Deep beneath the Slaughtered Lamb, stacked crates hid away a parlor in a cold room of the catacombs. The soft, warm light of an oil lamp lit the numerous crates, a giveaway that someone occupied the space. Indeed, a woman stood on the bare stone floor, indecisive between sitting or standing alone. Jarel Moor, the bartender of the Lamb, had been generous with the choice of furniture he'd supplied Anisse with, though most of it had been rubbish thrown away by fellow citizenry of Stormwind. The summoning spell she'd been forced to purchase seemed useless. Both irritating and finicky, it had been difficult working with the imp--the demon seemed to want to burn everything else in the small room instead of what she ordered it too. Fortunately, her own control over the Immolation spell was all she needed to fuse broken hinges and wooden legs back together. There was a distinct enjoyment in wielding this particular spell, feeling the fire hot along her fingers, yet not burning at her skin. The intensity of the fire was rather unexplainable, as was her inclination to it. No elemental fire spell taught to her by the Twilight's was quite the same.
The imp on the other hand...she'd found another use for it. Its body was somewhere in the crypt, still smoldering as it twitched in the darkness. Pinned to the cracks of the stone floor by broken slivers of wood, Anisse kept the demon alive through the process of extracting its tiny gland of a heart--it was the only way she could keep it from unsummoning. The heart seemed small within the jar of solution it floated in, overtaken by the fluids, and she had to rebalance the cocktail of alcohol and formaldehyde to keep the small organ from drying out completely. It sat upon the wooden vanity desk Anisse now, another part of her growing collection. However, it was not the jar she was staring at--it seemed very far away at this particular moment. It was her precious pendant she looked down silently upon from where she sat.
The pendant that was no longer there.
Still, the woman stared, as if her mere eyes might make the necklace materialize out of thin air. She knew it well, the leather cord holding the small obsidian obelisk close around her throat. It had been given to her by her own Speaker, a gift to welcome her to the Twilight's Hammer. Carved from the stone the cultists used to call forth the empowered abyssals upon the sands of Silithus, as she was told, it resonated faintly, thrumming in her hand and against her throat when she wore it. Though she had distanced herself from the cult, and she might've sealed her fate eventually by their hands, Anisse still found a comfort she could not explain in the little trinket.
The loss of it dented her heart.
It sent her into a flurry, sheets and pillows flung this way and that inside the small parlor. The drawers of her vanity were pulled out roughly, searching, the oil lamp carried to light the cold crypt floors in her desperation. Her search came to nothing. Slowly, her eyes retracked around the room and everywhere she'd been, before settling back on the bed.
The bed, where the elf had been hiding.
Jarel insinuated that the elf had been a merchant of some sort, and apparently a thief, as she'd caught him rummaging through her parlor. She'd overlooked him, like a boy caught with his hand in a cookie jar, he fled in shame after failing to charm her with his antics. Now, realizing he'd tricked her all along, she eyed the steps, following the ghost of his movements that night with a determination.
Stomping her way back up to the tavern above, Anisse caught the attention of the bartender almost immediately--even the few guests of the Lamb regarded the "mousy" girl curiously. A few strapping men were working behind the counter, carrying the large boxed crates out of the Slaughtered Lamb. It seemed Jarel had produced a nice shipping deal for the very special meatpies served within the Slaughtered Lamb.
"Why aren't you sleeping, Anna dear?" The bartender blinked at the woman as one of the shipping men assessed her. She ran about hoodless today, with her quaint, soft face. A smile was drawn from the moving boy as he looked upon her, trying to greet Anisse. That smile left quickly when she fixed him with a pair of empty amber eyes, rushing him out the door with only her cold stare. Jarel sighed, shaking his head. "You've been up for two days straight! I don't have any errands for you now, go on."
"No," came the cold answer from the woman, imagining the teasing smile of the elf. The long-eared brat made her feel like an idiot now, having testing her, trying to provoke her to action that night. She couldn't fathom now why she let him get away alive. Inhaling a quick breath, she softened her voice, trying to sound amiable. "I wish to help."
"Haha, Anisse." Jarel spoke the name as if it were some strange revelation. The copper binds that held his hair in dreds caught the reflection of the torchlit tavern as he moved, leaning on the bar. "My dear, you're simply too scrawny to pick up one of these boxes. They'd break you."
"Let me...at least make sure the product gets to the approapriate ship," Anisse argued, her face intense. "You do not want to be caught with an unmanned tavern, do you?"
"Heh, you have a point, little lady." Jarel eyed his live-in assistant for a long moment. By now he knew there was something she was up to. The woman hardly threw herself upon a job as she did now. He at last sighed and shooed her off with a hand. "And then you come back, you sleep."
"Of course," was the soft reply in turn. "In a bit."
The tavern door was slammed in her wake, making Jarel jump slightly behind the bar.
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