We’re now coming to the conclusion (at least for now) of my project to do at least one piece of fan fiction exploring all of my favourite World of Warcraft characters.

Ironically, despite her being my most played character by far and my mascot in the digital realm, Mai the rogue was the hardest to come up with something for. As much as I love her, she is frankly not the most exciting character. She loves her country, and she’s good at her job, and there’s just not much else to say about her.

But in the end I did manage to scrounge together a little something that should give you a bit of insight into what makes this master assassin tick.

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Infinite Paths

Above her, the sky roiled and twisted, reality eating itself alive before her very eyes.

Mai yawned.

She pulled her thick salt and pepper hair free from its pony tail and laid back in her bedroll, which lay upon hard rock in a Ren’dorei camp within the Voidstorm. Bedtime was one of the few times she ever let her hair down, in any sense of the term. She was a forty-something woman with a fit build and red-brown eyes that were always darting about, on the search for danger… or targets. Her massive swords lay on the ground next to her.

It had been a long day of scouting the surrounding landscape, the tedium broken only by a brief and violent encounter with an unlucky Domanaar. She felt the long miles of walking in her aching soles and tired bones, and unwelcoming though it was, this still wasn’t the worst place she’d camped in her time. In moments, she was asleep.

* * *

She awoke sometime later to the sound of a child’s laughter. She sat up, scanning the camp. It appeared almost emptied of people, the Ren’dorei guards nowhere in sight. The only other soul in sight was a raven-haired little girl, maybe seven years old, who ran off out of sight.

Mai narrowed her eyes. That wasn’t any little girl. That was her, or something that looked like her, as she would have appeared a little under forty years ago.

She was dreaming, of course, and giving her current location there was a pretty significant chance this was no ordinary dream, but the attempt by some malicious entity to influence her thoughts. Such things were one of the many hazards she’d been trained to combat, and that training had been put to use before.

Her efforts to will herself to wakefulness proved fruitless, though, and while Mai was a very cautious woman, she wouldn’t have ended up in her line of work if she didn’t also have a curious streak, so she decided to play along, for now. She slid out of her bedroll, put her boots back on, and strapped on her swords. She wasn’t sure if such things would be of any use in the dreamscape, but habits were habits. At least she didn’t feel so tired now she was asleep.

She looked around, and couldn’t find the girl wearing her face. That wasn’t entirely surprising. She had always been a little too good at hide and seek back in the day.

If I were me, where I would be hiding? In one of the tents? No, too obvious. There, that cluster of rocks. There was just enough space between them for a little girl to slip in.

Mai crept up to the stones in question and peered into the gap between them. A little girl with red-brown eyes smiled up at her, then darted off into a nearby canyon, giggling merrily.

The girl moved faster than should have been possible, and Mai lost sight of her again. No choice but to follow her into the canyon. She noted it was an ideal spot for an ambush, but if something was already in her head, why would it need to physically corner her? She trudged off, her mind on long ago games of hide and seek.

It had been a while since she had given much thought to her childhood in Elwynn Forest. “Idyllic” would not have been an exaggeration. Those first ten years or so had been well after the Second War, but before the Third, and life had been quite peaceful.

She had grown up in an immigrant family, her mother a paladin of Lordaeron and her father a humble carpenter from Gilneas, and they had always impressed upon her how lucky they were that the people of Stormwind had welcomed them so warmly, a lesson that hit home all too hard when the Third War broke out and Lordaeron fell to the Scourge, taking many of their relatives with it. While she was proud of her heritage, Mai had always considered herself a citizen of Stormwind first, and with the fierce of love her country that only a migrant can possess, she had chosen to serve it as soon as she had been old enough to enlist.

Almost immediately her instructors had noticed she was special. Mai still wasn’t entirely convinced her mother hadn’t given them secret instructions to keep an eye on her. There had always been questions about how Mai was able to hide so well, even when she was little.

There had been tests, exams. She had been determined to possess a talent for magic. Its strength was not enough that sending her off to train as a mage would have made sense, but it could be honed in other ways. She could meld with the shadows, walk without leaving tracks, sense a blow before it fell, and move faster than a normal person should. Before long she had ceased training with the standard cadets and begun more specialized instruction under the auspices of Stormwind Intelligence, an agency she served to this day.

The canyon fanned out into many small, twisting, winding forks. Mai looked down one to her right and saw herself again, but older now. This Mai was a young adult, practising sword forms with other recruits. This would have been before her transfer to SI:7.

The grinding of a saw caught her attention, and she turned to her left. That fork of the canyon showed another vision of her teenage self, but this one was in her father’s workshop, helping him to craft a set of cabinets. Instead of a sword, she held a saw.

She frowned. That wasn’t right. This vision had never happened. She’d loved her father, but she had never taken any interest in his work. She certainly hadn’t become his apprentice.

She crept on, passing more of the narrow canyons, each containing its own vision. There was one she recognized; a training exchange program where she’d received unarmed combat instruction from a Night Elf woman named Nisa Oakfist. But the others were unfamiliar once more.

She saw herself picnicking beneath a tree with a handsome young man. She blinked, and they were standing in Northshire Abby, being married. Blinked again, and the man was watching over two raven-haired young children in a cozy living room while Mai carried in a freshly baked pie.

Another vision showed Mai training in the blade once more, but not with soldiers in the barracks. She was outside the Cathedral of the Light in Stormwind, wearing a tabard of the Silver Hand. Blink, and now this version of her was striding across the battlefield on a radiant charger, the legendary Ashbringer in her hand. Blink again, and the paladin Mai knelt before the Sunwell, sweating in pain as she channelled Light to combat the Voidstorm.

The visions kept coming. She saw herself a cultist of the Twilight’s Blade, bringing a dagger down into the chest of a terrified prisoner. She saw herself on a gilded throne atop a pile of gold, red-masked members of the Defias Brotherhood kneeling at her feet. She saw herself as a toothless drunk, singing without tune but smiling all the same.

She remembered something she’d heard one of the Void Elves say. “The Light sees only one path, and views all else as lies. The Void sees every possible path, and believes they are all equally true.”

That was what Mai was seeing, she realized. She was being confronted with all the equally valid things she could have been if she had not become the person she was. The sinner, the saint, the mother, the lover, the harlot, the beggar, the hero, the villain.

This was the Void’s attempt to influence her, but it was not trying to hijack her mind with force. It was simply trying to undermine her resolve by showing her all the experience she had missed out on by being so devout in her duty to Stormwind.

The frustrating thing was that it was working. It was true that she had missed out an incredible amount of her life. She had spent nearly every day travelling to far off lands, sneaking through forbidden places, and fighting horrifying creatures. She’d had almost no opportunity for intimate relationships, barely even friendships. She had no family of her own, no chance to recreate the warmth and comfort she’d known in childhood. She had seen multiple worlds and done wondrous things most people had never dreamed of, but she also couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an apple pie. She had hardly ever let herself simply be a person; she was merely a weapon to be wielded by her superiors.

She wouldn’t change it. She would not abandon her duty now, nor would she choose a different path if some reckless Bronze Dragon were to appear and give her the opportunity.

But now, having seen firsthand all the other things that might have been, she could not honestly say she had no regrets.

She awoke, for real this time, upon whatever passed for morning in the shadowy hellscape of the Voidstorm. She strapped on her boots and her blades – for real this time – and prepared for another day of serving king and country.

She was so very tired.