For what seemed like hours, Jayavarna wandered in the woods of southern Ashenvale. The guild's camp had been mobile, and they most likely wouldn't have remained in one space for long. Although the leader had claimed that they would be watching all the potential recruits, they weren't easily found. For sure they would hide themselves away; it seemed that they relied on stealth rather than open confrontation...which made the mission of full frontal assault on a garrisoned village all the more confusing.
All along the way, Jayavarna tried to convince herself that there has been some greater purpose to the carnage. Perhaps it was lost on her for the time being, or perhaps it was simply beyond her level of combat and even life experience, but she knew that there must be some sort of logical explanation. The guild recruiter she'd met had been so sure of herself, so inspiring, that it seemed impossible that they had been sent on a suicide mission. What would be the point of recruiting potential members, then?
Maybe it was a test, she thought to herself as her tired hooves stumbled over the thick roots of the Ashenvale purplewoods. Were that the case, it would certainly be a harsh and cruel test, and one where most of the aspirants would surely perish. But the more Jayavarna learned about the mysterious inhabitants of this planet called night elves, the more similar they seemed to the more familiar inhabitants of her first planet, the orcs. Both races behaved like they were bred for combat, and didn't shy away from confrontation if they felt their people and their rights were being threatened. There were most assuredly differences in their outlooks on the world and their lifestyles, but that harshness and that tendency to temper the uninitiated on the battlefield was certainly similar.
If that was true...then she really would be the last one standing. Such an attrition rate seemed unbelievable, but maybe that's what such a secretive guild was looking for. She would be the first outlander allowed into the guild, but she experienced difficulty taking solace in that thought. What she'd seen had haunted her, and she wondered whether or not she would be able to live up to the standards set. The thought scared her after she'd come so close to losing her life in a burning building; she felt as if she'd already come too far. But how many times would she be expected to do this? Surely not every mission would be of this nature, right?
Close to where she thought all the hopefuls had initially converged, Jayavarna could hear the soft sounds of a relatively quiet military camp. While they certainly weren't anywhere near as noisy as the orcs, it was clear that the members of the guild weren't concerned with concealing their presence, and her tired legs felt relief wash into them as she finally slowed down to a more comfortable trot. Searching throughout the densely packed forest that seemed to be dark twenty four hours a day, she eventually caught sight of one of the members, the woman's tune etched tabard waving amongst the sea of purple and green. What must have been a third or fourth wind carried her until a few of the silk tents were in view, and the member spotted the exhausted draenei briefly before disappearing into a tent, ostensibly to seek help.
By the time she'd reached the edge of the circle of tents, the silver haired night elf whose nostrils wheezed every time she breathed had exited, and was staring at Jayavarna in disbelief. That both unsettled yet also filled the draenei with pride as she felt it confirmed in her mind that none of them had been expected to make it out of that mission alive; she really had beat all the odds.
Bloodied and bent mail armor clinked as Jayavarna came to a stop before the silver haired sentinel, and she assumed that the stoic woman's stare was one of respect and mild awe. "Reporting...for duty," the draenei panted.
Nostril wheezing the entire time, the quartermistress of the guild looked the potential member up and down. "The others?" the woman asked, both of them carefully considering their words since they were communicating in a language that was foreign to both of them.
"They didn't make it...they didn't make it," Jayavarna panted again. Pain and a bit of sadness bit at her, but the raw feeling of having escaped a battle with her life caused her mostly to feel numb. "I'm the only one."
Nodding and stepping back, the silver haired sentinel excused herself. "Our leader must hear of this." The smaller woman promptly disappeared back into the tent, and hushed conversation in elven language could be heard. That area of the forest was eerily quiet, and the time spent waiting felt even longer as Jayavarna's lungs stung her at every breath.
Eventually the tent flaps were pulled apart, revealing the guild leader herself. The quartermistress walked passed them both, possibly moving to inspect the area back behind them and ensure that nobody had followed them to the camp. Green haired Gwynneth inspected the draenei in much the same manner, almost looking surprised in a way that would have caused her bosom to swell with pride were she not in so much pain from having a ceiling collapse on her.
"Report, soldier," Gwynneth demanded. The language used, as if she were their equal, almost helped the larger woman to forget the horrors she'd witnessed. Almost.
"Oh...well, captain. They, the others didn't make it. We were hit hard by the initial volley thrown at us over the city walls, and then we had to fight street by street, house by house inside. The orcs...they never give up."
