The Windbringer and the Winterborn

No Such Thing as a Smooth Course

2011-10-12T18:19:00.001-04:00

((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.”
. . . . . His baby brother burbled along into another stream of consciousness about the properties of exceptionally large fish as Diyos pushed away from the railing and crossed the deck to stare starboard towards the barely-visible land on the horizon. He was no sailor and no better a navigator, but as near as he could figure it, they were drawing about even with Southshore before catching the northern current off the coast. An acid green flash along the smudge of land miles in the distance made him squint and press himself against the railing.
. . . . . “Magic, ho! Starboard!” came the shout of the tall, skinny human boy up in the crow's nest balanced at the top of the mast. While Athos dashed over to join Diyos at the railing, the crew left off their lounging in the easy breeze and started loosening sail lines and unfurling canvas. The captain set up a hue and cry from the wheel, ordering the ship's mage brought up and no, he didn't care if the man was still asleep and no, he didn't care if waking a sleeping mage might mean the sailor needed a healer afterward; “Just get that damned mage on deck now!”
. . . . . Neither draenei, nor any of the other passengers on the ship who had begun gathering on the starboard railing could see more than a hazy smudge and the occasional bright green flash against the clear blue sky. It occurred to Diyos, though, that the shade of green was too virulent for any nature magic he'd ever seen.
. . . . . “Ike,” the captain snapped out as a disheveled human in a long nightshirt stumbled on up from the cabins, blinking blearily in the late morning sun. “I need one of those hard arctic gusts and I need it three minutes ago. We've got a seaward wind coming in, and if it blows that Bli-...” The captain cut off as he realized more than half his passengers were on deck and listening, but it was too late. The hushed whisper of “Blight!” raced across the open deck. A steward and four sailors began escorting folks below deck rapidly.
. . . . . “Wait, what?” Athos asked, tugging on Diyos's sleeve as the elder twin went a sickly pale, washed-out indigo shade.
. . . . . “Not now, brother. Move it. We're going inside.”
. . . . . “But what if I could study this pheno-”
. . . . . “NO!” Diyos roared, bodily shoving his slighter twin before him towards the hold. “You are not studying it. I've met a veteran of the Wrathgate before, and I guarantee you that neither of us is equipped to deal with that.” Pushing his baby brother before him, Diyos followed the rest of the passengers as they were herded down into the hold, while the ship's mage summoned up a cone of rough, frigid air to boost the unfurled sails. The schooner lurched awkwardly forward, jerking through the water like a child's wooden toy on a pull-string. Everyone was discussing the possibility of Blight, spreading all the wild and baseless rumors that had sprung up in the year or so since it had taken Bolvar Fordragon and many stalwart Alliance soldiers. Diyos knew enough to know that most of it was crazy talk - “Don't worry; the Blight isn't airborne!” - and some of it was not - “I heard it can melt your very flesh into a puddle of goo!” - but he also knew that he didn't know nearly enough about the stuff to join in the conversation. He just wanted some of that terrible, thick, bitter ship's coffee and maybe some ear plugs; Athos was launching into a disease pathology discussion with the ship's surgeon.

. . . . . “Yazmina is a tyrant,” Diyos moaned as he pulled back a wooden chair at the table and slumped into it, making his best overly-dramatic whining face at his twin brother. It had the desired effect - Athos began laughing, and it was infectious, helping Diyos pick his mood back up.
. . . . . “Don't tell me she's run out of bandages again,” Athos said, leaning back in his chair as the barmaid brought dinner over with a smile and set it down on the table. True to form, Athos was entirely oblivious to the sauciness in that smile, and Diyos was uncharacteristically too tired to catch it. The barmaid shook her head as she headed back to the kitchen.
. . . . . Diyos picked up his fork, well-practiced now at holding the small human utensils after several years worth of classes in human culture, and attacked the hearty mashed tubers on his plate. It was several moments before he responded, pulling another comically dramatic face as he did so, “'More bandages, Diyos! Get to purifying those scraps!' Honestly, I think it'd be faster if I shredded the lot and wove new whole cloth for her. Is it my imagination or are these potatoes a blessing of the Light itself?”
. . . . . Athos laughed again, nodding assent as he kept working on his own dinner. “Oh, by the way,” he said between mouthfuls of turkey, “we're finally getting ships from Menethil Harbor again. The first one came in today. Arcanist Ike is pretty excited about the opportunity to get to head home, but the stories from those sailors today...” As his mouth was full, Diyos let his raised eyebrow ask the question. “The harbor's a mess!” Athos explained. “There was this massive wave which washed away part of the docks and flooded right over the retaining walls. It was the afternoon of the same day we left!” Athos waved his fork around wildly. “And a dragon attacked Stormwind! A huge, massive dragon! It destroyed a lot of the city. I hope Kreli is alright. We should go ba-”
. . . . . “No,” Diyos interjected, stopping his brother's stream of consciousness mid-chatter. “We came up here to explore the north, and I think we should do that. The ships will still be having trouble for some time, and they don't need unnecessary passengers right now. Besides,” Diyos threw out the hook on his coaxing line, “Dalaran University.”
. . . . . It worked. Athos was reeled right back in. “Dalaran! You know, McGoyver says his flying machine can get high enough that I could see the spires from here. I think I just mi-”
. . . . . “Woah! Oh no you don't!” Diyos practically spit out the mouthful of berry pie he'd been chewing, then swallowed fast so he could put some caution on this line of thinking before Athos got too far out of hand. “I've never seen a gnomish invention that didn't malfunction eventually, and if it malfunctions that high in the air...”
. . . . . Athos settled a droll look on his twin. “Overprotective,” he said warningly, something he'd been accusing Diyos of being rather often lately.
. . . . . “Fine, but at least bring some feathers with you. If it starts misbehaving, levitate out right away.”
. . . . . Athos rolled his eyes and pushed back his chair. “Of course. A package came for you on today's boat. It got a little damp. I left it up in our room.”
. . . . . Diyos pulled a small, leather wallet-like pouch off his belt as Athos began to leave and threw it at his brother's shoulder. “Feathers!”

. . . . . Worry over the news from Stormwind was heavy on Diyos's mind as he climbed the stairs in the inn at Valgarde to the room he and his brother had been renting out for the last month. What had been destroyed? Was anyone hurt? Had the bakery survived? Was Azsh-. Stop that. He wasn't allowed to fret over her anymore. It was time to get over her. She certainly wasn't worrying over him. If he had a spare leg he wasn't using for walking up the stairs, he'd use it to kick his own tail for still mooning.
. . . . . The package was sitting in a small puddle on the nightstand between the two beds in the room. “A 'little damp'?” he asked the quiet room, huffing with indignation as he picked it up. If Menethil Harbor had flooded, this package must've still been awaiting pick-up when it happened, because it was thoroughly soaked - even after the boat transport here - and smelled strongly of seawater. Even the address to him was only barely legible, the exceptionally neat printing of a trained scribe.
. . . . . Diyos quickly gave up fumbling with the swollen knot in the twine and pulled his sewing kit off his belt, found the scissors, and cut the string free. Inside the box was a folded note and a wooden carving of a wolf. To someone trained in the magical enchantment of objects, the thing was clearly imbued with...something...but he couldn't fathom what. The note squelched a little as he unfolded it, and it was tragically beyond useless. Seawater had caused the ink to bleed into a thick blue smudge on the parchment, so smeared he couldn't even discern what the original language might've been. He had a terrible feeling it was explaining the wolf's enchantment, and damned if he didn't really wish he knew who it was from.
. . . . . Grumbling under his breath, he stuffed the wolf carving in a pocket of his robes and took the letter with him back down into the tavern proper for a bracing drink.

. . . . . About three mugs of ale in, Diyos finally felt like bringing the carving back out of his pocket to study it. It was clearly a wolf, but also rough and rustic - almost primitive. Humans tended to be more exacting in most of their work, and dwarves definitely so; no gnomes he knew of worked with natural materials, and he didn't know anyone among the Horde who would send him anything. That left either a draenei or a kaldorei to send him such a thing.
. . . . . His eyes watered suspiciously and he put the carving down in favor of several more gulps of ale until he'd chased off the sudden case of sniffles. Azshariel was a wood carver... But no, this wasn't her work; even though she had a tendency towards more rustic designs, she was still more exacting in form. Besides, she had no reason to send him anything. Ever. Except maybe a letter bomb. A sudden resolve to drench all his packages from now on in case they needed defusing struck him. More ale.
. . . . . The carving sat forgotten on the table for nearly an hour that evening while he slouched in his chair, getting good and drunk to keep him from being a sad sap or charging outside to save Athos from flying machines. He'd gotten himself well into slurring territory by the time he gave it another go, picking the carving up and trying to get a sense of the enchantment that had been placed on the item. It was strong, the sort of thing which was either quite lasting or was holding a lot of potential. Diyos had just decided to surreptitiously hold the carving up to his nose and see if he could use his thauma-synaesthesia to smell the type of enchantment when the barmaid returned.
. . . . . “You want another round there, mister?”
. . . . . “Ah? Zsshure. An' maybde ahn-... Hic! Anoztherr pie.” He realized he probably looked very strange with this wolf carving practically up his nose, and the barmaid's expression confirmed it. A dark navy blush spreading over his cheeks, he put the wolf back on the table and gave it a few nervous strokes behind the carved ears.
. . . . . When the barmaid returned, she shook her head as she put the pie, mug of ale, and a cup of coffee on the table. “Last one for you, y'hear? It's all coffee after this.” She waved away Diyos's complaint. “Barkeep's orders. Coffee.” Disgruntled, Diyos settled down to enjoy his last alcohol of the evening, alternating sips of ale and coffee in an attempt to prolong this good drunk he had gotten. From where he sat, he could see out through the tavern's open front door. It was a fairly tolerable mid-November night in the north, which meant that while it was cold enough to see one's breath outside, the fire was going well enough that fresh air was welcome in the stuffy tavern.
. . . . . Somewhere out there, Athos and McGoyver were likely preparing to shower Valgarde with machine wreckage. Somewhere out there, Yazmina was probably using up the last of the scraps he'd purified and sewn together today to patch up more of the soldiers who'd been trickling in from the frozen peaks ever since the Citadel's fall. Somewhere out there, Doc Laurenhall was supposedly helping grow a tree. Somewhere out there, a huge dragon was reportedly tearing up cities. Somewhere out there, a ghost of a wolf was definitely walking...through...the...tavern door. What.
. . . . . He blinked a few times down into his coffee and looked back up. The ghost was closer. In fact, it was having a seat in front of his chair and leveling an expectant stare at him. It smelled like dirt and ozone, which now that he thought of it, was a lot like what that carving smelled like. Well, the carving had a lot more wood smell. Why was there a ghost wolf staring at him?
. . . . . With an impatient exhalation, the ghost wolf backed up a few steps and elongated and solidified into a half-naked, pierced and tattooed draenei male in a kilt with a very grumpy expression on his face. Diyos gave him several dumb blinks in response to this transformation. “You summoned me,” the gruff draenei said in their shared native tongue, folding his arms across his bared chest. It was framed as a question, but didn't carry the tone of one.
. . . . . “I did no such thing,” Diyos blurted, though it came out more like “I'd nno zssuch 'ing.”
. . . . . The fellow in the kilt pointed at the wolf carving. “Yes, you did. The Exarch will speak with you.”
. . . . . “The wha'? Nno, m' brozer's 'ere an' I zsstay.” Diyos figured out finally how terribly drunk he sounded and knocked back more coffee in an attempt to sober up faster and not sound like such an idiot. From the expression on the other male's face, there was no saving this first impression.
. . . . . “You will. You summoned me. I went to the trouble of answering, so you will go to the trouble of speaking to the Exarch.”
. . . . . “What is this? I have no-” Diyos broke off as the kilted draenei made as if to haul him out of his seat. “Woah, woah! Hang on. Let's talk this over.” He picked up the parchment and its watercolor smear of blue ink. “Did the Exarch send this?” The coffee was starting to break through the comfortable fuzz of ale, and it was starting to dawn on him that one typically did not deny such a high-ranking personage among the exiled ones.
. . . . . “It belongs to the Exarch,” came a response which was absolutely no explanation at all. “Now, come.”
. . . . . Diyos held the letter up in front of his face as he tried to think fast. Was he in trouble with the Hand of Argus? Had word of his resignation from the Modan Company reached his handlers and someone had misplaced his request for leave to explore the north? “I'll need to tell my brother when we're leaving,” he said, stalling.
. . . . . “That would be now, so you can do it on the way.” Big, Blue, and Tattooed was implacable. Irritatingly so.
. . . . . “Fine, fine. Keep your skirt on.” Diyos looked around for his last mug of ale, which he'd been splitting with the sobering sips of coffee. He wouldn't have quite believed it if he hadn't seen it happen, but within seconds of his quip about Big, Blue, and Tattooed's kilt, his mug of ale was off the table and in the kilted male's hand. “Hey! That's mine!” He was out of his chair, snatching for the ale...and found himself shoved out the tavern door. He blinked at the chill night sky. “Crafty bastard,” he muttered.
. . . . . Herded towards the dock as surely as if he were a docile sheep, Diyos was sobering up enough to figure out that this was probably very big trouble if he didn't go along. He spotted Athos and McGoyver bent over a blessedly grounded machine on the shoreline and threw a hand up. “Brother!” he yelled, “I've been called back for a bit of business. I'll be back in a few days, and I'll keep in touch!” He tapped the chest pocket where he kept his communication crystal and got a distracted nod from his twin in response. Well, with luck, the machinery would keep his brother busy for a few days and he'd be back from this meeting with... “Which Exarch are we speaking of here, anyway?”
. . . . . “Get on the boat.”
. . . . . “What, this summoning thing doesn't work in reverse?”
. . . . . “Pulling you through the astral realm with me would require me to hug you.”
. . . . . Diyos looked over his shoulder, making sure that he exaggerated the assessment in the expression. “I would've thought a male in a dres-”
. . . . . “It's a kilt! You're in a dress.”
. . . . . “Am not. These are robes.” Diyos smoothed the very same garment as he walked up the gangplank. Lucky for them the steamboat to Stormwind was casting off this evening. He grinned as he realized that he'd just figured out how to get Big, Blue, and Tattooed's ire up. This trip was going to be fun.

One Disaster Less

2010-11-09T22:54:00.004-05:00

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.
. . . . . “Don’t forget that I’m your twin, Diyos, and I might be friendly and open, but I’m not stupid. I know you’re undergoing a dark night right now and struggling with your grasp of the Light. Get the white and gold, it makes you look almost like an exarch. Well? Hurry!”
. . . . . Startled to compliance by this uncharacteristic lecture from his dipsy, nerdish baby brother, Diyos hurried to his closet to change. As soon as he was out of sight, Athos leaned over the kitchen table to shift aside the blank paper and look at what his brother had been writing. He expected as much; those archaeologists were definitely not the peaceful, sedate researchers they’d been billed as, and this last year had been really hard on his big brother. What he needed, Athos figured, was a reminder of the beauty of the world. A reminder that not all adventures were dangerous or heavy, a reminder of the days when they were just two brothers out seeing the world.
. . . . . Diyos charged back into the kitchen, tugging his white and gold robes straight while simultaneously trying to fasten the belt of gold links around his waist. Athos was already away from the table, his excited, friendly smile back in place. He knew just the thing.
. . . . . “Hey, that’s nice and shiny, Diyos,” Athos said approvingly as he clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
. . . . . Diyos scowled darkly at the word ‘shiny’ but trailed along behind Athos as he practically bounced on his hooves through the Park.

. . . . . “Oh good, you’re here! And in plenty of time. Not that time’s really an issue. I mean, look at all the folks standing about waiting. We’re going to have to wait. I hope you brought a book!” Kreli Conktoggle, the pink-haired, entirely dotty owner of the Canal Street bookstore where Athos worked chattered incessantly as soon as the twins showed up. Dutifully, Diyos lifted up the book he’d tucked under his arm to show Kreli, then proceeded to prop it open across his large hand to the fourth chapter and continue his reading. Since Kreli had already claimed them some space in the courthouse antechamber, he did his best to take it up by leaning against the wall while he read.
. . . . . The chatter increased in complexity as Athos engaged his boss and friend in a discussion about the applications of elemental energy in relation to temporal-spatial disruptions that had been spotted recently by adventurers at a volcanic mountain north of the city. Diyos tried hard to tune it out; the two of them on a discussion could make his head hurt faster than a dreamfoil hangover. Not that he was back on the dreamfoil, just a few nips of mead here and there. Reflexively, he let go of the page he was about to turn and checked his belt for his flask. Reassured it was still there, he turned the page and kept waiting.
. . . . . The room was so crowded and his attention so involved in the book, that he missed the two armored soldiers – a human and a draenei – with matching black and white tabards as they slipped into the antechamber, cut effortlessly through the crowd, and entered the courtroom. It was not long after that an assistant stepped out and called for Athos of Zangarmarsh.
. . . . . The magistrate sitting on the bench at the head of the room was the same steely-haired, steely-eyed woman who’d sentenced Athos a year ago. A certain tightness around her eyes was nearly a billboard of emotion to Diyos, trained as he was to recognize the cues. Something had her scared; maybe the earthquakes had unnerved her. He didn’t even think to look for an answer, mentally preparing the speech he’d been working on to outline the exemplary behavior of his brother during his probationary year.
. . . . . He never got the chance to deliver his speech. Judge Not-Hellscream clattered her gavel against the bench and tipped her head towards Athos as he stood. “You are free to go, sir. Your record has been expunged.” Her voice was steady, but her hand shook the gavel slightly. “Please, leave.”
. . . . . This last was so rude that Diyos gaped in shock, staring at the magistrate. But she was not addressing Athos directly – she was looking at two fully-armored soldiers standing at the back of the courtroom, their faces concealed beneath titansteel helms. Diyos recognized those colors... His indigo skin paled as the two soldiers simply tipped their helms in a nod to the magistrate, turned, and marched out.

. . . . . “Zat vas easy. It is a damned shame I could not have done it for zem sooner.”
. . . . . “What’s past is past, Commander. It’s taken care of now.”

. . . . . “What was that about?” Athos asked as they exited the courtyard and returned to the bustling Stormwind streets.
. . . . . “Looks to me like you had some powerful advocates this time,” Kreli chattered as he hurried to keep up with the much-broader draenei steps. “Do you know what ‘expunged’ means? It’s like it never happened! The record is totally gone! You’re not even an ex-offender; you never offended at all! This is great!”
. . . . . “Hmph,” is all Diyos said as they walked.
. . . . . “Diyos,” Athos said quietly as the three of them dodged around a dark-robed figure wearing a paper-covered clapboard on his chest and shouting about the end of the world, “I need your help.” No more perfectly-crafted words could have been said, and Athos knew it.
. . . . . It snapped Diyos out of his silent fugue immediately and focused his attention on his baby brother. “Of course, Athos! Just name it.”
. . . . . “I want to leave Stormwind.” Several feet closer to the street, Kreli gasped, but Athos continued, “I’m not as driven to see the world from on high like you, brother, but this world has much we haven’t seen yet in our first year of travels. Or at least, that I haven’t.”
. . . . . “It’s dangerous out there! I don’t want you getting hur-”
. . . . . Athos cut his brother off before he could get far with that. “I’m just as old as you are. We’ve been adventuring together for millennia. Quit leaning on that over-protective crap you’ve picked up since the crash and come with me. I’m going exploring with or without you – and I’d rather go with you.”
. . . . . “But…the obligations I have to the Company…”
. . . . . “Oh, posh,” Athos scoffed, borrowing a phrase from Kreli – who giggled to hear a draenei say it. “I know you’re trying to draft a resignation letter.”
. . . . . Diyos stopped in the middle of the street, staring at Athos like he’d just claimed himself in love with a top-hat-wearing murloc.
. . . . . Another dark-robed figure with a clapboard walked by, shouting, “Our world will be torn apart. Join us, so that you may live!”
. . . . . While Diyos stared, Athos jerked his thumb at the figure. “Hey, if those freaks are right, we’re on the edge of another shattering. I want to see this frozen north you’ve brought back all these stories about. Besides, it will give you time to consider whether or not you’re really going to write that letter.”
. . . . . “It just…” Diyos stammered, searching for words, “It seems so bluntly stated, brother. It’s like you switched bodies with someone else. Someone…not as bubbly and peaceful. And much more nosy.” That last was added with a grimace of distaste on Diyos’s face.
. . . . . Athos laughed and stepped forward to clap his brother on the back firmly and get him walking again. “Let’s go start packing the apartment; we don’t need to keep much with us if we’re travelling. I want to watch you float off those sky pillars you told me about. I want to see these grand, tall peaks of snow. Light, I really want to go see this magical flying city.”
. . . . . “You just want to see if you can enroll in the Dalaran University!”
. . . . . Athos adopted an expression befitting innocent children and newborn kittens. “Maybe.”
. . . . . “Ha. Caught you out.” Diyos was quiet a moment after they both saw Kreli back to his shop on Canal Street. As they walked back to the Park District, he spoke up again, “Fine. But we’re going to Ironforge first. I have a date with a mug of ale.”
. . . . . “Would you please stop celebrating your degeneration?!”
. . . . . “It’s not degeneration, brother. Think of it as a promise I need to keep. And to keep it, I need you at my side.”

Fishing Stories

2010-10-07T13:04:00.006-04:00

((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.”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Yes, Diyos?”
. . . . . “How old are you?”
. . . . . “Ooh, I’ve around since the Well, so...about 11,417.”
. . . . . “Wow. That's pretty good, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “It’s nothing to write home about. How old are you?”
. . . . . “I’ve never really thought of it in terms of the human numbering system.”
. . . . . “Diyos.”
. . . . . “Twenty-thousand, one-hundred, and thirty-three years.”
. . . . . “…And how much ‘tail’ have you chased in those years?”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos?”
. . . . . “Yeah, Diyos?”
. . . . . “I’m really sorry your scroll got wet.”
. . . . . “It’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting the number to be that high.”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Yes, Diyos?”
. . . . . “Do you have mushrooms on this world?”
. . . . . “Of course.”
. . . . . “I haven’t seen any. I’ve been looking around all over, and I just see houses on the ground.”
. . . . . “Our mushrooms are small, Diyos. We eat them.”
. . . . . “Eat – your world is weird.”

. . . . . “Ekanos...”
. . . . . “Yes, Diyos?”
. . . . . “How old’s your sister?”
. . . . . “...Why are you asking?”
. . . . . “No reason.”
. . . . . “I would hope so. She doesn’t have a tail to chase, Diyos.”
. . . . . “Azsha doesn’t have a tail!”
. . . . . “Most of the time.”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos?”
. . . . . “Yeah, Diyos?”
. . . . . “Do you have anything to drink?”
. . . . . “I’ve got some honeymint tea here.”
. . . . . “I meant alcoholic.”
. . . . . “Oh. No, just tea and medicines.”
. . . . . “How about that jug on your pack that looks like a kungaloosh jar?”
. . . . . “That’s for medicinal use!”
. . . . . “Mmhm.”

. . . . . “I need to visit the bushes. I’ll be right back.”
. . . . . “Okay, Ekanos. …… Hm, if I cast at just the right angle… Careful now! Aha! Got it. Sweet, sweet kungaloosh…”

. . . . . “I’m back. I was thinking that maybe your hoof’s healed enough that we can head out for a bit. Maybe visit Brewfe-… Diyos? Diyos!”
. . . . . “Zzzzzz……”

. . . . . “Hey, Diyos.”
. . . . . “Yeah, Ekanos?”
. . . . . “Do you have any medicinal allergies I should know about? Perhaps something that makes you fall asleep?”
. . . . . “No. Why?”
. . . . . “No reason.”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Yes, Diyos?”
. . . . . “Is the lake water...steaming?”
. . . . . “Uh. It looks like it is.”
. . . . . “I...guess you're cooking your meal after all, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “...You know what, we should go to Brewfest!”
. . . . . “Ekanos...”
. . . . . “What? It’ll be fun! We can wear disguises! I can eat mandu!”
. . . . . “Ekanos, it’s just cooking-”
. . . . . “There’s plenty of free beer.”
. . . . . “Oh. Well, let’s go then!”

. . . . . “Ekanos, these disguises are great!”
. . . . . “Keep your voice down! We don’t want to draw suspicion!”
. . . . . “Hey, is that Sam? He looks ma- OH NAARU, HE’S SHOOTING AT US!”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Yes, Diyos?”
. . . . . “You could’ve asked me to make some disguises for us. I am a tailor.”
. . . . . “I know, Diyos, but I didn’t want to stress you.”
. . . . . “Hmph. Where did you get them?”
. . . . . “I got a deal from a guy selling them near Ironforge. Very comfortable, colors you and I don’t wear, so nobody will bother us. They even came with cowls!”
. . . . . “How good a deal, Ekanos?”
. . . . . “Oh, two for a gold. I think it was an excellent find.”
. . . . . “Not so excellent, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Why not? Doesn’t it fit?”
. . . . . “It does, Ekanos, but-”
. . . . . “Do you not like the color?”
. . . . . “No, the color’s fine, but-”
. . . . . “Are you allergic to the fabric? Oh, I should have asked!”
. . . . . “No! The fabric is comfortable, but-”
. . . . . “Then what is it?”
. . . . . “They’re dryclean only.”
. . . . . “...AGH! I've been swindled!”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Yeah, Diyos?”
. . . . . “What do you think the secret ingredient is in the Gordok brew?”
. . . . . “Maltodextrin.”
. . . . . “What’s that, Ekanos?”
. . . . . “The ‘return to’ name on the shield in that mixer, Diyos.”
. . . . . “... I don’t like Gordok brew anymore.”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Yes, Diyos?”
. . . . . “Do you have sewing circles on this world?”
. . . . . “Of course, Diyos.”
. . . . . “Do they...talk about the subjugation of the sentient races of Azeroth?”
. . . . . “Not…usually. Why, Diyos?”
. . . . . “I was sitting in a sewing circle with a bunch of people wearing these robes like the ones you got, and that’s what they were talking about!”
. . . . . “Diyos...that’s not a sewing circle!”
. . . . . “What is it, then?”
. . . . . “A brewer’s concern.”
. . . . . “Oh. Well, then it all makes perfect sense.”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Mrrrfl?”
. . . . . “Why do you always get dumplings and mandu? You should expand your palette!”
. . . . . “But-”
. . . . . “Have a sausage with me! They're delectablicious.”
. . . . . “Diyos, I-”
. . . . . “I will not take no for an answer!”
. . . . . “Well, all righ-mrf! That’s good!”
. . . . . “You see, you should always broaden your hori-”
. . . . . “I mean, the intestinal casing really brings out the flavor of the coagulated blood inside! And how did they get the little bits of stem out of the sweetmeat?”
. . . . . “S...sweetmeat?”
. . . . . “The brains, heart or other innards. They’re really tender. This is good!”
. . . . . “Uh... Uhm...”
. . . . . “Diyos? Diyos, Draenei aren’t supposed to be that color!”

. . . . . “’Ey. Ekanos!”
. . . . . “Wha’?”
. . . . . “Shoul’ build a...tower! Yeah! A tower!”
. . . . . “Out...wha’?”
. . . . . “We take these...sampler mugs an’... Tower!”
. . . . . “Oh...Okay! Bu’...Diyos.”
. . . . . “Wha’?”
. . . . . “Wh’ ’appens when we run out?”
. . . . . “’S Brewfest! Not gon’ run out!”

. . . . . “Ye gods and little fishes... Ekanos. Ekanos!”
. . . . . “Huh? What? What is it?”
. . . . . “What were we doing? I remember a thousand samplers and some kind of plan.”
. . . . . “We, uh. We made art, Diyos.”
. . . . . “What? I remember a tower!”
. . . . . “Gnomes for the Arts calls it ‘A stunning fusion of Kaldorei and Draenei history.’”
. . . . . “...Wow! Look at that!”
. . . . . “Mhm. Better Scones in Beer Gardens calls it ‘A wonder of the modern age.’”
. . . . . “So what’s this paper?”
. . . . . “Oh, that’s the estimate of ticket sales to see it.”
. . . . . “In...credizing! What’s this one?”
. . . . . “The, uh...bill for materials use - Diyos, don’t land on your tai - not on the tail!”

Frostbite

2010-10-03T01:46:00.003-04:00

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.
. . . . . He could understand Azshariel’s anger; he’d let her down personally. But the rest of the Company… Once the adventure was on, he as a person no longer mattered. As they speculated about his sexual equipment and used his prison as a beer cooler and squabbled over where they would go, finally settling on a place that had nothing to do with where they’d been asked to go, the cloud over his head and the emptiness in his chest expanded. By the time they’d left, his give-a-damn had long since cleared the way out for them.
. . . . . With barely any of his attention at all, he heard the human Colonel dismiss the draenei Corporal. Then the death knight approached Diyos in his icy prison, hefting the massive three-pronged mace onto his shoulder in preparation. The anchorite said nothing, his eyes on the ice encasing his hooves.
. . . . . The death knight swung the mace in a low arc and shattered the ice with laughably little effort, shards spinning off into the sere red dust of the Breach. Without the support of the ice, Diyos’s wearied legs crumpled and he dropped onto his tail with a faint crunching sound. It was probably broken, but he couldn’t feel anything from the waist – or wrists – down.
. . . . . Colonel Eredis tossed the mace aside into the dust as if the giant thing weighed about as much as an emaciated gnome. “You were unruly, so you’re now in the ghoul pits,” he said, “where no one will know you exist.” There was nothing emotional in his tone, nothing to indicate why the hell he’d just done that. “Disappear until you hear the all-clear. Only I will know you aren’t in the pits; am I understood?”
. . . . . From his position on the ground, Diyos looked up, puzzled. “Wait… And when your asshole Man’ari comes back looking for me…?” To his dismay, he wasn’t shivering, nor were his teeth chattering. He couldn’t feel anything at all, and a tiny part of his rational mind was saying ‘warning sign, danger.’
. . . . . The death knight’s expression hardly changed at all, just the faintest lift of an eyebrow. “I told you. You’ll be in the ghoul pits, where it will take a year to find out where you’re hiding.”
. . . . . Feeling a numbness that went disturbingly beyond the physical, Diyos blanched and tried to push himself to a standing position. As he managed to get upright, a loud crack reported off the bones nearby, echoing back to him – his right hoof splitting. “Disappear, huh? Do you care where or how far I go?”
. . . . . “That’s your business. Not mine.” After a moment’s pause, the Colonel continued, “I’d suggest away from anywhere you’d think I would show up.”
. . . . . The anchorite cast his gaze around. After several long moments of searching, he sighed like a man stepping up to the gallows. “Fine. Don’t show up in this tent, then.” He turned around and limped over to a dark tent across from the one full of sinister alchemy supplies he’d been held in front of, his legs working more through force of will than actual function.
. . . . . While he was shifting aside a stack of rotted feed sacks and moving a crate to the side, Eredis followed him to the entry of the tent, one eyebrow clearly arched now. “Huh. I would’ve thought it was Booty Bay for certain.”
. . . . . “I’m too tired to go far,” Diyos said as he sat down on the ground once more. “Figured you’d know that.” He tugged the crate in front of him.
. . . . . “Your elekk isn’t too far off. Had a contact find him and move him closer.” A short pause. “Turns out he likes walnuts.”
. . . . . The anchorite grabbed one of the sacks and pulled it over his hooves. “Dammit, Jim. Traitorous beast’ll follow anyone with nuts.” He draped another bit of rotted sackcloth over his waist and coughed. “Maybe…tomorrow…I’ll find him and vanish.”
. . . . . Colonel Eredis watched the anchorite arrange the abandoned sacks to help hide his robes from view and pull the sackcloth up around his shoulders. “Hmh.” His booted feet kicked up a bit of sanguine dust as he walked back to the alchemy tent and then returned with an armful of blankets. It seemed he had damn near a full linen closet in that alchemy tent. “In case you get cold. … -Er.” The blankets dropped to the ground within reach.
. . . . . Diyos pulled two free and paused, eying the weave. “Hey. This looks…” For a moment, he puzzled over the familiarity of the work, but that lasted about as long as his hope that the Company gave a damn about him or that the Light would help him. He shrugged and balled one up under his head, lying down so that the crate hid about a third of his body.
. . . . . He could hear the death knight do one of those crisp, soldierly pivots and start walking out of the tent. “Hey. Colonel Baker Man.”
. . . . . Eredis stopped at the edge of the tent. “Hm?”
. . . . . “Do you like fishing much?”
. . . . . “I do.”
. . . . . “Maybe… Don’t go fishing at Loch Modan for a while.”
. . . . . The death knight hardly missed a beat. “Y’know, there’s a nice spot around the base of the dam that I don’t go to anymore, too. Don’t think I’ll be welcome in Ironforge for a while, anyway.”
. . . . . Diyos coughed again and pulled the blankets up over his head. “Sure.”
. . . . . The pause was long enough that Diyos almost figured the death knight had silently left, until he spoke again. “You’re the only breather I’ve ever known that could match and evade a full squad of my Knights. Twice. Had to take you seriously.” The anchorite might not have known it, but it was perhaps the closest thing to an apology the Colonel would ever give.
. . . . . The blankets shuffled a bit; maybe he was laughing, maybe it was just a coughing fit.
. . . . . “Live to the fullest, anchorite. And talk to your sister when we find her. She’s the same person you know at her core – just a bit more weathered than most on the outside.”

