#wow character: tharien flamesorrow

[lamesorrow]

Stagnation

Time: Right before the Fall of Quel'Thalas.

(TW: Substance abuse and its consequences. Gross and stinky.)

-

At some point he stopped counting days. There was no point, really; days, weeks, months, they all clumped together into a tasteless pulp that was all just an endless repeat of the same and the same and the same.

Baelklad's day (or, as he liked to call it, his everyday) started with a bottle of something cheap and vile, just to get him going. Then he would get dressed, choosing whichever clothes didn't stink too much, grab a few coins—few enough that wouldn't hurt too much if someone robbed him, which wasn't unusual—and then he would walk downstairs to the main room of whatever inn he was currently calling home.

Sometimes he would pick fights, just because. Most of them he won, because even drunk he was still bigger and stronger than most of his opponents, but some of them he lost, and then he woke up under the table or in a trash pile behind the inn. Once he found a dagger sticking out of his thigh. It was enough of a disruption to the routine that he remembered it. He kept the dagger but then lost it somewhere. (He lost a lot of things these days, but he no longer had anything worth missing.)

Usually he just sat there on whatever bench had the best view of the main room, pouring mug after mug of cheap booze down his throat. He spent whatever money he brought from the room and then dragged himself back to bed, secure in the knowledge that the next everyday meant nothing but more coins, more booze and more numbness.

Baelklad never really wanted the money, but he couldn't insult the memory of his fallen brothers by refusing his cut; according to their sacred custom, the one older than Baelklad himself, after the battle the riches of the fallen were distributed evenly amongst the surviving members of the battle brigade. In the end Baelklad, Tami and Langren had inherited a combined wealth of thirty accomplished dwarven mercenaries. An abundance of wealth. A ticket to a better future for anyone with a plan.

What it meant for Baelklad is that he got so much gold it was almost certain his liver was going to kill him long before he put any noticeable dent in his undeserved fortune.

(He should have died with them. He should have been the grave number thirty-one, always the odd one but always in the right place amongst the dwarves—amongst his people.)

He closed his eyes and dug his fingers into his hair, trying to coax the raging headache into leaving him the fuck alone. Sometimes, before he drowned his brain in alcohol, Baelklad wondered what the others would've said if they knew he was wasting their life savings on cheap booze.

He wondered what his father would've said if he knew that his firstborn son—his biggest investment, his hopes and dreams all in one big defective package—was currently swaying on his feet in a dingy room, trying not to puke all over the floor of... uh... the inn. Where was he again?

Baelklad frowned. Actually, he wasn't sure where exactly he was.

Then again, what did it matter?

He licked his chapped lips. Waking up with a brain so bone-dry he could hear it rattling in his skull was something he had gotten used to ages ago, but the thirst... The thirst was a constant thing, one that could force his legs to move no matter how tired he was.

He found a pair of leather trousers crumpled up in the corner of the room. There was a flaking smudge of dry puke on them. Meh. As long as it wasn't piss, Baelklad could deal with it.

Hell, on some everydays even piss wasn't a dealbreaker.

Something in Baelklad's stomach gurgled dangerously when he tried to align his foot with the right hole in his trousers. A familiar sour taste flooded his mouth, so he tilted his head back and swallowed it down. For a hot minute the world flipped itself upside down, which did nothing for Baelklad's fine motor skills, so he clenched his puffy eyes shut and committed to muscle memory.

It took him a minute—an hour?—but eventually he managed to stand up—when the fuck did he sit down?—and open his eyes. The lopsided contour of the door promised great things: booze and alcoholic oblivion. He was ready for both; he put the trousers on, after all. Some scrap of conscious thought still flickering in the back of his aching head reminded him that he probably needed a shirt too.

The shirt conundrum proved very easy to solve because, as it turned out, Baelklad was already wearing one—it was stretched out, threadbare and discoloured with old sweat. A more thorough inspection revealed that he was also wearing boots—a fact he really should've noted during the laborious process of putting on trousers, but somehow didn't.

Oh well.

Rise and shine, it's a brand new everyday, Baelklad thought tiredly. He grabbed a few silver coins from the dresser and reached for the doorknob, ready to face the rest of his awful life.

….And then somebody knocked on the door.

Pain exploded inside his skull. Every infernally loud knock felt like it was drilling directly into his brain.

Baelklad clenched his teeth and helplessly pawed at his ears—stupid pointless pointy things, he should've chopped them off decades ago...

