Chapter Text
Vereesa holds the torn metal back up to the light again, casts certainty over just how broken her armour really is. A single strike, but a well-aimed one, shattering mail and biting into the woman beneath, leaving no pity or mercy to the armour that has protected her for years.
And healers can mend skin, seal open wounds until the damage itself is little more than an afterthought, a half-trusted memory to be thrown aside, but broken armour lingers longer still. An inconvenience Vereesa hardly needs, not when plans are being strung without her, not when the armour itself becomes one more reason to bar her from the very patrols she orders her people out on.
“I don’t think this can be fixed.” She says finally, dropping the pile of broken chains onto her table. The sound it makes is awful, cruel and loud, and only makes her mood worse. It’s a petulant thing, a childish thing, and yet she can’t quite force herself not to.
But it’s enough to make Jaina jump, to look across the room from where she’d been sitting, writing a never-ending stream of letters. That’s new too, the hovering. They spend enough time together already most days, with meeting and plans, and yet Jaina still insists on finding excuse after excuse to stay by her side, her excuses ranging from almost subtle to beyond blatant. But Vereesa accepts them, every time. She’s never in quite so foul a mood to refuse the company.
“Can you not just get another?” Jaina asks, already looking back down to her letters. She writes fast, her hand flying over the page without thought, somehow able to write and talk simultaneously. There’s something quietly magnetising in the ways her quill moves across her page, quick but controlled, a dance so smooth Vereesa is half convinced she is casting a spell for it. Vereesa wonders sometimes, just how Kul Tiras ever managed to keep their affairs in order without her.
“Of this quality? Not easily.” Vereesa sighs out, long and drawn. “I’m sure there’s a spare set of leathers in our supplies somewhere. It will… have to do.”
Vereesa pulls a chair out, throws herself into it heavily. Jabs at the rough edges of the torn metal with a hand, then pulls her hand away when the jagged edges almost catch at her bare fingers, trying to bite down into her skin. She’s had enough cuts for a while, she thinks.
And she knows it’s unreasonable, to get so wound up over broken links, in how quickly what was once sure and strong becomes weak, brittle, more dangerous to those who would use it than protective. But the loss of it is just the start of the avalanche, the lone shout to topple endless tons of snow and ice. It’s hard to focus her fury on vague concepts, on thoughts of inadequacy, on fears of war. It’s easy to hate a failed piece of metal.
A hand touches her shoulder, and Vereesa jolts, surprised Jaina had managed to move without her realising. Maybe she really is far too obsessively caught up in a pile of shattered metal, to lose track of her surroundings so. Jaina leans across, picks up the mail and drags it closer to her, inspects the same fragments of metal.
“I’m sure an armourer could fix this.” Jaina says.
“The metal itself, sure. But not the magic. It’s more enchantment than steel.”
Jaina makes a thoughtful noise, deep in her throat, and pulls out a chair for herself, much smoother than Vereesa had. She settles into it, focuses on the pile of metal. She stays quiet for a long moment, staring at it, and then her head tilts as she looks back to Vereesa. “Can I take it?” She asks. “I cannot promise anything, but…”
“Take it.” Vereesa tells her, pushing it towards her. Even if she suspects Jaina will end up using it in some other research, funnelling what enchantment still remains within it towards some other spell. Though, at least then it would have some kind of use.
Jaina catches her hand before she can move it, traps it with one of her own, gets Vereesa to look at her. “Broken armour is one thing.” She says. “But what about you?”
“I’m fine.”
Jaina’s mouth twists down.
Just by a fraction, but it’s enough.
It’s a terrible promise Vereesa has made, bound not by blood, or magic, but only by the threat of disappointment.
Of Jaina’s disappointment.
And maybe one more forced lie may not shatter this, tear like once strong steel, but even the echo of disappointment is enough to tear honesty from between her teeth.
“I will be fine. Eventually.” Vereesa says instead. Jaina takes her hand up, lifts it away from cold metal and into her lap. “I am only… I can still fight. I’m not some broken thing.”
