The Mindless Ones

A House On Murder Row: Nine Entries in an Unknown's Journal

2007-09-29T08:08:48Z

A House On Murder Row: Nine Entries in an Unknown's Journal
Characters: Darda, Arduriel -- though neither are outright mentioned by name.
Notes: The names are all intentionally left blank here, though it's pretty obvious who they are. The author is nameless, as her character wasn't that important, and this is more my trying to map out the life of one of the Wretched before, y'know, they get all Wretched. Arr.

i.
The city is moving.

So many things are rising back up, and the air is scented with energy I have not experienced in a painfully long time. On the way to work I was nearly bowled over two men orchastrating the restoration of the statues outside an auction house. It did my heart much good to watch their splintered arms slide back into place, their torsos once again fit with the curve of their stone hips, and finally their severed heads rejoining with their necks! I must look at these things, though their devastation brings memories I could do without, and look forward to the future.

I am working in a lounge on one of the upper floors of a building. The area is less than reputable, but the house itself is very fine. There is a splendid main parlour with a balcony that allows a favourable view of the city -- so long as one does not look down -- and a great many well embroidered cushions. Those that attend the parlour in the evenings are not, as I first feared, those that I spy on the alleys below, but rather very handsomely dressed citizens, both men and women. No doubt some of their number are the very same magisters reviving the glory of our city! I feel safe knowing that I spend my working time with them.

The woman who runs it is named A---- S----. Her face seems very taut, and her eyes are quite small, but otherwise she is very handsome herself. I am not naive, I understand the image that I will have to project as a hostess here, but A---- has assured me that I am more than capable. She even expressed interest when I informed her of my singing, and perhaps will let me perform in the parlour.

There are a number of other entertainers here, but as of yet none seem especially keen to talk with me. I spied a girl with red hair writing in a book in the lounge before the parlour opened, and thought perhaps we shared an interest in the keeping of journals. Not so.

"It's a drawing of A--- being ravished by two crocolisks," she informed me when she caught me looking. When I gave the page the briefest of glances and gasped, she apologised for the anatomy, and explained that she'd only seen crocolisks in books before.

ii.
The nights here are very loud. I have not yet been given an opportunity to sing, but every evening it seems there are entertainers of some breed -- and between each piece, A--- sets the instruments to play by themselves. It makes me recall what a avid music enthusiast my brother was. I wish it wouldn't.

I enjoyed a great deal of attention from the patrons tonight. It seemed that there is no end to the interesting people who wished to speak with me! It is good to see that so many, who have gone through such terror, can still laugh at a joke, or enjoy simple things like sharing stories. I find myself admiring their ability to bolster themselves with a smile despite all their hardships -- I am not yet able to feel like my own happiness is genuine. The hope nearly brings tears to my eyes. It is good to see a people come together!

The girl I caught drawing in the parlour the other day asked me how I was adjusting. She said A---- told her to. Her name is D----. At first I thought she was A----'s daughter, the way the two of them seem to talk to one another, but this is clearly not the case. D---- lacks the graciousness that A---- has displayed me, and though she is apparently the youngest here, the rings below her eyes are most unbecoming. It is no wonder she spends the longest preparing for work in the evenings.

I told her I was fine.

iii.
I am feeling brittle with embarrassment. I awoke screaming last night, the result of a nightmare that I have been experiencing for some days now. The sound roused the two girls I have been sharing a room with, both of which seemed angry. I apologised for the interruption, but I fear my hands are still shaking.

I miss them, my father and mother, my brother, my sister... I feel so guilty for having outlived them when I was always the weakest. It is a great cruelty that I should survive the Invasion and they should not.

A---- took one look at me and told me to take the night off and find a way to replenish my mana. She must have seen how poorly I am feeling. I was so overcome with gratitude that I could not respond at all before she closed her door on me.

iv.
The realisation is beginning to dawn that I will never sing here. A---- keeps putting me off whenever I broach the subject, and by this point there is an edge of irritation creeping into her tone. I'll stay quiet for now, but I know I can do better than some of the girls who've performed. She suggested to pass the time that I keep up my colour by tapping those animals she keeps.

As the city has repaired, the evenings have become busier. I can only assume that this is because, with so many working, there are now so many more that need to unwind, but I am unsure. I have so little time to think when I'm not sleeping. The patrons continue to speak a great deal to me, but there is an expectation on their faces that was -- if not absent entirely -- subdued on nights past.

I expressed by concerns about this to one of the other girls, L----, this past evening, and she assured me that there is a world of difference between our parlour and the less reputable ones along Murder Row. We keep patrons company, keep them happy and coming back for more relaxation, wine, and smoke from our pipes, we are not for sale. D---- was listening. Her only contribution was a snort.

v.
A man in the lower alley this morning tried to grab me on my way to the Exchange. I could barely make out his face -- he was backlit by an enormous gem that was being lifted into place at the top of one of the new spires. Perhaps he was someone I knew, but I ran. His lack of a face made me imagine rows of teeth, peeling skin, bloody jaws in its place. It turned my insides to ice. I have been pulling magic from mana wyrms all afternoon, and my eyes burn.

Last night I discovered what the patrons have been wanting from me. It happened in one of the small rooms that branch off the main parlour like the legs of a spider. He found it amusing, I think, to pull the mana from me when he knows that A---- will immediately supply me with the means to more. He did not have to hold my mouth shut. He did not have to be so close. He did not need to do that to me when there are creatures we use for that instead.

I thought of what my brother looked like after he died, in the split second before I had to run.

vi.
I spent a long while examining the statues outside the auction house today. I can no longer even tell where they were broken -- the magic has smoothed them together entirely -- but I still remember what those pieces looked like when I saw them fit together that day. I dislike the look of them. I want to see the seams, the tears, the chips that they suffered. How else are we reminded how they were ravaged? How else may we remember to never let it happen again?

