Warnings: stitching/suturing, light gore, very brief mention of suicidal ideation

Song: Storytime by Nightwish


Ysadéan handed Kel'Thuzad the spindle after several minutes. A single drop of blood seeped onto her forehead from the cut in her antler velvet and drew a line of scarlet down her veil.

She leaned over and gently cupped her hands around Zaphine's broken skull.

"Do not be frightened, child," she murmured. "I am here with you."

Then she turned to Kel'Thuzad.

"How will you begin?"

He folded his arms over his chest. "Put her back together first. The ghouls found as much as they could but even if you're going to carve all the bones she's missing, I've salvaged two- eh, two and half- other bodies for spare parts."

"No. No, no, no. You do not patch a person together with the corpses of others like some threadbare cloak!"

He gestured to Zaphine's wounds. "So you'll leave her in this state?"

"We 'salvage'- as you say- from living things. Never take from the dead." She moved around to examine the stump of Zaphine's right arm with careful fingers. "The part of the rhyme that you know as 'wicked seeds in sacred ground' was twisted by the ignorant. It is 'precious seeds in sacred ground'. In the beginning, when we of the Antler still lived in the embrace of Teldrassil, we buried our corpses between the roots, and painted them with spells to draw in living strength from the World Tree."

"I see why that was not well-received."

"The tree gave willingly, as we do. It was powerful enough to grow missing flesh and bone. But you are correct: it was not well-received." She cocked her head to one side. "Your resurrection in the light of the Sunwell was poorly received, was it not?"

Where did she hear that? "Very poorly."

"But what power it must have bestowed!"

"Whatever power it may have given me is long lost through repeated destruction and resurrection."

She shook her finger in his face. "Power is never lost. You know this. It only cycles, as night and day, death and life. You know this." She touched two fingers to Zaphine's sternum. "Now… We don't have access to the strength of a World Tree. But we can still repair her without befouling her body with a stranger's flesh. We use fire. Fire changes dead things to light and heat, and we will sculpt that energy around the bones I carve to complete her body. You can manage this task, yes?"

"I'm sure you've seen that I can." Most of Kel'Thuzad's current physical form was built from pure woven magic. The basic structure came from pieces of well-chosen corpses but the rest was his own creation. "At least we'll have some use for the salvage I collected."

Kel'Thuzad put on his spectacles and carefully threaded Ysadéan's blood through a curved needle. "Start your carving. This won't take long."

He considered the length and breadth of the wound in Zaphine's abdomen. Whatever weapon was responsible had been poorly-sharpened and the edges of the cut were ragged. Closing it would leave an asymmetrical zig-zag of thread up her torso.

But as Kel'Thuzad stitched, the sutures melted into a softly glowing ladder of red that faded to pink like a living scar. Against her dull turquoise skin, it was barely visible. He thought of all the neat lines of black thread he had put into the cold flesh of his best projects and scowled.

Ysadéan worked silently and much too quickly for someone using only physical tools. She kept the short-bladed dagger in a tiny sheath on the back of her left hand and held the tools she wasn't presently using between her fingers, swapping them to her right hand to do the actual carving. Every now and then, she touched the broken bone protruding from Zaphine's shoulder, then touched her carving, back and forth until she was satisfied and continued on.

Kel'Thuzad finished his stitching and looked over every inch of Zaphine, finding small wounds that he might have left untended on another corpse but this was, as Ysadéan noted, practise.

So he sutured the cuts on her knuckles, the gashes on her knees, washed sand from scrapes and abrasions, and patched them with delicate weaves until Zaphine was perfect except for her fatal wounds.

He left Ysadéan to her carving and retrieved the 'spare parts'. Even in the Citadel, it would spark curiosity if he was seen carrying dismembered bodies, so he teleported.

Ysadéan was unphased by his gruesome collection. "We will have to burn them in small pieces. I hope it will be enough."

"I can always find more."

He had an iron stove in the corner of the room, not for heat but for melting and boiling ingredients. Kel'Thuzad copied the spells that Jaina had cast on the stove in the laboratory to keep smoke from escaping, kindled a flame, and began to feed the fire.

"What would you carve for Jaina?"

"Whatever she needs. If she needs nothing, then something integral to who she is."

"Something like Soffriel's vertebra."

"Yes."

"I'm curious how you managed to replace such a significant part of the skeleton in an animate undead person."

