(1) Rupture
For all of her short life, Ceil has learned many lessons. As a child forced to be an adult far before she ought to have been, Ceil is, if nothing else, very aware of herself: her strengths, her flaws, her hastily learned lessons. She is no stranger to self-analysis; she doesn't hesitate to think on her actions, one of the lessons she's learned so well.
So Ceil thinks. And she thinks, and she dwells, and she obsesses, because Ceil Nightfury is incapable of doing anything with moderation.
But there has always been one lesson, among the many, that she has never learned very well. A lesson that has lurked in the long shadow of her half-blindness: Ceil has never, ever learned that it is a very unwise thing to lean into the sharp blade.
~
It hurts - goddess and stars, it hurts. The gulf between us, of all the things gone wrong and all the things gone right, it hurts. It yawns and aches and throbs and pulses and stabs. I've run out of words for how much it hurts, and there are simply no words for how much it hurts to stay away day, after day, after day. I am not, truly, a creature of self control, and I have never been a creature of martyrdom and deprivation. I am always a creature of the moment, of impulse and action and immersion. To keep myself from from the man my life has practically centered around, day after day after day for four long, bloody years is, far harder than I'd like to admit, more than I can bear.
I find myself straying - my eye turning south towards Stormwind, my hand reaching for the coins to bribe passage away from this place - often. As the long, harsh nights wear on, slow, cold hour after slow, cold hour, I realize more and more just how little control I really have over myself. Being away from him is too much like giving up the arcane; I can feel myself fraying at the edges, unraveling like cheap rope. And cheap is just how I feel - sold for little and made for even less. Is this what I've become? I'm no person, I'm simply a vessel, hollow, filled with wants and desires. So I walk away, further and further, and shackle myself to other things, cold things and bloody things, things to keep me from the ones I love. Because for as long as I was there, as long as I was in his life, and even now, I can be no person. Only something empty and filled with wants, or something empty and filled with love. Filled and filled and filled.
I cannot stop from thinking of him. Any shade of green, putrid or pretty, decaying or blighted or beautiful, puts me in mind of his eyes. I shred to pieces, thinking of his eyes, looking into mine, and never really seeing. For all he knew me - better, at times, than I thought I knew myself - I cannot be sure if he knew what he saw. If he knew of what each night brings me...or, more truly, doesn't bring me. As we grow, as we stretch towards the sun or moon or stars, as we blossom and sprout, we are supposed to become better. That's growing, isn't it? We become more, we learn our lessons, we improve. Our capacity to love increases. The number of those we care for, the ones the stars and moon have brought into our lives, increases. Doesn't it?
But I've stopped. Each day, as I was filled and filled with the love of him, with the love of our family, I felt the bottom fall from me. This empty vessel has a tear, a rent, a rupture, never to be whole.
I can't be sure of when it happened. The cold of the Northsea, mayhap, with the dead walking under me? The chill of Winterspring, with his blows echoing around the cabin? The staring sun of Nagrand, burning overhead during months of self-sentenced isolation? I only know, as others grew, as he grew (and grew and grew), I became only more and more crooked and twisted and stunted, like a dead thing myself. From this hole in me fell the love for my family that I should have felt. This hole drained away the desire to be one of them and to be one with them. All that was left was the love of a man who'll never stop giving to me, until he's empty.
And what if the love for him leaves from this fissure that's rent in the very core of me?
What if I stopped loving Tarquin?
What if I stopped loving?
Survival
Moderator: Guild Officer
Survival
(2) On the Subject of the Heart
I have been thinking often on the subject of the heart, of late, for a wide variety of reasons.
The heart is an item of interest for someone like me. It occupies my thoughts on both a professional and personal level. The heart, you see, pumps life's blood through the body. When this crimson river flows through the meat, there's a spark of life that sustains near all of us for the length of our existence, should all go as it should. The heart also swells and shrinks, tightens and explodes with feelings of love and sorrow or joy and misery. Emotion flows through the heart just as steadily as blood, and both are, I think, essential for our lives.
On a professional level, the heart is near sacred. To understand this, one must needs understand my profession, and what it is that I do, the very essence of it.
I murder people.
Oh, there's plenty of ways to fancy that up, quite a few pretty terms and flashy words and charming turning of phrases, but in the very heart of it (and oh, but how the use of the word pleases) is that I murder people. Often for coin, though there's other forms of payment and other reasons to kill.
There's many types of murder, which can be quite difficult to understand if one doesn't kill often or at all. There's murders of passion and fury; an argument turns to petty blows, but then those blows grow viscous and brutal. There's murders of malice and hate; enmity grows until one cannot stand the thought of this person alive any longer, that you must kill them if you've any sake of continuing at all without going mad. There's murders of defense; the lord's been looking at your sweet little girl with hungry, wolfish eyes, and you've only the recourse of the blade. There's even murders of need or survival; 'tis you and your comrade lost alone in the woods and oh, these woods are so dark and so lonesome and so very secretive and oh your stomach is an empty clutch of pain. I, in my expert opinion, would wager good coin that there's near as many kinds of murders as there are ways to die.
My murders are a varied rainbow of reasons and methods, but all, it needs to be understood, are done by my own hand. The hand of the daughter of the Warden Nightfury, she who upheld and enforced the centuries old law of the children of the stars. She who did not murder but whom executed in the name of justice and peace. The hand of the daughter of the Hunter Nightfury, he who walked the forests with weapon at hand to provide for his wife, his children, his neighbors. He who used every piece of the game he brought to the table, whom never wasted. My murders, for money or power or favors or just plain enjoyment, oh wouldn't they be such a sin to my mother and father? My murders have no mercy or justice and rarely even have any true need to them. My murders simply are.
As a murderer, the heart is of great interest to me. Since the heart is where life flows from, the heart can be an exquisite target. A deep slice, rupturing the walls of the meat, will cause that flow of life to become a tide, quickly, oh so quickly, rushing out of control, flowing over the channels it so vitally must fill. A simple stab, with just the fine tip of a dagger will just barely breech those same walls, or maybe just slice the edge of one of those great river-like channels; the blood will begin to seep, slowly at first, then faster and faster - just like tears, really. Tears always start slow, then grow heavier and heavier, wetter on cheeks. Since the heart is where emotions are focused and amplified, it's something like a musical instrument to a good murderer. A professional murderer must know how to play the heart masterfully. Fear, relief, joy, sorrow, regret, these are my music, and no song sounds as lovely when plucked from a quickening pulse. With my blades, I've mutilated many a heart, be it with a quick death or a slow one. With my skills, I've torn many a long and perfect song from a fluttering heart. But though I am such a master of the heart as a professional murderer, as a woman, it is my greatest weakness.
How aware are most folk, of their hearts? Every day, every breath, how many actually feel it beating within their chests, feel it pushing life and feeling through their bodies? In the past, I'd only been aware of it at moments of great pain or great joy such as my parents' deaths or the eve of my wedding. It grew tight, it hurt, it clutched and clenched and stifled my breath and my thoughts. Or it expanded, it grew huge in my chest, making me dumb-headed and giddy. These days, however, I'm aware of my heart each time it beats.
I think that each beat must feel the way it feels to have a keenly sharp blade stabbed through the chest cavity, past muscle and gristle, 'til just the very tip of the blade has slipped into the meat of the heart. Each beat my heart works around this imaginary knife-tip, blood seeping out like tears around the edges. What I was, the me that I could stand, the me that others could love, drains away while my heart beats and beats and beats, tight with the continued effort, each instinctive, uncontrollable pulse sending a renewed shard of pain through what's left of me. My song is one of constant pain (we're apart still) and loss (I left him behind), of fear (he'll find another) and panic (and oh, how he'll hate me). There's a part of me, I think the very most professional part of me, the murderer, that is damned well impressed with the slow song of my heart. It's a long aria, panic like strings, loss like woodwinds, pain like a deep, aching percussion.
I think, mayhap, that the only way to stop this song is to lean further into the blade, to shove it in deep. A shank right through the heart cuts any song short, doesn't it?
~
This is the lesson, one of the most basic for life to survive, the lesson Ceil cannot seem to learn.
Most living creatures share a very simple and universal bond of self-preservation: pain causes discomfort so that one is inclined to stop the pain. In other words, nearly all creatures know to pull away from the sharp blade, particularly when it is already bloodied.
I have been thinking often on the subject of the heart, of late, for a wide variety of reasons.
The heart is an item of interest for someone like me. It occupies my thoughts on both a professional and personal level. The heart, you see, pumps life's blood through the body. When this crimson river flows through the meat, there's a spark of life that sustains near all of us for the length of our existence, should all go as it should. The heart also swells and shrinks, tightens and explodes with feelings of love and sorrow or joy and misery. Emotion flows through the heart just as steadily as blood, and both are, I think, essential for our lives.
On a professional level, the heart is near sacred. To understand this, one must needs understand my profession, and what it is that I do, the very essence of it.
I murder people.
Oh, there's plenty of ways to fancy that up, quite a few pretty terms and flashy words and charming turning of phrases, but in the very heart of it (and oh, but how the use of the word pleases) is that I murder people. Often for coin, though there's other forms of payment and other reasons to kill.
There's many types of murder, which can be quite difficult to understand if one doesn't kill often or at all. There's murders of passion and fury; an argument turns to petty blows, but then those blows grow viscous and brutal. There's murders of malice and hate; enmity grows until one cannot stand the thought of this person alive any longer, that you must kill them if you've any sake of continuing at all without going mad. There's murders of defense; the lord's been looking at your sweet little girl with hungry, wolfish eyes, and you've only the recourse of the blade. There's even murders of need or survival; 'tis you and your comrade lost alone in the woods and oh, these woods are so dark and so lonesome and so very secretive and oh your stomach is an empty clutch of pain. I, in my expert opinion, would wager good coin that there's near as many kinds of murders as there are ways to die.
My murders are a varied rainbow of reasons and methods, but all, it needs to be understood, are done by my own hand. The hand of the daughter of the Warden Nightfury, she who upheld and enforced the centuries old law of the children of the stars. She who did not murder but whom executed in the name of justice and peace. The hand of the daughter of the Hunter Nightfury, he who walked the forests with weapon at hand to provide for his wife, his children, his neighbors. He who used every piece of the game he brought to the table, whom never wasted. My murders, for money or power or favors or just plain enjoyment, oh wouldn't they be such a sin to my mother and father? My murders have no mercy or justice and rarely even have any true need to them. My murders simply are.
As a murderer, the heart is of great interest to me. Since the heart is where life flows from, the heart can be an exquisite target. A deep slice, rupturing the walls of the meat, will cause that flow of life to become a tide, quickly, oh so quickly, rushing out of control, flowing over the channels it so vitally must fill. A simple stab, with just the fine tip of a dagger will just barely breech those same walls, or maybe just slice the edge of one of those great river-like channels; the blood will begin to seep, slowly at first, then faster and faster - just like tears, really. Tears always start slow, then grow heavier and heavier, wetter on cheeks. Since the heart is where emotions are focused and amplified, it's something like a musical instrument to a good murderer. A professional murderer must know how to play the heart masterfully. Fear, relief, joy, sorrow, regret, these are my music, and no song sounds as lovely when plucked from a quickening pulse. With my blades, I've mutilated many a heart, be it with a quick death or a slow one. With my skills, I've torn many a long and perfect song from a fluttering heart. But though I am such a master of the heart as a professional murderer, as a woman, it is my greatest weakness.
How aware are most folk, of their hearts? Every day, every breath, how many actually feel it beating within their chests, feel it pushing life and feeling through their bodies? In the past, I'd only been aware of it at moments of great pain or great joy such as my parents' deaths or the eve of my wedding. It grew tight, it hurt, it clutched and clenched and stifled my breath and my thoughts. Or it expanded, it grew huge in my chest, making me dumb-headed and giddy. These days, however, I'm aware of my heart each time it beats.
I think that each beat must feel the way it feels to have a keenly sharp blade stabbed through the chest cavity, past muscle and gristle, 'til just the very tip of the blade has slipped into the meat of the heart. Each beat my heart works around this imaginary knife-tip, blood seeping out like tears around the edges. What I was, the me that I could stand, the me that others could love, drains away while my heart beats and beats and beats, tight with the continued effort, each instinctive, uncontrollable pulse sending a renewed shard of pain through what's left of me. My song is one of constant pain (we're apart still) and loss (I left him behind), of fear (he'll find another) and panic (and oh, how he'll hate me). There's a part of me, I think the very most professional part of me, the murderer, that is damned well impressed with the slow song of my heart. It's a long aria, panic like strings, loss like woodwinds, pain like a deep, aching percussion.
I think, mayhap, that the only way to stop this song is to lean further into the blade, to shove it in deep. A shank right through the heart cuts any song short, doesn't it?
~
This is the lesson, one of the most basic for life to survive, the lesson Ceil cannot seem to learn.
Most living creatures share a very simple and universal bond of self-preservation: pain causes discomfort so that one is inclined to stop the pain. In other words, nearly all creatures know to pull away from the sharp blade, particularly when it is already bloodied.
Survival
(3) Buttons and Beads
It's terribly important to understand that I did not run away. I strive to never run, not after the Plaguefather and the endless chill of the Northsea. Though I feared and though I still fear, 'twasn't ever that I was running from the way the faces of my friends and family started to blend together into a single mass without any remarkable features, with nothing I recognized with care. 'Twasn't that I was running from the feeling of hollowness that started in my heart and soon consumed all of me.
I left because 'twasn't fair to them, and certainly not fair to him, who loves them near endlessly. They loved and cared for me, past all the shite I've done, past all the shite I've put any of them through. Past sin and crime and mistakes, they remained my friends and family, and I felt the love for them draining out of the leaking vessel of me.
I'll not lie - I am, at times, a greedy creature. I've wanted more than I'm to be allowed, and the pain it caused those dearest to me isn't something I can think about without the knife in my heart twisting and tearing. But even I cannot take all the love and care of my family and friends and feel nothing in return, I cannot give nothing back. Though I've done evil things, I don't think I'm truly an evil person. To remain there, to pretend, to act - 'tis crossing a line that even I won't tread. To pretend to love would make me a true monster.
And so I never ran. 'Tis a huge gulf between running away and simply walking away. No matter how hurried my steps may have been, no matter how silent my passage, I walked away.
~
"That's a pretty bead you've there," Jimmy Buttons said boldly from her side. She glanced to her right, thoughts breaking off, and blinked both tarnished silver eyes. Near her right eye hung the remarked upon bead; it was one of many braided into her long, unkempt hair, but by far the richest looking of the ornaments strewn through her dark locks. It was presumably ceramic, glazed and fired with a glossy finish, painted black with tiny bright colors like star bursts that seemed to twinkle on their own accord.
"Thank you," she replied with a smile that showed no teeth. Compliments from Jimmy Buttons were neither new nor welcomed. They'd been dancing this dance since the night 'Dalah Shadowfury' walked onto the Glacier's Mark, a scant day before the ship set sail over the frigid Northsea.
"But the bead--"
"Isn't near as pretty as either the hair 'tis braided into or the face it hangs near?" Dalah asked with a little twist to her smile. She kept the sharpness from her voice this time, because though persistent, Buttons wasn't yet an annoyance. The attention wasn't entirely bad; he couldn't have been much older than her and his friendly, handsome face was still clear of the wrinkles and wear that he'd certainly start to show soon, as any other sailor. He had a thick mane of wavy chestnut hair that, had it not been shoved under a knit cap so often, would probably turn to darling curls. Best of all were Jimmy Button's eyes - black and bright, they were often filled with laughter but still had the bright clarity of intelligence behind them, rarely clouded by drink or the exotic smoke like so many others of this crew, late at night. This was, presumably, why she and Buttons had been elected the deck's night watch. He was, by far, the most bearable company on this ship of piratical murderers, the worst for many reasons, of the Cartel's men and women.
Buttons gave a rueful little smile with just enough pout to endear but not entirely destroy his masculinity. He'd be practicing. "I was just going to say it wasn't as pretty as you. I think you're better with words than me, Shadowfury."
She let the twist fall from her smile, leaving it flat and hollow but still passable for real expression. She had recognized 'Buttons' as a surname early on; she'd read some where it was given as a name to children with no family names of their own, in places like Kul Tiras - bastards were named after small objects, never people. Buttons, Pins, Cups, Tins. It was an old fashioned style, but one still occasionally met children named in it, and it was obvious that given his station on a pirate's ship with a letter of mark from the Steamwheedle Cartel, this handsome lad wasn't from a high station.
"A friend made it for me, a while ago," she allowed, looking away from Buttons to the water. In her hand she held a brass telescope, metal surely chilled from the sharp air, though she couldn't tell through the thick woolen gloves covering her palms. The water was like badly made black glass; mostly smooth but broken by uneven waves. She could feel Buttons try to slip a little closer to her and didn't turn him away; any warmth was welcome in this chill. It was as close to her as he would ever get; elbows just brushing, a heavy black wool and fur cloak over a thick leather coat over a cable knit sweater over a sturdy leather cuirass over a tight silk tunic between his arm and her skin.
Jimmy Buttons was discarded as any kind of an option upon introduction. Because really, even if 'Dalah Shadowfury's' romantic life wasn't more complicated than the slowly rotting rigging of this old galleon, Jimmy Buttons accepted for himself a name that was deeply amusing and absolutely a scarlet mark of shame in this crass, obsessive human society. Dalah had no respect for some one who showed their shame to the world so very willingly and some one who allowed their parents' shame to become their own. Shame was, she believed, an intensely personal thing. What Dalah Shadowfury thought was not at all far from the thoughts of Ceil Nightfury. This was not a difficult persona to act.
"You must have some damned generous friends," Buttons grinned. Dalah kept her flat smile while inwardly, Ceil flinched. There was a glimmer in the distance, a shard of moonlight reflected onto something that wasn't water at all. In a moment, her smile was gone and she raised the telescope to her left eye.
"Not as generous as what I spy to the north north-west..." The smile didn't return, but a wicked smirk appeared as she and Buttons let the call ring out to the rest of the crew. A beauty of a mark, floating handsome and lonesome on black waves. A rich looking vessel, probably transporting a merchant as rich as his ship to Northrend, then on to Dalaran. It was a miracle of a treasure for one woman not ready and certainly not willing to talk about friends.
It's terribly important to understand that I did not run away. I strive to never run, not after the Plaguefather and the endless chill of the Northsea. Though I feared and though I still fear, 'twasn't ever that I was running from the way the faces of my friends and family started to blend together into a single mass without any remarkable features, with nothing I recognized with care. 'Twasn't that I was running from the feeling of hollowness that started in my heart and soon consumed all of me.
I left because 'twasn't fair to them, and certainly not fair to him, who loves them near endlessly. They loved and cared for me, past all the shite I've done, past all the shite I've put any of them through. Past sin and crime and mistakes, they remained my friends and family, and I felt the love for them draining out of the leaking vessel of me.
I'll not lie - I am, at times, a greedy creature. I've wanted more than I'm to be allowed, and the pain it caused those dearest to me isn't something I can think about without the knife in my heart twisting and tearing. But even I cannot take all the love and care of my family and friends and feel nothing in return, I cannot give nothing back. Though I've done evil things, I don't think I'm truly an evil person. To remain there, to pretend, to act - 'tis crossing a line that even I won't tread. To pretend to love would make me a true monster.
And so I never ran. 'Tis a huge gulf between running away and simply walking away. No matter how hurried my steps may have been, no matter how silent my passage, I walked away.
~
"That's a pretty bead you've there," Jimmy Buttons said boldly from her side. She glanced to her right, thoughts breaking off, and blinked both tarnished silver eyes. Near her right eye hung the remarked upon bead; it was one of many braided into her long, unkempt hair, but by far the richest looking of the ornaments strewn through her dark locks. It was presumably ceramic, glazed and fired with a glossy finish, painted black with tiny bright colors like star bursts that seemed to twinkle on their own accord.
"Thank you," she replied with a smile that showed no teeth. Compliments from Jimmy Buttons were neither new nor welcomed. They'd been dancing this dance since the night 'Dalah Shadowfury' walked onto the Glacier's Mark, a scant day before the ship set sail over the frigid Northsea.
"But the bead--"
"Isn't near as pretty as either the hair 'tis braided into or the face it hangs near?" Dalah asked with a little twist to her smile. She kept the sharpness from her voice this time, because though persistent, Buttons wasn't yet an annoyance. The attention wasn't entirely bad; he couldn't have been much older than her and his friendly, handsome face was still clear of the wrinkles and wear that he'd certainly start to show soon, as any other sailor. He had a thick mane of wavy chestnut hair that, had it not been shoved under a knit cap so often, would probably turn to darling curls. Best of all were Jimmy Button's eyes - black and bright, they were often filled with laughter but still had the bright clarity of intelligence behind them, rarely clouded by drink or the exotic smoke like so many others of this crew, late at night. This was, presumably, why she and Buttons had been elected the deck's night watch. He was, by far, the most bearable company on this ship of piratical murderers, the worst for many reasons, of the Cartel's men and women.
Buttons gave a rueful little smile with just enough pout to endear but not entirely destroy his masculinity. He'd be practicing. "I was just going to say it wasn't as pretty as you. I think you're better with words than me, Shadowfury."
She let the twist fall from her smile, leaving it flat and hollow but still passable for real expression. She had recognized 'Buttons' as a surname early on; she'd read some where it was given as a name to children with no family names of their own, in places like Kul Tiras - bastards were named after small objects, never people. Buttons, Pins, Cups, Tins. It was an old fashioned style, but one still occasionally met children named in it, and it was obvious that given his station on a pirate's ship with a letter of mark from the Steamwheedle Cartel, this handsome lad wasn't from a high station.
