Still seething (and more than a little bewildered at the speed with which her life had been upended) Callista walked back through the twilight towards the friendly glow of The Gilded Rose. The knots of people socializing outside had dispersed with sunset, but as she pushed open the heavy wooden door she found the inside still bright and cheerfully packed.
The easiest to catch – the assassin's words galled her, in large part because they were probably true. In her work as glorified vermin-catcher for the nobility, she'd stopped just barely short of advertising her real talents. That she was a warlock was an open secret that almost all of her employers knew, though few were ill-bred enough to talk about it. She'd been arrogant enough to think that their influence would protect her (who else would keep a felhound from savaging the game on their hunting estates?), but in fact it seemed to have done the opposite, making of her a pathetically easy victim for whoever had arranged this expedition. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If what that assassin had said was true, they could collect enough material to arrest her several times over.
She pushed past the crowded bar to find Tun, Nissa and Darryl still seated where she'd left them, laughing at some anecdote and picking at the remains of their dinners. They looked up as she approached (all except Darryl, who continued to frown at some particularly tricky passage in his text).
"What happened to you?" Tun asked, an affectionate note of scolding in his voice. "We were just about to go look – "
He trailed off as he got a better view of her sour expression. "Callista? Are you alright?"
"I think I've been enlisted," she said, settling back into her seat and jabbing her spoon violently into her bowl of now cold stew.
"Enlisted?" he echoed, setting down his own spoon to stare. "Into what?"
That was actually an excellent question. She knew she was supposed to get on a boat with a bunch of (no doubt) bleeding heart paladins to look for some foolish pack of refugees, but she wasn't even sure where they were going. "I don't know. Some kind of rescue mission, I think."
Nissa scoffed (probably at the idea of Callista rescuing anyone). "Tell them you aren't interested."
"I did. The assassin they sent to talk to me wasn't interested in my lack of interest."
"They sent an assassin?" Nissa asked, suspicion entering her large brown eyes. "What did you do?"
Callista made a face in response. Why were people forever asking her that? "Nothing!" she said, taking another sharp stab at her stew. The spoon clattered furiously off the side of the bowl. "The House of Nobles is reviving some anti-warlock petition, and if I don't play along they're going to arrest me."
"That isn't even legal!" Tun said, almost knocking over his mug with an indignant gesture.
"What are you going to do?" Nissa asked, somewhat more practically, steadying Tun's mug just before it splattered her with beer.
Callista rubbed at the bridge of her nose. She was still angry, but an uncomfortable trapped feeling was beginning to erode the edges of her ire. "I don't know. The ship leaves in two days, and I said I'd be on it. Not that I intend to be," she finished defiantly.
Tun pulled up one side of his mouth, misgiving tingeing his expression as he recognized her tone as one that no good ever came of. "Just…please try to be careful?"
Callista wasn't very good at being careful under the best of circumstances, let alone when she was as agitated as she was now. She twitched her shoulders impatiently, gazing darkly into the dregs of her stew. "When I find out who did this, I'll be careful my felhound doesn't choke on him."
Tun rolled his eyes and sighed.
Darryl, who up to this point had been chewing his lip as he stared at his book with an air of total absorption, chose this moment to raise his rumpled head and peer at her. "Being arrested won't be so bad," he said, patting her shoulder with an ink-smeared hand.
Callista, who under other circumstances might've been amused at the mage's uncharacteristic spark of malice, shot him a look of pure venom.
The next afternoon, Callista sat on her bed with a large map of Kalimdor spread out across her quilt, narrowing her eyes in the general direction of Winterspring. A tough leather pack, half filled with traveling gear, slumped against her side.
So far today she'd already been to The Slaughtered Lamb to speak with Madame Fairchild (the woman had been alarmed at her news, then smug, then coolly indifferent to Callista's fate, in approximately that order) and down to the docks to speak with the Stormwind harbormaster. An irritable clerk had informed her that yes, the ship The Fortitude was due to depart at sunrise tomorrow, commissioned by a knight of the Argent Dawn to sail to the elven port of Auberdine, but had refused to tell her anything more.
The whole morning gone, and she'd learned nothing she hadn't already known or couldn't have guessed.
