The air was brisk with frost when she awoke. She could taste the placid embrace of frost as she stretched, extending exhausted limbs under the thick velvet sheets. The navy blue duvet creased around her tanned legs as she sat up. The elf's fingers traced the thin stitches of gold around the fabric, until she had to stretch to reach the thread. She took one last breath.
It had been nearly three months since she had arrived in Stormwind. Not much had changed since the first fateful meeting in terms of a rebellion, but it was increasingly clear was that there would be one. She was often alone, very rarely speaking to Alastrine as the priestess took it upon herself to help the wounded in the Keep's infirmary. She suspected it was mostly due to boredom, as Faine had had little to no contact with the human king since their arrival and thus the two were free to do as they pleased.
Removing the blanket from herself, the warrior commenced her day. She bathed in the adjoined room, scrutinising the lavender flowers that danced with the floating strands of hair in the clear water. She dried herself with the cerulean towel out of the stack of cerise linen, combed her hair with a wide-toothed comb. She fixed her hair into a tight circle on the crown of her skull, fastened into place with pins made of ivory and rubies.
She dressed herself leisurely, permitting the cool air from the open windows to send ripples along her bare skin. The glint of steel caught her eye from across the chamber. She stepped towards the wooden bureau and found a pin a top her folded tabard. It was like everything else in the room; gold, blue, and a symbol of the Alliance.
She jeered mildly at the lion's head, the left side of her mouth lifting faintly. "Predictable."
Once entirely dressed, she flattened her crimson tabard out in front of her. During one of their rare encounters, Varian had tried to coax her out of the colourful plate and into one of his own standard issue sets, but she refused. Her own crest glowered back at her from the cold wood.
She played with the human's pin for a few moments, all while never drifting her eyes from Lor'themar's. So modest, yet so vulgar were these thin fragments of painted sheet metal. She jammed the lion under the phoenix, violating a silent rule, one that said to always keep the other court's pin above your own. She knew it would garner stares and raised brows, but it was a memorandum. I know where my loyalties lay.
The blood elf unlocked the heavy doors, swathed in the velvet hues of her people. Each side was perpetually safeguarded by greatly armoured guards. She acknowledged the one on the left. Young, petite, and naïve. She could see lively indigo eyes from under the helm, but nothing more.
"Eileen," she addressed her, as she reasoned it compulsory. It was one thing to be reserved, but an entire other to be discourteous.
The clear-eyed human gave her a solid nod and fell unswervingly into place behind the blood elf. Faine was not sure where she was going then, but had the pantries in mind. She tapped her fingers against her right thigh as they strode.
They passed innumerable doors, countless drapes of navy banners. Guards passed by every now and then, eyeing her scrupulously. She only raised her head higher.
The pair of armoured women reached the focal room of the Keep in under ten minutes. There, they caught the consideration of countless pairs of eyes. Only one seemed strictly attracted, stalking to them with weighty feet.
"Miss Sunfeather," he called to her, using the Common translation of her name. His voice was grating and as lurid as his footsteps. "You are anticipated in the Stockades." He spoke deliberately, as if he figured she could not understand him.
"The Stockades?" She reverberated. "Why?"
He shifted. "As the ambassador of the blood elves, there is someone there you may be interested in." Undeniably, she was interested.
She tilted her head and twisted around to look at Eileen. The woman only shrugged, as if the update was new to her as well. When she turned back, the man with the heavy steps was already gone.
"He does that," emanated the first words out of her guard's mouth since they met, months ago.
Faine permitted the woman to lead her through the flagstone backstreets, past faces that stared right through her as if she were an apparition. The cloak over her head hid her ears but the plate and tabard spoke dimensions.
Their footsteps resonated together through the boulevards, the unkind air chilling their noses. Soon they walked parallel to the canal, boats stippling the unblemished water, until they came across a bare building. It seemed no matter the culture, the stockade of a city always appeared the same, if only slightly altered.
She was her own captive here, imprisoned inside barriers that decorated her as a merciless reaper. She was an extraneous creature, a force of unknown power and motivation and one only read about in dusty, tomes riddled with dog-eared pages.
