Of War and Wings
Chapter Four
Trust
Flare almost couldn't believe herself as she stared at Toru and Tetra on the bridge between the Old Town and Trade District. They had re-united after several hours of scouring the town to report their findings, to find on top of everything that the two were going to actually take formal training to learn how to fight in Azerothian styles. Tetra's choice alone had her astounded at first, though she had recalled some chats with the girl where she'd mentioned wanting to chip into their group's efforts in passing. Toru's decision though...
"There's absolutely no way you're gonna make it as a formally trained warrior." Flare said flatly, earning a glare from the Amian, already clutching onto a pair of black-handled, silver-bladed swords and a letter signed and sealed to be delivered to Northshire Abbey. "You don't have the patience or the discipline, do you know how long it took me to turn my hunting skills to combat ones back home in Starblaze?"
"Yeah, well, sorry I didn't grow up feeding off the fat of a frozen wasteland." Toru bit back, waving the letter in front of Flare's face. "Though I don't think they'd have given me this thing if it was a waste of their time, so obviously I've got something worth refining, eh?"
"Yeah, yeah, we'll see, big shot." She quipped back, setting her hand on her hip with a frown. "But what, you're just going to ditch us to do all the work while you run off and play hero?"
"Look, Ms. Personality, I'm gonna say this first, get the damned bug out of your ass." Toru snapped, leaning a little closer to Flare's face, a gesture she returned as she came within a few inches of his. "Just because your little brother's a punk doesn't give you extra excuse to be bitchier than the rest of us. Do you even remember how to smile, 'cause I haven't seen one since before we got here outta you."
"Oh, pardon me, you self-serving prick, while I just blow off all my problems and go dancing in the fields. I swear, I've got half the right mind to-"
"That's enough." Juno growled, grabbing the both of them by their shoulders and spinning them to face him, taking them both by the back of the neck and glaring back and forth between them, starting with Flare. "Your attitude has been worse than Toru's was at it's worst. Shape up or I'll make you." Juno's glare turned to Toru after that. "And you're doing no better antagonizing things. Do you want me to remind you why I always commanded the authority around the house back home?"
"N, no..." Toru stammered out, although still clearly irritated as Juno released he and Flare.
Flare sniffed, turning her head off to the side and crossing her arms. "I still stand by it, they're just ditching us..."
"Flare, that's not it at all." Tetra said with an almost pleading quality to her voice. "I talked to the Archbishop in the cathedral, and Toru talked to the trainers. There's a high demand for our work out there, apparently there's a huge shortage on people who can heal in Azeroth, and people willing to, uh... How best put it..."
"I'm not going to be one of those human shields." Toru said adamantly. "Yeah, there's a novel idea, I go out there and get the crap kicked out of me while everyone else attacks. Maybe if they'd have asked me four years ago I'd have considered it when I didn't think I'd live to see this age anyways..."
"... Yeah, that's actually a lot of the problem with why they're short on manpower in that department." Tetra said with an awkward smile. "But, there are always people looking for others to do work. I guess the best way to put it is we'd be kind of mercenaries."
"Not to mention it'll compensate for these unreliable abilities of ours." Toru said, pocketing the note and looking to Juno. "Hell, you're probably close enough to being a full-blown warrior here since you actually finished your formal training back home."
"The races here are, for the better part of things, human-like in nature." Juno said matter-of-factly. "The anatomies can't differ too much, even the Draenei and Tauren with their hooves still generally walk like the rest of us. A well placed slash and they go down just like anyone else."
"Considering what I've heard about the Forsaken you may want to make a practice of aiming for the throat." Toru said with a light grin and a cutting gesture across his own. "But yeah, we'll be raking in cash with odd jobs, and since it's probably going to involve a bit of travel I imagine we'll get the scope of this world a lot better that way, too."
Juno nodded, some approval on his features. "Fair enough, but be careful. I've heard around today that there are parts of Azeroth where the Legion is in small numbers, not to speak of that plague of undeath. I'd rather not have to remove your head, Toru."
"Yeah, no kidding." Toru remarked, looking up at the sky. "We'd better'd get going though. Tetra and I were hoping to make it there before nightfall, and it's getting pretty late in the day."
Juno nodded, looking at the sun overhead briefly before looking back to the two. "Then you'd better'd get going. Watch each other's backs on the road, too. I've heard there are some thugs between here and Westfall that won't hesitate to prey on travelers."
