A Dream of Blood

Blood dripped from the edge of the blade, drop by drop. It fell into a small puddle, which grew larger with each drop. There was nothing else in the vision beyond that puddle and the blood that dripped into it. After a time, the view expanded, and it was clear to the dreamer that the blood dripped from the metal edge of an axe. It glowed with power, a feeling of hunger around it that could not be denied. A thousand thousand deaths it had caused, and still it hungered for more, endlessly seeking life to feed itself. A reaper of souls...

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Mariskka jerked awake, her nearly naked body glistening with sweat as she shivered from the after-effects of the dream-vision. The small room she rented in the Blue Recluse surrounded her, but still a deep sense of dread and unease filled her as she tried to blink the sleep from her eyes and shake off the disturbing thoughts. The dream, like many of her dreams, was a vision that meant more than the symbols within it, and it was up to her to determine what it all meant.

As she sat up, she almost immediately got confirmation that her dream was a dire portent. With her special sight, she could feel and see the presence of unsettled spirits within the room around her. They whispered to her, their words urgent and barely heard. She tilted her head, the last bit of sleep rubbed from her eyes as the voices grew louder.

"She suffers!"
"The axe will be restored. There will be more unless you do something!"
"They will take the souls of those you love, there is no hope for you, you are DOOMED!"
"You will suffer more than the rest!"

The draenei's eyes widened in surprise and she waved her hand futilely in the air as she slipped from the bed. The voices continued to whisper around her, disembodied spirits shrieking words that quickly became less and less comprehensible. While she was used to spirits and elementals speaking to her, they rarely did so with such violence or anger, and she stumbled away from the bed in a disoriented daze as they continued.

"No! Be going avay! I am not understanding, cannot be helping you, no!" she murmured, still flailing her hands.

She pushed open the door of her small room, stumbling into the hallway of the Blue Recluse. The voices trailed after her, spirits needing no doorway to pass their forms through the walls as they continued to harass her. The draenei shook her head vigorously, her messy ponytails bouncing around her face and doing little to dissuade the dead from communing with her.

In the dark, she stumbled down the hallway, her hooves sounding loudly on the wooden flooring as she came to the edge of the stairway leading down to the common room. She blinked her eyes, trying to shut out the voices around her and she decided to head down and try to get some fresh air, despite it being deep in the middle of the night. As she started forward, a particularly gruesome poltergeist shrieked something about her blood spilling down the edge of the axe, and she slipped backwards. Her rump hit the first step and she bounced, tumbling down the stairs and painfully smacking each and every step before coming to a rest in a heap at the bottom.

The voices of the spirits softened as she sat up and pulled out a small stone totem. She tossed it onto the ground before her, and the soothing light of a Tranquil Mind spell bathed the area around her. Almost immediately she felt her thoughts calm, and the voices of the dead trailed away to whispers of nothing.

Bruised, unsettled and upset, Mariskka sat on the bottom step of the stairs, crying quietly to herself in the empty common room. After a time, one of the inn's workers came out to check on the noises he'd heard, and found the red-eyed draenei sitting in only a wisp of nightgown, rubbing her eyes and sniffling.

"Are you alright miss...?" he asked, looking her over in concern. She had a few fresh bruises on her arms and legs, and looked like she'd had a rough night; not necessarily an uncommon thing in one of Stormwind's many taverns, although usually such things didn't happen while the establishments were CLOSED.

Mariskka gave one last sniffle and bobbed her head. "Am knowing something terrible is happening. But vhat is being I cannot see. Cannot be helping if am not knowing, yes?"

The man nodded, patting the shaman on her arm. "Perhaps if you get some rest you can think about it, and it will come to you? Everything seems to be just fine right now, and it'll be dawn in another few hours. Time enough to figure it out then."

Mariskka smiled at him and nodded again. "Yes. Is alvays being darkest before day. I vill go back to room and be thinking of this. If there is being something I am needing to do, I vill find out and be doing."

She rose slowly, and the man held up his candle so she could see as she made her way back up the stairs to her room. He shook his head and sighed; Galvan probably would have enjoyed finding a half-naked shaman sitting in the common room in the middle of the night, but if she was going to make so much noise it would drive the other paying customers away. With another sigh he snuffed out his candle and headed back to his room.

The voices of the spirits remained silent, they had told the Seer all they were willing to, it was up to her to discover the rest on her own.