I swear

There's no epic ballad to be sung about Duke's strategic withdrawal. It was less a glorious retreat and more a hasty, no-frills exit. He had no intention of playing a game of chicken with Gul'dan, especially not while the Orcish Horde was swarming like a plague of locusts on a fresh crop. After a few Windrunners had thoroughly put the fear of the Light into the green-skinned cannon fodder – leaving a trail of bewildered, dismembered trolls in their wake – Duke simply snapped his fingers, conjured a shimmering portal, and vanished like a wisp in a hurricane.

Staying behind would have been a fool's errand, a one-way ticket to an early grave. Once Gul'dan, that greasy, power-hungry warlock, decided to grace them with his full, unholy attention, they'd all be dead in the water, belly-up like drowned fish. Duke's only ace in the hole, his trump card, was Gul'dan's monumental arrogance, or perhaps the warlock's elaborate, convoluted scheme to pull the wool over Orgrim Doomhammer's eyes.

Bright and early the next morning, Alleria, looking like she'd gone ten rounds with a gronn and barely come out on top, appeared outside the hallowed, yet utterly infuriating, halls of the Silvermoon Council. Her armor was scuffed, her hair a bit wild, and her eyes held the haunted look of someone who'd seen too much.

"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, a furious drumbeat against her skull. "Unrefined?!" she practically spat, her voice a low growl that promised pain. "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, overflowing the damned place! 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, blood-soaked war!"

"But—" the captain began, his face a mask of bureaucratic obstinacy, a man who clearly valued procedure over survival.

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, all rolled into one grisly package.

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. You could have heard a pin drop, if the pin wasn't too terrified to hit the floor.

The entire team of a dozen guards, usually bored stiff and ready for their lunch break, 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, a piece of their very soul. 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. The elite. The best of the best.

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. She moved with the quiet fury of a storm about to break.

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 that could shatter glass, "could you possibly refrain from interrupting this most sacred of meetings! This is an outrage!"

"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 self-important, ivory-tower councilors, who seemed to live in a bubble of their own making, completely detached from the bloodshed outside. "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, breathing down your gilded necks?!"

Every elf in the chamber could practically taste the bitter, undiluted scorn in Alleria's words. It hung in the air like a noxious gas.

"Impossible!" a portly, self-important great lord named Moria 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! An absolute barrier!"

"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, its magical glow flickering weakly, and with a casual flick of her wrist, tossed it to the blustering overlord. It landed with a dull thud, a stark, undeniable piece of evidence.

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 firmly protecting Quel'Thalas.

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

Every single councilman's heart hammered against their ribs like a trapped bird, and they collectively forgot how to breathe. A cold dread seeped into the room.

"Lord Moria," Alleria purred, her voice deceptively sweet, like venom-laced honey, "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? Just a thought."

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, his face a sickly shade of green.

Ignoring the sputtering clown, Alleria's gaze locked onto the Sun King, Anasterian Sunstrider. Her eyes were twin points of steel.

"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 are planning 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, laced with a desperate edge. 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. A grim rain of sacrifice.

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, a silent, gruesome accusation.

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, a rage that had finally boiled over.

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!"

Although Alleria was happy to see that her king had finally come to his senses and grown a spine, she had to remind the Sun King, who was clearly still seeing red: "Your Majesty, the trolls are just the tip of the iceberg! The real monster under the bed, the biggest threat, is the Horde! Fortunately, I've brought some heavy hitters, some serious backup: Grand Duke Edmund Duke of Stormwind and his thirty thousand private soldiers, ready to roll!"

Unexpectedly, the Sun King refused outright, his jaw set like granite. "No," he declared, his voice cutting through the air like a cold wind. "I don't need the help of humans. The high elves can deal with these invaders ourselves. Send an order to summon my son, Kael'thas, back immediately."

