He was about to head back to Azeroth - to do what, I haven’t a bloody clue, he mused - when the stone fiend caught up to him, with an urgent message to return to Revendreth. He landed in Pridefall Hamlet, where one of the Accuser’s judges was waiting for him. She folded her arms across her chest, staring evenly at him. “You took your sweet time, demon hunter.”
“Much as I always love to banter with you, I was on my way back to a place that makes a greater modicum of sense to me,” he replied with a slight sneer. “What do you want?”
"Ah, typical impatience, believing you have better things to do. Your arrogance has not changed a whit since coming here, it seems. To think that the Nightborne noble had more humility than you do… " She snorted. “You’ve learned nothing, Teren Skyfire.”
His teeth ground together. “That is not my name anymore.”
“Hide from your past all you like, you will not escape it. Your sinstone is added to with every breath you take. I look forward to putting you in your place when you arrive here.”
“Then you can wait for all eternity, Drastiya, as I will never be setting foot in this place again.”
Inquisitor Drastiya grinned wickedly. “That’s the beauty of it, ‘Poquelin’. I have all eternity to wait. You, on the other hand…”
“Get to the point, damn you,” Poquelin the Accursed snarled.
“Very well,” Drastiya replied, all traces of mockery gone. “There is a new soul who has just arrived here, rescued from the Maw by the Knights of the Ebon Blade. He has specifically asked to meet with you.”
Poquelin’s horned head tilted, his haughty expression replaced by one of curiosity. “Me? Whatever for?”
“He didn’t elaborate much. Evidently his friends and family thought he had been here already… but other than his son, he specifically wanted to speak to you. Something about ‘putting things to rest’.” She gazed levelly at him. “You’ve been to the Maw. You saw what a horror that was, even with your altered sight. Do you think even your worst enemies would have deserved that?”
Poquelin had to admit she had a point, and shook his head. “No.” What he had witnessed in the Maw - more felt than anything else - was beyond his most terrible nightmares. Oblivion would have been a far greater release. He mused on this for a moment, then finally decided to see what this was about. “By all means, lead on.”
Drastiya led him to a nearby gazebo, where Poquelin was astonished to find himself standing across from someone he never would have thought he would see again. He was in a ghostly form; the ren’dorei standing next to him in purple and gold, a grayish-blue pandaren rank cord around his waist, was not. He began to laugh quietly, shaking his head. “Of all the people I had expected, I never once thought it would be you.”
“Whyever not? It was your hatred for me that eventually led you to where you are now, Teren.”
Poquelin did not bother to correct him. “You flatter yourself.”
“Hardly. You made your ambitions clear enough to Kel’theris, and to me. When he made me the head of the House Guard when your sister died, you chose exile because it was not you, and deprived us of a good man in the wars to come.”
Fury boiled in Poquelin’s blood. “Everything that you have should have been mine, Taeril’hane, and you know it. House Skyfire had served at the right hand of House Whitehair long before your family crawled its way through the ranks.”
Fury took hold in the ghostly visage of Taeril’hane Ketiron. “I’m dead, you idiot!” he shouted. “I don’t ‘have’ anything anymore! House Ketiron, House Whitehair, House Skyfire… nothing remains but ruins and ashes! You really think if you had stood in my place, it would have made a damn bit of difference?” His tone lowered, but the pain was evident in his voice. “You think it would have been any better for you, had you gotten everything you wanted? If fate had been reversed, and you had become Kel’theris’ commander instead of me, and married Areinnye… do you really think you would not be here now, in my place, awaiting penance? Do you think you could have saved Areinnye from death, or kept your own child from being transformed by the Void and banished as a ‘threat’ to the Sunwell? As much joy as I have to see that my son is well, I would never wish such a painful journey on anyone. Not even you, Teren.”
Poquelin clenched his fists at his sides. “Why did you bring me here, Taeril’hane? I know why he’s here,” and he gestured to the silent ren’dorei. “But why me? I’ve made no secret of what I think of you. And you hate me. You always have. You used that hatred and turned my own sister against me. So why this sudden reconciliation?”
“I do not hate you, Teren,” Ketiron replied. “And I did nothing of the kind. Kaleris worried that you were more concerned about the power of the position rather than the responsibility, even as our land was going to hell around us. You were a better warrior than I, Teren, but you let your pride go to your head. Because House Skyfire had always been House Whitehair’s protectors, and you and Kaleris were all that remained, you expected to receive it automatically when Kaleris died, and you made sure we all knew it. And Kaleris could see that. She warned Kel’theris before she fell. I never knew that until I raised the question to him of why me instead of you; I had expected you would get it from the start. ‘Because you don’t want it at all,’ he told me, ‘and he wants it too much.’”
An expression of disbelief crossed Poquelin’s face. “You didn’t want it?”
“I was content to be Kaleris’ lieutenant, Teren. But Kel’theris suspected I would not have been content to be yours. You always looked down on me, and all of us in the Guard. Again, because it had always been that way, the Skyfires were the commanders… and you expected it would not change, even with our king dead and our land in ruin. You were the only one left, after all. Kel’theris saw differently, and so he chose me. Marrying his granddaughter, taking over his House, was never in my mind.”
Poquelin’s jaw dropped a fraction. “Not once?”
“Not ever. But you? You would never have served as second to anyone, certainly not me. Such rewards would have been expected if you had taken my place. And you would be dead, and probably right here, suffering under the weight of your pride. Far more than I, and I have my share of it.”
“And in this scenario, what would your fate have been?”
Ketiron smiled sadly. “Probably right here with you, because I would have been duty-bound to be at your side.”
Poquelin’s mind raced. He didn’t know what to say to that… and he found he believed what he heard. Ketiron was dead, after all; what reason would he have to lie? Especially here?
“I have been burdened by this for more than a decade,” Ketiron continued. “Ord’taeril had seen you here before, and knew you had returned. He told me, and I asked Inquisitor Drastiya to send for you.”
“I ask again: Why me?”
“Because now that I’m here, and not rotting in a cell in Torghast, I want to lift that burden. I did not want this to become what it did. And I do not want to await my future here without having explained myself to you, now that we are not locked in mortal combat or fighting to save our future again.” He bowed his head. “Whatever wrongs you did me and mine, I forgive you for them. I do not expect you will do the same for me, but… perhaps in time.”
For the first time he could remember, Poquelin was absolutely dumbfounded. He had heard the same rumor as Ord’taeril had, which had been part of his motivation to come here in the first place - to watch his old enemy languish in torment. But what he had endured was worse, and what he had said to Drastiya about no one deserving a fate like the Maw, he had meant it. The fact that Ketiron’s spirit had survived… and yet this was how he thought about it all? This was not what he had expected at all.
“Perhaps,” he said after a long moment.