Canticle of Doherty

Inveiglement
Boots crunched over dry pine needles, growing closer to the young woman sitting on the old rope swing. She swung leisurely back and forth without acknowledging the approaching man, summer dress drifting about her ankles like sea foam. His large hand gently enclosed over the rope above her left hand to slow her ascent.

The young woman glanced coyly up at him. He was muscular, with dark hair and light eyes. He was not a day over twenty-five.

“You’ve put a spell on me, Aislin.” The man whispered as he gazed down at her, and reached for her hand. She relented and loosened her grip to allow him to kiss the soft skin on the back of it.

The demure woman also chuckled at his comment. “I did no such thing,” she muttered, though it was not entirely convincing.

Four figures stood at the edge of the cliff above the Azurelode Mine.

“The secrets of men, love-sighs, the murmurs of mothers to their babes…these are not our lot.”

Aislin watched the laborers in their work, the way their muscles rippled in such angles unlike a woman’s. Not their lot…

The harsh cawing of a jay shook her from her thoughts.

“Follow me, newly-made-women,” the old woman turned from the mine. Aislin’s cousins were quick behind her wrinkled and rough heels.

The girl stood for awhile longer on the cliff’s edge, where the shrubs hid the true path upward. She cringed at the jay’s incessant call.

They stood before a granite stone face, the little worn path continuing under as if it were a doorway.

“This is the sacred site,” the old woman explained, with a hand on the smooth, speckled stone. Her wild grey hair swung past her shoulders as she moved back, and a blue feather fell to the dust at her feet. “This is the Road of Exiles. If you listen, you can still hear their echoes.”

She smiled at the girls.

“She won’t be happy.”

Aislin jumped from her log seat when she heard the voice of her little sister.

“Go away, Bidelia.” She threw salt over the fire in the clay cauldron.

“You think you know what you’re doing?”

“Go away; you’ll understand when you’re older,” she said while staring at the resurging flames. “''It is not salt I turn to fire, but the heart of the man I seek. Let him have no peace of mind until he come to me. It is not salt I turn to fire, but the heart of the man I seek. Let him have no peace of mind until he come to me. It is not salt I turn to fire, but the heart of the man I seek. He shall have no peace of mind until he come to me. ''”

Delenda
Two figures strolled over the grass and stray evergreen needles, one tall, one short. One had hair as dark as the bark of a tree in spring, the other had an ashy, dull brown. The girl twirled a sprig of lupine in her fingers, given to her by the young man. They both watched the field ahead of them.

“You are sure you must go to Dalaran? Traveling north is dangerous, they say…”

“I must go if I wish to train.”

“Humph,” the man grunted lightly. “It seems I must do the same. It is unfortunate we cannot travel together.”

“Danel…”

“Erina, you would not wait for me?” He stopped walking and turned to face her, mail armor jingling. She looked away, a soft breeze from the bay blowing her chestnut curls. While he watched her averted eyes contemplate he distinctly recalled a time when they were happier and content to gaze upon him in this same meadow.

“No,” Erina finally replied, and would not look at him. “I will not be a housewife when I have the power to aid our country the same as you.”

Pretty Southsore girl. Danel could not help longing for her even as she rejected him. Erina flinched as he drew his greatsword.

“At least, then, give me something to remember you by. I’ll return it if we ever meet again.”

At first she didn’t understand, seeing him hold out his sword in such a fashion, then she touched her hair and remembered the green ribbon. Wordlessly she let down her hair and tied the ribbon at the base of Danel’s sword hilt.

Nerit embraced her big brother, barely able to get her arms around him with all the mail and padding. “Dan, you can’t leave me here alone with— ” “Don’t worry,” he interrupted, all smiles. “The Hand’ll crush the threat to the North, and I’ll come back so you can tell my fortune then.”

Danel blinked open his eyes, brain pounding against his skull.

He inched forward, covered head to toe in mud. It coated his young, faint beard.

“Greg,” he whispered and shook the man lying next to him. “Gregor?”

Danel placed two fingers at the side of Gregor’s throat; his heart still beat. He sat his aching body up and laid both hands over his friend’s chest. After a moment of silence, the Light granted him his miracle, but now Danel was completely exhausted of energy. He fell backward against the ditch, realizing now they had both been left for dead.

