Natural Selection

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The story relates to Kestrel, and is an ongoing project, describing RP events as they happen, and as Kes sees them. The stories may be used IC within reason (barring the piece titled, The request). Text copyrighted to Auburn, plagiarists will be keelhauled and fed to rabid weasels.

Almae
The girl huntress meets her in the Plaguelands, and from the very beginning, it goes as badly as she feared. She has had this talk with creatures of all species – the one where they hear the first ten words out of her mouth and conclude she is simple, a dog or a child to be ordered or educated. She has grown endlessly weary of it: of correcting or even disdaining them for it. So, she ignores it and simply tells her would-be commander why she refused to kill the leech prince for her.

“Your plan was bad. Would have died. Stupidly.”

Too blunt: the huntress hears only defiance, and turns it to anger. She wonders what the youngling sees, as she plays her role as the indignant commander. A coward? A fool? A cantankerous old wolf, rebelling for no reason except that she can? She keeps her peace as best she can, waits for the girl huntress to finish laying down her judgement. “You will march with us,” the little one tells her finally, “and you will fight for something besides your own survival. We are Kaldorei, we know better than that.” As she speaks, her eyes shine with the sincere conviction of one truly believing she is teaching a hard but desperately needed lesson.

She could laugh, at her motives being so completely mistaken. How long has she served the Circle, because being needed was all that kept her alive? Waiting to die, Sarama had called it, when they talked of other things. Any fight would do – except a useless one. “Almae,” she says – and when the leaving huntress stops as if on command, she finally draws herself up as if she were a person, and explains. About wolves, about dogs, about trust and leaders. But she can’t find the right words, and she can see the girl doesn’t understand. So, she says something different instead. She tells the girl huntress what she sees in her – the lost and lonely young thing, trying to be brave but terrified that asking for guidance will make her seem weak, unfit to lead whatever tatters remain of her lost elder’s pack.

True things. Or true enough to make the girl’s hackles go down, and show her they are not speaking in anger, or as enemies.

After that, they talk. It’s hard, thinking in words rather than now, but the girl huntress reminds her of someone. Another young thing, beautiful and damaged but not yet ruined by her mistakes. She remembers how narrow that divide is. It hurts, just by existing.

They don’t agree, but for a little while, they listen. It’s a start.

Druids and water
For the next weeks, between her duties to the Circle, she is a messenger. It is less than a week before the huntress has said they leave when she finds the druids in Zangarmarsh for the third time. There is no need this time, no message, but if they are to be her pack she would rather know who they are, before they are pitted tooth and claw against an enemy again.

One, she does. The older druid, Anadurion - they have barely met, but she recognises him, or the idea of him. Creatures of nature, so streamlined into Balance that there is very little they actually need to say to each other. It's comfortable, like old armour. She likes him, for no reason other than that.

His student, another matter. Young druids she has never knows what to make of, and age has made her worse, not better at it. That grates, though she knows it is not the girl's fault. These young things, who have heard the edges of Balance, but have yet to understand it. Most younglings she can be patient with. Druids, they are different. Druids are supposed to already know. She listens to the druids talk, and can't quite stop her hackles rising with impatience.

"What will you do?" The words are out of her mouth before she realises she made them into sound. She glances at Anadurion quickly, but he has gone silent, prepared to let her chase the thought. So, for a while, she hunts for answers. Challenges the druid youngling, though not in body - just to explain her understanding, or lack of one, of how the naga are killing this marshland the little one is so enamoured with. Solutions, always solutions - admitting ignorance is a start, but Balance cares nothing for knowing, only for what is and what is done. And when the little one finally admits she has no idea where to look for how the fishfolk are killing the marshes...

"Water," she says, surprising even herself. She has never thought it before, never needed to, but it becomes obvious as she says it, like a sound she has long heard but only now had reason to notice. "Water is life. Water they steal. But water fights, so it rains here, always." She wonders if it's the surprise in her voice that makes Anadurion look at her, at that. She wonders if it is simply sense, because he tells her she should share the thought with Ysiel, at the Outpost. She declines, tells him a druid will be heard better than a hunter. But they go together anyway, dismissing the youngling to continue her hunt for the totem that will let her understand flight.

