Something troubling this way comes

A far-flung map-wright with delusions of adequacy. An irrepressible explorer of unprovenanced arts. A Forsaken wretch suffering from bomb-proof optimism.Death was not the end, it was merely the turning point.

Here be arts!

Above by the amazing kueshka

Above by an amazing and lovely artist

Here be character theme(s)!

• Vibe pt 1.
• Vibe pt2.
• Vibe pt 3.

Here be stories!

Listed in chronological order according to the broad storylines. Precise chronological order across storylines can be traced by glancing at the numbers.

(Content warning: Death, violence, spooky stuff etc. He's undead, go figure.)

• Death and Wagons (Concluded)
• Skeins of Service (Ongoing)
• Unprovenanced Arts (Ongoing, new content!)
• Miscallaneous short stories

Barebones FAQ

Q1: Why the carrd?
A1: It's neater than kludging story after story into the about page of the trp profile.Q2: I have feedback/your writing reeks/what the hap is fuckening in your texts. How do I get in touch?
A2: Wisdan or Murkholt can be mailed/whispered in game. Or hit me up on Discord if you can find me.Q3: What's with the story structure?
A3: All but the earliest writeup has been penned during/in response to roleplay, and continues to spiral into travesty. Treat the stories as glimpses into noteworthy moments of Murkholt's tale rather than a start-to-finish tale of standard make.

Dead and Buried:
Early Termination

I

  The traveller's step is brisk, his smile wide. He inhales, and feels his lungs swell with the crisp morning air. Rope and chain and rod alike are strapped to his pack, laden as it is with stacks of neatly organised notes and drawings, even the carefully wrapped semicircle - acquired in foreign lands at some ludicrous expense. The scent of baked bread, fresh from the oven, wafts across square and street.  It will be a great day, this one. He can feel it; in his very bones, in the thick steam wafting upwards from the half-loaf clasped in his hand. He finds a familiar doorstep, just at the edge of Market Row, where he takes a seat and bites down. The loaf is pungent, musty - a new trend sweeping across Lordaeron's pearl.  He peers to his left, then to his right. The inner coat pocket is emptied of its contents while he chews and swallows; a quarce-stamped proof of passage to and from a not-quite distant kingdom out at sea, a humble level with a dust-ridden eye. And a crumpled slip of paper, swiftly procured from its precarious landing spot just next to a particularly rancid puddle.  "Tuesday, presentation of Brennadam shared surveys. Wednesday, staking out new enclosure at the menagerie. Thursday - the matter of-"
Wisdan muses to nobody in particular, as he grants the upcoming week's itinerary is given the full courtesy of a look overm He tries to drown out the ragged scream rising from the alleys beyond the row proper. He tries to put his mind to matters of profession and lining, rather than how his tongue swells and his eyes water.  The note is folded, neatly this time, and placed within the breast pocket. He glances upwards, to where sun's rays beam across roof and tile. The wind is absent, so too are the ripples that should cascade across the puddle's surface. Wisdan Jahnsson reaches for his level, scoops it up and places it in his palm. It does not close. It can not close.  He draws breath, but no air surges into his lungs. He yelps, surprised, but expels nought but phlegm and blood. Skin bruises upon contact with cracked tile. Delicate contraptions of glass and metal fare even worse. The twinned stenches of rot and smoke waft across the row.

Dead and Buried:
Broken Tiles

III

  The street yawns, forsaken and forlorn; its cobbles ruddy where they are not mired in years of murk and grime. Ghoulish features shudder as skin contorts and limbs distend; the ghastly thing staggers neath window and pane, until it stops.
A pale hand juts forth from the distended carcass, and a once-slavering maw is pulled upwards, until it engulfs the horrid creature’s skull. And with his brow smeared by ichorous expulsions, Murkholt peeks forth. Peers down into the gutter, to the cracked tile.
    To where his old level still lay.  It had been a scourged ghoul, picking at the remains of a pair of scavengers. Elfin skin of midnight hue had found its way into the ghoulish gullet just as well as the waifling magi’s robes - it had been a simple enough matter to skulk up to it, and subsequently break its head in with a rock. Or a cudgel, or simply a branch. Wisdan wasn’t entirely certain of how he had managed it, only that it had come easily to him. Violence increasingly did, these days.  There had been the matter of the carcass, of course. The brief debate over how best to enter dreaded Stratholme without ending up as chow for the Ghouls. One and one had been put together, and he had gotten to work, cutting the ghoulish thing like a fish and draping its hollowed frame across his body. It hadn’t been pleasant or tidy - his humble wayfarer’s garb suffers from both soaking and strain - but it had seen him through the gates. Through the streets. All the way to that familiar doorstep, just at the edge of Market Row.
There, he had come to a halt. There, he had found a small level, its eye whole despite the fall. Despite the years.  No stars shone upon the muddied glass held within his hand, and no reflection was cast upon it. Wisdan Murkholt did not see himself as he had been - waistcoat-filling, broad-necked, a bon vivant in all ways his trade would allow.
He saw something else. Something grim, an affront to the houses of prayer and worship alike. A thing that had outlasted both disease and bodily frailty, who had learned and grown into something more. Something gaunt, yet shaped like a man.

  The traveller’s step is brisk, his smile wide. He pulls the ghoulish jaw down across his face, and draws no breath. He peers to his left, then to his right, before setting off into the night.
    He leaves behind a broken level, its eye shattered underfoot.

Discount Meat Wagon:
Pans and Fires

IV

  Wisdan Murkholt holds still, and does his very best pretending to be a dead Ghoul, halfway stuffed into a disused crate. He had done so for the last thirty six hours, give or take seven or so minutes. He ponders whether he should switch to counting the days rather than the hours out of fear that he’d eventually lose count. The act, as he had begun referring to it as, went well. Nobody looked twice at an inert undead in Stratholme of all places, and he was fairly confident his half-hearted descent into a crate littered with tracefuls of tobacco had helped sell it. The occasional meatbag walking past sure seemed to consider him little more than dirt. So too did the Scourge, and the necromancer that seemed to lead this particular rebasing effort of the purged city.  All in all, Wisdan considered his foray into the city to be a staggering success. From the approach to the infiltration, to the charting of the leaders of this particular incursion, it had all gone swimmingly, if slowly. Even the Meat Wagons he had expressed eager interest in had been found, and he had managed to make his way to them ungutted. That is, of course, where his luck had run dry. A pair of Abominations had taken up post right by the contraptions, prompting Murkholt to do like a corpse and play dead. Problem was, these lumbering oafs hadn’t left. They didn’t talk either, which made guessing how long they were going to hold him up a fool’s errand.  As the thirty seventh hour draws to a close, heavy metal clatters in the distance. It’s almost a welcome noise when compared to the otherwise unseemly noises of bodily revulsion emanating from the Abominations, but the approaching clanking fills Murkholt with unease.
He had spotted three individuals with greater cerebral, not to mention necromantic, capacity than the rest of the Scourge rabble.
One was a distinctly robe-wearing sort, with the kind of headdresses that drew the mind to the Necrolytes of olden days. Wisdan had that one pinned down as a Necromancer of some sort.The other two had worn enough plate and mail to break the back of a horse, and their garb had been far too spike-ridden for Wisdan’s liking. He had them pinned down as some kind of Ebon Blade renegades, or perhaps thralls of the Necromancer. The two had bickered quite a bit, which Murkholt put down to one of them having hooves - he was quite proud of this observation, and felt that was something a keen-eyed member of the Phalanx should make note of.  He quietly hopes it’s just one of the maybe-Ebons, coming to dismiss the two corpulent constructs from their post. If fortune truly favours him, that one Knight would be dumb enough to not wear their grim helmet, making identification beyond “big, spiky and menacing” possible. The indistinct chatter between two terrifying individuals heading the way of the Wagons does a little something to temper Murkholt’s optimism. When they draw close enough to be overheard, the discussion about “raising the rest of the bodies” greatly increases his panic levels. The two terrors are kind enough to stop to boss the Abominations around, inadvertently blessing Murkholt with an entire two and a half minutes to avoid being found out as more un- than simply dead.

