Simon Ashlock (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
paladingus) wrote2017-12-06 04:40 am
paladingus) wrote2017-12-06 04:40 am
for Aurus
It doesn't take much for portal magic to go awry, and less still when those portals are being maintained by increasingly distracted and exhausted mages with nothing on their minds except home. It's the sort of arcane skill that Simon could never in decades of study begin to fathom, fascinating though he finds it when it's put in layman's terms for him, and so he leaves them to it and tells them they're doing great.
Perhaps it would be better for morale if he could relate to the homesickness. Not that morale matters much at this point in the war, when there's nothing much left but the cleanup, but it matters when his entire career has relied on the "I was one of you once" strategy of command, and it matters when those eldritch plant-folk are still mustering forces to attack the garrison every so often as if they think it'll make them leave any faster.
It does not, to the endless chagrin of the botani. But finally, finally, a bright and bushy-tailed new commander arrives to relieve him, and he makes his fond farewells to his troops as he heads for the portal, armed with nothing but a hammer and a duffel bag. One portal mage, ever sentimental, hugs him, and the other rubs her eyes with secondhand embarrassment. The portal flickers--
--and whatever is on the other side, he discovers far too late, is not Stormwind.
Perhaps it would be better for morale if he could relate to the homesickness. Not that morale matters much at this point in the war, when there's nothing much left but the cleanup, but it matters when his entire career has relied on the "I was one of you once" strategy of command, and it matters when those eldritch plant-folk are still mustering forces to attack the garrison every so often as if they think it'll make them leave any faster.
It does not, to the endless chagrin of the botani. But finally, finally, a bright and bushy-tailed new commander arrives to relieve him, and he makes his fond farewells to his troops as he heads for the portal, armed with nothing but a hammer and a duffel bag. One portal mage, ever sentimental, hugs him, and the other rubs her eyes with secondhand embarrassment. The portal flickers--
--and whatever is on the other side, he discovers far too late, is not Stormwind.