I put my hands in front of me and watched them shake with effort as I slowly pulled myself up onto all fours. I forced down the nausea that was threatening to overwhelm me from my trip through the mirror of paradox. When I was sure I wasn't going to throw up on the wooden floor panels, I slowly raised my head to look around me.
I found three different pair of eyes staring at me, instantly spreading goosebumps on my skin. I didn't like being stared at. Or any attention at all.
The first pair of eyes were dim grey, belonging to a beautiful young woman with strawberry blonde hair in a dress of a regal purple shade with golden patterns. She had an inviting, yet slightly mischievous smile on her lips. The woman was sitting in a pretty relaxed position in a chair under a window, eyeing me with something aching to glee. Like she was expecting me to entertain her.
The second pair of eyes were amber colored ones on the face of a middle aged man with black, messy, shoulder length hair and a full beard, kept relatively short. The man wore a black robe with grey linings at the hem and had a worn leather belt around his middle. He stood with his back half to me in front of a large bookcase, hands behind his back. Something about his stare was more chilling than the others.
The third pair were an uncomfortably familiar shade of grey blue. Uncomfortable in the way that I felt I knew those eyes, that I had spent a long time memorizing that exact hue of blue- and yet those eyes were on a completely unfamiliar face. They didn't belong above that straight nose, under those dark brown, furrowed eyebrows. I tried to break away from their stare in favor of getting a complete look at the owner of those eyes, taking in the muscular form that was sitting on a chair across from the other two, his broad back turned to me. His face was that of a young man, relatively handsome in a messy kind of way- mostly due to his chaotic hair and a couple of days old stubble covering the lower part of his face.
"All right lass, let's get ye up" The dwarven voice from the inn sounded behind me before I felt a strong hand on my upper arm, heaving me up. My body felt like dough as I struggled to find my balance but after a few moments, I managed and shrugged the large hand off me.
"Well then, since we're all accounted for, let's begin the introduction, yeah?" The dwarf continued, "This handsome devil over yonder is Melton Alvingham. He doesn't talk much but don't let that get to ye." The raven haired man in the black robe nodded in greeting. I didn't respond to his gesture, my head reeling.
"And this lovely dame," the dwarf gestured towards the blonde woman with the knowing smile, "is headmistress Wanda Claridge."
"She's far quieter than her brother" The woman remarked and the world around me stopped. I felt as if the wind had been kicked out of me and found the familiar feeling of fear crawl up my spine, along with an unfamiliar sense of anger,
"Where is he?" I asked, my voice betrayed by the slightest of tremors
"Where's Zane?" I asked again, this time more forceful.
I watched as the woman's smile stretched out, reminding me of the cheshire cat. It only served to fuel my anger and I felt my body grow cold with it. My hands formed into fists that were hidden under the far too long sleeves of my shirt.
"...Ruth?"
My head whipped to the younger male in the middle of the room. His grey blue eyes were looking at me widely, questioningly. I stared back, strangely drawn in by those eyes. I felt my anger dissipate for some reason. Then I saw it. It had been there for a split second only, the ghost of an image of a scrawny young man with blond hair and the exact same hue of blue in his eyes.
"Zane?" I croaked. It couldn't be. And yet…
"Aye, lass, the last of the bunch is Zane, no last name. But I doubt I'mma have to introduce yer very own brother, hm?"
I simply stared. I couldn't form words in my head and wasn't about to mumble some gibberish, so I kept my mouth shut while my head tried to calm the storm of thoughts within it. "Here, let's get ye seated, yeah? We'll explain, lass, that's why we're here, don't worry yer pretty little head."
I let the dwarf take a hold on my arm again and dumbly followed as he led me to a chair right next to the messy haired, young man. This was Zane? But how? What happened to him?
"Good then," Drum sighed, a pleased smile on his lips, "now that we're all here and relatively calm, let us begin this meeting. Zane, Ruth, it's a pleasure to finally meet the two of ye. We've been expecting ye for quite some time now, let me tell ya."
