Chapter 1: The blue mercenary
Running, again.
Why did they do that? Why were the orcs chasing us like that? What was driving them? Why were they spreading fear and death with this sudden demonic power? Why that green skin, those bloodshot eyes?
But this was no time for questions.
"Stropo, take my hand."
Mom.
"How much further to Shattrath?" I asked.
With her face covered in mud and her teeth clenched, she looked to my father for the answer.
Then she turned to me.
"I don't know."
Her tone of voice was authoritative, but her bright eyes expressed terror.
Dozens of us had fled Sha'naar, west of the Tanaan jungle. I didn't know the world beyond, nor did my parents. Sha'naar had always been our home, our calm and blessed universe. All I remember is that one day there were flames, screams and blood. In the chaos, we fled in scattered groups far from the roads; more often we had to crawl than to walk, in humus teeming with insects, through dense, suffocating, sometimes poisonous vegetation, scratching ourselves, weeping, thrown without explanation into a misfortune as profound as it was absurd.
We knew that Shattrath would be a refuge, but, now lost in the byways and clammy darkness of the Zangarra swamp, we had also lost all notion of space and time.
What we were sure of was that we were being hunted by those vile dimensional trackers trained by orc hunters, beasts capable of rendering themselves invisible, with acute hearing and sense of smell.
The attack was by night. Drenched in blood I woke up because of the horrific screams of my neighbor. I caught a vague glimpse of one of these beasts chewing on... a piece of the neighbor, I guess. In any case, it was dripping and mixed with cloth. I felt my father's arm lift me off the ground. He and my mother ran, their eyes widening in panic, until they came to a steep slope where they threw themselves down together. We rolled for a moment before coming to rest in a bed of big, sticky, awful-smelling mushrooms. It was their caps and their stench that saved us. Our companions probably all perished.
But for some reason, the orcs sensed that some of their prey was still missing: us.
Running, again.
"How much further to Shattrath? I asked.
— Stop it, Stropo!" replied my mother furiously. Fear was making her aggressive.
"Look!"
My father pointed at something. In the distance, between the giant mushrooms, we could make out in the mist the vague outlines of wooden buildings built on the cap of a mushroom that was slightly taller than its neighbors.
"It must be a refuge," he said seriously. He didn't want to rejoice too quickly and continued to watch for any sign of our pursuers.
A road passed in front of the refuge. It seemed deserted in both directions. Still, my father was afraid of making a mistake. He made us hide behind a shrub covered in blue moss. My mother was frightened, but he signaled that he would go anyway. Using his mage powers – which, unfortunately, were very modest – he teleported to the other side of the road, already on the slope of an embankment. We saw him reach the foot of the mushroom and attract the attention of a refugee, who left to alert others.
A moment later, a platform magically descended from the top of the refuge to take us in. My father finally smiled and began to walk back towards the shrub to lead us to safety.
Then I heard my mother exclaim as she stood up, then a strange sound, that of a sharp knock against a door. Knock! I turned towards her and saw her chest pierced by an arrow. Without time to understand or react, I was suddenly blinded by a curtain of fire.
My body was covered in flames.
Through the fiery veil covering my face, a few meters behind my mother, I saw a hooded orc in a long robe staring at me intently. I was suffocating; the pain was so powerful it prevented me from breathing or thinking. As I tried to flee, or at least move, haggard, shocked and confused, he mumbled a formula in his language, the hoarse accents of which still echo in my memory – though I can't transcribe any word he pronounced.
I felt a volcano erupt in my body. My heart pumped magma through my veins. My head vibrated as blood and flames spurted from the corners of my eyes, my nostrils, my mouth, the inside of which I could feel drying and splitting like a barren wasteland. But above all, under my skin, every nerve tensed and screamed. I learned pain and madness. I learned the song of the abyss. I learned the cry of the soul. The cry I uttered then, the last cry of my existence, the last echo of my childhood.
"What are you writing?"
Stropovitch briskly closed his notebook and glared at the individual who had just apostrophized him.
"Oh, don't be offended, I can't read your handwriting, I can't make any sense of it."
Stropovitch's gaze didn't soften in the slightest.
"All right, my apologies, ah! Let me introduce myself, Jack, well, it's just to give a name, eh heh heh."
The individual named "Jack" held out his hand to his interlocutor, who ignored it and continued to stare.
