#9.0

The magister reached out, taking the scroll gingerly, looking between it and its giver in bafflement, “Are you certain? If this falls into the wrong hands…”

“It will not. You had the power in your hands, remember. And you chose your ally over expediency. You can be trusted.”

Breaking the seal with the reverence due in such a moment, Luminash nodded, taking in the words on the page:

Senaril Dawnwing.

Devoted to his people, all his deeds furthered their cause. The wilds left uncharted were laid bare by the stroke of his pen, expanses of forest carved away for monuments of lasting stone. The soil was broken for his own glory in the end, not that of his people.

In exile, he led his House in pursuit of a new power to sustain them, lest they wither away. Power was wrung from the dark earth, and into their minds it seeped. Among few others did he make his escape.

In his final days, he became a weapon of his people, one wielded honorably. Weapons ought take no pleasure, yet rejoice he did in searing flesh from bone. To secure his legacy in his new kingdom, he built a monument to cruelty.

A man of duty; a hoarder of honors.

A caring patriarch; a boot on the neck of his own children.

Honorable; bloodstained.

For his devotion, drive to protect his people, and his service, he deserves redemption. For his avarice, cowardice, and cruelty, he has come to us. Let these be washed away and let him be made anew.

“There is a story behind those words, one not told on the stone, as well. My crimes were many, but one was my greatest source of guilt.”

                                        *****************************

Senaril Dawnwing stood, arms crossed behind his back, in the center of his father’s grand observatory in Zin’azshari. Underneath its darkened dome, images of Azeroth’s night skies glimmering in goldleaf upon it, one could almost forget the horrors raging just outside those walls but for the quaking as infernals rained down. Behind the closed lids of his eyes, Senaril could see the felfire, the crater left behind, and the stony forms of the Legion’s beasts rise. Why had Lanestrian not come? He thought for sure that his invitation - his taunts - would bring a man so vain running to defend what honor he thought he had left.

Another quake, and a muffled sound of fighting beyond the marble walls. Amidst those sounds came too the near-imperceptible thump of slippered feet on marble in the observatory’s entryway.

Turning, eyes opening to expose the arcane power Senaril held barely in check - he was prepared to do what had to be done - the younger Dawnwing greeted the newcomer, “So good of you to join me, father.”

“I always suspected you lacked the will to seize what our people deserve, Senaril,” Lanestrian replied, ignoring his son’s jab, “You would see those forest-dwellers and their peasant defectors tear down everything I have built!” The sound of his sword slipping from its sheath resounded off the marble surfaces of the observatory.

“You? While you stared up at the sky, I mapped our empire! Those forest-dwellers already owe me for my aid, and will owe me more when all is done here!” Senaril’s hands flared with flames, nearly white so great was their heat, filling the chamber’s doorway with an inferno, cutting off Lanestrian’s way back, “You will drag the House down with your demon-consort Queen, and I will not let everything I have done fall with you!” The next burst of flames flew from Senaril’s fingertips.

A flick of his sword, an arrogant smirk on his face, and Lanestrian slashed through the flames, the magic infusing his weapon - and himself - dispelling his son’s attack, “Oh please, Senaril! I would have expected more tact from you than such a sloppy attempt! Do try again!” He continued striding towards his son, seemingly unfazed.

With a shout of barely-contained fury, Senaril unleashed another gout of flame, and another, and another. Lanestrian, remaining cool, cut through each with ease, his head tilted to the side as if curious, that look on his face that had always driven his son to anger. He had always been so insufferably smug - he was never wrong, never the lesser man, always had the other Highborne eating from the palm of his blasted hand. Even now, on the eve of the Legion lapdogs’ downfall, one would never guess he was on the losing side.

“I trained you better, Senaril. Everything I did - and you know this - was for us, for our family. Do not throw it away!” As he drew near, Lanestrian lashed out with his blade, a thin silvery thing, but it was hardly a threat. The blade-like thrust of arcane power it sent forth, however, was.

Blinded by his anger, Senaril did not notice until too late that he was bleeding, a gash along his side. As he stumbled back, the floor of the observatory shook violently, sending both him and his father reeling. Pushing himself up, he realized that the entire building had shifted, and the sounds of fighting outside had grown more intense. Something was happening. His father had noticed too, eyes wide.

There was a great disturbance in their source of arcane power, as if what they both sought to hold in their hands was being forcibly torn away, and while it remained in their grip, every moment cut into their flesh ever further.

Leaping forward, a momentary advantage gained in Lanestrian’s shock, Senaril crashed into the elder man, knocking him to the floor and his mageblade out of reach. Magic would not be the weapon that saved the Dawnwing name this day. Fury welled in the son as his fists rained upon his father, ignoring cries for mercy. His mind was filled only with anger - his whole life, charted and constrained for the House, never for himself; a loving, kind father on the surface, but distant beneath, depths unseen by any around him; that insufferable arrogance when he just knew himself to be right.

