Winter Veil from Seron’dal

The box alone was beautiful, and she couldn’t help her smile as she stroked her fingers over the ribbon. Upon opening it and reading the note, she felt a lump in her throat, a joy in her heart. Holding the pendant close to her chest she closed her eyes and sighed. “Damn you Hade.” she shook her head then and reached for their comm stone to call him up. 

She’d be wearing the pendant, nestled just as the crest of her ample bosom, and in her lap was a box for him as well. It was white, with black ribbon, and her smile was wide while she waited for him to come back to her from wherever he was that day.

Inside the box were two things, carefully wrapped in layered, thin, fine paper. The large of the two was an ornate silver hair brush she’d had fashioned for him, pure sterling and talbuk hair, knowing how much she cared for his beautiful inky tresses. The second piece complimented it. It was a sterling forged hair pin, meant to adorn a pony tail, something he wore often as it were. Both were handcrafted and she could feel the flutters in her stomach, wondering what he’d think of them both.

There were a few names on Hadeon’s Winter Veil list who he simply could not find, no hint of where to look for them. Much like his errant witch-child. It was a bit depressing to think of how easy it was to lose track of friends even when you didn’t travel worlds away and it was with a heavy heart and empty hands that he returned from Dalaran’s central post. He wouldn’t go buying things if he couldn’t even send them, after all.

It was strange to come back to an inn room at all; left to his own devices, he’d do as he’d done for years and simply stay out in the wilds, safely away from the good, decent folk of the world. But he couldn’t shake the arcanist and he couldn’t make her sleep out in the woods simply because she refused to let him be… So there was an inn room. And shared meals (though he ate very, very little). And quiet evenings where he read a book and pretended Seron’dal was not sitting behind him and playing with his hair.

He couldn’t very well not give his companion a Winter Veil gift. It’d be tremendously rude and besides, she was tolerable enough company.

You lie like a wolf fur rug.

So he spent that evening like many other quiet evenings, sitting at the foot of the bed with a book in his hands that he wasn’t reading in the slightest because his eyes were actually closed as he listened to Seron’dal speak of her day while she brushed his hair and put a lovely clasp on it that was already one of his favorites.

Prompt Week XV: Sentence Prompt

Sometimes we must do terrible things in the name of love.

What has your character done, all in the name of love? Perhaps it was not love but infatuation, maybe loyalty, or even duty. Good or bad? How do they reflect back upon their actions, or inaction? Take us back to the moment, or even the thought that began it all. Tell the story of your exploits.

[I would like to point out, this does not have to be canon by any means! This is simply a writing prompt and made to expand on different reactions per character]

[Random Tags]

@garleanstalker @mrblaque @wolf-queen @anshellasunsong @suwanbuwan @ffxiv-roleplayer @orland-silverwing @smith-hadeon @renlavaye @bennich-darkfall @elibraddock

[ As always I look forward to what you all produce from this. Be sure to tag me in whatever you do write! A link to how responding to the prompt can be found here!] 

  [ Just something small this week to get back into the flow of things. ]

- The Anonymous Muse

———- ———- ———- ———- ———-

(Alternate) Draenor-That-Was, present day

Every time he shut his eyes, his arm came back. If he didn’t look and he didn’t think too hard about it and he simply gave himself over to the endless pain that screamed in the empty air on his left side, he could swear that his left arm was still there. At times, wishing it back was almost worth feeling the weight of an occupied cryopod crushing muscle and sinew and bone into a single formless pulp of flesh in an arm-shaped bag of skin.

Hadeon. Hadeon, wake up.

The warden growled and turned his face away from the sound. He wasn’t sleeping - at least, he hadn’t been for the last ten minutes or so - but opening his eyes meant facing that depressing realization that he’d kept the pain even when he lost the arm. Unfortunately, his Taalia was having none of that. A tremendous chill wrapped itself around one of his neck tendrils and stayed there until the cold grew so bad Hadeon was forced to open his eyes and admit he was awake. “Sweetling, please. Let me go.”

The young woman uncurled her hand from his tendril and drifted away from his bedside without disturbing any of the empty bottles arrayed around it. Silvery blue eyes surveyed the carnage in the once tidy vindicator’s quarters. This has gone too far. It is time for you to start healing.

Groaning, Hadeon dragged his right hand up from where it had fallen over the side of the bed and let it fall on his face with a meaty sound. “There is nothing to be healed. It is gone.”

