"You're the person who was interested in steam armor, yes?" The Goblin man sitting on the edge of a half-ajar crate peered up at the Death Knight who just entered the shop, and was looking around the work area with an air of extreme fascination. She looked back at him. After a moment, she blinked, breaking the stare.
"Yes. I've been asking around Booty Bay about it, and I was directed to this shop. I'm Sanya. Are you Azzel Steamsmash?"
"Yup. Buyer, eh? I've gotta warn you, those things don't come cheap." He hopped off his crate and walked over to a work bench with a bunch of pale yellow-filled vials and metal components laid out on it. "Funny, elf taking an interest," he said in a low voice to himself. "Who'da thought it?" Sanya inspected the components and vials, but kept her hands to herself.
"How many different kinds of steam armor are there?" She asked. "I've heard from the other people I've spoken to that they vary a lot from maker to maker, and race to race. Even their uses vary."
"Ya heard right, elf. Gnomes always make those stupid speedy little things, but Goblins build for war. Steam armor doesn't pay my bills, but it's my bread and butter all the same. So, what're ya looking for?"
They kept walking through the store, into another room filled with much larger, hydraulic limbs, pistons, and fibrous networks of wire which were plainly intended for running through an entire suit.
As they stood there, a grin crept onto Sanya's face unbidden. She seemed fascinated by each component, but her eyes stayed longest on the weaponry in the corner; saws with extra chains, small half-assembled cannons (some mounted, some not), several fearsome-looking jagged blades, and long spikes meant for attaching directly onto the body of a suit. Some of the blades bore an uncommon resemblance to the jagged-edged runeblade slung across her back.
"I want a combat suit. That's why I came to you - Gnomes don't make good combat suits, and from everywhere I've asked around, you've got the best reputation."
"Took them long enough to notice. Well.. I've got an Super Reaper 6000 in tha works, but I can whip up something different - for the right price, of course.."
"Actually.." Sanya looked away from the weapons in the corner, and back down to the goblin. "I want to learn from you. Test me, and see if I'm a worthy student or not. If I am, I'll pay you to teach me."
"Interesting. Could be worth it." Azzel replied. He moved to the side and pulled a canister of thick, pale-gold fluid from a slightly oil-blackened pile of other bottles and cans. His hands left marks in the oil tracks on it as he handed it to Sanya. "What's this, Death Knight?" He asked. Sanya looked at it just as carefully as she had the weapons, noting the color and viscosity of it by tipping the bottle to the light.
"This is phlogiston. Normally, it's a very precise mix of oil, water and gas. But it looks like there's either something wrong with the gas in the mixture, or there's too little oil. Am I right?"
"Yup." Azzel dropped it back into the pile. "I'll be trying to fix it soon. Well, that or sell it to some dumbass who thinks they're getting a bargain. Let's see..."
He kept walking until they reached the iron-strut shelf on the opposite wall. It was almost large enough to span the entire wall, and contained the better half of all the engineering equipment in the room. At the sight of one thing on the shelf, he smirked and reached for it. An extremely complex L-shaped gadget made of steel and pistons, almost the size of Azzel. He tapped it with bony green fingers. "What's thi- Don't pick it up, or I'll make you pay for it if you drop it," he added the last sentence on just as Sanya was trying to lift the gadget off the shelf.
"...Sorry." She ran her gauntlet over it instead, looking at the overall shape of the metal, trying to judge what purpose the pistons had.
"'S alright. If ya break it, I'll just charge my usual price. Or if ya break it then become my student, I'll make ya work it off." Azzel laughed. "So don't worry about it." Sanya nodded, but her mind was clearly off elsewhere. A few minutes passed, in which she finally stepped back.
"I've got it. It's part of the chest of a set of steam armor. It attaches onto a deeper-in piece here-" she pointed to one end, which interlinked with several thick wire cords, and a network of hydraulic channels which attached to the pistons. There is a pressure release valve on the side facing out. "-and the other side goes out to the arm."
"Good guess. I want to see if yer serious about this. If ya aren't, it's no sweat off my back, but I don't want word getting around that I took on a third-rater student." He looked up to Sanya, eyes narrowed. "It'll damage my rep in Booty Bay, which'll damage my business. Geddit?"
"Yes, War- I mean Azzel. If you want, I can pay a deposit now as proof that I'm serious about learning. Even if you decide not to keep me as a student, you can keep it. Deal?"
"Deal." Azzel held out a hand as Sanya unclipped a bag from her belt. She upturned it in her hand, and let several gold coins clank out. Azzel took them out of her hand instead of waiting for her. "All right, one more question." He pocketed the gold, and nodded over at a black cylindrical object, sitting on the floor with wires fanning out from it like an octopus.
Sanya grinned. "That's easy. It's a power core for a weapon used in a set of steam armor. They shock people if you set them up correctly."
"Righto. You're in. Follow me, Sanya, and we'll set up a lesson time, starting tomorrow." They left the back room empty again, as the conversation turned to the variance between steam armor sets, and the finer points of the weaponry of each.
"I brought my pet with me this time, Azzel." Sanya called outside the shop.
The shop's door unlatched under her gauntlet, and the gears in the back of the door ground slowly, opening it until it stopped at a precise 90 degree angle. Sanya walked in, silhouetted and glowing in the coming sunset over the threshold. For once, her rusty-seamed face was full of innocent enthusiasm.
Beside her was a gaunt creature plated over with so much metal that his only features were the rough, shagreen-like indentations in the armor, the axes shoved into his belt, and the spikes across the plating. "Sorry, but I can't just leave him out wandering the Bay by himself. He could get into trouble or attack someone."
They had just crossed the threshold when the half-built Super Reaper 6000 up against the wall clicked and whirred softly. A cannon mounted on the shoulder trained to target Sanya and Braindrinker. Silence. The silence stretched.
"Hey! Azzel! It's all right, he's with me!" Sanya shouted, moving in front of Braindrinker for all the good it would do. The ghoul tilted his head as he looked up at the shoulder cannon. It's at least three feet above him.
"Machine food?"
"No, it's not food. It could blast us both apart if it shot at us. Understand, Brain'?"
Sanya kept her ground between Braindrinker and the Super Reaper 6000 while looking through the room for Azzel.
A ball bearing inside the steam armor dropped, and came out between a gap in the silvery plating. It rolled towards Braindrinker and Sanya, and the latter snatched it up while Braindrinker was still crouched, watching the rolling like one mesmerized. She knocked on the coating with one curled finger. "You dropped something. Here."
"Thanks." Azzel's head appeared at the top of the set. He took the proffered ball bearing in the palm of one hand, then climbed back down into the armor. "That pet of yours 'sa menace. He's been terrorizing the Bay for months, y'know."
"I know. He has a way of wandering off when he's not supposed to. Don't worry - I'll keep him from doing anything while he's here." Sanya kept her hand pressed against the hammered steel casing. With each echoing sound of the work being done inside it, the casing registered a mild shock from the force. "And I'll pay you extra," she added as a seeming afterthought.
That did it. There were no more complaints from Azzel. As he tested the hydraulics inside the set of steam armor, then the system itself - first lifting a leg, than an arm, then making it take a few steps inside the shop -, the two spoke casually, punctuated by questions from Braindrinker, and the occasional cautions from Sanya whenever the ghoul got into harm's way.
"I see. So, let me just see if I understood it all properly; most of the basic Goblin steam armor those days is built according to a certain schematic a single mech engineer prefers. That takes care of the functions which any two-legged creature has - like walking, running, grabbing and holding things. Basic things which anyone expects from their own body."
Azzel nods. "Go on."
"-Then later you add customizations. Sometimes you have to retrofit them to do that. Goblin-style customizations means that you usually add weaponry and armor to the suit according to what the person wants. Those are the real things which make each armor set different, and those are what make them take so long to perfect."
"Being dead gives ya a brain like a sponge," the Goblin told her. Sanya stood there, clueless of the expression.
"I've been interested in those suits for a very long time. But... thanks. What's the lesson for today going to be?"
"I was thinking it over yesterday. Yer gonna like this one." They returned to the back room they visited yesterday. The clutter which had been on the floor was tidied and rearranged, freeing up much of the stained wooden floor for work. One of the worktables had a sleek phlogiston-powered lamp clamped onto the side. It illuminated a massive stack of schematics laid out the table, with freshly-sharpened charcoal pencils just waiting to be used.
"This is..?" Sanya looked from Azzel to the schematics. "I'm going to learn by building?"
"Yup. 'S the tradition, elfie. 'S how I learned, how my teacher learned, and how his teacher learned. Looking over little bits of paper and trying to fit them together in yer brain never teaches as well as rolling yer sleeves up and doing something."