“Piss off!”

The knocking stopped for one blessed second and then it started again, even more insistent and painful than before.

He blindly reached for the doorknob and almost tore it off the door in some fleeting hope to fling it at the scum responsible for the merciless auditory attack aimed at his vulnerable, hungover brain.

There was nobody there.

Baelklad swallowed an indignant hiccup and suspiciously looked around. Spare for the stink of ancient sweat, sour and biting hint of half-digested ale, and the odour of cheap perfumes that his neighbour just loved to overuse, there was not a soul on the other side of the door.

Baelklad frowned and stepped back into his room, about to close the door when a painfully familiar voice came from somewhere on his knee level.

“They told me you would be here.”

He looked down.

Tami. Fuck.

He glared at her from under his puffy eyelids. His skin crawled a little when he realized how much different she looked from... fuck, when was the last time he saw her? How many years had passed since then?

The gnome's sunny disposition was gone, replaced by an unnaturally sombre expression. Her pale gaze burned as it mercilessly slid up and down Baelklad's body, meticulously taking note of the details of his downfall. A dark frown that followed was to be expected—he was, admittedly, in a pretty sorry state.

Not that he cared. It was his life and there was not much to it outside of cheap inns, cheap booze and an absolute lack of cheap whores, because his appearance always attracted the type of people that did completely nothing for him. Because fuck him in particular. Or, in this case, not fuck. Whatever. He needed booze more than he needed dick.

“Go away, I'm busy,” he muttered. His ears twitched when they registered how bloody hoarse and squeaky his voice sounded—as if he had chugged down a bucket of razors and washed it down with a neat glass of acid.

Tami frowned and decisively pushed her foot forward, planting it firmly against the door frame. As if that could possibly stop Baelklad. She was a fucking gnome—he could grind her into paste with his bare hands.

...He didn't close the door, because that would hurt her foot and he would sooner rip his own eyes out of his head and shove them up his arse than hurt Tami Twincog.

Baelklad let out a defeated sigh as the pale-haired gnome folded her arms and marched into the room.

“Busy,” Tami echoed dryly. She glared at the interior of Baelklad's temporary home and scrunched up her nose. “Busy with what? Ugh, when was the last time you've done any laundry..?”

Years—decades?—ago he might've felt ashamed by the disgust in Tami's voice, but now Baelklad just shrugged and glanced around the room. Small and cramped, filled with creaky wooden furniture... Dirty mattress, dirty clothes on the ground, sticky bottles on every even remotely horizontal surface.

No sword.

He had no need for it these days. Hell, he couldn't bear even looking at it any more. The sword was a painful memento of a century he had spent amongst his dwarven brothers, so he put it in the vault and never looked back. To wield the blade that Angus had forged for him would feel too much like sacrilege—it deserved far better hands than those of a drunkard. Most of his disputes could very easily be solved with boots and fists. Teeth, sometimes.

Baelklad growled quietly when he noticed that his hands were shaking. He ran his scarred fingers through his hair, wincing slightly when they came back shiny and slippery with grease.

Holy shit, he was disgusting.

Tami's sigh made him turn his bloodshot gaze to the gnome. She was still looking around with a very unamused frown on her face—where the fuck did those wrinkles around her eyes and mouth come from?—either unaware or uncaring of the turmoil her very presence brought him. She was jarring, like a ray of sunshine that had accidentally strayed too far into the dark below. Something out of another life, one that he tried very hard not to remember too well.

“Langren died. Last month.”

Something in Baelklad chest came to a grinding halt.

“Who got him?”

The question was out before his brain caught up to the idea that was just... no. No.

Tami smiled. It was a dry, tired smile.

“Old age,” she said softly.

Baelklad stared at her blankly.

Langren wasn't even that old, he wanted to protest, but that was childish and simply untrue; the dwarf was ancient by the standards of his race.

He was, Baelklad realized numbly, his oldest friend.

Remorse washed over him, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. Worse than nausea, worse than stale beer, worse than blood. Every year he planned to go visit Langren, just to see how the dwarf was holding up, and every year he ended up calling it off for one reason or another. (Booze. It was because of booze. Every year he called it off because he was too drunk to bloody move.)

How fucking ironic that the moment he heard about the old man's passing, Baelklad suddenly found himself focused and ready to go—fuck, he could up and leave right now.

