World of Warcraft®

Fastice blinked awake in a surprisingly comfortable bed. What had happened? The last thing he remembered was...He was on the bridge right outside the Undercity. He felt dizzy, then...this. He attempted to sit up and clutched at his chest in pain. What in the world was happening to him?

The room was warm. So warm. Or was that him? He couldn't tell. He tried to look around, to get his bearings, only to find his vision blurry. He looked down. He was certainly no longer in his armor, instead wrapped in soft linen pants and a shirt, that looked to be dotted with something...red. Paint? Couldn't be. Must be blood. Coughing once...twice...three times...he felt a warm, sticky glob in his mouth. Looking around, he spotted a silver goblet that he spat in to. Red, again.

Blinking with heavy eyes is harder than it sounds. After a few times, vision began to return to him, slightly. Was anyone around? "he-h-hello...?". It came out as little more than a squeak, at first. He grabbed a glass full of what looked like water, and drank a large amount of it. Water, good. "H-hello?" A bit louder, this time.

The surroundings began to look familiar. He'd seen the decor before. Could it be? Was this actually the library? But how, he was in the Undercity. He is...no, he isn't. He's lying in bed, in blood spotted clothes. "Anyone?" Raspy, but louder. More water. He felt like he couldn't get enough. The glass was empty now. It almost landed on the table, but rather decided it would be more fitting on the floor, in a dozen pieces.

"Anyone?!" He's able to get quite a bit louder now. "Please...help!"

Gezelda kicked open the door loudly, she was carrying a tray with some food on it "Heya Icy! Thought yo could use something to eat! Beni and me dragged you back to the library! Ya looked real bad what with all the blood barfing!" She walked up to his bed and set the tray down on a nearby table.

He looked utterly confused. "Uh...blood...what?"

Squinting at the tray, his vision still blurry, he sighed, laying backwards. "Miss Fizzlesprocket, what happened? Where am I? I don't...Nngh."

Another coughing fit came upon him. Blood spattered all over his clothes for a few seconds before he thought to put his hand in front of his mouth. "What is going on..."

He shakes his head, regretting it almost immediately as the dizziness came upon him. He could barely move, let alone try and move so suddenly.

Lifting a shaky hand, he reached up to the tray, grabbing a random article of food and chewing on it slightly. It tasted odd. Almost like...metal. Copper, maybe? Oh...right.

"What happened last night? I remember the bridge. I was walking next to you and Ben, then...fel, it's just dark after that. I can't even remember how I got here. How did I get here, Gez?"

Gezelda guffaed and poured him a glass of wine. "Beni and I had to drag your icy metal butt all the way back here, that's how you got here! Lemme tell ya it wasn't easy!" She put her hands on her hips, eyeing him up and down. "You're in the library, at the dorms. And we're not really sure what happened you just...got really sick all at once!"

He plops back down on the bed, basically having given up. "It's so hot in here, Gez. I don't understand, it's never hot." He swallows hard, trying so desperately to get the blood out of his mouth. No luck.

He grabbed the glass of water Gez brought in on the tray, and downed it in three gulps. Still blood. "Was everyone...did anyone at the...the fundraiser see me like this?"

“I heard she pinched the Mad Dog’s bum, right in the middle of the fundraiser.”

“Archivist Dawnsong?!”

“No! Of course not! It was Chef Fizzlesprocket.”

“Oh. Well. That makes much more sense. And it’s Inquisitor Bloodwing, mind.”

“You know who I meant.”

A pair of the Library’s ever dutiful interns walked the halls of the guest dorms. A girl in her teens carried a silver tray laden with a vial of tonic and a bottle of stark white pills. A boy around the same age walked alongside her, just there to keep the girl company. They carried on chatting in hushed voices.

“So is that who the medicine’s for? Inquisitor Bloodwing? Marius said he saw a man being carried in just covered--completely drenched in blood. ”

“No, no. That was Ser Blackblade.”

“Who?”

“You know, Blackblade Security.”

“Oh right. The guy who got in a fist fight with the Inquisitor at Thunder Bluff, right?”

“Yeah. That’s the one.”

“So, what, did they have another brawl last night?”

“Well, not with each other, but there were these tauren who called Chef Fizzlesprocket a -- anyway, that’s not how he got injured.”