When they are finished, he tells her she should make her way back to the huntress, and make sure the Circle's mission is being seen to and will begin as planned. That the pack is ready to hunt together, and run the huntress's errand if she still insists on it.

She agrees, of course she does. She takes the fast paths, the ones that run outside other paths. All will go well. It must. Staghelm will have his mission, and then ... then he will tell her about dragons.

Stormwind invaded
She never gets that far: barely reaches Nethergarde before word comes from Stormwind. She goes. Of course she does. There is a debt she owes, a debt of freedom to a man who loves that city. In the balance of things, that counts for more than making certain others do what is their responsibility to begin with.

Midnight has come and gone, when she arrives. The humans have fought well, but they are daywalkers, and they need rest. She is fresh, except for travel - she is old and sleepless - and most of all she is Kaldorei, used to walking by night, to baring steel and claw under moonlight. When the Lich King's flesh giants and bone dragons fall on the preparing war ships yet again, she and the wolf take the place of defenders already exhausted. They sound no battlecry, they fight without a sound. Occasionally they catch the scent of others on the field -- Sarama, Almae, unseen but still deadly.

At heart, she approves. Steel and shadow, striking and vanishing, vicious ghosts with nothing to fear from darkness - this is who they are. This is how Kaldorei should fight.

And that is how it goes. She fights, she holds the line, and when the enemies fall back to regroup, she listens - and finds, to her surprise, her eyes tearing against the bleak winds raking the harbour. What she hears in the lull between battles isn't hurt, or fear. It's a sound from pasts long distant - of tired soldiers reaching for a shoulder, of reassurance, of flow, of tiny living connections being made as they reaffirm their own survival, make sure their fellows are right enough to fight on. Strong, sure, and parting around her like a river cut by a rock that refuses to be part of it.

Nature abhors a solitary thing. Wind, water, time, all will whittle away at it until there is nothing.

Midnight has come and gone, the stars lit and paled, and a thousand challenges been met and beaten before dawn arrives, bringing realisation of what it is niggling at her. For the first time since the world ended, she is remembering how it feels to want something.

Nesingwary
After the ships land in the Tundra, for days she sees no-one. She is glad, because for days, she wishes she was anywhere else. For days, waking and sleeping, she hears the earth wail and whimper. It makes her cringe, afraid to even try to guess what has hurt it.

They claim to know, the druids who call themselves DEHTA. She isn't so sure. She has met Nesingwary once: She can't believe one hunter could hurt a place this badly, no matter how recklessly he hunts. Almae refuses any part in it. Still, the huntress has no immediate battle plans - and when she says she will go, just to speak, the huntress agrees. With Anadurion's blessing, she takes his youngling with her.

Something she did not tell the druids: when she scouted the land, she was told of dwarves going north, away from crazy elves. Not hard to find, with the description of a gnome who has seen it from his flying machine. At the camp by the river in Sholazar Basin, she finds Nesingwary and they talk. It is short. Nesingwary tells her he has no intention of returning to the Tundra, when the lush Basin offers game more challenging. She tells him it is good, because if he threatens the Balance by bringing his hunt where nature already bleeds, she will kill him herself, and he will not see her come.

They leave quickly, after that, to the sound of flintlocks being loaded. She understands, accepts even. No more a threat than hers: just prudence, a living thing's response to a predator in the fold. Just how things are.

The druidling follows in silence the whole while, saying nothing. When asked, she denies any opinion.

That changes, once she presses hard enough. It goes against the grain to take a hand to a druid - but cubs are cubs, they will forgive the nips and bites they get growing up once they are old enough to realise why they were being warned. She doesn't know if Anadurion will approve her method, the quick scuffle and grip to the throat, cutting through any need to argue by simply claiming law of the pack, the right of older, stronger wolves to say how it is. It's a dangerous tack to take with one so obviously enamoured with her new gifts, that chance to touch and feel and lives not hers. She remembers that. She remembers how she chased it so far that for a while, there was nothing else. A pale wolf in womanskin, kinless and without troubles, without anything but the pack and a promise almost forgotten - there are worse ways to pass millenia. But there are better, too.

