![](http://cobalt-company.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/writing:2024-04-30-the-end-of-sacrifice-the-shattering/style="margin:/medium.jpg) |
| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | On the day of the Shattering, Isla and Finley are in Stormwind. The way the story should go is that everyone survives; that is not the way the story goes. 5k~ words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
All of her life in Stormwind, Isla has felt safe within the city.
Is it the walls? The buildings, large fortresses in every cardinal direction? The stone itself, grayer and darker than Lordaeron’s own brighter and lighter stone, seems like it would stand the test of time. Or is it just that this city is the one Isla has never known real, deep fear within? In the stories, there’s always a safe haven, somewhere that stands true and fast for all time, and she knows it can’t be Lordaeron. Stormwind survived in the end. It’s the hero of the cities.
The turmoil of the rest of the world, the tension at House Fallon that has been growing day by day since the baby was born, has all melted away within Stormwind’s city walls. The afternoon sun shines like a mother’s smile and benediction over the cobblestones, the breeze from the harbor fresh and pleasantly sharp this close to the townhouse. They’ve been shopping down at the harbor, picking up some of the new wares of the merchants stuck in port for longer than expected. Everyone is happy, and just like Avrenne promised, everyone is safe here in the city.
Isla’s mood is high, a bouncing inside her that leaps upward, as she swings her shopping bags at her side in time with her step. The paper of the bags makes fun swishing sounds with each swing, the boxes inside shifting around a little each time. Finley has already complained twice about her hitting him with the bags (as if he bruises like a peach or something! He’s not fragile!), and said she’ll throw one accidentally because she isn’t holding onto it tightly enough, but what does he know? She can hold onto things just as tightly as he can! Besides, even if she did drop it – and she might – nothing inside was breakable! And if it can’t break, then it doesn’t matter if it sometimes falls, because it won’t be broken, just maybe a little damaged.
Avrenne wouldn’t be mad. She wasn’t ever mad before either, but maybe it isn’t only anger that Isla worries about. Avrenne used to get a look in her eyes when Isla would break something, or damage it, like Avrenne could see the money it would cost floating above the object, a ghost she would have to pay to exercise. Isla hated that look, hated putting it on Avrenne’s face. Since getting married to Siamus, Isla hasn’t seen it on Avrenne’s face at all. She knows that the floating numbers are probably still there, they just no longer mean anything to Avrenne, the cost is just a note to be made. Isla is careful – she is – but it was a relief to no longer feel like any second she could do something wrong that Avrenne would have to bear the burden of, and sacrifice something for Isla.
There had been enough of that already.
It isn’t a good story. Isla hates that ending, hates everything about it.
Sir Somer is a warm, comforting presence behind the duo, there to ensure nothing bad happens with any of the weird people on the streets. Isla had been so excited to see them for the first time, because it was so interesting! What in the world were they up to, why were they there, what exactly were they saying? But it did not take long for the shine to go out of the experience. They were saying terrible things were inevitable, that darkness was the only safety, and there is relief in giving up.
What a load of shit. (Raised by sailors! Whew. Sintha was right, that really does work.)
Not once in all of Isla’s sixteen years of life has giving up ever solved anything, and not once has darkness been the answer or safe place. Darkness was what covered them when the Scourge found them hiding, where they didn’t see them coming until it was too late. It was Avrenne, a fiery beacon of light in the darkness, that held them back because she refused to give up.
Isla wants to be like that. She wants to be someone who can shine bright enough, and never gives up, and never lets the darkness close in.
She just doesn’t want to sacrifice everything to be that.
There is a loud buzzing murmur, the way a crowd sounds just before the curtains come up on a stage of a poorly reviewed play, people curious and not sure yet if they should be excited. Which makes Isla curious, and she turns her head to get a better look at where the sound is coming from behind them. “What is that?” she asks, and she almost loses her balance to the movement, but she doesn’t.