"There won't be for long if they try and mess with us." Toru remarked confidently, turning and starting off towards the Trade District, and from there, the gates of Stormwind. Tetra followed close behind after a smile and wave.
Flare sniffed, sitting down on the edge of the bridge and crossing one leg over the other. "So now what?"
"We've done enough for today, and Toru told us where the inn is in the Trade District." Juno said, starting to walk in the direction the Amian and his girlfriend headed off in. "Let's get a room, then we'll go over what we've figured out and what we'll do tomorrow. The sooner that we can bring everyone here and help get them situated, the better."
"Sure, why not...?" Flare responded, her tone more half-hearted now as she rose to her feet and began to follow after the dragon. She crossed her arms and cast her gaze to the stone bridge beneath her feet, clutching her arms so tightly it hurt. Cygnus and Desirei are here... Skye and Dirge must be too... Damn it, it was so much easier thinking he was dead.
Late into the night, after dinner and discussing their plans, the two had resigned to bed, sharing out of necessity. Unlike the inns they'd seen back home, there were fewer rooms to be seen with normally only a single large bed to be spared between them. Juno didn't seem to mind, but Flare, combined with that and all other things on her mind, had found sleep out of her grasp. After perhaps an hour, when she was certain Juno was deep enough into sleep, she crept out of the bed and room, taking with her the pouches that contained her claws.
The streets were quiet, the greatest signs of life in the vermin that made their evening rounds and the guards that did much the same with lanterns in hand. Her coat and t-shirt were inside, leaving her in the black undershirt she wore beneath, baring to open view several scars that peaked out from beneath her arms and on her shoulders. She didn't care, she did grow up in a hunter's town after all. It was just natural to take damage.
It wasn't natural to abandon your kin though. She began to reminisce as she walked down the cobblestone road, strapping her pouches to her side and casting a glance now and then at the starlit sky overhead out the tops of her eyes. Starblaze was a town built around an ancient meteor crash site, the only place in a frozen wasteland that exuded a fire aura, and allowed flora to grow with the fauna. History dictated that her people were nomadic before that, and settled centuries ago around it. With time and enough generations, their auras changed too, eliminating any water auras all together and leaving the people with the ability to manipulate fire in its place. She was one of those people.
Her brother, however, was not. The first child with a water aura in probably a good few centuries, superstitious fear-mongering had nearly driven their family out of town. It was nothing less than a saving grace that the village elder was blessed with the good common sense to see that his birth was no 'sign from spirits' or anything ridiculous like that, just nature taking its course. Of course, that didn't stop the people, especially the other children, as cruel as they could be even to each other, from looking down on him, bullying him, treating him like an outsider.
She would never have taken that, and never did. She sat down on a stack of crates on the other side of the district, bending one leg up to her chest and leaning back against the wall as she thought about all the fights she got into to protect him. Idly, her fingers ran over a piece of blue cloth strapped around her wrist, ragged and worn.
"Skye, this is for you." She could hear herself saying as she thought back to the tender age of eight, when she learned to sew like all girls did back home. She raised her wrist before her eyes, recalling how clean and carefully cut the cloth used to be. Hers was blue, Skye's was red. "See? This way we can always be close! It's a... what's it, um... a momento, that's it!"
Damn, I was a stupid kid, didn't even get the name right. She thought to herself, sitting forward as she dipped that same hand into her pocket, pulling out a metal case and drawing out a hand-wrapped cigarette, taking it between her lips. She'd only started smoking recently, after the Burning Legion first attacked Viarde, but it calmed her nerves, and with all in her life, she needed more stress like she needed a hole in her head. Striking the case against the stone wall behind her, a spark shot off of it, all she needed as she used her aura to ignite it into a small flame. She willed it to the end of her cigarette, and took a long drag off of it, blowing the smoke out of her nostrils as she let the fire hover before her.
It flickered out on its own several seconds later, causing her to frown a little as she was reminded of their newest problem in the unreliability of their auras.
"Pain in the ass, that's what it is..." she muttered to no one out of one corner of her mouth. She reached up, setting a hand over her eyes as she tried to push back the memories, of how she stood by him, fought for him, loved him like a sister should love her brother... And scowled bitterly as she even thought of his betrayal. She finally stood up, growing restless and shaking her head as she took the cigarette between her index and middle fingers and tapped the ashes off of it before returning it between her lips. It was going to be a long night, and she'd either fall asleep partway through it, or need to find the nearest tobacco peddler in short order.
