"You are damn right we'll pursue them. We've won here, we will take the battle to them!" A pounding on the table underscored the words.

"With all due respect, our numbers seem to be a bit down," the sarcasm in the voice barely perceptible, "Perhaps you'd like to take your unit to the forward ranks?"

"You know damn well—" Damien's gravely throat-clearing grabbed the attention of the arguing parties as he lifted the tent flap to usher Sarenda inside. As a one, the group around the table stood, Sarenda could hardly face them. Far from her first time in a war tent, and certainly not with this group, she just didn't give a crap about their bickering.

"General Highweather, our condolences." The purple robes of the Kirin Tor mage dipped with her form. "With the sight of things to come, I welcome you to our ranks." Lysind Tok's formality reminded the others of their place, squelching their arguments for the moment. But only a moment. She knew them well, as leaders, as companions and some of them as legends.

"Ay lassie, we suffer alongside you even as we welcome you in," The powerful figure of Nolan Smithhammer stood only to her chest, he nodded to his left, "Both from Ironforge and Aerie Peak, ye mourn not alone." A flight clad Wildhammer general standing behind Smithhammer nodding in agreement.

The Exodar leaders stood; offering a low formal bow, "It is our world you fight for, it is our world you've lost in, may your companions find peace in the Holy light. Lieutenant Maidelin and I have approached the Anchorites for services should you wish them." Holding her breath for fear of more tears, Sarenda dipped her head in thanks to General Sain.

"May Elune's blessing be with you and your companions." Shaeyla Springshine stood taller than even the formidable elven warrior next to her, "As you know General Andoar and I have agreed to buttress your forward forces."

"Yes, thank you Shaeyla, Feinin." Sarenda meant every word of her thanks, for without the elves, she'd be nothing more than a scouting unit. "We'll expect more troops and cavalry once with the return of our messengers." Putting her fist to her heart, she offered them both a low bow.

"Highweather."

Standing straight, her eyes locked on the other human general. "General Weir." His eyes pinched in disgust with her choices she knew. More said in the distance of silence between the two of them, Sarenda dared not lower her gaze.

Breaking the battle of will between the two, when Mitziple Dimiand spoke, one couldn't help but listen. "Sarenda, I speak for all of Gnomegian, we suffer your loss with you." Sarenda broke her human staring contest, to smile and acknowledge the pink haired engineer.

"Thank you Mitzi, truly." The loose alliance around the table held together, just barely, but all felt the loss of the level-headed Nystar. Sarenda knew her loss was theirs as well.

The angry human general pointed at Damien, "You can go now." Never one to question an order, the dwarf turned to leave until Sarenda put her hand to his leather clad shoulder and stopped him.

Sarenda put her full warrior weight into her words, "He stays General Weir."

"He does not belong."

"With all due respect Tungsten, he is my second, he stays," turning to the Ironforge general, "with your permission, of course." She nodded at her peer. She couldn't know for certain, but Sarenda was sure a smile formed under the bushy grey beard of General Smithhammer.

"A dwarven second eh lass?" his black eyes pinned the hunter from his own ranks; sparkling with mischief seeing Damien unable to contain his own surprise, "Aye, no one better for this discussion, it'll be his folks doing the chasin' if we go." Nolan nodded at his own man, and again at Sarenda.

"Please join us Damien Spitehawk," Again, Lysind's formality and the only mage among them, brought them back to the business, and argument, at hand. Sarenda eyed the table in front of them strewn with maps between tankards and broken end crusts of bread. The barren Hellfire Penninsula mapped into the lush forest. Between the Fel Orcs and the Horde, they had their hands full, the remaining Burning Legion existing on the peripherals, not fully engaged. At least not yet.

"We must pursue them, in spite of our own casualties," The Exodar General spoke up, "We must. We have opportunity, we have Beinbrath on the run. He must be captured at the absolute least. And I would not lose sleep if he was relieved of his spirit in the process."

"Beinbrath isn't our objective here Oralin," Shaeyla reminded them, "Our purpose is much broader than one raiding enemy."

"Ha! Lassie, you call him one raiding enemy? We barely made it through this 'skirmish', and at much cost the last two days." Nolan looked between Oralin and Shaeyln, "No, you are both right and both wrong. No doubt that we must pursue Beinbrath, he will stir and unite larger groups; but we cannot ignore the Horde gathering to the northeast either." His massive thumb pointed out the corner of the peninsula which his scouts identified earlier in the week as growing in mass.

"I agree with Smithhammer, we bicker for naught. Split off a fast, light force to pursue and heckle Beinbrath if we must, but, we should move against the Horde." Tungsten said it so matter of fact, Sarenda wanted to punch him. This, however, was not a new feeling for her.

"The Horde is not our only enemy." The high voice of the gnome never mislead any of them, Mitzi's grasp of strategy was born of her engineering veins. "We have not spoken of the things we could not explain. We avoid the conversation because no one knows the answer, and no one wants to admit it." Sarenda felt the thump in her shoulder from her newly appointed second. In a less formal situation, she would have thumped Damien back. Instead, she let out a long deliberate sigh, he was right, and so was Mitzi. Sarenda just didn't want to talk about it.

