A toast to your success

[Frygyd]

One might wonder how long she had been drinking. Whether there had been any breaks taken in between the steady rotation of imbibing from the flask, ensuring it was full by topping it up at any nearby tavern and taking another draught before teleporting off to another destination.  She always seemed to be on the move these days.  Studying and some drinking.  Practicing and then drinking.  Chores with some drinking.

It was not as though she wobbled while she moved or had the stink of alcohol about her that would normally draw attention to a truly dedicated lush. No, that would require a lapse in concentration and routine abhorent to the very fibers that make up her being.  Instead her walk was icily certain, gestures crisply controlled, body regularly scrubbed clean to invigorate with chilly unforgiving water leaving her fair elvish skin abrased.  Robes pressed, boots shined, jewelry cleaned and polished. She did all her own mending, delivered her messages from city to city via teleportation rather than leaving them to a courier.  When she was not battling under the Grim banner she was wracking her mind and somatic movements for any fraction of improvement that could be eeked forth from her magicks.  Obsessively she catalogued the differing affects of each trinket, bauble, wand, staff, dagger and combination of enchanted vestments in her personal arsenal.  All this while she continued to drink. The flask was her ever present companion, as likely to be seen in her off hand as the staff was within her main.  Constantly in motion the varied potions she funneled into her frail form were an inadequate substitution for what her body truly needed.  Bloodelves were well known by their green eyes and hers darted unceasingly, manic but one would need to look very deeply into their startling depths to divine the extent of the madness seething there.

She did not sleep anymore.

It had started with a few incidents of waking only seconds before mutilating herself with her own sharp fingernails.  One night she awoke to find herself idly carving runes into one of her thighs with a favored jeweled dagger.  It was with a detached point of view that she watched her hand guiding the knife, tilting her head to better see what she was creating.  And then she came to her senses and realized what she was doing or rather what was being done to her.  Startled into action the realization dawned upon her with cold clarity that she had lost ground to the enemy in her resting hours.  She showed no one.  The mixture of panic, fury and bruised pride was a powerful stimulant.  Retreating inside, bolstering her defenses, she chose to fight alone because she trusted no others.  Could not trust.  The whispers had many allies and they were very clever indeed, obfuscating themselves and their motives but she would not be fooled.  She was aware of their wiles, saw it in a quick glance, a barely concealed leer, a carefully blank look that told all to well what was going on.  They were all in on it.  Maybe not consciously, not yet, but unlike herself they were all weak.  Only she had the determination to stay the course and she would not risk telling a soul of what was at stake.  If she let it slip then all would be lost.

Frya was slowly going mad.

[Greebo]

(( excellent. Greebo can find a new bourbon buddy ))