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Once a year the elves of Quel’Thalas came together in remembrance of their lost friends and loved ones, those who had been slaughtered by Arthas Menethil’s army of the undead and Prince Kael’thas’s demonic legion. For ten days the Belore Chapel in Silvermoon shone with thousands of faerie lights in representation of the lost souls, and candles burned in the windows of every home. And every year, the elves commemorated the Lich King’s ten day march through the country by escorting a flame borne of the holy Sunwell along the scar he'd burned into the land.

In the past the flame had been carried by the new leaders of Quel’Thalas. Lor’themar had begun the tradition, and had delivered a heartfelt speech at the sight of every major battle. Rommath carried it the year after, speaking to the strength of Silvermoon and the sin’dorei; and Halduron the year after that, praising the swift military response and the coming together of survivors from all walks of life. Liadrin, Warden Neeluu, High Priest Kath’mar, Astalor Bloodsworn, Erindae Firestrider, and Solanar Bloodwrath had all carried the flame, the most prestigious honor awarded in this new Quel’Thalas, and it was decided after a time, after carefully considering public response, that the torchbearer would be no longer be a right wielded by a government official but a privilege bestowed upon an ordinary citizen. 

Names were entered into consideration by lotto in the interest of fairness, and the submissions flooded the capital every year. A name was chosen at random by the Silvermoon Triumvirate and announced with a personal visit to the winner’s home by the Regent Lord himself. The drawing had the added bonus of encouraging business within the chosen village and bringing notoriety to the family. This year, however…

There were those who were unhappy with this year’s torchbearer. The handful of civilians in the past, as well as every government official, who had been selected for the honor had all been older. Had personally lived through the Scourge, seen the horrors of the slaughter and knew the difficulties of rebuilding. Had struggled in the recession and clawed their way out, fought desperately to return to some sort of normalcy. 

“She’s just a child,” Kath’mar sniffed. “What does she know about the Scourge?”

“She wasn’t even born in Quel’Thalas,” whispered Peoreth. 

“If it had to be a child,” remarked Kelemar, “it should have been Lyanis. He deserves the honor as the first born after the tragedy.”

“Don’t listen to them,” Solanar said solemnly, the sun glinting off his armor. “You earned this honor.” 

Salandria shifted uneasily, scuffing her boot in the dirt. “Maybe I should withdraw,” she murmured, and the blood knight frowned.

“What? Why?”

“Some people think I was only selected because of my mother…”

Solanar rolled his eyes and clapped a gauntleted hand to her shoulder, metal clanging in the quiet of the afternoon. “There will always be people who will try and undermine your accomplishments,” he said solemnly. “They’ll say you’re privileged because of Liadrin, or because of your close relationship with the Regent Lord and the people who run our country. They’ll say whatever they can to make themselves feel better about not reaching your level of success or not being chosen themselves.” He levied the girl with a firm stare. “But you know, and I know, that Lor’themar would not have chosen your name himself.”

Salandria knew that Solanar was right. Her father largely preferred that she remain anonymous, and no one ever acknowledged their relationship in public. She didn’t even carry his name. I won’t have you targeted by my enemies for the crime of being my daughter, he’d explained more than once. The torchbearer would thrust her in the public eye for years ﹣ people still knew the names of the other bearers, and now they would know hers too.

“That’s true,” she admitted. Her father had been upset at pulling her name. He’d tried to hide it, as he did all negative emotions, but Salandria wasn’t stupid. She had seen the worry in his eyes, knew he feared for her safety ﹣ not during the event but afterwards. Ambassadors from many nations ﹣ even the Alliance ﹣ always arrived for the march and ceremonies, and every single one of them would take note of her. Truth be told, she was nervous. 

“Hey.” Solanar squeezed her shoulder, eyes softening. “You don’t have to do it,” he reminded her. “You’re allowed to request a new name be chosen. But if you go that route, make sure it’s what you want. Not what a bunch of people you’ve never even met want.” His lips twisted into a small, kind smile. “When I did it was the proudest moment of my life.”

Salandria considered her mentor’s words as she helped clean the pavilion. Torchbearer was an extremely important part of the remembrance festival ﹣ she would be expected to make a speech, and ride all the way from Thalassian Pass to Quel’Danas. Every eye in the country would be on her…

There was no shame in backing out. Uncle Halduron had refused to do it for several years, saying it dredged up too many painful memories, and Uncle Rommath too. Her mother had broken down the one and only year she bore the torch; and when the mayor of Tranquillien had been selected two years ago, the pressure he’d felt had been so immense he’d relinquished the opportunity for his own mental health and wellbeing. 

The most public attention Salandria had ever received had been when she’d assisted her mother, Solanar, and Uncle Astalor with the graduating ceremonies of last year’s paladin order. Seven of the ninety-two had been inducted into the Blood Knight Order, and it had been Salandria’s responsibility to pass Solanar the ceremonial ranseurs. She’d fretted for weeks about it, and her heart had beat so fast during the event she'd thought she would pass out.

She knew what people thought of her. While most were kind and always made time for her ﹣ even sour Uncle Rommath ﹣ there were many who did not like her. They objected to a high ranking official such as her mother raising her seemingly alone, and they disliked her Shattrathi origins. Her mother and her blood knights were a sore spot to many people, and there were those even among the paladins’ guild who assumed she received special treatment because she was Liadrin’s daughter. Salandria bore it all with the quiet grace bestowed on her by her father, worked five times harder than her peers, and did not complain. 

Perhaps she had not been born in Quel’Thalas, and maybe she had not seen firsthand the terrors of the Scourge, but she had been birthed in tragedy in a way they had not. Her life was privileged now but it wasn’t always. She deserved to carry that torch through the forests of her ancestral homeland. 

She carefully packed away the training weapons and stowed her cleaned and polished armor. She left her mentor with a bow, and walked quickly through the Court of the Sun in the fading light. Her boots thudded over the rosy cobblestones as she crossed into Farstriders’ Square, and by the time she rounded the corner to her father’s townhome the streetlights had just begun to blink to life. 

“An’da!” she called, swinging the door open loudly. Her father’s home was small and utilitarian and very, very like him, and the savory smell of stew told her that he was here and not at her mother’s. She clomped through the hall without stopping to remove her shoes and crashed into the kitchen where her father was half bent over a large pot, a spoon in one hand and a little container of some sort of spice in the other. Her father had always cooked all their meals, for as long as Salandria had known him, and didn't believe in servants.

“Hey there,” her father said, a soft grin blooming over his face. “Your mother with you?”

“No, I haven’t seen her,” Salandria said in a rush. “An’da, I want to do it.”

Lor’themar straightened, a little bemused. “Do what?” he asked mildly. 

“I want to bear the torch.” 

Her father regarded her for several moments, his face betraying nothing. “Are you sure?” he asked seriously. “It’s a lot of responsibility.”

She nodded. “I’ve thought about it. I have as much right as any other elf to it, and it’s my duty as a citizen of Quel’Thalas to bring the Sunwell’s Light to those killed by the Scourge.” She chewed her lip a moment before adding, “And it’s my duty, as your daughter, to escort the flame.”

Her father was quiet for a long moment and Salandria worried for a moment that she’d said the wrong thing. She knew her father loved her and loved her dearly, but their relationship was not something they ever really discussed. He was her father, and she was his daughter, and that was all there was to it. 

It was several moments before he answered, and his voice was quiet and proud. “Yes,” he told her, “I suppose it is.” 

* * *

The lantern was made of enchanted glass, and shaped in the likeness of the naaru whose Light supplied the flame within. Salandria had visited the Sunwell plenty of times in her life, but there was something wholly different and sacred about carrying a piece of it in her arms. As she left the holy sanctum, Salandria had hugged it tightly to her chest, terrified that she would trip and drop it, that the glass would shatter, and the flame would go out.

She’d stayed up all night polishing her armor. The Lady Neeluu, when she’d undertaken the journey, had worn her ceremonial red and gold robes as Warden of the Sunwell, and Uncle Rommath’s right hand Erindae had also worn red and gold, with dainty silk slippers Salandria had mooned over for months. Two years ago, Taliona, a baker from the Azurebreeze Coast, had donned a fine scarlet and purple robe with trailing hem. Perhaps that was what she should have worn, and for the first time in her life Salandria had spent weeks fretting over her wardrobe. 

But Salandria was not a mage, as Neeluu and Erindae were, nor was she especially feminine. She felt more comfortable in trousers than dresses, and had since she was nine years old. Rooting through her mother’s closet at her own paltry selection of robes and frocks, Salandria was struck by an old memory, half lost to time: her mother astride Redemption, scarlet and silver armor gleaming in the sun as she escorted the Sunwell’s Light through the city. 

It had been an easy decision, after that.

She dressed carefully that morning, bathing and pulling her hair neatly back into a high tail. She donned her best tunic, though no one would see it beneath her chest guard, and triple checked her reflection. With shaking hands, she saddled her charger, a deep bay named Deliverance, and prayed she would not fall upon dismounting at the gates of Thalassian Pass.