  He drops the counting of days from his mind, and dredges an approximate inventory from the depths of memory. He finds his assets to be, in no particular order:
- Mundane clothing, stained and reeking
- One gutted Ghoul, worn
- A dagger forged from Truesilver, not to be squandered
- A notebook full of observations, important
- His own limbs, sort-of disposable  Finding his assets lacking and a plan of escape still forming, Wisdan Murkholt commits to improvise, and hopes like hell he wouldn’t be caught.  Twenty-four seconds after the maybe-Ebons commences the bullying of the Abominations, the Forsaken springs to action. Drawing his dagger as silently as he can, he sets about carving a series of frantic sigils in the murky wood of the crate he rather shoddily inhabits. Marks upon marks, sigils upon sigils. A pattern begins to emerge from the haphazard knifework; one predating that of the church of Lodaeron, its time-lost shapes crude and unrefined. Primal, and uncompromising. He continues etching, the certainty of his capture mounting with every second.
One minute and fifty eight seconds after the Ebons rounds on their subjects, Wisdan feels a wave of sudden relief wash over him. A pressure he had not felt building lifts from his mind. Compulsion seizes him, his carving comes to an abrupt end, and he peeks above the crateside.  Six meatbags have appeared from somewhere or other, clad in metal and cloth garishly decorated with the old seal of the Northern Realm, bellowing challenges at the maybe-Ebons. One of the Abominations finds its skull boiled by the sudden onset of arcanely induced fire, and the battle is on. Wisdan sits tight until the first clash of blades, and as a cry vaguely reminiscent of the request to “avenge me” sounds, he makes a break for it. He hurls himself from the crate, sheathing his blade mid-flight, and dashes for the Wagons.
He catches a brief glance at the Brave Heroes, and another of the disappointingly helmeted mugs of the terrible Knights, before reaching and subsequently clambering on top of the closest wagon. Forsaken hands work hard to bury himself into its cartload of corpses, as the pretender-diaspora of old Lordaeron gets a first-hand chance to reevaluate their decision to assault bloody Ebons at less than full company strength. The screams go on for a while, before silence reigns supreme.  Down in the pile of putrid flesh and broken bones, Murkholt’s evaluation of his new position was interrupted by the unmistakable jostle, and subsequent thrumming, of the Meat Wagon burbling to life. And its subsequent, slow movement.
He isn’t sure where he is going, and desperately wants to chance a peek out of the pile, but he resists the urge.
He runs some made-up numbers to calm himself, and vicariously ponders his odds at taking on two errant Knights of the Ebon Blade with nothing but his trusty dagger and dumb luck, compared to sitting tight and hoping that his trip aboard the Meat Wagon won’t end with him being repurposed into parts for fleshstitching.
  He decides to go with the latter, though it’s a damned close call.

Discount Meat Wagon:
A New Bearing

V

  It can’t be done, Murkholt grumbles to himself. The half-pint Necrolyte had met his end when the Phalanx surged north to save the day, whilst bagging themselves a bounty of Scourge siegecraft and an errant Map-wright all at once. Withermoon, a Nightborne elf with ties to the Ebon Blade, had proven to be a consummate scavenger, and had taken the small corpse along to Hir’watha. And with it, some articles of probable potential. Among them, a booklet written in an approximation of goblin-jargon which Wisdan had been told to sift through for clues or codes, or any information pertaining to the strange group and their operations up north. A booklet that he had spent the better part of a day trying to decipher. And as the sun began to set, he felt that he was closer to cracking himself than the damned code - if it even contained such a thing in the first place!  Either the little rat was very good at encoding his thoughts, or I am about to lose my mind over the sappy musings of a late Necrolyte with delusions of romantic capacity.
He slams the pages shut, and resigns himself to passing it on to someone with a greater analytical bent than himself. Perhaps Haldren, or maybe Preston. The chortle-inducing thought of letting the recently conscripted Geist seizes him, though that particular train of thought derails when he starts pondering in earnest whether or not the bloodthirsty little thing is even capable of reading. Having jostled the idea for a few minutes longer than he feels is entirely warranted, he designates the problem as being above his pay grade, and something to be dropped - unceremoniously - in someone else’s lap.  Putting the cipher-hunt out of his mind, and the booklet out of sight, Murkholt’s mind turns to more recent developments. The liberation of the Wagon had been received well by the Phalanx and its leadership, well enough that he felt pretty certain that his little adventure up north wouldn’t cause him any lasting troubles; the rapid establishment of the Phalanx’s armoured formation and subsequent live firing exercises that had taken place just the other day fuelled that particular hope’s flame.  The marching, the articulated vehicular carnage, the group working as one to scout, relay and report their own positions and those of their fabricated adversaries. It had just been a drill, yes, but the men had moved as a disciplined unit. The formation had held through twists and turns. Withermoon, Haldren and the Geist had identified threats and moved to defend the vehicle, Murkholt had estimated distance and bearing based on the trio’s observations and Graves had manned the catapult to some appreciable extent. All while the Lieutenant, whose name still escaped Murkholt, had belted increasingly confusing orders at the troop.
Apart from that one instance with the tree that Murkholt was fairly certain no one would miss, it had gone swimmingly. He had even bagged himself a title, or a position, in the process; that of Siegemaster.  Murkholt muses vividly on this development as his eyes flit between the resting behemoth hull of the Meat Wagon, and his personal scribblings. A Siegemaster! He had scarcely known such a position existed, nor had he ever expected to be ranked as such. But the Lieutenant had asked for a man with a know-how of charting and bearing, and he had answered, and was subsequently ranked as such on the spot. He felt a twinge of concern that his lack of experience with sieges - not to mention military endeavours as a whole - might come back to bite him in the arse, but he tries not to dwell on it.  The Phalanx’s leadership is astute enough to recognise the capabilities of the men they have at hand, he reassures himself. Even if all were to go completely ploin-shaped, he’s canny enough to handle himself in his new-found position of relative importance.
  Maybe, he tells himself. Probably.

Skeins of Service:
Beyond the Wall

II

  "Deathguard! Fall back beyond the cordon! All who remain shall be rendered unto dust!"
The order had been given. The excursion beyond the great wall had come to an end. And the troop followed the given command to the letter; a well-worded bark is motivation enough on its own, but the Gilneans - the majority of which had seemingly succumbed to some druidic malady of old - surged towards the unit, baying for blood. Or failing that, an untidy helping of undead ichor.  Reed covered the retreat, bringing his rifle to bear on the first of the Brave Heroes of Gilneas scrambling to pursue. Baker barked further orders and placated an enthusiastic assailant by crumpling their arm with one fell swing of her mace. Murkholt carried the wounded Hansson across the heath, and old Gebrandt willed them on with storied words, imbued with the sacred purity of Light itself; despite the searing pain inflicted by the syllables of old Lordaeron's faith, it rallied the Forsaken's hearts. The end was near. The wall loomed, closer and closer.  "Praise the Lady, we're going to make it!" The wounded Hansson, carried along in two pieces, cried.
"I can see the tears in the wall! Told you we'd make it!" Murkholt yelled as he hoisted Hansson's bottom half over his shoulder.
"Not out of the woods yet," Reed corrected as he began the arduous process of reloading.
"Have faith, young gunner. And you too, Murkholt." Old Gebrandt croaked, and turned towards the squad's assigned apothecary in training. "Though it burns, the Light guides our way." His skeletal features softened, and a still-fleshy grin spread across his lips. "As it has always done. Even now, we fight the good fight, to ensure our future."
"Light guide this maggot-eaten ass," Reed complained. "Didn't we tell y-"
"Less talking, more pushing!" Baker cut off, and commanded. "Move it, Deathguard!"  The troop followed this order, too. Undead limbs carried them fast, but not fast enough. Upon reaching the top of the hillock overlooking the western bay, a silence fell upon the soldiery, assembled from those who remained of the old Kingdom. There was a glint, a flash, and everything went so very bright. Had Murkholt not been dead, he might have mistaken the light for that of the very sun.  When he comes to, he is one limb shorter than he should be. But before he can take further stock of the situation, there is the matter of the Gilnean. The one brandishing a sheen of arcane ice, mouthing off to their comrades about "confirming the kill." The death scream of old Gebrandt, still clutching his holy libram, provides the distraction required. With bloodied axe, its twin buried in the skull of the mage, the Eastweald surveyor is upon them. Steel clashes against steel, and a guttural roar shakes the hillock. The wall-huddlers are driven off at a heavy cost. They would rather flee, than face death.

  The flames lick, lap at the wood. The funerary pyre roars to life, contrasting against the solemn procession of unliving seeing their beloved off. One last time.
Hansson holds the old Libram close to her chest. Reed sits silent, watching the blaze consume his beloved captain. And Murkholt stands before the pyre, listening to the sermon delivered by the regimental chaplain. He would speak up, but there is little undeath can do to avert the sensation of a swelling throat, of eyes growing bleary.  It is when the embers have cooled, and the clouds rumble overhead that the procession breaks. It is when the first droplet falls upon his chin that Wisdan offers his promise. A quiet oath to those he knew, and those he loved.  Rain carries the remains down the brook. One day, he prays, their ashes will fall like rain.