It? That is very rude of you. Turning back to face him, Taalia glowered. It was a bit like having a kitten very mad at you. Did you ever wonder if they came here for a purpose? That maybe all those little pink sentients had more cause than just stopping one of their own?

“Do we really need to have this discussion again? It must be four chimes to morning. The threat arose, the Army came, the threat was put down. We return to our lives and they…go do whatever it is they do in their dimension. Save some other planet, probably.”

Do you not want to save planets?

Wool blankets fell to his lap as he sat up in the darkness. “No. I do not.”

Liar. I heard how your heart raced at their stories.

“Can we talk about how rude it is that you listen to my heart?”

Someone ought to.

Hadeon bowed his head. Arguing with Taalia rarely ended well for him and she was already talking circles around him. Of course, at this hour of the night he was operating at a handicap. The morbid humor made him snort. “Sweetling, please tell me you did not wake me up just to tell me to leave Auchindoun. Again.”

I did.

The old warden groaned.

But this time it is because Soulbinder Athanos is writing up transfer orders for you right now. She took no satisfaction in the suddenly stricken look on Hadeon’s face. He will deliver them at eight chimes this morning. Some of the offworlders were Auchenai too; they have requested assistance - and you will go. You have a duty to serv-

“Naaru’s shards, I will go!” he objected, features contorting with anger. “You told him about Sha-”

I did not, the young woman interrupted sharply. They lost most of their elders in the destruction of their own Auchindoun and requested the counsel of those no longer available in their dimension. From what I know already, it involves souls of our traitors.

The anger inside Hadeon’s chest turned out like a snuffed magelight. “If he is delivering at eight, why did you wake me up now?”

You need time to clean up. It looks like an angry, dirty, old alcoholic lives here.

“That is very rude, Taalia.”

And yet true. Up now. Come on. I cannot do this myself. Her ghostly hands passed right through the rows of empty liquor bottles on the floor beside his bed.

“Aye, aye. On with you, then. Go get my arm for me?”

Hadeon! Are you still concerned for my virtue? I have no b-

“Please?”

Taalia sighed. Alright. But I am not helping you put it on until after you shower.

Idyll Interrupted

He never asked how his contact with the Ebon Blade got her information. It seemed the sort of thing that was better off not knowing. Hadeon simply took the rosters and crew lists and patient listings when she offered them and pored over the names in private, praying to find some he could recognize.

Rohaju Furysong. No. Haz’ruk Bloodeye. Nope. Mal’dan Firesnarl. Nuh-uh. Horgul Shadowripper. Is that Ganogg’s son? Hadeon scribed a small mark next to that name. This is stupid.

“We are getting nowhere,” Hadeon reluctantly agreed.

You had better luck with that ridiculous stone-seer.

The old smith sighed and set the guard roster for Hammerfall aside. He’d been wasting too much time on this today anyway when he should be catching dinner. He turned to reach for the fishing rod he’d stuck upright in the rocky sand when an ear-popping boom shook the ground beneath him. Water from the Forbidding Sea lapped at his hooves and for once the undead draenei ignored it. Instinct had his head turning towards the seaside cottage north and west of his position. Instinct had him abandoning rod, reel, and roster to the shoreline and hurrying towards the simple, whitewashed structure.

“Witch-child! Are y’ alright? What was that?” The large draenei had to both duck and turn sideways to get through the front door, but a year and a half here had made it at least a familiar motion if not automatic. “Witch-child,” he rumbled in his badly-accented Common, “I heard a noise; was that y-… you?” It was not a large cottage. There was a single open room that held both a small kitchen and a sitting area with a wood-burning stove and a pile of pillows. Above that was a loft tucked in the eaves, a perfectly sized retreat for a small human woman, and just high enough that Hadeon needed a riser to peek above the overhang and into the loft. “Imp?” There was no answer.

Turning and stepping down off the riser, he spotted the paper lying on the kitchen counter. The scrawl was shaky and childish.

Sorry, granddad.

Shaking his head, Hadeon folded the note and tucked it in his pocket. She did that sometimes - just took off for no apparent reason, returned days or weeks later. If she’d managed to write a note, she must be fine. He was unconcerned as he twisted back through the doorway, content that he didn’t have to keep trying to catch fish today; he was a terrible fisherman.

But that boom…

As he lifted his head upon emerging from the doorway, he was facing due west. Due west, where above the ridge of mountains, far in the distance, acid-green felfire spread across the sky.

