My first attempt at WoW fan fiction. Please be easy on me. I’ve had this story in my head for a long time, but finally just got the nerve to write it down.
The Mural
Even as a child, Remi knew something was not right with the living room. Its hardwood floors hand crafted and imported from Drustvar. It’s walls lacking of color and cheer. Long black shades covering the dusty windows.
Nothing of interest stood in this room except the mural: that void born mockery of existence. His mother had painted it when he was born, and she continued to paint on it throughout his life.
She never spoke of it and would yell at Remi not to ask any questions of it upon her mortal soul. Every night, his mother would put him to bed and close the door. Shortly there after, she would steal away to pray quietly in the next room facing that dreaded scene depicting some distant desert world with images of men and women running from an eldritch shadow – a Storm that was fast approaching on the horizon.
Remi swore that he could smell death itself just beneath the layers of paint, and at times the wall would seem to breathe as though a strong wind were barely held at bay. Fell voices would whisper in a language for which no mortal could utter.
The years passed, and his mother grew old, but she never stopped praying nor painting a single day. The weight of some unfathomable sorrow would never leave its burden from her shoulders. It wore her down, made her gaunt and gray.
When Remi turned 19, Boralus had begun to prosper and to grow into a bustling harbor; every day new people came into town. Young men would sign up for its Navy, the pride of Kul Tiras. While many came, fewer stayed.
The past always lingered over the land. A history etched by something or someone long before the settlers came. Riddles in the depths of waters inky black and stone torn from the Earth by giant hands. And then, there were the Others. People would draw away from the sight of the gaunt, gangly men in deep purple and blue cloaks. Standing on shorelines with great staves. The howling winds and the shrieking waves a tempest at their command.
Such old men would often come to visit Remi’s mother. They would say nothing to him-- their gazes piercing right through him. Always they came to look upon the mural. His mother would be transfixed with dread. They would whisper and make cryptic signs. She only dared called them tidesages.
It was Remi’s naming day. Turning 19 meant he was now an adult. But, no celebration came. His mother only flinched as he said good morning. He went out to assist in construction at the newly build site of a great castle. The work paid almost nothing, but it kept him busy.
It seemed as though all day the weather looked forlorn. The clouds an angry collage. The weather turned for worse. Men and women would be hurt by falling stones. Small marshes became flooded. Horses could not quell their fear. Heavy rains made construction difficult, but this was unnatural. It became obvious to leave for home. The foreman had already fled.
The raging wind followed him from town. It savagely attacked him and he barely could close the front door. Sleep did not come that night.
Dawn broke and eerie silence came with it. Word came from passing neighbors that tragedy had taken a young couple at Kenning farm. They said that around midnight the wind was blowing harder than ever before. And there were voices within it calling for something, and then a gutteral ungodly sound cut them off.
Oddly enough there were no other reports. Word was no one outside of Boralus remembers a windy night.
Remi woke among a ruin of his mother’s house. The remaining walls had giant claw marks. The doors smashed. The windows a shredded mass slowly sinking into the Earth. Already a pair of Brinepinches were clawing at his presence. Other creatures had run havoc among the house seeking out spilled food. All was in disarray except the unholy living room held together as if by unseen magic.
Remi edged himself for a peak into the room. There his mother sat, per usual, in her chair fast asleep. All was well kept save for a plaster piece depicting an eye that had fallen from the mural. He thought nothing of it. Kept it within his hexweave bag. His thoughts turned to rebuilding the house.
Years passed. Remi’s mom looked ancient; she looked like one of those oil paintings he had seen in the grand hall in Norwington Estate. The very wrinkles on her skin gave off an eerie blue light; Remi swore he was dreaming, but he could not be certain of anything anymore. She constantly painted the mural, trying to restore parts that were now falling off.
One day, he failed to notice that part of the mural wall had been revealed, and that some reptilian like eye followed him. Her hands, weak from the many years of hard work, had no strength to keep the mural from fading all together.
Though the sun was kept at bay, the very air itself was corrosive in the living room. He kept himself out of there often. He visited a few times while on break from the Naval Academy, but wherever Remi left, he couldn’t shake that someone was watching him.
His dreams consumed him with people running from something while carrying a child and then he saw them begging a great wizard to cast a spell upon the thing that followed. These wizards sealed the monster beneath the waves.
Often he longed to be at home, to comfort his aged mother from the endless dread that consumed her. He sent mail home often, but no letters would return. Increasingly, the air, in his mother’s home, hummed with static and voices speaking in unknown tongues would whisper to him. They called him something. He felt he knew the name, but not at the same time.
At long last, graduation came. He rode home early. He looked for his mother, but it seemed she had left on an errand. The very air of the house was insanely cold. Yet, not five steps did he take before slowly turning his head towards the massively voided shape that now gazed upon him in the living room.
From that abyssal darkness, he heard the first and last words of his mortal life, “Ya gnaiigof’n…" (My son….)