(2022-09-14) The Silver Spirit

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Author:	Saaron
Summary:	Since the Aspenwood wedding, Azizia has been gathering a reputation as a vigilante, to her dismay. This is the story of how her alter ego's reputation grew.
Rating:	T for Teen

The rumors had started half a year ago, now.

One of these newcomers in Azeroth, a Draenei, had been spotted running on the waters of the canals, doing what even the city’s guards couldn’t. The stories were getting progressively more extravagant, with tales of fights against world-ending threats. The first people who began speaking about her called her the Silver Spirit, based on the color of her hair, and the way some say they’ve seen her turn into a ghost. The Draenei seemed to dislike this description, though, as soon, the Silver Spirit appeared with her hair covered by a mask hiding the upper half of her face and a new burgundy and grey leotard with matching knee-high socks.

Until recently, she was a rumor but said rumor grew, as they do. Even the stories of her past heroic deeds have grown stronger. Azizia hasn’t done many of them, truth be told. She hasn’t defeated a flying abomination passing over the city, or fought a team of highly trained assassins during a heist inside the royal palace, for example.

No, what she did was honor the deals she’d made with the elements of Stormwind, just because she wanted to outshine people at their wedding. All it took was some random people seeing her, and they began all the rumors. She had to hide her identity for her next missions because there was no way she would let anyone think she was some kind of night hero of Stormwind, protecting its citizens. No, she was just paying back her debts inside this city, and then no one would ever hear of the Silver Spirit again.

It all began the night after the wedding. As Azizia left the party on her own, the spirit that’d made her shine with crystallized water came to her in a hurry. “Someone is trying to poison me! You have to stop them!” and so she did. That was one less debt she had to repay to the spirits already, so it was a win in her book! Azizia ran on the water of Stormwind, still wearing her dress, looking for the Forsaken hiding in the night. After finding him, Azizia knocked him out and tied him up tightly in front of the prison for the guards to handle later. And as she stopped the forsaken, as she dragged him from a well to where she was leaving him, she crossed paths with a human, the one known as Ol’ Emma. The Draenei wondered what the old lady was doing in the middle of the night, and quickly learned she was doing as she always does: she was fetching water in the well, talking to herself. She saw the woman’s eyes, staring at her as Azizia finished tying up the Forsaken. Not really knowing what to say to the woman she considered odd, Azizia nodded, turned into a spirit wolf, and ran back home.

Azizia might have been spotted by other people – people suffering from insomnia and looking out their windows, or simply enjoying a night stroll, or even guests of the wedding leaving the party long after her – but the old woman blabbering on about a Forsaken and a silver-haired spirit as she paced through the city probably started the tales of the Silver Spirit, only fueled by the other potential witnesses.
The rumors grew once the earth spirit that made her bracelet came a few months later, asking for what it needed from their deal. Still worried about the stories about her, Azizia put on an outfit she bought on Draenor but would never normally wear with a mask that would hide her face, and she ran to the harbor’s construction site early in the morning. She jumped in front of workers and held her hands up above her head. She whispered in Draenei, then shouted at the workers to get away. The spirit had warned her of an incoming accident that would be caused by the excavation.

“The Silver Spirit!” whispered one of the workers.

“I am not—” Azizia turned around, letting go of the boulders for a second. Before making the situation worse, she refocused her energy on the rocks coming closer and closer to crushing her.

She gently spoke to the spirits, worked with them to place the rocks in a safer, more stable way. Once she was done, she spoke to the workers and instructed them on how and where to dig, based on the advice given by the spirits.
They thanked her for the help, before going back to their work. As she walked away, she heard praise again. Praise for the ‘Silver Spirit’, of course. She let out a huge, exasperated sigh, almost regretting helping these people and undoing it all.
It was the third element that truly added fuel to the fire.

The fire elemental noticed how much Azizia hated her growing notoriety as the Silver Spirit, and decided to have some fun with it. It told her that the only way she could pay back the ‘degrading’ favor of turning into an ankle bracelet’ was by stopping 10 criminals at night. As her vigilante alter ego, of course. If not, he would refuse to help her again, even working with other shamans against her. And so she obeyed.

Azizia truly tried to be as sneaky as she could. Fighting bandits in dark, isolated alleys, taking detours to avoid the most populated areas, she tried everything. To no avail, as there was always at least one person to notice her sneaking around or throwing a tied-up criminal towards the Stormwind’s prison. Sometimes said witness was even brought there by following a small, glowing, flying flame in the streets of Stormwind! With every passing night, the Silver Spirit’s reputation grew, to her dismay.

Hopefully, the air spirit was a lot kinder. It promised to only ask for a favor if an urgent, significant event were to happen to Stormwind. And for a few more months, nothing happened! Azizia even thought she’d never have to do anything for that air spirit! The talks of the Silver Spirit slowly died down, strangers asked Azizia if she was or knew the hero progressively less with each passing day.

Until a plague struck the city. Then, the spirit came to Azizia, panicking. The disease was poisoning the air, and it needed her to help others cleanse the city from this undead corruption. Azizia thought about going without her costume, but she believed the Silver Spirit was still too fresh in people’s memories. There was a risk that people would see this Draenei shaman with silver hair helping the city and associate her with the night vigilante, revealing it was Azizia all along… And to be completely honest, the Shaman would be lying if she said she didn’t like the anonymous attention at least a tiny bit. Just one last time couldn’t hurt, right?
She donned the costume once more. For a week, Azizia traveled the city as the Silver Spirit, fighting the undead, healing the sick, and purifying the air by working with all sorts of elemental spirits.

Once the plague died down, the air spirit came to thank Azizia, and, having paid back all her favors to the spirits of Stormwind, she could finally hang up the costume forever. She said goodbye to the Silver Spirit, and went out looking for a new outfit to celebrate the end of her mission.

But now, there was little to no denying the Silver Spirit’s existence. Too many people had seen her fighting for the safety of Stormwind’s citizens. The only mysteries that remained for some were if she was a real person or an actual spirit, and if the former was true, who was hiding behind that mask, protecting the city…