Chapter Text
One hundred and fifty-two. They’d first met Alleria Windrunner with a force of one hundred and fifty-two.
He’d left Silvermoon with more than that. Not much more, but more. Because of his carelessness, his inability to reign in the Void’s incredible powers, he’d lost friends, people disillusioned with Silvermoon and its illustrious Grand Magister. People who had willingly followed him and conspired with him. People who’d given up their old lives and everyone in them for him. He couldn’t get them back.
Silvermoon had been their home, and for the crime of knowledge, for seeking to find a way to safeguard and empower their city and people in the face of the Sunwell’s collapse, they’d been thrown out. Cast aside. Exiled. Grand Magister Rommath had stood there, face contorted in fury, not understanding the power he was being handed, and ordered their banishment, and Regent Lord Theron had let him.
Ohhh, Rommath. He’d deal with that man. One way or another, he’d make him eat his words.
And wasn’t that why he’d pledged them to the Alliance? To prove to people like Rommath that he’d been right, that the Void was not some terrifying, unknowable entity but a force that could be contained and used for the advancement of their race? Alleria Windrunner had seen value in their potential, and despite all the atrocities the Alliance had committed against the quel’dorei, he’d been so confident, so sure of his decision to go with her. To bring his one hundred and fifty-two newly-christened void elves into the blue.
The Alliance was supposed to protect them. What a fucking joke. Instead, people like Halford Wyrmbane and Mathias fucking Shaw had dipped into their precious, unrenewable resources, had sent ren’dorei after ren’dorei into the fray to die. He knew them all.
Vazun Starspeaker, buried on some nameless island in the South Seas.
Savia Anguossa and Mastus Snowspray, slaughtered by Horde forces in the Arathi Highlands. Celosel Nightgiver, in critical condition.
Selina Duskraven, killed in the attack on Fort Victory, in Sunwellforsaken Nazmir.
And more. Crystalynn and Kelain and Falania Nightsoul ﹣ people he’d known for decades and his entire life. Mendaci, his personal guard since Silvermoon, where he’d protected them from mobs of manahungry Wretched. Loranis, who’d established the Riftrunners, and the best friend he’d ever had.
He watched the desolation of his people with despair in his heart. The Alliance didn’t understand ﹣ hadn’t he told them that the ren’dorei were a finite resource? Did they not understand basic Common?
Send a squadron of your most powerful fighters to the Arathi Basin, Greymane ordered.
Give me a team of your most capable, most discreet men and women for SI:7 training, commanded the spymaster.
How many battlemages would you give us for the fight in Nazmir? Wyrmbane asked. Fifty? Sixty?
As if they had fifty or sixty to spare.
And now this, on the eve of the invasion of Dazar’alor. Pack up your camp, came the order. Send word to your teams in Zuldazar. You will serve in the infantry in Nazmir, and then flank the Lady Jaina into the city.
The fucking infantry. There were twenty of them stationed in outposts around Zuldazar, and maybe six in Nazmir. Twenty-six ren’dorei against the forces of blood trolls and angry Zandalari and all the Horde. How many more deaths would he see today?
“Fuck this,” he muttered. “Fuck Dazar’alor and the Alliance. Let it all burn.”
He was so tired.
There came a smack, more out of shock than genuine anger, and he felt himself almost shoved from the bedroll. Beside him, beneath golden hair tousled from sleep, Valeera Sanguinair’s emerald eyes glared at him sharply in the dark morning light.
“I work for the High King, idiot. You can’t say things like that.”
Fuck the High King. He’d heard tales of the boy king, of his kindness and compassion. Rumors that he was nothing like his father, that he saw value in the common lives of every soldier and peasant. At the rate in which they were sent to die, he knew the rumors were lies. At least Kael'thas had given them a choice.
“I’ll say whatever I want about the man who uses us as cannon fodder,” he grumbled, but he didn’t think Valeera heard him. Louder, he said, “I’m up. Fine, I’m getting up.”
He dressed slowly. Outside the tent was a flurry of activity, shouting and grousing and the clinking of eating on the go. All of their sensitive instruments were being carefully put away, the most secret information ﹣ the things even the Alliance couldn’t know ﹣ being burned. He had his own tent to pack up, his people to address. He couldn’t stay here with Valeera, no matter how he wanted to.
