Seven years and three months ago.
Back out on the side street, the crowds were already gathering for some evening window shopping and tavern crawling, though it was nothing like the descriptions she had heard of the goblin cities. There were no flashing lights powered by heated gas nor was there the diversity she was hoping to see in the neutral zones. Weaving in and out of the foot traffic and stepping over the gnomes, she passed several more brick and mortar buildings until she made her way out to the main square.
The lighting was brighter due to all the torches, and the mixture of bright and dim caused difficulty for her nocturnal eyes. Her excessive height, however, helped her to see over the entire crowd save the two mounted knights on their tall steeds. The city gates were closed that night and there were a number of armored foot soldiers roving the streets in order to keep the peace.
Isurith scanned the crowd, looking for the one person she felt she could trust as a fellow stranger in this strange land. It wasn't long before she spied, across the square and on a side street with numerous patrons seated at tables on a shady, isolated patio area between two workshops, those strands of vibrant evergreen hair.
Her search was momentarily cut off by a hunched over human waving a cold jar of pickles in front of her face.
"Get them while they're hot!" what she assumed was a human female blabbered.
Isurith balked at the jar and the hawker, perturbed by the thought of someone who didn't know her assuming she would be interested in their wares. Why were outlanders so pushy? They should just wait for customers to ask for something like Kaldorei do.
"I do not desire your heated vinegar tubers," Isurith said in her emotionless sentinel voice, frustrated that she had lost sight of Mardrack.
The crowd was noisy and chaotic, with dozens of people whose heads were at the level of Isurith's chest or lower pushing and shoving yet not seeming bothered. Elves were not touchy-feely people, and while they didn't shy away from public gatherings, they certainly didn't like even the thought of a stranger pushing on their arm lightly to squeeze by in a crowded area. If people would just slow down and wait, they would be able to run whatever errands they needed to run.
Refocusing her thoughts, Isurith spied the patio again. The cobblestone side street on the opposite side of the square was somewhat dark, perhaps about ten feet wide and bordered by two-storey buildings on each side. The patio was further down the street and off to the left side though part of it was visible from her vantage point; it led into what she assumed was some sort of restaurant as the handful of tables she could see were patronized by various humanoids with drinks in their hands. Perhaps her fellow night elf had gone for his breakfast after moonrise and was sharing his knowledge with the outlanders in a casual setting.
"Forgive me for asking," she whispered to herself in Darnassian as she made her way across the square with a large fountain in the middle.
Truth be told, she felt embarrassed to ask for her money back so early but surely Mardrack would understand given her situation and the fact that he had only asked for a single gold piece anyway. Weaving in and out of the crowd of short people again, she rounded the fountain and tried her best to tune out all the hawkers and competing town criers sitting or standing on the circular three-foot high barrier separating the pavement of the square from the grass in between the various streets that lead to it.
The night elves spent their lives in naturally grown cities, the druids in the Emerald Dream directing the production of food crops without the need of labor and the slow growth of the enormous Kalimdor purplewood trees that ringed most settlements as an impenetrable barrier. Within the small to medium sized groves where the bulk of their population dwelled, the priestesses communicated directly with the forest regarding the worldly affairs of their people, deciding where barracks or other dwellings would grow and where huntress lodges would be established; the sentinels handled the logistics of where supplies and materials would be shipped by sabre or hippogriff, and both components of the Sisterhood of Elune would direct the wisps when small changes such as raising small stones from the soil for more even walkways or growing small wooden structures such as fences or sheds as necessary. Even in real cities like Astranaar, everything was open, spacious, and meticulously organized for both utility and comfortable living before the outlanders came.
But this…as Isurith approached the other side of the square and passed the last stone barrier onto the side street, she only hoped even more than she could leave the solely human city and reach a destination that was a little more open. Even if Booty Bay wasn't a Kaldorei city, it wasn't a human city either, and it was a port open to the ocean on one side and the natural jungle on the other. She hoped the tropics were as her mother had told her when recounting her travels to Feralas thousands of years ago.
As Isurith approached the patio, she could hear the sound of dozens of people laughing, joking and shouting out numbers as small wooden objects collided with wooden tables. Each table had an attendant standing at it with matching attire handing something out to the people who were seated.
Once Isurith passed the last building on the left and reached noisy, crowded patio, she noticed that Mardrack was seated between two short human women at one of the tables, each wearing rather loose fitting evening gowns. The fact that each of them were clinging to one of his muscular arms sent a tinge of jealousy up the former sentinel's spine. Night elf men were so fewer in number than night elf women, she thought to herself. Even for her sister Unelia to marry a man outside of the race had been difficult to accept. For Isurith to see Mardrack, a male, snuggling with two outlander females rather than two females of their own kind – even if she wasn't one of them – was already boiling her blood more than she liked to admit.
