Eine Kleine Background Text or Those Who Fail to Learn from History are Doomed to Repeat it Next Semester.

It was in the late 1960s BIE (Before the Interstellar Era) that Mankind first hurled himself at the stars with any measure of success.  For years, decades even, science fiction authors and leading scientists dreamed of a time when Man would soar through the stars, claiming all he could survey (and occasionally fighting off remarkably unified and monothematic alien races in the process.)  Those first pioneers, Gagarin and Glenn, now the patron saints of explorers and other daft fools too brave to know they should be scared shitless, brought back the first inklings of what humanity could actually achieve when it truly bent its collective will to a task.

But that bit’s all ancient history and no one except history majors really gives two shits about it anymore.  Fast forward a hundred and fifty years or so and you get to where the real excitement starts.  See, that’s the point where some really, really smart guys came up with a whole new way of not only looking at the universe, but mathematically describing it.  Okay, so the maths part is about as exciting as watching paint dry and roughly twice as dense as duranium, but it’s very important to this part of the story.  See, these smart guys and their new way of thinking and describing the universe were finally able to crack the Big Nut and get at the tasty sciencey meat inside that allowed them to develop feasible faster than light travel.  Until that point, humanity had been more or less bound by Einsteinian physics and unable to even truly approach the speed of light, let alone exceed it.  Sure, there were colonies all through the Solar System, but travel between them took weeks, sometimes months, depending on gravitic conditions and the position of the start and destination points.  It’s hard to imagine now what it was like then since most systems take a day or less to cross in their entirety.

Anyway, the FTL cat was out of the FTL bag and pretty much all of humanity jumped off Earth and out of the Solar System faster than you can say, “Hey, everyone, let’s jump off Earth and out of the Solar System!”  Which is to say, it took forever.  As always, there were the first pioneers, who took those first giant leaps and damn the consequences.  Once that first human-habitable planet was colonized, though, that was all she wrote.  People couldn’t get off that ball of mud fast enough.  It wasn’t all a field of poppies, though, but then when has it ever been?  At first, only the super-wealthy were able to afford spots on the newly-colonized garden worlds to escape the rampant pollution, overcrowding and dwindling natural resources of Mother Terra.  Of course, once the super-wealthy realized that they would be expected to actually work to build and support the new colonies, they were suddenly very generous about paying for the other 99% of humanity to reach the stars.

Taking a page from ancient history, a wealthy individual would arrange a plot on a newly-colonized garden world and then pay for workers to go there and do all the hard work of getting it set up and ready for their eventual arrival.  In return, the worker would earn an insult of a salary and be worked nearly to death for a period of three-to-five years, depending on the terms of the contract.  In the ancient past, this arrangement was called indentured servitude.  In our new modern era, this arrangement is called a Contracted Resettlement Expense Debt or, more commonly, a CRSD or cursed.  Still, the arrangement worked fairly well for billions of people who otherwise would have had no choice but to slowly languish to death on the dying Earth.  As time went on and the expense of the cursed started to threaten the triple-digit percentage profit margins to merely double-digit, the number of cursed began slowly but steadily decreasing as the demand to get off Earth and out into the stars and a better chance at a decent life increased.  At first, just a tiny trickle, a few hundred thousand here and there, which rapidly became a raging torrent of people sold into slavery, either by choice or by cruel twists of fate.  Of course, they don’t call it slavery in polite society, but it amounts to the same thing.  There’s no contract, no fixed term of service, just poor bastard who have nothing selling off the only thing they truly own for that fabled chance at the brass ring: themselves. 

That was the first wave of colonization, in the early 1400s IE (Interstellar Era.)  Eventually, there were more people among the stars than there were back on old home sweet homeworld and the rush of colonization slowed significantly.  The colonies, both garden world and otherwise, moved quickly toward self-sufficiency so they could get to their real goal: growth.  With the massive amount of resources, both private and government, being poured into the colonial efforts, many colonies were able to become self-sufficient within only a few decades and able to help grow other colonies shortly afterward.  By the close of the 16th century IE, the majority of colonies were no longer mere colonies but fully-fledged nation-states, fully independent and self-governing, often with their own standing militias to provide for defense.

Remarkably, this massive and lengthy period of expansion saw very little armed conflict.  There were odd skirmishes here and there, but they tended to be localized to a single world and usually occurred between corporate security and raiders, rather and any actual military actions.  Historians have thought and pondered as to why this period of peace should have been so lengthy and there’s many and sundry theories but the simple fact is that for the first time, humans were presented with limitless resources that just had to be reached for and taken.  There was no need to fight over a particularly rich patch of resources because chances were, the next planet over was just as rich.  It was simply cheaper to just find another plant to rape than it was fight over one.

This period of peace came to an end in the mid 1600s IE.  Several of the oldest and largest colonies joined together under a common banner, forming the first interstellar nation.  Soon after, other colonies either joined or formed their own amalgamated nations.  Very quickly, an interstellar map that once looked like hundreds of grains of sand scattered across the Galileo Arm, each individual and unique, started seeing borders being drawn amongst the stars and large blocks of colour representing the new colonial nations.  Before long, the interstellar map looked like a child’s paint-by-numbers only without any kind of coherent picture filled in.  Of course, with borders, come border disputes, inevitably followed by wars.

At the end of the wars, not much actually changed but a new age of exploration was sparked.  Ships and probes and explorers went off in all directions to find new worlds to be colonized and exploited.  It was a singularly lucky probe that was able to find a navigable route through a treacherous region of space that had come to be known as the Brahe Traverse, so called for its tempestuous nature and the high likelihood of not surviving the journey across it.  On the other side of the Brahe Traverse, though, was a veritable cornucopia of worlds, all ripe for the exploiting.  Hundreds of garden worlds and thousands upon thousands of mining worlds all just waiting for Mankind to come along and put them to good use.  And come He did.

Despite the danger of the journey, the interstellar nations threw ship after ship after ship into the Brahe Traverse, hoping to secure as much of the tasty, tasty resources for themselves as they possibly could.  Colonies were set up.  Mining outposts were built.  The vast wealth of the Copernicus Arm began being extracted from the useless ground of hundreds and thousands of planets and steadily flowing back to the home nations.  Once again, workers were needed to bring the valuable resources from the Copernicus Arm, back to the Galileo Arm where they belonged.

Indentured servitude has become prevalent again, though slavery is starting to catch on once more.  Four major players are vying for control of the Copernicus Arm, which may actually be possible for one group to control the whole thing, what with the treacherous Brahe Traverse limiting all travel to and from the Arm.  The difficulty of travel has also led to a rise that wasn’t seen in large scale before: pirates.  The limited number of warships that are in the Copernicus Arm and have been able to make the journey, combined with the lack of facilities to build warships locally, and ideal environment has been created to give rise to clever opportunists who are able to take advantage of the lack of protection and make a fair few credits by plying the shipping lanes for richly laden cargo vessels bound back for the motherland. 

Not all of the supposed pirate attacks are as advertised, though.  With the lack of a proper military presence to protect against piracy, another age-old practice has become new again.  While there is a lack of proper warships, there is no shortage of vessels in the Copernicus Arm and armed with a Letter of Marque, a captain can become that most dreaded breed of pirate, a privateer.  The major powers began issuing Letters of Marque about a decade back and the program has been wildly successful, though not necessarily with the proper authorities.

