The polished arches of the Valley of Heroes gleamed in the keen morning light. A calm roar exuded from the city, as Men, Dwarves, Gnomes, Elves, and Draenei flowed in and out of its gate.
At the end of the titanic bridge that spanned the Valley was Skai Mistweaver. She stood in the shadow of the statue of General Turalyon of the Silver Hand. Her words were inaudible over the sound of the city, but her manner was visibly polite as she addressed General Marcus Jonathan, commander of the Stormwind guards.
Jonathan nodded to Skai, and she bowed to him. They parted ways, and Skai walked back down the bridge, shielding her eyes from the glittering daylight, and made her way out of the city and down into the forest.
Within minutes she arrived at Goldshire. She greeted Innkeeper Farley, climbed the stairs to her room, and brought out an envelope, a sheet of parchment, an inkpot, and a pen. She moistened the pen's nib with her tongue, dipped it into the inkpot, and began to write.
"Shan'do Icharu Oakwalker, it will please his grace the Archdruid to know that I have recently had an audience with General Marcus Jonathan of the Stormwind Militia. He congratulated me on a victory I recently achieved in the field…"
The streets of Stormwind wound like a brain's convolutions around the network of canals that divided the districts. A child cast his fishing line down from a bridge, hoping to hook one of the small fish which swam the canals. Passing him by, taking no notice, was a man clad in red, white, and gold robes.
Diello swept his way along the canal's edge, disappearing among the purple-roofed buildings of Stormwind's Mage Quarter.
The Mage Quarter was more extravagant even than the other pristine and animated districts of the city. Its walks were paved, rather than masonry, with mana-fed greenery, and at its heart was the spiral tower that led to the Mage's Sanctum.
Diello wove through the crowds of robed and jeweled figures. The sharp tang of mana smoke hung in the air. He gave a token smile to a pretty young mage he'd almost bumped into, and was on his way. He finally stopped, rather than at the tower, at a small pub which looked almost pointlessly insignificant beside the blazing majesty of its neighbors. Diello entered. The sign above him creaked in the breeze: "The Slaughtered Lamb."
"Morning, Diello," said the barkeep, whose dark, braided locks hung across his chest. The pub was otherwise empty.
"Jarel," said Diello, nodding. He made his way past a table, its candles perpetually burning, mugs arranged across its surface as if to imply that the pub had dozen of patrons, and that they had all merely stepped out for a pipe break. Diello had never seen anyone drink on the first floor of The Slaughtered Lamb.
The clandestine back door that led to the basement of the pub was concealed by a heavy linen curtain. Diello pushed the curtain aside impatiently and descended an unlit spiral staircase. He emerged into a circular room where a large fire burnt. There were five figures in the room, all of them engaged in their separate studies and experiments. One, a brown-haired warlock with a creased, suntanned visage and violet-trimmed robes, looked up at Diello's entry.
They approached each other silently.
"Diello," said the warlock. His voice was quiet but rugged, like sand on leather.
"Sandahl," said Diello. "You sent for me."
"I did," said Sandahl. "Come, sit. I'll send for Jarel to fetch us some drink."
"No," said Diello, shaking his head. "No. I hate to turn aside your hospitality, but I have come here to hear what you have to say to me, to respond if doing so is merited, and then to leave." There was a heavy pause. "Sorry."
"So be it," said Sandahl. "There is a man who knows you, but whom you do not know. He is staying at the Lion's Pride Inn."
"One of yours?" Diello asked.
"No," said Sandahl. "He is no acolyte of ours, or of any other order falling within our knowledge. Our brother Maximillian Crowe, who drinks at the Lion's Pride, overheard this man asking after a tall 'mage,' with a gold cloak and golden hair."
Sandahl cleared his throat and turned to one of the boarded-up windows, through which chinks of dusty light broke. "Brother Crowe was convinced that this man knew you to be no mere mage. And as I have consulted with all my associates in Stormwind, I have concluded that he is of no order of ours. He is of a rank that is foreign, or far more powerful, perhaps less constrained by the formalities that bind our own intimacy with the Nether."
"Or maybe he's just a lone lunatic. What's your point?"
Sandahl, unperturbed, fixed his gaze on Diello. "We know that he reports back to Ironforge. Spackle Thornberry," Sandahl indicated a pink-haired, grimacing gnome pacing about on the opposite side of the fire, "has set up a contact for you in Ironforge, should you accompany our mark there. Find out what you can. Be sure to be on your guard."
"Always," said Diello.
"Remember that if he does represent a… foreign power, eliminating him and claiming what is his would be entirely defensible."
"Always foremost on my mind," said Diello, perhaps with a trace of irony, perhaps not. "I'll be on my way." He turned to go.
"I heard of your victory over that ferocious field-dog, brother," said Sandahl. "You have my congratulations."
