Solstice Village

False dawn threw long shadows across Sasha’s modest camp before Laiza and Saelessa returned. Despite himself, Necrothirst started to worry when the horizon turned blush pink and there was still no sign of either death knight.

Finally, Laiza rode into camp on her Deathcharger. Necrothirst stopped pacing around the campfire and strode over to her, his jaw tight. “The worgen?”

“Saelessa is coming with her,” Laiza said. “She’ll need stitches. The beast put up one hell of a fight.”

“I thought that was what the tranquilizer was for,” Necrothirst said, eyeing Sasha sidelong.

The human glared back at him. “It works,” she said. “It’s not my fault if your knights can’t shoot.”

Laiza shrugged. “That’s what it was,” she said. “We had to get close enough to actually stick her with it, and - ah, here they are.”

Saelessa came out of the treeline slowly, the reins of her Deathcharger in her hand. Over its saddle was a thin female worgen, dark gray in color. She wore the tattered remains of a simple cotton dress. Saelessa herself moved stiffly with exaggerated care.

Epyon came forward to gather the worgen, throwing her over his shoulder with little effort. Saelessa’s mount vanished in a puff of smoke, and before she could collapse Tamasi was at her side, drawing the night elf’s arm over her shoulders. “Where are you hurt?”

“My back,” Saelessa said, her voice tight.

Tamasi looked around the camp. Epyon and Laiza stood guard over the prisoner - having two of them there was necessary, especially since Anatoly recognized his wife immediately and looked ready to pounce on Sasha at any moment. Tamasi’s eyes met Necrothirst’s and narrowed. “I require your assistance,” she said.

Necrothirst didn’t move for a moment, staring Tamasi down. The draenei didn’t give any ground. Her words in the firelight of the night rang in his ears - Saelessa was simply a sentinel.

Saelessa was sagging by the moment, and Tamasi pressed her lips together in a thin line, looking like she wanted to take Necrothirst to task but was holding it in out of respect for his station as her commander. Once again Necrothirst was impressed - this time, it was with her loyalty to her sister in death, and her equal loyalty to her commanding officer.

“Very well,” he said grudgingly, coming forward, “but only because it is you that requests it.”

Tamasi didn’t look like she cared why he’d decided to help. She helped Saelessa grab hold of Necrothirst’s arms, until the two night elves stood in what resembled an embrace - Saelessa sagged against his chest, her arms looped around his.

Necrothirst glared down at the top of her head simply out of reflex. He hadn’t been this close to one of his own kind for many long centuries and he only endured it now because, despite himself, he respected Tamasi and she had requested it of him directly.

The draenei ignored his glaring, behaving like there was nothing odd or uncomfortable about the situation. She knelt down behind Saelessa until she was eye-level with the wound and hissed through her teeth. Necrothirst craned his neck so he could see.

Three long gashes laid the flesh of Saelessa’s lower back open so deeply he could see the white flash of bone. “How did you manage to let that thing get behind you?” he asked.

“We thought she was unconscious,” Saelessa grunted. “We - ouch, Tamasi, be careful - didn’t realize the tranquilizer took a few moments to become effective. She lured us in by pretending it was an instant effect, and then as soon as I turned my back on her...”

“Stop talking,” Tamasi said. She was pushing the edges of the wounds together, trying to find the best way to stitch them back together. Unlike a wound on a mortal person, there was no blood flowing from it. Around the edges of the gashes pooled the dark, congealed substance that sat stagnant in a death knight’s veins - blood, but without a heartbeat to drive it. The flesh would not knit together on its own. Saelessa would have to change and maintain the stitching for the rest of her undeath. Tamasi sat back on her hooves and went through her packs looking for the curved bone needle and thick thread every death knight carried with them. One never knew when one would have to re-attach a limb or stitch a wound like this closed.

Saelessa tightened her hands on Necrothirst’s arms and hissed to keep from flinching when Tamasi stabbed the needle into her flesh. While the draenei worked to close the wounds, Necrothirst turned his attention to the group guarding the prisoners. “Is the female awake yet?” he asked.

“She’s coming around,” Epyon said. He stood guard over Anatoly, who crouched on his haunches glaring murder at him. Laiza and Sasha stood over Tatjana, Sasha with her rifle trained on the worgen’s head. Tatjana was indeed moving, stirring a little and sitting up slowly with the heel of her clawed hand pressed to her forehead.

“Kyladriss is our first objective,” Necrothirst said.

“Understood,” Epyon said. His sword was out of his sheath, but he held it down by his side. He was ready to react if Anatoly tried anything, but he seemed to be trying not to provoke the beast.

“Worgen,” Laiza said, and Tatjana’s eyes snapped to the gnome, narrowing in a fierce glare. Laiza was unfazed. “We’re looking for one of our order, a Knight of the Ebon Blade. She was last seen with a worgen - we assume of your pack. They moved in this direction. Have you seen her? Speak!”

