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"Would you elaborate?" Illidan asked back, joining to the conversation. |
"Trolls. Young outlaw punk trolls. One of the gangs seems to have settled in the area, and quite a few members have started to come here as well. They harrassed the guests and the employees. They even got weapons inside somehow, despite my sons having bodysearched them before! Okay, so you don't have to think about the... |
"And when did you want to tell this to my partner?" Maiev snapped at him. "Before or after he gets knifed?" |
"By the Light, no, what are you saying? He wouldn't get knifed! I-it only happened once or twice! It's not that frequent, y'know. Nothing serious... And I wanted to tell him anyway, it's just... well, I might have been a little scared that..." |
"That for the ridiculous amount you would offer to him, he wouldn't risk his skin? Well, you are damn right about that!" Maiev growled at the man with increasing heat, but before she could really warm up, a gentle touch on her shoulder took her out of her towering anger, signaling that it was time for a shift. |
"After hearing about your problems, I believe you found the best possible man for the job." He smiled at the dwarf with boundless confidence. The man's eyes, upon hearing those words, began to sparkle yet again. |
"Then you take it?" |
"Yes, but..." with one firm move the demon hunter took the contract out of Maiev's hand. Suddenly green light flashed in the tiny room as Illidan set the paper on fire. The edges of the white sheet slowly blackened, then the small pieces of ash fell to the floor. "Not on these terms." he closed his fist, extinguishing ... |
Ukar fell back in horror at the sight of magic. Not even his great-grandparents had seen a spell like that before, it became that absent from people's lives. The scene utterly shocked him. After a moment of hesitation, he ran to his desk, tearing open all the drawers, trying to find something in them with trembling ha... |
"It's useless, you can't even scratch me with that dagger." Illidan laughed haughtily as he stepped closer. His tattoos glowed menacingly in the dimly lit room. |
"Ho... how...?" The dwarf looked at the demon hunter, frozen as Illidan towered over him, slowly closing the drawers. Ukar shifted his vision to Maiev, but the woman stood firmly in the shadows, showing only her faint smile. |
"Like I said, you have found the best man for the job." Illidan turned to the trembling dwarf, removing his blindfold, exposing the burnt flesh under it. The empty eyesockets stared right into the man's soul, as the sight of the small fel flames waltzed a cruel dance on his eyes’ wet surface. He got his hand in front o... |
"What do you want? Just tell me whatever you want, I'll give it to you, but please don't hurt me!" the old man fell to his knees, shaking in terror. Illidan nodded contentedly at Maiev. |
"My partner just wanted to point out that his service is worth far more than the pathetic amount that was printed on that contract. I think you can see that by now. If I remember correctly, you said you lost four people. Illidan can make up for them on his own, and can offer even more... " She walked slowly next to the... |
"Ho... how much do you want?" |
"I'm convinced that he would've promised you the salary of ten other men too, if I hadn't stopped him." Maiev said as she bit into her usual chicken sandwich. "You scared the poor old man to death." she pecked at Illidan, who stretched contentedly in his chair, visibly taking the woman's remark as a compliment. |
"Thank you, but you weren't exactly gentle with him, either." he elbowed on the table, grinning. - You enjoyed it, don't even try to deny it. |
Maiev pretended to be deep in thought, but her faint smile served as a dead giveaway that the man was right. |
"Perhaps... a bit." she said at last, squeezing two of her thumbs togehter to show just how tiny that pleasure was. Or at least how much she cared to admit. Illidan, pleased by her answer, took another bite from his own wrap. Maiev took a glance at the man, than returned to her food as well. "How pleasant..." she thoug... |
"By the way..." Maiev reached into her pocket, then handed over her cellphone to Illidan. The display showed Malfurion's name. "I thought you'd like to tell your brother about your new job." she placed the device into the man's hand, then pressed to dial. |
Illidan's face lit up as he brought the phone to his ears, waiting for the other side to pick it up. After a while, he happily spoke into the device. |
"Brother, it's Illidan. Guess what, I got a job!" he said with joy, but his smile suddenly faded to nothing. To his surprise, a different voice aswered his call. One, that he used to know well. "Tyrande...?" |
