It was well past noon when Hesterlynn finally stirred.
Her head throbbed with each sluggish beat of her heart. She clutched the icy weight in her chest.
Where am I?
A bed, but not her own. The room was spartan, almost clinical, devoid of any decoration save an ornate vanity by the window, with curtains drawn shut against the red dusted sunlight of the Eastern Plaguelands. A silver tray held a cold tea service and a vase bursting with colorful wildflowers: violet dreamfoil, white peacebloom, crimson roses–
Zelion’s instructions had been simple: “You are to offer your assistance to Lord Bloodrose in whatever manner he sees fit.”
Hester willed the Light to the awful ache in her skull, and caught sight of her chipped manicure. Beneath her nails was dirt and shredded skin.
She lifted the dull linen sheets. The fabric of her dress was rife with wood splintered runs and ruined by dirt. A gorey spill of dried blood ran the length of her ruched bodice.
It was not her own.
She should have never gone to that party.
Lord Bloodrose had dressed outlandishly in ruffles, cogwheels and his workshop goggles. He requested she wear “something poofy”. She obliged in the form of a tea-length, robin’s egg frock. The billowing skirt was made of layer upon layer of airy chiffon. A demure neckline shrouded her secrets but exposed her pronounced collar bones and milk white shoulders.
The confessor stumbled from the bed, tripping over her ivory shoes. The right one was missing its low heel; the left had a rusty smudge over the toes.
She lurched to the vanity, gripping the edge of the woodwork as the world swam.  Â
Her reflection was haggard but whole. Bruises circled both biceps and wrists like bracelets. Impossibly long blonde hair, free from its styled ties, fell in haggish curls peppered with wilted white flowers and matted with blood. Dark circles framed the candlelight glow of her eyes, dimmed and glassy.
She looked monstrous.
The cleric swallowed hard and tore off the damaged dress.
The diamond cut crystal embedded in her chest still slept in its nest of black veins.
Hester was quick to shroud the Mournstone in a cozy sweater; one long and shapeless on her willowy body that fell just above the knees. As she slid into a borrowed pair of house slippers, she inspected the punctures and tears in her ill-fated dress until her hand fell on a disc of cool metal.
"... As a bit of a thank-you for attending this lousy party with me."
A brooch forged in bronze and plated by gold. The detailed cast depicted a bouquet of flowers, unpainted, but remarkably detailed-- Plaguebloom, Arthas' Tears and dreamfoil, all with a backdrop of Sungrass stalks. On close inspection, each squared blossom spun as a cogwheel, parting the bouquet like a curtain to reveal a greater detail beneath.
"It's just what I thought of when I thought of you… I hope you like it."
To think that Hesterlynn Mournvalor was naught but a bouquet of pretty flowers was sure to be a mistake, or so Lord Bloodrose must have thought, for behind the bouquet was an intricate knife with a pearl handle and a blade of sharpened steel.
She pinned it to her sweater before bustling out of the bedroom and down the hall on legs still wobbly as a newborn fawn’s.
A saw hummed behind the double doors of his workshop. Hester sucked a sharp and desperate breath before wrapping her scraped knuckles on the woodwork.
Crash! Metal rang in the air. Lord Bloodrose swore loudly, then swung wide the door.
What a mess! Him, and the workshop too!
Tool chests lay opened, gaping like baby birds. Wires hung from the ceiling, thick black and coiled like snakes hanging from a tree. A mechanosuit stood vigil in the rear, headless and tethered like an ancient effigy reclaimed by vines.
And then Lord Corwin Bloodrose--no, Cory. An ugly bruise painted the bridge of his nose shades of red and violet. A bandage bound the worst of it, acting as a stint and giving padding to the scratched glasses resting gingerly atop.
"Hester!" he greeted, boyishly bright. "Come see this!"
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He shook the memory from his head and threw open wide the door.
He always hoped she would visit his workshop.
Mess that it was!
She arrived at his mansion in the remote mountains of the Plaguelands a month prior, moon-eyed and on stilt-like legs with a sungrass joint tucked behind her ear.
She was a bit stiff, at first, but he was accustomed to that; his family was, after all, enormously wealthy and powerful even among their fellow Sin’dorei.
Or at least Corwin Bloodrose Senior was.
The facade was easy enough to crack. When he couldn't recall the honorific the Mournvalor family title demanded, he took to using several-- and the first of many inside jokes was born. After a few bowls of Horde-e-o’s supped in his Observatory together and a night in which he schooled her in the basics of Hearthstone, the awkwardness of their first meeting melted away.