"A friend made it for me, a while ago," she allowed, looking away from Buttons to the water. In her hand she held a brass telescope, metal surely chilled from the sharp air, though she couldn't tell through the thick woolen gloves covering her palms. The water was like badly made black glass; mostly smooth but broken by uneven waves. She could feel Buttons try to slip a little closer to her and didn't turn him away; any warmth was welcome in this chill. It was as close to her as he would ever get; elbows just brushing, a heavy black wool and fur cloak over a thick leather coat over a cable knit sweater over a sturdy leather cuirass over a tight silk tunic between his arm and her skin.
Jimmy Buttons was discarded as any kind of an option upon introduction. Because really, even if 'Dalah Shadowfury's' romantic life wasn't more complicated than the slowly rotting rigging of this old galleon, Jimmy Buttons accepted for himself a name that was deeply amusing and absolutely a scarlet mark of shame in this crass, obsessive human society. Dalah had no respect for some one who showed their shame to the world so very willingly and some one who allowed their parents' shame to become their own. Shame was, she believed, an intensely personal thing. What Dalah Shadowfury thought was not at all far from the thoughts of Ceil Nightfury. This was not a difficult persona to act.
"You must have some damned generous friends," Buttons grinned. Dalah kept her flat smile while inwardly, Ceil flinched. There was a glimmer in the distance, a shard of moonlight reflected onto something that wasn't water at all. In a moment, her smile was gone and she raised the telescope to her left eye.
"Not as generous as what I spy to the north north-west..." The smile didn't return, but a wicked smirk appeared as she and Buttons let the call ring out to the rest of the crew. A beauty of a mark, floating handsome and lonesome on black waves. A rich looking vessel, probably transporting a merchant as rich as his ship to Northrend, then on to Dalaran. It was a miracle of a treasure for one woman not ready and certainly not willing to talk about friends.
Survival
(4) A Treatise on Fear
The ship sat anchored on the black, choppy waves. Sailing on the Northsea was a task to be undertaken only with the utmost care; the ocean floor was tricky and the currents even trickier. The closer a vessel got to Northrend, the more hazardous the way became with icebergs hiding under the frigid waters and winds knife-sharp to batter sails. The merchant ship Trader's Treatise had anchored instead of braving the possibility of waves worse through the black night, leaving only a single man to keep watch in the freezing night.
It wasn't entirely unintelligent to leave only one set of eyes for such a rich ship; the Northsea was notably short on pirates. Most of the pirates in Northrend kept to the shores and harbors of the continent, not straying far into the open sea. The north was a bad place for pirates; the work was hard with the chill and the constant bad weather, the ships they preyed upon were often staffed with adventurers and soldiers on their way to clash with the Scourge, and rumors and legends of undead sea beasts and water dragons abounded.
However, the Glacier's Mark was a very special case with a very special crew.
~
People like me, murderers, we like the fear of others. If the death of the heart is a song, then fear is the solo vocalist, the star of the production. You can tell when the fear hits those high notes: there's this beautiful wild and uncontrollable instinct of terror in the eyes. When you have that fear in a person's eyes they're both their most vulnerable and their most dangerous. That instinctive fear, that fight-or-flight is where, as a murderer, art comes into play. A thug or a soldier will often simply shove the blade in deep, or swing the hammer, or pull the trigger at this point. It's a form of mercy to not let one suffer through this uncontrollable, entirely natural terror for very long. But an artistic murderer can pluck the strings of the heart here and watch that terror become malleable, like a fine sculpting clay.
~
The crew of the Glacier's Mark roused themselves with surprising speed and eagerness for it being the darkest, coldest hour of the night, especially considering how many of them had gone to bed suffering the affects of overindulgence in both dusts and drink. But each pirate that came up from under-deck was exceptionally clear-eyed and ready, with gleaming blades and polished muskets. Rowdy Rodrik, a Gilnean man huge enough to loom over even Dalah, gave her a wide smile that displayed broken teeth.
"S'a good lass that brings such luck, ayuh? Keen eyes yuh got, " he chortled, raking his eyes over her. She gave a mild smile in return, tripe-checking the sharpness of the hatchets on her belt.
"It's no luck I've brought to them," she said, nodding across the waves towards the merchant's vessel the Glacier's Mark was cleanly and silently approaching. Though old and battered, the Glacier's Mark was still a galleon of good make and decent enough upkeep; stable and speedy even over the dangerous waters of the Northsea. Rowdy Rodrik gave a huge laugh that earned him a reproachful stare from the first mate, a withered goblin called Gearcrunch. The stare did little to quiet the huge man. Rodrik didn't mind if the prey heard him coming since fleeing was simply a delicious part of this game they played on the open sea. Most of the crew probably agreed with him.
This was the crew of the Glacier's Mark; murderers all, killers so in love with their art that even the Steamwheedle Cartel was forced to be careful and cautious with their placement. These were men and women who willingly suffered the cold and the danger of the black Northsea for the freedom of unquestioned killing. These were no pirates to run up the colors and let their prey surrender in fear. These pirates didn't want surrender at all. The crew of Glacier's Mark were some of the worst pirates known to Azeroth, but somewhat more than capable killers. The cold did nothing to freeze their bloodlust, the thought of battle with adventurers only roused them quicker to action, and sea beasts or water dragons, the crew unanimously believed, had nothing on their own host of sins.
~
Fear is a great motivator, both of others and of oneself, but fear can also trap us, lock our knees and dig our heels down. I am no stranger at all to fear; my fears have slept in my head, laid curled in my arms and huddled me close through frigid, dead nights. Perhaps that is why I've discovered such a great enjoyment of the fear in those I kill; in knowing that I can take the largest, fiercest monster of a man and break him down into the crying little child I was once. To know that though these fears have lived with me night after night, I am able to control that fear, to sculpt it, in others. To know that while I am fear's victim, I am also its mistress.
~
Black sails, a black hull, the crew's dark clothing, nothing gave them away as they slid through the night to sidle up near the Trader's Treatise.
"Ready the ropes," called Gearcrunch from the forecastle deck, his creaking voice low. Though his voice came soft, most of the crew was alert for commands and leaped into readiness. Dalah was in the rigging and finally finished untangling the spider's web of raiding ropes. She selected her own strand and hooked herself to the rigging by only a single foot, while she clutched her rope with one long leg and one strong arm, free hand dangling, hatchet ready. Rowdy Rodrik, two yards below her, stood on the deck's railing and caught the rope she tossed down to him. He looked up at her agile display and his broken smile grew with appreciation.
"More'n keen eyes, lovely lass," he muttered coarsely. Dalah kept looking ahead, as if she hadn't heard. The Trader's Treatise was easily visible to the naked eye now, the Mark's crew could count the planks of rich wood that made up the hull. Gearcrunch nimbly raced off the forecastle and onto the main deck. He stood over a very specific spot, the board of the deck there scuffed and worn and marked with a scarred X. Some of the crew stared with panting eagerness as Gearcrunch raised his cane over this X, while the rest looked at the Treatise.
Gearcrunch slammed his cane down onto the marked X and the gunners below didn't hesitate as the familiar thud echoed around the under-deck. The guns of the Glacier's Mark exploded to life, pulping the Treatise's rudder. The merchant's ship awoke then; the single lookout, presumably half asleep and numbed by the cold, gave a sudden scream of warning. The Trader's Treatise floundered in the water, rocking back and forth without much control as the Glacier's Mark slide perfectly up to its side, snug as dancers at a country ball.
"Planks ready!" Gearcrunch boomed in a voice far too loud and far too deep to be coming from such a tiny goblin. The secondary wave of crew, Jimmy Buttons included, rushed up to the gaps in the railing with long planks in hand, ready to connect the two ships. However, it was the next command the crew had been waiting for with deep eagerness. The next command broke any attempt at control the crew of the Glacier's Mark had been exerting. "Ropes, away!"
~
Though it holds completely true that I chose to walk away, that though I walked fast, 'twas still walking, I cannot deny that a fear was my motivation. That it was a very specific fear that kicked my knees loose and shoved my feet on this path. Though I hated what I have become, though I struggled to find the faces of my friends in the lumps of flesh their faces had become, I held fast to the idea of who they - who he - wanted me to be. I buried the fear down deep and kept trying, kept striving. I let myself go time after time; I walked away but always came back to him, to them. I am not a creature of self-control; though I felt it unfair to them, and I felt myself becoming a monster who could not care, I still returned. It hurt far too much to be away from Tarquin, and where Tarquin is, that is where our family is.
That is the thought that spurred my fear.
It was a day not long at all after Angrathar. My dreams, ever plaguing me as they are, intensified after seeing the Bloody Prince in all his terrible glory. The fear that consumed my senses and mind there was unlike anything I had ever felt - I was there, yet I was not. It was like the fear threw a blanket over my senses and my thoughts drifted away from my quaking hands and weakened knees. My dreams let me feel this over and over and over. It let me remember how I could only think of getting my own sorry arse from the field, and then, a moment, later, how I could get free with Tarquin. I thought of no other. Only him, only me. Even when I looked about and saw him dragging away Sonya, the one I call my very own sister, I thought not of her. Only him.
And in my dreams, I saw Threnn there, in the snow. In my dreams, she wore a simple linen shift, not her armor. In my dreams, I saw her shift turn crimson at the waist and vivid blood run onto the snow as her life and the life of that babe bled away. And in my dreams, when she slumped to the ground, dead and white as the snow, it 'twasn't Threnn any longer but my daughter. Our daughter. The child he has wanted so badly. The child I promised him. Then the real fear consumed me, no longer distant, with no longer a barrier between my thoughts and my senses. This was all I could think of, then, through my dawning panic: if I can't love our family, how will I ever be able to love our child?
~
Rowdy Rodrik led the charge with a bellow that rivaled Gearcrunch's for volume, though his bellow was wordless, nearly a roar. He swung through the night, followed barely a split second afterwards by the ropes-crew, Dalah among them. Rowdy Rodrik landed on his feet hard enough to rock the main deck of the Treatise and immediately went to arms with one of the cargo's guards, an obvious landlubber in pieces of plate armor. Rodrik was already laughing as he spotted the man.
"Dumbshite! Ain't no one evir tell yuh armor's a bad idea on the fuckin' sea?!"
The guard didn't reply, he only blocked the pick-axe with a shield and swung at Rodrik with his opposing hand in which he held a simple longblade. Rodrik kept booming with laughter as he left the pick-axe buried in the guard's shield and stepped close, inside the other man's reach, before the longblade could do anything more but tear a rent in the pirate's oilcloth cloak. The huge Gilnean grabbed the guard by his arms and lifted him up, laughing still. He whirled about and pitched the man over the deck's railing with ease. Rodrik paused only to listen to the sound of heavy armor hitting freezing water.
~
And so away I took myself, to a place where I can drown my fear in the fear of others. Where the shade of a babe not yet born cannot haunt, for I'm too busy making new ghosts to plague the night.
Fear, so they say, exists solely to push us to seek safety. This is what I am. This is safe.
~
While the battle joined, Dalah dropped in a clean crouch onto the main deck. As she landed she was already holding out one hatchet to meet the quick blow that one of the Treatise's crew threw at her; the edge of the crewman's cutlass clanged loud against the wide axe-blade. She breathed a happy sigh at the sound and lunged forward from the balls of her feet, leaping straight up into the crewman's face, drawing her second hatchet as she moved with a jingle of the beads and trinkets in her matted hair. The crewman, an older man of obvious Arathi heritage, snarled at her through lips chapped from the northern cold. Dalah smiled charmingly back even while they traded hard blows, cutlass attempting to slip past hatchet's guard.
"'ey, elfie!" The shout came from a thick Zandali accent and Dalah didn't need to look in the direction to know which of her crew-mates was heckling her. The troll, Sul'wassa, didn't like her on race alone, unsurprisingly, and they hadn't gone a day so far on the sea without trading verbal blows. "Why aren't yah usin' a cutlass like a proper pirate, eh?!"
Dalah's smile sharpened as she continued to trade blows with the Treatise's crewman, tossing her dread-locked hair over her shoulder. "There's good reason for that, darlin'," she drawled, barely breathless. This quipping and lack of effort seemed to anger the crewman further, the strikes and slashes of his cutlasses coming faster and more accurate. He was good, and Dalah was truly dancing to get around his blades.
"Can't be handlin' that much blade, elfie girl? Better with a staff, could be? A nice, hard rod?" Sul'wassa cackled while he crouched over a body and shamelessly looted it.
"Oh, no," Dalah said, wrinkling her nose at the crewman she fought. He cried something too angry to decipher, and tried to run her through with a powerful stab. Dalah's eyes widened but she kept talking, sweeping the stab away with a scooping motion of one hatchet, while she spun in an odd, unusual motion. Turning on her boot, the spin moved her into the crewman's reach, inside of his guard, and she looped one of her arms over his outstretched limb. "No priest will let me use a sword, these days!"
Sul'wassa looked up at the elf, locked in her strange dance step with the Treatise's crewman. Both crewman and pirate looked equally confused, though the one with the elf's back against him started to look triumphant. Sul'wassa cocked his head, not moving at all to help her. "Eh?"
"'Tis against all the religions there are..." Dalah began, as the Treatise's crewman deftly reversed his grip on his free cutlass. The blade's tip faced Dalah's vulnerable torso, her reach and evasion dampened by her grapple of his arm. The Treatise's crewman stabbed the blade home, a steady, true strike for the elf's breast. A moment later, he coughed blood, the blade protruding from his own chest, cut clear through his leather breastplate. Dalah was crouched at his feet, as she had dropped faster than a blink before the cutlass's blade even skimmed her woolen cloak. "Because, you see, I'd be better than all of the gods."
~
Ooch. Sorry, Loche, I've stolen your line.
The ship sat anchored on the black, choppy waves. Sailing on the Northsea was a task to be undertaken only with the utmost care; the ocean floor was tricky and the currents even trickier. The closer a vessel got to Northrend, the more hazardous the way became with icebergs hiding under the frigid waters and winds knife-sharp to batter sails. The merchant ship Trader's Treatise had anchored instead of braving the possibility of waves worse through the black night, leaving only a single man to keep watch in the freezing night.
It wasn't entirely unintelligent to leave only one set of eyes for such a rich ship; the Northsea was notably short on pirates. Most of the pirates in Northrend kept to the shores and harbors of the continent, not straying far into the open sea. The north was a bad place for pirates; the work was hard with the chill and the constant bad weather, the ships they preyed upon were often staffed with adventurers and soldiers on their way to clash with the Scourge, and rumors and legends of undead sea beasts and water dragons abounded.
However, the Glacier's Mark was a very special case with a very special crew.
~
People like me, murderers, we like the fear of others. If the death of the heart is a song, then fear is the solo vocalist, the star of the production. You can tell when the fear hits those high notes: there's this beautiful wild and uncontrollable instinct of terror in the eyes. When you have that fear in a person's eyes they're both their most vulnerable and their most dangerous. That instinctive fear, that fight-or-flight is where, as a murderer, art comes into play. A thug or a soldier will often simply shove the blade in deep, or swing the hammer, or pull the trigger at this point. It's a form of mercy to not let one suffer through this uncontrollable, entirely natural terror for very long. But an artistic murderer can pluck the strings of the heart here and watch that terror become malleable, like a fine sculpting clay.
~
The crew of the Glacier's Mark roused themselves with surprising speed and eagerness for it being the darkest, coldest hour of the night, especially considering how many of them had gone to bed suffering the affects of overindulgence in both dusts and drink. But each pirate that came up from under-deck was exceptionally clear-eyed and ready, with gleaming blades and polished muskets. Rowdy Rodrik, a Gilnean man huge enough to loom over even Dalah, gave her a wide smile that displayed broken teeth.
"S'a good lass that brings such luck, ayuh? Keen eyes yuh got, " he chortled, raking his eyes over her. She gave a mild smile in return, tripe-checking the sharpness of the hatchets on her belt.
"It's no luck I've brought to them," she said, nodding across the waves towards the merchant's vessel the Glacier's Mark was cleanly and silently approaching. Though old and battered, the Glacier's Mark was still a galleon of good make and decent enough upkeep; stable and speedy even over the dangerous waters of the Northsea. Rowdy Rodrik gave a huge laugh that earned him a reproachful stare from the first mate, a withered goblin called Gearcrunch. The stare did little to quiet the huge man. Rodrik didn't mind if the prey heard him coming since fleeing was simply a delicious part of this game they played on the open sea. Most of the crew probably agreed with him.
This was the crew of the Glacier's Mark; murderers all, killers so in love with their art that even the Steamwheedle Cartel was forced to be careful and cautious with their placement. These were men and women who willingly suffered the cold and the danger of the black Northsea for the freedom of unquestioned killing. These were no pirates to run up the colors and let their prey surrender in fear. These pirates didn't want surrender at all. The crew of Glacier's Mark were some of the worst pirates known to Azeroth, but somewhat more than capable killers. The cold did nothing to freeze their bloodlust, the thought of battle with adventurers only roused them quicker to action, and sea beasts or water dragons, the crew unanimously believed, had nothing on their own host of sins.
~
Fear is a great motivator, both of others and of oneself, but fear can also trap us, lock our knees and dig our heels down. I am no stranger at all to fear; my fears have slept in my head, laid curled in my arms and huddled me close through frigid, dead nights. Perhaps that is why I've discovered such a great enjoyment of the fear in those I kill; in knowing that I can take the largest, fiercest monster of a man and break him down into the crying little child I was once. To know that though these fears have lived with me night after night, I am able to control that fear, to sculpt it, in others. To know that while I am fear's victim, I am also its mistress.
~
Black sails, a black hull, the crew's dark clothing, nothing gave them away as they slid through the night to sidle up near the Trader's Treatise.
"Ready the ropes," called Gearcrunch from the forecastle deck, his creaking voice low. Though his voice came soft, most of the crew was alert for commands and leaped into readiness. Dalah was in the rigging and finally finished untangling the spider's web of raiding ropes. She selected her own strand and hooked herself to the rigging by only a single foot, while she clutched her rope with one long leg and one strong arm, free hand dangling, hatchet ready. Rowdy Rodrik, two yards below her, stood on the deck's railing and caught the rope she tossed down to him. He looked up at her agile display and his broken smile grew with appreciation.
"More'n keen eyes, lovely lass," he muttered coarsely. Dalah kept looking ahead, as if she hadn't heard. The Trader's Treatise was easily visible to the naked eye now, the Mark's crew could count the planks of rich wood that made up the hull. Gearcrunch nimbly raced off the forecastle and onto the main deck. He stood over a very specific spot, the board of the deck there scuffed and worn and marked with a scarred X. Some of the crew stared with panting eagerness as Gearcrunch raised his cane over this X, while the rest looked at the Treatise.
Gearcrunch slammed his cane down onto the marked X and the gunners below didn't hesitate as the familiar thud echoed around the under-deck. The guns of the Glacier's Mark exploded to life, pulping the Treatise's rudder. The merchant's ship awoke then; the single lookout, presumably half asleep and numbed by the cold, gave a sudden scream of warning. The Trader's Treatise floundered in the water, rocking back and forth without much control as the Glacier's Mark slide perfectly up to its side, snug as dancers at a country ball.
"Planks ready!" Gearcrunch boomed in a voice far too loud and far too deep to be coming from such a tiny goblin. The secondary wave of crew, Jimmy Buttons included, rushed up to the gaps in the railing with long planks in hand, ready to connect the two ships. However, it was the next command the crew had been waiting for with deep eagerness. The next command broke any attempt at control the crew of the Glacier's Mark had been exerting. "Ropes, away!"
~
Though it holds completely true that I chose to walk away, that though I walked fast, 'twas still walking, I cannot deny that a fear was my motivation. That it was a very specific fear that kicked my knees loose and shoved my feet on this path. Though I hated what I have become, though I struggled to find the faces of my friends in the lumps of flesh their faces had become, I held fast to the idea of who they - who he - wanted me to be. I buried the fear down deep and kept trying, kept striving. I let myself go time after time; I walked away but always came back to him, to them. I am not a creature of self-control; though I felt it unfair to them, and I felt myself becoming a monster who could not care, I still returned. It hurt far too much to be away from Tarquin, and where Tarquin is, that is where our family is.
That is the thought that spurred my fear.
It was a day not long at all after Angrathar. My dreams, ever plaguing me as they are, intensified after seeing the Bloody Prince in all his terrible glory. The fear that consumed my senses and mind there was unlike anything I had ever felt - I was there, yet I was not. It was like the fear threw a blanket over my senses and my thoughts drifted away from my quaking hands and weakened knees. My dreams let me feel this over and over and over. It let me remember how I could only think of getting my own sorry arse from the field, and then, a moment, later, how I could get free with Tarquin. I thought of no other. Only him, only me. Even when I looked about and saw him dragging away Sonya, the one I call my very own sister, I thought not of her. Only him.
And in my dreams, I saw Threnn there, in the snow. In my dreams, she wore a simple linen shift, not her armor. In my dreams, I saw her shift turn crimson at the waist and vivid blood run onto the snow as her life and the life of that babe bled away. And in my dreams, when she slumped to the ground, dead and white as the snow, it 'twasn't Threnn any longer but my daughter. Our daughter. The child he has wanted so badly. The child I promised him. Then the real fear consumed me, no longer distant, with no longer a barrier between my thoughts and my senses. This was all I could think of, then, through my dawning panic: if I can't love our family, how will I ever be able to love our child?
~
Rowdy Rodrik led the charge with a bellow that rivaled Gearcrunch's for volume, though his bellow was wordless, nearly a roar. He swung through the night, followed barely a split second afterwards by the ropes-crew, Dalah among them. Rowdy Rodrik landed on his feet hard enough to rock the main deck of the Treatise and immediately went to arms with one of the cargo's guards, an obvious landlubber in pieces of plate armor. Rodrik was already laughing as he spotted the man.
