Trial of Sacrifice: Mirathendia

[Mirathendia]

Daylight was too bright after the incomprehensible darkness and shadow, but Mirathendia forced herself to face it. Ri made her drink, cajoled her until she ate, though everything was ash on her tongue. The orc remained at the small manor for longer than she would normally stay in a stretch, and in that time, had asked Mira nothing. For both of those things, Mira was grateful.

Mirathendia stood in the manor's entryway. The wall held a tapestry showing the Morrowblood lineage. At the top, the last two branches. Mirathendia. Shahadra.

I don't go by that name anymore.

Mira gritted her teeth. She tore the great axe from the wall, screamed and cut the tapestry down. She hacked the top of the tapestry off in a great strip and carried it back to her bedroom.

Shahadra's skull sat on the vanity table, void-stained in the back, light-scorched in the front. She kissed the brow of the skull, then touched her forehead to the same spot and whispered, "I'm sorry."

Mirathendia gritted her teeth and set the skull in the small lockbox. She padded the skull with the piece of tapestry and draped it so her sister's name rested atop the bone.

She closed the box, touched the Morrowblood crest embossed into the leather on the lid. There would be no new branches on the Morrowblood tree.

She shook herself, rubbed her hand against her thigh, listened. The manor was quiet and she hadn't seen Narath since the night before. She picked up the lockbox.

Time to get it over with?

"Where are you going?"

Mira stopped in the entryway, hand on the door. She should have know she'd be unable to sneak away if Ri was still there. Mirathendia stopped bowed her head. "I have a delivery to make."

The orc pressed a hand gently onto Mirathendia's shoulder. "Let me make it for you."

Mirathendia shook her head. "No. This is." She drew a deep breath, straightened herself. "This is a delivery I have to make myself." She looked over her shoulder at Ri. "If--" Her throat closed and words failed her. Mira licked her lips, tried again. "If for some reason I do not return..."

"I will find you." The orc's words carried the ferocity of vengeance and the calmness of an oath resworn.

Mirathendia nodded and left. She carried the chest to the Grim guild hall and waited for Khorshah.

[Khorshah]

Khorshah settled down behind his desk after Mirathendia left, the chair creaking under the big Tauren's weight. He opened the chest, drew the shredded tapestry aside, and regarded the skull in its resting place. "Now what in the world drove you to think infiltrating The Grim, of all the Horde, was a good idea?" He lifted the skull gently, a big thumb sliding along one light-scorched orbital bone as he stared into the sockets. "How did you ever think that it was going to work?" He shook his head, then turned and slid the skull onto a shelf beside a larger, tusked skull with a shattered temple.

And then he turned back to the paperwork on his desk, making marks in a notebook as he went through the reports.