Etharion's Journal vol. 4

((The penmanship here is hurried and messy, as if marked down in a moment the writer stole from moments he did not have.))

August 9

They're here.  

People are pouring into the Keep for protection:  Wildhammers from Stormfeather Outpost, pilgrims to Uther's Tomb, travelers of all kinds, even a few Horde citizens who were caught out in the open and appealed to the Wildhammers because they had nowhere else to go.  How bad is it?  When Sylvanas invaded the Hinterlands and laid siege to the Keep, the Quel'dorei at the Lodge simply retreated into the hills and forests and carried out a guerrilla campaign.  But now they're here, and the Servitors are helping keep order as we scramble to find rooms in the city below for all the displaced.  

They're all scared, even the ones who put on a brave face--I see their eyes staring out through the mask, and I recognize the look from my own mirror.

A good half of our swordbrethren were caught abroad.  I issued codeword Rochambeau so the officers would know it was the real thing and told everyone to get to shelter and execute our invasion orders.  Comms lasted long enough for them to report in that they'd reached the safe house in Ironforge, but then the comms cut out.

Essilte, Izzy, Hunter, and Varia are here safe.  We've laid down bedrolls in my office.  It's cramped but the children are safe and Essilte is keeping the little ones in good spirits, all things considered.

Mother is in Ashenvale with the Sentinels.  She won't be alone.

Síla is probably all right...she'd be with the Cenarions in Moonglade, at least, so she's not alone.

I hope Aerin is there too.  Maybe with Belenos?  I hope he's not pulling his "I can handle this myself" bullshit, because this is not a good time to be alone in the world.

I hope Sig's all right, wherever she is.

I hope Terithas is all right.

I hope Ollie is all right.

Shining Lady, keep them safe.  Keep us all safe.

August 10

We wait behind mountain walls, peering out at the world through narrow rampart windows.  The sky churns with black swirling storms, shot through with bright green lightning.  No sight of demons yet, but a monstrous wedge-shaped metal airship hangs in the wretched sky.  

They came from the sky, like the Demon Hunter said they would.

The runed stone waits in the top left-hand drawer of my desk.  

I'm not ready to use it yet.  Maybe the ship will drift northward, or westward, towards more populous places and leave the Hinterlands be.  Maybe our away team will make it back here without encountering a single demon.

Silence on the comms.  Not even a burst of static.

((The penmanship here is slurred and sloppy, as if written in exhaustion.  There's a rust-colored smear on the page.))

August 11

We're under siege.

The alarm went up sometime after nineteen hundred--Legion troops heading straight for us.  We were to hold the left flank while the Wildhammers defended the center and right.  We were strong but the waves kept coming, pounding our defenses, especially the center.  Above us, an aerial battle raged between Stormriders and winged bat-demons; blood and worse rained down on our lines.  Too many demons.  Just too many.  Then they brought up a fel cannon.

I knew we wouldn't last once they got that thing on line.  I sent Frovelos out to sabotage it, which he did.  I had to send him.  There was no other choice.  He was the only one who had a chance of reaching it.  He had a good chance of making it there, in all the confusion.  But his chances of making it back again...

I've always said during Questions that one day I might have to order men to their deaths.  But it was an abstract thing, a cliche. Tonight it became real 

((Here the writing quavers even more, with a circular smear as if something wet dropped on the page.))

I killed him

((The trailing letter drags down in a long jagged line that breaks off suddenly, as if the pen went slack in the writer's fingers and then simply fell.  After a space, the writing takes up again, and is reasonably legible.))

Roiya did something.  I still don't understand what or how but she did Something.  It was like a mana bomb, except with Moonlight.  The Legion fell before her, and she carried Frovelos back with her, alive and whole.  His leg's a little weird but he'll walk on it again.

The blast doors are down and the Keep is sealed.  The Legion surrounds us.  M's team has an army of demons between them and home.

((Hastily-scribbled.))

Tried to catch a few hours of sleep next to Thoran, while he recovers in the infirmary.  Just had a disturbing dream.  There was a green world, verdant and alive, untouched by people.  Then the early morning sky ripped open and the stars were devoured by green fire and black smoke.  There was a scream, and then nothing.  Nothing at all.

Don't think I will get back to sleep.  I'm going to roll some bandages.

August 12

I am not comfortable around Demon Hunters and doubt I ever will be, even though I've met a few who were helpful.  But I have to say our new recruit Lathyrii has already aided us by spotting an unguarded hidden entrance.  

But it turns out the Legion didn't need to find any secret ingress.  All they had to do was take over one of our safe houses.  I don't know which one.  Maybe the one in Ashenvale?  We got a garbled message from Bey about an attack there.  Or maybe it was the one in Duskwood.  It was definitely one of the ones we set up with a permanent portal, for instant one-way transport back to the Keep.  They used our own portal against us.

First it was a swarm of about a hundred imps.  These were not the mildly amusing wisecrackers you see under control by warlocks.  No, these were like land-borne frenzies, full of teeth and malice.  Giggling dangerous bloody psychotic menaces to life and limb.  They wreaked havoc and destruction in the tank bay and then made for the tunnels leading into the city below.  We would have followed them if not for Ah'lam, who sensed a disturbance in the earth and led us to the source:  three enormous mo'arg with drill and saw enhancements, boring holes through the rock wall.

