The Battle at Fallhaven

(All House of Stewards material used with permission, and with much gratitude.  and as always, gratitude to my collaborator Alia!)

Siege of Fallhaven Post Report 
Compiled by Mafius: 

Overview: Fallhaven was saved and the Horde forces driven back. Over a hundred Horde, one catapult, and one siege engine lay in ruin on the field. A blood guard commander was killed, however, the two other commanders and their General successfully disengaged from the conflict and fled. 

Personnel: The toll for the Stewards and allies was severe. One friendly ally was killed, several Stewards critically injured and nearly killed, and all others moderately wounded. Steward current battle readiness is critically compromised at the moment, and it's my recommendation that the forces are withdrawn. 

Infrastructure: The northern bridge, overlook, and trenches running from the bridge along the dry riverbed to the western road have all been detonated. The western bridge has been destroyed, and none of the crossroad barricades remain intact. Substantial damage to all the buildings and the square itself and nearby fields are heavily damaged and pockmarked. It will be a week before the rubble could be cleared away to afford normal wagon travel.

Current Appraisal of the Stewards: While successful, the remaining Stewards are highly vulnerable. Caution should be applied to any engagement within the near future.

The fellow known as Jon Chess sat in his bed, the pain of his burns and other wounds blunted by the healing he had received from the hands of Raelian after the battle of Fallhaven, in which he had participated as an ally of the House of Stewards, attached to the North Bridge defenders and under the command of Minnie.

Minnie was a short and muscular Gnome woman with neatly cropped pink hair, no doubt to keep it out of her wide, green eyes.  She had a line of tattoos various cogs and gears - which started behind each ear and met at the base of her neck, cascading from there down her spine.  Jon had grinned as he had spotted knives hidden in both boots and noted vials filled with either healing potions or poisons at her belt. It was she who Hinik had assigned Jon to work with on the matter of the counterfeit Kul Tiras coinage.  Jon had noticed while working with Minne, that her spoken accent seemed to change quite often. Jon liked the diminutive sneak; she reminded him of Phredaria Goldgears, Jon's forensics mage consultant and close friend.

In the battle, Jon had taken a stabbing across his ribs, a spear had impaled his right shoulder, his face and neck had been lacerated by stone shards from a catapult, and his back had been set ablaze by a Horde siege engine while he shielded the Ren'dorei monk (with a laudatory love of cheese) named Raethian and her patient, the Rendorei ranger and former Farstrider named Falerelan.  He had managed to make it to the cover of the stone steps in the town square before the siege engine had detonated under friendly fire, but the concussive explosion had knocked him unconscious until he had woke to the emerald healing mists from the hands of Raethian. Her ministrations had been enough such that Jon could reach his own medical supplies; a cache of his own healing draughts.  Between her soothing mists and Jon's alchemical crimson vials, the worst of the damage had been healed, leaving Jon ravenous for cheese.

Aside from being delicious and providing Jon cover has a merchant for his espionage and assassination activities, cheese was almost the perfect food for replenishing the resources magical healing invariably used to repair the body; it was high in easily-digestible proteins and fats, both of which were used in abundance by magical healing. Such healing was like butter scrapped over toast; if you had enough, all was well.  If you had too little butter for too much toast, the effect was patchwork and to little effect.  Jon carried cheese with him everywhere in the frost magic-powered enchanted bag for which he had paid a small fortune to a Kirin Tor magister long before he had met Alia Atherton for pragmatic as well as commercial reasons. It was as much part of his arsenal as his F.R.I.E.D. grenades.

Once more Jon pondered whether or not he should continue to recover here in Fallhaven, or if he should ask Alia to take him home to their tower in the Elywnn Forest. The advantage of recovering in Fallhaven was that Alia would not be able to scold Jon for putting his thick, stubborn neck at risk, or at least, at risk without her. Additionally, Jon would not be tempted to tax what strength he could recover by pulling her into bed with him... besides being a mage of no small ability, Alia Atherton was, at least in Jon's eyes, an irresistible, purple-eyed enchantress. But that was a decision for when he was more awake - for now, a healing slumber beckoned to him irresistibly.

*     *     *

Jon felt her before he had the presence of mind to know he was conscious.

Alia’s side of the link was remarkably open to his searching, though the maelstrom of thought and emotion made him spin; longing, adoration, fear, doubt, gratitude, anger, and no small bit of underlining confusion with this anger. She held his hand, thumb pressing gently on the ring that denoted their bond, and had chosen a mostly bandage free place on his torso as a resting place for her head while her body awkwardly leaned over the bed from a chair. Alia wore what he supposed was the mage version of traveling leathers; a slim, almost body suit like a blend of cloth and light armor dyed in blacks and dark purples, with shoulder guards wrapped in scrolls to the point they dangled down her back behind her. The scrolls had strange runes written on them, the origins of which he could not make out in this state of halfness. Her signature hood and cloak were pulled tight around her and a half-curled lump of disheveled hair hid her face from him, making it difficult to see her eyes, but her breathing was even, if short. Out of the silence of the room, she sniffled.

She was awake.

A nosy inn staff member tried to talk to her when she briefly stepped out for more coffee, something about needing rest after her journey and not having eaten a full meal since her arrival the night before, but she waved them off, and when they insisted, she whipped her head and growled at them, her eyes flickering with unchecked arcana, though dark with exhaustion as they were, before closing the door behind her. They understandably did not disturb them from then on, unless purposefully called upon.

It seems the Gilnean Rook had rubbed off of the Dalaran Magna.