Salandria knew the history of the Scourge, and she knew the Battle of Thalassian Pass probably better than most. A monument to the Farstriders who had fallen there stood within the shadow of the desiccated necropolis, and it was always a ranger who gave a speech there. For the first time in living memory, however, that ranger was not one of their own, but was instead Forsaken. 

“Thank you for your hospitality,” said Dark Ranger Alina, “and for allowing me to speak today.” Her voice was strained and didn’t carry far, even with the magical enhancement one of Salandria’s entourage had placed upon her ﹣ a result, she’d been told, of her torture at the hands of Sylvanas. There were some grumblings within the crowd ﹣ anti-Forsaken sentiment was at its highest since the dawn of the Scourge ﹣ but Alina had been invited under protection of the Ranger General, and there was very little anyone could say against that. 

“I understand that my presence here has struck a nerve among some of you,” Alina announced, “and I understand that many of you hold resentment towards the dark rangers, and Forsaken as a whole. But I ask you to remember that before I was risen, I was just an elf like you, and this was my home too. I grew up in these forests, and what’s become of them pains me too.”

Salandria stood quietly as the dark ranger spoke, the lantern’s handle clutched tightly in her sweaty hands. She’d heard the story of this battle many times, but never from the perspective of one who’d been there. Someone who'd fought and died there. 

“I was born in the southern Golden Strand,” Alina said, “and joined the Farstriders quite early in life. My brother had been one, and both of my parents and their parents before them. The forests were in my blood. I served under Captain Orestes, and later under Lieutenant Halduron Brightwing.” Halduron, standing just to the side, shifted his weight to his other foot and offered her a reassuring smile. “I was a captain in his company when the Scourge came.”

No one spoke as Alina recounted those first terrible days. She had been too late to come to the aid of Sylvanas’s elite unit, the forty-two men and women who’d been ambushed by waves of the undead on what was supposed to be a scouting mission. Had seen first hand the shambling corpses of her countrymen, and fought the legion that protected Dar’Khan Drathir, the greatest traitor in Thalassian history. 

“I remember as the great tree went up in flames,” Alina continued, her broken voice wavering only slightly. “I watched in horror, unable to do anything. I felt Thas’alah’s agony in my soul. Even as the battle raged, I heard only its screams in my ears.” Her crimson eyes blinked several times as though holding back tears. “Drathir broke us when he killed the tree, and he knew it. He didn’t just want the wood for Deatholme ﹣ he wanted to break our spirits. It was easier to kill us if we were already dead inside.”

Salandria felt her throat constrict as Alina described how the tide of battle turned after the burning of the world tree. How the fight bled out of her brothers and sisters, how some actually collapsed right there in the mud, became easy pickings for the undead horde. How she tried, so hard, to keep going, wrenching arrows out of bodies when her quiver emptied, too late to stop Arthas Menethil but not too late to murder Drathir.

“I was too close to turn away. I sent word to those behind me ﹣ the bulk of Lieutenant Brightwing’s rangers and most of Ranger Lord Theron’s ﹣ to run north. To follow the march. We couldn’t save the tree and there were too many ghouls choking the pass. They would have died had they followed me.” Beside her Halduron had gone very still, staring determinedly into the crowd without really seeing.

“No one from my company survived. The last thing I remember is running in the direction of a skeleton guard. The tree was cracking apart, fiery debris killing just as many Farstriders as the undead. I watched many of us burn to death.” Alina fell silent, her voice giving out, and it was many moments until she was able to speak again. “I lost much to the Scourge. My friends. My entire family. My company. My wife.” She bit her pale lip. “Many Forsaken try their best to forget their former lives, but I never could. I lived and died for Quel’Thalas, and I would do it all over again. The forests may have changed, but they are still my home, and I am happy to be back now after so long.”

It was only at Uncle Halduron’s soft cough that Salandria remembered herself, and she stepped forth on heavy feet. Alina unlatched the enchanted glass at the base of the monument ﹣ a monument which bore her own name ﹣ and Salandria shakily kissed the flame to its waiting holder. The Light swelled blindingly bright for the span of the heartbeat, illuminating for just a moment the ghost of the land on which it stood, before dimming, becoming an ordinary flame in an ordinary lantern. The crowd murmured ﹣ prayers and verses from the Lament of the Highborne ﹣ and Salandria watched as Halduron pulled his old friend Alina into his embrace, a very public declaration that she was welcome home once again.

* * *

“Uncle Halduron?”

The Ranger General did not turn. Perhaps he’d heard her approach and was not surprised. Salandria had never been able to successfully walk silently over the leaf-scattered grass, despite her father's attempts to teach her. 

“Uncle Halduron, are you alright?” 

He’d left shortly after the ceremony at the edge of the Dead Scar. It was more dangerous than the one at the Pass; the Scar was still populated by remnants of the undead army, and it was not safe to leave a flicker of the Sunwell there, even under guard. A battalion of blood knights had surrounded them for the short hour they’d been there, listening to a very moving account from a couple whose daughter had been part of the first line of defense. 

“Yeah.” Halduron’s voice was quiet and detached. This was not his favorite time of year, Salandria knew, and he despised the southern Ghostlands. She suspected he’d only come on her behalf, to see her safely through the south; he’d never been present here any other year that Salandria could remember.

Uncle Halduron was a melancholy sort of person, and had been since before she’d been adopted. Seemingly random things would set him off ﹣ the roar of Elrendar Falls, or climbing very tall trees, or once the sight of a teal-feathered hawkstrider strutting along the streets. Salandria had many fond memories with her godfather, but despite the adults’ attempts to shield her, she had many sad ones too. More than once she’d lain awake at night, listening to her father attempt to comfort a drunken and angry Halduron.

“Does Uncle Halduron hate you?” she asked quietly one morning. She didn’t think her godfather would hear her, snoring soundly from her father’s room, but she wanted to take no chances.

“What?” Lor’themar looked at her strangely. “Why would you think that?”

“He’s… I heard him,” Salandria said hesitantly. “Last night.” It didn’t miss her notice that the living room was a wreck, as if a scuffle had taken place, but she thought it wise not to mention it. She was only eight years old, but she was already very intuitive.

Her father’s whole demeanor softened. He sat beside her at the table and pulled her into his lap. “I’m sorry we woke you,” he said softly. “No, he doesn’t hate me.”

“He was crying.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Does he do that a lot?”

Lor’themar sighed, and scratched just beneath his eyepatch. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Do you remember the last time he stayed over, and he woke us all up?”

Salandria nodded. “Mother said he had a nightmare.”

“He did. Uncle Halduron has a lot of nightmares.” His good eye searched the room, as if looking for the best explanation to give a small child. “Do you remember when you learned about the Scourge?”

Salandria’s face screwed up. “What does that have to do with Uncle Halduron?”

He squeezed her shoulder. “The Scourge was a very bad thing that happened not that long ago, and Uncle Halduron has a lot of nightmares about it,” he explained. “He lost many people he loved.”

“His an’da?” Salandria knew her mother had lost her an’da; they had visited the memorial on Quel’Danas, and Liadrin had read his name from the tall marble slab. 

“Not his an’da. You’ve met his an’da, remember?”

“Oh.”

“Uncle Halduron lost his wife,” Lor’themar said gently. “And it’s been very hard on him. He loved her very much.”

“Oh.” Salandria considered this. “But why is he mad at you?”

“Oh my little sun,” her father sighed. “That’s a very complicated question. Grief ﹣ when you lose someone ﹣ makes you feel terrible things. Sometimes Uncle Halduron is very sad, and sometimes he’s jealous and angry.”

“Why?”

“Because he lost his wife, and I didn’t lose your mother. I didn’t lose very much at all, compared to him.”

“Your… your eye,” Salandria pointed out. “And Grandfather Vandellor.”

And her father nodded. “But losing my eye didn’t really change my life,” he explained. “And while I loved your grandfather, he was only one person. The Scourge killed Hal’s wife, his min’da, his brother-in-law, his grandparents… He doesn’t think that’s fair. He doesn’t think it’s fair that I have your mother and you, and he has no one.”

It was a difficult concept to explain to a child, and Salandria didn’t quite understand. “But he has his an’da and… his…. his sister, and she has boys too,” she protested. “That’s more people than you.”

“You love your family differently,” came her father’s explanation. “Uncle Halduron had many plans for his life that involved your aunt, and they were together a very long time. They’d known each other almost a thousand years.”

“Like you and Mother?”

A small smile pulled at the edges of her father’s mouth. “A bit like us, yes. Maybe some day he’ll tell you about her.”

“What was her name?” Salandria pressed.

“Velonara.”

Salandria was older now, and she knew what her father had told her at eight years old was not the entire truth. The aunt she’d never met wasn’t just dead but Forsaken, and it was that fact more than any other that hurt her godfather so deeply. 

