Garbage Day

Several months ago--at least by her own calendar--Velameestra never really would have expected swordplay to have become such an entrenched part of her life. She had always been mobile. Short range teleportation. Battlefield control. They were things that she was intimately familiar with. An enemy closing was a weak point. One that could have easily spelled her doom.

Yet now, as she poised herself in front of Kilnar’s intrigued gaze, it became all the more obvious of just how much had changed in such a short amount of time.

A small smirk danced along the younger elf’s dark lips as she idly twirled the slender elvish longsword in her hand and took a step forward--the first step of the routine that the Seeker had been so interested to see. A step that soon melted into a slow twirl as she started to work her way into the tempo that she was most familiar with.

Step.

Twist.

Step.

Her sword followed her body like a ribbon of water, and her eyes illuminated with arcane light that trailed down her arm. There was a momentary flash, and a runes followed a trail of frost that spidered out from around her--flaring at their outer reach before vanishing as the frost aura took effect.

If there was any time to show off, it was now.

The older mage wanted to see what she could do, after all; what Esara had managed to teach of the lost art that Kilnar had revived.

Her feet slid across the materialized ice as if she were a skater on a frozen lake, using the slickness as a tool to augment her movements. Her sword cut through the air in a series of calculated strikes, the hum of the magic-empowered blade only faintly perceptible in her hand now that she had grown used to the vibrations of the bladesong.

A twirl shifted into a leap, her jacket splaying around her, and she landed with a half-spin, the tip of her toe guiding her balance. Her sword never fully stopped moving, switching hands back and forth in a deceptively artful display of coordination as she jumped again.

Freeze.

This time, as she landed, the tip of the sword touched the ground, and another runic circle exploded out from its tip a frost nova erupted from the epicenter of the blade. The blast of swirling, icy wind blew Vel’s hair back from her face as she continued into another, smaller jump, her foot kicking into the air--and into the throat of an invisible enemy-- as the momentum carried her movements through.

As she landed again a second frost nova flared to life and continued to turn the area directly around her into a deadly maelstrom of ice that washed harmlessly over her frost-augmented skin.

And then a third.

Her blade spun rapidly, twisting over the back of her hand and into her secondary grip. She swung it around with a horizontal slash, the contours of her body flickering for a brief second before three identical mirror images materialized around her. The now quartet moved in tandem as Vel continued to slide across the ice that surrounded her, gliding on one foot, and then kicking into a jump before she landed on the other, twisting her body into a rapid spin with her blade abruptly pulled close to her body.

As she spun, her body drew closer to the ground, increasing the rate of the spin as one foot went out to guide the momentum with her heel.

One.

Two.

Three.

Strike.

At the lowest point, she halted her spin with a free hand driven against the ground, and the elf’s eyes suddenly flared with a renewed surge of bright arcane energy. In an instant, more illusory doubles appeared, honing in on the mirror images and striking with coordinated precision. As the strikes connected, all six of the illusions shattered into shards of ice that faded slowly into nothingness as they trickled to the ground.

Vel vanished in her own flurry of snow, reappearing fully standing several feet back. She ran a hand down her sword as she took a few steps forward, the blade rapidly coating with frigid rime, and she lashed out with one final slash, arcing her body in another wide kick before landed with a flourish, the ice on the sword dissipating.

She glanced at Kilnar with another small smirk, thick tresses of her hair draped messily in front of one of her eyes, and then sheathed her blade, running her other hand through her hair to pull it out of her face.

Despite herself, perhaps it was Esara's influence showing through--or perhaps it was the infectious nature of Kilnar's pride now that she found herself in the presence of the older magister once more--Vel concluded with a small bow.

A gentle round of applause filled the silence that hung in the air like ice crystals carried aloft on the wind.

"Very good, Velameestra.  Very, very good." She smirked as she stood, taking a few ambling steps towards her dear co-conspirator. "To be true, I was more than a little curious to see the veracity of Esara's tutelage. She is enthusiastic, but can be a bit... unsystematic at times. But it seems that my fears were unfounded - or at least you are an exceptionally good student. Perhaps both.

"I believe you are well past the point one could be considered a true Bladesinger. I am certain our predecessors would be proud to see what you have mastered in such a short time, were they around to see it. Though..." she mused, tapping two of her webbed fingers together on her chin, "I suppose with new information that has come to light, some of them might just be."