. . . . . Despite being on the ground in enemy territory amid psychic echoes that should have kept him staring wide-eyed at the inside of his blanket cocoon in terror, Diyos slept. Looking back at it later, he could say it was from the mental and physical exhaustion. Evading a squad of death knights wasn’t easy, and magically battling them even less so. His drugged sleep hadn’t been restful, and the hours afterward had drained his will out through a gaping invisible hole in his chest. So despite it all, he slept.
. . . . . It was not a good sleep. Nightmares plagued him - etheric echoes of the devastated land, ghosts of his past, fears for the future. Somehow, his mind took the interrogation he’d just endured and recast him as the nasty Man’ari. His face contorted with rage as he bent forward over a ghostly shell of himself and screamed imprecations like “coward” and “murderer,” “liar” and “tainted one.”
. . . . . The worst part of it all was that none of these insults really impacted him anymore. He’d heard them – in one form or another, awake or asleep – for centuries. Just an old nightmare with a new setting. Ho-hum.
. . . . . Part of him wanted to protest, to insist he wasn’t what he seemed, that he’d told the truth, he had only taken life twice in twenty-thousand years and not recently, and he was still a man of the Light. But was he? The Light had abandoned him in need, and it wasn’t the first time. How long would he deceive himself that he still believed?
. . . . . The interrogator Diyos’s face twisted in disgust and reared back, spitting on his cheek for wavering in his faith. His ghostly form dissolved into shadows...and didn’t return. He started looking around, trying to find out where he had gone, but before he could find himself, there were hands on his shoulders, pulling on him to roll him over, dragging him from sleep.
. . . . . “Ungh... Huh... Wha’?” was his oh-so-coherent response. The blanket wasn’t over his head anymore, but he was still in the tent he’d fallen asleep in. With a distinct ‘what now?’ thought in his mind, he tried to force some semblance of focus.
. . . . . Before him, the elf who’d been pulling on his shoulders sat back, resting on the balls of his feet. The accoutrements of mechanical healing were spread about before him – mixing for plaster, what appeared to be some sort of resin, and bandages. Concern mingled with a sheepish grin on his face. “Hello, Diyos. It’s been some time.”
. . . . . The draenei blinked several times, trying to clear the incarnadine grit of the place from his eyes. He sat up as if the awkwardly bent tail beneath him was also beneath his notice; truthfully, he couldn’t even feel it. “Doc…” he croaked. “They got you here after all.”
. . . . . The doctor, one Ekanos Laurenhall, formerly of the Modan Company and now a freelance medic, gave him a confused look. “Who did? Er, never mind that. You’re pretty banged up. I need you to take it easy on your right hoof for a while, and I need to look at your tail too.” He paused. “You…haven’t gotten a lot of kindness lately, have you?”
. . . . . Diyos glanced down and slightly behind him, finally noticing his tail. “Oh. Damn. Yeah, that’s probably going to need…something…” He didn’t move. “It’s been a really terrible few weeks – if you want the short version.”
. . . . . “You’ll have to tell me all about it. Let’s see what we can do about getting you on the road to recovery, hm?”
. . . . . The anchorite smiled inwardly a little, recognizing that Ekanos was going into bedside-manner-mode. It was kind of nice to have someone give a damn. “Uh. Right. Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind. They were just going to have Ky help me…later…but I guess someone heard my insistence that I wanted the expert and not the trainee after all.” He chuckled quietly to lessen the slight bitterness of his words, but it was hard to hide.
. . . . . Ekanos frowned. “She’s good…but, well…I haven’t seen her in a day or two. Turn over. I apologize, I need to get a good look at your butt.”
. . . . . The draenei snorted and balled up the rotted sack cloth around him, clearing space to turn over. “Always knew you elves were a little fruity. I kid, I kid. Ky was here last night, along with much of the rest of the Company.”
. . . . . The night elf nodded, gingerly taking Diyos’s tail and examining it. “Ouch,” he muttered, “you took quite a fall on it, it looks like. I heard some things about it, but very little hard information. Only that I had to come out here and check on you.”
. . . . . “Was it the Company that went looking for you in the end? Or…the other guy?”
. . . . . Ekanos gently began straightening Diyos’s tail, ignoring the question for the moment. “Tell me if this hurts.” Even as the part most clearly broken and gashed on the side from the injury was straightened, the anchorite remained quiet. He wasn’t looking back, wasn’t watching what was going on. “Diyos… Did you feel anything?”
. . . . . Diyos shook his head, dust and bits of decaying plant matter falling from his curls. “I take it I’m supposed to be.” He craned his neck around and looked over his shoulder, then went silent for a long moment. “Well. Hell.”
. . . . . Much as he had with Diyos’s fractured right hock – Diyos only noticed now that a plaster seemed to have appeared there – he began binding the tail’s bones, using a more giving splint instead of plaster. “I haven’t spoken to anyone from the Modan Company other than you and Kylea. I didn’t even know they were looking for me. Can you feel your hands?”
. . . . . “Damn good thing I can’t feel you doing that, I imagine. Ah, fingers… Fingers…” When he looked down to his ungloved hands, his stomach lurched as he recognized the slightly blackened cast to his indigo skin. The command from brain to fingers to wiggle them worked, though. Then he lifted up his left hand and bit his index finger. “I can control them, but I don’t feel them. Ever had your arm fall asleep ‘cause you were resting on it funny?”
. . . . . Ekanos nodded as he finished the splint. “You’re going to be wearing cloaks for a while and lying on your stomach. We’ll discuss the next treatment in a moment.” He paused. “I know it’s silly, but… How are you feeling, Diyos? I mean… Your brain. Your heart.”
. . . . . Turning away from morbidly watching the straightening of his tail, Diyos stared in silence at the rotted cloth balled up in front of him. What the hell did he say to that?
. . . . . “I can’t imagine you’re really happy with anybody right now.”
. . . . . He remained silent a little while longer before finally responding. “My list is about two right now, it seems.” His list of people he was happy with, he meant, and worse still, one of them had put him in this situation. Things were bad when you were grateful to the guy who’d iced you because he was nice enough to send a doctor quickly.
. . . . . Ekanos sighed. “I can…relate. It reminds me of the meeting before the last one I went to.”
. . . . . “I think I was sauced for that one.” Diyos paused, considering the idea. “I usually was.”
. . . . . “I don’t think you were actually there. This was the time when that girl had the awful sickness, and Kylea and I weren’t…doing well.”
. . . . . Diyos shook his head. “No memory of that, though that doesn’t mean much from me.”
. . . . . The elf frowned, continuing his earlier thought. “Seems sort of like right now, all things considered, though I can’t fault her if everyone was here trying to rescue you, right?”
. . . . . Diyos’s voice was flat as he responded, looking away. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what they were here for.”
. . . . . Ekanos sighed again and closed his eyes. “I’m going to guess that what was supposed to happen didn’t. They got…distracted.”
. . . . . “Something like that.”
. . . . . “Yes. I can relate. I was supposed to meet Kylea last night at the Outpost, to discuss my rehiring with the Company. Now I’m being sought out, and I was there a good…three hours with the place desolate. Now I know why, I suppose. I just wish…” He trailed off, then continued after several moments of uncomfortable silence. “Well, that I was here, so I could’ve handled this earlier.” The elf stood up, his robes settling around him. “Let’s see if we can get you to a nicer place, hm?”
. . . . . “Jim’s somewhere around. Probably a tree.” He pushed himself upright as if he didn’t feel anything in his legs at all – which he didn’t – and stumbled out of the tent. The blankets and sacks were left heaped in the corner of the tent behind him. “Right. Look to the trees. Might help if you have any acorns or walnuts.”
. . . . . The elf whistled for his mistsaber as the draenei ranged ahead around the bend in the path, looking up to the trees for his mentally-damaged elekk. “Dammit, Jim,” he cursed as he stumbled along. He couldn’t feel any pain in his legs, but they also weren’t fully cooperating with his brain’s orders. A loud crack from the air about fifteen feet up, two leafy crashes, and Jim landed on his armored side atop a large decaying branch. Diyos shook his head as the elekk who thought he was a squirrel clambered back to his feet and waved his trunk at his master.
. . . . . “Ride with me to the Loch and I’ll explain, doc…”

. . . . . Somewhere behind the curve in the path, a young draenei death knight with two piercings in her nose crested the hill at Death’s Breach to check on her co-worker. She caught a glimpse of long white hair, pointed ears, robes, and a mistsaber. But no co-worker.
. . . . . There was nothing but a deep mark in the ground where something heavy had landed.

A Little Character Art

2010-10-01T00:03:00.001-04:00

. . . . .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

2010-09-06T17:48:00.004-04:00

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.
. . . . . Azshariel hadn’t said it outright, but her displeasure with him was clear; understandable, even, given that the company’s meetings had been disrupted by a pack of walking abominations bristling with weaponry and seeking his cowardly tail for questioning. His hands stilled on the loom. He had brought them. He was responsible for this mess by virtue of those filial bonds. What had Azshariel said about new predators in an environment killing off their prey?
. . . . . Extinction.
. . . . . Adapt or die.
. . . . . The wooden legs of the stool he sat upon screeched in protest as he shoved himself back from the mana loom, leaving the nearly-finished bolt behind. His heart hammering in his chest, he reached for the torch and extinguished it in the bucket of water near the top of the stairs. He could see as well in the dark as the light… The shadows tugged playfully at the edge of his white robes and the ends of his wildly curly hair. Ignoring their call, he stomped down the stairs and out into Ironforge’s stone-paved streets. Some dark shadow flickered at the edge of his peripheral vision, but he had it up to here already with shadows and paid it no mind.
. . . . . As the anchorite arranged for and took a gryphon-back flight off to Thelsamar, a pair of unholy blue eyes watched from across the Great Forge.

. . . . . Thelsamar in Loch Modan served as one of Diyos’s favorite homes away from home. Not that he really felt he had any concept of what “home” meant any longer, after so long of moving from place to place to place. Zangarmarsh was were he stayed the longest – aside from the vessel – so he called that home when asked, but home usually implied things like a connection to a place, a desire to stay somewhere for the long term, some concept of settling down. Thelsamar was just a great place to fish and convenient to the South Gate Outpost.
. . . . . On the comparatively – compared to, say, flying to Light’s Hope Chapel – short flight, the anchorite felt almost like a privileged observer. Removed from the actual process, he watched pieces of logic and conversation, thoughts and will fit together like a broken artifact being made whole once more. Intellectually, he knew that he was approaching the edge of a psychological break and distancing himself as a coping mechanism; he’d spent too long studying the workings of the mind to not be able to see the impending crash of the vessel here. If he was lucky, this process of putting the pieces back together would fix the dimensional engine of his psyche before his mind plowed into the unyielding surface of madness.
. . . . . He was using far too many metaphors; the privileged observer within him told him that was another coping technique he used to keep himself together when all he really wanted was to drink himself stupid. The saddle he sat in shifted with each beat of the gryphon’s wings, but Diyos felt like each slow beat matched his thumping heart.
. . . . . According to his mentor, coping was as simple as choosing how he was going to feel about this and getting on with life. That meshed with Azshariel’s warning to adapt or become a relic. Somewhere in the back of his thoughts, a reminder that he had the strength of will to give up an addiction spanning thousands of years for the love of an elf waved frantically at him. Terrifying visages of souls mangled and torn and trapped in rotting bodies smoothed out into civil discourse about missing Zangarmarsh or a commission for a shirt; they weren’t so scary when they were being so…normal about things. A little girl’s giggle transitioned into a woman’s throaty laugh and then became an ice-edged rasp of breath in his memory. His stomach dropped, although the gryphon still flew true.
. . . . . That was the heart of his distress right there, pointed out the privileged observer. The memories he clung to of his baby sister in life were making her more terrifying than any of the others in death. Perhaps if he set those expectations aside, if he saw her as any of the other death knights – civil enough when they tried to be – he could find whatever it was he needed to get past his fear of them.
. . . . . Or he could fight, whispered a small voice behind the observer in his mind. He could scare them so badly they’d avoid Azshariel and him, sear their minds until they were hardly more than the ghouls they carted around behind them. He could make them leave him alone.
. . . . . And then where would he get his cupcakes? Who would remember the prayers he led at the Twin Spire with any fondness? Who would fetch him out of danger if he were trapped and needed to use his crystal to call for hel-… He stilled, all the color draining from his indigo skin. The communication crystal. All this time these death knights had been searching for his sister, and she had come to reattune her crystal to his the last time he’d seen her. He could simply ask her where she was and then tell them and they would go away!
. . . . . Until the next time she went on an extended vacation. Or the next time someone wanted to deliver a commission to him through one of the better known couriers in Stormwind.
. . . . . Extinction.
. . . . . The gryphon touched down and hopped about as the flight master gripped the reins from the draenei who was doing absolutely nothing to help the situation. Diyos barely noticed himself handing the flight master some coins and heading to the stables to get Jim out. He got onto the back of his elekk in a daze, kneeing Jim somewhere in the vague direction of the company’s outpost.
. . . . . Adapt or die. Death knights were the new predator in the environment. Either he learned how to deal with them…or he was easy prey. There was something he was trying to remember…what was it? The desire for a sip of sharply-sweet mead distracted him for a moment, but he pushed the thought away.
. . . . . Jim plodded along, not unused to his master’s silent fugues and well-practiced in the “how to get to South Gate undirected” game. There were acorns stashed among his master’s things at the outpost.
. . . . . Realization broke through the morass of trapped fireflies in Diyos’s head, clearing his mind as quickly as taking the lid off the jar. He had the strength of will to change himself. Perhaps it would take a little dangerous tinkering with his psyche, but he could erase the irrational fear of the undead if he applied a combination of the discipline he learned as a priest of the Light and the mental techniques he learned as one of the Concealed of the Hand of Argus. Discipline had served him well in ignoring his alcoholism, so why couldn’t he apply that same strength of will to ignoring his fear of death knights?
. . . . . His knees tightened on Jim’s sides and the elekk bugled a short welcome back to reality, his long snout coming around over his shoulder to seek an apple from his master. Diyos swatted the elekk’s trunk away gently and began planning, the strange feeling of remotely observing his own thoughts fading as he sorted his memory for the incantations necessary to alter his psychological reactions. He could enhance a fear in another, so what was to say he couldn’t reverse-engineer the process to destroy it in himself?
. . . . . Adapt or die.

. . . . . Diyos left Jim to seek out a tree full of late-summer fruit or some such – whatever that insane elekk did when he tried to climb trees – and walked into the South Gate Outpost, his steps full of purpose and his motions sharp with the economy of planning. Here on the right, near the door, were crates full of dig supplies. He filched a traveler’s pack out of one crate and began filling it with supplies for a few days’ journey. Up into the kitchen, there were the spare canteens; Auchindoun now was sere and dry, he’d need water. And dried jerky to eat on the way there. A shovel from the dig supplies. Paper and a quill, to write Azshariel a short note on where he’d be for a few days, since she didn’t seem to have her radio on.
. . . . . He would go to the Dark Portal and find some relic to represent the spirits of Rulaam and Valdiis both. He’d take the items out to Auchindoun, the traditional resting place of the Draenei before the shattering, and he’d bury them. He would officially mourn his other baby brother, Rulaam, and bury his expectations of who – or what – Valdiis was.
. . . . . After settling that fear, he would go to the Aldor tier of Shattrath – where it was nice and quiet – and set about diminishing his own fears and adapting his attitude to something better suited to this new environment he was living in.
. . . . . Screw extinction. He would survive.
. . . . . Riding on a surge of certainty-induced courage, he reached into his pocket and found the small purple crystal attuned to his baby brother…and sister. He lifted the crystal to his mouth and spoke into one of the facets, “Hey, Valdiis?”

Making the Best of It

2010-06-25T17:44:00.003-04:00

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.
. . . . . He was wrong, of course. There was a tiny janitor’s closet accessed from the landing back there. Sitting at a cramped desk more suited for a dwarf’s dimensions was a draenei female. Owing to the excessive heat of mid-summer in the Borean Tundra and a room behind a working cooking fire, she was stripped down to a sleeveless off-white shirt and sturdy, dark blue pants. Although it was exceptionally hot in the small closet, her scarred, ashen gray skin gave off no sweat – only a fine sheen of rapidly melting frost.
. . . . . She sat in one chair at the desk. The other was shoved under the handle of the door to make it impossible to open from the outside, since the door swung inward. The sharp lines of her skeletally-thin shoulder blades stood out beneath her shirt as she bent closer to the small metal tripod set upon the desk. A deep purple crystal no bigger than a human’s index finger was captured in the tripod, although small shards of it were carefully arranged by size on the desk.
. . . . . Before picking up another shard of the crystal with her tweezers, the draenei female used the tip of them to draw an intricate rune in the air. The design glowed with an icy blue light for a moment and frost reappeared on her skin. “Zat is better,” she sighed in relief.
. . . . . The tweezers captured another shard of the crystal and swiped it through a clear, gelatinous substance before carefully placing the shard within the larger piece. Wielding a small hammer, she carefully tapped the shard into place. She was almost there.

. . . . . Leaving the last handful of acorns behind to placate Jim, the draenei anchorite left his elekk in the care of the handlers above-ground outside the wreckage of the ship which had become a small city for the draenei people. With a set to his wide shoulders that welcomed no smiles or friendly greetings, he descended the ramp to the wreckage-turned-city below-ground.
. . . . . The Exodar always smelled like fizzy grapes to him, what with the constant arcs from the arcane-tubes and the flashes of lambent energy dancing between the exposed coils and crystals. He tugged the dark cowl he had donned after disembarking from the Elune’s Blessing tighter around his face to help muffle the grape fizz scent.
. . . . . Would the Exodar ever feel like home to him? He knew many of his people had decided to settle permanently in and around the wreckage, but he’d never much been one for sticking around the ships after they landed. Planet after planet, he’d been among the first to help form a metropolitan settlement. After crashing on Azeroth, he and his brother had been quick to head off on adventures, learning about this new planet and coming to love the quirky mix of intelligent races living on it.
. . . . . But the Exodar…always felt like failure and despair to him.
. . . . . Maybe it was because he only ever came here for training or advice, never just to be with his own people. Perhaps this time he would stay a while and meditate in the Vault, remember what it meant to be an exile and a man of the Light. Maybe find peace.
. . . . . And maybe Jim would learn to fly.
. . . . . His hooves clattered to a halt just past the crystal-lined hall leading into the Vault of Lights. A small class of fresh acolytes in red and white robes followed a senior anchorite in the distance as she led them to one of the lecture halls. In the distance, the highly-advanced arcaneograms of Legion enemies flickered and moved in silent battle poses. Holy light seeped from the peach-tinted crystals along the top of the Vault, hushing the sounds in the cavernous space like a falling snow hushes a forest.
. . . . . In this quieted atmosphere, it was easy to startle a body if you were careless. Krysion always was careless. “Diyos!” a baritone voice rang against the carved floors and walls around the anchorite as another senior anchorite in robes of charcoal grey and burgundy came down the steps towards him from the Mystics’ Hall.
. . . . . After he’d managed to peel his claws from the crystal-lined vaulting and resettle his robes back on his hips, Diyos tugged his dark cowl down around his neck and eyed the approaching senior anchorite. “Krys, can you not scare the Light out of me every time I come here?”
. . . . . “Maybe if you came here a little more often,” Krysion drawled, “you would be more used to my voice. A’dal’s sake, you have not visited since the mandatory training months back. One might think you did not like your own people, Diyos.”
. . . . . The anchorite being scolded waved his hand dismissively and fell into step beside his comrade. “I like the exiled ones well enough and you know it; I have just been…busy.”
. . . . . “Ah, so you have been out getting into trouble and are now here for my advice.” Diyos spluttered, which only made the senior anchorite grin wider. “I knew it. Come, then. The chapel is open.”

. . . . . The heavy, titansteel pauldrons set carefully atop the chair under the door buzzed. Her startle reflex numbed by years of undeath, the draenei female working on putting the shards of crystal back together did not jump. She simply looked up slowly, then uttered a quiet curse in her native tongue, “Kil’jaeden’s teat, what now?”
. . . . . Setting aside the tweezers she’d been working with, Valdiis stood and reached for her armor, lifting the right pauldron to pull a small gnomish communicator from its clip between the bladed arches of the armor. A dial on the top turned the volume up enough for her to hear the inane chatter of bored death knights bickering over who would take fire watch in a city they were mostly supposed to be staying out of anyway.
. . . . . She sighed. The communicator buzzed again. Switching the active channel to an officers’ line, she let her voice slip into a neutral tone as she asked in heavily-accented Common, “Vhat is ze problem, sir?”
. . . . . A human male voice answered, tinny over the line, “Get those Knights active again, Commander. I’m tired of listening to them whine.”
. . . . . The corners of her eyes crinkled slightly with amusement; she could tell the Colonel was faintly annoyed, but only because she’d been around him enough to pick up on the subtleties. “Still off-duty, sir?”
. . . . . There was a small delay before the response, and she thought she heard the sound of a page turning. “Yes, Commander. And now you are not. Get to it.”
. . . . . “Understood, Colonel.” She scowled at her communicator for several moments before switching the active channel back to the unit’s general line. “Knights!” she barked into the communicator, “Just because you have a fresh set of orders to assist in guardink ze Midsummer fires does not negate your previous standink orders from ze General. If you are not actively on vatch at one of ze four fires, I vant you to head out to Zoram Strand to investigate ze talk of cultists out zere.” She paused for a moment to let that sink into their rotted brains. “I vant you reportink back to me in person at Valiance Keep once you have information. And do not all come at once.”
. . . . . The communicator clicked to indicate the end of her transmission and she set it down on the table next to the crystal she had been piecing back together. “Later,” she mumbled to the crystal in Draenei as she picked up her breastplate and snapped it around her torso. “I will finish fixing you later.”

. . . . . “And she just stood there on the water, like this was the most normal way in the world to have a conversation with a man in a boat, and she spoke in that dry, emotionless voice and gave me a concise version of what has happened in the last twenty-five years and I know she left things out because I could see the pain in her soul and she is dead, Krys, and every time I remem-”
. . . . . A lavender-pale hand popped over Diyos’s mouth, cutting him off mid-stream-of-consciousness. “Breathe, Diyos,” the senior anchorite advised calmly before he dropped his hand. He watched as Diyos took several deep breaths before he spoke again, “So your sister is a death knight. Have you been living under a rock, Diyos? There are unfortunately many of them, but they are not – for the most part – evil if they have control of themselves once more.”
. . . . . “You do not understand, Krysion, my sister is an abomination! It is unnatural!”
. . . . . The senior anchorite leaned back on the bench in the small room at the back of the chapel reserved for the anchorites who worked with the Hand of Argus. He folded his arms across his chest. “You are telling me that to die and yet to walk around is unnatural?”
. . . . . “Of course!” Diyos appeared on the edge of frantic, plunging his indigo hands into his thick curls.
. . . . . “Forget your resurrection spell, then. Forget how to see a soul tethered to a body.”
. . . . . “That is not the sa-!” Diyos cut off again as Krysion leveled a withering look at him. It was several moments before he came up with a response. “An anchorite’s resurrection is a Light-given ability. It is not the same.”
. . . . . “And the death knights are any less Light-blessed than you simply because they had to endure death and forced servitude?”
. . . . . Diyos sputtered and gave Krysion an incredulous look. “Of course they are! Look at them! They are rotting in their bodies! They cause diseases with a touch! They have no emotions!”
. . . . . Krysion unfolded his arms just long enough to reach out and pop his friend and junior anchorite on the side of the head. The sudden violence jolted Diyos out of his frenzied ranting and left him staring blankly at the senior anchorite for a moment. Krysion figured this was as good a time as he’d get to make his point. “Oh, grow a spine, Diyos. Did you know there are several death knights that work here at the Exodar now? Some of them have been tasked as Peacekeepers. Some mine for the busted crystals alongside the Broken. Two are guardians of the Farseers in the Crystal Hall.” Krysion took a breath and kept going, “I know them. I interact with them. Yes, they are suffering under an unnatural condition, but it is no more unnatural than you or I as Concealed. We have talents that lend towards the shadow, but we have not given ourselves over; it is the same for these death knights. They have some terrifying abilities, but they have turned their backs on the shadow of death.”
. . . . . “But what abou-”
. . . . . “Shut up. You are just trying to come up with excuses for not accepting that your sister is returned to you. If you do not want her back, just admit it already.” Krysion stood and turned his back on his friend. “You are such a coward, Diyos. Choose how you want to feel already and get back to living.” The senior anchorite made a disgusted tsking sound with his tongue and left the meditation room, leaving a stunned-to-silence anchorite staring after him.

. . . . . The last shard of the crystal tapped into place and Valdiis gave a stiff grin at her work. She leaned back in her too-small chair and began the wait for the adhesive to dry. Once it was done, she was going to have to go seek out her brother to re-attune the formerly-shattered crystal to his so that she could use it to speak to her brothers from afar. While she waited, she gathered up the reports she’d written on the Twilight’s Hammer activity. She’d leave these for Colonel Orill when she went to the Exodar. There were some very intriguing pieces of intelligence among all the mundanity, and she might as well investigate a few of them herself while she was not so far from Ashenvale.
. . . . . Valdiis picked up the repaired crystal and wrapped it in a few strips of mageweave to cushion it. Although it hadn’t turned out to be a safe place to keep it the first time, she was lacking any better, so she slipped the wrapped crystal into the chest pocket of her black gambeson. This new titansteel armor she had should prevent the sort of crushing blow that had shattered the crystal the first time.
. . . . . Once more through the familiar, laborious process of donning her plate armor…unstick the chair from beneath the door handle…sheath the sword on her back…grab the reports…
. . . . . And she was off.

Writer's Block

2010-04-22T13:09:00.002-04:00

. . . . . 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

2010-02-01T17:08:00.006-05:00

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.

. . . . . . It was twilight by the time her distance-eating strides carried her all the way to the outskirts of Lailein. The draenei shared the settlement with the native inhabitants of the planet, a brown-skinned, four-legged but otherwise relatively humanoid-shaped race that called themselves “akri.” Rosoe nodded respectfully to a passing akri as she headed for the draenei market in the city. Six-hundred-and-thirty-eight years on this planet and she still didn’t speak a lick of Akkrieh beyond how to ask for food and basic trade words, and she wasn’t especially inclined to learn more now. Knowing their luck, the Legion would show up soon anyway and render it a moot point.
. . . . . . She stood at a small stall – little more than a wooden frame with a cloth awning – and was haggling with the draenei woman tending the general goods trade there when a booming baritone echoed out over the market, “Kil’jaeden’s teat, Rosoe, have you come back among the civilized for a while, or are you only passing through?”
. . . . . . Rosoe grimaced down at the flint in her hand and completed her transaction, handing over two small purple crystals as payment, before turning around to level a glare at the heavily armored Shield of Velen not ten feet away from her and gleaming in the light cast by the teal light-emitting crystals set around the market. “Leaus.” Her tone could have just as clearly been applied to the words ‘elekk dung’ and been as fitting.
. . . . . . The tall, broad sky-blue-skinned draenei male in heavy metallic plate armor trimmed with gold to indicate one of the high-ranking vindicators assigned to guard the Prophet Velen himself seemed not to notice her tone – or if he did, he didn’t care. He stepped forward and clapped a massive hand on the draenei female’s leather-clad shoulder and grinned down at her, standing a full foot taller than even the relatively tall female. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’re here to socialize.” He sidled closer to slip his hand over and drape his arm around her shoulders, ignoring the annoyed growling sound she made. “Come, have dinner with me and I’ll show you my mace. It’s got some quite pronounced ridges on the handle.”
. . . . . . “Leaus, you are not a smooth-talker, so stop attempting it. It’s unbecoming. If you want a female to warm your bed, just say it.” Nimbly, the sturdy scout ducked backwards from beneath the weight of his arm and took a step back.
. . . . . . “Don’t be like that, baby,” came the vindicator’s cajoling voice as he held out his hands to her.
. . . . . . With a soft, bloodied squelch, a bundle of raw meat wrapped in fur landed in his outstretched hands. “Dinner’s on me. Enjoy.” Whistling a little tune to herself, she spun on her hoof and walked off towards one of the akri eating establishments with the disgusted wail of a prim and proper vindicator ringing in her ears.

. . . . . . Most draenei females would consider it something of a feather in their cap to be in Rosoe’s situation, but she was never much one for wearing hats anyway. Her arms were folded behind her head as she stared up at the ceiling and listened to Leaus clank and clatter while he obsessively cleaned his armor in the other room. The two of them weren’t fooling one another – she was too much a loner and he was too tied to his duties as a Shield for there to be much more than the occasional scratch of an itch between them. She was fine with that. Besides, Shields got some very nice digs, she thought as she wiggled happily against the soft sheets.
. . . . . . It was dark in the room, well before dawn, when a noise broke her from light sleep: a door opening, followed by the gentle click of it closing. She kept her eyes closed, listening with ears well-practiced at picking up tiny sounds in the forest. There was a scraping noise of one wooden thing being dragged across another – a drawer opening she identified it as. A rattle and then a clunk – something being placed down on something else. Two snaps and a creak – probably a box opening. A crystalline clinking, and then…
. . . . . . “Leaus reporting in,” the spoken words were in Eredun, but Rosoe was not such a youngling that she did not still remember the old dialect. However, she hadn’t heard it in thousands and thousands of years, because their people spoke a new dialect now, an updated version of their native tongue that reflected how different they had become from their Man’ari enemies. “I have good news for you, dread lord. I have been detailed to Velen this next four risings, so I will be close to him as early as suns-rise tomorrow.” To be hearing Shield Leaus speak Eredun so casually, and the words she was hearing… This was very bad indeed.
. . . . . . Her heart thumping erratically in her chest, she listened to Leaus confirm the details of an assassination of the Prophet – “Glory to Sargeras! The Legion shall prevail.” – then heard the clinking of what was assuredly a communication crystal being replaced in the box. Mustering every ounce of control she had, she evened out her breathing and appeared to be sleeping when Leaus rejoined her in the bed. As soon as suns-rise…as soon as she left, she had better inform someone fast.

. . . . . . “Ruso, was it?” The lavender-skinned and obnoxiously bureaucratic female in the ivory robes of an acolyte tried to look down her nose at the unkempt scout before her, but it was hard to do when the scout was five inches taller.
. . . . . . “Rosoe,” the scout corrected through gritted teeth. “And it’s very urgent. Get me to a member of the Hand immediately.” The close confines of the temple in Lailein were making her twitchy, and – indeed – the tendrils set behind her ears swayed in agitation, sending the strings of crystal beads twined around them clattering faintly.
. . . . . . The bureaucratic acolyte sniffed haughtily and took a step back. “Unfortunately, all of the members of the Hand are still asleep; it is very early in the morning, after all. Perhaps you can leave a mes-…”
. . . . . . “Not all of the Hand is asleep, Phaiera,” came a grumbling tenor voice as a slender but broad-shouldered draenei male stepped out of the temple’s inner sanctum and into the nave.
. . . . . . Another sniff. “Diyos,” the snooty female said in an icy tone.
. . . . . . “Anchorite Diyos, Phaiera.” He turned his indigo face towards Rosoe and bowed to her, placing his closed fists together at chest height in a gesture of equanimity. “And member of the Hand of Argus. What can I do for you, ma’am?”
. . . . . . Rosoe cast a wary look at the acolyte as she took a seat in the nave and stepped closer to the anchorite. “A word? Privately.”
. . . . . . “Of course. Follow me.” The anchorite led the way back into the sanctum he’d stepped out of. Amid the soft glow of the crystals inside, there was a low bench for meditations. He sat down with an expansive gesture to the rest of the bench, indicating she should sit too.
. . . . . . Instead, the scout began pacing back and forth agitatedly in the small sanctum. The walls were too damn close! Get a grip. She took a deep breath. “Anchorite Diyos. I’m here with information about a Man’ari traitor.” She paused at his unusually stricken expression, then shrugged and went on, “I’ve evidence that a Shield of Velen is corrupt, in contact with the Legion, and plotting an assassination as early as a few hours from now.”
. . . . . . “A few hours?” The anchorite stood, which only served to make Rosoe feel more crowded. She backed up a step, then snarled at herself and stood her ground from there. “Urgent indeed,” Diyos seemed to mutter to himself. “What’s your evidence?”
. . . . . . “I overheard a conversation he had during the night while he thought I was sleeping. Over a communication crystal.” She hadn’t dared try to filch it from the room before she left that morning.
. . . . . . The anchorite leveled a somber gaze at her. “Hearsay.”
. . . . . . “No! I can take you to his quarters among the Shields and we can retrieve the crystal.”
. . . . . . Diyos frowned. “I can’t go just on that. We need something more solid.” He let out a breath on a sigh. “Will you consent to a search of your memories?”
. . . . . . The ebon-gray scout blanched, her face turning ashen. He was one of the Concealed – the shadowy interrogators hidden in the palm of the Hand. Naaru’s sake, was she in the right or not? What was there for her to be afraid of? Practicality quickly beat back her concerns and she considered the anchorite before her. “Consent given. But, the memory may be…intimate.” A grin spread across her lips as she watched a violet blush creep over the draenei male’s indigo cheeks.
. . . . . . A sibilant hiss echoed against the crystals in the sanctum as the anchorite wrapped the shadows around himself and reached his slim fingers for her temples.

. . . . . . Rosoe accompanied the anchorite and a squad of four Shields of Velen who insisted on being present while the quarters of one of their own was being searched. It was rather a blessing that Leaus had never been exceptionally bright; the drawer and box were not even locked. A shiver went down her spine as the anchorite pulled a sickly fel-green crystal from the box, a grim expression on his face. “You’re free to go, ma’am,” he said with a short nod her direction. A heavy sigh escaped him and his voice was low as he continued, “And you should probably pack your things…”
. . . . . . As she hurried from the building housing the Shields of Velen, she pulled her own crystal from a pouch at her side, a small blue piece that was linked to about forty-five similar ones – the scouts and loners and individualists among the highly communal and social draenei people. “Journeyers,” she spoke quietly into one of the polished magical facets, alerting them all at once. None of them answered to any particular authority, but with the suddenness of past experience, they found ways to stay in touch else they get left behind in this very sadly recurring event. “Recall time. Hoof it to the Nether-blasted ship.”

Crucible

2010-01-28T15:06:00.008-05:00

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.”

. . . . . . The land on the other side of the Dark Portal was as barren as the land from whence they came – blasted, sere, and scarred. Their hooves kicked up clouds of red dust while leaving behind a trail of navy smears. Several of the draenei males were supporting one another in order to keep walking forward. Just one more step. Just one more step. As long as they could walk, they would keep going. A draenei female – one of only two amongst them – wept silently as she moved up and down the marching line, summoning what she could of her connection to the spirits of this blasted land to mend the worst of the wounded.
. . . . . . As she approached the only other woman in the company, the second gave her a dry-eyed curt nod. “Do not waste your powers on me, Beluuma. It is not so bad a wound.” She jerked her head back to indicate the two stumbling males behind her. “Ordrion there is wheezing badly.”
. . . . . . Beluuma gave the draenei female a skeptical look, the direction of her gaze on the obscene inward-bend of the warrior’s breastplate on the right side. “Valdiis…” she said warningly.
. . . . . . “It is not fatal, Beluuma. Just ugly. I will live.” With a slow, pained shrug, the warrior jerked her head again towards the ones behind her. Firefly Company’s only shaman and remaining medic moved to help the wheezing Ordrion.
. . . . . . “Keep moving, soldiers,” came the gruff rumble of their Commander. As bloodied and battered as the rest of them, he led the line – only a quarter of his original Company – away from the Portal through whence they’d arrived some five miles behind them and still looming massively. Ahead loomed a pass clogged with moss-draped trees and smelling wetly of swamp, a scent the self-proclaimed ‘swamprats’ of the Firefly Company marsh-guard unit were familiar with. “We’ll not tarry here long. Keep moving.”

. . . . . . Portal travel was the only way she was going to be able to do this. The orders she followed were truly pushing the edges of her sanity inwards and threatening to crumble the self she’d rebuilt over the last six months. The leather of her gloves creaked as she clenched her fists and stared at the shimmering blue portal to Shattrath in the back of the enclave in Dalaran.
. . . . . . “I hate portals,” she murmured under her breath in Draenei.
. . . . . . Then she stepped through.
. . . . . . The heavily-plated draenei female doubled over as she landed on her hooves – barely – at the center of Shattrath. “There ya are, lass!” The tip of a long, red beard entered her vision while she fought back the entirely ridiculous nausea. She hardly had much of a stomach left, how could it roil so much?
. . . . . . “Ugh,” she growled as she straightened to tower over the dwarf at her side. “I hate portals. It alvays feels like my brain is beink pulled out through my spine and shoved back in through my eye sockets.”
. . . . . . The dwarf didn’t even acknowledge her gruesome assessment of mage portals, instead beaming a cheery grin at her. “Come along, then. We’ve birds ta catch.”
. . . . . . She spent the majority of the gryphon-back flight looking straight ahead, the shattered sky dancing with arcane and fel storms less awful to look at than the shattered ground racing by beneath her. The speed of the flight and the passing rush of air made strategizing with her companion impossible, despite his gryphon flying only a wingspan away. In contrast to her stoic forward stare, the dwarf spent most of his flight looking down at the ground or down into his mug. One day, she was going to have to ask him how he managed to not spill his ale on a flight…

. . . . . . “I truly think he’s taken a liking to you,” murmured Major Eredis. The draenei Commander was staring blankly at a point just beyond his head again, but he didn’t seem to notice. He let the silence drag on.
. . . . . . Commander Valdiis’s leather gloves creaked again as she squeezed her hands tightly and finally looked at Major Eredis, her voice quiet and her question abrupt: “Sir, vhere vas your last big battle? Before beink raised.”
. . . . . . The Major raised one dark eyebrow at her, hesitating a quarter moment, but he saw no harm to the inquiry. “That would have been during the Second War. Blackrock Spire, where Lord Lothar fell.”
. . . . . . “Have you been back zere since?”
. . . . . . He nodded. “I have. I can’t say I like what the orcs have done with the place.”
. . . . . . “I lost a hundred and twenty-three men on zat last march, sir.” She was still for a moment before continuing, her voice flat as she gave the briefest summary possible, “I have been back all of once.”
. . . . . . “To the Peninsula.”
. . . . . . “Yes, sir.”

. . . . . . Hoarse cries for aid competed with the harsh clash of blades on metal armor and shields. Her brothers in arms were dying all around her and all she could do was fight to take another step forward to the massively looming Portal ahead that would take them to an unknown land on the other side. “Val! Your back!” shouted a sky-blue-skinned warrior several feet to her left as he swung a heavy two-handed blade at the green-skinned fiend trying to cut him down.
. . . . . . Valdiis spun and crouched simultaneously, barely missing the whistling blade that would have otherwise taken her head. The large double-bladed axe in her hands connected with a body covered in felsteel, bit deep through the metal, and channeled the blackish-red blood down to her ungloved ebon-gray hands and beneath the vambraces strapped to her forearms. As she pulled her axe free by kicking the corpse backwards with her hoof, she felt a familiar thump at her back as her brother resumed his usual position guarding her back while she guarded his. The siblings cut a whirling, well-synchronized path of death towards the Dark Portal.
. . . . . . Other warriors of Firefly Company did much the same, fighting in pairs or clumps to regroup and press forward. Those draenei who fell, if they could keep walking, were gathered up; if they could not, they were trampled by the rabid orcs before their comrades could retrieve them anyway.
. . . . . . A gleefully battle-crazed green face leered up in Valdiis’s vision as she reflexively parried the oncoming swing of a mace. Unfortunately, she missed the fact that the orc squaring off with her was wielding two. With a sickening crunch, the second mace hit her khorium breastplate on the right side and crumpled it against her ribs. Spears of pain pierced her with each panting breath, but she spat no blood, so she gritted her teeth and lashed out with a plated forearm, her spiked battle vambraces connecting with the side of the orc’s head. He fell. To her right, so did another draenei – a younger fellow she knew had a wife back at Orebor praying he’d return and come with her to Tempest Keep; so many of them she knew so much about, and would never be hearing from again.

