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Chapter 36: Happy Holidays
"Happy holidays."
I thought I was being clever. I was sort of thrilled that I'd come this far at last and felt the first thing I said to the magical man ought to show how debonair I was.
The old dwarf scrunched up his face. Long white beard and stache. Red suit, white fur trim, the whole nine. He looked so real, it's hard to describe it. He nearly looked like he could be an old friend, that's how familiar and warm his presence was. There was definite magic about this man, if he was already making my heart melt. At first, it looked like he didn't want to wake up. He must have been approached like this before. So, Faltheriel or Dannox or perhaps their wife Rachel came up here sometimes to check on him. And, he hated it.
"If we go now, then maybe we can get away."
Now, Greatfather Winter opened his eyes. He blinked. Then, he glared. At last, he sat up. He slapped a hand on his red-clad knee. Leaned in.
"You…"
"Yes, it is I—"
"You dope! I've been trapped here what—for four years! Five?"
"Huh?"
"That's how long it felt to me, waiting here for your slow, lazy Tauren ass!"
"Uh, I can go back again if you like. Leave you here."
"Can you?" Greatfather Winter demanded next.
I guessed not. I really hoped so, and tried to walk back the way I had come, but it looked like a normal shower. It looked like a mirror of the bathroom I had entered, and when I ducked my head into the very normal-looking shower this time, it had an extremely normal sort of ceiling. Not glossy and mysterious like before. And the bottom of the tub looked normal too. No discernable way back out. It also explained why Dannox knew I was fooling around in the hiding place for Greatfather Winter and had not bothered to run in shouting and stop me. Dannox had known I would either stay in the bathroom I had locked, or get stuck in the magical shower shelf.
"So… only Faltheriel and his mates can get out?"
"Only Faltheriel comes up here. The other two would be insane to try and they know better than that. Oh, but they are curious, they do ask. Faltheriel goes 'the less you know, the better' as if he's being such a good damned husband, but he's a prick."
I noticed that the hair and beard on the right side of Greatfather Winter's face were mashed, as if he'd been asleep on that side for a long time. He kept talking angry and fast, unaware of it. Or perhaps he could not be bothered to care. "He put the fear of the old gods into his spouses for ever touching his shampoo, that's what this is really about. So of course they wouldn't dare!"
I blurt laughter.
"Idiot! You dare laugh at me, in this mess?"
"No sir."
"I gave you the damned address! I manipulated time to get you my address on a slip of paper. Do you know how long it took me to think that up, let alone manage it. At all?"
I tried not to look like the dumb Tauren country bumpkin. "Kael'thas stole that piece of paper."
"Of course he did! It was a brief moment in time, a chance, it always is—"
As a child, I might have been tickled to meet Greatfather Winter but now he was yelling at me. I decided to be a grown man again.
"Sir. I'd like to work on getting you out of here."
Greatfather Winter parroted my voice and made me sound like a whiny little kid.
"Okay." I went, "You're an ass! Why don't you just magic yourself out of here then, if you wanna act like you don't need me!"
He got quiet. Or, he simmered. I wasn't sure yet. "I have very powerful magic. So powerful that the elements themselves are disturbed around me if I am in distress. That is how angry I get, that the very primal powers of this world respond to my beck and call and it snows. It storms, Turaho."
"But you're here, stuck on a toilet."
"Yes."
"So Kael'thas obviously figured out a way to nullify what you're able to do."
"You mean with this pitiful cage? It wasn't him—"
"Oh?"
"I don't want to talk about that right now!"
I took a step closer, on my big Tauren hooves. I slipped into investigator mode, questioning Greatfather Winter himself.
"Greatfather Winter, do you… know who kidnapped you? Was it not Kael'thas? Was that what you were going to say?"
Greatfather Winter sank back into his porcelain throne. His feet dangled, unable to reach the floor the way he sat. He tried to point his black patent-leather toes in his boots to hide it.
"Why, oh Turaho Runestalker, should I give you the pleasure?"
I hated that answer. I folded hands behind my back, flicked my tail, paced. "Your note said that Kael'thas was at the center of everything. You yelled it at me in your own handwriting, I remember."
"You don't even seem sure yourself, Turaho?"
"I don't believe that you saw who really put a bag over your head, no. It's nothing against you, few of us would be able to."
"So then, you're on the side of the Horde. You want to protect a Horde leader who happens to be on your own team."
"I have a friend—someone I know who said that to me."
"Alessandre. He's right, too."
"I am not loyal to Kael'thas."
"You're loyal to the Horde."
"I want to get the right person locked up for the right crime. Do you know what happens if I accuse the likes of Kael'thas Sunstrider himself and I turn out to be wrong? Or if the investigation isn't air-tight? He goes free. And it calls everything I've done into question. They all might go free. They might flip it around on me and I lose my career, instead of them being punished for what was done. Then they go and get cavalier and they just out and do it all over again. Do you want to get kidnapped for a third time, Greatfather Winter?"
