~*~ Author's Notes ~*~

This chapter was shorter than intended and so I removed the beginning scene from the next chapter and added it to the end of this one. It sits a little awkward for my taste but serves it's purpose of lengthening the chapter a bit

~*~ Chapter 29 ~*~

… and the next thing she knew the Priest was pulling her off the bed and out of the room. "I'm sorry," he was saying, "but I need the house. Now. Alone. Go do something else for a while." His voice shook, as did his hands. The sunlight, if it could be called that was filtering threw the dingy windows, looking like gray air in a cold crypt.

She was roughly dumped in the hallway, alarmed and annoyed. When she stood, feline feet tucked under to avoid being trampled she was pushed even further towards the door by an insisting hand. "Out!" he barked at her.

The fore room of the house was deserted of all possessions of both the Warlock and his ward. Any traces of 'breakfast for four' were also gone with not even a smell to linger. In the corner stood a silent mass draped in red and white. Even its face was covered, but from the size and posture… she knew it was the Warlock. Something about how absolutely still the undead woman was set off warning bells in the Druids head. Like a nightmare she just existed in that moment, having no past and no future. Just now.

The red on the cloth was fresh blood. A lot of blood and judging by the splatter patterns not shed willingly.

Kayas went. Even in her feline form she wept for the loss of the Scarlet Zealots and everything those men and women had lost this day. Not just their lives, but also possibly their afterlives. If Sylvannas took recruits from the living, she certainly wouldn't pass up fresh corpses to drag back up from the dead and force into indentured servitude.

Slinking into the shadows she decided to explore the town unseen. The Priest had said "go do something else for a while", but how long that was she had no idea. Filling a few hours sating curiosity wouldn't hurt, right? The hammers at the anvils and the gossip from the shops wouldn't stop for her passing if they did not know she passed. The sleep still clung to her eyes, despite the adrenaline of being awakened so rudely, so some light exploration would do her some good.

She slunk threw the shadows of Brill, this dead town full of a strange sort of lively silence. The Deathguards could stare right at her, seeing threw her stealth with enchantments of some kind, but they said nary a word and let her be. This turned out to be helpful as she came upon a bakers shop near an old inn. The smell wafting threw the windows was oddly familiar and only slightly moldy.

Leaping into a broken window she sniffed harder and tried to pinpoint the smell. The bakery had been large before a fire had taken out half the structure. The current owner hadn't bothered to fix the damage, just scooted the huge cast iron oven to the other side of the structure and took out a wall to make more room. The shelves were lined with sacks of old flour and dusty bottles of spices.

And alliance crates of food.

Kayas' tale lashed to keep her balanced on the thin sash of the window as she looking the crates over. Yes, they belonged to the Alliance. The blue lion was the sigil of no one else that she knew of. Leaping softly onto the floor she padded across the dust and debris to the shelves and leap up. Small as she was there was room for her between the two crates.

Her paws were working at the lid when something very, very warm touched her shoulder. Turning slightly she got a view of a piping hot pie balanced on the end of a large paddle used to pull them from the oven. The shop owner was scowling or grinning. It was hard to tell with half her covered in metal plates.

"Moon berries," she said, "commission to make some pies. And you'll be keeping out of them, thank you." The pie and it's maker went to the other end of the shop and the pie soon joined a row of almost a dozen others on the table. An enchanted bag was folded neatly nearby, awaiting the cooled pies.

The Druid mewled softly, seeking some kind of pity from this Forsaken woman. Moon berries grew wild all over Darkshore and Ashenvale and were amongst her favorite fruits. The pies themselves glowed from the moonlight caught within the berries they were baked of. It had been so long since she had tasted anything from her homelands…

"Out with you." The woman turned back to her work, hands working two knives to churn up another batch of pie crust.

Shifting into her upright form the Druid slid from the shelf and crept close to the pies, "Just a nibble?" She held up her hand as the woman turned towards her, making a tiny space between her fingers to indicate size. "Just a tiny taste. Just to make sure it's perfect!"

"Tell me something," the baker said, "Are you the Druid from the Undercity? The one who made the Dark Lady and the Priest fight?"

Kayas was confused. She backed away a step, not liking the look in the woman's deadly glowing eyes, or the way she held the two knives she had been using to break the shortening into the flour. She opted for a diplomatic answer to the question, hoping still to get an least a single berry before she got chased off, "I'm just a Druid from Auberdine. I never wanted to be in the Undercity."

The knives lashed out fast as lighting. Whoever this woman had been in life – well it certainly wasn't a baker! Kayas was into her Dishu form and out the window fast as she had ever fled before, but not before the woman got two shavings of hair, one from the shoulders and another from the end of her tale. Certainly she was skilled in the use of daggers but it had been a long time since she wielded them against anything but a pie.

