And here... we... go.
- The Joker
"Are you gonna eat that?"
Looking to her left, Zoen Mith raised an eyebrow at the raggedy dressed child who stood next to where she sat. His eyes shifted between her and the heel of bread she held; his hand was outstretched, as though he knew the answer to his own question.
Sighing, Zoen tore the bread roughly in half and held out the larger piece for the boy. He happily took it before moving to sit next to her, his legs dangling over the edge of the tier as they both munched on their food and started out at the new Stormwind docks. At one point Zoen tore her bread again, giving a piece of it to the massive black wolf that lay at her side. His yellow eyes opened and he reached forward, snapping it up quickly before settling down again. The boy made a soft ahmm sound, drawing Zoen's attention. "Dogs eat meat," he stated smugly.
"Dogs eat whatever you put in front of them, edible or not." Leaning forward, Zoen watched as another merchant ship docked. Pushing a few errant strands of blonde hair behind her ear, she said, "I'm guessing you're here for a better reason than my supper."
The boy nodded. "Sparks said you're runnin' away." He smacked his jaws, and from the corner of her eye Zoen thought she saw a glob of chewed bread before he swallowed. She grimaced.
"Sparks is a warlock, and therefore crazy. Can't always believe what she says." There was silence, foiled only by the distant shouting of dock workers and gulls' cries. At the very edge of the horizon, Zoen thought she could see a ship, though she couldn't tell if it was coming or going. Considering the time, probably coming.
"Doesn't mean she's a liar," retorted the boy.
She turned to him, glaring half-heartedly. She realized, suddenly, that she had no idea what is name was or even who he was, besides the fact that his mother had once yelled at her for putting an arrow through her window. Feeling the need to defend herself against her nearly-anonymous accuser, Zoen elaborated, "I'm just going with some Argent Dawn paladins to check out this old Lordaeron ruin. I'll be back in a few weeks."
"That sounds like running away."
The bread still in Zoen's mouth turned to glue, clogging her throat; struggling to swallow, her voice cracked as she said, "You're a little kid - what do you know?"
The boy stood then, leaving Zoen to inhale the salty sea air and watch as the sun slowly sank before she too left, the black wolf padding alongside her.
It didn't take long before she found herself weaving through the maze of back alleys and rundown streets of Old Town, following a path she'd memorized better than the back of her hand. A turn here, a twist there, a careful avoidance of the abandoned building known to house Cultists of the Damned, and she was standing before a dilapidated apartment complex. Kicking her way through the rusty door, she climbed the stairs, reaching a scratched-up door marked with the number twenty-one before shoving a key in it, twisting the lock and knob before holding the door open for the wolf to enter first, murmuring, "After you, your majesty." She herself managed three steps in before having to duck, a knife embedded in the wall behind her. Cheerfully, she greeted, "Hey, Sparks. Get a new haircut?"
"What the hell d'you think you're doing, signing up for some hairbrained trip through Scourge territory?" seethed a woman in purple robes. She was brunette and somewhere in her late forties, though age had robbed her of none of her ferocity. It helped than she was more than capable at summoning and enslaving a Terrorguard at a moment's whim, too.
Having developed a healthy fear of said Terrorguard, Zoen smiled brightly, trying her best to console the unhappy warlock. "I'll be with paladins. If they start dying, I'll just run." Hopefully, her flippancy would calm the warlock, convince her that this was not as dire as she thought.
It didn't.
Flames engulfed one of Sparks' hands and Zoen squeaked in fear, jumping behind a rickety chair and clutching at her wolf's fur tightly. "Don't kill me!"
"Do you honestly think I'm going to let you do this?" Sparks demanded.
"No! It's kind of why I didn't run it by you beforehand! By the way, how did you find out?" Zoen looked up from her defensive barrier, diving back down a moment later.
Sparks hissed. "An Argent Dawn paladin came to the door, leaving a letter for a Miss Zoen Mith, telling me how proud I should be of my daughter, how brave she was, how she volunteered to help scour a Lordaeron ruin free of the Undead Scourge!"
"Well there's your problem. I'm not your daughter."
"To hell, you're not my daughter!" screamed Sparks, the fire in her hands flaring red-hot. The wolf whined and Zoen scrambled away, her back hitting a wall as Sparks stalked closer. "I raised you, fed and clothed and housed you for seventeen years, and you have the gall to say you're not my daughter?! You're a damn sight more mine than Jaina's or Arth-" She stopped short, the fire puttering out into swallowed, releasing a breath she hasn't known she'd been holding.
"That's it, isn't it?" asked Sparks softly. "You just think the more Scourge toy kill, the less like him you'll be, right?"
Zoen considered lying, wondering if it'd end the conversation quicker than the truth. Her dislike of lying outright to Sparks surfaced, however, and she found herself admitting, "Honestly, I just want to be a hero. Really, any sort of fame'd work for me."
Sparks' face darkened. "You're lying. It has to be more than that."
