Echo

((Image down below the break, given his pose, I felt putting the mature tag up was a good bet, enjoy!))

Continued from Beisel's The Mind of a Cultist:

They were coming. Two-hundred yards uphill Gus splashed across the stream, running headlong towards us with something in his mouth. Not big enough to be the donkey’s head... it looked like a leg. He barreled on, closer and closer, until I could hear the nervous giggle in his throat. When he reached me he didn’t even slow down, just kept going down the path we’d come, a rippling mottled gray mass descending through the trees.

Continued from Echo's "Trail's End, Part 2"

“Thank the Light.” Echo took a deep breath and stood.  She motioned across the clearing to a dwarf in cultist robes.  “All yours.”  The dwarf cackled through her gag, and Echo walked into the trees to stand guard. 
 
I went to the dwarf and removed her gag.  She bit my fingers.  Pulling my hand away, I shouted in Dwarven, “Oiy, none of that!”  The bite was superficial, and I drew on the Light for healing while she laughed herself breathless.  “Tell me what you know about Hron Ironbelly.”
 
The question was too much for her, and she wheezed out another gleeful laugh.  “Dead!”

Continued from Trail's End, Part 1

The most useful aspect of being an expert tracker isn’t the ability to recognize and follow just about any trail. The most useful aspect is the ability to recognize what a trail looks like so completely you can make one yourself. Any trail. Any type. Anywhere. From a deer’s meandering path through the forest to the marks a tauren’s hooves make on wet sand.

Here I was working with rocks, dust, dry scrub, pockets of aspen and birch with their flickering golden leaves, and dense growths of conifers. A little spare - not like the thick forests of Hillsbrad around Dalaran where I’d learned the craft - but workable. I walked on the hunched backs of the stones, scuffing the gravel between them here and there, reaching out to break or bend a branch in the way. Others I pushed aside. After all, this trail wasn’t meant to be mine.

“I’ve got to go.” I didn’t even look back as I stuffed necessities into my pack, buckled my crossbow quiver against my hip and tugged on my gloves. “It’s important. There isn’t time.” I opened the door.

Before I stepped out I glanced over my shoulder at the two of them. Credence and E, sitting at the table with our unfinished dinner plates between them, just as they had been when the message from Zhukova arrived. Neither had even moved, nor spoken a word as I’d leaped from my roast chicken and started suiting up, blathering about Hron Ironbelly and cultist informants and a hot lead.

“Kids these days,” Echo muttered, wincing as Credence gently lifted her foot to her shoulder and leaned forward slightly, hands pulling back at the muscles of her thigh. Echo’s knee gave a sad little creak and burned, the pain ebbing back as Credence loosened her hold and gently lowered the limb to the bedspread. Echo let out a few breaths before she opened her eyes again.

“That’s better,” she sighed, as strained muscles and tendons relaxed after the stretch. “Just... just wait a minute before you do the other one.”

Despite her preparations, despite her focus, despite all the contingencies she’d planned for, Ana Zhukova was caught by surprise as the figure entered the tent.

The wind rose in a shriek, flinging sand to spatter against the heavy canvas of the tent.  Inside, the small fire’s flames leaped slightly before settling back to dance in place.  

She says they are just the usual ghosts tonight. I say nothing.

She says they are not new nightmares. I say nothing.

She says they are just the same old memories. I say nothing.

I see everything.

I know.

And there are no magic words.

I see where she hurts, and how she twists.

And there is nothing I can say.

As she sleeps, I do not. I am not tired. I have not been tired lately, since she started driving herself again. Perhaps it is something in me which senses the strife she seeks out, and feeds me so I need not rest. More likely, it is something far less dark and twisted. She is busy, I am not. There is not so much to clean anymore, after all.

I smell the blood under her fingernails.

I wish there was a magic which I could work that would wipe away the past and let her smile again. I have seen the smile that could have been.

Kast decided to take a break. He didn’t look at me as he walked out of the room, and I didn’t look at him. He can be an ugly man sometimes. This business was some of the ugliest, and sure wouldn’t do much to improve his looks.
 
I snapped my fingers at my side, answered by the huff and scuff of Gus rising from where he had been lying against the wall. The basement was dark enough the hyena’s hoary coat barely muddied the shadows, but his eyes gleamed in what light there was. Funny how I treated him like a dog. In many ways, he wasn’t like a dog at all. All the better for this. People get used to dogs.

