out that particular story.
In essence, it went like this.. though I hadn't expected it, after about two solid weeks of roleplaying until 6am, Aktarin found out that Ythfas was ultimately just like her within himself, and was as dedicated and driven, and as guilt-laden. Akkie's backstory has her losing a child six years ago when the orcs invaded Ashenvale, for which she has longed to die, and blamed herself, sending herself into battle with the aim of dying honourably. Ythfas was a mage before the Third War, and had a Queldorei (high elf) lover whom he truly DID love; when the Scourge and the war came, his lover died while he was fighting the undead menace in the human lands, and he since blamed himself for not being there in time. He lost himself in drink and women, and in forgetting. Ythfas and Aktarin ended up at a crucial moment - either she was going to kill him or end up in bed with him. I rolled a die, and Ythfas lived, and a relationship was born.
But the thing about a short lived human with a 10,512 yr old elf.. I really felt that having half-elves pop out in a world where half-elf isn't even a viable race option due to its rarity. So Aktarin asked Ythfas to find himself a broodmare of sorts to pop out a human child that after the human lover was dead, so that she could guard his line and feel in some way linked to her lover.
He chose Swallowtail before he even knew I played her, which was rather amusing. As the Master of the Tower of Secrets, all females etc within the Tower were his to take if he wished.
Now as far as Ythfas' backstory, I'll see if I can snag it and post it. It's pretty darned well written. I created as a villain for Ythfas' growing revival as a positive instead of evil character, the person of his father. I designed Ythgar Vinguld to be one of the nastiest characters I've ever created. World of Warcraft has no space for vampires, and the only area for a vampire per se is a Nathrezim, a demonic dreadlord.
Now I'm peering out of the webbing at... something new.
School starts next week, and I've the usual introspective terrors of.. who am I? What the fuck am I doing here? Where IS here?
Having roleplayed daily for up to 12 hours or more, led others, and interacted with voices and faces from around the world hasn't helped my sense of reality.
And what if the "world" I see from my cocoon is... just the inside of another cocoon?
That's some scary shit yo.
Here are some stories about some of my characters. Why? Why not.
Some background first, I guess. In WoW, warlocks are mages who have fallen to demonic forces, and made pacts to attain greater power. Magic is an addictive substance, and once you start, it's hard to stop. As my main character, Aktarin of House Shadowsong, I met a warlock, named Ythfas. Now, a night elf or Kaldorei knows exactly what sort of depraved magics such a fiend uses, and as such, Aktarin considered killing him out of hand. However, she had a task at the time, which was to strip him verbally bare, and reveal the squirming coward he doutbless was. The fellow playing him turned out to be one of the finest roleplayers I have EVER met, and I genuinely enjoyed his company over the all nighter roleplaying sessions we had of verbal sparring and repartee. I rolled a character named Swallowtail, an amoral shamanistic human from the depths of the jungle, and combined the Atani from Eddings, Maori and Masaai concepts, and a bit of other indigenous lore and culture to create a very unique and interesting character to put in Ythfas' guild and enjoy further interaction with the player and character.
So here are Swallowtail's various tales, a combined series of forum entries I put together and really haven't smoothed as yet. A lot of her tale happened in long conversations with Ythfas or in the guildchat, and her character formed into one of a blend of complexity and utter simplicity.
I am granted these things because I ask , with respect in my heart, and I am willing to offer something in return. At times, I ask great things, but only when the cause is good... In return, I thank these powers, knowing they are borrowed only, never bought. They come to me because they choose to, not because I demand it! These are not slaves, but are powerful entities who come of their own free will, who are companions in my magic, not my servants. -Drek'Thar
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The throb of deep-voiced drums sounded… a cry as wild and primal as a cat's eerie shriek of pride over a craggy mountain.
At first a low thrumming… bright black eyes of bright plumaged birds blinking, head tilting, heavy beak a flash of brilliant yellow. Then the lone drummer was joined by a mighty chorus, each drum hand-made by its player, each as unique as their voices as that mighty song arose.
A thundering of wings briefly drowned the frenzied pounding drums as gemlike birds winged wildly from the emerald and dripping trees.
The sun slowly inched upward over the sleeping rain forest... mist rising like a woman from a sweated bed. Beneath the canopy, the shrill screams of monkeys as they searched for their morning berries and fruit; the hissing cry of the raptors a metallic counterpoint.
The drums throbbed like the pulse of the steaming jungle as the sunlight poured like thick gold over the treetops. Far below the swaying fronds, a dappled gloom reigned supreme, pounding slowly with the struck drums as the tribe began the hunt.
Suddenly, the drums fell silent. In the absence of the wild sound, even the chattering of the monkeys took on a pregnant pause... waiting.
Like shadows beneath the trees, like the spirits they worship, the tribe flowed like a river between the trunks. No gleam of metal to betray them; sharpened rock does not catch light easily.
Last night, like lightning jagged across a reddened sky, the tribe had danced before the roaring bonfire, sparks leaping as if to challenge the stars themselves. Angular spinning black figures against the orange glow of the fire; seeking the tribal spirits' blessing of the next day's hunt.
Among them, her fingers flying to pound out the rhythms pulsing in her blood, a slender girl, as savage as her tribe. Her father the Chief, mother one of many women he had taken. It did not matter... rank meant nothing to her people. Only prowess in the hunt, in the ways and trials of strength, or the wisdom to hear the spirits mattered. She had excelled in all of the trials, and bore the raised scars about breasts, belly and calves to prove the spirits' blessing.
Six months ago she had lain, a thong about her head, stick between teeth as the shaman had pierced her mahogany flesh, carefully cutting in the shapes the spirits dictated to his dreams. Her strength and skill had earned her the marks.. favour of the spirits. A blessing to children yet to come.. a scarring to make her more beautiful, and show all the tribes her strength.
Pride and honour and dedication pounded in her drumming fingers; spinning figures before her, the hunt to come. As always, she would show her strength, and bring honour to the tribe as she returned, the bloodied form of a deer slung across her strong young shoulders.
Six months ago she had been a spinning girl; dancing the purest dance.