Instinct had him reaching for the communication crystal on his hip to warn his commandry to hoof it to the ship. No crystal. No commandry. No ship. Reality slammed home with all the force of a plummeting Genedar: the Legion had come and there was no choice but to stand and fight.

And he didn’t know where his daughter was.

[ @shamestoneborn - though she no longer plays… ]

The Twisted Kingdom

Everything here was gray - so very gray and desolate.

As far as could be seen in any direction, there was a vast expanse of colorless nothing, a lonely and broken landscape which the old smith walked in solitude. He took a deep breath to power lungs he no longer had with air that wasn’t really even there. A hymn poured from his cracked lips as his hooves ate up the distance between nothing and nowhere. It was an Auchenai funeral hymn, of course, a song in the early Draenei dialect right after they began making changes from the original Eredun. It was a song of returning, a song of the Light and home.

The barren wasteland grew rockier, the dust giving way to dangerous scree and jagged stone, a steep path descending ever towards a pull - a call - that Hadeon had been mightily resisting for a long time. His hooves took him down until the rocks gave way to heaps and heaps of white bones. Jumbled together, no longer recognizable as the sacrosanct structure beneath flesh, the landscape could have been the Bone Wastes outside Auchindoun but for the fresh splashes of navy blood painting the ivory bones. It was no real place, this land of bone. It was no place of the Light. This was hell.

Still, the Auchenai guard clung fast to hope in his heart and continued his baritone paean to the Light. He spared a glance behind him at the path he’d come down. It was a forbidding maw of spikes lining a narrow, almost vertical ascent. Do not try, the path said, you cannot return. Hadeon followed the bones down.

Gray and ivory, bone and rock, metal and song, navy and red… His hooves stopped before tall gates made of bone and steel. The gates were closed to him. Here, you pay your price, smith, the gates said.

But he had nothing left to pay with. He had nothing but hope and his voice. His soul began to fracture from the strain, but the old exile threw everything he had left at the gates, forcing more from his voice than it could rightly give.

Bone and steel swung open.

Come home.

The Guard

For a moment the cold of Acherus made the knight’s body feel almost warm, but then the chill of the place began to sink into motionless flesh and he was once again the same temperature as the air.  

The necromancer walked with eyes open but unseeing.  The scenes replayed before them: Zrimgor’s arm, encased in Light, the smell of burning, the sight of bare, scorched bone.  Hadeon face to face with the witch, the crunch of bone—once, then again—the gentle gray-skinned knight falling.

She did not look back at Taeriix.  She did not look at the gray-skinned body in his arms.  The death knights who they passed did look, but not for too long.  Acherus was used to death.  She led Taeriix up and back into the twisting passageways of crypts: some still sealed, but most long-ago emptied by the Scourge.  Finally she stopped in front of one of the doors, it appeared to be sealed but, when she touched her fingers to it, the door swung open.

“Lay him down,” she told Taeriix, the only knight still walking, though he moved like a sleepwalker now.

There was a lamp, she remembered that, a lamp left here over a year ago.  Her hands found it, the matches still beside it.  Candlelight reached over the crypt, trying to illuminate the corners with its trembling fingers.  Someone had lived here once—the crypt was strewn with the bits and pieces of mortal life, a cup here, a blanket there—and before that someone had been buried here.

Now someone would be buried here again.

There was a clink of metal as Taeriix laid his burden down.  Now the necromancer turned to look.  His armor was dented, unusable—he would have hated that.  His long black hair was tangled—he would have hated that too.  “Bring me Corvus,” she said, forcing the words from between numb lips.

Taeriix turned and left, closing the door behind him, leaving her alone.

She reached out and took the dead man’s hand, running her thumb over the calluses built by long years of working metal.  She doesn’t have any words for him, no stories, no songs—this was the moment where all words still and fade into silence.  So she did what she had been trained to do: she readied the body for burial.

Some of his armor was missing: Corvus would replace it.  The rest was damaged, crumpled, the metal around one knee so badly bent that it would have to be pulled from cold flesh with pliers: Corvus would repair it.  She began to work the leather straps that held the metal in place, they were familiar to her now.  Piece by piece she removed his metal shell and placed it on the floor beside her.  By the time she was done, Corvus had arrived.  The dead were silent, and the Siegesmith was more silent than most.  The bare skull of his face could reveal no emotion, but their was a tilt in the bones of his neck that made her think of sorrow.

“Can it be repaired?”  She gestured to the pile.  

The skull dipped once:  Yes.  

“Please?”

The Siegesmith gathered up the broken armor and left without a word.  She trusted him.  He would do what was necessary.

