Site Write Entry #26: Beauty in the Strangest Places

Prompt: June 1, 2012 - What's an unusual/weird item/person/place that your character finds beauty in?

. . . . . "It just falls so wonderfully off the tongue!"
. . . . . "It's too short."
. . . . . "But that's what makes it wonderful!"
. . . . . Athos crossed his arms and scowled across the little wooden table dinner had been set upon on the ship they were taking down the Kalimdor coast. "What's wrong with Djemiiliak?" Of course, that came out sounding - to a Draenei speaker - more like "What is wrong with Green-Beast-Lumbers-With-Grace?" 
. . . . . "It's unwieldy." Diyos picked up a long loaf of bread from the plate between them and waved one end of it at his brother. "It's unnecessarily long and lacks the elegant grace of a shorter name."
. . . . . "It's human," Athos protested, leaning back before he was beaned by a loaf.
. . . . . "I know! It's great! It's so succinct and solid and it's just got grace to it that our own language can't quite encapsulate. I'm going to rename him to Jim." To a Draenei speaker, that sounded a lot like "I am going to rename him to Jim."  
. . . . . Athos grimaced at the distastefully abrupt syllable. "Haven't you damaged that elekk enough?"
. . . . . "Hey!" The loaf was more aggressive now. "It's entirely not my fault he thinks he's a squirrel."
. . . . . "You encourage it!"
. . . . . "I do not!"
. . . . . Athos closed his eyes for a moment, and as his hand was coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose - as if to stave off a headache - BAM! right between the eyes with the crusty end of a loaf of bread. He batted it aside and shook a finger at his elder brother. "You should've given him back to the handlers so he could be retrained."
. . . . . "It's not a matter of retraining. He hit his head! The handlers would've put him down for such an injury."
. . . . . "Put him out of his misery, you mean."
. . . . . "Jim is not miserable! He's a very happy squirrelekk."

Site Write Entry #25: A Succulent

Prompt: May 31, 2012 - Succulent http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/succulent?s=t

. . . . . "Hoi, brother!" The shout traveled easily over the sun-baked sands. "Come take a look at this!"
. . . . . Diyos turned away from his forlorn search of the sandy horizon for a glimmer of water and headed for the source of the call, his twin, Athos. His younger brother (by a only a few minutes, he would not hesitate to remind!) was standing before quite the oddest looking tree Diyos had ever seen. His brother's braid fell off his left shoulder as he tilted his head that direction, clearly giving this strange thing his best curious regard.
. . . . . "Can I drink it?" Diyos whined as he approached.
. . . . . "Well, maybe. You see, it looks thick and juicy from here, but the spi- DIYOS!"
. . . . . It was too late. The parched priest had run headlong to the odd tree and grabbed a branch. There was just one problem; the branch - indeed, the whole "tree" - was covered in long, sharp spines. Diyos howled and pulled his hand back, two long spines embedded in his palm.
. . . . . "Honestly, I was trying to tell you to be careful," Athos chided as he called upon the Light to soothe his twin's wounds and cease the flow of blood from his palm.
. . . . . "I thought you were about to go into pedantic mode again. And I am thirsty!" Diyos scowled. "Let's head towards the coast for water."
. . . . . "We haven't even mapped as far as these fabled time caverns yet!"
. . . . . "We can come back! Besides, that goblin back in Gadgetzan said we'd find folks with water out that way. Perhaps someone will be feeling kindly enough to share."

Site Write Entry #13: The Animal Companion

Prompt: May 19, 2012 - Your character's favorite animal companion at any point in their life.