At the games held within the tribes, a brief short time when the people of the tribes could walk safely among one another without fear- or at least without much fear. Of course, what the Northerners would call rape still happened... but after all, in a culture where love was a near impossibility, that particular vice was more of a day-to-day lifestyle choice. If a woman were taken by a warrior against her will and the spirits’ dictate, she had a duty to kill him or herself by the laws of the people. And it was her right to kill any who touched her save the one the shamans directed her to lie with.
The tribal understandings still existed. If a strong warrior walked beside another, and the other let his shadow fall upon the stronger- well, it was understood that killing him out of hand was necessary to propitiate the spirits.
The girl the shamans’ eyes were on now had been dancing the dance of the tribes for a long time now. The sun had edged from the trees until it was overhead, and still she danced. Her obsidian weapon a blur as she blocked, smoothly parried, and cut low. Her forearms ran rivulets of blood, but still she danced.
The girl was extraordinary; clearly the spirits had marked her. The shamans nodded wizened heads, wispy hair like tufts of fur catching the sunlight. The previous day she had endured the test of endurance longer than any; standing with her arms outstretched, holding twin baskets, each with heavy stones in it. The other young ones had eventually dropped theirs, but, arms shaking, sweat pouring over her body, the girl had held hers until, awed, the shamans permitted her to let them loose.
Among the people, a girl-child was given one single choice in her life.
When first she gave her moon's blood, a girl was taken to the tribal shaman. Or witch doctor, if the tribe's spirits desired to be coaxed by such. There she would speak her wish; either to walk the path of a warrior of the people, or to accept her destiny as one of the mothers.
The quieter girls, the ones who knew what the warrior's path held, generally whispered the latter. They were then taken to the tribal Chief, who would with the shamans’ advice send them to one of his warriors, and, usually with cries the spirits forced from them, the girls would give up their spirit blood, and obey the Chief in whomever he sent them to at the spirits dictate. It made the tribe stronger.
Others through, the brave, foolhardy ones, would speak with firm strength, and name themselves warriors. Then were they taken to begin their training, as brutally as any of the young boys; their gender did not matter in this save that if a male touched them, they could kill him, for they were not spoken of to lie with any. It was understood that the spirits had moved them, and they were tested harshly for it. At any time, should they falter and cry, beg for their choice back, they would be made slaves of whomever the Chief ruled. After all, they had presumed to understand the spirits, and had failed. Such beings were not worthy of more than menial duties, and like the boys who failed as warriors, they would serve both the pleasures of the tribe, and their whims, until they died. It didn’t take long usually.
Two years ago, a lean brown monkey of a girl had stood before the shamans of her people. In a clear, unwavering voice, she had named herself a warrior.
Now she stood in the sun, sweat pouring from her, dancing the dance of sword and axe, sparring with the champions and the young alike. Many were the males who ached for the whipcord creature there, beads in her hair clacking loudly with each spin and thrust. All knew that until a warrior woman decided to swear herself to a tribe, to touch her was to invite their swift death… either by her hand, or the spirits who had called her to walk the path of pain and combat.
One of the beauties of the tribe. One of their favoured. This girl, it was said, listened to and heard the voices of the spirits as few save the shamans ever could. It showed in her calm face as she fought in the hot sun, in her sure-footed movements.
Her mother had seen a bird, they said.
Thus her name.
As a babe in her mother's arms, she had been held out to the shamans, while the woman had whispered what first she had seen after the screams and agony of childbirth had ebbed.
Swallowtail.
Her childhood, such as it was, had been a happy one. A squadron of laughing dark children running naked through the underbrush about the village, chasing monkeys and waving sticks - not a bad way to experience life. As she grew past the toddler stage, she had sat, wide eyed, at the tribe's rituals. Screaming prisoners from internecine wars dragged before the dark-stained altar of the spirits' sacred place, their heads bent back as the tribe watching with uncaring eyes; the flash of polished stone, and the welling of bright blood.
Sometimes the spirits were thirsty.
Other times, as a child, she would wander to stand at the sacred place, and half close her eyes, smelling the sickly-sweet scent of rotted meat... the heads always decayed in time, no matter how carefully preserved.
The spirits needed the heads to see and hear from.
Looking at the wrinkled things, tufts of hair remaining on dried scalps, Swallowtail could almost hear the whispers of an unseen world.
As she grew older, she partook in the strange brews the shamans fermented. Each child given a hollowed-out shell filled with the foul-tasting stuff to drink; it was important to step from their bodies.
A child of the people needed to know who she was. If she did not, she would die when doubt took her at the panther's maw.
The drink bubbled in her, and for the first time she saw. In the dappled shadows between the creepers, the chatter of birds, the hidden shadows of something… other. The wispy forms of the spirits sat grinning back at her. She could see them.
And with that sight the knowledge some killed themselves to avoid.
When you can see.... you can be seen.
The world is filled with spirits, but once consecrated and given to them... you can forever be seen by them in return. No way to hide. No way to block out the spirits who would forever smile and watch, whisper advice, or grow angry when you erred.
It was a truth some had slain themselves to be free of.
It was a truth she stared full in the face of, hazed and mazed by the drugged brew... standing beside her own soul, staring at the impish faces of the spirits of her people. Knowing they stared back. Knowing they knew her.
She raised a shaking hand, and drew the knife of the ritual over her arm, letting spill the blood... promising herself to them as her people had done for ages.
For her life they would come at her call. They would drink of her blood.
And when she died, if she be worthy, she would become a spirit herself, to fly to aid her descendants.
Wiping flecks of blood from her face, Swallowtail straightened. The damp air almost felt like home... almost.
Since she had left the Vale, her muscles had grown harder... her reflexes catlike. Her hair still swung with the beads her people believed protected against the evil spirits that haunted this world, and her eyes still held that odd strength and poise, fuelled by the boundless energy of youth and her limitless faith in the spirits.
But she had changed. This much she knew.
The Northerners and their ways had finally managed to worm their way into the untroubled heart of the girl, and she had at long last learned the lesson of how to love one being above the rest.
A curious thing, love.
