The Gulch: Supplemental Runes

[fallonquinn]

The Gulch: Supplemental Runes
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: There are ten short stories to this little collection that tie into The Gulch. Once they're out there, which shouldn't be long, D&R will drop. Enjoy.

Freeze Frame One: Patch & Lily

Two little boys found it. Curled up in the thick of the forest, shrouded by trees. Alcaz Island off the coast of Theramore Isle became a spectacle. Word spread in hushed whispers.

"It'll eat you if you get to close."

"I heard the thing makes you crazy."

Patch and Lily moved through the darkness on two steady mounts towards Theramore Isle. The elves had been born minutes apart, almost identical except for the narrow divide of brother and sister. A steel plated lance sat rigged to Patch's saddle. He was dressed in a plain set of purple pants and iron armbands. A brown cloak wrapped around his shoulders, hood pulled up over his head. The Silverwing Sentinels had dispatched them when word of mouth bubbled over the brim of the city streets.

There was a door on Alcaz Island. A lone door that stood up on nothing.

Rumors came and went. Back in Shadowglen Patch and Lily had been pulled aside by an on Elf. His eyes two bits of shattered coal in deep ground sockets. He sat in front of a fire outside the giant tree amid the boars and cats.

Patch came to him after being woke in the dead of night. The old elf waved him over and then took a long shuddering breath.

"Take your sister." The old elf said. "Take her and go to the island. Find the door, and protect it. If there really is a door send back word and we'll send aid."

In the darkness along the trail to Theramore, Patch shivered. He didn't like the idea of doors. Of magic that had no purpose, or worse yet, magic that had a purpose no one knew about.

"Cold out." Lily muttered.

Patch nodded. An hour later their horses stepped onto the cobblestone walkway into Theramore. A short dwarf waited for them outside a tavern dressed in dark forest clothing. They exchanged horses for a rolled sail and a small boat. The map they had was roof.

"Watch yourself." The dwarf said. His rotted smile flashed in the dancing torchlight.

They left Theramore in the dead of night. Sailors on the Seas of fate. By dawn they reached the small island and shored the boat. The first thing Patch felt was the dull vibration in his teeth. Especially where old elf McCormick had carved the decay out as a child and filled it with liquid iron.

"I don't like this." Lily said.

That makes two of us, Patch thought.

They wove through the thick blanket of forest like shadows in the dark. Somewhere near the middle of the island they came to the clearing. Patch slowed. He held out his arm and caught Lily before she crossed the threshold. A giant stone pillar stuck out of the ground in the middle of the clearing, almost invisible, its smooth obsidian surface eating the starlight. Beside the pillar was a lone door, from his vantage point he could see it hanging open. The frame was suspended a good three inches off the ground with no visible support he could see.

Just a door, he thought. That's all.

Lily pushed his arm down and went into the clearing. The door seemed to quiver. The black pillar pulsed a quick flash of dark light.

"Lily!"

She didn't listen to him. Patch unthread the lance from his back and marched into the clearing. The grass felt crisp under his boots, all of it shaved down to an inch long projection.

Who's cutting this stuff?

"It's just a door-" Lily started. She stood facing the open doorway, one hand clamped on the door itself. Her mouth dropped open. "Patch..."

He turned towards the opening and froze. What he should have seen was an empty frame that showed the other side of the clearing, nothing but an empty door-frame. What he saw instead was a street, at least it looked like a street. He could make out a weird sort of gray pavement that humans, people, were walking on. What snatched the breath from him was the sight of dozens of steel beasts on all fours. All four whats he didn't know. They looked like wheels, but no wheels he had seen before. The beasts had glass bellies, and the humans were inside, turning knobs and wheels like some kind of monstrous creation by the goblins.

"Elune..." Lily whispered.

"They can't see us." Patch said. "They can't-"

A tall woman dressed in a strange sort of clothing, carrying a leather case and holding a tiny device in her hand passed right in front of the door. Lily shrieked and jumped back towards the forest. Patch raised his lance, palms coated in sweat.

Can't see us, can't see us, he thought.

Muted sound came through the door. Shrill sirens, the chorus of voices that made up a muttering crowd. Every now and then one of the steel beasts would honk at another. Lights flashed inside glass casings.

Those aren't fireflies, he thought.

Massive brick buildings rose from the ground. Hundreds of glass eye windows popped into their hides. Patch felt his stomach go reeling. He planted the end of his lance into the ground and leaned against it for support.

"Patch...Patch!"

