lionofthelight | Entries tagged with isidor

As the sun sets on Azeroth, the valley town of Lakeshire is touched by the shadows that stretch out of the Redridge mountains. High on the cliffside, Ademar's manor has long since chilled in the absence of the sun.

Zandros and Isidor arrive in the gazebo at the heart of the darkened garden. He steps ahead and calls to the Light, and with its guidance they navigate the winding garden maze. The home ahead of them is dark already, apart from the faintest candle glow from the upstairs windows and a pair of cyan lights at the manor doors. When Zandros notices the dead man's eyes, another set of blue lights flash in a vertical line.

As they approach the entryway Zandros snuffs the Light with a shake of his palm. The gesture calms the blade, which goes dark, but Ademar, standing stiffly at the door with his hands behind his back, remains unmoved -- figuratively and literally. He may as well be a piece of scenery for how little he reacts to the presence of his guests. It isn't until Zandros speaks that he moves at all.

"I hope we didn't keep you waiting long," Zandros says quietly, punctuated by a small, polite laugh.

Ademar remains silent.

Quietly, Zandros presses on. "Only, I didn't see you step out, so I thought you might have been waiting for some time, and--"

"I have," the death knight interrupts.

Zandros pulls a face. Ademar's eyes fall on him, then drift to Isidor.

"Let us enter, so that I might critique your guises before preparing the way. Lord Alter... I should hope you do not intend to arrive as you are."

Zandros feigns some confidence and raises his voice. "Isidor has a plan for me, I'm told."

Sufficiently assuaged, Ademar leads them into the foyer of his home, and with a businesslike quickness that his conversational manners belie he sets about lighting candles on the walls. Just inside the doorway an ornately-framed, full-length mirror has been propped against a wall. Zandros catches a glance of himself in it, but he's swift to look away. Narcissism just doesn't hold the same joy it once did... And besides, he can see Isidor in it.

An empty box. A waste of wood, of gold, of effort. An empty box to fill a grave in which no body would ever rest. His mother and his sister could fill it with imagination and find closure in it, but not Zandros. Zandros knew exactly where his father’s bones would rest. And, Light, he hoped they were resting. That was a lie he could tell himself, at least. Resting — though not beneath sweet roses. Resting elsewhere, he could imagine, half buried in the mud. Resting, he hoped. Merely resting.

A golden medallion. Another worthless trinket. A gesture from the King to those who had braved the war and, against all odds, returned. A ceremony of a thousand men and women, and between them all half as many limbs as there ought to have been. The heavy pin on his chest would never be enough to balance the weight of a missing hand. It belonged in a drawer, he determined at once. Piled away beneath forgotten things. Buried.

He would never fight again. Even if his heart, his mind, his soul had wanted to — and, oh, how they desperately did not — his wound would always hold him back. Without his father, the burden of the family business would fall on him. All the better that he might occupy himself with something so quiet, he had thought, until he held a quill in his left hand and failed to write his own name.

And even his family name would fade. He was promised to a woman from a far-off place where he would surely be sent for the remainder of his days. Payment for their connection. And what of his old life would remain for him, then? What of the Alters? In a matter of years would they all be Durants? Consumed by a greater power, would they fade into obscurity?

A week passed by before Zandros could bring himself to return to his new family. After all, how could he face them as the wretch he had become? Would they comment on the way he wheezed? Would they stare at his stump? They would, certainly. They would focus on what had changed. They would ask after what was missing. And how could he tell them the worst of it? That the person they wanted to return — the one they would spare a thought for — had died to save him? Harrowheart had killed a dozen or a hundred good men that day only to save the one that he should have left to die.

When Zandros finally returns to the Nexus it isn’t in his typical finery. That morning when he’d bundled himself against the cold he found himself content in country beige and brown. It felt right, he noted as he made his way to Viatorus’ apartment, that no one should spare him a second thought. It was a sensation he’d never truly understood until he trudged through the snow with his shorn hair under a tweed cap and his stump arm hidden beneath the buttons of his jacket: Humility.

And he would need it in spades today.

In the late hours of the morning he knocks against the door of Viatorus’ apartment. It was the place he’d been when he’d last seen them. Where they’d last seen Harrowheart, he assumed. Remembering their last encounter with the death knight in the Nexus brought a chill into his soul. The glee that had warmed him as he’d heard him fighting the Durants now freezes his stomach. The memory of his joy turns to shame in his heart. What a demon he had been. What a loathsome man. All for a future he was no longer certain he wanted. Not certain he had ever wanted, really.