"Dumbshite! Ain't no one evir tell yuh armor's a bad idea on the fuckin' sea?!"
The guard didn't reply, he only blocked the pick-axe with a shield and swung at Rodrik with his opposing hand in which he held a simple longblade. Rodrik kept booming with laughter as he left the pick-axe buried in the guard's shield and stepped close, inside the other man's reach, before the longblade could do anything more but tear a rent in the pirate's oilcloth cloak. The huge Gilnean grabbed the guard by his arms and lifted him up, laughing still. He whirled about and pitched the man over the deck's railing with ease. Rodrik paused only to listen to the sound of heavy armor hitting freezing water.
~
And so away I took myself, to a place where I can drown my fear in the fear of others. Where the shade of a babe not yet born cannot haunt, for I'm too busy making new ghosts to plague the night.
Fear, so they say, exists solely to push us to seek safety. This is what I am. This is safe.
~
While the battle joined, Dalah dropped in a clean crouch onto the main deck. As she landed she was already holding out one hatchet to meet the quick blow that one of the Treatise's crew threw at her; the edge of the crewman's cutlass clanged loud against the wide axe-blade. She breathed a happy sigh at the sound and lunged forward from the balls of her feet, leaping straight up into the crewman's face, drawing her second hatchet as she moved with a jingle of the beads and trinkets in her matted hair. The crewman, an older man of obvious Arathi heritage, snarled at her through lips chapped from the northern cold. Dalah smiled charmingly back even while they traded hard blows, cutlass attempting to slip past hatchet's guard.
"'ey, elfie!" The shout came from a thick Zandali accent and Dalah didn't need to look in the direction to know which of her crew-mates was heckling her. The troll, Sul'wassa, didn't like her on race alone, unsurprisingly, and they hadn't gone a day so far on the sea without trading verbal blows. "Why aren't yah usin' a cutlass like a proper pirate, eh?!"
Dalah's smile sharpened as she continued to trade blows with the Treatise's crewman, tossing her dread-locked hair over her shoulder. "There's good reason for that, darlin'," she drawled, barely breathless. This quipping and lack of effort seemed to anger the crewman further, the strikes and slashes of his cutlasses coming faster and more accurate. He was good, and Dalah was truly dancing to get around his blades.
"Can't be handlin' that much blade, elfie girl? Better with a staff, could be? A nice, hard rod?" Sul'wassa cackled while he crouched over a body and shamelessly looted it.
"Oh, no," Dalah said, wrinkling her nose at the crewman she fought. He cried something too angry to decipher, and tried to run her through with a powerful stab. Dalah's eyes widened but she kept talking, sweeping the stab away with a scooping motion of one hatchet, while she spun in an odd, unusual motion. Turning on her boot, the spin moved her into the crewman's reach, inside of his guard, and she looped one of her arms over his outstretched limb. "No priest will let me use a sword, these days!"
Sul'wassa looked up at the elf, locked in her strange dance step with the Treatise's crewman. Both crewman and pirate looked equally confused, though the one with the elf's back against him started to look triumphant. Sul'wassa cocked his head, not moving at all to help her. "Eh?"
"'Tis against all the religions there are..." Dalah began, as the Treatise's crewman deftly reversed his grip on his free cutlass. The blade's tip faced Dalah's vulnerable torso, her reach and evasion dampened by her grapple of his arm. The Treatise's crewman stabbed the blade home, a steady, true strike for the elf's breast. A moment later, he coughed blood, the blade protruding from his own chest, cut clear through his leather breastplate. Dalah was crouched at his feet, as she had dropped faster than a blink before the cutlass's blade even skimmed her woolen cloak. "Because, you see, I'd be better than all of the gods."
~
Ooch. Sorry, Loche, I've stolen your line.
Survival
Warning: The following contains potentially disturbing content including graphic violence and innuendo.
(5) Mercy
Dalah pulled herself up above the battle for the Treatise, hanging one handed from the rigging to cast her gaze about the deck. She spied Sul'wassa, who'd moved from his looting to battling furiously with one of the Treatise's crewmen. His voodoo stick traded blows with the dwarf's hammer, with the stick coming out definitely short in the contest. It didn't take Sul'wassa long at all to retreat to his favorite trick - soon the hexed dwarf hopped around underfoot, frantic ribbits the only thing warning pirates and comrades both from stepping on him.
"Planks down!" Came Gearcrunch's call from the distance, followed swiftly a chorus of loud slamming as the Mark's pirates connected the two ships with wooden planks. Dalah noticed Jimmy Buttons as one of the first onto the Treatise, leaping headlong into the fray with pistol and cutlass, quite unsurprisingly stereotypical. The object of her search, however, wasn't noticeable from her perch. Dalah clucked her tongue in mild annoyance and swing herself down to the hatch leading down below.
~
I pegged him from the start. There's too much familiar to me about the man. His size, his hair, his country of voice. And then, there's that look in his eyes, which reminds me of someone else entirely, something maybe worse.
It wasn't hard to confirm; besides myself, there's only one other woman on this bloody boat, the cook. She's an old dwarven battle-axe, and besides which, no one dares to fuck about with the ship's cook. They didn't want to put me on this boat, I only made it onto the Mark by making it impossible for the Cartel to put me anywhere else. I've proven myself too lethal for any of the rest of the crew to fuck with me, but there's that look in only his eyes every time I lift a blade or take a life. I've seen that look before.
But I just can't think about that look, because I can't think about how Loche was back then.
~
The under-decks of the rich merchant's ship were lit with mage-made globe lights, flickering as the ship rocked to and fro. Dalah skulked in the shadows, quietly moving past her voracious and enthusiastic crewmates. The pirates were too busy breaking into the hold and rejoicing for the riches they found to pay very much attention to the shadows or the occasional glimpse of a silvery eye slipping by them. Dalah continued on past mate's quarters to the captain's quarters, certainly there the rich merchant was sure to--
"Get out of here, you filthy thieving bastard!"
--be.
The quarters were fairly large, very lavish accommodations fitting for such a rich vessel. Despite their size, however, Rowdy Rodrik loomed huge and seemed to take up more space than was possible; walls only served to make the Gilnean man bigger. His back was to the door and just around him Dalah could see the loud merchant. He was a gnome, so fat she had to trust in nature that he had legs under the bulk of his gut. He was safe for the moment behind his personal guard. This guard, unlike her master, was some one even Dalah had to pause and admire.
Her hair was dyed a bright-henna red but tamed back in a thick long braid that fell past her shoulder-blades. She was clearly a veteran of Northrend, dressed wisely in the style of the Hyldnir; warm furs and leathers that allowed her freedom of movement. She was tall and leanly muscled, wielding a barbed spear not entirely well suited to close-quarters, but clearly doing a good enough job of keeping Rodrik at bay with it. She had a currently useless wall shield across her back and a pair of wickedly curved single-hand swords on her belt. It took Dalah a moment of distraction to notice her face was notched with scars and her nose had been broken a countless number of times.
"Ah, shut yir fuckin' mouth, yuh wee thing," Rodrik dismissed the merchant, his eyes all over the guardswoman. "Yuh, though, yir a most lovely lass - may haveta keep a helm on that face of yir's, but o'er wise...heh."
The guardswoman was wise enough not to rise to Rodrik's bait, nor did she look intimidated, even by the considerable size of the pirate. She only waited with slightly bent knees, prepared for the huge man's attack. Rodrik held his yew and steel pick-axe in one hand, the other ready with a longknife that looked more like a dining utensil in his hand than a weapon. Dalah, just outside the quarters, exhaled slowly. Her lips moved soundlessly as she began counting backwards from ten.
At the count of eight, battle erupted in the quarters. Rodrik lunged forward with a feint to the left. The guardswoman opened herself up for just a moment, long enough for Rodrik to start moving past her spear's head. She twisted rapidly, sending the edge of the spear against the huge pirate's arm. She managed to get the spear's point tangled in his oilcloth cloak. With skillful twists and shoves, the spear tangled with Rodrik, sending him tumbling to the side, crashing into a table and chairs.
Dalah reached 'five' and spun around to meet the knife about to introduce itself to her kidney. Wielded by a figure dressed in tight, thin leathers, the knife slashed upwards swiftly, dancing from hatchet-blade towards Dalah's face. She looked over this second guardswoman with bright eyes and tilted her head just barely out of the way; the keen blade cleanly sliced off one of her thick plaits. This guard was so slender she was nearly skeletal, and the lack of protection and warmth of her clothing was noticeable in the few moments Dalah had to backpedal towards the doorway. Upon gaining her footing, Dalah easily crossed her hatchet under the guardswoman's knives and across her sunken belly, cutting leather and skin. The slow drip of black bile instead of blood confirmed her suspicions - Forsaken.
~
These two are good, better than I've seen in this iced over shite-hole of a sea. They're worth my attention, and the human woman, the one Rodrik wants, is far too good for the type of attention he offers. 'Tis a pity and a shame, but 'tis better to die against the blades of a worthy opponent then to be broken down to what that kind of man wants. I'll never let that look, the look glaring and burning and seething in Rodrik's eyes, that self-same look Loche once stared at me with, win again. I'll offer a better death than the kind of life he'd want for her. Certainly 'tisn't the first time on this voyage.
~
Inside, Rodrik threw his knife towards the guardswoman as he attempted to right himself and pulled away from her spear. She nimbly dodged out of the way of the knife thrown force enough to bruise bone. While she moved, Rodrik grabbed the spear's haft in his freed hand and braced it against his arm. With a roar that shook the room's eaves, broke the spear in half.
"Stop messing about, Bennet, and kill him!" The gnome merchant urged the guardswoman, who continued to ignore her employer in favor of staring at Rodrik with cold eyes. The pirate smiled back while he breathed deep and fast, sending his nostrils flaring. Though the guardswoman, Bennet, refused to break her eyes from his, Rodrik kept staring up and down her body with eager intensity.
"Don't listen to the wee fuck, let's mess about all eve long, lass," Rodrik invited with a chortle. "Gonna break yir legs first - yuh won't need to walk 'way, aye?" Bennet's nose just barely curled in disgust, but she remained wordless. Her actions spoke louder than anything she could have said; she drew the curved blades at her belt.
Meanwhile, the Forsaken's yellow glowing eyes barely met Dalah's silver as they danced. The elf was pushed back further and further with blindingly swift slices and slashes of the Forsaken's knives. The hatchets were on nothing but defense as swift footwork saved Dalah's life. The Forsaken, with a snort of annoyance from under her hood, lunged forward, both blades ready to stab. Dalah gave up all pretense and leaped backwards, through the doorway and into the captain's quarters. Rodrik glanced over his shoulder to see Dalah crouched down, hatchets crossed in a guard.
"'lo there, friend, mind a guest?" She asked brightly, though she was breathing hard, sweat on her brow. Rodrik didn't have the time to reply to his crewmate as Bennet dove at him, one blade at guard, the other stabbing for his eye.
"Lucas! There you are!" The gnome, backed up into the room's corner, exclaimed as he caught sight of the Forsaken. "Why weren't you here! With me! And Bennet! And this thug!"
For a moment, the Forsaken, apparently Lucas, met Dalah's eyes. Dalah rose carefully and backed up another step. She gave a sympathetic smile that wasn't returned, possibly because of the hood that hid the Forsaken's face.
"Busy, boss," grunted Lucas, and burst back into action.
Not quite back to back, Rodrik and Dalah fought their partners ferociously. Bennet and Lucas pressed their attacks harder and harder; Lucas feinted right and nicked Dalah's left leg, causing the elf to fall back a pace and spin off of Rodrik's huge arm. She ducked and turned, using the big man as a shield. Lucas ducked after her, only to find Rodrik's huge hand around her throat a moment later.
"Fuck off!" He roared. Dalah smiled as she disengaged and threw herself, a blur of dreadlocks and violence, towards Bennet. She interrupted the guardswoman's attack on the distracted Rodrik - as Bennet sought to bring her blades for Rodrik, they instead met hatchet and very quickly moving elf.
Rodrik and Lucas fell to fighting, though Rodrik's joviality gave way to fury with his next conquest being so stolen away by a trick of the battle's flow. Meanwhile, the gnome merchant wouldn't quiet.
"Kill them and be done with it! That stinking giant is wide open, Lucas! Bennet, slice off her ears!"
Bennet stepped up her speed against her new opponent, but Dalah was putting up a much better offense now, slipping past curved blades and slicing hatchet edge to leather over and over. She pressed near the human, just about eye-level and murmured in a soft voice, rough piratical tones dropped for a far more natural accent.
"You deserve better than him. I'm very sorry to kill you."
Bennet's eyes crinkled at the corners. "I'm very sorry to disappoint you."
Before Dalah could reply, there was a terribly loud crack through the room. A moment later, Lucas's broken body flew through the air and smashed against the wall near Bennet's head. The guardswoman lost her composure for just a breath, but the moment she attempted to trade barbs with Dalah, was also the moment of her doom. The distraction of Lucas's second death wasn't only icing on the cake of the maneuver Dalah had already set up. The elf trapped one of Bennet's arms against the wall. Before she could react, Dalah slid her hatchet down the length of the guardswoman's sword in an odd whirling motion, too close and too intricate to defend against. There was a scream of metal to metal that only ended when the hatchet sunk cleanly and deeply into Bennet's neck.
~
It's mercy. I think that it's the only mercy I know how to give.
~
Dalah wrenched her hatchet free and stood panting, hot under her furs and leathers. Bennet's body slumped at her feet, gouge in her neck pumping blood slick across the floorboards. Rodrik looked at Bennet's body and glowered at the twist of fate, but before he could say a word, the silence was split with the noisy sound of vomiting. Both elf and Gilnean looked over to see the slain guardswomen's merchant master kneeling in the corner, face as green as his ugly robe. Rodrik, red faced as a Eredar lord, swung his pick-axe in a great overhand blow down towards the bald plate of the gnome, which waited like a shiny bullseye.
"Ho, you two, they're laying down ar--" Jimmy Buttons stuck his head into the captain's quarters just in time to catch the end of both Rodrik's blow and the gnome merchant. He blanched and looked to Dalah, without words to interrupt her with this time.
"...yeesh," Dalah muttered, at the mess and shrugged at Buttons.
(5) Mercy
Dalah pulled herself up above the battle for the Treatise, hanging one handed from the rigging to cast her gaze about the deck. She spied Sul'wassa, who'd moved from his looting to battling furiously with one of the Treatise's crewmen. His voodoo stick traded blows with the dwarf's hammer, with the stick coming out definitely short in the contest. It didn't take Sul'wassa long at all to retreat to his favorite trick - soon the hexed dwarf hopped around underfoot, frantic ribbits the only thing warning pirates and comrades both from stepping on him.
"Planks down!" Came Gearcrunch's call from the distance, followed swiftly a chorus of loud slamming as the Mark's pirates connected the two ships with wooden planks. Dalah noticed Jimmy Buttons as one of the first onto the Treatise, leaping headlong into the fray with pistol and cutlass, quite unsurprisingly stereotypical. The object of her search, however, wasn't noticeable from her perch. Dalah clucked her tongue in mild annoyance and swing herself down to the hatch leading down below.
~
I pegged him from the start. There's too much familiar to me about the man. His size, his hair, his country of voice. And then, there's that look in his eyes, which reminds me of someone else entirely, something maybe worse.
It wasn't hard to confirm; besides myself, there's only one other woman on this bloody boat, the cook. She's an old dwarven battle-axe, and besides which, no one dares to fuck about with the ship's cook. They didn't want to put me on this boat, I only made it onto the Mark by making it impossible for the Cartel to put me anywhere else. I've proven myself too lethal for any of the rest of the crew to fuck with me, but there's that look in only his eyes every time I lift a blade or take a life. I've seen that look before.
But I just can't think about that look, because I can't think about how Loche was back then.
~
The under-decks of the rich merchant's ship were lit with mage-made globe lights, flickering as the ship rocked to and fro. Dalah skulked in the shadows, quietly moving past her voracious and enthusiastic crewmates. The pirates were too busy breaking into the hold and rejoicing for the riches they found to pay very much attention to the shadows or the occasional glimpse of a silvery eye slipping by them. Dalah continued on past mate's quarters to the captain's quarters, certainly there the rich merchant was sure to--
"Get out of here, you filthy thieving bastard!"
--be.
The quarters were fairly large, very lavish accommodations fitting for such a rich vessel. Despite their size, however, Rowdy Rodrik loomed huge and seemed to take up more space than was possible; walls only served to make the Gilnean man bigger. His back was to the door and just around him Dalah could see the loud merchant. He was a gnome, so fat she had to trust in nature that he had legs under the bulk of his gut. He was safe for the moment behind his personal guard. This guard, unlike her master, was some one even Dalah had to pause and admire.
Her hair was dyed a bright-henna red but tamed back in a thick long braid that fell past her shoulder-blades. She was clearly a veteran of Northrend, dressed wisely in the style of the Hyldnir; warm furs and leathers that allowed her freedom of movement. She was tall and leanly muscled, wielding a barbed spear not entirely well suited to close-quarters, but clearly doing a good enough job of keeping Rodrik at bay with it. She had a currently useless wall shield across her back and a pair of wickedly curved single-hand swords on her belt. It took Dalah a moment of distraction to notice her face was notched with scars and her nose had been broken a countless number of times.
"Ah, shut yir fuckin' mouth, yuh wee thing," Rodrik dismissed the merchant, his eyes all over the guardswoman. "Yuh, though, yir a most lovely lass - may haveta keep a helm on that face of yir's, but o'er wise...heh."
The guardswoman was wise enough not to rise to Rodrik's bait, nor did she look intimidated, even by the considerable size of the pirate. She only waited with slightly bent knees, prepared for the huge man's attack. Rodrik held his yew and steel pick-axe in one hand, the other ready with a longknife that looked more like a dining utensil in his hand than a weapon. Dalah, just outside the quarters, exhaled slowly. Her lips moved soundlessly as she began counting backwards from ten.
At the count of eight, battle erupted in the quarters. Rodrik lunged forward with a feint to the left. The guardswoman opened herself up for just a moment, long enough for Rodrik to start moving past her spear's head. She twisted rapidly, sending the edge of the spear against the huge pirate's arm. She managed to get the spear's point tangled in his oilcloth cloak. With skillful twists and shoves, the spear tangled with Rodrik, sending him tumbling to the side, crashing into a table and chairs.
Dalah reached 'five' and spun around to meet the knife about to introduce itself to her kidney. Wielded by a figure dressed in tight, thin leathers, the knife slashed upwards swiftly, dancing from hatchet-blade towards Dalah's face. She looked over this second guardswoman with bright eyes and tilted her head just barely out of the way; the keen blade cleanly sliced off one of her thick plaits. This guard was so slender she was nearly skeletal, and the lack of protection and warmth of her clothing was noticeable in the few moments Dalah had to backpedal towards the doorway. Upon gaining her footing, Dalah easily crossed her hatchet under the guardswoman's knives and across her sunken belly, cutting leather and skin. The slow drip of black bile instead of blood confirmed her suspicions - Forsaken.
~
These two are good, better than I've seen in this iced over shite-hole of a sea. They're worth my attention, and the human woman, the one Rodrik wants, is far too good for the type of attention he offers. 'Tis a pity and a shame, but 'tis better to die against the blades of a worthy opponent then to be broken down to what that kind of man wants. I'll never let that look, the look glaring and burning and seething in Rodrik's eyes, that self-same look Loche once stared at me with, win again. I'll offer a better death than the kind of life he'd want for her. Certainly 'tisn't the first time on this voyage.
~
Inside, Rodrik threw his knife towards the guardswoman as he attempted to right himself and pulled away from her spear. She nimbly dodged out of the way of the knife thrown force enough to bruise bone. While she moved, Rodrik grabbed the spear's haft in his freed hand and braced it against his arm. With a roar that shook the room's eaves, broke the spear in half.
"Stop messing about, Bennet, and kill him!" The gnome merchant urged the guardswoman, who continued to ignore her employer in favor of staring at Rodrik with cold eyes. The pirate smiled back while he breathed deep and fast, sending his nostrils flaring. Though the guardswoman, Bennet, refused to break her eyes from his, Rodrik kept staring up and down her body with eager intensity.
"Don't listen to the wee fuck, let's mess about all eve long, lass," Rodrik invited with a chortle. "Gonna break yir legs first - yuh won't need to walk 'way, aye?" Bennet's nose just barely curled in disgust, but she remained wordless. Her actions spoke louder than anything she could have said; she drew the curved blades at her belt.
Meanwhile, the Forsaken's yellow glowing eyes barely met Dalah's silver as they danced. The elf was pushed back further and further with blindingly swift slices and slashes of the Forsaken's knives. The hatchets were on nothing but defense as swift footwork saved Dalah's life. The Forsaken, with a snort of annoyance from under her hood, lunged forward, both blades ready to stab. Dalah gave up all pretense and leaped backwards, through the doorway and into the captain's quarters. Rodrik glanced over his shoulder to see Dalah crouched down, hatchets crossed in a guard.
"'lo there, friend, mind a guest?" She asked brightly, though she was breathing hard, sweat on her brow. Rodrik didn't have the time to reply to his crewmate as Bennet dove at him, one blade at guard, the other stabbing for his eye.
"Lucas! There you are!" The gnome, backed up into the room's corner, exclaimed as he caught sight of the Forsaken. "Why weren't you here! With me! And Bennet! And this thug!"
For a moment, the Forsaken, apparently Lucas, met Dalah's eyes. Dalah rose carefully and backed up another step. She gave a sympathetic smile that wasn't returned, possibly because of the hood that hid the Forsaken's face.
