The Romancer Greatfather Winter

Episode Six:

The Spirit of Winter's Veil moved Alessandre to extremes that he did not even think himself capable of. Near to midnight, and on unsteady feet, the gorgeous rogue found himself at the doorstep of a certain shadowpriestess.

He knocked over and over for ten minutes before Alessandre remembered that Opalbane could not answer her own door. And, besides being bedridden, the deadbolt was on the outside of her door, which Alessandre took a long time to notice.

The result of this was, when Alessandre entered Opalbane's room, she had been fully alerted to his presence and looked very annoyed.

"Who are you?" she demanded instantly.

Alessandre squinted his eyes at her and rolled his shoulders. His hands were weighted down by heavy casks of liquor.

"You're hot." He said dumbly and nearly fell over when he tried to set all the drinks down.

"You did not ansher my queshion." Opalbane said, and hiccupped.

"Haha. You're drunk!" Alessandre chuckled.

"Sho are you. Tell me why I shouldn't flay your brain into a thoushand tiny pieshes." Opalbane frowned.

Alessandre came into the room and closed the door behind him.

"My name is Alesshandre and I come in peace." Alessandre bowed and almost fell over again. "In the spirit of Winter's Veil I've come to share the bounty of Stormwind with you. I bring gifts of rum, sausages… and more rum."

"What?" Opalbane demanded suspiciously, but she couldn't help eyeing the large containers of liquor on the floor. They were not the standard bottle sized gifts you would bring to a friend's party. These were more keg-sized and meant to satisfy an entire tavern of thirsty patrons.

"Look. I am your bodyguard, so you can trust me. Priestess Feathershine shent me. And then there's my boss Shadowshte… Stadowshep… no… it's…" Alessandre swayed on his feet and slurred the words terribly.

"No, no, you've got it all wrong." Opalbane corrected him but her efforts were even more pathetic. "It's Spadow… Spadow…why is that so hard to say?"

Alessandre chuckled merrily and plopped down next to Opalbane on the bed. "You don't even have any chairsh!" he exclaimed.

Opalbane scooted away from the handsome stranger. "Get off my bed! I don't have a bodyguard you lying son of an orc. Priestess Feathershine would have told me about it first." Opalbane narrowed her eyes at Alessandre, though it wasn't clear if she was angry or just trying focus through her double vision.

"You did not get a letter about it because my employer wishes to remain anonymoush. He or she knew you would reject my help outright if I told you who offered it. Good thing that I followed ordersh, too." Alessandre stretched out on the bed and smiled.

"You dolt!" Opalbane thundered. "You jusht told me who your employers are."

"Aaah! Dammit." Alessandre swore and flopped over. He laid his head in Opalbane's lap. "I'm not a very good liar when I'm like thish."

"I don't want you here—"

"Jush drink." Alessandre pushed the large cask of rum into Opalbane's hands.

"No, I'm not going to drink shomething you give me. I don't even know you." Opalbane objected but then took a long drink anyway.

Alessandre hefted the other cask of rum up from the floor and onto his lap. "Thish is good stuff. You know, I'm normally really good when I drink. But when I went to the tavern I felt sho bad about Greatfather Winter… and leaving you up here all alone for days. And then, I thought about how I had to come up here to save you, and actually saving shomeone is really out of my league… and I just stole this and I just stole this…" he stumbled along for a while until he realized that he was repeating himself, then said, "They were too busy to notice that I took theshe. I knew there wash no way I could be a hero while sober. And also, I figured that you wouldn't mind caushe you're an alcoholic already."

Opalbane's unhappy features lightened on hearing this. "It may be a bit inshulting, but true." She said, and laughed.

"But if anyone comes through that door, I got a rapier with hish name on it. I can fight drunk."

"And jusht who will you be fighting? For all I know, you could be a Twilight Cultist come to drink me silly and then drag me back to Silithus."

Alessandre got very quiet just then. He stood up and drew his swords. Opalbane flinched at the menacing look in his eyes and paused midsip.

"I'll prove it to you." Alessandre said, and lay his rapiers across the bedside table. Then he came right up to Opalbane, within inches of her face, and undid his pants.

Opalbane gasped, flushed with embarrassment and turned away.

"Oh, come on." Alessandre complained. "Shtop being a baby and just look at it, will you?"

Opalbane let herself look at where Alessandre was pointing. Just above his hip began a jagged scar. It was a nasty one, old and long. Who ever had done it came very close to unmaking him a man. The horrible scar could not have been made by any conventional weapon; it was too savagely done to have been made by a sharp blade. Alessandre watched Opalbane look, gave her all the time she wanted, and then slowly fastened his pants closed again. Then, Alessandre bent over.

Opalbane gasped. "It's a nice view, I musht admit, but I don't quite get what you're doing—"

Alessandre rolled up a leather pants leg, and took off his excellent boots. The scar was there too, carved deeply into his foot.

"They ripped me from there to here." Alessandre explained solemnly. "The Twilight Cultists did this to me when I was foolish enough to try saving someone I loved. That was after she was already long gone though. I was a nightsaber at the time, and stupid."

"You are a druid?"

"I was a druid. I once had mana. But… I lost faith in that. I was once a part of the Cenarion Hold in Silithus. We were there to watch the gates of Ahn Qiraj, and the Silithid. But the Twilight Cultists harried us to no end. Finally, when she was taken, I could stand following orders no longer. I went after her eventhough the Archdruid ordered all of us to wait. This is what the Cultists did to me for playing a hero. But, the whole point of my undressing is to prove to you that I am an enemy of the cultists." Alessandre was speaking calmly now that he was being so serious. The effects of the rum were not able to come into his voice and trivialize this painful memory.