Words come hard, still, and she knows the druidling hasn't come far enough yet to read her lines and posture, like Anadurion does. In the end she gives up. True things - balance, readiness, sense, self - none of them are taught in a day.

She tells the druids of DEHTA nothing of what they found, just strings her bow and asks which of the hunters remaining in the tundra are doing the most damage. Almae will not approve, and she is reluctant to go against the young huntress - the girl did well, leaving her feuds behind and offering Anadurion a position of honour at her fire. She has no wish to bring unrest to a new hearth still finding it's peace.

She will explain, when she has to. Almae has a young heart, she will forgive. But if she doesn't, it'll be no more than an old wolf deserves for keeping her own council.

Death of a dragon
The death cry of the red dragon shatters the frozen air of the spire. For the longest moment after it dies, she stands paralysed, bow still raised, unable to accept that was was supposed to be a rescue became a killing. Her Kaldorei heart, that broken and useless thing, screams and thrashes at the injustice.

Then the moment passes, and scents and now flood back in, and the flow of Balance steadies her again. As Almae raises her voice in horror -- as Sarama looks on, drink-addled and bemused -- as Anadurion bows his head in mourning for the great creature and Nyrania just flees -- she walks to the fallen dragon and quietly takes the ruined head in her arms. "So that's why," she hears her own voice whisper - or is it just in her head, so loud it seems it's made voice? "Poor sister. Rest now."

She stays there a long while, eyes bleeding sorrow for the creature she'd hoped they could save. It's bitter consolation to know they succeeded - saved her from torture and enslavement by her captors, from a body so broken it was no longer hers. Magewarped scales - rune-riddled skin - her vision blurrs, she cannot see, and for a while she forgets where and when she is. Until something calls her back. Anadurion, voice low and heavy with grief, telling Almae the red's death is not something she can claim responsibility to. Almae, afraid and arguing.

"Forget yourself!" There's fury in the words, fire, and it takes her a moment to realise they are hers. Her Kaldorei voice, wild and hurting, screaming as she stands. "Look at her! Look at what they did to her!" Her hand passes over the shimmering blue runes branded into the red's scales, runes that still burn and writhe with magic too hungry to touch. "They broke her! Tortured her, tried to make her blue! We did not kill her." Her voice cracks, her knees give, and she slumps by the dragon's body, pressing her forehead to the cold, scarred scales. She cannot say the last words. We saved her, the only way we could.

"I see! I see nothing else! And don't you understand? We had no right!" Almae's voice rips through the spire, harsh and riddled with fear of what the dragons will do, and the dissonance of it silences the screaming Kaldorei in her skin. Children should never be left to argue by themselves. Nothing good ever comes of it.

"Then tell that to the dragon queen," she says quietly, wiping her blurred eyes. "I will tell her different. Will tell her she sang."

She realises later that honesty with the youngling might have been a mistake. But that is after -- after Almae has walked out with them and them left without a word; after she has asked Anadurion for final words of advice on how to speak to dragons; after Sarama tells her to hell with all this, she'll go back to fighting and drinking with the dwarves, and read about it in a letter. She finds a path, one of the straight ones that run outside normal paths, and gives chase.

The request
Distance is a friend: in snow and hard weather, time has taught her how to chase efficiently. She finds the huntress not far from her destination, and too tired from her trek and her wild emotions to argue. I go with, she tells the huntress. Almae bows her head and agrees.

Even so, she may as well have walked alone into the temple lair of the gathered dragon flights. She has hunted dragons, killed and almost been killed by many while Deathwing scoured the earth. It is not natural to walk before them, exposed, unprepared to fight tooth and claw. Every instinct screams, run. She cannot tell if it is because of the sheer primal terror of being entirely in a larger predator's power, or because she knows what she must do before she leaves.

