Ashnod stirred in her sleep. All would seem normal this night, but the turmoil was taking place inside the Blood Elfs head. Her room was barren, no luxury items save for an area rug that was quite worn, (it barely reached the edges of the room) it’s dull green color eerie in the moonlight that shone in through a curtain-less window. A desk sat in the middle of a wall across from her cot, the top had been smoothed out over many uses over the years, except for the string of foreign marks burned into the edges. Tomes, parchments, candles, scrolls, and inkwells were piled here as if left in mid-study. A dull, sad-looking place, but it was home now for the lock.
She stirred again in her sleep, her eyes rolling underneath her eyelids. Her long brows furrowed slightly, and she exhaled sharply in her sleep.
~~~~~~
The darkness around her was charged with malicious energy as she floated in the nothingness. Her body was glowing, it was all she could see in her vision. She looked around and only saw black until… a small, luminescent green orb the size of a marble flitted about in front of her face. Her eyes tried to focus on the brightness and she snatched it out of the air. She looked down at her closed fist, and slowly loosed her grip revealing the dull colored green orb which had stopped glowing. She wrinkled a brow at it and began to roll it between her fingertips, exploring the nature of the thing. It was squishy, its wall was thick enough to have some give, yet she could tell there was fluid inside of it. Curious as she was, she pinched it with increasing pressure, watching the small orb distort in shape.
”Absorb it!” Came the faintest of whispers. Startled, she accidentally popped the orb, and a minuscule amount of green dust exploded abound her fingers, seeming to glitter in the darkness. She watched it float slowly around her, unnerved that it was swirling closer. And that’s when it all halted and shot straight into her nose.
~~~~~~~
Ashnod coughed, and shot straight up in her cot, choking and coughing, grasping at her burning throat and irritated nasal passages. She turned to crawl on her hands and knees, towards her pack for her flask while feeling like her respiratory system was being burned up in a blaze. Her eyes began to water and burn, her throat felt like it was about to collapse… she was running out of time and she scrabbled along the floor and stretched her hand out into her pack and clutched her flask. She rolled over onto her back and pulled the cork out, and guzzled the water to it’s last drop, not caring if it had spilled on her face.
She heaved, her arms flopping to the floor beside her, her eyes straining to focus on the ceiling above her as her head swam with the aftereffects of… whatever that powder was.
She sniffled and rubbed at her nose absentmindedly. There was a wet sensation on her knuckle, and she turned her hand to see that it was blood. She groaned and pushed herself up with her other arm, her head throbbing in protest at the movement, and she immediately felt a rush of blood exit her nose. She spluttered, covering her nose and dove for her pack again, finding a spare cotton shirt and pinched her nose shut with it. Her eyes fluttered and her vision darkened slightly as she stood up as slowly as she could and staggered to her chair at her desk. She looked carefully at the contents sitting there, and spread some parchment about, leaving small fingerprints with her blood. At this point, she didn’t care for the neatness of the pile. She tugged at a page under a tome and pulled it out and began to read it feverishly, searching for an answer. Annoyed, she tossed the parchment over her shoulder, sending it fluttering to the floor as she ripped open a blackened tome, and began leafing through large portions of the pages. She stopped at a page that held drawings of crystalline formations, the author took great note in all of the details of the fragments they came across in the world. Her head throbbed, and she closed her eyes tight and tried to will the pain out of her consciousness. She kept reading on, searching for her answer.
“Pools of steaming green liquid, volatile…” She scanned the text, "Radiates energy… glows.”
Ashnod looked up from the vague words, and thought for a moment… Could it be that? She turned in her chair and stared at her bag, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“I couldn’t have stumbled upon that so easily… out in the open?” She mused as she lowered herself off the chair and onto the floor with her knees. Her head throbbed and the world spun, but she held herself up with an arm. She fiddled with her pack, looking for the item she had found earlier that day and fished it out and looked at it intently. It was no longer than the width of her palm but looked like some sort of green mana crystal. She rolled it around, watching as the moonlight glinted off its smooth facets. A drop of blood fell from the soaked shirt she was using and dripped onto her palm she didn’t expect then, for the crystal to glow in response.
Her eyes widened as her vision suddenly went dark and a low, growling voice rumbled inside her mind.
“Ashnod Daemaris… your fate belongs to me.”
To be continued…