The Exchange

A murky sky spread over the Highlands, patched with stars and clouds that… were not entirely clouds… Much less entirely there. Their existence - much like the residual energies that touched this land - seemed to pulse and shift on itself at times. There were beautiful, clear streams and thriving green forests for as far as the eye could see. But there were also places that were broken, like cracked boils in the face of the earth, brought about by twisted, insane energy.

The scenery was rugged, thick with rocks, craggy hills, and trees and shrubs. Places where prey could hide and predator could ambush.

A feral smirk spread over Aranya Ver'Sarn’s lips, though none could see it. She sat alone, cloaked from all eyes with an invisibility spell, high in a tree, with a leather satchel slung over her slender shoulder and her booted feet dangling below her. Observant, fel-kissed eyes scanned the ground and the surrounding dark forest, up to the horizon, towards the Vermilion Redoubt.

Ironic history that the elf had with the reds. Despite the things that they had been coerced into doing during the Second War - the siege of Dalaran, her home at the time, and the destruction to the southern forests of Quel'thalas - she had garnered favor with them on several occasions in the time that had passed since they regained their freedom from the vestiges of the first Horde. But there would be no dragons watching over her here. Even Etherfang was left behind, as the terms of the exchange were express that she come alone.

The dark-haired sorceress inhaled a breath and steadily exhaled it, blowing softly through her lips. There was as much that could go wrong with this “exchange” as there was that could go right. The anticipation of it kept her nerves rapid-firing, kept the blood thumping through her veins at a pace just short of a rush, and all her senses - physical and otherwise - in a state of highest clarity and alertness.

That song of life.

How she adored that feeling of presentness in situations like this.

Below, a moving group of forms took shape, walking into the small clearing at the base of Aranya’s tree. Two of them peered around, scanning the area, their hands on their mageblades, ready to draw them at a moment’s notice. A third, shorter and more slender, sauntered into the clearing behind them, and had no sword, unlike the others. In fact, this one did not appear to be armed at all - not with mageblade nor spellblade, nor even just a simple, unenchanted dagger. The last two pulled a low-rolling cart behind them, draped over with darkest purple cloth. All of them bore the symbol of the Twilight’s Hammer cult on their apparel and their effects.

“No sign of her,” noted one.

Another spoke up with, “Perhaps a trick? Trying to take us for fools.”

“She has no need to take you for fools. You already are fools,” scoffed the slender figure in a bored, feminine voice that sounded too young.

The so-called “High Sorceress of the Twilight.” No more than a human girl of eighteen years, at most, leading a rag-tag holdout group that still clung to a defeated ideology that worshiped oblivion. The Twilight’s Hammer had been steadily going extinct ever since the demise of Neltharion the Destroyer, but this upstart sorceress somehow had enough natural charisma and power to bring the stragglers together.

Power was dangerous in someone like her, Aranya knew. A no-name human, with no training other than what the cult must have given her since she was a child. Just a scared little girl, with no traditions in magic to stand on, as elves had, and no future of her own, born with power that she could never hope to control or understand by herself. An easy target for the Twilight cult to acquire, and mold to their purposes.

But even barely-grown-up as she was, the girl radiated that natural power. It swelled through Aranya’s every sense. She could smell it, taste it, feel it, and had little doubt that she would choke on it before the evening was over.

The elf let her mouth pull into a wily smile. Her eyes glinted and her smooth voice dripped with a sly tone, so that she sounded every bit the fox who’d snuck up on a handful of rabbits as she called down, “Oh, there’s trickery afoot!”

Letting her invisibility slip away to reveal herself to the startled cultists, Aranya pushed off from the tree branch that she had been sitting on, and fell twenty feet to the ground, her arms aloft at either side of her. At the very last second, she invoked a word of power that set a flash of magic over her body and slowed her fall, letting her come to land perfectly unharmed, dipping at the knees, with one foot just slightly behind her- like a dancer, posing in a curtsy. She straightened up with her chest lifted, shoulders square, chin high, and appraising them all with a calmly condescending look - as if the “fox” could sink her teeth into the throat of any rabbit that she damn well pleased, whenever she pleased, and there was nothing special about these Twilight rodents that made them any different.

All for show, really. A display of grace, power, and aloofness, meant to inspire proper manners if nothing else. But oh, she did enjoy playing the part, all the same. Thoroughly.

It wasn’t all that far from the truth, either, which is what made it have the proper effect. A couple of the cultists became more shifty in their posture and avoided the sin'dorei woman’s fel-tainted eyes, less self-assured… But not the high sorceress.