. . . . . Soft purple glows gone red with warning. Klaxon sirens. A bone-deep shudder and worringly enduring rumble. Heat. Fire. Debris. Crash. 
. . . . . Diyos had been in the stables portion of the Menagerie where riding animals were kept, feeding his elekk a favored treat - a handful of glowcaps - when sabotage brought the Exodar down. A great deal of luck and a small amount of foresight had saved him severe injury by diving into a nearby empty stall which protected him from the worst as the vessel plowed into the deep earth of this strange silvery-blue island. Bruised and cut but lacking serious wounding, Diyos crawled out from under the partially collapsed stall and plucked a piece of Nagrand hay from his unleashed curls. When he looked up, the shock froze him in place, staring slack-jawed at the devastation.
. . . . . The damage was so great that the vessel had splintered. Not two stalls over from him, the vessel had been sheared clean off, leaving the rest of the Menagerie only O'ros knew where. But three stalls over had been... Diyos gasped, limping out of the wreckage and looking around wildly. "Djemiiliak!" he yelled, "Djemiiliak!" There had been no one else in the section of the stables he'd been idling in; he was looking for his beloved elekk. "Green-Beast-Lumbers-With-Grace!" he called again - roughly the translation of the lengthy Draenei name for the creature.
. . . . . Some several hundred yards from the twisted wreckage the anchorite had crawled out of, he found another section of the Menagerie. The grass around the debris was starting to look a strange shade of red, seeping slowly into the silvery-blue grass of the island. A long, limp greenish-grey appendage stuck out from under a collapsed piece of lithoforming. Frantic with concern, Diyos worked to haul the chunks of fallen stone and crystal off. What he uncovered drew a unrestrained cry of grief from his lips. His stalwart companion of the last ten years, an elekk he'd stabled and tended - with aid of a beastmaster, of course - from a calf, was lying motionless on a large slab of lithoformed wall. Blood - the odd reddish color common to Draenor's creatures - pooled around Djemiiliak's head where a metal bar had pierced into the skull. His elekk was dead.
. . . . . The elekk's ribs moved up and down. He was breathing! Diyos knew this was a vast misuse of his Light-given healing talent, small though his abilities were, and to waste his energy on a creature and not a fellow exile during this crisis was a horrendous sin... But this land was so large he knew only that there was visible shore to his right and land without measure to his left; he needed an elekk to begin the search for his twin brother, Athos, as well as his parents and his elder brother. Clearly, the Exodar was scattered all over if the pieces the Menagerie had become were any indication.
. . . . . At least, that was his official reasoning.
. . . . . Dredging up every speck of talent in repairing wounds he could muster, his prayers to the Light fervent and heartfelt, Diyos laid one hand on the elekk's pierced skull to steady it - and with the other, pulled the metal bar out. A rush of Light and talent left him through the gates of energy in his palms, voluntarily offered to accelerate the elekk's healing process vastly beyond nature's own time frame.
. . . . . Occupied as he was with the healing, Diyos did not notice the strange, brave creature creeping up on the wreckage. No larger than an exiled one's teacup with a tail like a bottle brush and reddish-brown fur, the creature sneaked curiously up on four almost hand-like paws. It sat back on its haunches after sniffing the long, greenish-brown, meaty thing on the ground - and, bravely, did not so much as flinch when the meaty thing sniffed back.
. . . . . The demands of healing so severe a wound so quickly caused Diyos to fall to his knees at Djemiiliak's head. He closed his eyes and rested, utterly exhausted. The furred creature squeaked. In a surprisingly good imitation, so did the elekk. Diyos opened his eyes to see his elekk patting some tiny furred thing with a long bushy tail with his trunk. The furred thing offered the elekk a tiny, rounded, hard brown object, which the elekk immediately picked up with the end of his trunk and put in his mouth. Crunch! The elekk squeaked in pleasure.  
 . . . . What in the Twisting Nether had just happened to his elekk?

-----

. . . . . It was late evening after his first meeting with his new employers, the Modan Company at South Gate Outpost. Diyos rolled his broad shoulders to work out stiffness in them and trudged across the snow, his hooves kicking up little flurries. Where had Jim gotten off t-... Oh. Again?
. . . . . "Dammit, Jim! Get out of that tree!"
. . . . . His greenish-grey elekk trumpeted something between an elekk's noise of dismay and a squirrel's angry chatter. With a forewarning avalanche of snow and several broken branches, thump! the elekk fell out of the tree it had climbed. Diyos allowed himself a much put-upon sigh and braced a shoulder against the beast's side, pushing until Jim managed to right himself in the snow. The elekk's trunk snaked around and patted his hip repeatedly. "Fine," Diyos grumbled, pulling out a handful of acorns from his pocket. "Just this treat, and then we go." Jim squeaked with pleasure and enjoyed his nuts.