In the Stormwind Harbor, from their vantage point approaching the steps that lead up towards the townhouse, she can see a strange stillness. Usually people are always moving in the Harbor, zig zags and scurrying, but they’ve stopped.
“Something’s wrong,” Finley says, because he always thinks that, always assumes the worst, and puts a hand on Isla’s shoulder to either hold her back, or prepare to shove her behind him. She squirms out from under it. She doesn’t want to miss what’s going on and Finley is so much larger than she is. If he gets in front of her, he will block her from it all.
Isla is too busy looking at the people. She doesn’t see it, until Sir Somer shouts.
“Tidal wave!”
Finley grabs Isla in a hard grip, his fingers digging into her, and she looks up at him to see that he’s gone white with the slightly reddened hues of his cheeks now standing out in stark colors. She barely has time to glance at the ocean – where did it go? It isn’t in the harbor at all, the boats stranded on solid ground – before she is yanked back.
“Finley, get Isla out of the City! I’ll warn the others!” Sir Somer’s voice is a battle shout, and Finley’s grip shifts to Isla’s hand.
The bags filled with their shopping drop to the ground. A box tumbles free, and lands on its side.
“If you – “ Finley starts, and he’s looking at Sir Somer with wide eyes, his jaw clenched.
“I have to. Sophie is there,” Sir Somer says. He meets Isla’s eyes and there’s something wrong with his face, something that she hasn’t seen in a long time but she knows she has seen before, and he smiles like it hurts him to make the expression. He nods to Finley a second later, claps a hand on his shoulder. “Keep the children safe!”
Keep the children safe!
The words echo in Isla’s head, in Sir Somer’s voice and Avrenne’s voice, and Isla is eight-years-old on a hill in the darkness about to watch Avrenne set herself on fire, and she is sixteen-years-old in the sunlight about to run with Finley and she knows – she knows – before it even starts, before Finley drags her along, that Sir Somer isn’t going to make it back. He is going to die, and he knows he’s going to die, and he has set his burden that Avrenne charged him with onto Finley.
“No!” Isla shouts. She tries to fight against Finley’s pull out of the Harbor, to follow Sir Somer to the townhouse. “No, we can’t! Lee! We can’t!” Everyone in the townhouse, they can’t be dead soon. They can’t just give up. There has to be enough time to save everyone. That is a better story. That’s the right story.
“We have to run, Isla! There isn’t time!” Finely won’t give in. He’s so much bigger than her, and she can’t win against this. “If we go back, we’re dead, too! What are you going to even do, Isla? Do you want to die? Just for once do what I tell you to!” She stops pulling back against him, and lets him yank her forward.
Isla cries as they run. She doesn’t know what to do. What can she even do against a tidal wave? Finley is right. She doesn’t have that kind of power, and she doesn’t want to die.
So she runs.
There are screams behind them, and Isla looks back. There is a wall of water coming towards them, unlike anything Isla has ever seen before, and she can’t even think of a metaphor for it, the way it moves, the way it defies every wave she has ever seen before.
She’s only a minnow.
It’s the only thought that she can think as the wave hits the harbor. The screaming is louder now, and the sound of water hitting first the wood then the stone is like rain on the roof of their old home. There is no warm scent of hot chocolate, and no reassuring hum of Sophie at her needlework. This isn’t that story, where it is only rain she hears, curled up in a favorite chair with a book listening to the weather outside that can’t hurt her.
The stairs feel endless, and Isla runs up them, her legs straining and aching, pulled by Finley. When she misses the timing of a step, and trips, it’s Finley who holds onto her, who grabs her arm as she feels something pop in her wrist. He shouts at her. She can’t even hear what he says through the noise. Everything is rain on the roof around them, the smell of saltwater and the feeling of cool air rushing in to chill where the sun had warmed her back just a few minutes ago.
She feels water on her, drops of seawater rain, cool touches of kisses from the sea.
Then she is in the water: it’s in every direction, it’s pulling, it’s pushing. Finley’s hand squeezes her fingers so hard she wonders if they break. They are swept against the stone, crushed, pulled, pushed. Water closes over her head and Isla struggles.
