#terezstories

[terezascania]

A Proper Wedding

(Trigger Warning: Abuse)

The sun had long since set by the time Terez sat down at the end of the long pier in Seafarer’s Rest. The last of the dancing had come to an end, and the few remaining guests wished the newlyweds well before their honeymoon to Northrend. She had considered speaking to Mozelle, the only person left, but instead contented herself with robbing the dinner table of two largely full bottles of wine before finding her way to her pierside perch by the sea. The wedding itself had been the most beautiful Terez had ever seen, and the festivities afterwards had elicited as many joyous laughs from her as the ceremony had tears. It had been beautiful. It had been sweet. It had been heartfelt. All and all, it was a perfect night, and as Terez looked up at the bright moon only occasionally obscured by the dark night clouds, Terez knew in her heart that she was happy for them. Overjoyed, even. That was the purpose of weddings anyway, wasn’t it? Joy?

But still, as Alexandria and Merellia departed the dark and heavy pit of something that had been floating in her stomach all night suddenly sank with added weight. She had tried her best to hide it behind a smile, as she hid so very many things, but her usual masquerade had faltered that evening as friend after friend asked if she was alright. Cerusani, Josephine, and a few others had all come to her one by one to check and make sure that she was okay. It was sweet of them, but it hadn’t been enough to stave off the oppressive and choking cloud of darkness that clogged her throat like a stubborn chunk of stuck apple that simply refused to go down. The feeling she held wasn’t envy, or jealousy, or anything of that sort - far from it, actually. Instead she felt like she was an anchor tossed out to sea, and that she was sinking perilously into the inky depths of a bottomless ocean with no hope of ever rising. It was suffocating, but thankfully she had the air she needed in her bottle of wine.

So she drank to breath.

And drank to forget.

And drank to no longer feel.

But the more she drank the more she heard the soft violin of her wedding music, the more she could smell the polished silver of the dinning room where the reception had been held, the more she could feel the calloused touch of his hand in her palm as they danced. By the time the first bottle was gone Terez was at her wedding again. It had been so small and intimate within Lord Gregory Ascania’s home, and the contrast of the flickering gold candelabras had been pretty against the darkly rich wood of the manor’s library. It had just been her, Gregory, a few of his closest friends, and the Tidespeaker. Her dress had been so gorgeous, although like everything Gregory had picked it out. Layers of beautiful white lace with pretty pearl buttons that had felt so smooth under her fingers. It was a dress fit for a beautiful bride at a beautiful wedding. 

She hated it.

For years Terez had wandered the streets of Stormwind and Boralus, spending rainy nights under tiny awnings and in the homes of strangers. She had done whatever was necessary to survive after her father had cast her out at the age of sixteen and disowned her for just being her. It was hard. The homelessness, the abject poverty, the endless drinking and endless highs just to stave off the choking loneliness. She had barely been nineteen when Lord Ascania, a man whose hair had long turned grey with age, had found her in the Dampwick Ward and took a shine to her. He had asked her to smile for him, and she had. After that? It was over.

He brought her to his home, gave her proper clothes, and gave her food and a warm bed to sleep in at night. In the protective warmth of his home Terez no longer had to worry about what shadows lurked in the blackness of night on dark streets, or having to constantly worry about how she could make a copper or two to get her next high or loaf of bread - whatever struck her as most necessary in that moment. He offered her everything she had ever wanted: the life of a lady, the life of a woman of wealth and high society,  a chance to be the her that she had been born to be. And who better than he to give her this? Lord Gregory Ascania was rich and powerful, an Admiral in his own right, and a powerful voice in the Assembly of Great Houses that served the Proudmoore Admiralty. His connections and influence ran deep, and his nobility was beyond reproach. He taught her the lessons of etiquette she had never finished, he taught her how to sing and dance, he taught her how to dress, and he taught her how to curtsey and smile so that it pleased those around her. He also taught her how to be ruthless, and how to be smart in a world where being a fool meant certain death. He had shaped her, molded her, turned her into what he desired. She had been his little porcelain doll, and she hadn’t realized his soft touch for what it was until it was too late, for she had been too accustomed to the cruel end of her father’s cane during his beatings to recognize that there were other ways to hurt. Gregory was her husband in name only, and like any master he did not care to let his treasures leave when they desired.  