Which brings my tale to the current date.  It’s 1756 IE and a new Golden Age of Piracy is in the making.  It’s an exciting time to a ship captain with a Letter of Marque these days.  There’s a fortune out there just waiting to be had, if you just have the courage to take it.  My name is “Gentleman” Jack Calico, I’m the captain of the light frigate Oceanborn and I am a pirate.

Intermission: The Shattering: Disasterpiece

Sometime later, I’m not quite sure how long, time blurs oddly when you’re being beaten nearly constantly, I was being locked away in the Vault. I knew this because the guards were assuring someone that no one ever broke out of the Vault. I’m quick like that, even with my head full of fuzz and rattling marbles. As they were locking me away, presumably to throw away the key, Shaw entered my cell to have a lovely chat with me. I’m pretty sure there was tea and biscuits, but, like I said, it was kind of hard to tell the difference between what really happened and what was only happening in my head. Savage beatings, sleep deprivation and other general assorted maltreatment tends to muck about with the grey matter.

Where was I then? Oh, right.

“It’s your fault, you know,” I said, sipping tea through split lips. There was a trickle of blood in the rim of the cup as I set it down. If you looked quickly it looked like a woman’s lipstick.

“How do you figure that?” Shaw’s silhouette loomed against the light from the cell door.

“You know my history with the Twilights,” I said calmly, stabbing a quarter of cucumber sandwich at him for emphasis. The sandwich looked tiny and delicate in my purple, swollen fingers. “You know what they did to me. And you sicced me on them anyway. I know you, Shaw. You knew something like this would happen. Don’t act like this isn’t exactly what you wanted.”

Shaw steepled his fingers and peered at me over them, sitting across from me at the small table and tea set, “Are you quite certain of that? You’re certain that you aren’t just a monster? You do what you want to do; you always have. Presumably you always will. Don’t try to blame me for something you’ve been dying to do for the last five years.”

My shoulders slumped and the weight of the iron prisoner’s collar around my neck felt as if it weighed a hundred times more that it did. Maybe he was right. Light knew I hated Arkenhill enough. I knew there was that part of me that I didn’t talk about at parties. The part of me that enjoyed the hunting and the killing, the part that exulted in the spilling of blood and the rending of flesh. The part of me that had roared triumphantly as I stalked the halls of Arkenhill’s manor like the right hand of Death.

The part that had always made Saya just a bit wary of me.

If I wanted to be completely honest with myself, which I really didn’t, I had enjoyed the crap out of killing all those cultists and probably wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. But I wasn’t about to admit that. Not to Shaw and especially not to myself. I was the last person that needed to hear that.

Shaw tossed a scrap of cucumber sandwich to a filthy, rag-draped figure curled up in the shadows of the corner of my cell. I watched myself slowly uncurl and sniff at the sandwich before hungrily devouring it, eyes wild and alert for threats and challenges for my food.

I was starting to think that maybe this wasn’t really happening, after all.

“Of course this isn’t real!” Shaw thundered, suddenly growing a good thirty feet tall and sprouting horns, a tail and a very impressive set of bat wings. The Battle of Mount Hyjal raged all around us, all chaos and screaming, desperation and bravery. Eredar-Shaw spread his thickly muscled arms wide, taloned hands gesturing around to take in the confusion and fury of the wild battle all around the tiny little table and tea service.

“This is what is real for you!” Eredar-Shaw roared to be heard over the virtual wall of noise of the battle, “This is where you are alive!” A squad of dwarven riflemen were obliterated beneath a falling infernal, the giant demon of stone and fire in turn getting shattered by a passing orcish demolisher. “This is all you’re good for!”

I was in my armour again, the Bloodfang leather worn and broken in so well it fit like a second skin. My swords seemed to tremble in my hands, like eager coursing hounds baying to be loosed to chase the rabbit, eager to shed blood and take lives. A pack of felhounds surged my way, driven by a succubus pack mistress. I felt the feral grin twist my lips, bringing a new bright bead of blood from the split in them. I leapt for them, cutting and slicing away until the demon dogs and their mistress were so much twitching meat.

I was about to turn for more foes, when the succubus started to rise again, her component parts reassembling themselves along the lines of my cuts, still dripping dark purple ichor to hiss and spit upon the ground. She swept her mane of raven hair back from her face and Shannon stared back at me, her eyes at once accusing and inviting. Given that everything I was experiencing here was most likely taking place in my own mental landscape, this really said a lot about how I really felt about my erstwhile apprentice.

“Mr. Draaaaaake,” the succubus purred with Shannon’s sultry-innocent voice, “You’ve done a very bad thing. You need to be punished, you naughty boy. Come here.” She cracked the whip quite expertly over my head.

“Tempting,” I smirked, even as I was turning to run, “But we both know you’d enjoy that a lot more than I would.” I felt the crack of the whip at my back, licking the back of my cuirass before I was away.

I’ve no idea how far or for how long I ran. I don’t remember stopping. I do remember picking myself up off the floor of the Stormwind Cathedral, though. A young acolyte knelt at her prayers in an alcove nearby, the table before her coated in old wax and festooned with burning candles. More importantly, though, it was covered in a floor-length cloth. I dived for the table, scrambling under the cloth just as the heavy boots of the Watch pounded into the nave. I poked my head out just enough to wink, smile and put my finger to my lips, entreating the pretty young acolyte to not reveal me. Her surprise and awkward blush told me she wouldn’t give me away, though her eyes darted toward the Watchmen looking about the nave. Unwilling to disturb the smattering of priests and acolytes going about their business, the Watchmen performed a perfunctory search and departed. After the last one left, the cloth lifted and Sayessa knelt there, looking every bit as beautiful as she had the last time I’d seen her alive.

She silently helped me from under the table and sat me down on a nearby stool. A small incense burner filled the tent with a cloying sweetness, but also effectively covered the small of illness, injury and death. A dozen cots, all full, filled the rest of the field hospital. I was one of the lucky ones; I was only bleeding from a couple dozen wounds. It was a fight to stay awake, despite the sting of Saya’s needle and thread, deftly stitching up my hurts, and the pungent scent of her salves and poultices, keeping infection away.

“All of them, hm?” she said absently, her nimble fingers guiding the thread to close a cut on my arm.

“Every last one I could find. Every one who answered the passphrase,” my voice sounded hollow, distant. Oh, right, the incense was also mildly narcotic. That was why Saya wore that mask over her mouth and nose.

“And exactly how much closer are you to bringing me back, now?” She snipped the thread on the suture and moved on to the next one, a gaping hole over my heart.

“That would be stupid. I can’t bring you back. No one can,” I hissed in pain as she cleaned the wound and folded the skin back in place.

“Mm. Well, at least you realize that much.” I swear she smiled a little when I winced at her sticking the needle in me to start sewing again, “So, why? It’s been five years. Are you still so angry? Do you have so little self-control?” She stopped sewing and took my chin between her slender, blood-stained fingers, forcing me to meet her eyes, “Is that why you let yourself be caught?”