"With permission, of course."

"Doing so would have required you to remove his existing vertebra and detach it from the spells that animate him, then reattach them."

"It was difficult, yes. I did not undo the spells; I could not. I left the pieces where the spells attached and rebuilt the rest of the structure around them."

Kel'Thuzad watched her without remark for a minute.

"How many times have you done this?"

Her hands stilled. "I was not among the first; I never saw Teldrassil. But although I did not establish our craft, I have furthered it."

Ysadéan leaned forward and fitted her carved antler to Zaphine's shoulder. It clicked into place. From where he sat, Kel'Thuzad couldn't see any distinction between the bone and her carved antler.

"There. A foundation for our work." She drew another piece of antler from some inner pocket and began to shape it. "I will say this, Kel'Thuzad: your work is beyond any expectation I had for your kind. You are a skilled and clever man. You have found ways to build an army, to raise them quickly, and to keep some personality and expertise in your higher creations."

"But…?"

"But your craft is cruel. It is crude and done for evil reasons. You may love your work, but it does not love you back as it should."

He chuckled. "I don't need them to love me. They only need to heed me."

"And that is why people fear undeath! You take their self from them, defile them with this- this patchwork of parts, use them for your own selfish ends! This is what they see when they look at you."

He picked a severed arm from his pile of parts, broke it at the elbow and wrist, and nudged it into the stove.

"If you're trying to shame me for the things I've done, don't bother."

"No. I am only angry. This is what I love. Do you understand? This is not a profession. It is what I am. To be hated by my own people is enough. To see what your kind has done… The fear you have wrought…" She shook her head. "We will never find acceptance in any land. It matters not what good we have done."

Kel'Thuzad took a seat and leaned back, hands behind his head. "What good is it that you've done?"

Ysadéan smiled. "Ah. Of course. They don't tell this story. I will share it with you. In the beginning, we of the Antler, children of Malorne, walked the wilds as all druids do, in harmony with the ebb and flow of the natural world. Always we have been shepherds of life and death; we tended to births and to funerals. Death never comes naturally to a race of immortals; we laid their spirits to rest and consoled their grieving friends." She paused to run her fingers over the carving, then the piece she had already fitted to Zaphine's arm. "But then came the War of the Ancients and Malorne was slain by the demon Archimonde. We became, as the rhyme tells, 'fawns without a sire'. We were bereft. Where would we turn for guidance and comfort?"

She set down her tools and fitted her newly-completed carving in place.

"There's no way you're working that fast without magic."

"It would take days- weeks- without magic." She took another piece of bone from some hidden pocket and reached up to touch Zaphine's shattered face. "This one is too small for her arm but I think it should fit here… Where was I? Oh yes. We mourned our Father and as we did, the seasons changed. The days grew short, then long, then short again... Our antlers grew and fell. And then- if part of us can die each year and be reborn again, then why not our Father? We have guided the wisps, the souls of our people, down the path to peace. But a path can be travelled two ways."

Kel'Thuzad opened the door of the stove. "I'm listening." He gathered the heat from within, confined it in an invisible globe, and held the ball of churning flames over Zaphine. "Switch places with me. I'll work on her arm."

Ysadéan complied.

"Feed the stove. Don't let the fire burn low."

"If I can see the flames, then there is no danger of it dying." Nevertheless, she settled her tools on the table beside Zaphine's head and selected a piece from the gathered corpses. He watched as she used her little dagger to cut ligaments and pop joints from their sockets. A thousand years of practise.

"There. Now, I'll continue. If a path can be walked two ways, then perhaps we could walk to the end and bring back the willing spirit of one beyond. And so we tried. We tried many ways; we lost ourselves on the path sometimes, our bodies withered and our spirits wandered. But after many attempts and long years of learning, we found success."

She paused to watch as he sketched a spell circle he had drawn hundreds of times and pulled the flames down to light it. The lines flared green; he waited for them to brighten, then guided the power to form tightly woven cords of magic. He used Ysadéan's carved antler as a base to build from. It took him several minutes to mould the energy into solid bone and complete Zaphine's arm from shoulder to elbow.

"I see now." Ysadéan nodded. "You do not have compassion for your subjects but you love your craft very much. This is why you do not understand why someone would not wish to receive your gift."

"You're losing the thread of your story."