Now, remember, you’re not fighting the water, darling, nor do you want to hit out at her. The sea loves all her children and wants to hold them up.
It doesn’t feel like the sea loves her. It feels like she wants to kill Isla and Finley and everyone. But, Sintha knows things. She knows the sea, and Avrenne always says to trust the experts in their fields, and Sintha is a sea expert, isn’t she? Isla trusts in Sintha, and she doesn’t fight against the water, and she doesn’t fight against Finley.
Somehow, the sea loves her enough, and Isla gets her head above the water. She gulps in the air, takes in water with it, coughs and chokes, and Finley wraps his arms around her. He feels solid, steady, while Isla floats in the swirling currents. His feet must be touching the stone, and Isla clings to him like people do a raft in all the stories. She hadn’t realized how desperate it would feel, how hard it was to hold onto anything, how the water would be so cold, and how her arms would be shaking, her hands refusing the orders to close tightly enough.
Then the water recedes, and it feels like maybe the sea does love Isla, or at least it wants to possess her, because it tries to take her with it, but Finley holds fast, one arm wrapped around her, his other hand gripping onto the unyielding Stormwind rock of a lion statue they have been thrown against.
For a few seconds, Isla can’t get her bearings, even when her feet touch the ground. Nothing feels real.
She looks behind her, back at the Harbor, and it’s all wrong. All of it. Docks destroyed. Ships destroyed. Where are the people? There were so many people. Where are her bags? They’re gone. Everything is gone. She turns her head to look for the townhouse, and Finley grabs her face with a hand that is bleeding.
“No, no, Isla. Don’t. Don’t.”
She’s so cold. She’s shaking, and she wants to throw up the seawater and she wants to run and she wants to go back in time and rewrite this all.
The afternoon sun is shining like a mother’s smile and benediction, and she is holding onto Finley’s hand, and everyone else is there, too, and they are all out, and no one is in the townhouse, they are in the Harbor and they see the signs of the tidal wave sooner than anyone. They shout for everyone to run, and everyone does, everyone gets up the stairs, and everyone is safe, and the townhouse is just out of reach of the crashing waves. No one dies. No one loses anything. Even her shopping bags are safe.
“Isla! Come on, we have to get – “
There’s something wrong with the air, the pressure of it. A huge gust comes barreling at them, and blows even Isla’s soaking dress around her, as a shadow grows. Someone is beating a drum.
Finley looks up, so Isla looks up.
Above them, like out of a fairytale, is a dragon. A real, actual dragon, black and soaring on shredded wings, fire trailing with it, and that is the drum that beats, as the wings flap. It opens its mouth to spout out fire unlike anything Isla has ever seen before. This is what the stories call an inferno, and Isla screams. It’s like an echo when another joins in and then another and another. The city is screaming with her.
Finley’s bleeding hand grabs her own, and he runs. Isla trips, crashes into him, and he says a word that Avrenne would never approve of him using, but she isn’t here to hear it, she isn’t here to save them this time. He steadies Isla, and they run together.
They know the city. Finley knows it even better than Isla. They run down the alleys, they run over the canal. Isla can’t keep up to Finley’s pace, her wet skirts tangling around her legs like grasping arms shooting up from the cobblestones just to hold her back.
“Sir Somer! Your knife, I need your knife!”
Avrenne cut her dress off her legs. She cut into her leg, and she was bleeding on and on after.
Isla doesn’t want to cut her leg. She doesn’t know how to cut the dress off her. She doesn’t want to repeat that story, to write another version of it.
So she tries to just run.
Her lungs are burning, her body is burning, she is cold and she is on fire inside – is this what Avrenne feels all the time, is it what she felt that day? All around them the city is in chaos, people running, they are in a crowd, then they are out of it as Finley takes another route into a side street.
The dragon roars again and Isla hears laughter in it, twisted and dark and terrifying. She loses her balance; she can’t keep it with that sound echoing in the narrow alley around them.