I had a hard time listening to the dwarven man's words in between his thick scottish accent and me trying to accept the fact that the handsome young man on the chair beside me was actually my brother- who was staring at me like an animal in a zoo, along with three other people in the very same room with expression varying from puzzlement, amusement, excitement and nonchalance.
Yeah, my attention span was shortening with every second.
"We know exactly what yer going through at the moment. Ye are confused, frightened and maybe feelin a little insane. Though I can't testify to yer sanity, I can tell ye that ye are safe here with us and that we will try to explain everything to ye as well as we can, yeah?"
The dwarf paused and I realized after a while he was waiting to see if we were following him so far. I nodded slowly, signaling him to continue. I was feeling sick and I had a killer headache but the heavens knew I needed some answers or I really would go insane.
"Excellent," Drum continued, "now, ye might find this hard to believe but the three of us here, along with a handful of others, have all been in yer shoes before. We came from a different reality- planet Earth, to be exact- and once we died, we woke up again in this reality. In Azeroth.
"Azeroth, you see, is a world full of wonder. Sights you'd never though would be possible to ever see, people you hoped you never would meet and magic! That's right, I swear on me name, I jest ye not: magic. It sounds preposterous, no doubt, but the two of ye have been here long enoigh- ye must have seen things in the last few days that made you feel ye were losing a few screws. But here I am, a humble dwarf, telling ye to have faith, 'tis all true."
Drum took a dramatic pause while he examined our faces, likely to see how we were taking his lecture so far. I was gripping my shirt tightly around my legs from the time where he mentioned we were dead. I knew it, but apparently I had held to the tiniest hope that all of this was just a very weird, long dream.
And then there was the affirmation I had been seeking all this time. Here this dwarf stood, telling us we were in Azeroth. It had been confirmed.
I had finally lost it.
Zane seemed to be more confused than anything, I noted when I turned to see how he was taking this. I then watched as his furrowed brows unwrinkled and the tiniest tug at the corner of his lips appeared as he faced me. "Told you. I knew this was World of Warcraft."
A sudden urge to punch that self-satisfied smirk off his face washed over me, but a small breadcrumb of grace somewhere inside my core stopped me. "And I agreed with you," I said between my gritted teeth, "I merely noted that there was no reasonable way we could be there because that's insane!"
For a moment, I had forgotten where I was and in which company but the shame was not far away once I remembered. I felt my ears warm up and I sweat formed in my ice cold palms.
"World… of Warcraft?" Drum asked after a long, suffocating period of silence. I was confused by his look of bewilderment. Had he never heard of WoW? Didn't he say there were a handful of us here? Was it even possible that none of them had known that this world was recognized on Earth in the form of a video game? I suddenly realised that telling them this world was known as a video game might not be the best of ideas.
"Yeah, though we usually just call it WoW. It's a computer game, haven't you heard of it before?"
But, of course, I had an idiot for a brother.
The silence in the room was suffocating. It was a long while before I managed to raise my head from the suddenly interesting, old floorboards to face the people in the room. I almost regretted it.
Wanda, the woman who had been situated under the window, spoke up first, her amused expression completely wiped off, replaced by an angry calm. I felt myself shudder at the sight, and my muscles tightened up, as if they were ready for me to make a run for it. I tried to calm myself down.
"You mean to tell us" the woman said through clenched jaws, "that you've already been acquainted with this world in the form of a simple game?"
It felt as if the room had suddenly gotten colder. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up and I swallowed with difficulty. The smiling, taunting woman from before seemed so dangerous now… So powerful.
I only hoped that Zane caught up on this dangerous atmosphere and kept his mouth shut.
"Yeah it's really popular, me and Ruth used to play it a lot."
And, then again, he wouldn't be my brother if he'd kept his mouth shut.
The old floorboards at my feet seemed so enticing in that moment, but I forced myself to look at the three strangers in front of us, I needed to know if I was in danger. Unconsciously, I began to look for escape routes and I noted the two windows in the room, along with a single wooden door behind us.
"That… Certainly is news to us, I must admit," Drum finally said, "Naturally, we have some questions regarding this new piece of information, but we will have time for that later, hm?" The question didn't seem to be directed at Zane and I, and I watched with silent apprehension whether the dwarf's words would be enough to dissipate the threatening aura that had so quickly filled the room.
