Homecoming

                Kyliska’s head pounded, her stress high enough to make her want to return to the room she had been trapped in for so long, but she knew she couldn’t. As she stood in the courtyard of Sunfire Estate, the babble of all of the petitioners that had plagued her for the past few weeks rose into a dull roar, echoing inside her skull with a dull pain.

                She’d come out into the courtyard after servants had reported a caravan of elves approaching the estate, wrongly thinking that the insistent, rude petitioners would remain indoors where they had been consuming her finest wine. They came from various lowborn Houses, from the Magistrate, from Orgrimmar, and one of them was even a page all the way from Suramar with some message or another. All were uninvited, all refused to leave despite her insistence. It was times like these that Kyliska longed for the old days when she didn’t have to deal with any of this and could just put her sword to good use.

                A particularly jarring and raucous laugh echoed off the stone pavement, setting Kyliska to grind her teeth. Lord Amrath of House Windstar was one of the most annoying of the petitioners. Insisting on his ‘right’ to remain to parley with her over matters concerning his ‘mighty’ house, he had obnoxiously eaten twice his share of food and four times his share of wine. The insult to it all was that his ‘house’ was made up of no more than fifteen retainers and wouldn’t have dared to come petitioning back in the height of House Sunfire’s power.

                Kyliska tried to push the irritation to the side as horns sounded outside and the gates to the estate’s courtyard swung wide. Her mood was temporarily bolstered by the sight of Braeth’el riding at the head of a pack of Sin’dorei on hawkstriders. He’d wrapped up his winter gear, storing it on his mount’s saddle, leaving his tight leather tunic on for protection. The armor glinted dully with polish in the warm sunlight, the sun’s rays playing along his muscular arms as he brought his mount to a halt before her.

                She could have basked in the sight of his strong form forever, his presence bolstering her, except for the mystery of his trip and the caravan of elves approaching behind him. He’d said he had something important to attend to, something she would be pleased with once he was able to reveal more. Now she peered past him curiously as a trio of hawkstriders pulled an open-air carriage behind them into the courtyard, a cloaked and hooded figure seated on its soft cushions.

                Kyliska’s gaze homed in on that figure, a female elf sitting alone and accompanied by guards as if she were a queen. For reasons she couldn’t quite understand, Kyli’s heart began to pound as a nagging realization set in. Her pulse quickened as she caught a glimpse of arcane wards flickering within the shadowed depths of the hood. She knew, in that moment, who sat in the carriage, and if Braeth’el had brought her…

                Her thoughts were interrupted by Lord Amrath as he rudely shouldered his way through the mounted elves, standing with his back straight before her, “Lady Kyli… Are we to be forced to remain in this heat all day? This procession hardly looks worthy of our valuable time, and we have much to discuss in the ways of our future business. It is unseemly for you to keep your guests waiting with only a mediocre wine to drink and all of this dust.”

                Kyliska felt a stab of irritation spike through her. Her mouth opened and closed, longing to say so many things that her staff had assured her would be political suicide to utter. She was both saved and horrified when another voice answered the inquiry, her eyes snapping to the hooded figure in the carriage. A figure that had risen and spoken with a voice that chilled her to her core.

                “Your audience is over. You will depart these grounds at once, never to return.”

                Lord Amrath sniffed disdainfully, swirling his wine in his glass, “I hardly think that House Sunfire can afford to treat its guests in such a manner, given its current…difficulties. Perhaps you should reconsider what you’re saying, stranger.”

                Kyliska’s heart felt like a hand was squeezing it as she watched the woman reach up and expose the features she knew so well. The only surprise was the golden eyes that glared down at the unfortunate elf that was about to learn a very valuable lesson. Although her world spun around her, Kyli clung to the pounding rage, confusion, and hope that surged through her, clung to consciousness for a moment longer before she heard a thing that confirmed her deepest fears and joys.

                As the sounds of over a hundred wine glasses and bottles shattering from the sudden ice that had claimed them tinkled over the gasps of petitioners who had been cut by flying shards of glass, Kyli watched Lord Amrath tumble to his knees, his arms and face bleeding. That voice echoed out over the crowd once again.

                “Guards, remove these insolent pests from my property before I make a mess in the courtyard. I am the Magistrix Biara Dayfire, and I will not tolerate a traitorous little bitch like this to talk back to me. Throw his belongings in the river and let him fish them out.”

