Maiev berated herself when she finally took shelter under a vacant roof. The house was decrepit and the owner was dead, his bones she found bleaching under the sun just beside the bend in the road. Bandits. But there were none as far as her eyes could see.

"Sloppy," she growled. That human should be glad she did not slice his head clean off. And he dared not even show fear even as she drew perilously close to ending his life. His lack of intimidation meant that she had dulled. Severely. "Very sloppy."

Only on rare occasions did she allow someone else to get the drop on her and most of them were her trainees. But she was not in the Barrow Deeps grilling new Watchers. Neither was she in Outland, baking under the grisly suns of the fragmented planet.

Rather, she was sitting here in an abandoned hovel where a vagrant would dream to lay his head. The cot looked comfortable. It called to her with the voice of a siren.

Part of her revolted at the thought of rest. But her whole body cried for it. And in her tired mind she acquiesced to lay her head on a softer pillow. The cot was layered with hay and dried dicot after all. Her hands went up to do undo the latches that held down her helmet. When it finally came off, she felt her sweat dry up against the breeze that flowed through the only window around.

A part of her screamed at the removal of her headgear. She could care less. It felt good to have her hair flow back down to her shoulders. Sweet cool air wafting under the chin, sweeping up the moist of her sweat after a long journey... Her attention had locked onto her beddings. After all, it was plainly obvious that no one lived here, let alone would bother to enter a crumbling shack...

This time, Maiev awoke just in time to catch the brigands sneaking far too close for comfort. These fools would pay dearly for attempting to rob a Kaldorei. No sooner had she stabbed the first bandit through the heart that the second one fell to the crescent that halved his lungs. Both dropped to the ground instantly, bright crimson fountaining against her cloak and mail.

There was a creak behind her and she moved quick enough to toss a dagger into the javelin thrower's right eye.

"You wench!" another yelled, jumping through the only window and knocking her down before she could block his lunge. She managed to inch her head away from the axe that came down close to her ear.

Then the bandit suddenly released himself from her—or appeared to have been yanked. She scrambled to her feet and saw a sword burst from his chest and retreat back through it.

"You again?" her savior lamented, kicking the corpse onto the floor. "What a coincidence."

Maiev snarled. "I never intended for us to meet."

"Neither have I," the human replied, wiping his blade clean before sheathing it. "You seem lost."

She retrieved her glaive but hesitated cutting him with it at the last second. "I have no time for this."

The Traveler saw her reach for her helmet, a cup of steel that mimicked the everlasting gaze of a hawkish night owl. "Nice gear," he quipped.

For a brief moment, she stopped dead in her tracks. Then she hastened to affix her cloak. "I have no business with you, human."

"Don't Blink away from me," he said. "I know your tricks, Warden."

As expected, he instantly felt her breath trickle against the back of his neck and the sharp edge of several knives pressing against the leather on his back. The words rolled of her tongue in brief, acidic, and, much to his chagrin, piercing hisses. "Who are you and how do you know me?"

"Only a certain kind of Kaldorei would sport such a set of armor," he replied in equally the same tone. "And yours in particular has no parallel even among your own people."

"You know much for a human."

Even as he felt her arm squeeze out his airway, he managed to let out a sigh that sounded halfway between vexed and grateful. "Your brother has been looking for you, Maiev. I could compliment his enthusiasm but at least I could tell Jarod the next time I see him that his sister is still alive."

The daggers bore deeper until he could feel the edges sting against the skin of his back. For being so haggard, he had to hand it to her; she had to be a tough nut to crack for surviving Outland...and constant trouble for the past millennia or so. Most everyone else he knew of didn't. "How do you know Jarod?"

"We were cohorts. He had this noble notion of gathering the lost and confused and giving them a second chance in life. We went places...doing things...working as, say, righteous mercenaries for two years. Then he decided to go find you; now and again, we ended chasing faulty evidence that a Kaldorei warden had come across this town or that—"

She tightened her chokehold on him. "How do I know that you are not lying?"

