Olaff

When you told me you were dying,

I prayed this sorry witch was not

The only keeper of your legacy.

The voice on the box was clear and even.

I was.. well. Truthfully? I was feeling on edge. My great grandson had been born. A new joy. A new life. A new threat.

Let's not be fools, after all.. for all Iloam's petulant demands that I show more love concerning this event, the fact remains that if I dote overmuch? I make the new child a target.

I will not have that. I lost Yshri to a murdering fool, and no more sweet nor innocent child might be imagined. I've many enemies, and they would not halt at the notion of butchering a helpless newborn and his weakened mother any more than Olaff did at driving a knife into a girl he claimed he loved.

Yshri was murdered.

Her uncle stood swaying in an abandoned temple in the Storm Peaks. What remained of his ability to think noted in passing that he had erred greatly in letting himself trust the so-called 'paladin'. He should have brought his guards, and let them deal with the halfwitted traitor.

Instead, lulled by their feigned friendship, by the sworn oaths he'd trusted that a man claiming to be of the Light would hold to, he'd gone alone, and faced a man wearing goblin-forged armour, who'd broken every oath he'd made to another man of Lordaeron, and proudly claimed the butchering of an innocent child whose only crime was loving an unworthy peasant. He prattled that he could not save Lordaeron, and so had fled his duty to that beleaguered land.

Dearest Chaplain. My dearest Olaff Isenkopf. Dare I call you my beloved even if only in my mind? I do love you. I cannot express the depth of my feeling in words for though we have spoken only briefly, I love you still. Though you were gone for months on end, I loved you and love you. As I attempted to open your mind and heart to the possibility of forgiveness for the human race, I learned to love you. Perhaps it was a child's fairytale love at first. Perhaps it is still.

I awoke late in the afternoon fearing that I dreamt you once more. But there you are! Glorious as a summer's dawn, stern faced behind your fearsome helm and when you pull it off, your face... oh Light, how my heart does contract so with my love. I wish to wake every day to see your face, your eyes, your hands...

"I was under the impression," Marionna stated in a precise, dangerously calm tone, "that the situation was well in hand. Do I not recall my favored sons informing me thus?" Shadows blacker than black twisted violently about the woman's feet and whiplashed out at the two young men kneeling before her. She was a beautiful woman, the richer, luscious, mature vision of what Yshri Vinguld will someday become. A beautiful, and deadly, woman. "You claimed that the man chosen for that simpering fool of a grand-daughter did not need elimination because he himself would achieve our task for us. Did I mishear these statements?"

The two men winced away from the coiling Shadows. "Matron, all information available denoted this Chaplain as a fanatical observer of his teachings," one intoned without inflection. "By rights, he should have killed her with his own hands."

Dearest Olaff,

Light, how I do miss your eyes right now. Though you are dead and I come closer to accepting that fact and letting you go, I write these letters and mail them in the hopes of prolonging my own delusion that you still live, that you will come in shining armor on that hill. The sun will shine, dispersing all storm clouds, and you will sweep me off my feet. And when we kiss, even my toes will tingle with joy.

A wind picked up from the north and stirred the meadow grasses, yellow, pink and orange flowers bobbing their colorful heads to the rhythm. She sat on a blue and white blanket with a book propped in her hands, absently brushing away wind-swept curls.

A horse neighed on the horizon.

Surprised out of her reverie, she gazed up the hill. She gasped. Resplendent in white and crimson, he was poised just at the rise with the sun shining down. "Through thorns and thistles, through the earth and the forest, across oceans and moors I have returned. But as I live, I will not rescind my vows."

He lived. He lived! With a sigh of relief that seemed to rise from the very depths of her soul, she smiled up at him for of course he was standing right before her. He grasped her, kissed her and like snow in the sun, she melted into his arms-

My Dearest Olaff,

Though I know you are dead, I cannot help but hope, wish, pray fervently that the courier message is wrong. I cannot accept such a death, I will not-- Are you truly gone, dear Chaplain? How can I mourn properly when even your body cannot be recovered and properly buried?

So I write, and hope against hope. I do so miss our conversations.

There is something wrong, dear Olaff. I am recovering disturbing memories, such that I am not certain they were ever mine and Light how they frighten me. Dark things, dangerous things, and a pressure growing inside me.