Site Write Entry #12: Pathetic

Prompt: May 18, 2012 - Pathetic http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pathetic?s=t

. . . . . "Oy, it's closin' time. Wake up." The bartender didn't hesitate to kick the chair the tall, lanky draenei male was planted in. After all, he needed to be budged before he took up root.
. . . . . "Uh. Ah. Huh?" Blearily, the draenei raised his head with an exhale that'd send a plague whelp into the corner to cry in shame. While his tightly-wound brown curls were usually a mess, it was something new to have the entire mass migrate to one side of his head with a poof of Too Much Hair on the left and a flat plane on the right where his head had been on the bar-room table.
. . . . . The dwarf bartender - one of Bruuk's employees - kicked the chair again. "Git on wit' ye."
. . . . . Somewhere, Diyos was quite certain he'd left his hooves, but that somewhere didn't seem to include 'beneath him.' He tried to stand, wobbled, and fell into the table. Blessedly, dwarven tables are sturdy and the draenei was skinny. The bartender tsked and gave him a good shove. "Out."
. . . . . "Right. Right. I'm goin'. I'm- oh Light she dumped me!" Diyos wailed. Entirely unsympathetic - as inert objects tend to be - the door closed behind him. A hiccup knocked him back against the door frame as he tried again to find his hooves. Looking down helped. There they were. Left one forward. Balance. Right one forward. Balance again. Good!
. . . . . He made it about fourteen feet to the stoop of the closed shop next door to Bruuk's. It was somewhere past three bells at night, not long after Brewfest. The anchorite had managed to give his best friend the slip and go get spectacularly drunk in one final purging of emotion over his recent split. He knew he was being rather overly dramatic about it, but Diyos never did do much by halves. Once he'd gotten all the wailing and sadness and the mix of rejection and anger and unworthiness out of his head, he knew he'd be over it entirely. But for now, he wallowed and he was quite content to wallow.
. . . . . "Diyos?" In front of him were four identical elf men. They crouched simultaneously - woah! - and held out four hands to him. "I've been looking all over Ironforge for you. Ooo, we ought to get you some mints. Come on."  
. . . . . Diyos tried to take the hand of the elf on his far left. That didn't work - bastard must've pulled his hand away at the last second. So he tried far right. Still too slow. The middle left worked though, mostly, and he gripped his friend's hand. "Y'know, Ekkerssh, you're a good friend. A goooood friend."
. . . . . Ekanos tucked his shoulder under the tall, slender draenei male's arm and helped steady him as he stood up. "Sure I am. Let me tell you some stories that'll cheer you up. And get you some breath mints."

Site Write Entry #2: A Second Chance

Prompt: May 8, 2012 - Somehow by magic, your character is given one shot to redo and/or take back something that happened in their lives. What would they take back? Would your character take the offer or would they decide against playing with fate?

A Second Chance (To [verb] Your [noun] ) - or - I Swear I Didn't Intend to Write Two Flashbacks in a Row

. . . . . It was really quite a pleasant thing that Azuremyst Isle had clean, non-irradiated water again, because while the soaking tubs of the Exodar were quite nice, they had nothing on dunking oneself in the chill rapids of a flowing stream in late spring. Diyos would never call himself an ascetic, but he did indulge in the occasional austerity for austerity's sake.
. . . . . Like today, when his head was so muddled over whether he ought to go back to Stormwind or stick around and find that scary former Auchenai he'd been told to train. A bracing few minutes in the stream were supposed to help him clear his mind.
. . . . . Instead, he was just cold.
. . . . . Grumpy about it, Diyos walked back onto the bank and swiped his towel off the low-hanging tree branch. Toweling off his wildly curly hair, he still couldn't decide if this new duty was really worth the trouble. As he bent his head to see his own hands so he could wrap the towel around his hips without it falling into the mud, his eyes caught the jagged, sky-blue line dragging just beneath his ribs on the right side.

