thesoulbinder-blog

[thesoulbinder-blog]

A New Game

It had been amusing while it lasted, though the ending--the wrong death knight murdering Suraja and being executed for the crime--had left something to be desired.

“Go.”  Ezekiel shoved the weeping draenei woman between her shoulderblades, forcing her to stumble forward down the path that lead to the smith’s forge.  Even with her hair dyed and styled the same as Kirahti’s, she didn’t look enough like the priestess to suit him.

Once away from his touch the woman froze and glanced back over her shoulder.  The Vigilant at Ezekiel’s side shifted, arcane sparks dancing between its metallic fingers: it was dangerous to go forward, but it was death to stay.  The woman took a single shuffling step forward, then another--her hooves lifting to step over the motionless body of her predecessor--another draenei woman, another identical hair cut.  The Vigilant would not have been enough to hold a real priestess, but Ezekiel had been careful to only take civilians for this job.  There was nothing worse than learning a pawn has its own moves when all you needed it to do was step forward.

He didn’t see the trip wire, just the poison darts as they buried themselves in the woman’s side.  She cried out, and clutched a hand to her ribs, her neck.  She teetered but did not fall.

“Keep walking,” Ezekiel ordered.  “Another ten feet and I will give you an antidote.”

She fell in nine.

Ezekiel gestured and a pair of masked guards pulled the next woman from line, untied her, and shoved her down the trapped walkway.  Ezekiel smiled at the horror in her eyes.  “Go,” he ordered.

The amount of traps on the path to Hadeon’s forge was rather tedious--evidence that the man had only grown more paranoid in death.  Hadeon probably thought his little booby traps clever--but then he was not the sort of man to use another as cannon fodder.  For a while Ezekiel had worried that his enemy’s brain had been ruined--that only his pathological need to protect had survived undeath.  What else could explain his lack of action after all the threats to his paper priestess?  But these traps--his mind was still working, but perhaps death had twisted it.

Another woman fell, but now Ezekiel could see the cold, silent forge.  He gestured to the guards, “Get the last girl.”

It had been a lovely plan: threaten the paper priestess each time her cruelty had brought Hadeon the the breaking point, reunite them with her danger, watch as one more piece of the death knight shattered.  In time, Ezekiel was certain, he could have brought Hadeon to the point of murder.  Unfortunate that he had not been able to act quickly enough to prevent the final breakup of legati and praetori, that Suraja’s death had derailed the game.  More unfortunate that the other draenei priestesses he had tried to shove in Hadeon’s path had failed to arouse the knight’s protective instinct.  Utterly disheartening that the smith had gone through the Portal with all the others: Ezekiel had been left almost alone with the Auchenai--lost! leaderless!-- in Shattrath, but without the knight he had no desire to play with the fragments of the priesthood that remained.

So he had decided to lure the death knight home.

The last woman was brought to him, clasped on either side by the guards’ mailed hands.  This one, unlike the others, looked enough like the paper priestess to be her sister.  “Go.”  He gestured her towards the forge.

No traps sprung in the last three feet.  The woman’s hooves stopped inches from the cold forge.  She looked back over her shoulder, uncertain.

“Touch it.”

She reached out with her right hand then hesitated and pulled it back, reaching with her left hand instead.

Hmph, this one has a bit of sense.  Too bad she wasn’t born with power to go with it--she might have been useful.

Blue light blazed as her fingers touched the forge.  Ice-blue runes ran up her left arm--Ezekiel could smell flesh burning.  He looked away as she began to scream.  When she went silent he looked back and found, to his surprise, that she was still alive, though her left arm hung withered and useless at her side.  As his surprise faded, his smile widened.

“Just what I needed.  A messenger.”  He gestured to the guards.  “Take her through the Portal and deliver her to the knight’s doorstep.”  

Ezekiel turned to leave but was stopped by the woman’s voice, hissing pained between her teeth.  “And what...is the message?”

He turned back and looked down at her, at the rage burning in her pained blue eyes.  “Tell him Suraja is dead, but I am not.”

After the guards hustled her away, Ezekiel prowled around the side of the forge and paused in front of a small niche carved into the wall.  Inside was a shrine to the Light.  He pulled it free, let it smash on the floor.  “Your move, Hadeon.” 

smith-hadeon

#hadeon #kirahti #ezekiel #auchenai