A Stab in the Dark

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

2011-10-24T00:13:00.000-05:00

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

2011-04-24T23:09:00.003-05:00

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

2011-01-29T16:19:00.001-06:00

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

2011-01-28T00:07:00.004-06:00

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)

2010-11-27T19:30:00.003-06:00

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.

Part the Eighteenth: Necessary Accessories

2010-10-21T23:59:00.002-05:00

While it wasn’t exactly news to me that I’d made an enemy of both Twilight’s Hammer and the Defias, it was interesting to note that my name was coming up in their communications and not in a good way. Both groups were large organizations with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of members spread over both the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. I was one man with a fast sword and a smart mouth. I was a fly pestering a behemoth. Of course, some flies could weaken or kill even a giant, but more often than not they just tended to get swatted. I would need to be more careful from here on out. No more roughing up noble cultists or kidnapping random lieutenants and pumping them for information. It really wouldn’t do much for my schemes of revenge if I managed to get myself cacked by those I’d annoyed in the process of tracking down the person ultimately responsible for Saya’s death.

Perhaps it was time for me to get a little backup. While SI:7 was a potential option, it wasn’t very attractive one at the moment. I’d told Shaw the truth when I’d said that I wanted more than theories and accusations before I opened up. Right now, I had a lot of circumstantial evidence and a few theories as to how it all fit together. Yes, Brass’ testimony had filled in a lot of blanks that I had been missing but until I had actual proof of what he’d told me, it was worth exactly as much as what his testimony was written on. Which reminded me, I needed to get his whole story written down before I forgot too many details. The notes I’d made during his interview only told the high points.

I headed back to my apartment with all haste. After Shaw’s warnings it would serve me well to not be seen out and about on the streets too much. Scratching my chin through my beard, I considered the value of a change of appearance in addition to going to ground for a bit. Anyone looking for me would almost certainly be looking for a ruggedly handsome, dark-haired man with a neatly-trimmed beard just starting to show a few threads of silver and his long hair pulled back into a devilishly fashionable ponytail. It was certainly something to consider as it always behooves one to keep one’s enemies off balance.

While I mulled over what to do with my appearance, I also considered how best to approach Atalanta. The first inklings of an idea were already forming, but I needed to get back to my file to get enough details to really form a solid plan. Shaw would probably hate my plan, even though I would be using his own tactics.

I was going to need some help. My preferred means of dealing with hostile mages, a bullet through the brain pan, would be less than ideally effective in this case, as I needed Atalanta alive for the time being. Depending on what she was able to give me information-wise, the time being could well turn into the time was really quickly. I knew a couple of reliable bruisers who also happened to owe me a few favours and had rather negotiable attitudes when it came to things like laws and morality. They would be a good start. It occurred to me I might also want a docile mage of my own on my side, but no names were leaping to mind. In the sort of situation I was devising, using an unknown actor was never a good idea, though it might prove necessary if I couldn’t come up with someone quickly. Perhaps Mordock could lend me one of his tame mages if he was in the area.

I was getting close to my apartment when something pulled me out of my head. I stopped short and tried to place just what was wrong that I’d managed to notice without noticing. It took a moment, but I caught it quickly enough to get myself hidden.

None of the bully boys were clustered around the front stoop of my building.

Their absence could mean nothing good. Since I had taken patronage of the gang, they had come to regard my building as their headquarters and used the first floor as a hideout more often than not. If they were missing, there were three likely reasons for this that I could immediately come up with. One, someone had paid them to skedaddle. I figured this was the least potentially possible, since it would take a significantly obscene sum of money to make the entire gang vacate my building. Two, they had decided that my patronage was no longer beneficial. The third option was that they had been driven off somehow. While the first two options were possible, I didn’t consider them particularly probable. There were more than a few of the gangers who wouldn’t be among the living today if not for the coin I paid and contacts I shared. Saving lives tends to buy a lot of loyalty, which said nothing of the jobs and various and sundry equipment my patronage had provided them. As street gangs go, my pet gang was one of the more heavily armed ones on the streets of Stormwind. Some of the older gang members had actually risen out of the gang and become mostly respectable citizens and helped to push some of the younger members in that direction as well. If that trend kept up, in a few years there likely wouldn’t be much of a gang left and I would have to hire real guards, though that prospect was years down the road.

I hoped the gangers were largely unhurt, but that was a rather secondary concern, as I was primarily worried about who could and would have chased them off. Pretty much the only thing I knew of that would make them think twice was a group of significantly superior numbers, so I had to figure there was probably a large group of whoever waiting for me. Part of me wanted to rush ahead, swords at the ready and take apart anyone who dared stand against me. That was the monster in me speaking, though; the part I tried very hard to deny and feared would come back once I took up my weapons again. Sometimes, rushing in is the correct response, as it denies the enemy time to prepare and often comes with the element of surprise. Of course, you only want to rush in when you know exactly what you’ll be face. Time like this, where there were a whole lot of questions and not many answers, you needed a little more finesse.

First things first, I needed intel. Slipping through the dark space between two tenements which could laughingly be called an alley, I scrambled up to the sides of the buildings and onto the roof. It’s always easier to get a good look at a situation from higher up and most people don’t bother to look in that direction for a threat.

In the light of day, my dark leathers did very little to help conceal me. Of course when I had set out from Stormwind three days ago, I hadn’t expected to have to be sneaking around my own place in the broad daylight. Or at all. Still, sneaking about was my bread and butter, so while I could wish for more favourable conditions, I could easily make do with what I had.

Once on the roof of the tenement, I noticed that whoever had chased off my erstwhile guards, they were at least smart enough to keep out of sight. I didn’t see anyone obviously hanging around my building or the neighbourhood in general who didn’t belong there, though I suppose one or more of the random vagrants could have been one of my mysterious antagonists in disguise. Actually, now that I thought about it, that was very likely. If there is anyone in the city with an amazingly sharp sense of self-preservation it is the vagrants. Their very existence tends to depend on the good will, or at least the lack of malice, of the people they live among.

I kept to the back side of the sloped roof of the tenement I had scaled, screening any potential bad guys catching sight of me from the street or other rooftops. Poking my nose over the ridge of the roof, I quickly scanned the flat roof of my building. I caught sight of what appeared to be a large bundle or rags, haphazardly dumped against the chimney. I knew I hadn’t left anything up there and I doubted the gang would do so, not when they could just store things on the first floor. That left only a few options but, given the situation, only one of them was likely. It was very likely I was staring at one of the people who had driven off my gang.

I slipped across another narrow gap to the flat roof of another tenement and behind the low wall surrounding it. I tensed a moment as I saw someone else on the rooftop, but quickly realized it was one of my gang members, a sallow-faced young man I knew as Sleazy V. He looked both surprised and relieved to see me. Truth told, I was relieved to see him as well.

“Mr. Drake!” he whispered excitedly, motioning me over to where he sat with his back to the wall.

I moved over beside the ganger and stole another glance over the wall. The bundle of rags had shifted a bit.

“How are the rest of the boys, V?” I asked quietly, settling next to him. No point in asking stupid questions like where they were or what was going on. My bully boys were tough and, mostly, not stupid. Either they had fought and lost or run. What they had done would depend largely on who it was squatting on my roof at the moment.

He gave a lazy shrug and shook his head, “Couple guys are hurt pretty bad, but most of us got out before the magic started,” his lean face, pocked with acne scars, darkened, “Light-damned Twilights came at us, man. Madman told me to stay here and warn you when you got back.”

Madman was the gang’s current leader. He had taken over after the previous leader had thought that he and his gang standing against me was a good idea. Not coincidentally, Madman taking over and the gang coming to work for me had occurred at about the same time. He and I got on pretty well, given the circumstances. Despite his name, Madman has proven to be smart, cunning, reliable and loyal. Most of all, though, he was very concerned about the well-being of the people under his command. If I hadn’t known it would get him killed, I might have pointed him toward SI:7. Since I did know SI:7 would get him killed, I had dropped some hints at both Madman and Turner Krieg that he might be of great benefit to the information broker. As yet, they were both thinking things over.

I passed Sleazy V a handful of crowns, “Get the injured seen to at the usual place.” It was the personal touch that really maintained the gang’s loyalty, “Tell me what happened before you go.”

The coins disappeared as if they had never been. I wasn’t worried about them not making it to the wounded that needed them. The first couple of times I had paid to have the gang’s wounded taken care of I had made it a point to check on them later. Madman did not take kindly to members holding on to funds intended for the care of wounded members. It usually resulted in an additional casualty who required treatment at their own cost. Most of the gang learned very quickly that when I gave them money, it had better go to its intended purpose. Madman understood that his boys stood a much better chance with my backing than without it.

Sleazy V had the decency to look grateful. I didn’t know him well but, unfortunate nickname notwithstanding, he seemed like a good kid. I figured one of his friends was among the injured.

“We were just doing our usual thing, man, and next thing we know there’s, like, twenty guys coming at us,” Sleazy V sneered at the gross violation of standard gang procedure, “Most of our guys were off doing, uh, other stuff, so there was only about a dozen of us around your place, man,” he shook his head and pounded his fist into his other hand, “I know you pay us to watch your place and all, but they came at us with real heavies, man. Guys in armour and a mage. We made to fight but took off pretty quick, soon as we saw the caster. We can’t stand up to magic and shit,” he slumped against the wall a bit more, “Whatever it is they want from you, man, they want it bad to bring that much shit down here. Shit, even though we ran, they still lit us up. Beetle took a fireball in the back.”

I had a pretty good idea what they wanted: my head on a silver platter. I kept that part to myself, though, “You said they were Twilights, how do you know?” I asked.

Sleazy V gave me another lazy shrug, “One of the tanks had this big medallion that fell out of his shirt when he got knocked down. I told Madman about it and he told me they who they were.”

I put on my best thinking face and made a note to give Madman a raise. He was obviously smarter than the average thug. I passed another couple crowns to the ganger, “Thanks, V, you did real good. Did you get a look at the caster?”

Once more, the coins vanished with a murmured thanks then he said, “Not really, man, we were busy bugging out. It was a dude, though, might have been a human. Had a beard like yours, lighter, though.”

“All right, thanks,” I nodded and jerked my thumb toward the district wall the tenement butted up against, “Get on out of here. Tell Madman I need to meet him at the Pig and Whistle, about nine bells tonight, if he can. Tell him to keep everyone clear of my place for now. There’s some bad things going on and they’re only going to get worse. I don’t want any more of you guys getting hurt because of it.”

Sleazy V nodded and scarpered, getting up and over the district wall with an admirable alacrity. Now more knowledgeable about who was currently occupying my apartment, I turned my attention to the bundle of rags leaning against my chimney. It had moved again, looking a bit like there might be a person lying down under the pile. Given the size of the outline, I reckoned whoever it was to be a dwarf. That was a mixed blessing, since dwarves tended to not use magic, but also tended to be ferocious fighters.

Rags over there was probably the lookout for a larger group and doing quite a wonderful job of it, I might add.

Now, if the Twilight’s were smart, which I had to assume they at least weren’t stupid, they would have put lookouts on the taller buildings to either side of mine as well as the lookout who was doing such a phenomenal job on the roof of my own building. They may be crazy, but crazy does not necessarily equate to stupid. Fortunately for me, most of the tenements in my neighbourhood were only three or floors high, compared to the two of my own home. The building I was hiding on was a four-story job, as were the two flanking my home. That worked to my advantage in that any lookouts on those buildings wouldn’t be able to see me, especially if they were being as attentive as my dwarf friend down there.

Once more, I gave brief consideration to heading back to Shaw and dumping the whole mess in his lap. Once more I rejected it just as quickly. I didn’t have anything like concrete evidence of anything and, really, the idea just stunk of running back to daddy to come fix things. While the former was a problem, it was the latter that I just could not abide.

Yeah, my pride tends to do that to me a lot.

An alternate consideration was to just leave the Twilights in place and walk away from the whole affair. I wasn’t so attached to anything in my apartment than I couldn’t bear to lose it and it was reasonable to surmise that the cultists would give up and go home before too long, at which point I could easily retrieve anything of actual value to me, since all the good stuff was well hidden. Unfortunately, they might stumble across the place where I’d hidden my file on all the players in this little drama and I was going to need the information in it sooner rather than later if I had any intention of pursuing this investigation and actually want to be able to prove anything.

Sleazy V had said there had been about twenty of the Twilights when they showed up. I seriously doubted there were that many still lurking around. They wouldn’t leave that many men for just one man, even if that one man was yours truly: dashing assassin, thief and swordsman extraordinaire.

What? It could be true. Mostly.

The first great need when going up against a larger force is good intel. Good intel can mean the difference between pulling off an amazing ambush that decimates your foes and walking into the proverbial meat grinder. If you have time, collecting a thorough and detailed accounting of the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses will give you the best chance of winning when the odds are stacked heavily in their favour. If time is working against you, at least getting a count and location of the bad guys can be pretty useful as well. Of course, there are always the times when you can’t even get that much.

Using the district walls and several of the higher buildings that bordered my neighbourhood, I managed to get a decent accounting of the men already on watch for me outside of my building. Provided they were working on a simple rotation and just changing men out every so often, the six cultists stationed outside shouldn’t prove to be overly difficult. The real problem would be getting inside and finding out what I would be dealing with in there. It seemed the Twilights had done their homework on that count; they hadn’t left a single avenue of approach to my place that wouldn’t be seen by at least one sentry. Dropping one or two of them wouldn’t be hard, but it would tip off the others before I was ready to make my move, which would put the rest on alert and that was the exact opposite of what I wanted.

Don’t let the legend of the invincible assassin fool you, the second thing any assassin worth the name learns is the value of shock and surprise. I mean, really, how do you think those legends get started? Two guards milling about on the wall and suddenly one falls over or disappears into the darkness or some other nasty trick or trap and the second one gets a glimpse of the assassin just before being rendered unconscious. Half a dozen tellings and twice as many jacks of ale later and the assassin is ten-feet tall, bounces arrows off his skin and shoots lightning out his ass.

It’s simple tactics, really. People don’t deal with the unexpected well, especially when the unexpected is all but silent and carrying more blades than a small army. Even the most attentive guard, unless he thinks there is a reason to expect something, doesn’t actually ever expect anything to happen. The longer I could keep the Twilight guards in just such a state, the better it would work out for me.

In any case, it was still mid-afternoon and it wasn’t like the Twilights were going anywhere. I slipped over the district wall and headed for the Stormwind Counting House. A few hours weren’t going to make a huge difference at this point and I was going to need all the advantages I could get. Darkness is, after all, the natural environment of both the thief and assassin.

After refreshing my gold supply from my account at the Counting House, I got down to the business of becoming scarce. I hadn’t been wearing my armour lately, largely because it hadn’t been necessary while wandering around the city and travelling. Having just returned from Duskwood, I was still wearing the soft leathers in mottled blue and grey I preferred when I don’t want to be seen at night. While my armour was better protection, the soft leathers were better for hiding and sneaking around in, which I tend to find I need to do more than I need to absorb a blow. Annoyingly, my good armour, the set I had stashed away in Saya’s attic, the set that was custom-fitted and had seen me more or less whole through the Third War was sitting in a trunk in my apartment. It wasn’t a huge feat to obtain a basic set of hardened leather from the auction house in the Trade District, the favoured place of all the adventurer types to off-load the things they took from the people they killed.

I avoided the Trade District as a rule and the auction house most of all, if I could. The whole district seethed with adventurers making asses of themselves, bragging about their latest achievements and trying to gouge just that much more gold from their fellows. At least I had the decency to use a fence to profit from my ill-gotten gains.

Yes, I do realize the irony of an assassin getting all judgmental about killing for profit.

Sadly, dressed in such subdued colours and practical clothing, I stood out like a sore thumb. Once suitably equipped, however, it was a lot easier to blend in with the crowds of faceless adventurers who filled Stormwind’s streets these days. The best camouflage in the world is to look like everyone else. After buying the armour, I paid a visit to a dwarven barber over in the Dwarven District for a shave and a haircut. Sure, there’s the goblin in the Trade District who calls himself a barber, but I just can’t bring myself to trust someone with virtually no hair to know how to cut hair with any kind of skill. Yes, I am vain enough to want to look good while I’m hiding from large groups of people who are out to kill me.

Cutting my hair down from a long, stylish ponytail to the short, spiky style that was currently in vogue and shaving off my beard entirely made me look different enough that pretty much anyone looking for Khol Drake, master thief and assassin, was going to be looking for the wrong guy. Add in the ridiculous adventurer gear and I barely recognized myself, so it was a sure thing my myriad foes would have a difficult time.

Dusk was just setting in as I finished at the barber. I wanted to wait until full night had set in before I made any kind of move against the Twilights, so I had some time to kill yet. My stomach had been reminding me just how long it’d been since I had last eaten so I put in at the Pig and Whistle for a bite.

It may seem counter-intuitive to be wandering all over the city in plain view of everything, but there were a couple of factors involved which worked to hamper the efforts the people wanting to kill me. First, I was one guy in a city of a couple hundred thousand. That alone put the odds in my favour. Second, I could move quickly and freely throughout the city, while the two groups after my head were frequently composed of known criminals who would find movement through the six main districts more difficult, especially in large groups, which simple logistics made it most logical to send to find me. The more people looking, the more likely they would be to find me. Contrast that with a single guy or a group of two or three. Sure, they could move more freely, but they stood a much lower chance of finding me, though they would stand a better chance of taking me out, if they did. It doesn’t take much more than a short, sharp blade to the inside of the upper arm or just above the elbow to drop someone in seconds. Most times they won’t even realize they’ve been cut until their legs suddenly fail. Most don’t even get that far.

What? I kill people for a living. I get paid to know this stuff.

Getting outside some decent food and a pint fortified my attitude, if not my resolve. I wanted to get a big deeper into the night before I made any move so I figured spending that time watching the night shift bore themselves to sleep would be a pretty good idea. I wasn’t disappointed. Two of the guards, whose field of view would have overlapped nicely, were already dozing when I showed up and were stone asleep an hour later. That settled my approach path; now all there was left to do was wait for the moon to go down.

Intermission: In Memoriam

2010-06-12T01:58:00.003-05:00

See this dog here? This is Heinz. He's a shar-pei. He is also the best dog ever in the history of ever.

To really appreciate how awesome he is, you must understand that I really, really can't stand dogs. Yet this is the best dog ever. He is that awesome.

Heinz was once jumped by an entire sled dog team. He killed three of them before the rest realised they'd bitten off more than they could chew.

He was born seven years ago on Valentine's day, about two weeks after my nephew. Despite having killed three sled dogs, Heinz is the most gentle creature ever. Even when you give him a treat, he tries to take it with his lips, for fear of accidentally biting the hand that fed him.

Ever the faithful watchdog, Heinz made sure no Marines or ninjas ever thought they could get within 100 yards of our house.

Today, we finally had to let him go. He's been in decline for over a year, steadily losing weight and energy. Today, as we returned from dinner, we realised that he hadn't moved in the two or three hours we'd been gone. We tried to get him to eat, brought his favourite foods to him, but he wouldn't even give them a sniff. We got him to take some water, but it was soon apparent that he was only rapidly getting worse.

Today is a terrible day because the most awesome dog in the world died.

Intermission: WARNING: F-Bombs Have Been Authorized!

2010-04-28T23:24:00.007-05:00

*pulls out the old fogey stool and shakes his cane at the young whippersnappers and johnny-come-latelys*

So, back in the day when the choice of raid size was 40 or...40, there were these things called "raiding alliances." Now, some of these have survived to this day (hi, TRI!) but most have disappeared for the simple fact that getting together 40 ADD jackholes hopped up on sugar and caffeine (and various other substances) in one place at one time and getting them to all focus on one task for more than a few seconds is mind-breakingly difficult. Also, you think the drama is bad inside one guild when shit goes wrong? See what happens when there’s two or three or six and people are blaming everyone else in every other guild and the shit is being talked inside one guild and nothing is actually being addressed in the open because that would fucking well makes sense, wouldn’t it? Oh, yeah, good times. Usually these alliances occurred when a large, but not large enough guild, would approach a smaller, but not small enough guild, to join together for the betterment of all. Yeah, ‘cause communism works so well in the real world, it should work great when John Gabriel’s Internet Fuckwad Theory is in effect. What usually ended up happening is some small and normally easily resolved bit of drama would get blown all out of proportion and the alliance would collapse in on itself like the Austro-Hungarian Empire…or a flan in a cupboard.

Why were these strange and bizarre constructs created, you ask? Because for one guild to be able to field 40 people at one time was freaking hard! Like "why are we bothering with this shit" hard. So, people would meet other people from other guilds and they would join up so they could field 40 people. Problem being, most guilds usually had more than, say, half a raid's worth of people who wanted to raid, but even with multiple guilds pulling together, couldn’t field more than one raid, thus causing Drama the First: Who Gets to Raid? Guilds came up with all kinds of crazy shit to manage who got to raid when and who was in and who was out and for which fight and...ugh...

Hand me the vodka, I must destroy the memories.

Ah, better. Once it was determined who got in and who got sat, came the actual business of raiding, which, really, had far more in common with herding cats than playing a game. And there was always that one guy who feigned in front of the healer, pulled aggro intentionally, went the wrong way, tried to follow the stealthed rogue, etc, etc. Granted, that guy is still around but usually only once these days. If and when you managed to get down to the srsbizns and actually down a boss, well, then up popped Drama the Second: It’s Mine, No It’s Mine, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, also known as Loot Distribution.

If you’ve been around for a while, say, over five years, for example, you’ve probably heard of some ridiculous loot system or two: DKP, SWAPS, Karma…the list goes on ad nauseum. But since there were FORTY FREAKING PEOPLE who all showed up for loot, and a whopping five or six pieces of loot, for the toughest (read: Ragnaros) bosses.

Let’s see…carry the one…divide by the square root of pi…aha!

Yeah, with a good night of raiding, you were looking at maybe a dozen people getting loot. We’re also talking a FULL NIGHT of raiding. Raids were five to six hours long! And you still didn’t finish the damn instance. You had to go back a second and sometimes third night! So, you put in all this work, raid for a long damn time and all you’ve managed to rack up at the end of the night is a big repair bill and a little more damage to your liver. Somehow, some genius in one of the “top guilds” decided it was a good idea to reward people who had the intestinal fortitude to show up every night with points they could use to buy gear. This eventually filtered down through the whole system and just about every freaking guild in the whole damn world adopted it. Yet, no one could really come up with a system that was as fair and balance as the one Blizzard implemented from the word go: the random roll. See, every one of these point systems had a weakness: they could be exploited by the people with lots and lots of free time. Show up, get your points, go home. Wash, rinse, repeat for a few weeks. Suddenly, one guy has taken all the loot and the loot drama commences!

Strangely, people still yearn for those days to return. I have to assume these are people who never actually raided 40-man raids. Those days were far more headache than they were ever worth. More often than not, the only fun that was had was in the friendships made along the way, not in the actual gameplay. Yes, yes, I know Blizzard was new at designing raid encounters and didn’t have the tools then they do now. With few exceptions (I’m looking at you living bomb, Razorgore, Vael and core hound packs), most raiding in those days was straight up tank’n’spanks. Where do you think we get the term? Other than using them as a DPS meter, how much fun does anyone really have on a tank’n’spank? Hey! Stand there, don’t die and DPS as hard as you fucking can! Yeah, it’s fun once. Once. Then it’s time to move on to actual challenges.

I was only too happy to see 40-man raids die like the filthy fucking dogs they were. This was also about the time that most of these “raiding alliances” died away as well. These I wasn’t as happy to see go, as they were usually a good source of friends you might not meet otherwise.

I told you that story so I could tell you this one….

See, back in the dark days of vanilla WoW, I was a member of this little guild, who, for security purposes, shall remain nameless. For some reason, we’ve been prone to attract a lot of hate on our server. I’m still not sure why. Anyway, this happy little guild was part of a fairly large raiding alliance. The alliance was rather successful, as these things go, but eventually it did fold, largely due to one guild *coughminecough* having grown large enough to actually put up a full 40-man raid on its own and leaving the alliance. Great days! Not much changed. What worked in the alliance worked fine on our own as well, only without the annoying attendance points.

Enter BC and all the glorious glory of new, smaller raids! We initially thought this might be a problem, but it turned out half the guild were raging fuckwads and pulled out like their fathers should have done from their mothers the night they were conceived. This left us as a pretty lean, mean fighting force and we were able to meet most of the challenges of Outland head-on, with minimal breakage of skull on our part.

Okay, so it actually gutted our roster for a couple months until we were able to reorganize and rebuild into the leaner, meaner fighting force, etc, etc. But! We were still here.

(Parenthetical aside: the asshats who left to be uberleet and ultra hardcore raiders? Gone. Guild failed a couple months after inception. Strange how when you take all the assclowns from one guild and put them together in another, with none of the balancing force of the awesome people, it falls apart due to a critical mass of asshattery. And yeah, it really was just all the assclowns.)

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I didn’t raid much with my guild in BC due to real life commitments (read: my fucking work schedule sucked donkey balls.) I even spent some time in a different guild for that reason. I did help that guild to become raid viable, however. Which was an achievement, let me tell you. You guys know who you are. You know.

However, I did get into the raiding late in BC and let me tell you, the flexibility to choose 10 or 25 based on how many you had at the time: awesome. It didn’t much matter that ZOMFG TWENNYFIVSH HAZH DA BESHT GEARSH GUYSH! WE SHOULD RUN ONLY DOESH! SHERIOUSHLY! (that last bit should be read with a lateral, or “slushy” lisp.) The differences in item level wasn’t so great that 25-only raiders could really look down on 10-man only raiders because they were doing the same content because some of the gear was just as good, even if it was fuckugly. (ohai, ZA, I didn’t see you there. Okay, I did, because fuck you.)

Now along comes the Rash of the Itch King and suddenly, not only do we have the option of how big we want our raid to be, but where. This is a huge thing. We’re not locked into the same three raids every week, no matter how many times we’ve done them or how long ago we mastered them. Okay, fine, so Naxx was kind of weaksauce, but we really only made it to the door by the time BC came out, so fuck it, it was nice to finally see.

