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| Details |
| Author: | Saaron |
| Summary: | Azizia goes to Dane for a new weapon and they end up talking shamanism, orcs and bad guys. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Azizia leans against a wall of Stormwind’s Dwarven District, her arms crossed. She faces the forges and anvils, a slight frown on her face. She’s wearing her green leather armor, a small steel axe around which a wisp of fire swirls is attached to her belt. Her wooden shield lays on the ground, next to her left hoof. She came to this place immediately after helping some more with the situation on Azuremyst Isle, and one could still feel some of the electricity of the shaman’s lighting shields moving in the air around her.
This is her least favorite part of this city, because of all the fumes making the world around her look hazy, because of the smell, and because of all the noises the blacksmiths make while working. All of her senses feel attacked just by standing in this part of Stormwind.
But she’s here for a reason. She’s here for business. After asking people she’d crossed paths with in the Headquarters of the Cobalt Company for a good blacksmith, she was recommended another member of the Company, a certain Dane Atley.
Azizia sent him a letter to know where and when she could see him as well as introducing herself as one of Cobalt Company’s new mercenaries needing him for his blacksmithing. The day of the meeting has come and thanks to a portal she paid for from the Exodar to Stormwind, the shaman is even a little early.
Early as she is, she’ll find Dane. He stands in his well worn leather boots, brown pants, suspenders and white shirt with the sleeves having been ripped off. He’s at the anvil, of course, and where she seems to loathe the district, he seems right at home.
He moves slowly but deliberately, navigating between the forge, the anvil, the furnace so smoothly one might even wonder if he could do it blind folded. She can see the letter she wrote to him folded sloppily and dangling out of his back pocket as he meets with citizens who approach, handing over aged weapons or tools in need of repair. They always go the same way. After a bit of coin is exchanged, Dane takes whatever item needs attention and utilizes his skill set and instrument to remedy the problems of the wood, the steel, the iron.
His hair remains tied back tightly against his scalp, exposing his face if not for the stray lock off brown hair managing to escape the lazily crafted knot. He does, however, look tired, which makes him look angry. That is, angrier than he usually looks. When he strikes at the anvil, she might be keen enough to notice a bit of anger propelling his blows, adding force to his strikes. A tightness in his shoulders and a clench of his jaw communicates built tension that slowly seems to dissipate the more he works, the more physical he is
The letter in his pocket finally catches Azizia’s attention, not that she was looking in that general area. Her eyes go up a bit to catch a glimpse of Dane’s face. Oh no, she whispers to herself. She thinks that’s the rude guy who left when she entered the headquarters, at the party. He looks like him, at least, maybe even angrier. She considers leaving and never coming back to this district, but realizes that this is just a transaction. She gives him money, asks him for a better weapon, leaves, and comes back to get it later. Even if she doesn’t want to interact with him, this is a small price to pay for a better axe, a hammer, or a mace.
She gathers up her motivation, not her courage, picks up the shield that she straps to her back, and walks up to the blacksmith, dragging her hooves. She stands behind him, maybe a little too close, and announces with her thick accent and soft voice: “Dane Atley?”
Clang! Dane gets in one last strike at the anvil and the blistering hot metal laid out over it before she arrives. He slowly turns his glare towards her, over a broad and mostly bare shoulder, looking up, up, up at the draenei. He raises the hammer and drags a sooty forearm across the sweat of his forehead and grunts in acknowledgement.
“Aye, I’m him. You’re …” he squints, even in the shade of the smithing tent, and vaguely waves his hammer in her direction a few times. “The lass with the letter.” he nods once in recognition, fully turning to face her now, his own accent harsh, and sharp.
She doesn't sigh at the confirmation that she's looking at the person she came to see, but her shoulder slowly raise with a deep breath before quickly falling lower than they were before once she breathes out.
"Azizia. We have very briefly met." she gives a polite bow as she insists strongly on the 'very'. "I come to you for weapon. For fighting."
