Final Solution, A

She shifted the baby to her hip and stepped back from Edrek. “I don’t think I can talk to you anymore. I’m too angry right now.” Furious actually, so angry she could barely stand to look at him.

High in the hills above Shattrath City, Edrek opened his mouth to respond. She cut him off. “No.” Thoughts focused on a single goal, protecting her child from the Cenarion Circle, whose wardens Edrek called down without thinking. She plastered as formidable a glare as she could manage onto her face. “Meet me in Nagrand, tomorrow. And don’t you dare tell your damn wardens.”

She ignored the look on his face and vaulted onto her mistsaber, the baby firmly planted on the saddle in front of her. In moments, Edrek was left in the dust, and Shattrath lay before her. Only one day to get the Cenarions off her trail, permanently.

“They won’t believe you’re dead without a body,” Edrek had told her. Well… a body they’d have.

--

Ayrma left the child with the Aldor, high in their home and far from the scene of the crime. She changed into her leathers in the inn and pulled a mask across her face before slipping once more – hopefully, for the very last time – into cat form and into the shadows.

Finding the Cenarion Expedition in the Outlands, still structured as the Circle back on Azeroth, had been something of a surprise. Finding out that the expedition was as large as it was… and in as much trouble… was an even greater surprise. With the destruction of the expedition facilities in Terokkar Forest, a number of displaced Kaldorei wandered the Lower City, unknown and uncounted. Completely forgotten.

It was easy to blend in among the beggars and thieves. Just stick to the shadows with the others below the shining Draenei city, and nobody would notice an extra Kaldorei.

And there, deep among the refugees, Ayrma found her lurking near the doctors, coughing into a ragged towel. She heard the doctors pronounce her incurable.

Young. Hair near the same color as her own, a rich dark blue that was maybe – maybe – prettier than her own. The girl – woman, since Ayrma was no older – was perhaps a few inches taller. Her face was entirely different, but that could be easily taken care of, and the lack of any tattoos on the other woman’s face would hardly be noticed in the end.

So Ayrma followed in the shadows, watching her movements, and waiting.

It only took a couple of hours to track her movements sufficiently, but each hour was one fewer until the wardens caught up. When the woman slunk into the shadows, coughing blood, Ayrma followed. Unseen, the cat prowled behind her as she stood beside a pile of blankets – probably her bed, infested with all sorts of underworld creatures.

The woman sat on her pallet. Silently, Ayrma took her Kaldorei form and stepped out of the shadows. She was oblivious, coughing to loud to hear.

Ayrma paused. From the back, the woman really was the spitting image of her, dying slowly in the slums of Shattrath. It was only a pause though. Ayrma stepped forward, grabbed the woman by the hair, and tilted her head back.

They locked eyes for a moment. The woman was frail, sickly, the hollows of her cheeks giving a ghostly look to her face. Ayrma hesitated. And then the woman closed hers, and sighed.

Ayrma slit her throat.

--

There was blood everywhere, but in the depths of the Lower City, few would notice. She wrapped the body in a shroud of the woman’s blankets and carried her from the city, playing the role of the grieving sister.

It worked. The guards gave only half a glance to another body in the slums, and Ayrma crept out to the graveyard where her mistsaber waited. Body d*%%%d in front of her in the saddle, she rode to Nagrand and stopped on the road to Telaar, just out of sight of the bridge. Body dropped on the ground, she patted her saber and sent him off to run. He’d roam the fields now, until it was safe to find him again.

Was she going too far? It was the first time the thought crossed her mind. Too late, though, far too late…

There was gruesome work to be done. She pulled her dagger and went about making the corpse look like her own. Left middle finger, cut to the knuckle (oh, how it had hurt when the gnome took hers…). Right ear, cut close to the body’s head, like a human’s (and like hers, since the Scarlet bastard took his knife to her skin).

The face though. It would be too risky to simply leave it for the animals to destroy, and nothing in the vicinity looked very vicious. Stomach churning, she took the knife to it.

--

The work was done. If Edrek took the bait, his grief might even be enough to convince the Cenarion Circle she was really dead.

And so she lay in wait, melded into the shadows, until Edrek arrived to find her handiwork.

But she’d forgotten something important. Scars like Ayrma’s took weeks to form, months to heal into a map of the past.

The body on the road bore no scars.