. . . . . . “Did you need time away from the Temple to see to them?”
. . . . . . If a death knight could manage to look green, Valdiis did exactly that, slow horror spreading over her formerly blank expression. “No, sir. I vould like to be stationed elsevhere if at all possible. Nagrand is vonderful zis time of year.” The flatness had left her tone, but there was no false hope behind her suggestion of Nagrand either.
. . . . . . “Nagrand isn’t where the Horde is massing, Commander.”
. . . . . . She looked down at the report on the desk unseeingly. “Sir. Is zere anyvhere else you could station me?”
. . . . . . Major Eredis Orill folded his hands on the desk, thinking for a long moment. “Yes. Yes, there are several places I could assign you.” He paused as the draenei across from him looked at him expectantly. His expression never changed. “After you report to the Temple to deny the Horde any strategic advantage.”
. . . . . . The draenei shoved her chair back and stood with a clatter of light plate falling into place, her face a resolved and unreadable mask – the blank mask of a ‘good’ soldier. She snapped a stiff, almost jerky salute at the man sitting on the other side of the desk. “Sir. Yes, sir.”
. . . . . . “We must all make sacrifices for the greater good, Commander.”

. . . . . . The dwarf was deep in his cups by the time the gryphons landed at Telhamat, each being kept in reserve to allow for the draenei and the dwarf to use them in battle. She’d fought at his side long enough to know he usually battled sauced, and so gave it little heed. They walked across the dry, blasted, red land between the buildings, discussing defensibility and strategic advantages of each. The lack of massing Grand Alliance troops at the Temple was worrisome.
. . . . . . “AEGIS coordinator Valdiis?” A gryphon wheeled a few feet overhead, a lean, battle-worn elf at its reins.
. . . . . . The draenei paused and looked up at the hovering warrior. “Yes?”
. . . . . . “There’s been a change in the strategy. AEGIS member units are massing at Honor Hold. We have elected to leave the Temple defenseless in the face of our-” the elf looked away sharply, “-diminished defensive capabilities.”
. . . . . . “Diminished? Wot are ye on about?” asked Bergmann.
. . . . . . “We don’t have enough forces to support the action here.”
. . . . . . The death knight cursed and turned back towards the stabled gryphons. “Felfire and night! Come on, Bergmann, ve vill have to go meet vith zem zere. Who is runnink zis Nether-blasted operation?”

. . . . . . The Temple of Telhamat was empty, an eerie ghost town of draenei architecture. Once, it had been built on the edge of a fertile plain, but fel magics had blasted this land and scoured it of life. The Temple’s priests and the small sect of Seers training here had long since fled through the pass Firefly guarded and reached safety at Orebor Harborage. Or so the one hundred and sixty soldiers of Firefly Company hoped as they took up residence in the abandoned buildings to have the medic corps see to their wounds, clean their own armor, sharpen their blades, and get a night’s rest before pursuing the orcs across the barren peninsula.
. . . . . . A fire was built in the shelter of an open-fronted shop, the officers of Firefly Company settled around it after the rest of the soldiers had eaten and gone to prepare themselves for the impending battle.
. . . . . . “So how many of them do you think are between us and that Portal?” asked a large, sky-blue-skinned warrior as he ran a whetstone along the edge of his two-handed blade.
. . . . . . “Best estimate, Rulaam?” Commander Magtoor rumbled, “I’d say upwards of five hundred.”
. . . . . . “So we each get three kills. That seems fair enough. I’ll even take Beluuma’s three, since she doesn’t kill.” The speaker, an ebon-gray female warrior laughed as Beluuma, a pretty, middle-aged draenei – one of those new Seer sorts – gave her a droll look.
. . . . . . “You can leave my extra kills to Arteros, Valdiis. I trust my husband to pick up my slack.”
. . . . . . “I’ll bet your ‘slack’ is not what he’s picking up tonight,” laughed Rulaam as he mimicked a gesture of having a woman on his lap.
. . . . . . The nine warriors and lone company shaman kept up the good-natured ribbing between strategizing, trying to plan a way to escape through impossible odds, pinched between a lost pass back to the marshes and a mysterious Portal to Naaru only knew where – or take as many of the hated orcs down in flames with them as they could.

. . . . . . “Fifteen?!” The death knight’s voice was a quiet hiss, but her disgust was clear. “Ve are fieldink a force of fifteen Alliance soldiers against an expected attack by forty Horde troops?”
. . . . . . Out of earshot of the commander of the sole unit who had shown up for the battle, Valdiis and her aide, Bergmann, conferred in hushed, angry tones. If the draenei kept glancing towards the walls of the Hold and twitching like a caged animal, the dwarf was polite enough to ignore it. “Aye, lass. Some sort of conflictin’ mission in Azeroth, it sounds like.”
. . . . . . There was a faint ringing sound as Valdiis stamped one titansteel-shod hoof against the flagstones of the tower door behind them. “Zat leaves us vith barely enough forces to defend ze Hold, much less to put forth any attack on zeir resources!”
. . . . . . Bergmann looked down at his ever-present mug of ale. “We defend what we can then, aye?”
. . . . . . Valdiis threw her hands up in exasperation, then turned the gesture into hailing the elven commander over to them. “Alright. Strategy adjustment. Ve vill consolidate our forces vithin zis tower, defend ze Hold from here. Ve must stay together and keep fightink to be even moderately successful.” She tilted her head to the left with an obnoxious crack of vertebrae, her fists clenched at her sides. “It is still likely zat ze Hold vill take some damage in ze attack, but if ve can get ze Alliance forces to hole up and stay defensive, ve have a chance of vearink zem out and sendink zem back empty-handed.”
. . . . . . With that, the coordinator of the Alliance Expeditionary Group Intelligence and Support project headed into the tower, barking out defense orders in her heavily-accented Common, preparing for a defense against impossible odds for a trade route the Alliance hardly seemed to give a damn about.

. . . . . . Valdiis turned sharply from the desk and headed towards the stairs out of the office, one plate-gloved hand coming up to tangle in a mithril chain around her neck, the unseen pendant weighing it down clattering against the inside of her breastplate. She looked at the human still seated at the desk. “You know one of ze first slurs against ze draenei I heard vhen I arrived in Stormvind, sir?”
. . . . . . Eredis raised an eyebrow and waited.
. . . . . . “Cobblestone.” Her accented voice was harsh. “For ze bones linink ze Path of Glory.” She looked as if she might spit on the stone floor to say those last three words, if she had any spit remaining in her dead mouth.
. . . . . . The Major pursed his lips, then sighed. “Commander…Valdiis. I do not deny that your people have suffered terribly, and I understand you have no wish to ever step foot near that path again. I do not blame you for it.” He paused. “We have all lost…much in this regiment, for those who remember it.
. . . . . . “But I can say with certainty that you are not a ‘cobblestone.’ You are the granite that turns the droplets of the Horde aside as so much moisture.”
. . . . . . The draenei stood at the top of the stairs and nodded tightly, her hand still tangled in the chain around her neck. “Understood, sir. And…appreciated. I vill report for duty at Telhamat as ordered.”
. . . . . . “I do not send you there for the people who call you such silly terms. I send you there so the one hundred and twenty-plus troops who were with you then will know that not even death can stop you honoring their memory. Not. Even. Death, Valdiis.
. . . . . . “Bring our foes the winter that heralded your rebirth, Commander. We will not tarry there long.”
. . . . . . She nodded tightly again, her movements little more than stiff jerks. Light glinted dully off the scoured gold rings around the tendrils behind her ears, the faint twitching betraying her agitation. “I… Yes, sir.”
. . . . . . Major Eredis nodded at her. “Thank you. And, Commander?” Valdiis looked at him for a long moment, then he went on. “I order you there because you, above all others I have served with, can get the job done.”
. . . . . . Valdiis reached up to the dead skin of her neck with her hand still wrapped in the mithril chain she wore and appeared to pinch herself before dropping her hand back down to rest against the top of her breastplate. “Zank you, sir. I vill not let you down.”
. . . . . . “You never have, Commander.”

Fake It ‘Til You Make It

2010-01-27T12:29:00.010-05:00

Written while listening to Fake It by Seether.

. . . . . “I’d really rather you stay here.” The concerned words of his friend and fellow draenei in the Modan Company rang in his ears for a few hours after she had left. The Company doctor had reiterated it. Then the boss lady had come back and shared roasted rabbit and a bit of lovely conversation with him.
. . . . . But now he was alone in the Southgate Outpost. And supposed to stay here.
. . . . . “Booooring!” he wailed up at the stone ceiling.
. . . . . The anchorite was sitting on the edge of the cot kept in the upstairs of the Outpost for medical needs…and did the Company ever have medical needs. Lately, it seemed it had been mostly him. He looked at the empty bottle of Captain Rumsey clutched in one platter-sized indigo hand, and then at the four empty bottles set neatly next to the box he’d been pulling them from. For a moment, it all looked perfectly fine…and then his neurons went into another misfire tailspin.

. . . . . A stalk of dreamfoil, fuzzy and periwinkle blue, stood upright before him. It also stood nearly eight feet tall. The tiny blossoms dotting the conical shape of the plant rearranged themselves until they formed the face of a familiar Company doctor. “Sure!” he said. “Have another drink! Drink to your heart’s content, then have three steins more!” The dreamfoil stalk with Ekanos’s face winked at him as the Outpost dissolved into golden sparkles.
. . . . . The War of the Shifting Plains. Massive Silithid bugs with their hideous, spiky carapaces burst forth from beneath the rolling green plains of Karabor. Lush crops were trampled under the stony feet of guardians. The golden gleam of Light from the Temple of Karabor in the distance was obscured by the painted pillars of the Ahn’Qiraj citadel. Druids were fighting for their lives. All males. How strange… Except…that bear looked familiar. And not male. Oh no!
. . . . . A massive, transparent-dog-headed guardian lifted a mace dipped in sickly green fel-lava and slammed it down on the fighting bear. Diyos screamed a prayer and threw a shield of holy light in that millisecond before mace met bear, but his connection to the Light was so strained…so weak.

. . . . . The bottle crashed to the stone floor in the Outpost, the sound of shattering glass wrenching him out of the nightmare of tangled memories and hallucinations. “Damn spores,” he muttered, getting to his hooves to go grab an empty grain sack. He knelt on the stone and cleaned up the glass shards, then grabbed the other empty bottles and stuffed them in the sack.
. . . . . Leaving it at the foot of the cot, he sat back down with the last bottle of Rumsey and pulled the cork out. “Bet it galled Ekanos to have to tell me to drink more for once…” Diyos chuckled to himself. “A bottle a day keeps the psychotropic spores away!” He tipped back his sixth bottle of alcohol in twenty-four hours, and then stared blankly at the table full of bread not far out of reach. “Except…” he mused aloud in the empty Outpost, “I have ended up under the doc’s care every single time I’ve managed to make it to a Company meeting.”
. . . . . The boss lady’s face flashed in his memory, her concern and fretting not as well-hidden as she thought. Diyos harrumphed and glared at the bottle in his hand. “I am sick and tired of Azshariel only ever getting to see me laid up and drunk and needing to be coddled.” The bottle clunked down on the floor next to the cot as the draenei anchorite stood up and tilted his head back at the ceiling to shout, “Do you hear me?! Sick and tired!”
. . . . . As if in answer to his shouting, a puff of fuzzy spore dust rose off his robes and into his face. Coughing, he waved the spore cloud away and swiped a piece of bread off the table. He was still standing when the spores went to work on his brain again, causing another neuron misfire despite his best efforts to kill the spores with alcohol as prescribed by the Company doctor.

. . . . . Not far from Southshore, large camps of Lost Ones – refugees – were huddled together, being harassed by angry humans for daring to invade through the portal in Stormwind’s mage district. One of the humans, some sort of high-ranking fellow by the shininess of his armor and the swagger of his steps, came up to Diyos and eyed him up and down. “Well, aren’t you shiny?” he growled.
. . . . . Diyos looked at himself in his nice white and gold robes made from primal mooncloth. “Why, yes I am. Everyone says that.” He tugged on the drape of his mantle and beamed proudly.
. . . . . “You’re in the wrong colors. We need you in purple.” The human tugged on Diyos’s hand suddenly, yanking him forward to a chair set in the middle of the refugee camp. Instead of a warped Lost One, a massive, lavender-skinned draenei male in black and white robes with an Argent Dawn tabard was seated in the chair, tied to it. A table next to him held some sort of device bristling with arcane magic spikes. “I’ll just be over here, straightening up these shelves.” The high-ranking human turned to stare into the courtyard as Diyos looked blankly at his eldest brother’s face.
. . . . . “What are you waiting for?” Zunaadrin – the eldest – snarled at him in a familiarly grumpy voice he hadn’t heard in almost two years. “Start being helpful already.” With a similar – although much more disquieting – familiarity, Diyos heard the sibilant hiss as he took that mental half-step to the side, slid into the amorphous embrace of the shadows, and reached for his brother’s temples with fingers wrapped in transparent purple magic. Another mind to dig through, to rip open, to flay and break...
. . . . . His brother started laughing madly, his crazed cackle rising in tone until it wasn’t his voice anymore. Diyos snapped his shadow-hazed eyes open to find that he wasn’t digging through his brother’s mind now, but the fel-tainted, power-crazed mind of Shield Leaus – the first Man’ari traitor Diyos had had the displeasure of discovering.
. . . . . “The Prophet is false,” hissed Shield Leaus, his sky-blue face twisted with rage. “The Light you serve will fall before the might of the Legion!”Diyos’s shadowy fingers tightened on the cackling Man’ari’s temples and the heavily-armored Man’ari being held down by four vindicators howled in pain. “Sear my mind all you like, Light-addled fool! It is nothing compared to what Sargeras will do to this planet when he gets here!”
. . . . . “Evacuate Spretomi, now.” Diyos felt sick to his stomach at the level of command, of trust, he’d been given. That he could order that…and it would be done. They were running again.

. . . . . Nothing crashed. Nothing broke. Nothing fell over. Blessedly, not even himself.
. . . . . But, somehow, Diyos managed to drag himself out of the spore-induced hallucination and memory. He looked down at his hands, drenched in shadows as if he’d dipped them in shadow-water. Shaking it off, he stuffed the piece of bread in his mouth. “Sick and tired,” he mumbled around the bread.
. . . . . His hooves clacked on the stone floor as he began pacing, the bottle of Rumsey abandoned next to the cot. The hallucination of his dead brother had a point… What was he waiting for? Did he think anything was going to be solved by drowning himself in drink? Did he think he was getting anything done running from himself? The pretty elf woman he wanted never saw anything of him but the fragile drunkard to be fretted over. The doc never saw anything but the weak man hiding from his failures. The rest of the Company, Naaru’s sake, they probably never saw anything but a brash, drunken priest.
. . . . . At one time, his words saved lives. His work – distasteful as it was – had supported the Light, protected the Prophet, warned his people before the Legion reached them… He hadn’t always been a useless drunk.
. . . . . One of the slang phrases he’d learned in Common classes burst from his mouth in an angry rush of air: “Screw this!”
. . . . . He stomped over to the cot and picked up the bottle of Rumsey, swiped another piece of bread off the table, and stomped down the stairs, muttering to the empty Outpost, “Screw this! Screw waiting around. Screw being sick. Screw being drunk. Screw these Nether-blasted spores. Screw that transparent dog thing that blew them on me.” He paused. “Wait, no. No screwing dogs. That’s just awful.”
. . . . . The tablets the Company had uncovered from the Uldaman expedition were still on the table in the meeting room where he had left them last night. So was his pack. Rumsey bottle and tablets went into the pack. Pack went onto his shoulder. He looked around the Southgate Outpost in Dun Morogh. Other than leaving a note, which he didn’t have the paper to do, he couldn’t think of anything else he should do. Well, staying here was what he should do, but the tedium was driving him nearly as crazy as the weird spores he’d been doused with. It was time he started being helpful again and took these Titan tablets up to the Frostborn dwarves he’d made friends with to see if they could translate them. “But first,” he announced to the empty meeting room, “a bath!”
. . . . . Breath puffing white clouds in the cold air, his steps almost jaunty with a renewed sense of purpose, Diyos walked out of the Outpost and looked around for his trusty steed. “Dammit, Jim!” he yelled as he spotted it inexplicably attempting to climb one of the heftier evergreens around the Outpost, “You’re an elekk, not a monkey! Get out of that tree!”

Chased by Destiny

2010-01-04T16:02:00.004-05:00

Written while listening to King of Pain by the Police.
((I tend to think of my stories as "fan service" most of the time, because they often aren't stand-alone tales that could make for universal stories. That's one of the reasons I don't go out of my way to point people to my blog. That said, this may be the most "fan service"-y story of all, because of the rapid-fire way guildmates are mentioned without introduction, and the way actual in-game events are inserted almost at random. So. Fair warning given.))

. . . . . The sickly green tendrils of fel energy dragged claws across his mind, their tainted fingers tugging and stroking and promising all manner of unimaginable power if he let them in. Just a taste. Just a touch. You’re already halfway there… What’s a little more?
. . . . . No.
. . . . . The anchorite strapped a little bit of mental steel to his backbone and concentrated on the task at hand: rifling through the thoughts of the bound sindorei prisoner in front of him. Despite being half-hidden by shadows and mist, he could see the two Hand of Argus vindicators guarding the prisoner eyeing him nervously. Wasn’t that always the price of it? Those few who knew what he did for the Hand…he always made them nervous. He shut out his own feelings, his own thoughts, and concentrated on the sindorei.
. . . . . Like a file clerk going through papers, he shuffled through a series of images, searching for anything that would reveal the source of the constant influx of fresh troops that were attacking the newly formed camp of Blood Watch. He shuffled past an image of a large portal and red crystals – the Vector Coil, stopped, went back. On the bound and unconscious prisoner’s temples, fingers of shadow and magic over indigo skin tightened slightly.
. . . . . The shadowy anchorite opened his mouth to tell the vindicators about the portal the sindorei attackers were using to get more troops. As his mouth opened, the sickly green tendrils of fel energy rising from the sindorei swarmed in and began squirming around in his brain, lashing his soul and tearing him away from the last of the Light.
. . . . . No!

. . . . . “No!” Diyos sat upright in the too-short bed in the too-small room he’d rented at the inn at Valiance Keep. He began to shiver almost immediately as the pile of woolen blankets fell down around his waist; the pre-dawn air of a winter in Borean Tundra, even inside an inn, was not a place for bare skin. A soft chiming sound and a faint purple glow came from the table next to the bed. The anchorite groaned quietly and reached over to drop a small bag of coins over top of the communication crystal and hide it from sight and sound. It was because he dearly loved his little brother that he couldn’t answer that summons. Not now. Not while the shadows still tugged at him.
. . . . . He clasped a hand around the gold and brass symbol around his neck, pulled the wool blankets back up over his head, and tried desperately to get back to sleep for a few more hours.

. . . . . The draenei anchorite had just given up on taming the tangle of tight curls springing out of his head when a banging on the door to his room at the inn started up. “Quiet down,” he grumbled. “I’m coming.”
. . . . . When he yanked the door open and glowered at the interruption, the human boy on the other side of the door simply gave him a droll look and held out a package. “Post for Anchorite Diyos.”
. . . . . “Oh. Ehm. Thanks. One moment.” Leaving the door open, he moved three steps to the bedside table and fished a few copper coins out of the coin bag there. He dropped them in the boy’s hand after accepting the wrapped package, and then closed the door absently on the boy’s thanks.
. . . . . Diyos turned the small box wrapped in plain brown paper and twine all the way around, trying to discover its origin before he opened it, but he couldn’t figure it out. Shrugging his broad shoulders, he untied the twine and unwrapped the box. Inside it was a note written in Common and Draenei – “Happy Winter’s Veil!” – and a drawn heart. It was signed “Kylea!” A grin settled on the anchorite’s indigo face as he dug through the packaging and pulled out a flask with a stylized likeness of a Naaru – A’dal, maybe? – on it. He gave the flask a little shake and felt it slosh full of liquid. Eagerly unscrewing the top, he gave the liquid a sniff before he tilted it back. What he smelled stopped him before he got the flask to his lips.
. . . . . “Ohh…” He chuckled and screwed the cap back on. “Dreamfoil. Probably best not to guzzle that. How thoughtful of her. I’ll have to think of something to send. I hadn’t even realized it was Winter’s Veil already,” he mused.
. . . . . With one of the loose straps on his belt, he attached the new flask next to his old, beat-up, banged-up flask of mead, and then picked up his pack from the floor. He’d heard tales of abandoned tuskarr artifacts down below Amber Ledge and decided that he’d bring one of them back to the Modan Company to research.
. . . . . Time to go get a new story to tell his baby brother.

. . . . . Treasure-hunting is a risky business. The draenei anchorite was just stuffing an interestingly enchanted stone idol into his pack when the warning scent of grape fizz reached his nose. Magic, and coming quick.
. . . . . He dove to the left as a fireball whizzed over his head. “Naaru’s sake!” he shouted. “Don’t attack!”
. . . . . The sorcerer, one of the Beryl Order also scouring the site for magical artifacts, simply gave him a maniacal grin and started chanting again, channeling up another attack.
. . . . . Diyos smelled the grape fizz of arcane almost exclusively as he rolled back to his hooves and turned to face the sorcerer. He yanked the top of his pack down over his prize and said a swift prayer to the Light, conjuring up a glowing golden bubble of holy light around his form as he backed away from the Beryl sorcerer. “I don’t want to fight. Just got this one idol. I’ll be going now!”
. . . . . The shield around him rang like a crystal chalice as a series of arcane bolts struck it. The shield fizzled out before the bolts did, and two arcane bolts found their mark on the anchorite’s chest, jolting him with the mind-scrambling sensation of arcane energy blasting through his nerves. His hooves went out from under him and he went down on his back, scrambling backwards as the sorcerer continued to advance.
. . . . . “Okay, okay, you can keep the idol. I’m just going to leave. Please don’t shoot!” His words seemed to fall on deaf ears as the sorcerer lifted his hands to channel another blast. “Light take it,” the draenei muttered. As he got back to his hooves a second time, the shadows where the bluffs of the dig site obscured the afternoon sun crept towards his form and swirled up his body, enveloping the anchorite in shadows and mist. Through the wavy purple haze of shadow vision, Diyos focused on the attacking sorcerer and took that little mental half-step to the side where the mind became more visible than the body, where the glowing, crazed thoughts of the Beryl sorcerer seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch.
. . . . . And reach out and touch he did, focusing a blast of shadowy energy at the approaching sorcerer before he could finish his next incantation. The scent of grape fizz in the air and the dim red glow of an insane mind winked out as the sorcerer crumpled, unconscious, to the ground.
. . . . . The shadows slid away from Diyos as a wave on the shore sliding back to the ocean. He hefted his pack up onto his shoulder and turned to leave, just as a voice rang out over the bluffs, “Oy, draenei! Good job subduing that one!” A human mage in the unmistakable robes of the Kirin Tor scrambled down from the upper ridge, heading straight for him. She was slender and willowy, like many mages, with a heart-shaped face and ginger hair. She gave Diyos a bright smile as she approached, her hands held open in a universal gesture of peace. “We’ve been trying to get the jump on one of the Beryls for a few days now. Could I trouble you to help me take him back to Amber Ledge?”
. . . . . Diyos blinked at the Kirin Tor mage. She batted her golden-fringed green eyes at him and he sighed. He was such a sap for a pretty girl. “Fine,” he grumbled, reaching down as she did to grab one of the sorcerer’s arms and begin dragging the unconscious villain up the path through the dig site. “What do you need with a Beryl sorcerer anyway?”
. . . . . She frowned as the sorcerer let out a quiet groan. “He’s coming around…” A sigh escaped her as she looked at Diyos. “The Beryls have captured a Kirin Tor mage and sent us a ransom note. They’re going to kill her if we don’t pull all our forces out of Coldarra. We can’t be blackmailed like this by Malygos!” The fierceness of her words broke on a tiny sniffle. “But that’s my sister they have in that cage…”
. . . . . As they entered the camp with the woozy, barely-conscious Beryl sorcerer between them, a sudden flurry of activity sprang up. Two more Kirin Tor mages came to take the prisoner from them. Diyos watched them drag the sorcerer into the tower at Amber Ledge and turned to the mage woman. “Ehm. Well. Glad I could help in some small way. I’m Anchorite Diyos of Zangarmarsh.” He bowed slightly to her, smiling when he was rewarded by a dazzling smile from the mage.
. . . . . “I’m Nikkei Stern, a journeyman mage with the Kirin Tor. Why don’t you have a seat over at the table? I’ll bring over some food. It’s the least I can do to treat you to lunch for your help.”
. . . . . Diyos chuckled quietly to himself as he sat down at the table in the small mess tent the mages kept. And here he’d thought there would be a shortage of pretty people in Northrend…
. . . . . Nikkei returned with two bowls of northern stew and sat down with Diyos, expressing her profuse thanks again. The spoons had just clattered with finality into empty bowls when a baby-faced man in Kirin Tor robes ran up and frowned apologetically at the ginger-haired mage woman. “He won’t talk, Nikkei. We can’t get Lady Evanor’s location out of him through our own means.” The baby-faced man stopped as he noticed Diyos sitting at the table. “Although…”
. . . . . Nikkei shook her head. “No. No, we cannot ask that.”
. . . . . “Ask what?” Diyos rumbled, looking puzzled.
. . . . . “For you to get the information.” The baby-faced man paled. “Through means the Kirin Tor is not allowed to use. As a free agent, you, of course, could do what we cannot.”
. . . . . A scowl settled on the draenei’s features, making him look fierce despite his relatively slender build. “No. By Velen’s beard, no. I will not do your dirty work for you.”
. . . . . The ginger-haired mage sniffled again and quickly looked away. “He is right, Donathan. We cannot use such means. Lady Evanor…” Her voice trembled and broke. “She is lost to us. They will kill her.”
. . . . . Diyos lifted a broad hand and pinched the bridge of his nose as if to stave off a headache. He was such a sap for a pretty girl. “I’ll see what I can do.”

. . . . . Inside the tower at Amber Ledge, the Beryl sorcerer was awake and grumbling obscenities at the Kirin Tor mage standing guard over him. The mage turned to look as the draenei’s hooves clomped on the wooden stairs to the landing where the sorcerer was tied to a chair. “Ah. So, I…” The mage looked down over the railing. “I’ll just busy myself organizing these shelves here.” He nodded his head to a strange device bristling with spikes of arcane magic on the table next to the sorcerer. “Oh, and here, perhaps you’ll find this old thing useful…” With that, the Kirin Tor mage turned away and studiously watched the stone wall where there were no shelves at all, as if expecting them to pop up in front of him.
. . . . . Diyos glowered at the device on the table. “I will not participate in torture,” he rumbled.
. . . . . The Beryl sorcerer cackled at him. “A servant of Malygos would sooner die than aid an enemy!”
. . . . . With a quiet sigh and a grimace, Diyos held a hand out towards the shadows along the back wall behind the bound sorcerer. “I swore I was done with this after Blood Watch…” Like a hungry cat twining around his hand, the shadows came, flowing over his form and altering his vision until the world was made of glowing minds like stars where people had stood before him. The sorcerer’s red-tinted, crazed mind was his focus. Darkness-touched fingers came up to rest on the sorcerer’s temples as Diyos dipped into the shadier side of his art and began rifling through the sorcerer’s mind.
. . . . . Sheer insanity and rage battered against his own skull as he searched. Do your worst, priest! I’ll tell you NOTHING! screamed the sorcerer. The anchorite hit a wall of madness-infused arcane energy. The first wall he found, he tried to scale, but when he was thwarted, he blasted it with dark shadows. The second wall he tried to go around, but he had to blast through that in the end too. The third wall took two mind blasts to break.
. . . . . His physical form, under all the swirling mist and shadow, began to tremble. Nausea roiled in his stomach. Diyos had been down this path. He had done this sort of interrogation for his own people when Man’ari traitors on the ship had to be rooted out. For each of the sorcerer’s mental shields he broke down, he knew he was damaging the man’s psyche. If only he wouldn’t fight… If only he would just give the information already…
. . . . . Another wall. Another shield. Another step towards utterly destroying this man’s mind.
. . . . . There.
. . . . . “She is held in a prison, elevated and sealed. Someone named Salrand holds the key.” The anchorite’s voice echoed with a sibilance of shadows. His fingers released from the sorcerer’s temples and the shadows slid away from his form. The sorcerer’s gibbering, maddened howl rang inside the tower as Diyos turned to heave up all the stew he’d had for lunch in the corner next to the bookshelf.

. . . . . The bartender at Valiance Keep’s inn and tavern shot a concerned look at the robed draenei huddled in the corner. The poor fellow hadn’t moved, except to signal the barmaid and drink his alcohol, for nearly two straight days now. Deciding to shift the poor fellow up to his room, the bartender approached slowly. The draenei waved a large hand at him. “Morre kunn’looosssh,” he slurred as he knocked a gnomish radio off the table in front of him and onto the floor.
. . . . . The bartender leaned down and picked it up, recognizing it as one of the models common to adventurers in the area who were members of larger companies and organizations. He turned the radio back on and looked at the little calendar display that flipped the days over mechanically. “Hey, big guy, you’re goin’ to miss your company’s meetin’. Better go catch a gryphon.” Slapping the draenei on the back heartily, the bartender slid the radio into the draenei’s hand instead of a new mug. “Settle up your tab and get goin’.”
. . . . . “Oh hell,” groaned the draenei.

. . . . . At Southgate Outpost, everyone was nice and fuzzy. Even his thoughts. He was pretty happy with fuzzy, even if he still felt detached from the Modan Company’s Winter’s Veil party. They were decorating a tree. But maybe that was a druid. He wasn’t too clear on that. An elf ran out to get a star from somewhere for the druid. Someone shouted that Illumyn was naked. Carvain climbed the druid. Kylea and Ekanos sat down at the table with him.
. . . . . Diyos managed a bleary, bewildered smile at both of them – or were there four? – and looked startled to find himself with half a cookie sticking out of his mouth. Where’d that come from? He took it out and looked curiously at the half a cookie. The pretty pink flower leaned over the table and inspected the cookie too.
. . . . . What the hell?
. . . . . Entirely lost in the bustle of the party and the fuzziness of enough alcohol to down an entire regiment of dwarves, Diyos handed his half a cookie to Parsnip the pink flower and looked up as he heard a familiar sibilant hiss.
. . . . . “Look what I can do!” a night elf woman was saying as her form faded into shadows. Diyos swallowed reflexively.
. . . . . “I can do that too!” said Kensaij, who then faded into even less than shadows, entirely invisible to Diyos.
. . . . . The draenei anchorite stood up quickly, mumbled something he presumed was coherent to those at the table with him, and then wandered out of the Outpost and into the Dun Morogh snow. His hooves flattened down a figure eight in the snow as he paced and tried to stop the shaking. He knew the shadows were not quite so frowned upon here on Azeroth, but he knew what he could do, what he’d done, what he was.
. . . . . And what he was…was a bad draenei. A bad priest. A bad twin.
. . . . . He flopped onto his back in the snow and began to make snow angels. No reason. Just letting the chill of the snow mix with the fuzziness in his head to make him far too numb to care.
. . . . . “Is he okay?” he heard Kylea say.
. . . . . “’m fine,” he mumbled at the human man looking down at him.
. . . . . “Says he’s fine. He’s just making snow angels out here,” the human man said as he went back into the Outpost.
. . . . . The face of Ekanos loomed over him for a moment – why did he have white hair again? Oh, right, stinky shark. He blinked and smiled up at Ekanos, groping around in the snow for his flask. He’d emptied the old one on the trip to Dalaran, and started on the new one sometime after he’d been kicked out of A Hero’s Welcome in Dalaran, taken the portal to Ironforge, and gotten kicked out of Bruuk’s Corner. The new one tasted really nice, although it made him far fuzzier than the four days’ worth of non-stop drinking had. It was a pity it was almost out.
. . . . . And then it was entirely out, because Kylea snatched the flask from his hands. “Is this the dreamfoil?! You’re not supposed to drink it straight!”
. . . . . Before Diyos had a full grasp of what was going on, he was hoisted out of the snow and bustled back into the Outpost. It looked like the party had wrapped up. His friends dropped him in a chair on the second level and a large pile of bread appeared in front of him. “Eat!” demanded Kylea.
. . . . . “Can I have my flask back?” he asked plaintively. She shook her head. Listlessly, he broke off a piece of bread and stuck it halfway in his mouth. “Mmmph?” he asked.
. . . . . Behind him, Kensaij and Erodis were talking about being stalkers and learning how to hide. He was starting to wish he could hide. The chill of the snow had inadvertently begun to sober him, and the last thing he wanted to be right now was sober.
. . . . . Kensaij and Erodis left to practice being sneaky. Kylea left to her office. Diyos sat there with the bread in his mouth and wondered if he felt up to chewing it.
. . . . . “Alright,” said Ekanos as he leveled a serious look at Diyos. “Talk.”
. . . . . Much to his bewilderment, Diyos did.

. . . . . While he was rarely entirely sober, the draenei anchorite was at least significantly less sauced than usual as he stood in the auction house in Ironforge and browsed one of the many copies of the lists of items for sale. He needed more dreamfoil, but not to go back to drinking himself into oblivion. He had a tasty mead invention to work on.
. . . . . That’s when the call came across the radio.
. . . . . “Help me! I’m not really crazy! Someone come tell them!”
. . . . . “Kylea?” Diyos barked into his radio as he stepped away from the auction lists.
. . . . . “She is crazy!” came a male voice. He thought it sounded like Kensaij. “She thinks I’m Kensaij, but I’m Erodis!”
. . . . . Thoroughly confused, Diyos asked for their location, then headed for the Tram to find them in Stormwind. When he finally got there, it was to find two nearly identical night elf men and one nearly hysterical draenei woman.
. . . . . “I’m Erodis,” said the one who smelled like poisons. He tugged his crisply tailored black shirt straight, the same shirt as the other elf wore, and grinned wickedly.
. . . . . “And I’m Kensaij,” said the one who smelled like the wilds. He smoothed a hand through his dark blue hair, the same color and style as the other elf’s.
. . . . . “AUGH! Diyos! Tell them to stop it! Which one is Kensaij?”
. . . . . Diyos looked at them both. He thought about his answer for a moment, and then looked at Kylea. “That one is.” Of course, he was looking at nor pointing to either one of them.
. . . . . “AUGH! Ekanos!” Kylea waved over the doctor as he joined them in the street. “Help me out here. I’m not crazy! They’re playing a trick!”
. . . . . Ekanos walked around each man and sniffed them, inspected their faces, then made entirely ambiguous comments about which was which. As Kylea started yelling threats about breaking legs and chased after the two fleeing elves, Diyos turned to Ekanos. “Does this happen often?”
. . . . . “First I’ve seen of it.”
. . . . . “Hrhn. We should go have a drink.”
. . . . . The night elf doctor and the draenei anchorite headed off to the park to wait for the inevitable cries for help over the radio when Kylea finally caught up to Kensaij and Erodis.

. . . . . While the winter air in Stormwind was significantly more forgiving than the frozen gusts across Borean Tundra, Diyos still began to shiver as he sat bolt upright in bed again, awoken from his nightmare by the snores of his twin brother, Athos, in the next room over. For several moments, he listened to be sure his brother was definitely asleep before he threw back the covers, donned his robes, and crept out of his room.
. . . . . As quietly as hooves could manage, he snuck out of the apartment he shared with Athos in the Park District. Once out, he headed for the Cathedral. Maybe it was pre-dawn, but the Light was always welcoming. Maybe it was a human place, but the Light was always shining. Maybe it was a different form of worship, but the Light was always there.
. . . . . He just had to reassure himself that the Light was always there.

Lady Sawn in Two

2009-12-28T10:22:00.012-05:00

Written while listening to None But Shadows by Cassandra Syndrome. (The first song in the video clip.)
((I am not entirely satisfied with this piece. But I'm posting it anyway, because it furthers the story of this character. I am starting to strongly consider server transferring Hadeon just so I can RP with him, because I'm really loving his weird mix of comedy and grotesque. That said, the almost schizophrenic shifts between comedy and tragedy for this guy may not appeal to all readers.))

. . . . . The ice in his chest was so heavy. It weighed his steps down so that his hooves clomped loudly on the packed earth as he went to the stables next to the inn and retrieved Thubaab. He saddled the elekk, and then used the side of the saddle to haul himself up onto the elekk’s back. As if sensing its rider’s mood, the animal plodded almost as sonorously as the death knight had.
. . . . . The Broken were cleaning up dishes from dinner, their voices quiet as they discussed the hymn to the forgotten dead they had heard.
. . . . . “His name isn’t Naz,” the death knight rumbled as he passed by a young Broken man. “It’s Akiius.”
. . . . . Shadows and night clinging to them like old lovers, rider and elekk left Telaar to the west, towards the Mountain of Spirits, the great diamond Oshu’gun.

