Good news, everyone! I've completed another chapter! Apologies for the long wait, the holidays kept me pretty busy. Hope you all enjoyed them as much as I did. As to the story here, I still own nothing. Any comments, criticisms, and ideas are welcome, please pass them along. And now... on with the show!
Leora punched hard across her body, jerking herself into a sidelong roll a scant second before the descending sword's razor edge dug deep into the ground. A painful yank on her scalp drew an involuntary yelp as a trailing golden lock fell victim to the strike, but it quickly gave way and she rolled on.
She came around with twin fistfuls of dirt and grass to find the human still tugging at the weapon he had, in his desperation, implanted too firmly in the earth. With both hands on its hilt and wide eyes on her, he pulled again. The blade broke free, but only after a heartbeat of resistance.
That heartbeat was all the rogue needed. One hand, then the other launched its projectile into the man's face. As he reeled, momentarily blinded, her dagger gouged at his sword arm, tore at tendons in his wrist, and the sword slipped from suddenly unresponsive fingers.
Before Leora could make another move, the infiltrator was buried beneath a flying tauren. She wiped her dagger in the grass and gulped in deep breaths as she did, and wondered if the warlord would swap one useful prisoner for one not so useful. Not terribly hopeful, she backed away as the tauren pushed himself up off the barely conscious human until she flanked the tower's entrance.
In her gut she knew the brutal orc would see this one as nothing more than another head to decorate his walls. Diplomacy wouldn't get her the information she needed, not with Sokramm in the picture. And though she wouldn't admit it, she preferred it that way.
The warlord had rattled her, unnerved her in a way that she hadn't experienced through a hundred life-threatening experiences. Such a response, coupled with the orc's insults, were an unforgivable blow to her pride. And if there was one thing prized above all… No, she would take what she wanted in spite of Sokramm, just to prove that he couldn't stop her.
When the tower's door swung inward and a pair of greenskins rushed out to secure their new prisoner, Leora slipped inside in their wake. Immediately she ducked behind a stack of crates three long and two high, and listened intently for any others coming in or going out. Footsteps overhead pulled her gaze upwards, and she flattened herself against the crates when she realized that anyone on the staircase winding up the tower's hollowed interior could spot her from above.
But the arrogant warlord marched on, not peering into the shadows but instead focusing on the door through which his latest trophy awaited. Soon enough he lumbered outside, and before the portal even swung closed behind him Leora darted from cover.
Silent as a shadow she spiraled upwards, gliding over the obsidian steps, all the while watching further up the tower for any other guards. Not particularly eager to complicate the situation by spilling Horde blood, her daggers stayed sheathed. Instead she drew forth a small but heavy club, perfect for knocking someone senseless just long enough to slip by, ask her questions, and escape.
She needn't have bothered with even that much of a weapon. At the top of the stairs was an unguarded entrance, through which she found a hallway that stretched beyond the meager light of the pair of torches some yards away from her. Rooms lined either side of the hall, cells she assumed due to the barred viewports centered at orc height in each door. One by one she rose to her tiptoes to peer into those chambers until, huddled in a corner behind the flat metal slab serving as his bed, she found her elf.
The cell's large iron lock proved no match for her lock picks. As the door swung inward the battered elf looked up, noting Leora's presence with cool, detached eyes, seemingly unfazed by the fist-sized bruises and jagged cuts scattered across his face and arms, and probably where his tattered, bloody robes covered as well.
"Further attempts at coercion will avail you nothing," the night elf informed Leora as she crossed the threshold. "I know little of your conflict, and care even less. As I told the orc, and as you can tell him again."
"I'm not going to tell him a thing. He doesn't know I'm here. In fact, he probably wouldn't be too happy if he did know. Azj'Tordin, I presume?"
The prisoner straightened in his corner but said nothing, just blinked slowly. Leora pressed on, knowing she didn't have long before Sokramm dragged the spy up for an interrogation of his own. "I need to know all you can tell me about the Shen'dralar. How did you feed off the demon's magic without becoming corrupted? How have you fed the addiction since he was slain? Did you find a cure?"
Azj'Tordin chuckled and closed his eyes, resting his head against the wall. "You feel it then, child? The hunger? The ache that penetrates to the deepest reaches of your very being?"
Leora nodded, though he couldn't see it. "I do. We all do. But you found a way around the madness, didn't you? The wretchedness? You can help us."
"Perhaps."
The quiet echo of distant footsteps and a smug, coarse voice had Leora peering out the door. Time was short. Sokramm was returning.
She turned back to the captive elf to plead her case, only to jump and choke back a gasp when she found he'd somehow crossed the cell without making a sound. Yellow eyes stared into green from inches away, sending shivers through the rogue.
"If you wish for my aid, child, you must aid me as well. Free me from this place."
The footsteps grew louder. Leora glanced over her shoulder, through the cell door, where freedom and answers awaited, and back to Azj'Tordin, her race's chance for salvation.
Dark as the hall was, it was child's play to slip the keys from the trailing orc's belt. Too intent on the spectacle of his new warlord dragging the captured Alliance spy up the stairs of the supposedly secure tower and throwing him into the chosen cell, neither he nor his companion noticed the rogue crouched in the shadows. The pair followed dutifully behind Sokramm into the cell, grinning wide in anticipation of the upcoming show.
