Sacred Meeting

There's not much to write home about regarding Duke's tactical withdrawal. He wasn't about to play a game of chicken with Gul'dan, especially not while the Orcish Horde was swarming like angry hornets. After the Windrunners had thoroughly put the fear of the Light into the green-skinned cannon fodder, Duke simply snapped his fingers, conjured a shimmering portal, and vanished.

Staying behind would have been a fool's errand. Once Gul'dan, that shifty-eyed warlock, decided to grace them with his presence, they'd all be dead in the water. Duke's only ace in the hole right now was Gul'dan's monumental arrogance, or perhaps the warlock's elaborate scheme to pull the wool over Orgrim Doomhammer's eyes.

Bright and early the next morning, Alleria, looking like she'd wrestled a bear and won, appeared outside the hallowed, infuriating halls of the Silvermoon Council.

"Apologies, General Windrunner," the captain of the guard droned, his voice dripping with practiced condescension. He blocked her path with a shield so polished it practically reflected the sun, an infuriatingly gleaming barrier designed to keep out all unpleasantness, like, say, reality. "The Silvermoon Council is currently engaged in a routine meeting. Your entry is strictly prohibited! I must remind you, the last time you barged in, many esteemed councilors expressed considerable displeasure at your rather... unrefined conduct."

Alleria, usually as cool as a cucumber, felt a vein throb in her temple. "Unrefined?!" she practically spat, her voice a low growl. "Eversong Forest is under siege! From yesterday afternoon to this very morning, we've lost seven battalions! Seven! The highest-level distress calls are piled up in the communication room like dirty laundry! And you're telling me I can't interrupt that damn daily tea party? We're not playing dress-up, captain; we're in a full-blown war!"

"But—" the captain began, his face a mask of bureaucratic obstinacy.

Alleria didn't give him the chance to finish. Without another word, she flung the object Duke had meticulously instructed her to carry last night. It was her mic drop, her opening statement, her declaration of war.

The severed head of a troll.

It spun through the air, its dozens of strange, black braids whipping wildly, catching the morning sun. Its long, yellowed fangs glinted menacingly as it smacked squarely against the captain's pristine, kite-shaped shield, sending a sickening thud echoing through the quiet plaza, before finally thudding to a stop at his polished boots.

The air, for a single, pregnant moment, froze solid.

The entire team of a dozen guards, usually bored stiff, stared at the grisly trophy, their eyes wide as dinner plates.

Then, Alleria casually uncinched a leather pouch, revealing its contents.

They weren't just any trinkets. They were beautiful, shimmering magic crystal nameplates, each one a testament to a high elf soldier's identity. And when those nameplates were removed, it meant only one thing: death in battle.

There were so many of them, a cascade of crystalline grief. And the truly stomach-churning part? Among the blood-stained shards, the captain, his face now ashen, recognized the nameplates of squadron leaders, even captains.

Every single guard's face drained of color faster than a goblin's coin purse after a night at the tavern.

Alleria, with the grim satisfaction of a seasoned warrior, once again strode into the hallowed, yet utterly despised, halls of the Silvermoon Council.

The Speaker of the Parliament, a pompous windbag named Theron, practically blew a gasket the moment he caught sight of Alleria's handsome, yet fiercely determined, face. "For the very sanctity of Silvermoon City, General Windrunner," he blustered, his voice rising to a shrill squeak, "could you possibly refrain from interrupting this most sacred of meetings!"

"Oh, I am so terribly sorry!" Alleria retorted, her voice dripping with enough sarcasm to strip paint from a battle-axe. Even her legendary temper was fraying at the edges when faced with these ivory-tower councilors, who seemed to live in a bubble of their own self-importance. "Eversong Forest has been invaded! Do you intend to halt your 'sacred' meeting and acknowledge the coming war only when the Horde is literally knocking on this 'sacred' gate?!"

Every elf in the chamber could practically taste the bitter, undiluted scorn in Alleria's words.

"Impossible!" a portly, self-important great lord suddenly bellowed, leaping to his feet and jabbing a trembling finger at Alleria. "No one, I repeat, no one can survive after passing through those rune stones! They are impenetrable!"

"Oh, really? No one?" Alleria arched a slender, golden eyebrow, a smirk playing on her lips. "Are you absolutely certain? Are we talking about this kind of rune stone, perhaps?"