"That sounds as we expected. But tell me, child," Gwynneth practically hummed in a low voice that sounded musical even when discussing the most dire of situations. "Are you truly the last woman standing?"
Mulling it over for a moment, Jayavarna went through a mental list in her head just to be sure. "Yes, captain. I saw them all, everybody. We lost them. The people there, in those burrows...buildings. They fought so hard." When Gwynneth nodded in cold, calculating conformation, the draenei felt the suspense to be too much. "Captain...I'm concerned about that city."
"Concerned?" Gwynneth asked, looking concerned herself. "Whatever for?"
"I...well...I..." Jayavarna had no idea how to broach such a topic. It felt disrespectful, as if she'd be doubting the guild's intelligence gathering skills or their strategy by questioning what had happened. But if she truly was the last woman standing, then she felt that she had the right to do so. "Captain...I don't think those orcs were Horde soldiers. They were farmers. And the town...all the architecture was Orcish. But we followed the directions, and that was the place."
Inhaling deeply, Gwynneth folded her arms behind her back and looked contemplative. "Your assumption is correct, soldier; that was never an Alliance town. But that was the point: that Horde town needed to be sacked." Jayavarna tried to form words with her mouth, but no sound came out of her shocked throat, and Gwynneth deemed it fit to continue. "You see, child...we had to eliminate that settlement. It was small, undefended, and easy to take, but contained just enough people that a few might escape the fray. And those people will flee to other towns, and inform them that a diverse force of Alliance soldiers attacked them unprovoked."
The words were said so nonchalantly that they almost seemed like they might make sense. Despite her weariness, however, Jayavarna retained enough good sense to recognize the madness being explained to her. A deep sense of betrayal punched her in the stomach, and the last words of Harper that she'd dismissed as delirium echoed throughout her mind, granting her no respite and no place to hide from the truth. Had she more energy, Jayavarna might have been angry; but in her state, a sense of hopelessness and despair at the wrong she wouldn't be able to right just crushed her to the center of the planet.
She shook her head a few times, disturbed by the way that Gwynneth continued staring at her unapologetically. "But...but...the people...the ones we killed...they were fighting us...we killed them-"
"They fought for their town and their lives, as was to be expected," Gwynneth said dryly, interrupting the flustered and devastated draenei. "Almost all of them were killed for no reason, and news of the senseless massacre will spread. The entirety of the Alliance will be implicated; meanwhile, the report of deceased members of the Alliance will outrage our faction in general. The fact that you - all of you, every last one of you, down to the last person - has no living family members means that nobody will investigate closely enough to realize that an attack on an undefended hamlet seems odd."
Emotions that Jayavarna couldn't even label created a minor storm inside of her, but without the power to truly rage, she merely felt herself melting down. "How could you, captain! Those people, they were innocent - they didn't deserve to die! My comrades didn't deserve to die! All this will do is create more hatred between the two factions - revenge attacks will occur back and forth!"
"Exactly," Gwynneth replied while smiling. She took a step forward and reached a hand out, brushing Jayavarna's bloodied and sweaty bangs away from her contorted face. "There will be revenge. There will be hate. There will be blood. Because neither side will fully understand what happened, both will blame each other; nobody will know exactly what happened, and total war will eventually ensue. This," Gwynneth said while pointing to the ancient elven rune on her tabard. "But there only remains one loose end..."
Furrowing her brow in confusion, Jayavarna tilted her head to avoid the cruel captain's hand, feeling almost nauseous as everything that she held sacred felt violated. Gwynneth just stood there, causal as if there was nothing wrong with all she had claimed, only serving to further increase the draenei's sense of offense.
She was completely unprepared when the silver haired sentinel pressed into her back and and pinned her arms to her sides. The movement was so slow and so fluid that it didn't even feel aggressive at first.
"Hey, what - wait!"
Locking Jayavarna's shoulders with a wrestling hold, the silver haired sentinel then grapevined her legs around the draenei's, placing all of her weight onto the larger but absolutely exhausted woman's back and then leaning, pulling both of them to the ground with a loud thud. The silverhead was on the bottom, skillfully keeping contro, while on her own back and clinging to Jayavarna like a spider monkey and putting the draenei into a very exposed, prone position with her belly up toward the dark canopy. Jayavarna gasped and protested and even called for help, but found her muscles too worn out to properly resist the night elf, whose wheezing nostril tickled in her ears.