Before she could dwell for too long, she heard something, her eyes widening as she glanced out the corners of her eyes, careful not to move her head. A pebble bounced along the street. It seemed harmless enough, though the problem lay in that there wasn't a soul visible, man or animal, that could have done it.
She turned casually, starting on a slow walk as she eyed what was the pebble's path before it came to a rest. Taking another drag off her cigarette, she withdrew it from her mouth and blew a thin veil of smoke out. She watched it, her expression lapsing to boredom, only to catch sight of some of the smoke parting off in the direction of the square. It didn't take long to put two and two together, someone was sneaking around, and that late at night it normally meant nothing good. Good common sense told her to just leave well enough alone and go back to her thoughts.
The subject of her thoughts succeeded in getting her to tell good common sense to go jump in a lake. Instead, she focused on finding a way to ensure she didn't lose track of her target. No doubt one of those rogues she'd learned about, stealth was their specialty. She needed a way to track it without drawing too much attention. The quickest answer she could think of made her frown slightly, but it provided an option. Taking hold of her cigarette, she bit down hard and tore a piece off, shuddering at the taste. She'd have to rely on an old hunter's trick she learned with some modifications. Focusing her aura into the piece of the cigarette butt in her mouth, she invested a little of her energy into it, took a breath, and then spit. She watched it fly through the air, and stick to something only barely visible near the ground, lifting slightly before it faded from sight.
Just like sticking a dart to the prey back home, just hope it doesn't fall off. She thought, pulling her cigarette out of her mouth as she followed her own aura's sensation moving across the district at a slow pace. She might've used an actual dart, had whatever was creeping had the thick, armor-like skin some of the creatures back home did, but this would have to do. She stuck her tongue out bitterly and rolled her cigarette closed again. "God awful taste though..." she muttered, beginning to walk at a pace that matched the movement of the rogue now that there was enough space between them.
Her subject led her out of the Trade District and a long ways around the canals. She stopped once or twice along the way, fearing she might have been drawing too much attention to herself and swiftly ducking behind beams or carts along the way. After a short while, she found them leaving the stone-laden grounds to more plush, grassy ones. They were in the Mage Quarter. It was but a few moments later, after a few more turns along the path, that she watched the rogue actually drop his stealthy veil. Even so heavily clad in leathers, judging by the hulking physique and the hunched posture, not to speak of those blood red eyes that seemed to bear their own luminescence in the moonlit evening, it was an orc.
Horde in an Alliance city. She thought as the Orc walked into the tavern after glancing over his shoulders a few times, breaking into a sprint towards the doorway. Now doesn't that just reek of good news? She leapt up onto the stone pathway, out of line of sight of the door, and looked up at the sign above. The Slaughtered Lamb, not exactly the most appealing name for a place to get a drink as far as she was concerned, but she'd worry about the aesthetics of the place later. She edged towards the doorway against the wall, pulling her hair back and holding it behind her head as she peeked inside.
"Good of you to join us, Grun." A man with black hair and an eye patch remarked to the orc as he approached a table at the darkest corner of the tavern. Sitting beside him was a dwarf, also in leathers, with two particularly vicious daggers hanging at his hips. Also dressed in leathers, there were no discerning traits of individuality that she could pick out from the distance as the man continued to speak to the hulking figure. "I was beginning to wonder if you would show."
"There were some complications." Grun responded, taking a seat at the table, even in that way still towering over the other two figures.
"Very well. Let's get started then, shall we?" the eye-patched man said, clasping his hands together on the table.
From there, Flare was simply standing, straining to listen in on exactly what may or may not have been spoken of, and coming up short. She silently cursed under her breath, clenching her fists at her sides and repeatedly taking looks out the corner of her eyes to the grassy path. The guards didn't seem to pass in the way of the tavern's part of the quarter, if at all.
"Maybe I ought to go find one and let one in on this..." she muttered to herself after a half hour, in a tone barely audible to even her own ears. She nodded, turning and beginning to walk back the way she came. If the Stormwind guard came, they could properly interrogate, probably unravel a plan that had the potential to bring upset to the human nation. She couldn't do anything alone, her abilities as unreliable as they were, what choice did she have? It was only after a few steps that she found herself stopped suddenly, a hand came up over her mouth, and something sharp was jabbed against her back, a muffled yelp of surprise silenced by the leather-clad limb.
