I've kept it under pretty heavy wraps for long enough, so I think it's time for me to actually talk about my fic The Smoke Still Lingers so people know what's coming. The finished thing is still probably a year off at least, but the end is in sight. And I'm sharing the first chapter now as a preview ;)
Taking place within my AU of course, it starts three years after the end of the Fourth War and five years after Teldrassil. Cathala and Tarinne have been living in Stormwind since then, making money where they can, unable to return to Kalimdor. And for those five long years it's been nothing but radio silence on Maiev and the High Priestess on their hunt for the Banshee Queen.
While on a trip to survey ruins in Hillsbrad, Cathala and Tarinne are blown off course by a bandit attack. Nothing too out of the ordinary for them, but it's what they find at the bandits' camp that turns this trip into a journey; they were hired by a sect of Sylvanas loyalists, somewhere on the continent, to collect materials for an unknown (but certainly sinister) purpose.
Vengeance, of some small kind, is finally within reach.
The trail goes a lot farther than they or the other two mercenaries who join them, Sairann the human mage and Nora the half-elf bounty hunter, expect. And it'll test them both as some of the worst moments in their lives come back like risen corpses to tear the wounds open again.
The dust of the war has settled, but the smoke still lingers.
...
If that piques your interest at all, well... here's the first chapter :)
((Logistics and content warnings below the cut))