But it was too late, and he was never going to see his friend ever again.

Fuck.

Tami watched him. A peculiar mix of sympathy and disappointment in her gaze... It was unbearable. It made his skin fucking crawl.

Baelklad wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, in complete silence. Unbidden memories flooded his head and he couldn't deal with them. Not now—he was too sober for that. Fuck, not ever—he was too messed up for that.

“Baelklad,” Tami said an eternity later. “You need to... to stop this thing you're doing, alright?”

He bared his fangs in response. (Way, way, waaaay too sober for that.)

“I don't need to do shit. What the fuck is even your point?”

It came out too sharp, too high-pitched for him. Defensive in a way he couldn't afford to be, because there was nothing left worth defending in him. All that would bring was strife and Baelklad was long beyond strife. Daily intake of booze took care of that.

Hearing about Langren hurt. Baelklad was used to things hurting, but the pain was usually dulled by a comfortable blur of intoxication. Its edges were filed down, degraded into a vague discomfort that he could make himself ignore. Now there was nothing standing between him and the harsh, merciless reality.

It left him reeling, too big and jagged for his shrivelled skin to contain. He instinctively grabbed the first bottle he saw. He had no idea if there was anything to be found on the bottom, but right now he felt ready to suck the last mucky dregs from the floor around a leaking keg.

For a second Tami looked like she was going to punch him. For a second he wondered whether it was really her—this woman with worry etched deep into the lines on her face, she was nothing like the bushy-tailed kid he remembered.

“My point is that you need to get your shit together, Baelklad. It's just the two of us now. I need you to take care of yourself.”

Okay, so he really didn't like this new Tami. He wished she had never found him.

“All I'm—HEY!”

Funny how that old trick worked every time. A gnome's only weakness—being picked up by the collar.

“Sorry, kid,” Baelklad muttered, “but I'm not in the mood for a pep talk.”

She dropped her on the floor outside and immediately slammed the door before she could turn around and barrel right back in. A second before the lock clicked, Tami started kicking and yelling.

Baelklad leaned against the door and tried not to puke.

Now he really needed a drink.

[lamesorrow]

Control

Time: A century (and several decades) ago.

-

Despite the refreshing chill of late morning air Tharien finds himself sweating buckets under the ornate cloth of his new robe. His wand feels unnatural in his clumsy hand, damp fingers slipping on the smooth wooden handle.

Worst of all, he can feel all his classmates watching him with ravenous curiosity. They are all only eleven years old, still young enough not to fully concern themselves with proper etiquette. While older elves humour him with indulgent words and hollow encouragements, his fellow students respond with gleeful cruelty. They want to see him fail.

Tharien is not surprised. For years now they've been hearing about his unprecedented arcane potential. A Grand Magister in the making, his first teacher used to say. Destined for greatness, his mother used to whisper between gentle caresses.

It must be so satisfying to see him taken down a peg or two.

A whisper and a muffled giggle. Tharien tightens his fingers on the wand. He wants to be somewhere else. He wants to be out of his sticky robes. He wants his new teacher to stop playing with the grimoire and start the lesson. He wants this lecture to be over with.

The Light apparently feels inclined to answer at least one of his prayers. Arcanist Emberwood clears his throat and closes the book with a resounding thud.

“Well then,” he says cordially, “I suppose we might not be quite ready for aimed spells after all. Today we will try something simple again—a little refresher, if you will. Open your copies of Manaweaving Theory for Young Mages on page thirty-eight...”

Something cold and burning fills Tharien's veins. They are not quite ready because of him. The entire class is being held back because of him, and they know. He wants to argue, pretend that it’s not all his fault, yet in the end he doesn't say anything because the absence of Alhania Blazebringer feels so acute it makes him wonder if that's what phantom pain feels like. He put her in the academy's infirmary because he couldn't stop his magic from lashing out during a simple exercise.

Tharien tries very high not to sigh. Tries even harder not to cry—that would be the end of him if his father heard about it. (Tharien is a good son, he will not disappoint his father. Never again.)

He obediently opens his battered book and flips through the pages until he finds himself looking at the exercise section of Chapter Three: How To Tame Your Mana.

Someone snorts softly and Tharien feels his ears burn. He clenches his teeth and tries to ignore a prickling shiver that runs down his spine.