. . . . . The very air itself sparkled in such close proximity to the giant diamond. Shading his eyes against the glare even as he appreciated being in the light, death knight Hadeon guided his elekk around the perimeter of the massive crystal mountain. He was following the stream of brown-skinned orc ghosts towards the entrance down into the old draenei vessel.
. . . . . “Retz, why is it that these orcs died with brown skin but you died with red?” Inside the holy light prison the warlock’s soul resided in, Retz conveyed some amount of discomfort at the question. “If you don’t want to answer, that’s up to you,” Hadeon said conversationally. “Just trying to learn a little more about orcs, you know.”
. . . . . Harrumph.
. . . . . Once he found the way in, he slid off Thubaab and sent the beast to graze – cautiously, since there were so many Ethereal thieves in the area – and descended with the stream of souls into the vessel that had once served as home to tens of thousands of draenei for millennia. It took until he stepped inside for Hadeon to realize that these agitated, discomfited ghosts he followed were not really souls – not even shades – just ghostly representations.
. . . . . As he opened his mouth to sing a hymn to the Light anyway, Retz spoke up, Leave them be, goat. This is orc holy land you stand on now. This might have been yours once, but you abandoned it to go take our land. We have taken this.
. . . . . “I but offered it as a courtesy,” Hadeon said quietly, wincing as his voice echoed off the empty walls of tile and stone.
. . . . . It is not for you to give, Retz replied sternly. The elements reign here now.
. . . . . Hadeon nodded, although he began to formulate the beginning phrases of a new hymn – a hymn to the elements – in the back of his mind.
. . . . . While the ghosts were packed tightly all around him, they were utterly silent in their agitation. The only sound was his cracked hooves clacking against the ancient tile floors he had once known better than the tentacles on his chin. The eerie sense of quiet persisted. Perhaps K’ure was no longer here. Or perhaps he was so shunned by the Light that he could not feel it. There was only this strange, sucking vortex sensation as he passed through halls that echoed with memories.
. . . . . Here, this corridor led to the cafeteria. He had broken up many a scuffle among the young boys there during his meal breaks with a single quelling look.
. . . . . Here, these sets of rooms were once filled with crates of power crystals, their energy supplying the resources to feed thousands. A few of those crystals could still be found across the shattered remains of Draenor.
. . . . . Here, down this hallway was the infirmary. Those early months had been spent here, tending the wounded and the dead. Although he served his first shift as a Death-speaker on Argus, it was aboard this vessel that he had truly practiced his art. He had consoled so many, served as a channel for the words the deceased left unspoken, lent his broad shoulders to carry the burdens of mourning. Even now, tens of thousands of years later, amid the eerie silence and agitated ghosts, he could hear the echoes of the ancient hymns sung in harmony by all nine of them.
. . . . . Here, in this vast empty chamber, he and Preserver Tena and the seven other Death-speakers had carefully taken up the remains of D’ore, the fallen Naaru, drained to near nothingness by the crash. The memory was still so clear to him, despite nearly a thousand years. The death of a Naaru was the strongest, most bewildering mystery of death he had ever encountered in his very long life. Even in undeath, no mystery still came close. The reverence the draenei held for the passing of D’ore had been the impetus behind the entire creation of the temple mausoleums of Auchindoun. The ceremonies and rituals had been the most complex and most beautiful things his brothers and sisters in the fold had ever created.
. . . . . Here, in this next chamber, at the heart of the old vessel, was K’u-…
. . . . . Hadeon stopped, his hooves clattering loudly as he nearly stumbled over himself.
. . . . . As the dark blue form of a Naaru twirled sluggishly before him, Hadeon finally identified that sensation of a sucking vortex…and it was this sickly, weak Naaru. His eyes were so fixed upon the horrors that had befallen the beloved savior of his people that he missed the rest of the surroundings in the room.
. . . . . Uh, goat, said a worried Retz, we have a problem. Goat? HADEON!
. . . . . Blinking his cold blue eyes, Hadeon finally took in the rest of the room. “Oh. Hello there,” he said in conversationally calm Orcish. Three orc warlocks – Shadow Council? Cult of the Damned? Illidari? Did it even really matter? – were already summoning up demons and starting to cast spells. The one on the left snapped a soul shard in half and tossed it to a burly doomguard behind him. The middle one was mid-incantation in Eredun, so Hadeon knew he was about five seconds away from a fel-fireball to the face. The one on the right had a staff with a sickly purple fire on the tip pointed at his chest.
. . . . . Hadeon looked up at K’ure once more. No matter what had happened to it, no matter that it might be the source of this dark vortex he could feel tugging even at his own soul – and Retz’s, no matter if K’ure was ill or injured or corrupted…he could not kill another being in the presence of a Naaru. Especially not the very Naaru who had shouldered his pain for him in the early years of the exodus. He turned on his hooves and ran.

. . . . . “That went well…” Hadeon muttered, wincing slightly as he wiped a damp rag over his left shoulder. His scorched, dented, scratched, and now partially-melted breastplate sat in the grass next to him at the base of the hills behind Telaar. His nerves were mostly deadened, but it seemed fel-fire was hot enough to melt metal, and so now here he was wiping away flakes of charred skin from a section of his back and shoulder that was part dead flesh and part melted khorium. Pulling the breastplate off was almost as uncomfortable as cracking his chest open had been, and ultimately just as necessary to stop the consuming flames.
. . . . . Where in the Nether did they learn a spell like that? Retz pondered from inside his holy light prison. That was a mighty powerful fel-fireball there…
. . . . . “Ugh. And now I come permanently equipped with a pauldron to show for it,” grumbled Hadeon. “I’m not going back to ask them.” The rag snagged on the jagged, brittle shard of metal sticking out from just below his shoulderblade. As the khorium armor melted down his back, he had to flash-freeze the metal to crack it and break the breastplate free from his flesh. He tossed the torn rag back into his opened pack on the ground. “I’ve got to get that taken care of…”
. . . . . At least infection is not one of your worries.
. . . . . “Hmph. Thanks for the optimism, Retz…” the death knight grumbled. He pulled a thin blanket from his pack and wrapped it around his chest to cover the scarred, dead flesh as best as he could. He picked up the ruined breastplate and attached it to Thubaab’s saddle. “Maybe I can get the khorium melted down and use that to buy new armor.”
. . . . . You’ll have to come up with something, Retz grumbled. You’re almost out of coins.
. . . . . “Don’t remind me.”

. . . . . Unwilling to face the futile, depressing madness and hatred of his old colleague and friend at Telaar, the death knight bypassed the town entirely, heading back towards the capital city of Shattrath. The days of travel passed slowly, much of the daylight spent sitting in the saddle with Ned’s journal and the mirror. To his horror, Hadeon found the instructions and notations on disease and biological warfare fascinating. He found himself making mental notes as he and Retz deciphered the text, planning ways to apply his corrupted, formerly-healing skills to members of the Shadow Council and this Cult of the Damned Akiius accused him of being party to.
. . . . . Inside his holy light prison, the soul of Shadow Council warlock Retz the Gut-diviner turned his face away from the soul of Death-speaker Hadeon and smirked.
. . . . . He was still a day away from the High Path when he reached an account of the fall of Shattrath. The city had fallen within days of his own death, and he had no recollection of it, having been walled off by Retz at the time. Swallowing against the reflexive nausea, Hadeon read the gruesome events of the fall of his people’s greatest city, tainted with the glee of an insane warlock who had participated in the battle. Among the list of warlocks Ned had recorded as participants in the battle was one of the other warlocks he had a journal for: Kordolma.
. . . . . “Hrhn. Retz, this word here, what is it?”
. . . . . Deceased.
. . . . . “Oh.” By now, Hadeon was convinced that coincidences never really were that simple, so he closed Ned’s journal over the sliver of mirror to mark his place, and exchanged it in his pack for Kordolma’s. This leather-bound journal was a stark contrast to the disjointed – if occasionally brilliant – ramblings of Neddelibranggok the Highly-Unstable. Shadow Councilman Kordolma the Soul-cleaver was exceedingly neat and precise. No sketches accompanied his experiments, and every notation was in the exact same format as the last. Failed experiments were recorded as faithfully as successful ones.
. . . . . With Retz looking on in his mind and assisting in translating the neat and precise Orcish, Hadeon read about innovations in necromancy and demonology. He read of dark pacts of sacrifice one could impose upon a minion to effect more strength for the self. He read of ways to split the soul in parts to feed multiple demons. He read of efficient and inefficient manipulations of unholy energy to raise the dead. Hadeon told himself that this information would be a useful weapon in his quest to find the other Death-speaker souls. Retz just steepled his dark red fingers in front of his chin and looked thoughtful.
. . . . . The last entry in the journal spoke of the battle of Auchindoun. The death knight had to close the journal to stare blankly at the path ahead as his elekk plodded along after reading it. He needed several minutes to absorb the blows that entry had dealt to his soul. Kordolma had taken four draenei souls. He described in his exceedingly neat writing each draenei he had siphoned as they died on a warrior’s pike or blade. One of the descriptions fit Death-speaker Anessa – a draenei woman with pale lavender skin, curling black hair, unusually straight horns, and silver-plated adamantite armor. Anessa had always been fond of being shiny…
. . . . . A memory of the bubbly, bright Death-speaker’s laughter flashed in Hadeon’s mind: Anessa at the enclave outside Mac’Aree after one of Tena’s lessons, joking about how she wanted to be preserved with every single glittery bauble she owned sewn against her skin. Grenar had returned with a refusal to carry that much weight on his shoulders and told her she’d have to find more bearers if she expected that sort of burial. There was no hope she would be found like Akiius, alive but mad…she had died on the end of an Orcish spear, her silvery armor pierced with cold steel, her soul drawn out into a magenta shard and tossed to an imp.
. . . . . Hadeon stared unseeingly at the path before him. What sort of burial had Anessa gotten? He couldn’t bear to even think about it.
. . . . . “What happens to a soul when a demon consumes it?” he asked the parasite warlock in his mind, his voice hollow and toneless.
. . . . . It becomes energetic fuel for the demon. Burns out in a few days, then the demon needs another to keep from returning to the Nether.
. . . . . “Is there anything left when a demon is done?”
. . . . . I’ve never looked. Retz tapped his steepled fingers against his lips and looked thoughtfully at the draenei soul sitting in the gray dust of the twisted kingdom of lost souls across from him. The warlock considered what he had heard in Shattrath…what Hadeon had missed in his agitation on the Aldor Rise. He sighed. Maybe a shade. Or part of a shade. Something enough to cry out… He looked away guiltily. Like up on the Aldor Rise, right about where that blind elf was wandering.
. . . . . The soul of Death-speaker Hadeon stood up, quivering with rage. Outside the twisted kingdom, the death knight simply sat in frozen silence in the saddle as the elekk continued to follow the path towards Shattrath. You knew, his soul accused the warlock. You knew of a soul I missed and you didn’t tell me!
. . . . . The orc warlock’s guilty look faded into bland impassivity. I just did, didn’t I?
. . . . . The Death-speaker’s soul snarled and turned away to pace across the gray dust.
. . . . . I would have said something when you got back to Shattrath anyway, the warlock grumbled. No sense in delaying your journey on the way out.
. . . . . Hadeon retreated into the physicality of the world, using his voice to anchor him in solidity and tear him from the desolate grayness of the twisted kingdom. “You should have said something, Retz. What if that blind elf knows something? It’s been almost two weeks now. He’s probably long gone.”
. . . . . It can’t be that hard to track down a blind elf in Shattrath.

. . . . . When he came back through the High Path Gate, Hadeon guided his elekk straight to the garden pool on the Aldor Rise where he had nearly run down the blind elf. Of course, there was no one there. He stared at several square feet of tile, trying to find what the elf had been looking for without opening himself to the crash of angry, unsung souls in Shattrath. Without his otherworldly senses though, he could not hear the shade. The death knight looked over his shoulder at the Shrine of Unending Light and grimaced. His gaze slid to the Diplomat’s Lift just barely visible past the structures on the Aldor Rise.
. . . . . Scowling darkly, Hadeon made up his mind and headed for the lift that would take him to the Scryer’s Tier. Except for returning to this spot one more time, he no longer had any need to be on the Aldor Rise. He no longer wanted their close-minded, Light-addled bigotry – even if they were his own people. What had happened to the Aldor? Where was the Prophet Velen?
. . . . . He left Thubaab in the care of a spindly-looking young sindorei man at the stables on the Scryer’s Tier, utterly ignoring the man’s curious look at the blanket wrapped around his chest. The foreign touches to the draenei architecture were a bit jarring to his senses, but rather that than more of what he’d gotten from the High Priestess. He felt the blanket snag against the metal jutting out of his shoulderblade and snarled wordlessly. Better take care of that quickly…
. . . . . Hadeon took the Erea’Thal Lift down and descended into the cesspool of Lower City again, heading for the Swapper’s Bargain. A few inquiries led him to the Floating Market across from Smelter Hill, where the Ethereal Traders – the bizarre, bandage-wrapped bundles of arcane energy – did business in rare goods. There was one in particular he sought out, near the entrance to the World’s End Tavern. “Wind Trader Lathrai?” the death knight rumbled as he approached the Ethereal’s stall.
. . . . . The Ethereal turned to look at him – or at least, that’s what he thought, since the bandaged body turned in a fashion that seemed to present its front to him. “Yes? How may I help you today, draenei?”
. . . . . “Word down in the Swapper’s Bargain is that you deal primarily in engineering goods, but that you sometimes appreciate the exotic and rare.” Hadeon paused to gauge the being’s reaction, but it was impossible to read these bandaged energy ball things. He gave up and was simply blunt about it, holding up a small crystal vial filled with clear liquid. “I have something exceedingly exotic and rare here to sell you. A vial of Anhuuri rum from the planet Argus. Approximately 25,000 years old. You do not find rum more aged than this, I would wager.”
. . . . . “And you can provide provenance for the item?”
. . . . . Hadeon cursed inwardly and turned the vial in his fingers, looking for the seal. “Will the seal on the wax do?” He held the vial out, still gripping it tightly, for the Ethereal to inspect the Eredun markings on the seal that proclaimed it to be Anhuuri rum and not – as the vial would otherwise indicate – embalming fluid.
. . . . . The Ethereal laughed; Hadeon thought that was what the sound was. “‘Rum, safe to drink. Not embalming fluid. Anhuuri.’ Why does it have that warning on it?”
. . . . . Hadeon grinned. “My friends back on Argus had a very strange sense of humor…”
. . . . . “I will give you eight hundred gold for it.”
. . . . . The death knight sputtered and yanked the vial back, closing his large hand around it to hide it entirely. “Two thousand, minimum.”
. . . . . The Wind Trader and the death knight each drove a hard bargain, eventually settling on a price of one-thousand-and-three-hundred gold for the single vial of ancient liquor. As Hadeon stuffed the leather bag full of coins into his pack, he whispered, “Thank you, Derius.” Then he settled his pack across his chest where he could keep it safe from thieves, and headed for Smelter Hill.

. . . . . The only smiths at Smelter Hill were brown-skinned orcs, but he really didn’t have the luxury of being picky. With Retz’s assistance, his flawless Orcish impressed them enough for one of the smiths to agree to smooth out the melted metal and file down the spike in his flesh. The smith, an orc male by the name of Ruku, was not very talkative. His eyes widened a little as Hadeon unwrapped the blanket covering his dead and mangled flesh, but he didn’t ask Hadeon how he’d gotten – or survived – the injury. Over the rasping of the file as Ruku worked, Hadeon inquired about a new breastplate, something at least as strong as khorium.
. . . . . “Go to the Terrace of Light,” Ruku rumbled as he reached for a chisel and hammer. “Take one of the portals to Azeroth. Stronger metals than khorium there. Too expensive for me to work with. But if you are getting things melted into you, you clearly need something sturdier than I have. Look for saronite – newly discovered up in Northrend.”
. . . . . Hadeon grumbled, “I do not feel right without plate armor on…”
. . . . . “I will sell you adamantite piece to get you by, yes?” Ruku placed the tip of the chisel against the spur of brittle khorium sticking out of the death knight’s shoulderblade. What in the Nether had this deadie done to get something like this…? On second thought, he really didn’t want to know. Ruku just focused his mind on working with the metal and ignored that it was attached to flesh. A few blows of the hammer on the chisel broke off the spur and he began filing again as he and the death knight haggled a little over the price of the adamantite chestplate.
. . . . . Gold coins changed hands. A large, mostly-fitting chestplate was snapped around Hadeon’s torso. The death knight thanked Ruku for his help, and then left Smelter Hill so hastily he almost left smoke tracks in his wake.

. . . . . “Ugh. Back to the Aldor Rise,” the draenei grumbled as he stood waiting for the lift. Lower City had frayed his nerves badly again. He could feel what had happened there, even with every otherworldly sense shut down. Now that he’d read Ned’s account of the battle, he knew exactly why the press of souls was so strong and so angry there.
. . . . . He stepped onto the lift and began taking the deep – if entirely unnecessary – breaths that he’d been trained to do prior to a meditation eons ago when his Vindicator training began. If he could just get calm enough, perhaps he could wall off himself from Lower City and only listen to the souls on Aldor Rise.
. . . . . The Rise was mostly empty, just a few Peacekeepers milling outside the Shrine. Hadeon studiously did not look in that direction as he moved to the garden pool and sat down on the raised lip of stone around it. Deep breaths. Do not think about the High Priestess. Do not think about the Lower City. Just here…just find out what is going on here… Slowly, cautiously, the Death-speaker turned death knight began to release his stranglehold on his otherworldly senses.
. . . . . The first thing he got was an annoyed grumble from Retz at being shut out all day. “Necessary,” he mumbled, then closed his eyes to shut out the visual world. With measured paces, he listened a little more…a little more…
. . . . . Kil’jaden’s foul teat! The horrified screams of women and children pressed down upon him. With otherworldly sight, he saw nearly a hundred women – some Vindicators, mostly anchorites and civilians – crying and wailing atop the Aldor Rise. The souls of children, some thirty or so of them, clung to skirts or milled about in confusion. Hadeon was intensely grateful to be sitting down, because this…this was unbearable…this atrocity… As he settled deeper into his sight, the unsung souls of the dead noticed him. He strapped a bit of mental steel to his backbone as the wails increased and the souls crowded around him, keening wildly. At the edge of the Rise, he could feel a dark maelstrom waiting, but he used a technique he had learned from his parasite warlock and threw up a wall of energy to block out the rest of Shattrath.
. . . . . Honor and duty demanded nothing less from him, no matter that he sat alone on Aldor Rise, no matter that he was shunned by the Light – he had to at least attempt to point these souls to rest. Biting his tongue to hold back the hymn, his physical eyes still closed, he searched among the souls, looking for the shade of Death-speaker…“Anessa,” he murmured softly, trying to call her forward with his voice.
. . . . . “Huh. So was that the warlock or the imp?” came a gruff voice to Hadeon’s left.
. . . . . His eyes snapped open, focusing an extremely disoriented gaze on the shirtless, heavily scarred and tattooed, blind kaldorei elf. The elf folded his arms across his bared chest and seemed to be regarding Hadeon intently. “Neither. Go away,” Hadeon snarled, his voice strained with the effort of holding onto both physical and otherworldly sight at the same time.
. . . . . “I don’t think I will. I been feelin’ somethin’ at this spot for two weeks now, and you’re the first one I seen notice it too. It’s demonic energy – not quite as demonic as you, though – so I figure ya must know what it is if you’re sittin’ here.” The kaldorei nodded down at the tiles between him and the death knight, and stood his ground.
. . . . . “I am not demonic,” Hadeon growled, still trying to hold onto both worlds.
. . . . . “What were ya ‘fore ya died, hm? Warlock?”
. . . . . “I was a De-…” Hadeon stopped, remembering what Akiius had told him about how the world saw them now. “Detailed Vindicator. Special detail service.” Inside his mind, Retz snorted.
. . . . . “Went bad, huh? That ‘appens.” The elf shifted on his feet, his soft leather boots making a sound too soft for Hadeon to hear over the keening souls begging for his attention.
. . . . . “None of your business,” his voice cracked on the last word. He had to tamp down his irritation. This elf might know something. “Anessa was a Vindicator with me. She is dead.”
. . . . . The elf bowed slightly from the waist at this. “So the soul screamin’ under this demonic signature really is neither…”
. . . . . Hadeon nodded curtly and closed his eyes again, trying to reach for Anessa’s soul through the cacophony. If he could just sing a few of them away… He felt rather than saw the elf flop down on the stone wall around the garden pool next to him. This close and this deep in otherworldly sight, he could tell there was definitely something dark lurking around the elf, but it didn’t feel malevolent, so he left well enough alone. Ignoring the elf next to him, he touched two fingers to his forehead and began to sing quietly, his voice hardly carrying farther than the nearby lift, a hymn to guide a soul to the Light. It was a newer hymn, the Eredun words shifted and rearranged around the Draenei dialect until the hymn was a paean to the Light as the Draenei knew it.
. . . . . At least a dozen of the unsung and forgotten souls in the immediate vicinity bowed their heads and faded into golden sparkles of Light.

. . . . . Bracing his purple-skinned hands on either side of him, the elf leaned back slightly and regarded the large and clearly dead draenei singing some sort of pretty, quiet song. He didn’t know a lick of Draenei, but it was soothing to listen to anyway, so he sat and listened instead of interrupting the fellow again. It was odd how the dead draenei’s form seemed to be the usual shadowy gray of most physical entities in the world, but kept having these weird flashes of demonic green energy signature popping up from time to time. This dead guy definitely knew something about demons and he intended to damn well find out what was going on here.

. . . . . With some of the traumatized souls of the fall of Shattrath returned to the Light, the pressure on Hadeon’s head eased up. He kept singing as he searched for the shade of Anessa in the crush of dead women. There. By Velen’s beard… What had happened to her? The shade, too weak to be a full soul, appeared to have been cleaved in two vertically. Only the right half of Anessa was there. The left…was missing. From her half a mouth, she spoke softly, “Hadeon… Finally, you heard me.”
. . . . . Hadeon could only blink his otherworldly eyes at her, dumbfounded.
. . . . . “Find the imp. Send the rest of me home; I can feel the other half of me is off this world. The elf’s hunches are right.” A ghostly black curl fell forward as she bowed her half a head and faded into the Light.
. . . . . The death knight let his song fade into an exhausted hum, unable to send all the souls of Shattrath to the Light alone. Perhaps the Aldor could figure it out, do it themselves… Retz’s amused smile was so subtle it simply annoyed Hadeon as he closed off his otherworldly senses – instead of alarming him.
. . . . . “Nice song,” the blind elf said with an appreciative nod.
. . . . . “I used to sing it with Anessa,” Hadeon said, which was entirely the truth, yet not an explanation at all.
. . . . . “So are we both gonna dance aroun’ each other ‘fore askin’ what we wanna know, or are we gonna be men about it?”
. . . . . Hadeon snorted and looked at the kaldorei’s blindfolded visage. “Blunt, are you?”
. . . . . A smirk passed over the elf’s dark purple lips. “I like to get to the point. What in Elune’s name just ‘appened here?”
. . . . . Hadeon tapped his plated fingers against the stone lip of the water garden, considering how much to tell this mysterious blind elf.
. . . . . “If it helps any, I’ll go first,” the elf said with a chuckle. “Kaeten Tindalos, demon hunter. I was passin’ through Shattrath to help mop up aroun’ the Black Temple when I noticed a demonic signature clingin’ to this spot. Figured it was a weird place for demons to be, seein’ as it’s the Aldor Rise, so I been tryin’ to figure out the story since.”
. . . . . “Strange accent for a kaldorei.”
. . . . . “Yeah, well ya sound like an orc tryin’ to speak decent Common.”
. . . . . “Fair enough.” Hadeon nodded slowly, forgetting that the elf couldn’t see the gesture. “Hadeon, former Vindicator. I came here to look for Anessa’s soul. An orc warlock siphoned it and fed it to an imp during the fall of Auchindoun. Just now, I sang half of it back to the Light. The other half…I do not know. It is off this world, and now I have to find an imp.” He left off the last part of what she had said, waiting to see how Kaeten would respond.
. . . . . “Interestin’…” The kaldorei turned his head to face the spot on the tiles which was exactly like all the other spots now. “Awful lot of ‘off this world’ out there, yanno.” He smirked when the draenei groaned. “Good thing ya got a demon hunter who wants to know why in Elune’s name you’re swirlin’ with fel signature who’s willin’ to swap knowledge with ya.”
. . . . . Hadeon looked at Kaeten, startled. “What?”
. . . . . Kaeten flashed very white, slightly pointed teeth in an almost feral grin. “I’ll help ya hunt your imp if ya tell me why you’re demonic but not demon even a little bit. It’s freaky, ‘s what it is. So I’m curious.”
. . . . . Muffled into silence by the grip Hadeon had on his sense of disembodied souls, Retz tried to tell Hadeon this was a bad deal, that he really should not agree to this, that secrecy was a very good idea. Not a bit of it got through. “Ehm. Alright then. Help me find this imp and I will solve your mystery for you.”
. . . . . Kaeten Tindalos cackled with glee and stood up, not at all wobbly or unsure of where he was going like a blind man would be. “How ya feel ‘bout portal travel, Hadeon?”
. . . . . Still sitting, the draenei blinked, then made a concerned noise. “Have not actually travelled by portal that I can recall. Why?”
. . . . . “Pack up. I got a hunch–” Kaeten missed Hadeon’s suddenly very sharp look– “that we gotta take a portal to be gettin’ off this world.”

. . . . . “Kil’jaeden’s foul teat, Kaeten, if you ever do such a horrible thing to me again, I will string you up by your pointed ears and skin you alive,” Hadeon gasped. He was on his hands and knees in the grass at the base of a tall stone tower. Thubaab grazed placidly nearby the elf’s lazy stormsaber cat. The portal had deposited all of them at the base of the tower, since the mounts had gone through first. Hadeon felt rather like his brain had been pulled out through his lower back and shoved back in through his eye sockets.
. . . . . Kaeten simply cackled.
. . . . . Once Hadeon managed to get his nausea under control again, he and Kaeten set off for a place to stable their mounts for a few days. The draenei death knight snarled wordlessly as a dark-plated human followed by a shambling monstrosity of a ghoul hurried past them.
. . . . . The blindfolded elf waved a calloused, blade-nicked hand at Hadeon. “Cool it. Common sight around here. Most death knights ain’t got a lick of decency, present company excepted.” Kaeten, despite being blindfolded and ostensibly unable to see, wolf-whistled as a scantily-clad kaldorei girl ran past. “Welcome to Stormwind City, Hadeon.”

Disappearing Act

2009-12-17T12:00:00.014-05:00

Written while listening to Walk Away From the Sun by Seether.
((Nods must be given to Queen of the Darkness by Anne Bishop – which I was reading during the writing of this piece and ended up influencing it heavily, Destron's description of Lower City, as well as a song by Cassandra Syndrome that will likely be featured on the next story but also ended up influencing this one. Also, with Icecrown Citadel out and the preponderance of Cult of the Damned “Deathspeaker Initiate” mobs and the like, I realize that I have totally run off with this title when I made it “originally Draenei” and originally decent. Thus, some of that is…explained, I suppose, in the denouement of this story. Still, my stories are not and never have been canon, so it doesn’t really matter to anyone but me. ;P))

. . . . . Walking corpses. They were all walking corpses. They just hadn’t yet figured out they were supposed to lie down.
. . . . . Everywhere he looked, all he saw were hungry ghosts and walking corpses. Screaming to be heard. Live ones, dead ones, some as big as your head, all screaming at him. Why couldn’t they be just a little quieter?
. . . . . He pulled his cowl forward, trying to hide his face from the dead. All he wanted was peace! Soft lavender grass and graceful arches. But the grass here was green. The arches were crumbling. He was crumbling.
. . . . . Why wouldn’t they stop screaming?

. . . . . Shattrath’s Lower City was a cesspool. Between the flux and scorched metal smell from Smelter Hill and the rancid stench of chicken shit at the lower end of Swapper’s Bargain, it left Hadeon very grateful that breathing was an unnecessary remnant of living. He simply stopped the habitual process while he was doing business in the Lower City. It was much harder, though, to block out the memories of this section of the grand city as it had been – before it became a shattered ruin housing dirty, angry outcasts. Like all draenei architecture, it had been made of softly rounded stone and graceful arches, several gardens tucked among the residential sections and two fountains at either end where small, bustling, colorful markets held court.
. . . . . The Death-speaker kept his mind strictly on his search for a decently-sized sliver of mirror. He could feel the true horrors of the Lower City – horrors far worse than chicken shit – lurking at the corners of his vision. If he opened his mind to his otherworldly senses, the crush of souls from the fall of the city would push him into the abyss he always seemed to walk the edge of, send him tumbling into the cold rage hovering just on the other side of sanity. So he stuck to something safe – finding a mirror.
. . . . . “Ya look lovesick,” came a gravelly, strongly-accented voice to Hadeon’s left. He turned to regard a gangly male troll in one of the most hideously garish outfits he had ever seen. “Special someone be gettin’ ya down, eh? No worries, no worries. Ya get this medallion from me, ya wear it when ya see ‘em, and they be all over ya, man!” The troll gave Hadeon a broad, tusked grin and lifted a brassy medallion on a ratty cord from a table full of trinkets and baubles set out in front of him.
. . . . . “Sick? I look sick?” Hadeon asked, sounding offended. His Common had greatly improved since his last visit to Shattrath. He really should have kept his helmet on today; he just hadn’t wanted to trap the scents of Lower City so close to his nose. With what little it still did for him to detect smells, it seemed poor repayment to force it to suffer Lower City.
. . . . . The troll set the medallion down and spread both hands wide in a mollifying gesture. “Hey, hey, no offense, man. Look over here, I be havin’ just the thing for ya.”
. . . . . Catching a glimpse of something silvery and shiny among the grass-skirted dolls and large chunks of soap, Hadeon tilted his head to the side with an obnoxiously loud crack from two vertebrae in his neck. Entertained by the faint wince that crossed the troll’s features, he stepped up to the table to look over the curios and talismans. He let the troll babble on about his tried and true mystical methods while he spent long enough at the table to make it seem like he couldn’t find anything he wanted. With a rattle of plate pauldrons, he shrugged his shoulders and turned away from the table.
. . . . . “C’mere! I can help ya defy death itself! Just wear this madstone ‘round your neck, see,” The troll lifted up a painted rock on a leather cord and raised his voice. “Ya be able to come back if ya find yerself in the spirit world!”
. . . . . If only it were that easy, came the wry tones of the parasitic warlock soul sharing Hadeon’s body. The draenei death knight chuckled softly and turned back to the table, keeping his expression carefully bored. “Defy death, hm? Honestly, how useful is that if it is around your body’s neck while your spirit is running around in the spirit world?”
. . . . . The troll sputtered and waved the stone at him. “Guaranteed to work!”
. . . . . Hadeon grabbed a small black pouch around his neck and lifted it clear from underneath his breastplate to fish in it. He held up three silver coins in his thick blue fingers. “I will give you three for it, if you throw in the little piece of mirror too.”
. . . . . “Come on, ol’ Griftah be a refugee!” the garishly-attired troll protested. But as the draenei started to turn away again, the troll shot out one teal-colored hand towards the coins. “Not my fault I be an ENTERPRISIN’ refugee…” With his other hand, he picked up the piece of mirror and held it out with the ‘madstone’ on the cord. His fingers twitched for the coins. Hadeon nodded amiably and the exchange was made. “I be practically givin’ ‘em away,” the troll grumbled.
. . . . . Hadeon looped the cord around his neck and tucked it – along with his coin pouch – under his breastplate. The mirror, a rectangular piece about the size of a human woman’s palm, went into a side pouch of his leather pack. “Pleasure doing business, Griftah,” he rumbled.

. . . . . The death knight threw all of his rather considerable armor-plated weight into hauling on the reins draping down from the elekk’s tusked mouth – to no avail. The animal squealed at him and refused to budge. “Oh come on, you stupid beast. It is just a lift!” Hadeon and his newly-purchased beast of burden engaged in a short staring match which the elekk won. The ghosts of Shattrath were starting to get too loud to block out, putting the Death-speaker on edge and making him even more irritable than usual.
. . . . . As he walked around the stubbornly immovable elekk to pull back a hoof and kick it in the rump, a Shattrath Peacekeeper on his own elekk thundered past towards the Aldhaar Lift. He pulled back on the reins and regarded Hadeon – who set his hoof down before he actually kicked his own elekk. Hadeon could have sworn the low trumpeting sound the beast made was the elekk form of a cackle.
. . . . . “They obey better when you actually ride them,” the Peacekeeper said in a laconic drawl. “You might give that a try.” He thumped his hooves on either side of his elekk’s back and led it obediently onto the lift as it settled on the ground level once more.
. . . . . Hadeon stared, envious of the Peacekeeper’s easy control over the stubborn, recalcitrant, pain-in-the-ass animal. He only barely noticed that his own elekk was lifting its tail in enough time to dive out of the way.
. . . . . To his chagrin, the Peacekeeper had been right. Mounted in the saddle with his hooves and the reins to guide the elekk – whom he had decided to call Thubaab – the death knight found his new pack animal to be much easier to guide. It seemed to be less afraid of the lift with someone nudging it along. Death knight and elekk made it onto the Aldhaar Lift the next time it descended, and upon reaching the top, Hadeon tugged the reins to guide the animal towards the Shrine of Unending Light at the far end of the Aldor Rise.
. . . . . He knew what he was, he knew that the Light no longer answered when he called, but he had always sought out a blessing before a long journey when he was alive. It seemed a good habit to be in, when blessings were available, at least. In the twisted shadow kingdom of lost souls, Retz grumbled at the delay, but Hadeon had shut down his otherworldly senses so tightly that he barely heard even the other soul in his own body.
. . . . . Stopping some distance away from the Shrine near a pool of water on the tier, Hadeon looked back over his shoulder at the sparkling golden beam from the Seat of the Naaru. Once, he would have gone straight there, would have sought a blessing from the Naaru. But now he was uncomfortable even in A’dal’s presence, felt he was somehow unclean and unworthy. An anchorite’s blessing, if he could get it, was quite enough.
. . . . . He kicked Thubaab forward and was startled nearly into falling from the saddle by a hoarse shout. “’Ey, watch it, ya hippopotamic land mass! I’m walkin’ here!” Hadeon jerked the reins back and leaned to the side to see around the elekk’s head, discovering that he had nearly run right over a very angry-looking male elf. Glowing, cold blue eyes met subdued, dark-colored cloth – the man was blind. “Rotten deader,” the grizzled, scarred, shirtless elf snarled, “Always have to be trompin’ through someone’s business. Get on with ya, then!” He waved a purple-skinned hand dismissively and smacked the elekk’s trunk away as it tried to sniff him.
. . . . . Hadeon gave the elf one of his better quelling looks, but it was met with a droll sneer. Two men who had both seen some version of hell – if the scars marring the tattoos on the elf’s bared chest and his blindfolded face were any indication – sized one another up. With a respectful incline of his head, Hadeon kicked the right side of his elekk until it sidled out of the elf’s way. The elf walked a step or two, turned around, circled back, and kept walking in the same few square tiles, his attention back on whatever business he was about.
. . . . . “Strange…” Hadeon shook his head and guided his elekk forward, his senses too closed off to hear the screaming shade there calling his name. Retz, closer to the spirit world, heard it; the parasitic warlock said nothing.