In the end, as the resistance fled Zin’azshari, Senaril alone emerged from the ruined observatory, blood staining his robes, his knuckles, and his face, eyes cold and dead within, all the anger burned away, leaving an empty husk.

                                       *****************************

“I was once a cartographer, as you might have guessed,” Grigori laughed, “I looked to the earth while Lanestrian looked to the stars, and oh, how that earth could glorify me, make my name resound.”

“What of the rest?” Luminash rolled the scroll back up tightly, and with a few flicks of his finger, something shifted around the seal, and it was once more good as new - the very same as a moment before.

“I assume you know the history of the Highborne’s landing in what the humans named Tirisfal, yes?” The Venthyr’s face appeared pained, as if speaking of these deeds even without proclaiming them formally disrupted something vital within him, “The Highborne struggled without the Well, and so we reached deep into the earth in that dark place. What we found drove many to madness, and yet I drank deep. Experimented on those who had pledged themselves to the House. Abused their trust, only to run, a coward, when it all came crashing down.” 

Grigori twisted his lips, looking like he was about to spit in disdain, “And when the man I was fled with those few who remained in his care, he was shocked when they distanced themselves. He threw everything he had left into carving out a new homeland, and what joy he took in watching Amani corpses burn. By then…” He sighed, “He was hollowed out. Nothing was left that could feel remorse, for he had sacrificed everything to his own glory. And in the throes of his personal war he perished, and…” A theatrical wave of his hand, a pointed change of perspective, “Here I am.

“I felt no remorse, no regret when I arrived here. Only outrage that I must be subjected to the will of another. Outrage that the Venthyr dared accuse me of anything. I did not realize until the Inquisitors had spent who knows how long wringing manifestations from me that I had become everything I found unbearable in Lanestrian.”

“It is never too late, then, is it?” Luminash threw back the rest of his tea, some of the weight his worries pressed down upon him having lifted for now, “Thank you sharing this, Grigori. I may never understand fully what it means to give me that trust, but I can at least try.” He was about to say more, when he was interrupted by the approach of crunching boots grinding against the sand blown in from the Ember Ward.

“Ah, Nelyne! So good of you to join us! Please, do take a seat.” Grigori smiled broadly, motioning to another seat at the table, “The Mad Duke’s pet dredgers have been keeping us in a steady supply of liquid shadows while we await the main event.”

Nelyne, rather than sitting, or responding to Grigori’s invitation, rested her hips against the table, leaning a clawed hand on the surface and drumming her fingers as she spoke, “I am glad to have found the two of you, even if you aren’t making yourselves at all useful.”

Luminash opened his mouth to respond, then shook his head, reconsidering, “It is good to see you too, Nelyne. How is the turnout?” He jerked his head subtly in the direction of the Bridge of Banishment, the once-grand structure that connected Sinfall and the Castle Nathria, “Have many come to gawk at the Master’s vanquishers?”

She nodded grimly, lips pursed over her jagged teeth, “Oh yes. And among them, I suspect, are loyalist infiltrators. Once you lot have finished sipping tea, we’ve orders: patrol the perimeter and make sure any and all mirrors are secured. There have been disturbances in the network as of late, and while they seem to have been scoured, we cannot be sure.”

Grigori’s face nearly split in two from his toothy grin, “Infiltrators! In the Ember Court! Oh, this will be a delight! It has been so long since I’ve had a decent day of drama among the nobility.”

Nelyne rolled her amber eyes with a scoff, though to Luminash’s ear it seemed more playful than anything else, a quirk of her lips directed at Grigori before she pushed herself from the table and strode off, “You both performed admirably in Nathria. Let us not grow lax at home, now!”

The magister’s companion finished his tea and set the cup delicately on the table, grin still plastered on his face, “This should be good. Anyone who is anyone will be here today, and I suspect we may be able to tease out some lingering traitors to Revendreth while we are enjoying the festivities. But, you were saying, Luminash?”

The magister’s eyes drifted towards the tendrils of black in the distance, the Maw looming beyond the edges of Revendreth, and he shook his head, “Only that I ought to tell you of the good things as well, sometime.”

Grigori stood, a fluid movement that scarcely disturbed the chair he had been sitting in, “I would very much like that. It gives me hope, Luminash, that - while I may have found my lessons here - the legacy Senaril left may be some good after all.”

Luminash’s smile was warm and genuine, but his face quickly took on a look of resolve, “I am glad for it. But now, there is work to be done, is there not?”