Second Chances
By Rillan macDhai
Inspired by "The Art of Seduction, by Kael'thas Sunstrider" by PennyForTheGuy
Please at least take a look at TheGuy's story, so you have a clue how this got started …
Copyright 2010 by Rillan macDhai except for the parts owned by PennyForTheGuy and Blizzard, and TSR or whoever owns AD&D these days. Guest appearances by Jaina and Arthas and possibly others I don't normally mention in my Warcraft stories…. Lady Blaze is c/o 1996? By Rillan macDhai. Sex and lots of references to the real world and bad language, not quite Urban Fantasy, but going in that direction….
Well, since I hate no-win scenarios as any of you who've read my non-Warcraft story "Reboot" would know, it was certain I would eventually be drawn to Kael'thas for a tale of sex, love, redemption, and the battle against the Burning Legion, and Arthas-bashing. Oh, and did I mention sex? Reviewers, please bring your Mary-Sue bats and smack me if I let this get too hokey, I usually avoid the Named characters of WoW, in part for the very reason they are so powerful… though I really don't know why I'm worrying, this was supposed to be fluff... okay the fluff got sapped by one of my rogues and this is running as a full-on story. I guess we'll know when we get there...
Complicating this, is that I'm not up on all the lore, so I might make some terrible gaffes, Please Do Poke me about them by leaving reviews or emails
LINE BREAK
Part OneThe Art of Seduction, by the Lady Blaze, Worldwalker
By Rillan macDhai
I'd reached Dalaran, thank the gods and found the one I was seeking by the simple expedient of stumbling across the two people he was unfortunately drawn to follow. I'd been site seeing, wondering when the archmages were going to get around to noticing me, though I imagined them in council even then, trying to decide who was high enough on their shit-list to be potentially sacrificed by contacting me, I just hoped it wasn't Rhonin. Better they think I was some sort of terrible threat than the truth I was here desperately trying to find help.
I was near the Violet Citadel, actually looking at the beautiful blue flowering vines when I saw Jaina Proudmoore, younger than I knew her, but unmistakable. And with her was Arthas. Blonde as a California surfer dude, thankfully looking more like the TokyoPop version of himself than the round-faced farm boy version in the game, but still that actually made it worse, I'm kept expecting him to go into 'crazy face' mode like in the first few pages of Death Knight . . .
I know I hissed at him like an angry cat, fortunately no one else was close enough to hear me. Or so I'd thought at the time. "Poor damned Prince of Lordaeron, how I wish I could just drop you in a hole and forget about you," I muttered and spun around to leave, crashing straight into the man I'd come here to find.
He caught me, steadied me, and I looked up to see him as he truly was, not the pale imitation I'd glimpsed through the computer screen. I'd been studying the high elves since I'd arrived, so I was at least a bit prepared. His beauty still struck me speechless. That and the unmistakable reaction my body had to him.
"Lady?" he asked uncertainty tingeing his voice. He knew I recognized him; he was trying to decide if he should know me as well. I remember thinking he wasn't that much taller than me I shut my mouth and nodded, "Prince Sunstrider. Excuse me, I didn't mean to crash into you."
"No one ever uses my House name," he said in soft amazement, obviously startled. "Excuse me instead, it was rather obvious you didn't know I was there. I shouldn't have stood so close."
His eyes were free of fel. It was so wonderful just to see that, to see him without the tension and stress that marred his features and without that damning green. Right now, he was obviously burning with curiosity, though even with his hands still on my arms, his gaze had flickered to Jaina and that man before returning to me.
Releasing my arms, he'd taken a step back, asking, "I know why I don't like him, but what has Arthas Menethil done to you to provoke such a reaction? You don't sound like you're from Lordaeron - ?"
"No," I gave him a wry smile. "I'm from somewhere a bit farther away than that, my lord Prince. And my problems with the Prince of Lordaeron are too long a list to trouble you with."
"Would you indulge an apprentice and walk with me, lady mage?"
"I would be honored, my lord mage." I told him, pleased to catch the slight widening of his eyes at that title. Even though I was sure part of the reason he asked was simply to let Jaina see him with someone else, a female someone else, I was glad for the opportunity to continue talking with him away from the others.