The bright light of the city gives me headaches. I plan to sleep until the evening.

vii.
How can they spend night after night engaged in festivities when outside more atrocities gather in that Scar? The parlour remains busy, with some patrons not leaving until first light. Do I have any better excuse to be there than they do, simply because it is how I have decided to be employed there? They all come from such magnificent Houses, I would assume they have means where I do not. If this is not true, and the Scourge has made equals of us all, why am I still treated as I am? Why are they so content to pretend as if nothing has happened?

I refused to go to the parlour this evening. A---- sent D---- out to find me, which she did after I unlocked the door for her. She seemed almost smug that I was not doing well. "This new world's not for everyone," she said. I wanted to strike her, but she was not close enough, and I did not feel like moving. She also said she was told to tell me that if I came into work tomorrow A---- would furnish me with all the mana I needed to feel better. It sounds easier than seeking it out myself.

A part of me says I need only to stay patient until the Prince returns, but it drives me mad not knowing how long that will be, how long I will have to bear this grief.

viii.
I despise these people. I loathe how useless they've allowed themselves to become, how easily they seem to have forgotten the carnage that happened on the very streets they walk each day. The cleanliness of the city makes me rabid -- I want to see the buildings torn down again, the blood on the streets, the chewed bones and gristly shredded flesh. I want to remember, I want to never forget, I want to mourn them properly and I want to stop being robbed of my pain by these brooms and these magics and these sparkling stones.

Work has become automatic to me. I go through through the motions, I stay still when needed, I smile when cued by jokes they've forgotten they've told a dozen times before. In the early morning I peel off the jewels A----'s given me to wear in glinting strips, like so much dead skin. I feel raw and pink when I crawl into bed. I lie still through the day, staring instead of sleeping so that I won't have more nightmares. Evenings are filled with so much mana that I feel like I'm breathing glass, and it's heady and thick and brilliant until it thins and leaves me gasping.

ix.
My ink won't last the page.

I've left the parlour. D---- was the one to remove me. She said she'd speak to A---- about letting me in for the night in exchange for one of my bracelets. She didn't come back out.

I remember feeling like I was suffocating. The man next to me had a hand on my leg and his fingers felt like claws, the woman beside me kept laughing and each note was a dagger, her mouth was right next to my ear, and both were grinning and speaking and swirling their words with the smoke from their pipes until everything they said hung heavy around me, and there was a haze, a grey haze, that not even the keening of the singer could break. I felt my scream crawl up the back of my throat, acidic, biting, until it punched its way out of me.

Things were very silent. Or maybe they weren't. I can only recall my voice, parched from lack of use, from too much that meant too little, ringing through the room. I screamed about my mother who was torn apart, my father who disappeared, my brother who lost his head, my sister who was pulled in two before she was eaten. I screamed for them to remember, to tell their own stories, to stop just stop please act like it happened, please tell me I'm not the only one who was ruined, please stop please leave please don't pull me apart all over again

A---- put a hand on my shoulder. She told me I was brave. She addressed the room and ordered everyone a glass of wine, free of charge, so that we could make a toast to the fallen. She said that tomorrow, when things are clear and our emotions have cooled, we should take up arms and fight against that which lurks beyond the city. She ordered everyone another round in honour of my honesty. Then she quietly told D---- to lock me outside and not ever let me back in.

The sun's alm st up now. My ink s almo t out. I kn w no one in M rder Row. I kno no one in the C ty. I am so th rsty. I a so painf lly thirs y

A House On Murder Row: Darda & Asric, Part II

2007-09-29T08:03:34Z

A House On Murder Row: Darda & Asric, Part II
Characters: Darda, Arduriel, Asric
Other Parts: Part I

She didn't see him for a week.

Not that she spent the time complaining. If anything Darda felt humiliated, to the point where even guests at Arduriel's parlour wondered at her rather distracted demeanour, her less than devoted attention when they attempted to regale her and her coworkers with various meandering anecdotes. By the time Asric came around, snaring her wrist in his hand as she passed by a corridor, she'd only just begun swallowing her pride about the whole thing.

The girl glared at the dark haired elf trapping her in the hallway. "Piss off," she hissed.

"I have something for you," he began quickly, his tone low. When she moved to jerk her arm from his grasp, he allowed her to break free. Just as well, as his hand was needed in order to dip into his vest, an endeavour which, a moment later, produced a sealed letter.

The paper was eyed several long moments until, flatly, she asked, "What's that then?"

"I wanted to apologize." Again his eyes darted along the length of the corridor, then settled once more on her form, cloaked as it was in gaudy jewels and silks. "... but I'm absolutely wretched at the things," he continued, his grin light, faint, before fading once more. The letter was extended to her. "So I wanted to give you this instead."

A snort, a skeptical once over of the elf in front of her, and she snatched the paper from him. "If it's poetry I'll be ill for days."

"Just read it," he instructed, then leaned in towards her for a parting kiss. His lips, however, met only air. Darda herself had rather indelicately pushed the letter into her dress and turned away.

********************

"You feel that heat? I believe fresh air's in order," the red haired girl very nearly purred into the ear of the man beside her. The pair shared a cushion, the material a rich and heady purple, trimmed around the edge in gold like so many of the other pillows the room boasted. Around them the parlour's other clientele found themselves in similar states of repose, and littered here and there, glinting with the gold of their hairpins and the metallic threading of their delicate gowns, were the enterprises' employees. And because she was fair, but not by any stretch the prettiest one in the room, the man beside the redhead let her excuse herself without much protest.

Darda expertly picked her way through the hookahs and wine bottles that decorated the room's floor, her destination the much less opulant hallway most of the girls took to get into the building for their shifts. She mumbled something to one of the young women in the hall, bartered a small stack of bloodthistle for a brightly skinned apple, and set up temporary camp in the open doorway. It was difficult to eat while at the same time keep her make up intact, but practice had rather made perfect.

When Asric appeared in the alley beside her, she nearly choked.

"Piss--"

"... off, I know, I'm aware," he finished hurriedly, taking up a spot against the wall beside her. The man arched one dark eyebrow and lifted his chin in a mild prompt. "Well?"

"Well... piss off?"

His voice was thin. "Did you read it?"

Darda blinked, paused in her chewing for a moment. As her memories caught up with her, she slowly began to swallow the bite of apple in her mouth. "No," and then she added, "Not yet at least."