She thought she’d find him with a bottle in hand ﹣ how often had she stumbled across such a scene growing up? But Uncle Halduron had stopped drinking almost two years ago, and the stink of alcohol was absent as she sat beside him.

“Are you coming to Windrunner Village tomorrow?” she asked quietly. There had been a bit of an uproar about that. Windrunner Spire had been part of the remembrance festival for years, and in the wake of Sylvanas’s betrayal some thought it a tasteless glorification of tyranny to return. But Sylvanas Windrunner had played a large part in the Scourge invasion, Salandria had always been told, and despite her actions in her undeath, in life she had always been considered a hero. 

“Of course,” Halduron murmured, but he offered nothing else.

Generally, her parents had tried to shield her from her godfather’s most sour moods, but neither of them were here tonight and would not be joining her for several days. Salandria didn’t feel right about leaving Halduron alone like this ﹣ he had always been there for her when she was upset. 

“How are you holding up?” he asked after a time, and she didn’t understand at first what he meant. “It can be jarring, your first time this far south.”

Salandria tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s different,” she said quietly. “I didn’t know what to expect. Nothing at home looks like this.”

Halduron nodded. Extended his hand. “It didn’t used to look like this either. Everything was green, and there were things that grew here that didn’t grow anywhere else.”

“Like what?”

“Prickly puffs,” came the answer. “Little round flowers encased in thorns. They bloomed once a year ﹣ stringy pink and white things, they were. And bloodvine, up in the mountains. We called it that because the sap was thick and red. It was an amazing medicinal plant, and we haven’t really found anything else like it.” He thought for a moment before adding, “Sour apples. They used to grow wild near what’s now Deatholme, and looked identical to the golden ones grown up north. And real Amani oak trees.”

“There are Amani oaks in the Royal Gardens,” Salandria protested, but her godfather shook his head.

“Someday I’ll take you up in the mountains by Zul’Aman and show you a real oak tree,” he promised. “They’re so tall you’ll think you’re standing under a world tree, and their leaves are silver. We used to use them for everything down here, but the last untouched grove is under control of the Amani now.”

Salandria craned her neck and stared at the sparse canopy above them. Very few of the trees had leaves anymore, and what little remained were crinkled and black. She tried to imagine them as they’d been, but she’d never seen silver leaves and her imagination supplied only the familiar orange-gold.

“It’s hard, listening to the speeches,” her godfather murmured after a moment. “At least I think so.”

“No… I think that too.” Salandria drew her knees up to her chest. “It’s not the same as just reading about what happened here.”

“No,” he agreed quietly. “It isn’t.”

She knew better than to pry, though she desperately wanted to. Her parents had instilled in her the taboo of peeking into others’ lives, and had warned her especially to exercise control around Uncle Halduron. He was sensitive, they said, and didn’t like to relive his past.

“I know the people who spoke today,” he said at length, and Salandria didn’t think this was something that warranted a response. Thought this was something he just had to say, and she was the only one around to tell. “Haven’t seen them in a long time… They’re Velonara’s parents.”

Velonara. Uncle Halduron had never said her name before. 

The couple had spoken tearfully about their daughter, handpicked to serve in the Ranger General’s own company, slaughtered by the Lich King himself. They’d recounted stories from her childhood, her determination to leave their luxurious manor for a life amongst the trees.

She never grew out of her Farstrider phase, the father had said.

She might still be alive if she had, the mother had murmured, too quiet for the public to hear.

“They don’t know she’s…?”

“I’m sure they do,” Halduron said tonelessly. “But she doesn’t want to see them and they’ve never reached out to her.” He shrugged, a minimal gesture. “It’s as nice an outcome as could be expected, honestly.”

“Really?”

Her godfather did look at her then. “Even before all this business with Sylvanas, dark rangers weren’t very welcome in Quel’Thalas. You saw the reaction to Alina.”

Salandria bit her lip. “You don’t think like that,” she said tentatively.

A dark cloud descended on Halduron’s features. “I did,” he said regretfully. “For a long time.”

He turned away again, watching a bat soar in the distance, and Salandria knew she shouldn’t say anything. She knew. In the last six months, her godfather had started regressing to the way he’d been and Salandria didn’t want to be the reason he went back to being the angry, sobbing drunk who stumbled into her father’s home in the middle of the night.

“What changed?” she asked carefully. And for a long time her godfather didn’t answer her, so long that she thought he hadn’t heard her at all, and she hadn’t the courage to repeat herself.

“Velonara,” he said at last. “I just… I couldn’t let her go.” A flush started to bloom on his face, starting at his nose and spreading rapidly onto his cheeks, a telltale sign he was going to cry. Salandria had seen it enough over the years.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Uncle Halduron shook his head, eyes shining in the twilight. “No,” he whispered. 

Salandria shivered in the chilly night air. “Do… do you want to be alone?”

“No. I really don’t.” And he looked so miserable there that Salandria couldn’t help but wrap her arms around him and squeeze him tight. She felt his strong arm curl over her shoulders, his chin press into her hair.

“You know you’re my favorite, right?” he asked huskily, not entirely hiding a sniffle. 

Salandria felt herself smile despite it all. “You’re my favorite too,” she told him.

* * *

Sylvanas Windrunner, the Banshee Queen, had until recently rarely ventured from the decaying throne that was the Undercity. Upon the destruction of the city and her ascension to Warchief, she and her ilk had uprooted their lives once more and settled in Orgrimmar. As such, Salandria had never truly had the opportunity to meet her ﹣ but she knew the stories. Had listened in reverence as her father told her miraculous stories of the former Ranger General, as Uncle Halduron recalled tales of her bravery and cunning and selflessness. Sylvanas Windrunner had been Salandria’s hero.

Looking at the statue of her now, Salandria wasn’t so sure. The monument showed a powerful woman wielding a bow, the arrow meticulously crafted in the style favored before the war. Her face was proud, chin held high. A woman who had done everything and more for her country, and sacrificed herself in its name. 

That was not the Sylvanas Windrunner who haunted them all now. This woman who’d stood tall and strong before the Lich King and defied him. Did not surrender. Did not run away. This woman, in Farstrider leathers and handcrafted bow, could not be the same one who kept her parents up at night in fear. Could not be the same one who’d ordered the execution of so many innocents, or the one who’d done the unthinkable and burned a world tree.

Salandria stared into Sylvanas Windrunner’s stone eyes and wondered what had happened to her. Placed her hands together and prayed for the soul of the woman she’d once admired. 

Her ears twitched at the strange sounds of the Ghostlands. The shrieking banshees who normally inhabited the structure, chased away today for the ceremony, and the far off sounds of waves lapping against the shore. The screeching of bats and clicking of spiders, and the restlessness of the meagre crowd outside. Windrunner Village, now a living, thriving town once more, had been chosen long ago as the place to honor those settlements that had fallen, but not everyone agreed with the choice this year. Suncrown was overrun by terrifying monsters and Goldenmist haunted beyond redemption, but Tranquillien had been proposed as an alternative in light of Sylvanas’s betrayal. She knew the Grand Magister had been in favor of the switch; the town had been the first to be reclaimed from the Scourge, for the longest time the only inhabited settlement in the desecrated south, and longer ago still he had been born there. 

“It’s not up to Rommath or the Sanctum,” her father decreed irritably. Salandria had not meant to spy but at the anger in her father’s voice ﹣ emotion so rarely heard she almost didn’t recognize it ﹣ she stopped short outside the door, heart thundering in her ears for reasons she couldn’t quite name.

“He does have a point,” her mother argued patiently. “Lighting the flame at Windrunner Spire could be seen as an endorsement of her vile acts.”

“How could anyone think that, after all we’ve done?” Lor’themar demanded. “We chose the spire years ago as a symbol of the Farstriders, a memorial of everything we did against the undead and all the people we lost, and Rommath respected us then. The north has Silvermoon, but the south has always had Windrunner Village.”

“You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Lor’themar,” Liadrin said gently. “I understand the reasons why, and I agree with them. But I think, as it so often does, your opinion of Sylvanas may be clouding your judgement.”

Salandria could picture the frown creasing her father’s face. “I’ve seen her for who she is now,” he said steadily. “But I also knew who she was. That woman, and so many others, died to the Scourge, and her actions now only intensify that loss. Lia…” He sighed, and Salandria imagined him fussing with his eyepatch in frustration. “Lia, you don’t… understand. What she meant to us. What Windrunner Village means. You aren’t a Farstrider. Her betrayal has infected the wound her death created. For years we’ve rallied behind her memory. Tranquillien holds none of the significance to us that the spire has.”

There was silence on the other side of the door. Salandria had never heard her father so upset before, and after what seemed like an eternity, there was a quiet rustling, and her mother said softly, “Perhaps explain that to Rommath, in a way he can understand, and put it to a vote.”

“We voted years ago,” Lor’themar grumbled. “Windrunner Village won. Every Farstrider will vote in its name.”

“It’s not the Farstriders that need convincing,” Liadrin pointed out. 

