So, I know it's been a long time again. My boyfriend decided that he didn't want to be in a relationship with me anymore... thus destroying our little family of 3. Which is now a family of 2. I won't carry on with the specifics, but it has been a really, really hard time for myself and my daughter between the upheaval of her diagnosis with diabetes, and now her father just deciding that he's going to check out for good.

Please forgive the delay, and I hope that you enjoy today's installment. :)

~ Shannon

Chapter 10

Malovici was quiet for a while, clearly thinking of a long-ago time. The silence stretched until the sounds of the great Tauren's labored breathing overtook the room.

I watched him for a time. But the pain of being near him and yet away from him began to eat at me. My erstwhile son had become a man and claimed his own family and clan. I decided to go back and see how my father fared.

The strangest part of life is that we often do not realize that passage of time, even as we yet do realize it. At the same time that I mourned the passage of time, I also didn't really realize that my father was gone and that generations had passed. I suppose I knew it intellectually, but not on a visceral level.

I entered the castle itself, only to find a stranger on the throne conducting the affairs of humans in that region. He was old and harsh. The land was not faring well, and people were suffering. I had expected to find things little different, or perhaps more advanced, but our realm had devolved under this man's rule.

I learned the story of his ascension. He had killed my brother and stolen the throne in his youth. My family was gone entirely, with only a walking corpse to remind the world of a forgotten King and his legacy. Gone was the golden era ushered in by my father, and all that was left was this greedy brute.

Using hidden passages that had been forgotten along with my family's legacy, I killed him in his sleep and left the land in turmoil.

I began to travel. I happened upon, of all things, an elf. He was the beginning of what we now call 'blood elves'. He was near death, and I had the urge to grant him that kindness, but he first cursed me, and then begged me to save him.

On a whim, I did. His name was Bemaaris. He had fled his people, and like me, was an outcast everywhere. We became the strangest of accomplices. He began to teach me, and I was eager to learn. When you live for so long, life becomes boredom; and learning alleviates it.

He taught me how to steal, how to sneak, and how to use many weapons. Time passed and he worked me hard, pushing me to excellence. Together, we practiced new techniques, and I found myself obsessed with the pleasure of weapons. The feel of a throwing star, the satisfying 'thunk' when it strikes home in a body... the proper weight of a dagger, so sweet and light in your hand.

We practiced against each other endlessly, always seeking to change our methods so that the other could never predict the next move. We were competitive, fighting each other to near death on many occasions.

I loved him like a brother. More than I had loved my brother in that life long ago. I lost touch with who I was, and what I knew of loss, and I let myself draw close to him. I had not yet learned the harsh lesson that live has to offer to those whose lives never end.

I learned diligence. Together we learned persistence. He taught me every weapon he knew, and I taught him every weapon I knew. We mastered ourselves and learned to love these sessions. We were inseparable, even when we argued-which was frequently, as brothers are wont to do. Yet he was all I had, and I was all he had.

Then came the day that it all ended. It began simply enough. We needed provisions and had decided to steal them from a fat, slovenly merchant who had gotten rich on the backs of slaves and by taking food from the mouths of the starving.

Bemaaris laughed when I warned him that the caravan was too well guarded. He scoffed that I was an old man, huddling in my cave. I would starve to death while he ate his bounty, he promised. I reminded him that I had no need of food, but he knew me too well. He needed food, and I would never think to let him starve, even if it meant my own life.

That madness of the living had not left me yet, and so I loved my brother and I went with him to rob the caravan. How could I not go? He was as close to family as I could get. I could not stand to be alone in the world and neither could he. Better the brother you fight with than no brother at all.

They caught him and they gutted him. His screams drew me back to their camp, where they thought to capture me, as well.

I was reminded then of that other madness of the living... I knew rage. Pure and unadulterated, my rage poured out of me. The merchant was intentionally violent and sadistic, and he was torturing my brother Bemaaris even as I fought my way to him.

His wretched laughter lives in my mind to this day. His cruelty was a lesson to me; one he regretted teaching. For one madness I did not possess... I had lived long enough by then, and I had been given the great gift by then of patience.

When I reached him, Bemaaris was already dead. But he was not.

The greatest madness of love is that it gives rise to depths of hate that are beyond fathoming. By the time he knew his danger... by the time I had killed so many of his minions that the others fled... it was too late for him. He had allowed himself to get caught up in his glee at punishing Bemaaris.

I did not do what I most desired in that moment. I did not spill his blood and let it mingle with my dead brother's blood. I did not decapitate him.

I took him to the camp I had shared that morning with Bemaaris. I sat him beside the fire that Bemaaris had cooked his breakfast at. With great care and patience, over the next few weeks, I prepared the potions that would keep him alive. I prepared poisons-though at the time, I knew little about them. But the ones I knew would bring great pain, if given in small doses. Great pain, but not death.

Then I tortured him. It was my daily ritual. I woke him up at night, and tortured him then. I would not let him die, though. His pleading and his screams made me laugh with joy. I understood him then. I understood how one man can laugh at the suffering of another.

But I grew bored with it. I killed him and turned back towards the homeland of the man I had once seen as my son. I went to him, but it was with shame in my heart. I had become everything I had taught him not to be. I was ashamed, but I could not stay away.

It was good that I returned, for I was not the first to do so...