Paper Planes
Jan. 22nd, 2012 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalenedralArdeth and Kal after the ambush on Benedin.
- - - - -
To be a Death Knight was more than simply being raised from the dead by necromancers, given a set of armor and a weapon, and going forth to destroy anything that the Lich King pointed you at. To survive -- such as it was -- required a certain will and a certain... demeanor, as any newly-risen Knight who so much as flinched upon being raised was almost always fed immediately to the ghouls. Take a name that the Lich King did not approve of, and you could very well be executed, burned, and your ashes thrown into an outhouse. You did not remove your armor, and you did not rest, no matter how badly your mind screamed for it, or you would be made into spare parts for an abomination.
Those who survived such an existence, let alone for the years that Kalenedral had, were unlikely to show pain or discomfort to others. It was simply not their way. And Kalenedral had not merely survived that existence, but had excelled during it.
And so, after deciding that no one was likely to die in the aftermath of the failed ambush on Benedin Darker, Kalenedral signaled his skeletal gryphon to land, climbed onto it with a minimum of fuss, and left. In the safe confines of his helmet, his expression was not a pleasant one, and the gryphon barely sailed out of sight before nosediving straight down into a body of water.
Acid was really, really unpleasant, and even Kalenedral was only going to put up with it etching into his flesh for so long.
Ardeth was already by the shore when Kalenedral surfaced.
While the death knight soaked out the acid, he'd removed a very large towel from his pack -- presumably for Kalenedral -- and draped it over the fallen tree-trunk behind him, and then sat on his makeshift rough-barked seat.
His own robe was torn over his chest and stomach, his blood lurid red in the sunset light. The flesh behind it, however, was whole-- or as whole as it would ever be, as scarred, pitted, and mangled as it was. He produced a needle and thread from somewhere, while he waited, and carefully and neatly began to sew that rent up; the robe was a loss, but it would do for now.
Ice thick enough to hold an armored man atop a charging mount formed on the surface of the water, and Kalenedral pulled himself up onto it. A ways away, the bone gryphon flailed its way out of the water far less gracefully, and flapped up into the sky, presumably to find a nice sunny rock to wait on.
"Our would-be combatants," Kalenedral said quite mildly as he approached on the growing sheet of ice, water running freely out of the seams of his plate armor, "are amazingly incompetent as a unit."
Behind him and to the side of the ice, his ghoul swam along for the same shore. Perfectly whole, of course, as Limbface was dismembered and destroyed on a regular basis, and it never mattered two minutes later.
The Knight took his helmet off, now that his face was calm again. Except... then he looked at said helmet, and noted all the tiny little problems with it that being splashed in acid had brought to light. The edges looked a little... chewed on. And to a blacksmith's eye, it wasn't hard to see a new weakness or two in the plating itself. He didn't have to look to know that the rest of it had suffered similarly.
Kalenedral allowed himself a moment's freedom and snarled, throwing the helmet against one of the many standing trees. The crack of impact, to his ears, wasn't simply of strong metal hitting an object.
Ardeth didn't even seem to see it, though he surely did; he sat perfectly still. It was the same sort of sangfroid that his niece had so often shown, and at that moment their resemblance was very strong, he almost as pale and cool and slender as she. But she was dead, and he was not; his eyes only glowed light green.
"Yes." His voice was soft and smooth and calm. "They're civilians, and very young and foolish. Get out of that armor and dry off, I've a robe for you."
Kalenedral stepped off of the ice and onto the shore proper, his composure settling back into place as though it had never cracked.
"A few were not complete idiots," the former Commander said stiffly, "but one could be the best soldier in Azeroth, and it would matter not one whit if they spend as much time fighting allies as they spend fighting the enemy."
It hardly needed to be said what would have happened to soldiers who refused to fight as a unit in the Scourge. Limbface himself had probably eaten more than a few. And speaking of, the ghoul climbed out of the water and went over to the discarded helmet, picking it up silently.
As to getting out of his armor, Kalenedral simply didn't react.
Ardeth removed it from his pack anyway, and set it beside the towel, and then averted his gaze.
"I will be resigning; I won't risk myself, nor you, really, on the front lines of this dispute when their own members value neither we, nor their own safety. Perhaps I'll work in their infirmary, I don't know. I apologise for dragging you into this in the first place." His tone didn't change.
Kal snorted softly at that, and began unbuckling pieces of his now-untrustworthy armor. On the one hand, it was a bad idea out here with a new-found enemy at large. On the other hand, if this 'Darker' fellow was still in the area, he hadn't attacked yet. And with an ego as big as Kalenedral had observed, he doubted the presence of his armor would hinder such a move.
He shrugged into the robe, still soaked, and closed it properly, although wearing so much fabric was... odd.
"I was willing to protect the less self-sufficient of them," Kalenedral noted, "but I am unwilling to count as comrades-in-arms what the Institute has mustered as a fighting force. Not to mention that those I would be expected to protect have already proven that informing security of much of anything is not among their priorities."
Some would be surprised, perhaps, that he spoke so much. But anyone who had bothered to deal with him much wouldn't have been, and Ardeth surely wasn't. "As such, I have no intention of remaining as their meat-shield, and as I have no other relevant skills... I suppose I will not be remaining at all. I do not babysit, especially on the battlefield."
It really didn't take long for him to come to a decision on this. One did not make Knight-Commander with a slow mind. And while remaining as their guard would have, perhaps, been a more noble thing to do, Kalenedral didn't care that much. He wasn't in the least bit attached to the members of the Institute. Why would he be?
They were there, and they had books. Kal could find other books, and he could certainly assist with certain things without being on the school's payroll.
With a soft sigh, Ardeth rose, took the towel, and moved to dry Kalenedral's hair.