“I would never say you were broken.” Jaina tells her. “But blades cut deeper than even the Light can heal. We both know that. And I don’t want you to run. I only want you to be gentle to yourself.”
“Are you gentle to yourself, then?” It’s harsher than she means it to be, slices under Jaina’s skin and settles there, an arrowhead buried too deep for any healer to remove. She doesn’t flinch, but she doesn’t have to. Jaina looks away from her, even if she still holds her hand in hers.
“Promises travel both ways.” Vereesa tells her, softens her voice this time.
“They do.” Jaina says. “And your answer is no. But I am trying. And I don’t expect you to be perfect. Only ever to try.”
And Jaina smiles at her. Small, and shy, it flits across her expression for only just long enough for Vereesa to notice it. But it’s there. And it sticks in Vereesa’s mind long after she sees it. It’s enough.
She moves her hand, the one Jaina has so jealously captured, takes both Jaina’s hands with it as she pulls it closer to her. And Jaina doesn’t stop her, lets Vereesa steal her hands and press a brief kiss against the back of her knuckles.
“Sometimes, you are almost too much.” Vereesa says. “But thank you.”
“Of course.” Jaina says.
It’s a brief moment they have. Only ever brief, and only ever so peaceful with the shadow of responsibility looming above. But it’s there. And despite it all, the uncertainty, the fear, Vereesa let’s herself treasure it.
It’s the small moments, the quiet ones, that make her realise the obvious, she thinks. For time is so nebulous, so short and so long. Vereesa may yet live for centuries more, see kingdoms rise and fall, outlive more wars than she can give names. Or she may fall tomorrow, and have her name crushed into so much dust, lose herself into foreign soil, or more likely yet, be lost amongst the waves she still fears so.
And maybe it is not wise. Or practical. But Vereesa would still risk it all for Jaina, for this still-strange land she has pledged herself to, borne here by orders but chained here by a promise to a single woman.
And she would have done the same even if she had never felt Jaina’s touch.
The thought stirs something in her gut, something familiar yet unnamed, and Vereesa resists giving it a voice, and instead brushes her lips against the back of Jaina’s hand again, just to check if she’s still real.
Jaina doesn’t smile this time, but the corners of her eyes crinkle, a tiny, fleeting thing. Too small for even Jaina to recognise.
But it’s fleeting. Like all things, it sweeps across like a bird on wing, follows the call of something greater than fleeting thoughts and stolen moments. Vereesa lets her anchor her for a moment more, before she slips her hand out and stands up.
“I need to find that spare armour.” She says. “Otherwise you may yet leave without me.”
Her words are enough to drain Jaina in an instant, to descend on her like a heavy cloak wrapped around her shoulders. “You don’t have to go.” She says. “You’ve only been up again for a day, surely-”
“I’ll be fine.” Her words are a shade too sharp, and Vereesa wishes she could tear them back into herself. “I’ll be fine.” She repeats, gentler this time. “I promise I’ll be careful.”
“I will hold you to that.” Jaina says. And there still an echo of emotion in her eyes, but she doesn’t quite argue. Mainly she just looks tired. Exhausted, bone deep. And Vereesa knows she doesn’t sleep enough, has caught her still awake and working far too many nights to count. Most days she wishes she could make Jaina just forget about all her responsibilities, even for a handful of hours.
It’s a nice dream.
Jaina gathers her things, her staff and half-written letters, and follows her out the door. This is her least subtle of her excuses, all her grace run dry. And Vereesa can just about hear her thoughts, the way they linger on where her injury had been.
She couldn’t stay back. Not after what happened. In the back of her mind, the memory plays still. The danger means little, her own injury less still, but the fear in her son’s eyes she can’t forget.
It’s her war now, she thinks. And if she were not here, she would shed her blood in some other land, forever and ever, until there is a time when her sons can know peace. It’s a futile thought. But it grants her some of the control she craves, so she lets it linger.
“Jaina.” She says. “Give me one thing.”
“Of course.”
