Last Rites- chat log

Killing a character you’ve become intimately familiar with is never easy, but I finally admitted to myself that it was time for Ganak to move on. Rest in peace, old friend. You deserve it.

Chat log posted with permission from Erzulie.

Clouds

The mid-afternoon sun played on Ganak’s hammer as he fell into the rhythm of steady strokes against the anvil. His kodo stood entranced by the old tree nearby, watching the glint as the hammer rose and fell. Soon enough she grew bored and wandered off with a sniffle to find some grass to munch on. Ganak paused for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow and shake some from his mane. He looked around the low, rounded buildings of Garadar, his mind also beginning to wander. When he was doing basic smith work he could release his mind and let it roam where it willed, completely relaxed. Mentally anyway.

 
He looked down at the smoldering links he had just finished, fishing out his tongs and gingerly placing them into the water barrel as the steam blasted his face and left his fur a bit fluffy. He started to smooth it down for the sake of appearance but abruptly gave up. Fluffy or not, who cared? He had finished a good, hard day’s work and should be worrying about nothing but relaxing. He stretched his shoulders and strolled over to the tree where he had left the kodo.

 
She had abandoned any sense of nobility and lay stretched at length on the sun-warmed grass, staring at him upside down with her tongue lolling out the side. As Ganak approached she wiggled her massive club of a tail, anticipating a belly rub. He sighed and began to chuckle as he complied with her wish. “Kruga, sometimes I wonder if I should replace you with a dog and be done with it.” She snorted at this but remained in belly-scratching position until he flopped down to the grass beside her. She rolled over to face him, snout to snout, and stared intently. He laughed again, only the second time that day. There was nothing like a kodo with no self-respect to bring a smile to your face.

 
But as he scratched behind Kruga’s ears his mind wandered again, and he felt just as tense as before. He had worked so hard lately, too hard in fact. And he had taken too many chances and had some close calls in Northrend. On top of it all, despite working himself to death every day somehow he still couldn’t sleep until dawn when he passed out for an hour or two from exhaustion. When he could sleep he had nightmares, ever since that woman in the Undercity. Every night, faces and people he knew, things that couldn’t possibly happen haunted him. He was afraid he was on the verge of collapsing. If only he could get one night’s decent sleep…

 
But never mind all that, he told himself. Never mind that your body and your mind are fighting losing battles against each other, never mind that each day you work and struggle because you don’t know what else to do. Never mind that a past you can’t face has spit you into a future with no point to it but simply existing. Never mind all that, and just be here for a while. Be a stone, the grass in the wind, anything but yourself, and for a moment be at peace.

 
He perceived the faint wheeze of a kodo snoring next to him as he looked up into the clear, beautiful Nagrand sky. At the edge of his vision clouds rolled in and he felt the storm begin to build in the distance.

Bones

The shadowy, cloaked woman drew a nail, or maybe a claw along his face and muttered in his ear. “This is going to be…delightful.” Ganak shuddered on the table and stretched against the restraints to move his face away from hers. “What are you?” She drew down closer until their faces almost touched, though his eyes still could not penetrate the darkness of her cowl. She laughed, though the sound was entirely mirthless. “Didn’t you know?” She ran a finger down to the fresh blood from the open wound on his chest and lifted it to her lips. “I’m your Deus Ex Machina.”