Chapter Text
Don’t it always seem to go/that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
I imagine that Joni Mitchell never had my particular situation in mind when she put those words to paper. She was talking about more heartfelt things, loss of innocence, loss of love. Singing a song about someone leaving her that may or may not have had a not-so-subtle environmental Aesop attached to it. Problems that are so much more real to most people, problems that have weight in others’ minds because they can be understood and empathized with.
More specifically, she almost certainly wasn’t thinking about losing muscle memory in the process of dying and being reborn, mind inexplicably intact despite the transition. It wasn’t just that the muscles of a child simply weren’t powerful enough to even keep their head upright. Every motion I could make was clumsy and distorted, the idea from my memories that I should have respectable coordination and functional proprioception seemingly doing nothing to hasten the development of such things to the point where in my brief moments of focus I sometimes worried that whatever had jammed me into the head of a literal newborn might have somehow done damage that would slow the proper growth of such things.
Occasional bouts of bitterly wondering if I had somehow screwed up the process of being isekai’d aside however, my moments of clearer thought seemed fewer at the start. Even with my memories and personality at the helm the age of my body still showed through as my brain constantly raced with incoherent instinctive thoughts much of the time. The resulting sense of almost being a passenger in this body as it went through the motions of childhood was unnerving at times but it might be for the better really, having clear memories of my own diapers being changed isn’t something I really feel any need to add to my repertoire of life experiences.
Then again I say ‘might be’ because I suspect that such dissociation might be why it took me so long to notice that in the course of my reincarnation I seem to have traded my Y-Chromosome for a second ‘X’.
Dissociation can’t last forever of course, over the course of that first year the world slowly but surely came back into focus. The blurs of other people becoming sharper and more distinct, a nursemaid of some sort, a woman with golden hair and sea-green eyes (Mother). A man with a stern face that always softened when his eyes met mine, taking on a smile that often seemed a touch awkward in its openness (Father).
Terenas and Lianne, The King and Queen of Lordaeron, founders of the Alliance of Seven Nations that rules over Azeroth.
Mother and Father (eventually) of Arthas Menethil, a boy whose sense of goodness and determination will be twisted and manipulated to turn him into one of the most infamous villains this world will ever know.
And me, the eldest child who always stood at the periphery. Known more for being ‘Arthas’ Older Sister’ or ‘Terenas’ Eldest Daughter’ than by her own deeds, my deeds-to-be.
In another life, another story, she might have been content to languish in obscurity, but I have no interest in simply letting tragedy play out, not when I have some knowledge of what’s to come.
My name, my new name, is Calia Menethil, and I will not stand idly by as she would have in another life.
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Of course for all that I resolved to change things very soon after realizing where and when I was, human bodies only mature so quickly. The transition from crawling to walking was hastened by my ability to think of strategies like ‘hold on to something so you don’t fall over right away’ from the get-go but my muscles still needed work to strengthen themselves to the point they could sustain my weight for more than a few seconds and my inner ear still needed time to calibrate for this new mode of locomotion.
Language on the other hand was simpler, re-learning the mouth shapes of syllables made it hard to speak at first despite understanding the ‘Common’ everyone was speaking around me. Yet once I was over the initial hump things seemed to fall into place quite quickly.
I think I disturbed some of the nursemaids by accidentally naming objects that they hadn’t taught me the names of yet but I thought I managed to deflect it by pointing them at each other. For those first two years my new life consisted of a very small handful of people, two nursemaids, an assistant to them, a few manservants whose faces I came to recognize from regularly seeing them come and go, an Archbishop of the light who oversaw the Royal Chapel built into the palace, and of course my new parents. Mother’s belly swelling with pregnancy as my second birthday came and went.
The second royal birth was a tense affair. I half-expected to be in the room by the King’s side but instead I was sent away while Terenas maintained a vigil over his wife’s labour. Healing magic made the act of childbirth less risky than it would have been in a similar era back on Earth but it was not perfect, and from what I gleaned by listening in on my nursemaids quiet gossiping my own birth had been a hard one.
