Sethlion

Christmas present for Sethlion!

"After what I've seen" Sethlion softly said, the words effortlessly pushed through his slack lips to ride with the steady rivulets of unceasing Zangar rain that dripped along his sharp chin. His eyes, but piercing emeralds beyond a darkness of betrayal and deep, alien night, lifted toward her unflinching against the threat of the quaking arrow she'd notched, "After what I've done, I can't go back."

"She was a big girl. Taller than me at least, and fairly heavyset. So when she pushed me against the wall, I was not only shocked but it knocked the wind straight out at me. And she kissed me. It was so desperate and real you know? Such an intoxicating urgency to her." Ivor said wistfully, holding his shovel across his waist in a moment's rest.

Sethlion paused as well and planted his shovel in the dirt, leaning on the pommel. "And she didn't say anything?  Anything at all?"

Stardrifter. Stardust. Starwhisper. Mu'sha, it seems like everyone's either you or the stars. Even in name...

     The balmy heat licked against her skin, causing a layer of sweat to cling to her slightly aching frame with no way to escape, the muggy time of day was to blame for the unpleasantness certainly. The day was dragging to a close and she awaited the cooler evening patiently. Lifting her arm, she wiped the perspiration away from her forehead with the back of her hand before using her fingers to draw the dark chocolate strands away from her eyes.

It was hot.

The evening had started off so well. From the amusement in watching Hakkajin's expression as she removed those final stitches herself, to the playful games with the exhuberant young druid named 'Hu, and the ridiculous suggestions made in a game of "Truth or Dare", it should have ended as a good night. It had not.

Zyjiin had been awoken with a start as the cold splash of seawater pulled him from the peaceful oblivion that had been his sleep. The wharfmaster of Ratchet stood next to him, holding the guilty bucket. The goblin muttered something about loafing around the docks being unwanted; That there was an inn if he wanted a bed, and if he couldn't afford the inn, he'd best get out of town. No money meant no profit, and goblins cared for little else.

Assorted headshots of my characters and other people's characters.

The ticking of seconds on the clock threatened to drive her insane.

How long had she been confined to rooms, now? Each new city was a prison, the spare rooms of Aestan Firatril her holding cell. Perhaps the rooms were more comforting than a tent on the street, where the Convocate-General had first discovered her during her ill-begotten snake charming act. Her hair in tatters, the skin around her eyes bruised, her nose badly broken. Did he pity her, or had she charmed him as thoroughly as the snakes? He'd fixed her nose-- only she knew that it was slightly different than the features she'd been born with. So the Light wasn't perfect... what else was new?

It was a dark land that she traversed through. The Barrens at night was only for the wild things. The cloud cover was thick this night, and so only a faint glow from the heavens made some sort of resemblance of company.

(( A little something from Seth's past. ))

The cavalry had taken a backseat to more magical means of troop transport after the war, but Quel'Thelas never disarmed, never demobilized. They maintained their stables in tip-top condition, three staff officers kept busy five days a week looking for new stock, making the rounds of the breeders and the wranglers. Except for the trolls in Zul'Aman--and they likely had their own standards of excellence-- Quel'Danas had what was arguably the finest collection of dragonhawks in the world.

Which didn't mean that they didn't also have their share of molting, chip-feathered, buzzard-necked cannon-fodder. It was just kept to a minimum, was all, set aside for the poor bastards the supply sergeants had a problem with.

He has had a purpose for as long as he can remember. Before all else, his attention has been there. Before family, friends, hearth and home, his attention settles elsewhere and makes his fingers itch for his bow, his ears hear the breeze, and his eyes see them, hidden in the forest.

Trolls. Perhaps now, it is done. We few set out and hit them again. Finishing what was started so very, very long ago for Razyel. A war he remembers beginning,  when it was simply the way of things for the rest of us. Who, but Razyel, could remember a time we were not fighting trolls? They, with their lightning lives-—shortened further with perpetual fighting—-certainly could not. No one, for generations in Quel’Thalas, could remember peace.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid fuckin’ bitch!” the blue wild flower coiled and twirled down to the sandy grass of the tropical grove.

With frustration Hakkajin ripped at the taut leather binding plates of metal to her hands and flung them without care to wherever they might happen to land. This would probably lead to an hour or so hunt the next day. Good. She could think about how harshly she had failed tonight while doing that.

She had promised herself that she would do it. It had been nearly two weeks that she had to psych herself up to it. There had only been one chance and she blew it completely. It was all her fucking fault. She had totally been ready to do it, been the time came she had cowed out like the coward she had always known herself to be. Good thing she had everyone else fooled.

Dear Knight Adept Aestan,

The Librarian has sent me updates on the overdue books, so I'm writing you this note so you have current information.  Please attempt to retrieve the following titles:

Artisania Stillwater-Ell'Karan had ordered a cake.

