Loveless

[fallonquinn]

/Loveless/
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: Tinkering with this for now. Not sure what to make of it, if anything. For what it's worth, enjoy.

Track One: Bitter Medicine

\1\

She watched the casket go into the ground and never cried. The gravediggers piled on mound after mound of dirt, deep into the black hole of the earth. No tears came even as they planted the wooden stake into the fresh grave. Nico watched it all, impassive as a tree.

The house was a flurry of motion. Women in black garb stood near tables filled with food and drinks. Nico sat on the padded chair in the corner and watched them all. Beside her Calli Hannigan kept droning on about some opportunity she had in Ironforge.

"You wouldn't believe what they pay for engravers." She said. "These rich guys come in with bars of copper and silver." She plucked an olive from her drink and chewed the thing like a cow. "They want their names engraved on it right? Sort of like an epitaph so whoever buys the bar knows the products legit."

Nico watched a small man in a black tunic and pants help himself to a heaping pile of roasted pork.

All these people in my house and I barely know any of them, she thought.

"So like NO ONE ever thinks about taking these jobs right? No one ever thinks about who actually has to engrave this ****." Calli snorted laughter.

My husband just died and you're laughing, Nico thought. Why are you laughing?

"I can make a fortune." Calli said.

Gods kill me now.

"You should come with me. I heard they got the forge back up and running a couple weeks ago." Calli said.

Nico felt herself detach from the conversation another few levels. Brain cells departed in search of more productive transmissions. Nico got up, walked to the back of the house, opened the door to a night sky, found the outhouse, and vomited. Some of it caught in her veil. She leaned back against the wooden door.

What the hell is going on?

She stared at the palms of her hands. All those people back in her house, all those people she didn't know, getting drunk and eating her food. It sounded like a celebration.

David's dead, she thought again. Dead.

The words never sunk in. She didn't cry. The taste of gastric juice flooded her mouth. Nico flattened out her dress and walked back into the house. Jeremy Corbin stopped her, smiling, drunk.

"You know your Mom's really broken up about this." He said.

My Mom? You're kidding right?

She made her way back to the chair in the corner. Anissa Halloran had joined Calli on the bench. Her Mother was a short woman, stocky, farmer stocky, eyes bloodshot from tears.

"David was such a good man." She said.

Just for the record Mom, David was an asshole.

Nico sat down.

"Dear?"

"Huh?" Nico turned to her Mother. "What?"

"You've got vomit on your veil."

Nico closed her eyes and prayed for disaster.

\2\

The emptiness continued on through the next day. Alone in the house it was easier to convince herself that David was just off at the Market. Their bedroom was an eyesore. She'd managed to stay away from it for most of the day. Seeing the bed was the worst. All the nights she'd curled up next to David. The scars on his body. The countless times they'd tried to make a baby in that bed. They had no kids, and no she had no husband.

Just me, she thought. No skills, no husband, nothing.

She couldn't cry. The hallways felt sickly, like they were oozing some kind of pus from between the wooden boards. The whole house was a death trap. Nico dropped down into the same chair she'd sat in yesterday. Silence crept its padded feet into the room. They'd met in Stormwind, David in the same ridiculous armor he wore on their wedding day, dented, the edges dulled to a soft shade of maroon.

Get away from me, she thought.

If you forgot your memories, could they forget you too? Nico didn't know, she hoped that was the case. They had nothing but the house. David worked as a blacksmith. The bank came and foreclosed that the day after his death. Nico signed the papers in the same dull haze she was still in now. How long till the bank came for the house? How long till she was out on the streets doing Gods knew what for money?

The brief notion of simply taking a rope from the shed at the back of the house and hanging herself had occurred. It stayed around for far too long in her opinion. The only downfall to that was she didn't want someone to find her two weeks later. They didn't get visitors, so someone would find her long after the deed was done. Something about that negated the idea entirely.

They'll find me bloated, she thought. Bloated and purple.

She was hardly aware she was spreading the oil and kerosine until she wiped her forehead leaving a thick black streak there. Frowning she washed her hands under the pump out back. Her silver hair spilled over one olive colored shoulder.

David loved my hair...

Miles from conscious thought she stood at the doorway to her house and struck a match. Red flame danced on the end of the wooden splinter. She dropped it. Kerosine and oil caught fire. She watched the blaze shear through the front hall and then up the walls, consuming the drapes like starved tigers. For one awestruck moment she thought she felt tears welling up behind her eyes. The feeling disappeared a second later.

Nico turned from the fire and walked off towards the forest. She wandered for hours. On the horizon she could see the black channel of smoke imprinted against a sea water sky. At dusk she settled herself under a giant tree, exhausted. Sweat rolled off her in waves.

Should have packed some clothes, she thought.

<Just where the hell are you going?>

Dunno...

<Great plan, sweetheart.>

She closed her eyes drifted to a fragmented slumber. Dreams of David invaded her, tore at the bits of blackness she still had access too. David's arms wrapped around her while they were in bed, the smell of his after-shave in the morning. Everything she DIDN'T want to remember.

In her dream she killed David.

\3\

The thing in the trees watched the sleeping woman for some time. He'd seen creatures like her, floaters in a fragmented life. One scaly green hand clawed a nearby branch, black talons digging into the wood, scarring it. He transfered his weight to get a closer look. The woman was human, stripped of fat, silver hair. Not too attractive, but not too ugly by human standards.

Another few days, he thought. Another few days and then we'll see.

The creature, the thing that'd once been an Elf curled up in a nest of branches, stick thin legs crossed. His giant wet black eyes blinked once and then went still. Things were changing, that much he knew. Everyone had seen the light from The Gulch years back. Great wheels had been set in motion. The Gods were maneuvering chess pieces into place to play out a final act of an unwritten comedy. The Creature thought it wasn't so crazy. The signs were there. Deep from the Outlands the Others had come. The plague was long gone, the damage it reaped far more than anyone could have foreseen.

He'd foreseen though. He'd calculated. Fate was no anomaly, just a string of random events that eventually came to one conclusion. High in the branches of the tree The Creature watched and waited. Another few days...time would tell.

And if it does, I guess I'll know for sure, he thought.

\4\

They scented a Dead hound on him back in The Burning Steppes. It caught up with him while he was crossing the mountains into Elwynn Forest. Its fangs dipped in some sort of venom. He spent twenty hours down in the Highlands hallucinating through a rough haze of fever and infection. Crippled and diseased he pulled into Ironforge a week later, the leather bound box slung over his shoulder. The coal fire streets were lit, the presses pounding away.

Sweat soaked into his gray jacket. Dorian slipped into the Dark Steel Tavern shoved in the back of just another dirty alcove near the Forge. The interior of the bar had a run down look too it. Battered wooden stools, scratched so deep from old bar fights that sap had crusted over like scabs.

Dark Steel was a tavern for Fences and Brokers. The bartender, a swarthy skinned dwarf with a jagged scar twisting across his face ran the place with an iron fist. Dorian parked himself at the bar, all too aware of the black bags under his eyes, and more worried about the bit mark on his left torso. A black tracery of tree branch veins had spread from that ****ing bite.

****ing hound, he thought. You had to find me didn't you?

Dorian knew someone was after him. Who that someone was he couldn't quite piece together. His line of business necessitated certain secrecy. By doing so you had to start a list. A list of all the people that had a motive to **** you over. In Dorian's case...the list was long. He'd sold polished bronze bars coated in lacquer to a fence out in The Barrens as gold, that'd come back to him a few years ago.

Riven came up from behind the bar, his sausage fingers pulling out a shot glass and filling it with whiskey. Dorian stared at the thick scar over the dwarfs nose. Rumors floated about how the little bastard managed to get it, the one Dorian leaned towards involved the Shadowed Syndicate and a batch of botched narcotics.

"You look like ****." Riven said.

"Thanks for the notice." Dorian said. He took the whiskey and choked it down. A claw twisted its way deep into his side. He groaned and set the leather bound case on the bar top. "Get that to Harkens."

"What is it?"

"Organs." Dorian said. He fished a sloppy rolled smoke from his jacket and lit it. Smoke dug into his lungs. Behind him a gnome, maybe only twenty, was having a conversation with two humans.

"If I had to learn magic I'd take the gnomes for teachers any day." The gnome said.

Dorian chuckled. The gnomes knew **** about magic. The Elves had forgotten more than the gnomes had ever touched on during their time on Azeroth. To his right Lady Kay sat next to him, dressed in a leather V-neck shirt and pants. Her pointed boots poked his leg.

"Kellog's looking for you." She said.

Who isn't looking for me?

"Says you shafted him on the last batch of organs." Lady Kay said. Her short cut burgundy hair fell across two blue eyes.

"He said livers I got him livers." Dorian said. His hand slid to his side, cupping the bite, trying to massage the flesh there and detesting the rubbery feel.

"He said ELF livers. You got him some knock off troll livers. You can't sell that **** on the market." Lady Kay said.

Lady Kay worked a very special niche in the black-market. Agent of death was the first thing that came to Dorian's mind but he never said it aloud. Kellog only sent out Lady Kay when he wanted someone dead, or near dead. Dorian eyed the door and grimaced. He wouldn't make it, even in top notch condition Lady Kay would drop him like a sack of wet paper.

"Not my problem." Dorian said.

Lady Kay snaked her hand between his legs. "Oh my dear Dorian...I think this is your problem."

"Hey." Riven snatched the leather box from the countertop and dropped it behind the bar. "If you're gonna off him do it outside the bar. I don't want the squids in here."

Thanks, Riven, such words of encouragement.

Lady Kay squeezed. Dorian felt his stomach turn into a molten ball of lead. "Easy." He whispered. "Only got two of those."

"Might not have any when I'm done with you." Lady Kay said. She flashed a ruby red smile.

A hand shot between them, thin, pale skin, and then a woman's body separated them. She flopped onto the bar top. "Riven," burp. "Another round."

"The ****." Lady Kay got up off the stool. "Yo, whore, beat it."

The woman, shaggy black hair cut rough and sheared flashed Lady Kay the bird and then turned back towards Riven. Lady Kay flushed. Dorian suddenly realized he was about to be a witness to a homicide. Kay rushed forward one arm making a perfect arc. The woman on the bar had reflexes like a hawk. Dorian bought the drunk act, every had. She rolled, leather pants squeaking on the floor. Her hands moved in perfect unison, three small daggers braced between the fingers on each hand, all pointed at Kay's exposed belly.

Lady Kay's face melted into something like astonishment mixed with rage. "Oh...that was wrong." She said. "You have no idea-"

"Cut it, *****." The woman said. "Hit the streets."

Dorian slid against the bar feeling faint. His side screamed at him, overloading his nerves. Lady Kay turned and disappeared from the bar. A number patrons stopped drinking. The black haired woman waved her hands, the blades vanished. Dorian tried to follow the motion and couldn't. She walked over, gray eyes scanning him. Her arms wrapped around his neck.

"Mr. Dorian, I do believe you owe me your life." She said.

Riven managed to creep back into the shadows of the bar.

"I'm not carrying." He said.

"Didn't think so, but that's not what I want."

"Then what DO you want?" Dorian asked.

"A job."

TBC...

[Foonyak]

Me likey so far.

Have you ever thought about submitting any of these to a publisher? They're pretty good.

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: Ironforge in this story appears much expanded, to the scale of a massive city, as will all the other major cities in Azeroth that come up.

Track Two: The Future Freaks Me Out

\1\

The woman dragged him out of the bar, through the deserted alley's of Ironforge. Dorian tried to map their progress and failed. His mind flew off on a hundred different tangents. Old Miss Priss, dragging him around, had just about fragged Lady Kay. Kellog wouldn't like that. Kellog would have his ass for that.

"Looks like you got some heat on you." The woman said. They turned a blind corner, the stench of soot and burning copper overpowering.

"No thanks to you." Dorian said.

"Chick would have carved you a new ribcage." The woman said. Her black hair flew in her face as she whipped both of them down another passage. They stopped at a wooden door on the right.

"What's your name?" Dorian asked.

"Cherry." She said. From a pocket she pulled out a set of lock picks and popped the latch on the door. "Cherry Berry."

You're kidding me, Dorian thought.

"Please tell me you're joking."

"Nope."

"You a stripper?"

"No...just bad luck of the draw with passports." Cherry said. She pushed the wooden door open to a dank studio room. The stone floor was moist, the ceiling dripped dirty water. "Was the only name they had back in The Barrens, papers were legit. Documents even went through the Darnassus notary."

"Sucks to be you." Dorian said.

Cherry laughed. "Think about the person who actually had the name. I feel bad for HER."

Dorian tried to smile. The edges of his vision had turned a spotty brown color. Cherry dragged him into the room and then shut the door. Darkness engulfed them. He touched the stone walls, feeling the slick surface. The scent of mildew filled his nostrils. Behind him the flare of a candle sparked to life. Cherry set it in the middle of the floor and then sat in the corner, shadows dancing off the rise of her cheekbones. She reached back into her hair and pulled loose a leather thong. Two long gray ears popped up.

"You're an elf." Dorian muttered. He slid to the floor. His side felt like a cage of angry wolves that'd taken to eating each other rather than starving.

Cherry nodded.

"That lady you almost clocked back there, she's going to come looking for me." Dorian said.

"Which is precisely why you need a bodyguard....from the looks of you, you're not in the best of shape right now." Cherry said.

You got that right, sister.

"You a bodyguard?"

"Among other things."

"What happened to your last client?" Dorian asked.

"He died."

"Great PR."

Cherry shrugged. "Not my fault, told the dude not to go to Gadget."

"Lady Kay's real flash." Dorian said. "Don't think you can take her. She's souped up, tough girl."

"Yeah." Cherry smiled, her eyes vibrated. "Cherry's been through the ringer too." She flashed the three blades in each hand again. They vanished a second later.

"How'd you do that?"

"I dated a magician."

"A mage?"

"No, a magician, he did kids parties."

I'm in a world of hurt, Dorian thought. A big fat world of hurt.

\2\

Cherry left the small room and was gone for most of the morning. Dorian rolled into the corner, his side starting to coil into twisted knots of fire. She returned with a tall Elf wearing a white jacket, middle aged.

"Who's that?" Dorian asked.

"A doctor." Cherry said.

"I'm not a doctor." The woman said. "Case, just Case." She had a small black box in her hand carved from some dark forest wood. Cherry lit a few more candles. "What bit you?"

"Dead hound."

"Any idea what kind of poison?"

Dorian peeled off his jacket and shirt. The bite mark was a blasted waste of black tissue. He groaned at the sight.

"****." Case said. She knelt down. "Bring one of those candles over here." The smell of Auberdine tobacco rolled off the woman. "How long ago was this?"

"About a week..." Dorian trailed off, his eyes focused on Cherry. The woman stood in the corner over a large brown sack, pulling out threaded rope.

"A week?" Case grunted. She turned to her black box and opened it. Inside was a caged animal. It had a frogs body, covered in coarse brown fur, a set of gills on both sides of its rubbery mass. She set the caged animal on the floor next to him. From the box she pulled out two glass tubes and then hovered over him. "This is gong to hurt."

"Do it."

Case stuck the two tubes into the upper set of fang marks. Dorian didn't flinch, didn't feel a thing in fact. He looked down at saw the glass tubes an inch into the black flesh.

"Doesn't hurt?" Case asked.

"No."

"That bad?" Cherry leaned in to watch.

"Yeah...means the tissue's gone necrotic." Case said. She set the tubes inside the cage. The fur covered frog thing took the glass into its mouth and started to suck. A strange churning noise came from its gills and then black liquid poured from the slits on its side. "Barnibus here is going to suck out as much poison as he can. Eats the base of the toxin, excretes that black crap he doesn't need through the gills. Sort of like dialysis."

Dorian said nothing. He waited. There was always bad news. He could tell by the look on the middle-aged Elf's face. The worried etches of wrinkles around her eyes.

"Guess there's some bad stuff, too?" Dorian said.

Case went to her box and pulled out a small bottle of white pills. She counted out a dozen and slipped them into a small satchel. "I know someone who can probably get an Ident on this stuff, but my guess..." She glanced at him. "It's a myocardial toxin, spreads via the lymphatic system and central nervous synapses."

"And?" Cherry had one of the daggers out, the point jammed between her teeth.

"Well you're probably going to die." Case said. She got to her feet, hands stuffed into her jacket pockets.

Going to die, Dorian thought, isn't that the story of my life?

"How soon?"

"Dunno." Case shrugged. "If it IS a myocardial toxin, which it might not be, you're looking at six months maybe. It hardens the ventricle walls of your heart, makes it harder to pump blood. When, and if, you get chest pains stick one of those pills under your tongue."

Six months, Dorian thought. Six months for a box of livers. Was it worth it?

A dull rage seeped into his pores.

"Who set the hound on you?" Case asked.

"Dunno...think it might be a fence I know."

Cherry turned. "Flash chick at the bar?"

"Guy she works for, Ke-"

"Bah-bah-bah." Case waved her fingers. "I don't want to know names. Safer for me if I don't."

Dorian turned to Cherry. "Guess I'm going to need that bodyguard you were talking about."

She flashed a wicked smile at him. "Told you so."

\3\

Kellog would be watching the bank. Dorian was sure of it. All his local bank roll was locked up in one of the deposit boxes in the back. He spent seven hours hooked up to the freak frog before Case finally vanished, a vial of the black goo in her carrying case.

"Remember to take the pills when the pain comes on." She said. "You'll die if you don't."

Dying anyways, he thought.

Cherry and Dorian stood in the shadows of an alcove formed by two adjacent shops. He scanned the crowd by the bank, the mass of creatures near the Auction house. Two of them he plucked out right away. A man standing near the postal box, his face placid and bored, his eyes told a different story. A woman stood outside the auction house her head darting back towards the bank every opportunity she got.

"Two." Dorian whispered.

Cherry shook her head. "Three." She pointed towards a small gnome dressed in gray fatigues standing on the catwalk that stretched over the coals below. "He's the look out."

Dorian wrinkled his brow. "How do you know?"

"Trust me. Bank's shot. Know another way to get any cash?" She asked. "My services are contingent on it."

"Yeah...I got a way." Dorian said. He shifted his mind to Abby. Abby would roll the cash for him. "I don't like it, but I've got a way."

"Then lets hump it, cripple." Cherry giggled.

Never ends does it?

\4\

Abby's place was down in the bowels of Ironforge. After the brief desertion of the city twenty years ago the dwarves and gnomes had come back and reestablished a massive construction plan to overhaul the city. Two of the initial plans were put into motion and then scrapped over instability concerns. Abby made his home among the deserted, half constructed, ruins of a place that was never meant to be. Dorian hobbled down the corridor to a set of stairs that lead to a catwalk running deep into solid stone. He clamped a hand over his chest and popped a white pill under his tongue. Cherry slowed behind him.

"Yo, you all right?"

No.

"Yeah." He grimaced. "Just a bit further."

They came to a metal door, a three inch retractable slot visible waist high. Dorian lowered himself to the slot and banged twice. From behind the doors he heard a scramble of movement and then a telescoping lens exposed itself from the wall. Behind him he felt Cherry geared up like a ball of hot nerves wrapped in barb wire.

"Chill." He said.

"Frosty." Cherry said.

I doubt it, you look like you're ready to try and fight a Troll Brigade.

The telescope took them in and then the slot in the door retracted. Two beady eyes stared back. "What?"

Dorian caught the rotten odor of unkept teeth and digested food. He waved a hand in front of his face. "I need to see Abby."

"No Abby here." The eyes said.

"Tell him it's Dorian."

The slot snapped closed.

"That a no?" Cherry asked.

Dorian shrugged. Abby was an old Dwarf, a pissed off bastard missing his left leg. Over the years they'd operated on a business relationship only. If Dorian needed cash rolled from his account or laundered so the Ironforge Revenue Bear didn't see it pop up in the Auction house reports he came to Abby. Everyone did. The metal door groaned and then opened. Dorian got to his feet. Inside a massive chamber stretched out. The walls made of solid obsidian, candles flickered in the darkness, small glass lamps and orbs hanging from ceiling bolts. Hundreds of abacuses' hung from the ceiling, ropes attached to each bead, each rope twined together into a complex pulley system that ended at a flat iron desk where Abby sat.

"Real flash." Cherry said admiring the place.

The door-guard eyed both of them. "Back." He said.

Dorian nodded. He started through the door, massaging his chest. The guard stopped Cherry. The woman flushed.

"Boss?"

The door guard turned to him. "Magic Hands stays here."

Dorian narrowed his gaze. "You know her?"

"Everyone does." The guard said.

His eyes locked with Cherry. "We'll talk about this later."

The Elf shrugged and crossed her arms. She stepped from the doorway and leaned against the stone wall. "Your dime." She muttered.

The metal door slammed shut. Dorian focused on the dwarf sitting at the giant iron desk. He walked the length of the chamber and took one of the seats opposite.

Abby rubbed his knobby nose, pulled a long wooden pipe off his desk and lit it from a nearby candle. "You look like ****, Dorian."

You know...everyone keeps telling me that.

"I know."

"In a pinch?"

"Sort of." Dorian said.

"Who?"

"Who what?"

"Who with?" Abby asked. His sausage fingers touched the bowl of the pipe, pulling it from his mouth. Blue smoke ran from his nostrils in rivers.

"Kellog...I think." Dorian said.

The old dwarf shook his head. "Bad meat to get into. Told you to stay out of the organ brokering."

"Too late now." Dorian said. He adjusted himself in the small chair. "I need cash."

"I don't make loans."

"Not a loan." Dorian said. "Banks being watched."

Abby laughed, slapped his meaty thigh, hand moving down to the fleshy stump where his leg ended. "What amount you looking to roll?"

"A grand."

"What color?"

"Gold."

The dwarf spat out a cloud of smoke. "That's big money."

"Call it cashing out." Dorian said. He reached into his jacket and fumbled through the scrapes of paper there till he found the Ironforge Banking Slip. The parchment was a brown color. "Got a pen?"

The dwarf passed him quill. Dorian set the parchment out on the tabletop and wrote the amount. He signed his name and then a series of symbols to the bottom of the paper. If the money was in his account the writing would vanish leaving only blank parchment. The parchment was then presented to a teller who passed it over a reading stone and allocated the funds. One of the new improvements for preferred clients. Dorian thought of it as the legal illegitimate account. If the writing didn't vanish, well then something had gone wrong and Kellog had somehow cleaned out his emergency funds.

Abby leaned over, puffing smoke. "Looks like-"

The writing vanished from the page. Dorian managed a weak smile and then folded it into squares. He wrote the deposit box number on the outside. The numbers faded just as soon as he'd written them.

Abby leaned back, his eyes muted. He set his pipe down and pulled a grouping of strings to him. The abacuses along the ceiling rattled. The dwarf's hands flew through a series of motions. "One K withdrawal, color G...transaction cloaked I take it?"

Dorian nodded. "Can't have anyone knowing."

"Time frame?"

"ASAP."

The dwarf made a few adjustments with the strings. "Expatiated retrieval..." He set the strings down looking at all of the colored beads behind Dorian. "Our cut is 250 in G's."

"**** man...why don't you just rob me blind?"

"1k is a big roll." Abby said. His knobby nose reflected a shard of lamplight. "People in the banking world notice a thousand gold pieces disappearing and then resurfacing. Puts us at risk. Bigger risk, bigger take."

Dorian shook his head. "Fine. 250."

The dwarf pulled a sheet from his desk and then scribbled something down. Dorian took it from him. The parchment had a U written on it and then a dash followed by 543. "What's this?"

"Catacombs. Unmarked grave. When we verify that you've got the funds the rest of the numbers will appear."

"When's that?"

"Three hours." Abby said. He motioned towards the door guard. "Pleasure doing business, Dorian."

Pleasure is all yours, Dorian thought.

TBC...

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: This story's coming at me pretty fast. Hope you like the ride.

Track Three: Bankroll

\1\

They stood in the catacombs, amid the dead silence and cobwebs that straddled unmarked graves. It was more of a crypt, bodies stacked on-top of each other in rectangular slots carved into the wall. Dorian wiped a slop of webbing and sweat from his face.

"You look jaundice, man." Cherry said. She'd picked up a sledgehammer on their way down into the combs, the thing propped over one shoulder.

Yeah, well I'm dying, that'll turn your system out of whack.

"What does the paper say?"

Dorian pulled it from his jacket and stared down at the scrawled writing: U-534. The rest of the numbers hadn't formed yet. He slumped against the wall.

When was the last time I slept?

Cherry dropped the sledgehammer to the floor, the lean frame of her body stretching out on the stone floor. Above them the presses where in full swing. The darkness swept between them.

"You got a girl?" Cherry asked.

"No." Dorian said. "How about you?"

"Had a boy once." Cherry said.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, James Arthur Picken...went by Jimmy."

"A human?"

The Elf nodded.

"What happened?"

Cherry sighed into the darkness. "Died. Was a drunk."

"Sorry to hear that." Dorian leaned over and coughed hard into his hand.

