Welcome to my World of Warcraft fanfiction, my friends!
This is rated T for now, but depending on what happens I may bump the rating up. We'll see.
To any readers of Breaking Faith and Reawakening who may have stumbled across this story, don't worry, I'm updating those two next. ;) I just wanted to get this one up and running as well, as I have some crazy thoughts and plans for this story in my brain and I didn't want to risk losing them.
Hope you enjoy, and I will update as frequently as possible.
"Admit it," the words somehow made their way through the howling, frigid northern wind, and Sebastian scowled in response, pulling his fur-laden coat closer to his body and ignoring the sounds from behind him as best as he could. "We're lost," the voice continued, "We wouldn't be lost if you hadn't insisted upon leaving in the dead of night. If you had just listened to me-"
"Enough, Tiberius!" Sebastian growled as he pulled his mask down over his chin and whipped around, glaring at the owner of the voice behind him and squinting through the swirling snow that bit at his exposed skin. "Complaining about the past will not make the present any more bearable."
"And trudging through a blizzard is any better?" The young man before him argued back, nearly having to shout to be heard, though the two of them were mere feet apart.
"What would you suggest I do?" Sebastian asked sarcastically, holding his arms out to his sides and ignoring the bitter wind as it chafed his chapped, scarred lips and cheeks.
"I did suggest something! I suggested that we stay at the tavern until dawn, but no!" The last word was laced with ridicule.
"That place offered nothing but trouble," Sebastian argued, "I insisted we leave because it was unsafe."
"Unsafe!" Tiberius scoffed, shaking his head. "It was just three guys, Sebastian! You could eat men like them for breakfast, and yet you ran! You always run!"
"Is that what this is about?" Sebastian hissed, glaring at Tiberius with tense green eyes. "You think less of me because rather than initiate conflict, I avoid it? Because unlike you, I actually give a damn about the outcome of my actions?" He jammed a finger toward his brother. "You have no place to judge, no grounds upon which to base your foolishness. I saved your life, little brother."
"Saved it, only to have it waste away in this barren arctic wasteland!" Tiberius retorted, swinging his arms out wide. "You have turned our retreat into a suicide, turned this mountainside into a graveyard!"
"Bah!" Sebastian cursed under his breath, turning away haughtily and resuming his trudge through the dark, freezing night. Honestly, he'd give anything to be out of this wind, sleeping the night away with food in his belly and fire in the hearth. But that was out of the question.
Back at that tavern, both men had sought nothing more than a warm fire and a roof over their heads. They'd been running for more than three months now, outlaws of their own home city all due to a mere misunderstanding.
Though, to call it a misunderstanding was a bit of an understatement.
They were fugitives, wanted for murder - and not the clean kind, but the bloody, ugly homicide kind, where the only identifiable remains of a person is their grocery receipt. The thing is, however, it was a setup. Tiberius had somehow gotten involved with a disreputable guild, and when he was demanded payment he couldn't secure, his creditors took drastic action. They framed him, murdering so many innocents just to prove a point. When the Stormwind City Guard patrol stumbled upon the gory, abhorrent sight of nine mutilated corpses surrounding one man covered in blood, questions were a thing of the past. Swords were drawn, the guards advanced, and Tiberius was forced to take action. By the time he had fled the scene, it wasn't just nine corpses now, it was thirteen; all four guards had met their death at the Priest's spells, joining the lifeless bodies at the young man's feet.
With nowhere else to hide, Tiberius had sought out the aid of his brother, who ended up not only providing assistance, but he'd sacrificed his freedom and his good name to save Tiberius, offering protection and support that the young man could get from nowhere else. So, since then, Sebastian and Tiberius had been on the run, constantly tracked and never fully managing to evade their pursuers' radars.
Earlier that night, though, they'd gotten close to a full evasion. Sebastian had managed to send nearly all of their followers on some form of wild goose chase, sending out false leads and bribing locals to provide forged information for when questions arose during interrogations. However, the sole issue he absolutely could not fix was the bounty hunter: The Bloodhound. That was the name the hunter was known by, and apparently he lived up to the title. Sebastian hadn't laid eyes upon the man himself, but he'd heard scarce rumors. No one Sebastian had talked to had seen him before, only heard stories of his savagery when working a job. The bounty hunter had virtually-endless resources, doing his work by sending in hired thugs and lowlifes to capture his bounties rather than waltzing in there himself.