The barge was the key. It came downriver with the gray light before dawn, sidling up to scrape against the shallows. A quick transaction of men and cargo followed. With Forsaken crowding the surrounding territories, new supply routes had been carved through the hills, Alterac’s river shores being one safe place to make landing. Chillwind camp would have some fresh soldiers and fresh supplies tonight. But not after a quick trip downstream, first.

Echo stepped below deck of the houseboat, her mail jingling. "Well, that didn't go as expected," she sighed, moving to hang her crossbow back in its pegs on the bulwark.

Credence looked up from a table sporting a freshly-baked tart, her eyes smiling as they often did when she was successful in her endeavors in the galley. "You're back early. The tart is just out of the oven. It will take a bit to cool before we can eat it."

Timothy, the black fox, took a white-tipped ear in his mouth and growled. The owner of the ear, a long, golden cat stretched out on the houseboat deck in the sun, rolled slowly over, loose spotted coat flowing after the initial torsion, big white paw lifting to spread toes across the fox's cheek. Echo smiled at the lazy feline and poked Timothy with the toe of her boot on the cat's behalf, though her interference did little more than motivate the fox to switch ears. The two animals curled into a playful, harmless wrestle, Whistler the parrot hopping to and fro around them, bobbing his head and spreading his wings like some kind of mad referee.

"Going north, you said?" Credence asked, lifting the green-and-blue bracers from the table and handing them to Echo, a note of curiosity in her eyes.

"Not that far north," Echo answered, with a soothing smile.  "Not that far, hopefully ever again.  Just up into Quel'thalas, to deal with the Amani.  Haven't been up there, myself, but most of the Scions have been.  You know, I don't think I've dealt with trolls before - at least not a whole tribe, not like this.  Should be interesting."

"I always feel better when there's a dwarf around," Echo said, sitting back in her chair after swallowing a particularly refreshing mouthful of ale.  Decompressing with Credence on Friday nights had become a cherished routine: a light supper on the table, plenty of ale, and a patient smile accompanying a listening ear. Her sooty armor hung on its rack, far enough away that the scent of creosote didn't tingle their noses, and her bare feet rested in Credence's lap. As those kind fingers worked the tension from her toes, the ale tempted further musings from her lips.

The weight of the ham - wrapped in cloth and secured about Echo's wrist with a loop of butcher's twine - balanced the weight of the basket hung over her opposite arm, which was full of potatoes, apples, onions and yams.  Between them, she cradled a sack full of lighter things: bundles of sage, thyme and marjoram, a bouquet of greenhouse flowers.  Despite the planning which had gone into burdening herself, still she more or less waddled down the Stormwind docks.  Her mind, likewise, carried an abundance of cooking times, recipes, double-checked ingredients and most of all hopes for a successful family dinner.  It was to be the first, formally, on board the houseboat.

She remembered a flag. 

A swath of blue with gold embroidery, it flicked and wavered over the battlefield like a stroke of pure color on a muddy canvas.  Somewhere, far back in time, careful hands had woven the cloth, dyed it, sewn the seams and with callused fingers a hundred times pricked in dedication to that design. Not the last blood the banner would bear, carried across the sea, unfurled on foriegn soil, borne up by hands upon hands of those far from home. It fluttered over their marching steps, over desert and through forest, high up the mountainsides, to witness their efforts against the enemy.  It flew bold and bright against magic, explosives, blood and thunder, death-cries and the curdled moans of the wounded and dying.  She saw it, battered and frayed, snapping against its staff, so little left of its original cloth as to seem unrecognizable.  She saw it, as she lay amid the corpses, the shock of her wounds dulling their pain but knowing she was bleeding out; the Standard waved, to her, to her, only to her, to bear her up and remind her of so much more than what she could see.

It wasn't every day Echo would consider relationship advice from a girl half her age.  The whole notion still seemed ridiculous.  Even if Countess DeWynter was indeed older than she estimated, she was still - more or less - some noble's brat with little to show but an oddly subservient Kaldorei lover (if she could call Tavlo'ashmalan that) and an expansive house and lands.  It could be pure coincidence that Echo had always so enjoyed her time at Wyntersmere with Credence, or it could just be something in the water, or Light forbid some kind of lingering succubus curse hanging over the whole estate.

The low winter sunlight rolled over the snowy Alterac hills, pushing long shadows back from the pines, scattering across the windows of trappers' huts, shining off fresh-frozen streams.  The mouth of a cavern gaped to catch it, swallowing a swath of brightness to paint one inner wall.  Just inside the cave, Echo crouched opposite in shadow, careful not to disturb the fragile beam nor what it revealed. 