It's been nearly three hundred years since the last remnants of the once glorious Kaldorei Empire officially ceased to exist.The handful of Night Elves who had survived the Fourth War were unable to retain their former territories, pressuring them to rely more and more on the help of the Alliance to maintain their infl... |
The ringtone of an old mobile broke the silence of the kitchen. The device lay on top of a fruit basket, its display flashing wildly, signaling that someone was looking for its owner. But he was nowhere to be found. Rustle of faint footsteps could be heard from the corridor, then the wooden door painted emerald green o... |
The light of the moon casted ominous shadows on the evergreen thujas growing around the wooden house, reflecting the feelings in the soul of the woman staring out of the window into the darkness. The sounds of the night were suppressed by the crackling noises of the restlessly rustling branches. Tyrande leaned out, let... |
"That was completely uncalled-for." Illidan said with a resigned expression on his face. "On the contrary. I absolutely called her." Maiev replied as she put her phone away, swimming in her flush of victory. Her tiny revenge on account of Tyrande having spoiled their festive mood successfully made her feel like wanting... |
Although it was only early afternoon, grey winter clouds covered the sun, keeping the day in a dirty darkness. A sharp icy wind swept through the streets, ruthlessly punishing those who trusted the weather forecast and dressed thinner. Maiev pulled the fur hood of her jacket over her head, protecting her face from the ... |
Maiev got off contentedly at the tram stop near her residence. As the battered vehicle continued on its way behind her back, she looked cheerfully at the display of her phone. It showed a bit after half past five. In less than four hours, she hunted down four worthless undead. It was far from her personal record, and h... |
The reflection of dark clouds painted the usually bright, sparkling lake that surrounded the downtown of Astranaar dirty green. On the quay, as always, a multitude of young lovers gathered despite the unpleasant weather. Two Night Elven teenagers held hands as they walked up to a huge, iron-lattice monument. The art re... |
The pub where Maiev led them was small and poorly lit. Perhaps not even the owner could tell anymore if the walls were originally that color, or if over the years tobacco smoke had colored them dirty yellow. Behind the clumsily fixed bar counter that broke earlier during a fight, poor spirits stood on the wooden shelf ... |
In the dim light that filtered through the dirty basement window, tiny grains of dust danced undisturbed, waltzing around in the small storage room. Along the mud- and dirt-stained wall, alcohol bottles of varied prices were waiting in junk wooden boxes to be served to thirsty guests one day. One thing they all had in ... |
She reluctantly opened her silver eyes to look around, where the morning has found her this time. She was counting on the usual bench, or a pissed, dirty doorway, but to her surprise, she woke up in a storage room. Under her head, the blue bag - still containing the clothes she sewed - served as a pillow, and as a blan... |
The throbbing pain ripped into her head again as the door creaked open and Ukarner Redpike walked in, humming off-key. At that sacred moment, Maiev could have drowned the dwarf in a spoonful of water in her fury. But at least she finally knew where she was. Seemingly not noticing her, the man walked straight to the box... |
"Oh, good mornin’!" the dwarf cleared his dry throat, quickly hiding the bottle behind him. It’s not like it mattered... "I see you feel better now! But hey, let me tell you, you really knocked yourself out last night, little miss!" the man opened his conversation-tap, letting out a flow of words, seemingly ignoring Ma... |
"Not my boyfriend." the night elf squeezed the words out between her lips, but her steely voice hurt her ears. However, she could not dispute the other part of the sentence. As much as her confused memories allowed her to recall, she indeed owed gratitude to the demon hunter. |
"All righty, I see the day starts badly. Wait "ere, I’ll get ya my miracle medicine! It always whips me into shape!" the old man whooped, already rushing out of the room, leaving Maiev alone with her throbbing head. She blinked a few more times, wiped the tweezers out of her eyes, then climbed out from her occasional b... |
"Ukar sent this. He told me it helps with the hangover." he said in a completely ordinary tone. "Although I must confess, I’ve never seen a drug like this before. The composition is strange." |