Jack swallowed. From this mercenary known as Stropovitch emanated a dark, disquieting aura, a heavy sadness and at the same time a latent brutality. His impressive build and the two long swords he wore at his sides didn't reassure the valet either.
But in fact the draenei – if that was indeed the name of these large blue aliens with a tail and hooves – was a reference in his profession, and there was none more prized than him from the Wetlands to Darkshire. Firstly, he was a draenei, so he had no personal connection with the problems of the various regions of Azeroth. Secondly, he always fulfilled his contracts quickly and neatly. Finally, he was a mute, so if he got caught, nothing would transpire from him.
The meeting place the draenei had set was rather unusual. It was a dilapidated, crumbling and isolated inn: on Sentinel Hill, in the Westfall. The old, dirty, crazy and deaf innkeeper, who had never left this place despite having no customers, looked on, chewing her thumb, with a blissful air, at the man dressed as a casual city-dweller, with beret and shirt spilling over his pants, and the colossal draenei who hadn't lightened himself of the slightest piece of armor.
Jack sighed.
"I'll come to the point. Nothing complicated for you. Basically, the daughter of the man who sent me was kidnapped, you see. The kidnappers are asking for a ransom the old man doesn't want to pay, like... even your services are three times cheaper."
The draenei raised an eyebrow half a millimeter.
"Yeah, you heard me right, a huge ransom. Not like a normal ransom, since it's not just the girl's life that's threatened, you see." He put on an air of finesse. "Yeah, the old man's got things to hide, and things that really can't be told, heavy stuff, that the kidnappers, a little group of scoundrels who call themselves the Violet Clan, are threatening to divulge."
Stropovitch's gaze became thoughtful, which disconcerted Jack a little, who dropped his sarcastic air and said, as if suddenly irritated: "Basically, your job is to find out where the guys are and shut them up. Bring the girl here. I'll see you in three days. Okay?"
Stropovitch thought. Jack watched him curiously. The draenei held up two fingers.
"Two days? Is that enough time to locate them?"
The other didn't respond in the slightest.
"Okay, okay, okay in two days," said Jack, who was starting to get really exasperated. "By the way," he added, rising to his feet, "you don't seem to mind that I'm not giving you any clues as to how to find her. Your employer told me you'd manage, and I find that hard to believe. It's just that any clue he might give you could reveal who he is, and he doesn't want to do that, you see. So, basically, you don't know anything. No problem?"
Then Stropovitch, much to Jack's surprise, drew a sword, took out a small stone from one of his leather bags and began to sharpen the blade, impassive. Jack turned away with a trembling rage he couldn't understand himself.
Stropovitch thought again. This Jack was clearly only a servant, a valet at most, to a nobleman. The latter hadn't wanted to show himself to the mercenary, but in fact, the one who knew the least at the moment was Jack. Through him, the nobleman had revealed what he really wanted, since giving no clues encouraged Stropovitch to keep only the most likely explanations. The fact that the "kidnappers" were aware of what the nobleman wanted to hide certainly meant that he had become involved in a plot, then disassociated himself from it – and now the plotters were holding his daughter hostage to ensure his silence. But the nobleman didn't want to reveal the plot publicly, which might also reveal that he'd been involved. No, he wanted Stropovitch to discreetly clean up the mess and put an end to it.
The draenei sighed. The fish was big. Violet Clan – how could the valet not have realized that this absurd name hid his real target, Van Cleef, the former architect betrayed by the nobility of Stormwind, now master of the Defias brotherhood, and whose death many wished. Stropovitch didn't need any special instructions. Jack's master knew that Van Cleef had under his command men of all origins, some of whom worked as mercenaries when they had the time between pirate campaigns or farm raids. In short, they came from the same background as Stropovitch. This nobleman was sure that the draenei had contacts within the brotherhood. And that he'd have no trouble using them to get to their hideout.
This nobleman was definitely intelligent.
Stropovitch was still reluctant to accept. He might have to kill acquaintances – even though he hadn't made any special friends. But the sum of money promised was staggering. It was a golden plan, one of those plans that allow the mercenary to be sure of spending the winter in the warm – something Stropovitch felt he needed after long months of uneasy, even arduous, low-paying missions.
What's more, some of his opponents would be no pushovers. A great opportunity to train for his true purpose, the purpose that alone had kept him alive for the past two years: to carry out his two acts of vengeance, to make his two enemies suffer the worst, to cut them up, to peel them, to consume them, even if it meant consuming himself with them by staring into their eyes, right down to the bottom of their souls.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone