Andaeros Dawnflare

Terms

Telemancy.

The arcane discipline of teleportation. Joining two distant pin-points on a map together, by folding space, by travelling along ley-lines, by passing through the nether, through the aether. Instantaneously traveling tens, hundreds, thousands of miles, thousands of thousands.

It’s an exciting concept. One moment you’re here and then then next moment you’re there. You could be on another world, on another plane entirely. It’s convenient, it’s safe when performed by a veteran magus. People love it.

But, then there’s me.

I’ve had portal sickness from the day I first stepped through a portal. Long before I learned to master the arcane. Long before I made myself immune to magic. I’m sure my wards don’t help the process. It’s harmless for most people, even if they do feel something; maybe there’s a full-body tingle, maybe they stumble like they misjudged their step, but most folk don’t feel a thing. I do. And, it only gets worse the longer a distance I travel.

When I step through a portal I am immediately, viscerally aware that I am nowhere for an instant. I lose track of up and down, east and west. My weight shifts, simultaneously feeling pulled in every direction, weightless, and encumbered by own mass. My vision tunnels. My stomach wrenches. I lose my breath.

And then I’m there, in Orgrimmar.

I gasped to try and refill my lungs, only to find my mouth full of smoke. My nostrils flared, and I could smell iron and sweat and cinders, the mildew on the walls of the Drag. My eyes dilated and contracted, not sure if it was too bright or too dark, taking a few moments to discover that it was, yes, too dark in this cave, lit only by the ethereal glow of maintained portals, the dying embers of barely-maintained braziers swinging on rusted chains, and what sunlight could find its way into the cavernous underbelly of Orgrimmar.

I was on my feet when I arranged for the portal in Silvermoon, but I was on my hands and knees now, desperately trying to keep my insides from becoming my outsides, dry-heaving once or twice for good measure.

I spit on the ground and I panted, still catching my breath and making sure my legs were ready to function.

The forsaken telemancer behind me apparently found it amusing. It was muffled by pressure, my ears adjusting to a swift ascent, or descent, though, neither were really applicable. I stretched my jaw to try and bring my hearing into focus, trying to pop my ears. His laughter was like creaky gravel, a perpetually deep, scratchy sound that I found too grating, right now. Emotionally, of course, not aurally. I usually preferred to be alone when I recovered from my debilitation.

I picked myself up and dusted myself off, a hand on my stomach to keep it still as I walked. I had time to kill before my meeting with Blazzil. I wasn’t going to talk to that slimy bastard on an upset stomach. I wasn’t going to let him see me weak. I had a hunch he would see it, that weakness, and file it away in a catalogue of things to use against me.

The sun hit me, almost like a physical weight, a sudden heat on my shoulders and light in my eyes. Ugh. I kept walking, up through the winding canyon-valleys of the trade-streets. Orgrimmar had a different life to it than Silvermoon, it had a different rhythm. You walked differently, the sand slowing your pace a bit more than the cobblestones of Silvermoon, but the steady tings of the blacksmith hammers made you want to march a bit faster. Traffic in the streets was less formal, people walked up and down on either side, and you either gave people a berth or you took a check to your shoulder. There were deep drumbeats on the hour, and the occasional screech of wyverns in formation in the sky. All cities were alive, in some way, but Orgrimmar was aggressive and boisterous. It made sense to me.

It didn’t take too long to find a serviceable bar. I wasn’t unfamiliar with Orgrimmar, and the Valley of Honor was where I’d done most of my drinking last time I was here. It was where I met Makara and learned that two broken ribs meant foreplay to orcs. I remembered the troll bartender, Gravy, and I ordered a double of firewater from him. It was ten minutes before I touched it. I wanted to let my stomach settle before my double-serving of liquid patience. I was going to need it to stay calm talking to Blazzil and whatever associates were in his bar.

I made each sip last. I wasn’t in any rush. I didn’t care if I kept that asshole waiting.

The sun was just coming down off its apex when I stepped back onto the streets and headed to “The Oilcan”. On the other side of the city, the trolls and the goblins cohabitated near the Southfury river, with trollish huts, tall reeds, and shallow ponds giving way to sheet-metal buildings, electric lights, copper tubes, and polluted water.

“The Oilcan” was, fittingly, an oily blue-black building, done up with gaudy, flickering green-yellow lights along the roof and the borders of its port-hole windows. Big, wooden arrows on springs said its name and pointed towards it. Buoys rocked on artificial oil ponds and flashed red like alarm-lights. Uneven wooden planks were set in a winding path from the road to the door through the mud and polluted ground. Twin spot-lights flanked the door, and a goblin in mechanic’s overalls worked on a broken trike out front.