I sometimes do not recall portions of a day. Not long periods of time, not yet, but already they are growing in length. When first I noticed this, the lapses were mere minutes long. Two, three. I found myself riding to a destination I could not recall or holding a strange drink. Now, these lapses are sometimes almost an hour long.

Better take care
Think I better go, better get a room
Better take care of me
Again and again

"You are most certain?"

"Yes, Deva."

Wrap a hand in her hair, pull the head taut-

I collapsed in the midst of one of the simplest staff, balance utterly disturbed by the abrupt surface of the psuedo-memory. Not merely images but sensations, skin beneath my hand, the smell of her, the -feel- of her. Dear Uncle was correct; I needed to be distanced from our ancestral lands until the bond settled. The internal struggle to maintain my composure and not fall ill stripped some of the shielding from my mind. And the last few impressions from Uncle... and the things Theryl -thought-, so strongly that I might well have accused her of a mental assault except I think she did not know what would happen.

(( As this is somewhat... long, I've split it into three parts so that each can be read at a later time simply by skipping. If you would like to skip to a different part, simply hit Ctrl+F and type in one of the three pre-defined sections! ))

Part One: Family Secrets
Part Two: The Nature of the Beast
Part Three: Origins Revealed

Dearest Uncle,

I have discovered that your libraries here in Vingetrymming are woefully lacking in texts pertaining to the recent surgical and alchemical discoveries in the matter of healing and medicines as well as comparison texts of the different ways of healing. Am I simply not finding them? Otherwise, may I add to your library?

Right Honourable, my Lady Mother, with my most humble and dutiful thanks for your Ladyship's bountiful goodness towards me all times, I make bold to acquaint your Honourable Ladyship with such tidings as may interest your Ladyship; and I pray most earnestly that the Most Holy Light keep your Honourable Ladyship in good health.

Theraesia sighed and paused to rub her temple, replying to her mother's letters was a task she avoided as much as possible.  "You're not even fifty, Mother."  She thought.  "Why do you insist on a style that was old fashioned when you where a girl?"

She could hear her mother's reply as clearly as if she were in the room.  "Standards, daughter.  We do not permit ourselves the laxity of current times."

Chaplain Isenkopf,

Thank you greatly for the gift of your ring. It has created a far more pleasant environment for my pseudo-seclusion here in the Cathedral as I have, since placing it around my neck, found myself entirely unmolested and treated with the utmost courtesy. Indeed, the courtesy is to such a degree that I would feel downright uncomfortable were it not for the fact that I have been allowed access to my patients again.

I cringed as I walked into the main hallway of the Cathedral, the Chaplain trudging heavily beside me as he led the way inside. It had been at least forty some years since I had seen the inside of any sort of holy establishment and I was terrified, I felt as if the various priests and clergymen could sense my taint just by looking at me...

Ythgar Vinguld prowled from the repugnant edifice of Stormwind Keep, his lips quirked in a faint smile. His steps took him toward Old Town, and amid the hubbub of the street callers and the yells of washer women, he permitted himself to chuckle once.

Am I the only one who sees?

They are two of a kind in their mutual misery. 

Contempt.

Ythgar Vinguld sat his skeletal mount at the border of Mulgore and the Barrens and waited for the rest to arrive. He'd caught wind of some Alliance force striking the Horde, and was asked along by the chaplain, Olaff Isenkopf. A Scarlet, yet did Ythgar not praise their crusade? He couldn't wear the colours.. no, not and stay true to his own festering hatreds, but he appreciated their beliefs. He gazed out over the beast-men's land, and thought of smoking torches set to the dry ocean of golden waving grass. How the stupid cows would low and bellow. He turned his head and spat. The group wanted to torch the animals' home to punish the actions of some brute bull called Ashface or Ashass or some equally ridiculous savage name.

Pitiful. But he'd come and revel in the slaughter, feeding the smoldering embers in his heart with the screams of guards as they crumpled to his heavy mace swings.

[ Had a blast with a mess of awesome folks last night mauling Sylvanas. Got inspired by all the brilliance in vent. :x ]

[ For more about Ythika, and the Blood and Felfire storyline, check out bloodandfelfire.blogspot.com ]

Lirriel tied off the last knot and trimmed the thread carefully, eying her work critically under the magic lamps of the Hero’s Welcome inside balcony. Below, revelers drank holiday brew and ate cookies with their meals. It reminded her to be sure that shipment of holiday spices had made it to Winterspring.