She prodded the stylized tree on the map that represented Auberdine, tracing her fingertip across the murky green blotch that marked Felwood. From what she'd gathered, they were to land at the port and then travel east through the forest – but why? The only thing on the other side was Winterspring. Even if this mysterious group of settlers had landed there, it would be easier to approach from the south and avoid Felwood (and the inhospitable mountain range that bounded it) altogether. Unless the settlement was in the mountains. But who in the Nether would make their home there?
Frustrated by the lack of answers, she swept the map aside and climbed off the bed, pulling her wardrobe open and scowling at the contents. Beginning to pack felt unpleasantly like surrender.
She pawed through the clothes hanging before her, pulling out a black robe with crimson accents and eyeing it critically. Callista had two full sets of arcanist's attire; one was the silver and green outfit she wore on legitimate business, bearing only the sort of enchantments typical to fire mages, and the other was this. Many of the runes woven into it were demonic, and though it was better suited to the kind of magic she wielded, it would mark her instantly as a warlock to anyone who looked at her.
After a brief moment of indecision she grabbed the black robes and tossed them onto her open pack. That expedition wanted a warlock…well, now they had one. If they didn't like what they'd ended up with, maybe they should reevaluate their recruitment methods.
Matters of attire resolved, she cast the map one last frustrated glance before leaving the room and stalking downstairs to the pantry. She shifted aside a sack of flour to clear a trapdoor set into the solid planks of the floor and pulled the iron ring set into its end, revealing a wooden staircase that led down into shadow. If she was really going through with this farce, she'd need more than just clothes.
She waved a hand as she descended to light the torches set in brackets around the room below. The walls were roughly square and made of grey stone, but the floor below was earth; probably it had been a root cellar before the warlock turned it to less ordinary purposes. Shelves cluttered with books and various arcane objects sat along two walls, while a permanent summoning circle dominated the center of the floor, glowing with purple and green runes.
Callista made straight for the far shelf, rustling among the objects laid upon it until she pulled out a dagger in a thick leather sheath. She didn't usually go armed, having little skill with any kind of weapon, but luckily this one didn't require much – it was a Legion blade, and the enchantments on it made any wound it delivered devilishly hard to staunch. She slid the dagger from its sheath, noting with satisfaction the sickly shine of the metal, before replacing it and snagging a bag of infernal stones and an almost full pouch of soul shards with her free hand. Better to bring more than she thought she'd need – paladins seemed to have few qualms about smashing things with those hammers, but they got very squeamish about souls.
Her gaze fell on a basketful of ensnared demons, a pile of spheres glowing a poisonous green with dark figures floating at their hearts, and her brow furrowed. She didn't know what sort of token "compensation" she would receive for this expedition, but it wouldn't come close to equaling what she'd miss out on here. She wouldn't even be able to sell the crystals she'd already empowered.
A vindictive impulse to sabotage the wards on a few and wedge them beneath the axles of the first noble carriage she saw seized her, but was only barely outweighed by practicality. Those enchantments would hold for years, and she could always sell them upon her return. Besides, the way her luck had been running lately, the demons would probably manage to claw their way out in a crowd of schoolchildren, or kittens, or something equally tragic.
Shaking her head, she tucked the scabbarded dagger and the two pouches beneath her arm, ascending the stairs and waving out the torches. She was already mostly packed, had exhausted all the potential sources of information she could reach in a day, and had sent a letter to Lord Duncan in the morning post, requesting that he mail his reply to Auberdine. With any luck, he'd demand her immediate return to Stormwind.
Satisfied that she'd done all she could to prepare herself for the morrow, Callista was left with the remainder of the afternoon and evening to kill. The temptation to start drinking now and show up at the docks at sunrise hungover and utterly unfit for duty was very strong, but she was torn as to whether her commander's dismay would be worth spending the rest of the day emptying her stomach over The Fortitude's side.
Oh, well.
Tossing the leather pouches onto her kitchen table, she dropped into a chair and tapped her fingernails thoughtfully against the wood, staring at the swirl of the grain without really seeing it. Perhaps she'd make her way over to The Blue Recluse now and just see how things worked out.