Three hired thugs. That's who Sebastian had spotted in the tavern that night. That's why he was now trudging through a blizzard, trying to make his way to the next town. If he hadn't left immediately, he quite possibly could've come face-to-face with The Bloodhound in the flesh, and that wasn't exactly on his agenda for the night. It was rumored that none who encounter that bounty hunter ever escape.
Sebastian knew that without himself present, Tiberius would've been captured, sentenced, and executed before he had a chance to plead his case. If Tiberius even knew half of what Sebastian had to do to keep them both alive, perhaps he wouldn't be so critical. But that was a secret Sebastian was willing to hold; Tiberius, though merely two years behind his 26-year-old brother, was very innocent - naive, even. Tiberius's devotion to his priestly training had defined him for so long, and Sebastian constantly caught himself wondering how on earth his virtuous brother managed to get tangled up in such a mess. The less stress on the man, the better. Any innocence in his little brother's eyes was viewed as a victory to Sebastian, who felt more responsible for his brother than anything else. Ignorance is bliss, he decided, and frostbite is preferable to a beheading.
So here they were, freezing their asses off in the middle of Northrend, and Sebastian was getting desperate, though he would never show it. They'd been running for months. The future was looking bleak, not to mention he needed to find shelter soon, or both he and his brother could suffer dire consequences.
"At least let us seek out shelter and fire," Tiberius's voice carried through the icy wind again, sounding pleading this time more than anything else. "It is much too cold for us to be so exposed. We need to get out of this wind."
Sebastian sighed, having lost the ire in his voice and now more exhausted than anything else. "Yes, I know, brother," he said, squinting through the flurries, hoping for some sort of outcrop or cave or anything they could use as a shield against the wind on this mountain. "I'm trying."
Tiberius didn't reply, just trudged along behind, using his staff as a support as he scaled the mountainside. The two of them stumbled through the deepening snow, becoming increasingly tired and discouraged. Each step either brought them closer to safety or closer to their icy deaths, and in truth, luck hadn't proven in their favor recently.
Minutes turned to what felt like hours, trudging through the icy, windy snow that bit like shrapnel against the exposed skin of their faces. Sebastian let out an utterly exhausted sigh, taking one more step before halting his trek and collapsing onto his knees in the deep snow. He heard Tiberius behind him make a sound of concern, and then, to his confusion, a cheer.
Sebastian glanced up with squinted eyes, peering through the nearly-pitch-black night in the direction of his brother's continued applause. Tiberius muttered a prayer and his staff began to glow in a sparkling spell that just barely managed to illuminate the area, reflecting its light off of the Priest's golden hair and furs and the surrounding snow.
"Brilliant!" Tiberius practically laughed, intensifying the cold light of his staff to finally give Sebastian a glimpse of why he was so happy. A simple, dark gap in the snow stood out: the mouth of a cave.
Sebastian breathed a sigh of relief. As long as this cave was uninhabited, they could survive another night. Without the bone-chilling wind to snuff it out and by using the native icy moss of the caves, a fire could be sustained within the walls of the shelter, which would provide heat and safety both. With that positive thought, he stood, his extremities completely numb from the cold and his whole body shivering despite the thickly-sewn furs that decorated his shoulders. Both brothers stumbled into the dark opening, already anticipating resting their sore limbs by a crackling fire.
The chill wind sang an almost mournful song through the mountain as an injured woman adjusted her deadly glaive in its sheath against her back, pulling on the leather straps before tightening the cinch of her warm hood and continuing her limp through the snow. A mental note surrounding the drawbacks of wearing plate armor in the middle of a snowstorm surfaced in her head as she gritted her teeth, holding her arm against her side with a constant pressure to stave the bleeding that was - embarrassingly - a result of a fall.
