Cain knew his days were numbered.
Simply put, someone had got their grubby little hands on some documents that could frame him should they be put in the right hands. That someone was sitting in his Atrium, smiling sweetly, as if they were here for a chat and a cup of tea. They even had the thought to turn up in a gas mask with a small army, all of whom were grinning politely as they waited for audience with the Grand Apothecary. Even as he fidgeted at the bottom of the lift he could imagine the sly smirk on their face, as they waited in arrogant anticipation for their moment of glory. Even as he pulled the grate open and stepped onto the small circular platform he could hear Julian speaking to him, his tone nerved, worried. This couldn’t be happening, not now, not after all he had worked for.
Then his arm was twisted behind his back. He stood, his knees shaking slightly, in the Atrium of his Apothecarium, as an elf he would have once called a friend held him, his voice mercifully strong despite the flood of thoughts and feelings that bombarded his head. The crack that followed was accompanied by a yelp as four fingers curved around the top of his mask, digging into his hot eye sockets, withdrawing the two yellow citrons that granted him merciful sight. The cry was short lived, as an armoured foot crushed down on one of them, the crunching sound invisible compared to the explosion of energy that surged from both the eye and from Cain, and that too was masked by the female scream that emitted from the destroyed jewel. Even as he reeled from the unbearable pain, he felt a shadowy grip snatching his shoulder, pulling him back through the cold, the darkness and the twisting vortex of the Azerothian ley lines to the waiting warlock, his world black in the absence of his long stolen sight.
It was obvious where he was being taken. He could feel the sway of the zeppelin; he could smell the crisp, sea air and hear the chatter of Goblins. And as he was led off the hard wooden boards of the airship to the skyway tower, he could feel the bustling presence of Orgrimmar, the city still busy at this late hour. Led down ladder, led down stair, led down lift he was marched through the city. People were talking around him, about the documents – the fake documents he reminded himself, and the one eye Thrakha still held. At last they stopped, and, with a whooshing of air the second eye was destroyed, and through the burst of arcane energy Cain could feel a bond on his mind snap. The laughing he displayed after wasn’t his own, but he thoroughly enjoyed it. Things were beginning to look up, and even as he was pushed into a vault that was just too small for him to lie down comfortably, he realised, with a leap in his heart that his captors had forgotten to confiscate his weapons and his potions. As the still air surrounded him he lent back, and fell asleep.
