When Light Dims...

Folcan looked around at the house where it sat, the breeze of late summer stirring the leaves as it came in off of the lake. Behind him sat the large workshop he once shared with her, a place he could not bring himself to go right now.  It was hard enough to look at the front door to what was their home, and think about walking in there. It had just been a little over a week before that they were there, sharing a Worship Day morning breakfast together, sitting at the table, very much alive and in love.

And now that was all over. Nullified.

There was a resounding thump as his hammer slipped from his hand to the earth. His fingers had gone nerveless on him, unable to hold onto the handle of the massive war maul any longer, no matter how strong he seemed. Folcan choked back a sob, swallowing it down and feeling it settle somewhere near his heart. He didn’t want to walk into that place now, without her. So little a time together, but richer than any life he had led before. All ended now.

One foot plodded in front of the other, slowly leading him towards the door there, waiting like Judgment. He didn’t know where he had gotten the courage to continue to that door, but it was inexorable. Now that he started, he couldn’t stop, no matter how much a part of him screamed at him, teary-eyed inside, to stop.  His gauntleted hand rested on the handle there, trying to find the strength to open the door.

He closed his eyes, remembering so much all at once. Was this what it was that he did to others on the battlefield when he pronounced Judgment upon them? Is this what happened to them? Could it be that he had done this to others so many times, and now it was being done to him, by himself. His hand shook and he felt the first hot tears sting his eyes.

Was this what his father had gone through the first time he came to their refuge home in Elwynn Forest after Folcan’s mother had died?  That had been the Crimson Fever, but it had still claimed her life unexpectedly.  Folcan had been grown by then, but came to his parents’ home frequently then, after working a long day at the meager smithy he had run there. He remembered losing his mother, and how his father had smiled kindly at Folcan, but still couldn’t keep the pain out of even that warm grin. It had eaten at Folcan terribly then, but only because he knew his hammer and arm couldn’t mend his father.

And now Folcan felt himself breaking.

Taking a hard swallow, the large man turned the handle and pushed inward, entering what had been his home with Izarre.  The silence of the home was a screaming dagger stabbed into him as he walked solemnly.  Tears coursed down his cheek as he looked around their home. His home. He had fought battles, and faced demons and undead. He had been tortured before as well. Had anyone of his tormentors known then that this is what would break him, they would have paid handsomely.

His feet shuffled the floor, taking him automatically to the stairs, and up, towards they bedroom they’d shared, the place they had talked so often, after days working at their respective crafts out in the workshop.  She had teased him then about his singing and dwarven accent when doing so as he smithed.  He would laugh and immediately try to sing them in Draenic, and fail miserably as the rhythms were thrown off, and they’d laugh together.  His body clambered the stairs, shaking with emotions.

Each step took more and more of his strength, until he was leaning against the wall, going down the hallway to a door that hung open, but was a threshold for him.  His shuffling steps took him right up to that threshold of the door and he looked in.

The midday sun cast its light in through a window, and across the large bed. It was still rumpled, unmade. At the foot rested two large chests that held clothing. Hers was there as well, full of her things. Even the winter shoes he had made for her, to give her better grip in the snows and ice. He tried to just take a breath, but he lost what strength was left, and he slid to his knees.

He hadn’t noticed how much he was crying then, but there he was, kneeling in the doorway to a place of happiness and love, shaking in his grief as his heart kept breaking, staring down at his hands. His hair fell forward over his face, a curtain from the light of the window and the day. It was over now. No new laughing or love would happen here.  Not the same.

Everything left here was just echoes in the night, in the dark time of dreams passing, when he would be alone.

He sat at the hearth, in the chair he always sat in, gauntleted hands clasped in front of him. He could still taste the Ambrosia in the back of his mouth. It was nice of them to have bought him some, but he couldn’t help but just sit there, lost as he had been for days now.  His body hurt right now from wounds he’d sustained over the past days, but it was the distant growl of an animal in the distance, while other parts of him alternately screamed and wept.  But outside, what everyone else could see, he was just a lost man.

He stared at his hands, so big for a human, and wondered. Those hands had saved lives, crafted horseshoes and longswords, had wielded his own hammer in the service of the Light, had healed the sick, carried heavy loads. And in the end, as he had always feared, they failed him. They failed her. But he just kept looking, wondering if it was his hands that had failed, or his faith, or his heart, or the Light…

And he just couldn’t stop looking at them.

He remembered how they had held hers, or cupped her chin or her cheek. How his hands had made food for them, or held her in the dark of the night. How they had carefully crafted for her new pieces of Lightsteel for her artificial hand and arm. How they had even just held her hand and they looked out on the world. They were so steady, even now, when he felt as if his whole world did nothing but tremble.

He had returned to their home, and locked everything up. After he had found the strength to stand again, and stagger down the hallway, he’d stepped just outside the door and been sick, weeping. He staggered to their shared workshop, her crystal shaping studio beside his forge, and the Lightforge.  With shaking hands and unsure heart, he drew the Light out of it, extinguishing the Lightforge. He locked the shops up the same as the house. And then his hands had shaken, unable to steady anything. His tears burned trails down his face, but he just went through those motions.