And oh, he wanted to. Valeera Sanguinar had not been a part of his meticulously crafted machinations, had never factored into his designs on the Alliance, his revenge against Rommath, the hatred brewing beneath his skin, and yet she had happened anyway. She’d gone from a base desire, a need to fuck a nameless and attractive woman, to someone he looked forward to having in his bed, to someone whose quiet footsteps he anticipated, someone whose company he enjoyed.
Someone he cared for.
Sighing, he sat up and began reaching for his discarded clothing. Smallclothes, socks ﹣ he ran out of socks so quickly, he’d learned, on a warfront ﹣ trousers. Fine violet silk robes, near invisible in the darkness of the tent save for their gold trim. Sturdy leather boots, uncomfortably mismatched with his usual attire but unfortunately necessary in the Zuldazar jungle.
“You coming?” He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. She was so terribly, devastatingly beautiful in the soft light of the coming dawn, and he was terrified that he would walk into battle and not come back, would never see her again.
Her answer was loud to his ears against the din of the camp, the quietness of the tent. “Have to wait for Shaw.” And his heart dropped into his stomach.
Shaw. His superior, and the man who’d ordered all those deaths. The spymaster had come to represent the Alliance as a whole, in his eyes, and the knowledge that Valeera would stand with Shaw ﹣ with the Alliance ﹣ and not him made all the breath leave him.
It was never supposed to be like this, he chastised himself. You weren’t supposed to get involved. She was only supposed to be a fuck.
“Right,” he whispered, more to himself than to her. What did he expect?
This is Ms Sanguinar, an agent of His Majesty King Anduin, Shaw had said. She will be carrying out assignments at His Majesty’s request. Even Shaw had told him, plain as day all those months ago, who Valeera belonged to, and it wasn’t him. Would never be him, no matter how many nights she shared his bed, how many kisses passed between them. No matter how many times he woke in the middle of the night to her warm, sleepy body in his arms.
He straightened his spine. Threw back his shoulders. You knew this would happen, he scolded himself, and you did it anyway. Your pain is your own fault.
“Right,” he said again, louder. And then he stood abruptly, his dark hair brushing the ceiling, feeling Valeera’s eyes boring into him. As much as he wanted to grab her and leave, as badly as he wanted to put this whole dirty Alliance business behind him, he couldn’t. The ren’dorei ﹣ his people ﹣ needed him. He would not let them down again.
Umbric left the tent, and he did not look back.
* * *
The last thing he remembered was pain.
A blow to the head. The foul taste of seawater. He couldn’t open the portal in time, his fingers searching for tears in the fabric of reality that weren’t there.
He didn’t know what happened. He heard talking, somewhere above him. Lady Jaina and tidal wave and survivors. Was he one of those? Or had he finally, blissfully died, succumbed to the Void as Rommath had sworn would happen all those years ago?
Rommath. The last time he’d seen the man had been in Lordaeron, and oh, it had been glorious. The Grand Magister’s face had flickered between shock and fury and delicious, insane determination. Everything had fallen away ﹣ the dying troops, Sylvanas, even his own ren’dorei ﹣ as they faced each other, flame crackling at the Grand Magister’s feet, brimming in his hands and along his bare, tattooed arms.
What’s the matter, Grand Magister? he’d taunted. Surprised to see me?
UMBRIC! The rage emanating from the magister was palpable, shooting powerful thrills of excited, frenzied arousal up his spine. He wanted to possess the man, to seize him against all social convention by his sleek black hair and show him the power of the Void, prove to him he’d been wrong. If the orc Saurfang could be captured as prisoner of war, why not the esteemed Grand Magister? Umbric wouldn’t hurt him ﹣ not at first.
Tentacles erupted in the space between them, thick and powerful and reaching ﹣
“Shit﹣!”
“﹣get him under﹣!”
“﹣someone restrain﹣!”
And then his mind went regretfully, blissfully blank.
The next time he surfaced he couldn’t breathe. Every attempt to fill his ravaged, aching lungs was like trying to breathe water, and with a vague spark of surprise he realized that the rumbling, whistling noise he heard was coming from his own lips.
“﹣gister? Magister Umbric, can you hear me?”
Someone was talking to him. He didn’t recognize the voice. It probably didn’t matter.
