You Can Go Home Again

Taking a screenie as a general reference for my 5th Edition character, Elenia Sinthraxian, a blackscale dragonborn warlock/fighter

Pretzel Thief's Note: This is a world of wacraft fanfiction not at all canon with my current original characters and the original characters of other treasured friends. What originally began as a what-if scenario should Ahvie be completely corrupted by her other half if the other half decided that Azeroth was their sandbox... well, now is a somewhat fleshed-out theorycraft of lovecraftian proportions. If you don't like horror stories or explicit violence, I'd stop here and stop thinking of ever reading The Dark Tower by Stephen King. Cuz shit be weird from here on out, yo. You have been warned. 

Pretzel Guardian’s Note: This is in no way a reflection of my views and opinions of the characters portrayed within. Ahvie and Perse are very dear to me, as are my friends and the stories their characters continue to include Ahvie in. Whatever happens here, consider it a darker future of an alternate timeline. Enjoying the writing of a villain does not mean I wish my OC to become one.

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Chapter 1

Aelakor, or at least the writhing mass of half-incorporeal shadows and opaque bubbling puddle of tar that passed for the void elf youth, feebly struggled in the grasp of oversized and razor-sharp bloody talons framing a crimson claw too big for the woman who wielded it. The gaping maw of the boy's mouth struggled to scream. Or maybe he was gasping for breath when his fight-or-flight instincts were at war with his panicked subconscious. The difference was inconsequential to Perse. The boy had run, and run, and fled and eluded her at every turn for months, tracing a path of hunger and vulnerability through his friends and allies, for all the good they did him. The void siren had fought and devoured each in turn as they tried to stop her or buy the vaporwave elf enough time to escape her clutches.

But it never mattered in the end. Ahvie laughed madly through Perse's bloody jaws, the musical insanity of the bouncy blood elf leaking through the grim arrogance and satisfaction on the voidfiend's face. Writhing tendrils of night snaked out from her skin as though hungrily drinking in the dying gasps and despair of the world around them, just as much the emerald orbs of power that marked Perse's eyes all focused intently on the elusive quarry that they at long last had pinned down.

Ael managed, with some effort she admitted was impressive, to let out a psychic scream more powerful than he should have managed. The discordant screech of notes would have staggered even her blood elf host long enough for the boy to flee before she could even tell what direction. But, that was only if Ahvie and Perse hadn't eaten select members of her crew, the Seventy-Third and the Skyhunters. Now the two of them had grown fat with strength, and they were so much more than they had been now. Now the spearshot of voidlike id merely melted into Perse's mind, absorbed by it. She grinned wider, oozing blood and tarlike saliva dripping onto Ael's face whenever he couldn't manage to keep his body incorporeal. Nothing he did could concern her now. Her claws could grasp anything on Azeroth and the Shadowlands and more in between, even those ethereal and faded. A simple slip of one's essence into a evaporating smoke no longer was a trick that she would be stopped by. Even now, one of Perse's massive bloody claws pierced his throat and shoulder, pinning his ghostly form to her. 

Somehow through some feat of willpower he had yet to show her twisted his face from deathly terror into rage and betrayal.  She didn't give him the chance to hurl his epithets at her. She had pursued him far, far too long to let him spoil the moment with his impish impudence. Let him listen to her poetic voice first.

Perse just laughed alongside the elf's voice that crept up alongside her, the disembodied mind not visible but easily audible.  "Ael, Ael, Ael... Why did you run like that? Do you have any idea how much of your friends' blood and deaths are on your hands? Had you not been such the coward, you could have faced me when I was weak and wounded me enough to give your allies a chance to stop me."

She tsksed in disappointment, almost sounding motherly, and tightened her grip on his bleeding throat. His face still contorted in anger rather than pain. He had passion, she'd give him that.  "Y-YOU... Y-YOU..."  He choked, struggled to cough, then wheezed. "L-LET H-HER..."

She beamed down at him, straightening upright and lifting his fragile and underweight body in that single vice grip. Her other arm and claw trembled despite great effort. This balancing act might have been impossible before she had grown strong.

"LET... HER..."

"Let who, darling? Ahvie let me take over, and we've had SO much fun together ever since! No more rules, no more restrictions, not even fear of your pitiful, mewling flashes of the void you tried to lash out at me with..."

"LET... MY MOTHER... GO!"

Perse grinned proudly at him, as though his defiant anger was something to be admired. It was, really. He was born into corruption and grew determined not to be controlled or influenced or deterred by zealots, paladins, ebons or even herself for that matter. She had infected him once with the intention of protecting his mind from N'Zoth, and to her surprise he had eventually cast off her influence by asserting his own free will of all the old gods. She was going to miss chasing him on a bloody path through all the friends he thought could protect him. She certainly was going to miss the thrill of the hunt. Her other arm tingled with what might once have been pain in another life, and Perse sighed with irritation as she turned to the prey that dangled lifelessly on her other talons.

Or, rather, as lifelessly as vampyr could. Ael's mother, Zay'letta, was impaled through the chest and nearly pried apart by each individual talon, the claw nearly filleting the pale elf like a fish. Oh how fun that fight had been, mother and son combining their talents in a feat of skill and synergy that would have bested any faction leader on either side of the border. But Ahvie had stopped being a mere mortal months ago. And Perse drank in the dying woman's rage as surely as she had Ael's fear. The red-robed siren shuddered in what might have been ecstasy, her eyes lidded briefly by darkness in a half-gaze concealing nothing but carnal pleasure. 

Zay couldn't talk, of course. Perse had ripped out the woman's tongue and stuffed it up where the voidling doubted the vampyr had felt another tongue in centuries. The irony made what was left of Ahvie rolling about on the floor of her mind in laughter, and Perse grinned madly at the memory. Whenever Perse's symbiote was happy, she was even happier. There was a time not so long ago when Perse had been the passenger in Ahvie's body. Azeroth was ripe for the plucking, and those few who knew of her ascended state now were dead. Except perhaps these two, such as they were. 

When eventually the rest of The Seventy-Third would start to notice the absence of their more disagreeable members or those who kept to themselves, Perse would be too strong for them to even tickle with their combined might. Oh how she looked forward to that day when she refounded a sliver of her Mistress' empire where N'Zoth had so plainly and spectacularly failed. THAT irony would be a flavor that wouldn't ever grow old, the mere taste of a dream rich on her tongue.

The exquisite pleasure of that inspiration, that magnum ambition, made Perse's sinewy limbs twitch as she sighed out what might have passed for a a small moan, an orgasm of thought. Then her arms stopped trembling. The siren opened her eyes to look upon an utterly frozen Zay devoid of resistance, save for the twitching eyes that bore crimson hatred and sorrow. Perhaps in her brief loss of control, Perse had snapped part of the woman's spine? Well, no matter. The eyes were worth it. Setting down the broken heap of a vampyr against a tree trunk none too gently, Perse propped Zay'letta upright so she had a full view of what she was about to do to the boy. That loss of hope in a mortal's eyes was just as delicious as a properly-matured void horror, as all this child's friends had once seen him as.

