Twin Angel Step

[Varenna]

...is being started over, this time from the right direction. Look out!

[Itanya_blade]

((BAH! What about the other thing you have been teasing us with?))

[Varenna]

I've started work on that one too. This is further along.

Incoming!

[Varenna]

This is our protagonist. We don't know her name yet, but we can see what she looks like: Her hair is a color falling somewhere between purple, red, and deep brown, or more simply: burgundy. Her skin is a pale-dark shade normally found in mugs of hot cocoa after the marshmallows have melted. Her eyes are wide, gorgeous, and a stunningly bright blue, and her best feature. Right now they are closed, and she is asleep.

The reason she's sleeping, rather than doing something exciting for the introduction, is this: At this moment in our story, she is only two months old.

Because she is asleep, she is unaware that she is currently being carried in the arms of someone who is more or less a ninja.

The Kirin Tor - for our protagonist and her ninja are in Dalaran before the Second War - is too polite to call them ninjas. Similarly avoided are related words such as: assassin, shadowmaster, and blade-for-hire. Nevertheless, such people are very common on Cross Island at this time. Most of them are referred to by their masters as assistants, or, slightly more openly, as bodyguards. The person we see now, carefully carrying our protagonist, has actually been officially employed under the title of "Valet." He has numerous diverse talents. Like many of his kind in the Magocratic City-State of Dalaran, among these talents is a certain very practical degree of training in all the magical arts, especially illusion. One would think this might make him a mage or perhaps a spellsword, but the facts are these: without using any of his magic, he is not only carrying our protagonist, but doing so quite easily across the famously altitudinous rooftops of the Violet City. He is executing some very impressive aerial acrobatics, and gravity seems to be something that only minorly concerns him. Hidden in his tuxedo is a short but extremely sharp single-edged sword, and more throwing stars than even he can adequately keep count of. He is a ninja.

We are currently resting on the furthest edge of dusk. The lamps in the streets below are still in the process of being lit. It is not raining, although we feel that perhaps it should be. The heavy grey-black clouds gathered over the city, actually pierced through by the tallest and most impressive of the Kirin Tor's spires, including the great Citadel itself rising higher than any of the rest, seem to feel so as well, but it still isn't going to start raining until morning. We'll just have to do without it until then, because the story is starting...

Now.

[Varenna]

Dalaran was a wonderful place - wondrous, more like - but its politics would eat you alive these days. That's what was going through Chesterfield's head as he rappeled one-handed down the treacherous and deceptively shimmering side of the Tower of Illusory Arts and Sciences. The rumor was one of the Six Seats was open, and already this month another three very prominent families had been murdered over it. It was a shame that the most recent had been his.

He'd been too slow, of course. He hadn't been paying enough attention to notice when the wards went down. Instead he'd been doing the dishes. By the time he heard the first explosions - the assassin had been an evoker - the lady of the house had already been stabbed in her sleep. By the time Chesterfield had made it upstairs, a well-placed fireball had forced her unprepared husband to join her. He had failed them, no doubt about that. He was a disgrace, unquestionably. Still-- at least he hadn't failed them entirely...

He hooked a grappling hook over a protruding gargoyle that wasn't really there. Letting it bear his weight and the child's, he resumed his descent. He could see what looked like a garden far below; one of the embassies, most likely. They would have to do. He had already used all of his spells just to escape the burning estate, and now he was running out of time. He hoped they had good security.


In the background, a small frog was chirping in the reeds near one of the water features.

"Look, I'm sorry, but I simply can't. We've gone over this before, you know why the tariffs are set as they are. Dalaran already has extremely reasonable rates. I've done as much as I can. Why must you keep asking?"

The Royal Ambassador from Quel'thalas to Dalaran gave the Official Kirin Tor Representative to Silvermoon a helpless shrug. The Official Kirin Tor Represenative to Silvermoon glared back at her. He sighed. They took it in turns back and forth which city they argued in, this month it was Dalaran, and he always seemed to do worse on his own ground. She was being deliberately difficult, as always. And she'd worn that low-cut dress again, just to distract him.

"Look," he started. "You cannot assume that-"

"Ma'am?"

The Official Kirin Tor Representative to Silvermoon looked peeved as he was cut off. The harpy quel'dorei's bodyguard, normally silent and still as a statue in his ornamental silver plate, had come in from the perimeter of the garden.

