The Silvermoon Embassy: Noble Submission

Silendiel reclined, stretched out on her favorite chaise longue, yet was unable to find any semblance of rest. Within the decorated white and gold and red of her inner sanctum, more hall than living room, a place with tall windows each lit by an arcane blue orb, she should be at her safest. At her most self-indulgent. And yet, the news of a single, normally irrelevant servant leaving her employ had her upset to such an extent that she fidgeted with herself, having found and tugged at a loose fragment of one of her perfectly manicured nails, ruining it in the process.

Her majordomo had informed her that the servant girl, some commoner who had been with the house Flameborn for no more than three years, had effectively been poached. Submitted her resignation in writing, not even showing up to deliver it herself, preferring instead to remain with her new employer – the recently established kaldorei embassy in Silvermoon City.

Upon hearing the news, Silendiel had spent a long while staring out one window at the fabulously and meticulously styled and maintained garden outside, an outrageous luxury in the city, even with the population still thin and recovering from the Scourge’s onslaught. There, she had crafted a facade to show her majordomo, and any other staff that might be looking. Nothing but contained, appropriate fury. Not at losing an irrelevant servant girl, but at the manner in which she had been lost, taken, conquered, whatever one might call it. Not that slavery was permitted, but, really, what had happened was tantamount to theft. Scoffing, raising one hand to aggressively waft a lock of blonde hair out of her face, failing, and having to repeat the maneuver not once, but twice, she gathered her trembling hands across her stomach.

Upon recovering from the sheer outrage of what the kaldorei had done, encouraging an innocent servant to walk right into their clutches, Silendiel had ordered a few of her employees, those used to more subtle work outside of the mansion, to investigate the comings and goings of the kaldorei and their people. And their servants. Upon learning that the servant girl, Ennia, was not the first to fall into the claws of the night elves, it was easy enough to begin having some of her staff frequent taverns and bars to start spreading clearly false, but very believable rumors. That the kaldorei in the embassy were abducting innocent sin’dorei, that they sheltered criminals, even, after it was discovered that the seneschal of the place, another local, Liriel, was a fugitive. Someone who had tried to escape the city rather than paying her debts. And for that, the kaldorei rewarded her with a high position in their new stronghold within the walls of Silvermoon, at the heart of Quel’thalas. It proved terribly easy to tell people what they wanted to hear, and after many years of war, it seemed they wanted to hear that their old Alliance enemies could also be thought of as their current enemies.

That work going on still, Silendiel had dismissed everyone who might usually fuss around her, and take care of her every need, see to her every whim, so that she might seethe in peace. At the silly girl who had let herself fall into the hands of the kaldorei. In theory. In practice, however, her thoughts circled what her majordomo had told her of the embassy, of what seemed to go on there, and her mind wandered back to the few kaldorei she had seen when the wars still raged. Captives from one endless war or another. Her father, when he still lived, had even had one brought into the mansion. A kind of showpiece, living and feral art, which they could impress and intimidate guests with at each gathering and fete.

Just out of reach of that night elf, Silendiel had placed a chair, its back between her and the sentinel. There she had sat for many and long hours, observing the chained up, feral, purple, massive elf. Even as she grew emaciated, she did not lose the sharpness, the edge, that made one ever worry in her presence. At first, she tested the chains. Wrists and ankles wrapped in iron, secured in the wall and floor. Endless growling and tugging and snarling, trying to get within hands distance of the much smaller blood elf, Silendiel, who sat and observed. As that melted away, they talked. Silendiel brought food and drink, just a little of each, and in return, she began to learn the tongue of the kaldorei. The one which, ostensibly, her own had developed from. They became something like friends, even.

In Silendiel’s mind, at least, they had grown into an odd friendship, prisoner and naive girl, but the distance from reality of that conception of the two was proven to her when she, at long last, stepped close enough to the sentinel that the chains allowed them to meet. She spent a few hours, then, trapped and held hostage, until her father organized both several armed soldiers, a priest, and more than one arcanist. Through the efforts of those people, with magics of various sorts, they dulled the sentinel’s mind, over time, and eventually got her to release Silendiel. In that moment, as she was still stumbling into her father’s arms, the soldiers finished the friendship with finality, four crossbow bolts shot at close range at the sentinel, biting into her flesh. To her credit, to her kind’s credit, she did not die then. She did not die for a long while. But she did die, chained up and alone, hours later.

As she had grown, as the years had passed and she had had time to contemplate that supposed friendship, Silendiel quietly came to the conclusion that allowing that sentinel into their home had ruined her, romantically. Being held in the sentinel’s arms, even as a hostage, was a feeling she would not soon forget. Would perhaps never forget.

Alone, then, snapping out of her memories, lit by arcane light, she grasped her left thumb in her right hand. And then did the reverse – right thumb in left hand. Kept moving her hands and fingers, unable to find peace. The servant girl did not matter. The preposterous rumors of what the kaldorei were doing to, with, their servants inside the embassy did not matter, she told herself. Knowing that she lied, and lied badly, at that. To no one but herself, thankfully. Not a week had passed since her first, nameless kaldorei friend had been ended that she had not regretted what happened. Nor, after the shock passed, had a week passed without her recalling what it was like to be held by the large, feral night elf. The shock receded, the sensory experience remained.

Silendiel found no peace, that evening, because she was jealous. It was struggling to come to terms with that shameful revelation that kept her up, that had made her send away her every remaining servant and confidant. They should have sent for her. They should have called on her to establish connections in Silvermoon. They should have assigned her a contact, a sentinel of her very own, with whom she could coordinate efforts very closely. Who she could have lured into staying a little longer, perhaps sharing a glass of wine. Perhaps sharing a look too many, and then a touch. Clearly, if the absurd rumors were to be believed, the night elves had a taste for her kind, one perhaps stronger still than she had for theirs. But instead, they had lavished their attention on a servant.

A servant.

Fingers curled, then unfurling, face tight, she stared daggers at an unspecified spot on the floor. Extended her hand, very slowly, towards the small, rounded, white marble table near her, held up by the gilded claw of a giant lynx. Upon it, a half-full glass of wine remained. With a finger, she pushed it just a little. And then a little more, and yet more.

It tipped over the edge, and shattered. And, a moment later, an ardent and eager servant knocked on the door, and then opened it, and then rushed in.

Silendiel sighed.