She looks up, because she doesn’t know if the dragon is there, and instead she sees the dark and sturdy and forever standing stones of the fortresses of Stormwind breaking into pieces.
The stones above them fall to the stones beneath them, and it is not crashing; it is applause. As each stone falls to the cobblestone it is like a clap of hands, and this is the audience giving a standing ovation all around her. It is the theater last night, with Isla clapping her hands together until they burn, and the sound has followed her, like it was trapped inside her and now has been unleashed.
She’s aware when Finley calls her name. She hears it, even over the stunning applause, but she doesn’t have anything to say. How do you speak in front of this? How do words capture enough in this moment, struck by the realization that a dragon is laughing and death is cheering for you?
Finley’s body slams into hers, a sound lost in the rest of the noise, and the world goes dark for Isla, shadowed and shaded inside Finley’s shelter, and when they are both driven to the ground, it’s like being caught in a wave and shoved beneath it into the tumbling dark. She doesn’t know which way is up, or down, because there is something below her and something above her and she’s nothing but something held there, suspended. She doesn’t fight against Finley, because she wants them both to resurface, and she can’t think if this is like the ocean before or not.
The applause ends, the roar of the dragon rings out again with that laughter, that wrong and twisted laughter, and Isla huddles against Finley. He is her bearings – he is warm and softly solid, and not the hard cold of the stones under her body. It’s darkness all around, and she can’t see beyond Finley’s chest. She feels like she might suffocate here, but she holds her breath instead, because Finley is, and he must be trying to hide them.
Don’t notice us, don’t look here, don’t kill us, please. The story goes like this: the dragon flies overhead and it doesn’t see them under this stone, and it doesn’t notice them, and it lands in the city streets, and then Cobalt Company comes and they fight it off. Cressidha Aspenwood herself summons a mighty blizzard and extinguishes the fires, and everyone is okay.
The dragon doesn’t keep roaring. The flames of the fire aren’t growing, coming for them. There is no more clapping. Isla breathes out, shaky and trembling. The quiet goes on and on. Maybe a hero killed the dragon. Maybe Cobalt Company has done it again. It might be safe.
“Lee.”
There is no response. Finley has always been cautious, sometimes to the point of being ridiculous.
“Lee? I think it’s okay now. I think it’s okay,” she tells him. She pushes at him, trying to get herself more space to breathe. He says nothing, and she pushes harder, fights against him. “Come on, Lee, we have to go. We have to tell Avrenne what’s happened. It’s probably safe now.” Isla’s breaths are gasps, and her voice sounds smaller, tiny here in the endless dark.
And then she hears it.
That is, she hears what isn’t there, she hears what’s missing: there are no matching sounds of Finley’s breathing.
There are shouts again in the streets, but not the ones of before. This isn’t pure terror. These are the screams of people who are hurting, and people who are calling for help.
Something warm trickles down onto the top of her head, onto her hair, soaks in with the seawater.
“Lee,” Isla begs, and she doesn’t know what she’s trying to do now. He isn’t breathing. It's only her breathing here in the dark. She knows what that means. She knows.
You must never touch the dead, Isla! They spread a taint, a disease. If you touch one, you will be tainted, you will be diseased, and you will die, too.
It was the plague. Isla knows that, she does, at sixteen. But Avrenne’s words echo forever inside her head, because she knows she did it. She lied. She had touched the dead, touched Otto’s mom, and she didn’t tell Avrenne, and Isla has carried that mark since, a brand under her skin.
Here at last it has come to call, like a curse so slow in building she never saw it. Only it wasn’t Isla who paid that price. It’s never Isla who pays it. It’s always someone else. Isla's mom. Otto’s mom. Avrenne. Finley.
Isla can’t do it, pay that price, be that sacrifice. She never can, she never wants to. She hates that story. She hates the one she’s in. She hates Finley for writing this story.