"Busy, boss," grunted Lucas, and burst back into action.
Not quite back to back, Rodrik and Dalah fought their partners ferociously. Bennet and Lucas pressed their attacks harder and harder; Lucas feinted right and nicked Dalah's left leg, causing the elf to fall back a pace and spin off of Rodrik's huge arm. She ducked and turned, using the big man as a shield. Lucas ducked after her, only to find Rodrik's huge hand around her throat a moment later.
"Fuck off!" He roared. Dalah smiled as she disengaged and threw herself, a blur of dreadlocks and violence, towards Bennet. She interrupted the guardswoman's attack on the distracted Rodrik - as Bennet sought to bring her blades for Rodrik, they instead met hatchet and very quickly moving elf.
Rodrik and Lucas fell to fighting, though Rodrik's joviality gave way to fury with his next conquest being so stolen away by a trick of the battle's flow. Meanwhile, the gnome merchant wouldn't quiet.
"Kill them and be done with it! That stinking giant is wide open, Lucas! Bennet, slice off her ears!"
Bennet stepped up her speed against her new opponent, but Dalah was putting up a much better offense now, slipping past curved blades and slicing hatchet edge to leather over and over. She pressed near the human, just about eye-level and murmured in a soft voice, rough piratical tones dropped for a far more natural accent.
"You deserve better than him. I'm very sorry to kill you."
Bennet's eyes crinkled at the corners. "I'm very sorry to disappoint you."
Before Dalah could reply, there was a terribly loud crack through the room. A moment later, Lucas's broken body flew through the air and smashed against the wall near Bennet's head. The guardswoman lost her composure for just a breath, but the moment she attempted to trade barbs with Dalah, was also the moment of her doom. The distraction of Lucas's second death wasn't only icing on the cake of the maneuver Dalah had already set up. The elf trapped one of Bennet's arms against the wall. Before she could react, Dalah slid her hatchet down the length of the guardswoman's sword in an odd whirling motion, too close and too intricate to defend against. There was a scream of metal to metal that only ended when the hatchet sunk cleanly and deeply into Bennet's neck.
~
It's mercy. I think that it's the only mercy I know how to give.
~
Dalah wrenched her hatchet free and stood panting, hot under her furs and leathers. Bennet's body slumped at her feet, gouge in her neck pumping blood slick across the floorboards. Rodrik looked at Bennet's body and glowered at the twist of fate, but before he could say a word, the silence was split with the noisy sound of vomiting. Both elf and Gilnean looked over to see the slain guardswomen's merchant master kneeling in the corner, face as green as his ugly robe. Rodrik, red faced as a Eredar lord, swung his pick-axe in a great overhand blow down towards the bald plate of the gnome, which waited like a shiny bullseye.
"Ho, you two, they're laying down ar--" Jimmy Buttons stuck his head into the captain's quarters just in time to catch the end of both Rodrik's blow and the gnome merchant. He blanched and looked to Dalah, without words to interrupt her with this time.
"...yeesh," Dalah muttered, at the mess and shrugged at Buttons.
Survival
(6) A Typical Evening for Atypical Folk
The galley of the Glacier's Mark was small and cramped, much like nearly every other part of the ship. The crowding was particularly dire during dinner time, but exceptionally bad at this dinner time. The crew was pressed tightly together on benches at their tables, sitting closer to each other than they'd ever previously deigned to. Personal space was not important, what was important, was sitting as far away from Rowdy Rodrik as possible.
"Nice night t'be out on watch," mused the ship's cook, a dwarven woman with her grey streaked hair in dozens of tiny braids. Not a soul on the ship knew her first name. She was only ever called by what was assumed to be her clan name, 'Copperblade.' Dalah grinned lightly, holding her bowl out.
"Considering myself damned fortunate. Blessed by the Goddess, even," she replied cheerfully, then glanced quickly over her shoulder at the huge man sitting alone. "What's got his beard in a knot, then?"
Copperblade frowned and started to ladle thick stew into the bowl. Hot food was a requirement for any meal on the Glacier's Mark; hot food was one the few things that could combat the Northsea's chill. "S'no question fer yeh t'ask, lass. Yeh got ta eyes, don' yeh?"
Dalah made a little face. "And yet, I was hoping so hard I'd be wrong. I hate to say it, but you've let me down." Copperblade snorted, unamused.
~
She's no replacement Delion, for as far as clever quipping goes, is she? Lucky enough, I suppose, I won't have to ever sneak in and shave HER on a dare.
~
"Good eve, ma'am," Jimmy Buttons said from behind the women, with even more cheer than Dalah's earlier. Whatever Copperblade was about to tell Dalah vanished because Button's rough hand was reaching for the fresh biscuits. The dwarf rapped him hard enough to leave a fast bruise on his knuckles with her serving spoon, splattering both elf and man with stew.
"Yeh lil' bastard, yeh keeps yer filthy paws off m'fresh bread, or I'll be shovin' yer head in th' cookfire! That'll thaw th' fucking isicles fro' yer brain!" She cursed roundly. Jimmy Buttons shrunk back and Dalah made her escape, laughing with liar's cheer.
~
And the weeks pass and pass and soon they're months. I might even make it a year.
For all this time, though, I can't quite fit into this lot. 'Tisn't just because of the lies, either. 'Dalah Shadowfury' isn't even much of a lie, she's just enough of a fib to blur Ceil Nightfury from the question. Each time one of these crewmen tries to befriend me, in their own way, I compare them to some one I've left behind. They're all found wanting, because, really, I don't want new friends. I don't want a new family. I want my family, and I want my friends, and I want my bloody Pig and my goddess-be-damned black-and-red.
But I also want to deserve it. I need to deserve it, I need to be the sort of person whom they can--
~
"She nearly broke my finger," Jimmy Buttons sighed as he approached Dalah's seat on the base of the bowsprit. She rolled her eyes, then turned about in place to face him, back to the cold sea.
"Even I could see the dirt under your nails," she answered, waggling her spoon at him. Buttons smiled and sat next to her, facing out to sea. They'd devised this method very soon after they'd been elected the night watch of the ship; they could sit near enough to share body-warmth but still see in all directions. Dalah was always careful to keep Buttons on her right. He, as always, seemed happy just to sit near her, both for the warmth and the opportunity. They ate in companionable silence, eyes on the Northsea.
~
Though 'tis far too late for regrets, I find myself wondering time and time again if I really needed to pull myself away so very far. I know I did it the worst way - no explanations, no conversations , no true goodbyes. But I knew if I did it the right way, I'd never leave. And I knew if I remained, there was a damned good chance I'd never be able to explain what's wrong with me. I barely know what's wrong with me, and stars know I've no idea how to make those who love me or even just like me understand that I've lost the ability to love and care for them without making them hate and despise me and whatever 'tis I've become.
And coming here? Where else could I have gone? I wanted, so very badly, to at least go with Loche, to be with the one person I absolutely know would never judge me for what I was or what I am or what I'll become. But acceptance isn't what I need, though neither is hate. I ought to be honest, I don't really know what 'tis that I ne--
~
Buttons broke the silence and the train of Dalah's thoughts. "It's a pretty night, isn't it?" He asked hesitantly, glancing upwards. There were very few clouds and the black sky seemed endless, score after score of tiny pinprick stars shining.
Dalah glanced up, spoon in her mouth. "S'aright," she mumbled around her food, then swallowed. "Hells of cold."
"But it's always hells of cold, here," Buttons replied, with a touch of confusion. "That doesn't change the night being pretty."
"It's always cold enough to be remarked on, says me," Dalah returned, pulling her cloak more tightly around herself. "Doesn't matter how bright the stars shine if your nose is falling off your face and into the drink, does it?"
"I thought elves were supposed to have more appreciation for nature and such."
Dalah snorted. "I thought humans were supposed to have more appreciation for honor and the Light. And such."
Buttons grinned, all handsome angles and cheery eyes. "You've the right of it, Shadowfury."
~
Me, right? Excuse me while I laugh so hard that stew comes back up.
~
The Northsea's waves crashed along the hull of the Glacier's Mark, beating out the rhythm of passing time.
The galley of the Glacier's Mark was small and cramped, much like nearly every other part of the ship. The crowding was particularly dire during dinner time, but exceptionally bad at this dinner time. The crew was pressed tightly together on benches at their tables, sitting closer to each other than they'd ever previously deigned to. Personal space was not important, what was important, was sitting as far away from Rowdy Rodrik as possible.
"Nice night t'be out on watch," mused the ship's cook, a dwarven woman with her grey streaked hair in dozens of tiny braids. Not a soul on the ship knew her first name. She was only ever called by what was assumed to be her clan name, 'Copperblade.' Dalah grinned lightly, holding her bowl out.
"Considering myself damned fortunate. Blessed by the Goddess, even," she replied cheerfully, then glanced quickly over her shoulder at the huge man sitting alone. "What's got his beard in a knot, then?"
Copperblade frowned and started to ladle thick stew into the bowl. Hot food was a requirement for any meal on the Glacier's Mark; hot food was one the few things that could combat the Northsea's chill. "S'no question fer yeh t'ask, lass. Yeh got ta eyes, don' yeh?"
Dalah made a little face. "And yet, I was hoping so hard I'd be wrong. I hate to say it, but you've let me down." Copperblade snorted, unamused.
~
She's no replacement Delion, for as far as clever quipping goes, is she? Lucky enough, I suppose, I won't have to ever sneak in and shave HER on a dare.
~
"Good eve, ma'am," Jimmy Buttons said from behind the women, with even more cheer than Dalah's earlier. Whatever Copperblade was about to tell Dalah vanished because Button's rough hand was reaching for the fresh biscuits. The dwarf rapped him hard enough to leave a fast bruise on his knuckles with her serving spoon, splattering both elf and man with stew.
"Yeh lil' bastard, yeh keeps yer filthy paws off m'fresh bread, or I'll be shovin' yer head in th' cookfire! That'll thaw th' fucking isicles fro' yer brain!" She cursed roundly. Jimmy Buttons shrunk back and Dalah made her escape, laughing with liar's cheer.
~
And the weeks pass and pass and soon they're months. I might even make it a year.
For all this time, though, I can't quite fit into this lot. 'Tisn't just because of the lies, either. 'Dalah Shadowfury' isn't even much of a lie, she's just enough of a fib to blur Ceil Nightfury from the question. Each time one of these crewmen tries to befriend me, in their own way, I compare them to some one I've left behind. They're all found wanting, because, really, I don't want new friends. I don't want a new family. I want my family, and I want my friends, and I want my bloody Pig and my goddess-be-damned black-and-red.
But I also want to deserve it. I need to deserve it, I need to be the sort of person whom they can--
~
"She nearly broke my finger," Jimmy Buttons sighed as he approached Dalah's seat on the base of the bowsprit. She rolled her eyes, then turned about in place to face him, back to the cold sea.
"Even I could see the dirt under your nails," she answered, waggling her spoon at him. Buttons smiled and sat next to her, facing out to sea. They'd devised this method very soon after they'd been elected the night watch of the ship; they could sit near enough to share body-warmth but still see in all directions. Dalah was always careful to keep Buttons on her right. He, as always, seemed happy just to sit near her, both for the warmth and the opportunity. They ate in companionable silence, eyes on the Northsea.
~
Though 'tis far too late for regrets, I find myself wondering time and time again if I really needed to pull myself away so very far. I know I did it the worst way - no explanations, no conversations , no true goodbyes. But I knew if I did it the right way, I'd never leave. And I knew if I remained, there was a damned good chance I'd never be able to explain what's wrong with me. I barely know what's wrong with me, and stars know I've no idea how to make those who love me or even just like me understand that I've lost the ability to love and care for them without making them hate and despise me and whatever 'tis I've become.
And coming here? Where else could I have gone? I wanted, so very badly, to at least go with Loche, to be with the one person I absolutely know would never judge me for what I was or what I am or what I'll become. But acceptance isn't what I need, though neither is hate. I ought to be honest, I don't really know what 'tis that I ne--
~
Buttons broke the silence and the train of Dalah's thoughts. "It's a pretty night, isn't it?" He asked hesitantly, glancing upwards. There were very few clouds and the black sky seemed endless, score after score of tiny pinprick stars shining.
Dalah glanced up, spoon in her mouth. "S'aright," she mumbled around her food, then swallowed. "Hells of cold."
"But it's always hells of cold, here," Buttons replied, with a touch of confusion. "That doesn't change the night being pretty."
"It's always cold enough to be remarked on, says me," Dalah returned, pulling her cloak more tightly around herself. "Doesn't matter how bright the stars shine if your nose is falling off your face and into the drink, does it?"
"I thought elves were supposed to have more appreciation for nature and such."
Dalah snorted. "I thought humans were supposed to have more appreciation for honor and the Light. And such."
Buttons grinned, all handsome angles and cheery eyes. "You've the right of it, Shadowfury."
~
Me, right? Excuse me while I laugh so hard that stew comes back up.
~
The Northsea's waves crashed along the hull of the Glacier's Mark, beating out the rhythm of passing time.
Survival
Warning: The following contains potentially disturbing content including sexual situations and graphic violence.
(7) Love Is
The black ship's flag couldn't be seen in the mist, but the colors weren't needed for the crew and a good deal of the passengers to realize exactly what was happening. The cry went up from a hoarse throat that sounded like it was struggling with the knife-sharp night wind.
"Pirates!"
Liah Carrew knew, in theory, what a pirate was. She'd read about them in histories and in romances, and her older brother had told her the tale of the pirate he once saw hanged in Menethil, rough town that it was. None of this, however, prepared her for this night, standing on the ship to Northrend in a dressing gown thrown hastily over her thick flannel night dress. She'd pulled on her ill-fitting snow boots and rushed above deck with the crew's call of emergency. She had barely remembered to grab her belt of regents and supplies along with her spell book. The book she clutched tightly now with the crowd of her fellow passengers stirring around her. She was attempting to formulate what spells would be of most use for the situation, when all hell broke quite loudly loose.
The pirate ship begun to pepper the Sophia with a booming hail of cannon-fire, crushing portholes and pulping hull. The Sophia's crew was already to action, but as the ship rocked, they grew frenzied. Their frenzy quickly infected the passengers and turned to far less useful panic. The group pressing about Liah broke into a riot of activity. Half the group, adventurers on their way to fight the Scourge, split away to aid the crew. The other half, mostly laborers or tradesfolk, rushed below deck to secure belongings and hide, should their fellow passengers and the crew fail in driving off the crew of invading pirates.
Liah, 19 years old and wearing snow boots too large for her feet, had no idea at all of where to go or what to do. Though she had trained long and hard in the Towers - the Sanctum of Stormwind and Azora's of Elwynn - and was no longer considered an apprentice, her skills in action were expectation and theoretical only. She had never faced a real fight and had not planned to in the near future; Northrend wasn't a bastion against the Scourge to her, it was simply the hunk of land that Dalaran, fabled city of magic and might, floated above. But her teachers had always told her to use her hard learned skills for the betterment of her fellows, for the betterment of strangers, for the betterment of civilization. Pirates, Liah was fairly certain, were not very good for anybody.
Just as she made up her mind to go aid the crew, the first pirate rushed through the last dregs of the group of other uncertain passengers Liah still stood with. Liah caught the stench of unwashed wool and sour sweat, and saw only a flash of a small club in the pirate's hand until the Sophia's mage-globe lights finally flickered on. Now Liah made out the bits of scalp, blood and unidentified matter splattered over the bludgeon. She felt her breath strangle in her chest with the thrill of real fear that burst through her. All academics and calm thought fled from her mind.
Something jogged into her hard from behind and sent her stumbling forward. The panic her logical thought process had belayed finally took her then, and she looked around frantically for a place to flee. All around here the battle began to rage. She saw a cackling troll pirate casts hex after hex onto the Sophia's first mate, turning the poor man from screaming bat to small frog to black cat and half a dozen other forms, all looking a mix between highly concerned and very angry. On the forecastle a furious duel broke out between Captain Williams and a pirate with a cutlass and a musket; the gun's loud retort echoed through the night and brought the fight to a end as quickly as it started. Captain Williams fell to the deck and the pirate leaped over his body to rejoin the fray. Liah shoved a hand over her mouth to muffle her cry of alarm and barely breathed as she realized where she stood. Her stumble had carried her into sight of the now deceased captain's quarters, with its huge riveted and oaken door. Liah broke into a run, over-sized boots thundering across the bloodied deck.
~
I've changed more than a little since I left Shadowglen to come to the Eastern Kingdoms. No longer a timid girl living in her brother's shadow, I am far more of a blatant, independent killer. Part of my place here on this terrible ship in this horrible sea with these despicable people is to help prove that to myself; Druid of the Wild Ceil Nightfury , would never have suffered herself here, and never, ever, by choice. I can't help to think that the girl I was then would despise the woman I am now, and I am not entirely sure what to feel about that. Conversely, I certainly can't hate who I was; that girl gained the strength to become who I am now. She had the fortitude to survive Degmarlee's Dust, the intelligence to pick good, lasting friends and the bravery to walk with Tarquin ap Danwyrith to his room at the Gilded Rose.
But she was also a little fool; taken in by the schemes and plots of two liars, neither of whom made good fathers. Idealistic, naive and delusional, losing her eye wasn't enough to knock some sense into her befuddled little head. Stars, but I was a fool.
~
The smell of fire carried on the night wind, an odd scent on the frigid Northsea. A small group of pirates huddled around the thick door to the now deceased captain's quarters. They muttered to each other, more than a little perplexed at the situation. One pirate, only a littler stronger on strategy than the others, steadfastly hollered threats and promises to whomever was barricaded inside. Rowdy Rodrik approached the group, tapping the heavy weight on the reverse of his pick axe's head against his meaty palm. Even Rodrik's sturdy steel and yew pick-axe looked like a toy against his broad palm and thick fingers.
"Wha's this, then?" He demanded in a grumble. Rodrik didn't need the grumble to communicate his foul mood, the glower his eyes squinted into and the frown his mouth bent in were more than enough to send the small group of his crew-mates back a few steps. Though the Sophia was a rich ship and a good haul, the fight they'd had to claim it left many of the pirates wanting, Rodrik more than most. The Sophia was likely their last mark before the long return to Stranglethorn Vale and Booty Bay, even now Captain and First Mate Gearcrunch were plotting the best pace in which to turn sail and head back south into waters the Cartel gave to other ships. While the fight for the Sophia was not nearly enough to satiate the crew of the Glacier's Mark for the long time until they were once again set free on the Northsea, much worse was how this entire voyage hadn't been nearly enough to satiate Rodrik's very specific proclivities.
"Got a mage keeping herself in there," hesitantly answered the crewman who'd been yelling threats through the door. "Door ain't locked, but every time we pull it open, there's a fuckin' ball o' fire in our faces."
Silence reigned for a moment while the crewmen watched Rodrik's deep-set frown slowly blossom into a wide smile that displayed his rotten teeth and vivid gums. "We got a fighter? Yuh bloody bastards, get outta m'way--" Rodrik didn't even bother finishing his sentiment before he was barging for the captain's quarters door. He paused only to grab a buckler from the arm of the insult-happy pirate. In a blink he had the door thrown open, charged inside and slammed it shut again before any of them could utter so much as a complaint. The crewmen looked at each other for a moment, then crowded back around the door to listen to the action inside. Rowdy Rodrik was well known for the shows he put on when he found 'his kinda girl.'
~
My father, the hunter and war-veteran Isil Nightfury, left me to my brother (who also left me, in the running pattern of Nightfury men) so that he could die in defense of our home. It took a very long time for my heart to truly understand my father's choice; even seeing him in again in Hyjal and knowing nothing would change his mind did not truly satisfy the wound his choice left in my heart. 'Twasn't until the Longest Night, when I, in the poorest section of a giant death-trap of a city, facing a horde of the Scourge in defense of a bar, really understood loving something (not someone) so much that you'd die for it. The Pig was my Hyjal, then, it represented everything I lived for at the time. It was our bloody home. 'Never Again,' fucking aye indeed. Scribbling those words in that old script on the banner, I understood my parents completely. Something in me healed that night.
But before I could forgive my father, I punished him by forgetting him and replacing him. I had an idealized father, a man who'd never leave me. Who'd never betray me, of course, who would lead me to avenge my home and bring peace to my heart. Tarq had one of these as well - Nikolai Diaconescu promised us homes, safety, freedom from tyranny. In a way, through their betrayal, their lies, and the horrors they put us through, our mistaken fathers fulfilled some of their promises. Without Absolution, we would never have had the Pig. Without the Exiles, we would never have had our Riders. Without Uthas giving us the fucking plague and without Nikolai abandoning us on the road while Tarq bled out his life and I pleaded for help, we would never have given up the idea of serving anyone, we would never have realized we needed no pretty ideals or glorious causes. Without the sins of these fake fathers, we would never have found our new family.
I don't think that ever stopped Tarquin for wanting to take Uthas's head and heart, and it has never stopped me from wanting Nikolai's life bleeding out all over the filthy road.
~
Liah sat on the edge of the deceased Captain Williams's bed, her spellbook at her side. Her hands shook and she felt a bone deep weariness she'd never before experienced. Keeping the pirates at bay had more than taxed her abilities; she'd never in her life had to keep such a steady stream of fierce offensive magic. Magic was not for battle to Liah, it was a delicate science, an art. Throwing balls of fire at that door was much like stabbing some one with a quill pen wet with ink or bashing a sculpture over their head. Something deep in her hated it and she cursed herself a fool again, the only thing keeping her from completely succumbing to panic.
