Chalk Hills
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Summary: The Regent Lord of Silvermoon is taken captive by the Cultist's Dr. Kohler, where he chances to meet a rather unusual rogue. Insane as she is, she may be the only one who can shed light on these events.
One: Blue Glass
(1)
"Ah, my dear Beatrice," Dr. Kohler crooned, brushing his fingers, reduced to nothing more than pearly bone, against the thick glass of the tank, it's green contents glowing faintly. "It won't be long now."
In the dimly lit prison, Lor'themar Theron sighed. He sat on the cool stone floor, his shackles ringing out in a metallic voice in the dark at his slightest movement. The Blood Elf had been locked in this subterranean prison for days, or it may have been weeks, he had no way of knowing. Surely, they had searched for him, the Regent-Lord of Silvermoon, but he could not be found.
"Soon I will return," Kohler's mouth twisted into a grin in the green light. "Soon," he turned, leaving the lifeless body of his latest sacrifice, a young Tauren, beside the green vat. The stench was unbearable.
Across that dark room, a girl lie on the floor on the cell there. She had not moved since she had been brought, and Lor'themar had presumed that she was dead. A slight movement proved him wrong, she turned her head and wiped at the bloodied corners of her mouth, prying her eyes open.
Dr. Kohler paused before this cell.
"I can see you are awake." He smiled once again. "It is time for another test."
Lor'themar looked away once he saw the doctor move to a metal panel against the wall.
"My work is never done," he lamented, touching something on the panel. The girl let out a howl of pain so loud he wondered if she was even human, to be able to make such a noise.
He vanished again, leaving the girl, or whatever was left of her shattered frame and broken mind on the floor.
Lor'themar slept. His dream took him to someplace far from the twisted laboratory that smelled of death, formaldehyde and Lanolin.
For some reason, he thought of Lordaeron, Brill and Silverpine, as they were before the Scourge twisted them into something ugly.
A loud clang woke him, faceless, formless beasts rushed the prison and forced Kohler to hide in the darker recesses of his subterranean lab.
As quickly as they had come, they vanished, taking no interest in Kohler's subjects.
"Are you alive?" it was the girl he thought had died, barely able to stand on her own, leaning heavily against the metal bars.
She pulled on the door, the broken padlock crumbled away.
He rose to face her, his rescuer, his blood enemy. His one eye regarded her warily, the other he had lost sight in the undead siege upon Silvermoon. He thrust his hands forward, raising the shackles about his wrists as if they were a question.
Her fingers twisted around the metal in the dark, working at the lock until it clicked open.
"Thank you." Lor'themar rubbed at his wrists until the marks faded.
"We don't have much time."
Lor'themar studied carefully the face of the thief, his rescuer and enemy, her dark hair, dark eyes and bruised face. There was blood, dried and cracked at her lips, the corners of her mouth.
He straightened and walked past her, tall and proud while she leaned, about to crumble. One hand was pressed firmly against her side, as if that could alleviate some of the pain.
Lor'themar understood now why his enemy might take the trouble to release him. She would never have been able to reach the surface alive, in her debilitated state.
He offered her his arm. The rogue eyed him warily, and then walked past him, refusing the offer with labored breathing and slow steps.
The place was labyrinthine and unknowable. He took a tentative step into a dark hall.
"No," She protested, digging her fingers deep into his muscular arm with all the strength she had left. "There are traps," Once she was certain he would not go forward, she released him and sunk to the floor, her fingers twitching around bits of metal and machine Lor'themar had failed to notice before.
"All right," She breathed, rising to her feet again.
Back in the prison, there was a sharp noise. The two exchanged glances and took off running down the hall. She fell more than once and he had to stop to help her up again, for now she had no strength left to even rise on her own.
"Can you make it back?" The rogue asked once they reached the exit. Lor'themar nearly laughed at her.
"The Argent Tournament Grounds are not far from here, I can take you to the Vanguard." He reached to steady her. "You need medical attention."
"I'm fine." She insisted, pushing away from him.
She fell and he caught her as she lapsed into unconsciousness, using the last of his strength to carry her across the frozen north to the tournament grounds.
"Justicar!" Lor'themar called out,
He was surrounded, suddenly. The rogue was taken from him, and placed on a cot in some corner of the tent.
The medics worked on her for hours, digging through her wounds to remove all traces of the poison from her veins. Sometimes she woke up, but despite her screams they kept working anyway.
Lor'themar watched from a distance, hypnotized and unable to look away.
When her wounds were clean and bandaged she slept, her breathing so soft and soundless.
"Rhys Anvilmar the Insane, a SI:7 agent from Stormwind." Someone identified her, finally.
"Anvilmar?" A medic raised an eyebrow at the name, common among dwarves, but not for a human.
"She was raised by a dwarven family, of Menethil Harbor."
"Ah,"
"Apparently they raised goats. Or Rams. Whatever you call the blasted things."
"Regent Lord?" They turned their attention to Lor'themar. "Silvermoon is in an uproar…. What has happened?"
By the time he had told them what little he knew of the circumstances regarding his capture, he was exhausted. They let him sleep, too tired to even dream, but he thought he heard a whisper.