He turned. Lily had both her hands to her mouth. She pointed at the door. He looked back and noticed what he hadn't before. A woman, across the street, dressed in a white shirt and denim overalls stared at them.

"She sees us."

"She sees IT." Lily said. "The door."

The woman paused at one of the corners of the street, waited till the green fireflies in the black metal case lit and then ran across the street out of view of the door. She appeared a moment later, two brown eyes looking directly at him.

Patch took a step back.

"Yo, this door 144?" The woman asked. The woman leaned her head forwards. "Hello?"

Patch pointed at himself.

"Yeah." The woman nodded. "I'm talking to you little guy." She leaned forward, her hand came through the doorway. Patch shouted something and stumbled backwards, falling.

"Little hopped up?" The woman asked. She stepped through the doorway and then found the back of the door. Written in black grease pencil on the upper right hand side of the door was the number 144. "Sorry, won't take long. Things like this happen on occasion. You know how it goes, the union goes on strike and it takes God knows how long for the Rabbit Hole And Railway System to actually give in." The woman glanced over her shoulder and shrugged. "The whole time all the freaking doors go crazy and the next thing you know we've got a good months worth of work to do in about a week, I swear."

The woman shook her head. She smiled, and pulled out a piece of paper from the front pocket of her overalls. "Door 144, reset, prime directive I. Blah, blah, blah, occupant model is a one time use paradigm....yadda, yadda, yadda."

Patch couldn't feel his legs. Lily had her hand twined around his in a hammer-lock. Patch didn't mind it one bit. For the first time in his life he felt utterly shellshocked by what was happening.

The woman stuck a strange looking cigarette in her mouth and then flame danced out of a cylindrical red tube she held in her hand. The end of the smoke turned a dull red color, like a disembodied eye floating in the air.

"Anywho, this door must have gotten delivered a little early. Strike happened, thing went nuts." She shrugged. Her hands flew across the bottom of the door drawing runes as it went. "That should do it. Good as new." She turned back to Patch and Lily. "Sorry for the inconvenience, it'll work now." The woman grabbed the knob, stepped through the door and shut it behind her. The other world vanished.

Patch felt himself breath. "What the hell was that?"

Lily didn't answer.

The door shook once and then the front surface made an odd garbling sound. Two words carved itself into the doors surface. Shavings slid down its mahogany surface. A gust of wind tore through the trees. Patch brought the arm of his cloak up protecting his face. When the wind died down he saw the words.

THE ROGUE was printed in fine lettering at head height on the door. Patch got to his feet. His heart took a few sideways leaps in his chest. Trembling he reached out.

"Patch, don't!"

"Easy." He waved his hand at her and then wrapped tried the knob. It wouldn't budge. He went around to the back side of the door, half expecting that wild other world to be there. The runes were gone, the polished surface of a mahogany door looked back at him.

"Does this qualify as something?"

Lily poked her head around the side of the door, tears welled up at the corners of her eyes. "I think so."

"Go back to shore, send a message to the elder." Patch said. He backed away from the door, back from the pillar.

"You sure?" Lily asked.

He didn't bother answering, she was already sprinting back towards their boat.

This is trouble, Patch thought, this is serious trouble.

[fallonquinn]

The Gulch: Supplemental Runes
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: None.

Freeze Frame Two: The Estranged Levine Kef

Once upon a whenever, there was a guy named Levine Kef. He was convinced he'd been infected. Just by what he didn't know. It came to him in his home one brilliantly lit morning. He'd covered the windows of his home with bits of cloth by then and stripped out most of the furniture. Sitting in the corner, shirtless he saw a small spider twirl down from the ceiling on a silk cable.

Spiders...there were spiders in him.

The answer seemed so obvious he almost laughed when it came to him. He used to sleep outside in the summers, the house lacked any real cooling system. During one of those summers a spider had simply crawled into his open mouth and down into his lungs, laying eggs in his ventricles. That's why he coughed, that's why he hacked up mouthfuls of blood sometimes. The eggs were trying to hatch somewhere inside of him. He counted the number of holes on his body, all the openings a spider could have gone down...or up for that matter.

Mild amusement turned into obsession. Levine went to the local market and picked up cans of herbal medicine and repellent from The Traveling Clinic that stopped near the town one day. He'd ducked into the white circus tent fearful of the others inside. If spiders could get into him, what stopped other people from carrying something else. The Traveling Clinic gave him a small vial of poison to be tapped in the corners of his home. Levine didn't tap it in the corners of his home. He bought ten bottles and spent the next ten days inhaling the stuff. Nevermind trying to cleanse his house, he had to cleanse his body before the eggs hatched and the spiders poured out of his orifices.

