Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

The Price of Gratitude	By : Mayamahal Category: +S through Z > World of Warcraft Views: 6057 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Blizzard or World of Warcraft. I make no profit or money for writing this.

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
- 18
Several days before Maia's name was tacked to every vacant wall from Dalaran to Booty Bay, her guild-leader, Arin Zarred, contemplated his current circumstances.

Arin Zarred had always considered himself a brave man.

Granted, that was usually because he never left his Guild office, confined primarily to paperwork and the economics of his little community, but it wasn't something he dwelled on. His days of soldiering the front lines were over. He prefered the power that came with leading, heeding the call of duty when summoned, sending his best to do the work and accepting the praise that usually followed when the campaigns were successful.

No, his preference... his reward ... for all his service to the Alliance was to sit back, guide the chess pieces from afar, and manage the coins that filled his coffers.

There was a lull these days, however. The rise of Deathwing had called many of his guild-mates home, to families who'd lost their entire villages, burned farms, damaged cities. Irrationally, he fought the urge to tongue-lash every last person in his command, to get back in line and do as he said, not flee to their homes to pick up the pieces of a collapsing nation.

He knew he was considered an extremist, but their money was drying up, the wealth of adventures and military campaigns trickling into the expenses it took to maintain members, property, taxes, tithes, and debts over-due.

Sitting at his desk, he squirmed over that last thought.

Arin was a man of many debts, and many of which were over-due. For the hundredth time that evening, he stared at the two accounting books open before him. One was the accounting record he presented to his guild secretary and the Alliance revenue services.

The other was the real accounting record, the one he kept in his private quarters, when it ever left his side.

For many years, they tallied to about the same, though the sources and export of incomes was a little ... tailored. His crafters and artisans had kept everything nice and even, covering the expenses – his expenses – that he felt due his as leader. He was too busy managing his guild to learn a trade, and many, many of his guild crafters were at the top of their skill. Indeed, it was the first incentive he gave when he founded the White Suns Company; no tradesman in his guild would go hungry, he would purchase from them directly, sell the items and share the profits with the guild bank.

Minus a small percentage, of course, for himself.

And it had gone on for so long without hitch or problem.

Until the Shattering.

His tradesmen were no longer worried about giving him their best. They had followed the example of that damned mage, Maia, when they heard what she'd been doing: selling her wares on her own to any customer of any faction at prices she dictated, often at far less than what Arin himself had been selling her pieces for.

He gritted his teeth in rage, running his hands through his sandy-blonde hair.

Why would they sell to him at double cost, when they could sell for triple cost, which was more than half of what Arin himself would have charged?

His guild-mates now made their wares to support their homeless families, their destroyed townships, and completely bypassed the guild altogether.

His loans were swiftly going into default, his four expansive homes threatening to foreclose, his five businesses going dry of all the goods he had previously sold. Soon he would be bankrupt, with nothing to his name but his fouled reputation.

Or worse than nothing; he still had those other debts to pay.

As if summoned by this particularly gruesome thought, a voice filtered through the shadows, the origin the empty, night-graced terraced his desk faced.

"Ya be lookin' peaked, if ya don' min' me sayin'. Are ya gonna tell me ya can' pay me. Again."

The voice was water over gravel, liquid but unclean. The stench that came with it was unmistakable.

Arin jerked upright, eyes wide, and screamed silently at himself for leaving the balcony doors open.

"A-ah-" he stammered at first, mind racing. "Nn... well... actually..." He cleared his throat, eyes darting, wondering if there was anything he could trade or barter with. "You're ah... you're right, I don't have any money but-"

He saw movement – pale scar-mottled green skin and greasy black braids, easing from the darkness with a sleek grace that made him nauseous. He stood abruptly, holding his hands up in a warding gesture.

"-but! I wanted to know if... if there was anything I could trade in lieu of payment?"

The posture of the Troll changed, his movements changing to something less dangerous. Arin resisted the urge to wrinkle his nose as the fetid creature perched on the edge of his desk. The Troll's scars had healed completely since last he saw him, no longer pink and raw looking. The human momentarily envied the regenerative power of trolls, but quickly pushed the thought away.

"Ya be a good employer," the Troll drawled, fiddling with a paper-weight on the human's desk. "Offerin' so much for a simple follow-an-chase." He looked Arin in the eye then, his grin feral, aggressive, and without humor. "Though ya miss'd tellin' me about how powerful the lil' bitch was."

A shudder ran through Arin, but he attempted to look irritated, brow furrowing. "I told you to be discrete," he returned, jabbing a finger in the Troll's direction. "Not to confront her in the open. All I wanted to know was what she was doing with all the extra items she made, how she had enough money to pay guild-tithes without going out on a single campaign."

The Troll laughed, a hollow sound, his head thrown back and tangled, lanky hair swinging. "I know it, mon," he chuckled, idly rubbing his wrist. "I be a professional, I know how ta hide in the open an' wander past, observin' and lookin' without bein' noticed. Woulda been fine, too, if I didn' realize you'd sent me after a morsel of a Troll-fucka." That grin was back, but this time, it held all the mocking laughter the last one didn't.

It took a moment for Arin to understand what he'd been told, and then another moment for the rage inside him to seep up and boil over.

Whatever his spy saw, it pleased him, his grin absolutely wicked. "Thas' right, mon. Not only was she cheatin' ya of yer profits, she was beddin' the enemy too." He cackled.

Arin was speechless. Rage wiped his mind of coherent thought; he gripped the edge of his desk so hard the wood began to creak.

