by Shashibala
Shashibala had encountered vile horrors in her time, sights that would send mere mortals gibbering in terror. She had endured torture, and was forced to inflict torture in the process of the training that was supposed to make her into an interrogator for the Burning Legion. She had been to the depths of exhaustion and despair only to find new lows of both.
This, somehow, was worse in some ways.
The Succubus bounced the wailing baby boy on her hip, her expression frantic, her magically-altered white skin flushed pink with frustration and panic. His face was red and his big blue eyes, softly glowing, were screwed stubbornly shut. In the corner, also snuffling and sobbing was a small Tauren girl, hands clamped over her ears.
"I swear to SARGERAS if you don't shut them both up RIGHT NOW I'm dumping the LOT of you into the middle of the EMPTY NETHER," Mazrethok snarled, the Pit Lord in an Elven body reaching his wit's end.
Standing in a corner, the Elven Magister Uloro swirled a drink of some kind around in a glass, an eyebrow quirked consideringly. "Maybe we should try rum? Rum puts me to sleep..." he sighed, flipping his immaculately groomed blonde hair over one shoulder.
Shashi bit her lower lip, on the verge of tears. "Shashi is being handle! Shashi is being take care!" She said, forcing a bright, cheery expression as she looked at the baby in her arms. "Hush hush hush littling boylike, we are dance and we are bounce and we are happy being..." She said as she bounced him, to no avail.
"He's too looooooooud..." Kishi cried in the corner, cringing away from Mazrethok's raging temper. "I wanna go home to MAAMAAAAA!"
It was times like this Shashi wished she was more like a normal Sayaad. Something was broken inside her, some part of her that would have made her hard and uncaring and focused only on causing pleasure and pain. It was the weak ones like her that ended up enslaved in the rituals of weak young adventurers barely learning their spells to steal energy from her people.
At times like this, though, she wondered if her so-called freedom was really worth all that.
"Kishi, Kishi, everylike is being all righting!" She said, turning her too-bright smile on the Tauren girl. "Kishi and Shashi are being make cookie, play gamelike? When Daltrien is being rest!" She nodded firmly, one of the tight buns at the nape of her neck starting to come undone and white hair hanging in her face. Her dress was a mess, covered in very small five-fingered and larger three-fingered handprints, and there was a smear of some kind down the side of her face, of what she didn't even want to consider, but she was fairly sure it was mashed banana.
She hoped it was mashed banana.
"You don't want to go home anyway," Uloro drawled sardonically. "Your so-called parents will just lose you again." He trailed a finger around the rim of his glass, smirking.
"Lololo is not being help!" Shashi frowned. "Kishi is just staying for short timelike, then home being go, safing and sound!" She nodded, trying not to look at Mazrethok. Daltrien's cries started to wind down and she blinked at him, incredulous...only to have him erupt in even louder crying, apparently only having run out of breath for a moment. Everyone in the room cringed, and Kishi burst into fresh tears.
"DO SOMETHING!" Mazrethok thundered, his hands glowing with fel energy. "Do something or I will!"
Panicked, her eyes darting, Shashi tried everything she could think of. "Oh! Looking here! Shashi is having fun toy! Shashi is face making crazy! Shashi is silly dance doing! Shashi is...Shashi is..." Her voice faltered, on the verge of breaking down into sobs herself. She stared down at the little boy in her arms despairingly.
The little BOY in her arms.
Struck by sudden inspiration, she kissed two of her fingers, a spark of demonic light igniting against her lips, and then pressed the fingers to the baby's forehead. He had just enough time to blink once, widely, and then fell into a deep sleep. Everyone in the room relaxed visibly, and Shashi slumped into a chair weakly with the boy in her arms.
"Good enough," Mazrethok growled, opening a portal and striding off to who even knew where.
"Well, if I'm not needed here I'm going to go back and...spy, or something. Look in on the others," Uloro said with another toss of his golden tresses, and likewise stepped into a portal that had the vague shapes of the building of Shattrath glimmering in the distance.
Shashi started to close her eyes, exhausted, when there was an insistent tugging on her arm. "Shashi? Can we make cookies now? Can we? Can we? You saaaaaaid we were gonna make cookies!" Kishi asked her, her tears forgotten, bouncing with excitement.
Shashi took a deep breath, trying to find some trace of the Sayaad cruelty inside of her that would make her tell the girl to go away, she was tired, leave her alone...but looking at the girl's wide, hopeful eyes, she just couldn't do it.
"All right...cookie make timelike being," she said with a soft smile, patting Kishi's hand.