Ulduar

She winced as she felt her knee scrape the ground, her eyes slightly blinded by the dawn's first rays,  as the snow left on her boots from Kharnos, made her boots slick on the polished stone streets of Dalaran.  She had to return and be ready for a scouting mission for the gnomes by Midnight, making the portal the fastest way to get her shopping done.  She was after a few special components from the Alchemy shop and after a brief time of small talk and haggling, she walked outside.  Maybe it was fate that she heard a group of adventurers discussing how they were short a person.

"We need only one more person, someone who can hit hard and scout around."

"Someone who isn't afraid of the unknown."

(( Hlin asked me to do a picture of this is fiesty dwarf so here is my rendition of this red-headed dwarf about to leave Ulduar. I've decided to post the pictures showing the slow evolution of the picture.))

The tide is receding patiently. Waves of water flow in, carress my hooves. Wet fingers grip at the cloth about my hips, stretching upwards. To mine inner eye, they are spirits, playful little spritelings. The gurgle is their laughter. Waves of water flow out, pulling minute grains of silt and sand to entrap me in place so that I should remain there when they return.

I am not rooted to the earth though I plant my hooves firmly lest a stray breeze tumble me onwards. Like the water, I come when needed and recede when not, leaving only damp impressions in the sands of others to denote that I had ever been there at all. The waters soon wash even those away until they are mere memory.

Reserve duty again. One'd think that after all the service and campaigning I've done against the Scourge ever since landing on the shores of Northrend that little things like 'trustworthiness' wouldn't be an issue any more. They say it's because I've been spending a little too much time in close proximity to Ulduar; I think they're full of it. Soldiers have been coming out of there without their sanity for quite some time now, but not since the pit was cleared - and besides, I've never actually been inside the place anyways. The closest I've come to entering Ulduar proper has been to comb over the wreckage of the automated defenses on the surface long after Brann's vehicle crews blasted them to pieces.

Messenger of fear in sight
Dark deception kills the light

Hybrid children watch the sea
Pray for father, roaming free

Lord Kast commands us ever deeper into Ulduar. His eyes face forward only, as if in rebellion against the fear that awaits beneath; every guardian and watcher is only an obstacle in our way. One by one they fall.

Among the scrap heaps, where the giant mechanical screams and throws its tantrums, I spotted a shadow. It dashed for cover when we entered the chamber and disappeared when we engaged the mechagnomes and their equipment. While the others picked apart the remains, gleaning for gold or treasure, I sought the shadow among cast off metal plates, piles of robotic guts, wires and gears and cogs. A shadow amid the shadows, it huddled beneath a great beam and hissed, batting at my gauntlet as I reached for it. I could pick it up with one hand, wrapped about its ribs.

((Set last Sunday. Some spoilers for Storm Peak. more about this day shall be forth coming.))

Taneel lay in bed, his arms lightly embracing Asilia. The tail end of the harsh stress and worry that had dogged him since Zaas’s kidnapping seemed to have melted away in her arms. As his exhausted mind sunk into unconsciousness, the day’s events seemed to wash over him.

The battle of titanic warriors, Loken and Thorim, that he and Rose had unintentionally brought to pass. Watching the great green tentacles Loken strike at Thorim had been hard enough without Loken revealing how they’d been played.

But had they? Or had Loken lost his own game when he brought Thorim out of hiding. Only time, and the ventures into the heart of Ulduar, would tell.

I have heard tales of Argus, of what our homeworld was. I have heard of the shining streets of Mac'Aree and the shimmering waters which flowed through the mountains. Elders wove their memories into our imagination, until I believed that I might never see such wonder, such magnificence, with my own eyes. But I have.

**a slip of paper lying half under a bed in a corner of the Hero's Welcome dormitory, appearing as if it had been written in the middle of the night.  The pen has rolled out of sight; the occupants of the bed are soundly sleeping **

Don't think.

Don't worry.

Just be.

I breathe deep, the herbal smoke filling my lungs and causing me to close my eyes. Behind them, I listen for the spirits. I listen for the high pure call of the wind, the rumbling wash of the tides, the crackle of the fire, the deep quivering of the earth. I listen for them and feel them surround me like an embrace, like they had been waiting for me all along. I open my eyes and the world is so vibrant I can barely see.

The dusty scent of forgotten halls surrounded Tharan. He cursed himself repeatedly. The breath mask he had designed was flawless, absolutely flawless. The air motes in the rightmost vial served to perfectly filter the outside air, no matter how toxic or pungent. The cleansed air was flushed into the right tube that kept a constant pump of the cool, tasteless oxygen flowing into Tharan’s lungs. The left tube took out the useless carbon dioxide and converted it back into oxygen in the other vial of air motes. He had survived the thickest clouds of plague by drawing on the stored breaths of pure air. Even pockets of lost atmosphere on Outland did not faze Tharan Kiloth in the slightest. The cracked glass of the vials irked him to no end, however. He had no idea how fortunate his oversight would prove.

Rain fell in heavy sheets around the hooded, shrouded figure hunched over a book. He scratched diligently onto the pages with red ink. He looked up with glowing red lenses and focused on the inn set before him. Another note was hurriedly jotted onto the pages as he prepared himself for what waited inside the dilapidated building. This would be a long night.

Ironforge wasn't exactly the first place Otsdarva wanted to be, but it certainly wasn't the last. The Hall of Explorers, a collection of all known history of Azeroth. Everything the dwarfs had dug up and recorded. Everything they felt was paramount to uncovering this planets tattered past was there and surrounded by the masses of logs and collections that had been written and recorded with the recent discovery of the titan structures in the violent Storm Peaks was Otsdarva. Scrolls and books, journals and logs all surrounded him, some left open and all thoroughly dissected. Directly infront of him was a more recent scroll from travellers who had claimed to discover Brann Bronzebeard inside one of the peripherals of Ulduar, the Halls of Stone. Underneath the book was a scroll and a quill. With random placings, written in both Common and Draenei Otsdarva had penned his thoughts.

"Excuse me," the high pitched voice of a gnome from behind his stool. No reply.

“That which cannot be accomplished with might, is accomplished with magic. And that which is not accomplished with magic, is accomplished with machines.” 

Log entry

            Subject: On site inquisition of the Guardians Archaedas and Auroth.