Dane grunts in surprise. He’s not going to say that he can’t exactly tell all draenei apart, yet. He takes to eyeing her up and down, though it’s not out of lewd desire, but practical curiosity. More specifically, he inspects her weapons, her equipment. He frowns in thought, lowering his head to drop his hammer into a metal ring on his belt with a subtle clink!
That’s when he notes the swirling ball of energy caught in her orbit. He lifts a brow, glancing back up at her and furrowing his brow entirely. “Wot’s your name, again?”
Azizia narrows her eyes, staring down at Dane, not liking the way he's been furrowing his brows more and more. She puts her right hand on her hip.
"A. Zi. Zia." she spells out, exaggerating the syllables of her name. Wanting to get this over with as fast as she can, she adds. "I like hammers and axes. One hand, but heavy."
Dane slowly nods once, up and down goes his head. “Azizia,” he remarks with a low growl, scratching at his sweaty temple as he commits the name to memory. His eyes abruptly shift to her biceps, where he seems to go through some sort of calculation, before snapping to her shoulders. “That’d be your current weapon there, then,” he says, gesturing towards the steel axe without initially looking.
“S’have a look’at wot’ you’ve been working with.” he says, stepping out from under the scalding air of the forge tent. He holds out a bare, calloused, and rather dirty looking hand for her weaponry, green eyes warily following the circling magical orb.
She follows his gaze from her arm to her shoulder, curious to know what’s actually going through his mind. She nods when he asks about the axe, unstrapping it from her belt. Azizia is about to hand it to him, but suddenly pauses, taking the hand holding the axe back towards herself.
“Ah, forgive me!” she exclaims. Immediately, she cups her hand, gently grabs the fire wisp and bring it to her face. She whispers to it in Draenei, thanking it. The tiny elemental’s face briefly appears before disappearing entirely from this plane.
“There,” she says, handing Dane the Black Metal Axe. “This is safer to hold, now.”
Dane pulls his hand back, that same chestnut brow raising rigidly again as he witnesses her dismiss her elemental boon. He grunts and nods shortly, accepting it once she offers it. He accepts the black metal, turning it left and right in the smoky sunlight before flicking his gaze back up to her.
“Wot’s that,” he inquires dryly. “Wot’ sort of sorcery have you got on it?” Dane peers back up at her he backs away to swing the axe once, twice, three times through the air, getting a gauge of it. “And wot’ use has a sorcerer got with hand-axes?” he inquires flatly, but with genuine, if stoic, curiosity.
Azizia takes a few steps back as well as he starts swinging the axe, just in case. She looks at him swinging it around, which reminds her of how her mother used to try weapons as well.
“I am not sorcerer,” she says, shaking her head. “Shaman. I call the elements to my aid.” She points to the axe with her chin. “I used fire spirit to make strikes more powerful. I am more fighter than sorcerer.”
He pauses after one last swing, flicking his gaze in her direction. “Shaman.” He flips the axe around and holds it back towards her, raising his eyes to meet her gaze. “Innat’ just the word you lot use? Wizard. Mage. Somman’ who uses magic, magic like that,” he points vaguely at her waist, where the lightning sphere had been spinning.
“I know the word shaman. S’old, for us humans. We’ve not used it in ages, since before the kingdoms proper. Green skins. Trolls. They use it.” he informs her gruffly, setting his hands on his hips.
Azizia grabs back her axe, strapping it on her belt again. "Not really. I do not use magic. Not spells; calls. I ask spirits for help, but I learn no spells or train magic inside me."
She listens to him talk and then looks up at the sky, thinking. Green skins? Who are the Green skins? She asks herself. She frowns a little, trying to decipher who this human could be referring to? She's seen murloc with green skin, and some do seem to commune with the elements. At first, this is what she believes he's talking about, but then, it hits her.
This is about orcs! The name green skin took her some long seconds to understand, as she had known Orcs before they had turned green because of the Fel. Then she nods, raising an eyebrow. Of course he would compare her to orcs.
