Her interloper may have thought she was being quiet—and to most she probably was—but the forest hid nothing from Tyrande Whisperwind. Small nocturnal creatures would normally wander in and out of the bramble around her; but instead, all was still. The owls were silent, the breeze moved differently around her, billowing, disturbed. She had company.

Eyes still closed, legs still crossed, Tyrande took a breath. "I know you're there."

It was a moment before she heard someone sigh. "Of course you do…" The voice dripped with sarcasm. "I suppose one of your little mice or little birds came to tattle on me?"

Sylvanas.

Involuntarily, Tyrande's muscles clenched, undoing a full evening of prayer and reverie. She took a long, slow, steadying breath and exhaled with the same measure. Then, she opened her eyes, but didn't give Sylvanas the courtesy of standing. Tyrande wouldn't stand to greet a traitor.

Sylvanas circled slowly around her with a ranger's soft footsteps. Footsteps so familiar to Tyrande, once. Creeping in, creeping away. The footsteps were all that remained of the ranger Sylvanas Tyrande once knew. Now, ranger Sylvanas was gone; only Banshee Sylvanas remained, and she looked amused. "My apologies. Did I disturb your commune with the forest, or whatever it is you night elves do?"

"Yes."

"My bad," she said, not sounding very sorry. In fact, she looked rather proud of herself, and it was difficult for Tyrande not to be baited to react.

Everything about what Sylvanas was doing was bait: her words, her smug grin, the way she'd positioned herself: between Tyrande and the burning embers of Teldrassil, so Tyrande had to look at the wreckage of her home and people if she looked up at her old ally. Her ex-ally.

Everything Sylvanas did was deliberate. It always was. Tyrande wondered what Sylvanas hoped to achieve with this display.

Whatever it was, Sylvanas wasn't going to be easily defeated. "Look around you, night elf," she said, not even using Tyrande's name. "It can't be much of a commune you were having. There's hardly any forest left." She forced a dark laugh.

Tyrande took a slow breath in, and felt it slowly move through her mouth as she exhaled.

"Yes, I imagine it must be suffocating, surrounded by all this wood smoke. Fortunately, not an affliction I need to concern myself with any longer..."

Tyrande let a moment of silence fall between them. No matter how Sylvanas tried her, she would not snap. "On the contrary," she said evenly. "Every breath is a gift."

She saw Sylvanas' lip curl momentarily. "Even when every breath you take smells like the burning corpses of your people, people you failed to save?"

Tyrande gut twisted on that knife. She felt it plunge deep into her heart and her heart ached around it. The warrior in her yearned to pull that knife out and fling it back at Sylvanas—to leap at her, to tear her limb from limb in a frenzy of violence, to shout the names of everyone, everyone who'd perished, everyone whose funeral pyre was the burning tree before them. Instead—

Instead, she didn't. She took a slow breath. In, out. And then she looked Sylvanas dead in those cold eyes of hers. "I mourn them, yes," she said honestly, but calmly. "But I know that they are with their loved ones in a beautiful afterlife full of joy and love." She paused. "And that one day, I will join them."

Sylvanas' brow lowered, and she opened her mouth to fires something back at—

"Is that why you hate us, Sylvanas? Because you know love and joy await us, and only misery awaits you?"

The knife struck bulleye. Sylvanas' face contorted, and the smug, cool demeanor vanished in a flurry of wildfire. "Please," she spat, "don't flatter yourselves. You're not that important to me. The reason I made a decision to burn your oh-so sacred tree was because Kalimdor will be free for the Horde to—"

"No one believes that. Especially not I."

Sylvanas gave her a look and then laughed once, incredulously. "You presume to tell me my reasoning behind my decisions?"

"If you presume to try and lie to both yourself and me, then yes." Tyrande made her own decision to stand, finally—a slow and careful movement, as if she had all the time in the world. Sylvanas was close enough that Tyrande could tower over her and look down upon her as she said, "You and I both know the real reason you slaughtered us."

Sylvanas managed a dismissive laugh. "Because of the sheer joy it gave me to burn the righteous and insufferable? No. That was just a happy by-product."

In, and out. In, and out. "Don't lie, Sylvanas. Nothing brings you joy."

Sylvanas turned and gave the burning vista behind her a long, pointed stare, and then pivoted back to Tyrande. "Oh?"

Tyrande ignored her little display. She wasn't so easily fooled. "Nothing brings you joy, and you desperately wish it did. Your life is over. Your joy is over. Only suffering awaits you and you yearn to make everyone suffer with you." She looked at the ever-burning fire, and made sure her voice was calm and slow when she continued.. "Our tree—our beautiful symbol of nature and life—you burnt it. Nothing is clearer: you suffer in death and you want to make everyone suffer in death with you."

Sylvanas lost her tenuous grip on appearing amused. "You're one to lecture me on suffering, Tyrande, I only suffer in death—the Forsaken only suffer in death—because of the torment your little Alliance wrecks on us!"

Tyrande watched her impassively. "And burning Teldrassil certain puts an end to that, doesn't it?" She may have sounded a tad sarcastic herself.

"Burning Teldrassil sends you a message we will not be made to suffer any more at your hands!"

The malice in her voice; she was raging within, Tyrande could feel it. Her coiling, aching spirit, writhing in hatred and anger. Never at peace; never at rest. Nothing at all left of the laughing, singing ranger Tyrande had once cared so much for. For that, Tyrande pitied her. "Your kind has suffered at our hands, that is true," she said. "But we'd made peace with you before this."

"There will never be peace with the Forsaken. I see how you look at us."

"Am I looking at you that way now?"

Sylvanas' face was dark; her eyes were distant. "You always looked at me that way. You always wanted me to suffer. You only got what you deserve." She gestured at the tree.

Tyrande's lips parted.

Oh.

Suddenly, pieces fit into place. An ancient mechanism turned in her head—she understood. She hated this new Sylvanas—this being of malice, hatred and suffering, who wrought suffering wherever she went—but she understood.

Far off in the distance, in a time long ago, she could hear an echo of laughter—ranger Sylvanas, living Sylvanas. Dancing, singing. Watching Tyrande from the corner of her blue eyes and eventually reaching for her hand and drawing her back into the shadows away from the fire. Whispering to her as they lay together in the soft undergrowth.

It made sense. It all made sense, why Sylvanas set fire to their tree. "I never wanted you to suffer, Sylvanas."

Sylvanas' lip curled again. "Now who's lying?"

"I didn't. You always knew Malfurion would wake up one day."

Sylvanas didn't contradict her. "I should have killed him myself." There was such venom in her voice. "You were better without him."

I would never have loved you the way I love him, Tyrande wanted to say, but didn't. She didn't need to throw more knives; Sylvanas was already suffering enough. Besides: Sylvanas was fighting a battle against life that she would never win—not if Tyrande had anything to do with it. "I am always myself, with or without my love," she said clearly. "And I don't regret the choices I made."

Sylvanas' face darkened. The fire inside those dead eyes swirled. "You will," she said, with intent. "You will, I will make sure of it, if it's the last thing I do."

"It will be the last thing you do if you try," Tyrande told her calmly.

"I look forward to facing off with you, then," Sylvanas said, and Tyrande believed it was genuine. She took a few steps back towards the shadows, melting into them just as she had for hundreds of years before her death. "You will join me in death, Tyrande, even though you were too foolish to do so in life."

After she'd left. Tyrande spent a while counting her breaths, feeling her chest swell with each, and exhaling at length until she felt the ground beneath her and the sky above her once more.

If Sylvanas wanted war with Tyrande, and she did: at her own peril, she was going to find it.