He was now struggling to make his voice heard, let alone catch his breath. "Miss Shadowsong, I would be dead years before I met you if I were lying..."

Maiev relented after a moment. The Traveler dropped to his knee, hitching and wheezing. She rounded him and when he stood up, he found her uncomfortably close to his face. The glow from the eye slits on her helm stung and he squinted.

"If I were lying to you, then I would have nothing to lose," he continued. "And I could see it plain as day that you yourself are lacking in direction just as he is."

She stared at him.

"Please give me my personal space, Warden," he belatedly asked.

She stepped back, allowing him air to breath without smelling her sweat.

"Thank you."

"Jarod hired you?" she asked, her voice lacking the authority and murderous malice that he had heard earlier.

"The pay was good. Though it was not really about the money." The Traveler pointed at the specs of dry red dust smeared all over her cloak. "It is difficult to wash away the stains of Outland. No doubt you have either succeeded or escaped. Personally, I am starting to think that you succeeded."

"You have no knowledge of such," she dismissed.

"You would have Blinked away from me if you were genuinely at peace with the matter." The Traveler followed her outside where dusk had given into evening. "Otherwise, you would need an ear to listen."

Maiev continued walking. "I have nothing else to say to you. Begone."

"Then why are you not distancing yourself from me?" the Traveler asked. "Now is your chance to Blink away."

Maiev wanted to. But she found that she was unwilling to do so. And she did not know why. So she chose to walk away. She heard him catching up.

"If you don't want me around, then kill me. Here I am. I won't even fight back." He stretched his arms, seeing the shadow of them illuminated against the cobbled road by the rising moon. When he illicit no reply, he raised his voice.

"He's dead, isn't he?"

She felt her legs turn to jelly. Her pacing wobbled.

"I see. He is dead. Quite a revelation that is..."

The Traveler stopped as she did. Her shoulders trembled and she buckled onto her knees in the middle of the road. He had heard much about Warden Shadowsong, mostly revolving around her iron will and fierce determination to deliver justice to any wrongdoer. With such a strong mask, he nonetheless believed that she would crack like everyone else. And he could hear her whimpering under her armor.

"I left after a year of faithful service. Last I heard, he had taken the boys to Outland," he continued. "That was not too long ago. By now, he might have recovered his senses and could very well be returning here. Who knows?"

"Why will you not stop talking?" she asked, halfway between a demand and a plea.

He stooped down beside her. "Because in all my years of mercenary work, I have never seen such compassion drive a man to great lengths to find the only family he has left."

For the first time, she looked at him. The pain was there. The agony was there. The sadness, the depression, the loneliness... Now he understood her.

"Warden, I see that your task is done. But your heart is searching for a reason to keep beating. I am not the most suited to tell you this but I advise you to return to Darnassus. Or you could present yourself to your brother and end his tiresome search."

"Why are you offering me this?"

The Traveler smiled. He pointed to the junction that sprouted off the horizon of the hill up ahead. "There is a place I know of where the rent is free. Since you do not have your soldiers with you, it would be easier for them to prepare a proper bed for you—"

"My Watchers are dead. All of them are dead," she echoed.

"Sobbing in the middle of the road will accomplish nothing if your goal is to appease your guilt. Your 'Watchers' may be dead but you are not." He found himself sounding like his old drill sergeant which he did not mind. "Come on. We need to get out of here before anything untoward happens to us."

To his annoyance, she finally used her ability to disappear from him. The flash was quick and he groused when he waved away the unseen magical residue of her Blink. He correctly guessed that she was on the other side of the hill, hastening towards the half-open inn owned by that old fart Genghis.

"Night elves," he murmured. "You give them hope and they leave you hanging... Damn it."

NOTE: "Blink" here refers to the Blink skill of the night elf Warden hero (and Maiev, of course) in The Frozen Throne. If I have to explain it, it's a teleportation skill where the hero can teleport between short distances and is quite useful in popping in and out of combat (or getting to those hard to reach places...especially when piecing together Gul'dan's shadow orb in the night elves campaign).