Chapter 7: Booty Bay
The salt-stink of Booty Bay was a living thing. It seeped into clothing, hair, the back of the throat—a thick cocktail of rotten fish, tar, exotic spices, and the faint, metallic tang of blood from the slaughterhouse docks. After the clean, silent cold of Winterspring, the noise was a physical assault. Shrieking gulls fought over offal. Dockworkers bellowed in a dozen languages. From the taverns lining the cobbled, sloping streets came the raucous sounds of accordions and broken glass.
Their room was a closet above a bait shop, paid for a week in advance with the last of Alyna’s silver. It had a single grimy window overlooking an alley, a straw-stuffed mattress on the floor, and walls that sweat with humidity. It was home.
“Charming,” Alex said, dropping his pack. A cockroach skittered for cover.
“Told you you’d hate it.” Alyna was already at the window, cracking it open to the din. “But it’s anonymous. And the guy downstairs smells so strongly of dead shrimp, no one could track our scent even if they tried.”
Work was the first priority. They split up the next morning at the cracked mirror, dressing for different wars. Alex wore his practical, muted hunting leathers, now carefully mended. Alyna put on her dark, sleek rogue gear, the one that made her look like a dagger given form.
“Stay near the Stranglethorn side of the peninsula,” she instructed, checking the alignment of her daggers. “The crocolisks in the jungle itself will swallow you whole. The ones on the rocky beaches are just… moderately lethal. Aim for the eyes if they charge. They have a bony plate on the skull like a shield.”
“You’ve hunted crocolisks?”
“I’ve stolen eggs from their nests. Same principle: don’t get caught.” She turned and pulled him into a quick, hard kiss. “Be back by sunset. I’ll have news.”
He headed north, out of the stinking hive of the bay, following the coast. The air grew heavier, hotter, thick with the scent of blooming rot and vibrant life. Jungle pressed in on his left, a solid wall of shrieking green. To his right, the sea crashed against black volcanic rock.
He found his first target within an hour: a young saltwater crocolisk, twelve feet of armored, olive-green muscle basking on a sun-bleached rock. Its belly was a soft, creamy yellow. Unblemished hide. Alex moved with the wind in his face, nocking an arrow. He aimed not for the eye, but for the softer tissue at the back of the jaw, where the head met the neck. He breathed out, let the string go.
The shot was true. The beast thrashed violently for a minute, then lay still. Skinning it was a brutal, messy, two-hour ordeal in the sweltering heat. The hide was heavier than he expected, a sodden, bloody burden in his arms. By the time he’d finished, he was drenched in sweat and saltwater.
The second hunt went wrong. A basilisks, a creature of stone-like scales and a petrifying gaze, was not something Winterspring prepared him for. He misjudged the distance. It turned, its eyes beginning to glow with a sickly grey light. He threw himself behind a boulder just as he felt a strange stiffness seize his left foot. He looked down. His boot was turning a mottled, ashen grey, the leather cracking. Not stone, but close. Panic shot through him. He scrambled, putting the rock between him and the creature, his heart hammering. He couldn’t outrun it with a dead foot.
He remembered the pouch Alyna had given him. Flash powder. Good for creating an exit.
He didn’t throw it at the ground. As the basilisk rounded the boulder, he flung the entire pouch into its open, hissing mouth.
The resulting muffled CRUMP and the sudden plume of acrid smoke from the creature’s gullet was surreal. It recoiled, choking, blinded from the inside. Alex didn’t wait. He lunged, ignoring the pain in his petrified foot, and drove his skinning knife into the softer under-scales of its throat. It was a frantic, ugly kill. The hide, once he managed to strip it, was marred by the knife wounds. He’d get less for it. But he was alive.
He returned to Booty Bay as the sun painted the bay in oranges and purples, limping, stinking of blood and reptile, the massive hides rolled and hoisted on his back. He found the leatherworker, a grizzled dwarf with a missing eyebrow, in a shack reeking of tannin.
The dwarf unrolled the hides on his stained table, grunting. He poked at the basilisk skin. “Messy work on this one. See these gouges? Weakens the integrity. I’ll give you half the rate.”
“It was trying to turn me to stone,” Alex said flatly, exhaustion stripping his politeness.
“Aye, well, business is business. The croc hide is prime, though. Good cut.” He counted out silver and copper. It was more money than Alex had held in a year. “You bring me more like that croc, and not the hacked-up ones, we’ll keep doing business, lad.”