People would come into his home to check on him. Levine would smile the whole time, smile and nod.

"What's so funny Levine?" Domino asked. A short woman with the stripped down body of a farmers wife. She leaned over looking at him curled in the corner. "Yo, Lev, you okay?"

Just ****ing dandy, he thought. The Gods are in their palaces, and all is peachy keen in Azeroth.

After she left Levine drank some of the poison. When he felt it in his stomach he drank a little more and breathed in. A harsh cough racked him as the stuff went down the wrong pipes. This was all part of the plan. How could he kill the eggs in his lungs if the poison never reached it?

People trafficked in and out of his home. His boss stopped by one afternoon and gave a quick once over. In the course of trying to rid himself of the spiders he'd let most of his house go. He hadn't cleaned the outhouse in months. Mr. Alderman handed him his pink ticket right there on the spot.

"****, Lev, get yourself together and come to see me. Get off the junk." The Boss said.

Former boss really. One nameless morning after that, after he'd started crapping blood in the outhouse and coughing up eggs (oh he saw the eggs when he coughed, no one else could, but he did), he realized that sleep was a nicety he could no longer afford. It was getting harder to breath, the spiders must have been visiting him every night almost and laying more eggs. The fact that none of the eggs had ever hatched never crossed his worried mind.

Domino came in the middle of him stripping the walls and painting them with Bruiseweed.

"What the hell are you doing, Lev?"

Levine only smiled.

"You need to see a Doctor man."

He went to the bedroom and locked the door. He couldn't sit on the bed. The mattress were breeding grounds for the spiders. The entire world was one giant egg waiting to hatch. It was then that idea formed. He owned a boat. The spiders were coming because he was on land. Out in the ocean there was nothing for them to grapple onto but the boat. If he sanitized the boat and went out to sea they wouldn't be able to lay more eggs in him.

The idea put the wheels in motion.

"Lev, man, you gotta fire the outhouse, people are starting to complain." Domino said.

Screw them, what had they done for him?

"You're getting crazier every time I see you, man." Domino said.

And there was the word. The magical word that had tumbled in his head on those restless nights when he decided sleeping wasn't worth the price of more spider eggs in his chest or stomach, or ass for that matter. He was sure that the spider eggs in his ass had hatched. How else could you explain the blood he crapped out in the mornings?

"Are you drinking that poison crap they gave you at the Clinic?" Domino asked. "You are aren't you?"

Levine smiled. It was all he could do. People convinced themselves they couldn't hear his mushy breath or the sound of the spiders eating him from the inside out. They listened to his conversations, he knew that much, they were trying to hear his thoughts. He hadn't caught them, but late at night he heard the scratching coming from outside. He tried to imagine the elaborate listening devices the townspeople made, a giant cup suctioned to his home, people on the other end laughing at him. How could they move it so fast? He'd run out two nights ago screaming, trying to surprise them, but they'd gotten into the forrest too quickly.

When Domino left he gathered the clothes he deemed uninfected and a small bag. His boat was tethered to the dock, a small one sail rower. By dawn he was out at sea and hungry. The spiders couldn't find him at see, they were busy searching the house for him. The townspeople couldn't use their mechanical listening device if he had no walls for them to attach it too.

Levine passed two years at sea. Coming back once a month for the small satchel of supplies that Domino left at the dock. He spent the better part of a day after getting them, inspecting them. The water always looked okay, but smelled like turpentine. He continued to drink and huff the poison. People back on shore called him The Sanitary Sailor, that or Crazy Man Keff. He braved three storms, the last the worst while at sea. During the last he saw a woman standing on the pitching waves. Coarse gray hair that looked like silk cascading down her shoulders.

Why aren't you wet? He wondered.

The woman waved and glided over the pitching waves and cut through the shears of wind. Levine had himself wrapped in a thick burlap cloth, his skin chaffed raw and ragged, it beat having spiders crawl into his lungs at night. Chaffed skin was a temporary problem. Spider eggs hatching in your lungs was a long term, deathly problem.

Two silver eyes settled on him. She flew over the side of his tiny boat and seated herself opposite him, long gown untouched by the water. From in-between her breasts she pulled a piece of crisp parchment.

"You Levine Keff?"

He smiled. Kept on smiling right through the rain.

"Right...I'll take that as a yes, they said you were a wethead." The woman said.