The next morning, she led her horse, burdened with packs, through the murky darkness that preceded the first glint of dawn. Nothing else stirred in the streets, and the clip-clop of the mare's hooves struck lonely echoes from the cobbles. Callista yawned, rubbing her wrist against her eyes to clear the sleep from them. Last night had ended in a compromise: she'd only drunk half as much as she'd initially intended, and even though she wasn't hungover – exactly – she was still exhausted and had an unpleasantly empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. Hopefully the seas would be smooth today, and her shipmates would be sensible enough to leave her alone.
The mare's ears pricked and she snorted as the first sounds of Stormwind's port disturbed the pre-dawn silence.
Callista grimaced at the voices of sailors and seabirds, mood souring. Until this moment, she'd managed to hold out some hope, no matter how small or irrational, that she'd somehow manage to evade this journey. But now, with the laden mare plodding at her side as the masts of ships rose above the dark profile of the city, inevitability settled in heavily. She was really sailing to Auberdine, and there was really nothing she could do about it.
She muttered a curse under her breath.
Leading her horse around the next corner, the long piers of the harbor came into view, crowded with moored ships and lit by dozens of lanterns carried by sailors or hanging from posts set onto the piers themselves. The cries of seabirds awakened by the noise floated down from the dark sky, and the leaping shadows caused by the sway of the lights only added to the impression of hurried activity. It was more than sailors and the large ships that caused it; many small fishing boats were already putting out to sea for the day, and the space between the piers and the large warehouses that serviced them was thick with animals and carts preparing to be loaded into ships' holds.
Callista dragged her reluctant mare into the midst of the chaos, too tired to be very careful as the crowd jostled her against merchants' carriages and sleepy-looking sailors. A great deal of cursing (some of it directed at her) and the clatter of wood against wood filled the salty air. She returned various shouted oaths with scowls as she pushed her way towards the third pier.
The Fortitude, a four-masted clipper with a raked-forward bow, sat tied to it with hawsers thicker than Callista's wrists. Not being a merchant vessel, her pier was at least less crowded with carts and squawking animals than some of the others, but there were still plenty of sailors dashing about, as well as an assortment of more bewildered-looking people who Callista assumed were passengers. She wondered which of them was Sir Aren Westwood. Her scowl became more pronounced at the thought.
No one took any notice of her as she halted her mare at the edge of the pier and looked around skeptically. A sailor led a horse barded in the Argent Dawn's black, silver and gold up the gangplank, confirming that she was in the right place, but who here was she supposed to announce herself to? She was gathering the energy to flag down one of the many ship's hands hurrying past when a strange male voice addressed her.
"Excuse me, miss?"
She turned to see the speaker, and blinked as she got a good look at him. A curly-haired human man clad in a black and silver tabard over chainmail smiled back at her. He was very broad-shouldered, and short enough to make her wonder if there was dwarven blood in his family, but that wasn't what made her stare: a large purple bruise swelled his left cheekbone, and he had another, almost identical man (who she took to be his brother) clinging to his shoulder for support. This other man swayed slightly, and though the right half of his face was clean-shaven (though nicked), the other half sported a day's growth of beard.
"Are you Sir Aren?" Callista asked, looking doubtfully between the first man and his blearily-grinning brother.
The man shook his head with an apologetic smile. "I'm Nathanial Redbranch, and this is my brother, Anduin."
"That's Ander, to everyone who isn't a twit," his brother interrupted with a glare at Nathanial, clapping him (mostly affectionately) on the shoulder. The movement almost caused him to lose his balance, and he had to clutch at his brother's pauldron again to regain it. "Our mother wanted a war hero, but instead she got me," he added in a mock-sorrowful whisper to Callista.
"I'm sorry you have to see him like this," Nathanial said, shaking his head. "He's not usually this drunk."
"I hate boats," Ander pronounced as though that settled everything, glowering at the innocuous wooden side of The Fortitude.
"Are you in Sir Aren's company, too?" Nathaniel asked, ignoring his brother. "I can take care of your horse, if you want. I think the commander is calling a meeting on the pier before we board."
