'Slaughter' - 3

        “…for two reasons,” she was saying, before the majority of the Shan Tel’dorei here in Astranaar.  His eyes panned over the crowd as he listened to her speak, his back firm and head high in a show of respect for his honorable leader, the High Priestess Mynora.  Though it was true he loved her dearly, and even now his mind tempted him with thoughts and visions of romance, he quelled them all and stood proud and ready to serve at her side and the sides of his fellow Tel’dorei.
        In her words, he had sensed a quavering uncertainty; she did not present this task with the assertive and convincing tone she was known to adopt… Perhaps it was because he had grown to know her so much more than some of the other tel’dorei had gotten a chance to, and it may well have been that he was the only one who noticed.  Glancing sidelong at Mardanel, however, the man who had served at Mynora’s side for several centuries, he knew the rogue must have sensed it too; something in the slant of his eyes and the pursing of his lips had revealed it, but only for a moment.
        “…and if that reason is too selfish, then perhaps you will do it for the second reason,” she went on to say.  He didn’t even hear her second reason… he was already envisioning slaying followers of the Horde—possibly even innocents—because his priestess asked it of him.  Falling back into reality, he realized she had finished speaking now, and was looking from face to face, awaiting a response from her loyal tel’dorei.  Just as he opened his mouth to tell her he couldn’t do it nor should they—just as he was prepared to convince his love and all the others not to go, not to commit this sin—she said those words he had always despised, because of the way they pulled at his heart and stomach.  
        “Or shall I do this alone?”
        She knew he wouldn’t allow that.  Hardly any of them would.  And it wasn’t that any of her followers thought her to be frail or incapable of fighting alone and surviving… As a matter of fact, Berufeng honestly believed she could slay a fire-breathing dragon and an army of orcs, single-handedly.  He had seen her power, and so had most of the others standing here in the inn.  No, it wasn’t that they doubted her; it was because none of them could take the chance of losing their beloved priestess in a battle they refused to attend, knowing that she might not have fallen had they chosen to fight at her side.  
        Despite his discomfort about the situation and his urge to convince them to abandon the raid completely, Berufeng knew full-well when Mynora said those words, that she could not be swayed.  At that moment, he tossed aside his fears, his doubts, and too, his morals, for the safety of his priestess and the benefit of the Shan Tel’dorei.  “You will have my sword, Lady Priestess,” he announced in his formal voice, the one he seemed to forget whenever they two were alone…

        The camp was small and quiet; it was but a peaceful gathering of orc and troll fishmongers, minding their ways.  Sure, there were blades and blunt maces and fire about, but they were the variety used in a fisherman’s work, not in battle.  Besides, no weapon was raised to take arms as the small organization of tel’dorei gathered in the woods close by.
        The first sword fell—the draenei Arron’s—upon the shoulder of a troll carrying a basket of grouper.  The fisherman screamed in pain, as Arron roared a vicious battlecry, and a bloodlust filled the rest of the attackers.  Berufeng charged, his rapier flailing, finding its way through the hearts and midriffs of orc and troll men and women alike… a few moments, and the scene was blurry and eerily tranquil.  Bodies of the innocent were scattered all around, causing dark stains in the white sand upon which they had fallen.
        Arron had begun a scene.  “They are not coming,” he declared, yet he was announcing that his work was finished here, and that he was to leave for more important endeavors.  The Arron that Berufeng had known would not abandon his friends for any reason, great or small.  Arron of the Invictus, as he had been known, was a man of dignity and great honor; he was the first draenei Berufeng had ever known, and the reason the elf assumed every man of that race to be valiant and kind.  
        “They do not come, and yet you are to flee?” Berufeng asked, incredulously.  “Perhaps along with your tabard of Invictus, you discarded your honor, friend?”  The draenei hurled insults back in response—he was but a shadow of his former self.  “What have you become, Arron?”  Berufeng begged to know the answer, to know why Arron would act such a way.  “You are not the honorable man I once knew.”
        “To hell with what you think is honorable, you pointy-eared bastard!” the man roared in reply, but the words had fallen upon deaf ears.  Berufeng had spotted an orc wielding a greataxe, charging toward the group—toward the High Priestess, in fact.  
        In one fluidic motion, and before the others even noticed the attacker, the elf had withdrawn his bow, set an arrow, and sent it flying… it sunk itself through the orc’s head, directly between the eyes.  As the orc fell, bloody face first onto the sand, and the axe tumbled from his grip, a wash of remorse and shame flooded over Berufeng; his knees had begun to feel weak and wobbly, and his lunch threatened to rise from his stomach.  Slowly and silently, and under the scrutiny of the furious Arron, he laid his blade down onto the sand at his own feet, then took a step backward.
        “I cannot remain here and slaughter fishmongers,” he said, his words aimed pointedly to the priestess, though his eyes were locked on the draenic warrior whose veins were throbbing.  “I promised you that my sword would be at your side, and here it lies.  I, however, cannot continue this.”
        He was so terribly disappointed in his priestess for bringing them all to this place… it would have been much better to discuss his feelings with her privately, but such a discussion would be impossible with the inflated head of Arron crashing through the moment.  As Berufeng walked away from the scene, he heard a roar, and the unmistakable sound of a great hoof coming down onto his steel blade, snapping it in two.  His temper flared and the blood rushed to his head and knuckles, but he kept his path, not turning back.  Far enough from the group that he could only just barely hear Arron’s shouting in the distance, the elf found a seat on the grass and fell perfectly still, melding with the shadows.