The Troll shifted where he sat, as if to get comfortable, his eyes closing half way as he considered the human. "I be keepin' that to myself, hopin' to find her myself. But..." He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "The little brown-skin has disappeared. House empty, goblins an' clients I findin' say she late on her deliveries."

Arin still said nothing, slowly coming down from his high and listening closely. "What are you getting at?" he grunted out from behind clenched teeth. He was getting a headache now too.

The Atal'ai contemplated Arin a moment longer and then dug around in a satchel attached to hips; withdrawing a pouch that, when tossed on the desk, jingled heavily with gold. The human swallowed dryly, staring at it.

"First in a payment of three," the Troll drawled, smug smile on his lips. "Ya said ya knew her a long time ago, an' I imagine it was more than jus' a roll or two in the sack, mmm?" At Arin's silence, the Troll cackled. "Ya not lookin' for her no more, since ya know what she was up to, an' I hear that the information I gave ya kinda backfire." He eyed the human's accounting books, noting the negative numbers peppering the page.

Arin jerked and snapped them closed. "More than that!" he snarled, anger taking hold of him again.

"She a traitor too, eh? Leavin' ya, sellin' what's yer's to the enemy, fuckin' em, screwin' with yer plans..."

It was too easy, but the Troll was riling the human up again. Arin didn't care; he let the anger carry him in a cloud of red.

"I be sayin' I give ya two more bags of gold, one when ya get her to come to ya, an' another after I get her ... where I want her." The Troll licked his lips, the gesture unconscious.

Despite his rage, however, Arin paused. "You're ... you're asking me to bring her into the open? To trade her, sell her, to ... you?"

The Troll grinned, pleased. "Why, I like the way ya think! I think I be takin' that offer, in lieu of money! I mean, it's not ya fault, bein' broke an all..." He cackled.

"And ... our debt?"

"Gone."

"Done." Arin sniffed. "She's a traitor anyway. I bet that's where she's at, too, hiding behind her... her..."

"Some advice, mon, before ya start yellin' her name in all manner of quarters: if she be with a Troll, best way to get her runnin' is to get him to cast her out. Honor would demand... that he claim no woman that belong to someone else." He paused. "Ya get what I be sayin', mm?"

A memory came unbidden, a moment from childhood where self-inflicted cuts on the thumbs of little children were pressed together, an exchange of names and a vow of bonding. He flushed and shook the memory away. An idea stayed with him, though.

"Yes," he considered slowly. "Yes, I can do that. But how would I? I don't know who he is, or where-"

At that, the Troll dropped a stack of pages on Arin's desk. At the human's arched eyebrow, the Troll said, "Receipts from the Goblins."

The human suddenly looked doubtful. "So? Everyone knows they're neutral. She isn't the only one selling through them-"

"They ain't neutral no more, remember?" the Troll cackled. "The Warchief-" (no one really considered anyone else but Thrall as the Warchief, despite the politics going on in Orgrimmar) "-invited them into our fold when they saved his life. Selling her wares to them, if, o' course, this evidence was presented to the right people, can be considered an act of treason." His grin turned feral.

Arin blinked slowly, flipping through the pages. Then: "But... these are dated. I mean, I might-"

The Troll managed to look disappointed. But then, feigning defeat, he pointed at her sigil at the bottom of one page. "Oh, be that her mark? That looks so familiar..." He leaned forward, and casually dropped another stack of papers atop the desk. "Oh well. Sorry for takin' up ya time, then."

Arin opened his mouth in confusion, ready to ask a question, but when he looked up he was alone.

Rubbing the back of his neck, he realized the Troll had deliberately left the gold behind – and an extra stack of articles. What was he up to?

Sitting back down, he reached for the bag and tested its weight. Despair radiated through him; two more bags of such a size would fix all his problems; would settle his loans on at least one house, work through the paperwork of closing his failing businesses, and even out his ledgers with the guild. How was he ever going to find what the Troll wanted? It was such an easy fix...

His eyes wandered to the last papers the Troll had presented. It looked like an incident report, the stationary stamped with the symbol of Stormwind City. He reached for them, eyes skimming the hand written words. This was a cop copy, statements from a jewel crafter in their employ for evidence.

"What the hell is-" he began, before understanding began to set in.

There was an attack on the king, by a Forsaken woman who'd been disguised by a powerful charm, a bracelet bonding to an illusion spell. The jewel crafter had found the maker's sigil ingrained into the magic, hidden carefully but now revealed. He'd illustrated it on the fourth page, with a suggestion to pass around the maker's mark for personal identification.

The fifth page was a reward flier for any information, signed by the King himself.

Arin felt himself salivating, even as he scrambled for a pen and paper and yelled at the top of his lungs for his secretary to get a messenger in here- "-RIGHT NOW!"

It was perfect. Revenge neatly tied to a solution to a hundred problems and a pay bonus to boot. Absolutely perfect.

As Arin began to write his letter to the Captain of the Stormwind Guard he gathered up Maia's receipts and stacked them on the flier, detailing in his writing about Maia's character, the evidence of her sales to the enemy, and – most of all – the casual reference to her maker's sigil; In case, of course, they recognized it in their investigation. Just in case. He even included her full name, which of course included his own, from the vow they took. Nevermind that it was a child's vow of brotherhood; no one would ever know the difference.

Arin's smile was sly, his despair and depression vanishing with his anxiety, declaring in his written words that despite his attachment to his 'wife', he knew where his loyalties were and would never hesitate to fork over any information he had on such a terrible attempt on the life of their sovereign.

As he sealed the package and handed it to the messenger, he refrained from cackling with glee as he considered all the possibilities.

Ah, he thought. What luck is this, to find such a satisfying solution to such a mundane problem!
- 16
- 17
- 18
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Price of Gratitude