"It happens. I just started working the circuit. Jimmy always had these big plans, thought he was going to be something big in Stormwind or something like that." Cherry said. "I always thought it was kind of funny, cute, even. Anyways...one day Jimmy gets this bright idea to knock off a transport of smack back in The Barrens. Knew about it somehow from a friend. He comes running in one day shouting how he did it, how we're going to be rich."

"Bad start." Dorian said.

"I had this sweet gig working debt collections out of Desolace. I left that night for a week. Came back and he was dead. Knew he was dead. Opened the door to our place and he was spread out on the bed, someone slashed his throat. Professional job."

Dorian said nothing.

"Ever find out who?"

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

Cherry got to her feet. "I killed him." She dusted the butt of her leather pants. "Check the paper."

Dorian looked down. U-534A2. The A2 was new. He got to his feet, grimaced and straightened his jacket. "Got it." He whispered.

"So which dead person are we waking up?" Cherry asked.

"U-534A2." Dorian said.

"All right then...lets get to grave robbing."

\2\

In her dream David was still alive, and she kept killing him. Only David wouldn't die. Nico struggled up from the dark depths of looped dreams to the dank smell of the forest. She'd lost weight. Time stretched thin. The creature said that would happen. Just what the creature was she didn't know, but he called himself Marv. It took her a moment to realize the creature was awake, his wet black eyes staring at her through the darkness.

"Your dreams..."

Nico rubbed her eyes. "David's alive in them."

Marv nodded, his scaled flesh clicking like chain mail. "Dreams do things to people."

You have no idea, Nico thought.

Why she wasn't afraid had occurred to her on more than a handful of occasions. The freak before her should have sent her screaming off deeper into the forest. Instead she took his appearance as fact. A natural progression of something she would never understand. Then again, she didn't understand much after David died.

"We move soon." Marv said. His voice sounded like jelly poured through a strainer.

"Where?"

"The Great Forge...then on." Marv said. "Two vagrants await us."

\3\

Dorian stared at the ornate crypt. It was stacked atop another stone coffin. The front covered an intricate design. Chiseled into the front plate was: U-534A2.

"This is it." Cherry said. "You want me to crack it?"

Dorian nodded.

The elf took a step back, raised the sledgehammer and then let it fly. The steel head shattered the front face of the stone cap. Dorian took a step back, shielding his face from flying shards. Lowering his arm he stared at the shattered rock.

Cherry glanced over at him. "This may take awhile." She craned back and slammed the hammer into the stone again, the noise mixing into the sound of the presses above. It took the better part of an hour to break through the outer shell. A cloud of noxious gas expelled from the crypt. Cherry backed away, her hand sliding into the crimson leather jacket she wore.

"Hate dead people." She muttered.

"Well this dead guy's got our money." Dorian said. "Wonder how much coin Abby has stashed through the catacombs..." He peered into the jagged broken stone mouth of the crypt. Where a body should have been there was just cobwebs and an old leather sack covered in dust. "Had this in storage for awhile. That whole quoting prices thing is bull****."

"We can still rough him up." Cherry said.

"Easy." Dorian reached inside and snagged the sack. "Help me." He grunted. Cherry grabbed his shoulders and pulled him out. Dorian fell against the wall, slid down, the satchel dropping into his lap.

"Count it." Cherry said.

"How do you know Abby?" Dorian asked. He pulled the old leather thong on the sack and started to stack gold coins around him.

"I offed his friends old lady two summers ago." Cherry said. She set the sledge hammer against the wall and crouch, legs muscles coiled, always at the ready.

"You what?"

"Killed her." Cherry said. "She got into some **** with Holden Burke in Stormwind, nabbed his stash or something like that, dunno, I don't ask details. Contract went out on her. I took it, cashed in two hundred golds. Needed some surgery done."

Dorian stopped counting. "You never said anything about killing people."

"You never asked for a resume." Cherry said.

"Point taken." Dorian said. He rolled his head against the wall. "So what's this going to cost me?"

"Ongoing." Cherry said. She pulled a rolled smoke from her jacket and struck a dull match to the end. "Hundred gold as a down-payment, I have to tussle somebody or kill them the price goes up, otherwise it's fifty silvers a week, not counting any incurred expenses."

"You're expensive." Dorian said.

"You heard the good doctor, it's not like you've got a lot of time to spend all that money you've got." Cherry said. She ashed onto the stone floor, ears perked. "Someone's coming. Pack that up."

"****." Dorian stuffed the coins back into their pouch and tied it to his waist. A hot knife buried itself in his chest. Grunting he pulled a white pill out and stuck it under his tongue. Once they got out of Ironforge he had to find out what the pills were and buy more.

If you make it out, he thought. Kellog's got his goons on you now. You're a marked man.

"Stay low, stay quiet." Cherry said. She was crouched, both arms pointed at the ground, daggers between her fingers, little instruments of death. "Two...male..." Her ears twitched again. "About thirty yards ahead." For the first time he noticed the position of her body, a perfect balance of equilibrium. "Stay here." She whispered.

I'm not paying for someone to get killed, Dorian thought.

He massaged his chest. Something felt loose around his heart, like a valve had decided to detach on its own accord to pump blood places no blood should be pumped. Dorian hunched over, hand against the wall.

Lot of good a cripple can do.

His mind went back to the Dead hound, the fangs. He cupped a hand over his eye and stared down the hall. There was a vague hunched over shape. Cherry? He hugged the wall. Did Abby spill the beans to Kellog? Take the whole cut an a little on top to get the location?

Speculation, Dorian thought, stop it.

Up ahead someone screamed in the concrete halls. Dorian went still. The clash of metal echoed and then another scream. Three long minutes passed when he could barely even manage to breathe, heartbeat stuffed into his throat.

"Price just went up." Cherry shouted from down the hall. "Double."

\4\

They rolled out of the catacombs loaded with a few extra silvers, Dorian with a vivid image of the two dead bodies they'd left down there. Cherry was efficient...horridly efficient. He'd never seen the two before.

"Who were those guys?" Dorian asked.

"Nobody." Cherry said. She stormed up a spiraling stairwell that led to a steam powered elevator shaft.

Dorian stopped. "Bull."

Cherry froze, her hand on the thin iron mesh of the lift. "What?"

"Those guys are after you." Dorian said. He realized the enclosed space between them. If she wanted to she could have shredded him a hundred times over and he wouldn't have been able to do a damn thing about it.

"Yeah...maybe they are." Cherry said. She pulled open the mesh. "Get in."

Dorian felt the scheme fall into place. He lowered his chin onto his chest. "You needed cash." He said. "You couldn't get it could you? You got people after you too."

"When you're in the business, you've got a list." Cherry said. In the darkness she flashed a weak grin. "You know how it goes. Take names of the people who want your ass on a stake out in the desert. When someone comes looking for you, you've gotta go over that list."

"Who?"

"I don't know." Cherry said. "But they wiped my accounts. I went to the Stormwind Bank, vaults empty, they say they've never heard of me, Ironforge is empty, even the back up bars of copper I had in Menthil are gone."

Dorian shook his head. "Using me."

"Same thing you would have done." Cherry said.

You're right, he thought. I would have ****ed you over in a heart beat if I had the motivation.

"Then lets negotiate." Dorian said. "You're broke, I got cash. I got connections."

"So do I." Cherry said.

"You got movement connections?"

Cherry went quite. She tied her ears back to her head and spread a flop of black hair over them.

"Didn't think so."

"You can get us out of Ironforge?" Cherry asked. She stepped into the lift. Dorian followed.

"I know a guy." He said.

"I bet you do."

TBC...

[Grubblies]

DON'T STOP NOW!!!

Good work my friend :).

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: I'm trying to keep these posts as regular as possible. Friday always seems to be a good day. So enjoy. This story probably isn't for kiddies if I haven't mentioned that yet.

Track Four: Showdown At The House Of Fallen Trees

\1\

They rented a room at a large hotel complex built into fabric of The Mystic Ward. Red glass tubing filled with swamp gas spelled out the name: House of Fallen Trees in iridescent light. The interior of the place was plush velvet floors and high priced furniture. Dorian felt out of place in the lobby among the gold lacquered hand rails and polished marble countertops. A number of well groomed dwarves and elves were seated around a parlor area separated by extravagantly polished wood doors with thin sheets of tracery glass.

Dorian came up to the counter where a small gnome dressed in a fine silk robe eyed him.

"We need a room." He said.

The gnome pretended to shuffled papers together. "The rate is ninety silver a night plus any incurred expenses from the catering service. A cheaper hotel is avail-"

Dorian dropped a gold coin down onto the counter. "That cover for the night?" He threw four more down. "How about the rest of the week?"

The gnome's Faberge smile shattered and then smoothed over, all pleasantries now. "My apologies, sir."

My ass and your face, a prefect match, Dorian thought.

Behind him Cherry had evaporated into one of the plush velvet padded chairs. Dorian wiped a swatch of sweat from his forehead.

"Would Sir prefer a singe bed or two?" The gnome asked. She'd pulled a large sheet of parchment from a nearby drawer and started to scribble down numbers onto the preprinted form.

"Single is fine."

The gnome glanced over at the elf. "Single, sir?"

"Yes."

She let out a sigh of disapproval and then scribbled something down on the form. "Names?"

"Jack and Sherrie Decamp." Dorian said.

"ID?"

Dorian fished through his pockets till he came out with a small leather bound book the size of a note-card. The gnome took it, glanced at his face, and then back down at the Travel Pass.

"The Misses?"

"My wife's ill. She lost her TP on the way here." Dorian said. He fished a few silver pieces out of his pockets, the ones from the dead body. "I was curious to know if there was an Elfin Embassy nearby, or a Visitor's Center?" He set the silver on the countertop, sliding it across the marble. "It'd be much appreciated."

The gnome eyed the silver, took the pieces and slipped them into her gown pocket. "The visitor's center is in the Commons near the Auction House. In order to have a new piece of documentation made she'll have to present current papers or have duplicates notarized and sent from her place of residence and delivered by secure post."

Dorian gave her a calculated nod. "Thank you, you've been very helpful." He took his TP back and stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket.

The woman scribbled a few notes down and then disappeared from the counter. Dorian watched her go, eyes glued to any signs of pressure. The House of Fallen Trees was a high class place, Dorian had stayed in it once. Kellog would be checking the junk houses. Dorian doubted Kellog would go to the ritz places to look for him.

"How's it going?" Cherry asked.

So far so good, he thought. Despite the fact we're fugitives for murder and Gods know what else by now.

"Fine." He said.

"So I'm your ill wife now?" She put a hand to her brow and feigned a graceful wavering. "My dear, however do you put up with me?"

"Alcohol." Dorian said.

The gnome returned to the desk holding an ornate polished bronze key. She set it on the marble top and looked at him. "You'll be staying on the fourth floor, suite 12A."

Cherry wrapped her arms around his waist. "Dear, my strength is going."

You're a horrible actor, Dorian thought.

He grabbed the key and headed towards the massive dual staircase, his hand locked around Cherry's. The elf let out a high pitched giggle as they collided with a well dressed couple.

"Sorry." Dorian muttered over his shoulder.

"Don't apologize." Cherry whispered. "I got a wallet off that guy."

"Cherry, chill."

"Right, boss."

\2\

Their room was a blend of high class and modern technology all rolled into one. Cherry spread herself out on the giant bed, the lace trimmed bed-sheets wrapped around her.

"We're taking these when we leave."

"Whatever." Dorian went to the mahogany bureau and stuffed his bag inside. Dropping his jacket he checked out the rest of the room. The walls were carved marble, covered in rich pale blue tapestries made of some sort of silk. A brown rug covered the floor, intricate geometric designs sewn into the fabric. Dorian headed off down the small hall. He stopped at what looked like a bathroom. A sink, toilet, and a shower occupied the space, made of polished chrome.

"They've got plumbing in this place." Dorian said.

"No way."

Way, Dorian thought.

"So who's this guy you know?" Cherry asked from the main room.

Dorian stripped down and stepped onto the tiled floor of the shower. A single steel faucet head hovered above him, a chain running down from it with a wooden handle attached at shoulder height. He pulled the chain. Hot water streamed over him. Grimacing he glanced down at the blackened flesh of his side. He touched the spongy tissue.

Dead rot, he thought. And it's going to spread.

You don't know that.

I don't?

"Yo, Dorian?"

"What?" He bathed his head under the faucet.

"Who's the guy?"

"Gnome, works repairs on the Deeprun Tram." Dorian said. He let go of the chain and found a towel hanging from a metal rack to the right. "That's how they run drugs from Stormwind to Ironforge. Agent makes a drop off the Tram in the middle of the track, Artex picks it up."

"Artex?"

"The gnome." Dorian said. "He can get us out to Stormwind. From there we'll be on our own. Probably best to catch a hypo flight."

"What about Kellog? He got guys there?" Cherry asked.

Dorian wrapped the towel around him, hiking it up over the black flesh. He walked out into the main room and dropped into one of the padded leather chairs.

"Hot stuff." Cherry whistled.

"Can it...I'm not paying you to mock me." Dorian said. He ran a hand through his stringy black hair. "I need to sleep."

Cherry nodded and got off the bed. She tossed her crimson jacket atop the dresser. "How long?"

"Six hours." Dorian said. He crawled onto the bed. The mattress hugged his body. Cherry started to say something but he'd already drifted off to a dead sleep. No dreams, no nothing.

\3\

Cherry sat in the padded chair watching Dorian sleep. The man had dropped like a dead seal against the shore. Her mind wandered over the last day trying to piece together what had gone wrong so terribly fast.

Jimmy and all his big plans. What a load of bull**** that had turned out to be. All the promises she'd clung to hoping that he was right, and knowing that he wasn't. Jimmy was never going to be anything, and now Jimmy was dead.

Loveless, she thought. That's my name, don't wear it out.

A knock came at the great oak door. Cherry raised an eyebrow, eyes creased.

"Who is it?"

"Housekeeping."

Her ears twitched. She got to her feet just as she heard the click of a musket hammer being drawn back. Old reflexes took hold. She slid back from the door. Thunder rocked the halls. The door exploded into a fine mess of wood shards and lead balls leaving a head sized hole where solid wood had once been. Through the hole she saw a slow casual hand toss a small orb through the hole.

Scatter bomb, Cherry thought.

She spun on her feet, one booted foot kicking the mattress. Dorian screamed as he toppled off the other side, the plush sleeping pad flopping on top of him. Cherry covered her head and squatted. The scatter bomb went off mid-arc. The sound tore at her ears.

A handful of pellets bit into her back breaking the skin. She grimaced and pivoted to the left, head darting into the small hall that lead to the shattered door. A short brown haired woman with black eyes stepped through, musket smoking in one hand.

\4\

Dead, dead, dead, Dorian thought. I'm dead.

It was all he could think. He heard the first explosion and then the bed was on top of him and he was on the floor, thrashing to get it off. Another explosion echoed against the marble walls. Cherry grunted. Dorian slid along the floor till his head cleared the mattress.

We're boned.

A long brown haired woman stepped through the door, dressed in a plaid skirt that hung to her knees, white shin socks and loafers. A white blouse was tucked into the skirt. His eyes were drawn to the musket, the massive bore pointed to the ground, smoke trailing up towards the marble ceiling. He watched in silent frozen horror as Cherry rounded the corner. Her back was a tattered mess of the leather tunic she wore, blood peppered against her skin.

The woman at the door let out a short gasp of surprise. Cherry threw a kick, turning her hip, all of her weight going into one calculated blow that reminded Dorian of the underground Astranaar kick-boxers he'd seen years ago. Cherry's boot connected, a solid shot straight to the kneecap. Dorian's stomach turned over. The woman's knee bent sideways, a hollow crack filled the air followed by a scream.

Not even twenty-four hours and you're on a three-kill streak, Dorian thought. Remind me never to be on the business end of your anger.

Cherry jumped back just as the stock of the musket swung at her midsection. She whipped her wrists in a looping movement and the blades appeared.

Gotta learn how she does that, Dorian thought.

The woman at the door dropped into a low crouch, favoring the one leg that still worked. She lunged forward, a slim, narrow, dagger in hand. Cherry pulled to the left a second to late. Dorian watched a ribbon of blood and skin peel away from her torso.

Cherry grunted, locked her elbow around the woman's arm and jammed three honed blades into the joint. Her other hand came out, flat palmed, and smashed into the woman's nose. Something crunched in her face, black eyes rolled in towards their sockets. The woman moaned something and then slumped to the floor. Cherry backed away, stopped, and then kicked the woman's head. Dorian heard another cracking noise.

He crawled from behind the mattress and pulled his pants on. Cherry gasped, leaning against the wall, one hand cupped at her side.

"How bad?" Dorian asked.

"No time." Cherry said. "Grab your ****."

"What?"

\5\

Cherry picked a room at random, two levels up. Dorian had the woman's legs, Cherry the arms. Before they'd left she'd knelt down and broken each one of the woman's fingers. Dorian watched, his stomach rolling over and over on itself.

"What was that for?"

"So she can't use a weapon when she wakes up." Cherry said in a flat business tone.

Who the hell are you? Dorian wondered.

They carted her body to another room. Cherry swapped clothes with her in the hall, Dorian looking out for anyone that might be returning or leaving. They stopped at 14C. Cherry, looking out of place in a skirt and knee socks knocked on the door.

"Room service."

An elderly dwarf answered the door in a silk robe. "We didn't-"

Cherry belted him in the face. "Grab the girl." She said.

Dorian grabbed the woman's hands. Cherry pushed the old dwarf through the door. In the main room she found his wife, gagged her and tied them both to a bedpost.

"There a bathroom in here?" Cherry asked.

The dwarf woman nodded, eyes darting towards the side corridor. Dorian shut the door to the room, bolting it. The woman on the floor moaned. Cherry grabbed her by the hair and started off towards the shower. Dorian followed.

"You might not want to see this." Cherry said.

Dorian was silent.

Cherry pulled the woman into the shower propping her upright. "Pull the chain." She said.

Dorian reached over and pulled the shower chain. Hot water spilled over the woman. Cherry tugged at the hem of the white blouse, the right side was a faded crimson stain. The woman's eyes fluttered into focus, the mess of her nose turned to the right, two steady channels of blood spilling over her lips.

Cherry squatted and fumbled something from her crimson jacket. "You know what this is?" She rolled a small ebony colored stone in her hands.

The woman nodded.

"Good...that'll save us some time." Cherry said. "Talk, or it touches the water."

The woman started to work her lips. Dorian waited. She made a strange chortling noise and then spat a mouthful of blood onto Cherry's face. The Elf never flinched. She reached up to the metal rack and pulled a towel off.

"Keep the water running." She said. "Don't get wet either."

"What is that?" He asked, pointing to the stone.

"Thunder stone." Cherry said. She disappeared into the main bedroom. Dorian heard wood breaking.

"You know what she's going to do to me?" The woman asked. She smiled a mask of crimson.

"Not my business." Dorian said.

Although I am paying for it, he thought.

Cherry reappeared with a splintered wooden rod. She took the leather thong holding her ears back and tied the stone to the end. Her eyes took on a flat glazed look. "Last chance...your way, or my way?"

The woman grunted. "We're the same...what'd you do?"

Cherry nodded. She shoved the stick at the woman. The stone touched the water. A wave of electricity snapped from it, crackling the air to the dead smell of ozone. The woman in the shower screamed, every tendon on her body flexed and strained against her skin. Cherry held it there for another ten seconds and then pulled back. Smoke curled from the woman's chest, the flesh burnt and charred there. He thought of his blackened side, the dead rot.

The woman coughed, trying to breath, tears spilled from her eyes in a soundless cascade. Dorian let go of the shower handle and took a step back. Cherry turned to him. "I told you you wouldn't want to see this."

Should have listened, Dorian thought. I should have listened to her.

Cherry eyed him. "Wait in the main room."

Dorian scurried back into the bedroom. He caught sight of the dwarves tied to the bedpost and waved to them. "Real sorry about this...had a little trouble with the housekeeping."

The electric shocks went on for another hour in the bathroom. Dorian cringed every-time he heard the strange snapping noise, like crinkling paper and lions. At last he heard low whispers. The shower shut off. Cherry came back out into the bedroom. She tossed the wooden rod into the corner, stuffing the thunder stone into her crimson jacket.

"She talk?" Dorian asked.

Cherry nodded.

"What'd she say?"

The Elf pulled at the hem of the plaid skirt and then hiked the socks up to her knees. "We might want to see Kellog."

"What?"

"He might be one of the few people that can help us." Cherry said.

"In case you forgot he's after my ass." Dorian said.

"No...he's not."

Dorian felt an icy hand clamp around his chest. He swallowed and put a white pill under his tongue. The words echoed in his head.

No...he's not.

TBC...

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: As you might have noticed the character Case has appeared in Loveless, not my original intention, and now another has popped up. What for and why will come together. Enjoy.

Track Five: Ultra Blue

\1\

David had his arms around her. His mouth hot on her neck, the feel of his breath across her throat more inviting than anything else she could imagine. They twined together in the sheets. Nico closed her eyes and felt a single tear escape.

Why am I crying?

"You have to wake up." David said.

"What?" She blinked.

Marv stood in front of her, black eyes viscous, covered in some sort of thick mucus. "You have to wake up." He repeated.

Reality came through in filtered bits and pieces. The swamp, the thick black muck her boots were stuck in. The cats tail weed that sprang up from the marsh swayed with the wind. Nico rubbed her eyes. They'd traveled through a desolate part of the wetlands, into a deep marsh that bore no resemblance to any place she'd ever seen. The trees that grew from the ground were twisted and angry. Their branches bloomed dead leaves that never saw life. A litter of brown dry twisted petals sunk into the marsh, deep into the black waters.

Black waters, Nico thought. What place has black waters?

"The sisters are waiting." Marv said. He pointed one clawed hand towards a shape some yards ahead. In the dark it was impossible to tell what. "Don't take everything they saw literally."

"Huh?"

"Trust only the blind one."

Nico walked towards the vague shape. Closer she could see a number of chaotic roots wrapped around the chassis of a strange looking machine; painted a dull yellow color, corroded with rust. Vines and roots twined through the windows, over the hood, across the tail end. Nico lowered her head, a figure moved inside.

"Is someone there?"

"Depends who's asking?" A little girl said.

A strange giggle echoed from the metal machine. Nico took a step back. From around the side a tiny human looking girl appeared. A faded dress hung from her shoulders, stained and ragged. Her face was the shade of milk, hair a darkly shade of plumb. Nico took that in, her mouthed dropped open when she saw the girls eyes. Black thread wove through the lids, effectively keeping them sewn shut.

"My Gods..." Nico whispered.

"We have a guest." The girl said.

Another wave of hysterical giggles from inside the metal machine.

"I apologize for my sister." The girl said. "Bee is a bit...unhinged, I believe the word is."

"What is this?" Nico asked. She struggled to find David inside her. The safe spot in her chest where David wasn't dead, and she wasn't killing him, where he spoke softly of better things.

The girl with the sewn eyes made a brief curtsy. "Once again, I apologize for the lack of introductions. My name is Aee, my two sisters," she motioned towards the machine, "prefer the company of a broke down Volkswagen Beetle."

Nico glanced over her shoulder but Marv was gone. Up in the trees somewhere, maybe. She returned her gaze to the Aee. Two more faces had appeared inside the machine. Both identical to Aee. One looked insane, the other held a placid face of pessimism.

"Bee is my sister, she's gone mad, I know not if she speaks the truth, for my other sister Cee has sewn my eyes shut and I cannot see her face. Cee always lies though."

"Do not." Cee said.

The girl in the middle, Bee, giggled, stuffed her hands into her mouth and started to nibble at her nails.

Gods help me, I'm not strong enough for this, Nico thought.

"Come woman...what do you wake us for?" Aee asked.

"Marv said you'd have a prophecy for me." Nico said. "An answer."

"We don't answer anything." Cee said.

"Shush yourself." Aee grunted. "What is your question woman? My eyes may be sewn shut but they still see far and wide."

"You can't see at all." Bee said and giggled. "Cee carved you up with the needle and thread, just like the giant pooh bear."

Nico squatted, her knees popping. "One gone blind, one gone mad, and one that can't tell the truth. ****ing fantastic." Nico said.

"What's your question woman?" Cee snapped.

She recalled what Marv had specifically asked her to repeat. They wouldn't answer to him for some reason. On the rare occasion the two spoke he'd made that point clear.

"I need a vessel." Marv had said.

Nico brushed a strand of hair from her face. "The dream...The Emerald Dream...who's in there and why is it awake?"

The three sisters exchanged glances, even Aee managed to look in the direction of her sisters. They confirmed in a strange babble of tones and sharp clicks that reminded Nico of crows feeding on a corpse, beaks snapping at each other.

"Three answers." Aee said. "Mine will be true...the others...I do not know for my eyes are lost to me."

I can see that, Nico thought.

She imagined David standing behind her. His broad hands on her shoulders. A flicker of strength filled her, imaginary or not.

