Rogue Magick: the Return of Nightfrost
by Rillan macDhai
Continuing the story of Nightfrost, Firesworn and the cast of Rogue Magick. Rough draft 5/27/10
Part 1: Do You Love Him?
"Burn my body to ash," the dying sin'dorei choked out, the words almost lost in the spate of blood.
It was a slight variant of the Plaguelands' battlecry, "Burn the bodies to ashes!" Any who had fought the Scourge or spent time in the Plaguelands knew what it meant, burn the enemies' bodies, burn your comrades' bodies if they fell, do as much to deny the Lich King more fodder for his army as possible.
Firesworn's howl was full of fury and madness, "No, not you too!"
Oh, hells! No, my love, I'm not leaving you again, Tal said to the frantic mage, to himself and to the dying elf. Boy, I need your body as intact as possible, burning it isn't happening. He shook his head in annoyance, knowing he had to take action before the elf bled out. So much for waiting patiently, you'd better be worth this . . .
I was standing in my room, drinking a cup of tea and staring absently into the mirror. I had no idea what I'd just been doing or how long I'd been standing there.
Do you love him? A red-eyed shadow of an almost transparent elf appeared beside me in the mirror.
I started so violently I spilled my tea all over.
A smile curved lips drawn in crystal. Or ice. He was beautiful. And terrifying.
There was no one, transparent or otherwise, standing beside me, but there was undeniably something very cold there for the teacup was steaming when the remaining liquid it held had only been warm. I could feel the chill radiating from the spot.
The ghostly red eyes met mine with obvious amusement and certain urgency. All mirrors are doorways. But I asked you a question.
"Why should I tell you, whoever you are?" I answered aloud. "How are you doing this? And why?"
Because I do love him, in my way, and you're dying. You're close enough to hear and see me just a bit already, and your mind is trying to make sense of things that make very little sense when you're still mortal. And the first answer answers why.
Dying?
Abruptly, I remembered.
King Varian, in a murderous rage over Bobby Twoknives' presence, accusing Grandmamma and Richelle and Stef and all his SI-7 cell of being traitors, Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore and others I didn't know, and all of us in much too small a space. Firesworn protecting Bobby in that fearless decidedly-non-mage way of his by stepping between them, the Alliance king perfectly willing to go through the mage to kill the once-Defias rogue. Nevermind that Bobby had probably been about five when Tiffin Wrynn was murdered.
And myself, shadowstepping between them, just as Firesworn had put himself in the way of that blade, so I protected him. The shadowstepping would have been pain enough, but then I stopped the king in the only way I could without killing him, by catching his blade with my body and pinning it, hoping that would be enough for someone to stop him or talk sense into him. Stunning them all with a vision of happened at the Wrathgate as I had seen it and felt it that terrible, unforgettable day, my only magick beyond what any rogue can call. And Giselle, screaming.
Fire in my chest and not being able to breathe and – And being here, in what seemed to be my room, talking to . . . someone?
You care. You care for all of them, most especially Firesworn and the girl. But do you love him?
"I put myself between him and the damn crazy gladiator king of Stormwind."
Dying heroically is always a nice touch. "Stupid, but a nice touch. Do you love him, Sky Nightfrost?" His voice was clearer, not just in my head anymore. There was a haze in the air next to me, like an ice fog above a warm stream, except it took an elven form and had red eyes. The image in the mirror was clearer too; one of my kin, pale and dark-flamed of hair, but the eyes meeting mine there were pupil-less orbs the color of blood.
"I never had the chance to find out, okay?" I argued with the voice of this strange ghostly sin'dore. "I wanted him, dreamed about him, but I never got to know him outside the months we spent in the Stockades. All I know is I would die rather than see him cut down in front of me."
Those red eyes were getting clearer and brighter in the haze beside me, the flesh going from transparent to translucent like the aurora. It was very like a dream, a very disturbed dream.
"Well, you're working hard on doing just that; what a waste of blood," he said, looking at something on the floor or beyond it. "Well, not that I need it anymore, but your body does. One last question then. Do you want to find out enough to live?"
Make a wish. What is the one thing you truly want, as you know you're dying, despite or in spite of all the weird tricks your mind plays on you as it happens?
"Hell yes." More even than living, I wanted to know if the promise I'd seen in Firesworn's eyes was real.
Abruptly the other elf vanished from the mirror and was very solid and truly standing beside me in the room, though I suspected my mind was just spinning one last very odd dream.
He slashed down the length of a vein with a finger that was also a claw and held it to my lips. I could see the wound, see the blood within refusing to flow.
"What?"
