Night was falling in Stormwind, time was running out. The messenger rode across the brick roads, past the various shops and districts, with such speed one might have thought a raptor were chasing him. The massive gates of the keep would soon be closed, and this news was too important, too urgent to wait til they were opened again at dawn. The messenger was lucky, though. Catching sight of the slowly moving doors, he urged his horse on even faster and just barely made it in time to signal the guards.
For all that his flight had wracked his nerves, it was nothing compared to what the messenger felt waiting for an audience. His short brown hair stood at strange angles, pushed there by the wind as he rode, and held in place by a crust of sea salt accumulated during the voyage that brought him to the city. His normally pale skin was flushed red, and he dripped with sweat. Green eyes scanned the room, looking for escape routes, while all the muscles in the man's legs tensed, ready to flee. The news he bore was far from good, and he doubted this encounter would end any better.
Finally, though to little relief for the messenger, Varian Wrynn entered the room. The messenger tried to swallow his anxiety, but almost choked on it. He coughed, and attempted to speak. "Sorry for disturbing you, sir – uh, Your Highness." Fear threatened to creep into the words, but the he managed to keep it at bay.
Varian shook his head dismissively. "You bring news of the White Pawn, correct?" The other man nodded in confirmation. "Then it's no disturbance. Come." Varian gestured down a hallway to his left, and led the way into the keep's war room. Maps of Pandaria and charts of the surrounding waters, many clearly sketched in haste by those exploring the newly discovered continent, were strewn across a table at the room's center. The king sifted through the mess of papers until he found one marked with the location of the Sapphire's crash site.
Every second seemed to eat away at the messenger's dwindling resolve. He wasn't sure how much longer he could take the stress. Just as his king was about to speak again, it became too much. "He's gone!" The man closed his eyes and braced himself for the fury of Lo'gosh, but it never came.
"... What?" The word was hardly a whisper, but it was enough to catch the messenger's attention. He cautiously opened one eye, then the other, and looked at his king.
Varian was frozen, still hovering over the maps. He didn't seem to be blinking and the color had drained from his face. A keen eye might have noticed a single tremble work its way through Wrynn's body.
After taking a moment to realize that he had not, in fact, been immediately killed for delivering the news, the messenger spoke up again. "He's not dead," he said so quickly the words almost melded together. "H-he's gone, b-but h-he's not dead..." The man felt like he was going to be ill.
That Varian didn't seem to relax at the addendum only made it worse. Instead, slowly, in a terrifyingly calm tone, he asked "What do you mean 'gone'?"
The messenger hoped desperately that the only thing to escape his mouth would be words. "The SI:7 located the White Pawn, but he refused to return with them." Still no movement from the king. "He ran off with two of the local pandaren."
For what seemed like ages, Varian remained as he had been, hunched over the scattered parchment. Then, in utter silence, he stood straight and left the room. His personal guards exchanged knowing glances. Their duty was to follow Wrynn, but he would chase them off if they tried. They chose instead to guide the poor messenger to the guest quarters and order him some much needed food, water, and wine.
Varian's mind was racing. Thoughts and ideas ricocheted around his head and bounced off one another. He roamed the halls of Stormwind Keep, trying to make some sense of the chaos within, but to no avail. One thought stuck with him. It was simple, easy to grasp. Alcohol. Aimless wandering suddenly gave way to a determined search for the quickest path to the kitchens.
The room was dark and empty when Varian arrived. Dinner had been served hours ago, and the staff had cleaned the kitchens and left for their quarters not long after. All the better in his mind. No questions or pleasantries to delay his quest for inebriation. He headed across the kitchen to the large room dedicated to countless drinks from various cultures. The walls were lined with local mead, Darnassian wine, Draenic vodka, and Gilnean gin. There were even bottles of a strange clear spirit made of rice, given as a gift by the newly recruited Tushui pandaren. Varian walked past them all without a glance. Only one brew would be strong enough to ease his troubled mind: Wildhammer stout. He grabbed the nearest jug, and turned to leave.
In just over an hour, and almost half the drink, Wrynn had managed to chase away the chaos of his thoughts. In their place was a comfortable haze that blurred his vision and made everything feel somehow fuzzy. Something kept trying to pull him back into sobriety. It tried to reason with him, but Varian only caught the occasional word or idea, all seemingly unrelated to each other. Run. Pawn. Angry. He tried to piece the words together, but quickly came to the conclusion that it was too much trouble, and decided to try his hand at sleeping. That would be much easier.
Varian awoke as exhausted as if he just come out of fight. At some point he'd managed to stumble over to his bed, though he was still fully-dressed. Likely the king had attempted to disrobe only to find his fingers incapable of grasping the ties and clasps of his armor. He hadn't slept for long, both moons were still high in the night sky, and the inevitable aftereffects of drunkenness had yet to set in. The half-empty jug of stout sat undisturbed on the writing desk.
Taking advantage of the brief window between intoxicated and incapacitated, Varian tried again to make sense of the disjointed concepts that had nagged at him earlier. Still not completely sober or awake, the process was slow. When it all finally came together, the understanding knocked the wind out of him. The coming hangover would be less painful than knowing what Wrynn knew now: Anduin had run away.
Anduin, his son, his only family, had run away. Not to study in the safety of the Exodar, which had been painful enough, but into some strange land full of untold dangers! Rage, anger, and hatred rose at the back of Varian's throat. Not at Anduin, not at his fleet, not at the SI:7 agents, but at himself. Surely it was his fault. He must have alienated his son more than he'd thought, or done something to chase him off. Thanks to whatever Varian had done, his son was in peril. He'd failed Anduin, and he'd failed Tiffin.
The thought of Tiffin nearly did him in. Again, Varian had put their son in danger. He hung his head, covered his face with his hands, and seemed almost to weep. From between his fingers he spied the jug of stout. It wouldn't fix his mistakes, but it would at least bring him some fleeting bit of peace.