. . . . . At the Shrine of Unending Light, High Priestess Ishanah shook her head sadly as the very large and clearly dead draenei man filled the doorway. They got these from time to time, lost souls seeking to come back. It was so hard to tell them that they could not, that they were Broken and rejected, to watch their faces fall and their shoulders slump as they shuffled back out of the Shrine. She put her best priestess face and smoothed a hand down her robe as he approached. “Greetings, traveler,” she murmured softly.
. . . . . Heavy plate armor rattled as the large draenei knelt several feet away from her and bowed his head to her. “I come seeking a blessing,” he rumbled in a gravelly baritone.
. . . . . High Priestess Ishanah’s brow furrowed. This was a little different. Usually, they were seeking re-admittance by the Light. She cleared her throat and looked everywhere but at the dead draenei kneeling in front of her. “I cannot provide what you seek. The Light no longer shines upon such as you.”
. . . . . “Is a simple traveler’s blessing so much to ask?” he said too softly, too gently. The air around him took on a chill.
. . . . . The High Priestess rubbed her hands up both her arms, chasing away the cold. “It is. I know it is hard to hear, but you are Broken and no longer welcomed by the Light. It is best that you leave here.”
. . . . . The draenei’s bowed head rose, his eyes piercing her with a cold blue glare. A soft growl was all the warning she got before a freezing cold, plated hand closed around her left wrist. “Let the Light speak for itself, priestess. A small blessing is not something we draenei cannot provide even to those shunned by the Light.” In contrast to the bruising grip on her wrist, his tone was malevolently gentle, the cold rage tightly leashed behind those frozen eyes. “I was a follower of the Light too. I know what we are allowed to do. I only came here seeking peace.”
. . . . . Cold sweat broke out on High Priestess Ishanah’s brow and she looked around the Shrine. Where had her Peacekeepers gone?
. . . . . “Priestess.” The cold intensified.
. . . . . She shivered and nodded, her right hand coming up to trace a symbol of the Light over the dead draenei’s forehead. “Ark’hanon poros,” she murmured. Journey well…
. . . . . The death knight released her wrist and inclined his head towards her. “Thank you, priestess.” Where her fingers had traced over the cracked scaleplates of his brow, a faintly welted mark was forming. He seemed unaware of it as he turned away from her, his shoulders thrown back defiantly as he left the shivering High Priestess in the Shrine.
. . . . . High Priestess Ishanah watched nervously through the open doorway as the dead draenei used the side of his saddle to get up onto the elekk waiting for him outside. She jumped when one of the alcove doors to her right opened and a Peacekeeper emerged. “Where the hell were you when I needed you here?!” she shrieked at the puzzled Peacekeeper.

. . . . . Death knight Hadeon guided his elekk to the backside of the inn near the pass towards Nagrand. It was only through supreme exertion of control that he kept his hands from shaking on the reins. A cold, killing rage filled him, fueled by the burn on his forehead and at his fingertips and the echo of the High Priestess’s words spinning around in his head. What sort of close-minded, Light-addled fools had his people become? Throughout their long exodus, no matter how harsh the planet they stopped on, no matter how backwards the intelligent race they found – when they found any, an anchorite could always offer at least a simple traveler’s blessing. It had nothing to do with rejection by the Light and everything to do with common courtesy towards others!
. . . . . No longer welcomed by the Light… The words spun in his mind like blades, cutting away at his self-control. He was coming undone. The Light no longer shines upon you…
. . . . . Only partially protected by the saddle from the frosty rage seeping from the death knight on its back, Thubaab the elekk danced nervously in place until it backed its tail against the inn’s wall.
. . . . . Goat… came the Orcish tenor of the parasite soul sharing his body. Hadeon, you already knew this. You knew you were not of the Light any longer. You’ve known for years and years. Back down.
. . . . . Retz’s use of his actual name gave Hadeon pause, startled him enough that he took a step back from the killing edge. “She must do that to all the death knights who enter the Shrine,” he rumbled, his hands still clenched so tightly on the reins that his plated gauntlets creaked. “The Aldor must sanction that sort of mistreatment. We must be too much of an abomination for even the simplest comfort of a blessing.”
. . . . . You find comfort in setting your fingers on fire? Retz asked with a dry tone.
. . . . . “If it burns, then it means the Light still exists. I can still remember it and dream of one day returning to it. The day it doesn’t burn is the day I know it is truly gone.”
. . . . . Weird.
. . . . . Hadeon snorted and spent several more minutes mastering himself and replacing the mask of sanity and composure he had nearly lost. Slowly, his hands unclenched from the reins of the elekk and his hooves stopped digging into its sides. The elekk stopped trying to back into the left wall of the inn. “Sorry, Thubaab,” he muttered, patting the beast’s side in front of the saddle. “We should start walking already. Telaar is a long journey from here…”
. . . . . Hadeon thumped his hooves against his elekk’s sides and nudged it towards the High Path Gate and the tunnel beyond. After he passed beyond the Gate, his baritone voice rang out against the walls of the tunnel, empty but for him in the late afternoon. Although it made his dead tongue burn to do it, he sang a hymn to the Light as he left Shattrath and its wailing souls and bitter, bitchy priestesses behind.

. . . . . None but shadows dared draw near. Only shadows circled around him, poking and prodding and laughing and snarling and shoving and walking away…
. . . . . One of the walking corpses shoved a bowl of stew into his gnarled hands and patted his shoulder gently. The touch made him want to cry and run away. No touchy! No…! Leave the poor thing alone… But this walking corpse was persistent. It did this to him every day. How many days? How long had it been?
. . . . . Like windrocs circling a corpse, the hungry ghosts circled around him, nipping and biting and screaming. Remember! they shouted. You must remember! Sing to us!
. . . . . A song of nonsense, Draenei syllables mixed with bits of Orcish and something like ancient Eredun, burst from his warped mouth. If it would stop the screaming, he would sing.

. . . . . After so long beneath the overcast skies of Terokkar or the fel-clouded skies of Shadowmoon Valley, Hadeon had forgotten what sunlight and blue skies were really like. Emerging from the tunnel onto the High Path in Nagrand was like emerging from the inter-dimensional ship onto a new planet all over again. Terokkar had once been sunlit and verdant like this…
. . . . . The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the land as Hadeon guided Thubaab along the long, windy path through the mountains. He hadn’t been back this way since they first covered the ship in stone and dispersed across Draenor, but if he recalled properly, he should be able to reach the bottom of the High Path before sundown.
. . . . . The mad, swirling, hungry ghosts of Shattrath left behind him, the Death-speaker turned death knight slowly released his mental grip on his otherworldly senses. Nagrand had escaped the worst of what tore Draenor apart. He liked to believe it was due to what was left of K’ure, buried beneath the massive Oshu’gun diamond. K’ure had been his comfort – had been everyone’s comfort – in those early centuries of reconciling the pain of the Man’ari betrayal. Hadeon wondered if K’ure still waned in the remnants of the ship.
. . . . . Inside his head, inside the holy light prison he was kept in, the parasite soul of warlock Retz perked up from what had seemed to be a nap. That big diamond in Nagrand holds a Naaru?
. . . . . “It does, Retz,” Hadeon rumbled over the thumps of Thubaab’s massive feet plodding down the path. “That was how we arrived here on Draenor, on the ship buried in that diamond.”
. . . . . Hrnh. Well, figure that… Retz bounced a foot under his robe as he sat thoughtfully in his prison. Legend did hold that the mountain fell from the sky hundreds of years ago… You know our ancestors’ souls are sent there, goat?
. . . . . “Orc ancestors?”
. . . . . Mm-hmm. We call it the Mountain of Spirits. It is holy land.
. . . . . Hadeon pondered this as Thubaab thundered along the path. It occurred to him that if the orcs could hear K’ure’s call, even just a little, then perhaps they weren’t really all that bad after all. Then again…there was still Auchindoun. His heart – spiritually speaking, anyway – hardened again.
. . . . . Retz sighed and went back to his nap.

. . . . . It was four days of journeying during the day and sitting up at night next to a snoring elekk, cradling the small purple crystal that reminded him that he was not alone in his suffering, before Hadeon reached Telaar. Although Nagrand had escaped the worst of the war which shattered the planet, it had not been wholly sheltered. Inexplicable islands of land floated in the air, shards broken off the mountains surely. The arches of the first draenei town to be built after the crash were aged, broken and crumbling in places. Teal crystals, brought from Argus on the inter-dimensional ship, sparkled in the sunlight atop many of the buildings in Telaar. The crystals channeled arcane energy into the town to light it at night and help the mages conjure the bland but nutritious food that many draenei still ate.
. . . . . Hadeon grimaced as he thought about the conjured food. He could not taste anymore, although he still ate to feed the blood worms so they would keep regenerating his corpse, but as soon as they had settled on Draenor, conjured food was one of the first things he shunned. Almost as if thumbing his nose at the concept, he dug into his pack for an apple – of which he had bought several from the old human grandmother in Swapper’s Bargain, Lower City – and started snacking on it. Hrm. One of his teeth was getting a little wobbly. Going to have send one of the baby blood worms up there to regenerate his gums. Again.
. . . . . Thubaab the elekk perked up at the scent of the apple and waved its trunk back towards Hadeon until he fished another apple out and placed it at the end of the grasping trunk. With a singular loud crunch, the apple disappeared into the elekk’s mouth.
. . . . . The wooden bridge spanning the gap between the eastern side of the plains and the town of Telaar creaked and swayed as Thubaab lumbered across. Inside the twisted kingdom of lost souls, Retz’s dark red skin went a little green. Oh, ew… Hurry this up, will you. I don’t like the swaying… Hadeon just chuckled in response and tapped his hooves against the elekk’s sides. He and Thubaab were getting along a lot better than when he’d first purchased the animal.
. . . . . “So,” he murmured under his breath as the elekk hit solid ground again. “We just have to find our Brok…en… Oh hell.” A measured glance around quickly showed him that almost all the town’s inhabitants were the mutated, devolved Broken. “How am I supposed to find the forgetful one? Ugh.” He rubbed a plated hand over his face and looked up at the midday sun. “Inn first, I suppose. Searching later.” Nudging the elekk with hooves and gentle tugs on the reins, he headed for the tall spires of the inn at Telaar.

. . . . . Eons past, when they had all been eredar, his people were extremely social – always taking meals together and living in communal groups. In the long exodus, as they became draenei, they continued this tradition, taking comfort in one another’s presence on some level that went deeper, closer to the soul, than it seemed other intelligent races did. One of many reasons why the separation of the Kro’kul from the “unaffected” was so painfully wrong was because of this tendency. The Broken were already cut off from the Light…but to cut them further from the communal presence they had known all their lives was the height of cruelty. It was no wonder so many of them went mad.
. . . . . Here in Telaar, the Kro’kul were so numerous that they socialized among themselves, holding communal dinners every night which they kindly deigned to allow the few “unaffected” draenei to attend. Hadeon found himself sitting with a group of seven Kro’kul on the benches set around one of the teal light-giving crystals in the evening. They all – even he – had a bowl of hearty stew instead of conjured food. He noticed a young man, hardly more than a century or two old, but hornless and drop-jawed in the way of most Broken, staring at him as he ladled spoonfuls of soup into his mouth. He quirked up an eyebrow. “What?”
. . . . . The young man coughed and looked away quickly, then back. “I did not think you dead sorts ate.” He jerked his chin towards the bowl in Hadeon’s hands.
. . . . . “I do,” came the gruff response. Did everyone know he was a death knight just by looking at him?
. . . . . “Hrnh.” The young man turned his head as, from the shadows, a rusty baritone rose up in a song of syllabic nonsense. “Oh Naaru’s sake, he’s at it again. Excuse me.” He set his bowl down on the bench and slumped off into the shadows past the benches and towards the backside of the Telaar inn.
. . . . . Curious, Hadeon set his bowl down too and followed the young Broken man into the shadows. As he followed, he heard a phrase or two that sounded almost like one of the hymns to sing a soul back to the Light. That couldn’t be, no one but him knew those now.
. . . . . “Naz,” the young Broken man said, crouching down next to a huddled Broken draped in a cowl and thick blanket. “Naz, you did not eat your stew. Eat before you start singing, alright?”
. . . . . The Broken covered in cloth batted a gnarled hand at the younger Broken, trying to wave him away. “No, no, the singing must come first. Always first. They need to hear it. It shuts them up for a while so I can sleep.”
. . . . . There was no way Hadeon could hide the heavy clank of his plate armor and approach silently, so he didn’t try. “What is he singing?” he asked the younger Broken.
. . . . . “Nonsense,” he said with a dismissive shake of his head. “Every night, soon as darkness falls, he sings for about an hour. Naz mostly stays back here behind the inn. He says if he moves too far, the bodies will fall in on him. I’ve given up trying to figure it out.” The younger Broken stood and shook his head. “Best come back and eat before your stew gets cold.”
. . . . . “I’ll be there in a minute.” The death knight crouched with a creak and groan of plate armor next to the huddled Broken. “Hey, Naz… Sing for me?”
. . . . . The cowl shook a moment before the Broken man turned dull, cloudy blue eyes to Hadeon. His face was smooth and sunken, his jaw low and the scaleplates on his forehead fused solid. For several moments, he stared at Hadeon until it seemed to make the death knight uncomfortable enough to look away. “Oh no,” the Broken whispered. “Not you. No, no, you do not deserve the Light. You do not get sung to the Light. Not you.”
. . . . . The High Priestess’s words joined with the Broken’s to lance through Hadeon’s soul. He resisted the urge to double over in pain and simply sat down next to Naz. “Why not?” he asked, proud of himself for keeping the quaver out of his voice.

. . . . . The walking corpse was telling him not to sing until he ate. Then the shadow – the darkest shadow he had seen yet – sat down next to him and told him to sing. What to do? His hands trembled as he pulled his blanket tight around his neck. This shadow, no, this shadow was the bad one. The worst one. It was quite clear, even in the ever-shifting madness. This would not do.

. . . . . “You are a shadow,” the Broken man rumbled. “A traitorous shadow. I have not forgotten. They call me forgotten, but I have not. Oh no no no. I know still the ways. The Light is up there. I am down here. The shadows say sing, but no no, I will not sing for you. You are the bad shadow.”
. . . . . Hadeon tried to make some sort of sense out of the Broken’s ramblings. Forgotten, Retz said quietly in his mind. Wasn’t that “Naz’theros?” This fellow’s called Naz. Coincidence?
. . . . . In the twisted kingdom of lost souls, the soul of Death-speaker Hadeon blinked at the orc warlock Retz. Of course, he responded before slipping back into the physical world.
. . . . . “You haven’t forgotten,” Hadeon rumbled, turning an intent, cold blue gaze on the cloth-wrapped Broken. “You haven’t forgotten Auchindoun, have you?”
. . . . . The Broken flinched as if shying from a blow. “No. Not there. If I move, the bodies will fall in and crush me. So many corpses… I can’t stitch them all up alone. All red. Red red red. And you,” the Broken hissed suddenly at Hadeon. “You traitorous, murderous shadow. You turned us in. You sided with them.”
. . . . . Hadeon’s hand shot out and clamped over the Broken man’s clenched fists and the blanket tucked under his chin. He pulled until the Broken man’s hands released and turned the gnarled hands over to look at the wrists. As he recognized the dark lines of a tattoo of stitches on the inside of the wrists, he felt the ground drop out from underneath him– “Akiius…” –and then come back up again hard and fast, jolting him roughly. “Death-speaker Akiius.”
. . . . . A memory of a drunken Akiius returning to his guard post at the ship’s entrance, the planet Spretomi, about five-hundred years into the six-hundred or so they had there…his wrists bandaged. They thought he was injured. But no. On a drunken lark, he had decided that it would be hilarious to have permanent stitches etched into his blue skin. Everyone knew that with his skills with a needle and thread, he would be the next Preserver when Tena finally retired…
. . . . . “NO!” the Broken shouted, wrenching his hands free. “Mustn’t say that. It is not to be a Deathspeaker. This is bad.” Somehow, the lack of hyphen in the word translated into the way he said it. “A Deathspeaker is a bad shadow. Speaks of death and pain and fear and evil and madness…”
. . . . . “No, Akiius, don’t you remember? We speak for the dead.” Emotions collided in him, banging against his fragile sanity. Hadeon tried desperately to regain control of his feelings before they spiraled into the cold rage he would not – could not – release on Akiius.
. . . . . “You do not,” came the raspy, fear-filled whisper. “You betrayed us. You and Ramdor. Ramdor sent forty-seven soft, defenseless anchorites to their deaths, the waiting hands of the red orcs between the tombs and the city. You let them in. Hadeon the Dead, Hadeon the Apostate, Hadeon the Deathspeaker… You do not speak for the dead. You speak of death.” Under the blanket, Akiius began to shiver violently, his dulled blue gaze rapidly losing its lucidity. “Cult of the Damned, you are. Legions of Deathspeakers in your wake…”
. . . . . Hadeon was too stunned to respond, feeling a cold rage gathering in the abyss below him. “Where did you hear all this, Akiius? Who told you these lies?”
. . . . . “Lies? LIES?!” The Broken’s cowl fell backwards as he lunged towards the armor-plated death knight and grabbed onto his facial tentacles. He pushed his face so close to Hadeon’s that even his mostly dead nose could pick up the scent of stew on Akiius’s breath. “I crawled out from under the corpses of twelve red orcs to watch you command the cultists to begin their necromancy. To watch you and the Stitcher and the Fighter go follow that madman human-orc man. I stayed at the crypts for weeks, bowing and scraping, Kro’kul in form and function.” The hands grasping Hadeon’s facial tentacles shook. “I have not forgotten… And thanks to you, no one may ever speak for the dead again. Only Deathspeakers, no Death-speakers…”

. . . . . So cold… His hands were so cold. Why were his hands cold? They should be under his blanket. The shadow in front of him growled at him like a caged predator being poked with a stick. They all poked him. Poke poke poke. Just a mad Broken. Who cares about poking the mad Broken? No one listens anyway. Except the hungry ghosts. They like it when he sings to them.

. . . . . Hadeon gently pried Akiius’s hands off of his facial tentacles, wincing as one cracked and began weeping sluggish navy blood. What little lucidity was left in the Broken’s face was rapidly fading. When Akiius suddenly began to sing again, fragments of a hymn to mourn the forgotten deceased, Hadeon gently chafed the Broken’s cold hands with the edge of the blanket and tucked them back underneath it. Akiius rocked from side to side, wrapped in cloth, his rusty voice catching and dipping erratically on the hymn.
. . . . . Using it as a means to battle himself back from the edge of madness too, Hadeon joined in, singing a deeper harmony beneath Akiius’s reedy words. The random syllables and Draenei dialect interspersing Akiius’s version of the song slowly smoothed out into the traditional Eredun hymn the longer Hadeon sang by his side. The two men sang of remembrance, of honor and memory, of laying down the burdens of the past and moving into the Light.
. . . . . Past the inn, gathered around the light, the Kro’kul finishing their dinner paused to listen to the sad, slow, sonorous harmony. One or two of them were old enough and sane enough still to know the meaning of the hymn. Wiping their eyes, they explained it to the others, and all sat in silence until the singing stopped. Then they collected up their dishes and went on about the night’s business.

. . . . . Akiius stared dully at the moonlit hill behind the inn. “I did not see it correctly, did I?” he asked after several minutes of silence, his voice carrying more sanity than it had all night.
. . . . . “No, Akiius, you did not.”
. . . . . “If I can remember the words, I will sing for you, then.”
. . . . . “I still have a long road to walk before that time.” Hadeon reached under his breastplate and pulled out a small, ancient, elekk-hide bound book of hymns. “Here. Maybe this will help you remember.” He handed the prayer book to the old, warped Broken.
. . . . . “Thank you.” Akiius clutched the book despite the chill still clinging to it.
. . . . . “There is nothing left for us to rebuild between us is there?”
. . . . . “No, there is not.”
. . . . . The death knight pushed himself up with a rattle and clank of his heavy armor. “What can I do then, Akiius?”
. . . . . “Walk away, Hadeon. Just walk away.”
. . . . . He did.

Prestidigitation

2009-12-14T09:24:00.005-05:00

Written while listening to Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
((Orahei translates to “Lost Ones” while Naz’theros is “Forgotten.” Yes, there are indeed some very silly elements to this second trilogy of stories; I was apparently in a - mostly - comic mood when I wrote these.))

. . . . . “Several decades, a major war, a second inter-dimensional exodus, and two planets. This is impossible. There is no way I will find them.” Despondent, the Death-speaker turned death knight plunged his large blue hands into wild, fragile wisps of hair. A few pieces fell out, their grip on his scalp too weakened by decay to stay put any longer.
. . . . . Excellent. Your duties are done then. Can I have the body back now?
. . . . . “Shut up, Retz.”
. . . . . Spoilsport. The orc soul sharing the body of the draenei death knight writhed around in his bubble prison of holy light until he seemed to be reclining in the “air” of the twisted shadow kingdom of lost souls. He folded ethereal soul hands behind his head and regarded the draenei soul he was forced to cooperate with if he wanted to keep being a soul at all. Fine. Think logically about it. Five souls, Shadow Council, Auchindoun... The soul of Shadow Council warlock Retz the Gut-diviner bounced one foot under his robe, a strange habit he had whenever he was thinking hard. The soul of Death-speaker Hadeon, sitting on the other side of the endless road dividing the dusty gray plain of the twisted kingdom, glared at the parasite warlock. Oh, stop it, goat. The sooner you get this weird draenei Lightie soul stuff done, the sooner we can both rest. I’m just as tired as you are now. The ogar side of Lok’tar ogar sucks.
. . . . . Surprised at this admission by the parasite, death knight Hadeon nodded to himself as he looked around the small camp he’d set up in Terokkar Forest, far enough away from the ruined draenei settlements to not remind him of the loss of his old life and far enough away from the human settlement of Allerian Stronghold that he didn’t have to deal with their Light-waving and shouting about Scourge-born abominations. “I’m listening. If you have any ideas – useful ideas – then I’ll hear you out.” While the soul he shared his body with muttered to himself in Orcish, Hadeon picked up one of his plated gauntlets and began cleaning blood and fur out of the joints. He’d had to clear a few mutated warp-stalkers from the area to secure his campsite.
. . . . . The Shadow Council, for all that it is run by a pack of bloodthirsty savages – scratch that, we are all bloodthirsty savages – is a fairly organized lot. Organization is the only way to get anything on a grand scale done. Do you know how much note-taking was done while we supported all those necromancy experiments? Of course you do. You’re me.
. . . . . “Get to the point, Retz.”
. . . . . The parasitic warlock twisted in his prison again, leaning forward and bringing his hands around to prop his chin in dark red hands. Perhaps there are records of the battle and subsequent experiments on the draenei bodies. You find those, you find your souls.
. . . . . Hadeon flexed the middle finger of the gauntlet a few times to shake the last of the pale warp-stalker fur out of the articulated points. “Honestly, records? Demonic fel orcs doing paperwork?”
. . . . . What do you think an imp is good for anyway? Great note-takers when you can get them to shut up. And the necrolytes too. Most of them were peons, too stupid to write and more useful as sacrifices than helpmeets, but a few of them were damned handy with a quill.
. . . . . “I’m not going back to Auchindoun to dig around for records. That last time nearly drove me mad and I wasn’t there for more than an hour or so. I would have to be a lot better at subterfuge than I really am to be able to get to any records kept there anyway.” Death knight Hadeon set the right gauntlet down and picked up the left to clean it similarly.
. . . . . After those fools blew the place to smithereens trying to summon that elemental, they probably moved their records anyway. The warlock began sketching against the bubble of holy light he was contained in, having been mellowed by it long enough that touching it no longer made his soul-fingers sizzle. He appeared to be drawing a crude map of Terokkar from his own perspective. He stabbed a finger at a point on his map that approximated the location of Stonebreaker Hold. We could try here.
. . . . . Hadeon turned his gauntlet over in his hands, inspecting it while he considered this suggestion. “You think that Kro’kul disguise will work there? They’re probably about as fond of Illidari cultists as I am. Especially since that that special strike force finally took out that demon elf all the little cultists wanted to be like.”
. . . . . You looked at us in a mirror lately? Of course not. Goat, you don’t need a Kro’kul “disguise” anymore. You’re Broken. Face it.
. . . . . Snarling his denial, death knight Hadeon stamped a hoof on the ground as he tossed his gauntlet aside. There was no answering glow of consecrated ground. Only in the twisted kingdom did his soul have any connection to the Light now. Reflexively, he turned his gaze towards Shattrath, the beam of the Seat of the Naaru visible even above the trees of Terokkar Forest. He felt nothing. No connection, no pull, no soft warmth. Only the chill of death and the whispers of ghosts.

. . . . . It was not nearly as hard to get into Stonebreaker Hold as Hadeon thought it would be. He spent a day watching the road into the settlement and saw several very large hoofed and horned folks walk right on in, welcome among the orcs it seemed. They had much larger horns than he did, snouted faces, broader hips, and thinner tails, but these must be those Tauren he has been mistaken for at first in Worlds’ End Tavern. If he affixed some larger horns to his helm and kept it on at all times, covered his skeletally-thin tail with some fur, he might just be able to pass off as one of them – a really short-nosed, thick-tailed one.
. . . . . Finding larger horns in Terokkar Forest proved impossible however. After a day of hunting in the forest, he had come up with nothing but worgs, enraged moths, and those cursed warp-stalkers. If he never saw another warp-stalker, it would be too soon. The worgs, at least, provided an excellent source of brown fur, which he coated the remnants of his once-thick tail with using the sluggish navy gel that had once been blood in his veins as glue.
. . . . . Covered head to hoof in the bulky plate armor he’d had since serving under Gorefiend, the large draenei swaggered like he belonged right up to the gate of Stonebreaker Hold. He purposely mangled his deep baritone voice a lot to sound as if he was speaking while missing much of his face, but his flawless Orcish – courtesy of Retz – and the Orcish styling of his armor seemed to convince the guards that he was a Tauren death knight who’d lost most of his snout and his horns to undeath, and he was seeking a place to rest for the night in the settlement before continuing his journey to Auchindoun to meet up with a group of Horde adventurers assaulting the Shadow Labyrinth.
. . . . . It had been Retz’s idea, too, to tell them that he was headed to Auchindoun. It would make asking about records of the place much less conspicuous. Canny to the last, Retz was. Hadeon begrudgingly offered him silent thanks for the help.
. . . . . Eh. Making up for the help in those early days in Deadwind. Retz offered no more than that as his explanation, his tone bored. But he looked rather pleased to be thanked as he sat in his holy light prison.

. . . . . The warlocks of the Horde in Stonebreaker Hold no longer swore any allegiance with the Shadow Council or their old antics, but most magic users consider it the height of blasphemy to destroy gathered knowledge. Finding the building where the warlocks stayed was simply a matter of listening for the screams of the trapped souls. A great many of the souls were voiceless, trapped animals which keened wordlessly. Hadeon was surprised to find that so few of the Horde’s warlocks carried around bags full of souls from the intelligent races he’d run across.
. . . . . Retz took this revelation somewhat worse, though. Spineless dogs! Bloodless weaklings! No wonder they scrabble for respect now, hidden in a building at the edge of the city like they’re ashamed of their heritage. We command demons, not these weak, pansy Nether creatures with the shell of demons and the fire of a child’s matches. Grumbling and cursing in Orcish, Retz went on until Hadeon began to get a headache from all the ranting.
. . . . . “Shut up, Retz,” he mumbled in Orcish, not daring to use his native tongue in enemy territory. Eventually, the parasite warlock quieted, but he continued to radiate fury at the state of the warlocks of this “new” Horde. Since Retz had been so helpful so far, Hadeon didn’t push his opinion that the new Horde’s warlocks were probably more decent folk for it.
. . . . . His story of being an adventurer heading to Auchindoun carried him as far as into the library of the warlocks’ building, where a brawny, green-skinned orc woman in a dark violet robe glared at him over incongruously delicate glasses. “Right. A death knight. Looking for old Shadow Council records. No way, bull boy,” she growled, narrowing her eyes as she looked him over from his large, cracked hooves to his menacing, face-covering helmet. “I know what you death knights do now that you’re freed. You go rampaging anywhere you damn well please, toting around a risen corpse like it’s your new best friend. Come to think of it, it was probably your old best friend and you killed him.”
. . . . . Hadeon stood before the orc librarian’s desk with his hands held in loose fists at his sides, no risen corpses in sight, entirely baffled at how to respond to her diatribe.
. . . . . “And then it’s just ‘Oops, dropped a little decay on the ground over there, I’m sure the books will be fine.’ They’re damn well not fine! Paper is fragile! Death destroyed the mental capabilities of each and every one of you ‘risen heroes’ and I will not allow you tromp about in my records room, mucking up my organization system and leaving rotting bits of yourself in the stacks.”
. . . . . Hadeon blinked. Inside his head, he asked Retz what to do.
. . . . . Retz had a dreamy expression on his face as he used Hadeon’s eyes to gaze at the orc librarian. Ohhhh, goat. A smart one. I like the smart ones. Hadeon’s snort of disgust was entirely mental. Right. Um. Tell her this…
. . . . . “Well, ma’am, I mean the utmost respect for your books and your organization system. Since you are so brilliant at what you do, I would rather trust you to be ‘tromping about’ in the library because you will know exactly where to find things. I would be deeply appreciative of any help you could offer, and this information may save the lives of my fellow adventurers at Auchindoun if we know what sort of experiments went on there and what we may face.” Hadeon’s throat hurt from speaking with his mangled ‘no-snout’ voice for so long, but he was pleased to see the orc woman stand up and nod at him.
. . . . . “Fine. But if a single one of these records starts to crumble after you touch it, I will geld you. I don’t care if you deaders don’t actually use your balls anymore. I can still make it hurt.” She stomped away into the stacks to find the old records Hadeon requested.
. . . . . I like her, Retz piped up.
. . . . . “Sadly,” Hadeon murmured quietly, trying to pick a response that the orc woman might overhear and simply think was a response to her – instead of to the voice in his head.
. . . . . After thirty minutes or so of standing around in front of the desk in the records room, he had nearly decided to go rummaging around in the stacks anyway when the orc woman reappeared with four leather-bound journals stacked in her arms. “Records of Councilmen Herix, Kordolma, Gurtoc, and Ned.”
. . . . . Hadeon blinked. “Ned?”
. . . . . The orc woman looked down at the top journal in her arms. “Short for Neddelibranggok the Highly-Unstable, it seems.”
. . . . . I remember him. Right brilliant warlock, actually. Had a penchant for Nagrand Cherries.
. . . . . Thankful that his helm hid his grimace at the mention of the rather foul “treat,” Hadeon reached his plated hands out for the journals.
. . . . . The orc woman jerked back so sharply her glasses fell off her face and clattered to the floor. “You’re not a Tauren! You’ve got five fingers! GUARDS!!” She clutched the four journals to her chest and scrabbled backwards.
. . . . . “Sorry about this,” Hadeon said in Orcish as he moved around the desk quickly and shot his arm out to connect the outside of his plated left forearm with the left side of the orc woman’s head. To his immense dismay, he discovered then that orc women are very sturdy. She rocked to the side and narrowed her eyes at him, then drove a robed knee into his groin with a loud clank and enough force to actually lift his hooves off the ground an inch before he dropped back down. Never as thankful for his deadened nerves than at that moment, he used her off-balance stance to push her over. As she fell backwards, he grabbed the journals from her hands and sprinted for the door.
. . . . . Two orc guards loomed in the doorway with blades drawn, while a screeching, angry warlock librarian was untangling herself from her robes and getting to her feet. “Just great,” death knight Hadeon grumbled in Draenei as he shifted the journals to his left hand and used his right to pull his mace free. He stomped a hoof on the floor, spreading an unholy mix of death and decay across the area around him in a sickly red mist. It had its intended effect, causing the two guards to begin hopping frantically as the decay ate away at their armored boots and then their green-skinned feet. The mace followed with a loud double crack, two hard orcish skulls like smashed eggshells to the spiked adamantite mace.
. . . . . Entirely repulsed by the necessity of it, death knight Hadeon summoned up a blast of unholy necromancy from the jewel that pulsed inside his chest and aimed it at one of the two fresh corpses he had made. “I am so sorry about this…” The orcish ghoul stood up, its head leaking as it wobbled from side to side. There was a flash of shadowy green as the orc warlock woman threw a coil of death magic at his back, but it only gave him a little more strength to run. Using the ghoul as a shield, Hadeon ran from the building and into the settlement, where hue and cry was already being raised.
. . . . . Get moving, goat! Retz shouted in Hadeon’s mind as the draenei death knight stopped to get his bearings. There. Fence. Commanding the ghoul to follow closely behind him as a shield against the spells being thrown his way, mace in one hand and journals in the other, Hadeon ran for the fence like the Burning Legion itself was on his hooves. Unfortunately, hooves are not so good for climbing. Fortunately, the fence was only about eight feet high, so he only had to jump and scrabble to get over it, tossing the journals over first to free up a hand. The sharpened points of the wooden fence left deep gouges in his plate armor. The ghoul seemed confounded by the obstacle. “Very sorry about this!” he shouted in Orcish as he yanked back the unholy energy infusing the ghoul and let it crumple as an inert corpse on the Horde’s side of the fence.
. . . . . A shouting mob of orc warlocks on his tail, Hadeon scooped the journals up and ran into the forest.

. . . . . “I don’t like this, Retz. It seems way too damned convenient that the very records I would want would be in the very first place I looked.” Death knight Hadeon was back in his camp, sitting on a fallen log and glancing at the four journals stacked next to him while he cleaned his tail. “I think you’re setting me up.” He shook out the rag he was using to remove the frozen, gelled blood and fur off his tail.
. . . . . Oh, come on, goat, the parasitic warlock soul shot back, his tone annoyed, It was only a hunch that you might find them there. The things you look for are always in the last place you look anyway.
. . . . . “Yeah, it just happened to also be the first place. It just seems suspicious.”
. . . . . The orc soul made a disgusted noise and turned around in his bubble of holy light in the twisted shadow kingdom of lost souls to present his back to Death-speaker Hadeon’s soul. You’re welcome, Retz, he grumbled in a mocking tenor that came nowhere near matching Hadeon’s baritone growl. I appreciate your help, Retz. Maybe you aren’t such a bad orc after all, Retz…
. . . . . Hadeon reached out a heavy blue hand to pick up the top journal, the records of Neddelibranggok the Highly-Unstable. He couldn’t quite bring himself to pick up Herix’s journal, to read about the end of his own life… Not yet. Letting it fall open in his hand to a random page, he was treated to a lovingly detailed sketch of what appeared to be a juicy, cooked talbuk steak. “What the…?” He flipped the page. The cramped scrawl that filled the two pages so entirely as to not even leave margins appeared to be – from what little he knew of Orcish script – written backwards. “Retz, quit pouting and help me decipher this.”
. . . . . The parasite warlock soul grumbled and turned around, using Hadeon’s physical eyes to skim the two pages. What the…? How in the Nether did Ned read this stuff later?
. . . . . “Oh, great. So he’s stumped you too.”
. . . . . Not precisely, goat. It will just take time to figure this out. Is this entire thing written backwards?
. . . . . Careful not to accidentally ‘drop a little decay’ on the fragile, aged paper, Hadeon turned the journal’s pages. He recognized some ancient Eredun script in places, sketches of Man’ari eredar and imps and fel hounds, what appeared to be a tusked pig, a long-necked bottle, more backwards Orcish mixed in with rightwards Orcish. Ned’s journal was a morass of either demonic knowledge or senseless rambling; it was rather hard to tell the difference at a glance. With Retz’s help in translating the Orcish words, it became evident that the Councilman had indeed practiced necromancy on the corpses at Auchindoun – but he had arrived a week after the Shadow Council took the place over, a week after Retz and Hadeon had been combined into one cold, brutal being. The three death knights created that day had already been sent out to join Gorefiend by the time Ned arrived.
. . . . . At the end of the journal, was a sketch of a hunched male Kro’kul followed by several pages of Orcish writing. What stood out, though, were the Draenei-dialect Eredun words interspersed among the rightwards-written Orcish. Hadeon could read those without his parasite’s help. And they were very interesting, even taken out of context. “Kro’kul. Telaar. Orahei. Auchindoun. Naz’theros. Draenei.”
. . . . . Hadeon stared at the Orcish words surrounding ‘Auchindoun’ and ‘Naz’theros.’ “Retz, what does this bit here say?”
. . . . . “Once a proud and mighty Light-wielder, the hunched creature is now nearly useless, its fighting skills and spells lost and its body mutated so far as to make the actions of normal life impossible. I asked it where it came from, what it did. It seemed to take eons to bring up the words to respond. ‘Auchindoun,’ it told me. ‘Naz’theros.’ And then it wandered away through the town full of these similar creatures. I must spend more time studying what the fel mist has done to the draenei. It is fascinating. Perhaps we can use this as a biological weapon against the ones holed up in the marshes.”
. . . . . It’s getting too dark for me to keep reading...
. . . . . One of the annoying remnants of living Hadeon found he still had was nausea; considering he didn’t have a stomach to be roiling anymore, it was an odd and unsettling sensation when it did come up. Just remembering the pressure against his skull from that tainted red fel mist brought the phantom nausea back to him, but that he was morbidly curious about the effects of biological weapons combined with his unholy powers – and the red mist which accompanied the death and decay he spread on the ground – made him sicker still. “I am not evil,” he muttered to himself, shutting the journal with a snap and looking towards the beam of Light from Shattrath. It shone all the brighter against the darkening twilight sky. “I am not fel-tainted. I will remember the Light.”
. . . . . Ask me about remembering the elements sometime, goat, Retz said bitterly, his voice hardly more than a whisper in Hadeon’s mind.
. . . . . “I’ll head for Telaar in the morning. Maybe this Kro’kul will have remembered by now whatever it was he forgot about Auchindoun. And I’ll pick up a mirror in Shattrath to make this scribble easier to read. I’m going to assume that this will help me somehow because to believe otherwise is just too damn depressing right now.” Retz snorted agreement. Death knight Hadeon stuffed the four journals into the leather pack propped up against the log he sat on, then dug in a side pouch for a small object. Hunching his shoulders against a chill that never, ever left him, he settled his armored back against a tree to wait out the darkness for one more night, a tiny purple crystal cupped in his palm.

