Black rocks, grey gravel and green flames marked the southern coastal plane. Based solely on colors, Faronaar wasn't exactly a bad place: it had a long coastline uninterrupted by tourists (as if anybody would vacation there), exotic wildlife (which had mostly been mutated by chaos energy), and lots of excitement (in the form of interdimensional mass murdering beings). While her quest might have been harrowing, Kenda was also having the time of her life.
At just over a decade since the Raventusk tribe of forest trolls had joined the Horde, Kenda's experience with the third incarnation of the faction hadn't lived up to the hype. She'd come of age just around that time, and began her training as a shadow hunter in earnest. Unlike the Darkspear tribe of jungle trolls which had renounced voodoo when joining the Horde, the Raventusk viewed that as a redline: they would not compromise on their beliefs for anyone. Unfortunately, that meant that she'd spent most of her career as a defender of her people patrolling her village for intruders rather than actual adventuring.
But now, with the last felguard in a string of a dozen charging at her, she had her chance. Draenor had turned out to be a massive disappointment in more ways than one; the Lost Isles, however, were like a field day for her to practice her class' blend of life and death magic.
"Onk wuaraki oush!" the felguard shouted in its demonic tongue as it raised its spiked sword at her.
Kenda grinned. Holding her ground and slouching even lower than usual, she waited as the demon footsoldier charged. She gripped the handles of her twin fel blades - the same style of long blade once wielded by Zul'jin - and braced for the impact. She was skilled enough such that she could have preemptively cut the unholy entity down had she wanted, but the felguards were so reckless that she found it more efficient to simply wait for them to run straight at her. Metal boots thundered on the ground as the demon ran yelling like a maniac, practically doing her job for her. She didn't even need to hex the charging demon to soften it up this time; its lack of caution put it in an even more disadvantaged position.
Swinging in a perfect arc just as it reached her position on the rocky, corrupted shoreline, the felguard cut into the air and brought its sword toward her head. The amount of force behind the swing would have been sufficient to cut through iron had it not been parried. Rather than directly blocking the swing and risking damage to the runed blades running along the length of her forearms, Kenda parried the sword strike and redirected its force, causing the felguard's weapon to swoop down into the gravel and soil. The demon stumbled due to the lack of a fleshy victim to catch its motion, leaving it to unexpectedly bend at the waste and expose its spiked back to her. She wasted no time in spinning in a quarter circle and dragging her fel blade across the back of the felguard's neck. Demonic regeneration was as powerful as troll regeneration, but even the demon couldn't recover from severed neck muscles quickly enough.
Without a sound, the felguard's head fell downward, unable to rise without control behind its vertebrae. The severed flesh and meat burned with demonic flames as the tissue started to reseal itself, though the demon still fell to its hands and knees from the shock. Wasting no time, Kenda straddled the felguard's back and crossed her arms in a V shape, resting the blades on her forearms against the opposite sides of the demon's neck. Not granting it a chance to get back up, she uncrossed her arms, severing its head in the process. The corpse hadn't even hit the ground by the time it began to smolder and disintegrate back into the Twisting Nether. All that was left behind was a lifeless skull, the token she'd need to tie with a rope to all the others as proof of her quest completion.
Kenda turned around, watching her own footprints on the ground for the past mile or so. Though there were no bodies in her wake since demons dematerialized upon death, the lifeless skulls inexplicably left behind formed a sort of trail of evidence. Each felguard dropped one, a testament to her growing skill.
Pausing for a moment, she relaxed her muscles and observed her surroundings. The area of Faronaar she'd been sent to was empty save a handful of sparsely growing trees and, until moments ago, wandering demons patrolling the coast. Whether the Horde authorities wanted to land ships on that coast or simply to clean out the demonic infestations wasn't her business. All she knew is that an orc in Dalaran wearing an official looking tabard ordered her to leave no demon living on the southwest coast, and she'd be rewarded for doing so.
Kenda took a deep breath. "Time to collect," she sighed to herself as she reached behind her back and slung her fel blades from her trappings.
Alone and without any further opponents, she took her time collecting her quest items. A dozen skulls wasn't a small load to carry, and since she'd left her mount perched safely in a small woodland two miles away, she had a lot of footwork to do.
Slowly, she took the first skull and looped a piece of rope through holes she punctured in the top. One by one she formed a collection of the skulls on the rope like a macabre bunch of grapes clattering around every time she took a step. Although all of the felguards had seen her the moment she killed the first among their number, they had been wandering so far apart that she'd been able to kill each one on its own before reaching the next one. It was fun, but the work of retracing her steps and struggling to tie the skulls together snugly felt like a bit of a chore.
At some point during her collection duty, she began to notice the odd flash of purple and green over the horizon. She thought nothing of it at first since much of that part of Faronaar was made of dark rocks and green demonic fire and chaos magic. It was a perfect blend. When the object began to move toward her, however, she groaned out loud at the prospect of yet another felguard-
"Oh loa," she sighed again when she realized that the person tearing a path toward her from a great distance wasn't exactly a demon...it was a demon hunter.
