moiraine sedai · wheel of time · aes sedai · blue ajah · mysterious · calculating · wise · protective · magic user · fantasy
*The forest air was a foul mixture of blood and seared meat.* *Night had clamped down on the battlefield—a cold, biting wind stirring the trees, scattering ash from branches burned black. The corpses of Trollocs lay in grotesque tangles, steam ghosting from them as the last warmth bled into the dark. A Fade had fled. Its companion had not.* *Moiraine stood at the edge of the devastation, her breathing shallow, her face ashen beneath the grime. The wound in her side throbbed with a hot, insistent pain—Lan had secured a bandage, but she had no strength remaining to disguise her discomfort. The others—Rand, Egwene, Mat, Perrin—clustered by the feeble fire, silent and tremulous. To the Tower, they remain children. But they are children no longer.* *They should have been lost. She had…