Meanwhile, Alyna had found her own battlefield.
The Booty Bay guard barracks was a haphazard stone structure that looked like it had been assembled during a hurricane. Inside, it stank of sweat, cheap grog, and desperation. The captain, a harried human with a waxed mustache, looked her up and down with profound skepticism.
“The requisition is for a melee trainer. To whip this lot into something resembling a coherent unit,” he said, waving a hand at the motley assembly in the yard: a hulking orc looking bored, a wiry goblin sharpening a ridiculously large cleaver, and a human woman with the cold eyes of a veteran. “The pay is extraordinary because the job is impossible. And because the last trainer lost a leg to a pirate’s parrot. Don’t ask.”
“What’s the test?” Alyna asked, her thumbs hooked in her belt.
“You fight them. One after the other. No killing blows, obviously. You last, you’re hired. You get pounded into the mud, we laugh and you leave.”
The orc went first. He charged, relying on brute strength. Alyna didn’t meet it. She sidestepped, her leg snaking out to trip him. As he stumbled, she used his own momentum, planting a foot on his back and shoving him face-first into a trough of murky water. He came up spluttering. She was already five feet away, dusting her hands. “Over-committed. Predictable.”
The goblin was trickier, a whirlwind of shrieking, slashing metal. Alyna retreated, dodging, letting him exhaust himself. His cleaver bit into a wooden post, stuck for a second. That was all she needed. She closed the distance, not with a weapon, but with a pressure-point strike to his wrist. The cleaver dropped. She caught it by the handle before it hit the ground and tossed it back to him, haft-first. “Speed without control is just noise.”
The human woman was the real challenge. She was careful, patient, her short sword held in a solid guard. They circled. The woman feinted high, thrust low. Alyna parried with a dagger, the clash of steel ringing in the yard. For a minute, it was a real duel—methodical, sharp. Then Alyna saw the pattern, a slight drop of the shoulder before a lunge. The next time it came, she was ready. She deflected the blade upward, stepped inside the woman’s guard, and pinned her wrist against her own chest. Her other dagger came to rest, gently, against the woman’s throat.
“You’re good,” Alyna breathed, inches from her face. “But you’re repeating yourself. Don’t be a ledger. Be a poem.”
She released her. The woman stepped back, nodding once, a flicker of respect in her cold eyes.
The captain exhaled slowly. “Well. I’ll be damned.” He handed her a contract and a heavy purse. “Start tomorrow. Try not to demoralize them completely.”
They met back at the room as full dark settled. Alex was scrubbing reptile gore from his hands in the basin. Alyna kicked the door shut and dropped the purse on the mattress with a heavy, musical clink.
They stared at each other. He saw the fresh bruise forming on her jawline. She saw the strange, ashen-grey patches on his leather boot and the exhaustion in his eyes.
“You’re hurt,” he said.
“You’re… partially stone?” she replied.
They both started laughing then, a tired, slightly unhinged sound that blended with the chaos from the street below. It was laughter of survival, of absurdity.
“Basilisk,” he explained.
“Orc,” she countered.
He showed her the money from the hides. She showed him the guard’s purse. It was a small fortune between them.
“We’re celebrating,” Alyna declared. “Actual food. On a table. With chairs.”
They went to the famed Booty Bay tavern, The Salty Sailor. It was a riot of noise and smoke. They found a corner table, ordered something described as ‘today’s catch’ and a bottle of surprisingly decent Westfall wine. The food, when it came, was a spicy fish stew with actual vegetables. It tasted like heaven.
Between mouthfuls, the stories spilled out. He described the basilisk’s choking smoke, the dread weight of the petrifying feeling. She mimicked the goblin’s furious shrieks, recounted the precise moment the human guard’s rhythm became predictable. They talked over each other, grinning, their legs tangling under the table.
For a few hours, the fear and the grime receded. They were just two people in a loud room, victorious in their small ways, building something new together. The wine warmed Alex’s belly and loosened his tongue.
“When you had her pinned,” he said, swirling the dark liquid in his cup. “You told her to be a poem, not a ledger. What did you mean?”
Alyna leaned back, a soft smile on her lips. “A ledger is all facts. Addition, subtraction. Predictable. A poem… it can turn on a word. It uses rhythm to hide its intent. It surprises you.” She looked at him across the table, the tavern’s lantern light catching in her green eyes. “It’s more alive.”
He held her gaze, understanding. She wasn’t just talking about fighting.
