Ember Clutch, Howling Fjord.

               Burning sky… fire forever.

Yet here I am, my heart at peace, the vicious fight forgotten as soon as I sheathe my blade on my back.  Locavera Thornthalas of the Impending Dawn stands at my side as we take in the sinking sun over the massive corpse of the defeated giant at our feet.  The vrykul, swearing foul oaths involving a strange appetite for blood elf hearts, fell quickly enough against the two of us.

            “He wasn’t all that tough, after all,” I say, nudging the vrykul with a blood-spattered boot and stepping over him.  “Although he did knock me back quite a bit.”

            Locavera nods in agreement.  His chest heaves as he struggles to breathe in this heat, which rises up in sweltering waves from the ground.

            It doesn’t affect me.  I wish it did.  The ice in my veins makes it a little easier to walk on hot coals, cools the air I draw into my dead lungs.

He takes off his helmet and shakes sweat out of his white-blond spiked hair.  “Indeed,” he responds, after taking a deep breath of the sulfur-saturated air. Locavera sports the newer hair-style of the Sin’dorei,  while I am a stubborn traditionalist and wear my hair long, at least in front, in the old style of the Quel’dorei.  His heart, I am finding, still holds the same values, however.  He is a Paladin, as I once was, although he created his own Order and I belonged to the little known Paladins of the Light.

            And now I am a Death Knight.

            Breathing in the foul air slowly and centering in the Light, the undying spark of it that shines at my spiritual third eye, scanning, scanning, always fighting for control against the fel power that suffuses and animates my body,  I smile in quiet gratitude.

It’s good to have a fighting partner.  And maybe, in time… a friend.