Warcraft 1. Out of the Fire

_Author's Foreword:_

_Greetings, reader. I realize anyone who opened up this work is here to read the story and not my notes on it, but with so much time having passed since I originally devised the majority of this story, I feel there are a few things I should make a note of. I also realized my previous foreword was way too long, so I'll make it short and keep it that way._

_I came up with the script for this story back before any expansions, so the world and situation presented here might be quite different from what the game shows nowadays. Looking for a map of the old version Azeroth might be a good idea to keep you on track, especially if you never had the privilege to experience it in-game._

_I personally have not touched the game since the Shattering, aka. the Pre-Cataclysm patch, because things got a little too illogical and different for me, especially with my playable race of choice (guess which one). It has therefore taken some extra effort to check up on certain lore details for the benefit of the later chapters, while making sure I don't end up mixing it with some of the downright idiotic retconning and newer story that makes no sense to me. That, and the fact that every other time I hear about what's been going on in WoW lately it makes me want to bang my head on the nearest wall for the next couple days, has been the primary cause of some of the massive delays there have been in my writing this. My apologies if you find that the last 20-25 chapters contain some hating against current WoW storyline. I've been trying hard to keep it out of there and keep to my own, honest._

_This also means that there are probably several lore details that my story has got "wrong" when all that really is is me having written/scripted my take on something before official writers did, or before they changed it from what it once was. The elves' aging might be one such thing, as I honestly don't recall anything going against my theory of "it's fantasy, a long lifespan doesn't have to equal a long youth, it doesn't have to be linear biology, especially with a people who were once blessed with immortality" back when I came up with this. Even if you disagree, you'll soon see that a fair bit of this story pretty much hangs on that logic._

_And no, the opening to this story is not a retelling of a certain even from the Cataclysm. This one was first written years earlier, it has a very different purpose and resolution, and generally has nothing to do with what you saw in-game. Speaking of the opening, it's about time to get to it._

_Feel free to criticize, I'm not easily shaken and too far to stop anymore anyway._

* * *

Some say that writing down your thoughts helps you forget. I say it's a lie. Either that, or I am some kind of _special exception_ in this matter too...by Elune I hate that phrase. If you're reading this, know that it wasn't meant to be read by anyone, not even myself after I've finished writing it. This is my last desperate attempt to try and forget, to rid myself of the nightmares that haunt me. What are my dreams about then? Fire. Always fire. The fire that made me into what I am. But that wasn't the beginning, it's just the point that connects it all. The beginning lies in my childhood, so that's where I will start. If you're still reading this, hear my tale.

I don't remember much about the first three years of my life, but I guess very few people do. My hometown was a fishing village called Auberdine. Contrary to popular belief, the only real fishermen in the town were random bypassers and travelers, not us night elves. As a child, I always liked to observe all the different people of several races moving around the pier and the inn, always some kind of business in mind. I remember I used to wonder why most of the townspeople were not at all excited to meet these strangers, and I soon found out the reason for that. It wasn't until I turned four when my parents finally told me that a great battle had taken place at Mount Hyjal only three years before I was born. They told me of the great tree, Nordrassil, and how our leaders had been forced to sacrifice it, and of the consequences of that event. Back then it seemed impossible to me that our race had once been immortal. I guess I should have considered myself lucky for not having been there to see it.

I've always loved the sea. I often spent entire days at the beach, swimming in the cool water and observing what was going on around me. Of all the people in the town, the only person I truly remember was the boy who was always sitting on top of a certain rock, fishing pole in hand. I don't know if he ever actually caught anything, I never saw him doing anything but waiting and sitting there like a statue. Even so, I always had a feeling that he was watching me.

Some months after I had turned four, I found the purpose of the large bell that was up in the lighthouse. It was the evening of yet another misty but peaceful day by the seaside. I was about to go to bed when I heard the bell. I looked out of my window to see that the townspeople were racing all around, some of them looking shocked, some were pulling on their armour to join the ranks of the town guard who were gathering up by the moonwell. One glance towards the forest froze me on the spot. There were maybe ten or twelve of them, and more poured out of the shadows. Furry, horned satyrs. Even my child's mind could understand that the guards were not ready for this. I witnessed men and women fall in battle, saw as the satyrs used their fel magics to raise mindless undead skeletons from the corpses of the slain...and then there was a bang at the door. I heard my father go to the door and yell something. Then there was a loud crash as someone broke inside, followed by a terrible scream. That was the last sound my father ever made. Mother came into my room, looking terrified. Two skeletons and a satyr followed her in, their weapons already coated in blood.

"Leave my daughter alone!", I remember her yelling.

As if talking to demons would ever do any good. What followed was not a fight, it was a slaughter. Then the demon and it's minions turned their views towards me. I was ready to faint on my bed. Then something strong clutched my arm from behind. The next thing I knew was that someone had just pulled me out of the window of my room. That someone was now dragging me along the pier, towards a boat. The townsfolk had arranged a boat to take civilians into safety, across the sea to Teldrassil. When my savior pushed me onboard, I saw his face. It was the same boy who was always fishing at the beach. Without another word, he turned around and hurried back into the night. A few moments later the ship's deck under my bare feet jerked sideways as it began its journey. I remember looking over the side as the flames appeared. One after another, the buildings that made up the silhouette of the town were engulfed in them. After a while, _fire_ was all that I could see in the horizon. Unbelievable as it may sound, I have a faint memory that I let out an animal-like roar of helpless rage, one that belonged to some wild beast and not the little girl I was. And I felt something wake up inside me. Then came tears. My face, which bore no markings or tattoos of any kind, was quickly wet with them as I sat in the corner of the ship's deck. I think it took me an hour or two to fall asleep. I dreamed of fire.

I'm not sure what woke me up, was it the warm breeze of air, the shaking of the ship as it came to a halt, or all the sounds made by the people onboard as they started to disembark. I was still half sleeping when my feet hit the ground again. At first I decided to go with the flow of people, not really knowing what I was supposed to do. We walked right through the beautiful city of Darnassus, but I wasn't looking. My body was sore and my limbs numb. There was a cleaving, empty feeling in my stomach. But those, and my clothes that had gotten quite ragged during the last twelve hours, were the least of my concerns. By the time we reached the city's gates, there were hardly anyone of the people I had followed in sight. I was alone. Exhausted, I sat against a large tree just outside the gates, by the side of the road that led out of the city. Then my sorrow and despair overcame my will to go any further.

I lingered on the edge of consciousness for two full days. At noon on the third day, I heard a clear voice speak to me.

"You don't seem to be very well, child. Allow me to help you."

I opened my eyes to see a man crouching in front of me, his face almost at the same height as mine. Even though both his skin and his long straight beard were deep blue, they didn't mix into each other. The glow in his eyes was dimmer than any other night elf I had seen and it's color reminded me of brass rather than silver. He was wearing a robe that looked very complex, but not expensive or formal. It was wooden brown, with stripes and lines of green all over it. In his left hand, he held a long wooden staff that had a tiny branch growing on one end.

At first I thought I was dreaming and decided to ignore him, but then he repeated what he had just said. I looked him in the eyes for a long time. He had the kind of tranquil air to him that even a goblin would've trusted him.

"What is your name?"

I didn't even consider lying to him, even though he was a stranger.

"Cailea", I managed to mutter.


	2. The Path Revealed

The man in front of me was quiet for a while. Even though he had already noticed my poor condition, he remained as calm as the land itself. I thought it was strange. All the adults I had known would've already started a big fuss about it, asking if I was alright, things like that. But he didn't. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

"How did you end up here, child?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't say it out loud. Instead, I glanced back towards the city. Then I turned my view to my knees again, as tears began to force their way onto my eyes again, running down my cheeks. He seemed to guess my thoughts anyway.

"Were you with the refugees from Auberdine?"

I didn't know what 'refugees' meant, but I could guess. I nodded and wiped the salty liquid off my left cheek.

