#gharnholm

[kyuusei-shadowleaf]

The Huntress’ Horn

[ image by Ninjatic ]

The trail led Kyuusei and the rest of the small scouting party along the length of Darkshore, following in murder’s wake. Finally, though, their quarry had been run to ground. The Dark Iron dwarf Gharnholm and his band of mercenaries, huddled along the shoreline just beyond a few dunes covered in grasses, grousing about the loss of their prize to the betrayal of some rogue druid. Likely the same druid Kyuusei had spied much earlier, flying low over the trees in a storm crow’s shape.

While the rest of the scouting party, members of Ingmarus’ Stormbolt Militia and Lane’s Foxrun Hall both, discussed reinforcements and exacting vengeance, Kyuu slowly drifted away. Not truly a part of either group, she’d come more to see the finish of what had started with Gharnholm’s treachery and threats - and to ensure certain people close to her didn’t come to harm.

Both of those goals now all but ensured, there were other matters left in the small band’s wake. Something it seemed only Kyuu found of concern. Then again, none of the others were kaldorei, no others beholden of Cenarius. Certainly none that were reverent of Ashamane.

It took her over an hour to retrace her steps, even in a nightsaber’s shape.

The trap’s scent still lingered in the grasses when Kyuusei finally arrived - a pungent, musky scent that marked a young nightsaber’s challenge to an established range. Fight me!, it screamed to whatever male might claim the territory as his own, I challenge you!

That had been the nature of the trap laid by Gharnholm’s mercenaries, a spray of musk that brought the nightsaber patriarch who ranged in this area between foothills and river, thinking his territory under threat. Drawing him to attack the scouting party as they pursued their quarry through Darkshore.

Kyuu stood upright on two legs as she walked the remaining few yards to where the great nightsaber’s corpse lay, facing away from the trap’s fading stink. The ice that had trapped him was all but melted, but cruel wounds pierced his flank and back, left his skull shattered.

“You tried to flee,” the druidess spoke in Darnassian, dropping to her knees at the great cat’s side, heedless of the crimson mud near the feline corpse. “You knew the challenge was lost. But my compatriots refused to relent. I am sorry.”

Kyuusei rested one hand on the nightsaber’s cold flank, fingers twining in frost-dampened fur. Then, almost reluctantly, she gave her voice to a soft, lilting song:

The huntress’ horn has sounded! To battle, it calls us now, To the defense of all we hold dear This city, This well of the moon, This soft song of the evening breeze. It calls us, And we answer.

There was a moment’s silence in the twilight, even the wildlife seeming to be briefly reverent.

“I will see that Bashal’aran knows you have fallen,” Kyuusei finally murmured, “you shall not waste here on the forest’s floor.”

Shifting to a nightsaber’s shape, Kyuusei nosed the patriarch’s corpse once, gently, before loping off to the south.