This piece was written in 2002 as a sort of "establishing shot" for a character of mine who once appeared in a Warcraft role-playing game. Not, as you might expect, THE Warcraft roleplaying game - alas, there is not nearly enough customisation available for Kit to exist under WoW's rules - but rather a pen-and-paper game set after Warcraft II, which ended IRL just about the time the third game was being released.
In any case, to those of you who do play That Game, a couple of characterisations or references here may seem odd here (especially "Lord Greymane"), but rest assured that it's only because there were far more unexplored areas in the lore when the game was run. Indeed, considering what an awesome fellow he is in WoW, our characterisation of him was rather mean - he really did seem nastier in W2. And anyway, he got better.
Now, with that out of the way...
"The glassblower's?" The messenger asked, looking rather confused and very embarrassed.
"The glassblower's," the boy confirmed. "It is on the main street of the Gilneas commerce quarter. It is the twenty-third shop along the row if you are entering the street from the Eastern end, and the nineteenth shop if you are entering from the West-South-Western end. There is a blacksmiths on its left side, and a stonemasonry to its right. The shopfront has one large window divided into eight equal sections by the frame, and a sign painted with in green and yellow, with black lettering."
The messenger... stared.
"The cobblestones are slightly more worn in front of it because the owner's donkey wears unusually heavy shoes," the boy added, helpfully.
"Ur... right you are, young sir..." The man on horseback replied, somewhat nervous. A local, he told himself. Obviously the kid had grown up around that area. That would explain it - at least, for a really smart kid... "Ur... beggin' your pardon, Lad, but I don't s'pose you could write that down for me?"
"As you wish." The boy paused to extract several items from the stained leather bag he carried. One was a small wooden box, the second a neatly-rolled sheaf of paper tied with twine.
Runner Amon took the opportunity to study his unexpected young customer. To look at, the boy who'd commissioned him to carry a single letter to Gilneas could not have been more normal. Apparently between the ages of twelve and fifteen, he was of an average height and slightly skinny build, wearing tousled brown-grey hair and the practical, patched-together clothing of the mid-lower classes. From his expressionless face to his slightly worn-out boots, the boy could not have been more perfectly mundane.
A less casual observer - or perhaps one who had a less limited mind than Runner Amon - might have noticed that this was precisely what was giving him the willies. It was all just too perfect. The hair was just messy enough, every strand sitting obediently in its out-of-place place. The vaguely tattered hem of his cloak was just a little too straight, the tears in it not quite random. The patches on the boy's trousers went, without failure, 'square, square, wobbly shape, triangle, square - new line'.
The problem, Runner completely failed to realise, was that the somebody was trying too hard. The kid wasn't used to being scruffy; he'd been made that way.
The boy finished his writing, neatly folded the paper into a perfectly quartered square, and held it up to Runner. "There."
"Right you are, then, Lad," Runner nodded, quickly stopping himself from nervously fidgeting with the reigns, and reaching down to take the note.
"I have drawn a map," Runner's client held up a second folded sheet. The messenger knew as he took it what he was going to see; he opened it anyway. Morbid curiosity had already shouldered common sense into the back seat, anyway.
The map was perfect. The straight lines were absolutely straight, the streets perfectly parallel - the right angles would have made a gnome proud. Each shop was marked with its name in simple-yet-elegant lettering, and the sign that each one wore was drawn neatly underneath. And the West-South-Western end of the main street pointed precisely in that direction, like the kid had pulled out a compass to check it by.
That boy just drew this, Runner realised. Just then, while I was watching. By himself. Just like that - just from memory...
"Ur... right..." the man gave a slightly weak smile. "I'll be off, then... pleasure doin' business with you..."
The boy held up a sealed envelope, regarding him calmly. "The letter."
Mentally, Runner gave himself a good solid kick, wondering what was going on. Fer gawdsake, man, it's just a kid, writing home with some silly little letter! Just coz he's got the personality of a peat bog, doesn't mean he's anything special!
Actually, he reflected, that was an unfair comparison. He'd met several peat bogs during his time in this job, and every one had been more interesting - and less worrying - than this kid.
He almost snatched the letter, his voice sounding a shade desperate now. "Right! Heh heh, how about that, eh? Be forgetting to get me pay next!"
"You did," the boy replied. Now he was holding out a small drawstring bag, dangling from his fingers with the weight of several coins.
Runner Amon made a small, sick noise.
"Do not open the letter," the boy added flatly, all the while with that same blank, expressionless expression. "The glassblower will reward you when it is delivered with the seal intact."
When, thought Runner Amon. 'When', he says, not 'if'...
"And... uhmm..." the messenger swallowed, "what was the name of this glassblower bloke?..."
The boy looked blank. That was no surprise - so far, he hadn't looked anything but blank - but this time, he seemed to be thinking about something.
He gave a tiny shrug. "I have forgotten."
The runner left. Quickly.
And Kit watched. He hoped the man would obey his directions. While Lord Greymane knew to wear gloves while opening his boy assassin's letters, the runner would quickly succumb to the contact poison that laced the paper inside the envelope. And it would be inconvenient, to have to write another letter.
"You're creepy."
The young boy blinked, turning toward the voice. Its owner stood several feet away, frowning at him from between rusty red bangs and gripping what was probably supposed to be a knobbly wooden sword in one fist. The child looked about seven or eight years old, and was probably female, though quite possibly not. Her face was smudged with dirt and what looked like chalk, and both exposed knees were grazed and scabby.