"I know you hate me, but remember that I did this for you, if you are able to bear it."
When morning came, the girl had gone, and he was strangely glad of it. His presence was required in the Plaguelands. He had another day of rest.
(2.)
"Dr. Kohler is dead." The dark haired, dark eyed girl reported. She produced from the folds of her cloak a bundle of papers. "These are his notes." She placed them on the table before Matthias Shaw, the head of SI:7.
"Thank you." He nodded dismissively. "The king will want to see these immediately." He knew less about Rhys Anvilmar the Insane than any of the other rogues in his employ. She had lived in the Wetlands, in a small house in the harbor there with the Dwarves she had called Mother and Father, and the dwarves she called her brothers. Four of them. Where the human girl had come from, before the salty shores of the harbor he did not know, and if she knew, she did not speak of it.
"Your next assignment," Shaw said suddenly, as if he had forgotten. Rhys turned around and walked back to the table. Glancing at the parchment he had placed there, she frowned.
"Darrowshire, sir?"
"We are looking for information regarding the prince Arthas Menethil. His past, his weaknesses. As you know, this has been our first priority for some time." A pause. She nodded to show that she had been listening."You are dismissed."
(3.)
"Little Rhys that listens to ghosts,"
Darrowshire was a different place from what it once was - it was the sound of a little girl's laughter that brought her there, to a little house, burnt near entirely to cinders.
"Hello! I am Pamela, what is your name?"
Rhys blinked. In places like Darrowshire, she often had a difficult time distinguishing the real from the unreal. She told the little girl her name and waited.
"I can't find my doll anywhere!" Pamela lamented. "Won't you help me?"
And Rhys felt sorry for this girl, because she was dead and did not know it. "Yes. Yes of course I will." She dropped to one knee so she could better look the child in the eye, and reminded herself to smile. Such a little girl... how could she have died? "Where did you have it last?" She asked instead.
Pamela pointed to a dark house across a sundered stone path.
"All right." Rhys took a step forward, her heels clanging on a bit of flagstone. She did not tell Pamela to wait, because she already knew she would.
The house was wide and draped in a shroud of silence. It was death, and Rhys could taste it, hear it.
The fireplace was covered in grey ashes, the floor cool and black.
On the mantle piece was a bottle of bright blue glass, held shut and worn around the rim, most likely taken from a shore not too far from here.
Rhys knew she should not have taken it, the only thing of beauty left in this house, and not the thing she had come in search of. Her pale fingers wrapped around the glass and she held it.
"Every night at half past eight, comes tap tap tapping," A voice sang in a whisper.
Rhys turned around to face the shade of a woman she did not know, frowning and worried. She pointed at something at the Rogues feet.
There was Pamela's doll.
She bent to retrieve it, careful not to let the glass slip from her fingers.
A scream rang through the house and in her ears, flames shot up suddenly and were everywhere, crawling up the walls and across the floor.
Trying to remain calm, Rhys stepped backwards, the ceiling and the floor above crumbling down on her. She threw up her arms to protect her face and lunged for the door, clutching her blue-bottle prize and Pamela's doll.
Something glared back at her from the doorway, something tall and dark with gleaming teeth. Rhys took off running through the hills, and did not stop.
The Light's Hope Chapel was a safe haven, but still a nightmare crept into Rhys' head.
There were fires in her dream, and that pale woman.
"Where is my doll?" Pamela's voice whispered, quiet and afraid.
"Fire! Fire!" Someone was screaming.
Rhys awoke, reaching for her belt, her knives. She rushed outside, straight into a man she may have met once before.
"You," He accused. It was not a human man, but a blood-elf that had ensnared her. And she remembered him, the one who had carried her, half dead, half alive. Not just any blood elf, the Regent-Lord of Silvermoon.
" Lord Theron." Rhys uttered the name as his remaining eye, an unsettling viridian green bore down on her and she had to look away.
"The Scourge approaches!" Someone called out.
His hand flew to his blade and he pushed Rhys behind him, launching himself into the fray.
The battle passed in a frenzy, even though Lor'themar cut down many with his sword, more abominations rose from the ground to take their place.
He turned to face his new enemy, a twisted reflection of something once human with a sharp-toothed grin and grasping claws. In a moment, they would have him.
A whistle at his ear startled him; a throwing knife pierced the skull of his foe and it crumbled into bone-dust.
Lor'themar turned back to see Rhys the Insane, arm still extended, her fingers just recoiling from a perfectly executed throw.
(4.)
The remains of the dead and undead were gathered and bound in oil-soaked rags and then set ablaze. The sky was growing lighter - dawn was coming.
"Dwarven Whiskey." Rhys offered Lor'themar her flask.
"Thank you." Lor'themar took a generous swig. And they stood like that for a while, watching the ash and cinders rise to meet the dawn.
In the morning light, Rhys inspected carefully Pamela's rag doll, and knew she had too long delayed the task of returning it.
"Regent-Lord Theron," A Horde dispatch courier saluted, tired and out of breath. He produced from the folds of his cloak a message. "From Tarren Mill."
