Paxineau

((Continued from Never Lend a Book ))

The bag looked far larger than her frame could carry.  She limped with it against her shoulders, wobbly like an old pedlar woman or a snail wearing its home like a pack.  If it pained her, none on the streets would notice.  Her head bent with her back, and a threadbare hood sheltered any shadow of the effort in her expression.  The stones below her feet could see.  They stared up with flat faces, a thousand little mirrors of the still resolve in her burnished gaze. 

My eyes drifted over the chessboard and didn't really consider them beyond a brief assessment of the end of last night's game.

I still enjoyed playing chess with Hugh, though I do wish that his excellent solution to my ailment hadn't involved letting some damned heathen entity reshape me to its liking. I'd won the game. I generally do. The image of Ythfas's first effort to best me suddenly arose, and I banished it with a snarl which tugged at my face and urged it to lengthen, to grow bestial. My second son and murderer. His head was not yet in my hands, my vengeance not yet accomplished to my knowledge. That still rankled.

I focused on the names of the intricate moves, and the urge eased.

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

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?

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;

Bishop Reeds hated his job sometimes. It was often a tiring duty, seeing to the various needs of the decrepit Cardinal Foxworthy; his letters were to be penned *just* so, his tea was to be served *exactly* one way, his schedule must be organized in the most exacting (and, to the mind of the good Bishop, pointless) way possible. All in all, though, he smiled through the vague irritations and thanked the Light daily that he was given such a position of import. Normally, he would have been shipped out to some provincial abbey, to tend to the needs of the various parishioners there, and all the mundane tasks required of a Bishop - marriages, namings, funerals, so forth. Not so for our good Bishop Reeds! No, he was on the fast track to significance in the ranks of the clergy - a humble priest from a rather quaint and unrefined boyhood in Westfall whose devotion and studiousness had propelled him to serve as the right-hand man of one of the most venerable servants of the Light Stormwind had seen in quite some time!

"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."
~Hannah Arendt

((Directly after entry To Fight the Sea))

But sordid workers bend to kiss
Concealing water's luring lips,
And wave-washed, blighted figures strive
To force the course of passing ships.

Together calling they decree:
"Oh woe on she who fights the sea!"

((This is really way too long and too rough to be of interest, but it supplies some background. This takes place after the entry The Winter Road and before the Path to the Infernal stuff.))

There is no line between good and evil,
But a vast country
Where men lose their gods and find them
Where we lose and find ourselves.

There is no good, or evil- not for me.
There is only the boundless space between.
There is no fall, no ascension,
No Light to scorn, no Darkness to embrace.

The winter road, she takes my heart
With fog and bitter rain.
My soul and I may quickly part,
But she’ll not have my name.