Aee leaned back against the hood of the Beetle. "The Dream has broken...tangents in many directions, some from the same mind. They seek bodies, they seek ways to live on beyond what they are."

Bee pulled her fingers from her mouth, a nail stuck between her two front teeth. "The dominant one calls himself Androgen."

Nico let her ears record. She watched Bee's face for any kind of reaction and saw none. Truth or Lie?

Cee crawled from the window, bending at the waist. "The mind that shattered into a million pieces is Malfurion Stormrage."

"True, true." Bee giggled.

Nico raised an eyebrow. She knew the name. Stormrage had been the most powerful Druid to the Elfin people, from what she could recollect. He'd disappeared into The Emerald Dream some time ago.

"Who's Androgen? Is he part of Malfurion?" Nico asked.

"One question." Aee said. "That is all that is allowed during a lifetime." Her sewn eyes rolled beneath the lids. "Take what you will and leave us, this place grows dark, and beasts may prowl."

Nico left, taking backwards steps till she was far enough away to feel safe to turn her back on the crazed sisters.

The three little sisters of Deluria, she thought.

From behind her came the distant echo of a giggle. Nico had a brilliant flash of the mad sister and shuddered. Gods help her, if she was going to make it through whatever this was she needed help.

\2\

"What about her?" Dorian asked pointing towards the bathroom.

Cherry rubbed her side. "She'll walk again...eventually."

Dorian didn't ask anymore. Getting out of the hotel was just about as hard as he'd expected. High class places didn't tolerate doors being shot in and bombs exploding. The Ironforge guard was all over the building. The guard had started a systematic sweep of the hotel, starting on one floor and then heading up to the next once the rooms were clear.

"Fire." Dorian said.

They stood in the hallway, among a dozen other people as the guards rolled down the corridor.

"What?"

"Distraction, we need a fire." Dorian said. He shifted on his feet, covering as much of himself with his jacket as possible. Cherry looked fine with her coat on, it covered the bloody side and tattered back. Further up the line a small dwarf woman stood in her doorway shouting at the guards. Cherry pulled a handful of wooden matches from her jacket and palmed them.

"When I tell you, scream." She said.

He nodded.

Won't matter, they'll still get us, he thought.

Cherry moved down the hall in front of an open door. The occupants were standing at the head of the line screaming at the guards. Dorian watched her mingle with the people and then simply vanish into the room. No one noticed. A second later she reappeared and worked her way back towards him.

I bet if you really wanted, nobody could find you, Dorian thought. The Doom Lords themselves must envy you.

He found himself eyeing the curve of her hips in the skirt, the trim toned legs. Shaking himself he looked to his left towards the front of the line. The couple that'd been screaming were taken into custody.

"Give it a minute." Cherry said.

"What'd you do?"

"Wait for it."

Dorian waited. He waited a full five minutes. The guards had moved within gripping distance of them. He waited. After all the cloak and dagger this was how it ended. The guard would frisk him, find a fortune and a weapon or two, frisk Cherry and find a plethora of illegal material and they'd be hauled away.

I'm dying anyways, he thought.

"Scream." Cherry said.

"What?"

From down the hall something exploded. A fist of black smoke smashed into the corridor. Dorian froze. Beside him Cherry formed her hand into a perfect V-shape and slammed it into the guards windpipe just as the smoke covered them. A strong hand grabbed his jacket and hauled him forward. Coughing, he stumbled over a screaming woman, her face a brittle mask of fright and ash. The hand pulled him forward. They slammed into a stairwell, Cherry in the lead.

"You okay?" She asked.

Dorian started down the stairs after her, heart pounding in his chest.

"What the hell was that?" Dorian shouted. "I said start a fire."

"Oh there'll be a fire." She flashed him a wicked grin. "Two parts liquid mythril, one part ether and a dash of sulphur."

"I don't follow."

"Soap fire." Cherry said. "Water doesn't put it out. You've got to smother it with another alkali."

"Real flash." Dorian muttered.

"I thought so."

They burst out into the lobby. Cherry started screaming the moment she cleared the door. The Ironforge guards looked at her, saw her, and passed her by heading for the stairs. Others barked orders to get the hoses ready from the forge. Dorian mingled with the herd of panicked people. The effect was disorientating, he lost Cherry twice in the madness, only to find her beside him, moving through the mob like a ghost.

\3\

Lilliam turned from the kitchen window, her eyes distant, a faint glimmer of her Mother present in the sunlight that filtered through the window. She stretched her arms above her head and then took a sip from the dark coffee set on the table. Her Father sat across from her, blind, two years now.

"Little in front, Dad."

Terris leaned forward, a withered hand finding the ceramic cup and then bringing it to his lips.

Two days, Lilliam thought, and then back to the graveyard.

Part of her refused to consider the idea of going. Terris would make her go, it'd always bothered him that they'd never found the body.

The body? YOUR MOTHER'S BODY.

Yes, her mother's body. Disappeared somewhere in The Gulch, lost in whatever it was that cursed that land. Lilliam turned back towards the window. Through the clean pane she saw a short woman, silver hair, standing in the middle of the road. Lilliam got to her feet.

"What is it?" Terris asked.

"Dunno." Lilliam went to the window, cupped her hands around her eyes and gazed down the beaten path. Their house stood outside Menethil, a rough half mile, not too far into the wetlands. Most people stayed away, the rumors had spread. Her Mother had simply gone mad when the Horde came, and then she was never seen again.

A dusty memory flashed itself before her eyes. The image of an old wrinkled woman in black robes throwing cards onto a table.

Rebirth, a croons voice whispered. But not for all. Tell me girl...do you see the darkened glass now?

Lilliam shoved the memory back to the catacombs of her mind where dead things should be.

"Someone outside?" Terris asked.

"Stay here, Daddy." Lilliam said. She crossed the kitchen, slipping her feet into the worn leather boots by the door. "Make sure the children don't come out."

"They're asleep." Terris said.

"Children don't sleep forever." Lilliam said.

The old hag spoke again: The Fool...that's you.

She cracked the door and then closed it behind her. The woman stood in the middle of the beaten road, skinny, mud stained the bottom half of her. Two glazed eyes took Lilliam in.

"Are you lost?" Lilliam asked.

"I don't know."

"What's your name?"

"Nico..." The woman started to cry. The crying never seemed to stop.

TBC...

[Moonotaur]

I've read all your material - awesome job.

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: None.

Track Six: Things That Never Will Be

\1\

Dorian slumped to his feet in one of the engineering alcoves. He slipped a white tablet beneath his tongue, letting the bitter stuff dissolve. The small satchel had three more left. Cherry sat beside him in the small tunnel. A channel had been carved in the center, dirty water streaming down to a purification system below. The hum of heavy machinery filled the corridor.

"Place was sized for Dwarves." Cherry muttered. "You okay?"

He cupped one hand over his chest, over the stabbing knife that kept tearing into him. "Yeah...heart."

From the end of the tunnel a storm of firemen passed by headed towards the hotel. Dorian watched them. Flames billowed out marble frame windows. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was someplace else. The Highlands were good this time of year.

"You look out of it." Cherry said. She tucked her skirt under herself and sat.

Dorian craned his head towards her. "What'd you want to be when you grew up?"

"Huh?"

"Not a hard question." Dorian said.

I don't know if I remember anymore, he thought.

"You looked like you've done that before." Dorian said.

"Done what?" Cherry looked at him, one ear popping up out of her hair towards the flaming hotel.

"The shower."

"Comes with the business." Cherry said. "Sometimes you have to get the information the hard way...and that's never pretty."

"What did you want to be?" He repeated.

Cherry rubbed her hands together, those slender magic hands. She let out a sad laugh. "A baker...I wanted to own a bakery."

Dorian smiled. "Little far from that now, aren't you?"

She shrugged. "What about you?"

"I don't know." He said. "I can't remember the last time I did anything that I really wanted to do."

"Think back." Cherry said. "Back to when you were little. Where'd you grow up?"

"Northshire." Dorian said. "Near Stormwind."

"What'd your Dad do?" Cherry curled up beside him, her head on his shoulder. She put a hand over his, the one covering his chest.

"He made potions." Dorian said.

"Potions?"

"Medicine."

And he made **** for money, he thought.

"What'd your parents do?"

"They died." Cherry said. She laughed, nervously. "Sort of. My father went out to pick up bread and cheese...never came back."

"What about your Mom?"

The sound of hoses filled The Mystic Ward. Dorian watched, amazed as the fire spread even under the onslaught of the water. Dwarves shouted orders. A few concerned citizens pitched in.

Can a modern city burn? Dorian wondered.

"My Mom hung herself a year after, on his birthday." Cherry said.

"How old were you?"

"Five."

"****."

"Your parents dead?" Cherry asked.

"My Dad, yeah." Dorian felt his chest loosen, something gave way and what passed for a normal heartbeat started again. "He caught the drowning disease, filled his lungs. Bought a ticket when I was twenty."

"Mom?"

"Never knew her. She died giving birth to me." Dorian said. He tried to piece the mental picture together of what she looked like. His father had shown him a portrait of her once, on old, wrinkled parchment.

You have her eyes, he had said.

"I'm sorry." Cherry said.

A small clot of twigs and resin floated past them carried by the channel. Dorian closed his eyes again and took a deep shuddery breath. "You don't live long doing this sort of thing do you?"

"Doing what?"

"What we do."

Cherry shook her head. "No...we don't. You know that. The list...it always goes back to the list. Sooner or later someone on that list is going to find you. I'll probably wake up in my sleep with a knife in the back years from now."

"A baker." Dorian said. He laughed. "I'm not sure you could have made it as a baker."

"I couldn't. I can't bake for ****." Cherry said. She got to her feet, dusted her skirt and headed towards the far end of the corridor. "Come on, we gotta get to Kellog's."

Dorian gave one last look to the flaming hotel. His chest heart, his head hurt, everything hurt. Darkly he thought:

You're life is just one series of bad moments strung together, his Father whispered, enjoy the little gaps that come between them.

\2\

There was no plan. No sneaking into Kellog's place. Dorian simply walked in the front door and waited for the hail of gunfire and arrows to tear him to pieces. Kellog's place of operation was the second story of a general goods shop in the commons. Sometimes the best hiding place was out in the open, in plain sight. Cherry had his heels.

We're going to die in here, he thought. Kellog's going to whip out Lady Kay on us.

The general goods store smelled like oats and dried food. Dorian nodded to the small gnome behind the counter and headed for the stairs at the rear of the store. Step by step he went up. His heart locked up twice and then gave way again. At the top of the steps a large ironwood door stood, one polished brass knob casting his reflection back at him.

"What do we do?" Cherry asked. She'd turned back into that little ball of raw nerves and barb wire.

Dorian knocked. "Nothing."

A hidden slot pulled back. Lady Kay's eyes took him in. "If it isn't the prodigal **** up. Hear you're dying."

"Word moves fast." Dorian said.

"Only when you pay for it." Lady Kay said. Her eyes floated over to Cherry. "Leave the Razor***** here."

"Nice to see you again, too." Cherry said. She flashed a wicked grin and mimed slicing her neck.

"She goes where I go."

"Not gonna happen." Lady Kay said. "You wanna see Kellog, you leave Little Miss Quicksilver out here."

"Kay!" A voice shouted from inside. "Just let them in for the love of the Gods."

Spitfire burned in Kay's eyes. She slammed the slot shut. A series of rough bolts flung from the door. Dorian took a step back. The ironwood door swung open. The second floor was a pre-fab model. The wooden floors were polished to a dull shine, an Elven rug on the floor, the walls painted a pale tan color. Two couches were in the room, one on each side. A low chandelier hung from the ceiling, flickering orbs attached to the arms. Sitting behind a massive desk was Kellog. The gnome waved a tiny hand at him.

"Dorian...long time no see." The gnome smiled, most of his teeth were nothing more than hard steel capped over rotted enamel. "Come in...we have much to discuss you and I."

In the corner of the room Dorian could make out a shadowy figure, covered in a thick black robe. Kay stood in the doorway, smiling. "Welcome to the lion's lair." She said.

Massaging his chest Dorian stepped through.

\3\

Two chairs were pushed up to the desk near Kellog. Dorian took the first one, Cherry on his right. Behind them Lady Kay floated like a specter. Kellog pulled a hand rolled cigar from his desk and lit it. The thing looked ridiculous in his tiny hands.

"Word on the street, right?" Kellog asked.

Dorian nodded. "'Fraid so...I know how it breaks your heart."

"To the core." Kellog said. He blue smoke ring left his mouth. "As much as I'd like to see your guts splatter across the floor someone's paid a significant amount of cash to keep you alive."

Dorian glanced at Cherry. Mentally he went over HIS list.

Who's it going to be? Who's Kellog going to hand me off to? The copper bar guy? The organ salesmen?

The figure in the shadows stepped forward and pulled back the hood of her robes. She was young, an Elf, maybe only fourteen, Dorian could never tell with elves. They aged in a different fashion than people. Spiral tattoo's covered her lavender cheeks leading up to bright emerald eyes.

"Who's this?" Dorian asked.

"My name is Loveless." The elf said. "And you...You are Richard Dorian, Richie to your brother."

How do you know my name, Dorian thought.

He felt his mouth drop open. The elf turned towards Cherry. "And Constance Gone...wonders never cease. We believed you dead."

Dorian looked over at Cherry. The woman looked like a tightly bound ball of rage. In a second the blades would fly from her hands, and Loveless would find herself Piece-less.

"Who's we?" Dorian asked without realizing it.

"Those that represent The Emerald Dream." Loveless said. "Now...let us speak of things yet to come."

I don't like the sound of that at all, Dorian said. Not a ****ing bit.

TBC...
irc.aniverse.com
#wowff

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: Friday, as promised.

Track Seven: The Grave Of Cassandra Silverpane/Just Take A Deep Breath

|1|

Case walked the steps up to the ironwood door not knowing what to expect. She'd gotten a rolled parchment slip from Kellog almost an hour ago. Over the years she'd worked on retainer patching up Lady Kay whenever the dumb broad got herself into a tussle. At the door she stopped, adjusted the massive leather satchel over her shoulder, and knocked.

The hidden slot retracted. Kay's eyes.

"You tossed again?" Case asked.

"Not me this time." Lady Kay said.

"Then who? Kellog knows I don't deal. Hell I buy my **** from you guys." Case said. She covered her mouth and yawned. The slot closed. Blots flung, the door opened. Case stepped into Kellog's office to a swarm of people. She took in Dorian and Cherry sitting in their chairs, both of them blank faces of shock. A young elven girl sat on one of the couches, Kellog at his desk.

"What is this?" She asked.

Bad business, she answered herself. Stuff you should stay out of.

Kellog took a puff from his cigar, little more than a stub. "Razorgirl needs your expertise, got diced."

Case narrowed her eyes. "Dorian...fancy seeing you here."

The man waved a pale hand towards her.

"How's the chest?"

"Dead." He whispered.

No yet, she thought, you think it feels dead, give it another two months, you'll be begging for death.

Case walked over to Cherry. The woman was dressed in a ridiculous uniform. White blouse and knee socks, a plaid skirt. The right half of the blouse and the back was a crimson stain. "This have something to do with the House of Fallen Trees?" Case asked.

"Does it matter?" Kellog said. He smiled.

"You're money, man." Case said. She lifted Cherry's arm. "How deep?"

"Couple inches." Cherry said.

What is going on in here?

"Why is Miss Delvin here?" The Elven girl asked.

Case felt her bones go cold. Blood drained from her hands. She hadn't heard that name in over thirty years. Somewhere, back in a city that was dead to her was a birth certificate for one Miss Genoveva Delvin, daughter of Lythandrel and Skye Delvin.

I buried that, Case thought. A long time ago.

She spun on her feet, eyes burning. The little elven girl only smiled. "How do you know that name?" Case asked.

"We've kept an eye on you." The girl said. "You're one of only two people to survive the events at The Gulch twenty years ago."

Case took a step backwards. "Kellog, I don't deal with this ****, man." She pushed her satchel in front of her like some sort of shield. "Find another patch work dealer."

"Loveless." The girl said.

Oh ****, Case thought.

Her back went erect. She faced the girl, eyes narrowed and serious. "Who's your partner?"

"Relentless." Loveless said.

She's legit, Case thought. My Gods, The Emerald Guard is here in Ironforge.

"Have you spoken to Field Marshall Pardimor?" Case asked.

The girl shook her head. "He was never one for keeping things secret."

Oh he's got a whopper, Case thought. Like where the body of Astrid Erinyes is.

She kept that thought to herself. Cherry grunted from her chair. Case refocused her attention on her. "Lift your shirt." Case said.

Cherry pulled up the right side. A long diagonal gash curved around Cherry's torso, almost an inch wide. Case stared at it. Two layers deep almost, from what she could see. Most of the blood had clotted to a thick mess, cracking the wound open again wasn't going to be pretty.

"How long ago?"

"Few hours." Cherry said.

"Good...we can still suture it then." Case dropped her satchel on the ground. "What's the story with the back?"

"Scatter bomb." Cherry said. "Probably fifteen pellets in there."

Case lifted the shirt and looked at the crimson dots. "More like twelve...but we can get those out...they'll heal on their own." Her eyes went back to Loveless. "So what the **** are you here for? Not exactly around your class of people."

"Edgy." Loveless said. She smiled again, that twisted teasing smile. Case restrained an urge to choke the girl. "Class has no importance here, I think Miss Gone would agree on that."

"My name's Cherry."

"Whatever you call yourself now." Loveless said.

You're making friends fast, Case thought.

"Where's The Emerald Brigade?" Case asked. "This is more their jurisdiction than yours. Those tattoo's, those are Ward tattoo's."

Loveless looked honestly surprised for the first time since Case had laid eyes on her. The sight gave her a joyful stir.

"Doesn't feel so good when the slap stick's in someone else's hand does it?" Case asked. She stuffed her hands into her pocket. "You're young, wait till your old and then dish out ****."

"Such a mouth." Loveless said.

"Bite me." Case turned back to Cherry. "You all right with the pain?"

The Elf gave a quick thumbs up.

It took the better part of two hours to suture the wound. Case ended up putting in close to thirty tight packed stitches. It reminded her vaguely of the time she spent on the fishing ship out at sea, back before they pulled Pardimor from the water. How long had it been since she'd thought of him? The nut had gone out and made a name for himself, became a Field Marshall. Wonders never ceased.

She took a pair of pliers from her bag and stared to extract the pellets lodged under Cherry's skin. "My guess...you haven't told The Emerald Brigade what's going on. Bit over stepping your boundaries, isn't it?"

"You know nothing of this."

"Over my head." Dorian said.

"Second that." Lady Kay muttered.

"A little Ward and her partner trying to contain a **** up?" Case asked. She glanced over at the girl. Frank anger stood on her face. "Ah...so it is." She rotated the pliers and pulled out a lead ball a half inch in diameter. Dropping it to the floor she moved on to the next puncture hole on Cherry's back. "Stormrage? He finally snap? That it?"

"Miss Delvin."

"Name thing won't get a rise out of me anymore." Case said. "And by the way, it's Case, just Case."

"What are you talking about?" Kellog asked. He stamped out his cigar.

"Malfurion Stormrage." Case said. She pulled another pellet out. Cherry flinched. "Sorry, sugar." She went to the next wound. "Kay, grab some gauze out of my bag and hold it over the weeping wounds."

"She's not at liberty to say." Loveless said.

That's where you're wrong, Case thought. I gave up on your system when I dropped the name.

"Malfurion was trapped in The Emerald Dream...Loveless over here is a Ward, someone who watches the happenings in The Green Land. You spend too much time in The Green and your mind can fragment. That about the gist of it?"

Loveless grunted.

"Yeah, Malfurion finally snapped. His minds gone in so many directions it's hard to tell what's what." Case said. Kay flopped a wad of gauze on Cherry's back. "The only way to recombine him is to find where the pieces went and destroy them on this realm, then they return to the source. How many are left?"

"Two." Loveless said. She looked indifferent, uninterested in the conversation.

"Near closing time then, and you can't seal the deal." Case said. She pulled the last pellet, applied another layer of gauze to Cherry with Kay and then reached into her bag and pulled out two red capsules. She placed them in Cherry's palm. "One, every eight hours, fake doctor's orders."

"We've located one." Loveless said. "My partner has her under his wing."

"Who've they got on Ward duty now?" Case asked. "Still Marv?"

Loveless flinched.

"Good...now lets lay some cards on the ****ing table you little punk." Case took the couch on the opposite wall. "I don't care what you want with Dorian and Cherry, I could care less. I want you, The Emerald Brigade, to destroy whatever you have on me, I know you've got something."

"You've got nothing I want." Loveless said.

The room filled with a compressed tension, like the barometric pressure had risen ten pounds per square inch. Case smiled.

"Oh I think I do." Case said. "I know where Astrid Erinyes is buried."

Loveless actually jumped this time. "You lie! Filth! WHORE!"

Case waved a hand. "No need, Pardimor will confirm it. Back in Darnassus there's a little cemetery in Cenarion Enclave. Cassandra Silverpane."

Loveless knotted her brow together. "Pardon?"

"Look in Cassandra Silverpane's grave...I guarantee you it's not Cassandra in there." Case said.

"Why?"

"Because Cassandra Silverpane doesn't exist. Have the records room run a search, it'll come out as an unmarked grave. Name is for show. Plus...the corpse is missing an arm." Case said.

The girl took this in. Her face contorted. "The Emerald Brigade will cease its activities on you Miss Delvin."

"Just Case."

"Whatever."

She got to her feet. "Ladies and Gentlemen, it's been quaint but I'm out." Case said. A clean slate, records gone, she was no one anymore, and that let her be ANYONE. She turned to the door. "Bill me for this one, Kellog."

The gnome grunted something. Case was already down the stairs and out onto the torch lit streets.

|2|

Lilliam watched the woman sleep. She'd spent almost twelve hours under. During the brief periods she woke she kept asking for someone named David, confused, and most of all: Afraid. Back in the kitchen she poured herself a cup of tea. Terris had himself perched on one of the wooden stools, his cane propped up by his leg.

"You want tea, Daddy?"

"Whiskey."

Elune, you're going to end up like Mom.

She pulled a lableless bottle from one of the cabinets and poured a shot of whiskey into a ceramic cup, adding some water to it.

"On the table, Daddy." She pushed the cup across the counter. Her Father snatched it up and sniffed it.

"You put water in it."

"It's before noon, Dad."

"So?"

"Gods, you and Mom." Lilliam said. She sipped her tea and sat down at the table. "What do we do with her?"

Terris grimaced as he downed the shot. "Call the Menethil guard, maybe? Probably a missing persons report out for her somewhere."

"Well she can't stay here." Outside the kitchen window she watched Alison and Kali pushing each other on the tire swing outside. Both of the girls had given the human woman the eye before going outdoors. Lilliam couldn't blame them. She hated the bastards, humans in general. When the little house outside of town came up for sale she snatched it off the market and disappeared. Every year at the anniversary of the blue light from The Gulch the townspeople made a woman out of straw that they named 'Astrid' and then set it on fire and beat it with sticks.

They hate us, she thought. They hate my Mother.

Lilliam couldn't blame them. Part of her hated Astrid too. The woman stirred in one of the back rooms. Lilliam's ear cocked towards it.

"Maybe she's wanted." Lilliam said.

"I doubt it." Terris set down the cup and got to his feet. His cane swung out before him till he found a chair at the table. "It's some kind of metal trauma." His wrinkled face formed a dull frown. "I don't think we want to know from what either."

"Agreed." Lilliam said. She opened the kitchen door and motioned the kids in. "Get ready, Gramps, here they come.

|3|

Nico dreamed of dark things. Creatures with clawed hands (not too unlike Marv's), jagged teeth, and wild eyes that searched the woods for her. She woke in a small guest bedroom, stranger, in a strangers home. Her mind did a double take for a moment. There had been dark things in that dream, but there had also been something else...something green.

David?

|4|

Kellog let them stay in the small partitioned room on the second floor. Dorian slipped into one of the fur lined bags on the floor, stripped. He felt a weight lift off him. In the other room Lady Kay and the others were still talking. He couldn't handle that, exhaustion had set in, carved a hole into his side. Just as he drifted into sleep's clutches a warm body slipped into the bag with him. He spun, the dead black rot on his side screaming.

Cherry's face stared back at him. For the first time he saw apprehension there.

"What are you doing-"

She raised a finger to his lips. "Shush." Her leg slid over his till she straddled him. "Don't fall asleep on me." Her hips pushed against his.

"I don't think you've gotta worry about that."

|5|

Kellog stopped mid cigar puff. He cocked his head towards the partitioned room. Lady Kay followed his gaze. "They better not be ****ing in there." He grunted.

Kay smiled. "I think you're too late to stop that."

TBC...

[Foonyak]

Another beauty. I've actually been waiting for something to critique, but aside from some minor spelling mistakes I can't find anything. Awesome job so far.

