Can the dead smile?

Lohengrin sometimes wondered if he was dead and remembering or alive and dreaming. He floated in and out of consciousness with no concept of how quickly time passed. Voices rang incoherently in his ears, snippets of conversations in languages he couldn't understand. Occasionally he felt hands on his forehead or a bottle of water was brought to his lips to allow him to drink.

His rescue barely registered. He felt a bony hand on his shoulder, a feminine voice speaking to him, asking him something. He nodded to her question, whatever it was, and a second later strong arms were lifting him up off the cold, damp ground and throwing him over a broad shoulder. Tauren, he assumed. Maybe Orc. He was too delirious to care.

They carried him out into a swirling white world, snow caking in his hair. Dully his leg ached, but the cold had already numbed him. He narrowed his eyes, but the world remained blurred, figures darting in and out of focus in a world gone gray.

It wasn't until they had him inside a bunker, wrapped in front of a fire that it really hit him that he was no longer a prisoner. The undead priest who had accompanied the Tauren carrying him here handed him a mug of something warm and tasteless. She was smiling at him, or at least he thought she was. The left half of her face had rotted away to reveal the bones of her jaw.

"That drought will have you asleep soon, blood elf. Tell me your name while you can still speak."

Already his tongue felt leaden. He managed to tell her, slowly. "Lohengrin. Lohengrin Neverdusk."

Snow is a bit cold, don't you think?

The battle for control of Stonehearth raged on for hours until at last Alliance troops retreated as dusk settled in and a blizzard threatened the combatants. Snow fell in relentless waves, driving even the most stalwart Horde warrior into the confines of the Dwarven hovel, where a fire burned meagerly on the ground floor. Priests and warriors, shamans and paladins alike huddled around it for what little warmth it provided.

In war, often times even the smallest grunts became leaders, simply by attrition. Such was the case with Ravenin Blackglove, who had no desire to lead. Yet he found himself directing the rag tag bunch anyway, as the snow settled over the land and freezing winds kept Alliance at bay. He sent Tauren warriors out to gather wood, Blood elf and Orc hunters to keep watch from the second floor of the hovel, priests to tend to the wounded, and rogues out to scout in the snow and keep an eye out for any stalwart Alliance brave or stupid enough to try anything.

And oddly enough, they fell in line and obeyed him. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not, finding the control over others exhilarating but the work it also entailed cumbersome.

Just as everyone had settled in for the evening, along came yet another headache in the form of an orc rogue with news from outside. "It's a cave sir, and some of the warriors found Alliance inside. There's a battle in progress, we need some of the healers if they can be spared."

Ravenin had taken stock of his numbers earlier. Two priests, a restoration shaman and a healing druid. Four, out of some twenty-three Horde who occupied Stonehearth. "Foolish of you to engage the Alliance now. We've enough trouble as it is. Just how many healers do you think I can spare?"

"Sir, let me go," one of the priests said. An undead woman who still clung to her human trappings and went by her original name, Miriam Thatcher.

Ravenin waved them off, "Very well, there is your healer. I suggest you take all precautions in protecting her. And bring no prisoners. We haven't the resources for them. Kill. Them. All."

Tauren are not for dinner.

Anyone who claimed that Tauren were eternally patient had never met a bull determined to smash his enemies. Fawa did not take kindly to the stereotypes of her people. The slow moving Tauren were as swift as their comrades, and even swifter than their enemies when necessity called for it. When diplomacy and patience had worn thin, their horns turned bright with the blood of their adversaries. And anyone foolish enough to believe them dim witted or unintelligent usually realized their folly far too late. Tauren were not cattle, and could not be rounded up and driven over cliffs.

She tried hard to call upon the patience of her ancestors during times when required, especially when dealing with those who were supposedly on her side, yet saw fit to overlook her intelligence and assume she had nothing to add. While slow to anger, frustration built a bit quicker.

The blood elf barely looked at her, merely reading off the parchment in front of him. He recited each word slowly, pausing occasionally to change a word he assumed would be too large for a Tauren to understand. "... And as you are normally in the company of my son, I would app- like you to please send me news of his whereabouts-- that means where he's at-- as soon as you are ab--Hey!"

Taliesin, tired of listening to the long winded missive, simply snatched it out of the courier's hand and held it out to Fawa. "She isn't stupid. In fact, I daresay she can read it herself without your input."

The courier huffed indignantly, glaring at Taliesin as if he'd grown a second head with warts. "As you wish..." Something else hung on the sentence, something likely unkind. But he had the forethought to bite his own words and simply leave the room.

Fawa smiled at Taliesin, taking the missive and unfolding it in her lap. "Thank you. He was becoming rather obnoxious."

Taliesin shrugged his shoulders, making a whimsical gesture with his hands. "If you'd run him through with your horns, I don't think I would have minded very much."

"Taliesin!"

He simply smiled at her in reply.

