Disclaimer: World of Warcraft is copyright Blizzard Entertainment 2005. In fact, so is anything else that doesn’t look like it was invented by me. Gelles is my level 60 Paladin on Thorium Brotherhood. Gelki/Mnemosyne is my mage and Aoni is my other paladin. Please don’t sue me.

This story is rated R for swearing, violence and sexual references

Stand Alone

A World of Warcraft fanfic

By Kristin Renee Taylor

Part Four - Tracing a Path

The room was pitch-black, save for the light of a single small flame, flickering bravely before her eyes. Bright green eyes remained focused on that solitary point of light, unblinking, unwavering. To anyone watching, her stillness would have seemed unnatural, uncanny; her lack of breathing or blinking making it hard to believe she even lived. Just an impossibly lifelike doll, sitting in the air, staring sightlessly at the flame.

Eventually, though, the blood elf's lips parted and she exhaled a name.

"Gelles Magain."

And the spell was loosed.

Someone tugged on her sleeve. "Mith?"

So intent had Gelles Hannigan been on her navigating the muddy rivercourse, that the sudden intrusion caught her completely off-guard. Before she could stop herself, she jumped and rounded on the intruder, half-drawing her sword before realizing that the monster that had bothered her was nothing more than a small, dirty street urchin no taller than her hip. The waif (gender was hard to discern beneath a layer of grime and muck) was looking up at her, an innocent look of curiosity in it's faded blue eyes. "Thu you have any footh?"

Gelles nodded. "Some, yes. Here." And she reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a wrapped loaf of bread, which she handed to the youngster. "Don't eat it all at- Hey!" She snatched her hand back as the bread was uncovered and uncermoniously crammed into the kid's mouth. In minutes, all that remained of the loaf was a few crumbs and her formerly pristine swatch of linen fabric being squelched into the mud by the urchin's bare and dirty feet.

The youth wrapped hands around it's stomach. "I thun feel tho gooth."

Gelles sighed. "Come on, then. Let's get you someplace where you can lie down."

Her Sight flew with the spell.

Out of Silvermoon and high into the morning sky. South, past the scar and the Plaguelands, faster than any bird, the spell tracked its target with unerring accuracy.

She traveled leagues in minutes, following a path that only she knew existed, until, finally, she found her quarry in Arathi: the paladin leading her horse along a riverbank, a small dirty creature hunched onto the animal's back.

Back in her lab, the blood elf's lips curved into the barest of smiles. She took a breath.

And then she sang.

"Are thu a warrior?"

"Not quite."

"Thu wearin' a thword."

"Yes, I am."

"Where thu goin'?"

"I'm not sure."

"How lon' thill we geth there?"

Gelles closed her eyes and counted to ten. She had never been good with children. How she, of all people, in the middle of nowhere, had come to be saddled with one had to be proof there were gods. And that they hated her.

She glared over her shoulder at the child. "There is no 'we.' I am taking you to the nearest town, and you are going to stay there. Do you understand?"

The creature stared at her owlishly, blinking huge eyes.

"Well?"

The creature pointed one skinny and nail-bitted hand at her. "Thu're burnin'."

Gelles sighed again. 'Best to humor the bratling.' She glanced down. And gasped.

Her chest was on fire. Flames sprouted from her left breast, directly over her heart. Startled, she lifted a hand to put it out, and noticed a second blaze in the middle of her palm. Neither blaze gave off heat. "What in the Light..?"

A sound, a clear note of music burst through the air. "Sever."

The fire on her chest snuffed out.

Seconds later, Gelles dropped face-first into the mud, unconscious.

End – Tracing a Path