It was impossible to avoid looking at his face any longer, though looking at it hurt.  She kept expecting his lich-lit eyes to open.  But they didn’t.  They would not again.  Her throat hurt, her stomach, her heart.  She pulled the carved bone comb from her belt pouch and began to comb the tangles out of his hair.  His hair was the only part of him that a stranger would call beautiful.  She had done that, restored thickness and gloss to long-dead and weather-tattered strands.  He hadn’t asked for it, and she hadn’t done it for beauty—he had always been beautiful to her—she had done it so that she had something to keep her hands busy, much as he had fiddled with bits of wire on his sleepless nights.

The comb slipped from her fingers and clattered against the stone floor.  Her hands were trembling.  “You are….”  She swallowed.  “You are the best of guards.  I’m so sorry.  I failed.  I’m sorry.”  And the weight on her shoulders finally bore her down, until her face was buried against his motionless chest.  And a sound clawed its way out of her throat, like a sob, like a scream.

And for the first time she could remember, she began to cry.

Lucid Dreamer

Seven years ago, McLean, Virginia

Kelley hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the Metro. The ride from Arlington to the McLean stop was really just shy of half an hour - not that long - but sleep was hard to come by when he couldn’t bring his temper down. So Kelley McMurray fell asleep on the Metro.

—–

“Mail f’r ya on th’ table, son.” Twenty-two years in America and Peter McMurray’s accent still clung like a burr to his words.

“Thanks. Any colleges?”

“Aye, two or three.”

“Awesome!” Setting down the leather laptop case he took with him to work, the dark-haired and pale olive-skinned youth took off through the house to snatch his mail up from the kitchen table. Paper tore, followed by a whoop of delight.

Beaming, Peter rounded the corner from his office to go join his boy’s celebration. “Think you’ll set up in Harbin Hall?”

“Harbi- Oh. Georgetown. Eh, yeah…” Kelley set the acceptance letter in his hand down and picked up a second thick envelope. “Look at that,” he murmured wonderingly. “Georgetown too.”

That his boy hadn’t leapt at the Georgetown admission first made Peter nervous. “Y’ are goin’ into th’ SFS, yeah?”

Kelley raised a hand to rake his slender fingers through his shaggy black hair. “Actually, da, I’m going to accept the offer from Loyola.”

“Loyola?!” His son might as well have just told him he was dropping school entirely to deliver pizzas for the way Peter clutched his starched shirt. “Y’ have an in at th’ best foreign service school in th’ nation an’ you’re goin’ t’ Loyola?!”

Ducking his head, Kelley looked at the granite counter-top instead of facing the weight of his father’s disappointment. “I’m not going into foreign service either. I want a theology degree. I’m gonna go to CUA after.”

It was worse than pizzas. It was worse than finding out his son wanted to take his ‘gap year’ in the still incredibly dangerous Haiti. Peter stretched his other hand out until he found the kitchen table and could rest heavily on it. “Th’ priesthood? Boy, are y’ bloody barmy?”

Keep reading

“Da, I saw the suffering firsthand! I saw people’s lives saved by the Church! I’m not going into foreign service to be another fookin’ bureaucrat!”

The elder McMurray looked affronted, his black brows coming together like gathering thunder clouds. “Y’ think foreign service is bein’ another fookin’ bureaucrat? Y’ think y’ can’t save lives with diplomacy?”

“Have you looked around lately, da?” Kelley gestured broadly to the well-appointed kitchen, granite and steel, a sterile $42,000 of stuff they never touched except to swig orange juice from the carton. “We’re wasteful shites! Diplomacy makes money!”

“An’ how bloody wrong is it t’ make money? We’re successful. We fookin’ earned it!”

“On the backs of the poor! We don’t need all this crap, Da. We could fit four other families in here and it’s just you and me haunting the damn place. We could sell this off and downsize and give the leftovers to help others succeed.”

Oh, that was the wrong thing to say. The thunder clouds broke open, Peter’s voice roaring from his throat as he straightened, “This house was designed by your mum an’ you will bloody well appreciate that her touch lives on in this place!”

Frustrated, Kelley swept the Georgetown acceptance letter off the kitchen table to skitter across the floor. “Maybe if your fookin’ diplomacy saved lives, we wouldn’t be living in mum’s ghost!” Both McMurrays glared daggers at one another, until Kelley broke first, spun away, and stomped out of the house to cool his head.

