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| Details |
| Author: | Alli |
| Summary: | Erixa is not a water vindicator. She has been mostly keeping to the caves, providing what help she can in maintenance and healing. Today, she ventures out into the water with Florande as a companion, exploring the wonders and horrors of the deeps. ~2500 words |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Arc: Season 14
Erixa clings to a green shelf that might be some kind of sea fungus, suspended in the dim expanse of water that presses in from all sides. A dark cloud of hair floats in the currents around her head, marked by the occasional light blue of her drifting face tentacles. She wears her sword and its harness, but she has abandoned her armor today for ease of movement. In her small, navy-blue top and short tied skirt, she might seem almost like a beach-goer - if she were on top of the sea rather than under it.
A sudden current pushes the mass of water against her, and her tail twitches as she struggles to turn and look for what terrible predator of the depths has her in its sight. Then he lets out a low, exasperated sigh as a familiar sea lion comes more clearly into view.
“Florande,” She says, and little bubbles issue from her mouth with the words. She takes a kind of gasping watery breath, and says, “Don’t startle me. I was getting my bearings.”
Florande shimmers into elvish form and says, “Finally, you join me in the water! Tired of being towed from one cave to another? Or curious about Quel’dormir and the Ancient Nespirah?”
Erixa tentatively lets go of the green shelf and pushes towards the kaldorei woman. “Let’s say both. I thought my armor might hinder more than help, so I try this way. I am still not used to this… speaking, breathing, in the water.”
“It does take some getting used to,” Florande nods. “Even for me, when I’m not in my water form. But we have done so much by now, I am well-practiced. Come! I will show you all the things!”
Florande grabs Erixa’s hand without hesitation and moves through the water as smoothly as a fish. Erixa follows less gracefully, half-towed and propelling herself unsteadily with one hand and two legs. She’s clearly not a water vindicator by nature. It isn’t long before a massive shape looms out of the dark water, an enormous shelled creature, covered with spines and bioluminescence. Florande kicks herself to a stop close to the creature, and Erixa floats past her before grabbing hold of a nearby spine as an anchor point.
“This is Nespirah,” Florande says, with awe and reverence in her face. “The Ancient. I only wish I could take you into her flesh tunnels, but I think now she would probably eat you.”
“In another context, that sounds like a good time,” Erixa says, with an amused smile. She does not elaborate in the face of Florande’s puzzlement, but only continues with, “You’re saying she is… a monster now? A person-eater?”
Florande gasps and shakes her head. “No! Not monster. Never monster. She is a Wild God of Azeroth, very powerful. Born of Azeroth and tied to it, guarding it. She would not want to consume you - it is only her internal fluids, there to protect her. They will destroy anything in her body, now that we have broken her free from the naga magic. We know this because she spoke to us through a crab.”
“Through a crab,” Erixa repeats dryly, but there’s a spark of interest in her eyes. “So she is a being truly of Azeroth, not of the titans, or come through some portal or crashing ship?”
Florande nods, the force of it shifting her body up and down slightly in the water. “I do not know how she is related to Oacha’noa exactly, but I am only a little bear. I try to understand what I can.”
“Always a good policy,” Erixa says, tentatively letting go of the spine. She is not drawn into the Ancient’s reported ‘flesh tunnels’, nor is she pushed away. She hovers in the water, facing the young kaldorei woman.”Will Nespirah help us get to the surface? Back to Tol Barad?”
Florande blinks slowly. Right. Escape. The thing we want to happen. She may have briefly forgotten about this. “I do not think so. The naga wanted to use her for war, which would be…” there does not seem to be a Common word that is bad enough to describe what that would be. Florande just shivers, sending the tiniest ripples out through the water. “They were also harvesting her pearls, which I do not know what that is for. Maybe it is for them to get to the surface? Like the pearl prisons where they held our people. But anyway I think Niksi is right - there is so much here to learn, there is no rush to leave.”
“I am eager to get back to original mission, but…” Erixa shakes her head, disturbing the cloud of hair and tentacles. “I guess in a way it is nice? Seeing the deep secrets of a world. The bottom of the sea. The Ancient. It almost starts to feel like a world that is mine. That I am tied to, even if my people were not born here.”
