Dwelling in high places brought a sense of clarity to Oaken’s thoughts. From atop the roof of the Sagelight Tailoring Emporium he watched life ripple through the city of Stormwind.
Across the canal, merchants and travelers of all races crossed under the archway leading into the Trade District. They were well practiced in turning an invisible eye on the local homeless celebrities that loitered near the District walls. Oaken watched as every so often a gryphon bearing a rider rose into the sky from the gryphon roost. All the sounds of the city seemed to float up into his ears and blend into a chorus that sounded like a river rolling over stones.
Seeing things from afar with his eyes, helped him to see things from afar with his mind.
Undurgath was not who he claimed to be.
Up close, Gath had been someone whose language Oaken had understood. The mage had become a quick friend whose clever and curious mind Oaken had grown to respect and even admire.
Now, from afar, Oaken could see through the guise. Gath was a Forsaken.
“And it is in the nature of the Forsaken to be sinister.” Oaken spoke his thoughts out loud to a snail inching its way across his bare foot.
“They…they pervert the warmth of life. They are venom, touching Azeroth with blight.”
A small trail of slime followed the snail as it worked its away across the Kaldorei’s flesh. Oaken watched in silence as the snail tilted and fell down the side of his foot. There it lay pitifully on its shell, unable to right itself. A long purple finger brushed gently along the snail, guiding it back into an upright position.
His thoughts strayed to Jerimoth.
The ex-cultist had been raised under nihilistic views, and yet he had grown to fight against what he believed was in his nature. Oaken suddenly found himself thinking about beings in his past he had not thought of for a long time. Faces he had once trusted who eventually proved themselves different from what he once thought they were.
He thought of himself and the foreign, underlying apathy tipped with rage building inside of him since being pricked by N’Zoth. Here on top of the Emporium, he could see himself from afar. His own nature was changing.
Oaken brushed the snail’s shell with the tip of his pinky. “Who am I to say what is in Gath’s nature, when I cannot even be sure of what is in my own?”
The Kaldorei rose to his feet. His eyes swept over the human city one more time. Small bodies walked along the streets. Their faces were shapeless in the distance.
“Perhaps we are more than the skin life chooses to give us.” Oaken rubbed the side of his neck.
Tiptoeing across the snail garden, Oaken made his way down into the Emporium where he hopped aboard Ellnara’s new rotating mannequin platform. He held on tightly to the mannequin as they spun slowly in circles for the next several minutes.