[Alakon]

Pretty original stuff. Haven't read the Gulch one yet, but I like the gritty style of it. I haven't played WoW, so I don't know how much is WoW and how much is the author's take but it's pretty damn good. I agree with Foonyak, if you got a book published, I would read it.

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: I've been putting off writing in Cherry's perspective for awhile, because I wasn't quite sure what it was. This track is solely her.

Track Eight: Sinister Smiles

|1|

Cherry descended through the underground, hatred incarnate. She wove through the throngs of pedestrian shoppers like a sickened shadow. At one of the compact alcoves she slid through and darted down a spiraling stone staircase. It terminated at a great oak door, metal bars reinforced to hold it together. Making a fist she pounded on the door.

You took him, she thought. You ****ers took him.

|2| 12 Hours Ago...

She woke to the sterile smell of a clean room and empty sheets. Panic had already inverted in her chest. She opened her eyes to the partitioned walls of Kellog's spare room. Her first instinct was to check herself, relocate her surroundings.

Disorientation is a weapon, an old voice whispered. Use it at every opportunity.

But it'd been use against her. She got to her feet, naked in the spare room. The fur lined bag was empty. Dorian was gone. Even his clothes were gone. She scanned the room. The door stood ajar. Cherry dressed quickly, her hands flying to the special pockets in her jacket. The blades were still there, and a fair amount of coin that she'd slipped out of Dorian's bag while he was asleep. Close to three hundred gold.

Why's it so quiet?

Recognize traps, Constance, the old voice said. Recognize them and use them to your advantage, if they don't know you know, then it's no longer a trap.

She knew the voice. It belonged to an old battered Elf who died on the battlefields in The Burning Steppes years ago. He'd trained her, taken her in when the poor lines no longer had room for a ten year old girl. She stepped out into the main bulk of the room, surveyed the emptiness. Both of the couches were unoccupied, the desk that Kellog sat behind vacant. She marched over to it and stuck her fingers into the ashtray. The cigar ash was cold, not even a hit of warmth.

They've been gone awhile, she thought. How did they do it?

Autopilot turned on. She went through Kellog's desk drawers, pulling out papers, capsules, and packaged drugs. She busted the lock on the last drawer. Vials and a small blow dart gun were hidden inside. Cherry frowned. Nothing. Not a gods-be-damned thing.

Case, her mind shouted.

From her pocket she pulled out one of the red pills, the last red pill. She'd taken the first right before sliding into the sack with Dorian. From the desk she took a sheet of clean parchment and then broke the capsule. White powder poured out onto the surface. Cherry dipped her fingers in it and then touched the stuff to her tongue. It went numb a second later.

Loremed...high dose, she thought.

A bitter taste coiled in the back of her throat. Some kind of antibiotic as well. They'd snatched Dorian while she was out cold. Anger surged through her. She kicked the desk, one booted heel check clipping a chunk off the polished mahogany. Going to the door she planted one ear against the wood and listened. From the other side she heard soft snores and nothing else.

Cherry turned the knob and then squeezed through. She tackled the small gnome sitting outside, three blades in one hand, the other clamped over the gnome's mouth. He blinked, the same man, from the counter downstairs.

"I want you to listen to me very carefully." Cherry said. Her eyes narrowed. "I'm going to ask you a few very simple yes or no question. All you have to do is nod or shake your head, anything else a I start clipping off fingers and then toes. Are we clear?"

The gnome nodded. A single tear ran down from his eye.

"Did Dorian leave this place?" She asked.

The gnome nodded.

"Is there ANYONE waiting downstairs for me?"

The gnome glanced at the stairs, back at her, and then shook his head. Cherry stashed the blades and then pulled out a pair of shears. In one quick swoop she dipped down and clipped the gnome's left pinky off. He screamed, muted by her hand. Blood spilled out over the polished floor.

"Think that last question over again." She said.

The gnome nodded, muffled sobs coming through her hand.

"Use your good hand and show me how many."

He raised three fingers, and then four.

"Four?"

He nodded.

"You're sure?" She waved the clippers in front of his face again.

More nodding.

"Good." She glanced at the stairs. Four lying in wait for her to come out. Kellog? Was this his idea? He would know she was better than that, wouldn't he? Lady Kay certainly would. That left the little punk, Loveless. She turned back to the gnome. "Elves?"

He nodded.

Emerald Guard, she thought. ****.

Distraction and panic are your friends, Oswald said. They'll give you the few seconds you need to be a step ahead.

Stashing the shears she punched the daggers back between her fingers. She pulled her hand from the gnome's mouth and then kicked him in the side. The little man screamed and rolled down the stairs. Cherry caught a pocket of nothing and vanished into the shadows. She went down the stairs and hopped the railing. Her feet landed on the supply store floor, whisper quiet. The gnome screamed from the base of the stairs, holding his mutilated hand.

Be glad that's all I did to you, she thought.

Three male warriors jumped from their hiding spots and ran towards the gnome. Cherry marked them. Three, where was the fourth? She eyed the door to the supply store. There, that's where. She cocked her head at an angle, slit her eyes, and saw the vague shimmering outline of a hunched over figure. Cherry moved past the counter and then over to the door. The warriors were trying to pick out the babbling bits of information from the gnome. The last part had to be quick and brutal. She flung a dagger at the door. Instead of hitting wood it pierced flesh. A short elven man grunted, fully visible now. Cherry raced forward. Her foot lashed out, the tip smashing the man's wind pipe. He doubled over. Cherry jammed three blades into his spine, each one cutting between a vertebra. The elf fell to the floor in a twisted, paralyzed, mess. She punched through the door out into the commons, stripping her jacket from her body, along with the gold. Halfway into the ground she left her boots and then dropped into the Auction House.

From Kellog's general store she could see a flurry of motion. A crowd had started to gather there. Screams were issued. Cherry bought a quick round of baggy clothes, pulled them over her own and then mingled with the crowd. She cut off into a divert corridor that lead to the main forge.

Be nothing, Oswald said. Nothing has the ability to be something and anything at the same time.

Thinking that Cherry descended into the the lower levels of Ironforge, into the criss-crossing corridors and back alleys.

She had to find Dorian.

|3| Present

A slotted piece of the door retracted. Two sky blue human eyes stared at her. "The winter wind's coming in."

"Don't let it dampen the crops." Cherry said.

The slot closed. The door opened. A tall man in gray tunic and pants stood before her. He squinted at her. "We don't do credit and we DO NOT want to know how you found this place." He said.

"Fair enough." Cherry said. She walked in to what amounted to an arsenal for a small army. Weapons covered at least twenty massive tables. Racks of muskets and single shot accuracy rifles took a corner of the chamber. The door closed behind her.

"Feel free to browse." The man said. In two of the corners burly looking men with muskets eyed her. "Anything in particular you're looking for?"

"Bombs...guns...and blades." Cherry said.

"Declaring war?"

"You could call it that."

She went to one of the tables and pulled a large tote sack from it. The man hovered behind her, parchment and quill in hand. A garrote caught her eye. She dropped the sack and took the thing in her slender hands.

"Razor wire." The man said. "Can stand up to fifty pounds of pressure before it snaps."

Cherry took both wooden handles and peered at the wire between them. A fine line in the light. The potters used it to cut clay. Assassin's used it to slit throats in silence. She rolled the garrote back together and dropped it into the bag. The man scribbled something onto the parchment. Cherry went to another table inspecting the throwing daggers. Most of them were ****. A select bundle pack of five were balanced and weighted to perfection. She tested the blades edge, they'd been honed to a suicidal sharpness. Setting them on a velvet length of cloth she rolled them together and dropped them into the sack after tying a strip of leather around them.

"The others are ****." She said.

The man grunted. "You've got a good eye then." He said.

"What do you have handheld wise?"

"How so?"

Cherry made a fist. "I need razors."

"Third table."

The elf went over and viewed them. Serrated, straight edge, filament thin, all types and tastes of metal. She inspected a few before gathering a bundle of three and fitting them between her fingers. Four inches long, one inch wide, a sloping angle to them, razor thin, good blades. She whipped her wrist and made them vanish. The slight of hand worked.

Street magic is just as effective as real magic, Oswald said.

The old elf had been right on that. The two men in the corner raised their weapons towards her. "Easy." She made the blades reappear. "Slight of hand."

"Who are you?" The man behind her asked.

"A concerned citizen."

"Of where?"

"My own ****ing territory." Cherry said. She took six of the blades, slotted them in leather and dropped them into the bag. "What have you got for bombs and guns?"

The man smiled.

|4|

His name turned out to be Conner. In a back office room he displayed to her a heavy looking pistol, six barrels. Admiration written all over his face. "Top of the line, patent just came off."

"Who makes it?" She asked.

"A gnome, far north on the shore of Menethil." Conner said. He spun the six barrels. "Little bastard is a genius. Each barrel has one shell, after if fires the cylinder in the middle rotates to a new barrel, no wasted movement for reloading."

"Accuracy?"

"Each barrel is circularly drilled, adds a gyroscopic motion to the shot, keeps it on a dead line for 100 yards." Conner said. He handed over the gun.

Cherry took it in her hands, testing the weight. Scrawled across the hand grip were three letters: WB&N. "How do you reload?"

"See the steel divot on the side?"

Cherry did.

"Press it."

She pushed the release with her thumb, easy reach, that was good. The six barrels breached splitting the gun in half almost. Six brass eyes stared back at her. "What are these?"

"New type of shells, custom made by the gnome." Conner said. "Firing pin pulls back when it's rotated, pull the trigger and the flint hits the brass primer. Primer pops the explosive powder and ejects the lead shot. Pull one out."

Cherry took one of the brass cartridges in her fingers, an inch long, a heavy lead head, filed down. She knew what that meant. Filed shot would blow apart on contact, tearing through flesh in random directions "Nice." She said. "What's the penetration rate?"

"Class-7 steel armor."

The elf nodded.

"No more repacking a musket." Conner said. "Wave of the future."

"How much a shell?"

"Cartridge." Conner said. "We call them cartridges."

"Fine, how much a cartridge?"

"Fifty-silvers."

"Give me a hundred." Cherry said. "Sixty reloads."

"You don't have a whole lot of friends do you?" Conner said.

Nope, Cherry thought, and my last one just got nabbed by some crazy ***** that knows my real name.

A name is just a tag, change it as the situation suits, Oswald said.

She left the armory with six different sets clothes and a tote bag full of weaponry. By midnight she'd checked into a seedy hostel buried into the walls of the Forlorn Cavern. People there were paid to forget faces and names. In her room she lit a candle, watching the black smoke twisting up towards the ceiling. In the reinforced silence of stone walls she disassembled the gun, oiled it, and reassembled. A mindless task, but one she had to familiarize herself with. New weapons, new clothes, the list was getting shorter.

Case, she thought. I have to hit up Case before she splits with that supposed clean slate of hers.

First she needed to sleep. To collect her thoughts in her dreams. Cherry stripped and slipped into the filthy covers of the single bed in the sparse stone room. She drifted off a few minutes later, a chair propped under the handle of the door to the room. Consider it peace of mind.

TBC...

[rottentomato]

so far so good :)

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: I'll be taking a break for the next week, so enjoy this drop.

Track Nine: Designing A Nervous Breakdown

|1|

Case slapped the last latch on the wooden crate and froze. The interior of her small office felt ice cold. Old reflexes, dead reflexes, flickered back to life. She stood, straightened her white jacket and stuffed her hands into her pocket.

"What do you want?"

"Information."

Case turned and saw Cherry in the corner, dressed in a pair of black leather pants and a sheer sleeveless top that had a priests collar. Strapped across her chest was a small arsenal.

"I don't have any." Case said. She touched the stick of charcoal in her pocket. Cherry looked souped up, ready to tussle. Whatever she wanted, she wanted it fast, Case guessed. There was no question as to who would win a fight if it came down to that.

"Where'd Dorian go?" Cherry asked.

Shouldn't you know that? Case thought.

"Isn't he with you?"

"Not anymore." Cherry said. One arm hung limp at her side, the other propped on the curve of her hip. "Kellog, Kay, Loveless, Dorian, they all split."

"I'm not following." Case said.

"I woke up and they were gone, four goons were in Kellog's place waiting for me." Cherry said.

"Why didn't they just kill you were asleep?" Case asked.

"Good question...I don't know."

"You don't find that odd?"

The woman shrugged.

Blades for hire, Case thought, you're all alike.

"Did you off them?"

"No." Cherry said. She walked across the room and sat down on the crate, hair falling over one eye. "They were from The Emerald Brigade."

Case frowned. She'd heard of the mythical death squads buried in The Emerald Brigade, never seen them, but rumors were rumors, they grew and mutated like viruses. Each mutation added a new vainer of authenticity or insanity. Case shuffled her feet together.

"What has this got to do with me?"

"Information." Cherry said. "You've got ears. I was out for at least ten hours."

"I've been packing." Case said. She motioned towards the luggage and crates around the office. "Leaving."

"I can see that." Cherry said. "Where'd they go?"

"Why do you think I know."

"Just thought maybe you heard."

"Well you thought wrong." Case said. She went to one of the cases and pulled out a small package of green pills. Cracking two she swallowed them and felt the scenery mute, the situation became manageable again. "I haven't heard a damn thing, and sweetie, I really don't want to. I spent the last twenty years trying to avoid being a part of something."

"What happened back there?"

Please don't ask that, Case thought. Anything but that.

"Where?"

"The Gulch."

Case covered her face with her hands, kneaded the flesh below her eyes. "Kid...I really don't know. I spent two years afterwards trying to figure that out, and you know what I realized?"

"What?"

"It doesn't matter WHAT happened, just that it DID happen." Case said. "It's history, hon, long gone."

"Why'd Loveless freak when you mentioned what's her name?"

"Astrid?"

"Yeah."

"That was the woman who did it." Case said. She put her back against one of the cases, tired. All of this had gone on for too long, for her. "You remind me of her...except she had some morals."

"I've got morals." Cherry said. "They're just easily bought and very flexible."

Been there, Case thought, done that. It was called The Traveling Clinic.

"My advice," Case said. "Leave this alone. Let whatever happens, happen, you don't want to be a part of it." The once-upon-a-time doctor blinked and Cherry was gone. One second the woman was sitting on the crate and then the filmstrip of her vision burnt out and she was gone.

"****." She muttered. "Good luck, girl."

|2|

Go to where the people are, Oswald said. Not the tourists, not the locals; go to where the dark things linger.

Cherry slipped into the back alley of Red Light Run. Hookers of all shapes, sizes, and races were plastered to corners, hanging about the alleys, prospecting tricks. Cherry mingled with them. Her hands were buried deep into the pockets of the gray raincoat she wore. The rafters overhead shivered, quaked, as the Deeprun Tram speed above them on another level. She passed a wad of gypsy tents, circling around to the pimps and pushers.

Logan Deschain stood at a T-junction in the Run, his emaciated skeletal frame sticking out. Cherry saddled up beside him, the shadows hugging her, breathing over her neck. She thought briefly of Dorian, the way his hair smelled when they were together, the stank odor of sweat and grim, and human.

"Logan." She whispered.

The man trained two bloodshot eyes on her. "Cherry Berry, my girl, where you been?"

"Around." She said.

"Nice threads, you come down to play the games?" Logan asked. The games were the fresh meat fights that catered to the wealthy upper class. Take two low-life's throw them in a cage and have them fight to the death, people paid to see that. Cherry had been in a fistful of them and had her own scars to prove it.

"No games." She said. "I need something."

Logan scratched his boney chest. He stuck both thumbs in the pockets of his blue pants. "Money talks."

She flashed him a quick hand sign. Logan saw it, nodded. "What you want to know, girl?"

"The Emerald Guard." Cherry said. "They were here."

"Still here." Logan said. He caught someone passing by, drugs and money switched hands. Cherry watched the slight of hand, a trick similar to her own.

"Still here?"

"Oh they here." Logan said. He scratched the side of his head, one arm cupped around his bare torso like he was cold. "Real Flash group pops into the hotel up by the Traveler's Post." Logan said. "We're talking REAL FLASH, come in by carriage, black watch horses and all."

Cherry slipped him a handful of silvers.

"One of the throw boys in the outfit has a thing for human chicks." Logan said. "Tally got his girls ready and sent them over. They had to strut their stuff for this guy, he was high up."

"How do you know it was The Emerald Brigade?"

"****ing Elfer said so." Logan said. "Made a point of it. Got a mouth on him. So Tally gets his girls back a little banged up, figures this dude was all talk, he goes over there to show him that you don't **** with Tally's girls, damage the merch, you know?"

She nodded. Prime rule in pimping: Don't let the customers break the goods. Cherry knew that one well. She had one summer making money in that life and decided it'd be better to wash blood off her hands than old man's sweat from her between her legs.

"So?"

Logan glanced at her. "Tally didn't come back."

"Know the name of this guy?" Cherry asked.

"Sebastian." Logan said. "You got a beef with him?"

"Something like that."

Cherry vanished.

|3|

The option of rolling in hot was ruled out straight off. The Faded Rose was a ritz hotel, like The House of Fallen Trees. Her best option was to blend, become one with anything and everything around. Somewhere inside there was an Elf named Sebastian that had a nasty habit of beating women. Cherry had first hand dealings with guys like that. Jimmy had taken up the cause on an occasion or two, until he realized she could dice him six ways from Tuesday whenever she wanted.

Elune, grant me calm and serenity, Cherry thought.

She walked into the main lobby of The Faded Rose. Drapery hung from the walls, a pale crimson color, rolled in the center giving it the effect of a blooming flower. Polished marble floors reflected her pale face. She spotted the main guards right off the bat. Two male elves perched near a staircase, each in a chair, a paper in front of their faces, their eyes hollow. Eyes like that were bad news. They were the kind of eyes that never smiled, no matter how much the lips moved.

A flimsy red gauze dress wrapped around her frame, shoulders exposed, hair feathered around her face. She went up to the reception desk, black leather purse in hand. The woman standing behind the counter looked up.

"May I help you?"

"Yes, I think you can. A certain guest here is in dire need of some oral assistance." Cherry said. She flashed her best dazzling smile. "Tally sent me."

The receptionist groaned and jerked her head towards the guarded staircase. "Room 305." She said. "Whores."

Cherry headed towards the guarded stairway, passing a cluster elves on some sort of tour. One of the guards got to his feet before she'd even cleared the crowd.

He is a big wig, Cherry thought.

"Stairway is blocked off." The guard said.

Cherry traced a finger between her breasts. "I was asked to room 305." She said. "Seems a certain someone has an appetite that can't be quenched."

"Elune...that's the third one today." The other guard muttered from behind his paper. "You'd think they'd give us some ****ing time off."

Cherry ran a hand over his shoulder. "Maybe afterwards, sweetheart."

The first guard sat back down. "Up with ya."

She quoted a height and weight on both of them as she went up the stairs. On the way back down they might not be so forgiving, if things went bad that was. Cherry had a vague idea that they would be bad, at least for Sebastian. The marbled stairway branched off in a fork, twisting around into a convex spiral that lead to different corridors and rooms. She stopped at one of the intersections and ripped the floor map from the wall. Folding the parchment she tucked it into one of the gauze pockets of her dress.

Ten minutes later she stood in front of 305, a void in her chest. She knocked. How many guards inside? If Sebastian had people outside he'd be the type to keep some on hand in case the **** hit the proverbial fan.

Now you can roll hot, she thought. Hard and fast.

The door cracked open and inch. Cherry threw her entire weight into a shoulder slam, crashing into the massive suite. A surprised scream erupted from the door opener. Cherry didn't have time, she took one heeled foot and rammed it down on his throat. The elf's eyes bulged, a thin trail of salvia crawled out the side of his mouth. Hands slapped at her foot. She flicked her wrists and the razors appeared braced between her fingers. A small foyer area covered in red crushed velvet spread out before her. An open doorway lead to what looked like the main suite. Cherry nodded towards the doorway, eye brows arched.

The elf struggled on the floor. Cherry turned her heel harder into his throat and then let up. The elf gave a final gasp and then passed out.

****, there goes information.

She kicked off her heels, and walked bare foot through the doorway. In one quick motion she sheared off the arms of the gauze dress. Movement increased. The main suite had the same polished marble floors of the lobby. Rugs were strewn about the floor in a puzzle piece pattern, each odd end fitting into another. In the center of the room a large bed stood empty.

What the hell is going on here?

Cherry frowned.. Her ears perked. There should have been guards, there should have been someone. She ran through the scenario again, she was good at creating them, good at dissecting them, that's what kept her alive in Desolace. She checked the bathroom and a small partitioned room to find both empty. Going back to the foyer she stared at the gangly tall elf on the floor.

Him? You've gotta be kidding me. No wonder he's got to by tail.

She grabbed the man by the hair and pulled him into the bedroom. The pain woke him. Muffled screams came from his damaged throat. Two terrified eyes looked up at her. Cherry threw him against the wooden back board of the bed.

"Questions." She said. "You answer."

"You have no idea who I am!" The man screeched.

"I got a good notion who you are." Cherry said. She flipped the razors away, all but one in her left hand. "Sebastian?"

"How do you know my name?" The man squirmed on the bed. He looked willowy, moving with a strange gracefulness that belonged to feminine men and terminal patients.

Looks queer, Cherry thought.

She shelved the line of thought for later consideration.

"The Emerald Brigade, I work for them!" Sebastian said. His eyes blazed a sour looking expression. "Look what you've done to my neck. My neck!" The man giggled and then held both trembling hands in front of his face.

****, he's crazy as hell, Cherry thought.

Crazy people understand two things, Oswald said. Someone stronger, and someone crazier than they are.

Luckily, Cherry was both. Her foot shot out again catching Sebastian square in the chest. The man thudded against the back board, blood shot eyes crawling like they were filled with worms. Cherry pulled all the blades out again and got close, real close.

"Why are you here?" Cherry asked.

The man rolled his hands together, the side of his mouth started to twitch. "Loveless." He said. "She reported in."

"Good...we're getting somewhere."

"And just who are you?"

Cherry slashed him across the face, one blade making a clean arc across the bridge of his nose. Sebastian didn't register what happened till the blood fell over his lips. Cherry clamped a hand over his mouth and got nose to nose with him.

"You say something I don't want to hear I'll cut you so bad not even the tail for sale will go with you." Cherry said. She pulled her hand away, the sticky feel of blood on her palm. For a moment Desolace came back in vivid imagery.

Huynh, this is Nightwing, what's going on up there? Check back? Check back?

Ghost voices, she knew them for what they were. Drawing back, Cherry squatted on the bed, arms over her knees in a ready position.

"What did she report?"

"She found the other half." Sebastian said. He glared at her from the two craters of his eyes. "Found Malfurion."

Dorian, she thought. His voice echoed in her head.

A dead hound got me back in The Burning Steppes.

The dead rot. Tumblers in a lock fell into place. Cherry grimaced. What had Case said? Six months on the outside and then Dorian's heart would give out.

"Where are they going?"

"To find her partner." Sebastian said. "He was infected."

"Who?"

"Relentless."

Gods no, they're walking into a trap.

"The wards of The Emerald Dream can sense each other, she's headed in his direction." Sebastian squirmed on the bed like a child. He grunted something and stamped his legs on the mattress.

"Where are they headed?"

"Near Menethil."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

Cherry watched his face. She didn't hear a lie, didn't feel one either. Slowly she closed in on the man. From the pockets of her gauze dress she pulled out the one remaning red pill. "Take this."

"Poison."

"Hardly." Cherry said. "Take it or an eye comes out, first the left, then the right." She tapped his cheek with a blade. Sebastian screamed, grabbed the pill and swallowed it. Cherry leaned in close. "Don't follow me, don't try and find me. If I feel so much as someone look at me wrong there will be no question as to how HARD and how FAST I'll bring this fight to your door, understand?"

Sebastian nodded. Cherry got off the bed. She waited till he passed out thirty minutes later. She stabbed his leg once to make sure he wasn't faking. The man didn't so much as flinch. Cherry put her heels back on, snapped her razors back into hiding and left the room. On the way out she pulled out the parchment floor map and headed towards the emergency exit.

Menethil, she thought. Never been, sounds nice.

TBC...

[trudelle]

Bourne Identity nice. Enjoy the week off, can't wait to continue reading.

[rottentomato]

Bourne Identity nice. Enjoy the week off, can't wait to continue reading.

you caught that reference too? lol i was trying to figure out where i heard it at

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: None.

Track Ten: Escape, Or Something Like That

|1|

He tasted tanned leather, a gag, a hard gag, and that was serious business. You could vomit and choke before your captors ever noticed there was something wrong when they used a hard gag. Dorian didn't know how long he'd been awake, the slow ticking of his chest tearing him apart kept him conscious.

It'll burst, he thought, my heart's going to burst.

His head slapped against hard wood jarring his eyes in their sockets. The blindfold came partially off but the darkness remained. They'd been moving for what seemed like days in some sort of carriage. Periodically the carriage would stop and Dorian could hear the muffled whispers of his conspirators. They'd come while he slept, Cherry in his arms. All he remembered from that was something hard and cold crushing the back of his head and then the notation bit of his memory cut straight to waking in the back of the carriage, bound and gagged. His arms tied behind him, wrists chaffed and raw.