Once inside the captain's quarters, she'd had plans of casting a teleportation spell that would sweep her back to Stormwind and the Wizard's Sanctum. From there she would be safe and able to alert the authorities, for what little good it would do the passengers and crew of the Sophia. From Stormwind, she could find a warlock to work their dark arts and summon her to bloody Dalaran. However, the moment she was locked into the captain's quarters, Liah burst into tears. Reaching for her belt of supplies, she found the pouch filled with runes of teleportation gone. She had a bad habit of not tying it tightly enough to her belt, and in her flight across the Sophia's deck, it must have fallen loose. The runes must have spilled out across the deck, surely crushed underfoot in the combat by now.
And so she sat on a dead man's bed and gathered her failing strength, waiting for the next attempt on her life.
It came much faster than she expected, too fast for her to even get off the first volley of fire. The largest human she'd ever seen in her life burst through the door and slammed it shut behind himself. He was dressed in hides and furs, or at least Liah thought they were furs; he had so much thick, wiry black hair that it was very difficult for her to discern where his beard ended and his clothing began. He had a buckler on one arm but wasn't bothering to hold it up in protection, this was less than surprising because his meaty fist was barely covered by the shield. The pick-axe in his free hand, however, was far more of Liah's concern.
He laughed at the sight of her, eyes frighteningly bright behind bushy black brows. "Shite, yuh already on the sheets fir me? That weren't much work!" He guffawed so loud it echoed around the small cabin.
Liah felt herself trembling in a mixture of exhaustion and fear. She glanced wildly around the cabin for a route of escape, but beyond the door the huge man was blocking, there was nothing but a latched porthole that led to the cold ocean. Between herself and the pirate was a large table, scarred with years of meals and map plotting. Besides that, there was little in the cabin; the late Captain Williams had apparently been something of a spartan gentleman.
"G-get out!" Liah snapped, her voice completely nonthreatening even to her own ears. She stood up, thick night dress and dressing gown just barely hiding the knocking of her knees.
"Or yuh'll toast me?" Rodrik questioned with an unhealthy degree of enthusiasm. "Go on, then, lovely. Light me right up." He didn't move and just grinned his wide, broken toothed smile. Something about this frightened Liah even more than if he'd just charged at her, but she didn't hesitate. It took a degree longer than a second - the longest second of her life - for her to summon a spell to her fingertips. It was only a scorching spell, far weaker than a true fireball, but it was all she could manage for the moment. She threw the spell as hard as she could at the pirate, which was to say, she lobbed it across the cabin with an unsteady hand.
The spell burst into heat and flame halfway across the room, an earlier detonation than needed, but Liah's concentration and focus were practically non-existent. The pirate brought up the buckler as the spell became visible; the weak heat and flames dashed against the metal and steel. The diminished effect of the spell barely even splashed past the edges of the little buckler. Once the spell was expended Liah felt light headed and dizzy, she would have swooned if not for the huge man's laugh and how it burst, far more impressive than her spell, through the room.
"All tuckered out, eh, lovely?" He asked as he discarded the buckler to the floor with a clang. "Too bad, I like me more of a fight, but s'been a long day fir the both of us."
Liah felt a shudder of disgust ripple through her and she resisted the urge to back up. It would only send her tripping onto the bed. "P-please. I can show you where the valuables are hidden, I have coin and texts, they're worth some more, and--"
"Don't want none of that," the pirate said without a care, his eyes tracing over her body intently. Liah had never felt so naked, even through her thick, dowdy night dress. Her disgust rose tenfold as the pirate shed his thick oilcloth cloak, then started to work at the hide armor and furs under it. "Rodrik jes' wants a wee bit of quality time wi' such a pretty, spirited lass like yirself. Yir my type of girl, lovely." He pulled off his chest-piece and the stained wool shirt under it in one repulsively smooth motion.
Liah's tongue felt thick and slow and heavy in her mouth while her heart beat so fast she was certain it would break free of her chest and run laps around the cabin. "No," was the only word she could summon. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the huge man undressing in front of her. Her gorge rose as he kicked off boots like small boats and started at his breeches. "No!"
Rodrik giggled like a schoolboy with a magnifying glass, an ant colony and a bright summer day. "Tha's jes' perfect, yuh keep that up."
Liah looked around again, considering the porthole. She was slight enough to slip through it, and this huge pirate, Rodrik, couldn't possibly follow her. He chortled, following her panicked gaze. "Wouldn't be doin' that, lovely. Getcha before yuh culd get the latch open, and even if not, yir dead nearly 'fore yuh hit the waters of the Northsea." He dropped his breeches to the floor and loomed, nude and impossibly hairy. Liah struggled to control both her panic, her racing breath and her stomach's convulsions from disgust. Rodrik was huge even without layers of armor and fur; at least seven feet tall and as broad as the door he was blocking. His weathered skin was scored with scars that stood out white against the thick black hair that covered him nearly everywhere.Liah couldn't lower her gaze from his broken toothed grin, she didn't want to see what he was threatening her with. He wordlessly lunged around the table for her. She screamed, shrill and loud, and broke away from the bed to the opposite end of the table.
"Little catch an' grab?" Rodrik questioned, idly scratching at his chest. He leered at her from across the table and started to circle nearer.
"Get away from me," Liah replied, voice edging on hysterical. She moved away for every step he circled nearer. As they slowly traded places across the large table, her back was soon near the cabin's door. She considered, briefly, making a run for it. The closer she got, though, the louder the lewd comments from their eavesdropping audience sounded. They were gathered around just outside. Even in her slowly consuming panic, Liah knew she'd never make it more than two steps.
"C'mon, lovely, gimme another one of them screams," Rodrik prodded, then very obviously reached down and scratched himself lower, amid grizzled hair.
"You filthy pig!" The words burst from Liah's mouth without bidding, as she was too light headed with fear and exhaustion to care any more.
"That's jes' like it," Rodrik growled through his predatory grin. With one huge hand he picked up the edge of the table and shoved it out of the way. It clattered against the floor loudly, but Liah's scream was even louder.
(7) Love Is
The black ship's flag couldn't be seen in the mist, but the colors weren't needed for the crew and a good deal of the passengers to realize exactly what was happening. The cry went up from a hoarse throat that sounded like it was struggling with the knife-sharp night wind.
"Pirates!"
Liah Carrew knew, in theory, what a pirate was. She'd read about them in histories and in romances, and her older brother had told her the tale of the pirate he once saw hanged in Menethil, rough town that it was. None of this, however, prepared her for this night, standing on the ship to Northrend in a dressing gown thrown hastily over her thick flannel night dress. She'd pulled on her ill-fitting snow boots and rushed above deck with the crew's call of emergency. She had barely remembered to grab her belt of regents and supplies along with her spell book. The book she clutched tightly now with the crowd of her fellow passengers stirring around her. She was attempting to formulate what spells would be of most use for the situation, when all hell broke quite loudly loose.
The pirate ship begun to pepper the Sophia with a booming hail of cannon-fire, crushing portholes and pulping hull. The Sophia's crew was already to action, but as the ship rocked, they grew frenzied. Their frenzy quickly infected the passengers and turned to far less useful panic. The group pressing about Liah broke into a riot of activity. Half the group, adventurers on their way to fight the Scourge, split away to aid the crew. The other half, mostly laborers or tradesfolk, rushed below deck to secure belongings and hide, should their fellow passengers and the crew fail in driving off the crew of invading pirates.
Liah, 19 years old and wearing snow boots too large for her feet, had no idea at all of where to go or what to do. Though she had trained long and hard in the Towers - the Sanctum of Stormwind and Azora's of Elwynn - and was no longer considered an apprentice, her skills in action were expectation and theoretical only. She had never faced a real fight and had not planned to in the near future; Northrend wasn't a bastion against the Scourge to her, it was simply the hunk of land that Dalaran, fabled city of magic and might, floated above. But her teachers had always told her to use her hard learned skills for the betterment of her fellows, for the betterment of strangers, for the betterment of civilization. Pirates, Liah was fairly certain, were not very good for anybody.
Just as she made up her mind to go aid the crew, the first pirate rushed through the last dregs of the group of other uncertain passengers Liah still stood with. Liah caught the stench of unwashed wool and sour sweat, and saw only a flash of a small club in the pirate's hand until the Sophia's mage-globe lights finally flickered on. Now Liah made out the bits of scalp, blood and unidentified matter splattered over the bludgeon. She felt her breath strangle in her chest with the thrill of real fear that burst through her. All academics and calm thought fled from her mind.
Something jogged into her hard from behind and sent her stumbling forward. The panic her logical thought process had belayed finally took her then, and she looked around frantically for a place to flee. All around here the battle began to rage. She saw a cackling troll pirate casts hex after hex onto the Sophia's first mate, turning the poor man from screaming bat to small frog to black cat and half a dozen other forms, all looking a mix between highly concerned and very angry. On the forecastle a furious duel broke out between Captain Williams and a pirate with a cutlass and a musket; the gun's loud retort echoed through the night and brought the fight to a end as quickly as it started. Captain Williams fell to the deck and the pirate leaped over his body to rejoin the fray. Liah shoved a hand over her mouth to muffle her cry of alarm and barely breathed as she realized where she stood. Her stumble had carried her into sight of the now deceased captain's quarters, with its huge riveted and oaken door. Liah broke into a run, over-sized boots thundering across the bloodied deck.
~
I've changed more than a little since I left Shadowglen to come to the Eastern Kingdoms. No longer a timid girl living in her brother's shadow, I am far more of a blatant, independent killer. Part of my place here on this terrible ship in this horrible sea with these despicable people is to help prove that to myself; Druid of the Wild Ceil Nightfury , would never have suffered herself here, and never, ever, by choice. I can't help to think that the girl I was then would despise the woman I am now, and I am not entirely sure what to feel about that. Conversely, I certainly can't hate who I was; that girl gained the strength to become who I am now. She had the fortitude to survive Degmarlee's Dust, the intelligence to pick good, lasting friends and the bravery to walk with Tarquin ap Danwyrith to his room at the Gilded Rose.
But she was also a little fool; taken in by the schemes and plots of two liars, neither of whom made good fathers. Idealistic, naive and delusional, losing her eye wasn't enough to knock some sense into her befuddled little head. Stars, but I was a fool.
~
The smell of fire carried on the night wind, an odd scent on the frigid Northsea. A small group of pirates huddled around the thick door to the now deceased captain's quarters. They muttered to each other, more than a little perplexed at the situation. One pirate, only a littler stronger on strategy than the others, steadfastly hollered threats and promises to whomever was barricaded inside. Rowdy Rodrik approached the group, tapping the heavy weight on the reverse of his pick axe's head against his meaty palm. Even Rodrik's sturdy steel and yew pick-axe looked like a toy against his broad palm and thick fingers.
"Wha's this, then?" He demanded in a grumble. Rodrik didn't need the grumble to communicate his foul mood, the glower his eyes squinted into and the frown his mouth bent in were more than enough to send the small group of his crew-mates back a few steps. Though the Sophia was a rich ship and a good haul, the fight they'd had to claim it left many of the pirates wanting, Rodrik more than most. The Sophia was likely their last mark before the long return to Stranglethorn Vale and Booty Bay, even now Captain and First Mate Gearcrunch were plotting the best pace in which to turn sail and head back south into waters the Cartel gave to other ships. While the fight for the Sophia was not nearly enough to satiate the crew of the Glacier's Mark for the long time until they were once again set free on the Northsea, much worse was how this entire voyage hadn't been nearly enough to satiate Rodrik's very specific proclivities.
"Got a mage keeping herself in there," hesitantly answered the crewman who'd been yelling threats through the door. "Door ain't locked, but every time we pull it open, there's a fuckin' ball o' fire in our faces."
Silence reigned for a moment while the crewmen watched Rodrik's deep-set frown slowly blossom into a wide smile that displayed his rotten teeth and vivid gums. "We got a fighter? Yuh bloody bastards, get outta m'way--" Rodrik didn't even bother finishing his sentiment before he was barging for the captain's quarters door. He paused only to grab a buckler from the arm of the insult-happy pirate. In a blink he had the door thrown open, charged inside and slammed it shut again before any of them could utter so much as a complaint. The crewmen looked at each other for a moment, then crowded back around the door to listen to the action inside. Rowdy Rodrik was well known for the shows he put on when he found 'his kinda girl.'
~
My father, the hunter and war-veteran Isil Nightfury, left me to my brother (who also left me, in the running pattern of Nightfury men) so that he could die in defense of our home. It took a very long time for my heart to truly understand my father's choice; even seeing him in again in Hyjal and knowing nothing would change his mind did not truly satisfy the wound his choice left in my heart. 'Twasn't until the Longest Night, when I, in the poorest section of a giant death-trap of a city, facing a horde of the Scourge in defense of a bar, really understood loving something (not someone) so much that you'd die for it. The Pig was my Hyjal, then, it represented everything I lived for at the time. It was our bloody home. 'Never Again,' fucking aye indeed. Scribbling those words in that old script on the banner, I understood my parents completely. Something in me healed that night.
But before I could forgive my father, I punished him by forgetting him and replacing him. I had an idealized father, a man who'd never leave me. Who'd never betray me, of course, who would lead me to avenge my home and bring peace to my heart. Tarq had one of these as well - Nikolai Diaconescu promised us homes, safety, freedom from tyranny. In a way, through their betrayal, their lies, and the horrors they put us through, our mistaken fathers fulfilled some of their promises. Without Absolution, we would never have had the Pig. Without the Exiles, we would never have had our Riders. Without Uthas giving us the fucking plague and without Nikolai abandoning us on the road while Tarq bled out his life and I pleaded for help, we would never have given up the idea of serving anyone, we would never have realized we needed no pretty ideals or glorious causes. Without the sins of these fake fathers, we would never have found our new family.
I don't think that ever stopped Tarquin for wanting to take Uthas's head and heart, and it has never stopped me from wanting Nikolai's life bleeding out all over the filthy road.
~
Liah sat on the edge of the deceased Captain Williams's bed, her spellbook at her side. Her hands shook and she felt a bone deep weariness she'd never before experienced. Keeping the pirates at bay had more than taxed her abilities; she'd never in her life had to keep such a steady stream of fierce offensive magic. Magic was not for battle to Liah, it was a delicate science, an art. Throwing balls of fire at that door was much like stabbing some one with a quill pen wet with ink or bashing a sculpture over their head. Something deep in her hated it and she cursed herself a fool again, the only thing keeping her from completely succumbing to panic.
Once inside the captain's quarters, she'd had plans of casting a teleportation spell that would sweep her back to Stormwind and the Wizard's Sanctum. From there she would be safe and able to alert the authorities, for what little good it would do the passengers and crew of the Sophia. From Stormwind, she could find a warlock to work their dark arts and summon her to bloody Dalaran. However, the moment she was locked into the captain's quarters, Liah burst into tears. Reaching for her belt of supplies, she found the pouch filled with runes of teleportation gone. She had a bad habit of not tying it tightly enough to her belt, and in her flight across the Sophia's deck, it must have fallen loose. The runes must have spilled out across the deck, surely crushed underfoot in the combat by now.
And so she sat on a dead man's bed and gathered her failing strength, waiting for the next attempt on her life.
It came much faster than she expected, too fast for her to even get off the first volley of fire. The largest human she'd ever seen in her life burst through the door and slammed it shut behind himself. He was dressed in hides and furs, or at least Liah thought they were furs; he had so much thick, wiry black hair that it was very difficult for her to discern where his beard ended and his clothing began. He had a buckler on one arm but wasn't bothering to hold it up in protection, this was less than surprising because his meaty fist was barely covered by the shield. The pick-axe in his free hand, however, was far more of Liah's concern.
He laughed at the sight of her, eyes frighteningly bright behind bushy black brows. "Shite, yuh already on the sheets fir me? That weren't much work!" He guffawed so loud it echoed around the small cabin.
Liah felt herself trembling in a mixture of exhaustion and fear. She glanced wildly around the cabin for a route of escape, but beyond the door the huge man was blocking, there was nothing but a latched porthole that led to the cold ocean. Between herself and the pirate was a large table, scarred with years of meals and map plotting. Besides that, there was little in the cabin; the late Captain Williams had apparently been something of a spartan gentleman.
"G-get out!" Liah snapped, her voice completely nonthreatening even to her own ears. She stood up, thick night dress and dressing gown just barely hiding the knocking of her knees.
"Or yuh'll toast me?" Rodrik questioned with an unhealthy degree of enthusiasm. "Go on, then, lovely. Light me right up." He didn't move and just grinned his wide, broken toothed smile. Something about this frightened Liah even more than if he'd just charged at her, but she didn't hesitate. It took a degree longer than a second - the longest second of her life - for her to summon a spell to her fingertips. It was only a scorching spell, far weaker than a true fireball, but it was all she could manage for the moment. She threw the spell as hard as she could at the pirate, which was to say, she lobbed it across the cabin with an unsteady hand.
The spell burst into heat and flame halfway across the room, an earlier detonation than needed, but Liah's concentration and focus were practically non-existent. The pirate brought up the buckler as the spell became visible; the weak heat and flames dashed against the metal and steel. The diminished effect of the spell barely even splashed past the edges of the little buckler. Once the spell was expended Liah felt light headed and dizzy, she would have swooned if not for the huge man's laugh and how it burst, far more impressive than her spell, through the room.
"All tuckered out, eh, lovely?" He asked as he discarded the buckler to the floor with a clang. "Too bad, I like me more of a fight, but s'been a long day fir the both of us."
Liah felt a shudder of disgust ripple through her and she resisted the urge to back up. It would only send her tripping onto the bed. "P-please. I can show you where the valuables are hidden, I have coin and texts, they're worth some more, and--"
"Don't want none of that," the pirate said without a care, his eyes tracing over her body intently. Liah had never felt so naked, even through her thick, dowdy night dress. Her disgust rose tenfold as the pirate shed his thick oilcloth cloak, then started to work at the hide armor and furs under it. "Rodrik jes' wants a wee bit of quality time wi' such a pretty, spirited lass like yirself. Yir my type of girl, lovely." He pulled off his chest-piece and the stained wool shirt under it in one repulsively smooth motion.
Liah's tongue felt thick and slow and heavy in her mouth while her heart beat so fast she was certain it would break free of her chest and run laps around the cabin. "No," was the only word she could summon. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the huge man undressing in front of her. Her gorge rose as he kicked off boots like small boats and started at his breeches. "No!"
Rodrik giggled like a schoolboy with a magnifying glass, an ant colony and a bright summer day. "Tha's jes' perfect, yuh keep that up."
Liah looked around again, considering the porthole. She was slight enough to slip through it, and this huge pirate, Rodrik, couldn't possibly follow her. He chortled, following her panicked gaze. "Wouldn't be doin' that, lovely. Getcha before yuh culd get the latch open, and even if not, yir dead nearly 'fore yuh hit the waters of the Northsea." He dropped his breeches to the floor and loomed, nude and impossibly hairy. Liah struggled to control both her panic, her racing breath and her stomach's convulsions from disgust. Rodrik was huge even without layers of armor and fur; at least seven feet tall and as broad as the door he was blocking. His weathered skin was scored with scars that stood out white against the thick black hair that covered him nearly everywhere.Liah couldn't lower her gaze from his broken toothed grin, she didn't want to see what he was threatening her with. He wordlessly lunged around the table for her. She screamed, shrill and loud, and broke away from the bed to the opposite end of the table.
"Little catch an' grab?" Rodrik questioned, idly scratching at his chest. He leered at her from across the table and started to circle nearer.
"Get away from me," Liah replied, voice edging on hysterical. She moved away for every step he circled nearer. As they slowly traded places across the large table, her back was soon near the cabin's door. She considered, briefly, making a run for it. The closer she got, though, the louder the lewd comments from their eavesdropping audience sounded. They were gathered around just outside. Even in her slowly consuming panic, Liah knew she'd never make it more than two steps.
"C'mon, lovely, gimme another one of them screams," Rodrik prodded, then very obviously reached down and scratched himself lower, amid grizzled hair.
"You filthy pig!" The words burst from Liah's mouth without bidding, as she was too light headed with fear and exhaustion to care any more.
"That's jes' like it," Rodrik growled through his predatory grin. With one huge hand he picked up the edge of the table and shoved it out of the way. It clattered against the floor loudly, but Liah's scream was even louder.
Survival
Warning: The following contains potentially disturbing content including drug usage, sexual situations and graphic violence.
(8) Hate Does
My thoughts always wander so easily from the men who did me such wrong to the man who only strove to do right by me, and that's maybe some of the only right he's ever striven for.
The place Tarquin had in my life is obvious enough - husband, lover, partner. Our romance was, I suppose, something of an infamous one; mundane and even a little boring if not for the trollish assassin and his poison. I used to fear that our swift love was based all on Tarq's guilt, my need, and our mutual fear at that time. I needed him, he needed to make things right. I feared that as much as I changed - from timid druid to blatant killer - that perhaps he'd fall out of love with me, his heart set on that girl I once was. The years have shown me well that Tarq's not near so flighty as that and that his heart is set, hook and barb, to mine. It isn't anything I would change for the world. Though at times my actions may not have demonstrated it, I love him now just as much as I did when he rescued me from the Bone Towers of my darkest, Purgatory Dust given dreams and held my hand as I had to be lashed to the bed, for the fear of what I would do to myself in my terrors.
~
Rowdy Rodrik's lunge for the mage-girl made her backpedal frantically away from his giant, nude body. She tripped over the clothing he'd left on the floor and fell backwards. Rodrik roared with laughter that battled with the mage-girl's screams. He reached one broad arm for her and she closed her eyes tightly. The grab, however, never came. Rodrik's laughter was cut off with a strange gurgle as the garrote looped around his thick neck. A dark shape unfolded itself from the open eaves of the low ceiling and deftly twisted to the floor in a flip that only served to tighten the garrote.
