The corner's of the Thalassian woman's mouth immediately started softly pulling into that characteristic lopsided smile of hers, full of warmth as she took in his face. "I was hoping I would see you soon," she said sincerely. Having already temporarily uninstalled her boot knives in their sheathes from their home inside her well-worn but sturdy footwear, Aranya produced the pair of them from her bag for Rhovin to accept.

"I should still pay you in some way... Shall I stay instead of go?" Aranya didn't wait for his answer before sitting down. "I don't know if my letter reached you or not, but there are things we need to talk about, you and I. I'm hoping trying to work and converse at the same time  isn't out of the question for you?"

Setting his work aside, Rhovin sat by a table near the arcanist. A set of various tools and an oiled stone was at the center. "I was hoping to avoid such a meeting," he admitted. He began to sharpen the blade in a careful curving from the base to the pointed tip, eyes focused on each grind to avoid any potential damage from a simple mistake. "I've too much in front of me to worry about the inevitable." It was then that he paused and looked over to where Aranya sat, though no smile came. "I'll see to the details when I get to Kalimdor. Away from this war, away from the Alliance. Away from everything." 

"Rhovin... you're dying," said Aranya, her tone almost pleading, reaching out to him with her voice in ways that her hand would not, lest she tread over some line between them that would reach up and choke her if she trespassed it. "At least let me... Before you go... I believe I know how to restore you," she said. "Or if not restore you, at least help me find some closure with something," the arcanist continued. "When Argus' soul was killed by the combined forces of Azeroth, it destroyed the ability of all demons everywhere to renew themselves after death. Once dead they stay dead, unless they have a life-pact with a warlock, which means Tezzakel is dead." She waited for the warrior to glance up and catch her gaze before she went on, "But his two sayaad that he tried to toss me to are not. They're still out there..." Her voice went low and her green eyes burned savagely as she leaned forward and said, "And I would very much like to break them." 

"Your father new the arts of a warlock better than many, he knew what it takes to hurt a demon, not just kill them," pointed out Aranya. "And also among those arts, he knew how to convert lifeforce into magic, and magic into life. I..." she hesitated here. How would he react? "I need to look at his work, have access to his studies and sanctums again. I could learn what he knew," she said. Ironic, given how she had staunchly made known that her emotions were in the negative when it came to any implication the warlock lord had ever made about the possibility of her ever being his apprentice. 

"I could save you," said Aranya, and here she couldn't help it that no matter how strong she sounded, he knew what to listen for when she was pleading, in her own way.

Suddenly, the sharp end of her blade found itself slammed and buried halfway deep into the wooden table from the brute strength of his arm. Clearly, Rhovin was agitated. At the mention of his father, the twistedness of his work, and the consequences the came with it. "I don't need saving," he raised his voice, turning his chair to her direction. "His magic has done more harm than good, he even prepped to sacrifice me in order to save his own life! How is anything he has ever done going to make a beneficial difference?!" He paused and looked away to catch his breath.

Rhovin’s fel-tainted eyes wandered, collecting thought. "Even if you had access to everything he did, it wouldn't matter. It's all locked away in that cursed home of his. There is nothing there that would help in the matter." Finally, his gaze turned to her. It was not of anger, but of pain. "Nothing but misery and regret within those walls. It's haunted by the worst of his doing, and you stepping in there only risks you getting lost in everything he's done... and I can't allow myself for that to happen."

Aranya startled a bit at his forcefully abrupt actions, but remained still as Rhovin spoke. It seemed that no matter what history lay between them or how bad things had ever been, he still cared, still did not want to see her fall to darkness - and not for the pragmatic reasons of her becoming more dangerous, no, he had never minded that she was deadly in her ways. She could only imagine how it would affect him, if he watched her become an echo of what his father had been. It was a thought fit to make one shudder. 

Aranya got up from her seat and knelt in front of Rhovin, looking him full in the face, serious. "Do you still have any faith in me?" she asked quietly. It was a far more important question than do you trust me. Trust was not even the issue at hand. "Do you believe that saying 'no' to your father so many times was something I did for nothing?" She had to know if he could believe in her, believe that she could resist what his father had always desired.

The sorceress stood up. "I have to finish this, Rhovin," she told him, speaking of the demons now. "I have to finish them. I only almost finished Tezzakel myself. I..."

'Fess up. 

"I need this," she admitted. She needed closure. She was going to do it with or without his help, with or without his willingness to be saved, but could she succeed if she had lesser tools than what she knew to be the best? Would she survive it?

A quiet sigh soon followed. Not one of defeat, but more that he knew his disapproval would just further encourage her desire for this. 

Rhovin stood, stepping away and far across to a bag that lay on the ground nearby his previous work station. He knelt and reached inside. There, he grabbed a small wooden box. The warrior stood and walked over to his former lover, sitting on his chair just across. He handed her the box. Inside, a simple key, though someone such as herself could sense the heavy aura of magic surrounding it.

"The walls, the foundation... it's all falling apart,”said Rhovin. “The spirits, the power? It all dwells and waits for the first to step in for them to take over. He's set up barriers, and has spells to negate the use of any power. Where he did this, I can't tell you. You'll go in there blind, and I don't know a thing that might help you get through it." He focused his gaze over her, already worried of what she would deal with, the haunting images of his past being put into light. He knew his father would use everything to try and turn her against him, and even possibly taking over her body. "In there, he's alive. His spirit still dwells. The afterlife isn't something he so easily accepts if it doesn't involve some form of immortality... and he won't let you go without the fight."