"There's no use in protecting the suicidal. I'd leave without looking back, but something back there troubled me... That man's mind, Kalenedral. It wasn't just his own. An Old God was in there, or something quite like them. This Benedin is no Arthas, no Illidan nor Kael'thas, but something like that running around... I at least have to discuss this with Frostglare."
- - - - -
To be a Death Knight was more than simply being raised from the dead by necromancers, given a set of armor and a weapon, and going forth to destroy anything that the Lich King pointed you at. To survive -- such as it was -- required a certain will and a certain... demeanor, as any newly-risen Knight who so much as flinched upon being raised was almost always fed immediately to the ghouls. Take a name that the Lich King did not approve of, and you could very well be executed, burned, and your ashes thrown into an outhouse. You did not remove your armor, and you did not rest, no matter how badly your mind screamed for it, or you would be made into spare parts for an abomination.
Those who survived such an existence, let alone for the years that Kalenedral had, were unlikely to show pain or discomfort to others. It was simply not their way. And Kalenedral had not merely survived that existence, but had excelled during it.
And so, after deciding that no one was likely to die in the aftermath of the failed ambush on Benedin Darker, Kalenedral signaled his skeletal gryphon to land, climbed onto it with a minimum of fuss, and left. In the safe confines of his helmet, his expression was not a pleasant one, and the gryphon barely sailed out of sight before nosediving straight down into a body of water.
Acid was really, really unpleasant, and even Kalenedral was only going to put up with it etching into his flesh for so long.
Ardeth was already by the shore when Kalenedral surfaced.
While the death knight soaked out the acid, he'd removed a very large towel from his pack -- presumably for Kalenedral -- and draped it over the fallen tree-trunk behind him, and then sat on his makeshift rough-barked seat.
His own robe was torn over his chest and stomach, his blood lurid red in the sunset light. The flesh behind it, however, was whole-- or as whole as it would ever be, as scarred, pitted, and mangled as it was. He produced a needle and thread from somewhere, while he waited, and carefully and neatly began to sew that rent up; the robe was a loss, but it would do for now.
Ice thick enough to hold an armored man atop a charging mount formed on the surface of the water, and Kalenedral pulled himself up onto it. A ways away, the bone gryphon flailed its way out of the water far less gracefully, and flapped up into the sky, presumably to find a nice sunny rock to wait on.
"Our would-be combatants," Kalenedral said quite mildly as he approached on the growing sheet of ice, water running freely out of the seams of his plate armor, "are amazingly incompetent as a unit."
Behind him and to the side of the ice, his ghoul swam along for the same shore. Perfectly whole, of course, as Limbface was dismembered and destroyed on a regular basis, and it never mattered two minutes later.
The Knight took his helmet off, now that his face was calm again. Except... then he looked at said helmet, and noted all the tiny little problems with it that being splashed in acid had brought to light. The edges looked a little... chewed on. And to a blacksmith's eye, it wasn't hard to see a new weakness or two in the plating itself. He didn't have to look to know that the rest of it had suffered similarly.
Kalenedral allowed himself a moment's freedom and snarled, throwing the helmet against one of the many standing trees. The crack of impact, to his ears, wasn't simply of strong metal hitting an object.
Ardeth didn't even seem to see it, though he surely did; he sat perfectly still. It was the same sort of sangfroid that his niece had so often shown, and at that moment their resemblance was very strong, he almost as pale and cool and slender as she. But she was dead, and he was not; his eyes only glowed light green.
"Yes." His voice was soft and smooth and calm. "They're civilians, and very young and foolish. Get out of that armor and dry off, I've a robe for you."
Kalenedral stepped off of the ice and onto the shore proper, his composure settling back into place as though it had never cracked.
"A few were not complete idiots," the former Commander said stiffly, "but one could be the best soldier in Azeroth, and it would matter not one whit if they spend as much time fighting allies as they spend fighting the enemy."
It hardly needed to be said what would have happened to soldiers who refused to fight as a unit in the Scourge. Limbface himself had probably eaten more than a few. And speaking of, the ghoul climbed out of the water and went over to the discarded helmet, picking it up silently.
As to getting out of his armor, Kalenedral simply didn't react.
Ardeth removed it from his pack anyway, and set it beside the towel, and then averted his gaze.
"I will be resigning; I won't risk myself, nor you, really, on the front lines of this dispute when their own members value neither we, nor their own safety. Perhaps I'll work in their infirmary, I don't know. I apologise for dragging you into this in the first place." His tone didn't change.
Kal snorted softly at that, and began unbuckling pieces of his now-untrustworthy armor. On the one hand, it was a bad idea out here with a new-found enemy at large. On the other hand, if this 'Darker' fellow was still in the area, he hadn't attacked yet. And with an ego as big as Kalenedral had observed, he doubted the presence of his armor would hinder such a move.
He shrugged into the robe, still soaked, and closed it properly, although wearing so much fabric was... odd.
"I was willing to protect the less self-sufficient of them," Kalenedral noted, "but I am unwilling to count as comrades-in-arms what the Institute has mustered as a fighting force. Not to mention that those I would be expected to protect have already proven that informing security of much of anything is not among their priorities."
Some would be surprised, perhaps, that he spoke so much. But anyone who had bothered to deal with him much wouldn't have been, and Ardeth surely wasn't. "As such, I have no intention of remaining as their meat-shield, and as I have no other relevant skills... I suppose I will not be remaining at all. I do not babysit, especially on the battlefield."
It really didn't take long for him to come to a decision on this. One did not make Knight-Commander with a slow mind. And while remaining as their guard would have, perhaps, been a more noble thing to do, Kalenedral didn't care that much. He wasn't in the least bit attached to the members of the Institute. Why would he be?
They were there, and they had books. Kal could find other books, and he could certainly assist with certain things without being on the school's payroll.
With a soft sigh, Ardeth rose, took the towel, and moved to dry Kalenedral's hair.