Aranya gave a slight nod to one of the cultists that had spoken. “And you are a fool,” she said, eliciting a silent glower from the hooded man, and a smirk from the young human sorceress.

The presumptuous girl took a few strides forward, towards the Thalassian woman. “You have what we asked?” The haughty attempt at imperiousness was not lost on the elf’s powers of perception, but it was wasted on her, nonetheless.

“That depends,” the arcanist replied, her voice as cool as steel. Her unnaturally lit eyes were fixed like a predator’s gaze on the shorter female, the faintest hints of a vulpine smile still playing across her mouth. “On whether or not you have what I asked.”

The twilight sorceress opened her mouth to speak, and she began to lift her hand - her fingers coming together in the beginnings of a pointing gesture at the blood elf - but she was interrupted.

“And before you make any excuses to see my merchandise first,” sneered Aranya, all traces of a smile now gone in an instant, her tone of voice and the look in her burning eyes both as hard and as sharp as the sword at her side. “Allow me to point out that you are the ones who have claimed delay after delay in making good on your side of the deal in this business. Not I.” She gestured with a jerk of her chin at the cart. “Prove it to me that you have something, first.”

The human girl stood absolutely stock-still, livid that she had just been chastised and ordered so. But at length, after many moments of tense silence, she signaled to one of her underlings who stood with the cart.

The cultist threw back the dark purple cloth, revealing four raw blocks of solid quartzite.

Aranya strode forward, past the high sorceress and her two other followers. The cultists that had stood by the cart stepped away, standing back for the arcanist. She stood before the blocks, inspecting them, her fingertips brushing over their cool, hard surfaces.

It was too easy for the blood elf to feel the power that the stones held. They thrummed with a magic that came from the very heart of the world, and resonated with the pulse of the earth. Their magic would be self-sustaining, they would not need to be imbued with the powers of the Sunwell, as the runed monoliths at the borders of Eversong Woods were. All it would take was to carve the right runes into them, position them correctly, and Sunspire Port would have another level of long-term defense.

“You are satisfied?” The high sorceress inquired.

The smile that had bloomed on Aranya’s fair face in her examination of the quartz melted away. She nodded.

“What you promised…?” Prompted the Twilight leader.

Aranya inhaled a slow, carefully silent breath, and let it go in a long, shallow exhale. The pace of her heart kicked back up to that rhythm of that alert anticipation that it’d had, just prior to the meeting. Her senses were fully on edge once again. She willed herself to keep her motions fluid, steady and controlled, though her every nerve wanted to spring.

The Thalassian arcanist lifted the leather strap of her satchel from her slender shoulder and up over her head, taking it off. She clutched it, seeming reluctant for an instant… But then she turned, and tossed it to the ground with an effortless fling of her arm, watching it come sliding to a halt at the feet of the high sorceress.

“The prophecy from the depths, as promised,” declared Aranya. “You will find a leatherbound journal inside the satchel, with the fully transcribed prophecy from the naga tablets that my colleague and I recovered from Vashj'ir a season ago. Sketches, translations, notes about lines of inquiry I’ve pursued and speculated upon…” The mage took a deep breath. “And all the notes pertaining to what I have more recently sought - and found - in the colder reaches of Northrend,” she continued. “All my findings on the evidence and artifacts, both naga and titan, which have corroborated the prophecy’s veracity…” Her clear voice went a notch quieter. “And that it has yet to come to pass.”

All around, the elf saw looks of being pleased and impressed on their faces. Even people such as this appreciated thoroughness and quality in the things that she offered them, it seemed. The thought was one that struck her with a bitter kind of wry amusement and a smoldering sense of disgust at the same time.

The Twilight sorceress stooped down to retrieve the satchel from the ground, and stood up to fix a chill look upon the blood elf. The human gave just the slightest tilt of her proud head, regarding the sin'dorei woman. “You are certain of all of these things?”

“I am,” answered the arcanist.

“And you understand all of these things… Even without the masters’ favor?”

Though the girl made a none-too-bad attempt in being subtle about it, Aranya still knew jealousy and suspicion when they were in front of her.

The elf mage smirked, lowering the lids over her smoldering eyes in a feigned blink, to hide how she was actually rolling them. “Perhaps it is because the masters would deem my mind worthy to carry their wisdom,” she offered, in a tone of voice that was too reasonable, she felt.

“Perhaps,” echoed the younger sorceress. She passed off the satchel to one of her underlings, ordering them to open it. Checking the contents to be sure that the elf wasn’t cheating them, naturally.