She picked it up from the little wagon in Dalaran at the appointed time, mid-morning, while the icing was still fresh and setting up in little swirls and tufts around the rim of the confection. Very tempting indeed, but she carried it carefully in its little paper box back to the apartment without even peeking once, though she did lick her fingers after setting it out on the table.

The taunka swear their blood and strength and life to the Horde, and he wonders if their eyes are as blinded as his were when he first swore the same.

It seems a lifetime ago,  was, he supposes, when he tries to put a name to whatever his existence is now. Which isn’t often.

They’re motivated by grief and revenge, and he understands both. Only had the first to take him into yet another war that wasn’t his, but still wanted the second deep within the heart that had given up.

He remembers standing on the zeppelin tower the first time, looking down at the diseased land he had once cursed in that same heart. Remembers seeing the damage done by those who could make such dark dreams a reality. Thinks revenge isn’t always as nice as you’d expect.

Clad in gray, a hazy and diaphanous fabric that reminds more of mist than it does of any solid substance, her pale face veiled and her pale hands never still, she works.

Seated in the darkness and the endlessness of her ever widening halls, she toils.

The spire leans out at an angle over the gulf, far below the levels of the surrounding walls, but high over the floor of the valley, which at this time gives no sign of the horrible death-in-life which inhabits it, and through the hours of darkness imitates the true dance of life and death in hideous parody of natural wasteland. It looks almost as though it was broken out from the mountain walls and guiltily shoved back in, in effort to conceal the accident, but it is not really sheer at all, and there are many natural steps and crannies that make ascent possible.

They’re staying in Winterhoof, ignoring the not-wolf glaring daggers from the corner. He can’t really remember what he said to earn the outright death threat, but thinks it might have been his literal interpretation of “fuck you.”

He knows it’s not an offer — wouldn’t accept if it was because the lovesick elf is a pretty decent guy — but it seems to shut her up. From what he’s seen, that’s a difficult task.

The northlands are as cold as she’d said. He’s almost forgotten what warmth is, hadn’t had a good enough grasp before coming here to hold onto it now. He feels a little odd when his grasping mind pulls out a night sharing blankets with friends and says, “there, it’s that.” Seems like he should have something else, something connected to one who really had made an offer, but it’s been too long since he accepted any the memories might as well be fantasy.

     A heavy presence of mist burdened the air with moisture. No offshore breeze was blowing into the Grizzly Hills, the still blanket of mist saving Hakka from the chilly northern bite. It was the twilight hours of morning, and the birdless silence told her that the fire had gone out. It was also far to early for her to have awakened on her own accord.

Seth talks too much.

Whole monologues spilling from him in a ceaseless, unstoppable joyful rush like the steady yet ever changing pattern and hiss of rain, like the flutter and leap of fire, always restless, always reaching. That mouth soliciting more trouble than it was rightly worth.

But this wasn't the cause of his slow death.

"You've forgotten something very important.

That is the thought that woke me from my weekly nap-time. Oh, I did still need to nap despite having just recently slept longer than was strictly healthy even for one of the pseudo-dead. No, I am not undead because un-dead would be alive. They call us Forsaken; I don't understand that either. Though I suppose that we are forsaken by our past and by, well, everyone around us who isn't a pseudo-dead.

The sound of her breathing might as well as been the only noise which ever existed. The solid helmet encasing her head magnified the noise, and with the lack of background distractions, her respiration overshadowed everything. It would have been a pleasant day in Nagrand if not for the circumstances. The temperature was mostly comfortable and the animals kept to their own desires.

The silence was unnerving, not peaceful, and the smooth tree bark was stiff and uncomfortable. The plate leggings didn't help this. She had been sitting in this exact position for hours.

The thing about quietness wasn't what you heard, but what you didn't. And that was exactly what was bothering her. The elf hadn't made a noise for so long.. even his breathing was shushed.

He could hear waves, quiet thunder and hiss of water against the shore, the steady, ceaseless rhythm of the tide wearing upon the land. The sound was his only real measure of time's passing. The day's first light was breaking into shards on the back of the sea: brilliant, blinding ripples following one another, each an all-consuming brightness that held him within its crescent curve until the next one came to replace it, and then the next one, and the next....

All urgency seemed a thing of the past.

The worktable he shared with Avan and Armand was littered with armor parts and the detritus of three cleaning kits, but it was a sociable chaos. Every once in a while the Sarge would come by and yell at someone for doing a half-assed job and did he want to get his ugly hide pierced by a troll spear because he was too godsdamned lazy to repair his armor properly?

Artisania Stillwater-Ell'Karan fell into the kitchen chair. No tea was necessary.