"I'm Aegwyn," the child declared, raising her 'sword' and pointing it at Kit.
"Really?" The boy seemed genuinely interested.
"Of course!" The girl sneered, posing in what might be considered a heroic manner if you were three and a half feet tall. "And I'm strong and I'm magic and I'm pretty, and you're still creepy."
"You are a child," Kit observed quietly.
"Am not!" She retorted, then stuck her tongue out. "Besides, so are you! And I'm older than I look, I am! Because I'm Aegwyn. And I'm magic, so I can look like a kid if I want! Even though I'm not a kid. 'Cuz I'm not."
Kit stared, almost looking confused.
"Anyway," the girl changed the topic. "I have a sword! See?"
"It doesn't look like a sword," he frowned slightly.
"Does too!" She retorted.
"It has a bend in the middle."
"It's a skimmer-tar!"
"It is made of wood."
"It's... um... cammer... camera... it's just pretending to be wood! Coz it's magic, like me! 'Cuz I made it. So there."
Kit remained dubious.
"'S'a good sword," she glared at him, pouting. "'S'magic. And you're creepy, so you have to play with me now."
The boy blinked. "I do?"
She nodded, and he realised that his fate was sealed.
It had been a long day. Originally, Kit had been appointed as Gul'Dan, but he had been stripped of this title after Gemma - his young companion - had decided that he was too boring to be an evil warlock. He had spent a further few hours as Orgrim Doomhammer, until it had been realised that Gemma was actually stronger than him, and his arms were becoming tired from hefting the thick branch she had declared to be his warhammer. After a brief stint as Uther Lightbringer, the little girl had declared that life was boring with no bad guys, and had made him into Medivh, staging a re-enactment of the classic battle between the Guardian and her son.
"Hey!" Gemma protested angrily, as Kit ducked a clumsy strike and pointed the stick that was his 'magic dagger' at the child's throat. "You're not s'posed to beat me!"
"But Medivh did defeat Aegwyn," Kit pointed out, quite correctly.
"But not this time," Gemma insisted, scowling and pushing the stick-dagger away. "We're doing it properly this time!"
"Properly?" The boy echoed. "How can it be properly if it isn't what really happened?"
"Properly is how things should have happened!" She said, like it was a known fact. "Everybody knows Aegwyn shoulda beated Medivh - I reckon he cheated. Girls are tougher than boys."
Kit couldn't really argue that. Gemma was certainly stronger than him, and on the one occasion during his childhood that he had fought with Arma, she had mauled him without breaking a sweat. And he didn't have anybody else to compare with - not in a fair fight.
"You don't know much about make-believe, do you?" Asked Gemma, plonking herself down on a crate. "You're pretty awful at playing bad guys. I thought you were good at being Mister Light-thinger, though - he came and made all these speeches here once, and he was just as boring as you. He talked lots more, though."
She seemed to think for a while, then reached inside the neck of her shirt to pull something out. Kit realised that she was removing something that had been tied around her neck. Grinning, she held it up by the string - it was a flat, round pendant, made rather amateurishly from red clay.
"I made it myself!" She told him, proudly. "So it's magic, just like me. I made it special, to keep me safe from the bad guys when I go out in the woods."
"..." Kit replied, a little at a loss.
"I've decided you need it more than me, though," she nodded sagely. "'Cuz you're not as tough as me, and if you get hurt you couldn't play with me again. So you can have it."
She waved it in front of his face, smiling encouragingly until he accepted. As he held the pendant and studied it, he heard her cough expectantly. He looked back up.
"What do you say?" She asked, sternly, as if it were something she'd heard said many a time to her.
Kit blinked. "Many things, though not often."
She glared. "Dummy! I just gave you a present - you have to say 'thank you'! You don't have any imagination or any manners!"
"...Oh," he said. "Ur - thank you. Will that do?"
She nodded, apparently satisfied.
"Should I give you a present, too?" He asked.
Gemma's eyes widened; she hadn't thought of that.
"I think that would be good manners," she affirmed. "Something special."
Kit tried to decide if there was anything 'special' in his bag that he could give to her. A peasant child would not be literate, so a pen or pencil would be unsuitable. There was nothing special about a coin or his rations, and vials of poison were something that even Kit knew would make very bad gifts...
"A sewing kit?" She scowled as he held it out to her. "That's silly! It's like something Grandmam would give me, something all boring and girly!"
"For protecting you," Kit tried to explain. "Like the necklace."
"Protecting me?" She wrinkled her nose, studying it. "How could it do that?"
"When you get hurt, it helps you heal," he held out his own arm, indicating one of the many faint scars that barely showed against his pale skin.
Her face blanched, a mixture of disgust and fascination. Her voice held a tone of awe. "You mean when you get cut, you sew it back together?"
Kit nodded. Gemma considered this for a moment.
"Does it hurt?" She asked, in a somewhat conspiratorial whisper.
"Yes."
"A lot? Like, really, really?"
"It is quite excruciating," Kit affirmed.
Gemma grinned. "Neeeeeeaaaaaat!"
"So - this present is suitable?"
"Yep!"
He smiled, ever-so-faintly. "Then what do you say?"
Somewhere on a road between Hillsbrad and Gilneas, Runner Amon's curiosity had finally gotten the better of him. He was at present extremely regretful of this, as he felt his body stiffen and his heart slow, as he heard the sound of his own wheezing breath grinding to a gradual halt.
Should've stuck with the damn peat bogs, he thought, as his vision clouded. ...Bloody thing was written in code anyw -