Deception (a World of Warcraft Fanfic)

Stay With Me

Lion's landing was peculiarly calm when I arrived the next morning to join the alliance troops. To my surprise, it seemed none were gathered.

In fact, it's inhabitants was rather benign compared to the quotidian chaos. It was nice to see people out and about enjoying themselves for once, but despite the calm, this war wasn't over. Where were the troops? Had they left without me.

I made my way to the docks, perhaps the higher ranking officers of the naval fleet would have some insight on the plan.

"Hello there! Watch your step, just laid some new planks to replace the ones damaged earlier this week and haven't quite gotten to nailing them all in yet," A dockhand warned, "Say, aren't you Anduin's friend? He's back so soon?"

"Yes, but I haven't seen him this morning, did he go somewhere?"

"Probably not far, he traveled light, just a cloak and some hammer. My guess is he was just fetching a tool for one of the technicians, they've been working on a siege engine that broke down a while back. Funny story about that..."

"I'm sorry, but I don't have much time. Have you any idea where the king is?"

"Likely in his study as usual." The man resumed his work.

"What on earth would he need a hammer for...?" I asked myself. It wasn't like Anduin to just leave without waiting for me to join him. Something wasn't right.

"Hope they figure out where Garrosh has taken that bell soon. Search parties for it left just hours ago."

"WHAT!?" Thwack! I had startled the worker into hammering his own thumb. His scream could be heard all around the vacant Lions landing.

After a fit of vulgar words, he was able to tell me more, "All our forces are out searching the wilds for signs of the bell, some believe it's been stored at domination point due to it's high security. Seems reasonable, I mean, it's the best lead yet..."

A second scream interrupted the peace of the crashing waves against the docks.

"Just when I though I was going to have an easy day..." The worker groaned, rising to his feet to join me to investigate.

The scream came from inside the fortress, Varian had already arrived at the scene of the crime.

At first glance, nothing seemed out of order. The room remained neat, and lacked any signs of struggle. The scream had come from a night elf ranger, who was repeating the same thing over and over again in her foreign tongue, clearly startled.

The worker understood, "She's saying 'they took it'. Who, Milah, and what did they take?"

She began to ramble in some more, this time in common, "From right under our noses! Oh, first the bell, now this!? Our people have failed the alliance and all of Pandaria! We were supposed to protect it... how did we let it get away!?"

"Milah calm down! The horde used betrayal of neutral allies to retrieve the bell, none of us could have seen it coming. Would you please tell us what's wrong?" Varian attempted to calm the elf.

"The hammer..."

"What hammer? Milah, did you break a tool? Geez, get a grip! There's plenty more hammers in the-"

"What did you say Anduin left with?" I interrupted the worker. I slowly began to share Milah's concern.

"He left this morning with a pretty fancy hammer, I though nothing of it." He defended himself, voice shaking. I hadn't noticed the arcane energy swelling in my hands, I suppressed it, taking a deep breath.