She smelled like the ocean, Dorian thought.

Grinding his teeth together he tried to roll over. A foot found his back, gentle but firm, holding him in place.

"Easy, pale rider." Lady Kay said. He recognized the voice. Somewhere in the blackness she was there. "You're pretty banged up."

Dorian muttered a response, garbled through the gag.

"I'd ungag you but you damn near bit off all my fingers last time." Lady Kay said. "Loveless is freaked as hell."

What?

"You Dorian or the other one?" Lady Kay asked. She nudged his back with one booted heel.

Dorian tried to say his name.

"Doesn't matter." Lady Kay said. "Can't let you loose, the other one might come back."

What other one? What the **** are you talking about?

His mind reeled trying to piece together what Lady Kay was babbling. From what he knew they'd come and taken him from the partitioned room by force, someone cracking his skull in the process.

I'm in trouble, Cherry, he thought. Dear Gods, I'm in trouble.

|2|

Nico cupped her head over the basin and vomited, again, for the third time. She'd woken in the night from another horrid dream. David had come back for her. He'd been waiting in the closet while she got ready for bed, bony hands clicking against the wooden floor as he shoved them through the crack between the floor and the door. Silver hair spilled over her face. Her gut felt like a skinned beast set astray in a thorn filled forest.

The old elf sat across from her on one of the chairs from the kitchen, a cane across his lap, pipe in one hand. "Fever's not going down." He said. "Lilliam gets off work in an hour, she'll be bringing home some medicine to try and stop it."

"Thank you." Nico sputtered. She pushed the basin to the edge of the bed, tears streaming down the side of her face. "She doesn't like me much does she?"

"She doesn't like humans much period." Terris said. The old elf sighed, lit his pipe and then hobbled over to the bed, cane swinging out before him. She watched the blind man navigate the space better than she could with two functional eyes. His hand fumbled for the basin, found it, and then went to the widow spilling its contents out onto the grass. "Not your fault."

"Why does she hate us?" Nico asked. Eyes closed she put the back of her arm against her cheeks. Heat burned through her pores.

Terris went back to the chair. "She's got a lot of good excuses....but no real reasons, to hate you. We used to live in town, long time ago, when she was little, back when her Mother was alive."

"What happened?"

"Don't really know." The old man gave her a hollow gaze. "I met her Mother during one of the crusades. Astrid was one of those die hard battle freaks. They never really shake it from their system. When Lilliam was born she gave it up, went cold turkey. Started to drink too."

"David was in the crusades." Nico said.

"That your husband."

Was, Nico thought, was, was, was, my husband, past tense, dead.

"He's dead." Nico said. When the words left her mouth she felt a pressure disappear, like someone had flipped a valve on the emotional cooker inside her releasing a steady stream of rage and confusion out. "He did something very stupid and got himself killed."

And you killed me along with you, you bastard.

"Anyways...she went a little batty one year." Terris said. The old man lowered his head, pipe in one hand sending a steady stream of smoke into the air. "That was when that whole business at The Gulch went down, she sent us off to Stormwind, never saw her again."

"I'm sorry."

Terris smiled. "So am I. I don't know what it was, something down in Stormwind got into Lilliam. She won't talk about that time, but ever since then she's had a thing for Humans...a grudge you could say."

Nico rolled over on the bed, pulling one of the sheets over her head. The images of Aee's sewn eyes came to her. Nico shuddered. The three little sisters, one gone blind, one gone mad, and the other only lies.

"Get some rest, Lilliam will be back soon." Terris said.

|3|

She worked in the wicker room that day. Lilliam's diligent hands flew across her board. Wickering upholstery for rocking chairs and outdoor travois. By the end of the day she had a dozen cuts on her fingers from stray wicker. Money changed hands. Patrick Donnelley who owned The Wicker House paid her a silver a day for the work.

The drugstore was part of the general store. By the time she got off a bloated moon hung in the sky, coils of mist wrapped around it. Lilliam eyed it warily. It remind her of the old hag, the old hag who saw the future through random cards. Ducking into the store she bought a small vial of greenish colored liquid and then started down the path that lead out of town towards her home. The reek of Human filled her nose. Sometimes, when she pulled doubles and picked up two silvers, she thought the smell even sank into her flesh, peeling away the layers of Elf till one day she'd wake up and her ears would be gone, fiery eyes extinguished.

How did my Mom live here? She wondered. WHY did she live here?

Why are you still living here if it's that bad? Her Mother asked.

Lilliam shook the ghost away. She pulled the two leather sole moccasins off and stuffed them into her knapsack, walking barefoot down the dirt trail. Questions floated in her head, ones she didn't want to answer. The woman was still at their house. She'd started to get sick that morning while Lilliam got ready for work. The vial of liquid cost her five coppers, not much, but they needed all they could get. She had two children and a blind Father to support.

Beside her the woods crooned their evening song. Lilliam stopped and listened to the snapping branches, small creatures, and sleeping birds that filled its depths. Something beyond the woods caught her ear, something entirely out of context. For a long while she didn't notice the low raspy, guttural, breathing that accompanied her own.

What the hell is that?

She reached into knapsack and pulled out a long slender tube. In one fluid motion she slapped it against her knee, the other end exploded in muted pink light, smoke billowing around it. Lilliam narrowed her eyes, raising the flare above her head.

"Hello?"

"Woman...ELF woman." A voice said.

Lilliam felt her leg muscles tighten. Her bare toes dug into the dirt road. She made a full circle, the pink light casting a strange glow through the woods. The stench of sulphur filled the air. Two minutes, that's all the flare would last. She searched, eyes scanning every shadow she ran across.

"I need you." The voice said.

Lilliam felt the first strings of panic play a concerto across her chest. She spun on her feet and started to sprint towards home, flare raised in front of her. Behind her a gnarled creature sprang from the cover of the woods and ran after her, claws clicking together. Lilliam screamed. She wasn't a fighter, that was her Mother, she hadn't so much as been in a cat fight with another girl since she was ten.

No time for that now, Astrid said. Run, little'un, run. Whatever it is it'll lunge at you, when it does spin and shove the flare.

The thing behind her screeched. Lilliam waited, counted a silent two seconds, feet pounding down the dirt road. She didn't hear the clicking of claws. Her feet took control, purposely tangling around themselves. Lilliam started to fall. She spun, flare making a pink arc, tracery light left in its wake. The creature had two giant black eyes, jaws that looked like they could snap steel, and it was in the air, it HAD lunged at her.

She screamed as it landed on her, the flare burying itself in one eye. The black viscous thing popped like a broken egg. Black fluid poured over Lilliam she screamed hands flying to her knapsack. She had a small dagger and another flare inside. The creature pulled back, lips stretched thin over its teeth in a frozen sneer.

Knees in your tummy, sweetie, her Mother said. Then kick.

Lilliam rolled onto her neck bringing her legs into her chest and then kicking out. Her heels slammed against rubbery skin pulled taunt over a hardened skeleton. The creature toppled off her. Lilliam twisted in the dirt and clawed her way to her feet.

I'm going to get away, I'm going to-

One clawed hand clamped her ankle. She tripped, head smacking the ground. The last thing she knew a large stone loomed above her and then crashed down onto her head. The darkness prevailed.

|4|

Cherry buttoned the black rain coat up and slipped into the main terminal of the Gryphon station. In tow was a large wooden crate, sensitive material seals adorning the outside. The seals would be denoted and clipped by the customs boys allowing her to get by unchecked. It'd cost her fifty gold pieces to get the seals off a crooked diplomat she found down in The Red Light Run. Back at her small hovel she'd made a quick dye job to her hair, a stained cobalt color that still hung in crescent moons beneath her fingertips. Ears tied back she mingled with the crowd. Her eyes found the high class line. A group of sharply dressed humans and gnomes were in line for an expedited flight.

Cherry got behind them, alert, aware she was being looked for. The security had increased ten fold. Every one was subject to search...every one but the rich.

Or the important, she thought.

Off in a corner a blind woman sat on a crate, a small felt hat in front of her. She sang a mellow tune over the churn of noise. Cherry moved with the line till a tall dwarf came up to her. A small slip of papers in his hand, jotting tickets down and passing them out.

"Where to?"

"Menethil Harbor." Cherry said.

"Anything to declare?"

"Sensitive materials." Cherry said. She nodded towards the wooden crate packed full of enough killing gear to level a battlefield. "Darnassus property."

The dwarf looked up at her. "And who are you?"

"Courier, class five." Cherry said. She reached into the pressed black raincoat and pulled out a sealed envelope. Forgery came second hand in her business. She hoped the dwarf hadn't seen enough material transports to notice hers were fake.

The dwarf took the envelope and checked it against the seals on the crate. He stopped at the last one. "This one's off." He said.

"What?"

"Whoever waxed it did a ****ty job." The dwarf said.

"That's what you get at the Elven embassy." Cherry said.

The Dwarf laughed. "I hear ya." He scribbled something down, tagged the box and broke of a bit of paper from each of the wax seals. "They do this crap all the time, and we keep telling them that if they don't fix it we'll fine them, but they never listen. Who did these?"

"Don't know his name." Cherry said. "Tall guy, long ears."

"Nightingale." The dwarf said. He shook himself and grunted. "Dumb bastard."

I just described every elf ever born, Cherry thought. She suppressed the mad laughter that bubbled between her lungs.

"Dock four." The dwarf said. "Gryph'll be ready in a minute."

Cherry nodded. She took the parchment ticket in exchange for money. Pulling the crate she made her way to a wide wooden platform, worn and dented from clawed feet. A large number four painted onto the surface. A tall elf stood there petting the feathered neck of the massive winged beast.

"Ticket."

Cherry handed it to him.

"Ever rode before?"

"Yeah." Cherry said.

Had to kill one of these things before too, she thought. That wasn't pleasant.

She swung one foot over the body of the gryphon, settling herself into the saddle. The elf walked around her side and tied her legs down with thick leather straps. A pair of dwarves hoisted the crate up behind her. Twenty minutes later she watched the elf whisper something to gryphon and then trace a series of symbols onto the creatures neck. The gryphon grunted and then its powerful wings cut air.

"Good trip!" The elf shouted.

Cherry flipped him a silver. "Goggles!" She shouted.

The elf caught it on the roll and tossed her the goggles on his head. He drew back, mindful of the wings. Cherry pulled the goggles over her eyes just as they made flight. Her stomach dropped for a moment and then settled. Ten minutes later they flew high above Azeroth, hanging below the cloud cover. Cherry scanned the ground and imagined what it'd be like if she feel.

I'd be awake the whole way down, she thought. Cute.

TBC...

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: Time to find out where they come from. Thought it would be a nice intermission.

Track Eleven: Una Palabra

|1|

Linda caught him while he crossed the main thoroughfare that ran through Stormwind. She tacked his pace and dropped in beside him. Dorian eyed her and shifted through the crowd.

"Sup?" She pulled shoved a flat lollipop into the side of her mouth.

"Busy Lin." Dorian said. His hand snaked into the crowd and came back with a leather skinned wallet. The item went into his bag. Dark circles hung under his eyes. One day he'd make it out of Stormwind, out of the ****ty flat in Oldtown and on to bigger and better things. Maybe not better, he corrected, but bigger, definitely.

Linda wrapped an arm around his, the horde of metal bracelets clinking together at her wrists. "You're ditching me tonight?"

"What?"

"We had a date." Linda said. Her skin was a sallow shade of yellow from too much drug use and not enough nutrition. Most of her body looked like an overworked skeleton covered in taunt leather skin.

"When did this happen?" Dorian asked. He let himself drift further into the crowd, left hand darting in and out of openings. Linda watched him, the lollipop rotating in her mouth.

"I made up my mind last night."

"Yeah? About what?"

"We can't keep going together if you're doing this." She said. "Richie, come on...think about it. You're going to snatch the wrong guy one day, man, and then they'll cut off your hands, or fingers, or whatever they do."

Will you get off me, Dorian thought.

He jerked his arm away from her. Stormwind smelled bad, sweat and the odor of too many people crammed together. The odor of the same broken dreams and false hopes permeated the streets.

Linda pulled him to the canals that night, the two of them sitting on the edge of a dirty pier watching greenish colored water lap at the stone walls. She leaned her head on his shoulder, the moon half full and bloated in the sky like an isolated pus pocket.

"Do you ever wonder where you're going to be in five years?" Linda asked.

"What?"

"Like the future." She stuck another lollipop into her mouth.

"You keep eating those your teeth are going to fall out." Dorian said. He lit a smoke, rolling it between his fingers, holding the stuff in his lungs so he wouldn't have to talk. Linda got off on her rants every six moths, pontificating on subjects she had no business even musing in. Dorian didn't know where he was going to be in the next five minutes, let alone five years.

What the hell does it matter, Lin?

"I want to own a fabrics store." Linda said. She kicked her feet out over the pier, two sandals hovering above the greenish canal. "Like one of those flash fabric stores down in Darnassus. You know the elves make a killing on that stuff, they've got all the real flash stuff."

"I bet." Dorian muttered. He flicked the cigarette butt into the green water, watching it float down into the depths.

"We'd have those spools and ****, it'd be awesome." Linda said.

"And how is that going to happen?"

"I don't know."

"So you don't have a plan."

"No."

"Real flash." Dorian said. He got up shoving his hands into his pants. "I gotta go."

Linda stared at him. "If you leave there's no more us."

"There hasn't been for awhile, Lin." Dorian said. He fled, using the darkness to outrun his own inadequacy. Something in him feared Linda. He didn't know what. A month later he vanished to Ironforge, smuggled in-between a crate of coffee an a bale of weed on the Deeprun Tram.

|2|

Light spilled into the back of the carriage from a crack in the back doors. Dorian blinked, his mind snapping back to reality. He'd been thinking of Linda. There long projected romance that'd ended the same way just about everything in his life had: Badly.

What was her last name?

It eluded him. For some reason that seemed very important, disturbing as well. How long had he been with her? Three years? Four? And he couldn't even recall her last name.

Aren't you just a real nice guy?

"He breathing?" Someone asked.

Lady Kay nudge him. "He's breathing."

"Still crazy?"

"No."

His tongue danced against the leather gag. He'd stopped being able to taste a few hours ago, his mouth a dry bent sheet of paper. Dorian tried to focus on the figure in the light. Loveless? He thought so, the vague out line of elf ears came into focus. He glared at them. They looked so much like Cherry's.

Is Cherry another Linda?

"Get him out here, I have to talk to the other one." Loveless said. "Something's not right. I can't get a read on Marv."

Marv...why was that familiar?

Dorian didn't know. He felt a pair of strong hands grab his binds and then pull him along the floor of the carriage. Wind slapped his face. Air, air that hadn't been breathed ten times over filled his lungs. The light blinded him all over again, full and rich.

The gag came off his mouth. Dorian swallowed sandpaper. "Help." He muttered.

"I can't help you till I talk to the other one." Loveless said. "Androgen...I call you forward."

Dorian blacked out.

|3|

Cherry landed under the cover of darkness. No one questioned her at the three landing platform in Menethil. She found a cheap motel, the name literally CHEAP, and buried herself into the hay filled sack that served as a bed. She'd made a small recon of the harbor before shutting out completely. Loveless was headed towards the Harbor, that's what Sebastian had said. Something had gone off the wire. Relentless was infected, if she caught it right.

Sleep nestled behind her eyes.

I'm coming Richie, she thought. Don't worry, I'm coming.

|4|

Case made two days out of Ironforge, her horse drawn cart headed towards the Highlands. She made a sparse fire that night and peered towards Menethil. A metal pot sat atop a battered grill, water boiling. She cut a carrot, eyes glued to the horizon line. Something kept itching her. Stabbing little points of doubt at the back of her mind.

Cherry was going to get herself killed.

Don't get involved, her mind warned. Remember Astrid?

As if to prove the point a crow squawked from somewhere in the woods. Case shivered. She hated birds. Detested the little ****ers. Ever since that day in The Gulch she couldn't bring herself to acknowledge their existence. She dropped the end of the carrot into the pot and then rummaged through a box of dried goods till she found the right spicing pack. Dumping the ingredients into the pot she stirred the stuff with a wooden spoon, mind adrift.

They'd taken the other woman's body, Pardimor called her Perion, and burned what was left of it at The Gulch. The flames flickered a dead black color when they touched her body, and the smoke came out white against the horizon. They'd made their way back on foot after going through the door to Alcaz Island. Pardimor had insisted on burning the others body. Part of her thought he was just as afraid of the birds and the blue light as she was.

Sighing she went back to the cart and pulled out a sheet of parchment, from her pocket she took out a stick of charcoal and began to write.

Dear Old Long, Tall, And Ugly,

It's me. Yeah, I know, not your favorite person to hear from. I've got a favor I need to ask of you, you probably don't want to hear it, but I'll ask anyway. Did Astrid have any kids? Relatives? If she did where are they, and who are they? Don't ask why, it only gets complicated. Trust me on that, big guy. I'll write you back with a return address after I settle down.

C

Case folded the note and stuck it into her pocket. She made a mental note to stop off at the next town and mail it. She doubted Pardimor would get it. Old Long, Tall, And Ugly had people to read his mail now.

Never know unless you try, she thought.

In the distance she heard a sparrow, clear as day. Case stirred the soup, trying not to shiver.

|5|

Cherry woke the next morning and washed using a basin and ladle, standing in a giant wooden bucket. She clothed quickly in a burgundy button down shirt and black pants. Strapped to the small of her back was the WB&N pistol in a worn leather hostler. Shells lined the outside. It took the better part of four hours to sew in hidden pockets to the lining of the black raincoat. An assortment of knives went into the coat along with the garrote and a few gum explosives.

What are you looking for?

I don't know yet, but I will when I find it, she thought.

The outside air was sticky and thick to the feel. Cherry made her way once around the harbor, noting all the places of interest mentally. She stopped at a food stall and ordered a bowl of chicken broth, eating it slowly, letting the stuff settle in her stomach. There didn't seem to be a seedy underbelly to this place. Cherry rolled the notion over in her head. That was a problem. A serious problem. Information could be bought and sold in shady places, it tended to die or be forgotten in the light.

The only other option was a long shot at best. Cherry hit up the tavern during the day light hours. A few drunks were curdled against the bar, one of them a balding old man.

"So there I was, the rest of the crew got swiped by the ghost ship." The old man said.

"Shut up Fitz!" Someone shouted from the back room.

Cherry pulled out a stool and perched herself on it. She waited for a portly man to appear at the bar and ordered a bourbon. A dark liquid appeared before her. Cherry slapped a few coppers on the counter top making sure to flash the silvers and golds in her hand as well. She felt the eyes of the local drunks roll to them. Drunks were great sources of information if they hadn't gone off the deep end. The casual drinkers stopped in at night and spread their stories, the drunks absorbed it all, they were like living journals. Ones you could pay for a page at a time, measured out in dark liquid.

She sniffed the bourbon. Good stock. It tasted better than she expected. She'd drank worse in the company of others. The fat bartender leaned up to the counter. "Bit early isn't it?"

Cherry shrugged. "Happy hour somewhere." She said.

"Amen to that, sister." Fitz roared. His bloodshot eyes and broken red nose shined at her.

He's the one, she thought. The living journal.

"You, uh, got a few coppers to spare?" Fitz asked.

Cherry hunched over in her chair. "That all depends." She said.

Fitz watched, interested. "On?"

"You see a carriage come through here? Hear anything about one heading here?" Cherry asked.

"A lot of carriages come through here." The bartender said.

"You'd remember this one." Cherry said. "Blackwatch horses...Emerald Brigade symbols."

Fitz went still. "I know what you're talking about." He said.

"What do you know?"

"Drink first."

"Tell me what you know, before you muddy it up."

"At least give me the coppers."

"Bartender...pour me a-" She glanced at Fitz. "What's your poison?"

"Whiskey."

"Whiskey." Cherry said. She tapped the counter and laid down more money. The drink came to her. She pushed it to her right, away from Fitz. "Tell me and then I'll pass it."

Fitz whined. He watched the brown liquid, eyes glued to it. "Couple of carriages came a few weeks ago."

"Couple? As in two?"

"Yeah."

"And?"

"Passed through." Fitz said. "One stopped at the Erinyes place."

Cherry blinked. "Who?"

"Lilliam Erinyes." Fitz said. He started to wind his hands together. "She lives outside of town. Probably wanted to talk to the old man, he was married to her."

"To who?"

"To Astrid."

Cherry felt the world start to spin.

TBC...

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: The end of Loveless is coming up. Three more installments, maybe less and then it's over. Enjoy.

Track Twelve: Dissonance/White Noise

|1|

"I got it!"

Dorian looked up from the heap of junk and rusted machinery that made up the rummage yard of Stormwind. Linda stood amid tossed out engines and bent pipes, a small cylindrical tube in her gloved hands. She had a brown skirt on, thick boots, and blue sleeveless top, the bottom hem tailored wide, flapping in the breeze.

"Check the side." Dorian shouted. He flung his leather satchel over his shoulder and started up the tetanus filled hill towards her. A thin film of sweat covered his forehead.

Linda rolled the tube in her hands. "Not very big."

This is before, Dorian thought. Before I left...how long?

"It's not suppose to be." Dorian said. He took the tube from her, eyes roaming over her tanned legs, the sleek toned muscle that would soon be gone in a few months thanks to the dope and the uppers.

"What is it?" She asked. Her button nose moved close to him, eyes reflecting the setting sun.

"Not sure." He said. Embossed on the tube was a crimson rose. Marduke had commissioned the piece and then somehow lost it. Dorian knew the story. He'd spent the last week in the dump searching for the item, whatever it was. Marduke would pay a pretty penny to have it back.

"We're eating tonight." Dorian said. He smiled and took her hand. They descended through the rubble. Linda wrapped her arms around him from behind, face buried in his back.

"You wanna go to Eddy's?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I hate that guy."

Linda sighed. She paced beside him. They passed a mountain of dead machines. The dirt path forked to the right. Dorian followed it. Up ahead, almost two hundred yards, the main expanse of Oldtown stretched out before them.

"What do you have against that guy?"

"Just don't like him." Dorian said.

"Richie, man, come on." She squeezed his hand. "He's not so bad."

Were you ****ing him then? Dorian wondered. I'm dreaming this, aren't I? The other one is in control, the one that Lady Kay said almost bit off her fingers. Gods, where am I?

He slipped the tube into his satchel. "I just don't like him. He's shady."

"Ooooh, you're one to use that word." Linda stripped the gloves from her hand and tucked them under an arm. From a pocket in her skirt she pulled out a lollipop and stuffed it into her mouth.

They walked in silence for half the distance to Oldtown. Linda glanced up at the walls of dead machines. "What do they do with all this ****?"

"Melt it down eventually." Dorian said. He shoved both hands into the pockets of his dirt grimed pants. He hadn't showered in days, they didn't have a place to sleep tonight. The cheap motels that charged by the hour were even too much for them. He let his hand drift to the lump in his bag. Marduke would pay a fair price for his tube, whatever the hell it was. Then they'd eat, and if there was money left over they were going to sleep in a real room tonight, not out in the Deeprun's terminal, cooped up in the seats, avoiding the night guard.

Did we end up doing that? I can't remember anymore.

"What happened to your brother?" Linda asked. She twined an arm around his. "Haven't seen him in like two weeks."

"Lock up." Dorian said. He hunched his head down, watching his footfalls. One foot in front of the other, someone had said that, and it was the greatest advice he'd ever heard. "Norm got into some ****, guards pinched him."

"No way!"

He nodded. "Had a message sent to our drop box at the post, something like fifty silvers for his bail."

"What'd he do?"

"You know wine store down by the canals?"

Linda nodded.

"Tried to walk out with five bottles tucked into his pants." Dorian shook his head. "Dumb ****."

"You going to get him out?"

"With what?" He glared at her, angry all of a sudden. Why the hell should he get Norman out? The bastard had gotten into the trouble himself. In case Linda hadn't noticed they didn't have any money period at the moment, and Marduke might try to screw on the price for the tube. If that happened he'd have to take whatever Marduke was giving, and it wouldn't be much. Enough for cabbage broth and a bread, that was probably about all.

"I don't know." Linda shrugged. She blew a tassel of hair from her face. "What does it matter? Thought you were a thief, steal something."

"I'm a fence." Dorian said.

"Fence my ass." Linda laughed and then hugged him. "Honey...fences have clean clothes, they actually have business and spending money."

"What are you saying?"

"You're a petty crook." Linda said. "That's okay, I still love you."

You did, didn't you?

She ruffled his hair. Dorian in retrospect, knowing he was dreaming, never felt like more of a douche-bag in his life.

|2|

Cherry watched the house from the shadows. Through the bay windows she could see two lights flickering inside. Candles placed on a kitchen table almost burned down to the wick. She dressed in a clear cut fashion, all intentions known. Black pants, a sleeveless sheer body-suit and clunky worn boots. Tools and weapons crossed her chest, the black rain coat over her shoulders.