Callista eyed the two men indecisively, only partially due to Nathanial's offer. So, these were the people she'd be traveling with. She'd been determined to hate them, but she was finding the brothers extremely difficult to dislike. "Yes, thank you," she said neutrally, torn between her previous resolution to be as nasty as possible to everyone involved in this and her sudden impulse to be friendly.
"Stay. Here," Nathanial instructed his brother sternly, propping him up against a stack of crates prepared for loading. He waited until Callista had removed her packs and saddlebags before taking the mare's bridle. "This shouldn't take long," he assured her.
Ander looked her over from where he was leaning against a rope-trussed barrel for support, poking one of the nicks on the shaved half of his face. "Someone tried to kill me last night, you know," he said, leaning in earnestly, close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath. "He had a knife this long."
Callista made a face, prodding his armored shoulder with her finger until he stumbled back a step. "They couldn't have tried very hard," she said.
Nathanial made an exasperated noise, accidentally jerking the bridle and causing the white mare to snap at him. "Oh, for Light's sake, Anduin! No one tried to kill you. For one thing, it wasn't last night, it was this morning. And for another, it was me. Trying to help you shave."
"It was a criminal," Ander said with the supreme certainty of the very drunk. "And I punched him."
"Well, that part's true, at least," Nathaniel muttered, rubbing the purple bruise on his cheekbone. "Please make sure he doesn't fall in?" he asked Callista, glancing at Ander wearily.
After another brief moment of waffling, Callista resolved her dilemma in favor of the two brothers. Obviously, they weren't officers, and so had nothing to do with her conscription. That meant she could be nice to them without breaking her resolution to ruin the lives of everyone responsible for it.
Ander tried to sling an arm around her shoulder, smiling in a way he clearly believed to be charming, and she sidestepped neatly. "Well, I promise not to push him," she said, but her lip twitched as she did.
Nathanial sighed, rolling his eyes at his brother. "Good enough for me." Turning, he clucked his tongue at the white mare as he led her away down the pier.
Ander waited for him to meld into the crowd surrounding The Fortitude before turning back to Callista, grabbing at a crate as the motion unsteadied him. "I always knew it was Nate," he confided smugly. "I just felt like punchin' him."
Callista tried not to laugh, but failed as it came out a choked snort. "I take it you two aren't paladins?"
"Us? Nah," Ander said, waving a leather-gloved hand vaguely. She wondered if Nathanial had managed to get him into all that armor while he was drunk, or if he'd simply been wearing it last night. "I bet Nate could've done it, but they would never have taken me. Didn't want to be separated." He peered more closely at Callista, making an effort to focus his gaze. Since she wasn't wearing any robes, arcane or demonic, over her tunic, his inspection probably didn't tell him much. "Are you our mage?" he asked, finally. "Didn't know we were getting one."
"Sort of…" Callista said evasively, cocking her head. People's reactions to discovering she was a warlock were always interesting. Actually, they were often so interesting that Callista tried to avoid this kind of admission entirely, but since she'd been hired specifically for her talents with demons, she didn't really see the point of that now. Ander didn't seem like the type to launch into an appalled diatribe about the evils of the Twisting Nether, but you could never tell. Especially with drunks.
"'Sort of?'" Ander said, creasing his brow as he tried to reason that out through the whiskey in his brain. "How are you 'sort of' a mage?"
She held out her hand, and emerald-green flame flared briefly in her palm in answer.
For a moment, Ander's eyes widened. Then he wrinkled his nose and staggered slightly as he tried to eye her critically sideways. "You're the warlock? You don't look like one."
Callista snorted, not really offended and more unsurprised than anything, relieved his reaction wasn't worse. Most warlocks heard that sort of thing frequently – in all the common tales they were cast as villains, and were usually described as the storyteller's ideal of appropriately monstrous. It sometimes gave people some odd ideas. "What were you expecting? An orc?"
"Or a hag," Ander suggested cheerfully. His gaze traveled over her again, and he raised a brow lecherously at her as he grinned. "I think I'll get over it."
If he'd been sober that would've earned him at least a scornful look (Ander wasn't really her type, and Callista was neither shy nor delicate about deflecting unwanted attention), but since he was obviously very drunk, and not, on the whole, unlikeable, she chose to ignore his remark instead.