My happy guild (still around, with much of the same people as it started with) started out Lich King doing Naxx 25 and making quick werk (UCWHUTIDIDTHAR) of it. Eventually, summer came and people left and some never came back, so we stepped things down a bit to tens.

(Also, I spent some time with another guild because, again, I couldn’t make my guild’s raiding schedule, but could the other guild’s. Drama drove me back. My guild is pretty much like that one old girlfriend that will always take you back because she really loves you and you really love her even if you’re too stupid to know it. You know, the ones that only exist in the movies?)

So here we are. Wrapping up Lich King (both the expansion and the boss…well…FUCK YOU SINDRAGOSA!) doing ten mans and the occasional pugged 25. We’ve got a tight core group of raiders with plenty of room for others to step in and wreck shit up if they want or if their schedule doesn’t allow them to raid every raid night. We do well and we do it on our own. The changes coming down the pipe? BRING THEM THE FUCK ON. Give us more flexibility. Give us the one thing that makes the 25-only fuckwits think they can look down on people who raid only tens. Cry me that fucking river because your epeen won’t be as huge and glorious because you raid with 24 other fucktards while I raid with nine good friends. Your tears are delicious and they nourish me and power my Fortress of Win™. Also, they fuel Fifteen Seconds of Awesome™ (that’s an inside joke, by the way, for all the people who know me who don’t read my blog *sob*.) It pleases me that Blizzard is doing everything they can to do what this game is supposed to do, be fun. Someone else said it better than I can: if 25-mans die, it’s because they were meant to die, not because Blizzard killed them. Strangely, when you make the playing field level, the players with the real skill are the ones who step up and really shine.

Things have improved so much from the dark days where we bled, sweated and cried in Molten Core. Why would anyone want to perpetuate that, much less go back to it. The idea that only a select few players should be able to access and successfully defeat the top level content is an idea that should have died back when EverQuest was releasing their third expansion (and yes, a giant FUCK YOU to Furor for trying to keep it that way for so fucking long, which is another rant entirely.) Even with ten-million players worldwide, it doesn’t make any kind of financial sense for Blizzard to design content for one-percent of their subscribers. How many people would have quit playing by now if they knew they had no chance of ever seeing the top-end raid content because they couldn’t get into the hardest of the hardcore guilds? WoW is successful because it doesn’t do these things, because Blizzard does try to make their content available to as many people as possible. Fuck all, I’m just a hack fanfic writer and I still want as many people to read my shit as possible. Blizzard has got a huge fucking team of people working to create as much awesome shit as your eyeballs can take. Why wouldn’t they want as many people as possible to see it?

To the whiners with a terrible case of silicate vaginosis who can’t feel like a worthwhile human being unless they have the highest Gear Score (another fucking rant) possible with a side order of mighty, golden epeen: FUCK. YOU. Quit trying to douche the game up according to your infantile need to be better than other people in a video game. Enjoy the fucking game. Let other people enjoy the game. If you can’t enjoy the game without shitting all over other people’s enjoyment of it, well, I hear EverQuest plus all 15 expansions are about forty bucks on Steam and they cater to your type quite well.

To the people who chase world firsts and are concerned these changes will make your achievements somehow mean less: um, really? First of all, it’s cool you beat the game and all, but it’s not like you won a marathon or, say, the Tour de France seven times in a row with one fucking nut. Yes, your skill is admirable, but quit acting like you’re the queen’s own shit. Because, really, if these changes will do anything, it will be to give you an even greater chance to shine. (Because the field is level now, see above.)

In summary, the changes are good, whiners can chug a big ol’ glass of go fuck yourself and I’m looking forward to year six with my guild and raiding with a bunch of good friends for as long as we’re here. Because we have been here for a long ass time. Longer than most guilds I’ve seen. There are very few who are still around from five years ago. Fewer still who still have most of the same roster then as they do now. We’ve seen a lot of shit over the years and a lot that has improved. Take the long view. Look back on the road we’ve been down and look forward to where we’re going. It’s been doing nothing but getting better for five years and shows no sign of stopping now.

Fuck.

(Total f-bomb count: 24. Beat that, K.)

Part the Seventeenth: The Song Remains the Same

2010-04-18T15:16:00.004-05:00

Brass and I had plenty of time to talk on the gryphon to Ironforge. I had briefly considered bringing him back to Stormwind and taking the newly-finished Deeprun Tram but had discarded the idea based on the fact that I had just gotten Brass free of the Defias and, if the rumours were true, they had plenty of allies within the city itself that would have been more than happy to recapture or kill him. Also, gnomish technology is dangerous and not to be trusted.

Turns out the Defias lieutenant I had handed over to SI:7 had told me the truth. Brass knew exactly what I was asking about and gave me all the details I could want. Being a stonemason and, more importantly, a subterranean architect, the Defias had rented him out to the Twilight’s Hammer bunch out at Lord Arkenhill’s place to design some sort of chamber. He wasn’t given many details but the specs he was told to design around indicated the chamber was going to house a pretty massive object. Whatever it was, it also had to be magical in nature, a fact he reasoned out just from his experience in designing structures for mages.

Apparently, the way the structure is designed and built can aid the flow of magical energy in the area. I had no idea this was possible; you learn something new every day.

Imaria had said she’d been hired by a mage named Atalanta to kill Saya. She had also been working with the bunch of Twilight’s Hammer mooks that had tried to do me in. Were the two connected? It would make sense, given the structure the cultists were building; they’d need a mage to do something with all that magical power. That begged the question of whether Atalanta was a member or an outsider. I knew Twilight’s Hammer had their own mages; I’d killed plenty of them during the war, so why would they bring in an outsider, unless Atalanta had some unique quality that made her more appealing than using one of their own. There were just too many unanswered questions and there weren’t many answers forthcoming.

Chief among those unanswered questions was why Saya had to die. You don’t hire an assassin, especially one as skilled as Imaria, to kill someone for no reason, even if that someone is nursing Stormwind’s best thief back to health from the brink of death. It didn’t make sense, especially for a mage working to cure the blood elves’ magic addiction. As far as the bunch who’d tried to kill me were concerned, I was already dead and not a threat. Her death was as senseless and random an act as I could figure, a thought that had been nagging the back of my conscience for some time now.

I supposed there was the small chance that Imaria had been lying when she said she’d been hired to kill Saya. Generally, unless you’ve got stones the size of boulders and made of solid thorium, lying is the last thing on your mind when facing down your worst nightmare made flesh. Which put me solidly back at square one in the motive department. The more I turned it around and looked at it, the more it was becoming apparent I was going to have to have a meeting with this Atalanta person.

I really don’t like dealing with mages. As far as I’m concerned, the whole bunch of them are about as stable as a handcart on a seesaw. Playing with the laws of the world isn’t healthy for one’s mental state; it makes you think you’re more important than you really are.

I was turning all this over in my head as while I rode the gryphon back to Stormwind. As ever, the more questions I answered the more that popped up. I still had no idea what the Twilight’s Hammer’s interest in this whole deal was, unless it was just to sow chaos and destruction. While that wasn’t impossible, it didn’t make much sense. As a rule, Twilight’s Hammer cultists are interested in widespread chaos and destruction only as a side effect of bringing the old gods back, not so much as a goal in and of itself. Maybe my investigation into Atalanta would shed some light on the reason for their cooperation, though I suppose she could just be a member. Stranger things have happened.

I needed to get back to my place and check the file that Krieg had given me. Until Imaria had fingered her as the money, I’d dismissed Atalanta as a minor player, at most. The more I considered it, though, the more it was starting to look like she was a bigger piece of the puzzle than I’d originally imagined. I suppose that made sense, in a way. In any organization, there’s always a magic-user pulling the strings somewhere high up in the chain.

No sooner than I’d handed the reins of the rented gryphon over to the flight master, than my plan to get back to my apartment was derailed. A slender blonde girl, barely into her teens by the look of her, fell into step with me as I left the gryphon stables. I didn’t recognize her, but with the black on black on black leathers she was wearing, there were only two possibilities as to why she would be approaching me. Since she wasn’t trying to put something sharp and pointy into Ma Drake’s favourite son, the options were rather narrowed down a bit.

I had a good head and a half on her and she had to hurry to match my strides as I walked down the ramp from the gryphon stables. I could sense the wind up even before she opened her mouth and beat her to the punch, “I got it, Shaw wants to see me. Lucky for him, his office is closer than my apartment, so I can graciously spare a few minutes.”

The assassin cub put on a pretty little pout for a second. I’m sure she was used to using it to get her way. She would be quite the heartbreaker in a few years. Provided she lived that long. Most people in Shaw’s employ had a way of getting dead.

Being the grumpy old cuss that I am, and being a bit cranky from the long ride to and from Ironforge, I jumped on whatever else she might have had to say, “Two things: one, the whole black on black motif is way overdone and doesn’t really help a whole lot anyway, unless you’re trying to announce to the world what you are. The idea is to blend in. If you must wear dark colours, go for greys and blues, preferably in some sort of mottled pattern, helps to break up your outline in the dark. You can thank me for that bit later. Two, only one person in this city would have had any idea that I was coming in by gryphon. Or at all. Your boss likes to think I’m still on the payroll and will come at his beck and call.”

She raised an eyebrow at me and sneered, “Reznik warned me you were an asshole.”

I couldn’t help but grin, “I do have that reputation, yes.” I slowed my pace a bit so she didn’t have to struggle so much to keep up, “So did His Secretfullness bother to tell you why he wanted to see me so urgently?”

She shrugged eloquently and put on what I’m sure was supposed to be a haughty expression. It came out rather flat and made her look more like she had a pebble in her boot or some rather painful gas, “Unlike some people, I don’t question my superiors,” her face fell to a disappointed sneer, “Besides, Reznik told me to fetch you and pushed me out the door. I didn’t even have time to ask what you looked like.”

Ah, the glamourous life of an assassin. The kid had my sympathy and I told her as much. Having proven myself during the war, I didn’t have to go through all the initiate crap Shaw put new members of the Assassin’s Guild through, but I’d seen plenty of fledglings give up just based on all the crap he and the Guild’s trainers put them through. Not that the crap didn’t have a purpose. It weeded out the stupid and the impatient. The overall quality of assassins improved and once you made it to full-grade killer, life got much easier. After all, there were always newbies to train. Sure, a lot of people swore they’d never be like that once they became a full member, but it’s amazing how fast one’s opinion changes when you’re facing down a pile of scut work and there are several able and, if not exactly willing, at least resigned to the fact young bodies to do it because you told them to. Yeah, it was a vicious circle.

We were crossing over the bridge from the Trade District into Old Town when I finally relented, “So what is it you’re wanting to ask? You’ve been trying to screw up the courage since I saw you.”

Her frown turned quickly into a scowl, “That obvious, huh? Old Parni says I may as well write my thoughts on my forehead it’s so easy to read my face. I can’t help it.”

“Bah,” I waved my hand dismissively, “There’s more than one way to hide your intentions, unless you ask old Poker-Face. You know he actually injected his face with too much numbing poison, right? That’s why he never shows any kind of expression. He can’t.”

That earned me a ghost of a smile, “I didn’t know that, but now that I do…” she trailed off and I could see the devilry forming in her mind.

“Anyway, kid, you’ve got the kind of open, honest face people trust. Practice using that instead of being a carefully composed blank. Just look wide-eyed and innocent and I guarantee you’ll fool most people more often than not.”

She seemed to take this in and consider it, at least, which I had to give her credit for. Most kids her age would have dismissed anything I said as the rambling of an old fart. Of course, most kids her age weren’t training to be assassins. I didn’t have too many contemporaries my age and ever fewer who were older than me. One thing you learned early on in this business is that your chances of dying quietly of old age, surrounded by friends and family were pretty slim. It paid to listen to those who made it even to middle age.

“Out with it, then. You’re dying to ask me something.”

She looked up at me as we walked, favouring me with a look that was more respectful and less barely disguised contempt than before, “Did you really slug Mr. Shaw in the jaw when you quit?”

I snickered and grinned broadly, “Where did you hear that?”

Her disappointment was almost palpable, “It’s just a rumour. People mention it whenever your name comes up.”

Shaw had been smart sending her to come fetch me. She was just wet enough behind the ears that, kind and helpful soul that I am, I couldn’t help but take her under my proverbial wing. The well-faked concealed hero-worship was really the icing on the cake. She was nothing but pure ego food and Shaw knew it. I probably would have ditched any other escort long before now.

“That was the first time I quit,” I smirked at the memory. What had started as a shouting match ended with me belting Shaw one across his smug mouth. I didn’t see any reason to mention getting beaten half to death by four of his guards and tossed into the street. If it really was true that people talked about me hitting Shaw, it was only as a cautionary tale not to cross him. “The second time was the real show-stopper,” I said, the smirk fading quickly.

She caught on fast, “No one talks about that. Ever.” I got the impression she was telling the truth about that. I didn’t like to talk about it. One of the skills that makes Shaw such an effective spymaster is his quite uncanny skill at judging a person’s reaction to a given situation. I’ve never quite been sure if that was because he manipulated events to force the outcome he wanted or if he really was just that good at reading people. Whatever the truth may be, one of the very few times he’d been wrong was in sending a man I’d once regarded as a friend to bring me back into the fold, dead or alive. I hadn’t wanted to kill him, he had been a friend, after all, but his fanatical loyalty to Shaw didn’t leave me a choice in the matter. After it was said and done, I’d taken his body back to SI:7 for proper burial and so they wouldn’t be able to screw his widow out of her pension for his death in the line of duty. Despite my efforts to make sure he was afforded everything due to him, most of the members of SI:7 and the Stormwind Assassins regarded me ever after as little better than a kinslayer and he as a posthumous hero. I harboured no doubts that should he have succeeded in killing me, he would have been a hero that brought down a dangerous rogue. Very few, if any, of the operatives appreciated the irony.

I might have said a word or two more about what had happened, if only to explain my side of things, but by that time we were climbing the steps to SI:7.

Go to any human city worth the name and somewhere at its heart you will find a fortress or fastness of some sort. It’s the natural order of cities to grow up around easily defensible areas. Stormwind is no exception to the rule, though after the orcs razed the city at the end of the First War and the city was rebuilt, the old fortress ended up at the edge of Old Town. Once the new Stormwind Keep had been built, the old fortress was converted into the command center and headquarters for the Stormwind Army, providing a central location for operations, logistics and intelligence to work together cohesively. Removing the sharp end of the day-to-day operations of the Army from the environs of the Keep and, more importantly, the nobles within it had the additional effect of freeing up the Army to go about its business unencumbered by the brilliant, yet completely idiotic and insanely unpractical, ideas often foisted upon the military by people with too much time on their hands and precious little to keep their tiny minds from wandering, whose only qualifications to command were a happenstance of birth.

Me? Bitter? Never.

Surprisingly, Shaw met my escort and I in the practice yard. That was unusual enough in and of itself to make me mentally sit up and take notice. Compounding surprise with shock, he seemed pleased to see me, which is to say he wasn’t snarling and glowering at me. In point of fact, he looked reasonably pleasant. Taken separately, each of these points wouldn’t have fazed me much. All at once, however, they got my back up as surely as if I had been a startled cat. I could tell Shaw noticed me tense up, though he was polite enough not to make any indication of having done so.

I made a quick mental accounting of the last couple of weeks, trying to remember if I had done anything that might make Shaw suddenly decide I was more valuable dead than alive. As it happened, the main reason I was still alive at all was because I had taken great pains to make sure Shaw was very much aware that even though he no longer signed my paychecks, I was still very much on his side and was much more useful to him alive. That was the main reason he had only send one guy after me way back when. Shortly afterward, I’d gotten wind of a scheme to undermine the city walls so one of the noble houses, who just happened to own a very large stake in several stone quarries, could make a killing selling stone to the city to repair them. After that, Shaw had decided that I had more value as a freelancer since I could come by information that might take his agents weeks or months to discover otherwise.

Strangely, you tend to come by a lot of information when you spend a lot of your time pilfering the homes of the wealthy.

Still, I wasn’t able to come up with anything, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something I’d done to make Shaw believe I was now a threat, or at least no longer of value. That was the problem with his particular brand of fanaticism: there was no room from grey in his world view. Either you were a threat to Stormwind or an asset to be used and discarded as soon as you were no longer useful.

Shaw favoured my escort with something that resembled a paternal smile, one that was almost believable, had I not known the man in the slightest. It also might have been intensely creepy coming from just about anyone else. From the master of both the Stormwind Assassins and SI:7, though, creepy was rather the norm.

“Thank you for escorting Mr. Drake, Shannon. I believe Reznik has another assignment for you.” Watching the proud father-figure act set my teeth on edge and turned my stomach sour. It was akin to watching a viper coo over a newborn babe. For her part, Shannon just about burst into flame from the joy that came with knowing that the boss not only knew her name but could match it to her face. Faked hero-worship certainly had nothing on the real deal.

To her credit, Shannon did manage to give Shaw a proper salute before scampering off. She was also polite enough to say she would work on the things we talked about. It was nice of her to say, but I believed it about as much as I believed Shaw’s saintly patron act.

“She’s a good kid,” I said, still smiling pleasantly after her, “You should try to not get her killed.”

Shaw’s proud father smile didn’t falter in the slightest, “She’d killed three men by the time she was twelve and two more when I found her in the Stockades.”

I wasn’t about to be out-blaséd, “Hm. Well, then, even you should have a hard time.”

Shaw let the matter drop. Most likely because he found my witty banter banal and annoying. Personally, I always rather suspected that was just because he couldn’t keep up.

No sooner was Shannon out of sight than Shaw’s manner cooled considerably, “Walk with me, Drake,” he said with all the hallmarks of an order. Judging by the way he marched off without so much as glancing to see if I would follow, indicated that while I had a choice, only one option would have an outcome that I even remotely liked. As much as I enjoy antagonizing him, I know well enough when to shut up and do as I’m told. I still couldn’t help but come back to wondering if Shaw was planning on getting rid of me in that oh-so-permanent way.

It was no great feat to catch up and fall into step with him as he led the way up one of the towers and out onto the wallwalk. Being the headquarters of the Army, there was usually only a couple of guards up here and a watchman who came up as part of his patrol route. As we made our way toward the middle of the wall, I could only see one of the guards and he pointedly moved himself out of sight and out of earshot. That certainly boded ill.

Shaw stopped around the middle of the wall and leaned on his crossed arms on a crenel, staring out over Old Town. I stopped next to him and leaned against the opposite side of the wall, trying hard to appear relaxed, but very busily looking for where the attack might come from. There would certainly be a diversion first, just to draw off my attention, then the actual strike. Shaw’s silence was not helping. After several long seconds, he finally let out a long sigh.

“You know, Drake, despite our differences, I actually like you.”

That was exactly the sort of opening statement that usually finished with, “I’m sorry I have to kill you.”

Shaw continued, “You’re a good operative, when you want to be. It’s a shame we don’t see eye to eye on things. You could go far with SI:7.”

Maybe he was going to do it himself. That would almost be an honour, really, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d be, you know, dead.

Apparently, Shaw can sense tension in the air, “You can relax, I didn’t call you up here to kill you. If I wanted you dead, you’d never know it and certainly never see it coming.” He turned and faced me, putting his back against the crenel, “Your name is coming up a lot over in the Keep these days. Seems a certain lord you attacked in his home has been rather vocal about it to the other nobles. There’s a lot of pressure coming down from on high to do something about you.”

“If that was supposed to calm me…”

Shaw shook his head, “No, just so you know what’s going on. Whatever you’re into, it’s getting a lot of noses out of joint. I’d suggest laying low for a while, but I don’t think that’s going to be good enough this time. Highlord Fordragon is staying out of it so far, going on my recommendation that it was an isolated incident, which it was, of course.” His tone of the last statement left no wiggle room and contained all the warning I would get. If I pulled another stunt like that, I was a dead man.

Shaw leveled his most serious look at me, which, for a man with no sense of humour, is quite serious indeed, “I showed Fordragon your record and, criminal activity notwithstanding, he’s content to give me the benefit of the doubt. He is not the king, however, and cannot deny the demands of the nobles forever.”

I chewed my lip for a few seconds, taking that in. While some might take what he had said for a threat, anyone who understood Shaw would realize the statement for the warning it was. This was just his subtle way of telling me that he was willing and currently able to protect me, for now, but I’d better finish what I was doing and vanish soon or he wouldn’t be able to shield me much longer.

“How long do I have?” I asked.

“That will largely depend on how much longer Arkenhill can hold the ‘Lady’ Prestor’s favour,” the air quotes around Lady were audible, “The bitch queen is the one howling the loudest for your head. Arkenhill doesn’t have nearly the influence on his own to even get audience with Fordragon, let alone move him to give me orders. For whatever reason, helping Arkenhill raise a stink serves her purposes, so I wouldn’t count on her giving up any time soon, which leaves you very little time.

“Of course, if you were to fill me in on just what you’re up to beyond spreading chaos and mayhem and sowing seeds of dissent, I might be able to give Fordragon a reason not to order you tossed into the Vault.”

I smirked on the inside, but kept my face appropriately somber, “Not yet. Maybe once I have more than crazy theories and wile accusations.”

He favoured me with a look that told me he knew exactly what I was thinking and he didn’t believe a word of what I was saying, “That you cover your tracks is all I ask.”

This time I let the grin creep to my face, “If I’m right, my tracks will be the least of your worries. Your boys and girls will be busy little bees.”

“So I’ve gathered,” he shrugged eloquently, “Your name has been popping up quite a lot in the local Twilight’s Hammer chatter. The Defias, too. I take it you’ve been making all sorts of good friends these last few weeks.”

“What can I say, I’m a likable guy,” I said, spreading my hands in the very essence of innocence and giving him my best trust me smile. Sadly, Shaw was not convinced.

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

I snorted and waved my hand dismissively, giving a good show of wounded pride, “Bah, you’re biased. You already know me.” Since it seemed that Shaw had passed on all that he had wanted to, I moved away from the crenel, “Anyway, I do have chaos and mayhem to spread and seeds of dissent to sow, if there’s nothing else?”

Shaw shook his head but then caught my arm as I started away, “I’m serious about this, Khol. You’re racking up some powerful enemies. The kind of enemies a fast sword and a smart mouth can’t touch. The fact that Prestor has gotten herself involved should be enough to give you pause; you’re also in the sights of the Twilight’s Hammer and Defias. Watch your step.”

That caught me off guard. One, Shaw had addressed me by my first name, something he never does without reason. Two, he actually sounded concerned, which might have been faked, but in all the time I’ve known him, Shaw had only rarely ever shown his true feelings. Maybe he’d just gotten that good at faking it, but his concerned seemed…genuine.

Talk about creepy.

Much later, after all the fallout had settled, it would occur to me why he’d sounded so concerned. Despite our differences, Shaw had never questioned my loyalty to the kingdom. For him, this was worth more than all the gold in the world, as his main driving goal in life was the safeguarding of Stormwind by any means necessary. It meant that I was a valuable asset to the protection of the kingdom, freelancer or no. While he would never say as much out loud, that was about as close to actual friendship as he ever got.

Intermission: Because I'm Tired of Seeing the Same Damn Post and I Haven't Finished the Next Chapter of A Stab In the Dark...

2010-02-14T16:02:00.005-06:00

Silent Desperation

Over-Duke Colm O’Bronwen of Caer Avondrev rubbed his temples, his face etched with the lines of worry that only fear for a child could produce. Both his personal and the court physicker sat before his heavy rosewood desk, speaking at great length of ill humours and bloodtaint in overly-complicated detail to explain to the Over-Duke that his son was dying and there was nothing they could do for him, save place more leeches on him. They had been speaking in turns for the past twenty minutes, long enough to worsen the already bad headache that was rumbling just behind the Over-Duke’s eyes. Finally, he held up his hand and the two physickers fell silent.

“So,” the Over-Duke began, his bass voice rumbling from deep in his throat, “if I understand you correctly, and please, do correct me if I am mistaken, what you are both telling me, is that there is little you can do, save bleed my son to death or wait for this thrice-damned illness to take him?” The Over-Duke’s blue-grey eyes flashed dangerously, staring across his desk to the two sallow-faced men across from him.

“Your grace, it is not as simple as all that,” the court physicker began, but the Over-Duke held his hand for silence again, cutting him off.

“It is as simple as all that, Master Physicker, either you can cure him, or you cannot. If this illness is beyond your abilities I will send for someone who’s abilities it is not beyond,” The Over-Duke’s eyes moved slowly from one man to the other, making both feel like butterflies standing on the lip of a killing jar. After a heavy, lengthy pause, he asked, “Can you cure him, or no?” His question, though simple was asked with all the weight of an executioner’s axe behind it.

Both physickers swallowed hard, glancing to one another, both knowing the Over-Duke would not like their answer. While the Over-Duke was not a man given to summary executions for receiving answers that didn’t please him, he had been in a black mood in the week since his son had been found in the training yard in a pool of his own bloody vomit. That he would be upset was understandable, but none had ever seen him like that, not even his wife, Katarina, when she had still lived.

Finally, the Over-Duke’s personal physicker spoke, “No, your grace, we cannot identify the source of his illness, and without knowing what has made him ill, we cannot begin his cure.”

The scowl on the Over-Duke’s face deepened and he lays his hands flat on his desk standing slowly. The Over-Duke was not a large man, though neither was he a small man. His broad shoulders and well-muscled arms and chest spoke loudly of his years in the Imperial Army and the Knights Pantera, the Empire’s elite strike force. While not the largest of men, the Over-Duke could make himself seem to be ten feet tall with the right glower, which he happened to be favouring the two doctors with. The two physickers did their best not to shrink back from his imposing figure, but were finding it difficult.

“You are dismissed. Both of you. Send my aide in on your way out.”

“Of course, your grace,” both men said in near-unison, rising quickly and bowing before beating as hasty a retreat as they could. The Over-Duke turned to the large window behind his desk, clasping his hands behind his back as he stared out over the vast wheat fields outside the castle and small town. A few moments later, a tall, heavyset woman in a gown that was more functional than elegant made in the green and black of the duchy entered with an inquisitive expression on her face.

“I see you’ve been bullying the medicks again, my lord. Perhaps I should return when you are in a better mood?” The hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her full lips and she idly smoothed a stray lock back into the queue her iron-grey hair had been tied in.