Tatjana laughed, a gruff barking noise that sounded not at all human or feminine. “The Lich King will slaughter your order to the last man, and then raise you all again bound to his will. There is no escaping his grasp. The whole of the world will fall-”

“Oh shut up,” Laiza said, rolling her eyes. “Blah blah blah, nobody escapes the Lich King, all hail the frozen throne, whatever. We’ll kill Arthas on our own time. Right now we’re worried about one of our own that’s gone missing.”

For a moment, the worgen’s jaw worked silently. She stared at Laiza in disbelief and snapped her jaw shut, refusing to speak.

“Don’t be like that,” Epyon said affably. He put his sword to Anatoly’s throat. The smile he gave Tatjana might have been called benevolent if he didn’t press the edge of it into Anatoly’s neck and draw blood.

Tatjana twitched like she wanted to go for his throat, but it was Anatoly who spoke up. “They say it is a worgen death knight they seek,” he said.

“Ah,” Tatjana said, her hackles settling slowly. “Yes, I know the one. She followed one of our long patrol scouts in two nights ago. She is quite mad - but also quite powerful.”
“She came to your village?” Laiza asked.

“She took over our village,” Tatjana corrected. She shifted her gaze to Anatoly. “Bores is dead. The death knight Kyladriss leads the pack, now.”

“Bores is dead?” Anatoly repeated, dismayed. “No... he was our best warrior!”

“No worgen is a match for a trained Knight of the Ebon Blade,” Epyon said.

Tatjana bared all her teeth in a vicious smile. “She will get what is coming to her soon enough.”

Saelessa flinched hard, and Necrothirst’s attention was drawn back to the two frost knights. “Hold still,” he said. “It will be even more painful if she sets a stitch in the wrong place because you could not stop moving.”

“It is not intentional,” Saelessa grated out through her clenched teeth.

“If you females would wear breastplates that actually cover your midsection, this would not have happened,” Necrothirst said dryly.

“It is not our fault that our ebon plate is cut for the feminine figure, it’s standard issue,” Tamasi said. “I think it is ridiculous as much as the next knight, but our alternative is commission a breastplate from a blacksmith - are you flush with gold?”

Necrothirst frowned. Gold was something all death knights lacked. Those that were rich in life found that their bankers did not care a whit whether being declared legally dead meant they could no longer access their funds.

“I am almost finished,” Tamasi said, perhaps sensing that Necrothirst was growing impatient. They knew where Kyladriss was now, and he wanted to move before something happened and she slipped through their grasp again. “Only a few more stitches.”

“Hurry,” Necrothirst said. “I mislike what the worgen implies. Something is coming.”

“Do not rush me,” Tamasi said. Despite her words, she did speed up her movements. They had all heard the female say that Kyladriss would get what was coming to her soon - they needed to get to that village.

“Dispatch the prisoners and prepare to move out,” Necrothirst said.

Someone shouted a denial. Tatjana leapt up from her seat on the ground. Anatoly shoved Epyon aside with a bestial roar and picked Laiza up with one hand by the top of her skull. Sasha fired her rifle, and the shot hit Anatoly between the eyes, dropping him like a stone. Tatjana collapsed over his body, howling with grief. Laiza pushed her way out from under the worgen’s body, cursing blackly.

“You didn’t have to do that!” Sasha yelled at him. “I mean, I would’ve shot him anyway but now how am I supposed to know where my sister is?!”

“If she is alive and not worgen, she will be in the village, obviously,” Necrothirst said. Tamasi looped the thread around her finger and snapped it off. Saelessa straightened, her expression pinched and tight. Necrothirst stepped back from her as soon as she stood under her own power, feeling strange. After the first few moments, he hadn’t even noticed she was kaldorei. Seeing her face again reminded him, but he felt only a twinge of annoyance, not the deep loathing that took him over before. “Shut that beast up before she brings the whole pack down on our head,” Necrothirst said, pushing his thoughts to the back of his mind.

Laiza stabbed the worgen through the chest. Tatjana’s grieved howling turned choked and wet, then went silent as her body slumped over her mate’s. Sasha chewed her lip, her face screwed up in a combination of disgust and sympathy.

“Mount up,” Necrothirst said. “We have a knight to retrieve.”

“I want to come,” Sasha said.

“We do not have the time to wait for you,” Necrothirst said shortly, mounting his raptor. “Knights, move out!”

Sasha shouted at them as they rode away, but Necrothirst did not stop. Tatjana’s ominous words rang in his ears. He could feel in his bones that something was not right in this part of the forest. There had to be a reason for the worgen to be there - and a reason for them to be loyal to the Lich King.

He held up his fist, signaling for the death knights to stop, and dismounted his raptor, drawing his sword in the same motion. The sounds of barks and low growls filled his ears. They were on the edge of Solstice Village, and he stepped warily in case there were guards about. To his surprise, it appeared that all the worgen were gathered in the central area of the village.

“Dear Elune,” Saelessa said from beside him. “She’s gone native.”