Away from the rest of the Council, I suddenly remembered. Apprentice! Ha! Kael, despite his 'vain playboy' image, was one of the shadowy six who ruled Dalaran. I wondered if he'd ever heard of Bruce Wayne. I'd also wondered how to pique his interest, if I was to save him and his people. And maybe save my world, if we were both very lucky and the Fates' smiled. It seemed the 'how to be interesting' part was as simple as just being in Dalaran and being what I am.
I noticed he was guiding me away from the more traveled parts of the city, out toward the lake. I'd left my robe-cloak and non-essential gear in my room at the Legerdemain, along with my staff. I wasn't worried about anyone messing with it just yet and I could defend myself with blade and dagger if I had to, but I didn't think things would come to battle. They would be too curious about me at first, but I knew it could easily go either way once they started figuring things out. It really didn't matter as long as I made myself memorable to Kael without ending up in a cell in the Violet Hold. I wasn't certain I'd be able to summon my staff or portal out of that place, since it was designed to hold renegade mages after all.
"So, Lady -?" he asked, as we paused on a terrace overlooking the lower city of Dalaran, where the lesser mages and apprentices and normal people lived. There was a clear view of Lordamere Lake in the distance. It reminded me of Erie and Huron, a huge inland ocean. Broken sunlight and purple clouds, like Daralan's lesser-known symbol, floated above the lake. Which reminded me of the Council again.
"Blaze," I told him. It was sort of my unofficial battle name, culled from an old superhero game I'd once played, back when I was only starting to realize what was going on in the world, my world.
"Lady Blaze." He smiled, attention fully on me, as though I were the most interesting person he'd ever met. I'd been in the costume call at a science fiction and fantasy convention in Washington D.C. once, where Mike Jittlov the filmmaker had been one of the judges. I'd met his eyes in the middle of my turn on stage and just frozen in amazement and shock, everything completely gone from my mind. Kael had just done the same thing to me.
His eyes were dark like star sapphires, with the transparency of a regular sapphire or some poetic nonsense like that. They widened in surprise and shock, then he dropped his head down and kissed me, arms tightening around me, half lifting me off my feet, my own around his back, both of us locked in a hungry, primal kiss that set fire to the blood burning heat in my lower belly. We were gasping when we finally broke the kiss, neither of us letting go of the other.
"What -?" he protested, still looking down at me. "Lady, I –" he set me down. "I have no idea what came over me. I do profoundly beg your pardon once again," he dropped to one knee, obviously in shock, still babbling apologies. I wasn't much better, trembling with the unexpected reaction, my hands still on his arms.
And that's when Jaina came around the corner.
I was still gasping in air, my heart hammering as though I'd just sprinted the length of the city and somehow the movement of her arrival caught the corner of my eye. Was it Antonidas, sending his apprentice to keep an eye on Kael and I or just happenstance? Either way, Jaina looked like I'd just smacked her in the face with a flounder.
"Go away!" I mouthed at her and she ducked back out of sight like a scalded cat. Kael missed it entirely, still wheezing himself and trying to apologize. I dropped down to put myself on a level with him and because I didn't think I could stand much longer. With very little more provocation I would just crawl on top of him and take him in the street. His eyes held a wild look that said his own thoughts weren't far away from mine, though he was trying desperately to salvage his dignity and restrain himself.
I finally pulled myself away from him entirely and sat there shaking. "What in the Nine Hells was that?" I asked rhetorically. It was clear he had no more idea than I did.
"What? Where?" he asked, still confused. "I have no idea. I'm, I'm not like this –"
"It's alright, Kael. I know you're not." Maybe if you had been, Jaina would have been yours, the thought swept in, unbidden. My use of his more intimate name seemed to sober him a bit.
"What are you?" he asked me bluntly, all pretense stripped away.
"Human. Mortal. Just as shocked as you are by what just happened. And you don't have to apologize, I'm not some fainting fair princess, Prince Kael'thas, even if you are the most beautiful man I've ever seen."
"You're a mage," he said, huddling around his drawn up knees, seeming completely unaware he was still sitting on the ground with me. "But I've never seen anything like the mix of magicks you have around you."
