A Purpose

She awoke to the smell of burining flesh and the acrid smoke of arcane fires. All around her where she lay was the carnage of her people and the demolished debris of wanton destruction. The air was heavy with the sweet smell of blood and the ground underneath her was slick with it.

As she lay there, going in and out of consciousness, she began to dream. It was not a dream like most she had known during the days of her innocence in her father's house. Not a dream made of the memory of the highborne, full of regalness and majesty and set in the mystical realm of the Elven twilight. This was a nightmare.

The nightmare had come from the south, well below the borders of her father's lands. It had come on a dark wind of pestilence and deception. It arose from the borders of the Plaguelands like a vastly glowing cloud, shutting out all light and devouring any that came near it. She remembered that many of the leaders of the Quel'dorei lost heart in those Black Days, breaking their oaths to Queen Azshara, and becomming forever bound to the undeath that followed. Then upon a night that was as cold as death, they came....

An army, vast and fell had come behind the darkness. Rank upon rank of undead beings came into the attack. She recalled her father slaying many in the Main Hall and Ante-chambers of their estate, yelling at her and her identical twin siste Amarie to run and rally the defenses in the Keep. She saw her mother lying there, dead upon the ground in the passage way that lead to the stables."Mother!.....Mother......No!," she had screamed as Amarie tugged at her arm for them to go. She remembered running through the garden and across the grounds. All the dead Elven bodies clumped down upon the ground as if a puppet master had simply cut thrir strings. Tears swelled in her eyes as she ran.....Then she heard her Father's horn. She remembered turning to run to his aid when a blast of a blue-white light and a feeling of intense cold through her sideways to hit her head against the wall of her father's stable......

She was numb and stiff from the blast as she tried to raise herself up to her hands and knees. Her side was burned from the frost. She tasted blood in her mouth and realized that she was bleeding from the right side of her head. As she slowly regained her balance and wits, she began to look for her family....

Amarie, she could not find. They had separated when the blast hit her, and for all she knew her twin my be lying somewhere dead. She found her father's body dismembered where he fell. Her mother's remains she found half eaten and burned. She remembered vomiting and screaming at the sight.

She burned the bodies of what dead Elves remained and then sat alone and despondent in the former doorway of her father's house for many many days, neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeeping....only staring into the dying fires. As time slowly stood still she began to grow very cold in her heart. All emotion began to fade as her heart darkened. She closed her eyes. When she awoke she knew what must be done. Her name was Indris, the raven haired beauty, warlock, daughter of House Vanyar..and she was going to war.