A laugh bubbled its way out of Zoen,a little hysteric and a lot amused. "Light's honest truth. Everyone wants to be famous, right? I just have a little more incentive. This way, if anyone ever figures, 'Wait, Zoen Mith's actually Zoen Menethil' his friend can say, 'Who cares, she's a demon-slaying, Scourge-killing hero who rescues cats from trees.' Thus, my chances at getting killed by stupid apple-doesn't-fall-far-from-the-tree people drastically lower."
The warlock threw up her (thankfully, flameless) hands, and Zoen carefully grasped her makeshift shield before hauling herself up. "I just want an adventure," she said simply. "Just a little fun. They're paladins, champions of the Light, all that warm, fuzzy stuff. They'll keep me safe. One of them said the ruins were mostly abandoned anyways, he'd been there himself before."
"Then why do they need you?" There was a sliver of desperation in Sparks' voice, one that made Zoen pause. When next the hunter spoke, her words were much softer and slower, meant to soothe more than placate.
"They needed an archer. I'll be at the very back, the closest to the exit. If anything goes wrong, I can just bolt. I promise." Sparks sunk down into a nearby chair, picking at the torn armrest cushions idly. Tentatively, Zoen padded her way across to stand not too far away from the warlock, twisting her hands nervously before her. Suddenly, she begged, "Please, Sparky. Please. I - after that year, and that Light-forsaken cell, I just -" She stopped, sighed, ran a hand through her hair. "A break," she tried again. "Time away. You know?"
Sparks bit her lip, resting her head in her hands. "I can't say yes," the warlock sighed. "Don't ask me to say yes."
Zoen didn't. She gestured for the wolf to follow her, murmuring, "C'mon, Tiris." They walked quietly away into a tiny room furnished by a creaky bed and a wooden box of random paraphernalia. Carefully, Zoen checked on her bow from where she'd stashed it for the day before nodding, satisfied that it was still in pristine shape. Tiris leaped onto the bed, settling on the side nearest the windowless pane Zoen had pushed her bed against, vigilant even as he fell asleep. She smiled at him before readying herself for bed. The sun had fallen not too long ago, and Old Town was dangerous at night; unless one wanted to get pulled into a dark alley and shanked for their shoes, there was nothing to do.
Flopping down besides the wolf, Zoen idly ran her fingers through his coarse fur, watching out the window. She watched as two robed humans stole quickly further down the street towards the abandoned building, a limp night elf being between them, her feet dragging even as they tried to provide even the slightest facsimile of her being conscious. Zoen shook her head, turned from the window, and closed her eyes. Sleep came easily enough afterwards.
She still had nightmares about it.
They're usually just flashes of fire, red splotches in the darkness and murmured voices of inquisitors, too low for her to understand. Metal glints threateningly off to the side, patiently waiting for a chance to tear at her. Sometimes, she can hear screams and pleads close by, an auditory hell that just keeps going in a loop and she wants to claw at her ears because Light, it hurts hearing those screams. Sometimes, the metal is raised, the glinting blade brought down on her, and sometimes she can make out the form of one of the inquisitors in the firelight. Sometimes, she almost sees a face, stained red and snarling like an animal.
Sometimes, she remembers it's just a dream.
But that is not tonight. Tonight is haunted by ghosts tearing at her flesh and moaning in agony in her ears. Zombies clamp their jaws on her limbs, shaking their heads like hounds and ripping her to pieces. Lordaeron burns around her while rose petals fall from the sky. Shadowmen stalk her in the dark, hissing and terrorizing her and laughing at her fear. Ruins collapse on top of her, burying her alive and swallowing her screams, hiding her from help. Light explodes and paladins scream, and her bow snaps as Tiris howls in his death throes -
She woke up quickly, yelping when she accidentally bit her tongue. Zoen propped herself up over Tiris and spat bloody saliva out of the windowless pane, doing it again when her mouth was filled again with the metallic tang of blood. She grimaced and scratched behind her wolf's ears.
"This'll be fun," she told herself. "Explore some ruins, maybe kill a skeleton or two, make some pals in the Argent Dawn... This is good. This will be very good."
She stayed like that for the rest of the night, watching the stars and the moons and convincing herself she'd done the right thing.
Come sunrise, she almost believed herself.
A/N: A few things need to be made absolutely clear.
1. This is not a Mary-Sue story. Yes, I know that no Suethor thinks they're a Suethor, but I swear to God this won't be. There'll be no kill-steals from Tirion, no Arthas redemption due to his "totalie perfct dahtr", no weird Npc/Oc action going on, no super-uber epicness of annoying proportions going on, and so on. Zoen is going to make major mistakes in this story, and each and every one of them is going to come back and bite her in the ass.
2. Reviews are extremely important to this story's health and length. I will for the first time attempt to reply to each and every one of them. Constructive criticism will eternally be well-received.
3. While the ending is definite, the journey there is not. All suggestions, be they a line a particular character says or a whole arc, will be seriously considered.
4. I sincerely hope you enjoy this.
- Frostfyre