"I am, I was San'layn, this is easiest way for me to visualize it in the hurry that we're in. Drink. Or die." He shrugged indifferently; looking at me with those amused red eyes and smiled more widely, baring fangs. "I'll have your mortal body either way. I've been dead before and I'm enough of a necromancer even like this I can step in whether or not that fool healer keeps working on you. So," he shrugged again, "we can share or I'll just take it once your soul floats loose in another moment." He smiled like the thought pleased him, but added, "If you choose to go to the Light, you'll never know what might have been."
I pondered that for only a moment, aware the dream had gone from mere strangeness into nightmare. Then I put my lips to his wrist, covering the wound and gave it a deep, sucking kiss like drawing out poison. Suddenly there was liquid in my mouth, but it might as well have been water for all the taste it had. But it was cold and good like spring water and a mana potion in the chill air of Northrend. This I wanted to drink, rather than spit out as I'd expected. I drank, then drank more and finally there was a taste, like fire and sex and blood. Mana flooded my nearly emptied system, silencing my arcane-addicted body's need. And then the San'layn's body desiccated into ashes on my lips, startling the hell out of me.
Hold on to yourself then, his voice said, very clear and very clearly from inside my head, cause this is going to hurt like hell.
Sky Nightfrost took a terrible wrenching, choking breath and began coughing up blood from his lungs, like a near-drowned man coughing up water.
"Light be praised, we've got him back, somehow," the dwarven healer cheered, obviously surprised at the rally of someone he'd thought had already bled out all over the floor. He poured another healing potion directly into the terrible chest wound before beginning a spell. Firesworn held Nightfrost cradled against his chest, whispering something frantically in Thalassian, too low to be heard by anyone but the elf in his arms. Bloody pieces of leather armor and cloth were thrown all around them.
"Lo'gosh?" said Bobby to the king of Stormwind in the lull, his bright mad voice shaken to something like sanity by the near deaths of both men he considered his only true friends.
The king and former gladiator looked up from watching the healer work.
Jaina made an annoyed hiss, but both men ignored her.
The one-time Defias rogue took a single step away from the others and knelt, sliding his knives across the floor to the king's feet. "I surrender," he said simply. He bowed his head and put his hands behind his back, clearly expecting to either be executed on the spot or clamped in chains. "Firesworn," he told the sin'dorei mage, "don't interfere. This is what I want. What I deserve," he added more softly.
"Bobby?" the sin'dore mage's head jerked up, pale face splashed with Nightfrost's blood, his green eyes far too wide and shocky.
"My choice, Firesworn. Take care of him, he's going to need you," said the rogue, still looking at nothing but the pattern of the wood grain in the floor, bright with specks of elven blood.
"My lords and ladies," said the Alliance healer, recovering a moment before another casting, "whatever you're going to do, I'm trying to save a man's life here and I'd appreciate it if you didn't get any more blood on my patient. Or make me any more."
"No need to worry, Micah," said Varian Wrynn, his voice much calmer than it had been. "We'll keep out of your way. Scout Twoknives, I'll expect your report on the Wrathgate battle in an hour. Jaina, you can stop watching me. Do what you can to help save that boy. I'll be at the inn. Let me know if he pulls through."
And the king of Stormwind left the room, taking some of the extraneous humans with him.
Bobby sank back on his heels, glancing around the room. He was obviously looking for anyone else who had a grudge against him, confused and somewhat put out. "La, de, dah. La, de, dah, just like that? He leaves? Isn't someone going to execute me?"
Thrall chuckled. "You're a scout of the Alliance. I believe your king's command takes precedence. Healer Micah, if I might offer aid?"
Through the pain, a deep rich voice asked, "Spirit, do you want to return to life?"
Speaking in accord, two spirits intricately twined about each other answered, "Yes."
"What? Two of you?"
"We are bound together of our own choice. And we choose life."
"Well then," the voice seems to ponder this information. "There is no demon taint to either of you. There is necromancy, but not like any I've dealt with before."
The voice fell silent, pain continued; pain and memories from two lives now jumbled together like a child's box of toys.
"Necromancy, but I can find no harm in it, outside of what you have done to yourselves," the rich deep voice announced. "Here is your pathway, return if you will."
Sky coughed harder, spitting out blood and clots of blood. Thrall was talking with a spirit of the air, while Micah Stonebreaker held the elf, encouraging him. "Come on, lad. That's it. We've got to get all that rotten blood out of there or it will kill you as sure as if I'd just let you choke to death."
"It was just . . . all running out . . . hurts . . . wouldn't have choked," the elf complained weakly.