"There's no use in protecting the suicidal. I'd leave without looking back, but something back there troubled me... That man's mind, Kalenedral. It wasn't just his own. An Old God was in there, or something quite like them. This Benedin is no Arthas, no Illidan nor Kael'thas, but something like that running around... I at least have to discuss this with Frostglare."
Kal held still under the hair-drying with a particular care that made it as clear as day that he was puzzled as hell.
As to the rest, he made a noncommital sound, mulling that information over a bit. "Killing him hardly requires that we -- or I, I suppose -- remain in their employment."
And then, in case it wasn't perfectly clear that he had no idea what to do about Ardeth's current actions, "...What are you doing?"
"Civilized men dry their hair when it's wet, and the rest of themselves, too," the priest stated rather primly. "Do you have a comb? Your hair is a crime against... well, existence. You dye it, so brush it out now and then, too. Nobody nowadays is going to obliterate you into an oubliette for such things. Look, the burnt ends are coming off on the towel, it's obscene."
And as for employment, "...I truly don't know what the right course of action is. I'd hoped to find a lot of knowledge in this Institute, which there is, but knowledge without wisdom is nothing. Its headmaster is well-intentioned, but..."
He looked a little melancholy. "After so long, I'd been hoping to... set my hearth somewhere, I suppose. But Dalaran is ever fickle."
"I am sure the elf who died would be horrified," Kalenedral said dryly, "but I, the corpse, am content to let the air dry it. And as you may notice, it is not snowing." So it would obviously dry. He reached up and back to swat the priest away and seize the towel, though doing much of anything with bare hands was incredibly strange.
"It is a floating city, made by and inhabited largely by mages. 'Fickle' is a gentle term."
Ardeth swayed back, for he was never steady on his feet. He relinquished the towel, his hands falling to his sides.
"As you may notice, you're no longer Scourge, to eschew the small comforts of civilization." But there was no real sharpness to his words. "And did you not live in floating cities? The Ebon Hold may as well be."
"It is hardly martyrdom," Kalenedral said, as dryly as he usually spoke, "I comb it enough to keep it ordered, and I trim the burns out when I dye it. The burns come from my forge, and the mess from my helmet. But others fussing over it is alien, to say the least."
After all, his formative years were not those of the living. Being without the solid weight of his armor, with bare hands and practically-bare skin, was unnerving enough in its own way. The lurid red of his burns was not enough to bother him, but the rest... well, it was best not to add such an odd gesture to the mix.
No one wanted him getting too edgy, surely.
"The Ebon Hold is a necropolis, not a city full of greenery and civilians," he said of the rest, "it is a mobile staging point for warfare, and not originally intended to be a 'home'. The sorcery keeping it afloat may be similar, but little else is."
"And yet," Ardeth murmured, "It is a home."
He turned away, limping back to his pack until a flick of magic lifted his feet a few inches from the ground. With his back to Kalenedral, he somehow seemed more frail than ever, his posture that of someone thoroughly worn out.
And yet, they'd faced armies of Alliance, and he'd left the field unbowed.
"That would depend on your definition of such a thing," Kalenedral shrugged, and was struck once again by the lack of physical weight on his shoulders. He draped the towel around them like a cape, to see if it would help.
It didn't.
"With no real experience on the matter, I am hardly an expert. I will wait," he added apparently out of nowhere, "before I speak to Frostglare. I have a few books I am still reading, after all." And while he often thought fast, he was cautious in his actions.
Ardeth's state was taken in with an assessing stare.
"You said some very strange things, during that battle."
"I can show you, if you like." The priest sounded deeply troubled, unnerved, though he did not raise his voice. "What that thing showed me. Though perhaps I shouldn't. Old Gods drive mad those men whose minds they touch; though I think myself uncorrupted by so brief a contact, I truly can't say."
But he would certainly have some interesting nightmares.
"There are very few things which frighten me nowadays, Kalenedral. But I'm shamed to say that I was afraid. And that it was seen by those who'd mock it."
"I would rather you did not," Kalenedral replied calmly, "I have had quite enough of mad things whispering in my mind, and have been quite mad myself, before." And he was not, it seemed, mad enough anymore to invite more of it.
As to the last, the Knight snorted faintly in clear disdain, and took the towel off his shoulders to toss at Ardeth's back. "Then they are even less worth our effort and experience. Your blood can be spilled and my armor ruined for the safety of much more worthy people."
Ardeth jerked to a halt, startled, and then stooped to pick it up. "You know what to do, then, if I should start spewing tentacles everywhere, and speaking in a lot more tongues than I did earlier."
He didn't expect Kalenedral to shy away from drastic measures, and he sounded genuinely concerned about his own sanity. He, too, hadn't been precisely sane at one point, and the consequences of what had happened could be much worse.
"Your family," Kalenedral noted, "has an odd history with myself and my doing what is necessary. But yes, I shall."
Because he always did.
He glanced, finally, over at the pile of discarded armor, and found that Limbface had rearranged it all so that the insides caught the sun, the better to dry out. The ghoul had no idea that the armor wasn't completely trustworthy, now, but he still had the right of it that Kal would eventually want to put it back on, anyway, even in its current state.
It wasn't as though he'd go anywhere near the public eye without being dressed from neck to toe in plate. His dignity as a representative of the Ebon Blade, if nothing else, required no less.
"Do you suppose that man is mad because of his association with such a creature, then? Or does he associate because he is mad?" It wouldn't matter, in the end, but Kal still found such things interesting regardless.
"Both, though stupidity is undoubtedly more the case for the latter." For a brief moment, Ardeth looked exceedingly disgusted. He packed the towel away, and sat back down on the fallen log. "Why these men must inflict their madness on the rest of us..."
He shook his head and folded his arms tightly against his chest. They sat just a little oddly against him, for he was missing a good deal of flesh under his robes.
