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| Details |
| Author: | Alli |
| Summary: | After an evening of helping his mother at their family tavern, Thalstan talks with her about the adventures of the Cobalt Blade, and the secret problem they're trying to solve. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Arc: The Cobalt Blade
In the Commons of Ironforge, it was swiftly approaching that time of night when silence began to win out over sounds of laughter, conversation and raucous dwarven singing. There was a small surge of quieter activity, that of the cleaning, tidying and locking up variety, up and down the tavern row.
The Thirsty Dragon, the Stouthammer establishment, was no different. Thal had just finished sweeping up the floor, and he settled with a satisfied sigh on a stool, propping the broomhandle against the bar. You’d think, with all the adventuring, he wouldn’t be tired after a Friday night waiting tables in his ma’s tavern. Then again, a dwarven tavern could be as exhausting as a battlefield.
He turned, his long, full beard rustling, as footsteps sounded from the kitchen. And there she was, his ma, her dark hair tied up in a bun only slightly frazzled by the end of the night, her face still a little flush from the heat of the ovens. She smiled fondly at him, and for a moment he wondered if those lines around her eyes and mouth had always been so pronounced. They were lines that spoke of a life filled with laughter and happiness, at least, even if it had been less so lately. Since his pa had been lost in Silithus. Still, it lifted his heart to see that she could still smile like that, after everything.
“It’s been good havin’ yeh ‘round the bar again, Thal,” she said, coming around to pat him on the shoulder, careful not to muss his long hair. “Though yeh brought a righ’ amount o’ work with yeh. Seems after the first week all the lasses told their friends to come on over an’ take a gander.” She chuckled. “I have ne’er seen so much flirtin’. Worse than when the Firststone books came out.”
Thalstan chuckled. “Reckon I’m about a real-life Arnathorn Firststone by now, with all th’ Cobalt Blade adventures. And wi’ the Blade novels too, even better’n the Knack ones, though no’ a lot of romance in the published ones.”
“And yet, not a one o’ those lasses catches yer fancy?” his mother settled with a weary sigh on a nearby stool. “Yeh know, a tavern-keeper’s got a wide social network. If yeh’d like, I could easily match yeh with… I dinnae know, a senator’s daughter, mayhap? Or an adventurin’ sort…”
Thal shook his head, his mustache rustling as he smiled at his mother’s meddling. “Plenty o’ lasses catch my fancy, but none o’ them my heart.” He placed one hand on the center of his beard, over his chest. “Not yet. There’s still time, ma. Lots o’ time. Fer now, I’ve got enough ta be goin’ on with, leadin’ the Cobalt Blade.”
This time it was his mother who laughed. “I’d imagine so, readin’ those books. Are they true? Is th’ gnome really so dangerous? An’ the mage, grey-haired because o’ a time travel accident wi’ the bronze dragons, stoppin’ the Blackrock mountain from explodin’ and destroyin’ Azeroth?”
“Uh, I think tha’ one was a fan-written backstory.” Thal stroked his beard in thought. “Far’s I know, Art’s not had any major run-in’s wi’ dragons. Nor volcanoes, but for the nice one right here.”
His mother blushed, barely visible in the dim light. “Well, hard ta keep straight sometimes, but I read all th’ stories I can get my hands on. ‘Cept the sorts o’ stories a mother shouldn’t. I’m jus’… jus’ so proud o’ you I could burst. An’ yer father would be, too, were ‘e here.”
Thal felt his own heart lift, even as he felt the faint prickling of tears at the corner of his eyes. Not as clever with words as Arnathorn Firststone, he just leaned over to give his ma a hug. Her frame felt a bit more fragile these days, which was another little jolt. She’d always seemed like a force of nature when he was growing up. Demanding that the world accept what she had to give, and that it make room for her and her little family.
Then he remembered the expression on her face, when they’d gotten word his father was killed in action. That was the first time he looked at her and saw her as a person who could break, just like anyone else. Still, she had endured. He only hoped he could carry half of her strength into his work with the Blade.
He pulled back from the hug and straightened his tabard, moving the conversation back to sturdier ground. “As fer the rest o’ the portrayals, Zaara’s… well, I think th’ real girl’s funnier than they put ‘er as in fiction. But she’s got a darker side too, I think. I glimpsed it once or twice, when we got to talkin’ about war an’ orcs. I can also say Vesyllah’s jus’ as broody as they make ‘er out ta be. And I believe she would ha’ made some kind of flirtin’ pass at that san’layn, if it hadn’t been evil an’ undead an’ tryin’ ta kill us all. ”
His ma slapped the bar with a laugh. “So the san’layn killin’ in Silverpine was true? What o’ the rest of it? Freein’ druids from nightmares in caverns tha’ moan an’ wail? The cultists wi’ their monster egg in the cave systems off the coast o’ Kalimdor? Securin’ a major Defias informant?”
