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Nathanos is called down to the Apothecarium at around two o’clock in the morning.
There is no sleep to be disturbed, here- true, the forsaken did not require sleep, but some of them occasionally played at it, or meditated, or attempted some other form of rest. Nathanos was not one of them, but it was generally accepted that sundown was for relaxation and leisure, despite this, and he certainly appreciated that. He certainly would have appreciated more of a warning prior to this, to be sure.
But he trundles along, bones and all, to where he’s called, all the same. The Dark Lady wouldn’t have summoned him like this if it wasn’t absolutely an emergency. Truthfully, though, he’s not sure of how much help he can be in this state; he’s down to teeth and sinew, with not much holding him together besides that and sheer willpower. He can still notch an arrow, sure, and he can still draw back a bow- but not much more than that. He wouldn’t really call himself old, but he’d definitely consider himself an older forsaken; he and everyone from the first generation of their kind are all generally around this state of decomposition. They’ve already lost too many of their kin to war and pestilence, and now decay seeks to finally stake its claim, as well. He’s not sure how long he’s got left- any of them, really.
Anya meets him at the bridge outside the Apothecarium’s grand entrance and wordlessly motions for him to follow, tipping her head towards some hallway he can’t see. The other ranger isn’t looking too good, herself. Her ears are tattered at the tips, the right one ripped in half, and not much left of what was once luxurious black hair. The rest of her body is methodically covered from head to toe in leather armor. He’s seen her without it only once, and he suspects that will be the one time he ever will.
It went without saying that most of them despise the state of their bodies, and it was fairly common practice to cover up as much as one could. Anya in particular is meticulous about this, and while she doesn’t quite care for appearance as much as she once did, she does go far out of her way to hide any aspects of her form that belied weakness. In fact, Nathanos only saw such a weakness because Anya had no other choice. In one of the Legion’s recent incursions to Lordaeron, he and Anya were patrolling around Tirisfal, and she had been struck from behind, the glaive of a Wrathguard piercing straight through.
They drove off the demons, but barely. He and Velonara had to perform triage right there just to make sure she wouldn’t be sliced in half before they could make their way back. When removing the shards of tainted metal, the three of them began to realize that her chest guard was going to have to be removed to get the largest piece out, and Anya wasn’t having it. She struggled against them until the very last moment, finally giving in only when both he and Velonara snapped at her.
When the two of them began to peel off the leather bound to her form, Anya gave them but one warning:
“Not a word to anyone about this,” she hissed at them. The ‘or else’ is unsaid but clear.
“Of course,” Nathanos agreed. Velonara nodded, brow still furrowed. At that point she was too angry to speak. Nathanos felt a little torn at this; Velonara is right to be angry. They’re far too few to make such a fuss over what boiled down to hurt pride, and Velonara is viciously protective of her rangers. That Anya would stand in the way of her own survival is infuriating. But still. There’s no dignity in this. Nathanos understands that intimately.
Anya looked away when they finally pulled the armor from her body. Her ears were folded back, and her fists clenched. Underneath the dark leather, her ribs are almost fully exposed, with very little flesh hanging off of them. The armor was probably more there to keep her together than to protect whatever shriveled organs she had left. And there, lodged between two ribs, was the largest piece, fel corruption already beginning to ooze and spread. From what they could see, it had cracked a couple vertebrae; they’re going to have to carry her home. Velonara mutely offered her hand to Anya, then, clutching hers tightly while Nathanos began to painstakingly extract the iron shard with sure but fragile hands.
He was successful enough, sure, but they still had to wrap her back up and take her to see a healer, where the process of humiliation began all over again.
Anya ran a little hot and cold with them for a bit after that; avoiding them and snarling at them in equal turn, glaring openly and suspiciously, until, slowly but surely, her temper finally cooled. Then, she didn’t know how to behave around them, no longer hurt and angry but still wary, still unable to return how she was like with them before, when camaraderie came easy. She’s still quiet with them, but it’s better now, he thinks. She trusts them now, however little she’s able.
