Red, Red Earth, Season 2

  

Relevant notes:

-No AI was used to write the story

-Queen Rosaego of the Bloodwarders is a work of fanfiction inspired by the lore and setting of World of Warcraft, owned by Blizzard Entertainment.

All original characters, dialogue, and narrative elements — including the character of Rosaego, her lineage, and the events depicted in this story — are the intellectual creation of the author.

This is a non-commercial, transformative work created with love and respect for the source material.

-PG 18+ Reader discretion is advised; includes themes of violence, death, gore, abuse, sex, drug and alcohol consumption, depression, anxiety, s*cide etc.

-The author is 18+ 

Red, Red Earth by Melice Nix, Season 2

------------Chapter XI: The Titan's Purpose for us All------------

 

Three knocks at the chamber door. She heard them. And the key, removed, clinking against the ground. But she did not turn.

 

“Rosaego…”, she heard the muffled voice, and felt the bedding sink in with his warmth again,

“Rosaego… I know you lie awake. Rise, my queen. You haven’t had a thing of food in days”

 

The queen did not turn. No cordiality, nor closeness but her unclad spine to her beloved when she spoke the frigid words,

 

“Neither did they. Neither did your sons, Kenodormu”

 

Kenodormu would not give up. He felt in his heart, beneath that bulwark of ice, behind the wraith of grief that devoured at his lover’s face, still laid the lady with whom he had danced on moonlit balconies. He dared lay down just behind her cover, just a touch away from the wisps of her hair. And a touch too close, at fingerlength, for his hand came to her. The skin on her cheek was a pale burning of tears. His sigh in her hair would wish to warm her back among the living, and he whispered as he caressed the cheek that wept,

 

“So… Do you blame me for it?”

 

But all the efforts he would make at reaching her would end in vain, and the Queen halted any and all his advances at good will. Swiftly she turned and with intent she pierced him with a grieving eye, and did not spare him gently,

 

“If I did, you would be dead”

 

That one icicle never melted in the prince’s heart. That cold, unemotive look in her pupils was as if for the first time again he had met her, but it was not her. Not the Rosaego he knew, but a different queen and wife. One indifferent to him, or to life, or death.

 

Yet, he found there was something in her voice, as if the young girl she buried along with her boys fought beneath all that pain. And with the patience of a snake, at last he heard love budding, simmering beneath her pain after days of deathly silence.

 

“I do not blame you, Kenodormu”, Rosaego gripped his hand on her flushed cheek, and the faintest light became of the whites in her eyes, “I am afraid you do not understand… Not the whole of it. Not what it carries. You would wish for me to heal. To tell you, that all can be good again… I fear, my dear, I no longer can”

 

“I know there are things that are beyond repair. My world is shattered just the same. Do you not know how it eats me inside?”

 

He buried his eyes away from hers, in the comfort of her palm. He hid so, from her sight, but even more so, he wished to hide from the disgust and shame he grew for himself, a lesson carved in his mind by his father. Hushed, his whisper would scream, if it could,

 

“To know I failed to save them! That I was weak! Each day I have been choosing the heights of the tallest towers where from to drop my pitiful body. This head, this shell – it serves no purpose, my love!”, Kenodormu’s heart cracked, heavy with the weight of his burdens, and they all at last got the better of him, and he could not hold them any longer. The pristine façade that adorned his brow, split in twain beneath the hollow desperation, “I have nothing of my name left. Nothing but this agony, and now I must carry on and wear it in silver and splendor. I understand your pain all too well, my love. Better than anyone could dare to think, because I was there. I saw what you saw, and lost what you have lost. But look around you, Rosaego… There are enemy ships at our shores, the smallfolk are disgruntled at the thought of war, the court is in shambles… The world may be broken, but it will not wait. But there is hope. There are still allies we can turn to. You must stand up. You must be Queen again”

 

Rosaego knew very well that her husband was in as much pain as her. She knew this pain hurt him differently, however, she knew that he could not forget nor survive as a whole what all had unfolded. And that in his heart, Kenodormu’s suffering was greater and deeper than he would ever dare let on, for such was the decorum of his upbringing.

 

She solely kissed the palm of his hand, and the prince’s brow quivered for he thought it a hint of an unusual farewell, “That is where we part, dear. After all you have seen, and you have seen what I have… You still speak of silver and hope”

 

The Queen, hollow and gaunt to the bone stood from her bedding covered in her sleeping gown, and with a stern will as a wandering ghost strode for the bolt of the door, and in a stunned commotion the prince took off for her steps.

 

“Where to, Rosaego! Stop searching for him!”, he chased and cried after her, but she was long gone past the great hallways and servant passages she knew well like the back of her hand, and before he could call out her name again, his queen was away in the night.

 

But the Queen did not leave to seek out her dead son again. She sought not his body nor his voice, for she understood that he would never be found. For days spent of starlight beneath the changed boughs and clefts she walked, without aim or rhyme and sought what she could not quite name. A petal by a lake where she once bathed, or a bluff beyond which the waterfalls sink into the mouths of caves beneath. And all the fading beauty of the Crownlands and the sunlight that lingered between the cold dark of caverns posed before her as if though a question,

 

“Why does the morn now birth anew, and the petals blossom so vibrant when I am brought here, awakened from my earthly slumber but to watch it all wane? I see the realm of my father below. Its fields grow barren of poppies, and the names of his descendants ridded of remembrance. The geese from my mother’s frozen reach no longer stop by in their dancing flight. I hear they fear the evil in man. Why have you spared me, mother? Why did you rip my life from the illness of my infancy, if I must now lose more than you would have in your days? Must I alone stand here, powerless before the fist of a force that devours at the latest hour, and let my hold loose of all that binds me to the world, o Titans? Look, beyond, cities are counting their coin, and they laugh and they praise their prosperity but demand of those impoverished a cut of sacrifice, lest they be brandished heartless. Yet, cannot they see that this never-ending hunger they have taught their children to seek, and to look the other way should one in need kneel before their bounty strips them bare of mercy and all God’s grace, and all gold in their hands melts between their fingers fast? Mine shall not be the only hand that lost. Nothing shall remain”

 

Bloody rage stirred in the broken heart of the Queen of Valdrakken, and as a shadow in the skies, black to eclipse the setting sun she ascended on her great Bahamut, and the great beast climbed high with his wings white as all fury of heavens. Heavy was the gale beneath each thrashing flap of his silver scale, and the Queen on her dragon released her anger upon the sinful citizens of the town below the cliffs that worshiped none and loved naught but the pleasure of senses.

 

And that town burned for days in scentless blinding coldflame, and echoes of screams followed her zealous flight wide across the Crownlands. And the landsfolk fled before the terrible sight, for word had reached them that the blackened Queen in anger comes to cleanse, in all fervor mounted on the drake of precious silver. The terrorful two scoured the skies so for days and nights, until the rotten folk were no more but ashes, and those worthy of their lives shouted to her, should they calm the beast and the cursing furor that rode, “Skyscourge! Set down from the heights and grant us mercy in service, our burning Queen!”

 

By that name they knew her on the drake, for where the Queen rode Bahamut the land came charred and black in blazing flame, that as moonlight in the dead of winter glowed bright in mountain peaks. All that was rotten fled before the blinding of his wings, and in the ashes she could tell apart the gems from the fallen dust. The Queen gathered about her those that the beast deemed pure to serve her, and the name she earned there came made from the ash of the unworthy.

 

In the burning of the earth, and the fury of the beast quenched, another spark awoke to the fading times. As if it took the wails of a mourning queen, or the thousands of screams beneath her rage or the furthest the hearts of man could fall to reach and touch the heart of the very world, for once in an age the divine had responded to its creation, and the Titan spoke to her heart,

 

“The heavens weep with you, child, at the sight of decadence. What was once our world, now lies a lesson in descent and the flaw in our design is the man. Your kind were made to have nothing but the skin on their back and the fruits of the plenty serve but to kneel before the eternal. Surrender it all, and no longer be imprisoned by the perishable. Queen of Vengeance, take up your sword. Time is soon coming”

 

Lulled in the sweet voice of the heavenly Mother that all had made in the light that was pure, the Queen’s thirsting blade now set itself upon a clear vision. And a single thought made itself unveiled to her upon the horizon.

 

“…Rosaego”, the gentle hand on the shoulder shook her present, away from the racings of her mind.

 

“Hm?”, she mumbled through the nearly drunken-like phase.

 

“I said, our allies are soon coming. Will you not come out to greet them?”

 

Rosaego’s expression frowned in disorient. In an effort to regain a firm ground and tell apart the voices that spoke to her, she stood herself up to her shaking feet, and braced her focus. And for but a moment, almost caught herself wondering, if she had imagined it all, as the drake by her side slept silently and no heat nor the sizzling a linger remained on the white of his skin. But in her heart she knew, for she felt a force in herself, that snipped away at which did not serve her longer, and reshaped the core of her being irrevocably.

 

She glanced anew at Kenodormu, and felt compassion for him. Now to her eyes, he did not seem a prince, or a father, or her husband. He seemed timid, as if though he feared the world about would swallow him. A terrified, broken boy.

 

She swerved about the grove to search for her bearings, and she saw the sun had begun to set fast beneath the cold crags where Bahamut had sunken his wings to sleep. The lush of the green faded too into the twilight’s rest, and far past the mist there, in the peaks that covered in clouds reached she could see her city, towering still in biding her return.

 

“…You walked all this way to find me? Come then”, Rosaego uttered in a befuddled spur, but quickly turned to sobriety and gestured at the reins of Bahamut, who began to wake from his drowsy nest in the sand, “Let us not bid our guests to wait”

 

Together they made haste on dragon’s wings towards the gates of the keep, and a cohort of the royal guard awaited them there, to escort the prince and queen to the council chambers where it seemed, a gathering was under place. The guards in royal gilding spoke not a word, but the hurry in their movement made it apparent that decisions of great importance were being made at every moment delayed.

 

Murmur of tensing talk blared through the dense council walls, crafted thick to contain any secret unfit for an uninvited ear. The prince’s demeanor did not show concern at the notion, however. As though he knew who, and what news there were brought.

 

“…To sever all ties with the northern lordships, my liege, should they all fall to the enemy’s influence--“, an old man in white-raven feathers with his cane pointed across the map on the table, foaming in convincing the strategists of things they did not understand, but abruptly paused when he saw them bend their heads before the host that entered the hall. The white hair on his brows gave him an ancient age, but the skin of his face was clear and bright as a young man, and his bearing simple, yet his words measured and quite wise. To his left, a lady in training for the office he shall soon retire, bred of another royal house far. She stared at the prince and the queen in ways of distance, nearly distrust. Her face had changed from the last time Rosaego had seen her, an age it seems ago. Her eyelids were tired and grey and her skin was cold, yet she remained strong in her pose, even after all of her hardships had weighed her down. A true Proudmoore, unrelenting beneath the foot of aging. “--Queen Rosaego of the Dragon Isles, our Queen in Black, the kingdoms of men are in sorrow with you. Your arrival could not be better. I hope you take no offense – we have started the meeting already”

 

“You have not wearied a day since I last saw you a young boy, all but the lone whisker on your lip which has silvered. I take none, Archmage. And I hail you all a welcome into our realm”, she proclaimed in great austerity, and looked across the faces in the room. One remained unfamiliar, unplaceable among the rest, “And who might be the maiden by your side, lady Jaina?”

 

“I believe you know of her. In the old world, your red kin helped mine to defend my home from the black dragonkin’s assaults. The port of Theramore remains grateful for the dragons’ aid, and so we have come to you. And Alleria too, has come to greet you from the lands where once your kind made great alliance with the Elves”

 

The lady-warrior in white silken armor rose her hand from her weapon to hail them.

 

“A surviving sister of the Windrunners? The legend of your defense of Quel’Thalas precedes you”, the Queen grew interested.

 

The ranger in white forced a smile at the thought, and drifted into memory where scenes of wonderous nostalgia sparked alive still, “The cities of Valdrakken and Silvermoon are as two jewels sundered by the seas”

 

Khadgar strode closer with the raven’s head staff in his hand, pushing against the heavy stone below and past the council table, and stopped into the dim light of a brazier. There weighed a darkness behind the message and the meaning of this eve’s assembly, and all eyes awaited his tidings.

 

“We, too, remember”, the Archmage said to Rosaego, reminding that the enmity of the Blue Dragons and the mages does not lay forgotten, yet in these times, it seemed, must be disregarded, “But it is not why we have gathered here, in Valdrakken, or Silvermoon, or any great mage-cities ruled by their guardians. It is not solely your home we have come to defend, Queen Rosaego, nor to renew the vows of past alliances, but all our homes, I’m afraid. We have come, because we have heard the heedings of the Titan”

 

The Queen seemed to grow eager to hear what the lot had to say. She leaned forward and rested her cloaked arm on the war table, and let down the goblet of pewter from her hand.

 

“Each one of us has seen the visions. I have heard her voice. Caring, like the warmth of the sun, embracing of all her children. Azeroth, our Mother of Light is in pain”, Jaina interjected, and looked for the signs of understanding in Rosaego.

 

The prince listened to their musings patiently, but himself did not understand why the Titans did not show him visions of the Mother like they have for them. Why he solely saw in his dreams the fall, the darkness and the evil horrors made at the hands of the vile sorceress. He would glance at Rosaego as the guests relayed the portents to her, and hoped to find that she too, did not see what they all did, that perhaps, the three emissaries of the kingdoms of Lordaeron were simply wrong, and that nothing of this sort of grand a scale was aplace. But he saw, instead, his beloved’s eyes light up for the first time since the death of her sons at the mention of the Titan’s calling.

 

The Archmage paced about the command table in patient thought of what is to come, and between the shades that intertwined the fires of the flickering candles he relayed a grave tale,

“The world soul shall wake at the last hour, and the dragons shall take their flight – this was written. The darkness this land has witnessed best dwells not in these shires alone. And the armies she grows at her side come made of militants of every nation of the earth”

 

The Queen’s advisors eyed Khadgar down to his ashed brow. They thought him too young, it seemed, or unwise for his age, and they stirred in disagreement of his strange ideas. One older and more respectable among them even questioned the Archmage, rhetorically concerned at learning what sort of titan would have a plain woman for an enemy.

 

“It is not a woman I hunt. Xal’atath is… A shade. A fallen sister of the Goddess”, Alleria dejected, disgruntled at their simplicity.

 

“This shadow, the one that has taken from you everything, will not be stopped at the gates of the Isles alone. It will spread. And it will consume and ravage the world we have known, until there is no longer a kingdom left on the earth to rule. We have come to ask for your aid, once again – shall you join us in defending our world, and bring with you the might of the Dragons, and the ancient holds of the Titans under your command to face the greatest enemy, and fight with us the final war”

 

Queen Rosaego had listened to them. With caution she followed the words they had come here to say, and they were enough to confirm what inklings she had of her own of the fate that was abound, and after a pause of silence, she followed,

 

“I have heard her voice too, friends to the Dragonkind. She has shown me my fate, and the fate of all lands. Let us cast all our past hostilities aside, for I shall fly out to my mother, and ask of her the support of the Blue Houses”

 

“And the famed mage-city of Dalaran shall gladly have you as our guest. Though our kind has seen vicious hatred between your draconic ancestors and the mages of the Kirin’Tor, I, the Guardian of the Violet Citadel, give you my word. We shall not hold you captive nor your mother’s drakes, and you shall be granted immunity and the freedom to walk at will. Now is not a moment to dig up the old grudge, but to find an ally in the most unlikely of places, for the need is great”

 

The chamber seemed to tense in the remark, and the guests there found relief in the Queen’s latent words, for it took them great patience to await the reveal of her final decision.

 

She felt a careful tug at her sleeve’ seams.

 

“Queen Rosaego, you do not think to--“, Kenodormu urged of her, a pleading gasp of sweat on his coiled lip.

 

“--There is no time to discuss this now, Prince Kenodormu”, unbothered to assure him, she turned to the allies, “Let it be known: my choice is made. The Crownlands and all of the Dragon Isles shall ride to join the cause”

 

It was done. With each footstep the queen took further away from that council room, it seemed to Kenodormu, albeit unavowedly, that she walked closer to the consequences of that decision which rippled like the echo of a hurricane. He could not longer hold her back, nor chase her words back into her mouth, and the Queen would not let him, lest all the burden doomed to drop upon them all as a pendulum hung from the skies let itself unleashed. The torchlight behind them took out, and shadows crept in their steps, and followed the two all but to the rising of a spire vaulted in the clouds, from where the moonlight cast its eye to overlook the vast land beyond.

 

“And shall you run away on your drake again?”, the prince tested her, “You must but call his name, and away you would go. No longer to be concerned of what goes on in our realm”

 

In silence she stood, concealed by the pillars against the glow of the night. The fields that grew beneath carried the scent of endings.

 

“…What have you done, Rosaego!”

 

Nevertheless the Queen would not obey his desire, though the prince came near to fume, and his fingers curled in his fist to strangle instead of her folly will. If just once, she would stop the stubborn game, just once, take heed to him with regard, Kenodormu’s anger whispered to his heart that struggled to keep afloat on the sea of her making.

 

Like the hurries of wind lamenting, dignified, she recalled,

 

“Once, I asked of you the reason. For why the Titans had woken us to the end of times. Now, finally I believe I know”

 

The sleeping gown dark with ash gracefully waded amidst the air, and her attention was drawn to the firmament that in black shared her rage.

 

“Rosaego…”, Kenodormu treaded an ounce closer and believing her ill, acted to caress the ear of his grieving wife, and he reached to have a hold of her hand, “Stand fast from your passions, my lady. I fear they have begun eating you. I fear for you! I fear for what is left of our home… Of us”

 

“Let go of the notion of us, Prince Kenodormu”, she dejected with the firmest of denouncing what little remained of their unity, pushing out the word with all force of her lungs through the thin of her mouth.

 

The Prince’s brows begged her to rethink. The last ray of the moon that as if glowed to bring alive the same look that once graced the eyes of his sons, should it soothe back the heart of his wife to his arms again. ‘Would you not stay, safely away from this toil beyond the borders of our home, with me, and the starlight that burns above the world?’, his white eyes told silently.

 

But the steady Queen told away the false light. It was clear to her at last, that naught but death could come to be true.

 

“This is a dying world, Kenodormu. Look at your home, and take a good look! The blossoms we have known shall never spring again. The starlight has long faded and will not be re-born, not while we yet live and never again. And if the world must die and all things burn in its wake, then I shall light the last spark”, her tongue a ruthless blade, thundered keen, “The Titans are calling my name, and I must go”

 

Injured was the salted heart that wished to step away from her. Yet his hand pulling her closer, unwilling to let that which it loved slip into that dark,

“The choices you are making are not of the sane mind”

 

Carefully she reduced the hand to a gentle drop not to break, and still kept her glance far aimed above,

 

“This time I am not running, Kenodormu. We were made to serve our ends, all of us. And I finally see why I had not died a babe in my mother’s arms, when she praid to the Gods for my life. And they had heard her prayer, and listened. Here lies the reason for my waking, in the last fading of their hour… Perhaps it was, so to fight for the memory of God, and avenge my children, and to die. For all our losses this is the reason. The Titan’s purpose for us all”

 

Cinders of bronze that blessed the Prince’s temples tingled of renewal, and a piece of forgotten need concealed in the hearts of all Dracthyr, a spark of the Titan’s making, a mark of their hand became lit alive. The stuff of cosmos that made in his veins recalled – that there might be yet something to their grand design for him. That there, within the legends of his valorous house came before the kings a God, and all his descendants up until him – the prince without a crown, had forgotten to serve.