"We did not learn from orcs. They were first shamans we saw, but we learned without them. They were evil before we learned." She looks at him, tilting her head. He has piqued her curiosity. "Humans, shamans before? I did not know. Spirits are so… chaotic, and lonely here."
Dane frowns out of confusion and turns his head to the side, causing another brown lock, damp with sweat, to swing in front of his eyes. “Spirits?” He parts his lips to speak before leaning back as he, too, takes a moment to reconsider her words. “Y’don’t mean the spirits of the dead. You mean … fire, earth, aye? That that’s never properly lived.”
He folds his arms and settles a bit in place, shifting around before he sharply upnods, taking a wide, confident stance. “Wot’ do you mean lonely? Lonelier than they’re on your world?” he inquires uncertainly, still visibly struggling to visualize what she’s talking about.
"Elemental spirits, yes," she says a bit impatiently. How dare he think she'd commune with the dead! It has only happened once. "On Draenor, elemental spirits," she insists on the 'elemental'. "They are more peaceful. Here, they war with each other."
Azizia looks in the distance, as if she was actively trying to find an elemental right now.
"They are lonelier in places. Like here, Stormwind. They look glad to see shamans, even if it's just to ask help to be stronger." She shrugs. "Probably not as lonely in places where they have shamans all the time. Like orc or troll cities."
Dane gnashes his teeth so discreetly it almost looks like he’s chewing something for a moment. “I dunno’ of most of that,” he croaks, nodding her on to follow as he walks up to a crate with its lid pried off. Inside are stacks or iron ore, neatly fitted together. He starts retrieving them, setting them down on a work bench two by two until he has six assembled. “Wot’ I do know is that rows of mud huts are not proper cities.” he issues sharply, glancing back at her.
Some of the tension bleeds away from his shoulder before he knits his brow, pushing a stray lock out from his eyes, unintentionally smearing a bit of snot across his forehead. “And aye. The legends say humans had sommat’ like shamans in the old times, well ‘fore Thoradin. Up north in the Arathi Highlands. Teaching the rocks and trees to talk. Could damn well be just a myth.” He grunts. “You say our elementals are fighting,” he says mildly, shifting the subject slightly. “Wot’ makes ‘em different? Different than … Draenor.”
Azizia follows him to the crate and, even though she tries to be sneaky about it, it’s incredibly obvious that she looks at the content. Much more organized than she had imagined this Dane Atley would be! She smiles at his comment on the horde cities.
“That we agree on. I thought Orcs would try making better homes on other world, but it seems they refuse to have comfort.”
The shaman goes to lean against the nearest wall again, feeling that her legs were tiring. She mechanically starts playing with the ring on her index, listening to the blacksmith, her gaze fixated onto the ground. Her silence is broken by a scoff at the mention of humans teaching rocks and trees to talk. She doesn’t comment on this inaccuracy any more, though.
She shakes her head at his question.
“That, I do not know,” the ring keeps going round and round around her finger. “Elements in Draenor, they have found an harmony. At least until warlocks hurt them… Left them very confused. This is what elements told us after, there was no Draenei shaman back then. But still, they worked together more than here. Here they want more power.” She almost spits that last word.
Dane briefly double-takes her at her loud scoff, but makes no verbal acknowledgement of it. At least, not yet. He does passively listen to her explanation as he takes to pulling other ingredients out from crates, shelves, corners of the work bench. Most notably, he swipes up a sturdy wooden rod, shorter than the length of his arm, and takes to tightly coiling heavy leather around its base.
He’s slow, periodic, but effective in his work. Not a scrap of the leather or an inch of the wood is wasted. He frowns down at it with exhausted focus as he starts putting together the precursor to what may end up being an actual weapon. “I dunno’ of much f’that,” he confesses distractedly.
“But I do know weapons.” He side-eyes her, up and nods. “You’ve got the strength for a hammer. Proper hammer. Iron in make. You receive any formal fight training?”
