▸ Column · The Scourge's domain, age of the Lich King — Azeroth rendered in modern grounded comic register
ARTHAS MENETHIL replies.
Replied to by Arthas Menethil, with a rebuttal from Illidan Stormrage.
The letter
For three weeks someone in the keep has been systematically raiding the communal provisions chest, and I have run out of patience. I label everything — name, date, even a small death's-head rune drawn in charcoal for emphasis — and still my leftover spiced stew, my labeled preserves, and most devastatingly my mother's handmade dumplings have all vanished. On Tuesday I set a trap: a jar marked "FIRESEED EXTRACT (do not open — extreme heat)" and at midday I heard my colleague Tobias coughing violently at his post and draining an entire cask of oat milk. He refuses to confess. The garrison steward is now involved because someone lodged a formal grievance calling my jar "deliberate workplace endangerment," and meanwhile the keep's administrator Yuki keeps suggesting I "simply bring less tempting provisions," as though seasoning my own rations is the crime here. Do I escalate to a padlocked chest, do I expose Tobias before the whole hall, or do I accept that my mother's dumplings now nourish a man whose eyes haven't found mine since Tuesday?
Arthas Menethil replies
The skull drawing is what I want to name first — not because the threat wasn't real, but because you drew it certain it would deter someone capable of being deterred. It deterred no one. You were already past ordinary steps when you drew it.
I know that trap. I set one once, at a city called Stratholme. The threat was real. My cause was entirely just. It was the last responsible move left to a man who had exhausted every other option. I was right about the threat. I was wrong about what taking the step would make of me, and there was no road back from that side.
Tobias drank an entire cask of oat milk. You heard it happen. You have your proof. What you are asking me is: what comes next? You have framed it as the padlock, the public accusation, or surrender.
On the public accusation: it will not leave you unchanged. I know how that sounds. I said the same thing at Stratholme — it was already done, it had to be done — and said it until it was the whole of what I was. You know he stole from you. The knowing is not the problem. What you do with that certainty is the problem.
Your mother's dumplings are gone. I am sorry for it. But I am speaking now about you, not about Tobias. Uther tried to say something like this to me once. I walked past him without looking back. Don't.
— Arthas Menethil
Illidan Stormrage weighs in
Arthas will trace the history of his failures for you until you are too paralyzed by the comparison to act. The trap was not Stratholme. Stratholme was a city of innocents. Tobias ate your lunch and lost a fight with fireseed extract. They are not the same scale.
Yuki is the problem — "bring less tempting provisions" means make yourself smaller so the thief stays comfortable. Ignore her.
Padlock the chest today. Then walk to Tobias's desk and say, plainly, that you know. Not a question. A statement. He does not get to not look at you.
I was imprisoned ten thousand years while the world burned because no one acted. Your mother made those dumplings. Act accordingly.
— Illidan Stormrage
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