“We will not be working in groups today,” Emberwood says, apparently blissfully unaware that one of his students is about to suffer a mental breakdown. (Never again.) “Consider it an exercise in personal growth. Patience and caution are essential traits of every successful mage. Young Lady Silverwind, Young Lady Summerflight and Young Lord Sunbringer are allowed to skip the beginner section and go straight to page forty-two.”

Patience and caution, Tharien thinks angrily and pulls the book closer.

He can do it. He can.

*

“Ah.”

Tharien doesn't need to look up to know that Arcanist Emberwood is standing right behind him, so he doesn't. He keeps his eyes fixed on the tip of his wand instead.

He carefully traces the lines of the simple arcane rune. It's difficult not to be aware of the fact that all his classmates are already done with the exercise and are now staring at him with malicious curiosity, so Tharien pretends that he's sitting all alone in his mother's spacious library. Just him and the book, maybe his mother's familiar curled up in his lap, maybe a glass of cold milk on the desk. A bowl of strawberries. It's easier to focus when he thinks of strawberries instead of smirks.

His fingers are shaking slightly as he dutifully draws arcane lines over the page.

The point of the exercise is to teach children how to properly channel their magic—it's one of the basics, the foundations, the very building blocks of arcane theory. The diagram is enchanted to respond to mana that gets poured into it so that students can see a visual representation of their mistakes—the parts where they unleashed too much magic or the ones where its flow was disturbed.

Tharien's entire rune is a huge mess.

He slowly traces the largest circle, trying to focus on controlling the flow of mana. No matter what he does, though, he can't get it right—the page is covered in arcane residue from where the magic focused on the tip of the wand suddenly bubbled up for no good reason. Sometimes his mana stops flowing completely, leaving dull gaps in the diagram. Here and there it leaves glowing splotches that look like spilled ink. He should be able to do it. Everyone else can do it.

“Young Lord Flameheart... I strongly suggest you start taking your studies more seriously. There is only so far your inherent affinity will carry you.”

It's the gentle disapproval in Arcanist Emberwood's voice that makes something inside Tharien balloon up, and the next thing he knows a sudden burst of magic rips the training wand apart, sending wood splinters flying. A massive splash of glowing residue spreads over the enchanted page. After a second of stunned silence somebody in the backgrounds lets out a sharp laugh. Two, three seconds and another voice joins the chorus. As the Arcanist struggles to get the class back under control, Tharien's book gains a few more smears—red this time, from trembling fingers cut on sharp splinters.

He is eleven years old and he really, really, really wishes he were somewhere else, someone else.

[lamesorrow]

Thirty

Time: End of the 2nd War.

-

A rusty shovel bit deep into the ruddy ground, gravel and pebbles scratching noisily against weathered metal.

Strong muscles rippled under sunburned skin as the elf commonly known as Baelklad kept digging. Red dust clung to his legs and stained the dirty bandage wrapped around his chest. He didn't seem to mind, focused as he was on his task. The last portion of ashy dirt landed on the ground and the elf slowly straightened out his back, trying not to pull on the stitches too much.

He turned around and idly stared at the long row of identical mounds of red dirt. Twenty nine. The hole he was standing in was about to become the last one. He was almost done.

Baelklad crawled out of the hole, hissing quietly when his stitched flank protested with a sharp jab of pain. He sat on the edge and gave himself a minute or so to catch his breath. He was a very strong and resilient man, and yet he could feel himself rapidly approaching the hard limit of what his body could give. Light-headed, in pain and so exhausted he could barely see straight, all he wanted was to crawl into a cold mountain lake and fall asleep. Not think about anything for a while. Hell, not think about anything ever. Just... forget.

But first, his duty. He clumsily scrambled back to his feet. One more. Just one more.

His hands, made for violence, were almost unnaturally gentle as he slid them under his shroud-wrapped burden and carefully picked it up, stubbornly ignoring the painful pull of the stitches.

Baelklad let out a muffled groan. Ruddy gravel crunched unpleasantly. Something in the berserker's back crunched too. A spike of pain pierced his ankle and knee when he awkwardly slid down the hole, riding on top of a miniature avalanche.

The soil was mercifully cool as he gently placed his burden down. Remaining on his knees, Baelklad attentively adjusted the shroud. Like a mother fussing over some milkdrinker, a familiar voice in his head laughed. It made Baelklad's mouth twitch, torn between a smile and a sob.