Shaw’s silhouette loomed before me again, framed once more in the light spilling in from outside the door to my cell. I was sitting at the table again, my swollen fingers clumsily holding a cup of tea, one eye swollen shut. A tiny trickle of blood dripped slowly from my chin from a fresh split in my lip. I was tired. More than all the beatings, all the mind games, my own guilt, everything was piled up higher and higher and finally came crashing down on me all at once and settled in as a singular bone-deep weariness that no amount of sleep can ever relieve. The kind of weariness that sets in after a few weeks behind enemy lines, weeks of being always alert, always running, adrenaline always pumping at full tilt, never coming down. When you finally get the chance to relax, it comes as a great crashing, crushing wave and there is nothing you can even think to do against it.

“Why, Drake?” Shaw asked again, stern, patient.

I sat quietly, considering the question carefully and studiously avoiding the answer that was staring me in the face, but I refused to admit. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was to admit to myself why I had given myself up. I knew, deep down, that I was a monster. Wasn’t that enough? Why did I need to admit my failings to someone else? Why did I have to admit it to Shaw? Shaw! The last man on Azeroth you should give deep, dark secrets to.

The chains weighed heavily around my wrists and neck. The teacup looked so tiny and delicate in my red, taloned fist. So beautiful and delicate. Just as Saya had been.

I was so tired.

“You already know why, or you wouldn’t be asking,” I rumbled. My cell seemed tiny, stifling. My wings were cramped in this tiny space. If I could just lie down, stretch out. Rest.

Shaw’s silhouette peered at me over steepled fingers again. The gleam of his eyes the only indication he wasn’t just a creature of shadow, “Because you need to hear yourself say it. To admit it. Truly admit what you already know. To understand.”

“And then you’ll let me sleep?” I hated the pleading tone in my voice, but it couldn’t be helped and I was too tired to try to cover it up.

“As long as you like,” Shaw’s voice was almost gentle, paternal.

“I…

I needed to be stopped. I was out of control and I knew it. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. It was like being at a bar or a party or anywhere and watching yourself do something amazingly stupid. You know it’s stupid. You know when you start that it’s stupid, while you’re doing it that it’s stupid and afterward that it was stupid. But you can’t stop. It’s like an avalanche or an earthquake. There’s nothing anyone can do but watch you be stupid. And no matter how much you want to stop, how much you try to stop, you just can’t make the connections between wanting to stop and actually stopping. It was like that, for me, only I was killing people. I was angry. Too angry. Furious. Furious about the Twilight’s Hammer and their little plots and schemes. And the more I thought about it, the angrier it made me. So I started thinking, why shouldn’t I just kill them, then? I have the ability, why not use it? And that was all that that part of me that is a monster, that enjoys killing, needed to be able to take control. Only one is never enough, is it? Like any other junkie, I just needed another hit, another fix. Sure, it would start with just the Twilights, but how long until I was slaughtering anyone in the street who pissed me off? Oh, they were a threat to Stormwind the monster would say and that would justify it. How long before I was nothing more than a mad dog and needed to be put down? There was only one way to stop myself and that was to have someone else do it for me. And in the Vault, at least I’m among my own kind.

I could feel Shaw’s sneer, “How very noble of you, to sacrifice yourself for the greater good.”

“I was thinking more that I was saving my own ass,” I sniped back, “I may be a monster, but I rather prefer being alive to the alternative.”

Shaw let the barest hint of a smirk touch the stone of his face and turned to face out to the city again. I shifted in my chains to look out the battlements as well. SI:7 headquarters was a hive of activity behind us, but out here on the wall it was quiet, with only the buzz of the living city below us.

“Good, I was afraid you had taken a turn toward the altruistic.”

I made a gesture that told him exactly what I thought about that. Shaw actually chuckled and put his hand on my shoulder, giving a reassuring squeeze, “You’ll be okay, Drake. It’s going to take some time, but you’ll be okay,” he turned and looked back out at the city for a moment and said, “You should rest now.”

At those words, every bit of the exhaustion that had been dogging me since they dragged me from the gallows came crashing down on me and I slept.

* * *

“Well?” Shaw packed an awful lot of questions into that one word.

The dark-skinned draenei pushed a lock of smoky hair back over one of her broadly curling horns, “Your man is…very conflicted. He would make a fascinating study.” She set about collecting her implements: a small incense burner that gave off a cloying sweet smell and a small tea set.

The head of SI:7 and the Stormwind Assassins frowned. Most people didn’t care to see Shaw frown like that. It usually meant people were about to die. “That is less informative than I was looking for.”

The draenei woman could already feel the headache building behind her eyes. She could tell it was going to take quite a bit of opium to dull this one. Working mind magic of the intensity and detail Shaw had wanted always put an immense strain on her. “Wounds of the mind are difficult to recover from, at best, and your man’s are old and deep. It is a wonder he did not break long ago.”

“That much is understood, Ms. Trellen,” Shaw closed the cell door behind her on whisper-quiet hinges and led the way up the stairs and back out of the Vault. “What I need to know is if you can repair what damage he’s done to himself.”

Ms. Trellen fixed Shaw with her pale-eyed stare, the one that tended to unnerve humans. Shaw didn’t flinch. “One does not simply fix the mind, Mr. Shaw, as if it were a stopped watch or torn harness. It takes time, effort and, most of all, trust. Your man has never met me. You cannot expect miracles overnight.”

Shaw was silent as he signed both of them out, thinking of the best course of action. Hard times were coming. It was in almost every report, every note that came into SI:7 these days. Things were getting bleaker, more brutal, ruthless. Shaw wasn’t sure exactly what lay ahead, but he did know none of it was good. To make matters worse, while Varian Wrynn was a fair and just king, he was also reckless and intractable when it came to the Horde. If the rumours of Hellscream’s get taking over the mantle of Warchief proved to be accurate, there would soon be open war between the Alliance and the Horde once more. Shaw was going to need every capable hand he could get and he needed them sooner rather than later. Drake could be a valuable asset, even if he only trained new recruits, but only if he could be controlled.

“Of course,” Shaw said, sighing, “Do what you can, but, please remember that time is of the essence. I need him to be in control of himself again.” He would never say as much to Drake, but Shaw knew without a doubt that he could rely on the swordsman, thief and assassin to always work to protect Stormwind. That was the one thing they had always seen eye to eye on, even if they differed over the exact methods. Shaw knew that before long, he was going to need as many men and women he could count on as he could lay hands on. The other shoe was all set to drop and it wasn’t going to be gentle when it did.

* * *

Right, so where was I?

Ah, yes, the cell door.

Standing in the doorway, just as she had nearly every day for the last two years was the Priestess of the Shadow, Iriandra Trellen. She stood a full head taller than me and the horns and the tail were a little off-putting, but the rest of her was curved in all the right ways and in all the right places. Her dusky blue skin gave her an even more exotic look, as did the tiny fangs and solid white eyes. I’ve also been in prison for two years and she has been the only woman I’ve seen in that time. Which, I suppose, is better than most of the refuse in the Vault, who would be lucky to see another living being, let alone a beautiful draenei woman.