Leora wondered who was about to bear the brunt of Sokramm's violent rage, the poor bastard she'd unmasked or the idiot underling whose keys she used to lock the three orcs in their own prison. She didn't intend to wait and see.
The lock clicked into place, and shortly after a furious howl split the air. A brown mass slammed into the door, and through the bars Sokramm's flaming eyes bore into the sweetly smiling elf, promised to rend the flesh from her bones when that wooden barricade gave way. But the orcs had built their prison well, too well, and the barrier held for the moment.
Leora pushed open Azj'Tordin's cell and he joined her in watching his jailors struggle futilely to escape. Only for a moment, though, before he asked her to wait and strode into the darkness. He returned almost immediately, cradling in his arms an ancient tome, bound in cracked and pitted leather.
"Twice now have I let my guard down, and twice has my book of incantations been taken from me," he offered as explanation. "It will not happen again."
The blood elf cursed to herself, but carefully kept her face carved out of stone. He'd be that much harder to control if he could defend himself. Daggers didn't usually match up well against fireballs, after all. But the thud of a body against a cell door reminded her of where she was and what she'd done, and spurred her towards the stairs.
Howls of impotent, imprisoned rage followed the elves all the way to the tower's ground floor. Leora unbarred the entrance and cracked it wide enough for a sliver of sunlight to stream inside, while Azj'Tordin idly drew his fingertips across the cover of his spell book and watched the stairs high above them.
Through her slender peephole the rogue spied the flight master tending to his wyverns, still somewhat ruffled by the earlier excitement. No one else was visible in her very limited field of view, and she didn't dare open the door wider until she had some idea of how to get a night elf through a Horde base in broad daylight.
"I assume you have a plan of sorts," Azj'Tordin said, somehow reading her mind. She glanced back at him to find him still watching the ceiling. "It would be in our best interests to make haste, before the orc realizes—"
A thunderous crack of splintering wood reverberated through the largely open tower interior, pierced the elves' keen ears and forced a wince from Leora. A second crash followed close behind, even louder.
Azj'Tordin, still unerringly calm, finally looked at the rogue and continued. "That he has his weapon with him."
"You'll suffer for your treachery, elf! I'll rip your still-beating heart from your chest and—"
Leora yanked the exit open and bolted outside before Sokramm could finish his threat. With any luck, Azj'Tordin would follow. She gripped her club once more and bore down on the oblivious wyvern handler. A swing, a crack, and she lowered his limp form to the dry grass as smoothly as she could.
The agitated beasts shifted on their perches, but didn't flee and didn't fight. Leora murmured to them, peacefully she hoped, while looking around for any witnesses to the takedown. But the hold's upper tier appeared blissfully empty of conscious occupants outside of her and her quickly approaching fellow escapee.
Though skittish, a pair of wyverns responded to the rogue's coaxing, old habits combining with the few tricks she'd picked up from watching dozens of flight masters at work to overcome their distrust of her and her companion. Azj'Tordin mounted easily, but Leora, slow to join him as she soothed her soon-to-be escape vessel, was still on foot as Sokramm charged out of the tower, one guard limping in his wake.
The warlord didn't bother with threats, not this time. His maul went wide over one shoulder and a wordless war cry burst forth from his lips. Stunned into stupidity, Leora didn't move, didn't react at all but for her jaw dropping as doom approached.
Azj'Tordin was not similarly affected. A page of his precious tome leapt to mind, etched into his memory by thousands of viewings over thousands of years, and arcane sigils sparked to life around him as his magic answered his call. A wave of his hand, a few wiggled fingers, and the two oncoming orcs were largely encased in ice.
Dumbfounded, it took Leora a moment to find her voice. "You can do that? Why didn't you escape on your own, then?"
Azj'Tordin shrugged, seated astride his wyvern. "The magic did not answer my call. There are ways to prevent use of the arcane. I assumed they employed them against me. It would not be much of a prison otherwise."
Leora scoffed at him and shook her head, and Azj'Tordin continued. "They will not be held for long. Come, we must depart for safer lands." Without waiting for her response, he and his wyvern leapt into the skies and started to the south.
The rogue, though, wasn't quite ready to depart. Not after this same accursed orc had twice reduced her to a mindless, spineless whelp for the second time in as many hours. She drew a dagger and sauntered towards the frozen warlord.
"You could have just let me talk to him, you know," she chided softly, inches from the eye and ear that were the only parts of Sokramm not iced over. "I just had a few questions, and then you could have had his head for decoration."
She lightly traced the tip of her blade across his skin, circling his eye. To her disappointment, there was no fear in that bloodshot orb, only hatred. Pure, gut-wrenching hatred. Suddenly she felt colder than if she'd been the one encased in ice. The urge to be away from this one overwhelmed the urge to humiliate him.
"Don't follow us. Stay here, win back the Barrens for the glory of the Horde, and you'll never see me again. But if you come after me, if I so much as get the faintest feeling that your killers are behind me… well, I'd hate to accidentally end some orc bystander, but I'm afraid there's no way to tell the innocent apart from your henchmen."
She leaned closer, her lips almost touching Sokramm's ear, and pressed the tip of her blade into the flesh of his cheek just hard enough to draw blood. Unable to resist a final taunt as that red stream stained the ice, she whispered, "One orc looks no different than another, not to me."