Pulling himself onto the white gryphon, Folcan whispered for it to go back to the Keep, and he didn’t belt himself in. It didn’t even occur to him; he was just happy to have the winds dry the tears he couldn’t stop.

After a while, they landed at the Keep, and he dismounted, looking around. The sun was just coming up, rising past the horizon with bright colors and a soft palette.  They were colors of dawn, of a new day, and all he could do is think to himself, “But she won’t see them.”  He walked inside the Keep, making his way to the smithy and the dark corners it provided. He slumped into a corner there, his knees up and arms propped on them, and for a long time, he didn’t move. He didn’t sleep, or even doze.  He just sat there, his usually slow and methodical mind racing with recent memories, and all that they carried to him.  A part of him didn’t understand, and the rest of him just wished.

When he shuffled out of the smithy, the sun was setting already, and he made his way to the Keep again, just out of habit. The Keep. He could find a place there, and just sit, and maybe find something there to hold onto, to assert himself to. 

There had been people, but in the end he had just felt as if he was a disruption to them. They’d been kind, and bought him a drink, speaking kind words.  But in the end, all he could feel was a distance, as if something existed between himself and the others. He tried with all of his strength to find a way to reach out to them, but in the end, it just had felt like he was alone again. He didn’t understand it, and a part of him thanked them profusely for reminding him that others still existed. But to the rest of him, all he could think was that he was a cripple now, someone who had lost a part of themselves integral to who they were, and their charity was because of that.

And as he moved down to the Hearth, where he now sat, it struck him that this was his life now. And something in him wept so hard it broke through and he leaned forward, his head in his hands. He didn’t want pity from others, or succor, or even healing. He didn’t want to be “saved,” or coddled. He didn’t want a hug, or someone to smooth his hair. He didn’t even want someone to come kick him until he moved.

He just wanted his wife back, and his love restored to him. He just wanted her back, and that was the one thing he couldn’t have anymore.

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Sleep was no respite for him. The nurse in the infirmary had helped him strip off his armor, and send it to be cleaned.  And when she got down to his flesh, she winced. Large bruises marred his body, and the few serious wounds he had taken had gone an ugly red, and started to fester. Folcan just sat there blankly, letting her see to him. He winced in pain as she cleaned the wounds, applying a salve from Darnassus that the druids and priestesses there had relied on for ages to draw they infection out. Still, he simply sat there, his normally methodical mind racing. 

The nurse, a Kaldorei woman of gentle hands and caring nature, laid him back and gave him a cup of something, telling him to drink it. Folcan looked at her questioningly and she gave him a soft, soothing look.  “It will let you sleep, Folcan. It will let your body rest.”  He nodded to her and took it down in one long gulp, waiting for it to work.

He had scarcely a moment before he felt a warm numbness radiating from his belly, and a few heartbeats later, the wooden cup tumbled from his now slack hand to the floor. Glassy eyes slowly closing, the last thing he saw for ten straight hours were those kind, Kaldorei eyes watching him drift into slumber.

The sleep renewed his body, but not his soul. In the grips of so deep a sleep, his mind raced, and he relived those terrible moments at least a dozen times, each time realizing he had no power to save her, and that not even the Light would respond to him. Nightmares of what might have been held him tightly, and drew him in horrible directions, leaving him fitful at best.  But when he woke all those hours later, his body was renewed. It hurt, still, from the wounds, but they no longer festered at least, and the Kaldorei woman had stitched him up well. 

Looking to the corner of the room, his armor was returned to him, the dents hammered out, and a new gambeson. Standing, he went to the business of putting himself back together to do something he was sure would get him in trouble.  The truth of what had happened had been with him the whole time. Lordaeron was a loss to him. The whole land was terribly corrupted to him, by what happened years ago, and now by the Plague and loss of his wife. But there was one thing he had yet to do there.

He had to get his wife’s body back, so she could be buried.

He held up his tabard, with the insignia of the Servitors. It was not that he was ashamed of being one, but this was not something he needed to wear in doing this. He was still a Lion at heart, but the colors did not need worn. He took up his hammer, slinging it onto his back and tightening the straps on the holster harness. He knew he risked court martial, and possibly expulsion from the Servitors, but he had to go get her and bring her home. She was a woman that had traveled the length of the universe, and he knew her wishes were to rest at home.

Folcan strode down the hall, resolute in his actions, and accepting of what may come.  He listened to his footfalls echo through the halls, and his heart gave him the echo of hoof beats to accompany them. He bit back the tears at the imagined sounds, clenching his hands to resolute fists.  Making his way to the Aerie, Folcan kept his eyes on the ground before him, not trusting himself to look to the sky.

She had gone home to face what happened there, and what had broken her heart there. Now he had to do the same to bring her home. He had to return to the terrible wasteland that once, long ago, had been home to his people. His heart was already broken, and he could do no less for her.

At this point, everything he did was for her. He knew it would bring him peace to bring her home, as it fulfilled her wishes. He just didn’t know how to do anything else.

He swung one plated leg up and over the gryphon waiting there, his snowy white mount with the blue and gold plate. It was time to return to this world’s newest den of horrors.