I couldn’t stand the sight of the place. It made me feel just a little greasy looking at it.

I took a smoke, watching the place from a post down the road, where one of the mouths of the drag came up into the daylight. I cupped the bead of fire at the tip of my cigarette as I smoked, the heat dangerously close to my palm as I held it at the filter.

It was an old sailor’s and soldier’s habit that I first picked up from Artennis. On a dark ship on the ocean or during the night on a guard shift, it hid the light of the cigarette from snipers and enemy scouts, so you didn’t get picked up or picked off on a smoke break.

I watched the mechanic out front ratchet the same bolt for ten minutes. He was a lookout.

I flicked my cigarette, or the dregs of what was left of it, into the red-orange sand and snuffed it out with a sigh. I had to get this over with.

I wasn’t ten feet away from the first wooden plank before the lookout turned the key in the trike’s ignition to “check” the engine, revving it to life with a monstrous roar before turning it off and making a few minor adjusts to nothing in the engine block as I walked by and opened the door. That was the signal.

Inside, there was the tinny, out of focus sound of a malfunctioning goblin jukebox, playing something inoffensively jazzy that I could barely hear over the humming racket of electric fans spinning overhead, with the occasional squeak of rust. The smell of cheap tobacco, decent beer, and sweat was offensively present, as were the sudden, momentary glances of a half-dozen pairs of goblin eyes in the room on me.

It wasn’t a big bar, with a smattering of mis-matched wooden tables, paired with mis-matched metal stools and flimsy chairs mostly sized for goblins arranged haphazardly in front of a sturdy, sheet-metal bar topped by cheap, overly knotted, but polished wood, shelves of cheap whiskey in colored glass lining the wall.

The bartender was an older goblin, honestly, the oldest goblin I’d ever seen. His hair was a wispy comb-over that refused to stay down, occasionally lifting and blowing in the artificial breeze of the fans. His ears were wrinkled and sagging, drooping with the weight of the silver bolts that were in his ears. He’d formed a plump second chin under his first, and his teeth were mostly silver, with a few yellowed teeth that weren’t long for the world. His brow looked impossibly heavy over his eyes, with thick, white tufts of eyebrows that dipped off from his face. His gaze settled on me as I sidled my way through the tables and conspicuous glances, chewing at something that probably wasn’t there in his mouth, his eyes defiantly keen through the glaze of old age. His voice was hoarse and speckled with mileage and smoke, his eyes returning to the countertop he was wiping down, “Blazzil’s in the back.”

His head tilted to one side, towards a set of swinging saloon doors, a bit of a whistle through his teeth, “Past the bathrooms. You’ll see the Twins.”

I nodded, wordlessly. I really didn’t have the patience for pleasantries.

The “Twins” stood at either side of a red steel door with a sliding peep-hole, each man dressed in a matching suit, crisp and clean, their hair slicked back into identical top-knot ponytails held in place by gold wire. They both wore goggles, pitch-black and reflective, and stared straight ahead, arms held at-ease in front of them, the unmistakable, pristine gleam of truesilver on one hip and a blocky communicator on the other.

They stopped me as I approached, both their hands raised up in unison.

They both looked up, with Right Goblin speaking first, “Andaeros Dawnflare?”

I couldn’t help but breath out with annoyance, “That’s me. Blazzil’s expecting me.”

They both hummed in thought, studying me through the reflective black of their lenses, Left Goblin turning to Right Goblin, their hands still raised “Spellbreakah?”

Right Goblin sneered, still looking up at me, “Spellbreakah.”

Their hands both lowered, both sets of knuckles rapping on the door behind them in unison, their voices a choir, “Go through.”

Their hands both moved to rest on the handles of the truesilver wands on their hips. They were thick, made solid with the stuff, with dark leather wrappings, handles molded into an ergonomic grip. Those weren’t just wands. Those were blasting rods.

Think of wands as a survival knife. Utilitarian. An all-purpose tool for a wizard to use to channel their magic as a focusing implement.  Blasting rods are more like zweihanders. Made for one purpose only: war.

These swords were sharp.

Each of them was inscribed, from base to tip with offensive rune-work. Some of the most efficient mana conservation enchantments I’d seen in a long career of magical warfare, with amplification runes that thrummed with solid, steady, and stable power under my arcane sight. These blasting rods weren’t even zweihanders. They were ballistas. Each one etched along the shaft in Orcish, with Right’s saying “Light ‘em up” and Left’s saying “Put ‘em on ice”.