He refused to say he saw my point, but he did.
"I have a job to do." I put it simply this time.
"Your nobility will be your undoing, then."
I hesitated. It rang true every time it resounded in my mind. Like a bell swinging in a tower, going gong-gong-gong. I was too noble to let Meydiri get away with her crime. I could have slipped away with her sooner, married her back in Mulgore, maybe. If I was a little meaner. A little more selfish. Less determined to put Kael'thas or his cronies behind bars… Now Meydiri was dead.
I turned away from Greatfather Winter. I couldn't look at him.
"I have other magic, too."
"Good for you." I went back to the shower, or what it appeared to be in our mirror version of Faltheriel's bathroom. I felt the sides of the tub, sniffed for a new scent that might help me.
"That won't work. I tried it all, you know. But it's true what they say—and they say it because I do, Turaho, that there is hope in the season. My other magic works through people."
"How very nice."
"Turaho, look at me."
"I don't think you want to try to read me right now, Greatfather Winter, to find out whether I should be on your naughty list."
I did turn around though. It was hard to see. The tears were coming, I couldn't keep them away.
"Meydiri is gone." Greatfather Winter said. "But you are still here, Turaho Runestalker."
"I kill—I killed her."
Greatfather Winter nodded at me, slowly. "One cougar pounced faster than the other, in a desperate situation. I don't think I'd like her greeting me here, instead of you."
"Could she really have summoned you out of here? Into that summoning circle the Twilight Cultists had in the Ghostlands?"
His look was grim.
"And Kael'thas was really alright with that?"
"It would not have revealed where he stashed me. Him and his fools. The Twilight Cultists didn't even know for sure. They just guessed I was in the area and that I was on a ley line. Which I am. This sort of dimensional magic could not be empowered any other way." Greatfather leaned in, still seated on the toilet. He folded his white-gloved hands. "And Kael'thas did not care whether I survived the attack. It would have put him in the clear."
"Sheesh. What makes Kael'thas such a Greench when it comes to you? You sure you don't have a tuft of his hair or something, or a fingerprint conveniently on your person so I can lock him up for sure right now?"
Greatfather Winter waved a hand, dismissing all that.
"Many holidays ago, Alessandre passed his test. Really, it was a challenge I put to him. He overcame it, succeeded, was rewarded with the love of his life."
"That creature?! She called it healing, but Opal was not healing me."
Greatfather Winter finally smiled. It was brief, though. "Kael'thas failed his little test."
"Because he was messing around with the Legion in Outland."
Greatfather Winter sighed, "You won't want to hear it, but there was so much of that Kael'thas could not prevent on his own. It was like being caught in an avalanche."
"I'm sure all the free-flowing magical drugs Kael'thas chose to snort or siphon, that didn't help either."
Greatfather Winter shook his head at me. "Listen. Kael'thas wanted a fast answer to his situation. I gave him a gift bag and told him that he would see what he needed to see, about what he was up to in Outland. His fate, his destiny."
"And?"
"Illidan was there as well. He pulled out a perfect diamond. Kael'thas got a lump of coal."
I snorted laughter.
"Illidan could not see what his problems were. Kael'thas got the gift of knowing he was on the wrong path—realizing that he was still able to see how he had fallen. Self-awareness, a conscience. He wasn't so far gone yet that he didn't care and couldn't change it."
I thought about that.
"Kael'thas never forgave me for that. He did not see it that way. And he certainly did not see it that way at all, when he discovered that his beloved, Saturna, still existed. He presumed that I knew that and refused to tell him. So I tormented him and he suffered needlessly. I suppose that's Kael'thas' version."
"A good reason to take revenge on you."
"Between us men, it was settled and over. We both knew that."
I wasn't so sure. In my line of work, I'd seen that people get pushed to the limit, do all kinds of wrong. 'Oh he was such a nice guy', never means a thing if this 'nice guy' has stabbed someone.
Greatfather Winter insisted, "Kael'thas could have done something about it, on his own."
"I hate to defend the guy, but Kael'thas thought Saturna was dead."
"She was very closeby him. All that time. He was too angry to do anything about it. Almost blinded by his rage." Greatfather waited for me to stop pacing, meet his eye again. "And what about you?"
I half-laughed, "I think we just need to find our way out of here, at the moment."
Greatfather Winter spoke again, slowly, patiently. He was kinder in that moment than he had ever been with me. "Turaho. I can work that miracle, but only through another person. Only through you."
"Are you saying you can kind of magic us out of here? Then do it!"
"Trust me, I tried to magic myself out of here through Faltheriel when he visited that time but it didn't work. The subject does have to be willing. And, generally a good guy." Greatfather Winter rolled his eyes.
"But Kael'thas isn't—"
"Good enough. Don't laugh, it means there is yet hope for you Turaho Runestalker." And then the old Dwarf's voice turned down at the end, getting as facetious as he liked.
Time to take one more hit, then. Wasn't sure I could handle it though.