Florande smiles, reaching out for both of Erixa’s hands. “Then come. See our deep secrets, our ruins beneath the sea.”
Erixa tries her best to help with kicking as Florande propels them both through the water, away from Nespirah and sliding past many different colorful corals, plants and patterned fish. They make their way to the algae-covered structures of the Quel’Dormir Gardens, a drowned place where stone figures of the ancient highborne preside over no one but fish and the occasional naga.
“This is… how old? Hundreds of years?” Erixa asks, as the druid tows her past columns half-fallen from age and exposure to salt water.
“Thousands,” Florande says, drifting down towards the sea floor. “Tens of thousands. Or at least one ten thousand. And even then, when the garden was new, it was a memorial. Now to some people that are no longer remembered.”
Erixa drifts down with her, hooves touching the sand and raising a little cloud of dust around her ankles. “Almost on the scale of Argus, then. A place the oldest of my people would call home, but to me it is nothing but a name.”
“Maybe we feel similar in that,” Florande says, looking around. “This place… it is my history. But the place itself, the statues, it means nothing in my heart. It is… Vashj’ir. Just a word, a word that means a place drowned thousands of years before I was born.”
“Like a world left thousands of years before I was born,” Erixa murmurs, reaching out to touch the slick surface of one the columns. “And both lost because of the Legion.”
“Because of…” Florande hesitates, then says, “Because people invited the Legion in.”
Erixa tenses, her expression hardening at the correction, but then she sighs, releasing a little stream of bubbles. “Yes. Because of the welcome, foolish as it was to give. Still, I think now the Legion will come to Azeroth again, whether invited or not. We must be ready.”
Florande curls her knees into her chest, a little ball of elf on the bottom of the sea. She is not ready for the Legion. She was not even ready for the Val’kyr. “Let’s go back. This is a good practice swim for you, and we have run into no naga or lantern-murlocs.”
“Lantern murlocs?” Erixa asks, and she sounds more intrigued than frightened. “That sounds adorable. But okay, we can return.”
Florande straightens her body, and then a little shimmer leaves her as a sea lion. She darts off into the gloom, leaving Erixa to follow more slowly behind. The sea lion doesn’t abandon her, though, returning to flip in circles around the less-skilled swimmer. It is perhaps more irritating than encouraging.
When they approach the waving yellow fronds that announce the cave’s entrance, Erixa looks up at the rocky crags above. “Have you explored up there? It is so close to cave, we should make sure there are no more dangers.”
Florande shakes her head, and shifts to propel herself upward, while Erixa paddles up behind. The two of them rise to another shelf, a sandy expanse covered with red coral and massive sea plants of red and green leaves. And then, with a gurgling cry, a drab-colored murloc with a bioluminescent fin, eyes and eyestalk attacks them with a spear.
Erixa struggles against the water to draw her sword, but Florande is faster. In less than the time it takes to draw a watery breath, the sea lion is a panther that attacks the murloc in something like a slow-motion pounce. The water buffets Erixa wildly as the panther slashes at the murloc with teeth and claws. The angler murloc has already fallen by the time Erixa has re-oriented herself for battle. The panther releases the murlocs body and shimmers back into elvish form, turning to see if her companion is unharmed.
“I’m going to need to get better at that,” Erixa says, holding her sword with both hands as Light shimmers over her form. The Light flashes briefly brighter before it fades, and it reflects on something half-buried in the sand below. “Wait… what is that? A shell?”
“Hm…” Florande inverts herself and dives towards the sand, digging her hands in around the unexpected object. It is metallic and oblong. “This is… a Niksi part?” Florande turns it this way and that. “A sonicationoil?”
“Sonic… coil, so it would be coily,” Erixa says, peering at the object. “Maybe not that, but it looks like something someone would use for a machine. Or well, it’s not a crystal, but Niksi and other Azeroth engineers do not use crystals, so…” Erixa’s eye catches on a crab scuttling away, something distinctly coily and metal in its claws. “Look, Flo, the crab has something!”
This time Erixa is not too slow. A hammer of righteousness comes down on the crab’s head, stunning it long enough for the draenei to pry the metal thing out of its claws. When it recovers, it scurries away, not willing to put up a fight for its prize. Erixa holds the metallic coil up as Florande tucks the first piece in her bag and drifts over.
