Flamefist

“Kids these days,” Echo muttered, wincing as Credence gently lifted her foot to her shoulder and leaned forward slightly, hands pulling back at the muscles of her thigh. Echo’s knee gave a sad little creak and burned, the pain ebbing back as Credence loosened her hold and gently lowered the limb to the bedspread. Echo let out a few breaths before she opened her eyes again.

“That’s better,” she sighed, as strained muscles and tendons relaxed after the stretch. “Just... just wait a minute before you do the other one.”

This is me, Ian Price, player of Amara "Flamefist" Niall.

The moon hung fat and full over Stormwind City.

Suldrae was not sleeping.  A warm front had washed in with the tide, changing temperatures too quickly, leaving her sweating alone in the pink room.  But the heat, she knew, was not wholly at fault for her sleeplessness.  Once rested, once fed, once Arasminna had left her, she had found herself staring at the ceiling, rolling over in her head all the offenses, defenses, fears, resolutions, solutions, questions... what was she going to do?  Her pink room.  Amara's obsidian key.  The look in Arasminna's eyes when she had left her, torn between the two.

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves.
- Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"


Suldrae woke in a haze of pink.

The wellspring rises
trickles under leaves and runs
deep into the earth

High in the hillside a spring rose, leaking out between the stones as a determined sheen. Strand by strand the waters ran together, twirling into a thin stream that pattered off sandstone and large leaves of plants clasped close to the source. Farther down, the waters pooled, deep and clear, resting cold in a basin of sediment. Gravity begged for a sip, however, and in reply the pool released its waters in a smooth arc across the sandstone. Over time, the waters carved a cravasse, puncturing the stone in a long lacy drop, to be caught by the jungle's floor below. 

Continued from...

"It's written in Darnassian."

My eyes widened as they caught sight of the words unfolding from Flamefist's letter.  Not written in my sister's hand, either; no, he had translated his thoughts, perhaps asking for her clarification here and there, but the entire letter was written in our mother tongue.  I glanced to Suldrae; she remained curled in her defensive cocoon, breathing deeply.  I wondered if I should continue, running the risk of her exploding from her huddle to silence the words. I had not forgotten her keen appraisal of me when I had first approached.  The long knives still hung at her sides.

Continued from...

"I care, you know," she said, raising her face from her arms to wipe her eyes with the backs of her hands, silvery streaks on pale skin.  Her sobs had settled to a mere tremble in her breath, but beneath my hand her body still quivered, like a wounded deer.  I settled myself beside her, to listen if she would speak.

"I care about all of them. I see a woman with some need in her eyes... some deep emptiness, or perhaps a shallow curiosity... and I invite her in. Simply invite, with no expectations but to see that need fufilled. To see... happiness.  Do you know what happiness alone can do?  Just a touch, an exchange, and an entire life changes."

Suldrae's eyes never met mine as she choked her confessional, but I did not doubt her sincerity.  Her beatific vision, however - I moved my hand to the packet of letters and quietly withdrew the small, perfumed envelope, the lady's handwriting looping and twirling in the firelight.  I held it up to her.  The thumb and forefinger of the hand holding the radio device closed upon one corner, her eyes resting heavily on the calligraphy.

Continued from...

At the rowdy Goldshire tavern, I had described her: a tall, pale, female kaldorei with a deep violet tattoo across her eyes and white hair.  No one had seen her in weeks.  In placid Lakeshire, the innkeeper had recognized the name Suldrae Redwing, mentioning a man from Redridge was also looking for her.  I had moved on to Duskwood, under the grim dark trees.  At the tumbledown hostel there, the master of the house nodded and tossed into my hands a bundle of mail.  She went into the woods to the North two days ago, well supplied, he said.  This mail came for her since; if you are going to find her, can you deliver it? 

As I turned to the dark forest, I read over the addresses before the weak lamplight dwindled behind me. Two packets bore the stamps of the Stormwind Auction House. One small envelope reeked of perfume, marked with a lady's fine calligraphy.  The last, sturdy, square and sealed with wax, displayed a bold familiar hand, Flamefist's mark, as well as his name, Amara Niall.  I stared curiously at the last, but tucked them all safely into my jerkin before heading off into the wood.

"She left," Arasminna said.  "There was a... disagreement."

She didn't look to me. I leaned in the doorway of the bedroom, my arms crossed, eyes taking in the pink walls, pink doorframe, pink wainscoting, little pink rosepetals curled and drying on creamy-pink floorboards.  My sister stood to the side, packing small items into a box, her hands moving so quickly I could not see what she took away from the top of the chest of drawers. I had stopped by the apartment in hopes of seeing the pink room she had described during our last meeting. I had found her alone, closed, quiet, relentlessly busy.  This was another person entirely than the one who had laughed and smiled just three nights before. This was the sister I had known for so many years.  Only in my youth had I seen her as happy as she had been, telling me of her new lover.