After hearing that I rather expected a tragedy but when a liveried Kingsguard arrived to pick me up, the first quiet words from his lips were, ‘the queen lives and the babe is well. A healthy young boy.”
Words meant for the maids more than I but they brought relief nonetheless.
“Come along Princess Calia, your mother and father request your presence.” The man offered a hand which I took, assuming that he would be escorting me until he lifted me up, drawing a startled noise from my lips as he sat me on his shoulder before ducking out of the room again, making his way down the hall as I tried and failed to keep a smile off my lips.
I’m sure that if others could go back to being small enough to pick up and carry they’d do the same.
Down the carpeted hallway, turning left at the door to the Royal Chambers, the guard depressed the latch and ducked again under the lintel and giving a little shrug to dislodge me from my perch. Terenas looked my way, a smile on his lips, “Ah, Calia, good, come over here would you?”
The Kingsguard stuck with me as I made my shaky way around the foot of the bed but I made it with one hand against the frame for balance and my new father scooped me up into his lap, letting me see the little bundle in Lianne’s arms.
“This is your brother Calia, we’re thinking of calling him, Arthas.” The naming wouldn’t be for a few weeks yet but I nodded even so, trying and failing to come up with anything to say. “Prince Arthas Menethil.”
“A-thas,” I repeated, my tongue wasn’t still quite up to nailing the name but it earned me a slight brightening of father’s smile as I looked up at him. He nodded to himself, then to mother as she gave us both a tired but happy expression.
“I already told you I approve dear.”
“It never hurts to be sure my love~” He kissed the back of her hand and she flushed, giving him a fond look.
I looked into the peaceful little face of my new younger brother and thought of the darkness to come.
I’ll keep you safe.
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Another year and a half passed after Arthas was born before I met the governess who would be ‘ensuring I received proper tutelage’, one Katelynn Riley who refused to let me use her first name under any circumstances. She was a stereotype of any number of novels I’d once read but a stereotype upon whose good side I managed to stay for the most part. Shamelessly taking advantage of my remembered maturity I did my best to excel at her lessons. Reading and writing were mostly further matters of restoring muscle memory, histories were an interesting mix of what I remembered from back when I played the games and little details that were either recorded differently or simply hadn’t been present in those broader narratives.
Of course it couldn’t all be good, we clashed when it came to the beginnings of etiquette lessons, dull by the fact that they were either rote repetition of basics I already understood like ‘sit up straight’ and ‘don’t slurp your soup’ or insane little details which order to use three identical spoons in at a high table. The novelty of it all was interesting enough to keep me from going stir crazy and while that looming deadline lurked in the back of my mind, the routines kept me distracted.
It wasn’t like there was anything I could do as a four-year-old to stop my currently two-year-old brother’s eventual slide into darkness. Especially since that wouldn’t even start for another fifteen years at least.
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At some point after my fifth birthday I was introduced to a mage from Dalaran. I didn’t know if she had any other business in the city but while he was there Mother had her summoned to the palace to test me for magical potential. It was something I’d wondered myself in my spare time. I recalled that the original Calia eventually became a priestess of sorts thanks to a talent with the light, but did that translate into any other abilities? The family chapel always seemed to have a serene sort of aura to it when I was there but I couldn’t be sure whether that was to do with me, the ordained priest in attendance, or even just my mind personifying the gravitas of the place.
Even in my previous life religious sanctuaries had always held a sort of presence to them after all. At least to me anyways…
“Stand there, if you will, at the center of the circle.” The mage was young, her red hair cut in a short bob that curled slightly around the backs of her ears. I eyed circle in question, six large runes set equidistant from each other around the edge while runic script that flowed through the spaces between them. I was nervous I had to admit, it was a silly thing, if this mage wanted to do something to me I wouldn’t be able to do much about it besides hope the Kingsguard could get to her first.