—–

Cooling his head hadn’t worked too well and Kelley ended up walking some six miles all the way to Arlington. While Kelley was an idealist, there were sections of Arlington where being a clean-cut Asian-looking kid in crisp business casual at night was a distinctly bad idea, and Kelley wasn’t a stupid idealist. Grumpy at the thought of having to return home, he hurried to the Metro station and caught a train back towards McLean.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

His dream started out blandly enough: the photographic flip-book of the last day or two, silver sparkles in black granite, the wheeze of an ancient fan in the office of the charity where he fixed aging computers and replaced obsolete baud modems with broadband, dull and dusty computer guts, the resiny rose scent of the rosary against his chest. When one of the computers started spinning like a top, the nonsense of it broke Kelley out of the moment and he realized - as he often did - that he was dreaming.

That was the best part of sleeping, really. In dreams, he could do anything. Godlike, he waved his hand and the entire system was upgraded. Wishing idly, the air conditioner was fixed. A passing fancy cleaned the floors and pressed the uniforms and blasted years of car exhaust off the exterior of the old church building. In his dreams, Kelley could fix the entire world. Reveling in his power, he shot into the sky like Ironman, rearranging the air to suit him with puffy clouds and gentle mists.

A woman stepped out of the mists in the sky. She wore a toga, her brown face sculpted in the severe lines of a Greek statue beneath hair pulled up under a woolen circlet. A black rod rested in her fingertips like a wand from the Harry Potter movies. Kelley froze mid rocket-leap. You don’t belong here.

I walked right in.

But this isn’t your space. It’s mine.

No. It’s mine. Something else strode up next to the woman. Not a someone, for this was like a person in the same way that the Atlantic was like a pond. With a gravity like the moon and stars for eyes in a black hole face, the something-else pulled Kelley into its orbit. You wake in your dreams.

The world wobbled slightly, then righted with a tightening that felt like a vice on his temples. I’m usually lucid, yeah. What of it?

You did well to call me, Marietta. You may awaken. The woman smiled at Kelley, lifted her hand to wave with a wiggle of fingers, and faded away. The primordial star-stuff stayed. I have too few dreamers. You will serve.

Serve what? Okay, really, time to wake up now. This is bullshit. Kelley clasped his rosary against his chest - only to have the resin and rose-paste beads disappear. That’s not supposed to happen. That’s mine.

And this place is mine. I am Morpheus. You are Kelley Ichirou McMurray.

Yeah, thank you so much for the reminder of my parents’ lame attempt at cultural fusion. It’s time to wake up. The vice on his head tightened and Kelley realized it was a night-sky hand cupping the top of his head. Morpheus. As in… Greek myth Morpheus?

I am not a myth. Mine is the realm of sleep, and you will serve.

Kinda already spoken for here. Catholic. Going into the priesthood. Already claimed by the Almighty.

The All-Seeing does not see all. This place is mine. As are you.

I’d like to object. Strenuously.

It takes two weeks for the hallucinations to begin. In less than six months, you will die. Serve or be barred from my realm.

This dream is weird, I’d like to wake up now, and I’m still objecting. The edges of the world went white, the vice grip disappearing. And Kelley woke up a stop before McLean.

There was a woman in the car with him, riding four seats ahead. As the train pulled to a halt, she grasped the rail in front of her and stood up. Her face was smile-lined and her hair greying at the temples; she looked plush and warm and friendly. Fishing in her purse, she beamed at him and pulled out a business card. Where had he seen her smile before? While he pondered, she pushed the card into his hand, stepped back with a little wiggle of her fingers, and walked onto the platform.

“Marietta Bower, horticultural specialist,” he read off the card. “Marietta? Wait…”

—–

Kelley lasted four days without sleep before he called the number on the card. “I give. I’m in.” A week later, he was in Baltimore. At Loyola. Under the omnipotent eye of the Almighty.

Except in his dreams.

Your move

(( ref: http://asherrean.tumblr.com/post/142808470418/piano-man  by @mewkeere​ ))

Asherrean arrived home disheveled but whole.   He sat before a chessboard in the loft he rented.  

A solitary pawn plucked from before it’s mistress.   The piece was held in a hand which had blood caked under the nails.  This was a thing, he noted, that had not happened in some years.  The grey haired man reflected on the night as his hands busied themselves with passing pawn back and forth.

A gig at the Broken Heart’s club down in the city.  The trek into the backroom up the stairs.

“We didn’t just hire you for your music Asherrean”

A large man bleeding out on the table.  So much blood…. so much wasted time. 

