Broken Aura

[muhaha8]

In the darkness of the night, all is silent. The whole world falls still at once as the sun's rays have left the land to the bitter feel of the twilight hours. As the cold tendrils of the darkness spread over the land, one flame of life cries out in anguish against that which would sooner see it extinguished. Its demise is swift, as the cold, unfeeling fingers of the night smother the flame, choking it from existence. Its end is, at the very least, swift and painless, as the growing flame is swiftly crushed and wiped from the world, just like so many others when the darkness comes.


A masked man stands before the burnt husk of a once-great building, tapping his foot against the ground. He clutches tightly a cane in his grip, teetering perilously from side to side with the wind. He exhales slowly but deeply, his gaze crossing over the building repeatedly, yet inevitably coming to fall on a turned bit of earth at the base of a set of crumbling stone steps leading to what presumably was once a doorway. The figure of a man is hunched deeply over, and begins to retch harshly. He spits out a blood-filled glob of phlegm and grimaces at the sight of the stain upon the earth, which he covers over with a scrape of his black-booted foot. His clothing is dark and ragged, even torn in places. He looks as though he had been through hell and back, just to arrive at the spot which he now stands. And yet, something in his demeanor gives away a lack of satisfaction at his discovery.

The mask adorning his face seems securely affixed, as there are no apparent straps or buckles keeping it attached. It is drawn upon with painstaking details in fine paints, fantastic swirls and markings adorning its surface. Beneath the edges are visible many burn marks, as well as signs of age and physical wear. His scalp is mostly burnt free of hair, only small patches capable of sustained growth at this stage. His voice comes in rasps, as though he were becoming physically exhausted through the mere act of speaking.

“This place was once great; once beautiful; once vibrant, so full of life and love. All it is now is a destroyed husk, a corpse of its former glory. No trace of its former owner anywhere.” He looks down to the upturned earth before him, and his balance slips. A young man rushes forward and catches him before he outright collapses, and holds him up in a firm yet gentle grasp. The masked man points at the spot of upturned earth, and another man moves in with a shovel and begins digging. One foot down, nothing; two feet, nothing; five feet, nothing; ten feet, still nothing. The group gives up soon after, and retreat back to a waiting carriage, where the masked man quickly falls asleep.


The drive north was swift. No one dared think that they would move so far north. But they did, once again proving human arrogance and deterministic views wrong. The bloody bastards had made their charge, and succeeded. He saw hordes of green beasts charging across the plains toward the home in which they were staying. He hardly cared about those who owned the house; it was convenient for him, at the time, to live there – nothing more. Yet, when the green beasts charged north, even he felt a pang of pity for the family whose home was bound to be destroyed. But he didn’t expect them to arrive before he made his escape.

They were there before the week’s end, and it was too late to flee west. Far too late. He prepared his family for the inevitable, and forced everyone he could to enter the home’s cellar: his son, his son’s new wife, and a few scattered members of the wife’s family. He and the men of the other family armed themselves, preparing to do what they could to keep their families alive. The green bastards fell upon them before any of them knew what to expect.

The battle was bloody; senselessly so. So many men fell, and many of the green ones did as well. However, the will of the green bastards was stronger than he and his men's, and the lines broke and collapsed. Driven back into the house, he prepared for his last defense, at the entrance to the cellar.

The end came before he knew what hit him: an axe hilt to the face knocked him unconscious. The building was ablaze when he came to. His body was catching alight as well. His screams echoed throughout the building, but he was trapped beneath timbers. Then, his world faded to black once more.

When he came to, a hand showed before his face, shoving aside the timbers. It then grasped for his own, pulling him up. He couldn’t help but think about his family; where was his wife? Was his son alive? What of his bro–


He started awake, sitting up with a sharp, wincing breath. He wiped a cold sweat from the side of his head, shaking it. ‘Where did you go, son?’ he thought to himself, before turning his eyes out to the world beyond the carriage. He watched the landscape shift from the barren, snowy landscape of the mountains down to a more thickly forested world, before closing his eyes again and losing himself to his thoughts.

[muhaha8]

As the sun regains hold over its domain, the world comes into a clearer view. It fails to provide solace for the flames of life that survived the cold darkness, but instead, it provides a sense of solidarity to those who remain. Those who survived the night find commonality with others like them, and band together in the face of the darkness that will come once more, after the sun’s grasp of the world slips away again.


He startled awake the following morning as his carriage dragged on into the streets of Stormwind. He remembered the city as it was, before the Orcs smashed it to pieces and scattered its people. A once-proud place, now it hid the wounds to its pride while baring its fangs to the world.

He hated it.

