~* Author's Notes *~

Sylvannas jacked my storyline back in chapter 28.

Elune beats the Muses and makes them rain oodles of story details for me.

~*~ Chapter 62 ~*~

~ The Overlook ~

~Salira~

The RazorWing and Frostfire flashed hand signals back and forth as they stood guard at the Overlook. The living children were huddled in one spot under the watchful eye if Michael second-in-command.

I'm bored.

Me, too.

We could teach the kids how to play Kill It?

I don't think they'd find it as fun as we do.

Hotbodies (1) and their need to breathe...

Overrated.

Right?

The burnt out shell of the house sat in the middle of the clearing. Salira wouldn't go near it. The little druid paced, torn between trying to find a dock with a boat and staying to help Salira defend the surviving children. She would not – could not – just leave her there alone. Especially after she had put herself between the druid and the other Scarlet. She had been a buffer between the druid and the Commander during her brief "visit". Kaldorei etiquette dictated she return the favor. She would not return home and tell her father she behaved badly of her own free will.

The Scarlet warrior sharpened the double headed ax, brushing loose strands of hair out of her face every few seconds. If she would turn towards the house the wind would be head on and not keep blowing the flyaways. When it started drying it really turned into a fuzzy mess.

"You're pacing," she noted after watching the bi-pedal druid wear a rut in what had once been a beautiful back garden. The remains of a fence were pulled up and used for the fire. The wood was pre-Scourge, untainted. The fire flickered nearby, though none of them were worried it would bring the undead down on them: that right when to their sweat glands.

"I am," the druid admitted. Turning sharply her fog of hair swung around and fell to her left as the rut received another pass.

The older woman noted, "You lack a certain fighters discipline." She never looked up from carefully, expertly sharpening the weapon. Something of pride had settled in the way she gazed at the blade, as if the Scarlet mace she broke to pieces on the first abomination were a usurper of her hands.

"This isn't my war." Turn, trample, turn, trample. "Are there any docks along the coast? Boats, by chance?"

Salira laughed softly, mockingly, "You won't find docks here. Arthas blew them to prevent escape. He sunk the warships and trader cogs as well. The Dark Lady is dredging them up one at a time for her navy. Perhaps she'll lend you one?"

It was sarcastic but the druid answered anyway, "I'd rather swim." She was disappointed to hear this escape plan would not work. "What about north of here? If I go north are there docks? What about south?"

"The Dark Lady blew the docks in Silverpine, for the same reason Arthas did. The ones north of here? The short answer is no. They belong to the Quel'dorei and last I checked they were taking turns sinking them themselves." The few remaining High Elves were currently undergoing a civil war of types with the ones who now called themselves Blood Elves. Though they hadn't been officially evicted from the city, they would be soon. The Kaldorei did keep up with current goings-on of their Elune-forsaking cousins. If for nothing else than to keep tabs on their dangerous magic... as if that were an issue anymore.

Kayas shifted into her feline form and sat sharply, deciding to give Salira some peace form watching her shuffle about. Her senses sharpened several times as much as her upright form. At least this way she would be able to sense danger coming more easily.

"It's strange to see you do that," the warrior said, finally looking up from her glistening ax, "I saw you do it for a week and it still baffles me. Does it hurt? I hear it hurts."

Shifting back into her upright form she answers the warrior's questions just to have something to do in the silent night. "No, not even the first time." Salira put more questions to her. "Can you drink potions while in an animal form? Can you talk to people?" Soon the curious living children were chiming in with their questions, forming a circle around the druid and touching her as she shifted into each of their forms. She wouldn't let them put their hands anywhere near her face for fear of spreading the plague, assuming she could spread it. Each question was answered with practiced patience. It was not the first time someone who was not a Druid had been bursting with curiosity. Fondly she remembered her friend Sappy, a dwarf woman who's skill with a throwing darts was only matched by her skill at losing drinking games. The first time Kayas had turned into a bear the woman swore she'd give up drinking if it were she who accidentally put a curse on the elf. Dwarf legends about being turned into animals, or some such other nonsense.

Kayas ears perked from some outward stimulation. The hair on her neck ruffled. Something was coming. Something dark and deadly. Something looking for her. Something which had caused her a great deal of pain recently an-

"I have to go." She shifted into her Dishu form and hit the trail headed out of the clearing. The startled children scattered in surprise, causing Salira to have to round them up.

"Wait, what?"

Shifting back upright long enough she said, "I'm glad to have met you, Salira Porter. Fight well and good bye."

The druid ran out of the clearing and was gone for a full fifteen seconds before the Dark Lady came striding in. Her neck to deck Quel'dorei style armor looked like crap. The feathers were completely missing from one shoulder, the stubs looked to be burnt. The claw and scratch marks indicated how many Scourge would have gotten a taste of the Banshee Queen had that armor not been in place. The boots were caked to the knees in filthy mud and she smelled of Scourge corpse rot.

