“Maybe ya didn’t hear me,” the man snapped, slapping his fists on the table and leaning his face closer to his target. “I asked whatya think yer doin’ in my tavern.”
Vasedra raised a brow at him, deigning to look up from her drink for the first time since the drunken Kul’Tiran had approached her table, her short, dark hair swinging back from her face to reveal its angled lines and the false blue light of her azure eyes. It also revealed the cold disdain within them, and the stranger shivered at a sudden, visceral chill, his breath frosting visibly.
“I thought dhat answer vas obvious enough,” she said calmly in her affected draeneic accent, taking a swig of her ale and enjoying the way his expression darkened as she made him wait. “Even somevun of your clearly leemited faculties can tell dhat I’m drinking. Or so I vished to believe. But you prove me wrong.”
Something in her thrilled at the growing rage in her assailant, the restless hunger that had been eating at her all day crawling up her spine to poise on her shoulder, grasping and eager. As a consequence, her cool look became a toothy smile. Too sweet. Too smug. A smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Mainlander b-”
“Outlander,” the ‘warrior’ corrected, interrupting his attempt to insult her.
“Wha?!” The human, probably some sort of dock worker by the size of his musclebound shoulders and bulging arms, reached for her blue and cream breastplate only to find his hand knocked away by a whip-quick slap.
“Outlander.” Sedra repeated, her smile dying and her eyes narrowing as she surged up and kicked her chair back with a skittering screech, forcing him to dodge back or end up taking a hard, gracefully arching horn to his stout chin. “**OUT**lander, you great, haulking vaste of fresh ayer. Do I look like I am Azerothian stock?”
She enjoyed it as the man gogged at the cheek of this stranger, this blue, tailed woman who, now that he saw her on her cloven hooves, was every inch as tall as he was. The ‘draenei’ didn’t actually care what he called her, and wasn’t even an Outlander in truth. But she also wasn’t a Mainlander in any sense of the word and was supposed to be practicing her role. Keeping a ‘low profile’. Perhaps the kind of profile that didn’t include picking fights in seedy taverns at the bottom of the seawall, true, but… he had started it. And she was… she needed something. Something that wasn’t sitting there, calmly drinking her mead and waiting for her contact.
Her attention fixed on the Kul’Tiran as his face reddened and his fists clenched, feeling that restless hunger claw and gnaw and demand, eager to see the point where he exploded into violence, into madness. It was fast approaching, and the ‘draenei’ suddenly yanked her plate gauntlets from her hands, tossing them away to clatter on her table. The urge was specific and consuming and simple: when she hit him, she needed to feel it on her flesh.
He’ll swing at me, first. The realization came with no small shiver of anticipation down the knight’s spine, the slow, languid thrum of Viskarri’s heart suddenly loud in her ears. Darkling things, shadows and phantoms, crowded the edges of her vision and whispered in her head, but she ignored them, instead staring at her opponent as he lifted one arm. He’ll swing at me, and… no, I won’t break his arm. It’ll be more fun to toss him around a bit.
So she did. He was slow, the stranger. Not particularly a challenge. When he roared a foul word and flung a meaty fist at her face, she grabbed his wrist in one hand and the front of his dirty, sweat-stained tunic in the other and let his own momentum swing him around until she lifted him from his feet and threw him into the next table, dumping him across the top and watching as the sturdy wood gave. The pair of sailors sitting there gasped and kicked back as their dinners and their drinks dumped all over themselves and him.
Yes. Sedra grinned, an excited, feral expression of lips pulling back from fangs. Her hands still felt the texture of his skin and the scratch of fabric, her powerful, lithe form still filled with the moment of strength, that hunger leaning in, pressing its claws over her heart as it lapped at the surge of adrenaline, the growing hubbub of grumbles and cries of alarm. She ran the fingers of one hand through her chin-length hair and over her horn, watching the table’s upset occupants surge to their feet with incensed shouts. But far from alarmed or contrite, the ‘draenei’ kicked her chair out of her way, conveniently hitting another nearby table, and faced the pair of them, her bare fists clenched.
“Y’apologize, an’ mebbe ya walk outta here in one piece, bluebonnet.” The man who growled it swiped stew from his tunic as he drew a wicked looking longknife from his tattered, leather boot.
His companion scoffed and glared at the ‘warrior’ in front of them, adding, “Y’apologize an’ ya buy us new dinners an’ drinks, he means.”
Behind them, the drunk dock worker was trying to extricate himself from the ruins of the table, and behind that a trio of what could only be Freeholders were scowling and shaking spilt beer from their hands as they kicked an errant chair out of the way.
The knight’s response was a chuckle, dismissive and eager, and a finger pointed at the man’s blade. “You might vant to put dhat avay,” she said casually, stepping away from her table with a careless swagger, her tail swinging despite the darkness behind her smile. “Things might get more serious dhan you can hehndle if you don’t.”
“Oh, izzat so?” came the skeptical response.
Sedra shrugged, her darkling grin never faltering. “Well, I suppose that depends on what you can do with it. You’ve been warned.” Letting her fake accent slip, she looked around, her false blue gaze dancing over to the trio of pirates coming around their table toward her. In all truth, it was annoying to try to play the role, the draenei warrior from the Outlands. No, that was so far from true that it was painful. Instead, she just emphasized in her own tones, “You’ve all been warned.”
“Yer a right cocky thing, bluebonnet.” The man with the longknife growled it out, pointing the blade toward her. “Em’ thinkin’ ya need a few scars on that pretty face t’take ya down a peg.”
