The Hunt Begins

Deep in the portions of Eldre'Thalas, now known as Dire Maul, where the Highborne no longer roamed, a deep, gravelly voice began to chant in a demonic tongue over an altar lit by flickering green flames. The dancing candlelight around the exterior of the room illuminated the small space prepared for powerful spellcasting. The light's embrace ended when it encountered the dark form of the satyr as he cast his spell. Magic flared at the end of his clawed hands, seeking out its objective over the great distances between continents.

As the chanting died down, a small oval of space opened before the demon, an image flickering to life within it as he peered into its depths. At first indistinct, the image soon solidified until the satyr found his gaze wandering over tall grasses, slipping quickly over the terrain towards a shimmering pool of water with a small waterfall cascading into it from a river above, somewhere deep in Elwynn Forest.

The image slowed as it encountered first a pair of fashionable high heeled shoes, and then a carefully folded dress in bright green, yellow, orange, brown, and red. Beside the articles of clothing lay a few lacy underthings and a small pile of pouches with a sheathed spellblade leaning against them. The demon chanted again and the vision within the scrying spell slid away from the garments and out over the water until it encountered a figure standing beneath the cascading waterfall. The image displayed then made even a satyr hold its breath for a moment.

She stood naked beneath the falling water, her back to the source of the spell. The moonlight sparkled from high above, illuminating the falling beads of liquid as they struck her head and shoulders and cascaded off her body. Each tiny droplet seemed to sparkle in the light, but the beauty of the falling water was nothing compared to what they fell upon.

Long, beautiful cyan hair spilled down to the middle of her back, the water deepening the color slightly from its natural state. Freed from the high pigtails she normally wore it in, Malandrae's hair was revealed in its full glory. It clung to her from the moisture, each strand a beautiful contrast to the pinkish-purple flesh of the elf beneath it. She sighed, enjoying the waterfall that bathed her, reaching up and stretching towards the falling water above her, her delicate fingers splayed out as if to catch the fall.

The satyr's foul heart quickened in pace as he studied the image in the scrying spell. The naked flesh of the elf in the vision was something he had not seen in over ten thousand years, and memories flooded back to his mind of a time before he was what he had become. To a time when he had possessed the lithe creature he spied upon now. A clawed hand reached out, as if to caress the flesh that his normal hands had once held in his natural life, a dark growl escaping him as his desire to possess his property rose within him once again. She would be his. He OWNED her. She would ever escape the destiny he had prepared for her so many eons before.

Even as he thought these things, thought about what he would do with the sorceress once he had reclaimed her, she turned slightly, her silver eyes closed as she twisted her head in the falling water. After a moment, her eyes opened, their beautiful sparkle competing with the very moonlight. She turned towards him, singing a song to herself that rose above the fall of the water, her voice an echo of a time long ago.

He was enraptured. Her nakedness, the vulnerability she presented and the fact that she was unaware of his spying all enhanced his enjoyment of the moment, encouraged his thoughts of conquest. She had eluded him once, and soon a time would come when she would bow before him and serve him once more, as she had in Zin-Azshari.

Even as he thought this, the image began to shift, drawing closer to her face. For a moment he failed to notice it, failed to notice that her song had ended and that she seemed to be looking right into the scrying field. As it moved in closer, highlighting just her face now, the demon understood that something had gone wrong. As he began to sense the tingle arcane energies in the air around the elf that now seemed to be staring directly at him, he realized the peril of his wandering mind.

Malandrae smiled sweetly, she same dull, vapid look on her face that she had always worn as she whispered almost sensuously into the scrying spell, “Did you like what you saw, Master? Do you remember me so well?”

The image zoomed closer, only her two silver eyes, her nose, and her lips visible now. The satyr had a moment of puzzlement as he noted a thin line of crimson spilling from one of her nostrils, her eyes now burning with some otherness, some awareness that he had not seen except for one time long ago when he'd banished her from his tower for a night and she had verbally accosted him.

The Sorceress tilted her head, a smile on her lips now as she spoke in the ancient dialect of their people, “House Moonwhisper sends its regards, High Arcanist.”

Even as she spoke the surface of the scrying spell warped and bowed outward, a small bubble of energy floating into the room with him. Beyond it, he could see that the image had zoomed in even further, showing only two perfect, coral painted lips pressed in a tight smile. As the bubble of energy began to expand, an air-headed giggle filled the room from the scrying spell before it winked out of existence.

The satyr was no fool. The minute he looked at the small sphere of energy he knew exactly what it was; Malandrae had once accidentally destroyed one of his laboratories with such a spell when performing research. Hooves digging into the rough stones of the fallen city of Eldre'Thalas, the satyr turned and fled.

The orb began to rotate slowly.

He dashed down the corridors leading to the spellcasting room, past other satyrs and demonic minions summoned to do their foul bidding. His retainers watched in some surprise to see their newly risen and normally controlled leader hurrying along. Behind him in the room where the spell had been cast the orb began to expand, small little spheres coming off of it and orbiting it. Slowly they began to elongate, becoming hard shards of ice as they picked up speed.

At first the spell did nothing. Here a candle was snuffed out. There a piece of paper was hurled into the air by the passing wind. But as more and more of the shards began to spin off of the orb, they began to pick up speed and become sharper. Now a candle was cut in half. On the other side of a room a chair fell over, the leg torn free by a shard of ice. A chip was carved out of the dark altar over which the spell had been cast.

Down the long corridors the satyr who had once held the title High Arcanist continued to run, leaving his minions behind in confused bafflement as he picked up his pace. He knew what was coming, he knew what his former apprentice was capable of. And then time was up.

The orb stopped spinning.

Instantly every shard of ice in the room paused, orientated inwards towards the orb, and shot back into it. It detonated a second later, the explosion catastrophic as it sent waves of frozen death in all directions. The pillars supporting the room crumbled from the blast destroying the room utterly, and a wave of razor sharp shards of magically propelled ice roared down the corridors immediately adjacent to the room.

The former High Arcanist had just enough time to clear the corridor before the blast-wave reached where he was running. The howls of his dying minions and the unnatural wails of demons as they were shredded and sent back to the nether made him quake with rage, until his own howl of anger echoed through the empty, dark corridors deep below the ruins of a once proud city. His cries for vengeance heard only by his own cursed ears.

And far away in Elwynn Forest, a night elf finished her bath without further incident, or even the memory of what had transpired.