Vereesa stops in place. Nowhere she is going now is interesting, only boxes to tick, duties to fulfil. And Jaina’s overblown concern will only lead to her following at her footsteps, convinced Vereesa will fall into pieces if she doesn’t watch. The concern is touching, but not something Vereesa wants to indulge when exhaustion has already weighed Jaina down so.
“We have a few more hours until we go.” She says. “Promise me you’ll rest.”
Jaina’s hands tighten around her staff. “I’m perfectly-”
“Promises are a double-edged sword.” Vereesa reminds her.
It takes her a moment to speak, but Jaina concedes finally. “Alright.” she says. “I will.” And while she still looks reluctant, her voice is firm, assured. Vereesa would like to believe her, but habit settles into the heart as solid and unmoveable as stone. And promises mean little without time and intention to power it.
But it’s something. If only wars would cease, Vereesa thinks. Then promises may mean something again, and not just form another thing to break.
There's nothing wrong with Jaina's clothes, especially not with her cloak, not after she checked it before leaving her rooms that very morning. But her mother's hands linger on it, fixing folds, brushing what must be mountains of dust from her shoulders, and she doesn't stop until Jaina reminds her quietly that the ships are waiting for her.
And then her mother's jaw tenses and Jaina sees this for the obvious ploy that it is.
"I won't be long." She says, but it doesn't seem to give Katherine much comfort at all. "Vereesa will keep me out of trouble."
"Will she?" Katherine murmurs. Her voice is soft, betrays none of her thoughts, but there is naked worry in her eyes, and she hasn't yet let go of Jaina's cloak. "And what trouble will that be? Trouble that you make or that which you will stumble into?"
"Both, if I'm truly unlucky." Jaina jokes, then kicks herself when her mother fixes her with a stare that makes her feel like two decades have been carved from her shoulders and she is but a child again.
In any other time, Jaina might admire her mother's poise. Because while her worry is beyond obvious this close, from even a handful of metres away she must look just the same as ever, posture stiff, head held high, unbent and unbroken. But this close, however, she sees the truth, and she hates to be the one to inflict another unnecessary dose of stress.
"She had better bring you home safe." Katherine warns, and bundles Jaina up in one last embrace, but this one is quick, and sooner than Jaina would have liked Katherine is stepping back.
“Watch the tides.” Her mother says, only just loud enough for Jaina to hear, and more than soft enough to escape the hearing of anyone else curious. “And don’t stay out too long. Your brother has been at sea long enough.”
Then she turns away, leaving a hand held high in goodbye. And while Katherine had succeeded her title and her authority as Lord Admiral, her work is never done, and within a handful of steps a runner has already reached her side, handed across a message that kills whatever temptation Katherine had to linger, and she disappears out of sight.
She finds Vereesa soon later, already on board, staring over the edge into the water far below. The ships are still tied up, awaiting Jaina’s final signal, but already Vereesa has started to look ill, holding the railing tight enough to snap the solid wood.
“The water isn’t going to reach up and bite you.” Jaina tells her, watching some of the tension wound up in Vereesa’s shoulders melt away. But only some.
“I’m not so sure.” Vereesa says, but she slowly forces her hands to uncurl from around the railing, and she turns around and rests her back on it, tilting her head upwards to the sky instead. Jaina follows her gaze, but there is nothing in the sky, only the ever-present sea birds, and the still furled sails of their ship. It’s a familiar sight to Jaina, but maybe not so much for Vereesa, and she catches her watching the lazy flight of the birds above for some minutes more.
She’s wearing new armour. Or old armour, really, from the part of it that escape into sight from under her tabard, aged but solid leather, gone slightly grey either from time or dust. It fits her, but only just, and she finds Vereesa mindlessly adjusting the straps of it, tightening and loosening it. It’s serviceable, and Jaina already knows what Vereesa would say if she suggested she stay behind one more time. But even Jaina, more used to robes than armour, knows how oddly armour fits when it is not made with you in mind.
“You realise you can still-” Jaina tries, but Vereesa snaps her gaze back from the sky to glare at her.
“The answer is still no.” she says.
“Worth a try.” Jaina says.
