No Such Thing as a Smooth Course

((Hey, I'm not dead.))

Written while listening to Times Like These (Acoustic) by Foo Fighters.


. . . . . Schwip... schwip... schwip...
. . . . . Waves lapped gently against the sturdy wooden hull of the schooner before Diyos's eyes. He tried to focus on the solidity of the boat instead of the constant motion of the waves, but it was no good. His stomach heaved again and he hung over the railing like a limp rag. They were only about six hours out from Menethil Harbor, but he hadn't exactly started the day on the best hoof. Still plagued by a vicious hangover ever since they'd pushed off in the early morning, it was all he could do to keep from toppling into the Great Sea.
. . . . . “Ooo, look!” came the far-too-cheery-for-the-hour voice of his baby brother by his ear. “I'm pretty sure that's a dragon up there!” After several rapid pats at his shoulder, Athos gave up and elbowed him in the ribs. “Degenerate,” he muttered with good humor.
. . . . . “Shut it, will you? I'm trying to find my sobriety.”
. . . . . “And whose overindulgence was that?” Athos peered down into the sea with Diyos, watching as the lapping waves seemed to slow their pace against the hull. “It was a small bronze dragon,” he explained.
. . . . . “Probably one of the dragons who started befriending adventurers last year, then.” Diyos clung to the railing for another few moments, then started to straighten. As he did so, the entire ship rolled and bucked under his hooves - a long, slow yaw port, then a gentle pitch starboard. “Urrrp!” was Diyos's only reaction.
. . . . . “Woah!” was Athos's response, followed by a sharp gasp. “What was that? Did we just pass over a huge fish? Maybe a shark? Or a whale? Do sharks get that big? Maybe it was a whaleshark!”
. . . . . “Athos, quit being such a nerd. There's no such thing as whalesharks. It was just a big wave.”

One Disaster Less

Written while listening to The Last Thing On Your Mind by Lights.


. . . . . To whom it may conce-... “No, too formal.”
. . . . . Regretfully, the ti-... “Too emotional!”
. . . . . After a year, it has co-...
. . . . . “Diyos!”
. . . . . Papers rustled as Diyos swiftly covered the letter he was writing with a blank sheet and looked up expectantly to see his baby brother closing the door to their apartment in the Park District of Stormwind behind him. Athos had a distinctly frazzled air to go with his usual excitability; he practically bounded into the room, a cardboard box wrapped in twine tucked under one arm. “DiyosDiyosDi-”
. . . . . “Stop.” The priest held out one platter-sized hand in a staying gesture, careful not to sweep his sleeve through the pile of crumpled balls of paper on the table in front of him. “Breathe.”
. . . . . The younger – by a few minutes – draenei clattered to a halt in front of the table and set down his package. He took a deep breath and regarded Diyos in his chair, managing to stay quiet for all of about six seconds. “Diyos! Naaru’s sake, did you forget? Why are you just sitting here? Get up. Get up! It’s time to go!”
. . . . . “I didn’t forget – I’m just trying to get other business done, brother.” The chair made an obnoxious scraping sound as it moved back across the wooden floor and Diyos stood. “Is Kreli coming up or are we mee-”
. . . . . “We’re meeting him there!” Athos interrupted.
. . . . . Diyos shook his head and gave his baby brother a bemused smile as he picked up a book titled Compassion in Battle: War-time Counseling to read while they waited at the courthouse and tucked it under his arm. “Alright, let’s get under way then.”
. . . . . “You’re going to wear that?”
. . . . . Diyos glanced down at his robes; they were black with purple embroidery on the cuffs. “What’s wrong with this?”
. . . . . “You practically look like a magistrate yourself,” his baby brother said with a scowl. “You could at least attempt to look like a man who still serves the Light.”
. . . . . “They do! I mean, magistrates. I mean, I do!” Diyos practically gasped at the audacity of the accusation.

Fishing Stories

((What follows are a series of conversations - mostly conceived and written by Ekanos’s player - that occurred between the two while they were in hiding. It’s not everything they spoke about - for example, the deep conversations about what was really going on tended to be in the evening, staring up at the stars - but it was a writing challenge to try to convey a sense of what they were up to almost entirely through text. There is exactly one line of non-dialogue in this story, and only because we could figure out no better way to present it. Imagine these as snapshot moments which break up hours of silently staring at the water.))


. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Yeff, Diyof?”
. . . . . “Do... Do you have to do that?”
. . . . . “Do what?”
. . . . . “Eat...like that.”
. . . . . “Like what?”
. . . . . “The fish is still alive, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “What?” The elf cracked the fish against the trunk of the tree he was leaning on. “No, it isn’t.”
. . . . . “Well not now. Couldn’t you at least cook it?”
. . . . . “But...then it loses all the flavor!”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos?”
. . . . . “Yes, Diyos?”
. . . . . “What’cha readin’?”
. . . . . “A scroll about abnormal tumors in the human body.”
. . . . . “What’s a ‘normal’ tumor?”
. . . . . “I...don’t know, Diyos. That’s a really good question.”