"Thanks," said Diello.
He ascended the stairs and emerged into the ground floor of the pub. Jarel was polishing the same spotless mug that he had been when Diello had gone downstairs.
"Interest you in a goblet?" he asked Diello. "On the house."
Diello paused. He gave Jarel a look, and wondered. In The Slaughtered Lamb, it was impossible not to. "No," said Diello. "No, I don't think I shall."
Jarel returned the proffered bottle of Pinot Noir to its shelf, where it continued to age.
Skai stood up and stretched. The sun, though initially blinding, had become all but pleasant over the past few hours. She had just posted off her missive to the Shan'do, and now she stood by the mailbox, regarding the groups of people who moved through the town: Humans, Dwarves, even a blue-skinned Draenei.
Her mind was made up. She would take the silver she had received from the Goldshire marshal, hire a mount, and ride north, north through Dun Morogh, north through the Wetlands, north through Arathi, north through Hillsbrad, and finally, north into Alterac.
Borders and boundaries were always difficult to pin down in a war-torn region like Alterac, but after an hour in the Stormwind library, she had determined that the best course of action would be to set up camp in the woods outside the Forsaken town of Tarren Mill, to pick off travelers as they filtered out.
Skai re-entered the Lion's Pride Inn. It was barely midday, and only two pairs of people sat, talking reservedly: a pair of Draenei Vindicators and, Skai did a double-take, Diello and the pipe-smoking rogue who had been eyeing them last night.
Diello gesticulated, apparently telling a story, which the other man listened to with rapt congeniality.
Against her better judgment, Skai approached.
"Good day," said Skai, once more attempting a Human manner.
"Skai," said Diello. "Sit. I was just recounting our battle."
"And a fierce one it was as well, if your friend speaks true," said the man. His eyes were a pale green, and his smile insistent. Skai thought that he would scarcely have appeared less trustworthy had he been wearing the plate of a Death Knight.
Once Diello had finished what Skai considered a pretty reserved account of their battle with Hogger, there was a lull in the conversation. Skai almost broke in to announce her plan to leave for Alterac, but Diello shot her a strong look that said, quiet.
After the lull had persisted for several moments, the man in black leant forward, his eyes lighting up as if something brilliant had just occurred to him.
"I have an enterprise… I would rather not reveal it to anyone, but you have shown yourself to be a trustworthy fellow, Diello, in our talks. I have an enterprise in the frozen city of Ironforge."
"Ironforge," said Diello. "Really."
The man nodded. "Yes, yes. Are you familiar with the Rockjaw Troggs?"
"By reputation only," said Diello.
The man turned to Skai.
Skai shrugged. Her dislike of him was growing, and she was surprised that Diello, seemingly so skeptical of others, had been drawn in by him. He'd set himself at odds with a Paladin of the Argent Dawn, an organization so wide-reaching and venerable that even Skai was quite familiar with it, but still he refrained from telling off this unsavory stranger. Of course, she reflected, Diello might be, by nature, only suspicious of the seemingly pure, and apt to let his guard down in the company of the overtly unrighteous. Maybe.
The man went on eagerly, telling of a lost treasure of the Wildhammer Dwarves that the Rockjaws had unearthed, and of his quest to retrieve it from their clutches. When the story concluded, Diello signaled his eagerness to accompany him.
At this point, Skai could stand it no longer. She rose and looked down at the warlock.
"Diello, could I talk to you for a moment?"
"Certainly." Skai led Diello upstairs to her room. They needed privacy for the moment.
"Where did you meet this man?"
"You know the table nearest the hearth in the Lion's Pride Inn?"
Skai paused. "You mean the one we were just sitting at?"
Diello nodded. "That's the one."
Skai glowered at him. "Don't patronize me, warlock."
Diello shrugged. "What's your gripe?"
"Have you seen him?" Skai asked, gesturing a little more wildly than she meant to. "Anu therador mali! From the look of him, I'd rather have an Orc guarding my back! How can you be so… enthused about joining him? Surely your desire for wealth isn't so overbearing." Skai slowed her breathing, knowing she needed to be more rational if she were to talk him out of it.
"I understand how you feel," said Diello. "But I do trust him."
Skai shook her head, barely managing to restrain her frustration. "Why? Has he saved your life?"
"No," said Diello. "In fact, I believe he wants to maneuver me to Ironforge as part of some sort of ambush. I think he may want to kill me. I believe I've judged him sufficiently well that I know what is in his heart: deception. And that is why I trust his nature to be of a certain quality."
"What?" said Skai, utterly taken aback by Diello for the second time that day. For want of something better to do while Diello, she hoped, explained himself fully, she went to the window and swung open the shutters, letting the full daylight in.
"What's his name?" she asked.
