Roiya's journal - Book of Grace

A rolled up piece of parchment sealed in green and the old seal of the Suramar Guard is tucked into the journal.

Brother -

Kind of you and Shadowgrace to remember an old comrade such as I.  That makes this more difficult to write.  I would not take you from Shadowgrace if it were not needful.  I am sorry.

Meet me in Hyjal's shadow as soon as you might.

- J

If Alernid were a druid, I’d say that the madness has taken him.  As it is, I’m not sure what to think beyond that perhaps all the years of walking a fine line have taken their toll and he, too, has tumbled off into madness.  His reports to the temple have been nothing short of bizarre, with mundane minutiae one moment and complex arcane theory the next.  While it heartens me that he can still do that sort of work, that his knowledge hasn’t faded even after all of the centuries laying fallow, I am concerned by his apparent mental state.  He seems to have some sort of compulsive condition that he said came from a curse by some “incredible power that deserves study.”

Goddess save me from every too-curious elf (and otherwise) in my life because it’s led them all to so much grief over the long centuries.

As for Alernid, he assures me that the curse is temporary and should run its course, and yet I’m not so certain.  At least some of his faculties seem to be intact by and large, in spite of his compulsive behavior.  The old argument came up again, in any case, after I told him what was coming.  The man is like an alcoholic whose solution to their own problem is to make sure that no one can ever drink agan.

We need the magi with us whether he believes it or not.  I have said it to him again and while I know he disagrees, I have to hope that eventually he’ll come to realize that perhaps he’s been in the wrong all this time.  He’s been in Darkshire, away from his people, away from the Temple, for far too long.

I know bringing him home is not my responsibility but goddess sometimes it feels like it should be.

All of us must stand together against what’s coming.

Keydyn received a letter—it must have been early in the morning yesterday, because he was gone when I woke up, but he left the letter behind when he went.  I understand why he departed so abruptly and I pray for them in Hyjal—and beyond, for I suspect they did not stay in Nordrassil’s shadow for long.

I know he’ll tell me what they’ve been about when the time is right, and I’d trust our old friend with my husband’s life under nearly any circumstance—and yet I still worry.

When the old enemy is coming again, the one that once took everything from you, you can’t help but be afraid for what you’ve managed to reclaim from them and from the fullness of time.

Elune, watch over them in these twilight hours.

Calm.  Be calm.  I must be calm for everyone’s sake.  I must be reasonable even though everything else around me is going absolutely insane.

It has gone too far and while I didn’t want to be right, I was.  This is dangerous.  The only good thing about it all is that for the moment, there’s nothing screaming inside of me to solve the problem with a sharp blade and a vial of alchemist’s fire.  If it gets worse, though...

This is not what we needed and yet somehow, it wouldn’t be the end of furlough without something exploding.

This is the life we lead.

Etharion and I are to have words on everything this morning, though I wonder if he won’t be needing some time to get his house in order before speaking with me.

I know what I want to advise.  I think he does, too.  I’ve spent the whole night in prayer and the answer hasn’t changed.

This is dangerous, too dangerous.  While Sky’s assurance is heartening, I still...

We’re supposed to trust each other, especially at this level, especially with so many lives as our responsibility.

Goddess help us.

Only a few weeks left to go, but my son is apparently determined to come early.  Aekatrine has ordered me to take it easy as a result of last night’s scare, but Elune knows it’s not in me to do that and so does my niece.  Still, I’d not want anyone else tending me right now save her father, and of course he’s nowhere to be found right now.

Dream business, he said.

Elune help us, the last time he was gone this long on “Dream business” we nearly lost him forever.

Bastard.

I shouldn’t dwell on that right now, though, unless I really do want to have this baby earlier than intended.  I always go early, but this is a titch too far in advance, even for me—though, truth be known, if it had been Kaedyriel, I would be holding a newborn now.

I will not make the mistake I made with her.  I will never again give up my children—not ever.

Elune forgive me.

I’m going to have another child on a battlefield, though my son will be at the outset of war rather than at the end.

The unit was on a mission in Outland last night and it kills me inside that I wasn’t there to help them.  Perhaps that was the catalyst.  At least my water didn’t break—if it had, there would have been no choice.

