[Satchiel] Post-Traumatic, Part One

Interviewer: Beginning recording, first session.  Knight Adept Kerwin, it's good to meet you.  Just so you're aware, this gem here is a recording device, it's just to make certain we can review this later. 

Satchiel Valas Kerwin: I know Arcana goodies when I see them, Doc.  What precisely is this for, anyway?

Well, there have been reports since you left active service to Silvermoon that you've been acting erratically.  Admitting to not sleeping for days at a time, running off on expeditions to far areas of the Kingdoms or Kalimdor without advanced warning, et cetera.  The Order of Blood Knights is concerned for your wellbeing.

Considering I've already caused them PR trouble with Rivanne, they're just making sure I'm not gonna do it again.  Cute. 

Either way, Knight Adept, I'm here and I want to talk to you if that's all right.  I take it the rumors are true?

Yes.

Can you explain why?

I'd rather not.

This is confidential, just so you know.

Confidential to anyone who doesn't flash the right set of credentials, threats and bribes.

You don't seem to appreciate Silvermoon very much.  You're regularly dressed in old Quel'dorai fashion, to say nothing of your actions regarding your wife the lady Rivanne Sunwing-Kerwin.  Why is that?

I look good in blue.  Accents my eyes and all that.

You were previously serving at the Tranquillien Garisson, expressed noteworthy irritability upon being transferred back to Silvermoon to work city patrolling duties. 

Tranquillien isn't much, but it was my home.  Can you blame me?

I suppose not.  Still, reports from a deathguard serving around the time you began service there claimed you were first located in the woods of the Ghostlands, whereas surviving reports from the original razing of Silvermoon during the Third War state you were in the city tending injuries through herbal treatments and triage.

That's correct, yeah.

Where were you in the intervening years?

...Look, Doctor, I'm not...

(Kerwin sighs)

I was running.

For three years?

Yes.

What happened?

...Well, Quel'thalas was besieged pretty quickly in all honesty.  My father - Convocate Kerwin, evidently everybody knows who he is - sent word to my mother, my sisters, and me to head back to Silvermoon as soon as word broke that the outlying estates had been hit.  Guy's a magister, you know?  Communication's pretty fast.  So, I wished my friends luck and hauled tail back to the city proper.  Confusion of war, it happens all the time.  Lanae, my older sister, was called up on active duty.  She'd been waiting on leave for a month, but, well, when you got a job to do...heh.  Everywhere you looked, it was one thing after another.  People ran through the streets, people you'd never expect to know how - magisters, bureaucrats, old Quel'dorai and prima donnas calling themselves women.  You didn't see kids anywhere. 

The panic was everywhere though, just under the surface, as the reports started coming in.  Information was so widespread, you see, and most to all of it was wrong.  Every bit was tinged with fear, real, honest-to-light fear, though, and you could see it in their eyes.  We'd had threats before, sure.  This was just different.  No one ever expected something like this to stick around like it did - especially not coming from Lordaeron.  Me, my mother,  my little sister Sofia and her husband all moved to the cathedral - Mom knew the deacon there, and we helped out where we could with the refugees that came in.  There weren't a lot.  Some of the old elves were still just doggedly confident.  "General Windrunner is just drawing them in," they'd say.  "We'll be fine."  Tch.  Some of us even believed it - after we lost contact with Tranquillien, with Dad, Mom just kept this calm face on all the time.  Sofia was just a little bundle of hope - She and her husband, they were married pretty recently, baby on the way...it was always kind of hard to keep her from being cheerful.  With all that she had to look forward to, it was impossible.  But Mom...she wasn't ever that calm.  I could tell she was breaking, no word from Dad or my uncle, just...this pillar, needing to hold together just long enough.

You cared for your family a great deal.

Yeah.  Which...well, when things started getting worse, just this flood of injured and dying, we didn't know how to fix it.  The plague was so damn tough to treat, it was all I could do keeping people with normal injuries bandaged and sedated while Mom, Sofi and the other healers kept on them.  Jossiah, Sofi's husband, got hurt trying to restrain one of the infected.  Ended up freezing him solid when the man bit him trying to get at Sofi.  We could all tell it wasn't good, particularly when he went comatose like the others.  Joss was a good man, a brother-in-law I was proud having.  Sofi...Light, I don't ever want to see what I saw in her eyes, watching over Joss.  Just endlessly trying to reassure herself that it was gonna be okay.

But it wasn't.

Nope.

What came next?