 

The spire carried them in peace. The two in their quietest moment saw of the other for the first time, and it is here in this very silence between the spite that Kenodormu and Rosaego met truly one another, naked of lies.

 

“Then, you are really leaving for Iskaara?”, he asked of her when the calm took its setting.

“…How long?”

 

“At dawn”, she sated.

 

“Then so be it, my Queen”, Kenodormu accepted, settling his knee to the upheaved dust, “But if it must be so, then I would not have you venture unprotected”

 

Rosaego tilted to a side in dismay, “You would have me followed?”

 

“…Escorted… Watched at a distance”

 

The Prince’s stroke of caution caught her at part hurt with conceit.

 

“And who might be fitting for the task?”, she challenged. Last hails of the restless eve closed in around the keep, and the cold of the morning was beginning to set on the skin.

 

“I know of one”, Kenodormu assured her, certain as the passing of the swift midnight.

 

The highlands of the Span were basked in the chill of the bleak sun. Into their halls of fir high she rode watchfully on Bahamut, though she had not him soar, but walk as a snake, fair as the snowfall that covered his stride. And way down the descent of the calfsoad they lost their track, for the snowfall turned a dusky and grey blizzard, and the path was gone.

 

The wind a howl of livid hoarfrost split the ears from heads. Drifts, as tall as birdnests in the first branches of trees closed in to bury them alive, and fill their mouths with coldwater. The silver drake, made and bred of the north, shivered and the scales on his feet bitten rotted apart, and his wings like glass could not spread though much they wished to. Bahamut and his Queen the rider resorted to what laid left of their endurance to swim across the blinding storm, but the trees looked too similar, and the same birdnests saw their birds return from the Dragon and the Queen’s point of way.

 

‘Bahamut, grand protector. We are lost in circles’

 

Her hand on his frozen scale nearly welded to the touch. ‘What is it your eyes see in the whites that mine own cannot?’

 

“Hmmphhh…”, the ancient huffed a heat of breath from the chasm of his nostrils, and with last his vigor his neck pointed high, and he whispered to her between the silence of a snowflake that falls and the touch of her frosted palm,

 

‘I do not see, for even I grow blind. But the scent, young Queen, resembles a home’

 

‘Guide us’, she hushed, ‘Carry us there’

 

Soon, lights of fire were blinking through the fog. The inviting fume of brothy goodness kindled their gaping bellies. And the sounds of accordion music melted the ice on their ears to a dance, yet when the sorrowed queen in black finery on her wyrm rode past the ivory gates, her kin there welcomed her with silence.

 

Before her drake fell to a kneel the elder, and the runes of ancestors a black ink on his face kissed the ground. The grandfather, who had been burdened for his time to keep alive the tales of kin and tell the stories to the young, left beside him the pole with which he fished, and the fur on his shoulder, for to the hardy folk a lost mouth to feed makes the fisherman’s tools but wasted sticks to break,

“The sea is great with your tears, lassi-na”

 

“Do not halt your music for my grief, Dido. Fast as our toes have thawed, I must have a word with my mother. Does she still seat the Ivory Throne?”, Rosaego boldly insisted. At her allowance, an awkward spur of fingers the chordsinger resumed his song, of war times of long old, and the graves in the snow that still ache,

 

“Hoi ma Tuska, Tuska-mat, Ie katsi ka jarvi-tal,

Lissa toika valtava, tai-ie kassi berozhna.

Sin vartijat-la marosna, sebi jaalle zavyela,

Sebie toi-a zavyela, goroveh ut zabyl’a”

 

“She knows you are coming. Come, I will take you to the House of Tapestries”

 

Rosaego carefully set down from Bahamut, and let him to rest by the cauldron fire’s heat. The boots on her feet frozen to wood, met at the ankles the water of melted ice before the fire, freezing still, yet still charred from the coal. Above her greeted the tusks of a giant creature made prey, centuries mounted above the doorway just like it was when she was a child visiting the village, but the moths in the night had carved in its bone a set of intricate pathways, and made the creature even more horribly beautiful a trophy. The wardens removed their spears from a cross at the passage to allow her entrance, and she realized how she never quite noticed they were two heads taller than the guardsmen’s height.

 

The firepit burned stark and livid. Wax of candles’ melted fumes heaped into the moisture that collected on the woolen carpets decking the curving walls of pinewood halfboard. Like the wax, behind the fire an unmelting seat of ivory spread its roots into the dirt ground, and slenderly to the arching top, and its queen beneath the crown of ice and pelt of a snowfox raiment, furiously cold a stare she looked into the fire, gritting the white of her teeth. Until she saw her daughter.

 

Steadily the Ice Queen arose with her aching knees, and untangled the braid as long as her age, white and soft of clouds and as daring an entanglement of her maidenly beauty a remnant, faster held and more ornate than the weaving of her most valued embroidery.

 

Rosaego would have knelt, but her mother held her to the warmth of her bosom. Her mother never held her – when it was not needed. She would let her daughter accustom to the cold and the harsh, lonely world where no one would be her strength but herself. But Rosaego’s Mother, the icy queen, knew when to hold her firmly in the grip of her pale hand, her child not to slip into the depths, and she knew and kept all little tinder salted away solely should there come a day of need to warm safe her daughter’s dove-heart.

 

“I know what embers in your chest, dear daughter”, the mother exhaled. Her voice had never been so filled with tears, “You wish to set the world aflame. Over and over again, until the bellies of hell birth to its surface your unharmed sons. Until the cities under mountains beg, ‘enough’”

 

Firelight burned in the tears on their cheeks. The two queens, sharing in the burden of pain knelt under its weight in embrace.

 

How she wished everything was like before. That she could be again a young girl in this hall, in the comfort of the tales of nannies and their knitting songs, and that her mother, like there now she did, embraced her into sleep.

“Do you recall, mother… The song you sang to me. The song your mother had sung to you too”, Rosaego pleaded, her words broken into splinters of innocence, “What awaits me, mother, in the vast, strange world?”

 

Her mother braided the girl’s coiling locks, black beneath the icewater and the salt of tears. She saw there laid a question behind the lullaby Rosaego convoked, a question for which her daughter was timed to learn the answer. Compassion demanded she tell her the truth.

 

“I will not lie to you, my only one”, she took Rosaego’s face afront the flame, “You must face the fire. But I cannot bear to let my child walk alone. I shall face beside you whatever may. In their memory”

 

Queen Rosaego felt nothing remained of warmth but the touch of her mother’s hand. Even the fire which there burned so ravingly, did not suffice against the heart made cold asleep. And what good should ever come to that heart that beats, frozen be as it may, if it lives to count the days in vain above their dreaming graves?

 

She shot a glance dead-straight into her mother’s eye, and now even were the two queens in shared pain,

 

“I will fly out into war. Forge me my armor, mother, and bring to me a good mammoth”

 

Her best smiths toiled for weeks. Sleepless nights in counting before the smoldering forge, their hands blistered and pained perfected each scale on the chestpiece. Gems of cobalt in dozens decorated the joints, plucked from the depths of caves in Vakthros. And when it had all been set and done, and the smiths paid in rice and a coin a head, Rosaego returned to Valdrakken on her wyrm, and a shadow followed their steps in the hardened snow not far behind.

 

Bahamut rested her at the foot of the great stair, and the peoples below gathered to see what it was their Queen carried, and the horns went silent. The fog of cold grey descended the city, as if she never left the Span the air was biting and chilled, smothered in a blackish cloud that densed above the spires.

 

The armor she bore – steelbound scalemail of draconic tradition, melded to perfection a pressure of cobalt, black and cold under the sun – her mother’s bloodline called it Black Ice. Named so for it was made for widow-queens, and it burdened them with a pyre for their lifetimes should only the metal remain to be worn and given to the next. But Iskaara had been filled with widows, and no more could spare theirs. So a new heritage was made, in the fires of the forges there, and a parting gift to their young Queen Puna’Lohi, for her steel to tell the world of the anger of Iskaara’s mothers.

 

She emerged before her constables in the pavilion. All watched in fright. Her hand gripped onto Ashkandur. The skin on her face was flushed and her eyes were open and red and her jaw was shut in loathing. Whenever the Queen turned still, they had learned to expect a verdict.

 

Heralds at the base of the young snowfall-dressed stair commanded make way, and to the sides of the yard alarmed the folk that gasped and trembled, locking in fear their eyes away from the gate that opened forcefully. Thunder came beneath stone of the pavement, and the militia fled before a pair of Iskaara’s cattlemasters that fought to take restrain with their roped javelins against the will of a massive beast that charged iron-headed to trample mound or rock.

 

“Puna’Lohi, we bring the gift of your mother”, panting in broken sweat beneath the layers of fur, the cattlemaster belted, nearly to release his hold of the giant in the struggle and lose the tendons in his arm, “Uq’patan is untamed. If you move him, he is yours. If you don’t, you die”

 

The vicious beast carried on raging, frightening the courtly dames. It charged forth and before, and in circles clashed. And in a moment the old stonefoot’s wearied glance met the Queen’s into a lock. Dread overcame her, but she could not let show a flinch. Not a yardful divided her and the monster and its fangs, and no steel nor armor could stop its leaded toe from crushing the chest. Yet the animal would not attack, nor would it reduce its gaze. It stared at her with its cold eyes as it galloped in its craze, grumbling and sneering from its weakened lungs, and it seemed, it knew of a broken heart.

 

The Queen summoned Galahad the court-healer to her side.

 

“Your grace, I cannot treat the animal”, he explained.

 

“I do not wish for a means of healing, but of harm”

 

Galahad swerved, “You would not mean to… Kill it?”

 

The Queen turned to the healer to relieve him of his fears, and told him an order through her grinding teeth beneath the hood of the helm,

 

“Salve-master Galahad, you and your healers are to craft me the most potent poison of your knowledge and skill. Of it, you shall make two cauldrons, and bring them to me”

 

Galahad understood. Allowing his apprentices to begin, the meister bowed in service,

 

“As is your wish, Queen Rosaego”

 

Snow collected at the knee with the passing of the day. The mammoth still toyed with its surroundings, still to find no calm.

 

The keep’s chambers opened. Through their arches, the healers went forth, with their hands in gloves of black leather, far away perching the pole that carried carefully two batches of iron. Grimaces on their faces were of horror, for one drop spilled on their skin would be their end.

 

Court-healer Galahad gently released his end from his brothers. And in a rush came away before Rosaego, weeping in dreadful sweat,

 

“Queen Rosaego, within those cups lies our strongest, crafted to the best of my ability”

 

The band of scholars came forward slowly with the cauldrons of iron, dripping at their edges and seeping with citrous blue liquid.

 

“It is not as potent as what was used by the enemy”, he apologized. The expression on his face was one not of a medic, not a scholar, but of disdain for what he had to do, and the healing hands he would cut off had he known in his early days that they would craft a weapon of this kind, “But it is my finest work”

 

Rosaego bent her eyes towards the flaming liquid. Like the lives it had consumed, she admired and imagined how the snow that fell in its depths melted away like the skin on the bones of those she sought to fry.

 

“That is good enough”, she turned to the scholars breaking in their backs, and gestured her guards to pick up the weight, and ordered them, “Take the cauldrons. Mount each to a chain on the back of the beast. Should you touch the poison, heed my warning, you should wish to throw yourself before its foot. Another shall take your place. When it is done, run, I shall ride the beast. And I intend to feed the murderers each a cauldron they are due”

 

Fear did not stop them, for they followed the command they were given. The guards armored to show no skin survived, but a scholar of good knowledge fell to the venom; and knew its crafting too well to let his days go on. The young man of lifetimes in awaiting slid underneath the bouldering leg and cut short his agony. The guardsmen removed what remained of his body, and his head stained the snowcoat a splatter.

 

The Queen approached, still dead-on the eyes of the animal, and its own still gazing straight at hers as it fought still against the attackers. With a final effort, the jugs that carried death were mounted sealed on its back. The mammoth huffed and snarled, but it stopped beneath the burdens. As if its scent knew of the grave nature of what it carried, the beast made no harsh moves lest to topple on itself the liquid. The weight of chains seared on its hardened back and made it powerless lest to calm to a halt. Uq’patan’s eyelids slowed to a half. As if they were to say, ‘you have won’. He had surrendered.

 

She took hold of its curling tusks. At any moment they could spear her straight past the armor, should the beast only make it his desire to do so. Yet he did not. Her armored hand greeted a cold touch against the wrinkled eyelid, and she shut it, and climbed on the iron barding that made the chain.

 

“Be still now, great beast”, she commanded the old monster gently, “You and I share a rage. It would be an honor to share the retribution just the same”

 

In the season of the fallen snow when the northern wind howls, minding not the walls of a stronghold and the realmsfolk defenseless and their homes unsafe, there could be no dreams of peace if they were to seal themselves in their Isles away from the world. In the far north, remnants of usurpers still sporadically pushed further into the land, and they did so not without aid, but with the hand of their new masters. This new army, of a foreign demeanor and tongue, seemed to come out of nowhere, and the folk told tales that they dwelt in the holes in the earth. Others claimed, the sea birthed them, for their navy had assaulted the bordering waters. And their attacks were brisk and efficient; they let themselves not to linger too long amongst the natives. It seemed that their commanders were a patient lot, having their ships docked before the shore and fit to endure for months before an opportunity arose, until one day they had retreated but all from the Isles. The peoples were fast to rejoice a time free of pillaging, but the leaders of the great houses knew better. There were few places left to run. The army did not retreat, Queen Rosaego knew, but went on to regain greater numbers and choose its field of battle, and it laid where it suited them better, not at sea, but deep, far beneath. And from there, it would intend to lay claim to all, slowly seeping its poison into the hearts of greater nations, until all are withered and have no strength left but to join their villains.

 

Queen Rosaego guided the mammoth up the great stair, and stood atop his back as if the saddle of iron were her throne. She would give no words of comfort to her soldiers. But these men needed none. Each face she looked at, every helmet and banner stood proudly before her, ready at heart to give their lives for their homeland, and each man would have their spear pierce the blood of the foe should they be blessed so to avenge their Queen’s pain. Their homes could not be defended in their green shires no longer, nor by the softness of their bedding’s pillow by their women’s side – it raged away from the kindred shores, where the foot of the dragon had never stepped, and where no familiar word or taste awaited. And whether war would take them far from hearth they did not know, for wherever the battle must take its place they would now call home.

 

And so as the armies of the two houses of Valdrakken and the Broodlands joined forces in the crown city. They counted two battalions of the reds: of the Bloodwarders – drakonid footmen mostly but furiously armed, and of House Lethalor a regiment of skilled drake-riders, trained personally by Lord Andestrasz. And the Crownlands sent their fill of regiments of two-thousand heads, a fifth of which were the royal army and the personal guard of the Queen. Of bronzen and gold shields and sabres and gleaming gilded pauldrons their valor preceded them, and loyally they stood to protect the honor of their Queen. The raiders of her motherland in the Span, already on their way up the mountains, soaked in the blood of the first prey. Mighty was the sea of blades under her, but it did not suffice for to face the growing threat.

 

In a show of glory, a great blood-scaled drake hovered above the red army that had gathered there, and from its wings descended its master of elderly hair, the good teacher Lord Andestrasz. Proud yet sorrowing, he hailed the lady,

 

“Blood does not abandon blood. Your kin, Queen Rosaego, will follow you into death gladly”

 

“And I shall have them gladly, and you my Lord Andestrasz”, she spread her arms in welcome to her mentor, “Theirs is the right to the song of the braves, and so it is yours. Tell me, are the drake-riders readied?”

 

“With steel and fire tried”, he braced firmly, “Fierce, fast. Cunning. They are now at your command”

 

There was an exhaustion in the eyes of the old drake-master. It appeared to Rosaego, the lines in his eyelids cut ever deeper and he would wish to close them, waning once his force in the spirit of a rider. She wondered to ask of him,

 

“What of you, my lord? Will you not take their charge?”

 

The drakelord smiled at her, as if a veteran’s hundredth race’s conquest,

 

“I shall stay behind, in the Broodlands. Mine must be to watch over the realm of your father, and keep an elder’s council until your return. The wars and strifes have been in the past, but I fear my Queen, my bones no longer serve me”

 

She accepted his will. What is more, she seemed content to know that her homeland rested in good hands of her most trusted advisor, and he would yet share to her one more word of counsel,

 

“This is a war to be fought among many a nation. It would be wise to seek out friends in the fight”

 

The wisdom he let to her there came from many wars fought in centuries past, and she would be a fool not to heed a beard as grey as his, for sparingly he gave his thoughts to friends and fewer still to stubborn rulers. An advice of elders was not one to be shunned, and so she was taught by her father and all the kings that were, to listen and obey the ones who paid in their experience their great price. She sent word to her heralds, and bid them to send her message across the lands beyond that the Queen of the Dragon Isles seeks allies.

 

“Not like so”, the torch lit gold beneath the hood of a cloaked man that stopped the Queen in walking to her chambers, “This would be unadvised”

 

The Queen lingered to turn. The light of fire in his hand shone to reveal the darkness that sat in the look of his eyes. And he removed his hood, yet the black locks still concealed his cheek. A good half of his face, disfigured in ghastly scarring beyond recognition of what there used to be.

 

“Who are you to give me council?”, the Queen’s voice tittered in the corridor, with no sword or guard to come to her aid in the shaded hall.

 

The man fought a smile across his unharmed cheek. The torch he held in his hand carefully reached towards Rosaego, and he gestured at her to claim it, but would not say a word.

 

“You would have been better off in the Span. There, shrouded by blizzards in the night you could recall your generals and your armies would assemble away from cunning eyes”

 

The lady’s fist with fire trembled, “Have you been at my heels? How did you learn of Iskaaran flanks?”

 

“Your prince tasked this of me”, restrained and little to give of ken, he said, “Yet, I have seen you visit their graves long before”

 

The hairs on her skin grew cold in tensing dread, and her shattered heart a bottle empty, filled with pain.

 

The man looked into her eye as if he had found something familiar. Like a broken mirror her pupils sat amidst the blue. Within his own, sunlight came to kindle for a moment, for he saw in her their image. And he spoke to her,

 

“I once met your boys. One summer’s play day, they sought for streamshells by the waters. They came close to my encampment”

 

The heart that shattered rested in the hollow chest came to beat with vigor at the mention of her sons in life. This man spoke of a skirmish camp whereby her children were once seen, not too long before their passing. Yet, unconsciously she strove to step closer, her throat swelling with tears and her eyes wishing, ‘Tell me of them’

 

“Krelagos was an untainted soul. He offered me a pearl, yet purer was the light that came from the child’s smile”

 

Like a candle lit anew, she carefully listened to each his letter, as if a world that for a moment hosted their roles in a play, but of passing ghosts a tale. The words of the man in scars brought them into life, for another story to let them live anew.

