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.