“Ngh,” he said, and that wasn't a word at all.
“You’re safe, Magister Umbric. You swallowed a lot of water, and fractured﹣”
Oh. Well that explained why it hurt to breathe.
“﹣onboard the Assurance, sir, on the way back to Bor﹣”
Whatever the Assurance was. Was that a ship? Was that why it felt as though he were rolling?
His stomach churned then, and suddenly he was being shoved rapidly onto his side, heaving violently over the side of… wherever he was.
“Get it all out,” the voice soothed. “We tried to pull as much water as we could﹣”
He couldn’t hear the voice anymore over the sound of his own retching. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a tendril of shame emerged at his sorry state of being.
It felt like hours before he regained control of himself, before the roiling in his belly calmed. Someone was cleaning his face with a warm, damp cloth.
“﹣be there soon ﹣ try to sleep﹣”
He passed out again.
At some point they did indeed make it back to Boralus. He was freezing, and the pile of blankets the healers had given him weren't helping. All they were was a weight, pressing on his already constricted and pained chest, but he had not the strength to push them off, and when the tidesages removed them to examine him, he shivered so violently he could feel the rattling of his bones.
“You’re awake,” said the tidesage. She seemed neither surprised nor disappointed, and he supposed that was fair. Whatever these people thought of him, another death was still a tragedy, and something to be avoided. “Don’t ﹣ don’t try and sit up.”
A gentle hand was placed on his shoulder, forcing him back to the bed. But laying down hurt, and his wheezy breathing grew more desperate until he was shooting up, hacking great globs of green-tinged phlegm into a washcloth hastily shoved into his shaking hand.
“I’ll get Sister Yvia,” the tidesage was saying. She placed a glass and pitcher by his bedside and hurried from the room. No, not a room. They’d strung a curtain around his bed, and the girl had left through that.
He fell back to his pillows with a gasp, and had not the strength to either reach for the water or pull up the covers he’d knocked askew. Shudders wracked his body until the curtain parted again, and the tidesage was back with another woman who he assumed was this Sister Yvia.
“Magister Umbric,” she said, covering him with the blankets, “my name is Yvia. Do you know where you are?”
“B-B-Boralus.” It was difficult to talk through the chattering of teeth.
The tidesage nodded. “You’re back in Boralus,” she confirmed, “in recovery. You drowned, and now you’re suffering from pneumonia.”
He wanted to laugh. His entire life was suffering at this point. What was a little pneumonia on top of things?
“H-h-how…” He wanted to scream. The strength it took to form even a single word was maddening.
“There were tidesages in Lady Jaina’s forces,” Yvia explained, carefully extracting one of his arms from the mountain of blankets. It was bandaged, and it stung as she removed the wrapping. “Drowning isn’t fatal, if the water is removed in time.”
Umbric shook his head, wincing at the feeling of his brain bashing around his skull. That had been a bad move. “N-no,” he grit out, watching without really seeing as the tidesage examined the terrible wound. “H-how m-m-many…” The words grew thicker with each attempt, until he was coughing again, unable to speak for the fluid in his lungs.
Sister Yvia was patient, dressing the area with some sort of runny salve. It burned at first before fading to a dull warmth that soothed his icy skin.
“How m-m-many ren… r-ren’d-dorei…”
And, Light bless the woman, he didn’t have to say more. “I’m not sure,” the tidesage said.
“There’s two void elves downstairs, sir,” piped the younger one, somewhere out of his field of vision. “They’re in a right state.”
Sister Yvia was mixing some sort of sweet-smelling herb into a glass of water, helping him sit up enough to drink. His throat was so dry. “I’ll try and find out,” she promised, “but you should really be more concerned with yourself right now. You’re very ill.”
He laughed, and it came out sounding more like an angry grunt. He’d lived through the blighting of Lordaeron and scrounging rotting mushrooms in the Ghostlands. The Void would not let him die from some water and a little fever.
