The story of Erumarä, Mage of the Horde

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“The answer is still no.” The servant at the door was new. Erumarä remembered when old Jessamyr would answer, his shining light blue eyes saddened to look at her. The disdain in this new one, a younger man with a pointed beard and stiff bearing, she found easier to bear. Anger was a better feeling than sadness — sadness felt leaden, like being weighed down. Anger was like the crackle of flames in a hearth, except she was the hearth, the wood that cracked and popped and the flames licking and tearing and leaping all at once.

“Please inform them I’ll be in Dalaran for some time…”

“They have instructed me not to pass along any further messages from you. They do not wish to know your arrivals and leavings.” With that, the nameless (as far as she knew, since he hadn’t deigned to give her his name) servant closed the door in her face.

For a moment Erumarä considered just blowing the door off the hinges. She took several deep breaths, but they felt like a bellows at a forge, stoking the flames yet higher. You master it, it doesn’t master you.

When she finally turned away from the door, her eyes felt hot and her stride was stiff. She walked until she found herself at the Legerdemain Lounge. She waved down the bartender, a tall Orc she also didn’t recognize. New faces every day.

“What can I get you?”

“Wine. A lot of wine. Just… a bottle. Something red and expensive.” He nodded and walked off. A few minutes later, she’d drained a goblet and was starting on another, thinking. She wondered at how the same woman who’d taught her the first spell she’d ever learned could be the same one who told some lackey not to even bother her with…

“Easy there, Eri.” She looked up, seeing another pair of lightly glowing blue eyes. Another ‘High’ Elf. She knew this one, barely.

“Captain Sunchaser. What do I owe the pleasure?”

“You’re boiling your wine.” Sure enough, the bottle had begun to seethe in her grasp. You master it, it doesn’t master you. She put the bottle down, took yet another breath. “Something wrong?”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t be of interest.”

“I can think of worse uses of my time than to share a drink and talk.” He gestured to the chair. “May I?”

“I…” She wasn’t sure. She wanted to tell him to leave, and yet, he was a potential source of answers. “If I say yes, you have to answer a question for me. A few, perhaps.”

“I’ll do what I can.” He raised his eyebrows and she felt the clash of her anger and the amusement at the expression.

“Sit, then, if you’re willing.” He did, and she looked at the bottle. “I’d best order another. What do you like?”

“I haven’t have Quel’thalas Red in a very long time.” He smiled, a sad thing. “Not since the Second War.”

She gestured to the barkeep and made the order, keeping her own council and letting him keep his. Once the wine and two new goblets were brought, they sat there and drank for a while, her letting the smell remind her of a long ago summer day in the orchard attached to the estate. The estate now destroyed, in the ruins of what was once a beautiful place. Days spent watching her mother’s father pick the grapes with his own hands. It’s a blessing, to be able to choose what we burden ourselves with.

“So what did you want to ask me?”

“You… don’t you miss us?” She looked into the goblet. “Silvermoon? The Sunwell? How can you…”

“I miss Silvermoon every day. I had some cousins… no close family. Those died when the Orcs came.” She looked up, surprised at the evenness of his tone. “My siblings all died when Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer allied with the Amani. I had nothing left, so I pledged myself to Alleria, and we went to war. Chased them all the way to Outland.”

“That was decades ago.” She took a sip. “Look at what’s happened since. Look at…”

“You’re not really asking about me.”

“No.” She sighed, the flames momentarily banked. “My parents live here. In Dalaran. They teach. They taught me and my brothers. I learned magic from them, mostly my mother… father is a lab wizard. Mother’s the one who…” The surface of the wine in her goblet was starting to dance and she put it down, feeling the heat rise again. “I have six brothers. When Prince Kael… when the bastard raised his banner, we joined him. We wanted to fight. They marched through Quel’thalas and they killed everything they touched! I saw it! We fought and we died or we ran because there were so many of them, and the gates fell, and…”

The words stopped suddenly and it felt like choking but he didn’t rush her.

“They stayed here.” He said it calmly and she nodded. “And you want to know why?”

“I want to know why they don’t want us. We’re all still alive! We could… I chose the Prince, and then, I chose the Horde. The Alliance spawned that bastard and set him loose on us and then, when we tried to find allies, they let a pig named Garithos…” This time the flames actually leapt and her eyes flashed. “He wanted us dead. They all do. I know them now. That’s your Alliance, when you need them they turn on you.”

“Orcs cut my sister’s head off and stuck it on a pike. You work alongside them.” He held up a hand. “It’s not an argument either of us will win today, Eri. Your parents… well. I don’t know them. I wish my family were here. I hope for their sake they come around while they have a family to still see.”

“They’re pigheaded old fools.”

“And you miss them.”

“And I miss them.” She hissed like steam escaping a boiler. “She always said we master the magic, it can’t ever master us. This past year… the demons, the constant fighting. New faces everywhere I look. I don’t recognize the Horde anymore, but I know it’s never sent me off on a mission hoping I would die.”

He just inclined his head and took a sip of his wine.

“We didn’t bring enough of this when we went through the portal.”

“I have a tab.” She leaned back in her chair. “Feel free to order another.”

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