AN: The Forsaken character that appears in this chapter is fully dedicated to the odd minds of those who post in WCSues. I can think of only one who reads this story with any amount of regularity, and I hope he/she recognizes the character from a conversation that took place on one of the posts there. The idea of this particular Forsaken just about killed me in imagery, and I couldn't help but include him.
In other randomness, we wander back to our Sin'dorei. A little more of the background of these two is brought to light in narrative, and I'm fairly certain we saw it coming. I can think of nothing else to say. I hope it is enjoyed, and feel free to comment. I love feedback, I really do.
"You said he was in one place. Then he was in another. Now he's somewhere else?" Kalthor groaned, his voice muffled behind a silken cloth as they trudged through the stone-walled corridors of the Undercity. His eyes followed the steel-clad form of his friend as she skipped the bridge that would lead into the inner quarters of the underground city, his face turning a deep shade of green as she simply traipsed through the slick ooze. He couldn't help the thoughts that pushed into his head as she emerged on the far side, the liquid slipping off of the bare curves she sported. "Tr – I'm not walking through that!"
He groaned as she shot back an impish grin, a look that seemed to tell him that it was no skin off her back if he followed her or not. Kalthor was not an idiot. He knew his friend would keep walking, and Light damn him for it all, he'd follow her to the Nether and back if given the chance. "Don't you leave me here, Tria! Tria!" Kalthor looked between the green sludge and the woman who had now vanished around the corner in her haste to get to the upper quarters, where she had heard the one she sought now lingered.
"Fel-damned female..." Kalthor looked at the sludge for a moment more, a resigned sigh passing his lips as he closed his eyes and bravely stepped into the slick and slimy fluid. "Oh... oh this is disgusting. Light, oh!" The warlock tried to hurry, his robes twisting around his feet, and tripping him. With a shocked grunt he fell, the scenery vanishing to be replaced by the acidic green that swarmed around him. He gasped, choked on the sludge, and reached out to find purchase on anything that he possibly could, and grasped something slippery.
A voice sounded above him, something grasping around his other flailing hand. It pulled, despite his great desire not to have anything to do with it, and he found that he could breathe again and took a great breath inward. Dimly, he was aware of laughter, familiar laughter that he hadn't heard in ages. His eyes opened, and he realized who was holding him, her hands gripping his elbows while he quivered there. Triadae laughed, and he wasn't sure if the tears in her eyes were worry or relief, or simply because the situation was just too amusing in her mind to risk laughing like her sanity had left her.
"You don't have to laugh." Kalthor pouted, his voice wounded as he began picking up the shredded bits of his dignity that seemed to line the pavement around them. He marveled at the way the liquid he had just been drowning in no more than a few moments ago was sliding away from his clothes, leaving them dry. Reluctantly, he let go of his friend, his fingers stealing a graze of her skin as he drew away, standing and brushing the expensive fabric down as she continued to laugh.
She was beautiful. Kalthor had never doubted that particular fact in all of the time that they had known each other, but with the absence of her laughter, he seemed to have forgotten how she looked when her walls were down. Before everything had happened. It had been so long, that he was certain her eyes should have been blue when they opened and looked up to him. They weren't. They never would be again, and he knew this for the fact that it was, but it never ceased to make his heart endure pain as if he were having it torn from him.
Triadae was his dearest friend, the one who knew all of his secrets. All except one, or maybe the one she refused to believe. He loved her more than he loved his power, more than he loved his looks or his mind. All the things he valued were the things he'd give up in a moment just to spend one night with her as more than a friend. Anyone else would have been burned, cursed, and set upon by a demon if they dared laugh at him, but her...
He watched as she pushed herself to her feet, still wiping tears from her eyes as she shook her head. That little moment, that smile that wasn't a tease or a look of disapproval was set into his mind, permanently ingrained in his memory as easily as if someone had taken a picture with one of those strange gnome contraptions and given it to him. He framed it, set it beside the images from so long ago. Images of her in a white dress, images of her with flowers in her hair, and even one where she sat beside a window and watched the rain beat at the glass, matching the tears that trickled down her cheeks.