They had tried.  Oh, how they had tried.  The gauze and towels thrown about the room, once pure, now sanguine; These were testament to their trials. 

Bullet wounds are nasty things.  There is no such thing as a ‘safe’ gun round, despite what the stories say.  ‘Nothing vital has been hit’ was said.  Yet still, three holes had bored through the man. 

He had barked orders at those he did not know.  Large men. Dangerous men.  Those with an all too earthy scent about them.  They balked, but they complied.  The more battered of the two taking charge of the other; the one with a smith’s arms.

In the eventual still of the room, once the others had gone, he has called on his arts.  Magics of a time he’d distanced himself from.  

A subtle art compared to the sounds of the club below.  Blueish white light suffused the room.  The words he had chanted were an ironic soft staccato thing compared to the backdrop of such a lively and raucous swing piece echoing up the stairs. 

Flesh was forced to knit together.  Bone once cracked made to bind together once more. There was no gentle mothers touch in Asherrean’s work; no care to stifle the pain.  With how the vessel he worked on jerked and twitched under his ministrations, it was just as well he was unconscious this evening. 

The others returned as the body’s torso was being wrapped in gauze and bandage.  He could not recall where he procured the linen from.  It was cleaner than anything else in that place.   Asherrean ignored them and their banter… or was it yelling as they set up their retrieved IV to replenish their comrade’s blood.   He hadn’t a mind for it then and could not recall now. 

Asherrean had left as the subject of his night’s work awoke with a broken scream.  The others had been too tied up in their comrade to notice his passing.

A phrase had flashed through his mind as he left the club. 

“We didn’t just hire you for your music Asherrean” 

They had known.  He had not spoken or practiced the art in at least six years.  He had tried to leave that part of himself behind.   But they had known. 

Someone remembered and they knew. 

It gave him pause as he made his escape.  Pause enough to leave a message in the form of a ‘bill’ with the doorman.

Asherrean set the piece down as memory ran its course.   The written bill, it’s meaning and message though cryptic still fresh in his mind. 

“Queen’s pawn to Queen’s pawn four.  ~ Koth”

Grey haired man looked at the board, wondering if it would be answered and how.  The corner of his mouth tugged upwards at this thought and another.  The songstress would be home soon.  He wondered, as well, what she would make of the night’s events.

“Evenin’, Mister Z- oh! Hello uncle Diyos! What are you doing at the front door of the Heart?”

The draenei tailor was perched on a stool, taking entrance tickets with the sort of distracted disinterest that said he wasn’t even supposed to be here today. Or ever. This wasn’t his job. His indigo skin had a bit of a pallor and his left arm was cradled close to his chest. He looked his niece over from horns to hooves and frowned. “I’m recuperating from a surprise blood donation. What are you doing at the front door of the Heart?”

Xere gave him her very best sunshine smile. “I’m the night janitor! Since Mama wants me to go to Dalaran University, I’m making sure I stay far too busy to have the time to apply.”

“Hey! What’s the hold-up up there?”

The bright young janitor casually flipped the bird to the man several people down in line. “Did Misters Z and H remember to take care of you afterwards, or did they just prop you up here at the door?” Her uncle’s weak smile said it all. “I’ll go fetch a glass of orange juice. Anything else you need?”

“Can you take this bill up to the office? Pretty sure it’s from the doc.” Diyos was definitely listing to port as he plucked the folded paper out of the bin full of entrance tickets.

“Sure thing! I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Have the bartender add some tequila to that orange juice, will you?” the temporary doorman called out as the young woman slipped inside.

The key to being nosy was to not be secretive about it. If you look suspicious, people think you’re acting suspicious. So Xere stood right there in the lobby and peeked at the bill, curious to see how much it had cost to save a man. Oh, she knew which man. She’d fetched Mister M to get him after all.

Oh dear. Wasn’t that an interesting price. Observe and record, her boss had told her, that archaic Stormwindian brogue clear in her mind. Observe and record. Xeremuriis tucked the bill into her pocket to deliver to Mister M - after she got her uncle an orange juice.

A Badly Needed Vacation

Whatever they decided to call it - ‘new’ Draenor, 'other’ Draenor, 'alternate’ Draenor - the fact of the matter was that the place was nowhere good for a recovering warrior to be, so at the first available opportunity, Izraid requested leave from the post he’d been serving with the Alliance and took his beloved to Feralas. Lush jungle and steamy hot springs seemed just the ticket to him. Renting a small, private cabin at the very edge of the jungle and far from the biggest hot springs with all the crowds, the burly monk did his best to encourage Blautel to settle in for a full month of being doted on - scars and all.

