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| Details |
| Author: | Aly |
| Summary: | Alysson spots some suspicious activity and sets off in pursuit, prompting a meeting with someone he never expected. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
The sky was darker than usual for nighttime, seemed some clouds had got it in their heads to invade while he wasn’t looking because day time stuff needed doing. Alysson sat on the top of the inn at Valiance Keep, not a hard place to reach for a fellow who could climb like he could, but an important place ‘cause it was close to the sky and no one else was occupying it, which meant he could be alone.
And that’s how he felt, what with Elune locked in Her cloud war, and him stuck on the ground with no way to help. He’d tried jumping once, but instead of reaching the sky he’d reached backward off the roof and onto the head of some poor worker fellow who’d chased him for nearly an hour threatening to skin him. It wasn’t the first time he’d sat on the roof, it’d been enough times that he saw the same Kaldorei sneaking out every night to do who knows what, she didn’t even carry a weapon. Sometimes he’d sit up there during the day, too, and watch the squad leave without him and wonder what kind of trouble he’d find himself in without ‘Randy.
But it was that Eluneless night that Alysson caught sight of axe Ma, disappearing out of Valiance like she had a place to be, and crazy as axe Ma was, he couldn’t leave her alone out there. So he hopped down from the roof like one of them Kaldorei nightsabers, smooth and catlike, and took to the shadows to tail her. Only halfway through he was starting to wish he was a nightsaber. Boring Tundra was sure cold, after all, and nightsabers had such nice fur. Or maybe he could be like Shei’van, and drip lava everyplace, and then the Keepfolk’d be happy to have him around.
It wasn’t until he heard voices that he realized he’d almost walked right up on axe Ma and her apparent meeting partner.
“You are the Watcher, I presume?” The unfamiliar woman spoke, sounding like one of those creatures of death, and the blue of her eyes told him that maybe she was one. She had quite the scar across her neck, but otherwise he supposed she was kinda pretty. Anyhow, he recognized the name of axe Ma when she said it.
“You are taking quite the risk, coming this close to Valiance Keep,” axe Ma said, her head raised in that she-knows-best way she had of looking down on a fellow. “I heard the other death knights landed nearby. Won’t they be watching for you?”
“Worried?” the death knight smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile, in fact it gave Alysson an unexpected chill. “We are safe here. I have a plan in place.”
Axe Ma’s eyes widened and she reached for her axe, suddenly looking unsettled, like she had to use the outhouse or something. “When did they get here? I couldn’t sense them until…”
Something rubbed Alysson’s lower leg, up under his armor. It might’ve felt nice, if it wasn’t so cold and also attached to a moving dead fellow. He tried not to leap away, but it was too late.
“Then they are doing their job.” The death knight’s eyes narrowed. “But it seems you were followed. Did you know that?”
“Followed?” Axe Ma whirled around, axe finally in hand. She looked like she was ready to tear the whole tundra down, and as far as Alysson knew, she probably could. “Show yourself!”
Only one way to escape her wrath now, and that was to beg forgiveness. He stepped out of the shadows to face the ladies, hands raised. “You caught me, I'm sorry, don’t go swingin’ that thing around.” As a gesture of goodwill, he sent a wink off to the death knight, and she didn’t throw something at him so he figured it was well-received.
“Alysson.” Axe Ma didn’t look happy to see him, most folks didn’t, but at least she wasn’t trying to gut him.
“You know this one?” It was hard to read the look of the knight of death, but it wasn’t anything hostile. Alysson was good at judging hostile, it’s how he kept his skin on his bones for so many years.
“It’s a long story, and one not even worth explaining. He is her son.” Axe Ma always talked like that. Like he wasn’t her son, and she was someone else. That’s why she introduced herself as the Watcher, and not Alynnra.
“Son? Then she…” The death knight’s whole standoffish bit changed, then, and she gave him a smile bright as anything. “Your name is Alysson?” she asked. “I am Kaela Mondragon. Your aunt.”