-----

. . . . . It didn't hurt. Not yet. He was still too busy staring in wide-eyed in shock at the youth - surely not more than an adolescent from his gawky frame - who stood hoof to hoof with him, a twisted sneer on his boyish face as his hands were stained a dark navy with Diyos' blood. In the rapidly narrowing frame of the priest's vision, the boy's sudden rage and violence was backlit with the bright red robe of the female crumpled on the floor, her ears and nose leaking the same dark navy which once moved life.
. . . . . Priest and boy stood in a circle drawn in charcoal and blood on the floor of the female's spare dwelling on the edge of the settlement. They hadn't even named this planet yet, and already they were finding their first settlement too confining. Fetid rot filled the air. Not the female, she was quite freshly dead. The smell came from the recently exhumed remains of her mate arranged in the center of the room-spanning magic circle.
. . . . . She'd gone mad with grief, susceptible to the twisted whispers of foul man'ari magics. But as - oh, hey, there's the pain - Diyos was beginning to realize, she wasn't the only one to have gone man'ari here at the edge of town. Vision dimming further, Diyos reached his hands out as if to embrace the youth who'd put the serrated knife into his abdomen. A mental half-step to the side, and the shadows - easy to reach in this ritual charnel house - flowed into him. It was only seasons upon seasons of strict discipline which allowed him to keep the shadow magic's glee in check, making the youth's death swift and clean. One quick shadow spike to the brainpan. The unholy red light in the youth's eyes winked out and his hands dropped away from the dagger, leaving it embedded in Diyos' side as the youth's body toppled over, leaking blood from his nose and ears.
. . . . . Come away with us, the shadows whispered. Your pain will go away. All your pain will go away. It will become someone else's problem. Come with us.
. . . . . "No." With just that word, a word borne of immeasurable time spent being trained by the Hand to refuse, Diyos pushed the shadows away. He was a male of the Light. His work was in service to his people. He did what must be done. A faint scent of spiced honey gone rancid wafted past his nose as the door to the dwelling was yanked open. There were shouts, recognizable as his fellow man'ari hunters. He smelled charcoal. Oh. It was because he was lying on his face on the necromancy circle. He really hoped they didn't bring him back from the dead...

-----

. . . . . Long, thin indigo fingers set on a hand the size of a human dinner plate traced along the scar below his ribs. He'd almost died that evening. And two people did. A female and a youth.
. . . . . Come to us. Retreat, and we will undo your sins, hide your pai-...
. . . . . "No."
. . . . . He was a male of the Light and would not undo his hard work for any magic promise.
. . . . . Realization struck and he sighed at the flowing stream. "Dammit!" he muttered, kicking the bank and getting splashed by the mud he dislodged into the water. He'd be staying to train Elysium's new priest. If nothing else, he would teach the male how to deny the whispers of his old ways.

No Such Thing as a Smooth Course

((Hey, I'm not dead.))

Written while listening to Times Like These (Acoustic) by Foo Fighters.


. . . . . Schwip... schwip... schwip...
. . . . . Waves lapped gently against the sturdy wooden hull of the schooner before Diyos's eyes. He tried to focus on the solidity of the boat instead of the constant motion of the waves, but it was no good. His stomach heaved again and he hung over the railing like a limp rag. They were only about six hours out from Menethil Harbor, but he hadn't exactly started the day on the best hoof. Still plagued by a vicious hangover ever since they'd pushed off in the early morning, it was all he could do to keep from toppling into the Great Sea.
. . . . . “Ooo, look!” came the far-too-cheery-for-the-hour voice of his baby brother by his ear. “I'm pretty sure that's a dragon up there!” After several rapid pats at his shoulder, Athos gave up and elbowed him in the ribs. “Degenerate,” he muttered with good humor.
. . . . . “Shut it, will you? I'm trying to find my sobriety.”
. . . . . “And whose overindulgence was that?” Athos peered down into the sea with Diyos, watching as the lapping waves seemed to slow their pace against the hull. “It was a small bronze dragon,” he explained.
. . . . . “Probably one of the dragons who started befriending adventurers last year, then.” Diyos clung to the railing for another few moments, then started to straighten. As he did so, the entire ship rolled and bucked under his hooves - a long, slow yaw port, then a gentle pitch starboard. “Urrrp!” was Diyos's only reaction.
. . . . . “Woah!” was Athos's response, followed by a sharp gasp. “What was that? Did we just pass over a huge fish? Maybe a shark? Or a whale? Do sharks get that big? Maybe it was a whaleshark!”
. . . . . “Athos, quit being such a nerd. There's no such thing as whalesharks. It was just a big wave.”