Frostbite

Written while listening to Six Gun Quota by Seether.


. . . . . Finally, the last of the Company left, but not until after the creepy young thing had left a cookie atop his ice prison and told him to keep his chin up. She was one of them and always struck Diyos as a little freakish. She’d taken up the human habit of adornment through piercing and so much metal pushing into her dead flesh only seemed to make it more obscene…like carving smiley faces onto the fallen walls of Auchindoun. On Azshariel, a single piercing was cute. Perhaps he was just a hypocrite; it wouldn’t be the first time.
. . . . . The pierced one told him to keep faith in the Light and the Naaru. He’d scoffed and told her to leave, to let this human Colonel just knock him over the head and put him out already. The Light wasn’t doing jack – more slang he’d picked up in Common classes – to help him. He didn’t know precisely what jack was, but he knew not doing it meant that his world got a little bleaker with each heartbeat. When that nasty unholy Man’ari had been in his face and the Company had gotten a dose of righteous fury on his behalf, he almost felt like he’d be alright after all.
. . . . . And then they took a vote on whether or not to help him.
. . . . . And after being told what they needed to do to spring him from this early, they debated it like they were choosing an expedition spot and ended up deciding to not do anything like what they’d been asked.
. . . . . He was so screwed.

A Little Character Art

. . . . .I was complaining to a friend of mine that I was a sometimes little sad I played a dead character, because dead characters could not be sexy - ever. (And shouldn't be!) She decided to attempt to prove me wrong and drew a picture of Valdiis for me. I got bored and colored it recently, so I decided to share.

Drawn by Kyléa of Moon Guard. Colored by Valdiis of Moon Guard.

Fireflies in a Jar

Written while listening to Hello Again (live) by Dave Matthews Band.
((I actually want to use the CD version and not the live version, but this will do.))

. . . . . Extinction. The word crashed against the inside of Diyos’s mind like a marshlight bleeder in a giant jar. He translated the word into his native tongue and back again, listened to his memory echo Azshariel’s voice to him until he felt like it was his own psyche beating on the glass for freedom.
. . . . . In the small workspace in Ironforge he rented for his tailoring commissions, he sat at his mana loom, weaving threads soaked in arcane dust with threads soaked in nether essence. Every clack of the shuttle seemed to repeat her premise: adapt or die. Under his hands, enough imbued netherweave to form a full bolt of cloth was forming.
. . . . . A craving for the bitter burn of alcohol settled in the back of his throat. Before joining the company, a few hours of watching his thoughts batter against his mind like trapped fireflies would have him well on his way to drinking himself into oblivion. But now he had a new start, people counting on him who were not obliged to toleration by filial bonds like his baby brother. He could forget the nightmares of millennia nipping at his hooves. He had a connection to this planet outside of his family’s bonds, and for all that he was not with them as often as their core members, he felt as if the company’s employees were what held him here – as well as his brother still on probation in Stormwind.
. . . . . Unlike Athos, if he screwed this up, they would kick him to the curb.

Making the Best of It

Written while listening to The Best of What's Around by Dave Matthews Band.
((I’m not totally pleased with this, but as it’s been several months since I last wrote something, I’ll take what I can get.))

. . . . . “She’s dead, Jim.”
. . . . . The draenei anchorite who’d just voiced this statement of fact for the fifty-third time thumped his head back against the thick hide of the elekk lying behind him on the deck of the Elune’s Blessing. For his part, the elekk – named Jim – curled his trunk around to his side and appeared to give his draenei owner a comforting pat on the hip…until it became clear that he was actually tugging on the small pouch of acorns tied to the anchorite’s belt.
. . . . . A platter-sized indigo hand swatted at the elekk’s gray trunk. The elekk snorted, blowing clear snot all over the right hip of the anchorite’s brown trousers.
. . . . . “Thanks, Jim. Good to know your opinion.” The anchorite’s voice was dry as he elbowed the elekk in the side to get him to settle down.
. . . . . A shout drifted down from the crow’s nest of the ship. The glittering crystal spires of the Exodar were just visible on the horizon. He was almost there.

. . . . . The new cook at the Valiance Keep inn gritted his teeth. That damned tapping sound was back. Taptaptap. Tap. Taptap. Tap. It was coming from the other side of the wall behind the fire pit, which was impossible since there was nothing back there.