She hadn't gotten attacked by anything, hadn't fought anything... No, she'd slipped on a patch of mountain ice and fell nearly fifteen feet, landing on a bed of jagged rocks with just enough impact for one of the sharper points to puncture straight through a thin part of her armor and into the soft skin just under her ribs. It wasn't deep, but it was deep enough, and the pain accompanying each step was nearly enough in itself to cause the woman to just drop everything and return home. Not only that, but she'd also managed to scrape up some cuts on her legs as well, and each time she took a step, the tears would reopen. It was one of the most aggravating, annoying experiences she'd endured in a long time.
Then again, she convinced herself, it was currently nighttime during a blizzard, and to turn back would be illogical. Not only that, but she was so close to achieving a goal she'd been chasing for months. She was so close she could practically taste its sweet, glorious reward. Giving up was out of the question, not when she'd gotten this far.
The only problem? She was losing blood. Usually, blood loss for her was a somewhat ordinary happenstance. But this.. this was a whole new level of the term. Despite the pressure she was keeping on the wound, through the incredibly-dim light of the night storm, she could make out the reflecting glisten of the seeping crimson life-substance that trickled down her armor, freezing against the metal only to be thawed by a new layer of the hot liquid as it oozed from the injury. Every time she took a step, it only sped up the bleeding process, irritating the wound and agitating the blood clotting process. Something had to be done, and it had to be done soon, or the only thing she'd manage to get out of this traipse through the arctic wilderness would be her own icy grave.
After a seemingly-endless period of time, her breathing became more labored as she fought against the dizziness of her blood loss. Her thoughts and movements were sluggish, light grey eyes drooping and footsteps proving more and more forced as she plodded through the deep snow, exhausting herself. The only thing keeping her going was a mixture of her own conviction and a splash of greed.
The Bloodhound had been tracking her targets for months now, a pair of lowly penniless murderers, traitors to the crown. Two men with thirteen deaths on their hands. Thirteen. And if she could bring them in, it'd be the highest-paid bounty she'd have retrieved to date. The money she could get for this job could very well set her up for years. She could pay off her debts, buy a place of her own, and stop living out of a suitcase.
Those thoughts spurred her on for a while longer, awakening her senses just enough for her to be able to stay upright. She had used her last remaining potion last week and now had nothing, not even bandages to patch herself up. Her logical thoughts had left her by now, and she had not even begun to think about what would happen when she did find her bounty. She was injured and weak, and there was no way she could possibly drag two murderers all the way back through Northrend to the ships and back to the city. She would need to use tact and utilize her anonymity.
There was a reason everyone thought 'The Bloodhound' was a man. No one would ever expect a woman of her small stature and fair appearance to secretly be plotting their capture. And now that she was injured, well, it was both a blessing and a curse. Nothing like a damsel in distress. She could only hope these two criminals had morals buried somewhere deep inside those psychotic minds of theirs. If she could earn their trust, they would be putty in her hands. All she'd have to do was call in some help, some hired hands, when they least expected it and bam, job done.
She stumbled through the darkness, stomping through the snow despite the pain in her legs and side. As long as she could find the two of them, she hadn't a single doubt that her plan would work. She knew the one was a priest with healing magic, the one who actually committed the murders, which meant if all went correctly, she'd be healed up by morning.
Unsure of how long she had been stomping through the mountains, a whiff of smoke caught her frozen nose and brought her to attention. Not only was it smoke, but it smelled of cooking meat. That meant people, and out here in the middle of nowhere, the only people she could expect to encounter were the two men themselves. The smell came from upwind, and she followed it, fighting against the blasts of snowy, howling wind toward her destination. She'd become very cold, partially from the cold itself and partially from her loss of blood, and she knew she didn't have much time before her energy failed her.
With a few final heavy steps she came upon a glorious sight. A cave in the snowy rock face jutted out just enough for her to see an ever-so-faint flicker of firelight coming from within. The smoke was heavy in the swirling, freezing air, and she heard a hint of a man's voice from inside. The Bloodhound's mouth curled in a smirk of triumph as she exaggerated a limp, then donned an innocent, terrified expression, trembling her lower lip as she stumbled toward the cave.
This left off at a weird point, but I'll have another chapter up soon, I promise. :P