To Touch the Fire

2009-12-05T12:00:00.018-05:00

Written while listening to: “Scattered Rain” by Tsuneo Imahori.

. . . . . I still remember the sense of awe and wonder I felt when I first saw Farseer Nobundo wield the elements as easily as our Vindicators wield the Light. Like most of my people, my head was still clouded by fear and prejudice; I believed the Broken were somehow tainted and unworthy. I was such a fool.

. . . . . My path had been a simple one until that day. Born to the life of an eternal refugee during the early centuries of our exodus, I trained as a scout and tracker, my reckless disregard for myself allowing an unusual amount of skill in finding which places on each new planet we landed on would be safe to inhabit and which places were potentially fatal to us. I spent the millennia learning to be self-sufficient, to rely only on myself – a very bizarre habit among the communal draenei. I think, then, my reasoning was that I spent so much time while we were off-ship alone, that when we were on-ship, it just continued to be my habit. Maybe I just never wanted to own up to the fact that I didn’t quite fit in. All in all, it was a simple path, and I did not entirely stay alone; I had friends and lovers among the other scouts. Never anyone too close, anyone I could not leave behind when the restlessness struck.
. . . . . When we landed for what we had hoped was the final time – didn’t we always hope it was the final time? – I went a-wander across the new planet. My hooves didn’t touch the same soil twice for many years. I saw the rolling hills of Nagrand, the graceful plains before the Temple of Karabor, the lush greenery of the Peninsula in the Devouring Sea. I found glory in discovering untouched lands, places even the orcs hadn’t seen yet. Perhaps the way of the eternal refugee lives under my skin and will forever more. I never have quite seemed to settle down.

. . . . . It was only luck and happenstance that I even learned about our exodus to Zangarmarsh. I had heard about the sacking of Farahlon, of course, and it was why I retreated to the high mountains of Nagrand alone. I found peace in solitude and even under threat of attack from the orcs, I felt safer alone in the mountains than in a city. But when one of my climbing spikes broke, I had to leave my hermitage behind and descend the mountains to Shattrath City to get a new one.
. . . . . There in the city I learned that our most sacred temples – Karabor and Auchindoun – had fallen already to the orcs, and they were headed toward our last bastion of safety. It took me less than a day to volunteer to join the scouting party to lead the city’s refugees to the small anchorite settlement of Telredor.
. . . . . Telredor was much too small for so many of us. Some went on to form Orebor Harborage, some settled at the Twin Spires, but we all stuck to the safety of the marshes. As scouts, we were often sent to gather food for the refugees. Even now, I hate mushrooms and will not eat them unless I have no other option. And I will consider eating my own hooves as an option before eating mushrooms again. We managed to eke out several years of relative safety, although the pass in from Terokkar and from the Peninsula had to be heavily guarded.
. . . . . The Prophet Velen? We did not know where he was. After Karabor fell, he had come to Shattrath to share his wisdom and point us towards the marshes. But somewhere along the way, he departed into the marshland and we knew not where he had gone or if he even still lived. The anchorites at Telredor told us to remain fast to the Light, that it would hold us safe. I admit that I no longer had such faith. How was a life of constant retreat, of death to a deathless race, of loss and sorrow and fear…how was this what the Light wanted for us? I attended prayer services and mouthed the words, but I held more faith in my ability to provide for myself than the Light’s providence.

. . . . . I returned from a food-gathering expedition, laden with two baskets of edible fungi, to find a crowd gathered in the central terrace at the top of Telredor. The Prophet had returned, and he was bringing with him someone who would help him guide our people to a new peace, a new communion with the world. Despite my lack of faith in the Light on the whole, I did still have faith in the Prophet’s wisdom, so I joined the milling throng with excitement in my heart.
. . . . . That excitement burned to ashes when I saw the stooped, warped, Broken man leaning on a walking stick at the Prophet’s side. The buzzing murmurs around me reflected my own disappointment. A Broken. A tainted one. What if his presence here began to mutate the rest of us? What if the fel energies clinging to him spread to us? There was a reason, after all, that they were not allowed among the unaffected! The crowd grew restless, stepped back almost as one. Someone shouted a question about the wisdom of this to the Prophet Velen. I was already searching a path out through the crowd with my baskets when the sky cracked open above our heads with a deafening sound.
. . . . . I froze in place as all the hairs on my body stood at attention and a blue glow infused the air for less than a second before lightning streaked down and whipped around the agitated crowd, just above our heads, just far enough away to keep us from true harm. I looked to the platform above us, awe suffusing my soul. The Prophet Velen had his hands folded in the sleeves of his robe and an inscrutable expression on his face. The Broken he introduced to us had his face turned up to the sky as the rain began to fall. “Everything that is, is alive,” he said, his voice quiet but audible to us even over the rain.

. . . . . This was self-sufficiency! This was power! This was providence at its most basic level! Like several in the crowd, I ended up approaching the Broken – Farseer Nobundo – to seek to join his growing number of students. I learned later that I was in the larger, second of the groups he mentored along this new path for the draenei, having followed behind a smaller group of students who had sought him out without the Prophet’s guidance.
. . . . . I was an arrogant and envious fool, then. I believed that I chose this path for myself, that I would master it, that I was somehow less desperate than the first group because they had all been Broken – or nearly so. I was impatient, impertinent, and entirely too stupid. It surprises me even still to think that it took so long for sense to be knocked into my empty head.

. . . . . Ten of us were gathered around Farseer Nobundo, sitting on the wet marshlands near a lake in Zangarmarsh. We were practicing listening to the spirits of Water, and – as was typical for me – I was struggling. I could not hear them, no matter how I raged and pleaded with my soul. I demanded, I begged, I railed and requested by turns. I had conquered the natural world through my own determination and skill, and now to find that all the mountains I climbed were living, the water I drank freely given to me, and that all I conquered was merely a gift, not a victory…
. . . . . I rose from the wet ground and stomped away from the lesson, my hooves guiding me out of earshot and to a clearing at the edge of the lake. I was so angry, so upset, that even the one spirit I could hear – the sibilant whisper of Air – did not seem to get through to me. I ignored it…to my own peril. Frustration guiding me, I turned my face to the sky and shouted my rage to the heavens. I did not see the group turn to look at me. I did not see Farseer Nobundo take a step towards me. All I saw was the fluorescent blue glow light the air a split second before the bolt of silver fire from the heavens answered my rage with its own.
. . . . . Though I know now from simply looking in a mirror that the strike was a small one and made contact with only a few inches of the left side of my face, it felt at the time as if my entire being was enveloped in agonizing flame. My last conscious memory is of every muscle and tendon locking into a rigid and violent contraction, and I do not have another memory from that until two months later when I awoke to being tended by one of the other students, a wonderfully kind woman named Beluuma, in a small room in Telredor.
. . . . . I am told that the lightning strike threw me from the lake back to the clearing and that my insensible form landed rigidly at Nobundo’s hooves. I am told that he had to pound on my chest hard enough to crack my sternum to restart my heart. I am told that I was carried – a twitching, spasmodic mess – back to Telredor by two of my peers. I am told that it was approximately two months before I regained my senses. I remember none of it.

. . . . . It is a wonder what such a universal clue-by-four to the face can do for one’s attitude. Although I remember being an arrogant and power-hungry woman, I no longer am able to find that part of my personality. It is as if the lightning burned it from my brain. Near death brings a certain humility to the soul, and it is only due to that humility that I managed to complete my training with Farseer Nobundo.
. . . . . Approach the elements with reverence and humility, with polite deference and gentle requests – lest they find their own ways of ensuring that you are humbled.

Northrend is Calling

2009-12-02T12:00:00.079-05:00

Written while listening to: Leipzig is Calling (with short intro) by Thomas Dolby.

. . . . . If a person wanted to be digging up a magical artifact for research on this planet, then they ought to seek out a dwarf. Diyos had been here long enough to learn this. So it was that a week after his brother’s hearing and making that stupid, stupid promise, here Diyos was, making his way to the Dwarven District of Stormwind on a lovely, bright, late fall day. Scratch that. It was a lovely, bright, late fall day – except in the Dwarven District. Here, the thick layer of soot in the air didn’t so much obscure the sun as grab it by the throat and shake it until the lights went out.
. . . . . Diyos coughed and thumped his chest, cursed his sensitive nose, and lifted the directions he’d hastily scribbled from a city guard close enough to his eyes to read in the gloom. “Right past the Cathedral-side entrance, then left at the next block,” he mumbled aloud, stifling another cough with his hand. He tried to pull his hood around to the front to shield his face until he realized that his robes didn’t actually have a hood.
. . . . . A rhythmic clank of armor and hooves caused him to look behind just in time to jump out of the way of a skeletally-thin horse and dark-plated human rider. “Watch it!” Diyos yelled, accustomed to his bellow and wide shoulders giving him some measure of intimidation factor. The rider paused briefly and fixed cold, inhumanly glowing eyes on the anchorite – who quailed under the look and backed to the wall. So much for intimidation factor. To his relief, the rider turned away and went on, dismounting nearly half a block away. The dark-plated knight left his charger outside the building and clanked on up a set of stairs and inside.
. . . . . Diyos touched two fingers to his forehead in silent prayer and then coughed into his sleeve. “Damned stiffs,” he grumbled. “Why can’t they stay in the ground where they belong? Sometimes I wonder about this Army of the Light… Oh, hell! I dropped the directions!”
. . . . . The smog was so thick that Diyos was loath to spend long searching for the scrap of parchment. He figured he remembered them just fine anyway. Turning left, he headed up the street in the same direction as the death knight. As he passed the skeletal charger, it whinnied; Diyos could swear the horse was snickering at him. Could dead horses snicker? He caught a glimpse through a grimy window – everything here was grimy – and saw a whole unholy convention of the glowing-eyed risen “heroes” inside the building. They appeared to be simply waiting around – probably for their next set of kill orders or a fresh supply of ghoul corpses or something.
. . . . . Diyos gulped and hurried on down the block, his hooves clopping rapidly on the cobblestone. At the end of the street, he took a right, squinting up at the sullen pall which passed for sky around here. The heavy smog offered him no directions, just another hacking cough he took because his lungs offered no choice in the matter. He walked another two blocks before he spied a glow in the sooty cloud to his right. A forge! Fixing his gaze on the warm glow, he followed the fiery beacon until the clangs of hammers on hot metal drowned out all thought – much less speech.
. . . . . A small, sad smile settled on his face as the sounds brought up a memory of his baby sister making her own shoes. She’d always been a little weird, the sword-dancing degenerate. He missed her… He also missed the dwarf in front of him – right until he bumped into the fellow. In slow motion horror as he fell backwards onto his tail, he watched the stocky dwarf rock forwards toward a brazier of coals he’d been pulling a rod from. Diyos shot an indigo hand out and shouted a levitation spell; the dwarf’s fall arrested, but the smell of burnt hair rose above the soot and flux and molten steel.
. . . . . “Mah beard!!” shrieked the dwarven smith as he twisted wildly in the air, dragging the end of his beard out of the coals. Diyos finally managed to push himself to his hooves and plucked the floating, screaming dwarf out of the air.
. . . . . The moment the dwarf was back on his feet, Diyos found a very solid dwarven fist in his belly. “Ooof!” The anchorite doubled over, then fell a second time to the sooty ground.
. . . . . “Watch where yer walkin’, ya great blue lummox!” the dwarf yelled.
. . . . . Diyos wheezed and fixed his gaze on the dwarf’s boots in case he needed to roll out of the way of a kick. “I…” he gasped out, “don’t sup-suppose…I need…ow…to ask if you’re…alright, then…since you can…unnnh…still throw a punch.”
. . . . . A stream of Dwarven words Diyos could only assume were curses followed, but no more blows. He sat up and blinked away soot to find the dwarf forlornly cradling a foot and a half of thick black beard, the last four inches of which were crispy and curled upon itself. Well, hell… Only dwarf he’d managed to find so far in the Dwarven District, and he’d gone and knocked the poor fellow into his own coals and singed his beard.
. . . . . “Hey,” Diyos offered lamely as he sat on the ground – which put him about eye-level with the standing dwarf, “at least the rest of you didn’t go into the coals.”
. . . . . The dwarf growled at him.
. . . . . “Eh. Heh heh…” Diyos laughed nervously and began to assess how fast he could get to his hooves and run. “You, eh… You wouldn’t hit a priest, would you? Ehm. Again?” He raised platter-sized hands defensively and started thinking faster. Aha! That was it! The incantation didn’t need to be spoken, just thought very clearly and directly. Diyos stared intently at the dwarf’s craggy forehead and dipped into the shadier side of his anchorite training. He touched the violence in the dwarf’s mind and gently soothed it away; it wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, but that should be enough.
. . . . . The dwarf scowled still, but his fists unclenched. Diyos offered up his best, most non-threatening, friendly priest’s smile. “Hey, I’m really sorry about that, sir dwarf. I really meant no harm. It’s hard to see around here.” This is my chance! While the dwarf is still pacified! “You, uh, wouldn’t happen to know where around here I could find an archaeologist to help me on a research project, would you?”
. . . . . He was so busy getting his hooves back under him that he missed the expression of calculated glee on the dwarf’s face. “Och, lookin’ fer a competent archaeologist, are ya? Nice, safe, peaceful sort ta ‘elp a good priest?” There was an odd note of suppressed laughter in the dwarf’s voice, but the draenei didn’t have enough experience with the race to notice it. He nodded and smiled hopefully at the dwarven smith. “I know jus’ tha lads fer ya. ‘Ead on doon ta tha’ tavern over on tha other side a’ this square an’ ask ‘em aboot an application fer tha Modan Company.” Deep within the remaining recesses of his beard, the dwarf grinned. “Nice, sedate, peaceful folk, those. Jus’ yer speed.”
. . . . . “Thank you kindly, sir dwarf! And sorry again about the accident.” Diyos placed his open left palm over his closed right fist and bowed respectfully to the manically (and maniacally) grinning dwarf. As he hurried away towards the direction the dwarf had pointed, he was a little surprised to hear laughter and not shouts and curses as his mind soothing spell wore off, but who was he to invite trouble?

. . . . . “Ah, trade professions. Athos, what should I write here?” Diyos sat at the small kitchen table in the apartment he shared with his brother and chewed on the end of his pen. “I mean… I sew and enchant things. How do I make that sound cool?”
. . . . . Athos looked up from the transcription of a gnomish treatise he was working on and pondered a moment. “Well, instead of saying ‘enchanting’ just describe what enchanting is. And you know, you can just fill out the whole thing and then ask me all these questions.” He smiled. “It’d probably be faster.” He bent his head back over his transcription as his older brother grumbled and went back to work.
. . . . . An hour later, Athos sat at the table with a bottle of parchment-colored paint and a pen, going over the application. “Wait a minute… Why are they including ‘fighting’ under work experience? I thought you said these were peaceful researchers.”
. . . . . “They are! The dwarf was quite vociferous about that. Mentioned it repeatedly.” Folding his hands on the table while he watched his brother proofread, Diyos decided discretion was the better part of avoiding complicated explanations, and didn’t mention that he’d tampered with the dwarf’s mind a little. The less his little brother knew about the details of the shadier side of his studies of the intelligent mind, the better.
. . . . . “Hey!”Athos protested, pointing at a line Diyos had written. “You don’t have to tell them about ‘fetching book nerds out of inexplicable danger’! I don’t get in trouble that often.” Athos painted out the offending line and wrote in something more acceptable. “All this alcohol talk here, too. You really shouldn’t be bragging about your drinking problem. A good draen-”
. . . . . “I’m not a good draenei!” Diyos interrupted grumpily. “Besides, these archaeologists are dwarves. Dwarves appreciate a hearty drinker.”
. . . . . Unable to fault this reasoning, Athos left the lines alone.
. . . . . After his little brother went back to his gnomish transcription, Diyos addressed the envelope. He glanced up to be sure Athos was occupied, and then grabbed the corrective paint. Moving fast, he rewrote the line about book nerds and stifled a chuckle. He folded the application and stuffed it into the envelope. “I’ll go drop this in the mailbox downstairs. I’ll pick up some dinner from the tavern too. Want anything specific?”
. . . . . “See if the soup of the day is clam chowder. That stuff is tasty!”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This sealed letter is addressed to "Employment Officer, Modan Company, Dun Morogh." The handwriting on the application is a strangely bipolar mix of large, expansive writing and smaller, neater words placed in the middle of sentences where it seems the original word or phrase may have been blotted out.

The Modan Company
Employment Application

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in the Modan Company!

The Modan Company (hereafter known as 'Modan Co.') has a long and storied history which you will discover in the course of your employment. Please take the time to fill out this short application and questionnaire and your Modan Co. career will be just a short review* away!

PERSONAL INFORMATION

==========

Name: Diyos
Birthplace: An obscure and now-destroyed planet we called Kretos for the two-hundred-ish years we were on it.
Current Address: 85 Moonwell Circle #C, Park District, Stormwind City, Eastern Kingdoms.
Age: Somewhere around 20,100 – my parents did not keep particularly exacting records. I am a draenei in the prime of his life.
Species: Draenei
Gender: Male
Hair Color: Dark brown
Eye Color: Pale, glowing blue

EDUCATION
=========
What is your chosen path of training (I.E. Class)?: Anchorite; you folk call us priests.
On a scale of 1 to 80, rank your progression on this path: 70 – experienced and trained, but by no means a big damn hero.
Do you have any trade professions? Yes, I do.
If yes, what are they?: I am a master craftsman in the disassembling of magical items into their base magical parts, and the use of these components in placing new qualities on intact items. I also am quite handy with a needle and thread. Yeah, you read that right, a man who sews. I knit too.
If no, why not?:
On a scale of 1 to 450, rank your progression on these paths: I’d say somewhere in the range of three-hundred-eighty-nine for the enchanting skills I possess, and around four-hundred-forty-two for my tailoring skills.
Can you fish?: Yes.
Can you cook?: Yes.
Can you make bandages?: Yes.
Can you do any of the above well?: Not especially. I’m better at fishing than cooking, and I’m better at cooking than making bandages – but I am good at none of the three. As an anchorite, I tend to rely more on holy magic than bandages – which is probably a skill I should pick up regardless.

WORK EXPERIENCE:
=========
Please describe any related work experience (this may include, but not be limited to, archeology, research, engineering, fighting, getting one's hands dirty, and drinking alcohol):

. . . . . Through my centuries of experimenting on magical objects, I have a good feel for magical energies and artifact identification, although I still am working on being able to identify the sorts of artifacts common to Azeroth. I served the Hand of Argus on Bloodmyst Isle with distinction for several months after the crash, tending to the wounded and lending spiritual and metaphysical support to the rescue patrols.
. . . . . Prior to arriving here, I led prayer services in Telredor and the Twin Spires, researched theological conundrums and their confluence with arcane energies, and endeavored – with little luck – to further my understanding of the Light.
. . . . . I have a few hundred years’ worth of experience in the complexities of the intelligent mind and its functions, fears, and mental controls. I developed this skill in an effort to better understand those around me and how to provide spiritual guidance and assistance.
. . . . . I have several thousand years’ worth of experience fetching book nerds out of inexplicable danger and breaking up fights between hot-headed warriors. This has led to several thousand years’ worth of experience drinking alcohol.
(The final paragraph appears to have had the first sentence blotted out twice and is written in the larger handwriting which is dominant to the composition of the application - with a faint series of lines of what may have been the smaller writing behind it.)

PLACEMENT
=========
Upon employment with Modan Co., you will be placed into one or two prospective departments. Please check two of the following to signify your interest:

___ Worker: A worker is one who engages in manual labor and fights when necessary. Physical or magical strength required. Subgroups: Laborer, Brute.

___ Engineer: The people in charge of technology. Work includes piloting our zeppelin, demolition work, and the invention of items to assist in our archeological work. Subgroups: Demolitionist, Mechanic, Tinker.

___ Archaeologist: Those involved in making discoveries and finding the relics.

_X_ Healer: Those who keep us alive.

_X_ Bookworms: The intelligent folk who keep us to the facts, as well as experiment in science. Subgroups: Scientist, Researcher, Lorekeeper.
If there is a particular subgroup you are interested in, please note it here:
I am particularly interested in the research of artifacts and their properties.

YOUR FUTURE IN MODAN CO
=========

Where do you see yourself in a year?: With any luck, a tavern chair in Ironforge with a mug of ale in hand, my brother at my side, surrounded by friends as we celebrate a successful research project.
Five years?: My arm around a lovely young mage and a glass of wine in the other hand as we celebrate my promotion to senior anchorite.
Ten years?: Face-down on a tavern floor, a jug of bourbon nearby, while I contemplate why lovely young mages never seem to be interested in men who are not above getting dirty hands in the name of magical experimentation. And why my brother seems to be standing sideways on the wall.
For Draenei and Night Elf applicants: One thousand, four hundred and twenty-two years?: Accepting an award for the successful blending of alcohol and magical enchantments into a tasty enchanted mead that renders lasting and beautiful bliss to the drinker with no similarly lasting hangover. Following that award, starting a new form of anchorite monastic order with a focus on spiritual counseling through the application of said tasty enchanted mead invention.

PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO HELP US DETERMINE WHERE YOU WILL FIT IN MODAN CO
=========
In a hundred words or less, please tell us about yourself. We would like to get to know you, and know that you would like to get to know us! Please use the space below, and continue on the back if you have excessively large handwriting.

. . . . . I come from a family of priests – except the two youngest, who became sword-dancing degenerates. I grew up, like many, aboard an inter-dimensional vessel in close quarters with many thousands of my people. I call Zangarmarsh my homeland, although I have only been back a few times since we fled. I reside in Stormwind with my brother - the bustling city and constant influx of artifacts is interesting. However, I plan to head to Northrend to see where I can lend a hand to the Alliance, as well as look into reports I’ve heard about mysterious magical objects and energies.

In a hundred words or less, please tell us why you came to Modan Co. for employment, and what you feel you wish to accomplish while with our organization. Please use whatever margins may be free to complete this application.

. . . . . I have heard the name of the organization on the streets of Stormwind as a reputable archaeological group with many discoveries to their credit. With my goals of finding new and interesting magical research in Northrend, I am seeking employment with a company that has more experience and knowledge of Azeroth and of archaeological techniques than I myself have. I hope to contribute my skills as a magical and spiritual researcher to further the discoveries of the company, and – if nothing else – to help mend the wounded and hung-over when necessary.

===========

Congratulations! You've completed your application of employment to Modan Co.! You will hear a response after a short review session*.

Thank you again for your interest, and we look forward to working with you!

*Review session includes application fee, reviewing fee, supplies fee, processing fee, and fee fee. Please do not question the fee, for the fee will become agitated.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

. . . . . Three days later, Diyos sat at a table outside the Blue Recluse with a letter telling him to meet a dwarf woman here at three in the afternoon. He was enjoying another lovely, late fall day and a nice mug of ale when a dwarf woman in a dark dress and a tall, pointy hat approached the table. “Anchorite?” she asked of him.
. . . . . “Ehm, yes. Anchorite Diyos, ma’am.”
. . . . . The woman settled into the chair across from him and introduced herself as Ailde, one of the Company’s foremen. As she pulled the application out of her satchel, Diyos considered her outfit. “Nice hat,” he rumbled with a grin. “Hallow’s End costume?” She nodded.
. . . . . The interview was surprisingly short, the Fee fee minimal, and the woman delightful to talk with. Diyos stared curiously at the gnomish radio the Company used to communicate across distances. What a wonderful little invention! He was so intent on inspecting the thing that he almost missed her final words.
. . . . . “Our ‘ead foreman expects each a’ us ta present evidence we’ve been on a self-guided expedition at next Tuesday’s meetin’. Tha’ shoul’ give ya…och, aboot four days. Good luck!” With that, the dwarf woman hopped off the chair and vanished into thin air.
. . . . . “Wait, what is this? I don’t even…” Diyos looked around wildly, then slumped at the table and took a long drink of ale. “Oh, hell…”

Writer's Block Sucks

2009-11-30T09:47:00.001-05:00

On 12/5/09, I will run out of scheduled story posts. At that point, this blog will cease to be updated every three days and will instead be updated only as often as I end up writing something. The concern I have with this is that I have not written anything worth posting since 11/10/09. Sure, that's only twenty days without writing, but I suppose I'm a little afraid that I've already lost my muse again.

I know I haven't - the holidays are upon me, finals for the semester, actual work at work, some hefty guild RP stuffs, and so forth. I've got another Hadeon story beginning to percolate in my brain, plans for another Diyos one as well... It'll come back. But in the meanwhile, posting around here will probably slow down considerably.

Much love to all four or five people who read the blog.

Good Deeds Never Go Unpunished

2009-11-29T12:00:00.035-05:00

Written while listening to Under the Bridge (City of Angels) by Red Hot Chili Peppers.

. . . . . Diyos had been feeling the subtle prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck for a good three minutes now. The weight of the stare he was getting pushed his shoulders into a hunch and his hand tighter around his mug of ale. He finally could take no more. Shoulders straightening, he spun in his seat; his blue robes twisted around his hips. “Yes, it’s in a bun!” he yelled at the human girl at the table behind him. “My masculinity is not threatened by this!” His bellow did not cow the girl so much as the gleam of pointy white teeth in his indigo face. The girl turned bright pink and turned around in her chair to face her companion and pretend she had not been staring.
. . . . . “Bloody gawkers,” he grumbled with some of the slang he’d picked up and turned back to his mug at his own table. “If it’s not the beard it’s the hair.” He lifted a platter-sized hand and stroked his facial tentacles self-consciously, then took another swig from his mug. The prickly feeling was back already.
. . . . . With an impatient snort, the draenei shoved his chair back and stood up, slamming his empty mug down on the wooden table. He dropped a handful of coins next to it, tugged his robe straight, and stalked out of the tavern. Outside the Blue Recluse, dusk had fallen on the city. The guards were already patrolling in incompetent, inefficient squads. Three of them ran by towards the warlocks’ section, their plate armor jouncing and clinking comically. You know, the warlocks’ district wasn’t such a bad idea; they had a tavern too. A single mug of ale really just wasn’t enough for as big a fellow as Diyos. He set his hooves towards the Slaughtered Lamb to get another drink – or five.

. . . . . It was somewhat after midnight when Diyos staggered out of the Slaughtered Lamb, his robes rumpled and his hooves wobbly. He made it as far as the well in front of the tavern and slumped onto a bench. As he leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees so he could find his head with his hands, a lock of dark brown hair fell down across his left eye. “Naaru’s sake,” he muttered. It took him a few seconds, but he did manage to find his head, which was – yes – still attached to his shoulders. Excellent. Thick indigo fingers carefully followed the top of his head back until they reached the mass of hair bundled on the back of his skull.
. . . . . Giving up the possibility of neatness for a while, he grabbed the heavy bronze stick and yanked it free. A wild mass of dark, coarse, curly brown hair tumbled down his back and fell forward over his shoulders. He grumbled and shoved it back with one hand, the other hand fumbling with a chain around his neck. It took three tries, but he finally managed to snap the bronze stick into place along the back of the holy symbol he wore around his neck. Part concealed weapon, part hair taming device, part symbol of his faith, Diyos tucked the symbol back under the collar of his robe and leaned forward on his knees again.
. . . . . He spent a few minutes enjoying watching the cobblestones wiggle on the ground. “Damn, those fel suckers sure know how to party…” he mumbled. A girlish giggle came from the tree next to his bench. Blinking his pale blue eyes slowly, Diyos leaned back and looked to his right. Oh. A burly night elf male and a scrawny human girl – was that the same girl who’d been staring at him earlier? – were partially clothed and quite involved against the tree.
. . . . . Grimacing, he pushed off the bench and wavered towards the canals. “That is really just not fair,” he rumbled. “You’re taunting me, universe, aren’t you?” The universe didn’t answer. As drunk as he was, Diyos figured it was best to get off the streets before a guard unit found him and hauled him in for public intoxication. Pity they wouldn’t get those two at the tree for public indecency. Then again, night elves’ mere existence was usually indecent, if that lovely little jiggle many of the ladies did was any indication.
. . . . . Catching a hoof on a raised cobblestone yanked Diyos’s thoughts away from that pleasant jiggle and back to the task at hand – getting someplace safe for the night before he passed out. Light take it… His brother had the keys to the apartment. Two places he could be, really – the bookstore or the library. The bookstore was closer. Diyos followed the path along the canals.
. . . . . For the exceptionally late hour, few stores stayed open, but the bookstore on the canal side of the mage district was used to scholars with no regard for a normal person’s hours popping in at any time, so the magelights still shone from the windows. A spell chimed softly as Diyos pushed the wooden door open and slid woozily inside the shop. He squinted his eyes against the brightness of the lights and started looking between the stacks for his brother.
. . . . . “He’s not here, Diyos,” came a high-pitched voice from behind a towering pile of books. “He was. Earlier, I mean. But not now. There was a young gnome girl. Something about Naaru’s blessing. Screaming. Squad of guards. You’ll find him down in the Stockades.” The pink-haired gnome mage – Kreli Conktoggle – peered around the books and way, way up at the drunken draenei. He waved a hand in front of his face. “Phew! Maybe you won’t find him. Not like that anyway.” The gnome set his book down next to the stack and jumped to his feet. “Come upstairs.”
. . . . . It took Diyos several seconds to process the gnome’s babbling. “Wait… What?!” He frowned as the gnome nearly yanked his robe clean off trying to pull him towards the upstairs portion of the shop.
. . . . . “Upstairs first, kiddo.”
. . . . . Diyos made a disgusted noise as he followed the gnome. “I am not a ‘kiddo.’ I’m tens of thousands of years older than you.”
. . . . . “You’re also drunker than an engineer at a Sprocket Party, so I can get away with calling you anything I like right now.” Kreli led his friend’s brother up to a table and shoved at his shins until he sat in a chair. “Just sit there and try not to puke on the books. My last vacuum broke this morning. Now where did I put that goldclover?”
. . . . . Diyos lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the magelight and tried hard to figure out where he left his sobriety as he watched the gnome bounce around a low table full of vials and jars. A handful of dried this, a few drops of distilled that, thirty seconds over a flame, a pinch of powdered whatsit… This was really not how he’d planned to spend his evening. He’d hoped he’d find a nice mage girl – or even a nice mage boy would be fine with him – and go back to an inn with a companion of somewhat better stature than the babbling bundle of pink hair and unsubtle madness known as Kreli Conktoggle.
. . . . . A beaker of brownish liquid that smelled like the backside of an elekk appeared in front of Diyos’s face. He reared back and glared at Kreli. “What the hell is that, shortie? Going to poison me so you have both of us out of your shop for good?”
. . . . . “Oh, posh, goat. It’s a sobering potion. Little concoction I cooked up last year when I had to help a dwarf get sober enough to fire his rifle at this crazy warlock who was trying to steal my books. What in the world would a warlock want with A Treatise on Making People into Pigs anyway?” The gnome waved the beaker impatiently. “Just drink it. You can’t go bail Athos out while you’re drunk. They’ll just throw you in with him.” Kreli went back to the table and pulled a length of linen cloth out of a drawer. He ripped a strip free and handed it to the draenei. “And use this to tie your hair back. It looks like you’ve got a dead baby yeti glued to your head.”
. . . . . The sobering potion tasted like boiled marsh water and old socks, but Diyos choked it back. Kreli was right, after all. And his baby brother wouldn’t last long in the Stormwind Stockades. What the hell was the guard thinking, putting a bookish nerd like his brother in a prison full of hardened convicts?

. . . . . It took a great deal of smooth talking and several gold coins for Diyos to even get to a magistrate at this hour. Several more gold coins parted ways with Diyos for the bail. The magistrate – a grumpy human male in what appeared to be woolen onesie pajamas – pressed his signet ring into a wax seal on the release orders, yawned, and shooed the draenei out of the office on the ground floor of his home.
. . . . . Considerably more in control of his faculties after Kreli’s sobering potion, Diyos hurried to the Stockades with the release orders rolled in his fist. The smell of the place hit him before he even stepped into the entry way. He tried not to wrinkle his nose, but failed when the guard he approached turned out to smell even worse than the surrounding dungeon. Through a slit in his helmet, the human guard glared as Diyos produced the release orders from the magistrate. He waved a plated hand at one of the other guards.
. . . . . “Take the big guy down to fetch the molester,” he said, his tone dripping venom.
. . . . . Diyos paled at the words. He hadn’t even heard what Athos was down here for. But molestation? He would never…!
. . . . . He watched his hooves carefully as he followed the escort guard down the steps and into the belly of the prison. Torches along the wall barely kept the place bright enough to see where one was going. Shouts, sobs, and even the occasional agonized scream slithered around the bars and thick wooden doors, into the main corridor. Two large indigo fingers touched the scaleplates on Diyos’s forehead in a wordless prayer to the Light. His baby brother had better be alright, or Diyos was going to be bringing the wrath of…well, the wrath of something down. He’d figure that part out later.
. . . . . The human guard stopped at the fifth cell in on the right and lifted his keys, using the wan torchlight to search them. The cell on the other side of the thick wooden door with a barred window was frighteningly silent. Diyos shifted from hoof to hoof and tried to look through the window, but the door was open before he got a chance.
. . . . . In a puddle of white robes, his baby brother was sitting on the filthy stone, three prisoners seated on the floor in front of him. Their eyes were wide with wonder as Athos spoke very softly to them.
. . . . . “Athos!” shouted the elder – by a few minutes – brother as he stepped into the cell. “Why – by Kil’jaden’s foul left teat – am I bailing you out of jail instead of the other way around?”
. . . . . Athos turned and smiled brightly at his brother, his indigo skin purpling slightly with embarrassment. “Can we talk about it later? I’m telling these nice fellows about the giant blue mushrooms of Zangarmarsh.”
. . . . . “No, brother. I’ve got release orders for you and an impatient guard outside the door. It’s time to go.” The three prisoners looked disappointed as Athos stood and brushed off his robes. The entire backside of them was stained from the floor. He smiled at the three seated humans. “Maybe they’ll let me come back and finish my story tomorrow,” he said.
. . . . . Diyos lifted a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s go…”

. . . . . It was not until the brothers were back at their apartment in the Park District and Athos had taken the bath Diyos ordered that the incident was discussed. The two draenei – similar in appearance but not identical – sat across from one another at their small kitchen table over a pre-dawn meal of milk and leftover cherry pie.
. . . . . “Alright, seriously, Athos,” Diyos said as he tried to cover a yawn. “Explain to me why the good twin had to be bailed out by the bad one?”
. . . . . “You’re not bad,” Athos protested, patting his brother’s hand. He ignored the scoffing sound Diyos made and spent a moment organizing his words for the explanation. “I was at the bookstore helping Kreli catalog some wonderful research theses on the mingling of Light and arcane – would you believe the sorts of things humans think up to try? I mean, to use an arcane bolt to deliver hea-”
. . . . . “Nerrrrd…”
. . . . . “Right. So this female gnome comes into the shop. She looked nice enough, but she had a bit of a black eye. Why anyone would bang up such a tiny little creature-”
. . . . . “Athos. Subject at hand.”
. . . . . “Right. Well, I offered to heal her bruise, since it looked painful. She said that was alright. I knelt down and cast a blessing of the Naaru on her. You know the hand gesture. Right above her head.” Athos bent down from the table and mimicked the gesture about two and a half feet from the floor. “But then all of a sudden she starts screaming ‘rape!’ She just screams absolute bloody murder about me groping her chest until these three guards showed up. Kreli tried to tell them I wouldn’t – I don’t even like girls! – but they didn’t listen.” Athos stamped a hoof against the wooden floor. “So they arrested me and took me down into the Stockades. It doesn’t smell so good in there, but it wasn’t too bad. I hope I can go back and finish telling those nice men about Zangarmarsh.”
. . . . . “Athos, you’re not going back in there. You didn’t grope that gnome girl and you definitely don’t belong anywhere near prison.” Diyos pinched the bridge of his nose and scowled at the crumbs of his pie on the table. “I’m sure this will be cleared up in a matter of minutes at the hearing. You’re a priest, you don’t grope people.”
. . . . . The younger brother arched an eyebrow at his fraternal twin. “You do.”
. . . . . Diyos, midway through a sip of milk, began to cough and thumped his chest. “Yes, well, I’m a bad priest. Just tell the judge the truth. This was clearly a misunderstanding of monumental proportions.”

