[Work in Progress] Coldarra.

[[Hello! Hope you're all enjoying yourselves with whatever you're up to. This is a short story, hopefully to be added to if I can ever be bothered, about what Viatrix is up to in Coldarra (Borean Tundra) with the Kirin Tor. I have NOT had time to spell check it, so it may not make much sense... But I hope it's alright anyway, and it can keep you up to date! Missing the Spine much, but so busy I hardly ever get round to visiting this awesome place. Again, hope you're all good!]]

The chill. She could feel it whispering on the edge of her stretched flesh, like a soft ache but never quite formed in full. The wind. It tore hungrily at her tattered violet robe: the tabard of the Kirin Tor fluttered wildly in the harsh breeze.

With a rasp of joy Viatrix lurched back into the tent, crouching down to pull herself through the tiny opening. She felt at home here, so busy had she been in the Undercity, with the Spine, and (though she felt sometimes like a traitor, depriving herself of the Queen’s instruction) there was something beautiful in the barren wasteland of Coldarra. Her research notes were scattered around her infinite quarters, although the corridor off to the left led to a tidier bedroom (sleep was something she rarely attempted). The corridor to the right was shimmering again, the illusionary enchantment was fading and she grasped quickly for the codex: strengthening the spell at once with the correct incantation. The corridor bulged in response and then solidified, satisfied she swept into the room, stripping away her fur coat (which was only needed because it looked so splendid!) and glancing off into the distance down another corridor which had not been there when she left this morning. The enchantment was becoming increasingly unstable. Her research with the Kirin Tor had not yet been conclusive, the slumped corpse of the majestic Malygos still waited for burial, the ruins of the Nexus still crackled with bright blue flame, blue drakes still clung to the outer rim of the basin… And they could not yet determine the true impact of the death of the Spellweaver. What was clear was that, in this place, magic was mutated. The Ley energy was enough to break the most complex charm or empower the simplest spell, and the process by which this occurred seemed increasingly unpredictable.

She glanced behind her again (for the flutter of the outer canvas drew her attention) out onto the encampment of the Kirin Tor. Only six or so tents clustered round the fire in the centre, with a few guards on duty a little way off. Impatiently Viatrix fastened the canvas shut, so the entrance vanished with the hiss of a last gust and she was alone. Her work would now continue, weeks she had been here and (though she had been assured that the shard system would operate this far north) something constantly disrupted communication with her kind. Total isolation was her remedy and she had quite forgotten in which room she had left her shard (or whether this room still existed). The humans she worked with were barely tolerable, but she owed the Kirin Tor something and they were, at least, avid intellectuals.

Her work could go on; she knew this as she snatched her first cartographic account of the Ley line configuration in the area from a table nearby and took a turn down the first corridor she came to. The hallway was part tent and part stone. Although the walls seemed fixed, permanent and strong, although the lamps and the bookshelves and the tables and the rugs all suggested a solid reality which wove its way around her: she could hear the quiver of the canvas beyond this façade, she could catch glimpses of the fragile fabric (only ever from the corner of her eye) and she could still hear the whisper of the wind. Coldarra waited beyond these false walls.

For now she moved on and hobbled her way gracelessly along the narrow passageway. The lighting was faint, a few purple lamps hung from the canvas roof which fluttered softly as she glanced up, she glowered at the nearest lantern for a moment and in response the flame within it flared: brightening the path ahead (but she could see now all the way into the far-away gloom, where the corridor must have spun away into nothingness). She squinted into the darkness and then leapt with fright as a something clasped her shoulder. Dread pulsed down dead veins. She turned slowly, preparing a Curse as she did so, thinking in her mind over and over: agony, anguish, pain. So that the world seemed to move with her thoughts, slowly, in stages, stepping along with her mind as she yelled out from terror within by thinking of such suffering.

Now she laughed aloud, the agony shrunk away, the canvas behind her fell from her shoulder with a hiss and a slither and a thump. The corridor had shut itself around her; the magic which opened it was sapped away to the Occulus, the canvas now flapped jeeringly at her silence. She turned to look back down the rest of the corridor, the purple lanterns swung gently, humming. The tables along the way were scattered with her own work, work she thought she had misplaced a week ago. The bookshelves grew around her, throwing harsh shadows onto the red velvet rugs. For a moment she felt trapped, then relieved at having a moment to rest away from the encampment (she knew the corridor would open itself eventually), Viatrix was now ready to explore this new walkway. Into the darkness she plunged.

She'd now been crawling down the corridor for an hour or more, the howl of the wind she had left behind - and so she now forgot to picture herself back in the land of Lordaeron (where the wind whistled amongst the quiet glades)... It was dark down here and, despite the purple light she sprung from her wand, she had to squint into the murk to see the faint outline of the magically woven fabric which engulfed her. Uncertainty filled her heart and she crept on.

Somewhere beneath her and to the right, a catastrophic rumble resounded... The ground trembled, the fabric collapsed, the corridor she had just pulled herself down snapped shut with a "hiss". An earthquake, another one, (Viatrix knew this had been the strongest of them all). Fire would come soon... raging, or Air would ensnare her. She could not make her way back to the research station: her journey into the magically corrupted maze of fluttering canvas had taken her deep into an unknown world utterly separate from the one she had left. Coldarra was a distant memory, she could not remember how long she had been lost in this hellish underworld, formed by the magically expanded tent of the Kirin Tor. What fools they had been! Why use such reckless magic in the very place where magic may be twisted and broken. Had they not thought the death of the Spellweaver might corrupt their work? Yet they still insisted on providing themselves with comfortable 'room'. Worthless, greedy, reckless. And now, she was trapped. She could only go onward.

[[A rather rushed and sudden continuation. She'll be trapped up north until I get back and get Cataclysm on the comp' (if mine can handle it), which should be in around 1 week (11th / 12th -ish). Hope you're all well, I look forward to catching up with you guys over the Christmas hol's!]]