“How are you today, Khol?” she asked, her faint draenic accent giving her words a slight lilt. I wasn’t sure if she just had a very slight accent or if she had purposefully tried to eliminate it.

“Oh, just smashing,” I grinned, “I thought I might take a morning constitutional around the lake and then perhaps breakfast on the east veranda. I believe the cook is making poached eggs and fresh bacon, if you’d care to join me?”

She was kind enough to humour me with a chuckle and a genuine smile, “I am glad you are in good spirits. I know how much your confinement chafes.”

“Yeah, well, you can laugh about it or you can go mad, right?” I smirked, earning another genuine smile. To make her smile so easily twice in one visit wasn’t normal. Something was bothering her and she was taking every opportunity to be distracted from it. As much as she’d been mucking in my head, I couldn’t help but learn a bit about her as well.

As usual, I helped her set out the tea service and incense burner. I pretended I didn’t know that she drugged my tea and used the incense to keep me under and, by way of thanks, she pretended to not know that I knew. As this sort of arrangement went, it worked pretty well. I was broken and I knew it. If it took being drugged to the gills four days out of seven to be less broken, that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Besides, Iriandra used really good drugs.

There was the faintest tremor in her hand as she went about preparing the daily tea, almost unnoticeable, but for the tiny vibrations in the water. Something was very wrong. Looking closer, I could see the tension in the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes, the way her lips were imperceptibly turned down. I know she prided herself on the difficulty people had in reading her face and if not for the fact that hers had been the only friendly face I’d seen for the last two years, I might not have noticed either. I kept silent for the moment, though. Whatever it was probably wasn’t any of my business or even be related to me. Above all, Iriandra had made very clear from the outset that our relationship was strictly professional; though we had certainly become friendly, perhaps even friends, in the time we’d worked together. I wasn’t about to damage that relationship by pointing out her troubles.

Once I tasted the tea, however, I knew something was very, direly, wrong. It lacked the distinctive musky sweetness of ghost mushroom extract she used to put me into a stupor. The only reason I could think that she wouldn’t need the soporific would be if our work was done, in which case I would be due to be released. If I was to be released, I’d like to think she would be happy for me, not tensed up like the proverbial long tailed cat in the proverbial room full of rocking chairs.

“So what’s wrong?” I asked, taking a louder than necessary sip of the tea.

The shadow priestess looked blankly at me for a long moment before sighing and setting down her own teacup, “You’ve felt the earthquakes?”

I nodded, “Of course. We’re almost a hundred feet underground here. We’re lucky none of them have brought the whole place down. Last night’s was the worst of them all, though. I heard more than one man praying.” I didn’t bother mentioning that I had made a couple foxhole prayers, myself.

Iriandra took a steadying breath, keeping her hands flat on her thighs, as if she were trying to keep them from trembling, “Last night was not an earthquake. Stormwind was attacked.”

I found myself on my feet before I’d realized my brain had given the command to my legs. My stool clattered noisily. “Then I need to get out of here.”

“If only it were so simple,” Iriandra motioned me back to my stool and took a sip of her tea, “All indications are that it was Deathwing who attacked the city.”

That made me pause a moment, “Isn’t he dead?”

“Reports of his demise, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated,” Shaw said laconically, leaning against the door to my cell.

I didn’t realize how much I had suddenly tensed up until I felt Iriandra’s calm, warm hand over my own.

“I trust there won’t be another incident?” The glare Shaw fixed me with told me all I needed to know about what would happen if there was.

I looked to Iriandra for a moment and nodded once, giving her a warm, grateful smile, which she returned. “No, that’s not going to be a problem.”

Shaw grunted and tossed something onto my bunk and motioned to someone outside the cell. He didn’t stick around to say goodbye. Not that I was looking for a long, heartfelt reunion with him or anything. I was pretty sure that with Deathwing’s attack he was busier than a two-bit whore on nickel night.

Iriandra and I finished our tea while she filled me in on two year’s worth of news while we waited for my release to be processed. She’d been forbidden from talking about the world outside my cell with me and she seemed eager to share, like she would with an old friend. That thought was rather pleasant and distracted nicely from the other, darker, thought that lurked over on my bunk.

I paid full attention to Iriandra as she spoke, if for no other reason than to avoid looking at my bunk and the old noose that lay upon it. Shaw’s message had been received, loud and clear.

Intermission: The Shattering: Hallowed Be Thy Name

Unless you encounter them in the wilds, most members of the Twilight’s Hammer don’t go around advertising the fact. Fortunately, my infiltration into their ranks not long ago taught me the simple set of challenge phrases they used to identify themselves to each other without revealing their actual allegiance. From what I’d observed, most of the rank and file were too terrified of their masters to question where the challenge phrase has come from and would just respond blindly to avoid being killed or worse. Tragic, then, that their blind obedience was what had gotten them killed that night. I’m sure that the few who survived the slaughter thought it was random luck that they had been spared. It’s possible a cultist or two slipped out with the innocent, either being smart enough to wonder why, in a deserted hallway, they were getting challenged, or just a little too slow on the draw to spit out the proper response. Either way, the only people to meet their end that night all clearly identified themselves as members of Twilight’s Hammer.

Call me a monster if you will, but I take it as a mark of pride turning that place into an abattoir that the Twilight cultists still whisper about in horror to this day. For all the pain and misery and fear that those cultists have inflicted on both Stormwind and all of Azeroth, I figure a night of fear and death is just a small drop in the bucket of what they are truly owed.

The Watch came with the dawn. They had no idea what to do with me. They just weren’t equipped, mentally, procedurally or manpower-wise, to deal with a crime of this nature or scale. The Watch dealt with muggers, thieves, rapists and murderers. They seldom saw more than one victim of the crimes they investigated, three or four at the most. The scene they arrived at was just beyond their abilities to handle, despite how I had made it easier for them.

After the last cultist had left, the one I let live after carving a warning into his chest and back, I’d dragged all of the bodies into the grand ballroom and laid them out in neat order according to their rank within the cult. I had been surprised to see that Lord Arkenhill hadn’t actually been the top dog at his own place. There had been two others even higher up the food chain. Whether they were permanent residents or just visiting was pretty much a moot point now.

Throne may have been too grand a word for the chair that Arkenhill had placed on the dais between the twin curving staircases at the back of the ballroom, but only just. That throne was where the Watch, and subsequently Mathias Shaw and several members of SI:7, had found me waiting for them. I sat calmly, smiling vaguely, completely at ease and patiently eating an apple.

I waited for Shaw to get his apoplexy under control, which really only took a moment or two, then stood suddenly, making the collective Watchmen jump and reach for weapons.

“Well, then, my work here is done,” I announced, pitching the apple core out a nearby window and dusted my hands off for effect. I didn’t need to see Shaw’s signal to his men to know what was coming. There was a motion of air, a black bag over my head and then sweet, merciful unconsciousness. I felt no need to resist; I knew what I’d done.

Sometime later, I’m not sure quite how long as time tends to blur oddly during near-constant beatings, I came to and I found myself in one of the cells of the Stockades. That was a little surprising, since I’d expected I’d be stuffed into the Vault or summarily executed. Of course, those options were still on the table and this could have been just a stopover. The bag had been removed from my head so I could see, which was nice, I thought. I was sitting in a chair, my wrists and ankles chained to the arms and legs to limit my movement. A pair of thin metal plates had been welded to the manacles on my wrists that kept my hands immobile and made it much less likely I could excrete a lock pick and get free.