Umbric floated in and out of sleep, some of it induced and unnatural. He saw Silvermoon, bathed in the black-violet energies of the Void, and Rommath submitting to him under the heel of his gold-trimmed boot. He saw Loranis and Faedra and Crystalynn, huddled together around the decrepit, unsettling journal of High Astromancer Solarian, saw his parents’ faces as they were before they’d been taken by the Scourge. He saw Valeera on the ship to Zandalar, half listening as he spoke of void crystals and Telogrus Rift, and saw her as she had been that afternoon in the jungle, silk robes of red and gold hugging her slim figure and her long hair piled gracefully atop her head. He watched as she used one finger to dab scarlet paint upon her lips, the whispers murmuring how good those lips would look wrapped around his cock. Saw her beneath him as she’d been hundreds of times, panting and bruised from his deft fingers, heard as clearly as if she were beside him the gasps and hums as she writhed from the pleasure only he could give her.
He dreamt of Valeera quite a lot, and his heart ached for it.
The nightmares to which he was prone were kept blissfully at bay with little vials of dreamless sleep potion after he’d woken one night screaming, tentacles erupting from his body and giving the healer the scare of her life. The whispers of the Void calmed under the drug but were still there, just beneath the surface. They fed him visions of Mathias Shaw, dead by his hand, and little King Anduin broken and bleeding on the steps of his golden throne. Halford Wyrmbane and steady General Feathermoon, strangled and struggling before disappearing beneath the waves of a vicious sea. He saw his ren’dorei, eyes aglow and unleashing slithering tendrils, reclaiming what they had lost amongst the rubble of Stormwind and the fires of Silvermoon. The Sunwell, infused with Void energies, sacred and incorruptible as it was always meant to be…
Umbric woke coughing, the air trickling thinly into his battered lungs. He hacked, trying to dislodge the fluid that had built during sleep, and his vision cleared from the black of unconsciousness to the watery haze of the recovery room’s light. He blinked several times, eyes streaming, and fought against his mountain of blankets.
It took several moments before he could breathe again.
He laid back against his pillows, wheezing, trying to calm his racing heart. The tidesages had said the pneumonia had to run its course, that they couldn’t pull the phlegm from his lungs. Some things just have to heal on their own time, Magister Umbric, they’d told him. What a crock of hawkstrider shit.
And then he saw a flash of dark crimson, just in the edge of his vision, and what breath he had left immediately caught in his throat. It was just a tidesage, he told himself, or Halford Wyrmbane. Perhaps even Elestrae Dawnshard, one of his subordinates who’d survived and worried for him and the other ren’dorei. She checked on him sometimes, being a little versed in the healing arts, brought him calming tea and warm blankets.
But when he turned his head, he didn’t see Elestrae. Didn’t see pale blue skin or silver-blue eyes. He saw blonde hair, a tall trembling figure standing tentatively near the flap of his privacy curtain, stark against the dark cloth. Valeera.
She came back.
He’d left her that morning, however long ago, certain he would never see her again. Convinced that if she didn’t die in Dazar’alor, her love of the Alliance and her precious King Anduin would keep her from him after what he’d said, convinced that she’d report him to Shaw now that she’d finally gotten a glimpse into his angry black heart.
But here she was.
She worried one of her full pink lips between her teeth, her green eyes wide. One arm she’d wrapped around herself, anxious as he’d never seen her before. For him? Why? He’d as good as announced his treasonous thoughts the morning of battle. He’d never expected to see her again.
He coughed weakly, mustering all his effort in one word and praying he didn’t make a fool of himself. “Hi.”
And like a dam breaking, she responded. The tenseness bled from her body and she dove for him, with none of her usual stealth and grace. Had she been worried for him?
“Hi,” she whispered breathlessly, relief bleeding into the word. Umbric saw out of the corner of his eye her hand come up, hesitantly, reaching for him as she hadn’t that morning, as he’d desperately wanted her to. A hiccup of a laugh escaped from her then, and he felt, over his many blankets, the weight of her hand in the vicinity of his.
“Hi,” she breathed again. And Umbric knew Valeera wasn’t the type to express open affection. Knew even though she’d raked her hands through his short hair, as she allowed him to twist her own between lithe fingers, that it was merely a gesture of passion, of raw lust, of carnal desire. Despite what they did at night in his bed, she hadn’t meant any of it, hadn’t begun to feel anything like he had. The whispers told him as much.
But maybe. With her hand over his and her breathy Hi, with the concern in her eyes and the fact that she came back for him…
Maybe the whispers were wrong. Maybe there was something there after all.