Sanya flipped carefully through the sheets on the table, laying each down on their opposite side as gently as she could. Detailed in each is a different piece of the basic system. By the time she reached the middle, she was grinning. The next schematic was the largest, and worn through along the creases by use. This had the designs for putting everything together.
"Wow.."
But it was forgotten when she reached the second half. Those were as much document as schematic, providing information on the weaponry of Goblin steam armor. Lightning harnessers. Buzzer blades. Dragon mouths. Ballistae and cannons. Laser generators. A crushing mouth set directly into the armor's front, in the manner of a Fiend. Extra viewing lenses providing vision in all directions. Pincer claws. Crusher claws. Blades set onto arms. Mounted guns. By the time she finished looking through them, that curious innocence she had earlier was gone. Her every word and move was calculated, intent as a stalking predator.
"Those ones have your specializations, right?"
Azzel nodded. He had managed to walk up to the other side of the table without Sanya ever noticing. "Yup. All of them. The base might've taken a while to fix up right, but those are the beauts. Those, right here, are my life's work. Yer gonna start with the base, then make your own weapons. I won't have ya stealing my ideas."
"Do I need to start by getting materials first, or are they provided?"
"Get yer own. If you're gonna be any kind of Steamwarrior, then ya have to learn how to start from scratch. Besides, I wanna see how well ya can haggle for those goods. It's an important part of training."
"Get back, Braindrinker. Stop trying to touch those. They're not ours." Sanya gave Braindrinker a shove back from the schematics. The ghoul had been imitating Sanya; standing just as she had been, flipping through the schematics with a severe lack of coordination. Azzel eyed the rip on one page very sourly.
"All right," she continued. "If I can take the schematics with me, then I'll get all of the materials I need for the base gear." She is about to return to the rest of the shop when Azzel cleared his throat. "What is it?"
"Being a tinkerer is all good'n fine. But we're not just tinkerers. We're warriors. Sure, you're a Death Knight and all, but ya don't know the way we fight yet. We've gotta fight all the time in those suits. So if it's the training yer after, then it's training practice too. First we start on the ground, then work our way up. See?"
The two visitors were in the main room by then. The schematics were clamped securely in Sanya's hand as she listened to Azzel. Another huge smile was growing over her face, revealing such a long line of teeth that even the Goblin did a double take, and braced himself.
"I'll be back to start the combat training soon. After that, I'll get to work on the assembly. And don't worry - I don't bite. I'm not that kind of person."
It was early morning. Inside the shop's lower levels. Sanya crouched over the metal framework of her steam armor by lamplight, balancing on her sabatons and focused on shearing off thick metal plate with a pair of cutters. The force she was using on the plate left indentations on the floor whenever the cutters slipped.
The steel framework lying on the workshop floor was nearly half-done. It presented a bulky, squared-off outline to the viewer, and was almost too large to fit through the door already. The engine space below, and slightly in back of the cockpit had been filled by an engine too small for it - hopefully just a temporary one. Most of the major joints were finished, while the hand, fingers, and knee of the left side still needed to be added. A few crudely-cast knuckle joints gleamed on the floor just below the left hand.
Someone clattered around in the room just out of reach of the lamp's light. When it knocked a box over, Sanya glared over in its direction, then kept working. The strip of metal she was working on came away with a ragged seam. She spent a few minutes snipping away the offending edge, then put it in the pile of strips off to the side.
"Almost done," she said aloud to the room. "Just a few more of those. I'm so close.." She blinked once, heavily.
"They food?" Braindrinker walked out of the shadows and sat down next to Sanya. He grabbed a handful of metal strips and raised them to his mouth. Sanya put a hand to his arm to keep him from eating them.
"No, metal strips are not food." She took them away from her ghoul, and dropped them in a place too far for him to reach while sitting, then glanced back at him. "They're bad for Death Knights and ghouls. See?"
She had reserved one metal strip. After taking off one of her gauntlets, she ran it lightly over a blackened fingertip. The metal cut to the bone, but she didn't bleed. The incised flesh was white; bloodless, almost stonelike. "Imagine that happening to your insides. You.. probably wouldn't be able to feel it, but it would still damage you. And I don't like it when my ghoul is damaged."
"Oh." Braindrinker laid belly-down on the floor to look at the rest of the framework closely. "So this. What this do? It good for us?" He scratched at an intersection of many tubes, near where the center would be when it was finished. Sanya just ignored it.
"We're making a set of steam armor, Brain'. People climb into it, then operate it from inside when they fight. It makes them much larger and stronger, and gives them more weapons to use."
"Why does Master make things?"
"Because I like making things like this. Back when I lived in Quel'thalas, people thought I was crazy for it. Maybe it's because they preferred magic, or thought machines were crude; I've no idea."
She stood up and went into the back room to search for something. She continued talking as she searched, although it was hard to hear over the sound of metal clanging. "Warmlings call things they enjoy and do frequently 'hobbies'. I've never had one, so perhaps this can be mine."
"Killing is hobby. It fun. Eating hobby. Eating is fun too." Braindrinker climbed into the open space left for the cockpit, and sat down inside it. Once he was safely ensconced, he peered around at the outside, and grinned. Soon he got bored and started gnawing on the pipe closest to him. Sanya checked the pipe for damage, and let him continue.
"That's right. It's also a hobby - I think. But.. Brain.. some of them are better than others. Killing people is wrong. Some people will even try to kill you for it. Haven't you seen that already?"
Braindrinker kept clattering away at the piping for a while, as Sanya got out the blowtorch. She attached a phlogiston capsule to it, and motioned for him to get out of the way. He sat on the sidelines, pouting as well as a ghoul could. Sanya passed him one of the faceguards sitting on the table, and put the second one on.
The sudden churning warmth in the air made Sanya wince with pain. Once, the blowtorch slipped in her grasp. She gritted her teeth and stared at the ceiling, her gauntlet with a now-deformed and glowing finger held stiffly at her side. Her eyes watered from the heat. She waited until it passed, then continued working.
"Machine for killing." Braindrinker commented. He scratched at a splintery area on the floor, completely oblivious to the pain the blowtorch should have been inflicting. "You kill too. Machine do it."
"It's not for killing. It's just a hobby. Engineering is a hobby, and it doesn't kill anyone. The steam armor won't kill anyone."
"Oh."
There was silence, except for the sound of the blowtorch. When she was done, Sanya stepped back and took off her faceguard. Her eyes were still watery; almost as if the heat had been melting them. She sat down on the available chair at the work table, still holding the torch as she waited for it to cool.
"I hope Azzel comes in soon. I need some advice on how to do the next part."
"Azzel taste good? Green taste good?" Braindrinker kept the faceguard on. He looked owlishly from Sanya to the half-finished steam armor to the door, waiting. "When find out?"
"We don't find out. I'm sorry, but we can't eat him or anyone else in the Bay. Perhaps we could find some criminals for you later; Bloodsails, or something similar. Nobody'll miss them."
"Tastey."
Sanya couldn't help but grin at that. With her free hand, she flipped through the stack of schematics still resting in the lamplight. Four pages had been placed off to the side; pages she'd already used. There were five sheets left.
(So I haven't had much time to write lately. This is a bit of a catch-up post, told in a different format which explains the situation better than a third-person narrator.)
Spoiler:
So I've decided to chronicle some of the time spent on the steam-armor in a journal. Azzel was only too happy to sell me parchment at an inflated price for it (it keeps him happy. We want that.)
I spent a few days after that working on the frame. When I tried to operate it, I came across a lot of mechanical difficulties. Steam armor's systems are very complex, and it shows in their workings. So a lot of revisions followed (not needing sleep or food has its benefits sometimes). Hopefully I'm getting the hang of it.
That was a while ago. Azzel has been redesigning his own steam armor's arsenal (he has a suit somewhere, apparently. He's reluctant to let me see it - probably because he thinks I'd base my own off it. And he'd be right.) and he's decided that some of the flesh-melting acid the Forsaken brew up would be just the thing for chemical warfare. It can be sealed safely in some containers as long as you change them out regularly, so it's not as dangerous as it sounds. Anyhow, he decided to send me to Undercity to bargain with some of the apothecaries there for the best deal while he works on the compartments for it.
Funny. He'd be much better at turning a bargain than I am. A price quoted, and it's sold. There are better things to do than to save a few coins. He's probably just being shrewd and minimizing his own legwork.
While I've been here, I've been spending a lot of my time doodling on my parchment. Weaponry systems, different generators, a calculation of one built-in gun's stats when compared to another. It's become almost an obsession. I even forgot to feed Braindrinker last night; he wandered off and tried to steal a Forsaken's femur. It would have been shocking if I hadn't still been sketching up something at the time he was dragged back to me, the ragged hole from a pike through one arm.