New content!
Skeins of Service:
Back to the Heath

X

Location: Silverpine, The Sepulcher Crypt Complex.
Time: Early hours, standard timeframe. 
Deputy Captain Murkholt had not believed Captains Valachev and Vaelthorn when they had informed him of just what manner of individual would be heading the weeklong slog through tactica both historical and contemporary in the days ahead; an old, grizzled and alchemically rejuvenated stiff-neck of an Executor, who had been carted out of retirement through unknown means. Wisdan had balked at the idea.
To his knowledge, an Executor is known to “retire” much in the same way that a ruthless nob of old Lordaeron could be said to retire; either through being reduced to a greasy stain on the ground through some carefully arranged accident, or through formally stepping back from a position of prominence - in order to ascend the playing field of political pig-wrestling, and resume playing the game from behind the scenes.  That’s what the Deputy Captain had believed - and he had been forward enough to tell his seniors just where they could stuff the ludicrous idea of a retired High Executor crawling out of their hidey-hole and/or grave to teach an up-and-coming generation of military commanders. He had been wrong, of course, and he had found his expected weeklong siesta interrupted by the sudden realisation that it was all not just a poorly thought-through joke played on junior officers out of rote. As in, there had been a mere seven minutes and forty-three seconds until he was expected to attend the initial briefing.  He hadn’t been able to find his formal tabard in time, and had felt forced to dress in the battle-worn field variety he had borne since enlisting with the regiment. It did little to obscur Wisdan’s decidedly non-regimental attire; a wretched mixture of battlefield salvage from the far north and esoteric - if not outright wistful - designs purchased, then maintained, at ludicrous expense.  He scurries down to the crypt, notebook in hand, and engages in a brief but frantic declaration of status, intent and showcasing of his credentials to a couple of terminally-bored looking Dreadguard. He is let through without more trouble than a lazy kick aimed at his rear and an off-handed comment about “civilian mindset” - this is enough for him to feel hopeful. Maybe this won’t be so bad, after all. His hopes are then promptly squashed as he sets foot in the briefing chamber; all it takes for the commanding staff is to glance in his direction to recognise an ill fit to his non-regimental uniform along with his decidedly civilian posture.
  The screaming is frantic, but mercifully brief - the not-quite retired brass have more on his agenda than to spend all day abusing increasingly terrified junior officers.

Location: Silverpine, The Sepulcher Crypt Complex.
Time: Four-ish hours after time shrivelled and died.  “.. and those are my thoughts on the matter, Ma’am.” Murkholt concludes.
“Come again, Captain,” the Disapproving Hench-Officer urges. “Deputy Captain,” she corrects herself.  Murkholt winces. They had been through this song and dance twice over already. The Disapproving Hench-Officer had spent the better part of Wisdan’s painstaking elaboration pacing across the across the room, taking jabs at the then-civilian Murkholt’s observations of that one trek across the Gilnean wall that ended in disaster for three quarters of the company the map-wright had been assigned to. She had argued regimental regulation, cited the general incompetence of the late captain that had led the company, and the specific incompetence of the knuckle-dragging, feeble-minded sheepshit excuse of a surveyor that had somehow found himself jostled into actual rank, and now had the poor taste to stand before her.
    To say that she had taken an incredulous view of Murkholt’s decade-old explanation of how things really went down was a bit of an understatement.  Murkholt had grown weary of the conversational sniping by the end of his first attempt at a run-through, by the end of his repetition he felt tempted to jump out of one of those windows that the crypt-chamber didn’t have. He had lost track of how this ill-justified examination of his past had anything to do with the arcane art of shouting at people and getting them to do what you tell them to, and he had scarcely any idea of what phase the sun was, outside of the crypt. Forsaken, no longer suffering from the petty meatbag requirements of sustenance and rest, were disposed to operating on an entirely inhuman timescale, and he was fairly certain that the Hench-Officer - whose signature and voice felt increasingly familiar to him - had managed to lecture him on both doctrine and protocol for around forty-three hours; after the heated argument about the importance of adjudicating pre-Council regulations, he had simply lost track.  Still - the Phalanx had sent him to the Sepulcher to learn from the best, and since that so clearly entailed explaining the reasoning behind his remarks on a theoretical plan of attack, then he was going to stand his ground. Even if it meant running it all over one more bloody time.  “I’ll start over,” Murkholt says, forcing a curt smile across his strained lips. He steps up to the map, the one splayed across the near table. He gestures over the torch-lit edges of its inkbound topography; the southern kingdom of Gilneas with its myriad hills and rivers, its snaking expanse of wolf-land and its northern, wild heath. He plants his index finger square in the featureless heathlands, and cranes his neck to face the Hench-Officer.  “Here,” Wisdan says. “It was here it all culminated, but hindsight has been kind to me. We were doomed before we set out.”
“Explain,” replies the Hench-Officer.
“Baker was assigned command, and she did a damned good job at it. Th-”
“You say she did, and yet the death toll numbered three on that day. Hansson, Gebrandt and Baker herself. Doesn’t sound very competent to me,” the Hench-Officer butts in.
“Ethel, please,” Wisdan tries. “Baker was the lynchpin that held the group together, even as-”
“It’s Junior Executor Ethelweiss to you, Deputy Captain.” The sour-faced aspirant retorts.
“And don’t go all slobber-nosed on me. I remember the state you were in, when you scurried back through the broken wall. I remember the broken bodies, and the price we paid for your failure. For Baker’s failure.”
“...”
“But humour me. You didn’t lead with this when last you droned on, or the time before that,” she says.
Wisdan stares at her, much in the way a house-owner stares at a trespasser relieving themselves upon their living room floor. How dare she?! After all he had- fine. He’ll give her the not-quite dispassionate version. If she argues still, she can stuff it. If she argues, everyone from ex-Retiree High Executor down to the bewildered-looking Deathguard recruits can all go hurl themselves off the hills up by Agamand’s.  Wisdan clears his throat, jabs his finger against the map-wrought heathlands, and rallies.
“Baker did what she could. Which, considering we went into the wolf-infested hellhole of Gilneas - and returned with at least a few men and women alive - is saying a lot. When peril threatened the unit she strode into the field, banner in hand, barking orders and leading by example. Her words of courage rallied the soldiers, rallied us few civilians to acts unimaginable. What Baker decreed, we did. And we did it damned well.”  Silence. The Junior Executor’s helmeted countenance is all but unreadable, but she hasn’t started shouting. Murkholt boggles the possibilities for a moment, then correctly assumes this is a cue to keep going.  “I didn’t quite appreciate what she did for us, back then. But after enlisting in the Twelfth Regiment of Brill, and having learned of those days when the wall - the world - broke, I’ve got a better picture. A clear one, if you will.”
Wisdan detaches his digit from the map, and steps up to the Junior Executor. Just one, two steps. Enough to ensure focus remains on him, not the map on the table behind.
“We were all treated like mushrooms. That is to say, kept in the dark and fed horseshit. All I - and Baker too, probably - knew was that we were supposed to find a munitions cache, light it on fire, then run back home before anyone bold enough to pursue came around looking at why that large hill had been redistributed across the heath. I thought us unfortunate, back then, to have run afoul of so many obstacles along our way.”
He locks eyes with what he feels reasonably confident are the eye-holes of Ethelweiss’s helmet, and continues.  “Running afoul of a defending patrol when you’re merrily skipping across the foe’s lands is something that happens. Once. Twice is simply unfortunate, especially when you’re trying and feeling as though you’re keeping a low profile.” Murkholt raises his hands, and nearly ten fingers jut out from his thread-marred palms. “We were waylaid no less than nine times, by disproportionately well equipped groups. The rank and file were bad enough, and they got worse once the Worgen curse started spreading among the Gilnean ranks. But Magi? Night Elven Moon-chanters? An honest-to-Throne Ebon Knight of Dwarven stock, cutting through us like a warm knife through the finest Eastweald butter?”  Junior Executor Ethelweiss stands still, and says nothing. But there is an inclination to her helmeted skull that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Wisdan’s right hand, which had carelessly risen to accentuate the point he was trying to get across, joins with his left one in professing a concluding, revealing gesture. A presentation of palms, along with the final part of his testimony.  “We were down to thirteen men and women, once we reached the designated spot. But there was nothing. Not a hill, not a feature across the nearest hundred paces of blasted heathland. It wasn’t the maps - me and Hansson had seen to those - and it wasn’t Baker, either. She led us into the thick of it, despite mounting opposition, and was rewarded with wet grass and the howling wind mocking us through our harried retreat back across the cordon.”
Wisdan draws breath, and the absence of lungs swells in his chest.
“Captain Baker took initiative where convention would have seen us all dead. She brought us home, at the cost of her own life. It wasn’t just us mud-feet that were misled, but the entire blasted chain of command, up to the Captain herself. Possibly higher, still.”  The lightless sockets of Ethelweiss’s helmet flare to life, twin burning lights of violet hue. She plants her hand on the pommel of her sword, and beckons Wisdan to continue.  “You see it, too?” he asks her.
“I suspected it. High Command was riddled with sycophants of the Mad Banshee, in those days.” she responds.
“And Baker with her sympathies..”
“Lordaeron for its people. Simpler, back then. More dangerous, too.”
“Baker was meant to go into Gilneas, and to not return. What happened to us others was probably just-”
“Acceptable collateral. I reckon it was more convenient than arranging a friendly fire incident inside of her tent.”
“Right. So you understand what I mean, with all this?”  Junior Executor Ethelweiss stares at Murkholt, and bursts out into laughter. It’s a half-wailing, fluting noise that echoes through the closed chamber. She shakes her head, and nudges at the tip of her helmet’s noseguard.
“A decade-old accusation against my former Executor? The damned coot isn’t even alive, and his closest flunkies met with unfortunate accidents during their return from the Fourth War. Even if your slander had any weight to it, it wouldn’t amount to a thing.”
“That’s not what I was getting at, but it was a necessary part of the explanation.” Wisdan says.
“Then spit it out,” she urges him. “Don’t keep old battleaxes waiting, hm?”  “She was a model Captain, and an example to be followed.” Wisdan takes a step back, and points towards the map on the table. Then, realising he’s currently gesturing towards the crypt chamber floor tiles, he steps back a pace further. With his splayed hand hovering above the map, and the ink-bound traces of Gilneas heathlands, he continues.
“Had she not shown ample initiative, we would have marched into the field with high knees, then we wiped from the sodden heath - to a man.”
“You did, though,” Ethel huffs.
“Almost, but not quite,” Murkholt hisses in response. “Listen.”
“I am,” she flutes with a disconcerting tone to her voice. He rather thinks she sounds pleased; this comes as a novelty and a shock to the Deputy Captain. It’s almost enough to make him stop in his tracks. Almost.
“The game might have been rigged from the start. But through courage and initiative, she held the banner high. The company’s morale, too, even as our numbers dwindled. We all trusted in her, and she saw the mission through, to the end. Can’t ask more than that from a captain, M’am.”  Ethel’s violet eyes flicker, then her gaze locks with Murkholt’s. There’s an appreciative twinkle to her eyes, and a quizzical sideways list of her gorget-clad neck.
“I take it this is something you aspire to then, Murky?”
    Deputy Captain Murkholt nods curtly, and smiles broadly.