It’s like they thought I was dangerous or something.

Escape, while always an attractive option when restrained against my will, was actually not the top priority in my mind at the time. I was more concerned with the various aches and sharp pains left behind by the beatings I’d been enduring. There was a particularly unpleasant poking sensation in my chest that had to be a rib, hopefully just dislocated and not broken. One eye was swollen nearly shut, which either meant the damage was recent and it would soon be completely closed or it had already started healing and opened a little, it was hard to tell which at this point. My lips were split, my nose broken, my right leg would be doing amazingly well to be able to bear my weight for a while and my abdomen was just one big mass of dull ache. Shaw’s boys certainly know how to hurt a man and leave him still alive. Most annoying, though, was the sharp ache of my left hand being forced flat with my fingers fully open. It had never healed entirely properly after being shattered by Arkenhill’s boot. I could still wield a sword, but it hurt like felfire to open fully.

I must have made some kind of sound while I catalogued my various injuries, since I saw a guard poke his head around the cell door and vanish just as quickly. Well, may as well get whatever was going to happen over with sooner rather than later. I hate waiting for the other shoe to drop, anyway. Shaw showed up a few minutes later, followed by a striking draenei woman in priest’s robes and the warden of the Stockades. This did not bode well at all.

Shaw’s face was grim but even he couldn’t conceal the look of I-told-you-so in his eyes. He looked me up and down and shook his head. The disappointment there was palpable. He looked to the warden and nodded once. Warden Thelwater fixed me with his remaining eye, “Has the condemned any final words?”

The condemned. Well, that narrowed down the list of possible outcomes here. I suspected as much when I saw the priestess, but I didn’t want to believe it. At least, until now.

I looked down at my bare feet for a moment, trying to come up with some pity last words, something clever or defiant. For once, I didn’t have any quip or barb ready to my tongue. I looked up and squared my shoulders as best I could and looked Shaw in the eye, “I removed a cancer from the heart of Stormwind and she is safer because of it. I have no regrets.”

“And you can’t be allowed to live because of how you did it,” Shaw turned and left the cell. The warden motioned to the priestess and signaled a pair of burly guards to enter and unshackle me from the chair. I briefly considered making a break for it but rejected the idea out of hand. I had nowhere to run to and even less reason to do so, save simple self-preservation. After the massacre of all those people, deserving or not, I wasn’t so sure I didn’t deserve to die as well.

The guards roughly hauled me to my feet, bringing an involuntary whimper of pain from my lips as my battered body protested moving. The musical lilt of the priestess’ recitation of the Last Rites eased a bit of the pain, somewhat, though. In this ugly place, the pure, simple beauty of her voice was completely incongruous. Half-dragged, half-walking from my cell, I focused on her words, letting them dull the ache in my body and delay the consideration of exactly what it was that I was being marched toward.

Tears rose to my eyes then, unbidden. I couldn’t figure why I should be crying. It’s not like I was afraid of dying. I’d faced certain death so many times I barely felt it anymore. Perhaps it was the simple certainty of walking to my own execution, that this was the last few minutes of my life. There would be no daring escape, no last minute rescue, this was it. This was the end; the sands of time had run out.

The other prisoners here on Death Row gathered to the doors of their cells to watch the procession, their future, as we walked by. More than once I heard someone murmur, “Light be with you.” I was pretty sure the Light had given me up for lost a long time ago. Still, it would be nice if I could find a place with the Light in the end. It would be nice to see Sayessa again.

The light of day was blinding after so long in the darkness. I had to squint my one good eye for long minutes until I could finally see again. By the time I could see, I was being pushed up the steps to the gallows. The priestess finished the Last Rites and fell silent, stopping at the foot of the gallows stairs. The guards replaced the manacles at my wrists and ankles with another set that locked them together, to keep me from doing the Dead Man’s Jig. The warden offered me a hood, but I shook my head. I wanted to be able to see everything I could until the very last moment.

Thelwater shrugged and motioned to the hangman to practice his craft. The noose was snug and well-made, fitting closely to the base of my skull. When the trap door opened, I wouldn’t ever know when I reached the end of my rope. I quietly thanked the hangman for his mercy. Had he done his job more sloppily, I would dangle at the end of the rope slowly strangling to death. This way, my neck would snap and that would be the end of it.

The guards, warden and hangman all stepped down from the platform and it was only then that I noticed how few people were present. Shaw and the priestess stood a dozen feet away, the hangman stood at the lever to the gallows with the warden next to him. The two guards had departed. Other than the five of use, the execution courtyard was deserted. The witness stands, which should have had at least a dozen people in it, as well as the usual stations for guards were all deserted.

I narrowed my eyes at Shaw and opened my mouth to speak. Unfortunately, that was the moment the hangman pushed the lever down and I found myself suddenly standing on empty air. There was a sharp pain behind my head and everything went black.

* * *

I awoke with dust in my mouth and all new sharp pains in my legs. Shaw stood over me, holding the loose end of the noose in one fist, pulling my head from the ground with it. He leaned close, pitching his voice so only I would ever hear his words.

“Understand this, Drake, you live purely by my will now and if you don’t want this noose to become a permanent accessory, you will exactly as you are told, when you are told. Am I clear?”

Stunned and still shocked to be breathing, all I could do was nod.

“Good,” he snapped and then punched me in the face and it was lights out all over again.

Intermission: The Shattering: The Provenance of Specie

I snapped my wrist, casually flicking the blood from my sword on the still-twitching corpse of the last Twilight cultist. Well, the last one I had killed, anyway. I let a savage grin split my face as I turned my attention to the last living Twilight in the manor.

Backed against the wall, I’m pretty sure he wanted nothing more than to be able to fade through the walls and be anywhere but at the scene of my latest bloodbath. Not that I cared to ask. I was too busy enjoying myself. I paused long enough to clean my swords on the robes of the dead, keeping my eyes fixed on the trembling cultist. Strange how they didn’t seem nearly as threatening when they were shitting themselves in fear. Sheathing my swords, I drew one of my fighting knives and moved purposefully toward the last cultist.

“Don’t worry,” I said brightly, making sure my knife shone and flashed in the candlelight, “You get to live, though I can’t promise how much longer you’ll want to…”

Perhaps I should back up a bit.

* * *

The rusted screech of the cell door’s hinges was every bit as jarring as the first time I’d heard them two years ago. It’s funny, really, the kinds of things you can get used to and the things that never really settle. Two years in the Vault can make you get used to a lot of things.

Dammit, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I’m afraid I’ll have to beg a bit of patience, as I’m still readjusting. Time passes strangely when you have no point of reference. Forgive me if I seem to jump around a bit. Keeping everything straight in my head is difficult.