Near the floor of the cave, poking up among oddly arranged little piles of rocks and sticks, four lumpy animal feet were drawn.  Massive, rounded toes sported painstakingly-placed claws, spindly legs winding upwards over blocky outcroppings to meet a sausage-like body. From the body a huge shape was drawn, rounded at the front, coming to a point at the end.  Above, where the sunlight licked into shadowy crevices, a head, long-snouted, perked triangle ears.  The drawing was childlike and scrawled and yet somehow recognizable: A fox.  A magic fox.

The crisp wind rolled into the cavern, sweeping its dank depths and dusting away yet more bits of charcoal from the image.  In her bare hand, Echo held two thick sticks, heavily charred at the ends, the points dulled.  The wood had gradually warmed in her grasp. The last time the sticks had been held Kjerstin's young niece had wielded one, and Echo's sister the other.

Shimmering orbs, the water droplets sparkled on the blue and gold of the motorbike, trailing down through the machinery or whisked away by the cool winter winds off the harbor.  Echo knelt, the thick mail of her leggings creaking and jingling, to carefully wipe down the leather seat and polish the chrome.  Not a lick of soot remained, nor ash, nor pine needle.  She dug at a little stubborn clod of dirt between two metal plates, wearing her fingernail through the cloth, eyes intent.  Even Credence would approve of how the bike gleamed, slick and shiny after its journey to Hyjal.

So much for appearances.  Echo stood, flicking the polishing cloth out and letting her eyes travel over the machine in front of her.  Credence was right about one thing; cleaning did, indeed, grant a sense of calm assurance.  Things should be in place, Credence had said, or things could go wrong.  Echo nodded a little, catching her wide-eyed reflection distorted in the chrome.  She polished another spot away then twisted the cloth in her hands, looking out for a moment at the gray sea.  The wind blew sharp and salty, buffeting her drawn-back hair.  Winter's Veil, soon...

When the knock came on the door of House DeWynter, Kjerstin almost didn't answer it.  Echo and Credence had gone out somewhere, and all she wanted was to be left alone.  She had cut down a ghoul that morning with a face like Garrett's.  Though, after nearly two weeks, she was starting to see her family in every glimpse of an undead face.  She needed to get out of here.  She got up and went to the door.

"Kjerstin Engel?"  The uniformed man couldn't have been more than eighteen, but he wore the livery of the Argent Dawn.

"That's me."

"We found a kid outside Chillwind Camp this morning, ma'am.  She's clammed up now, but when we brought her in she was babbling and said something about Auntie Kjerstin."  Kjerstin's heart leaped.  "And it's not a common name, so the Sarge sent me to find you, ma'am, and see if you knew who she was."

Dear Miss Martin;

Dear Dad,

I wish I could write with better news.  I have confirmed that Lise is dead.  A Forsaken plaguebringer at what remains of the farms was wearing her wedding ring.  Before he died of his wounds, he admitted that he had taken it from a body of a woman.  He didn't live long enough to describe any others he had seen.  Clearly I need to refine my technique.

It has been five days now, and I am still hoping, but not expecting to find any survivors.  The Forsaken were very thorough, and I don't know how much longer I'll be able to slip past their guard and get into Hillsbrad.  They are tightening their grip on the borders every day.  My companions in the search for survivors, Echo Martin and Credence Black, have offered me shelter at House DeWynter in Alterac, but it may not remain safe to stay here.  Our daily forays into enemy territory are becoming more dangerous, and every day the chances of finding refugees dwindle.

Morning rose once more over the broken city of Stormwind, and once more Stormwind's citizens rose in quiet determination to clean up the mess.

Echo walked up from the harbor fully armed and armored, wearing her old 7th Legion tabard.  Although she didn't expect the great beast who had done this to return soon, plenty of looters were about, pilfering the destruction. She had found they responded much more quickly to perceived military force bearing down than some lady yelling at them.  At her side trotted a large, iron-gray dog who amplified the effect.

Stormwind Harbor, usually placid, washed and heaved.

Echo looked out from the quarterdeck of the houseboat, narrowing her eyes as a hot wind seethed over her face.  Under the black night sky the horizon glowed strangely orange.

She had a feeling no elementals would invade tonight.

He'd nearly passed out, lost his vision, but someone, or something had kept agging him on. The Soldiers around him pushing on his heavy plate covered form. The loss of blood had made him weak...he wasn't even sure he could make it...and then the world went black.