Now, the new lover was gone.

The voice was quiet in the middle of the night, but it was still loud enough to be heard over the sound of paperwork.

"Shaw."

The man looked up, eyes reflexively narrowing to speed the transition between paper and candlelight.  He turned this way and that, slowly, smoothly, not telegraphing his movements.

"Always the professional, Shaw.  I'll make this fast and painless, for old time's sake."

His hand gripped the arm of his chair as he slowly swiveled about, fingers tightening on the trigger mounted under the leather-covered oak.  He'd get a shot off, but only if he saw her first.  That's how the game was always played.

"You keep using wanted posters this way, they're going to send the wrong message.  This is the third time you've put up a price on our heads.  You're making yourself look a fool if you don't bring us in.  I don't think Matty Shaw wants to be the court fool."

I went to Stormwind for roses.  The early Alterac frosts had withered those I planted outside House deWynter, the last blooms dropping petal after petal.  Stormwind always has fresh roses, and a beautiful variety.  Cassie deserves roses every day of the year.

We have no certain date or time to call our anniversary, but we both remember the music and festivities of Brewfest ringing around certain words that could not be unsaid.  No, the brews of the season were not involved.  Our exchanges are clear in memory, if not in exact time.  For the day, for the week, for the month, I will bring her roses. Red ones. White ones. Black ones hinted with the deep violet of her soul.

I shift in the saddle, five miles from Warsong Hold. Dusk lowers his head, the slip and clatter of his barding ringing in the Borean stillness, as he seeks rare fodder among the lichens. The wind is sharp and relentless along my right side, blowing down from the North.  As I sit waiting, it reminds me.

This is my first return to Northrend since that night.  The cold wind feels both fresh and familiar, ruffling the fur of my cloak's collar and seeping through the layers of my clothing.  I am wearing leathers beneath the warm hide on my back, and carrying only my axe and my crossbow.  I have not come here to make war.  The war is over.

The war is over.

Trust is your weakness...

It's too damn cold up here.

((After a few months of missed or short raids due to real life events and after a welcome break for the Meet and Greet, the Ghost Scions finally got another full night of attempts on The Lich King...and guess what happened?  Big grats to the best little raid team out there.))

The cold pervades everything here: The air that snaps at our lips as we breathe, the bright clattering of weaponry and armor, the low rumble of crunching ice beneath our feet.  The spire is brittle and threatens us with its tenuous surface; if our boot-heels catch the edge, shards break away, whirling down into darkness.  It would have us fall, tumble away from the icy throne and the evil we seek to destroy.  But we cannot fall.  We will not fall.

He will not fall.  Melersian Corinth is one with the abyss, despite the voice of amusement often rising from behind his mask.  How much is he still human?  He will not fall.

She will not fall.  Beisel Goldthread sets a dwarven table, feeds us with laughter, then disperses in a puff of shadow.  How can a shadow be smashed or broken?  She will not fall.

I touch the little cut on my neck, the least wound I have received in months.  Half of an inch long, it appears as a mere translucent line across my skin, hardly opening any chasm to flesh beneath.  It does not require a bandage.  I smear a thin salve over the incision; it will probably close by nightfall.

The assassin's sharp knife had hardly nicked my skin, not nearly deep enough to grant his poison's passage into my bloodstream.  His attack had been awkward, thrusting between my neck and my heavy shoulder-armor, having to leap for my height, grabbing my hair with his unarmed hand in an attempt to pull me back and down while slicing deep and true.  He could have cut my throat; he could have left me bleeding out and poisoned on the lawn.  He could have killed me, no more than ten steps from the entrance to my home. 

Sir,
As one of my standing rules is to keep a diary, amongst other things, I have decided to write you a letter. In fact, I have been restricted to doing absolutely nothing for anyone else except cooking. Neither am I allowed to clean up after anyone else, nor do any sort of work at all and I shudder to consider what sort of state my research is in by this point. No doubt, I shall return to find that someone ruined the entire codex, never mind tethering points and actual matrices...

I am well. Relatively. I do not know, really; Amara and Minna are intent on making me become accustomed to 'the pain of my past' so that it does not hurt me if I think on it too long. I am not certain I understand, nor do I truly believe that this is useful but they are both older and wiser than I (especially Minna), thus  I trust them. And they care about my well-being. Thus, the writing.

I let bowstring loosen, abandoned weapons. The sporebat lingered in the fresh spring night.

I shed my armor upon entering, death and plague left behind.

I went upstairs, my hair at my shoulders, every step one step closer.