"Very well. I will continue. We of the Antler taught the kaldorei the art of resurrection. Not the sort of resurrection that we are doing right now, but what the world calls true resurrection: the hallowed gift that our druids and priests still use today, that returns the soul to a living body. They will never tell you that it was us who taught them. They will say that it was discovered long ago, and that much is true."

She checked the progress of her carving.

"While we studied and practised, we found that sometimes when a soul returned to the body, it was… different. They did not breathe. No blood moved through their veins. They felt no pain or hunger. They could not make children. And they were very difficult to kill. Yet they walked and spoke and laughed and loved as any other person."

Ysadéan shook her head slowly, the beads on her veil swinging with the motion. The stripe of blood on the fringe was dry now.

"The kaldorei celebrated the resurrected ones who drew breath- but they shunned our strange, cold people. They told us that these people were aberrations- that nothing like them exists in nature and we had done an unholy thing by creating them. Imagine turning away from your own mother, your child, your lover merely because they took a different path back."

Ysadéan rubbed her thumb along the curve of what was beginning to look like a jaw bone.

"In the end, we gave a great gift to our people: the power to bring back the fallen. And they have never thanked us."

Kel'Thuzad drew the spell circle again, captured a globe of flame, and began to mould it into bones of solid light. The fire resisted less than flesh; it was almost eager to be shaped. He could bind it tighter, smooth out the flickering heat into flawless strength. Ysadéan watched him work.

"It is unnatural," she said. "And it was the first unnatural thing the kaldorei knew, apart from the Burning Legion. But now… Now, there are metal harvesters clearing our forests, goblin wells that bring up oil instead of water, and flying machines. There is the great ship of the draenei people that carried them between planets. There was a forge built large enough to armour Deathwing. Undeath may be unnatural but it is among many, many other things that are unnatural too."


Jaina stood on the edge of a precipice, hands folded on the head of her cane, and gazed out at golden hills and a huge blue sky. Northrend was descending into autumn but here in Pandaria, spring was just beginning.

"It is difficult to look upon." A pandaren man with his hair tied in a neat topknot joined her at the edge of the terrace. "This Vale was a place of great peace once."

"It feels… restless."

The man nodded. "It has been transformed unwillingly to something unfamiliar. I would be restless too." He turned and offered a hand. "I am Lorewalker Cho. Welcome!"

"Thank you for your kind invitation, Lorewalker. Please, call me Jaina."

"It is an honour to call you such, Jaina. I hear that you have another name, one with quite a tale attached to it."

"Nowhere near as long as the history of your people. I'll happily trade you tale for tale."

The Lorewalker's eyes lit up. "That's what I like to hear. Have my fellows showed you around the Palace yet?"

Jaina nodded. "Oh, yes. I could spend weeks- months!- here."

The Mogu'Shan Palace was ancient; when Jaina laid her hand on the stone wall, she thought she could feel the echo of a thousand past scholars. Shelves of books and scrolls climbed the walls and each colum, every floor tile, the ceiling above, and even the shelves were carved with a pattern of stylized clouds, curling around each other in a fluid, repeating pattern. Everything was painted purple, gold, and vermillion and it was populated by pandaren who dressed as brightly as the Palace.

There were a few other visitors besides Jaina, members of both Horde and Alliance perusing the shelves. The Palace was neutral territory, open to any who wished to study within. A sanctuary.

"Our people have hidden in the mists for too long. We have much to learn from each other now that we have rejoined the rest of the world. Tell me, what do you wish to learn?"

Jaina paused to think. "Whatever you wish to show me. I admit, I came here because my rather hazy memories of Pandaria were of beauty and… tranquility."

The Lorewalker nodded slowly. "You saw the shade of Emperor Shao Hao."

"Yes. Your Emperor's words struck a chord."

"How so?"

Again, Jaina paused before answering. "I am struggling to face my fears and to find peace."

"Ahh. Perhaps what you need cannot be found in the Palace then. Sometimes I find it distracting to pursue meaningful reflection among such a bounty of knowledge. Sometimes what you need is a beautiful view and good food! I know just the place. Let us journey together- and tell stories along the way."

"That sounds splendid. Let me collect my apprentices."

Jaina found Kinndy and Soffriel among the standing bookcases- Kinndy rapidly transcribing something from a scroll into her magical notebook while Soffriel petted an exotic big cat with orange fur and black stripes. It opened one amber eye when Jaina approached and grumbled when Soffriel gave it one final scratch under the chin before following her back to the terrace.