Writer's Block

. . . . . I have not forgotten about my stories or stopped playing my characters. I've had some fairly major life upheavals in the last few months and have hit a bit of writer's block with my stories. That said, I do have a collaborative piece with Valdiis and Major Eredis Orill I'm writing with his player mostly finished and the vaguest of plots for a Diyos and Valdiis piece in the back of my head. Hadeon has an outline for another story. Xeremuriis may be a little while before she pops up again. So. Just a lull. ^.^ 

Recall

Written while listening to Beauty Never Fades by Junkie XL.


. . . . . . The small, sharp blade whistled through the air with the sweetest, softest ring, its movement so swift that its target only had enough time to perk a long ear at the warning before the dagger pinned its chest to the forest floor. The hare kicked twice and expired, its life blood pooling beneath it from the well-aimed thrown weapon.
. . . . . . Hooves no noisier than a doe’s carried the sturdy draenei female out of the bushes and to her quarry. She mumbled a perfunctory prayer to the Light for the animal’s soul, rote words with hardly more thought behind them than it took to form her mouth around the syllables. An ebon-gray hand, calloused with hard work and tipped with blunted, heavily-used claws, pulled the blade free of the corpse, and wiped it clean with a pale peach-tinted leaf plucked from the bushes. The dagger joined its twin on her leather belt, and she scooped up the hare’s corpse.
. . . . . . Whistling a tune to startle off any other predators drawn by the scent of blood, the draenei female headed back to the small lean-to in the woods she’d set up miles from the nearest settlement, and miles farther from the claustrophobic, Nether-blasted ship the draenei had landed here on. She settled her leather-covered rump on a fallen log and pulled a smaller blade from her belt, a flensing knife. With the deft movements of a practiced hand, the skin was separated from the corpse in one piece, the meat sliced free in perfectly-sized servings for two meals and set atop the bloodied skin. She got back up and laid out the sticks and larger pieces of wood for a campfire, then pulled a small pouch off her belt. Inside was a bundle of tinder and…
. . . . . . “Archimonde’s shriveled balls!” she cursed at the empty forest. “Where is my flint?” She searched beneath a rack of curing hides, inside her simple lean-to, all around the fallen log she used as seating, even took apart the campfire she’d just built. All to no avail. There was no flint to be found.
. . . . . . Continuing to curse, the draenei female known as Rosoe secured her campsite, bundled the meat up in the skin it had originally lived in, stuffed it in a pack slung over her shoulder, and started the long walk to the nearest settlement of Lailein on their latest chunk of rock in the Nether, a planet they called Spretomi.

Crucible

Written while listening to Marunae by E.S. Posthumus.
((I blame this one on Yulenia of Moon Guard. “Write a Val story,” he says; “write a war story,” he says… The discussion between Eredis and Valdiis comes from in-game RP; much thanks to Eredis and Bergmann for letting me run off with those characters a bit. The format – specifically, the timing of the three threads – of this particular story is somewhat bizarre. Hopefully, it is not too obscure to be understood.))


. . . . . . The acrid mixed scent of sulfur and flux, of melted iron and crushed rock, hung on the hot, dry air swirling lazily through the open balcony of the second floor of the building. As acclimated as any native of the city by now – or perhaps just too dead to smell it – a draenei female in light plate armor sat motionless at a desk piled high with papers. In her hands she held a report detailing the buildup of sin’dorei troops on the other side of the Dark Portal – a clear and immediate threat to Alliance trade interests that must be dealt with swiftly.
. . . . . . Plated boots clomped up the stairs and the draenei never moved, her glowing eyes fixed not on the report, but blankly at a spot on the wall opposite her chair. The clomping continued as a grizzled, older human male in heavy plate covered by a black tabard moved through the path of her blank stare and sat down across from her at the desk.
. . . . . . “Commander Valdiis. Just the person I wanted to see.”
. . . . . . The draenei Commander took several seconds to focus her attention on the man across the table from her, and several seconds more to form something between a sigh and an acknowledgment. “Hrhn. Major…”
. . . . . . The human Major raised his eyebrow inquisitively at this unusually slow response.
. . . . . . After another several seconds, she blinked and seemed to shake herself out of it. “Major Eredis, sir. Ehm. Alright, so I am just ze person you vanted to see?” The paper went down on the table and her hands – covered as always in articulated plates over leather gloves – folded atop the desk in what would have been a casual gesture if the creak of tightly-clutched leather didn’t give her away.
. . . . . . The Major nodded. “You’ve read the reports on Sunguard activity in Outland.” It wasn’t a question.
. . . . . . She glanced down at the paper under her hands and nodded mutely. One of the ebon-gray tendrils set behind her ear twitched.
. . . . . . “I need you to represent AEGIS at the Temple of Telhamat.” The Major scratched his bearded chin. “Bergmann will be your aide, as usual.”