Paxineau

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

Countess. Lady Countess de Cheraville-Calloun.

The title lapped at her, pricked at her skin, stroked her thighs better than any man. Nepenthea's cries in the other room belonged to another life. Countess. She was a countess now and Paxineau, finally a rotting, steaming wad of meat under dirt already frozen over.

Countess Fierine twirled around until her nightgown swung wide like a ballgown's graceful arc.

Recent events make me wonder how I have changed. Who I have become. How this world has changed, and I with it.

Tonight I sat at my noisy club in the belly of Dalaran. I drained every stored iota to do what I did to that warlock. I hope she's unaware of that - it's a limit of mine, and I don't particularly like enemies to know my limits.

Is she an enemy? I suppose that remains to be seen.

It was the eyes which gave me the idea. The elf's too-thin face with its jutting cheekbones was, aside from looking like a woman in the second stages of starvation, dominated by entirely black eyes. Just as her compatriot Iloam's had flowed into inky orbs when his demon Tithe had wrested dominance, forcing the elf's consciousness away into amnesiac interludes.

It fit.

She'd come to me, this starving woman with demon's eyes, so that I could prevent her from devouring others. Again, rather like Tithe, though driven into avenues unlike a fully fledged demonic entity residing within the idiot elf. Unlike her friend, this Ixinane was bright enough to actively seek help.

As she stood before one of the myriad move posters that lined the back alley of the Copacetic, Szevajah Netherbloom mused for a moment on the oft-noted irony of the city's name; indeed, the Sun reigned supreme over Silvermoon, the city that never slept. But as she stood there gazing upon other sets of glazed-over starstruck eyes staring up at the latest simulacrum of the Sun, she could not help but wonder if quite the opposite were true - if Silvermoon was the city that never woke. Where else, after all, might she, a physical manifestation of one woman's dream, have come into being?

Lady Howell frowned, not for the first time, and considered the letter that lay on her desk.  She reflected how interesting it was that a simple piece of paper and such a seemingly innocuous request could hold such peril.  The Fallowtide woman had written her some days earlier requesting; politely, oh so politely, access to the late Countess Cheraville's books.  Such a simple request, and one that raised the most interesting questions.

How had she known of the bequest?  It was generally assumed that the Countess' library had been destroyed in the fire which had consumed her estate following her death.  The books had been conveyed to her some months later through a chain of intermediaries.

Alphonse picked his way along the deer trail through the deepest part of the woods. The leaves rustled underhoof, twigs snapping, ironshod hooves clinking against half buried rocks under the thick leafmould. All around, thick gray-spotted trunks soared upward to a distant dappled canopy which managed to block out the pestilent miasma of the rechristened Plaguelands.

On the shortest day of the year, Ythgar Vinguld was returned to life. The thought struck me as I was combing out my hair before bed. Been a long couple of days with one thing and another. It had taken all three of us bring him back: Yshri's strange earth magic, Paxineau's necromancy, and me to go wandering through the shattered pieces of his soul and haul him out of the hell that had been his memories.

I wasn't sure why I'd gotten that job, maybe because I was the most expendable of the three of us. On the other hand, impulsively wrapping my arms around a scared and lonely little boy was what had finally pulled him out of there. Yshri might have done that, but she was awful young, and Paxineau was about as motherly as a crocolisk. I still couldn't believe I'd been stupid enough to drink something Paxineau had handed me.

The bath had been a delightful idea. Food.. Light, he was able to eat FOOD and more, he wanted to!

When he'd returned to himself, his soul crying out Theryl's name for what she'd done inside him, had done to save him, he'd felt his body seizing all around him. Tried to reach for the controls, to master it as he'd done for eight long years, and been unable. Instead, like a man in mud, he'd sunken somehow INTO the body he'd essentially possessed since his murder. His spirit had flailed.. he'd tried to.. but the body wouldn't respond. Limbs merely twitching, mouth merely gaping. Something was terribly wrong.. and terribly right.

Because as he'd realized.. his body was either alive, or somehow.. his intellect balked at the thought - it had been completely fooled into believing it was alive. The concept was stunning, and he'd noted his beloved niece slumped by his side, tried to reach for her only to feel a hot stabbing pain

pain?

The letter is tied with red ribbon around a black lotus, nearly identical to the one depicted in the Raven's claws in the crest of House Cheraville. The wax seal, however, is foreign--a twisted serpent.

Mother Dearest,

I feared your fate might be thus. The magics which consumed you so, or at least I am led to believe this was how your end was met, are the same which drove me to sever our ties at the time. But I am not without fault; hubris leaves its mark on us all. Your return to polite society, whether fashionably or unfashionably so, makes me hopeful that all grievances can be buried in your erstwhile grave.

Paxineau Velianne Cheraville-Vinguld,

Regards and well-wishes, it would seem, are in order. I've addressed this letter to Vingetrymmyng Hall as your fresh-minted hyphenation would suggest. My sincerest congratulations on your reunion with the Marquis! Of all the chest-puffing nobles I recall from your parties in those carefree days in Lordaeron, Ythgar Vinguld perhaps grated me the least. Forgive me, though, that I was surprised most that you have reemerged at all. After that unfortunate madness took Robious I feared I had lost you forever to your pupils, your own desires... And the whispers of Stormwind's alleys hinted you'd been lost further still.

How desperate did she have to be, to look to that despicable kal'dorei for rescue? To think he would? The voices over her are a dull thud in her ears, overlaid by ringing that won't abate. The acid bite of vomit flares in her mouth and she almost still feels the knife wound deep in her thigh. Fingers and toes numbed with sedative, and dried blood crackling in her palm.