For that the little Druid was grateful. The disappointment of not getting at least one berry was tempered with a smug feeling that the wretched Dark Lady and the High Priest had fought because of her. She hoped they had said nasty things. She hoped they didn't like each other anymore. She hoped they were moving towards being enemies now. And while she was at it she hoped this eventually made the entire Horde collapse inward on itself and snuffed out the threats her beloved forests faced half a world away.

Her imagined scheming was interrupted by the very real feeling of being followed. Having lost her taste for being around the Scourged minions of Brill the little Druid had left town and was wondering close to the fire-charred walls of an abandoned garrison. The smoke from a fire could be seen coming up threw the roof. Those who would repair it had abandoned it, but someone was still calling it home it seemed.

It wasn't so much the feeling of being watched, but the familiar feeling of the Priest and the Warlock seeming to follow her.

The road was silent, a few wandering undead dotting the hillsides around her. There were few trees, and fewer 'wildlife' to mill about under them. And speaking of mills, the one up ahead looked like it had it's own horror story to tell. Whatever it was, the Druid didn't want to hear it. After two weeks of listening to the sobbing and heartsick stories of those left in the Plaguelands she had enough of stories.

Her melded herself into the shadows and crept, circling around and heading towards the feeling of 'following'. Whatever it was it wasn't just filled with the power of the Priest and the Warlock, but of life itself. The promise of life, to be precise; she followed what had been following her.

Seems the plague in her system had not taken away her ability to sense the natural ebb and flow of life at all. One of the earliest exercises she had done with her Druid trainer had been to make 'friends' with a plant. Then the plant was neglected, not given food and water, until it cried out to be helped. If she could sense this then she could pass onto the next level of training, which would be learning how to help the little plant.

She had been an excellent student. Not particularly powerful in the ways of the Druid, but naturally inclined. It came to her as instinct. The same instinct that now had her tracking down another plant she had 'made friends' with.

Circling behind a busted up wagon scarred with weapon marks, she hopped over the bones of an enormous warhorse and landed right behind the one who had been following her. He was motionless and quite, listening. Despite this he had no idea where she was or how she had dropped off his radar.

All she saw were long white and scarred ears sticking up into the stale roadside air. Dressed crown to toe in black, she took him for a High Elf of some kind. The lowly kind, judging by how old his clothing was. The heat coming off his body as he strained to pinpoint where she had disappeared smelled of some kind of men's scented water and good quality sheets.

Shifting into her elfin form, she tapped him on the shoulder, "Excuse me, but you have something of mine."

Her accent, she was aware, was thickly Darnassian. No doubt he noted this also when his back when ramrod strait. Without saying or doing anything else, he simply reached into his bag and handed her what she asked for over his shoulder.

Taking the pilfered item gingerly between two fingers, she put it in the little compartment attached to her belt. Smiling so that her voice would reflect pleasure at his cooptation she said, "Goddess watch over you."

"It was you who healed the Sentinels?" The tone of his voice unnerved her. His posture, his rich smell and old clothing, it didn't add up. There also wasn't the same trace of burned up arcane or fel energy emanating from him as there was with Blood Elves.

"What are you?" she asked

His smile was apparent even inside his mask and with his back still turned, "A figment, like love." And just like that he was gone. Disappearing in a cloud of transparent smoke.

Startled, Kayas jumped back. Glancing around she tried to find him. His aura should make it easy; once a Druid had your unique aura signature they usually were able to track any Human-type creature. But he was gone. Just gone.

Taking the item from her belt she held it in her hand and looked at it. She had been made an abomination of nature for this small, precious thing. It could save the entire world from the Scourge if only she could find a way to reproduce the thing and teach others to do the same.

The Dorie seed.

~*~ Segue ~*~

Sylvannas

There wasn't an inch of Tirisfal the Dark Lady didn't patrol. With all the Deathguards around one would think they could be trusted to the task but alas, no. Not long ago, before there were Deathguards or Forsaken or hope of restoring what was destroyed there had only been her. When she was finally free of Arthas she set out to find the only thing she still had left: her body.

Irony that he had buried her ravaged corpse, even more so that he had done it in Brill's cemetery. The elaborate mausoleum constructed to house the thing had only enraged the spirit who had to break the thick walls, wards and iron bolts to get in. Alone with her thoughts at last the fallen Ranger General of Silvermoon set out to establish a place from which she could launch her counterattack and win back what was ripped from her dying grasp.

A foolish though, that something dead could live again. All she had succeeded in doing was becoming so much like him it irked her to the core. Often she found herself in a council meeting, some boring discussion about an embargo on stolen Dwarven ale just about putting her to sleep, and she would feel it in her bones. She would feel him in her bones and need to remind herself how she was different.

Fortunately, just a few hundred yards outside the city proper she found the difference. Arthas had daemons at his disposal… she had angels. Three days into the discussion and the Dark Iron still wouldn't let up on the embargo, their emissary getting fat on Tirisfal pumpkin wine in the process. She had half a mind to dump him in the mote and send for a new emissary. Instead she left him there and went forth to quiet her troubles with a short walk…