* * *

My investigation into the Twilight’s Hammer had been almost laughably easy. It was almost as if they had wanted SI:7 infiltrating their little club. It was hardly a challenge to learn their half-baked plan to “bring Stormwind to its knees.” Said plan largely consisted of trapping an angry elemental in a magical time bomb and scattering them all over the city. To say the time bombs were hidden was being incredibly generous and stretching the meaning of hidden almost to the breaking point. Defusing them and releasing the elemental was even easier. As plans go, I’ve seen better. A better plan would have been to tie up Stormwind’s defenders in finding and defusing the devices, to distract from the real attack elsewhere. Not so much the case here, though. Just goes to show that intelligence is not a prime requisite for cult members and even less for their planners, apparently. Of course, when the bulk of your members are the most hopeless of the underclasses, you can’t expect much upstairs. These days, any idiot with a dull knife and an arm to swing it can make a decent living as an adventurer. If they aren’t smart enough to even do that, well…yeah.

Still, the revelation that it was the Twilight’s Hammer behind the recent troubles pretty much made it open season on the culties, which, really, was like my birthday, wrapped in Winter’s Veil and topped with Brewfest.

After what I’d suffered at the hands of the Twlights six years, to say that I had a grudge against them was probably the understatement of the century, possibly the millennium. I hunted and killed culties whenever I could like it was a career. Until now, however, I had largely only been allowed to go after the culties out in the wilds in the various ruins and fastnesses they claimed and worshipped the Old Gods in. With open season declared, I figured that pretty much gave me carte blanche to kill them anywhere I could find them, to include within the confines of my beloved Stormwind City, previously off limits.

This meant that the illustrious Lord Arkenhill was now a very, very viable target.

After Lady Katrana Prestor had been unmasked as the dragon Onyxia, and was subsequently killed by King Varian Wrynn, Lord Arkenhill had lost most of the favour he had been able to curry at court. Apparently, the mad scramble of Lady Prestor’s sycophants distancing themselves from her resembled nothing so much as roaches scattering before the lighting of a candle. Very few, Lord Arkenhill included, clung together, fervently denying that Lady Prestor and the dragon Onyxia were one and the same. It didn’t help his cause any that rumours of his affiliation with everyone’s favourite little doomsday cult persisted until even today; rumours that I’m fairly certain were the work of Shaw’s less visible agents like my erstwhile protégé, Shannon.

So, open season on my favourite enemies of the state plus a years-old grudge multiplied by a hint of psychopathic rage equaled a recipe for a bloodbath. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Now, in retrospect, perhaps waging a purely malicious campaign of psychological warfare on Arkenhill for the last five years may have been a mistake. While I had been forbidden from directly harming the good lord himself, nothing, and more specifically no one, had said anything about periodic reminders that I was still out there, still alive and, most importantly, still murderously angry.

Every few months, I’d pop by and see the latest in his improved security, most of which consisted of more and bigger guards. I’d leave a little present for him, usually something small and meaningful like a dagger sunk into his desk and soaking in a pool of poison or the stylized wind serpent device that was my emblem drawn prominently in the blood of one of his horses or other livestock. You’d think that after five years of this he would have figured out that I couldn’t actually touch him. Then again, if he was actually smart enough to have figured that much out, he would have been smart enough to get himself as far away from the Twilight’s Hammer as possible.

For my part, it amused me to leave one of my little presents and then watch his guards and staff scramble around like ants from a kicked over hill trying to figure out where the hole in the security was this time.

Yes, it was petty and stupid but it was also vastly satisfying to my admittedly skewed moral compass. Ah, good times…

Where was I? Oh, right…

It was a particularly good night for wreaking some havoc. The moon was a bare sliver dodging in and out of thick, dark clouds that promised a good, heavy rain later. The farmers would be happy for it, but I doubted anyone else would. The impending raid and late hour had the streets deserted, especially in the wealthy quarter. I lurked in the shadows of a doorway about a block and a half from the main gate to Arkenhill’s estate. My investment into a pair of aether goggles was already paying off, allowing me to see quite clearly, despite the darkness of the night and showing me the new magical reinforcements Arkenhill had added to his walls. The wall itself had been raised, topping a little over eight feet now, unless my guess was off. It was now topped in sharp iron spikes angled in several different directions to prevent scaling. That was a pretty standard feature these days and was probably combined with the top of the wall being lined with shattered glass and shards of metal to make it even more painful for anyone foolish enough to try to get over by brute force. Assuming they survived the batteries of spells set to trigger if anyone actually reached the top, the spells glowing bright blue in the goggles’ enchanted lenses.

The gate itself was quite impressive, even without the dark, writhing energy waiting to be triggered by the wrong set of hands. The ironwork was all appropriately scary looking, with lots of sharp pointy bits and orcish curlicues that seemed to be very popular these days. The whole deal was secured with a very serious-looking lock that would probably take me whole minutes to pick, assuming the spells didn’t fry my eyeballs first. Appropriate to such a serious-looking gate, a pair of guards was studiously upholding the grand tradition of gate guards everywhere by looking both sullen and superior at the same time to anyone and everyone within sight of the entrance.

When presented with a seemingly impenetrable area, the wise assassin looks for the weakest point and applies pressure there to make his entrance. More often than not, that weak point is the human element; those parts of security that have to be overseen by a living, breathing person, like a gate guard. Most guards, gate guards especially, are only there for the steady paycheck rather than any kind of great sense of loyalty to their employer. Guard duty is usually pretty low-risk work since the main purpose of guards it to warn people away from causing trouble. You don’t usually encounter any kind of personal loyalty issues until you get a little higher up the food chain, like the guard captain or head of the household staff. The two near-archetypal examples of guardhood standing at Arkenhill’s gate were the kind of guys that seemed to exist for no other purpose than to fill the role of stereotypical guards.

After all, the archetype has to come from somewhere.

The one on the right was a thick-set brute with a lantern jaw and beetling brows under his polished steel cap. One look in his porcine eyes was all it took to see that deep, critical thought was something to be regarded with suspicion and avoided whenever possible. He’d probably been a corporal in the Army, simply by virtue of not knowing how to disobey an order but lacking the malicious cunning required to rise to a sergeant’s baton. He isn’t stupid, he just prefers being told what to do and think.

The guard on the left, by contrast, was as lean as a refugee and slouched against the wall with all the casual menace of a starving wolf. If the first guard was the epitome of duty and obedience, his partner was the personification of the self-interested thug who wouldn’t piss to put out a fire unless he was getting paid. Like the larger guard, this one had probably also been in the Army, but not on any front-line unit if he could help it and had all the markings of a nightmare of a platoon sergeant. He’d probably found work as a guard simply because it allowed him to legally fleece passersby and randomly beat and otherwise harm whomever he took to mind.

Naturally, this was the guard I approached.

I was eager to get to work, so I figured honesty would be the best approach. I walked up smiling with my hands spread wide and well away from my weapons.

Credit to the larger guard, he reacted well, snapping his spear down at my chest and growling rather menacingly, “That’s close enough, lad, what business d’you have wit’ th’ Lord Arkenhill at this time o’ night?”

I let him keep the spear pointed at me and addressed his partner, who had barely just bothered to look up from cleaning his nails with the point of his knife. His speak leaned against the wall next to him, but I had no doubts it could be in his hand and in the blink of an eye.

“I mean to kill him. Violently. Painfully, if time permits,” I said pleasantly, giving my most winning smile.