The Over-Duke gave a heavy sigh and dropped back into his chair, his expression melting immediately to the pained worry of a father, “Unavoidable, I’m afraid, Gwynneth, to get the answers I require from them. They are good, but consumed too much by this new ‘science’ to speak plainly.”

“And what information was it you sought, my lord?” Though Lady Gwynneth knew very well what the Over-Duke had been asking after, she also knew he would get to it in his own time.

The Over-Duke shook his head and looked up at her with the closest thing to misery in his eyes that Gwynneth had ever seen, “They can do nothing for William. Their ‘science’ is not sufficient to save him.”

Gwynneth nodded slowly and took one of the seats before the Over-Duke, reaching across and resting her hand over his, “My lord, please, know that I sympathise with your plight. I have lost younglings of my own to sickness and I do not wish that pain upon you,” she squeezed his hand gently and sat back, “May I suggest we despatch a hawk rider to the Imperial City or to Deepwater Bay? Perhaps one of the magickers there can succeed where the physickers have not?”

The Over-Duke smiled slightly at his aide and nodded once, “Often, Lady Gwynneth, I wonder if you are not gifted with magery, so well do you anticipate my will. I had asked you here to have you do just that.”

Gwynneth smiled in appreciation, her cheeks colouring slightly at the praise, “I assure you, my lord, that I simply know you very, very well,” she rose and gave him a short bow, “As it happens, there is a man who has arrived just this past evening and wishes audience with you. I have put him off for now and claimed you to be indisposed, shall I send him away or make the necessary arrangements?”

“Who is he?”

“He claims he is a healer from the highlands. He says he was passing on his way to the Warring States and heard of William’s illness and wishes to lend his services. He calls himself Ysbryd Gleddyf. I’ve already set the scholars to translating the name from the old tongue to Imperial; though even to my ears it sounds obscure.”

The Over-Duke frowned slightly in thought, finally nodding, “Arrange an audience. Though it is likely his name carries the weight that all highlander names do, he may simply be claiming to be from there and it means nothing. I’m afraid William hasn’t got enough time to wait for the meaning to be puzzled out. I will meet with him in the East Garden.”

“As you wish, my lord,” Gwynneth bowed once more and closed the doors of the Over-Duke’s office behind her. Over-Duke Colm O’Bronwen of Caer Avondrev rubbed his hands over his face and sighed heavily. He hadn’t realised how desperate he was to see his son returned to health. A week ago he never would have considered even meeting with a stranger who claimed to be a healer without first thoroughly checking to ensure he was who he said. Now, as his son and heir-apparent lay dying in his sickbed he was afraid of the lengths to which he would go to have his son returned to him.

Not for the first time, the Over-Duke silently wished he could find it in himself to take another woman to wife, if for no other reason than the situation that currently faced him. If William perished, so, too, would the last of his family line and while he knew the world would get by just fine without the line of O’Bronwen in it, he had dearly hoped to one day become a grandfather. The Over-Duke shook his head sadly; there was nothing to be gained from such thinking. His son would not die. He would do whatever it took to ensure William lived, no matter the cost.

Intermission: Friday 5(00): Letters from the Front

2009-12-19T00:39:00.004-06:00

The inimitable Anna of Too Many Annas made the suggestion last week of writing a letter from the front lines of the war against the Lich King. As I have a hard time passing these up, what follows is a letter from the shadow priest Iriandra Trellen to her sister Merridwen.

Dear Merri,

I hope this letter finds you safe and warm in the Exodar, Light knows we’ve precious little of both here in the frigid north. Highlord Fordring’s tournament seems to be wrapping up as the preparations for the march on Icecrown Citadel itself progress. The forces to make the assault have been chosen and I am proud to say that I am among them. I have worked hard these last weeks to prove my skill both as a lancer and as a priestess. Know that even if I fall in battle, I will have brought great honour to our family. Perhaps even enough to undo the shame I brought when I chose the path of the shadow over the Light. At least you understood why I had to choose, even if mother and father did not.

We thought Azeroth cold when we first came here, but I had no idea what cold was until I first set hoof onto Northrend. If I ever leave this Light-forsaken land, I fear I will never be warm again! My comrades in Polaris Company often tease me because of the way I look with the thick furs I layer underneath my robes to keep warm. Sometimes I wish I had been chosen for the path of the vindicator, like Morrigandra was, if only so I would have that thick metal armour to stop the wind! Although, Jynx, our commander, tells me his armour is much colder than my robes are.

I’m told our unit will be part of the initial attack on the citadel and then will be rotated out with other units that are still at full strength for the first push into the citadel proper. I can’t say that I am happy about that. Dear sister, after all I have seen in this frozen wasteland, I am ashamed to admit that my heart hungers for battle and I am eager to fight and kill the Lich King and all his followers until their black blood flows from my claws. You would not believe the horrors this Arthas has visited upon his own people and upon all the people of this world. The horrors of the Wrathgate, which I have told you about before, are but a small example of his disdain for the Light and all life. I have faith in the Light that we will be triumphant, that Highlord Fordring will lead the brave souls of the Argent Crusade, Silver Covenant, the Horde, Alliance and even the death knights of the Ebon Blade to victory. I just wish I could be there to finally end Arthas’ filth once and for all.

The clarion for assembly was just sounded. I go now to battle, dear sister, pray for me and us all. Should I survive the next few days, I will write again.

In the name of the Light,
Iri

Intermission: Extended Silence Edition

2009-11-11T12:17:00.003-06:00

Oh, hey, didn't see you there. Because if anyone is still there, it's likely a miracle. I noticed it has been a very long time since the last chapter went up and I thought it might be nice to let all two of you know that I haven't forgotten about this here blog and the story. I am still working on it, but let's just say that life has intruded a little bit in the past couple of months. I can't say for sure when the next chapter will be ready, but I can assure you that it is in the works.

TL;DR: I suck. I'm still writing. It'll still be a while before the next post is ready.

Part the Sixteenth: Run Like Hell (Slight Reprise)

2009-08-18T17:26:00.001-05:00

Brass and I got while the getting was good. The majority of the Defias were still sniffing around the farmhouse and the edge of the woods where I had given them the slip. They were apparently smart enough not to go running blindly into the trees and undergrowth where they thought an assassin might be lurking.

We were able to circle around the majority of the searchers, quickly heading for where I’d tied my horse. Things were starting to look like we might be able to make a clean getaway. Brass wasn’t exactly stealthy, but he did well enough to not attract attention, which was all he needed to do. I was just able to see the stand of saplings I’d picketed my horse in when things went pear-shaped.

Apparently, the Defias are sneakier than I had given them credit for. While one group of them acted as bush-beaters, moving forward in a line and making plenty of noise while doing so, another group was moving ahead of them, sneaking around through the brush trying to catch sight of a certain assassin fleeing from the search line. Crouched low in a particularly large salal berry bush and doing a very good job of being silent, though looking in the wrong direction, I didn’t notice the Defias until I’d just about tripped over him.

His eyes got big over the trademark red bandanna the Defias wore over their faces. I’m not sure which of us was more surprised, but he was able to shake it off first, making to scramble back and turning to yell at the same time. I wasn’t far behind him in reacting, hammering a two-inch punch into his solar plexus that took the wind from him long enough to strangle his warning in his throat. He had enough presence of mind to grab at my wrists to keep from hitting him again or going for a weapon. Further, he slammed his forehead into my nose, making me reel back and stars of pain flash and pop in front of my eyes.

The last thing I could let happen was for the Defias to call out a warning to the rest of his compatriots. Good as I am, a whole camp full of men is a bit beyond my abilities. That did spawn an idea, but first I had to deal with the scout I was wrestling with.

The thing about wrestling is that it was invented by orcs and to work best with their unique physiology. That is to say, it takes advantage of their superior size and strength. Scouts and assassins, on the other hand, tend to be less on the bulky and more on the leaner end of the morphologic spectrum. As any good wrestler will tell you, the idea is to use your superior size and strength to immobilize and incapacitate a smaller, faster opponent. If both wrestlers are about the same size and neither is clearly stronger than the other, it pretty much just turns in to two men writhing around on the ground holding on to each other.

As ever, all else being equal, skill always decides the day and, unfortunately for me, the Defias scout was better than I was. I had one arm bound up behind me and both legs locked down in a scissor hold, my one free arm could flail helplessly, but that was about it. I at least was able to keep my weight shifted in such a way that he was only able to draw short, shallow breaths and unable to call out to his friends.

Unlike me.

“Any time you wanna jump in here, Brass, feel free,” I grunted. I felt, more than saw, the scout’s head snap over, looking toward where I supposed Brass was.

“Wull, ye looked laik y’were ‘avin’ such fun. Ah didnae wan’te interrupt,” I could hear the smirk in his voice.

“No, no, by all means, interrupt,” I said from clenched teeth. No sooner had I spoken than the scout started struggling more, rolling about and trying to stretch me out even taller and doing a fair job of it. He got his hand wrapped up in my hair at the back of my head and seemed to be trying to wrench my head on all manner of directions it shouldn’t go. It was about then that I heard a decidedly solid crack and all the limbs holding me immobile very suddenly went slack.

I rolled to my feet and looked at Brass and the scout. The dwarf looked rather self-satisfied, the scout was unconscious and his jaw didn’t look like it was on right.

Brass shrugged with a smile and said, “When ever’thin’ in th’ whole o’ th’ world is bigger ‘n ye, ye learn how t’ kick real ‘ard.”

“I can see that. Glad you’re on my side.”

I could hear the beaters approaching quickly; we didn’t have a whole lot of time, certainly not enough to reach the copse of trees where my horse was picketed. I sketched out my plan to Brass as quickly as I could and pointed out where my horse was. He looked at me like I was insane, which I certainly had to be to even consider what I was about to do to be a good plan, but he went along with it, hunkering down in the thick brush near the bole of a tree. Unless they were using dogs, which it didn’t sound like they were, or someone literally tripped over him, the beaters should pass right by him without noticing.

That left my part of the plan, the crazy part. I stood and rolled my shoulders, looking toward the beaters and then in the direction they were heading.

“Good luck, lad,” Brass said quietly from his hiding spot.

“You owe me my body weight in beer when this is over,” I sighed back.

I could hear his grin, “Deal.”

I moved half a dozen yards away from where Brass was hiding and took a deep breath, “He’s here! He’s here! I found him! He’s over here!” I kept hollering at the top of my lungs, even as I took off in the opposite direction. Running through dense underbrush isn’t exactly easy, in fact, it’s damn near impossible, something I was counting on to slow the Defias down and help keep me ahead of them. I bulled through about twenty feet worth of bushes before finding a game trail, which made the going much easier. There was a lot of shouting and crashing coming from behind me and gaining fast. I just had to stay enough ahead of them that they never quite caught sight of me, at least until I go to more open ground, which, if memory served, I should reach any…moment…now!

I burst from the brush into an open space with a few scattered campfires and the dilapidated remains of several wagons and tents. Fifty yards to the right, the gaping maw of an abandoned mine loomed ominously, just as ramshackle as the remains of the wagons and lean-tos.

Oh, and a couple score worgen lazing around the remains of their most recent kills.

Dropping down a short incline from the line of brush into the worgen camp, I hit the ground at a dead sprint, scattering at least one pile of smoldering embers into the fur of the worgen rapidly waking up. I kept hollering and shouting to keep the Defias coming, just about reaching the safety of the brush on the other side of the camp right about the same time the Defias burst forth, stumbling and falling into a whole mess of worgen who were rapidly growing irate at the disturbance of their post-meal nap.

Now, if you’ve never seen a worgen, allow me to explain just why this was both a crazy and brilliant plan. Your basic worgen is essentially a really big wolf. Like, really big. Like seven to eight feet tall kind of big. So you have this huge bloody wolf that stands on its hind legs and is little more than muscle, fur, claws and fangs. To make matters worse, they’re pretty smart on top of being crazy strong. My experience with them puts them right about even with a slow human. So, yeah, big, smart, strong, terrifying. And the Defias were blundering right into a great bloody pack of them.

For my part, I was nearly across the clearing, less than half a dozen strides would see me back into the brush with the triumphant howling of the worgen and the screams of the dying Defias behind me. Just a few more yards and I would be home free.

When I was kid, maybe ten or eleven years old, two of my friends and I were exploring the rooftops of the tenements near Deadman’s Alley. Even back then, you could easily traverse most of the poorer districts in the city by way of rooftops as you could on the streets below. Sometimes more easily, depending on where you were. In this particular instance, my two friends had just crossed a rather dodgy-looking plank bridge from one building to another. The board had creaked and cracked ominously as my friends had crossed, so I was a little nervous about it. Still, I had to show that I was just as brave as they were, creaking and cracking be damned. I got a short run up on the board and made it across in three great strides. We were busy congratulating ourselves when we felt the first stings. Seems there was a wasp nest on the underside of the board. Everything would have been fine had I not crossed, my friends having disturbed the nest, but not so badly as to make the wasps aggressive. No, that had been me and my great galumphing across.

This was pretty much the core of my plan today as I raced across the worgen’s clearing before the abandoned mine. I would pass by so quickly as to be ignored, but the Defias, unaware of what they were getting led into, would catch the full brunt of the worgen’s wrath. As plans go, it wasn’t bad. It almost even worked.

I was just about to clear the last step up a short incline and into the brush, a big triumphant smile on my face. That smile quickly melted away to mounting horror as I felt the iron grip of a worgen paw wrap around my ankle and got to see the ground eagerly rise up to meet me. I rolled to my back and got a good, long look at the hungry malevolence in the pale yellow eyes set above a gore-streaked muzzle.

The worgen leaned back his head and howled in triumph, a spine-chilling sound that even at a distance could loosen a lesser man’s bowels. Hearing that howl up close and personal, I was glad I have had sufficient control of my water not to embarrass myself. When he was done howling, he leveled that unblinking stare on me once more and reared back with his free paw, four-inch long claws shining in the pale light of early morning.

A lot of people in my line of work generally wear a soft, flat-soled shoe or short boot, the kind of footwear that makes it easier to sneak about. The problem with that sort of boot is that it really doesn’t hold up very well when the shit starts flying. I’ve known more thieves and assassins who got caught because they slipped or fell victim to a well-placed sharp object. Personally, I swore off those little moccasin things the first time I had to pick caltrops out of my feet. It took a little while to get used to, and a bit longer to become good at sneaking around in, but a good pair of riding boots with a solid heel are just about the best thing short of actual sabatons when you need to move quickly or fight your way out.

They also make a particularly sickening crunch when you ram the heel into the snout of an angry worgen with all your strength. I had just enough time to scramble to my feet and take two steps into the brush before I heard the sound I will forever remember as The Furious Roar. This was a sound so full of raw, molten fury, of pure, unbridled hatred and of hot, bloody anguish that there was only one reason any living thing would be making it. I risked a glance backward as I darted through the thickening undergrowth to see the biggest, blackest worgen I’d ever seen cradling the whimpering form of the worgen whose muzzle I’d shattered. In that split second, his baleful, glowing green eyes met mine and he extended a single gore-slick claw at me. I knew that look. All too well.

The momentary tableau shattered as soon as I realized he wasn’t just pointing at me, but aiming. I saw the fel energy gathering around his paw a moment before he unleashed it at me. Undergrowth withered and died as the shadowbolt streaked toward me and I swear I heard the tree I dove behind to avoid it groan in pain as the bolt impacted, carving away a gaping, rotting hole in the trunk in seconds. I didn’t wait around for the second or third or however many more shadowbolts the worgen was going to cast at me. I could hear the telltale moan of the shadowbolts streaking around me and I dove and rolled through the brush and brambles.

I was lucky in one respect. If that worgen had ever stopped casting long enough to actually give chase through the woods, I would have been well and proper fucked. There’s no way in all the Twisting Nether I would have been able to outrun a worgen in the woods, doubly so when I finally broke from the brush onto the path to the Tranquil Gardens Cemetery. Fortunately, it seemed that big black worgen wasn’t interested in giving chase today. Oh, joy.

Once I hit the path it didn’t take me long to get to the main road and, shortly after, to Darkshire. An agitated Watchman stopped me at the erstwhile gate to the village. Standing there, my clothes muddy, torn and covered in sticks and twigs and leaves and Light knows whatever else I’d picked up from the woods, and looking haggard and exhausted, I’m sure I presented the very image of respectability and decorum.

“Don’t suppose you know what’s got the worgen so riled up this morning?” the guard slowly drawled. Judging by his laconic speech and general lackadaisical attitude, I suspected he was a conscript from deep Westfall.

I glanced over my shoulder with the feigned attitude of mild surprise and fear, the latter not being hard to fake, “They’ve been like that for some time, no idea what’s set them off.”

The guard rolled his eyes and waved me through, “Uh huh. For your sake, let’s just hope they keep to their part of the woods and don’t come over here thinking that Darkshire is full of tasty people.”

Intermission: Casting Call!

2009-07-28T17:19:00.007-05:00

Jessika the Tank from over at Pretty in Plate had this excellent idea for a post, so I'm going to take a moment from your regularly scheduled program (crap, when was my last real post again? I better get on that...) and run with this here idea, 'cause it's a good one.

Yes, Jess, I am shamelessly stealing your meme. Let's see how far this goes from my little corner of teh intarwebtubes...

The idea is thus: we know that the great Sam Raimi is going to be directing the fabled World of Warcraft movie. So, let's imagine, if we will, that the great Lord Raimi has decided that your characters would be perfect to tell the story he wants to tell. Even better, Mr. Raimi has given you first pass at casting your characters. The question, then, is simple: Who do you get to play your character(s) in the WoW movie?

Being that I'm starting the meme, my choices are...

Oded Fehr as Khol Drake. Y0u may remember him best as the mysterious desert rider from the trio of Mummy films, but he was also the asskicker Carlos Olivera in the second and third Resident Evil movies. He's the exact right height, he's got the right build and has already proven he can do the action. Give him plenty of dry, sarcastic one-liners and we're set.

Rutger Hauer as Mordock Steelfist. Mordock is, above all, an old soldier. Despite the fact that he's really only in his late 30's, he looks and acts like he's a veteran of the First War. If there's anyone who exemplifies the old veteran of innumerable battles, Rutger Hauer is that man.

Kate Nauta as Lotos Abstraction. At first glance, Lotos looks like most Night Elf women: tall, slender, athletic, rounded in all the right ways and all the right places. A closer look and you can see that she's actually hard muscle and sharp lines. Kinda like Kate Nauta, the crazy killer woman from Transporter 2.

That's my cast. So, a meme isn't much of a meme unless you tag other people to participate. Since Jessika started this, I can't well tag her. What I can do, though is tag a bunch of people who I think should have something interesting to say.

Edit (3DEC09): Anna went and made another casting call, so I couldn't help but participate. Since I wrote this post, though, I've been melting a lot of faces on my shadow priest, so now she needs to be cast as well. So without further ado...

Lucy Lawless as Iriandra Trellen. Tall, shapely and just a little on the dominatrix side, Iriandra is not the sort of priest you want to cross. Under normal circumstances, she's quite pleasant and amiable. Once her temper is up, though, faces start melting. I can't think of anyone who embodies this more than the lovely Ms. Lawless.

So, Ratshag, Ila, Anna, Keredria, Pike and Euripedes...consider yourselves tagged. Who would you cast as your characters in the WoW movie?

Intermission: More Teasing, Pleasing Included

2009-06-21T03:11:00.003-05:00

In the Days of Misspent Youth

The sun beat down on the field, baking the already hard-packed dust even further. A young man stood under the punishing sun, his leather hauberk and helmet only compounding the heat, sweat running freely down his face and back. He faced an older man who wore only a light leather vest and held his weapon with the practiced ease of many years of experience. The younger man swiped his gauntleted hand over his forehead in a vain attempt to mop away sweat and grit, instead only keeping the sweat from running into his eyes for a moment. The older man smirked to himself and lunged, forcing the younger man back several steps before he was able to bring his own weapon up to block.

Pressing his advantage, the older man feinted for the young man’s legs, reversing his stroke at the last second; deftly avoiding a clumsy parry to bring his weapon around in what should have been a killing blow. Fortunately for the younger man, the wooden practice sword only left a stinging welt, despite the thick leather armour he wore.

William picked himself out of the dust and proceeded to brush himself off, muttering quietly to himself.

“What’s that, lad? I didn’t quite hear you. Are you making excuses for your poor performance?” the weapons master said with a smirk. His iron-coloured hair and beard were near white in the sun of the Eastern Reaches and his face showed the colouration of a man who had spent many years under it, though his Elmordran accent marked him as being from the highlands of the Empire, far to the northwest.

“Of course not, goodsire, I’ve no desire for another drubbing,” William said, trying hard to keep the grumble from his voice. He picked up the wooden practice sword and saluted the weapons master, adding a short bow to acknowledge his loss.

“Good! That shows you can learn! Now, why did you lose?” the weapons master crossed the practice yard, tossing the cudgel onto a pile of a dozen more just like it and taking up the ladle from a keg of drinking water.

William thought for a moment before answering. Simply saying that the weapons master was better then him would only get him another long duel and a dozen more bruises to match the set he had just earned. It was an answer like that which had landed him before the weapons master’s waster to begin with. He thought about the fight, seeing every error he had made, each of which had been pointed out with a bruise where those errors had cost him.

“I was sloppy and complacent. I expected you to go easy on me, but you didn’t,” William hoped that answer would be sufficient to appease Master Cuhal.

“You’re right, lad, I didn’t and that you expected me to shows you’ve got far more to learn about fighting than strokes and stances,” Master Cuhal turned to address the rest of the young men standing in a rough circle around the practice yard, “That goes for all of you. Just because this is only training, doesn’t mean you can ever expect any quarter from your foes. Expect just as much as you would give, which is none. Is that understood?” Heads nodded eagerly, desperate to get out of the blazing furnace of the practice yard.

“Well, that’s about enough for today, then, off with you all,” he paused long enough for the bulk of the young men to start leaving, “Except you, William.”

William froze in mid-step, silently cursing his luck at having been singled out. He sighed and trudged back toward the weapons master.

“Yes, goodsire?”

Master Cuhal chuckled quietly, “You act as if someone just killed your new pup, lad. It’s nothing so bad as you might think,” he patted William on the shoulder and smiled, “You were sloppy today, lad, and that’s just not like you. You’re the best in the class; almost good enough for your first steel, yet the kind of mistakes you were making today were the sort of thing I expect from the greenest of boys. Is something wrong, lad?”

William only half-heard the weapons master’s words, fear suddenly running through him like ice-water. Something was indeed wrong, but William couldn’t speak of it. The fact that the weapons master had noticed made him wonder who else might have suspicions. Only his servant knew anything and he had been sworn to secrecy. Would Ælf have said anything? William could all but swear he would not have. They had made so sure to destroy or hide the evidence of his illness. The weapons master’s voice snapped him from his racing thoughts.

“William? Lad?”

William pushed a smile to his face, hoping his voice would be steady, “I-I’m fine, Master Cuhal. I think the heat is getting to me is all. Nothing to worry about.”

Master Cuhal didn’t look entirely convinced, but accepted the young man’s words at face value, “I’ll see if your father will go back to Caer Avondrev a little early. This heat is abominable and the roads should be sound enough by now.”

“Oh, no! That won’t be necessary, Master Cuhal, I just need a bit of rest, is all. There’s no need to mention anything to Father, really.” The mention of William’s father brought cold sweat to his brow once more. The last person that needed to know anything was his father. If he found out William was sick... Well, he just didn’t need to find out.

Master Cuhal nodded and patted William on the back, guiding him to the shade and the keg of water, “Well, get something to drink and try to stay out of the sun for a while, then, hey? I’ll go let your tutors know you’ve a touch of heat sickness and to excuse you from your lessons today. Get some rest, hm?”

William nodded and gave him a grateful smile, “Yes, Master Cuhal, thank you.” The weapons master smiled in return and walked from the yard, leaving William standing alone. He was able to wait just long enough for Master Cuhal to vanish from sight before he was brought to his knees by his guts suddenly twisting and causing him to retch and vomit violently. He felt like spears were being driven into his stomach with each retch, expelling less and less each time, but still the spasms wracked him. Even through the pain-filled haze, his only thought was, Please don’t let there be too much blood, please don’t let anyone find out I’m sick.

Intermission: In Which the Chronicler is a Filthy Cocktease

2009-05-28T13:59:00.002-05:00

By Demons be Driven

The bricks of the chimney oozed just enough heat to warm the small room comfortably, yet to the figure huddling on the bed, the room was stiflingly hot. Sweat damped his shirt and ran freely down his face, mixing with the tears rolling slowly down his unshaven cheeks. His dark hair hung in limp clumps, fat drops of sweat running down the clumps to drip onto his already-stained shirt. A single candle burned on the small table in the corner, the stubs of three more just like it scattered around the battered holder. The man stared blankly into the flame, grey eyes rendered amber in the weak, flickering light of the candle. Only he could say what he saw there, but judging by the fear in his eyes, it wasn’t anything pleasant. Silently, his lips moved, forming words that only he could hear, each word seeming torn from him as if dragged free by a team of horses.

A faint, sibilant hiss suddenly drew his eyes to the true object of his fear, lying across the foot of the straw mat that made up bed, flashing and glinting in the light of the candle. His arms peeled away from hugging his knees and he tried to push himself back, further away from the thing, but his back was already to the wall and his limbs lacked the strength to move him more than a few inches before they gave out.

“You ssee? You ssee what happenss when you neglect me?” the voice whispered, quiet as silk drawing over flesh. The man pushed himself from the bed, tumbling to the floor with a thud, fresh bruises already beginning to form under his pale flesh.

“You are weak. I am sstrong. Sstrong for you, William Lynch.”

The man grunted with the strain of levering himself upright and heaving himself into the corner, as far from the thing on the bed as possible.

“You need my sstrength, William Lynch. You will die without it. Sslowly, wassting in thiss sstinking inn. Thiss iss not your fate.”

William’s lips moved in time with the words, the hiss coming from his own throat, through his ears heard it differently. To him, they came from what he knew was the true source of the words. On the bed, the swept-hilted rapier lay unmoving; its hilt burnished silver and graceful curves. Only William could see the truth of it, knew the truth of it. Of the monstrous thing that lived inside of it.