Before Vereesa can argue more, she stretches her arms out, closes her eyes. The spell is familiar now, one that has long since passed from curiosity to habit. But despite that, the complexity of it remains, and there’s some quiet joy to be had from breaking it into pieces, step by step by step, and checking for the thousandth time that every section works.
She can hear the wind, the call of the sea-birds, even the distant noise of Boralus. But she stretches herself out further with her magic, until she can fear the very bones of her ship, the water surrounding it, the ropes that tie its restless spirit down. And then she starts her spell.
The rope glow, and move by themselves, coiling back on board the ship and tying themselves down. The next steps are simple, burned into her mind. She reaches out, unfurls the sails, tightens ropes and give the ship an extra nudge away from the dock. She can hear the ships around her, captains bellowing orders, ropes cast off and sails thrown open, but every noise flows over her like water, and, lost in her spell, Jaina has her sails catch the wind, and guides her ship to glide slowly out of the harbour, largely under its own power.
Jaina is only giving it an extra nudge. Something barely there, but enough that she is still a full ship’s length ahead of even the next fastest ship.
It’s a futile kind of competition really, but Jaina maintains it, at least until she breaks away from the most intense part of the spell, and notices how her speed has warred with the high swell and rocking waves, and left Vereesa looking almost green.
Then she just focuses on making the ship’s movements as smooth as possible.
She thought it was subtle, barely more than a tiny alteration in an ongoing spell, but Vereesa seems to catch it anyway, and one ear twitches as soon as Jaina has cast it.
“Thank you.” She says.
The sea is quiet but for the sound of water breaking around the ship’s hull, and the breeze is strong, carries them far and fast. It’s a fair day, good for sailing, but Jaina cannot quite swallow down the restlessness that floods her when she starts to wonder when exactly they will encounter resistance.
She had sent people out, she remembers, only for each to inevitably be driven back, by greater and greater numbers every time. There’s something they’re protecting, up north. This strategy, looping around to attack by sea, may just be enough to grant them the answers they seek. Or at least one answer.
Knowing the Void, whatever knowledge they may be able to find would likely only come at the expense of more confusion. A mystery within a mystery, chains within chains. It’s enough to drive a woman mad.
But for now, it is only Jaina and the sea. The wind snatches at what loose hair has escaped her braid, plays with the edges of her cloak as well, but Jaina makes no move to avoid it. Here, on a fast-moving ship, with salt in the air and the faint undercurrent of magic still buzzing in her hands, she can forget the rest of the world, even for a moment.
Some days she wishes she could feel like this all the time. Travelling forever, not lost but never arriving anywhere, where there is nothing to remember beyond how to sail. To forget it all, to let memories fade into dust, responsibilities into sand.
Life shatters that strange dream, as it always does. And Jaina is no longer quite certain she’d want to remain lost at sea forever, not alone.
Vereesa had been circling the deck, following the edge, much more restless than Jaina is too be restrained to one set area of space, no matter how large Jaina’s ship may be. Most of the time, she walks silently, but the constant movement of the ship catches at her feet sometimes, forces her to grab at the railing, or at nearby ropes. But strangely enough, despite her stolen grace, she no longer seems quite so unhappy to be at sea as she used to.
Her balance at sea has not yet arrived, but even as she stumbles, her expression remains neutral. Jaina can still remember the first few times she took her out to sea with her, the way Vereesa would scowl at the water when she thought Jaina wasn’t looking. And Jaina had told her several times that she didn’t need to come if she hated it so, but there is a stubbornness to Vereesa that doesn’t always come to light, and it showed strong every time Jaina tried to give her a way out.
Vereesa circles once more, and stops on one side, directly opposite to where Jaina stands at the bow. She puts a hand to her brow and stares out, across the sea and towards the shore in the distance, which Jaina can only just see the outline of.
“Jaina?” she calls out. “Come have a look at this.”
By the time they are close enough for Jaina to see what she had found with the naked eye, Vereesa has started to make details. More details than she wants to know.
A sea of ships.
