(49) - The Ghost Who Walks

The Booty Bay warehouse was almost empty at this time of year; the merchants that plied the oceans between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimbor had all sought to make their last voyages before the first of the winter storms made such open-water trips far more dangerous than profitable. Bales of fabric, luxury items, holds full of grain... all of them left behind their own particular musk, still permeating the wood upon which they'd rested.

Five gathered around a small brazier, warming their hands in the chill of the night. Two were gnome warriors; even with the scars and missing teeth, somehow these veterans of a thousand fights still manage to look adorable. One was an orc, towering over the rest - she was not the brightest thing in the world, but her loyalty to their cell was unquestioned. Her armor and supple leathers showed her musculature to excellent advantage - even the fiercest Alliance warrior would not fail to be at once attracted and repelled by the aura of lethality surrounding her. At her side, leaning on his spear, was a troll, all whipcord muscle. He was a shaman of his tribe, and his body was festooned with illustrative fetishes of the spirit world.

The leader of the group, an older human named Darokin DarKovin, spoke.

"Larminius owes us wages and bonuses, and if we don't seek repayment from his daughter, we will never again have an employer who won't try to cheat us. Its a shame she must pay the debt, in cash or in blood, but pay she must. We are agreed then?"

The orc warrior maiden nodded, and the troll just grinned. The gnome twin warriors answered together, finishing each other's sentences.

"Oh, we don't think..." began Odo.

"...that it will be much of a shame." finished Kodo.

"The apple doesn't often fall far from the tree" they said together.

The orc grunted, the barest grin on her face. Even she was affected by the aura of cute, the gnome race's most secret weapon.

"So, here's how we'll do it... First, we'll...." the leader began, but stopped suddenly. All four stared at him, willing him to continue, to no avail. He collapsed forward, the blade that killed him still in his back, its mithril blade gleaming in the brazier-light.

The shadows themselves seemed to wrap themselves around his killer. The small group rushed the darkness where their captain's killer must be hiding; gnomes and orc and troll had superior night vision, after all.

The gnomes fell first as a razor sharp blade with a ghostly fire leaped as if from nowhere, taking both heads almost at the same time; the orc maiden saw the beginning of the stroke blaze upward at a slant, cleaving the neck of the first and continuing to rise high, inscribing a reverse teardrop shape in the air equidistant between the two brothers, and taking the head of the second on the downstroke. At the terminus of the stroke, the flames vanished, as if the fire had been dunked into a barrel of water.

Her twin axes lead her to where her foe should have been, and she snarled an orcish battlecry as she rushed, brave to the end. As she passed where she should have found him, her axe strokes wheeled to the side, to either parry a return stroke or perhaps deal a blow to someone who had danced aside. She felt the base of her spine erupt in a cold fire, and her cry was cut off as the blade punched through viscera and out her front before vanishing.

The shaman wasted no time, but ran for the door. Something carved into his side, and he kept running, mumbling a chant of healing - or trying to. Unseen hands took his throat from behind, and his voice cut off... he hit the door hard, and crawled onto the docks. His windpipe crushed, he knew he had but minutes before his wounds bled out, or he drowned in his own blood. His final act was to draw certain sigils from the Erudin tongue on the wood of the docks.

Eventually his still form would be found by the Bruisers, who would copy the writing and seek a translation from some of their darker associates. Security Chief Kalot would never forget his trepidation, and the aura of a dark, secret fear of the supernatural when he read the translation, neatly called out on parchment:

"Vji Hjutv Xju Xemlt"

"The Ghost Who Walks"