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Sylvanas's dull red eyes bore into Alleria as she watched the other elf pull a hatchet out of the skull of her sworn guard.
"Did you come here to say you forgive me? To save my soul?" She asked with contempt.
No flaw, no emotion to her words, only a lacing of bitterness to an otherwise inquisitive tone. Alleria's response was silence as she used a bit of fabric from her tabard to smear off the blood.
"No.. I am not sure that fate would be more suited for you."
Alleria finally then glanced up. Her bright icy blue eyes piercing hers, the contrast almost making Sylvanas blink. Almost.
Sylvanas stroked the quiver at her side in a silent message, but instead decided to reach out and rest against the fragmented city wall beside her. The city around them felt ghostly silent. Only now did new noises of settlement protrude her senses, the soft crackle of campfires and the distant bustling of quiet conversation.
Those did not use to be there.
The city was half torn asunder, scorch marks trailing bite-sized chunks of structure fallen inward. The walls were painted with far more color than they had been prior.
A rather shame she thought. Sylvanas much preferred the dull silent lifelessness that filled the courtyard. It always did giver he peace to hear the quiet churning of poisonous ooze that now filtered were the water canals were once built.
Alleria had not moved. Keeping her up-straight militarist pose that always so defined her.
"Are you still considered my sister?" She asked flatly.
What lively siblings they were.
"Am I not?" Sylvanas asked in turn. Choosing to instead look towards the bleak full moon.
"Hm, well some part of you remains. I knew you would travel back to..." she glanced around at the ruins, "...home."
Sylvanas felt the intensity of being stared at and looked back at Alleria, who was not staring at her eyes, but rather her lips and nose. Sylvanas had given no indication of breathing since she had sat down. That was merely because she didn't have to.
"Strange to see a high elf this tone?"
"You still consider yourself one?" Alleria immediately questioned, betraying slight shock.
"Hm, I suppose I am not." Sylvanas replied stalely.
"The High Elves do not side with the Horde."
"You did not see how they were treated outside your care, sister." Sylvanas stated curtly.
"That is your best excuse?" Alleria said through thick pronunciation, hiding obvious agitation.
"No, simply a factor. Why else would they leave?"
Alleria clicked her tongue in annoyance. She still held the hatchet, it gleamed with the reflected moonlight. It burned her eyes.
"You do not wish to kill me."
Without any sympathy, Alleria immediately responded, "You do not want me dead either."
A moment's silence, only distant crackles to fill the empty echoing area the two had caged in.
"Do you still keep it?" Alleria asked slightly with a small leak of curiosity.
Sylvanas paused for a moment, pursing her lips.
"I do." She said in a far quieter voice than she had wanted. Anger berated her for her weakness.
Alleria's grip on her hatchet visibly tightened, her knuckles going white as she grimaced.
"Then I..cannot understand..what has become of you." She said through stiff words.
“I do not think..you ever will.” Sylvanas’s words trying to quell the rage growing inside of her.
Alleria now stared straight at Sylvanas. The ferocity of her gaze almost felt like a blow to the gut, Sylvanas would have winced, had that still caused her pain. There was an unflinching nerve to her older sister, something she had always admired of her. But that attachment was long gone, and it felt like Sylvanas was locked into gaze with a ghost. Though she supposes, that is how Alleria must feel as well.
“If you are so gone then, tread lightly next you face me. I intend to avenge.”
“You came here to avenge and failed,” Sylvanas stated flatly with twisted bitterness. “Neither of you are capable.”
Almost like a twitch in her eye, a slight change in the air. Alleria moved with shocking action, delivering a swift jarring punch to Sylvanas’s face. Enough to send her lurching back for a second before regaining her footing.
“You do not get to speak of her. You do not get to mourn her.”
The replacement of rage snarled over Alleria’s visage as if she were possessed. Anger burned like a living flame sparking from her eyes.
“She was my Little Moon too you know.” Sylvanas said mockingly yet unconvincingly.
Alleria seemed almost lost in mirth for a moment, a small crack of a smirk among a face of pure hatred, an expression the former undead elf often wore.
But she shook out of it, pushing back the clouds choking her mind until she was able to get a grip on herself.
“You were such an inseparable pair growing up. A deadly duo of sisters in combat, I knew you would accomplish much. But it seems my return, something I have yearned for far more years than you have lived, is to see the demise of my own remaining family name.”
“I mourned your death.” Sylvanas stated like a case.
“You did not. My sister did. I do not know where she resides within you, or if you murdered her a long time ago, but any hope of her clinging survival, is the only reason you live.”
“You underestimate my strength, sister.” Sylvanas said in a growl. “You are not the only one who has been honing their skills.”
With seething rage, Alleria in an instant had drawn and notched an arrow. All in a fluid motion like lightning, an arrow pointing to aim right between Sylvanas’s eyes. The was a physical strain to Alleria’s firing arm. It looked like she had flimsily shook her arm, but Sylvanas knew it was a strain to prevent herself from firing on instinct. Alleria regained control and the rage left her form again. How Sylvanas envied that ability.
“Be gone.” She said in such a monotone that even her elven accent fleeted for a moment.
“Farewell then, sister.” Sylvanas said turning.
Alleria’s grip tightened on her bow as she sought to damper her outrage. She did not lower her aim as it traced Sylvanas exiting the small tunnel she had snuck in through.
“Sister.” Alleria muttered, feeling the sourness of the words directed at the banshee now leading the cause she fought her whole life against.
Sylvanas paced through the worn and acid-stained tunnel, the silent clicking of her boots bounding off the walls. But her face betrayed her composure, she held a heavy frown as she stared at what her hand had instinctively gone to thumb over. The silver chains traced over her hand as she opened her grip to stare at the cursed locket that rested there. Red was it, barely glistening in the darkening illumination. Her thumb automatically moved to click it open, but she hesitated. Near rolling her eyes at the stupid sentiment of an inanimate object, she clicked it open and read the inscription.
"For my dearest sister Sylvanas, with love, Alleria".
Appearing unimpressed, Sylvanas then closed and pocketed the locket.
“Sister.” She said, letting the word cut like iron on her spirit that felt no pain.
She carried on out of the tunnel.