Episode Five:

The very handsome warrior Onyxbane stood before his ex girlfriend. She waited patiently on the bed of his humble quarters belowdeck of the Darnassian ship docked at Menethil Harbor. Wisthera had a sly smile on her face. It had taken him weeks to work up the courage to do this, but in the end he angrily warned neither Priestess Feathershine nor Willypearl to interfere. He certainly was no expert at seduction; maybe he should not have warned all the women first? Should he have been more subtle? Would that lack of tact completely ruin his chances with the others? Onyxbane also told his better sense not to interfere. He was going to give in eventually, right? Why not do it for his sister's sake?

But, as he watched Wisthera undress, he seriously began to doubt he was doing this for nobler reasons.

"Dear Elune," Onyxbane cupped his hand over his mouth, and tried to turn away. "I'd forgotten how beautiful you are."

Wisthera sat on the bed, naked but watching him carefully.

"You don't want this do you?" she asked him. Hurt was full in her voice.

Onyxbane was afraid to look at her.

"So, you do truly hate me." Wisthera got up quickly and began to put her clothes back on.

"No, that's not true."

"I can't believe I talked myself into this!" she pulled her pants on with an effort. As soon as the ship docked, Priestess Feathershine made Wisthera go out and hunt crocodiles. The priestess also forced a local merchant to show once con artist how to turn the skins into primitive clothing. In her shabby handmade rags, Wisthera looked to him like a human penitent cowering before the Cathedral of Light. The pathetic misaligned seams made her new clothing hard to put on. The old leather armor Wisthera no doubt swindled from someone in her past was given away to a poor family in Menethil, at the priestess' urging.

Onyxbane forced himself not to laugh, but failed.

"So you think this is funny!" Wisthera came and pushed hard on Onyxbane's shoulder so that he was forced to turn around and face her. Then, she slapped him. Onyxbane narrowed his long eyebrows in angry surprise, but he broke out into another peal of laughter. Didn't she just make him turn around, and then only to slap him like she didn't want to see him?

"I hate you!"

"Wait, you seemed pretty upset about my hating you a moment ago. Now you're okay with hating me?" he mocked her.

"I hate you Onyxbane! I hate you! I hate you! Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because you know something about my sister." Onyxbane got serious suddenly, and caught Wisthera's hand in mid air when it was about to come down on his cheek again. He was mostly undressed himself, and the two looked odd, their night-toned bodies illuminated by the pale green swampy sunlight of the Wetlands outside. With Wisthera in her rags, and Onyxbane's trousers hastily re-fastened, they looked like the primal missing link between Night Elves and Trolls.

"Forgive me for thinking that I could do to you what you did to me, but I haven't got the heart for it. Now, tell me what the Rogues of Darnassus know about Opalbane."

Wisthera stared up at him in confusion but then her silvery eyes blinked with realization. She had seduced him, back in the Burning Steppes, in order to fool him and throw him off the correct trail.

"This is different Onyxbane. I did that to you in order to survive."

"You liar! How can you compare it?"

"I had an angry shadow priestess, and her brother, a fury trained warrior on my tail. I had mere hours to plan how to keep my head on my shoulders. I did what I had to do."

"You had that long to talk yourself out of breaking my heart, and you didn't?"

Wisthera turned away from him and went to stand by the small round portal. At another time, in a not so distant past, perhaps he would have demanded that his topless girlfriend get away from the window. But they were not together. As a free woman, Wisthera could do what she wanted, and nudity came naturally to Kaldorei. Onyxbane wondered why it was so important to him that he be the only one to see her that way.

When Wisthera turned back around, she was bathed in the green light of the swampland around them, and it was like she was a vision, a sweet day they might have shared in the wilds of Feralas, if only they'd stayed together…

She was crying, "I regret it. I can't believe that I hurt you that way. When you left the note for me at Eastvale Logging Camp, I had a choice to make, you know. I knew that if I went to Stormwind to accept your offer, and wear your wreathe, that I could get thrown in prison. I cried that morning. I was tempted to run away, but I just couldn't—"

"Ah, so you were ready to abandon me even then."

"No! No, you stupid, prancing male elf!" Onyxbane scowled at the insult. It was something the dwarves had begun to say recently. Before joining the Alliance it was widely known that few Night Elf women had a problem with the way their men danced.

"I love you. I was going to accept your offer. I couldn't leave you there. I went to see you even though it meant I might not make it."

And Onyxbane might have never known the difference. It was only through visiting Willypearl in the Stockades later in the day that he learned of Stormwind's most recent female prisoner.

Onyxbane looked at the woman he once loved, still beautiful, still dangerous.

"Fine, I won't treat you so poorly. I guess there's no reason for history to repeat itself. But, I have to know what you know about my sister. Is there anything that I could use to save her?"

Wisthera bit her lip. Onyxbane tried not to be attracted to her in that moment.

"Alright, but it means I'm a bad rogue," she said, walking back over to him from the window. Onyxbane was forced out of his lingering thoughts, and he studied his once love carefully.

"Shadowstep told me not to tell anyone anything… but it's so hard—regardless of what you think—to lie to you. In addition to Feathershine's punishment, the rogues have punished me as well. I'm to find out if… I'm to meet people and see if their observations of Opalbane have foundation."

"What… does that mean?"

Wisthera stopped pacing, and sat down on the bed. She splayed her legs and rested her elbows on her thighs like a man. "Ever since Willypearl asked me to steal the ring from the Archmage and deliver it to your sister all those years ago, there have been people watching me and the Rogues of Darnassus. I didn't know this back then, but Shadowstep told me they caught onto the spies right away, and alerted some operatives they had in Stormwind to watch the Archmage in turn. Our sources know now that there are forces in Stormwind, dark forces that keep an eye out for 'young talent' like your sister and try to encourage their development."

