Aisslyn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Aisslyn drove her blade through the demon's chest, and the moment its blood touched her hands, the thing inside her woke. Illidan's gift. The corruption she had carried out of the Vault and wanted gone. Her vision went red. Her muscles burned with a strength that was not hers. She wanted to keep cutting, past the corpse, into anything that moved. That was the price of every fight now. Win, and lose herself a little more. She staggered back from the body and pressed her back against a tree. Her hands shook. She counted her breaths the way she once counted seedlings in a row. Ten breaths. The red faded, but slowly. Slower than last time. Someday it would not fade at all. She had escaped one prison. She would not become another. "You held it," a voice said. "Barely." Maiev Shadowsong stood among the trees, watching. The woman who had chained Aisslyn to a wall in the dark. The woman who had let her go, then made her a Watcher after seeing her defend travelers at a river crossing. Aisslyn's grip tightened on her blade before she made herself lower it. "I don't need a keeper," Aisslyn said. "You need control." Maiev stepped closer. She did not soften it. "The demon's blood feeds what Illidan left in you. Every kill pulls you toward it. I've seen better fighters than you lose that fight." Aisslyn wanted to argue. She couldn't. Her hands were still shaking. Maiev crouched and pulled a small flower from the ground near the tree roots. Pale petals, the kind Aisslyn had grown a lifetime ago. "You worked plants once." "How do you know that?" "I read your file for a year." Maiev held out the bloom. "A hunter can't master the corruption by fighting it head-on. You bury a still thing under the rage. Something to reach for when the red comes. A word. A memory. A weight in your hand." She pressed the flower into Aisslyn's palm and closed her fingers over it. "You need an anchor. Or you die, and I lose a Watcher I can't spare." Aisslyn stared at the crushed petals. The smell reached her, green and clean, and something in her chest loosened. Not gone. Steadied. "Show me," she said. They worked until dark. Maiev wounded her own arm and let a fugitive from the northern vaults come at them, then made Aisslyn fight it while holding the bloom's scent in her mind. The red came. Aisslyn reached for the flower, the row of seedlings, the woman watching her with hard pale eyes. She held. She killed the demon and did not lose herself. When it was done, she stood over the body, breathing, her mind her own. She had found her anchor. But her fingers had crushed the bloom to pulp during the fight, and she understood the flaw at once. A scent she could carry ran out. She needed something that would not.