"He might have an excuse," she sighed to herself in their language as she walked through the swinging gate leading to the upper part of the patio with two black-suited human attendants on each side. "Maybe they followed him and he's just too polite to break their hearts."
The perplexed elf was so intent on politely requesting some of the money back and to know, ahem, what the hell Mardrack thought he was doing with those two tiny tarts, that she didn't even notice when one of the puny humans tried to hold her back and ask for identification. The comparatively miniscule gateman hadn't realized how close he was to being stepped on and yanked himself back from the much larger elf at the last moment.
While the two human women and several other patrons looked up at the glowing and glowering silver eyes above them, the target of the stare continued ignoring the bearer of those two eyes. He was more focused on the playing cards between his hands and the gold coins piled in front of him, as were the others seated at the table. Several patrons who were standing around, leaning against the patio walls as they drank and smoked, began looking back from whence Isurith had come nervously, as though they were expecting something.
"Ma'am, are you a guest of one of the established customers," the black-suited non-gentleman who had tried to stop her earlier asserted, rather than asked, in Common.
"Mardrack," she called out, ignoring the gateman. The night elf male began saying something urgent to the patron to the right of one of the two human women, trying hard to distract the others from the pissed off night elf female.
"Mardrack, I need to talk to you," she urged in Darnassian.
"Speak Common, please," the gateman prodded. "We need to understand what people are saying when hands are being played."
The human female on the left of 'Mardrack' and closest to Isurith looked up at her and then to the Kaldorei man. "Heralath, do you know this person?"
"Heralath?" No, this wasn't adding up!
The green-haired male turned to look nonchalantly at the indigo-haired female before turning back to his blonde human escort. "No, I don't believe I've seen this person before. Her dialect is unintelligible to me."
A few of the other patrons cooed and leaned closer at the word 'unintelligible' as though it was itself unintelligible and scholarly. He had these people hook, line and sinker.
"Darnassian doesn't…have dialects! Just accents!" Isurith choked out, speaking the first half in Orcish and the second half in Nazja without realizing that she was code switching, such was her shock at the blatant lie. People from the next table over began looking and pointing and she suddenly felt very alone, and very exposed.
"Mardrack, I need'do borrow somoff thaat money baack," she managed to utter in stumbling Common with an even heavier accent than usual, her face turning an even darker shade of purple as she tried not to think about what was happening around her and focus on why she came.
Eyes were darting between the two night elves now and the second gateman had come over to the table.
"My lady," the male elf started in fluent Common with a clearly fake, forced accent that caused the humans around the table to instinctively lean toward him in awe. "If you're in need of help, there are several clerics of the Light offering meals for the needy up on the hill."
Though he said it with a straight, unemotional face, she could hear murmurs and a gnomish youth gasping 'ooohhhhh' somewhere off to the side.
Isurith clenched her fists and grit her teeth, her warrior rage screeching for her to cleave the heads off of the nearest ten people with so much as the sharp edges of the playing cards on the table. Some dwarf jackass at the next table over actually stood up on a chair and folded her arms to get a better view of the show.
"Ma'am, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave," the second gateman stated as he reached for her arm.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" she shouted in Darnassian as she pulled away and stepped back toward the stairs leading down from the upper patio.
Isurith had never felt so insulted in her entire life, and the fact that all these gawking idiots at the other tables wouldn't refrain from observing a conflict that wasn't theirs amplified her anger and directed it out at the entire world around her. It was only then that she heard the clinking of metal boots as one of the town foot soldiers passed through the gate and walked onto the patio. There were gasps from several patrons as the attendants at the next two tables folded the cards away and quickly set up some more bottles containing the ingredients for their foul alcoholic mixtures.
"What's all the commotion about?" the foot soldier asked in a formal, commanding voice. His shining silver-grey armor seemed heavy and he had to have been the tallest human Isurith had ever seen, even moreso than Johan, his head nearly as high as the overly tall night elf's own shoulder.
"Nothing from our end," burst out the attendant at the nearest table. "We're just trying to offer our newest beverages here, but we suspect that certain patrons might have difficulty knowing their limits."
"Certain…patrons? Limits?" Isurith repeated with a stutter that betrayed the clouds in her mind. It took her a few seconds to realize the pimply human was speaking about her, though she still didn't understand what he meant.
"Ma'am, do you understand Common?" the clinking foot soldier asked.