She barely hears Almae speak to the dragon queen. She barely speaks herself, except to give a promise. It is stupid, she knows that as she gives it. It is all she has to bargain with. But here, now ... no. There can be no bargaining with dragons. Only true things -- only her rage for the pain of the dragon that died by her hands, alchemised into a furious promise to fight any way the gathered Flights wish, to end the Blue Flight's madness anywhere she can.

It is terrifying. She cannot understand how Almae stands so easily, speaks as she does to anyone. She would run if she had a choice. But she doesn't. All she can do is wait, a smaller predator scared breathless, until the huntress finishes and turns to go. This is nothing to do with the girl and her Guardians.

"One thing," she hears herself say - she never looks up at the dragon queen, never rises from her knees. She ignores Almae halting, fussing, telling her to mind her manners and leave now. She would strike the girl silent if she dared fight in a dragon's presence. Her risk to take: the huntress has done nothing to demand her loyalty. "Gave a promise. Will honour it. Ask that when you say I have done enough, you let me ask for something. A favour. If you will." She swallows, voice cracking, and tells the queen of dragons why.

If Alexstrasza answers, she does not hear it. The world contracts, fades, becomes nothing but the dragon queen's eyes. No lies, no hiding from them. Only true things. Only life, naked and vulnerable before the dragon aspect with dominion over all of it, and love for all that lives.

The request hangs in the air, unanswered.

She is exhausted, worn raw when they leave. The wolf keens, fusses, worried. She tells him not to, tells him they are done and the future will happen, or not, as it will. And she barely notices Almae go. She is halfway to Star's Rest before she realises away is the wrong direction.

When she returns, neither she nor the red waste time on greetings. He tells her what she will hunt. She bows her head, and agrees.

Sarama
One question leads to another. Some things can't be done alone. In the end, she goes to the obvious ally.

"No," Sarama says finally, glowering over the railing to the storm howling around the ship. Every line of her body says she doesn't want to be talking about this - even the perpetual smirk, that bloody-minded look that says she can't believe the world thinks it's worth taking seriously, can't mask her discomfort at anyone knowing her secrets, even part of them. "I didn't try to change it. I deserve it. You can't change the past."

She glances back at the woman, the assassin, and shakes her head. "Things past, don't exist anymore," she says. "The time. The dead. All gone. Know what is left?"

"No."

"Yes you do. It chases you, too." She flicks a sharp look at Sarama's hipflask, flashing teeth. "Memory." And then she tells her. Tells her what the dragon queen said, the task she set for the favour that will give an old wolf her life back.

Sarama laughs. She jokes. She makes up a scheme, from air, about bribing goblins to satisfy the formal terms of the dragons' task with a clever trick. When she points out that the spirit of the task is what matters, the woman tells her she is a pessimist, then laughs and agrees the goblins would probably pocket the pay and sell the booty under the table anyway. No they wouldn't, she wants to say -- you would kill them if they did, or I would, and they are cowards at heart. -- but the idea makes her smile. It makes the impossible seem less so.

She has no proper plan, and she admits it as she outlines the poor one she does have. Sarama tells her, blankly, that it sucks.

"The choice is, jump," she answers. She doesn't look back, but she almost hears the smirk fall from Sarama's lips. "Didn't. Couldn't. And can't wait anymore. So I have to change it."

For a long while there is silence, broken by nothing but the sounds of a storm at sea, and intangible things meshing.

"I see," Sarama says, finally. No quip, no joke. Only, simple as that: "Alright."

She says thank you. She is grateful. But they both know why Sarama agrees. ''Worst case? Worst case, we fail, and we will both be done with waiting. Not so bad. Not bad at all.''

She nods, hunkering down against the storm, and waits for the ship to carry them back into the battle.

The Howl
She builds the fire in a cave off the Valgarde bay, and waits. The others come, in ones and twos. Few of them, fewer than she'd like ... but it is to be expected in times of war. It's alright. There will be time. If they live that long.