Ander seemed totally unaffected by her lack of interest. Actually, he shortly became distracted as a red-haired woman in low-cut green robes walked past with an armful of luggage, carrying the bags against her chest in a way that propped up her already remarkable bosom. If she noticed the man's leering, she didn't spare him a glare for it.
"Hey," Ander said once she'd passed, staring at Callista as though a brilliant idea had just occurred to him. "You can summon demons, riiiiight?"
"Yes, I have a succubus, and no, you won't like her as much as you think you will," Callista said, amused by his drunkenly eager expression. Letting Azlia loose on Ander would be wretchedly mean even by her standards.
"I think," Ander said, grinning wryly and wobbling as he tried to straighten himself against the crates, "that you're greatly overestimating my standards."
Actually, she was pretty sure she was exactly estimating his desire not to get stabbed in the neck, but Ander didn't seem to be in any frame of mind to take her word for it. Besides, the fact he'd been propositioning her not five minutes ago made his comment slightly less endearing than it might otherwise have been. "Do you ever get slapped in taverns?" Callista wondered, picturing what would happen if he made a similar remark to someone like Lady Devereux.
Ander blinked at her, his lopsided scruff adding to his incredulous expression. "How did you know?"
She probably would've enlightened him, but a female voice with a mild Ironforge brogue broke into the conversation. "Ander, are you pestering the lasses again?"
"Nah-uh!" Ander said. He managed, by executing an awkward hop-shuffle, to pivot around to face the lady dwarf without pitching onto his face. "She's not a lass, she's a warlock," he said with the satisfaction of someone who's just made an unassailable point.
Callista, who really ought to have been offended by now, was so tickled by the juxtaposition of Ander's obliviously pleased look with the flicker of horror in the dwarf woman's eyes that she doubled over with laughter.
The dwarf, who appeared, by the finely-wrought silver and gold plate armor she wore, to be a paladin, relaxed slightly once it became apparent that Callista was not about to summon a doomguard onto the hapless Ander's head. She sized her up for a moment before seeming to conclude that she wasn't immediately a menace. "If you set fire to his head, lass, I daresay the Light would forgive you," she said dryly.
"Would not!"
Callista had barely gathered enough breath to answer, but the sight of Ander's indignant, half-shaven face as he protested sent her into another gale of laughter.
The dwarf leaned against a massive warhammer that gleamed in the torchlight, waiting for her to settle herself. Clear green eyes winked from either side of her silver noseguard, and tightly braided red hair peeped from beneath her helm. "Wynda Threehammer," she said by way of introduction, once Callista managed to choke down her amusement long enough to look at her. "I can't say I care much for fiends, lass, but do your part and I daresay we'll all get on."
"Callista Dunhaven," the warlock said, sobering unpleasantly as the remark about doing her part reminded her why she was here, "and I don't think you have anything to worry about." Not past Auberdine, anyway, if she had any say in the matter.
Wynda nodded, apparently satisfied, and slung her hammer onto her armored shoulder as easily as if it were made of matchsticks. "Well, come along then. Nathanial sent me after you. Everyone else is ready to board."
Bowing to the unavoidable, Callista picked up her saddlebags, hefting one in each hand and looping the straps of her pack over her arm.
Ander pushed himself away from his pile of crates, weaving precariously along the edge of the pier until Wynda took pity on him and threw an arm around his waist. The dwarf was a head or two shorter than his brother, and Ander had to hunch slightly to lean on her shoulder. "You are exactly the wrong height for an armrest," he slurred, struggling to keep his grip on the smooth metal of her pauldron.
"Aye, but I'm still tall enough to box your ears, laddie, and don't you forget it," she said good-naturedly, steering him around a trio of bickering sailors.
Callista trailed a step behind them, disgruntled expression slowly creeping back onto her face. Wynda and the Redbranches may have been pleasant enough at first impression, but that did nothing to quell her ire at being saddled with a potentially deadly trip she wanted no part of.
Black seawater glimmered to her left, close below the level of the pier now that the tide was high. Sailors and passengers still thronged, dark shadows against The Fortitude's graceful bulk, but the tenor of the hubbub had changed. She could hear more farewells than shouted orders among the noise.