"I would imagine not," I said. I summoned, pulling, and my staff clapped into my hand. I used it to get back into my feet and wrapped myself around it, much as Kael had been hugging his knees. Across from me, he hastily picked himself up, flicking off dirt and settling his robes, completely unaware he was even doing it as he resumed his immaculate appearance. I tried not to watch him closely, grounding the excess random energy and magicks through my staff and into the terrace, through the stone of the terrace down until I could feed it into the good solid earth, bracing in case things suddenly all went south. "I'm mostly self-taught, it makes for a lot of diversity."
I could finally breathe again without gasping and, if I was careful not to look directly at him, didn't feel an immediate need to rip all of his clothes off and mount him. What the hell had happened between us? I already had a Chosen . . . though that mostly meant we were secure enough with each other we didn't worry about the other straying too far. It didn't mean we couldn't sample other wares, just that we'd always come home again… I wondered what his reaction to Kael would be…
"I've heard the Kirin Tor will teach any human with talent. Is that still true?"
"Mmm," he said. "That depends on what you want learn."
"How to make portal stones," I said firmly and let myself watch his expression change. "And the whole theory behind portals, 'cause I know just enough to know what you're doing and what I do are two very different approaches."
"And that would be?"
"I'll show you how I do it at some point, but not right now. I don't have to have a precisely set point on the arrival end, which it seems the mages here do, but it seems to take a lot more power than they use for me to do it. I'd rather not waste the energy. I don't have the luxury of doing it that way any longer."
The wind from the lake was blowing his hair all around his face like a wild stallion's mane. I very much want to find out what it would feel like to run my fingers through those long silky stands and . . . and why did I think his long golden hair should actually be black? Where did that thought come from?
"Right now, I'm going back to my hotel room and taking a cold bath. Tell the Council I won't be going anywhere for a while."
"I'll at least walk you there."
"Thank you, Prince Sunstrider," I told him bluntly, "but the reason for the cold shower is you. I think I need to be out of your presence for a bit until I can clear my head."
I gave him a very measuring stare, still liking what I saw, probably more than was good for both of us. "I would very much like to follow up on what just happened between us, but we've only just met and neither of us is comfortable enough with the other at the moment. And if we ever do, I'd prefer it to be somewhere people won't just walk in on us."
Leaving him standing there, I turned and lost myself among the buildings.
Line Break
And so, after some cautious exchanges in various public and semi-public places, Kael helped me gain a teacher. Unfortunately, it was one whom I immediately butted heads with as she tried to cope with my "undisciplined shamanistic techniques." It didn't help I couldn't read a word of their language without spending hours pouring over it. English in a different alphabet was almost as difficult as one completely foreign. She generally spent a good part of my lesson complaining about having to explain standard principles to someone who "should be studying with a basic grammar school teacher, not wasting my valuable time."
After the third day of that, sometime in the midmorning when I was grumpy and somewhere between sleepy and hungry, I flared my shields into the visible spectrum and told her if she didn't want to learn just what I was capable of she should start running right then. Just to get the point across, I starting building an energy ball between my hands. She left, hastily. Then Kael walked in as though my flare of temper had summoned him and perhaps it had.
I reabsorbed the ball of energy, chi, funky special effects, call it what you will and smiled in frustration. He was, at least, so much better to look at than the fussy woman I'd been trying to study under, but I was annoyed, coming down from the start of one of my 'I'm really going to kill you' rages. Thank the gods for Lexapro; I'd have left her a little pile of ash without it. Magick was a lot easier to grab here than where I'm from, which was a line of thought I really needed to follow up on . . .
"Kael, where can we go to blow things up?"
He looked startled, which was kind of endearing, and something I seemed to do to him whenever we met.
"Where is a place I can cut loose on harmless bits of landscape? Or not so harmless somethings?"
"There's a shielded dueling area in the Citadel."
"No, no. Not when I'm like this." I sighed and summoned my staff across the room, it was just so damn ease to do it here . . . going home was going to be stifling. "No duels. I'd kill someone. Walk with me? It's better if I can find someway to burn this off by not burning someone up and moving helps."
He nodded and took a point on my right, falling into step with me. "If you're going to keep using my intimate name, Lady Blaze, I'd be pleased if you'd share yours with me."
So I told him.
"That's a Quel'dorei name," he said after a few moments.