Isurith turned to the ignorant questioner with such a rage in her eyes that she could have stopped a mountain giant dead in its tracks. The foot soldier held his ground unafraid and the fuming former sentinel realized that both gatemen and even Mardrack or Heralath or whatever the hell he was calling himself were all standing a bit closer to her now, forming a half-diamond around her with the side street behind.
Isurith's heart was beating too fast, increasing her dizziness as her adrenaline-pumped muscles were denied the release they were crying out for. She could take all of them unarmed – if Maralath had any common sense, he would be very aware of what his people's womenfolk were capable of – but what little logic was left in her increasingly feral brain warned her of the whistle on a thick string hanging around the foot soldier's neck.
Eating a huge serving of crow and stabbing herself in the heart, Irusith backed down from the confrontation and stormed off the patio, her intentionally loud stomps as she rounded the corner and moved back out to the edge of the main square her only means of protest.
"Obviously a lower class person in our society," she overheard the two-timing excuse for a Kaldorei proclaim to the small crowd that had congregated. "Such individuals are unfortunately thrust upon your graciousness here due to their inability to achieve back home."
"Lower class?" she repeated incredulously in more fluent Common with less of an accent. Nobility and class division were removed from Kaldorei society after the criminalization of arcane magic and the aristocracy which caused the War of the Ancients! Isurith's fury at this dirty rotten scoundrel suckering her out of her money and telling lies about their proud, honorable people could no longer be pent up. She spun around, making the mistake of shouting back toward the patio within earshot of several groups of people on her side of the town square.
"You know what you – hey!" Isurith pulled back as she realized the foot soldier had followed her out onto the patch of grass next to the street and was standing only two feet away, the human's dark brown eyes glaring up at her.
No, the elf scolded herself inside. No! No! No! No! You moron, you worthless excuse for a warrior! Do NOT flinch back from a human! Do! Not!
"Perhaps you should wait out by the docks for the next ship," the foot soldier ordered as he pointed toward a small, open wooden gate in the city wall through which the ocean could be seen. "Now."
A mustacheod cavalryman rode up behind Isurith, his hands on his hips as he sat pompously atop his steed. The anger rose inside of her as she realized that she wasn't only being kicked out of the gambling den; the humans were running her out of town. These insects, these worms with lifespans shorter than her mood swings, were running her out of town for the sake of that fraud, that phony betraying asshole who called himself by two names. The pride of a defender of Azeroth, a woman who spent millennia defending the planet from demons so these mongrels could even be born, was stung by the audacious lack of proper respect.
"I was going there anyway!" the disrespected night elf answered with a voice far less powerful than what she had intended.
"We're sorry we let such riff-raff slip through," she heard the second gateman apologizing to Heralath the lying thief. "You're a respected and hard-working part of the community and you don't deserve such shabby treatment."
It was too much. These people have no idea what happened, Isurith thought to herself. Why couldn't they just give her a chance to explain? Why were they all against her? She hadn't been in what was truly an Alliance rather than a Kaldorei city for even a full day yet and she already had yet another reason to wish High Priestess Tyrande had never aligned their people with such a 'civilization.' Unelia would have met Johan anyway considering that he left his people to live among theirs two years before Darnassus even joined forces with Stormwind; her people had nothing to gain as a whole and her family had nothing to gain on a personal level from dealing with these outlanders at all.
As Isurith strode away, a half elf woman with strawberry blonde hair who had been leaning against the wall beside the patio with a few admirers took notice. "Take it easy, blueberry!"
The hurt, anger, rage, and humiliation of being treated in such a way publicy spurred Isurith to swing around again, still backing up toward the side gate in the wall leading to the docks as another foot soldier converged, the two infantry and single cavalry following her out as the night elf continued to back up.
"That's racist!" Isurith shouted a bit louder, though still with a weaker voice than she had wanted to produce. "That is a racist statement!"
The three soldiers stood motionless and unsympathetic at the gate once Isurith had exited the town completely, watching to make sure that she would walk along the shoreline against the high city walls and loop around the side wall of the keep forming an alternative entrance to the docks.
Once she was sure they could no longer see her in the dark, she took off around the corner in an attempt to work some of the remaining adrenaline out of her system before she crashed. Isurith had been through war, had heard the taunts of her foes, had been involved in squabbles with other sentinels and had even been mocked for a bit when her captors had first thrown a net over her at Warsong Gulch and dragged her back to the jail at the Mor'shan Rampart. But never in her life had she been forced to suffer the utter indignity she had this night. She had been swindled, lied to, lied about, laughed at, verbally degraded and then run out of town. She hate hate hated this place, hated that man and hated the utter lack of respect from people whose lifespans were comparable to those of rodents.