Maiev looked in amazement at the demon hunter glaring at the pill with suspicion. She would have dared to bet that he would open with some arrogant remark about yesterday, but he was more interested in the painkiller. |
"Fascinating..." he said at last as he stepped closer to the woman. |
"Thanks." She took the glass and the pill from the man, then swallowed it without hesitation. "If you don’t mind, I’m leaving now." |
"I see. Ukar allowed me to keep my stuff here until I find a place for myself." |
"At the same time..." he lifted the material hanging on his arm until that moment. It was a simple black t-shirt with the logo of the place on it. "I..." he began, but he quickly bit the word, no doubt embarrassed to ask a favour from her. "If you could..." |
Before he could continue, Maiev took the cloth from him. |
"I’ll do it. But! You must never mention yesterday!" She raised a finger in warning. "Don’t bring it up. Not today, not tomorrow. Never. The best would be if you could forget it quickly." |
"The memory of an awkward evening for an awkward favour..." Illidan said with a smug grin, pretending to think about the offer. "Seems like a reasonable trade." |
"Then it’s settled." she replied, and with that she was already at the door, ready to leave. |
"It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Warden." the man looked after her, with a satisfied smirk on his face. The woman turned back, her smile matching his. |
"You are the worst businessman in history." she laughed lightly. She said something about the date of their next meeting, then disappeared into the nightclub’s out-of-the-box hallway. |
Illidan followed her with his gaze for a long time as the lights depicting the woman got farther and farther away from him. Although he promised he wouldn’t bring up the event, there was something he wanted to talk about with the night elf but he had to realize that this wasn’t the right place nor the right time. Befor... |
The journey to home felt infinitely long for Maiev. Albeit the sun was already high, somehow it seemed as if every noisy, crying child had the desire to travel on the same tram on which she was sitting. Eventually, the vehicle stopped and the night elf could leave the carriage reminiscent of a birdcage. Close to the st... |
"I can’t decide which one is more embarrassing... Giving a score or crying... Damn it, I didn’t want to talk about it, but now I must, I can’t leave the topic at that... I’d like to sink into the earth in shame! What was I thinking? Oh, I know! Nothing, you drunken idiot!" she thought as she staggered down the stairs t... |
"What the...?" she pulled it out in surprise. The key was harder to turn than usual. She examined the device frantically. Could Illidan have bent it? That’s unlikely. He wasn’t even there according to him. Even if he had accidentally sat on it, it wouldn’t be enough weight to deform it. Eventually, Maiev opted for an o... |
"I’m imagining things... It’s just the hangover." she tried to allay her worries, opening the door slowly. Inside, her apartment greeted her just as she had left it the day before. Open bathroom door, closed closet, tie on the table... The table... Where she thought she saw a small, red flashing light...! |
As the picture finally assembled in her mind, she immediately tried to close the door and get away from the apartment, but it was too late. At that moment, a fiery, dazzling light flooded the room, followed by a terrible bang as the destructive energy erupted with an abhorrent force from the tiny structure hidden under... |
Someone hid an explosive in her apartment. |
"That damn device... must have been already there by yesterday...!" Maiev thought as she tried to stand up to her feet. "Luckily, Illidan never came here. He would have probably walked in without hesitation, and he would have been caught in the explosion’s centre... Well... " she looked at her shattered arm. Skin and f... |
Using her other, uninjured hand, she clung to a lattice door and leaned against the wall. |
"If I hadn’t taken that painkiller, I probably wouldn’t be able to stand at all." she tried to concentrate on a healing spell, but suddenly another thought crossed her mind. "It was a small bomb. Apparently, they didn’t want to damage the structure of the building or the other apartments... I was the only target. But i... |
"Shandris! This is Maiev!" she shouted into the phone as loudly as she could, hoping the other could hear what she was saying. "A bomb exploded in my apartment! Don’t go home! By all means, don’t go home! Tell Jarod and Lysende too! Stay away, you understand? I can’t hear you. My eardrum got ruptured. If you understood... |