"I know. I've found reference to it in several places connected with Azeroth." I didn't tell him it had come up on the name generator for blood elves, much to my great surprise. "I've been looking for your kin back home for most of my life, but if they're still there in any numbers, they've been able to remain hidden very well."
I was taking the shortest way to the lake, straight down to the docks and my shields were still flaring enough to scatter the commoners.
"You've still never said just where that is -?
"Are you familiar with the concepts of parallel universes and other worlds, Kael'thas?"
"Yes," he said cautiously after giving me a measuring look of his own. Softly, just pitched for my ears, he asked, "Are you a Bronze?"
I laughed. "Oh, gods, no. I'm not a dragon. I'm human. Maybe some kinship with you or your kind, but if there is, it's way, 'way back in time for a human."
"Not some long lost princess of Faerie, then?" he asked.
I laughed again delighted he knew the terminology. "Oh, fuck no. Maybe, just maybe something like a long lost warrior-mage. Or I might just be crazy." I looked at him sidelong. "There's always that possibility. Except you seem to think I'm here as well. I'm not putting you down to hallucination just yet."
"Where are we going?" he asked, turning the subject to less esoteric matters while he mulled that one over. Or maybe shared the information with the rest of the Council, I wasn't sure that was beyond them.
"To where I portaled in at. I want to check on it. Let you see it, if you haven't already been there."
"We've been . . . observing it," he admitted. I liked how he never quite admitted anything about his affiliation, but just got things done. Had he lost that ability after the Sunwell? Or rather, would he? I wished I could just take him home with me now and to hell with the timeline…
It was a long, pleasant walk along the beach, the wind off the water cooling rather than fierce and fridge. Kael was keeping up a gentle interrogation about all sorts of seeming random things as we walked. I probed back, both of us aware of what we were doing and I, at least, enjoying it, enjoying the time we could be away from the city and just learn about one another.
"Do you ever wear dresses?" he asked at one point.
"Sometimes," I admitted. "But they really aren't very practical most of the time. I'm always sitting on the floor or getting jumped on by my pets or running or something. And they're cold. I get sick too easily to wear something I'm going to catch a chill in."
"Thus explaining the long sleeves and high necks, I see." His gaze was faintly wistful
"If you'd like to see me in something else, you'll have to invite me on a date," I told him.
Before he came up with an answer, we reached my portal and the Kirin Tor's observation point. At least the people working there had the grace to look guilty when they saw me. I could have done without the scared, which was how most of them also looked at me, but at least I'd walked off my fury long before I'd gotten here.
"Okay, everyone," I raised my voice as I walked into their camp. "Kindly back away from the portal and give me room to work."
There was a 'bampf!' of displaced air as Antonidas and Jaina arrived.
"Ah, I was wondering if anyone else would be joining us." I was holding my staff one-handed, but cross-body for deflection if too many more of them showed up. Kael seemed a bit undecided as to where he was standing in this possible faceoff, which I found interesting. Didn't have time to ponder, but it was interesting.
"'This is it,' as I believe you would say it," said the Head of the Council.
"Fair enough." I grounded my staff. "So what parts don't you want too many others to see?"
"Probably all of it," he said. So I waited while the underlings cleared out. Kael was carefully not looking at Jaina and Jaina was staring at me with clear curiosity.
"Fancy?" I asked, "Or fast and dirty?"
All of them seemed confused, so I did it the slow and elaborate way, which is slow, and elaborate, and very ceremonial, and takes a lot less energy to do, but doesn't work for shit if you have something breathing down your neck, like demons, no time for fancy when dealing with demons. I allowed myself an evil grin in my mind; no, not the way I deal with demons.
First I summoned the rest of my working gear, laid everything out, and started up a running commentary for Jaina and the two men. "Now if I was being really fully elaborate, I'd have mediated and taken a purifying bath, but we'll just skip ahead a bit and assume that's been done. I'm fairly certain the three of you know what steps you can or can't do without up until Robing. So …"
I settled my cloak-robe around me and as I did the wind picked up off the lake. Portal magicks of the type I was invoking seem to play hob with the weather. And I wasn't even going to open it wide enough to do more than send a message. Robe buttoned, hood down, hair free and loose. Good. Pewter bracers clasped at wrists, necklace, earrings, rings. Yes. I lit the candle, poured the water. Paced a circle thrice widdershins which had them all watching me nervously as I invoked the four quarters and spirit. "Let nothing evil or of ill intent disrupt our workings here," I intoned, finishing the casting.