One Disaster Less

Written while listening to The Last Thing On Your Mind by Lights.


. . . . . To whom it may conce-... “No, too formal.”
. . . . . Regretfully, the ti-... “Too emotional!”
. . . . . After a year, it has co-...
. . . . . “Diyos!”
. . . . . Papers rustled as Diyos swiftly covered the letter he was writing with a blank sheet and looked up expectantly to see his baby brother closing the door to their apartment in the Park District of Stormwind behind him. Athos had a distinctly frazzled air to go with his usual excitability; he practically bounded into the room, a cardboard box wrapped in twine tucked under one arm. “DiyosDiyosDi-”
. . . . . “Stop.” The priest held out one platter-sized hand in a staying gesture, careful not to sweep his sleeve through the pile of crumpled balls of paper on the table in front of him. “Breathe.”
. . . . . The younger – by a few minutes – draenei clattered to a halt in front of the table and set down his package. He took a deep breath and regarded Diyos in his chair, managing to stay quiet for all of about six seconds. “Diyos! Naaru’s sake, did you forget? Why are you just sitting here? Get up. Get up! It’s time to go!”
. . . . . “I didn’t forget – I’m just trying to get other business done, brother.” The chair made an obnoxious scraping sound as it moved back across the wooden floor and Diyos stood. “Is Kreli coming up or are we mee-”
. . . . . “We’re meeting him there!” Athos interrupted.
. . . . . Diyos shook his head and gave his baby brother a bemused smile as he picked up a book titled Compassion in Battle: War-time Counseling to read while they waited at the courthouse and tucked it under his arm. “Alright, let’s get under way then.”
. . . . . “You’re going to wear that?”
. . . . . Diyos glanced down at his robes; they were black with purple embroidery on the cuffs. “What’s wrong with this?”
. . . . . “You practically look like a magistrate yourself,” his baby brother said with a scowl. “You could at least attempt to look like a man who still serves the Light.”
. . . . . “They do! I mean, magistrates. I mean, I do!” Diyos practically gasped at the audacity of the accusation.

Fishing Stories

((What follows are a series of conversations - mostly conceived and written by Ekanos’s player - that occurred between the two while they were in hiding. It’s not everything they spoke about - for example, the deep conversations about what was really going on tended to be in the evening, staring up at the stars - but it was a writing challenge to try to convey a sense of what they were up to almost entirely through text. There is exactly one line of non-dialogue in this story, and only because we could figure out no better way to present it. Imagine these as snapshot moments which break up hours of silently staring at the water.))


. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “Yeff, Diyof?”
. . . . . “Do... Do you have to do that?”
. . . . . “Do what?”
. . . . . “Eat...like that.”
. . . . . “Like what?”
. . . . . “The fish is still alive, Ekanos.”
. . . . . “What?” The elf cracked the fish against the trunk of the tree he was leaning on. “No, it isn’t.”
. . . . . “Well not now. Couldn’t you at least cook it?”
. . . . . “But...then it loses all the flavor!”

. . . . . “Hey, Ekanos?”
. . . . . “Yes, Diyos?”
. . . . . “What’cha readin’?”
. . . . . “A scroll about abnormal tumors in the human body.”
. . . . . “What’s a ‘normal’ tumor?”
. . . . . “I...don’t know, Diyos. That’s a really good question.”

Frostbite

Written while listening to Six Gun Quota by Seether.