The reaction she received was a rather wide eyed one. "I gave it to you two days ago!"

The response made her hackles raise. She dropped the arm with the fruit still in it, shifted to look at him a little better, and frowned. "And I am not so subject to your charms that I desire nothing more than to waste my time on a love letter!"

"It wasn't a bloody love letter!" And then, with a short glance down the alley, he reined his voice in. When next he spoke, the volume was diminished, but not the urgency. "I did the research that you asked of me," he said, adding, "But some of the information detailed within is a touch... more delicate than I'd originally suspected."

Her forehead furrowed. "... what's that mean?"

Asric sighed roughly. "Just... where's the letter now?"

"I... probably left it in my dress," when his sigh turned into a groan she persisted, "but it's just upstairs, I could run and find it right now, so stop being so damned dramatic!"

"Go and get it. Please," he instructed, giving her one last exasperated look before pushing from the wall he'd been holding against, and moving to the other side of the alley instead. "Just... come to the balcony outside when you're done. Wave if you've got it, that's it, then I'll be gone."

Darda gave an irritated sigh herself, tossed the apple core at his feet, and picked up her skirts before dashing back into the building.

It wasn't in any of the joint dressing rooms. It wasn't (thankfully, she thought) dropped in any of the hallways, or between any of the large soft pillows amassed on the sunken floors of the main room. And though on the whole these were more or less positive things, it meant that there was only one other place where it could be -- the head hostess' office, Arduriel's, where often girls slipped in to perform a quick change behind their boss' painted screen.

Darda approached the door quietly, ducking down in order to press an ear against the wood. Silence. Gnawing for a moment on the inside of her lip, she slowly straightened, hand curling around the glinting door knob. The turning of it was quiet. So too was the push that brought the door open enough to enable her to slip through into the room beyond.

Arduriel's voice came, instantly, from behind the desk at the far wall.

"What is it?"

The young elven woman stiffened, closing the door behind her while at the same time scouring the room with her eyes -- particularly the section by the folding screen. "I was... just looking for something I... thought I saw here earlier."

Her dark haired hostess barely looked up from her ledger. "And what is that?"

When the brief search turned up empty, she chanced a look towards her superior. "A letter?"

The sound of the scratching that the quill made against the pages of the ledger stopped for an instant. "I've only found one letter on the premises recently," she began, eyes still on her paper. "And that letter I was compelled to hand over to city officials."

Darda stiffened. "Oh?"

"It was my duty as a citizen," Arduriel continued neatly, back to her writing. "I can't maintain the level of clientele I am seeking while at the same time allowing my business to become a grounds for such slander." At this point she glanced up at the girl by the doorway. "Imagine if one of the customers had discovered such a document?" The older woman's voice was clipped, sharp. Her attention dropped back to her papers, quill poised at the ready once more. "I do not wish to be styled as a house where society's betters cannot feel comfortable. No doubt the letter's author has been detained by authorities already."

The girl's head tilted. "You know the author then?"

Arduriel murmured an affirmative. "I suppose he'll learn his lesson when it comes to signing his name to inflammatory statements."

There was another pause before Darda spoke again. "... and was it addressed to anyone in particular?"

The scratch of the quill did not halt this time. "We'll never know," the hostess confessed in a moment, offering the girl the briefest of glances before adding, "I accidentally mistook the first leaf for kindling, and burned it in the fireplace."

Within a few moments the young elf had managed to excuse herself from the room, her cheeks heated, her heartbeat feeling sickly and thin. She was not so gainly this time as she picked her way through the hookahs and pillows on her way to the balcony, and when she arrived there she was forced to take a deep gulp of cool air and brace herself against the stone railing. The alley below was thinning in terms of traffic -- a drunk here, a stumbling couple turning the corner there, nothing much to block the sight of a darkly clad man waiting by the next building. She was able to catch Asric's eye in an instant.

He seemed to read the look on her face even before she lifted her hand to give a weak wave. Almost immediately he turned and began to head back down the alley, sidestepping a stray cat and taking a long stride over a man passed out on the cobblestones.

It wasn't until he reached the end of the alley that Darda saw two dark figures take him, an arm each, and pull him so quickly from view that Asric seemed to have been devoured by something very black, and very silent.

She ducked beneath the railing so quickly that she lost her breath.

Later, as she changed costumes behind Arduriel's folding screen, Darda listened to the disembodied voice of her employer. "If you wanted to know about your father, you could've asked me," Arduriel was saying, her voice soft, low, distracted. "But he's dead now. There's really little point."

And underscoring this, the scratching of the quill as she put another number in the ledger.

A House On Murder Row: Darda & Asric, Part I

2007-09-29T08:01:00Z

A House On Murder Row: Darda & Asric, Part I
Faction: Horde
Characters: Darda, Arduriel, Asric
Other Parts: Part Two

When she was finished slipping the last brilliant pin into her ginger hair, giving one last adjustment to the slim chains and sparkling gems at her throat, and cleaning up the stray makeup at her lips with a tongue dampened fingertip, she turned the man behind her and asked, "... presentable?”

The man gave his belt one last tug before clasping it, then lifted his chin towards her chest. “Missed a button or two there."

Darda fastened the front of her robes closed hastily, scarcely finishing the movement before she was moving forward to meet the other elf in another, brief kiss.

His hand kneaded her side. "You'll ruin your make up again."

She snorted, mouth free to grin as she pulled away again just as quickly. "I know." Another brief touch up with her fingertips to her lips, and she was pulling the blue curtain beside them open, just enough to let a brilliant green eye peer through to the hallway beyond. "... looks clear," she confirmed, turning her attention back into the room in time to see him raking his dark hair back into order. She reached out to tug on his sleeve. "You first. Hurry up, you're not getting any prettier."

The elf slipped by her and out into the corridor, his progress only halted when he felt her hand on his wrist. His eyebrow lifted at the slim, red haired girl in the garish jewels. She asked, "... see you tomorrow then? You can tell me more about what we discussed earlier and that."