"Who said?" He asked. The sound of his voice scared him. What scared him more was the thought that speaking might spit out spiders on the beautiful woman in his boat.

The woman pointed a finger to the sky. "Dudes upstairs."

"Who are you?"

"Me?" She shrugged. "Messenger from the gods, divine vision, all that crap."

"Oh."

"Oh?" The woman rolled her eyes. "You know you can tell someone you formed mountains, made oceans, created flesh and blood and they'll still have the same answer."

Levine continued to smile. It was all he could think to do.

"You retarded?"

"Re-what now?" Levine blinked. Wind battered him left and right. Rain poured down on him. He became intimately aware his little boat wasn't designed to stand this kind of storm. The woman looked unphased by any of it.

"Nothing. " She read the parchment, bobbing her head as she did so, then rolled it and tucked it back between her breasts. "You've got a bug problem?"

"Spiders." Levine said. "Spiders in my lungs."

"Right." The woman looked at the angry sea. Planted her elbows on her knees and leaned forward. "Today's your lucky day. I can help you with that bug problem, but you have to do me a favor first."

Levine stopped smiling. Another game? Was the lady from the town?

She snapped her fingers and the ocean went dead clam. The blackened skies cleared. Levine looked around. "Oh." He muttered.

The woman sighed. "Everyone always says that."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Well my dear crazy friend," The woman said. "I need you to shore your boat up at a specific place to the north and wait for a woman to appear. Take her where she needs to go and then I'll get rid of those spiders."

"You'll take them out?" Levine asked. "How?"

"I made the seas calm didn't I?"

Levine nodded.

"Taking some spiders from your lungs is nothing." The woman said. She reclined against the boat. "You'll know the woman when you see her. She only has one arm and a flock of sparrows follows her."

"One arm, sparrows." Levine repeated.

"And here I thought you weren't listening." The woman said. She flashed a dazzling smile of white teeth. "I'll be watching. When you're done another storm will carry you out here again and I'll be waiting."

"And the spiders?"

"We'll take care of that when the time comes." The woman said. "For now...shore up the boat to the north and wait." The Goddess vanished into the angry sea. Levine blinked and then coughed a mouthful of blood into his hand. The lady in the water would take the spiders out...and all he had to do was wait for a one armed woman.

He shored the boat to the north two days later. The forrest ran up to the beach-line, animals scurried in the trees. Somewhere in the forrest he could hear a babbling brook. His mushy breath filled his ears. The spiders would be gone soon. Just as soon as the one arm woman appeared.

Just as soon as she appeared.

Levine hunkered down and began to wait, he drifted off to his first untroubled sleep in years a minute later.

[fallonquinn]

The Gulch: Supplemental Runes
By: Fallon Quinn

Freeze Frame Three: The Case Of Pardimor

The sea ate him whole, like a hungry monster birthed from an angry Mother. He sank, resurfaced, and sank again. The armor, it was too heavy, and his sword, his beloved sword, all of it was so heavy. His mouth caught air, one arm pitching out above the surface of the angry beast. The last bit of sour energy slithered from his grasp and he sank once again. Darkness clouded his vision. Through the waters he could see the fires of Menethil.

Failed, he thought. I've failed.

**

"What's wrong with him?" Someone asked.

"How the hell should I know?"

"Thought you were a doctor."

"WAS! WAS a doctor, you guys keep missing that part."

Darkness pulled him down again.

**

He woke to the harsh odor of burning candles and sea salt. His muscles felt slack against his bones. Pardimor opened his eyes and took in a small wooden cabin. A short woman sat at one of the desks bolted to the floor. A number of bottles clustered atop the desk like a hive. The woman picked one up, stared at it while she held it in front of a flame.

"Where am I?" Pardimor asked. His voice sounded like cow meat scrapped against sand paper.

The woman turned from the table. Her pupils looked two sizes too big. "The Fallen Queen, it's a fishing ship."

"Who are you?"

The woman smiled. "Case, just Case."

Pardimor tried to sit up and flinched.

"Wouldn't do that." Case said. She stood up from the desk, grappled one of the overhead beams and hung there, midriff exposed. "Muscles are shot...at least for another day or so. You've got some fluid in your lungs too, going to be a ***** trying to get that stuff out."

"Huh?"

"Pneumonia, we fished you out of the ocean." Case said. Her head stretched towards him. "You almost drowned. Your lungs are full of sea-water."

Pardimor tried to imagine that and failed. Imagination had never been his strong suit. Something burned just beneath his skin. Pardimor rolled onto his side and coughed, hard.