Joss got up.  It was about midday, I was still watching over him.  We were near the end now - the Scourge were at the walls, the cathedral'd been all but turned into combination hospital and fortress.  And he just...got up, and lurched at me.  I tried talking to him, I tried anything.  You know what you're facing.  You know it's dead, it's not your friend, not somebody you let marry your little sister.  You never wanna believe it, you know?  I finally grabbed one of those big old double-swords the spellbreakers carry, and like that, I lopped off my brother-in-law's head. 

No one blames you for what happened, Satchiel.

It just...It hit me, hard.  Joss was a friend, a good one.  I needed some air.  I snuck out of the cathedral through one of the upper-level ways that we'd figured out, getting to a spot that was at least kind of safe so I could see the sky.  It didn't help.  Not at all.

Why's that?

It was panicked, everywhere.  I passed by houses, could hear people talking inside, breaking down, all alone and unwilling or unable to believe anyone was coming to help.  The ghouls were running through the streets by then, it was all coming apart.  I looked in through one boarded up window.  I could hear kids inside, I got out of my shellshock long enough to help.  And...

What did you see, Satchiel?

It was this mother...could hear someone straining, trying to hold the door closed while ghouls were pounding on it, yelling in Thalassian, get out, get out.  I won't let them take you, the woman said to her kids.  She was hysterical.  Grabbed the little boy, and then just picked him up by his ankles and swung him into the wall headfirst, full-tilt.  "I won't let them take you, I won't let them take you," she kept screaming, crazed.  The boy was dead on the first swing.  I kicked open the window, grabbed the little girl.  She was shrieking like a banshee, half-dazed, crying mommy, daddy, mommy help.  I ran a couple blocks across the roofs with her under my arm.  Something grabbed my foot as I got to the roof of a bigger house, I dropped her.  She got to her feet as I looked back to see what had my leg and started kicking the ghoul in the head.  I just yelled for her to run, run, don't stop running.  I finally got the ghoul off me, didn't see where the girl went.  I hope she's out there and okay.

Then what?

Adrenaline was wearing down, I finally thought for a second and realized, oh shit, Mom and Sofi.  I ran back to the cathedral, running past swarms of them - people, and monsters.  I was quick enough and there were enough bigger groups running around to make one maniac trying to get INTO the heart of the city not worth noticing.  I got across the street before it happened.

(Kerwin pauses, taking a deep breath)

The Cathedral wasn't there anymore, was it.

No.  No, it was still there.  I saw.

Saw what, Satchiel?

The Abominations.  The big ones, fat bastards, they had braced the doors.  I thought they were trying to get in, then..well, then I heard those meat wagons, the catapults launch.  You ever had this just...crushing moment of certainty, doc?  This instant where you know something horrible's going to happen, and you can't stop it, can't do anything but ride it out?

(Interviewer remains silent)

I saw her.  Sofi.  Sofi was in one of the windows.  And I saw the barrels crash through it.  She ducked, I could see her blonde hair.  She always cut it short, this pretty little bob.

(Kerwin's voice is choked.) 

And then, I heard those thumps, those explosions, and the building just cracked.  I saw...I saw my baby sister, staggering, trying to find a way out...she saw me...and I...

(Kerwin is near sobbing.  Interviewer conjures a glass of water and offers it to Kerwin)

What happened, Satchiel?

It all fell.  And I heard her scream.  And then it just stopped.  And the whole building fell in.  There were...what, two, three hundred people in that little cathedral?  300 people, just...hiding so long, and the walls just falling in on them...And I just...I just ran.  And I couldn't stop. I was outside the city by the time I felt the Sunwell just...wink out.  I kept running.  I couldn't do anything else.

(Kerwin stops, takes another breath, can be heard drinking the water,  The glass is slammed down on the table empty)

There's still others out there, you know.  Other people.  Running.  Out by Zul'Aman, the other troll territories.  Couple hundred people, they assume, just fleeing everything, not knowing anything more about the war, nothing, just knowing their home is gone, and everybody they loved is dead.  Dead or worse, not gone.

There's a lot of operations on the ground to find those people, Satchiel.  You're one among them that's gotten back to civilization, that's been helped. 

I know that.  Hell, I've been out there making sure it happens.  You wanna know why I didn't like it in Silvermoon, doc?

Shoot.

Because I went with the Spellbreakers on one of the clearing missions through the Scar in the city.  What used to be the city.  And I passed by the cathedral.

What did you see?

Wasn't what I saw, as much as what I found.

Which was?

Mom. 

(pause)

She was trapped under a column, couldn't move, just reaching for me as I pulled out my sword. 

It wasn't your mother.

I wanna believe that.  But she spoke, those old, rotting vocal chords still able to move a little...I could almost recognize her voice.  And what she said...

What did she say?

(Kerwin pauses)

She said Sofi still loves us all.