And awkward it had been. For a fleeting moment, as they sat across from one another at the dinner table, he was convinced she was sent to surveil his research-- his real research, not the Mournstone drivel he did for his father nor the hogwash he used as a distraction for the masses.
And she--
“I think I was sent here to die.”
He could feel it, like a beast lurking in the dark outside a frosted window pane. It began meager, plaintive like a cat demanding entry from the cold; then, the further his fingers trailed down her split bodice, the more fervid it became-- like claws scoring the arcane defenses of his mind.
But proof lay beneath the high neck and ruffles of her stately blouse: a Mournstone, as promised by the letters of Zelion and Corwin Bloodrose Senior.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, but it wasn't her husband's handiwork to which he referred.
It was a golden curl, painted warm by the nearby candle light.
“You have beautiful hair.”
Then-- “Sorry,” he professed for the inappropriate nature of his remark.
And, “Sorry,” she echoed with a wild stare as she slipped the knife into his gut.
How awkward! Until they shared a laugh as she tidied his weak attempt to mend the wound with Holy magic.
“Lady Dame Admiral Hesterlynn Mournvalor! First you stab me, then you apologize and heal me!”
Because she was right!
She was right to act in self defense. She was sent to him to die!
And he was to be her executioner.
“I really don't know how you feel about me at this point. You'd better stab me one more time for good measure!”
“How strange that you should take your time.”
He shook the thought from his head and threw open wide the door.
"Lady Dame Admiral Hesterlynn Mournvalor!” He ushered her into his shop, where a jazzy, swingy mix crackled on the gramophone.
An ugly bruise painted the bridge of his nose shades of violet and red, like a galaxy born of brute and malice. A bandage obscured the worst of it, acting as a stint and padding to the scratched glasses resting gingerly atop.
"I wanna show you something!”
He took her by the wrist and lead her through a narrow path, between tables scattered with gears; between a cooled blacksmith's furnace with a glass-blowing port and an anvil, draped with hooded leather gloves; over the spilled bits and teeth and the toolchest that had fallen; between hanging lights and lamps, all of which could be drawn closer on a gliding rail; and finally, in the rear of the shop beneath the shadow of a mechanized colossus, to an unassuming, messy desk scattered with books, a tobacco pipe laced with mana thistle, a faded photograph of two dark haired boys and their prized Hearthstone cards, and a dozen half-finished, hand-sized projects with dead lights and exposed copper wires.
Cory pushed up the slipping glasses on the bridge of his broken nose and plucked a wrist plate from the center of it all.
Thil paused his mad scribbling on the bar napkin.
“Whoa, hang on–” he fixed Bruce with a wild eyed stare. “First of all, he called her a what?”
A moment of silence was begged when the next round of Great Sea lagers arrived, a long draught taken before he continued: “--And second of all, you called her your what?”
“Not important. Jus’ keep your eyes–”
“--ears?”
“--on the story. So anyway, I’m strippin’ clothes and Zelion had enough–”
“Imagine!” Thil snorted a laugh.
“Shut up and listen–”
It began with a sharp chill in the air, sapping heat until a thin layer of frost coated each stained glass window. Torches snuffed, plunging combatants in darkness, save where Elune’s red-dressed glow swayed on the ballroom floor.
That was when he saw it: there was no telltale glint of steel in the darkness. The twelve soldiers brandished sheathed blades and wooden bucklers painted with a black and gold castle turret-- the Mournvalor family crest.
A woody, earthy smell filled the air, like oak but sweeter. Rowanwood.
“The worgen’s weakness. It melts through fur and flesh alike.”
The sounds of transformation were indistinguishable from a man being torn limb from limb. Joints cracked and formed anew, sinew and muscles crawling like spiders across a web to claim their length. Corded muscles launched the newly formed monster, not at Zelion, but in a wide arch over his head to vanish among the shadows on the wall.
“Beast,” Zelion spat derisively.
Hairs stood on the back of a soldier’s exposed neck. The shadow descended from the wall and teeth sank between vertebrae, puncturing with airy ease. Armor clattered as the soldier collapsed.
Steam rose from the blood pooled on the pinewood floor; pale, ghastly wisps draining life into the chilled air.
“One wrong move and I was dead.”
“Protect his lordship!” barked the commander; he of the greatest courage. An old soldier, past his prime but keen of mind, took up Zelion’s right flank, golden eyes wild.
