The Stables

((Saving a piece from forum creep. The prompt was to write about our mounts.))

. . . . . As the cursed thing he was, the mysterious adjunct weaponsmith for the Light's Blade remained so far removed from his own people that he did not even know they had stables - and even if he had known, he had long since sworn off most visits to the Aldor tier after High Priestess Ishanah had declared him unworthy of even a simple traveler's blessing. Hadeon did not want what stained his soul to touch those exiles who remained in the Light, so he kept to himself until the loneliness and solitude grew so overbearing that he terrified himself by seeking a few hours among the Light's Blade. Given the images which regularly assailed his mind whenever he was in the shining city, he tended to avoid Shattrath altogether most of the time. No, his mount - like his rider - lived alone and isolated.
. . . . . Zangarmarsh lacked the memories and images many other places on Draenor held for Hadeon, and so it was a smallish cave in the southern mountains of Zangarmarsh where he and Thubaab kept some semblance of residence when he was not in Stormwind or Ironforge, picking the brains of the dwarves for alloy research. Hadeon was a latecomer to metalworking, but the lack of a need for sleep and the need to bide his time until he could fulfill what he remained in this tainted shell to do meant he had gotten quite good at it over a short span of years. What had been a hobby in life was an all-consuming mission now. Scattered around the cave were linen and wool sacks of different ores and powdered minerals. A stack of books - some bound up in leather, some in linen, and some truly more hastily-bound paper than anything else - sat next to an extinguished lantern on the cave's dirt floor. A broken shard of mirror rested as a paperweight atop an intricate chart of the material properties of the various phases of elementium and obsidium at temperatures above ambient.
. . . . . In the farthest corner of the cave, dried rushes from the marsh had been scattered to make a comfortable place for the immense greenish-brown elekk to rest. A stand wrought of artless scrap adamantite held a feed sack high enough for the elekk to eat comfortably. Several thick blankets (which smelled of an elekk) were neatly folded near a large shovel (which smelled like the other end of an elekk). Thubaab was clean, his food fresh, and he was free to wander out of the cave and into the marsh as much as he liked - which wasn't terribly often, since he never could get himself proper purchase on the swampy land which started about a quarter-mile from the cave.
. . . . . At this very moment, Hadeon has planted a backside covered in thick, protective metalworker's leathers on the cave floor next to his settled elekk. He leans back to rest against the beast's broad ribs. The adamantite fused to the back of his left shoulder is chilly - as always - but Thubaab has long since learned to tolerate it as the price to be paid for pats and hand-fed glowcaps. Thubaab is exceptionally fond of the glowcaps. "Looks like a lot more'n I thought made it," Hadeon muses aloud in the sort of Common one expects to hear from lowly soldiers. "I think the shock of it made 'em looney, though." Thubaab snorts a response which could mean anything from 'By Velen, you must be right, old chap' to 'Shut up and give me another glowcap.' It's probably the latter. Hadeon rolls his eyes skyward for a moment and mutters, "It's already been 'stablished that I'm crazy, so don't even start that conversation again." Thubaab gets another glowcap. It is late afternoon and, except for the dead man talking to himself in the cave and the occasional excited wuffle of the elekk seeking treats, quiet. Rather typical, really, for any given snapshot in the life of this exile among exiles.

((In my forum RP post about our mounts, I wrote about some of the metallurgy journals Hadeon keeps. Inspired by Vitaska and powered by a whole lot of tracing, cool fonts, and awesome brushes from DeviantArt, I decided to try my hand at reproducing one page of his journal. Huge props to anyone who knows where I found that diagram from (hint: my materials science class inspired it), and even more bonus points if you know why the point Hadeon circled is important.))

A Strange Voice in Shattrath

((Archiving a written IC reaction to an in-game RP to save it from forum creep.))

. . . . . Driven to the extremity of loneliness, the decayed, angry adjunct smith for the Light's Blade left his elekk Thubaab with a bucket of glowcaps to keep him happy and braved a forty-minute walk to Shattrath City. He hated it there - all those memories and ghosts haunting the place - but he needed the company in ways he had not comprehended when he was living. Never again would he be the gregarious, social creature of his last twenty-seven thousand years... Yet he found his grip on himself faltered if he spent more than a few months in isolation.
. . . . . A rock jamming into the crevice of a permanently-cracked left hoof forced him to stop just shy of the northern bridge into the city. He cursed as he bent to dig it out, and that's when he heard the whisper: "Death is so vivid in my mind now that I fear it has drowned out the memory of anything else. When will we be free? Is anyone coming?"
. . . . . Hadeon glanced skyward and - well out of earshot of the bridge guards - muttered a response in flawless Orcish which was both vocal and a mental sending, "Retz? Quit messing with me. I thought we agreed you would shut up." There was no reply.
. . . . . The stone cleared from his hoof, he set out across the bridge, stopping halfway to peer down at the Lower City below. A ghost bloodied in vivid, glistening navy was milling in the throng of living traders and refugees, and made his stomach - or what was left of the icy, decayed mass where it would have been - roil. "Damned cesspool city," he muttered in Draenei, ducking away from the edge of the bridge before the ghost could look up and notice him. Once across the bridge, he headed around to the nearest entrance to the Terrace of Light. The walking dead man had stood before A'dal twice; it was agony, sheer skin-flaying agony. Standing in the entryway with part of the wall to shield him, he grit what remained of his rotting teeth together against a burn like lying face-down on the coals of a forge and tried to remember what it felt like to bask in the Light.
. . . . . Then it came again, several voices whispering at once: "To find the stalker, you must ask the earth she walks upon. Beg the wind she is carried by. Bargain with the water she bathes in. And beseech the fire of her heart. The answers shall come in the land of the ancestors..."
. . . . . Hadeon looked skyward again and backed away from the entry to the Terrace, his large, gnarled hands coming up to press the linen wrappings around his biceps into his cracked skin. Wasn't me, goat. Angrily, he hissed and backed away farther, heading towards the Scryers' Tier as he thought fiercely in Draenei towards the unknown source, Nether-blasted ghosts! Get back to the Lower City cesspool where you belong!
. . . . . And then the tenuous mental connection he held to the Light's Blade erupted into activity, assailing him with more voices - all of which had heard the same speech about this stalker. It almost felt like the days of sharing cramped spaces on the vessel with his vindicator detail. Before he could stop it, a sob tore from his parched throat. The noise itself was enough for him to clamp down on his control, strap some mental steel to his backbone, reassert the chill of death on the soul trapped inside. Still, the terrible maw of solitude gaped behind him, ready to shred his control again. Tentatively from behind the thick mental wall he kept between himself and his comrades, he reached out for the first time in...ever: "Would you like aid?"