It remained to be seen if this would change her soul for good or ill... she found it interesting, but her faith in the spirits and their choices for her was such that she had thrown herself into the winds of fate and destiny, trusting in their power to hold and carry her, and lend her wings. If the spirits had led her to this tribe of the Eclipsed Sun, and the Master she obeyed without hesitation, then they had reason.
Reason... she smiled. She now carried three items of great power. The spirits' design for her grew clearer as her eyes grew stronger when they stared into the strange world her people knew existed alongside their own. The twin blades, thought lost to the sands of the desert, were now hers. Sang'Thraze the Defender had come to her first; pulsing with power, whispering sweet words of longing and loneliness. Then Jang'Thraze, the stronger, brother to the blade she held. Jang'Thraze the Protector, whose lulling words in her dreams urged her nightly to let the two blades reform into what they had once been. They protected her now… though the first battle of wills had not been easy.
The shamans had trained her well though, and through sheer mental strength, and the stillness even now she held inside her, she had mastered the swords, and bent them to serve her instead of their old masters, the Sandfury Trolls. There was a peace about the savage warrior earned through the scourging of agony, the deprivations and hardships of her childhood, and the simple harsh truths she had grown knowing.
Few soft Northerners would have the strength to hold the seductive whispered promises of the powers in the swords at bay. She would wait, and not give in to their desire until she knew the time was right, or the blade she made would master her, and not the other way around. In time, she would permit them what they longed for... when she was even stronger and could bend the mighty sword to her will also. Sang and Jang were but halves of a whole. The Sandfury had rallied to the god-blade, the Lasher, Sul'Thraze, and swept from the desert until it seemed none could stop them. Only the destruction of that powerful blade, and its reforging into the shadowy halves, had saved those non Trolls who called the desert home.
In time she would hold Sul'Thraze herself, and hold it in strength, and skill, and peace. And use it against the Trolls, as the spirits of her people sang their songs in the charged air around her.
She stared around the dankness of the Sunken Temple, eyes tracing the twisted corpses of the Atal'ai trolls she had slain. One hand rested on the soft curve her belly had recently taken, protectively. She had borne three things of power into this place, two formed of pain and power, one of love.
She recalled the touch of Ythfas when he had first taken her... rough, desperate, needing to lose himself in sweet limbs and the body of a female. Eventually, directed to give his mate the child she could not bear herself, her had come to her again, and again, and in time learned a kind of joy in her young body. Now when the savage awoke, she did so beside him, and each morning, though she now swelled with his child, he took her again, gently, tenderly, amidst kisses and soft touches. She had learned love in those mornings, in his arms, held by him, claimed by him, and bathed in the light of his eyes when they smiled into hers.
The three items she bore... two of metal, one growing within her... all would learn the will of the spirits.
The savage rested one hand on the wire-wrapped leather of the long grip. Two days prior, she had let the spirits fuel her; she had lifted her hammer on high, and freed the bound forces within Jang'Thraze and Sang'Thraze, her skill and her own strength controlling the swirling energies.
The swords had poured forth the twin halves of the godblade as she had hammered the metal on the forge, the hissing sheets of rain steaming off the hammered stuff before even touching it. The energies had moved like sinuous snakes curving through the soaking air, then had fought her as she reforged the blade that had been broken. Howling and screaming through the air, they had turned on her, seeking to assert their ancient strength, to dominate their wielder as they once had, united into a force few mortal minds could withstand. The green power of Jang'Thraze had snarled at her like a wildcat, clawing at her mind. Fear, terror, weakness... all found and exposed to be used against her.
Only one problem did the sword's trapped force have.
Long years under the shamans, enduring the strict discipline of the Vale's tribes, through agony and pain, had forged the girl hammering no less than she now forged the runeblade.
The claws of Jang raked up spiritual sheets of sparks, but neither her mind, nor her soul. Sang, like a snake, sought to inveigle her way through lust, through greed and envy - to find the savage's desire to rule, and rule her using it.
Thwarted again.
The twin forces screamed in unison as they realized their error. They had allowed this savage to wield them, knowing her mind worked like a Troll in its acceptance of spirits, and in their contempt for her kind, assuming her mind would break easily when they unleashed their true might and she foolish enough to seek the Lasher. Now they knew that they had instead placed themselves into a position to be controlled utterly by this poised girl, despite her youth.
As her lips chanted the Call of Sul'Thraze, the sword took form... huge and black, the runed length of it coruscating with ebon power, swirling forces about the mighty blade like tiny green skulls.
Now, two days later, the tremendous toll of the spiritual battle and the forging were finally replenished with her own body's strength. Blue eyes narrowed, she held the blade, soothing it as the mistress of a vicious dog might the tremendous beast. Her mind controlled it completely, the spirits of the Trollish godblade serving her with hesitation now, but serving her nonetheless.
The harsh winds whipped across the barren desert. A low moan came with them, the cry of the wind spirits. The sun was like a hammer, beating upon the heads of those who dares sit beneath the dry, dark sky. The rolling dunes stretched as far as the eye could see in one direction, in another only rippling to the curiously shaped, wind-scoured stones rising like reddish clawing fingers from beneath the heavy sands.
Only the moan of the wind echoed in this mournful, hot land. Empty and arid, Tanaris, to the civilized visitor.
But if you could see with different eyes... you would see spirits.
A line of grotesque faces sat perched on incongruous bodies, perched in a ring about the quiet figure of the girl whose eyes could see them, sitting atop a sand dune, in this still, peaceful place. To eyes unused to them, they would be worthy of weeks of terror-laden sleep. But to her they were... friends. Guardians. Advisors. Comfort.
Above her whipped the various spirits of this place, going about their business, whether it be tormenting the hyenas scouring old bones for lingering mummified flesh, or the ogres to the south, grumbling in their fear, not knowing what voices chattered in the rocks and shifting grains of sand.
::Your Northerner fell, Shaw'shaw. Do you still think he is worthy?::
The little face speaking was gnarled and wrinkled almost out of recognition, but vaguely resembled the parrot it usually rode.
The girl turned to regard it. Her plate mail was piled carefully beside her slender body, only the bulge in her belly distorting her sleek frame, the wind moving her beaded hair, soft clatter.
I know he is, Owaissa. You yourself and the others rode in him once. You know what merit he has. You know his strength.