"Don't move." A woman's voice spoke to her in a soft, but nonetheless threatening tone. It wasn't a second after that Flare felt the jabbing sensation in her back leave, only to return as the woman wrapped an arm around her neck, and pressed the blade of her weapon to the side of her throat. "Make so much as a sound and I'll see that you never get to make another." She handed the weapon off into the same one looped around her throat, and drew the empty hand out of sight. Flare heard something rustling behind her, and before she knew it, her arms were pulled back behind her, and tightly cinched together at the wrist, flexing her hands as her binds were set to stimulate some blood flow into them. It wasn't a second later that she was grabbed by her wrists and jerked around, and escorted back to the bar entrance she'd just started away from. They entered, and the next thing she knew, she was airborne, albeit briefly, as she was roughly shoved forward, slamming down on the floorboards with a grunt and wheeze as the air rushed out of her lungs.
"Good job, Elise." The man with the eye patch announced as he rose from his seat, walking around the table he was sitting at and approaching Flare. "I thought there was a rat scurrying about, it seems as though we've caught her." The man knelt down before Flare, grabbing her up by her hair and pulling her up to gaze at her. "We can do this one of two ways, young lady. Tell us why you were sneaking around, or we can 'interrogate' you."
Flare grit her teeth in some pain, glaring defiantly at the man. "Speak for yourself and the orc you're keeping company with." Flare bit back in a defiant tone, looking the man dead in his good eye. "Last I heard, Wrynn didn't take so kindly to the Horde in his city. What exactly is it you're up to, huh, patch?"
This seemed to spark some intrigue in the man's features, but his expression remained mostly reserved. "Sit her up, Elise." The man ordered, turning and heading back to the table. "She'll be dealt with properly when we return to SI:7."
"Hey!" Flare snapped loudly, earning all of their attentions, even the bar keeper's, who, up to this point, seemed to have been turning a blind eye to everything. "Just who the hell are you, talking like you're so damned hot? Maybe you didn't realize it, but plotting with a damned O-" She was stopped cold, her eyes widening as she felt a swift, brief impact to the back of her head. The next thing Flare knew, she was falling towards the floor, and all went black.
The next sensation she registered was something cold and wet. She coughed and sputtered, her head throbbing as she came around. She could make out voices after a second or two as she began to fully come around. She groaned, spitting a few sopping wet strands of her hair off her lips before looking up, seeing before her a man standing before her, different than the last one she had been looking at. In fact, the entire place had changed, from a tavern to a stone-walled room with stairs leading up on the other side. The man had brown hair and eyes, and was dressed in black leathers from shoulder to toe. She tried to pull forward, but found her arms tied to the back of the chair she was seated in with sturdy rope.
"I see that our extra set of eyes has finally woken up." He said, his tone cold as the water, at least Flare assumed it was, that she'd been splashed with. "You're brave, if nothing else, girl."
"Wh, who are you...?" she muttered out, squeezing her eyes shut from a flash of pain from the place she'd been struck before. She looked past the man, seeing the same woman from that time even standing there, holding the bucket that had no doubt carried what now soaked her flesh and clothes. "A… and where...?"
"Mathias Shaw." The man said, stepping forward and setting a hand on her forehead, making her look up at him. "Where we are, you don't need to concern yourself with that. Cooperate, though, and we may see where that leads us in what happens to you. I'd like to know what you were doing last night, tracking the trio in the Slaughtered Lamb, and just what your intentions were."
"Cooperate...?" Flare breathed, now nearly completely together, donning a glare at the man. "For a man who was sneaking Horde into an Alliance city, you're pretty casual with name drops and things like that, and you have a lot of nerve..."
"So you won't cooperate." Mathias state, earning a dismissive sniff from the dark-skinned girl. He turned quietly, clasping his hands together behind his back as he headed for the stairs. "You do of course understand you can't simply be allowed to leave. I'll give you a little time to think about what your situation entails exactly. After all, I can't promise your safety should you refuse to divulge information to us. Get comfortable, young lady, or don't, but I trust you understand with that attitude, you'll be down here for a long while."
Flare watched Mathias and the woman with him leave in silence after that. If it wasn't already obvious, her presence only confirmed to her that this man had links to the other in the tavern. In all good sense, cooperation was the best option for her well being at face value. It might even get her to walk free to a certain extent, at least enough to break off into a good sprint and escape. Still, she had an outstanding stubbornness on right and wrong, and as she knew it, whatever the Horde was doing in an Alliance city was all wrong. No doubt if she stayed, they might try to persuade her with force, torture even. Ultimately, if she withheld through it all, there would be the final route of death, if only to silence her and ensure that whatever they were doing never saw the light of day.