She was an addict, with eyes that exhibited her flaw on a pedestal, diffusely lit by fel energies that streamed through her veins, even though she had not touched the stuff since being in Corriana's room with the detectives. Either way, she did not belong here.
Profoundly safeguarded doors were opened with two terse shakes of heads. Eileen shouldered past numerous armoured men. The brief flash of eyes that the blood elf caught were ones that expressed annoyance and the smallest hint of anger. She watched the synthetic blue hair of her companion's helmet whip back and forth with her head as she flashed those same eyes to each being she passed; a warning to all.
They descended numerous stairs, passed numerous cells, past numerous inmates that bellowed unsophisticated comments to both women in every language under the bleeding sun. They were dirtied by indefinite amounts of time, locked behind bars for the unforeseeable future for whatever unspeakable crimes they had committed.
At the end of the wing, a great hubbub could be overheard and perceived. A group of men distinguishable as Wrynn's men crowded around a small, blonde woman, who screamed strong disputes to all of their faces. They contended in front of a cell, the occupant anonymous to Faine at that point.
When they finally were near enough to the group that they were able to lure attention to themselves, the warrior noted the fuming woman was truly like herself; a blood elf. Unusually, the unidentified subject in the cell behind the group was also a blood elf, contaminated by filth and with knotted brown hair.
"What is going on here?" The warrior asked in Common, instantly receiving an outbreak of replies. The intersecting singings did not take long to irritate her, and she silenced them all at once. "I would specifically request to know why I have been called down to a pit of hell itself, in front of a cell holding one of my own."
The blonde woman protracted a hand, to which the warrior took. "Valeera," she spoke punctually, picking to dive right into an answer. "They found Evagria a few days ago, floating comatose towards the docks on a seahorse. She says she was in Vashj'ir after the Cataclysm, but that was years ago."
Faine was confused, as no one appeared to be able to add the story up in a way that made sense. She was about to speak before a lurid squawking initiated in the blood elf's cell, which appeared to have been coming from a murloc that emerged from behind Evagria.
The other blonde elf shrugged, her face wrinkled up at the penetrating cries. The enigmatic prisoner began quieting the scaled creature, until it finally calmed down. "This is Mrglina," derived the first words out of the imprisoned elf's mouth, all in Thalassian.
An abysmal, resonating snarl sounded from behind the group. Faine turned to find a gigantic white cat pacing the cell across from Evagria's, fur prickling. Through the airborne spittle and the purple tattoo on the cat's arm, she was able to infer that it was a druid, explicitly a night elf. From then on she made it a point to ignore it, as best as she could, as there were more incompatible issues at hand that she had to burden herself with.
"Why?" She asked, incapable of thinking of anything else to say. "How?" The elf, who publicised herself to be a paladin, clarified that she would tell them everything once the pair of blonde elves were able to get her and her murloc out of the cell and back to Silvermoon or Orgrimmar. "That is not the finest idea," Faine interjected. "Orgrimmar is a warzone." The news did not seem to be fresh to Valeera, she noted.
"What? What happened?" Evagria appeared to be very late on numerous matters, which additionally did not help clarify how she had been drifting out at sea for so long. "Never mind, actually. Just get me the fuck outta here and tell me after." A bottomless sigh came from one of the males, and all three women turned to gaze at them.
"For security reasons, we must tell you to speak in plain Common, so that we are able to comprehend you."
The words carried a frustrated din from the incarcerated paladin. "For the last time, I can't understand you!"
While everything around her looked to have developed even more complicated, all the elven warrior could do was pinch the bridge of her nose and attempt to accumulate her skidding sanity at the awareness that her job had just become even more challenging.
"What is the elf doing in here, anyways? Shouldn't she be executed by Hellscream, not Wrynn?" The cat, sedentary near the bars of her cell and glaring at the cluster of people, swished her tail agitatedly.
"There will be no executions taking place, as far as I am concerned," the blood elf told her, facing the paladin once more.
Eileen coughed from beside her, effectively drawing the attention of all the beings in her radius. "Actually… you will be interpreting for Evagria during her sentencing."
