Sinobel's blog

Continued from Building a Mystery, part 2.

The recent past.

Sinobel laboriously swam through the darkness, as she had for…as long as she could currently remember.  Weights seemed to dangle from her arms and legs; but she continued to struggle, not knowing which way was up or which way was down.  She had picked a direction what felt like years ago and was going with it, sluggishly but with determination.

A distant, murky glimmer caught her attention.  She puzzled at it, but her body angled toward it involuntary, like a flower toward the sun.  The closer she got, the more she began to feel herself, feel the confines of a physical body, and remember…but she was so heavy, so very heavy…it would be so much easier to sink away into oblivion…

Continued from Building a Mystery, part 1.

Time passed differently in the mysterious deserts of Uldum.  A second seemed like hours, and hours dragged on like days.

Sinobel mused as to how long she’d been a ‘guest’ here, busying herself by the fire deep in the depths of the cave.  Her desert-dwelling captors - Wastewanders, by the look of them - ambled about, seemingly at ease; but she knew they were keeping a watchful eye on her every move.  She snorted.  They had been holding her here and testing her skills and abilities, and all because she'd been using some sacred oil?  It just didn't make sense.

Sinobel hummed to herself absently, looking at her reflection in the waters which kissed the port town of Mar'at. 'My hair's grown long, and I hadn't even noticed' she mused as she ran her fingers through the strawberry locks, the dark blonde tinted as it was with henna.  She stared at herself, at her hair.  The reddish tones marked her connection to those myseterious desert folk who had changed her life so very much over these last few weeks.  She didn't look like the same person she used to be, and gods knew she didn't feel like it. 

She was starting to like herself and her life again.

It all started with that intoxicatingly pleasant oil from the Mar'at bazaar.

...

She should have suspected it was a gateway to the unknown and thus TROUBLE, when she asked the merchant about the ingredients.

"A base of equal parts olive and almond oils, with...primarily the essences of bergamot and vetiver."

Sinobel glanced askance at the interpreter.  The streets of Mar'at were crawling with them now that the Ramkahen had opened their cities to outside trade and commerce.  They attracted so much business, and those who could translate the language of the Tol'vir who hadn't yet learned to converse was most lucrative.

He nodded plesantly at her, waiting.

"Primarily?" she asked in clarification.  The merchant, grinning, growed something at the translator.  "Yes, he says the other ingredients are...inconsequential."

Sinobel’s life seemed fairly simple lately. 

She was employed and didn’t really have to do anything to keep her position except be mildly entertaining and pretty. 

She was in love, and her lover was back and more "present" than he had been in what seemed like years.  She and her beloved had the shared opinion that nothing else was interesting, nothing else really mattered, nothing else around them felt like it was evolving - except each other.

However, very recently, her life had been anything but simple.

She still awoke in cold sweats over it, and he held her, knowing all too well without words what tendrils worked their way through her imagination, her soul.

But did he, really?  Perhaps most of it.  But, not all of it.  He couldn’t.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There he was.

"Alainthal…"

She said the name with an almost religious reverence, her voice slightly metallic in its raspy fervor.  He was as beautiful as she remembered, with his blood red hair and ebon leathers in stark contrast to pale skin inset with eyes like dark emeralds afire with passion, and the expanse of white snow which surrounded them on all sides.  He looked none the worse for wear for his travels, she noted: perhaps a bit rigid, a bit haggard, a bit lean; nothing they couldn't fix in time.  Tears welled in her eyes, leaving icy stains down her face.

He just stared at her, his face an impenetrable mask.

"Sinobel."  He seemed oddly unsurprised at her sudden reappearance in his life.  "I told you not to follow me."

High Arcanist Theledra of the Blue Dragonflight paced back and forth in her quarters of The Spellweaver’s Victory, otherwise known as the ‘Nexus’ to outsiders – those she derisively dubbed “barbaric interlopers”.  What crudely straightforward terminology they used.  ‘Such lack of vision’ she thought, sneering, as she gazed idly through frostglass windows to the snowscape below.  Her ebon locks, held back from her face with a glinting coil of mithril, shimmered like oil down her back.  The lean form beneath her robes was taut with agitation.  She needed information, and she needed it now!

At last, a curt knock at her door relieved her tension.  “Come” she instructed the visitor, her tone cool and collected.

A human male covered from head to toe in midnight leathers entered, quickly kneeling down on one knee, head bowed to the arcanist respectfully.  “Report” she barked. 

