Faetrix

Twelve found dead; House Severidan no more

((Have to Log in to view the photos. Enjoy))

 Within the morning papers, inserts were slipped in every newspaper. Dalaran, Ratchet, Gadgetzan, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Shattrah City, Silvermoon, Undercity, and strongholds such as Light's Hope all received these cryptic messages.

The name of the insert was The Whispering Lips, with a large section especially devoted to pictures and captions.

Good morning proud citizens of the Horde! We trust you've made the right decisions when you got the preview to our brand new publication! That scene was just delightfully wicked, with discreet eyes on the street reporting the local pastry shop in Silvermoon almost emptying OUT of patrons when certain celebrities showed up!

Our analyst Ima B. Tr'lling secretly got some comments from the scent after purchasing a cupcake. Here's what his recorder picked up:

"Ah, there you are."
  Darvahn sat himself down carefully, holding a Red Rose towards Faetrix, who was reading a book cradled in her lap.  With a slight start, she blinked up at the tattooed face of her companion, "Look what the worgs dragged in. Good to see you... whole."  She sighed and looked thoughtfully at the rose, her brows twisting in a mix of trepidatious emotions of which her mask could somewhat hide.
  He tilted his head to the side as if to indicate that 'whole' was a subjective word.  "Sorry about that whole dissapearing business."  He didn't really look at her, keeping his gaze out over the road below as he still holds the flower for her.
  She sighed slightly, almost slouching in defeat as she plucked the rose from the extended hand and spun it 'round in her fingers, watching the depth of hue shift depending on the light of the evening. "Yeah."

He was upset.  No, scratch that.  He was pissed.  The men who had unexpectedly summoned him to Northrend had good reasons for bending time and space to bring him there, but that still didn't temper his anger.  After all, he had been enjoying himself beside Faetrix Severidan, hookah burning and dancers dancing, contemplating the pleasureable burn of alchohol and the even more pleasurable touch of her skin on his when he suddenly felt himself yanked through a Void and into the cold bitting North winds.  As he sat down, wiping the blood and gore off his blade, his mind began to wander to the morning after his first night spent with the heiress.

I had a visitor. Rather, Faetrix had a visitor; a gentleman caller, if you will. Regardless, I was excited to have company!

He had sent word ahead that he would be arriving at the penthouse loft she owned. I stared in a cracked, scarf-adorned mirror and blotted the lipstick on Faetrix's lips, making sultry expressions only made twisted by the reflection of scarlet in my eyes. Tossing the pigmented vial into the antique vanity, I rose and sauntered through the apartment to take careful inventory. The hookah table in the center of the living space was straightened, dozens of sparkling, gemmed boxes holding various and sundry illicit substances. The Convocate had quite a habit she shoved up her nose and through her veins, as it turned out, and each box had a different treat.

Crossing to straighten a lush velour pillow on Faetrix's cigarette-burned divan, I peered out the stained glass bay window overlooking the fountains in the courtyard, and I saw him arriving. He was magnificient, handsome as his father the Lord Convocate was in his prime, and wrapped in azure and cerulean leather. I thought vaguely of how I would tear that leather off with my teeth and revel in Satchiel Kerwin's lust.

((Delayed post. This evening happened a handful of weeks ago. Bad me.))

Sebastien recieved the last memo with a sigh. 

"No word from the others, eh?" he asked, looking to the apprentices around the room.  No one dared respond until one of the younger, bolder fire students spoke.

"They're calling it extended leave to attend to duties in the field, sir.  Convocate-General Firatril's tendered a formal resignation, same with Featherfax and Prideux.  No word whatsoever from LaMont."

Kerwin closed his eyes solemnly, taking a long, patient breath.  "Then the situation has become as we feared.  Gentlemen and ladies, inform your superiors.  Operation Al'ar is now in effect."

The house was very quiet at night. Sid dismissed the servants after finding the note. It didn’t seem like there was any real need to keep them around. Left alone with his thoughts in the bedroom, he still wasn’t sure how he felt about it all. No, that wasn’t exactly true. What he felt was a strange sort of relief, he just wasn’t sure what he thought about it all. It was probably for the best. If he didn’t die from old age, she was going to die from her condition. And, mortality aside, it wasn’t as if he could stop her from… being herself. That didn’t mean he was going to admit that Patience was right. Not to her face, anyway. He took the ring from the bedside table and turned it over in his hands. He didn’t need to say anything to her, returning the rings said everything. What he really needed was to stop keeping company with Forsaken, they took far too much pleasure out of the misfortune of others. Then again, maybe they were entitled, the rotten bastards.

One last stone, and then it was done. Sid turned it over in his hand, examining the faintly glowing rune that was etched on one side. He still wasn’t sure how it all worked, or why the new runes had to be buried at various places within the grounds instead of around the fence. Supposedly it meant for better, more discriminating protection than the slapdash and potentially fatal ward his family had left. Sid still had his doubts, mostly because he had a feeling most of the enchanters in town were dipping heavily into their own supplies of magic dust. The blighted tree standing at the garden’s edge was the last designated position of power. Sid knelt down and buried the stone near one of its gnarled roots, then read the eighth phrase scribbled on the scrap of parchment. A faint glow radiated from the soil in response, and for just a moment he thought he could see threads of blue light stretching away from it. The light faded before he could make out exactly what the pattern was.