Then Wisthera looked up at Onyxbane who'd circled in. Real compassion was on her face. "I'm so sorry Onyxbane. It seems that since the convention—which was probably a farce organized by these people as a recruitment effort, and not the witchunt the Archmage seems guilty of—members of the Twilight's Hammer have been watching your sister, and manipulating events to ensure that she was ashamed of who she was. It sounds like they… encouraged her bitterness, made her miss out on key opportunities that might have boosted her confidence and morale. Things that might have never taken her down the path to become a shadow priestess."

"The apprenticeship in Ironforge!" Onyxbane gasped. His sister Opalbane had worked very hard to apply for an opportunity to gain an apprenticeship with the priests of the light in the famous city, and Opalbane was a star student, so it seemed a sure thing. But, it turned out that someone she deemed far less worthy was chosen, and a long rejection letter had been sent to Opalbane, but none of the other candidates.

Wisthera nodded. "Yes. I'm afraid so. And there must have been many other things as well. But I can't know for sure until I talk to the operatives in Silithus. They have been watching her closely. They can tell us, from her behavior, if she was manipulated or no."

Onyxbane thought for a long moment, rubbing his thumb and forefinger on his clefted chin, and then asked, "The rogues in the Cenarion Enclave are using this situation as a kind of experiment. They want to know if Opalbane is the first, and so special, or one of many?"

Wisthera looked afraid to answer, and then, "Yes. You are very insightful."

Onyxbane raked his fingers through his hair, nearly causing his careful twin braids to come apart.

"Come, sit down. I don't like you pacing like that."

Without really thinking about who made the request, only that it seemed a reasonable thing that a person who cared about him would ask, Onyxbane obeyed.

"Dear goddess!" he exclaimed. "Do they want you to help her?"

"Shadowstep said that was up to me." She said carefully. "But, he also told me that getting the information about the Twilight's Hammer recruiters was my priority, and I'd better return with it, or else. He warned me that his motivations and that of the priestesses might conflict and I might have to choose."

"And what are you going to choose, or have you chosen already?" Onyxbane demanded.

Wisthera's tear-stained face looked into her ex-lover's. His face filled with the white light of her eyes, and her own blue face, stained with dark green tattoos of large dark leaves was illuminated by the golden light that shone from Onyxbane's eyes. It looked like the light of life was in Wisthera's mysterious features. But was that not Elune? Beautiful with even the light and dark of creation, in its wonder and mystery? Miracles of life happened in the morning as well as in the night, in the open woods, as well as in birds' nests in the springtime, or in deep quiet borrows.

"Can't you see that I've already chosen, my love? You and your family. I intend to make this all up to you. How can you even doubt this?"

Onyxbane wanted to believe her, but he didn't trust Wisthera.

"That's enough," he said, when she tried to embrace him. He got up from the bed and put his shirt on. Then, he went to the door. "You've told me too much already. You might have even compromised your mission, or endangered yourself."

"Dearest, when was I ever free of danger when I was with you? I'm afraid I might like it. I think you do as well."

But Onyxbane shook his head. "Not like this."

"Aren't you even going to thank me?"

"Is that what you were expecting? If so, then I think I'll let you suffer some more."

Wisthera was seething. It was a shocking image, a woman nearly naked, angry, frustrated, betrayed. Onyxbane thought to himself that a woman as breathtaking as Wisthera should never be left on a bed alone, as hurt and vulnerable as she looked in that moment. But then, rather coldly, Onyxbane shut the door on her. As he walked as calmly as possible down the length of the hull, and then to the upper deck, he heard a feminine scream of rage, and a loud thud as something, most certainly one of his own heavy precious possessions, was thrown at the door he'd closed.

Later on that afternoon...

"Priestess, there are many witnesses. It's clear that shadow priestess yer looking for blazed a trail through here, then hopped on the next boat to Theramore Isle as soon as we were done with her."

Priestess Feathershine sighed heavily. Wisthera was nearly always in her presence, a lot like a hunter's pet, but more useless in tense situations. Wisthera was angry beyond the priestess' understanding, and Feathershine had been wise enough to let whatever her Onyxbane had done to the unworthy rogue pass. She'd made Wisthera go back and put on a shirt before they left the boat, but that was as much as she could force her to do.

"Thank you, Ironcrest. I'm very grateful to you dwarves for keeping an eye on this for me."

"What now?" Wisthera complained loudly when their dwarven contacts left the tavern.

"We go and make sure that Opalbane hasn't stepped on too many more toes before she gets to Silithus, and hopefully not any once there. The Cenarion Hold is a lot less tolerant of raucous behavior than the dwarves, and beyond their stronghold is unforgiving wilderness."

"Do we have to tell Onyxbane that his sister cast a Vampiric Embrace on the bartender when he refused to give any more rum? I mean... I'm really mad at him right now, but even I think that would be cruel."

"No, we certainly don't, dear. I wouldn't want to hear that about my relative."

"Good, and don't call me dear anymore, I hate it."

"You do not tell me what to do dear, I own you."

"For now."

For perhaps the millionth time, Feathershine raised a shining emerald eyebrow at her captive. I'll have you know that I can read your thoughts whenever I please. There is no getting away from me and certainly no getting out of your punishment for hurting the two people I love the most in the world besides Elune herself. And if you think you are going to use this penance as an opportunity to get close to my Onyxbane--"

"Alright, alright, I get it. But in the end, you're just jealous that I got to sleep with him, and you didn't."

Should I even respond to that dear? I can tell that it didn't work out between you, and I don't need to read your mind for that.

This caused Wisthera to pout, and she tried to order a drink as they left the Saltwater Tavern, but Priestess Feathershine slapped her hand.