. . . . . Finally, the last of the Company left, but not until after the creepy young thing had left a cookie atop his ice prison and told him to keep his chin up. She was one of them and always struck Diyos as a little freakish. She’d taken up the human habit of adornment through piercing and so much metal pushing into her dead flesh only seemed to make it more obscene…like carving smiley faces onto the fallen walls of Auchindoun. On Azshariel, a single piercing was cute. Perhaps he was just a hypocrite; it wouldn’t be the first time.
. . . . . The pierced one told him to keep faith in the Light and the Naaru. He’d scoffed and told her to leave, to let this human Colonel just knock him over the head and put him out already. The Light wasn’t doing jack – more slang he’d picked up in Common classes – to help him. He didn’t know precisely what jack was, but he knew not doing it meant that his world got a little bleaker with each heartbeat. When that nasty unholy Man’ari had been in his face and the Company had gotten a dose of righteous fury on his behalf, he almost felt like he’d be alright after all.
. . . . . And then they took a vote on whether or not to help him.
. . . . . And after being told what they needed to do to spring him from this early, they debated it like they were choosing an expedition spot and ended up deciding to not do anything like what they’d been asked.
. . . . . He was so screwed.

Fireflies in a Jar

Written while listening to Hello Again by Dave Matthews Band.


. . . . . Extinction. The word crashed against the inside of Diyos’s mind like a marshlight bleeder in a giant jar. He translated the word into his native tongue and back again, listened to his memory echo Azshariel’s voice to him until he felt like it was his own psyche beating on the glass for freedom.
. . . . . In the small workspace in Ironforge he rented for his tailoring commissions, he sat at his mana loom, weaving threads soaked in arcane dust with threads soaked in nether essence. Every clack of the shuttle seemed to repeat her premise: adapt or die. Under his hands, enough imbued netherweave to form a full bolt of cloth was forming.
. . . . . A craving for the bitter burn of alcohol settled in the back of his throat. Before joining the company, a few hours of watching his thoughts batter against his mind like trapped fireflies would have him well on his way to drinking himself into oblivion. But now he had a new start, people counting on him who were not obliged to toleration by filial bonds like his baby brother. He could forget the nightmares of millennia nipping at his hooves. He had a connection to this planet outside of his family’s bonds, and for all that he was not with them as often as their core members, he felt as if the company’s employees were what held him here – as well as his brother still on probation in Stormwind.
. . . . . Unlike Athos, if he screwed this up, they would kick him to the curb.

Making the Best of It

Written while listening to The Best of What's Around by Dave Matthews Band.
((I’m not totally pleased with this, but as it’s been several months since I last wrote something, I’ll take what I can get.))

. . . . . “She’s dead, Jim.”
. . . . . The draenei anchorite who’d just voiced this statement of fact for the fifty-third time thumped his head back against the thick hide of the elekk lying behind him on the deck of the Elune’s Blessing. For his part, the elekk – named Jim – curled his trunk around to his side and appeared to give his draenei owner a comforting pat on the hip…until it became clear that he was actually tugging on the small pouch of acorns tied to the anchorite’s belt.
. . . . . A platter-sized indigo hand swatted at the elekk’s gray trunk. The elekk snorted, blowing clear snot all over the right hip of the anchorite’s brown trousers.
. . . . . “Thanks, Jim. Good to know your opinion.” The anchorite’s voice was dry as he elbowed the elekk in the side to get him to settle down.
. . . . . A shout drifted down from the crow’s nest of the ship. The glittering crystal spires of the Exodar were just visible on the horizon. He was almost there.

. . . . . The new cook at the Valiance Keep inn gritted his teeth. That damned tapping sound was back. Taptaptap. Tap. Taptap. Tap. It was coming from the other side of the wall behind the fire pit, which was impossible since there was nothing back there.

Recall

Written while listening to Beauty Never Fades by Junkie XL.