“Ey, lad. Light bless ye, get up.”

With some effort the other knight closed a festering gash on Danel’s leg with divine magic then together they hobbled out of the ditch.

Suddenly Gregor put a hand to the exhausted Danel. Before he could ask what the matter was, his friend pointed a shaking finger.

There was Rich, meandering aimlessly about the town’s cobbled streets. Beut he appeared most agitated, cursing vehemently while no sound came from his mouth. Then Danel realized how Rich was not…fleshy. His body showed the torn buildings behind him. It was not a body at all, but a tormented spirit imitating its previous container. The two knights looked about the square. All their fallen brethren, paladins to town defenders wandered in anguish.

“Light save us…” Danel whispered.

“Mate, we should have been counted among them.” said Gregor.

Some of the spirits turned their spectral heads, seeing the insolent living mocking their unfortunate positions. A defender flailed her hollow arms and opened her mouth to release a soundless scream.

Danel reached for his sword, Gregor his hammer. They must each have believed, in their endless faith, that they could defeat the tormented souls of their comrades despite their fatigue and injuries. But Gregor could not lift his hammer, or Danel his greatsword. Spirits enclosed around them. They too, were destined to be destroyed.

A blinding flash of divine light tore through the female spirit, and her attention turned to what new source of living insolence it could be from. Soldiers in red. Each with a tabard of flame upon their breasts.

The other spirits skulked away, leaving the open-mouthed woman to wrench at the illusion of her hair.

“Begone, cursed spirit!” a soldier in red called. A man dressed in red robes stepped forward and held out his hand to exorcise the specter.

Danel fell to his knees, unable to stand any longer.

“We did not expect survivors,” another soldier said, and bent to help Danel with prayers. “All…dead,” he breathed.

“Do not lose faith,” said the robed man. He carried a book in one arm. Danel looked up at him and recognized it as the devout Davil’s libram. So many faithful had fallen to the death knight Marduk Blackpool. Danel did not know if it had been hours or days since the battle of Darrowshire.

“Knights,” spoke one of the soldiers, who bore a captain’s insignia, “The Silver Hand is gone from this place. Join us, help save our lands from this terrible scourge.”

“Who are you?” Gregor asked, leaning on his hammer.

“We are the Scarlet Crusade of Tyr’s Hand.”

Decubitus, or Aislin’s Concession
The children were ten and fourteen. Long she had been gone from the southern hills. The hamlet nestled in the Hillsbrad foothills was coated in a thin frost. Winter was a blessing in some ways; the beasts and wilds had to save their strength for the summer months.

Tell her to find me an acre of land…

Aislin exhaled the curling mist of her breath as she watched the bundled children play with their father. A Father to all in the parish. Then she turned and walked toward the wood.

Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather

With a spade she dug into the frozen ground under the marked fir. She pulled out a dirty, dark lock of hair braided through with embroidery thread and pushed the dirt back into the little hole. As she strolled back to her family, she unwound the braid, scattering the hair behind her.

And gather it all in a bunch of heather

Nerit slid the window open, the latch, as usual, remained unlocked for her. Her small frame slipped over the familiar sill and into the humble house. She had lost count of the nights she had done this, coming back when the moon was high smelling of blood and herbs. This night was different.

“Staying up late again, child?” asked a deep voice.

Her heart skipped painfully in her chest. She froze in place, not even breathing.

A white light erupted from the darkness of the kitchen. Her father stood with his hand raised, his right hand cupped as if he could hold the Light itself. He liked to think he could.

And her mother was there, too, sitting at the table’s end, abashed in the stark shadows behind the orb of Light.

Immediately, she understood. Nerit put her hand behind her back.

“Come here.” His countenance and voice were even. Nothing could frighten the girl more.

She stepped forward. Elior traced his hand over Nerit’s head, through her long hair. “You will be a great servant of the Light.”

Nerit went rigid, she could not move from her father’s grasp, as her mother couldn’t. Elior turned his gaze on Aislin.

Remember me to one who lives there.

She once was a true love of mine.

The Bartering of Bidelia
They wrenched her arm into the open, inspecting for wounds.

“No consorter of demons can continue to summon!” one man exclaimed. A priest with the insignia of Southshore’s church turned over her arms. “She hides it elsewhere,” he said.