"Fever." Case said. "You're topping out at about one-oh-three if I had to guess. Hard to tell without any equipment."

"Are you a doctor?"

"Hell no, man." She shook her head. "Not for awhile now."

"What are you?"

"Hired help. Fisherman have a nasty habit of slashing themselves and all that crap. I'm here to sew up wounds." She shrugged. "Makes a living I guess. Better than my last gig."

"What'd you do?"

"I ran a clinic..." Case said. Her eyes glazed over. "Anyways, you need rest, man. You're going to kill yourself trying to move around. Once we shore up I'll be able to buy some herbs and whip up a batch of antibiotics. Till then you're on bed rest, doctor's orders."

"But you said you're not a doctor."

"I'm not." Case said. She let go of the beam and walked towards the far side of the cabin towards the stairs. She stopped on the first step. "Which means I don't give a rats ass if you die, just try not to do it before we get to shore. Dumping bodies in the ocean gives me the willies."

Pardimor watched her go in silence. He tested his arms. Hands flexed. Arms tensed. All good signs. Mentally he checked his body over for any other wounds he may have. A strange tattered sensation reverberated in his side. Pardimor looked down and saw ten neat, concise stitches along his torso. Professional, no haphazard battlefield medic job.

**

They came ashore three days later. Pardimor remembered it in bits and pieces of ragged memory. Fever baked through him, sizzled his neurons. The Case woman appeared twice, once to tell him he was burning up, the other time she came back with a small red vial.

"You gotta drink this, man."

Glass touched his lip and the bitter liquid ran down his throat. Pardimor gagged, convulsed once, his stomach muscles cramping.

"Keep it down." Case said.

"You've gotta keep it down."

The darkness took him again.

**

His eyes opened to a starry sky. "Where are we?"

"In the middle the ****ing ocean." Case grunted. The woman was hunched over two oars, back muscles rippling.

"What?"

"Yeah...turns out fishermen don't like getting hustled during a poker game." Case said. "Had to procure this nifty craft of ours from the neighborhood kids."

He tried to roll on his side and found himself strapped down to the plank boards of the boat. "Where are we going?"

"What?" Case looked over her shoulder at him. "Don't ask me, you're the one that's been babbling about Theramore for the last two days." Her face looked like a roadmap of exhaustion. Deep crows feet were etched around her eyes, ears pointed back, low to the ground.

"Babbling?"

"Dude, you are so dense." Case grunted. She grabbed the oars and fought a fierce streak of undertow. "You've been jabbering about Theramore for the last two days straight. Had to dope your ass so you'd shut up or you would have tipped the boat."

Pardimor touched his side. The sticks were gone. A thick mesh of tissue formed a scar there. "You stitch me up?"

"Huh?" Case leaned forward and dragged the oars. "Yeah, patched you up when we pulled you out of the water. Nasty looking stab wound, thought you were a goner. The real question is why are we gong to Theramore Isle?"

"I was born there." Pardimor said.

"Little far for an Elf isn't it?" Case asked.

Pardimor said nothing. He watched the sky shift above him. "We can get supplies there." He said. "I've still got a few friends hanging around."

"You've got friends I've got wanted posters, fantastic." Case said.

"Wanted posters?"

"Long story." Case said. She shifted on the wooden plank seat. "Theramore it is."

The two headed off to towards the Isle. Fate, Elune, whatever you wanted to name it pushed them on like a dead horse running on pure force of will.

[fallonquinn]

The Gulch: Supplemental Runes
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: None

Freeze Frame Four: Through A Darkened Glass

The old woman smelled like rotten spice and boiled cabbage. Lilliam tried to act like she wasn't afraid, but she was. The old woman stretched her twig hands through the black folds of her robe and then a deck of cards appeared in them.

"How'd you do that?"

"Many things I can do, child." The old woman said. Outside the black tent the sounds of Stormwind were muted. Night was a mask that descended on the city. The guards passed the tent in shifts. Lilliam had made sure to dodge them when she snuck out of the small flat her Father purchased.

The old woman said she was an Oracle. What that was, Lilliam didn't know for certain, she did know it had something to do with the future, and the future freaked her out. Too many unknowns.

Her Mother would have understood.

I'm alone and forgotten, she thought for no reason, at the edge of the world and forgotten.

The old woman looked up at her, brown liver spots dotting wrinkled cheeks. A smear of black paintstick covered the woman's lips. She smiled displaying a set of yellowed teeth. One gray dusty tongue came out and licked the back of the card deck.