The missive was difficult to read. Not because Fawa didn't know how, but because the letters themselves weren't shaped quite right and the language was rough in patches. Blood elves had to learn Orcish, the primary language of the Horde. Some balked at the idea of it, Orcish was a very gutteral language, harsh enough to be difficult on the throats of many elves. Others, like Taliesin and Lohengrin, took to it with ease. Not only had Tal already picked up Orcish, but he now had Fawa teaching him bits and pieces of Taurahe.

She wished she could try sitting Lohengrin down and teach him as well. If only he weren't so flighty! Determined to go find some cause somewhere and fight for it. And now she had another missive from his father in Silvermoon City demanding information from her. As if she had it to give him. Since Lohengrin ran off to join the armies at Frostwolf, she hadn't heard from him.

That in and of itself was unusual. Lohengrin usually kept in touch some way. That his father was unable to find him and send someone on him to keep an eye on him was even stranger. The man was obsessive about his son's welfare. While Fawa understood it to a degree, she often felt he took it too far.

"What does he want this time? Secret bombing squads with goblins to go looking for our wayward friend?" Taliesin asked.

Fawa laughed. "No, it's just the usual round of questions about Lohen. I'll reply... tomorrow."

Beginnings can be painful.

Lohengrin Sunstorm woke to the sound of a rushing river. Somewhere nearby water cascaded past and the world around him gathered its moisture. His ears rang terribly, a constant, high-pitched wail overtaken only by the waterfall and the dank sound of condensation dripping in the near distance.

He opened his eyes as a water droplet surprised him, splashing against his forehead. His prison was a cavern filled with blue light glowing from the fungai lining the walls. Cold, terribly cold, he could see his breath streaming out of his mouth in white tendrils. Left sandwiched between two old pillars of ice covered stone, no one stood guard anywhere near him. An odd prison, indeed.

He remembered, then, Alterac Valley, the battle that clashed near Stonehearth as the Horde valiantly tried to push Alliance back to their base in the north. They were outnumbered and despite lasting far longer than he ever thought they might, eventually Alliance cut them down, one by one.

They didn't take prisoners, he had been warned. Alliance sent Horde forces back south after stripping them of what they were worth, where sometimes you were resurrected if there was enough of your body to raise. Else, a brief ceremony would see you interred into the ground at Frostwolf, mourned for a moment before the drums of war renewed their relentless beat and more soldiers stepped up to take the places of the fallen.

An unwinnable war, Taliesin had said and Fawa nodded in solemn agreement. Lohengrin ignored the call for as long as he could until at last his will waivered and he traveled to the valley to volunteer. He could pictures Taliesin's face even now, sighing at him and shaking his head. And Fawa, with her patient stare. She would wish him luck no matter what kind of fool's errand he ran.

It was the memory of him that drove him to attempt getting up. And the pain in his leg that brought him back down just as swiftly. He tried to reach for the light, the holy source of the paladin, the Blood Knight. Yet even reaching for it, he could feel it so far away. Too far. No mana, not even a bit of it. Surely he had time to regenerate it after being unconcious for so long.

The light pulsated and he realized then what tampered with his powers. The fungi covering the walls granted light in the darkness, and drained his mana continually to do so. He sighed and sank back against the damp furs. With his leg certainly broken and no ability to use any of his light granted powers, there would be no escape for him and he knew it.

But why would the Alliance keep him a prisoner? Why not slay him as well and send him south with the rest of the rank and file who failed to take Stonehearth? And why would they leave him in a cavern somewhere rather than keep him prisoner at their stronghold?

Unless they knew who his father was. A diplomat, now, in a world bereft of nearly all the Blood Elves. Necessity had plucked him out of his lowly birth as a rank and file guardsman and lifted him into a loftier position within Quel'thalas. A soldier scarred by battle now going soft attending functions and trading politics within the Horde's inner structures of leadership.

If they knew this, any of it, that would be more than enough incentive to keep him alive, use him toward political ends. They couldn't possibly have known him. He'd gone to such trouble to keep his family a secret. Never to speak the name of his father, nor had he risen to great heights within the Horde army. He served them when necessary, and otherwise only really stayed with his longtime companions.

Surely they couldn't know who he was. Surely.

This thought he repeated until blacking out again. He waded the darkness, falling in and out of conciousness after that, sometimes hearing voices murmuring in the distance. Dwarven and night elf and a human occasionally. Someone brought him water and helped him prop himself up to drink it. Female hands, cool thanks to the air in the cavern, but gentle.

Eventually, he woke to hear the heated words of an argument.

"--till we hear from Blackbramble and that's it."

"He can't make any decision without getting Mistral's approval fist and she can take forever when she wants to. In the meanwhile what do we do here? This blood elf won't last much longer, you heard Saranda's assessment, his fever's spiking and if we don't allow someone to tend to his wounds, he's going to die before we get a single bit of information out of him."

He had a fever? He hadn't even realized it. It all made perfect sense, now, as did the darkness coming up to swallow him again.