He knocks once more and hopes they might surprise him with their faces. He hadn’t warned them of his coming, he realized. Light, they might not even be home. If they didn’t show, would he have to face the Weatherhills instead? Would he have to be the one to tell them? He wasn’t sure he could bear that.

“Viatorus?” he calls. “Runa? I-... Isidor?” It's difficult to raise his voice, but he takes in a ragged breath and tries again, louder. “Is anybody home?”

((Discord log featuring Isidor Durant))

She's going to be here today! Everything must be utterly perfect! Not a thing out of place, every moment pre-planned and accounted for. Refreshments are prepared, the guest has arrived, and the gryphons are saddled. What more could there be left to do?...

But sweat in waiting for Isidor's arrival.

It's a crisp and slightly blustery day in the hills above Stormwind, but that gives Zandros a good excuse to dress in too many layers. Scandalously, he'll even wear a hat. A suspiciously casual one at that, a dark blue beanie more fitting a dock worker than a noble boy. And more than that, he's dressed down all over! A navy pea coat, a pair of dark, woolen trousers with fingerless gloves to match, and a simple pair of leather shoes make him look like a man of Earth -- perhaps even a modern one!

He awaits Isidor's arrival with his shoulders bunched against the wind and his cheeks reddened with the chill, but a smile on his face nonetheless. The sight of her is enough to warm him, and, for the first time, even bring him a touch of worry. Well, less a touch and more a giant, ominous palm pressing down from the heavens as if to crush him like a roach. But, yes, a touch in a manner of speaking.

"Isidor," he mumbles, suddenly realizing how the chill on his cheeks has affected his ability to speak. He laughs and tries to warm his face with gentle slaps. "I am truly glad to see you here this day. How are you faring? How is your work?" He knows she loves it, after all.

((A Discord log posted here for posterity, featuring votivescholars' Lieselotte Durant, mother of Isidor. This is posted after What is Owed, but was written prior and comes earlier chronologically.))

It's a week past the wedding when Zandros requests to meet with Lieselotte. In Azeroth, he thinks. That will be the perfect meeting ground. Shortly after the wedding he had given her a stone inscribed with a swirling rune -- a teleportation stone, he claimed. Simple, magical transportation between his family's manor in Stormwind and theirs on Earth. Traditional and functional. No need of mechanical devices from poorly-understood multiversal realms.

Nothing about the manor has changed since her last visit, but the world around them has shifted with the seasons. Though the weather is mild compared to near-winter in England, most leaves have already been stripped from the now-bare branches of the trees. It's the powerful gusts that do it, high in the hills above the city of Stormwind. The blusteriness of it all makes the place seem colder than it is, but a good coat is enough to keep the worst of it out.

With the wooded hillside no longer an obstacle the view over Elwynn Forest is expansive. Below in the valley are rolling hills, and even so far off the eye can see the vineyards and the bright colors of the pumpkin harvests in the fields. A rustic hamlet lies far enough off that only its buildings' vague shapes and the largest plumes of smoke from the fireplaces are discernable.

The opposite view is of Stormwind City itself, bright white as ever. The matching, colored rooftops of the districts catch the eye, stark against each other in purples, blues, and golds. Light reflects off the canals and the golden spires of the towering cathedral. In the far, far distance the most massive ships entering the harbor can be distinguished by their large, white sails.

Zandros is there to greet Lieselotte when she arrives, and quick to guide her into the marbled manor. Without the wind to chill them and with the ambient heat of fires in the fireplaces it's much warmer indoors. Lord and Lady Alter don't appear to greet Lieselotte -- presumably they must be gone. It seems it's only Lieselotte, Zandros, and the help today.

He leads them both to a smaller eating room than the massive dining hall Lieselotte was invited into before. The food has not been yet set out, but a metal container for liquids has been set out with a pair of mugs. Three tea lights have been placed below it to keep its contents warm.

Zandros pulls out a chair for Lieselotte and takes his own seat once she's comfortable.

"I appreciate you sparing an afternoon for me, Lady Durant," he says. By now the Nexus' translation magic has permeated him, and the two might speak freely without the aid of other, possibly nosier parties. "Especially now, as your son's wedding has me looking towards the future Isidor and I might someday share."

“I’ve been told the Horde are consolidating troops in the Barrens.”

“Pointless posturing as usual, I’m sure. Unlike the Forsaken in the Kingdoms, their forces in Kalimdor have lives worth dubiously living.”

“Eking out a muddy existence wrangling swine?”

“Paradise for an orc!”