“That so?” the second guard drawled, making a bit of a show of putting his knife away and placing a restraining hand on his partner’s arm. I could see the greedy wheels already turning behind his vulpine leer. He knew I had an angle here and was going to try to exploit it for all he could.

“Exactly so,” I said, flourishing a bit of sleight of hand that dropped two fifty-crown coins into each hand. I made sure they both could clearly see Adamant Wrynn’s profile on the coins, “More to the point, I’m willing to pay each of you a hundred crowns to open the gate and walk away.”

The lean guard’s eyes lit up like child who’d just gotten a new toy. It seemed I had correctly judged his sense of avarice. His eyes never left the coins as he spoke, “Reckon us letting you through is worth a spot more than that, I’d say,” he smirked and met my eyes, “We got a duty, yeah?”

I’d expected him to press for more and made the coins disappear just as quickly as they had appeared, to be replaced with a rather stout fighting knife, “Yes, it would. About eight inches of straight silver, I’d say.”

The larger guard’s spear twitched forward, dimpling my leathers before the lean guard pressed a little more firmly on his arm. The lean guard took several seconds to very obviously size me up. He knew I had at least two hundred crowns on me and I could see he was gauging if I might be carrying more and if he and his partner might be able to take me without getting hurt in the process. It’s not that I couldn’t have killed the both of them in a matter of seconds, but rather that I had no issue with them so there was no reason to harm them. A couple hundred gold was much better than a pair of pointless murders in my eyes.

He didn’t seem to care much for their chances and rolled his shoulders in a lazy shrug, “Yeh, awwright. A hundred crowns each, then.” I could tell it was an effort for him to put his hand out with calculated disinterest, “Cash before service, though, eh?”

There was a rumble from behind the skinny guard that it took me a moment to realize was speech, “I ain’t goin’” the bruiser grumbled, finally adding to the conversation. He set his speak more firmly at my chest. I could actually feel the point through my chest piece now. It was very sharp. I sighed inwardly; I’d been afraid of this.

I kept calm and continued smiling, though it was a tad tighter around the edges. The skinny guard looked at his partner as if he’d just sprouted a second head.

“Now, see here, Greg,” his voice was tightly controlled and it was very likely all he could do to keep from spittle-shrieking, “This very nice man is offering us a nice deal. We’d be fools not to take it,” he said, casting a suddenly nervous smile my way in an attempt to be reassuring. I could virtually see his mental image of gold coins flying away from his bleeding corpse on little golden wings.

“Don’t seem right, though, do it?” the brute of a guard rumbled, “Lord Arkenhill pays us good coin to guard this here gate.”

I smiled helpfully, edging slightly away from the point of the spear, “If it helps, after tonight, there won’t be a Lord Arkenhill anymore, so you’ll be out of a job anyway.” The spear point tracked my movement, though a slightly less surely. I was apparently getting through to him but at this rate the Titans would return before I got inside.

Greg looked to the skinny guard, his great brows forming a single entity in confusion. All this thinking made it difficult to just do his job. He said, “I dunno, Ray. Molly’ll have my hide if I lose this job. She said she would. I don’t like when Molly’s mad at me. She ain’t nice when she’s mad,” his tone was the same used by married men the world over when their single friends are trying to get them to do something colossally stupid.

Ray’s nervous smile shored up a bit, this was familiar territory. He wanted his hundred crowns and he wanted them badly. Of course, I never said they both had to agree to get the money. If Ray wanted to take the money and Greg didn’t, I didn’t have a problem letting Ray walk. I didn’t want to kill Greg if I didn’t have to, though. Still, I guess guys like me have a bit of a reputation for leaving a trail of bodies.

“What’s gonna piss Molly off more, Greg, you looking for work or you being dead?” Quite a lot of good sense in Ray, even if it did come from a hyper-developed sense of self-preservation. “Besides, you’ll have a hundred crowns to give her and, as a bonus, you won’t be dead. You know she’ll like that.” He glanced at me again and gave me that weasel’s smile.

For my part, I just stood there smiling pleasantly and casually resting my hands on the pommels of my swords. Greg’s uncertainty had caused him to forget about his spear and its point was now resting on the cobblestones. I was in no rush and could wait for these two to figure out they wanted to be alive and get paid rather than dead and dutiful. A little extra time was worth it to spare a couple of mostly innocent lives.

Why, yes, I do enjoy being a walking contradiction. Thank you for noticing.

Greg was silent for a long time, his might brow furrowed in thought. It was pretty easy to see the wheels of his mind slowly grinding to the inevitable conclusion like a millwheel. He may not think fast, but he did get there eventually. At long last, he looked up again and focused on me, fixing me with an unexpectedly piercing look, “A hundred crowns and all I gotta do is walk away?”

“I’d prefer if you unlocked the gate first, but yes. One hundred crowns, free and clear. You don’t even have to report it to the tax man,” I nodded.

That seemed to be all he needed to hear. Greg nodded once and unlocked the gate, pushing it open enough for me to pass through. I handed him his coins before he could ask and did the same for Ray, stepping back and waiting for them to depart.

“It’s been a pleasure, gentlemen,” I said, cheerfully, “You’ll forgive me, though, if I hope we never meet again.”

I watched them walk away, just catching Greg telling Ray in no uncertain terms that Ray would be buying the pints that night. Ray’s protests were quickly quashed with a large, firm hand laid upon his skinny shoulder. I waited until they were out of sight and then slipped through the now-open gate and onto the manor grounds beyond. Much as I suspected, the walls and gate were reinforced and magically enhanced to prevent being scaled or forced, but properly opened with the key and all those very expensive security measures were about as much protection as tissue paper in the rain. Once inside, there was little more than a few guard patrols as security.

Ah, blessed be the overconfidence walls provide.

I spent another three hundred crowns to send six more guards on their way; seven if you count the one who thought his life was worth more than fifty easy crowns. Why give the guys at the gate so much more? Simple economics. I wanted something from them. Now that I was on the grounds, it was just a matter of avoiding needless bloodshed. There would be plenty of that soon enough.

Intermission: The Shattering: Five Years After...(Prelude to a Disaster)

Five years. Hard to believe it’s been five years since I took up with SI:7 again and accepted commission as a field agent. Five years since Saya was killed. Yeah, I took my revenge on her killers but revenge never tastes quite as sweet as you imagine it will and it was just as much ashes in my mouth as it has been for anyone else. I carry the guilt of her death with me like a stone. It reminds me why I’m working for SI:7, why I do the things I do. Saya always strove to make the world a little bit better, however she could. It was easy for her; she was a doctor, a healer. All she had to do to improve the world was practice her craft.

It’s significantly less easy to make the world a better place when your only viable skills are killing and stealing.

The best you can do is kill the right people in the hope that the more constructive members of society are able to build something better in your wake. Peace is always built on the bones of the dead and I have left a lot of bones behind me.

A lot has changed over the last five years. From dragons to Old Gods to the thrice-damned Lich King himself, I’ve been there in the shadows, quietly ending those deemed most dangerous to Stormwind and all of Azeroth. Finally, after all this time, it seems we may finally be getting a shred of peace. The last great threats to the world, at least, for the moment, the Lich King and the Old God Yog-Saron, have been put down. Even the Scourge has been largely contained. We’ll probably always have outposts in Northrend just to keep an eye on things, but for the most part, for the first time in five years, there is no world-ending threat waiting in the wings.