Inside of him.

“Yess, William Lynch, sstop thesse regretss and sself pity. You can be sstronger than thiss. Take me up. Let my sstrength be yourss again! You can be the sstrongesst of them all!”

His eyes fell closed, as heavily as if they had been made of lead. He squeezed them shut, refusing to look at that cursed thing. His hands came to his ears, refusing to listen to the honeyed words, trying to block them out. They came still, creeping into his mind without stopping first at his ears.

“You need me, William Lynch. I need you. Take me up, feel my sstrength as yourss!”

Hot tears started fresh down his cheeks, sweat running in thick rivulets down his face and back. His entire body began to shudder, though from the effort of holding himself upright or resisting the urge to reach for the sword was impossible to tell. Slowly, his fingers untwined from his lank hair, shaking as if palsied, moving almost of their own volition. Gradually, his arm stretched, trembling like a leaf in a storm, to its full length, his palm upward.

Resting there, lightly as if it were nothing more than a dream, the rapier fitted to his hand more closely than if it were a glove of the finest kidskin. In that moment, the whole of his being changed.

He stood slowly, easily, the quaking in his limbs but a faint memory. A slow smile spread across his lips, full of stated desire and dark intentions. The most striking change, however, was the faint bluish tint shining in his pale grey eyes. He lifted the sword to his lips, smiling more and gently kissed the naked blade.

“My strength,” he whispered and this time his voice was wholly his own.

Part the Fifteenth: Skin of My Teeth

2009-04-22T16:05:00.004-05:00

Spend enough time in the business of killing people and sooner or later you’re going to end up on the receiving end rather than the giving. This, of course, gives you the opportunity to either prove your skills or vanish into the annals of dead assassins. The first few times this happens it can be a little disconcerting, especially if it happens when you’re still rather new to the game. After a while, you get used to people wanting and trying to kill you. What you never get used to is the times when they almost succeed. These are usually the times that end up keeping you up nights with a bottle of dwarven whisky to keep you company. This episode with the warlock was definitely shaping up to be one of those times.

I’m not a big fan of pain. I try to avoid it whenever possible, though that doesn’t mean I can’t take a few licks when I need to. There were times during the war I hurt so badly I would have preferred the sweet release of death. Whatever curse it was that the warlock had used on me, it was an order of magnitude worse than all of those times combined. Just the act of drawing breath was almost too much to bear and the hammering of my heart in my chest felt like it was trying to punch its way out of my ribcage one beat at a time.

The night elves have this trick they use during times of extreme duress to block out all but the most necessary sensation. The druid who tried to teach it to me said she used it in place of sleep much of the time, as it was more efficient and restful. I never believed that, but I did recognize the value of being able to block out extraneous sensory input. For instance, now would have been a good time to start blocking.

I really wish I’d learned that trick better.

I was trying to draw down and find my inner focus when the warlock pushed me onto my back. My eyes were squeezed tightly shut, so I couldn’t see what he was doing, but the chanting didn’t bode well for me. The problem I’d always had finding that very specific mental state was in the trying. Moiralyn had always told me that I needed to stop trying and just let it happen, which never made any sense to me. The more I tried not to try, the more I ended up trying and, well, you get the idea. I was, at that moment, trying very hard not to try to find that non-state of mind I needed to block the truly exquisite agony I was in. Short version: I wasn’t doing very well.

The warlock’s chanting was becoming more strident, which could only mean my time was getting shorter. My old drill sergeant’s unforgettable catch phrase came floating unbidden from the depths of my memory. Sometimes, your best just isn’t good enough. Apparently, the mind tends to wander when it knows it’s about to die. Remembering my old drill sergeant brought Saya’s face front and center to my mind. Thinking about my time in the military always made me think of her, since that’s where we met. In the face of her easy smile and kind eyes, floating large in my memory, I knew I couldn’t let things end like this. She still hadn’t gotten her justice and I’d be damned if I was going to let some two-bit hack demon-fucker stop me from laying hands on the person responsible for her murder.

Suddenly, there was no more pain. Just like a snuffed candle, the fire that made me feel like I was being torn apart from the inside out was just…gone. I knew it wasn’t the night elf trick that had brought about this miracle, since I could very clearly feel the floor at my back and, more importantly, the pure cold fury that raced through my veins.

My eyes snapped open just in time to see the warlock’s dagger plunging toward my chest. Without even thinking, I caught his wrist in one hand and shattered his forearm with the other. His scream was immensely satisfying.

I was back on my feet in a moment and already bringing my booted heel around in a bone-crushing kick. At least one of the warlock’s ribs had to have snapped, probably more, judging by the yowling scream he let loose. He crumbled to the floor, trying to cradle and shield his broken arm and ribs at the same time. I kicked him to his back with a snarl and put my foot over his throat.

“You brought this on yourself,” I sneered, “You could have just given me the key and walked away, but no, you had to try and be the big bad warlock.”

He probably tried to reply, but all that came out was a kind of wet gurgle. That’s usually all the does come out when someone has a boot on your throat.

“You have this one chance to save your miserable hide. Give me the key to the dwarf’s shackles.”

I got an enthusiastic nod, though with my foot under his chin, it was hard to tell he was nodding. The warlock’s trembling good hand reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and drew forth the key. It clattered the floor, slipping from his hand. I could see clearly where it was, but I let him grope around for it for a few moments and offer it up to me once he was able to get it back into his fingers.

“Good. See how much easier that was?” I said, taking the key and slipping it into a hidden pocket in one of my bracers.

The pounding from downstairs came to an end with the sound of a door being splintered apart by something large and heavy. I had only a few seconds before I would be up to my eyeballs in Defias. I glanced down at the warlock and flashed the sort of savage grin I imagine most trolls reserve for their dinner. He knew what was coming and that there was nothing he could do about it. Even knowing that, he still grabbed at my ankle, ignoring the broken bones in his wrist.

The warlock’s choking and gagging on the crushed remains of his throat didn’t last long, maybe as long as it took me to toss the small table he’d been breakfasting at down the stairs. That would at least slow the Defias coming up down for a few precious seconds. I spent those seconds smashing out a window with a chair, which I tossed down the stairs as well. Even half-blocked, I was able to worm my way out and grab on to the eaves. I was just pulling my legs through when I pair of hands latched onto one of my boots. The owner of the hands earned the heel of my other boot in the ribs for his trouble and let go. From there it was simply a matter of hauling myself up to the roof. I stood up for about two seconds before whizzing crossbow bolts convinced me it was a much better idea to not make such a good target of myself and I hit the deck.

When you’re being chased and have a decision between going up or down, in most cases, it’s best to go down. Going down usually leads to a ground floor, which leads to more escape options. Obviously, that depends on being above ground to begin with, but you get my point. The problem with going up is that, eventually, you always run out of up. Case in point, I was on the roof of the farmhouse now and out of places to run. Worse, the Defias on the ground already knew I was up here and weren’t being shy about trying to find me with their crossbows. It wouldn’t be too long before someone inside got suicidal enough to try to follow me out the window and onto the roof.

I spotted the stables off to my left, as well as a dozen Defias ranged around loading and firing their crossbows at me. Aside from the Defias, it was only thirty or so yards between where I was and the dwarf I was trying to rescue. At least I didn’t have to worry about them killing him. If they hadn’t done it by now, they certainly weren’t going to do it in the immediate future.

Crossbow bolts continued to ricochet across the shingles around me as the Defias kept firing blindly, hoping to score a hit. Random chance would see me get hit before too much longer, something I didn’t really care to have happen. I belly crawled across the roof toward the edge that didn’t have crossbow bolts flying up from it. A quick peek showed me it was mostly clear below, despite being higher that I usually like jumping down from. With few other choices in the matter, I swung over the edge and dropped to the ground.

Even knowing how to fall and land from a height, it doesn’t hurt any less when you twist your ankle on landing. So much for running full tilt back to the stable. A curious Defias popped around the corner of the house, probably investigating the loud thump and grunt of my landing, and earned himself a throwing knife in the chest for his trouble. It was enough to convince him that pursuing his investigation was a poor idea. I moved the opposite direction from the wounded Defias, keeping low and in the shadows as best I could, which really is much more easily said than done when one has just twisted one’s ankle.

I made it to the tree line and the underbrush that came with it with no further incident. While I wasn’t safe, I at least could take a breather while the Defias searched the farm high and low for me. It would probably be a few minutes before they thought to start searching the surrounding forest. Most likely, whoever was now in charge was probably making assumptions as to who I was and why I had been there. These assumptions probably centered around the assassination of their former boss, the now swiftly-cooling warlock. Never mind the fact that had the warlock actually been the target of an actual assassination by an actual assassin, they probably still wouldn’t know the warlock was dead.

There were a lot of puzzled Defias wandering around the farmhouse with a bad case of the wheredidhegoes. Still, it wouldn’t be to long before someone saw my footprints leading away and into the woods. I stuck to the undergrowth and circled around to the stable again. Not unexpectedly, it was all but deserted. Just to be on the safe side, I put the stable between myself and the farmhouse, though. Getting in unnoticed was a simple matter, getting out with the dwarf was going to be another matter altogether.

“Ye sure raised a rum-bugger o’a ruckus oot theer,” Brass whispered once I’d climbed into the hay loft, “Ah hope thais is awl part o’yer plan.”

I sighed heavily, “Well, whether it is or not doesn’t matter much now, does it?”

The dwarf bowled me over with the most unexpected hug I’d ever received when I unlocked the shackle from his ankle. If I didn’t know dwarves so well, I’d swear there were actual tears in his eyes.

“Oh, Light praise ye an’ all yer kin, lad!” he said as he released me. I was grateful to be able to breathe again. I learned two very important lessons in that moment. One, a dwarf gives a hug with the same sort of enthusiasm they put into drinking, fighting and mining, which makes them a hazard to the average human. Two, never get within breathing distance of a dwarf that hasn’t seen a bath in more than a fortnight.

“So, what’s our plan fer getting’ oot o’ here?” the dwarf asked, testing the weight of a baling hook in his meaty fist. I didn’t envy the first man to be on the receiving end of that hook.

The men running around the farmhouse were starting to spread out in a very organized-looking search pattern. They would find us before long. Whether he had any fighting skill or not, I figured the dwarf had a few years of rage to work out, which would probably serve just as well at this point. Any running fight wasn’t going to be pretty.

I watched a pair of Defias moving toward the stables, “To be honest, I hadn’t quite gotten that far. This is all pretty on the fly at this point.”

Brass pointed to the two men coming this way, “Wull, Ah hope ye kin fly fast, we’re aboot t’ave coompany.”

Briefly, before I’d killed the warlock, I’d entertained the possibility that I might be able to sneak in and sneak back out with Brass and no one would be the wiser. So far, the body count was at four with another probable and the way things were shaping up, it was about to get a lot higher. As a rule, I prefer not have to kill people if I can at all avoid it. However, I do recognize that it is sometimes unavoidable that a few people may have to die if I’m going to live. Sometimes, like now, in order to survive, you just have to make bodies start hitting the ground.

My swords came free of their scabbards with the usual hiss of steel. Resolved, and resigned, to what was about to come, I glanced to Brass and shook my head, “This may be a real short rescue. Keep up and watch my back.”

“Ye dun need t’ worry aboot me, lad,” he said with wicked grin and a twinkle in his eye, “But they do!”

That was about all we had time for because the men who had been coming this way had entered the stable. They paused at the door to let their eyes adjust to the gloom inside. The last they saw was a flash of steel and then the floor rushing up at them.

Intermission: Honest Scrap

2009-04-10T13:50:00.009-05:00

So, there's this meme going around call the Honest Scrap award. Maybe you've heard of it? No? Oh, well, in that case, I was gifted with said award by Ms. Jessika of Pretty in Plate, who has determined that I be worthy of such an honour because I comment on her blog, which does have a fair amount of brilliance to it. So there's some rules for this here award and they are thus:

When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

Right, so there's the rules out of the way. Rule one is done above (ha! I'm not lazy, I'm efficient!) and rule two will be...well...I can't think of anyone who hasn't been tagged already, soooooo, yeah... Rule three, well...here goes...

Ten Things You May or May Not Want to Know About the Guy Who Writes This Blog (every two months or so)...

Despite my good intentions, I've only finished one story in a length acceptable enough to be called a novella. Sadly, said story was finished when I was approximately 15 and it bears all the hallmarks of being written by a 15-year-old geek. Never shall it see the light of day. Ever.
I did a tour with Uncle Sam's Aviatin' Fools when I was a younger man. I loved my job, but didn't care so much for being in the military (although I wouldn't trade the experience for anything and believe that every snot-nosed 18-year old punk who comes out of high school should be conscripted into the service, but that's another rant entirely.) I'd love if I could still do my job as a civilian, but, sadly, there isn't much call for weapons system maintainers outside of the Air Force.
My friends love to make much ado about my inability to cook anything, mostly due to the fact that I have a bachelor's habit of creating atrocities in the kitchen which should not be visited upon the mortal palate. In point of fact, if given a proper set of instructions, it's quite possible for me to cook quite well. I'm just a hazard to myself and others if left to my own devices.
Khol does not actually exist on an RP server. In point of fact, the character of Khol Drake and the character Khol that I play are two entirely different entities who simply share a name and a class. I suppose that might change if I were to move him to an RP server, but that's not likely to happen in the near future. Interestingly (maybe,) Khol is not based on myself, though he does share a few of my personality traits. Khol has more in common with Michael Westen, than myself.
I am a proud member of the Utiliclan. If not for the fact that the torturous hellhole I live in does tend to get a little on the cold side and tends to be excessively windy, I'd probably wear my Utilikilt all the damn time. Freedom is good, but showing the world what your momma gave ya isn't. It tends to get one's freedom curtailed.
I'm often said to be honest to a fault. I have a nasty habit of telling the truth even when it would be to my benefit to lie my ass off. I actually do this as a defense mechanism. I find it much more useful to use the truth as a weapon than any number of clever lies. It's usually much more painful that way, which feeds my inner sadist. Also, I'm kind of a bastard.
Related to number six is that I have a certain...inflexibility...when it comes to truth and honesty. I am, by nature, a very tolerant person. I will put up with just about anything for a very long time, except for people lying to me. I ended a decade-long friendship in a heartbeat because said (former) friend chose to lie to me. Yes, I realise some would say this makes me the dick, but they're my priciples and I will stick by them, come hell or high water.
Contrary to what the previous two points might indicate, I'm actually a pretty lighthearted and easy-going guy. I come from a long line of sarcastic smart-asses and I carry on the family tradition proudly. Perfect example: my grandfather passed away when I was still a young buck. Now, in a normal family, a relative's passing tends to be a somber affair with all the attendant wailing and gnashing of teeth. In my family, however, we do things a little differently. As my mother and aunt were making the funeral arrangements, they're cracking jokes left, right and center. The poor funeral director, much more accustomed to dealing with the wailing and gnashing of teeth, really has no idea how to handle this pair of jokers in his office. He's trying to remain respectful and somber and all, but, really, when my mom and aunt get going, they're bloody hilarious. They left the funeral director in tears of laughter. My grandfather wouldn't have had it any other way.
The fastest way to a man's heart is through his stomach. In the case of this man, a chicken vindaloo, saffron rice and naan is like a guided missile.
I detest the telephone and cellphones. I understand the need for these devices and I use them only grudgingly. Given my druthers, I'd communicate either via IM, email or face to face, but never over the phone. In a cruel twist of irony, I spend my working day chained to a phone.

Okay, so there's ten true things about me. It's really hard coming up with ten things to say about yourself. Or maybe that's just me, because I'm really not that interesting. Anyway, I'll put more story up soon and stop being a filthy cocktease with these intermissions.

Intermission: Tagged by the Seventh Son of a Sixth Screenshot?

2009-03-08T23:06:00.010-05:00

Man, there sure has been a lot of not-story posts going on here lately. What's up with that? Someone needs to smack that writer-guy over the head and tell him to get to work and quit slacking off with things like memes. Of course, when he gets tagged, there's nothing he can do but meme away and do what the meme tells him.

Today's memetag comes courtesy of Billy Wallace (i c wut u did thar) of Casual Tank, which is quite the enjoyable read. Check it out, won't you? Here we are tasked to display the sixth screenshot in our sixth folder (no, I didn't just descend into the royal 'we', nor am I emulating the inimitable BRK, I say we meaning those tagged by the meme, sheesh!)

Note to self: don't write posts after staying up for almost 36 hours trying to get your priest alt just one. More. Level. It doesn't go well. Although it goes give you the ability to shout "TONIGHT, WE DINE IN NORTHREND!" for no apparent reason.

Addendum to note to self: stream of consciousness writing never turns out well. Stop it.

Right, where was I? Oh, yeah, the meme.

So, since I only have one screenshot folder, I'm just posting every sixth screenshot and seeing what spews forth. So with no further ado...

Here we have the altar in C'Thun's chamber after a bunch of my guildies and I got really drunk and decided to go knock over some old instances. Achievements, you understand. I still have C'Thun's heart in my bag. It's gotta be starting to smell. Bonus points if you can pick me out of the crowd.

Hooray for the guild first kill of Thaddius on 25-man! This shitebird gave us no end of trouble for weeks. Note the nelf pimpette in the foreground. No, that's not me, I just wanted to draw your attention to her.

Here we have my (pre-Titan's Grope) fury warrior alt doing his impression of a Spartan. That's right, I was fury before fury was cool. Also, THIS! IS! SHATTRATH!

lolwut?

Okay, screw this, I just realised how many screenshots I have. Good christ, I fat finger that button a lot. I should faceroll less. So, in the tradition of the Daily Show, I leave you with this moment of zen, in which my hunter learns that Kara=srsbzns.

Karazhan is serious business.

Intermission: In Which the Chronicler Weighs in on a Matter of Great Import

2009-02-26T14:46:00.005-06:00

I'm glad Anna mentioned this, since I was thinking much the same thing upon reading Bearfoot's post. Go ahead and read them both. I'll wait.

I often find BF's attitude to be very common among Horde players, that it's the Aliiance that's evil and the Horde are the good guys. I strongly disagree with this position, not because I play Alliance, but because nothing is as simple as all that. That's actually the great thing that Blizzard has done with WoW, there are precious few instances of very clear-cut Good v. Evil scenarios in the game. The battles against Arthas are obviously one example (though the case could be made that even that is a grey area, I mean, all he wants to do is unify everyone under a single banner with a single goal and eliminate strife and war, how can that be bad?) as is the battles against Kil'Jaeden and, by extension, Sargeras and the rest of the Legion.

However, let's examine in more detail the evidence that BF uses to label the Alliance as Evil. Specifically, Varian Wrynn and his desire to once more go to war with the Horde. From the Horde perspective, yes, the desire to bring war against them would appear to be evil, however, to look at the other side of the equation, well, not so much.

Let's look at recent history, shall we? At the battle of the Wrathgate, the Horde and Alliance were working together. Everything was sunshine and flowers and happy clouds. Then, Grand Apothecary Putress stepped up and wiped out everyone, Horde and Alliance alike. In so doing, took down one of the Alliance's greatest heroes. In retribution, Varian Wrynn leads a raid on the Undercity to revenge on Putress for annihilating so many good men and women. After the raid, Thrall and Varian go at it while talking things through.

Now then, let's take a moment to examine the power structures in both of our factions. On the Horde side, Thrall is the Warchief. Every other leader in the Horde reports to him. To put it another way, Thrall is the president and Cairne, Sylvanas, Vol'jin and Lor'themar are the Joint Chiefs. They are capable of making their own decisions, but the ultimate responsibility for those actions are on Thrall. On the Alliance, we don't quite have the same power structure. Each racial leader is the president of their own race and no one answers to anyone else. Granted, the rest of the Alliance tends to follow Stormwind's lead, but there is nothing that says they have to.

So, back to the point. Putress, being Sylvanas' underling, for whom Thrall is ultimately responsible, was the one responsible for escalating the cold war between to the Alliance and Horde to hot status. Varian, understanding the power structure of the Horde and being a pyramid with Thrall at the top, calls Thrall out for not being able to control his underlings. Thrall doesn't exactly back down, either, instead goading Varian to bring it until Jaina steps in and teleports everyone out.

However, Varian isn't wanting to go to war because he wants things to be the way they were before the First War and before the orcs ever came to Azeroth, though Varian's upbringing during the Second War and the murder of his father and the fact that much of his early adult life was spent fighting against the orcs of Blackrock Mountain certainly figures into his opinion of orcs and the Horde and influences his desire for war. In Varian's experience, the only way to deal with orcs and the Horde is at the end of a blade and nothing in his life thus far has shown him any different. Varian blames Thrall and the Horde for allowing Putress to slaughter thousands of Alliance men and women while their backs were effectively turned.

With all that said, how, exactly, is it evil of Varian and the Alliance to seek justice and retribution on the Horde for a cowardly attack on his people?

Intermission: Friday 500

2009-01-23T19:56:00.004-06:00

Anna, over at Too Many Annas, offered something different for her usual Friday Five. Normally she proposes five questions for you to answer about your character(s). This week, it's the Friday 500, a challenge to write 500 words in relation to your character on a given topic. The topic of this first week is:

Someone is walking through a back alley in a Major City, and they are mugged. What happens to them? What happens to the mugger?

So, without further ado, I present to you, my gentle snowflakes, my entry for the Friday 500...

The vast expanse of the Stormwind docks were a far cry from the utilitarian structures of the same name Iriandra Trellen had seen at Auberdine and Azuremyst Isle. Ferocious lion statues glared balefully out to sea, almost daring one of Stormwind’s many enemies to try to attack by sea. If the statues were not enough, certainly the cannon and massive ballista were.

The young priestess knew she should pay more attention to where she was going, but there was just so much to see! Stormwind was so very different from the close halls of the Exodar or the wide open spaces of Darnassus. To Iriandra’s wondering eyes, the high stone walls of Stormwind reminded her very much of the strong, defiant spirit of the humans she had met in her travels so far.

Without realizing it, Iriandra found she had stopped walking, gawking up at one of the massive lion statues. Glancing around sheepishly, especially surrounded by the rapid pace of longshoremen and dockworkers around her, she started forward again only to draw up short lest she run over the gangly teen with a shock of white-blonde hair that very nearly popped up in front of her.

“Carry yer bags fer ya, miss?” he asked with a bright smile.

Iriandra smiled at the open eagerness in his face and voice and nodded, “Yes, thank you, child,” she pushed a dark lock of hair behind one of her curling horns and easily swung the satchel from her shoulder into his waiting hands. His smile faltered slightly and he stifled a grunt as the heavy satchel landed in his arms.

“I kin guide yer where yer goin’, too, miss,” the young man said, settling the priestess’ bag on his own shoulder.

“I seek the Cathedral of Light, do you know it?” she said with all due reverence.

“Like the back o’ me own ‘and. Follow me, priestess!” he replied and hurried off toward the Canal district, forcing Iriandra to lift the hem of her robes and nearly run to keep up.

After barely three turns, Iriandra was so thoroughly lost she would have required a map and a compass to find her way. Still, even new to the city and a little on the naïve side, she knew enough to draw up short when she saw her erstwhile guide bound into a dark alley. Too late, she realized she’d been had. Angry at herself for being so easily duped, she turned to try to find her way back, only to see the white-blonde youth and an older, darker man blocking her way.

“We’ve got yer bag, now givvus yer coin and we’ll let yer walk away, goat,” the dark man growled.

Fury flashed in Iriandra’s pale blue eyes as she spoke two words that sent both men to their knees, doubled over in pain. She plucked her satchel from where the younger man had dropped it and stepped over the writhing men.

“The next time you think to rob a priestess of the Light, you would do well to remember that the Light also casts a shadow,” she sneered as she walked away, her tail flicking back and forth angrily.

Part the Fourteenth: Bloodwork

2009-01-13T14:32:00.000-06:00

I made it to the stables without incident, as long as you consider nearly decapitating the guard and dragging his corpse behind the building as “without incident.” The horses inside whickered anxiously and pranced in their stalls; the smell of fresh blood was making them nervous. I was working on borrowed time now. Any second, one of the several corpses I’d left in my wake would be discovered, the alarm would go up and I’d be up to my eyeballs in Defias. If my luck held, I’d be out of here before then.

Every now and then, you have a moment where the only possible response is to stare blankly and say, “oh, shite.” I point this out because no sooner had I scaled the ladder into the hay loft than I was faced with just such a moment.

My head had just popped over the edge of the floor to see a ragged-looking dwarf, what little of him was visible behind the matted clumps of his grey beard. He looked almost as surprised to see me as I was to see that things were not exactly as I expected. I have to say, he recovered more quickly than I did.

“Ye’re no’ one o’ th’ Defias, lad, so if’n ye’d help meh git oot o’ here, Ah’d greatly ‘preciate it.”

I stared blankly for several seconds and then said, “Oh, shite.” There was a filthy pallet, a tin plate and not much else, save for the dwarf himself, in the hay loft. As for the dwarf, he wasn’t going anywhere due to the giant iron ball shackled to his ankle on a very short chain.

I got all the way up the ladder and moved for the lock on the shackle, already taking my lock picks from my belt, “Yeah, sure, just give me a minute to get this open.”

The dwarf moved around to block me from getting at the lock, “Ah wouldn’ advise ‘at, lad. If’n ‘twere ‘at simple Ah’d o’ freed mehself ‘afore noo. Th’ lock’s warded so it kin only be opened wit’ th’ key.”

I glared and put my picks away, “And where will I find this key?”

“Th’eadman ‘ere’s got it. Ye’ll wanna be careful, though. Tha’ bugger’s a demon-lover, sure.”

Great. A warlock. Here. In the middle of nowhere. It figured. I swear, if my inherent good-nature has gotten me nearly killed once, it’s gotten me nearly killed a hundred times. In this case, it didn’t matter if the dwarf was even Zoltan Brass or not, he was obviously a prisoner of the Defias, which meant he deserved to be set free. From a warlock. Note to self: never leave my gun behind again.

