IC: Getting Better at Being Worse
It seems that I have taken part in a camping trip.
A camping trip. The fire outside my tent has burnt low by now but I can still hear the faint crackle of smouldering wood and the scent of smoke hangs heavy in the air. It comforts me with its familiarity but then I must remind myself that I did not come to Mulgore so that I might recite stories and be young again.
I came for a war.
If I am ever able to locate the idiot responsible for getting his ears in a twist over that ragtag group of Alliance soldiers I...well, best not to write of that here. Suffice to say that I will have words for him and will impress on him the importance of my time.
As we regrouped ourselves from our ‘victory’ I could hear many of the Shu’halo praising our battle prowess and the collective might of the Horde.
They must be joking, surely? I have been in shouting matches with my siblings that have seen more bloodshed than what was seen today. What prowess does it take to march onto a field where you outnumber the enemy five to the one? None.
I cannot even claim that my actions served them, they who I always serve. It is true that carnage and destruction feed them like magic feeds my people but what I served them today was poor and diluted, milky with contamination. So many opportunities were missed, so many chances to light a vengeful fire in the hearts of my enemies and wait for them to succumb.
In fact, the only redeemable part of the entire experience is that apparently Winterbitten requires flying lessons; she sustained mild casualties when she managed to fall from her saddle and introduce herself to the dirt. It serves as amusement if nothing else.
And Sunwell knows that there was nothing else.
Ah, that and I have had the mixed pleasure of meeting Nightsnare. Her association with the Highlord weighs heavily on my mind and I cannot help but wonder if she sensed that. Perhaps not. While she is to be commended for arriving to the battle and performing her duty it is also not a worthwhile testing ground.
She would have met more resistance from turkeys in Northrend, I think. Regardless, I do not believe that we can trust her. She wants to be trusted. I do not care.
What is strangest though, and this is what keeps me from sleep, is that I am entirely calm. I am frustrated, yes, but I have always been given to such manners when I feel slighted. This is not new.
But the calm is. It has haunted and teased me these last weeks and tonight, with my face pressed into my bedroll and the smell of smoke in the air, it is upon me.
I have not been calm since...
Storm Peaks.
I know what has brought about my peace, at least in part but I cannot help but marvel at it. I feel no different than I did a month ago, no less devoted to their cause, but I feel more able.
A peculiar notion when one considers that I just spent several hours patrolling a damned hill and waving my swords through the air with all due manliness.
But I am.
What I seek to accomplish is possible. I am still Jadall Sunsorrow and I am still as powerful now as I was in the North and I am much more cunning. Perhaps I am even a little wiser.
It can be done.
It may take shattering every weapon I own on the shields of the ignorant and faithless, it may consume and extinguish Aenstrian’s fire, it may even, and Sunwell save me, call on every arrow Thistle has to offer.
It may kill us.
But it is possible.
ooc: small voice change here as I finally get to dabble in something present and not backlogged by forever.