Ander Carmyne
((I hope you like books. This will probably be the longest part of this three part story. Thanks to Seralah for her interaction!))
Abigayle and Ravvos would be fine. There was no doubt in Carmyne's mind that they would return from the frozen front unharmed, although possibly changed. He'd watched and learned from Abigayle Wexford ever since his return from his lengthly travels. She reminded him of everything in life that he never had, never knew he wanted. Here was this woman, proud and true, who was underestimated by everyone in her company, and why? Because she could cook? Because she loved to serve and dish and show her friends she cared? And for that, most of Blackdawn wouldn't even suspect that this woman could end any one of them in an instant. She was much more powerful of a human being than Carmyne ever was. Ravvos Duskmaw, her mate, didn't even really realize how lucky he was to have found her.
Their love... scared him. Sickened him on some level. It was so easy for them to have, and yet Carmyne could not even fathom how they did not hurt each other in the end. Every woman he had ever loved had hurt him, afterall... and because of it he had turned into them. Cordilea... Ihluriel... they had suffered simply because Ander Carmyne was... broken.
Carmyne rode. For hours. He'd sent his best remaining friends off to war, and stuck himself alone with the company of troops who, for the most part, didn't even like him. Without Abigayle and Ravvos, how would he control them? He'd gifted them with cloaks to keep them warm in Northrend and told them that if it was the last time he saw them, he would remember them fondly. Such... impartial words for such a personal gift. The real Ander Carmyne... would have said so much more to Abigayle. So much more to Ravvos. Things they deserved to hear. He had zero doubts in his mind that they would return from their journey, and help lead Blackdawn to a bigger and brighter future. It was himself he wasn't sure would ever return.
Carmyne rode for Gilneas. The rain started to patter his face as his horse galloped across the Silverpine border. He could have flown one of his mystical beasts, and if anyone had asked him why he hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to answer. He was already cold, he should have worn his mask.
There was an old poem in his family. A rhyme, lyrics of a song possibly. Ander's father had always recited it to him at key points of his life. Every night before bed, graduation days. However, the times he heard it most, the times when it had had the most impact on him, was when Carmyne did something to disappoint his father. That is when he had heard the true meaning behind the words. And now, Carmyne, feeling as dark and lost as he had ever felt... couldn't remember it. His father's words were lost in him somewhere. For weeks he had tried to remember, tried to recite the mantra to himself, and could not. He couldn't even get one of the words out of his mouth. Nothing came everytime he tried. So he had returned to Gilneas, a city of memories and lost treasures, to find his family tome. This tome that had his salvation, written in it's pages. What was his father trying to tell him all those years? Why couldn't he remember?
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When Carmyne rode up on the house, he stared it down. He had not noticed from afar that it was illuminated. A faint glow lit up the parlor window, which showed just a little smoke coming as well. Fire? Vagrants? Looters? Unacceptable, considering his personal mission. He walked up the steps to the door and put his ear to it. He was still human at this point, holding his breath to see if he might hear voices. When he could not, he creaked the door open and slipped inside, wrapping his black cloak around him to hide his golden trimmed leathers in the shadows. He sneaked along the hallway that served as a nexus of sorts to every room and stair in the house, one straight hall connected to every door on the first floor. He did not have to sneak far to find a Blood Elf, dancing to unheard music, whispering to unseen things. The room was set up in such a way that she was clearly involving herself in some kind of ritual or seance. The incense burners around the study gave it a hightened temperature. He kept his breathing in control as he snuck up on her.
She said something, dropping the dress she had been holding, pleading to something to come back to her, to speak and not hide. Carmyne knew she wasn't referring to him, but even still, he came up from behind her with a loud hiss and drew his seratted dagger from his waist. He put the knife to her throat quickly. "Welcome to the Carmyne house. I hope you've enjoyed the hospitality."
She called him Raven, a ghost, a spectre. Accused him of having a darkness following which scared away all the spirits from this place. How right she was. He threw her to the ground, letting his dagger scratch her skin superficially. She began to tremble, not really aware of her surroundings. Carmyne took a deep breath, trying to soothe his anger at the Horde denizen corrupting his old home in such away, and immediately he staggered. The incense in the room was burning some kind of drug into his system. He had not truely noticed it before, as he was controlling his breathing in the dark, sneaking. He immediately toppled one of the burners closest to him.
"What have you touched? Taken?" He asked her, angry.
"We only wished to speak to the sad little spirits here... but they ignore us..." She said, shaking on the floor, beginning to stand. "We touched some wet things, a dress, poppet." She swayed when she stood. She was clearly under the influence of many many things, although what Carmyne would never be able to say. These drugs in the room were just the icing on her decadant cake. She eyed him and took a step back. "Darkness. Darkness bleeds into you... icy fingers... death..."
Carmyne growled again, lost in his anger, and wrapped his hand around the small creature's even smaller neck. He squeezed. He warned her that if she did not do as he said, she would feel the darkness more than she already had. Who was this man talking to this Elf?