For the first time in her life, Isla understands those doomsayers, here in the darkness, and what relief it would be to just give up. She’s lost so much. She doesn’t even know if the others are alive. Avrenne might be dead. Siamus might be dead. Everyone she has ever known, dead. It could be only Isla that is left. Does she even want to live if it will mean she is the only one still alive, if everyone and everything she has ever loved is gone?
Don’t be stupid, Isla.
Finley’s voice, and Isla sobs even as rage fills her. She isn’t being stupid, Lee! This is serious, she is despairing, because everyone is dead!
You don’t know that. Stop being a know-it-all, call for help, get up, and get out. You can’t save me. You can save yourself.
The rage is a beating in her chest, and she screams out against Finley because how dare he, how dare he say she can’t save him. He’s the one that did this, made the choice. She didn’t get any say in it. And now she's just supposed to do what he says?
She doesn't want to die here.
She wants someone to save her.
She fights against his body, cold and still over her, and she yells, “Help! Help! Help!”
“There’s someone o’er here!” It’s a dwarven voice, low and somewhere above her. “Hang on, lass! We’ll get ye out! No, not tha’ one, this one ‘ere, lift up, and hooooo!”
Some of the pressure around Isla lifts, and she kicks Finley in the shin, because he deserves it.
“An’ here! Hang on, lass, we’re comin’!”
More pressure lifts, and Isla can hear the shifting of the rocks, of the stones, and how limp Finley’s body is. She screams again, and she cannot ever remember being this angry. It’s like a rage that will choke her, it will destroy her. How does anyone hold onto rage like this?
“Oh, lad,” the dwarf says.
“He dead?” That’s a human, someone from Stormwind.
“Aye.”
How dare they. How dare they write those words into existence; how dare they make it real.
“I’m no’ enough o’ a paladin yet, I can’t – I’ll get someone. There might still be time.”
The light of the day fills her vision as someone tries to roll Finley away, and Isla holds onto him. “Don’t touch him!” She doesn’t care if he’s dead, she doesn’t care if it taints her. They can’t take him from her. “Get away from him!”
“Alright, alright. Light’s sake,” the other person mutters, and Isla hears the crunching of rock as he backs away.
She pushes Finley over, and looks at him.
He died with his eyes open.
There is blood all over his face, down his neck, and there’s something wrong with his head, something that tells her she does not want to see the back of it. The dust of the stone has covered him so that he looks gray, like a Forsaken, and Isla pounds her hands down on his chest, over and over.
“How dare you! How dare you!” Isla can’t breathe. She’s going to die here with him because she can’t breathe, and she is burning up in rage.
This is all wrong.
This is all the wrong story.
It’s not this.
It’s this: it's a warm, sunny spring day. The sun is beaming down on them all, a mother’s smile and benediction, and Avrenne is there with them. Siamus is with her. Everyone is there in the Harbor together. When the wave starts, Siamus sees it first, and he shouts for everyone to get to safety. Everyone does. Everyone lives.
The dragon comes, and Avrenne knows exactly where to go. She calculates out the route, and everyone moves together. The whole city comes with them, everyone runs together, and some heroes come and they fight the dragon. The dragon dies, and it doesn’t knock everything down, and everyone lives.
Everyone lives.
Everyone lives.
Finley lives.
Isla pounds it into Finley over and over. He lives. That’s how the story goes! That’s how it goes, because Isla will make it go that way, and he doesn’t get a say in the matter. How does he like it when she makes that decision for him! Just this once, he does what she says. She’s ending sacrifice! That’s final!
Beneath her hands, burning, there’s something happening she doesn't – she can't– understand. The sun is shining under her fingers.
Finley gasps. He tries to push forward, blinking and hands grasping. “Is – la.” His voice is a thready strain.
Isla screams and slaps him.
Finley says another word that he isn’t allowed to say. “What the hell, Isla,” he says, and it’s him. It’s actually Finley. It isn’t a risen zombie. It isn’t a voice in her head. It’s Finley.