That, though, would require that she stay put. She took a good look around the room, ensuring she was entirely alone before turning her gaze to a torch on the far wall. A light red glow lit around her body, faint and only just covering her frame, but enough to be noticeable. She focused on the torch for a few seconds, watching the flames before acting. A spark shot out of the greater flame, blazing across the room towards her seat. It arched up sharply as it came upon her, shooting up towards the ceiling before shooting down in a thin blazing trail, straight through her bindings. She pulled her arms forward swiftly, unwrapping the remainders of the ropes from her wrists and beginning to rub them where they were.
That's one problem solved. She thought, leaning forward and looking around the room. How do I get out of here though? This might be their headquarters, if I'm caught, they might figure out how I freed myself, and that'd make things even worse. She rose from the chair and walked towards one of the walls where several crates were stacked up. She noted one was cracked open, and took that as invitation enough to push the lid back. Weapons were inside, of all kinds. Swords, daggers, maces, axes, it was certainly an impressive collection of tools. This brought to mind her own weapons, and as she looked to her hips, she was more disappointed than she felt she should have been. Of course they'd take them. A pair of gloves with claws for fingers, leaving those is asking for trouble. She sighed silently, cursing her understanding of the good sense they had.
Intent on making her escape regardless, she reached into the crate, carefully sifting through the weapons, making her best efforts to remain quiet with the clinking of metals and stones being shifted through the box. As she dug, she eyed a pair of weapons joined by a leather strap, raising an eyebrow as she shifted the surrounding contents further and pulled them out. She held in her hand a pair of fighting claws, very different than her own. Rather than the individual fingers, there were two, red talon-like blades extending out off the back of the hand. She could already imagine some of the awkwardness she'd face using them, but she'd have to cope. The kind of fortune it took to come across these in her current predicament at all far outweighed the unfamiliar variation of her favored tools.
She started towards the stairs, slipping the claws on as she moved in silence, using her training as a huntress from back home. She'd gotten the drop on more than her own fair of stealthy predators, so sneaking past her captors shouldn't have been too great of a task. She approached the wooden steps, lightly setting her foot down on each one, ascending slowly towards a wooden door in the ceiling. It became quickly clear she was in some kind of cellar.
She crouched low under the door, pressing her forearm against it and raising it slowly, just a crack enough to see where she was. A stone floor spread out in the room before her, more crates and barrels were visible as well. Much to her delight, there was no sign of movement. That was quick to change, as she heard something moving quickly from further up, and drawing closer. She shut the door, backing off from it and readying herself, just in time to see it fly up and open. Before her eyes sat the same woman from the night before, who'd restrained her, and if she guessed right, was responsible for her unconsciousness.
"You." She hissed.
"Me." Flare growled in response, quickly striking the claws together and springing back down the stairs backwards, an action that seemed to puzzle the woman. That suited her just fine as her aura erupted around her, feeding furiously into the sparks she'd just created. The tiny sparks combusted suddenly into a full-blown explosion, shattering the door and blowing her would-be opponent away with a pained cry, followed by a loud, metallic clatter. Flare landed on her hands and feet at the base of the stairs, looking down to the claws with a smirk. Okay, kind of works.
She knew she didn't have time to waste though. Sprinting up the stairs as quickly as she could, she looked around, finding herself in what looked to be a basement above the basement. A gnome nearby had been knocked unconscious and sported a rather large bump on his head, looking like he took the blow from a piece of the hidden door that had been utterly wrecked in the explosion. Looking towards the back of the room, she could see the door, and what they'd done. It was a thick piece of wood bolted to metal grating, painted to look like a sewer ran beneath. The room must have seen few visitors from outside this group she'd run afoul of, so such simple camouflage no doubt proved adequate for that. Sitting slumped in a corner was the woman, unconscious, burned a few places and groaning in quite a lot of pain.
"Pardon me for having little sympathy..." she muttered, running over to her and grabbing her quickly. She could already hear footsteps overhead, that boom she'd made certainly didn't go unnoticed. She hurried and dragged her into a tiny space behind a row of barrels, crouching down as low as she could and pulling the woman tight into the space, holding a hand over her mouth to muffle any other groans of pain the woman might have made.
"What was that explosion?" an alarmed man's voice exclaimed as his feet came off the steps and onto the stony floor.