"You wish to know the future." The old woman said.

"Yes." Lilliam wrapped her arms around herself, aware that the flap of the tent was directly behind her. If needed she could bolt at any second.

"Future is a twisted thing, a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that never quite fit together." The old woman said. She flashed the smile again. Lilliam shivered.

I will not be afraid, she thought. I will not be afraid.

"Sometimes it can ruin an ending." The old woman said. Her fingers danced across the deck removing cards at random. The pictures on the cards chilled her. A skeleton hung upside down from a tree by one foot. The Oracle tossed the card onto the dirt floor. "The Fool...that's you."

"I'm no fool." Lilliam whispered.

"We see things through a darkened glass, child. All of us." The old woman ran her crumpled paper fingers against the deck and then threw another card out onto the dirt. Lilliam's eyes were drawn to the card. The portrait of an upright figure standing in a wide field with his arms spread was printed on the card.

"Redemption." The old woman said. A thick odor of peppermint filled the tent. Lilliam squeezed her nose shut. "I see a man...a dead man, who seeks redemption through manipulation."

"I don't know what that word means." Lilliam said.

"Need not matter." The Oracle said. She pulled another card. A strikingly handsome Elf woman was hunched over on cloud peering down towards the lands of Azeroth.

"Who's that?"

"Elune's messenger." The Oracle said. One boney hand, tendons taunt, almost tearing through the skin. "She watches the progress and intervenes when necessary. She's done it before. She'll do it again."

Lilliam took a step away from the old woman. Her bare feet touched the stone flooring that lead to the main canal walkways. The Oracle sneered, a strange tittering laughter coming from the old woman's chest. Another card flipped into the air and landed face up. Lilliam's breath caught in her throat. Her Mother's face was on the card. Etched in sharp ink and colored in herb paints.

"Mamma."

Written on the bottom of the card was a single word in deep india ink: DEATH.

Lilliam knew the word. She knew the word all to well. It played out in her dreams, sometimes forming backwards, sometimes taking the shape of the ghostpaw they used to own. It chased her from home to home, across seas and a million imaginary landscapes.

"Death...but not for her." The Oracle said.

Lilliam wiped at her eyes, surprised at the wetness she found there.

"The card is inverted. Things are shadowed from my eyes. She brings Death, but is also controlled by it." The Oracle said. "She may die, that all depends on this." Another card fly from the deck. Lilliam watched it flip down onto the pile face down.

"Turn it over, girl." The Oracle said.

Lilliam crouched forward, one skinny arm extended. She touched the card, its surface greasy.

It's alive, she thought. Mamma, the cards are alive.

She flipped the card. A short woman, gray skinned, hair tied back into a ponytail wearing a white jacket stood on the shore of a deserted beach. Behind her was a thick forest, LIlliam was sure there were eyes somewhere in that forest. Eyes waiting to grab the woman when she wasn't paying attention and then-

And then it'll eat her, Lilliam thought.

"The Doctor." The Oracle said. The old woman frowned. Jasmine filled the tent. Lilliam grimaced at the clash of odors. "She's ridden by a demon, its name does not come to me, but she allows the demon to infest her."

The Oracle drew back into the darkness of the tent and threw a card into the pile. "The final draw." She said.

Lilliam took another step backwards. The final card looked at her. Lilliam was drawn to it. Her eyes turned towards its slick surface. Framed by a cropped border was a pair of figures, one held a large gun in her hand, the other had a dagger, thrust forward through the gun woman. The end went out her back. Behind them a massive tower rose up on the horizon line disappearing into the sky.

"REBIRTH." The Oracle said. "But not for all. Tell me girl...do you see the darkened glass now?" Hysterical laughter that sounding like snapping branches filled the tent.

Lilliam pivoted on her feet and ran through the tent flaps out onto the cobblestone. Her mind went into a terminal blankness. All she could do was run, run and try not to scream. She ran through the candled streets, past taverns and closed shops. The laughter followed her. For one horrid second she thought if she looked over her shoulder the rotten old woman would be flying behind her, black robes billowing, dust pouring from her like a dried out piece of parchment turned to powder.

A strong hand caught her. Lilliam screamed and then stared up into the face of a young human man, dressed in armor and a Stormwind tabard. He smiled and cocked his head.

"You all right Miss?"

Lilliam started to cry.

The man smiled. "No need for tears."

"My Mamma-"

"Shhh." He held her close for a moment, squatting down to one knee.

"The glass, the glass-"

"What glass?"

"It's dark."

The guard laughed. "Then break it."