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“Get out. Get out of her.”

Her best friend advanced, her movements odd and jerky like breaking clockwork.

“The King is looking for you. Do you think he won’t find you?”

“I said get out!”

Her best friend picked up the kitchen knife, scraping it over the counter. 

      The surprise never fails to catch him when he least counts on it, how truly quiet it is within the walls of the ship when mere steps away stands molten corruption and the call of battle. To think this is the life his parents lead for thousands upon thousands of years, Ara/tor is at once proud and overwhelmed. Mournful, too, for how much they have lost, how long they have been apart.

      Somewhere down there, they are carrying on with their unending war. Soon, he will join them but not precisely at their side.

      “ It looks as though we will make the journey to the planet’s surface together. If you have objections, I can arrange for another assignment. ”

    “Is there a reason I ought to object?”

    His isn’t a face she quickly recognizes, although the armor and aura (oh, Aura) immediately register as paladin in her head. Was he at Light’s Hope - did she or her knights leave him broken on the ground, too?

    Zoen swallows, feels shattered glass scrape against her throat, and tries to (snarl) smile as she leans closer to him. “You plannin’ something nefarious, hero?”

    Let him, she doesn’t care. If it means she can escape the sweltering confines of the blessed Vindicaar, she’ll suffer the machinations of a vengeful Silver Hand. And if those machinations happen to succeed - if this is to be her final resting place, or if he just kicks her off the side of the broken world to tumble endlessly through the Nether -

    Well.

          A map of Azeroth is placed before him, long and sprawling with figurines depicting different troop movements. Horde, Alliance, and now Legion pieces litter it like a child’s board game. There’s nothing childish about it, though. The entire world relies on the cunning and strategic advice of people like Varian—and reports of people like Zoen Mith.

          Which, considering her parentage and the atrocities surrounding them both, seems like a tall order. Thus far she’s proven to be resourceful and useful, despite what those who cry for blood may think otherwise. Varian trusts her.

          “ Tell me what you’ve been up to, ” he says, attempting to reign in the tone he normally reserves for when Anduin deigns it appropriate to be mischievous and sneaky. It’s hard when he considers her as much his daughter as Anduin is his son.

    “Your Majesty, always a pleasure.” He deserves so much more than the little dip of a head she gives him as she slides into the proffered seat, one arm hooked across the back as the other drums staccato against her thigh. Tiris’ absence is a gaping hole that makes her feel a bit off-kilter, but she will not hold it against him for seeking Anduin’s company, nor Anduin for so easily commanding her wolf’s affection. In another place and time, it might have made her tetchy with the king, but... the years between them are long, and Zoen is not so young and unsure anymore that she finds it necessary to bare her teeth at everything like a wounded animal. Not even Varian Wrynn.

         Especially not Varian Wrynn.

    "The usual. Murder.” She grins, bright and cheerful. Killing forces who had intended to conquer and destroy probably isn’t actually murder, but they’d been so easy to fell that no other word really felt accurate. 

     Plus, she wants to see his face.

     A little Dreadlord figurine catches her attention at the bottom of her perception, reminding her of her true reason for coming. Sobered, the Wraith leans forward in her seat, seeking the king’s eye. The hand that had been tapping tightens into a fist atop her leg.

   “Been hearing... things, from up north. Sort of. They’re all in here,” she reaches up to tap at the side of her skull, “and I’m not the only one. It’s not urgent, especially with the Legion gearing up, but it’s not nothing, either.”