"Calm down!" a more familiar voice barked off the bat, clearly allowing absolutely no leeway for any kind of alarm. It took Flare a second to place it, but she recognized it to be that man, Mathias Shaw. "By the looks of things I'd say that girl's broken free. Treat Dr. Mixilpixil, make sure he's not seriously injured. The rest of you, start searching. I want a couple of you to head upstairs in case she managed to sneak by somehow. The rest of you turn this room and the storage room upside down if you have to, find her!"
Flare cursed herself in silence, wishing she'd gone with armed combat as opposed to an impulsive, quick-ending blast. The immediate threat had been taken care of, sure, but now she was in a much more complicated bind. It would only be a matter of time before Shaw's subordinates looked behind the barrels, and the game would be over right there. She had to think of something, anything that could better her odds. Biting down on her lip, she thought hard for a moment. From just those two uses of her aura, she could already tell how much more taxing it was to draw on those powers on this world, she'd do herself little good if she took them out and was still confronted with even more opponents up top, add to the exhaustion that may come with more explosions and the obvious attention they'd earn. She couldn't disappear like those rogues could, which made simply walking out unquestionable. More and more options presented themselves, and none of them had any great success odds behind them.
So when she heard footsteps approaching her barrels, she made with the only thing she could think of at the time, lacking any more time to plan. She hiked up the unconscious woman and laid as flat as she could, lying her out atop her. The head she saw poke out was a woman with lightly tanned skin and dark eyes, ash-black hair cinched back into a ponytail with black and brown leathers adorning her body. Her eyes widened in alarm.
"Elise!" she exclaimed, quickly rushing around the barrel and slipping in the side. It didn't take long for her to close in, and her eyes to widen as she saw just what was beneath the woman. "I've found-" She was cut off swiftly as something slammed into her solar plexus, her eyes bulging and mouth hanging open as she was thrown back off of Flare's foot with a fierce kick.
"Cyrdia!" another one of the nearby rogues exclaimed, rushing around quickly to meet Flare, only to find the weight of something pushed onto him. Elise's unconscious frame bowled him over and made him stumble back, giving Flare the room she needed to bolt out of the crack as quickly as she could, turning so sharply and so fast she had to kick off the wall nearby to keep from slamming into it. She made it to the stairs swiftly, and was almost to the top before something burst into existence behind her. Reflex took over, just from the instant provided by the sound, and she rolled to the side, turning about to face the opponent, only to see a faint flicker of Mathias' form before he vanished again.
Is this Chaos? She thought, her eyes widening as he appeared at her side. She ducked a slash from a sword in his hand, lunging at him with her claws, only for him to vanish again. No, I can't detect a bit of his aura at all. Is it pure speed? What the hell's going on? Somehow or other, she managed to get away with just little nicks and scratches from his weapons, though something about them hurt far more than they should have. A couple on her legs and a few more on her arms, however, didn't seem enough to make her stop and sweat over it. He finally came to a stop behind her, coming at her with a slash from above. Swiping across overhead, she deflected his weapon with the claw blades, before bringing the hand back across and crashing the blunt metal part against his face, knocking him back and down a few stairs with a pained grunt.
Can't waste time here, I've gotta go! She thought, quickly turning and beginning to sprint again. Her eyes widened as she came to the top of the stairs, her legs freezing up on her, and arms doing much of the same, unable to brace herself as she toppled forward from the sudden motionlessness and crashed onto the wooden floor, her eyes wide and teeth grit. "W... what... is this...?"
"A paralytic." Mathias Shaw said as he walked calmly up the stairs, wiping a little blood off of his chin, not even wincing as he touched an already heavily bruising spot where she'd struck. "It'll come and go for the next few minutes, in the small doses you took in." He stopped, looming directly over her as he gazed down upon her. "You've caused quite a mess. I'm afraid you lack the self-control to get away from us."
Flare struggled to move, wanting to lash out at the man again, hamstring him perhaps and make a bolt for the door nearby, but the paralytic, the poison, it was working too well. She saw him move towards her, staring wide-eyed for a moment before squeezing her eyes shut.
She was completely taken off guard as she felt herself hefted to her feet, with the ease one might lift a child. Her eyes opened, seeing Mathias' hands on her waist, steadying her upright.
"We can refine that. Cyrdia."
"Y, yes sir!" the young woman from before stammered out, clearly fighting a little pain as she shot to attention halfway down the stairs.