Mired in Murk

VI

  They had not made it in time. When the Phalanx thundered across the southern reaches of Fenris lake’s detritus-laden beach, they had spotted the lights, far in the distance.
When the Forsaken had reached the overlit barn and the blazing farmhouse, Wisdan had not yet understood it. But when the battle had been joined, when the hoven devils - Ebon and Lightforged - set forth to purge anew, he had come close enough to gaze upon the mound. He had seen familiar faces, empty eyes, gut-wrenching absences where there had once been at least a facsimile of life.
He had recognised the corpses for what they were, names and smiles and dreams of lives before and after doom had crept across the north. Beatrice, Eubans, Osbail, Eughast. Friends from years gone by in living days, brought to a sudden end by adherents of the very light that forsook them long ago.  They were gone, and no praying, no wishing, no mourning was going to see them returned. And so he had grasped an axe in each hand, and set upon the hoven horrors alongside his Forsaken kin.
The otherworldly hulks had been certain of their superiority, and had one by one found faith and zeal insufficient to guard against cold steel, against the time-honed discipline of the Phalanx.
The Vindicators and the robed Herald, even the Ebon mastermind, had fallen. Only a Bulwark remained, having retreated upon his mammoth steed, swearing vengeance beneath his breath. And once the hurlyburly was done, the battle truly lost and won, Murkholt had set off into the deep forests of Silverpine. To stop what he feared one so forged of the Light might claim, what strings they might pull, if they were allowed to return to the lands of those who flock under banners blue.  Their cause had been just, in a way. To those who flocked under banners blue, the Forsaken were little but unholy aberrations deserving only of true death - he saw well the line of reasoning behind the purge of Silverpine. It was not murder, for Forsaken were not laden with the burden of personhood.
It was not extermination, for the undead had no just claim to life in any form. It was simply the act of wiping the slate clean, to let the scathing light burn away the rot, and the horror of undeath.
To let life spring anew from the forlorn weald of the north east, and to let those Forsaken be forgotten at long last.  It was not an uncommon sentiment, and he was familiar with its original expressions. He had run afoul of these sorts before - steadfast warriors of the holy Light, hell-bent on wiping the shame of undeath from the north. Some few cared to distinguish between a gibbering ghoul and a man with a second lease on life.
Most did not. And he could well recall the marks left from trusting a holy man all too easily; a latticework of stitches across his abdomen. A multitude of vertebral replacements. Things that were not ribs, yet passed as them.
He remembered the sensation of his back breaking, and ravenous hands reaching for gut-skin. The knife had been so very sharp, the flensing torturously slow, the iron blistering white hot.
He had been gutted like a fish, and kicked towards the pyre. It had been dumb luck, nothing else, that had seen him survive the ordeal.  He can not help but wonder. If compromise may yet be reached with the adherents of the cascading brightness, threatening to sear his existence with its radiance. If he should cling to hope, that the fleeing scion of Argus will simply let things be, if he lets them escape. And every speculative trail of thought has led him to the same conclusion, the very reason he cuts through the moonlit undergrowth of Silverpine like a man possessed.
He pursues the only one that may answer for the murder of his kin, his fellows, his friends. Words are not enough to articulate his grief. Hatred is too feeble a term to describe the unaccountable heart-pounding sensation threatening to tear a hole through his hollow chest.
For he knows in his heart, that if the last of the Lightforged flees the forest, and warns his kin - there will be no tomorrow. Not for him, nor for those he loves.  So deep in thought is he, that he does not see the beast before he stumbles into it. He freezes up - the mammoth-like creature stands as tall as a horse and a half placed atop each other, and with many times their bulk. Seconds pass, and no elephantine terror deigns to move, or even breathe.
Murkholt backs off - slowly - and gazes upon the gilded carcass.
It was an imposing creature in life, and hasn’t lost a bit of its dreadful grandeur in death. The armour it carries would crush a lesser creature, its light-burnished markings are.. bloodied. Bloodied? Wisdan sidles to the right of the sloughing trunk, feeling his way forward, then inward. There, where its left eye has seeped through its cavity. He can feel the back end of something feathery, attached to a thin thing - an arrow and its fletching.  He pushes his gauntlet-clad hand into the socket, and tugs at the arrow, which flat out refuses to budge.
“That must have done it,” he thinks to himself, recalling the moment when the Phalanx’s ranger set off in pursuit of a fleeing foe. The woodsman had returned without a tendrilled skull, but with one arrow shorter than he left with. And then - Wisdan’s pale eyes flare wide open as lines of reason are drawn through scattered nodes of impression and assumption. Hope surges anew in the hollow that once held Wisdan’s heart. With the Lightforged’s beast slain, the armoured brute just might be traceable.
And what’s more, it might be possible for little old Murkholt to catch up, and prevent another catastrophe from befalling his kin.  Fir and juniper find their branches whisked to the side as a gaunt and Forsaken shape cuts a swathe through the woodlands, and forges a path through the dales. The old mind of the surveyor he once was works quickly to establish distance and angle, to estimate terrain and course. Hillock, marsh and wind-blasted heath give way to distant shoreline, and the still mirror pane of the sunless sea.
Only the somber glow of the moon shines down upon the night-draped vista, painting the scene in pallid light.  Something else shines, close to the shore.
A heavy and towering thing, snapping branch and twig as it makes its way towards the sole surviving pier standing still in the bay.
The distant clanking and cursing, the glow of something foreign and sacred - it must be his mark Far away on the other side of the inlet, a vessel lies still. And although it flies no flag and carries no discernible marks of allegiance, Wisdan is yet of sound enough mind to put the pieces together, to let observation confirm suspicion. If his quarry reaches the ship, and sets sail for southern lands - Wisdan puts the thought, and fear of what might happen then, out of his mind.
As he trundles downhill, as the alien cursing grows audible to his ears, he plucks at a wretched effigy, long since affixed to his belt with strap and twine.
It is but a figure of bone and twig, a vile facsimile of a human shape, no larger than a clenched fist - a memory of days when delusion, if not ambition, had him firmly in its claws. Without knowing why, he pats it on the head, and mumbles something that sounds like a prayer.