"Yes, dear?" said the Royal Ambassador from Quel'thalas to Dalaran, holding up a red-nailed index finger to her opposite number. "We'll get back to your whining in a moment, Alexstus. I'm sure this is important."

The Royal Ambassador's bodyguard bowed. "Sorry for the interruption, ma'am. Only I feel something coming toward us."

"Do you, dear? What might that be?"

A tuxedo'd ninja landed in nearby bush, setting off half a dozen magical alarms and triggering several automated fireball runes that turned the bush into a crater. He emerged unscathed, clutching what appeared to be child, and ran at them.

"Looks like somebody's personal assistant, ma'am."

"What is the meaning of-" started the Official Kirin Tor Representative to Silvermoon, also known as Alexstus. He was cut off again as a second ninja landed in a bush that was slightly to the left of the bush the first ninja had landed in, setting off more alarms and more fireballs. He vaulted out of the second crater, slightly scorched, and began shooting off fireballs of his own at the first ninja.

As has already been noted, Chesterfield, the first ninja, was dressed in the traditional tuxedo, with black tie. It had been personally handmade for him by the famous Floyd's of Dalaran company. The assassin, the second ninja, was wearing a tastefully striped grey tweed suit. It had come with a floppy hat.

Chesterfield ducked into a roll. A fireball scorched the grass near his head. He came up again in front of the Royal Ambassador from Quel'thalas to Dalaran, deposited the the baby girl in her surprised arms, then turned. He drew the extremely sharp single-edged sword from its place in his cummerbund and darted back at the second ninja, preceding himself with a hail of throwing stars.

The second ninja melted most of the throwing stars with a quick lightning blast, then swore as a stray one tore his sleeve. "This jacket cost sixty gold, you tosser!"

The ninjas met. There was a short, sharp explosion, then Chesterfield slumped to the grass smoldering. Bleeding heavily from another, much larger tear in his jacket, the second ninja padded on very expensive dress shoes to stand in front of the Royal Ambassador. Her bodyguard moved between them, pulling his shield, shaped like a phoenix, and the double-bladed sword off of his back. The ninja waved a dismissive hand at him.

"Move."

"No."

The ninja flowed, like a cobra or the better class of running riverwater. A fireball dissipated in the air in front of the bodyguard's face. He spun his sword, deflecting a throwing star, then struck the ninja hard in the face with his shield as the man fumbled for his own sword.

There was a noise like: foompf. A purple smoke cloud billowed up behind the ninja. The Official Kirin Tor Representative to Silvermoon's Official State-Employed Bodyguard materialized out of it, pulled a purple silk handkerchief from his sleeve and a longsword from the handkerchief, and took off the ninja's head. The Royal Ambassador's bodyguard nodded at him. He nodded back.

The Royal Ambassador looked across at Alexstus. She looked at her bodyguard, then his, then at the corpses on the grass. She listened to the irritating klaxon alarm sounds that had been going off in the embassy building, and looked at the baby girl in her arms, and frowned.

"Oh dear."

[Varenna]

It was raining now, sheets of it, smearing the world grey. Water streamed across the surfaces of the expensive glass windows set in the walls of the Quel'dorei Embassy Building. Behind one, in the private suite belonging to Lady Crysenia Silverbloom, the Royal Ambassador from Quel'thalas to Dalaran, the baby girl had fallen soundly asleep to the gentle sound of arguing.

"And what am I supposed to do about it? It was obviously an attempted political assassination! We're in enough trouble as it is. Do you really think I'm going to stick my neck out just for an infant? Honestly, Crysenia."

"We were defending ourselves. It was quite legal, I have full diplomatic immunity, and besides, no one knows about it. We haven't exactly been advertising. You're getting yourself worked up over nothing, Alexstus."

The Kirin Tor Representative to Silvermoon turned from the window. The Royal Ambassador from Quel'thalas to Dalaran lounged amidst the pillows on her double bed, watching him.

"Nothing? My dear lady, you do realize what this city is like, don't you? Especially with the current political atmosphere. Dalaran is a magocracy. That makes it rather like a bureaucracy, except bloodier and more inclined to sudden explosions. This year alone, I've already had two tries at my own life-- in my job. Which, delightful as you most assuredly are, madam, is certainly nothing to write home about. No. We're in rather a lot of trouble."

He sighed, turning to look out at the rain again.