Her journey had taken her across Northrend and into dangerous territory.  Her health had deteriorated as she focused single-mindedly on her goal - to locate Alainthal Starwhisper.  Apparently he had returned to Azeroth, and she made haste to follow.

In an isolated area of the Storm Peaks she met one last burst of resistance.  A magical storm had raged, preventing her departure, as waves of blue dragonflight operatives attacked.  A band of goblin pirates fought at her side, eventually turning the tide; though the Blues' left Sinobel a far more sinister parting gift. 

Her world had become a blur of blues.

Her days had become azure skies and the glare of reflected snow.  Her nights, midnight and cobalt.  Her dreams haunted her with the memory of cerulean and indigo eyes, and her waking thoughts were the blues of swirling Dragonflight mage cloaks, the wings of blue dragons, the ice blue of the Oculus and Nexus. 

She had tracked.  She had killed.  She had questioned.  She had gained in confidence seemingly in contrast to the weight she lost.  She was gaunt and hungry, too focused to eat, hardly sleeping.

And it was cold.  She was so very, very cold.

SUMMER

The summer sun beat punishingly down upon Dustwallow Marsh, trapping the moisture between ground and canopy in a stifling vacuum of humidity.  Though the sweat rolled down her back, Sinobel Alayna was happy to be on patrol.  It suited her talents, and at least she didn't have to wear the platemail of Her Lady's Elven Guard. 

REGRET

“So, Seraph, are you ever going to show me what your little apprentice can do?”

“As my Baroness wishes, of course” he replied with a gracefully sketched bow.  He turned, smirking faintly, to Sinobel.  “Alright, Sinobel, prepare yourself” he said lightly, with a hint of threat.

“…huh?”  She had only been half paying attention to the conversation, what was he…WHOA!  She dodged his sudden attack, throwing herself to the ground and rolling up into a defensive stance.

SNOW

She veered off the main road to take the smaller path up the mountain which led toward the enemy’s starting encampment.  Vanishing to avoid being caught, she padded silent and unseen through the snow, blades drawn.  She felt oddly removed, the din of battle seeming distant from up here.  Making a few calculated sharp turns through the undergrowth, the Irondeep mine soon appeared in front of her.  She wondered if she’d see him again, as it seemed to have become an unspoken game they played: who could capture the mine first?  She made her way through the shadowy tunnels as quickly as she could, ignoring the miners and surveyors.  At last her prize, the largest trogg she’d ever seen, came within her view.  She made ready to spring; like clockwork, the trogg was cut down by a pair of glowing Merciless Gladiator’s Slicers which seemed to come from nowhere.  “Too slow, little girl” he smirked.

POISON

Sinobel slammed the door to her apartment behind her and glowered.

Silvermoon's little Bishop was insane.  Well, maybe not crazy, but certainly not the cool-headed leader of souls she portrayed herself as.

The woman made no sense.  She never really had, but without her Seraph here to buffer the experience, she was intolerable.  As Sinobel had told Maras in a bloom of irritation when she "stumbled" upon him post-conversation, "She's a woman ruled by emotions who pretends to have a mastery of logic."

Aelberyn felt threatened by her, that's what this came down to.  None of her flowery-stated reasons or professed hurt feelings made any sense otherwise.  Sinobel smirked.  Apparently without the Seraph here to buffer the Baroness's experience of Sinobel, the sentiment Aelberyn endured was similar enough to her own.

Sinobel tried to wind down in her Venomspite apartment, but she was too on edge.  Her dreams had been shadowy and disturbing.  She felt unrested and unsure of so many things.  So instead she paced, back and forth, hands wrapped around her daggers, drawn for no purpose other than to keep her personal demons at bay. 

After the Hallow’s End costume party a few days ago, when Sinobel had handed the Seraph’s private missive to Aelberyn, pointing out that she didn’t care what it said enough to break into it and read it…

Ugh.

Sinobel's mind was blissfully empty as they kissed; deep, breath-stealing kisses, and an embrace that was tight enough to thwart death itself.

Or was it?

A figure appeared, her face hidden beneath a grey cowl.  Iron-colored angel wings rose high from her shoulders, brushing the ceiling and blocking the light so that she was oddly backlit, casting her visage in macabre shadows.  She was petite but obviously feminine, her grey-and-midnight robes obscuring and yet accentuating her curves.

The lovers paused, and all parties regarded each other.  Then the cowled head nodded slightly and the figure waved her hand, as if bidding them continue.  Once again, Sinobel lost herself in the arms of her lover.

