Stormwind Keep, for thousands of years, had been built into the side of the mountains of the Elwynn Forest region of the Eastern Kingdoms. The decaying fortress had been refurbished and rebuilt a number of times after razing by numerous Alliance enemies as well as general wear and tear continued to eat away at the center of the human city.
The humans were nothing if not tenacious.
Bekkami glared with dark eyes through the tree limbs. She was a climber, preferred the high ground, and was currently perched on a limb overlooking the Stormwind cemetery, where the long line of human nobility was buried, off of Cathedral Square. Peering at the wall that surrounded the Keep, she spat, barely hearing the startled protest from the ground.
Bekka was a well-muscled, but nimble, twenty-five year old tracker. Her blonde hair was always pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, keeping it out of her face. She was dressed in dark leather so soft that it barely made a sound as she crept along the bough. Courtesy of her brother Streig, she snorted softly to herself as she remembered doubting that such a thing would exist. His handiwork always put all the other leatherworkers in Azeroth to shame. She had, when she first started tracking at age twelve, been subject to such outfits, but as she progressed in her training and expertise, Streig had provided her with proper leathers. She remembered the wicked gleam in his eye when he handed over her first set when she was sixteen. All of her brothers – and there were seven of them – clapped her on the back and cackled in approval. She would do well, they said to each other. She would be an expert thief and close-combat expert. Maybe even an assassin some day. Bekka grinned with pride before scurrying off to put on her new outfit.
Her family was nothing if not ruthless.
Bekka leaned back against the trunk of the tree, straddling the limb and scratching at the bark with her dagger. Her expression was dark, brooding. It had been several weeks since the, the… draenei – she spat again – dared to set foot in their territory. For ages, the families involved in the Underground were warned of Krastos, the shaman who had dared to leave the organization back in the old days, a few thousand years before. Bekka had grown up believing it was a fairy tale, something youngsters were told to discourage disloyalty. From the stories, she had imagined him a monster with a terrible countenance, but weak with age, easily frightened and intimidated.
She growled softly as she remembered actually meeting him, tracing the tip of her dagger along the back of her hand, along the scar that he gave her, one of several that she was usually able to hide by her combat gear. Her brothers and friends, now the core of the Underground operations, had ambushed the pair – Krastos and his… mate, they had assumed – as they traveled idly through the Eastern Kingdoms.
The pair of draenei fought hard, Krastos more accustomed to hand to hand combat than the spellcaster, who was fairly easily disabled while they attempted to subdue the shaman. But the humans hadn’t gotten off that easily – the mate had had time to scorch all of them with fire spells, disorienting them momentarily with icy flashes and strange arcane magics, until one of Bekkami’s brothers snuck up behind her and slid a dagger with a binding poison on the tip into her side, making her crumple to the ground. Bekka crinkled her nose at the smell of burnt leather and hair, shaking out her pony tail, loosening the icy tendrils of hair that curled around her neck.
It had been a long time since shamans had been the norm in this region of Azeroth. It was still a practice held dear by some of the dwarves, but the humans had never gotten into it. So when Krastos let loose with the power of the elements, Bekka wasn’t exactly prepared. He summoned elementals made of fire and stone to fight by his side, and Bekka paused to gape at them just long enough for the draenei to get the upper hand, knocking her back with a crackle of lightning that shook the ground and bowled over the humans. The elementals scattered her brothers, pounding the ground at their feet, chasing them away from the epicenter of the battle, and Krastos narrowed his strangely glowing eyes at Bekka.
Her daggers nearly slipped from her fingers as Krastos bellowed in his queer native tongue, raising his lightning-fisted hands in the air and calling on the power of the storm growing overhead. Thunder rumbled in the near distance, and Bekka stood stock still, frozen at the sight. Krastos called the elementals back to his side, and lifted a single finger in her direction, giving her a deadly look, setting them loose on her while he turned away and tended to his wounded mate, picking her up and cradling her in his arms, whispering softly to her.
Bekka gasped and turned tail, ducking into the shadows of the forest and scrambling up into a tree, the elementals close behind, beating on the trunk of the tree and threatening to set it on fire. She clung to the limb she was precariously perched upon and squeezed her eyes tight as she heard her brothers return and reengage the draenei.
Her brothers eventually overpowered and bound the pair of draenei, knocking them unconscious and, using all their strength, dragged them to the nearby farm, paying off the destitute landowner for the use of his wagon and best – which wasn’t saying much – horse. The troupe made their way slowly back toward the city in silence, eyeing the alien draenei apprehensively, as if the creatures would spring back to life at any second.
Bekka narrowed her eyes at the Keep once more, snorting to herself. If the King in power had any idea who really ran this city, she thought. They were puppets, and had been for as long as humans had been on this planet. The Underground ran everything in the Eastern Kingdoms. Their power knew no end, their sticky fingers were in everything.
True, society had fairly crumbled around them, and for the most part, the entirety of the human race lived in destitution – even the so-called King – but it was no matter. It would come back around.
The humans were nothing if not tenacious.
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