Hakkajin

It was a beautiful day.

It was a day meant for running through the sand, for basking in the sun, and playing the frivolous games of youth. The sun melted through canopies above and beyond Zyjiin, and he knew there was warmth, though it felt hollow. He knew that he walked a trail littered with dead leaves, but he felt nothing. The scents that had once been so strong in the jungle were only a vague memory now.

The sky turned to darkness, and the world wept as nature arched her back in pain under the torment she suffered.  The shudder was felt in every root, every stone, and the sea drew back, exposing cliffs and corals previously hidden beneath its waves. A rush of air followed as birds took to flight, and the jungle became alive as the danger was realized.

The sun had long since faded out of view as a pair of trolls found their way towards a lone tree deep in the Barrens. Its bell-like shape blossomed up under the shadow of a nearby hill. The savannah beyond it was still, save for the occasional call of a plainstrider and the heckling of a pack of hyenas on the prowl. Zyjiin, exhausted as he was, tried to hide it from Hakka as he helped her climb into the boughs and the hollow within that he had begun to call his home.

She had helped him find it months before, when Zion’deh still held their camp at the base of the Stonetalon mountains. She had wanted him nearby whenever she was staying with them, and he had been all too happy to oblige. He had harbored a crush on his best friend for months, and they were still in the long, drawn-out process of discovering their relationship.

The three trolls moved quickly along the cliff face, hands and feet moving from one ledge to the next. Zyjiin was frantically trying to keep up, all the while trying to keep his mind from thinking too much about what would happen if he lost this race of theirs. His stomach tied itself into a knot, and he couldn’t make sense of how he felt about it. Were the girls serious? Would the winner really kiss Zy? What was he going to do?

With a yelp, Zy caught himself about to walk off a ledge into the thin air. Had to focus, had to concentrate on the task at hand. A glance above him confirmed his fears as he saw a pair of blue feet scamper over the next rise. Moments before he had been worried that they would end up in yet another argument. They had set aside their differences all too eagerly in this new attempt to make him squirm.

A tap on his shoulder was all it had took. Fortune counted the seconds, best he could. He wasn't thinking clearly. "Bash 'is head on deh fountain!", Hakkajin had said. "I don't think this is a good idea.", Saviero had said. Too late now. Three, two, one.

Ahmandil had turned from Braedyn, their smiles dripping with insincerity. Words came out of his mouth that Fortune didn't hear. All he heard was the blood pounding in his head. His jaw was set even while he smiled pleasantly, his fingers curled into fists. The first blow was thrown, angled into Ahmandil's gut. Time slowed, there was the clatter of the sweet tray against the cobblestones. The tinkle of precious china dashed to the ground. Shouts, demands, questions and idle remarks. None of it he heard, because he only had eyes for the man in front of him, recovering from the attack and ready to launch his own.

((The following occurred over a month ago towards the start of Faraji’s "The Adventures of Sefu the Ravenous" blog series. I am far behind, but attempting to play catch up!))

I had a lot on me mind. This wasn’t completely unusual – I kept a lot in there most times: meeting schedules, running bar tabs, gambling debts owed to me, names and faces to avoid, Drunken Fishball League scores, delivery schedules for me clients, mana & thissle orders, produce Kharris wanted me to pick up, sailing conditions in Booty Bay, and so on. But this was on a completely different level. It wasn’t just me own inner voice bouncing around in there. It was mine. It was Mum’s. It was Ythgar’s. Strangest of all, it was Halodante’s.

“You’re here!” she giggled, her voice wispy and young – seductive in all the wrong ways – in me ear.