As he rode onward through the city, he caught himself imagining it as it once was; a wave of the hand discarded his delusions of the past, and he rediscovered himself in the present. He saw the slums of the city he was once so proud of; he saw the beggars on street corners with wealthy men simply walking past them as though they did not exist; he saw the division between wealth and poverty as he had never before been able to, in his past life.

It depressed him.

He rode further into the streets, and saw only worse. He saw men rob each other blind behind the other’s back, all the while talking with niceties to the face. He saw women offering themselves to strangers on the side-streets, only as a way to make a living. He saw men gang up on and murder those who walked down the wrong alley in groups, and guards who turned a blind eye to the crimes being committed. Everywhere his eyes fell, he saw things that wounded him to his very core and destroyed the image in his head of the city he once knew.

It sickened him.

The Lion was injured, covering up its decaying wounds with its pride. He shook his head and closed his eyes, choosing to rest, in the hopes that he might be able to wash away bad memories with good ones of the old city.


His eyes flashed open to find that he was sitting in a shabby camp, wooden boxes piled up around a campfire as though to keep out that which moved unsavorily in the night. He tried to look around, but found that he could not; he had little to no control of his own body. It was then that the pain hit him. A bloodcurdling scream of agony tore through his broken form, and his eyes fell down to look upon what remained of his burnt person, wrapped hastily in cloth and bandages. Two men quickly rushed to him, dabbing what flesh was exposed with bits of wadded-up cloth, while a third approached with a jug of water. He felt it touch his lips gently, and some was poured into his mouth. He swallowed as quickly as he could, his throat scorched and requiring relief.

“He’s awake,” he heard the jug-holding man say, oddly muffled. “He survived the day. Tough bastard, this one.”

“The day was nothing. We’ll see if he survives the night as well,” he hears a voice reply faintly, coming from near the campfire, as far as he can tell. “If he survives that, then we’ll take him with us when we move out in the morning.”

“But Sir, he’s hardly ready to move in this condition. Is there nothing we can do? Can we not stay for a day lo-“

The jug-holding man is cut off with a shout. “If he doesn’t survive the trip, then he doesn’t. We can’t afford to stay here any longer. The Orcs are already advancing this way. We were lucky enough to make it this far as is.”

Detaching himself from the conversation as best he can, he looks off to the west, to see the sun setting across the sky. The orange, red, and gold colors explode across the entire sky over the next few minutes, before slowly dying down again, as the cold darkness of the night claims the camp. The fire is stoked one last time before everyone beds down, a long, cold, night ahead.


He starts awake to the sound of shouting and stomping feet. He hears shouts and calls about Orcs and their return, their numbers, their positioning. He is lifted into a wagon as gently as the urgency of the moment allows, and finds he is lying on a thick bed of hay, covered by cloth. The only feature to greet him is the canvas of a covered wagon, and it is the only thing that keeps him company as the wagon rides off down the road with utmost haste.

He lost track of the time between when the wagon started moving and when it finally stopped, but when it did, there was no doubt of what had happened. He heard the din of battle from outside the covered wagon, the roars of Orcs and screams of impaled men; the gurgling of dying men and Orcs as their throats are cut; the sounds of death and hatred. He believed himself to be doomed.

Just as he hears the last dying cry of a man and sees the flap of his wagon being pulled back, he hears the whinnies of horses off in the distance. War shouts of human origin fill his ears once more, and the gallop of hoof beats follow shortly afterward. His vision goes black soon after, and he falls unconscious once more.


He awakens to find himself in another camp, light shining in from the east, this time with well-armed, well-armored men instead of the rough, uncouth boys – they could hardly be called true men – which he had found himself with the last time he awoke. One of the men approaches him and kneels before him, armor clanking gently. “Can you speak, sir?” The calm voice of the man fills his ears, yet sounds strangely hollow at the same time. He opens his mouth to speak, but only manages a rough, rattling breath. He resigns himself to shaking his head for the time being. “Alright, that’s fine. We’ll keep an eye on you for now. You’re in safe hands, sir.”

The armored man walks away, and he vaguely hears men speaking off in the distance. He turns his gaze to the rising sun, and thinks momentarily upon what his life has in store for him before he again succumbs to the pain of his wounds. His mind is once again seared blank, and he falls unconscious.


He starts awake once again, to find himself back in his carriage, in the middle of new Stormwind City. He sees his driver tapping on the glass of the door. “Sir, we have arrived,” he says through the glass. The driver opens the door and reaches to help him down, and he gladly accepts. “Your sleeping arrangements have been made. Right inside here.” He looks up to see the sun setting in the west, and sets his jaw against the coming darkness he fears every night, before he steps into the building presented to him.