"The kitemistress is on the level below. My cloud serpent friend, Mishi, can carry us down to her."

Mishi was one of the long, wingless dragons that Jaina half-thought she had hallucinated. It floated, gently undulating in place. As far as dragons went, it seemed docile and cheerful. It's… actually it's quite cute.

Kinndy peered over the edge of the terrace. "Thank you very much for the offer, Lorewalker, but I've been itching to try out this spell-"

She snapped her fingers and jumped the low railing. Jaina watched her fall slowly in a puff of sparkles.

"I'll take Mishi up on the offer. Soffriel?"

He joined Jaina on the dragon's back.

Kinndy was already talking to the kitemistress.

"Lean back to slow down," said the woman. "You can steer left and right but it won't veer too far off the route. If you want to rise, pull up on the edges here, and to dive, lean forward."

The kite was exactly as advertised: a fabric kite with a bamboo frame and a lantern at the rear glowing with magic.

"It's like riding a paper airplane!"

Jaina had not once in her life had the desire to ride a paper airplane.

"Where are you taking them, Lorewalker?"

"To Dawn's Blossom."

"Ah! It is the perfect time of year for a visit! Now, once you ascend, the kite will know where to go." She passed her hands over the lantern on the back of Kinndy's kite and it floated up to shoulder height, wobbling on slight air currents. She readied another for Soffriel, who seemed somewhat apprehensive at first.

After the lantern was lit and he knelt on the back of the kite, Jaina watched something come alive in his expression.

"It's fun, right?" Kinndy stood in a crouch on her kite, fixing her twin ponytails into one messy bun at the back of her head. "Have you ever flown before?"

He nodded. "Yes, but only as myself."

"Oooh!"

The kitemistress turned to Jaina and the Lorewalker. Cho put his hand on Jaina's shoulder.

"Our honoured guest will ride with Mishi and I."

The serpent rose gracefully and Cho's stocky body blocked the wind of their passage. Far ahead of them, fading into the east, Soffriel and Kinndy appeared to be racing.

"Unfortunately, it is too windy for storytelling up here, but I will point out important places for you."

Despite the wind, Lorewalker Cho recited pieces of history for several temples, villages, and important locations as they flew.

And then they crossed a river and everything was green. It was so vivid that Jaina had to blink as though she had walked out of the dark into brilliant light.

"Welcome to the Jade Forest!"

It was a green like she had never seen; tall trees draped with hanging vines, trees with long sweeping branches that trailed in the water of clear streams, and stands of bamboo. Even the forest floor was carpeted with green- grass or moss or ferns, Jaina couldn't tell. The forest was so vigorously alive everywhere she looked.

The air was warmer here and more humid but not so much that it was uncomfortable. Jaina took a deep breath and it tasted of life.

Mishi descended through the forest and Jaina began to see red and gold painted roofs, and round lanterns hung up in the trees. They glowed even though it was already midmorning.

Kinndy and Soffriel had beat them to Dawn's Blossom by a good half hour and had disappeared into the town already.

"Don't worry," said the Lorewalker. "They won't be hard to find."

For the first time in weeks, Jaina couldn't easily pick Kinndy out of the background. It was Soffriel who stood out now with his stark white hair and black clothes.

Cho showed them around parts of the town with Mishi floating idly above him, occasionally doing loops, as the Lorewalker regaled them with history and gossip. Jaina found a food stall that sold some sort of honey-drenched dessert on a stick. Kinndy stopped to compliment a woman on her hair and got an impromptu lesson on several popular pandaren styles. She left the conversation with cute buns tied up with gold ribbons.

They stopped on a bridge over a little river dotted with colourful carp.

"What do you think, Jaina- shall I visit your land in the summer when the sun doesn't set or in the winter when it doesn't rise?"

"Why not both? Both are equally strange."

"Aha, yes! Why limit myself to one experience? I hope my fur is thick enough for your winters."

Three pandaren kids ran up to the shore of the river. One of them had a miniature version of Mishi on her shoulder. The kids immediately waded in to the shallows and spent some minutes attempting to catch fish with their bare hands for the little cloud serpent to eat, without success.

Soffriel pushed himself away from the railing where he was leaning and hesitantly approached the group.

"I can show you how to catch them, if you would like."

The three kids exchanged looks. Jaina found herself holding her breath.