I stitched him up and began to wonder - what's stopping me from adding real machinery onto his body? (Well, except for his accident rate skyrocketing.) Someday, when I'm finished with the steam armor, I'll try that out next.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Many Sin'dorei legends say that Tirisfal is cursed. I listened to some of them when I was young and thought little of it, only wondering why such a concurrent story would appear where Humans lived. After all, there were supposed to be Humans living there who were not affected by it. You know, Lordaeron. (Come to think of it, there's something wrong right there.)
I'm beginning to think the legends were correct. When I am sitting out on the hill in front of the zeppelin towers and drawing, I become very focused on my work. During this time it always feels like I'm forgetting something - and each time I remember that voice vividly. That familiar voice which I thought was the product of insanity. Only it sounds perfectly rational and calm now, when it speaks in Thalassian. Perhaps there's more to the curse than I thought. Perhaps what happened before was only my imagination. Or perhaps I'm being led astray here and now.
That's not about to happen. I'll be leaving here in a day to return to Stranglethorn.
I wonder what the word Ysiau means. It is the one word I always remember from those whispers. I'd return to Silvermoon and spend a while looking through books on other languages (perhaps ask a few scholars) until I found the language similar, but I have more important things to do. And if it's only the product of my deranged mind, I'd do well to keep quiet about it. The Ebon Blade does not need to be given a reason to come after me again.
Until later. I need to arrange for the passage of the acid on the zeppelin. When I write next, I'll be riding back to the Bay.
It was a sunny afternoon in Booty Bay, not like it mattered. Down in the basement of Azzel's workshop - Sanya's work alcove - a sudden burst of gunfire could be heard, following by the clinking of discarded shells. There was silence, followed by a muffled metallic giggle. Someone rummaged through paper.
The tall, silver-haired Night Elf thumped downstairs, her sabatons heavy on the indented wooden stairs. In the half-shadow of the basement, her eyes glowed runic blue. "Hey, I heard a loud noise..." she trailed off.
The Blood Elf curled up against one of the walls was holding the turret-in-progress steady, then looked over to her target. A small circle in the wall opposite her was riddled with bullet holes. She peered over at the Night Elf, her expression smooth and innocent. "Oh, hello..."
Kynra quirked an eyebrow. "...Hello. Always in the last place I'd expect, huh?..." She looked slowly over to the ruined circle in the wall, then grinned, her fangs baring. Her teeth had the faint reddish-pink stain of blood on them. "Building something?"
Sanya picked out a box of bullets from the clutter lying on the floor next to her. She looked from them to Kynra, muttering something along the lines of "-won't last very long, will they?" She rested her back up against the wall. "Oh, how interesting. Are you back to threatening me again?"
Kynra blinked. "Huh? No. Call it wandering - or better yet, a vacation. I have no reason to threaten you. I do not threaten my friends. "...And, I think the faster a weapon shoots stuff, the faster the ammunition will drain." She walked closer to Sanya, carefully moving past the clutter on the floor.
"When you're a Death Knight and you smile at people, it can be interpreted as a direct threat. Especially if you've got blood on your teeth." Sanya started disassembling the turret, breaking it down into a few large components before she looked over to the looming shadow in the corner - rendered black, jagged and malefic by the poor light. "I should find a way to make it reload automatically," she commented. "So. What've you been up to?"
Kynra followed her gaze. "...Well, that I haven't seen before." She looked back to Sanya. "I did not mean it as a threat. Merely happiness at seeing an old traveling companion once more. I've been hunting on some rumors. There's this one Sin'dorei female, a living one, gathering Renegades under her like flies to honey. Problem is, where they are most of the time, I can't reach... I'm starting to consider... alternative methods to merely slaying the renegades." She sat down on the floor in her full armor, not far out of range of the now-disassembled turret. The wooden floor creaked beneath her.
A wide smile grew on Sanya's face, creeping up the slit mouth almost to her earlobes, revealing the jagged line of teeth. "So, why can't you reach them?" She asked. "Death Knights in general have fewer limits about where they can go and live."
Kynra nodded. "Because most of the time, they're in Dalaran, swarming around the little idiot-Sorry, I'm... slightly frustrated." She sighed. "Anyhow, the girl leaves the city every now and then... So, I'd think that a good time to strike, when they're tailing her. But..." She scratched at her cheek. "They're considerable, in number. At least three Death Knights, plus the girl that would defend them."
Sanya let out an echoing giggle. "Give them something to draw them out of Dalaran as bait, then. And have a few volunteers waiting for them. Simply done. Especially if you don't mind killing the live one either." She looked down to the schematic laid out on the floor to the side of her, studying some intricate part of a hydraulic crusher mechanism. "Brain's brought back plenty of limbs before - Blood Elven included - but I do recall him telling me something about a whiny girl he was 'trying to play with'. Maybe that's the person."
Kynra nodded again. "Yes, I think it is. She lacks an arm and an eye... I'm actually glad your ghoul did that... Anyhow, thank you. I'm intending on doing just that. A group that would take care of the girl, and a Knight Hunter unit for the three. And... I think a lure could be arranged somehow." She tipped her head to the side, smiling still. Her long silvery hair trailed down to one red-sheened pauldron. "...You're really happy when you work like that." she grinned. "I'm glad you're doing it."
Sanya looked back at Kynra, not blinking as per usual. "Do you have hobbies?" She asked. "Often, I hear whenever I read or speak to Wa- most people, that it's important to have your own interests." She flipped over to the next schematic underneath it.
In an instant, she went very still. Time stretched out, and she didn't look back. Very quietly, she asked, "Do you know much about the history of Tirisfal? This is important."
"I have little in the way of hobbies." she looked up. "Thinking of picking something up... I feel like making things." she looked back to Sanya. "Some that would help distract me or make me forget - for a little bit - of the rest of the world." She suddenly burst into another happy grin. "I also love as a hobby-Though, it's a bit more than that. I like loving. It feels great. Anyhow, I don't know about Tirisfal. I'm Kal'dorei. Spent my years on a wholly different continent. Why do you ask?"
"There's a long-running legend in Quel'thalas that the earth and stone of Tirisfal are cursed. Saronite can whisper to people who aren't Death Knights - but that place on the earth can draw anyone to it, whisper anything to them." She stopped messing around with the machinery and schematics and sat with her back against the wall again, looking straight ahead to the bullet holes in the wall. "You would know what it's like to have.. something.. whisper to you. But my point is, there's something in the earth which does it without being related somehow to the Lich King."
"Mmm... I see. I'd like to have a look at it myself, to be honest. I mean, I want to travel there and see if I hear anything." she frowned a little. She shifted her weight off her rear a bit, setting both palms on the floor behind herself and leaning on them with a relieved exhale. She smiled afterwards. "Anyhow, I'll see what I hear for you, then. If you want, I could ask around about this earth and stone whispering."
Sanya stood up, her sabatons clanking heavily on the floor. "I'd appreciate it if you did," she said. "You've heard the voices before; I suppose you know to be careful." She re-shelved some of the turret pieces. "Did you ever notice.. how the Lich King whispered to you in your own voice?"
Kynra nodded, peering up at her. "Yes, I do. And, it was part of the way he manipulated us. Made us think his commands were our own suggestions..." she tilted her head to the side. "Do the Tirisfal voices whisper in the same way, or do they have distinct voices?"
Sanya looked back at Kynra. Her mouth was clenched, the line of unnatural teeth visible behind the flesh. "The exact same. It's not even a voice either. You know the feeling- suddenly, you start thinking of things you've never considered before. And even though they're not yours, you still think they are. Or maybe they are, and you're just making excuses for your own horrible thoughts - disclaiming them." A moment passed. "If you go, I think I'll go too. It's less likely that something will happen, that way."
"I see. I'll be very careful, then, not to let stray thoughts... Interfere." She looked up to Sanya. "Then, it's settled. We can go together. Though, I'd like to let my mate know of the journey beforehand."
"I will be traveling there, as soon as I arrange passage for the steam armor on the zeppelin. I suppose we'll meet there."
Kynra grinned. "That's perfect. That'll give me plenty of time. I'll probably just Death Gate over and ride, or something. So, that leaves enough to spare for... other things. Anyhow, may I ask what you're working on with such fervor and cheer?" she asks.
Sanya took a few steps back and flicked on one of the lights on the farthest wall. The shadow in the corner was illuminated; the entire structure of the steam armor appearing out of the gloom. "This.." Sanya said, eyes glinting suddenly in the light, "Is Shindu'Ysiau."
"Looks kind of like armor. But... A little different. Technological." Kynra looked over to Sanya. "Failing... Something... What does it mean?"