Aranya ever-so-slightly shifted herself so that her feet were set apart, her weight centering evenly between her hips, her knees only just slightly bent. Her shoulder-blades slid a little more back and down - more open - her slender arms hovering more that just passively resting, in their downward-pointing aim at her sides. Her eyes flickered once over all five of the cultists in turn, and then over the surrounding landscape.

The hooded cultist pulled the leatherbound journal from the satchel, and began flipping through the pages. Nothing appeared to be out of sorts. The pages were covered in words and pictures, notes and scribbles, text put side-by-side in both the Naz'ja and Common languages… flip… flip… flip…

KA-POOM!

The tome exploded in a resounding blast of smoke and sound.

Aranya’s hand flew to the hilt of her of her mageblade, drawing the sword and thrusting it into the nearest of the two cultists that stood by the cart. Blood gushed from their belly as she finished them with a strong upward cut to their chest that all but split them open. A blink and she was magically on the other side of the cart, driving her blade through the midsection of the next stunned cultist, all the way through to the other side, to protrude out their back, and then wrenching it free with a snarl under her breath. Her eyes flashed.

Two easy kills in the daze.

But they would be the only things she was to gain easily this night.

Dark, twisted metal writhed up from the earth. A trademark of the Twilight’s Hammer cult, wrought into the architecture of their encampments and bastions. Moving like the tentacles of a living thing, they surged at Aranya, with ends that were deadly sharp and piercing. Moving fast, she dodged them where she could, and parried them with her blade when she could not.

Geomancers, was the only articulate thought that could pass through the arcanist’s mind for one instant in that fight. The rest of her awareness was wholly focused on surviving, reacting, improvising, and fighting.

Of course, it would make sense that at least one geomancer would take part in the task to secure spoils from Deepholm, the heart of the earth. This one manipulated the metal twisting up from out of the ground, while the last of his cult-fellows was set on protecting the High Sorceress, hurriedly ushering the girl away from the area.

Strike after strike the writhing spikes made at the blood elf. She spun and whirled, bending and dodging this way and that, deflecting with her mageblade when an attack was too direct, and trying to fire a burst of arcane here and there upon the geomancer in counterattack, but to little avail, as the bleeding metal was kept in the way by its puppeteer, used to shield and absorb the magic.

One of the metal tendrils swung wide in front of her, curving around behind her, like a snake. Aranya improvised. She ran towards the geomancer, and blinked. As her form materialized just on the other side of him, the sharp metal followed through with a burst of speed after its target… and impaled the geomancer, who was put into its path by this manouver.

Aranya did not stop to look at her fallen foe, but kept on running.

The cultist who had sought to protect the High Sorceress was not long in coming back to eliminate the threat of the sin'dorei woman. A blast of dark energy slammed her hard into the trunk of a tree, yelling out in pain at the impact. Dazed, she wasn’t quick enough to recover herself in time to react before another blast sent her whirling through the air and landing in a sprawl on the wooded ground.

Aranya’s head spun. Were it not for the earth underneath her, she would not have been able to tell which way was up. Pain radiated along her back where she had collided with the tree trunk from the Twilight cultist’s blast of dark magic, and from her shoulders, arms, and upper leg where she had impacted with the ground. Twigs and pebbles scraped her face. It hurt to move. She made a soft sound under her breath.

The cultist advanced too swiftly for the blood elf to come up with anything clever. With a hasty word of power and an almost defensive, upsweep gesture of her hands, a blast of fire hit her approaching assailant. It wasn’t enough to completely deter him, the elemental wards that were imbued into his armor mitigated any serious damage, but the thickly padded cloth still smoldered with embers, singed in places - and it gave him enough of a pause for Aranya to exploit.

Quick as only an elf could be, she scrabbled to her feet, and took off into the trees with a blink.

She ran hard, putting as much distance between herself and the darkcaster as possible. Another blink ahead, and then an idea came to her.

None too soon.

Dark magic sent chips and splinters of wood flying from one of the trees that Aranya ran past, just missing her. The cultist was quickly catching up. The arcanist ducked around another tree to avoid another blast, and as she rounded the other side of it, four individual Aranyas went running off in different directions.

The Twilight darkcaster came to a stop in his pursuit, bewildered by the sudden appearance of these mirror images of the elf heathen who dared attempt harm on his mistress. They wove around the trees, away from him and his attacks, and then doubling back towards him to strike back. The confusion was infuriating. One came around the side of him, firing a pulse of arcane on him as he attempted to blast another apart. One forced him to invoke a temporary warding spell as flame launched from her fingers. And then… stillness.