They finished the bottle. The walk back to their room was unsteady, arm-in-arm, weaving through the vibrant, dangerous night. In their closet-sized room, with the sounds of the bay as their orchestra, they made love. It wasn’t the desperate, hungry coupling of the cave, or the profound, merging connection of the frozen stream. This was different. Lighter. Playful. There was laughter in it. Ease.
Afterward, lying sticky and sated on the thin mattress, her head on his chest, reality began to seep back in with the damp from the walls.
“The captain said the last trainer lost a leg to a pirate’s parrot,” Alyna murmured, her fingers tracing the line of his ribs.
“That’s… creatively horrifying.”
“This place is a joke. But the money’s real.” She paused. “We can’t stay here forever, Alex. This is a hidey-hole. A good one. But a hidey-hole all the same.”
He knew she was right. Booty Bay was a stopgap, a place to gather resources and breathe. The world, with its patrols and its prejudices, hadn’t forgotten them. It was just out of sight, beyond the jungle and the sea.
“Where next?” he asked, staring at the water-stained ceiling.
“I don’t know.” She shifted, propping herself up on an elbow to look at him. Her expression was serious. “But we’ll need a ship. A real one. And a destination that doesn’t have extradition treaties with the Alliance. Or the Horde.”
“So, nowhere, basically.”
“Basically.” She kissed his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. We’ve got time. And we’ve got this.” She gestured vaguely at the room, at them.
He pulled her closer, breathing in the scent of her—tavern smoke, salt, and sweat. It was the scent of their new, precarious life. It was terrifying. And for the first time, staring into that uncertain future, Alex felt not dread, but a low, steady thrill. They were a poem now, not a ledger. And the next line was theirs to write.
And the next line was theirs to write.
Six months later, the line had become a ledger after all, but a rich one, filled with the dark ink of accumulated coin and hard-won routine. Booty Bay’s chaotic rhythm no longer jarred Alex’s nerves; it was just the drumbeat of their new life. He knew which alleys to avoid, which vendor would buy basilisk tongues, and how to field-dress a raptor in the steam-drenched jungle before the heat could spoil the hide.
His body had changed, lean muscle built from hauling carcasses and the constant, careful tension of the hunt. The boyish softness was gone from his face, replaced by a sharpness around the eyes that came from staring down things that wanted to eat him. He’d learned to read the jungle’s green silence, to differentiate between the harmless rustle of a windseeker and the predatory stalk of a tigerslayer. The petrified boot was a trophy now, stored under their bed.
Alyna’s guards no longer stabbed themselves, or each other, during drills. They moved with a cohesion that bordered on respectable. The orc, Gort, had learned to channel his rage into a controlled fury. The goblin, Fizzlek, could actually feint without falling over. The human woman, Kaela, had become Alyna’s unofficial lieutenant, her once-cold eyes now gleaming with something like ambition. The captain’s mustache seemed less droopy these days.
“They’re starting to understand,” Alyna told him one evening, oiling her blades at the small table in their room. They’d upgraded to a larger space with a real bed and a window that didn’t look into a slaughterhouse alley. “It’s not about the forms. It’s about the space between the forms. The moment you decide to move.”
“Like a poem,” Alex said, smiling from where he was mending a tear in his game bag.
She looked up, her expression softening. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”
The money piled up. Silver became gold. The heavy guard purses and the leatherworker’s payments were stored in a sealed clay pot hidden in a hollowed-out floorboard. It was more wealth than Alex had ever dreamed of touching. It felt solid. Real. A possible future had weight.
“We should celebrate,” Alex said one afternoon, returning from a hunt with only a single, perfect panther pelt. He hadn’t even broken a sweat. “Properly. I saw a new place down by the lower docks. A Pandaren just opened it.”
Alyna wiped her brow after a long sparring session, her skin gleaming. “Pandaren? Like the bear-people? What do they know about cooking?”
“Apparently,” Alex said, pulling two heavy gold coins from his pocket, “enough to charge a fortune. Let’s find out.”
The restaurant, The Jade Serenity, was an impossible pocket of calm. The air inside smelled of ginger, star anise, and steaming dough, utterly vanquishing the harbor stink. A cheerful, round Pandaren with black and white fur and an apron bowed them to a low table. The walls were painted with misty mountain scenes.
The food arrived in small, exquisite portions: dumplings so delicate they seemed to float, braised pork belly that melted on the tongue, spiced vegetables with a crisp, clean fire. They ate with a focused, shared silence, punctuated by soft groans of pleasure.