A minute later, Soffriel was ankle-deep in the river, pants rolled up to his knees, showing the kids how to stand still, with their hands in the water. He was much faster than they were but after another ten minutes of idle conversation, each of the kids had managed to catch a fish and the little cloud serpent was too full to hover.

He sat on the bridge, buckling his boots, and caught Jaina's gaze.

"They know what I am," he said, "but not… exactly what I am."

She smiled. "They know you're a good hunter."

Next, Lorewalker Cho hired a cart and driver, and gave him whispered directions.

"It is best as a surprise, seen from the ground."

Mishi accompanied them above the trees.

Jaina never got tired of gazing into the green of the forest and the rhythmic clatter of the cart wheels over the stone path lulled her into a kind of half-trance. All along the road there were signposts hung with red tassels and square lanterns, awaiting dusk.

Then they crested a hill and a sea of blossoming pink trees spread out before them. Jaina gasped.

"This is the Arboretum."

The scent of the flowering trees was delicate and it made her want to breathe deeply, daring her body to fail her. For once, it did not.

The cart took them all the way to the edge of a towering cliff overlooking the sea. The sky and trees around them were full of cloud serpents in every life stage, and a crowd of people- some pandaren, some from the other continents- were feeding the little dragons or racing astride older ones.

Jaina noticed them in passing. She had eyes only for the ocean.

There were islands near the shore like tall, green-clad spires but beyond them was an infinity of water, glittering in the late afternoon sun. She sat down with some difficulty- her knees were starting to ache- and stared out at the ocean.

"Thank you for this."

Cho sat down beside her. "You come from a coastal place?"

She nodded. "Yes. I was born in a port city and then lived in another for an important part of my life." She let her vision unfocus in the distance. "The place I live now is land-locked. I do miss the sea."

Kinndy joined them. "Hey, is there a way we can get down to the water? It would be fun to go swimming."

Cho hummed. "Not here, but there's village nearby on the shore. It's a short flight. And there is an inn with some of the best beer in Pandaria! This must be fate."

Pandaria must have a different kind of fate than Icecrown.

The place was called Sri-La Village. Most of the houses and shops were built on stilts of tightly wrapped bamboo, projecting over the sea, or nestled back into the nearly sheer cliff wall. Jaina was glad they flew in; there was a stairway carved into the cliff, switch-back after switch-back and her knees wailed at the thought.

The sun was just touching the edge of the horizon, throwing gold and orange light across the sky and ocean. Cho and several curious villagers showed them to a stony beach where Kinndy realized that she didn't have any swim wear and immediately made several new friends who offered to loan her makeshift clothes. She was in the water, splashing around with a couple dozen locals, in less than ten minutes.

Soffriel stayed on the shore with Jaina and Cho this time.

"I have a lot of, er... scars," he said softly when Kinndy came up to cajol him.

"Right, should've thought of that. Sorry!"

There was a scattering of small islands off the shore and Cho pointed to familiar shapes half-sunk near them.

"Which side are you on?"

One of the shapes had tattered red sails; the other blue.

"Neither." Jaina leaned hard on her cane. "Neither will have me and truth be told, I'm happy with that. I'm on the side of Azeroth."

"Both sides are of Azeroth, are they not?"

"In their own way. For their own interests. But rarely are they truly, completely acting in the best interest of the world as a whole." She shifted her weight. "I'm tired of it. I'm tired of- of putting out one fire only to have a half dozen smaller fires spring up, then another big one- and once that big one is out, one or more of those small ones has turned into an inferno."

"It is hard to walk a middle path." Cho stroked his pointed beard. "Sometimes it is cowardly."

Jaina was quiet for a moment.

"My Kingdom is isolated. Those who choose to visit and stay do so because it affords them a place without conflict. Not everyone values that. The people who come, the ones I interact with, already have a willingness to keep the peace." Most of them, anyway. "Yes, it would be easy to say I'm neutral and turn my back on the world. But that isn't the path I want to walk." She paused and thought of Emperor Shao Hao's words. "I want to make a place where I can share peace with the world. A place to show Azeroth that peace is possible."

"Peace is not always possible. Peace, as it exists in your kingdom, may not be possible in all places."

The only way a sanctuary will survive is with an army to defend it.

Jaina looked over at Cho. She wasn't good at reading pandaren expressions yet.

"All of Azeroth brought a war to your shores."