No sight nor sound of the blood elf or her conjured copies.

Too late for the cultist to realize what was happening, the spell of invisibility dispersed from the real arcanist, standing some short distance behind the darkcaster. She blinked right up to him, seized his head between her hands, and pulse after pulse of arcane energy slammed into his skull from her palms.

The darkcaster fell to the ground, lifeless.

Aranya stood with her chest heaving, heart thundering hard in her chest. Her muscles burned, her bones ached. Sweat glistened on her finely featured face and slender neck in the twisted half-light of the Highland stars. Several breaths and heartbeats passed, and the tension began to deflate out of her…

Snapping up from the earth like whips, the twisting tendrils of dark metal that had been summoned to attack her before bled up from the ground once more, wrapping around Aranya’s wrists and yanking her onto the ground on her back. Another wrapped across her calves, locking her into place on the ground. Though she tried and strained at her bonds, it was to no avail, they were as solid and unyielding as the earth from which they had been drawn. She was trapped.

The High Sorceress of the Twilight stepped into view from around one of the many trees in the vicinity. She, too, was panting for breath, as though she had been running. “You were right,” she hissed darkly. “Your power is formidable, and you fight with cunning.” She came to crouch down by Aranya. Malice snapped from her eyes like lightning. “You are worthy to bear the knowledge of the Masters… But first…” she said, her lips curling into a vicious smile. “We should open your mind a little more.”

Dark energy seemed to rip from out of the air itself into the the hands of the human sorceress, and Aranya’s eyes went wide with horror as the meaning of the girl’s words sank in. “No!” she shouted, as immense power penetrated her mind.

The pain was staggering. It felt like something vile writhed and lashed around inside Aranya’s head, like her skull was going to crack and split open. Her screams sounded detached and far away to her own ears.

Mercilessly, the younger sorceress tore at her captive’s consciousness. Gone went the levels of Aranya’s mind that thought with rationale. Gone went the facets of her that functioned with guile. Gone went everything that kept her collected and held her together. The Twilight prodigy was bent on flaying her, stripping her down until nothing but the raw core of her was left.

But what she met with when she pierced that far… was not what she expected. Whatever fears or weaknesses that the sorceress had thought to find and prey on… were not there.

They were hidden away within all the other layers that she had pulled back and discarded, giving them no further thought.

Aranya was a creature that had been forged by blood, fire, and hunger. At her core, there was chaos, fury, and power. There was the indomitable nature of a phoenix, one who had punished and devoured anything foolish enough to attempt to break her.

And this little sorceress had just pulled aside everything that held the fullest depth of that in check.

The blood elf’s eyes blazed with a flame that was too bright and too wild to be their lingering fel taint. Her voice changed from a scream to a roar. The metal bonds that held her to the ground began to glow red. The Twilight sorceress couldn’t stop herself from taking a few nervous steps back as Aranya’s furious eyes fixed on her.

With a fiery blast that set the very ground ablaze in a wave that spread in all directions, the arcanist broke free.

The forest became a flurry of magic and motion. Metal tendrils whipped and surged at the elf, cutting with their sharp tips when they found their mark. Aranya unleashed flames that rendered them to slag mid-attack, and barrages of arcane energy that reduced them to nothing but shining splinters on the ground. The high sorceress invoked dark, incomprehensible words to launch bolts of twisted magic at the arcanist, who would blink out of the way, or dodge and move so that one of the metal snakes took the blows that were meant for her, instead. The high sorceress tried to elude the elf’s retaliating wrath, but was caught by a snaring spell that slowed her motions, and she was left with no choice but to defend against the blistering counterattacks that came her way.

Not many were the times that Aranya cast with frost magic, and certainly not when she felt that there were other options, but she needed an opening. She just needed to buy herself a moment’s worth of time. Lifting her arms above her head, a barrier of thick, hard ice formed around her, encasing her and protecting her from the onslaught of the writhing metal. She would have only a minute for the chill shield to hold, but it was all the time she needed.

Another spell was spoken by the Thalassian arcanist, reaching out to the splinters of metal that had fallen inert to the ground. Magically, Aranya lifted them into the air - some small, some large, all of them sharp - and sent the multitude of them flying like darts at the human sorceress.

The girl had not expected this move, and she was too late in realizing it to defend against it. The metal spikes drove into her flesh, the larger ones pinning her by the arms and legs into a tree that was behind her. She screamed with agony, and gasped over and over again with the pain.