Seconds- maybe minutes- passed in silent conversations before finally, Wanda quietly sat back down. I hadn't even noticed her standing up, such had been my panic. The man in the back of the room, who's name by now had escaped me, also seemed to have decided on a retreat- though something told me it would only be temporary.
A shudder ran through me as the air in the room slowly became breathable again and I took a deep, grounding breath.
"Is everything okay?" Zane finally asked and I had to squeeze my hands into fists, feeling the prickling sensation of fingernails in my palms to refrain from whacking him for being so atmospherically blind.
"Aye, lad, nothin' ta worry about." Drum replied, "This piece of information ye just gave us was simply surprising, is all. I never thought the new arrivals would be the ones giving us information." He chuckled, before clearing his throat. "Moving on," he made a single clap of his two rather unproportionally large hands, "it seems that we perhaps need not explain as much as we thought at first, which saves us some time.
"As I was telling ye before, ye are not the only ones to have found yerselves in this rather absurd situation, in fact, there are quite a handful of us in this world. We've come to call ourselves 'leapers', and we have a rather large network throughout Azeroth.
"The transaction- or 'leap', as we call it- of the soul between two worlds can of course be quite confusing for just about anyone, but it was a few decades ago that we realized we were not the only ones. We found each other, through hard work, obstinacy and with some help from magic, of course, and came to form some kind of a 'comfort group'-"
The blonde woman behind the dwarf snorted at that,
"And when we believed we were all gathered, or all of us that wished to be a part of our network, that is, we used the same means we used to find each other, to foresee the coming of new leapers. If we could do this, perhaps we could take some force from the trauma, help them with the transaction that so many of us struggled with, and that is why we are here." Drum spread out his arms, "we are yer welcoming committee." He ended with a satisfied smile, brown eyes sparkling behind those ridiculously bushy eyebrows of his.
I wasn't sure if he was expecting us to applaud, but I sat still, not really knowing what to do. It was good to have some information about what was going on, but this was almost too much to take in at once, and I found my head pounding while trying to keep up with this information.
"Any questions?"
I mulled it over for a while, searching for a reasonable question that would hopefully not anger anyone. Of course, 'reasonable' and 'careful' were not my brother's forte.
"Why are you a dwarf?" There was genuine curiosity written on Zane's face.
The dwarf blinked, "I beg yer pardon?"
"Well, if you came from our world, then you must have once been human, right? But then why are you a dwarf now? And why are the rest of us human?"
When he put it like that, I guess I was rather curious to know the answer myself.
I watched as Drum puffed up like a balloon waiting to pop- this was clearly a sore subject. "Well, We can't all just be perfect little humies, now can we?"
"Why not?" I almost winced at Zane's tactlessness but found myself fidgeting slightly in my seat instead.
"Actually," Wanda surprised me by speaking up after all this time, "we, too, have speculated much about the reason behind the selection of races. In our network of leapers, most of as are, indeed, human, but there are also a handful of other races such as dwarves, elves and a gnome."
I couldn't help but be surprised at that. To go from being a human to a gnome must have been a largely difficult transiction- no pun intended.
"We do not know for sure the reason for this variety," She continued, "but we have deduced it may have something to do with our personalities. Drum here, for example, is a natural explorer, as are all of the other dwarves in our network. They are also very emotional." She added with a smirk directed at Drum, who simply nodded at that.
"The elves seem to be calm in nature, value solitary to a degree and are very wise. It also so happens that both of them died at an older age than most of us, which explains a lot about their nature." I nodded along to her explanation, taking it all in.
"Then what about humans?" Zane asked, voicing the question in my own head.
"We humans," she began, "seem to be the most flawed." I raised an eyebrow at that, but otherwise kept my mouth shut. I was good at that.
"We are curious in nature," she explained, "often times reckless, most often secretive and untrusting."