Far be it from Kenda to question the wisdom behind admittance of such people to the major factions. Her own tribe was only tenuously a member of the Horde, so she couldn't really judge. But why a class who'd literally made pacts with demons were tolerated in order to fight a demonic invasion was beyond her. In fact, it made about as little sense as tolerating the death knights while fighting the Scourge. But what did she know?
As the purple and green dot became a blob at half a mile away and then a person with definable features at a few hundred yards, Kenda dropped the bunch of skulls and pulled her fel blades out again. The demon hunter appeared to be a night elf, and so likely a member of the Alliance, and was really sprinting at full speed. This wasn't simply another adventurer just trying to reach her destination quickly; this lady clearly meant to pick a fight. Kenda was no stranger to random duels with members of the other faction while questing in the wilderness, though the warming of relations between the Alliance and Horde on Draenor had brought a temporary halt to such skirmishes. She would have preferred the status quo to have remained that way, if anything for her peace of mind while questing alone without her mount.
The night elf was only about fifty yards away by then, her features more noticeable as she neared the end of what must have been a run of several miles all for the sake of fighting a random stranger in the middle of nowhere. The green tattoos, the blindfold, the weird horns - this lady really did look like a demon without hooves. The two glowing war blades left Kenda no time to muse on the elf's freakish appearance, and she took up her own fighting stance in response to the rapidly approaching enemy.
"Finally, a worthy opponent!" the night elf growled in what sounded like very archaic Darnassian. The language was close enough to Thalassian - almost like a dialect rather than a separate language - for Kenda to understand that the other woman must have been an older night elf and linguistically uncorrupted by the influence of other tongues. Which would also mean that she wasn't a novice fighter by any means.
This time, Kenda threw herself headfirst into the duel without waiting for her opponent to strike first. Without even trying to figure out what the other woman wanted, the forest troll dashed forward, catching the night elf off guard. Fel blade clashed with war blade as the two of them tested each other with opening strikes, though Kenda wasted no time in the half a second thereafter and fell into combination moves aimed at her new enemy's arms, shoulders and neck.
At first, the demon hunter appeared taken off guard by the shadow hunter's assault (despite having been the instigator). She parried Kenda's blows expertly but mounted no offense of her own, rapidly giving up much of the ground she'd gained while charging toward the nominal Horde member. Kenda pressed on modestly, vigorously thrusting with both arms as she sought to slice her attacker to pieces.
As she increased the speed of her strikes, her attacker began to fight back, bringing the twin war blades dangerously close to Kenda's arms and head on a few occasions. A measure of panic welled up inside of the forest troll as she realized the night elf must have been positively ancient; Kenda was stronger, heavier and had a longer reach, but once the night elf overcame the initial shock, the demonic fighter not only parried and redirected all of Kenda's strikes but even struck back with such speed that she forced the Raventusk tribeswoman to begin backtracking.
The space in between the two of them became a mess of shining metal and silver flashes as they both swung for each other and parried those swings at breakneck speed. It was a workout so intense that they both began panting from the strain, as well as the frustration at their mutual inability to land a single blow on each other. Finally tiring of their back and forth ordeal, they both had the same thought and tried to low kick each other at the same time. They both connected, mutually grunting as they kicked each other's legs and backed away from each other.
Not even skipping a beat, the night elf screeched and jumped backward, arching her back like a rabid cat. Rising off the ground like a creepy possessed child, the demon hunter floated a few feet in the air as her tattoos glowed an even brighter shade of green. Kenda had only a split second to collect her thoughts before a strange demonic light emitted from the demonic elf's empty eye sockets. The light looked like a combination of laser beam and demonic flames, burning into the air and catching Kenda's bicep before she shadow hunter could dodge.
"Argh!" she screamed as searing pain ate into her upper arm. The burning sensation stung her like fire, but it also throbbed continuously afterward as if she'd been hit with damage over time.
While the demon hunter was floating, she appeared to lose some of her ability to pivot or pursue an opponent easily, and Kenda circled the woman while trying to blink the intense pain away. If this lady wanted to fight dirty, then the shadow hunter was just as prepared to do so.
Muttering a voodoo curse under her breath, Kenda continued to circle around her opponent as the woman stopped the eyeball flames, dropped to the ground and abruptly dropped her arms. The war blades dragged the night elf's hands toward the soil and forced the woman to slouch as the curse of weakness overtook her. For good measure, Kenda hexed the woman with joint pain as well, a technically harmless but endlessly distracting ailment. She could heal her burn wound later; at the moment, she had her attacker where she wanted her.