Or what used to be ships, where now the broken remnants litter the shoreline of Stormsong Valley, from scattered trails of wood building up to great piles in the centre, high enough to overshadow any ship that sailed past. Vereesa cannot make out the great details from here, but she can still see the curve of hulls, the tall rise of masts, and the thin torn banners of what used to be sails, flying high in the wind.
Beside her, Jaina’s control over her spell stops, and their ship moves forward under the wind alone, slow enough for the other ships in their convoy to catch up with them. For a moment, Vereesa lets herself look out over the other ships, to the captains with their spyglasses, and the frozen sailors in rigging, only moving when their captains return to shouting orders.
There are no rocks in the harbour, not here. Vereesa remembers glancing at Jaina’s maps before they left, and she trusts that she would notice if an area so close to shore was beset by submerged rocks. Stranger still, she herself has organised patrols, all over Kul Tiras. Nothing to this scale could have escaped notice, not for long. Especially not by any ships that sailed past here.
How fast did this happen, she wonders. And why?
That last question is easy enough to answer, when she glances back at Jaina, and notices how pale she has gotten, how Jaina is still frozen in place. Vereesa puts a hand on Jaina’s shoulder, and even then, it takes her a moment to realise Vereesa is there, and when she relaxes, she does so forcefully.
“They’re taunting us.” Jaina says quietly.
Vereesa nods.
Jaina ducks under a long splinter of wood, a shattered mast lying discarded and separate from whichever ship it once belonged too. It slips her out of sight for a moment, and Vereesa immediately moves to follow her. The ground is soft at her feet, more sand and water than anything else, but there’s a sense to it, a balance she can find and a way to keep her movements smooth, her progress nearly silent. Not that it matters, really, not when she walks with Jaina, who strides through it with little thought given to how much noise she makes, or how many tracks she leaves in her wake. Humans. The thought almost makes her smile.
Vereesa finds Jaina waiting on the other side, one hand lighting touching a sea-worn plank. She traces it for a moment, but seems to find nothing, and shrugs.
“I’m not quite certain where we’re going.” Jaina admits, and sweeps her hand out to let Vereesa to take the lead, this time. She steps ahead, but only slightly, looks for tracks, scratches on wood, any sign that something has come through here. Or any sign that there is something to find, after all. But she finds little, ends up choosing a direction at random.
They walk for a while, in the quiet, with little but the sound of the wind to accompany them. It could almost be comfortable, if it were any situation but this. If they weren’t overshadowed by these hulking wrecks, if there weren’t some inexplicable danger lurking. If Jaina hadn’t become so suddenly, awfully quiet.
This part of the wreck is the same as the others, broken wood embedded within mud, and they have not yet seen a sign of anything more sinister than the occasional scurrying crab, but even still, Jaina has kept her tongue for several long minutes, until all Vereesa can hear of her is her footsteps, and her breathing.
Vereesa stops in her tracks for a moment, and Jaina collides with her back hard enough to almost push her over, if she hadn’t caught herself first.
“What’s wrong?” Jaina demands, re-balancing herself with a hand on Vereesa’s shoulder. The other stays around her staff, but the surprise has her use it to steady herself too, sticking the blunt end of the artefact into the mud. “Did you see something?”
“No, I-”
“Is it your wound? I can portal us back right now.”
“Listen to me. I’m worried about you.”
Jaina takes another step forward. She barely lifts her feet when she does, and leaves a trench behind in the mud, which rapidly collapses in on itself, destruction in her wake. It spooks another crab, and it scurries out of sight and under another broken plank.
“We can take a break if you need it.” Vereesa calls after her, even though Jaina has barely moved a metre from her side.
“I shouldn’t need it.” Jaina says.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does! You were the one who got stabbed just days ago! I can- I can keep going.”
Vereesa rushes to catch up with her, and for once she doesn’t care about how much noise she makes, or what tracks she leaves behind. She takes Jaina by the shoulder, and when she doesn’t try to throw her off, Vereesa turns her around slowly, and anchors her in place.