Sunset, after a light dinner, Izraid grabbed a heavy canvas bag from the foot of their bed and flashed a warm smile at his dusha. “Come with me; I promise, you’ll enjoy it.” There was only a little grumbling as Blau followed him outside and down to the shore of their own personal little spring. The death knight sat in the sand and watched Izra drop the bag with a clank, then produce a length of chain. And another. The grumpy look turned wary, until he saw the scorched rag ball on the end of each chain.

“You still play with fire?”

“Does an elekk shit?” Izraid’s mischief practically shined through his lush beard as he set a pillar candle in the sand between them and lit it. Blau just shook his head; the monk was still a big barrel of trouble. “Watch.” He dipped each poi into the candle flame, and began to dance.

Safe Passage

It seemed like only seconds had gone by before a loud banging on the door rousted me from my nap. Startled awake, I leapt out of the swaying hammock set up in the corner of my temporary quarters, moving from prone to upright in an instant. By dint of willpower alone, I did not flail in my skirts as I gained my balance on the gently rolling wooden floor; it would not do to flail about, even when no one could see me. A lady does not flail.

The banging on the heavy wooden door separating my quarters from everything else began again. “One moment, please,” I called out in only lightly accented D'Angeline, taking care that my voice carried the appropriate unhurried, low pitch of a woman unconcerned with urgency. I raked my fingers through my hair, giving it an artful tousle around my face before I strode across the room and lifted the latch free. A short man in salt-stained linen stood before me, his fist still upraised as if to further abuse the already-beaten planking. The expression on his face said it all, really. He had not been among those to see me get on the ship. I gave him a dazzling smile, for I knew what effect the features I had been graced with had on many men, and I was quite satisfied to use this set of tools as I would any other – ruthlessly. After a moment of the sailor’s dumbstruck silence, I let my pleasure at startling the man subsume itself into a warm inner glow I kept to myself and a pleasantly expectant expression, my brows coming together faintly. I almost regretted using the full measure of my looks against this man who likely did not see enough of women as it was. Almost. As the moment drew too long, impatience set in and I let subdued tones convey my displeasure at being woken from my nap: “What is it, mariner?” That seemed to finally bring the man to some semblance of sense. His raised fist became a pitch-sticky hand to run through his sun-bleached hair – which only served to pull several strands of it out and spike the rest unattractively – and cleared his throat. “Beggin’ y'r pardon, m'lady. Th’ cap'n sent me…” He trailed off, his gaze dropping to my chest where a pale gold cambric blouse demurely covered all but a hint of cleavage. Not that his gaze had far to fall – he was nearly as short as I was at five-foot-two. I cleared my throat delicately and his murky blue eyes snapped back up to my face. “Ah. That is… ‘E wanted a word, ‘e did. Sent me t’ fetch y'r ladyship.” “I will require a moment.” With that, I firmly shut the door in the sailor’s face and turned back to my room. I needed something which carried just the right balance of femininity and expense while not looking precisely fragile… There. That was perfect. From the wooden armoire bolted to the wall of my temporary quarters, I removed a long black jacket, the dark gabardine wool embroidered with intricate gold thread at the cuffs and down the lapels. Two gold hoops from the locked box on my desk – similarly bolted to the wall – went into the tiny scarred openings on my earlobes. A glimpse in the wavy silvered glass attached to the front of the armoire door showed me the effect I’d made, and I was satisfied. The sailor had moved to the wall across from my door, propping up the polished planking of the hallway with his paltry shoulders. He had to be the lookout, to get so much sun like that and yet remain so scrawny. As I closed the door behind me gently, he snapped to attention and tugged on the bottom of his linen shirt. “My moment,” I said quietly, “is not quite up.” Aware of the curious eyes on my wool-covered back as I moved, I rapped my knuckles lightly against the door set some several feet down the hallway from my own. As if he’d been waiting for me – and knowing his hearing, he probably had – my companion opened his door before the echo of my last knock had even faded. No words were exchanged as he simply ducked his head a bit to clear the door lintel and stepped out of his temporary quarters, closing his door behind him as gently as I had. With a gracious wave, I indicated that the sailor should lead the way as Zigor fell in behind me, his capacious shoulders nearly brushing either side of the hallway and his dusky hairless head bowed slightly to keep from doing the same to the ceiling of the hallway. His