Windrunner Village had won in the end, with what her father called the elves’ strict observance of tradition. Moving the flame, however distasteful its current location, was not something many sin’dorei were truly committed to doing. 

“Salandria?”

The girl started and whirled, but it was only the dark ranger who had spoken at the pass. Alina, with the broken voice, and her godfather’s dear friend. Further along there were guards ﹣ blood knights and Farstriders ﹣ and Salandria knew that if she were in any real danger, within moments all of them would leap to her defense. 

She bowed low. “Hello, erm…” It was polite to address a stranger by their title but Salandria didn’t think it appropriate here. And while it was also polite to use surnames, she didn’t know if the woman even had one. 

The dark ranger bowed as well, and with her features schooled into a carefully neutral expression implored, “Alina, please.” The sound struggled to breach her throat, and it came out as ...ina, pleasss…

“Hello, Alina.” The flame had been left to burn at the tip of the statue’s arrow in the past but not this year. This year, while her father had been successful in keeping the village in the march, he had instructed the flame to be lit in the town square, in celebration of the hard won battle to resettle the area. The spire was not supposed to have been visited at all, but Salandria had insisted on paying her respects to the flame’s old home. Had wanted to stare into the face of Sylvanas Windrunner, even if it was only stone, and try to understand the path she had chosen. “Are they calling for me?”

Alina shook her head. It was easier for her to speak quietly, and she sounded almost like a normal person standing by the girl’s side, talking barely above a whisper. “Not yet,” the ranger whispered. “I didn’t think anyone else would be here. Even Halduron won’t…”

Salandria shook her head, a loose strand the color of cornsilk coming loose and falling in her eyes. “Uncle Halduron says he doesn’t want to see her. He says it hurts.” She followed Alina’s gaze back to the statue’s face.

“It does,” Alina murmured. “It hurts very much.” 

For a long time neither of them spoke, lost in thought with the ghost of Sylvanas Windrunner. Salandria read the plaque at her feet ﹣ By the light of the sun, Failing children of the blood, O’ children of the blood, By the light of the sun ﹣ and tried to remember which poem it had come from.

“How old are you, Salandria?” Alina was looking at her curiously, inky dark hair blowing gently in the cool breeze. Unlike Eversong Woods, it was quite cold in the Ghostlands, and Salandria shivered despite herself. 

“Seventeen,” she answered. “I’ll be eighteen this year.”

A smile touched the dark ranger’s lips, tinged with sadness. “I see. You wouldn’t have known her then.” She turned back to the statue, crimson eyes unblinking. “She wasn’t always… She was very different, long ago.” Her voice was so soft that Salandria strained to hear her. “She loved us, and we loved her in return. She protected us when everyone else sought to do us harm.”

It took a moment for Salandria to realize that Alina spoke not of Sylvanas as the Ranger General, but as the Banshee Queen she’d been before her betrayal. 

“She used her own power to free many of us from the Lich King, and she drove the Scourge from western Lordaeron so that we might have a safe place to just… exist. She gave us the Undercity, and because of her, people ﹣ people with real power, like Lor’themar and Thrall ﹣ began to take us seriously. Because of her, we were accepted as proper people, not just an offshoot of the Scourge.” Alina wrapped her arms around herself as if chilled. “She really did care, once upon a time.”

Salandria had never heard any stories of the former Ranger General in her undeath. Her father and Halduron told her of centuries-old exploits, feats of bravery and heroism that had happened long before the fall of Lordaeron or the reclamation of Tirisfal Glades. Acts that took place during the time of Good King Anasterian, when there were no sin’dorei, and the elves had been part of the Alliance, and their most pressing concern was the Amani raids. 

“My father was a Farstrider,” she offered. “He says dying corrupted all she was.”

A soft, mostly soundless laugh puffed from Alina’s cracked lips. “Dying corrupted us all,” she corrected gently. “But I think he’s right. I don’t think it’s possible for someone like her to have remained the way she was in life. It seems many powerful Forsaken go mad in time.” The makings of a frown smudged her features. “The Lich King bestowed on her dark magicks he withheld from the rest of us. We all blessed it, at first. Her power kept us safe. But I think it twisted her, in the end.” She pressed her lips together and stared hard at Sylvanas’s stone likeness. “Wherever she is, she isn’t the ranger who died with us. And she’s not the savior she was at first. I don’t… I don’t know what she is anymore.”

“She was my hero,” Salandria whispered, “for a long time.” And the dark ranger nodded.

“She was everyone’s hero.” She laid a hand on the statue’s arm, leather scraping gently against the stone, and Salandria understood, much more clearly, why her father had fought for Windrunner Village’s right to bear the flame. 

Sylvanas, Ranger General, Dark Lady and Banshee Queen, and savior of elf and Forsaken alike, was dead, and that thing wearing her face was not her. The very last one to fall to the Scourge. And that was the most terrible tragedy of all, that even the most good, the most just, was not safe from evil.

* * *

Fairbreeze was one of Salandria’s favorite places, with its suggestion of controlled greenery, its surrounding orchards, and the vast village square that in the summer hosted noisy and exciting auctions. There were no auctions now, however. The old decommissioned ballista stood in the empty plaza, scratches from undead claws streaking its sides. It had been given a thorough wash, and its plaque a good scrubbing, and the lantern that would hold the Sunwell’s flame for the remainder of the festival stood almost taller than Salandria did.

Like Tranquillien, Fairbreeze had been relatively unimportant before the Scourge, merely a stopping point between the sea and its much larger neighbor, Throndoril. But Throndoril had stood smack in the middle of the undead march, and the city had fallen before any could attempt to save it, and in its place rose Fairbreeze, more easily defended among the hills without the main road snaking through. Like Tranquillien, it became the largest settlement on its side of the Elrendar, second only to Silvermoon herself.

Halduron took Salandria to Fairbreeze often. It was the first place she had ever ridden a hawkstrider, and it was where she had first met her beloved charger Deliverance, after her induction into the paladins’ guild hall. She had played in its orchards as a child, chasing and being chased by her friends Furan and Kalaren Brightwing, and on very hot days, when she had naughtily skipped her lessons, her godfather would take her to splash in the river just down the way. 

Her parents were waiting for her in Fairbreeze, as part of her northern escort, and Salandria stood very straight like she’d been taught as Baran Brightwing, Uncle Halduron’s an’da, began to speak. 

Baran had always been very kind to her and Salandria was very fond of him, but as she listened to his story ﹣ the pain of losing his entire extended family in one night, the son-in-law he’d treated as his own child and the daughter-in-law he’d loved as his own, and especially his wife, without whom he’d felt there was no point in living. Salandria had never known he’d carried such sadness within him, had never known behind his every smile and laugh he felt so despondent and broken. In the crowd, she saw her godfather’s sister Bria press her hand to her face as she listened to her father’s words, saw Furan and Kalaren wrap their arms around her. On her other side, she saw the rigidity in Halduron’s stature, the furious blinking of his eyes, and Lor’themar's respectful bowed head. 

“But like our great nation, I grew from the terrible tragedy,” Baran continued. He had helped rebuild Fairbreeze with the other able-bodied men and women, had defended it from the ghouls that still haunted the Scar. He’d found a new love, a woman his children and grandchildren adored, “and while I will never forget what I’ve lost, every day it becomes a little easier. I am thankful every day for my son and daughter, my grandsons, and my wife, and whoever they bring to my door.” He spoke of rebuilding, of the breaking of archaism and the fostering of new relationships and traditions. 

“We should never forget the horrors of the Scourge,” Baran concluded, “but we must also never forget that we survived them.”

* * *

Fairbreeze was half a day’s ride from the city and it was there Salandria spent the night before the trip to Quel’Danas in the morning to return the sacred flame to the Sunwell. Silvermoon had been transformed in her absence, glowing softly with candles in every window and its citizens milling quietly about in mourning white. The shops had closed early in preparation for the final day of remembrance, and there was to be a candle-lighting ceremony in the Belore Chapel at midnight. Salandria had attended every year from the time her mother had brought her to live in this city, but never as someone so important. Always she’d stood in the crowd with the rest of the city, looking on as High Priest Kath’mar led them in prayer and song.

This year proceeded in much the same way. She wore the dress her mother’d had made several weeks ago, a slim linen shift unadorned with embroidery or the fancy ruching that had come into style, with soft matching slippers. Her hair had been swept back from her face in an elaborate braided bun, and held in one hand the ceremonial ranseur of the Blood Knight Order and the Sunwell’s enchanted lantern in the other. From the front of the pews her parents ﹣ her father, seated between his Grand Magister and Ranger General, and her mother several spots down the bench ﹣ offered her soft, reassuring smiles. Salandria was nervous, and she wasn’t sure if the anxiety was due to presenting herself before the entire city or the speech that she would make on the morrow. 

“Thank you,” Kath’mar addressed them, after the last refrains of the Lament of the Highborne had faded and the customary moment of silence. His voice carried through the gilded building, a man used to making himself heard. “This year we come together as one nation to honor those who died beneath the Lich King’s fetid feet, and to pray for true death for those still in his thrall. I would ask now for our city’s Grand Magister to rise and say a few words before the lighting of the last candle.”