Pictures and images he could share with none, not even the woman he loved so dearly. Words that were needed to describe such things didn't come easily to him. It was easier to hide behind a wall of indifference, as much a weapon to deal with her and other as it was to defend himself against her. Kalthor chuckled, opened his mouth to tell her something, and realized that she had already walked off again. He caught the flick of her oddly cut hair vanishing around the corner, and sighed.
The upper floors of the Undercity still didn't hold the store of the one she searched for. Triadae asked around for another few hours before she caught color from the corner of her eyes, her steps pausing as she adjusted to the gloom she had seen them from. A flash of white, pale skin against the blackness, and red fabric. She ignored the questioning noise from Kalthor, shaking her head quickly as they continued on to the elevators. The color flickered here and there in her sight, a ghost of color that wasn't present if she looked fully, but was slowly guiding her.
Triadae hated feeling like she was being led along, and hated herself more for following without question. Instinct told her that she'd find what she sought if she just kept following, but it didn't ease her in the least. They entered the elevator, and she heard laughter, familiar and dark, and the flashes of color became something more than that. Triadae's lips curled in a snarl as the elevator lifted, and she swore she could feel fingers brush against her face.
Freedom came, and the newly formed figure stepped lightly from the lift, crooking fingers back at her. She glanced at Kalthor and saw that he was waiting for her. He simply thought she knew where she was going. This disturbed her further, and she moved swiftly to follow the ghostly figure as it wound past pillars and through doors until they broke free of stone and dirt into a courtyard.
The voice called to her, a darkly haunting voice laced with rich promise and reward. She knew the voice, knew it as easily as she had known her own, and her hand lifted to grab her sword-hilt as she took off after it. The colors of the courtyard paled and changed, spires turning into snow-capped mountains and lethal gates that twisted and brought fear, but she paid attention to nothing more than the figure that laughed at her, red hair whipping behind it as it ran.
"You'll never get rid of me, Triadae!" The voice pulled at her, mocking her as it drove deep pain into her mind and body. As if swords had cut at her flesh, and Triadae stumbled and gasped with the sensation. Her hand pressed to her side, saw blood that glimmered and faded as if washed away by the ebb and flow of a tide that no longer existed. "Never, ever!" They voice laughed, the sound echoing around her, and Triadae roared in defiance.
"Come. Chase me down and do your worst. It was nothing compared to what I did to you, isn't that right? Hurt me again, Tria. It felt so good. So very, very good." The scenery warped again as she ran, the mountains superimposed over the ruins of the once great Lordaeron. Triadae spotted that flash of color slip past a grave and followed, her steps coming quicker and quicker until she was doing nothing more than running as fast as her body would allow, and finally she was catching up to the figure. Finally, some ground gained!
Around another corner, and Triadae nearly hit a wall trying to turn into the narrow alley, and nearly hit another before she was brought up sharp by what stood in front of her. The walls of Lordaeron were gone, nothing more than gates and spires once more, prisons pulled from a cold, nightmarish world, and she stopped, her breathing ragged. Emerald eyes all but glared at the woman that stared right back at her, a sneer curling perfect lips painted red amidst a ghost-white face. Red hair swirled around the figure, brushing against black robes. "Go ahead. Hurt me again. I long for it..."
The figure made no move to avoid Triadae's attack, simply rolling her head back and assuming a look of bliss that the warrior had never before seen. It shook her to her core, and her fingers tightened around the delicate neck as her victim continued to moan. "The look I wore when it all happened, Tria. The look you'll never wear. These sounds? I made them, too. Come on, hurt me more. Be a big girl. Beat me. Break me. You know you want to. Or are you a coward?"
"Shut up. Shut up!" Tria's voice lifted into a scream from the low growl it had been, her eyes stinging with tears as she gripped harder, pushed the now laughing woman back against a wall, determined to squeeze ever last breath from her even if it killed her. Pain flashed across her face, her head turning away when something struck at her eyes, and she pulled her hand back only to slam the moaning woman back against the wall again. "Stop laughing! Stop!"