Ceil sighed, with a wrinkle of her nose. "This is far closer than I'd ever wanted to come to you without the benefit of clothing and bathing, Rodrik." She had to stand on the toes of her boots to keep the garrote around the big man's neck. At the sound of her voice, Rodrik began to struggle, slamming one elbow back for the elf's unamused face. Ceil twisted her head away from the blow and jerked the garrote she held in gloved hands. "Don't worry," she said, looking past Rodrik to Liah, huddled against the door. "This," she jerked the garrote again, hard. "Is coated in a mix of bruiseweed and the essences of pain and anguish. It's a rather nice paralyzing...hah, there we are."
Before Ceil was even finished with her explanation, Rodrik's legs gave out and he stumbled onto his knees. Now at a far more manageable height, Ceil leaned over him. Her grin was now the predatory one, all teeth and wicked edges. Rodrik gasped and struggled for breath, but his movements were slow and sluggish, their strength stolen by the contact poison coating the garrote.
"W, what--" Liah tried to speak but her voice was as weak as Rodrik's legs and she just watched the scene before her with wide eyes.
"Don't worry yourself over it. But if you don't want our generous crewmates in here to give him a hand, you'll keep screaming," Ceil ordered sharply, looking up from Rodrik. Her blade-silver eyes only barely touched on Liah's terrified gaze through the thick mats of her hair.
"I can't--"
"You can, and you shall. He's trying to fuck you, that's all you need remember. Now go." There was something in Ceil's tone, or perhaps in the tension of the garrote that spurred Liah to listen and obey. The mage-girl started to scream in short, staccato bursts, filling the moments between with heavy breathing and whimpering. All in all, it was a very convincing act because it was very obviously not entirely an act.
Cover taken care of, Ceil returned her attention to Rodrik's slow death. "Now, then," she began, amusement creeping into her voice. "I've been looking forward to this. Do you know how much work I went to, for you? Well, not truly, for you, Rowdy Rodrik , but more because of you. I knew there wasn't a bloody way in the nether you'd be able to take the trip back to the 'Bay without making me the next object of your desires. And waiting for you to try and have your way with me in my sleep doesn't suit me, nor does the inevitable questions from Captain and accusations from crew. Damn your popularity, eh?"
Rodrik gurgled under the garrote. Liah's voice was starting to give out, so she paused longer between her screams. "I thought of this little set up when I found you with that guardswoman a few weeks back. It's been some waiting, but really, patience is virtue, when you want your few moments of murder. Because, dear Rodrik, that's just what I'm doing - this lovely lass is murdering the fuck out of you." There was glee in her voice, and in her grin.
"Coward," he managed, the veins throbbing in his neck, standing out against muscles he couldn't quite control.
"Victim," Ceil returned calmly. "Partially because you're scum, of course. She had the right of it, calling you a filthy pig. You're a disgusting thing that can't get hard unless he's taking it by force, with no way you could get it by asking. But even moreso, not because of you, but because of who 'tis you look like. Do you, maybe, have any noble blood to you ?"
Rodrik was too far gone now to reply, though the last hint of a struggle about his limbs gave away his understanding of her words. Ceil listened to Rodrik's gurgling and choking in silence, her hands holding the garrote steady and tight. Her breathing was quickening, as Rodrik's was ceasing.
Liah's last scream fell through silence. Ceil left the garrote free, and Rodrik's body tumbled limply onto the floor.
~
Right now, what I miss from Tarquin isn't as much his love - as I always feel his love about me, warmer than all the furs and hides - but the less obvious place he had in my life, the place no one but he and I knew about. There is a very large part of me that still needs Tarquin, and still for rescue. While I am no longer in danger of drifting into my nightmares, never to return, I still need Tarquin to rescue me from the darkness.
I need Tarquin because I need him to look into my eye, to hold my gaze. I need him to know what I've done, what I want to do, and what 'tis I shall do. I need Tarquin because I need some one that I can explain myself to, and some one who will never hate me for it. I need him to pull me back from the edge, when I go too far. Without him, I don't just fall.
I jump.
~
Ceil turned away from Liah and Rodrik's corpse to cross the cabin. She unlatched the porthole and tossed the garrote and her gloves out to sea. She left the hatch open as she turned back to Liah . The cold air that swept in did little to lessen the odor of death; terror mixed with the stink of a soiled corpse. Ceil returned to the trembling mage and offered her bare hand out.
"Here. We've still some work to do," she said with a slight smile, obviously pleased. Liah only stared at the calloused hand, then looked into Ceil's face.
"W...what? I can't...he's..." Liah's voice trembled and died off. Her eyes fell to the dead man. His tongue protruded out between thick lips but she was sparred the look of his eyes, which had rolled up into his head.
"Dead," Ceil replied, firmly. "And if you'd like to get off this bloody ship with both maidenhead and head on your shoulders intact, we haven't much time to fuck about here."
A swift look of revulsion passed over Liah's features, which helped to banish some of her fear. She neglected Ceil's offered hand and used the door as leverage to stand, leaning hard against it but at least rising on her own. "I don't know what you want from me. I'm exhausted. I can't possibly use any more magic."
Ceil produced a small parchment packet from somewhere on her person. She held it out. "Use this. 'Tis a pick-you-up, as it were, stronger than a potion."
"What is it?" Liah asked cautiously as she took the packet. She would have refused it much like she refused the elf's hand, but through the thick door she could hear the looting and pillaging starting to calm. The pirates would be coming at any moment. Even still, she nearly dropped the packet with Ceil's reply.
"Arcane dust. Hold it to your nose and breath in, nice and sharp."
"Dust?! I can't use that!"
Ceil kept her voice patient. "Dust or death, I'm afraid."
She stared at the mage and the mage stared back, reproachful. There was a bang on the door.
"'ey, Roddy, you done yet?!"
Liah started and Ceil gave a very obvious motion, though she didn't seem much in a rush. It was obvious enough to both of them this was going to be entirely Liah's choice. The elf was not going to force her into it, in fact, the elf put on a good show of not giving a damn. Liah thought for only a moment before she held the packet up to her nose. She coughed hard a moment later, sputtering. Ceil reached forward and grabbed the packet of powder before any could spill to the floor and give away the game. Liah closed her eyes tightly and held her hand to her nose. After a moment she started to shake violently and when she finally opened her eyes, they blazed a bright but garish blue, forced magical energy flowing through her.
"Good girl," Ceil said quietly, and took a few steps back, walking over Rodrik's body in the process. She got her boot up under his ribs and shoved hard, rolling the corpse onto his back. His blue face was made all the more visible now, caught in therictus of death, panicked and fearful. Liah seemed to shake even harder, but she didn't look away from the dead man. "Now immolate him."
Liah now glanced from Rodrik's body, assured the giant of a man wasn't going to spring back to life and lunge at her again, to the elf's calm face. "W-what? I'm not touching him!"
"If you burn him to char, they'll not bother noticing the ligature around his neck and simply assume he made the wrong choice of mark - Rodrik liked the girls that struggled, as you probably noticed. They'll just figure one of his girls got the best of him, finally. Destroy the proof for me and I'll help get you away from here, unharmed," Ceil promised, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back against the upended table. Liah regarded her distrustfully while behind her the pirates' voices boomed from behind the unlocked door. With little other choice, she finally took the few steps forward to Rodrik's body and knelt down.
"Hands around his neck," Ceil instructed. It'll be the most concentrated bit, and it makes the most sense - he was atop you, and you reached up--"
"I understand," Liah cut Ceil off sharply, trying to control her trembling hands. An unseen smile crossed Ceil's face while Liah grasped Rodrik's thick neck; even with both hands she couldn't get a hold entirely around it. The magic flowed easily with barely a thought, the arcane dust flitting through her senses made the mana easy to grasp and manipulate. Rowdy Rodrik burst into flames from the inside. Fire flowed out of his pores and singed away every thick black hair, flames melted and boiled his skin, heat twisted and burnt his muscle. It didn't take long for the concentrated heat to leave the huge body little more than a charred husk.
Working the magic had calmed Liah's nerves, though she still couldn't hold exactly still with the effects of the dust so strongly working her over. She rose to her feet and faced Ceil with a palpable attempt at dignity. "There. Now you promised--"
Before the mage could finish, Ceil pulled a pouch from her sleeve and tossed it over the burnt-out corpse. "So I did. There you are."
Liah caught the pouch and stared at it. It was so familiar that it actually took her a moment to place it through her surprise. She opened it up and inside was the neat stack of runes she kept at the ready, the neat stack she had assumed were on her belt when she locked herself in the captain's quarters. "My runes. How did you---" Liah looked up at Ceil with wide, accusatory eyes.
"You're a clever enough girl, you understand," Ceil replied, straightening up. "Work your spell quicklike, now."
Liah still stared at the elf, clutching the pouch white-knuckled. The accusation had fled her eyes, leaving behind disgust. She pulled out the rune, trembling finally gone in favor of the angry set of her mouth and jerky motions of her hands. Ceil said nothing and simply pulled out a spare pair of gloves while she watched the mage work her spell.
Just before the spell was complete, Liah paused. "You're a horrid bitch," she said quietly, and spat on the elf's cuirass. Before the disregard even hit its target, the mage was gone. Ceil glanced down, mouth twisting. She didn't bother to clean off her chest-piece as she made for the porthole.
~
Worth it.
(8) Hate Does
My thoughts always wander so easily from the men who did me such wrong to the man who only strove to do right by me, and that's maybe some of the only right he's ever striven for.
The place Tarquin had in my life is obvious enough - husband, lover, partner. Our romance was, I suppose, something of an infamous one; mundane and even a little boring if not for the trollish assassin and his poison. I used to fear that our swift love was based all on Tarq's guilt, my need, and our mutual fear at that time. I needed him, he needed to make things right. I feared that as much as I changed - from timid druid to blatant killer - that perhaps he'd fall out of love with me, his heart set on that girl I once was. The years have shown me well that Tarq's not near so flighty as that and that his heart is set, hook and barb, to mine. It isn't anything I would change for the world. Though at times my actions may not have demonstrated it, I love him now just as much as I did when he rescued me from the Bone Towers of my darkest, Purgatory Dust given dreams and held my hand as I had to be lashed to the bed, for the fear of what I would do to myself in my terrors.
~
Rowdy Rodrik's lunge for the mage-girl made her backpedal frantically away from his giant, nude body. She tripped over the clothing he'd left on the floor and fell backwards. Rodrik roared with laughter that battled with the mage-girl's screams. He reached one broad arm for her and she closed her eyes tightly. The grab, however, never came. Rodrik's laughter was cut off with a strange gurgle as the garrote looped around his thick neck. A dark shape unfolded itself from the open eaves of the low ceiling and deftly twisted to the floor in a flip that only served to tighten the garrote.
Ceil sighed, with a wrinkle of her nose. "This is far closer than I'd ever wanted to come to you without the benefit of clothing and bathing, Rodrik." She had to stand on the toes of her boots to keep the garrote around the big man's neck. At the sound of her voice, Rodrik began to struggle, slamming one elbow back for the elf's unamused face. Ceil twisted her head away from the blow and jerked the garrote she held in gloved hands. "Don't worry," she said, looking past Rodrik to Liah, huddled against the door. "This," she jerked the garrote again, hard. "Is coated in a mix of bruiseweed and the essences of pain and anguish. It's a rather nice paralyzing...hah, there we are."
Before Ceil was even finished with her explanation, Rodrik's legs gave out and he stumbled onto his knees. Now at a far more manageable height, Ceil leaned over him. Her grin was now the predatory one, all teeth and wicked edges. Rodrik gasped and struggled for breath, but his movements were slow and sluggish, their strength stolen by the contact poison coating the garrote.
"W, what--" Liah tried to speak but her voice was as weak as Rodrik's legs and she just watched the scene before her with wide eyes.
"Don't worry yourself over it. But if you don't want our generous crewmates in here to give him a hand, you'll keep screaming," Ceil ordered sharply, looking up from Rodrik. Her blade-silver eyes only barely touched on Liah's terrified gaze through the thick mats of her hair.
"I can't--"
"You can, and you shall. He's trying to fuck you, that's all you need remember. Now go." There was something in Ceil's tone, or perhaps in the tension of the garrote that spurred Liah to listen and obey. The mage-girl started to scream in short, staccato bursts, filling the moments between with heavy breathing and whimpering. All in all, it was a very convincing act because it was very obviously not entirely an act.
Cover taken care of, Ceil returned her attention to Rodrik's slow death. "Now, then," she began, amusement creeping into her voice. "I've been looking forward to this. Do you know how much work I went to, for you? Well, not truly, for you, Rowdy Rodrik , but more because of you. I knew there wasn't a bloody way in the nether you'd be able to take the trip back to the 'Bay without making me the next object of your desires. And waiting for you to try and have your way with me in my sleep doesn't suit me, nor does the inevitable questions from Captain and accusations from crew. Damn your popularity, eh?"
Rodrik gurgled under the garrote. Liah's voice was starting to give out, so she paused longer between her screams. "I thought of this little set up when I found you with that guardswoman a few weeks back. It's been some waiting, but really, patience is virtue, when you want your few moments of murder. Because, dear Rodrik, that's just what I'm doing - this lovely lass is murdering the fuck out of you." There was glee in her voice, and in her grin.
"Coward," he managed, the veins throbbing in his neck, standing out against muscles he couldn't quite control.
"Victim," Ceil returned calmly. "Partially because you're scum, of course. She had the right of it, calling you a filthy pig. You're a disgusting thing that can't get hard unless he's taking it by force, with no way you could get it by asking. But even moreso, not because of you, but because of who 'tis you look like. Do you, maybe, have any noble blood to you ?"
Rodrik was too far gone now to reply, though the last hint of a struggle about his limbs gave away his understanding of her words. Ceil listened to Rodrik's gurgling and choking in silence, her hands holding the garrote steady and tight. Her breathing was quickening, as Rodrik's was ceasing.
Liah's last scream fell through silence. Ceil left the garrote free, and Rodrik's body tumbled limply onto the floor.
~
Right now, what I miss from Tarquin isn't as much his love - as I always feel his love about me, warmer than all the furs and hides - but the less obvious place he had in my life, the place no one but he and I knew about. There is a very large part of me that still needs Tarquin, and still for rescue. While I am no longer in danger of drifting into my nightmares, never to return, I still need Tarquin to rescue me from the darkness.
I need Tarquin because I need him to look into my eye, to hold my gaze. I need him to know what I've done, what I want to do, and what 'tis I shall do. I need Tarquin because I need some one that I can explain myself to, and some one who will never hate me for it. I need him to pull me back from the edge, when I go too far. Without him, I don't just fall.
I jump.
~
Ceil turned away from Liah and Rodrik's corpse to cross the cabin. She unlatched the porthole and tossed the garrote and her gloves out to sea. She left the hatch open as she turned back to Liah . The cold air that swept in did little to lessen the odor of death; terror mixed with the stink of a soiled corpse. Ceil returned to the trembling mage and offered her bare hand out.
"Here. We've still some work to do," she said with a slight smile, obviously pleased. Liah only stared at the calloused hand, then looked into Ceil's face.
"W...what? I can't...he's..." Liah's voice trembled and died off. Her eyes fell to the dead man. His tongue protruded out between thick lips but she was sparred the look of his eyes, which had rolled up into his head.
"Dead," Ceil replied, firmly. "And if you'd like to get off this bloody ship with both maidenhead and head on your shoulders intact, we haven't much time to fuck about here."
A swift look of revulsion passed over Liah's features, which helped to banish some of her fear. She neglected Ceil's offered hand and used the door as leverage to stand, leaning hard against it but at least rising on her own. "I don't know what you want from me. I'm exhausted. I can't possibly use any more magic."
Ceil produced a small parchment packet from somewhere on her person. She held it out. "Use this. 'Tis a pick-you-up, as it were, stronger than a potion."
"What is it?" Liah asked cautiously as she took the packet. She would have refused it much like she refused the elf's hand, but through the thick door she could hear the looting and pillaging starting to calm. The pirates would be coming at any moment. Even still, she nearly dropped the packet with Ceil's reply.
"Arcane dust. Hold it to your nose and breath in, nice and sharp."
"Dust?! I can't use that!"
Ceil kept her voice patient. "Dust or death, I'm afraid."
She stared at the mage and the mage stared back, reproachful. There was a bang on the door.
"'ey, Roddy, you done yet?!"
Liah started and Ceil gave a very obvious motion, though she didn't seem much in a rush. It was obvious enough to both of them this was going to be entirely Liah's choice. The elf was not going to force her into it, in fact, the elf put on a good show of not giving a damn. Liah thought for only a moment before she held the packet up to her nose. She coughed hard a moment later, sputtering. Ceil reached forward and grabbed the packet of powder before any could spill to the floor and give away the game. Liah closed her eyes tightly and held her hand to her nose. After a moment she started to shake violently and when she finally opened her eyes, they blazed a bright but garish blue, forced magical energy flowing through her.
"Good girl," Ceil said quietly, and took a few steps back, walking over Rodrik's body in the process. She got her boot up under his ribs and shoved hard, rolling the corpse onto his back. His blue face was made all the more visible now, caught in therictus of death, panicked and fearful. Liah seemed to shake even harder, but she didn't look away from the dead man. "Now immolate him."
Liah now glanced from Rodrik's body, assured the giant of a man wasn't going to spring back to life and lunge at her again, to the elf's calm face. "W-what? I'm not touching him!"
"If you burn him to char, they'll not bother noticing the ligature around his neck and simply assume he made the wrong choice of mark - Rodrik liked the girls that struggled, as you probably noticed. They'll just figure one of his girls got the best of him, finally. Destroy the proof for me and I'll help get you away from here, unharmed," Ceil promised, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back against the upended table. Liah regarded her distrustfully while behind her the pirates' voices boomed from behind the unlocked door. With little other choice, she finally took the few steps forward to Rodrik's body and knelt down.
"Hands around his neck," Ceil instructed. It'll be the most concentrated bit, and it makes the most sense - he was atop you, and you reached up--"
"I understand," Liah cut Ceil off sharply, trying to control her trembling hands. An unseen smile crossed Ceil's face while Liah grasped Rodrik's thick neck; even with both hands she couldn't get a hold entirely around it. The magic flowed easily with barely a thought, the arcane dust flitting through her senses made the mana easy to grasp and manipulate. Rowdy Rodrik burst into flames from the inside. Fire flowed out of his pores and singed away every thick black hair, flames melted and boiled his skin, heat twisted and burnt his muscle. It didn't take long for the concentrated heat to leave the huge body little more than a charred husk.
Working the magic had calmed Liah's nerves, though she still couldn't hold exactly still with the effects of the dust so strongly working her over. She rose to her feet and faced Ceil with a palpable attempt at dignity. "There. Now you promised--"
Before the mage could finish, Ceil pulled a pouch from her sleeve and tossed it over the burnt-out corpse. "So I did. There you are."
Liah caught the pouch and stared at it. It was so familiar that it actually took her a moment to place it through her surprise. She opened it up and inside was the neat stack of runes she kept at the ready, the neat stack she had assumed were on her belt when she locked herself in the captain's quarters. "My runes. How did you---" Liah looked up at Ceil with wide, accusatory eyes.
"You're a clever enough girl, you understand," Ceil replied, straightening up. "Work your spell quicklike, now."
Liah still stared at the elf, clutching the pouch white-knuckled. The accusation had fled her eyes, leaving behind disgust. She pulled out the rune, trembling finally gone in favor of the angry set of her mouth and jerky motions of her hands. Ceil said nothing and simply pulled out a spare pair of gloves while she watched the mage work her spell.
Just before the spell was complete, Liah paused. "You're a horrid bitch," she said quietly, and spat on the elf's cuirass. Before the disregard even hit its target, the mage was gone. Ceil glanced down, mouth twisting. She didn't bother to clean off her chest-piece as she made for the porthole.
~
Worth it.
Survival
(9) Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?
By noon tomorrow, I expect we'll be back to the Bay, and from there, what shall I do with myself? 'Tisn't a long haul to Stormwind, really, especially if I pick up the cat and ride him swiftly through 'Vale and Duskwood and Westfall. But what will I do, back to Stormwind? Vanished for months, I know nothing of what's gone on. Gone for months, and I still haven't fixed whatever's broken inside of me. I want to see them, I want to see him. I want to know all the news, all the schemes, all the battles, all the new things. But if I go back now, even if I hide who I am, I'll never be able to keep away. If I see him now, is there anyway I can stop myself from flinging myself into his arms? I am still not a creature of self control.
I could stay with this ship, claim my part of the haul and wait to go to sea again. I could lurk the bars and pubs, chance the drink to keep my head clouded 'til I can kill freely again. I could, I suppose, go back to working jobs, but there's true danger there; there's too many ears in the Riders kept low to the ground. Is this how the rest of my life will be? Drifting, searching, not finding the cure or fix, not knowing how to mend what--
~
"Miss?" Jimmy Buttons's voice came up from behind, interrupting her thoughts.
~
I swear to the stars, the next time he interrupts me, I'm going to shove steel in his gut and his feet off the damn deck. A woman can't properly self-pity with him flitting about so, goddess-be-damned.
~
"Buttons..." she began and it was obvious her patience was wearing thin with the hint of warning in her voice. Before she could continue, he interrupted her once again.
"That's sort of a wanker's name, innit?"
~
It certainly 'tis. Wait, what?
~
She looked up with a blink, twisting her body to look behind her as he approached. Immediately she could see something had changed. He'd developed a slouch, where before he'd been all broad shoulders and raised chin. There was a gleeful little grin on his face with a familiar crook to it, and a hint of teeth too white. Then there was his voice - that one sentence could have come from another man entirely just from accent alone; a charming but slick accent familiar to the back alleys and broken cobblestone streets of Stormwind. He sat down next to her, but not too close this time, and let his legs dangle over the side of the galleon.