"This girl -" He gestured without looking at the infant being held in the arms of the Royal Ambassador's bodyguard, who was standing quietly in a corner of the room still in blood-splattered armor. "- Was chased who-knows-how-far across the city before she reached us. A man died for her. Two, in fact. We killed one of them. People are going to be searching for her. They're going to come to kill her, and they're going to kill us. And we don't even know who she is." He paused to stare reflectively out at the rain. "We're in deep shit."

"What do you suggest then, dear?" asked Crysenia. She stretched out on her pillows, yawning reluctantly. The Kirin Tor Representative's fretting had kept her from getting any sleep; there were pale red circles under the blue glows of her eyes. More cleavage than was necessary rose and fell with her breath. She'd switched from her low-cut dress to a lower-cut nightgown.

"I don't know," admitted Alexstus. He looked back at her, at her face. It takes considerable mental fortitude to become an accomplished magus; he was exercising all of it to keep his eyes from traveling any lower than her chin. "We can't simply leave her somewhere, obviously. She'd be scried out almost instantly. It's fortunate the embassy is warded against it, or we'd already have been discovered."

"Yes," said Crysenia. She blew at a long curl of golden hair to remove it from her eyes. It ignored her.

Silence, except for the rain on the window, gloomily invaded the room.

The door opened.

"Ah. Filkins. Were you successful?" asked Alexstus.

"I was, sir," said Filkins. He moved silently, in very expensive shoes, across the thick carpet. He had something tucked under one arm. Crysenia followed him with her eyes. She was still trying to work out where it was he kept his longsword when it wasn't in use. In his handkerchief, obviously, but where did the handkerchief lead to? There wasn't quite room enough in his cummerbund.

"I think you had better take a look at this, sir," said Filkins, and handed over the newspaper he'd been carrying.

Alexstus unfolded it awkwardly. "Front page?"

"Indeed, sir."

He scanned his eyes down the page. One point five seconds in, he went pale. Wordless, he finished reading the cover story and handed the paper back to Filkins. He carried it over to Crysenia.

She read the cover story. One point four seconds in, she started smiling.

There was an expensive color illusion at the top of the page, just under the headline, which read tastelessly, "Firedawn Family Perish In Irony!!" The illusion showed a tall residential mage tower catching aflame from the top down, starting with a violent explosion that tore the roof and the upper floors off all in one go. The explosion repeated itself as she watched it. The illusion was on a loop. A few inches down, smaller, was a second illusion. A young couple in the colors of the Kirin Tor smiled cheerfully at whoever had cast the spell. The man had dark skin. The woman had wavy burgundy hair down past her shoulders.

"Alexstus?" asked Crysenia.

"...In deep shit..."

"Consider a hypothetical question for me, please, dear."

"...Archmage Firedawn!!"

"Suppose you had sent an assassin to kill an archmage and his family. An assassin who could cause an explosion like this." She held the paper up in one hand. Alexstus whimpered. She paused, tapping a perfect crimson fingernail on her teeth, then went on. "In the morning, seeing this paper, would you be more inclined to assume that your scrying spells had failed to work because all of the subjects involved were consumed in a magical catastrophe, and that your assassin succeeded in his task but at the cost of his own life-- or would you construct an elaborate story in which the surviving baby daughter is carried eight blocks away to a foreign embassy building, where she and the corpses of her bodyguard and would-be assassin are effectively invisible due to extensive Quel'dorei wards not standardly employed in Dalaran? Which is more likely, do you think?"

Alextus stared across the room at the repeating illusion of the explosion. Finally he said,"The former..." He glanced down to the small illusion of Archmage and Lady Firedawn. "We'll dispose of the two bodies. And she'll have to leave the city to be safe, of course. She looks too much like her parents, she's too easy to trace."

Crysenia nodded her agreement. "We can return to Silvermoon, take her with us. I'm sure we can find someone along the way who would adopt a newborn human child."

Their eyes met. A Plot-Significant Moment occurred. Alexstus nodded.

In the corner, clanking lightly as he shifted his weight, the Royal Ambassador's bodyguard spoke up quietly. "Ma'am?"

"Yes, Mr. Sungale?" said Crysenia, and looked over to him. "What is it, dear?"

He stared down at the baby girl in his arms, frowning thoughtfully. She was cute. Possibly adorable. She needed someone to protect her. Deep inside him, he could feel something stirring.

It was his latent fatherhood gene.

"...I could maybe take care of her, ma'am..."