Part One

Zaac was cold, quite irrespective of the chilly draft that snaked its way through his office late at night. It could have been noon on the summer solstice and no ray of sunshine would have eased the scowl from his face, nor would any dazzling heat compel him to open his stuffy sanctuary to the outside world. More relevantly, perhaps, Zaac was equally untouched by the winter that iced the streets outside his door and, when the wind was particularly ardent, slipped through his window panes to cut through his office, as it did presently. And why shouldn’t he be unaffected? There was certainly no morning chill as bitter as him, no sleet as bleak. His heart possessed an iciness that could rebuke even dark nights of winter… or would have, save for the fact that Wintersday eve had filled the streets with a merriment that defied the frosty weather.

Wintersday! How Zaac loathed it. Throughout the rest of the year, he could walk the length and breadth of Lion’s Arch and not a soul would stop to ask of his wellbeing. Bookahs would carefully avoid catching his eye as he approached, his fellow Asura would surreptitiously detour to avoid crossing his path (though not so surreptitiously that he didn’t notice), and even the lean but cheery dogs who trotted around the city would sooner slink into shadows and doorways than greet him. It was little enough of a burden for Zaac, who in fact derived a silent satisfaction from such reactions. For him, there was no amenity greater than having a crowd part out of his way, no convenience more sought than the outside world keeping its distance. Wintersday’s approach brought such contentment to a sudden and unwelcome end, however, as carollers and revellers took it upon themselves to spread their cheer unto Zaac, which was met with as much welcome as a virulent disease.

So it was that while the rest of the city’s residents banded together in song and goodwill or darted about the markets in eager anticipation of a family feast, Zaac spent his Wintersday eve in much the same fashion as every other night, rambling around his office alone. There were usually figures to scratch into ledgers or inventory lists to scrutinise, and certainly subordinates that needed castigating, for Zaac felt that he was utterly isolated in a world filled with lazy and insolent others. Once – just once – Zaac had found a kindred spirit in his business partner Maarl, but he had perished some seven years earlier after succumbing to old age. To say that he missed Maarl’s company would imply a sense of sentiment that he utterly lacked, but he did miss the other Asura’s presence – which is to say he’d been grateful not for his personality, but his lack of personality. They alone seemed to appreciate the significance of a cashbook’s bottom line, that money equalled worth, and that by extension anything which detracted from the earning of money was, by definition, worthless. But alas, Maarl was seven years deceased, and Zaac then found himself quite alone with his austere principles.

Zaac could have spent the rest of the evening, and even the rest of his living days, engrossed with his work and unvisited save for the occasional cowering worker that was compelled to report in. He could have worked well into the night, grunting approvingly at profits and sneering resentfully at expenses, lost in his sterile little world of numbers and budgets. But for all Zaac’s desires to be left alone, the outside world had plans of its own that fateful night…

The front door to the office suddenly reverberated in its frame as some enormous force hammered a quick staccato on it, the crunching of wood snapping Zaac from his reverie. Forever wary of carollers and charitable petitioners, Zaac did not approach the door directly but instead stalked over to small mechanical assembly affixed to the wall. The device, complete with a periscope and speaking tube, was designed to minimise contact with the outside world. As he peered through the glass he’d expected to see the usual herd of rosy-faced carollers, grinning inanely with the cold somehow forgotten amidst their glee, but instead saw the figure of a hulking man looming over his doorstep, his face festooned with piercings and head bereft of hair. It was, in fact, hard to tell whether he was an exceptionally tall human or impossibly squat Norn, though it made little enough difference to Zaac. He would have ignored the visitor, as he did with all petitioners, were it not for the fact that the man was raising another club-like fist to batter the door again, and there was some doubt as to whether or not the door would hold. Zaac bellowed down the speaking tube, his first contact with the outside world for some days:

“Don’t! Not unless you care to pay for a new door to replace the one you dented. Just speak into the tube, and make it quick.”
The man looked up to the glass telescope. “’ere! It’s an ‘aunting, innit?”
“… what?”
“An ‘aunting? You know, from them dead ghosts, like.”
“What the hells are you talking about, you hare brained, hairless lout?”
“We got a message from your business partner, Maarl, right?”
“Maarl’s been dead for years, you detestable imbecile!”
“That’s the whole point of an ‘aunting, innit! He got us to write a letter for ya. That’s how we do business these days, can’t have ghosts running about the streets ‘ere. The Charr in particular get jittery ‘bout ghosts, like.” The skinhead energetically waved a piece of paper in front of the looking glass.
“Oh, for crying out loud… whatever it is, just put it through the damn letter slot already! I don’t have time for this nonsense! I need to make sure everything’s in place for tomorrow’s project…”
“Wot, you’re working tomorrow? On Wintersday?” His brows creased in confusion, an expression that probably came naturally to many bookahs. “Must be pretty important if yer working on Wintersday.”
“Trying to explain my job to someone of your intellectual stature would involve demeaning myself in ways I am not prepared to stoop to. Now, get off my doorstep and be gone with you!” Zaac was about to put the speaking tube back on the hook when a sudden thought occurred to him. “Actually, wait!”
“’ere, wot?”
“Am I to understand from your hateful babbling that there’s some ridiculous bookah tradition of not working on Wintersday?”
“Right gov.”
“Hmm. Well then, I might have an urgent message of my own that need delivering to my workshop downtown.”
The brow creased again. “’Ere, we usually only deliver letters from ghosts and spirits…”
“You’re a messenger, and I have a message. Just be silent and do your job!”