"Tria!" Kalthor had only turned the corner when he saw her, and who she was attacking. The tiny Forsaken squirmed in the warrior's grip, its robes billowing as he flailed and blindly scratched at Triadae. "Tria!" He ran to her, grabbing her arm and trying to pull her from the thing that she was slowly killing, but her grip was like steel and impossible to remove.
"Counter. Central shelf. Get the syringe!" The Forsaken pointed to an alcove to the side, where an arch led into a small room. Kalthor dropped his bags, vaulting the counter inside and searching for the item. Only one could be considered a syringe, filled with a viscous looking liquid with flecks of fel green inside of it. Without pause he left the shop, slipping behind his friend and jabbing the needle into her skin.
The effect was almost immediate, his arm wrapping around to catch her as her legs gave out. The Forsaken dropped, rubbing his mangled throat with thin and brittle looking fingers. "Thank you," it rasped, looking more to the woman that had been mere moments from snapping its neck than the man who had rescued him. "Funny, I couldn't think of what I had done to make her so angry with me. I had only said hello."
"She's not normally like this. Not to strangers, at least." Kalthor was sitting, his fingers stroking through Tria's hair as she lay in his lap. Her eyes were dull and unfocused, staring past him and up into a sky full of clouds. It worried him greatly, but he focused more on the Forsaken as it laughed. Now that his mind cleared, he could tell that the Forsaken was male. Or so he thought, until it bent down to inspect Triadae, and he was greeted by nothing less than a view of perfectly fleshed cleavage.
"We're not strangers. She'll be up in a few moments, yes. Bring her inside where it is warm." Kalthor watched the Forsaken walk into the store, the sound of clinking glass audible over his groans as he moved, hooking an arm around his friend and beneath her arms. A flash of an idea came to him, an impish grin flitting across his lips as his hand curled around one steel covered breast.
He truly wasn't surprised when he felt the elbow that jammed into his side. His grunt was echoed by her, but he released her to stumble away. "You're welcome." Distantly, he heard her snicker, or thought he did. He remained outside while she entered the small store, and followed only when he could stand again. The mild sting that radiated up his side was completely worth the few moments of bliss. He wouldn't tell her that, though.
"It's good to see you up and around. I always told you not to wander through that slime. You never know what is in there. Well, maybe you do, but it's still never a good idea to go wandering through that." Kalthor could hear the two talking, or at least the strangely loud voice of the Forsaken, and Triadae's mumbled replies. He stepped into the store after fetching his bags, leaning back against the wall. Listening was more than enough for him right now.
"Kalthor walked through it as well. As you can see, he's relatively unaffected." Kalthor chuckled at the phrasing. He hadn't walked through it, far from it in fact. He'd have said he'd all but drunk the well dry.
"Ah, but you were affected by that hallucinations brought on by it, far more than anyone I've ever seen. Interesting, interesting. Very lucky that I had that syringe made, don't you think? Even more interesting that you came here for it." The Forsaken eyed the woman a moment before speaking again. "Who were you confusing me for, I wonder?"
Triadae frowned. She was facing away from him, but Kalthor knew that she did so by the way her ears moved, and how her shoulders seemed to sag. The warlock knew the answer before she even spoke it, and her ice-like tone made him wince as it was confirmed. "My sister. You weren't wondering it either, you bag of bones. You already knew."
Yes, her sister. Kalthor let his head drop back against the shelves, his eyes closing. Miralai was the only person, living or dead, that could have made the stoic warrior go from calm to enraged in mere moments. It was Miralai who had destroyed the woman so completely. It was Miralai who had taken the Light from Triadae, and had plunged her into a darkness that none seemed capable of retrieving her from. Miralai, who had taken her sister's smile.
Tria had been just shy of adulthood when Miralai had begun causing trouble. At first it was simple things; petty theft and late nights out. Bending and warping the arcana her family was known to weave so naturally. When Triadae had entered the Priesthood, Mira's acting out only got worse, until there was nothing left for her to do but leave the family that no longer wanted her. When the Battle of Hyjal called for them to band together, Kalthor stood proudly with Triadae and her father, but Mira was nowhere to be found.