At an artificially shaped edge of the shore of the hexagonal island, Isurith spied an iron cylindrical post with a carved wooden sign colored like cement at the top that read 'THERAMORE.'
How could these mongrels judge her, she thought. They were the ones building a signpost in a place where nobody would read it. Her fists shaking with rage and her muscles shaking with unreleased power, Isurith clenched her fist and swung to punch that stupid sign halfway across the ocean.
::THUD::
"AAAAAAAARRRRGGGHGHHHHH!" she bellowed as her skin grated against the solid stone sign that had only appeared to be made from wood. The rock chipped and broke apart from the gigantic elf woman's strength, with grey dust mixing in with the cuts on her bruised and battered right fist.
Isurith bent over and jumped up and down with her hands tucked between her legs as she sucked air in through her teeth and tried not to pass out from the strain that had been thrust on her cardiovascular health that evening. Snapping her head back up, she ran further down the shoreline, wanting only to find the first ship out of Kalimdor as any regret she had over leaving the entire blasted continent disappeared. The passenger docks toward the front of the city would be closed at that hour, but Heradick had told her before she slept that cargo shipping at the back ran twenty-four hours a day.
It wasn't long before she came upon the more isolated area for the cargo shipping, a few ogre dockworkers loading up crates onto three separate large ships as some small goblins and gnomes directed them. She ran over to them without realizing that, considering the fact that she was almost as tall as the ogres and it was the middle of the night, she might intimidate them.
As she approached, the sensitive ears of a goblin male with a stubbly face and dark blue overalls smudged with oil picked up her normally light footsteps. He turned to face her, more than a little afraid as the dark figure with long, pointed ears, long eyebrows, bloody knuckles and two glowing eyes headed right for him.
"Can I…um…help you?" he asked anxiously, glancing back at the two ogre dock workers who were just as frightened as he was.
"I need to get to Booty Bay," she panted, fighting to not let her voice waver.
He scratched his head, trying to look friendly and unassuming. "Well, this is the midnight ship. We're heading there in just two and a half hours, but we haul cargo. Passengers mean added weight."
Isurith didn't realize how pleading her tone had become. "Please," she urged. "I need to leave town tonight. I can work. I speak six languages. Just give me something to do. Please!"
The goblin had calmed down a bit now, seeing that she was far from hostile, and the two dockworkers continued loading.
"Well…Pogo-pogo over there has decided to stay here in Theramore until the next shipment, and you'd be less weight than him anyway. But…I mean, no offense but I don't know you. I'd like to help, but the boss here on this end would need some sort of boarding fare because even if you do some sort of work on the way there, you wouldn't legally be employed; the paperwork would take a day and you couldn't leave tonight. You'd count as a passenger, and that's even if we make an exception."
Without thinking, without considering what she was doing, and without a second more of hesitation, she searched through her backpack and pulled out something she hated to see: the medal she had received from the Silverwing Sentinels after the humiliating speech she had to endure in front of her former peers. Her pity medal. A constant reminder of what a failure she was, of what a heartless murderer she had become, of what a miserable life she was trying to leave behind.
"Here," she said as she shoved it down into his chest. "It's pure, sterling silver, original Kaldorei handwork. It's yours."
The dollar signs could almost be seen flashing across the goblin's eyes before he quickly tried to play it cool. "Well…I don't know…it's pretty nice…but I'm feeling nice too tonight and…ohwhattheheckwelcomeaboard!"
Had she been in a calmer state of mind, his overenthusiasm wouldn't have been lost on her. Turning toward a gnomish deckhand, the goblin motioned for the rope cordoning off the entrance at the top of the ramp to be removed so the crew's newest member could climb aboard.
Isurith had already zipped up her backpack and passed the covetous captain as she pushed the two ogres out of the way and tossed the last crate all by herself over the railing and onto the deck. With a few long strides, she practically leapt up the ramp and over to the door leading below the deck.
All she wanted to do was find the most isolated part of the ship to brood in for however many weeks it took to cross the great ocean, and move on to a nice, wholesome place like Booty Bay without all the liars and two-timers. The captain didn't even check on her as they cast off a few hours later, and Isurith finally left her people's continent after twelve-thousand years of blissful naiveté.
A/N: In case you're wondering, Heralath doesn't get to exploit others forever, though his other appearances are not in stories related to this one. Just thought I'd share. More from Cecilia/Isurith's past to come, though for the next few chapters we will be returning to the present time - in Gorgrond!