"I heard what happened. A terrible thing... But didn't anyone come with you?"

I sobbed and shook my head. I started to hope that the man would just leave me alone...what could he possibly do for me? My family was gone and my home had more than likely been burnt down. Again he seemed to read my mind.

"Cailea.... You are still young and have your whole life ahead of you. Why would you want to end it here? It's not like the trees around you wouldn't mourn you."

I barely caught even half of what he said, but it was enough to get my attention. I looked up into his eyes again and he looked deep into mine. It was the first moment I could see a hint of surprise on his aged face. I thought he saw something in me that others did not.

"Then", he said and straightened up a bit, "let me help you to find your path", he continued and held out a hand for me.

I hesitated. The idea of going anywhere with a complete stranger seemed like something I shouldn't be doing. But no matter which way I thought of it, he was right. There was no other way for me to go. So I took his hand and he helped me stand up.

"Now, you look like you could use a good meal. Let's go see what we can find in the tradesmen's terrace, shall we?"

I wanted to tell him I wasn't hungry, but my ability to speak seemed to be missing. So we went back inside the city. This time, however, I actually paid some attention to my surroundings. Of course my first thought was that the city was beautiful. Especially a part of it on the other side of the middle lake, that looked like a small grove with large treehouses. I stopped to look at it. The man holding my hand stopped as he realized that I wasn't moving.

"Ah, the cenarion enclave. That's where all the druids of the city are.", he said while looking the same way as I.

We found our way into a wooden house where a white-haired night elf woman was cooking something on a stove, which was placed behind a counter. The rest of the room was full of small round tables with chairs around each one. Each table also had a lantern in the middle, but none of them were lit in the middle of the day. The smell of food that dominated the air made my stomach growl heavily, but it didn't make me feel like I could eat.

The old elf pointed me at a table near the door.

"Wait here for a moment while I get something for you, alright?"

I sat on the chair he pulled up for me and watched as he went over to the counter. He spoke with the woman behind the counter for several minutes, then returned to me with a bowl of hot vegetable soup and a spoon.

I held the spoon in my hand for quite a while, but I didn't touch the food. All the while, the old elf patiently sat on the opposite side of the table, observing me.

"You should eat before it gets cold", he finally said.

I brought myself to taste the food. It was hot, but it was also very good. Slowly I began to eat and felt more hungry after each spoonful. When the bowl was about half empty, I had to stop to avoid burning my throat. The warm food seemed to have restored my ability to speak.

"Are you a druid?", I asked in a small, shy voice.

The question had been hovering about my mind since the moment I first saw him. He gave me a friendly smile and replied:

"Perhaps your mind isn't as young as what you look like. Yes, I am a druid."

He held out his hand into an offer to shake hands.

"Dalrith Cloudsky. Pleased to meet you."

I was stunned by his sudden formality, to say the least. Still, I responded in kind.

"Cailea Evergreen", I said and shook his hand.

I couldn't come up with anything more to say, so I continued my soup. He interrupted me soon enough.

"Do you know where your family is?"

I stopped eating and looked him in the eyes for several seconds. Then I looked back at my food as my eyes became watery again.

"They are with the stars now", I mumbled while trying hard not to shed any more tears. I attacked my food with renewed determination, to try not to think about what I just said. He remained silent until I had finished eating.

"Would you like to come and live in my house then? It's a small cottage in Ashenvale forest. I'm sure you'd like it more than the orphanage in Stormwind. Besides, it would be a shame to see such potential put to waste."

At my situation, the offer was already very tempting in itself, but it did seem just a bit too easy to be right.

"Potential?"

"Yes, I saw it in your eyes."

He took a better position on his seat and said in a very deep and meaningful tone:

"Cailea...you have what is needed to become a druid. I know it probably seems very far-fetched to you, but I was young once too, and I also didn't believe it at first."

I went silent, pondered his words. I toyed with the idea of running around as a big furry bear.

"I'd be a pretty poor druid. I don't even know any spells."

The old druid let out a hearty chuckle.

"Magic is something you have to learn. Nobody knows how to use it the minute they are born. Being a druid is about knowing the nature around you and preserving it's balance. And I believe you would become a fine druid. As I said, you have great potential."

I spent a while longer thinking about it. The more I thought about it, the better it sounded.

"Would I learn to turn into an animal?"

He smiled again.

"If you want to."

"I think I could try it."

"And I'm sure you won't regret it", he said and sat up.

"Come then, we have a long trip ahead."


	3. A Place to Call Home

I had fallen asleep a few minutes after our conversation had ended. I woke up from sleep when I felt like the ground under me was shaking. Except that it wasn't ground, it was fur. I sat up and realized I was riding a gray bear in the middle of a forest I had never seen before. The animal trotted forward as if nothing happened, up until the moment I fell off onto a soft patch of grass. To my surprise, the bear immediately noticed and turned around to face me. Then something even more bizarre happened. A green glow radiated from the bear's fur. Then it's front paws looked like they started to melt away, and the rest of it's body grew tall and slim.. In a matter of seconds, the old druid was standing in front of me with that friendly smile of his.

"Ah, good morning! I see you finally woke up. I hope I didn't startle you too badly, but you fell asleep along the way and I didn't want to wake you up. Welcome to Ashenvale forest."

I rubbed my eyes and looked around in slight confusion. I had slept an entire day?

"How do you like the sights?"

I was downright amazed by the amount of wildlife around me, but I couldn't really find any words do describe it. I found the surroundings both calming and exciting.

"I hate to rush, but we should keep moving. We can reach my house by twilight. And perhaps I can tell you a little something on the way."

So we continued the journey on foot. Along the way, I found it surprisingly pleasant to walk in the wild forest barefooted. The old druid told me many things about the world and it's history that I hadn't known before, like that there was a continent called Northrend, which was ruled by some dark character called the lich king and the fact that the orcs were not originally from this world. Funny how little I knew about the world back then.

Not only was I listening to him with both of my ears, my other senses were fixed on taking in every possible bit of the surrounding woods: every last breeze of warm air, and the feeling of grass and moss slipping between my toes every now and then. I had to admit to myself, I had started to feel better again.

By the time he got to telling me about the cenarion circle and other druids in the world, I started to ask questions.

"Where are all the other druids?"

"All over the world, really. Some remain in Darnassus or Moonglade, focusing on all kinds of research. Others have been called to battlefronts, like the one in Silithus. And then there are those who choose not to follow any governing power, but instead roam the lands freely, lending their aid whenever they see fit."

"Are you one of those traveling druids?"

"No, I'm a bit too old for that. But perhaps you'll do it for me one day", he said and winked at me.

After that we spent a long while walking and talking about all kinds of things in the world.

It turned out he had been right about how long it would take us to reach our destination. What he had called his house came into sight by dusk. It was a small round cottage, just the kind of a place where a single person has just enough room to live. It took me only a few moments to realize that the whole building was actually just a massive tree stump carved hollow, with a door and a window or two. The only seemingly separate element of the building was a small chimney, which rose from the middle of the roof. To my surprise, there was also a small but colorful flowerbed next to the door, by the wall.

However, the thing I liked most about the place, was the fact that there was a small crystal-clear pond right behind the cabin.

"It might not quite live up to your expectations, but I think you'll find it - if not a place to call home - then at least a good place to live in."

I nodded at him as he opened the door and stepped inside; I was quite pleased with what I had seen so far. The inside of the cottage was essentially made up of one big room split by a wall, so that the smaller side had enough space to house a stove and a few cupboards - everything a small, one-man kitchen needed. The larger side had just five pieces of furniture: a large cupboard on the back wall, most likely where he kept his clothes, a round table with a lantern in the middle and a simple chair next to it, a cushioned, most comfortable-looking large chair in the corner of the room and finally, a large, full bookshelf on another wall. But the very first thing that I couldn't help noticing about the inside of the cottage, was the overwhelming smell of wood. Again the old druid seemed to have read my thoughts on the matter.