. . . . . . The small, sharp blade whistled through the air with the sweetest, softest ring, its movement so swift that its target only had enough time to perk a long ear at the warning before the dagger pinned its chest to the forest floor. The hare kicked twice and expired, its life blood pooling beneath it from the well-aimed thrown weapon.
. . . . . . Hooves no noisier than a doe’s carried the sturdy draenei female out of the bushes and to her quarry. She mumbled a perfunctory prayer to the Light for the animal’s soul, rote words with hardly more thought behind them than it took to form her mouth around the syllables. An ebon-gray hand, calloused with hard work and tipped with blunted, heavily-used claws, pulled the blade free of the corpse, and wiped it clean with a pale peach-tinted leaf plucked from the bushes. The dagger joined its twin on her leather belt, and she scooped up the hare’s corpse.
. . . . . . Whistling a tune to startle off any other predators drawn by the scent of blood, the draenei female headed back to the small lean-to in the woods she’d set up miles from the nearest settlement, and miles farther from the claustrophobic, Nether-blasted ship the draenei had landed here on. She settled her leather-covered rump on a fallen log and pulled a smaller blade from her belt, a flensing knife. With the deft movements of a practiced hand, the skin was separated from the corpse in one piece, the meat sliced free in perfectly-sized servings for two meals and set atop the bloodied skin. She got back up and laid out the sticks and larger pieces of wood for a campfire, then pulled a small pouch off her belt. Inside was a bundle of tinder and…
. . . . . . “Archimonde’s shriveled balls!” she cursed at the empty forest. “Where is my flint?” She searched beneath a rack of curing hides, inside her simple lean-to, all around the fallen log she used as seating, even took apart the campfire she’d just built. All to no avail. There was no flint to be found.
. . . . . . Continuing to curse, the draenei female known as Rosoe secured her campsite, bundled the meat up in the skin it had originally lived in, stuffed it in a pack slung over her shoulder, and started the long walk to the nearest settlement of Lailein on their latest chunk of rock in the Nether, a planet they called Spretomi.

Fake It ‘Til You Make It

Written while listening to Fake It by Seether.


. . . . . “I’d really rather you stay here.” The concerned words of his friend and fellow draenei in the Modan Company rang in his ears for a few hours after she had left. The Company doctor had reiterated it. Then the boss lady had come back and shared roasted rabbit and a bit of lovely conversation with him.
. . . . . But now he was alone in the Southgate Outpost. And supposed to stay here.
. . . . . “Booooring!” he wailed up at the stone ceiling.
. . . . . The anchorite was sitting on the edge of the cot kept in the upstairs of the Outpost for medical needs…and did the Company ever have medical needs. Lately, it seemed it had been mostly him. He looked at the empty bottle of Captain Rumsey clutched in one platter-sized indigo hand, and then at the four empty bottles set neatly next to the box he’d been pulling them from. For a moment, it all looked perfectly fine…and then his neurons went into another misfire tailspin.

Chased by Destiny

Written while listening to King of Pain by the Police.
((I tend to think of my stories as "fan service" most of the time, because they often aren't stand-alone tales that could make for universal stories. That's one of the reasons I don't go out of my way to point people to my blog. That said, this may be the most "fan service"-y story of all, because of the rapid-fire way guildmates are mentioned without introduction, and the way actual in-game events are inserted almost at random. So. Fair warning given.))


. . . . . The sickly green tendrils of fel energy dragged claws across his mind, their tainted fingers tugging and stroking and promising all manner of unimaginable power if he let them in. Just a taste. Just a touch. You’re already halfway there… What’s a little more?
. . . . . No.
. . . . . The anchorite strapped a little bit of mental steel to his backbone and concentrated on the task at hand: rifling through the thoughts of the bound sindorei prisoner in front of him. Despite being half-hidden by shadows and mist, he could see the two Hand of Argus vindicators guarding the prisoner eyeing him nervously. Wasn’t that always the price of it? Those few who knew what he did for the Hand…he always made them nervous. He shut out his own feelings, his own thoughts, and concentrated on the sindorei.
. . . . . Like a file clerk going through papers, he shuffled through a series of images, searching for anything that would reveal the source of the constant influx of fresh troops that were attacking the newly formed camp of Blood Watch. He shuffled past an image of a large portal and red crystals – the Vector Coil, stopped, went back. On the bound and unconscious prisoner’s temples, fingers of shadow and magic over indigo skin tightened slightly.
. . . . . The shadowy anchorite opened his mouth to tell the vindicators about the portal the sindorei attackers were using to get more troops. As his mouth opened, the sickly green tendrils of fel energy rising from the sindorei swarmed in and began squirming around in his brain, lashing his soul and tearing him away from the last of the Light.
. . . . . No!