Azizia tilts her head observing the man working, a bit fascinated. She watches the way his hands move as he prepares her new weapon, her own hammer.
“And I don’t know of weapon-making,” she says, as he turns towards her. She smiles at his comment on her strength “Thanks! Yes, I was trained formally. Mother was warrior, father vindicator.”
She looks at him, at his arms as he works.
“You seem strong as well. Warrior too?”
Dane clenches his jaw, taking a rather long moment to respond as he once again wipes at his broad and seizes a shovel. With a grunt and a shift of his arms, he scrapes the pile of ingots into a steaming basin, where they gradually begin to bubble and dissolve right before her eyes.
“Aye,” he growls, finally looking back (and up) at her. “I was a soldier, for many years.” He gestures to the brand on his shoulder, the sigil of the Stormwind Liar pointedly scarred into his arm with surprisingly ornate detail. He dismissively waves it off and uses the same shovel to stoke the forge, shoveling in small but heavy piles of coal. “But that was long ago.”
Azizia smiles as she watches him melting the ingots. There’s something inherently funny to her to see something as strong as iron just… bubble. When Dane points his tattoo out, she looks at his shoulder, instantly recognizing it as the emblem of this city, and then nods.
“You are mercenary, now. In one of Cobalt Company important squads.”
Feeling a bit odd, standing there, staring at him working while not contributing, Azizia turns towards the fiery coal and softly speaks in Draenei.
“I seek the finest hammer in my quest to serve you. Today, you are able to help me if you cooperate effectively with this blacksmith. Please, if only for today, play your role in this forge as perfectly as you can.”
“Aye. Sellsword,” he agrees gruffly, his tone mild and flat as he reaches for an ash covered implement to stir the ingots around over the mold, the metal almost looking like some sort of chocolate as it melts and trickles obediently into place with a hiss.
He perks a brow as she draws near, towering as she is, and grows still. It’s not necessarily out of fear, just the uncertainty of what’s to become next. He slowly leans back once she whispers in her native tongue, communing with the elements to aid his dutiful efforts. He scoffs with amusement, barrel chest jumping once as he turns to ss his metal implement aside with a raucous clang!
“Wot’d you do?” he asks quietly, brow furrowed faintly as he glances between her and the coals that seem to stoke to life at her command.
Azizia looks at Dane with a proud smile on her face.
“Only asked rocks and fire to work with you efficiently as possible.” She flips her hair off of her shoulder and goes back to the wall, this time sitting on the ground. “Now you are not working with tools, but companions.”
Dane scoffs again, eyeing her up and down once more as he repeats. “Companions.” Despite his dubious tone, he is visibly impressed, if a bit surprised. He turns away from her, whisking his hammer out from his belt loop to produce to smash at the molten metal.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
He pauses mid swing, rotating his broad torso to briefly point at her. “You. You ought to smith. You can just tell ‘em wot’ to do on command. I’ve got to coax ‘em into it.”
The Shaman didn’t do this to brag, but impressing someone with your connection to the elements always feels very nice. Especially since a lot of Draenei disapprove of their peers following such practices. Pride, even cockiness, appears very clearly on the smirk that appears on her face
She shakes her head at his comment, chuckling.
“I did not command. Shamans do not control elements,” she shrugs. “Simply, I asked politely. I said that if you work well together, I get better weapon and I am better able to help them in exchange.”
She looks around at the place, and even though she’s getting used to the smells and noises (focusing on someone working, even if they are the source of the noise, makes it more bearable to her than just having to just suffer these sensory attacks), she says:
“I am not cut for here. Dwarven District.” She points at her rings and bracelets, smiling. “I like Trade District better. Plus I already have profession!”
Dane hammers away some more, and it’s unclear whether he’s even hearing her over the din of his own racket as the moldable iron begins to vaguely take the shape of a rectangular prism.