The rest fell in line like herded cattle, their terror barely suppressed.
The soldier’s wooden blade howled madly in the dark. It was all he could do to keep snapping teeth and rending claws from his throat as the wolfman’s weight bore down on his shield, smoke rising from a boiling palm.
The wild swing singed fur off the monster's arm, forcing Bruce to retreat back to the cover of the moonless shadows.
“Truth is, I was just stalling. I think Zelion knew that.”
“Disappointing,” Zelion tutted. “You’re all quivering at a single dog.”
The lord’s small fist clenched the air like he caught the tails of balloons.
The old soldier froze abruptly, his blade dropping to the floor. Necrotic magic coalesced just above his heart. A cry died, strangled in his throat.
 Zelion’s fingers squeezed and one by one, a steady series of pops echoed within each golden cuirass. One by one his men collapsed around his feet. Blood oozed from the chinks in their armor. Blood and something worse.
Something black and fetid.
The stench of rotten meat and withered fruit was immediate and overwhelming.
“I had to strike. But what I didn't realize at the time was... each one of them had a Mournstone implanted in them–”Â
A final lunge from the shadows. A flash of teeth in a silent snarl, slavering for Zelion’s delicate throat.
“--just as I did.”
Bruce’s breath no longer came out in hot puffs; frost coated his lungs as his death sentence in his chest thrummed.
It twisted under his skin in mirror to Zelion's dainty wrist, as though he had a safe dial pinched between thumb and forefinger.
A pustule burst. A wave of nausea drove the worgen to the ground. Astral energy dimmed, leaving his eyes cold, gray and unfocused.
The commander rose to his feet, eyes reignited with lichfire.
Zelion’s fingers sprang open. Bruce sucked in a desperate breath as the necromancer disappeared down the hallway, leaving a simple command in his wake: “Kill him.”
"But the Fury of Goldrinn is fiercest when protecting the ones you love."
Skeletal hands clawed at Bruce, dragging him down among corpses and flesh sloughed from bone in rivers of pitch.
Bruce looked down at his arm. His skin was pale as the waning moonlight, black veins writhing with every weakened pulse of his heart. His head swam, vision dim and distant.
Bruce looked up. “The Red Witch. What do you know of her?”
The little lord pursed his lips.
“The legend of E’Andusore… The whore told you, did she?” The shards of whispering shadow framing his head began to spin, building momentum. “It’s a tale lost to most of my people.
“She was a vicious crone who haunted a powerful magic circle; she and her nightmare hound, Narral’thix. The sacred site held the key to Life after Death; the natural cycle made manifest in mana. A power she used to butcher innocents and turn farmland fallow.
“As the story goes,” the lord smiled grimly. “She ate the dog’s heart to tap into the circle’s power, raising a mighty tree surrounded by a bramble thicket miles wide that only she could pass through unscathed.
“Until the Lady came with fire. A mother desperate to save her son.”
“Three times I've asked about that story now. The first time I heard it, She shared Her memory with me-- that old Oak Tree.”
Bruce's jaw set as the plaintive mew of a kitten long passed echoed in his mind. In that mansion, where Zelion’s family portraits lined the walls and an Oak Tree split the marble floors, he'd heard her cries.
Her coat was mottled brown with camouflage not yet shed. Milk teeth flashed in the darkness. Paws too big for her scrambled, begging purchase.
Emerald magicks flared outwards from his touch, along the grooves of the Oak’s bark, scrawling up and down the trunk. A whistling shimmer grew twice as loud from below, a tremor taking the ballroom floor felt up through the soles of his feet to his knees; enough to require bracing but not enough to steal his legs out from beneath him. The floor splintered beneath the kit’s paws, a desperate cry falling away into the darkness below until there was nothing left to be heard but the burgeoning hum of the awakened tree.
She regarded him with a tingle that remained in his fingertips and pricked at his thumbs. The Oak spoke only by willing a single word to the forefront of his mind: Vengeance.
Her bark served him as second eyes, racing down Her formidable length past the vine covered, stone walls of the cellars, deeper still past crypts, dirt, stone, bone until they reached where Her strongest roots anchored. She was framed by a circle of fallen trees, Her roots wrapped protectively over an ancient altar of jasper. The dead lynx cub’s broken back never made it to the stone.
And then the Oak stood silent.
