I am Vinz, Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer.

It's when her hands shake as she reads through Neyrelle’s words, that he finally asks her to follow. She falls into step behind him wordlessly. The streets wind and wend but the same awful destination waits for them.

It's claustrophobic having someone looming behind him. But the cadence of Kennach's steps is comforting, until they shuffle to a stop outside of the darkened archive. Lorath takes a deep breath to steady himself.

Kennach eventually follows. He stops short of Neyrelle’s resting place deeper into the building instead to watch the world fall apart on Kennach’s face.

It's the silence that crushes him. Her eyes dart wide and wild between him and whatever it is that lay behind him, trying to comprehend that the shape behind him is Neyrelle. Warded but gone.

“She stabbed him.” Lorath breaks the suffocating quiet.

“Good,” Kennach snaps.

He wishes she sobbed. Instead, she asks thoughtful things like where will she be buried, do they bury Horadrim? Will there be a pyre? Will birds pick Neyrelle’s bones clean? What happens now?

It’s been taken care of, Lorath assures her. The quiet drives her away, not before she upends a bookshelf on her way out. Her boots echo onto the street.

He looks around the archive a final time, leaving a ward to keep Neyrelle safe. The dead don’t deserve peace while the living suffer, he’d said before he remembered he had promises to keep.

-------

In the thick air of his room, he spreads out all of Neyrelle's papers he’s collected so far. Answers are just within. Possibilities. Variables. Vectors.

“Don’t do it, old man.” Neyrelle had written to him once. “Don’t lock yourself away.”

He sighs and snatches up his cloak on his way to the stables.

Kennach won’t be hard to find. Druids are bloody in their grief and demons aren’t hard to find on the best of days.

------

Standing in a field, under a moonless sky, the fires from burning structures glisten in the sweat on her body. Kennach is breathless and bloody. Broken. Furious.

A nearby farmhouse has become her abattoir. She smashes squirming, screeching demons into its stones. Turning them into a stain. It's not the first time he’s seen her covered in viscera but the only time she’s looked disinterested in it.

He approaches the druid, leaning on his polearm to curry any remaining sympathy. He's just a frail old man with a lantern to light the way on this late night. “Seven other attacks just today. Took a while to find the messiest one.”

She rolls her shoulders. Doesn’t have it in her to volley barbs by the sounds of the deep, exhausted breaths she takes and disaffected grunts. Kennach slings the blood from her hands before stomping on the remains of a skittering creature.

“Thought you were a ghost,” she says absently.

“So did Neyrelle.”

Kennach slings another demon against the stone foundations. Unmoved by the prostration.

"Let me see to those cuts," Lorath continues.

“I can clean them myself.”

“I've no doubt but someone needs to hold the light. Come.”  He swings his lantern towards the mostly upright remains of a barn. Somewhere out of the wind and the dust.

Kennach paces through rotten bales of straw. She has her own poultices and potions but it doesn’t stop Lorath from taking a seat to get a closer look at the knocks to her knuckles. Glass and horn vials click and clack in his bag, lids squeak, corks pop.

She winces when Lorath presses a bandage against her bruised cheek. It strips away any courtesy she reserved for him.

“Where were you?” She pushes his hand away from her with a sneer.

“It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t where I needed to be. I know that now.”

“You know that now?” she sputters.

Lorath shakes his head, “I knew it then.”

“She needed you. Not your scrolls or your secrets or the Horadrim,” she spits, “You, Lorath.” 

She drops her voice to a whisper, eyes narrowed, “You.” 

Kennach's spent time brewing this contempt, but she’s right. Hiding in libraries, convincing himself this is the only way he can help Neyrelle. Time he could have spent with Neyrelle instead. He didn’t.

“I told you what I was,” he reminds her. “At the cabin.”

“Craven,” she mutters.

“Aye. And rotten. But I still know how to dress a wound.”

Lorath straightens her arm and her eyes don’t leave him. He doesn’t look away because he has nothing left to hide. The bandages are halfway wound when she pushes him down into the hay and straddles him. This is a mistake they’ve made before and Heavens willing, might make again. Lorath wrestles the thick medallions on the belt around her waist. If he could get his hands on her hips, it might fix everything.

She rucks up his robes. Spits in her hand. “Tell me to stop.”

“I won’t.” Lorath inhales sharply as she runs her slicked hand along his cock.

He reaches up, pulling her closer with his grip on her neck. It's a mean and hurt and needy thing between them.

Kennach kicks off her britches and braces her bandaged hand against his chest before sinking onto him with a sigh. She drives a simple, desperate rhythm against him. She is warm and wet. She smells like a bonfire. He drags her mouth back to his, and digs his fingers into her thighs when he comes. He doesn’t bother to ask the same of her, he knows better. Stupid answers for stupid questions.

She catches her breath and stands, cinching her trousers up - she's not lingering.

“I’ve a room, if you want company.” He smooths down his robes. Repositions his cloak, reties his belt. He knocks straw from his shoulders.

“Where?”

“East of the plaza, ten minutes ride.”

She begrudges him a nod and is gone.

“Where were you?” She had asked him, standing in a hellsbegotten field at the arse end of the night in the shite end of Ked Bardu. Making him account for himself. For Neyrelle. For her.

I still can't believe that Tyrael's back, oh my god. I've kept my expectations for the new campaigns low, because Vessel of Hatred's campaign was underwhelming for me (speaking as a Lorath fan hoping for more Lorath content lmao).

And this cutscene, hoo boy, I've already rewatched it like 50 times. Lorath's breaking point, the Wanderer rushing after him, Tyrael returning (looking regal and kind), the music (oh my god, the music) and MOST IMPORTANTLY: THIS HUG! THIS STUPID, PERFECT, TENDER HUG!!! OUGH, MY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN FINALLY ANSWERED.

I'm still not sure how to feel about the reason for his long abscence. I always expected something, well, more dramatic, I suppose. But after reading The Lost Horadrim, it also feels plausible. Also, he's back, that's the only thing I care about