Someone on the other side hung up. Maiev leaned against the wall with relief. Everything will be fine now... Suddenly she noticed lights and movement from the other end of the corridor. Someone was probably trying to find out what happened... At least that’s what she thought, but soon she had to realize she was wrong. ... |
"So you’re behind this. I’m not even surprised. Wretched cowards using cowardly methods to execute their cowardly plan. Fitting." She spat blood on the ground. "But if you think I will give my skin so easily, then you’re sorely mistaken, vile worms! I’ve been in worse situations before! You can ask those fools soon eno... |
"The wretched... probably climbed in through the window." the night elf felt the knife stuck in her shoulder, making her dominant arm now completely useless. She barely felt her fingers. She had to treat it and fast if she didn’t want to lose it. |
The adrenaline and the painkiller suppressed her pain just enough to let her move quickly despite her many injuries. She took the stairs by two, then tore open the front door. However, the open sky did not bring relief either. Seven other ReLifers stood in her way. They seemed to have been waiting for her. Maiev knew s... |
Taking the opportunity, the night elf blinked through the man-made wall and ran. Fearing that more attackers would await her at the tram, she headed in the other direction, straight into the heart of the housing estates, hoping to shake off her attackers there. However, her plan seemed to fail. Her initial fear appeare... |
She was careless. And now she has to pay for it. Did she truly think she could have a life she always dreamed of? One with meaning, care, and attachment? Finding her place in this world? For the first time in millennia, she did. |
"No, I can’t give in now!" she thought as she tried desperately to force her legs to move. "I already came this far, I want to see that possibility!" She took corner after corner but her pursuers were on her trail ceaselessly and she was close to coming to the end of her rope. It was getting difficult to even concentra... |
In the end, her last ounce of strength also left her as she fell to the ground, dazed. "No...!" She cried out in a panic. "Not now! It can’t be!" she tried to push herself up but to no avail. She rolled over to rest on her back. Under her, she felt the warm pool that increased in size by the minute. Her own blood. Her ... |
"Someone... help..." But no one heard her desperate supplication in the empty housing estate. "I don’t want to die... Not yet...!" |
She turned her head to the side. Her vision was gradually getting blurred as her thoughts slowly faded away into the void. A ghastly, alien emptiness flowed through her body. First, only in her fingers and then in her feet, approaching her heart. An undead was running toward her, holding a knife. Maiev tried to raise h... |
"No... I want to live... Live...!" she begged Elune as her attacker got closer. The tears running down on her burned cheeks dissolved in the pool of sanguine fluid beneath her. With her last breath, she clung desperately onto her memories, as if those could somehow keep her alive. Jarod’s kind voice, being worried abou... |
Lying on the ground, broken and ragged, unable to move even her fingers, her pulse weakening, her pursuer finally caught up with her. She sobbed as the man leaned over her, seeing her eye to eye. There was no reason to hide her feelings anymore. It didn’t matter who gets to see her cry. It will end soon anyway. Pride b... |
"If only I could start over..." |
The undead was ready to strike down when his arm suddenly stopped in mid-air. Slowly he let go of the knife and fell on the ground, revealing a woman’s figure behind him, a smoking pistol in her hand. Not far from her, several uniformed men approached. |
"Shandris...!" Maiev sighed, then the world went black. |
Outside, the sun emerged from behind the grey clouds of winter, illuminating the unnaturally clean, brittle room. Only one of the four beds was in use, on the surplusses the immaculately white sheets were resting untouched. On the one closest to the door sat a night elf woman, despondently. She closed her silver eyes b... |
The bright neon lights of Astranaar's nightlife filtered through the spaces between the plethora of multi-storey houses as mere tiny blurry spots. Maiev peered reluctantly at the horizon from her nephew's bed, remaining red even at night from the artificial lightings. Kur'talos had moved out years earlier, but Shandris... |
Several young people gathered at the Hot and Misty Club’s entrance, excitedly waiting to finally get in. Not just to have a royal time in the evening, but to finally warm up a little. Illidan looked at the shivering girls reprovingly. Most of them were wearing knee-length skirts despite the near-freezing temperature, t... |