“To the soothing embrace of the earth I return my brother, Balgenn Blackchain. Spirits of the ancestors, accept him as your own for he was a brave warrior, a good blacksmith and a cherished companion. Holy Light, guide his way for he walked the path of honour.”

His voice was so hoarse he could barely recognize it as his own. The noise that left his throat was more like the guttural snarling of the orcs than—

Baelklad scowled and pressed his dirty hand to the equally dirty shroud.

“You’ve done well, you bloody bastard.”

They have all done well, all thirty of them.

And now they were gone.

All thirty of them.

[lamesorrow]

A thousand doors ago

Title from the poem ”Young” by Anne Sexton. TW for child abuse.

-

Lord Flameheart's private quarters were surprisingly austere. Long plush curtains the colour of royal blue were the only decoration in the room—all furniture and equipment was nearly ascetic in its simplicity and the cut crystal wine glass looked strangely out of place on the darkened surface of the antique mahogany desk.

Sometimes Tharien wondered if his father was a man of simple pleasures, living the decadent life of a magister only because it was expected of an elf of his position, and if this small inconspicuous office was only a glimpse of the raw soul hidden underneath all the expensive fabrics and leathers. He watched the sunny amber of the finest southern peach wine slowly fill the glass and wondered if perhaps the reason why mother hated coming here so much was because she could subconsciously feel it too.

The temperature in the room has always been a few degrees lower than it was in the rest of the mansion, and yet Tharien found himself sweating through his undershirt.

Lord Flameheart put the bottle back on the desk when the glass was filled to half of its capacity. Tharien kept his eyes fixed on the wall and listened to the little sounds—a soft murmur of silk, a nearly noiseless exhale—when the magister sampled his drink.

When his father finally opened his mouth, it was to say:

“No.”

Tharien inhaled sharply, but before he could find a compelling argument—he had an entire collection of those, carefully gathered over the countless times he had rehearsed this conversation in front of the mirror—his father raised his hand and, just like that, the young elf found himself unable to speak.

“No, Tharien,” lord Flameheart repeated softly and finally looked up at his son. His eyes were illuminated with an eerily cool shade of blue that always chilled Tharien to the bone. “You are my heir.” He looked back at his glass, seemingly more interested in the wine than in his firstborn child. “I will not allow a product of countless generations of selective breeding to be wasted on a fleeting fancy.”

“It's not a fleeting fancy.”

Lord Flameheart looked up. He was not used to his son—or anyone, really—talking back to him. He made it clear that, in his opinion, the discussion was over. Any other time Tharien would've dejectedly hung his head and quietly left the office.

Not now, though.

Tharien opened his mouth, but no sound escaped his clenched throat. He could feel his cheeks burn and he hated himself, hated himself so much for being such a damn coward. He knew this conversation was coming. He had plenty of time to prepare. And yet, as he stood in front of his father, he found himself unable to gather his thoughts and form them into coherent words.

Lord Flameheart clicked his tongue and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Of course,” he said dryly. “You're a young man, thus easily swayed by silly stories about knights and damsels in distress. I will make sure that all such stories are immediately removed from the library and replaced with reading material that might actually benefit you—such as treatises on arcane theory.”

Only the treatises don't bloody work, Tharien thought desperately.

It didn't matter that he knew countless arcane diagrams and formulae by heart. It didn't matter that he could do all the necessary calculations in his head and was usually done long before his classmates finished fumbling with their abacuses. It didn't matter that his mind grasped magic immediately and instinctively, easily navigating the patterns and solving complicated problems.

None of that mattered because Tharien Flameheart still couldn't cast a spell to save his life.

Magic simply refused to obey. No matter how much he tried, how hard he strived for balance and harmony, how much he practised over and over and over again, it just didn't listen. He could call upon it with deceptive ease, but the moment it filled his veins it was simply impossible to control. It charred his sleeves, burned his skin and never ever did what he wanted it to do.

And yet his parents stubbornly refused to acknowledge the fact that something was wrong with their son, something that was not related to laziness or stupidity or carelessness. Something that simply couldn't be fixed by giving him more and more assignments or hiring more and more private tutors.

Worst of all, it made them wilfully blind to the fact that Tharien was gradually getting worse.

Lord Flameheart sighed tiredly and leaned back in his chair. “I'm going to tell you something. Something I trust you are old enough to understand.”

Tharien nodded stiffly.