For a moment, it appears as though they’re heading towards the dungeons below, and Nathanos begins to ready himself for whatever horrid creature they’re about to encounter down there, but then Anya takes a sharp left, going in the complete opposite direction. Huh.
Now he’s back to having no idea where they’re going. He knows better than to ask, at this point. If they were truly in danger, Anya would have told him by now. If he asked now, he’d probably just get a sarcastic reply, if he got one at all.
Anya takes him down a winding path through narrow, seldom-used hallways until they’re in a completely unused part of the catacombs. They’ve been steadily going back up towards the surface, he’s pretty sure, and the other ranger seems to be leading them in a way that is deliberately circuitous, to avoid being tracked or followed. He says nothing, still, and asks nothing, but the question begins to eat at him: where was it that they were going that they had to take such measures to protect its secrecy?
They reach the top of a slim, rough-hewn tunnel that had been steadily going uphill, and standing there is heavy, wooden door. Anya knocks in a peculiar order: two short taps, a pause, another tap, another pause, and then two more short taps. Nathanos can hear the turning and grinding of a heavy lock being undone, and then the door creaks open. Anya slides in as soon as the opening is barely wide enough, and he follows close behind, the door closing behind him as soon as he’s clear of it.
He finds himself in a small, circular room, the one half of it carved out of the stone it lays upon, and the other built up by brick and mortar, placed there by human hands. There’s another doorway in the bricks, the wooden frame crushed in, and debris filling the hallway beyond to the brim. There’s no escape to be found there; only through the door he had just entered, and locked tight behind him. There is a single narrow window, and long cracks in the domed ceiling above, through which the early rays of dawn filter through. Had they been walking for that long?
And in front of him, with what dim light there was in the room, he sees an altar, carved right into the stone. It’s been crafted into the image of a seraph- a spirit healer, unmistakable even after how long it’s been since he’s seen one. They’re safe from the other cursed dead then, at least. None would follow them here, of all places. But that still begs the question.
He glances around. Anya has disappeared again, no doubt hiding herself amongst the shelves and shadows, but standing behind him, in front of the closed door, is another hooded figure who is unmistakable in his mind.
“My queen,” he greets, fist over his heart, bowing his head in respect.
“Blightcaller,” she greets in turn, nodding at him. “I’m sure you are wondering why I have brought you here.”
“Where are we?” he asks finally.
“The office of the royal physician,” Sylvanas tells him lowly. “It was connected to the royal family’s living quarters. It would have been one of their escape routes, had they suspected their beloved prince of anything. Now, it's little more than long-forgotten rubble.” Sylvanas looks away, then, red eyes glinting in the low light. Her stance is tense; jaw and fists are clenched, shoulders bunched up and angry. He gives her a moment. Eventually, she finds his gaze again, still tense but newly determined.
“Stephon Marris was found grievously injured just beyond the border of the Plaguelands,” she tells him gravely. Shock ripples through him. His grip must have gone slack; he nearly drops the bow in his hand, and all he can do is gape at her uselessly.
“He’s-“ he starts, mind numb. “He survived?” Sylvanas nods at him.
Stephon was hardly grown, the last he saw him. No longer a child, but still some ways off from being an adult. He’d been visiting the farm, at the time. Nathanos wasn’t really all that close with his family, hadn’t been for years, but Stephon seemed to have a persistent fondness of him, just the same. He’d been born when Nathanos was already nearly grown, and old enough to be a father or uncle rather than a cousin, so uncle he became. He enjoyed visiting during the summer months, claiming he was there to help his uncle with the family farm, but he always seemed to wander off during the hottest parts of the day, and Nathanos would typically find him sleeping in a heap with the dogs or barn cats, in some shady spot just out of his uncle’s immediate line of sight.
The last summer he’d seen him had been like that, too. It was the last week of his visit. Stephon lingered as long as he could, to help with the harvest. All the larger farms around them had already begun theirs, and usually at that point they would have contacted Nathanos already, checking if he needed help with his harvest, or asking if he could help with theirs. He hadn’t heard anything from them for weeks, and with his nephew there, he didn’t have the time to check.