"Esara was unexpectedly relentless. It ended up being an effective match," Vel replied, a smirk dancing on her dark lips in response to Kilnar's approval as she straightened and allowed her arms to cross loosely against her abdomen.

"Though there were gaps in the accompanying history lesson," she added, a spark of curiosity twinkling in the back of her icy eyes as she processed the implication behind Kilnar's musing. "She mentioned the literature you adapted the art from dated to before Silvermoon."

Her eyes trailed around the courtyard they had momentarily adopted for their purposes. The buildings that made up Gadgetzan were distinctly not elven in make, but their wolfish guide's people resided in the lands far beyond the desert.

"You don't suppose some of them might be here, do you? Nahlen'do mentioned his people weren't... overly fond of the arcane arts from what he recalled. Not anymore, anyway."

"Indeed they aren't," she nodded. "His account is hardly present-day, as he has been out of commission for the better part of the last decamillennium, but it seems after the War of the Ancients, as he called it, many of their people fled from the arcane magics that drew the demons here in the first place." She paced a bit as she spoke, gesticulating as she accounted her own thoughts. "And, it seems some time after his slumber began, those remaining holdouts of its practitioners fled, eventually, to the Eversong Forest. But!" she said, turning abruptly back towards Vel, "that hardly means all of ancestors came together. But... I would not be surprised if some chose instead to disappear, rather than accept exile. If there is anything all elves share, it is a propensity for disagreement, and I cannot imagine every Highbourne mage wished to follow King Dath'remar Sunstrider into the great unknown."

She tucked her hands back behind her once again. "If they, too, benefit from the gift of immortality that the kaldorei enjoy, it is possible that not only could there be practitioners of bladesinging here: the creators of the art, the authors of the piecemeal works I was able to cobble together into a rough translation may still be alive!" Kilnar took a deep breath and sighed. "Imagining the refinement, the poise that such individuals would wield in their technique, honed over thousands of years, is almost enough to make me embarrassed to show them our own rendering of their esoteric art."

She turned and glanced back at Vel, a twinkle in her eye.  "Almost."

"There's much to be said about comparing the fruits of divergent development. For both sides," Vel replied, the corner of her mouth tugging slightly upward once more. "Particularly when one branch was developed in what amounts to a blink in the span of immortality."

She tilted her head again.

"And call it curiosity, but where did you find such works in the first place? Our history has been nearly erased, and judging from Kael'thas's reaction to your tale of Azshara, not even a direct descendent of Dath'remar knew it."

The mage gestured absently again, indicating the surrounding buildings of Gadgetzan.

"Apparently the goblins found their way here, but I've never even heard mention of the kaldorei before seeing the term in an old book out of the Sunstrider library, nor the War of the Ancients, Kalimdor, or Azshara. Nearly no one has. Seems to be pertinent details to erase from our collective history, even more so than knowledge of a martial style that falls so naturally aside our connection to the arcane."

Kilnar smirked. "That is quite the tale. Truthfully, 'twas not in a singular place, but in multiple. As Seeker of Wisdom, it is my duty to locate and chronicle information... but also to control it, that it is used to help our people. The men who held my seat before me, it seems, took that particular aspect of this seat very seriously." 

The waned elf sighed and shrugged her shoulders before cocking her weight on one hip. "For whatever reason, Dath'remar and the first children of the Sun saw fit to censor nearly all of the histories they could find about our past before coming to Lordaeron. I have yet to discern precisely why they saw fit to erase so much knowledge and lore... but they did.  I have hypothesized many reasons. It is possible that their memories were altered with magic when they left - an attempt at safeguarding their homeland, to proverbially lock the door behind them with knowledge. Alternatively, the quel'dorei chose to lock this information away out of spite and petty revenge against their brethren's memory. Or, perhaps they simply wished to wipe away their own sins in a hope that none would remember whatever role they played in bringing demons to Azeroth's doorstep the first time. Terribly ironic that explanation would be." Kilnar's eyes crinkled with cunning. "Though honestly, 'twould not surprise me to learn that they simply lost the information, or forgot to write it all down. After all, what can you expect when you leave a bunch of men in charge of organization." The archmage chuckled at her own joke unabashedly.

