Things that Only Stars Hear: Pain

I don't handle pain very well.

Things go up in flames when I'm in pain.

When I was experiencing the magic withdrawal from the Sunwell's destruction, the pain was debilitating. I would have days and nights when nothing else in my world existed. All I could do was writhe on the floor, screaming, "It hurts! It hurts!" More than once, everything around me would be set ablaze in my hysteria, magic fire pouring from me, feverishly.

That was at my worst. Most of the time when I get hurt, I yell out, I curse, I curl my fist around a spark in my hand.

It's different when it's my heart that's hurting. Pain, hurt, confusion. The inner phoenix abhors it all, rages at how I could've become open to these things, vulnerable.

Unacceptable.

It all ignites and turns into rage. At myself. At whatever or whomever hurt me.

Fire starts, and I have to let it go before I combust.

I bite my tongue, before the embers within can fly away from me and catch on the person I DON'T want to singe. I summon Etherfang, I mount the netherdrake and I seek out blood.

That's what happened here tonight.

Charred remains of demons follow the path that I took through a Shattrath City that I never called home. Various puddles of dark ichors that flow through demons' veins in place of blood stream over the ground and scorch marks stain the stones. The air crackles with the power and fury of the chaos I let loose upon my prey. Death, debris, mayhem. How many did I cut apart with my mageblade? How many did I blast apart with pulses of magic? How many were rendered to ashes with a wave of my arms and words of flame? So many. Not enough. I don't know. I might have even killed one of the Legion's prisoners in the sweep of my rage.

I don't care.

The fire is spent. The pain isn't gone.

I lie on my back at the end of one of the great docks in the harbor, exhausted. I'm alone. I'm safe. I stare up at the stars. They won't judge me.

The armor cracks and falls away. I come undone. Tears spring from my eyes. I can't breathe. I can't think. I can only feel, and I hate what I'm feeling.

Until my mind somehow finds a moment of clarity enough to touch a memory of another feeling, and I whisper a prayer to the being whose grace was my solace in Outland. One of the Naaru whom a small number of my sin'dorei kin revere.

"Please, A'dal, take it from me," I beg. "Reach across the Nether and the Great Dark with your light. Burn it from my soul. Vendel'o eranu... It hurts."

I choke on my words. My tears. My sobs.

"It hurts so much."