        After several long minutes of sitting and thinking, and allowing his rage to whither away into a somewhat comfortable disgust, he returned where the group stood, apparently working things out.  Several tel’dorei had already left by the time he returned, and now Arron stood facing Mynora, Mardanel, and Saya and her fel hound Nheedhum, adopting a defensive posture and attempting to explain himself.
        Berufeng quietly took his position between Mardanel and Mynora, though he did not reach for the priestess’ hand to caress like he had been recently known to do.  Instead, he stood firm and tall, eyeing the draenei closely, with his arms folded across his chest.  He could feel Mynora looking at him, but his eyes were locked upon the warrior, from whose mouth silent words fell; Berufeng wasn’t listening to what he was saying, only watching his lips move.
        How much time had passed was a mystery—the elf still stood with his arms across his breastplate, focusing his eyes on Arron but his mind on nothing at all—but now smiles were forming and Saya had waddled over to hug the draenei’s leg.  Perhaps he had offered an apology… he had said something directed at Berufeng regarding a sword, though it was in a soft tone, no longer an angry one.  What he said now was unimportant, though, for all Berufeng could hear was the resounding echo of the words he spoke earlier.  “To hell with what you think is honorable, you pointy-eared bastard!”  
        Something in his subconscious told him to fake a smile.  It said to offer to shake the man’s hand in return for his apologetic gesture, and let everything slide… for now.  “You were not the man I once thought you to be, today,” Berufeng said firmly, yet stepping forward to proffer a gloved hand.  “But I, of all people, cannot fault a man for forgetting himself once in awhile.”  The words were from his heart, undeniably; however, he had wanted to say many other things that his conscience had warned him to withhold for the time being.  
        With nary more than a glance in the direction of his dear love Mynora, the elf walked calmly toward where his broken sword lay.  It was indeed damaged beyond repair, he determined, clenching his jaw.  However, he picked up the two pieces and, again without turning back to look upon the party, he quietly set about for the forest’s edge en route to Astranaar.

        *                    *                    *                    *                    *

        As Mardanel made off down the road on his way out of Astranaar, a fury returned to the eyes of the hunter Berufeng.  His thoughts were a convoluted mash of emotion, which had manifested itself in a bloodthirsty rage.  Without hesitation, the moment that Mardanel and his saber mount Nocturne were out of sight, Berufeng set a brisk pace in the opposite direction—toward the Warsong Lumber Encampment.
        The orcs were packing up for the night, gathering the last scraps of lumber from the outskirts of the encampment and bringing them in to the piles near the small stone fortress in the center.  Many of them were yawning and rubbing their eyes, and aside from the occasional grunt or complaint in orcish in groups of two and three, the scene was quiet and drowsy.
        Quick and light footfalls were coming from somewhere in the thicket to the west of the encampment, and no faster could the orcs who had heard this whirl around, than an unarmed and furious elf was barreling down upon them.  Berufeng flung himself at the nearest of them, wrenching a lumberjack’s axe from his grip; he knocked the orc onto his back with a heavy boot to the chest, and swung hard with the blade of the axe at the neck of the next that came.  With a primal roar, he continued, bashing them with the handle of the axe, and brutalizing them with its dull blade.  Blood splashed through the air, onto the elf’s face and in his hair, and staining the elegant blue and silver of his Shan Tel’dorei tabard.  
        He was charging at the next wave of a dozen or more orcs, and they at him, when a voice rang clear in his head.  “Is anyone… about?”  The priestess—the woman he loved—was calling out to him… had she felt his anger?  Had she known how he was defiling himself right now?  Did she know what he was becoming, that very moment?  Or perhaps was she just looking for someone to talk to on a lonely night?
        Nothing mattered.  There was nothing, not kind words nor false hopes, nor a hearty meal nor any lyric of song—not even love—that could calm him at this very moment.  He knew that his rage would not be satisfied until all of these orcs… these men… these fathers and sons and grandfathers and nephews… lay dead at his feet.  He stopped, allowing the orcs that charged at him from the camps now to cover some free ground, and he answered the priestess’ call the most respectful way he could muster in this fit of anger;  “No.”  He was not about.  He was not present, nor available to converse.  He must kill; he must spill their blood until they have none left to spill.
        The last of them fell—the last of them foolish enough to challenge him, at least—and he threw the borrowed axe down onto the back of the nearest corpse, with finality.  

        He felt no remorse until hours later, when he embraced the power of his hearthstone and felt his essence being teleported back to Darnassus; the sensation collapsed upon him like an ocean crushing his lungs.  Now tears welled in his eyes, and his breath came short and reluctantly, as his feet settled upon the floor of the guild members’ quarters, and the great Tree City formed around him.  He crumbled to his knees and wept; how late into the night, he did not know, for when the sun awoke in the east, Berufeng was asleep upon the wooden floor.