Lux et Umbrae

[Ylisaxa]

"Why do you colour your hair blue, Sister"? Ylisaxa asked, combing through her sister's tangled ichor-slick herb-strewn blue tresses. "You know the Elders dislike it".

Ylinoxa, withdrawing her mane from her sister's fingers, plaits it into a thick braid. "It 'elps wiz ze shadows. Draws zem in. I can be unseen".



The Arazabesque elves were renowned for their fine moon-shine whiteness, pale translucent-silk skin crowned with ice-straight white hair. As the moon struck the grounds of the palatial Azarabesque gardens, Ylisaxa's hair glimmered an ice-waxen blaze as these last two sisters of the House of Arazabesque ventured further into the garden-night-glow.



"And you, wiz ze ridiculous accent you use. So concerned wiz our traditions and there you are, talking like ze 'umans. You know what ze Elders think of zat".

"I do not wish to be thought of as a silly country Night Elf when I leave for Stormwind this summer", Ylisaxa grins, poking her sister in the ribs with a short sharp shadow word pain.



"Ouch! Ohhh now you av asked for it!". Ylinoxa, azure and statuesque, pulls herself moonwards, reaching for a well-timed wrath. "Take zis, sister".

The bolt of frenzied vernal leaves fly fast from Ylinoxa's fingers, bouncing off Ylisaxa's golden-gowned shield, and swift into the fuzz of a poor unwary rabbit.

"Ooops, petit rabbit." Ylinoxa apologies half heartedly, reaching for her skinning knife, "but you shall not go to waste".

Ylisaxa suppresses a giggle. "You need to control that nature-craft of yours. It is going to get you into a world of trou..."



"Hush, Sister. Come and see zis 'ere".



Ylinoxa's hands were red-black with rabbit-gut-slush. But inside the fresh-flesh pulse of meat, Ylisaxa could discern a finely carved bone key.



"You zee it?" Ylinoxa whispered.

"Yes, and I am not touching it. It is covered in gunk". Ylisaxa reinforced her disgust with a graceful step backwards. "You can get it out. You killed it".



Ylinoxa extends a finger into the gut-swirled mass of tissue and removes the blood-stenched bone key, then discards the emptied rabbit onto the moss-silvered soil. Rubbing the gut and bile away from they key, it begins to ebb a purple-haze glow. The key begins to burn vibrant and violet as the last of the viscera are polished away. Ylinoxa drops the key violently on the ground.

"Ouch! zat iz hot!". In an act of revenge she kicks the rabbit's mutilated carcass into a nearby shrub. "Stupid Rabbit".



A white-ember mist forms where the rabbit fell and its spirit emerges stealthily from the shrub. It considers its surroundings for a moment, then dashes north in a sash of while-light aura towards the garden-forest edge. Ylisaxa scoops the key off the ground, now a dazzling dark damson, and fiercely pulsating in the firm grip of her fist. Grabbing her sister's arm, the last two sisters of Arazabesque follow the rabbit's wraithlike form into the wrinkling deep of the forest.


Charging through the thorn-splintered sharp of the prickled night, the sisters chase the rabbit's wisp-shedding ghost. He disappears into a mud-strewn musk-draped hole.
"A rabbit 'ole. Where else, huh?" Ylinoxa shrugs. "You are going to 'av to get yourself a little dirty". She winks wickedly at her sister.
"After you, Sister. You are the one so fond of muck and filth". Ylisaxa, grimacing at the blood-caked-gossamer on her sister's hands, motions to the dripping den's entrance.

The sisters scramble though the dank-encrusted slop, their knees raw and sliding along rain-soaked belly of the burrow, the white sparkle of the ghost-rabbit glowing dimly ahead. The rabbit-light dips out of sight and the two are plunged into thick black-dark.
"I guess it would be prudent to turn around now?" Ylisaxa coughs through the sweat-musk swelter.
"Absolutely not" returns Ylinoxa. Despite the blind-dark void, Ylisaxa could detect a wicked grin emit from her sisters voice. "On we go".
No sooner as she had spoken, the sisters felt a subterranean suck, and the slop and muck beneath them fell away. They were falling - fast.

They land not in a nest of cold filthy mudslide, but in a spice-scented cavern lit with incense-burning torches. Red-blue-gold-green beads scatter the shimmering walls. The ghost-rabbit sits almost invisibly in the brightly lit centre of the room. Ylisaxa cautiously approaches him, her clean-white hand reaching out to him. Kneeling, she offers him the delicately carved bone key, now furious and glowing in the palm of her hand. The ghost-rabbit, now already faded to a bleach-mist, vanishes.

"Well, 'ee must 'av wanted us 'ere for something". Ylinoxa suggests, scanning the cavern, her eyes squinting at the chromatic dazzle of jewelled beads. She spots an object in the back of the cave.
"Over 'ere, a chest. It is purple like ze key".

The two sisters kneel before the purple jewel-crested chest. Ylinoxa traces a blood-soil-moss encrusted finger over the ornate lettering, vocalising each one as if a trance induced chant.