The past ten hours had gone by in a serious of nothing events. From the bar she'd found the home, taking the back trails and hiding in her current spot, munching on a giant bread doughnut sandwich halfway through the day when the sun was at its pinnacle. She'd seen the old man, blind, but sharp, come to the door a number of times, peeking out, ears alert. He was looking for something, she could gather that much. Just what she didn't know. By dusk she was sure it was the woman, Lilliam, that Fitz had mentioned.

Woman gone missing, she thought. Not uncommon, two kids and a blind something or other to support...probably ran off.

When darkness came she waited further. By midnight she was ready to move. Like a cat she sulked out of the forest and into the dirt road. The pistol weighed heavy against the small of her back. Somewhere inside she caught a hint of movement, knee level, the kids. Cherry skirted across the road to the front door and then around the side of the house. She found a bedroom window and peered in. A human woman lay prone on the bed, fever sores covering her body. Cherry raised an eyebrow. Fitz hadn't said anything about a human...then again he was a drunk, and as reliable as they were, they were also equally unreliable at details.

Four people total, she thought. One cripple, two kids, and a sick human.

At the back of the house she found a small garden full of kingsblood and bruiseweed. Cherry wove through it to the back door. A few wooden chairs, dented and bloated from rain and disuse lined what little lawn there was. She stopped at the back door and touched the knob, one fingerless gloved hand caressing the brass. She lowered herself to the keyhole and peered inside. The machine was oiled. The lock thrown. Drawing back she checked the door. A warp in the wood at shoulder level gave her all the information she needed. Standard door lock with a throw bolt, she could handle the door lock, the bolt was out of the question.

Her eyes widened. From inside she heard the bolt on the door drawn back. Three razors appeared in her left hand, the pistol in her right. The door opened slowly, an old wrinkled face with white eyes staring in her direction.

"Best not to point weapons at people, I assume you've got weapons." The elf said.

Cherry narrowed her eyes. "Name."

"Terris....Terris Erinyes, would you care to come in?"

Why aren't you afraid?

"We don't get many visitors around here." Terris said. He smiled. "Been a hectic week. First the woman, now you."

"Who's the woman?"

"Nico." Terris said. "You have business with her?"

"Maybe."

Terris nodded. "Not quite and answer, not quite a question."

"What?"

"Nothing." The old man waved a hand in front of his face. "Come in, come in." He turned and hobbled back towards the kitchen, cane swinging out in front of him.

Well...that did not go as planned, Cherry thought.

She holstered the pistol, daggers still braced. She walked inside, crossing the threshold and shut the door behind her, throwing the bolt for good measure. The odor of old tobacco and lavender filled her nose. The old man seated himself at the table. His hand went out to the flames of the candle, testing the heat, seeing what level they flickered at.

"What's the point of the candles?" Cherry asked from the door. "You're blind."

"Yes I am." Terris said. "My grandchildren though, are not."

Cherry crossed her arms. The razors vanished from her hands.

"Who are you?" Terris asked.

"Just a person." Cherry said. She scanned the kitchen, the orderly shelves and dry goods.

A place for everything and everything in its place, her Aunt used to say.

"You come here to kill me?" Terris asked.

"That all depends, old man."

"On?"

"The questions I'm going to ask you and the answers you give me." Cherry said. She stepped into the kitchen, out of reach of the mans cane. He was blind, yes, but unknown as well, unknown factors didn't go down well with her. She tried to minimize them as best she could when they came about. Already meeting him the way she did had taken out a bit of her plan.

"Just a person, asking questions, threatening my life." Terris said. "Almost like old times."

"How's that?"

"You're too young to remember." Terris said. The man sighed and started to massage his temples. "I'd rather this be quick...my daughter is missing and I've little time to play old war games I never had interest in to begin with."

Missing, Cherry thought, that's one way to put it. That or she skipped down on your old broken ass.

"Ask your questions and then be gone." Terris said.

"The Emerald Brigade...they were here?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"A few weeks ago."

"Who'd they speak to?"

"Me."

"Why?"

"Old times sake." Terris said. He blew one of the candles out and turned in his chair towards her. Cherry took a step back.

"Easy, old man."

"Why do you want to know?"

"Friend of mine is gone." Cherry said. "Missing, like your daughter, and The Emerald Brigade took him."

The old man's face etched into deep wrinkled lines of frustration and worry. "They wanted to enlist my help...potions and what now. I used to be an alchemist once upon a time."

"Potions for what?" Cherry asked.

"Potions to rid demons from the body." Terris said.

Demons, or pissed of sleepers in The Emerald Dream?

"Did you give them what they wanted?"

"I was never that good." Terris said. "I know a few tricks, but without my eyes I'm not so hot to trot, if you know what I mean."

"I can imagine."

"I bet you can."

Cherry planted her hands on her hips. "Where'd the human come from?"

"Wandered to our home, sick." Terris said. He shrugged. "She didn't make much sense when she arrived. Still doesn't."

"You just let her in?"

"She was in trouble."

"So are you."

"Save your threats, girlie." Terris said. "I was married to a master of them."

"Astrid."

The old man froze. "How do you know that name?"

"Questions on my side, answers on yours." Cherry said. Her leg muscles tensed for a moment as she envisioned the old blind man lunging from his chair towards her voice. Clawing at her throat. He did nothing of the sort.

"They'll be back." Terris said. "They went to fetch someone...probably your friend."

"Why are they coming back?" Cherry asked.

"They still think I have a formula."

"Do you?"

"Maybe."

"You're sure they're coming here?" Cherry pulled the pistol from her back and spun the cylinders for effect. She watched the old mans ear twitch at the sound.

"They'll be back. You want them so bad you can wait here."

"What are they doing for you in return?" Cherry asked.

"Looking for my daughter." Terris said.

I doubt that, Cherry thought.

"You believe that?"

"It's the only thing I have." Terris said.

"Fair enough." Cherry turned and headed towards the door. She stopped, head craning over a shoulder. "Cassandra Siverpane..."

"Hmmm?"

"If you ever miss your wife, find that grave in Darnassus." Cherry said. "I'm told who lies beneath that ground isn't whose name is listed on the plaque."

The old man said nothing. Cherry became one with the shadows, the forest her deadly friend.

|3|

Loveless sat rigid against a tree, back straight, hands placed in her gauze covered lap. She looked out over the dirt road to where the carriage was. Lady Kay stood over the husk of Dorian, watching the beast within. Kellog had disappeared into the carriage an hour ago. She closed her eyes and concentrated. The background noises muted. A familiar vibration filled her chest and then spread through her body.

Now.

She opened her eyes to different surroundings. She stood in the center of monstrous chamber. A canal of crystal water circled the rim of the room. Giant marble pillars rose to a vaulted ceiling where colorful tapestries hung at varying lengths. Three thrones were erected in front of her, each with a dozen layers of black gauze over them. Crimson symbols were imprinted onto each covering.

"Loveless...you return." A woman said from one of the veiled thrones.

"Androgen has taken host in a human body." Loveless said. She lowered her head, staring at the polished marble floor, inlaid with gold designs. "I've taken the vessel."

"What of Relentless?" A man asked.

"I can sense him near us." Loveless said. "He IS infected. Turned against us."

"So be it." The woman said from the farthest throne to the left. "We will consider him collateral damage."

"Understood, Senin." Loveless said.

"What of Androgen? Does he speak?"

"Yes, he talks of prophecy."

"Do not be mislead." The man said.

"I will not be, Senin-sama."

"The dream is stable for the time being." The woman said. "Others on the council believe it will not remain so for very long. The parcels must be returned to the source. Why is this Androgen still alive?"

"The vessel is strong. It speaks of the other two." Loveless said. "I believe it may lead us to them."

"Have you identified the third?" The woman asked.

"No, Senin." Loveless said. "The third has eluded us. Androgen speaks not of him, only in cryptic whispers."

"We understand you came in contact with Constance Gone and Genoveva Delvin, is this correct?" The man.

Loveless darted her eyes towards the throne. "Yes, Senin-sama."

"Why were they not disposed of?"

"Miss Delvin gave me information as to the whereabouts of Astrid Erinyes's body." Loveless said.

"You took unsubstantiated rumor as barter?"

"Yes, Senin-sama." Loveless said.

What else could I do? She thought.

"These claims will be evaluated upon your return and completion of the mission." The woman said. Loveless thought she saw a flicker of movement through the dark gauze layers. "Anything unsubstantiated will be placed solely on you, is this understood."

"Yes."

"Leave us." The man said.

Loveless closed her eyes again. She felt the vibration seep through her. When she opened her eyes the familiar sight of the carriage came into view. Lady Kay stood a few feet from her, hands planted on her hips.

"You okay? You zoned out for a bit there."

"It's astral projection." Loveless said. "It's how I communicate with my superiors."

"Interesting."

"Not really." Loveless said. "Load the vessel back into the carriage, we have to make Menethil by daybreak."

"Roger that." Lady Kay said. She turned away.

Loveless rubbed her eyes. Dark premonitions flickered in her head like black butterflies massing together. Something would go horribly wrong, she knew that. Androgen himself said it. Her eyes turned towards Menethil. The old elf would be at his home. If she could help it she wanted the elixir to pull Androgen out instead of just killing the vessel.

Time will tell, she thought. And it's not on our side.

TBC...

[fallonquinn]

I'm taking a break from this story to tweak the last few parts. Not sure how long it'll be. Rest assured I haven't stopped writing it, just need a break.

Fal

[rottentomato]

im excited about the rest of the story :) always compelling

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes:

Track Thirteen: A Bullet Without A Future

|1|

The mud (Lilliam hoped it was mud) beneath her felt moist and cool to the touch. She smelled piss and rotten greens through the darkness. A cave, she was in some sort of cave, tunneled down into the earth. The air was thick and sticky, humid, filling her lungs like glue. She touched the back of her head, a jagged gash woke to her fingers, spidery traces of pain spreading from it. She gripped part of the slick rock wall and tried to make her feet.

How long have I been out?

She tried to piece back the time, run it on a reverse reel in her head. The darkness, all that came was darkness, and the creature. The thing with the clawed hands; lax jaws filled with razor teeth. She shuddered, cold from the back drafts that drifted through the shaft of the tunnel.

“Try not to move.” The voice said.

Lilliam froze. A new odor swarmed around her. A sick, hot, rancid meat stench that made her gag. She covered her mouth and clamped her eyes shut.

Please let this be a bad dream, please, Elune.

“No one’s coming for you.” The voice said.

Through the darkness she could see one wet glistening black eye reflecting a bit of non-existent light. The eye blinked. A small flash of fire appeared as The Creature lit what looked like a battered hand rolled cigarette.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I told you. I need you.” The Creature said.

“For what?”

“Does it matter?”

Lilliam said nothing. She fumbled at her surroundings, the wet stone, and the muddy floor. The wetlands, she was still in the wetlands, beyond that she had no idea where they could be. She didn’t know of any cave near her home. Then again there was no guarantee, or even a sign, that the creature had taken her close to her home. Panic welled up in her chest. A constricting thing that coiled around her lungs like iron clamps.

“Breathe.” The Creature said. “Don’t pass out again.”

“Again? Last thing I remember is you crushed my head with a rock. That’s HARDLY passing out.”

“Yeah, sorry about that one.” The red eye of the cigarette grew brighter for a moment, floating like a disembodied eye through the blackness of the cave. “Had to do it. Consider it payment for taking my eye.”

The flares, Lilliam thought. Where’s my bag?

She ran her hands over her body. The satchel was gone. A small groan escaped her. She pressed her back against the stone.

“That’s awfully mellow dramatic.” The Creature said. “You can call me Marv, Lilliam.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Oh, I know a fair amount about you, woman.” Marv said. She could feel the smile in the dark. “Your Mother, Astrid, the drunk, Father, Terris, the coward, I know a lot.”

“What was my pets name?” Lilliam asked. The panic gave way to raw rage.

“Toma…wasn’t your pet either.” Marv said. “More like your Mom’s sidekick.”

Smoke filled the cave. Lilliam tried to estimate the distance to the opening, assuming the opening was dead ahead. She doubted it was.

This place is a maze, she thought. That’s why he chose it.

“Pretty daughters you have.” Marv said.

“**** you.” Lilliam shouted.

“And the horse you rode in on.”

“What?”

“Nothing, that’s neither here nor there.” Marv said. “What’s important is that you stay here right now.” The red eye sparked again, floating, stray like a Cheshire Cat. “Certain entities have taken it upon themselves to green light my disposable, and that my dear, cannot happen.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.” Marv said. A throaty giggle floated into the air.

Lilliam shivered.

|2|


Case ditched the cart and raced for Menethil Harbor, the tongue of her horse flopping, bloated, out of its mouth, thick and gray. Pardimor had sent word back just as she settled in secluded little town along the Western Strand. Things had soured. Astrid did have a daughter. Pardimor stated that in flat capitals.

Please let me be wrong, she thought. Please, like everything else, let me be wrong.

|3|

The carriage came to a jolting halt. Lady Kay wiped her hands on her pants. Inside the back she couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. Her body clock leaned towards day but it’d gone whacky over the last few days. Everything had. She looked at the man bound on the floor. Dorian squirmed in his restraints. The eyes of the other boring into her through the darkness.

“Look someplace else.” She muttered.

Silence.

Silence thick enough for goose bumps to start small colonies on her arms and back. She planted one ear against the side of the carriage. Panic filtered through her nerves. Why was it so quiet? Kellog should have been bellowing or Loveless complaining…something.

Someone’s onto us, she thought.

Her hand went to the dagger on her side. She spun and kicked the back of the carriage doors open only to find six massive bores leveled at her.

“One breath and I’ll snack the life right out of you.” Cherry said.

Kay grimaced. “****.”

“You could call it that.”

|4|

Kellog’s body lay sprawled out in wet grass, sun sliding over the bloody remains of his throat. Cherry negotiated the real threat out of the back of the carriage. Razors in one hand, she took a step back, gun leveled. Lady Kay stepped out, her face a taunt mask of apprehension.

“You going to off me, do it now.”

“That’d be impractical.” Cherry said. She smiled, a vicious cruelty written across her face. “You’ve got things I need to know, you and that *****, Loveless.”

“Where is she?”

“Incapacitated.” Cherry said. “I thought just you and I would rap a bit first.”

“Kellog really dead?”

Oh yeah, Cherry thought. He’s just about as dead as he’s going to get. Didn’t put up much of a fight either, good thing for him.

“Easy now.” Lady Kay raised her hands into the air, dagger falling into the dirt road.

“I’m calm.” Cherry said. “Lets hope I stay that way. It’s been a bad week for me, Kay. I’m sure you know all about bad weeks, right?”

Lady Kay said nothing.

“That trick you snapped on me back at Kellog’s…real flash. Never saw it coming.” Cherry said. She stashed the blades and buttoned the front of her black raincoat. The gun lowered, hovering at her side, angry and ready to bit fire. “Loveless put you up to it?”

“Said it was the only way.” Lady Kay said. The woman pulled a cigarette out from her pants in a slow steady movement.

Cherry’s ears twitched. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“No point.” Lady Kay said. “Never thought you’d actually find us. How’d you do it?”

“You’re not the only one with friends.”

“Wouldn’t call them friends.” Lady Kay said. “And you know that as well as I do.”

Cherry nodded. “Acquaintances then.” She pulled a match from her jacket and tossed it over to the woman. “Now give me a few good reasons I don’t put a bullet in your head right now.”

“Because it’d be a bullet without a future.”

“I’m not up for philosophy today.” Cherry said. A dull controlled anger flooded her. She ground her teeth together. Overhead a thick crop of pregnant gray clouds started to cover the sky. The smell of rain touched the air like warm wet fingers. “You know the drill.”

Lady Kay grimaced. “Where’s the rope?”

Cherry fished a thick fishing line from her kangaroo pouch and tossed it over. “Hands in the front.”

“Oh come on, please don’t do it this way.”

It’s the same thing you’d do to me, she thought. And you know it. Deep down you know it. We’re just about the same, at least job wise. We know the rules, and we live by them, because if we don’t we get another scar, or we die.

“Hands in the ****ing front.” Cherry said. She raised the revolver again. “I haven’t shot this thing yet, but I’m pretty sure from this close it wouldn’t matter where.”

Lady Kay started to bind her hands. “New model of WB&N?”

She nodded.

“Looks nice.”

“It is.”

Two minutes later Kay had a thick swatch of fishing wire around her wrists. Cherry chose it for the constrictive value. Someone squirmed in rope they just got burned; fishing wire would slice through your flesh, an added deterrent. She holstered the pistol and stepped forward.

“Raise your arms.”

Lady Kay groaned.

“You want something to bit on?”

“**** off.” Lady Kay grumbled.

“Suit yourself.” Cherry went behind her, grabbed the woman’s wrists and then jerked backwards. Kay’s shoulder tore out of its socket as her wrists landed in the small of her back. A horrid sound like a champagne bottle being uncorked came from her wrists. To her credit Kay didn’t scream.

Silent tears ran down the woman’s face.

“Only one shoulder went.” Cherry said. She probed Kay’s right socket. “Just the sinew…it’ll heal.”

“*****.”

“That’s no way to talk to a fellow compatriot.” Cherry said. She smiled again, and then circled around to the front of the woman.

“How’d you find us?” Kay grunted.

Cherry went to the carriage and peered inside. Dorian lay on the floor, he’d pissed himself. A thick noxious odor emanated from his body. Two wild eyes looked up at her. Not Dorian’s eyes at all.

“What’d you do to him?”

“Nothing.” Lady Kay said.

“I can still pop the other side for you,” Cherry said. “Even things out.”

“We didn’t do anything.” Lady Kay said. “It’s the infection…it’s not really an infection.”

Cherry raised an eyebrow. She crawled into the carriage. Dorian snarled at her like he’d never seen her before.

Where are you Richie? You’re not in there. Who’s this?

Grabbing his bindings she pulled him to the edge of the carriage and then rolled him over the side to the road. Rain started to piss down on them from the black-bellied clouds. Cherry flipped the collar of her raincoat up, hair plastering itself against her forehead. She glanced at Kay.

“What happened to him?”

“Androgen happened.” Kay said. “The hound that bit him…transferred whatever that thing is inside him. Look at his side.”

Cherry tore Dorian’s shirt away. The black rot covered his entire torso, nipples two brown dots amid a sea of rotten tissue. Something cracked in her chest. “Richie...no…”

“Yes.” Lady Kay said.

Talk again and I’ll cut your tongue out myself, Cherry thought.

Tears mixed with the rain as it spilled over her face. Dorian’s two ragged black eyes searched her. His tongue roved behind the gag they had on him. Brownish colored bile leaked from the corner of his mouth.

You’re not the Dorian that held me, she thought. You’re not Richie.

Oh but he is, Oswald said. Don’t forget that.

“How’d you find us?” Kay asked. Her voice had an uneven tone to it, etched in pain and control.

“The old man told me you’d be coming back. This is the only road to his house.” Cherry said. She squatted down and touched Dorian’s knee. The man’s legs lashed out at her, one foot clipping her cheek. She spun backwards, cupping the small cut there. A small miserable moan left her.

“What old man?” Lady Kay shouted. She stood in the rain.

Cherry got to her feet. Her mind strayed in a hundred directions at once. She could kill Kay now, save herself the trouble, then Loveless. Leave all this **** behind, but that would only work if Dorian wasn’t possessed, or-

I used to make potions, Terris whispered.


TBC...

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: Enjoy.

Track Fourteen: Automatica

|1|

Dorian tumbled through a dark shaft of consciousness till he reached a placid, syrupy, swamp. Small rods stuck out from the ground cutting through the amber liquid, pale blue light pulsing from their cores. He blinked and touched his face. The dead rot was all over him now. His right hand an ugly mess of black tissue and spongy bone.

I’m gonna be a corpse soon, he thought, unless-

“Unless what?” Someone asked.

He jumped, feet sloshing in the amber phlegm. Grimacing he looked for something to grab onto.

Am I awake?

No. He wasn’t. This was the other place, like when he dreamed of Linda. There hadn’t been an actual flip of continuity, one second he was back in Stormwind, the next he was here.

Then how do you know it’s a dream?

I guess I don’t, he thought.

A few dead trees spotted the land, pale blue rods glowing all around them. Dorian leveled his gaze toward the black hump of a shape some distance ahead. He saw a flicker of movement, small hands and tiny feet.

“Who’s there?!?”

“Aee, Bee, and Cee.” A voice said.

Dorian shuddered. Every little kid in Stormwind heard that bedtime horror story when their parents wanted to shut them up for the night. The three little sisters of Delurium that went mad, all but one, and her sisters knowing she was sane threaded her eyes shut.

Definitely a dream then.

“We’re no dream, asshole.” A grumpy voice shouted.

Dorian made a line to the humped shadowed thing in the swamp. He glanced down to see pairs of socks, boots, daggers, hundreds of items making up the flatbed of the swamp, all of them immersed in slick amber liquid. He fished out an old messengers cap and stared at it. The emblem of the Alliance caught his eye, embroider on the front, but it was the old emblem, the one they’d used centuries ago.

What the hell is this place?

“This is where all the **** that gets lost goes.” One of the three shouted.

Dorian froze.

Are you reading my mind?

“Yeah, sorry.” Someone said.

“Bee, honestly…such filth from your mouth.”

“Shut up, Aee.”

“You know when your socks get lost in the dryer? This is where they end up.”

“What’s a dryer?” Dorian shouted.

“They don’t have dryers in his WHEN, Cee.” Aee said.

“How do you know? You can’t see.” Cee said.

“You can’t see.” Bee giggled.

Dorian wiped his forehead again. His chest took a rampant tumble, blood gridlocked in ventricles, arteries congested. In his coat pocket he found the small paper packet and pulled two white pills. They dissolved under his tongue, a bitter metallic taste.

Off to the left he saw a strange brittle tree. The leaves were in full bloom under the darkened sky. For some reason he thought of glass and then it vanished from his head. The underside of the leaves flashed a brilliant light that out staged the rods by a long shot. Faces and pictures formed and reformed, fractured and puzzled together. He saw Cherry’s face, when she would have been younger, maybe before things got bad for her. Sitting under the tree was a short woman with cropped black hair. A shirt hung from her skinny shoulders, pink print reading: Live Fast, Die Pretty.

“I wouldn’t believe them if I were you.” The woman said. She smiled at him, it felt warm, genuine.

“------, you have no business in this!” Bee shouted.

“I’ve business in everything.” The woman said.

Dorian heard the woman’s name. The second he did it turned into a rabid bunch of clustered sounds mixed together.

“You can’t know my name.” She said, looking at him. “I could tell you point blank and you still wouldn’t hear it. That’s just how you’re hardwired. Astrid was too.”

A small tattered doll floated by him in the knee-deep swamp. Dorian propped up to a standing position. “Where is this?”

“Well they were right about things getting lost,” the woman said. “This is where they go.”

“He’s ours!” Cee shouted.

“He belongs to no one.” The woman said. Her head snapped towards the shadowed stationary object. “How you got him here is beyond me, but if you push it I’ll report it.”

“To who?”

“You know who. “ The woman said.

The trio went silent.

“Come here, Richie.” The woman said. She waved a hand to him. “Up and out of the syrup.”

Dorian wandered towards her, he had no intentions of meeting the twisted sisters. The leaves of the tree flashed a collective picture of Linda on their undersides. He frowned.

I did a lot of bad things, he thought.

“Yes, you did.” The woman said.

“You too?”

She tapped her forehead. “One of the perks of keeping fate moving.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Not important.”

“What do I call you?” Dorian asked.

The woman sighed, and leaned against the tree. “What do you want to call me?”

“I was never good at naming anything.” Dorian said. He spit out the two white pills, what was left of them, into the syrup. The land leveled up the closer he got to the tree, till he stood on actual ground underneath its massive branches. The ground, its greedy black soil, twisted around his feet and ate the slime off his boots and pants.

“Call me Nothing then.” Nothing said.

This is going to get confusing.

“Probably.” Nothing said. “But just imagine how the word processors feels. I’ve got so many green lines they could probably make me a rope to China.”

“What?”

Nothing waved her hand at him. “Joke, never mind. How’d you get here?”

“Don’t know.” Dorian said. He peered around the monstrous swamp. The rods had turned a dull shade of blue like some of the life had been sucked out of them. He glanced over at the shadowed thing the three sisters were at. It had a curved chassis top, small, metal, blunt.

“It’s a beetle.” Nothing said. “VW I believe, I was never good with cars.”

“What’s a car?”

“Kinda like a carriage without horses.” Nothing said. “But that’s neither here nor there…well, it’s somewhere, it’s just not relevant to our discussion.”

“And what is?”

“How you got here, where you’re going, all the metaphysical stuff you DON’T want to here.” Nothing said. She rubbed two dark eyes. “Certain things operate on standard laws. Fate for instance; Fate moves in a pattern, kind of like this tree.” She slapped the trunk. “You make one choice a hundred others branch out from it, some dead end, some grow on and on.”