“What does it do?” I asked anyways, partially out of curiosity, partially out of interest. Tilting my head at her as she looked at me askance and then sighed, rolling her eyes to the ceiling and clearly thinking.
“It pulls mana out of you and uses it to light up the runes-, these symbols.” She declared after a long moment, indicating each rune in turn before her lips pursed, “you know what mana is right?”
“Magic energy?”
“…basically yes.”
“Okay.” She was clearly struggling not to drop a more complete explanation on me but as much as I wanted to press her for details, spooking nursemaids by accidentally dropping knowledge was one thing. Spooking an accredited mage was quite another.
But I still wanted to know more damnit… “Why are there six of them?”
“That’s… Well there’s more than one type of magical energy so this checks for all of them.”
“Ohh… So some of the runes will be brighter?”
“They better not be…” I thought I heard a curse as she muttered under her breath but she seemed to catch herself. “Well, since you’re very young, your mana probably has no aspect. Um… No type. So…”
She struggled for words for a moment before sighing explosively and pinching the bridge of her nose. I waited patiently.
“So since it has no type, it should just… Divide itself evenly.”
“Woah…” I didn’t really have to effect a little bit of awe. Hard magic was always cool, even if I was clearly being given a watered down version that she thought I could understand. “Cool!”
“Uh-huh, so… Step into the circle please Princess?” Oh, whoops. I quickly complied, planting my feet squarely in the middle and turning to face her. “Now just hold still a second…”
She touched the edge of the array and I felt a twinge in my belly, like something inside me was being pulled down into the soles of my feet. The world seemed to tilt from the suddenly sensation, vertigo swirling in my mind as I swayed on my feet, trying to stay upright as the room seemed to tilt on its axis. Tipping and tipping and-
I fell with a cry, only barely managing to catch myself as I panted, feeling my fingers tremble against the hardwood as I stared down, my heart sinking. The symbols glowed only faintly, winking out one by one even as I watched, the light of the torch behind me obscuring them as I slowly rose. My brow furrowed. Wait…
This room is lit by candles.
Still feeling wobbly, I turned slowly, having to squint as the source of illumination came into my peripheral vision. A white light that was only just now starting to fade to a warm yellow glow. Oh…
I didn’t need to be told what rune that was. I knew the Light when I saw it.
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Of course it wasn’t as simple as getting trained after that little display. After everyone had taken some time to calm down and properly examine the results it came out that the sheer brightness of the glow hadn’t come from any isekai cheat like an abnormally large magical potential. Instead, it was simply the fact that all of the mana my slightly above average potential could produce had been pulled straight into the ‘Light’ slice of the circle. I had an unusually high affinity for that type of mana, one that was almost unheard of really, but the more I learned, the more it seemed that such a thing was more curse than blessing.
With such a strong Light aspect to my mana, attempting to learn any other school of magic might well be an exercise in futility. The mage, whose name I shortly learned was ‘Cargueria’, informed me that while some back in Dalaran might be interested in studying someone with such strongly aspected internal energies, even they would balk at the prospect of trying to go against those energies to teach me the Arcane. Training to use the Light was my only realistic option, and that option brought with it issues of its own.
Simply put, the Church of Light would not teach me spells without being ordained, something that would effectively overtake my duties as a Princess. Even if Arthas would be heir to the throne, I knew that Father would eventually wish to see his daughter married off, and while priests are not sworn to chastity or celibacy, their devotion to the light still made them less desirable. Or so I guessed by reading between the lines of his thoughts on the matter.
Marriage… That had me nervous in its own way. How the original Calia avoided being married to Deathwing’s human identity was never clear so I simply had to hope that things would work out for me just as they had for her.
Fortunately I managed not to ask about paladins and the Order of the Silver Hand before remembering that said order hadn’t even been founded yet, and wouldn’t be for another… Five years? Six?
I was only five years old after all… Perhaps I was getting ahead of myself a little.