Perse swung her hungry gaze back upon Ael, whose face had become ghostly pale once more as death began to overshadow him. Her jaws elongated beyond their limits, several inlaid rows of serrated teeth spun around hungrily as the gaping maw of her innermost vulnerability tasted the final exhalations of the boy's breath. Bowing her head down, her voice echoed through the forest and in both their minds, her eagerness overpowering her need to voice it with her rippling throat,  "And now, old friend, I regret to inform you that although you once had the skill and power to stop me, I must make use of your shadows to feed my soul. A twinborn goddess needs twice the --"

And she let out an ear-splitting shriek as a spear of blazing light pierced through her backside, parting her impenetrable robes and sliced open a radiant wound up through her chest. Her claws spasmed, trembled, and she continued to scream and wail as the jagged tip of the polearm sprung outward in shining steel before rotating and tearing out a bloody gout from Perse's body. A flooding rush of tar and blood and ooze gushed from the abyss in the void woman's chest as she staggered to stay upright with her powerful legs. Spinning and nearly tripping on the cloak that once had been perfectly unmarred from her battles before, Perse swung around with claws alight with blood magic and void magic alike to face her ambusher.

A quartet of paladins of different species emerged from a thicket at the edge of the clearing, armor and weapons as bright as the sun in full daylight. A human male, greyhaired and sorrow-faced; a human woman whose hair nearly seemed to be on fire as much as her volcano of a greathammer; an elf male whose beard was neatly trimmed despite the hatred and sympathy at war in his otherwise stony expression; and an elf woman with crimson hair so dark it might well have been silver stained thoroughly with blood. 

Perse hissed at first at all of them, heedless of the bodily fluids falling from her mortal form. Just as soon as the viscous viscera bubbled to the ground, her billowing crimson cloak seemed to soak it up, and her gaping chest wound ever so slowly regrew.  The fury on her face grew into a motherly, overconfident grin of what might have been pride. In her campaign of slaughter and corruption, she had warranted herself enough a threat to require even champions of the light to join forces to stop her. Even in their opposition to the Black Empire, these paladins had felt the touch of her inspiration.

"Alesticus, Magdella, Astilaldan and Liniadel,"  she sneered, the laugh of disbelief just on the edge of her mocking tone.  "... what took you so long?"

Astil's face darkened from sympathy to murderous hate, contrasting with Alesticus' pale determination, and Mags looked as though she were on the verge of tears... but Lini's face was contorted with barely contained rage and condemnation.  "Ahvie, it ends here," Lini growled.

Perse tilted her head to the side as the last of her chest cavity healed, and she willed her glistening ooze-like body to form all-too suggestive feminine curves to match her alluring tone. It wasn't to seduce these light-bricks, but to mock.  "Oh? Not going to try to bring her back to the Light? Not going to try to dig the elf child out of my body and cleanse her of my corruption?"

The singsongy smile made Alesticus and Mags grit their teeth beneath misty eyes. Everyone knew the score, even if these humans refused to believe it. They really did hold out hope that Ahvie could be salvaged and saved. Well, maybe all but Astil. Oh how little the mortals of this age understood. Lini held up a warding hand to her side to hold Astil back, but not before the scarred commander herself drew singlehandedly a wicked-looking troll claymore of legendary renown. Perse grinned wider at seeing it once more. She had had a small part in inspiring its creation with her Mistress when the Empire yet held sway over Azeroth. How the woman had pierced her with a spear of Light must have been a skill she had taught herself in her retirement.

"You are beyond hope, beyond the Light, and therefore beyond redemption. You betrayed your friends and your comrades... for... Light, it doesn't fucking matter anymore..."  Lini snarled.

"Of course it matters, dear--"  Perse began, but was cut off as Mags cut in, her tone pleading despite how tightly she gripped her flaming maul.  

"Morgirt is dead. Lashadrik is dead. Zhi is dead. Narcoss is dead,"  Mags said through gritted teeth, eyes watering. Before the paladin woman could go on, Perse laughed. They had not listed the others she devoured last night, and perhaps did not know.

"Narcoss was already dead, fool. I just ended his torture by putting him back to sleep. Why would a paladin mourn a walking corpse?"

"Mayluri," he snarled at her, grip tightening on his sword, "... is also dead." Astil's face darkened further, and his face went a mix of crimson and black Perse wished she could keep that way when she killed him. It would remind Ahvie of how closely his own tabard he resembled.  Ahvie's giggling laughter peeled through the forest again, disembodied but already making Alesticus' stance slump. Lini glared daggers at the man, incredulous. 

"We both know she's dead, grumpyface. Why remind both of us of a past we can do nothing about?"  Perse shook her head, green eyes blinking independently of one another.

"I would have expected you to bring more. Unless you pitiful lot think yourself more than a match for little old me..."  Perse said with a wide, bloody grin. 

Ael's voice, hoarse and ragged but as loud as Ahvie's had been a moment before, interrupted the chatter.  "SHE KILLED ORACULA!"

The trio of orbs rolled their eyes and turned only slightly to snicker at the dying man pinned beneath shrouded feet.  "I didn't kill her, child. I ATE her, there's a distinct difference," to which Perse gestured calmly at the paladins as though this were an explanation of common sense.  "A madman or murderer kills for sport, but wastes so much in the process. I make use of every little molecule of a mortal, so that their lives contribute to the glory of Xal'atath."

"SEWERSPAWN CUNTROACH--"  He wheezed, and she shifted her stance as though leaning harder on Ael. His voice and breath cut off in concert to wildly flailing arms that passed through her robes. Oh, if only the boy had mastered his ability to become ethereal. She grinned back at Mags pointedly.  "Oh, that's right, you didn't know yet. Aldo doesn't know yet. If you run now and save your skin, you might be able to point that loyal guard dog and half the Vampyr Hunters in my direction before the month is out. I'm sure he'll be the picture-perfect model of self-restraint when he learns that the only way he'll join his beloved is in my --"

"Shut. Up. Pretender."

Lini's words briefly stunned Perse through her complacent speech. The other three paladins not named Magdella had drawn their weapons, with the fiery woman looking doubtful.  She glanced to Lini with such fright and uncertainty that it gave the siren another visible shiver.

"You are but a fragment. A thread cast about by the storm of justice. You and your mistress failed in your trickery and were imprisoned, and you barely clawed your way back to a mockery of existence by inhabiting the flesh of a young elf priestess. You can't even form your own body yet, maggot."

Perse curled her jaws up in a silent snarl as Lini's armored shoulders rose and fell in a quickening pace. Astil was right beside the scarred elf, eyes bloody murder.  "You're a parasite playing at god. Your Mistress abandoned you on Azeroth because she knew what was good for her. She's not going to save you or reward you, and you've never had the need to outsmart your opponents when you could just take their strength for your own. You're not even worthy of my disgust, you failed pathetic shadow of an elf. Both of you have --"

And before Lini could get another word in, a lancing bolt of liquid blood shot from Perse's claw and pierced Lini's armor at both breast curves. The woman gasped and coughed, blood sprouting from lips beneath enraged eyes. Astil and Alesticus both charged with a furious cry of vengeance, and Perse soured her grim expression of hate by piercing Lini through the forehead with another bloody spike. Using that method of attack might have been exhausting, even draining for Perse. But she could not stand to be lectured by a mortal any longer. A blood elf, wielding the light, presuming to call her the pretender?

The men who crossed the clearing were agile and enchanted by the Light, and surely would have done irreparable damage to her void-tainted body, perhaps even enough to permanently wound the vulnerable elf brain and heart beneath her oozing midnight shell.

But Perse just sighed and spun in place, taking pressure off Ael's crushed throat long enough to pivot and swing both razor claws about as though to catch both men in her grasp. Alesticus was impaled by the supersonic swipe rather than caught in its palm as Light splashed out around the crimson bones. Perse gritted her teeth and growled through the pain, further frustrated by Astil's amazingly agile duck and jump past her arc and backswing. Perse flashed a triumphant grin at him as his blazing greatsword carved a gaping path through her shoulder and halfway through her body.