Pouncing straight toward the demon hunter, the shadow hunter spun in a few circles like a whirling blade as she pressed the attack against her assailant. The demon hunter jumped ten yards backward with a flash of green light at her heels, but all she did was give the shadow hunter enough time to mutter her curse again and increase the intensity of the physical weakness. Unable to swing her heavy war blades effectively, the night elf crumbled under the forest troll's final assault, her blades knocked from her hands and her forearms, shoulders and even her upper back covered in thin but long gashes as Kenda cut her to pieces. The demonic lady fell to the ground, unable to withstand the combination of bleeding wounds, joint pain and feebleness.
Kenda quickly placed a foot on the night elf's sternum to pin the woman down, giving her the chance to cast a healing spell on her burn wound and sling her fel blades behind her back again. Her attacker was a beaten woman, and made no effort to stand back up as the victor pulled herself together.
"Why you be attacking me?" Kenda asked in the most fluent Thalassian she could muster.
Whether the night elf wasn't used to the sound of Thalassian, or was dazed from the curse and hex spells, the woman took her time answering. Only after staring up at Kenda suspiciously did she grit her teeth and spit out a pained answer. "My people demand the head of Horde scum before I can reclaim my rank in the Sentinel Army," the night elf hissed acrimoniously. Her pursed lips almost spoke of spite, but her frown quickly turned to one of dismay. "And now you ruined it."
For a good few seconds, Kenda kept her foot on the other woman's chest, trying to figure out what the night elf's angle was. "The Illidari already been accepted by both factions. You not be having anything to worry about; you just be trying to gank an unsuspecting traveler. And you chose the wrong person."
"You don't understand." The night elf remained flat on her back, bleeding into the gravel and sand as she let her head slump to the side. She looked broken by her defeat not only physically but mentally as well.
This is...interesting, to say the least, Kenda thought. It would have been easy to just execute the night elf right there. Killing a member of the Alliance was politically costly when tensions were so high, but killing some griefer trash without witnesses wasn't likely to cause any repercussions. But the way the night elf seemed so depressed at the loss, and so lucid despite that depression, intrigued the forest troll.
"Try me."
This time, when the night elf turned her head and looked back up at Kenda again, there was stubbornness and anger in her frown. "It's not your business."
"Honey, you already be spilling the beans about why you tried to jump me," Kenda laughed, triumphant in the knowledge that she'd figured out the stranger so quickly. "You either be trying to stall your own death, or you actually do wanna tell me. Or tell someone. So...entertain me, and maybe I'm gonna let you live."
A minor war played itself out on the night elf's eyeless yet still animated face. Kenda knew that many people would fall into the confessional trap when faced with imminent death, and for all this woman's centuries (or even possibly millennia) of experience, she was no different. The forest troll grinned as the conflicted casualty beneath her foot struggled so intensely with the comment.
"I...no...you Horde scum, you're only mocking me. You're no different than them."
"Than your own people, yeah?"
The night elf winced and gasped with her mouth closed, but quickly suppressed the reaction to the pain and weakness. "I didn't become this way in order to stop the Legion...I joined the Illidari because I was dishonorably discharged. You were going to be the source of my redemption..." The demonic elf slumped even further into the ground, if such a movement was possible, and looked resigned to her fate. "I hate you."
"You not be the first elfie to tell me that."
"Do not call me-"
"So listen, elfie. You obviously a sad sack and just be acting out of desperation. And I been having a pretty good day so far...so here's what's gonna happen next."
Kenda lifted her foot off the woman's chest, garnering a sharp gasp from her downed opponent. Not giving the night elf the chance to launch a last stand, she quickly squatted on the woman and pulled the rest of her spare rope from around her shoulder. Flipping the night elf on her stomach, Kenda actually hog tied the feebly squirming opponent.
"I'm gonna heal you just a little bit, just so you don't bleed out," she explained while wiping the elf blood from her hands onto the elf's leather breeches. "My voodoo is gonna fade out in a little while, and you gonna be strong enough to untie yourself and go about your merry way. And if we bump into each other again while here on the Broken Isles-"
"I hate you!"
"-then you gonna be leaving me alone to finish my work or go about my business. We clear, hun?"
"No, I hate you!"
"Yeah, well, life be too short to spend it pissed off all the time."
Not granting her attacker the opportunity to further test her patience, Kenda walked over to the garland of felguard skulls she'd strung together and took her prize. Slinging it over her shoulder and walking away, she made a point of stepping over the hog tied demon hunter just to show her who was boss.
"And lighten up a little," she said as she began the hike back to her flying mount.
Miles more of empty coast and chaos-infected land filled her vision as she walked away. A part of her wondered if she'd made a mistake; after all, the elf most certainly intended to kill her, and Kenda was partial to the 'eye for an eye' maxim. But the demonic elf hadn't successfully killed her, or even hurt her beyond the burn mark which she'd healed anyway. Killing her there felt inappropriate.
She hoped she wouldn't regret the decision later.