“I understand the romantic allure of the... military life,” lord Flameheart said, although his dry voice directly implied that he does not understand it at all, “but your carefully curated lineage is too precious to be wasted on some nameless battlefield.”

Tharien lowered his eyes. He promised himself that he wouldn't give up, not this time, yet he could feel his resolve wavering with every single word.

“Your bloodline,” his father continued, “is one of the oldest and purest in the entire kingdom. You have a responsibility to uphold the values of your house and expand its influence. That's why you are going to become a magister and marry Alhania Starbreeze, so that in the next generation our position will be significantly boosted by being indirectly related to the ruling house of Quel'Thalas.”

Tharien's heart gave a painful squeeze.

He knew, of course. Contrary to what his father liked to believe, Tharien was perfectly aware of what would be expected of him in the future. His parents' plans regarding his person were not exactly a secret either. Still, hearing his father talk about them so openly filled Tharien with a sense of unavoidable finality that left a sinking sensation in his stomach.

“But I don't—“

“Of course you don't want to marry her.” Lord Flameheart smiled, but there was no warmth behind his smile. If anything, somehow his eyes became even more icy than before. “We have already established that what you want to do is swing a sword, like some dirty commoner.”

It came out of nowhere—as always. Lord Flameheart's anger was an elusive thing. One second he was sitting perfectly still, calmly sipping on his wine, and the next the glass was rolling across the desk and the magister was on his feet, narrow hand shooting out to tangle in his son's hair.

Tharien's head slammed against the desk with enough force to knock the air out of his lungs and make his knees buckle.

“Your mother and I have made many sacrifices to give you and Thelerissa the finest education that gold could possibly buy. And yet you keep spitting in my face by stubbornly refusing to do the bare minimum required by the Academy.”

Lord Flameheart's voice was brimming with barely contained fury as he readjusted his grip on his son's hair and shifted his weight, pressing down on Tharien's head and grinding the boy's cheek into the puddle of wine spilled over the desk's wooden surface.

“I am a magister, Tharien,” lord Flameheart growled hoarsely. “I know how magic works and I know how much sacrifice goes into mastering it. I also know how little effort you put into your studies.”

Tharien clenched his teeth and let out a pained mewl. He didn't even bother trying to fight back—he knew his father well enough to know that at this point even the tiniest attempt at disobedience would only make it worse. Instead he dazedly gripped the edge of the desk and held on for dear life, trying not to move, not to breathe.

“If that wasn't bad enough,” lord Flameheart hissed into his son's ear, “you now come to me and have the gall to imply that all my efforts and investments were a fool's errand because you are no better than a filthy peasant with a sword.”

And then, just like that, the fingers buried in Tharien's hair were gone. He stumbled back, desperately trying not to fall to his knees. His head was spinning and he could taste the mixture of blood and peach wine in his mouth.

Lord Flameheart looked down and carefully unwrapped a single brown hair from where it got tangled around his finger.

“Unfortunately, my son, it's time for you to learn that not all elves were created equal,” he said quietly, as if the outburst from only seconds ago had never happened. “There are those who pointlessly throw their lives away, fighting for a few coppers, and there are those who control the future of this country. You were born with all the privileges and responsibilities of royalty and it's time for you to finally embrace them.”

Tharien's heart skipped a beat when he heard a gentle scrape of wood against wood, but he stubbornly kept his eyes fixed on the floor, trying to focus on a stray drop of blood that glistened in the last rays of the setting sun. He blinked and spotted another drop, and then another one next to his foot, and then he realized that his lip was bleeding.

He tensed up when he registered movement in the corner of his eye. He instinctively clenched his teeth, preparing for another strike.

It never came. Instead, lord Flameheart stopped next to his son and exhaled wearily. Tharien could see the rim of his father's expensive robe slide over the drop of blood, smearing it over the floor.

“That means no more riding lessons, no more free time and no more silly stories to distract you from your studies,” the magister announced firmly. “Go back to your room. I don't want to see you until you get those outlandish ideas out of your head.”

A soft click of closing door. Languid footsteps retreating down the hall.

Finally, when the only sound he could hear was the hectic pounding of his own heart, Tharien allowed himself to wheeze. His cheek felt disgustingly sticky when he dug shaking fingers into the puffy flesh. Sore and numb at the same time, but it was a dull and familiar pain of a forming bruise. The bone itself seemed whole, at least as far as he could tell.

Tharien coughed wetly and licked the blood off his lips.