They had no idea of what was going on around them, of the horror that was coming, but they learned, soon enough, of their prince’s mad crusade, of the pestilence tearing through the countryside like wildfire. They learned this when said pestilence, and all its ills and devils, came upon them. It was mid-morning, and the Marrises had already awoken at the crack of dawn to smoke in the distance and great black clouds billowing overhead. They’d spent that morning doing a headcount of all the animals there, and tracking down the ones that weren’t. Nathanos’ first thought was that a fire had broken out, and that once he’d secured things over here, he would instruct his nephew to hunker down here while he rode around, looking for his neighbors.
He knew, instinctively, that something was terribly wrong, and when it came time to actually go out and search for his neighbors, he found himself equipping his ranger gear and throwing together a hastily-made provisions pack for the next few days. He didn’t even know why. He couldn’t have possibly imagined what had actually come to be.
Then, a startled yelp- sprinting out of his house at breakneck speed, nearly flying, he came upon his nephew, frozen in fear, and the terrible creature that was nearly upon him. Nathanos remembers the adrenaline, and how it streaked through him, driven by instinct, and his hatchet, driven into its skull. A walking corpse- a ghoul, perhaps, from what he remembers- there wasn’t much left when he was done with it, anyway. Viscera splattered on the earth, on him, all around them, blood pumping through his veins with a heart that yet lived. His blood sang the ancient song of all living creatures, then- of love, the pack bond, and the will to live and kill and die for it. He must have been something of a intimidating creature, himself, at that point. When he had turned to his nephew, the fear had not yet left him, frozen and trembling before the gore-stained visage of his uncle.
More ghouls on the horizon. His neighbors, flesh rotting and torn asunder, clambering down the hill. He knew, then, that they weren’t going to survive. Not both of them, anyway.
So Nathanos put Stephon on his best horse, gave him the pack full of supplies, and sent him galloping down the road to the church. He told him he would meet up with him in a few days, as soon as he gets things settled, here. They both knew it was a lie. Nathanos didn’t even live through that night. He doesn’t remember much of it- a few more hours of holing up in the house with his bow and his hounds, barring the doors and windows with furniture only for both to be broken through. His neighbors, in their deaths, had been given a peculiar, fragile strength. They cared not for the state of their bodies, flesh wrenched from bone and bone from socket, destroying themselves in their haste, only focused on what lie before them: a living pulse, and the warmth of it rushing between their jaws. He shot down what cursed dead he could, from open windows upstairs, but he could only hold them off for so long- there were too many of them.
Though he struggled, the moment of his death was mercifully swift. Neck snapped, life snuffed out like a candle. Then, the endless haze of his initial undeath, wandering the span of his property with his loyal hounds with no thought but to take, to consume. A predator, stalking his hunting grounds. This was how Sylvanas found him.
“Apparently, he was investigating rumors of scourge remnants in the Western Plaguelands,” she continues, dragging him back to the present. “Needless to say, they found him first. We’ve taken him into custody while he recovers. The Argent Dawn will be here to take him back once he’s fit to travel. Nathanos, he... he said he wants to talk to you.” She eyes him carefully, looking for a response he can’t currently give. He’s still too stunned by the fact that he has living family, somehow, let alone the fact that said family wants to reconnect or even acknowledge his existence. Did he follow his childhood dream, then, and join the ranks of the Silver Hand? Did he make it to the chapel, and no longer have a choice in the matter? He rubs his temples with skeletal fingers, soothing the phantom symptoms of a migraine that will not come.
“What do you want to do?” Sylvanas asks him lowly, cautiously.
“I don’t,” he starts. He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know.” He pauses, gathering his thoughts. “...have you spoken with him already?”
“No,” she admits. “One of our rangers recognized him and brought him in.” The fact that she’s not giving him a name immediately makes him suspect that it was Anya. Anya, who is pointedly not here when she was the one who led him here in the first place.