[muhaha8]

Those souls left untouched bond securely during the time that the sun casts its warm rays over them. They forge a sort of brotherhood, a bond of kinship, through which they better themselves and each other. They secure their holdings, for they know that when the night comes again, their fight to stay free of the icy grip of the darkness becomes only more difficult. As the cold dark falls once more over the land, and the sun dies once again, these kindred souls bind close together in an effort to survive the horror that is the night.


It had been days since he was first taken to the camp. The knightly figures remained ever-vigilant, ever-present, against the darkness and the horrid green hordes that attacked every day with undying resolve. He spent his days thinking upon the past days, weeks, however long it had been; he truly had no idea how much time had passed any longer. He took his loss to heart; he believed it his fault that such a menace was beset upon his family, and the family he was staying with.

He hated himself for their deaths.

As he thought, he made ties to his past life, to the lives of his ancestors. He thought about their constant, life-long practices of the dark and forbidden magicks of the world, and how he came to despise himself for continuing on the practice. He came to the inevitable end that it was some higher power’s way of punishing his family for their actions. For the heretical things they had done, they would burn to death. And for being the patriarch that continued to spread their cursed actions, he would bear the scars that killed everyone he held dear, yet would carry on in humiliating, mocking display of their punishment.

He rolled over and retched violently due to the thoughts, coughing up what little food his caretakers had managed to get into him that day.


It took weeks in the camp, but he came to stand once more without support. His clerical caretakers spent their time rehabilitating them and, when he made his intent to study their religion – the Holy Light – clear, they took him under their collective wings to teach him their ways. He learned that the knightly figures that kept a constant watch on the camp were a new breed of holy warriors called the Paladins, members of the Order of the Knights of the Silver Hand. He came to revere the Light, and believed that it was the power that had punished his family for its actions. While he felt he should have hated himself for worshipping the very power he felt caused his suffering, he could not bring himself to do such a thing.

He came to revere the Paladins as well, through time. He witnessed them in battle against many Orcs as they attempted to raid the camp. He saw their maces and warhammers crush the skulls of many of the green menace, and saw their spears impale the assaulting hordes upon their shafts. He came to revere their power with the Light, and wished only that he could hold it himself someday. He wanted to be like the Paladins, though he knew he would never truly be in the physical condition to do such things.

And for that, he hated his physical form, and wished to restore it to what it was. And he tried, time and time again, and did nothing but fail each time.


His education began with the learning of doctrine. The group left camp many times and eventually moved from what he had learned was Hillsbrad north through Arathi, then east into Lordamere. The group arrived at the Church of the Holy Light’s headquarters at that point, East Lordamere’s regional capital, Stratholme. It was there that his education began. He learned the ways of the Church, learned its doctrine, learned its history, and learned its prayers. He learned everything that the common priest would know, and when his time came, well over a year later, he accepted his status as an ordained priest with open and accepting arms, just as the Church had accepted him so long ago.


He awakes to the sun shining through his room in the inn, birds chirping on the windowsill outside. ‘The middle of autumn,’ he thinks to himself, ‘and they still chirp…’ He scoffs at the thought that spring birds are still as excited as they most likely were in the springtime.

He dresses himself, this time in a pair of robes he had been saving for just the right moment: the pure, clean, white robes of a figure of his stature within the Church. ‘I’ve been gone for too long…” he thought, chuckling. ‘I wonder if they thought me dead all these years.’ He affixes the appropriate symbols to his robes, and sets off out of the inn for the Cathedral District. As he exits the inn, he pulls up his hood. Awaiting him is his carriage, the driver prepared to take him. He waves off the man as he approaches. “This last leg of the journey I must make of my own power and volition,” he mutters, and carries onward, a holy symbol clutched firmly in his left hand, cane in the other holding up his form.

He walks the pathways of Stormwind, finding his way to the new – to him – Cathedral in the north of the city. He follows a small group of priests, dressed far less ornately than he, across several bridges and canals, and arrives, after a lengthy time, at the Cathedral District. He stops a moment in admiration of the great building, admiring it as he once had the old Cathedral, but for different reasons this time around. He approaches the building slowly, bracing himself firmly on his cane. As he approaches, he sees two men in conversation, one young and the other nearing fifty. The older of the man stops mid-sentence as he sees the masked, hooded man pass.

The older man approaches him, jaw slackened. The priest blinks several times, before shaking his head slowly. He stops hobbling along on his cane to stop before this aging cleric. The man mumbles softly. “It can’t be… I’d know that mask anywhere. I painted that, so long ago, though it looks like it’s been touched up since then. But alas, I was much younger then. We thought you dead, Brother Calethos.”