The night she opened his throat with his own blade was both the worst and greatest night of her life. The memory itself made her wine taste like iron, and what was left of her second bottle was tossed into the sea. The white glossy deadness in the elder Lord Ascania’s eyes in the moments after Terez had taken the dagger from beneath her pillow and ended his life were haunting will-o'-the-wisps that danced and lurked forever in the darkness locked away in the back of her mind - impressions on her soul that would never fade with time. He was a ghost to her, but one that was inextricably bound and woven into the very fabric of her being. He had saved her. He had made her. He had enslaved her. One could forget many things in life, but try as hard as one might, one could never truly forget their creator. Never.

So, Terez wept at the end of the long lonely pier in Seafarer’s Rest. She wept because the wedding had reminded her of her own. She wept because she felt alone. Most painfully, she wept because, despite all of the cruel and malicious things Lord Gregory Ascania had done to her…

She still missed him. 

[terezascania]

Closure

The early morning sun cut through the high stained glass windows of Terez’s castle room, the wide and spacious quarters granted to her by virtue of Lord Thaltor’s death and his death alone. Her companion from the night before was gone, called away early to duty. Terez didn’t mind this too much, although she knew that having company for longer would have been preferable to the silence that was almost always present in the castle. There was something special about waking up in the arms of another, something that couldn’t really be replicated or easily found anywhere else in nature. It was warmth, it was security, it was

intimacy

all wrapped into one. She had had that, and so for the time being she was satisfied even if the pleasures of lazing in bed for hours were beyond her grasp for the day. 

Her companion’s departure had woken her and it was for the best that she didn’t have an excuse to linger in the bed longer than strictly necessary. Having stayed in bed this long was an unusual luxury, one that she was already calculating how she could make up for throughout the rest of the day. She stretched lazily on the massive oak bed that dominated the chamber, taking a moment to wallow in comfort before she allowed herself to start thinking about the duties of the day that loomed ever larger above her head. The duties of the Lord High Speaker were endless, and there were only so many hours that one had in the day to work. Every minute counted, every minute mattered. 

She got up and dressed, taking the time to fix her hair and wash her face. She smiled at the Royal Guards when she left her room and went to her office, greeting the various ministers and castle personnel that buzzed about the grounds with quiet intensity ever since King Anduin had gone missing. Sometimes it seemed like she was living in a hushed beehive, where the sound of the drones was so quiet that it was almost impossible to tell that you were in the middle of such an immense hive of activity. By the time she arrived at her office she was happy that the secretaries had not arrived yet, for she had forgotten to put the chamber back to place from the night before. Bits of paper, stationary, pens, and the other drudgery that usually lived on great desks of dark wood were scattered about the floor, and the normally tidy desk was a mess. Terez patiently picked up the pieces and set them back to place in their homes, everything neatly ordered in the precise place where it belonged. 

When Terez was almost done she picked up a letter that had been knocked aside the night before and she froze in place. It was a simple letter, nothing bearing any fancy seals or made of expensively soft paper. It was plain and stiff parchment, the cheapest thing one could get, and the ink was so watery that the letters were blurred. Terez had read the letter a thousand times since she had received it two days earlier, but with each reading nothing changed. 

“I am alive, I am home, we will meet soon. I hope you have not worried too much.” - V

She should have been overjoyed that V was alive, that the ice of Northrend had not crushed her to pieces as the ship’s captain had originally reported. This relieved Terez to no end, but there was something that seemed off about all of it, about the brevity, about the too-swift and too-careless handwriting. It was all too distant and cold for V, too much written between the lines for Terez to not feel as though there was more at play. It didn’t make much sense for her to feel this way, she thought, but like anchors her feet seemed incapable of movement when the thought of going to see V entered her mind. 

Something had changed. She didn’t know what exactly, but she could feel it in her bones and deep in her heart she knew that if she went to see her old flame it would cease being a feeling and would become a reality. What brief spark there was between them was gone, changed as they were by the ever shifting sands of life that brought people together with all the intensity of great icebergs crashing together, only to slowly drift apart after the initial impact. It had started before V had left, and only now was the horizon in sight. 

So, without regard to her schedule, Terez sat down and began to write at her desk. She loathed stories without closure, and so it was time to give this one a proper ending. As painful as it might be. 

[terezascania]

what would completely break your character?