There’s tension in Jaina’s jaw, and exhaustion plain in her eyes. How long has it been since she slept properly, Vereesa asks herself. She isn’t sure. There’s little wonder how badly this is affecting her, exhaustion forming chains around her ankles, dragging her down, down, down, until she won’t be able to breathe.
If only there were a simple solution. If only Vereesa could burn away the fear, and the obsession that makes the fear all the worse. If only she knew the words, the actions, that could bring Jaina even a moments peace. And maybe no perfect solution exists, but surely there’s something that would help. Whatever it is, Vereesa doesn’t know it.
Vereesa wishes, again, that she were braver. Or smarter. Or kinder. That the years had given her something other than the anger she has never managed to burn away, the fear that lingers in hidden corners, or the endless string of failures.
She reaches out with one hand, lets it rest against the side of Jaina’s face. It’s a poor comfort, she thinks, an awkward action to make, but Jaina lets her, and leans into the touch.
“Give yourself room to breathe.” Vereesa tells her. It’s too harsh a tone, she realises, once the words have already left her. Like an order shouted to rangers from afar, and not words of comfort to a woman already upset. She softens them, as much as she can. “Please. We’ll stop for a moment.”
Jaina still tries to argue, but it’s just for show, thin, unconvincing words not even she would believe.
“Do it for my sake.” Vereesa says. “I can pretend to limp, if that would convince you to stop for even a minute.”
She leads her to the nearest, least muddy surface she can find, a curved section of keel, from a ship that must not have survived long without it. She makes Jaina sit, but Jaina is just as stubborn, and she makes Vereesa stop too, drags her down and might have resorted to freezing her in place if she even thought of resisting.
The priest would love that, Vereesa thinks. Returning with frostbite only days later.
Jaina summons some mana cakes, and passes her one. It’s sweet, almost too sweet for a place like this where spirits lurk in dead wood, where the Void stays silent but cannot be forgotten. But it fills her stomach, just a fraction, and the thought is sweeter still.
Jaina looks older than she used to. And maybe magic will keep her younger than most of her race, keep her marching on long since time would have drowned anyone else, but stress still leaves its mark on her skin.
Jaina is kind, she thinks. Strong too. And maybe this is a moment of weakness, another stress to leave it’s imprint behind on her skin, but the essence of her is still strong, iron-clad. Beneath the titles, the magic, the history, there is still a woman with a will no winter could break, and no sword could shatter.
Maybe Vereesa is not strong. But she can be strong for her, today of all days.
“I can’t stop thinking.” Jaina says, finally. “Not just about this, about… Everything. But this most off all. So many gone. Their ships shattered; their bodies stolen who knows where. What will I say to their families, when they have no bodies to bury?”
“That they were brave. They will not blame you for this.”
Jaina turns to her, and her expression is strained, tense, close to breaking like the ships that surround her. “But they will. I cannot make even one misstep, one rushed plan, one ill-advised decision. I am- They still think of me as a traitor.”
Guilt is strangling her. It’s an old rope, well worn, but when wrapped tight around her throat it hurts all the same.
Vereesa slips off the keel and kneels before her, takes her hands and slowly unwraps the one wrapped tight around her staff. “Listen to me.” she says. As serious as she can. Like this is some vow, a binding oath, a knight paying allegiance to her queen. “You cannot lay the responsibility for this all at your own feet. Or expect that they will all do the same for you. You cannot survive like that. And maybe the past won’t ever stop hurting, but,” she reaches up, touches Jaina’s jaw lightly, letting her hand linger there when Jaina leans into the touch. Jaina melts almost as she does, like a fierce storm wave breaking into nothing. “You can make it better.”
“I am trying.” Jaina tells her.
“I know you are. But you cannot shoulder it alone.”
That seems to break through to her. Jaina stands, and pulls her up with her. And while the guilt still weighs on her, deepens the small lines around her eyes, puts heavy weight on her shoulders, there’s a stubbornness to her too. A strength little could ever break, steady as stone. And tides may ebb and flow, but stone remains strong for centuries still.