"You take," Limbface enunciated very carefully, holding quite still, his faintly-glowing dead eyes fixed on the priest. Ardeth was distressed, even the ghoul could tell -- he did, after all, get the benefit of constant information from his master -- and shinies helped everything.
Because shinies were amazing.
And even though the priest was... well, a priest. And alive. And a priest. And also, a priest. Even despite that, he wasn't generally an ass to the ghoul (who, much like a child or an animal, still noticed such things), so he would give him a shiny.
"While that is true," Kalenedral replied, buckling pieces of armor back on, because even if it wasn't entirely battle sound it was at least still armor, "I have no other relevant skills. They are not a military, to need the services of a master smith, and I will not instruct them in combat. Someone shall need to teach them to work as a team, if they wish to survive, but I doubt it will be any Death Knight who does so. Our ways are not theirs."
And really, it had been Calthor who had been the biggest issue, with his stunt. But even without him, it had been painfully obvious to Kalenedral that while several of them were fighters, they were notsoldiers. They probably couldn't coordinate a simple march without bickering or tripping over one another, let alone fight as a unit.
"Limbface..." Ardeth stared at him, genuinely surprised, wide-eyed. "Thank you." He reached out to take the crystal, his cloth-covered hands dipping between the ghoul's claws.
That a ghoul can retain enough humanity to try to comfort a person who is neither his master, nor a Death Knight...
He held Limbface's gaze with his own. "Did you want some teacups to go with that teapot?" Oh yes, he remembered, even if he'd never said anything about it before.
And to Kalenedral, he murmured, "Yes. That is true... well, if you go, I will of course accompany you."
"Shiny!" Limbface sounded quite pleased with the world, which could either be because Ardeth had taken his present, or in reply about the teacups, or just... because he was Limbface. It was very hard to read him, sometimes. The ghoul scampered back off into the water, as he often did when they were near large bodies of it.
Kalenedral really did keep him on a very long leash, which was perhaps part of why his intelligence had grown. He was allowed to go forth and puzzle things out for himself while his master was occupied, however slowly he did so.
"We will not know, I would suppose, until I go to resign my position," the Knight said quite reasonably, setting the robe aside so as to buckle his breastplate back on. The shirt he'd had on under it before was a mass of tattered strips on the ground, which he intended to take with him when he went to speak to an alchemist. "I do not intend to be talked into remaining as a flock dog, but I hardly know the needs of a school. This is the first one I have set foot near, after all." That he remembered.
"Wait, wait, I have a shirt..."
Ardeth's pack was truly bottomless! He moved to stuff the crystal away somewhere secure, and then pulled out a fine black silk shirt. (He traveled light but stylishly!)
"Here. You can't just put metal on bare flesh, it'll chafe."
Kalenedral paused mid-buckling and eyeballed said shirt, one eyebrow raising slowly. "And it is mere coincidence that it is broad enough to fit, I would suppose," he said dryly. Then he shook his head, and undid his work on the breastplate, setting it back down and holding out a -- still bare! -- hand for the shirt. "Tailors."
The explosion of the sunwell had blackened his flesh, years and years ago. Now it was mostly gone, the discoloration on his torso was subtle, almost as though it had moved a few layers of skin down and left only a faint stain behind. The visible signs that he had been there wouldn't linger for too many more years, although Kal's memory since his resurrection was impeccable, and there was no doubt that he would remember every detail of the attack long after all lingering reminders were gone.
If Kalenedral had been a man prone to guilt, his memory would have been a curse. Thankfully, he was not.
Strange company, indeed.
"I should not want to..." Ardeth said slowly as he handed the shirt over. "I'm hardly even myself, to speak aloud of such things to a man who is neither inclined, nor interested, nor even aware."
He spoke with no censure, no anger, nothing save resignation. "Or even alive. I thought my nephew was an idiot, and look, I've fallen to the same lunacy. Ah, what strange times these are."
"You are speaking gibberish," Kalenedral replied slowly, eyebrow only going up higher as he slid the shirt on and did up the ties to keep it tight enough to not cause issue under the armor, but loose enough to not end up tearing, either. "But I see no tentacles. Shall I hold off on taking your head, then?"
It was utterly dry; he wasn't entirely serious. But no, he had no idea what the priest was talking about. 'Nor even aware' was quite correct, even now.
Ardeth gave him a wan smile. "It's a different kind of madness. Let's get out of here, I don't trust this forest."
The High Elves had settled in woods very near here, once. Many of them had gone mad, and eventually, they'd moved north, and founded their new kingdom. But perhaps some of it still lingered...
The priest slung his pack over his shoulder, and summoned his own mount. Today, it was a horse made of stars.
The Death Knight snorted faintly at that, and resumed re-armoring himself. Eventually it was all back on, and the skeletal gryphon returned to the shore, and they were off.
"Civilized men dry their hair when it's wet, and the rest of themselves, too," the priest stated rather primly. "Do you have a comb? Your hair is a crime against... well, existence. You dye it, so brush it out now and then, too. Nobody nowadays is going to obliterate you into an oubliette for such things. Look, the burnt ends are coming off on the towel, it's obscene."
And as for employment, "...I truly don't know what the right course of action is. I'd hoped to find a lot of knowledge in this Institute, which there is, but knowledge without wisdom is nothing. Its headmaster is well-intentioned, but..."
He looked a little melancholy. "After so long, I'd been hoping to... set my hearth somewhere, I suppose. But Dalaran is ever fickle."
"I am sure the elf who died would be horrified," Kalenedral said dryly, "but I, the corpse, am content to let the air dry it. And as you may notice, it is not snowing." So it would obviously dry. He reached up and back to swat the priest away and seize the towel, though doing much of anything with bare hands was incredibly strange.
"It is a floating city, made by and inhabited largely by mages. 'Fickle' is a gentle term."
Ardeth swayed back, for he was never steady on his feet. He relinquished the towel, his hands falling to his sides.
