preparations

  I thumbed through a book that had far to many bent pages.  I had dog eared each one, seeing something of importance, but no such luck for my new task.  I welcomed the distraction, though it would prove challenging indeed. I hadn’t tried to teach a warlock since Wraithlynn was still alive but she was a poor excuse for a warlock to begin with.  Dante served a greater purpose in the accidental demise of her adopted sister, more then she knew and certainly more then she could remember. Her maze like mind had been ready to bury that atrocity with all the others she had suffered and I wasn’t one to dig it up.
 

Lightning frolicked with peals of thunder ahead. Azures eyes squinted in amazement of the combination, the tautness of cold hand gripping a heavy runemace. The other hand held the tome of despair, pain, and of a love he failed in cultivating.

"You could have done things with more vigor. Made broad and narrow strokes in ensuring your Duchess love to you would be absolute. You failed, and in doing so, she found another. His name is Destruction, with kinsmen of Malice and Pride." Such thoughts ravaged his mind as he looked onto the tome, reading further still.

"In my pursuits of dominating the elven populace, it had occured to me that the Baroness would be my staunchest enemy. She had many parishoners, but very few who could be considered able champions. It was to this end, albeit others, that I set back to work. I had many things to do, many projects to embark upon in order to challenge the weak and cull the strong.

Moving quietly and having a gimp leg tend to be mutually exclusive activities. Stands to reason.

Doing it in the dark, with only the smallest of glows from the decorative crystals in the room to guide you whilst you hobble about? Or the wane light of the pre-dawn peeking through the curtains? Peak of idiocy. Invitation to disaster.

That is, unless you've had years upon years to practice.

Rancor surveyed the materials he'd gathered on the table absently, in the corner of Oneska's apartment. Our apartment, he corrected himself. It wasn't a slip he made often, these days. A quiet snore from the other end of the apartment, issuing from the bed, brought a scowl to his face. Of course, it wasn't just 'their' apartment anymore, their private, calm island in the sea of activity that was Silvermoon City.

Artisania Marveloso figured she would need at least five-dozen cookies.

With a lovely hand-woven Tauren basket hung over one arm, she left her Thunder Bluff longhouse on a clear blue morning, just enough bite in the air to cause her to hurriedly pull on her gloves despite the bright sunshine. Although Mulgore remained temperate, a hint of winter still sliced through the air, enough to remind her she was not altogether removed from the seasons she had once known. After all, the Shu'Halo seemed quite enamored with Winter's Veil as well.