"He calls himself 'Greymantle,' but even if I didn't know what I know about him, it would ring false. You are correct, he is a slipshod pretender. Slipshod. He bought me a drink when I entered the inn today, and made as if his interest in me were spontaneous. But I was forewarned."
"By whom?" Skai was instantaneously suspicious of Diello's source.
"An associate."
"One of your Nether-channeling friends? How can you be sure that he and this Greymantle aren't in it together?"
"I can only play it by ear," said Diello, not disagreeing. "At any rate, I know that he works out of Ironforge. He wants to maneuver me there for some purpose, presumably a purpose other than retrieving the Wildhammer family jewels."
"And you intend to let yourself be maneuvered?"
Diello leant against the dresser. "Skai, I've encountered Greymantle's type before. They lie eagerly and easily, but incompetently. Accordingly, he will be quick to grow suspicious, but in those suspicions he will have no conviction. I don't think that staying one step ahead of him would tax even our Paladin friend."
"What do you expect to get out of this?"
"My associates… imply very strongly that he is an agent of a power outside of the Alliance. Perhaps the Horde."
Horde? The glow of Hogger's demise had faded with the posting of the letter, and Skai's ears pricked up at the word. "Do you think that you could persuade him to let me come along too?"
Even to the Skai who had, just minutes ago, been scheming to camp on the outskirts of Tarren Mill, this idea seemed like it had an immense potential for going horrifically awry. But she also knew that, as she rode the interminable leagues to Alterac, she would always wonder if she would not have found herself fighting Orc after Orc had she followed this warlock. Besides, Ironforge was halfway to Alterac. Decision made.
"Are you kidding?" said Diello in response to her question. "This man is greedy. He's greedy for something that I can provide, probably spellcasting power. Nothing makes one more malleable than greed or loneliness. I think I could persuade him to buy you a whole new wardrobe if he thought that my going along with him depended on it." He gave her suit of leather hunting gear a quick look up and down. "Come to think of it, I probably should."
Diello and Skai followed Greymantle back down the bridge through the Valley of Heroes. The sun was masked by cloud, and the freneticism of the morning had abated somewhat. Skai glanced up at the statue of Alleria Windrunner, champion of the Quel'dorei, and her cousin in some respects. Alleria had been a ranger, doing work not unlike Skai's own. She had disappeared into Outland after the Dark Portal had collapsed, but now, as Skai heard more and more reports of expeditions returning from the far side of the Portal, she held out hope that the legendary huntress might be alive somewhere.
Skai and Alleria would be only the most distant of cousins, it was true. It was also true that Alleria's own sister, Sylvanas, had become the banshee queen of the Forsaken, and that most of Alleria's mortal kin had now joined the Horde, where demon magics were openly tolerated. But even so, it was hard to think that, if Alleria did survive, she would follow in the footsteps of the Forsaken or the Sin'dorei. Alleria had hunted with her longbow and her nature-given senses to guide her, and, Skai reflected, even if Alleria did keep company with arcanists like the mage Khadgar, perhaps she was not to be judged so harshly.
They made their way into Stormwind's trade district. To Skai's left, the purple roofs of the Mage Quarter were just apparent. To the right, the maroon roofs of Old Town. Straight ahead, the golden roofs of Cathedral Square, home of both the Argent Dawn and the Silver Hand. They turned right and doubled back toward the city wall, climbing a short flight of stairs to the aviary. The Stormwind aviary was administrated by a goggled Human named Dungar Longdrink.
Greymantle halted and turned to face them. "I'll go first. You'll both follow, right?"
"Of course," said Diello.
"All right," said Greymantle. He handed over a few silver to Longdrink.
"Sure you want to go all the way?" asked the flight master. "There's a nasty storm brewing."
"Yeah, yeah," said Greymantle, throwing a glance back at them. "Yeah, sure. Just… yeah." He closed Longdrink's hand over the silver. "Please."
"Your funeral," said the flight master. Greymantle mounted a Gryphon and took off over the water's surface.
Diello moved to approach the flight master, but Skai held him back.
"Are you certain about this?" she asked.
Now it was Diello who was taken aback. "Are you joking? How oversure of myself do I look? Am I a damned Paladin?"
Skai shook her head. "I don't know. Will we really be sharp enough to head off his ambush in Ironforge?" Skai thought of herself dead, Snickers left alone, with only the conscientious, though somewhat less personable Meridia to care for him. "Your imp… You saw him torn limb from limb. Doesn't that affect you?"
"Oh." Diello laughed. "The first time Kal'nos got dismembered, it definitely did. Definitely."
Oh, thought Skai.
Diello forked over a piece of silver, and he and Skai mounted the last two Gryphons in the roost.
"Good luck," said Longdrink with unconcealed apprehension.
Diello clicked his tongue and his Gryphon cantered over toward the edge of the balcony and swooped out over the Valley of Heroes. Skai's followed.
