#i think any character metzen has voiced is hot

[wp100]

forge of souls is my favourite wrath of the lich king dungeon

The aesthetic and music is just.. Amazing. The last boss is hilarious, and Bronjahm... yeah he's like half the reason.

[classywastelandbread-blog]

Bonus Story from Good Directions: Bastian and Efi’s Story (INCOMPLETE)

It’s not mentioned yet in the posted chapters (1-19) but Bastian and Efi used to be very good friends. 

This little blurb won’t have any spoilers for the “A Plot Train” as I’ve taken to calling this hot mess of a story, but it covers the background of some of the characters. It’s been sitting in my Google Drive for more than a month and I’m not sure when I’ll get around to finishing it, but I thought I’d post it anyway. 

When Bastian woke up, he wasn’t sure where he was at first. It was simply a blank room and he was strapped to a bed. The nurses told him he was at Watchpoint and he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

His mouth was bandaged shut so he couldn’t speak and his arms weren’t moving. Nothing was, but he tried not to panic at it.

They told him he was at Watchpoint as if he’d forget so soon. When they changed his bandages, they told him there’d been an accident – clearly that had to have been the case. He had so many questions but lacked the ability to speak.

They dosed him on morphine and he slept.

When he woke up again, he could move arms. One was missing at the elbow; the other had two fingers missing. As the machines around him started shrieking, he found himself thinking crazily that now his fingers were trapped perpetually in the shape of the finger-guns he’d shoot at Ginny...

His last thoughts when they dosed him with sedatives were of Ginny and her gap-toothed smile.

They changed his bandages and told him he was at Watchpoint; that there had been an accident. It seemed that they didn’t know what else to tell him.

He slept and he thought because they bandaged his arms again and bound him to the bed. There was nothing else he could do.

The nurses came back. They checked on his chart, his medication, his IVs. Seeing him awake they asked him if he knew where he was as if he could answer. Sympathetically, they told him he was at Watchpoint and there had been an accident; did he remember it?

He couldn’t move his head to shake it yes or no. Eventually they left, murmuring sympathetically about the poor broken man in the room.

One day a little girl, instead of the nurses, came into his room. Her skin was as dark as charcoal but her eyes were light brown and her smile was brilliant. She sat next to his bed until a nurse – a massive woman that seemed to fill the space in the doorway – came to collect her.

Her name was Efi Oladele and from then on she visited at some point every day because she said he looked lonely. The nurse, Orisa, sometimes accompanied her.

The nurses visited. They told him he was at Watchpoint; that there had been an accident; they asked if he remembered it. Efi visited and Orisa came to collect her. He slept.

So passed weeks of his lonely time in bed.

A new doctor came by, Dr. Kayode Winston. He checked his chart, introduced himself when he saw Bastian was awake. When he asked his first question, he seemed to realize that Bastian couldn’t respond.

His bandages were removed and Dr. Winston examined him. He could move his head, his arms, all the way down to his hips; his jaw was still bandaged shut.

Dr. Winston asked him if he knew where he was; Bastian rolled his eyes and nodded his head yes. The man smiled and admitted that it was an admittedly bad joke. He asked if he knew who he was; Bastian nodded yes again. Then he asked if Bastian remembered what happened, why he was at Watchpoint; Bastian shrugged. There was red, black, gold; Ginny’s gap-toothed grin, a brindled orange feather braided in auburn hair.

Patting his arm sympathetically – careful of the various tubes and wires – Dr. Winston finally explained what was going on.

Bastian had been in an accident. Both legs were broken but his arms had escaped relatively unscathed. He had bitten off a portion of his tongue, he suffered severe cranial trauma, his jaw was not working quite right – the reason for the stiff apparatus and bandages around his head.

He tried to ask about Ginny but his lips and jaw wouldn’t move. Dr. Winston sat with him until he calmed down.

When Efi visited she gave him a crude drawing that she explained was what she thought he looked like. She told him that one day they would all get better and all be happy together. That was the next picture: Bastian (though she didn’t know his name), her, Orisa, and a few others she clearly knew from another ward.

He realized that she looked thin and there were bags under her eyes that no young child should have.

Orisa’s face was drawn when she came to collect Efi and she looked down at her with a kind of hopelessness that made Bastian’s heart hurt.

The nurses came. They changed his sheets, checked his IV, asked him if he knew where he was. He ignored them; they gave him empty platitudes and left.

Dr. Winston visited. He updated Bastian on his progress and overall health as he was aware of it. He called him “John Doe” and Bastian wanted to correct him but he still couldn’t speak.

Rolling his tongue in his mouth, he could feel the jagged edges where he had reportedly bitten a portion off; he wondered if he’d ever speak again.

Efi visited. She looked better than she had the last time but she looked thinner. But her smile was as bright as ever when she saw him. She told him that he was the only friend she had left; everyone else had died or gone home to die.

There was a peculiarly matter-of-fact way she spoke that broke Bastian’s heart.

But Efi smiled and patted his mostly-whole hand and fingered the plastic hospital bracelet. She told him that Orisa told her that they weren’t sure what his name was so he was called John Doe. She told him that she didn’t like that name; he looked like a Sebastian. She used to have a friend named Sebastian – his room was down the hall but he died of a blood clot and she hoped that he stuck around longer than her friend had.

Her honesty, while morbid and depressing in such a young child, was refreshing. Bastian decided he liked the sound of her voice as she chattered away at his side.

She continued to read his bracelet and then asked if it made him uncomfortable. He was rewarded by her smile when he shook his head no.

They had the same blood type, Efi announced happily. It was sad that they weren’t attached to the same doctor but she had seen Dr. Winston come by his room and wondered out loud if Dr. Tsoukalas would let Dr. Winston take over Bastian’s care.

Bastian hadn’t known that, but it didn’t matter because he had no way to ask the doctor the next time he visited, anyway.

Efi chattered at him until Orisa came to collect her. The woman’s honey-colored eyes were swollen as if she hadn’t slept in days. Still, she was gentle with Efi and swung her around at the foot of Bastian’s bed to her glee. Bastian tried to smile; he thought that Efi understood despite the bandages as she waved over Orisa’s shoulder at him.

The nurses came. They chattered like a flock of geese at each other was if he were an inanimate object. They changed his bandages and clucked their tongues at the wounds.

Dr. Winston visited again; this time he brought a pad of paper and a plastic Ziplock bag of pens and pencils. He suggested Bastian try to write his answers.

They gently slipped a pencil into his left hand so that it was pinched between his pointer and middle fingers – the only one remaining – and braced against his thumb. Writing was slow – he was originally right-handed and there were less fingers now for him to work with.

For simplicity, Dr. Winston wrote two letters in the top corners of the pad: Y and N. He asked yes/no questions and Bastian could point; he could write if he needed to.

It was frustrating, the complexity of his thoughts being stifled to the tiniest of trickles due to his still-healing injuries.

Do you know how long you’ve been here, Dr. Winston asked.

N, Bastian pointed.

Do you know your name?

Y. He wrote S E B before running out of space on the first half of the page. The second half took A S T I before he ran out of space again.

Dr. Winston asked if Efi had actually been calling him the correct name the entire time.

Y, Bastian pointed. On another page, he struggled through his last name.

The doctor said he knows that family; Bastian pointed to the Y Dr. Winston had rewritten at the top of the page. Was it the same family that manufactured war machines for the military? He pointed again at the Y.

They moved on. Bastian didn’t wonder about the awkward transition; he understood. The Metzen family’s most famous contribution to automated tanks was the Bastion unit, ostensibly named after their son Sebastian Metzen. An odd legacy to have and one that Bastian didn’t expect any doctor that had taken the Hippocratic Oath to appreciate.

Dr. Winston asked again if Bastian knew what happened; again he pointed to the N.

Bastian was glad for the opportunity to communicate with someone, no matter how rudimentary it was. He scribbled D R . S ? on the board.

The doctor made a face and admitted that he was working on taking over Bastian’s case from the Dr. Tsoukalas that Efi had mentioned.

Efi visited and Orisa carried a small plastic box with art supplies. As the little girl chattered, she colored next to Bastian’s bed. She checked the tag on his arm and declared that his name had been changed: Sebastian M – was that his real name?

She had dimples when she smiled; it reminded Bastian of Ginny and she had a gap between her front two teeth too. Efi declared that she liked that name but what kind of nickname could she give him?

His arm was feeling better so she gleefully read out loud the letters he traced on the blankets beside him. She read them out loud.

B!

A!

S!

L! No, T! Sorry, she hadn’t seen it.

I!

A!

N!

Bastian like the Bastion tanks, pew-pew, Efi had cried, making finger guns. She giggled when he made the same motion back, much easier for him because he was missing his ring and pinkie fingers.

She reminded him of Ginny, who he was beginning to remember more and more; he wondered what had happened to her but wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

One day Efi wanted to be an engineer, he was told; well, what she actually said was that one day she wished she could be an engineer…it was an odd way to phrase it but Bastian couldn’t really ask. She didn’t much like the OR-15 war machines with their blank faces but she liked the way the Bastion models had a little strip of optical lighting even if she thought the ones with red glass was eerie.

Leaning close, she’d whisper that sometimes she’d pretend that Orisa was a war machine. But Orisa was too kind – she was the kind of person that would stop traffic to help a line of ducklings cross the road, to climb a tree to rescue a trapped kitten. To Efi, Orisa was the strongest person she ever knew – even stronger than her parents! That’s why she sometimes imagined Orisa in the shape of a war machine, even if her nurse was incapable of such violence. Surely more strength would let Orisa help more people.

It was another odd thing to say but Bastian let her keep talking. She was nice to listen to and she, unlike the nurses that visited him, didn’t treat him like something that wasn’t alive.

When she came back to pick Efi up, Orisa hung the pictures Efi had drawn for him that day on the wall where he could see it with Bastian’s permission. Efi waved and smiled over Orisa’s shoulder as she was carried out.

The nurses came. They changed the bandages and his sheets but this time didn’t replace the ones holding his face shut. When they left he had lighter bandages, letting him see his injuries for the first time. They told him, speaking to him like a child, that he couldn’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t scratch or pick at his wounds as they left.

When Efi visited, she squealed in glee though at first Bastian was worried she was afraid of him. She told him she liked being able to see more of his face now even if it looked like a squished pumpkin.

Orisa scolded her for her indelicate phrasing but there was something like joy in her honey-colored eyes. He realized that for whatever reason she had been worried about Efi so even if he had been insulted by her words he couldn’t find it in himself to be unhappy with either of them.

He tried his best to smile and Efi squealed again and asked if she could draw him.

The picture she gave him when it was time for her to leave was hideous, much like a cartoonish version of Quasimodo or Igor with a narrow, nearly rectangular face, a lopsided mouth, and two eyes that were uneven in size. At that point he wasn’t even sure that it was just the way she drew or if that was how he looked.

Orisa looked horrified to see it but when he gestured, she smiled softly and hung it on the wall with the rest of Efi’s drawings. She told him that soon he’d run out of space; Efi liked that idea if Bastian did and promised that she’d work on her art for him.

Dr. Winston visited. He told Bastian that he was healing very well but the nurses were concerned with a possible infection in one of his legs and Bastian tried to convey without the use of his jaw, which ached, that he appreciated his candor.

The doctor helped him into a wheelchair and rolled him around the hospital. He took Bastian outside where they encountered Efi and Orisa reading together under a tree. They joined them in the middle of the novel but it was wonderful to Bastian to breathe in the fresh air and feel the sun on his face.

When they parted, Efi gave Bastian a crudely-drawn picture of him in his chair in front of the fountain with the glass tiles. Orisa and Dr. Winston traded looks.

The nurses came. They changed his bandages and spoke nervously to each other about something on one of his injured legs. One of them left and came back with someone that wasn’t Dr. Winston who barely acknowledged Bastian. He said the A-word that Bastian had been dreading but they didn’t do anything then; they left in a clump and only one of them seemed to remember that his wounds were still exposed to the air. She hastily rewrapped the gauze and left.

Dr. Winston came with the other doctor. He explained that it wasn’t an infection; they tested his blood and the nurses were overreacting. They left though Dr. Winston’s expression was drawn.

Efi didn’t visit.

The nurses came and tittered at them, at him. A male nurse kicked the female ones out and was kind enough to help him take a proper shower. Bastian was mortified but bore through it. The male nurse wasn’t chatty but he was kind enough and he tried not to take his frustration out on him.

He was allowed to look in the mirror for the first time.

Efi’s drawing hadn’t been too far off. His wavy blond hair had been shaved on the sides to accommodate a crown of scarring; his head was misshapen, not unlike the smashed pumpkin Efi had claimed it to resemble. There was scarring and black stitches along his cheek that made him look like a scarecrow from a horror movie and when he opened his mouth – painfully, as his jaw was so stiff it was almost immobile – he saw the large chunk missing from his tongue.

He was taken back to his bed.

He couldn’t sleep.

The nurses came and another doctor that removed the stitches crowning his head. The bandages around his arms came off replaced with taped-on gauze pads.

Efi didn’t visit.