                Kyli’s world turned black as she fainted.

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                The world spun again and blackness receded to reveal the all too familiar sight of the ceiling in Kyliska’s room. For a moment she thought she had dreamed the entire thing, thought that perhaps the pressure had finally gotten to her. She shifted in place, a gasp escaping her as she realized a silent figure sat beside her bed.

                Biara was paler than she remembered, and thinner, as if she had suffered much over a long period of time. Her eyes glowed brightly with power though, those golden orbs affixed on some distant place beyond Kyliska’s view. She struggled to sit up, her mouth opening and then closing, unable to find the words to say.

                Biara saved her the trouble, speaking without looking at her, her gaze still on the floor, “I was captured many months ago. Taken by surprise in the night. For the first few months, I couldn’t move because of the temporal spells on me, but such magic can’t hold me. Not after the experiments I’ve done with that type of power. As the spell faded, I began to use my magic to try to scry, siphoning as much as I could with my limited resources.”

                She turned, her piercing gaze meeting Kyli’s, “I hoped…for a long time I hoped you would all see through the deception and lies the Highborne spun. That you would come to find me. I couldn’t reach you, but I could watch and hope. As time passed and my prison began to malfunction, I realized you had been truly fooled, that you had believed that I could betray you so deeply. It hurt to know that you thought that about me, that you wouldn’t come for me because of a lie.”

                Kyliska tried to speak, but Biara held up a hand to forestall her, “I realized you didn’t have the magic, didn’t have the power needed to see through the deception. It wasn’t your fault, even if it hurt me. For a time I raged, alone in my cell, slowly starving of mana exhaustion. I thought about all I had seen, what I now knew. The Highborne, the one calling herself Kerriel, she explained it to me. We are her blood heirs, her descendants. She wanted to keep us safe, and the two of us together are like oil and water. We create trouble, we bring about destruction. I lead you into disaster, you egg me on with your passion, and together we cause hardship on ourselves and on others. She had to put me away, she said, had to keep us safe from ourselves so she could achieve her plans. So she ruined our bond and kept us apart. She put me safely away and out of the picture so we could not ruin it all.”

                The enormity of what Biara was saying settled on Kyliska even as tears streamed down her face. All of it, all of her suffering, was over. Her sister was here, in the flesh, on her side again. A million things flashed through her mind, all of them trying to get out at once. Instead she just said, “So what do we do now?”

                Biara smiled at her, the look cold and full of fury that ignited something deep within Kyliska. She rose, standing over her sister, her voice full of fire, “Now? Well, I have been fully briefed on events since my departure. I consider this entire thing fortunate in the end. It has exposed a dangerous enemy we did not know. It has proven that friends and allies I thought reliable were mercurial and traitorous. That they were unreliable in your deepest time of need. I understand now that had I truly died at some point, you would have been cast adrift by the others, and that I need to show you how to ensure that never happens again.”

                She shifted in place, the hand behind her reaching forward, revealing Kyliska’s sheathed sword in her fist. “Now, my dearest sister, now we will take an accounting of every wrong that has been done to us in the past year. Now we will teach our allies why they should have stuck by their word. Now, I will lead, and you will follow with your blade drawn, your passion and anger driving me. We will be oil and water, and we will ignite the flames across the surface until it all burns down. The Highborne feared destruction? Just wait until she sees what we will unleash upon her, upon the world.”

                Kyliska felt a vicious grin creep across her face as Biara reached out and handed her the sword. She felt it in her hands, the steel sending an electric thrill through her. Things would be like they had been! Her sister would make it right!

                As Kyliska grinned, Biara’s face mirrored hers. Her hands came up, clapping twice very sharply. The door to Kyliska’s room opened and a number of Blood Knights and apprentices poured in, all standing at attention, all of them apparently inspired by a previous, similar speech from their Magistrix.

                “Come sister, you have lain quietly by the wayside for long enough. Let us soak your blade in the blood of enemies and traitors, until the world learns just exactly how destructive we can be.”

                Kyliska rose from her bed, whipping her sword out and raising it high as her knights cheered her. Her heart pounded again, but this time, it was with a thrilling joy that had been missing for far too long. Everyone would pay. Everyone would learn why the sisters had survived for so very long through so much hardship. They would learn that lesson the hard way.

                Together the two dangerous Sin’dorei marched from the room, their guards and servants following, ready to carry out the orders of House Sunfire’s renewed leadership.