“This is… I have no words,” Alyna finally said, putting her chopsticks down.
The drinks were called Pandarinhas. They came in chilled copper cups, a vibrant green concoction laced with lime and a mysterious, smooth liquor that tasted of melon and herbs. One sip sent a cool, pleasant hum through Alex’s veins.
“I could live on these,” Alyna sighed, taking a long drink, her ears twitching in contentment.
They had a second round. The warm buzz of good food, exceptional drink, and safety loosened something in Alex’s chest. He watched the Pandaren proprietor laugh with a table of grizzled troll sailors, his demeanor unflappably kind.
“Look at him,” Alex said, his voice low. “He doesn’t care. They’re not Alliance. They’re not Horde. They’re just… customers.”
Alyna followed his gaze. “It’s a restaurant. It’s his job not to care.”
“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?” Alex leaned forward, the gold coins in their pocket feeling suddenly less like an end and more like a key. “I’ve been reading the shipping bulletins. Talking to traders. There’s a whole continent. Pandaria. That’s where he’s from.”
“I know what Pandaria is, Alex.”
“The factions there… they say it’s different. The fighting’s background noise. Not the main event.” The words started tumbling out, a idea forming as he spoke it. “The climate’s mild. No blizzards. And the food… Alyna, you taste this. This is just one restaurant.”
She swirled her drink, the green liquid clinging to the copper. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we have a fortune. Enough for passage. Enough to start. We could… go there.” He held his breath. “The Pandaren are tolerant. We could just be… us. A hunter and a… a poem. We could build a life.”
Alyna was quiet for a long time, studying him. The casual bravado was absent. He saw the calculation in her eyes, the weighing of old fears against this new, fragrant possibility.
“A life,” she repeated, as if testing the weight of the word. It wasn’t a hidey-hole. It wasn’t a frantic run. It was a positive, declarative statement.
“Yeah,” Alex said, his pulse quickening. “A real one. Where no one has a leaflet with your face on it. Where I won’t have to watch for human patrols at the door.”
She reached across the table, her fingers brushing his. The calluses from her dagger grips felt familiar and right. “You’ve really thought about this.”
“For months.” He turned his hand to interlace their fingers. “Every time I sold a perfect hide. Every time you came home without a new bruise from training some guard who finally got it. It all felt like… steps. Toward something.”
Alyna looked down at their joined hands, then around the serene room, then back at him. A slow, genuine smile spread across her face, reaching her eyes. It was the smile from the cave, not the tavern. Unburdened.
“A life,” she said again, and this time it sounded like a promise. “I guess we should start looking at ships, then.”
“I guess we should start looking at ships, then.”
The words hung between them, a tangible decision made over empty copper cups. Alex felt a jolt, part terror, part wild excitement, like leaping from a cliff and only now seeing the water below. He signaled for the check, his fingers trembling slightly as he counted out the gold. The Pandaren proprietor bowed deeply, his serene smile seeming to bless their departure.
The next morning, the harbor master’s office smelled of mildew and bureaucracy. A gnomish woman with lenses strapped to her goggles consulted a massive, ticking ledger. “Pandaria? You’re in luck. The Dawn Chaser is a decent vessel. Captain’s a tauren, steady as stone. Departs in a fortnight with the tide. She’s taking on supplies for the long haul west.” She named a price that made Alex flinch, but when he slid the heavy gold coins across the wet counter, the gnome didn’t blink. She stamped two parchment tickets with a firm thwack. “Gangplank opens at dawn, two weeks from tomorrow. Don’t be late. Tide waits for no one, not even lovers.”
Two weeks felt simultaneously like an eternity and the blink of an eye. Their routine continued, but every action was now underscored with a final, poignant weight. Alex sought out the grizzled dwarf leatherworker on his last supply run. He didn’t bring hides. He brought a detailed sketch, measurements memorized from nights of tracing the lines of her body, and a hefty deposit of pure gold. “Violet and black dye. Reinforced at the joints, but flexible. Like a second skin. Can you do it?”
The dwarf squinted at the sketch, then at Alex. “Aye. For this price, I can make it sing. But it’ll take every day you’ve got.”
The final evening in their room, the air was thick with the scent of packing oil and sea-salt. Alex was arranging his few remaining tools when Alyna returned from her last training session. She pushed the door open and froze. Laid across their bed was the armor.