Rommath did, and Salandria could see none of the animosity she was accustomed to pass between the two men as Rommath ascended the dais and nodded to the High Priest. He nodded to her as well before turning to face the crowd, folding his bare arms behind his back in his usual, reserved manner. The starkness of his arcane tattoos gave the impression of blood against the white of his robes. 

“Thank you, High Priest,” he said formally, and Salandria forced herself to pay attention. Never more than when he addressed the public did Rommath speak so formally, a register Salandria heard little of in today’s Silvermoon. Her father had explained once that Rommath spoke in the style of kings, having been a close friend and advisor of the last Sunstrider prince. 

Privately, Salandria was pleased the register had begun to die out. She was quite skilled with languages and spoke four fluently, and yet still her eyes would glaze over at the excessively flowery words.

The magister seemed stiff, and behind his back his hands clenched into fists. “It is important to recognize the role our past has played in the shaping of Silvermoon today…”

Rommath spoke nearly every year, and though the events he cited differed, in Salandria’s opinion he always said the same things. Always praised the efforts of the sin’dorei in overcoming the tragedy that had befallen them, the new programs that had been put into place and the people who’d worked to make them possible; and Salandria thought that this year he would speak on the overthrow of Sylvanas ﹣ perhaps call it some sort of victory, finally freeing them from the virus of bad leadership that had plagued them since the death of Anasterian ﹣ or maybe spread the word of Dark Ranger Velonara, who had been instrumental in Sylvanas’s downfall and was still a missing prisoner of war. Rommath’s speeches were always pragmatic, and straightforward, and it took several moments for Salandria to understand the curious, surprised, and somewhat disbelieving looks from the crowd before them.

“I would like to share a personal anecdote tonight,” the magister had said, “of my own struggles in the wake of the Scourge.”

Rommath never spoke about himself. Salandria could not recall a single fact he had ever divulged to her about his upbringing or family. She wasn’t sure if he was currently or had ever been married, if he had children or parents or if he’d simply sprung from the soil fully formed as an adult elf already firmly ensconced within the Magisters’ Sanctum. She could count the number of things she knew about the Grand Magister on one hand, and none of them had been told to her by the man himself.

“Many of you know I was there when the city fell. I coordinated the evacuation of Silvermoon’s children, and helped wall off the Sunspire from the undead. I was among those hunting ghouls in the wreckage of the city, searching for survivors and burning the bodies. These are memories I wish I did not have ﹣ but I do. And among these terrible memories, I would like to share a story about my late sister and what she taught me.”

He took a deep breath, eyes fixated on some point Salandria could not make out in the crowd. 

“I am sure many of you in those first days met my sister,” he continued steadily. “If you were wounded, she tended to you. If you hungered, she fed you. If you for any reason set foot in Falconwing Square, you would have seen a priestess ﹣ oftentimes alone, surrounded by the injured and the dying, and regardless of what she was doing, she would have looked you in the eyes and asked if you were alright.” 

Salandria’s ears twitched as a quiet murmur rippled through the crowd, but Rommath paid them no mind and went on. 

“For many days, my sister Auriel was the only trained healer in the city. She hardly slept, and ate standing up. I remember once I finally convinced her to stop for just five minutes to eat ﹣ I’d managed to procure an actual meal of some sort of meat ﹣ and she’d barely taken a bite before an elderly man poked his head in the room and asked, in the scratchiest voice, if there was any more bread. Two children had just been brought in by the city guard. Without hesitation, my sister gave her meal to those children, and tore bandages from her own skirts to wrap their wounds. That was just the sort of person my sister was. She would never indulge if it meant someone else would go without.”

In the front row, Astalor Bloodsworn was smiling, despite the sorrowful flush dotting his cheeks. Rommath looked at him for several moments, seemingly drawing strength from his friend before going on.

“Before the Scourge,” he announced, “I believed that the selflessness Auriel displayed was nothing short of the divine taking elven form. My mother liked to say that the Light had chosen Auriel in the womb, and indeed, she always exhibited those qualities praised in the scripture. Our family was privileged, and she was quite conscious of that fact. I believed, in the wake of the Scourge, that only the select few blessed as she was by the Light would do as she did. And I was wrong.” Salandria watched him shift his weight almost imperceptibly to his other foot. “The Lich King murdered many of our priests, but even those with no training ﹣ those of able body yet not strong enough to assist the watch or the Farstriders ﹣ stepped up. Regardless if their own loved ones suffered, I watched people from all walks of life, from powerful and conceited nobility to common shopkeepers and even children, gather fabric for bandages, search for herbs and medicines, and scrounge for food in increasingly dangerous parts of the city. My sister and the small number of priests and journeymen were unable to be everywhere at once, and while they were debriding wounds and setting bones and mopping blood, there were others who fed the wounded, who changed their dirty bandages, who carried supplies from Falconwing Square to the hospital and back, and who sat with the sick and the dying when the priests could not. People who carried messages, who argued with the Farstriders for aid, who gently coaxed people like my sister away from ‘just one more patient’ to sleep for even five or ten minutes. These people were not blessed, as Auriel was. They could easily have crowded the inns and avoided the hospitals, could have looked at her, shrugged, and said I’m no healer. But they didn’t.”

Rommath’s voice broke then, and he took a beat to compose himself. He cleared his throat. “I remember quite clearly when a close friend of mine learned her home had been relatively untouched by the destruction. I expected her to wall herself in with her husband. It was the sort of thing she’d do. Instead, she stripped the entire home of every blanket, towel, curtain, piece of clothing, and foodstuff it possessed, and donated it all to the city.” He looked at Astalor then. “Another friend offered his home itself, which became the Bloodsworn Memorial Hospital.

“I never anticipated such a response from my countrymen,” he admitted. “I did not grow up in a world in which such acts existed in anything but stories. Even my closest friend, well known as snobbish, self-centered, and out of touch, was beside himself, and scrambled to donate money and supplies to the wounded, to rescue those whose villages had been overrun. Even as the Sunwell fed us its tainted mana, those who could cast did, and those who could not found other ways to be of service.

“I look at the sin'dorei now, and I see the same helpers I did then. I see people like my sister, people who care for others at the expense of themselves, and it impresses upon me that one does not require divine intervention to be a person and come to the aid of those who are struggling. Many of us, myself included, would not be here today without the selflessness of others, and I urge you all to remember that. I strive to be more like my sister every day, because without people like her, all of Quel’Thalas would have perished.”

“Are you going back to Quel’Danas tonight?”

Astalor levied her with a gentle smile. “I may,” he admitted, “but it’s gotten so late that it might make more sense to leave in the morning.” He patted the empty space beside him. “What’s on your mind?”

Liadrin was not the sister of Astalor Bloodsworn, but Salandria had called him uncle for as long as she could remember. He had co-founded the Blood Knight Order and Salandria had many a memory of dozing on the couch in her mother’s office as she and Astalor poured over budgets and rosters and charters. He wasn’t a paladin, but Salandria considered him just as much of a mentor as Solanar. He always had time for her and her problems, and listened with a kind, nonjudgmental ear. 

Salandria sat, and for the span of several heartbeats the only sound was the soft murmuring of prayer and the quiet burning of candles. 

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Astalor prodded gently. “The last day always starts early.”

“I know.” Salandria picked at a thread on her skirt. “Uncle Astalor, can I ask you a stupid question?”

“The only stupid question is the one you never ask,” came the reply. 

A small huff of a laugh escaped her. “I suppose.” She watched the flickering flames, momentarily in awe of how similar and yet so different they were compared to that of the Sunwell. The Sunwell’s Light was not true fire, after all. “How do people like Uncle Rommath stand in front of so many people and just… talk?”

“It’s part of the job, really. The Grand Magister has always been a very prominent, public position. Before the Scourge, the Grand Magister’s power was second only to the king’s, and they had to be able to announce and explain government decisions.”

“But tonight wasn’t a government decision,” Salandria protested. “Uncle Rommath talked about himself.”

Astalor chuckled. “That is quite rare,” he acknowledged. “He’s always been a rather private person, not unlike your parents. If we hadn’t grown up together, I wouldn’t know much about him at all, despite marrying Auriel.”

It didn’t surprise Salandria that the Auriel in Rommath’s story and Uncle Astalor’s late wife were the same person. Auriel was not a common name, and in fact Auriel Bloodsworn was the only woman Salandria knew of who carried it. 

“I didn’t know he had a sister,” she said quietly. She’d always admired Auriel Bloodsworn. One of the original seven who’d thrown down their priest robes and holy relics to join the fledgling Blood Knight Order, selfless and righteous and just. Salandria had grown up on stories of Auriel just as much as she had Sylvanas Windrunner; it was only natural, when the vast majority of her time was spent in the company of paladins, to hear tales of those who brought them glory and honor and pride. 