“As long as you can, Auntie,” she said.  “Hang on as long as you can.  It’s better that way.”

Better, she says.

I feel selfish, to be honest, on so many levels, and guilty.  The state I saw Cere and his team in after their mission to the Caverns of Time to get Il’s book...I should have been able to deal with that myself.  No one else should have had to endanger themselves for that book.  It should have been my task and mine alone.

I spoke to Keydyn.  He said he’ll start on the transcription from Il’s cipher as soon as he returns from Stormwind.

Aekatrine says it could be any time now, that I should ask him to stay here—but on the eve of war, how can I do that?  We both have our jobs to do—Elune knows I’ll be back to mine as soon as I’m able, that I’m doing as much as any of them would allow me (I know that there are a few of my swordbrethren that would have kittens if I were to venture into the field in my current state—it’s easier to keep them calm by staying home these past few weeks and months).  The Alliance needs Keydyn to do his job and the Servitors—goddess love them—will need me to do mine soon enough, newborn or no.

I know it will be soon—that we’ll welcome another life into this world and that They will come again.

I only pray that they do not exact so dear a price as they did the first time they came.

If I bless and hug someone who dies shortly thereafter again...that never gets easier.  It will always be too soon.

Goddess, watch over us as we walk in your shadows and your light.

The entry is brief, written in green ink, dated 9 August, Year 1 of the reign of Anduin Wrynn.

It has begun.

The image of the Academe advisor's seal in green overlays a stylized black pawprint beneath the words.

13 August, Year 1 of the reign of Anduin Wrynn

When I told Etharion to stay in bed, I should have known that he would not listen.  They never listen.  I don't know why I try.  Then again, if both his husband and I can't keep him in bed, there's no hope.

I just pray our wounds will heal, the physical...and otherwise.

It was on the COMMs last night.  Masana is dead, but the others who are with her are a live.  Davvi is alive in the relative safety of Ironforge.  Who knows about anything else.  Ashenvale safehouse destroyed.

It's the War of the Ancients all over again.

Keydyn was in Kalimdor when it started, carrying dispatches from Darnassus to Hyjal.

If I've lost him again, I don't know what I'll do.

Iz and Ah'Lam will make it, Fro will be okay, Etharion will be okay.

No one else dies on my watch.

I can't let it happen.

He has a plan to break the siege.  I don't know how I feel about it, but I'll work with the Wildhammers, coordinate their efforts, then I'll join the other Servitors.

A Ghost has moved in with Aekatrine, with me.  She brought the Chancellor's children with her.  It seems the company is good for them.  I wonder how long it'll be before Aekatrine brings them to bed down in my office, since it's nearer to the infirmary.

After all, why should I be the only one sleeping there?

Elune, Light and Love incarnate, watch over us in these hours of darkness, as we dwell in the shadows of Your light.

At some point, I will learn better.  I will know better than to internalize problems that are not my own, I will learn to quell the ache that rises inside when I see the people I care about suffering.  I know that was a lesson Nessiana tried to teach me long ago.  It is one that never took and truth be known, I don’t know if I really want it to.

I went through ten thousand years of trying to cobble together a family to replace the one I’d lost, the one my work had forced me to forsake, the one the war had taken from me.  Now I have one and it’s no easier—far harder, in fact.

I hate watching them suffer, but at the same time, I can’t solve their problems for them.  I have to keep reminding myself of that.

All I want is for them to be happy.

Cere still doesn’t trust himself.  Sky is afraid.  Nikus...he doesn’t say it out loud, but he’s unnerved by what’s happened—to him more than anyone else.  Keydyn is grim, as if there’s to know than what he’s saying, that there’s more going on in the echelons of the Alliance that he doesn’t want to talk about.  Something’s going on with Fro and I’m not sure what it is, but I haven’t gotten to corner him about it, either.  People are confused, worried, uncertain.  We’re fighting a war against an enemy most of our number is only slowly coming to understand.  There are Servitors mixed up in something that they’re trying to keep secret—M among them—and while there is a part of me that wants to get to the bottom of it, in truth there are a dozen other things that I need to concern myself with and at this point, sorting out whatever they’re up to is currently somewhere in the middle on the list rather than nearer to the top.