During the war, the SAS had gotten plenty of experience dealing with warlocks, both living and undead. We’d found that the easiest way to deal with a warlock was to have one guy hide with a gun and another bunch of guys to hide nearby. When the warlock was near the ambuscade, the gunman would fire, hopefully scoring a hit, which would usually throw the warlock off his game enough that the guys waiting in ambush would jump out and proceed to butcher the living, or unliving, crap out of the warlock until all that was left was a few twitching pieces.

Facing a warlock alone, your best plan was to run as fast as your legs could carry you until you joined up with a group of mates who had a gun.

“Anything else I should know?” I asked, more than a little peevishly. I was perfectly willing to rescue the guy, but facing down with a warlock wasn’t my idea of a good time, especially since I wasn’t getting paid.

“Watch oot fer ‘is wee imp. Tha’ li’l bastard’s twice as mean as ‘e is ugly.”

“And the good news just keeps on coming,” I grumbled, “All right, I’ll be back as soon as I can, just keep your head down.”

“Good luck,” I heard him say as I climbed back down the ladder. Honestly, I was amazed none of the bodies had been discovered yet. That spoke volumes about how long the Defias had been out here and how firmly entrenched they were. They had been here long enough that they were lax enough for occasional disappearances to not be investigated.

I drew one of my swords and moved to the door of the stables to examine my options. I needed to get to the main farmhouse, but to do so I would have to cover a good thirty yards of open ground. With the whole encampment slowly coming awake, that was low on my list of good ideas. The farmhouse itself was a two-story design commonly built by moderately successful farmers. All the common areas were on the ground floor and the bedrooms on the first floor. There was one entrance, which was guarded and walled off by barricades to further limit access and all the ground floor windows had been boarded up. The upper level windows had been boarded up only halfway, I imagine so they could be used to fire crossbows from. I might have been able to climb up and into one of the windows, but it would be slow and difficult. The boarding didn’t leave a whole lot of space to crawl in through, which really only left the front door as a viable entrance. Oh, boy.

Trying to look casual when you know that at any second crap is going to start flying at you from all directions is a practiced skill. I am proud to say that I have damn near refined it into an art form. Nothing draws attention faster than breaking into a dead run for no discernable reason. Even when you don’t belong somewhere and everyone knows you don’t belong there, sometimes, if you just stroll along looking for all the world like you couldn’t possibly belong anywhere else you confuse people for just long enough for you to get where you’re going and no one is the wiser. Sometimes, it actually works.

One of these days, I really hope it works for me.

I hadn’t taken two steps from the stable when three things happened at the same time. One, someone found one or more corpses and started shouting about it. Two, I was spotted by no less than four separate Defias footmen, who started shouting about it. Three, I started to run and started shouting about it. Everyone else was shouting, I saw no reason not to join in.

Breaking into a dead run, I crossed the distance from the stable to the house in a little more than a dozen strides. My long, half-crazy yell drew the attention of the guard at the door and he turned to see what was going on just in time to see me vault the barricade and launch myself feet-first at his chest. We both went down in a tangle of limbs, but, since I was ready, I was up first. I flicked my sword and opened his tunic from one hip to his opposite shoulder to convince him that following or putting up a fight wasn’t a good idea. The deep gash that opened up his chest probably also helped.

Two crossbow bolts whistled by me and a third thunked into the doorframe, just missing my shoulder. Time was wasting and I couldn’t count on the Defias being poor shots and me being lucky forever. It took three solid applications of boot to door to finally get the latch to give way. In those precious few seconds, another half dozen bolts had very firmly embedded themselves in the barricade and door.

As the door crashed in, I rolled forward, disappointing the Defias and his crossbow who’d been eagerly waiting for me to outline myself in the doorway for him. His bolt whizzed by over my head and out the door. I heard a yelp from outside and hoped someone else had been hit. I sprang forward from my crouch and buried my sword in his gut in the same movement. Kicking him away, I slammed the door shut and jammed a chair under the ruined latch. That should work to keep the bulk of the Defias off my back while I looked for this warlock.

I had just taken the third step on the stairs when another Defias decided to take a shot at me. He used the more traditional large axe, however, taking a chunk out of the wooden stair as I leapt forward to avoid his blow. Standing on the fourth step, I expected to have a significant advantage over the Defias on the floor. Instead, the near giant facing me was fairly staring me in the chest. I tried to plant the heel of my boot into his nose, but he managed to step back in time to avoid it. That at least gave me the room I needed to get off the stairs and square off on even footing. Normally, it’s good to have the high ground, but when that high ground is very narrow and limits your movement significantly, it’s better to have space to move around, even if it does put you almost a foot lower than your foe.

The saying about things being bigger falling harder is partially true; larger foes do tend to be heavier and thus fall harder. Of course, the reason they fall is usually because they came up against a smaller, sneakier and just plain meaner fighter. I hoped that would be the case here. The room we were fighting in didn’t leave the Defias much room to really make good use of his giant axe. His sheer size, coupled with the small size of the room meant he couldn’t really unleash the wide, powerful swings that would have probably split me cleanly in half, should one land. Still, the large chunks he was taking out of the floor, walls and furniture as I dodged around showed that even without his full strength behind it, one blow would be more than enough to take care of me.

I didn’t have too many options, but I knew what I wanted to do, provided an opening presented itself. Jumbo wasn’t looking too keen on giving me any opportunity to get close enough to put my deadly flashing blade to use, so I was going to have to make the opening myself. I leapt back just as the massive axe crashed down where I had so recently been standing. Back in the mud room, even smaller than the living room, it was time to make my move. Jumbo was winding up to take another swing when I did the last thing he expected.

I leapt at him.

Well, not exactly at him, but toward him. I kicked off the wall and used my free hand to use the Defias’ shoulder to swing around behind him. The precious seconds it took him to realize what I had just done were seconds he didn’t have. The tip of my sword easily cut through his trousers and the tendons at the back of his knees. He fell hard and screaming, though even that was cut short when I pulled his head back and opened his neck. He crashed to the floor and died quietly in the expanding pool of his own blood.

Grimacing, I turned back for the stairs. I still had more bloody work to do.

There was no doubt that the warlock upstairs knew something was going on. From the crashing of the door, to the fighting and screaming, there was no way he couldn’t know something was up. Further, I was all but certain I would be walking into a deathtrap at the top of the stairs. Unfortunately, if I wanted to know what the Twilight’s Hammer cult was up to and get more information on Atalanta, I needed to free the dwarf. To free the dwarf, I had to kill the warlock. So much easier said than done.

Everything I had learned about fighting warlocks during the Third War told me that the worst possible thing I could do would be to try to fight him on his home turf. If I had any other option, I would have been delighted to have taken it. Bad enough I didn’t have the necessary hardware, but to go waltzing in to where I was surely going to be expected was damn near as close to suicidal as I could think.

You can understand that suicide has never been very high on my list of things to do.

I crept as near to the top of the stairs as I had to in order to get a peek and what might be waiting for me. Surprisingly, no eldritch horror from the depths of the Twisting Nether waited to peel my face off and wear it as a mask. What was there was a sitting area of the sort that young couples could use to spend time together without being in private, yet not be bothered by the rest of the family. Sitting at the small table was a man who had to be the warlock, though he didn’t quite fit the image of warlocks that I carried in my head.

In the war, warlocks came in three flavours: orc, undead and cultist. The cultists tended to be human, but because of their chosen lifestyle also tended to be pale, malnourished things hiding in voluminous robes. Orc and undead warlocks tended to decorate themselves in the bones of their enemies, as well as being varying shades of green or grey, respectively. The man sitting at the table met none of these criteria.

He was probably my age, putting him somewhere around thirty or so, and wore his dark blonde hair in the shaggy style popular among the well-to-do of the young and wealthy of Stormwind. He had a well-trimmed mustache and beard, cut in the Booty Bay style that just outlined his jaw, probably in an attempt to look either more sinister or more mature. There was a roundness to his face that, without the beard, would make him look much younger than he was. He wore a stylish jacket, shirt, trousers and boots of varying shades of dark blue and white, though the style was of the sort that was popular in Stormwind high society a few years past. In all, he looked more the part of a down-on-his-luck noble than a half-crazed demon-lover. Maybe I could even convince him to be reasonable.

“You might as well show yourself,” he said loudly enough to be heard over the banging on the door down below while mopping up the last traces of yolk from his plate with the edge of his toast, “I know you’re lurking down there.” He didn’t sound at all asthmatic like most of the warlocks I’d encountered in the past. In fact, he sounded more like he could be shouting strident orders across the battlefield just as well as summoning up abominations from the deepest nether. He wore his Lordaeron accent like a badge of honour.

He was right in that there was no point in hiding. It’s not like I could have come from any other direction or make the noise downstairs suddenly cease. I stepped to the top of the stairs, my sword held loose and casually in my hand to appear to be less threatening to use it and more stating that yes, I do have a sword.

The warlock made a big show of wiping his mouth in his napkin and setting it aside before very obviously looking me up and down. With the copious helpings of attitude he was dishing out, he had either been a noble in Lordaeron or had desperately wanted to be one.

“So you’re the one responsible for all the shouting, then,” he sniffed dismissively and stood from the table, “You certainly don’t look like much, but you obviously have some measure to skill to have bested Sigurd.” He moved from behind the table and rested his hand on the latch to the door that lead further back into the living quarters, “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what this is all about before you die, hm?”

Finally able to get a word in edgewise, I said, “Actually, I was thinking that no one had to die, well, no one else, anyway,” I put on my most winning smile and spread my hand in a picture of innocence, though I suspect the sword in my right hand spoiled the effect somewhat, “I’m just here for the dwarf. Give me the key to his shackles and I’ll be on my way.”

“Ah, a rescue mission, then. Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Brass is property of the Defias now and I’d have to do an awful lot of explaining I’d rather not do if I were to give him up,” the warlock sighed heavily, almost as if it really did pain him that he couldn’t give up the key, “However, since you had the decency to speak before charging to your inevitable demise, I’ll give you this chance to escape. Provided you can get by the guards downstairs, of course, but I won’t kill you.”

Either he was that sure of his abilities or very unsure, it was hard to tell which. Of course, it really could be that he just fancied himself as that much of a gentleman. Whatever the case, as much as I didn’t want to have to fight a warlock, I needed to know what Brass did and I wasn’t going to get that without freeing him. Damned if I do…

I smiled, calm and easy once more and made half a turn toward the stairs, “Your offer is very tempting,” a pair of throwing knives were already leaving my left hand, “but I’ll have to pass this time!”

I was lunging after the knives, my other sword in my hand before I’d even taken a full step. The warlock, to his credit, first spoke an ugly, guttural word and then started swearing. The way my knives bounced off the sudden sickly green sheen covering his body, I’d have to guess he cast some sort of shield on himself. My sword was barely two handbreadths from landing when my legs just weren’t underneath me any longer and I was being introduced to the wall in a very forceful way.

I heard another guttural grunt from the warlock, followed by a voice like a tomb’s breath saying, “I obey.”

I didn’t have time to drag myself to my feet, though the same ice-cold hand that had gripped my leg a moment before now clasped around the back of my neck. That same icy grip cleared up the stars I was seeing rather quickly as well. I didn’t even bother to fight against the grip. I had a good idea what I was up against already, which was immediately confirmed when the voidwalker held me before the baleful glow of its golden eyes. Brass had warned me about the warlock’s imp, he could have mentioned the voidwalker, too.

“It livesss,” the demon groaned, turning to face the warlock and proffering me forward.

The problem with voidwalkers is that they’re almost impossible to fight in the traditional way. They’re pretty much nothing more than shadows and mist bound into a vaguely humanoid form and have the ability to make themselves solid or incorporeal at will. Magic is the best way to deal with them, or, failing that, a serious magical weapon. Plain old steel, like I carried, was about as useful as a toothpick against a dragon. There was a way to fight them without magical assistance, it was just very difficult.

The warlock chuckled and took a few moments to gloat, though he was tragically smart enough to stay well outside the reach of my sword, “I’ll give you credit, noob, you were almost fast enough. Fortunately, Juk’Thang here is just a bit faster. The Defias could certainly use a man of your talents; you could go far with us. Unlike your current predicament.”

I made a show of thinking about the offer, if for no other reason than to buy time. The voidwalker still held me like an oversize ragdoll in one fist, one of its binding bracers directly behind my head. Interestingly, the voidwalker had done nothing to incapacitate me in any way, simply holding me up by the scruff of my neck. Painful though that was, it wasn’t quite enough to immobilize me.

“You make a very convincing argument,” I said, just before grabbing hold of the bracer behind my head and using it to get enough leverage to kick both heels at the bracer’s mate on the demon’s other arm, “But I’m afraid I’m not available at the moment!” The voidwalker reacted in what I figured was its instinctive way, becoming significantly less corporeal in response to the attack. The bracer went flying, I, quite literally, slipped through its fingers and the demon’s cohesion seemed to loosen significantly. I gave a hard yank on the other bracer, pulling it free of the voidwalker’s form. The demon roared in triumph and quickly dissipated, fading away back to wherever it is that voidwalkers come from.

Feeling proud of my cunning, I rose to face the warlock, giving him my best smug face. He gave me two ugly grunts and a smug smirk of his own while I howled in agony and fell to the floor, twitching and writhing. I’ve since learned that the modern warlock isn’t very much like his cousins from the war. For one thing, they have a lot more tricks up their sleeves. Tricks like curses they can cast with a single demonic word. As a note, just in case you were wondering, they hurt a lot.

Through the haze of pain wrapping around me, I could see the warlock moving toward me with glacial slowness. I’m not sure if that was because of the pain or if he was actually moving that slowly. I’m pretty sure it was the pain, though I could be wrong. The warlock had a wickedly curved dagger in his hand as he approached and I was certain I knew what he planned to do with it. I was equally certain that I wasn’t going to like it one bit.

Watch This Space

2009-01-12T12:07:00.002-06:00

Hi.

I know, it's been a while, but you've been patient and I think you deserve this.

There will be something here...SOON.

We Interrupt This Broadcast...

2008-12-17T16:54:00.003-06:00

I know, I know...it's a filthy, dirty trick to make you think there's a new post here when there clearly isn't. However, I have been tagged by the inimitable Rhoelyn regarding a look back at my first postings and comments here...

Having only started this blog about nine months ago, mostly due to the fact that this story was burning a hole in my HEAD, it turns out that that first post wasn't all that long ago. Also, since there's very few posts that aren't the actual story (this being one of them), it kinda makes my blog a little different from most of the WoW-blogosphere. All that said, I haven't posted as often as I've wanted or should, as I'm sure several of the more frequent commenters here will agree.

I know I was going somewhere with this...

Oh, right...first comments...

So, I can't tell you how delighted I was to see that the first and second posts on my insignificant corner of the intarwebtubes were none other than Ratshag and Rhoelyn, two of the bloggers in the WoWosphere that I respect the most. This goes double since that first post was, shall we say, somewhat lacking in content.

So, now it's my turn to tag some people with this meme...

I choose, in a very random sort of way...

Euripedes of CriticalQQ, living proof that the Horde can be funny in more ways than looks...
Vonya of The Egotistical Priest, half the reason this blog even exists.
BRK of BigRedKitty, the first WoW blog I started reading and the sole man upon whom blame can be laid for getting me reading WoW blogs in the first place.
Megs of OutofMana, just because she rocks and her hair totally looks natural and not like extensions.
Batty of Warcraft & other Hooha, if anyone should be the head of the RPSA, it's her and the wonderful screenshots she takes.

P.S. I was going to tag Rhoelyn and Ratshag, but Rhoe tagged me and I suspect there are no tagbacks and Ratshag has already been tagged...

Part the Thirteenth: Duskwood by Morning

2008-10-03T11:15:00.002-05:00

True to his word, Edward did tell me what I wanted to know. Eventually. I had to remind him that his lifespan was now exponentially longer than it would be if I hadn’t brought him to Westbrook a couple of times and give up one of my healing potions, but he did talk. If he was that reluctant to talk to Shaw’s agents once they picked him up, he probably would have been better off with the Defias. At least they would just kill him.

Edward had given me the name of an exiled dwarfish stonemason by the name of Zoltan Brass. He was currently working with the Defias down in Duskwood near the old Yorgen farmstead. That was yet another tale of the Defias showing their true colours as nothing more than thugs and bandits. The original owner of the farm, Sven Yorgen, didn’t give the Defias the farm because he was a supporter. From what I’d heard, they’d located something they wanted on his land and killed Sven’s family and farmhands. The only reason Sven survived was because he’d been away on business at the time the Defias came down.

I don’t know if the Defias ever found what they were looking for, but they’ve held onto the farm all the same, and have been using it as a base of operations ever since. Back when I was still with SI:7 I’d been assigned to investigate scattered reports of bandit attacks originating from the area of the Yorgen Farm. Despite my findings, the fact that the Defias were still firmly entrenched spoke volumes about how much the nobles that controlled the army cared about the common man.

Night was rapidly approaching by the time I rode into Darkshire and while I knew the stories about the woods around the small town being cursed were little more than creative tales told by scared farmers, I wasn’t stupid enough to wander around at night alone. On my previous investigation of the area, I’d found evidence of a very large pack of worgen not far from the town, which would certainly account for a lot of the stories of disappearances and strange noises in the night. I’ve fought a worgen before and it’s not something I care to repeat if I can avoid it.

I set out in the morning a few hours before dawn broke. At that unholy hour, I reasoned I’d be relatively safe from the worgen pack as they tend to be more nocturnal hunters and even a few hours before dawn should see them retreating to the safety of their dens, plus they seldom strayed too close to the road. Worgen were cunning hunters and the pack here was smart enough to avoid doing things like snatching people from the roads. Doing so would quickly bring the wrath of the Night Watch militia down on them and even the legendary ferocity of the worgen wouldn’t be a match to the fury of the watchmen.

I approached the Yorgen farmstead by the road from the east. While the Defias squatting there might take notice of me, I counted on them not being dumb enough to attack every traveler on the road. Much like the worgen, doing so would bring the Night Watch down on them faster than they could scream a warning. I kept the hood of my cloak up and rode slowly, just another weary traveler trying to pass without incident. Of course, safe in the deep shadows of my cloak’s hood, I could busily scan for any sentries and guards and maybe get a rough count of numbers.

The thing about holding a large, open position is that unless you’ve got a truly staggering amount of manpower, it’s virtually impossible to seal up with any amount of certainty that no one will get in. Most people will stay away anyway, just to avoid trouble. The rest will stay way if the people holding that area are a group of thugs and bandits with a nasty reputation. Some people, though, say a thief looking for information from someone in that large, open position, realize that there is always a way in and they are going to find it.

There weren’t many sentries, maybe a dozen or so that I saw, hunkered down in amongst the undergrowth along the fence line. I’m sure they thought there were being sneaky, but they obviously hadn’t been contested in a long time, so they were lax and barely paid me any attention as I rode past. I made the turn south onto the road that eventually leads into Stranglethorn Vale, though I had no intention of riding that far. As soon as I was out of sight of the last sentry, I dismounted and tied my horse to a nearby tree. One thing that I had noticed both approaching and passing the Yorgen farm was the hilly terrain that backed up against the farm. I like hills. Hills are easy to sneak through and hide amongst. They’re also really hard to patrol properly.

I made my way through the hills well away from the farm, where it was easier to travel more quickly without having to worry about surprising a sentry or patrol. Once I got about to where I thought the actual farm buildings were, I started moving closer. I wasn’t too far off the mark, maybe a couple hundred yards at the most.

The dreary forest was starting to grow slightly lighter; morning must have been well under way by that point. I’d been here before but at that time I hadn’t known just how similar Duskwood was to the Ghostlands. The land and trees weren’t infected by the Scourge, but something dark had twisted the forest here. Nothing was as it should have been, despite the fact that the trees, vegetation and animals were all healthy, after a fashion. It was like there was a perpetual gloom in and around the forest that kept the entire area in a state of twilight during the day and darker than the furthest reaches of the Twisting Nether at night. Most people preferred to avoid the forest for just that reason. Truth be told, so did I, however, the darkness tended to be my ally when I was working, so I couldn’t complain overmuch.

I left the corpses of two sentries in my wake as I approached the farm complex. Evidence of the Defias digging in and fortifying the farm was much more evident here. All the windows had been boarded up, leaving only arrow slits for seeing out, not that they would have to worry about that too much. Barricades half as tall as a man had been set up around the doors, manned by at least one guard outside and probably another inside. The farm buildings were arranged in a rough semi-circle, which the Defias had completed with further barricades manned by over two dozen men. Whatever they were up to here, it was apparently very important that it be well-defended.

Crouching behind a dense bush, I was able to make a pretty good survey of the farm without being disturbed. Given the early hour, there was little activity, just the guards manning the barricades and doors, though I was fairly certain that would be changing soon as more people woke up. I wasn’t so much concerned about the Defias as I was about where I would find Zoltan Brass. Of course, there was also the question of why a stonemason was on a farm in what was effectively the back end of nowhere, but that was less important than which building he was in.

I figured the bunkhouse was as good a place as any to start. There was a good chance the bulk of the Defias were housed there, as that would be the most logical place. Of course, the inherent problem with that would be that the bulk of the Defias would be housed there and would probably be waking up soon. Just given the sheer number of men I’d seen around the farm as sentries and patrols, not to mention the men on the barricade, chances were pretty good the bunkhouse was full, one man leaving the bed as another crawled in. That also meant that the few sentries I had killed would probably be missed when the man they replaced in bed noticed they weren’t there. Yeah, I could have thought that through a little better.

I briefly thought about masquerading as one of the Defias, but tossed that idea due to the fact that everyone here would probably know each other pretty well and any new arrivals would have been very easy to pick out and I doubted anyone would buy my story about being the new guy who arrived in the middle of the night. I had to move, a small group of Defias were heading this way, probably the replacements for the guys I’d already taken out. I slipped from shadow to shadow, moving around to a better position. The three Defias stood around talking very near to the bush I had just vacated.

Brilliant plans, when they strike, should be seized upon, examined and then enacted, usually in that order. Fail to seize the plan and the opportunity may pass. Fail to examine the plan and you’re likely to miss any critical flaws. Obviously, failing to enact the plan is just plain failure. I managed two out of the three. I figure it’s pretty obvious which step got left out of mine.

Getting the drop on the three Defias wasn’t hard; they weren’t exactly looking for a man coming out of the shadows with knives for hands. Okay, so my hands weren’t knives, but it sounded good. One of my throwing knives found the throat of the man on the right, at this range it was almost impossible to miss. Less than a second later, I’d buried a dagger near to the hilt into the chest of the man on the left. Stunned by the sudden attack, the third stood there gaping long enough for me to get around behind him with my arm around his neck, dragging him off into the gloom of the forest.

“Zoltan Brass, where?” I growled.

The Defias struggled against me, trying to get free of the arm wrapped tightly around his neck. He calmed remarkably once he felt the dagger poking into his crotch. Of course, he still wasn’t answering.

“There’s plenty more where you came from, jackoff, so if you wanna keep breathing, start talking.”

Apparently, that was finally enough encouragement for him to speak. Nothing like reminding someone of how expendable they are to motivate them.

“The stables! The dwarf is in the hay loft in the stables!” That was an added bonus; he knew exactly who I was talking about. That meant my real target was still here.

I threw the guard to the ground hard enough he wouldn’t be able to recover quickly or easily. I snarled down at him, “Unless you plan on getting killed, you better run as far and fast as you can. And don’t even think about raising an alarm.”

He got the message, scrambling away on his hands and feet until he could finally get to his feet and run away. I pulled the other two bodies back around a tree, where they wouldn’t be easily seen. I got my knives put back where they belonged and drew my swords. Sneaking into the stable wouldn’t be easy, but at least it wasn’t the bunkhouse where I’d have to cut a swathe through the Defias to get to the dwarf. Despite that, there was still bloody work to be done.

Part the Twelfth: Uncomfortable Compromises

2008-08-19T09:55:00.003-05:00

I hadn’t expected to get any answers from my confrontation with Imaria and the fact that I had was a nice bonus. I knew there was something larger than a simple killing and revenge going on. All the information I’d uncovered while tracking down Imaria told me that and had started to form an ugly picture. There were still large pieces missing, though. Like who this Atalanta was and what her relation to Twilight’s Hammer was. Further, I was pretty sure her research into curing the blood elves magic addiction had to be a major part as well, if that was what she was actually doing. Nothing like dangling a little hope out there to get someone to work for you. Those were just the two questions added to the pile after I’d left the Ghostlands. I still had the vast sum of intel I’d gotten from both Turner and Shaw and was spending some quality time looking all of it over, as I was pretty sure I would find a good number of my answers there. In the couple of weeks since Saya’s funeral, I hadn’t figured out much.

Without even realizing it, I had slipped back into the job. I had known it was going to happen sooner or later when I decided to pick up my swords and armour again, but I had figured I would be able to recognize the warning signs and pull back before I got in too deep. Maybe I had seen them and intentionally ignored them. I felt more like I had a sense of purpose to my life than I had in months, maybe even years. That was perhaps the hardest reality that I had to face, though I wasn’t even remotely prepared to do so yet. For all that I didn’t like the person I was when I was on the job; I loved the work that went into planning and executing a job. That was part of why I was a thief, there was all of challenge with none of the killing. Problem was, and getting back into the job reminded me of this more sharply than I cared to admit, that just wasn’t true. Stealing a piece of art and killing a well-guarded noble are two very different tasks and the theft is just plain easier than the killing and it was always the difficulty of the job that appealed to me. If there was some way to be an assassin without having to be a mass-murdering, emotionless monster, I’d jump at it. One day I would have to find a way to both do the job and live with myself.

Today wasn’t that day. Tomorrow didn’t look good for it either.

The Defias Brotherhood had all but taken over the territory of Westfall years ago. Picture your average street gang moving out to the sticks and menacing a bunch of pig farmers and you’d have a pretty good idea of what the Defias were. There were rumours about connections to the exiled Stonemasons Guild, which were actually pretty credible given how hard, fast and deep the Stormwind nobility had given the masons who rebuilt Stormwind after the first war the shaft. The Stonemasons Guild had sought payment for their services, crazy, I know, and they ended up getting exiled for their trouble. The Defias tended to be remarkably well-informed for a gang of thugs extorting a bunch of farmers, though, which lent credence to the rumour of their connections. Also, any group that Matthias Shaw was interested in couldn’t be more than a simple band of thugs and brigands. My interest in them was due to their reputation for being very well-informed thugs and brigands.