Wynda led them towards a knot of people gathered out of the way near a pile of discarded fishing nets, half-dragging Ander along in her purposeful stride. Four pairs of eyes, two faintly glittering and two bright with their own glow, turned to regard them as they drew close.
Callista lagged back further at the sight, even as Ander let go of Wynda's shoulder long enough to wave his arm in something that, if she turned her head and squinted, might have resembled a salute. The Night Elf, for that's who the silvery pair of eyes belonged to, didn't faze her (Night Elves distrusted most mages, and all warlocks, and though Callista reflexively returned the dislike she wasn't afraid of them), but the large Draenei who stood behind her gave her pause.
If the universe had set itself to create a race completely anathema to Callista, it couldn't have done much better than Draenei. She considered them a diabolical fusion of her two least favorite things in the world – Eredar warlocks and the Holy Light – and as a result avoided them twice as hard as she did either of those things separately.
Or at least she tried to.
Aware that there was no escape this time, she shifted her packs on her shoulder and picked up her head assertively as she approached in Ander and Wynda's wake. Nathanial gave a half smile and waggled his fingers at her in greeting, while the cool light of the elven woman's gaze swept over her appraisingly. She must've seen something she didn't like (perhaps she could sense the enchantments on the cursed dagger that hung at Callista's hip), because her expression hardened quickly.
Callista narrowed her eyes briefly at her on principle, but was pleased to note that the Draenei, at least, seemed mostly uninterested in her. He watched the mortals before him with patient indifference, muscular tail waving slowly. The glow from the warhammer strapped to his back, its head comprised of a massive spar of purple crystal, waxed and waned gently.
"Everyone present and accounted for, Sir Aren," Wynda said, planting her hammer against the dock with a thud as she addressed the last man in the group.
Callista dropped her packs as she came to halt at her side, turning her gaze to Sir Aren with open hostility. The man was younger than she'd expected. Fair-haired and clean-shaven, he was clad in well-kept plate armor and handsome enough, she supposed, in the wholesome way she'd never much appreciated. Callista couldn't have pictured a more typical-looking paladin if she'd tried, and the fact did nothing to endear him to her.
If the venom in her stare took him aback, he didn't show it. His eyes rested on her for a moment before sweeping across the rest of the company. "For those of you I don't know, my name is Sir Aren Westwood. I command this venture by authority of the Argent Dawn." He paused, smiling slightly. "You all know what you enlisted for, so I won't bore you with repetition. The Fortitude sails at first light, and I request that you all gather on deck half a bell before then to be shown to your quarters. Until then, your time is your own."
Most of the party simply nodded or looked on attentively…except Ander.
"Sir, yes, sir," he said glibly, ignoring Wynda's elbow jabbing into his mailed side.
Nathanial groaned and clapped his palm over his eyes as Sir Aren studied his clearly whiskey-sodden brother with raised brow. "What I don't know about, Ander, I can't report for being unfit for duty. Are we clear?"
Ander had the grace to look at least approximately sheepish. "Sir, yes – ow!"
Wynda's second thrown elbow was somewhat more effective.
Callista found herself glad that she'd rejected her initial plan to show up drunk – she'd have been terribly upstaged.
Sir Aren seemed to be finished, and the others were focused on Ander with varying amounts of amusement and irritation, so she took the opportunity to pick up her bags again and move away a little down the pier. Luckily for the paladin, Callista didn't believe in airing her dirty laundry in public, but once she had a spare moment aboard ship she intended to hunt him down and make sure he understood exactly how she felt about his little adventure – and what she intended to do about it. Callista didn't like being blindsided. Or manipulated.
Until then, she was happy to stay out of the way and avoid a confrontation with either that Draenei or the Night Elf woman, who had noticed her departure and was watching her distrustfully. Put off by her stare, Callista twisted her magic into a seeking spell as she returned the look. Since there weren't any demons around the docks, it didn't do anything useful, but it did cause a wholly unnatural green glow to burn in the pupils of her eyes, prompting the Night Elf's lip to curl back a little from her white teeth.
Callista had never seen how the Kaldorei had earned their holier-than-thou attitude when it came to the younger races. Once they'd nearly destroyed Azeroth, and once they'd saved it – she didn't think one for two was a very spectacular record.
