First Rough draft as of 3/24/10, hopefully polished into an acceptable, coherent form

copyright 2010 by Rillan macDhai for original characters, otherwise, Blizzard Entertainment/WoW owns the world, setting, etc and the everything else. This is fanfiction, though I'd love to write for Blizzard.

This may not be canon for blood elves, but it's my take on it – Rillan

Oh, and magick with a 'k' is the real, world-altering stuff, magic with only the 'c' is slight-of-hand, card tricks and such

This first part isn't M, but it'll get worse (or better) from here. Will contain original character guy/guy pairing, so if that creeps you out, please don't look. Swearing, violence, blood, character death (still deciding on that one), and all sorts of nasty, messy things. Not for little eyes. Also, I have a mild dyslexia, you may find letters transposed that my spell checker didn't catch.

Rogue Magick by Rillan macDhai

Prologue

The magisters look down on us, but they look down on everyone. They scorn us for not having magick, but they are wrong. While our magick is seldom as flashy as theirs, it is part of us in ways the magick they shape in words and items can never be part of them. The shadows are our refuge and our home. They are our magick. We are the rogues of the Sin'dorei.

But no amount of magick will keep you from doing stupid things, especially when you drink. I'd been drinking and playing cards in Booty Bay when the conversation at our table turned to fishing. Somehow that had let to a challenge to catch some weird fish only found in the canals of Stormwind. . .

*** *** ***

Escape

"There," said Firesworn, our mage. "It's done."

It was a portal stone or so we hoped. In the depths of the prison called the Stockades, we had scavenged and traded and killed to find enough pieces to cobble one together. We were a hodgepodge of sin'dorei, orcs, and renegade humans, united mainly by our desire to escape. "No better time than now," he added. "I'll try for Stonard, it's the closest."

I could feel the magick he drew, trying to open the space between, where the mages say everything touches everything else, and you can slide from one place to another in a breath. A shimmer formed and stabilized. It looked like white stone beyond the shimmer-edged window, not the mossy green of Stonard, but it had to be somewhere else. I just threw myself into it, while alarms shrieked through the Stockades like a battle-mad banshee. I landed hard on my knees, half-blinded by the relative glare of a rainy day's light on the bridge stones of Stormwind's inland gate. I wrapped what shadow I could grab around myself as I heard startled exclamations around me. Then I ran.

But there were too many thief catchers manning the bridge and too few shadows. Someone yelled an alarm and portcullises started down. I threw blinding dust behind me, pulled magick to shadowstep, and staggered into a killingyard as the great iron and wood grates slammed behind and before me. I spun, sapping a slow-reacting guard, but already there were others starting for me. I threw the last of my dust, almost as hardfound as the pieces of the portal stone in the damp of the Stockades. A wolf-dog lunged at me, but I left one of my shivs through an eye and kept moving. Someone opened a door to my right and I forced a shadowstep again, feeling things tear in my body and in my head where my magick lives. I kicked the human's legs out from under him and kept running, dodging through the base of the gatehouse and out.

I was the clear, but barely outside the walls in Goldshire and I knew I didn't blind all of them with the dust I threw. I dodged around the side of the gatehouse, hoping to get out of their sight, if only for a moment.

To my surprise, there was a shantytown before me, like the one the humans in Silverpine built at the Greymane, but there was too much open ground between the gatehouse and what shelter it offered. I had spent too much time in prison with too little food and too much cold and damp. My reserves were gone and I couldn't think through the pain in my head to shadowstep again. I wanted to scream in frustration, but my training kicked in and instead I pulled myself into an alcove where they'd stored a pile of junk and broken war engines. I clambered into a niche against the wall where I could see and maybe remain unseen.

It was a child's hiding spot and I knew they would find me and drag me back.

But, even certain my hiding place would fail, I pulled off my striped prison jacket, jamming it way down behind me where it couldn't be seen. There was no time to take off the red Defias shirt I'd won during one of our interminable card games. Of Firesworn and the others, I'd seen and heard nothing and could only pray they'd not been trapped on the bridge. I curled up on myself, shaking uncontrollably now, partly from exhaustion, party, I admit, from fear.

Be still, I told myself, be not seen.

But my head was pounding in time with my heart and my breathing was as ragged as if I'd run miles. I had no strength to call the shadows around me even to deflect an enemy's sight. The terrible tearing throb behind my eyes suggested perhaps I never would again.

I realized I heard people running, yelling, but no one came to roust me yet. Perhaps I killed the dog, for it hadn't come to sniff me out either.