presence was a familiar comfort, and the lightest of touches between my shoulder-blades – just below the fall of my hair – was all the communication necessary as we both followed the sailor to answer the captain’s summons. —– “As I’m sure you can see from the map, milady, our charted course has become more dangerous than originally plotted when you boarded and paid for passage. With the risks to my men, I’ll be up front with you – I’m going to need more coin for this voyage.” The captain of the Lyssa’s Tryst braced his weather-beaten hands on either side of the navigation map spread out on his desk and took a deep breath before trying to look me in the eye again. It was patently obvious that he was experienced in such post-boarding scams and attempting to cow me with flinty resolve. My own gaze narrowed, the frozen citrine of my eyes knapped his flint, shoving his gaze away as easily as if the giant behind me had physically directed his ocular challenge elsewhere. I indulged in another moment of secretly enjoying the warm glow of besting a man. “It’s the storms, milady. I’m sure you can understand…” Captain Garmon’s cheeks flushed with the heat I so politely kept to myself. With my slight frame, the rough-hewn chair across his desk dwarfed me, but I knew I could conquer it with the force of my presence. “What I understand, Captain,” I remarked quietly, “is that you are attempting to take advantage of me. Do you know why Mister Itzal travels with me, Captain Garmon?” Lazily, I lifted one hand and flicked my wrist so that two fingers caught his attention and bounced it up to the mountain standing behind my chair. Even though his neck was bent to avoid hitting his bald head on the planked ceiling above him, the colossus did not need to be able to stand tall to look intimidating; a narrowed look from eyes too ice-pale to be real was enough. Captain Garmon gulped as I settled my hand back on the chair’s armrest and continued, “A lady alone is all too easy to victimize, her virtue and coin her only bargaining chips. With Mister Itzal at my side, I have rather improved my negotiating position. Don’t you think?” The smile which graced my lips held mirth, but there was nothing warm about it. Against the armrest of the chair, I slid a dagger free of my sleeve and held the pommel in the coiled, stealthy readiness I had been taught. “The storms could drive us onto the rocks before we reach safe harbor, milady,” the Captain tried again, not looking at either of us as he leaned over the map and pointed at the warning sketch of sharp rocks just outside the Marsilikos harbor. “My men are taking a great risk to sail when such weather threatens.” It was a mistake for him to take his eyes off me. A whisper of breeze was all the alert he got before I watched the realization dawn that he could not take his hand away from the map now. Quivering in the wood of his desk and piercing the stiff cuff of his broadcloth shirt was a finely-made dagger. From the way the light of the lanterns in his quarters gleamed off the blade, it was sharpened on each side and well-oiled - oiled, I knew, with the venom from a red algae that bloomed on northern coastlines and rose-hip oil. It was a specially imported paralytic, and one I was quite fond of for the temporariness of its effects and the fast skin-absorption of the oil. “Then I would hope,” I murmured as I reclined in the rough chair, “that your helmsman is highly-skilled, yes? Don’t jerk your hand about like that; you might accidentally get a bit of venom on your skin. Now, we will be getting to Marsilikos precisely in the condition – physically and monetarily – as agreed upon when we boarded, won’t we?” Captain Garmon froze – and not voluntarily – as the venom which had brushed the inside of his wrist wormed its way into his bloodstream and took over his nervous system. A series of loud cracks had him looking up before his eyes froze too, gaze locked in terror at the leather-wrapped hands of the giant behind me as he placed an open hand over a fist and cracked his knuckles, then switched hands and repeated the gesture.

“Pah! Zere goes my excuse for killink ze king of Stormvind. Did someone finally teach him ze benefits of symmetry? Look, he even balances his blades now! Humans can be taught!”

“Valdiis, have you forgotten that I am a human?”

“Vell, no, Eredis, but you are…” She waffles a gloved hand back and forth in the air over the game board (where he was soundly trouncing her at draenic tri-qirkat), then sighed. “In Draenei, ze vord is sophotal - roughly translates to ‘ze old stag in ze talbuk herd who outsmarts all ze hunters.’”

The old man on the other side of the board gave one of his most classic expressions: the glacially-slow eyebrow raise. “Are you calling me an ‘old stag’?”

“Only vhen Nancy is home, yes?”

The clash of metal echoed across the recently harvested field. Meaty thuds, ground-shaking thumps, and gusts of icy wind rattled the hills. And then laughter - hollow, echoing, lightless laughter of two souls standing at the edge of hell and pissing over the cliff into the abyss.