“Something is written on it,” Erixa says, holding it close to her eyes. “…fiasco? What is a fiasco? Well, no matter, this one is coily. No idea if it is sonic or actuating, but maybe something Niksi can use.”
Florande nods, but her attention is already on something else, buried in the sand. “Look! There is more! Let’s collect all we can, and Niksi will sort it out later.”
The two of them continue on, picking up half a dozen of what appear to be engineering parts that are more or less whole. As Florande puts away the last, she hears the faint sound of weeping from beyond a dense stand of red coral. She swims upward, frowning, and Erixa follows. When they come up over the top of the coral, they see… an orc.
The green-skinned orc woman huddles by a bubbling air vent, and already-fading tracks spreading out in a starburst pattern from the vent give a testament of her efforts to find a way out with her limited breath. She’s unarmed, her dark hair is bound back and floating in a tail behind her, and her clothing is only rags that do little more than protect her modesty.
If the orc was the source of the weeping sound, there’s no sign of it from the moment she spots the night elf and the draenei. Her expression hardens, and she raises bare fists. Even with the aggressive posture, though, the hunger and weariness in her eyes is unmistakable.
Erixa’s lip curls in disgust. “Oh, look. An orc. Unarmed. Perhaps we can win the battle of Tol Barad fighting one by one.” She brings her sword around to bear, with a little grunt of annoyance at the resistance of the water.
Before she can move any closer, though, Florande darts in front of her. “Maybe we would have fought her, yes. If we both made it to our destination. But now she is a naga slave freed. We freed orcs and humans and whoever else, when we were inside Nespirah. We cannot kill her, helpless, while she flees enemies that are our enemies as well.”
“If places were switched, she would kill us without a second thought,” Erixa says, her voice hard with certainty. It softens as she explains, “I have seen it many times. You have not, young one.”
“So you want to act as she would?” Florande asks, clasping her hands together. “You want to be the same?”
Erixa’s jaw tenses, and she raises one hand away from her sword, as if she might strike Florande across the face. Instead she tilts her head back, looking up at the endless expanse of water above their heads. She breathes in once, the water swirling around her nose with the shamanic magic, and breathes out.
The orc woman looks on, fists still raised, but confusion in her eyes. Confusion, and maybe the beginnings of hope.
“I am sorry,” Florande says, kicking closer to place her hand on Erixa’s shoulders. The sword rests between them, really kind of a hazard even if Erixa wasn’t feeling violent right now, but Flo takes little notice of it. “I do not ask this to hurt you. Only to say… maybe I am not a good soldier. I want to learn. But I also think… we should be what we want people to be, not what they are.”
Erixa shakes her head. “It sounds like something Luu would say - her from her twenty thousand years of experience and you from your twenty. But part of being a soldier is knowing sometimes things are as they are, no matter how hard you wish it otherwise. I wish orcs were not as they are. So many I loved would still be alive. This particular orc was heading to Tol Barad, eager to kill us all. She is not magically now a friend, on the bottom of the sea.”
“No,” Florande admits, letting go of Erixa’s shoulders. “She is not a friend, and maybe she would kill me if given a chance. But she is unarmed and in need, and I want to be a person that matters to.” Florande opens her pack, shifting aside metal parts, and pulls out a spiralung shell. A snail crawls along one side of it. “I am not saying we take her with us, or let her see where our cave is. I will give her breath, and then we will leave.”
Erixa sighs. “Be careful. She may still be armed.” Just to be sure, she summons a shell of Light around Florande.
Florande smiles, and then kicks over to the orc woman. She holds out the shell, and the orc takes it. The orc holds it to her mouth and breathes deeply.
“Aka’magosh,” the orc gasps in her harsh language, and then she swims away, wasting no time in leaving behind these very armed, very dangerous hostiles.
Florande turns back to Erixa. “If she is on a battlefield later, I will not hesitate. Just… not like this. It is not the person I am.”
Erixa sighs, and then offers an uneasy smile, though she keeps her sword in hand. “If we meet her on a battlefield, you won’t have to. That is the kind of person I am. Now, maybe we circle a little and then go back to the cave? I think that was quite enough for a practice swim.”