Opalbane frowned. "I'm so sorry." The effects of the rum were wearing off on her too. The tragedy itself was sobering.

"Of course you are." His voice was pained though he'd tried to make it sound detached, sarcastic. "It's a horrible thing to happen to anybody." Alessandre fixed his clothing and replaced his leather boot.

"A cultist… a shadow priest turned their powers on you, didn't they?" Opalbane suddenly asked.

Alessandre said nothing.

"I know how they think. This cultist knew that you had no chance against him, and could have killed you easily. But instead, he found it more satisfying to amuse himself and try to obliterate your manhood."

Alessandre straightened his clothing and was not forthcoming with any more information on the subject.

Opalbane insisted, "He left you alive for a reason. He knew that you were coming after someone that you loved, saw the youth and the hope in you, the passion, and tried to destroy it. He thought he succeeded and that is why you, a lone nightsaber in a camp of angry cultists, were allowed to live. You wouldn't really be living at all, just suffering, and each time you cared for someone else, you'd try to make love, but be unable to. Even now as I'm explaining it to you… eventhough I'm no longer one of them, I get the joke. In a cultist's mind, it is rather amusing—"

"She did this to me!" Alessandre lost control of himself. "It was her. The Archdruid was right, and she was truly gone, but I didn't listen. I just had to be a hero and save her… she was the one who opened my leg with the searing shadow power, she was the one who laughed while I dragged myself through the sands, and back to Cenarion Hold. And then for what? To be punished by the Archdruid and stripped of my rank."

Alessandre looked like he was going mad. He yanked the heavy cask of rum away from Opal and downed more of it himself.

"Do you know that I wish she'd aimed better that day? I wish that she had castrated me, the way that she wanted to. And then, maybe that part of my mind that still wants women, that makes me say yes when I'm in the mood and desperate eventhough I loathe the act of love itself… if that part of me could be excised, I'd be a much happier man with nothing to tempt me."

That was when Opalbane realized this was only the second time in her whole life that she'd seen a man cry. The first was a month ago, when she'd almost killed her brother Onyxbane in Silithus. And this was the second, a man who'd tried to do the same as her brother had, only Alessandre failed to save the woman he loved.

"Come here." Opalbane said. Alessandre was so distraught he looked like he was ready to leave the room, but the once priestess of Elune insisted and he felt compelled to obey. Opalbane began to speak to Alessandre about the kindness of the goddess, the painful truth of the shadow which lie beyond the light, and how men were terrified to look at the darkness of their own souls but that the reflection was necessary if one was to find peace. Alessandre had taken up the rum again and started to drink. He wasn't listening. "If I could use my mana right now," Opalbane said, "I could read your mind and take your confession. But, I guess you'll just have to tell me what you've done so that I can find a suitable penance—"

"I'm not so broken," Alessandre said hurriedly and kissed her. "I don't need fixing, I have nothing to confess—"

"Yes you do, I can feel it—"

"I can show you," Alessandre pressed Opalbane against her pillows and tried fervently to silence her with kisses. "I'm very good, practically a legend… I was a pathetic youth, that's all. But I grew up, into a man. I changed my name, turned my life around. I swear to you that there is nothing for me to atone for."

You are stealing from her, Alessandre. And, you are lying to her about the murders.

Alessandre tried to ignore the voice in his head but it came again.

She has never been with a man, and you are taking advantage of her. You're going right back down the path of callousness laddy, and that is not in the spirit of Winter's Veil.

"You're in my head now too?" Alessandre stopped what he was doing and asked aloud, frustrated.

"Who are you talking to?" Opalbane looked surprised, but she was smiling.

Alessandre studied Opalbane's face and realized what he was doing. So far, he observed her to be a sad but enchanting woman. Right now, she was so giddy she looked like she was going to leap all over him.

"Geez woman! Why didn't you tell me that you were a virgin? And let me guess, that was your first kiss?"

Opalbane's pale skin blushed a bright rose color.

Told you. Now stop fooling around and get back to being a bodyguard.

Alessandre sat up and buried his face in his hands.

"Why did you stop… do you have voices in your head?" Alessandre was surprised to hear someone ask this question so casually, but then he remembered just what kind of crazy shadowpriestess he was dealing with.

"Yes, and it's Greatfather Winter talking to me," Alessandre tested her further and raised an eyebrow expectantly.

"Oh, well that's not so bad. Better than an old god who wants to use you in order to strike up a following and keep his body from melting."

Alessandre balked at that statement. "You are a very strange girl."

Opalbane shrugged. "You're worse. You got yourself drunk so that you could stomach coming in here and saving me, and ontop of that, you used to be a druid, but now you're a rogue. I thought people couldn't change their classes?"

"You miss a manipulative old god as if he were an ex-lover, and you're an alcoholic shadowpriestess. And, furthermore, someone like me is supposed to save you?"

Alessandre was trying to figure out which one of them was worse off when Opalbane suddenly asked. "So… does that mean you can't kiss me, since you're my bodyguard?"

"I refuse to answer that question in my current state of mind." Alessandre grumbled and kicked his boots off. "I'm drunk and I'm hearing things, so I am going to take a little nap. You don't mind, do you?"

Opalbane considered her situation. She'd been alone in Stormwind for weeks, save Priest Benactus and she had to admit, he was more than likely a Twilight Cultist. If Greatfather Winter saw fit to send her a handsome man who had no choice but to stay by her side day and night… then she had been a very good girl indeed this year, and there was no way she was going to turn down that kind of gift.

"Oh, I don't mind," Opalbane nearly sang, but Alessandre was fast asleep.