Isla throws herself onto him. He makes a horrible sound of pain, but he doesn’t try to push her away, he holds onto her instead. “Isla. You’re okay? Isla? You’re okay?”
She can only sob, because what if she says a word and the story changes again? She doesn’t know how she’s in this one, how she’s rewritten the ending, and she doesn’t know how to stay in it. Finley closes a hand over her head.
“Oh, shit, you’re bleeding. Isla, get up, we have to get you a healer.”
“It’s yours, stupid! You bled on me because you died on me because you’re dead in the other story! You’re dead! How can you do that to me, Lee?” So much for not saying a word.
“I – what? You’re not making any sense, Isla. Calm down.”
“You calm down!”
“I’m calm! You’re the one talking nonsense!”
“I am not! I was here! You died and I had to know it and you sacrificed yourself for me and you’re not allowed to do that, Lee! You’re not allowed! I say no!”
“So, it seems he’s no’ as dead as advertised,” says a dry, gravelly voice.
Isla freezes, and snaps her head around to see who is there. Two dwarves stand nearby the pile of rubble of the city, one in the robes of a priest of the Light, and the other in armor. The priest looks very old, and the armored one is probably young, black hair and dark eyes.
It’s the priest who moves forward, hand reaching out. “It’s good yer alive, lad, but let’s try ta keep ye tha’ way, aye?” The Light glows around his hand, and Finley takes in a deeper breath under Isla.
She’s suddenly very aware that she is on top of him, and she scrambles backwards.
“He was dead afore. I’m sure o’ it,” the other dwarf says, and it’s the one who answered her call.
Finley pales under the dust, puts a hand at his head as he sits up. “No, I – what do you mean I was dead?”
The older priest crouches down next to Finley. “Well, ye were, an’ now yer not. Feels like ye were Light touched, ta me.”
Isla doesn’t say anything.
She can’t tell them that she rewrote the story and the sun shone up from her fingers like a mother’s smile. That sounds like something a crazy person would say.
“Up ye go. We dinna want tae stay here, with the buildings as they are. Unstable. Come on, up.” The priest puts a hand under Finley’s arm and lifts. It isn’t even remotely helpful, because Finley is almost twice the height of the dwarf.
Isla giggles and slaps a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, sorry, I’m not – I.” She’s so embarrassed she hopes that the ground just gives out from under her and swallows her up. Maybe the dragon will come back and eat her. Anything.
“It’s alright, lass. It’s th’ shock. Do ye have somewhere ye can go?” The armored not-much-of-a-paladin asks. He sounds nice.
Finley nods, winces, and nods slower. “Yeah, yeah. We…we need to get out of the city. What happened with the dragon? There was a dragon.”
“Left. Came in, made some noise, an’ then jus’ up an’ left like he remembered he left th’ stove on back at home,” the not-paladin answers.
The priest just grunts, and brushes at his robes. “Out. Ye can babble along when yer no’ standing under a bunch o’ unstable death traps.”
Finley rises fully to a stand, stooping, and Isla gets to her feet awkwardly, and almost falls immediately back down as the rocks shift under her feet. Finley gets her hands as they flail in the air, and holds onto her, steadying her.
It’s really him.
It’s really Finley when they walk out of the alley, and it’s still Finley when the sun starts to set around them in the city, the shadows darkening all around broken buildings, and it’s still Finley when he guides them both out of the city.
“We’ll get horses in Goldshire, if it’s still…intact. We need to tell Avrenne and the Vice Admiral what’s happened,” Finley tells her. They’re both soaked in water, covered in dust and blood, and they’re both alive.
The sun is sinking down, a mother’s softening lullaby goodnight and gentle kiss before the darkness comes, and the people in the Harbor didn’t get out in time. The townhouse and all the people inside it didn’t survive. Finley died for Isla. But somehow, the Light brought him back. Somehow, just this once, Isla rewrote a part of the story and it came true.
She just doesn’t know how to rewrite the rest of it as the darkness falls, and they leave Stormwind, the last city that was ever safe and isn’t anymore, behind them.