Peace is…nice, I suppose.

The problem with peace is that someone like me, a weapon to be pointed at our enemies and loosed, doesn’t have a whole lot to occupy himself with. I’m not the only one, either. Once the citizen-soldiers have all returned to their farms and shops and normal lives, you’re left with an army of lifers. When there are no battles to be fought, a lifer tends to get…bored. Generally, when a life-long soldier gets bored, they start looking for something to do, which usually means fighting and property damage. At any given point, you can find easily a dozen soldiers, both Horde and Alliance, in the Dalaran lockup either sleeping off a drunken evening or nursing bruises from the last bar fight.

I suppose if I were more given to that sort of behavior, I might be right there too. However, since my line of work demands that I be both available and sober at a moment’s notice, I tend to avoid both drinking too much and getting in pointless fights with, well, everyone. Being sober and not in jail tends to get really boring, though, and sitting around waiting for my next mission was hardly the way I preferred to spend my time, primarily because it was excruciatingly boring. If I were to be honest with myself, which I try to avoid as a matter of course, the whole reason I became a thief after the Third War was because I was so relentlessly bored.

I hate to admit it, but for all the blood, sweat and tears that have been shed in the last five years, I’ve never been more content. I’m a thrill-seeker, an adrenaline junkie. Peace is probably the worst thing that could have happened for someone like me.

Fortunately, I’m able to fill my days with something almost like a regular job. Tirion Fordring’s Argent Tournament is still running and still needs support, supplies and odd jobs done here and there that the usual suppliers, sutlers and merchants aren’t able to provide for. The pay is decent, even though I don’t need it, and the more aggressive tasks keep me in good fighting shape. I’m sure that one day the Cult of the Damned and the vrykul will learn that keeping to themselves is far less costly in lives and materiel than otherwise but until they do, I’m more than happy to keep killing them.

So it has been for the last several months. The days have fallen into a rhythm of predictability that, while pleasant, has started to grow desperately boring. I was, in fact, searching for a resolution to this very situation in the golden foam of a very nice tankard of dark ale. I first noticed something was amiss when then throwing knife I had been rolling between my fingers was no longer there. She was getting better.

“Hello, Shannon,” I smiled, even as I held the point of a dagger to the gap between her third and fourth ribs, “Or are we someone else this week?”
There’s a certain stillness that occurs only when a person is holding intensely still so as to avoid an accidental perforation. It was this stillness that I could feel behind me more than anything else. Still, the fact that she had been able to get behind me at all spoke volumes as to either how good she was getting or how old and sloppy I was getting. I chose to believe the former, as the latter would certainly come in time.

“Mr. Drake,” she breathed in my ear in a voice ripe with promise and eager desire, “You know I’m always Shannon for you.”

I couldn’t help but shiver a little bit and pricked her with the point of my dagger, just enough to shoo her out from behind me. As if I needed more proof of the changing of the times, when I’d met her, Shannon had barely been a teenager. Now, she was nearly a full-grown woman and quite a woman at that. She shimmied herself out from behind me and into the chair across from mine, making me curse the fact that I wasn’t ten years younger. She’d been a pretty, fresh-faced young thing when I’d first met her and the years since then had been very kind. Convex and concave in all the right places, the mottled blue and grey leathers she wore only accentuated the gifts the Light had seen fit to give her. In a few more years, her smoldering gaze would be able to start fires.

She knew precisely what kind of effect she had on men and worked very hard at making sure they reacted in just that way. Men get stupid when a pretty woman is involved. Shannon’s specialty was infiltration and counter-intelligence and she was devastatingly good at it.

“Red’s a new look for you, I like it,” I said, pointing my chin toward the cascade of brilliant auburn curls framing her sweet, innocent face.

She shrugged non-committally and smiled a bit, “My most recent mark had a thing for redheads, I don’t care for it much, myself.”

This was usually her response when I complimented her latest appearance. Truth was, she could be shaved bald and would still be gorgeous. She had been a couple times. I suspected that with the way she had to change names, faces, hair and personality all the time she preferred being able to just wear her own face and hair whenever possible. Now, for instance, when presenting herself to a fellow agent, she was unadorned, unaccentuated. Normal.

I flagged down the waiter and ordered a glass of Dalaran Sweet for her. She smiled in genuine appreciation. Few people got to know her well enough to know what her favourite wine was and fewer still put the knowledge to benign use. While I appreciated her beauty, I couldn’t help but see her as that teenage girl I had first met so long ago. She had taken the advice I gave her that first day and even come back later to ask for more. Since then, I had been something of an ersatz teacher to her and she a pseudo-student.

We chatted briefly about inconsequential things, the usual sort of thing that normal people talk about when they haven’t seen each other for months. I’m not sure which of us was trying harder to be normal. However, once her wine arrived and she’d had a chance to enjoy a bit I had to ask, “So, as much as I enjoy seeing you, I have to wonder why you’ve popped up. You have that look that says this isn’t just a social call.”

“Sadly, no,” she waved her hand over the table and left and envelope in the passing. She loved sleight of hand tricks like that, “Though I am always happy to see you again.”

“You do my old heart well to speak such pretty lies,” I smiled, picking up the envelope, “They are always much appreciated.”

She rolled her eyes at me with a grin but quickly arrested the expression upon seeing my face drain of colour on reading the contents of the envelope.

“Khol, what is it?” I hardly felt the butterfly touch of her hand on mine, but the concern in her voice was hard to miss.

I read the letter twice more, just to be sure, “Shaw has a mission for me.”

“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” She was confused and I didn’t blame her. Last time we’d spoken, I couldn’t stop going on about how bored I was.

I swallowed the hatred in my throat before trusting myself to speak again, “It’s the Twilight’s Hammer. Shaw wants me to find out what they’re up to in Stormwind.”

“Oh,” she said, sitting back. She knew a small part of the events five years ago but the only person I had given all the details to was Shaw himself. Shannon knew they’d done some terrible things to me, but that was about it. I kept most of it quiet on purpose. Still, the thought of them made my left hand ache. Even all these years later, it still wasn’t back to full strength and probably never would be. He could have given this mission to anyone else.

“Well, looks like I won’t be bored much longer,” I gave Shannon a grim smile and tossed a few coins on the table, rising from my seat.

Shannon reached for my hand, the left, before I walked off. I could tell she could feel the lumpy scars even through my glove, but she hid it well.

“Khol,” genuine concern made her seem every bit that teenage girl I first met, “If you need anything, you know where to find me.”

I stopped and turned back to her, stroking her cheek with my damaged hand, “Remember me fondly.”

I strode off at that, before she could respond. She called after me once but there was no use, she knew I wasn’t going to turn back. Still, certain protocols must be observed.

Shaw could have given this mission to anyone else. There had to be someone closer to Stormwind than I was. He knew how much I hated the Twilight’s Hammer. He could have given this mission to someone else. He didn’t. He gave it to me.

He had to know this was not going to end well.