xhaztol

She'd left.

Just like Animos and Xhaztol, Fedora had dissapeared. Now he was in charge.

The morale of the Scourgebane was at an all time low. With the dissapearences of their leaders unrest amidst the ranks was rising. Worse of all a number of them were on the verge of outright rebellion.

He'd made things stricter since taking command. He would not tolerate the attacks on Alliance soldiers and he would not tolerate blind, frontal assaults for glory and honor.

Blasted animals, most of this 'Horde'.

Just warming up to do art more regularly. I swear I'll do finished pieces at some point in time.

*VOMIT*

First chime, second time, third rhyme, four.

The children slammed their spellbooks eagerly and stuffed their satchels full of vials and sextants and quills, the stuff of research. He had barely noticed the familiar dinging of the large wooden clock that now sat in the corner of his classroom, reflecting the releaved faces of thirty of Dalaran's youth. The glass fixtures bounced several shades of purple and gold back to the multiple sets of eyes now scrambling toward how quickest to get out the door. Xhaztol Kepling exhaled, his own tome's front cover theatrically slamming closed, a fit of dust spewing from between the pages. The last, and plumpest, of the students scrambled out into the stairwell, and the door creaked shut. Shouts of rapture spiraled down the tower until they could no longer be heard. The professor just sat.

THUNK!

Arain recoiled, the cobble connecting painfully with the back of his head. The sound was only muffled by his molars chomping the side of tongue. Immediately, tears saturated his eyes, and blood seeped out into his mouth. Vision blurred and cranium throbbing, Arain tripped clumsily over his own steps and toppled into the sewer entrance. After a four-or-so-foot drop, he sploshed into a heap, covered in pipewater.

He groaned, enveloped in pain.

"Had enough, Rainy??" came the pursuer's voice, echoing through the cavernous tunnel. The voice was quickly followed by its master, who in an acrobatic tumble, came inches from landing directly on the fallen boy, until they were both sitting crumpled and exhausted in the sparkling sewer river.

I went to bed last night happier than I’ve been in a long time. It’s easy to ignore how lonely you are when you hardly see anyone else. Nothing to compare it to, after all.

But last night so many friends showed up, even falling from the sky! Strange to see how much they’ve changed alongside all the ways they’ve stayed the same.

Not much, just a late night doodle to keep the creative juices flowin'. Trying to draw a little everyday.

EDIT: Resized :B

Jostled by a sudden swing in the lower bowels of the ship, Xhaztol Kepling awoke. The hammock tangled his limbs as it rocked, and at the toll of the bells, he fell into a crumpled heap on the damp floorboards. Pain pulsed through his temples as well as his stomach. Sea travel never did agree with him. 

Animos walked westward along the stone road in the middle of the night. He had his sword slung over his right shoulder and his helm held against his left side in the crook of his arm. The only sounds were from his metallic footsteps and the jingle of his mail. He watched ghouls run around mindlessly in the fields as he passed the farms.

Their army is perfect. No amount of torture can pry a secret from them. No amount of gold would change their loyalties. No threat against their families would even be heard. They can't even feel fear. They march unquestioningly to their victory or death, the outcome is meaningless.

Animos' mind wandered to his own allies as he passed the point on the road where he had been betrayed and murdered years before.

The air was peppered with with a pinkish, diluted essence, flits and wisps of energy circling and darting, giving the street block the appearance of some beautiful firefly infestation. Swatting at these particles only caused them to twirl more ferociously, much like the rough smoke from a cigar or the heady steam of a boiling dinner pot. Xhaztol Kepling stood planted in this courtyard, which, from his intoxicated observation, seemed to end beyond its four cardinal archways into a fine white mist. The architecture was grandiose and decorative, lined with crisp golden molding and violet-hued shingles. Yet it did not look recognizeable. Nowhere on Azeroth, visited or unvisited, harbored this kind of masonry. At closer inspection, it was a mesh of the hallowed walls of Stormwind and the gaudy elegance of Silvermoon.

The stench of decaying fish and mildew permeated Fedora’s quarters. On the floor the remains of her latest experiment lay where they’d been left. Shards of glass, dead fish, water stains, sand—she’d made no attempt to clean up.

The remote, easternmost part of the plaguelands hung low, as if the farther one travelled, the more skewed and heavy the atmosphere became, coming close to threshing, the bottoms of the stormy ceiling nearly flush with the grass. The diseased clouds scraped the tops of the shortest trees, and the light was so dim before it broke through to a terrestial level that the land was bathed in perpetual dusk. The blanket of filth hanging above filtered out all colors except yellow, orange, and brown; this once beautiful countryside was now a sepia photograph, caught forever in an endless history of death, disease, and sorrow.

"What could you possibly expect I would have done?! You can't just shove over a man who's been fighting the scourge for the entirety of his unlife and expect him to trust you!" roared Animos, snapping his arm out to gesture to the pile of ghouls that he had dispatched just moments ago.

Xhaztol, now terribly bitter about his decision to save this man, crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged, "Oh, I don't know, I guess I would have THOUGHT for a moment or two before engaging in something as barbaric as that."

Animos knelt close to Xhaztol, who had uprighted his battered frame and was dousing his dusted face with a waterpouch.

"Look, I don't have time to think out here. I only have time to act. It's been the difference between life and death more than once."

A book lays open...

Fedora;
Observationalist. Aloof. Analyst. Well dressed. Over-thinks. Over-analyzes. Speaks too much. Speaks too little. In control. Not in control. Stalker. Snake. Viper. What type of predator do I think I am?

The rest of the page repeats one word over and over...

Frustration.

At the bottom of the page, hastily written:

...I’m not crazy.

---

Fedora casually stepped around a cat as is lay on the ground, intently watching one of Silvermoon’s magicked brooms as it tidied the streets. Pushing back the delicate silk curtains guarding the entrance, she stepped into the inn. Without a nod to the tenant on duty, she headed to her room. From within a tattered leather satchel she retrieved a faintly glowing crystal—perhaps not the most secure of keys, though functional. Holding it close to the door of her room, she heard the locks click. She pushed the door open with ease, dropping the crystal back into the worn pack at her side. The door shut and locked instantly behind her. She allowed herself a sigh and a stretch.

The night had been a long one. Earlier in the week a poster had caught her attention, barely adhered to a city wall. Pinning down one of its corners with her hand, she had scanned the paper:

The already rotten and tangled bouquets made this newly placed batch of flowers appear to glow, even in the dusk of a heavily doused Tirisfal. Already their sheen and vibrance was beginning to molt, and he knew within the hour that they would be as decayed as his past offerings. Nothing lasted in this wretched glade, nothing.

Xhaztol opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't find the words. It had now been three weeks to the day that his nephew's grave had been defiled, its contents completely removed. Beyond the eastern portion of this hole there was significant earthen scarring, as whoever had stolen Tobias' body certainly wasn't being discrete. Yet, even after countless hours of pressing his nose to the dirt, even Ghurab, an expert tracker, could not make out the culprit. Brill's townspeople would later blame the gnolls, but the absense of their usual paw prints closed those accusations.