"Oh, don't mind the smell. You won't even notice it after a week or two."

While saying that, he dropped his sack of supplies he had been carrying on the floor under the table and went over to open another door on the far side of the room. Beyond it opened a view to a small 'backyard' by the pond. It was actually just a patch of grass that looked well-cared for, bordered, on the right by what looked like another flowerbed, but it had everything from minuscule flowers to large berrybushes and small trees growing in it, and on the left, by an impassable pile of rocks, which I realized to be a cradle where all the water of the pond was coming from.

As I went out there, the old druid waved his hand in the direction of the plantation.

"That's where I get most of my food, in case you were wondering. A lot of those things wouldn't normally grow in a place like this, but, well...let's just say that being a druid makes some things in life a lot easier", he said with a cunning smile on his face.

"I've got pretty much everything from moonberries to bananas and potatoes growing in there, feel free to try them anytime you like. Now if you'll excuse me...", he said and headed back inside, only to return a few seconds later with the bag he'd dropped earlier.

"I got these for you from Darnassus while you were sleeping", he said while pulling seemingly random pieces of clothing from the bag.

"I don't know if any of these fit, or if you even like them, but I reckoned you'd want to wear some clean clothes instead of those", he pointed at what I was wearing, and indeed, the clothes I had had on me since escaping from the demons had turned into quite some rags over the last three days.

"Also...", he said and retrieved a large brown blanket from inside the house. "...I think you'll want to sleep outside for now, so here's something to keep you warm in case we get cold weather."

He laid the blanket on the grass near the rocks and said: "Here's a pretty nice spot, I've tested it myself. Might feel a little rough at first if you are used to a fluffy bed, but that sound of water flowing from the cradle is something that really helps you sleep."

Then he put the pile of clothes on top of it and went back to the doorway.

"Now then, since it's getting late, I'll start teaching you tomorrow...if that's okay with you, of course. In the meantime, you should get some sleep and maybe you'll want to take a bath too. Feel free to use anything you can find, and in general, make yourself at home."

I glanced towards the pond and he continued to speak: "Uh, I'm sure you don't need my company for any of that though, so I'll leave you alone for now. In case you need anything else or just want to talk, feel free to come inside and wake me up."

He went silent for a moment, as if waiting for me to say something, or just trying to think of something more to say himself.

"Well then, I'll see you tomorrow."

He went inside and closed the door. There were no windows on that side of the house.

I went to sit on one of the rocks by the water and dipped my feet in the pond, absently floating them around while thinking; I knew from experience that doing so felt really good after a long walk and this time was no exception.

I don't think any of the people I'd known before would've given me privacy like this. Although I was both grateful and surprised for it, being suddenly treated more like an adult than a child made me feel a bit lonely, it somehow seemed to remind me that I really didn't have a family anymore. But I didn't cry for them anymore. All the things the old druid had told me on the way here had made me understand what a small thing the destruction of my home had really been to the flow of the world. Not as if I didn't care, but the simple fact that I was in a place like this so soon after it all happened made me realize just how lucky I was. It also brought to my mind the boy who had saved my life that night. Even if Dalrith, or "the old druid" as I preferred to call him, had saved me from a rather ironic death by starvation at the capital city's gates - I thought as I stood up and began to undress - in the end I owed it all to that blue-haired boy who got me onboard that ship in the first place.

Once I was done taking my clothes off, I dived into the water with more thoughts on my mind. But I was starting to be all to tired to make anything out of them, so I decided to try and just enjoy myself for a while. The water was cold, but my long hours of swimming in the sea had told me that no water was too cold to swim in as long as it wasn't frozen solid - in which case you obviously couldn't dive in it at all.

After about fifteen minutes, or at least that's what I estimated, I got up from the water and just laid down on the blanket, too tired to do much else. I didn't even bother to put any clothes on. If not because I didn't have the strength to look into the pile I pushed aside from the blanket, then because I thought I'd sleep this night naked, as if to make sure I'd have a fresh start to everything when I'd wake up in the morning. I did wrap the other half of the oversized blanket on and around myself though, in case the night would prove to be cold.

He had been right about the sound of water: I don't think I took even two minutes to fall asleep. On top of that, I no longer dreamed of fire like the nights before. Instead, my dreams were about an elven boy who was fishing. I was swimming around him and he watched...and smiled.

My first impression had been, that this would probably be a nice place to live in, or maybe even like the old druid had said, a place to call home.


	4. The First Lesson

When I woke up in the morning, I was surprised to find that my muscles and bones were relaxed after a good night's sleep. I had almost expected them to be aching because I had pretty much slept on the hard ground. For a few minutes I just laid there and looked at the sky...well, what was visible of it under all those big trees, anyway. I noticed smoke coming from the chimney. The old druid was probably cooking breakfast or something.

I got up and looked into the pile of clothes he had laid down for me. He had been right about one thing: a lot of the clothes were too big for me. Then again, I had been known all my life for being a little smaller in size than other girls of my age. I chose to wear a short light blue dress, almost the same color as my skin. Not because I particularly liked it, but because it was one of the few pieces of clothing in there that actually fit me and didn't make me feel like I was walking around with a sail.

The minute I entered through the door, the old druid came from the kitchen, with what looked like breakfast in his hands.

"Ah, I see you're awake. Good. We can start pretty early today. But first, I'm sure you'd like some breakfast", he said and put what he was carrying onto the table, then took a seat in the large chair in the corner of the room. I ate the breakfast, which wasn't particularly tasty, but I didn't complain. All the while, the old druid sat on his chair reading a book that had some kind of strange rune inscribed on its front cover.

"What's that?", I asked.

"Oh, this?", he asked and made a gesture at the book.

"This is the story of an orcish shaman, written by himself."

"It's written in orcish?"

"Yes. I know what you're thinking, but personally I find languages a rather interesting study. If you look at my bookshelf here, you'll find that it contains books in almost every wide spoken language of the world, except the undead's gutterspeak. From what I've heard, it's actually impossible to pronounce some of their words if you have a lower jaw", he said and seemed rather amused at the end of the sentence.

I took a glance at the backs of all the books on the shelf. I could make out that there were indeed books in many languages there, but not much else.

"I can't read", I said truthfully.

For a moment he seemed surprised, like he hadn't expected it. But the look on his face soon turned into the usual smile of his.

"Well then, we'll just have to start fixing that, don't we? But first, if you've already eaten, let me take you somewhere."

He opened the front door for me and we went outside. Then he started walking in a seemingly random direction and I followed.

For about fifteen minutes we walked through the woods and eventually stopped at a small opening. He told me to sit on a large flat rock in the middle of the grassy grove.

"Now then, this is the first thing I'm going to teach you. And it's also the most important lesson you need to know."

I looked at him, trying to seem like I was focusing on whatever he was going to say next.

"I know from experience, that this can be quite frustrating. At first, it might sound pointless or stupid. But as a druid, you really can't do much until you learn this."

He turned around and moved like he was going to give me a big time speech.

"I'm talking about listening. Not listening to me, but to the nature around you."

He turned to face me again, looking like he was just getting warmed up.

"I do not speak of the bird's chirping or the wind humming through the leaves of trees either. I mean a different kind of sound that they all make. Animals, plants, trees, even that rock you're sitting on. All druids and even some others have the skill and knowledge to listen to their surroundings in such a way."

He took a short break and changed his tone back to a less formal one.

"I want you to sit here, relax your mind and body, close your eyes, and listen."

I immediately did what he'd asked for...or at least tried. About two seconds after I'd closed my eyes, he interrupted me.

"Ah well, that's a start. But it really takes a lot more time to learn it. That's why I'm going to leave you here, so you can try it on your own for a few hours. I'm sure you'll find the way back."

He walked a few steps away and turned around.

"Besides, someone needs to prepare lunch for when you come back", he said and winked at me.

Then he walked off to the direction we came from.

