As she passes the stalls, she catches the eye of a merchant glancing towards her with puzzled curiosity. He soon spots the guard running after her, as do a few other traders. Phoenix is already halfway across the plaza when the guard emerges from the alley she left some ten seconds ago.
“Stop her!” he yells, the deep voice echoing across the plaza.
Phoenix suddenly comes over giddy, and slows ever so slightly to retain focus, her boots staggering across the cobbled ground. She passes a couple of patrolling guards, previously hidden by a large marquee on her right. She notices them in her peripheral vision but keeps her distorted focus dead ahead. The pair of guards look at each other and back at Phoenix. This propels her to keep up the pace, fighting against her body’s urge to stop and rest. She shakes it off and continues.
“ - her!” a screaming echo comes from the other end of the plaza. “By the Sunwell, stop that girl!”
The two guards give chase, joining the third, a few seconds ahead of him. But Phoenix has already reached the street at the end of the plaza and is now bursting with all her strength towards the Inner Elfgate. Her light, slim frame gives her an advantage over the heavily armoured guards with their long shields and double-bladed swords.
Flashes of blue, gold and white blur in front of her as she passes tall, ornate buildings either side of the street, which is paved with beautiful blue stones. There’s the odd person here and there, going for an early morning walk, their eyes bulging at Phoenix as she whizzes past, but at this hour there’s hardly anyone around.
Phoenix’s breathing is fast and erratic. She doesn’t have time to admire some of the golden statues of elven legend, including Dath’Remar Sunstrider who founded the kingdom of Quel’Thalas some 7,000 years ago. He fearlessly led his people across the seas, through harsh blizzards in the mountains and fought off savage Amani trolls to make their home here. Now his statue merely watches as an unwitting murderer flees his people.
Phoenix notices the statue and briefly wonders if she too will lead an interesting life, or if she’s destined to rot in prison for a crime she didn’t want to commit, or doesn’t even remember doing. Her head feels cloudy and she instead tries to concentrate on leaving Silvermoon City behind her.
Her body is burning with effort, crying out for her to stop, but her mind wills her to keep going. At the end of the street there’s a clearing, the buildings replaced by bushes and grass as the City ends and Eversong Forest begins. She can hear distant shouts from the guards behind her, but doesn’t hesitate as her boots move from the tap of the concrete to the silent muffle on grass.
Phoenix turns right and hesitates. The enormous Inner Elfgate dawns in front of her, defiant and bold, the only thing standing between her and freedom. Fear bubbles within her. The gate opens at sunrise every morning, around 6am, for traders and customers to bring their coin into the city, but Silvermoon is still in that transition between night and morning. The gate is closed tight. The only ones inside the city right now are those who live there or those who passed through the gate yesterday. She is trapped.
The Elfgate consists of two gargantuan wooden doors, each inlaid with gold and displaying a striking ornate pattern, which flows and curves as one when both doors are shut, as they are now. Each thick door is about 25 metres long and 20 metres tall, creating a huge 50-metre wall - a barrier to protect Silvermoon from the outside. A flicker of blue magic beams across the Elfgate, which is sandwiched by two circular stone guard towers and sheer, almost unscalable hilltops. Battlements run atop the length of the gate, connecting the twin towers, with some of Silvermoon’s finest guards and archers stationed and ready upon them. Two special gatekeepers are positioned at the centre of the battlements, responsible for any guard shift changes and most importantly, opening and closing the gate via two huge stone winches encrusted with magical runestones. The guards here speak only in Thalassian - the high elven tongue - and expect travellers to speak it too should they wish to trade in the city.
Phoenix, knowing she probably has half a minute maximum before the other guards catch up with her, runs straight towards the centre of the huge Inner Elfgate.
“Anaria shola,” shouts one of the elves down at her from atop the commanding Elfgate.
“Anar’alah belore,” Phoenix yells between breaths, her heart tearing through her chest like a drum.
A breeze catches her hair as she desperately tries to catch her breath.
“Belore, Aranal. Belore, Aranal!,” she repeats, desperately. But gets no response.
One gatekeeper says to the other, low and impossible for Phoenix to hear: “She’s eager, Andreas, it’s not daybreak yet.”
Phoenix cries up at the guards, her voice breaking and echoing across the large open space: “Anu belore dela'na!”
Back atop the high battlements, the second guard responds to the first: “Bah, it’s only a little girl, Dahneil, just ignore her…”
The gatekeeper’s words trail off as, in that very moment, the first ray of sunlight pokes above the horizon, catching Phoenix’s ginger hair and gleaming mildly off the gold pattern of the Inner Elfgate. Phoenix is spending every valuable second to take as many breaths as she can, but the shining glint from one of the guard’s helmets atop the Elfgate takes her breath away.
“Huh,” the first guard states, watching the first light of dawn break over the horizon. “Would you look at that? Guess she’s right. Well, let’s open it.”
“Al diel shala,” the second guard yells down towards Phoenix.
Hope flutters in her heart as she sprints towards the two towering doors, smiling widely.
“Al diel shala!” she shouts in return, with ecstasy and disbelief. “Al diel shala!”
The two gatekeepers atop the battlements start to turn their respective winches, and one of them shakes his head in response to the girl’s peculiar enthusiasm. They do not see the three guards emerging from the edge of the city towards the grass and the enormous gate.
Phoenix arrives at the base of the gate, pressing her hands on it as if this will somehow force it open quicker. She shuts her eyes and thinks about what may happen if she’s caught, her heavy breaths seeping into the old wood. After what seems like an eternity, but is probably only a few seconds, Phoenix feels the large door twinge as it starts to move. She looks over her shoulder and spots the three guards, shouting at the top of their voices, running towards her and waving at the guards in the battlements to close the gate.
“Tal anu'men no Quel’dorei!” one of the guards shouts up at the gatekeepers.
“Wait!” the first gatekeeper says to the other. “Andreas, what’s that?”
“Huh?” he says in surprise, both gatekeepers moving away from the winches and looking below to see the guards waving at them to close the Elfgate. They spin back towards the winches and turn them in the opposite direction fast, in a bid to close the gate. But it is too late.
Phoenix has already slithered through the narrowest of gaps between the two mammoth doors and is now sprinting down the hill into the thick shrubbery of Eversong Forest.
There is confusion as the gatekeepers atop the wall and the guards below them shout at one another, the gatekeepers trying to make sense of the situation and the archer generals in the two towers beside unable to understand what is happening fast enough. With no clear instructions given to them in the commotion, Phoenix is able to make distance between her and the gate. She has her eyes half-closed now as she runs, her heart feeling like it wants to beat its way out of her chest, her mind telling her a volley of arrows could shred her to pieces at any moment.
By the time the guards have opened fire on Phoenix, she’s at the edge of the Forest, blanketed by the leaves of a hundred trees, casting her in shadow, the shouts of the guards now a mere muffle in the wind.
Phoenix is terrified and incredibly lucky to be alive.
But she is alive. And she feels more alive than she can remember.
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