I intended to work on the next chapter of the Venthyr campaign with Kaelinda. Then this plotbunny hopped up, and I spent last night writing a story instead of playing the game.
Some small spoilers, mostly for side quests, for the leveling story of Bastion. It’s been long enough, though, that I’m pretty certain that all of my regular readers have either already done Bastion or aren’t playing Retail WoW and won’t mind reading about a story that they may never actually play through themselves.
~*~*~
On the day the Scourge invaded Eversong Woods, Keliora had been one of the priestesses on duty at the Sanctum of the Moon. Her oldest daughter was training at the East Sanctum, her middle daughter was on an expedition to visit the Runestones with Runewarden Deryan, and her youngest daughter (who was comparable enough in age to the exotic half-Human twin sons of Vereesa Windrunner to have a fantastical crush on them) was with her tutor at the family dwelling in the down-the-hill neighborhood of Tranquillien. She was, at that time, already a widow; her husband had perished in Archimonde’s attack on Dalaran. She had barely survived the onslaught of the Scourge. Her children had all been overrun.
“Tell me,” Keliora demanded, “Where are the souls of my husband and my children?”
Caretaker Kah-Sar shook its head. “We record where all souls have gone, but we do not,” it said in its resonating, not-quite masculine countertenor, not-quite feminine contralto voice. “Forgive me for the cryptic nature of the reply. We record, but we may not recall. Only the Purpose may reveal whether the threads of a soul will rejoin the tapestry of an individual existence.”
The bright sunshine and the soft colors of the golden and white fields and periwinkle trees and flowers of Bastion were soothing.
Keliora was collecting materials for Forgelite Sophone and her assistant Sika, and also looking for some books that another of the Kyrian Aspirants had asked her to find and suggested that she read. She asked an Aspirant who was sitting by himself under a tree, reading, if he knew where she might find Bear Witness: The Watcher’s Code. The Aspirant said he did not. She thanked him for his time and was turning to go on with her search when he said, “Wait, mortal. Your face is familiar to me, somehow. I think… I think I know you… knew you — in my mortal life.”
Surprised, she turned back toward him.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“Keliora,” she told him.
His face, which had been wearing a puzzled expression, brightened, and he smiled at her. “Yes, yes! I do know you! I think — I think we might have been Soulbinds, in my mortal life.”
Keliora was startled. “Tael?” she asked. “Taelorien of the Dawnstrider clan?”
He nodded. “I have a new name, now that I am one of the Kyrian,” and he told her what it was, “but that is the name attached to the records of my mortal memories archived at the Mnemonic Locus. Your name is in those records, too. And I have not given up all of my mortal burdens… not yet.”
Keliora slowly sat down on the grass beside him. “Do you still remember this?” She pulled up from inside her robe, where it hung on a long, fine chain, a delicately crafted, glittering ring. He stretched out his hand, and she placed the ring in his palm.
His smile turned beaming. “Yes. I remember this, and I still remember the day I gave it to you.” He sighed. “The happiest memories are the hardest to let go.” Seeing her expression turn hesitant, he said, “May I tell you what I remember?”
She nodded. He told her, and it was as she remembered, too — or at least enough to convince her that this Kyrian Aspirant really was, or had been, her husband.
“Have… have you chosen a Soulbind here, yet?” She hardly dared ask it.
He shook his head. “No. I have not felt the need of that form of companionship… yet.”
They sat in silence for some span of timeless moments. At length, she gathered up her courage enough to ask, “If I manage to live the rest of my life so that the Arbiter sends my soul here, to Bastion, to the Kyrian, when my time on Azeroth is done, is there any possibility that you and I might be Soulbinds… again? Truly, forever?”
He pondered the question for several more timeless moments. “From what I still remember of you… from what is in my archived memories of you… I think you already live such a life of service as to come here.” He paused, then smiled at her, somewhat shyly. “I will not ask another to be my Soulbind. And if another asks me to be their Soulbind, I will only accept if they have given me a wreath of Rising Glory, with one Adrima’s Lily and two larion feathers, one golden and one argent.”
She smiled back at him. “I can remember that. But… will you be able to remember that, even when you have given up all of your other memories?”
“I think… I hope… that I will be able to keep that, because that promise will be part of my new Kyrian memories, not part of my old mortal memories.”
Keliora wanted then, so very very much, to draw him into an embrace and kiss him with all the pent up longing of the years since his death during Archimonde’s assault on Dalaran. But she had already seen enough of the Kyrian and their Path and Process, to suspect that to do so would severely set back his progress, and so she refrained.
Sighing, she stood. “I suppose I must return to my tasks, now. I… should probably try not to see too much of you again, while I am here as a mortal, lest I delay your Ascension.”
He nodded, expression somber. “You are right. You always were. Are. Until we meet again, go in service.”
~*~*~
I began thinking of the main concept of this story — that Keliora chooses the Kyrian because she serendipitously discovers that the soul of her husband has been assigned to Bastion — when I first created the character.
Some of the details of the story are inspired by the Reconstructed Family Locket and accompanying Handwritten Note found on a dead Kyrian at the House of Constructs in Maldraxxus. Others are inspired by the evidence that Aspiring Souls who have graduated to become Kyrian Aspirants have not yet let go of all their mortal memories; in the task to assist Disciple Helene at the Temple of Purity, we see that in mortal life, Acolyte Galistos was Tauren, of unknown gender, and possibly gay, as he tries unsucessfully to overcome some of his lingering mortal memories/burdens. One of the memories is of two adult Tauren kneeling by a baby basket; when Kaelinda did the quest, she saw them as two males, but when Kaurinka did the same quest she saw them as two females — do they also appear sometimes as a male and a female?
The Soulbind concept is only explained with quests and seen in the NPC population in Bastion. As I’ve thought about it, it seems to me that Soulbinding is a compensating measure for the gaping void of loneliness caused by discarding all of one’s mortal memories. A Kyrian soul abandons all knowledge of their mortal companionships… and so they forge a new companionship for their new existence and the new person who they have become. But how heart-and-soul-breaking it would be to discover that one’s beloved mate in life, with whom one had expected to be eternally in the afterlife, was Kyrian, and, with Kyrian deliberate amnesia, had chosen another to be their bosom companion for the eternities!
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Kamalia et alia 