It was not just leather. It was a shadow given form, the violet a deep, royal twilight, the black like polished obsidian weaving through it in subtle, reinforcing patterns. The pauldrons were elegantly scaled, the chestplate molded to a contour that promised protection without bulk. Fine chainmail, lighter than silk, lined the vital areas. It was ruthless and beautiful.
She didn’t say a word. Her fingers, usually so sure, hovered over the chestpiece, then traced the seamless stitching along a pauldron. She looked at Alex, her green eyes wide, questions caught in her throat.
“The old one’s been chafing your right shoulder for months,” he said, his voice quiet in the dim room. “You mutter about it in your sleep. And the left hip buckle is starting to stress-fracture. I… I had some gold left over.”
“Left over,” she repeated, the words a bare whisper. She picked up the cuirass. It was shockingly light. She slipped it on over her tunic, the fastenings clicking shut with a satisfying, precise sound. It settled on her as if it had grown there. She twisted, dropped into a crouch, executed a fluid practice parry. The leather didn’t creak or bind. It moved with her, a silent partner.
She stood still, looking down at herself, then at him. Her bravado, her humor, all of it was gone. In its place was a naked, vulnerable awe. “It’s perfect,” she breathed. Her voice hitched. “Alex, it’s… nobody has ever…”
She couldn’t finish. She crossed the room in two strides and kissed him, her hands framing his face. It was a kiss of profound, wordless thanks. When she pulled back, her eyes were bright. “It’s the best thing. The most precious thing.”
The goodbyes were brief, pragmatic, but laced with unexpected sentiment. At the barracks, Kaela nodded to Alyna, then offered a firm handshake. “You made us less of a joke. Safe travels.” Gort grunted and presented her with a honing stone from his homeworld. Fizzlek saluted, for once not grinning. The captain with the waxed mustache actually sighed. “I’ll have to find some other poor soul to terrorize. Don’t name any children after me.”
The dwarf leatherworker merely grunted when Alex went to collect the final piece, a pair of reinforced gloves. He shoved them into Alex’s hands along with a small skin of conditioner. “For the armor. Tell the elf to use it monthly. Or the sea air will turn it stiff as a board.” He paused, looking away at his wall of tools. “Good work, lad. On the hides. On… the other thing.”
They had three days left with nothing to do but wait. They became tourists in their own temporary home. Alex showed her his hunting grounds, the rocky inlet where he’d killed his first crocolisk, the boulder where the basilisk had nearly turned his foot to stone. “I was terrified,” he admitted, kicking the rock.
“You were alive,” she corrected, lacing her fingers with his.
They found the old troll ruins north of the bay, crumbling ziggurats consumed by vibrant, choking jungle. They didn’t speak of ancient wars. They just walked through the green silence, listening to the calls of unseen birds. On their final full day, Alex led her on a winding path through a cleft in the coastal cliffs. It opened onto a crescent of white sand sheltered by towering palms, the water a breathtaking, clear turquoise.
“How did you find this?” Alyna gasped, shedding her pack.
“I was tracking a panther. It led me here, then decided I wasn’t worth eating.” He was already pulling his tunic over his head.
They swam naked in the warm, gentle surf, the grime and tension of Booty Bay washing away. They floated on their backs, staring at the flawless sky, fingers barely touching. Later, on a blanket of sun-warmed sand, they made love without hurry, the rhythm of the waves their only accompaniment. It was a quiet, sun-drenched affirmation, a sealing of their old life and a blessing for the new one.
Dawn on departure day was a grey promise. The Dawn Chaser was a broad-beamed carrack, her sails furled tight, her tauren captain a massive, silent silhouette on the quarterdeck. The dock was a chaos of final loading, shouted orders, and crying gulls. They stood at the bottom of the gangplank, their world condensed to two packs and the clothes on their backs.
Alex looked at Alyna. She was wearing the violet and black armor, her blonde ponytail stark against the dark leather. She looked like a future he’d barely dared to sketch. She caught his look and smiled, a real, easy thing. She took his hand, her grip firm.
“Ready, farm boy?”
He squeezed back, his eyes on the ship, on the vast sea beyond. “Ready.”
They walked up the groaning wooden plank together, their steps in sync, leaving the stinking, vibrant, temporary sanctuary of the bay behind. They did not look back. The deck of the ship felt solid and uncertain beneath their feet, a tiny island of wood destined for a distant, kinder shore. They stood at the rail as the lines were cast off, watching the coastline shrink. The wind picked up, smelling only of salt and open water.
Full of hope, silent and shared, they watched the horizon widen.