The source of her elation was the enormous, dark gothic club I was pacing in front of. It towered up into the Underbelly of Dalaran, built right into the stone – dank sewer water ran down the mossy, black stones and pooled under my boots as I stepped in puddles – the only sound echoing down the large annals of the floating city. Somewhere deep and far off, a pin prick of light cast creeping shadows that rats and frogs shifted through. Outside, it was noon – the sun high in twinkling blue sky with gauzy white clouds. Down here the club sat silent, waiting patiently for visitors to trickle in after dinner hour and fill its dance floors with writhing, sweating bodies. Overpriced drinks to be served, lines of mana dust to be snorted, pulsing music by the latest mechano-jockeys to be discovered. And then later, of course, it’s back rooms with bolts set into the floors and walls to be utilized in ways that I highly doubted the girl I was meeting here had even heard of. Had I been in a better mood, I’d have liked nothing better than to set about horrifying her by sharing just what she was to be walking into. But as it was, I was hardly of the mind to bother. 

“I’m ‘ere for Aji,” I reminded the voice, but we both knew it was half truth. I sucked nervously on the Thalassian Black bloodthissle cigarette hanging between me lips.

Xannivard’s grimore lay open next to me, in a rare moment of sunlight littering the landscape of Feralas it was an odd image to see its rays spread across the pages, the book looked as if it should be in permanent shadow. But maybe that was just my opinion…. maybe the book, bound in skin as it was, liked the sun..maybe it needed a tan?.. who was I to judge.

The evening had started off so well. From the amusement in watching Hakkajin's expression as she removed those final stitches herself, to the playful games with the exhuberant young druid named 'Hu, and the ridiculous suggestions made in a game of "Truth or Dare", it should have ended as a good night. It had not.

Zyjiin had been awoken with a start as the cold splash of seawater pulled him from the peaceful oblivion that had been his sleep. The wharfmaster of Ratchet stood next to him, holding the guilty bucket. The goblin muttered something about loafing around the docks being unwanted; That there was an inn if he wanted a bed, and if he couldn't afford the inn, he'd best get out of town. No money meant no profit, and goblins cared for little else.

I feel cheated. Utterly cheated.

Imagine if you will- we've all felt it! - seeing some delectable cake. It smells divine. It looks like paradise made into something most palatable indeed. You pay your coin, you take your share, and settle down, looking thoroughly forward to how you KNOW it will taste. And you are betrayed. Chalky icing. Dry, barely swallowable stuff. How bitterly you curse the facade that led you to fancy and anticipate the sweet victory. You damn yourself in that moment for weakness, for wanting what could not be.

Assorted headshots of my characters and other people's characters.

The stables are a well maintained area, for their purpose. I venture there twice daily, once to saddle and prepare the squirming child that is my hawkstrider, and again to return him, exhausted, to his roost. This daily ritual, performed after my routine check-in with the Sanctum, has been all that keeps me sane. Well, perhaps that is inaccurate. Jim is certainly a large help in keeping my mind in one piece, but what I experience around him is a distinct… lack. Lack of feeling, lack of care, lack of thought. A smothering void of emotion and fear, which I once craved but I now… need? Is that the right word? Need?

The badlands.

Why do I always find myself going here?

I look into the distance and spy the flat top mesas in the distance, and stone pillars that look like the earth itself were taking up art. The dirt is red clay, and the consistentsy of fine powder. Hephaestion's cloven hooves dig into it easy as he steps beside a cactus to nibble on the sweet flower. I slide myself out of the saddle, and straighten the barding on his back, wincing as pain shoots up my fingers, and I give a glance to my left hand. My ring and little fingers are bound together with leather after I smashed them under this same barding. Heph wasn't used to riding with armor, But as my deliveries took me into more dangerous situations, I figured I'd be kind to him and offer him some protection as well.

All the pretty Sin’dorei boys standing in a row.

Picking on mages and those who don’t stand a chance.

Me, I picked out Hakkajiin the troll.  I came for a challenge

I pay for it, but it was worth it.

Iloam takes on the troll to show at least there was one man here tonight.