“It didn’t seem... appropriate to, without you there,” she tells him.
“How... is he,” he finds himself asking, numb.
“Well enough,” she replies. “None of his injuries were enough to kill him. It may take him some time, but he’ll recover, soon enough.” She goes quiet, then, and they stand there in silence for a moment that lasts far longer than it really ought to. Her mouth is a thin, firm line. She seems to be gathering the strength to say something.
“I won’t be the one to force you to talk to him,” she starts, a little surly. “However, if you should choose to do so, then I will keep close by, if that is what you desire. I will not leave you to face this alone.”
She doesn’t say it, but he can see it, in her face, in her furrowed brow and the bags under her eyes. There’s hurt, there, under the rage she wields like a knife, old and ever-living. It is the hand wielding it, fearful of being hurt again. There is a necklace no longer worn, and a song no longer sung. Their absence is a deafening ache. Sylvanas isn’t one to wear her heart on her sleeves, but her message is clear to him: I don’t want what happened to me to happen to you, too.
“Thank you,” he tells her quietly.
“If he tries anything, I will slay him where he stands,” she tells him, fierce and wild-eyed. He’s... he can’t honestly say he knows if Stephon would even try. As he knew him, the boy wouldn’t even hurt a fly if he could help it. But time has a habit of changing things, and so does the need to survive. He appreciates the sentiment, all the same.
“Give me a moment,” he says, sitting on a nearby bench. “I need to think.” She nods, and sits down with him. She offers a gloved hand, and he takes it, trembling. They sit there for a while longer, long enough that the sun can rise further, more and more light filtering into the room. She makes no move to rush him; she just worries quietly, brow furrowed and running her thumb over his exposed knuckles.
Then, finally:
“I... should speak with him,” Nathanos says. “I don’t know if the opportunity will ever arise again, and if I’m going to be disowned by my living kin officially, I’d like to get it over with, now.” He chuckles darkly at this, but Sylvanas just frowns.
“If this is what you want,” she replies. A pause, and then she asks, “Is this what you want?”
“...I don’t know,” he replies tiredly. He doesn’t know, truly. There is hesitation, certainly, and homesickness. He doesn’t think Stephon would try to kill him, or at least is smart enough to not do it with Sylvanas around, but Nathanos isn’t sure how he’ll take rejection. It wasn’t even in the realm of possibility before, and now it is, and the uncertainty is daunting. But still.
“I want to try,” he says, determined and resigned. Sylvanas certainly understands that. She nods, grimacing in sympathy, and stands up, hand still in his. He gets up, bones creaking in complaint, and lets her lead him into the shelves that Anya disappeared into. On the far end, on the other side of the shelves. there is another door. It’s probably an examination room, or was one until Lordaeron fell. This one is remarkably intact, given the state of the main entrance, and Sylvanas gives it a peculiar knock. It’s similar to the one Anya had given, but not the same, and there is an answering knock. Sylvanas completes the rhythm with one final series of taps, and the door opens, Anya letting them inside.
There are probably some things of note in this room- it is an examination room, as it turns out, or it was one, with Anya guarding the door and one of the very few actual, white-robed doctors, not an apothecary, Undercity has on standby. But none of this matters, because sitting on the exam room table is the unmistakable shape of his nephew. He’s older, obviously, but- he’s older, he’s a grown man, under the beard and armor, and he looks like he could be Nathanos’ own son. He looks like a stranger, he looks like a doppelgänger, and Nathanos is having trouble telling the difference.
Stephon’s jaw drops upon taking in the image of his cousin, his not-uncle not-father, and he goes pale with shock. Nathanos remembers, suddenly, that rosiness was something of a Marris trait, and everyone of Marris blood had varying degrees of a ruddy complexion. He did, too, when blood still ran through his veins.
“Uncle,” Stephon calls, and somewhere in that grown man’s roughened voice is the plaintive cry of his nephew. His eyes are wide and gleaming. He doesn’t say anything else. Nathanos is frozen.
His mouth, independent of the rest of his body, says, “Gods, you got big.”