Sanya smiled, eyes narrowing. "This is steam armor. The machinery and weapons on it make the person inside it more powerful." She looked over at it, tipping her head. "Shindu'Ysiau. Failing Whisper. I'm considering adding a crusher mouth to it."
"Well, I think it'd be ironically fitting." Kynra pushed herself upright. "And besides, it'd also be interesting to watch and use in combat. Can you imagine mowing through Scourge ranks with it? Or who knows what great enemy?"
Sanya looked back to Kynra. "Honestly, I hadn't considered it," she admitted. "It just seems like a hobby to make." She took a few steps back, and turnd the light off. The molded 'face' of the steam armor disappeared into shadow again. "All right, I'm finished here. Did you have something to talk to Azzel about while we're here?"
Kynra shook her head. "No, I was actually looking for someone else, but they're long gone." she smiles. "And yeah, I think it'd be interesting to make. Way more than to use..."
Sanya nodded and clunked upstairs, humming faintly. "It's beautiful. Like a puzzle, but more complicated and deadly than any puzzle." She reached the top of the landing and looks back. "Do you remember when we went to Outland? Do you recall those demons with the crusher-jaws in their torsos?"
Kynra nodded back. "It's pretty. And intricate. I'm not good at such. But yes, I remember Terrorguards and Terrorfiends..." she trailed off. By then, Sanya was out the door. She left it ajar for Kynra, but didn't turn back to look.
"I'll meet you there. I don't know when, but I will."
The sudden sharp jolt of metal hitting metal, the strain at your bones. The sick white-hot pain as you slip and bite your tongue The acrid smell of smoke lingering just within your concentration. It catches at your throat and makes your eyes water. And then, the taut feeling of being strung out on your own nerves - an instant away from death, with only your own reflexes as insurance. Above all the sweetness of the moment.
The gleaming Super-Shredder took a few steps back on the scraped ground and lunged again with its hand-saw extended. The barer, weaponless steam armor opposite it moved to the side and grabbed the hand-saw just above its blade with a huge hand. For an instant they were locked in combat, as the warriors worked inside to divert the system power to their respective mech's limbs.
The Super-Shredder lurched free as it bent the other mech's arm back on itself. As the former advanced on the latter with the hand-saw, the sound of hydraulics grinding against themselves grew to an unbearable level. Something trickled out of the bent arm's point of damage.
"Khyyaaaaaaahhh!"
In an instant, the second mech was spurred into action. It ran at the Super-Shredder head-on, the damaged arm flopping uselessly at its side. They met with a sound so loud that it was felt rather than heard. The air tremored as the mechs fell over one another - still fighting -, each steamwarrior struggling to reach the vulnerable spots in their opponent's armor, while protecting their own. The second mech punched through the armor plating on the Super Shredder, and was reaching for one of the cable networks inside when it froze over entirely. It started to droop.
The Super Shredder pushed the now-defunct mech off it, and creaked upright. The Goblin inside it opened the neck-hatch and starts to climb down. He dug his feet into the crevasses of the metal before hopping the last two feet onto the ground. The person inside the other wasn't faring so well. She was still working on squeezing out from underneath the face-down mech. As soon as she extracted herself, she got up and started to brush the dirt from off her clothes.
"Eh, it was a good try. You'd better get use'ta people who know about the systems. Ya can't just run into battle and think you'll be great 's long as you're aggressive enough."
"Do most people know about the systems?"
"Nahh. Half tha time, they're just dumbasses with bows'n arrows who see ya and run a mile. That's regular people. But if yer gonna fight in real, dangerous situations, ya gotta assume they've been trained for stuff like that. Trust me elfie, people are dead-frightened of Steamwarriors. 'Cause of that fear, they learn quickly and teach others."
"All right. I'll remember that." Sanya knelt over the fallen suit, inspecting the damage done to the arm. She shook her head. "Why'd you have to damage this so badly? It's going to take longer to repair than it did to make."
"If ya think that was bad, wait til' ya get to a battle. Anyways, that was more of a warning than anything. Steam armor takes a lotta maintenance. It'll eat up yer time and money like ya wouldn't believe. If you can live with spending yer life on it.."
"I can."
"-Good, cause yer gonna be. Anyhow. When yer in Tirisfal, make sure to pick up more of that acid. It's got a real market down here." Azzel climbed back up into his steam armor. He left the hatch open so he could speak to Sanya from inside. "I'm not givin' ya any of the real weapon schematics. Ya gotta get use'ta yer armor before ya go putting stuff on it."
Sanya stood back up. She had a faint frown on her face. "All right, I'll make sure to bring more back. I'll spend the time in Tirisfal practicing using the armor, and upgrading the base. It's better than here. I've done too much around the area."
A guffaw echoed from inside the Super-Shredder. "Good idea. Keeps people from hassling ya. Bay's been upgrading security since some Death Knight got all stabby. Killed a buncha people."
Sanya looked back at Azzel, eyes wide. "So this Death Knight went around killing people, and was never caught?"
Azzel adjusted something inside the Super-Shredder, and it lurched into shaky motion towards Sanya. "Naaah. She got shot in tha head and died. Or, ya know, died a second time. The guards did it - cousin of mine was there, and he told me about it."
After Azzel and his Super-Shredder made it back to the road and head south back to Booty Bay, Sanya stood there for a long time amongst the ferns and jungle grass. She sat down in a cluster of roots at the base of a tree and held one dead-white palm to the side of her head.
Silence except for the birdsong, insects, and occasional howler monkey overhead.
The mist of late morning slowly gave way to a full-on haze.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
As the zeppelin took off, Sanya and Braindrinker leaned back over the supports to watch the jungle fade into the orange evening mist. With the passage of time, it disappeared and Braindrinker lost interest. But Sanya kept her head on the support, watching until the color and radiance of the sunset was leeched from the western horizon.
"I can't wait to continue the suit," she said to Braindrinker in a low, mellow voice. "There's so much to do. The framework is barely finished. The mechanisms are terrible. But just imagine what Shindu'Ysau will be like one day." She grinned and her long line of teeth gleamed in the light from her eyes. Frightening - but for once, just a smile of innocent happiness.
Braindrinker wandered off to explore the zeppelin. Sanya watched him leave, then flopped down to the deck in full armor to lie there and watch the stars. Her runeblade went next to her.
In that pale starlight, if not for the metal sewn into her face, she could have been just another elf girl. Just another elf girl, star-gazing as she drifted off to sleep.
"Living people like to debate about what happiness is, and how it's obtained. To them, it's something fleeting and easily lost - too variable. But after what I've seen in both life and death, I understand.
"If you've suffered throughout your entire life, then the simplest things you have are enough to make you happy."
((Short, but it conveys everything it's supposed to. I felt like writing in a horror-style this time, which is why it looks a little odd.))
Spoiler:
That evening, something was off.
Something moved through the slanted shadows of the pines in northeastern Tirisfal; something large, but too quick to be seen from casual glances. By the time one of the crusaders of the outpost reached a vantage point over the forest, it was gone. A whirring, clicking sound came from somewhere in the deep tangles of the forest. The smell of burning. And not just the smoke of machinery either. Something fouler, corrosively bitter and rotten. Like someone had taken to burning long-dead corpses.
The sentry moved for the higher ground, watching the suddenly-quiet forest edge below with a practiced eye. He kept his crossbow ready to fire.
"Hello..?"
With the voice drifting out of the forest, he blinked and moved back out of view - and range of any projectiles or spells. Crouched behind an outcropping of rock and dead weeds, he readjusted the grip of the crossbow in his shaking hands. Someone at the tower to the east was sitting at the vantage point, reading. He could see it from his hiding place. Protection from the undead. Safety. The other crusaders would doubtless be talking and laughing inside the tower with nothing to fear.
But out here...
Time passed.
A chill wind began to drift in from the north as the last rays of light disappeared. The usual unsettling dusk of Tirisfal seemed colder tonight. He stood up from his point and stretched to relieve aching muscles. All the while, he kept his eye on the border. The point at which the waiting, pitch-black depths of the forest converged with the higher ground of the hillocks.
Was it just his imagination, or could he see something moving across that dead grass below? Some trick of the remaining light, perhaps. Something - a branch - in the forest snapped. Light glanced off something metallic. Then, the pressing silence surrounding him, and the unmistakable presence of something just beyond his point of vision. Something, he couldn't even see..
The smoke was starting up again. He covered the lower half of his face with his free hand to block out the oily stench. But he couldn't tell where it was coming from. As he turned to face that ever-present border between forest and safety, something crunched behind him.Something large.
A massive metal construct was standing not far behind him. It looked like something bipedal, but there, any resemblance to a human ended. This one's complex angles, crushing limbs, and the way its outline blurred into shadow made it more akin to a nightmare.