With a faint smile and an even fainter series of quick nods, he answered, "Right. 'til then," and pulled his arm free of her grip. Once she'd watched his tall form reach the end of the hallway, where the music from the parlour seemed to bleed through to the private rooms beyond, Darda pulled the curtain open the rest of the way and set about straightening the soft fabric.

"There you are!"

The young elf turned, automatically clasping her hands behind her back, and faced the opposite end of the corridor. There the parlour's hostess stood with her brow furrowed in Darda's direction.

"Maera's ill, I need you out on the floor," the older woman instructed, not without giving the small room beside her employee a curious glance. "What on earth are you doing out here?"

"Just tidying," the girl grinned, quick to take to her feet and make her way down the hall.

*********************

Off the red and gold blankets of the room's round bed, a slender leg dangled. It swung slowly as its owner blew smoke rings towards the ceiling, squinting her vivid eyes against the sweetly smelling haze. Even though the apartment was squirreled away on the fourth floor, she could still hear the thrum of Murder Row outside – the buildings height was no match for shrieks of laughter, heady swells of music, and the stumbling of too many feet.

Darda still hadn't decided whether she hated it or not.

The sound of the hallway's beaded curtain made her sit up. The smoke left curling about her lips she blew in a hasty line to her side, then quickly set the pipe to rights on the small shelf tacked between her bed and the ceiling. By the time the thin curtain that lead into her own chamber was pulled aside, she'd managed to toss her hair quickly, pull a red gemmed necklace down over her head, and tug at the silks she wore so that they slung low over one bare shoulder.

"No roommates?" The elf who entered asked. The clothes he wore were as dark as his hair, which was bound loosely at the nape of his neck. He pulled off the gloves that he wore as he took a glance around the small burrow of a room – a pair of beds more made of pillows that anything substantial, a mirror and desk, the latter littered with small boxes, of modest jewelry, of creamy cosmetics.

"Asric, don't sound so disappointed," the girl admonished, slipping from her pillows and landing, barefoot, on the rooms cool floor. Darda took the couple steps needed to close the distance between them, sliding a fingertip beneath the soft cloth of his collar. "They'll both be gone for at least another hour, at least. … now, if you had shown up a touch earlier, then -–" At which point she was cut off as he pushed his mouth to hers, and let the momentum carry the both of them until they knocked against the far wall.

At the end of a full minute they were still kissing, though Darda had managed to maneuver her mouth away from his long to divert his attentions to her neck instead. Wrinkling her nose slightly as the edge of the vanity dug into the small of her back, the girl glanced upwards towards the ceiling and asked, "Were you able to speak to any of those contacts you mentioned?"

Asric shook his head against her throat, muttering a distracted "Not yet".

Darda dissuaded a hand that was intent on making its way past the silks knotted at her hip. Her other fingers stroked his hair. "I thought you said they were coming back into the city this week?"

The mouth against her skin paused, and, after what she felt to be a short sigh, Asric straightened and met her eye with a slight smile. "That's the drawback with these sorts of people. Hardly reliable." He ducked his head in order to deliver another kiss, flush to her lips. "You know how it is."

The smile he received in response did not seem especially convincing. "I actually... don't." The girl met his eyes. She pushed her lips together.

This time the sigh he gave was definite –- loud -- as his own eyes shut for a moment before squinting at someplace just above her head. "I...really can't focus on explaining this right now," he half laughed.

"It's just the sooner I know where he is, the sooner I can start seeing if he'll have –"

"Right. I understand," his eyes dropped back down to her face. A half grin flickered back onto his features before he added in a light, though low tone, "It's just that I'm not exactly in the habit of speaking with girls about their fathers, before..." Asric shrugged his shoulders.

Darda shrugged hers back at him – a feat, considering how stiff the rest of her had suddenly become. Her lips thinned. "Before what?"

When the best answer he could come with included nothing more than a raised eyebrow, a broadening of his grin, the girl pinned against the vanity gave his chest a rough shove and ordered him off of her. Asric lifted his eyes towards the ceiling before he turned back around to face her, and he continued to rub his face roughly as he observed the elven girl slipping the straps of her gown into their proper placements.

"You told me you were going to speak to them two weeks ago," she began.

"I don't believe that I ever gave you a definite time, no, that's not-—"

"So two weeks have passed. What news?" the young redhead's eyebrows lifted, her hands busy in unclasping the necklace at her throat.

Asric was watching her with his hands on his hips, impatience on his face, mild annoyance in the way he shifted his weight. In the time it took him to rake his fingers through his tousled hair and regain some semblance of order, he seemed to get his thoughts together. "I wasn't lying when I said I knew –- thought I knew –- who your father might be."

"I didn't say you were lying."

"May I finish?" Darda gave Asric a short glare, coupled with a nod.

"But I've got so little to go on," he continued, "You yourself don't even know his name, you've got the most minimal of physical descriptions, and, to be blunt, we barely even know where he met your mother –- a rather crucial point in the whole," Asric made an absent, rolling gesture with one hand as he sighed, "story of your existence."

"He was a soldier."

"Brilliant, that doesn't mean a thousand different things at all," came the response, biting at the heels of her words. A pause, and then the man took a slow step towards her, hand extended, as if she were an animal he didn't wish to startle. "Look," he said, settling less than a foot in front of the tall girl. "Tonight, just relax. I'll have what scraps of information I can give you by the end of the week," his voice rose to be heard over her heavy, irritated sigh, his eyebrows perking as well, "I promise."

Darda pulled her eyes from the floor and back to the man in front of her reluctantly. "I don't want to wait another two weeks."

His jaw tensed. "I didn't realize the last two had been such a chore."

"... I didn't say that." The girl slipped the necklace from her throat at last, and sidestepped the dark haired man in front of her in order to reach the vanity, where she sat after tossing the jewelery into an open box. When she glanced up, his reflection was looking back at her in the dresser's tarnished mirror. Her voice was stiff. "You've known you had nothing to tell me this entire time."

"I recall you being a whole lot friendlier when you thought I knew something of use to you," he pointed out with a smirk. "Let's not act so high and mighty, and instead just get this part over with."