“For some reason, I’m just not buying that you don’t know anything,” I kept my voice calm and rational; I find it has a greater impact that way. My fingers were already twisted up in the lank hair of the Defias lieutenant I’d found and I used that leverage to make sure he got a good view of his two bodyguards going about the business of quietly cooling in pools of their own blood.

“Really, Frank—can I call you Frank? You don’t even have to actually have any real information, Frank. Just point me toward someone who does and you get to stumble away from here...well, once your kneecaps heal, anyway.”

“M’name’s Edward,” the lieutenant slurred through his swollen, bleeding lips. I probably shouldn’t have punched him in the mouth so many times. He was having trouble speaking.

“Okay, Frank,” I persisted, “You gonna share or not?”

“M’a dead man, I tell ya ennyfin’,” Frank nee Edward slurred.

I leaned close to his ear to make sure he heard me very clearly, “How much better do you think your chances are if you don’t tell me anything?” I shook his head at the corpses to emphasize my point.

There are many ways to extract information from people. The most direct method is to beat them until they tell you what you want. This method works if it doesn’t much matter if what you get is the truth. People tend to start saying anything they can to make the pain stop when you beat on them too much. Torture is always popular with the nobility and other official types, as it lets them engage their sadistic tendencies, although it has the same liability as just beating people up. Anything you get is automatically suspect because people will say anything they have to to get the pain to stop once they’ve had enough. The most effective method of getting information is control. Once you control everything about your would-be informant’s existence, you can break them down systematically and make them give you anything you want and let them believe they are still resisting. This method is by far the most ruthless and cruel and also the one usually employed by SI:7 to get information from its prisoners. The downside is that it often takes a lot of time and requires a secure area where you can work. It doesn’t work very well if, for instance, you ambush a mid-level member of the Defias Brotherhood in his hideout and don’t have a secure area you can take him to.

Fortunately, in a situation such as that, there is another method available to you: give them a way out of certain death. Unless your soon-to-be informant is a full-blooded fanatic to the cause, giving them a very certain death either at your hands or the hands of their erstwhile comrades will start to make them think long and hard about things. If you then offer them a chance at life for helping you, chances are good they’ll jump at it. Add in a guarantee of quick and painful death if you find out they lied to you and you get a reasonable assurance you’re getting the truth. Pain makes people lie, death brings out the truth.

I let go of Edward’s hair and let him slump to the floor in a boneless heap. He struggled to a sitting position and glared up at me with all the fury of a limp noodle. I smirked back at him and let him think for a few seconds.

“Tell ya what, Frank, you give me what I want and I’ll even find a nice safe place for you to go to ground in so your soon-to-be former buddies can’t gank your ass.”

Edward looked up at me a hair’s breadth from pleadingly. I could see him mulling the offer over, that look of defeat was impossible to miss.

“Awrigh’, ah tell ya,” his shoulders slumped and he sagged in on himself, “Ah don’ know ‘bout nuffin’ in th’ city, but ah know who does. Ah tell yah, bu’ yuh gotta ge’ meh hid firs’.”

I rolled my eyes, but I had said I would get him in a safe place. A thief without honour is just a sneaky thug.

“Sure, I’ll get you hid. Why don’t you take a nap, first,” I didn’t give him a chance to respond and just clubbed him over the back of the neck. He fell into a heap at my feet and didn’t move again.

By the time Edward woke up again, I had him tied up and slung over the back of a horse. I knew where I was going to stash him, but it would take a couple hours to get there. The Westbrook Garrison in Elwynn Forest stood just over the tops of the trees to the east and was often used by SI:7 operatives as either a place to go to ground or to stash inconvenient prisoners. With Shaw’s enthusiastic approach to protecting the kingdom, people who were identified to be dangerous to Stormwind but not quite dangerous enough to require killing would often end up disappearing under unlikely, but believable, circumstances. Usually those who disappeared would make a first stop at the Westbrook Garrison before departing for parts unknown. I know this mostly because I’d dumped my share of prisoners there and never saw them again.

I dismounted as I turned the horse off the main road and onto the side road that led to the garrison, leading it the last leg more for the horse’s benefit than my prisoner’s. I waved to Deputy Rainer as I drew within sight of the garrison, purely just to show him that I came in peace. Having dealt with Rainer in the past, I knew he tended to be somewhat jumpy when it came to people approaching the garrison, alone or in groups. The poor bastard had been stationed here at least since the end of the war and a steady stream of gnoll attacks and Defias raids had taken their toll on his nerves. It didn’t help that he also often had to deal with adventurers passing through Elwynn Forest on their way to collect on the bounty on Defias heads. More than once, groups of Defias had tried to infiltrate the garrison to steal weapons and supplies by posing as adventurers.

I stopped a dozen yards from the garrison and I flashed him the hand signs taught to SI:7 agents when dropping off prisoners. Rainer visibly relaxed and beckoned me closer, also waving the archers on the parapets to stand down.

He indicated the unconscious Edward across the back of my horse with a jerk of his chin, “I wasn’t told we were going to have a guest today.”

I looked back at Edward and shrugged, giving Rainer my most assuring smile, “He’s an unscheduled guest. He’s requested amnesty of SI:7 in exchange for information.”

Rainer’s paranoia started acting up again, “Then why is he unconscious and why not take him to your headquarters?” His hand had already strayed toward his sword.

I spread my hands, palms up, keeping them well clear of my weapons, “I didn’t want him struggling and spooking the horse or to know where I was bringing him. Besides, the Defias have spies all over Stormwind City. Last thing I need is for them to get wind that one of their own has turned on them and kill him before we get anything useful out of him,” I kept my pleasant, reassuring, honest smile firmly in place. I could see Rainer was torn between believing me and ordering the archers to loose. Several very tense seconds passed as I waited.

Rainer finally moved his hand from the hilt of his sword, “You’re right, those bastards have got spies everywhere. Except here. I make damn sure of that,” he waved me inside, “just report to the captain once you’ve got your prize secured.”

“Absolutely, Deputy, thanks,” I gave him my winning smile again and made to tie up the horse. I pulled Edward from the horse and over my shoulder, lugging him down to the dungeons. This had been one of the reasons I’d left SI:7 in the first place. While I was all for protecting the kingdom, Shaw’s methods of protecting it at all costs left a bad taste in my mouth. Anyone he deemed to be dangerous was at risk of disappearing, or worse, at any time. I was all but certain that I was on his list and just hadn’t crossed whatever line he deemed to be the cut off point between harmless thief and enemy of the state. If I stayed with the job and didn’t rejoin SI:7, I was all but certain I would have a target on my head in short order.

Most people had a theory as to the disappearance of King Varian and I was no exception. The main difference was that my theory involved Matthias Shaw. The man would do anything to protect the kingdom from a perceived threat, even if that meant removing the king himself. That was another reason I couldn’t stay with SI:7 and the Stormwind Assassins, I just wasn’t that fanatical about protecting the kingdom. I mean, sure, I wanted the kingdom to be safe and all. That’s what I was doing out here, after all, trying to find out what the Twilight's Hammer was up to out here so I could find out who this Atalanta was and why she would pay to have Saya killed. I had my limits, though. In Shaw’s world view, the ends justified the means. Me, I’m not so much for giving up freedom for security. Saya was proof that you couldn’t protect everyone, no matter how many precautions you take. There comes a point when the people who protect you are more frightening than what they are supposed to be protecting you from. I think that was part of the problem Saya had with me when I was still with SI:7. I’d believed in what Shaw was doing and how he was doing it. It took a while, but I eventually saw why it was wrong.

I sat down on a bench outside the cell I’d dumped Edward in and sighed heavily. I didn’t believe in Shaw’s methods and yet here I was using them. After I interrogated him, Edward would disappear and never be heard from again. There were half a hundred places I knew of which he could be taken to, probably twice that which I didn’t know about and none of which were the kind of place you walked away from with a clear conscience, at least not if you had a shred of humanity in you.

Look away, Saya, just look away.

Edward would still be sleeping for a while, yet. I’d fed him a handful of powdered dreamfoil when he’d started to wake from the blow to the head I’d given him. I’d told Deputy Rainer the truth outside, I hadn’t wanted him spooking the horse or knowing where I was taking him. If he’d known, there was no way I would have gotten anything out of him. I’d promised he would be safe from the Defias, not safe from the agents of Stormwind. I had time to kill and I had to report Edward to the garrison captain. From there, the clock would start ticking down just how long I would have alone with Edward. I figured two and half to three hours to Stormwind City by fast horse, another hour in the city and another two and half to three on the return, assuming someone in SI:7 didn’t deem a low-ranking Defias lieutenant worthy of having a mage teleport the messenger, or worse, the captain had someone on staff who could teleport. Worst case scenario, I had maybe an hour and half, best case, upwards of six. That was a bastard of a range; I’d have to work fast.

I went upstairs to report to the captain.

Part the Eleventh: Mortal Combat!

2008-07-24T00:12:00.003-05:00

The next time I hunt someone for revenge, I’m going to kill them first and toss off the one-liner afterward, it gives them less time to try a leg sweep. Imaria didn’t actually knock me down, but avoiding the sweep gave her enough time to roll out of range of my sword and get to her feet. I admit, I had been a little disappointed at how easily it seemed I would be able to kill her. Of course, now I had a real fight on my hands.

A dagger appeared in Imaria’s hand from somewhere. She stayed well back, easily out of reach of my sword, but doubly was I out of reach of her knife. She tried to circle around, drawing me into the usual sort of dance that goes with a swordfight, but I wasn’t about to move and give her a chance at getting out the door. As long as I held my ground she was trapped.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” she said quietly, her Thalassian accent hinting around her words. Though her face was set in a mask of calm determination, her luminous eyes were darting all around. I suspected she was looking for something specific.

“You killed my best friend,” I sneered, “You couldn’t have even had a reason. What in the Twisting Nether could possibly lead you to believe we don’t have to do this?” I advanced half a step, forcing her back the same. She wasn’t far from the back wall of the house, maybe another three steps. If I kept her talking and distracted while moving forward, she would find herself proper fucked in short order.

She barked a short laugh, “You have no idea what you’ve stumbled into, how could you possibly hope to understand?”

I made a show of drawing one of my throwing knives and testing its weight in my hand, “All I need to understand is that Sayessa is dead and you killed her. Anything beyond that isn’t my problem.” The knife left my hand in a flash, forcing her back another step as she moved to avoid it. The knife clattered against the wall and to the floor.

She laughed sharply again, her eyes glittering with malice, “It will be soon. No matter what happens here, it will be very much your problem soon.”

I was about to make another move toward her, forcing her back against the wall when she leapt back and kicked off the wall, launching herself at me. I had to drop my sword to catch her wrist and twist the dagger out of her hand before she could stick me, but we still went down in a tangle of arms and legs. I was never an expert at grappling like that but I could hold my own. Imaria wasn’t much better than I was, which was a refreshing change as we exchanged blows, rolling around on the floor of the little house, each trying to find a bit of purchase to get an advantage over the other. My armour padded most of her strikes but due to the close range I wasn’t able to bring much of my superior strength to bear.

I was actually surprised by how solid she was, for as much as she looked like a little wisp of nothing. Looking at her, I’d put her at six, maybe seven, stone, certainly not more than that. Fighting her, she was probably closer to nine or ten. Fortunately, I had a good five stone on her, which did make it easier to throw her around like a rag doll once I did finally get a good grip on her.

The little elf bitch was like some kind of freakish gnomish bouncing toy, though. No sooner had I tossed her off of me and into a wall then she was back up and coming at me. Steel flashed in her hands, giving me no time to wonder what orifice she had just pulled the pair of daggers from. She wasted no time going on the attack and I wasted none defending myself. I’m sure to an observer it would have looked like we were in some sort of bizarre slapfight, with the way she was attacking with her daggers in a reverse grip and the way I was forced to parry and block with an open palm.

That kind of close-quarters fighting requires a lot of concentration and the slightest lapse almost certainly leads to someone getting dead, which is usually how it ends. However, a sneaky and cunning fighter can, if he maintains a cool head, swing the fight drastically in his favour by the simple expedient of a solid kick to the crotch.

A lot of people think that getting kicked in the groin only hurts if you’re a male. The truth of the matter is that it hurts everyone, not just men. Women may not carry their family jewels between their legs, but they’re every bit as vulnerable as a man. Imaria reacted much like I expected her to, stumbling back and gasping, though I actually only bought enough time to get my own daggers out before she was back on me.

Our daggers flashed in the fading light coming in through the doorway. It would be full dark soon, which gave me very little time to finish this, as once full night fell, I would be at a significant disadvantage. Damn elves and their excellent night vision. Just to make things even more interesting, both my blades and Imaria’s bore the trademark oily sheen of poison. Of course, mine should, I’d put it on less than an hour ago, that Imaria kept a pair of poisoned daggers on her person was a pretty good indicator she had expected someone to be coming after her, so she wasn’t completely stupid. But then, it’s not too hard to figure that someone would come looking for revenge after you kill their best friend and then taunt them over it.

As a rule, I dislike knife-fighting. The close range leaves no margin for error, which is not how I like to operate. Under normal circumstances, I endlessly plan and lay out my jobs so there’s plenty of wiggle room if things go pear-shaped. When I have to fight, I fight the same way, which is why I prefer a sword to a dagger. Being able to keep your enemy at arm’s-length gives you plenty of room to maneuver and adjust to unexpected changes. I decided it was time to put this fight on less even footing and make it more to my taste.

I missed a parry and let one of Imaria’s daggers slip past my defense, earning a long cut just over the side of my ribs. Fortunately, the leather breastplate took most of sting out of it and I actually barely felt it, but it looked like it could be serious, especially when started holding my arm much closer to the “injury.” Hotheaded as she was, Imaria couldn’t wait to press the advantage and reversed her grip on her daggers, lunging forward to bury them both hilt-deep in my chest. The only problem with her plan was that I suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

I sidestepped the attack, spinning around and landing my heel squarely in the small of her back, sending her forward tripping over her own feet. Rather than press, I took the second I needed to recover my fallen sword from the floor and draw the other from my hip. Maybe the gloating smirk wasn’t necessary, but I couldn’t help it, the anger and sheer surprise on her face was priceless. Apparently, this human had some tricks she hadn’t counted on.

Imaria narrowed her luminous green eyes at me, “Killing me won’t bring your friend back,” she spat.

“No, it won’t,” I admitted somberly before letting a vicious grin split my lips, “But it’ll make me feel a whole lot better.”

She glanced toward the door, measuring the distance and weighing her chances at making it out, I figured. Well, at least until I spared a look toward the door as well. She was still planning on making a fight of it, it seemed. Her sword belt hung on a peg next to her cloak by the door.

I took a step forward, tilting my head toward her swords, “Two, three steps at most, Imaria,” I took another step, putting me closer to her swords than she was, “You think you can make that before I kill you?”

I never heard her reply or saw her move. All I got was a face full of flash and a sound much like the roaring of the Maelstrom. I have no idea where she was hiding that flashbomb, but she certainly made it count. Momentarily blind and deaf, I did the most sensible thing I could: put my back against the wall and flail my weapons blindly. Second had passed by the time my vision started returning, just in time to see her running headlong across the village to the southwest.

I wasted no time lighting after her. The last thing I needed was for her to make it to one of the military outposts around here. I wasn’t about to try my luck against half a hundred soldiers just to get to her. I was pretty sure that if I didn’t get her now, I wasn’t going to get another chance. If she had half a brain, she’d go to ground for the next thirty or forty years and just wait me out. That’s what I’d do, if I were an elf. Simply outliving your enemies is easiest form of victory there is.

Regardless of what you may have seen at fairs and carnivals, throwing sharp objects is neither easy nor accurate. For all that the knives, axes and whatever else the carnies can come up with look like the real thing, more often than not they are actually very specially made and balanced so they fly in a very specific way. It also takes a lot of practice, as any novice who picks up a dagger and tosses it, thinking they’re going to actually hit something with it. Most knives and daggers are pretty worthless when it comes to throwing as all the weight is in the handle, so that’s usually the part that hits, if you hit your target at all. That can work fairly well if you’re trying to give your target a nasty bruise, but not much more than that. Professionals who do this sort of thing for a living, like carnies and assassins, spend a lot of money on specially made knives with very heavy blades made specifically for throwing. Even then, it takes a lot of practice to even be able to hit your target, let alone actually make the knife stick in. Personally, I have a pole in my flat I try to spend an hour or so a day just practicing on. I mention all this to highlight just how difficult accurately throwing a knife really is under the best of circumstances and to justify the fact that I missed three times while running after Imaria.

The last knife had been the closest miss, though. I nicked her sleeve, though I doubt it actually drew blood. It did make her look behind her, though, which was the break I needed because it took her attention off of where she was running. Let this be a lesson to never take your eyes off the road when the road hasn’t been maintained in years. I was able to catch up while Imaria picked herself up from sprawling on the ground.

A quick glance around told me we were near the fork in the main road the split off to lead to Suncrown. That was good news for me, since that meant we were no where near an elven army outpost. Not so good for Imaria. The light was better here, though I was fairly certain I only had about a quarter of an hour or so before it got too dark for me to see. I was going to have to finish this quickly, if that was even possible at this point.

Imaria drew steel and set herself to fight. That was fine with me, that was the whole point of chasing her down anyway. I drew my own swords and took a ready position. Her stance was similar to the ready position that some of the night elves that had been in the SAS during the war used. If nothing else, the night elves had developed a very effective swordsmanship style in their thousands of years. I was no slouch in the human style of swordsmanship but the elvish style blew my skills away. I’d spent a lot of my free time in Kalimdor learning from them. I was no expert, but I could hold my own against one. If memory served, the specific stance she was using was called “Hidden Lotus” or some crap. I never bothered learning the names of the hundreds of stances and routines the night elf swordsmen had, it just seemed unnecessary. Mine was a derivative of the “Rampaging Dragon” stance, though I liked to refer to it just as my arse-whooping stance.

“Last chance to give up and die quietly,” I smirked.

“Not in this lifetime,” she sneered in return. Her feet shifted slightly. She was getting ready to attack.

“Poor choice of words.”

I didn’t give her a chance to move this time, lashing out with both swords from opposite directions. To her credit, Imaria was able to parry both blows, but only barely and it put her immediately on the defensive. I pressed the attack, going into my version of what the night elves called Steel Rain. For everything else that I’m not all that good at, only adequate at or just plain bad at, I am an excellent swordsman. There was a reason I wanted this confrontation to be a swordfight, if a fight it had to be.

Blow by blow, I drove Imaria back, keeping her working so hard on defense she didn’t have a chance to counter. She was good, though, I had to give her that. She may not have been able to attack back, but she was able to keep me from landing more than superficial strikes. She wouldn’t be able to keep up her defense forever, though. Her style was similar to the one the night elves called Dancing Blossom. It was a very high-energy style, involving a lot of turning, spinning and twisting. Most of the moves were very flamboyant, meant more to confuse the opponent as to where the next attack would be coming from. It was a very offensively oriented style, though, and had very few counter moves, since the idea was to go on the attack from the beginning and never let up. Tiring yourself out wasn’t usually an issue with the Dancing Blossom style, as fights seldom lasted long enough for it to become an issue, assuming you got an opportunity to attack in the first place. My own style was almost directly opposite, though it was also a primarily offensive style, it was centered around direct, hard-hitting attacks, ruthlessly pounding an opponent into submission in order to finish them off. There was little grace or artistry to it, no flashy moves meant to dazzle or confuse, just pure attack power. Much like Dancing Blossom, fights seldom lasted long enough for wearing yourself out to become an issue.

Naturally, it was becoming an issue.

The song of our blades rang out through the blighted forest. I was sure everyone within at least a league could hear the battle and would soon come running. Unfortunately, for all I could keep her on the defensive, I couldn’t get a serious blow through her defense. It was becoming all too apparent that we were entirely too evenly matched. So much for being the better swordsman, I guess.

Evenly matched or no, I still had to win and I was starting to get an idea as to how. Imaria was wholly focused on blocking and parrying my blows, which didn’t leave her much room to consider other things. I kept pushing her back, moving slowly to the left, turning her around so we were fighting across the road rather than along it. Once I had her in position, it was a simple matter of continuing the attack, driving her further on, hammering at her defenses with strike after strike. She was already starting to flag, though my arms weren’t exactly fresh either. It was a matter of endurance, now.

I spared a glance over her shoulder. We were almost there. I had to keep her attention focused for just a little bit longer.

“Why’d you kill her? She wasn’t a threat to anyone, least of all you,” I said from between clenched teeth. Surprise showed on her too-innocent face, breaking the look of grim concentration. That momentary distraction alone was almost enough for me to slip a thrust through her defense, but she was able to deflect it at the last moment, earning a shallow cut along her side for the effort.

“Oh, get over it already, hero,” she snarled, “I do what I’m paid to, just like you.” She double-skipped backward, trying to put a little extra distance between us. I let her.

“So who paid you?” I brought both swords down in a vicious arc that would have easily neck to navel if they landed. She blocked the only way she could, crossing her own blades and catching mine in the V. She earned a boot in her chest for the effort. Falling backward, she took advantage of her momentum and managed to turn her fall into a back handspring. I had to hurry forward to keep her attention focused on me. Our dance resumed without missing hardly a beat.

“Does it matter now? Your friend is dead, you need to get used to the idea. This obsession isn’t healthy.” Humour? I guess I wasn’t holding her attention enough. Either that or she realized how this was going to end. I almost had her exactly where I wanted her, just a little bit further and this dance would be done.

“How about this, you spill who paid you and I let you walk away.”

She actually seemed to think about it for a moment, “No, I don’t think so. You’re not as good as you think you are.” She only partially deflected my next strikes, just enough so she could strike back. My one sword knocked her left arm down and away, cutting a long, jagged wound, but she was simply able to avoid the right with a bit of a twist and a half spin, her right sword coming from nowhere. I deflected it for the most part, at least so it missed my chest, but it still sunk into my shoulder. I barely felt it go in, but I sure felt it come out. Still, that was all I needed to finish the game. Her little half spin allowed her to see where I had herded her.

I grabbed her from behind, one hand clamped around her throat and the other pinning her arms to her sides.

I leaned close to her ear so she would be certain to hear what I had to say, “How’s this for a deal, then? You get to choose whether you go quick and clean,” I squeezed a little on her throat for emphasis, “Or slow and painful.” I leaned in a little, forcing her to look over the edge of the small ridge and into the darkness of the Dead Scar. The balefully glowing eyes of the shuffling undead snapped up as if on cue, suddenly sensing the presence of the living so close above them.

Her eyes got big and wild, terror barely held in check in her voice, “A-Ata-Atalanta! Her name was Atalanta!” I felt, as well as heard the sob of fear.

“I need more than that, Imaria. Who is she?” I shoved a little, making her scramble to keep her footing.

“A mage! She’s trying to cure our magic addiction!” Imaria was just this side of shrieking hysterically. I hadn’t expected her to react quite so strongly to the threat of the Scourge down below, but I wasn’t about to complain.

“Where can I find her?” I was growling now. This made less and less sense, but I had no reason not to believe what she was telling me.

“Stormwind,” she sobbed, tears finally starting to stream down her face, “She’s working in Stormwind.” She sagged in my arms, defeated. I almost felt bad for her, despite the fact that she had killed Saya. Broken and terrified, she seemed suddenly very small and weak, little more than a child. I knew Saya wouldn’t want me to kill her, but I didn’t know what else to do. Whatever I was going to do, I needed to do it quickly. The undead in the Scar were shuffling around, hunting for the living presence they sensed. It wouldn’t take them long to find us.

I glanced toward the bobbing points of light that indicated where the Scourge were moving around and back to Imaria. I made my decision and made myself scarce.

Part the Tenth: A View to a Kill

2008-07-13T11:18:00.012-05:00

The Ghostlands were every bit as charming as the name implied. I’d gotten a later start than I had wanted that morning, taking a little extra time to pick up supplies, but the delay had cost me precious daylight once I finally reached the Ghostlands. The blood elves had formally withdrawn from the Alliance and had closed their borders to everyone except their own kind. That alone had made it challenging to get in, as the one pass in the eastern Plaguelands was heavily guarded and patrolled by Farstriders, the blood ranger corps. My only option had been to take a gryphon over the mountains and pray I could dodge any patrols that might be wandering through them. I was almost spotted once by a squad of rangers but I had been able to dive into a narrow defile before they spotted me and wait there until they moved on, much to the protests of my rented gryphon.

The difference between the Plaguelands and the Ghostlands was stark, to say the least. Where the Plaguelands looked, and smelled, much like a suppurating wound, the Ghostlands were more reminiscent of a bad case of gangrene. Whatever plague the Scourge had worked on the land here was either farther along than in the Plaguelands or just more severe. The once mighty and majestic trees that the forests of Quel’Thalas had been known for had been twisted into a shadow of their former glory, oozing a thick green discharge from openings that looked very much like festering wounds. What little underbrush that was not a twisted reflection of the plants that once had flourished under the protective canopy of the forest sprouted brown and half-dead. Even late in the afternoon with the sun still high, no warming light managed to penetrate the dense cover of the twisted trees. While there might have been a slight breath of wind closer to the coast, far inland where I was, not even a hint of a breeze stirred the dead leaves of the dying underbrush.

If the flora was bad, the fauna was worse, what little of it there was. The one sickly deer I saw looked more dead than alive, which I suppose it was, given the nature of the land. I’ll admit, I was a little nervous about skulking around in a land so infected by the Scourge, despite the charm I had purchased before leaving Stormwind that was supposed to protect me from the Scourge’s plague. While I wasn’t comfortable, I had figured I was reasonably safe from infection. After all, the men and women of the Argent Dawn and Scarlet Crusade had been fighting throughout the Plaguelands ever since Arthas stormed through and created them in the first place and relatively few of them had ever been infected. Still, it was hard not be a just a little concerned when you were surrounded by evidence of the damage the plague could do.

I’d left the gryphon in the foothills of the mountains, covering the last league into the Ghostlands on foot. I didn’t bother picketing him, he would either stay or return to his stable. Either way, I was planning on being here longer than it would be prudent to keep him picketed for. I wasn’t far from the remains of the main road into Silvermoon City, but I didn’t dare go near it. Ever since Prince Sunstrider declared his people to be blood elves, rather than high elves, and went through the Dark Portal to parts unknown, the elves that had remained behind had become increasingly xenophobic and paranoid of any outsiders to the point of pretty much just killing on sight anyone who didn’t have pink skin and pointy ears.

Honestly, Sunstrider’s whole declaration thing just highlighted the problem I had with elves in the first place. I mean, was he really so arrogant to think that just by calling his people by a different name it really changed anything? I suppose the question was largely academic, but still. Elvish arrogance was only matched by human arrogance, but then, we didn’t have tens of thousands of years of history to learn from our mistakes. I had to think that living for so long and having so much history and knowledge accumulated would have to teach something other than how to treat every other people like crap because they don’t live as long as you do. But I digress.

Even only lightly patrolled, I stayed away from the road, but within sight of it, as I could. The map I had was from before the Scourge invasion and was useful mostly for marking settlements and roads; virtually everything else had changed, which meant I would do better to mark landmarks of my own and rely on those for primary navigation. I’m a child of the city, there was a reason I didn’t operate in the wilds.

One of those reasons presented itself toward the middle of my second day in the Ghostlands. I’d been making my way toward Sungraze Peak, a low mountain just east of the town of Tranquillien. Suncrown Village resided on the north slopes of the mountain, which was that much more to recommend the village as a hiding spot, being somewhat remote and difficult to get at. I was checking my map, comparing my observed location with what the map showed, trying to gauge just how long it would take me to get to Suncrown. I could just see the Sanctum of the Sun through the blighted trees a couple hundred yards ahead, the pristine alabaster and crimson of the tower streaked with sickly green and brown from the infected forest. A rustling in the brush behind me caused me to look up from my map and put my head on a swivel, scanning all around for anything that could be a threat to me.

I couldn’t see anything, but a snarl and roar later, I suddenly found myself face-down in the dirt with fifty pounds of angry lynx on my back. Now, there’s a lot of information that I noticed and processed after the fact, since at the moment, about all my brain could come up with was, “Holy shite, there’s a giant cat chewing on me!”

The cat ripped and tore at my back; though for a moment it seemed to get its claws caught in the thick leather of my traveling cloak. That worked to my advantage, as it gave me the moment I needed to get my arm behind me and get my hand around the fighting dagger slung across my back. I made a blind, weak stab at the lynx’s flanks, scoring at least enough of a hit to make it yowl and leap off me.

I scrambled to my feet, keeping my center of gravity low with the dagger held reverse. I eyed the lynx just as much as it eyed me. It was a filthy creature, its tawny fur tattered and full of mange. Judging by the way its skin clung to its ribs and it eyed me with its baleful yellow eyes, the creature was starving. Very few animals will attack a humanoid for no reason.

We circled slowly for a few long, tense moments. I didn’t dare look away from the lynx for fear it would take advantage of my momentary distraction and attack. It may have been starving, but it was still large enough and strong enough to be able to bowl me over and open up my throat. It stopped circling and drew back, its powerful rear legs drawing up to pounce. Time seemed to freeze for that moment, the feeble sunlight, turned shades of blue and green by the forest canopy, dappled the small clearing, making small pools of bright in the murk. The cat held the perfect pose of feline readiness, tensed and coiled, the curved daggers of its claws digging into the soft loam of the forest floor.

Somewhere in the span of the blink of an eye, the big cat was in the air and hurtling toward me, yellowed fangs the length of my finger bared and ready to clamp down on my neck. The lynx’s angry roar was swallowed by the gloom and murk of the forest and quickly drowned to a wheezing gurgle by my dagger exiting its throat. Its back legs gave a few residual twitches as I worked to pry its mouth open from around my left forearm. Only the largest fangs toward the front of its mouth had actually pierced my bracer, but that was enough to hurt like felfire.

After washing and dressing the wounds, I was back on my way. A healthy knowledge of plants and poisons always comes in handy, especially when one needs a numbing agent on a wound. My arm didn’t hurt so badly I couldn’t grip my sword, but the last thing I needed was to be distracted by pain at the wrong time. I would just have to keep a close eye on the wound to make sure it didn’t fester, something I fully expected to happen in this plague-ridden forest.

I was fortunate in that the lynx hadn’t torn through my pack and had only torn holes in my cloak. I hadn’t brought many supplies, as I didn’t expect to be here more than a few days, and I wasn’t about to rely on anything I caught for food. I was pretty sure plagued meat was bad for me.

A couple of Farstriders showed up at the clearing shortly after I left. I could hear them speaking to one another as I did my best imitation of a ghost and drifted away. If they picked up my trail, I would know soon enough and would have to make a disappearing act, but I was pretty confident they wouldn’t bother. Rare is the guard who goes looking for more work, especially when it looks like that work is probably armed and possibly dangerous. They inspected the area, apparently decided that the lynx had just attacked an innocent traveler and went back to their posts. Thank the Light for lazy and complacent guards.

I gave the Sanctum a wide berth, sticking to the forest as best I could. Unfortunately, I would run out of forest long before I reached the slopes of Sungraze Peak. I had been hoping I would just be able to skirt through the forest and through the foothills of the mountain and avoid any contact with the locals. Turns out what were marked as foothills on my map were actually near cliffs that would be difficult, at best, to scale with even the proper gear and the tiny little mark of the Sanctum of the Sun wasn’t the tiny little temple to the sun I had been lead to believe it was. What should have been a small, out of the way place of sun-worship, turned out to be a rather large tower with a full complement of guards, soldiers and mages. Oh, and it just happened to be sitting smack at the bottom of the only way up the mountain on the southern slopes.

I could probably sneak by the tower, but I didn’t like my chances. The elves had been very enthusiastic about clearing any possible hiding place within bowshot of the tower. With nowhere to hide, that left counting on inattentive guards and watchmen not just around the edges of the tower, but at every watch point up it as well. Fortune is too fickle a bitch to tempt her that much, which left my choices as circling around the mountain to the east or the west. On the western slopes, lay the village of Tranquillien, which I was already predisposed to wanting to avoid. Small towns take note of strangers, especially strangers who don’t look like they do. Like humans in elvish lands. On the eastern verge of the mountain was a small Farstrider enclave, though if the Sanctum of the Sun was any indication, it would probably turn out to be a full-blown fortress, complete with killing fields and hyper-active mages scrying for interlopers just waiting to unleash a fireball or lightning bolt or something.

Given that my choices were bad and worse, I opted for the lesser of the two and made my way toward Tranquillien. I liked my chances of survival that way better than with the Farstrider outpost, mostly because I could stretch my rations out a day or two more and just make a wide circle around the village, whereas trying to do the same with the Farstrider outpost would put me between a potential fortress and something called the Dawnstar Spire, which I was all but certain was somewhere I did not want to be near.

I made my way due west with as much speed as picking my way through game trails and undergrowth allowed. The watery light of day was rapidly becoming much, much dimmer, signaling the onset of night. I had managed to make enough time to cross the main road and get well enough into the wood on the other side that I would be able to make camp.

During the war, several of my missions had taken me up into what is now the Felwood for days at time. You learned real fast not to sleep on the ground in places the Scourge held sway. If you were lucky, you’d be a healthy meal for the cursed insects of the area; you’d be sore and itchy, but alive. If Fortune was being the usual bitch-queen she is, you’d wake up with corpse worms; which meant you’d be in for an amazingly painful day or so as you were devoured from the inside out. It wasn’t always a death sentence. If you were lucky enough to have a priest or one of the brothers of the Silver Hand around, they could cleanse the worms from you and you’d be fine. That usually wasn’t the case, though. Where corpse worms were concerned, it was usually more merciful to just cut the poor sod’s throat. To avoid the problem of sleeping on the ground, we borrowed from our night elf brethren and learned to find a tree, climb up to a branch that would support you and tie yourself up. It’s not comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but you wake up in the morning pest and parasite free.

I kept heading west in the morning, working out the kinks and stiffness as I loped through the woods. I’d only been traveling a couple of hours when I was forced to stop short. Spreading out before me and stretching as far as I could see to either side was a great black swath, peppered all over with the bones of the dead. The infection of the forest seemed to be absent in the great gash, though that wasn’t all that surprising, the land itself looked as dead as the bodies of the poor unfortunates littering the unnatural gorge. I’d heard tell of something that was being called the Dead Scar in the vicinity of Silvermoon City; I had a sneaking suspicion that this was it.

This put a definite kink in my plan. The Dead Scar wasn’t on my map and I’d only heard that it was supposed to be near Silvermoon City, not miles south. Most distressing, though, was the fact that there was distinct movement among the corpses littering the gorge, which really could only mean Scourge. The gorge wasn’t so wide that I couldn’t cross it, but there was no telling how many undead were down there and I wasn’t terribly inclined to find out. Crossing would also mean that I had to cross back once I got far enough north of Tranquillien and that really wasn’t about to happen.

I really didn’t like having my options cut off, especially when it was due to lack of good information. Grumbling the whole way, I turned north along the edge of the Dead Scar and started walking. If I was lucky, I would be able to pass close to Tranquillien without ever being in sight of it and not have to dip into the gorge. Luck, it seems, is the sort of thing you can only have when you don’t really need it. I wasn’t an hour along the gorge when I was met by a sheer cliff in front of me and the steep drop into the Scar to my left. Of course, to the east, the land sloped gently upward, giving a simple and easy way around the cliff and the Dead Scar.

It also probably led smack into the middle of Tranquillen.

With nothing else for it, I headed east and up the rise. I know that somewhere, someone is having a great laugh at my expense. There I was, wasting all that time and effort trying to avoid this little village because I didn’t want to risk blowing cover by moving too close to inhabited areas and it turns out the whole thrice-damned place was abandoned long ago and no one had moved back in. The worst part of it all was that my approach could have been used as a textbook definition on how to sneak around in enemy territory and no one was even there to witness my greatness. I mean, really, if anyone had been there and had seen me that would have been a huge failure on my part. So I guess it really didn’t matter that no one actually saw me, but still, it’s the principle. But I digress.

From the look of things, Tranquillien had been little more than a rest stop on the road to Silvermoon City. The Scourge had likely just waltzed right through, smashed what little there was to smash and moved on. Nether, I was surprised the place even had a name, though I suppose with the fetish elves have for naming things, it shouldn’t have been surprising at all. Regardless, the village of Tranquillien seemed to consist mostly of a couple of defensive towers and the scattered remains of a few dwellings. There had probably been more before the Scourge attacked, but I was willing to bet there hadn’t been much more.

Weary and annoyed with the day’s travels, I decided to rest in Tranquillien and finish the journey to Suncrown Village in the morning. The ruins of the eastern tower provided an excellent place to set up camp that was well above the ground, so I would be able to sleep more or less in comfort that night and maybe even have a small fire to heat my travel rations with. I’ve found that there’s nothing better to prepare for a fight than a good night’s sleep and a hot meal.

Since the day wasn’t much past half done, I was also able to use the time to finish brewing the couple vials of poison I had brought with me. A lot of people complain that using poisons is dirty, underhanded and dishonourable. Me, I’m more interested in surviving to be considered dirty, underhanded and dishonourable than I am in dying because I wasn’t. The poisons I’d brought with me were a couple of the nastier brews I’d picked up during the war. One, Guttwist, induced severe nausea and cramping, making it really hard to fight, but it took a little bit of time to start working. The other was called Bloody Serenity, it acted fast and was a powerful euphoric, usually distracting the victim from pretty much everything and then causing them to bleed out from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth. I found they complemented each other nicely. The only problem with them both is they both needed to be used within about a day after they were made or they soured and lost their efficacy. The nice thing was that they could be stored unfinished in a powdered form indefinitely and then finished by simply adding water and boiling them until the mixture was a thick sludge.

The night was quiet and almost peaceful, if you didn’t mind the faint sounds of the undead moving around and hunting for prey from the Dead Scar, anyway. I rose with the dawn and headed north. Suncrown Village wasn’t far from Tranquillien and I should be able to reach it by noon if I pushed. I abandoned stealth in favour of speed at this point, which, I’ll admit, was due in part to my eagerness to see my mission finished. Before the day was out, Saya would be avenged.

Suncrown appeared to have fared much better than Tranquillien had, mostly just because it was further from the main road than Tranquillien was. Where Tranquillien was more of a rest stop on the main road, Suncrown appeared to be a real village, with a dozen or so small houses scattered around a central fountain. Most peoples would center their village around a well, something functional. Not elves, though, nope, too good for simple functionality, they are, they have to build some sort of statue-fountain-thing instead of a simple well.

At first glance, the village didn’t appear to be inhabited. Upon skulking around the edges of the village a bit, I was able to discern that the village was inhabited, but the poor souls who lived here didn’t look like they did so voluntarily. There was no bustle of normal life or even the semblance thereof. The people living here were little more than ghosts, drifting through a mockery of life. The few people I saw were drawn, gaunt, haunted-looking things, resembling nothing so much as a collection of sticks held together by skin. I was reminded of the worst parts of the slums and ghettos of Stormwind, home to the lowest of the low, the worst of the junkies and homeless. In fact, the elves of Suncrown really reminded me of drug den I’d had to break into one time. The people there had had the same sort of look, lost and scared, sick and pleading.

That had to be the nasty secret the blood elves were hiding. I’d heard about some sort of sickness that had swept through the elvish lands shortly after the destruction of the Sunwell. It seemed it was less of a sickness and more like DTs. One of my mage friends had mentioned something of the sort; that the elves had lived with so much magic, so close by for so long that the sudden absence of it was making them sick. Apparently, it wasn’t so much making them sick so much as it was putting them into some sort of weird magical detox. And it wasn’t doing it gently. I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure it was killing them.

On the plus side, a sparsely populated village full of addicts going through the DTs would make it really easy to find a healthy blood elf assassin. As an added bonus very few, if any, of them would be able to lift a finger against me when the time came. Nether, I could probably walk around in plain sight and I don’t think any of them would even notice me. Still, I thought it best to just observe for a while; no good ever comes of rushing in blind. Watching the shades of the elves drift aimlessly though the ruins of the village was depressing, much like the drug den had been. I’ll admit, I’m pretty hard-hearted sometimes, but even I couldn’t look at those poor bastards and not feel some amount of pity for them. As the elves drifted around, I watched them shuffling in and out of the various ruins, moving around aimlessly, almost blindly in some cases. There was one building they never went near, though, a small house outside the main ring of the village. Now, it could have been because it was outside the main ring and not on the main paths of the village that they avoided it, but I suspected otherwise, especially when further investigation revealed that it not only had a door, unlike just about every other building, but a rather new looking one that was very firmly shut at that. If the elves were avoiding it, it told me the door had been closed long enough for them to realize they couldn’t get into that building, so they had no reason to go near it.

So close.

I set about to applying poison to all my various blades with grim determination. The sun was still high enough in the sky that the shadows were too short to really hide in. I would need to wait a few hours yet, but that would give the poison time to dry on my weapons. The poison wouldn’t be quite as potent, but it would last longer. As late afternoon gave way to evening and the shadows started to get long, I finally rose from my hiding place and slipped from shadow to shadow to the little house my target was hiding in.

A quick peek in one of the few windows told me she wasn’t inside, but the still-burning lantern let me know she would either be back soon or she was hiding. Given the furnishings, unless she was hiding under the floor, it was probably the former, more than the latter. It only took me a few seconds to get onto the roof and into a good position where I could see anyone approaching, but they wouldn’t be able to see me unless they were really looking.

I didn’t have to wait long, though I did have to move quickly to avoid being seen, as she came up from the northern edge of the village. That made sense, given what she was carrying. The river was just a few yards north of the village, which would be the best place to fill her waterskins and clean the chamber pot.

I know, I was amazed, too. The way they act, you’d think elves don’t crap like everyone else.

She wasn’t acting suspicious or paranoid, which meant she felt safe. That was good news for me, as it would give me the maximum surprise when the time came. A few of the shade-elves drifted toward her but quickly moved away with a dagger-sharp look and a few just as sharp words. I was surprised to see the door wasn’t locked, although I really shouldn’t have been. The only thing she really had to worry about where the not-yet-dead elves wandering around and they didn’t look much like they could even operate a door any longer.

I waited until she was inside and the door closed again before slipping down from the roof. This was it. I was so close now.

Saya, you might want to look away, if you’re watching. I know this won’t bring you back, but it will bring those of us left behind a measure of comfort, knowing your killer is dead. I guess that’s what revenge is all about, in the end.

I drew my left-hand sword and took a slow, calming breath. I was always a little slow with the left, so I wanted it out and ready before any fighting started. I could have the right out in less than an eyeblink. One last check. My daggers were in place at my back, throwing knives across my chest, everything poisoned and ready.

The door gave way easily under the heel of my boot, splintering the frame and crashing open with me following a hair’s breadth behind. Imaria sat on the dirty floor of the house, dressed simply in brown and green leathers. Her short blonde hair whipped around with her head, the look of shock and surprise on her round, innocent face melting away quickly to a flash of fear.

One long step brought me within striking distance. I saw her green eyes dancing around, taking in her surroundings, myself and my weapons, trying to find the exit, the way out. She arrived at the conclusion most people would have, there was none. She looked up at me, almost childlike, though I knew better. I had left the mask and hood of my armour down on purpose. I wanted her to see my face. Even though she didn’t speak, I could tell she recognized me. She knew what was coming and she knew why.

“Hello, Imaria, this is for Saya.”

This Post is Full of Fail

2008-07-07T17:22:00.001-05:00

Many apologies, my readers, for the lack of new posts. I promise I'm working on one, it's just taking longer than I expected. I'd planned on finishing it this weekend, but then my AC died and I was forced to flee my humble abode and the 100+ degree conditions within it. Please bear with me a little while longer. The next post will be up "soon."

Of course, I'm using Blizzard's definition of soon, to mean it should occur sometime between the time you read this and the next ice age.

Parth the Ninth: On Your Marks, Get Set...

2008-06-25T13:11:00.003-05:00

I picked up a tail as I left the Sign of the White Mountain and they weren’t making even the slightest effort to hide the fact that they were following me, which was bad news. No one who is up to any good is that obvious about following someone. I pulled my cloak around me a little more, mostly just to hide the fact that I was reaching for my head-knocker, which I wore hidden under my back pouch. Yes, I had my swords on, but I find leaving corpses in the streets is never a good idea, it makes the Guard all flustered and stern. However, a foot-and-a-half length of oak, half-filled with lead and wrapped in leather provides a very convincing, non-lethal argument as to why I shouldn’t be followed.

It quickly became obvious the two guys following me weren’t professionals. I stuck to the Canals for the most part, making just a few turns that could easily throw the tail if I chose to. They fell for each one, even going so far as to stop dead in their tracks and look around for me when I disappeared for a moment in a blind alley. While it was amusing to lead these guys on a merry chase around all of Stormwind, I had better things to do at the moment. I started making my way toward Old Town while I tried to think who might set such an obvious trail on me. The first option was Lord Arkenhill, even though that didn’t seem all that likely, since he knew I wasn’t working against him…at least not at the moment. I suppose there was nothing that could have stopped him from deciding I was more of a danger than Imaria and making the poor decision to get rid of me, but he hadn’t seemed quite stupid enough to try that when I had been talking to him. That left Imaria or someone else within the Twilight’s Hammer. Imaria wasn’t a likely option, she was more likely to be doing the tailing herself rather than leaving it to a pair of bumbling idiots like the two guys following me. I knew she wasn’t tailing me, I had been checking. That left someone else in the Twilight’s Hammer, most likely someone under Arkenhill, since someone higher would have access to people who were actually skilled at this sort of thing, I would think.

Of course, it was entirely possible I was completely wrong and these guys were completely unrelated to the Twilight’s Hammer. I’d been out of action for a long time after nearly being stabbed to death, but it stood to reason there could be someone I had robbed before who was still upset enough about to it to send a couple of amateur thugs after me.

If the guys following me had any sense, they were getting really nervous. I was all but leading them into a trap marked with a giant illuminated arrow half a hundred feet high. I wasn’t even trying anymore, I had been leading them all over the place, through narrow streets and alleys and double-backs and every twist and turn I could think of. They didn’t just stick with me, but actually got closer to make sure they didn’t lose me. After that, I just started making a straight line toward SI:7. They would be stupid to follow me there but apparently weren’t overly burdened by an abundance of intellect.

As I drew within sight of SI:7 and the Champion’s Hall next to it, I made an abrupt turn and made a short sprint down the alley and around the back to the other side. I exited the alley on the other side just in time to see them step into the alley I had just left. The pale moonlight glinted off something short and metal in each of their hands. Rule number one of survival in the shadows: do unto others before they do unto you.

I heard hissed whispers as I drew nearer to the mouth of the alley. They were spooked by my sudden disappearance. At least they had the intelligence to realize that nothing good could happen if I was out of sight. I pushed my cloak back from my shoulders to free my arms up as I drew behind them. My head-knocker rose and fell and the first guy dropped like a sack of wet flour. The second guy at least had the presence of mind to turn and get an arm up before I could knock him about the back of the head. He was even smart enough to block with the arm that wasn’t holding his dagger.

He jabbed the dagger toward me, more as a way to get me to move away than any attempt to actually perforate me. I stepped back, but foiled any further plans he had by bringing my head-knocker down on his wrist. The dagger clattered to the ground from his suddenly very useless hand. His howl of pain was cut short by another blow to the side of his head.

So much for my theory about these guys not being cultists. I rifled through their clothing and came up with Twilight’s Hammer insignia on both of them, as well as a fairly accurate drawing of myself. There was nothing else to indicate who had sent them or why, so I pocketed the drawing and dragged them both to the stairs that led up to SI:7. I waved to Osborne and walked off. He could take care of them from there.

I made a bee-line to my place from SI:7, if they were dumb enough to follow me wherever I may lead, they would be dumb enough to think they could wait for me at home. I wasn’t too concerned. If the two that had followed me were any indication, my bullyboys would make short work of anyone dumb enough to try to get into my house and they wouldn’t be nearly as gentle. A little more than a quarter hour later and I arrived to find half a dozen bullyboys lounging around with just as many cloaked cultists tied up in the middle of the street. There were another half dozen who weren’t so lucky to be tied up. For their part, the bullyboys had made a good accounting of themselves, though they didn’t escape unscathed. I tossed my purse to the eldest of the gang as I approached, he caught it smoothly and it disappeared into his tunic.

“Get your wounded seen to. What happened?”

The older boy turned and started giving out orders to the younger members of the gang. The two that had been hurt worst were helped off by two more that could use some bandages, but weren’t too badly injured. He then turned to me and rolled his shoulders in what was apparently a shrug, “I dunno, man, we’s jus’ chillin’ here watchin’ yer place like ya pays us to an’ these fools come walkin’ up like they wanna start sumpin’. They tries t’push past us and get int’ yer place, so’s we showed ‘em whacha pay us fer.”

I tossed him a crown, “Thanks, pal. You and your boys have one on me. There’ll be Guard and worse here in a little bit, so you might want to clear out for a couple hours, least till the Guard leaves.”

He rolled his shoulders again and signaled to the remaining gangers to follow him, “You da boss, man. Thanks fer takin’ care o’th’ boys.”

“That’s how it works, friend, you take care of me, I take care of you.”

The bullyboys wandered off and I headed upstairs to start reading up on my target. I’d skimmed the portfolio a little bit after dinner, just enough to realize how much trouble I was in. Now, I was looking for details, locations, habits, all the little things that make people easy to kill. I could put the larger troubles on the back burner for a little bit. Personal business came first.

I only had to wait about three-quarters of an hour before the inevitable knock came at my door. I was surprised to see Shaw himself standing on the other side. I invited him in and offered a drink to be polite. He declined, but that didn’t stop me. A little whisky sounded good about now. There was no trace of Turner’s portfolio. I needed to keep a few secrets for now.

Shaw gave my entire place the fish-eye, “You live like this and you still say you’re doing all right, eh?”

I scowled in return. I mean, my place wasn’t exactly the best money could buy, but it was a far cry from the bottom as well. Besides, I preferred to keep my wealth where it would do me the most good: in coin form, in the counting house.

“I’m sure you didn’t drop by at this hour just to insult my home,” I said, taking a sip of my drink, “I presume this is about the present I left you tonight?”

“Yeah,” Shaw snorted, “All eight of them. The Guard’s sorting out who’s who as we speak. Mostly looks like your average low-quality thug. So far, all members of Twilight’s Hammer. I don’t suppose you know anything about this?”

“Who, me?” I shrugged eloquently and met his stare. He knew I knew something, but I wasn’t about to reveal what it was that I knew. At least, not yet.

The silence grew long as we stared at each other. It wasn’t that I couldn’t use Shaw’s help, I certainly could, but until I had a better handle of what was going on, the last thing I needed was his band of thugs tromping around making people nervous and making it that much more difficult for me to do what I needed to. All too often, Shaw’s solution to all the world’s ills was to simply kill the source of the problem. I didn’t want that kind of bloodbath on my conscience, at least not until I was sure that everyone involved deserved their fate.

Finally, Shaw grew tired of the staring contest, letting out a long sigh of exasperation and combing his hand roughly through his ginger hair, “Fine, Drake, have it your way, but don’t come crying to me when this all blows up in your face.”

I calmly took another sip of my whisky and shrugged again, “I just have to confirm some things first. Once I’m satisfied with what I know, I’ll tell you everything.”

Shaw stood and appropriated my whisky from me, draining it in one gulp and shoving the cup back into my hand, “I’m crazy to let you run around loose like this, but you’ve never let me down before, so I guess I can trust you for now,” he crossed to the door and stopped with his hand on the latch, “Oh, and one more thing, try not to let your kids outside create any more bodies for the Guard to clean up, you know how they get.”

I grinned back at him, “Already taken care of.”

After I was sure Shaw was gone, I grabbed the portfolio out from under the chair cushion and resumed reading. The thing about assassins and assassination attempts is that the advantage is always with the assassin. The assassin is an unknown quantity, a variable that can’t be controlled, which is what makes us so hard to stop. When one assassin is hunting another, that dynamic doesn’t change much; it’s just a question of skill. If the other assassin knows they are being hunted, they can take steps to minimize their exposure to the other assassin; this is often referred to as digging in or going to ground. The less you move around, the less you can be seen, the more likely you are to throw a hunting assassin off your trail.