"Nevertheless, it seems that not all of our histories mysteriously vanished. Some, like the Meitre Scrolls, were preserved by the former Seekers and Grand Magisters. Snippets of texts painting small sketches of a greater picture. A continent-spanning empire of gleaming, mystic spires. Cities I have never heard of. Wars against trolls in places that don't exist, lead by commanders whose names would never be spoken in any history lessons taught anywhere in the Eastern Kingdoms, all in the name of a Goddess-Queen of unimaginable beauty. Most of it was incomplete, and almost all of it required extensive translation and illumination... but there were untold things to be learned there. Disciplines both mystical and martial, fragments of spells unheard of in modern society. This cracked wellspring of knowledge was the source of the techniques that I came to call 'Bladesinging,' though many others came from it as well. Lord Theron's Spellbreaker order, too, saw the seeds of its rebirth sowed within the research I found within those papers. Indeed, I have more than a few reasons to believe the techniques passed down through the Sunstrider dynasty share roots with the ones I have pioneered and you have begun to master."

"It would make sense, given the similarities. I haven't had the opportunity to fully appreciate Kael'thas's techniques, but even the concept of a spellsword is... not particularly common outside Quel'thalas. Not in the most organic sense. At least not from what I've seen."

Vel's mouth had disappeared beneath the cup of her hand, her eyes trailing around the courtyard in thought before they settled on Kilnar again. Somehow, despite how drastically she had changed physically, the archmage's disposition hadn't changed at all, and the younger mage couldn't help but allow another smirk to tug at the corner of her mouth.

"If we're going to be traversing across the continent, perhaps we can put some of those names to locales. If this is, in fact, where we came from. Horrendously ironic that if we descended from a faction of kaldorei our biology sought fit to make us as distinctly opposite as it could manage."

However, her brow furrowed, a thought suddenly pushing to the forefront.

"But if... we could find the originators of some of those lost arts, if some of those old ancestors still live, you don't suppose the magics needed to create something like a new Sunwell would be among them, do you?"

Kilnar pondered Vel's words for a moment as she paced, sorting her thoughts. "It isn't impossible. The Sunwell was located at a source of great magic, and at a cross-section of leylines, of course, but it was not there until Dath'remar did something  to it. Perhaps some ancient rituals that allowed them to imbue it with some portion of the world's magic? Perhaps an artifact of some sort smuggled from their ancient empire that allowed them to grant it a modicum of power from the Well of Eternity from which they had drawn their strength - and the Legion - before its destruction during the ancient wars."

She turned back to Vel. "One thing is certain; if there is a way to create a new Sunwell, it could be the solution to a great many challenges that our people now face. And not just the Waned, either. Should you find any of these people, or the knowledge they left behind in the ruins of their ancient cities, it goes without saying that the Reliquary would compensate you... and I would owe you a great deal more than I already do."

It's something for me to focus on.

At the very least.

Make up for lost time.

The mage tapped absently on her lower lip, her eyes flickering in a manner that betrayed she was running through several lines of thought at once before she gave a small nod of her head.

"I'm planning on leaving in the next day or so to partake of a brief leave to Northrend, but I'm intending on returning with adequate time to make any final preparations before we collectively set off."

Her hand fell back to its position cradled against her abdomen.

"If you could get me any of those names before we leave--anything you have on them.... Even if we have an established goal, that's not to discredit the possibility that something might be found along the way if I have an idea of what to look for."

Vel gave a small shrug of her shoulders, a humorless smile touching her lips.

"For all we know we know we could potentially find a lost branch of Goldenswords or Windrunners."

Kilnar nodded.  "Of course, dear. I shall compile what notes I can before you depart, though I fear it is much less than I would hope to give you. Though I fear it will read more like an incomplete travel brochure or fiction novel rather than an atlas. Poorly-translated tales and names, mostly. Zin'Azshari, Nar'thalas, Shandaral, Elun'dris, Eldre'thalas, Quel'Dormir... each and every one only as much information as I could squeeze from broken text and a recently-awoken and millennia-out-of-history druid. But none have drawn my interest so much as Suramar."

Kilnar took a deep breath and exhaled. "Oh, what I would give to turn back the hands of time and visit their vaunted archives. To witness the bladework of their spellblades. Alas, I fear that my investigations would suggest that would be thoroughly impossible."