"As you may notice, you're no longer Scourge, to eschew the small comforts of civilization." But there was no real sharpness to his words. "And did you not live in floating cities? The Ebon Hold may as well be."
"It is hardly martyrdom," Kalenedral said, as dryly as he usually spoke, "I comb it enough to keep it ordered, and I trim the burns out when I dye it. The burns come from my forge, and the mess from my helmet. But others fussing over it is alien, to say the least."
After all, his formative years were not those of the living. Being without the solid weight of his armor, with bare hands and practically-bare skin, was unnerving enough in its own way. The lurid red of his burns was not enough to bother him, but the rest... well, it was best not to add such an odd gesture to the mix.
No one wanted him getting too edgy, surely.
"The Ebon Hold is a necropolis, not a city full of greenery and civilians," he said of the rest, "it is a mobile staging point for warfare, and not originally intended to be a 'home'. The sorcery keeping it afloat may be similar, but little else is."
"And yet," Ardeth murmured, "It is a home."
He turned away, limping back to his pack until a flick of magic lifted his feet a few inches from the ground. With his back to Kalenedral, he somehow seemed more frail than ever, his posture that of someone thoroughly worn out.
And yet, they'd faced armies of Alliance, and he'd left the field unbowed.
"That would depend on your definition of such a thing," Kalenedral shrugged, and was struck once again by the lack of physical weight on his shoulders. He draped the towel around them like a cape, to see if it would help.
It didn't.
"With no real experience on the matter, I am hardly an expert. I will wait," he added apparently out of nowhere, "before I speak to Frostglare. I have a few books I am still reading, after all." And while he often thought fast, he was cautious in his actions.
Ardeth's state was taken in with an assessing stare.
"You said some very strange things, during that battle."
"I can show you, if you like." The priest sounded deeply troubled, unnerved, though he did not raise his voice. "What that thing showed me. Though perhaps I shouldn't. Old Gods drive mad those men whose minds they touch; though I think myself uncorrupted by so brief a contact, I truly can't say."
But he would certainly have some interesting nightmares.
"There are very few things which frighten me nowadays, Kalenedral. But I'm shamed to say that I was afraid. And that it was seen by those who'd mock it."
"I would rather you did not," Kalenedral replied calmly, "I have had quite enough of mad things whispering in my mind, and have been quite mad myself, before." And he was not, it seemed, mad enough anymore to invite more of it.
As to the last, the Knight snorted faintly in clear disdain, and took the towel off his shoulders to toss at Ardeth's back. "Then they are even less worth our effort and experience. Your blood can be spilled and my armor ruined for the safety of much more worthy people."
Ardeth jerked to a halt, startled, and then stooped to pick it up. "You know what to do, then, if I should start spewing tentacles everywhere, and speaking in a lot more tongues than I did earlier."
He didn't expect Kalenedral to shy away from drastic measures, and he sounded genuinely concerned about his own sanity. He, too, hadn't been precisely sane at one point, and the consequences of what had happened could be much worse.
"Your family," Kalenedral noted, "has an odd history with myself and my doing what is necessary. But yes, I shall."
Because he always did.
He glanced, finally, over at the pile of discarded armor, and found that Limbface had rearranged it all so that the insides caught the sun, the better to dry out. The ghoul had no idea that the armor wasn't completely trustworthy, now, but he still had the right of it that Kal would eventually want to put it back on, anyway, even in its current state.
It wasn't as though he'd go anywhere near the public eye without being dressed from neck to toe in plate. His dignity as a representative of the Ebon Blade, if nothing else, required no less.
"Do you suppose that man is mad because of his association with such a creature, then? Or does he associate because he is mad?" It wouldn't matter, in the end, but Kal still found such things interesting regardless.
"Both, though stupidity is undoubtedly more the case for the latter." For a brief moment, Ardeth looked exceedingly disgusted. He packed the towel away, and sat back down on the fallen log. "Why these men must inflict their madness on the rest of us..."
He shook his head and folded his arms tightly against his chest. They sat just a little oddly against him, for he was missing a good deal of flesh under his robes.
"The nature of madness, from what I understand of it," Kalenedral shrugged, watching as his ghoul waded into the water. At least Limbface was trouble-free, digging around in the shallows for rocks with the large, sharp claws that passed for his fingers. Limbface held one stone up in the sunlight, and seemed to contemplate it for a moment before tossing it back and digging for another.
"Although I admittedly have not read a lot of philosophy, yet," the Knight added wryly, "and I doubt I would understand it even if I did."
He was not so different, sometimes, from his ghoul. Narrow experience made for strange perspectives. A glance was slanted over at Ardeth at this thought, and Kal's gaze took in his build again, as it had undoubtedly done many times before. He knew the man had been nearly killed by a pack of ghouls; Visolela had told him that before he'd even met him, if he remembered correctly.
Strange company they kept these days, the both of them.
"I will remove your head if you go truly mad," he confirmed again, directly, as calm as he ever was, his thoughts on the idea inscrutable, "but you are not."
It was as close to reassurance as he could figure out how to give.
Ardeth turned to him and bowed slightly over folded hands. "Thank you." That he was asking, and thanking, Kalenedral for his own potential death seemed to trouble him less than going mad; these were strange times indeed! But his own sort of sentimentality, or his lack of it, perhaps made his company easier to tolerate.
That he was grateful for Kalenedral's kindness, such as it was, was also quietly clear.
"Come here," he said as he straightened. "I'll heal what damage is left, now that you've washed the acid out." And, since the Death Knight had been in enough discomfort already, "I won't use Holy magic today."
"Hn," was Kal's stunning commentary on the topic of using Holy power on his wounds. He'd adapted to it more than most of his kind, having traveled with various priests for... a while, now. Almost the entirety of the time he'd been free, in fact. But it would never be pleasant.