. . . . . The judge hearing Athos’s case was a stern-looking, steely-eyed, steely-haired woman with cheekbones that could slice deli meat and a reputation that made Grom Hellscream sound like a pleasant chap. The gnome girl cried big fat tears and trembled at the sight of Athos – slight and unprepossessing for a draenei, and in his best anchorite’s robes. Kreli, Diyos, and two very kind patrons of the bookstore testified to the sterling and upright character of Athos, even citing his service to the Hand of Argus on Bloodmyst Isle and his time spent aiding the medics of the Cathedral of Light in Stormwind for the last year.
. . . . . Judge Not-Hellscream was not swayed. Her gavel slammed down on a sentence of a year’s probation, eighty hours of community service, and orders not to leave Stormwind City until Athos’s probation time was completed.
. . . . . Diyos vibrated with rage as he watched his baby brother’s shoulders droop and his head bow. The judge was already leaving, so rather than vent his rage, he cast a venomous glare to the smirking gnome girl. You’ll pay, he mouthed at her, then turned away and draped an arm over his brother’s shoulders. “Come on, Athos. I know you don’t drink much, but I think now’s a good time for it.”
. . . . . Kreli Conktoggle patted the back of Athos’s calf over his robe. “Don’t worry, Athos. There’s a lot to be done in the shop still. I’ll keep you occupied. And that community service stuff, posh, you practically do that anyway. I’ll make sure you have the time off to do it all.”
. . . . . The two draenei and the gnome walked towards the Blue Recluse. Athos looked so awful – like someone had drowned his pet sporebat – that Diyos struggled for something else to come up with. “Hey, Athos. I know! I’ll go up to Northrend and bring you back a research project!” The moment the words popped out of his mouth, he regretted it. Diyos had nothing against adventure, but he really wasn’t the book-smarts sort. And Northrend was cold. And not likely to have much in the way of lovely people to court. Light take it…
. . . . . Athos brightened a little. “Ooo! You know, there’s stories about chips of ice that never melt no matter what you do to them. And sentient spiders! Can you imagine?”
. . . . . A grimace settled on Diyos’s face. “Unfortunately…”
. . . . . “I’ve heard reports that there’s a lot of relics from the Titans when they shaped Azeroth. And then there’s some-”
. . . . . “Nerrrrd…”

If the Sky Can Crack

2009-11-26T12:00:00.031-05:00

Written while listening to Electrical Storm (William Orbit mix) by U2.
((There is little precedent for draenei drinking alcohol, but there is some. I figure the tavern was built and staffed by another sentient race on the planet. My draenei are degenerates it seems.))

. . . . . A bright peal of laughter and the rapid clatter of hooves on the tile floors of the ship’s corridors were all the warning Shield Crusos got before the little girl came barreling around the curve in the corridor and straight into him. Luckily, that was enough warning for him to jump nimbly out of the way, despite the heavy plate armor he wore. “Sorry!” the girl shouted as she gained speed down the straight part of the corridor, waving a piece of paper over her head with one ebon-gray hand. Crusos shook his head and smiled, turning to go on his way and report for the day’s duty guarding the Prophet. A large boy on the far edge of adolescence rounded the corner at a full gallop and crashed into Shield Crusos, sending them both sprawling to the floor with a deafening clang of plate.

. . . . . “Naaru’s sake, child, you nearly ran into a Shield of Velen! This behavior must stop! It is not ladylike – it’s not even appropriate for males of our noble race! And stop tucking your skirt into the waist like that!” Anchorite Omii continued to scold as she grabbed for the girl child in front of her and tugged the back hem of her skirt out of the front of her waistband.
. . . . . The girl tried to squirm away. “It helps keep my skirt clean!”
. . . . . “It does not. All it does is expose your hooves in an unseemly fashion. Stop it.” She lightly cuffed her daughter on the right side of her head, just behind the arch of her horn. Grumbling, the child stopped squirming while her mother fussed with her skirt. “There. Now go apologize to your brother for stealing his letter.”

. . . . . “Stop, stop, stop,” the girl groused as she stomped off to the cafeteria of the ship to find her eldest brother. “Don’t run, don’t play, don’t have fun. I don’t think she was ever a child.” Balled up in one hand was the paper she’d run down the corridors with. She impatiently ran the other hand through the long, pale brown tangle of her hair, making a disgusted noise when her fingers snagged halfway down. As she walked towards a table on the near-side of the cafeteria where a half-dozen adolescent boys sat, she was so busy trying to extract her hand from her tangled hair that she tripped over the hem of her skirt. The laughter of six boys rang across the cafeteria as she caught her balance before she toppled over.
. . . . . “Ooo, look, has Miss Valee-belly been sent back to make amends finally?” the largest of the boys cooed, a grin on his face.
. . . . . The girl narrowed her bright blue eyes and held up the ball of paper clenched in her fist. She looked at the other five boys as she dropped a bombshell into the middle of their laughter. “Zunaadrin wrote a love poem to Xerte.” One of the boys in the group turned lavender with a blush of embarrassment as the largest boy turned violet with rage.
. . . . . “I will end you, Valdiis!” he shouted as he leapt for the girl. A grin shot across her face as she tossed the ball of paper into the crowd of boys, hiked up her skirt, and ran like the Burning Legion itself was on her hooves.

. . . . . “Oh come off it, Val. Zun had every right to chase you down,” said a thin, gangly sky-blue-skinned boy as he wiped blood from the scrape on her knee. “He didn’t want Xerte to know that he liked him that way.”
. . . . . “Well he shouldn’t’ve – ouch! – left his stupid poem out in the – hey, not so hard, that hurts! – family room for anyone to happen by, then.” Valdiis sat on a bench in the back of the engineering room, her skirt tucked around her thighs so her brother could tend her scrapes. “Besides, if he ever paid any attention, really, he’d know that Xerte thinks he’s cute too. Ow! Not that Xerte would write such awful poetry about it…”
. . . . . Rulaam, only a bit older than his youngest sibling, clucked his tongue as he dabbed the damp rag along a cut just underneath her eye. “Honestly, though… Did you have to give the poem to the rest of Zun’s gang?”
. . . . . Her bright peal of laughter echoed off the power crystals. “You should have seen the scramble for it! It was completely worth it.”
. . . . . “Yeah, just remember that when Mother gets a look at this black eye.”

. . . . . During the very long lecture on manners, decorum, ladylike behavior, and the nobility of the draenei people, the memory of five boys scrambling for a ball of paper helped Valdiis keep her tongue still. However, when she smiled to remember that Xerte – in the end – had gotten the poem, her mother cuffed her on the side of the head again. “Pay attention, girl! And don’t smirk at me like that. I know you’re not listening.”
. . . . . Valdiis looked down at her hooves, only about four and a half feet away, and nodded. “Yes, Omii. I promise not to steal Zunaadrin’s poems again.” Provided he doesn’t leave them lying around, she silently added.
. . . . . Anchorite Omii made a sound of annoyance and threw up her hands. “Valdiis, I am your mother. Please show a little more respect and stop using my given name when you address me.”
. . . . . “Yes, Mother.”
. . . . . An ebon-gray hand patted the top of the girl’s brown hair. “I know you don’t think so now, but one day you’ll make a wonderful mother yourself,” Omii mused, not looking at her daughter’s bruised face. “If you can just learn to stop fighting with your brothers all the time…”
. . . . . “I don’t fight with Rulaam!” the girl protested. “Besides, I don’t want to be a mother. I want to be an engineer.”
. . . . . Omii just sighed at this pronouncement and chased her daughter off to bed for the night.

. . . . . It had been nearly four thousand years since the last planet they had landed on before the draenei landed on another. This one was a tiny, frozen ball of ice covered in a strange blue foliage that thrived in the frigid temperatures. For the nearly adolescent Valdiis, this was the first time her hooves touched land; she had always been aboard a ship in the Twisting Nether. Thusly, this frozen ice ball was greeted with a great deal more enthusiasm by her than by all but one or two other children on the ship.
. . . . . Eleven-thousand years, so far, the draenei fled before the Burning Legion. Maybe this planet – inhospitable as it seemed – would be a respite. Rulaam – born on the last planet they’d been on, a place they called Taraatho – had experienced ice and snow there, so he taught Valdiis how to pack the snow into clumps and they had snowball fights lasting hours on end.
. . . . . Omii clucked her tongue in disapproval as her two youngest children returned to the ship most nights soaked through, chattering with cold, and their hooves so dry they cracked. “That is enough, young lady! If you crack your hoof one more time, I will just make you walk on it without healing it. Stop this nonsense!”
. . . . . Valdiis limped off to her room, grumbling something that sounded much like “stop, stop, stop…”
. . . . . The next day, the blacksmiths among the artificers on the ship were quite startled to find a young girl – not even quite an adolescent yet – with a hammer almost as large as her head and a piece of iron she was trying to hammer flat cold against the top of one of the anvils in the forge area. One of the blacksmiths, a wiry woman with arms that seemed almost as big around as the arcane pipes to the warp core, took pity on the child. “You have to heat it up first before it will move,” she explained, moving over to pluck the hammer from the girl’s hand. “Here,” the blacksmith said as she picked up a pair of tongs. “Let me show you.”

. . . . . Glimmers of sickly green fel energy flickered through the sky above the icy planet they’d named Cerbeuus. The Legion was near. A mere thirty years of peace, of staying in one place…and retreat again. Always retreat.
. . . . . They departed the planet, but Valdiis did not give up her odd habit of wearing metal shoes on the bottoms of her hooves. Only the warriors among them – Vindicators and Shields and such – wore metal shoes on their hooves to stave off cracks and warping from impacts in battle - warriors and one bizarre little girl who learned blacksmithing just so she could rely on her own skills to tend to her hooves.

. . . . . Zunaadrin loomed impressively in his black and white robes over his brothers as he intoned a prayer to the Light and called the Naaru’s blessing upon them. A senior anchorite took their vows. Omii, now an exarch, one of the most senior priests among her people – although still well below Velen, laid a golden chain with a symbol of the Light dangling from it around each of her son’s necks. On benches in the chapel the draenei had built on Spretomi, a planet they’d had a good six hundred years on, Omii’s two youngest children leaned their heads together and appeared to be paying no attention to the ceremony. As Valdiis, now a young woman – and quite disrespectfully in pants – made a stabbing gesture while she talked with Rulaam, Omii cleared her throat and raised her voice in prayer. Her youngest children looked up, Rulaam’s face impassive while Valdiis’s took on a faint dark violet blush over her ebon-gray cheeks.
. . . . . Whatever rude and barbaric conversation they were having was halted, so Omii continued with the consecration ceremony for the forty-two new anchorites.
. . . . . After it was over, Rulaam and Valdiis left their seats and went to the door of the chapel, retrieving their swords before they even congratulated their brothers. Eyes narrowing in her ebon-gray face, Omii crossed her arms over her chest and snarled at her children, “Could you have at least waited until you were leaving to pick those up?”
. . . . . “No, Mother,” rumbled Rulaam as he buckled the sword’s sheath back onto his belt. “We’re not even supposed to take them off here in the chapel, except that we do it out of respect for you.”
. . . . . His words did little to mollify her, and she focused her eyes on her only daughter. “And Valdiis, couldn’t you have worn a nice dress? This is your brothers’ consecration ceremony for Naaru’s sake!” Behind her, her pale-skinned husband, anchorite Arkun, stepped up and placed a quieting hand on his wife’s shoulder.
. . . . . “Omii, I haven’t worn a dress in two thousand years. As much as I love Diyos and Athos, they’re not worth me starting now.” As she looked towards them and caught their eye, she threw a little wave their way. “Besides, they don’t mind if I wear the uniform of my station as is proper.”
. . . . . “Don’t you lecture me on propriety!”
. . . . . Valdiis didn’t respond. She simply walked away, following Rulaam over to clap her brothers – the newest anchorites of the draenei people – on the back and laugh as Rulaam offered them a drink at the tavern after all the ceremonial mess was done.

. . . . . To casual observers, it might have seemed odd for a lone female draenei to sit and drink with four males, but only a moment or two of observation more revealed that she fit right in with their loud, boisterous, carousing ways. “To the Light!” cried the largest of them all, a pale-lavender-skinned and almost monstrously large draenei with a single, thick facial tendril descending from his chin. Zunaadrin lifted his mug, sloshing the alcoholic drink inside it, and toasted with his brothers and sister.
. . . . . One of two males who appeared the same age and very similar in appearance to his brother leaned forward over the table and said something that had the others falling back in their chairs with laughter. As Diyos wiped his eyes from laughing at his own joke, a curvaceous barmaid came by to replace all the drinks at the table. He winked at her, while his fraternal twin brother rolled his eyes. “Diyos,” chastised his twin, “you’ve not been an anchorite five hours and you’re already returning to lechery?”
. . . . . Diyos patted the barmaid’s behind as she left and grinned. “Someone in our brood ought to get some tail. We all know you and Zun won’t be giving our dear parents grandchildren.” Athos and Zunaadrin both scowled, but – drunkenly oblivious – Diyos kept pushing his hoof farther into his mouth, “And you two are too busy dancing with swords to find a mate. It is up to me to carry the family forward!” He puffed out his chest impressively. He looked impressive for about four seconds before the open, ebon-gray palm of Valdiis landed on the back of his head. “Ow! Val… You’re so violent…”
. . . . . “Our ‘dancing with swords’ as you put it still allows us plenty of time to enjoy the company of others,” she said with a grin. “Rulaam here has met a little fire mage…” She jerked her head towards the sky-blue male draenei next to her at the table. His cheeks went slightly purple. “Gone dancing with her yet, brother?” She grinned at him.
. . . . . Looking uncomfortable, he harrumphed his disapproval and tilted back his new mug of ale. “I’ve only known her a few days, Val. Give me a break.”
. . . . . Zunaadrin laughed. “Yeah, Valee!” He leaned his elbows on the table. “Unlike you, he doesn’t fall into bed with just anyone on the first date.”
. . . . . With a snarl that showed a great deal of pointy teeth, Valdiis lunged across the table at Zunaadrin and slapped him across the left cheek so hard that all chatter in the bar halted at the sound. At the large male’s glower, everyone turned back to their own conversations. “Outside. Now,” he gritted through his teeth.
. . . . . “Gladly,” his sister replied. The whole group of siblings stood – it had been a few centuries since they last witnessed the spectacle of the eldest and the youngest having a good brawl. Diyos tossed a handful of the purple crystals used as currency on the table, winked at the barmaid, and hustled out after the rest.
. . . . . Outside, behind the tavern, a very drunk Zunaadrin was prodding his little sister’s temper. “It’s the pants, you know. You’re practically advertising your assets to all those barbarians you dance with all the time. They know you’re easy. A real lady would never-” That was as far as he got before the much slighter but quite muscular woman barreled into him and knocked him back into the outside wall of the tavern with a loud thump. She didn’t waste her breath speaking; she just planted a fist in his midsection and danced back out of his reach. With a roar, he threw a right-hook towards the side of her head.
. . . . . In a semi-circle around the two fighting siblings, Rulaam and the fraternal twins conferred quietly, their eyes on the brawl. “My odds are on Zun,” said Diyos. “Even drunk, he’s always had a mean streak.”
. . . . . Rulaam shook his head as he watched his sister dart to the side and kick a hoof into the center of Zunaadrin’s back as he passed her. He sprawled on his face in the dirt. “He’s still just a priest. You forget that she’s been training with warriors. Besides,” Rulaam watched his sister crouch to leap at her fallen brother; he kept his voice very quiet, “Val’s pretty sensitive about the fact that she doesn’t actually have all that many lovers.”
. . . . . Athos stroked the short crop of tendrils on his chin thoughtfully. “Zun has the advantage of age and size, but Val is certainly very quick and very angry tonight.”
. . . . . Zunaadrin pushed himself up out of the dirt and lowered his head to charge Valdiis. She danced to the side again and planted her hoof on his behind this time. He pushed off the wall he had been heading towards and fell backwards towards his little sister, turning as he fell to face her. Surprised by this, she didn’t move fast enough and he landed on her, pinning her to the ground. She snarled and bucked upwards, trying to throw him off. The larger male laughed and grabbed her short light brown hair, yanking her head backwards and exposing her throat. “You fight like a girl, Valee…”
. . . . . Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Do I? Then I guess I’ll have to use a girl’s move.” Her knee shot up into Zunaadrin’s groin. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp, groaning with pain. After some considerable effort, she pushed him off of her and stood up. She faced her three other brothers and smiled. “I win.”
. . . . . Rulaam pointed behind her as Zunaadrin pushed himself out of the dirt again and tackled Valdiis from behind. She half-turned as she followed her brother’s pointing finger, and – forgetting everything she had learned about falling – shot out her left arm as she went crashing to the ground to attempt to stop her fall.
. . . . . The sickening snap of her forearm was louder than the thump of both draenei hitting the ground. Athos lifted a hand to his mouth and looked slightly green under his indigo skin. Rulaam growled darkly as he hauled Zunaadrin off of Valdiis and tossed him against the wall. “Dick move, Zun. Dick move…”
. . . . . The young female warrior lay on the ground, her left forearm bent where it should be straight, navy blood pooling around the wound where a piece of bone glistened out of her ebon-gray skin. While she was breathing heavily and very pale, she made not a sound. Diyos helped her sit up, while Athos held her left hand gently to keep her arm from dragging. Slumped against the wall, the normally pale Zunaadrin looked almost bone white. “Kil’jaeden’s foul teat, Val… I didn’t mean to.”
. . . . . She finally made a sound, snarling wordlessly at him. Her eyes closed and she swayed. “Help me up, Rulaam,” she said after a moment. “I don’t trust Zun to heal it.” Her eldest brother looked down at the ground in shame. “I want Omii or Arkun.” Rulaam helped his little sister stand up, a bit proud of her that she didn’t even gasp. He opened his mouth to speak but she cut him off. “Despite the lecture I know I’ll get, brother. Just get me to a healer already.”

. . . . . The bone healed cleanly, although Omii declined to do anything about the scar along the top of her daughter’s forearm. “You ought to have some reminder of what unladylike behavior gets you,” she scolded. The relationship between the eldest and the youngest sibling didn’t heal so cleanly. While they’d never gotten along wonderfully, their interactions were chilly at best for centuries afterwards.
. . . . . After the draenei landed on what the Naaru told them was the last planet – K’ure was too ill to keep the ship going, and D’ore was all but killed in the crash – the family followed a small collective of anchorites to the damp, heavy swamps of Zangarmarsh. Thousands and thousands of years among their own people in close quarters had given them all a desire to find a smaller community, a little less of the boisterous socializing the draenei were known for.
. . . . . Rulaam settled his wife and baby daughter comfortably in Telredor. Zunaadrin spent most of his time with a crew dedicated to the upkeep and repair of the town. Diyos and Athos split their time between leading prayers at Telredor when their parents were too weary to do it, and leading prayers for the Vindicators defending the Twin Spires from the occasionally-hostile orcs. Valdiis and Rulaam – their skills with weaponry not useful to the anchorites and not holy enough for the Vindicators – joined a unit of warriors guarding the marshlands surrounding Telredor.
. . . . . Perhaps, finally, they were safe. Perhaps, now, the Burning Legion would not find this refuge. Perhaps, at last, peace.

Summoned

2009-11-23T12:00:00.068-05:00

Written while listening to Sophia by the Crüxshadows.
((A commentary on the ending follows the story.))

. . . . . A pulse of unholy energy rent the air in front of Andular Tieran. He had just enough time to think Huh. What is that? before bolts of deep violet death magic wrapped around his torso and yanked him forward twenty-five yards. The fel-imbued robes of the Illidari cult that Andular wore were no protection against the rock he slammed into. Dazed and winded, still wrapped in those unusual tendrils of death magic that had come from nowhere, he looked up to see a massive suit of plated armor coming around the rock towards him. From a slit in the helmet glowed a pair of blue orbs so cold and hate-filled that Andular wet himself for the first time since his first battle as a teenaged medic with Turalyon’s Sons of Lothar.
. . . . . The tendrils of death magic faded, but the feel of death in the air did not. Andular opened his mouth to speak a demonic incantation and blast the suit of armor with a bolt of shadow magic. A dark gauntlet shot up, the articulated plates of the palm searing the skin of Andular’s neck with frostbite as the hand closed around his throat. He did not even manage a squeak. Those evil eyes never looked away from him as the blackness closed in. The cultist kicked his feet, clawed at the hand around his throat, and finally went still.
. . . . . Death knight Hadeon sighed and set the corpse down gently on the stone. He’d been watching the cultists for a few days and knew that another patrol wouldn’t be by for ten minutes. It was enough time. This was the largest of the humans he’d found and it would still take some extra scraps and some work to make the cultist’s robes and cowl fit him. He touched two fingers to his forehead and whispered a prayer for the human’s soul, although it had already fled the body. Quickly, he removed the robe and cowl from the body, grimacing at the rank scent of urine from the robes.
. . . . . His heart sank as he lifted his hand over the body and blasted it with foul, unholy magic. This was the worst part of his plan; he hadn’t been able to come up with any other way to get the body out of the area before the next patrol. Sickened by his own desecration of the dead, he snapped his fingers at the reanimated corpse. It mindlessly shambled after him as he slung the robes over his shoulder and headed for the tree line of Terokkar Forest.

. . . . . As soon as it was safe to do so, death knight Hadeon led the ghoul to a clearing amid the trees. He set down his pack and the cultist’s robes, and then pulled out a broken sword he’d claimed from a ruined settlement near the Black Temple. Using the sword as a shovel, Hadeon began to dig.
. . . . . You really should make the ghoul help, goat, came the dry tones of warlock Retz in his mind.
. . . . . “Shut up, Retz. I am not making this poor man dig his own grave.”
. . . . . He was a member of a demon cult. You hate demon cults. He’s not even worth a grave.
. . . . . “Even dead cultists deserve a little respect.” Hadeon kept digging.
. . . . . The grave wasn’t as deep as he would like, given the wildlife in the area, but a broken sword did not a decent shovel make. The death knight shoved the unresponsive ghoul into the hole and murmured a brief apology. He took back the infusion of unholy magic he had lent the ghoul and it became an inert corpse once more.
. . . . . Ignoring Retz’s complaints about the effort involved, the ignominy of the deed, and the tedium of the work, Hadeon filled the grave in with dirt and tamped the mound down with his hooves. He left the broken sword planted in the dirt as a marker and picked up the robes to go wash them in a nearby river.

. . . . . As he had travelled across Shadowmoon Valley, Hadeon saw enough of the demons of the Burning Legion to know that Draenor was lost. He had seen several Kro’kul among the roving bands of cultists, so his plan was to pass as a Kro’kul cultist when he got close enough to Auchindoun to need a disguise; he was probably Kro’kul himself at this point anyway. He’d only been away from Draenor for a few years – somewhere around two or three, although he wasn’t sure – and he was certain that the former temple of the dead was still teeming with Shadow Council and now Illidari cultists too.
. . . . . The disguise had been Retz’s idea. Retz was not terribly keen on slaughtering his fellows, but not because he owed them a lick of loyalty. It was a waste of their time, he reasoned. Better to just go in looking like one of them, do the weird little death rituals Hadeon was so set on performing for the soul in the shard he carried, and get out with minimal fuss. Hadeon had agreed that it was a sound enough concept, and so now he was trudging through the Bone Wastes in too-short, too-tight robes and wincing at every pile of draenei bones he passed as he made for the ruins of the temple. At least the cowl was roomy enough to hide his face.
. . . . . To Hadeon’s surprise, his parasite warlock had been right. No one questioned his right to be in the temple while he looked like a Kro’kul Illidari servant. One human woman had glanced at his hooves and murmured something about giving her regards to Akama to him. Hadeon had nodded beneath the cowl and kept moving across the massive, ruined courtyard towards the Auchenai Crypts.
. . . . . Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that being here again was pushing him to the killing edge, that his grasp on the Light slipped farther away the longer he was here, but he owed it to Ramdor to try. This was why he had overpowered Retz and retaken control of his body, after all – he owed it to his fellow Death-speakers to send all their souls to the Light.
. . . . . “Deathspeaker Malieos!” came the cry of a hollow-eyed draenei woman as she flagged down a bald, hornless Kro’kul man in the robes of a Shadow Council member. It took every ounce of control Hadeon possessed to not spin around to find out what was going on. He kept walking, slipping behind a large piece of debris in the courtyard so he could overhear the conversation. Had the woman just called that Kro’kul a Death-speaker? Those robes she wore, they looked almost like an anchorite’s attire, just…the wrong dye batch. Horror set in as he listened to the conversation.
. . . . . “What is it, Paandri? I’m running very short on time.” The Kro’kul sounded bored.
. . . . . “My apologies, Deathspeaker. I only wanted to inform you that there is a new batch of corpses ready for your work in the Shadow Labyrinth. Five ‘brave adventurers,’” she scoffed, “who seem to have been sent here by those Light-addled fools holding out in Shattrath. One of the preservers found a scroll containing orders from the Aldor on one of the bodies.”
. . . . . The Kro’kul waved her away. “Drain the blood and keep the corpses on ice for me. I will be there in a few hours. The Council wants us to reanimate a bone dragon today.”
. . . . . Leaning heavily back against the debris shielding him from the conversation, Hadeon closed his eyes. This abomination was called Death-speaker? His own people were now participating in this travesty at Auchindoun? The Aldor yet survived? He banged the back of his head against the stone behind him a few times.
. . . . . Worry later, goat. We need to hurry.
. . . . . With a curt nod, Hadeon pushed away from the debris and walked to the crypts. The massive pile of bones just inside the doorway nearly pushed him over that knife’s edge of madness he’d been treading since he’d gotten within sight of the ruins. The level of disrespect and downright blasphemy made him want to find some power which would allow him to raze the entire ruined temple to the ground. But as powerful as he’d become, he knew that was far beyond him. Too close to the killing edge, he knew he shouldn’t do it, but he had to… Hadeon opened his senses to the dead, looking with otherworldly eyes at the pile that was twice as tall as he was.
. . . . . The rush of screaming, anguished souls would have knocked him to his knees if he hadn’t locked them in anticipation of the influx. Now that he was listening, he could hear the maddened screaming from the magenta shard at his hip. Fumbling with the robes, Hadeon pulled the blood-stained case from his belt and unrolled it. There were still six vials of Anuurhi rum in the twelve slots for the case. Something frozen fell onto the leather. Hadeon stared at the tiny piece of ice until another fell and joined it. He realized then that he was weeping. Derius had given him the case and the rum. Along with the vials, tucked into one of the empty slots like some sort of bizarre supply, was the magenta soul shard with Ramdor’s soul in it.
. . . . . The shard felt warm to the touch as Hadeon picked it up. It was probably hot enough to damage his skin if he was feeling it at all. He heard a quiet sizzle over all the screaming of hungry ghosts. Yes, it was that hot, then.
. . . . . “I’m not sure I can find your body here, Ramdor,” he rumbled quietly at the shard. “This may be the best I can do.” Casting a quick glance around to ensure there were no cultists in the entryway, Hadeon dropped to one knee and set the shard down on the pile of bones. “Retz,” he asked his soul parasite, “how do I get his soul out of the shard?”
. . . . . You really should have asked earlier, goat. Retz sounded annoyed. Just break the shard. A demon would snap it and suck the soul out before it escaped, but since that’s not what you’re after… Just break it.
. . . . . Hadeon had left his mace in a cache with his armor at the edge of the Bone Wastes. Cultists didn’t carry them and he couldn’t figure a way to hide it beneath the too-tight robes. Whispering an apology to its former owner, Hadeon picked up a bone from the pile – human thigh bone, he thought – and brought it down hard on the magenta crystal.
. . . . . It shattered, although Hadeon could barely hear the sound of it amidst the crying souls all over the crypt. A dark mist, quite unlike any soul or shade he’d ever seen, slid out of the crystal’s pieces and coalesced into a black puddle hovering above the bones. The first notes of the prayer to sing a soul home emerged from Hadeon’s throat before the puddle rose up and formed into a ghostly image of Ramdor. A truly mad gleam lit his eyes as he looked at Hadeon.
. . . . . “Deathhhh-sssspeaker,” the ghostly soul rasped, voice destroyed by decades of screaming. Ramdor’s soul grimaced and shook his ethereal head. When he spoke again, his voice was rough still, but sounded much more like the living Ramdor’s rumble. “Get out of here, abomination.”
. . . . . Despite the gray tint ever-present under his blue skin, Hadeon went grayer still. “Ramdor, no, I just want to guide you to the Light.”
. . . . . “They are all mad here. I am the only sane one left! The only one with any common sense!” The soul paced atop the pile of bones. “Go! Gogogo! I stay. You… Look at you… Look at what you have become… Walking death, an abomination to your own ways. And you want to sing ME to the Light? Get away. I am the only one who can see it now. Get out! Get out!”
. . . . . Hadeon rose and backed away as the ghost continued to scream at him. Movement at the crypt’s lower entrance caught his eye. A cultist was coming. He snatched up the leather case, cast a look over his shoulder at the raving ghost, and hurried out of the crypts.

. . . . . In the shadowed corners of the tavern in Shattrath’s Lower City, the only thing which separated Hadeon from the patrols of Vindicators in the city was his darkened, battered armor. Well, that and the subtle scent of decay, but he tried to keep his skin icy to help conceal the smell. With everything covered by armor, he looked no different from his own people in the city.
. . . . . He felt worlds away, as if this was just some new planet they had landed on which happened to have a people who looked like him. The joyous bonding and connection to the Naaru his people had was almost a tangible presence in the air. Yet all he had were the roiling memories of slaughter and failure and bones. A bloodied haze filled his vision as he huddled in a chair in the corner and tried not to dwell on how much he would really like to see the inside of that ogre, or how interesting he thought that human woman might look in several pieces.
. . . . . Inside the restraining bubble of holy energy, warlock Retz’s soul giggled in Death-speaker Hadeon’s mind. And you thought you could be around the living. Ha!
. . . . . “Shut up, Retz,” growled the death knight as he put all the darkness of his visions into his regard for the parasite soul in his head. Auchindoun had snapped something inside him. Whatever part of his soul which still clung to the Light was missing in action right now, leaving him with nothing but an amused demonic orc and his own killing rage.
. . . . . His own skin was so icy he did not even notice the chill which settled over the tavern as two warriors in heavy, dark plate entered. Whispers raced around the patrons and several stood up to discreetly leave. The bartender paled. One of the warriors, a female draenei by the hooves and the curvy build, waved a plated hand dismissively at the bartender. He seemed relieved that he did not have to serve them. Her companion’s build under the armor suggested a human male. They both had two-handed blades slung over their backs.
. . . . . Hadeon was so lost in envisioning the walls of the tavern painted navy and crimson and blackened-red with blood that he didn’t notice the two dark warriors approaching until the draenei woman’s dark plated fist slammed down on the table in front of him.
. . . . . “You are in my seat,” she grated out in heavily-accented Common. Beneath her helmet, her voice echoed weirdly.
. . . . . Hadeon knew not a bit of the language she spoke, but thankfully, Retz knew some Common from his time with the Shadow Council, fighting the influx of Azerothians from the Dark Portal. He looked around at the empty tables all around him as he stalled for enough time for the warlock to feed him the syllables he needed. “I see many seats here.”
. . . . . The human didn’t waste time posturing; he simply sat down in the chair across the table from Hadeon. He pulled a flask from his belt and set it on the table, then pulled off his helmet. Hadeon growled as he took in the waxy skin and glowing eyes of a human death knight. Switching rapidly to his otherworldly sight, he looked for the orc behind the human’s eyes. To his deep confusion, it looked like there was only one soul there; he might’ve been ripped out and stuffed back in backwards, but he seemed to belong in the body.
. . . . . Another set of glowing eyes met his as Hadeon looked up at the draenei woman. No simple warrior either…she smelled like old blood and oiled metal, but the feel of her said nothing but death. She made an irritated noise at his stilted Common words and leaned back slightly on her hooves. “Exiled one?” she asked quietly in Draenei.
. . . . . Hadeon gestured to his hooves below the table. “What else?” he responded in kind.
. . . . . “From the size of you, a small Tauren.” Her helm moved from side to side as she shook her head.
. . . . . The human at the table snarled in Common, “Stick to bloody Common, will ye? All I got from that was ‘Tauren.’ Is he?” He waved a plated hand towards Hadeon across from him.
. . . . . “No. Draenei,” the woman responded. She seemed to give up the idea of confronting him for the chair against the wall and simply pulled the one next to him at the table to the side so her back was to the wall.
. . . . . It was finally at this point that Hadeon noticed the chill emanating from them both. How many of them had the orcs made? And why did these two seem to have their own souls? The human walking corpses had never felt dual-soulled like the two draenei death knights he had known, but they had also felt like souls in the wrong body to him. The human male seemed to fit in his own body, although it seemed like a piece here and there might be broken or mangled. The draenei female didn’t give off any sense of being dual-soulled, although she also seemed to be more than a little damaged on a soul’s level. The conundrum distracted Hadeon from his dark thoughts of raising the entire tavern as an army of ghouls.
. . . . . “You must be ze one ve have been gettink reports about,” the woman said conversationally, her voice still echoing inside her helm. “Been sittink back here in zis corner for six days, blastink so much ice no one vill sit vithin ten yards of you, yes?”
. . . . . The human took a swig from his flask and looked around at the empty tables surrounding the corner. “I’d say this is our deader, Corporal.”
. . . . . From within his own helmet, the glow from Hadeon’s eyes dimmed as he narrowed his eyes at the human. Most of the conversation’s meaning had escaped him, but the word “deader” wasn’t hard for Retz to translate. He couldn’t come up with the words in Common to express his offense quickly enough, so he settled for pulling his helm off and scowling at the human.
. . . . . “Bloody hell,” the human breathed, a grin settling on his face. “Bet you get all the ladies with that mug.” His voice was dry beneath the faint resonance they all seemed to have.
. . . . . “Len, ve did not come here to insult ze man,” the draenei reprimanded coolly, although her tone held the barest hint of amusement. She turned her head and seemed to be regarding Hadeon. “Vhat unit vere you vith, zen?” she finally asked.
. . . . . Inside his head, his parasite warlock soul had to puzzle out her meaning through her heavy accent. He couldn’t do it. Who cares about the human? I want to know where which warlock made these two. He did an excellent job fitting their souls back in! Just speak to her in your goat gibberish. Here, this is an apology in Common. “I am sad and will talk to her,” Hadeon said, repeating the syllables the warlock gave him.
. . . . . The human arched an eyebrow. “Sad, huh? That’s why you’ve been cryin’ in this corner?”
. . . . . Hadeon growled and switched into Draenei, focusing on the woman. “Tell him I’m sorry, but I don’t know more than a few words of Common. What question did you just ask me?”
. . . . . She informed the human that he’d meant “sorry” instead of “sad,” and promised to translate the conversation shortly. Her helmet still on, she appeared to be looking at him through the slit in its face. “I asked what unit you were with.” she repeated in Draenei.
. . . . . “Unit?” Hadeon stroked his chin, puzzled. “I’m not with a unit. Just me here.”
. . . . . The draenei woman made an exasperated noise that echoed within her helm. “Not now. Back then. Before Light’s Hope. Which of the Lich King’s units were you with?”
. . . . . Hadeon blinked at her. “The what king?”
. . . . . There was a thumping sound. He rather thought it might have been her stamping her hoof against the stone floor. “Are you addled? You certainly look like you took a good blow to the head. The Lich King,” she said with great emphasis. “He who created us. May the Ebon Blade shred his corpse into specks and send his soul in thousands of pieces to the Twisting Nether.”
. . . . . “So the warlock who made you calls himself the Lich King?”
. . . . . “That blow to the head must have done permanent damage…” She switched to Common and looked at the human. “He acts like he does not know who ze Lich King – may he eternally rot in agony – is.”
. . . . . While the human began to laugh – at least, that’s what he thought that rasping sound was – Hadeon glared at the draenei woman. “Look, lady, I don’t know what you’re getting at here, but I don’t know this Lich King,” he said in Draenei. “I was once under Teron Gorefiend’s command, but have long since escaped.”
. . . . . There was another thump, but this time it was her fist hitting the table again. “I’d heard rumors,” she murmured, her voice so soft he might not have heard it without the echo chamber of her plate helm. “That explains why you feel so strange…”
. . . . . The human might not understand the language, but the woman’s tone was clear enough. “I take it,” he said evenly, “that something just went wrong.” He took another swig from his flask.
. . . . . “Zis one is from an entirely different group of death knights,” she said quietly in Common. “He was created before you and I. Possibly even before ze Lich King.”
. . . . . There was a strange expression of pity on the human’s death-stiffened, waxy face. “Damn. Rough blow, brother,” he said, nodding at Hadeon.
. . . . . Inside his head, Retz tried to translate what he could, but his grasp of Common was fairly limited. He managed to convey to Hadeon most of the meaning, however. He nodded back at the human before a new concern struck him. “Wait,” Hadeon said, “so there are enough of our sort around that when you meet a strange death knight in a tavern, not only do you immediately know what sort of creature he is, you have to ask him which unit he was in?”
. . . . . The draenei woman’s helm bobbed up and down as she nodded. “Let me put it this way,” she said in Draenei. “Len and I here are from the 1113^th Infantry Unit.”
. . . . . Hadeon blinked. He swiftly calculated how many soldiers made up a unit. Then he considered that – at a minimum – there had been so many units for their numbers to surpass the thousand mark. “Kil’jaeden’s foul teat,” he cursed softly.
. . . . . The woman’s bitter laughter echoed inside the helm. “Something like that. Not all of us broke free, but many did. He’s still making more, though.”
. . . . . As Hadeon considered the horror of legions of his kind of abomination set loose upon Draenor and Azeroth, the woman reached up and pulled her helm off, unsnapping the clasps on the side which helped it fit around her horns. The strength of his reaction to her caught him so off-guard that he grabbed at the edge of the table to keep from falling out of his seat. Thoughts of blood and ghoul armies and razing ruined temples receded behind utterly unexpected thoughts of sunlit meadows and swimming nude in the ocean. She was absolutely captivating…if somewhat dead. Short and wild white hair, tarnished slightly golden, curled around her face and cupped the base of perfectly arched horns. Her skin was a deep gray, probably more of an ebon-gray shade before she’d died, and showed no signs of rot. There were crinkles at the edges of her ice-blue glowing eyes – she had laughed a lot in life, perhaps she still did. One of the tendrils trailing down from behind her ears had a crack in it, the skin showing a bit of the fragility of death. Where the ends of her facial tendrils brushed her shoulders and the top of her dark breastplate stopped, a thick scar ran across the front of her neck. The golden rings on her tendrils had been scrubbed blank with a coarse grinding stone, the usual Draenei markings of family and home and deeds wiped clean. Hadeon had no idea why he found her so attractive, but the strength of it concerned him deeply – especially since he was dead and supposed to be free from that sort of thing now. Even his parasitic warlock was momentarily struck dumb.
. . . . . The woman scowled at him the longer he stared. “Yes, I am dead. So are you. Get over it.” Her voice was curt, a rusty alto without the echo of her helm. It made him want to tell her his name just so she would say it.
. . . . . A loud laugh from the human finally dragged his attention away from her; it seemed that the human had gotten the gist of her Draenei response to Hadeon’s staring. He glared until the human stopped. “You say ‘Len and I’… Who are you? Who is he?” Hadeon wasn’t entirely sure why he asked.
. . . . . The woman waved a plated hand at the human. “This is Ardros Lendenson.” Understanding his name among the Draenei syllables, the human nodded. She went on, “I am Valdiis. We are both members of the Ebon Blade, and our unit now calls itself the Knights of Menethil.” She gestured down at the black tabard covering her breastplate.
. . . . . “You mentioned them once before. What is the Ebon Blade?”
. . . . . Valdiis put her elbow on the table and lifted her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. She looked over her hand at the human male, who appeared to be cheerfully draining his flask. “Len,” she said in Common. “Go get some drinks from ze bartender, yes? Ve vill be here a vhile…”

. . . . . By the time the three walking corpses finally left his tavern, the bartender was about ready to get some “No Death Knights” signs made. If he never saw one of them again, he would give his entire profits for a year to the Aldor temple.
. . . . . A chill crept into the room on little gnome’s feet as a two-foot tall abomination in dark plate entered the World’s End Tavern. So much for tithing.