The stables are a well maintained area, for their purpose. I venture there twice daily, once to saddle and prepare the squirming child that is my hawkstrider, and again to return him, exhausted, to his roost. This daily ritual, performed after my routine check-in with the Sanctum, has been all that keeps me sane. Well, perhaps that is inaccurate. Jim is certainly a large help in keeping my mind in one piece, but what I experience around him is a distinct… lack. Lack of feeling, lack of care, lack of thought. A smothering void of emotion and fear, which I once craved but I now… need? Is that the right word? Need?

I knew, some day, that I’d have to overcome my illness. I knew that in doing so I would also be overcoming a part of myself that I have known intimately for centuries. I knew it would be difficult, terrifying, and even bad for my health, and I knew it would likely take such time that I might never fully recover to the end of my days. I did not, however, pause to consider the myriad times in which this progress, slow and steady as it was, would slip backwards. I did not think my work could be undone, at least not this way.

A few words can throw a bloke off balance with the same weight of a mace or great sword. Resulting in a stumble. A trip. A staggering fall.

The following is on wanted posters, spread around Silvermoon on all government buildings and buildings of note.

Good morning Silvermoon, the Dawn is at hand.

(( Marked mature for graphic description of a wound (sorta) more than anything. Not that you folks care...? Yarr. And sorry for the formatting, this tidbit really didn't like the transfer to notepad from Word. ))

He had been told not to trust them. He had been warned on several occasions the harm these workers of dark magic could bring. He had even seen it first hand. Nothing, however, prepared him for the peculiar situation in which he found himself.
 

It would seem the only way to rid him of his ailment was to allow a warlock access to the parasite.
 

No other professional would do, as the creature was not of their realm, nor would it bend to their rules. It did not listen to reason or shrink from holy magic, but rather devoured it. The only option left in the labyrinth of cures and remedies was to put his life in the hands of a demonologist, an intimate with the ways of the Nether, a warlock.
 

At length, all was explained to him. What he had somehow known all along now had words to accompany, and the terrible weight of what he feared had settled onto his chest like some sort of… well… there really was no avoiding it, now… parasite.

What had lain dormant about his neck, just beneath the skin, was a system of veins and alien flesh belonging to an entity of the Nether, a slow rotting sucker that sunk a million invisible, tiny claws into his flesh and worked to drain him of every ounce of energy he possessed. It began first with his necrotic energy, the unholy force that gave him unnatural life. When this slow, even source was too little sustenance, it then fed on the energy other healers gave him in their attempts to ease his pain. That allowed it to swell and grow, growling and stirring in raw pleasure of an appeased hunger.

(( Follow up on 'Somniloquism' ))

It had started long before that night, these nightmares and half-visions. He always imagined he could feel some sort of entity encroaching upon him, a second sleeping mind that took up precious space in his. A solid lump where there should have been a cavernous opening. He had felt it ever since that damn elf uttered his curse, and placed it upon him.

But he never knew, never suspected that the beast did indeed sleep. He never imagined that one day it would wake in the literal sense and demand everything from him. It happened when he started on his hammock, nearly upending the thing so vicious was his bodily response to the dream. Unlike before, when the cool night air would creep in through the doorway, the soft moonlight clean away the red and purple scarring in his sleeping brain… it remained with him. He felt it at his back, breathing in his ear, coiling tiny clawed hands in his hair.

((The following letter is dropped off in the early morning for delivery to Lady-Convocate Rosewater as a generalized complaint. If the guard who took the letter is questioned on the identity of the citizen, he did not get the man’s name. Description would be given as a tall, lanky Elf of mid-adult age with copper hair and freckles. The man seemed to have a brogue accent of lower class when they exchanged brief greetings. Clothing would be described as “dark”, but nothing standing out in particular to the guard’s mind))

To the Lady-Convocate Rosewater,

Hey Neth,

Put this paper with the others, it’s important. Don’t lose it. A lot of things have happened since I left you in Silvermoon. The rune Drelgemir seared into my hand to help with my addiction has become much more useful than I thought it would, unlike the Warlock himself. He seems to have fallen off the face of Azeroth, though I really can’t say that I’m surprised, I shouldn’t have counted on him in the first place. Though I must admit, he’d be rather proud of what I’ve been up to in his absence.

I shivered in the twilight as that black sky above me began to turn a shade of violet. The shifting light of the dawn stirred me from my reverie, and I looked around. Every color was golden and violet: the colors of House Severidan. The colors of the House in which the man I so dearly adored, yet feared, belonged.

It would not be long before my exhausted mind wandered back into the mists of memory, and I leaned back against Azuline's feathered body, closing my eyes in thought.

It hadn't worked...

It was still there...

And there was nothing I could do about it.