“Feel free to try,” the eredar said, meaning even more than that. Meaning “I want you to try.”
The Kul’Tiran and his friend both obliged, one slashing with his knife while the other darted in at her, fists flying. Sedra caught the blade on her cream and bronze vambraces, shoving it away in the instant before she ducked a sucker punch aimed at her jaw. Her hand was steel as she grabbed that assailant’s arm, yanking him across her body with enhanced strength and forcing his knife-wielding friend to step back to avoid slashing his buddy.
With a little smirk, she spun the poor man around and shoved him into the trio of pirates trying to approach from her other side, sending them all careening into yet another table of ruffians. From there, the entire tavern burst into motion like it’d just been waiting for an excuse, and the real fun began.
Ary Valryss stood outside the open door of the Weighed Anchor and stared in with a little irritated sigh. A fight. The ruckus was audible from down the block, and now that she was closer, she could see the swarm of Kul’Tirans of questionable intent surging around, throwing punches and kicks amidst flying chairs, tankards, and occasional knives. And at its heart, a familiar figure in armor of cream, blue and bronze that managed to make one think “Alliance soldier” without actually bearing any of the Alliance telltales.
The short, redheaded human pressed her lips together and strode into the chaos, deftly ignoring the battle around her, side-stepping tussling combatants and dancing around flying debris until she found a relatively clear corner of the bar, one out of the main ebb and flow of the fight, and settled into a stool, there.
She tapped a finger on the bar, leaning over the top to stare down at the bartender cowering behind it. “Do you have wine?” the young woman asked, her voice carrying over the din.
The wiry, slender man shook his head, gripping the back of the bar and staring up at her with wide eyes.
“Mead, then,” Ary sighed, disappointed yet again. “I’ll take a mead.”
When he didn’t move, she frowned. “Now, please. I’m thirsty.”
There was nothing in the slightest about the human that actually looked intimidating, not from her rather ragged purple gown with its barely-decent neckline that aspired to reach her navel to the only weapon she carried: a small dagger with a crystal embedded in the pommel. And yet… fear sluiced through him at her displeasure, a fear that eclipsed the one that had driven him to cower behind his bar in the first place. He leapt to his feet and grabbed for an empty tankard with shaking hands, finding he had no desire to discover just what it was that lurked behind the little woman’s stern face.
When her drink was ready, he shoved it in her waiting hands and disappeared back beneath his bar like an eel scared back into the coral.
Ary barely noticed, taking a sip of her mead and turning around on her stool. She settled in to watch the fight, leaning one elbow back on the bar and sighing once more to herself. A voice she hated in her head estimated that the eredar across the room would down her final adversaries and break free of the bar fight within forty-three seconds, and she couldn’t help but start to count to see if it was right.
Forty-eight seconds later, Vasedra stepped up to the bar beside her friend, wiping a trickle of azure blood from the corner of her lip. Behind her, the fight still raged for the hearty few who hadn’t tried to throw themselves against the ‘warrior’. She felt Ary’s gaze on her, but it was easy to ignore it in favor of the pleasant glow at the core of her, the hunger temporarily sated. It pleased her, and that made her nervous. But she said nothing of that to the young woman at her side.
“That took longer than I expected,” the little human said by way of greeting, blue eyes following the void knight’s bloodied knuckles as her taller companion leaned over the bar.
This time, no one needed to say anything before the wiry bartender hopped back up to his feet, fixing wide, frightened eyes on the pair of women. Sedra pointed to the mead tap without a word, and soon he was shoving a tankard in her hands and disappearing once more.
“I wasn’t feeling motivated to end it faster,” the tall blue figure offered with a little shrug before she took a sip of her drink.
“Mmhm.” Ary raised a brow slightly but let it go as she did so many things, trying not to pry. Secretly hoping her friend would offer more, open up more. Instead, she got silence as she turned around on her stool and faced into the bar.
“Welcome back,” she finally added. “The new armor’s… interesting.”
“Thank you,” the eredar said. “I needed t-”
So far from home. So isolated and alone. Let the messengers come to bring you back.
They both whipped their heads up at the same time, glancing around and then at each other as thunder snapped through the evening sky, vibrating the mead in their tankards. Sedra winced and curled forward, pressing a hand to the center of her chest.
Her friend watched her, brow furrowed, until the moment of discomfort passed, and then she said, “You heard it, too.” There was no question, there, simply certainty. “You felt it? What was that?”
Vasedra frowned and shook her head, staring at the bar beside her mug as a little silver-purple worm plopped down from the rafters above, squirming. “I don’t know…” she said softly, reaching out a bare hand to pick up the creature. Her frown only deepened as she held it close to her face and rolled it around in her palm. “… not for certain. But if it has anything to do with what I fear it does… Well, there’s a reason I’m back on Azeroth early, Ary.”
Dropping the worm into the pool of mead that filled the bottom half of her drink, the eredar shoved to her hooves and stepped away from the counter, the twin swords at her hips chattering nonsense for a brief, mad moment before she silenced them with a glance.
“I need to go find Tharion. Maybe even find Malfias,” she sighed, “… again. Will you come?”
The red-head looked up from peering down at the shimmering creature in its sudden alcohol bath, wriggling uncertainly but not apparently drowning. She nodded. “I met you, didn’t I? I’m free.”
Vasedra nodded and turned to the door. “Then let’s hurry. I don’t think we have much time.”