 

“And his brother, Panthagos”, with pain he sighed, and through a choked glee he would remember, “He once asked me a riddle of the moon, and colors beneath waters. The boy played last with his pebbles there. Too deeply within his soul in hiding from the harm of earthly men”

 

If only she could keep living in his tale. And though the weeping mother wished to beg for a word or mention more, and but a secret whisper of their voice newly to learn, so she may once again hear of them, as if they were there again, alive and well. Yet there ended the tale, and the ghosts stripped their costumes and they were gone. And before her stood the last one to have seen her sons, not in a wishful dream, but in living truth and life, and the scars on his face told not of kindship, for the harm he spoke of came too close to them, and men that speak of it know it, she had long learned. And his words were not a tale, the Queen came aware, but a confession.

 

Rosaego saw black. In that ardor that blinds she did no longer see a man but her enemy, and she failed to see a hint of light that swelled to wash his lashes. In terror of a growing suspicion, she aimed her harrowing insults, at to break the broken beyond hurt, and she snarled,

 

“What part did you play in the deaths of my children!? Speak! Monst--"

 

“--Take away my sword”,

from what she would go on to say he shut his mouth closed, should he prevent hers from acting to spell a regret. To his side he flinched, and truly there gleamed iron on his armor, and he appeared for a moment grievously gutted by her accusation. In his age uncounted, he could not have been more wounded by the blade on those lips that cut so sweetly a bitter word. But who was he to drink in it, he thought, shedding his stature of pride for the shadows on his past. He watched her wait in praying for the answer, that she may at last find an end to her hungering pursuit in the blood of his throat, yet he had no such truth to offer her. No hand out of the dark, for his was, much like, the place far under,

“If you choose to, you could call upon your guards and within minutes I would be stoned to death by all of Valdrakken. But if you choose to, you will fail your vengeance. Arrest me, and resume to live in a lie. The war will go on, and more of your children will die. And your campaign will be crushed, because of an offer you rejected”

 

The man observed carefully her next move, unwilling to move his sights from hers. The flaming light in his eyes, wet and as if with charcoal grey spoke of life-or-death choices. Somewhere in the fervor in which their eyes locked swam, like a calmed beast she came to listen to his reasoning. The blade to cut a measure was still drawn.

Yet it made cold sense. To regain such forces in secrecy, rather than before the lordships beyond would ensure her safe passage. And that fire which glowed in his eye was not ire aimed at her. It was a truth he wished her to see. Of flames and fire in a darkened world, which swallows the light that once dwelled in the spirit of those who lived to see it, and such was his being once. She wondered why it was, that in his words she found there to lay no threat, though he could right there and then spill her blood. And the man, drenched as if in faded hope, took one step higher and stood next to her at height. Dreams that gone were from his eyes, it was plain as daylight beneath them left a pit, and equally blatant it was that the Queen, unmoving to act in hostility, did not mar for life no longer.

 

“The foe you mean to battle will not spare a single man. All of them will fall at the doorstep”, he warned her, and a strange compassion came from the way of his words. Rosaego could see him now clearly in the glow. His features pale and dried bore a likeness of elvenkind, and though his boots were wearied, the crest on his armor, blackened and tarnished with age carried nobility, “To bring about war, you must have more than flanks. Do not rely on allies for your host. You must command not scales and men alone”

 

Rosaego held in thought, “But my armies host no greater number, and the youth of the Isles come not yet of age for duty”

 

Warmth sparked in the cheek of the man scarred by fire.

“You do not host armies yet, but you could. I intend to bring to you my part of soldiers. And I intend to join you in service, if you let me as your consort”, he approached closer, and in remembering told, ”I served a valorous hold in an age that has passed from memory… I met a great many of warfare. Lend an ear to the skills I have. Then you shall command your armies”

 

Struck unexpecting by the unusual turn of his offer, the Queen demanded to know, “By what name are you known, knight?”

 

His attention lowered to the ground. From the hollow in his eyes no life let out.

“The name I was born with no longer matters; it is long forgotten in the earth. Mainuvar is the one I took up to bear”, he became as surrendered as dust. The weakness in his shoulders gave in, and Rosaego thought she could feel there dwelled a void.

 

With her gaze watchfully on his slightest of attempts, she nodded sharply. And went forth further up the stairs and left him there in the dark, with no torch to keep the air warm. And before she would close that door before him, he advised one last to her,

 

“Return homeward on your drake and set up camp. Share a whisper to no one but your most trusted allies. Gather your forces there. The army in my charge is already moving underway”

 

Dawn approached in the hills beyond the border. The thick halls of fir and pine footed in melted snow let not out the secret treading of the Queen and her few guards, that rode on their vorquins by the sides of Uq’patan.

 

She stopped her beast by the fork in the road where a cornerstone stood painted in black.

 

“There”, she gestured her guards to halt, “He should have come by now. I knew this was a trap”

 

“Queen Rosaego, let us return to the great city. It is far too dangerous”, an undercommander suggested.

 

Rosaego did not wish to return, scouting and glancing about for the signs of the blackened knight and any ambush a hint. “No”, deterrently she fought the idea, “Undercommander, I want to find out his plans. Search the land. Find out where he hides his--"

 

Claps of hooves in the icy pavement cracked.

 

“I arrived hours ago, expecting of you”

 

Rosaego glanced at the pale rider. The cloak of black that concealed beneath a gleaming set of armor, torn by time and battle, and the horse on which he sat, black of mane and frail of age yet barded gallantly.

 

“Roads are too lit and broad… We must not tarry here. There lies passage through the woods, by the spring of ice waters”

 

The queensguard would not bite. They held their spears at defense, perched in the gloves of their plate and ready.

 

Rosaego walked adamantly closer, soon at arm’s length from the bony snout of the black horse, and looked at the knight’s eye in questioning.

 

“And your… Army. Where is it?”

 

The horseman in general’s pride glanced about the snow-donned hills, and the hiding treetrunks, and crevasses of the mountaincliffs and whispered,

 

“Everywhere”

 

Her guards took their stances, vigilant their feet stood to act upon her command to seize. From the mist that had collected in the base of the boughs, shades of armorplates came revealing their numbers. The weapons in their hands, of swords and cunning glaives shone through the thicket in hundreds, and their banners raised to apprehension.

 

The knight on his steed simply raised his arm tall in the air in a piercing motion, without a word from his stiff face, and the soldiery hailed, stomping on their boots,

 

“Hail to the Duke, glorious commander Mainuvar!”

 

In the fall of his hand to a rest, disciplined silence followed. Rosaego and her guard watched as they all retreated into their hiding in perfect stillness, and in moments as if the hills swallowed them, their march kept on unseen.

 

“Duke?”, Rosaego inquired.

 

“They have been told where to the encampment. I suggest you order your lot the same path, have your soldiers follow in the steps of mine own”

 

Seeing the Queen begin to hesitate in fear, Mainuvar strove to gesture the band a hurry, nudging his horse to trot.

 

“I fear I have already sent a flank of Valdrakken on the way. And a small fellowship of Iskaaran hunters is joining from the southern roads”

 

Mainuvar turned but could hardly tell her through the churning that cramped in his chin,

 

“Those men are counted dead”

 

Nothing could be ought to fortune. Does there truly no mercy bloom, even for those elderly that fell before their homes’ thresholds, he could see she thought. None does, his glance sunken, told her.

 

“Then let us ride in secrecy. What is left of my guard will tell the others that the land is not safe for travel as it once was”, she shed yet another memory, a piece of the world once better and kinder, and Mainuvar stood to watch a familiar funeral, that takes and crushes bits by pieces in the harrowing stream of events. All there need be is the first to start the motion, and the avalanche rolls, until a soul is changed to disrepair, and all that was becomes a new loss.

 

The forest let apart its secret paths, and silently upon its fallen leaves the band of leaders made their way deep into the cold lushes. Moonlight paved their way and they followed east, to the base of the highlands where a fire was lit in signal of their arrival.

 

They marched towards its beaconing light. And there, hidden by the trees and walling hills stood the duke’s watchman in hailing. The lot set up about the campfire, and deep into the night it kept them company against the chilling winds of the Span.

 

Cladding his companion in a shroud of black, Mainuvar let his cloak rest on his horse, caressing on its tattered mane, and saw Rosaego approach his companion, apprehensive of disturbing their bond.

 

“Things we love dearly, we give names to. What is his?”, Rosaego questioned.

 

The duke clasped in his armored fist a lock of its hair. It seemed they two had many a shared battle. And the armor and the blades which he donned, elegant and ancient in their design seemed to Rosaego a familiar, though unplaceable sort.

 

“Lómearo… In the common tongue, it could mean Nightmane. Soon, that name shall mean nothing. A time ago, he was a steed like a shadow in the night, proudest and fast. But he has now wearied far, and lost most his hair”

 

The wisps on the horse’s eyes closed to a slow. It stood obediently by the camp, content with the presence of its master and an alms’ bit of feed from a kind hand.

 

Warmth of the campfire kept through the night. Seated by its kindling, Rosaego could see the armor he wore shone of old silver and the blade he polished carefully was a smitherswork of ancient steel. None such to be found in the Isles, not alone in this age.

 

“Your men called you ‘duke’. And your armaments tell of elite guard”, she requested to know, “You said you served a hold once. Were you its lord?”

 

Mainuvar scoffed to his chin, and came to reminisce, difficult to recall an ancient past, “I was not. I served as a general under Lord Ravencrest. An honorable, fearless leader, master tactician. He could lead a handful to war, and come back with more in numbers than before. Never let himself falter before undefeatable odds. But a day came when even the brave fell to a blade, and the great lord of Black Rook left us chargeless”

 

“So, you have inherited his command?”

 

The knight shook to a side, attempting to reject an already embraced temptation,

 

“Mine were opinions that ever differed from those of lord-commander. We disagreed on how alliances should be approached. He did not trust me to lead, as he believed I would ally our people with traitors and strangers to our kind. And he was right to have this fear of the foreign, for the bane we fought, in the days of the hold’s downfall sought to tear down our people’s values and, in their place, set up new ones”

 

Mainuvar silenced, then continued. Something which ate inside him, made him to talk.

 

“When lord Kur’talos was killed, I was there, and I saw it. The blade went through his helmet, and he fell. I did nothing to prevent it. I could see, from across the raging battlefield his second-in-command came to his rescue but was too late. He was the one the lord trusted to be his successor”

 

Rosaego observed the depth of the shadow that grips Mainuvar to his grave. And it made her think if she could trust to be advised by one such which has acted against his closest, most faithful figures.

 

“I shot him with an arrow across the field, and our soldiers never knew from where the blow had struck. And it hit to pierce his head against the cold corpse of our commander”

 

“You killed the man who was to be your leader?”, the Queen grew appalled.

 

The duke could not lie to her pale face, but would try to warn her of reality of who he was. His lifting, wounded cheek told, “I carry many shades from my past, fair lady. One such, is what I claimed in that battle, and that is the meaning of the name by which I am known in my kin. They call me now, Midnight’s Taker”

 

Night sky grew black with the quenching of the flame. Queen Rosaego struggled to understand the darkness that seeped from his words, and she could not have this man pretend to serve her as she sits by his side unguarded. Yet the shades which burdened him did not seem threatening to her. It served well to have by her side one which sees the world a battlefield, and does what he must for the better of those under his command, even if it cost him the conscience in sleepless nights.

 

“If you are to serve me in this war, as you claim to wish, duke Mainuvar, I must know you are not an enemy of mine. That you would not stab me in the skull as you have your commander. But be careful, knight – words you speak here are an oath, so make your choice now, and do so wisely”

 

Moon’s gleam fell beneath the hills of snow, and in the hours far-past of midnight the knight and the dame of dragons stood before the remnants of fire. The knight knelt with his blade on his honor and heart, and spoke forth to her eyes still heavy with tears,

 

“I could not kill you, princess. You can trust my word, for you have yourself died too”

 

She stared him down as he rose from his bent kneel, as he did her, but she felt he knew her better than the depths of darkness he hid carefully from her, whether out of caution, or guardianship from the things that would soil the light which she carried. And she uttered a single word before leaving for a handful of sleep, “I am a Queen now”

 

He watched and followed with his gaze her flowing hair depart in the northern wind, for he knew her a princess and still, ever may the wind blow biting it changes not, and she too, a wisp in that wind and a crown of silken light, though the storms break and tear, stands in that sea but a young thing with a burden too heavy for a title to be named.

 

Croaks of ravens fell silent. Smoke, and chatter of a foreign tongue overcame the air in her tent.

 

“Rise, princess”, gentle tug and beaming cold rays of sun woke her in the day, “A message comes for you”

 

Rosaego could see the sealed letter in the hand of Mainuvar. Standing herself up, she stared in surprise but would not let know, that she thought he ought to wish himself to see first what words were written inside.

 

The letter, solidified of the cold humid air and uncrumpled got into her hands. Its seal was a wax of deep blue, bearing the crest of a lion.

 

“Stormwind… Who carried this letter here?”, Rosaego inquired of the duke who followed her move as she paced about the camp a quizzed mind.

 

“It would have been sent days ago… When first you declared war. But only now does it reach our doorstep, and luckily, it came first to Valdrakken, and not the enemy”, Mainuvar expounded, glancing about her guardsmen, “And from there it was carried by a guard of yours”

 

“Where is this guard now?”

 

The duke pointed with the tip of his sword towards a tent and his eyes lowered. From its entrance came way a medic, bloodied to his shin, with a limb still in an armored boot, sawn off by the knee, where a black, unbleeding cut of flesh could be seen.

 

“Frostbites”

 

The man came towards the Queen. It was apparent to Rosaego at this distance, that he was not a medic at all, but a common soldier. But need would have it, and he tried what he could should he save his fellow’s life.

 

“Queen Rosaego… Your chamberguard lies dead”

 

She flinched, “Faordormu… No! What is he doing here!?”

Rosaego prepared to run for the tent, but the duke held her shoulder with his hand. “I did what I knew… But it was too late. The cold was too far in his blood”, the bloodbathed soldier cried out.

 

“You should not see that”, Mainuvar warned her, whispering to her side.

In hesitation, she turned to him and upon understanding the grotesque nature and the reason for his heeding, she sighingly told, “I lost a good man. Since the day I stepped into Valdrakken he guarded my side. He did not save my life, but my dignity many times. So I shall spare him his”

 

The men from the tent walked out, carrying a stretcher on which a shrouded corpse rested, and the soldier with the saw still in his hand led them away from their camp, to the outskirts to give his friend a burial beneath the frozen earth.

 

Dark musings in her mind raved about the corpses carried out of those tents in the cold, and many more that she did not see on the paths that led from Iskaara that finished their end there frozen, and the Queen could hardly bear to sit by the fire warmly, not knowing how many or how far were left unsaved on their journey here.

 

“Princess… Do not burden yourself with choices made. A new one lies before you. You hold it in your hand”

 

In her hand was the reason of her chamberguard’s death, she came to think. And if he died so she may have it, then she must see it received, for it must be of last importance.

 

Rosaego’s cold fingertips broke the seal of lion, and the writings in the letter revealed themselves to her a scribeswork of grand and regal ink, 

 

‘Queen Rosaego of the Dragon Isles, Lordaeron hears your call for allies. Our kingdom will not stand to watch the annihilation of the old world and the legend of its kings. The Royal Keep summons you to Stormwind City, to join forces and form a union of dragons and human kind. All free men must stand united against the dark. Let our past bind us once more in the songs of men and dragons that were before us. The Alliance will go into war’

 

“What say they?”, the duke inquired.

 

“The Eastern Kingdoms will join our cause”

 

Doubts stirred. Too many he had seen of such agreements before.

“Join us… Or command us?

 

Queen Rosaego folded the letter carefully back into the envelope. She did not share these doubts, and she made it clear to her advisor that she knew their word was true.

 

“I know the men of Lordaeron. The Alliance was founded on honor, not betrayal. Even my own fathers once allied with them and fought by their side. And I know that King Anduin himself would not allow for such derogation. He is just, like his father was”

 

“You could trick yourself greatly, princess”, within his chest boiled great suspicions, yet Mainuvar swallowed what he knew of the disgraceful past on which the Eastern Kingdoms rested and the bloody feuds within its crown and the darkness which doomed it in the north, “And their king, the boy. He is nowhere to be found”

 

“I know Anduin”, Rosaego reaffirmed, “When I was a child, an envoy of Stormwind sailed into the Waking Shores for a treaty. And we were children, free of it all. He was ever kind where the other children were not. He may be away, but his word still rules over the capital”

 

He stood before her way and would stop her advance. Overbearing the metal armor, black and torn he glanced firmly at her, looking straight at the grey of his eyes from beneath his chest’s height,

 

“Do not be sure of his protection there”

 

And the Queen subtly nodded, unmoving her gaze. The day would go on in preparation and saddling of her drake for the flight across the seas. Bahamut was readied for the northern winds, and white among the misty clouds in moments their trail was lost, and the Queen sailed on wyrmback east to the far and old kingdoms.

 

Storm greeted them in landing. The waves crashed against the mighty harbor of pristine whetstone white, but quickly the clouds gave way for sunlight. In attempts to land her drake at the gate before the city, she flew above its towers and could see the whole of its formation. All of it, from the heights above - horsemen and footmen alike, and their watchposts unmanned.

 

The cavalry awaited her there before the Valley of Heroes. Its moat above the water canal upon which stood the memory of the greatest and their deeds in the light chiseled. Of the ones that championed a new world, and bravely stepped across the threshold into Outland's voids. Grand a welcome was the sight above her, and before it, the royal guard expected her arrival.

 

“Dragon Queen Rosaego, we bid thee welcome”

 

The flank’s lot stood to salute. Gleaming steel of white and blue and shields unbroken, uniform beneath the helmets were their men and women brave, valorous.

 

“The keep awaits your arrival”, said the constable, withered of age and battle, robed in linen grey. And so too was the city which she walked again. Same as it once was, yet changed by events of her kind that brought ruin. But no matter how many times ravaged, its white stones rose proudly again, unstained, and its banners fell highly from the watchtowers. Its people, it seemed to Rosaego, still hopeful. Its elders, still kind. Perhaps they had seen all they could, and war had become a way of living for the folk of the Alliance.

 

Many here did not know her. Many no longer could remember. All but a few fishermen, grey of age in their mane that still spent their days counting a coin for a loaf of bread. And they hailed farewell from their wooden rowboats.

 

“Once, your forefathers led the defense at Blackrock not too far from here. The city hosted them for forty days. The red warriors were the only ones that understood the sly tactics of the black dragonkin”, the constable recalled as his horse trotted against the pavement of the bridges that span the canals.

 

Huff of pride from Bahamut’s wrinkling nose she could feel beneath her glove, like that of a lion’s roar.

“It is simple, really”, Rosaego’s glance carried away towards the heights beyond the city walls, from whose heart into the skies rose the tips of the cathedral. Structured tall but firmly in the earth, unmoved by history, its beauty withstood all flame that came cast upon the town once. She stated bluntly to her hosts, “Your aerial defenses are practically nonexistent. It is no wonder my forefathers led the battlement away from the city, into the mountains that surround. A single black dragon could soar above and set the roofs of the city to burn”

 

Trots pounded deafening beneath their feet as the cavalrymen nudged and eyed one another, debating in their minds how bad the price of leaving their station at the very instant could be. Offended so to seem, the constable that had watched and witnessed it all befall his beloved kingdom, puffed his frail chest at the brazen lady’s remark. Discontent grumbled beneath the goatsbeard that grew on his face since the birth of first kings, the old lantern in his hand recalling to her, “One did. The people named him Deathwing”

 

“At ease!”, the commander of the guard steadied the forces as their guest crossed the bridge to the keep. Eyes were vigilantly on Rosaego. Townsfolk too, did not seem eager of her, nor did the nobles of the keep.