The red eyes of the construct flickered on as it looked down at him. There was someone's pale face behind the viewing lens, grinning with a far-too-long line of teeth as it watched him.
"Hello, Warmling. Meet... Shindu'Ysau."
That evening, screams and the clang of metal filled the air of northeastern Tirisfal
Sanya sat up against the wall of the abandoned barn, smiling with a hand to her mouth, close enough to the leg of Shindu'Ysau that her clothes had smears of entrails and blood all over them.
"It was worth it," she said in a low voice to Braindrinker. She let out a muffled giggle, then unfolded the schematics from her satchel. The light from her eyes was enough to read by, and she scanned down the list with intent. "Just imagine.. what are the rangers, paladins and mages compared to this? To a person thirty times their size, made of metal with built-in weaponry? Why haven't the people of Quel'thalas even tried it before?"
"They stupid. Metal person makes tastey."
Sanya kept her hand clamped firmly over her smirk, which grew upon Braindrinker making this proclamation. "That's a little extreme, isn't it? That was just a test run. I even notified the Tirisfal guards and told them I'd be going. So it's not like I'm just going around killing people."
"They wear red. Red enemy?" Braindrinker sat with a thump on his rear, tilting his head back to look at Shindu'Ysau.
"The Scarlet Crusaders? They're the enemy of all the undead. And the living too." Sanya draws her finger along the leg of the steam armor, tracing a pattern in one of the half-dried bloodstains. "So you can kill all you like, as long as you don't get injured in the process."
"Can I have? Red tastey?" Braindrinker asked. Sanya nodded her approval, and Braindrinker scrambled out of the stables - fading into the shadows of the dead forest. Sanya kept unfolding new sheets of parchment in her haste to read them all. Many of them were precise copies of the schematics she had returned to Azzel earlier. And the rest were the weapon schematics she had not been intended to keep.
"I've barely even used mine for days yet.. and already.." She looked quickly through the weapon schematics, searching for something. Eventually she shook her head and started to reorganize the sheets so she could put them away. "-Helpless. They were helpless. If I spend long enough training, even Azzel won't be able to best me so easily. And once I find a way to put in a crusher mouth, the Ebon Blade only knows what it'll be capable of."
She flopped onto her stomach and began to write on the remaining parchment. It already had several lines of notes on it. As she worked, she smiled to herself.
"Hobbies. Now I see what I've missed all those years."
Sanya's just noodling around in the Plaguelands, practicing using her steam armor.
This is filler as far as the training is concerned (she needs to spend at least a month getting familiar with how to use it), but it's important for the storyline.
Oh, and you thought your dental work was bad?
Spoiler:
The middle of the night in the ruined Scarlet Enclave. The broken ruins were riddled with plants, some long-dead and some dying. The abandoned orchards had spread shoots and gone to bearing wormy apples from neglect. Amongst the ruined town, there was near-silence. Only the faint sound of humming. An echoing, metallic voice humming out the sort of old-style Thalassian ballad which would have been impossible to find in Silvermoon after the Fall.
A quiet night. Free of the fear, chaos and war which had made its last days Hell on earth.
Sanya sat in the center of the town, cross-legged and still wearing armor. The sword Terriss was resting on the dead grass nearby, and a massive dark outline was just outside the perimeter of the cobblestones. Shindu'Ysau.
The elf was holding one hand to the lower half of her face. Remarkably, the cuts along her mouth had healed, leaving only scars on either side. And her teeth were no longer packed into a freakish jagged line, made for a predator.
But the extracted teeth littered the ground around her.
Along the path down the Eastern Plaguelands, a behemoth of metal whirred and ground, stomping north. A pair of runic-blue eyes shone from the other side of the viewing port. If the steam armor hadn't been so loud, the faint sound of humming could be heard underneath it all.
The Death Knight at the vantage point just off the road looked down on the steam armor. Her Deathcharger tossed its head, nose flaring. The steam armor's head swiveled around, clicking as gears moved inside it. The eyes went on - shining red over at the Death Knight. Inside the suit, the wearer muttered something amounting to "not now, this one's not a Scarlet." It moved closer, focused on the Death Knight.
The Death Knight reined her horse around, eyes narrowing behind her helmet. "Great.. the nearest food actually might be a challenge.."
The steam armor stopped very suddenly, and the last few trails of smoke plumed from it before drifting off. Inside, the operator's face was pressed to the glass - her nose smushed up against the surface in an attempt to see out. The person - Sanya - blinked once.
"I.. I feel like I know you. From something important."
The Death Knight faltered, and stopped her horse with a tug of the reins. "What did you say? " Her hollow voice rang out across the road.
Sanya fumbled around, unlatching something near the top of the armor, just in back of the 'head'. When the engine stopped, the entire structure drooped. She climbed down the metallic face of the steam armor, dropping the last three feet. With her vision thus clear, she looked up the hillock at the other Death Knight. Behind her goggles, her eyes were wide. "You. Take off your helmet for a moment."
The other Death Knight casually lifted her her helmet, freeing her blue hair before looking back to Sanya with a smirk. Sanya tilted her head to the side very slowly, inspecting the other Death Knight with an unblinking, predatory gaze. Slowly, it softened, until she looked almost normal.
"Razi. I.. Don't you remember me?"
"It can't be. " The other Death Knight - Raziya - dismounted and slid off her charger. She moved closer, closing the gap between herself and Sanya. " So, the rumors were true. You were risen.."
Sanya pulled off the goggles. She remained silent for some time. With a slight frown, she held out a hand to Raziya, testing the temperature of the air closer to her. She withdrew it it, still frowning.
"That's right. Torn apart and left on the ground for months, then risen. Then shot in the head, had my legs broken and ribs crushed, all at various points in time. No, not dead after all of it. And you.. seem to be living."
"Yes.. the day of the invasion, I was.. dragged from my home. Spent hours in a pit, until they finally came for me. They threw me on the altar and worked their magic. I think.. the pain is the freshest memory I have from that day.. " She smiled, looking almost fond of the memory.
Sanya sat down with a thump of dust on the side of the hillock, looking over at the sullen brown horizon. "What can you remember? About when we were growing up? What were you like? Tell me." Her voice was firm.
"Surely you were there most of the time. Up until I left and began my training as a physician.. Mother and father always ignoring us, unless we embarrassed them.. then we got their full attention. Something I never wanted, personally.." Raziya frowned. " I think.. moving out was one of the happier moments of my life. "
"And the Siege? What happened to you there? Did you fight?" Sanya's voice remained serious, almost worried. She patted the side of the hillock next to her. "Come here. If you're hunting, there are plenty of Scarlets who will still be around by the time we're finished talking."
Raziya grinned at Sanya at the mention of hunting. She settled down next to her sister, hands on her legs and sabatons planted firmly in the dust. " The Siege itself.. was a trial. I never was a strong fighter so I did what I could. I allowed the wounded to stay in my home, I tended to the wounded as best I could, eased the passing of others.. " She smiled faintly at the memory.
"It was.. a trying time. I thought the defenders were holding up until the time the dead beat down my door and slew all those waiting below.. I had retired upstairs and that is where the necromancers found me.."
Sanya set down one armored hand to rest by her side. She remained very still otherwise, listening. "We're the last ones left, you know," she said. "Mother and Father weren't raised, and Cerdai.." She looked down at the hand. "Do you know what happened to him?"
Raziya shook her head. " No. I heard he was raised as well, but other than that.. nothing. "
Sanya looked back up over at Raziya. In the evening light, the very faint scars on the sides of her mouth were still visible. "He was raised as well. And.. I didn't even remember him. I hated him then, but didn't know why. I killed him after the battle at the chapel. I'm sorry. I know you two got along well."
"I'm.. glad. Surprisingly.. At least one of us escaped this.. torture." Raziya's voice was strangely flat and candid.
"It's not torture, Razi. We live - in a sense - and keep living, because even the Lich King couldn't take that away from us. It's our right, to be able to exist happily."
Something was clattering around inside the mech; it sounded like something chewing on metal.
"-And if we've got no meaning or purpose, at least we know that. Unlike people who only realize it just before they die." Sanya smiled very slightly. Her teeth were still extremely sharp, but no longer freakish. "What did you do after you were freed?"
"Tried to join society once more.. It.. did not work well." Raziya followed Sanya's gaze to the mech, but asked nothing about it for the moment. "I've.. missed you. "
"That's my pet. He doesn't particularly like being cooped up, but otherwise he gets into trouble." Sanya tilted her head very slightly. "I've missed you too. It's.. like seeing two worlds converge. You probably know the feeling, if you've been back to where we used to live, or met other people we used to know."
"It's how Death Knights feel."
"Is it? Do you feel that way?" As soon as Raziya sat up, mirroring Sanya's movement, Sanya leaned over and gave her a hug.