Soon she was sailing through the clear sky over the glittering white wall of Stormwind. Alleria and the rest diminished to the size of figurines, and then Elwynn itself became nothing more than an expansive green banner. She peered down over the Gryphon's feathered neck, watching specks of blue, red, and brown navigate their way across Elwynn's roads. There was a flash of far-off fire as a Defias burned under a mage's spell.
Skai squinted into the free blue distance. Diello was close ahead, his golden cloak whipping in the wind, and beyond him the wheeling shape of Greymantle's Gryphon was barely discernable. Skai could imagine Greymantle glancing back over his shoulder every few minutes, wondering if his naïve companions had indeed elected to follow.
They passed over a row of high mountains, the Gryphon's wings practically skirting their peaks, and a rancid, hot breath of ash and sulfur struck her in the face. Skai had studied enough atlases to know what was coming: the Burning Steppes.
But the sight that greeted her as she soared over the dividing ridge was utterly unlike the illustrated version of the Steppes, just an oblong grey smudge veined with orange and specked with black encampments. The emptiness which opened up beneath her was almost impossible to grasp. The sluggish floes of lava which would incinerate as surely as any one of Diello's curses stretched out long and eternal. Black dragon whelps crawled along the floes, and soon, out of the ashen smog, rose a pinnacle so fearfully large that it stretched even above the altitude of Skai's Gryphon. This was Blackrock Mountain, where the Azerothian Grand Marshal Anduin Lothar had fallen in battle. Now it was controlled by the Orcs, whom she could see moving in battalions, now pausing to look up, point, and grunt at them as they passed overhead.
This landscape, barren beyond all description, made Skai feel immediately despondent. As her Gryphon circled Blackrock's peak, she wished nauseously that Dun Morogh were just on the other side. But she knew better.
Next was an even blacker smudge on the map-parchment, the Searing Gorge. They sailed over its magma spattered wastes, the deep gash in the earth where Dark Iron Dwarves mined. She was offered a brief moment of relief by the sight of Thorium Point, small and bright among the charred crags. Even hamfisted Bronzebeard masonry looked as heavenly as the sinuous architecture of Darnassus, here, and Skai found that she was half-muttering a prayer to the goddess under her breath. She looked up at the smog-obscured form of Diello and wondered if his interactions with the Twisting Nether had gone so far as to jade him to this.
Minutes passed and Skai's heart rose as she saw streaks of pale snow begin to weave their way among the Gorge's bitter peaks. Dun Morogh would be cool, at least, and its animals possessing of no more savagery than nature had granted them.
But as they swooped over the last ridge dividing the Searing Gorge from the expansive mountain-hollow of Dun Morogh, Skai could see that something was wrong. Even more than the flying ash of the Gorge, the sky was hazed by pale icy clouds. Skai put her head down as she was pelted by chunks of sleet. The Gryphon banked hard, trying to fly with the wind, and Skai wondered what would happen if they landed short of Ironforge. She knew the names on the map: Kharanos, Anvilmar, Amberstill, but could she really find her way to any of them?
Full of apprehension, Skai raised her head just enough to see over the Gryphon's neck. Diello was discernable ahead of her, a waving gold flag veering left and right in the storm. There was a burst of fire-- Diello trying to warm himself against the encroaching cold.
No. That's not what it was.
A shriek, higher and chillier than the wind's, grew to her left, and for a split second the form of a tremendous bat ridden by a cloaked and masked Forsaken was clear to her. There was a whump as Diello's fireball impacted the bat, and it wheeled around them, screeching.
A second bat came out of the darkness, and then Greymantle's Gryphon.
There was a rending avian cry as one of the bats latched on to Greymantle's mount, slashing with its talons.
"Not me, you rotting fools! Not me!"
Skai's Gryphon pulled to the side, completely out of her control, attempting to maneuver underneath one of the bat's vulnerable stomachs.
"Corruption!" A greenish-black bolt struck one of the undead riders square in the chest, but the spell smoked and dissipated, unable to find any purchase in the Forsaken's already leprous body.
Skai was desperate. As her Gryphon flew up, up, almost vertically in the howling gale, up to face its adversary, she drew her gun from her back, clutched at her ammo pouch, and poured a measure of shot in. The wind snatched the pouch from her hand and whisked it away into the white void.
The bat was bearing down on her. As its claws wrapped around the Gryphon's body, she fired. The bat's eye opened up into a black hole, and it receded abruptly into the snow with a wail. But her mount was sagging from its path, listing to one side, the feathers beneath her hands growing hot with blood and then frosting over.
The Gryphon plummeted, struggling, for several interminable seconds, and plowed into a snow bank. Skai was thrown and tumbled down a snow-pillowed hill. There was the thud of the second rider falling nearby. The swoop of the bats' descent was the last sound in Skai's ears before she blacked out.