“I doubt anyone else did either.” Astalor twisted his wedding ring round his finger. “If you saw them together, they looked very much alike. The same long black hair, the same facial features.” He grinned. “When they were angry, they were almost twins…” He stared wistfully at the lights display. “But their personalities were very different... . Losing her was very hard for Rommath.” 

Salandria had heard the story many times. The Final Stand of Quel’Danas, against the mad prince and his Burning Legion. The demonic invasion and those who had stood against it. Of the original seven, only her mother, Solanar, and Uncle Astalor remained.

“Not for you?”

“Of course.” The ring spun faster. “I suppose I’ve coped better than he has. Just between you and me, he’s very sensitive.”

Disbelief colored her cheeks. “I doubt that,” Salandria giggled, but Astalor shook his head.

“A long time ago, I believed he was the way he is because he’s stubborn. He always held his emotions close to his chest, and if you ask him, he’ll deny he has any at all.” The magister stopped fidgeting, placed his hands on the bench. “He hid a lot of himself, and I think maybe the only person who truly knew him was Auriel.”

Salandria gnawed at her lip. “Why would he talk about her then?” she questioned. “I saw him ﹣ he was very tense.”

“I believe it. Rommath abhors being vulnerable, and Silvermoon has not looked kindly upon him in the past.” He seemed to pause here, as if expecting to be questioned, but Salandria didn’t. She understood the people of Silvermoon, she thought. They were judgmental and haughty, and before the Scourge cared very much about family and reputation. Uncle Rommath had come from a quiet town in the country, had integrated himself in with the royal family as if he’d always belonged there, and had been vilified for those ties after the prince’s betrayal. The rumors were quieter, two decades later, but not entirely gone. 

“I think he thought this anniversary was special,” Astalor continued. “He’s always taken it upon himself to build Silvermoon up, to be sure our accomplishments were noted amongst all the sad stories and loss. But Rommath suffered just like the rest of us, and maybe he just wanted to be heard.”

Salandria turned the words over in her mind. Rommath suffered just like the rest of us. Maybe he just wanted to be heard. So many people thought he’d been unaffected by the elven genocide, that he’d benefitted from his mentor’s demise by stepping seamlessly into his shoes. That his relationship with the crown prince had protected him from the very worst that the Scourge had to offer. By breaking the silence on his life, by sharing the story of his sister, he was informing the people that, in fact, he’d been affected too.

* * *

Quel’Danas was Salandria’s favorite place in all of Quel’Thalas. It was like stepping into the past, back to a simpler time of small town living, magical industrialism, and communing with the Sunwell in its own natural splendor. The Dead Scar was still an ugly, permanent mark upon the land, but the rest of the island had flourished. The Magister’s Terrace, where only high-ranking members of the Sanctum were permitted entry, stood proudly in the distance, a beautiful restoration of white and gold and scarlet tiles, rising above the villages of Dawnstar and Sun’s Reach as though placed there by Al’ar himself. The Sunwell, hidden in the center of the orange and gold grove, stood to the other side, and even from town Salandria could feel its pull. It sang to her in the warm summer air, and breathing deeply, she felt a little calmer.

Travel to the holy isle was heavily restricted. Its population was small, and its Wretched ﹣ still a plague after all these years ﹣ much more unhinged than those in Eversong Woods. There was a deep-seated need to preserve the isle the way it had been, and flora and fauna flourished in a way Salandria had only ever seen in the Eversong countryside. As they gathered in Dawnstar Square, she heard the chirping of dragonhawks, and a butterfly the color of a polished ruby fluttered among the bouquets of flowers placed at the feet of the monument in whose shadow they stood.

In this day and age, with Silvermoon no longer isolated from the world and the sin’dorei more connected now on a global scale than ever before, there still persisted the unwritten rule that only an elf, no matter their political affiliations, could set foot on Quel’Danas. Salandria recognized Captain Auric Sunchaser, leader of the quel’dorei who’d sided with the Alliance, and Death Hunter Renthar Hawkspear, one of a few independent quel’dorei who’d survived both the Scourge and the Burning Legion and still answered to no one. Vereesa Windrunner was absent this year, and her sister Alleria was not permitted, considered having forsaken the Sunwell and its Light in favor of the seductive darkness that was the Void. 

Though the other races of the Horde were not allowed, and instead respectfully attended the ceremony in the city the day before, there was one other people permitted for the final day of remembrance: a group of draenei, clustered by the monument which featured one of their own with an elf, side by side and arm in arm. It had been the prophet Velen who’d reignited the Sunwell all those years ago, using the core of the fallen naaru M’uru, and it was only right to include them on this most sacred day. Velen himself sat in a place of honor at Lor’themar Theron’s right hand, and listened attentively as the Warden of the Sunwell, Neeluu Dawnseeker, led them in prayer. 

On that fateful day, regardless of their ties to Horde and Alliance, a special relationship had been forged between the sin'dorei and the draenei. It had been the draenei who’d offered them aid in the rebuilding of Quel’Danas, and imports from Azuremyst had become quite common, especially of desperately needed wood. With so much of the Thalassian forest burned, for a long time it had been taboo, if not outright illegal, to fell trees for construction, and the draenei had responded with ships upon ships of silvery timber. A home built of real Thalassian wood had become somewhat of a status symbol, even now as the restrictions had begun to lift; and even Silvermoon in part had been restored with Azuremystian wood. 

The members of the draenei delegation were largely the same year after year, and Salandria knew them all. The prophet traveled with a small personal guard ﹣ Baatun, who towered over them all, Boros, whose impressive head crest resembled large horns, and Divinus, whose white hair shone with the intensity of the sun ﹣ and Farseer Nobundo, a Broken who every year had a word of appreciation for the recovery of the isle’s greenery. They sat beside General Tiras’alan and Grand Anchorite Almonen, who personally had overseen the reconstruction as leaders of the Shattered Sun Offensive. Salandria knew them well ﹣ her mother had been one of the organization’s sin’dorei leaders ﹣ and had been saddened when they returned to Shattrath. Velen oftentimes brought a student of the Light with him, and Salandria remembered the uproar the year that student had been Prince Anduin Wrynn. The boy, now High King of the Alliance, was quite possibly the only human in all seven thousand years of Thalassian history to have set foot on the shores of Quel’Danas. Salandria remembered him as quiet and respectful, and apologizing for his inability to speak Thalassian. 

A murmur rippled through the crowd as Neeluu introduced the Quel’Danasian speaker, and Salandria’s eyes widened. It was not a Dawnblade, one of the elite soldiers who protected the Sunwell, nor was it even a citizen of Dawnstar Village. Standing before them, their thin slimy film sparkling in the sun, was a murloc, and not just any murloc. Neeluu had referred to the beast as a chieftain.

Murlocs were native to Quel’Danas, and after the Scourge had been broken into two tribes. The Greengills to the very north were savage and isolationist, but Salandria had heard that the North Sea tribe was friendlier ﹣ as far as murlocs went ﹣ and even sometimes traded with the elves. Her only experience with murlocs was limited to the warfaring troops along the Golden Strand, and she leaned forward in her seat, curiosity and eagerness getting the better of her. 

Lrrglmmrgl, as she was called, spoke Thalassian with a peculiar accent, and while the elves of Quel’Danas seemed to understand her, those who had come from the mainland and Azuremyst struggled. Salandria was fascinated by the way a person with no lips managed to form the sounds needed to speak their language, and almost missed the murloc’s speech entirely. She spoke as though shouting through a mouthful of water, and at times relied on Neeluu to help make her point clear. She’d never spoken before a group of elves, she said, and she was nervous. 

The North Sea and the Greengills had been divided after the Scourge, she said, just as the sin’dorei had split from the quel’dorei. What had once been one large tribe overrunning the beaches was now the shambles of two, and the Greengills had taken the remains of their most capable warriors. The North Sea murlocs struggled greatly in the years following the genocide; while their undead were easily dealt with, rotting quickly in the warm sea, the waters that had once teemed with fish and bivalves were shockingly empty. “The Ssscourggge drrrove themm off,” Lrrglmmrgl explained, “and we coullldn’t feed ourrsselllvess.” 

The Greengills dealt with this by swimming far north and bringing back enough coldwater fish to last weeks, but the North Sea didn’t have the people or resources to do the same. Attempts to trade with the Greengills were stymied, and many North Sea murlocs lost their lives bartering for cast off crabs. Were it not for the sin’dorei, desperate enough for food to brave seas that for millennia had been murloc domain, they would have starved. They showed the sin’dorei fisherman how to construct crab traps and weave sturdy nets, and traded medicine for food. Their oracles relied on the ebb and flow of the tides to perform magic and thus were unaffected in that regard by the Sunwell’s collapse. As the fish returned, Warden Neeluu and Lrrglmmrgl worked together to ensure their two peoples continued fair trading and fishing, and it was not uncommon now to see a troop of the beasts in town, albeit usually Sun’s Reach rather than Dawnstar Village, entering with baskets of fresh caught seafood, medicinal kelps and large, colorful shells, and leaving with dragonhawk eggs and meat, clean wood and thatch for huts, fruits, and land herbs. For years until the restoration of the Well, murloc healing was the only magical healing available on the island, and even now, there were people who swore by the oracles, or who sought advice from both them and priests. 