"It doesn't matter if things have changed now. I've missed you, sis."
{This one comes with its own soundtrack. Look below - it's worth it.}
Spoiler:
The sun was dipping towards the horizon by the time the Goblin found what he was looking for. Alone, amidst the Undead and the sickly life of Tirisfal, he presented an odd sight for anyone traveling along the same road - west from Undercity. What was also notable that he carried several bags with him, all too large for someone his size to be carrying comfortably.
The farmhouse was far removed from the main road. Azzel took the short route towards the door, stepping through the soft dank soil and wincing with each step. He struck a bone once, and began to grumble curses in Goblin under his breath. The wood of the small porch had been entirely rotted away by moisture, and so he edged carefully onto the threshold from the ground.
Even the door creaked open easily in his grasp, letting the fading light shine into the house. It barely illuminated a foot or two in front of him.
Something scurried across the floorboards deeper in the house. The sound of someone - or something - walking down decrepit stairs. He barely had time to react to either before he was knocked back onto the porch. The something in red and black armor scrabbled wildly for a grip on the Goblin, until one of its hands clamped onto Azzel's shoulder. Silence. Then a sound that was a cross between teeth grinding, and someone clearing their throat. Metal scraped against metal as it removed an axe from its back.
Azzel kicked the creature back with both feet, forcing himself onto the sagging porch in the process. He was upright by the time the creature faced him again, letting out a faint snarl.
"Braindrinker! You'd better not have wandered out for a snack!" The voice came from somewhere inside the house. Braindrinker tilted his head very slowly, looking towards Azzel with the axe still in his hand. For the moment, he had backed off.
"Reds are tastey. Are greens tastey too?"
"Get tha f**k away. Elf, call yer walking freakshow off!"
There was silence for some time, during which Braindrinker sat down on the stairs and peered at Azzel unblinkingly. He even volunteered a smile - more an unpleasant stretching of his mouth than anything, during which his eyes remained still and dead. Azzel unholstered his gun, and kept it pointed at Braindrinker, either not daring or unwilling to look away.
"So. What are you here for? What was so worth coming to Tirisfal?" Sanya moved into the fading light with no sound of armor. She had replaced them with slightly worn worksman's clothes, but the sword was still on her back. Azzel looked over to her for a moment, and returned his focus to Braindrinker.
"That acid. I can turn a better profit if I jus' buy it straight. And ya haven't been to tha Bay in weeks. It's no way to turn a profit, ya know? You were s'posed to come back after a couple'a weeks."
"Sorry. I've been busy here, and I forgot.."
"Ya can't forget. What, next thing ya know, you'll be forgetting to repair and maintain tha armor, or forgetting to pay me what ya owe. You'd better not just be loungin' about with the deaders and leaving that armor alone ta rust."
"I'm not doing either. The steam armor's in the barn, just off the house. I was working on it barely an hour ago - go have a look, if you'd like." Sanya's voice was still calm, but a faintly cold tone was creeping into it.
"You'll be comin' with me, got it? That walking corpse'a yours will go after me once I take a step out."
Sanya nodded faintly to this, and followed Azzel out, edging along the porch to avoid damaging it further. Braindrinker followed at a distance, after taking a few marrow bones out of the cache in the old grandfather clock. He cracked one open and gnawed on it as he watched the two engineers.
The barn was lighter than the house, but barely. The former owner had owned horses, and accordingly, there were the remnants of stalls and the faint smell of hay going bad. Sanya led the two to where Shindu'Ysau sat in the center, as a menacing shadow in the gloom. Azzel flicked on a flashlight taken from his bag, shining it on one piece of the armor at a time.
All parts of it bore signs of recent work, but the feet still had faint imprints in blood on them. One imprint was in the shape of a human hand. As Azzel's light moved over those details, he began to take on a grim expression.
Finally, something new was revealed in the center. A crusher mouth had been built into the lower torso of the steam armor, fitted with multiple long lines of blunt teeth designed to come down like a vice on anything in it. Several of them had been traded out for sharp-filed teeth as thick as railroad spikes. Beyond the first lines were a couple of spiked wheels which meshed together, like a conveyor belt with no destination. A machine whose purpose was destruction - but taken to the extreme, even for the purpose.
Bloody flesh and a few scraps of cloth were caught in the crusher mouth. It had been used recently.
Very recently.
"Ya used the schematics." Azzel said flatly. He kept the flashlight on, but moved it back towards himself to afford the viewers more light. "I told ya not to use them 'til ya were accustomed. And ya went ahead and added something worse onto it."
"Eranu Sa'foros. But.. you said when we met that steam armor was your 'bread and butter'. I thought that meant it was something important to you. This.. now.. is something like what I've always dreamed of building." Sanya looked up to the face of Shindu'Ysau. hidden in the darkness again. "I thought you wouldn't mind, as long as I paid you well.." She admitted.
"We're mercenaries, not destroyers! Did ya forget everything I tried to tell ya except for all of that crap about weapons? Didya ever stop to think what people'll all do once yer out in the world, with a killing machine like that?" Another long silence, in which Sanya considered Azzel much like Braindrinker had earlier. But a cold, calculating gaze, during which Azzel reached stealthily into one of his bags and pocketed something.
"I knew you'd say that. The one person in the world who cares about those as much as I do, and all you'll do now is focus on what I've done wrong. I returned those schematics - I'm not the sort of person who'd steal from you. And now..." Sanya smiles very slightly, and her pointed teeth show. "-I'm being repaid for liking something too much. I'm not supposed to be happy, am I?"
Braindrinker had been creeping up on Azzel from behind during it all. As soon as Sanya finished speaking, she gave him a faint nod - and he lunged for Azzel, gripping him in a bladed headlock. The Goblin fought back, lashing out with sharp little fists. He managed to get the device out of his pocket, but Sanya snatched it away. She pocketed it, and stepped back to survey her minion and her captive.
Azzel looked back at her, expression defiant.
"You think I'm going to kill you, don't you? But no - I'm not that sort of person either. What if we were to stay in Tirisfal, and you could help me with the rest of the steam armor and weaponry? You could even conduct your trade in that acid here, and make a good profit off it.
"Nor am I heartless. I'll pay you more money than you'd receive back in the Bay for doing the same work. Does that sound reasonable to you?"
Azzel was so restricted in movement that he was barely able to nod his assent.
"Good." Sanya turned away to look out into the waiting darkness.
Night had fallen.
She turned back to him quite suddenly, her runic-blue eyes casting a cold glow on his face. "Braindrinker, you'll be in charge of him after I take away all of his weapons. And-" this was directed to Azzel "-I'm sorry it had to come to this. But I won't let anyone take away what happiness I have.
[Just as a note. I'm not saying Sanya's right in her actions. In fact, I think she's starting to go horribly, horribly wrong. It just doesn't change the fact that this is how it happened ICly.]
Spoiler:
Mid-afternoon out on the borders of Tirisfal. As always, there were no creatures there. Only the movement of the pine trees swaying in the coastal wind. That noon, with the golden light filtering through the pine trees, was almost too quiet and peaceful to belong to such a dead place. Even the graveyard near the border seemed caught in golden light, and subjected to tranquility. In the nearby camps, people milled freely about - a few Alliance soldiers crossing the road to talk to their Horde counterparts, and vice versa.
A blast of gunfire filled the air, to be followed by silence. Then a series of shots, all close together. A few of the soldiers stopped to listen, then returned to their usual duties once it stopped. But by then, the peace was gone.
"'S good enough. It'll hold ya, as long as ya don't need continuous stuff. Short bursts are tha key." Azzel wiped off his hands, and started to climb back down Shindu'Ysau, wedging his feet into the cracks for a grip. He jumped the last foot and landed on the wet turf with a muffled thud.
Sanya looked down at him from her seat on the steam armor's shoulder: right next to one of the newly-mounted guns. She kept her boots pressed into a crack for balance. The black hood draped over her head was pushed back enough for a viewer to see the glow of her eyes, the outline of a white face underneath it, and silvery-white threads of hair. She kept looking from the gun's barrel to Azzel, wearing a curiously solemn expression.
"Good. Now, what I want to know is how sturdy they are. What can they withstand? Say for example that if some other gunman shot at them? What if Shindu'Ysau fell over, onto them?"
A muffled grunt. "The'll do fine."
There was immediate silence following this. Sanya leaned down to peer at Azzel, resting her chin on one gloved hand. A quick sharp-toothed little grin passed across her face and disappeared so quickly that it might not have existed at all.
"I'll be testing them later. If I find out you've been lying to me - or that you've disabled them somehow - then you'll be the next practice target. Are we clear?"