"Now, lassie," Drum intersected, "Don't be so pessimistic. He gave Zane and I another one of his warm smiles. "You are indeed curious, and therefore constantly seek knowledge. This is an admirable trait," he nodded once, for empathizes, "Reckless, is just another word for bravery, and while most of ye do, indeed, have some trust issues," he glanced at Wanda, amused, "ye oftentimes make the most loyal friends once ye allow yerself to open up to others."
He had a way with words that dwarf, I'd give him that. There was a pause of silence, everyone no doubt mulling over their own thoughts. The pause, however, was interrupted by the sounds of a clearing throat, and everyone turned to look at the silent, dark-cled man in the back of the room, back still turned to us, eyeing the huge bookshelf in front of him. It was the first time anything had been heard from him all this time.
"Right," Drum said with a nod, an unspoken message seemingly received. "This greeting should be complete by now. Zane, Ruth, the heavens know this has all been a lot to take in, and ye no doubt have many unanswered questions still, but we have plenty of time.
"We do deem it necessary, however, to name one rule to ye that you must absolutely follow without the tiniest exception"
It was the first time the dwarf actually looked serious, and I found myself straightening up in my seat.
"It is very important that the information ye just received, regarding the leapers, our network, and any- and everything that has the slightest to do about planet Earth or yer previous lives stays as the top of everything secret. This is the one, most sacred rule, and it is for yer own protection as well as ours. Before we let ye leave this room, we will need ye to swear on this rule."
He wasn't being threatening, per se, but the seriousness of this message was very clear. Heck, even Zane looked serious which was for the first time this morning... or afternoon... or whatever the heck the time it was. I remembered that the three people of our welcoming committee were waiting for our reply.
"Yeah, sure." I heard Zane say from beside me. Drum nodded once in affirmation and then his deep brown gaze fell on me. I nodded, slowly but surely.
"I'm afraid I'm gonna have to hear ye say it, lass."
I found my ears heat up again. I had never been good at speaking on command. But I wasn't like my brother. I knew this was serious. I took a shaky breath,
"I swear."
The moment I said it, Drum lit up "excellent! Sorry about the sudden seriousness but it's standard procedure." He chuckled. "Anyways, with all that boring stuff out of the way, we're finally all done here. Ah, but I have an offer for the two of ye! Ye see, his loft," he gestured to the space around us, "belongs to my very own inn. I would like to extend to ye an invitation to stay here, free of charge, of course, while ye get yer feet back under ye. I will try my very best to inform ye of every thing about this world ye may need to know, until yer next journey." He looked at us each expectantly.
"What do ye say?"
This was a very generous offer no doubt, and I couldn't really see a reason as to why not to take him up on it, but I would make no decisions without the consent of my brother. I turned my head to face him, realizing he was already waiting for my opinion. I lifted my shoulder just slightly in response, to which Zane nodded and looked back at the dwarf.
"We accept your offer, thank you." I was satisfied with his manners this time around, glad that he hadn't forgotten everything our mama taught us during the leap.
"Excellent!" Drum roared, positively beaming.
"Well then, we'll say our goodbyes here," Wanda said, standing up and making her way towards us. She stretched out her hand towards me and I had to shake my long sleeve down my arm in order to grab her hand. I looked into her stormy grey eyes, and though her face belied amusement once again, there was another message hidden in her eyes. It made me uncomfortable and I tried not to make my eagerness obvious when I took my hand back.
"I'll see you two around," she said while shaking my brother's hand as well, before she moved towards the door behind us, where she stopped and streched out both of her hands. I watched in amazement as dazzingly blue and golden circles of light appeared around her palms, growing steadily before morphing into one big circle, until it had reached the same size as her.
She gestured towards the dark, mysterious man to come forth, which he did, nodding once as a greeting before stepping into the brilliant mirror of lights, disappearing as he did, followed by the waving Wanda.
A few seconds after they were both gone, the circle of dazzling light grew smaller and smaller before disappearing altogether, leaving stars in my eyes and Zane gaping beside me.
"Show off." Drum chuckled, breaking the silence. "Now let's go find the two of ye something to eat. Ye look skinny as a night elf!"
Author's Note:
I just wanted to say a quick thank you for those who have followed and/or favorited so far. It means a lot, so thanks!