The rest of the metal that had been harrying Aranya froze in place, no longer manipulated by the will of another. The ice barrier fell away, chips of the crystalline water falling around her on all sides to lie sparkling on the ground as she approached the Twilight sorceress. “You should have just killed me,” she said. That was the one thing that so many of her adversaries never seemed to learn, wasn’t it? It always cost them in the end.

To Aranya’s surprise, the human girl began to chuckle. The sound of it was… hysterical, like the girl had lost her mind. It swelled into a laugh, and a manic smile spread over the sorceress’ face. “You think that what happens now makes any difference?” The girl’s tone was mocking. “That you can protect them?” She laughed again. “You can hide them from the eyes of other wizards, other kingdoms, and from the Burning Legion with your designs, but if you think that that will be the most terrible of it, then you know nothing,” she spat. “Even now, the will of the masters ravages your precious port.”

This girl had been too deep into Aranya’s head.

The blood elf narrowed her eyes and shook her head, but she let nothing show outwardly of how this human disturbed her. “Impossible,” she said with dismissive finality. “All of your masters are dead. Nothing is left of them and their power but echoes.”

“All but one,” corrected the twilight sorceress. “And you know this full well, or you would not have come here tonight.” Moments passed as the two women glared at each other. Aranya stood stone-still. The human sorceress struggled for breath as she slowly bled out from the myriad wounds inflicted by her own metal turned against her. Both of them did nothing to hide their resolve towards their aims… Though one of them would not live to see her aims through. “The god of the depths, the corrupter…” the girl began, but then she trailed off, just watching Aranya’s face for a moment. Her mouth broke into a knowing grin. “You think to stall the inevitable?” More of a statement than a question, her tone mocking and derisive. “For how long?”

“Long enough,” answered Aranya. She reached into her boot for the knife hidden inside, and in the blink of an eye, she rushed the younger sorceress with it. The blade sunk deep into the human’s throat. She sputtered and choked on her last gurgling breaths, and then her limbs and head fell slack.

It was a simple enough task to burn the bodies of the sorceress and her followers as Aranya made her way back to the Deepholm quartz.

Trudging into the clearing, she noted the remains of the tome that she had given to the cultists, lying on the ground like a spent firework. A necessary device for her ruse. Aranya had spent three days preparing it, first by carefully embedding the magical trap mechanism into a handful of select pages with a disappearing solution instead of ink, and then carefully copying most of her notes - still tucked away in her room at the White Strider within the pages of journals that were very much intact - onto the the leatherbound leaflets.

She set fire to what was left of it. Nothing could be left behind for any questions from any soul to arise. She wasn’t worried about the patches of the forest that she had burned, the red dragons would see to their restoration. Aranya slumped to the ground beside the quartz blocks. Grabbing the dark purple cloth that had covered them, she wiped away the blood from her boot knife with it, before setting fire to the fabric, too.

She lifted her hands up to regard her wrists. The metal that had locked across Aranya’s legs had bent aside with the heat of her breakout from the high sorceress’ bonds, but the ones that had caught her wrists were still encircled around them. They were all but soldered to the fingerless wraps that covered her hands and wrists. Aranya heaved a sigh, she was exhausted, aching, and sore, but this was not going to resolve itself. Shifting her position on the ground slightly, she focused on the cuff-like pieces of metal, channeling power at them as steadily as she could manage. They began to glow red, then orange, then brighter still. The blood elf tried to keep her breathing measured as they grew hotter and hotter with the magic that she focused upon them. Her handwraps caught fire and quickly went up in cinders. The metal began to melt and drip from her wrists, pooling on the ground, and when it was all done, she scrutinized her bare skin.

The wounds were garish and awful. Even though the fire had been her own, her wrists were still left with raw, bloody lesions that would scar like shackle-marks. The thought chafed her.

Again, the arcanist saw the need for a branch of magic she did not prefer, and began whispering words that repaid her with the painfully cool sensation of her wrists stinging with magic frost. She almost faltered in her spell, hissing and biting down a whimper, but she needed to continue. This was all that she could do for herself until she could get proper healing. The frost would melt away, gradually, with the heat of her body.

Aranya looked at the molten metal on the ground, and suddenly she was struck by the opportunity that it presented. Waving a hand over the cooling, reflective substance, she murmured, “I seek the ear of the Stone Lords.” The appearance of the surface of the metal clouded and swirled, and when it cleared, it shimmered with a a craggy face that seemed as though it had expected to see her. It was Diamat, son and lieutenant of Therazane, the Stonemother.