 

Rosaego passed further into the walls of the guarded citadel. Flags of blue hailed high in the clouds on the heights of the spires.

 

“Another one of the dragon scum. We don’t want your kin here again!”

 

“Silence! Seize her!”, one of the men in the crowd, a pretender among civilians pounced to stop dead in its flight a bulge of stone that flew cast from the hands of a bittered common woman.

 

“My home burned because of your kind!”, the woman yelled out, enraged, reaching for anything she could find on the grounds to throw at the queen, hardly to be sustained by her fellows.

 

“Her ‘kind’ helped us defeat him, wench. Send her off!”

 

Before the commotion would spur among the people the guards had her arrested, and in seconds the lame woman was gone from his sights and lost between the crowds.

 

Green in disgust of the spit on his face that beneath the auburn slick reeked of onions, he bet his all on the little piece of scrubbing leather that he wore in his pockets. He approached the Queen, and introduced himself an agent by the name Matthias Shaw.

 

“Are you not the one in charge of secret service?”, the Queen asked. Glancing down, she could see his boots were muddied.

 

“Among many things. I am whoever my office needs me to be”, to curtsey presented a chance to polish at the crusted mud before the gates of the royal keep, which he slyly grasped, “For instance, today I was a swine herder. But tonight, I am to attend a wine-tasting event in Northshire”

 

“So, your duties span from swine to wine?”, Rosaego chuckled.

 

Matthias contemplated, and told, “Both places which contain good information. Different sorts of information, and very different folks, but valuable nonetheless”

 

The royal guard assisted in unbarding Bahamut, who fought stubbornly against such unnecessary protocol. It turned out to be that the Queen would assist them in their duty, should they not have to flee so soon from their court.

 

The halls were splendorously pristine in marble. Stillness reigned in the glow of the holy candles, lit for the blessed kings. And the echoes of footsteps alone on the stone melded with the sound of flame flickering.

 

But the throne before them sat empty.

 

“Where is your king?”, Rosaego turned to Matthias.

 

The hardened spymaster shot his gaze to a lower.

 

Heavy doors opened apart. A voice echoed steadfast, akin the light that beamed from his sword.

 

“We do not know where King Anduin has gone”, standing himself beside the throne, sanctified in paladin’s armor and taller than any man there, and the cloak from his neck fell heavily after his stride, a curtain of royal blue.

 

Matthias signaled the young Queen to bow. “Queen Rosaego, I trust you have heard the legend of Turalyon. The hero of our own, who fought countless the army of the Legion and spent an age locked in Outland away from home, and his love”

 

The scars on his armor told of each victorious sunless day in that void. The zeal in his eyes and his hair white with terror, each a tale.

 

“Lord Tyralion”, Rosaego came to witness, falling to an honored bow, “Never have I met you, but your story is known far across the continents. The statues they raised in your name are all the people of Azeroth have known for a millennium… And they believed you dead. And so did I. It brings me joy to learn, that we all were wrong”

 

The paladin approached a few steps closer to the queen, and plated in armor, himself bowed.

 

“I returned, because my enemy led me back here, to the land I call home. And here is where I destroyed them. And now, Queen Rosaego, you too will venture out into the world to seek out your vengeance”, he sterned himself, and gazed away at the light that peered through the wrought iron lattice. The choice was made as a blade of that light and set in his mind once and for all, and teeming his brow, he held her to stand as he saw in her face the pain that she endured.

 

“You found your light in your battles beyond. Know, my lord Tyralion, that I aim to scour all worlds which hide those that took from me mine”

Boiling tears became of the skin on her face.

 

“And it is once again my duty… Our duty. Of all kings, stewards and queens to hunt it where it may hide, and put this new bane to its end”, the paladin gave his promise.

 

Her visit came to a close after a fortnight of guesting and dining among the patrons of Stormwind, and its most lettered highborn. At her last day’s visit to the keep, the pact would at last be forged between their great forces. Conversations were long, yet fruitful. Arrangements were made, and negotiations were few and far between, for the Queen of Dragons and the servants of Anduin seemed to still serve the same cause, and that was their faith.

 

“Four shipments of Stormwind noire, casked”, the constable hastily scribbled, “Food rations, two tons. Ships enough to carry our combined numbers. Armor and weapons to be divided evenly between our forces… That should be it, I suppose?”

 

War supplies counted too great a piece. It would not work to store them all in Valdrakken, she came to realize. An arsenal of this sort would mark a target on her city. She considered, if there could be another place, a way to keep them away from watchful eyes of the enemy. Scattered perhaps, in places well-kept, where they may not breach easily.

 

But this mattered less at the moment. A greater concern was to her, that the steward and servants of the absent king keep alive his word and honor to their allies, and to her. It is true, once upon a time the kings of Stormwind and her forefathers shared great victories, but history changes many hearts. And though Rosaego knew that the blood that coursed her veins still bound her to her oaths, she could not be certain if the hearts of lions came tainted as those of traitors.

 

“There is one matter which we must agree upon”, raised Queen Rosaego, standing up among the lords, “Forces of the Alliance are great. Rest assured, my lords, that without your aid in battle, our own cannot be sustained. But should the moment come, at the turn of the bell whose word shall they follow? We do not wish for our battle to depend on obedience to the stronger power. You may fight this war with us, and along our side, lord Tyralion, and so might King Anduin too should he return, but know this: my commanders report to me alone. And my word and order must be independent from yours”

 

Turalyon jerked, crossing his arms. The queen he thought too green for war possessed a bladed tongue.

 

“You can be at ease, Queen Rosaego. Our mutual campaign shall be one of councils. Allies we form shall be treated equal”, he rose, assuring her soberly, “King Anduin is not a tyrant. He seeks not your subjection. You and your soldiers shall have your autonomy, as will mine, until the hour of the king’s return. I trust he, too will keep at this order. The Alliance he commands was made in respect between the nations”

 

A piece of her wished to believe Turalyon’s good intentions. Yet she could not but remember the history his forebearers forged. “Was it respect that led the Blood Elves to abandon such a union in the past and found their own rule? Or was it, that your marshals thought them a disgrace to your ranks and sought to make them slaves?”

 

“That was centuries ago. Those were different times, Queen Rosaego”

 

The chamber became heated with angst. The spymaster prepared in his stance for a quarrel to break out, curling a fist in his pocket.

 

“Would your beloved consider this true? Alleria still remembers Quel’Thalas as it used to be in those ages, and still she is fighting in its name--“

 

Air in the room suspended in the moment of time. Rush of memories, of a life longed for, lit up as mist in the paladin’s eyes,

“--Alleria? You… Saw her?”

 

“I did. She seems… Changed from the stories I was told”, Rosaego quieted in her tone, “A shade consumes her… One, which her and I both hunt now”

 

Turalyon’s thoughts sunk. Inside his face was a doubt that he could not address, one he would not unravel. And his heart beat within his iron chest, for his love lives, yet not as she once was, and perhaps too led astray by the shadows she chased. Perhaps again, divided by darkness that once split their two worlds, with his arm he could pull her from the depths in which she drowned. And though she had fallen far, again he would sail the divide to bring her back to the surface, once again to be cleansed in the sacred.

 

“The Archmage has summoned all parties to Dalaran, and he intends to lead our forces to lands which that cursed netherfolk call home. You will meet her there when you have readied your army. A common cause binds us. Our paths begin in that city”, the Queen imparted.

 

He could still remember Alleria’s voice. A force pulled him towards her. One he had no name for yet, but a force which she carried long ago into life, and the boy, whose name Turalyon yet did not know was that which bound him closer to her, calling out for him from the tide of darkness he could see in his mind coming for the shores of the world. Sweeping away all for which his battles were fought, cities, nations, men. He imagined as if a dream, his lady in that great wave drowning, kept afloat by a gentle love she bore for him. He saw himself battling against the shade which devoured at her, but failing again and again, yet still, the storm was gone and his lady unharmed and well, and holding onto something in her arms she cried. But the vision would abandon Turalyon before he could approach her. Just as he opened his mouth to call upon her name, she was gone, and so was the darkness.

 

“She has something she wants to tell me”, he knew. “It is what has kept me bound to her across that distance”

 

Rosaego slowly approached Turalyon, as he sat, sweating cold.

 

“You are seeing these visions too, are you not?”

 

Out of breath, he nodded.

 

“All the leaders of this world are being made to choose”, he could hear her whisper through the calm air beside him.

 

Recounting images of ages spent without her, with a burning wish in his heart the old hero hastened to act, “I will not let her walk into war alone”

 

He glanced at the Dragon Queen’s direction, and saw her respectful approval. Fight-worn, the old paladin once again lifted his sword, and readied to depart into one more long night.

As they made their way past the halls of the keep, he rallied his commanders to begin their preparations.

 

“And another thing, if I may”, Rosaego gently asked of her hosts at the doorstep, “I wish to rent a vault within the Bank of Stormwind. Our own cannot store the war supplies. Not all of them. And I wish to transport a large proportion of my valuables here to be guarded too”

 

Matthias smirked in unease. Something did not sit right with her request, yet he could not quite see an issue if a cut of profit makes it into Stormwind’s hands, and permitted, “I suppose this can be arranged. In fact, I know just the person for the job. But, know, Queen Rosaego, that he will charge his price”

 

“How much?”, she inquired.

 

Morning hours too patiently passed. Birds in flight descended in turns to peck at the base of the waterless fountain. Before the great vault’s iron latch that walled a whole chamber, Queen Rosaego could see the interior of the bank of Stormwind was sterile, and made so to scurry away any unwanted, unfitted lot. Solely the snooty donators and gentry in their tailored finery dared proud to walk its halls with their canes and the clinking sound of gold that stocked their pouches.

 

The lip in whiskers of the patron murred a lofty accent,

“A modest thing of commission, your majesty”

 

The spymaster introduced him, “Sir Fenriar of the Gilnean Gold Consortium. One of the wealthiest--”

 

“--The. Wealthiest”

 

“--Wealthiest patron of the crown. His father’s was a lineage that guarded the gold of Lordaeron since the reign of king Terenas. But, due to unfortunate circumstances, their business was left to operate solely in their homelands”

 

“And I intend to put your riches to a great account. Prosperity will be inevitable”

 

Rosaego eyed him. It was hard to trust a man with a monocle. His gloves, however, were stained in gold particles reacting to the silk.

 

The man’s voice was frail, but his mind counted sharply. The grey hair would give away his doddery. But he was no mute moose.

 

“I do not intend to store gold in your vault, good sir”, the Queen deterred, “I shall store goods. I trust, a cut in the form of spoiled wine and a bit of rations would not serve your business, or am I mistaken?”

 

The coinmaster was at odds,

 

“…Goods…? Such as those in your wagons outside the city walls? Food, and armor… Spices?”

 

“And medicine”, firmly she added, unwilling to let herself back down, “We ride to war, master Fenriar. Where my men are to go, coin will be of no value. Soldiers need to eat; they need weapons and bandage cloth. For that, we will need a solid space, and good transport. Can you assure it?”

 

The twitch in his mustache was obvious.

 

“But your majesty, we do not operate like so… Our guild is of profit, not of frontiers. We shall accept the part of spice as deposit, but this will not suffice”

 

That which she had hoped for was that perhaps, beyond the borders of the known world, there would yet be victories and spoils to pay off her debts to her rich allies. Deep in consideration, her eyes wandered left and right and back again, until she saw clearly to approach with a suggestion,

 

“You seem to forget, sir, that the greatest gold was forged in conquest. I intend not to conquer, but I will plunder them of their treasures. Not because I want to keep them…”

 

“But because they were never theirs in the first place”, the spymaster would conclude the Queen’s thoughts.

 

“Have the spices”, she yielded after some consideration. A small sacrifice to pay and an unneeded thing of a burden in the negotiation, and strove to convince the profiteer further, “If you find yourself patient, your fee shall come. If you aid us”

 

Sir Fenriar eyed the spymaster with his doubts. But the old thief could assure, he sensed no folly in the dragon queen’s words.

 

“You can trust her promise, my lord. In the war to come, few of us will have need of gold”, he approached closer to the tailored man, and grabbed him by his finery, the breath in the man’s throat swelling to a stop, “And these rags… Burn well when the fire rages”

 

“I concur, I concur!”, sir Fenriar struggled back into breathing, his heartbeat terrified of the bladewielding man, inconspicuous to be heard, “You may have the vault. But it is yet to be unsealed. If you shall store deteriorables, then changes must be made to its construction. And to do so, one must venture to treat with uncultured lot. A key must be remade”

 

“…And who might this ‘one’ be?”, the sheen of the blade in the spymaster’s hand threatened the silver button on his coat. It became obvious, that though the old rogue mingled with many a richman, he had grown to despise those that rise to wealth too quickly and unabashed of means necessary.  

 

“Well, it is I, of course!”, grinned the white mustache of the nobleman, teeth tittering with fear.

 

The coinmaster crossed far across the continent to discuss arrangements for the Queen’s vault. It is hard to recall why or where exactly it was he went, or whom he spoke to, but some claim he was seen in the taverns below the deck of Booty Bay’s ships, singing drunken, but his mind set on the prize of gold in their hands. And others say, and the bards say so in their songs too, that he flew way high on a gryphon across all of Kalimdor and to the heights of Mount Hyjal, where even the dragons struggle to climb, to speak to the highborne elves that mar not for the troubles below their heavens, and bathe in the mist of their great tree.

 

Upon at last the Keymaster’s return the vaults opened, and the treasures and war supplies of the Queen grew many in her hoard, awaiting to serve her fellows well in war.

 

The royal convoy saw to set her fare well to the borders of their land. The trot walked past the inn of Goldshire, and seated on Bahamut the Queen rode first, alongside the Spymaster, armored to the teeth as one of the soldiers of their nation, and Rosaego could not tell why it was he hid concealed beneath.

 

The road led them not too far from the village when their horses reared in distress. Arrowheads, speared into the dirt of the path, scattered about the area, and the sergeants leading the charge took off to investigate. Upon their return to alert the others, Spymaster Shaw overheard the captains talk about a sparring that took place by the pond, and seemingly not too long ago. Blood trailed away, deeper into the woods. The guardscaptain ordered his men to follow.

 

Just as a smaller flank passed into the distance and away beneath the thick wilds, within moments of calm came to break with terrible screaming.

 

“No, please, no, no!...”

 

Matthias and Rosaego charged forwards, toward their flanks lost.

 

Among the trees they passed, and saw their men surround a mound of corpses bloodied, butchered, and before the remains and broken limbs knelt a man. His hair meaden, but his arms soaked in the blood of the one whom at the sharp end of his blade he pushed and pulled, and continued to stab blindly, growling and grunting his red teeth until he tore his corpse long-dead apart. Never had she seen one fight with such furor, against so many and fell them to a pool of innards one after another, and unexpectantly to everyone about, her eyes grew impressed. He would not be calmed not by the sight of the royal guard, nor the spymaster, but by the tongue the queen’s words spoke.

 

“Sauli-naa! Suuri-keira stani!”

 

The bloodied blade slowed to a halt at the shin. His eyes, red and blue with guts and water shot wide at the sight of her, and he stood up fast. Cowled beneath a helm of bear’s head, his beard was yellow like that of her kin. And aside from the fervor, his eyes were a squint of blue, and the armor – though borrowed, of steel and lion crests was torn and scraped with leather and skin of fur, for he was not used to wearing the plate a whole.

 

Kneeling before the Queen, he whispered a few words that the men of Stormwind could not tell apart.

 

“Beware, your majesty. He is a giant!”, the spymaster urged Rosaego, unblinking away from the carnage the sword in the barbaric hand caused.

 

Chuckle escaped her mouth. Caressing with her hand the warpaint on his shoulderpad of elkskin, red and white runes of hunt and homely oath.

 

“Kayei nimela sinua kutsutka?”

 

The guards awaited patiently throughout the exchange, expecting the bloodshed to continue at any moment.

 

“Gorkivoy”, the beast-man spoke, and to everyone’s surprise, it was not a growl or a bark of a wolf that came of his voice.

 

“Gorkivoy… A good name”, Rosaego turned to Matthias, “He rides with me to the Isles”

 

Shaw could not quite understand how a lady could want to be near such a brute, let alone converse with him, so he would attempt to convince her against this idea,

 

“Queen Rosaego, he cannot be reasoned with. Our sergeants tried for months. They said they found him stranded in Northrend… He was recruited into the Alliance as a slave. This man… Is an animal!”

 

“Nay, lord Shaw!”, Rosaego rejected this allegation, and lifted the bloodied arm of the man to a stand, “He is a berserker of Iskaara. Of mine own kin and root. And I shall bring him home. He will not be slave again”

 

“Spasit Bog!”, the fearsome warrior kissed her hand, as it seemed he understood she allowed him free again, and would accept to serve her. And his eyes grew wide at the sight of white Bahamut, and he ran to the beast to fly with her back to the homeland.

 

Stillness of dawning hours surrounded the warcamp with eerie unrest. Their hungry bellies ached clearer than the cawks of ravens in the treetops. Even the moonlight gave away, and was none.

 

“These men are in duress. They will not stand in waiting much longer, if they must perish of the cold”

 

Mainuvar looked around him. The guards and scouts slept with empty food bowls in their hands coldly gripped about. Some would soon become too weak to march. Some had already begun to fade to the chill in their bones. And those that remain, would become impatient.

 

“I must ask of you to tell me, duke. Why do you trust to ride into war with this Queen of Dragons? What use does our kind have here?”

 

“You cannot see it like I do”, he told the adjutant, “Neither can you, and neither could Ravencrest”

 

“There was good reason for that, lad. A foreign oath can never be taken for true”

 

The duke peered into the gold of the first sun that as blades pierced the clouds of white and grey, and lit was the light in his eye; made living the scars that flamed his skin.

 

“Kur’talos condemned the lesser races, yet the betrayal to his heir came within his own ranks. I broke these oaths… And birthed a charge full of deceit. There cannot be renewal to what was broken in the past. Like a seed, once it is sown, distrust catches like fire amongst rulers. Daggers are drawn before promises are made, and honored until a better hand comes along. To redeem what was done, I sought an anchor in it all, and found it in places unsearched. The Dragon Queen has one fault among the rulers in war; she does not lie”

 

When nightfall came, and the wind set in, the Queen arrived with Bahamut and the berserker finally at land. Gorkivoy and the duke kept their distance, mistrusting and measuring the strength of the other, like hounds, the two warriors would not take their vigil from each motion. Strangers in the land were not always welcomed well, and the beastly man hardly grew to accepting his battle-decorated armor. The silver on his crest must have been paid in bloody acts, the Iskaaran keened. And the duke simply thought him an untamed, unbrushed beast, too uncontained for to be disciplined in his army, let alone to be left alone with the Queen, for his actions could not be predicted. What eased his mind, is that he knew that Bahamut would devour the hand that aims to come too eagerly for his rider, and seeing the wyrm coil near Rosaego’s tent, peacefully in rest it would seem that the drake carried no suspicion of this man, bloodied as he may be.

 

“It has been days… When will your soldiers arrive?”, Rosaego asked of the duke. Scouting with her glare, it was clear that the camp was less in number than what counted upon her leave for Stormwind.

