A lone hippogriff soared toward a small mountain in the Ashenvale forest. The rocky rise was almost small enough to be considered a large hill, though the specific label did not matter. What lied inside is what mattered.
It was late, and very soon the moon would set. The rider spurred the mount on, scanning the cliff face for the familiar opening toward the bottom. Once located, she circled around, making haste so as not to be seen by any passersby. Aiming for a break in the canopy, she dove under, landing the creature into a steady gallop toward a barely noticeable break in the rocky natural wall. Most signs of the previous skirmish had been removed, though splinters of wood and metal shards remained near the blood stains on the grass in a few spots. Several other hippogriffs were milling about beneath a tree, and she dismounted to leave hers among them.
Turning to the opening that appeared to lead to a cave, the rider strode through a scene of pure chaos.
Between the last of the low hanging branches of the tree and the cave mouth lied a dozen bodies. Scattered all around, it appeared as though some sort of official group had been attacked, the tabards of multiple organizations stained with blood as the emissaries and their bodyguards all remained motionless.
Most striking, however, was that the dead represented both factions.
Walking calmly, the silver-haired rider stepped over an orcish bodyguard impaled on a greatsword. The wound was jagged and open, too large for the greatsword bearing an Alliance insignia, as though the wound had originally been created by a different weapon which had been yanked out, only for the wound to be stabbed again with this other weapon.
Right next to him lied a human bodyguard whose armor had been pierced by a greatsword, but whose wound was awkwardly plugged with an orc grunt's axe.
And so was the case with the other victims. Not only were they dead, but most of them appeared to have had their wounds manipulated. Not so much to mutilate them as to mask the cause of death.
As the rider approached the cave with her long ears bouncing, her burning silver eyes caught the sight of movement. Glancing to her side, the rider spotted another night elf wearing sentinel's armor crawling across the ground. Her efforts were barely noticeable, so slowly was she inching across the red tinted grass toward a dead comrade. The sole survivor had been stabbed in the torso and was quickly losing blood from the gash beneath her floating rib, though given on the spot field healing, she could theoretically survive.
Yet when the rider approached her fellow sentinel, the wounded Kaldorei whose blue hair had been stained red displayed a look of dread in her eyes. Turning back around, she frantically tried to crawl away, seeking to escape from her sister sentinel and ostensible savior. The silver haired elf reached to the ground for the broadsword of a decapitated Forsaken deathguard, the Undercity insignia on it gleaming in the moonlight. As it reflected the lunar illuminescance onto the silverhead's guild tabard, the archaic elven rune for "WAR" came into view.
Giving up on the futility of escape, the ancient, assumedly wise yet also wounded blue haired sentinel gave up the crawl. As she appeared to realize that her fellow night elf wouldn't leave her be, she reached out. Coughing up blood for only a second, she turned to meet the silver haired rider's eyes, flashing a pleading look that had 'why' written all over it. A weak hand drained of all energy raised up, holding out her palm as though to seek quarter from one who should be her sister in arms to the very end.
The strike wasn't particularly fast; it didn't need to be. The silverhead thrust the broadsword into the bluehead's chest right where her heart laid. Death was painful but mercifully quick, and the silver haired sentinel made sure to leave the deathguard's blade in the wound.
Turning away coldly, the silverhead continued her march into the cave as though the devastation around her didn't exist. There seemed to be an even split between messengers and bodyguards, and most (though not all) of the major races of Azeroth were represented. At only twelve members, the group wasn't particularly large and wouldn't be a particularly significant loss, but the presence of diplomatic letters scattered across the ground insinuated that the loss would at least be noticed. Weapons of the opposing faction had been shoved into the jagged wounds of the fallen on both sides, sloppily enough that anyone happening upon the scene might suspect foul play anyway.
Inside, the cave had been turned into a temporary base of command. Rugs and mattresses were set up along with tables and a portable, fold-up weapon and armor rack. On a central table was a crudely drawn map with pins marking various locations, and several sentinels and a druid were busy forging letters in different languages at a long table underneath the guild's banner. In the middle of it all, a tall sentinel with evergreen hair stood arrogantly with her arms folded behind her back. Two messengers had been bound and forced to kneel before her by a sentinel attendant, one a human and the other an orc. From the looks of them, they had only barely been spared from the carnage outside and a terrible thrashing delivered inside.
The silver haired sentinel approached, pausing only to bow and then listen to the exchange from midway through.
"Your lack of cooperation is most unfortunate," said the green haired sentinel, wearing the decorated shoulder pauldrons and tassle of someone of rank, though not within the Sentinel Army. "We've tried to be reasonable in our request for information; it would be most unwise to tempt fate so rashly." Her voice was cold like that of most sentinels, though there was a haughty acrimony present as well. She sneered as she looked down her nose at her captives, appearing quite proud and self-assured.
The orc, however, was dismissively defiant, and though his voice was soft his audacity even gave the letter forgers pause. "Wait a minute…you're seriously trying to threaten an orc with death? And death for a cause I believe in?" Both voice and eyebrow raised questioningly, the Horde messenger seemed legitimately perplexed by the proposition and even his Alliance counterpart snorted a laugh through her nose. "Have you ever actually met one of us?" the orc asked incredulously.
All eyes were trained on the apparent captain with evergreen hair. Her sneer shifted from arrogant to contemptuous in such an intense way that the subtle difference between the two descriptions became clear. Shifting her weight with an audible creak of the leather and plate she was wearing, the captain gazed upon the defiant messenger as though he was wasting her time merely by existing in the same general vicinity as her excellency. Taking a deep breath, she finally lifted her eyes from his direction to signal to one of the sentinels behind him.