Perse couldn't quite remember why she needed to scream so, but wailed like a banshee she did, the weight of her once weightless upper torso no longer upheld by an intact spine. Bent over backwards, Perse sighed in annoyance at what she presumed was pain as one of her lungs was split open with the nearly cleaving strike. Some small part of her bloody body and cloak had tangled his sword and kept it from completing its follow-through, and her green eyes stared up partway at the canopy of leaves above her and the tree trunk behind her. Right into the almost grinning crimson orbs of Ael's mother's eyes.

A tugging at her lower torso confirmed what her omniscient flesh already knew -- Astil was struggling and failing to retrieve his sword from the stump of sludge and cloth and tentacles that made up Perse's torso. With a howl of rage and hatred, the elf man tore at her exposed guts, shoving his plated gauntlets as far into her and grasping for anything to squeeze, crush and claw out of her. With a measure of credit she hadn't given him until now, she realized that he sought her vital elf organs, the few threads of mortal flesh that bonded her to Ahvie and gave her the passport to anchor in this world. His hatred, his passion, his bloodlust was as exquisite as any void elf she had seasoned herself.

Whatever his plated hands sought, they did not find. What sort of anatomy did these mortals think a servant of the old gods would have? Blessedly, she continued to have such mastery over her liquid essence that wherever his grasping, furious hands wriggled, she shifted Ahvie's disembodied brain and beating heart away. She couldn't help but laugh, the musical mockery vibrating through ever fiber of her being, and even her crimson cloak billowed around her as though tentacles writhing with delight.

"FUCKING BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU AHVIE! I'LL BURN YOUR TRAITOROUS HEART FROM ITS HIDING PLACE AND --"

"Astil... stop... she --"  Mags began, but Perse gave the man no chance to capitalize on the growing suspicion she felt through his hesitation and slowing fury.

Using a sliver of her considerable stored-up reserves, Perse reknit her body and cloak in an instant, snapping shut her tarlike body over Astil's arm and trapping it in place. He roared in pain and frustration as his arm stuck limply out just below her shoulderblades, and his other arm tried to fumble angrily with the uncooperative tendrils of her writhing feminine torso. The claw not still pinning a limp Alesticus to her talontips snatched Astil up by the back of his head and cradled it precariously like an egg about to be popped. She grinned in a way Ahvie had taught her, goofily and so unconcernedly, in a way she was sure Astil would recognize.

The horror and fury at war in his face melted away to realization as he ceased struggling against her grasp. He was completely in her power, his greatsword of light and fire ominously sticking out of her side just out of his reach as though she had forgotten it was there, as though she did not feel its purifying touch. Her eyes quirked ever so slightly as Perse nodded faintly in the sword's direction, as though to inform Astil that although she didn't forget about it, she apparently did not care.  

"You should have gone for the head," she sneered at him.

His free hand was lacking purchase or leverage as he was lifted in the air by that insanely oversized claw of blood and sinew, and he cried out as his other shoulder popped by being stretched too far from its prison between her breasts. Those triple green eyes finally caught the attention of his own golden orbs, and a moment of silence passed between them. Mags' distant voice was wracked by despair and sobs, her flames all but gone out.  "ASTIL! ASTIL! DO NOT FORSAKE THE LIGHT! FACE HER WITH --"

"Now, now, we both know you're a good boy, aren't you, child?"  Perse's bloody jaws spat up some viscera from a wound she didn't even feel any longer, but it felt good to soil his grumpyface with her own spittle. He had already forsaken the light.  "You don't need to worry about your place among the Sunwell and Naaru, distant memories that they are."

Astil's face contorted again with rage, memories of all he had lost returning. And foremost of all of them his wife. Whom Ahvie was treasured friends with, for whom Ahvie sewed her wedding dress. Whom Ahvie had tortured in front of him before dunking the woman in the font of a now-corrupted sunwell. And Lor'themar cared not for the name of the monster, only that it was another traitorous void elf. 

"He's not here for vengeance, is he, Mags?" Perse shouted mockingly out to the weeping woman at the edge of the clearing.  "Surely Lini and your brother could just feel the righteousness and justice oozing from his heart..."

And again unbidden but perfectly timed in a way Perse was reinforced in believing that her once-host had surrendered completely to being a passenger, Ahvie's voice giggled out with schoolgirl-like laughter through the dark forest, and then spoke loudly through Perse's bloody sharklike jawline,  "Oh don't look so angry, grumpyface. You'll soon meet the same end May May did, and then you won't have to look so dumb all the time! So cheer up!"

His one free hand clawed at her immaterial jawbone and met only slippery tendrils of dark that melted away the metal of his armored fist.

His quivering lips stared into the widening maw with a smoothly controlled voice of crushed gravel,  "You're not invincible, Ahvie. You're still a shit fighter, and you'll die just like Y'shaarj did -- with your beating heart and brain crushed under our boots."

Perse flinched visibly at that thought, although only for a moment. Her low snarl then peeled into laughter that consumed his senses. Without further preamble, Perse bit Astil's head off with a sickening wet crunch, helmet and all. The limp body sagged in her claw grip, and a single echoing gulp spelled the end of the persistent nuisance in Ahvie's mortal life. Licking her voidstained lips with a slathering tongue of midnight pockmarked with stars of voidlight, Perse tilted back her head and opened her jaws wider, nearly wider than the brim of her hooded cloak would allow. Unceremoniously she dangled Astil's armored corpse above her awaiting maw before dropping the body in whole. And as though the displacement of mass were just a theory, Perse straightened and closed her bloody jawline to paint her face of naught but green glowing eyes hovering in a sea of darkness and framed by red cloth.

Mags was frozen in horror and defeat at the edge of the clearing, kneeling as though having prayed to the Light for her friends. Perse planted both claws on each of her curvaceous hips framed by the brilliant red traveling robe, and she snickered, shaking her head.

"K-kill me... F-finish it..."  Mags muttered, all fire and fuel gone from her demeanor. Perse sighed audibly, almost bored. She could remember a day when the woman had witnessed another such death of explicit insanity before turning herself into a human bonfire that scorched herself to ashes in seconds. Where was this paladin's immortal flame now?

"Mags..."  Came Ahvie's voice, this time devoid of the shifting musical vibrato everpresent in Perse's voidtinged tone.  "I don't want to kill you. I'm kinda fucking full after just him, and I'm not even halfway done with my meal. I have Lini, your brother, Ael and his mother to prepare for the main course. A girl can't just chow down without basting the roast, yknow?"

The woman trembled and cringed at the words, moreso that they came so casually and bouncy from Ahvie's voice. What was left of that endlessly optimistic elf within that heart of darkness, this creature of the unfathomable?

And Magdella had no idea how to answer that. She weakly pushed herself to her feet, and she was vaguely aware of powerful limbs picking up her discard firemaul and slotting back into the sheath at her back. She glared up weakly at the creature.

Perse was looking back almost fondly, sympathetically at Magdella, as though she had not just killed so many people she was dear to, and was about to kill even more. The massive bloody, boney, sinewy claws stroked Mags' unblemished face with a smidgeon of crimson that could have looked like face paint were it not for the smell.  "Blood of your brother, old friend. I'll let you bring back his dog tags and sword to Stormwind. You'll have time to grieve before the end."

What followed nearly sent Mags back to her knees, for the other bloody claw shook and dangled the corpse of a light-forsaken human still pinned greusomly to the edges of Perse's now occupied palm. The empty claw picked with sickening precison and agility at the hanging body, Alesticus' face unreconizable from smushing and mashing and clapping. A bloody sword and a chain of metal trinkets fell to the ground at Mag's weeping form, and Perse shrugged. With an effortless swivel, the claw flung the paladin's lifeless body pitched right at the limp form of Zay'letta. The crumpled heap of pale skin and bones crunched with wet blood and metal. A part of Perse's mind suggested that that might not have been such a good idea, although she couldn't be bothered to interrupt her mental torture with a reason as to why.

Shrugging again with nonchalance, Perse grinned down hungrily at the pain-wracked expression of one of the paladins whom always believed Ahvie would pull through, would choose the Light over the Void and control her urges.

Oh, how wrong she had been.

"W... what? You're letting me...?"

"Go? Yep,"  came Ahvie's voice, adding insult to injury.  "I need Aldo to come hunting me down. And with luck, he'll be too furious to think about bringing half the damn army to even stand a chance against me. Or maybe he will bring the army and I'll have souls enough to feast on until Noblegarden. Eh, either works."

"A-Ahvie... please... please listen... I know you're not this monster," Mags pleaded with her voice and eyes as her fumbling hands found the sword and dogtags.  "I know you're still in there, without anyone else to listen to. You're better than this. You can still walk in the light and defeat this corruption! You're not beyond penance for the crimes of the monster controlling you!”

A smug and surprised expression passed through the slightly parted jaws, and Ahvie exhaled through her shared body's pores. Nothing could ever feel as good as being Perse full-time. Still, even after slaying damn near half the people she loved, Mags was still the best of paladins with a heart of gold. Unfortunately for them, Ahvie thought with a grin, their time had passed long ago.

"Nah, I'm good, thanks. By the time you get back to Stormwind without your gryphon, I'll have SI:7 and His Majesty under my thumb. You're welcome to try to turn the 73rd against me, but... well... you know how Jathrul and Zethos and Seoni wound up, right? Treason is a despicable thing, Mags... Even among my kind we think of some creative punishments specifically for that transgression."

"T-treason?" Mags shakily got to her feet, clinging the last possessions she had of her brother. "You betrayed your family, your friends, your... and you... and you... speak of..."

"I only ever served myself, dear. You just wanted to believe I wasn't a lost cause." She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth admonishingly.  "Tsk tsk. Now run along like a good girl before I get hungry after fixing up these morsels for --"

Interrupting Ahvie this time was her own elf-like scream of surprise and pain, still devoid of Perse's corrupted watery accent. Mags' eyes went wide from the sound, and wider still at the naginata of crimson steel piercing Perse's head just below the eyes. The triplet of emerald orbs spun wildly, panicked for several long moments in disbelief, pain and terror... before they squinted shut in concentration. A massive bloody claw shoved Mags away from her hard enough to make the paladin stumbled back into the bushes.

When Mags had gotten to her feet, Perse was trembling in pain and exertion as the massive polearm seemed to tug at the void fiend in a particular direction, as though strung along by a towing line. Dimly, Mags could make out the visage of Zay'letta, bloodied armor glowing with droplets of glistening crimson swirling around her, a vortex of darkened rosy fluid streaming out of Alesticus' crumpled body and through her. Although both of Perse's massive claws flexed and clenched back toward the shaft of the weapon piercing her impaled head, the siren let out a low wail of pain and anguish that had no hint of Ahvie's in it. Magdella had a flash of hope, that perhaps she could help be the finishing blow on whatever tortured remnant of Ahvie remained in the creature... but her flame again went out.

With great effort and a screeching crash of metal on chalk on gods knows what else, the flowing red cloak displaced where Perse's front had once been facing Mags, and the swiveling of the arms suggested to the paladin that somehow the abomination had switched which direction she had been facing albeit still impaled.  The vampyr elf woman radiated even brighter crimson, enough to flood the whole forest in a sea of bloodlight, and shadows pooled and cascaded in around Perse as though to answer the threat.

Hoping against hope, Mags ran in the other direction, hoping to distance herself from the fighting and get to Stormwind before Perse did. Maybe if this fight dragged on long enough or wounded the creature, she'd have time to warn the others.

A battle cry of Quel'Danas echoed through the forest, shrill, defiant and triumphant.  "YOU SHALL NOT HAVE MY SON! BEGONE, BOTTOM FEEDER!"

Perse's responding roar quivered with rage rivalled the san'layn's in ferocity and, with what Mags suspected and hoped, what sounded like a hint of fear.  "NO! N-NOOOO! YOU CANNOT! IT IS MY BODY! M-MY BLOOD! I AM A GODDESS, YOU TRIFLING PUPPET! I... WILL... NOT... BE..."

Suddenly both voices stilled at the same time the woods were thrown back into utter darkness. The red light blazing from the confrontation behind Mags winked out at the same moent that a loud and all-too-familiar CRUNCH of metal preceded the pitch black and deafening silence, as though a brilliant sanguine lighthouse had its singular lamp destroyed beneath the pressure of a giant's fingers. Suddenly Magdella was aware of how loud her own panicked breathing was, how she could hear her pounding heartbeat in her chest.

She knew from the lingering silence the dreadful truth as well what the san'layn's final blaze of defiance meant.

Blessedly, or perhaps eerily, Perse's rasping voice and Ahvie's girlish laughter did not pursue her... at least, not at first. But the faintest of whispers crept into the paladin's mind, as though a kernel of doubt she thought long since scoured from her furnace of a mind. Hearing Ahvie's weakened, raspy but arrogant voice confirmed Mag's fears that she still was scarred by the void.  

Ahvie stared at the crumpled letter in her leatherclad hand for a long while, so long in fact that she hadn't quite remembered where she was. She hadn't opened it at all, and its seal of familiar and foreboding noble houses might as well have been a poisonous snake for all the regard she gave for it.

The void elf sighed and tossed the letter onto her small desk in what passed for an equally small office in the Stormwind Keep. Her introduction to Vyk was both unexpected and unsettling, two emotions she was not keen on feeling so soon after something or someone tore a hole in the sky above Icecrown. She shivered despite herself, and her cloak moved of its own accord to wrap and hug around her as though to reassure her in a snug embrace. Ahvie barely noticed, even if she was vaguely aware of how good it felt.

Many years ago, what was probably decades now that she thought of it, a rogue illidari named Illidan Stormrage had stormed Icecrown Citadel with the Eye of Sargeras with the very intention of doing just that -- tearing a hole in the sky at the top of the world. And although the collateral would have been beyond what she or many others would have been agreeable with, Illidan's charisma and mere name attracted loyalists and followers from both factions and every race on Azeroth. The night elf was aiming to land a pre-emptive killing blow on the Lich King before he could attract Arthas to his throne.

"Except the one tearing the whole in the sky is reviled by nearly every mortal on Azeroth, and the ones gathering from all corners of the world are those deigning to put a stop to the madness and destruction left in its wake," she spoke aloud to herself.

A throaty, feminine voice whispered huskily on the shadows around Ahvie, amused but also soothing.  Perse, her intelligent voidcloak, had decided to reply as though the void elf had been speaking to her in the first place:  "Why does it bother you so, sister? The mission of the organization implies it wishes to do what you tried to do with your fledging pirates and deserters. And it has considerably more influence and resources. Is this what you dreamed of?"

Ahvie didn't even give a start at the other's voice, for the voidfiend siren trapped in her ragged traveling cloak had long since been bonded to her ren'dorei mind, both altered forever by the explosion resulting from tampering with her void blade ... and by the partial influence of ethereals that Akako had narrowly saved her from. She shook her head, disbelieving, and turned to take a few steps back toward the doorway. Looking down it, her glacial blue eyes welled up with nostalgia and loss. It was what she dreamed of, but so was this.

Hundreds of officers, soldiers, agents and diplomats all rushed hurriedly from one place to another within the bustling hive of what now was the expanded Command Center of Stormwind Keep. Deep within the bowels of the fortress, the network of tunnels and carpeting would have been indistinguishable from the royal chambers normally open to the public. Except Anduin wouldn't be accepting visitors today. He was scrambling, as her SI:7 superiors were, to mobilize forces and resources for the unknown in Icecrown.

Ahvie leaned against the doorframe with one arm lounging up toward the stone ceiling. She used to tell herself and others that she didn't like cities, but that had been a lie. She found that during her time working for the Alliance like she once used to, that she delighted in patrolling Stormwind, watching and mingling with its chaotic and diverse population. Very rarely did she have to mind the occasional void elf getting too buddy-buddy with the forces of the Old Gods. Once, that thought and nostalgia would have made her shiver or wince in shame. She was a low-level agent with a wide passport reach to the far corners of the Alliance and influence enough to get access to all but the SI:7 archives.

Her leveraging of her pirate-turned-privateer crew had been invaluable during the Third War for extending SI:7's reach to corners of Zuldazar and beyond that would have otherwise attracted unwanted attention. Her old trade network was hungry for leadership and business, and she tapped that as well. But while she also was tasked with keeping a close watch on unruly ren'dorei who dabbled with the Old Gods, precious few of her associates and friends knew how dangerously she skirted those precepts as well.

Perse claimed to be a handmaiden of Xal'atath, some Old Goddess shunned and betrayed by the Not-Pantheon before the fall of the Black Empire. And despite granting the melded duo unspeakable powers over shadows and stealth, Perse was infuriatingly cryptic when it came to detailing what it was her goals were. A self-proclaimed patron of free will and independence. Indeed! What rubbish. From the onset of the burning of Lor'danel and Teldrassil, to this crossroads that loomed up before her far before she expected it to, she knew in her corrupted heart that there really was no choice at all.

"Ah, there you are, Agent Brightsinger,"  came a clipping accent from further up the hall.

"Gerry,"  she mused before she even turned to face her companion in the service.

The human was tall, well-built, muscled and mustachioed, but had wild, sharp eyes that seemed to pierce through all her facades of being a childish delinquent playing dress-up. He drew himself up before her, staring down at her with a hint of contempt. Expectant. She sighed.

"Sergeant Gerry," she added, souring her lips with the need to add title after his promotion. He probably had been secretly looking forward to making her jump at the word. Well she wouldn't let him.

"Shaw, Huwe and M all received your reports on Blackwood and the Fleet, and you are wanted in the Crow's Nest for debriefing."  His lip stiffened as his eyes narrowed down at her. She would not let her friend lord his rank over her, worgen or not! Albert had twice the bark of this stuffed shirt, and Alice four times over.

But the void elf cringed openly and tugged at her cloak, pulling it away from her body as though stuck to her curved catsuit like a static towel fresh from the dryers. All three bigwigs, bringing her in for questioning after she thought she had them duped.

Shows what I know, she thought, those old-timers saw far more than they let on. Just like that smug illusionist Vyk. How did he have access to her file? And why did he use names of an Alterac noble house long dead? Was he trying to give himself away as a... a... just to unsettle her?

Gerry took her lack of response for perhaps insubordination, and his voice took on a harder edge.   "Now, Brightsinger."

She sharply glared up at him, squinting with the strongest look of petulance she could manage. They were friends once, before the war. Now he had licked M's thighboots until his mouth practically belonged to the wisened warden, and was repaid with a promotion rivalling her one-time status as a freelancer. 

"Fine."

A slight tilt of his head, and his eyes twitched.  "Fine...?"

She grit her teeth at him and brushed past him, huffing angrily.  "Fine, sir."

Ignoring his shout of protest at leaving before she was dismissed, or without a salute, she stormed off with a glower in her face and stride. Many aides and soliders were shocked to see her out of uniform, but as soon as many recognized her, their eyes narrowed in turn and she was smugly satisfied to see the disdain on their faces. Oh yes, she was a rebel who didn't conform to their rules, even from the start. The women's uniform showed off waaaay too much cleavage anyway. Screw those apples, she wasn't about to wear a second set of clothing when her leather catsuit was, in actuality, as much a part of her skin as her cloak was now. Not that any of them needed to know that. At a distance, most agents and officers steered clear of her as her direction made apparent her destination -- the Boss' office.

Eventually she came to an archway of dark wooden double-doors, with the bald egghead himself standing guard with arms clased behind him in what passed for at ease these days. His hard face didn't match his disarmingly softened eyes sharp as a cold morning dew. Huwe, her immediate commanding officer, watched Ahvie approach the moment she turned the corner. If he felt anything remotely fond or smug at her arrival, nothing in his neutral expression conveyed it. For some reason, she found herself stopping a few paces short of him towering stature before saluting as crisply as she found herself giving Magdella or Morgirt.

Instead of appeared pleased or even a smidgeon satisfied, the hairless head nodded without even a hint of approval, and pushed open the door that led to the beating heart of the command center. Gesturing with the same arm, Huwe nodded ever so slightly in the direction, for her to enter first. Unable to repress her grimace, she ducked her head slightly as she passed by his discerning eye, her ears twitching from nervousness.

As she stepped into the room and onto a plush sapphire rug inlaid with gold and silver embroideries, Ahvie heard in her mind's eye what she suspected -- Perse was telling her that although she couldn't hear with her ears that Huwe had moved, he was stepping right behind her and closing the door in their wake, cutting off her exit. The void elf kept her eyes forward, scanning the room well-lit by an array of electric lights and candelabras lining the walls. Bookshelves and tables neatly framed the depression in the floor, a sort of atrium or anti-dais.

And sitting with thighs crossed on the edge of the wide squarish table in the atrium was a night elf woman of lean muscled features, mature but handsome beauty and an otherwise fetching face marred by scars, greying hair and a sneering grin. Gone were any pretense of hiding each others' identities. Ahvie had just about confirmed it herself when she cross-referenced M's absences and attendances with the sporadic and nearly untraceable appearances of the senior warden. She didn't actually think that M would stand for the veteran's name.

Beside the legendary jailer was her trademarked helmet worn but unbroken, and the woman's curvaceous but equally deadly bladed armor clung to the kaldorei's body as perfectly as Ahvie's shadowsuit did. Had the pirate captain not just reunited with her waifu a week ago, she might have been more loose with her eyes. She always wanted to know what it was like to wear the warden armor suits, perfectly tailored plate as they were.

Standing erect and rigid next to M was the mustachioed grandmaster himself, apparently back from his leave in Boralus. Ahvie could appreciate a man who looked for some quality time with the same gender, even if he didn't speak of it. It was not even an open secret, perhaps the best way to protect high-profile scoundrels in peacetime. Not that Shaw couldn't take care of himself, Ahvie reminded herself quietly. The man was lenient with agents who proved themselves resourceful, whatever their shortcomings. Whether this meeting was going to go the way she intended, even his thoughtful expression didn't assuage her.

Ahvie took a step down into the lowered dais and saluted as respectfully as she dared, hoping her rigidity wouldn't come off as mockery -- she rarely showed this level of deference and obedience to the others. The reports coming back from her officers in The Seventy-Third likely reflected much the same: a grudging, if not forgetful, regard for rank and what it stood for. She grinned inwardly for only a moment to remember the no small number of turnover casualties from which insubordination bore fruit within the battalion. M's devilish, condescending grin deepened as though the accursed woman could read Ahvie's mind.

Both thought and visualization made Ahvie shiver visibly, which seemed to be the right thing to let slip. Shaw quirked an eyebrow at the void elf's restraint and salute, but said nothing. A long silence drew out further when Huwe came to stand atop the step behind her, further emphasizing to her displeasure how unfairly tall he was.

"Two years. Twenty blockades ran, twelve pirate raids thwarted, two N'Zothian cults ratted out, one prisoner exchange," M began, eyeing Ahvie with a smile that was not so much mocking or appraising as hungry.  "Forty-eight field reports, two citizens' arrests, one assassination and an unconfirmed but -- if Huwe's suspicions are confirmed -- alleged fifty-one abominations slain. And yet you still find time to sneak off without telling us where you've gone to, Brightsinger."

Ahvie was too close to the woman and the others to avoid giving away even the slightest bit of her emotions or reactions. If she shifted her eyes, let her blush show, allowed her ears to twitch or shuffled her feet, would that convey unease in a confessional or defiant way? Ahvie focused for one of the few times in her life to keep her mind as straight as her eyes, instead locking onto the fascinating way M's bladed cloak wrapped around the formfitting plate. Looking The Boss in the eyes at least couldn't push her either way, right?

M chuckled darkly in response to Ahvie's attempt at self-control, and continued. Ahvie really wanted to know if the other men in the room were impressed with her work for the crown.  "We know through your interactions with Agent Gerry and Agent Narcoss that you've spent at least three of the past six months drawing the attention of June Blackwood. Why is that?"

Ahvie managed to grimace for only a split-second, for she was cringing all throughout her darkened blood. That's what she got for worrying her friends with the truth.  The ren'dorei cleared her throat and spoke firmly, not quite hoarsely while not meeting the night elf's piercing golden eyes.  "Beg pardon, Mum, I apologize. Before I had known it, June Blackwood had already ambushed me in Vol'dun not more than five months ago. I treated the battle as a chance to test her capabilities without revealing too many of my own. Seeming to wound her and her pride enough to drive her off the field was little comfort, Mum. Now that she had my scent and, presumably, a hatred of seeing my survival as an affront to her mission, I..."

M cut in dryly, interrupting her as smoothly as though the two had rehearsed it.  "Decided that you would protect those you loved and worked with by distancing yourself from them. Us included. Oh, we know, little shadow. The reports of your handiwork kept making their way to us, albeit not on time, during your absence. Had the Seventy-Third's officers not vouched for you during your disappearance, you would have been hunted down as surely as Illidan had once upon a time. We have a deal, after all."

Ahvie suppressed a squeak from her groaning mind.  "Yes, Mum."

The kaldorei snorted in derision or dissatisfaction, flexing her legs and armored ankles as though more gracefully performing an air of boredom that Ahvie so often portrayed atop lampposts. She wasn't sure whether to hate her or applaud her. The woman knew exactly what she was doing.

"Agent Narcoss speaks highly of you despite your inadequacies," M continued, a souring grimace of distate accompanying the scars on her wisened but unwrinkled face.  "Notable illidari I am reluctant to admit receiving reliable intel from also corroborate this stout reference for your resourcefulness to both the Alliance batallion you serve and the Champions of Azeroth. It seems that despite keeping your distance from your associates, you have found a way to maintain some laudable degree of your contracted duties. Care to explain?"

Ahvie squeezed her eyes shut for a time, unable to keep her embarrassment and reluctance from showing on her likely blushing face. Did all of her friends have to talk her up in what she hoped was a way to make them forget about her? She HAD been staying as busy with her adulting work for SI:7 as not. Perhaps moreso. A war with Sylvanas, a war with N'Zoth, a war with cultists threatening Finryx's attempt at convincing everyone he was dead, a war with those who hunted Ael and his family... all balanced on the tips of several knives while feeding the void fiend growing within her cloak. Within her mind. She wouldn't be able to explain this one away to just mere skill and vagaries. Would Rennadyr have told M and Shaw what she was, despite his promise not to? Would telling them now imply that Rennadyr had lied or been oblivious to the creature that lurked just below the facade of childish trickster?

What she said was, "Yes, Mum. I have been... teaching myself how to improve my connection to the void. Hunting zealots, cultists, N'Zothian abominations and rogue ren'dorei has given me a glimpse into adapting their volatile skills into something safely adoptable."

M narrowed her eyes to slits at that.  "Cut the crap, Brightsinger. You're not fooling anyone with that deliberate exposition. At ease."

Ahvie exhaled more with frustration than relief, and the fury in her eyes eventually lifted them to lock paths with the blazing suns in M's glare.  "Fine."

"What have you been learning from your prey, Brightsinger? Do not leave anything out, or else we will know. Your batallion officers have sent back reports of considerable inquest."

The void elf balled her gloves into fists at that, trembling with an indignation she didn't know how to convey any better. She absolutely hated how Maiev implied she knew everything about her. And the damnable scariest part of that was how the warden very likely did, and was testing her to see if she'd lie to the people she'd served in protecting the civilians and innocent caught between fronts in the Third War. The night elf didn't outright say it, but previous debriefings usually brought it up at one time or another.

"I can make void rifts to any location I've been before, provided I have had a proper meal beforehand. I need my strength and focus to keep the portal open long enough to pass through, and transporting another takes more endurance than I have even on a good night. I can jump between shadows without being seen in the light forking them. I can blink probably as good as you can now, Mum, although only to the hilts of my daggers, up to a distance of nearly forty yards now. And I can speak Shath'yar fluently."

The silence that followed was so thick that Ahvie could have sliced it with a butter knife, and she risked sparing a glance toward Shaw. He was stroking his mustache thoughtfully, his expression little changed from earlier. Had he always known, but not cared? Ahvie nearly jumped in place as Huwe cleared his own throat, and she nearly rounded on him as she glared over her shoulder. His blank expression was blessedly replaced with what she hoped was confusion and consternation. Her ears drooped at that. She liked Huwe, even if he did act like someone had hit him square in the face with a stopsign.

M, meanwhile, was giving her a squinting gaze of ... Light, she had only heard of Maiev giving people those hateful glares a handful of times when the world was falling apart. Maybe she was becoming used to those now that Azeroth seemed to be on a two-year cycle of almost ending before the factions got their shit together and stopped fighting long enough to put a band-aid on the problem.

"Is that all?"  Was what came out of M's thin frown.  "Surely that isn't all you've gleaned from the whispers that you've been hearing the past two years. Many of our ren'dorei agents who have shown more loyalty than you have --"

"Excuse YOU, Maiev,"  Ahvie interrupted her this time, an edge rising in her voice for once.  "I have ALWAYS been loyal, ever since the day you gave me and my crew the means and the pride to help combat the madness in the name of a king who cared not for my past or crimes. Even after Wrathion showed up in the keep, he kept me on duty. As did you. I was a part of the Alliance before even you were, so don't you dare fuckin' give me that shit."

The room seemed to still even further, but M only quirked an eyebrow at Ahvie, although her bitter frown seemed to deepen despite it.  Ahvie didn't dare let up now.  "Yeah, I know I've been an insubordinate little shit the past two years, yet you kept me on. You didn't reprimand much past putting me on guard duty in Stormwind. If you wanna talk disloyalty, maybe we oughtta dredge up that time in Teldrassil you and Neva --"

Shaw cleared his throat right around the time that Ahvie was aware of the bladed talons of M's plated gauntlets were cupping her pale-skinned jaw. The woman's eyes were furious, brilliant and deadly... Ahvie supposed that she would have found the predator attractive in another life. But interrupting their grudge match was the mustachioed one, to whom both women turned. Ahvie, with some discomfort at being held in death's claws, faced the grandmaster as well. Matthias, for his part, was smiling. SMILING! He was amused at the provocation she had responded to.

"Well now, I hadn't quite expected anyone capable of getting under her armor quite so deftly since Illidan took her out for a date in the Cathedral," Shaw said with a chuckle, and M seemed to realize finally what she was doing.

Her icy suaveness had broken at a barb of equal pain. Letting go of Ahvie's neck, the warden huffed loudly and slumped back onto the edge of the table, her taloned gauntlets clenched remarkably easily despite the way Ahvie thought surely would have made it difficult to grip anything small. Ahvie risked a shit-eating grin for The Boss, which had the intended reaction. If she was going to be punished for it, it wouldn't be until after the meeting, the void elf surmised.

Shaw had a tittering giggle of his own, disarming Ahvie as well, before he continued as bemused as ever.  "As much as I would enjoy seeing who is the master of blinking in this mythical catfight, I'd rather we not lose two of our best agents to injuries in the process. Think you two girls can keep your tits in your corsets long enough to stay on topic?"

Ahvie couldn't quite believe what she was hearing, but she peeled out a delighted laugh at that, drawing the flat stares of Huwe and M. But Shaw, dearsweet Shaw, let her compose herself before he addressed her properly.  "We know you're holding out on us, Brightsinger. You've been interacting with Andraya on a regular basis, despite public records showing her to be little more than a rockstar of moderate repute. She is... not simply that, is she?"

The void elf snorted at that, shrugging nonchalantly. Maybe he knew more than Maiev did, but wasn't letting on. Why WAS he so nice to her by comparison? This time, M spoke tenatively, as though still trying to rein in the edge in her voice.

"Andraya is not our concern, as you have stilled countless ren'dorei defectors in the past months. Your intentions are ... admittedly not in question, Brightsinger. If the vocalist was as dangerous as unconfirmed reports allege, you would have put her down by now. We..."  and this was the part that painted the grin on Ahvie's face from ear to ear, for M exchanged deliberate glances with Shaw and Huwe,  "We trust your reports, Ahvie, even if you leave out details. Every agent needs secrets of their own to keep."

The warden then suddenly looked quite tired, as though having run a marathon without boots or having conceded her only meal in a year to a rival. Ahvie then felt herself blushing as she tried to wipe her smile of smug satisfaction off her pale expression, the stab of shame rushing i to replace her disappearing mirth unbidden. How quickly this was changing on her.

Huwe's deep and throaty bass of a voice made Ahvie jump again, not used to hearing him break the silence with such punctuation.  "Your accolades have built to such a point that we've little choice but to reward you for your... time served, shall we say."

She blinked. Several times more, and felt a cloud of dizziness pass into her fogging mind. Did she hear that right?

Shaw nodded appreciatively.  "Thanks to your efforts, both on and off the record, we three acknowledge the benefit of recognizing a promotion long overdue."

And before Ahvie's swimming vision could right itself, M finished the appraisal.  "Congratulations, Brightsinger. We would have told you sooner, but your string of absences gave us pause as to your activities. From tonight hereon, you'll be a Double-Oh."

Ahvie was having a hard time thinking straight. Clearly, surely, this was just one big euphoric dream. Maybe Akako had sneaked in some bloodthistle into the brownies the huntress baked for the two of them the other day. One minute the most dangerous stalker in Azeroth short of Valeera herself had been within a thumbs width of making her throat as pockmarked as her cloak, and the next she was being REWARDED for her efforts.

She certainly didn't know what to say to say.  "Uh... what?"

M scowled at her, and the night elf woman flicked a small piece of metal at the void elf. Ahvie's reflexes were too instinctual at this point to not react, even in her dazed stupor. A black leatherclad hand picked the projectile out of the air cleanly, and the rush of adrenaline jolted the ren'dorei back to awareness. It was a flat scrap of metal, like a brass hearthstone card etched with words and Alliance symbols. More intricately wrought than the nickel scrap she'd carried around the past two years.

She shivered, trembled, wracked by emotion she didn't want to deal with right now. For so long after the Third War knocked on her adopted home's doorstep and kicked her teeth in, Ahvie had been struggling to find her place in a world that increasingly was closing its doors to her because of the decisions she'd made in the past, despite the fact that those decisions were made to do more good than harm.

Ahvie had captained a pirate vessel by chance and not entirely by choice, at a time when the crew was nearly slaughtered in the aftermath of a bloody battle with Lei-Shen's navy. The crew had once abducted her with the intention of ransoming her... but in the rush of facing an evil that cared not for faction lines, Ahvie felt a mirrored rush of compassion for her dying captors as she had the first day she found she could use the Light to heal others.

Even after the fateful night that nearly saw her drowned amid falling wreckage of the lifeboats, Ahvie felt the first anchor weights of duty to people who swore to loyalty, compassion and causes larger than themselves. She had rallied their defenses, saved many of their crew at the expense of Sunreavers who took potshots at the pirates amid the storm, and had even fought back Mogu with an alarming hybrid mix of light and shadow. To which Ahvie only discovered later was thanks to the adoption of the red hooded cloak that had found her amid the flotsam, in the moment she should have drowned.

Perse, dormant though she had been at the time, elevated Ahvie to a second chance at doing the right thing no matter whose flag she flew. And so it was that the then-blood elf found her calling and delight in uniting criminals, deserters, thieves and souls robbed of hope of redemption beneath a banner of belief. She gave the pirates a moral compass to turn their lives around by helping others do the same.

That... that was exactly was Vyk was claiming to do, wasn't it? Not so different from when she had been cast about in the storm left by the passing of Sylvanas' army in Darkshore. Clinging to vengeance dimly lesser than her desire to save others' families from the same fate that befell her crew and her adopted family among the night elves... Ahvie... Light it was horrible to relive that, but in moments like these, she couldn't help but dwell on it. She rejoined the Alliance and SI:7 to gain enough power and resources to make a difference in the war.

And here, on the crossroads of a new era of conflict beneath a rising whirlwind of a storm originating from Sunwell knows where above Icecrown, Ahvie was being offered two distinctly different positions of import and influence. But that was the rub, wasn't it?

Accepting SI:7's offer of a promotion would have been abhorrent to her before all this clandestine nonsense nestled its way into her instincts. Leash herself? With paperwork and reports and commanding officers? How in the nine hells had she managed to stumble into this mess in the first place? Didn't she HATE having someone else tell her what to do when she could just go ahead on her own and do what needed to be done? Weren't rules and faction lines the very reasons that she had becoming a reluctantly elected pirate captain in the first place?

And yet, this Vyk, this sleazy know-it-all illusionist was throwing around the words and claims that had wrapped Ahvie's heart in chains of silk and seawater. It mattered little what he really thought, for his intentions were difficult to read. She knew what he was as surely as he knew what she was, and... you know what, it doesn't scare me. Zethos was just a blustering dumbass in the end, and Kreyas was an exception to the rule. What did it matter if Vyk was as crazy as he let on or worse? Didn't she speak and sign on with crazy long before she started acting like a spy and erstwhile assassin? He actually approached her with mirth and appreciation for the skills she had nursed since turning her crew into a commissioned privateer team.

Shaking her head, Ahvie hefted and tested the weight of the medal for a time, eyeing it with some sadness. Then she tossed it back onto the table next to a shocked M.

"I can't accept this, Mum. I'm sorry. I... I was planning on telling you rather soon as well, but..."  the void elf sucked in a deep breathe and exhaled slowly, trying to relax. She would tell as much as the truth as she dared. She owed them that much at least. They trusted her?  "I've recently been approached by a fixer unknown to me and others in the underground. And his job offer is one I'm not sure I can pass up. I intend to resign my post and commission."