Sinobel reflected on the wedding she had recently participated in, that of the Baroness Aelberyn Bloodsword and the Lord Maras Bloodsword, Knight-Champion of House Akh'Argar.  It had been a beautiful and moving affair.  To tell the truth however, Sinobel had secretly wished no part in it.  Not because she wished the Lady Aelberyn ill on her wedding day or with her new husband...but because it wasn't in her nature to stand, unarmed, in the open, a focal point for possible danger.  She was used to prowling the shadows and guarding covertly.  Only Alainthal's steadying gaze upon her during the ceremony had kept her from vanishing into a cloud of obscuring mist and clambering up to some hidden perch from which to watch the rest of it.

The last thing anyone wants is to not feel useful.

Thus, Sinobel was beginning to feel quite upset at her apparent uselessness.

She had been trying to conceive for quite some time, but it just wasn't happening.

Now - this was not to say that Sinobel felt a woman's worth was indelibly tied to her ability to procrate.  Far from it.  She grew weary of the pampered mewlings of Silvermoon's "kept wives"...women who idled away their days with pointless pursuits and who protested their worth far too much; apparently, their having been bedded and having pushed a newborn from their loins automatically elevated them to a higher level of esteem and maturity in their own minds.

But.  House Starwhisper was a dying House, and there was good reason for Sinobel's title "Hope of Starwhisper."  And yet, she was not fulfilling that title, and she was beginning to suspect that part of her Lord's recent apathy related to this.

Sinobel's brow furrowed despite herself.  Aelberyn's questions had caused her mind to obsess since she'd asked them a few nights ago.  Though filmed-over with a layer of apathy, she and Alainthal's lives had been pleasant and fairly drama-free since the events in Coldarra...since the events that had ruptured their relationship, the damage of which Sinobel had been repairing with her quiet tenacity ever since.

Sinobel sighed, and snuggled deeper into the furs which covered her chair in her private Venomspite apartment.  The soft warmth did little to assuage the constant cold she felt deep inside her, body and soul, since her and Alainthal's return to the land of the living. 

She chuckled despite herself - funny she should call it that, when here she was, the only flesh-and-blood inhabitant of a Forsaken town in the middle of the Dragonblight. 

But the chill of Northrend was not the cold which haunted her, and the Forsaken in their current state were more alive than she had felt until very recently.

Her eyes lidded and her thoughts wandered as she stared out the window, through the blue-white gnarled Dragonblight trees she favored, and into the bleak scenery of a darkening Dragonblight sunset...

Sinobel stood by the shore and frowned. 

“This is ridiculous” she muttered aloud.

She kicked a stone out from underfoot.  It vanished with a satisfyingly loud splash and disappeared from view.  If only all of her problems were so easily solved.

She imagined a platinum blond head sinking beneath the surface of the placid waters off Eversong.  She smirked, then winced.  That’s not what she truly wanted.  She just wanted things to go back the way they had been.  Back before he started going to …Fancy Cakes.

The name.  Ridiculous.  Sinobel knew one way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but…really?  Fancy Cakes?!? 

“Ignorance is no excuse for failure.”

Sinobel’s delicate lips curled into a snarl as she parried the blow, the weight of his swords oppressive against her slim daggers.

“What’s that?” he chided.  “Not ignorance? I see…your movements are inherently lethargic, your form sloppy?  Did I not teach you anything?”

She exhaled slowly, concentrating on the sweat trickling down her temple instead of the ire rising in her blood.  He was goading her, tempting her to lose focus and make a mistake.  She smirked faintly, recalling his command: ‘Do not fail me, even in your mind.’

She deftly disengaged from their melee and began slowly backing away, calmly holding his gaze, her blades relaxed but ready.  The moment she was far enough away from him…she vanished from sight.

'Husband…'

Sinobel rolled the word around in her mouth, whispering it aloud as she watched him use a small whetstone on the edge of his blades. The word was new, foreign; and yet oddly warming and, dare it be said, right.

His gaze momentarily flickered to her, emerald breaking through the crimson strands of his hair. His mouth quirked into a wry smile as he looked back down and continued with his task, saying nothing. Drinking him in a moment longer – the black leather setting off his pale skin, the sheen of the well-honed swords, all sinuous grace – Sinobel glided to the window. Dusk was falling over the city and the denizens of Silvermoon meandered about, affable and distracted with leisurely pursuits.

“Do you envy them their idle lives, my love?” he hissed in her ear, suddenly, silently behind her, one hand falling to the curve of her waist, the other stroking her cheek. His touch was both possessive and protective, a feeling she had grown to hunger for.