Imaria wasn’t quite as much of a loose cannon as she seemed from what I had learned of her already. She at least had had the good sense to run and hide after killing Saya and stay there. Judging from the reports, she’d only been seen a couple times since she fled Stormwind and one of those times was renting a gryphon to leave Stormwind. The other sightings had all been up around Quel’Thalas and Silvermoon City. The latest sighting had her not far from what was left of Quel’Thalas, in the so-called Ghostlands, she’d last been seen going into the ruins of a village there. As far as hiding places go, ruins make some of the best, as long as you’re not seen going there.

If she was smart, and despite being reckless and impulsive, there was no indication she was stupid, she was moving every few days, just to make her trail that much harder to follow, which, given the time that had already passed between the time she was seen and now, I would be lucky to catch her there. I knocked back another cup of whisky to help me sleep and put myself in bed. I had a big day ahead of me tomorrow.

Part the Eighth: A Distant Early Warning

2008-06-23T11:41:00.003-05:00

Lord Arkenhill had been very accommodating in passing on what information he knew about Imaria. Granted, it wasn’t much. He had no idea where she was staying, where she frequented or who she spoke to on a regular basis. Mostly, he vented his spleen about how she had come in and just started killing people, seemingly at random, throughout the city. This was upsetting to him, not because she was killing people, but because her rash and random acts threatened to reveal several other members of the cult, of which he was one, though he demurred on revealing the rest. It was worth a shot, anyway. He would have preferred to either let her swing on the gibbet or have her simply go away, anything to get her out of his city. The problem, as he saw it, was that she had credentials from a Twilight Duke, which more or less gave her free reign to do whatever she pleased and that made her a danger to the cult as a whole.

Most of what I got from him was a better sense of who Imaria was. She seemed possessed of the arrogance indemic to her race, which was in turn exacerbated by her perception of her own invulnerability. Whether that came from skill or from having been given a free hand to do as she pleased was impossible to tell. In all her interactions with Arkenhill, she had been demanding, petulant, hot-headed and impulsive, only doing as she was told if it suited her whims at the time. I had to wonder how much of that was an act and how much was real. None of those traits make for a long-lived assassin and I didn’t think that a neophyte would be given carte blanche like she had been. Still, comparing my limited interactions with her to what Arkenhill told me painted a picture of a very troubled person. There was a good chance I could use that to my advantage.

What was very interesting to note was that she didn’t appear to suffer from the addiction to magic that virtually all other blood elves did. I had heard here and there about Prince Sunstrider and his quest to find a cure for the magical addiction plaguing his people, but that was about the extent of what I knew. Covering for weaknesses was nothing new and I suspected that’s exactly what she was doing. However, on the off chance that she wasn’t faking, I couldn’t count on being able to use her addiction against her.

The little bit of information I got from Arkenhill should nicely supplement whatever Turner was able to come up with for me. The real treasure trove came from the letters and ledger I swiped. It seemed that Arkenhill was spending a lot of money on not only construction materials, but excavating equipment and a dwarven mining team. I wondered if the two projects were related. I hadn’t seen any excavation equipment on the grounds of his manor, but according to the ledger he still had at least one more payment to make on it, which likely meant it wouldn’t be delivered until that last payment was made. I’m sure there was more interesting and damning information in the ledger, but that was all I was able to glean from it. I leave the accountancy to accountants.

The letters, on the other hand, were much more plain and easier for me to understand. A couple of the letters were nothing more than personal correspondence, friends from other parts of Azeroth giving the local news and happenings. Most of the letters came from the same person, someone who only everidentified themselves as “A.” Judging by the content of the letters, this A person was Arkenhill’s superior within the Twilight’s Hammer. The bulk of the letters were questions and requests for status reports regarding whatever project it was that Arkenhill was working on. Judging from the handwriting, whoever A was, they were probably both well-educated and spent a lot of their time writing. I was almost disappointed with the severely mundane nature of the letters, I had hoped to find the letter that detailed the plan to conquer and/or destroy the world. If there was anything like that here, it was in some sort of code that I had no idea about. Still, both Shaw and Turner would be interested in them, which meant they still had some value to me, even if only financial.

It was already dark by the time I finished reading through the letters and ledger. I had returned home by mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the time reading through my spoils, as well as making notes of my own regarding what I had learned from Arkenhill. I didn’t like the picture that was forming around Imaria. If what Arkenhill had told me was true, and I had no reason to believe it wasn’t, combined with what little I already knew, I was starting to get the idea that Imaria was one of those dangerous sort of assassins who kill because they enjoy the killing. It wasn’t that enjoying killing made her more dangerous, it was that it would make her unpredictable. Unpredictable is dangerous. Unpredictable tends to kill random people for no good reason. Unpredictable tends to get the people around them killed.

That would explain why she was working with a bunch of cultists instead of a real organization, like the Stormwind Assassins or Ravenholdt. No group of professionals would touch a wild card like Imaria, no matter how skilled she was. That was a bit of a relief, really. With her being a solo operator, I wouldn’t have to worry about professional repercussions when I dropped her.

I transcribed the best stuff from the letters into a report while I waited for my meeting with Turner. The report and ledger got sent over to Shaw via one of the bullyboys I paid to watch my place. There wasn’t much else to do beyond pay a visit to the Stormwind Counting House to get Turner’s fee and head to Dominique’s for a good meal and some more good coffee. I’m not entirely sure what possessed me to grab my head-knocker as I was heading out the door to meet with Turner, but in retrospect, it turned out to be a good idea.

Ever the gracious businessman, Turner had left word with the bouncers that I was going to be meeting with him tonight and would they be so kind as to allow me up to his table to wait for him if I arrived before he did. That gnome is going to end up running the city one day, I swear. From his raw business acumen to the way he treats every customer as if they are the most valuable customer he has, Turner could be a success at any venture he turned his hand to. I suppose it’s a good thing for other business-owners that he had, thus far, restricted himself to information dealing.

I didn’t have to wait long for Turner to show up, only working on my second cup of coffee when I saw his hat crest the stairs. While Turner was always impeccably dressed in the most tasteful of business attire, he always wore this broad-brimmed, flat-topped blue hat that was really beginning to show just how old it was. Before Turner had adopted it as his signature headpiece, it had belonged to Wilhelm Krieg, Turner’s adopted father. When Wilhelm died shortly after Turner’s fourteenth birthday, Turner had adopted the hat as his own and wore it partly to remember his father by, partly to honour him. Wilhelm had virtually never taken the hat off either.

We exchanged our greetings while Turner got himself situated and food and drinks ordered. I glanced at the portfolio he’d set on the table, it was about the size I expected, which meant Turner had been much more successful at digging up information than I had been. There was a bit of polite chatter about the weather and the food while we both tucked into our dinners. Turner had been doing well since the last I saw him a few months ago and was thinking about branching out into other commercial endeavours, but wasn’t sure what yet.

“You know, Khol,” he said around a mouthful of baked salmon, “When you finally get tired of working for yourself, I can make you a very lucrative deal. A lot of the SI:7 guys you served with have come to work for me.”

This was an old discussion we had just about every time we got together. Maybe someday I would take him up on the offer, but not today, “I have no doubt that you could, Turner, but I like being my own boss. Easy hours, good pay and all the fringe benefits I want.”

“And nothing to worry about but getting caught by the Guard or the occasional stabbing, hm?” he grinned impishly.

I rolled my eyes but smiled back, “That happens a lot less frequently than recent history would indicate.”

He chuckled and pushed his empty plate aside, “Fair enough, but keep my offer in mind, all the same.” He waited until the barmaid who had come to clear the table had left before settling down to business, drawing the portfolio in front of him and growing serious.

“I hope you know what you’re getting mixed up in, Khol. If you’ve got any reservations, now’s the time to pull out. Once I hand this to you, it’s all or nothing.”

I gave him my best furrowed brow, “This is about more than just the assassin I’m after, isn’t it?”

His silence and refusal to meet my eyes told me all I needed to know about that. Whatever he’d uncovered, it was much bigger than Imaria and was a larger threat than I had accounted for. Knowing me as he did, he knew I would act against whatever that threat was, which would probably not be good for my own health and well-being.

I shook my head, “It doesn’t matter if I do or not. She killed Saya.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” he shook his head and pushed the portfolio over. I glanced down at it and shrugged mentally. I’d already had hints that this was bigger than just one man’s revenge. It was hardly surprising to have it confirmed. In for a penny, in for a crown.

I produced the stack of letters I’d taken from Arkenhill and handed them over, “I had a bit of a productive afternoon, myself. I took these from a Lord Arkenhill, a known member of the Twilight’s Hammer. I didn’t find much of use to me in there, but I’m sure you can get a bit more out of them.”

The glum look on Turner’s face abated as his eyes lit upon the letters, “There’s a lot of interest in their activities lately. These should prove interesting, indeed.” I passed his fee over hidden in the stack of letters. Showing coins of that denomination seldom has good consequences.

I stashed the portfolio in my back pouch and knocked back the rest of my coffee, “A pleasure, as always, Turner. I’ll catch you up on all the action later.”

“I’d tell you to be careful, but I know it’ll fall on deaf ears,” he said with a smirk, though his voice betrayed the concern he really felt.

“Huh?”

He was shaking his head as I walked down the stairs.

* * *

Night time in Stormwind loves to tell lies. After the vast bulk of the good folk have shuttered themselves within the safety of their homes for the night, the streets are deceptively empty. No one with anything good to do is out much after dark, save the midden men collecting the city’s waste and the Guard doing the same. The crowds of the day are gone, allowing the cobblestone streets to release the heat of the day back to the sky, creating the illusion of a pleasantly warm night. Empty of people and with a full moon lighting the darkness, the streets can seem nearly friendly, open and ripe and full of opportunity for someone daring enough to take it.

Stormwind was founded on the backs of great heroes. Built and rebuilt on the shoulders of men and women who stood taller and straighter than any today could imagine. Nether, the whole damned entrance to the city reminded everyone, every day, that the city was made by people who were greater than anyone living here could ever hope to be. Some took that as a challenge, tried to live up to the examples displayed there in the Valley of Heroes, some took it as an insult, sunk deeper and darker than those paragons could ever imagine just to spite them. Most people didn’t care and just tried to get on with their lives.

The biggest lie that Stormwind ever told her people was that they were safe. The thick, high walls and brave men and women who manned them could do nothing against the things that really went bump in the night, the things that could really bring the city to her knees and further. That was partly why there was an SI:7, and Stormwind Assassins, rough men ready to do violence on behalf of the good people of city. But even those shadow organizations were a whisper over the scream of the real threats to the city.

The fall of Stormwind wouldn’t be engineered by the Horde or the Scourge or the Burning Legion or any of the other threats that we were warned against day after day. When Stormwind fell, the blame would be laid squarely at the feet of the stupid, arrogant, greedy, self-important nobles who pretended to run her. No army or Guard could protect the city from the very people who ran the city with one hand, while lining their pockets with the other. For proof, one needed look no further than the portfolio of information Turner had handed me. I had to imagine that Turner had been gathering this information for some time before I ever approached him. It was chock-full of all the information I needed to find and kill Imaria Goldenheart nee Bloodwalker, but went on much beyond that, detailing her connections to our own local Twilight’s Hammer cell complete with names and lists of crimes already committed in the name of furthering their own goals under the guise of being for the good of Stormwind. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am, if nothing else, a loyal citizen of Stormwind. Shaw and I have that much in common.

This job just got a lot bigger than one assassin against another.

Part the Seventh: Sneaky is as Sneaky Does

2008-06-13T15:12:00.003-05:00

I spent the remainder of the evening and a fair portion of the morning getting some much needed rest. After an all-night wake followed by a long flight and spending a large part of the night in a tavern, I was beat. I’d like to say I slept the sleep of the dead, but given the current situation that could well become prophetic, so I’ll pass on that analogy. Besides, the truly screwed up dreams I was having pretty much prevented much real rest. I didn’t really remember much about them on waking, but I did wake up with the feeling that my subconscious was really, really messing with me.

While I was waiting for Turner to get back to me, I figured I’d spend my time in a useful way, grilling the couple of local idiots that had tried to do unto me in a most unpleasant way. The dwarf and gnome both lived up north, in Loch Modan and the Arathi Highlands, respectively. I was still saddle-sore from my gryphon flight yesterday, so I wasn’t in the mood to go chasing either of them down. The human woman lived here in Stormwind, in the Mage District, but breaking into anywhere in there was risky at best and required a lot more preparation than I really had time for. That left the human male.

According to the file, he was a Stromgarde noble living in Stormwind in exile, one of the few to escape. He’d made a lot of noise, and a lot of enemies because of that noise, shortly after arriving in Stormwind calling for retaliatory strikes against the Syndicate and the Boulderfist ogres that had all but destroyed the city. Stormwind, at the time, was still in recovery from the war and just couldn’t afford to send a force north. As it became more and more apparent that Stormwind was not interested in saving what was left of Stromgarde, Lord Tyroles Arkenhill gradually became bitter and sullen. While he still railed for a military push to take back Stromgarde to any and all who would listen, he’d all but given up hope of ever seeing such an action occur.

About the time he stopped being so vocal about returning to Stromgarde, he’d also fallen in with Twilight’s Hammer. My guess was that he had some sort of plan to use the cult as the military force he couldn’t get Stormwind to send; it was hard to imagine he would be any sort of true believer. Cults like the Twilight’s Hammer generally prey upon the two kinds of people, the hopelessly poor and the woefully uneducated, of which Lord Arkenhill was neither.

Despite living in exile he was remarkably wealthy and, though it would cut into his net worth significantly, he could fund such a military expedition for at least a year. At least, that’s what Shaw’s documents said. Me, I don’t know the first damn thing about finances of that magnitude, so that part might as well have been in Taurahe to me.

Everything else aside, he was the most accessible member of my would-be killers and, as such, the lucky winner of a visit from yours truly.

Having decided to pay Lord Arkenhill a visit, I stared at the ruck that contained my armour. Yes, I’d made the decision to follow this path, but I still hadn’t put it on. Even though it was largely symbolic, once I took that last step, in my mind, at least, that was it. I would be committing myself to following this road wherever it may lead.

My hesitation lasted only a moment as the memory of finding Saya floated up from the shallow end of the depths of my mind. It didn’t matter what I wanted; she deserved vengeance.

Muscle-memory never fails to amaze me, even though I rely on it all the time. Securing the buckles and straps came back as easily as if I’d taken my armour off just the night before, rather than two years ago. I left the hood and mask down for the time being. Nothing screams “Hey, guards! Look at me! I’m up to no good!” like walking around with your face hidden. My swords settled around my hips like they’d never left and the bandolier of throwing knives felt almost like the embrace of an old friend. Finally, I pulled my hair back into the horsetail I customarily wore it in when I was working. It may look all dramatic, but having your hair whip into your face in the middle of a fight was never a good thing.

Arkenhill maintained a small manor house near the Park District, walled off and far enough removed from the plebeians to be able to delude himself into thinking that the world outside of his walls was just ducky. Knowing the way nobles tend to be, he’d probably fired the regular staff and brought in more cultists to do all of the drudge and grunt work around his place. I always wondered why we called them nobles when there was so often very little about them that was.

Now, I generally prefer to work at night, but there are some jobs that are easier to do in broad daylight. This was not one of them. The Guard in this part of town tended to be extra vigilant in their pursuit of ne’er-do-wells, poor people and other such riffraff. I imagine they were paid very well for that extra level of dedication, both above and below the table. Evading the Guard was the first, and easiest, challenge. Most times the Guard had trouble finding their own arses with both hands, a map, a compass, a mirror and a lantern. The second challenge was the wall and getting over it in one piece, rather than several. It had recently become popular amongst the well-to-do to use gunpowder and magic traps at the top of their walls, rather than the standard broken glass and sharp bits of rusted metal. Of course the old standbys were still present as well, giving that extra little oomph. Challenge number three would be to get to and into the house without being seen. Some places this was as easy as sneaking through the prodigious hedges spread across the property, other places had nothing but a well-manicured lawn without so much as a pebble to hide behind. Once up to the house, getting in unnoticed was usually pretty easy. Most large houses have several entrances and few are monitored all the time, particularly the servant’s entrances. That would then lead to challenge number four, avoiding everyone in the house, locating your target and doing your business. By the time you were actually inside, this was usually the easiest part, depending on when you were making your ingress.

My first goal was simply to avoid the Guard patrols, which ended up being as easy to do as it was to say. Clad in my armour, complete with a cloak thrown across my shoulders, the Guard barely paid me any attention. I guess there are some benefits to looking like one of those adventurer types. I’d always suspected the Guard just ignored them, but I’d never had any proof until now. I’d have to remember that in the future. Fortune, the fickle bitch that she is, continued to favour me for the time being, though, as I approached the Arkenhill estate. It would seem there was a good deal of construction going on at the good lord’s home. Carts and wagons were coming and going every few minutes, bringing bricks, lumber and stone. It wasn’t hard to hitch a ride underneath one to slip in unnoticed.

There didn’t seem to be any construction taking place on the house itself, which I thought a little odd, considering the amount of construction materials that were being stockpiled. I didn’t know a whole lot about construction, myself, but I did know that the only useful structures you could build from bricks, stone blocks and eight-by-eight oak beams were towers and fortifications. I made a mental note to pass that info on to Shaw later. He would certainly be interested in this, especially given the Lord Arkenhill’s recent affiliations.

My interest lay elsewhere at the moment, however, and while lurking around the construction supplies might net me some interesting information, that wasn’t what I was here for. The day was starting to get on toward the backside of noon, which didn’t leave me much in the way of shadows to lurk in. A few thrown pebbles later, however, and I had a clear path to the side entrance to the kitchen. I’d just like to note here that I love kitchen entrances. They’re almost never guarded and if you enter at the right time, you’ll be shooed out of the kitchen almost as quickly as you entered, without anyone bothering to note or check whether you belong there or not. Judging from the clamour on the other side of the door, now was the right time.

I strolled into the kitchen casually, as if I not only had the right to be there, but a reason as well. As I drifted through the kitchen, trying to stay out of the way of the staff busily preparing lunch for what looked like a small army, I nabbed myself an apple and made to drift on out the other side of the kitchen before the head cook saw me and all but pushed me out into the hallway I had been headed for anyway. Further proof that just looking like you belong somewhere is the best disguise you can have.

I kept my cloak pushed back, so as to better show that I was armed as well as armoured. Most servant types won’t bother an armed and armoured individual, especially if that person looks like they have every right to be there. No one scattered before me, but similarly, neither did they take much interest beyond to notice there was someone present before turning back to whatever task they were engaged in. The fact that no one took any special notice of a stranger, especially one with weapons and armour, was another handy fact that I filed away for reporting to Shaw later. Apparently, the Lord Arkenhill had been entertaining some unusual company.

The manor itself was pretty standard fare as far as noble’s dwellings go. Checked marble floors in tasteful brown and grey marble, potted plants from some of the further reaches of Azeroth, fine linen draperies hung about all the windows, various statuary and objects d’art scattered around in logical alcoves, all that sort of thing. Interestingly, while everything was obviously expensive, it was almost unassuming, present only because it was expected to be, not because the owner wanted to show off how wealthy he was. While everything was obviously very fine and well made, notably absent was the presence of pointless displays of precious metals.

Of course I noticed, I’m a thief, remember?

It was strange, though. Usually when I’m prowling around a house like this, there are gilt picture frames, gold statues, silver urns, the sort of thing that thieves like me love to pick up and fence later. The Arkenhill manor had none of that. It was possible he’d already sold off the most valuable items in order to bring more money into his coffers, but that would be directly counter to what Shaw had indicated in his file. More likely, looking around as I made my way through the house searching for the good lord, they’d never been there in the first place. There were no empty displays or obvious spots where something had been removed. I could respect that about him, at any rate, everything else aside. He wasn’t ostentatious, which revised my theory on him using cult members as free labour for his own ends and pushed it more toward him being a true believer.

On the second floor I finally located a suite of rooms that appeared to be what I was looking for. A secretary, currently unoccupied, guarded a closed walnut door from a small array of chairs. This appeared to be the waiting area for his lordship’s audience. I made a surreptitious test of the door, found it locked and took steps to remedy that fact in short order. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me, like I had every right to be there. I wouldn’t surprise anyone by entering that way, but I wouldn’t be caught off-guard, either.

Turns out, I needn’t have bothered. The room was empty of people, save for yours truly. I couldn’t have asked, wished or begged for a better set up. Offices have a wonderful tendency to contain all manner of useful information that a sneaky bastard could find handy or valuable. Given the good lord’s involvement with Twilight’s Hammer, I was fairly certain that even a few minutes alone here would net me quite the treasure trove to sell off to Turner or pass on to Shaw.

I wasted no time, immediately setting to rifling through his desk and the small filing cabinet next to it. I didn’t come up with anything marked “Plans for the End of the World,” but I did find his ledger, which is always a good source of information. I tucked that away into the pouch I wore on my back under my cloak and kept looking. I hoped to find something that would indicate what he was planning on using all those construction materials for, but came up empty. There was a pile of unresponded-to correspondence laying in a pile on the side of his desk, as well as a half composed letter on the blotter. All of that went into the pouch with the ledger.

I hadn’t been searching through his things for more than a quarter of an hour when I heard the door handle rattle. I made no effort to conceal what I’d been doing, he would find out soon enough, and moved to the hinge side of the door, pulling my hood and mask into place as I did so. I waited just long enough to determine it was actually Lord Arkenhill who was entering and not some hapless servant or underling.

Arkenhill, for his part, had to be given credit for not being completely oblivious. He’d taken two steps into the office before realizing something was wrong and turned to try to summon someone. That was about the point he met me, or, more specifically, my hand around his throat. Aside from the sounds of his strangled attempts at breathing, the soft click of the door latching was the only sound in the room for several long moments. For a moment, I considered just crushing his windpipe and being done with it. He tried to meet my eyes and glare me down, to put the upstart plebe in his place by weight of his authority, but the eye-rolling fear caused by the sudden realization of his own mortality lessened the impact of his gaze somewhat. There was clawing at my arm and hand, feeble attempts to fight back, get away, do something to escape my iron grip.

I watched the light in his eyes fade as his struggles became less and less substantial. Rest assured, I wasn’t going to kill him, but it worked to my benefit to have him be incapacitated for a few minutes. Mostly while I dumped him in his chair and tied him down.

What? Doesn’t everyone carry rope and/or leather straps on their person at all times? You never know when you’ll need them, after all.

I’d moved his chair out to the center of the room and tipped it over so he would be lying on his back when he woke. I speak from experience when I say that is a particularly difficult position to both escape and negotiate from. A lot of people seem to believe that when one is rendered unconscious, one remains that way for hours at a time. Sometimes, we should be so lucky. The fact of the matter is that generally, once knocked out, it doesn’t take long to wake back up, usually less than five minutes, particularly in the case of unconsciousness induced by strangulation.

I took a moment to regard the Lord Arkenhill, as it wouldn’t do to have the wrong man. Fortunately, I recognized the arched nose, pale complexion and receding hairline from our last encounter. He wasn’t all that much older than I was, all things considered, maybe in his mid-forties, though he wore every one of his years heavily. His face was already starting to sag a little, the bags under his eyes were starting to look a little full and his cheeks were starting to drop into jowls a bit. He’d had been sandy coloured hair at one time but it was rapidly losing the battle against the encroaching grey hairs and his hairline seemed to be in full retreat. My initial impression of him as not being ostentatious and somewhat unassuming was borne out upon seeing him in person again. Rather than the rich robes or over-designed clothes most nobles wore, Arkenhill favoured a more workaday dress: simple, durable clothing suitable for pretty much anything except meetings of high state. Regardless of other circumstances, I could at least respect that he didn’t lord his wealth over the have-nots of the world. Really, aside from the heavy gold signet ring on his right hand, he looked like just about anybody you would see in the streets.

I could tell he was starting to come awake again by the twitching and fluttering of his eyelids. I helped the process by patting him less-than-gently about the cheeks.

With the flat of my sword.

That had the desired effect, waking him fully and keeping him from calling or crying out. I stood above him, one boot perched at the edge of the seat of the chair and leaning one arm on my raised knee. I let the point of my blade rest on his shoulder, very close to his throat. Just so he didn’t get any funny ideas.

I had to give him credit; he was remarkably calm about everything. He glared up at me, obviously trying to figure out who I was. It was obvious he’d taken account of the situation and had figured out at least part of what was going on.

“You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that much,” he growled, and pointed with his chin, “There’s a safe behind the painting of Thoradin’s Wall. The key’s on my belt.” Direct and to the point, even if he was wrong about the point. I could almost like him, if not for that whole he tried to kill me thing.

“That’s good to know and I may put that information to use sometime, but I’m not here to rob you. I just want some information. Give me what I want and we all walk away happy."

His eyes narrowed, the wheels in his head really spinning away, “You’re one of Shaw’s dogs, aren’t you?”

I smirked behind my mask, “Formerly. I’m more freelance now,” I patted his shoulder with my sword, “Tell me everything you know about your associate Imaria Bloodstrike.”

He actually laughed, mocking though it was, “Friend, if you’re got her last name, you know more than I do.” He didn’t bother lying about knowing her, another mark in his favour. I pulled my mask down and pushed back my hood. There was no spark of recognition in his eyes, not that I really expected any.

“You probably don’t remember me, but you and some of your friends from Twilight’s Hammer tried to kill me a couple months ago,” There was the spark, together with a healthy portion of fear, “Relax. I’m not here to kill you. In fact, I was willing to live and let live. I mean, better luck next time, right?” I wore an easy smile, meant to reassure and relax, but even I could tell my face and eyes went hard, “Until that blood elf bitch decided she needed to make things personal and killed my best friend.”

Relief flooded his features, “Then I think we can help each other, friend. She’s been a pain in my arse since she was assigned here. You want her, you can have her and you can even keep the silver platter.”

I sheathed my sword and righted the chair, “You have my attention, tell me what you know.”