. . . . . The world had changed a great deal in the decades since his death at Auchindoun. Death knight Hadeon was fairly sure that the remaining Death-speakers he had known on Argus had perished in that battle, but he had not felt their souls among the cacophony in the Auchenai Crypts. That left five unsung souls somewhere that he felt it was his duty to guide home to the Light. Ramdor, he thought, was probably an impossible task. The decades had been too cruel, had solidified the soul’s presence away from the Light. Preserver Tena and Death-speaker Grenar had been found and guided home. Where he would find the other five…he had no idea. But he owed it to them to look before he gave his own soul up to rest.
. . . . . The parasitic warlock complained at the idea, but perhaps even he was starting to get weary of this strange unlife, because he didn’t complain loudly or long.
. . . . . When Valdiis offered him a place among the Knights of Menethil, Hadeon politely turned her down, although part of him – alright, most of him – wanted to take the excuse to be her comrade in arms if he couldn’t be her comrade in bed.
. . . . . “I walk alone,” he explained to her in their own language as they sat on a bench outside the Aldor temple. “And my methods may not always be…honorable…enough for your order. My mission is to guard the souls of the dead. Even now that I am on the wrong side of my own mission, I owe it to the rest of the Death-speakers to find them and sing their souls home.”
. . . . . Valdiis nodded, looking thoughtfully towards the beam of light from the Seat of the Naaru. “It is understandable. You do not have the same drive for vengeance that we do anyway.” She tapped her hoof on the stone for a moment. “Although… If you went through the Dark Portal to escape Gorefiend, there is a great likely-hood that other warlocks and their minions did too. The souls you seek may no longer be on Draenor.” She dropped this added complication into his lap and stood with a clatter, her armor settling into place. “It might help your search to have access to a network from time to time.”
. . . . . As Hadeon put his hand to his face and groaned at the added difficulty to his search, the female death knight pulled a small fawn-colored pouch off her belt. She pulled a tiny purple crystal from it and held it out towards Hadeon. “A communication stone. I had three, and if you take this, I will have but one. All you have to do is whisper my name to it and if I’m in a position to hear you, I can and I will help.” A smile stretched the death-stiffened muscles of her face as Hadeon looked up. His hand shook as he took the stone, but she was entirely oblivious. “My brothers and I used to use these to communicate. There are two more out there…somewhere. I’m not sure how I got three, actually.” Hadeon watched her babble and palmed the stone. By Velen’s beard, why couldn’t he have met her when he was living?
. . . . . Her head tilted to the side and her mouth stopped moving. It took him a moment to realize that she was waiting expectantly for an answer to something. “I’m sorry. Ehm. Momentary madness. Ghosts talking to me. Or something. Could you repeat that last?”
. . . . . “I said you will keep in touch, yes? I find you rather easy to get along with and would like to stay updated on your mission.”
. . . . . “Oh. Oh! Yes. Ehm. Yes, of course.” He held up the stone and tried to remember how to make his face form a smile. A rusty, quiet laugh slid from her lips and she patted the pauldron covering his left shoulder. Hadeon watched her walk away, fascinated by how plate armor could suddenly look so shapely.
. . . . . Goat… You’re dead. Besides, weren’t you a holy man? Dead holy men do not get the chicks.
. . . . . “Shut up, Retz.”

-----
. . . . . A short commentary about the ending: I am not completely and utterly satisfied by it, but it is more or less how it should be. Len is an invented character, no actual RPer on Moon Guard is responsible for him.
. . . . . Was it necessary for Hadeon to fall in love at first sight with one of my other characters? No. But I am tired of the emotionless, cold, crazy, or eternally angsty death knights. I prefer to write about resilient characters whose personalities survive in the face of the hell they are thrown into. Part of the beauty of life - and of fantasy life - is those people who can endure, even spit in the face of their past, and come out of the darkest places of the soul with something akin to humanity and normality. They'll never be normal, they'll never be quite right again, but they are still - at their core - themselves.
. . . . . Was it necessary for one of the darkest characters I have to lighten up a little and have a little more dimension to his purpose for not offing himself when he's done with his original duties? Yes. Will Valdiis ever notice? No.
. . . . . I don't do eternally dark and sad stories. It's not my thing. If it makes me a bad writer for not being so angsty, whatever.
. . . . . The orignal plan had been to wrap up Hadeon's story with just three parts, but I find I like him and his parasite warlock, so I purposely wrote the story to be able to continue it should I feel inclined.

. . . . . TL;DR? My story. My ending. Screw off.

Little Cat's Sixth (and Final) Lesson

2009-11-20T12:00:00.011-05:00

Written while listening to Lions! by Lights.
((If nothing else, listen to the song at least. It's totally sugar pop adorable and a very good fit for this character as a whole. Anyway, the title up there says "(and Final) Lesson" not because I am done with Xere, but because she is changing and so the titling, frequency, tone, et cetera of her stories will be changing with her. The first scene with the death knight is from in-game RP with Celuur of Moon Guard, and the scene with the Farseer is greatly abridged from in-game RP with Umbraan of Moon Guard, with a paragraph added at the end with creative license. (More than half the credit - I insist - goes to him instead of me.) I also wanted to include another bit where Xere meets Toxis and her death bear and apprentice shaman Daoloth, but I forgot to screencap those AND thought this was getting awfully long. This story finally brings Xeremuriis's timeline concurrent with Valdiis's. Where things go from here, we'll see.))

. . . . . As the Little Cat swept the air shrine’s terrace where Farseer Nobundo and Farseer Umbraan did their meditations, she practiced asking the dirt to kindly move itself along for her. Sometimes it worked. Today, though, the dirt was being stubborn. She was too busy fussing at the dirt on the rugs to notice the large armor-plated draenei man come up the ramp until she heard him mutter, “Damn you, Umbraan.”
. . . . . She turned quickly, her broom stilling at the unexpected voice. “Farseer Umbraan?” she asked the plated man.
. . . . . “Yes.”
. . . . . “He is away right now.”
. . . . . The plated man shifted his weight, but the Little Cat couldn’t even tell so much as the direction of his gaze. However, the dryness to his voice did not escape her. “Well evidently. You do not look like him.”
. . . . . She leaned the end of her broom on the floor. “I should hope not! He’s old.” She wrinkled her nose, and then smiled at her own joke. “I can take a message for him, though.”
. . . . . “I beg your pardon. He is old? I am the same age as Umbraan. Older, perhaps. Are you saying I look old?” The draenei’s voice echoed strangely inside his helmet.
. . . . . The Little Cat looked down at her hooves, her cheeks going purple with embarrassment. “Sorry! I didn’t mean… It’s just that… Well, he says so himself that he’s an old man!”
. . . . . “Hmph. If he wishes to feel like an old man, that is his business. Tell him that Celuur has arrived and is looking for him.”
. . . . . Somewhat oblivious, she continued to babble, “Besides, I can’t see how old you are inside that helmet anyway. So I would never be so rude as to call you old, sir! But I’m not sure when he’ll be back. I promise not to forge-…”
. . . . . She stopped as Celuur removed his helmet and tucked it under one arm. “Old enough,” he rumbled. “And also, let him know I am looking for a woman.”
. . . . . Her eyes narrowed with concern and she stepped forward, looking curiously at his face. “Oh dear… You look like you’re sick. Should I get you some tea?”
. . . . . “Sick? Not at all. I look sick?”
. . . . . “Your eyes are sort of…sunken in a little. Like you don’t sleep. And your cheeks are hollow like you haven’t eaten. Sick people don’t sleep or eat. So you look like you’ve been ill.” She popped her hand over her mouth, a horrified expression settling on her face. “Oh no! I forgot my manners again. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to call you old. Or sick.”
. . . . . Celuur snorted. “I am dead. What do you expect?”
. . . . . The Little Cat blinked repeatedly, momentarily at a loss for words. She tilted her head to the side and regarded the draenei man for a moment. “You don’t look like any dead person I’ve ever seen before. You’re moving around, for one.” She stepped closer, peering up at Celuur’s face. “You sure look more animated than a dead person. And you’re talking…”
. . . . . “Yes, I am a dead person.” The expression on his face clearly said he thought she was something of a moron.
. . . . . The Little Cat frowned. “You probably shouldn’t be so hard on yourself…”
. . . . . With an irritated shake of his head, Celuur attached his helm to his belt, pulled out a small notebook, consulted it, and went on, “Ask Umbraan about me when he returns. I am looking for a woman with dark hair and sky blue skin. Have you seen a woman of that description?” He paused for a moment. “Well… Stupid that I ask you, who cannot even recognize a dead person.”
. . . . . Flicking back a piece of her thick black hair and then holding her broom sideways in front of her with her sky blue hands, the Little Cat gave Celuur a look that clearly said she thought he was the moron. “You do smell like a dead person, though… Run that description by me one more time, sir? Slowly?”
. . . . . In a voice full of annoyance, he repeated himself. “Dark…hair… Sky. Blue. Skin. Slow enough?”
. . . . . The Little Cat arched a dark eyebrow. “Well, it certainly sounded clear to me.”
. . . . . Celuur glanced down to the notebook again. “Answers to the name of…miniature feline.”
. . . . . Her hooves clattered against the floor as she took several swift steps backwards. “What are you looking for her for?”
. . . . . “My junior officer is looking for her. A sort of grumpy dead draenei woman. Her niece, or something. I doubt she is even here, but I promised I would try.”
. . . . . “Are you so hard on all your friends? Calling them dead all the time?”
. . . . . Celuur blinked at her. “She is dead. Dead. Unliving. Without life.”
. . . . . The Little Cat’s knuckles paled as she tightened her grip on her broom in front of her. “Dead people generally lie still on the ground with their brains leaking out.” Her voice was flat, the memory of the dead crash victims rising too close to her mind’s eye.
. . . . . The large draenei man in a full suit of dark plate armor held his hand out over the tile floor of the shaman platform. A nauseating sensation swam up from the tile, followed in short order by an even more nauseatingly rotting humanoid corpse climbing up out of a swirling dark purple rune. The ghoul shivered and shook, standing next to Celuur and dribbling small bits of rot on the tile floor.
. . . . . She jumped back so quickly and so far that she bumped into one of the orbs for the air shrine behind her. “Th- THAT looks like a dead person!” A note somewhere between terror and panic, with a symphonic harmony to hysteria, had crept into her voice.
. . . . . “Now do you believe me?” He pointed to the skull motif adorning his plate armor.
. . . . . As the Little Cat began to babble, “A really long dead per-…” Celuur snapped his fingers and pointed at her. The ghoul leapt several feet and landed on the air orb behind her. “ACK!” She ran behind one of the walls of the shrine and cowered low, her knees only barely strong enough to keep her standing.
. . . . . “So yes,” Celuur went on. “This woman is looking for the miniature feline lady.” He nodded at the ghoul and it leapt around the wall right next to the young draenei girl. She screamed again and ran, tearing across the platform and bumping straight into Celuur.
. . . . . “Ow!” she cried out as they were both knocked backwards by the collision. She rubbed her head. “You’re cold… And snarly.” Bumping her head into the man’s freezing cold plate armor seemed to knock some of her fear out of her; he was solid and real and not as slimy-feeling as the thing he was sending after her.
. . . . . Celuur glared at her. “What are you doing up here anyway? You do not look like one of the shaman. They can generally identify the walking undead.” With an impatient gesture, he returned the ghoul through the dark purple rune and it was gone. The Little Cat shuddered and tried not to think too hard on what sort of mess she was going to be cleaning up.
. . . . . “I’m sweeping!” she protested, gesturing to her broom, fallen on Farseer Umbraan’s rug. “And I’m just an apprentice shaman…”
. . . . . “An apprentice?” Celuur laughed boisterously. “Apprentice of who?”
. . . . . Quickly, she fumbled with the tangle of charms and totems around her neck and pulled out the small apprentice’s totem. Without removing it from around her neck, she held it out to show him. “See. I am too an apprentice.”
. . . . . Celuur looked down at it. “No way…” He grabbed the totem around her neck and looked closer, ignoring the impatient stamp of her hoof and the quavering of her knees at being so close to this cold, intimidating man who commanded corpses.
. . . . . The Little Cat sniffed and tried to lean back, tethered by the totem around her neck. “Okay, so you really do smell dead…”
. . . . . For a moment, Celuur’s grip tightened on the totem. “Umbraan?!” He released the totem and began laughing again.
. . . . . Her face clearly showing hurt feelings, she frowned. “Why else would I be sweeping his rug? Of course, Farseer Umbraan. He’s not so bad!”
. . . . . “He would never take an apprentice. Did you steal that?”
. . . . . Tucking the totem gently against her chest, the Little Cat looked down at her hooves. “I did not! He gave it to me! Maybe it took a staring match and some convincing… But he did give it to me!”
. . . . . Celuur snorted. “Well, ask him about the death knight named Farseer Celuur. And keep your eyes out for a ‘little cat’ lady.” He turned and began to walk away.
. . . . . “Why do you want her?” she called out to his back. “Is your friend snarly like you?”
. . . . . “I told you. My junior officer is looking for her. Corporal Valdiis.”
. . . . . With a soft clatter and a louder thump, the Little Cat sat on the tile, her face stricken. “Valdiis?”
. . . . . “Yes. Can you remember that, little girl?” Celuur was nearly at the ramp to go down the platform.
. . . . . “Of course I can,” she said quietly. “She’s my aunt.”
. . . . . Celuur spun around and looked at the girl. She appeared to have been hit between the eyes with a mace – completely stunned. “She-… You are the little cat? You?!”
. . . . . She nodded slowly. “That’s what my mother calls me. My name is Xeremuriis, but my family doesn’t usually use it.”
. . . . . “I see… Well then. I have found you. You are alive. Congratulations. I will inform Corporal Valdiis.”
. . . . . Still seated on the tile, she looked up – way up – at Celuur. “She’s your…‘junior officer’ you said? Did you take over Firefly Company?”
. . . . . Celuur blinked at her. “Firefly? I do not know what you are talking about. She is an officer of the Knights of Menethil.”
. . . . . “Firefly! The marsh-guard unit she was wi-… Knights of what?”
. . . . . “Menethil.”
. . . . . “What’s a menethil?”
. . . . . Celuur rolled his plated shoulders. “Named for a human king. A noble order of death knights.”
. . . . . The Little Cat propped her chin on her hand. “Why would Val work for a human ki- DEATH knights? What in the Nether ARE you?” Her expression was part worried, part panicked, mostly confused.
. . . . . The death knight sighed. “There are issues of life and death which are better discussed with your mentor.”
. . . . . She scowled up at him. “You sound like everyone else around here. Poor Farseer Umbraan. You all dump questions you don’t want to answer on him!”
. . . . . “He is your mentor for a reason.”
. . . . . Bracing herself with a hand on the tile, the Little Cat pushed herself up to standing and faced the death knight intently. “Well, you listen to me Mister Snarlypants… I will not be told off! This is my family you’re talking about here! What happened to Firefly Company? Why do you keep saying Aunt Val’s dead?”
. . . . . “I know nothing about the Firefly Company. But Valdiis is, indeed, dead. She fell at the hands of the Scourge, and was raised from the dead in their service.”
. . . . . “What did you do to her?!” A purple flush covered not just the girl’s cheeks, but her entire face as her temper rose.
. . . . . Celuur looked offended. “I have done nothing to her!”
. . . . . “You say dead and Scourge, but then you say ‘noble order’ and speak about ranks like a marsh-guard unit…”
. . . . . “This discussion is really best left to your mentor…”
. . . . . Her voice rose. “You’re putting me off! You don’t want to answer my questions so you’re going to make Farseer Umbraan do it.” She began to pace back and forth.
. . . . . Celuur sighed and walked over to one of the rugs on the shaman’s tier. “Sit down.” He gestured to the rug.
. . . . . Hooves clicking on the tile, the Little Cat continued to pace. “So Aunt Val is alive. Or, um, ‘dead’ as you say. And she sent you to look for me?”
. . . . . “SIT!”
. . . . . The Little Cat thumped down on the rug. “You do sound a little like him sometimes…”
. . . . . “We know each other well.” Celuur shook his head. “Your aunt died. She was killed by an evil called the Scourge. They raise the dead to serve them. She broke free of their control. As I did. Since then, we have joined a group of free former Scourge agents.”
. . . . . “So you really are dead…” A furrow of worry formed between her eyebrows.
. . . . . “Yes, indeed I am.” Calling upon the skills of a death knight, Celuur smirked as a rush of unholy energy flowed over him, leaving its presence upon his own energy.
. . . . . Eyes wide as saucers, the Little Cat leaned away on the rug. “Ew! All of a sudden, you’re all…slimy! Gross!”
. . . . . Celuur frowned and called upon an ice presence instead.
. . . . . “Aunt Val sent you to look for me, really? I guess – other than the ‘dead’ part – is she okay? You aren’t being snarly to her in this ‘noble order’ of yours are you?”
. . . . . “I beg yo-…” Celuur stood scowling. “‘Snarly?’”
. . . . . The Little Cat stood up too, an expression of fierce protectiveness settling on her face. “Yes, snarly! Grumpy! Prickly! Mean!” She pointed her finger at Celuur with each word. “You’re not being mean to my family, are you?”
. . . . . Celuur snorted. “No. And I am regretting having made this promise to your aunt!” He turned and began swiftly walking away.
. . . . . “Hey!”
. . . . . For a moment, the draenei man ignored her, his concentration on calling up a gate to Acherus. Once the gate stabilized, he turned to look at the girl, glaring fiercely. “What?”
. . . . . “You didn’t tell me she’s alright…”
. . . . . “She is fine.”
. . . . . “Why didn’t she come?”
. . . . . “The Exodar makes her uneasy, apparently.” He pointed towards Umbraan’s rug. “Your mentor can answer your other questions.” Behind him, the gate winked out.
. . . . . The Little Cat scowled at him. “Pff! Fine. Snarly male…” She stalked over to the Farseer’s rug and picked up her broom. “I’ll tell him you came.”
. . . . . Celuur nodded and turned his back on her. “Great! You have made me miss my gate!”

. . . . . The Little Cat paced the length of her room, her hooves clicking on the tile floor. Six steps, stop, turn, six steps again, stop, turn. A sour expression sat on her face as she muttered to herself, “Rotten dead guys… Snarly males… Mysterious death knights… Confoundedly difficult people!” Each word came with all the emphasis of a sailor’s curses and was punctuated with jabbing hand gestures as if the Little Cat were shadowboxing with the stressors and fears in her mind.
. . . . . On her bed sat the tangle of charms and totems she normally wore around her neck, a rolled-up leather case, a shiny new steel mace, and a large brown leather pack. The apprentice’s totem still bounced against her chest as she punched the air. Halting mid-pace, the Little Cat faced her bed and scowled, lifting both hands to plunge them into her wiry hair. The quiet scream of frustration she let out was muffled by the thickness of her door and the constant tapping of the miners’ picks down the hall. She turned on her hoof and flopped onto her bed with a sigh. “Get yourself together,” she spoke sternly to her ceiling. “This isn’t doing you any good.” For a few moments, she lay there on the bed and continued to wallow. But inactivity had never really been one of her weaknesses. Continuing to lecture herself silently, she sat up and started packing her bag.
. . . . . The Little Cat had been sheltered at the Exodar for nearly two years, protected from the larger world of Azeroth, oblivious to the danger and adventure waiting for her at the end of the dock. No more! It was well past and more time that she set out. She had family to find!
. . . . . As a young child, she had helped her father pack his bags for his marsh-guard excursions. She still remembered the basic supplies he carried. On the floor at the foot of her bed lay a pile of supplies she had purchased with money earned from helping the murloc researcher at Blood Watch. The Little Cat carefully rolled up a stack of heavy linen bandages as small as she could make them and tucked the roll into an outside pocket of her bag. Little vials of those awful-tasting red and blue potions went on top of the bandages. She clipped a skinning knife to one of the shoulder straps. A heavy woolen blanket folded up at the bottom of the pack. A slim case of needles and fine thread for patching her armor. Oil to keep the leather armor and pack supple. A canteen of water and an extra empty one. A large package of dried jerky. She reached a hand into the pack and pushed down, trying to compress everything so she could fit more in. Flint and a small metal box of tinder. A packet of mild spices. Fishhooks carefully tucked in a leather pouch and a line. An exceptionally sturdy shallow pan made of lightweight tin. The Little Cat growled and tried to compress the bulging pack again. There wasn’t much space left.
. . . . . She picked up the rolled-up leather case and set it across her lap, letting the mélange of scents drift up to her nose. It wouldn’t fit in the pack. But she couldn’t leave her oils here! Even with the swirly blue hearthstone she’d gotten from the innkeeper here, she didn’t expect to be using it to return home to the Exodar often until she’d found her father, her aunt Valdiis, and her uncle Zunaadrin. These oils had travelled at her side for nearly a hundred years now, since her aunt gave them to her as a coming of age gift in Zangarmarsh. They would stay with her somehow. She eyed the pack, trying to decide what she could take out. Nothing came to mind as nonessential. “Blast it,” she muttered, grabbing one of the coils of leather thongs from the tangle she’d pulled off her neck. She tied the thong around the case, creating a makeshift harness to attach the case to her belt. “Problem solved.”
. . . . . Letting her leg swing absently from the edge of the bed, the Little Cat surveyed the supplies left – all things she planned to wear or tie to her pack. All that remained to do was to attach it all. Now it was time to tell Farseer Umbraan she was going. And her mother… She grimaced.

. . . . . The conversation went about as well as expected. Habii listened expressionlessly as her daughter told her about the grumpy dead draenei male who had come to visit her child’s mentor, the news that her sister-in-law was dead – sort of – and her daughter planned to go find her uncle Zunaadrin with the Argent Dawn to learn about these knights of death, and then go find Firefly Company or the Knights of Menethil, where her husband might still be dead – sort of. The Little Cat finished explaining her plans to her mother and looked at the woman’s soft, blank, sky-blue face. Minutes ticked by.
. . . . . The Little Cat ducked behind a chair a full three seconds before the blast of heat splashed outwards, her temperamental mage of a mother at the center. “Have you lost your wits, Xeremuriis? Did that Farseer steal your sanity away and replace your brain with crystal dust? Do you have any idea of what you will be facing out there, Xeremuriis? Was that dead thing not enough to scare you sensible again? Where did your father and I fail in raising you? Did the crash knock your senses clean out? Do you not remember Zun’s last letter ten months ago, Xeremuriis? You are not a warrior and Naaru forbid you ever become one! I will not let you follow your father’s footsteps! I should have you shackled by the ankle to a Shield of Velen!”
. . . . . Another wave of flames burst across the room as her mother’s voice rose. Her full name had been used three times. She was definitely in trouble. Crouched behind the chair, she held her hand out an inch or two from her face and concentrated on the moistness of her breath, recalling a basic lesson on water she’d gotten from Farseer Umbraan. “Please?” she whispered, calling to the water. A small ball of water coalesced in her hand and she set it to spinning around her. Amidst all the flames of her mother’s temper, not really any protection, but it helped to keep her calm.
. . . . . The Little Cat waited out her mother’s temper, wincing at each new question her mother shouted, each new threat of locking her away in the Vault of Lights. After her mother finally ran out of words, she waited a full minute before peeking up over the edge of the chair. Steam wisped up from her mother’s skin and the edges of the furniture were all a little crispy. “Oh, get up, my little cat. I’m out of mana now. You’re safe.” Her mother’s lyrical voice sounded weary and drained.
. . . . . The tiny water shield still spinning around her waist, the Little Cat stood up. She brushed a bit of charring off the back of the chair and looked at her mother. Habii dropped into a chair across from her with a sigh and raised an eyebrow at her daughter. The Little Cat said nothing. “None of that got through to you, did it?” Habii asked wearily.
. . . . . “I’m still going,” was all her daughter said.

. . . . . The first thing she did when she saw Farseer Umbraan the next day was to tell him about the death knight Farseer Celuur’s visit.
. . . . . “Celuur was here?” Farseer Umbraan snorted. “I have been trying to get him here for days…”
. . . . . “He said my aunt sent him here! Wait, why have you been trying to get a dead person to come here for days?”
. . . . . “Indeed? This is good news, is it not?” He ignored her second question entirely.
. . . . . The Little Cat sat back on her hooves on the Farseer’s rug, her brow creased with worry. “I don’t know, revered one. He said my aunt was like him…kind of dead. And he sent a dead thing after me! It stepped on the air shrine!” She pointed at the orb behind Farseer Umbraan.
. . . . . The Farseer chuckled. “It is his way of being intimidating. Do not be troubled.”
. . . . . “For someone who was supposedly doing Aunt Val a favor, he was awfully upset about it… Maybe she’s not actually his friend. He never did say that. He just said ‘junior officer.’”
. . . . . “He is a grumpy person, but he is difficult to call ‘friend.’ I doubt he would make any efforts for someone he did not consider a friend. He keeps himself…closed off.”
. . . . . A sudden realization struck the Little Cat and she gasped, jumping to her hooves with excitement. “Aunt Valdiis and my dad were in Firefly Company together! Maybe my dad is one of these death knights too! Maybe I can find him!”
. . . . . Farseer Umbraan let out a hacking cough and shook his head. “Do not jump to conclusions. Few of our numbers were made into these knights.”
. . . . . She tilted her head to the side. “But if Aunt Val… She wouldn’t have left Dad behind…” With a dejected thump, she sat on the rug again. “I forgot to ask Mister Snarlypants where she was before he ran away!”
. . . . . “I will ask Celuur for that information and see what he says.” The Farseer regarded his apprentice for a moment, then spoke again, “How do you feel about this situation?”
. . . . . The Little Cat looked wary. “Frustrated. Confused. Annoyed. Scared. Worried.” She blinked. “How can I have all of that in me at the same time?”
. . . . . “We are complex creatures, made of many elements.”
. . . . . She clasped the apprentice’s totem around her neck as if drawing comfort from it and sighed. “Maybe I was too hard on Mister Snarlypants. He only came here to look for you and pass along Aunt Val’s request that you look for me… I am sorry I chased him off, Farseer Umbraan. I didn’t mean to. I was worried about Aunt Val and my dad.”
. . . . . “Do not be concerned. I will track him down and force him to return if necessary.” Farseer Umbraan stood slowly. “Come. You have the pure water?”
. . . . . The Little Cat gasped. “I hadn’t even said anything about that yet!”
. . . . . “I am a Farseer…” He led her down to a pool around the water shrine in the Crystal Hall.
. . . . . For the next hour, Farseer Umbraan engaged his apprentice in a Socratic discussion on the element of water. He seemed satisfied with what she had learned and how she chose to apply it. The Farseer reached into a pocket and pulled out several pieces of leather bindings wrapped around themselves, with a small section for water to be poured into. The leather had draenic markings around it and appeared expandable. “Take this and, with it, make your water totem. Seek out Nobundo with this. He will be pleased.”
. . . . . The Little Cat took the bindings from him. “Farseer Nobundo? He’s… He’s sort of intimidating, revered one. Are you sure he won’t be bothered by me?”
. . . . . “Don’t be intimidated by Nobundo. He is a great man.” Farseer Umbraan let out another hacking cough. “However, it may be wise to be intimidated by me. You are my apprentice after all.”
. . . . . She smiled, but she was slightly ahead of the Farseer as they walked back up to the shrine of air, so he did not see it. “Of course I am intimidated by you, Farseer Umbraan. You are scary.”
. . . . . “Good!” They reached the top of the ramp and Farseer Umbraan gestured. “There he is. Go!” As he walked past his slightly-trembling apprentice, he grinned discreetly at Nobundo.
. . . . . The Little Cat shook some of the water off her hooves from having stood in the water shrine’s pool. She gathered her courage, nodded to herself, and approached Farseer Nobundo. Holding out the totem bindings she had been presented with, she quickly recounted the tale of her search for pure water to clean up a contaminated river on Bloodmyst Isle. Farseer Nobundo nodded and patted her shoulder, then looked very bemused when the apprentice impulsively hugged him before hurrying to the edge of Farseer Umbraan’s rug to work on crafting her totem.
. . . . . She spread the leather bindings over her knee and studied the markings on them and the small section for the water to pour into. At first, she tried to put the closed vial of leftover pure water into it, but she quickly figured out that wouldn’t work.
. . . . . Farseer Umbraan simply watched his apprentice think it through. Her previous two totems had also been small puzzles, but she had gotten them quickly enough.
. . . . . Biting her lip with concern, the Little Cat carefully opened the precious vial and tipped a few drops of the pure water onto the leather bindings. She closed her eyes and murmured a quiet, heartfelt request for the water’s help. A soft gasp escaped her as the leather bindings glowed with a gentle blue light and transformed into a small water totem. “I did it…” She stood and stared at the small totem as it tipped from side to side on the ground.
. . . . . “Congratulations, youngling.”
. . . . . “I did it!”
. . . . . “You did.” Farseer Umbraan chuckled. “Soon, you will face the fourth and final of your elemental instructions. But you are not yet ready. Once you have successfully acquainted yourself with air, I will take you to your meeting with the Ring.”
. . . . . The Little Cat appeared to be bouncing on the front edges of her hooves. “What’s the Ring?”
. . . . . “The Earthen Ring. When you know all the elements you become eligible to the title of shaman, and membership in the Earthen Ring. An Azerothian group, but the Kro’kul have made a heavy contribution to them since our arrival.”
. . . . . “You’d really do that for me? I’ve really done a good enough job so far that you would take me to see them some day?”
. . . . . “I appreciate you not making me regret taking an apprentice. You have done well. If you continue to succeed, yes.”
. . . . . The Little Cat beamed. “Oh, thank you, Farseer Umbraan!” She bounced forward a step, then stopped dead, realizing she was about to attempt to embrace the old Broken sitting on his rug. “Intimidated. Right.” She nodded and stepped back again, her cheeks turning violet.
. . . . . The Farseer gave her a dark glare before breaking into a small chuckle. “You came to tell me you are leaving the Exodar, did you not?”
. . . . . Her eyes widened with surprise before she murmured, “Right. Farseer… You Saw.”
. . . . . He chuckled again and nodded. “Go. Learn. Come back with something useful. Return when you can for lessons.” He waved his hand at her. “Go on, then!”
. . . . . As she practically skipped away, Farseer Umbraan regarded her back for a moment before allowing a small smile to tug at his lips. “Be safe, apprentice.”

. . . . . It was long, long past time. She had half an hour to catch her boat. The Little Cat buckled her mace to her belt on her left hip, then tied the rolled up case of scented oils to her right hip. She scooped up the tangle of charms and totems, looping the cords around her neck; along with her apprentice’s totem – which had never come off – her earth, fire, and water totems settled against her chest. There was a tiny compass on a cord; a very small, very sharp knife in a sheath decorated to look like a tiny scroll case; a miniature pennywhistle; a tiny clear crystal vial with a sprinkle of green dust and a faintly glowing mushroom; and a piece of copper wire intricately coiling around a darkly iridescent stone. Three cords with no charms and two plain silver chains went around her neck, the rest of the cords into a pocket of her pack.
. . . . . The Little Cat looked around her room. It would remain hers while she was away – her mother had agreed to look after it. The broom she had carried for nearly two years was propped up in the corner. A small part of her considered bringing it with her, but the time for invisibility had passed. If anything around here needed dusting off, it was herself. She shut the door to her room with a soft click.
. . . . . At the top of the ramp to the surface, the Little Cat wasted ten of her remaining thirty minutes haggling with the elekk handler over the price of a small – for an elekk – grey mount. She ended up handing over one of her precious few gold coins for both the beast and a good saddle, and made it to the docks just as the boat was casting lines onto the pylons. She patted the young bull on his tough flank. “I think I’ll name you Yuuta,” she said quietly to the beast. The elekk reached to his side with his long nose and snuffled at the Little Cat’s hair. Several silver coins purchased passage for her and her new elekk. As luck would have it, the ship was the same one which had carried the Little Cat and Seung on their journey to Astraanar – by way of Auberdine – to fetch pure water to help cleanse the contaminated river on Bloodmyst Isle. The captain was happy to see the Little Cat again and gave her a good price on her boarding.
. . . . . Once all the cargo was aboard, the passengers beginning to settle, the boat cast off across the Veiled Sea for Auberdine, where she planned to meet up with Seung in a week. The Little Cat stood on the deck and watched the crystal spires of the Exodar recede from sight. There was one last thing for her to do… She gathered up her sense of self, the family nickname she called herself, the persona of the helpful and awkward girl-child, the curious, invisible cleaner who lurked in the corners and alcoves…and she tossed it all overboard into the vast ocean waters.
. . . . . Apprentice shaman Xeremuriis turned her back on the shadow of Azuremyst Isle on the horizon and the little girl she had been. The young woman planted her hooves firmly on the deck of the ship, let the wind whip through her coarse black hair, politely called upon the lightning to provide her with a shield, and grinned at the world rushing towards her.