I closed my eyes again and relaxed my muscles, thinking that this would probably be pretty easy. For the first fifteen minutes or so, all I could hear was what my ears told me. I tried harder, but nothing seemed to happen. I started to think that I was doing something wrong, so I sat up and walked around the rock twice. Then I sat down again, trying to make sure I was in a good position, and tried again. Nothing happened.

After almost two hours of seemingly pointless trying and trying again, I had gotten nowhere. So I stood up and headed back to the cottage.

When I entered through the door, I took my seat at the table and waited for the lunch, which the old druid was preparing in his kitchen. I just sat silently, not wanting to tell him about my failure. To my surprise, he didn't ask about it either. When he served the food and we began to eat, he simply took one look at my face and said:

"I guess you didn't hear anything yet, did you?"

"No...I didn't."

"Don't worry, Cailea. I'd have been a lot more surprised had you been successful."

I stopped eating and looked at him with doubt. I couldn't quite understand what he meant by that.

"Don't get me wrong. It took me about three weeks before I was successful. That's why it's a good idea to start early. Just keep in mind: as far as a druid's spells go, I can't teach you anything more until you learn what I've told you today."


	5. The Sound of Silence

After eating, we sat down and he began to teach me how to read and write. I think I had more success on that than the listening task he gave a earlier. Around dusk, he put the books away and made us some tea for a refreshment.

"Make yourself comfortable. I'm going to tell you something more about the world around us", he said and sat on his big chair.

Then he began to talk about the history and geography of the world again. I hadn't realized there were still so many things we hadn't talked about on our way to the cottage. When I said it to him, he smiled and replied:

"Cailea...my entire lifespan from this point onwards wouldn't be enough time to tell you everything I know. If you'd like, we can keep these story sessions every evening."

"Really? Sounds good."

"Ah, well...you should get some sleep now. There will be more studying for you to do tomorrow."

After saying good night, I went back to my spot outside and decided to take a dive in the pond again, before going to sleep.

The same daily schedule became a routine for both of us. Every day when I woke up, I'd have some breakfast and then would spend early day in the forest, trying to 'listen', as he had said. I'd come back for lunch and then he'd teach me more about reading and writing. Every evening we settled down and he told me yet another story about the world, except that they were all true. Every day I'd take a swim in the pond before going to sleep.

This continued for about a week. The next morning he had some news for me.

"As you can imagine, there are some things that even I can't produce for myself here in the woods. That's why I need to go to town every now and then. It's a fairly sizable place, not far from here. Astranaar, it's called. I think I've already told you a few things about it."

I had stopped eating my breakfast and stared at him with surprise on my face.

"The trip usually takes the whole day, I won't be back until dusk, and...", at this point, he saw the look on my face and stopped talking. Then he came closer and said in a more friendly tone:

"Don't worry, child. I think you are capable of handling yourself for one day. You can eat whatever you can find in the kitchen and the garden. Feel free to do what you like, just don't stray too far from the cottage."

Thinking back to it, I wonder why I never asked if I could go with him. Maybe I just didn't feel like meeting anyone at that point. After all, the peacefulness of the surrounding woods had been what had taken my thoughts off the nightmares of my past in the first place. I guess I kinda felt like I couldn't go there and face it...just yet.

About half an hour later he left. For a while I wondered what I should do. I considered looking through some lockers and doors that's contents I had yet to see, but the great respect I had began to hold for the old druid stopped me from doing so. I could've spent the day swimming in the pond, but there were those days when I simply wasn't in the mood for that, and this one was one of them. After a while of thinking, I decided to go to that glade in the woods and try that listening exercise again. After all, I knew the way and all...or so I thought.

When I was about halfway there, I took a little detour from the path. Just going around a few trees, I thought it would be a shortcut. Suddenly the ground under my feet couldn't carry my weight anymore and I somehow fell through. When I shook my head and focused my view again, I found myself in the bottom of a hole in the ground, about three times as deep as I was tall. Muddy chunks of the ground that had crumbled beneath me were scattered about, and my right leg was stuck under one of them. The edges of the pit were completely vertical, there was no way I could climb up even if I did manage to free my leg. Somewhat surprisingly, I hadn't broken any of my bones or anything, I was just stuck in the bottom of a pit.

Of course I panicked at first, struggling to get my leg from under the muddy pile. It didn't make me feel any better when I realized after a few minutes that my efforts were in vain. I was probably just imagining, but the edges of the hole seemed to be closing in. I thought the whole thing might cave in on me any second. Being stuck in a small space made me fear. I felt a desperate need to get out of the hole.

I found that calming myself down was extremely hard. I think it took me at least an hour to stop struggling and panicking. I told myself the old druid would eventually come looking for me. It wouldn't take him too long to figure out where I was. But I knew it would take him hours to return and realize I'm missing. And even then, it could take him days to actually find me. The fear begun to take control again, but this time I fought it. I closed my eyes and my mind from everything around me. I wanted to just sit there, senseless, until I'd be found.

I don't know how many hours I stayed that way. Eventually I had brought myself to forget about the world around me. I was wandering in the middle of an empty darkness, created by myself. Eventually, my child's curiosity grew too large. I started to explore the void I had trapped myself in. Carefully, I poked holes in it, trying to see what was outside, taking careful peeks back into the real world, but trying not to expose myself to the full extent of it.

That's when I heard it. It was like a distant song, coming from somewhere. I had to hear more. I began to lower my barriers and hear the world around me. Slowly, the sound became louder and louder, and more details of it were revealed to me. It was coming from multiple sources all around me. Those that were close, I could hear loud and clear. And those that were further away seemed to be just small pieces of a massive choir in the background. The whole thing began to visualize in my mind. A map, based on the type and volume of the sounds I heard. It was amazing. I could literally feel and hear every living thing around me.

For who knows how long, I sat there, listening. Then I picked up something that was closing in. I couldn't quite tell what it was, but I did know that it was coming straight towards me. And the power it radiated was enormous, enough to overshadow everything else.

Then a voice, a real physical one, pierced through my thoughts.

"Cailea, there you are. I was starting to get worried."

I opened my eyes and found that the old druid was standing at the edge of the pit, looking at me with concern on his face.

"I'm alright, just help me out of here."

"Okay, hold on a minute.", he yelled back and walked somewhere.

Even though I had had my eyes open for mere minutes, the walls around me already started to press onto me again. I was very relieved when he came back again. He had his staff, which he reached down towards me.

"Here, grab this."

"I'm stuck. I can't get out.", I said and patted the pile of mud that my leg was buried under. He gave it a few swift pokes with his staff and it let me loose. Then he helped me up. The second I stood on solid ground again, hugged him while calming my mind and catching my breath after the panic.

"Damn holes. Always hidden where you'd least expect them to be. Are you alright? You look like you'd seen a ghost."

I took a few more moments before replying.

"I'm fine. Just a little scared."

Once again he seemed to understand me without much further talk. When we turned to walk back towards the cottage, I spoke again.

"I heard it."

"Hmm?"

"The nature, like you said. I heard it."

He stopped and looked at me. I'll never forget the surprised look on his face.

"When I was down in that pit, I closed my eyes and calmed my mind, just like you said. And it worked."

A wide smile slowly spread on his face.

"Well done Cailea. Well done."

Needless to say, we spent the rest of the trip and our evening together discussing the details of it. Even though we were both happy for my accomplishment, I knew it hadn't come without a price. Ever since that day, I've more or less feared small spaces.


	6. Studies of the Nature

The next morning I went inside, expecting something exciting to happen. The old druid said nothing while I was eating my breakfast. He only spoke when I sat up from the table, wondering what I should do.

"Well then, time for you to go do some listening again, no?"

I was both surprised and a bit disappointed to hear that.

"But...I already know how to..."

"Yes, so now you can actually start inspecting your surroundings. Knowing how to read doesn't mean you already know what's in a book."

I turned towards the door.