  Wisdan’s step is sure as he skulks up behind the Light-fused hulk, his pace swift. Had he followed a creature less than three meters tall, and one not decked out in enough sanctified plate to cause the very pier to buckle and groan beneath their hooves, he reckons he hadn’t tried to stalk them.
As stands - he’s not far now, only a few more feet before the hoven devil is within striking distance - he simply can’t believe his fortune. He raises his axes high, and takes as careful aim as he is capable of - and after judging the giant’s head to be decidedly out of reach, adjusts for a lower lop of extremity - and swings for the exposed midsection of the devil’s gold-adorned tail.  It is with a quick and ugly chopping noise that cold steel idigs into Lightforged flesh, and he has managed to cut messily through the bone by the time the hulk responds, swinging around at jaw-dropping speed for one so heavily encumbered.
The Bulwark’s blazing backhand punches a smouldering gash into the top of Murkholt’s helmet, and the following kick sends the Forsaken flying backwards with a bone-breaking - or is it pier-crushing - crash. The draenei spits between their teeth, taking quick stock of their injury; their tail sloughs uncomfortably, halfway hacked through. Barking furiously at the wretched corpse that looks more occupied with relocating a leg turned messily awry from the landing and finding their footing anew, the Bulwark stops short in their budding tirade and lets out a hissing sigh.
They see the Forsaken approaching at predictable velocity, axe in hand, and the Lightforged begins to raise their hands aloft.
An alien tongue intones a scorching syllable, followed by another, as their hands cusp in a teardrop shape. As light, sacred and purifying, gathers between the creases of their thumbs, the Argus-born wonders briefly if the undead really thought they could succeed against them.  Before the searing light can burn the gaunt corpse to ash, the Bulwark is overcome with the onset of unease. Their senses, their perception, grow runny along the edges. Seven feet closer the shoreline, an effigy of bone and twig clatters against the murky board, with two of six broken pieces bounding off towards the still waters below.  A radiant burst scorches across the damp sands of the beach as the shock of holy energies fly wide off their mark.
The Forsaken’s axe-stroke finds no better purchase, and bounces futilely away upon contact with the Bulwark’s half-slagged gorget.
Murkholt has a mere moment to consider the folly of grappling with a threat several orders of magnitude beyond his reach as he is grabbed by the shoulder, treated to the brunt force of an armoured knee rising to strike at his helmeted skull, and thrown across the pierside into the sea.  There is a splash in the moonlit water, and the ripples soon fade. No one rises from the sea, gasping for air. No one.
The Bulwark is quick to get into the boat, and quicker still to undo the knots to the mooring. They reach for the oars, and set off towards the caravel just across the bay. The one flying no flag.  Their arms have not begun to ache, and they have not given their mangled tail any second thought by the time they have spotted the softly glowing lights from the windows of the captain’s cabin.
They have not yet raised their voice to shout at their friends when something knocks against the rowboat’s stern. And they have not managed to shout for help, when something scuttles aboard the dinghy from the aft, upsetting the balance of the craft, and causing it to list - and then keel over.  The moon shines uncaringly upon the capsised pram as it rocks from the scuffle. It shines upon the waters as briefly turbulent waters turn still. It shines into the depths, its cold rays growing thinner by the fathom. Far enough down that the moonlight finds no purchase, something glows still. Something rages, the absence of air burning through its lungs.
It swats at a grim and horrid shape, time and time again, finding purchase more often than not. But the deep waters rob the Lightforged’s strikes of their strength, their prayers of breath, their heart of hope. For even when they have staved off the Forsaken one, they can not muster the strength to swim upwards, to reach for the surface.  There is no time to unstrap, no space to unbuckle, no chance to unseal what is holy and just. There is no chance to untangle the hoof that has stuck to the kelp-thick seabed, the one that will not budge. Gloved, hardened mitts grasp for their throat in a vain attempt to delay the loss of consciousness.
And as the fringes of the Bulwark’s vision grows dim and their panic plateaus, they recognise that the gloved digits that have wrapped around their throat are not their own.

  Clouds, dark and heavy, have stretched across the sky when the gaunt man steps foot onto the shore. Water runs, seeps, rushes from gaps in his garb, the gashes in his skin. He sets foot onto the shore, and steps to the point where the pier meets the beach.
An effigy of bone and twig sits whole atop the rightmost damp-slick pile. He recalls, vividly, how he tore it apart. How he had tried to curry favour - in a desperate moment - with someone, anyone who would listen.
He looks up, to where the moon no longer shines but stars pierce through the cloud-thick firmament, then back to the effigy. It sits on the edge of the pile, now. Closer than it had been just a moment ago.  There is little Murkholt can do to stop the smile from settling upon his half-torn lips. He can do less still to not reach for the eerie little figure. He cups it in his hand, and finds that he can hear it speaking. He brings it close to his ear, and listens. Nods once, then twice. The figure is brought from ear to eye, at distance to address. Murkholt’s pale eyes look to where the effigy’s eyes are not.
When at last his lips part, all that escapes him is a long, low whisper.

Beneath a Strange Sign:
The Deal

VII

  “What a day,” the Forsaken croaks, hoisting his legs atop the desk and leaning back into the chair. “With all that has happened, and everyone who has peeked up through the woodwork, I can’t say I’m surprised to see /you/ here, either. Grab a seat, will you?” He gestures pointedly at the rickety stool standing just by the side of the door. He is fairly certain that the scraping of wooden legs against the cabin floor comes from his own chamber, not from elsewhere, and that the visible bulging downwards of the seat means that its movement across the cabin has come to an end. Wisdan Murkholt nods approvingly at the absence filling out the seat, and takes the word.  “Before you ask, I hadn’t forgotten, you know. Not about the stag-head, nor about you,” he says. He leans to his right, and grasps at a dry, close-footed tube. It fits snugly between his index and middle fingers on his right hand, leaving the left to pull out a stick, and pull its end across a coarse surface. A small flame bursts to life, and is put to the - hurriedly and untidily cut - head of the bundle, which graciously accepts the smouldering gift. Smoke, scented and rich, trails upwards into the ceiling after Murkholt puts the foot of the Undermine export to his lips. Deep is the first breath he draws; it outlasts the second, and the minute, before it comes to an end.  His pale eyes narrow. He can not feel the gentle rap of a rolled up contract on his shoulder. No one in the room accuses him - at length - of neglecting certain stipulations in the agreement. There are certainly no pointed reminders about a debt which is owed.
“Doesn’t work like that,” he grumbles, rubbing at his brow. “That condition was null and void the moment I returned to Tirisfal. You try to play an angle that doesn’t exist. I understand the problem, but-”  No one bolts out of their seat to loom over him, spitting abuse into his face. Murkholt imagines that his bristling moustache is speckled by something, and his eyes grow wide - but there is no one there. No one but him. He exhales. He looks up at the absence, and musters the intolerably dismissive tone of voice he feels he should have led with. “The staff shattered, and that was that. I cannot be held accountable for the tool /you/ gave me giving up the ghost the moment I needed it the most.”  Wisdan sits up, and shoos no one back into their seat. Elbows on his knees, he leans across to better look upon the absence deflating in their seat. “I haven’t forgotten. Not about the stag-headed staff, which splintered in my hands. Not about the.. Kindness you showed me, back during the business with the fulgurite. I can’t precisely work the angle you suggested to me, but I’ve found other means.”
No one interjects, and no one asks for him to clarify. The air inside the small room is thick with smoke, only the slow burn of the cigarette can be heard. If even that.  After no one has said their piece, the Forsaken leans back into his chair, a budding grin plastered across his face. “Think I’ve figured why you sought me out. Think I know why you didn’t spring for poor Eughast, nor the company he kept. No, no. You glimpsed something, and you wanted in on it.” No one objects, and so Murkholt continues. “The people of tusk and horn speak of spirit, of communion, of joining together in a.. The precise term escapes me, but I gather it’s much like a chorister, guiding and nurturing the choir. This is what you spoke of, when I helped you unearth the barrow. I thought it all there was to it.”  Wisdan pauses, turns his hand so that the back of it no longer faces himself. It now faces no one. “I’ve learned that the Southlanders call it something strange. Something short that rolls of the tongue, but it means something along the lines of spirit. Something on the inside.”
The palm of the Forsaken’s hand grows beady, damp, then outright vaporous. Mists, faint at first, rise from his grasp - coalescing into near tangibility a mere inch above the surface of his palm. A trio of scents break into the cabin, blotting out the fumes of the cigar smouldering on Murkholt’s deskside; crushed flowers, camphor, ice.  No shocked expletive in a time-lost tongue is hurled Murkholt’s way, and the stool does not cease to budge, either. The absence has left its seat, and looms over the Forsaken, looms over the desk. The guest that is not there asks a question; the first time a voice that is not Wisdan’s flutes through the cabin, tonight. And before he can answer, a thin, gangly hand reaches into the coalescing mists. Its thumbs are enveloped by the vapors, and soon the entire dozen of digits are subsumed in their entirety.  Wisdan laps at his lips. “The man-giants of the north know a little. Their brine-lunged cousins know more.” he says. Tries to not let his nerves - long rotted as they are - get to him. The absence has grown agitated enough to fill out the entire room, and it presses uncomfortably against the walls, the ceiling, against Murkholt himself. No one might actually be willing to come to an accord, in light of what he has showcased.
“I will go with the regiment,” he says, pale eyes fixed on twinned spots of nothingness mere inches from his face. The two spots are close enough that he might mistake them for eyes.
“And I will learn how to wield it. This, the mists, the font of spirit-stuff that you did not mention- I will figure out its secrets, and drag them kicking and screaming into the dark.”
Two spots of nothingness close, and for a moment, Murkholt believes that he can see stars.
“I will help you, and bring you to rest.” I will not hate those who were responsible, nor grieve your fate. Please. Listen.  The cabin seems so small, now. Murkholt’s cigar has burned to ashes, and the smoke has been subsumed into nothingness. He feels as though the strain - the pressure from the all-encompassing absence - might break his bones if it does not cease. Might crack his skull like a rotten egg, and end his feeble attempt at bargaining with no one. But before his unliving corps can give up the ghost, the pressure recedes. Absence retracts into very little, then nothing at all.
The many-fingered hand, so small and frail, has descended to touch upon his own. Its grip is snug - seven extraneous digits work with the originals to ensure that Murkholt may not back away, now. He feels as though he should name the price he asks for such help. No one would be willing to give anything at all, for having another close the book, once and for all.  “If I am to grow, I must know where I came from. Those of tusk and horn, those of the mist-shrouded southlands - they all speak of the same thing. Recognise what you are, and the rest shall follow.” Wisdan Murkholt wraps his fingers - some turgid, others but skin and bone - around the hand pressed against his. “It’s all half-truths and assumptions, now. Need clarity of thought, certainty of what I am.”    “Stoneheight,” he says. “I need to remember.”