“The mortal arcanist,” remarked Diamat. “The earth has felt wounds that it was never meant to feel, and bled as it once did when the Twilight held sway.” His voice rumbled and echoed with the deepest sounds that Aranya could ever remember hearing in spoken words. “Your contacting me so soon of these events leads me to assume that you have completed the task that was bargained for. Have you?”

“I have,” answered Aranya. It shocked her how exhausted she sounded, when she was desperately holding on to whatever kept her brain suspended just above that exhaustion. “The Twilight hold-outs came with the stones that they believed they were stealing from you, not suspecting a trap. I dispatched them all, burned their bodies. The High Sorceress is dead, as you asked.”

“Then, you have the blessing of the Stone Lords to keep the blocks of quartz for your own, as it was agreed,” rumbled Diamat. “But I do not understand…” His gemstone-hewn head tilted oh-so-slightly to one side, regarding the image of the pointy-eared fleshling before him. “You have endured much risk and damage to yourself for this… Why?”

Aranya breathed a short, silent laugh and her face blossomed into a wry smile. “I thought that the affairs of mortals were not of concern to you,” she quipped. Trying to evade.

“I am curious,” replied Diamat. It dawned on the blood elf that he truly was resolved to know. “For what purpose do you need stone from the heart of the earth?” he prompted her after a moment’s silence.

The words flowed up from the depths of Aranya’s mind and out of her mouth, without hesitation, without even really thinking about it, “To protect someone - several someones - whose interests have become mine.”

Diamat made a low sound, as if this met with his approval. The contact between the stone lord and the blood elf came to an end as the cooling metal was absorbed into the earth before it could harden. Likely the earth elemental’s way of ensuring that even this would not be left behind for anyone to find.

Aranya hoisted herself up from the ground and turned to face the quartz blocks. She stepped up on top of them, knelt… and hesitated. She had to teleport them back to Sunspire Port, there was no time for moving them any other way, but she had exerted so much of herself tonight - physically, magically - and this would require just about everything that she had left… How would this undertaking affect her once she came through on the other side?

She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, bracing herself. This was another risk that she was just going to have to take to see this done.

Focusing, ignoring how her cuts and bruises ached, how tired she was, she incanted the spell of teleportation, looping the energy of the spell to encompass the blocks of stone. She thought of Sunspire Port; the light of the stars on the waves, the sound of the water lapping at the docks and the denizens of the town carousing, the smell of the salt air and the damp wood of the ships, and the taste of the Sunwell’s magic that touched everything in Quel'thalas - even there in that town so far south in Eversong. Embers of light winked into existence and converged on Aranya and the stones, and took them away from the Highlands as they winked out.

The stones were the first things to re-manifest, in the port town. Aranya followed, fractions of a second after.

Her scream of agony carried over the town and the docks for all to hear.

She thrashed atop the stones, clutching her head, gasping. Her ragged breaths were punctuated by sounds of pain. Every cell of her body hurt like it hadn’t hurt since the withdrawal from the destruction of the first Sunwell. Blood trickled from her nose.

Too much.

It had taken too much out of her to do this. So much physical and magical effort had been expended tonight, and this was the thing that had taken her too far. It had taxed her too highly to teleport the stones back here.

Aranya heard voices, some she recognized, some she didn’t. She felt a hand suddenly on her shoulder and lashed out, smacking it away. “Don’t!” she shouted, but soon felt remorse for the action, and held up her hand as if to show that she was just asking them to please stay back. “Don’t,” she insisted requested again.

She couldn’t be touched, not like this. Too much of her hurt. And besides, it was alright, she would be fine. She didn’t need anyone’s help, really. She just needed a moment.

Aranya coughed and spat out the blood that trickled down her throat, and took more ragged breaths. She must have looked grim in the state she was in, with all her cuts and bruises, and the wounds on her wrists. She felt for something solid over the side of the blocks with her foot, be it land or dock, and tried to stand.

The world spun. Her vision blanked out and she looked around, unseeing. The already-incomprehensible voices became indistinct and distant as her ears rang and everything began to sound more and more as though they were filled with water.

Aranya couldn’t take two steps before someone - in direct disobedience of her saying don’t - brought their arms around her to hold her up. She fought it at first, making sounds of protest, but ultimately gave in and slumped against the shoulder of whoever-it-was. They held her steady, as the vertigo swept her away, her labored breaths gradually going quieter.