The words fell like soft rain in this parched place.. liquid and musical, her voice almost gentle as she spoke in her own tongue.
::Sul'Thraze held his heart for a second.. do you not think it will again, little Shaw'shaw, little bird?::
I wish to know which of you let Sul'Thraze out. You must have wished him to fail. The blade was secured, as you all taught me. It is bound, and bound to me. My compassion, my soul, binds it tighter than ever before. Whomever freed it.. you know few can stand against its call. It dominated a race of Trolls. It will be used for their downfall. You have taught me this.
Her words fell like cold water now... fast and sparkling in the dry air. Her gaze was on the bound being lying beside her in the sand. Untrained eyes would see a sword. Hers saw a man, slender and shifting with each gaze that fell upon him. Only his eyes, virulent green, stayed the same. He lay snarling as if bound by chains, and when her gaze fell upon him, his eyes flashed with impotent anger, and his face became that of Ythfas, long black hair pooled in the sand, lips forming words of fury. Rising, the girl paced to the sword and knelt, one hand tracing the face so like the one which kissed her, spoke to her, claimed her for his own.
I suggest you remember who of the two of us rules here. You are mine, Sul'Thraze, and if you submit at last fully... you will have a harvest of souls like you could not have imagined in your poor shattered imprisonment.
Her words now rang, speaking the sword's own tongue- Trollish -as the bound man stared up with eyes suddenly hungry.
Yes, Sul'Thraze... you should begin to believe, or so long as you pit your will against me and mine, you will be chained as a slave.
Rising again she turned and regarded the spirits who fluttered like birds, moved like monkeys, writhed like snakes.
Spirits, you know me. Aid me as always, and cease to wish ill to the Northerner, and the child he has placed in me will grow as you wish, to become the greatest champion of the people save for her mother than this world has known. She will wield magic, as her father does, so you say. She will see you, as I do, so you say. She will understand the trees and kill with precision, as her foster mother the elf-spirit does.. so you say. But if you act again to set the Lasher on Ythfas, she will learn NOTHING of you, though your claws rend me to damnation and I never take my place among you.
She regarded them with eyes as bright as the sun overhead. They had willingly given her a piece of their power - each one of them - and infused her to ensure that the child she carried would be a name to fear one day. Now she stood, pulsing with this light, forged of her own strength, and of theirs, given freely, and controlled readily.
She sat down again. The sand crunched softly. She steepled her fingers and closed the gleaming blue eyes, and let the peace course through her again. The sword beside her muttered, but no longer complained. The spirits rustled, but offered no word.
Powerful warrior, strong with the spirits.
The savage knelt by the crone. The hunched form of the old woman was a mass of wrinkles, and the lank yellowed hair hanging from her walnut-brown head swung with darkened beads.
Her half-toothless mouth whispered words that seemed to hum in the air.
In Swallowtail's arms, cradled in the crook of it, was a tiny babe, her little head crowned with wispy silken black tufts of hair. Her pale blue eyes seemed to stare up at the crone as intently as the girl holding her. Though born but the day before, the tiny child seemed to hold a lightness in her that was entirely the result of the small cloud of spirits both women could easily see, all playing with the baby.
For the rest of her life, promised to the spirits, she would never be alone.
Though the savage had been drained past even her own endurance by the birth, the old shaman had shown her the way of growing strong once more, by finding the pulse of life and matching her own to it.
Now the crone moved hands in the air, little motes of what looked for all the world like the flickering cinders of a fire... save that no fire lay beneath to form them.
Swallowtail watched carefully, blue eyes studying the words spoken.
"Spirits of Fire, come to my call. I, Shadowed Leaf, call to you, and beg your aid in teaching my student how to better serve you!"
The sparkling motes whirled as if in an unseen wind, and shivered into forming the likeness of a roughly humanoid face, which spoke back in the tongue of the spirits.
::Child of Light, Child of the Vales, we come to you at your call, and ask what gifts you offer for our aid?::
The shaman smiled, the mass of wrinkles on her face creasing in the warm smile of a friend greeting an old companion.
"Spirits of Fire, I offer the blood of my heart to you, I offer the thrice cut feather of the Washugah, the heron, I gift to you the ochre of the river's edge."
The face seemed to smile.
::We find your offer pleasing, Shadowed Leaf. We also are pleased by this student, for she holds in her arms the future, and at her back she binds death to her command. Her crude understanding of the spirits her tribe has bound will not be enough to preserve her life against the coming storm. We accept her and your gift, and will aid you in teaching her the ways of the spirit-call, the way we taught you once long ago.::
The crone grinned at Swallowtail, who blinked back tears of pride at the spirits' words. She was to become a shaman also. Her fingers traced the Cord of acceptance, of the Elements she would one day converse with as her allies and friends. The blade grumbled on her back, but held its peace, no longer able to even sway her soul.
After the birth, she had faced the truth of her life, and realized once more the peace in her young heart. She was a woman of the Vale. She spoke to and saw the spirits. She would never be of the North, and love was a thing of the North. Therefore she had thrown it away, the turbulence that had nearly left her defenses vulnerable to the Lasher's subtle dream images, when it came to her as Ythfas, and whispered sweet words, or cutting words to wound and slash at her.
She was of the Vales, and a warrior. Now she would become a comrade of the Greater Spirits, and learn to work the powers they offered, if they agreed.
Ishkoodah snuffled and smiled in the girl's arms, staring at the face of flame, unafraid.
"I am ready to begin, Teacher."
Swallowtail sat by the edge of the water, Shadowed Leaf behind her. The girl had mastered her lesson for the day swiftly, as the crone knew she could. Now, already a deep bond between student and teacher, she sat, staring at the water as the shaman sat behind her. It was not a surprise to see such strength, such beauty, such dedication in the young warrior for the old shaman. How could she not know her great grand-daughter sat before her? The girl did not know.. it was not the way of the people to know parents or lineage... unless the spirits told them. Once called to become one of their speakers, their comrades, a shaman quickly understood the complex plan for the people, and the intricate lines of lineage. The easier to instruct a chief on which girl should be sent to which warrior. It was vital the breeding start early, before natural attraction should lull a girl into permitting a young man to spread her, when he could in fact be a cousin or brother.
