Kall's Fiction

Collection of fiction written about Kall by user:p3a. More being added and wikified whenever she has time. Please note, these are written from an in-character perspective, and may suffer from a case of an Unreliable Narrator - things Kall thinks are true might not neccessarily be that way.
==30th May 2008==
"You're very lucky to be alive, little Gnome... little Fatespinner."
The words sent chills down Kall Sprangler's spine as they were spoken. She still wasn't sure what to make of them now as she lay in bed, an entire day later, practically mummified in bandages to prevent the day's wounds from opening and leaking all over the bedsheets, beside her snoring spouse. Fatespinner... she'd heard the term once before, she swore it, but she was convinced it was way too important a title to be applied to her. Even if she did, er, change someone's fate.
It was one person... one person. Right? She only brought one person back...
==12th June 2008==
"Huh. Why do I bother?"
Mrs Pentrarch Kall Sprangler addressed this question to none but herself: she'd drawn the conclusion, eventually, that Lowen - the male one of the three triplets borne of her and her husband, and the one which was currently sleeping peacefully in her arms - couldn't understand what she was saying. She was sat with him on top of a large rock outside her house, which, in turn, was through a complicated arcano-temporal portal.
She had been thinking a little. Thinking, that was, about the nature of her life. The paperwork which she completed for the Bronze Dragonflight was unavoidable; she still unrelentingly loved Lowdan to the point of overprotection of him (even if he was very different to how he used to be), and there was no question that her three genetic children, her baby half-sister and her mentally challenged older brother were staying.
It was the hero bit she was wondering about.
She wasn't giving up, she decided. She had failed already, and it was just a matter of deciding where she drew the line between questionable perseverence and downright stupidity.
She'd lost Qialynna, and Lowdan was very different. Kouniam had fallen, and that was her fault. She'd misjudged Dunxie and now he was evil too. She'd defeated or disposed off most of her remaining family - the ones who had caused her so much pain over so much time - and so, the only personal threats remaining were the ones she could not solve.
Tasks for the forces in Outland were either mundane or too dangerous for her, and one of these days her Time would come. The bottom line was, she was fed up of losing - and she didn't want to play any more.
Lowen yawned, and pawed at his mother's chest sleepily. She sighed at him.
"I really don't know what I ought to do, you know."
==19th June 2008==
Kall sat in Lowdan's armchair, watching Sinn and Farshala playing.
Farshala was at least sixty years younger than Sinn. Gnomes generally matured to fighting age at 40, living to - on average - 200. Kall herself was 42 years old, and Lowdan was 50. Sinn was between 10 and 20 years over Lowdan's age.
Farshala was just over a year old now ((so on par with a 6-month old human baby)). When she was first rescued from the Darksprockets who she used to be a part of, her eyes had been completely white - no colour in them at all, although they didn't glow, either. She was very quiet, and never cried. Now, however... there were faint grey pupils beginning to show in the centres of her eyes, as if they were de-misting.
Sinn was sixty or so, but he was also a leper gnome. Since Kall had taken him in, his mental age had deteriorated severely - and now he was playing with his baby half-sister as if they were the same age.
Kall had managed to detain the radiation in Sinn. In the same manner that she'd been taught, as an engineer, that iron ships could be stopped from rusting by fixing a lump of the more reactive thorium* to them, so the mithril rusted first in place of the iron - she'd visited a goblin alchemist in Gadgetzan, and requested that he give her a small amount of radiation-absorbing material each month (for a price, of course). She hung it around his neck, and it took in the decay more readily than the bodies of her family.
She still wouldn't allow Sinn and Lowdan in the same room, what with Lowdan's immune system as it was - weak. Exposition to even the slightest bit of the radiation-induced illness, for Lowdan, might spell death.
Kall Sprangler pondered the fact that Sinn had been throwing up his food recently, and that he was getting iller and iller. She was sad at the fact he would die soon. She also pondered the fact that, just a few months ago, Sinn would - without question - have sacrificed the child he was playing with in order to summon a demon more powerful than anything brought to Azeroth so far.
==20th June 2008==
She placed the tabard neatly on the bed, next to the letter, and stared from one to the other and back again.
Pentrarch Kall Sprangler seemed to be torn.
A lot of the members and officers of Athanatoi had made it quite clear they didn't want her around, for whatever reason. She didn't mind what the reasons were - she knew she was a disagreeable person, and also a warlock. She also knew that sometimes their reasons were not entirely fair, but she'd learnt to deal with that. There was also the niggling sense that it was a trap of some kind - not specifically designed for her, although she certainly wasn't keen on all of the members of the Athanatoi being in one place, in one big group, at one time. She also suspected that she might be physically dragged through the space-time continuum by a very tested Dozramdu* back home to do her paperwork, if she left even for a few hours.