"We found no casters among the dead that were capable of what we saw." She heard the exhaustion in her own voice, and steeled herself to match her peers. To sound respectful, semi-informed, "I know that those in the radius of the paladins were unaffected, but even a step beyond their protective auras—" she couldn't stop the shudder, "—even those a step beyond the Light were decimated." Her mind opened in memory, and she saw Gavin stripped of his flesh, melting before her eyes. Again. And again. Her stomach lurched. She'd never know the truth: if her axe ended his misery or if he died first of the magic. In her heart she suspected she wasn't fast enough with her throw.

"Decimated, that's all you'll give us?" Tungsten's hard voice taunting her, marking her unworthy for the council. "You sit her, as unclean as a man out of the stable, and you're unable to tell us more?" No one spoke for a moment, the challenge dangling in the air. Sarenda opened her mouth to speak, but her defender spoke to her surprise.

"With all due respect General Weir, I believe the smell is that of our dead, the crust is the blood of her brothers, and the weariness born of the fact that while we were taking care of ourselves and eating our fill, she walked among the wounded and the fallen. Have you, in fact, seen to your troops yet Human?" Feinin Andoar moved not a muscle, zero inflection in his soft dulcent voice, and yet the threat radiated off of him in waves.

Tungsten stared at the elf, disregard evident in his own wry smile.

"Lass? Have ye really not eaten yet?" Nolan stuck two fingers into his mouth to whistle, but she pushed his arm out of the way, desperate to stop his summons.

"No general, but if you'd seen what I'd seen you wouldn't have been able to stomach anything either. Let the troops eat, I'll drink my fill later."

"Can't stomach it huh?" Tungsten ignored the steady glare from the elf.

The rage built in her stomach, she could feel it threatening her mind and did her best to stomp it down even as the dwarves next to her shifted in unconscious response to the waves of anger. "Have you seen a man bleed out General Weir?"

"We all have and you know it." Drinking idly from his cup, he let the red wine stain his smile before he licked his lips.

"Have you seen it happen, Tungsten, after their skin was ripped from their body in sheets? Their screams echoing in your head as their lips and gums melt off their faces? Teeth scattering like a set of bone dice?" Sarenda spoke in a low whisper, near growl, her blood rage gaining foothold. "Have you seen them drop their weapons because the hand simply no longer existed, having liquefied? Bracers and gloves falling from the body in gelatinous goo and blood?"

With enough sense not to speak, Tungsten merely set down his cup, idle smirk not lessening his challenge.

His silence stirred her anger. She ripped her dagger out of its sheath, shaking it at him. "This is my only unbloodied weapon, man. The only one! By all that's holy if I could have fought what took our men, our leaders - my leader, I would have surely shed its blood." Standing as she did, the red glow around her forced its way on each person, screaming through the air, the fury flooded her. She gripped the blade and drew it across her palm, not a flinch on her face as blood pooled over the titanium, then disappeared into the enchanted blade, its own red light adding to hers.

The mage and gnome slid back, searching for the edge of her aura to escape its hungry pull. Her voice, angry, deepened with each pat of blood that missed the blade splattering to the ground. "And by my god, and by the Light, I will find the source of this evil, and I will skin him with his own magic, and feed it to my people, I will hang his head for all to see." Her words colored the air, her memories of her friend and their leader projecting images into the furied aura above them. Nystar's kind face and ruthless eyes looked down over them as if in judgment.

Sarenda's voice cracked with her words, "And by my own blood," she reached her bloodied hand out as if to touch the astral form, "I will avenge all the men that died here." She slapped her hand down to the edge of the map, leaving a bloody handprint, spinning the dagger in a whirl on the table top with her other. Great white light filled the room; her warrior's rage battling it until in one second, the whirlwind of color embraced the room and vanished.

Stillness shrouded the room.

No one moved.

No breath taken.

The dagger continuing its ethereal spin, its metallic whirl filling the emptiness. Sarenda's wide, unblinking eyes regarded them each with the full weight of judgment. When last her eyes fell on Nolan's stoic form carrying a singular raised eyebrow, she checked herself, shaking off the dissipating rage. "I am done here," her voice breaking on each word. "We will not move tonight nor tomorrow. If you do so, you do so without my men. We need two days perhaps three, to mourn, to heal and to plan. Our menders will need time, our warriors need time, and we have a responsibility to the people of this land, the Cenarians will work with us to lessen the damage." Tungsten and Oralin coughed into their hands at the mention of the druids, underscoring the larger dismissal of the faction. Sarenda pointed at both of them, "They deserve a place at this table. They are here to heal your land," pointing first at the Draenai then at the Human, "and they healed your ass today." She turned to go. "Again, I'm done here. Speak to me of no more plans until tomorrow evening." Reaching back for the still spinning dagger, it jerked to a halt, tip pointing to where Oralin and Tungsten sat. Taking it from the table, she slammed the deadly blade home in its sheath then escaped into the night air without a backward glance.