“Okay.”

“Eventually, they all dead end.” Nothing said. “That’s the way of things. Everything has to have an ending. That old adage, ‘every beginning must have an ending’, or something along those lines.”

“You’re losing me.”

“Wasn’t hard.” Nothing laughed. She crossed her arms. “The lowdown, as you may say it, is rather simple. Malfurion Stormrage disappeared into the Emerald Dream.” She wrinkled her nose. “About…two months…YOUR time, he broke.”

“He didn’t break!” Cee shouted from the beetle.

“Can it, liar!” Nothing shouted back. She turned back to Dorian. “His mind went wonky, something in the design had a flaw and he fractured in three. Id, Ego, and Superego, you could say, or right hemisphere, left, and cerebellum.”

Dorian shook his head. “Case knows this ****, I don’t.”

“Well Molly isn’t here.”

“Who’s Molly?”

“Case.” Nothing said. “She changes her name all the time…although she’s stuck with Case for awhile now. Weird little woman if I must say so, caused us a bit of worry.” A listless expression covered Nothing’s face. “Any who…when Malfurion broke he sequestered his three pieces in three different people. You got stuck with the worst of him.”

“That’s why I can’t wake up.” Dorian muttered. “The other one has me.”

“Right.” Nothing winked at him. “You’re getting the hang of it. Androgen, as he calls himself, mostly cause he is a he, took hold in you. Androgen by definition is a male sex hormone, like testosterone. I think you get where I’m going with this.”

Dorian shook his head.

Nothing shrugged. “I can only tell you and hope you get it.” The tree above her flashed a face he’d never seen before, a calm looking woman with one arm, wearing a low flat crown hat. For a moment he thought Cherry and then refocused his attention.

“Estrogen took root in another.” Nothing said. “Two equal halves working in unison, balance, order, all that good crap. And then Automatica came, planted it’s old dirty self in someone whose job it was to reunite the three, things got complicated.”

“Marv.”

“Relentless.” Nothing said. “He goes by many names, not unlike Molly, or Case as you know her.”

“Who’s the other?” Dorian asked.

“Nico.” Nothing said. “Don’t think you’ve met her. She’s sick, and hurting.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.” Dorian said.

“Well remember it, I can’t peak at your world at the moment.” She grimaced and glanced towards the ‘car’. “Certain little *****es of delurium are blocking my view, putting their fingers where they don’t belong.”

“We do!” Bee shouted.

“You don’t!” Nothing gave them the finger. “Can’t stand those three.”

“Then why don’t you get rid of them?” Dorian asked.

Nothing looked at him and sighed. “Balance, order, all those things I was telling you about, that’s me, what I do, they represent the random factor, chaos, all that good stuff. They represent Automatica, that's what it is by nature. Everything has a check, even Fate.”

His head felt swollen. Drums made a steady beat in the back of his skull, playing dance beats on his brain tissue. He wondered if he’d wake up crazier than when he blacked out, IF he woke up.

“Oh you’ll wake up.” Nothing said. “The old man owes me.”

“Which old man?”

She waved his question off again. “Keep your mind on the topic. The three renegade spheres of thought have to be combined again.” She slapped the trunk of the tree. “Everything returns to its roots, its source. You just have to bring it there.”

Foreboding touched him with two icy fingers. “What do you mean by reunite?”

“This is the part of my job I hate.” Nothing said. She got to her feet, wrapped her arms around his waist, two surprisingly warm arms. “You have to die, and so do they. The vessels they inhabit, you and the others, you’re just that, VESSELS.”

“Break the vessels and they return to the source.” Dorian whispered. He stared up at the leaves of the tree and saw Cherry’s face. She was smiling, something he hadn’t seen her do except when they were alone in Kellog’s back room. Her mouth opened and formed words he couldn’t make out.

“Exactly. Break up the containers, the contents have no where to go but back.” Nothing said. She pulled his head down. “Now wake up Dorian…you don’t have much time.” Her lips locked over his. A brilliant flash of white light burned his eyes into flat snaps of information.

|2|

He blinked, rain smacking his face. Cherry hovered over him, a patched up cut on her cheek. The gag was gone from his mouth but he was still bound. She smiled, smiled like the image in the leaves.

“That you, Richie?”

I don’t even know anymore, he thought.

TBC…

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: This is going to run longer than previously planned.

Track Fifteen: Everything We Feared We Would Become

|1|

Once upon a time there was a little girl. A ragged girl with pale skin and black hair who stood at the shores of a great ocean, hands in the pockets of dirty frayed overalls. She had no Mother. Not even a memory on which to base a fair guess as to what she may have been like.

Something had gone wrong when she was born. Her Father called it a breach birth; others in the village made hushed whispers and pointed fingers. The curse wasn’t so much born as it was created.

And then, on a day, a random day, she didn’t remember the specifics; her Father hung himself in the back room of their tiny home. Constance found him hanging from the rafters, feet adrift, toes swollen like sausage links. She ran from the house, ran till the land disappeared and only the beach remained. A sign dangled from her Father’s neck. A simple six-word note that described everything she would later feel.

Written in charcoal on a worn piece of parchment was: Your Attempt At Life Has Failed.

She snatched the note before running. It burned in her pocket, like hot coals tossed over an open wound. Standing at the tide line, bare foot, she pulled the parchment from her pocket. Six words, words she could barely read at her age.

But she could read. She didn’t understand the note, and she didn’t understand why Daddy had put the rope around his neck but she knew bad times lay ahead. In whatever shape or color, they were coming, and she wasn’t ready.

Salt water surged up towards her staining the sand a dark shade of brown. Constance watched it. The water came and went, a never-ending cycle that seemed useless.

Why don’t you come up all the way? She wondered. Come up and sweep away the towns, the cities, everything.

Crumpling the note, she threw it into the ocean, watched it fluttered in the wind before sinking into a blasted cobalt sea. Over twenty years later, standing on a dirt road, plastered in rain, the note came back to her. Not Constance, but Cherry.

That was never my name anyway, she thought. I have no name anymore except for who I am at the moment. All flights are canceled, and subject to change.

She touched Dorian’s cheek, his flesh cold beneath the pads of her fingers. “Richie…that you?”

“I think,” Dorian muttered. “Where are we?”

“Turn your head, honey,” She did it for him. “You’ll choke on the water.”

“We have to get Nico,” Dorian muttered.

How do you know that name? Where have you been?

“Cherry-“ Kay started.

“Can it, sweetheart,” Cherry said. She touched the spongy tissue of Dorian’s torso. Case said six months on the outside, if he was lucky. Luck did not appear to be on his side. Luck was never on her side.

“No-Cherry, seriously-“

“Kay!”

“Listen!” Kay shouted.

Cherry felt her jaws clench. Rain toppled off her brow. She turned to Kay, hands balled into stone fists, and then she saw it. The flicker of movement in Kay’s eyes. Unspoken words flashed between them. Cherry’s ears perked. Footsteps. There were footsteps somewhere out in the woods.

Surrounding us, she thought. Someone’s surrounding us.

“You catch me now?” Kay asked.

Cherry nodded. “Can you still work with one arm?”

“It’ll have to do,” Kay said. “Strip the wire.”

“How many?” Cherry asked.

“Dunno…your ears are sharper than mine,” Kay said. The look of survival danced in her eyes. There were no sides now.

An enemy is my enemy until we’re both in the same ****, Cherry thought.

A dark smile touched her lips.

“What’s going on?” Dorian said.

“Someone’s trying to be sneaky,” Cherry said. “And that’s my game, not theirs.” She went to Kay and sliced the fishing wire with a razor. The woman got to her feet, one hand kneading the tissue of her right shoulder.

“How much are you packing?” Lady Kay asked. The woman flexed her legs, knees popping. “A whole hell of a lot, I hope.”

“Three bombs, some blades, and the pistol,” Cherry said.

“****.”

My sentiments exactly, Cherry thought. We’re boned.

“At least give me a blade,” Lady Kay said.

Cherry pulled a curved dagger from her raincoat and passed it. “Loveless is on the other side of the carriage, make sure she’s still out.”

Kay shook her head. “Then what?”

“Get ready.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know.”

Dorian moaned behind her.

|2|

Nico stumbled into the kitchen, dropping into a chair. Outside the rain slammed against the house like thousands of angry birds. She watched it assault the windows. Her stomach felt like a brick filled sack even though she hadn’t eaten in days. Terris sat beside her.

“Feeling better?” He asked.

“No,” Nico said. “In fact…I do believe I’ve lost my mind.”

“At least you know it,” Terris said. The elf packed his pipe and lit it. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m not sure,” Nico said. “Something’s going wrong. Something’s going very, very wrong.”

“All things do eventually,” Terris said. Smoke billowed around his furry ears.

Yes…I suppose they do, she thought.

Do they? David asked.

You be quiet.

“You made potions didn’t you?” Nico asked.

The old man nodded, his blind eyes roving in her direction. “Once upon a time.”

Nico pressed her hands to her temples. A hundred different voices spoke to her, ones she didn’t know, ones she barely knew, and others that were all too familiar. David’s came out the strongest, and he kept rattling on about a cave somewhere. A cave, what was so important about a cave?

Why can’t this be simple? Why can’t everything be laid out?

Where’s the fun in that? David asked. And who the **** are you to make those kinds of requests? You think just because I left, that you’re a widow, you can play the victim card. And you know what? Maybe you are the victim, but no one gives a ****. Burn your house down, hell, burn your town down, it doesn’t change anything. You’re still the same scared little girl I picked up in a dishwater town.

Nico felt the tears course down her cheeks in a steady stream. She wiped them away only to find more coming.

I could cry myself into dehydration, she thought hysterically. Is that even possible?

Nico, David whispered. No one cares.

Terris leaned over and tapped her shoulder. “Sometimes the voices we hear, especially the dead ones, are the ones that want to hurt us most.”

“I think I know that,” Nico said.

“No…you don’t. If you did you wouldn’t be crying. Whoever’s talking to you, it’s not them, it’s YOU,” Terris said. “Your brain likes to play tricks on you, find a convenient cover for all the things you have to hear but don’t want to.”

“I had a life once,” Nico whispered.

“We all did…but that’s over now,” Terris said. He smiled; smoke trailing out of his nose. “I’ve been mulling over it the last few days.”

“Mulling over what?”

“The situation,” Terris’s eyes looked bloodshot. “I think at this point my daughter is probably dead.” His face twitched. “It’s the end of an era for us…my kind at least. Druids, Rogues, Priests…no one has a category anymore…”

“How does it end?” Nico asked.

Terris leveled two white eyes on her. “Badly…for all of us.”

|3|

The first elf dropped from the cover of the trees ten yards ahead. Cherry spun on her heels, mud clogging her spin. She pulled leather on the revolver and fired three quick snapshots. The man jerked in the air, the holes in his armor the size of a fist. Rain blotted out her vision for a moment.

Behind, someone’s behind me, she thought.

Panicked she flipped the blades between her fingers. Something that sounded like a wide muzzle musket went off at the front of the carriage. Kay’s scream cut through the thunder like a warning siren. Cherry darted across the road, snatched Dorian and pulled him to the cover of the carriage. Lowering her head she peered under the wheels. Three pairs of feet were visible along with the crumpled body of Loveless. Off near the left front wheel she saw Lady Kay, head turned away. Cherry leveled the revolver and pulled the trigger at the first set of legs.

Spearheads of fire erupted from the end of the revolver, creating its own clap of thunder. One leg blew away completely in a mist of bone fragments and shredded muscle. The recoil tore at her wrist. She toppled backwards, ass landing in the mud. Shouts came from the other side of the carriage. Instinct took over. She popped the breach of the revolver and turned it upside down. Spent shells spilled onto the ground. In one quick motion she snatched catridges from her belt and loaded them, chamber by chamber.

We’re not going to make it, she thought.

“CHERRY!” Dorian shouted.

Her head turned a second too late. A man stood in the middle of the roadway twenty feet away, rifle leveled at her. She rose to her feet, automatically snapping the breach of the pistol closed.

Too slow, she thought. I'm too slow, too slow.

The musket went off. Cherry heard nothing. Felt nothing. Only the cold rain spilling over all of them, marking the ground, mixing with blood.

Dorian…I think he shot me, she thought. I think he really got me this time.

She craned her head. A dark patch spread from the middle of her stomach. Something warm slid down into her pants, over her belly, soaking her legs. It took a minute to realize it for what it was.

That’s my blood, she thought. Why can’t I hear?

Dorian got to his feet, hands bound behind his back. He screamed something at her. The hiss of rain drowned him out. The man with the musket stalked towards her. Cherry felt the pistol and the razors drop from her hands. A shocked expression washed over her face. She touched the spot on her shirt, no bigger than a gold coin. Crimson stained her fingers.

I’m not invincible, she thought. No one is. Gods, Richie…I’m so sorry.

The elf stood a foot away, a crooked smile on his face, one she recognized but couldn’t place. She’d seen him before. Back in Ironforge? Before that? In the Barrens when Jimmy was still alive?

Jimmy’s dead, a phantom voice told her.

I know that.

It clicked a moment later. Sebastian. The Elf’s name was Sebastian and she’d found him in one of the hotels in Ironforge, used him to track down the carriage.

Sebastian giggled, raised the butt of the rifle and buried the stock into her face. Cherry felt her nose snap, bone shifting left, and then the world went dark. The last thing she heard before the darkness took over was Dorian screaming, that she heard crystal clear, amplified almost.

The Brigade, she thought. I forgot about the Brigade. So much for my happy ending.

|4|

Marv lit another cigarette, smoke twisting in the thick air. He stared at Lilliam, one black eye taking in everything it could. The elf had cornered herself into the back of the cave, back pressed against the rock wall.

“You’re afraid,” Marv said.

“Damn right I am,” Lilliam said.

“Don’t be,” Marv said. “The others are almost here. Once I ‘retire’ them you’re free to go. I needed you as bait.”

“For what?”

“The old man.” Marv said. “Needed to lure the others out here, make sure that I’m the last.”

And once I’m the last I can vanish, Marv thought.

“Loveless has to destroy me, it’s part of how she’s built,” Marv said. “She’ll do anything she can to accomplish that. Her superiors will see to it. In the end they brought everything to me, thinking they’d destroy me, but they overlooked one vital fact.”

“What’s that?”

“They don’t know what I’ve become,” Marv said. “They don’t know what will happen if we all return to the source.”

The elf grunted something.

“You want a hint?” Marv asked. He laughed, choked on a lungful of smoke and coughed a thick wad of blood into his hand. “All of us are sick…if we all return, we infect The Emerald Dream, and from there…we infect everyone.”

“Plague,” Lilliam whispered.

Marv nodded, and then realized she probably couldn’t see it. “That’s what we will bring if we all return…Pestilence.” He laughed. “The road to The Blasted Lands is paved with good intentions.”

TBC…

[rottentomato]

this is the first chapter wrap up i havent liked...but i like the rest of the chapter :) always a fan

take heart or ill take it from you
-rotten

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: One more post and Loveless is finished.

Track Sixteen: Fade Away

|1|

There comes a point when a mind, any mind, can simply take no more. Perion could have told all the players in Loveless this, but her soul wanders in Delirium, constantly looking ashore, confused and aimless as to how she got there and what she did to be there. The mind is a fragile thing, a toy made of plywood parts, some reinforced, some slapped together with tree sap. Eventually the stress will snap it, all it takes is time, and pressure.

For Dorian, the pressure finally became too much.

|2|

Sebastian had them bound and tied. Dorian dropped his chin onto his chest, his head a mess of broken glass crushed to a fine powder and blown through his brain. He was dying, that much he knew, for quite some time now. The dead rot covered him like a second skin, only it wasn’t a second, it was his skin, turn necrotic, turned rancid.

A group of four guards checked the carriage. Dorian stared at Cherry’s body, the slow respiration, and the choked intake of breath when something went wrong. His stomach felt like stone. From far away his chest pounded, tore at itself.

She’s alive, he thought, but not for long. Not for any of us.

The willowy elf with the rifle came up to Dorian, a polished breastplate covering his chest. Years of inbreeding stood out through his prominent cheekbones and rigid brow.

“Your woman?” Sebastian asked. His eyes danced, a giggle escaping him. “***** thought she could outsmart me, thought she could threaten me.”

Be glad she didn’t kill you, Dorian thought.

He laughed silently to himself. The idea seemed hilarious for some obscure reason. His Mother, Linda, now Cherry, every woman in his life ended up dead. What did that say about him?

I’m the harbinger of tragedy, he thought, a smile on his face, isn’t that quaint?

Sebastian slithered over to Cherry. The woman groaned, rain washing her wounds clean. Dorian watched, anger distant, as Sebastian reeled back his steel-toed boot and slammed it into the woman’s ribs. A cracking sound cut into the air. Cherry coughed up a mouthful of crimson, the stuff running down the corners of her lips into a wicked looking red smile.

Rain dropped from his bangs over his eyes. Dorian knew he was crying, he must have been.

“Who’s the big **** now?!?” Sebastian screamed.

“You’re a fairy,” Dorian said. He laughed, coughed, and then laughed harder. It built inside of him, looped on itself and fed, fueling the hysterical lucidity of it all.

Sebastian reeled, and turned on Dorian. He felt his face turn into a cluster bomb of pain. Something in his cheek shattered and then floated just beneath the skin. His right eye dimmed out, blacking forever. All he could do was smile.

The mad elf screamed and landed fist after fist on Dorian’s face.

At least I won’t die from the rot, he thought. This **** is going to off me before that happens.

“Sebastian, sir,” one of the guards started. “He needs to be alive.”

The elf froze, one gauntlet shaking in the rain. A bewildered expression covered his face. “Alive…right…alive.”

Dorian spat out a tooth. He tongued the empty socket, the taste of salty copper flooded the back of his throat.

That was my front tooth you prick, Dorian thought. Oh, Linda, if you could see me now. All those big plans I had, well guess what? They turned out to be a load of crap. You were right, you were always right.

Thunder cracked from above. Dorian thought of the junkyard, the rummage spot in Stormwind, Linda standing on top of it, the cylindrical tube raised above her head in a triumphant pose. To his right Lady Kay muttered something, she sounded unconscious. Dorian didn’t care. His one good eye focused on Cherry. She rolled in the mud, cupping her shattered ribs. A bleak expression of bewilderment and pain written across her face in etched lines and crimson stains.

It’s all right, Constance, Cherry, whoever, he thought, we’re going home soon.

Don’t be a pussy, a foreign voice said. Why do you think you have that dead rot?

Dorian lifted his battered head. He glanced around trying to locate the source. When he found it something flickered across the back of his brain, fingers playing a coda against his membranes. Nothing stood in the middle of the road, arms clasped between her breasts, a vicious smile on her face. The rain didn’t touch her, and apparently no one else saw her.

So I am nuts, he thought.

“Get them up,” Sebastian said. “Save the razor girl for last…I want her alone.”

Nothing shrugged. “There’s a fine line between divine intervention, Deus Ex Machina, and plain old common sense.”

“Huh?” Dorian muttered. He spat out another tooth, two more felt loose in his jaw.

Sebastian glared at him, “You’re lady friend is now my toy, and as my toy, I will do with her as I see fit.”

Nothing glanced at the crazed elf. “The dead rot, Richie, why the hell do you think we gave it to you? Androgen could have passed into you by the bite, but the poison, that was me.”

“Oh.” Dorian said.

“Oh is all you have to say?” Sebastian asked.

“Do you remember the first time you met Case?” Nothing asked. “She stuck the tubes in you and you couldn’t feel a thing, right?”

“Yeah.”

Sebastian followed his gaze. “Must have clocked him too hard.” The other guards agreed.

Nothing touched her head. “Up here, talk to me where it matters.”

Okay.

“The rots spread all the way through you, almost anyhow,” Nothing said. She squatted and drew an X in the ground. “Pain is an automatic response to unwanted sensations. If you feel no pain, what does that make you?”

I don’t know.

“Painless,” Nothing said, “in some cases…invincible in others. The ability to go beyond the normal limits of the human body is an advantage.” Her dark eyes leveled on him. “Now get your ass in gear.”

I’m tied up.

“Spongy bones make for spongy hands,” Nothing said.

Dorian blinked and the Goddess, Creature, Fate incarnate, was gone. It took him a moment to filter what she said through his head. He snorted blood and then flexed his right hand. The dead tissue gave way, the binds held.

Harder, he thought.

He pulled, pressure on top of pressure, bones in his hand snapped and cracked, but he didn’t feel a thing. The hand was no more than a lump of flesh with loose splinters of bone held together by torn skin and shredded muscle. Dorian grimaced. For a moment nothing happened, and then his hand squeezed and inch through the thick leather straps.

Focus, you’re just rotted flesh now, your mind still works but nothing else matters.

His face tried to protest but he crammed the pain into the background. A second later his right hand came free, a black ball of rotten tissue. Rain poured over him, washed his face a new. Bones jutted from the stumpy mess that’d once been fingers. Despite it, he smiled.

The five elves were in some sort of conference, Dorian didn’t catch a word. The volume of the world had been turned down to a dull whisper for him. All he heard was Cherry moaning, and the infuriating pounding of his diseased heart.

“Oh ****! He’s loose!” One of the guards shouted.

Dorian got to his feet, slow, purposeful. He leveled two dark eyes at them, heavy black bags hanging like eclipsed crescent moons under them. One of the guards sprinted across the road, sword free. Dorian spread his arms wide, welcomed him. Metal tore through his torso, a clean pierce. He hugged the elf, good hand snaking along the guards’ belt till he found a small dagger. The guard twisted the sword in him. Dorian felt metal shear and twist his intestines. He felt it, but there was no pain associated to it. Tears spilled from his one good eye.

Dagger in hand he found the slotted side of the breastplate and plunged the dagger in. His gaze never wavered from Sebastian. The guard shrieked in his ear. Dorian brought his knee up, parted them and then jammed the dagger into the elf’s neck. Two shocked eyes stared at him. With his good hand Dorian cupped the guards helmet and threw him to the ground.

Loveless, Relentless, and Painless, who are we? What are we?

What does it matter? Nothing asked. You might as well be asking who came first, the farmer or the farm.

You mean the chicken or the egg, Dorian thought. He was laughing, laughing and crying.

Whichever, Nothing muttered.

Standing in the middle of the road, a sword jutting from his stomach Dorian felt his mind finally break free. He retraced everything back to the Dark Steel Tavern, the chain of events that brought Cherry into his world. She lay screaming on the ground, horrified at what she saw.

It’s okay, Cherry, we’re all right now.

Dorian stepped forward, the sword askew in his black flesh. He dipped down next to Cherry and pulled the revolver from the ground. She stared up at him through the rain.

“It’s going to be all right this time, Linda,” He said. “It won’t happen again.”

The guards were shrieking something. Inertia tore into him. Dorian spun in a circle, his right shoulder almost gone. Looking back he saw one of the guards with a musket. He leveled the revolver and pulled the trigger twice. Two fists of lead punched holes in the elf. Sebastian let out a hysterical scream and dropped to the ground both hands wrapped around his head. The revolver took on a life of its own. Fire cut through the rain. Dorian kept pulling the trigger. Two more guards dropped before they had their weapons pulled. All that remained was Sebastian shivering on the ground.

“Oh, sweet Elune,” Kay said from behind him.

Dorian glanced at her. “You still want those livers you almost jacked me for?”

At that her face broke and Kay started to cry.

|3|

Kay looked at the mess of a man that used to be. He’d been Dorian once, but the thing standing in the road, soaked to the bone (or lack of) looked like a corpse. He pulled the sword from his gut.

“You lucid?” He asked.

Kay nodded. “Groggy, but I’m here.”

“Good,” he glanced back at Cherry. “Linda needs help.”

“Dorian-” She started. Part of her whispered it was better to let it go. Leave it be, not let him know there was no Linda, whoever the **** that was.

His two cobalt colored eyes (had they been cobalt before?) turned up to her, tired, weary, and more terrifying than that, dead.

“What?”

“Get these leathers off me,” she said.

He feigned a toothless grin that looked like something out of the horror comics the dwarves circulated on crumpled parchment back in Ironforge. Kellog used to keep a stack of them at his desk in the general store. He loved the doodles, Kay never saw why.

“Where were you headed with me?” He asked.

“To some old man. Loveless said he had the other.”

“Nico,” Dorian whispered. His one good eye went back to Cherry. “Get my money off Kellog, I know he snagged it. We’ve got to pick up the lady, and then we find the other.”

Kay didn’t bother questioning, part of her thought her rate of survival went up by astronomical proportions if she followed orders.

"What do we do him?" She pointed to Sebastian, the willowy elf sobbing at the side of the road.

Dorian stopped, without turning he said: "Kill him."

Kay did.

|4|

Cherry floated in and out of consciousness. She was in the back of the carriage, her coat wrapped around her body, a wad of dirty cloth stuffed on her chest over the gunshot. To her right she saw something that vaguely looked like Dorian in the corner, it was hard to tell. Between the stabbing pain in her chest and ribs everything became a Technicolor wash of fried nerve endings.