“So, what happened?”

“It was the strangest thing! Ser Blackblade just started coughing up a lung and spewing blood like some fountain cherub. But, you know, with blood.”

“Delightful.”

“Charming.”

“So why did the Archivist bring him here? Doesn’t he have his own facili--Archivist Dawnsong!”

The interns shut up at the sight of Benoite. The three converged at the door of Ser Blackblade’s guestroom.

“Miss Haleshorn, Mister Nightsworn, the Sun keep you.” Benoite Dawnsong curtseyed to them with as much deference as she showed her colleagues.

“And you, Archivist,” chorused the interns in unison, blushing at the thought that Miss Dawnsong might have overheard them.

Benoite showed no sign that she had, smiling warmly at the youths. “Mister Nightsworn, I’d be quite happy to take that tray in for you.”

“Tray? Happy? Oh! Right! I .. Um … Th… Thank you, Archivist!”

Sarasri Haleshorn arched a brow and watched her friend turn into a bumbling fool. Archivist Dawnsong only maintained her gentle smile as she took the tray from the boy’s suddenly shaking hands.

“Thank you, Mister Nighsworn. Miss Haleshorn. I shan’t keep you any longer. Please do give my best to the doctor and thank her again for her services last night.”

“Yes, Archivist Dawnsong.”

Benoite watched the interns depart for their station with the Library's on-staff physician. The young archivist indulged in a soft sigh before she knocked on the door of the guest dorm room.

She hummed, though nobody could hear. She greeted with a shy smile and a tuck of her straight, dark hair. As she hovered up the North Wing steps, a door was held and she thanked the sturdy young man with a sunny and sincere gratitude.

The appreciation was lost on him. On his unreceptive senses. He frowned, miffed, as she floated inside silently.

Choir had become accustomed to this. She had read a study once, of an orca in the Northern Seas, who sung at the wrong frequency. She swam and cried, swam and cried, but none could come to comfort her. They simply could not hear.

As she entered the multi-tiered expanse of the wing's curving, shelved domain, she slipped a tiny pair of sandals from her purse and wriggled her toes into them. Inside, she would walk. And they might just glimpse her, this reedy dead girl with a creamy yellow sun-dress shifting about her knees and they might murmur, but the Inquisitorial seal at her shoulder warded against any prolonged scrutiny. There were an awful lot of -those- people in the Library lately. It was best to let them go about their business in peace.

Choir approached the central desk with her carefree gait. Paused a few feet away to dig in her purse. A pair of well-kept novellas plunked down on the smooth mahogany surface. The nearest Librarian scrawled one last adjustment to his ledger before attending her.

"Welcome to the- Oh! Its you! Hello again."

Bastian was a studious man of some thirty years, half of which he had spent in the employ of the Royal Library. This very room, in fact. There had been opportunities to grow, to move up, as it were. But Bastian suffered from the impoverishment of the sociopathic spirit required to make it big time. He adjusted his round glasses with an upturned palm. Choir beamed at him sunnily.

"Returning so soon? At this rate, you'll have a better working knowledge of our collection than our own staff."

The dead girl just smiled and shifted, foot to foot. Kept her eyes on the little books between them.

"Well," Bastian continued. "You've got the best of timing. We've just gotten -get ready for this- a second edition of Boylstyle's Lives. You should swipe it up before one of the Archivists finds out. You'd never get the chan-"

There.

A sharp where a flat would have belonged. A single -wrong- note, from the back of the symphony.

A deeply troubled soul, shredding his deeply troubled mind.

Choir held her smile, nodded to the Librarian's enthusiasm. She'd seen the Dreadmistress do it one thousand times. But without further ado, she concluded her exchange, tucked away Boylstyle's masterpiece and all but glided back out the door.

She worked her thin lip with her perfect teeth, reaching out with her mind. Pinpointing the source of the sound. The wrong frequency, drawing her concern.

Choir whispered her pardons as she drifted toward the dormitory. The interns frowned in her passing.

How rude. She didn't even say 'scuse me'.

Fastice sat up straight, getting really dizzy as he did. Still, he could guess who that may have been at the door. He tries to say something, it just comes out as raspy noises.

Grabbing more water, he downs it. And manages to squeak out a barely audible "Come in"