Kyladriss stood over the crowd of worgen, an impressive figure in her Ebon Blade plate armor. She had her clawed hands laced over the pommel of her sword, which stood upright with its point buried in the dirt. Her head was held high. Other worgen approached her cautiously, with their ears back, exchanging fearful glances as they placed what appeared to be the results of the night’s hunt in front of her. The sun had cleared the tops of the trees, and it reflected off the point of her runeblade as she used it to divide the carcasses of killed prey into different piles. As they watched, she waved her blade toward one of the kill piles, allowing a group of worgen to tuck in hungrily.

“You heard the worgen - she has taken over leadership of the pack. Look, though - they are not as deeply under her control as she thinks.”

Toward the back of the pack, where Kyladriss could not see them, several worgen were gathered around some kind of magical object. None of the knights could make out what they were saying, but whatever they were doing was concluded in a flash of brilliant light that made every worgen in the village turn to look. Kyladriss snarled, waving her blade, and the worgen parted in front of her to reveal the culprits.

“Get ready,” Necrothirst said. “Whatever is going to happen, it is happening now.”

Kyladriss swung her sword over her head, but before she could decapitate the ones that provoked her ire, there was a loud, long howl from the trees. A hulking worg with what looked like a man on its back burst into the clearing, scattering worgen in all directions. The man was translucent, almost transparent - clearly not of the living, at least not any longer.

His presence had an immediate effect on Kyladriss. Necrothirst could see the bloodlust even from where they hid in the trees, and stood from his hiding place as she threw herself at the shade and his worg. His knights broke cover with him as he ran to put his back to Kyladriss’s - the pack was rushing to the shade’s aid, not hers.

“Arugal!” Kyladriss snarled viciously, doing her level best to cleave the shade in two from his crown to his soles with her runeblade. The man laughed. It would have chilled his blood if it didn’t already stand still in his veins, but he concentrated on what was in front of him. His knights formed a loose semicircle around Kyladriss, who was fighting off both the shade and the worg. “Epyon, help her!” Necrothirst commanded, not sparing time to watch and see if the order was obeyed. The pack struggled to break through the death knights’ line, but Necrothirst kept their aggression focused on him while Laiza, Saelessa and Tamasi pared down their numbers.

“We are outnumbered!” Tamasi said. “We cannot keep this up!” She fought with enough ferocity for two death knights, putting herself between Saelessa and as many of her enemies as she could. Saelessa’s strikes were sluggish and pained.

“Kill him or go, Kyladriss!” Necrothirst snapped. “We do not have time for you to play with your prey!”

He did not know whether she understood him or not. The smell of blood, disease and unwashed fur filled the air. He mindlessly parried and dodged blows, striking out with his runeblade and draining health from whoever he struck. He could withstand this for a short while longer, but the pack’s numbers were large, and even he would be overwhelmed eventually.

From behind him, he heard a cry of anguish. Kyladriss let out a vicious, growling laugh, a sound made even more unsettling by the death knight echo to her voice. Necrothirst risked a glance over his shoulder and found that she had impaled the shade on her runeblade. Her bared teeth were inches from the shade’s face as it faded away and dissipated into the morning sunlight.

The influence of Arugal’s shade was broken. The pack of worgen stopped fighting cohesively. Some broke and ran. Some threw themselves on the line of death knights and were quickly dispatched for their troubles. Most turned on each other. Any worgen who had managed to maintain a human form lost it now. It seemed that all semblance of sanity had been removed from them, and they devolved into beasts. Necrothirst kept a wary eye on the in-fighting but turned to face Kyladriss.

She stood staring at the spot where the shade had been, panting heavily, her runeblade still gripped tightly in both hands.

“Kyladriss,” Necrothirst said.

She spun to face him, ears flat, teeth bared, sword at the ready. He stood calmly, stepping up into her space until they were practically nose to nose, staring directly into her glowing blue eyes with his own. She growled. He didn’t move. She raised her sword to swing it at him, and his hand darted out and closed on her throat. He bared his own teeth, still staring into her eyes.

“Necrothirst,” Tamasi said, reminding him that they needed to go. He nodded, not breaking eye contact, indicating that he’d heard her. Kyladriss had not yet yielded to him, and he would not look away until she did. Slowly, her lips fell back down over her teeth, and she lowered her sword. Finally, she shifted her eyes to the side, laying her ears back with a soft whine.

Necrothirst released her throat. “If I have to chase you down and recover you again, I will take it as a sign that your life is too much trouble to maintain,” he told her. Kyladriss’s ears twitched a bit and she glanced at him and away quickly, as if she was saying she understood. He nodded sharply and summoned his raptor. “If we do not reach Light’s Breach by nightfall, we will be late and they will report us to our superiors. Mount up and move out.”

“Are you sure it’s wise to leave her loose?” Laiza asked, eyeing Kyladriss. Kyladriss bared her teeth at the gnome and growled. Necrothirst thumped her pauldron with his fist and she stopped. “Huh,” Laiza said. “All right then.”

“She simply needed an alpha,” Tamasi said, mounting her Deathcharger.

Necrothirst was not so sure, but for now it appeared that Kyladriss would obey his orders. He hoped it would last until Light’s Breach. It would be a shame to have to kill her after all this.