The prompt: Use this line anywhere in your story: "Behind her, the noise escalated."
- Prompt #137, Creative Writing Prompts

They'd come back to Shattrath, as Arienne had wanted, defeated. Though they bore a new head on their pike of victories, it wasn't that of the Coilfang matron. The blood knight decided she could live with that.

They were - every last one of them - bruised and broken and bloody. Some of them came to the Scryers' tier; others filtering off to be tended by the Aldor anchorites. And despite all her attempts to leave her roots in her past, Arienne Songblade was still, in her heart, a combat medic. So she mended them, those that she could, and half-listened to the story of how Leotheras the Blind had fallen before them. And every day in Shattrath, there was a new face that wanted to join them.

Maybe Logan was right: maybe this really was an army that they were building, even if it hadn't seemed that way to her before.
"Next time," a bruised blue shaman promised, in between hacking coughs, "we be bringin' you." Arienne only nodded at Zaniya, not really sure she believed it.


"The time is now!" a garbled female voice cried. Zaniya had been as good as her word. "Leave none standing!"
In the center of her dais, Vashj was cocooned an a shroud of steam. For a moment, the lot of them stood there as if unsure what to do with themselves.
Then they heard splashing from the moat beneath them.
"Kalimar!" one of the shamans cried out. Elementals.
"You, and you. With me." Arienne pointed in turn at an orcish hunter they called Longrifle and a Forsaken rogue named Nexic, waving her arm in a grand gesture as they ran back toward the steps.
Water elementals were already bubbling up from the surface, advancing toward their mistress. Sword drawn, Arienne laid waste to them: they were fragile things, their bond to the world tenuous at the best of times.
Behind her the noise escalated.
The was a bellowing shu'halo voice behind her: "Myrmidons!" and from the roiling surface of the reservoir's water, an honor guard of male naga slithered, one from each point of the compass.
They were stupid, but strong: one charged directly for Arienne, and she brought her shield up to knock the wind from him, but the blow resounded through Arienne's own body and she knew she wasn't a match in single combat.
But Roka was. Her fellow blood knight wore thicker plate and carried a heavier shield, bending the Light to redirect the myrmidon's attention to himself.
"Keep yourself up!" he instructed Arienne in harsh Thalassian, and she nodded, tipping back a shot of blue liquid that took the edge off her acute thirst for mana.
But she wasn't priority number one: something had beaten up her comrades badly, and her stolen Light went to them first to close their wounds. Orc and Forsaken fought on tirelessly, the growing swarm of elementals cut down on the stairs before her.
Somewhere behind her there was the scuffle of feet, and she glanced over her shoulder to note one of the Farstriders strafing along the rim of the dais.
In pursuit was one of the hugest fen striders she'd ever seen, picking its way after him on spindly legs. The elf threw a net around his pursuer, but the thing nimbly picked its way out of the weave of cloth.
An overwhelming panic coursed through Arienne's veins and before the strider, she and her companions scattered and ran.
Something spit poison in her eyes, and the blood knight passed out.

She knew the touch of stolen Light when she felt it: Roka had been the one to return her to consciousness, but it was Nexic who knelt over her, a vague look of concern on his face.
His wounds were still bleeding. She said a single word in Thalassian, a shock of healing energy suffusing the Forsaken as he offered her his hand to get up.
When she took it, it was warm, as if he were living.
"Vashj?" she asked in a hoarse voice.
"Escaped," he sighed, displeased. "Dove into the water. Looks like we're making our escape too." He nodded toward a troll mage who'd torn a portal to Shattrath and was fixing to jump through it.
Arienne let the rogue's hand go, shooting him an almost-stern look.
"We'll be back."
"Oh, of course," he said evenly, his voice as quiet as death and as soft as fresh-turned soil. "Once we muster our strength again, her life is forfeit."
Arienne shot him one last, long look, and stepped through to the Terrace of Light and the almost-comforting presence of A'dal.
It wasn't over yet.