"So, back to that glade it is then..."

He put his hand on my shoulder.

"That place was just where you were supposed to learn the means. If you go there, you'll find that it's actually rather boring. Not much to listen to in there."

I turned to look at him again, expecting him to tell me what to do.

"I suggest you take a walk. Just move around and listen. You'll find that there's plenty to hear."

Then he let go of me. When I was about to leave through the door, he interrupted me once more.

"Now I know, that this'll be much more interesting than sitting in that grove but...I'll still be expecting you to lunch in a few hours."

From that point onward, the daily routine continued as it was before, except that I walked around while listening to my surroundings, instead of sitting in one place. It went on for weeks, no, months. I still always stayed at the cottage when he went to town.

And eventually came the day I turned five. The first thing I thought about that morning, was that I'd been living with the old druid for almost a year. Yet, it seemed as if the attack on Auberdine had happened at least half a decade ago. So different were things.

I don't know if I ever told him about it or what, but when I went inside for breakfast, he seemed to know that it was my birthday.

"Ah, there you are. I have something for you."

From his robes, he pulled out a large green jewel, about twice the size of my fist and handed it to me. I didn't think for a second that he'd have given me a real valuable jewel.

"Thank you. What is it?", I asked as I inspected it's smooth surface.

"Well, it doesn't really know a name, but it's something that allows you to communicate with me."

"But...I can talk to you anytime I like...right?"

"Well, under normal conditions, yes. But you'll eventually go your own way and you might want to contact me from a great distance. Or I might not always be accessible, like that time when you fell down into that hole, remember?"

"You mean I can speak to you with this, even if I'm on the other side of the world?"

"To put it simple - yes."

He retrieved some breakfast from the kitchen and laid it on the table.

"That's not all, however. I must say, you seem to have progressed quite well since you came here. So I though today we'd see if we can do something more than just listen."

I think my eyes widened as I braced myself to hear what he was going to say next.

"Hmm, I see you're eager to start. But we should really eat something first.", he said and smiled, then started eating his food.

Once we were done eating, he led me outside into a seemingly random spot in the woods.

"Now, one of the more simple things a druid can do is accelerated growth."

I didn't quite understand what he said. Judging by what he said next, he could see it on my face.

"Usually it can be seen as making trees and plants grow quick, creating entangling vines and other useful tricks. Now, druids also possess the power to heal living things, I think you about that, don't you?"

I nodded. I had heard a number of stories about druids' abilities, both from my parents and him.

"Now, what most people don't realize, is that both of these are based on the same principle. When a druid heals his wounds or tends to another's injury with his powers, he is in fact, only accelerating that creature's natural regeneration. All living things do regenerate over time. Like when you get a cut on your hand, you know that it'll no longer be there a few days later, because your body constantly heals itself if it's damaged."

I was struggling to grasp everything he had said, but managed to stay on the ball. He lowered his voice a bit when he continued speaking.

"That is also the reason why the dead can't be healed by our means of magic. A dead creature's body is no longer functioning, thus there is no natural regeneration to accelerate."

He looked at me and saw the highly concentrated look on my face.

"Ah, probably enough theoretics for now. This is something you learn by doing, anyway."

As silly as it may sound, we spent the first half of the day there, with him trying to show me how to grow new branches on a small young tree. As our time was beginning to end and we prepared to leave, I felt something in my fingertips on my last try at it. I had a strong feeling I'd succeed the next day.

What we did after having lunch also changed. The old druid told me I couldn't learn much more about writing and reading just by listening to his instructions. So instead of what we had done so far, he gave me a book from his shelf to read, saying:

"My apologies for selecting for you, but I believe this would be a good one to start with, as it's relatively simply written and all in darnassian."

Even though it took me a few hours just to wade through the first four pages or so, I was instantly interested in what I was reading. From what I could tell so far, the book was written by some ancient druid who wished to share his experiences of the emerald dream by writing about them.

All in all, one thing that didn't change about our daily routine was how we spent our evenings. He always had more stories to tell and I can't recall a day when I wouldn't have taken a bath in the pond before going to sleep.

The next day proved me right; I was able to affect the tree's growth, even if not as much as what was asked for. However, instead of moving on to more difficult things, he told me to keep practicing what I had learnt so far. That continued for about a week, during which I think I made rather good progress. Then he started to tell me about herbs and other useful things that could be found in the nature.

Overally, I was living a quite fine youth at that time.

The day I turned six, he had a present for me again. It was a brown leather pouch, hanging on what was actually a leather belt, but since the belt was measured for an adult, I wore it so that it would be hanging from my shoulder. And it fit quite fine that way. He said it was meant for collecting herbs, although I found it a good way to carry around the green gemstone, which was still a bit sizable for me. Also, instead of studying more about herbs just by reading, he told me to take walks in the forest and collect what I could identify. I found it a good time to practice my other skills along the way.

I guess I could write a small eternity about those times, but it wasn't really anything more than more of those normal days filled with studying.


	7. The Beast Unleashed

One of the more important things in my life happened some months after I had turned ten. It started out as yet another normal day, and like all the days with something special to them, it came apparent at breakfast.

"Today we'll try something completely different", the old druid said. But that was all he seemed willing to say until we walked out into the woods and stopped in that same glade with the flat rock in the middle.

"Now tell me...", he said and turned to face me. "...have you ever felt like there's something inside you that isn't really you? Like another consciousness that occasionally tries to get out."

At first it seemed to me like he was joking or something, it didn't seem to make any sense that he would ask me something like that after six years. Two seconds later the answer struck me like a lightning bolt. I remembered what had happened on that boat that took me away from Auberdine. But how could the old druid know about that? After all, it had been only a momentary feeling as far as I knew.

"Yeah...once", I answered, hoping to get an explanation.

"I see..."

Then the serious look on his face melted into a smile.

"In that case, there's an excellent chance that you have the potential to assume an animal form."

Again I was stunned. I hadn't expected this.

"You mean...to transform?"

"Yes. But before you can do that, you must search yourself for that other entity. Find it, and release it. When you do, it will feel as though it's trying to take control of you. When it does, don't resist it. Surrender yourself to it and you will transform."

I pondered his instructions for a while. Then I began searching for that something I was supposed to find. It didn't take me five seconds to find it. I gave it a little poke and it woke up. Then, things started to happen.

It was an odd feeling overally. "As if it was trying to take control of my body" was quite an accurate description. I was about to relax and give in to it, when I realized something and hit the brakes. I managed to stop it.

"How do I know what I'll turn into?", I asked from the old druid.

"That...depends on the force you searched for. Some druids have many of them, and some only have one. The only way to know what forms they will take is by testing. Go ahead, I'll be right here in case something goes wrong."

This time it took me even less time to call upon that force inside me. And then I let it out.

It is very hard to describe what transforming feels like. You can literally feel your body deforming and then forming again into something else and yet, at the same time it's almost as though you were watching yourself from outside, not really being a part of the act. And the most amazing thing is, it feels like it takes several dozen seconds, although in reality, it only lasts for a second or two.

When the surge of energy the transformation caused in my body faded away, I took a few quick breaths and tried to get a feel to my new form. The first thing I realized was that I no longer had hands and feet, just four furry paws. And a tail. Second came the senses. I quickly realized that my senses had been greatly enhanced. I could smell and hear a lot more than before, and even my eyesight was improved.

After taking a quick look at myself, I came to the conclusion that I was a black-furred cat-animal of some sort.

"Ah, I see you make a fine panther", I heard the old druid say.

"I'm sure you can entertain yourself for quite a while, but I'll still be expecting you back for lunch, as usual. Use this time to learn about your new form."

I tried to answer him that I approved, but only managed to let out what sounded like a small friendly growl. I hadn't realized that I couldn't speak our language as a cat. He smiled.

"I'll take that as a yes", he said and walked back towards the cottage.

I always thought that walking on four feet must be quite hard compared to doing so with just two, but it turned out I was wrong. Or maybe I had some sort of natural talent for it. In any case, in less than ten minutes, I was dashing through the woods at a speed higher than anything I'd achieved before. My own strength and speed amazed me. By the time I returned to the cottage for lunch, I had honestly began to doubt if my natural humanoid form was any more real than this...for a moment I felt almost as if I was actually a cat by nature, not an elf. I realized I didn't know how to transform back. I had my doubts and guesses about it, but I didn't feel like experimenting with my own body, so I scratched the door until the old druid let me in.

Transforming back proved to be as simple as reversing the process by pushing away the animal aspect and hibernating it inside myself, ready to be called upon later.

That afternoon and evening we skipped our usual schedule and talked about transformations. I learned about a number of different forms that druids are known to have assumed in the past. Some of them were quite unique, such as the story of some druid who had managed to transform into a deer. Eventually we got to talking about the details of the transformation process, as I hadn't quite grasped everything yet.

"So...why do some druids have forms that others don't?"

He re-adjusted himself on his big chair and answered:

"That's actually one of the things that is still under research. What has been found out so far, however, is that each one of us possesses his or her inner totemic powers from birth and some suggest that they could be inherited from our parents, just like any other natural talent or trait. So you might say that every boy or girl who becomes a druid has had his or her possible forms defined before that person even became fully aware of his or her own existence."

It took me a while to think over what he had said and try to understand it all. As I was organizing my thoughts on the matter, gave me a book from the shelf.

"If you're so interested in this, you'll find plenty of information from this book."

I held it in my hands as if it was some kind of holy relic. He saw the look on my face.

"Ah well, I guess you can spend the rest of the evening reading that if you want. But don't forget, we'll start tomorrow morning like any other, so be sure to get enough sleep."

After I had went to my spot outside, instead of taking my usual bath, I was immersed in the book the old druid had given to me. After a while, I couldn't stop myself from doing something I hadn't done before; experimenting with my powers on my own. I transformed into a panther again. Then I went over to the pond and looked at my reflection on the water and saw something I hadn't realized before. I was just a cub. Then again, I was a child, so it seemed to make sense. Before going to sleep, I trotted circles around the backyard, just to enjoy myself.

Indeed, that was one of those days that changed my life.


	8. A Trip to Town

My early teens were a time of training and development. Naturally, my physical appearance changed a bit during those years. But in addition to the obvious natural changes that came with my age, I grew quite strong and agile. That was essentially the result of all my training.

Of course, it wasn't studying and books that was behind it. It was the fact that ever since I had achieved my first transformation, freely roaming around the woods and playfully chasing animals that would've been my prey if I was a real panther were some of my favorite things to do. I could even climb up to the top of a medium-sized tree in under ten seconds and I had never been a better swimmer.

My studies were getting ahead as well. The old druid taught me more darnassian, as well as common, so I could speak with many more people. I also learned a number of ways to use identified herbs and other plants to make some basic antidotes and remedies. Everything else we discussed seemed like just one big history lesson to make me more aware of the surrounding world.

I was sixteen when another special day came up. Like always, it started like just another normal day. But by the time I started my breakfast, the old druid told me what we would do.

"I'll have to go to town today", he said. "...but I'd like you to come with me."

Although going back to real civilization was something I knew would eventually come, I couldn't quite stomach it at first. I didn't feel any more ready for it than the day I first came to the druid's cottage. It was the first time in years when I didn't reply with approval when the old druid asked me to do something. Nor did I refuse. Instead, I played around with my food, hoping that it would somehow give me more time to decide. Like always, it didn't take him very long to figure out what was going through my mind.

"With any luck, the only people we'll meet are a few shopkeepers. It's a rather quiet season...or so they say. And besides, you'll probably want to choose what kind of new clothes we'll get for you."

Some fifteen minutes later we started our trip, but for a good part of the journey I tried to just focus my attention on my surroundings instead of what was about to come.

Astranaar was built on a small island in the middle of a large opening in the forest. I couldn't tell if it should be called a small town or not, because I had seen few settlements in my life. But it was smaller than Auberdine...well, the way I remember it, anyway. Two roads came to the town from east and west, but we didn't really use either since we came from the south.

"Ah, we're here", the old druid said after we had crossed the western bridge to the town. "Let's get something to eat first...that way we'll get to hear the news before going to buy anything."

We found our way to the town inn, where we had lunch. Then we made a short tour around the town as the old druid bought some of the things we had come for. I looked around in a state of mild confusion. Somehow I had expected that the sight of another night elf town would bring my memories back to haunt me and couldn't quite understand what was going on when nothing like that happened.

Sometime later the old druid guided me to an elf who was the local tailor and leatherworker. To me she looked a bit young to be a shopkeeper all by herself, but everything in her house hinted that she lived alone. After exchanging greetings with her, the old druid quickly turned the discussion to me.

"So, my young apprentice here is looking for something new to wear", he said and pat my shoulder. The shopkeeper looked at me and smiled.

"I'm sure I have something that fits you."

"Ah, I believe you ladies can do without me. I have some business I need to handle. I'll be back soon enough", the old druid suddenly said and turned to leave.

"And oh..." he said and turned back. "Here's some money for you", the druid continued and gave me my first gold coins. Then he left through the door.

As I realized that this was the first time in years when I was alone with someone other than the old druid, I slight feeling of panic arose in me, a small voice in the back of my head telling me to run away. But I had already grown past the age where I would follow such primal instincts so quickly, so I stood still and waited for the shopkeeper to say something.

"Well then...", the shopkeeper started as her eyes viewed me from head to toe. I wasn't sure if she was looking at me or my clothes, a plain gray dress. Just the kind of thing you wear when you don't want to stand out from the crowd, although my reason for wearing it was the simple fact that the old druid didn't have anything else that fit me. The shopkeeper walked around the counter and stopped in front of me.

"What's your name?"

"Cailea"

"Hmm. So you're studying to become a druid then?"

I nodded.

"Well, let's go see what we can do about your clothes then, shall we?"

I followed her behind the counter, into a storage room of some kind. A wide variety of different outfits were hanging from the ceiling structures and at least as many were piled up along the walls. There was everything from sturdy leather armour to what looked like a wedding dress. I stood in the middle of the room, observing the room while the shopkeeper started digging through a pile in the corner of the room.

"Say, have you specialized in any area of your studies yet? I mean, I don't know much about druids, but I hear many of them like to train themselves in a single aspect of their powers."

"Not really...but I do like transforming a lot."

"Ahh...these might just suit you then."

She pulled out a bunch of brown items from the pile she was looking through. Then she came to me and gave me what she was holding. I put the small pile on the floor and started going through them one piece at a time. There was a brown leather vest that would be just large enough to cover the upper half of my torso, a pair of very short leather pants of the same color, which by my estimate weren't long enough reach my knees and finally, a set of four patterned leather bracers, which were meant to be worn on the wrists and ankles.

"It probably looks like ordinary leather, and it's not far from it. But this one is especially soft and flexible. It even stretches quite a bit without losing much of its thickness and protection, so if you like them, you're probably still wearing them ten years from now."

I looked through the items a second time. Then the shopkeeper seemed to guess what I was thinking.

"Feel free to try them on."

Within the next minute, I changed into the armour. Contrary to what I had expected, the new outfit was quite comfortable. Even though all the pieces were skin-tight, the words 'soft' and 'flexible' that the shopkeeper had used to describe them were right on spot. On top of that, I felt more mobile and free than in any of my previous outfits. By the time we went back to the counter and the shopkeeper pointed out a mirror where I could look at myself, I had made up my mind.

The old druid came back after about fifteen minutes more. I almost expected him to be surprised about what I was wearing, but as we walked out of the store, he just gave me his usual calm smile and said:

"Looks good, but you better wear a cloak with that if you plan on going to Winterspring someday."