Lammy and Izarre need prosthetic limbs now.

It was one of the hardest fights I've ever seen.  These aren't normal demons.  We took down the main driller fast enough, but the other two seemed to swell in power when their companion fell, and they only seemed to get stronger and more enraged the more we hit them.  They...did not go down easy.

This is not Outland.  The demons are bigger, stronger, meaner.  More varied.  Powers we've never seen.

I'm going to use the runestone.

August 13

Got some traffic on the comm tonight.  I thought it might just be because I went to our highest battlement to activate the stone; when Davvi's voice came through, all broken by static, I thought maybe there was less interference up there.  But it turns out other Servitors in the Keep heard her as well.  Some time after Davvi got through, we heard M.  She said something about Masana.  It got cut off but I have a very bad feeling.

Wildhammer and Quel'dorei scouts have been out and they've come back with reports.  We have a better idea of the Legion positions now, and we have targets, but we still have to bring down that ship.  As long as the ship remains over the Hinterlands, the Legion can bring up reserves fast, wherever we hit them.

This, as much as anything else, was one more reason to use the stone.

I did.  And they came, as they said they would.

It was difficult not to lower my ears like a callow youth before their leader, one of the largest Kaldorei I've ever seen.  As tall as Father was, and as broad, but he was covered in keloid scars and his voice was a horrid broken rasp.  Curling ram's horns crowned his head.  He wore plain bandages over his eyes, covering even the green fel light behind them, but I got the very uneasy sense that he was staring at me unblinking the whole time we spoke.

His companions were Aníra, Zabulon, Tanssia, Sarkesian.  His name was Eledhron.  

Exile.  A name even sadder than mine.

Aníra reminded me of Sigarni, with her swirling dark hair and the way she balanced--lightly on her feet and slightly forward.  The deceptively languid shift and flow of her sleek muscles.  Zabulon radiated menace and violence, barely contained.  Tanssia, too, wore menace like a cloak--but hers was a righteous vengeance, a burning light in her face where Zabulon's expression promised only darkness.  Sarkesian was the only other one to speak, and that only to joke.  He was also the only one who smiled.

They are terrifying, all of them.

Eledhron says they're going to bring that Legion ship down.  I believe him.

August 14

We got out of the Keep through secret egress and almost immediately we were set upon by infernals.  Our shields got put to the test and passed beautifully--except Thoran didn't have his with him, in defiance of direct orders.  For a moment I had a flashback and thought I would see another husband burned alive by felfire.  Thank Elune it was not to be.

Eledhron and his hunters joined us after we broke the infernal attack and together we made it up into the hills, using the terrain for cover as we traveled to Quel'danil Lodge, where the Legion had set up their base camp and a massive portal.  After a hard fight we took the portal, which Eledhron and the other demon hunters used to transport themselves up to the Legion ship.  Then we destroyed the portal; the demon hunter reassured us that they "had their ways" to make it off the ship after they sabotaged it.

With the smoking ruin of the portal behind us, we retreated back into the hills and watched from one of the highest peaks as the Keep's Great Gun opened up on the siege, tearing holes in the demon lines.  The moment the Gun fell silent, Wildhammer tanks and infantry, along with Quel'dorei rangers, smashed the Legion siege forces on the ground, while stormriders streaked above us--low enough for one of them to raise her hammer in salute as her flight passed over--and pounded the Legion from the air.  Caught between hammer and anvil, with no retreat and no reinforcement, the demon siege was broken utterly.  I'm still shivering as I remember the sight.  My Servitors watched it all and cheered.  I know it lifted their hearts.  And the comms worked just long enough for us to message M's team with news of the victory.  I hope they are heartened by the news as well.

Now I have to have a Very Serious Talk with Applicant Barrett.

August 20

Exhausted, but we're safe for the moment.

The Wildhammers made their forward base at Quel'danil with the rangers, and they planned to press east and north, clearing Legion out of the Hinterlands wherever they find them.  They tasked us with securing the south and taking the Hinterlands-Arathi tunnel.  From there, I planned to take us south into Arathi all the way to Stromgarde, a defensible position and a likely forward base to secure the rest of Arathi for our group heading northward.

The fight at the tunnel was shaping up to be a disaster but the Revantusk Horde showed up and saved our asses.  No other way to say it.  Their captain, a troll named Daz'rio, was pretty fluent in Common and it turned out he was on a similar mission to ours, except he was taking his troops to Hammerfall.  We parted ways in Arathi, with Daz'rio taking his fighters east to deal with a tower in the distance, while the Servitors headed west to investigate a column of smoke rising from a distant farmstead. 

The little community was devastated, with burned bodies scattered around and demons crawling everywhere, constructing a large portal machine.  We killed every single demon there, destroyed their work, and searched for survivors.  The lone survivor was a little boy we found hiding under some floorboards, filthy and in shock.  He might have been five years old.  No older than Hunter.  He was in shock and could not speak.