The colour exhausted from Faine's face before returning as a shade of deep red. "I demand to speak to Wrynn, immediately. Evagria, I will be back for you as soon as I can, to take you home."
The improvised group dispersed then, with the warrior following her escort out, and Valeera trailing Faine.
"You fucking better!" The paladin yelled after them, grasping the bars of her cell and struggling to rattle them, to no avail, in emphasis.
Outside the Keep, Faine physically blazed. Her skin was burning and clammy from the blood streaming through her veins in rage. Valeera and Eileen had to jog to keep up with her, the former struggling to stop her near the start of the last set of steps to the doors.
"Listen, I recognize that you're angry, but you need to calm down. Anger is something that is highly infectious to Varian, and with you like this, he'll trigger. That is something you don't want happening, trust me." The warrior pushed beside her to carry on her journey.
She heard the other elf sigh as she once again strained to catch up to her. "I do not give a damn about his feelings, particularly when one of our own is imprisoned in one of his cells, pending execution for being swept ashore in ragged conditions."
The shorter elf was in her face once again. "The law is different here, Faine. She's fortunate enough to be receiving a sentencing rather than being slain on sight when she arrived."
The scarred warrior grunted. "I find it entertaining how even Hellscream is more humane in the way he treats Alliance captives."
Valeera sighed. "I don't exactly call an axe to the neck 'humane.'" Her response fell on deaf ears.
The millisecond they were let through the doors, Faine was swiftly clanging her way down towards the throne room.
"Don't do this," the other elf cautioned her. "You have no idea what you're about to cause," she lastly said, giving up when she grasped the warrior was not going to step down. She hesitated with Eileen at the end of the hallway.
"Bring me to Varian, right now," she barked to no one in particular. The man in query was by now walking out of a room, irritated by both the disorder she was causing and her attitude.
Her anger appeared to spark the instant she laid eyes on him. "You!" She hissed, jostling past him and signalling for him to follow. She stomped her way into the room they had first come across in, fleeting by a bewildered Alastrine on the way.
Faine paused for Varian to enter the room in advance to slamming the wooden door as best as she could.
She turned around and immediately set off. "You fucking monster," she initiated, thrusting a plated finger into his thinly clothed chest. The blood elf had to crane her head to look him in the eye as she continued. "How fucking dare you do this. What grounds do you have to even hold her, let alone decide her fate?"
The human king did not delay before smacking her hand away and hauling her closer to his face by the collar of her tabard. "I gather you are angry about the blood elf, but you need to drop the attitude instantly. I am doing her a favour; typically, we kill the enemy on sight. She is fortunate enough to even be receiving a verdict from me."
He released her back to the ground and surveyed her as she wrathfully flattened out the velvet fabric. A part of her mind advised her to keep her mouth shut for Lor'themar's sake, but her fury extinguished the tiny flame of reason.
"I have to remind you that I am here purely for political reasons, not jury duty. You have greater complications to concern yourself with than a castaway elf that can scarcely recollect her own name. The only person she is a danger to is herself."
The king threw his hands up while releasing a mix between a snarl and a smothered cry of exhaustion. "Precisely! Listen to what you are saying! The woman is hardly lucid, why should she be freed of her crimes if she can't even tell right from wrong?"
Faine nearly laughed at his words. "Crimes? What crimes?"
He did not answer her, his face apathetic and his stance purportedly aggressive. "What crimes?"
When she received no answer, she tore the pin from her tabard, ripping a hole in its place, before tossing the piece of metal to the ground beside his feet.
Eileen's shadow danced like a contorted poltergeist down the extensive rows of cells, approximately sinister in appearance. The fire in the guard's hand sputtered and licked at the musty air, intermittently rising or waning with each draft of rogue air. The elf in the prison cell stirred and roused at their appearance, rubbing her eyes as she squinted up in the direction of the two women.
Faine stretched towards the bars and signalled for Evagria to come nearer to her. The other blood elf struggled but succeeded in getting to her feet, her face inches from the warrior's.
"You may or may not like what I have to tell you," the warrior whispered to her brethren in virtually imperceptible Thalassian.
