Fyve 1: A Day In The Life
Fyve: Just Another Day.
This is the story of a typical day in the life of Fyve. You might as well call it the story of his life, up to a point at least...
The sun inched grudgingly over the horizon of Zul'Drak. There was no cacophony of bird song to welcome it's presence. The only sound was the slight rustle of a dead leaf here or there, the sounds of the local denizens of the area.... The slithering, scurrying, quiet - lest they be eaten by eachother - inhabitants of the area of Zul'Drak known as Heb'Valock. Heb'Valock was a shithole. In it's hayday; before the resident trolls turned on their Gods and tried to steal their power ( wreaking havoc upon their home in their selfish pursuit, and making it all the more easy for the undead pestilence known as the Scourge to invade and suck the life from Zul'Drak ), Heb'Valock may have been a magestic place. A sanctuary or maybe a place of power and worship. Whatever it was, it was now a run-down, rotting, crumbling carcass of a place. Nothing green grew in the area, save maybe mold.
On the roof of a delapidated stone structure that had somehow managed to withstand time and corruption, thus far with all of its walls, a shadow of a shadow stirred. It wasn't a mist or an absence of light. More an ill-defined outline of a creature or man. It made no sound, save slow, shallow, quiet breathing. Breath so slight, like that of a child in slumber that is in the stage of sleep beyond dreaming. The place where one might think, "The little angel, is he dead?" but then there is breath... hardly a sigh, to reassure whoever may be watching that it is only sleep.
Fyve eased forward to the edge of the roof and peered down. He quietly unsheathed both his daggers. Removing a vial from the sturdy netherweave bag that he brought with him on jobs, he tilted it against a scrap of worn and soft leather, dampening it with poison. This, he ran across the ends and edges of the deadly-sharp blades. Having done that, he resumed his watch at the edge of the roof, taking note of the annoyingly rising sun, and waited.
The man, the blood elf, that he was being commissioned to end, was late in waking. He normally came out before the sun brought its icy white light to reveal the dead grey surroundings. He usually began his work early. The elf, something - Arnath's current burden was the collecting of assorted strange and often foul ingredients for the undead apothecary that busily worked inside, ignoring day and night (for what use have the undead of such things as rest? They rest when they are dead - again.) to create whatever vile potion or plague he was creating. What the apothecary did was inconsequential to Fyve. What mattered only was that the apothecary never came out. The blood elf had been attacked and wounded more than once by the creatures that supplied the ingredients, just outside the doorway of the building. The apothecary never wandered outside to check on his health. He was, after all, only a tool - a means to his ends - and replaceable. There was no love lost between either of them.
Just as the hired killer was ready to curse it, call it a day, and pull out his flask, he heard a tired yawn and the shuffling of feet. The tall, effeminate man was finally awake. Not a moment too soon! It was safer to work in the dark, whenever possible. Despite the isolation of the area, the troll still preferred to do what he had to do before the sun had touched the shadowy places. Because you never know.
Crouching over the doorway to the building, Fyve held his breath as the elf appeared beneath him. He held both daggers in his clumsy-looking large hands in a manner that gave the impression that he had been born with them gripped between the two fingers and thumb of each. Just as he was about to drop onto the young man, something, a certain sixth-sense that yearns to alert a body of his or her imminent doom possibly, caused him to turn and look at the roof. He saw nothing, but that somehow felt wrong to him. The troll was used to it, wasn't startled in the least as the pale face turned up toward him. Let him look, there was nothing to see. It wasn't common, but sometimes that sense seemed to nudge his victims to be ready to defend themselves. They always reacted too late.
He lunged and landed on Arnath.
Both daggers planted themselves firmly in the front of the man's shoulders, between his armpits and collar bone. He didn't scream... the towering troll's leather-clad body had landed forcefully on his chest, his knees pressing the other and knocking the wind out of him. He reached for both of the buried daggers automatically as the troll became visible. Fyve obliged immediately, yanking the daggers from muscle and bone and allowing the hapless elf's blood to flow freely. He would have slit his throat to further insure silence and death but the young man wore a high-collared leather shell of the popular fashion. These were designed to prevent such a quick and irreversible injury from being inflicted in these war-tortured times.
As it were, throat slitting wasn't necessary. The poisons were already beginning their work. The troll stared into the dying target's eyes. There was no sense of pleading there, no sadness or emotion. Only the uncomprehending abject terror of a rabbit that had fallen prey to a cat. "We are all beasts in the end", he thought. "Not just the trolls and the bovine tauren, but the humans and the dwarves... the blood elves too, with their hairless pink skin and their five-fingered hands. Despite what some may tell themselves, we are animals." He waited for the moment to arrive, and the elf did not disappoint. The final look... that of recognition. It was a common visage on one that was being murdered and who knew they were dying. He was ended.
The elf's body trembled as his lungs made one last great effort to expand despite the weight of his killer, and then fell still. His hands dropped from the bracers that wrapped Fyve's forearms like a thick, leathery and cracked skin. His eyes rolled upward as if the trees behind him held the answer... the reason for this sudden and final indignation which would never be revealed to him. Ah, the unfairness of it all.
Once he was sure that Arnath was through, he automatically wiped the blood and poison stained blades against the elf's body and dropped them deftly back into the sheaths on his belt. The act had been done cleanly, without much splatter. The job was finished. He would return to his employer to receive his pay, probably never to hear from him again. Anyone offering much work to a rogue killer like Fyve was either very powerful and well-guarded, or had a very short future. The fat, stupid blood elf that had commissioned this death was not very powerful. But there was work to be had elsewhere, always.
Climbing the stone walls easily, he returned to his bag and slung it onto his shoulder, dropping from the roof on the other side of the building. He paused to rub one long and curved tusk against the stone outer wall for a moment, grunting with quiet pleasure. There had been a burr there that was annoying him when he touched his tusk, a pointless habit. He removed it easily. Rubbing his tusks against anything solid always produced a strangely satisfying sensation that could only be known to a male troll, or possibly a boar. Not that the rogue knew or cared.
Disappearing into the shrinking shadows, he moved swiftly in the direction he had come from. A diseased crow landed on the dead elf's face and began to peck away.
-end
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