The lips of her broad mouth thinned once more. "What part?"

"The part where we get all indignant," he smiled, a touch humourlessly, and moved towards her once more. "Before finally coming to the grips that you've been using me, and I've been using you, and the means doesn't matter because the end is satisfying to both parties."

She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. "Satisfying," and as she said it she could see him nod into the mirror. She turned to face him instead. "All I'm aware of is having been used without the opportunity to use in return -– you still haven't told me anything about what I've asked you, and it's obvious now that it's because you don't bloody know!"

The smile, humourless or no, dropped. The frustration was showing plainly on his face when he informed her, "You might've been more successful if your efforts had not been so clumsy."

"Likewise!"

Asric's next words were swallowed, and after a moment of staring at the flushed redhead in front of him he lifted his hands and turned, reaching out to viciously snare the gloves he'd removed earlier. "This is ludicrous," he muttered, "You are turning down a perfectly reasonable, mutually beneficial arrangement because of a little impatience."

She snorted. "I'm not your whore."

Asric shrugged. "Not exclusively, no."

And before she could throw a single thing at him, he was out the door.

A House On Murder Row: An Introduction

2007-09-29T07:54:41Z

A House On Murder Row: An Introduction
Faction: Horde
Characters: Darda, Arduriel
Notes: Beginning of a set of stories that are in no particular order, detailing events from the life of my warlock (and main!) Darda during the period between the sin'dorei becoming sin'dorei, and their joining with the Horde. Effectively a brothel, but we in the biz like to call it a mana den.

It was located on the building's second floor. This was a necessity in order for it to boast the balcony, the talls windows that its proprietor prized – she was, above all else, a discriminating woman. And if one were to see through said windows during the night, rose tinted as they were and veiled so by gauzy indigo curtains, one would spy a sunken room boasting a multitude of plush pillows, the embroidery of each elaborate. Here and there the cushions played host to a patron, perhaps two, their figures at ease, their faces lit with relaxed smiles and glinting green eyes. Were they not linked by conversation or appreciative looks, they were connected by way of any number of hookahs. The curls of smoke that crept from their mouths spiraled towards the ceiling in time with the low strains of the nearby sitar, its strings sounding without a musician to pluck them.

By the edge of the room, where the curtains begin anew in shades of purple, there stood our host. Arduriel was not an unattractive woman, in fact she was quite pretty, but unfortunately her good looks were of the variety that are too even, perfect to the point so as to render her rather plain in a city such as Silvermoon. In the hallway beyond where she stood, carefully eyeing her clientele and her employees alike (for who else would encourage a patron to stay awhile longer, to enjoy the company for an hour or two more?), the sound of footsteps on the stairs made her pointed ears perk. Arduriel excused herself from the room, melted through the curtains at her back, and came face to face with her latest visitor.

“You’re late,” the hostess hissed at who she found there, immediately turning on her heel and starting towards the end of the corridor the next instant. Arduriel assumed that the red haired girl would follow.

However, the girl had paused to glance through the curtains, her young voice low as she spoke. “Bother, I doubt any of them will notice…” In an instant her wrist was snared by her employer, who didn’t let her go again until the younger woman had been successfully pulled into the end room.

This was Arduriel ‘s office. It was much less accommodating than the parlour proper – there was a desk and a chair, several lit lamps hovering in the air above that, bookshelves, a folding screen. It was the last that Arduriel directed the other elf towards before settling behind the desk herself. “Get dressed. Next time have the decency to show up late prepared.”

The girl, whose name was Darda, took this as a good sign – after all, if there was a ‘next time’, she certainly wasn’t getting fired – and slipped behind the screen. It was just low enough for her to peer over the top of it as she changed clothing, from the gaudy wear of the street to the refined silks and jeweled collars of Arduriel‘s parlour, just low enough for her to eye the neat stacks of dried bloodthistle on her matron’s desk. Beyond them Arduriel was writing something in her ledger, her eyes narrowing in that way that one’s eyes do when the task is the very fussy labour of bookkeeping.

Darda fastened the buttons at her neck, chirping over the folding screen, “I brought mor--“

“Just get dressed.”

The girl behind the screen went quiet. When she finally appeered appeared out from behind it, her slender fingers still in the process of weaving a very fine string of gems through her long hair, the redhead was back to smiling. The expression favoured the left side of her face. “Like I was saying...” she continued, producing a small paper envelope from her side (an item which snagged Arduriel ‘s attention), “I collected more of what you asked for.”

The older woman held out her hand expectantly. Not a second from the moment that the envelope graced her palm was she opening it, eyeing it critically before speaking again. “This isn’t what I asked for.”

“It’s better!” beamed Darda, who had finished with her hair and thus was able to place her hands on the desk, leaning forward to watch her superior’s reaction. “The bloodthistle’s been treated differently – see how it glitters when you tilt it in the light? The burn will be much slower, for those who prefer the delay.” On the last words she flared her eyes for dramatic effect. That said, she rose straight once more and shrugged. “Besides, the smoke’s a lovely lavender. You’re partial to lavender, aren’t you?”

Arduriel scrutinised the contents of the package for several moments longer, then, satisfied, tossed it onto her desk. “Next time gather what I ask of you.” And, before the girl could eek in a word of protest, she added, “Lord Lathaniel is waiting in his usual chamber. Go see that he’s not wanting of anything.”

The young woman in front of her stood still a moment, appearing to be on the edge of speech, then executed a delicate curtsey before exiting the hostess’ office. In her own palm was one of the leaves from her employer’s desk, nicked in the moments that she had leant forward with such apparent interest. Before entering into the parlour proper she slipped it underneath her tongue. By the time she reached the private rooms, their own doors merely more sheer curtains, her eyes gleamed a becoming green.

Within a handful of instants after the girl’s departure, Arduriel herself had traded the solitary atmosphere of the office for cool open air of the parlour’s balcony. There were sounds beyond her own business’ to be heard out here; the occasional spike of laughter from the inn down the street, the murmur of voices from corners and dark alleys. Considering that she had only been privy to such sounds for a minute or so, it came as some surprise when Darda pushed her way out through the curtains and onto the balcony.

Arduriel arched an eyebrow at her. “You’re supposed to be with Lord Lathaniel.”

“He didn’t want me,” she responded tersely, sparing a short look in the other woman’s direction. A pause, and then she added quickly, “He dislikes red hair.” The girl folded her arms, leaned against the stone railing and watched the cobblestones below her. “I told Meropa to go in and see to him instead.”

Arduriel cast a short look back into the parlour. “She's new. Will she be all right?”

“You tell me,” the girl rejoined, and that, coupled with another sharp glance, caused the two to fall into a silence. What slowly began to fill that quiet, aside from the sounds of soft music and the low tones of their patrons – which is a sort of grey noise anyway, that which underpins most everything – was the sound of heavy footfalls on the street below them. Arduriel towards the mouth of Murder Row.

It was a sight that had become more or less commonplace along the streets of the city, unfortunate as it may seem to some. Visitors. There were five of them in total, including the Elven gentleman who headed their number. Of the various races behind him the Troll was the most vocal, though every so often this appeared to be tempered by words from the large Tauren female that flanked him. It was only a guess on Arduriel s part.

“He mistrusts the planters – they hover,” the girl beside her explained, chin tucked into her crossed arms. Darda’s eyes were keen on the five below them. “Too much hovers and glows, he says.”

Arduriel's own eyes snapped to her employee. “And you know this how?”

The girl looked, distractedly, back at her. A moment, and then she shook her head, slim shoulders rolling forward once more in a shrug. “I thought it would be a novelty, learn a bit of their language.” She paused to pull a strand of hair from the side of her mouth, then spoke a few words in Orcish, all accented by her natural lilt.

The first reaction she received was a snort. Arduriel watched the small party travel the street below them, almost until the entire tour was mere metres from the floor of the balcony. “It sounds as if you are coughing something up,” she observed, gracing the girl with the barest of glances.

“I know,” Darda half sighed, feeling the last remnants of the bloodthistle melt away beneath her tongue. “Isn’t it glorious?”

Were there a response forthcoming, it disappeared the instant that a sharp scream broke from the parlour. Below the balcony the heads of the visiting ambassadors snapped upwards, their tour guide looking momentarily thrown by the cry. Arduriel grabbed Darda’s arm, thrust her back through the curtains with a low hiss of “Shut the doors!” before darting inside herself. Within scant instants the glass doors to the balcony were shut, locked, the curtains were roughly drawn. The second floor parlour was sealed off from view.

The patrons inside did not seem to much notice their hostess’ quick strides between their pillows – though the cry had broken their reverie a moment, ridding themselves of the fleeting distraction was no more difficult than shooing away a fly. By the time Darda passed them, following in her matron’s hurried wake, the customers had all settled back into their socializing. Their eyes were all brilliant, their smiles filled with white teeth.

Both women knew to stop outside the private chamber Darda had been so recently sent to. The girl arrived behind Arduriel in time to see the older woman pulled the curtain aside and allow a tall, fair man to exit. He was fitting pale blue gloves back onto his long fingered hands. When Arduriel curtseyed, so did Darda.

“Leaving so soon, Lord Lathaniel?” Arduriel asked genially, the girl behind her noting the way that her employer took a deep breath before the asking.

The man, with long blonde hair and eyes more vivid, more bright than any of those they had passed in the parlour, gave the shallowest of nods. He looked flushed. “Forgive my manners, Arduriel," he offered, “I had hoped for us to speak at greater length, but I am suddenly feeling the dire need for fresh air.”

Arduriel rose, nodded, then gestured ahead of her. "If I may offer the use of the back steps, my Lord...?"

"Very kind of you." His gaze slipped past the hostess momentarily, landed on the girl at her back. The corners of his mouth moved slightly. "Lovely girl," he offered in a moment, the remark edged with a rather genuine ring. "I do have a place in my heart for red coloured hair. No doubt we'll have our proper introductions some day." The words made Arduriel stiffen, and cast a glance over her shoulder at the ginger haired girl. Darda dropped her gaze.

The man took his leave of both women by way of a clipped bow, and it wasn't until he was through the corridor's exit, boots resounding against the stone steps that would take him to the opposite side of the alley outside, that either of them moved. Arduriel was the first. She tugged the curtain open, let it drop, turned quickly to face Darda. The girl's mouth was a thin line, drawn tight. It was reluctantly that she met her employer's eyes.

"Don't lie to me again." Arduriel 's words carried a sting worse than any slap she could've administered. "If I tell you to see a client don't send another in your bloody place." The reprimand held in the air for a breath or two before Arduriel started forward to pass the girl, waving a hand in the direction of the pale curtains, the private room. "Clean that up. By all rights it should've been you."

The young woman remained still as Arduriel pushed past her, buffeting her slightly into the soft drapery. Once her elder's footsteps had faded off into the distance, likely to see to her other customers still milling about the main parlour, Darda moved her arm forward to pull back the curtain. Meropa's legs were visible right away, the skin of them an almost lurid white against the deep blue of her robes, against the plush crimson of the pillows. The room still smelt of delicately spiced smoke, but there was one key difference to the air in this room and the air in the parlour. This one did not glitter with the soft undercurrent of magic that made so many patrons feel comfortable, feel relaxed. All traces of magic had been wrenched from this room, violently it felt, from the fabric, from the air.

This room was stale. Like the girl splayed on the floor in front of Darda, this room was dead.

A Stonemason's Daughters, Part II

2007-09-29T07:46:19Z

A Stonemason's Daughters, Part II
Faction: Alliance
Characters: Blythe (Molly), Katharine
Related Stories:A Stonemason's Daughters, Part I

"Don't even think about it."

The stern words cut Molly to the quick. She stops what she's doing -- which is creeping up behind the tree her sister currently leans against -- and lets her steps, which she was attempting to make so silent, lapse back into their usual shuffle against the dry grass of Westfall. In the gloom of night Katharine's form is almost entirely lost. Moonlight outlines her form sparingly, enough for Molly to see that the other girl has her arms crossed, has her eyes narrowed and fixed on the road, has two knives at her belt and another at her boot. At seventeen Katharine is already a good seven inches taller than her younger sister, and as Molly approaches, all five feet of her, she feels every bit of the difference in their heights.

"And quit dragging your feet," Katharine hisses, the sound half dulled by the red bandana knotted around her mouth and jaw. "If you insist on being out here, at least don't be a total write off."

The rebuke causes Molly's lips to draw into a thin line -- a visible one, as nearing fifteen is apparently too soon to have a bandana shielding them -- and her own thin arms cross over her own flat chest as she too leans back heavily against the tree. She slides down it, despite the bark's protest, 'til she meets the earth with a thump. Katharine barely glances over as she pulls her own knife out of its sheath and begins using the tip to draw shapes in the dirt between her legs. It's a blade stolen from their father's cache, one Molly figured he wouldn't miss due to the fact that the handle's bent at a slight angle, and metal's half dull anyway. Even the moon barely bothers to glint of its edge.

"Hey, Kat?"

The older sister doesn't respond, but she unfolds, then refolds her arms.

Molly uses one roughed up boot to kick clean the dirt she's been drawing in, scuffing up the ground and ignoring her sister's silence. "You ever actual kill someone?"

There's no response. Even a glance upward reveals nothing -- Katharine's face, the part that's not masked, is as unreadable as ever. For several long moments Molly is reduced to eyeing the daggers at the other girl's hips, attempting to divine whether or not they look like they've been used in someone's bitter demise. Her inspection is kept up until Kat speaks, her voice flat as she answers, "Yes."

It sounds final. Molly accepts the answer with little response -- to nod, to grin, to say anything else might incur some of her sister's anger, which could result in it being demanded that she go home. As it is she's surprised that Katharine's allowed her to stay out here so long, when it was easily within the elder sister's power to twist her arm until she left, or, as was the case in one instance, to chase her off with several well aimed rocks. Better to count her blessings, the younger girl decides, and settles herself against the base of the tree once more, bent knife in hand, and tries to imagine who it was her sister might've done away with. A merchant, perhaps. A drunken brawler. A farmer who'd had enough, a guard who'd spotted her, a jealous girlfriend... each new invention makes Molly carve a new shape in the dirt, bare and scant as the light is. A sidelong glance upward is given to her sister, whose eyes are still on the road, whose attentions are nowhere on her sibling's drawings. Molly looks down again. She kicks the dirt clear and starts to speak, almost snorting laughter as she does.

"Hey, Kat, ever notice how --"

She's silenced by a swift, quick kick to her side. Katharine's arms are uncrossed, one hand holding still for the other girl to be quiet, the other on the weapon at her hip. Molly's eyes automatically dart towards the road. She has to squint to see the dark figure approaching along it -- it looks male, riding a mule of some sort, one laden what looks like beyond its means. It's no guard, no brawler, but immediately her heart picks up, and the pace of it almost spikes as Katharine's next whisper is heard, sharp and quick in her ear. "Go tell them over the hill that he's here -- if he gets by me, they'll have to take him," she instructs, then silently detaches herself from the tree and edges towards the dirt of the road.

Molly's nod is quick, given even though her sister's already turned her back on her, is already halfway up the road towards the man on the mule. As she scrambles to her feet she can hear her sister's voice, then the sound of the animal's feet shifting back and forth as it comes to an unsteady stop. Katharine is saying something like, "Funny time of night to be packing up and leaving, Miller," when Molly is on her feet, about to turn, and feels a strong hand grip at the back of her neck and yank, hard. She doesn't have the time to bark out a cry of help (or warning) before she's lifted and slammed against the side of the broad tree, her head going cold and dull as her temple connects with a gnarled, rough knot of wood.

There's the dim sense that someone is stepping over her.

There's the hazy impression of a dark figure heading towards her sister, the miller, the mule.

She's on her feet, halfway down the road, before she even thinks to wonder how she got up from the ground by the tree. The moon seems to be at an angle. She's blinking heavily, then wiping her eye clear and trying to focus, hard, on the scene ahead of her. The man's no longer on his mount -- his foot is still in the stirrup, but his leg is hanging, his body's against the dirt of the road. He's dead. The animal seems to be pacing from hoof to hoof, unsure of how to proceed, loathe to trample closer to its former owner's limp form. Its packs, she can see now, are heavily burdened with various items one might see in anyone's house -- there's paintings and a clock, several small boxes, blankets, plates and tins. Molly's squinting at this, her vision still swimming, when she notices the much larger conflict happening in front of both dead miller and mule -- her sister is fighting a man dressed in black, both of them with knives in either hand, both of them a flurry of motion. Katharine's shape would be lost completely in the darkness were it not for the paleness of her skin, the sudden livid red of her bandana.

Molly is jolted into movement once the man strikes her sister down with one terrible and swift swipe of his arm.

She stabs him between his shoulders.

It is hard to hold onto the blade, onto its crooked handle, as he attempts to spin about and lash one of his own daggers towards the attacker suddenly at his back. Molly's arms pain to yank the knife free, but her hands feel slippery, and the wound feels too deep. As he sends a wild eyed look over his shoulder the girl locks panicked stares with him -- the man's eyes seem to widen, then his movements increase in ferocity. He turns around as Molly finally tears the blade free of his back, swooping towards her even as she falls backwards again, gets the wind stolen from her. She shouts something choked but her head's too full, too liquid feeling for her own ears to hear it. She readies to thrust the knife into him again, soon as he's close enough.

It's a moment that comes sooner than expected. From over the man's shoulder the slim dark form of Katharine rises, her body not hesitating before she moves both her arms through the air and two swirling daggers are thrown. They connect in his neck, his back. The blade in his own hand, gripped so tightly, aimed so readily for Molly's chest, veers off course as his body tumbles to the ground beside her. She feels the tremor of it hitting the earth rumble, slow and quiet, through the thick watery ache in her head. It isn't until Katharine steps over her, blocks out the light from the moon, that Molly finally passes out.