It has been a long time since she's howled, but some things don't change. Some words come easy - words she's heard others speak over the same fire over decades, centuries, millennia. ''Another has howled, others have not. Who will speak?'' She takes her turn, halfway, and howls for Vinga, in ways of the hunt more her mother than the one who birthed her - Vinga who taught her all, who flew with Torneth's Riders, and fell making the Black Flight pay for the arrogance to challenge them in their home. I howl for Vinga Nightspear, so Malygos will remember that Kaldorei have fought dragons before, and know we remember how they die.

A hunter's howl: a warrior's. Vinga would be proud.

The others howl in their turn, each showing a sliver of self, true things they might not share outside the fire. Gwenlyn, thoughtful, tells of her Sentinel commander's fall beating back the Warsong orcs, before she became Anadurion's student. Almae surprises her - she had expected a howl to Illidor and the Guardians lost with him, but instead it goes to her sister. Sarama ... she is not sure what story Sarama tells, in the end. The tale is like she is: simple, direct and half-way ludicrous. If you aren't looking, you could almost miss the poisonous feeling of something ugly left unsaid, something that makes all the rest make vicious sense.

She wonders if anyone else notices Sarama never says which part of the tale made it hers. She remembers the one time she has seen the woman sober, and a story about orc cubs, told without a flicker of care.

But the howl that stays with her, after, is Anadurion's. It is what she tried to do, but did not have the words or heart for - it is what Almae could have done, but didn't. The druid speaks last, and howls for those present - for stories yet to be written, battles yet to be won. For strangers, drawn together to a common purpose, and perhaps able to do what would be impossible for any of them alone.

For moments, just a little while, he brings them together. As it should be.

Demons
For her, the Guardian meeting never begins. Even if she hadn't seen it she would have smelled it: the demon taint on the hound Anissina defends, insists she is helping even. Instinct tells her different. While the others watch her, she watches the creature, along a drawn arrow. Runed hide, twisted flesh, burning eyes...

...ruined skin, torn meat, the stink of old blood and fel magic...

...she does not know, does not care how much of her thoughts translate into words. She is furious that they cannot see the wrong of the creature, nature twisted past any recognition, painful to itself, painful to be near. Voices speak, but not anyone who matters, nothing worth hearing. Just Anissina, who glowers, stalks up to her, challenging. "Do you want to fight me?" the huntress demands. Angry, like any youngling who has chosen to defend something and doesn't understand why she is wrong.

"Will you kill it?"

"No."

"Then we fight," she snarls. Muscle and sinew contract, launch her barehanded at the huntress - and just as she connects, she hears the girl draw steel. That's when she knows this will hurt.

Seconds later she is on the ground, panting and broken, bleeding freely from where swords ripped flesh instead of armour. Stupid, expecting anything less. In a pack without discipline, of course anger will resort to deadly force. Her mistake, expecting better. Mistakes like that can, should kill.

She limps away more than stalks, goes to lick her wounds in peace. No-one stops her. She is calmer, her wounds properly bound, when voices drift over the druid stone: Anissina saying she has reconsidered, and the hound will be dealt with. That takes the edge off her hurts, though she does not waste magic on an answer. The wounds weren't wasted, the point was made. That the girl accepts and corrects her mistake, though she won right of strength to it, shows she has heart.

Later, Sarama tells her what else happened, after she left. Sarama who did listen, did watch, and does remember how all acted before and after steel was drawn. Neither of them is comfortable with what she saw. There is no following a leader who refuses to take a hand.

Defenders in Ashenvale
When the Sentinel scout's message reaches her, she takes it to Anadurion. The old druid agrees: Ashenvale cannot be lost, and there is nothing they can do here that will suffer too greatly from a few days' absence. He remains. She sounds the call, gathers the Guardians to fight.

