BECAUSE BISHO MENTIONED VALANAR AND BOREAN TUNDRA MY BRAIN IS GOING NYOOOOOOM
Valanar’s complete and utter wreckification of Valiance Keep still fascinates me. Like.
For one the meaning of “Talbot” is great and whomstever came up with that deserves a smoothie.
For two, the way he just subtly cultivates and enables the resident humans’ bullshit bigoted attitudes is amazing. He’s got these nimrods who are being all ridiculous unwelcoming to the Draenei and he “tries to discourage it” but the way he chooses to phrase things just makes shit worse, and meanwhile all his Arthas Fanclub Bros are sailing in hidden in the ships’ holds, and.
And?
VAL HAS THEM HIT THE KEEP WITH PLAGUED GRAIN.
Val would have dealt with Garithos; the Blood Princes were mainly fragged and rezzed in Northrend. Val probably took a lot of pleasure in just MESSING WITH bigoted humans.
“See? This is what your ignorant attitudes get you.”
(Doubtless this was a bit of trying to get Thassarian to come home too. “They treat you horribly, they want you dead, come back to where the hateful losers are not?”)
i doubt arthas was prepared AT ALL for them to show up rocking armour as GOTH COUTURESPLOSION as that, the first time they did so.
he probably knew their armour would be pretty wild, he’s been to dalaran, he KNOWS elves have this haute couture streak (and he doesn’t look down on it, he thinks it’s pretty kickass) and so he knows on some level that these elfpires are gonna look all “RUNWAY IN SILVERMOON GOES GOTHIQUE” somehow
and then the princes all show up looking like gaultier meets mcqueen meets a goth club and not one of them has a shirt on
and lana’thel looks like eiko ishioka dressed her at a judas priest concert
and arthas is just staring at them going “how am i supposed to focus” and even ner’zhul is impressed.
Tenris/Keleseth: 36. What would their valentines gifts be to each other
adgjkhajkldffgsd 💖Kel gets Tenris a maintenance kit for his Arcanite Ripper; Tenris gets Kel some pretty inks, and they both buy each other chocolate peppermint bark too and end up giggling for HOURS over it. Then they bake the bark into AMAZING BROWNIES together.
There were two minor issues with the current plan-in-progress:
1) Tenris sometimes returned late from his missions, and
2) Keleseth was prone to obscure, symbolic prescient dreams--and his most recent ones hadn’t been especially optimistic.
So it was that when Tenris returned from the late Guardian’s Deadwind tower, he was greeted by an airborne Keleseth who’d obviously been concerned about the delay.
Tenris oofed quietly as Keleseth imitated a tree boa.
“What kept you?” he said--not a demand, not in anger.
“Castellan Moroes and Stage Manager Barnes were arguing again,” Tenris sighed, hugging Keleseth close. “Nothing bad happened.”
Keleseth kneaded at Tenris’s mantle. “I hate these dreams,” he murmured. “Why did I have to get ‘blessed’ with something like this anyway? I liked it better when they were that vague creepy deja-vu nonsense and they didn’t have any presence or weight to them.”
“They were useful though. You knew when it was going to pour rain that one time.”
“That was an exception.” Keleseth still wasn’t detaching. “I hate this. Have I mentioned that I hate this. Because I hate this. I hate having duties that keep me from aiding you and I hate being unable to contact you because Karazhan’s built on the world’s most uncanny gargantuan yarn-snarl of ley-lines--of ALL the ley-lines--and I know what a real dream feels like and I know what could happen and I can’t stop it and I’m terrified.”
Tenris sighed, plunked his chin on to of Keleseth’s head, and said, “You know that if something DOES happen the King can just call me back, right?”
Keleseth’s grip on the mantle tightened. “Yes, but it’s still...I still hate it. I hate losing people. You’re important to me and I’m sick of losing people I love. Even if they do come back. There’s still that time between where it feels like part of ME is missing, where there’s nothing but this obscene emptiness where somebody I love used to be.”
He loosened his grip on Tenris, then rose onto his toes and kissed the other blood prince soundly.
Tenris returned it. He understood Keleseth’s fear--he’d be lying to himself if he tried to pretend he wasn’t a little afraid as well. Even with the knowledge that their King would never let them simply slip away, would never abandon them...there was still fear.
Keleseth knew it, and shared it.
“If I do die,” Tenris murmured, “I won’t stay that way for long. If I do die, you can yell at me for being careless when I get in.”
“I’m not going to yell at you,” Keleseth replied. “It won’t be your fault.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“I know.”
They shared another kiss, both trying to ignore the fact that this might well be the last one.