"End him," the captain ordered with a flick of two fingers.
Using only a slight movement of her glaive, one of the sentinels behind the messengers sliced clean through the orc's neck. For a few seconds he remained kneeling, his severed head perfectly balanced atop his neck. His face betrayed no regret as his head finally tumbled over, and even though his body slumped after it his corpse didn't appear tense. In a final act of recalcitrance, his slumping forward revealed that he had been shooting the bird with his bound hands behind his back. Even after death, his middle fingers stayed raised and the Alliance messenger laughed out loud.
Bending over slightly, the captain crooked her head to stare at the aged human curiously. "Are you prepared to follow his path?" the elf captain asked the human messenger.
Two shrewd hazel eyes glared up from behind grey bangs, betraying absolutely no fear. "Your plan is ridiculous," the Alliance messenger stated just as defiantly, calm even after seeing her fellow diplomat slain a few feet away from her. She displayed no desire at all to actually engage the captain in a battle of threats and ignored the question entirely. "The world is moving toward a more realistic peace based on war fatigue. Our deaths will cause anger on both sides. But they will not spark anything more than local skirmishes."
The guild captain mostly retained her stoic composure but some real anger did break through the cracks as she arched her long eyebrows slightly. Forcing a grin which she may have thought looked certain but came off as more spiteful, she bared her fangs as she spoke.
"Step by step, this fragile peace you think you're building with the Horde will be dismantled," she growled in a low tone. "Very soon, every capitol on Azeroth will know that even a mere exchange of written guarantees for this supposed mutual pullout from Warsong Gulch - a brief changing of letters - ended in bloodshed. The whole world will lose hope in the possibility-"
"Your breath smells like decomposing eggs and sour dough bread and that makes it really difficult to focus when you're talking."
::CLACK::
The empty inkwell falling to the cave floor only made the silence more deafening. Not only did the human show no fear but she had insulted the guild's leader with the best poker face that side of Kalimdor. There was no laughter from the messenger's direction, but she was obviously aware of the shockwave she'd ripped through the makeshift base. The previously enraptured letter forgers hastily turned back to their work but with their ears pricked up to hear what would come next.
The captain grit her teeth so hard it must have hurt. "You...insolent...presumptuous-"
"Do it if you're serious; I'm ready to join my colleague here," the human Alliance envoy snapped as she nodded her head toward the orc Horde envoy. "And I'm quite weary from your insecure grandstanding. And another thing-"
"Mrrraaaa!" the captain screeched as she ripped the sword from one of her underlings' hand so roughly that the recruit's leather glove tore.
"Ack!" the guild recruit yelped as she jumped out of the way, surrendering her own weapon in order to dodge her raging commander.
In one fell swipe, the captain decapitated the human with an even cleaner cut than the orc had received. A straight line of blood splattered against the ground diagonally from the cut. Not sufficed by the summary execution, the captain proceeded to maim both corpses until all the hacking no longer made a difference. Her guild mates appeared scared save a fanatical few who grinned with delight.
The silver haired hippogriff rider in particular became so excited that her nose started to whistle and wheeze whenever she exhaled. Once the captain had calmed down, the rider approached and bowed again respectfully. The captain remained still, but her ears rotated to better listen to what the silverhead had to report.
"Captain Gwynneth, the targets approach," the rider stated gleefully.
Gwynneth brushed her evergreen hair back as an unnerving calm overtook her. "Good...good."
"I've come to learn that they will remain st Raynewood Retreat for a few days, at which point they will need to return to the mountain waystation in the northern Barrens." The rider stood at attention, working to contain her joy at the glad tidings she brought. "The couple earned the respect of many in western Nightsong Woods. People are actually starting to speak with respect for this...interracial couple. That their example supposedly signals a warming of cross-factional ties."
Defying all physics and logic, Gwynneth's sneer somehow became even more pronounced. "So everyone is delighted at our ancient sister who broke some supposed barrier by bringing a husband from the Horde right into our midst."
"Our people have lost their way, Captain," the rider lamented. "They are in need of us to correct them!"
"Soon, my sisters and brothers. Soon." The anger left Gwynneth's voice, and now there was a true sense of confidence there. "We will find them. We will cut them to pieces. And when the people find his body impaled with her lance and her neck snapped as though he throttled her, they will see. They will see what folly it was that led them to think this new peace could ever have been possible."
Several outrunners for the guild assembled at another wave of Gwynneth's hand, arming themselves and running outside to a duo of glaive throwing seige engines hidden between the trees. Folding her arms behind her back again, the rogue captain inhaled the early morning air, shutting her eyes tight as she reveled in the coming seeds of discord she would sow.
For a few seconds, she felt content to just go for a stroll on one side of the room before remembering the memento she'd held on to for so long. Reaching into her belt pouch, she fiddled gingerly with her fingers until she was able to grip something small and metallic. A shiny disc was her prize, the medallion containing a hole for a necklace that had long since been lost. But such an accessory was not what interested her; oh, no no.
Twirling the medallion around, she ran her thumb over the emblem of the Silvering Sentinels. The medal of valor was a bit faded due to not being chemically treated, though the name 'Isurith Swiftfoot' was still clearly imprinted on the silver. The medal had been a nearly forgotten piece of her collection ever since she'd tracked it down to Theramore before that city's destruction. But as her grander plans finally came to fruition, there was no possible way for Gwynneth to forget.
She spoke under her breath, addressing her main target and sacrificial lamb rhetorically while her underlings continued to prepare themselves.
"It's time to become reacquainted, Isurith."