It was always in Vivir's nature to constantly review and relive the events of the recent and distant past, and as he lay recovering in Kargath he had little else to do.
The dwarf spat some words at me. I don't know what he said, nor do I care all that much. All I know is that we were alone in that room, he carried the key to a certain vault, and wasn't decent enough to ignore me while I relieved him of it. Then again, in finding me, he passed my first test. He'd caught me doing what I do, I hadn't gone unnoticed. This is when his axe came out, along with my own twin blades. Now that I think about it, he didn't really call for help. Dunno if it was stupidity or arrogance, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.
A cough and an immediate wince. Though the outcome of the fight was not in dispute, the little details of it were nowhere near as clean as he liked.
I fight an awful lot like I dance: plenty of movement, showy, hitting the highlights and leading my audience to do just what I want, to feel just what I want. It was unfortunate for this dwarf that the feeling I wanted in him was that of my sword and dagger biting flesh. It had all proceeded like a dance in which both sides knew all the steps. Thrust, parry, dodge, and slash, nether party recieving more than superficial wounds to begin with.
Vivir grinned his usual mischievous grin at this point. Just like his dancing, there was always more than one goal to every step. In this case, there were three.
Blood had started to flow on both ends of the fight, but the dwarf was probably wondering at this point why his axe seemed so heavy in his hand, why the nicks and scratches he'd recieved burned like they did. Then, as the dance begins to conclude, his eyes widen as he realizes just what I did to him. Not one, but two separate poisons now coursed through his veins, slowing him down and ebbing away at his ability to fight, in addition to the bloody little scratches and cuts.
His eyes grew dim. At this point, the great performance had gone astray, the preparations not quite enough to seal the deal.
Just as he noticed the first and second acts to my attack, he realizes that the third was yet to come, that he'd failed my second test. He would not survive this match, I had beaten him face to face. As I swept into the final move, the one which I had been setting up for the entire battle, he lined one up of his own and let fly. Unable any longer to use finesse, he opted instead for the dervish approach. Even as my sword, given to me by a grateful client in Hammerfall, nearly clove him in two, his axe swept into an insane arc, planting itself firmly in the meat below the left side of my ribcage, just above the kidney. With this final move, he finally yelled a mix of pain, rage and desperation. It would have taken a deaf man to miss his cry, and a dumb one not to notice the voices suddenly coming from just outside of the one door.
Vivir's right hand moved to cover the wound as he remembered the pain of recieving it. He'd had just enough time to retrieve the key and hide in a barrel before reinforcements had arrived. The barrel turned out to not be quite empty, and though the whiskey burned like hellfire in his wound, its presence helped keep it clean while he'd performed what first aid he could.
Compared to all of that, the escape was almost pathetically easy. The vault supposedly containing a Darkspear ritual mask taken from one of our priests turned out to be holding a Gurubashi one, similar in appearance to an outsider but worlds different for someone in the know. I took it, though, and the rest of the contents with it. A few silver, a couple of fairly nice gemstones, and a rolled-up parchment that later turned out to be significant for a local Blacksmith in Kargath. The dwarves were so busy looking around their stronghold for the murderer that I could almost have strolled out. Thus, they failed the third and final test, to keep me from getting away. Dwarves one, Vivir two, score one more match on the Darkspear side.
As Vivir drifted off into what should be the last night needed to recover, his thoughts turned to one of the gems now residing in his packs, and the probable look of surprise and joy to be found on a certain shy girl when she found it in her mailbox. He smiled again, this time much warmer and much less mischevious, and let the pressing weight of the night take him for a time. After all, he'd do no less living and thinking in his dreams, for all that nobody else could participate there.