“I think I can keep going now.” Jaina says. And maybe she should take a moment longer, but Vereesa doesn’t argue. Not this time.
As they start off, and Jaina picks her staff up once more, another one of those crabs darts out from the shelter of the wreck, across the space, and out into shadow once more.
Vereesa squints at it, tries to see into the shadowed corner it hid itself in. There’s something strange about them, she thinks. Crabs, but no sea birds? No other predators? And maybe it’s a coincidence, but it’s a strange one at that.
She moves to where she saw the crab disappear, and while she cannot see its presence anymore and can feel Jaina’s confused eyes on her back, she kicks the wood as hard as she can, hard enough that the structure above complains and she can hear Jaina draw in breath. And something scurries out.
It’s a crab, but the markings on it are strange. Looping designs in a black so dark she cannot quite make her eyes focus on. It’s larger than it should be, and while all the other crabs had scurried off without hesitation, run from sight as soon as seen, this one stays, and snaps at the air in warning.
“Tides.” She hears Jaina say.
Vereesa draws one of her arrows out, and thrusts the pointed end at the creature, drawing her fingers back as it snaps at it, slicing the arrowhead clean off. Vereesa steps back, convinced it will try another attack, but it only stares at her a moment longer before scurrying off, no longer into another shadow but down across the mud, where they can see still see it.
She makes to follow it, then makes herself stop, still watching the path the crab had taken. “This feels like a trap.” Vereesa says.
“Do we have a choice?”
“Not really.”
The void-corrupted crab leads them deeper into the wrecks. Deeper, and deeper, until they walk through broken hulls, stumble over half buried pieces of wood, and the ships loom ever above, watching. From here, it’s easy to lose track of their path, of what turns they made in this unmarked maze, walking willingly into what is surely a trap. Playing the game the Void wants them to play, only ever hoping to gain a single piece of evidence that they may use to see further into the unbreaking darkness.
If it wanted too, surely the crab could escape them, worm its way under some small tunnel only it can cross. But it lets them follow, waits in place when they take too long to follow.
Vereesa had told Jaina to teleport away, just long enough to gather more of their soldiers, but she refuses to leave Vereesa here alone for a moment. And leaving together may risk losing it entirely. It’s an awful risk, but a necessary one, and Vereesa forces herself to bury down that fear that rises in her chest, down under layers of sand and mud.
The tattered remnants of a sail snap in the wind above the wreckage of one ship in particular. At a glance, it’s a Kul Tiran warship, but whatever name it once bore no longer remains. Out of all the ships here, this one is almost whole, barring the massive hole knocked into its side.
The crab pauses for a second, and then scurries inside and out of sight.
Jaina moves to follow it, but Vereesa takes her by the arm before she can step under its shadow.
“I’ll go first.” She says.
“No.” Jaina says. “What if-”
She takes her by the shoulders, long enough to make Jaina meet her gaze, to focus on her and not the looming shadows of shattered ships, not on fear and not on whatever lies hidden inside. “If something goes wrong,” she says, “you need to be able to portal us out. I can’t do that.”
It asks a lot, Vereesa knows, to ask her to stop shadowing her footsteps, even for a moment. But they both know it's wise, and even if Jaina tenses her jaw, and clenches her hands around her staff, a small scattering of frost appearing at her fingertips, she still nods.
She doesn’t have to say the words, this time. But Vereesa feels them still.
She steps out from the shadow of the ship and into the shadows within. Outside, the sunlight had kept them warm enough, and the eternal sea breeze kept the heat from ever getting too intense. Inside, however, is suddenly cold, the water and the thick layers of wood enough for Vereesa to almost forget how warm it had been outside.
Her eyes accustom to the lack of light fast, but still she can’t see any hint of movement inside. Only bare wooden planks, washed over with sand and silt until the wood beneath can barely be seen.
“Jaina?” she calls out, cautiously. “I think it’s safe enough.”