When she did turn up again, it was after Triadae had become a Blood Knight. Mira claimed to have renounced her unsavory ways, and entered into the Knighthood alongside her sister. It was Kalthor's deepest regret, that he had chosen to leave his dearest friend in her moment of need, but he had been in so much pain. His heart had grieved, and he fled to be rid of things he should not have felt to a woman who was falling in love, and he had been a coward to not confess everything then. He should have listened to her, should have listened when she said he might not like the things he'd come back to, but if either of them knew what Mira had been planning... -
"What about you, pretty boy?" Kalthor's eyes flashed open, and he backed up quickly with a look of curious-driven disgust on his face. "Do you like them? Nice, aren't they? Touch them! Go on, they won't bite!" The Forsaken held his robes open, dimly glowing golden eyes radiating some strange sort of perverted leer as he thrust his chest out at the warlock who could not possibly have looked like he wanted to bolt any more than he did right then.
Kalthor had not seen wrong, the first time. Judging by Tria's look of carefully hidden amusement, she knew all too well about this man's... problem? No, it couldn't have been a problem. There really was nothing wrong with breasts, they were just pasted onto the wrong body. Or in this case, sewn. His mind reeled as he tried to think of something to say while the milky skin of the breasts that had been attached, albeit quite nicely, to the rotting chest of the Forsaken were exposed to his view. "I... couldn't? They... they aren't mine!"
"Aren't mine, either! Got 'em off a nice human girl who didn't need them after they ran all those nasty experiments." The Forsaken cackled madly, grabbing one of Kalthor's wrists and dragging it until his palm pressed against one fleshy mound. "You like them, yes? Rather proud, myself. Go ahead, give 'em a good feel. Funny story about why I have these." The man seemed to think a moment about that, scratching his face for so long that it gouged and flaked slightly beneath his finger. "Actually, not really that funny. I just remember likin' them a lot when I was living, so I thought to myself," he puffed out his chest, both hands on his hips, "I thought to myself, 'Richard, assumin' that's really yours and mines name, why don't you set out and find a nice set of those things you liked to grab so much when you were livin'?'"
"So I tried. You know, the new body really doesn't do it for most women," Richard grabbed Kalthor's other hand, placing it on the other breast and 'helping' the dumbstruck man knead the rather healthy flesh, "they see the bones and the ragged hair and the like, and they take off screamin' the other way. And then I was talkin' to old Margerie, and I was starin' at her chest, and she said 'You like them, Richard? They're real! Not mine, but real!' So I got to thinking... if she could do it, why couldn't I? It wasn't like I could just walk over to Marge's everyday and ask to see her girls, if you know what I mean."
"That started the work. The first few pairs I got didn't last long. Rotted pretty fast, but as I – No, don't stop. Really, you can touch all you like! - started thinking more about it, I stopped focusing on all of my work making a new plague, and tried to formulate a way to make the breasts I gathered last longer. Safe to say the Apothecary Society didn't much appreciate that. Said I was gone daft and bonkers, and I was sent out." Richard grinned a little grin, leaning close enough that Kalthor had to force himself not to retch at the man's vile halitosis. "But I got it right, eventually. Just have to pat down the girls with a bit of elixir every mornin', and they stay nice and perky for me all day. I can have a good handful any time I want."
"I'm... impressed," Kalthor managed to wheeze the words, pulling his hands away with seeming reluctance, which pleased their host all the more. He was sure the Forsaken would split his jaw with the grin he sported. "I'm sure you have firmly set the new path for all people who are collectors of fine... ah... girls." Kalthor's eyes shot to Triadae, and narrowed in a manner that spoke quite clearly of his intent to pay her back tenfold for this mockery.
The woman clung to the counter, her body quivering with suppressed laughter until she could hold it no more, and she spoke in a rush that made her condition all too clear. "Richard, I need potions. Lots of them, the best you have, and a little of everything else." She couldn't look her friend in the eye, caught between finding his scarlet blush intolerably cute, and his glare darkly promising.