I gained a little control of my breathing before a human male finally came around the trash pile and looked right at me. My breath caught hard as I started in spite of myself, but I forced myself to stay in place. Nothing here, you don't see me. There was nothing to gain by trying to kill him, as no doubt there were more around the edge of the gatehouse, just waiting for me to bolt. Their arrows or steel would almost be welcome, but the desire to live kept me motionless. Just maybe, he wouldn't actually see me if I didn't move.

We stared at each other, this human and I. He was not wearing the armor and tabard of the guards and his beard was grey, but he still looked seasoned and capable. My shadow-in-the-shadows ploy didn't fool him at all, but I saw the moment when uncertainty entered his eyes.

Now he wasn't sure what I was, if I was the person he was hunting. I could tell he expected a burst of cornered violence, not the expressionless commoner's face I learned to use in Silvermoon. Perhaps he thought I was one of the shanty dwellers, squatting in a dry spot from the rain.

"Did you see someone run passed?" he asked, and for once I was grateful for those months in that cold, damp hole, where all there was to do was learn new gambling tricks and the harsh, constanant heavy language of the humans.

"Just you," I said, keeping my voice low, the language not quite as throat hurting as the bits of orcish I know.

"A prisoner escaped," he said. Then, over his shoulder to the others I knew were there, just out of sight, "Check the other side, he may have headed into the farm land."

At least, that's what I think he said, my grasp of the humans' language being mainly for the trading of insults. I waited, knowing the green glow of my eyes had to give me away, even as faint as it had to have been right then, even if nothing else about me confirmed what I really am.

It was so bright there my eyes were watering. After all the time in prison, always being cold, I'd wanted light and warmth so much. To finally be free of those walls, only to find the outside so painful seemed one last slap. I realized my mind was wandering dangerously.

He said something questioning from which I picked out only "Defias."

"Just a red shirt," I replied carefully. It was the truth and I hoped that's what he was asking about. "It's warm."

"A prisoner escaped," he said again. "A Horde spy, a blood elf. He was to be hung tomorrow."

I couldn't help myself; I know I flinched visibly. Hung, like the Scarlet Crusaders do with the Forsaken they capture, with some of the other things they do to Forsaken done to me as well, most likely.

I don't know how to explain it to you. You have to be a rogue to really understand, but death by hanging is … well, it's just the ultimate sign of failure. I felt myself start to gather for one final play, my last shiv a comforting weight in my hand, as I angrily demanded from my interrogator, "Did he kill anyone?"

It was perhaps a silly thing to ask. Just being a sin'dorei in Stormwind was enough to damn me, but I found myself remembering the human children who had discovered me in their favorite fishing spot, staring wide-mouthed with their bait cans and fishing poles dropped in surprise. A step through the shadows, some quick knife work, and no one would have known I'd been there until the bodies were found; if they were found, between the rats and the canal monsters.

But I don't kill children. Not while the Alliance hunted us after Kael'thas abandoned us, not through the chaos of rebuilding, not now. The human, though there was grey in his hair, is probably younger than I am. Does that make him count as a child? I wondered, distracted again.

I remembered the mad run through the city once the kids started screaming. I hadn't killed anyone then, either. I might have thrown off the guards, but this city had its own rogues in its shadows. There had been me, running, then me in chains, my head hurting almost as badly as it did now, with nothing to explain how it had happened except the pain. I'd been dragged through the streets to one of their courts, then to the damp cold hell of the prison. All because of a drunken bet and an altogether-too-helpful death knight who'd gotten me to Stormwind Harbor. That, and an itching curiosity to see a city not held up with magicks.

"No," said the human, breaking my abstraction. "Not that I know of. Not even just now, when he could have." His expression turned thoughtful.

"Well, boy, want to earn a few coins? Come help me search for our runaway." He turned and started toward the shantytown.

I blinked in the surprise of it. Was it a trap? Did I really care? I wasn't sure.

The human paused, head cocked as he looked back at me. "Well, lad?"

I slid down from my niche, nearly falling as my legs buckled under me. I forced the darkness at the edges of my vision back; terrified I'd wake up in the cold of the Stockades if I didn't stay aware. Or at the gallows.

The human was beside me somehow, his arms surprisingly strong as he steadied me. His fingers were gentle as he peeled the shiv from my hand. "Don't thrash, lad, you're safe enough."

He lifted me as though I were the lad he called me. "Nothing but skin and bones," he observed. "Keep your eyes closed, just because I've decided you're no threat to Stormwind doesn't mean everyone will agree."

It was then, as helpless as I've ever been, I realized he'd been speaking to me in my own language for some time. Somehow, that relaxed me and I sank against his shoulder, the darkness now a welcome release from the fire throbbing in my head.

End Part One