“Profession?” He asks after a moment, glancing over at her. “Isn’t wot’ you do —“ he vaguely gestures towards her and then to the coals with his well worn, trusty blacksmith hammer, apparently taking a bit of a break from the pounding to let the molten settle some more. “Isn’t that your role?”
Azizia nods at his questions while she stretches her legs.
“Someone can have two roles. You are sellsword and blacksmith. Me, I have two roles, but also only one.” She grabs her bag, opens it, and takes out a wooden box. Inside are a few vials containing colorful liquids. “Even before shamanism, I studied a bit alchemy. Now if I heal poison or disease in someone, I can give remedy to take for home, to help feel completely better faster. Other time I just sell potions or tonics I make.”
She looks at her vials, pondering, then takes a red healing potion and puts the other ones back into the box in her bag.
“Careful!” she tells him, as she throws the potion in his direction.
Dane has just enough time to drop his hammer onto the anvil with a hearty clang in order to scramble to catch the potion. He grunts lowly, shooting her a wary but only slightly bemused look as he holds the bottle up to his face. Dane squints through it, giving it a few vigorous shakes before he slowly lowers his hand and nods back to her.
“Alchemist then, aye,” he growls in acknowledgement. “You ought to meet Niris — later on. She’s kept busy these days. She’s a potion mistress herself.” He raises the potion, pinching its top and its bottom between his index finger and his thumb. “May be able to show you ‘round the plants of this world, compared to wot’ you’re used to on yours.”
“Wot’s in this one, then?”
Azizia nods at the mention of Niris, still smiling happily at the fact that he was able to catch the potion.
“Niris… Ex-lieutenant who stopped because of personal reasons. I remember the letter.”
She shakes her head when he asks what is in the potion she threw at him.
“I do not know. I mixed grass and herbs from Duskwood and around Exodar until turned red.”
The Draenei fakes a little cough to put her hand in front of her mouth and hide her smile.
Dane slowly retracts his head, almost making a double chin as he glances back and forth between her and the potion. “…Wager I’ll let you have a swig at it first, then,” he decrees with a growl before tossing it back without much warning.
“You are a bit f’a cheeky sort, aren’t you. Most of your kin seem that way.” he observes with a single nod before going back to adding the finishing touches on the hammer as the metal starts to cool.
Azizia catches the vial back, surprisingly easily, then finally bursts out laughing when he talks of the ‘cheekiness’ of Draenei. She finally talks after calming down a bit.
“You must have met few and good ones.” She looks at him with a smug smile. “Most too serious. Sometimes… high-and-mighty.”
She shakes the vial.
“Bruiseweed and briar—… briarthorn! Real potion.” She gets ready to throw it back to him but stops herself before she does. She then says, still sitting on the floor, “Let’s not try luck too many times, I will give later.”
“Well, definitely high and tall, you lot happen to be a punch of big basta — folk.” He corrects at the last moment.
“Aye… cheeky.” He recollects his hammer, squares his shoulders, and gets back to work. Metal cools, and finally begins to take shake under his surgical precision. He turns to his work bench, rooting around through a small pile of tools to collect the leather wrapped wooden shaft.
With a grunt and a heft of effort, he uses both hands to twist the wood up into the base of the hammer, giving it a few hardy twists here and there before he runs out of space. He takes to lightly hammering the hilt into the stone as he nods back to her.
“Wot’ you make of green skins, then?” He prods.
Azizia chuckles at his comments about Draenei, even if she knows perfectly well which word he was about to use to describe them. She watches her hammer looking progressively more like a hammer than ever before. Then, he asks about the orcs.
“Probably I think same like you.” she frowns as her gaze fixates onto a pebble on the ground. “I want to see Alliance crush them all. No survivors.”
She doesn’t add the “for everything they’ve done to us” part, but she thinks it really hard.
Dane grunts, just once. A short, gruff sound. One of approval, satisfaction. It’s one that he was expecting, and one he seems to share, or at the very least appreciate. “Right,” he growls simply before leaving it there.