Richard looked back at her, closing his robes, much to the relief of the still-cornered warlock. "Ooooh, traveling again, Miss Gildedsun?" He fairly beamed as he scooted around the shop, placing a small box of healing potions and elixirs on the counter before traipsing into what could only be described as a back room filled with softly glowing vials and bubbling cauldrons. "I've got a few new items you might be well interested in! As usual, you've only got to fetch me a special item, and all of what you can carry is of no cost to you."
"What will it be this time, Richard?" Triadae's head tilted. "The hair of an orphan mugwump? The eye of a murloc? The liver of a goretusk? I was long out of all of your potions before I managed those items, you silly man." She leaned on the counter, looking almost bored.
"Not this time, Triadae. Not this time." Richard appeared again, his arms full of so many countless items that Kalthor had no hope of cataloging what he did or did not recognize therein. "No, this time, I need a few things quite difficult to obtain. The slime of a corrupted ooze, the husk of a silithid, a vial of water from the halls of Maraudon, the blood of an adult virgin, the claw of a incendesaur, and..." The man's grin seemed ready to split his skull again, "a scale from each of the leaders of the flights."
"Flights? Are you mad?" Kalthor gaped at the Forsaken, his eyes about ready to burst from his sockets. "There's no way that any of us would hope to gather such an it - ..."
"We'll get all of that while we're out, Richard. You have my word, as always." Triadae felt the warm smile of Richard as much as she felt the incessant burning gaze that was boring holes into the back of her head from her friend. She watched the Forsaken pack the vials and pots and elixirs away without a word, the small satchel handed over to her with a pat on her hand.
"I believe you. The white liquid is something special for you. It will... help, if you think you really need it. Don't let her consume you, Triadae. To be mad is the worst anyone could have happen to them. It is only a step from genius to insanity. I should know. I walk all over the line that divides the two." Richard grinned, his golden eyes flaring. "Now go. If you happen to see a nice pair of breasts just laying around... grab them for me as well?"
"Of course." Tria nodded, tying the magic bag to her belt and turning on her heel, ignoring the glare from Kalthor. "Be well, my friend."
"All the things you will need are in the bag! Be safe, as much as you can be on the road you now walk!" His eyes went to Kalthor, who looked about to speak until the Forsaken offered a saucy wink. "And for you, my friend... you can get a good look any time you like." He was not surprised as the warlock fled the shop, his raspy laughter following the two as they made their way out of the courtyard.
"You're insane. A scale from each leader of the Flights? He was talking about dragons, was he not? I can't bear to have hope that he meant ducks, or wolpertingers, or anything else that won't sooner gouge out our spleens than give us a piece of them." Kalthor followed quickly behind Tria, coming to stand beside her as they walked.
"Of course he meant dragons. Richard might be losing his mind, might be becoming a little more than just mostly mad, but he's a brilliant scientist and alchemist. Dragons are supposed to be incredibly powerful creatures. I knew he'd ask for the impossible some day. All of those items... some of them don't exist or are difficult to obtain." She paused, realizing just how much of a plea for reason there was in her voice. She sighed, shaking her head. "He doesn't want me here when he loses it. He wants me to remember him like this, breasts and all."
They walked in silence for a long time, and were nearly to the zepplin when Kalthor spoke up. "You know, one of those items will be really easy." He looked to his friend, a grin sliding across his lips. "An adult virgin? He should have taken your blood while we were in the sho – OW!"
Triadae left Kalthor behind as she stalked up the steps, her fists clenched at her sides. Hitting him was almost therapeutic. Kalthor simply grinned, rubbing his arm and knowing that he would be sporting an excellent bruise in a few hours, but he was pleased to have caught the blush across her cheeks before she left his side. That image, of her green eyes flashing with both surprise and anger, and the way her lips parted just before pulling in a grimace... that image was placed beside all the others in his mind. The pain would fade in time... but they never would. He liked it that way.