Right now I’m more worried about unit cohesion and ensuring that we’re able to do what we need to do.

It’s only a matter of time before I have to ask them to come back to Val’sharah with me.  There is something stirring there that I fear the druids cannot handle.

With Ysera dead, the Dream is without its guardian.

Without the Dream...

...I need to talk to Cere.

Whisper reached out to me requesting help for a friend, and all things considered, I didn’t see how I could say no without at least learning what might be at stake.  It seems that there was some shal’dorei involvement, which is concerning to say the least.

Perhaps I have been too focused on Val’sharah, on the issues there, and have missed the worst of the hell going on in Suramar.  I am a fool.  There is too much work to be done and yet I spin myself in circles, constantly aiming in the wrong direction.

The Sunwhisper brothers were, in a word, amusing, but there was something strange about the two that I just can’t put my finger on—not that I exactly want to.  I have enough trouble; I don’t need to borrow more.  Still, it seems they would like me to work with the more casual of the two on the case.

Perhaps I can help this girl where I fear I am failing and have failed with some others, in part due to my reluctance to do something like blocking the memories.

But blocking memories only leads to trouble later.  I have learned that lesson all too well.  That brings only temporary relief—and the horror is worse later.

 It is always so much worse.

Goddess watch over us on this shattered beachhead.  We’re within view of that damned place and I can feel my hackles rising just thinking of it.  We’ve been here for two nights and a day; the Illidari requested our assistance in defending a toehold here.  They call it Vengeance Point.

I don’t know what I would call it, so I suppose that’s as good a name as any.

We help them turn back the Legion’s assaults against our camp, try to help ward the place, to build something akin to defenses.  One would think that bastard would have learned the utility of walls somewhere along the line and taught his followers the same.

I shouldn’t speak ill, much less set it down here, but I know it comes from a place of frustration and restlessness.  When they returned, I was in Suramar, working with the volunteers there.  For as wrong as everything seems there now, in some ways it still felt right and familiar.  I recognized the ache inside me that had been covered over and buried for so long.  For better or worse, Suramar was my home.

Was my home.

 [A few drops and a smear of ink mark the page, as if the writer paused here or was otherwise interrupted.]

I don’t know that I can keep them safe out here in the field.  I want to.  I want to make everything better, I want them to walk away from this stronger and with a future that they can look forward to—I want them to have futures even at the cost of my own.

Fro shoved his fist halfway down a demon’s throat, trying to keep a grip on his blade.  It was a mangled mess by the time all was said and done and thank Elune that Z and I were able to mend it with Ah’lam’s assistance.  I don’t think Sky has slept since we’ve been here and that worries me.  I know she fears the nightmares that could come and I know we’re close to the place where she was held, the place she escaped from, and that will only make the fear worse.

I tried to reassure her, but I don’t know if it helped.

Goddess watch over us.  I don’t know what to do anymore.

 I don’t.

I am still trying to sort through what happened last night.  I keep looking at his tabard, at the other trappings of the office.

Of the three of us, he gave them to me.  To me.

Why?

I don’t know that I can wear it—I don’t know that I ever could.  There is a part of me who would feel wrong in doing it.  My heart aches at the thought.

No.  I think the three of us will just update the trim on our tabards and that will be that.  That is his tabard, will always be his tabard.

He is one of us, will be one of us, forever.  He is a part of each of us.

There is so much I wanted to say, but the words would not come.  Words seem poor to express the wellspring of emotions, of memories and feelings and thoughts and actions.  They are not adequate to express the experiences of the past few years.

Has it only been a few years?  A drop in the bucket of a lifetime as long as my own, and yet…

And yet.

I will miss him dearly.

I write as if he’s dead.  Intellectually, I know he’s not, but my heart still aches like he was.

Nothing will be the same now that he’s stepped down.

Goddess help us all.

I will leave the tabard here when I go back to the Broken Shore, safely secured, like Fro’s scarf from Masana.

It is a thing I can’t bear to lose.