But she also had numerous good reasons to attend the event which she'd been written to about. She knew that, for a start, she would probably be punished. She knew she wouldn't be thrown out - by some utter miracle, she had managed to become a Pentrarch at some point: she was convinced this was because either the Matriarch or one of the Ethnarchs had either a soft spot, an ulterior motive, or both for her. But she would be punished. Senya would hate her even more, Qialynna... well, she wasn't even going to bother starting thinking about that... and the other officers who had never met her would develop a pre-conceived dislike of her. There were also sometimes people like Trienna, Zelcandor, Mirthe and their like - who didn't utterly loathe her guts, even if they didn't particularly like her either.
She looked at the letter, then at the tabard, then at the letter.
She placed the letter on top of the tabard, and folded them both neatly together, placing them in the top drawer of the bedside table. She'd decide another night.
==22nd June 2008 - Midsummer Fire Festival==
"Ow!"
"Shush Kall, we need to get these out."
Lowdan, speaking in Gnomish, had a pair of tweezers in his hand, and was picking strands of frayed robe out of her dried wounds.
"What were you doing, anyway? Weren't you meant to be getting blessed?" Lowdan narrowed his eyes at her, momentarily stopping picking at the stuck material. "The Athanatoi weren't being mean to you again were they? Did that Kouniam try anything shifty?"
"No, actually. By the time I got there, they'd all gone. This was the dragons I met on the way."
"Um..."
"Infinites, you know. Little ones - whelps, like - but they decided to come check this place out on a whim or somesuch. That's what I guessed, anyway. I fought them, is the point. Killed them all, so hopefully they won't bring their daddy with them next time cos there won't be a next time."
"Um... didn't you get a healer?"
"Well, I did. But then I went to Silvermoon."
Lowdan stopped, and looked her dead in the eye, close to laughing at the sheer absurdity of this revelation, and how low telling him seemed to be on her priority list. He said, in the most flat and serious voice he could,
"Kall, why were you in Silvermoon City?"
"To get their flame."
There was a long silence.
"Their what?"
"Their flame. We were stealing them."
Another silence.
"Why?"
"For fun."
There was a much longer silence.
Kall added, rather lamely, "and a shiny crown."
"How did you end up with all these cuts?" Lowdan's mouth was hanging slightly open, his eyes displaying an emotion somewhere between dismay and utter confusion.
"I got killed by elves a lot. They don't want their flames taking."
"...am I missing something here?"
"Oh, right, yeah. I went to Orgrimmar too, to get their flame too. I still need to go to Thunder Bluff."
There was a thick, rich silence. Kall grinned slightly at Lowdan, obliviously; Lowdan gaped at her, open-mouthed, trying desperately to comprehend without coming to the conclusion that his wife had finally lost the plot entirely (whereas before she'd merely been utilising holes within said plot in a questionable fashion).
"So... let me get this straight, Kall... you decided to steal into two of the Horde's main cities, one of which was the one I died in... full of hostile, savage orcs and nasty elves and all manner of other dangerous things... in order to get some of the fire from their Midsummer bonfires... to take it to someone in return for a pretty hat?"
"Yeah!"
The two exchanged looks.
"Just... let me know next time, okay?" He paused, then added coldly, "Something might happen."
Lowdan, very quietly, went back to picking the threads of netherweave out of Kall's now-scabbing cuts.
==22nd June 2008==
"Kall! Why do you keep going back... I don't understand... they're so horrible to you."
The two exchanged looks: Kall, looks of weariness and esasperation; Lowdan, looks of confusion and sadness.
"No, Lowdan. I'm horrible to them."
She turned her back him, facing the sink - washing her wounds again.
==23rd July 2008 - Blasted War==
"Ow! Garrot! Do not hit me!"
"Kall, you're being blood ridiculous. You can't just stay here. For all you know the Legion could be overtaking Tanaris right now!" 
"Yes, but is that likely?" The warlock's Demonic-Gnomish-dialect words rebounded around the room like whips. "All the soldiers there are perfectly competent. Moreso that I am. I'd only mess everything up!" 
"You can scout well!" 
"No, I can't. That's a lie. I've not had any training since I joined the Athanatoi, and I'm not even with them any more." 
"First aid, then! They need all the help they can get!" 
"Bandages are no substitute for the aid from the Light which some can give, and there are a surprisingly large number of people out there who would rather die than let a warlock lay hands on them!" 
"It's all about numbers, though! They need numbers! You will make the difference between nine-thousand-and-ninety-nine and ten-thousand!"
