The price of a kiss...

Aktarin's gryphon landed in Lakeshire as it ended.

When her saber stalked into the town, she glanced around; mangled corpses huddled where they'd fallen. A woman crouched weeping incoherently by a mutilated human male. By her side, a blank-faced boy stood, ashen, knuckling his eyes with one grimy hand, tears marking their tracks through dust. It seemed to her Kal'dorei gaze as if the human child had aged into adulthood with a suddenness she was distantly aware was unnatural for that species. Had his father held him, loved him? It didn't matter now. A family was shattered on the anvil of bloodlust and insanity, and who could say their fate.. the mother might lift a sword herself, the son... a cold-blooded killer with a lifetime to spend attempting to scour his soul clean of his father's murdered blood with the slaughter of the Horde.

She felt a sigh well, and ignored it. Instead, she walked past the sobbing pair, and her glowing eyes hunted for her comrades. She immediately saw a hulking mammoth, shaggy stinking black fur hanging in tangles, mad red eyes glaring from beneath its heavy brows. Atop it was the Crusader Olaff, his craggy face etched into deep creases and lines through grime and sweat. His head bore a purpling bruise on its bald pate, and his fanatic eyes held the unmistakeable gleam of triumph. She exchanged a grave nod with the wild-eyed human, and a salute with Tamlin and her Sabres. They reported in quiet voices; they were filthy and tired, battered and bloodied. Shryn'dael and her filthy Pox had come, and then left. The Omen with them. Elune only knew what motivated the insane elf and her vile minions. But it had cost them.

The signs of the fight were everywhere - rust-stained wet dirt splattered the road, and slashed corpses lay twisted in awkward poses like dolls with cut strings. Entrails already had flies settling on them, and the coppery stench of blood and waste-tainted freshly dead was a dark miasma hanging where clean mountain air had been. The calling card of the Pox and the Omen, as dark and foul as two snakes coiled amid reeking spilled guts. A human soldier, no more than a boy to Aktarin's eye, lay across his trail. His face - what was left of it - wore a tiny sparse beard. One eye was obscured by a flap of blood-soaked flesh, revealing glistening white bone beneath. His cheek and teeth stared grotesquely from his mangled face. A Tauren druid? A hunter's pet? It didn't matter. Hideous slashes had torn his tabard and mail, and where the horrific wound to his face might have not killed him, where his skull was smashed open, brain puddled out obviously had finished what the beast had begun.

Aktarin paced past. She'd seen such things before. The retching young soldier sent to clean up after the battle was someone she very distantly pitied. He'd learn better. With the Horde's unceasing brutality and viciousness, this sickened human would become as hard as she was in time. It wouldn't take long. She passed another mangled body. This one was a bit worse than the last to her critical eye. A woman, her guts spilling out of a distorted, swollen belly. Probably just a flower seller who'd stood too close to a blast wave. A civilian, her face staring blankly at the disinterested passersby, her body's innermost secrets exposed by the spellwork of a mage, blood trails staining down from nostrils, eyes and ears. The boy soldier couldn't handle this one, Aktarin wagered privately, and beckoned a Sabre over to deal with the corpse.

Olaff and his Scarlet Deathwatch had served their purpose, Tamlin's quiet words informed her. The Sabres did no more than her sworn word to Lirriel F'Sharri at their meeting. They'd protect these lands.. but it was a pleasant surprise to see Sentinel Leshana Bladerunner of the Tempest, others of her comrades, and Olaff's mad crusaders. Evidently all three groups had been enough to battle Pox and the Omen.

Were she younger, Aktarin might pity the families battered today by mad hates. But, old as she was, she felt only ashes in her soul for those whose fate it was to be leaves swept by a current they'd not started nor asked for; they were caught in it, and would in turn join the wild rush into destruction that she and every other fighter that day followed.

She sighed and nudged Talah past the various skeletons, corpses, and mounds of offal. Once more, in a cycle of madness, for this crime, Silvermoon would burn. Price to be paid in the wretched blood of the innocent, full measure.