The prompt: Begin a story with "The hallway was silent..."
- Prompt #139, Creative Writing Prompts

The hallway was silent, a hundred households asleep behind a hundred doors. When Logan had left Arienne, she was sound asleep and cradling a pillow. In one of her small hands there had glittered a vial of pristine water from the Well of Eternity; she could have filled a shot glass with immortality.

They'd returned victorious, finally, worn out and caked in blood. He'd had to carry her to her apartments, drawn her a bath and washed her hair. She'd been holding onto that little vial for gods-knew-how-long, and she clutched it throughout her bath, just staring forward, unseeing.
"She killed him," the blood knight finally said, though she didn't clarify exactly who had been killed. "So we killed her back." Her voice was a whisper, barely louder than the splash of water in the tub. "Her," the elf knew, was Lady Vashj, Arienne's target for months. Hers and her team's, some of whom he knew by name, some of whom he'd heard her speak about, and some of whom he recognized only by their insignia: a cream-colored flower on an earthy brown background. Arienne said nothing more, and Logan didn't pry.
The warm water did her some good eventually: her eyes came back into focus, actually seeing him instead of looking through him, and she moved under her own power when she stood from the bath, curling up in her bed and drifting off. Logan wasn't sure he should have left her alone ... but she wasn't alone, not really, and Damien had been there and knew what she had seen. He could entrust his lady to his brother's care ... as it was, he was late, and if anything earned a goblin's ire, it was wasting their time. Logan hurried off through Outland's swiftly darkening skies.

"Time is money, kid," the goblin greeted him, nodding toward the sun that was sinking over Booty Bay's harbor. The elf bowed, mumbling an apology in his best bad Orcish, then remembering the goblin spoke Common anyway. They ducked in to a small, well-kept shop emblazoned with the name Goodstitch, which must have been the goblin.
"Well, let's see it," the rogue said, and the goblin produced a stone that might not have impressed anyone who didn't know what they were looking at. It couldn't have been larger than his fingernail on any one side, irregularly shaped, but as clear as that mountain water in Arienne's precious vial. Logan squinted, holding a loupe in place as he held the stone up to the last rays of the sun. It was as flawless as Goodstitch had claimed, the goblin wringing his hands as the blood elf turned his attention back to the dealer.
"Four hundred." More than Logan had expected, but then, he had been late.
"I can get one transmuted for less!" the elf protested.
"Yeah, and then you've got a lab diamond." The goblin rolled his eyes, Logan looking indignant. "That's fine if you're going to cut it and slap it in a socket, but I have a feeling this isn't going in anyone's helmet."
Well, Goodstitch would know, right? Logan gazed longingly at the stone for a moment, his mind back on the Scryer's Tier, thinking of Arienne. She looked radiant even when she'd been covered in naga blood, and it brought him no small amount of pride to see her wearing his jewelry; to think of how the gems he cut aided in her efforts, even in some small way. "Four hundred," the goblin said again, jerking him out of his reverie.
"Two fifty," Logan countered. The goblin sized him up, leering at him as if he couldn't quite work out what it was he was looking at.
"What's your arena team called, boy?"
"Cloak and Bolt," he straightened, trying to look proud of his accomplishments in the circuit, no matter how meaningless he felt they were. "Duskmourn." He introduced himself.
"My second cousin's an arena promoter. Three seventy five." Logan wrinkled his nose in dismay.
He didn't want to, but ... "Well, then, do you know Dawnforge?" It was a long shot. Goodstitch shook his head. "She's an engineer, done her fair share of work for the Steamwheedle Cartel and logged a lot of time around Area 52." The dealer didn't look impressed. "The Consortium would know her by name, and since it's for her ..." Now he looked outright dismayed. "Three hundred."
"Three fifty."
"Done."

"I didn't know elves exchanged rings," the goblin commented absently, counting out the gold coins Logan had given him.
"They don't, usually." But they'd both spent so long around humans that the custom felt natural to him. He wrapped the stone delicately in a handkerchief and tucked it away.

It was the dead of night when he stood on the threshold of the Dark Portal, which meant it was dawn on the far side. Stepping into the Outland, Logan whistled his wyvern to him, gliding on the morning's air currents back to Shattrath.
In the Scryer's Tier apartments there were now the sounds of stirring: running water, quiet conversations, Damien's name, Arienne's name, their companions names, on more than a few lips. When Logan walked in, his younger brother was carefully polishing a red lacquered breastplate, which gleamed in the morning light.
"Did she sleep?" Logan asked in hushed Common, and his brother responded in that rough, rasping dialect the rest of the Horde called Gutterspeak.
"Through the night, yes. Where were you?"
"Booty Bay. Who died?" he asked abruptly. Damien's lipless face was hard to read, but his tone conveyed some measure of surprise:
"She told you about that? We lost one of the priests, a Forsaken."
"All Arienne said was --"
"She killed him, so we killed her right back." Arienne leaned against the doorframe of her room, her slender form wrapped in the soft expanse of her white linen sheet. Damien averted his eyes, and Logan crossed to kiss her on the forehead.
"How are you, princess?" he whispered in Thalassian.
"I'm fine -- did you go somewhere?"
"Just something I had to take care of ... I'm back now."
"Good," the blood knight murmured, wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him into her chambers. "Come to bed." He had no time to protest as she draped her long limbs around his form, dragging him down into her soft bedding and, with that vial still in her hand, buried her face against his shoulder, falling back to sleep.