It was very, very quite within the circle.
"Spirits who would pass on, hear me. If you look around you, you will see a door, outlined in light . . . "
The three Kirin Tor mages stayed very, very quite and very, very motionless while I asked the spirits of the dead for help opening the portal. Just a quick message to my circle, to let them know I was safe and well, then I thanked the spirits, opened the door to their portal for the ones who couldn't quite find it, and thanked the guardians of the quarters for their protection. "Go now to your own places and let there be no ill will between me and thee."
I didn't dismiss the circle completely; I'd be using to go home again soon enough.
Antonidas and Jaina 'ported out immediately without even waiting to say anything to me. Kael remained, watching me repack my supplies. I was tired and hungry and thirsty and it was a good long walk back to the city. I was not amused, but I hadn't really expected much. I'd just set the Council on its ear with a ceremony any witch could do or anyone who'd read Katherine Kurtz. Or, at least I assumed any witch could do it, I didn't know many to ask. Well, maybe not the talking with spirits part, or the portal, but even that I wasn't certain about. It all seemed to be a matter of what you thought you could do… Having a ley line the size of a city bus to tap didn't hurt either.
"So," I said to him when I was finished, "any possibility you can portal us back to Dalaran? Or do we have to walk?"
"I believe we owe you that much," he said, his eyes still having an inward 'I need to be working on this' distraction that might also have been the explanation for Antonidas and Jaina's hasty departure. I recognized it from writing, that need to get away from everyone and get things onto paper or digital as fast as I could type.
He cast and I watched him, feeling energies swirl and coalesce, but not grasping how it all was hung together. Storm might have, probably would have, understood, but he wasn't here. 'Send the one who blows things up to play diplomat – ha!' But the real point of my being here was winning Kael's trust and my partner hadn't wanted to volunteer for that, not unless it was the only way we stood to get close to the quel'dorei prince.
The portal opened on a room in Dalaran I'd seen hundreds, maybe thousands of times but never actually stood in. Kael entwined his fingers with mine and gently pulled me through.
He took me back to my inn, found me a table near the stove and turned to the attentive waitresses. "Any thing she wants, on my tab," he ordered and I added my immediate wants before they had time to scatter for the obligatory iced water and silverware ceremonies all waiters must be trained to perform.
"I have to go now," he said and I could hear the regret mingle with the almost frenetic need to be doing/making something that was an underlying hum to everything about him just then. "Three days," he said, "I have things I can't put off any longer, but, if you can stay, meet me at the seventh hour after noon at my apartment? It's in the Violet Citadel."
"I'll be there and I'll be alright. Go, answer their summons or return to your experiments. I'll see you in three days."
"I'll send directions . . ." and he was gone, leaving me to my supper and more than a few jealous or envious stares from the wait staff.
LINE BREAK
And so, three nights later I was walking up the steps of the Violet Citadel, wondering if I was just walking straight into a trap like an idiot. More stairs, up to the level of the portals. The one I wanted was on the right, but as I turned toward it, an unfamiliar but half-expected voice demanded, "What're you doing here?"
It was the portal guardian to the Caverns of Time.
"Hopefully getting laid," I shot back to her. I felt my shields snap fully into place, but they didn't flare, not yet. "Let's not scare the normals, shall we, Zidormi?"
And I stepped through the portal to the Purple Parlor.
I expected her or one of her kin to follow. Or already be waiting for me, but instead the butler, Alfred – someone had to be a Batman fan – waved me over to another portal, one not normally visible to guests. I stepped through it and came out in a tiny entry room with only one door.
A little uncertain, I knocked. The door opened slowly, releasing the smells of incense and honey-wax. He opened it completely and I felt my body tighten pleasantly at the sight of him, absolutely golden and perfect, in the purples he was born to, though they looked like they might slide off at any moment, definitely not formal robes by anyone's imagination, unless that imagination ran to bishie boys in flimsy nothings and 'way too much hair. And very little else.
He offered me his hand, brilliant eyes on mine, his smile one to break hearts and make celibate paladins forget their vows. "You're right on time," he said. "I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to this."