The young apprentice shaman, though, sat frowning. Shadowed Leaf understood the forces working in the girl, though as abstracts. She was afflicted by love, and in all her slender form, it was her only weakness. In her arms the young Ishkoodah, Fire-Hair or "Comet" to the Northerners, was held, quiet for a babe her age. Shadowed Leaf knew the infant would not have lived, born so early, had not the spirits taken a direct hand. It startled her, for rarely did they plan for one warrior, and one child so obviously.
Perhaps this girl and her child were the price the tribes must pay for protection. If the spirits demanded their futures, then the spirits would have them.
Her old face wrinkled in a worried sigh as she rested a hand on Swallowtail's shoulder, and the girl's face twisted in pain.
It was not normal or easy when one of the tribes fell in love. Bred for centuries to be loyal and dedicated, to be fierce and determined, and endure physical pain as few others could...
The old woman let herself remember the vision the spirits had shown her, of the first Shaman, Raven, pleading to the spirits for protection against the Trolls. The spirits had agreed, and had instructed him on the slow process of centuries, to breed individuals like Swallowtail. Strong, proud, yet able to bend to harsh duty and truths, to possess the coiled strength of a tiger, and the wisdom of humanity, welded with the obedience the spirits desired. Beauty came with it, for the strength of the people made for fine straight-limbed children. So too a deep sensitivity that few outside the tribes ever knew. It came through in their songs, their dances, in all the savage passion the people freed when they sang. In love, it could be destructive, as many legends showed.
Now, turning rheumy eyes to the girl bent before her, staring into the swells of the turquoise ocean, Shadowed Leaf gripped her shoulder again.
"Tell me"
"He.. I am torn, my teacher. I feel as I did when I met the spirits.. as if I belong with him.. to him.. I swore not only to obey him, but in my heart when I knelt, I swore to be his friend. There was.. something in his eyes that I felt I was needed for.. felt this was why the spirits sent me North. When he took me first, I did not kill him, though his ways were not our own. I have given to him the first fruits of loyalty and my body, even telling the spirits to preserve his life or lose me for their plaything."
The shaman blinked as the girl's low-voiced words poured out like shining stones in a waterfall.
"Yet how can I be as I am, and what he wants? He has told me I must raise Ishkoodah.. that is not the way... he brings a cradle for her, made of Vale-wood, and carved with our sacred symbols. He tries so hard, teacher.. but he is of the North. The love I feel, it is not a thing of the Vale. I tried to cast it away after Ishkoodah was born, but it only came back when he held me as I wept. How can I serve as a warrior and lie beside him as his woman-chosen-by-the-spirits? How can I live as one of our people, yet love as one of his? Were I one of his I could hate that pale spirit he has sworn himself to. As one of ours, I understood his need for me.. that I was to give him ther child they could not have. It... was a thing of the Vale to accept. Now though, the river is muddied, and he has told me he loves me, and spirits help me I love him back."
Her head bowed, and droplets betrayed tears.
The shaman sighed to herself. The people did not cry, but she did not need to tell anyone.
"Child, I will tell you one thing. Life is not easy, and love is not a thing the Vales know well, but it is a thing they have learned in places. You must break your own path in all matters of the heart, and find with him a place of truth, and of honour to the spirits. Do not let this weakness in you stay as a weakness; make it a strength to add to your many. Do not let it turn you from the spirits, for they guided you to him first. Teach him to be as strong as you, that Fire-hair will have the understandings she must as a girl of the Vales. And do not see his pale spirit as a woman to wish curses on, but remember she is a spirit, and even as you revere the spirits above him, so will he revere her above you."
Another gentle grip to her shoulder, and the shaman hauled herself up, and turned to stare at the black sword leaning against the side of her hut.
"We will have to deal better with this one also... it has a part to play before this tale is done."
The girl frowned, watching Shadowed Leaf work. The sun was as heavy as a mallet, but the heat mattered little to her, raised and bred in this place. The light sparkled on the slow swells of turquoise green sea, lapping at the gleaming beach, darkening the margins of land and sea.
The shaman repeated the exercise, and Swallowtail's lean brown hands mirrored her teacher's this time, the ritual gestures to call and speak to the spirits, to plead with them for their aid, the specific ways to stand and think.
Once more.
This time for truth.
Lightning arced from the girl's hands to ground into the sand, hissing and humming through the air.
The girl grinned broadly; flash of white teeth in her burnished face.
Again.
Blue-white crackles across the sand.
The child in her swaddling clothes within the shade nearby smiled at the light. The shaman clasped her student's arm.
"Good work, child. Very good"
Strength and power now.. to serve her people, and serve their spirits.
Swallowtail moved slightly in her sleep. Yshka had been given for a time to the spirit elf, mate to the man sleeping fitfully beside her. His black hair pooled over the pillow, mingling with her own sunbleached pale locks. Finally, giving sleep up, she sat up, and regarded the room. The large bed, with its four posts and hangings, was opulent and comfortable.
The room was simple but elegant. The polished wardrobe, the great window, the mirror with its gilt frame... the trappings of a man once a noble, a time once of decadence and pleasure in luxury.
At the foot of the bed, the cradle he had commisioned for the daughter he had from her. Her dark face creased into a warm smile. She regarded the empty cradle, her thoughts in a far off elven hall where the child of her body lay sleeping under the watchful eyes of beasts and spirits.
Though it was unpleasant to be parted from her daughter, the girl in the bed smiled yet. She trusted the spirits, and the elf Ythfas loved so dearly was clearly a spirit. She had learned the different kinds of spirits in her training at the crude hut.
There were Great Spirits, the kind she invoked when she called upon the powers of Lightning to crackle through her foes. Or the forces of Winds to immobilize them. Those spirits were mighty and forceful, but only small compared to the vast Spirits like the one she could sense pulsing in the bug lands. Its touch made her mind hurt.
There were the helper spirits of small things, which smiled as she smiled at them. They lined the room as she regarded them. Little faces on grotesque bodies, wizened forms grinning at her. These were the spirits she had once invoked, and still named her friends.