Beneath a Strange Sign:
The Dream

VIII

  Little Jahnsson, bright blue eyes wide as saucers, wakes up in a cold sweat. The bedsheets are damp, the blanket thrown across his legs rank with mildew. The candle on the bedside table sits quiet, dormant, shedding no light across the bedchamber. The window across the room is open, and curtains flutter in the dark.  Small, trembling hands tug at the blanket, then press against the linens covering his chest. His heart beats quickly, his breath is ragged, his voice is raw. Has he been dreaming? Screaming? Sweat drips from his brow, from rancid boils bulging from his cheek. He tries to cry out for help, for someone to take him away and cradle him in their arms, but his cracked lips manage no more than a whimper.  Enough. Old man Jahnsson reaches for the bedframe, but finds no purchase. He tries to back away from the edge, but tumbles across it and falls, and falls, and falls from the dizzying heights. He cradles the rancid blanket in his hands, his eyes closed, anticipating a hard smack against the floor. He falls for a long time. Long enough for his hair to grow wild and grey, for the rot in his skin and throat to claim him. Long enough for the seas to boil, for the stars in the sky to sputter and die. There is little left of him by the time he hits the floor, skin tearing and bones breaking when he crashes onto the floorboards.  The window is still open, the sky outside is black, the draping pattern of the curtains gnarled and knotted like the roots of trees of elden day. No wind blows through the opening, no hateful breath from the realm outside his room sets upon the wretch, to scour long-dead flesh from bone. Pale eyes flare open, and grotesque hands press against the floor. The abominable mass of stolen, stitched flesh heaves, and footing is found; half-socked, and uncertain.  Newly risen Jansson recalls now the room upon which floor he lies sprawled onto, though all lights are out. That old, small chamber, with barely enough space for a bed and a pot. Where the door leads to a winding hallway, which spreads across the body of the house like a worming, writhing parasite; infesting every nook and cranny. He does not recall the names of the people that lived there, the light-shy and the wretched, the hollow-eyed and frail. But he remembers well the fear of lingering, even for a moment longer, within these confines, within these walls.  He staggers aloft, and steps towards the window. It had been large, broad - wide enough to swallow the sea of stars that could be sighted, once in a while, in the distant firmament above. When his hands reach the windowframe, he finds it less than it once was. His hands - when did they grow so discoloured? He cannot remember when he had required stitches like these - reach out into the nothingness that lies beyond, and feel his fingers grab on to nothing at all. The nothingness bristles, and pricks his skin, through which cool ichor seeps.  Nothing to grab on to is more than what remains inside. He must leave this place - the chamber, the bed, the pot - the writhing hallways of the sick-house. The window was small enough to fit him, once upon a time, but it has been many years since he was locked up, the key stuffed between the cracks in the wall. He grasps at the windowframe, tries to bend it, to break it, to wedge his way out of his confinement and his cell. The frame does not budge, the window does not break. No matter how he tries, no matter how he tears at the hole in the wall.  Wisdan breaks his bones upon the unyielding woodwork; working arms and legs into fragmented pieces of stuffing, cracking rib and collarbone into residue. Slowly, surely, he worms his way across the windowsill. What might have been an arm goes first, a memory of a leg goes second. When at last the mockery of a torso has exited into nothingness does his cranium - intact, save for his jaw, torn off in desperation - follow across the threshold.  In the black world outside his window, he can make out silhouettes. Of people; the ones that put him in the sick-house, the ones that cared for him, the ones that simply were.
His pale eyes see the outlines of buildings, too. Listing and decrepit - a little better than the sick house which he fled, all those years ago. But in the unintentional lean of their frames, there is something beautiful. Still images of lights, of happy faces clustered and feasting; upon the rich foods at the table, at the rightful views outside their windows. He knows it in his heart - the hollow that remains - that he must return. That he must-  Dawn has broken by the time Wisdan comes to. His hands move of their own accord, seeking a blanket which is not there. He has not taken to one when resting for many, many years. He sits up straight in the bed, and looks out the window. The view outside is bright - radiant enough to hurt his eyes, with nary a cloud in the northern sky. The seaborne vessel of the regiment, the Ashen Wraith, already bustles with activity - and he knows well that he should join his kin in the regiment. Preferably before anyone reminds him that he was absent during the morning’s muster.  He rises out of bed with a creak and a crack of limb - his bones haven’t been so cooperative in years, decades even. He can already hear the Executor barking orders, and the Captain delegating assignments to the Dead-at-Arms and the Troopers. When he looks up, the view outside his window is clear as day. His memories are, too. No longer half-truths and assumptions, but recollections - clear as glass, clear as crystal.  A bargain had been upheld, on the other end. The memories of the sick-house, of the horror, of the crooked little village had all been dredged up from the migrainous straits of deep sleep.  “Stoneheight,” Wisdan thinks to himself as he ascends the final steps, and crosses the threshold into the sun-lit upper decks.
    “I need to return there.”

Snow and Spittle

XI

  He had wondered what became of them, down there in the canyon. The fighting force, meant to draw the eye of the foe, had been led by Executor Gallowlight and Captain Vaelthorn. They had entered the field with good soldiers; some of the finest Forsaken the Regiment could muster, bolstered by the battle-tested troops and magi the joint forces of Sin and Shal Serrar had to spare. They had magi, Wisdan had assured himself. They would have gotten out in time.  He had felt anxious for his senior officer, the towering Valachev, who had joined with him in the mad scramble up the mountain. The Captain had left the sortie early, but his absence had gnawed at Murkholt through the ascent. Had he made it to the others? Had he been crushed, buried, made inte little but bone and gristle? Murkholr had hoped not.  He had feared for his own squad, the bold-faced daredevils that had followed him towards the roof of the world, He had been harsh when sending them back, ahead of time. He had rather regretted it. But he could not have borne to see them risk it all, when their task - that or priming the canyonside with charges, to lend mother nature a hand in crushing the Vrykul throngs gathered down below, locked in battle against the Phalanx's and the Serrar's finest.
He had hoped for them, that they had escaped with their health - or unlives - intact. Old Graddius, dead-shot and garrulous to a fault. Aldain, noble and just. Brand, ill-tongued and optimistic. Valeroux, courteous and brave. And Rynathiel, weathered and kind. He would have prayed for them, if he had the time.. But there had not been much time for anything.  He had felt it. The sudden drop onto the snow-capped cliff. The bundle had followed suit, and five separate mechanisms had clicked, all at once. The mountains had ruptured, exploded outwards. There had not been time to rappel down, much less to hide. The snow had been upon him so fast, all he had heard was the rumble and the roar, mountain's rage made manifest. Tonnes upon tonnes had smashed him like a wine-glass. He had been tossed, and crushed, and made unto nothing by the unknowing, unfeeling avalanche. He had felt it all.  It is dark when he comes to. There is little space - just enough that he can feel his eyeballs swivel in their sockets, without budging under the pressure from the snow. And down here, in the endless expanse of spent mountain-matter, there is little he can do to save himself.
    Down here, there is very little screaming.