Azzel jerked his head in a nod, but didn't speak. Braindrinker, who had been slinking around amongst the pines while Azzel and Sanya were talking, emerged from a hollowed-out pine tree. To judge from the irregular little splinters embedded in his face, he had probably been trying to eat the wood too. He crept up to Azzel in his usual silent-but-ungainly way. He opened his hand to offer Azzel a handful of splinters, seemingly bitten off the pine's dead wood.
"Tastey. Bites back."
Azzel pushed Braindrinker's hand back quickly, trying to touch as little of it as possible. "Nahh. You keep them."
"They're bad for him. Are you trying to hurt him?" Sanya snapped. She took her head off her hand and glared down at Azzel. With her other hand, she adjusted the gun mounted on Shindu'Ysau's shoulder until it was trained on him. "Back away. Face that tree." She fired off a warning shot near Azzel's feet which made both him and Braindrinker jump. Braindrinker scrambled off to the side, still carrying the splinters. Azzel flinched again when the barrel of the gun moved up to aim at his head. As he followed the directions, Sanya caught a glimpse of his dazed, frozen expression, and laughed.
"Scared? Good. If the people of the world were a little more frightened, maybe they wouldn't act as they do. It'd be a better place if people actually thought about repercussions, now wouldn't it?"
She climbed down from the steam armor, and landed with a thump that jarred her hood to her shoulders. She walked over to Braindrinker, studying the prints of blood and splinters that the wood had left on his face. Every so often, she glanced back over to Azzel to make sure he hadn't moved. He was silent the whole time.
A jagged-edged spiral of shadow snaked around her right hand, growing more and eating away at the light with each pass around her wrist. As she worked on removing the splinters, Azzel kept standing there, motionless except for an occasional twitch, shift, or breath.
"Done. You can turn around now." Azzel did so, every gesture understated. Sanya gave him one last suspicious look. "Keep working on the steam armor. I want a couple of handblades - the materials are over there." She points towards the hollow tree, where most of the equipment Sanya bought had been stored to keep it from rusting.
As Sanya climbed up Shindu'Ysau to give the guns their first assessment, she began to smile. "Soon..."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We've been in the Tirisfal Glades for a little over a month by now. For the most part, I've been busy using the armor to grow accustomed to it. The Scarlet Crusaders are perfect for the purpose. The Forsaken are quite amused by my efforts, and turn a blind eye towards it all.
But that's not what my thoughts have been consumed by. My sister Raziya is living and well. The only living member of the family. She must remember everything that happened before the Siege. Even now, the past is discontinuous - disjointed, as if I am three people remembering instead of one. Your personality affects your memory, did you know that?
It's a relief to know she's still alive. I'm content with that. Maybe sometime soon, I can go visit her.
And those thoughts, after the first few weeks, have had no resurgence. The best way to tell if someone's been tampering with your mind is to remember yourself. If your thoughts vary suddenly and wildly from the way you always are, then you know... that someone is there with you.
The worst thing one can do is give in to those thoughts. No matter how hellish the thoughts get, or when horror creeps into your reality - you hear darkness, see whispers, taste entropy, and know that someone's always watching you. You can't react to them, no matter how logical your actions seem.
All that will happen is that you'll realize your mistake when your mind works again. And it will be something horrible.
The worst thing you can do is act. Even if you know you'll die if you don't.
Some-
Sanya looked up from her writing quite suddenly as something scratched at a tree nearby. She stood up in one quick movement, crumpling up the paper she had been writing on.
"Why does..?" A voice drifted out of the darkness. Scuffling sounds, as someone struggled closer to where Sanya stood.
"Why does what?"
"-He.. hate me?" Braindrinker crept out into the light, his armor clanking with each jolty movement. His leg had been bent almost backwards in his armor, and small holes pitted the metal over his torso. Blood colored near-black by the evening light drooled sluggishly from the wounds.
Sanya held him steady enough to sit down, and he did so with a thump on the forest floor, looking absently off into the darkness.
"I good, right? Why he not think so?"
Sanya's eyes glinted as her face took on a sharper, less pleasant expression. "Azzel did this to you, didn't he? So he could escape?"
"Green did, yes."
There was the sigh of trees rustling in the wind as Sanya rose to her feet again, looking over to the glinting outline of Shindu'Ysau. The dried blood and scraps of cloth had been cleaned off the crusher mouth, but it was still a sight to make one's flesh crawl.
"It's a hunt, Brain. We're leaving tonight."
-times there's nothing you can do. If you're too far into the thoughts that aren't yours, then thinking the way you did once is impossible.
In those cases, all you can do is follow that path - and pray.
[Since Sanya's already spent a long time tromping around in the steam armor, this is just tying up loose ends. Also - nothing is implied by the paragraph about BB. It's just supposed to help the mood of the post.]
Spoiler:
Time seemed to have been gaining speed over those days.
People, things - all moved quickly in and out of the Bay, leaving scarcely a mark on the town itself. All interchangeable, without any greater purpose. But who was to tell? Even if they did have such a purpose, who was there to care except them? Who was to notice? If they were all too absorbed in their own work to look around, then they might as well have not been there. Useless. All of it.
The shop belonging to Azzel had been abandoned some time ago. All of the machinery had been cleared from the floor and shelves with such haste that the residual iron and oil stains remained. Except for those, it was barren. Even the phlogiston-powered lamps had been ripped off the worktables they had been mounted on. A sheet of parchment had been stuck on the table with what seemed to be distilled tree sap. It flapped gently in the sea wind from the wide-open door.
It could have been days later that Sanya and Braindrinker came in through that door. In the cold, distant celestial light and silver-blue gleams from the sea below, it was only the phlogiston flashlight she carried and her eyes which gave them the light to search by. They did so quickly - moving through the building and shining the flashlight everywhere before noticing anything else. By the time Sanya saw the sheet of parchment and ripped it off the table, the closest moon was halfway across the sky. And the shop itself had been ravaged by the search: there were dents and embedded metal in the floor from Sanya's sabatons, and Braindrinker had left chew-marks on all of the available protrusions in the walls.
As Sanya smoothed the parchment into legibility on the table, she began to smile. "Brain. Come here." Braindrinker kept sitting by the puddle of oil on the floor, poking at where it had been absorbed by the floorboards. He was leaning down towards it before he realized Sanya had spoken. He looked back up at her, head tilted like a curious bird's.
"That? But paper not good food. It taste like... like.."
"Paper?" Sanya asked, still intent on the sheet and still wearing her cryptic little half-smile.
"...Yeah... Why other things not taste like what they are? Some greens taste like pink. Reds taste like pink too. Little green taste pink too?"
"Not right now, Brain. I'm trying to find out where Azzel went. This note's from him. Something about.." She squinted to examine the less legible parts of the writing, where the ink and paper had gone blotchy from sap. "-Telling an associate of his that he's out of the engineering business, and going to try a mining venture in Stranglethorn, because he wants some special kind of ore for smelting.. Which is apparently expensive... nothing mentioned about what happened to him in Tirisfal. And the note's new.." She crumples it in her hand. "That's an engineering adhesive. Strong - it's not meant for paper. It eats away at it within a few weeks. Which also means.."
"-Eat? Adhee-sive hungry?" Braindrinker asked suddenly. "Why it eat paper? Paper bad food. Maybe we give it tastey food?"
Sanya had a quick giggle at his expense before calming down and continuing as if she hadn't been interrupted at all. "-That he was in a rush, or else he would've found something better. I'll bet you anything that this was intended for us, not some other associate of his. He wants to throw us off the trail by giving us false direction. At least.. it seems likely.."
"Where green go?"
"To another town with his kind, of course. Goblins. I learned a lot over the years I hunted the living. All people are clannish - whether living or dead. They feel safer with one another than they do around others outside their 'group'. Take all of those racial cities; they have those because it makes them feel safer. Even the Ebon Blade is like that, with the prerequisite of being a Death Knight. They disgust me." Sanya moved onto the threshold of the door to look out onto the glittering sea below. Even in the night's calm, the waves kept up a persistent low rumble and spray. The timbers creaked with each influx. Saltwater glistened in puddles along the wooden ramps.
Above all, the strong wild smell.
She walked out onto the ramps, her cloak and hair streaming out behind her. Braindrinker followed, leaving the door open wide as a mouth.
Azzel Steamsmash had taken to his new life in Ratchet easily. His cousin needed a person to repair machines, and he needed a livelihood. It was only good business sense that they start working together. He had been nervous and jittery, especially for the first few days. Enough so that some of his old friends began to wonder what had gone wrong. Perhaps he'd lost the other shop somehow? Gotten into one too many fights with another Steamwarrior? Or perhaps he was just beginning to feel his age.