	9. Reaching the Limits

By the time we got back to the cottage, it was already late evening. However, I didn't feel like going to sleep yet. Something that the shopkeeper had said had began to bother me along the way back. After the old druid had stored away what he'd bought and we settled down in the cottage, he looked at me.

"Is something bothering you?"

I was always amazed at how he seemed to read my mind like that.

"Well...the lady in the tailoring shop said that most druids specialize in some are of their powers..."

"...and you're wondering if you should start thinking about it already?", he finished my sentence. I nodded.

He stayed silent for a moment. I thought he was thinking of a suitable way to answer me.

"Do you know _why_ many of us like to do that?"

"....no."

"Well, the reality is that very few druids have the potential to master all their powers. For example, I myself am not very good at transformations, and from what I've seen, you seem to be the opposite. So instead of trying to learn everything, which could even prove impossible, many druids simply train themselves to only do what they are naturally talented in."

He went silent for another moment and I looked at him expectantly. I hadn't really gotten an answer to my question yet.

"As for you...we should first find out if you have talents for some things that you haven't tried yet, such as some destructive spells. Then you can decide what to do."

"Destructive spells?"

He smiled at me.

"Restoration is just one way to preserve the balance of the world, but as it is now with all the wars and such, it's often the most effective way too. But there are times when healing won't do any good. Times when something has to be removed to preserve the balance. And of course, the ability to call down a bolt of lightning can be very useful against some more powerful foes if you know how to do it effectively. But let's discuss more about this tomorrow, shall we?"

As usual, he let me think a while about what he had said before I went to sleep, but I didn't really know what to think about it. For the first time ever, I felt like I didn't really want to learn what he was going to teach me the following day. The first thing that the words "destructive magic" brought to my mind was how those demons had destroyed my home years ago. It took me quite a while to fall asleep that night.

The next morning, after breakfast we were in the woods and the old druid started to instruct me how to gather energy from the nearby trees and plants and how to force it into something that can be thrown at enemies, it proved that my prejudice had a greater effect than I had guessed. Every time I tried to follow his instructions, I quickly lost my focus due to a shiver of fear passing through my body. It was also one of the few times I have hoped that the old druid wouldn't have been so good at reading my thoughts.

"Cailea...try to understand. While this isn't something that you absolutely must learn to be successful as a druid, I can tell you from experience that this will benefit you rather than harm."

"But..." I couldn't say the rest.

"Yes?"

"I...I guess I'm a bit afraid of what I might end up doing with such powers..."

The old druid crouched in front of me, put a hand on my shoulder and looked at my eyes. Then he let out a long sigh. It was the first time when he didn't immediately have an answer.

"I can't even imagine what you had to see that night. I know little of what happened out there. In fact, it seemed as though the government wanted to keep a lid on it altogether."

He took a short pause.

"Although there isn't a power in this world that can turn back time, there is one that can change the future into a better place. You and me. And everyone else who lives in Azeroth. As long as we are here, we will preserve the balance. As long as we remember, we will not allow history to repeat itself."

He went silent for a moment as he stood up.

"That was part of an oath I swore to the cenarion circle when I was young. I don't expect you to understand it's meaning, but I hope it can teach you something."

I stood still for a long while. I knew what he was trying to say. I shouldn't fear the past. Instead, I should take it as an example of something that I shouldn't let happen again. But even so, the task at hand seemed overwhelming and I still feared.

"Well then, do you want to try again?"

"I....", I aimed my eyes to the ground. "....no."

"As you like. Just remember, if you ever feel like trying this again, just tell me."

I didn't say anything as we headed back to the cottage. I felt weak and ashamed of myself. In fact, I'm not sure if I said a word for the rest of the day. And at the same time, a tiny voice in the back of my head was congratulating me for making a good choice.

Even our usual evening routine didn't change my mood.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of. Nobody can do everything.", the old druid said once or twice, but it didn't make me feel any better.

I didn't feel like taking a bath when I was alone by the pond again. Instead, I just sat on the rocks, dipped my feet in the water and watched as my reflection on the water was distorted with ripples. As I stared deep into the eyes that looked back at me, I caught a glimpse of what they looked like beyond the silvery glow. The golden yellow pupils seemed quite large and vertically oval, which made them look more like a cat's eyes than an elf's.

When I woke up the next morning, I had made my decision on what I would focus my training on. Instead of going straight to breakfast, I took off my clothes and dived in the pond. After splashing around a bit, I focused my mind and began searching myself for that animal force within. I recognized the panther aspect, but it wasn't what I was looking for. I had read in the book that the old druid had given about transformations, that druids who possess multiple animal forms usually have one that stands out as the most powerful one, but others can be found with careful search.

Within the next two minutes, I found another power. Waking it up was easy. Then I surrendered to it and transformed into a silvery-skinned dolphin.


	10. A Test of Skill

After taking a few moments to squeeze some water out of my green hair and dress up again, I went inside. Unsurprisingly, it was only a few moments until the old druid noticed the change in my mood and asked me about it. He seemed very interested to hear about the new transformation I had achieved.

"Well, I guess might say you're now better at shapeshifting than I am. I've only ever had one animal form. You'll probably need to study more by yourself from now on, although there is still much I can teach you as well."

The news came to me as a bit of a shock. Of course it was pleasant to hear that I was getting good at something, but I couldn't quite stomach the idea that I had actually surpassed my mentor at something. He had always seemed to me like some sort of an absolute power that I could count on. Of course I was being naive, thinking like that. The time had come for me to truly grow up, all those evening stories, that had been essentially a source of imagination for me, finally becoming reality in my mind.

Without any further conversation, it was clear to both of us that I had chosen what to focus the rest of my studies on.

As time passed, I learned more quicker and better ways to transform myself. I was getting to the point where it was so easy for me, that I could shapeshift rapidly in a fight.

One thing kept bothering me though. I never actually fought for real. Not even a practice match with the old druid. Although I was getting pretty good at what I did, I began to wonder if my confidence would hold once I face real danger.

Two more years passed as I continued to study and train myself. And around came my nineteenth birthday. I remember I was somewhat expecting the old druid to make it a special day for me, since nineteen is the age at which young night elves are considered adults. Not long after I had woken up, the day turned out to start like any other one. At breakfast, there was no mention whatsoever about my age. After that, I spent the whole day in the woods, thinking that the old druid had probably just forgotten what day it was.

When it was already getting dark and I was about to head back to the cottage, the old druid came to me. I don't know how he found me, but that wasn't the first thing in my mind. For several years, he had never come to meet me during the day, so I was a bit surprised by his arrival.

"Ah, there you are.", he said as he approached. Almost immediately, he turned around as if to walk back and continued:

"Come with me. I have something to show you."

The mysterious look on his face silenced me, so I just followed without a word.

In about half an hour, we came to a small lake. I'm not sure what it's called, but it was much larger than the little pond at the cabin and there was a small round island in the middle of it. The island was littered with different sized stone columns and structures, but most of them were broken, toppled over, or otherwise ruined. What made the scene particularly odd was the fact that there was no visible way to get to the island, save for swimming, which made the ruins on the island stand out as an oddity, rather than meld into the surroundings.

"Ah, we're here", the old druid said and stopped.

"I have put something on that island over there. You can't see it from here, but it's there."

He then turned to me.

"I would like you to go and get it."

The task seemed far too simple for such a mysterious presentation.

"I know you're a good swimmer, so let's make this a little harder. Let's assume the water is filled with some hostil creatures...say...naga, for example. Even a tiny touch to the surface of the water will cause them to pull you underwater and...well, you can guess the rest. You may use your powers, as well as anything you find around the lake, but I must be able to see you from here at all times."

As I was about to start looking around, he added:

"Oh, and please do take your time. This is a test of skill, not speed."