Alleria instinctively felt her stomach drop to her boots. Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

The elves. They were so arrogant, so insular, so stuck in their own heads. They truly believed they were the spark and birthplace of world civilization, convinced that humans were just picking up the magical crumbs left over by the elves. They dismissed the mechanical marvels of the dwarves and gnomes as nothing but crude heresy.

Thousands of years of isolation had brought nothing to the elves except a mountain of arrogance. No, perhaps there was something else: a creeping, insidious corruption, a rot from within.

She recalled that three thousand years ago, Anasterian himself had almost been forced to abdicate by the very Silvermoon Council for one reason: he had dared to teach humans too much magic. The old wounds ran deep.

Alleria shouted, her voice strained, practically begging her king to pay attention to the looming, green-skinned storm that was the orcs.

Unfortunately, her urgent plea was once again ignored, swallowed whole. Her clear, desperate voice was drowned out by the noisy, self-important arguments of the lords and mage councilors, a cacophony of denial.

Finally, the Sun King dismissed Alleria with just a few cold words, his tone utterly dismissive. "Thank you for your notice again, my Ranger General. Now is the time for you to fulfill your duty. Take your ranger troops and stop all trolls. Before our army arrives, I don't want to hear more news of the fall of the land. Is that clear?"

"Wait! Where are the reinforcements?! Our losses are already severe! More than half of the troops have been crippled, and the number of personnel is less than fifty percent of our full strength!" Alleria tried to argue, her voice cracking with desperation.

"There are no reinforcements!" Anasterian snapped, his patience clearly at an end. "We must do it even if we can't! The country lets you lead the ranger troops to pacify the border. Well, evacuating the people is also your responsibility. If you can't stop them, you'll have to hold the line with your teeth, General. Figure it out."

What in the blazes?! A ranger force of less than three thousand people left to resist a coalition of one hundred thousand orcs and trolls? You know, when facing trolls, the elven rangers had no advantage at all. They were practically fighting with one hand tied behind their backs!

The current situation was that they couldn't even resist the trolls, and they also had to organize the evacuation of the people?! It was like asking a squirrel to stop a stampeding kodo!

Alleria was practically seeing red, her blood boiling with a fury that threatened to consume her. Of course, at this moment, Alleria's thoughts naturally flew to Duke. He was her only hope, her last resort.

Who knew that the Sun King, just to twist the knife, added: "I don't care if your... boyfriend is nearby, General Windrunner, you are now a general of Quel'Thalas! Please perform your duties, otherwise I will punish you for treason, and I'll throw the book at you! Also, if humans enter our borders without our express consent, we will deal with them the same way we deal with the trolls. Consider yourselves warned."

The Sun King's words made Alleria's heart plummet straight into an icy abyss. It was a cold, hard slap of reality.

What time was it now? Did he still cling to the delusion that the elves alone could win this inter-racial war? It was as plain as the nose on your face that victory was impossible without unity, without allies!

"Your Majesty!" Alleria roared, her voice echoing with a desperate finality.

"Guards, take her away. Let the parliament send out military supervisors to ensure that the two generals of House Windrunner perform their duties." The Sun King waved a dismissive hand, and nearly ten kite-shaped shields of the Royal Guards quickly blocked the line of sight between her and the Sun King, a wall of polished brass and indifference.

"Sorry, General, it's my duty... please come along!" The captain of the guards also looked unhappy, his eyes betraying a flicker of pity and shame.

Everyone had sharp eyes. They saw the writing on the wall.

Alleria, a bona fide hero in the Troll Wars, had guarded the border for more than three thousand years for the safety of Quel'Thalas, giving her lifeblood to the cause. This time, she had once again given advance notice of a massive troll invasion, a warning that should have been heeded immediately.

The first time, she was thoroughly verbally humiliated by the MPs, treated like a common stable hand.

The second time, despite having made great contributions in alerting the top leaders, she was once again treated coldly, given the cold shoulder, all because of her background.