***

The Zaac and Maarl Adventuring Company (now bereft of its latter partner) considered itself to be a top tier setup, as evinced by the fact it did very little adventuring and a great deal of crafting, buying and selling. Weapons of the very rarest designs would exchange hands for incomprehensible sums of money, the ‘cool down’ phases of crafting machines were painstakingly timetabled and byzantine essays were published about the correct way for others to do things: all hallmarks of hard-core adventurers. To his unending regret, however, Zaac was not able to master every art on his own, and thus was compelled to hire two workers: Pentol (female Sylvari, jeweller) and Foskett (male human, weaponsmith). If they had qualities beyond their basic physiology and their trade, Zaac had never bothered to enquire.

Diligence was one of those uncelebrated qualities, as both workers were busy tinkering away in the ZM workshop. The air was frigid, for their master was infallibly stringent when meting out coals for the fire, so the two of them were forced to drag their workbenches over towards the smelting furnace for warmth. Neither complained though, as times were lean and each of them was grateful for any coin that graced their palm, whatever the work and whoever the taskmaster. There was only an hour left until closing but neither dared lay down tools as Zaac was forever breathing down their necks (figuratively, of course, as he was typically locked away in his office and, in any event, was three feet too short to breathe on bookah necks), so each worked on. Pentol busied herself adding some finishing touches to a light-emitting necklace, hoping to have it finished by the day’s close. Foskett’s diligence had admittedly wavered somewhat, and he was watching the clock so intently his smithing hammer had drifted off the brace he was holding and was instead tapping lightly on the wooden table top. With a meagre twenty five minutes left to go, however, a thundering on the door interrupted the countdown to closing.

Foskett glanced towards his colleague, whose slender frame was still hunched over her desk, engrossed in work and oblivious even to the report of the door being battered. Rather than disturbing her, Foskett gently scraped his chair back and trotted over to see who the visitor was. He flung open the door, expecting some Wintersday revellers, and was instead greeted by an enormous set of muscular shoulders that blocked out the view beyond. From somewhere far above a shaved, pierced head bellowed down:
“’ere! It’s an ‘aunting, innit?”
Replying to such an inscrutable remark from a presumably dangerous stranger proved to be something of a challenge for Foskett. At length, he craned his head up and managed a feeble “Oh, really?”
“Yeah!” The stranger hesitated, “’cept nah, it isn’t, cause the bloke sending the letter is still alive.”
“Ah. I see. Well he must be happy about that…” Foskett glanced back towards his colleague, desperately trying to summon some help. Meanwhile, the skinhead cleared his throat and carried on.
“Sorry ‘bout that, force of habit wif me customary greeting, and all. Right, well there’s no ‘aunting after all, but yer boss sends a message.”
Foskett’s blood turned cold. Having a maniac barge into your place of work to shout hysterically about dead people was bad, sure, but receiving a message from Zaac on Wintersday eve was appreciably more ominous. “Oh dear…”
“Yer boss says…” The man produced a small card, and read it aloud with sudden eloquence, “I am lead to believe you borderline worthless drudges had ambitions to shirk tomorrow’s workload on vaguely defined cultural grounds, namely Wintersday celebrations. Well guess what you craven slobs, I’m moving ‘the project’ forward to tonight. Consider this a pre-emptive strike against your laziness and impertinence. If you want to see a paycheque again, you’ll actually have to earn it. You have one hour, minus however long it took this knuckle dragging simian to deliver my message, to get over here. With the utmost sincerity, threats and all, Zaac Ebenezer.” The man glanced up. “End of correspondence. I mean… that’s all, innit?”
“…is it?”
“That was rhetorical, innit?”
“Uh…”
“Best get going, I reckon. Yer boss doesn’t seem like the forgiving type.”

It was something of an understatement. The messenger lumbered off without another word, leaving the door ajar as a deathly blast of cold air slashed past. With a resigned sigh, Foskett fetched his thin jacket from the rack and went to deliver Pentol the grim news.