Daughter of Azeroth

31 | TIME IS MONEY, FRIEND

Over the next few months, a variety of strange creatures arrived on various ships. One by one they joined the Captain. Reports from the docks of the new arrivals were disturbing, ogres and goblins and even a hobgoblin. Idira had no idea what these creatures looked like. She asked Arinna if she had any pictures in her books. The priestess promised she would check, but she never brought up the subject again. Idira sensed Arinna didn't want to talk about them, so she didn't ask anymore. The docks were far away, anyway. It wasn't like she would ever have to see any of them.

VanCleef said nothing publicly against Greenskin's cohorts, but privately he admitted he had lost far too many of his men in Jac's attack, and since then recruiting men for the Brotherhood had been laborious and slow. He didn't like to admit it, but he needed all the help he could get. Despite almost three years having passed since the morning of Papa's attack, the Brotherhood's numbers had shrunk from controlling Redridge, Duskwood and Westfall to only Westfall, with just a handful of men in Elwynn Forest and Redridge working as contacts for the Brotherhood, nothing more.

On the day of Idira's eleventh birthday, after a year of meticulous preparations and shipments of black market supplies being sourced and delivered from all over Azeroth, VanCleef ordered the massive water gates to the mines to be opened. He went down to supervise The Night's Cutlass's tricky navigation and positioning within the vast cavern of the Deadmines, the ship carrying VanCleef's precious cargo of supplies for the weapons he intended to build into it. He said he expected the move to take all day, but promised he would be back in time for her birthday dinner. He wasn't. They waited as long as they could, but when the dinner began to get cold, they carried on without him. Although Idira had been a little disappointed, it had still been fun with Nin, Bishop Mattias, Arinna, Lanira, Myra, and little Vanessa, two months shy of four years, running around on her little legs, laughing and play fighting with Unambi.

Afterwards, Idira stayed awake as long as she could, laying on Myra's bed talking about nothing in particular, fighting to keep her eyes open. The next morning she woke up where she had fallen asleep. She sat up, astonished. She had expected VanCleef to come home and wake her, before sending her up to her own room. It was the first time VanCleef had not come home at night in all the time Idira had known him.

He didn't come back that day, or even the next. When Myra sent Kip to the docks to check on him, Kip came back and said VanCleef was fine, just very preoccupied. When he finally did return, covered in soot and grease, he only stayed long enough to gather up the rest of his notes and designs for his weapons, and to order a trunk packed with clothes and necessities to be sent down to the docks. He pressed a gold coin into Idira's hand, telling her to buy herself something nice saying he was sorry he had missed her birthday, kissed Vanessa goodbye, and smiled at Myra, saying finally things were starting to come together for him and soon he would be able to make things right for the men who still supported him. He was in such a hurry to return, he didn't even bother to take a bath before striding back out the door and onto a fresh horse.

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The summer passed, hot and languid. VanCleef came home on the first Sunday of each month, though he didn't go to the Cathedral to listen to the service. In the evenings he would to meet with Kip, his newly promoted second-in-command to look over the accounting of the takings and deal with the reports.

At the end of the autumn, a new wave of rumours rose up, spreading like wildfire in the late autumn heat. Jac had returned with a new group of villains. His men had begun preying on the good people of Moonbrook, catching them on the roads, taking everything they owned, even the clothes off their backs. Darker stories circulated, of violations against the women, some of them even abducted, taken to Jac's camps to work, and worse.