They are not alone, when they arrive two days later. Sarama plans the ambush, but as they lie in wait, hidden, it's good to see the scouts of other defenders pass them. Sentinels, Kaldorei mercenaries, even younger allies, Mountaineers and the Theramore marines. When the ambush turns bad and they have to retreat after picking off the few they can, she is glad to have allies to regroup with. It's quick, it's brutal, it leaves her grinning and drenched in the blood of some soft leech magician she sliced neck to nethers. She and the Sentinel Eithel run ahead of the Guardians, scouting on Sarama's orders. She collects injuries, and barely escapes beheading by some horned bear and Blood Knights in Magisterial colours, but it's all good. They chase the Horde back to their den; they invade it enough to leave some corpses at their home door. As they retreat, the Earthfury chief's arrow in her side still feels like a fair price for victory.

They regroup at Silverwind Refuge, still a wreck after the Horde stormed it earlier. As Almae orders wounds tended, she quietly pulls the arrow from her side and skulks off, saying she will scout, make sure they are gone. Not quite fast enough -- sharp-eyed Sarama stalks after her, blankly orders her to strip armour and let her tend the arrow wound first. Not arguing is faster: the assassin does her business and lets her go, to make her way through the whispering wilderness that is Ashenvale. She walks, a limping shadow sometimes leaning on a tall black direwolf. Something feels badly. Something feels too easy. Skirmishes, nothing more, no serious assault on Astranaar at all ... were they wrong, thinking that was the Horde's target? Did they truly give up so easily?

It takes time, but she finds it: a Moonwell choked with bones, stinking of demonic magics, drained and defiled. It hurts to be near, draws tears from her that her wounds could not. It cries, like any wounded thing. She cannot leave it to it's misery.

The Guardians come in ones and twos when she calls. Her face is wet, her body raw from the Moonwell's tears when she begs Jarob to undo this, heal the well from the hurts the leeches have done it. If he has doubts over such delicate healings when they are all already tired from battle, he does not share them. He nods, and promises he will try. Desperately she tells him she will help -- her Kaldorei heart shrinks and wails as memory cuts through millennia with the sharpness of yesterday, but she ignores its crying. Instead she says her skills are old and small, but if he will show her, she will try.

They do. The druid balances himself, touches the water and the Moon's grace in it, shows her how to do the same. Between them, they reach for the song that the well sang before the leeches and their magics did the unspeakable to it. Beside them, Almae prays to the goddess, for once gripping her wild emotions, reaching for the peace to act well.

So hard. So painful, reaching through the snarls of poisonous magics to the pure sparks of divine moonfire. She reaches, but cannot hold them, not even with the druid's example and patient voice guiding her. She keens, shakes, feels blood break anew against her ribs as she pants with the effort to do this right, carry even a little of the weight of the healing. "A little more -- just a little more--" And then the Moon's blue fire comes, and she knows nothing else.

It is later, hours perhaps, when she comes to herself again. She wakes to panic, held down and in pain -- broken and bleeding, stinking of magic -- it takes time to realise the attackers she throws off are only Sarama and Almae, who release her and leap back, as surprised as she is. She does not explain, just takes in the damages. Jarob lies not far, exhausted, sleeping to the Moon's song. The wolf drags itself to lick her outstretched fingers, weak and pathetic from the drugs the others forced into it to pull it away from defending its hurt pack mate. She folds an arm over the animal's thick black neck, lets it lick the blood she's coughed up from her face. She listens to Sarama and Almae talking, deciding what to do next, and realises if they ask her to do anything but breathe, it will be too much.

It's alright. She has done enough -- the well no longer cries. It speaks, it sings with the moon. It is night in Ashenvale, where broken, exhausted Guardians stand guard over a moonwell no longer crying in pain.

She barely hears, as Sarama heads off to fetch Sentinels to stand guard, and Almae settles to watch over her and the even more desperately exhausted Jarob. She closes her eyes, and does not have the energy to wonder if she will wake to open them again.

Defend the Dream
Time passes. Wounds heal. She waits it out in Ashenvale, chasing leech would-be invaders and tending to recruits. Some of them she likes, though that is immaterial. What matters is, will they fight. Do they have the heart to bond with the pack, and give all they can for the preservation of the world they all share?