. . . . . “No!” Diyos sat upright in the too-short bed in the too-small room he’d rented at the inn at Valiance Keep. He began to shiver almost immediately as the pile of woolen blankets fell down around his waist; the pre-dawn air of a winter in Borean Tundra, even inside an inn, was not a place for bare skin. A soft chiming sound and a faint purple glow came from the table next to the bed. The anchorite groaned quietly and reached over to drop a small bag of coins over top of the communication crystal and hide it from sight and sound. It was because he dearly loved his little brother that he couldn’t answer that summons. Not now. Not while the shadows still tugged at him.
. . . . . He clasped a hand around the gold and brass symbol around his neck, pulled the wool blankets back up over his head, and tried desperately to get back to sleep for a few more hours.

Northrend is Calling

Written while listening to: Leipzig is Calling (with short intro) by Thomas Dolby.


. . . . . If a person wanted to be digging up a magical artifact for research on this planet, then they ought to seek out a dwarf. Diyos had been here long enough to learn this. So it was that a week after his brother’s hearing and making that stupid, stupid promise, here Diyos was, making his way to the Dwarven District of Stormwind on a lovely, bright, late fall day. Scratch that. It was a lovely, bright, late fall day – except in the Dwarven District. Here, the thick layer of soot in the air didn’t so much obscure the sun as grab it by the throat and shake it until the lights went out.
. . . . . Diyos coughed and thumped his chest, cursed his sensitive nose, and lifted the directions he’d hastily scribbled from a city guard close enough to his eyes to read in the gloom. “Right past the Cathedral-side entrance, then left at the next block,” he mumbled aloud, stifling another cough with his hand. He tried to pull his hood around to the front to shield his face until he realized that his robes didn’t actually have a hood.
. . . . . A rhythmic clank of armor and hooves caused him to look behind just in time to jump out of the way of a skeletally-thin horse and dark-plated human rider. “Watch it!” Diyos yelled, accustomed to his bellow and wide shoulders giving him some measure of intimidation factor. The rider paused briefly and fixed cold, inhumanly glowing eyes on the anchorite – who quailed under the look and backed to the wall. So much for intimidation factor. To his relief, the rider turned away and went on, dismounting nearly half a block away. The dark-plated knight left his charger outside the building and clanked on up a set of stairs and inside.

Good Deeds Never Go Unpunished

 Written while listening to Under the Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers.


. . . . . Diyos had been feeling the subtle prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck for a good three minutes now. The weight of the stare he was getting pushed his shoulders into a hunch and his hand tighter around his mug of ale. He finally could take no more. Shoulders straightening, he spun in his seat; his blue robes twisted around his hips. “Yes, it’s in a bun!” he yelled at the human girl at the table behind him. “My masculinity is not threatened by this!” His bellow did not cow the girl so much as the gleam of pointy white teeth in his indigo face. The girl turned bright pink and turned around in her chair to face her companion and pretend she had not been staring.
. . . . . “Bloody gawkers,” he grumbled with some of the slang he’d picked up and turned back to his mug at his own table. “If it’s not the beard it’s the hair.” He lifted a platter-sized hand and stroked his facial tentacles self-consciously, then took another swig from his mug. The prickly feeling was back already.
. . . . . With an impatient snort, the draenei shoved his chair back and stood up, slamming his empty mug down on the wooden table. He dropped a handful of coins next to it, tugged his robe straight, and stalked out of the tavern. Outside the Blue Recluse, dusk had fallen on the city. The guards were already patrolling in incompetent, inefficient squads. Three of them ran by towards the warlocks’ section, their plate armor jouncing and clinking comically. You know, the warlocks’ district wasn’t such a bad idea; they had a tavern too. A single mug of ale really just wasn’t enough for as big a fellow as Diyos. He set his hooves towards the Slaughtered Lamb to get another drink – or five.