We left him in the care of medics at Refuge Pointe and traveled on.  I don't know what will become of the child; I pray he recovers.

We found Stromgarde full of Legion, and worse--a fel forge where they were constructing a massive fel reaver.  It was too large of a force for us to take on by ourselves; it seemed our best bet would have been to launch RPGs at the fel forge and hope we destroyed it before the demons knew what hit them.  But then the cavalry arrived, literally:  the First Caerdun Regiment came riding into view.

Roiya was able to mind-communicate with Philomene and we coordinated attacks, the First Caerdun storming the entrance while we blasted the fel forge and the half-built reaver into tiny bits.  At that point a demon of a type I've never seen before came up to deal with us:  it looked like a tower-sized unholy mating between a harpy and a spider.  Not only are the demons stronger than anything the Legion's set against us before, but they have new kinds of demons with unexpected powers.  The only thing I can say is that the monstrosity went down.  It went down hard, but we sent it back to the Nether.

Tonight we sleep behind stone walls, with Philomene's First Caerdun on watch.

((There's a significant time gap between entries.  About seven pages are covered with nothing but doodles, faces of Servitors past and present.  There are other images as well, the mind-memories of old friends, annoyances, and brief acquaintances who still managed to make enough of an impact to end up committed to paper.  Then, finally, some text.))

April 4

It's funny--I haven't touched this book in months, but today as I was cleaning out the Commander's office it fell off the shelf and whacked me in the head.  I took that as a sign.  

To be honest, the reason I haven't written anything is because I haven't really wanted to.  At first I was just busy, to the point of being overwhelmed.  But when the moments came when I was able to pause and breathe--the moments when I would normally write or draw or otherwise try to sort out the turmoil on paper--I had no desire.  There was no urge to do it.  

Now, I only feel an urge to end it.

My father lives on as Eledhron Felsight.  He fell at Hyjal, yes, but not to his death.  It's complicated.

In the initial months after this most recent Legion invasion, my thoughts took a dark turn, helped along by my mother's words.  The only way to finally live up to my Father's legacy would be to die fighting the Legion.  The only way to live up to Síla's sacrifice, Meri's sacrifice, and the sacrifices of other Servitors--Masana and Sky for example--would be to die fighting.  The only way to prove my commitment to the Servitors would be to die fighting.  I had no concrete plans to actively seek out my demise, but I was ready to throw myself at it when the opportunity came.  Not because I was tired of life, but because I didn't deserve it.  

Then Eledhron admitted the truth to me, and the whole edifice of what I thought was reality came crashing down.

In the months since, I've been sifting through the rubble, looking for whatever truths I can use to rebuild.  Here are a few--the ones pertaining to the Servitors of Lothar, at any rate:

I came to the Servitors looking for purpose, a young man unmoored.  With the Servitors, I found the purpose of duty, and the fulfillment of serving something greater than one own's pleasures.

I came looking for stability and a place where I could build a life for my child.  Essilte was nine then.  

She's seventeen now.  She is tall and slender as a reed, strong as steel.  She is both smarter and wiser than I will ever be, thank Elune.  She is sometimes stern and serious, sometimes gay and carefree.  She loves to experiment and learn.  She's already a budding businesswoman, with Merric Wines and Spirits, and a keen student of the arcane arts.  She loves to swim, just like her mother...my dear lost Taniwë.  She keeps Meri in her heart and still calls him An'da, yet she's been able to accept another--Thoran, and all his big-hearted loving bluster.  She is a kind and loving big sister to two young children, having accepted them as readily as if they were her own blood.  She's made terrible mistakes and paid a dreadful price for them, but she survives and grows, like the Greentree that Meri named her.

She's wonderful.  She's a miracle.  I love her and had a small hand in shaping her...and I don't think it would have been possible without the Servitors.

I didn't know it at the time, but I came to the Servitors looking for family.  And I found one.  A dysfunctional one, to be sure, but still family.

I never wanted to become Commander.  And in a way, I'm not cut out for it--not the way Mena is.  But I think perhaps I was the Commander the Servitors needed, these past few years.  Looking back I found the entry I made the day I became Commander.  This is what part of it says:

It’s official, but it still feels wrong.  When I joined the Servitors, all I wanted to do was prove myself useful and worthy.  I never wanted to lead.  Now it falls to me to keep our order alive in the lean times coming…or make something of whatever remains.  If I ever need to remember my duty, I just need to recall the look on Davvi’s face–the tears in her eyes–at the meeting today as I explained our financial situation.

The Servitors are her family.   Her home.  As we have always been the home for the lost, the orphaned and dispossessed, the loners and odd ones.  Swordsisters and swordbrothers come and go, but the Servitors will remain.  I do not need to ask myself “What if the center does not hold?” because I am the center now.  I will hold.  I will hold for myself, for Davvi, for Arydd, Nel, Seda, Dani, Lav, Shivs, and anyone else who might seek a home and a purpose with us.

I held.  I held the center, and now we are strong again, even in the face of the Legion.  I leave our legacy to Roiya, M, Bromm, and their chosen Adjutants, confident that they are the right people for the right time.

I leave the Servitors having done what I needed to do, and now it's time to move on.