In the final analysis, it was because the entire high elf upper class was composed of mages, who had a fanatical, almost religious, worship of spellcasters, and regarded all beings other than spellcasters as little more than cannon fodder, expendable pawns in their arcane games.

If the Windrunners were a family of magic, she would have become a hero of Quel'Thalas again by now, lauded and praised. But they were rangers, and to the mages, that was a second-class profession.

Alleria was taken away, escorted out like a common criminal. And when an alternate senator, a pompous, pasty-faced mage, appeared as a military supervisor among the severely damaged rangers, their ranks already decimated, everyone was absolutely furious! It was like pouring salt in an open wound.

"Assholes – the Silvermoon Council is just chicken-hearted cowards! Sis! Anyway, we promised Duke to become his vassal, so why not just let Duke's troops come in early and we'll just pretend we don't see them... a little 'oops, my bad' situation?" Sylvanas, the most rebellious of the Windrunner sisters, cursed out loud, her voice laced with venom and defiance.

But all she got was a sharp, stinging slap across the face!

Sylvanas was stunned, her cheek burning, her eyes wide with shock.

Alleria said in a sharp, strained voice, her own internal conflict raging: "You and I are now Ranger Generals of Quel'Thalas! Our homeland is under attack. Are you saying this to be worthy of the country and the people we swore to protect? As long as we still carry the epaulettes of Quel'Thalas, the king's orders are absolute. Period."

Not to mention Sylvanas, even Alleria felt an irrepressible sense of frustration, a crushing weight of despair. It was like being caught between a rock and a hard place, with no easy way out.

Sylvanas argued unwillingly, her voice still defiant: "There is obviously a better way to resolve this crisis and eliminate the possible disaster, but you gave up all of this because of their arrogance! Do you really want to suppress your unhappiness and force yourself to accept this approach that will kill countless people!?"

"What else can I do?!" Alleria couldn't help but yell, her voice cracking with the strain. "It's wartime now! If everyone is safe after the war, I can certainly calmly serve Duke. But now our hometown is burning! Any special action I take would be treason! I'd be signing my own death warrant!"

Vereesa and Lirath looked at their two sisters arguing, their faces etched with helplessness, unable to get a word in edgewise. Both sides thought they were right, but they couldn't come up with any better ideas, just a stalemate of despair.

Vereesa could only persuade her two sisters to stop arguing with a look on her face that looked like she was about to cry, tears welling in her eyes.

Sylvanas, ever the stubborn one, finally snapped: "Fool! Don't you rely on Duke? Then go find him! That guy has more tricks up his sleeve than a goblin tinkerer. The ideas he can come up with are definitely better than yours, or anyone else's in this whole blasted kingdom!"

"Yeah! Why don't you go find Duke?" Vereesa chimed in, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

Under the cover of her sisters, Alleria found Daniel, the human mage Duke had cleverly embedded within the ranger corps, and asked him to use magic to communicate with Duke.

Soon, Alleria contacted Duke, his familiar voice a beacon in the storm.

After she told him about her difficulties, pouring out her heart, Duke chuckled, a warm, reassuring sound. "Fool," he said, his voice laced with playful teasing, "you should have come to me earlier. I was still wondering, if you were held captive by the Sun King, should I declare war on Quel'Thalas and burn the place to the ground? Or should I use political means to redeem you, like a damsel in distress?"

"Please, I'm asking you to help! Duke, please don't make things worse!" Alleria sounded like she was about to cry, her voice trembling.

"You're joking," she pleaded.

"This joke is not funny at all," she insisted, her voice barely a whisper.

"Okay, okay, I'll take care of the delayed orcs. You can just focus on organizing the evacuation of the people, alright? Get them out of harm's way."

"What are you going to do?" Alleria asked, her brow furrowed with concern. "Your soldiers can't cross the border! The King will have their heads!"

"I guarantee," Duke said, his voice brimming with an almost unsettling confidence, "that not a single soldier from the Alliance or Stormwind will cross the border. You have my word."