  Deputy Captain Murkholt had longed back to the time when he spent thirty-or something hours holed up in a barrel in Stratholme. It hadn't been pleasant, and he had nearly gotten himself killed while cooped up, but he had been able to hear things. Mostly ghouls, baying and clawing at whatever was close at hand. Footsteps. The occasional order from the Necrolyte he had thought the brains behind the operation. He had been able to hear, and to sense the hard embrace of the wooden barrel, pressing in on him. It hadn't been like this. It hadn't been like this.  He had tried to call, to yell for help, but hadn't managed more than to swallow a gutful of snow. It had not killed him - liberation from the petty meatbag requirements of drawing breath and sustaining oneself means that your torment is extended when buried in an avalanche - but the icy lump had nestled its way in, to settle against the lower rung of his left set of ribs. Uncomfortable didn't come close to describing it. He had tried to dig through the masses, but the weight had been too much. The scarce movement of fingertips against the snow had kept him occupied for a while, until the frozen white had trickled down, and filled the precious spots of briefly empty air he had managed to produce. There had been no more digging, after the seventeenth hour. Only the futile twitching of a thumb split open, and embraced by the cold.  It was all dark, down there. He might be seven paces down, buried in the snow. He might have fallen further; squeezed through a crevasse and plunged ever down, ever inward. There was no light, down here. No sound. Even the pressure of the snow - enveloping him like midwinter porridge around an almond - had supplanted his former sense of being, his sense of self. He hung there, frozen in place, until the hours stopped working. Until the days caved in on themselves, and the years guttered like dying stars. And there he would remain, a pale and thrice-stitched effigy of corpse-fats and lights. A candle unlit, until the end of time.  But something draws near. A presence swims through the porous masses, drawn like a moth to a flame. When he does not feel the tremors, he is too weary to feel despair, all too ignorant of what manner of thing descends upon his frozen form. He fathoms it is No One, come to claim him after such a short time, and is steels his mind with what little he has left. Pale, deathly eyes flare open, and - then he feels it. A tremor, in the slush and spittle expelled from the mountainsides. The split thumb ceases to shudder, and Wisdan forces his frigid jaw agape; just so much, that he may spit out a word before his mouth stuffs and freezes shut, forevermore.
"Stuck and hurt," he begins, and feels his lower jaw distend. Half of a second, that is all he got. He tries to swallow, but his throat will not bear it. It is distressing enough a sensation, but there is something new to this attempt. He feels seen. Felt heard, just now.  There is a low, ponderous tremor, until there is not - from the frozen space of nothingness situated in front of him, and perhaps a few meters up and to his right. The tremor grows into a shudder, and the slush grows slow and watery around him. He gasps for air - such a needless reflex, moreso now than usual, and clasps at his chest. Clasps? He looks down, and finds his split thumb lodged squarely against his collar, and all four of its siblings dig into the cold leathers strapped to his torso. The leathers are cold, that much he feels certain about, but they have grown wet since last he thought of how they felt, pressed against his skin. All is wet, now that he pays himself some real mind. His feet, half-booted and skin-flensed, dangle into very little at all. His chest heaves, and through an untidy process of expulsion he manages to dig the swallowed snow out though his lips. When he lets go of it, there is so little of it left. What little remains is subsumed within seconds.

  There is enough space for him to move about, for him to stretch his stiff limbs, for him to hear the distressing creak and unseemly pop as enthusiasm robs his right arm of its cozy place within its socket. Had he been strictly alive, the sensation would have caused him to cry out in pain. Now, he just glances down at the increasingly dysfunctional limb, and offers it the full courtesy of a wince. A problem to be handled later. Perhaps the venerable Fleshcrafter, or the regiment's Head Medic would be able to-  Something flickers in the wet ahead of him, something that might be an eye. It neatly captures his attention, and he puts the comparatively small problem of getting his limb back in working condition to the back of his mind. First comes getting out of the avalanche, or whatever strange space -or state - he has been induced to inhabit. He seeks the flicker, and finds nothing at all. He waves his hands, and get no response in turn. He tries to click his finger - the thumb split wide open proves rather difficult to work around -and he groans in frustration. He groans, and a great deal more noise escapes his lips than his submerged state should allow.  He takes stock of his situation; there is less of being frozen in place, and more of being able to move, to make noise. There is a presence with him, and it has not yet seen fit to tear him to ribbons. He still lacks a concept of the time, the day, or where in the blasted hellscape of the Storm Peaks he currently resides. /If/ the current liquid state of what was once slush around him doesn't indicate that he has been spirited away to some far-off place and further time, to dally and dance at the whims of some unknowable Hierarch of Sorceress. He wasn't quite so sure if that last part was the case, but he had read a great many novels concerning such abductions back when the slovenly publications had swept old Stratholme like locusts, and thought the idea a rather lot more compelling than simply getting eaten by a nameless horror from beneath the Peaks.  Wisdan mumbles something under his breath, that carries far too clearly through the still waters. He freezes up, swears, then speaks up.
"I can dance for you," he blurts out. What profound and utter spot of idiocy seized him, there? Not a plea for salvation, nor a bargain - an offer to entertain is what he managed to spit out? A curse, no, seven curses upon his folly! Unimaginable! "I mean to say," he tries, flailing in the slowly shifting waters. "- that I can offer you much, if you return me safely to the Peaks. Know-how. Riches. News and stories of the world above. What you wish for, I can grant. I promise." Better, but your idiocy still looks to be terminal. Way to go, young Jahnsson.  It is a tall ask, for the flicker of what might be an eye within a stream of mountain-slurry to express more than curiosity, or perhaps scorn. But there is no mistaking the outright undulation of what could be a lower eyelid, and the roll of what must surely be an eye. There is amusement, plain as day. And then, a voice.
"A dancer squeals, and offers to bargain," the Fury chimes. "You are not like the horned ones, are you?"
"No horns here. Just a lot of stitches," Wisdan responds.
The Fury slithers through the slush, and offers the Forsaken a few seconds of scrutinous inspection.
"You don't speak like they do," the Fury states. "And you appear to have died some time ago."
"I got better," Wisdan responds. His head swivels, and pale eyes seek to lock with something, anything, resembling an eye or a shape. There is nothing; all around him, all is blue, and all is bright. The waters churn excitedly, now.
"Have you come to eat me?"
The Fury's voice grates into laughter. It is much like the packed snow pouring rough across hard rock.
"I don't eat ones like you, gaunt fool. I don't eat like you do,"
"I don't eat, either," Wisdan adds, helpfully.

  "Don't interrupt a Fury when they speak, spittling." The Fury's glare coalesces; it was never an eye. It was never two, either. Every frozen speck of water, every churning droplet - all belong to the Fury. And now, all eyes are on him. All eyes on Wisdan.
"Sorry."
".. you are dead, and I can not expect you to be courteous like the ones who speaks with us. The ones who speaks with spirits."
Murkholt takes his pick from the thousand eyes staring at him, and returns the glare.
"So you are one."
"Correct. You stand," the Fury's eyes set on the Forsaken, and the awkward manner his legs sway in the stream. ".. you linger-" the Fury corrects itself. "- in the presence of Trickles-From-Springs. Grandest and most life-giving of the spirits of the north!"  As though the Fury had waited for this exact moment to unveil itself, its manifold particles shift before Wisdan's eyes. An extent of the Fury is revealed to him, as it basks in its own grandeur; from the trickling flow squeezed forth from underground reservoirs, to the flurry of flakes dancing through the northern wind, to the deep and quiet lakes that nestle deep into the earth, and from whence the cycle begins anew. Trickles-From-Springs mind presses up against that of Wisdan himself, and it is familiar, yet all so very alien. There is little of the rage one associates with wildfires, or the ornery fissure-crafters of the deep earth. There is instead the calm, inevitable force of a deep river, flowing from peak to basin, only to slither through pits and cracked mountains. And to at last spring from the peaks once more, and bite its own tail. That is the Fury; that is Trickles-From-Springs. Its myriad eyes look down upon Wisdan, expectantly.  Knowing better than to look a gift queue in the mouth, the Forsaken promptly folds in on himself in a more spirited than successful attempt at prostrating himself before the spirit. He does so for the better part of an age, or however long it takes for the Fury to let out chafing noise of tangential approval. While Wisdan works to stop rotating and turn upright - a difficult task, given how the waters whisk and burble around him - the Fury resumes.
"I will deign to absolve you of your sin of discourtesy, and -" It is impressive for a thing with many eyes and no mouths to sneer, but somehow Trickles-From-Springs manages it. "- I will tell you why you are so graced by my presence."  "You made one right mess of the War-Maidens down in the canyon. They fought for a while, battering themselves senseless against the settled masses, but even the most staunch of them perished within the hour of being buried. You, however, did not."
One eye among the myriad moves in place. The others remain still.
"You kept scraping, fumbling against the snow for so very long, that I thought you worthwile. A Shaman of some sort, pleading for an audience with the foremost daughter of the northern streams. I could not stay my curiosity, and so I flowed. Through the masses, from the springs, with most of me coalescing to gaze upon the mortal that had so very handsomely caught my eye."  Wisdan blinks.
".. no, you were not what I expected to find."
"Are you disappointed?" Murkholt asks, peevishly.
"I thought to sate myself, to find peace in communion. You aren't bad, for a corpse-"
"Forsaken," Murkholt interjects.
"- for a Forsaken. Not bad at all, were I to compare you to the petty warmongers and shamblers fighting atop the not-so-distant glaciers."
"You are disappointed," Murkholt concludes.