“Come on. Move.” The guard roughly shoved Terez out into the bright midday sun. Almost immediately she shrunk away from the overbearing sunlight, her eyes burning after having spent months locked away in the deepest dungeon of Stormwind Keep. Sudden pain or not, Terez was allowed no reprieve as the jailer roughly dragged her by her shackles. How long had she been in prison? Had it really been months? Was it weeks or days? She couldn’t really tell, isolated as she had been from the outside world after the Great Revolution had begun in earnest. The remnants of the King’s Army had fought until the bitter end, but even they eventually fell to the onslaught - and Terez with them.

The streets from the keep to the gallows were thick with onlookers and Terez could barely hear herself over the screaming jeers of the newly proclaimed Citizenry of the First Stormwind Republic.

“Tyrant!”

“Bitch!”

“Whore!”

The insults were varied and many, some more creative than others. There had been a time when that sort of verbal berating would have made her shrink, but by now it phased her relatively little. It was just too hard to care anymore. They had taken everything from her. They had taken her prisoner along with the rest of the Kingdom’s nobility - those few that were lucky enough not to be slaughtered like dogs in the street. They had also shorn off all of her hair to humiliate her, and as final insult to injury they had forced her into sackcloth and a pair of partially ruined trousers before carting her out into the street. So far removed was she from how she normally looked that she resembled a stable boy more than a proper lady - a punishment that was itself uniquely agonizing in a manner most would never understand.

“Kill her!”

“KILL HER!”

The venomous screams of the citizens grew more rabid the closer Terez was dragged towards the executioner’s block that now dominated Stormwind City. King Wrynn’s memorial had been destroyed at the onset of the revolution, the entirety of the memorial and empty coffin shoved by rioters into the sea below. In its place stood the high wooden platform that housed “the Equalizer,” the nick name for the guillotine that had claimed the heads of hundreds of Stormwind’s once privileged upper class.

The final drag up the platform was especially gruesome, and the unfamiliar faces of the commoners gave way to the more familiar faces of the Republic’s ruling council. Whitaker, Bohannon, Duskbinder, Rose, and many others. Fane was one of them too. He had turned coat early in the Revolution, and his defection had been especially painful - even if expected. Terez had drank and dined with many of them at some point or another, shared laughs and good times even, but those days were long gone. King Anduin’s treason had been the last straw that broke the monarchy’s back, and with it the power of his nobility.

As Terez ascended the steps she noticed the severed heads skewered on pikes of many people she once knew. Lord Graves, Harrowmire, Greywell - even Bishop Prismspark - and a few others she guessed she knew but couldn’t quite be sure of on account of the decay. One of the heads stood out though, and as Terez waited her turn in the guillotine she reached out to gently stroke the pale and somewhat bloated cheek of Gideon Northgate’s severed head - his mouth stuffed with golden coins.

“Oh Mr. Northgate...” Her voice trembled, tears carving small paths down her dirty cheeks. She had been able to hold back the tears until then, but seeing Gideon like that was too much. He had been as a brother to her, and she had prayed he would escape the violent reprisals of the Revolutions fiercest adherents. Obviously, he had not.

Mercifully, she didn’t have to wait long to be dragged away from Gideon and up onto the platform. Without fanfare she was roughly shoved into the guillotine, her neck exposed to blade above. She was permitted no grand speeches. No moment of dignity before death. No grandiosity. Just execution. Distantly she could hear First Citizen Whitaker preaching to his choir, riling them up into a foaming and blood thirsty mob.

Instead of listening to the madman’s words she looked up at her executioner. Terez could barely make out the robed figure as female, but most everything else was impossible to discern. In that moment before death took her Terez had imagined that she would think of pleasant things: taking tea with friends, riding her horse through the woods on a warm day, lounging on the city walls at sunset. Instead all she could see were the familiar burgundy eyes staring back at her from beneath the executioner’s hood, and something deep in Terez’s chest suddenly snapped.

It was in that moment, in the split second before the Equalizer’s blade kissed the back of her neck, Terez Ascania truly broke inside.

(Also asked by @foxglovethings !)

[terezascania]

LEFT IN THE DARK

Terez rubbed her eyes and blinked as she yawned. The night was late and her candle was worn down almost to the stub - barely a flicker in the cavernous office of the Lord High Speaker. 