"Callista!"
The familiar voice forestalled any more brooding on the subject. Her expression lightened somewhat as she turned to see Tun's lopsided smile, still hazy with sleep.
"I thought I'd come see you off," he said, yawning and rubbing his eyes with his fist. The gnome never had been fond of mornings, and Callista was rather touched he'd made the effort. He glanced at something over her shoulder, did a swift double-take and made a face. "Making friends already?"
Callista twisted around to see the Night Elf's luminous silver eyes regarding them both with haughty disapproval.
"They don't like mages much either, you know," she said, looking back to Tun.
Tun crossed his arms skeptically. "Maybe if you just tried being nice to her…"
"She glared at me," Callista protested. True, her blatant display of fel magic hadn't helped matters, but it wasn't like she'd come here to win people over.
For a moment Tun looked like he was going to pursue that further, then he shook his head, rubbing his eyes again. "Just…be careful," he said, for the hundredth time since two days ago.
Callista rolled her eyes affectionately, appreciating the concern but not sharing it. "I don't think the Argent Dawn will actually let her put an arrow through me."
"It's not the Dawn I'm worried about." He tilted his head at her reproachfully, green hair still tousled from sleep. "You're going to Felwood. We both know what sort of things live there."
"Demons?" Callista tried, arching a brow. She knew very well that the Shadow Council was probably closer to what he meant. Or at least, one particular member of it. She'd never told him that Nerothos had sought her out after their less than amicable parting outside the walls of Stormwind, and she never intended to – some things, her friend was happier not knowing.
"Yes," Tun muttered. "Demons."
"Don't worry so much," she said. "I don't intend to get that far, anyway."
"Good." He hesitated, frowning doubtfully. "Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?"
"Yes," Callista said firmly. He'd made this offer last night, too, and she'd said the same thing then. The last time she'd dragged him into one of her misadventures, he'd nearly been killed, and the hours before she'd realized he was alive had been some of the most harrowing of her life. She wouldn't put either of them through that again. Besides, Nissa would throttle her.
"I assumed you'd say that," he said with his sheepish smile, "but I thought I'd check. Just please promise me you won't go looking for trouble."
Callista interpreted this to mean "please don't lead those poor paladins straight to Jaedenar and leave them there." She'd be lying if she said the idea hadn't occurred to her at least briefly, but she doubted she'd have to resort to that. "I promise."
"And remember to write me."
"Paladin's honor," she said, quirking her lips and holding her hand up as though making a vow.
"Good," he said, satisfied. He yawned again, guttering torchlight throwing shadows across his face. "Now, don't miss your boat."
"Oh, go back to bed," she said fondly, rolling her shoulders to settle her packs more comfortably. "I'll see you in a fortnight, tops."
"I hope so." He laced his fingers together to stretch, movement revealing that he'd buttoned his outer robes slightly crookedly in his early-morning stupor. He noticed the same time she did, looking down at himself and wrinkling his nose before throwing his hands up dismissively. "Safe travels," he said.
She gave him a brief smile and wave before turning back towards the ship, sparing a glance for the grey light stealing above the horizon. The sea rippled the color of quicksilver, and the lanterns were beginning to look washed out. Soon it would be sunrise.
Most of her company was nowhere in sight, but Nathanial lingered on the pier in a pool of fading torchlight, saying farewell to a young woman with a sleepy child in her arms. He kissed them both goodbye (the woman looked unhappy but resigned) and then slung his pack over his shoulder, catching up to Callista as she reached The Fortitude's weathered gangplank.
"Excited?" he asked, wistfulness in his smile as his gaze was drawn over her shoulder to the woman on the pier.
Callista laughed dryly, pulling a face at Tun, who waved as he turned to depart. The yells of sailors untying the hawsers that bound the ship to shore mingled with the easy lap of the bay against the wood.
"You have no idea."
A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who's reviewed/faved so far, it's really encouraging to know people are still interested! For those who are wondering - yes, this will eventually come back around to the epilogue of Hell for the Company, and we will get to see what Nerothos has been up to. He actually has quite a large role in this, he's just got better things to do than watch Callista screw up her life in Stormwind:-p