"My druid has vanished again, has she?"

The Scarlet warrior was tired and did not want verbal banter. It had been a long night. The sun was just breaking over the horizon, if such a hazy thing as that could be called a sun in Tirisfal Glades. "She did say her farewells before she left."

Seeing the exhausted, puffy eyes of the middle-aged woman, the Dark Lady was exceedingly glad she herself had never lived to see that age. Few good things could be said about the plague of undeath, but eternal beauty was certainly one of them. And a skilled necromancer to keep it that way. Undercity had four such necromancer night spas that cater to an exclusive clientele. Once a Death Knight had managed to sneak his way into the place, disguised as a High Elf, but the frost rune tattoos told the truth when his shirt came off for the last part of the massage session. He tipped very well and didn't even kill anyone as he ran out with two dozen of her worst guards in tow. She never saw any of them again.

"Regardless," the Dark Lady said, dismissing her annoyance at certain free-thinkin Scourge, "I came to pay my debt to you."

Salira was surprised enough to put down her ax and stand, "What debt is that?"

The black slick mouth of the Banshee Queen drew back to show off-yellow teeth, "Why, the one I owe you for killing the second abomination. Yes, I saw that."

Salira was in the middle of denying it when Michael also came forward, admitting that he saw it too. Outnumbered she changed strategy. "You don't owe me anything. You have nothing I want and what I want is something you cannot give."

Tilting her head the tall elf looked down on the women, straitened her posture. She did not like being told what she could not do. A Windrunner of Quel'thalas always took it as a personal mission to prove others wrong. "What do you want, Salira Porter? I won't be called a liar and I won't have you showing up at my door ten years from now demanding payments for debts I will no longer be inclined to pay."

Salira shook her head, turning away and repeated, "There is nothing you have which I want. Nothing I want is within your power to give." She looked out over the ocean, or what of it she could see through the trees. Ten years ago the view had been perfect. Ten years ago there was a swing and a gentle breeze. Ten years ago there was pinkberry liquor and and boy who ran around laughing while he chased frogs and dragonflies. There are no more dragonflies in Tirisfal Glade. "You can't pay me for what I did, Your Majesty."

"Am I?"

"Are you what?" The weary warrior was getting annoyed. The Dark Lady liked to play games, she knew, though she expounded at length about how she did not have time for them. The warrior was in no mood for wittiness from the woman.

"Your Majesty?"

Salira exhaled, deeply. "I assume you killed everyone in the fortress, so me and these children are all that's left in Tirisfal of the Loarderon Empire. Doesn't that make me your citizen-property now? Or something to that effect?"

"Oh, please," the Banshee Queen had a rather girlish laughter, "Don't play at being the last of your kind. No, you do not get that privilege. The High Inquisitor is a wonder of the Light, you see. She resurrected all the fallen dead, everyone who was not infected with the plague. She then trapped us inside that infernal compound until I agreed not to kill them all again."

The warrior laughed, armor jingling as she did, "Oh, but to have seen that." She smiled almost friendly over her shoulder at the woman who walked her nightmares. "Someone needs to remind you that you do not get to play Goddess or God or whatever you believe in. Life and death should be left to the Light to figure out, not mortal people like us."

The Dark Lady came to stand beside her, looking out over the sea. She was well over a head taller, loose white hair falling to her wide hips, and tangled in leather straps binding her armor together. From the back they looked to be friends, but no one was fooled. "You want to know what irks me the most, though? About the whole debacle?

"What?"

"I lost well over a hundred good fighters today." The undead woman held up her gloveless hands and began ticking off long, purple tipped fingers. "Warriors and archers and mages and necromancers that I will not get back. I sacrificed them today to keep Arthas from destroying the last bastion of Light in Loarderon. And to save my druid, of course."

"You want me to give you a hand?" The warrior turned to the elf, brows down and forehead wrinkled, irked in her own right, "You want me to cheer for you? You went in there to do some major damage to us-"

"Do be serious. If I wanted you all dead you'd have been dead. The traitor priest were Arthas' doing, not mine. You still think I am the villain?"

Furious, Salira raised her voice, "Let me cry bit crocolisk tears for the Banshee Queen. Let me just pour out my heart's sympathy that your lost fighters which you rightfully stole from us to begin with. Your fighters grew up with me, went to school with me, died beside me and now they don't even recognize me. I saw children fighting -you aren't the only one who pays attention! - who died a decade ago on this very spot. I saw fathers fighting their daughters and I saw a woman die who gave her life to protect children who are Loarderon's last generation. What will you do with them now, Banshee Queen? What does a dead woman have to offer the living?"

~End Notes ~

1.) Forsaken fighter's nickname for the living.