(2024-02-27) Letter for a Legion Lass

Details

Author:	Mishell
Summary:	Brannagen writes to Sintha Fallon about the events at Mordre'Thar.
Rating:	T for Teen

Arc: Season 13

A letter arrives at the Fallon townhouse addressed not to Lady Sintha but to "Sergeant Fallon, 7th Legion, 6th Expeditionary."

The handwriting is peculiar, almost machine-neat but angular and blocky and proportioned in a way that no machine would print Common. Both on the envelope and on the letter itself, the writing perfectly fills the ideally-margined space of the paper, with the last word of each page lined up along the right margin and the closing orienting itself just inside the bottom margin, with all the lines evenly spaced.

Sgt. Fallon:

What I meant to convey to you at Dalaran HQ, badly timed as it was, was this: that battlefield was quite literally a death trap. As a priest I am trained to sense and manipulate certain spiritual currents that affect and carry souls, and that place, for reasons I cannot quite pin down, was a whirlpool sucking every ounce of Light and life into it. Far beyond even what I normally sense in Scourged areas.

Every single man and woman who was injured on that field simply gave up, but for a few we found who were either exceptionally strong willed or really not hurt that badly, just unable to walk. When I say the rest gave up, I mean spiritually, metaphysically. It took five to ten times the usual energy to heal their wounds, or to even attempt resurrection, like something was drawing most of it away into a horrible black void. And when I reached out to those souls that had not yet fled, I could not get purchase. Twas as though my hands were covered in grease and those souls were in a raging river going elsewhere.

I am telling you this because I do not understand how you walked away alone. And also to let you know that the man you tried to save, he was already gone before you took hold of him. I don't think Alonsus Faol himself could have reached him. I am under no illusions that I am the most powerful priest on Azeroth, but I am damned confident in my skills, and on that field I felt more useless than I did as a stumbling novice in the Third War.

What you need to focus on is that somehow you walked away from that. Alone. You need to understand that you are made of special stuff, if you don't already know that from being in the 7th Legion. You walked away without help. I wish I could show you that battlefield through a priest's eyes so you would know what it is you've done, and how impossible a thing.

Anyhow, I wish you all the best and I am real sorry for making you cry when we should have been having a good time. My curiosity sometimes just gets the better of me. And honestly seeing you cry blew my first theory to pieces: that maybe you just got free of that place because you are one of those accursed souls who just feels nothing at all (as I am sometimes accused of being). But that isn't true (for either of us, it seems).

So I don't know what you are exactly, other than a miracle. Maybe you've been told that before, but I would be remiss if I didn't.

Respectfully,

Prospector Brannagen Stillwall