"Get the anti-venom for this so our guest can move properly."
"Right away!"
Flare watched the young woman take off down the stairs as her head regained some mobility, and her other limbs began to slacken. She could understand what he was talking about, the periodic seizures of her movement entirely. She then looked past Mathias, watching another person dressed similarly to him rush by with what looked to be a priest.
"I imagine you must be very confused as to what's going on right now." Mathias said calmly.
"C... confused? I'm completely out of the damned loop here! What in the f... What's this about? First you cold cock me in the back of the head, then I wake up bound downstairs under interrogation, and, and then..." she felt the stiffening beginning to return, grimacing a little. Her blood was really pumping, she was, in perhaps one of the greater understatements of her life, very upset.
"Yes, well, scouting you wouldn't do very much good if we didn't know how you operated under stress. You're a bit volatile, but that can be fixed." Mathias crossed his arms, looking upon her. "Grun, the orc you were tracking last night, is one of our top moles within the Horde. He reports to us any particular happenings that we ought to know about. Political shifts, dissent, uprisings, those dirty kind of things that the good criers generally won't spread much word about. To report to us in any city at any given time, you must imagine that he has to be very good at his job. That's where you come in."
Flare could barely move again, but was still listening attentively, as her eyes showed when they locked on his. She barely acknowledged the girl, Cyrdia, as she ran up with the anti-venom and began to treat her with it.
"Now, there are common tactics for revealing rogues' positions. A wide area attack or a flare will be one of the greatest give aways. However, you didn't unveil him to the public after I assume you noticed him, you kept your distance and followed him to us, pursuing a greater threat than simply 'kill the Orc'. As Trias told me, you were quite vocal about his presence in the city and believed our section to be agents for the Horde. Sounds like you're something of a patriot, for a girl who came out of that crazy world those weeks back." He must have read the surprise on her face, which only earned a smirk from him. "There's nothing about you that fits our world's culture, young lady. You're behind the Draenei as far as peoples who have joined our Alliance from some far off world."
"Then..." she managed, feeling herself limbering up as the antidote began to run its course. "All of that down there...?"
"As I said, I wanted to see how you operated under stress. You again proved your committal to the Alliance when you snapped at me like that."
"How do you know I wasn't lying?" she muttered, rotating her arm a little.
"You're temperamental and impatient, for one so skilled at tracking. You were very passionate down there." Mathias smirked a little bit. "Though you need to learn to be much more discreet and reign those emotions in."
"Flare!" a familiar, and clearly irritated voice, boomed out from beyond the doorway.
"And there's our other guest." Mathias said, watching with her as Juno rushed in, stopping alongside her and looking down to her with visible concern.
"What the hell happened last night?" he half-demanded, pausing before he took a breath, easing himself to calm down before looking hard down at her, but with concern clear in his every gesture. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah... I think." She muttered the last part, looking to Mathias and raising her visible eyebrow.
"My agents get around. You two took an audience with the king yesterday, so that put you especially high on our radar. It's not hard to forget a man as large as that, pale to boot, with a small, dark girl like yourself. Quite the contrast."
His musing didn't seem to entertain Juno at all, the disguised dragon sporting a scowl at Mathias. "Give me one reason I shouldn't tear this place down over your head for what your flunkies told me you were doing to my friend."
"Because I'm training your friend." Mathias said, his arms crossed, unwavering from Juno's intimidation attempt. "That is, if she wants to be trained."
"If I want to be?" she repeated, looking more than a little flabbergasted by just how he presented a choice to her after holding her against her will and pushing her into a fight all in the last several hours.
"Well, Lord Mathias can't force you to train with us." Cyrdia interjected, completing a wrapping over the last of her wounds with some violet cloth bandage. "No disrespect, but, if you were to be forced into training with us and refused to comply, you'd just be a hindrance."
"I..." Flare paused, looking around before a frown settled on her face again, quickly grabbing each of the clawed weapons still equipped over her hands and half throwing them to the floor. "Why would I want to train under people who just held me against my will and nearly killed me? I'm out." She wasted no time after that, turning sharply in place and walking at a fever pace out of the building.
She didn't stop until she reached the fountain, now well aware of her surroundings, the region of Stormwind known as Old Town. She heaved a sigh and dropped onto the edge of the stone fixture, leaning forward with her arms propping herself upright on her legs. She was silent as death itself for a few moments.