Kall sighed heavily, turning her back on the small creature. 
"That's all it is, right?" 
"You could be the one to take a shadowbolt on behalf of a key leader. You could make that difference." 
"I don't want to fight." 
"Why not?" 
"I've... had my share." 
"That's a lie, Kall, and you know it. You haven't seen half as many battles as the people who are out there. You're not half as OLD as most of them, Kall. You're wasting yourself."
There was a silence. 
"I'm needed more here than there." She was referring to her home, where her (largely dependant) family lived. 
"Lowdan's getting better now. He can look after the children."
Another silence. 
"And if I die?" 
"He'll live. Belnema won't let him do anything stupid."
Kall turned around again, and picked up her backpack, putting it over her shoulders. 
"We're leaving for Nethergarde..."
==16th September 2008==
So, Lowdan thought, the key was to keep her occupied. She was a gnome, first and foremost. Gnomes thrived on invention.
He knew his wife, Kall Sprangler, had been going through bad times since... well, forever. It tired him sometimes. She'd come home in tears and she wouldn't be able to give him any help with the chores or playing with the children, so he had to go short on sleep whilst he gave her hot chocolate and then went and fed the children, and then the animals, then went to check she was asleep then play with the children until they were asleep, too. He didn't mind it, so much... he just wished he could sleep more.
"Lowdan, are you okay?"
"Yes, I am fine. Is the food alright?"
"Yes thank-you!" Kall carried on talking at him, about engineering a new device to take thaumotemporal readings from the eddies surrounding the nearby portals. Or something like that, anyway. Lowdan's hearing sort of phased out, his face automatically adjusting into the "I'm listening" expression that most married men learnt to develop.
He wished he could sleep more. But at least now she was occupied. She did love inventing things, and the Dragons had worked out that this kept her more occupied than making her fill out forms. Of course, Lowdan knew they were lying to her altogether. If they needed measurement devices, they could make them themselves. They were Dragons, after all. If all else failed, they could take a trip into the future and take one from there back in time to where it was needed - moving through time was as natural to the Bronzes as moving through space was for ordinary people.
"Eat your breakfast, Kall."
Kall looked down at her plate. She hadn't eaten anything. She'd been too busy talking. "Oh... okay..."
Lowdan smiled slightly.
==17th September 2008==
Farshala was the oldest of the four children. She was one year and six months old, whereas the other three - the triplets - were only seven months. She was their half-aunt, though, being Kall's half-sister.
Of course, she wasn't aware of this. She was aware of the fact that there was magic. Magic! Oh, how it fascinated her. It could jump from one hand to the other and - hands, they were interesting too. Hands. Yes, they existed, probably. Mostly. It was a bit vauge, really. That was what they were called, wasn't it? The one that was called "Daddy", and the one called "Mummy", and the one called "Ziz"... Ziz-zul... Ziz-something all had Hands too. They were instruments for smithing magic with, as far as she could work out.
Magic definitely existed, though.
Ziz-zul would sometimes come and visit and give her little balls of the stuff - the kind which tasted of itself and was very pale-blue but not cold - to play with. Mummy could only give her the hot magic, and that was a bit hurty if you got it wrong. Hurt. She remembered... remember, that's interesting too... but she did that to a recollection of some great amount of pain. But it had brought her the ability to know the magic was there, that it was real. She wanted that.
Magic was real. Magic was good. It was the people who were blurry.
She'd found three different kinds. There was the hot, hurty magic; the cold, bitey magic; and the magic that was magic. She'd felt an altogether darker kind of magic sometimes, like when the little green man came to play with her and the triplets. He had magic, and it smelt really, really bad. Mummy sometimes smelt of it too.
The triplets were a bit weird. They were really fuzzy. Farlynna was okay, but she smelt a bit like the little green man sometimes, and other times she smelt like the hurty burny magic. Daddy was worse, though. She couldn't see him a lot of the time and he'd pick her up and make her jump and cry because she hadn't been aware of his presence. He smelt of the magic that was magic sometimes, but in a bad way.
Now? Ooh, now was a nice thing, too. What happened to now when now became then? She wasn't quite sure. Something must happen to it. Things didn't stop being things, they just changed into other things.
Now. Yes, now she was sleeping. Sleep was strange too. It meant she couldn't move. Did that mean the bit that was her was detatched from the bit that moved? What was that called... she didn't know.
She stirred a little. She didn't like not knowing.
==7th November 2008==
"I hate them!"
"Kall, calm down..."
"I hate them with every fibre of my being! Ugh, they're so... so... so arrogant, and selfish, and horrible, and ugh!"
"KALL! Calm!"