Blazzil was not playing when it came to security. Those blasting rods had to be worth a small fortune, each, or a lot of time spent in an arcane laboratory. Those two were real magi. Those two were real killers.

The door tumbled and slid and clanked with the sound of a dozen heavy-duty locks and bolts before opening up to the bulk of Korag, twin broad-headed war-axes on either hip, dressed in a clean suit of his own, though it sat strangely on his form, with his muscles bulging out against the fabric, straining against it, a few buttons undone on his chest to make room for his broad chest. He seemed displeased to see me.

I smiled, and I tried to conjure as much poison as I could in it, “Afternoon Darng, or is it Korag? How’s your arm?”

Korag grunted and manhandled me without notice, his hands groping, squeezing, and patting me down, leaving no nook unchecked and no stone unturned. I had to give him credit, he knew his security, that was a squarely professional pat-down.

I readjusted and brushed off my shoulders, “If you liked me like that, Korag, I would’ve preferred grabbing a drink at the bar beforehand—”

I didn’t have much choice in entering the office as Korag grabbed my face and shoved me through, with a familiarity that I didn’t want to get used to.

Blazzil’s office was what I expected: a garish hodgepodge of low-brow bling, ill-gotten goods, and opulence. The walls were covered in fine, green wallpaper that seemed more at home in a study, which was a stark change from the splatter-job of the walls of the bar. Bookcases of fine mahogany held trinkets made of rare metals and gemstones and first-edition prints of classical literature that I gambled Blazzil hadn’t read, only keeping them for appearances. A matching mahogany liquor cabinet held a mish-mash of bottles of expensive whiskey that I’d had had a glass of only once or twice in my lifetime, old dwarven scotches and elven ryes, and cheap goblin hooch. He had a small wardrobe, with expensive imperial silk and premium cotton robes and shirts with thread counts too high to even feel, in offensive colors that almost seem like a waste of thread.

He sat behind a desk of intricately carved wood, stained in a rich reddish-brown with eagle heads carved in bas-relief at the top front-facing corners, wings extending along either side, that looked like it would be more at home in the estate of a human noble who thought himself two stations higher than their place. The size of it dwarfed him in the giant leather arm-chair he comfortably laughed in, idly and too-aggressively swirling the whiskey in his glass while a cigar burned slowly in his other hand. He gestured with his cigar towards a forsaken sat across from him, comfortably sat with a cup of tea in a matching, but smaller-backed armchair, “Hah! ‘How’s your arm” he says! Treatin’ Korag like he’s comin’ onta him! HAH! Andy’s got jokes! I loves jokes, don’t you, Doc?”

 The forsaken hummed with laughter, and nodded to Blazzil, “Oh, they are the finest balm, and laughter, the finest medicine.” He turned his head to look at me with a pleasant, placid smile, gesturing to the seat beside him with a hauntingly graceful wave of willowy, clawed fingers, his voice soft and accented, posh with a gentrified Lordaeronian lilt, “Ah, Mister Dawnflare, a distinct pleasure to meet you. I’m Doctor Ogden Von Strucker, though, more commonly known as “Doc” or “Stitch” or some combination thereof when on duty.”

The Doctor was impossibly gaunt and sickly white, occasionally marred by an unnatural grey blemish of the skin, dressed in silk robes that had become off-white with age, tattered at the sleeves. The robes hung loose on his emaciated form, but he kept then tight to him with a drawstring around his waist, and a few buckled straps on his sleeves.

Blazzil gestured, as well, to the chair, “My boy, Andy. How’s it hangin’? Sit. You want somethin’ ta drink? I know you’re a whiskey man, we got some o’ da same brands at least from what I saw in your place.” The way he said it was more command than request, “Doc here’s the best fuckin’ alchemist outside of the apothecary society and a world-class surgeon and he costs a pretty-fuckin’-penny ta keep on da payroll. He’s da medic for da fights, an’ he’s gonna be givin’ youse some pots for d’at broken shnozz o’ yers.”

I shook my head and I think I managed to keep the twitch of a sneer at bay as I lifted my hand in silent refusal of a drink. I nodded to the doctor perfunctorily, grunting a curt, “Pleasure.”

The doctor seemed unfazed by my curtness, but slightly offended by his introduction, lifting up a finger to Blazzil, “I am the best apothecary, even inside the Apothecary’s Society. I was ousted out of jealousy. They were intimidated by my academic and scientific ambition. I was set to revolutionize conventional healing alchemy and modern medicine. My panacea was going to be world-changing until the agents of orthodoxy and intellectual stagnation confiscated my works.” His lips never wavered in that perpetually placid smile, “But, yes, I am an alchemist, biologist, chirugeon, and dentist. Mr. Blazzil sells my capability and competency short.” He chuckled, something close to the tittering of a bird, “I won’t rest until I’ve a discipline for each letter of the alphabet! Exobiology is something I’m quite keen on, at the moment!”