"Flare." She heard Juno's voice call to her, looking to see him coming down the steps. In his hand he held the pouches with her gloves, the very ones she'd been liberated of. He tossed them to her casually, and she snatched them out of the air, holding them out, inspecting them as she felt the weight of her weapons inside.
"Thanks..." she muttered sourly.
"Don't thank me yet." He said, walking up next to her and standing over her. She noticed he had some kind of violet bag belted shut on his hip, appearing almost empty, the size of one of his hands, which about amounted to nearly the size of her own head. She watched him open it and slip the hand in effortlessly, and like beholding a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, he drew her coat and shirt out.
"H, how the-"
"It's a special kind of bag, call it Netherweave here. You can hold any item in here regardless of size, but only sixteen per bag."
"You've got to be kidding me."
"Corpses walk around this world under a national banner, I'm not nearly as surprised by this." He handed them off to her, watching her as she pulled the shirt on and began to slide her coat on. "I think you should accept his offer."
"Excuse me?" she asked, aghast of what he said as she rose to her feet. "I'm sorry, are you up to speed on what happened to me last night?"
"Completely, and how you blew your flames up in that woman's face, too. Shaw told me." She only grew more irate by that knowledge, but he looked unphazed. "You need this."
"I'm more than capable of fighting on my own, thanks! I don't need to go crawling to a bunch of-"
"You need teamwork." He said, cutting her off before she could get off whatever insult was ready to fly off her tongue. "You've been doing more and more on your own lately, ever since Skye betrayed us, and been fighting with everyone. You need to get your head out of your ass and get over it."
"Oh right, excuse me while I just wash that off my back. The person who I sacrificed EVERYTHING for stabbing me in the back, who I stood up for his entire life turning to the people who were sworn to blow our moons out of orbit regardless of what effects it'd have had on our home, yeah Juno, I'm just being a bitch, you're right!"
"I didn't say that." He shot back, his own tone growing more stern.
"You might as well've!" she returned without missing a beat. "How do I know that you're all any different? Toru and Tetra sure didn't waste any time running off for their own little adventure, and what about-" She was stopped, feeling his hand clamp down on her shoulder and jerk her harshly, silencing her as she turned wide eyes up to him.
"Just because you're afraid of getting burned again by someone else doesn't give you any right to place is in the same position as that ungrateful little punk that you call a little brother." He growled, his grip tightening to a point it began to hurt.
The next thing she knew, before her brain could even register it, his head had turned, her hand ached, and a loud, slapping noise echoed through the district.
She stood in horror for a second, noting the surprise on even Juno's face as she stood there. She stepped back, slipping out of his grip. "J... Juno, I... I'm..."
"Forget it." He said after a pause, sighing and rubbing his cheek. "I stepped out of line too, apparently..."
"No, he... Skye is..." she didn't know what to say suddenly, her gaze falling to the ground.
"You loved Skye like a big sister should." Juno said, his words recognized by her ears as truth and earning a flinch. "You did give up everything, after those horrible things your parents said, to protect him. You can't be faulted for that, and I can't imagine the kind of hurt you must be going through knowing he's working with Desirei and Cygnus."
Flare could only nod.
"But you can't isolate yourself like this... You're like how Toru was, but instead of being afraid of getting someone hurt, you're afraid of being the one hurt again. 'How can I trust someone if the person I gave up everything for will betray me like that?', that's what you're thinking." He sighed, burying his hands into his pockets. "All I can tell you is that you know better, not everyone is like that. But you have to make the decision yourself on whether you believe that or not. I think training with them would be a good way to put things back into perspective for you, and get your temper back in check, too."
"And..." Flare muttered, raising her head enough to look him in the eye and no more. "What'll you be doing...?"
"I'm going to stay in Stormwind." He said. "We need to get homes for ourselves and our families. I'll be around and let you know where I am, but for the next few days I'm still going to be at the inn." He walked forward, setting a hand on her shoulder again, but this time far more gently. "Think about it... And come see me when you've made your choice."
Flare watched him leave after that, watching until he vanished around the bend, off in the direction of the Trade District. She stood there, losing track of time as she thought over what he said, considered and weighed everything. Skye had hurt her horribly, she couldn't just forget that, but...
She looked down at her weapons in her hands, standing in quiet contemplation for a moment or two longer before individually buckling them, allowing them to hang off her waist down at her hips, as they always had. Turning, she faced the white stone building ahead and started forward. Perhaps, just perhaps, if she couldn't forget, then she could at least do something constructive with her time rather than moping over it.