"Cat got your tongue, love? I really doubt you've any need to worry about that, though - you spent enough time being a cat, didn't you?" He asked, the too-toothy grin widening. Her own eyes narrowed and she glanced over him. He was bare chested, wise enough in the hot Vale night. He was also barefoot and wearing only a fairly thin pair of leather breeches. There were very few places to hide a weapon and he immediately knew that was what she was looking for. He held up his hands, palms forward, displaying callouses that upon closer inspection matched the ones on her own palms. Callouses from bladework, primarily. "Not a blade or bludgeon in sight, that's a promise."
"Your promise?" She repeated, skeptical. "I don't even know who you are, going on like this."
"Easily enough solved. James Sullivan and pleased to meet you, luv," the man no longer showing any trace of Jimmy Buttons introduced himself, offering one of those rough hands to shake. She did not take it. She gave a slight cant to her head, as if trying to recall. "Don't worry about thinking too deep on it, you probably haven't heard the name. First Finger's lovely and obscure most of the time, innit?"
She stiffened at the mention of the hand of SI:7. Her voice next came petulant and annoyed and completely a lie, but to untrained ears it was unmistakable for the sound of those actual feelings. "I don't know what you're on about, Jimmy Buttons. Fingers and cats? Have you been in the 'dust? Captain'll have you lashed, we're to be on watch."
He threw back his head and laughed, harsh barks that bit through the night. "You're too good, aren't you? You'd have me in a blink if I hadn't followed you from Stormwind to the 'Bay and onto this damn ship, Mistress Nightfury."
"...'tis a long way and a long damned time to follow even me," Ceil replied, dropping the pretenses as cleanly as he had. Her shoulders straightened where his now slumped, and her accent came through a little more strongly, prettier than the roughened piratical tones she'd been putting on as Dalah. "And not even a single attempt on my life, if I'm not mistaken."
"You aren't mistaken at all, luv. Not my job to be killing you."
"But you're First Finger?" Her eyes narrowed.
"Sure am, but even the First has got to start at the Fourth, don't he?" Sullivan asked with a chuckle, leaning back on one hand to watch her. Ceil paused, then gave him a queer look.
"As a recruiter, you mean?" She asked, voice thick with disbelief.
"Got it in one, luv. And I was good, damn good, if you don't mind me polishin' me own knob a trifle. I was good then as Fourth and I'm good now as First, and all that experience puts me in picture perfect standing to be here with your lovely self, chatting it up." Sullivan was grinning like a cat in cream now and it was unsettling in its own way. One didn't sit on the bow of a ship on the black sea, supposedly unarmed, and announce their lies and subterfuge to some one like Ceil Nightfury, and one did not do it with the amusement that Sullivan was currently presenting.
"I mean no offense," Ceil said, then paused and shrugged. "Well, no, I do, actually. You're fucking with me, like a cat with a mouse."
Sullivan waved his hand with a shake of his head. "No, no, no..." but then he also shrugged. He pinched a thick thumb and a rough index finger together, then parted them a hair. "Maybe just a trifle bit? You can't blame me, can you? Eight months on this rotting heap, playing Jimmy Buttons suffering eternal blue balls at the mercy of the beautiful elvin pirate. Gods, Nightfury, but you DO play hard to get like a master."
He was rewarded with a smile, more of a smirk. "You can't blame me, can you? Who'd fuck a man named 'Buttons?' It's a wanker's name."
"Hah!" He gave another biting laugh, then wagged a finger at her. "Now, I didn't have my hopes up high, but I had plenty of pleasant dreams on the subject. Buttons or no, though, luv, you ought to let go and live a bit. Cooped up for too long in your own skin and you'll lose it, won't you? Even men oh so recently torn from their wives find it in themselves to dance the bedroom ballet, now and again." His grin sharpened lewdly, black eyes boring into her. Ceil gave him no reward this time, only a thinner smirk.
"That tack's been tried by folk far more subtle than you," she said with boredom in her voice and warning in her eyes. "If you're truly here to recruit me for SI:7's petty errands, you'll have to think of something far more clever to turn me against Tarquin ap Danwyrith."
Surprisingly, Sullivan rolled his eyes and theatrically threw his arms up in the air. "It's all about ap Danwyrith with you, isn't it? Hells, luv, don't you realize Shaw's got a few more pressing matters at hand than some nancy-boy ex-agent gone all organized crime? Shit, that's not even very bloody original, really. Have you ever bothered looking around yourself and taking note of the wars our lovely Kingdom is involved in? The dead to the north, the Horde to the west, the mad Old Gods...well, I haven't a fucking clue where those tossers are, but they're THERE. All, I must break it to you, a damned sight more important than your former husband and his band of crooks."
During Sullivan's explosive but short speech, Ceil's jaw became set on edge. The smirk fell from her lips, leaving them pressed into a tight line. "Horse's shite. You'd not be here for me if Mathias gods-damn-his-eyes Shaw didn't want me as a pawn in his little chess game against Tarq."
This visibly drew Sullivan up short, and he reached over for Ceil's hand. She removed it from his reach without hesitation and instead his hand fell lightly on her knee in a friendly, warm gesture. "I'm certainly not going to deny that Shaw's got a biggie for your man--" He paused, then canted his head. "...for ap Danwyrith, I should say? But that's personal. And Shaw isn't the type of man to let personal interfere with duty. Beside that, luv, you do yourself a remarkable disservice. You've lots more to you than ap Danwyrith, you do."
This garnered a somewhat enigmatic and very bitter snort of laughter. As he hadn't found steel in his guts yet, Sullivan continued without care. "Let's take stock, shall we, of your usefulness as an employee in our very particular field?" Before Ceil could say a thing, Sullivan had taken his hand from her knee and raised a finger. "You've got the disguise and acting mastered, that's a gimme. You've got the killing bit down cold, don't you, now?"
"Would you like to see?" She asked with a pleasant smile.
Another finger was raised. "I have on every raid this boat's gone on, and what a sight it is, m'lovely and homicidal lass." He raised a third finger. "And what I haven't seen this whole time has been you drunk or bobbed out on 'dust. You're clean. That's certainly stable enough for any murderer and we don't tend to be the stable lot, us. Circumspect, even, when times need..." after a moment's consideration he stuck up another finger to count this. "That's an important one, it is. You got rid of Rowdy Rodrik without a single suspicion of any kind of messing about."
"Then how do you know?" She asked softly, voice low against the sound of the waves lapping against the hull.
"Never suspected you, did I? I knew it was you, luv," Sullivan answered with that cat-at-cream grin. "But most importantly, you're an elf, aren't you?" He wagged his thumb, the last remaining finger, in her direction.
She stared at him, then very slowly raised her arm and checked her hands in the moonlight. "Still blue, aren't I?"
He teetered his hand to and fro. "More of a purplish blue, I'd say. Thing is, we don't have many kal'dorei folk."
"No. Mostly freelancers, contractors, or agents of the Darnassian Enclave," she said with narrowed eyes. "That's well known enough about SI:7."
"There you have it. That there, is where the duty comes in. Most our folk, near all our good folk, are up in the North, tracing the Cult of the Damned, or in the Eastern Kingdoms, following the trail southbound. We never had nearly enough folk in Kalimdor in the first place and there's even less sneakin' about over there now. Shaw needs good eyes - or, heh, a good eye - in the west, and a good eye who speaks the lingo and walks the walk is far more important than a pawn to use in a petty grudge. That's duty, luv, and that's what Shaw wants you for."
Ceil blinked, drawing back with some surprise. "Kalimdor, truly?" It made more than enough sense.
"You speak Orcish as well as you speak Common and the elvin tongue, don't you?" Sullivan leaned forward, grin crooked and knowing. It was a grin that told her he knew exactly what was going through her mind: not only did it make more than enough sense; it made enough sense to be the truth.
"...and a smattering of Troll," she admitted."But that's ridiculous--"
"Why? Do you really think ap Danwyrith is so important to Shaw that he'd put it over a chance to break into Staghelm's morrowgrain business, or the very loud rumblings of discontent in Orgrimmar? Do you really think one long haired poofer is more important than the well-being of the noble Alliance to Mathias fucking Shaw?"
The only sound was of the waves lapping against the Glacier's Mark for some time as one woman balanced her distrust of SI:7 against the reputation and bearing of one Mathias fucking Shaw.
By noon tomorrow, I expect we'll be back to the Bay, and from there, what shall I do with myself? 'Tisn't a long haul to Stormwind, really, especially if I pick up the cat and ride him swiftly through 'Vale and Duskwood and Westfall. But what will I do, back to Stormwind? Vanished for months, I know nothing of what's gone on. Gone for months, and I still haven't fixed whatever's broken inside of me. I want to see them, I want to see him. I want to know all the news, all the schemes, all the battles, all the new things. But if I go back now, even if I hide who I am, I'll never be able to keep away. If I see him now, is there anyway I can stop myself from flinging myself into his arms? I am still not a creature of self control.
I could stay with this ship, claim my part of the haul and wait to go to sea again. I could lurk the bars and pubs, chance the drink to keep my head clouded 'til I can kill freely again. I could, I suppose, go back to working jobs, but there's true danger there; there's too many ears in the Riders kept low to the ground. Is this how the rest of my life will be? Drifting, searching, not finding the cure or fix, not knowing how to mend what--
~
"Miss?" Jimmy Buttons's voice came up from behind, interrupting her thoughts.
~
I swear to the stars, the next time he interrupts me, I'm going to shove steel in his gut and his feet off the damn deck. A woman can't properly self-pity with him flitting about so, goddess-be-damned.
~
"Buttons..." she began and it was obvious her patience was wearing thin with the hint of warning in her voice. Before she could continue, he interrupted her once again.
"That's sort of a wanker's name, innit?"
~
It certainly 'tis. Wait, what?
~
She looked up with a blink, twisting her body to look behind her as he approached. Immediately she could see something had changed. He'd developed a slouch, where before he'd been all broad shoulders and raised chin. There was a gleeful little grin on his face with a familiar crook to it, and a hint of teeth too white. Then there was his voice - that one sentence could have come from another man entirely just from accent alone; a charming but slick accent familiar to the back alleys and broken cobblestone streets of Stormwind. He sat down next to her, but not too close this time, and let his legs dangle over the side of the galleon.
"Cat got your tongue, love? I really doubt you've any need to worry about that, though - you spent enough time being a cat, didn't you?" He asked, the too-toothy grin widening. Her own eyes narrowed and she glanced over him. He was bare chested, wise enough in the hot Vale night. He was also barefoot and wearing only a fairly thin pair of leather breeches. There were very few places to hide a weapon and he immediately knew that was what she was looking for. He held up his hands, palms forward, displaying callouses that upon closer inspection matched the ones on her own palms. Callouses from bladework, primarily. "Not a blade or bludgeon in sight, that's a promise."
"Your promise?" She repeated, skeptical. "I don't even know who you are, going on like this."
"Easily enough solved. James Sullivan and pleased to meet you, luv," the man no longer showing any trace of Jimmy Buttons introduced himself, offering one of those rough hands to shake. She did not take it. She gave a slight cant to her head, as if trying to recall. "Don't worry about thinking too deep on it, you probably haven't heard the name. First Finger's lovely and obscure most of the time, innit?"
She stiffened at the mention of the hand of SI:7. Her voice next came petulant and annoyed and completely a lie, but to untrained ears it was unmistakable for the sound of those actual feelings. "I don't know what you're on about, Jimmy Buttons. Fingers and cats? Have you been in the 'dust? Captain'll have you lashed, we're to be on watch."
He threw back his head and laughed, harsh barks that bit through the night. "You're too good, aren't you? You'd have me in a blink if I hadn't followed you from Stormwind to the 'Bay and onto this damn ship, Mistress Nightfury."
"...'tis a long way and a long damned time to follow even me," Ceil replied, dropping the pretenses as cleanly as he had. Her shoulders straightened where his now slumped, and her accent came through a little more strongly, prettier than the roughened piratical tones she'd been putting on as Dalah. "And not even a single attempt on my life, if I'm not mistaken."
"You aren't mistaken at all, luv. Not my job to be killing you."
"But you're First Finger?" Her eyes narrowed.
"Sure am, but even the First has got to start at the Fourth, don't he?" Sullivan asked with a chuckle, leaning back on one hand to watch her. Ceil paused, then gave him a queer look.
"As a recruiter, you mean?" She asked, voice thick with disbelief.
"Got it in one, luv. And I was good, damn good, if you don't mind me polishin' me own knob a trifle. I was good then as Fourth and I'm good now as First, and all that experience puts me in picture perfect standing to be here with your lovely self, chatting it up." Sullivan was grinning like a cat in cream now and it was unsettling in its own way. One didn't sit on the bow of a ship on the black sea, supposedly unarmed, and announce their lies and subterfuge to some one like Ceil Nightfury, and one did not do it with the amusement that Sullivan was currently presenting.
"I mean no offense," Ceil said, then paused and shrugged. "Well, no, I do, actually. You're fucking with me, like a cat with a mouse."
Sullivan waved his hand with a shake of his head. "No, no, no..." but then he also shrugged. He pinched a thick thumb and a rough index finger together, then parted them a hair. "Maybe just a trifle bit? You can't blame me, can you? Eight months on this rotting heap, playing Jimmy Buttons suffering eternal blue balls at the mercy of the beautiful elvin pirate. Gods, Nightfury, but you DO play hard to get like a master."
He was rewarded with a smile, more of a smirk. "You can't blame me, can you? Who'd fuck a man named 'Buttons?' It's a wanker's name."
"Hah!" He gave another biting laugh, then wagged a finger at her. "Now, I didn't have my hopes up high, but I had plenty of pleasant dreams on the subject. Buttons or no, though, luv, you ought to let go and live a bit. Cooped up for too long in your own skin and you'll lose it, won't you? Even men oh so recently torn from their wives find it in themselves to dance the bedroom ballet, now and again." His grin sharpened lewdly, black eyes boring into her. Ceil gave him no reward this time, only a thinner smirk.
"That tack's been tried by folk far more subtle than you," she said with boredom in her voice and warning in her eyes. "If you're truly here to recruit me for SI:7's petty errands, you'll have to think of something far more clever to turn me against Tarquin ap Danwyrith."
Surprisingly, Sullivan rolled his eyes and theatrically threw his arms up in the air. "It's all about ap Danwyrith with you, isn't it? Hells, luv, don't you realize Shaw's got a few more pressing matters at hand than some nancy-boy ex-agent gone all organized crime? Shit, that's not even very bloody original, really. Have you ever bothered looking around yourself and taking note of the wars our lovely Kingdom is involved in? The dead to the north, the Horde to the west, the mad Old Gods...well, I haven't a fucking clue where those tossers are, but they're THERE. All, I must break it to you, a damned sight more important than your former husband and his band of crooks."
During Sullivan's explosive but short speech, Ceil's jaw became set on edge. The smirk fell from her lips, leaving them pressed into a tight line. "Horse's shite. You'd not be here for me if Mathias gods-damn-his-eyes Shaw didn't want me as a pawn in his little chess game against Tarq."
This visibly drew Sullivan up short, and he reached over for Ceil's hand. She removed it from his reach without hesitation and instead his hand fell lightly on her knee in a friendly, warm gesture. "I'm certainly not going to deny that Shaw's got a biggie for your man--" He paused, then canted his head. "...for ap Danwyrith, I should say? But that's personal. And Shaw isn't the type of man to let personal interfere with duty. Beside that, luv, you do yourself a remarkable disservice. You've lots more to you than ap Danwyrith, you do."
This garnered a somewhat enigmatic and very bitter snort of laughter. As he hadn't found steel in his guts yet, Sullivan continued without care. "Let's take stock, shall we, of your usefulness as an employee in our very particular field?" Before Ceil could say a thing, Sullivan had taken his hand from her knee and raised a finger. "You've got the disguise and acting mastered, that's a gimme. You've got the killing bit down cold, don't you, now?"
"Would you like to see?" She asked with a pleasant smile.
Another finger was raised. "I have on every raid this boat's gone on, and what a sight it is, m'lovely and homicidal lass." He raised a third finger. "And what I haven't seen this whole time has been you drunk or bobbed out on 'dust. You're clean. That's certainly stable enough for any murderer and we don't tend to be the stable lot, us. Circumspect, even, when times need..." after a moment's consideration he stuck up another finger to count this. "That's an important one, it is. You got rid of Rowdy Rodrik without a single suspicion of any kind of messing about."
"Then how do you know?" She asked softly, voice low against the sound of the waves lapping against the hull.
"Never suspected you, did I? I knew it was you, luv," Sullivan answered with that cat-at-cream grin. "But most importantly, you're an elf, aren't you?" He wagged his thumb, the last remaining finger, in her direction.
She stared at him, then very slowly raised her arm and checked her hands in the moonlight. "Still blue, aren't I?"
He teetered his hand to and fro. "More of a purplish blue, I'd say. Thing is, we don't have many kal'dorei folk."
"No. Mostly freelancers, contractors, or agents of the Darnassian Enclave," she said with narrowed eyes. "That's well known enough about SI:7."
"There you have it. That there, is where the duty comes in. Most our folk, near all our good folk, are up in the North, tracing the Cult of the Damned, or in the Eastern Kingdoms, following the trail southbound. We never had nearly enough folk in Kalimdor in the first place and there's even less sneakin' about over there now. Shaw needs good eyes - or, heh, a good eye - in the west, and a good eye who speaks the lingo and walks the walk is far more important than a pawn to use in a petty grudge. That's duty, luv, and that's what Shaw wants you for."
Ceil blinked, drawing back with some surprise. "Kalimdor, truly?" It made more than enough sense.
"You speak Orcish as well as you speak Common and the elvin tongue, don't you?" Sullivan leaned forward, grin crooked and knowing. It was a grin that told her he knew exactly what was going through her mind: not only did it make more than enough sense; it made enough sense to be the truth.
"...and a smattering of Troll," she admitted."But that's ridiculous--"
"Why? Do you really think ap Danwyrith is so important to Shaw that he'd put it over a chance to break into Staghelm's morrowgrain business, or the very loud rumblings of discontent in Orgrimmar? Do you really think one long haired poofer is more important than the well-being of the noble Alliance to Mathias fucking Shaw?"
The only sound was of the waves lapping against the Glacier's Mark for some time as one woman balanced her distrust of SI:7 against the reputation and bearing of one Mathias fucking Shaw.
Survival
(10) Murder As Art
"So, then," she exhaled, then placed her hands on her knees. She kept her acceptance of Sullivan's argument silent, but his grin spoke volumes. Practically shouted it over the water. "The noble Alliance, is it? The Kingdom of Stormwind isn't my duty in the least."
Sullivan cocked an eyebrow with interest. "What about the kal'dorei?"
Suddenly feeling like she was walking across dangerously unstable ground, Ceil spoke slowly. "What of them?"
"They are your people, aren't they? If you've got duty to them, well then, we're the tops, we are. We want you to start in Darnassus. There's something wrong about things there, with the Tree, and--"
"Staghelm," she nodded, since this wasn't new information in the least. Those were, however, things so rarely investigated. The Darnassian Enclave was nearly entirely under Staghelm's thumb and SI:7...well, Sullivan had said it. It was hard, nearly too hard, for any one not a child of the stars to get close to the goings-on on the Crown of the Earth. "But, Agent Sullivan--"
"Shit and shingles, drop the 'agent.' We're not in a Lovelace book, now."
"...Sullivan. You know, I'm sure, I haven't lived in Kalimdor for years now. I've had barely anything to do with my own people but for that fuckery in the Caverns of Time. I've, in fact, had ought to do with any kingdom or people for some time, " Ceil replied with a slight murmur of distaste in her voice. "Why do you think I've any desire to do my so-called duty now?"
"Let me ask you this then, luv. Why are you here?"
"Here in the world? You'll have to seek out Elune for that one."
"Here on the Glacier's Mark. You spent eight months in the cold arse of the world surrounded by the worst pirates the Cartel's got, and you don't even need to give a damn about the pay, do you?"
"No, but what's wrong with pirates, then, 'Jimmy Buttons?'" She leaped to her feet and vaulted into the handrail behind them, balancing. "Pirates are wonderful. All peg legs, hook hands and fantastic hats, aren't they? Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, missing teeth and murder. I fit right in, don't I, with my missing morals and my appreciation of the absurd. What's wrong with that?"
"So you're a pirate for the irony of it, are you?"
She reached up and unwound the bead from her hair. As soon as the braid it was worked into came loose, the glamour it cast vanished. Ceil's right eye was a yawning hole surrounded by twisted and burnt azure scars, the socket of her eye uneven and empty. "And me without the eyepatch, aye?"
Sullivan gave a laugh, his longest yet. It split through the night air with a crackle. "That's cute, I'm really liking that. Part of it might even be true, as true as folk like us get. But..." he turned around to watch the elf balancing on the hand-rail, his unprotected back to the sea. "I just so happen to know the heart of it."
"...the heart of it?" She paused, something about his phrasing drawing her up short. She stood, unwavering and easily balanced. She looked down at him.
"Why you're really here, luv," he said, and tapped his temple lightly. "You stopped feeling, didn't you?"