Jarod's head could have been best described as an angered beehive that morning, his thoughts were buzzing and flying back and forth, seemingly without rhythm or meaning, but actually, he tried to organize memories and feelings of millennia in just half an hour. Indeed, it was twelve thousand years ago that Illidan Stor... |
The water mirror rippled from the hot water flowing from the tap, refracting the low-quality bulb's yellowish light glowing on its surface."I wonder how deep I should sink to get completely absorbed in the darkness and simply disappear from the world?" Maiev looked at the ceiling of the white-painted bathroom, lying on... |
Sitting on the edge, Jarod was waiting in the living room for someone to finally come out of his son's room. He jumped off the couch at a speed that could easily embarrass younger people at the click of the doorknob and hurried down the hall. Illidan carefully closed the door behind him, then nodded at the man and left... |
"Are you leaving already?" Jarod peeked out of the kitchen upon hearing his sister's footsteps. |
"Yes, I have an appointment with another offender under me, but due to his work schedule he is only available at the morning hours." She replied as she managed to put on her coat alone, albeit with little difficulty. The burgundy leather and black fur collar looked unusual on her, but all the more refreshing. Probably ... |
"Then I'll be quick, I don't want to hold you up." he stepped outside. "Can you look after Lysende this afternoon? Her detention hasn't expired yet, but Shandris and I are expected at a theatre play. I would be very grateful." |
Maiev sighed thoughtfully. Her niece's behaviour, especially her disrespect for her parents, has taken on a worrisome form since she started dating that troll. |
"All right. I have a meeting with Illidan at the evening, but..." as she uttered the magic words, Lysende's door slammed open and she poked her head out in excitement. |
"Are you meeting with Illidan?!" |
"I believe that's exactly what I said." the night elf frowned, and the filly's eyes began to sparkle even more vividly. She had probably pouted in her room until that moment for not allowed to meet with her boyfriend and pricked up her ears, but she clearly had no objection to finally getting to know the man she'd fant... |
"If you behave." Maiev raised her finger in warning, but her voice was lost in Lysende's cheer. She shook her head disapprovingly, though there was a smile around her lips. "I hope you won't be too disappointed..." |
A refreshing, green-scented spring breeze ruffled the lively blades of grass on the crystal-water lakeshore. On the branches of the giant tree that settled over The Well, the evergreen leaves gleamed with the dawn dew. The collected droplets fell like a diamond-downpour, breaking the sparkling surface. A silk moth flew... |
Malfurion shook his head resignedly. |
"What do I do with you, Kaelor?" |
Lysende stared back at forth with a mixture of excitement and tension at the display of her mobile phone and at the entrance of the fast-food restaurant that had seen better days, but none of it offered her anything new. |
"Is that why I hurried so much from school?" she sighed, but her aunt wasn't bothered by the reproach. |
"I agreed with him on half past five. Until then, it's almost a quarter of an hour." Maiev said, not even glancing at her niece. Her fingers ran diligently up and down the keyboard of her laptop, probably trying to finish another report. |
However, Lysende was not overly enthusiastic about the woman's objectivity, instead, she looked at her phone again. For safety's sake, she reconnected to the Wi-Fi to see if Za'zul still wrote to her, she just didn't get the text, but the last message was still the last heartbreaking "k" from the boy. The night elf, se... |
"Honey, it's not going to work, my parents won't let me." |
"You're just playing hard to get like a virgin bitch." The sentence caught her eyes, tearing open the wound cut on her immature heart by fear. |
A sudden sharp scream followed by a loud rattle pulled her out of her torment. Terrified, she turned back toward the front door to find out the cause of the noise, but she did not expect to see a scene like what she had witnessed, to say the least. A Draenei part-time worker stood in the hallway with her feet rooted to... |
"New employee?" the scary-looking figure asked as Maiev slid on the bench, giving him room. |
"Yes. Yesterday was Kende's last day, he's preparing for his university entrance exam." |
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