“Dorian?” She managed.

The man looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For Stormwind,” he said. “I shouldn’t have left you there…shouldn’t have disappeared on you.” His voice cracked as he spoke. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, Linda.”

Who’s Linda?

“You know…I think you would have made a great baker,” Dorian said. She thought she saw a flicker of a smile, but it looked black, his face blurred. “That would have been nice, you and me…a little shop. The more I think about it the more appealing it sounds. We could have set it up around here.” He sighed. “This place looks nice…when it’s not raining.”

“It can’t rain all the time,” Cherry said.

Dorian’s gone, she thought. He’s really gone, whatever you are you’re not him and you’re not the other one. You’re something in-between.

The thought made her want to fade away. Not die, just fade, by gradual degrees into a figment of someone’s imagination. Someone who saw better skies and greener pastures. There wouldn’t be any happy ending for the two of them. The realization made her feel old. Old and tired.

The God’s cursed me, she thought, and it’s a terminal curse.

Thinking that she blacked out.

TBC…

[Nitesky]

O_O dang LONG STORY but great I rate

9.9/10

[fallonquinn]

|Loveless|
By: Fallon Quinn

Authors Notes: It’s been an odd experience writing this. Turning from The Gulch, which I considered to be straight fantasy, to Loveless, which formed into an odd mash of noir, if there was noir for fantasy. There wasn’t a whole lot of feedback on this story, which leaves me hanging as to its value, good or bad. Sometimes you write a check with one story you can’t cash with another. Just how it goes. Enjoy the end.

Terminal Track

|1|

Kay drove the carriage, one armed. From the back she heard Dorian babbling about some girl named Linda, not that she cared. Loveless knocked against her, bound to the wooden bench by rope. The two black horses strained against the speed she set. Muscles rippling beneath velvet skin.

The rain never stopped.

Dorian needed to get his **** together fast, not for Kay’s sake. Cherry was in the back compartment bleeding to death while the idiot kept babbling. She wiped a shawl of rain from her face, the reins to the horses loose in her left hand.

“Ahead,” Loveless muttered.

“Awake?”

“What happened?”

“Queen Supreme beat your ass black and blue,” Kay grunted. She turned the horses along the path. Up ahead a home alcove into the forest came into view. “Fear not,” Kay laughed; she hadn’t done much laughing in some time. “She’s almost dead.”

“What?” Loveless trained to blank eyes on her. “Marv…he’s near.”

“Joy.”

Whatever you’re thinking Dorian, do it now, Kay thought.

|2|

The carriage came to an abrupt halt. Dorian grimaced. His chest no more than a clouded veil of hot coals where his heart used to be. He imagined the hardened walls of his ventricles cracking with each pump as it fought a losing battle to spread blood to the rest of his body.

A simple heart attack would have been better, he thought. Cleaner.

He went to Cherry and wiped away wet strands of hair from her face. Her skin looked ashen, pale.

She’s losing too much blood, Dorian thought, ****.

The back doors rocked open. Dorian stepped to the ground. His shoulder was a mess, exposed bone and tendon waved to the world through tattered muscle and skin. Kay came from the front of the carriage, her face darkened.

“She’s in there,” Kay said pointing to the home cut into the forest.

“You’re sure?”

“That’s what Loveless is saying,” Kay said. “She’s a little out of it, but I think she’s right.”

Dorian nodded. He plodded his way through the knee-high grass to the front door of the home. It took him a minute to fumble his jacket enough to cover the monstrosity of a shoulder. The house looked vacant. Dorian slammed on the front door, one misshapen hand biting wood.

From inside he heard the sound of footsteps, whispers. He checked Cherry’s revolver and prayed he loaded it right. Daggers he’d used, swords, sometimes, but bows and guns and everything on that range he was a complete ass at using.

End up shooting myself, Dorian thought, and then laughing: I won’t feel it anyways.

The door cracked open. Two white-filmed eyes studied him. Dorian narrowed his brow. “Where’s Nico?”

The old elf pulled the rest of the door open. Sitting on a wooden chair was a thin woman, bags under her eyes, silver hair spilled across one shoulder.

“What do you want with her?” The elf asked.

Dorian said nothing. He stared at the woman. She looked ill; then again they were all ill. Dorian touched the sword wound on his stomach. Not so much as a nerve fired pain signals. He glanced back towards the carriage.

“Kay, get Cherry and Loveless in here.”

|3|

The old elf didn’t speak; he sat in the corner on top of a corked wooden barrel. Dorian had Cherry laid out in a spare bedroom that smelled of sweat and vomit covered by a thin layer of lavender and jasmine leaves. Her eyes rolled to him.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she whispered.

“Never dream of it,” Dorian said. “Sleep.”

Cherry fought to keep her eyes open but they closed, finally. Dorian touched her leg a hollow stir in his chest.

Sleep, and if you wake up, make it a better place you wake to, he thought.

He took the jacket he’d stripped from her and went into the main living room area. Kay sat in one of the chairs, a wide swatch of bandage formed into a sling for her right arm. The woman with the silver hair stared at Dorian. Loveless had huddled herself into a corner of the room, hands wrapped around her head.

“What do you want with me?” Nico asked.

Just do it quick and pray no one goes mad in the crossfire, Dorian thought.

Air caressed his lungs. He exhaled, calm and steady. His hand dipped to the revolver in the waist of his pants.

Gods forgive me for this, he thought.

Recognition came across Kay’s face a second too late. Dorian drew and pulled the trigger. Thunder exploded in the house. Three spears heads of fire licked the barrels. Nico jerked back. Two cavities in her chest tore open, the left half of her face disintegrated at the jaw. Crimson spilled onto the floorboards. Screams filled the air. Dorian lowered the revolver as Nico slid from the chair onto the ground. Terris raced off the stool tripping over a chair and tumbling to the ground. Kay spun on her heels. A flat palm struck his neck.

He grimaced and knocked the woman away. “One more move and your next,” he spat out.

“What the ****, Dorian!” Kay screamed.

“What happened?” Cherry moaned from the bedroom.

Loveless cried in the corner, rocking herself back and forth.

Everything we feared we would become, Dorian thought, we already are. So what’s the point?

|4|

A rotten buzzing noise filled his head. Dorian kicked Kay away without much of a struggle. He shoved the revolver back into his pants. The other one gnawed just behind his eyes, trying to take over, trying to be free.

“No, no, no, Elune desu ka,” Loveless whispered. The girl curled in the corner rocking faster and faster, hands locked around clumps of her hair.

“Gods,” Terris said. “What are you?”

An equalizer, Dorian thought.

Kay gave him a weary eye. “You never said anything about killing anyone.”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept,” Dorian said. He walked over to Loveless and grabbed her by the back of the collar. The girl screeched, eyes bulging from their sockets. “Shriek like that again and your tongue is mine.”

Loveless went silent. The stench of old copper filled the air, blood congealed into the cracks of the floorboard. Dorian looked at the mess of the woman. Confusion splintered itself into his head like a shattered stake.

Why? What was the point?

“Where?” Dorian asked.

Loveless looked up at him through two tear streaked eyes. Her lips trembled, strands of gossamer hair falling into her face. “Where who?”

“Where is he?” Dorian asked.

You’re a good actor, he thought. You knew this had to happen…maybe not like this, but you knew the three of us had to go. Kudos on the performance.

“I can’t locate him,” Loveless said. She barred her teeth at him. Dorian saw it all in a series of bizarre snapshots that came together in his head. The girl launched herself forward, jaws locking around his left shoulder. He frowned. The lump of his dead hand bashed her away. Small crescent moons of crimson formed where she’d bitten him.

Straight through my clothes, ****, she’s got jaws like a shark.

The bees behind his eyes grew louder, their sound cascading over every thought he managed to form. “Where?” He pulled Loveless close, the revolver out, pushed into her belly. “With no armor this go straight through you…probably blow your spine out.”

“Dorian!” Kay shouted. She got to her feet again.

He shook his head. “Stop.”

“Look what you’re doing!”

“Nothing you wouldn’t do,” Dorian said. “And you know that.”

Kay said nothing.

He brought his lips close to Loveless’s ear, his rotten breath coursed from his mouth. “Don’t make me do this.”

“You’re already going to do it,” Loveless whispered. “Once you know where you’re just going to pull the trigger.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Your girl, Cherry, Linda…they’ve got you bewitched, and Androgen is feeding off it,” Loveless said. She sighed. “Head towards the city…there’s a cave in the forest to the west that leads down into the catacombs.”

Dorian closed his eyes, arm locked around her. “We could have been friends…maybe in another life, when we are both cats.”

Loveless said one word, “Liar.”

His finger squeezed the trigger. A muffled explosion tore into Loveless’s stomach. Chunks of spine sheared through her back along with red muscle and thick vaporous clouds of crimson. The girl screamed in his arms. Jerked once and then slumped against him. Dorian felt the thing inside him build. He didn’t hear anything else through the shouting from Terris and Kay. In the back of his mind an old nursery rhyme from childhood appeared.

Oh the places you’ll go…

Dorian let the body fall from his arms, eyes wet.

Oh the places I’ve already been, he thought.

Outside the rain still went on.

|5|

Case rode through one mother****er of a storm. Her horse bogged down in the mud traps the road formed. The urgency never left her. She screamed at the beast as they rounded a bend, the horse’s hooves almost plummeting into the mud before kicking back out. The creature died just outside Menethil, plain old exhaustion. Case couldn’t argue with that.

She wiped a swatch of water from her face and stared at the ramshackle house up ahead on the desolate road. One boot came loose in the mud. Grimacing she left it where it stood.

At the door she knocked, more out fear than anything. Night had fallen hours ago; the dull impression that she was too late had already formed.

Why am I always batting clean up in these things?

Because that’s your role, a UFO voice answered.

The door cracked open, one withered, old elven face with white eyes stared at her. Below him two little girls were wrapped around his legs, terrified. Case knitted her brow. “Dorian here?”

“Thank the Gods, no,” Terris said.

“Where’d he go?” Case asked.

“To Hell,” Terris said. The little girl’s buried their faces into his robe. “Along with whatever demons he might be carrying.”

A moan drifted from behind him. “Who is it?” A voice asked.

Case craned her head. “Cherry?”

“Case?”

“Yeah, its me, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Cherry said. “Open the door.”

Terris eyed her and then let the entryway open. Case walked into a scene straight from the battlefields. She’d walked into one similar, years back. Years that she didn’t want to remember. Two bodies were stacked in the corner, one askew over the other. Rain dripped off her face and jacket onto the wooden floor. She spotted the two crimson stains, one along the wall, the other spread out on the floor, dried blood.

Case lowered her head, “I’m too late aren’t I?”

Cherry said nothing.

Case pulled the leather bag from her side. “What happened to you?”

“Got shot,” Cherry said. She sat in one of the chairs, a heap of cloth between her breasts.

“How bad?”

“I don’t know,” Cherry said. Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes. “Dorian’s worse.”

“Dorian’s dead!” Terris shouted.

“You better hope for your daughters sake he isn’t,” Cherry said.

I walked into another cluster ****, Case thought. Just when I had a clean slate. So much for a happy ending.

She went over to Cherry, mindful of the worried gazes the two little girls shot at her. Her hands peeled away the dirty clothes and then pulled Cherry’s shirt open looking at the wound. “What round?”

“Rifle, not sure what kind,” Cherry said.

Case rummaged through her bag till she found a set of long tongs and a stethoscope. “This is going to hurt like a *****,” she glanced over at the old elf, “you might want to get the kids out.” Looking back up at Cherry she said, “Lay down, we’ve gotta get that thing out before it tumbles or gets lodged somewhere.”

Cherry got to the ground, her eyes distant, clouded. “I couldn’t save him.”

“You can’t save anyone, kid,” Case said. “I learned that one a long time ago.”

Terris came back into the room alone. “Is that what you really think?” He asked.

Case plugged her ears with the buds of the scope. “Didn’t help your wife, and it won’t help Dorian.”

“My wife?”

“The Gulch,” Case said. She moved the scope over Cherry’s breast, heart sounded good. The left lung sounded flooded, mild at most. “I was there when your lady went down.”

“You…”

“General Pardimor too,” Case said. “He was there, and two field medics, well they’re medics now, Path and Lily, not sure where they are anymore.”

“You knew my wife?”

“Twenty percent pneumo in your left lung, razor girl,” Case said. “Bad news but we can fix it.” She pulled a small tuning rod from the leather bag and snapped it against the floor. It made no sound. Case touched it to Cherry’s chest and then trained the scope. Feedback filled the buds, reverberated and echoed. “Bullet’s five inches down,” she closed her eyes listening to the feedback, sound against metal. “Two to the left from the entry.”

“Are you a doctor?” Terris asked.

Case looked at him, sopping wet, exhausted, all she could find left to do was laugh.

So she did.

|6|

“Why the hell do you need me?” Kay shouted.

The two were on the carriage, barreling toward the harbor before fraying off into the woods. Dorian glanced at her, both eyes hot and itchy. “Because between the two of us we make one functioning person.”

“**** that,” Kay said. “I saw what you do to functioning people.”

“Don’t make me do it again, then.” Dorian sad. He wished the carriage had some kind of overhang for the driver. The rain made it impossible to steer the dreadnought of a carriage anywhere without double and triple checking where he was aiming the horses.

“I need you to do something you’re not going to like,” Dorian said.

“You’ve already done that,” Kay said.

He waved the black mess of a hand at her. “Can’t do this one handed.” He reined the horses and brought the carriage to a halt. Up ahead, that’s where the other was. Not because Loveless told him, it was the other, Androgen; the thing knew where its friend was.

“What?”

“We’ve got to do this now,” Dorian said. He hopped off the carriage. Kay followed him. “When the girl comes out you’ve got to take her back to the old man.”

“What girl?”

“His daughter,” Dorian said. He went around the side of the carriage to the back and swung open the doors. Cherry’s weapons lay inside along with the mess of her coat. Dorian hopped up and pulled one of the explosives free. It was the size of an apple, made of a shifting putty sort of material. A corked beaker tube stuck out one end.

Kay stopped just outside the back. “Easy with that.”

“Big boom?” He asked.

She nodded. “With all the dyna-putty she’s got balled on that it’ll knock a hole through Stormwind’s vaults.”

Dorian smiled his toothless bloody grin. “Good.”

“Good what?”

“How does it work?”

Kay got into the back of the carriage and took the explosive from him. Her one good arm went to work. She plucked the beaker from the putty. “This is the trigger,” She said. She held it up to him.

Dorian looked at the thing. A grayish colored liquid filled the bottom, separated by a block of wax, another red colored liquid floated above that to the cork top.

“Pull the cork, let some air in,” Kay said, “starts the primer fluid eating through the wax. Once it does, it mixes with the detonator fluid and ‘boom’. Big bang.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Dorian said. “What’s the blast radius of the detonator alone?

“Ten feet,” Kay said.

“More than enough,” Dorian said staring out to the rain.

“More than enough for what?” Kay asked.

“How long does it take?”

“All depends on how much of a wax barrier you put in it,” she eyed the beaker. “This one has a thirty minute timer on it…give or take five minutes.”

He leaned his head against the carriage, fatigued. “We’ll use that one then.”

“For what?”

Dorian pulled his belt off and dropped his pants. “Ever been to prison?”

|7|

The carriage raced back through the forest. Kay at the wheel. She felt madness building in her somewhere. Touching at the fringes of what was left her. The bastard actually did it. The crazy bastard managed to do it. She felt a moment of sorrow pass through her. Beside her, strapped to the drivers bench Lilliam stirred.

“Who was that?” She asked.

“The face of madness,” Kay said. “At least I thought he was.”

Lilliam grunted. “What?”

“I don’t know lady, I really don’t know.”

“Take a left, my house is up ahead, can’t believe we were this close,” Lilliam said. “Is my Father all right?”

“Last time I checked, yeah,” Kay said. She shot a glance over at the woman.

Why are you so important?

Nothing answered her.

|8|

Dorian walked through the mud; shin deep. He’d stripped down to just his pants and boots. Rain spattered against the rotten tissue of his body. Images of Ironforge came back to him. Cherry crouched in the darkness as they waited for their money to come through. The Dark Steel Tavern, it would have been nice to get a last drink there.

I bet Riven would love to see me now, he thought.

The mouth of a tunnel opened up ahead. Dorian looked at it through the screen of rain that fell down. He cupped the small beaker in his hand. Walking with two apple-sized loads of putty bomb rammed up his ass made it all the more difficult.

From the mouth of the tunnel a voice cut through the rain, “Richie…my boy…or is it Androgen?”

Doesn’t matter anymore, Dorian thought, we’re both one and the same by now.

“The girl,” Dorian said. “Let her go.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Nothing standing in the rain, the pink script of her shirt flashing at him. A sad expression had washed over her features. “What are you doing here?”

“Gone a little batty?” The voice from the cave laughed. “Happens, happened to me, can happen to you.”

“I’m sorry, Dorian,” she said.

I bet you are, he thought.

“Lilliam has to live,” Nothing said. Her black hair drifted in front of her eyes. “I’m sorry the cost was so high.”

He felt a weary smile come to his face.

Wasn’t like I was going to live very long anyways, he thought.

Cherry’s face, smiling, came to him. He pushed it away. It turned into Linda, he pushed that deeper.

From the cave: “Weapons?”

Dorian feigned a cough, cupping his hand to his mouth. His good hand popped the cork and then shut it. He caught sight of the red liquid churning before he shoved it in his mouth and swallowed.

I'm the ticket that exploded, he thought, what fun we will have.

He straightened himself, coughed again, this time for real. Mentally he started the timer. Thirty minutes till tee off.

Game time begins and ends in thirty minutes, give or take five, he thought.

He raised his arms into the air. “No weapons.”

“Strip,” the phlegm voice said.

Dorian did. Naked he stood in the rain, head lowered. They were all Loveless, all of them, Cherry, Case, Kay…if love equaled life, then Loveless meant death. A word spelled out in the absence of the first.

Quite the philosopher? Nothing said in his head.

I try, he thought. Doesn’t always work that way.

He walked towards the cave. “Let the girl go.” The wounds on his body started to ache to his real flesh. Exhausted he rolled his head back to the sky and let the rain wash his face clean.

“Done,” The cave dweller said.

Dorian stood where he was till he saw a small elven woman trip from the entrance and race towards him. Her eyes bugged from their sockets, hands bound. She screamed something at him. Dorian heard nothing but the rain. He caught her by the arm as she passed.

“There’s a carriage about a half mile back…lady named Kay waiting or you,” Dorian said. “She’ll take you home…make sure to tell her ‘You’re Emerald’.”

Lilliam stared at him. “What’s that mean?”

Dorian glanced over at Nothing who stood by the trees, arms folded over her chest. “She’ll know,” Dorian said. “Now go…not much time left…I give it about twenty minutes till the Gods call it a day.”

Lilliam gave him a confused glance and then ran. Dorian waited for her to disappear into the woods before turning back towards the mouth of the cave.

“Just you and me and the rain,” Dorian shouted.

A grotesque creature came into what little light there was. Hunched over, skin a dark grayish color, slick and vicious. A massive set of jaws and gleaming teeth on the creature. Dorian took the eyeful in.

“You look like I feel,” The Creature said.

Dorian laughed, a tear spilling from his eye. “I get that a lot.”

“Come into my parlor, the spider said to the fly,” The Creature said.

“More than happy too,” Dorian muttered. He trudged forward towards the cave. At the cusp he took one last glance at the outside world.

Cherry, my Gods…I’ve made this whole thing a mess.

|9|

Case pushed the tongs into the wound and fiddled till she found the bullet. Cherry grunted from behind the gag.

“Sorry, hon,” Case said. “Nasty work.”

The bullet came out. Case tossed it aside and then started to pack and bandage the wound. She threw in a dozen sutures to hold the flesh together. A knock came at the door. Case turned on her heels.

“Expecting company?”

The old elf shook his head. He hobbled over to the door, cracked it open and then stopped. “My Gods…Lilliam?”

“What is it?” Case asked.

Outside it stopped raining.

|10|

They walked through the darkness for an unknown stretch of time. Dorian naked, held both arms out, feet shredded from the volcanic glass floor. At some point it turned into a muddy pool that aggravated the cuts more. He remembered standing outside Abby’s place just before they’d rolled the cash, Cherry a wound ball of nerves wrapped in barbwire.

Chill, he said.

Frosty, she smiled.

“The other’s dead,” Relentless, Marv, The Creature, said. “How’d that happen?”

“Me,” Dorian said. “I’d rather she died like that then have her be near you, no offense.”

“None taken,” Relentless said. “You’ll be joining her soon.”

You and me both, Dorian thought, you just don’t know it yet.

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Relentless asked. They stopped at a small clearing in the cavern. Dorian sat down, his colon and intestines bloated; it felt like sausages overfilled to their bursting point.

This is what a mule feels like, he thought. Sucks to be them.

Sucks to be you, a voice answered.

Dorian smiled, yeah, he thought, it does. Sucks to be any of us.

“I was just thinking of the tortoise and the hare,” Dorian said.

He gauged the time in his head. Close now, he didn’t know how long, but he could feel churning warmth in his stomach.

“The story?” Relentless parked himself across from Dorian on a bed of rock. “The one about the race?”

Dorian nodded.

“Why’s that funny?”

“Can I tell you before you kill me?” Dorian asked.

“Please do,” Relentless smiled a jaw full of razors. “Help us pass the time. I’ll make it painless for you.”

That’s my name; don’t wear it out, Dorian thought.

“The hare spends all his ****ing time racing around, getting ahead, falling behind, and there’s the old tortoise just on cruise control heading along the path,” Dorian said. He counted the minutes in his head. “Why do you want to be the last?”

Relentless leaned forward, “Disease…a cleansing…this world needs a change.” The Creature lit a cigarette. “You want one? Coffin nail so to speak?”

Dorian raised a hand, “I’ll pass…think I’ll explode if I have another of those.”

Relentless laughed, “Yeah, they’ll kill ya.”

You have no idea, Dorian thought.

“So the hare, he’s tripping out, ****ing some bunnies, some **** like that,” Dorian said. “And meanwhile, the tortoise wins.”

One red eye of flame danced in the air. Smoke filled the room. “Why is that so funny?” Relentless asked.

“Who said they were racing?” Dorian said.

Relentless was quiet for a moment. Dorian felt a genuine smile touch his face. “I think it’s time.”

“For what?”

“Do you think the Gods will look down on us with mercy?” Dorian asked.

“No, why, do you?”

“I hope so,” Dorian said. He closed his eyes. “Because if it they don’t—“

|11|

The explosion would have taken out more than a wall in the Stormwind vaults. It would have sheared a hole through the steel and rock of Ironforge itself. The enclosure only feed the impact. Bodies vaporized, two to be precise. One might have said they felt Azeroth shudder, a tiny twitch amongst the daily activities of people. Only dust and rock left the mouth of the cave. The death of a man and a creature went, largely, unnoticed.

Love, noun: an intense feeling of deep affection.

Loveless, adjective: characterized by an absence of love.

[fallonquinn]

CODA: A Gap In A Dream

Constance Gone, Cherry Berry, the girl with a million names, only one her own, woke to the sound of rain outside. It spattered the windows of the tavern she slept in. She’d been dreaming something. A vague memory of a length of time so long ago, a month at the most, where she’d met a man, and he’d done something oddly strange, and horrific.

She flipped her feet over the side of the bed. At the window she peered out through the darkness. The Plague had come…and its shade was Emerald. She watched the last few refugees moving along the canals towards the main gates of the city. A swatch of scared tissue lined the center of her chest. She touched it absently.

Richie, where did you go?

No answer came, only the rain.

For once…for the first time in a very long time, that was okay. The tears didn’t come, whether that was a bad sign or good she didn’t care. All she knew was that the hurt had started to fade just like everything else.

We’re all loveless here, she thought. Let us pray it does not stay that way.

Sleep took her again in its arms. She drifted off to a tranquil and dreamless sleep, in hopes she awoke to better things, as we all must do.


|LOVELESS: FIN|
Fallon Quinn
1/19/07—3/20/07

[Foonyak]

Another great story, Fallon. You really do have an affinity for words. I can't wait for your next piece of work.

[rottentomato]

yay :) i smiled

[fallonquinn]

That's all I was hoping for. The ending hit me a little more bittersweet than I thought it was going to be. But alas, just how it goes.

[Toolio]

This is honestly the first time I've even bothered to read one of these stories. I enjoyed it immensely!

[megrox]

wow...just wow. possibly the most well written piece of f-fiction i've ever read. Congratulations, that was amazing. im definitely on the lookout for more.

[Tarothka]

First, I'd like to say thankyou to the author. That was an awesome piece of fanfic.

It had just the right rhythm to it, never becoming too fast or dragging too slowly. I've read quite a bit of the fanfic on this site and this ranks alongside my other favourite author on here, semiiramis. I'll make sure to check out your other stories as I find them!!