He studied the dispatch for a moment before crumbling it between his fingers "I will leave at once."
(5.)
"Oh you've found it!" little Pamela clapped her hands. "Thank you so much! You took off running so far… I thought you would never come back."
"Pamela…" Rhys said suddenly. "Do you know where this comes from?" She asked, producing the blue bottle she had taken from the dark house.
"Yes, yes!" Her eyes glowed at the sight of it. "My father got it in Tarren Mill, from someone who brought it all the way from Gilneas! It was a present for my mother, but she isn't here anymore. Can you find her and give it back?"
Rhys nodded, looking into the blue glass. "Gilneas…" The mysterious walled city came to her mind once again, as it had a hundred times before. And Tarren Mill, where the puzzling Regent-Lord of Silvermoon was headed.
She said goodbye to Pamela, who embraced her, leaving her cold.
(6.)
The sky was dark and the moon hung high by the time Lor'themar and a handful of a few other blood elves reached his destination. Immediate action was required if Tarren Mill was to be defended from the Alliance. The Forsaken of Hillsbrad had thus far been able to fend them off, but could not last much longer.
Sylvanas' liberated undead did not like Lor'themar, but that hardly mattered. They kept this to themselves, and expressed gratitude for his aid.
"They will most likely resume their attacks at Dawn." One of them explained, speaking quite well considering the fact that he no longer had a jawbone.
When dawn came all the preparations had been made, the enemy soldiers appeared on the horizon.
Lor'themar charged into battle on his horse, a great black steed with heavy hooves that crushed his enemies, before a spear pierced his left shoulder blade and threw him to the ground.
The stout red-haired dwarf warrior responsible for his fall lunged at him. Mustering enough strength, Lor'themar raised his blade to parry the blow, a swift kick sent the dwarf reeling.
The young Dwarf lie helplessly on the ground before him. Lor'themar steadied himself for the final strike, tightening his grip on the hilt of his sword despite his shoulder-wound.
A sharp metallic sound prevented his blade from hitting its mark. He looked to see the face of the rogue they called Rhys the Insane, her dark eyes glaring with a fury.
She thrust back her head and propelled forward, their skulls clashing with a deep crack. Lor'themar fell backwards and just managed to regain his footing as she pursued him.
He struck and she met his blade with equal force. He could have fended her off, if not for his wound. She did not lunge at him again, but moved with such speed that he could not land a single blow.
Finally he pinned her against the thick bark of a dying evergreen, one that marked their proximity to the Plaguelands, their faces a mere few inches apart. He wondered if he should end her, for what she might one day become.
And what was that?
Somehow she twisted and escaped him, in a single deft movement she launched a stream of fine white sand into his eye.
Lor'themar let out a great roar and stumbled back. When the dust had cleared from his sight he searched the horizon for the rogue to find that she had vanished.
Back in the Plaguelands once more, he lie in the Argent Dawn's makeshift infirmary with a bandaged shoulder, cursing his own name for allowing her to escape.
"Lord Theron," The night elf who tended him spoke with carefully concealed venom. "There is someone who wishes to speak with you." And he left the room, as if Lor'themar had little choice in the matter. He closed his eyes, listening to the sound of carefully placed steps. The blood elf guards that stood at the entrance moved away.
He opened them again to the sight of those familiar dark eyes looking back at him. He did not know whether to welcome them or be repulsed.
"How is your shoulder?" Rhys the Insane inquired. He noticed that her forearm was bandaged and bloodied. Lor'themar wondered if he had been the cause of it.
"It is mending." He said. "Why are you here?"
"May I sit?"
"Of course." He spoke with a prescribed formality.
She sat on the old wooden chair beside his bed. "I owe you an apology of sorts. I should not have struck you."
"We are enemies, Rhys."
"But you did save my life once," She said, unfazed. "This presents an interesting problem. Among my people, this is a very serious debt, one that cannot be repaid."
"I've come to explain my actions to you." She said finally. "The man you would have killed,"
"Yes." Lor'themar remembered that Dwarf, the source of his wound.
"He is my brother. For your wound, I also must apologize – he does not know of the debt I owe you." Her face was like a mask that was impossible to read. She stood to leave, having said all she had meant to.
"Why do they call you the Insane?" He inquired. She stopped and turned around again.
"Because I am insane."
And she vanished.
(7.)
Lor'themar Theron, blind in one eye, dreamed that he was far away from the ravaged plague lands of Lodaeron, far from Silvermoon, on a chalk-white shore of a place he had never been. Or perhaps he had, but it was so very long ago and he could no longer remember.
A single sound, a wailing note, like that of a violin, rang out in the air thick with fog, and he walked down the beach, down into nothingness.
He found Rhys there, standing against the grey waves. Another step forward and she would vanish, swallowed by that ocean for ever.
Salt.
Salt tears, transparent and grey, like the sea.
Should I speak?, he wondered. The fog surrounded them, pushing him closer to the strange girl that stood waiting on the shore.
She regarded him with a curious look in her eyes, somewhere between the world of the real and the imaginary. He wondered what it meant.