The Sin’Dorei

Gil continued to check his tablet as the trio picked through the underbrush. He was perfectly happy to follow, so long as Zena was bringing him towards Candress. Indeed, when they arrived at a small campsite manned by a dozen elves, he was pleased to find that Candress was the very leader he had been brought to see.

She was a redhead with a sour expression, glaring daggers at all three of them when they entered the camp. Most of the people present were focused upon setting up light fortifications and gathering wood or game, so Candress stuck out as the only one sitting around meditating.

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"Zena. What is the meaning of this?" She snapped. "You were to observe the Draenei, not go on hikes with humans."

"I apologize, Surveyor." Zena said with a bow. "We are in a strange land; I thought we might benefit from a few local allies."

"As if humans have ever been worth the trouble." Candress said bitterly. "We might as well try, I suppose. You, human boy. Is there a town nearby where we could procure additional supplies? Or a farm?"

As she spoke, the other elves slowly shifted. Those in Gil's line of sight stood and found some excuse to walk to one side of the clearing or another. Those behind him crept into a loose circle, cutting off his escape. Gil didn't see this, but he could recognize the tension in their movements. In all likelihood, Candress would raid for supplies instead of purchasing them if Gil did tell her of an interesting destination. If nothing else, they were eyeing his tablet with great interest.

"Ireena." He whispered, "be ready if they attack."

Ireena didn't visibly react, but that was for the best. He wasn't trying to draw attention to his own paranoia, only spread it to his bodyguard.

"I'm afraid my companions and I live together on a small island." Gil explained, louder. "We only leave to gather supplies once a week or so. We don't have many to share."

"A shame that you walked into our home, stinking of magic, then." Candress said with a smirk. "Now!"

As the elves drew their short blades and charged the duo, Ireena tapped into the powers of Cow Lady for the first time. To the Blood Elves' shock, she grew nearly five feet in height and bulked up accordingly as a pair of curved horns emerged from either side of her head. To Ireena's own shock, her clothes exploded off of her body; the modest dress and leggings Snow had arranged for her were utterly unable to contain a frame that had abruptly doubled in height while maintaining approximately the same proportions.

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"A Tauren?" One of the elves sputtered, "here?"

Huh. I could have sworn that she turned into an anthropomorphic cow. Gil thought, Oh yeah, I asked for no furries. Honestly I was just making sure I was never called upon to fuck an actual horse again, but this is good too.

Ireena didn't have time to be embarrassed, and didn't waste her moment. She lunged forward and jabbed at Zena, the closest scout, with enough force to break bones. Zena was a trained soldier, so she didn't simply take it, instead going limp to absorb some of the blow. It still knocked her flat on her ass, where she elected to scramble away to preserve her own life.

Gil would have liked to watch, but he had his own work to do; specifically, he drew the Durst family blade and started backpedaling. He still wasn't much of a swordsman, at least not when put up against multiple trained combatants, but he was able to ward off their blows well enough. Of course, the strikes that did hit him tended to stop a fraction of an inch away from his skin thanks to the Bikini armor. He felt the strikes, but lightly enough that he could power through them. An ever present voice in the back of his head wondered if he could have done anything differently, if he could have avoided the fight altogether. He told it to shut up.

Ireena had not merely been granted the strength of a cow; she had the same total mass as a well fed and exercised adult bovine while maintaining the agility and proportional strength of a female athlete. If that doesn't sound impressive, consider that an adult cow is about nine times as heavy as a female Olympic boxer. Nine times the strength and mass without sacrificing a single bit of speed or maneuverability.

After the initial sucker punch, she was hard pressed to hold off the blood elves. She could hold her own, even outnumbered, but she couldn't afford to take many risks when she had this many assailants. Despite her overwhelming strength, she was as vulnerable to blood loss as anyone. Initially, the elves attempted to cast some kind of spell using a cupping gesture with their hands, but that behavior evaporated the first time Ireena managed to toss one of them onto a mass of their fellows.

She seemed likely to win in a long engagement unless she made a mistake, but Gil saw one major problem with that: Candress was gathering sparkling flames into her hands. He had no idea exactly how magic in this world worked, but the intuition granted by soul talent was more than enough to identify a spell intended to badly burn Ireena. That would slow her down, which she could scarcely afford.

He couldn't let that happen, and had objectively superior armor on than his half naked companion. He could take a few risks. He ripped a small bottle out of his bag and pulled the pin on his cloak, leaving him in nothing but the skintight spandex and a layer of iron forcefields.

He removed the bottle's stopper with a brief surge of will, thankful of the policy that anyone should be able to use all company assets with minimal difficulty. He took a long slash across his side, enough to leave a bad bruise, as he lunged towards Candress and splashed the Waters of Lethe all over her face. Candress's face went blank for several moments before she cast her gaze around the clearing with an expression of languid confusion.

"You're my friend and ally!" Gil hissed at close range, "you'd gladly die or kill to protect me."

He whirled around, catching one of the blood elves with a wide, clumsy, but unexpected slash. The other had stepped back and used some kind of magic, which caused his bodysuit to glow and become translucent. Though he had no clue what that meant, Gil sincerely doubted it was good. He rushed the bloodied elf before he could get backup, risking injury to stick a blade straight through the man's gut. He had been trusting in his armor too much; the reckless strike left Gil with a long slash along his arm. The elven scout's knife had slipped through, as if neither the bodysuit nor the force field were even present. Even worse, the Durst Family Sword was stuck in the elf's gut, and Gil needed to scramble to pull out his survival knife.

He was pressed by the spellcasting scout, but not for long; Candress fired a bolt of flames directly into her subordinate's face. Her expression was still uncertain, but the one thing that Candress knew for sure was that she would happily die or kill for her friend and ally. Even if she couldn't recall his name at the moment. While his assailant was reeling from the explosion of light and pain, Gil was able to strike her in the temple with the butt of his knife. She crumpled almost instantly.

Ireena had several shallow cuts, but thus far was doing an excellent job of holding off eight armed assailants alone. Three of them were groaning on the ground, trying to crawl away to safety. Zena was laid out with her eyes shut, though Gil was fairly sure she was playing possum. She kept cracking her eyes open to peek at the ongoing fight, and he hadn't ever seen her actually stand up after the initial strike.

"We need to help her." Gil said to Candress, figuring she was better equipped than he was at the moment, "She's another of my allies. Don't listen to anything the other elves try to say to you unless I tell you they are ok. They'll probably lie."

The redhead's eyes focused slightly. She had an objective, an enemy, and an ally who might explain things after the current crisis was over. Good enough for her.

While Gil nursed his injury, applying pressure and hoping that the bikini armor was enchanted in such a way as to be sterile, Candress lobbed several targeted fireballs at the elves from behind. The scouts, naturally, assumed that Gil was somehow responsible for the spells. After all, they saw only their commanding officer and a strangely dressed human. He was obliged to scramble out of the way of an impromptu charge.

Though Gil took another light injury when another two rushed him, Ireena and Candress were easily able to mop up the scouts. Ireena due to her massive superiority in strength, and Candress because they didn't recognize she was a threat until nearly half of them were dead. In a surprisingly short amount of time, everything went silent except for the groaning of the injured.