“Onllly Norr-ssea murrllocss do disss,” Lrrglmmrgl said. “No uhderr murrllocss have disss rellaysshunsship with ssin’dorrei. We kkept each uhderr alllive.”

The North Sea murlocs had managed to overcome the famine and genocide, and used it to break through centuries of xenophobia and animosity between their people and the sin’dorei. Neeluu and Lrrglmmrgl were good friends, and it showed in the Quel’Danasian economy and culture.

Long ago, Uncle Astalor had once said, it was known that the beaches were dangerous. Murlocs controlled the seas and didn’t take kindly to trespassers. Only a fool would find himself on the beach, or someone with a death wish.

The draenei, whose experiences with murlocs were uncommon, listened thoughtfully to the chieftain’s speech, and Salandria saw Prophet Velen murmur something quietly to her father, who responded in kind. The mainlanders whispered amongst themselves; elves were well known for their ethnocentrism, and it had probably never occurred to them before that murlocs were really people, and struggled as they had in the wake of Arthas Menethil’s unholy march. However, the murlocs of Eversong had responded to the tragedy in the same way the sin’dorei at large had, by withdrawing further into their own societies, and few were as badly affected as their North Sea cousins. The North Sea murlocs would have died without sin’dorei aid, and the sin’dorei of Quel’Danas would have died without murloc magicks and their knowledge of the seas.

Salandria had been to Quel’Danas many times but she’d never truly thought about the murlocs before. She made a vow to speak to Lrrglmmrgl before the day’s end. A small step, but a step forward nonetheless. 

The murloc’s feet slapped the ground softly as she returned to her seat, and her feet dangled off the end. She kicked them a bit, as a child would, as Neeluu announced Salandria’s name. 

The paladin’s heart pounded. She’d written and rewritten her speech many times since her name had been chosen, and rehearsed it with her parents until she could recite it from memory, but absolutely nothing had prepared her for actually giving it. Neeluu gave her a warm smile and an even warmer hug before relinquishing the spotlight, and leaving Salandria alone on stage before all of Quel’Danas. 

Out of the corner of her eye, her father gave an encouraging nod, and her mother beamed. Salandria took a deep breath, swallowed, and began. 

“My name is Salandria.” Her voice shook. She didn’t know how people like her parents and Uncle Rommath and Aunt Neeluu did this. “If you know me at all, it’s as the daughter of the Lady Liadrin, or a member of the Blood Knight Order.” She clenched her clammy hands; she hadn’t known what she’d expected, but no one interrupted, and every face was bright and attentive. “But I’m not just a paladin or the Blood Matriarch’s daughter. I was born in the Outland, and spent the first seven years of my life in a Shattrathi orphanage.

“There was some controversy when my name was chosen,” Salandria continued. “I have not served my community as my mother has, and I was not yet born when the Lich King ravaged the land. Arguably, I’ve done nothing for my country except live in it. I don’t have memories of what used to be, only what is. I grew up in a post-Scourge world and that didn’t sit well with people, as if there was no way I could possibly be affected by the greatest tragedy in our people's history.

“Like many sin’dorei, my birth parents followed Prince Kael’thas to the Outland. Whether they sought a cure to the sickness that had befallen the nation, or a separate power source to replace the Sunwell, I don’t know. I never met them. They died when I was born, and some kind soul brought me to Shattrath. For seven years, the closest thing I had to a parent was the matron, who I loved like a mother and who I’m sure loved me ﹣ as well as two hundred other orphaned elves in her care. There were three orphanages in Shattrath when I lived there, and I lived in the largest one.” Salandria took a moment to breathe and loosen her muscles; unconsciously, she’d snapped into the soldier’s stance her mother had ingrained in her as a child.

“I spent my formative years in the largest orphanage of a ruined city, and while I do carry some good memories of my time there, I carry many more upsetting ones. I would watch from the gates as refugees flooded the Lower City, and wonder if the new children dropped at our doorstep would receive my portion of dinner or my spare change of clothes. If that would be the day my luck would run out, and half my bed would be given away. I heard tales from other children of terrifying monsters, people who had been corrupted by the Burning Legion or withered away to madness, orcs whose villages had been massacred by a horrifying creature called the Fel Reaver, and draenei who’d be cannibalized by Lost Ones. I remember the rumors around a boy several years older than me, whose parents had fallen to Wretchedness. They said that because he was gifted in magic that he would fall too, and it wasn’t long after the Scryers began training him that he did give in to the addiction. We watched him decay into a power hungry, mad thing, hoarding mana crystals and lashing out at the matron and other children. He was eventually taken away, and I don’t know what happened to him. He was only thirteen.”

The Sunwell pulsed soothingly in her veins, and Salandria took another deep breath before going on. “I’ve been called fortunate for my situation, and I won’t deny that. If I hadn’t been in the right place at the right time, I never would have been noticed by the woman who became my mother. I would have stayed in that orphanage until I was turned out for space, and I’d probably be begging in the streets of the Lower City like other orphaned children too old to be under government care. I was very, very lucky ﹣ but having a mother now does not erase the fact that I lost one. My situation now does not erase that my life was stolen from me as a babe in the cradle, and I can never get it back.”

Salandria loved her life. She loved her mother and her father, and her large room with its grand four poster bed in the Spire. She loved Silvermoon and Quel’Thalas, and the family she’d acquired there. She’d talked with both her parents at length over the years, and while she generally had made peace with what could have been, there were times it still rankled. There were times she’d look at her mother and frown because they didn’t resemble one another. Times where she’d see a family in the city, the father open and acknowledging his children because he had no enemies to hide from, and feel jealous. Times where she’d see portraits of families ﹣ usually in the palace, where she was not really supposed to be ﹣ of mothers and fathers with babies and siblings, and have to squash down feelings of envy and longing. She’d never had that. Some of her friends in her regiment had bloodlines that went back centuries, some had children and S.E.L.F.I.E.s of those children doing various baby activities, and Salandria would never know if she had ever had those things. She would never, ever, trade her family for anything else, but sometimes she did feel inadequate, unattached, and even unloved.

Because of her mother, she was well known too. And no one had ever said to either of them, “You look like my sister” or “Your daughter looks exactly like my late brother.” No one had ever surfaced from the life she’d been born into.

“I love my mother,” Salandria said, perhaps a little more fiercely than she’d meant to, “and I love the family I have now.” She shot a glance at them, at the father she couldn’t name and the mother she could. “I really do. But I have spent years wondering about the parents I was born with. About what I could have been, and the life I could have had. I was robbed of the opportunity to create memories with them, to have siblings and adventures in Outland or anywhere else with them. I was robbed of the families they left behind, or even knowing if they had any surviving family. I don’t have grandparents, or cousins, or a family name. I don’t know where I come from.” 

Her parents had understood when she’d told them. It’s natural to wonder, her father had said. Her own mother had been adopted, by Grandfather Vandellor, and while she’d spent those first six years with her parents, she understood, to some degree.

I always used to wonder what my life would have been if they hadn’t passed, Liadrin had confided. 

“I wasn’t even born here, because of the Scourge. Arthas Menethil took from me the blessing of coming into this world with the Sunwell’s energies in my veins. I was a sickly baby without the Sunwell, and the children I lived with were the ones who’d survived the trauma of being born without a crucial piece of their biology. I didn’t understand it until my mother adopted me and took me to Quel’Danas for the first time. I broke down before the Well and wept, because at seven years old, I finally understood what had been missing my entire life. I felt its magic and Light and finally felt whole. I don’t think people understand what children my age went through, regardless of our station. While the adults knew the Sunwell and mourned its death, I was born without it, and didn’t have the memories to know its loss. I will carry the effects of my birth for the rest of my life.”

No one knew exactly how the Sunwell’s absence would affect the people of her generation, but Salandria knew what it had done already. Babies born in the interim didn’t often live, and she was one of the lucky few who had. 

“I am proud to be sin’dorei,” she concluded, “and proud of my beginnings. I was extremely fortunate to fall into the life I have now, and I will never take that for granted. I carry the flame this year in memory of those children in Shattrathi orphanages, and the children in mass graves outside the city. The children who never got to live. The children who weren’t so lucky, who weren’t adopted and have never seen the Sunwell. I carry the flame in defiance of Arthas Menethil, who tried to prevent our existence, and in the name of every child of my generation.”

With hands that shook only slightly, Salandria carefully unlatched the door of the enchanted lantern and transferred the flame, the final flame, to its holder, a shallow dish clasped tightly in the hands of the stone draenei and elf. It flickered slightly in the breeze before taking hold properly, shining for just a moment brighter than the sun in the wake of Salandria’s strong words.