I took her in my arms and lifted her up.

One step closer.

The Professor had fallen.

I entered through the back door.  The maid's face, when she saw me, fell open like a sheet to a gale-force wind.  I found my voice, caught in my throat as it was, and rasped out hoarse words.

“Tell the lady of the house I am home.  Tell her not to come down.  I will see her in the morning.”

The maid nodded, her eyes still wide and fixed upon me, her mouth a thin line.  She turned away swiftly.  If she spoke words from the place of her expression, Cassie would know not to come down. 

I did not prop my polearm against the wall, or set my bow where I usually did.  I did not touch anything.  Another maid and a houseboy came into the pantry, their faces as wan and eyes as wide as the maid before them. I stood without moving.

“I need three vats of hot water.  One with lye, one with vinegar, one with soaps.  I need a pitcher of warm oil and one of boiling water, crushed icecap in each.  A fire in my den.  Many hot stones.  Many towels.  Many -”  My rough voice broke, and I swallowed back the interruption.  “Chamber pots.  Many of them.” 

May I kiss you thanks, Miss Devereaux?

Zaas Glados Devereaux shoved yet another book away from her with no little amount of disgust. Honestly, did the Cult of the Damned have such poor record-keeping that no one had even bothered to draw down their matrices? Were there books taken before she had gone in with Master Niall? She pinched the bridge of her nose and pulled a sheaf of papers towards her, muttering some unfavorable words about cultists, Ythgar Vinguld, and since she was already at it, necromancy in general. It was a poor substitute for proper arcane constructs. Even the flesh golems were a weak substitute for properly constructed ethereal golems, capable of being programmed from relatively simple tasks ("Keep the peace" et alius in Light-be-damned Silvermoon) to complexities bordering on artificial intelligence.

Even the -golems- agreed on that score! Those that had the AI requisite of such things as opinions, of course.

Cassie raised her head as I entered the room. In an instant, she was clambering from where she had curled herself in the armchair to reach for me, and in two steps I had her in my arms. I kissed her like I had been away for years. I had thought my lips would never be so warm again.

 She broke the spell.

Theraesia von Haller was pacing.  Four steps up, four steps back, pausing once in a while to cast a baleful glance at the crumpled papers that covered her desk.  It had been literally weeks without a good lead, and now ... now she'd been deluged with a formless mass of possibilities.  Chance?  Possibly; but she'd been at this long enough that she doubted that.

It was a war.  She'd told Zaas that, even though she doubted the girl had really understood.  It was a war, one she'd been fighting longer than Zaas had been alive, and Stormwind was just one more battleground.

She stopped and sat down at the desk, looking at her notes.

Subject 1:  Unknown male.  Seen talking to Subject 2.  Possible SI:7 connection.  Possible half-elf.  Later seen talking to Cerwis in unknown language.

The limbs of trees, clinging to the last gold leaves of autumn, lash out at my bare skin as I run. Encouragement or punishment? I snarl at them, eyes narrowed, and run faster.

Zaas strode through the city, serene as a frozen lake. She moved far more calmly than she felt but having already mastered the fine art of outer appearances meant that it did not matter what she felt on the inside. It did not matter that she would rather curl up and weep in a corner, submit to shaking nerves instead of keep her limbs still and steady through effort of will alone. Perhaps she -would- have rather been held at the moment and told repeatedly how everything would be alright; it would not, she knew, but such polite fictions were a blessing in such cases. And yes, she would have dearly loved to escape to her home in Dalaran, curl up in a good pair of fleecy pajamas under a blanket.

Anatole expected many things when he walked into his manor and felt the faint shiver of the scrambling field activating. He expected the servants to bow, hand him the moist towlette to wipe the dust of travel from his face, neck and hands. He expected the armed 'guards', all of them thugs, thieves, sword-breakers and proven to be brutally efficient at their designated tasks, to stand a little closer to attention and eye him warily. He expected his horse to be taken care of and his personal effects brought inside and into his rooms. And he expected his very wayward wife to be prepared and waiting for him in the room specially designed for such activity.

Anatole stroked the massive sun crystal on his little finger absently. He nearly hummed with good cheer, a mood that was so alien to the man that his subordinates spent the day walking on egg-shells and watching him from the corners of their eyes.

'Master Barten, I will need any records you have of deaths in the area of Hangman Hill.'

Ben Barten, a man born to clerkhood, drywashed his hands as was his habit when thinking. 'Many people committed of murders there, Miss Devereaux. Why bother with convicts and murderers?'

Zaas Glados Devereaux glanced up from her paperwork with a polite expression on her features. 'The dead require justice for their crimes... As do the living, Master Barten.'

~~~~~