She started out defensively but unconvincingly, "I don't know what you're---"
"Horse's shite. You see, I know just how this goes. You had this big family, yeah? Folks you hand picked to be close to, to love, maybe. Husband, man on the side, sisters and brothers and maybe even a kid or two. You told yourself you did the shite you did for them, even sometimes when it was to them, and that's how your duty worked. But, see, the thing is, you murder people," Sullivan spoke easily, in a friendly tone, but his eyes never left Ceil's. She couldn't even draw her gaze away from him as he continued - the longest she had kept eye contact since she lost her eye. "Lots of folk kill other folk, it's true, but the kind of killing we do, it's different, innit? Art. And hells, we like it. Really like it. Doing a job well done, playing a person like a fiddle, all strings and quick fingers, being in control. So we kill and we kill and we kill and for you, pretty soon it got hard to tell the difference between the sort of folk you like killing and the sort of folk you're supposed to be killing for. The sort of folk you're supposed to be loving."
She was completely quiet, returning Sullivan's intent stare. Her face was schooled into a blank mask, whereas he kept his too-white grin. He tapped his temple again, then pointed to her. "Got you pegged, I do."
"You don't," she whispered, teeth on edge.
"No, luv?" He considered her for a moment, then spun about, legs dangling over the hull once again. He left his bare back to her, exposed. Inviting, even. "You're not so different from me. Around them, you're an actor playing a role. And a damned good one, too, I'll bet. Maybe it's even that you still love - ap Danwyrith? The man-" the way he said the word made it sound like a joke, half chuckling. "-on the side? But for the greater lot of them...you realized it. All their faces were just blurs. Lumps of eyes and noses and ears, nothing individual at all. You know exactly what's underneath all those pretty trappings."
There was only the sound of lapping waves as Ceil stared at Sullivan's back, eye focused on the smooth skin between his shoulder blades and slightly to the left. She twisted her wrist quietly and the stiletto up her sleeve slid against her skin. "What's underneath all that?"
"Muscle and gristle. Meat and blood." He didn't turn to look at her as he gave a fluid shrug, rolling first his right shoulder, then his left. It was nearly an invitation. But his words had drawn her up short again. "Just a skull with meat laid over it, weak..."
~
Weak at the temples...
~
He continued as she remained silent, "...at the temples, split too easy with a long blade..."
~
...through the soft roof of the mouth...
~
"...through the roof of the mouth."
She crept up next to him and sat down slowly, showing care. She spoke hesitantly, glancing at his profile then away, over the waves. Though not far off, they couldn't see the coast in the moonless night. "I realized it at the Battle of Wrathgate. When the gate opened and there was...the Bloody Prince...and...shite, I was terrified, of course, but everything seemed so very..."
Sullivan easily supplied the words at her pause. "Detached. Distant, like you weren't really there at all."
"Aye...that's...how 'twas." Ceil paused again to take a deep, cautious breath, as if her next words were dangerous to speak aloud. They were, in a way. "I could only think how I was to get out of there alive, then how I was to get out of there alive with Tarq."
"The rest of your Riders were there, weren't they?"
"Near all of them. Bricu and Threnn, expecting child. Bellesta, all fur and fury. Dear Genise, red and tall. Tirith, Ulthanon, fresh Aely, Jolstraer...Sonya. I called her my sister, you know. Sonya." She had to stop, she had to catch her breath. Without realizing it, her words had come faster and faster until her heart was racing. Her hands were fists. There was only the sound of her rapid breathing and Sullivan's low chuckle for a moment. "...and I could only think of my own sorry arse, and his."
"I told you, luv, I know just how this goes," Sullivan said easily, glancing over at Ceil. Her profile displayed the dark cavern of her missing eye and he only smiled all the more to see it. "You aren't so different from me at all. You can't see them as folk any more, because if they were folk, then so would every other bastard you've ever murdered. If you felt for them, you'd never be able to think of it the lovely way you do."
"And just how do I think of it?" Though the words were intended to be spirited and somewhat sarcastic, it was too obvious all the fight had gone out of her. Ceil looked down at her hands, quietly.
"Art, it is, and something to excel at. Something that proves you're a force not to be fucked with, a person of real and important value. Some one who can do shite instead of having shite happen to you. A way of control, innit and making your mark?" Sullivan's voice had changed; though his accent remained, the sound of amusement was gone. He spoke from the gut now, savoring words that sounded sacred as he spoke them. Ceil looked over to him, eye darting over his face. The grin remained, but his eyes no longer stared into hers; now he looked over the water.
"Yes," she nearly whispered and gave a slow, steady nod. "'Tis that. 'Tis all of that."
"You can use that," Sullivan said with a exhale that turned into a slight laugh. His levity returned swiftly, like it was never gone. He looked back over to her. "You're good, of course, or Shaw wouldn't want you, and you're steady, stable enough so much that when you kill, you at least do it for some reason beyond just addiction to it and desire for it. SI:7 can help with that part of it. Can give you a real reason."
"Kalimdor?"
"If you can't be there for your family, what's to stop you from at least doin' something for them? From finding your duty to your people, for helping the world the folk you're supposed to be caring about have to live in. This place--" Sullivan motioned with a deft hand, rolling his eyes at the Glacier's Mark. "--what a fucking waste it is for talent like your's. What a fucking waste of your time. It's just running away."
"I didn't run--"
"Maybe you didn't start off running, but that's what it's turned into, in a place like this. Stop indulging your sense of the gods-damned dramatic, Ceil Nightfury, and do some shite. Make your fucking mark."
~
He's still just a trifle wrong. 'Twasn't running. 'Twas hiding. Hiding from everything, including facing myself.
~
He watched her stay silent, staring again at her hands, as if they belonged to a stranger. "Freezing's as far from growing as you can be," he chided lightly.
"I can't grow," she replied lowly, with a catch in her voice.
"That's that sense of the dramatic again, there, innit?" Sullivan rolled his eyes. "There's how many First Finger?"
This caused Ceil to blink and look up. "O'er five hundred, so said on the streets."
He didn't confirm or deny the number, only let his grin grow devilish. "And a great deal of them are murderers; killers, assassins, deathdealers of the best sort. If they were all like us, Stormwind would have torn itself to little tiny bits by now, wouldn't it? Aye, of course, it certainly would have. No, most of those killers are happy, or close to it...family, friends, little brats running around the yard. You hadn't any training, had you?"
"I've been trained," Ceil protested cautiously, Sullivan's shifts in tone and questions drawing her in further despite herself.
"For the blade, of course. How to kill, but not how to live, that's the bit you're missing," Sullivan explained, with a rueful shake of his head. "That's a damn important part of our profession, and I think you're just figurin' that out now. It's one of the many wonderful parts of a SI:7 education, and it's one of the things we can teach you, Nightfury."
"Truly?" Ceil asked in a sarcastically skeptical tone. "You can teach me how to feel again."
"Well." Sullivan paused, then cracked a laugh. "Not me, all personal-like. But SI:7, aye."
"And why not you? If Shaw's lot are such good schoolchildren and learn their lessons oh so well, why is it that we're not so different at all, James Sullivan, and you can't feel, just the same?"
"Because I like being like this," he answered with an honest smile. Ceil could only stare at him, with a deep knot between her brows. "You can't see how? It's easy enough, really - I focus on my job, and gods know I love this job. And why shouldn't I? I get to travel, there's fantastic perks, I make good coin and all the while I'm helping my kingdom, my country and my folk."
"But you can't..."
"Love?" Sullivan raised an eyebrow. "Love's not doing you so well right now, is it?"
~
Spoken like a man who's never known love. Having had it is well worth having lost it, much as it hurts.
~
"...but there's others," she replied slowly, not answering his question. "That could teach me. That could fix this."
"Fix you, you mean?" Sullivan laughed easily, watching Ceil's face keenly now that her mask had shattered so cleanly. "Among other things, luv. SI:7's got as much to teach as years you want to learn." She looked over the waters while Sullivan pulled out a single sheet of paper in an oilskin sheath from a cleverly sewn pocket of his breeches. He wordlessly offered it over to her, without touching her at all. She looked down and hesitated for an instant before taking it from his calloused hands with a frown. It was a contract, unsurprisingly, made out to Ceil Nightfury with formal regards from SI:7.
As she read over contract offered to her, she realized one thing, then quickly followed it up with another, far more painful realization. The first thing she realized was that Sullivan had been telling the truth so much as she could see from this piece of paper. It was a very well worded document that came complete with a very unusual and blunt clause:
The undersigned will not be asked or ordered to undertake actions that may endanger the organization of her former employment ("Wildfire Riders") as well as the following list of associates.
There was a list of blank places for her to hand-ink a few names of her own choosing. She stared at the contract for a long time, reading and rereading, realizing just what those simple, elegantly scripted words really meant.
~
Sullivan isn't putting me on. They don't want me for the Riders - they want me for me. He isn't playing me. That means he wasn't lying about Tarq.
'Bedroom ballet,' he said.
That knife in my heart? It's just gone the whole way through.
~
Even Ceil couldn't hide her wince at the realization, but Sullivan just grinned without comment on it.
"'Tis only a sixmonth contract," she finally said, with a hint of surprise.
"It's a good place to start, innit? You can always sign another, after this, and what's a sixmonth to a child of the stars?" His voice was only slightly sarcastic, but as was clearly his custom, more than a little amused. Ceil stood, abruptly, and started to walk below deck. Sullivan raised an eyebrow as he stood, watching her back. "Is that a no, luv?"
She didn't pause, though she glanced over her shoulder. Their eyes met. "You couldn't possibly fit a quill in those too-tight pants, and your balls are too large by far to be inkwells. I've ink and pen both in my belongings."
Sullivan didn't reply, lost to his laughter as she disappeared below deck with the contract in hand.
"So, then," she exhaled, then placed her hands on her knees. She kept her acceptance of Sullivan's argument silent, but his grin spoke volumes. Practically shouted it over the water. "The noble Alliance, is it? The Kingdom of Stormwind isn't my duty in the least."
Sullivan cocked an eyebrow with interest. "What about the kal'dorei?"
Suddenly feeling like she was walking across dangerously unstable ground, Ceil spoke slowly. "What of them?"
"They are your people, aren't they? If you've got duty to them, well then, we're the tops, we are. We want you to start in Darnassus. There's something wrong about things there, with the Tree, and--"
"Staghelm," she nodded, since this wasn't new information in the least. Those were, however, things so rarely investigated. The Darnassian Enclave was nearly entirely under Staghelm's thumb and SI:7...well, Sullivan had said it. It was hard, nearly too hard, for any one not a child of the stars to get close to the goings-on on the Crown of the Earth. "But, Agent Sullivan--"
"Shit and shingles, drop the 'agent.' We're not in a Lovelace book, now."
"...Sullivan. You know, I'm sure, I haven't lived in Kalimdor for years now. I've had barely anything to do with my own people but for that fuckery in the Caverns of Time. I've, in fact, had ought to do with any kingdom or people for some time, " Ceil replied with a slight murmur of distaste in her voice. "Why do you think I've any desire to do my so-called duty now?"
"Let me ask you this then, luv. Why are you here?"
"Here in the world? You'll have to seek out Elune for that one."
"Here on the Glacier's Mark. You spent eight months in the cold arse of the world surrounded by the worst pirates the Cartel's got, and you don't even need to give a damn about the pay, do you?"
"No, but what's wrong with pirates, then, 'Jimmy Buttons?'" She leaped to her feet and vaulted into the handrail behind them, balancing. "Pirates are wonderful. All peg legs, hook hands and fantastic hats, aren't they? Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, missing teeth and murder. I fit right in, don't I, with my missing morals and my appreciation of the absurd. What's wrong with that?"
"So you're a pirate for the irony of it, are you?"
She reached up and unwound the bead from her hair. As soon as the braid it was worked into came loose, the glamour it cast vanished. Ceil's right eye was a yawning hole surrounded by twisted and burnt azure scars, the socket of her eye uneven and empty. "And me without the eyepatch, aye?"
Sullivan gave a laugh, his longest yet. It split through the night air with a crackle. "That's cute, I'm really liking that. Part of it might even be true, as true as folk like us get. But..." he turned around to watch the elf balancing on the hand-rail, his unprotected back to the sea. "I just so happen to know the heart of it."
"...the heart of it?" She paused, something about his phrasing drawing her up short. She stood, unwavering and easily balanced. She looked down at him.
"Why you're really here, luv," he said, and tapped his temple lightly. "You stopped feeling, didn't you?"
She started out defensively but unconvincingly, "I don't know what you're---"
"Horse's shite. You see, I know just how this goes. You had this big family, yeah? Folks you hand picked to be close to, to love, maybe. Husband, man on the side, sisters and brothers and maybe even a kid or two. You told yourself you did the shite you did for them, even sometimes when it was to them, and that's how your duty worked. But, see, the thing is, you murder people," Sullivan spoke easily, in a friendly tone, but his eyes never left Ceil's. She couldn't even draw her gaze away from him as he continued - the longest she had kept eye contact since she lost her eye. "Lots of folk kill other folk, it's true, but the kind of killing we do, it's different, innit? Art. And hells, we like it. Really like it. Doing a job well done, playing a person like a fiddle, all strings and quick fingers, being in control. So we kill and we kill and we kill and for you, pretty soon it got hard to tell the difference between the sort of folk you like killing and the sort of folk you're supposed to be killing for. The sort of folk you're supposed to be loving."
She was completely quiet, returning Sullivan's intent stare. Her face was schooled into a blank mask, whereas he kept his too-white grin. He tapped his temple again, then pointed to her. "Got you pegged, I do."
"You don't," she whispered, teeth on edge.
"No, luv?" He considered her for a moment, then spun about, legs dangling over the hull once again. He left his bare back to her, exposed. Inviting, even. "You're not so different from me. Around them, you're an actor playing a role. And a damned good one, too, I'll bet. Maybe it's even that you still love - ap Danwyrith? The man-" the way he said the word made it sound like a joke, half chuckling. "-on the side? But for the greater lot of them...you realized it. All their faces were just blurs. Lumps of eyes and noses and ears, nothing individual at all. You know exactly what's underneath all those pretty trappings."
There was only the sound of lapping waves as Ceil stared at Sullivan's back, eye focused on the smooth skin between his shoulder blades and slightly to the left. She twisted her wrist quietly and the stiletto up her sleeve slid against her skin. "What's underneath all that?"
"Muscle and gristle. Meat and blood." He didn't turn to look at her as he gave a fluid shrug, rolling first his right shoulder, then his left. It was nearly an invitation. But his words had drawn her up short again. "Just a skull with meat laid over it, weak..."
~
Weak at the temples...
~
He continued as she remained silent, "...at the temples, split too easy with a long blade..."
~
...through the soft roof of the mouth...
~
"...through the roof of the mouth."
She crept up next to him and sat down slowly, showing care. She spoke hesitantly, glancing at his profile then away, over the waves. Though not far off, they couldn't see the coast in the moonless night. "I realized it at the Battle of Wrathgate. When the gate opened and there was...the Bloody Prince...and...shite, I was terrified, of course, but everything seemed so very..."
Sullivan easily supplied the words at her pause. "Detached. Distant, like you weren't really there at all."
"Aye...that's...how 'twas." Ceil paused again to take a deep, cautious breath, as if her next words were dangerous to speak aloud. They were, in a way. "I could only think how I was to get out of there alive, then how I was to get out of there alive with Tarq."
"The rest of your Riders were there, weren't they?"
"Near all of them. Bricu and Threnn, expecting child. Bellesta, all fur and fury. Dear Genise, red and tall. Tirith, Ulthanon, fresh Aely, Jolstraer...Sonya. I called her my sister, you know. Sonya." She had to stop, she had to catch her breath. Without realizing it, her words had come faster and faster until her heart was racing. Her hands were fists. There was only the sound of her rapid breathing and Sullivan's low chuckle for a moment. "...and I could only think of my own sorry arse, and his."
"I told you, luv, I know just how this goes," Sullivan said easily, glancing over at Ceil. Her profile displayed the dark cavern of her missing eye and he only smiled all the more to see it. "You aren't so different from me at all. You can't see them as folk any more, because if they were folk, then so would every other bastard you've ever murdered. If you felt for them, you'd never be able to think of it the lovely way you do."
"And just how do I think of it?" Though the words were intended to be spirited and somewhat sarcastic, it was too obvious all the fight had gone out of her. Ceil looked down at her hands, quietly.
"Art, it is, and something to excel at. Something that proves you're a force not to be fucked with, a person of real and important value. Some one who can do shite instead of having shite happen to you. A way of control, innit and making your mark?" Sullivan's voice had changed; though his accent remained, the sound of amusement was gone. He spoke from the gut now, savoring words that sounded sacred as he spoke them. Ceil looked over to him, eye darting over his face. The grin remained, but his eyes no longer stared into hers; now he looked over the water.
"Yes," she nearly whispered and gave a slow, steady nod. "'Tis that. 'Tis all of that."
"You can use that," Sullivan said with a exhale that turned into a slight laugh. His levity returned swiftly, like it was never gone. He looked back over to her. "You're good, of course, or Shaw wouldn't want you, and you're steady, stable enough so much that when you kill, you at least do it for some reason beyond just addiction to it and desire for it. SI:7 can help with that part of it. Can give you a real reason."
"Kalimdor?"
"If you can't be there for your family, what's to stop you from at least doin' something for them? From finding your duty to your people, for helping the world the folk you're supposed to be caring about have to live in. This place--" Sullivan motioned with a deft hand, rolling his eyes at the Glacier's Mark. "--what a fucking waste it is for talent like your's. What a fucking waste of your time. It's just running away."
"I didn't run--"
"Maybe you didn't start off running, but that's what it's turned into, in a place like this. Stop indulging your sense of the gods-damned dramatic, Ceil Nightfury, and do some shite. Make your fucking mark."
~
He's still just a trifle wrong. 'Twasn't running. 'Twas hiding. Hiding from everything, including facing myself.
~
He watched her stay silent, staring again at her hands, as if they belonged to a stranger. "Freezing's as far from growing as you can be," he chided lightly.
"I can't grow," she replied lowly, with a catch in her voice.
"That's that sense of the dramatic again, there, innit?" Sullivan rolled his eyes. "There's how many First Finger?"
This caused Ceil to blink and look up. "O'er five hundred, so said on the streets."
He didn't confirm or deny the number, only let his grin grow devilish. "And a great deal of them are murderers; killers, assassins, deathdealers of the best sort. If they were all like us, Stormwind would have torn itself to little tiny bits by now, wouldn't it? Aye, of course, it certainly would have. No, most of those killers are happy, or close to it...family, friends, little brats running around the yard. You hadn't any training, had you?"
"I've been trained," Ceil protested cautiously, Sullivan's shifts in tone and questions drawing her in further despite herself.
"For the blade, of course. How to kill, but not how to live, that's the bit you're missing," Sullivan explained, with a rueful shake of his head. "That's a damn important part of our profession, and I think you're just figurin' that out now. It's one of the many wonderful parts of a SI:7 education, and it's one of the things we can teach you, Nightfury."
"Truly?" Ceil asked in a sarcastically skeptical tone. "You can teach me how to feel again."
"Well." Sullivan paused, then cracked a laugh. "Not me, all personal-like. But SI:7, aye."
"And why not you? If Shaw's lot are such good schoolchildren and learn their lessons oh so well, why is it that we're not so different at all, James Sullivan, and you can't feel, just the same?"
"Because I like being like this," he answered with an honest smile. Ceil could only stare at him, with a deep knot between her brows. "You can't see how? It's easy enough, really - I focus on my job, and gods know I love this job. And why shouldn't I? I get to travel, there's fantastic perks, I make good coin and all the while I'm helping my kingdom, my country and my folk."
"But you can't..."
"Love?" Sullivan raised an eyebrow. "Love's not doing you so well right now, is it?"
~
Spoken like a man who's never known love. Having had it is well worth having lost it, much as it hurts.
~
"...but there's others," she replied slowly, not answering his question. "That could teach me. That could fix this."
"Fix you, you mean?" Sullivan laughed easily, watching Ceil's face keenly now that her mask had shattered so cleanly. "Among other things, luv. SI:7's got as much to teach as years you want to learn." She looked over the waters while Sullivan pulled out a single sheet of paper in an oilskin sheath from a cleverly sewn pocket of his breeches. He wordlessly offered it over to her, without touching her at all. She looked down and hesitated for an instant before taking it from his calloused hands with a frown. It was a contract, unsurprisingly, made out to Ceil Nightfury with formal regards from SI:7.
As she read over contract offered to her, she realized one thing, then quickly followed it up with another, far more painful realization. The first thing she realized was that Sullivan had been telling the truth so much as she could see from this piece of paper. It was a very well worded document that came complete with a very unusual and blunt clause:
The undersigned will not be asked or ordered to undertake actions that may endanger the organization of her former employment ("Wildfire Riders") as well as the following list of associates.
There was a list of blank places for her to hand-ink a few names of her own choosing. She stared at the contract for a long time, reading and rereading, realizing just what those simple, elegantly scripted words really meant.
~
Sullivan isn't putting me on. They don't want me for the Riders - they want me for me. He isn't playing me. That means he wasn't lying about Tarq.
'Bedroom ballet,' he said.
That knife in my heart? It's just gone the whole way through.
~
Even Ceil couldn't hide her wince at the realization, but Sullivan just grinned without comment on it.
"'Tis only a sixmonth contract," she finally said, with a hint of surprise.
"It's a good place to start, innit? You can always sign another, after this, and what's a sixmonth to a child of the stars?" His voice was only slightly sarcastic, but as was clearly his custom, more than a little amused. Ceil stood, abruptly, and started to walk below deck. Sullivan raised an eyebrow as he stood, watching her back. "Is that a no, luv?"
She didn't pause, though she glanced over her shoulder. Their eyes met. "You couldn't possibly fit a quill in those too-tight pants, and your balls are too large by far to be inkwells. I've ink and pen both in my belongings."
Sullivan didn't reply, lost to his laughter as she disappeared below deck with the contract in hand.