  A degree of sheepish wincing can be inferred from the many, many eyes. The waters which Murkholt finds himself suspended in thins, and rises - it feels as though he floats upwards, now, carried on a cloud of rising steam. It dawns on him that even a spirit, or Fury - the distinction not being entirely clear to him - might be capable of feeling something passing for embarrassment.  "You are not what I hoped for, little spittling," Trickles-From-Springs chimes. "But you show promise. Should you ever grow into something more, I would speak with you, again."
Wisdan raises his voice, asks for the Fury to explain, to elaborate. He offers words of his own, to no avail. Rising and rising, through steam and through water-that-boils. And with a pop, his skull breaks the surface, and he is launched several feet into the air by a jet of scalding hot water. He doesn't have a ghost of a chance to stick the landing, plummets into the feet-thick snow beside the spring with a crack, and a long groan.  When he looks up, all around him are snow-dappled hills and vibrant leafen trees. The leaves glint, and the trees themselves glimmer. He shakes his head, closes his eyes, and puts the impression of his surroundings to the side for a moment. His limbs are still there. The right arm remains unsocketed. And judging from the texture of his skin, that reminds him of a rather sloppily cooked meal, he might just have gone from deep frozen to storm boiled, and is now rapidly perspirating into the cold, open air. In the distance, he can almost fathom voices. Distressingly enough, they sound familiar to him.  He lingers there, steaming up the snow-pit with his half-cooked presence alone. In his mind, a single word has nestled itself into the forefront of his slowly recomposing train of thoughts. A term that had upset him, one that had grown to confuse and befuddle.
  "Spittling," he mumbles. "Is it all that I am?"

Short Story:
Splendour, Sorrow, Shanty

  Wisps of smoke rise from center of Garadar, painting the evening sky with streaks of grey. No wind blows tonight; even the nether-torn skies of old Nagrand rest well, following the end of the week long Kosh'harg festival. Murkholt's legs droop and dangle from the branch he has hoisted himself on top of, a half-league south of the village's border. Once-blue eyes rest briefly behind twice-augmented eyelids, then his gaze sets upon the vaunted Throne.  He had felt it. Everyone had. Weathered and worn, the spirits of the broken world had heard the call of its children, and had parted with blessings of their own. The wind howled strangely, to a different tune than that of Azeroth, but settled for similar syllables. The water dripped, seeped, cascaded from crevasse to riverbed - the earth sighed, groaned, and shared freely of its bounty, much like the steadfast soil of forests long forgotten. And the flame, the flame, the wild lifeblood of both worlds - how it warmed his skin, still. Hours after the ceremony had come to a close.  Theirs was truly a world of wonder, of a primal beauty unmatched by any lands or rivers that he had seen. It was no wonder that such a true place - even when he beheld it in its broken state - had given rise to the traditions he had observed, dabbled in, to this very day. Amidst tumult and uncertainty, a font of harmony. And yet..  There had been the urn. The body had been heavy, and a burial by flame had been better than leaving the sailor to rot. The ashes had been brought not to Blackrock, but to fair and western plains. It was fair, in a way. As fair as it would ever be.
There had been the totem. The Grim and the Horned had spoken of parting gifts and the funeral rites of her people, and He of Withered Tusk had advised him on the carving of once-grown materials; wood, bone, less seemly things.
It had all burned, and turned into dust. Once, in the Unclean Pyre. Then, in the great wicker beast.  Murkholt's neck cranes, and his gaze lists southwards. Past Oshu'gun. Past the great expanse of nothingness, where the seas had once encroached upon Nagrand's lower shores. His skin is warm, so warm - Draenor's blessings are nothing if not enduring - but his hands feel heavy. His limbs would rather not move. His eyes have grown bleary - when did that happen?  He groans and mumbles and speaks out loud - not to the three who do not perch on top of the branches around him. His ramblings give way to song, a forlorn melody for a friend lost to time that trails across the treetops, never to reach the ground. One voice is joined by another, and then two others. Twenty four seconds into the third verse, a fourth singer chimes in - and the chorus wavers, threatening to break upon the craggy reefs of unfamiliarity.  The chorister maintains the tone, and the tempo, and diverts from the established song. The new arrival is curious, abhorrent - yet their voice, ghastly as it is - swells with recognition. A nautical quality to their uttermost consonants. A regimental commitment to their drawn-out a's and o's. He can almost hear well-polished boots stamping along, now. His lips part - when did that smile carve its way across his countenance?
"Ongburz, young Salt," Wisdan posits, then asks bluntly. "Won't you join our chorus? Just for a song."  The wispy trails of smoke no longer rise from the center of Garadar. The skies are calm, and only faint streaks of the roiling nether can be seen from the treetop. The one, where a quintet cheers and laughs, recounting the daring and unsightly escapades of a particularly fortunate son, from Gorgrond of old.

Short Story:
Down, down in Goblintown

  The Vengeful Wildstalker snarls, their fangs bared as they puff up their chest before repeating their unkind request.
"Have your brains rotted away, undead filth, or just your ears? Hand. It. Over."
Druidic, golden eyes glare down at the prey, Forsaken as he is. Draped in seldom pelts and scales, the mustachioed undead glares daggers up at the towering elf.
"I hear you just fine, but I have nothing for you or your gaggle of robbers." The Forsaken does not relinquish his grip on the thrice-bound portfolio he carries, but wearily suggests that the robbers - as a group - skip off to fornicate with a waterfowl. Defiant, desperately pursuing a means of escape.  "You are bad at this," a burly offworlder remarks. "If I had gotten to lead as usual, this would only have taken a moment."
A hooded lass with a Westfallian drawl chimes in, adding that- "This is taking /so/ long. Get it over with, or let someone else bully the corpse!"
"Silence!" the Wildstalker roars, stepping back to address his fellows - and briefly letting his victim out of sight. "I know well what I am doing, you can see the pathetic rotter trembling in his boots as we speak!"
A shrill rebuttal in Thalassian slant emerges from somewhere in the back, accompanied by a faint plea to - please - focus on just getting "the stuff", whence upon the lavishly garbed group breaks into a heated argument regarding the nature of theft and what constitutes proper procedure.  Wisdan, keen to not get gutted like a fish by what is unmistakably a restless group of Brave Heroes, strikes a hasty if sidling retreat towards the stairwell. He curses himself for having lingered - the joys of Undermine had been many, far too many - and clutches his prize as sidle gives way to hurried jog. A theodolite of goblin design, purchased at blistering expense. And now he risks losing it to this band of.. No. This can not be. He feels his left arm drifting off towards his hip, to reach for an immediate solution to the problem still at hand.  He feels a large hand gripping him by the shoulder, and he is yanked backwards, then spun around. The grinning face of the loud-mouthed Kaldorei grins at him, and then his vision goes black. Well, half of it. It is with an ugly squelch that the claw-like protrusion is withdrawn from his right eye socket. The remnants of the ocular organ seeps, dribbles down Murkholt's cheek, speckling his pale skin with gruesome hues.
"Should've stayed put," the Wildstalker purrs. "Now I'm going to have to tear you apart, bit by bit."  As though on queue, elfin digits - or claws -dig into fur and scale and Forsaken flesh alike. The Kaldorei's lush ebon mane spills across their frame like pus cascades from a ruptured boil. Wisdan's mind blots out as he panics, his left arm rising of its own accord - with solution in hand. The metal rim presses up against the half-transfigured elf's jaw, and one second later Murkholt is thrown backwards by the recoil, as the singular depression of a trigger hoses the haughty Kaldorei with point-blank shotgun fire. He has but a moment to contemplate his misfortune as he plummets towards the streets below.

  Heavy footsteps and angry voices herald the arrival of the Brave Heroes, who gather around their prize - and the largely headless corpse of their druid companion.
"Where are they? " yells the Vigorous Mageling, peeking across roof's rim. "Where's the rotter?! He went bang, and then- I don't see him!"
"The wretch killed Atha'len'tha'nor! Death to the Forsaken and all damned Horde-" howls the Void-steeped Exile, but is interrupted by the Skittish Scion.
"They're both dead," the Scion mumbles, near-immediately setting their eyes on the prize portfolio, blood-caked and unattended. "Let's take the loot and get out of here. Before others come."
The Mageling and the Exile round on the Scion, but only manage a few vitriolic insults before the Hoven Officer raises her voice, barks a command, and sees the lot fall in line. The looting commences. The retreat follows.  Someone prods him in the ribs. He wheezes at them to bugger off, but all he manages is a burble or two. Wisdan opens his eyes, and with his left takes stock of his position; face down in a puddle of what he hopes is just well-used grease from one of the myriad diners littering Undermine's downtown. He pushes himself aloft, slips head over heel and lands on his arse, sending what might be a tin of cooking oil splattering across himself, and the Buckaneering Entrepeneur that had her leisursly stroll across the street so rudely interrupted by a falling carcass.  The goblin sighs before letting out a sharp whistle. She assures him, absent-mindedly, that things will be all right. Murkholt's remaining eye brightens, and then the hench-goons begin to close in. The Forsaken, one-eyed and soaked in grease, does not resist. He does not complain. But his eyes burn with rare flames intertwined; indignation, and open hatred.