(2026-04-20) Terrible Things

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Author:	Athena
Summary:	Melancholy writes Theris about the harrowing weekend and the beautiful Monday she's had, and explains some of the reasons why the pandaren tell them to show the mogu "no mercy." 2k~ words.
Rating:	T for Teen

Dear Theris,

It’s terrible that the poem made me laugh, especially because it is terrible, but it’s fair to say that while it is excessive spacing, it’s used correctly at least.

Have you shown Mr. Wilkinson the poem “We Are Seven” by William Wordsworth, yet? Perhaps he would find understanding in it, too.

I know that I wrote recently, but the past two days alone have had entire sagas worth of words in them, but for every horror of the darkness, there is a dawning come to burn it away. If I were at home, I might think I shouldn’t tell you about it, for I know there’s no possibility that I would be able to relate the stories with a smile beneath to match the one on my face. It was distressing, and even the memories fill me with a cold dread that makes me flinch from the thoughts.

The Golden Vale’s people asked for our help in finding what was happening with some of their people who had been slain by the mogu, and so we set out, a contingent of us, Lena, Bryn, and myself with the Fleet and of others with Cobalt Company (including Sir Dane Atley the Red and Lady Cressidha Aspenwood!). There was a mogu who seems to be in charge, with a great and appalling power, whose name I’m surely botching the spelling of Jow Jin (there’s a sound in it that I can’t seem to decide how to spell, like juh+zzz, so you’ll have to just imagine until I can get someone who will spell it for me).

We’d fought him before – well, I say fought but that might give you a false impression of what happened, especially with me. He commanded us to kneel, and then he made us kneel: imposed some sort of magical will over us. I tore my skirt. Afterwards, I asked Lena if there was anything I might do, in case anything like it ever happened again (and we had not fought him off then; he left a guard quilen to finish us off, but either underestimated us or overestimated his creature). She helped me with a technique called Unbound Will, which I had thought I did well in learning to succeed at least most of the time.

But when we faced him again, he set these nets on us after assaulting the entirety of us with what felt like an endless army of clay soldiers imbued with souls, and I panicked in the moment. I couldn’t concentrate to cast it at all. They took us away to cages, and imprisoned us. I was utterly useless – it was all I could do to not only lay there on the ground and cry miserably, I was so frightened.

Luckily, one of the scouts we had been working with – and who we had tried to save from the mogu – was captured with us, and they hadn’t checked him over thoroughly. He got us out (it’s going to be confusing, but his name is actually “He,” pronounced the same as the pronoun, and his surname is Softfoot, which might be useful to refer to him by, except that he has a brother much like him whose name is also Softfoot, and I have mixed them up several times already to my embarrassment when they are really entirely different people).

I was so shaken, I could hardly think to cast, and I was one of those who could, because I had my other focusing crystal in a cane inside the Emotionless Void in my pocket, and so though they took my focusing athame along with all the others’ weapons (Bryn lost his rifle, and Sir Dane Atley his sword with an incredible name of Thunderfury), I was still able to use the fel because of it. Even more fortunate for us all though was that Cressidha and Lena were there, and we had our lucky charm of a stormcrow of a druid named Caspis. I should hate to think what might have happened if it had only been me. I am entirely undependable for any real efforts, although I am doing my best to learn quickly.

In the end, we retrieved everyone’s weapons, and no one died (not even a poor creature of a hippogryph named Almond who belongs to Bishop Mordecai Aspenwood – this is the sort of illustrious company I am keeping! Me! Little Melancholy!), but we had to retreat.

The next day we went to go to a soul’s library of the mogu’s, Bryn, Lena, and a quel’dorei woman I hadn’t met before named Aszera Sunstrike (I must speak with her more to at last perhaps make it possible for me to speak Thalassian properly), and I. The mogu do the most horrific of things with souls of their own people as well as others, encapsulating them, using them as like gnomish batteries, and enslaving them. I was overconfident, since I thought that we were referring to it as a “library” but really it might just as easily have been called a “morgue” or “catacombs” by other measures.

I shouldn’t have been in it. I do know better. I thought of Walt Whitman’s “Shut Not Your Doors To Me Proud Libraries,” when I walked inside it, and on reflection, it must have been an attempt of some premonition of my mind trying to warn me.

I was reckless, and I asked to be shown how this tool – so much like a card catalogue, but for souls instead of books – worked for calling upon the spirits of old mogu kings. We knew what it did already, and it had been dangerous when four had been summoned prior. I was too caught up in my excitement, and so for my sake, I was indulged, and it summoned a mogu king who had a great many interesting beliefs. If it had been only that, I might have falsely believed that perhaps I had done nothing wrong, but it wasn’t.