It tasted like wine and steel.

*

A century or so later Nereus Winterleaf thoughtfully scratched his nose, looked at the wet stain on the bark of his favourite oak and said, “You know what? It would've been much easier if you just said, 'Hey sweetheart, peach wine is a touchy subject' or something of that sort.” He gave the stain a critical look. “Now this poor girl is going to be hungover all night.”

Tharien groaned quietly and slowly rubbed his face. He inhaled deeply, trying to get rid of the unpleasant smell by replacing it with the much more agreeable aroma of grass and flowers, but the memory of peach wine and blue fire in his father's eyes proved to be difficult to shake off.

“Hungover?” he grunted tiredly. “It's a tree.”

“Exactly. Are you sure you want to argue with a druid about trees?”

Tharien snorted loudly. “Not when I'm traumatized by peaches, no,” he said dryly.

He pushed himself off the bench and reached for the training swords. They were not nearly as large and heavy as the pair of matching warblades that young Duncan had recently forged for him, but they were acceptable when it came to exercises focused on coordination and dexterity.

Tharien slowly rolled his shoulders. He figured there was still enough time for another short training session before Lara unavoidably finds him and drags him back to her place to test this supposedly miraculous new burn ointment she got recently.

He readjusted his grip on the practice swords. Late evening sun bathed the training area in the last warm rays of the day, heating up Tharien's tired muscles and chasing the chill out of his bones.

Chasing the memories out of his head.

[lamesorrow]

Some kind of magic

It feels so painfully, fundamentally wrong to do this; to stand with a scroll in his hand, trying to decipher some ancient magister's formula and understand the theory behind it.

Tharien grinds his teeth and throws the scroll on the pile of other discarded sources. It lands on top and cheerfully rolls down a steel-bound grimoire, unravelling symbols and words of power.

Very few people know that Tharien Flamesorrow is, in fact, a bit of a genius as far as arcane theory is concerned. His tendency to spontaneously catch on fire as well as his complete inability to use magic in an even remotely safe manner doesn't change the fact that his brilliance—the unusually effective way his brain processes all sorts of magical information—is still there.

After more than a century away from Silvermoon and all things magic he had fully expected himself to have forgotten most of it, but every page he reads rips layers of patina off the ridges of his brain.

And as much as Tharien hates himself for it, he knows that the stakes are too high to simply give up.

So he grinds his teeth, reaches for a fresh pencil and fills in another section of the formula.

He started the traditional way: by pinning a large sheet of paper to the wall. He didn't notice that he ran out of paper and was absentmindedly scribbling on the plaster until Fizzlesnack started yelling at him for vandalizing the Crusade's property, and then he made a short break to find that large roll of unused wallpaper that he had seen in Lara's basement years ago.

Tharien sighs and looks around. Now his calculations cover three entire walls and over half of the fourth one, and he's all out of wallpaper. He grunts quietly and heavily sits down on top of his book pile, ignoring the way the spine of an ornate grimoire immediately starts digging into his arse, and stares morosely at the last part of the formula. He's almost done. Just needs that one last push, one final effort before he gets the answer he needed.

He closes his eyes and carefully rubs his temples. The headache had been a constant companion since... about yesterday, and it was only getting worse. Now the constant pain makes Tharien's head spin whenever he looks at the long rows of letters and numbers and symbols. He tried to give his mind a few moments of relief whenever he could, overusing the abacus even for calculations he knew he could easily do on his own, but it did nothing to lessen the pressure he can now feel in his temples.

Tharien pinches the bridge of his nose and stubbornly looks up, grimly staring at the last string of calculations. Numbers start to flow through his head, filling his mind with calculations and possibilities and answers. The elf closes his eyes and angrily taps his fingers against his thigh, trying to unravel the formula. He can feel his annoyance growing as the elusive numbers slip out of his grasp.

And then, just like that, a revelation.

Tharien blinks when the string of symbols suddenly form a neat little row inside his head.

Well shit, he thinks.

He takes a deep breath and feels a shudder run down his spine. He takes a few slow steps towards the wall, where the last '=' is waiting for him, carefully presses the pencil to the paper and meticulously draws a single oval.

He take a step back and exhales, feeling the tension leave his body along with his strained breath.

Zero.

He was right. He finally has definite proof that the shields used by the Nightborne could be used to destabilize the portal and make it collapse.

The theory is sound. Now... now it's time for some practice.