"A-R-A-Z-A-B-A-R"

"Arazabar? Are you sure it does not say Arazabesque"?
"Non, I am quite sure. It says Arazabar, Sister". Ylinoxa replies. "I 'av never 'eard of ziz Arazabar".
The key now searing into Ylisaxa's ashen-skinned palm, she slips it gently into the bone lock of the chest.
"Perhaps the answer lies within" she whispers, slowly turning the key and springing the chest open.



The dust coughs upwards from the spring of the chest forming firework like patterns in the thick swelter of damp air, blinding the sister is sparkle. Ylisaxa extends her ashen-sleeved hand into the gape of the chest, dust consuming her fingers. Her grasp migrates to a smooth pebble-like object.

“It is just an ordinary stone” Ylisaxa says, inspecting the object in the dim incense-lit cavern. “Look”.

Ylinoxa grabs the stone and rubs away the thousand-year old grime and dust from its polished surface. Her muck-encrusted fingernail scratches away a particularly solid accumulation of mortar-like substance to reveal a mark.

“No it is no normal stone. Ziz here, look, a mark sister” Ylinoxa passes the runed stone back to her sister.

“I have not seen this mark in any book. And this object does not feel magical to me” Ylisaxa says dropping the stone into her pocket as Ylinoxa rummages in the ash-dirt of the box zealously.

“Oooh, now ziz is something magical”. Ylinoxa gently lifts her prize out of the chest and holds it gracefully at eye level. The perfectly white skull glistens in the shimmer-lit musk of the cave.

“Humanoid, certainly”. Ylisaxa squints at the bleached bone, tracing a finger around the eye socket. “But what are these…. Tusks?”

“Well, it iz not Elven, sister.” Ylinoxa distances herself from the skull now holding it at arms length, her fingers manipulating its jaw. “Maybe this be Mr. A-r-a-z-a-b-a-r”.

“Have some more respect for the dead! Put it back to rest Ylinoxa”.

Ylinoxa kneels before the chest as if to ceremonially place the skull back into its chasm. Her fingers grip the glass-bone texture tentatively. A moment before the skull reaches the bottom of the chest, she wraps it in the velvet swathe of her long flowing sleeve, and in one swift motion deposits the artefact in the open back pack at her side. The chest snaps shut sucking in the remains of the fire-lit dust and the cave plunges into dank-dark.

A chink of light beckons the sisters as the torches extinguish. Clawing away through tangles of ivy and fern, they make their exit into the cool outside night air. They emerge into the familiar neatness of the palace gardens.

“It seems we are home” Ylisaxa sighs, “that tomb must be on our grounds” she observes turning around, only to see the ivy-fern thicket swirl and retreat around former exit of the cavern.

Under owl-song the sisters walk silently through the neatly combed gardens and up towards the palace steps. Ylisaxa begins to shiver under the frost-dew breath of night misting close around them. Her fingers clasp the nagging cold of the stone in her pocket.
A dusky figure emerges from the shadows in the distance on the palace steps.

“Oh no, we ‘ave been out so late they ‘ave sent a guard to look for us. The Elders will not be pleased with us,” Ylinoxa sighs.

Ylisaxa draws her arm in front of her sister. “Wait. That is not an elf. Look at his posture, all hunched over and crooked. An Arazabesque guard would never hold herself like that”.

The eerie crooked figure emerges glowing in the profile of the mist and night. Lowering his hood, he draws a crooked grey-blue finger and points focused at Ylisaxa. The stone in her pocket responds to the gesture with a heavy muted pulse.

A tumult of green-gold frenzy shoots from the dirt-caked tips of Ylinoxa’s fingers firing straight at the ghostly Troll sage. Instinctively, Ylisaxa scolds her sister with a shock-sharp shadow word pain. The Troll sage vanishes into the ghost-night fog, still eerily pointing at Ylisaxa.

“You attack me and not Troll, sister” Ylinoxa rages furiously. “What, you are ze
‘Orde now?” she rails pushing Ylisaxa to the ground.

“He was no harm to us. I don’t know how I knew, but I felt it. The stone felt it”.

“Horde? No ‘arm? If you could ‘ear yourself!”

“I hear myself perfectly well, thank you, and I hear you also in your childish bloodlust. Not everything in Azeroth is as black and white as you sketch it, little one. You will do to remember that. Use your rage at your peril”. Ylisaxa stands up from the dew-damp loam, brushing the moss from her moon-white gown.

Ylisaxa plucks a gem from the jewel-runed palace steps and begins to enchant it.

“Take this, Ylin. I must now go to Stormwind. Maybe there lies the answer to the mystery of this rune. Should you wish to speak with me, use the gem. You do not follow me, do you hear?”

“I should not follow you to save you from ze jaws of death. Go. Leave. I shall not impede your foul treacherous footsteps”. Ylinoxa snatches the enchanted gem from Ylisaxa’s freezing fingers. “Go on”.

Ylisaxa nods at the sister’s scowl as she turns to face the glimmer of almost sunrise. She knows better than to turn around as she walks towards the muggy summer-dawn sun.

Ylinoxa gazes at the gem nesting in her open palm. With a quick acrobatic flourish, she smashes the jewel against the smooth marble-while palace wall, and spits a curse in heavy Darnassian at Ylisaxa’s long drawn dawn-shadow.