They tore into her robe and finally found an inconspicuous mark on her left collarbone. Bidelia protested to deaf ears as the priest laid his hand upon her to heal the wound. She laughed.

“Sweet wife, soon all this will be over…” Elior held Aislin’s head to his chest and pet her downy ash waves.

“What? What did you do?” she looked up at him, but without admiration.

It was a mockery of a marriage by the same priest of Southshore, who neither noticed nor cared about the bride’s struggles in rope bonds. The groom was a burly, bearded man of no noticeable attraction, and he maintained a sneer though the short ceremony. The priest did not ask if the woman consented, and simply turned away after she spit in his eye.

“I found your sister a husband.”

Men shoved her into a rickety carriage. Her new “husband” dragged her bodily to a ruin of a house in a place once called Strahnbrad.

“You won’t ever be usin’ your dirty magics again,” he jeered and pushed the woman against the wooden table.

The man pulled out a knife and held it to her throat. Bidelia eyed him with such defiance that eventually he broke her gaze to look at her breasts beneath the cheap, white linen dress they had thrown on her.

“A weddin’ night for you has been long overdue.”

Without a word, Bidelia rammed her knee into his loins, making him drop the knife. He howled and cursed, “Filthy witch!”

She fumbled to catch it, but quickly picked it up to saw at her bonds.

By then he was back on his feet, angrier than before. Seeing him barrel toward her stopped her sawing away at the rope. With a hiss of breath she sliced at her own wrists and began to chant. The man grabbed hold of her throat, choking the words. His other hand gripped hers to wrestle out the knife.

She lifted her knee to kick him again, but this time he blocked it with a hand. Bidelia, though red in the face, smiled and slammed the blade into his hand, forcing it down on the table. He screamed bloody murder and let go of her completely to wrench free his pinned hand.

Meanwhile Bidelia backed away and completed her chant. Blood dripped off her arms but never hit the floor. Angry cries filled the space between rotted wood and dirt-covered stone. Her rope bonds fell to the floor, bitten to pieces.

The man panicked as he heard tiny, unnatural voices.

“Whore to demons!” he spat, and finally managed to get the knife from his hand with another howl of agony. Bidelia was already gone. In her wake was the ferocious chattering. He straightened up slowly.

“Light send you back where you all came from!” As he exhaled, scratches and bites appeared all over his face and arms. It happened too fast for him to see, but the pain, like fifty beestings, sent him fleeing from the old house.

“No, Bidelia!” she cried and tried to tug herself away from Elior, but he held fast to her in a rough embrace.

“And all of it will be over…” he whispered in the candlelight.

With bare feet in frost Bidelia ran from the mountain village. Men in black leather and orange masks chased after her, eager to keep their end of the bargain.

There were too many of them blocking the paths down from the mountains. There was only a cliff before her.

As they surrounded Bidelia she turned to face them. She lifted her arms, streaming with her blood, and hollered, “Ar ndutcas!”

She fell backward off the edge.

Oh my grace, I got no hiding place…

The Dangling Conversation
Nerit stopped filling in the outline of a D, and ink collected at the tip of her quill.

The shadow priestess had said…there were channels to find the information. Libraries still intact, run by the dead.

Brother Maynard glanced up from his own work to watch the nun scoot her stool out from the desks and wander out of the Scriptorium.

“She’s an odd one, always seen conversing in taverns,” another brother whispered. Pious Brother Menard shook his head, disapproving of such talk in the sacred room.

“Sister Nerit is lonely, I think.”

“Never let a man take your power,” Aislin whispered in her daughter’s ear.

The cruelty of men knows no bounds, she said. They destroy, we create.

It was funny to hear now.

Nerit walked the Canals, passing by guards, knights, beggars and adventurers. Many men, and just as many women, carrying greatswords still crusted with orc’s blood. She smirked at a draenei warrior, an elk on two legs with dark features. The woman with horns nodded as she walked past, which made her plate armor squeak and clink at the joints.

And there was a human man carrying a child on his shoulders. He looked weary, war-torn. A veteran home from the fronts.

All capable of destruction. And creation.

The nun looked at her hands. So recently they had been covered in blood. For a simple deal.

“Arathor, Alterac, Lordaeron…” Nerit muttered and lowered her hands to her sides.

The question was how to dig through ashes, dust and dirt to find what once was.