There were spirits housed in flesh, like Owaissa, who perched sleeping on a wooden clothes-rack in this very room. Their power was in thought and speech, giving their experience to others.
Also, clearly, the elf was one such.. perhaps a spirit of vengeance. The savage wasn't entirely sure.. but it was clear that she and her race had once been spirits indeed, housed in immortal flesh. Her drumsong had shown her their great tragedy.. losing a Great Spirit to the raging green skinned creatures she now knew were called orcs. That trauma had shaken the race of spirits. That much was clear. In some cases, it had apparently torn loose their spirits, and now the hollow flesh walked the lands, desperate for the pleasures of a sweated bed, or emulating the Gurubashi Blood-drinkers.. all actions the young warrior knew were an attempt to fill the holes in their spiritual forms. In time perhaps they would return to their immortal flesh, their spirits at peace as guardians of their forests.
She looked thoughtfully at the northern sky, spattered with stars. Her wandering gaze looked down at the man lying beside her. Her Master, yes, but also her friend and lover. Pity shone in the clear blue gaze for a moment as she regarded him. He, like the others of the North, had lost much.
When the golden-haired boy she had seen in the visions brought by smoke and drumming had slain his father, the Chief of the tribes of the North, he had unleashed great sorrow. Ill spirits coursed down from the icy waters of the far north even now. It was due to the coiled thing she had seen in his belly as he had walked to that fateful meeting. Watching with wide eyes, far from her body as it sat drumming, she had seen the empty hollow in his heart, the coiling snarling monster inside. And the blade at his side.. so like the Lasher, but better forged, more effective, and far, far more potent. He had lost his battle of wills with it and he was its tool.
Her glance moved to regard the huge blade leaning against the wall. To her strange eyes, it was the form of Ythfas, posing seductively at her. Sul'Thraze no longer tried to wrest control form her. It had learned that the souls she fed it in battle were quite tasy and enjoyable enough not to warrant a battle for mastery. Rather than trying to break her now, it took a form it knew mattered to her, and purred its pleasure.
Ythfas' simulacrum leaned against the wall, superimposed over the runed blade. His eyes were a virulent green, his long raven hair loose and spilling about his shoulders, expressive lips curled into a look of truly vile satiation akin to the sort worn by sadists when they were truly delighted by some new torment. The Lasher had flayed a soul that prior evening, and drunk it screaming down. He pursed his lips in a silent kiss blown to her, and she sighed and glanced at the real man beside her. Looking at Sul'Thraze when it was pleased wasn't always a wise choice.
She sighed, surrounded by beings, surrounded by life, and hugged her knees to her chest. For a moment she remained in that pose, then looked up, her eyes brilliant with an inner light. She was no longer a child to wish for comfort.
She stretched slowly, burnished, scarred skin moving over defined and lean muscles, and let her mind ease again. Curling to her Master once more, she closed her eyes and let the spirits lull her to sleep with their whispers.
As she rode from the Tower, the runeblade slung across her armoured back, the girl sighed. It was snarling its dissatisfaction. Not permitting it to drink Zilenoz' soul, the Lasher was feeling thwarted and rebellious again. That would mean the dreams again.
She frowned. This would end tonight. She knew it was past time for the spirit within the sword to be barred from touching her mind. It favoured the form however of the one thing she was sworn to obey with a spirit Oath - Ythfas. When it took his form, it took all her will not to obey and fall to its blandishments. It was her one weakness, and she knew now that she could by no means give him up to protect herself.
There had to be another way.
She directed the horse southward instead of to the harbour leading to Kalimdor and then Feralas. Shadowed Leaf would aid her in this thing before she retrieved Ishkoodah.
In a short time, cross-legged on the warm sand as the sun set, the savage looked into the shaman's eyes as the old woman held out a drink to her. It would send her into sleep immediately, and dreams. There the Lasher would do as it wished, and she would do as her teacher had directed. It made her stomach churn to think about what she must do, but she gritted her teeth and drank the bitter brew with one gulp. Time to face the tiger head on, and let this hunt end for good.
Swallowtail dreamed.
She stood in that familiar room once more; hung with rich tapestries, lit by a thousand candles it seemed. Each hanging woven in emerald thread, chased with the gold of a noble family's excesses. The wood where visible was polished, ornate, and carved in elven designs quite unlike those she had seen in Aktarin's rooms. As always, her eyes moved to the two figures on the bed. A woman, bound by her ankles and wrists to the bedposts, spread eagled. Between her legs, the familiar form of her Master, his hips moving sinuously, muscles in his back flowing with each motion. His hands were busy.. and with each little gesture a yelp came from the bound elf, her golden hair spilled across the pillow. Gleaming pins driven through tiny folds of her fair skin, the savage noted. Never once ceasing in the sinuous dance, he reached for a whip, and the elf's eyes lit with anticipation, dark with lust and pain. He raised it.. and the warrior looked away as the first strike came. It made her physically ill to watch this.. which was of course why it was of late the favoured torment of the godsword for her.
Shadowed Leaf had informed her bluntly that it was a spell of sorts... mind magic. If she did not halt its insidious spread through her mind, in time she would be the one bound as the simulacrum of her Master moved upon her, either so warping her perception of the true Ythfas that she became numb to all things good and whole, or twisting her until she desired only the twisted delights of this perfumed place.
The elf cried out again and again, and the man moving over her smirked, whispering that she had to be punished for making such noise.. and as she nodded desperately, the Ythfas-twin reaching for a wax-brimming candle, the savage stepped out of the shadows and cleared her throat. It required a confrontation.. a denial. That much the shaman had said.
Well, she would see what she could manage. Disobeying one to whom she had sworn obedience was almost impossible... but her will was thorium.
The man between the elf's legs paused in his slow thrusts, and turned, face identical to the one she had smiled at in the Tower - with one exception. In the dreamworld, no being can truly hide their nature. THIS Ythfas' eyes glowed that virulent green, sign of the Lasher. He drove his hips forward as he spoke, making the elf under him moan in ecstasy.
"What is it, my Swallowtail? No longer content to watch? Sorry, pet, but your turn isn't up yet... trust me though.. it will be soon."