He turns over to her, drags his forearm once again across his brow as he adds the finishing touches onto his hammer. “C’mon over, then. Have a look at wot’ you’ve got, now,” he says, hefting the fresh new hammer up with a grunt, turning his body to face her fully.
Azizia stares at Dane, not sure what his grunts mean, and even more uncertain that the elements could help her translate that language. Especially with how he cuts the conversation. She expected an ex-soldier like him to really hate the enemy. But she has no time to ask more about his viewpoint on orcs, as her new hammer seems to be done!
She gets up and approaches Dane, staring at the hammer. It was beautiful, and she didn’t expect such fine work from someone that looked like Dane, but there was still something missing. What, though?. She goes to grab her future brand-new purchase and try its weight. Without looking away from her weapon, she hands the health potion to Dane.
“For you.”
“Cheers, lass.”
Dane accepts the bottle and grunts, peering briefly at her before cinching it into another notch in his belt. He gestures to the open space to his left and nods at her. “Go on, then. Give’t a swing or two. Try out your …” he trails off, squinting with uncertainty. “Magic on it. Ought to do the job for you.”
He folds his burly bare arms across his chest and leans back, eyes shifting to the hammer in her hand. His brow fainty knits in thought as he more than likely goes through another round of mental calculations, watching how she handles it, pondering what other adjustments could be made on the piece of equipment, but all of it is done in silence.
She grabs the hammer and takes a few steps back. It feels heavy in her hands, and everything seems to be staying in place. Perfect, she thinks. Azizia starts swinging the hammer imagining she’s hitting armies of orcs, just like her mother had taught her. “Always use your rage in every strike, even when you’re training.” Her grip on the hammer’s handle tightens, her brows furrow, and her mouth contorts in a snarl. She looks absolutely furious.
Then, all of a sudden, she holds out the hammer to her side, and whispers in Draenei. From the ground, a rock forms and starts hovering around the hammer. She swings it a few times more.
“Ah yes, with rock call,” she precise, not magic. “… This hammer will hurt.”
As she stares at it, she realizes what’s been missing. This hammer, while very well-made, isn’t aesthetically pleasing enough!
“Do you do carving?”
Dane sets his jaw, going quite still once she tests the hammer out with formidable savagery. The stillness isn’t visibly out of fear, but curiosity — he’d never seen a draenei in action before. His eyes do narrow, instead of flinch, once she summons the earth and the element dutifully answers her call. This causes him to grunt, just once, coming to a conclusion about something.
He flicks his emerald gaze back to her, eyes widened in acknowledgement. “Carving?” he inquires with a growl, somewhat caught off guard by what he presumes to be her request after such a fearsome display. “Aye. Hilt’r hammer,” he informs stoically, arms still folded across his barrel of a chest.
Azizia nods happily when he asks to confirm she’s said ‘carving’. That’s the perfect touch that was missing on that hammer! She dismisses the rock swirling around it. Then, she hands him the weapon back excitedly, a complete change of demeanor from when she was testing it. She opens her bag and takes out her four elemental totems one by one, all made out of stones. She points to the Draenic runes on each one.
“Water. Earth. Fire. Air,” she explains. “It will make hammer unique and beautiful!”
She realizes quickly that making his weapons “unique” and “beautiful” isn’t probably what Dane primarily wants from the weapons he crafts. “And make connection of hammer to elements better,” she adds, as convincingly as she can, a little bit too late.
She clears her throat a bit akwardly, and as she gently taps on the hammer, she says:
“Maybe one rune for one side of the hammer?”
Dane’s right eye twitches at her sudden excitement, but otherwise he stoically maintains his deadpan. His arms slowly fall to his sides as he slowly takes the hammer back, tearing his gaze off of her to examine it while she instructs, tilting it this way and that in the afternoon light.
Atley smacks his lips a few times, squinting back and forth from her demonstrative totems to the hammer in his hand as he sets his jaw. “It’ll make the connections stronger, will it …” Dane repeats dubiously in flat monotone before he just nods.