"I mean seriously, none of them ever even noticed I was having trouble! None of them noticed when I left! Senya even called me a PENTRARCH!"
"Kall!!"
"What?!"
"You're being irrational. They all have problems of their own. You are not their life priority. I don't think you even should have left in the first place, given it's caused more problems than it's solved."
"I don't care! They want me to bloody do whatever the Nether I'm supposed to be Fated to do for their goddamn Matriarch or whatever it is they all need me alive for, they'd better bloody start being nice to me!"
Lowdan sighed.
"And bloody Dunxie as well! UGH I hate his GUTS! I hate his DEMONS! I hate HIM! All of him!"
"Kall..." Lowdan's tone of voice was no longer measured. It was slightly panicked.
"WHAT?!"
He took two steps backwards.
"Let me go and get Zizzleclank, okay? You're turning into a demon again."
His wife was going insane.
==22nd April 2009==
Kall woke up. It was actually a relatively quick job - she hadn't really slept in mind, so it just involved forcing her body through the process, rather than also having to salvage her consciousness from the groggy depths of lethargy. Lying down still, she reached sideways for her glasses, pushing them on clumsily - her vision kill them all resolving from ambiguous blobs of colourful light soup into actual objects. She propped herself up on her elbows, catching sight of a still-fast-asleep Lowdan.
It would just take one little cut.
Oh, here we go... Kall sighed. There was a twinge of pain in her temples; she ignored it.
Yes... just one cut. All the trouble you're going through could be over. You wouldn't have to worry about anybody but you.
Yeah, whatever... Kall groaned, and pushed herself up to sitting. She shuffled around a 90 degree turn, then slipped off the bed, pulling her night-dress down to a respectable length before traipsing across the room and grabbing a dressing-gown at random, slipping on her slippers.
You wouldn't have to get up this early, you know.
Kall yawned. She clicked the door open, pushing it gently, and plodding sleepily down the corridor, past the rooms of the as-of-now sleeping children. The clock above the doorway to the central room read 6:00am exactly.
You'd only have to work for yourself. No family, no extra responsibilities, just you and your needs...
Shut up.
The twinge of hurt at her temples, and now the place where her head met her neck, was now developing into a more insistant throbbing. She continued to ignore it as she reached the kitchen, poured herself some cereal, and crunched sleepily.
You would be able to lie in bed and not think or worry.
You wouldn't even have to justify it to anybody. Nobody would ask. Nobody cares.
Zizzleclank isn't as powerful as she seems. If you accepted a certain little deal, you could summon all of your demons at once and ta
SHUT UP.
There was silence for a little while.
It was a normal day.
==28th April 2009==
It was the first time Kall had cried at a nightmare in a long time.
She saw herself running away. It was red, dusty, choking here - the dirt kicked up by Light knew how many feet. But as she watched the dream Kall charge off into an enemy, fire in her eyes and fel in her heart, she--
There was a gut-wrenching stab. It came from behind, piercing through weak-spots in heavy chain and sideways into soft stomach skin, an armoured arm prising plate protection open like a tin-can. Literally gut-wrenching... gruesomely, the dagger was still in sideways, but was pulled out horizontally away, pulling intestines with it. Thrown onto the hard ground, with a morbid squelch. Issued a death gasp... and woke up with the sinking notion that the dream was a memory of Lowdan's.
"It's okay..." he told her, when he was woken by her whimpering. She wasn't sure whether or not to believe him.
==5th May 2009==
"So... how did it go?"
"It was... okay. I didn't cry. Nearly. But not."
"Heh." Zizzleclank smirked a bit.
"But look what Bolgorim gave me."
Kall held up a shirt. Emblem of Gnomeregan, lit by stars and magic coming from the city of Dalaran below.
"That was nice of him."
A little silence.
"And guess what Kouniam did."
"Hmm?"
"He gave me a hug. And said sorry."
There was a pause.
"I wonder what he's up to now," said Zizzleclank, suspicious.
"You know what?"
"What?"
"I think he just wanted a hug. And to say sorry."
Zizzleclank's smirk softened into a smile, then faded.
"Fair enough."
==7th May 2009==
"So... what's this for?" Lowdan held up the black and white tabard. The emblem almost seemed to sparkle - ancilla* stripes on the shoulder, iridescing gently. Kall smiled faintly.
"It'll be useful. I can tell."
"Oh, you're being mystical again."
Kall blushed. "No I'm not!"
"Yes, you are. Your eyes always space out and your voice goes all distant."
Kall stopped, bright red in the face. She hadn't realised anything was different.
Lowdan smiled, then hugged her.
"I'll take it if it makes you feel better."
Category:Story