He doesn’t know why he says it, even if it is true- Stephon was a string bean the last he saw him, coltish and gangly, and now he’s damn near doubled in size, filling the mold of his heavy plate armor. Maybe it’s the last scrap of his humanity, exhumed with the appearance of his living kin.
Stephon huffs a small laugh, perhaps all he could manage, and steps down from the table. The space between them is gone in an instant, and Nathanos finds himself crushed in his nephew’s embrace. Sylvanas and Anya take some exception to this, and to how fast he moved, but they don’t go beyond keeping their hands on their weapons. Anya takes a surreptitious step forward, looking to Nathanos for some kind of signal, but he waves her off with a skeletal hand. He returns the embrace in kind. Perhaps hesitantly at first, but the last threads of his humanity seem to remember the language of touch well enough, even if he can’t just yet. His hands, desiccated as they are, know where to go, resting gently along Stephon’s spine.
“It’s really you,” Stephon says, laughing wetly.
“Still don’t know your own strength, I see,” Nathanos wheezes.
“Gently, dear,” the doctor reminds patiently. “He’s likely a bit more fragile than you remember.”
“Sorry,” Stephon replies, releasing him from his hold.
“And you should be careful not to put strain on your own injuries, too,” she continues, nagging. “Neither of us wants you to end up back on my table more than is strictly necessary.”
“Sorry,” he says again, sheepishly.
“What happened to you?” Nathanos asks. He still feels a little detached from himself, but he’s able to soldier on, somehow.
“Got caught off guard by some gheists,” he replies, wincing a bit. “I was able to dispatch them, but I was still cut up pretty badly. Was not one of my finest moments. I probably would have bled out if not for one of your rangers finding me.” He gestures to Anya, her ears folded back in embarrassment.
“I mostly just needed stitches,” he explains. The doctor harrumphs.
“Don’t let him fool you,” she starts. “I had to patch him up quite a bit before we could even think about coming up here.”
That’s... Mary Edras, if he remembers correctly. An older woman, even before her death, with children and grandchildren. Her corpse is remarkably well-preserved, save for a few pock marks here and there, but that’s not too surprising, considering her skill and means for self-maintenance.
“Idiocy runs in the family, I see,” Anya says, half under her breath. Stephon chokes back a laugh, and Nathanos manages to bite down on a smirk before it shows. Sylvanas shoots a warning look at Anya, who rolls her eyes but complies, quieting again.
Stephon is silent for a moment, giving the husk of his kin a pensive look.
“May I speak to my uncle privately?” he asks warily, looking to Sylvanas. She tenses slightly; this may very well be the first thing that Stephon has said to her in close to ten years.
“I’m afraid I cannot allow that,” she replies. Somehow, Nathanos still remembers enough of Stephon to recognize when he’s crestfallen and hiding his hurt. What is alien, however, is the maturity with which he masks it. It’s hard to pick out, under his tired eyes, a full beard, and a nose that has been broken at least once since the last he’s seen him.
“However,” she continues, “If you like I can ask Anya and Dr. Edras to leave the room. You must still have supervision, but at least this way is a little less... crowded. Is this acceptable?” Stephon bites his lip, thinking, then nods.
“Very well,” she concludes. She turns to the two in question. “Leave us,” she bids, and Anya escorts Dr. Edras to the door. She glances at Nathanos as they leave, and on anyone else, he would have called the look on her face irritated. He knows better, now. When Anya closes the door behind them, she very pointedly leaves it cracked open an inch. A contrarian, for better or worse.
“Thank you,” Stephon tells Sylvanas hoarsely. His sincerity is a little disarming. She merely gives a curt nod in response. And then, he turns those tired eyes on his uncle, and already expecting the worst, he asks him:
“What happened to you?”
There’s a weighted pause. Though his lungs no longer hold any breath, Nathanos sighs, and tells him, “You already know the answer to that. You don’t need to know the details.”