 “I was wondering if I’m no better off than that kitten when Kallarel--”
The smell of sulfur filled the worgen's lungs. Hellfire: the scent which lingered as the bramble brands crawled into skin; the scent which pierced the air with every lit cigarette. He focused on the sickening sweetness alone.
One by one, the arch over his heart gave way as Kallarel tore into the hallway, a manifested monster hot on her high heels with a blazing green gem alight in a chest once empty.
By the third spout of blighted blood, the witch was upon them; beauty, beast and burden all.
By the fourth, her hands were alight with a green fire to match the flame licking the demon’s panting tongue.
By the fifth, the lord’s prone figure was cloaked in cold shadow, absconded without a trace apart from the faintest flicker of rot against the nostrils before the witch could claim him.
And as the last of Zelion’s void crystals burst in Bruce’s chest, the haphazardly placed shard split in two with a deafening crack.
“I can’t... I can’t have died that night. I didn’t. But I dreamed. I dreamed... I was in a house-- the house in Gilneas. With my wife-- with my dead wife, Sophia.”
It was shamefully small, that old cabin in Gilneas. Sophia had given up everything for him-- lands, titles and inheritance. In exchange, Bruce had built a shack with leaky walls and slept with her on the far side of the kitchen for fourteen years.
Now they sat across from one another at the dinner table.
“I thought it might come to this.”
Bruce felt sick. There was a teacup in front of him, which rattled quietly.
“I miss you,” he said. Her face was just as he remembered it; prominent cheeks smattered with freckles and a button nose.
She rolled her eyes-- big, stormy and blue. The same ones he saw every time he looked at his daughter. “You’re doing fine without me.”
“I’m sorry--”
“Don’t be. I mean it. I'm proud of how Lizzie turned out. But if you want, you can join me now. You can rest.”
The knot in his stomach twisted.
“You don’t have to,” she went on. “Not everyone gets a choice, but you will.”
The tips of his fingers felt cold as ice. The table trembled below.
She smiled. It was warm and remarkably genuine-- like a candle in the night. “I know this is what you want, Bruce.”
The support beams above his head cracked. Dust fell in a plume, rippling his tea.
“Just know--” she hesitated, expression soft-- “you’re messing with powers you don’t understand. The Gods may never forgive you for this.”Â
“You’re pullin’ my leg!” Thilonus balked. “Zelion Mournvalor is a necromancer?”
“Yeah, and a roight prick.”
“So how did you get out alive?” Thil’s brows furrowed, casting a careworn shadow. “You and my sister?”
“Well, she needed me.”
The Rowanwood scabbard clattered as its tip was dragged through an inky river of blood and pitch, painting the floor like a quill. The commander raised it high above his head, silhouetted by Elune’s watchful eye.
Cold, bony digits of eleven dead men sank into the worgen’s hide, digging Cursed trenches through ashen fur.
Over the stench of death permeating the room, he caught her scent; sharp like a struck match.
Bruce snarled, eyes ignited and teeth flashing in the dark.
The dulled blade sang through the frost-bitten air, caught on the golden breastplate of another soldier.
Bruce thrust his weight forward until the sheath shattered, impaling the corpse, then pinned both under a massive paw. He lunged for the commander’s throat, filling his mouth with the vertebrae exposed between helm and breastplate.
The commander rattled, his head tore free from his shoulders with an echoing crunch.
With claws still digging into his hide like ticks, Bruce leapt through the nearest stained glass window.
"Zelion was takin’ the hallways. There's a shorter path… if you're a good climber.”
Platinum blonde hair clung to Caelia’s sweat soaked forehead. Like a pianist whose instrument was armed with a bomb triggered by a single misstroke, her fingers hovered above Kallarel’s chest, just above the Mournstone planted there, a different school of magic summoned to each digit.
“Once I begin, the process cannot be stopped,” Caelia had explained as Kallarel lay comfortably on the bed.
“That’s why I’m so expensive! Everything must be maintained perfectly. One mistake and you and I both will have our souls torn asunder in the most horrible, painful fashion imaginable. Like-- have you ever seen someone take the most gorgeous, vibrant, bright yellow dress and then pair it with purple shoes? Yeah, it will be like that. Except we actually will die. Like, literally.”
And thus, when clawed fingers slid the window open with a squeal, Caelia swore. She swore again as a bloodied monster poured itself upon the floor, and a third time (this time with a yelp) as the creature cracked and melted into a very naked man.
"What the fuck--" she began when Bruce interrupted her.
