| rdfs:comment | - It’s funny to me…she’s been warned about this sort of thing before, and eidetic memory or not, she won’t act on it. Creature comfort found in habit is one of the few things that she allows to dull her edge. That’s what’s key. Still, there’s a definite need for caution when having a go at a badger in its den, especially one that has spent the past several weeks with her hackles raised in a constant state of ready. I wander back to the Gallows’ End, slipping an envelope containing a cloth mask into the mailbox by the front door, then walk to the Undercity and catch a flight to Tarren Mill.
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| abstract | - It’s funny to me…she’s been warned about this sort of thing before, and eidetic memory or not, she won’t act on it. Creature comfort found in habit is one of the few things that she allows to dull her edge. That’s what’s key. Still, there’s a definite need for caution when having a go at a badger in its den, especially one that has spent the past several weeks with her hackles raised in a constant state of ready. Fel damn the chatterbox who let slip the fact that she was going to be a target. I mean, any idiot ought to have known that it was only a matter of time, but they didn’t have to make it so fucking obvious. I guess that’s why they needed to take things on with a different approach. In the gloom, I can still see Hakk’s touch all over the place. Evidently she’s done little to personalize the place since he took a step back into the shadows. It all goes back to the creature comfort thing. She can boast an exterior like adamantite, but at her core, she’s still a child and there’s nothing that’ll ever change that. Not entirely. Symptom of her condition…she’ll never fully grow into what she would have been. I settle in the ample darkness at the back of the basement and wait, motionless and phased out of view. It’s not a skill in which I’m particularly strong, but the circumstances place things squarely in my favor here. She won’t expect it here. Nobody knows about this place. I smell the fragrant smoke of her cigarette on the air a full five minutes before she makes her way in, pulling open the trapdoor and plunking down the ladder. She settles on the floor without a sound and looks around briefly, noted only by slight changes in the way she tilts her head. Satisfied, she pulls the drawstring on the cellar door and it closes with the muffled thud of weight against wet wood. There she stands, this gawky, waif of a child who has had a hand in more bloodshed and dirty deeds than an entire barracks worth of crusted veterans. Had I gotten my claws on her before anyone else, she could’ve proved every bit as useful as any other loyal pet, but there’s nothing to be done about that now. She stiffens ever so slightly as I watch her, her posture shifting subtly to that of a cat ready to prowl. A new approach was in order. I take a slight step backwards, my form melting back into the shadows, and then I instantly pull forward behind her, right arm cocked with my sap in hand. It comes down across the back of her skull with a muffled thud a little like the slam of the cellar door and she falls prone to the floor. I kneel beside her and rip the earbud out of her ear, pushing the small red button on the side of it and tossing it across the floor. A few seconds later, it explodes, kicking up a cloud of dust and debris. Paying it no mind, I pull her mask from her eyes and slip it in my pocket, wrap her face in a bolt of imbued netherweave cloth and pull the drawstring tightly around her neck, then hogtie her wrists and ankles with another strip of the magically enhanced cloth. I strip her bare and take every blade, every point and every tool she has from her, piling them off to the side. At this point she’s begun to stir slightly, so I brain her with the sap again and hoist her up, dropping her body in a thick cloth bag that I tie shut with yet another imbued tie. Slipping the straps of the bag over my shoulders, I climb the ladder and push the cellar door open, hoist the two of us out and then close it behind me, scattering some decaying hay over it. I make my way out into Tirisfal, moving to the outer edge of the mostly peaceful area into the unmanned graveyard between the Scarlet Monastery and the Bulwark. I set the bag down for a moment, move to one of the unassuming embedded tombstones and pull it to the side, revealing a stone-lined pit that rests nearly ten feet deep. I grab the bag and toss it down the hole, then push the tombstone back, covering the opening completely. I wander back to the Gallows’ End, slipping an envelope containing a cloth mask into the mailbox by the front door, then walk to the Undercity and catch a flight to Tarren Mill. A burst of static flared over the coms as Krelle's unit detonated. Grumbles from tigers about the noise went unanswered. In the basement of the fishmonger's one of the lights on a long console winked off. Krassik never did hear from Lucky that night. The pearls that Mei left in Booty Bay didn't get picked up. And then the letter arrived. I return to the graveyard, pushing the tombstone aside ever so slightly for just a moment. I don't want to give the kitten a chance to flash it's claws. A fist sized pouch of Dream Dust and ground Nightmare Vine is dumped down into the pit, immediately scattering in the air of the chamber as it spills downward. In the Dream Dust's luminescence, I catch a brief glimpse of her hunkered down in the corner of the pit, completely still and poised to strike at anything within reach. I smirk to myself as I pull the tombstone back once again. The nightmares begin.
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