Harrowheart couldn’t help but laugh at that, and in doing so roused more laughter from the men around him. It was the first sound he’d made all afternoon, and it sat well with the gathering. They smiled in his direction, and for once today Harrowheart felt part of the group.

It was Zandros’ friends who surrounded him at the overly long table in the Alter manor’s dining hall. Most of the day the intricate inlays beneath his hands had distracted Harrowheart from conversations he felt he didn’t understand: discussions of the economy, of investments, of noble relations, of Lordly names he’d never heard but whom these men knew well. But the topics of war and racial relations? He understood those perfectly. Well enough to know when to laugh unprompted, at least.

“It does speak!” The ginger one laughs, and Harrowheart smiles uncertainly, suddenly all too aware of himself. Bartelby, he thinks the man was called, but he can’t exactly recall.

Maybe-Bartelby smiles at him from across the table. “And to laugh, even. Good man. My brother-in-law became one of your persuasion and it’s rare enough to hear a word from him, least of all a laugh.”

“Well, Harrowheart is an amenable fellow who does enjoy a good joke. Aren’t you?” Zandros asks, smiling in an easy way.

Harrowheart finds his own tentative smile growing at that. Encouraged, he looks around the group with fresh eyes. All of them dress similarly to Zandros, casually wearing the sort of attire he’d toiled for months to earn and only wears on the most important of occasions. Lace-ruffed necks, high collars, broad lapels in bright colors, seamless everywhere and perfectly fit to the form. And here he is in his country beige. He’d felt so out of place before. But now?

“I suspect you’ve got more than jokes to tell, too,” Zandros says, gesturing with an open palm. “Why were you so quiet earlier? I’m certain the lads and I would have wanted to hear your thoughts on prior topics!”

Zandros looks to his friends, brows raised. The two black-haired twins get to nodding right away. The young dwarven man says his ayes. Bartleby pinches a smile and folds his hands on the table.

When Zandros turns his attention back to Harrowheart he finds him slouching, brows furrowed equally with worry and thought. Zandros delicately presses his fingertips against Harrowheart’s collarbone, encouraging him to sit back and up, which Harrowheart uncertainly does.

“I... Idunno,” the dead man mutters.

One of the twins tilts his head and, brows creased, touches his ear with one finger.

A little louder Harrow tries again. “I ain’t really educated like y’all.”

”Over-educated,” says the other twin with a laugh that Zandros and his brother join him in.

Nodding, Zandros adds, “We’ve been taught to think only one way. A fresh perspective should reinvigorate the conversation!”

Harrowheart hadn’t seen it that way. A new light brightens his eyes and he squares himself into a prouder posture without coercion.

“So, I was thinkin’... If the kingdom’s got debts, why not just mint more coins? Give a whole bunch to all the folks who need ‘em. Then? No more debt, right?”

Zandros audibly gasps, while the twins nod so quickly that their faces become hard to see.

“What a concept!” Zandros beams. He pats Harrowheart on the back, then jostles his shoulder playfully. “Tell us more!”

Harrowheart, smiling with relief, begins to nod. “Well...”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Bartleby was the first to leave, and quickly. Not long after followed the dwarf. The twins lingered only until Harrowheart, who had graciously provided such entertainment, noted with some disappointment that the hour had grown late. He was due back in Acherus soon, he admitted, and had to depart – though not without a smile on his face. The autumn sun had set by then and the twins eventually conceded that the time had come to take their leave as well.

The silence of the manor felt so hollow after all the laughter that had filled the hall. Even Harrowheart had laughed, none the wiser. Recalling it brought a smile to Zandros’ face as he poured himself a glass of wine. He’d wanted a drink hours ago, but a touch too much alcohol and he might have tipped his hand, and where would the fun have been in that?

Content with the day, he passes through the marbled hallways of the manor toward his own room, but scarcely enters his chamber’s wing when his stony-faced father appears. Zandros tips his head and raises his glass, but his father’s dour expression doesn’t change.

“Father?” Zandros asks, his voice betraying his instant anxiety. “Is something amiss?”

His father hums affirmatively, and his expression falls.

Zandros hastens to ask, “Is there bad news? Has something happened?”

“Unfortunately,” his father says. “You’ll join me in the dining hall.”

His father’s measured strides are agonizingly slow for Zandros, who nervously sips at his wine all the way back to the table. He’d spent the entire day enjoying himself in that room. What news was to sully it? His thoughts raced with the possibilities. He'd seen neither his mother nor his sister all day. Could something have happened? Was it a business deal gone sour? An attack on their holdings in Northrend? Perhaps –

“Sit,” his father says, and Zandros obeys without hesitation.

But what follows is silence.

Zandros’ nearly-empty glass waits between them, now untouched. A few moments’ reflection and Zandros realizes that his father is where he’d been all day, while he himself sits where the corpse had been propped up. He could sense it still, the residual presence of necrotic magic that felt like centipedes stalking across his flesh.

“What am I to you?”

Confused, Zandros leans in. “Father?”

“Yes, I should like to think I am your father,” Lord Alter says, his distant voice hardly above a whisper. “Likewise, I should like to think you are my son. And yet I question who it is that raised you, for in recent days I fail to see the smallest scrap of myself in you.”

Zandros’ face twists with uncertainty.

His father’s does not.

“You stare at me as if you need an explanation. That alone tells me the extent to which you have changed and the depths to which you disrespect the name we share. My son, would you not recognize the shame of your own actions were it worn by a different face? Sadly, I think not, for you laughed readily along with those men whom you mistakenly call your friends.”

“Mistakenly?” Zandros huffs. “Father! We have known their families for years! What are they if not friends?”

“Poor influences, by the looks of it. Zandros, I watched you today with dire disappointment and imagined that were I a guest in this manor I might have come to the conclusion that privileged birth was the bane of the soul. The only ones among you without cruelty in their hearts were a corpse and Bartleby, of lowest birth, who--”

“Laughed.” Zandros is firm in that. “Bartleby enjoyed our humor just as much as the death knight–”

”Bartleby,” Lord Alter stresses, “Knew better than to defy his social superiors. He humored you with pinched smiles and hollow eyes.” He turns his head to the side and practically spits the word, ”Light. My own son fails to recognize the lie of feigned friendship. And to think that you interpreted the dead man's laughter as true enthusiasm. To watch you take advantage of one so ignorant… The depths indeed to which you have changed.”

Lips pursed, Zandros challenges his father, “Changed from what, exactly?”

Lord Alter's fist rattles the table. “From a man who is guided by the Light to one who is blinded by his own reflection!”

They sit in silence after that, unblinking stares locked until Zandros falters and looks toward the inlaid wood. His father breathes deeply and begins to nod.

“My son,” he continues, his voice a gentle sound, “The Light saw fit to send the spark of you into a life of comfort and joys few shall ever know. From your very conception you were blessed. Blessed to be born whole, into a family that would be whole, into a land which would remain whole. You have known a simplicity and happiness that comes to so few. Food at your table, laughter at your humor, and, eventually, the Light itself to warm you. But I see that the years of convenience have stolen two precious gifts from you: Compassion and Respect.”

The pillars of the Light. Zandros inhales sharply through his sculpted nose.

Lord Alter sighs and turns his gaze away. “The gifts you have been given were not made yours out of divine right, Zandros, but out of love. The education by which you escaped the nightmares of the battlefront was given to you by your mother and I as a loving protection, as a shield from a world which destroys the ignorant and the naive. But now you reforge that shield into a sword by which you might cut down those less fortunate.”

In the quiet that passes between them Zandros can hear the soles of a servant's shoes carrying him or her through other rooms. He sits with hard eyes and tight lips and stiff fingers as he waits for his father to continue reprimanding him, but his pressed expression softens at what he hears next.

“Catherine,” Lord Alter says, then pauses as he watches his son's tension turn to lax guilt.

Ah. So that is what it will take after all.

“Catherine,” he repeats, “Gave you her heart because she loved you, and you likewise loved her. Do you remember that? You were young then. Things were different. You were not too proud to bridge the gap between you and bring yourself into her ways. She taught you the grace of the Light, and by the unfortunate mysteries of fate was called home to it too soon. But in her absence you have forgotten true humility, and, I am sorry to say, I believe you have forgotten love itself.”

He watches his son, who remains unmoving, eyes cast down. Zandros has no protestations now. What could he say, after all, in the face of the bitter truth?

“Isidor,” Lord Alter now says and watches as his son's tension returns.

Another enlightening moment.

“Isidor,” he says again, “Is the one person you have encountered who has not granted you your every desire. Her heart was not immediately softened at the very sight of you. And do you know why?”

Zandros’ jaw clenches. He feels his face grow hotter. He knows exactly why. If his father is going to deign to lecture him, perhaps he ought to know the truth.

“Because she loves another. One far below her station at that.”

Lord Alter's brows raise, but there's a calmness in his eyes. “Is that so?” he asks softly. “She loves another?”

Zandros nods once, his bouncing hair a flash of gold.

“I see. A lowborn man? Perhaps one of no great education? No great status? Perhaps one who has not only failed to be blessed by the Light, but has in fact been Forsaken by it?”

“Precisely!” The word rushes out of Zandros louder and faster than he'd meant, but he can't be ashamed by it. Finally, his father understands his predicament. “She has been tainted by the overly familiar presence of darkness, father. Our relationship has been cursed from the start.”

Lord Alter rubs at his beard. His glassy eyes are elsewhere. “Cursed indeed. That she might choose a twisted husk above my own son speaks volumes.”

Zandros sits straight, a smile on his face. But his father turns his gaze to him and in that moment Zandros understands what his father meant: he fails to see a scrap of himself there.

Lord Alter doesn't have to say it. Zandros knows.

Of him.

Again they share a long and unbroken stare until Zandros finally parts his lips and Lord Alter raises his hand to silence him.

“Zandros. Recall humility. Recall love. Be once more a shield, not a sword, and bring yourself to her not as an instrument of war, but of the loving Light. Treat her as a person. Value her opinions and keep your own to yourself. Love that which she loves and find worth in it. Learn from her. Be as the wide-eyed and ignorant, not the pompous and hard of heart. Find in yourself that which comes so easily to a lowborn man with only a scrap of a soul. Only then might you have a future with her. And remember this above all else: Nothing is destined, and nothing is owed.”

The black eye will remain, at least for a few days. Even the Light can't unspill blood. And though it can fix Zandros' likely broken nose and the split skin of his knuckles, it can't do a thing for his bruised pride. To have so thoroughly embarrassed himself in public and now be left sitting on a fence with only in the company of the dead...

But company nonetheless, and a sympathetic ear at that. It had been at first unsettling to have a corpse's arm behind his neck and a handless wrist dangling down near his chest, but the strangeness of unliving company was soon wearing off. The crawling sensation of the dark magic that animated him perhaps less so, but Zandros found it an acceptable if slightly sickening distraction. He'd rather gooseflesh from necromancy than the dishonor of his earlier deeds.

Harrowheart is the first to speak. "I know it's a hard lesson to learn for guys like us who come from Azeroth, but here in this place you can't just go tryin' to fight folks you don't like."

"Strange words from a death knight, but who am I to argue?" Zandros says, testing the mood with a hint of an uncertain smile. "You know this plane better than me."

Harrowheart laughs. The sensation of a cold, muscular arm slipping off his shoulder is like feeling a snake crawl down his body and Zandros tries to hide his shivery grimace by growing his smile.

"Nah," Harrowheart corrects. "I just know these people. They ain't the violent type. Most of 'em come from pretty peaceful places. Their worlds ain't like ours."

"That is what brings us together, then, you and I. A shared culture -- and misison, perhaps," Zandros considers aloud. "We are a two-man Ashen Verdict."

Another single laugh from the death knight who shakes his head now. "Wouldn't know what that's like."

"Truly?" Zandros asks in surprise.

"Really," Harrowheart says, smiling guiltily.

"I've learned something new about you, I suppose," Zandros mutters, now looking off into the middle distance.

He's quiet with his thoughts a while as he folds and readjusts his hands on his lap a half dozen times in a minute. Eventually his eyes drop down to them and to the rail on which the two sit and he quietly admits, "I have quite a lot to learn about you. All of you. And Isidor more than any other."

He looks to the dead man, who's looking back at him with silent expectation.

"That is why I did it. Hurt her -- your? -- friend, the captain. It's more stress than I had thought it might be."

Harrowheart's head tilts and his eyes narrow. He doesn't follow, but he won't admit as much.

Zandros' smile returns, though pinched with discomfort now. "To be an intruder in everyone's lives," he explains. "To have arrived in the middle of a story half-told, having none of the facts and no companion at my side who might guide me. Even Isidor, who I had thought might be that influence... There is a distance between us."

He sighs and begins to shake his hanging head. "I feel as if I am a burglar stalking through the halls of her life, stealing the rare gem that I can pry from locked and treasured boxes. I fear I may never be welcomed into a heart whose ways are otherwise closed."

Something in Zandros' words twist up the pale face of his dead company. Confusion, Zandros thinks at first, until he sees the flitting eyes running over him and the tilted brows and he knows at once it's pity. Pitied by the dead. He's had better evenings to be sure.

He expects to hear the death knight speak, but no words come. Only that cold and heavy arm behind his neck once more pulling him closer to be held. An icy sigh comes as a foggy flow of steam and blows away to nothingness in the warm air of summer.