Aranya nodded grimly as her fingers brushed his, receiving the box. So, no magic would be effective against Kethron in his tomb. His power, his essence, was spread throughout it, saturated it. What to do then...? 

An inspired thought came to her in answer, only the merest flicker of a chance with it, but it was still a chance, and the corner of Aranya's mouth twitched up for a split second.

The Thalassian woman looked at the man who had once been her captain, and so much more. A terrible impulse took her, and she went with it. "Thank you," she said, reaching out and laying her hand over his so that their fingertips brushed again. The art of drawing on mana which all blood elves had learned was easily done from a short distance, but the connection was strongest with closer proximity - especially as close as a touch. She reached into him - merely a lick of her essence on his - and immediately drew back, taking nothing with her. 

That one brief taste was more than enough to send alarms going off all down her spine. His taste burned, like brightest fel, which wasn't unexpected in his current condition, but still far too acrid from what she remembered of him in their moments together. And underneath that - the taste of him - it very nearly made Aranya feel sick. What had once tasted like a bold, delicious spark, now.... felt dwindled. Felt wrong. He tasted like ash in rain, bitter, choking, the brightness gone. The tip of her tongue ran across the back of her teeth reflexively inside her mouth, as if wanting to rid herself somehow of just the memory of that taste on him, but it stayed. It fully hit her how far gone he was, how he was running out of time. Her heart sank.

Aranya's breath shook as she pulled it into her chest, not realizing she had stopped for that on disheartening moment. Her burning green eyes strayed to her boot knives, and then met with Rhovin's again. "I can go while you work on them," she said quietly. "Or stay if you like."

Rhovin only blinked, at first. He was perfectly still, despite the warring urges he found himself with in that moment.

She had just touched him in a way that meant something far deeper before. It recalled back... too many things.

He gritted his jaw. His fingers twitched only ever-so-slightly, fighting not to snatch her hand back. He held her gaze, his fel eyes seething.

"You should go," said Rhovin at last. "I'll get a courier to take them to your sanctum here in the city when they're done."

"You still know where it is?" Aranya asked. 

Rhovin tucked his chin with a smirk, and with a slight shake of his head, said, "I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just ask me that."

Aranya shook her head slightly also. No, he wouldn't forget. Not him. With a slight bow of her head and a half-smile that didn't reach her eyes, she got up and left, focusing on one stride after the the other as she walked and not looking back.

There was much to prepare for now, she reminded herself. One foot after the other.

We need to talk. Alone.

Booty Bay. One hour.

- Rho.

Aranya could only chuckle in a low voice. Too late. She had spent the whole evening in the company of Halenvar and Ryodan, in Uldaman, salvaging things of power for the Titan project. The rogue’s presumptiveness was kind of amusing.

Her reply would find him one way or another, a plain letter, essentially chiding him on the folly of delegating to chance that things would follow through as he wished, if he didn’t see to such matters himself. And a hint that she had been keeping busy.

My time has not been my own lately. Good luck finding me when it is.

Her last words, however, were not the cool, pragmatic words of syndicate head, or of a sought-after arcanist. They were sincere, and only Aranya.

And for the love of A’dal, stay alive, Thorne.

~A

The dark-haired sorceress turned to her curious mana wyrm. “Can you believe this, Sugarfiend? Do you see this?” Aranya gestured to the untouched rose. “Seven months he’s content to just pretend that I don’t exist, now he wants to talk.”

The Thalassian woman scoffed and stood, disrobing for a bath before she transported herself back to Halenvar’s cottage in Valdisdal. Vrykul accommodations for bathing weren’t quite as relaxing as the arcane luxuries that Dalaran afforded her. “It’s not a coincidence,” continued Aranya, still speaking to the shimmering, slithering creature. “No sooner do I speak with the woman in his sights, then this thing turns up? No. He had eyes and ears on her. He never would’ve glanced my way again, if it hadn’t been for that.”

Sinking into the steaming tub, the phoenix-mage sighed with content and closed her smoldering green eyes a moment, relaxing. “I wonder if it ever even crossed his mind once, that he can cover his eyes all he wants,” she mused. “But it still doesn’t make me disappear.”

And indeed, disappear she had not.

She was the port arcanist of Sunspire now. The head of the Eclipse Syndicate. Her daughter was top of her class in sparring with the other trainees of the Light. She had deals in Gadgetzan with the Kabal and the Jade Lotus, and beyond. Partnerships for her fleet, and prospects for her wishes to start a merc core and sponsoring gladiators. Outland, Tanaris, Dalaran, Quel’thalas, she had the world behind her now.

“The crow let me out of his sight too long. The phoenix out-wings him now,” she murmured. “He wants to talk, he’ll have to get up to speed.” A smirk played over her lips at her own pun. “But I doubt he will,” she said, opening her eyes, turning the embers of her gaze to her chittering wyrmling, twirling in the air through the bath steam. “Just you watch, I’ll bet you whatever’s left in the sugar-bowl that this gift was a one-off.”

An elegant wave of her arm sent the rose flying out the window, far out over the ocean below Dalaran. A graceful twist of her wrist rendered the black flower to a puff of ashes and smoke. Harmless now, whether he poisoned it or not, too far away to have been touched or inhaled.