“Aunt?” Alysson just about startled clean off his feet. “I didn’t know I had one o’ those. You’re Ma’s sister? ‘Randy never said anythin’ ‘bout an aunt. Well if that’s all this is, why all the sneakin’ an’ the dead folk? Uh, no offense Aunt Kaela, seein’ as how you seem to be a dead folk too.”
She didn’t seem to take it too hard, and her smile didn’t flicker out like some of them did after he said something dumb. What she did do, was look to axe Ma, as if maybe asking her how to proceed. Folks did that sometimes, with their eyebrows. Alysson’d made a try of it a time or ten, but no one ever heard his eyebrows right. Could be it was like talking through his heart, and he just wasn’t good at it.
Axe Ma put her axe away and sidled up real close to him, sizing him up with those angry eyes of hers, before answering, “We are about to set off on a mission. A secret one that no one can know about.”
“A secret mission? Is it somethin’ heroic?” Though he’d never taken axe Ma for the heroing type, he couldn’t say she wouldn’t make a good one, not after her showing at the House of Lights some weeks back. She was tough, and if she had a mind to, she could do some real good.
“It is.” And then his Aunt Kaela said the words he most wanted to hear since his arrival in Northend. “Would you join us?”
A grin sprang onto his face. “Yeah? You’ll really let me? I won’t be in the way, or underfoot? I am pretty good at the ol’ combat, y’know.” He made some swssshing and whsssshing sounds to demonstrate.
Axe Ma glared daggers at her, but good Aunt Kaela kept her smile, and the offer, open. “You would be a welcome addition to our team.”
And then it occurred to him, about all the fellows back at Valiance, sleeping or otherwise, and how they might wonder after him. “Might need to tell Cobalt I’ll be out for a bit, but I won’t say anythin’ about secrets or missions. Or aunts?”
“Would anything change, if you were to disappear?” Axe Ma’s words were harsh, per usual.
“Well, I don’t s’pose anythin’ too particular, no. Might be quieter?” he offered.
“Then why bother? You weren’t invited here, right? They won’t miss you.”
He felt his smile falter, then fade away. “That’s… true, I s’pose.” Her words bit deeper than they should’ve. Alysson checked the sky for guidance, but Elune was not winning Her war, and he knew he’d have to go along on his own for now. “Alright. I won’t tell ‘em ‘til I get back. So, where we goin’?”
Aunt Kaela called a horse from some other place, or at least it was maybe a horse? Where she pulled it from was all shadows and darkness, and the horse fellow looked like that too. “Ride with me, Alysson. I will explain on the way.”
Axe Ma called a horse too, only hers was definitely a horse. It was easy to forget she was a paladin until she did the stuff with exploding Light, like she did making that horse appear. Anyhow, Aunt Kaela climbed onto her shadow beast, and Alysson got on behind her, and they started off in a direction that was probably east.
***
When the horses disappeared from sight, and the gathered dead went on their way, Almeiria emerged from her own protective darkness. “Kaela Mondragon… To think the Lich King had her all this time.”
A cloaked figure emerged at her side. “Mother. I’m concerned about Alysson. He’s getting involved in something he knows nothing about.”
“Doesn’t he always?” Almeiria studied Miranda’s face, looking up at her with those unfortunate green eyes. She must have gotten them from her grandmother. Poor child.
“Well, yes, but…” Her lips curved into a miserable expression.
“Come, my dear…there is nothing to worry about. Alysson is part of Cobalt Company, and we know how much they look after their own. Don’t we, little cat?” Miranda frowned in confusion, until the third observer revealed themselves. It was unmistakably a druid, the wildlife of Northrend wasn’t nearly so colorful. It stared at them with tame silver eyes, not moving to attack or flee, simply observing. “Go on then, the show is over, hmm?”
Wisely, the cat slipped away through the brush, heading for Valiance Keep. What a joke of a name, considering the state of the place.
Almeiria couldn’t help but smile to herself. “Oh, Watcher dear, what is your game?”