She draws her charred dead arm--singed bandages cling to it in tatters, where the molten poker hadn't burnt them away--over her stomach and hopes it's not in vain.

"You see? Far more sustainable than your mother's approach." He laughed, and tapped a claw to her blued lips that issued forth another gust of cold. "I will warn you, though. The invigoration it offers is... addictive."

My blood burns with the legacy of House Cheraville.

I'm sixteen years old and tomorrow I'll be dragged tear-stained and hoarse-voiced to Dalaran to train as a mage, like my father. But I don't want to be like my father. My father is dead. I love the muggy summer days in Lordaeron City as the wind rolls off the Northern Sea. I love bossing around our orcish slaves and shopping for dresses for Mother's parties and having Gritta show me how to bake and stealing tastes of wine with my best friend Lorna. But I sensed end to these days, growing along the horizon at the edge of my plane of awareness--that slow unfurling of a greater structure to life, a lifting away of the clock's face to reveal the gears, that I think every girl my age begins to see.

It was watching her again.

A reckless spark of silver out of the corner of her eye. What was it doing on the table? Hadn't she locked it in a drawer? Fierine gave the too-large signet ring of House Cheraville a sharp spin and it whirled around her finger a few times before coming to rest, heavy sigil drooping to her palm. She bade her eyes focus on the gaudy script before her that scrawled to either edge of the page.

Vingetrymming Hall

To the Most Honorable Marquis of Vinguld,

I would have begun this letter on more intimate terms, say, My Love, My Dear Ythgar, or some other equivalent phrase expressing the affections of she who presently holds the pen, but as it has been some seventeen years since we last spoke, I fear the recent impudence of one half-beguiling you under my name may have inured you to the bewitching charms responsible for arranging that little scene in the carriage.

I, it seems, have a great deal of explaining to do.

It had been no easy task getting this far. The Countess Paxineau Cheraville's manor was nothing less than a fortress, filled to the brim with every sort of protection that gold can buy. If it had not been for Elrin's sudden appearance, there would be no way that I could have defeated Cheraville's personal mercenaries, the Seven Scourges of the West, on my own.

"Look at me, girl. What do you see?"

"...Death..."

How maudlin. How pretentious. It served its purpose, I'll agree. The broken wretch began to find her feet again, and accept her fate. Her fate? Her destiny, perhaps. Reborn to be a weapon, and in her case all unwilling, she might as well turn in her creator's hand.

Yes, that served me so well, didn't it. Got me such a terribly long way...

Ah well. May she have some luck, the silly fool. And that paladin.. she seemed able to see beyond what her friend so obviously reeked of, and try and help her. How sweet. How terribly nice. I had not to laugh when she turned to me with eyes aglow, fairly burning with the Light, and offered to help me redeem myself too.

Nervous pacing was not one of Lady Howell's usual habits.  She'd expected Countess Cheraville to make herself known at some point, the woman's monstrous vanity would permit no less.  But why now? She stopped and picked up the letter from her desk. 

"My dear pet," Belmilia wrinkled her nose in distaste at the Countess' phrasing.  The letter had been long, florid, and annoyingly ... self indulgent.  It was a pity she had not retained Miss Blanchard's writing style, even legalese was preferable to this.

Ythgar rested his chin on a fist, elbow on a wooden slat, eyeing a horse. The paddock was his. The lands were his. He was home, if it meant anything any more. A memory from his past had decided to occupy the manor in his absence, and he had yet to muster sufficient outrage to kill her for it. Besides, it was mildly diverting to untangle her motivations. At the moment, Ythgar was more interested in testing his memory as a man might gingerly explore his mouth with his tongue after a fight to see which teeth were loose and which were missing altogether.

A gleaming red dollop of paint - that forbidden art of his youth. Red as the blood of a child. Red as the blood of a father, glistening wetly on the palette of an unseen artist.

He stood in the dim confines of the necropolis, feeling the dull anger ebbing a little. When he fought, he was transformed; suffused by life he ripped from his foes, glutted by their dying screams. Soaked in the blood he watch spurt from the bodies of those who dared stand before his blade. It was incandescent... to have stripped away the man he had been and unveiled the demon who lay beneath the surface. Memories of his past no longer existed.. no longer mattered. Memories

A delicate dabbling in an inky pool of paint near the red - just south of it.. carefully mixed of soot and binding. The hairs darkened by the paint as if stained by night itself.

{{ Posted 12/29/05 on Realmportal by Paxineau }}

Like so many others as of late, Paxineau too had a dream in which Sowelu's fate hung in the balance. As the aristocrat stood beside the young woman at the edge of the cliff, a grin stretched across her face.

"My, my! This is certainly unexpected! Admittedly, I had always been searching for the means to refocus your aims, but I did not expect to see this decision come about so soon! Perhaps I may be of assistance yet, however..."

The first day of the eighth month of the year 28

Dear Lady Howell,

Again I wish to thank you for a most enjoyable afternoon. The tea was excellent and the cakes marvelous, but neither compared with your company. I appreciate your kindness and hospitality more than you know.

Sincerely,

Sowelu, Judiciary Danea, His Majesty's Silver Dragoons

Now that I'm trying to write this post, I'm not entirely sure what I want to say.

In short, real life circumstances are / will make it difficult to continue playing WoW; however, my departure isn't a result of a bad situation, which is a good thing. I'm just not going to have the time to really devote to playing anymore, and I think it's time I moved on, anyhow.

I suppose I ought to thank you.

Once I merely dabbled in the Fel arts;