The spire leans out at an angle over the gulf, far below the levels of the surrounding walls, but high over the floor of the valley, which at this time gives no sign of the horrible death-in-life which inhabits it, and through the hours of darkness imitates the true dance of life and death in hideous parody of natural wasteland. It looks almost as though it was broken out from the mountain walls and guiltily shoved back in, in effort to conceal the accident, but it is not really sheer at all, and there are many natural steps and crannies that make ascent possible.

They’re staying in Winterhoof, ignoring the not-wolf glaring daggers from the corner. He can’t really remember what he said to earn the outright death threat, but thinks it might have been his literal interpretation of “fuck you.”

He knows it’s not an offer — wouldn’t accept if it was because the lovesick elf is a pretty decent guy — but it seems to shut her up. From what he’s seen, that’s a difficult task.

The northlands are as cold as she’d said. He’s almost forgotten what warmth is, hadn’t had a good enough grasp before coming here to hold onto it now. He feels a little odd when his grasping mind pulls out a night sharing blankets with friends and says, “there, it’s that.” Seems like he should have something else, something connected to one who really had made an offer, but it’s been too long since he accepted any the memories might as well be fantasy.

Bearded with heavy slate storm clouds, the mountains thrust up in a solid wall behind the village nestled in its foothills, the snow line creeping lower each day.  The wind that keened down crags and frost-armored trees was bitterly cold, smelling of the deep hours of the night even at noon.  The tall grass it whipped through was a sickly gray, waterlogged from an endless cycle of rain and snow that had rotted the fields and turned wells and ponds brackish, until the damp seeped into the bone and every rock sweated and swelled.  It was as if the very earth was anticipiating the malignant disease spreading in from the North West.  When the weak sun had risen that morning, the myriad pools of standing water had been sheathed with a rime of thin ice, slowly hardening as the snows marched closer by the hour.

Seth talks too much.

Whole monologues spilling from him in a ceaseless, unstoppable joyful rush like the steady yet ever changing pattern and hiss of rain, like the flutter and leap of fire, always restless, always reaching. That mouth soliciting more trouble than it was rightly worth.

But this wasn't the cause of his slow death.

The silver tabby curled up in the crook of his arm, eyes half closed in contentment, purring deeply. He grinned down at the animal. It was a full grown cat, not a kitten. But hopefully the soft silver fur and black markings around the cat's eyes and on its ears would be enough for Hakka to forget the maiming that everyone else was so sure she was going to give him.

The two crates of booze he was sending her would hopefully help, too.

I should have anticipated this.  Enough people knew the weakling that sooner or later I would encounter one of his past associates before I was quite ready.  Still, the last person I expected to find standing in front of me, there in Thunderlord Stronghold, was Darkheart.

He could hear waves, quiet thunder and hiss of water against the shore, the steady, ceaseless rhythm of the tide wearing upon the land. The sound was his only real measure of time's passing. The day's first light was breaking into shards on the back of the sea: brilliant, blinding ripples following one another, each an all-consuming brightness that held him within its crescent curve until the next one came to replace it, and then the next one, and the next....

All urgency seemed a thing of the past.

Artisania Stillwater-Ell'Karan fell into the kitchen chair. No tea was necessary.

A black, leather bound book rests in a locked box, buried amongst silk linens and a tangle of colored ribbons in a hole of a great tree trunk, high above the fields of the Ecodome in Netherstorm. A wayward traveler's journal, perhaps? Or a diary of a young teenaged magus seeking love in all the wrong places?

Neither. A ledger of a thriving business resurrected from the dead and given a new name. There is no boardroom, no staff meetings, no strict dresscode. Can you kill? Can you be discreet? Can you supply that which is in great demand: murder; assassination; vengeance, custom ordered to client's specifications?

Then, perhaps, we may have a job for you.

~From the personal diary of Pri'kha Cruciare~

-Ecodome Farfield, Netherstorm-

I wonder where they've all gone.

Fragments of family.

Can things be as they were?

No.

But they can be better.