He was always going to be an abomination to the Light, and he couldn't exactly claim that the sentiment wasn't mutual. No love lost, here. It was a useful tool for the living, and that was all.
"I seem to have bled on your robe," he pointed out the obvious instead, walking over. And indeed, the burns had oozed blood that was not quite the standard healthy shade of red, but which was forced through his veins anyway. Some deep, buried, subconscious part of his mind felt that his heart should beat and his blood should flow, and so it did. And as far as he could tell, it would continue to do so until the internal organ found it impossible to operate for one eventual reason or another.
In the meantime, it was useful for keeping his unholy power distributed evenly through-out his form with a minimum of effort. Blood was, after all, an incredibly useful tool to one of his kind; even the blood inside of his own corpse..
"It can be cleaned."
Ardeth raised his gloved hands, and held them about an inch away from Kalenedral's chest; blue-white energy, not gold, flowed through them to heal the Death Knight's wounds: the priest's own will and mana working together to rebuild damaged flesh and skin.
"Would that I could do the same for your armor... I'm surprised the acid got through my barrier."
"As was I," it was still a strange sensation, but Kalenedral was nothing if not stoic, "It was not magic-based, either, else it would not have gotten through my anti-magic shell." Nothing magic did, not with his. No true master of the Unholy discipline would spend less than the required time mastering that ability entirely.
"I suppose I should ask Varathanda about it," he added thoughtfully, "being as that she is an alchemist." That Varathanda would be as likely to demonstrate the acid by pouring more on him as anything didn't seem to phase him. You sort of got used to a level of animosity after beating down an orc, pinning them to the ground, and cutting their tongue out.
Which had basically just been Wednesday afternoon, in the Scourge.
Out in the water, Limbface held up another rock to the light, considered it, and tossed it back. Splash, splash!
"I wonder, sometimes, if you enjoy receiving pain as much as you enjoy giving it." Ardeth sounded somewhat amused, though his tone was a little complicated: ripping out tongues wasn't something that he approved of on a general basis, but the circumstances had hardly been ideal!
He paid Limbface no heed; the ghoul was always on the hunt for shiny things.
When the healing was done, he hesitated, and then stepped back. His hands dropped to his sides and curled gently closed.
"Sometimes," Kalenedral didn't see anything wrong with admitting it; it was just a random fact about being a Death Knight. "I doubt I would enjoy having my tongue removed, of course. But combat can sometimes be..." he considered a word as he stepped away and went to examine his mangled armor, "exhilarating, even when I am the one being hit."
Death Knights really were odd creatures, all of themselves. At least he wasn't San'layn, who seemed to get way too much enjoyment out of the most brutal of combat. It wasn't a sexual thing by default for a Knight, and certainly not for Kalenedral, but one had to wonder sometimes about the vampire princes.
"Did you know that there is an entire discipline based around that principle?" Kalenedral asked idly, crouching down to examine the armor, "I have dabbled in it, but I cannot maintain Limbface's presence on this plane while working with it. It requires too much of a shift in thoughts."
"It's unsurprising that your kind should have embraced such a discipline." It was no insult; Ardeth said it only with sardonic amusement. He sat down again, and watched.
"And I couldn't imagine you going without Limbface." The two were nigh-inseparable!
"I have no memory of a time in which I did not have a ghoul at my back," Kalenedral agreed, "although Limbface's intelligence took time to develop, he has -- as far as my experience can say -- always been with me."
Most of the armor appeared to be fine. The helmet, shoulders, and part of the breastplate had taken the brunt of the damage, as it had been a vial of acid and not a bucket. And the damage by itself would likely have been largely cosmetic, had it not been for the fact that Kal was in combat on a regular basis. His armor was always in need of repair; always being hammered on in one manner or another -- whether by the enemy, or by Kal's own smithing hammer to beat the dents back out.
And because it was in constant use, the added strain of having an unknown acid thrown onto it made it suddenly questionable. He could gauge how many more battles his armor could withstand when it was damage he was familiar with, but...
A glance at the helmet that Limbface had retrieved showed the truth of it. There was a hairline break in the metal from the impact with the tree, where the acid had hit the strongest. The Death Knight was often hit harder than that, and it meant that this set's usefulness was at an end until he could afford the time to melt down and re-craft at least half of it.
...Although, since he was leaving his current job, he would probably have the time soon enough. It was doubtful that the Institute had a use for him besides 'conveniently well-trained meat shield that conveniently fell into our laps'.
But professionals who fell from the sky often had other things they could be doing, and Kalenedral was no exception to that.
"Even the Army ghouls seem to be getting smarter as the years go by," he added, coming back to his original thoughts, "but I doubt they will ever be on par with even an earlier Limbface. I simply cannot invest as much power in them."
Ardeth folded his hands together. "So," he asked very quietly, "What now?"
Of ghouls and armies, he might have said more, but the present and the future weighed heavily on his mind.
"I do not know," Kalenedral shrugged, once again unnerved by the lack of weight hindering the motion. "Darker shall die, of course, else he will only become a larger and more annoying threat." And a large enough threat could eventually endanger the Ebon Blade, which was something he was always conscious of. It was not wrong to say that the brotherhood of Knights -- and their leader -- was his purpose, now.
"Shiny," Limbface added quite seriously, and when had he shuffled ashore? Being soaked didn't improve the ghoul's looks any, for certain, darkening his ragged bandages and flattening his eternally-matted hair. The ghoul approached Ardeth, and held out a hand made of large, razored claws. In its palm was a pale crystal, worn smooth and dull by the water.
"It's very shiny," Ardeth agreed.
He spoke gently to the ghoul, as if he were a particularly intelligent child-- a dangerously lethal child, at that. Some part of him would never, ever, not cringe just a little inside at the sight of a ghoul, especially one so close as this... but he never let the fear show on his face.
Not anymore, anyway. And not to this one, most of all.