She spoke nonsense in return, begging, pleading once again to someone who was not there. Carmyne threw her against the wall, realizing that he would not be getting further with this woman than he already had, only able to try and remove her from the equation. He was breathing deeper, angrier. More and more of the infected air was hitting his senses, lifting his mind further from who he was. And he was so angry. Why was he so angry?
She would not budge, would not leave. His every word telling her, threatening her, fell on deaf ears, too influenced by drugs to pay him any mind. Soon, he lost control. Before she new it, an animal stood in front of her, in Carmyne's place. The big beast swiped her across the face. She was so easy to bruise. So tiny, lithe, malnourished. The claw swept across her cheek and sent her to the floor instantly. She crumpled up in a ball and Carmyne took another deep breath. It was all so fuzzy, this time the foggy smoke hitting him and causing him to lose his balance. He stumbled backward slowly, hitting the wall furthest away from her, closest to the door. He took another deep breath and abosrbed the fresh air from the hall way.
Carmyne wanted to rip her apart, send her back to the Sunwell in shreds, but that fresh air, the scent of long passed Gilnean perfumes and colognes, rain, it brought him back to reality for the moment. The book, the tome. Thats what he came for, not to shed blood in his old home. He stalked forward, the woman was on all fours now, and he leaned over her, grabbing her by the arm tightly. He dragged her out of the room and tossed her into the hall, following her shortly and shutting the door behind him. He took simple and deep breaths.
"Elf, you'll either be leaving... or helping me search the house. I'm looking for... a tome. With the name Carmyne written across it's cover. Very old." He muttered to her.
The air presented to Seralah, the elf, a moment of clarity in her drugged mindset. "We found no books here. Not but dust and clothes and an womans shoe, ugly, monster, beast." She said hatefully. "We meant no harm. We will leave when we are healthy... We wanted only to commune with the spirits in the place. You come with your Darkness, they all can feel it, scared them away, pushing it on us." She muttered. Carmyne had no more time, nor patience, to spend with the Blood Elf. He growled quietly and turned on a heel towards the stairs.
"This is not their place. This is my home. Let them find their own peace. Let me find mine." He said as he walked away from her.
She was quick to respond. "You will not find it here. No arm or whisper will ever give you peace, cruel, ugly, monster." She spat.
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Carmyne was alone upstairs. Just as she had warned him, there was nothing. No books or tomes of any kind upstairs. Carmyne stalked around for a moment, sighing. Room to room, nothing changed. All there was; dust, webs, and more dust. No reprieve or pleasant surprises. The last door he opened, one thing stuck out in the otherwise completely bare room. Just as Seralah had said. An old woman's shoe. He walked across the room, his padded feet leaving prints in the caked dust on the floor boards. Leaning down, he picked up the shoe off the floor and sighed. Upon further inspection, he could see the foot prints of another being as well. Perhaps this is where Ihluriel had found his sister's dress--
His sister. Carmyne looked up, imagining to himself. Of course, his sister. The realization hit him so hard that he reverted back to a human again, losing his fur in a puft of smoke and darkness. "Home." He whispered to himself. Carmyne had only lived here after the war for a time. Very few of his families possessions had ever even been moved here, why would he have thought this tome would be one of them? No, that tome was at his true home. Buried beneath the ocean. In Darkhaven.
Carmyne looked at the shoe in his hands again. Remorse, pity, regret, emotions flooded over him. He leaned down and set the shoe down in the exact way he had found it, replacing it in its impint in the dust.
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Returning to the elf, he found her asleep, curled up in a ball in the hallway where he had left her. He looked her over. He had hurt the small and frail woman. Her cheek was swollen, her neck was slightly bleeding and bruised. Ander frowned and all those emotions from the story above returned. How could he have done this to this little woman? She was relatively harmless, pathetic and small. He, who always toted the idea of peace, had damaged this elf in ways he hadn't even begun to realize yet. He had become the animal he never wanted to be, if only for a short moment.
The events that transpired after this lonely realization were fast. He awoke the elf and politely asked her to leave the house and never return, but it was an unfair request to make of this broken and hurt woman. A request she tried to fulfill weakly. Seralah made it outside, into the cold rain, and had tried to mount her horse, but had fallen to her knees. Carmyne watches as she coughed and hacked up a lung. Ander walked out to her, and placed her arm over his shoulder and walked her back into the house. He took care of her, removed her wet and cold clothes and put her in something warm, laid her to rest in his old guest room. He treated her wounds, and even her sickness as well as he could, with one of his spare runic potions.
In reality, there was nothing Ander Carmyne could do to save this woman, she could hardly save herself. So much was wrong with this elf, and she had found Carmyne at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
He left her there, in his home, the place he had tried to physically force her to leave. But his night was not over. Carmyne found his own horse and rode on, the rain stinging the skin on his face once more as he raced through the city, over a bridge. He was going to Darkhaven. He was going home. He had to remember who he was. Who his family needed him to be.
He had to find this tome. He had to find Ander Carmyne. Or become the monster that would have ended Seralah this night.