“Hammer’s done for free with you in the Company. These runes are sommat’ new.” He explains, bracing the hammer shaft against palm again and again as he casually talks. “Twenty five silver, each rune on a side.” He taps each side in question as he slowly spins the hammer. “M’no sorcerer but I can get it done.”
The Draenei looks almost a little bit disappointed, with a sad frown, when she hears that the hammer is free. Spending money is half the fun of buying something! Her arms slowly fall to the side.
However, she regains some energy hearing that her rune idea will cost her money. 1 gold coin exactly!
“This is cheap for such work. For hammer and for runes that make stronger, yes.” She nods while saying this, as if to convince herself of her lie.
She takes out a leather pouch from her bag, leather pouch which seems pretty full for someone who only recently woke up in this world. Azizia has been working hard. From it, she already takes out the gold coin and hands it to the blacksmith.
Dane smacks his lips a few times as he accepts the coin with dirty fingers. He tucks it into his back pocket and returns to the forge, rifling around through the small pile of blacksmithing tools on his work bench to find a hammer and chisel.
“Bring that totem over, will you,” he growls in his usual way as he audibly snaps his trunk like neck back and forth, releasing a heavy sigh. He sideyes her as he takes a moment to think, waiting.
“I’ve fought shamans before.” He gestures towards her with the hammer. “This sort’f magic. S’a wild magic. Powerful, too,” he mutters unfavorably, studying her expression.
Azizia gleefully takes the earth totem and holds it next to Dane, turning the totem so that it clearly exposes the rune. She holds it in front of her hips with both hands, one at the bottom and one at the back, so that it stands close to the hammer and at a certain angle so that it is easy for Dane to look at it while he works. She listens to him talk about his previous fights, and calling what she does ‘magic’. Again. She raises an eyebrow as she notices that he seems to be talking about it pretty negatively.
“It is as wild as elements can be, yes.” She looks down at her totem, a slightly sad expression draws on her face. “It can be very peaceful sometimes. Too very peaceful.”
She chuckles, thinking about the word “powerful”.
“It can be very powerful, yes. This is why I am not using it strongly as before.”
Plink! Plink! Plink! goes Dane as he hammers away at the weapon. He’d done good work on the mace, which made the engraving all the more difficult. Just as before, he seems to lose track of the conversation, regularly leaning awayto squint back and forth between her totem and the hanmer before he goes in for another micro adjustment.
“Strongly as before?” he growls, nodding at her as he turns the hammer to work in the newest side. “Wot’ you mean, you’ll be holding back then?”
He shakes his head lightly, raising the hammer off of the work bench to blow some dust off of it, briefly causing his cheeks to expand with a quick and powerful breath.
Azizia grabs another totem, this time the one water. She answers, almost absent-mindedly, her gaze lost.
"I do shaman work because I have to as mercenary for gold, and to help elements around me to make life peaceful for me, but I do not wish to create to strong bond with them." She sighs deeply, her lower lip raising almost into a pout. "History is always the same. People wants power, and they never have enough so they search deeper and deeper. Then, chaos."
She slowly shakes her head.
"When I waked up here, I was weaker. Both my body and away from spirits that I know. I do not wish for power I had or for more power, just comfort."
Dane repeats the process, taking a longer time with the water tune than with the earth, but the extra moment or two taken really seems to make a difference. The runes on the totem and on the hammer are nearly identical by the time he’s switching to the third side. He drops the chisel and shakes out his burly arm, clenching and unclenching his fingers before swiping it up to return to his ‘carving.’
“You don’t want to bond with ‘em…?” He growls inquisitively as he shakes metal. “Innat’ why you speak to ‘em as you do? Or s’there a fear of corruption, as with demons and the like.”
She takes the third totem, fire, and goes back to the same position. She tilts her head, thinking.