 

Mainuvar’s gut gave him no calm. Still no word of his men, nor of hers. And the night was filled with quiet but that of the crackling flame.

 

“I know that held-up breath in biding. One that hopes for news, ill or good but a word nonetheless”, Rosaego told what she saw when the fire lit aglow his glance, sunken in its flame.

 

“I go find duke’s men”

 

The queen and duke turned their necks to the lumbersome sound behind them. Overhearing their thoughts, the brute readied his still-bloodsoaked blade to depart, and heartily made his reason,

 

“My brati there, in danger. I know land”

 

Past the frozen streams, crossing the mossen highlands he sought their trails in snow and mud. Only to find them at last, outnumbered and ravaged by a greater foe, and he found his brethren too, his elders and brother, who first taught him to wield the very sword in his hand. Felled in pieces they laid beneath the icy lake, and he knew his brother’s finger by the wedding ring he wore.

 

The winds for a moment ceased their moaning flight. The camp was silent in the night, and the footmen slept soundly, but the duke and the Queen sat awake by the firelight. In that stillness when the hour would grow heavy, her thoughts would flood with longing, and her chest empty as a hollow stone took in breaths that felt of the poison, of remnants still it seemed, lingering on the air.

 

The Queen sought to gaze at the stars, but they laid clouded above the smoke and their shimmer barely danced among the flame. Her gaze, lost in the search of heavens above, seeking for something known.

 

“The stars cannot atone for the pain they have caused. Do you think, if they could, that you would still seek them out?”

 

Her throat released a weeping hale.

 

“I look to them, to find the glow within their grave above. But that night the killers took a dagger through the heavens, and left nothing but this black in the vastness”

 

There flickered the fire in his glance peaked at the emberless skies, and the void burning within the chest, burdened under knightly steel pained greater and fallower than the scars left in the great above, and the mouth in scars curved a frowning smile, like to a child to soothe the bleeding cuts he told her,

 

“Sometimes, princess, the bedrock chord makes the starless. Pitch-black and alone, without an end”

 

The flames let her to see the marking on his desecrated skin, butchered in tearing and ancient age. She perceived how his cheek on his mouth would only ever crease downwards even in moments of joy, as if any glee he could ever feel came impured with gutting pain, forged in countless aggressions. And the same abyss which rested in her, she there felt dwelt within Mainuvar, hither the gloom of the black in his eye the long-lost wish, which he sought to birth anew in the missing lights.

 

“The pain you speak of… Is that what made your scars?”, carefully she bid of the knight.

 

Mainuvar’s sights fell to the flames aground. The wail of winds ceased, and the air was still with but the singing of char, no hum to be heard rest the flap of an owl’s wings in flight.

 

“I, too, once lost a son”, he began to recount, sinking into an unremembered age, and the same frown aglow tinged in the sea of his eye, “An infant boy… He was a doe-eyed image of his mother. I was a vintner then. When the years were blessed in sunlight fair and white elks ran free across vales of wild flax, I spent my days among vines of raspberries, picking the fruits they would yield. My folk called me Mailinor, the song of gold. And my house was of Rúmilion, for my fathers were wisemen. The wine of mine inspired songs of minstrels, but mine were the poems to my boy. One day, our boy became ill, and the next we buried him. Then the fire came. The shire was engulfed… Raspberry fields burned a sweet scent. I went back into the flame for the last thing that remained of my child. And cursed myself that the fire did not finish me”

 

No words were left to share between them, none were needed. None but the kind quiet that binds two crumbled kindred hearts in waking death.

 

At the passing of the coming day, snows in the brooks began to melt into their bedding, and the chill came down to a calmful rest.

 

The scouts alerted the duke to an arrival at the edge of the settlement. He rode out to see that Gorkivoy had brought back safely what remained of the duke’s men, and with them they carried his family’s remains. Eyes swimming in burning tears, he made them their warriors’ funeral pyre and swore upon his sword, his homeland to avenge.

 

The duke’s soldiers stood at alert in a single file before the camp. Just by its edges, in a grove of fir and bushes of holly, the Queen had her bath in the springs there of ice-cold freshwater.

 

Bare she bathed upon the spring’s cliffs. Fog of the woods covered her, concealing her grace from unlawful sights.

 

Her gaze past the steam peered to see the ranks of ornate steel, helmets in crests adorned and pennants bladed sprung high in duke’s colors, covering the field in dozens. And before them she saw his black figure, in the shade of the darkened woods below commanding their stillness. Without a word of tongue, the soldiers were demanded to obey. Tall he stood on the caparison-clad steed, painted in ash and blood on its battle-worn hooves that beneath the cloth lay. And Mainuvar rode in front his fellows to inspire with chants ghoulish and black that spoke of decay, and ancient cries, and his words were as growls from the maws of a wolf, and he heralded his men to hunt, to slaughter and leave no mercy for the breathing corpse,

 

“Touller’ca tuisqueur, liveurs a framd, jeder mans a colte e fiusseaulds skeld,

D’et e vact l’feld d’une au chauge tammes: c’ capites biant ornairent l’ elairs cenne fraixes”

 

The duke rose his neck, and glanced at Rosaego between the gushes of streams above, and bid her behold as the water fell against her skin and rinsed her curling strands, made dark in the dew that collected on her hips. Her face was fresh like the moon riding upon the plains. The pupils in his grey eye grew at the sight, and the wounded cheek afrown wished for but a drop of it. And with one sharp move he resigned his hand and begun to speak, and when he did the helmets bent to knee in a single unit before the basking queen,

 

“Il fait d’ nos toutes loits diup dans erd pluis morquer. Enc breulex l’ luz les Elunees - tout respondrent pour cennt crims!”

 

And the regiment of many answered as one quaking menace,

“Voe, gaeie menxeur - ter regnait alleur! C’a teullant aieulle d’elangert mael!”

 

But not all there were so blindly brave, as trailing towards the lot rode upon a steed his captain-at-arms, and he rode to warn the duke,

 

“My liege, there to the west rode off their forces! Our scouts are at their footsteps. But nearly all are dead. We cannot push the foe further; we are too wounded to fight! It seems they will flee away”

 

The Queen overlooked the fire in their exchange, and peaked her ear desiring to grasp the cruelty of the face of war, revealed plainly in the duke’s discernment.

 

“Of your men is wanted MORE”, flame of bonfires revealing the whites of his eyes and Rosaego observed all his fury within them, as Mainuvar growled through his snarling, open mouth at his commandant, and brushed off his stare, “Send them the glaive-throwers. Let them know we are coming”

 

And he turned his attention to the men in his command, to begin at once his orders in severity:

 

“Au risander c’e terner, sic ouleur –“,

Called Mainuvar, and the cavalry responded with their steadfast stances,

“Men’ en riendeur arme – “,

And the footmen treaded forward to form a wall of steel,

“Rhovannes – formier l’ linie”

And archers drew their silvery arrows at the ready.

“Aux braisair pour ‘n honour seau stai’ne!”

And Rosaego witnessed the loyal wolves step forth at his roaring call, and it was the first of battlecries in the war to come, thundering an etching in history against the sea and the frozen glaciers and pine.

 

The glaive-throwers, a fierce machinery of metal and wood, raced towards the hiding foe. And with it, the regiment of riders and footmen alike, led by the duke and Queen Rosaego, who anxiously awaited to see the fate of her own kin of those sent from Valdrakken and the Broodlands.

 

What they encountered was an ongoing battle, of colored flags waving and colliding in the field – the duke’s, Valdrakken’s, and those lesser-known stranger men, the invaders to the homely Isles.

 

Arrows and steel flew true at his brisk command, and fast was his own blade at the throat of the enemy. And at the sight of their Queen, soldiers of Valdrakken took to chanting and their spirits were lifted, for once again they were to be guided, unabandoned by the Crown.

 

Yet, amidst the falling limbs and gushing blood, her feet were rooted in place. She could not lift her sword nor budge to evade the charge of many that were coming their way, and all she could was watch as the harrowing horde roared for their necks in hundreds, and sweat fell down her hair cold. She had never heard such screams before, such languishing cries. All her thoughts could wonder was what their blades were so made of, to injure and maim with such devastation.

 

The drake-riders of the Broodlands climbed above the pines, to soar in flight and await the order. Beneath their wings, for the first time she would witness the silhouettes of the nemesis-folk, and their cladding was vicious and foreign to her, and she did not see their weapons, but the carving left behind of the corpses of her allies.

 

Things were moving too quickly. The men about, slashing and dying of the blade in blinks of an eye, leaving only squirts of blood in place of their helmets, and the enemy, faster at combat than the catch of a lightning. Her legs shook in her grieves. And before she could try to conceal her fear, the flashing of a poniard was the last thing she saw before the leap of the duke’s horse, and the golden armor of the foe split to mush beneath his hooves.

 

Standing alongside her, in midst of the clash of steel and blood, Mainuvar wished to shield her sights from the gore that would ensue at the hands of his men just yet.

 

“Go north, princess, to the open plains where your drake-riders have gathered”

 

“But my men are fighting here--“, she would negotiate at the sight of her fellows taken by the sword.

 

“We shall push them out on the ground. I will lead the charge of your men here”, Mainuvar strove to ensure her of their safety. The knight held high as a dawning star the pennant gilded in silver, and his armor black of tar gleamed with blood in moonlight too, as he spoke down from his seat on the frenzy-stricken horse, that heaved and pawed at the dirt, “You must show them fire”

 

Overhearing the concern which he too had begun to share, a wingrider of the Reds approached in respect, to concur the thought, “The duke is right, scalecommander. We stand a good chance of securing an attack from there”

 

Queen Rosaego rode off fast and met with her red kin in the highlands where the grasslands meet Vakthros. Her men had proclaimed her scalecommander already at the orders of Valdrakken’s officers, and her arrival was met with the chanting of the new title.

 

Fast a flame graced the frigid skies, and painted red, black and bronze was the burning pinewood of the Span. Faster yet the enemy fled beneath the choking smoke, but they were far from defeated; and Queen Rosaego knew they fled but to seek out a familiar field on which to fight, calling to them, inviting them for a greater battle before their own gates in the unknown lands.

 

“So there we must go”, the duke said, calming the mane of the battle-weary Lómearo, and the blade on his hilt too, though it did not let on, grew of tire and grinding against the steel, “It is no use tarrying in the Isles. They are preparing, princess. The war must lead us elsewhere”

 

“Our scouts do not know where it is their ships arrive from”, the Queen stopped, then chuckled to herself, “They believe a legend, that they spring from the earth”

 

“There might be something to that belief”, the duke stole a glance towards the red clouds in dawning, recalling the wisdom of olden times, “Myths and legends are not a thing in vain. The red sun rises. More blood is yet to be spilled”

 

Rosaego halted on Uq’patan to watch the bloodied skies rise, as her fellows about her kept on their march forward, unaware or undesiring to learn where to.

 

“Gods know where the road takes them after this day”, her voice fell to a rest, unheard by her soldiers but by the duke alone, “Whether to glory, whether to death. But they must meet these distant lands, and gods help them”

 

Removing his helmet from his hair of curling black that fought the northern winds, he nodded his acknowledgement at the mention. As if a farewell, the duke glanced a salutation to meet each the eye of the infantrymen in their charge. It was as if each time he had them set out to battle, anew he would part with his brethren, and say his prayers to them all, their eulogy promised to come.

 

Among the sound of marching feet on cracking lingered ice, she stood next to the duke. But her words, nor her voice nor the choices she wished to make mattered not. They were now as drops, lost in the current. Standing to crumble and be carried by the river of a marching war, the act was already cast before it had even begun, and now, it was in motion.

 

“The ships are already preparing at the docks in Stormwind”, Mainuvar would answer her concern before she would even voice it to awareness, of whether reconsideration or delay would serve them well now. But he would not finish his though, for she was well aware of what it meant was required of her next.

 

Plated boots on the ground pounded louder, and it seemed, in numbers uncounted, that passed about them two.

 

“An army will sail”, she confessed to herself. Like the water or the falling snow, she felt her presence slip below the will of the peoples who were to be under her command, now riding carelessly for their own causes, plundering and looting the corpses of enemies of their exotic riches left behind.

 

It would be an ill thing, sending the lot to a battlefield without reason. Like guiding feral beasts to guard their masters, these young men whose hears were filled of adventure would soon become strong-headed and the desires of their own would overcome their oaths of service or the honor they uphold. And where oneness fails, mutiny fractures greater nations.

 

“But not yet. Not until they are united under one banner. One ruler”, he whispered to her and her only, and guided her attention towards her crown that glowed as a torch among the steel.

 

In his mind, the duke coined to experience of what must be done. They must be made to a purpose. A single-minded army, men of shared vision. Zealous, but for a cause more holy than themselves.  

 

“Do not talk to the men. Command them”, he offered to show her a snarl she must demonstrate too, “Before they turn rogue against you”

 

She listened to his words with care. Watching about, she could see the army had become as a vicious horde, fragmented and already too demoralized. What would be of them when they are ventured out to war, when even now they cannot be controlled, the concern grew. But so did too, the idea of what Mainuvar counseled her. It was important, at this time more than any other, to remind the people of what it is they ought fight for – their homes.

 

Rosaego gripped at the harness of iron of untamed Uq’patan, and the beast reaved to a gallop. She rode far forth to where the first ranks had reached, near the cliffs that border the shoreline, and led her beast to draw its breath before them. And before she would release its reins upon them to topple the cauldrons of torture on their heads, the soldiers in their steely hauberks changed their course away from its flaring snout.

 

Overlooking the north, she commanded the red scales to rise, “Soar forth and fast, winged fires, and guide with your ingle the warriors upon their destined path”

 

The red menaces crowded the clouds, and fitly saw the river of boots follow their charge to the steep mountains of the Crownlands, for the will of many came to one before the fear of blazing fire that threatened to rain from above.

 

Their march homeward kept on. But Queen Rosaego set out on a different mission, and the duke together with a flight of blue dragons of her mother accompanied her, for it came time to see if their allies still welcomed them as they said they would, in the greatest of the mage-cities upon the known world.

 

Brisk and structured was their reception into the city, which floated not in the clouds, nor on the rocks of earth. Upon their arrival, Bahamut tried to warn the Queen of what he had sensed. Hearts filled with buried hatred of Rosaego’s blue dragonkin. It was as if the mages could smell her blood which once sought the destruction of the fair college’s spires that sprung high against its violet clouds. She could hear the unspoken heedings in the guide of the hand of the ambassador which there greeted them, ‘This landing upon which your foot treads was named after one of your own. Korialstrasz, or Krasus as we came to know him. But be wary, Queen Rosaego, for though a part of your blood is exalted here, the other half, blue in part, is exiled. Too many battlescars have the people of Dalaran carried under their rebellion, and the anger still runs deep beneath”

 

Rosaego and Mainuvar were expediently walked towards the chamber of the Guardian. It did not leave much to be seen of the famed scholar towers, but a few alleys and their pristine cobblestones, and the occasional bustle of students in their violet robes that would pass by. She could only glimpse with the corner of her eye sights of a floating carpet, guided at the hand of skilled mage with nothing but the power from his irises that shone a lilac blue. And vendors of jewelry in grandly decorated stalls, gleaming of platinum and sun-gold and gems that glowed with mysterious energy. The scent of powdered donuts mystified on the air. But her attention was guided away, for the receptionists did not wish for the citizens to catch light of their presence during their stay there it seemed, and not much was left for gawking. Alas, though the riches of the Kirin’Tor were immeasurable, and their civilization highly ordered, Rosaego made her efforts to discard them from whim, for the jewels in which they bathed and the powers in their hands, and the ether in the air was not of the Titans. Wise men ruled its councils – true, but their duties were those of guardianship over the realm, and the earthly pleasures were not set for them, but were rejected by them. For they were better to know that it all – the silver, the gems, the knowledge must all once return to whence it came, and rid the men attached to degrade into their cravings. None of it was real. The task she came to see was one of politics, and the lesser things called to her no longer for she had come to learn how fast they are stripped away into nothingness.  

 

There was, however, one pupil in the city, who did spot the identity of the city guests as they made their way towards their sanctuary. And she did not gander at them with enmity, for her own kind was not of Dalaran alone, but part of dragon blood too, a secret she kept well among her peers. And Asterin, the youthful maiden of ginger hair and fair stature, a student of flame and frost held ever at the sidelines. The folk there did not seem to know her background, but they learned that somehow the lady had come to climb among the upper circles of the Silver Covenant, the most esteemed noble house of magister and highborn elves.

 

It was unclear her business there, perhaps moreso than that of the Queen of Dragons or her unfamed consort-knight. And as the meeting of the allies would continue on, she stood before the walls of the guardian’s hall, observing the spires in the city that made her, awaiting as if, for something. A moment, a time to act, or a the coming of events foreboding, of which, it seemed to her colleagues, she knew more than she was letting on. Perhaps, even so, that the gold which paid for her gallant finery, of silver and deep violets and blues that cascaded from her keybone, came from sources conspired with below the city’s depths, in the shadows spoken of, a force which grants power at a cost. And soon rumors would stir, if Asterin had made such a pact, and befriended the knowledge that is learned of its masters in shade, or if she aimed to still use their skills against them when the time would come to do so.

 

Queen Rosaego approached the heart of the chamber. Braziers of arcane fire as tall as the heights of the walls lit their step. Something sacred was being guarded here. Items, of unsafe potency, meant not for the hand of mortals.

 

“You cannot see them”, Rosaego heard the olden voice, slightly echoing off the walls of carved stone, “Not without the sight of the Makers”

 

The Archmage stepped from the shaded hall, and formed a sign of the eye in the light of the braziers. And lo, before the duke and the queen became true the ancient artifacts that belonged to the Titans themselves – and the eye itself, the secret key to them all.

 

“It is known as the eye of Aman’Thul. Some call him Othann, others dare not speak his name. He is the Allfather of the Titans”, Khadgar took his steps patiently between them, as if the time of the world had stopped its counting. But in a moment seemed to reconsider, and his face turned gravely, “The maker of War. Today, it is his council which we seek”

 

“Have the allies gathered?”, Rosaego was restless to learn. Less concerned with the religious, and more with acting out their plans.

 

Khadgar nodded affirmingly. “Come”, he gestured them, thudding against the ground with the raven’s staff, “Let us talk at last”

 

Accompanied by high magisters and elders, the Guardian entered his hall with Queen Rosaego and duke Mainuvar, bidding the guests to hail them welcome.

 

The hall was still, silently lit in unmelting wax, and Rosaego with her consort stepped onto the tessellatum of the constellations where many of her allies greeted her, and stood to salute the two. There she saw the kind smile of Lady Jaina, sharing in her grief in cordiality of their kindred womanhood. And when she saw Alleria, who held by the sides of the room, Rosaego would wish to tell her of her beloved, but her attention was called by another’s voice, familiar, yet she did not recognize it at first.

 

“Rosaego!”, cried the man, and when Rosaego did turn, she could not quite place him. Her gaze could have easily overlooked him in that crowd. The hair shaved short, and the torn skin on his brows did not resemble quite anyone. But the blade behind his white cloak, the sword of his father -, “Could it be…?”

 

“--…Anduin?”

 

Visions of a carefree childhood overcame her mind. But they were frail, as if something lost, and no longer obtainable. Something not hers any longer, or his. For the merciless grind of time, of death took from her, and changed him, and the innocent children they were no longer.