He spoke Trollish.. of course. He moved his free hand in a complicated gesture, and she slammed backward into the wall, iron manacles snapping from recesses to hold her in immobility. Turning his focus back, with a low laugh, he began to apply the hot wax to the writhing body impaled upon him, thrusting as he did.
Swallowtail growled, mustering her will, and flexed her strong body within the pinions.. muscles straining. One of the manacles cried a protest, and once more the similacrum turned his face to her.
"You are no match for me in this place I have found, my Swallowtail. Your lover showed me how to hurt you, and now I shall. And in time you will come to love it as this one did," Another hard drive of his hips, another sobbing cry of pleasure. "and then, at long last, I will be the Master and you the slave... but of course.. you are the slave anyway, aren't you, little broodmate?"
His words struck her with the force of spinning axes, and she flinched. Again that low, maddening laugh of cruel pleasure, and he returned to his delights.
Forcing the gleaming bodies locked in a bliss of pain and pleasure from her mind, the apprentice shaman examined her bindings. This was.. wait. She smiled suddenly. By fighting the manacles she only strengthened them. By accepting the reality he created, she only gave him control, for she agreed that HIS reality was true.
She looked at the bindings, and winked. They vanished. In HER world, how could anyone pin the Valewoman? It was not possible.
He growled, withdrawing from the protesting, blood-streaked woman under him, and stood rampant before the savage as she approached the bed. Gleaming body, glowing green eyes, that twisting of Ythfas' face into a cruel, grossly sensual expression.
"Still you defy me. KNEEL, Swallowtail! Kneel before your Master and obey the spirit's Oath you swore!" He demanded, voice resonant, commanding. Her knee buckled under her, and she found herself kneeling, cursing under her breath. This then was the true contest. She could not break her Oath, nor violate their strictures. And yet she could not let this.. entity.. destroy her mind and soul.
He stepped forward, virile, potent.. a spirit taking the form of a man she could not disobey. Pacing around her kneeling form, he laughed under his breath.
"So easy. You are a simple enough creature to break, my Swallowtail. Shall I force you to hands and knees and take you now? It might be amusing to take your body... amusing to think that his form can control you so much."
As the man walked slowly around her, the savage warrior gritted her teeth, closing her eyes as she built her will. No spirits could reach her in this place.. save one.. and it was not the one she could coerce into aiding her. Only her own energy could break the jaws of this trap. Her skin shivered as she felt his hand come to rest on her shoulder. A step and he straddled her kneeling form, heat between her shoulders. A low whisper in her ear, breath hot.
"You. Are. MINE."
As he spoke, her will faltered.. the intensity, the voice so familiar; something in her ached to give in, to let him do as he willed - the obedient part of her that kneeled willingly, that obeyed readily. Astonished to find this part of herself, Swallowtail saw that it was the part bound by the Oaths, and that it was her weakness, unless she turned it into strength. This was the part that bound her to kneel, that held her there by clinging thoughts as strong as a druid's vines.
She summoned his face to her mind.. focusing on the eyes. It was the eyes she had to see.. NOT her Master's eyes.. they were the eyes of the spirit named Sul'Thraze. She drove that fact into that weak, obedient part of her. This was NOT the man she had sworn to obey, this was NOT the man who had claimed her spirit-blood, this was an imposter. The weakness in her stiffened, then rose amid flames of wrath. The laws of the Vale were simple: if a man not permitted touched a woman, his life was forfeit. No longer weak, she kneeled, whole within herself.
As he pressed on her shoulders to push her forward, she smiled slightly, and he pushed harder, expecting her to take the pose he desired, so he could mount her like a beast.
She resisted.
Then said in level tones, "No. I am MINE."
With that her head slammed backward, striking the stiff manhood behind her, bringing a scream to this similacrum's lips.
She rose, turning to face him as he stood, covering his crotch, face contorted in anger and pain.
"I choose to obey Ythfas. I CHOOSE to love him. I chose to swear the spirit Oath to him. And though he may have wallowed in the doling out of pain, the man I love and obey is the one I know.. and you... are NOT.. he. No longer will the snippets of his past haunt me.. because I choose love above obedience, Lasher. I choose the will as a shaman to deny what is wrong. And you, runeblade, are wrong."
He snarled at her, green eyes blazing, then let his face assume a sensual expression, kneeling before her in a sudden, artful pose of servitude. It was repulsive to watch.
"Ahh.. you want to control him? Come.. punish me for the sins I have committed.. let the rage in you build, and fill you, and do it.. do it, slave, little animal he lies with, ruts with, DO it.. hurt him for what he-"
The stream of words was cut off as she smiled, eyes glowing with a white light.
"No. I think I'll just destroy you and keep you out of my mind for good, sword. Stay in my hand. Never again in my mind."
Her eyes flared to a hot white, and her raised hand boiled with the flare of lightnings. They struck the kneeling form so like Ythfas, and with a scream, he exploded into hot white sparks behind her eyelids.
Gasping, she sat up. Sand crunched beneath her.
The shaman crouched beside her. The huge black sword lay quiescent, a band of braided leather about the base of the hilt, a single feather tied to it.
Swallowtail half rolled to her side, retching, shaking.
"I.. k-killed.. him.. I killed Yth-"
She gasped, and Shadowed Leaf grasped her shoulder.
"No, child. You killed the poison in your mind. When you struck him, I bound the sword as it should have been bound when forged. Had you been a shaman then, you would have known to do it. As a warrior, you trusted in your half-knowledge. Go, little Shaw'shaw. Go and fetch Ishkoodah. Your lessons are done for this night. You have learned to drive out a wicked spirit within your own mind. Return home, and go to your man. And know that I am.. very, very proud of you."
He old face creased in a warm smile as she helped the still-shaky girl to stand. At first, Swallow moved her hand hesitantly, but under the motherly gaze of her teacher, she grasped the hilt of Sul'Thraze firmly, and slung it across her back. No more mutters sounded in her ears, nor snarls. She stood proudly, and raised her hand as she had been taught, calling the lightnings to shield her body. Shadowed Leaf smiled approvingly.
"Go, shaman."