"Another half an inch, two at the most," said the dwarf gruffly, "and you wouldn't be feeling anything. 'Course, wouldn't have mattered, 'cause it would have cut right through your heart as well. What the hell possessed you to get in front of his blade?"
"Had to stop him. Didn't want . . . to be . . . thought assassin. Don't need . . . another . . . war, but . . . wasn't any other . . . way."
The priest cast another spell and the young elf's breathing eased a little more as more things knit back together inside him. Thrall finished speaking with the spirit and another glow settled around the elven scout.
He sighed, a faint flush of color back in his face, and coughed hard again, convulsing and bringing up a lot of blood and tiny pieces of what looked suspiciously like crushed bone. Firesworn shifted and helped brace him, while Micah helped from the other side, pleased to see there wasn't a spate of fresh blood in what the elf coughed out. Another glow and this time when he coughed, what came out looked more like dirty bloodstained water than anything else. Another cough and the water ran clean. Eyes closed as he leaned back in the mage's arms, barely aware, but breathing much easier.
Firesworn hugged him gently, still whispering encouragement and nonsense in his ear.
"We'll take him to Orgrimmar," said Thrall. "He can recover there."
"No," said the small human rogue who'd been lurking nearby almost since Nightfrost had fallen off Varian's sword. She stood straight and defiant against the adults in the room, a throwing blade held ready, but almost forgotten in her hand. "He accepted geas to protect me. If you take him away, he'll die unless I go with him."
The Warchief of the Horde exchanged glances with the priest and the Lady of Theramore.
"I do not think we want to exchange one crisis for another," said Jaina Proudmoore. "Is there a place he can rest here?"
"Upstairs," said the girl. "We helped him get better once, we can do it again."
Thrall gently persuaded Firesworn to let him carry his wounded friend and, with direction from Giselle took the wounded elf to his bedroom at the end of the upper hall.
"Warchief?" the young elf mumbled as the leader of the Horde carefully laid him down.
"Hero." Thrall smiled. "You may have prevented another war from starting today. I have to go see to it what you saved doesn't get disrupted again. I will speak with you again, when you're stronger."
The sisters stayed and Firesworn and Bobby and the dwarven healer Micah. Carefully they stripped off the last of the blood soaked armor and settled him more comfortably into the bed. Once the dwarf was satisfied with his position, propped with a mass of pillows and had ordered him to stay in bed for the next day at least, the Alliance healer pulled Richelle aside, deep voice giving her a list of instructions as they withdrew down the hall.
"So," said Giselle, hands on her hips and surveying Nightfrost's two friends. "You're the one he told me about. You'd better be worth it."
She pointed at Bobby. "You, come with me. They need to be together and talk and - Just come with me."
She stalked over to the door, Bobby trailing her obediently with a completely bemused expression on his face. She shooed him out of the room, then paused, looking back at Firesworn. "At least you're cute. I'll have to talk to Richelle about you."
"Cute?" said the sin'dorei mage, kneeling and putting himself on a level with her, reminded of his own daughters back in Shattrath. "Men are not cute. Handsome, maybe."
She walked back in; studying him while Bobby hovered in the doorway.
"You have beautiful eyes. Don't do anything rough with him tonight, okay? And you are cute." She kissed the tip of his nose.
"Maybe I should marry both of you." She picked up a small bay-black toy horse from the floor and shoved it into Firesworn's hands. "Keep this with him and don't eat the magick out of it, okay?"
Nightfrost laughed weakly as she reclaimed Bobby and disappeared down the hall.
"What was that about?" asked Firesworn, coming to stand near the bed. He could feel a web of nature magick around the toy, feel it soothing some of his tension as he held it.
"She's been telling me we're going to get married for as long as I've been here," said Nightfrost. He sighed, breathing evening out into almost a doze, before he added, "That's when she's not trying to pair me off with her sister. I'm so glad you're here."
He shifted a little. "Take off that bloody uniform and crawl in with me? I'm cold."
"I don't want to hurt you." Firesworn tucked the dark little horse next to him among the pillows.
"I'm healed, I'm just faint from blood loss. You won't hurt me." He caught Firesworn's hand, but there was no strength in his grip. "Stay. Or tell me I've misread everything, that what you were whispering to me was just to get me to hang on a little longer."
"It was," Firesworn said.
Nightfrost's eyes shut and his breath caught in a little pained sigh that could have been from his injuries, but wasn't.
The ashen-haired mage slipped out of his grasp, turned and shut the door.
"But I meant all of it," he said from the doorway and began unbuttoning his jacket.