She realises that is about to be tested the night the Guardians meet at Maestra. Sarama brings a stranger to speak to them. Serinde, she calls herself. A druid, one of the many who tend to the Dream, skittish enough to seem barely more than a wisp of Dream herself. She is worried, afraid even. She comes for help.

“He is attacking her,” the girl druid explains, brittle and dolorous. “Malygos has drawn his runes on Ysera’s Great Tree, the portal to her Emerald Dream. I think he means to take it for his own. I … I don’t know what to do.”

Neither do the Guardians, but then knowing isn’t needed: some things are beyond obvious. Some things can’t be permitted.

They meet in Northrend, she and Serinde and Jarob, the three sent to assess the threat. Serinde shows them what she showed Sarama. The crystals and mageborn suspended in air about one of the broken crystal trees, drawing out magic that imbued and poisoned the forest when Malygos and Neltharion Deathwing fought over the forest aeons ago, before the world was sundered. The draconic runes, fed from the crystals and drawn in arcane energy into the bark of Ysera’s Great Tree. The tree itself, roots laid deep into Dream, defenceless against the magics that will slowly turn it, just like they turned the Red Dragon she and the Guardians had to kill only months before.

She stops Jarob, before he charges off to attack the Blue and their mageborn there and then. It’s hard, because her soft Kaldorei heart burns to do exactly that, but the wolf in her will not have it. The Highbourne meddled with mortal magics, and broke a continent with their arrogance. To meddle with an Aspect’s spells, powerful enough to attack another in her place of power… they can’t possibly dare. Not blindly. Not without knowing for sure what destruction will be unleashed by the disruption of such powerful magics, not without some way to protect the land and the mages’ floating city above it.

A memory surfaces. A leech sorceror’s face, through pain and blood, twisted with righteous fury as he demands the return of his property. ''“You think you can hide it? You think you can hide power that could challenge your precious Aspects themselves?”'' She thrusts the memory aside. Dead threats. Things best forgotten.

The Circle will decide, they agree, before they part ways. Jarob takes wing, headed to Moonglade to present the threat to the Cenarion Circle and ask the Elder druids’ to advise the Guardians on how to face it. Serinde stays at the Great Tree, keeping watch over it and the Blue Flight’s minions. She and the wolf, they pick a path south, to Wyrmrest. She is sure the gathered Flights already know of this threat, she doubts they can safely do more against Malygos than they already are doing. But perhaps they can advise lesser creatures on how to fight their battles, without further breaking a world that already creaks and cracks with the strain of Aspect against Aspect.

And perhaps, her traitor Kaldorei heart whispers, perhaps if we do this, the Dragon Queen will consider her terms met. ''You set out to save the life of a dragon, child. Finish the task you gave yourself… and perhaps I will hear this request you are so desperate to make.''

The Keeper's Orders
She leaves the Howl in a blind fury, burning from the news Jarob brought. In seven thousand years, no matter what they asked, she has never felt betrayed by the Circle. For them she has risked life, love and limb -- but this? She will not do it. She will not put a torch to Ysera's tree, no matter how necessary Staghelm thinks it may be.

There are things Staghelm does not know. Things that happened before his time. Things that now sit like cold stones in her gut, because put together, there is a terrible logic to it.

It's Remulous she goes to, eventually -- she and Serinde, both desperate for some solution that will not harm the Great Tree more than has been done already. She pleads her case to the son of Cenarius, reminds him of help his father once gave someone close to her, of things long hidden. He remembers, he agrees, he promises he will make the Circle wait. There are ways to end this, beside harming Ysera's Tree. He tells Serinde to listen, and explains what she must ask the Guardians to do.

"Two things I will need to find what my father hid," the Keeper says. "Growing things from my brother's grave, to walk the path, and Neltharion's breath to build it. When you bring me these, I will give you a guide."

Serinde nods. Not long after she is gone, off to tell the Guardians what they must do to serve the Circle.

She wishes she could follow. Instead she stays and turns to the Keeper, reaching for words to put around the cold stone in her gut. She is terrified of the answer, but she must know. "Did we do this? Our fault?"