She reached into her package, pulled out a jagged fragment of a rune stone, roughly the size of two palms, and with a casual flick of her wrist, tossed it to the blustering overlord.

High elves, bless their long-lived souls, have a rather extended lifespan. Many of the council members present were the very mages who had painstakingly arranged those "impenetrable" rune stones. Their entire sense of self-importance, their very right to sit above the common folk, stemmed from their "great achievements" in protecting Quel'Thalas.

Now, their pride, their sense of security, their entire carefully constructed world, evaporated in an instant.

Every single councilman's heart hammered against their ribs like a trapped bird, and they collectively forgot how to breathe.

"Lord Moria," Alleria purred, her voice deceptively sweet, "your sprawling estate, if I recall correctly, is nestled in the southern part of Eversong Forest, isn't it? Perhaps you'd like to find a high balcony right away and see if your ancestral home is currently going up in flames?"

Alleria's words hit Lord Moria like a kick in the pants, making him jump as if he'd sat on a hot griddle. He scrambled to his feet, a look of abject terror replacing his usual smugness.

Ignoring the sputtering clown, Alleria's gaze locked onto the Sun King, Anasterian Sunstrider.

"I won't rehash the warnings I've given you countless times before," she stated, her voice now devoid of sarcasm, filled only with grim urgency. "I'm here to lay out one undeniable fact: the trolls have, without a shadow of a doubt, breached our forest, trampled our sacred land, and slaughtered our people. And the orcs I warned you about? They're right on their heels. They might not have the trolls' slithery agility or their knack for vanishing into thin air, but they've got bodies like brick houses and numbers like a plague of locusts. They're here to burn our homeland to the ground, hand-in-glove with those green-skinned barbarians!"

Alleria was breathing heavily, her chest heaving with the force of her conviction and the raw pain of her losses. The grand hall, usually filled with the drone of self-important pronouncements, was utterly silent, save for the ragged sound of her own desperate breaths.

She raised her head, her face etched with endless sorrow and grief. "Finally," she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion, "I just want to know: are you all blind as bats and deaf as posts?! Do you want every ranger on our borders to be cut down like weeds? Do you want every single elf in Eversong Forest to be butchered like cattle? Do you have to stare into the hideous, snarling face of a troll and smell their nauseating breath before you'll admit that total war has come knocking on our high elven door?!"

Alleria's voice, normally a pleasant, melodic instrument, was now a raw, pleading cry. As she spoke, she opened the blood-stained bag again, and countless nameplates, each a silent testament to a fallen hero, poured out, clattering onto the shiny white tiles of the council floor with a chilling, tinkling sound.

King, Speaker, councilman – the pupils of every elf in the room suddenly constricted, their eyes riveted on the scattered nameplates, staring in stunned, horrified silence.

Then, their gaze shifted to the fresh troll head, still sitting innocently at the captain of the guard's feet.

Sun King Anasterian Sunstrider let out a roar that could curdle blood, a sound that shook the very foundations of the council hall.

"DAMN IT ALL TO THE TWISTING NETHER—" This time, the Sun King's outburst wasn't aimed at Alleria. It was pure, unadulterated fury, aimed at the unseen enemy.

The Elf King slapped the troll's head with a crack that echoed like a thunderclap, sending it spinning high into the air. The gruesome trophy didn't even have a chance to hit the ground. In mid-air, it was instantly incinerated, consumed by the Sun King's raw, destructive flames, reduced to nothing but ash and a faint, acrid smell.

Hot embers, like tiny, angry stars, scattered across the pristine floor of the Silvermoon Council's meeting hall.

The Sun King's brow furrowed, a deep, angry line. His eyes, usually clouded with age and the weight of countless decisions, snapped open, becoming as sharp and piercing as a freshly honed sword.

"How dare those wretched trolls invade our homeland?!" Anasterian thundered, his voice resonating with pure, unbridled rage. "How dare they even conceive of such an affront?!"

He raised his head, his expression that of an enraged brown bear, ready to tear apart anything in its path. "We will make them wash away their sins with their very lives and their filthy blood! Gather our warriors! Muster our rangers! We will launch a full-scale assault on those abominations, drive them out of our forest, and use their mangled heads to build the very foundations of our new border!"