“Nathanos, please,” he presses, and that’s probably the strangest thing of all; Stephon rarely if ever called him by his first name. Hearing it now is like hearing it in foreign tongues, or one that’s been long forgotten. Nathanos sighs again. Sylvanas’ hands curl into fists.
He tells him. Not all the details, because he refuses to, because Stephon does not deserve the gruesome image of his kin’s final moments, but he tells him.
“After you left, I managed to hold them off for a few more hours. But they got to me before the end of the night,” he says. Stephon goes stricken and pale at this admission. He doesn’t sit back down so much as his feet give way under him, and he lands heavily on the examination table.
“It- It was that short a time?” Stephon asks. He holds his head in his hands. “I thought perhaps you’d lasted a couple days, but hours?” Nathanos nods. The grislier details start drifting through his thoughts. The smell of decaying flesh, the growling and slavering of ghoul and hound alike- he shoves them down.
“Yes,” he manages, forcing his voice to work. Stephon inhales sharply. Nathanos is suddenly, acutely aware of the tears beading in the corners of Stephon’s eyes. His mind goes blank. He was numb, before, and is numb, still, but now with an undercurrent of static, as though his pulse should be racing, hackles standing on end.
The crunch of bone echoes through his mind, unbidden. The spray of blood, the coppery taste stuck under his tongue. He clenches his jaw; the taste is still there, between cracked teeth, and the smell of it in a nose that’s barely there.
“I should have stayed with you,” Stephon says, wrenched from his throat like it pains him. “I should have stayed and helped you fight them off.” Nathanos can’t say anything in response to this. Presently, he can’t say anything at all. The silence is agony. Stephon’s stilted breaths, even more so.
“If you had stayed, then you would have perished as well,” Sylvanas says lowly. Stephon looks up at her, eyes already going bloodshot. She’s grimacing. It wasn’t kind, exactly, but there is understanding. There is regret.
“There is nothing you could have done,” Sylvanas tells him. “You were too young.”
“I wasn’t that young,” he argues. “I could have stayed. I could have fought.” He’s agitated, now, and on the edge of a hysteria that only maddened grief can bring.
“You were young enough,” she replies firmly. “Nathanos was doing what he thought was best for you. What kind of guardian would he have been, if he had kept you with him and you had perished together, when there was a way for you to survive?” Stephon heaves, choking back a sob. He’s on his feet again, and tall enough to look her in the eye.
“No,” he snarls, growing more frustrated upon seeing Sylvanas’ unaffected gaze. “That’s not fair, you know that’s not fair-” Her eyes narrow slightly; she’s losing her patience. He can hear the stretch and creak of Anya’s bow in the next room.
“Stephon,” he croaks. Stephon whirls around on him, still seeing red.
“What?” he growls.
“Enough,” Nathanos tells him, managing to dredge up enough of himself to put on something of a disciplinary tone. Stephon deflates a bit, but not by much.
“It was my decision to make,” Nathanos tells him. “There was nothing you could have done.” All at once, the wind leaves his sails, and he slumps over. Stephon blinks, and tears stream anew. He doesn’t say anything else. Nathanos takes a wary step closer, and his hand hesitates for a moment before settling on Stephon’s shoulder. There’s a little jolt through his fingers as Light sparks at the touch. It doesn’t hurt. Not much, anyway, more a warning than anything else. A paladin, then, like he’d always wanted.
He looks at Nathanos and waits. His eyes are still gleaming with tears, but he’s quiet.
“You lived,” his uncle says. “You did everything you could. It’s alright.”
“I’m sorry,” Stephon says softly. Nathanos very delicately folds what remains of his arms around his shoulders, and something seems to break in him.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, voice breaking, and returns his uncle’s embrace.
“Hush,” Nathanos tells him. “None of that, now.”
Stephon holds on tight- tight enough that Nathanos’ bones creak in protest. But he doesn’t let go. He remembers something of himself, in this. Summer after summer, since Stephon was born, perpetually trotting after him. There’d been more than one occasion where he’d held him like this, through scraped knees, broken toys, the passing of their grandparents and others.
They stay like that for quite some time.