She stands in the galley of the ship, bare of any signs of habitation. No barrels, no bunks and no hammocks, and certainly no sailors. Jaina steps in after her carrying fire in her hands, a torch she raises above her head, and Vereesa passes her eyes back over the room. There’s what likely once was the staircase to the upper deck, now fallen in and blocked off by a rain of timber.
“Maybe it was just a crab?” Vereesa suggests, but whatever attempt at humour that was falls flat, and Jaina only raises her hand higher, increases the size of the flames wreathing her, until they lap at her arms as well, and fill the ship with torchlight, flickering off the wet sand below their feet.
She hopes they are just mad. Madwomen, the two of them, chasing after a scurrying creature just because it fled from them.
Jaina walks towards the centre of the room, watching the corners of the room, the splashing of her progress so loud, and the tracks left behind her so deep, that Vereesa tenses, watches each shadow to see if they move, but it stays quiet and her eyes are drawn back to the light, and to the shadow of something beneath Jaina’s feet.
“Jaina stop.” Vereesa calls, but the shadow doesn’t move, only fades as the displaced sand collapses back in on where Jaina had been walking.
Vereesa moves cautiously closer to her, and when she comes within an arm’s reach of Jaina, she scuffs her boot at the floor, deep enough to kick the sand out from on top of the wood. Beneath, she finds deep gouges in the wood, deep but precise, and as she keeps kicking the sand and silt out from its place, the line stays firm, unbroken, joins other lines in a pattern she cannot yet recognise.
“Step back.” Jaina tells her, and Vereesa obeys, watches as Jaina thrusts her staff forwards, summoning a concentrated burst of ice that uncovers more of the carving, more and more until even Vereesa can recognise it for what it is. A rune, the remnants of some large spell. But it is complex, lines and shapes that loop back on each other, far too complex for Vereesa to understand. But she can see the frown on Jaina’s expression, the concern that grows as each new section is uncovered.
She follows it round in a circle, and then cuts inside, closer and closer, until she flicks aside a large mound of sand, and finds their lost crab waiting within. Whatever void magic has infected it is stronger now and gives it an aura of malevolence, and as soon as it has been disturbed it snaps at Jaina’s feet.
She hisses, and manages to dodge it, and before her foot meets the ground again Vereesa has managed to draw an arrow and fire it, pinning the crab to the deck. Even that isn’t enough to quieten it, and void energy crackles around the wood of her arrow as it strains against the wood, still ever-reaching for Jaina.
There’s another arrow on her bow, but before she can draw it Jaina has brought her staff upwards, wreathed it in ice, and slammed it down on the crab like a spear, not so much slicing into it as crushing it, and finally the crab ceases moving.
As it collapses a burst of void energy emanates from it, leaving Jaina untouched but sinking into the now bare wood, making the uncovered rune shine bright white for a single moment. But without any focused magic to sustain it, the light fades, and they are left alone.
Jaina shakes her staff, grimacing at the pieces of crab still lingering on it.
“I found our guide.” She says, and casts a spell to clean the staff.
“I noticed.” Vereesa tells her. And maybe she is foolhardy, maybe desperate, but she crosses over the carved rune, and takes Jaina into her arms for a moment. Just a moment, that’s all she needs, just long enough to ground herself and alleviate the awful twist in her gut she has felt since stepping into this ship, found the carving hidden beneath their feet.
It’s a comfort, for a second. But Jaina breaks it, all too soon.
“I know what this spell was.” She says, speaking against Vereesa’s shoulder. And Vereesa steps away, gives Jaina the space to gesture at the lines around them. “It’s too much like… I showed you it once, do you remember? My wards around Boralus? It’s a counter to them, their precise opposite, forcing in a backdoor, only just wide enough for a handful of creatures to slip through but it’s enough. It’s enough.”
“So, the naga from a few days ago…”
“They got in because of this. So too did the void creature from before that…” Jaina’s hands wrap tight around her staff again, and Vereesa can see the frost return around her fingers, stronger this time, coating the entire staff with ice before Jaina notices, and melts it away. “How did they know?” Jaina asks. “How could they possibly have known?”
“I don’t know.” Vereesa tells her. And it’s the truth. As honest as she dares.