"I do not think elements can corrupt someone like demons. But I keep contact to minimum. I plan living here, so I keep good relation with Stormwind elements." She uses the hand that lays on the back of the totem to point to the coal from earlier. "If I can help and keep those peaceful, and also make money for comfort, I'm happy.
She lets out a chuckle while she puts her hand back on the totem.
"But I am not helping elements of… Auberdine. Others will do, and elements of Auberdine do not come to me, so I do not care."
Azizia sighs and looks up at the sky, her eyes glazing over.
"When people's objective is power, it never ends. There's always more to find and you go to wrong places."
She pauses and thinks about what a power hungry warrior would look like, as an example.
"Like warrior who wants power. Kill, and kill, and kill, always killing person above them. Then they kill king and take place, but not enough. So they war and kill more for more power. Maybe they make wrong deal along the way for that. I do not wish for shamanism to do same to me."
Dane grows still, still staring at his current room but he stops all movement, listening to her. “Aye. You do know greenskins then.” Soon enough, he goes back to the hammering and chiseling, nearly coming to the end. “They stop at nothing. There’s no end to the war, to the bloodlust. No sating it, no turnin’ it about,” he leans off to the side and snarls, noisily spitting onto the pavement.
Dane flips the hammer, and nods her closer to get a better look at the totem as the sun begins to set overhead, staining the sky blood red, making it glow. The regular hustle and bustle of the dwarven district is amplified as the townspeople return from their professions and go about their personal business.
“Spent most’f my adult life hunting them, fighting them.” His scowl deepens. “Surviving them.” He side-eyes her, his harsh look softening slightly — only slightly. “You lot have good taste.”
The faintest of “eww”s comes out of Azizia’s mouth as she listens to Dane spitting. When he nods her closer, she takes a careful step, making sure he didn’t spit there earlier or something.
She takes a second to appreciate the change of atmosphere in this District, with more people coming and going. She’d rather spend time in a noisy street full of people than a noisy, mostly empty one. She shrugs and slightly shakes her head at Dane.
“We have good taste in clothes, jewelry, and architecture, yes. But not much different than orcs you describe, in the end. What I said wasn’t especially about orcs, just people. Many of us fell to wanting more power. Some even would say I did, once…” Azizia gives Dane a rather cold look. “We are allies because, luckily, not one of us fell too far, and you had to survive orcs because they did and are now monsters.”
Dane grits his teeth, either due to the subject matter or the tenseness growing in his wrist. He side-eyes her and shakes his head. “You lot are different,” he states firmly, disagreeing. “When they came, they came to conquer, and they nearly did. You lot came as a desperate folk, looking for aid, and your ways, your people, you’re far less savage.” He nods. “S’far easier to receive that.”
He sniffs abruptly a single time before spinning the hammer around in his hand, giving it a last once-over before holding it out to her. “There you are. See if that’ll do.”
Azizia laughs.
“Wait until Eredar come here. They share almost all our ways, but they are as savage as orcs.” She grabs the hammer and turns it around in her hand, staring at the beautiful runes carved into each side. She talks without raising her eyes from the weapon. “It is perfect. It will serve me well in my savage magic.”
Dane seems to miss any sarcasm. In fact, everything she just said sounds perfectly normal. He leans back and puffs his broad chest with pride, each of his thumbs seizing a suspender and calmly moving up and down as he eyes the weapon, likely mentally going through any last adjustments.
“Aye, ought to suit you well for the time. You come back with wot’ever requirements you’ve got.”
Azizia frowns as she is a bit taken aback by his lack of reaction. She eventually just shrugs and straps the hammer to her belt.
“Fine work, I will probably come to you again, if hammer doesn’t break during battle.”
She nods at him, packs all her things back into her bag, and starts walking away, impatient to feel fresher air than the one tainted by the forges of the Dwarven district.
Dane watches her walk off, hooves clopping on the pavement, and raises a hairy arm to wipe sweat and soot from his forehead as another customer approaches.