Turning, the young shaman walked up the beach to where the horse was tied.
Power filled her now.. the strength of the storm.
When she moved, she could feel as if she walked through the middle of roiling clouds.. yet it was not an addictive feeling, no.. simply one of great strength. The Lasher was bound upon her back, and finally, it was truly bound, and would obey her.
She felt.... strange.
The Troll's attempt to harm Ythfas, and the resultant strange gift of her daughter... somehow made two.. somehow given thirteen or fourteen years.. it had confused her. Shadowed Leaf had simply shrugged and told her it was the spirits' will.
But Swallowtail, while accepting this, wished she could understand why the spirits would will her daughter.. daughterS... to be twinned, and almost her age.
She shook her head slowly where she sat. Her head felt far too big. She was on a rocky pinnacle she had felt a need to climb. Maybe.
The sun beat down, and the sweet scent of the grasslands around this curiously smooth rock filled her with light.
Shadowed Leaf had sent her to this land.. Mulgore.. to learn more of the spirit the bull-men called the Earthmother. That name had been brought up by both the wicked troll spirit and by her daughter. Daughters.
She had been sent to a bull man shaman.. Oak was the name he gave her in his rumbling, snorting voice. He had told her to follow the call of the spirits, and had given her a drink much like her people once had. Closing her eyes, sitting cross legged before the small fire, with the bull man across from her, and the odd musky smell of him.. as she sat, letting the brew move through her body, she felt light.. then heavy.. as if her head was ballooning. The being opposite her shifted from a bull man to Ythfas to a radiant light filled being to a woman to a cloud... she blinked.
Listen to your heartbeat, Shaw'shaw.
She half heard the deep voice.
It is Her heartbeat also, Shaw'shaw.
She concentrated through valleys of plunging storms and screaming birds. And then.. like a distant drumbeat.. she felt her own heart driving the blood through her veins. She almost felt each surge of that vital fluid in her body.. first this way.. then that.. pulse.. thud.. thud.. boom.. pulse.. surge.. each pulse a delta swept by the flooding tide, bringing life, each pulse sending flights of birds crying through sheets of rain..
Deeper, Shaw'shaw. Go deeper.
She frowned, and then felt something.. something drove each pulse in her veins.. something called each thud of her heart.. the muted thunder.. the power.. building.. that thing which sent the waters rushing in the flood season, that thing which brought the sun to rise each morning.. had left an eye in the sky.. the moon...
She rose suddenly, like a puppet on strings she had once seen at the human city of Stormwind.. was she human anymore? Maybe she had horns like Oak.. maybe she had wings like Owaissa.. Stumbling, she did not see the look of surprise at the human's sensitivity that crossed the bestial face by the fire as she stumbled off, moving to a sound that sang through the world itself.
The echo.. it pulsed through the land! She collapsed again, this time placing her head against the sun-warmed grass... she could feel it, like the rumble of distant animals rocking the packed rich soil.. boom... boom.. boom... yes.. yes!
She cried out in ecstasy. It was transcendant.. like staring at a tree and realizing it was an eyelash of an eye.. and the eye was the world.. and the world was the smallest part of a universal creation and reality. Her body trembled in wonder, and she sobbed with this new knowledge, while jagged bolts of lightning wreathed by clouds of butterlfies danced before her eyes.
The spirits sang in a paeon of triumph around her.. was this real? Was this illusion? She knew it for truth veiled in the images of the drink.. and knew that even as the first shaman's brew long ago had changed her, had let her see the spirit world.. that this too had changed her.. and she knew a greater truth about this world.
Time passed, the sun rose and fell and rose and fell.. winter came and passed and rains swept across the world.. land baked and heaved and still she lay, absorbing this great truth.
blink.
blink.
blink.
The sun beat down on the rock.
She wasn't entirely sure where it was, save that she felt it was still in Mulgore.
And she was filled. As she stared at her dark skinned hand, she saw the truth that within it flowed blood the same colour as that in Oak's paw-like hand.. the same blood as any other living being.. all bound as life. Life all was Hers.. the Earth Mother, whose creation this world was. Yet unlike Ythfas' poor Northern understanding of such things, which denoted possession.. it was Hers in that She had made it and let it walk this world freely, to choose for itself, and Her great love had been such.
She could feel the storm in her heart. Lightning bubbled in her nerves. The earth's tremors sang in her veins.
She felt...... alive.
After I created Swallowtail and she ended up as Ythfas' concubine (he runs an evil guild) and bore him a daughter, we continued to flesh out that particular story.
In essence, it went like this.. though I hadn't expected it, after about two solid weeks of roleplaying until 6am, Aktarin found out that Ythfas was ultimately just like her within himself, and was as dedicated and driven, and as guilt-laden. Akkie's backstory has her losing a child six years ago when the orcs invaded Ashenvale, for which she has longed to die, and blamed herself, sending herself into battle with the aim of dying honourably. Ythfas was a mage before the Third War, and had a Queldorei (high elf) lover whom he truly DID love; when the Scourge and the war came, his lover died while he was fighting the undead menace in the human lands, and he since blamed himself for not being there in time. He lost himself in drink and women, and in forgetting. Ythfas and Aktarin ended up at a crucial moment - either she was going to kill him or end up in bed with him. I rolled a die, and Ythfas lived, and a relationship was born.
But the thing about a short lived human with a 10,512 yr old elf.. I really felt that having half-elves pop out in a world where half-elf isn't even a viable race option due to its rarity. So Aktarin asked Ythfas to find himself a broodmare of sorts to pop out a human child that after the human lover was dead, so that she could guard his line and feel in some way linked to her lover.
He chose Swallowtail before he even knew I played her, which was rather amusing. As the Master of the Tower of Secrets, all females etc within the Tower were his to take if he wished.
Now as far as Ythfas' backstory, I'll see if I can snag it and post it. It's pretty darned well written. I created as a villain for Ythfas' growing revival as a positive instead of evil character, the person of his father. I designed Ythgar Vinguld to be one of the nastiest characters I've ever created. World of Warcraft has no space for vampires, and the only area for a vampire per se is a Nathrezim, a demonic dreadlord.