Before she could even realize what was happening, Jayavarna looked up to find Gwynneth hanging over her like a long shadow. Dark, menacing and blotting out the view of the world, the sharp, pointy silhouette brightened by two silver glowing dots braced itself on the ground over her, leaving only a few inches of space in between them despite the sensation of a huge gap. A single dark hand reached to the side, feeling the gaps in the middle of Jayavarna's midriff armor and searching carefully. Using the precision of a shaman performing an invasive operation, Gwynneth dragged her sword harmlessly along the exposed amount of skin beneath the draenei's floating rib, conveniently fitting into a spot where the mail armor had been torn open.
A sharp, stinging cold pain pierced into Jayavarna's abdomen as she cried out at the injustice of it all. Pushing further and further inside, the intruding force caused her to panic, but her arms and legs were too strongly restrained for her to thrash and Gwynneth lowered herself just enough to sandwich the draenei between the two night elves once the blade was safely inside the body of its target. Tears welled up at the edges of Jayavarna's eyes finally, not from the pain but rather from the anger at both the guild and herself.
She breathed in, and breathed out, feeling a burning cold high up inside as her oxygen supply was slowly cut off. It didn't hurt as much as one might expect it to. Then again, one generally didn't expect to be impaled by a sword.
Betrayal mounting, she nearly found herself speechless. "Why?" she asked, finding her lungs incapable of pumping normally around the intrusion.
The sword already inside, Gwynneth removed her free hand from the wound and tucked Jayavarna's bangs behind her ears. The captain looked absolutely psychotic, staring into the draenei so calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.
"You see, child...this was all part of the plan. From the very start, our recruiter watched the newbies in the inns and taverns. Everybody has a woobie sob story, usually embellished as people compete to see who had the most difficult life. But the orphans...the loners, the wanderers, the ones nobody will miss...your kind make for the perfect cannon fodder. Nobody will miss you. Nobody will investigate. You will just be a statistic in the gazettes from Darnassus to the Exodar to Stormwind. People will care inasmuch as their prejudices are confirmed...and then, you will be forgotten."
"Argh!" Jayavarna cried as she sword was pushed even higher into the wound. Gwynneth's hand on the draenei's forehead retained the same soft pressure, and the night elf's nostrils didn't flare nor did her pupils - visible that close up - dilate. Her heart rate probably didn't increase, either.
"So your death, and those of those strangers you erroneously referred to as comrades, will not be without merit. We'll easily lead local authorities to your bodies, and the Alliance will blame the Horde and vice versa. The cycle of violence will continue, until a fourth war can occur...it's beautiful. Our guild is the beginning of a new world, a world that needs to be saved from itself. We will break the weak with our violence, and allow the strong to arise. And then, when total war can spread, the resulting purges will cleanse the planet once more."
"Hhhhhhnnnnnn!"
All oxygen left Jayavarna's lungs when Gwynneth pulled the sword out, using equal surgical precision to when it had been shoved in. Cold pain was soon replaced bys system shock, interrupted only by the brief discomfort when the silver haired sentinel beneath her shoved her to the side in order to stand up along with Gwynneth.
Conversation in elven continued, though Jayavarna could no longer hear it. Only the rhythmic wheezing of a deviated septum could be heard as the world turned black, and her sense of foolishness was replaced by a final curse, a wish for the world to find out before it was too late for an endless cycle of senseless violence and pointless revenge to ensue.
The world became dark, but the coldness slowly bled out along with her life force. Pain that had beat in the place of her heart faded away alongside her vision, and Jayavarna found solace in her wish, even if it seemed so far off. As her soul drifted away to another place - a better place, a place without fear or hate or pain or sadness - her body ceased its weeping, accepting what had come to pass.
The tents were rolled up, and the camp moved out in order to cry crocodile tears to the nearest Alliance outriders. Victorious, Gwynneth marched away, leaving the bodies of the fallen on both sides littering the forest floor of southern Ashenvale. On many days, the wicked would get theirs; but in that day, she tasted her small victory and savored it to the very end.
A/N: this is the only the second story I've written with a sad ending. During the next few years, I only plan for two more and they're unrelated to this. It's stressful and difficult to do, but sometimes a writer's feelings need to be expressed - even when they're negative.
For those who reached the end, all I can say is that I hope this elicited some sort of emotion from you - that's a writer's job. For those who plan to continue, we eventually see Gwynneth's crimes catch up with her. In the upcoming story 'You, Me & Us,' a forty five chapter behemoth featuring my main OC couple Cecilia and Khujand, we get to see if Gwynneth's plans come to fruition.
Until then, I wish all readers the best and I hope that this was't too upsetting. Love your family, even those members you fight with more often, and cherish them no matter how angry you feel.