“All true,” Thalstan nodded. “Though we did some more down to earth stuff, too. Helping out the Night Watch in Duskwood, trackin’ down folks as burned an inn in Dustwallow… but I suppose the novels might no’ have given yeh the real thread.” Thal leaned closer to his mother, lowering his bushy brows over his keen and sharp eyes. “I can only tell yeh if yeh promise to keep a secret.”
“Course, son,” She nodded, her face open and honest. “No secret yeh tell me will ever leave th’ walls o’ the Dragon.”
“From th’ beginning, we were after a lockbox,” he explained, glancing around as if to make sure the closed tavern was as closed as it should be. “VanCleef’s lockbox, though we didnae know what was in it. It were a puzzle box, and it took us ages to get th’ keys for it. Ages and a lot o’ goblins.”
“Ooh, the goblins were in the books,” his ma smiled. “The tricksy ones?”
“The Mizzyrixes, yeah,” Thalstan grins briefly. “We first did some business with a Mebok, fetching things out o’ the Wailing Caverns when we went in ta help th’ druids. Then we got that Defias fellow, who ought to’ve had one of the original keys. But he’d bartered his key to Mebok’s brother, Wixxil.”
“Least yeh had good contact wi’ the Mizzyrixes already?” his ma interjected.
“Yeh could say that,” Thalstan rustled his mustache with a low chuckle. “But that Wixxil’d gone off and got himself stuck in a quilboar den. We had ta rescue him.”
“And he gave yeh the key in reward,” she nodded.
“Yeh’d think so, but no. Mebok’d had the key the whole time,” Thalstan throws up an exasperated hand. “He could ha’ given it to us, but he tricked us into goin’ in and savin’ his brother. Which mayhap we would’ve done anyway, if he’d asked us straight. But at the end o’ the day, at least Mebok gave us the key. The broken key.”
“Broken? An’ the goblin couldnae fix it?” She raised both eyebrows.
“Nope. Needed somethin’ only a gnome would have,” Thal sighed. “So we went into Gnomeregan to get the key fixed. In there we met their other brother, Kreebo, who seemed a lot more on th’ up an up. Gave us good info, and we found th’ thing we needed ta fix the key. He also got us in on another job in th’ quilboar dens later, to one-up his brothers, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. Back to the lockbox… when we opened it, it was empty.”
“Oh, surely no,” his ma said, her mouth dropping open in disappointment. “After all that.”
“Well, no’ fully empty,” Thal amended. “There was a letter in it. From some person called ‘A.M.’, said they were in the Twilight’s Hammer, and they took what was in the lockbox and said they were goin’ ta use it to ‘save Azeroth’.”
“I dinnae think we an’ the Twilight’s Hammer agree on the definition o’ saving,” his ma sniffed. “But then yeh’ve no idea what was in it?”
“Well, we had a guess,” Thal said slowly. “There was a mission months earlier, where I meself play-acted as a cultist.”
For a moment, his ma’s expression went thunderous, but then the anger subsided. “Fer a good cause, son, I know it. I jus’ don’t like the idea of people thinkin’ yer one o’ their ilk.”
“I know, and yeh know I’d never fall fer that claptrap, aye?” Thal relaxed when he saw agreement in his mother’s eyes. “But we found th’ same person who wrote that note was scrawlin’ in a cultist book by Damina Krawse, on th’ topic o’ somethin’ called the ‘Seed of Eternal Endings’. So tha’s what we think we’re after, but we dinnae know where it is.”
His ma’s eyes widened. “Eternal Endings? That does no’ sound good.”
“Supposedly, can curse somebody’s whole bloodline, an’ the cult had bigger plans fer it than even that,” Thal shuddered. “We’ve got ta find it, an’ we’ve got ta destroy it. As it happens, we’re doin’ better righ’ now on the second than th’ first. Working with some Scarlet Crusade types to make somethin’ called an ‘Elixir of Beginnings’.”
“Think yeh can trust a Scarlet Crusader?” his ma asked skeptically.
“No, an’ that’s why we’ve not told them we don’t know where th’ Seed is,” Thal said, furrowing his bushy brows even deeper and putting a sly finger by the side of his proud nose. “They’re helpin’ us fer now, an’ we’ll figure out how to handle things. We jus’ got to finish this elixir, and find this seed. Took somethin’ from a Scarlet cemetery, bone dust from Desolace, an’ we’ll see what else. Tha’s what we’re up to now, and probably back at it soon.”
His ma clapped him on the shoulder encouragingly, and smiled again. “My little hero. I always knew yeh’d end up savin’ the world someday, takin’ after yer pa. You and yer team o’ heroes. Yeh ought to bring ‘em by the Thirsty Dragon sometime fer a pint. I’d like to meet yer friends.”
“My colleagues,” Thalstan protested. “My heros-in-arms. But… yer right, also, they’re my friends. I’ll see if I can bring ‘em sometime. Maybe after we finish this bit wi’ the Scarlet Crusade, eh?”
She smiled, pushing up wearily from the barstool. “Whenever yeh like, son. You and yer friends are welcome here anytime.”