He nodded. "As fascinating as your new cultures and stories are, they have changed ours forever. What has been done to Pandaria cannot be undone. What has been done will echo in our future generations. Azeroth has changed us."

"You are part of Azeroth," said Soffriel.

Cho turned to look at him.

"My people- kaldorei- did as yours. We turned away from the world. It did not benefit us in the end."

Cho nodded slowly. "Each of us is right." Then he shrugged. "Enough of this! It is time for food and drink."

Half the village was already crowded into the tavern below the inn. Cho took them to a table smack in the middle of the room. Every eye and ear in the building shifted toward them but, as Jaina looked from one to the next, she saw none of the bone-deep hatred she was used to finding.

"I don't think they know the history of the Scourge." Soffriel was sitting so close to her that they were bumping elbows. Jaina wiggled her chair even closer. Neither of them were particularly comfortable being the centre of attention; best to create a united front.

The tavern owners themselves came out- more for the Lorewalker than for Jaina and Soffriel, she realized- and took the orders themselves. Kinndy joined them just in time and scooted in on Jaina's other side.

There was food. There was beer. There were a half dozen people who asked Soffriel why he wasn't eating. There was music. There was singing. There were another half dozen people who asked Kinndy to dance. And then what seemed like the whole village started begging for stories.

Cho waved his hands. "Quiet, quiet! Tonight it is not my turn to tell a tale. I was promised a new tale by our guest. We will be the first to hear it, in her words."

Fortunately, Jaina was already pleasantly buzzed and as such her blush of embarrassment didn't change the colour in her cheeks noticeably when the entire pandaren village turned their focus to her.

She cleared her throat and took another sip of her beer.

"Where should I start?"

"At the beginning, of course!"

"But which beginning?" She paused and cast a look around the table. "Shall I tell you of the battle of Icecrown Citadel and how I came to bear a crown I didn't want? Shall I tell you of the shores of Kalimdor and the founding of Theramore? Shall I tell you of Dalaran before it was sacked? Shall I tell you of Kul Tiras?"

"Kul Tiras! Kul Tiras!" That was Kinndy cheering in her ear.

"Yes," said Soffriel, on her other shoulder, "Tell us of the place you came from!"

Lorewalker Cho just chuckled.

"All right. I'll tell it from the very beginning." Jaina clasped her hands before her for a moment and then opened them. A misty landscape appeared on the tabletop to gasps and oohs from the crowd. The mist began to settle, rolling down to reveal the masts of ships, then dissolved entirely and revealed the masts were actually the roofs of buildings.

"I was born in a place called Kul Tiras. It's a place not unlike this, a place hidden and broken by the woes of Azeroth…"


Jaina sat on the narrow terrace outside the inn as the sun peeked over the horizon.

"Did you sleep at all?"

Soffriel held out a cup of what smelled like very strong coffee.

"No." She smiled and accepted the mug. Her voice was all but gone.

He settled himself onto the terrace beside her. How such a tall, broad-shouldered person could suddenly fold themself into a space she barely occupied was a mystery best pondered with sharper wits.

Jaina sipped the coffee.

"I liked your story."

Jaina nodded. "Mm."

"I wish I could tell you mine."

She cocked her head.

"I don't remember. They take that from you… or most of it." He fell silent for half a minute. "Shadowborn is a name I gave myself. I couldn't remember my family name. I have some pieces of my memory, but very few. Some are of Moonglade. I was little... barefoot and trying to hold a rabbit in my lap. Some are of a man I cannot name- I think he was my father. I remember dying. I remember coming back." He found a pebble wedged between the boards of the terrace, fished it out, and tossed it onto the beach. "I remember bits and pieces from Acherus. I remember when A-arthas lost control of us." He turned away from her. "I wanted to die."

Jaina took a long swig of coffee and concentrated on the bitter taste.

"Ysadéan found me in the Plaguelands. I don't fully understand her but I… wanted to be near another- a druid."

He looked out to sea. Even his eyelashes were white, lost in the pale blue glow of his eyes.

"And the rest you know. That's all I have." He glanced at her out the corner of his eye and for the first time, Jaina saw him make a real smile. "I have the Scourge. Again. But it's different. I can remember now."

Jaina took another long sip of coffee.

"Can I give you a hug, Soffriel?"

"Er. Yes."

Jaina set the mug down and somehow managed to fit Soffriel's shoulders in her embrace.