Later, as Katharine cleans the blood from the side of her sister's head, from the side of her neck, from the skin at her shoulder, Molly eyes her crooked dagger with new appreciation. It too has been cleaned by Katharine. For a moment she stills herself and feels the slow dabbing of her sister's cloth rag at her temple, the sting of each touch, the heaviness in her skull. For a moment she feels these things, and the next moment she laughs. Despite the sickness in her head, there's a bubbling giddiness that rushes up from her stomach and demands exit from her mouth -- she laughs loudly, she leans forward, she stabs the knife into the floor of their tent.

"He looked so surprised!" The girl gasps between giggles, her eyes growing hot and wet. "His face! You missed it, it was hil... hilar..." Molly gives up on getting the word out, breaks into peals of laughter again as Katharine tries to pin her in place, press the cloth to her head again and clean up the ruined skin.

"He must've been hired by the miller."

"... so fu... funny... probably thought he'd killed me!"

Before Molly passes out again, her body still shaking with laughter, her vision fuzzy and her eyes almost tearing with the force of her grin, she sees her sister's face swim hazy into her sight. Katharine's bandana is gone, her lips are tight. She's frowning. She's not finding it funny at all.

A Stonemason's Daughters

2007-09-29T07:42:43Z

A Stonemason's Daughters
Faction: Alliance
Characters: Blythe (Molly), Katharine
Related Stories: A Stonemason's Daughters, part II

She hates the Cathedral.

She suffers through the eager welcome she receives barely five steps inside, ignores the familiar tug to glance over her shoulder when the priest greets her as mage. The inside of her head's still too thick from the night's earlier drink. She finds herself squinting. She finds herself skirting the main ribbon of blue carpet that culminates in the room's altar, instead choosing to cling to the side pillars, the more shadowed vaults. With narrowed eyes she scrutinizes the carvings, the niches, absently tracing the outline given to the stone by the sunlight.

It's still the Cathedral of Light. It's never really dark.

**********

"I'm going to burn it down."

It's Katharine saying this, her tone matter of fact, her eyes not leaving the wooden blocks in front of her. On the other side of her play Molly watches, her blue eyes keen on her sister, knowing full well that at Katharine's age -- nine and nearly ten -- one simply knows things that a seven year old like Molly can't possibly fathom. Molly sees her cue. She stops what she's doing, which is chewing on the end of her braid, so that she can ask, "Burn what down?"

Katharine doesn't respond before she can put another block down -- horizontal on top of the first four's vertical -- and hovers her small hand over them tentatively. The blocks shake a moment, but balance. "The Cathedral in Stormwind." There's a grin in Kat's tone that is not present on her round young face as she takes her hand back and picks up another piece of wood.

Molly squints at the blocks, which she supposes must be a sort of makeshift Cathedral for her sister to plan this lofty raid with, and though her own memories of the building are shoddy (she can only see a large mass of stone in her mind's eye, a high window, the smell of rock, the smell of sweat from the men piecing it together), the trembling collection of blocks does not much resemble the place her father once smiled so broadly, so tiredly about. Outside the cottage a vulture flies past the window, thankfully blocking out the haggard vision of Westfall for a moment. Molly reaches forward to pluck up one of the straw dolls littered about her sister, nudges down the strip of red cloth knotted around its neck or head (hard to tell on a straw doll), and asks, "... is this dad?"

The doll is snatched away from her, is tossed to Kat's side again -- the one opposite Molly. The older girl glares a moment. "That's Mr. VanCleef," she says sharply, then tosses one of the unadorned dolls towards her sister. "Make that one dad if you want."

Which is what Molly does, though for lack of any scraps of red cloth she uses of her dad's old knives to cut off a lock of her own ginger coloured hair, and binds the doll's face with that instead. It's difficult to knot. It's difficult to make it look like their father, with his own red hair, his own rounded shoulders and pocked skin beneath his black armour. As she makes the attempt she looks back up at Katharine, who's now built the block Cathedral two storeys high. The older girl's face is a mask of concentration, her hair -- so much darker and thicker than Molly's -- is falling into her face -- the skin of which is so much more even, less freckled than Molly's.

"I'll do it with magic," Katharine says suddenly, balancing a triangular block along the top of two steadier rectangles. "Just like the kind mummy used."

The younger sister stays silent through this (she finishes the doll of their father and props it up against several unused blocks). Kat hints at their mother's use of magic a lot, though Molly rarely takes the bait -- she knows if she did all she'd get was a derisive snort from the other girl, narrowed eyes above a smug smile. Kat knew their mother, Molly didn't. She left when Molly was a baby -- "'cos of how hideous you looked", Kat says -- taking with her the dark hair, the dark eyes, the smooth skin that she'd passed onto her first daughter. "It's why dad hates me," Kat says every so often, matter-of-factly, evenly, almost triumphant. "I just look too much like her."

Now, with both girls hunched over the complete block Cathedral, their contrast is clear. Molly watches the structure uncertain -- Kat watches it keenly, even pointing out the sections she'd like to burn first. "Right here," she says, tapping a corner block, then focusing hard on it again.

In a few moments, when it doesn't explode in flames, Molly tilts her head and knits her eyebrows. "D'you think dad would want you doin thi-"

But downstairs there's a door opening then slamming shut, the shuffle of boots, the sound of their father's new wife standing up from her chair and asking where he's been. The new baby begins howling with tears a moment later. Katharine curses with one of those completely satisfying words neither of them are supposed to use, and a moment later Molly swears right along with her. For an instant they're united -- then the baby's cries cut through them both once more, and their father's calling up the wooden steps for them to get down there. Katharine's lips press together thinly.

She dashes the blocks apart with a swipe of her arm, snatching up the left over dolls -- the one of VanCleef, the one of herself (so noted by the straw singed black at the top of its head), the assorted workers, the masons, the artists. She shoves them all under her sleeping mat quickly, then pushes to her feet and heads down the stairs, cuffing Molly's shoulder as she passes.

The younger sister steals the doll of their father, bends it in half, and tucks it deep into her front pocket.