To Kalenedral, he added, "That is why I have not suggested that we leave this Institute. He is still mostly their problem, even if it all seems to have gotten away from them."
It was as close to reassurance as he could figure out how to give.
Ardeth turned to him and bowed slightly over folded hands. "Thank you." That he was asking, and thanking, Kalenedral for his own potential death seemed to trouble him less than going mad; these were strange times indeed! But his own sort of sentimentality, or his lack of it, perhaps made his company easier to tolerate.
That he was grateful for Kalenedral's kindness, such as it was, was also quietly clear.
"Come here," he said as he straightened. "I'll heal what damage is left, now that you've washed the acid out." And, since the Death Knight had been in enough discomfort already, "I won't use Holy magic today."
"Hn," was Kal's stunning commentary on the topic of using Holy power on his wounds. He'd adapted to it more than most of his kind, having traveled with various priests for... a while, now. Almost the entirety of the time he'd been free, in fact. But it would never be pleasant.
He was always going to be an abomination to the Light, and he couldn't exactly claim that the sentiment wasn't mutual. No love lost, here. It was a useful tool for the living, and that was all.
"I seem to have bled on your robe," he pointed out the obvious instead, walking over. And indeed, the burns had oozed blood that was not quite the standard healthy shade of red, but which was forced through his veins anyway. Some deep, buried, subconscious part of his mind felt that his heart should beat and his blood should flow, and so it did. And as far as he could tell, it would continue to do so until the internal organ found it impossible to operate for one eventual reason or another.
In the meantime, it was useful for keeping his unholy power distributed evenly through-out his form with a minimum of effort. Blood was, after all, an incredibly useful tool to one of his kind; even the blood inside of his own corpse..
"It can be cleaned."
Ardeth raised his gloved hands, and held them about an inch away from Kalenedral's chest; blue-white energy, not gold, flowed through them to heal the Death Knight's wounds: the priest's own will and mana working together to rebuild damaged flesh and skin.
"Would that I could do the same for your armor... I'm surprised the acid got through my barrier."
"As was I," it was still a strange sensation, but Kalenedral was nothing if not stoic, "It was not magic-based, either, else it would not have gotten through my anti-magic shell." Nothing magic did, not with his. No true master of the Unholy discipline would spend less than the required time mastering that ability entirely.
"I suppose I should ask Varathanda about it," he added thoughtfully, "being as that she is an alchemist." That Varathanda would be as likely to demonstrate the acid by pouring more on him as anything didn't seem to phase him. You sort of got used to a level of animosity after beating down an orc, pinning them to the ground, and cutting their tongue out.
Which had basically just been Wednesday afternoon, in the Scourge.
Out in the water, Limbface held up another rock to the light, considered it, and tossed it back. Splash, splash!
"I wonder, sometimes, if you enjoy receiving pain as much as you enjoy giving it." Ardeth sounded somewhat amused, though his tone was a little complicated: ripping out tongues wasn't something that he approved of on a general basis, but the circumstances had hardly been ideal!
He paid Limbface no heed; the ghoul was always on the hunt for shiny things.
When the healing was done, he hesitated, and then stepped back. His hands dropped to his sides and curled gently closed.
"Sometimes," Kalenedral didn't see anything wrong with admitting it; it was just a random fact about being a Death Knight. "I doubt I would enjoy having my tongue removed, of course. But combat can sometimes be..." he considered a word as he stepped away and went to examine his mangled armor, "exhilarating, even when I am the one being hit."
Death Knights really were odd creatures, all of themselves. At least he wasn't San'layn, who seemed to get way too much enjoyment out of the most brutal of combat. It wasn't a sexual thing by default for a Knight, and certainly not for Kalenedral, but one had to wonder sometimes about the vampire princes.
"Did you know that there is an entire discipline based around that principle?" Kalenedral asked idly, crouching down to examine the armor, "I have dabbled in it, but I cannot maintain Limbface's presence on this plane while working with it. It requires too much of a shift in thoughts."
"It's unsurprising that your kind should have embraced such a discipline." It was no insult; Ardeth said it only with sardonic amusement. He sat down again, and watched.
"And I couldn't imagine you going without Limbface." The two were nigh-inseparable!
"I have no memory of a time in which I did not have a ghoul at my back," Kalenedral agreed, "although Limbface's intelligence took time to develop, he has -- as far as my experience can say -- always been with me."
Most of the armor appeared to be fine. The helmet, shoulders, and part of the breastplate had taken the brunt of the damage, as it had been a vial of acid and not a bucket. And the damage by itself would likely have been largely cosmetic, had it not been for the fact that Kal was in combat on a regular basis. His armor was always in need of repair; always being hammered on in one manner or another -- whether by the enemy, or by Kal's own smithing hammer to beat the dents back out.
And because it was in constant use, the added strain of having an unknown acid thrown onto it made it suddenly questionable. He could gauge how many more battles his armor could withstand when it was damage he was familiar with, but...
A glance at the helmet that Limbface had retrieved showed the truth of it. There was a hairline break in the metal from the impact with the tree, where the acid had hit the strongest. The Death Knight was often hit harder than that, and it meant that this set's usefulness was at an end until he could afford the time to melt down and re-craft at least half of it.
...Although, since he was leaving his current job, he would probably have the time soon enough. It was doubtful that the Institute had a use for him besides 'conveniently well-trained meat shield that conveniently fell into our laps'.
But professionals who fell from the sky often had other things they could be doing, and Kalenedral was no exception to that.
"Even the Army ghouls seem to be getting smarter as the years go by," he added, coming back to his original thoughts, "but I doubt they will ever be on par with even an earlier Limbface. I simply cannot invest as much power in them."
Ardeth folded his hands together. "So," he asked very quietly, "What now?"
Of ghouls and armies, he might have said more, but the present and the future weighed heavily on his mind.