He summoned another king, having intimate knowledge of how to work the Card Catalogue of Souls, as he was the one who implemented it as an administrative efficiency effort during his rule, and the one he called out was atrocious. Everyone was hurt, although I took the least amount of harm. Aszera and Bryn were badly hurt. Bryn protected me from the worst of it, but I think it may have been at the expense of himself, the cost of watching out for me. I at least had the presence of mind to summon healthstones, but it was a bit too much like putting out a fire I set by knocking a mogu ghost candle over. We all survived, though, so at least it’s proof that I have chosen correctly this time, of being a warlock capable of making a difference.

I never told you why I left the Keep Library. I didn’t want to say, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I couldn’t, not because of you, but because of me. I haven’t told this to any of the family, or your mother, so please don’t mention it.

On the day of the Shattering, I was killed. I was in the Special Reserve alcove, by myself, and when Deathwing came through, it was like an earthquake, and a shelf fell on me. I think it crushed my heart, because of how little I remember, how fast it was. A warlock found me – she must have been checking in after hearing the crash. She had her Voidwalker get the shelf off me, and she revived me using a soulstone, applied after death (it was experimental at the time). She tried to help me get out of the Keep.

But she never made it. We were caught in a gust from Deathwing’s flight, and she was the one who was killed. Except that I wasn’t a warlock then, and she had already cast her soulstone on me. She didn’t have it on herself. So, she died, and there was nothing I could do. Her name was Alice Marie Yardley.

Until this morning with Bryn before the sunrise (he keeps odd hours because of a sailor’s watch times, which are in four hour intervals, like the Middle Watch, which is midnight to four, and Morning Watch, which is four to eight, and he tends to pull the middle or morning watch personally), I never told anyone about her. It still hurts horribly, all the time, but it’s no longer so sharp a thorn in my chest that I can’t bear to speak of it.

It’s not all terror and pain though here. Later today, I had my first swimming lesson with Bryn (I’m exhausted, and I think I ache in muscles I am sure I didn’t have before today). I was perfect, he said, like an otter in the water! Well, it’s fair to say at least that I did manage quite a lot more than I thought I would – I really did swim, of going forward through the water on my own. It was nothing at all like how Bryn can swim – if I was an otter (maybe a baby otter), he was a seal, or a dolphin maybe. Something graceful and svelte, cutting through the water in a way that would make Walt Whitman write four rapturous poems about it.

He has a tattoo of the ending line from “Invictus” on his back with the first ship he served on. “I am the captain of my soul.”

I think if I could have had a tattoo that I might have chosen the words, “I am the master of my fate.”

Although as soon as I wrote that, I had the thought that I probably could have one, a tattoo, if I wanted now. I don’t need to worry about whether or not it would be proper for a lady anymore. Much like vanity, there’s no point in the consideration. I’ve taken myself out of the line of succession of the House. I expect that I will never marry, and there’s that.

To answer your question about the pandaren and the mogu, I can only tell you that they pay people in gold to assist in killing the disagreeable lizards and horrid slave owners. When it comes to the mogu in particular, it’s not a passionless necessity – we were told specifically, by more than one, to show the mogu “no mercy.” They don’t want to negotiate or parlay an end to the war; they want justice and vengeance. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen the pandaren anything close to vicious, but I can’t blame them. I don’t think I’m inclined to be so magnanimous myself, and all the mogu have done to me personally is temporarily imprison me, badly bruise me, and frighten me.

I hope that you’re doing well, and so is Duskwood. I don’t know when or if I will return to it, but it will always be home to me.

I never shared my new favorite poem, because I wasn’t sure how to explain it to you, but I think you will understand now.

“Memory” by Siegfried Sassoon

When I was young my heart and head were light,
And I was gay and feckless as a colt
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,
Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.
O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free
And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time
Across the caroling meadows into June.

But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit
Burning my dreams away beside the fire:
For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;
And I am rich in all that I have lost.
O starshine on the fields of long-ago,
Bring me the darkness and the nightingale;
Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home,
And silence; and the faces of my friends.

Sincerely,
Your friend,
Melancholy Grimlocke

PS — Bryn said that he would like to meet you, as well as some other death knights Aszera knows named Siarra and Roper. He'd like to talk to you about physical construction in poems, he said. I don't think he says things like that when he doesn't mean them. He's incredibly sincere.

PPS — The three ships of the Fallon Fleet here are the Lady Blanche, the Swift, and the Tidewitch. The first ship Bryn served on was the Wind-wise. I have had to write them all down to remember them. The names are interesting, but I don't think I understand why they have the ones they do. It doesn't seem like a clear pattern. I should ask Bryn about it sometime. I bet he knows.