Blazzil made a face, somewhat displeased at the Doctor’s displeasure, eyeing him with some amount of irritation as he spoke and continued to speak unprompted, “Irregardlessly. I just wanted ta let youse know what’s gonna be happenin’, because I’m respectables, like d’at.” He grinned, baring those sharp, golden teeth to chomp back down on his cigar and puff at it, offering a single waggle of his slick, trimmed eyebrows, fully aware of how unrespectable he was.

He took a pause to enjoy the cigar, even turning to hum with enjoyment, nodding to it and then pointing to me, “Fras fuckin’ Siabi, Andy. Da fuckin’ best on Azeroth. Anyways. Like youse agreed, you’re gonna be fightin’ fah me, fah zero percent o’ the bets an’ purse, problem is, you’re a fuckin’ nobody.”

He smirked, trying to scrutinize me, for irritation at a bruised ego, but I didn’t give that rat bastard anything but a polite nod, “I imagine so.”

He silently harrumphed with disappointment, evident in the way his lips clamped around the cigar and his eyes moved from me to a portrait of a human woman, enigmatically smiling with her cherubic features, “So, you’re gonna needs ta do a few fights ta get ya name out, against some o’ the regulars. Some small names, so we can really make ya a fuckin’ headliner an’ snatch up all d’ose bets. Snatch. Snaaaatch. I fuckin’ loves d’at word, don’t youse?” He waggled his eyebrows too much. It was less charming on him than it was on me.

I felt sick to my stomach and felt like I could use a hot shower with steel wool.

“I know youse did some boxin’ in ya time. Arty was tellin’ me aaaall abouts ya. Andaeros “Nosebreakah” Dawnflare. D’ats a good fuckin’ name, we’re gonna go wit’ d’at, fah sure. He says youse was waaay bettah than he was, so I’m expectin’ some fuckin’ showmanship, a lil’ bit o’ playin’ ta the crowd. They loves d’at. Think youse can handle some shlubs an’ bums fah a couple o’ weeks, Andy? Yeeeah, o’ course ya can. C’mere. Shake my fuckin’ hand.” He grinned all too broadly and lept up onto his desk, nearly knocking over the small fortune in cigars in their box, thrusting out his hand, that rainbow of gemstones and glinting metals promising an uncomfortable grip.

I hated this. I hated how casually he treated this. How casually he dangled my friend’s name over me. How casually he talked about throwing me into the grinder.

I took a disrespectful moment, flat-faced and stone-browed, a heavy furrow weighing my expression down before standing up to grab his hand, tight.

Too tight.

His grin faltered with a scowl as his grip was overwhelmed by mine, grinding those rings together. He jerked his hand back, “Get da fuck outta my office, now.” He nearly spit it out, nodding to Doctor Von Strucker, “Youse, too, Doc.”

The Doctor remained all-too-placid and nodded his thanks, “Of course, Mister Blastcap.” He rose smoothly from the chair and slipped past Korag at the door, humming something baroque before turning back to me, “I look forward to piecing you back together, Mister Dawnflare!”

I rose with none of his haunting grace and with infinitely more irritation, “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

The doctor chortled, appearing to take a mental step back, “Oh, of course. Yes. Of course, of course.”

I made my way past him, though he seemed to fluidly slide to give me access to the door, though Korag did not.

Blazzil plopped himself back down in his chair and took a glug of his expensive whiskey, sucking at his teeth. He raised his voice so he would be heard, “Train hard, Andy, because your boy’s dead an’ you’re dead if ya don’t get me my fuckin’ money. Youse hears me? Likes I said at your place, when I repeats things, my finger gets real fuckin’ itchy. Your next fight’s in a week! Troll named Fawaka!”

Korag’s hand was twice as big as my shoulder and it pressed down on me to stop me from leaving, looking over and past me to his boss.

Blazzil waved a dismissive back-hand at him to open the door.

With little warning, but with my full expectation, he shoved me out into the hallway and closed the door after the doctor, tumbling locks and scraping slides retaking their place locking the door.

"Doc Stitch" continued humming, unfazed by the violence and extortion of it all, offering me the rippling wave of his fingers in a silent too-da-loo before gliding off.

I sneered and dusted myself off, running both thumbs down my suspenders.

I had training to do. I wasn’t going to lose. Blazzil wasn’t going to win.