Before her on her great desk of carved oak - where many Lord High Speakers had sat before her - sat two letters. One was destined for the Stormwind Daily and the other the Alliance Free Press. Both served a different purpose, but only time would tell if her carefully planted seeds would take root. The paper business was tricky, she had learned that much from her father, and so she would have to sit and wait for the winds of public opinion to blow as they might. Maybe, if she was very lucky, she might even see fruit from her labors one day. Probably not, but… in so many ways life was a game of statistics. Run the numbers enough and eventually an ace would come up. 

Either way, she was exhausted from a seemingly endless day of work, and all she could think about was pouring herself a glass of wine before going to bed.

“Are you sure you should be doing this?” A tall red headed man at her side frowned, his Stormwind Guard’s armor casting the dullest of reflections in the candlelight.

“Arm!” Terez nearly jumped out of her seat before letting out a long sigh of relief. “Arminius, you have to stop doing that, alright?” “That’s not the point.” The tall and bulky man frowned down at her like one of the old statues of even older old men that lined the halls of the castle. 

“It should be. I don’t like it when you sneak up like that.” She set down her blue and black toned stormsteel quill on her desk before rising to walk over to the hidden bar tucked out of sight at the back of the room. “And by the way you shouldn’t be here. You should be off somewhere else enjoying yourself.” “You know you’re just repeating the same mistakes he made, right? This is literally the same thing.” Arminius remained standing in place, his eyes narrowing somewhere behind the long red hair that cut in front of his eyes from time to time. 

“You’re my brother, not my mother. You should save the lecture. I know what I’m doing.” She rolled her eyes and went to pour herself some wine only to find that the bottle was empty. When had she drunk an entire bottle? She couldn’t recall. 

“Besides…” She rolled her eyes and uncorked another bottle before pouring herself a full glass. “Father was too short sighted, too impatient. If one or either of those articles doesn’t do what I want them to do then that’s fine. Neither can be traced back to me anyway, and if they do do well then I win. Simple enough.” “I wasn’t talking about the papers.” Arminius sighed. Maybe it was the dimness of the candlelight, or maybe it was the sheer immeasurable disappointment on his face, but Terez could almost swear that he looked sickly pale. 

“I’m going to bed, Arminius. You should too. Alright?” She raised her eyebrows at him, scooped up her letters, and marched right into the side bedroom that adjoined her office. 

“Get some rest, Arm. It’s late.” And so, with a small smile as she sipped her wine, Terez left her brother in the dark. 

[terezascania]

Unwanted Guests

It was hard to tell how long she had been staring at herself in the mirror. Sometimes it felt like just a few seconds when it was really hours, and sometimes when it felt like hours it had only been a few seconds. She noticed every tiny detail about herself. Some small and some not. The little speckled dots on her shoulders. The way the tip of one of her fingers seemed slightly crooked. The way her shoulders were a touch too wide still, and how when she turned just the right way her jawline seemed impossibly sharp. She carefully logged these minute details of her body in a neatly organized mental folder that she only barely kept herself from writing down, their presence always lurking in the back of her mind. The demon had changed much when they had forged their pact in blood, a price paid that seemed so little to her then but now so impossibly high. She couldn’t let herself think about that though, it was too painful, and so instead she turned her attention back to something that easily occupied her mind: her obsession, her body.

Beneath the layers of prim, proper, and ever so carefully selected dresses, was a body that few would have anticipated on a lady of such wealth and status. Her arms were sculpted and muscular, the strength there easily identifiable even at a glance. Her stomach was taught and lined with muscle, lean to the point that every bit of her strength was on display. Most jarring, however, was not her  athletic physique, but the most obvious remnant of her former life: a troublesome guest that she consistently vacillated between loving and loathing. Still, at least it could be covered. That brought her a measure of comfort, and so instead she chose to focus on what people did see.

“Hmm.” She wrinkled her nose in moderate disappointment as she leaned close to the mirror and stroked her jawline. Adramalech’s work had been good on the whole, it had made her her, finally, but Terez still resented what was yet undone - that which simply could not, and could never, be changed. 

“Lady Ascania, it is an hour until your meeting!” A servant knocked at the door before quickly disappearing. Terez had a standing order for them to remind her of her meetings, least she become engulfed in the obsession upon which her demon fed. 

“Enough.” She ripped herself away from the mirror and rubbed the bridge of her nose, her eyes aching from having stared too long. She had things to do and business to tend to. She had to move otherwise sometimes she thought she might turn to stone. 

“Too bad.” A dark and smoky voice that had no body whispered in her ear, an impossible smile audible in the words. “I was really enjoying myself.”