There, she said it, and she shuddered despite herself. It was nice, having been one of those storybook spies she'd read or heard about in bard's tales. But it was just a passing --

M and Shaw exchanged glances, uncertain but not ruffled.  Huwe rumbled a reply that sounded something like remorse.  "You... want to leave? Brightsinger, you've done so much good with the work you've done. Stormwind, no... Azeroth would suffer a great loss at your abandonment of your duties."

Before Ahvie could respond, Shaw and M both spoke at the same time.  "Brightsinger, wait."  And they exchanged another glance, more assured of each other this time. Matthias gestured his deference to the warden.

"What sort of job has this fixer offered you?"

Ahvie pursed her lips, then grimaced. She was not about to tell a bunch of Stormwind bigwigs that a black dragon using the authority of the Alterac noble houses had tried to recruit her into a faction-neutral vigilante cadre of heroes and spies.

"He's assembling a crew of well-connected individuals, particularly from the scattered remnants of the Phoenix Highguard. Although he did not specify why he targeted us in particular, he did express an intention to use us as protectors of Azeroth unhindered by faction or race."

Shaw grinned at that, apparently, and M snorted with amusement. Matthias exchanged another glance with Huwe, who also rumbled in deep-chested laughter. Ahvie spun on him, jabbing a dark finger up at him, barely to his pecks. "And just what's so funny about that? A girl's allowed to have dreams of growing out of her training wheels, isn't she?"

M then exchanged another glance with Shaw, who nodded back. The silver-haired warden then spoke more smoothly and crisply than she had all evening, self-assuredness thick on her lips.  "You do not see it, Brightsinger? This man is luring you in with the very promise and allure that we we had, that we knew would work on you. This is an opportunity we know you would not pass up whatever your suspicions... whatever OUR suspicions."

Matthias was stroking the end of a curly mustache as he continued the thought.  "You need to control your ear expressiveness better, Ahvie, lest the effort you put into acting like a petulant child be undone. You don't like his offer any more than ours, even though we both have our benefits to you and your noble goals." Ahvie then blushed and looked down sharply at her feet in precisely the way she was sure a young elf maiden would beneath the critique of an all-knowing parent. Why did Shaw have to be so damned GOOD at his job? It was unfair! He was less than half her age!

M's voice was nearly on the cusp of laughter by the quiver in her clipping accent.  "Besides, Brightsinger. Nobody really leaves His Majesty's service. There is no matter of simply turning in your badge like a provincial sheriff without any repercussions. You know too much of the inner workings of command, know many more isolated agent cells and how to recognize our field operatives. No... I do not think we will accept your resignation."

The void elf looked up sharply, taking a cautionary step back right into Huwe, who laid a blocky but gentle hand on her shoulder. She had to make a considerable conscious effort to keep Perse from wrapping around the unexpected limb's touch.  Huwe hummed thoughtfully, but Ahvie cut in, indignant despite being surrounded.

"What, you saying you'll kill me if I try to quit? Or stick me in a cell until I sign another contract? You're not like Sylvanas or Garrosh, Maiev, even if you were a sorry excuse for a --"  to which the warden cleared her throat all too politely.

Ahvie did not want to give the insufferable near-immortal the satisfaction, but paused.

"Consider your duty to both your homeland and your adopted home, as well as to The Seventy-Third and your fellow crewmates,"  Maiev said dryly, but held up a finger tipped with a razor-sharp talon to silence Ahvie's protest.  "I'm not saying that your service to us excludes you from pursuing your dream of joining this ragtag band of vigilantes. In fact, much the contrary."

That's when the dark elf felt her heart sink, her blood going cold from the devious smile on M's face, the all-knowing tone in her voice when she was about to get her way. But Shaw picked up from there, as though to distract the Double-Oh agent from the near-sinister smirk on his superior's expression,  "Your suspicion of this self-proclaimed do-gooder is well-founded, we think, and Anduin would doubtless be as grateful as we to know the motives of this third party."

Ahvie let out a low groan of defeat, which eventually came out in as immature a whine as she could remember using on The Seventy-Third's radio. But it only deepened M's facesplitting grin, all white teeth beneath brilliant golden orbs.

"Your next mission, Brightsinger, is to infiltrate and ingratiate yourself with these recruiters and ringleaders. Earn their trust, gain access to their facilities and resources, and discover what they are up to. Report back what you find, and you might well help His Majesty as much as you had these past two years."

Ahvie brought her hands up to cover her eyes in disbelief and shame -- not that they wouldn't know she had squinted her eyes shut in a distorted grimace.  She couldn't get away from them, and they spoke as much sense as she had to them! They WANTED her to go, but also to keep working for them! Was... was she expected to just have her cake and eat it too, all while pretending that the cake wasn't forkroot or some veritas?

But then again, Perse said silently in her mind's eye, laughing with much the same deviousness as the warden in front of her, you would rather enjoy having access to SI:7 and the vigilantes, no? Perfect opportunity to tell the mortals only what they need to know.

What the void siren meant by that, or which mortals, Ahvie wasn't quite sure... but she knew in her core, her trembling, aching, groaning and exhausted innermost shelter of thought, that she had been trapped by two ancient night elves. Again. Oh she certainly was looking much the child now.

The medal flicked through the air with barely a warning, but Ahvie's ever-expressive ears picked up on that through her inward cringing, and the void elf's other hand deftly caught the metal scrap without really being told to. Bringing her other hand away from a face yet righting itself away from her pouty grimace, Ahvie sighed with exasperation and gave M and Shaw another salute. Wanting anything more than everything to be dismissed.

"Understood, Mum. I... humbly accept your promotion with thanks. It will not go to waste."

M snorted at that, and Huwe rumbled a deep chuckle. Ahvie ignored them, sneaking a final,  "And, uh, one question, if I may, Mum."

The languid wave of the warden's hand was the best indication she thought she'd get.  "If I am to join and infiltrate this new crew, as it were, I won't have much time to report back to Rennadyr, Wildo and --"

"They have ranks, still, Brightsinger."

"-- Lucy. I haven't even told them yet that these... these two offers are on the table."

"You've got your hand on one already, Ahvie,"  Shaw replied, his colloquial smile and tone disarming her with ease.  "And accepting that means accepting your mission. You have two weeks to get everything arranged with The Seventy Third, using whatever truth or narrative you wish. We will not undo the work you've done to establish the rapport and business relationships you've established with them."

She squinted at him, trying not to sound relieved.  "They're called friendships, Shaw."

"Are they now?"  He quirked an eyebrow in a Narcoss-like manner. Maybe he invented it.  "And here I thought you had been a reluctant party to the yoke across your back. My, but you are still new to this, aren't you, Little Shadow?"

That last honorary made Ahvie flinch, for it was the same title Vyk had coined for her. Could Vyk be one of these three but under the guise of their voice and appearance? She really didn't want to start suspecting everyone she met, so she put that thought away with another sigh of defeat.

"Thank you, sir, Mum. I'll set to informing my battalion of my impending transfer within the allotted time period."

She would NOT thank them for keeping the leash on, albeit with a loosening of the slack.

In classical Ahvie fashion, she spun on her heels, wriggled free of Huwe's iron grip on her shoulder with a glamor of barely-noticeable adjusting of the friction of her shadowsuit. Mastery over her body's skin to make it look and feel as though she were properly clothed (she was, she tried to remind herself) often granted her many a slick surface devoid of purchase for grappling opponents. So it was that she ducked around Huwe and made for the door before the cue ball of an officer could spin around.

Maiev's voice chuckled and chortled in the grandmotherly way that kaldorei women infamously were known for mastering.  "Two weeks, Brightsinger, and you'd better have news to report on this gathering of vigilantes!"