Whatever the reason, he never spoke of it to anyone. The time - which had already seemed so quick to desert him - kept trickling by in an endless irreplaceable stream. It didn't take a Goblin's sense of time to know that it would never be returned.
When the door opened for the last time one evening, it wasn't a customer or Azzel's cousin coming in to rearrange the inventory and close up the shop. It was the Death Knight Sanya. She strode in with Braindrinker lingering behind her, and locked the door. Once any inhabitants were closed inside, the two began to search through everything.
Azzel, who had been bent over a worktable absorbed in fixing a pocket-watch, didn't take long to react. He heard the footsteps coming from outside the workroom door and bolted for the flight of stairs. The watch slipped off the table. As it clattered on the floor, there was silence outside the workroom. Two muffled voices. The door was kicked open moments later. Sanya and Braindrinker glanced around at Azzel's new workplace - Sanya smirking - and followed the sound of footsteps upstairs. One of the windows had been left ajar. It took only a few glances in the rooms upstairs to tell the hunters that their prey wasn't there. The furnishings wouldn't have been enough to hide even a goblin-sized person.
Sanya waited at the window until none of the guards were watching, and launched herself bodily into the open air.
-She landed on the ground, stumbling to catch her footing. Braindrinker jumped down without hesitation and followed like a clanky metallic shadow. As they ascended to one of the higher points in town, Azzel could be seen running north along the coastline in the shimmering haze. They followed, of course.
They caught up to him where the hoodoos and red stone of Durotar first appeared on the eastern horizon, like ghostly pillars out of the hazy sea. By then, he was running on adrenaline. He lashed out at Sanya with the long hunting knife he carried, and used the time he won to keep running on north. Braindrinker loped on in back of him, intent and not breathing. It may have been warm elsewhere that day, but the air on the coastline had an edge of cold to it. Sanya looked over to Braindrinker, and nodded; a faint gesture which the ghoul still noticed. She stopped running, and so did he. They stood there together on the grass, watching their quarry like eagles might watch a fleeing antelope.
Azzel kept running and glanced behind once he realized he was no longer being followed. He slowed down as he searched through his pockets for something. He turned back towards them. Something glinted in his hand.
Sanya jolted back as she was struck in the shoulder by the gunfire. Her eyes widened, and she clasped her hand to the wounded shoulder. She stared over in Azzel's direction, motionless as he aimed again - this time for Braindrinker.
Something shadowy and full of claws and teeth wrapped itself around his neck, and pulled him down to the ground. When he saw Sanya and Braindrinker walking over, his hands scrabbled at his neck, trying to pull it all off. They were cut across the palms and fingertips, bleeding freely as Sanya looked down at him. It beaded at the deep puncture wounds all over his neck; red on his green skin. And through it all, she was smiling.
"Ya b***h. Why did you do this to me?" Azzel looked up at her with a blend of resentment and fear plain on his face. "I thought you were gonna be an alright student... not some kill-freak Death Knight."
"Hah! You were the one who ruined it." Sanya stared back down at him. The runeblade on her back was growing brighter. "You were just waiting to kill my ghoul, weren't you? And you were probably going to go after me next. I know your kind - profit's always the bottom line..."
"..Like yer different. 'Course I wanted money. Knew all along what I was risking, fer that. Nobody else'd've taught ya, now would they?"
"..No.."
"People aren't as stupid as ya think. They knew ye'd be trouble. I knew it too, just wanted to give ya a chance and make a little extra money on the side. Only stupid thing there was me, and ya profited off that... the very thing ya blame me for.."
"I'm past feeling sorry for you," Sanya snapped. "There's no point in talking anymore." She pulled the Death Coil tighter around his neck, embedding the sharp edges in further. Azzel choked once, and began gasping for air, still trying to pull the tendrils away. Sanya beckoned to Braindrinker. He grinned and walked over to kneel next to Azzel.
It was a long time later that everything was silent again. By then, Sanya and Braindrinker were walking back south along the coastline. And nothing of Azzel's was left in the world - not even blood.
[The last IC post for Sanya's prestige, and the final shift from a distant narrator to her. As always, she finished training some time ago. This is just wrapping up loose ends.
It also takes some context to understand. Either way, I'm still quite proud of it.]
Spoiler:
Everything moves too quickly those days. People, things, my own thoughts. It's hard to remember the specifics of everything that's happened over the last week. We left Tirisfal to follow Azzel, and we found the shop in Booty Bay abandoned. After that, we traveled on to Ratchet. Why? It had something to do with grouping. Him running to his own kind.
Of course.
We killed him there. Or, more accurately, Braindrinker did, because I promised to let him eat Azzel alive. That's the vivid part. Have you ever killed someone? The feel of it will follow you for the rest of your life. Even now, I wake up in the night sometimes with a sudden rush of fear: Did I kill the right person, or was he just an innocent bystander, who had nothing to do with it?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It was clear, that night in Winterspring. So clear that the blanketed snow glowed underneath the sky, stretching miles in each direction. Up to where it was lost into altitude and distance. And the sky itself was a rich blue-black color which gave the true impression of it as a massive empty space. There could have been no atmosphere there, and it would have looked the same. Each star, each outline of trees and snow and buildings on the horizon was impossibly crisp. The cold wind blew over the landscape, smelling of nothing.
A lone humanoid-shaped set of steam armor walked alone along the road, heading east. The warmth rising from it and the smell of smoke was the only sign of life in the barren world.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I think I'm beginning to understand. All the while, the happiness I got from the steam armor was draining away. With the forwarning and fear of being mentally influenced by whatever was in Tirisfal, the only thing I succeeded in was becoming paranoid.
And because of it, someone else is dead now. One of many. Maybe not the last - who knows?
..Ysau exists...
You see, I was never driven to kill by the influence it had over me. Nothing so simple.
What it caused was the happiness.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
They left the trail before they reached the greater expanses of Winterspring, heading north up the snowy slopes. The armor was too warm from the breakdown of phlogiston to falter then and there. It grew steeper. Occasionally, one of the a roosting Owlkin would watch them from above before disappearing into the forest again. The first time, Sanya tried to chase it up the slope. But by the third time, she just smiled behind the port, ho-ho'ed a greeting, and kept walking. Braindrinker had been left his own devices to gnaw on his stash of marrow bones. He had been quieter than usual, recently.
They stopped on one of the largest ledges in the mountains. The small river running down from it was frozen over, as it had always been. Sanya and Braindrinker walked on the ice, deliberately trying to slide over it as if they were on skates.
"It's not exactly Northrend, but will it do for now?" She asked at length. Braindrinker kept frolicking on the ice, blissfully unaware until she repeated the question. He shrugged and smiled.
"It good. We here before - I remember. I remember that, and that, and-" He moved back onto the ice again, and a shove of his sabatons sent him moving away across the frozen river, pointing out all of the things he'd seen before.
Once he was gone, Sanya buried her face in her hands.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
You're so unlucky, Brain - you died as an elf once, and you remember nothing of what it was like to be a real person. I see it in your face and hear it in your words sometimes; someone's still there, hidden behind that silly grin of yours. But he's not you. You and he are different people now, and I don't know which one matters more.
But you're so happy...
I know how it feels. The frightened, oddball little girl - Terriss - used to be me, somehow. And somehow, I did everything the killer with the shark's mind and stolen name did. I have their memories, but they're not me. The first thing I remember of my real life is standing in the darkness with paladins around me. They looked at me as if I was a monster.
I'm afraid sometimes, that each day I live will be my last. That someday I'll look back on how I am now - thoughts, hopes, dreams of a real person - and see them as someone different. Like Terriss and the other-Sanya are to me now.
Worst of all, I understand that one day it will happen. It's happened so many times before that there's nothing to be done. The Ebon Blade will hear of what I did, and send their hunters after me again. Kynra was never there as my friend, was she? She was there, biding her time and watching me. Her enemy.
That will be the end. Someday.. I'll reach into my memories and find this moment. But by then, I'll be gone.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
They traveled down from the mountains many hours later. It had been long enough at a high altitude that the steam armor's joints needed some time to defrost. It clanked along noisily through the light, fluffy snow. The sky above was still dark.
Sanya hummed quietly to herself: the same Thalassian melody she always liked to repeat. It was the sound which rose above the grinding of gears and clatter of metal - the song which broke the silence.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Everyone has a moment in their life which defines them. Forever on, they can look back to this moment to affirm themselves. Some people have more than one.
Mine was the day in my life that I left the Amani tombs, and stopped on the border of the Ghostlands to drink clean water. It was still that day, with barely a ripple. When I looked into that river as a person, it was a corpse which stared back out at me. It was then that I understood.
...Someday, I'll reach into my memories and find this moment, preserved exactly as it is now. But that won't be for years. I will fight alongside those I trust.
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