"I do not know," Kalenedral shrugged, once again unnerved by the lack of weight hindering the motion. "Darker shall die, of course, else he will only become a larger and more annoying threat." And a large enough threat could eventually endanger the Ebon Blade, which was something he was always conscious of. It was not wrong to say that the brotherhood of Knights -- and their leader -- was his purpose, now.
"Shiny," Limbface added quite seriously, and when had he shuffled ashore? Being soaked didn't improve the ghoul's looks any, for certain, darkening his ragged bandages and flattening his eternally-matted hair. The ghoul approached Ardeth, and held out a hand made of large, razored claws. In its palm was a pale crystal, worn smooth and dull by the water.
"It's very shiny," Ardeth agreed.
He spoke gently to the ghoul, as if he were a particularly intelligent child-- a dangerously lethal child, at that. Some part of him would never, ever, not cringe just a little inside at the sight of a ghoul, especially one so close as this... but he never let the fear show on his face.
Not anymore, anyway. And not to this one, most of all.
To Kalenedral, he added, "That is why I have not suggested that we leave this Institute. He is still mostly their problem, even if it all seems to have gotten away from them."
"You take," Limbface enunciated very carefully, holding quite still, his faintly-glowing dead eyes fixed on the priest. Ardeth was distressed, even the ghoul could tell -- he did, after all, get the benefit of constant information from his master -- and shinies helped everything.
Because shinies were amazing.
And even though the priest was... well, a priest. And alive. And a priest. And also, a priest. Even despite that, he wasn't generally an ass to the ghoul (who, much like a child or an animal, still noticed such things), so he would give him a shiny.
"While that is true," Kalenedral replied, buckling pieces of armor back on, because even if it wasn't entirely battle sound it was at least still armor, "I have no other relevant skills. They are not a military, to need the services of a master smith, and I will not instruct them in combat. Someone shall need to teach them to work as a team, if they wish to survive, but I doubt it will be any Death Knight who does so. Our ways are not theirs."
And really, it had been Calthor who had been the biggest issue, with his stunt. But even without him, it had been painfully obvious to Kalenedral that while several of them were fighters, they were notsoldiers. They probably couldn't coordinate a simple march without bickering or tripping over one another, let alone fight as a unit.
"Limbface..." Ardeth stared at him, genuinely surprised, wide-eyed. "Thank you." He reached out to take the crystal, his cloth-covered hands dipping between the ghoul's claws.
That a ghoul can retain enough humanity to try to comfort a person who is neither his master, nor a Death Knight...
He held Limbface's gaze with his own. "Did you want some teacups to go with that teapot?" Oh yes, he remembered, even if he'd never said anything about it before.
And to Kalenedral, he murmured, "Yes. That is true... well, if you go, I will of course accompany you."
"Shiny!" Limbface sounded quite pleased with the world, which could either be because Ardeth had taken his present, or in reply about the teacups, or just... because he was Limbface. It was very hard to read him, sometimes. The ghoul scampered back off into the water, as he often did when they were near large bodies of it.
Kalenedral really did keep him on a very long leash, which was perhaps part of why his intelligence had grown. He was allowed to go forth and puzzle things out for himself while his master was occupied, however slowly he did so.
"We will not know, I would suppose, until I go to resign my position," the Knight said quite reasonably, setting the robe aside so as to buckle his breastplate back on. The shirt he'd had on under it before was a mass of tattered strips on the ground, which he intended to take with him when he went to speak to an alchemist. "I do not intend to be talked into remaining as a flock dog, but I hardly know the needs of a school. This is the first one I have set foot near, after all." That he remembered.
"Wait, wait, I have a shirt..."
Ardeth's pack was truly bottomless! He moved to stuff the crystal away somewhere secure, and then pulled out a fine black silk shirt. (He traveled light but stylishly!)
"Here. You can't just put metal on bare flesh, it'll chafe."
Kalenedral paused mid-buckling and eyeballed said shirt, one eyebrow raising slowly. "And it is mere coincidence that it is broad enough to fit, I would suppose," he said dryly. Then he shook his head, and undid his work on the breastplate, setting it back down and holding out a -- still bare! -- hand for the shirt. "Tailors."
The explosion of the sunwell had blackened his flesh, years and years ago. Now it was mostly gone, the discoloration on his torso was subtle, almost as though it had moved a few layers of skin down and left only a faint stain behind. The visible signs that he had been there wouldn't linger for too many more years, although Kal's memory since his resurrection was impeccable, and there was no doubt that he would remember every detail of the attack long after all lingering reminders were gone.
If Kalenedral had been a man prone to guilt, his memory would have been a curse. Thankfully, he was not.
Strange company, indeed.
"I should not want to..." Ardeth said slowly as he handed the shirt over. "I'm hardly even myself, to speak aloud of such things to a man who is neither inclined, nor interested, nor even aware."
He spoke with no censure, no anger, nothing save resignation. "Or even alive. I thought my nephew was an idiot, and look, I've fallen to the same lunacy. Ah, what strange times these are."
"You are speaking gibberish," Kalenedral replied slowly, eyebrow only going up higher as he slid the shirt on and did up the ties to keep it tight enough to not cause issue under the armor, but loose enough to not end up tearing, either. "But I see no tentacles. Shall I hold off on taking your head, then?"
It was utterly dry; he wasn't entirely serious. But no, he had no idea what the priest was talking about. 'Nor even aware' was quite correct, even now.
Ardeth gave him a wan smile. "It's a different kind of madness. Let's get out of here, I don't trust this forest."
The High Elves had settled in woods very near here, once. Many of them had gone mad, and eventually, they'd moved north, and founded their new kingdom. But perhaps some of it still lingered...
The priest slung his pack over his shoulder, and summoned his own mount. Today, it was a horse made of stars.
The Death Knight snorted faintly at that, and resumed re-armoring himself. Eventually it was all back on, and the skeletal gryphon returned to the shore, and they were off.