In the morning, Neeluu and Rommath would collect the flames from their ceremonial places of honor and return them to the Sunwell, but tonight they burned as a symbol of the might and unity of the sin’dorei. Salandria gazed up at the statue without quite seeing it, the warm night close but unoppressive. Someone had told her, a long time ago, that the figures hadn’t been modeled on anyone in particular and as a child that had made her sad. Other monuments bore names, she’d thought, and this one should too. Privately she called them Arephelon and Elsharin, after two heroes whose stories she'd learned as an orphan in Shattrath. 

Her ears twitched at the soft sound of footsteps, and she didn’t flinch as she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder.

“You did very well today,” her father said quietly, and wrapped an arm around her as she leaned into him. “I’m proud of you.”

It was no secret that the Lady Liadrin and Regent Lord Theron were old, close friends, and it made sense that the ranger would be close to her daughter as well. It was a neat, concise cover story that deflected attention from their small family, that allowed Salandria to grow up in the relative anonymity Liadrin could provide and eased Lor’themar’s well-placed anxieties. Anyone who cared to look over at them would see an uncle speaking gently to his niece, and nothing more.

She flushed. “Thank you. I almost couldn’t do it,” she admitted. “I saw all those people and just… panicked.”

Her father stroked her arm comfortingly. “The true enemy has always been public speaking,” he joked. “Even I still get nervous.” He chuckled softly. “I think the only one who doesn’t is Halduron. I don’t think he knows what nervous is.”

That brought a smile to Salandria’s face. Uncle Halduron rarely cared what other people thought, always plowed headfirst into any given situation without looking back. 

“An’da,” she said quietly, after several moments had passed. “Were you… I hope what I said didn’t hurt you. I love you and Mother more than anything else in the world.”

“I know,” Lor’themar assured her. 

“And I don’t want you to think I’m unhappy to be your daughter or part of this family.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think that.” He squeezed her shoulder. “I understand, a little, how you feel. Sometimes it feels like my life was taken from me too, and I wonder what could have been, if…”

It would have been easy to think the obvious, to think her father was referring to his appointment as Regent Lord, to being plucked from the obscurity of the forests and thrust unwittingly into the public eye, but Salandria thought it went deeper than that. Grandfather Vandellor was the only parent Lor’themar had ever mentioned, but it had been made quite clear that he was not the biological father of either Lor'themar or Liadrin. Her mother had told her before of the bits and pieces she could recall of her own parents, of the little village they’d lived in at the foot of the Amani Mountains, but her father’s past was a mystery, always glossed over, never spoken of. 

Salandria lost the opportunity to ask what he meant, however, as a kindly voice behind them said, “I hope I am not interrupting,” and the both of them turned as one.

“Of course not, Prophet,” her father said easily, and he squeezed Salandria’s shoulder once more before dropping his arm. “I was just commending Salandria on her performance today.”

The old draenei smiled serenely. “I was very moved by your speech,” he told her, in his soft, accented Thalassian. “I had never considered before the plight of children of your generation.” He spoke with the sharp consonants of his mother tongue, in a high class register not entirely befitting his own status, and Salandria suspected it was for her father’s benefit. For all their two races’ intermingling over the years, Lor’themar’s Draenei was laughable at best. Zandali was easier, he’d groused, poring over books written in beautiful, looping glyphs. Velen knew Salandria spoke Draenei, having conversed with her over many remembrances past, and his memory was long.

He was a great deal easier to understand than Lrrglmmrgl, at any rate.

“Many don’t,” Salandria replied. “There were few children born in Quel’Thalas when the Well was inactive, and the attitude many sin’dorei hold towards Scryer children is… a little apathetic,” she concluded delicately. Velen nodded, his great white beard shimmering like liquid down his front.

“I have noticed that,” he concurred, the th in that very soft. It wasn’t a sound that came at the beginning of a word in Draenei. “I suppose it had to do with the ill will toward those who followed Prince Kael’thas.” 

It was exactly that ﹣ the Scryers had defected from Kael’thas’s Sunfuries, after all ﹣ but now wasn’t the time or place to delve into sin’dorei politics. Salandria’s own knowledge of the subject came from memories of how many people had reacted to her adoption when she was young, and the odd whispered Scryer girl that some still considered an insult.

“The birth rate didn’t recover in earnest until several years after the Well’s restoration,” her father put in. 

“These things follow a certain pattern,” Velen agreed. “I have seen it many times. Your people are doing well for themselves.”

Salandria left her father and the prophet; she had no interest in the confusing, mildly depressing discussion of recovering races and culture. She’d heard it many times before, and she did not think she needed to hear it again.

She looked around as she waded back into the crowd. Uncle Rommath was nowhere to be seen, or Uncle Astalor, and Salandria guessed they had slipped into the Sunwell Grove to pray. A large monument stood there, towering stone slabs engraved with the names of all who had died on the isle, protecting the ashes of its defenders. Auriel Bloodsworn was buried there.

Uncle Halduron was speaking to a Dawnblade, a glass of water clutched in one hand. His friend, Alina, had not come to Quel’Danas. She hadn’t thought it right, with the destruction the undead had wrought, despite Halduron’s insistence. Instead by his side was Kelantir Bloodblade, his second in command. Her short hair had been pinned back by a vibrant orange flower, the only spot of color in her otherwise white ensemble. 

Salandria’s ears flicked in the direction of a familiar laugh, and when her eyes followed she saw her mother deep in conversation with Vindicator Boros, with whom she’d worked closely following the Sunwell’s rebirth. When they’d met, she hadn’t been able to speak Draenei and he didn’t speak Thalassian, and now, despite the fact that they both had learned, their conversations were still carried out in the smooth timbre of Common. Nearby, Aunt Neeluu was facilitating a conversation between Kath’mar and Lrrglmmrgl, which seemed to be about a specific sort of weed that grew in the seas to the west. 

The only thing missing, in Salandria’s opinion, was music, and it was to her immense chagrin that elves scored every other aspect of their lives except death. The silence, she had been told, served to keep focus on the lost souls, to give the event the solemnity it deserved; but Salandria had attended the High Overlord’s funeral in Orgrimmar, and she thought the war drums that accompanied his blazing pyre gave the whole ordeal a sort of gravity that Thalassian silence did not. 

“Salandria?”

Many people were saying her name ﹣ she had carried the flame, after all, and spoken quite capably only hours earlier ﹣ but at this particular utterance she started. It was not harsh or derogatory, or especially warranting of attention at all, were it not for the peculiar pronunciation, the deep ah and the quick, thickly enunciated dr, made by flattening the tongue against the roof of the mouth. It was a very Draenei pronunciation, and though the voice had changed from its girlish lilt, it was familiar in a way that made the paladin spin on her heel, eyes widening as she found its source.

A draenei girl stood before her. She was perhaps the same age, several years in either direction, with silver, almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones. Her horns grew in a gentle C shape, curling about the sides of her head, and her hair was pulled into a high braided tail. It was her hair that Salandria focused on, a rich shade of chocolate brown she had only seen a handful of times before. She remembered, long ago, the teasing of other draenei children directed at a friend with such hair…

The girl grinned, flashing a set of very even, very white teeth. “It is you, isn’t it?” she asked in Draenei. “The same Salandria from the children’s home. Do you remember Hch’uu?”

Hch’uu had been her friend, a long time ago. A sporeling girl with luminous lavender eyes, who tempered the hyperactivity of Salandria and the brashness of…

“Dornaa?” Salandria gasped. Another girl might have hesitated, might have shied away from the incredulous look she was being dealt. Not Dornaa. She closed the space between them in three strides, hooves rustling through the soft grass, and collapsed the other girl’s hands tightly in her own. 

“The prophet attends this ceremony every year, and when he mentioned your name I begged to come.” The words tumbled out in a rush, so fast that Salandria had trouble keeping up. Dornaa had always erred on the side of unintelligibility when she was excited. “I asked but he didn’t know so I had to come because what if it was you and it was and I can’t believe I’ve found you again, and on Azeroth, of all places!” She laughed, a harsh, tinkling sound like an old bell. “I’m so happy to know you’re alright! I’ve often wondered what happened to you.”

Hch’uu had often complained that between the two of them, she could never find any peace and quiet. That when they got going only the actual loss of their voices could stop them. Dornaa seemed to be exactly the same but Salandria found that her own words had abandoned her, that she could not form a single coherent thought. Out of all the impossibilities, coming across her very first friend on Quel’Danas during the remembrance festival ranked somewhere between climbing the great tree Nordrassil on the holy Mount Hyjal and standing in the presence of Al’ar the phoenix god himself. 

Salandria gently extracted her hands from Dornaa’s and instead threw her arms around the other girl in a state of shock. They had not seen each other for ten years and yet Dornaa had recognized her all the same, from just hearing her name.

“My friend,” she choked out. “My friend I have missed you.”

She felt the smile in the other girl’s words. “I’ve missed you too, kalo korah.” She hugged Salandria tight, and in that moment their friendship bloomed again, as though they’d never been separated at all.