"No, it's not made of saronite..." the teal-haired night elf warrioress tactfully pronounced.
" 'En eye 'on't kno' wat ya want, missy." Soft-spoken and ever patient, D'Dea had been trying to get this dwarf weaponsmith to understand her request for a good fifteen minutes. She was increasingly of the impression he already knew he didn't know how to smith the sword she was seeking, and was merely taking some twisted pleasure in wasting her time.
"A...felsteel longblade..." Carefully, slowly, struggling not to be patronizing. It wasn't in the night elf's nature, and she was in earnest; she was willing to hold out on the slimmest hope the beady-eyed, calloused, filthy dwarf (was he a Dark Iron dwarf or had he just not taken a bath in so long?) could deliver. "It is an Outland weapon. Crafted from felsteel. Reddish-black, slightly curved, broad-tipped, single-edged, one-handed. Can you make it? Or, do you know someone who can?"
"Eye 'on't kno', missy, ya hafta give me more info'mashion."
"How about gold? If you can tell me the name of a smith who can craft this sword, I will give you a hundred gold." To the quick.
The dwarf smithy's indolent eyes lit up with greed. "Aye that be easy, missy. Lady Aestu, of course, she can smith jus' about anything. A real piec a' work, 'at one, tho."
D'Dea felt promise before her. The dwarf seemed to be speaking in earnest. Greed was such a strong motivator for the lesser races. She had heard the name before...not always in the nicest sort of way... "So, do you know where I could find her?" D'Dea's long eyebrows danced above her delicate lavender features, animated with an almost teenage excitement at the prospect of finally laying hands on the sword she coveted so long.
The dwarf had already turned back to his work - or rather, to balefully turning the molten slag next to his forge over and over. Without turning around: "Las' I hears, she was 'bout th' land o' the raccoon folks." It took D'Dea a moment to make the connection. Raccoon folks? The Pandaren? Pandaria?
"Thank you so much, dwarf ally. I shall not forget to give you the hundred gold I promised upon having Aestu craft my sword." The dwarf half-turned to give her a last baleful look but did not argue, for all the good it would have done; the night elf, half again his height, had already mounted her pinkish-red drake - one of Alexstrazsa's chosen - and was flying up, up to the plateau above Stormwind, where the kingdom magi labored to maintain a portal to the formerly-mythical land that was now the latest front for the humans' quixotic endeavours. It was less than a thousand paces from the dwarf's anvil, but somehow she suspected that the smithy, caught up in his own petty foibles, had no idea the plateau even existed.
Hunting a person was not so different than hunting a stag. It took patience, diligence, resourcefulness, subtlety and guile. Speed, stealth, and powers of observation. A discreet question here, a bit of observation there, setting rhetorical traps, knowing when to watch and when to strike. Not that it was difficult. The Pandaren were a friendly and gregarious people. They were not fools, but it took little guile to procure information from them as to her quarry. Thirty minutes in this or that bar, dimly-illuminated by red silken lights, pungent with thick beer and loud with the unsettling belly laughs of the Pandaren led D'Dea up... Mt. Kota.
The warrioress guided her drake - stoic and obedient in the face of the exotic grandeur of Pandaria - to land her on a steppe about a third of the way up, a good half-mile above the foothills. It was a picturesque sight indeed. The length of the Western Wall could be seen from its southern steppes, the air was chill and crisp, the snow and ice brilliant, still, unmoving, sluicing down with the slowness of ages from the forbidding peaks of the mountain. D'Dea's sharp eyes gazed down at the wild savannah of the lowlands, and further away, the terraced agriculture of the valley.
The dry chill of the mountain wind, a south-south-east breeze, was not uncomfortable to the scantily-armored night elf. Her people were accustomed to exposure from infancy; it did not bother them. Their feminine machismo demanded the exposure of their physical grace and beauty - the tendency of other races towards prudishness seemed to reek of self-loathing and unreasoning hostility towards the natural. Not a goosebump appeared on her long, toned, pinkish-purple abdomen and legs, exposed past the limited coverage of her lime-green half-breastplate and armored kilt. Her ears pricked up -
Around an outcropping she sighted her quarry. A draenei paladin, about as tall as herself. Out of her dishwater-blonde hair, ending in a pair of pigtails, emerged long curved horns not so different from the crests of the mountain goats about the steppes of Mt. Kota. She wore a set of ponderous sapphirum armor, fitted with the sort of reinforced knee protectors draenei preferred. The draenei dug at the tough steppe clay with her shovel. Where handle met spade, the stock narrowed to a forefinger's width, so that the draenei could guide the shovel between the toes of her right hoof. Left and right of the breadth of the bluish-lavender spade - some exotic draenei alloy, the night elf surmised - were a pair of horizontal spikes, allowing the draenei to apply leverage with either hoof to pull the spade back out of the earth.
The draenei did not seem to notice D'Dea. Indeed, her stalker's instincts were still switched on. Realizing this, she called out - "Hello there, ally!"
Aestu released her hoof from the spade and turned. She'd heard of this paladin's reputation. Conflicted. By some accounts mad, bad and dangerous to know; by others, a misunderstood idealist. D'Dea took in her face and eyes. Aestu's eyes glowed with the brilliant blue opalescence common to all draenei - she had met many in her adventures; her cute light-blue features were delicate yet rugged, steady and full of character. What would be called handsome, for a woman. Behind the calm expression on her face and cool gaze, D'Dea sensed...exhaustion, melancholy. As if the fire within was a shadow of what it once was.
"How do you." Neat, heavily accented Common. "What would you ask of me?"
The jaded impatience of the draenei's query offended D'Dea's night elf sensibilities. But she reminded herself - from what she knew, this was a very tried woman - so she replied in kind...
"A felsteel longblade, Lady. I am told you can smith it."
"I can smith...very nearly anything. I can even smith armor purposed for the old Naxxramas. Do you have the materials, on you?" Boastful. Impatient. Yet matter of fact. Certainly not deliberately rude.
'Yes, Lady, I do..." D'Dea took a step forward, handed a sizeable gunnysack to the draenei. It was no harder for the draenei to take the cubit-and-half bag of ingots and ores than it was for her to hand them to her. It was a bit of an adjustment, actually, handing the mass to someone her own height and strength. The draenei opened the bag, gazed in, shook the contents around, making sure they were all there. D'Dea sensed a mental checklist being scratched off.
At Aestu's waist was a toolbox. She opened it, pulled out a dull metal box, gave it a good whack with her wrist as she let it fell to the ground. The box resounded with disproportionate volume and unfolded into a miniature anvil and forge. Impressive trick. The draenei did her work with a gnomish army engineer's combination tool - pounding, annealing, trimming, shaping, touching up.
"I was doing archaeological research. It is a hobby I have taken up in my...active retirement." Answering the question unasked.
"I see. Why an active retirement, Lady?" The draenei answered to the formal address whether she approved of it or not. Her strikes upon the metal became slower, though, weighed down by rumination.