 

King Anduin could no longer see the blush on her face that he once remembered. Nothing but the raging passion for the coming war.

 

“Look at what life has stripped from us both”, hollowly he said to her, searching for the light in her cheeks.

 

“Where have you been, old friend?”

 

Anduin pointed at the corner. “There were things that I could not bear to face. I sought a redemption of my past. And it led me back here again”

 

Standing in the corner, tallest among the wisemen was an orc, a foreigner to Azeroth. The true warchief of the Horde of Kalimdor – a shaman among their clans, whom his enslavers simply named Thrall. And despite it all, he loved the world which never welcomed his people, and fought to protect the life of Azeroth, though it showed its hostility towards his kind far too many times, and as a wicked mother turns away from an unwanted adopted child, it did not matter the boon or the care his kind offered, again and again the world rejected them from its embrace. And yet, despite it all, he was there again, ready to fight for the mother titan, seal though may she his people’s fates.

 

Mainuvar glanced about the room. His gaze was searching for a known face. Of his days in elden time, of the first kings, perhaps there was but one which could bear witness that still lived. None were there of his own. Yet faint in strength – but unwavering, he saw one which his father recounted tales of, Magni Bronzebeard, king of dwarves. By his side stood his wife, and his son and grandson. Time, it seemed, had raced them all to the end without warning.

 

 The knight reached forward, and eager was the hope in his heart to stir alive the ghosts of a vivid past.

 

“King under the Mountain, hail to thee!”

 

“I am a king no more, lad”, his voice, warm like the fire of a hearth was frailing away, and snapped through a fog, “Whose were you again, did you say?”

 

The duke knelt before him. And told him of tales of his father, of how once upon a time long passed, they fought alongside and shared in the brew. But the aged beard made of stone did not keep still these recollections engraved, and his watery eyes were failing him, for he did not recognize his old comrade in the ruined face of his son. The last that he would speak to the duke, were ramblings of a harrowing future his senile mind conjured, of visions of a city in flames. No memory remained of his father’s friend, he thought. No ken in the minds of the king’s sons, or grandsons. The glances they aimed at Mainuvar were in fear, not fellowship, as if they were protecting the old king from an intruder.

 

The thuds of ravenstaff were heard once again. All present were called to great attention.

 

The Archmage made his stride towards the map of the seas in the dead center, glowing under the light of the blue braziers, and his words echoed in the ears of the sovereigns that had gathered in that hall,

 

“Leaders of the free world, you all have answered the summons of the Titan. Our world is burning, and our enemy seeks to capture its very heart. Azeroth, the Mother of our earth calls us to protect her! And she bids us to war with any that seeks to destroy her light. Make no mistake – this is no simple foe. This is a nation made in the dark. They call themselves the Kaheti, and their tongue resembles that of the hissing of spiders”

 

He continued in his stride about the room, and all ears turned to listen true.

 

“Your spears and your weapons will not suffice. To defeat them, we must not wait for their arrival at our gates”, he glanced at Rosaego in granting her compassion, “Not again, for it is a price no one should pay. We must carry the light of our world – the world we have known, and the goodness of its maker in our hearts, and with this fire we must bring the war to them”, Archmage Khadgar leaned his gaze towards his map, and pointed with the tip of his staff to a lone island, unknown before to any present there, southeast of Kalimdor’s shores, “To the earthen lands beneath the Isle of Dorn. The lands they call Khaz’Algar”

 

The guardian halted in his stride and glanced at the emissaries at his table, and gave each an earnest look. He drew a breath, and exhaled audibly. It was time to cut the decision.

 

“Ours are not only the wars we fight for our cities. Ours are the battles of our allies, just the same. And what befell Queen Rosaego awaits to be the fate of all our kingdoms, men and mages alike. The darkness that grows beneath that isle will not stop at Dorn alone. It comes for us all. And the free peoples of the realm must unite in this cause – and we must be their leaders. We must fight this battle with one heart. We must join the cause for Azeroth, and fight together the last of wars”

 

The hearts of leaders rejoiced, and within them a fire was burning lit. Right there and then, all were ready to charge forth into glory, and to his surprise, Mainuvar saw in Queen Rosaego the ember in her eyes upon listening to the Archmage’s words, of a final battle to purge the world of filth, and all the likes of it which dared to do the unthinkable, and in agony took her two sons.

 

The council table saw swords drawn in signing the oath to the new allegiance, and one after the other, they joined in one great fire that kindles eternally still, everburning,

 

“The fleet of the Proudmoores stands at the ready”

 

“The brigades of Stormwind send their full might”

 

“And the dwarves of Ironforge will stand with you”

 

The duke awaited her response with restraint. To draw his blade with hers was a decision he was clear on easily and without a second thought, ready to do so before he had even met her. The change in her eyes, evident to him alone, came with the image of the poison on the tortured mouths of her boys in that night that engraved sat before her eyelids, and her heart owed it to their memory, to choose and to mark the fate sealed,

“And Dragons, Elves and men of the Isles shall ride to war”

 

The oath was forged, and the new alliance of the Nations of Light was made on that day. And lastly, the Archmage would go on to charge,

 

“Then, if the council is of set mind… Let us bring the joined forces of the Nations to this Khaz’Algar”

 

And as the great nations made their oaths and set their visions to the defense of their world, and their deaths in glories of battle, the crown city, shrouded in midwinter haunted its prince with scenes of losses he let to happen, as he held them in those futile arms of his. Its halls, hollow of life, host to the shell of his soul which once called them home.

 

Kenodormu stared past the heights of the balcony for days on end. His imagination made up characters, and faces and conversations of what his mind quietly thought was unfolding in those chambers of the mage-city. He had been there once. The wine his tongue savored still remains palpably intoxicating, the lamenting of sol-clarinet in the hands of swains, his earlobes could almost still recall their melodies. But his queen did not fly out to visit these luxuries. All the prince could leave of hope, is that perhaps the knight he sent to ride out after her and keep her safely guarded would see her back from this venture of hers. If only, with a change of heart.

 

------------Chapter XII: To War!------------

The driftwood that made stepfather’s house creaked from the rainfall in the night. The pouring would not end, and the hours dragged dreadfully long in the dark of the woods, and the dawning was nowhere in sight.

 

‘Just as soon as the first rays of sun arrive, it will be over’, he thought, but his ears were filling with the pounding of his chest. He must have run for half a mile through those woods, sprinting on his feet without a stop for air, for he could not afford to turn. Truth be told, how he succeeded to evade the old codger was puzzling to him, but it must have been by a hair between those steep rocks. ‘Dulled are the old legs of his’, believing it safe enough, he let to mocking. But his own were tired, so very tired. And when the boy looked down, in that little what remained of moonlight that creeped through the hatch, he saw his ribs protruding past the linen of his shirt.

 

‘Perhaps I can eat this lichen?’, his slender arm, a plank of bone reached far across the other end to the brick on the wall at the greenly mass that covered its stones. His muddied boots stepped faithfully upon the ledge. But his fingers, cold of the water and the rain were slippery, loosening their grip on the latch and unsettling the ropes at the spin of the unoiled wheel that thudded upon each dial of the cog. And the bucket of green and putrid contents, filled with collected wellwater, hurried towards him from the depths dark to a rapid climb.

 

The boy tried to convince himself that the noise was not loud enough, that he is still safe. The rain still pouring above trickled against the rotting wood, and he was sure it would muffle his move. But he had heard him. Just there past his house on the hill the boy could hear the man’s horse begin to neigh. In the distance across the lake, the fires of candles lit the city in celebration. King Archibald was returning from a raid, and Gilneas held its feasts, all while forgetting many boys like himself whose tummies growled. Did the king know what his forester did at night while he drank away his wine with his solicitors? The city, it seemed, forgot all about its afflicted children of the woods. Like wolves, they were to fend for theyselves, and the boy had no pack of his own any more. Scent of horse dung overcame his senses. He had just minutes, if not less, before he could sense his toothless mare’s pungent breath, prying open the hatch to the stonewell.

 

He glanced at his fist curled firm. The shiv he made with willow-wood and chickenbone was pressed against his trembling palm. Good – surprisedly he sighed with relief, that after all the running and the chase, and the near fall to his death it did not leave his grasp.

 

Short were the breaths that he drew. He could now hear the hooves in the night, and the laughter that echoed in the rain of the late hours. That awful laughter. Self-important, vile.

The boy prepared himself. The full moon shone past the clouds and into the unsealed hatch and made to glow his foggy eyes with grey, and his thin fingertips pushed the wood slab up, up to unveil the air and to glance at the lone orb in the clouds one last time. There were no dens left in which to take shelter any longer. None which his shriveled, dirty hand did not search, for the skills of a hunter far outweighed those of the frightened child, and the boy knew the old man would find him again. ‘You should learn how to hide better’, anger boiled in remembering the scornful sound, ‘Are you hunter, or are you prey’. Every night he would promise it to be the last time, and every night the dark desires won over his word, and the stepfather would wish to, hunt some wolf-meat, he would say. No more will he play in stepfather’s ugly games that he made him do. It was to be the end to hiding and to this miserable, cold dark. One end, or another, death may come.

 

Then – a shotgun’s blast that whistles past the ears, like a howl of a wolf echoing against the deep walls of the well. He was here. The boy could feel him, he could feel the hair on his spine standing up and the wildlife, too, was gone where the gunman stepped foot.

 

Moments came of silence, and then - the hooves, clasping, closer and closer they came. And then, the dreaded voice in the fog.

 

“Come out, come out, little pup”, the mocking came, but it was not the usual. There was a nasty anger in his voice this time. One that meant to kill.

 

The boy could hear him clear as day taunting above the ground, vile words piercing his prickled ear, undrowned by the falling of the rain,

 

“There is nowhere left to hide… Not beneath the bed, not in the cow’s den. Your daddy cannot help you now. He is long dead!”

 

Its huffs appeared to grow fainter with each clap of the metal hoof, and it sounded like the horse turned away from the opening of the well, for it seemed, it could not sense apart the boy’s smell from the mud around. But the old stinker knew where to look for the child, and it seemed he knew his playful mind all too well… And leaned onto the closed hatch with his fat, greasy fingers, creaking it open wide.

 

Those eyes were black and round, and hungry with an insatiable rage, and his fat hand in a strangler’s desire, released the shotgun away.

“Hunter or prey…”,

The boy saw the stepfather’s face up-close. And that reeking, stale breath from his mouth told of horrible things. His wee fingers were now surely at the grip of the homemade shiv. He would not be defiled again. One soundless, airy step forward and the kill was locked – nowhere to go but through with it to the end.

 

The muddied boot on his foot, quiet like smoke on the air dared a step upon the grass. There was the tip of the sharpened bone, just an inch from that cobwebbed hair on the back of stepfather’s neck, and the blood in the fat pig’s veins pounded loud and fresh, and his flesh was free game, for the dirty bastard’s back was turned to the boy and his head fit barely into the hatch of the well, still searching for him. Yet all he found was his own blood at the tip of his stepson’s first blade, and before he would bleed out the boy made sure to whisper behind his ear,

“I win”

 

The ships in the First Shores still awaited them. Seas of steel that still treaded into the hills, whose eyes filled with resolve saw nothing before them or above them but the step of the one in front, and the paving dirt path at their feet.

 

Songs of marching became when their breath came low, spun so by the bannermen but to keep at their men’s spirits one more mile to best. And the chilly air in the mountains, the norther they made their advance clutched harsher at the throat.

 

A greyish light unsettled the clouds, calling their gaze and attention to the heights, and they saw their Queen with the silver wyrm riding fast towards them from unknown lands. And with her hailed the duke to lead their many flanks, one her soldiers came to revere in his strategies in past shared battles.

 

“We ride across the Plains”, the Queen ordered as she mounted Uq’patan, and no one quite knew why. The mountains would have been a day’s walk fast into the vales of the Crownlands.

 

The commanders took charge into the green pastures. Rivers and streams clear, kissed by the pale trunks of birch trees were the sole obstacle in their way, and the horses of the bannermen galloped freely forwards, and the footmen would fail to keep the pace with the rest. Camps were set up for a time along the riverside and within woods of plum, deliciously sweet and golden in the blistery palms of hungry infantrymen. What could have been a simple expedition turned into a fortnight’s worth of ceaseless trotting. Even the soldiers’ feet became as hooves, they soon quipped amongst themselves.

 

Those that had their skills with a bow and arrow, all but the elite rowans of the duke’s army set out at night to hunt and bring a share of meat that would be roasted in the morn. And the land there was plentiful with wildlife, of moose and mammoth and fowl many a kind, and plentifully they ate for the road, more, the soldiers would recall, than any other time since then their tables would fill.

 

One such night in a hunter’s call a bowman returned to the camp. His leg had pierced an arrow of primitive making, right by the calf. He said to the Queen and the lot there that he could not have walked the way alone, but that he rode on the back of a horse-like man. They had left for him a bird to rest on his shoulder, white and tawny in feather, a sacred kind for the folk that lived in this land, and it was said to be called an ohuna.

 

“And they have for you a letter”, the bowman, sturdy, yet weakened and sweating of bloodloss, gestured at the leg of the ohuna. On its wrinkled skin was wrapped to a roll a sheet of leather, seemingly not long ago inscribed.

 

Rosaego’s scribe reached for the creature and carefully unlatched the writings from its body. The bird, wise in its gaze, did not but flinch yet gently kept her vigil of the scholar, sensing no danger from his hand.

 

Ears perched to hear what message it holds. And once he was done with his interpreting, the scribe told Rosaego, “Khanam-Matra sends her regards. Once again, the horsemasters ride with their friends of old”

 

Soon the armies readied for time was not to waste, and campfires were quenched where they once sat. The Queen led them onwards towards the khanam lands, and their wild clans. The Khural festival was coming to an end, and leaving for their huts of mud and twine, their people were gathering away the colored pennants and banners that decked the perches of the village. And in their stead new banners were sprung, ones that called to blood and war, and black in its making was the barding that they strapped onto their hunting hounds.

 

The one leaving the war tent, smothered in blessings of fragrant incenses was Mother Sarest, and she sent a look of acknowledgement Rosaego’s way before she would don her walnut mask. Rosaego remained at the ridge, overlooking the war tent. Their priestesses in red feather walked out in pairs, whispering grievingly to the rattling rocks in their hands. One after another, they proceeded to draw white paint onto the mask of the Khanam-Matra, as she stood there, unmoving.

“White is for the one who rides across the great river. Where the spirits will embrace her”, Rosaego’s shoulder was touched by the words as cold wind and rancid from the mouth of a witch. And she could not see her eyes in the night that befell. Their warriors were beginning to stir. Hunters took up their bows and the spears stood upright from the dirt. Before the queensguard and advisors formed a horde, hooves and battle howls upheaving the dust in their galloping circles. With her head raised beneath the mask, Mother Sarest welcomed to its rest the tawn-feathered ohuna in flight, and it made its home in the wise-woman’s painted brow. A crown upon the meeting of worlds came the blinding moon in the blackened heights, and in the glance of an eye that met the duke Rosaego could only read, ‘They ride into their deaths’.

 

Silently the Mother bid her warriors a charge and they joined their mounted, feral forces with the lady of Valdrakken, and onwards as one file carried the wearied and the weak on their horsebacks way forth to the hills, where the waters spring from the ice-clad peaks.

 

Into their steep incline as they drew not a way too far from the heights of the sun, the host halted abreath. And lo, there in the valleys neath the last, most tremendous peak where the sons of dragons stood, their eyes could see the spires of their city once more, and eager made a soldier’s heart to hasten in his foot, let all but tomorrow be the day he must sail if once again he may taste the bread of his hearth and home.

 

Generously awaited the great halls for their guests and hosted the full forces of its allies. And when the Queen made her presence at the throne, and it was her time to speak to them as those who would follow her, the chants of the coming war as too the songs of battles that were ceased not, but swelled in their resonance against the vaulted stone and its gilded arches. And with respect to pay, every warrior there spilled the first of his cup and sang to the songs of his homeland, and many were the songs of peoples sung that eve; of the dragons, and of elves, and the hardy tales of Iskaarans, and the war-cries of the hunters in the Plains.

 

Queen Rosaego seated the cold of the throne in her Black Ice, and she turned to address them all present. In the corner of her eye she saw her husband, Prince Kenodormu, sat upright as an arrow, but a clutch of knots in his gut anticipated ruin. Sweating drenches beneath his steely circlet, but would not let on to the peoples, as he retained a mild cheek for his beloved. Though her desire to soften his pain, it was him for whom Rosaego’s words aimed at her soldiers were meant. But he did not know what to make of those harsh musings but a farewell more than flesh and blood can bear to grasp, no more than any young soldier could.

 

“O all thee young heroes! Stand, and listen; the realm of our fathers fades before us, and time has come to make our stand. There can be no tyrannous hand among our councils; no room for twisted beliefs not of our own accord. If blood must be spilled and sown across that far and strange continent, then let it be ours, and let it be pure. Let the godless soil the foot of our foe walks know: that now comes an army of men who have known the old world and its makers, and the blade in each hand fights to remember what once was. The lands, green with ire and fury of the ones who came before us and shaped the path we are to set upon this day. And the Sun which burned since the first dawn, and still burns to this day, and when you are gone and your deeds forgotten, shall burn still in honor. Brave youth, I hail you farewell. From the distant lands that now call upon your names, many of your brothers will not return. Take relish in the warmth of this hall. This is the last you will see of grace. Before you awaits a long and cold dark, to descend into the depths of hell with the fire burning in your hearts, for you defend not a home, but a world that was once free, and good”, those are the words that she spoke. Light blazed in the skin of soldiers’ faces, pairs of bright eyes teeming with zeal. Each of them would have leaped into the grandest flame that day in a breath and a scream of glory, dying for things they did not yet understand. These boys, young and untainted by scars or any ugliness of age marred not for the mentions of death, or hunger in her speeches. They heard not the pain that crept between the slashes of steel against their fair skin, but they dreamed of their march into a valiant victory with the armsmate to the right of their shoulder; and wondered what roles they would play in the tales the minstrels would sing of their endeavors, of great campaigns to uncharted faraway lands. In daydreams, a soldier imagined in these songs were sung the proud eyes of his mate, armored in pristine steel, hoisting the colors of his house valorously in sunlight, ever young as he was there by his side, uninjured and unsullied by despair.

 

And when the Queen had concluded and he felt it wise to speak, Prince Kenodormu wished for to share his own blessings as was given unto him by the line of his fathers, the great kings that were before. But when he would gasp to open his lips, his words were stolen under him by the knight of his own choosing, and Kenodormu shut his brow with contempt. He simmered in the silence of his wife, watching, while the duke stepped to the front and faced his own soldiers, and all the halls and infantry listened when he swore at his men,

 

“Sons of nameless times, another battle comes. Now, again we meet in pursuit of our fates, and I see hollow steel and hungry blades. Moths have eaten your hearts. Soldiers, turn loose of hope. Our sun has long set. The forests we have known no longer flourish with the summers. And when the one by your side has fallen, with him will your name last be spoken. The world will change. Your mothers will forget you and live freed of their grief. And you will not dwell in the tales of your friends. You were made in the black of the soil and the graves of invaders. Let this foe meet the steel which brought to ruin the Legion and its conquest, cut down many of its cunning kind. Let them learn that they are not the first evil we have known! They will see their misdoings when their eyes are set to lances and their sockets lit by the morning light! Our hunger will sate the flesh of their innards! Let your dead eyes and ears heed, and ready to march your heartless boot upon their blood. Now marks the hour of reprisal”

 

The Queen held and bade welcome to the silence. It was then, before her final word to the men under her command that their hearts could hear the grave foreboding and a glimpse into their own oblivion, and late before the bells would sound,

 

“Let the realm of Dragons and all our allies prepare for a call to arms, for here before my sworn folk I declare war. May the Titans protect us and light the path to avenge our land. We march to our ends. To our forefathers. To Ainor”

 

When the halls sat emptied of all guests and night was drawing in the skies, Kenodormu still bit with envy took up to speak with Rosaego, to convince her one last try should she stay, as the bells in the town called to duty, and cavalrymen assembled in the square with their banners spanning high and vibrant. Moon had not yet sprung, but its gloom was nearly there, in the empty halls on the white lid of his beloved. Between the ready-made march of chainmail and steel and every count of the bell singing to the realm its testimony, he sought for words, and the blessings of a queen.

 

“This is not how I imagined it”, he fastened the grip around his chalice as Rosaego fastened hers about the sword, and locked the latches on her breastplate, “My father told me of how a war commences. He never warned me, though, of how in our homely hall, his own heritage, I would stand not as host, but guest”

 

Queen Rosaego darted his way. In his lips burnt with intoxication she read bitterness, but they stayed sealed to the truth that gathers like the mounting clouds, one that even the prince would not let into the light, for as a geist in nightmares this fact chased him. And instead, he carefully questioned her, waiting, praying in denial for the armored arm of his queen to reach open and let him in. Him, the first love, the forgotten king, a guest.

 

“And what shall be now”, he tested, “We have already been decimated of a fifth of our footmen. Too many spearmen fell when you led them out into Vakthros”

 

“I count most on my drake-riders”, she cut it down, and as she turned her attention away to the polish on her sword, she would steal glances of the empty skies that spanned just past the stained glass, “Of them I have plenty”

 

The prince there waited for her silence to break, for he knew there sleeps the fact from which he fled. And he could nearly sense what words she would speak next when she did, and knew to await them like he himself could have carved them from her mouth, letter-by-letter. There she laid unto the open this fact,

 

“And there is the duke’s men, still standing fast and healthy in number”

 

There they laid, them crushing letters. The concern in Kenodormu grew, bidding him to approach,

 

“So, you do not ride alone… I see many are there to protect you. Realms, kings… Even the knights of my own pay. You gave them all a title, but for me”

 

Unwavering, he then closed his distance so near, that she could sense the wine in his breath, as the arrow in his heart got the best of him, and Kenodormu issued his bargain, “What purpose is there to me?”

 

Rosaego stopped her motion to glance at him. There was no pain on his face left, just like the moonlight was gone of hers, but the yearning of tears collected in his white eyes. She saw the man who belonged nowhere, not to the throne, not to a son or a father, like many of his line bereft and lost of a fate less doomed. A descendant of kings, absolved of the right to destiny or a glorious path, she watched him wither in his curse, lonely fading behind.

 

“A guardian’s one”, she whispered consolation, but its meaning did not reach the prince’s deafened ears, “Much the same as the fate which reads on the tombs of all your bloodline. Yours too, shall be of a Dragon Isles’ Guardian”

 

“Allow me, then, to lead first on my drake. She is not fast, nor is she young, but a battle’s many kind she has seen. And my head may not be wise, but it will embolden the soldiers to see us in the skies together, soaring again to the mighty Sun”

 

Wishful was the image the prince had painted for her in his mind. Yet his pleads fell to the earth, and the Queen forced a turn to face him, and took hold of his arm firmly into the harsh steel of her gauntlet, and tears burst as words as she bade,

 

“This is my war. And you cannot come with me, for you do not know, Kenodormu, what ends meet me there”

 

And she went out to the cliffs with the break of day. The cavalries were already gone, as mithril-made dancing stars, fading past the edge of sight. The steep ravines carried their way files of the thousands, of marching men in infantry’s armor still hot to the touch from the smithy. Leaned onto a linden tree, from there she swore her eyes could see their faces in smiling pride and high spirit, and their arms wrapped about their comrades, and in the wind that cut the golden light she could hear their song to their land, that they sung as trumpets loudly and with great glee in each their youthful blue eye, and a tear on their fair cheek, the whole road’s descent to the ships at sea,

“Golden is the aspen leaf,

Far beyond the northern seas,

Leave my land and heart behind,

A-wo, one-wo

Mother dear and maid a-cry

A-wo, a-wo

Javelin’s bairn

I become

Under moss and sunless skie,

Marching where the shadows lie,

A-wo, a-wo,

Burning men to Algeth’ar,

Seek the sun to Valhalas,

One-wo, a-wo

Javelin’s bairn

Woe, my son

Fly, my son, my heart of gold,

On the way to herald’s home,

Free of chains that bind your wings

A-wo

Sailing for the grand abyss

One-wo, a-wo

Ride we all,

Death may come”

 

And this song that the troubadours had spun had no end, and the young lads that sang with cork its words knew not of its meaning, for it was crafted first in the olden strifes when their own ancestors took to the Reach, where they went to meet their enslavement. And later too, when their sons would retake the land, and would ride willingly into death, the marching song grew in recounting those lost, and it would continue to devour even now each life that the war would bury; as corpses spanned its verses that became too many to remember. The boys whose boots of craftsman’s care in leather, freshly polished and jauntily stomped the earth under greying skies, and the sun on their rosy smiles had not yet the fright, but wonderment, an infatuation for this distant land so new to their tongue, breastfed by bravery sung in war chants leading them on their way.

 

And her drake-riders, she came to witness, did not soar above them. Far in the mountains where the pines begin, her gaze caught their drakes, leading the fire in the footmen’s hearts. First among them, the winged furies strode along their side in avowal to their mortal arms.

 

“The first in line are already at the ships”, Rosaego heard the duke say, silently walking up to stand next to her. She could hear Lómearo too, for the knight had stayed the horse not far behind. His sword was in his hand and his eyes peaked at the torrenting march under the cloud which veiled the sun-blessed hills, “Look at your folk a last time, princess. Each of them descends unwittingly into the deep dark. Green, brittle. Like grass in sunlight, to be bent at the crush of a wagon… Made into a weapon of meat. There, they disappear just past the edge of the bluff, cast into the mist”

 

The men at sea waited. The deck’s floorboards no longer creaked beneath the crush of a thousand feet. The wood cared no longer to count. Anticipation in the hearts of these boys simmered, like the weight of the scorching sun that topped the silvery waters, and they all there wished for the same: wind, and at last, to sail out.

 

Quiecy and order was observed among the soldiers. Ruly boarding in files of two, low in chatter about a distant way from the woodlands to the northern path. And upon their approach, at the start of inspection by the dock’s gates, their marching songs replaced the procedural talk between the commanding officers and the shipyard staff, ruling their passage.

 

Those already on the deck could see in the distance the first ships that had already ventured out far as the onboarding continued. Down by the keel, a sergeant’s nod to the undercommander sealed the allowance to depart.

 

“Haul ‘em!”, called the first mate, procedurally observing the ship’s gear amongst the soldiers, climbing the stairs towards the upper deck without much regard. “I count it’ll be a day or two”, he was heard conversing with the deckhands, “Then it’s bread and a soft bed for me”

The canvases rose in a swift, glorious turn, and painted the armada in draconic heraldry. Out there on the water, ships of many such kind were seen departing away at their gentle speed. And the drakes carefully cruised the lower air among them, guiding the winds in their favor, until their riders urged them into a great, powerful ascent.

 

Slowly at the start, the ship began to glide against the peaceful shore. Ripples grazing below its bow would see the fish fleeing from its determined stream. The boys still waiting their turn at the dock watched their brothers take leave, eagerly expecting to sit in their shoes, and the ladies and onlookers waved their colored scarves, sending them their smiles in fortune. But if only the fighters’ hearts were not deaf underneath their great desire, their arms, it seemed would extend to reach for the ribbons, and save themselves onto the dryland, and call their brothers from boarding in their steps, better to make a noose of the maiden's cloth instead. A hundred languished arms, sinking fast under the marching wake of war, if they could have but held onto a grain of sand or a fin of the slippery fish that scattered away in their passing. Yet all remained to sail at their destined course. With each turn of the mighty oars against the weight of the nether, the ship gained pace. And the faces of their brothers at the bank and the colors of dresses of the maidens became a faint, unrecognizable blur, until all of the shoreline of their homeland could be seen, and the greater waves below riding on the winds set the armored crew far onto the vast sea. The soldiers watched the land disappear into the distance. Their squinting eyes, flared with the sun could but now see the beacons of the land glow a dim speck, engulfed in the landmass. They could no longer tell where their blighty lay. The ocean’s gales bid them, forget. The last, faint spark of the towers of home was gone to fade, swallowed by the mists of the Great Sea.

‘Goodbye!’, longed each hailing hand, ‘O red earth that nursed me once a boy with your river’s milk, soil that fed the bones of my fathers. Goodbye! They see me — now I leave, a learned warrior’

 

Gorkivoy had slept soundly through the perilous storms. Two ships were lost, and another four sunk and lying on the oceanbed, and none of it peaked his ear to waking from his groggy rest, cozied sweetly between bags of rice and corn in the ship’s pantry. It took three of the crewmen – a swabber, a cook and a ruffian lass to shake him into wakefulness, and all because they quite generously applied their tools of the trade – the iron ladle and a mopping stick, right on his belly. And he would have slept through those lashes too, if the big maiden had not threatened, holding her blunderbuss with one half-crippled hand to blow into bits what little was left of the rum in his waterskin.

 

He never grew fond of the Alliance’s conductorial ways. Things were not done this way in his village. Passing the canals to the Old Town, he remembered how it was to stand there, waiting for hours, to be told by the lieutenant he was ‘keeping watch’ of Stormwind’s streets – or something or other, whatever it may be to keep the soldiers’ minds occupied. He could remember the way his feet blistered in the steel-capped boots the militants were made to wear, and how ill-fitted they were for the hot pavements in the summer. Still, to this day it was no different. But at least our boys were wearing better made shoes, and maybe, he thought, the leadership of a Queen that hails from Iskaara, where things are made proper must know to treat the common man well.

To that, he downed his last sip of rum, and worried little. The Pig and Whistle seemed like a quaint place compared to the dens he was used to, where after a few too many large ones, they could place a bear in a man’s stead and one would not spot the difference. No, this was a fancy place. Even the girls that ran for buckets, up and down and there by the alleyway well bared no armpit hair! Many would be feasting here tonight, he was told, and he ought better to warm up for it. There would be little time for hoisting the flagon when the brawls, inevitably, break out. And to that, his way was just like on any other occasion, be it battle or joyous times, to blind himself drunk with mead, or less preferably ale, or, in the late hours, anything from the innkeeper’s daughter’s hand. And the taverns of Stormwind had plenty to offer for a man of his appetites.

 

Just behind that pretty, fat girl… There was the doorway. Simple - two steps, or three, he trusted!? He looked at the bear, stabled loosely and frothing at the tooth with thirst, and thought he would maybe get an answer, and in turn, the beast looked back at him with perhaps just as many questions; and if anything of words would have come out of the mouth of the animal it would have then been wiser than the thoughts of its master. Later in war, when the bands of sentries would sit around the fires in the night and to the sips of a coppered flask exchange their stories, he would go on to swear that the bear told him clearly, ‘If I were in your place with all four of my legs, I would not count on a single one of them!’

Gorkivoy pushed himself through the flimsy doorway. Beneath the roof of the tavern, shaded from the midday sun and unexpecting of visitors, least of which one such sudden entrance, the barman and the warlock observed the brute, fragrant of sweat with a note of varieties of distillates, trudge in and embrace a chair.

The first bit of mead was barely poured in the tankard of the innkeeper’s hand when the heathen yelled, “Another!”

The barman braved to exchange no other words with him, and it was at about the third pound of the tankard against the solid table that sealed all common tongue amongst them, and in its place sent a tremor through the hair on the feeble warlock’s armskin. If it were not for the all-nighter and the all-afternoon-long research he was forced to attend to, he would not have needed to be here today, stuck solid in his seat too far from the exit. The inertia of his body forcing him to endure the miasma of the barbarian’s breath mingle with the stale ale in the cup he held with his spell-worn fingernails. Too late for his age, but in light of these events the middle-aged sorcerer had an epiphany, that if he had cut down a little on the ale in his days as a young student, he would have avoided so many mistakes, among which was the beer belly that prevented him from getting up fast if the situation called for it. His joints were becoming slower with stiffness by the day, and he wondered at the thought, of how and where he would be stationed in the coming days, and if there would be such a need for a man to be lean and healthy.

The warrior barely stood up on his feet. He darted the warlock’s way into a frightening stun, and unprompted, said nothing but this, “War tomorrow, friend. Die well”

The innkeeper’s terror when he realized that the brute is with the expedition of Nations was not lessened by the understanding that he would likely be back again in the evening, when the rest of the soldiery gather, and the warlock, unsure yet of his contribution there, did little to think about it, or the coming levy, and could barely muster a civil nod Gorkivoy’s way.

As he stumbled his way out the door, the waitress, the barman and the man of forbidden knowledge, all of them slightly shaken and stupefied, still seated in their place, beheld him mount a bear as he left, and undoubtedly not a single soul which witnessed that sight could quite name the nature of the man. It was hard to say – or tell him apart from the fur of coat that cowled his head, or the animal that chose to obey him without reins; and harder still to understand, what sort of man, if not a beast, in the civilization of today walks about with such gruesome ideas, and what kind of world it is in which he learned or grew that foster them. Surely, however, there could not be enough mead to sate him in all of Stormwind or its taverns.

 

Come night-time, many folk foreign to Stormwind had gathered. The Pig and Whistle had never been so full, and so lively with chatter of maidens with their patron guests, and the rounds of ale that arrived as fast in platters of flagons, and faster yet were downed by the veterans that sat there than the fingers of the flute-reeler would spin the song away. The warmth of the fire crackled beneath the roast of beef – a whole of three heads of calves, sufficient – the innkeeper thought, for the lot of tonight. Conscripts, who in their time had never held but a butter knife and those older, who had a scar or few to show for sang just the same with their arms around the girls, in hopes to win a heart if just for this passing eve.

 

“Any word from the circle of elders over there?”, taunted the eager boy of a face as plump as fresh cotton and skin scarless and pure of battle-markings. Continuing to slap the porridge into the plate, he  placed himself on the wood bench across his friend.

“I heard the forester talking with his mates”, seated by the far end of the longtable, Rosaego saw the soldier say, “They’re saying this is the last war”

“Oh, what have you now, Lorin. Did you fall prey to his preachings again? All these old grumps ever do is complain. ‘Back in my day, soldiers had respect for officers!’”, the elfin one took to mockery, all the while delighting in a mouthful of the warm, moist bread that appeared in bunches at their table, steaming and straight from the oven.

“A dozen of ale, back table, move it!”

“What’s the holdup!? Do yer legs need help with dancing?”

Lorin leaned in closer towards the friend. As if to conceal his words from idle ears, and perhaps, to not be made a laughing stock by his peers, “Look, I’m serious, mate. The man may be a grouch, but he has seen four wars. And their captain did too. More than you and me”

“Burrrpp… Another!”

Impeccably armored in fashionable, yet modest infantry’s vesting, the young man minded more that the buckles on his tabard were tucked neatly, rather occupied with grooming than to pay any worth to the mentions. Staring at a piece of reflective glass from his fingers as he tucked the wavy sideburns behind his ears, he would only stop to meet his friend’s glance with a side-eye.

“All I’m saying is, there was something in the way they spoke…”, Lorin insisted. He found, that perhaps it was true what they say. That an army should not be made of a multitude of races. He was about to serve  alongside elves, and his father warned about them. But it appears, that father failed to mention of how self-absorbed, overconfident, yet surprisingly unsensing they are to the matters about. Or perhaps, he was just handed the odd, unwise one.

“Then we might as well have at our will one last night. Look at all the tits in here!”

One such, that he now realized he would likely have to share the trenches with for, at times days on end, and would have to get accustomed to his… Particular topics of interest. 

“Is this how you call your dames in Kalimdor, my lord?”

“Do the eastern dames dress this… Freely? Nevertheless. For you I shall make an exception, lady…?”

“Altaine”

With his eye scaling up and down her locks of auburn braids that fell against the leg bare of silk, the elf perked his chest muscles, softened his tone in speech to match, and shot her dead in the eye with the smirk behind his goblet, “Lady Altaine of Pigwhistle. Would you like to laugh?”

“Oh, don’t listen to him, girl. Charm-mouthed son of a commander, that one”

“Observe, please”, he hushed towards her mouth, and in heightened spirit turned towards where the forester and his band were seated, his hands clapping in over-the-top irony, ”Story! Tell us a story!”

 

The tankards and the plates stooped silent for a moment. Heads turned to hear. And when the silence took hold, the forester – a student of the wilds, skinny and rather unkempt in his beard and his brow stood up among his lot – a fat priestess with streaks of grey in her ashy hair and bright, light eyes, and the kaldorei sentinel armored to the teeth who, being a maiden of war cut her hair short like the men, their elder magi now in white shrouds among them too, a lesser-minded village hunter with his face in scars and painted markings, and the rest of their fellowship that withstood the test of time where allies fall from one another, or are swallowed by the grave.

Age-weary and quiet in his suffering, the druid began with a shake in his voice, uncertain of the beginning.

“There we were. Plaguelands… Everything was dark. Even the Sun was darker. From nowhere they came. We were outnumbered. Some strange sort of… Creatures. Nothing we had ever seen. Evil at heart”

“Aye, I recall that day”

Lorin pieced together the two sober braincells in an attempt to listen with caution.

The woodsman continued. He spoke patiently, biding for simple words,

“We kept killing, they kept coming. For hours we stood our ground and fought these foul creatures from the pits of Hell itself”

Just past the attentive audience, locked onto the speaker in the circle of chairs where the old warriors rested, Rosaego noticed a familiar face appear to join among the crowd, undesiring to call much attention to himself. Her hands held together in a soothing grasp, she gave half a glance to the side where the duke stood by her,

“The king of Stormwind has arrived, and… Who is that with him?”

A timid presence shrouded in shadowy leather, his stare appeared faint yet sharp-eyed. Lean-figured, skimming briefly the faces in the room, the king’s escort had both his hands at a dagger, crossed below his chest. Too far modestly dressed for a kingsguard. Mainuvar considered for a moment, in an attempt to read the man’s origin. Between a moment’s glance at the thinking mind of the Queen and the duke’s aims to predict what it was her next intent entailed, he looked at the king again who was now on his own, and like soot was on his feet, the young man appeared seated and readily in conversation with the forester’s circle.

“I do not know, princess. It looks like he is friends with the Seventh Legion”

It appeared to Rosaego that the duke was right, and this only added to her confusion. She shook her head, attempting to challenge her own reasoning, “He is too young to be a veteran”

“And then, forester sir?”, intrigued to hear the rest before their senses fall to stupor in the tankards’ bottoms, the conscripts eagerly leaned forward in their seats.

“All of a sudden, I looked to my right and my corps medic was attacked – severely wounded. We couldn’t help him. He died too fast”

“Did you know?”, they heard a raspy voice from their circle, much younger than the rest of their kind, and she went on to tell, “That day was my first day on duty. I joined the effort as a healer, in his stead. My brother did not want me there. I wish I had listened. What he turned into…”

“Another!”

“Wine for all… Your mouths won’t see the bottom of the glass, lest I be kicked in the gutter!”

“War against brothers! Blood, death, scorched bodies. Suffering, illness…”

The lot in the tavern returned to their usual, as its guests continued their chatter and singing, much of it louder than the storyteller, and the beats of the drums and dancing toes quickly overpowered his unassuming voice.

“That’s him alright…”

“That’s a MAN!?!”

And just like that, the air in the tavern was of an untamed spirit again. Cheers of rowdy rascals and their maids clapping in roaring laughter soon became in ravishing waves, just like the drinks filled the empty hands. To nobody’s surprise, at the first hurl of a half-poured flagon, smashed open against a head not of its primary target, the brawl broke out between many of its dissidents, and it quickly became uncertain why, or who first started it, or whom each of the secret clans, formed in unspoken agreement: the bar-ricadors, the second floor bombardiers or the diplomats were fighting against – the latter of which were too intoxicated to even effectively participate; and, as all things in nature would have it, they, the peaceful ones, got whipped the harshest, because the rest simply did not want the battle obstructed.

“Rivers of blood”, shaking with memory, the forester interjected with blind continuation. Fighting to stand up from the smack on his brow against the floor, Lorin, lying in a cesspool of ale used the storyteller’s voice as a point of orientation. He finally stood himself up, only to see that no one dared fling a single item the old soldier’s way. He saw the forester standing completely firm, unscathed, still in his tale and set to see it to the end. Before him, a row of bare arses, of harlots in corsets of shades the sober mind could but dream up, waiting in their queued positions, trembling not at the common scuffle but at the troubling musings of the old man’s recollections.

“Seas of tears”

Carried by the legs, a lad with a knife in his hand and ired to the point of maiming was seen being tossed out by a pair of dwarves, laughing brutally as they do it, when the tavern doors opened abruptly, and a captain of the guard stepped in. And he had enough to see of a warm welcome there.

“Menedar, sir”, Lorin saluted his captain in his passing.

“Darril… Get a soddin’ bath!”

“Where is the king”, he demanded, his brow determined at that alone, uninterested in the mess about.

“By the fire, sir”, the soldier nodded towards the crown.

The captain made his way through the lot brazenly. His king seemed in thought before the flames, and he did not drink a thing. Around him, the men of the Seventh Legion stood up to salute their captain.

“The hours close in, my king”, Menedar called to him.

Anduin visibly exhaled. “Friend. It is good that you are here”, he turned to hail him welcome.

“Now… Of our allies. Have the dragon host showed?”, the captain asked.

Anduin smiled, “I was just about to introduce you lot”

And when the captain hurled a look past his steel pauldron that concealed much of the fireplace, there stood the Queen so much talked about, and one her knight, unknown to them.

“Queen Rosaego of the Dragon Isles, you and your host are welcome. I hope your stay has been well accounted for”, warmly, the king spoke, “And I trust your consort is familiar with the men of the Seventh Legion?”

It was the crest on Mainuvar’s chainmail that gave away the land from which he hails to the mind as educated as that of the king’s. Briefly, he covered it with a hand on his heart, in a hiding attempt disguised beneath a giving of honor.

The Queen stepped forth to open a friendly palm, “It is a good thing, to be among allies, king Anduin”

The men of the old regiment first heard her speak. Though somewhat young, she appeared collected to them, ready. And the hand of the king graced their most esteemed, with a word of praise in his name,

“Captain Menedar of King’s Farthing, leader of the Seventh Legion. He served as commander of the guard in Stromgarde before joining them. He scaled the ranks, and, long after the Third War, made efforts to reform the guild into a flank of mercenaries. My father, King Varian saw his expertise and recruited his band as part of special forces in the previous war. He named Menedar as their captain. And the men continued to follow him as they did before, when he led them through death. He changed the course of many battles. Never once left a man behind”

“By the Light, Anduin… You sure know how to blow things out of proportion”, Menedar’s breath lightened the air. Yet the pain in his shoulder seemed to carry burdens of too many mistakes, that could have changed not battles, but entire wars. And the ones he failed to carry on his back, weighed even greater.

The king took to introducing the company, one by one naming their deeds, as each stood himself up, paying respect to the new ally’s leader-queen,

“Sword-sister Vanya, a surviving sentinel of the Silverwing order. Not many remain after the scouring of her lands. Marshall Shonehammer Angus, field-foe of the northern wastes. Anything that walked too slow tasted his pellet right through the browbone”

“They sure had ‘em coming, lad. Put the poor bastards right back to sleep where they belong. Too many for the countin’”, boasted the hunter, gripping onto his trusty old double-barrel.

“Fades Elkheart, forester of the legion’s efforts. Once, his alchemical prowess and druidic knowledge made him the best healer in Lordaeron. Birds would gather at his feet. They still do”, the king recalled what his father had told him of the man.

Weary in the skin of his brow, and of quiet a voice, the forester who once made a fortune from the wealthy of Stormwind in procuring them with elixirs made from rarest herbs, said lowly, “Went then ago afar”

The firelight hummed louder than the chatter in the tavern at this time, and the torches outside passing by the windows, of infantry well on their early march warned of the coming day, though much the moon still held on. And as they caught his attention, the duke’s hand fell to his waist, and in the sheen they cast, like that of a beat at a drum against the glass, the captain took notice of his silvery crest,

“I know you. Your men, at Broken Shore…--”

“--And what is your name, young man? You, behind the king”, Rosaego stepped forward, intent to learn of the boy’s background. Mud was freshly on his trapper’s boots. It seemed to her, after a first few moments of waiting on his response, that he did not wish to talk, and this acting was rather unusual. His foggy eyes glanced right past her. “Smoke”, he only whispered to his chin.

A bit of quiet became of the band. The captain nudged a tad forward to the guests to tell, “We call him Smoke. I took the boy in when he escaped the attempts at his arrest. His life was one of a cutpurse, smuggling with the wrong lot in the streets… But in the guild, we found use for his… Specialty talents. Aside from his day-job as a helping hand to the forester, we came to learn that the boy knew more than to cut wood planks. It wasn’t long before he started informing the king of what, when and where his would-be assassins lay dead”

But when Rosaego opened her mouth, wishing to ask a question of the rogue, he did not linger, nor still raise his glance, but wordlessly stood away from the wall and left them all there in-between thoughts.

 

“Bards, song! Tell the song of the fallen!”

Then the bards sang, and without the flute to accompany or a dancing drum. And it was a song like one that follows a departure, of soldiers, or of corpses upon many small boats across that great river, to their place of rest, where an arrow set in flames sees its course in the bedding of the funeral wheats. To its words, all the heroes sang. To go to war could not have been, not one war in the past, that let itself unfold without each an ear to come to meet its musings, and the call of its grieving tongues. It was in there that the kinship of soldiers laid, there, where all their differences, of where they came from, or how many foes they had slain, fell to none, when the inns in foreign lands all thrummed to the voices that belted in their walls,

“Fair steeds – brave the stormward dome,

Through smoke and seas, carry my son

Beyond red fire and fallen sun,

Bear him to his elden home”

And Rosaego lifted her cheek from its weeping, and saw Mainuvar sing it too, and saw him in that song to be mourning. And he did not stray away. All but when his shoulder touched a hand, much like his, but younger than that of his own. The boy did not say a word. Not to him, but to the Queen, he curtsied,

“Your grace… Our medic came looking for you. So as I brought him here, figured we’d chat”

The duke paused for a moment, and then went to explain, “My living son, Maethrin”

Rosaego’s eyes widened with cheer, when there she could see the spark that would have been in youth in the duke, and she could not place how such a vibrant spirit dwelled in the son of the father. And the scarless cheek, decorated with but a smile as wide as the earth, in ways a mirror to his past that she did not witness. And the grandest was, that at the mention of his name, the broken duke seemed to heal of tears for a while.

“Medic?”, she wondered. She could not have suspected whose voice came to be the answer, and the world seemed smaller than ever before.

“What do you make of it, my Queen? Does it suit me well?”

She turned to see there, standing fresh and proudly her trusted court-healer Galahad, clad to the neck in field medic’s uniform. The white collar folded perfectly above the buttons on his vest, and the red stitching of a cross on the right arm. His hair, once a flow of ashy brown, now cut cleanly to a soldier’s inch, and combed just over the top. He gleamed with a sort of pride in his line of work. The weight of the limbcutter he was given, lessened at the jester of his friend who made it serve as an eyebrow-trimmer. He was fast to make friends with the fellow soldiers there; for Galahad knew, he must be one among them to build their morale whence the time comes. Though, he did not expect, that on the way to the tavern, a simple horsetrot’s ride there he would come to meet first the troublemakers of the bunch – the spoiled sole son of the duke, a travelling bard that could make one believe that he was there for their own mother’s births and took great part in it. And Lorin, the one that believed it.

 

And when the moon too had fallen beyond the shroud and the night was great in passing, many of the drunken and song-swooned had met the bottoms of their cup, and found, at last, the ends of their endurance; and were as such, at the gest of the innkeeper guided amicably to their good night, and the last of the rounds were finishing.

“I tell you, it is no-one’s bear! I say it can be tamed”

“It’s sniffing your leg, Fades”

With the maidens, the hostesses of night that called no home their own but a bedding paid in coin of their vendors, the young lads still eager to taste the bit of battle left for their own ways, to relish in beauty, and to feast upon the carnal gifts in conquest. And the few that remained to lodge and rest for the long eve were the king’s honored guests, and his closest entourage. And had they roused a commotion like the rest, the innkeeper would have surely had them removed too, kings and queens all the same.

 

The steam of a bath, dearly missed, lingered on her skin beneath the linen robe. And Rosaego thought – that it may be the last drop made with warmth when the dawn soon unfolds. When she finished her prayer, she could not yet sleep, for a thought pecked at her. The gods would show her nothing of what tomorrow would bring. And if it was, that any man knew the answer, then it must be for her to find within the scar of the man burnt by these things, and the depth of what they caused unto him. A road she was yet to take, he had walked and seen its ends, each loss engraved a void in the words of his commands to his men, a void she could not quite gaze into. So, what was it, this ravine that made them so different? And were they different, at all?

“Back there, in the keep… You lied to your soldiers”, she aimed at straight to the matter, confident that the duke knew exactly of what it was she spoke of. And he did. And he knew, too, that the only among the thousands to see this lie could be a queen that lost. That a mother who would forget the wounds on her womb, mar not the ages that pass and what names the folk may then give unto the Sun, was never a mother at all.

“They must learn to live as ghosts”, grievingly he smiled to the whetstone on his blade, “So they may die men”

Rosaego lowered her chalice to the table. A step forward, she closed in on her questioning,

“So you would have your men be like you. Become as corpses, roaming in their own oblivion”

She waited, patient for his glance to come to a raise. While she held her breath, the knight, yet unarmored, left to stand defeatedly beside her and prepared to lead her eyes towards the nightly air and away from the pain a century, hiding in his own,

“Even now, as corpse, I ache for him”

The queen and consort stood by each other in shared remorse, and the clouds in the night flew oversky. They did not hear when it was, that they became to have company.

“Commander”, Mainuvar’s shoulder sensed a light tap, “I’ve brought you back your crest”

The duke, confounded, saw his double-crossed star of silver held in thiefly palms. Its tarnished arms radiated from the heart, in which laid etched by sword and tear the ages, of battle and sorrow lived, and names the wearied mind’s resolve still remembered. And there – even now it remained, a faint gleam, the last cry of a dimming light. He took it from his hand, as the rogue stood before him, looking up at him straight through his grey eyes that stared as two hawks in hunt. Proceeding to remove the shadowy white cowl, he stole a split second’s blink at the Queen before redirecting his sights to the ground again.

“What need did you have of this?”, Mainuvar brushed away the pointless act.

“I didn’t. I thought you might not want to draw the Seventh’s attention to it. So I took it. It’s back now”

Still unsure of when the token went missing from his chest, for he did not recall leaving it elsewhere when he bathed, the duke carefully nodded in thanks to the rogue, still trying to read him with stare as Smoke leanly backed away, with his hands back at his twin daggers, and the Queen could now see up-close that they seemed to be inscribed, or etched in an unusual ink or essence, curving with a tint of blue.

“When they ask you, tell them your horsemen were slain at the crag. Say, that the magi in violet misled them”, the young man whispered his advice as he left. And though much of questions sparked in Rosaego, more yet so the knight willed to know why it was that the legion’s own member saw to respect him at first sight. There must have been more to what the boy knew of the duke, or his whereabouts in those events. Even, that he might have come to learn the other side of the story – the duke’s own, and, past all ill-doings and sins clearly wrought in hindsight, thought it to be justified.

 

Cobblestone in late midnight echoed quiet in the Old Town when Lorin, struck with hangover made for his corner bed. The alley wherein he slept, on a sloppy-laid batch of fur was the only place in the quarter where the walls were not as damp. The dung of rat droppings did not bother him. It was the peace of being left alone for once, in which he relished and thought, it might just be enough for a night’s shuteye.

 

Proceeding to drop the weaponry and the shield freshly commissioned this day, he felt his wrists aching of the metal’s weight. He might just need a bit of adjusting to it, he would go on to figure. His head felt heavy as a pile of stone as it fell on the pillowed pelt. And just when his eye finally did rest, and he would become to dreaming, the world would have none of it, and the soldier was brought right back to a wake. Woken to an unknown, yet undaunting voice, his leg felt a nibble at the blanking fur, and a cautious prod of a staff.

“Who are you?”, he was asked. Standing fast upright, he saw before him in the lampshade a foreign sort of man, much older than his own father. Street rats in groups followed in his footsteps, like they were being played to a charmer’s tune.

“Who are YOU?”, Lorin returned the sentiment, pushing off the rat that sniffed his toe in curiosity. Of mustache as two whiskers that slenderly fell down his chubby face, and eyes a squinting, curious line. The staff in his hand – more in ways, a shovel, yet the sire was dressed perkily in embroidery.

“My name is Master Bao. What are you doing in my quarter? And on my bedding”

Lorin swerved, but he did not sense aggression from the man. Though it would not be unheard of for a beating bloody to be handed in these parts of the town, if one were to cross fates with the wrong scallywag.

“I sleep here”, he told the stranger. Sweet and sour an aroma, like that of a homecooked meal came from the man’s backpack, “Do you got anything of good food in there? I’ll trade you my shoes for it. Won’t need them any longer”

He gestured beneath the corner of fur, then glanced back at the teacher’s rounded ankles. His bare soles must have hurt from the odd cobblestone. Dusting away the ticks and the moths, Lorin uncovered the layers on his bedding for the master to see, that he had not one, but two pairs – ones of leather, well-trodden out, and fresh ones, of a steel’s buckle strapping that were readily on the soldier’s feet.

“Aye. A fair trade”, the flare from his nostrils made his mustache sway, and in turn, he opened the green pack, the steam soon released from its contents, warming the early air, “Stir-fried rice. And pork… And keep the bed, for tonight”

 

The goods were exchanged between the two unusual acquaintances. Uncanny for the streets of Old  Town to have gone without the use of coin or a bloodied dirk, left as signature in the gut of the naïve.

And the soldier shared the bit of rice with the stranger, for he would not let him to hunger as he ate. But his mouth wished to devour it all sweetly, the rice, dense with sauce still hot to the palate, and the crunch of a carrot – light and buttery as cream. He thought to himself, of when it was that last he had a proper dinner, and tasted meat well cooked. The warmth of the strangers cooking did nothing but remind him of his aunty. Of how she baked her pumpkin pies just for him, and held her recipe a secret from the neighbors, so that no baker could quite steal the art of the crust she had perfected, generously filling its contents with jam she made herself. And in his mind he was back there again, in her orchard. Yet his conscience led him forward, to what she told him last, before he ventured out to the town hall to be drafted. ‘There won’t be any pie in the army, so why do you have to go?’

 

Lorin reached for the spoonful, but his hand froze in the air way before his tongue. His throat would not swallow any bit of it more. Yet opposite him, the chubby man kept at the chopstick, bowl-to-mouth to bowl again in swift flicks of a hand, filling his cheeks with scrumptious. Last when the food was gone down his belly, master Bao prepared to take his leave and let the soldier to rest on his own, unaware of the anxiety in the boy’s breath. But before he would turn, Lorin stopped him with a question,

 

“Tell me, old master. How am I to dwell in war?”

 

Master Bao turned. He saw the boy still curled up in his seat. His hand rested the staff in two thuds against the stony ground. Searching the young face for honesty, he was wise to inquire,

 

“Must you truly go?”

 

Lorin wondered for a moment. But the truth, he thought, was simpler than his own desires,

 

“In truth… I don’t wish to. But all my friends have left. Should I stay, they would make me a coward, and all of the town would mock my name”

 

The brow on Master’s Bao face furled. Dropping the bit of crumbs to the hungering rats at his feet, his voice came more serious than before, yet still not uncaring,

 

“Then would you rather let your peers mock you or lead you into something not of your own will? Is that not the greatest cowardice, the one towards yourself?”

 

“So, what, I should then just… Become a rat-tamer? Where is the glory in that?”, Lorin challenged the old man, but his arrogance was clearer than his fear.

 

“Glory?”, repulsed, the partner in debate, the old master who had seen far too many of weak ideologies, but not yet one so unchecked, went on to impart, “I feed rats cheese and sweep up their droppings. I do so to keep the streets clean. But it is not for glory. Not for myself. Not for anything or anyone other than the rats”

 

He continued after pausing to collect his thoughts, “I have tamed rats, I have farmed, and I have brewed”

 

Both ears fully in waking, the boy felt his soberness returned in a sharp instant.

 

“But I have never killed”, he told the boy.

 

As he listened, ingesting the wiseman’s ways, Lorin’s heart wondered if he should deliberate at all of his words. Perhaps there was still time to return. An hour’s time, or two away from dawn, for the clouds were red with the rising of sun. But the ships would come to take him in less, and his eyes were so very tired. What a palaver it would stir, he thought, if he were to just vanish from his post tomorrow. And what for, if his mates would not be there to see him through the mess. The captain would surely have his head, but first he would snap at the rest of them, boiling like a kettle with anger. His pockets were penniless to take him far away, his tummy still grumbled. And perhaps there, in Dorn, the soldiers eat heartily. His racing mind slowed to convince him away from a deserter’s course – no, he could be sure. The captain promised. They, the boys will be taken care of. 

------------Chapter XIII: Forging Allies------------

------------Chapter XIV: Those, who sully Titans' Names------------

------------Chapter XV: Festivities------------

------------Chapter XVI: Red Dragon Smells Blood------------

------------Chapter XVII: Blood's Burden------------

------------Chapter XVIII: March of the Mothers------------

------------Chapter XIX: Maethrin------------
------------Chapter XX: Back to Where It All Began------------
------------Chapter XXI: No True Son of Arathor------------
------------Chapter XXII: 16 Days of Siege------------
------------Chapter XXIII: Birdsong of another World------------
------------Chapter XXIV: Brothers at Rumshackle------------
------------Chapter XXV: Clad in Iron Fire------------