Perched on a rooftop in the shadow of a chimney, Lokova faded into the shadows as she searched they alleyways she could see, desperately trying to track the sound of weeping she could hear over the ever-present flap of rotting wings and the roars of the frost drakes laying siege to the city. Distantly, she could see an abomination moving through the streets, and could hear the chattering of ghouls – once innocent townsfolk, now a threat to their former loved ones – as packs of the creatures roamed the streets.
And someone was crying; faintly, but if she could hear it, it was only a matter of time before something else did as well.
Glancing up to make sure that a frost drake was not going to see her, she dashed down the red shingles of the roof she was on and made the leap between buildings, rolling as she hit the ground and coming up in a low crouch as she darted into the next patch of shadows.
And there – below, a young woman trying desperately to hush a weeping child, crouched behind a stack of crates. Not to distantly, a group of ghouls were closing in, obviously sniffing around in search of the fresh flesh. Lokova ripped a shingle from the roof underfoot and lobbed it out and over a rooftop in a direction away from the innocents below; he bow came off her back, and though she flinched when she drew back – the bow had cracked ominously when she’d been forced to defend herself earlier in the siege; that’s what she got for using a bow as a shield – she still shot true, hitting the shingle to redirect its flight and sending it clattering loudly down the side of a distant building.
The ghouls redirected towards the noise with loud cries, giving the night elf a chance to slide to the edge of the roof and down, “Girl, here,” she said quietly, urgently, reaching out a hand as two tear-stained faces rose towards her, “Give me the child.”
It was a measure of how desperate the pair where that the young woman didn’t even hesitate the lift the child she was protecting into the arms of a strange elf woman. Lokova tucked the child against her side and stood, making the jump and skittering back up to the roof one armed, where she placed the young human in the shadows of an overlapping eave, pressing a finger to the child’s lips and hushing it, “Be still and quiet. I will return with your…sister?”
The child gave a tearful nod, but except for a faint hiccup they were now silent, watching with large eyes as Lokova slipped back the way she came. The young woman has already scaled the crates they’d been hiding behind and was halfway up the wall, moving from windowsill to windowsill in the short time it took the night elf to return, meaning she was able to simply lay flat and extend a hand, and the human woman jumped for it, allowing herself to be pulled swiftly the rest of the way to the temporary safety of the rooftops.
She tucked the woman in beside the child and crouched in front of them, direly missing her companion Maesha, but her beautiful, loyal nightsaber was so much meat near the docks now, having already given herself up to protect her hunter. Lokova had raised that cat from a cub with her own two hands, and her loss, brutal as it was, was a gaping wound in her spirit, and she could not even address the ache of the fresh grief yet. Not with innocents still in danger. But the lack of her companions sharp senses was just another jab against her mourning spirit.
Once she was fairly sure they were undetected for the moment, she slid back in beside the pair of humans, “We have mages evacuating civilians to Dalaran in the Mage district. Just follow me, I know the area. I can get us there safely.” Smiling at the human woman’s sharp, determined nod, she accepted the child and started to lead them over the rooftops.
* * *
Some time later, Lokova was lifting the last member of the group of civilians she’s managed to accumulate out of the canals and into the eager hands of a small group of Stormwind guards defending the east entrance to the Mage district when above her, from one of the guards she couldn’t see, she heard, “Oh. Oh. Light protect us, that’s a big one.”
She surged up and over the edge of the canal, coming up in the midst of the clustering civilians, to see the largest abomination she’d seen in her not inconsiderable life lumbering towards them rapidly with clear ill intent, its protruding organs and extraneous arms jiggling grotesquely as it broke into something of a charge from the direction of the docks.
She slid her bow off her back, grim, “Get the people into portals and to safety. I… I can distract it.”
One of the guards clapped her firmly on the shoulder and nodded at her, a grim look on his face, as the rest of the guards started ushering people past the gates, “Thank you. Is there anything I can do?”
She swallowed, mouth dry, eyes already tracking her best options to draw the abomination away, “One of the mages is a high elf from Dalaran. Her name is Phyreila. Ask her to come get me, once she’s able to?”
Unsaid was that they both knew it would likely be recovering a body.
The guard nodded, and Lokova shot off, arrows coming to her hands as she laid into the abomination. It finally look an arrow, streaming blue light, directly to the eye before the undead creature deviated from its course and came charging after her.
Unfortunately, it wasn't long before her cracked bow shattered, the stressed wood practically exploding under the pressure she was putting on it and thawking her in the face, stunning her just long enough for the abomination to reach up with one upper to drag her off the rooftop she’d been crouched on, slamming her forcefully into the ground, stunning her further.
The abomination roared and lifted an axe; the blade coming down was the last thing the night elf saw.
Later, when Phyreila used a spell to trace the night elf’s last steps, there was a pool of blood and shards of bone at the end of the trail, but no body.
* * *
Even later, a necromancer crouched over a pile of bodies brought looted as they Scourge was driven out of Stormwind. He eyed the limp body of a nearly bisected night elf speculatively, before turning to his neophyte assistant, “Sew this one up; it looks promising.”
Total Word Count: 1135
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