"Yes." There is no rancor in his voice, but she cringes anyway, as responsibility sets in. Sense races the paths or reason, tells her how entirely peripheral her involvement was -- but still, she she wants to shake or cry at the thought of having even in that small way helped bring harm on the Dreamer. "We could not know. We could not have predicted the fall of Malygos. You asked for a solution. My father gave you one, and it has held all these years."

"But not against him."

"No. Not against the master of such things."

"Tell me what I must do."

"You know, child."

She shudders, fingers wound tight into the wolf's thick fur, because the Keeper is right. "Find you a dragon," she says. "Bring you it's heart, then find what we lost ... and this time, find a way to destroy it."

"Yes."

"...alright."

The Best Laid Plans
The dragon roars, pain and fury, and this time there is nothing Illidor can do - the beast's black tail lashes him down like a toy soldier. The dragon rears, spitting fire, but Sarama and the wolf are already there, taunting the creature away from the fallen warrior. It costs the wolf an eye, but they manage. Neltharion's mad daughter falls: from there, it's a grizzly but easy task to pry loose her heart, still flaming with Neltharion's hot breath.

They have barely finished when a hawk comes, bringing Aliethia word her comrades in arms are ready to follow her into Maraudon.

She wishes the pup good hunting. She wishes Ex safe trails and swift passage, and watches the pale druidess leave to deliver the dragonheart to Keeper Remulos. The Guardians have done well for the Circle. Unexpectedly, she catches herself being proud to have fought with them.

But they are less than half done, will be even when they finish the Keeper's tasks. Once they have the tools, they must use them, and if they are to survive that, preparations must be made. That's why she goes to Darnassus, to Shandaris and her Moonguard. She meets them some days later in the Temple gardens, and tells them as much as she dares. That Malygos has brought forces against Ysera's Great Tree, and is trying to force his way into the Emerald Dream. That Keeper Remulos has a way to end it, but it's not a battle the Guardians can finish alone. That to end it, they must first retrieve a weapon, hidden long ago, and protected by a guard that cannot be placated, only fought.

She cringes, each time she leaves a piece of the truth out, keeps a secret from the people she is asking to risk their lives. She wants to trust them, but she can't know if the Horde spies lurking near Maestra have eyes here too. What she doesn't say, the leeches can't hear. What the others don't know, they cannot be questioned about.

The Moonguard promise their steel, even with the secrets. She thanks them, grateful, and leaves for Moonglade. It can't be long, until Aliethia brings them the seeds from the grave of Cenarius's son. When that is done, they will gather. Remulos will show them how to forge the path. She'll show them the secret her sisters died to protect. They will win the battle, or lose it. From there--

--but she never gets there.

A barrage of fireballs cut the night sky just outside Auberdine. Feathers crackle and burn, her screaming hippogryph drops like a stone, dying as it falls. She kicks loose of the creature's plumetting carcass, has time to howl to Sarama and the Guardians through the druid-stone, and then everything around her is water. Armour drags her down, her bow turns to dead weight, useless. She can't fight here, and she shouldn't, with no idea of what she faces. She grabs the wolf's solid flank and makes for the shore, as low and quiet as she can, praying to the goddess the attackers lost sight of her when she went under. Close, just a few dozen yards, she can make it that f--

Darts cut through her mail, set her blood afire with poison. Magic lashes her, ties her muscles in knots. Some vague phantasm worms into her head, but she throws it off, finds steel, finds a target, puts an arrow and a firecharm as close as she can to the eye of the first target she sees, some soft Sin'dorei leech playing at soldiers. It's useless. She never knows which of them takes her down, because by the time the poison finishes taking hold, every target has the same face as the first one - and she knows where she's seen it before.

It can't possibly be the same person -- but family blood, family vendettas, didn't they always come naturally to the Highborne? '' In a room thick with the smell of demons and blood, millennia ago or just hours ahead, the magus finishes securing her bonds and tells her how it will be. "You stole from me," he said, says, will say. "Now you will make it right. You will take me to the Evenstar and you will return it to me, or by the Sun, woman, death will be the least of the things I can do to you." ''