"Miss Mourningvale," he breathed, diving to the bedside. Kneeling beside her, he looked like hell: a pallid complexion only made dark veins crawling along his jaw and over the left side of his cheek that much more obvious. Even his hair had lost its luster. Only his eyes remained acute and thoughtful as ever.
“I took her hand in mine–”
"Zelion is here," Bruce told her, knitting his fingers with hers. His digits sapped at her warmth. It was soon apparent why; necrotic magic pulsed in his chest, dispersing ever since Zelion's twisting grasp.
"Sir, you need to--” Caelia started.
"I'll hold him off," he said with easy confidence, "but I might not make it back to you. Just in case, there's some… some things I want to tell you."
“There wasn't time to hesitate.”
“Miss Mourningvale, don't move or–!”
“You–” Kallarel snapped tersely at Caelia. “--focus.”
“And you…” It was breathed quietly to Bruce as she squeezed his fingers. “Go on.”
“I told her all I’d been wanting to tell her–”
"Great," Caelia groaned, "I've always wanted to be part of a deathbed love confession in a cheesy romance novel!"
He squeezed her fingers in return, a soft smile gracing chapped lips. His eyes flicked down her form. "I promised myself the first time I saw you on a nice bed like this, I'd ravage you."
"Oh for fuck's sake--!" Caelia was promptly cut off by a ssh! hissed through Kallarel’s teeth, sharp enough to slit a throat.
Bruce brought her hand to his lips, just close enough that he could feel the warmth of her there. "If I don't make it back to you, then I'm sorry I wasn't in your life longer. I wish we could have been... Well, I wish we could have been together."Â
“Maybe in the next life,” Kallarel wept.
The next words came out more clumsily. "I have a daughter," he confessed. "Elizabeth Hawkins. Lizzie. In Stormwind. If you ever want to... To check up on her. For me."
“Of course.”
"And..." The hand not tangled in hers came up to cup her cheek. There wasn't time, but he hesitated anyway. Only for a moment, as he drank in her features.Â
“And, finally–"
He pressed his lips to hers, softly.
It wasn't with the ravenous need of a beast nor the claim of a lover; it was mournful, vulnerable, and needy-- like he never wanted it to end.
He didn't have the strength to break it until they were both breathless. But then, when neither of them could go on, it came to an end as all things do. He drew back and admired her. "Don't forget me," he murmured.
With a bittersweet smirk, Kallarel chided: “How could I?”
Even if she was, possibly, just a satyr in a dead slut's skin, it hardly seemed relevant now. He stole another brief kiss before disappearing from the bedside.
He paused by the door to pilfer a cigarette from her bag, which he lit with a click of her lighter, returned haphazardly before slipping out into the hallway to wait.
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“And then-- I woke up. When I breathed in, ash burned my lungs. Her branches trembled before the morning sun, leaves blazing in the wind. When I looked down, it was-- it was her I saw. Kallarel collapsed on my chest, right where... this appeared.”
Bruce pulled down the collar of his shirt, revealing brambles and flames in gold all rung around the spot where his heart beat.
“I don’t know what she did or how we got there, or what it means,” he confessed. “I don’t know anything-- except... I’m alive because of her. And I love her. But that’s not a very satisfying ending, is it?”
“Yeah, see?” Thil tutted his tongue with a cheeky grin, tucking the napkin and pencil stub into his vest pocket. “Bard’s work ain’t as easy as you say it is, y’know?”
Bruce scoffed into his beer.
“Three times though, huh? An’ ya still ain’t heard it right!” Thil went on.
“E’Andusore was a clever girl, but with too big a heart. She tended a powerful magic circle deep in the once wilds of Quel’Thalas, she and her faithful hound Mefeon. The sacred site held the key to Life after Death; the natural cycle made manifest in mana. A power she used to heal the sick and soothe the dying. There were many who coveted it, but any fool enough to try and claim it would never return from her forest.
“Until the Lord came with hate in his heart and fire on his tongue, burning his way to her altar. Loyal and true, Mefeon battled the Lord to his last breath. When he fell--”
“--Nah, that can’t be right.”
He was cut off by Bruce’s empty beer stein thudding the counter, signaling the bartender for a refill. “Bard’s work’s easy, if you get the story right. You're just rubbish."
Thil theatrically deflated with a wounded gasp, clutching at his non-existent pearls. “A knife through this trash heap’s heart!”
As their shared laugh faded, Bruce asked: “But how was the Lord defea’ed?”