Then he sat on a tree stump behind him and looked at me expectantly. I started to look around for possible solutions, because I had the feeling that there was a ceratin something that this little problem was supposed to teach me. After about ten minutes, the only thing I could think of was a large tree, partially bent over the lake. With a bit of manipulation, I could've made it grow long enough to allow me to climb over the water. However, there was no telling what it was that I was supposed to bring back, and it could prove difficult to climb while carrying it...if it needed carrying at all. Still, growing the tree was the only idea I could come up with.

As I begun to focus for the task, another idea suddenly struck my mind. Yet another thing I had read about in that book the old druid had given to me. Once again I searched inside myself for those animal forces and quickly identified the ones I had unleashed before, but neither of them was what I was looking for. Then, after quite a while, I found it and called upon it. As the transformation begun, I started to shrink. My arms turned into feathery wings, and in a few moments I had morphed into a brown hawk, ready to take off to the sky.

Then I realized the flaw in my plan. Learning to fly was no easy task. The amazed look on the old druid's face when he saw me achieve a new form started to turn into an amused smile as I hopped and flapped around, trying to get a hang of how to use my wings properly. It took me about half an hour for me to get confident enough to try and cross the water by air. I was successful, but I knew I'd still need to practice flying quite a bit more if I wanted to fly any longer distances.

After making an unbalanced and rather rough landing on the island, I started to look around for whatever I was supposed to find. The only thing that didn't seem like it had been there for several years was a long wooden stick stuck on the ground in the middle of the island. It didn't seem special in any way, but it certainly was the only thing that had been brought there recently.

As I returned to the old druid and transformed back, holding the stick in my right hand like a staff, he greeted me with a smile.

"You did even better than I expected. I had no idea you could just fly over there."

"Neither did I", I replied truthfully. "What is this?"

"That's your birthday present. And don't give me that look, it's not any random stick I picked up, even if it looks like one."

"Then...", I started and looked at the staff.

"Well, technically it IS just a wooden stick, but...this one has special qualities. With your powers, you can manipulate it, as if it was an actual living tree. Additionally, what you choose to grow from it is not limited by any standard species. In other words you could, for instance, make one end of it bloom a rose while having a branch of oak grown from the other one."

I was just standing still, amazed.

"I think you'll find it quite useful someday. But right now, I think it might be a good idea to return to my house and get another night's sleep, don't you think?"

It took me a while to fall asleep that night. I was all too eager to try out what I could do with the staff. And to learn more about flying.


	11. A Shocking Start

As more time passed, it started to become apparent that the old druid didn't have a whole lot to teach me anymore. I spent most of my days just wandering the forest around the cottage, always staying close enough to be back by dinnertime. A few times I had tried to feed myself in the woods, but being a lousy cook and not too fond of hunting animals, I usually ended up eating raw fruit, some mushrooms and whatever edible plants I happened to find, so a lot of the time, going back for a warm meal seemed like a good idea. At some point, I realized I could grow different food using my staff, but even though it gave much more variety, I was still limited to raw vegetables and fruit.

Our evening sessions had turned from storytelling to sitting around and reading books. I had read the book on shapeshifting thru and thru more than once and several others as well.

So, on one random evening, about five months after I had turned twenty, I had a question for the old druid.

"I've been thinking...what would you say if I left for a while?"

"To see the world a bit, I presume?", he asked back without raising his eyes from the book he was reading.

"Yeah...I feel like there's much more for me to learn, but it's something I'd need to go looking for, not just read about it from a book."

"Go right ahead. I don't have any reason to try and stop you."

Then he finally put away the book and looked at me.

"But if I may say so, you should remain here for the night and leave tomorrow morning. Even if traveling in the dark is hardly a nuisance for you, a good night's sleep will serve you well."

I was always a bit amazed by the sheer amount of different ways he had for expressing such parental things.

I must say, I hadn't expected him to take it so calmly. Or more like, I didn't know what to expect in the first place. Before I could come up with anything to say, he walked around the wall to the kitchen, leaving me to sit at the table. After a few minutes, he came back with two mugs of something hot and placed one in front of me on the table, then took a seat on the opposite side, just as if we were settling down for a meal.

He took a sip of his drink and then asked in a casual tone:

"So, where are you planning to go?"

I didn't think it was his intention, but the question had made me feel stupid. I hadn't thought about where I'd go.

"Umm...would you recommend anything?"

He went silent for a moment and took another sip before answering.

"Now that you mention it, there might be a place...would you mind if I accompanied you for a while?", he asked while I was tasting the drink. He obviously had something on his mind, so I let him continue without interruption.

"When I was in town last week, I overheard a conversation about some new discovery up in northern Felwood. You probably aren't too fond of setting foot in those corrupted lands, but in all honesty, you'd have to face it sooner or later, so it might be a good idea if you weren't there alone."

I rolled my mug around in my hands as I listened to him.

"And if we're going that way, I could also introduce you to some people in Moonglade, if you're interested. You'd probably find plenty of things to learn there."

As I though about his suggestion, I realized that the whole situation was more or less just like fifteen years ago in Darnassus, when he had bought me a meal. Here we were, sitting on opposite sides of a small round table, discussing my future. Thinking of it that way made me feel a bit selfish and I thought at first, that I should politely refuse and just go my own way without dragging him along, but like always before, his suggestion was the logical and sensible one, with no easy way to make it look bad for myself. Besides, it had been his suggestion in the first place, so I guess 'dragging him along' would've been the wrong way to think about it anyway.

"Alright", I finally replied. "Let's go together then."

The next morning I took my time in the pond. After all, there was no telling how long it would be until I'd get to bathe again. The morning was more quiet than usual, a determined silence between the two of us as we prepared to leave. Even when he shut the door behind us and we began our journey, neither of us said a word. And then we set off.

After about half an hour or so, I transformed into a panther to move faster, but the old druid just continued his stable and slow speed. When I went back to his side and aimed a questioning look at his face, he smiled.

"I'm sorry Cailea, but I can't keep up to you if you do that. My old bones and joints aren't what they used to be."

For a moment I thought of dashing around a bit, just to make things more fun for myself. Then again, that would just have been a waste of energy, which I might need in case we ran into anything hostile, so I transformed back and we continued on foot.

Around midday we arrived at Astranaar, from where we would continue north. We decided to stop by to get one more proper meal before setting off for a fairly long trip in the wilderness. As we were having our lunch, a sudden interruption occured. A young elven woman around my age came staggering through the tavern door, looking like she was going to faint any moment.

"Help...heeelp....", she managed to gasp before falling flat on the floor and stopping there.

People from inside as well as outside quickly gathered around her. Some man grasped her wrist and held it for a moment, then let go of it and put a hand on her forehead.

"She's dead!", he soon said, looking pretty scared.

The deathly silence of the room was quickly broken by the arrival of three of the town guards.

"What goes on in h-", the guard stopped talking as she saw the body.

Not long after that, more guards showed up and started asking questions from anyone in sight.

"Looks like we may get delayed a little", the old druid told me under his voice.

"Mm-hm. I wonder what happened..."

Then one of the guards, who had been inspecting the body stood up and asked in a loud voice:

"Do we have any druid here?"

Instead of responding anything, the old druid gave me a nudge in the back.

"Go on, I'm sure they won't ask for anything too complex", he whispered.

A little shyly, I stepped up.

"I am."

"You?", the guard said, looking a little doubtful. "All right girl, come over here."

I complied and crouched beside him and the body.

"I think she's been poisoned, but I'd like you to confirm it. Can you do that?"


	12. Mystery and Fear

[I]"I think she's been poisoned, but I'd like you to confirm it. Can you do that?"[/I]

I gave the old druid a quick look and he responded with a subtle nod.

"I can try."

"Whenever you're ready", the guard responded.

I set my hands on the dead elf's chest and concentrated with my eyes closed. Poison was one of those things I'd read about in the old druid's books, but had never practiced in reality.

It was the first time I 'listened' with a dead person in the vicinity. To my surprise, her body wasn't quite as dead as it seemed on the outside, but along with a few other major organs, her heart had stopped functioning, so she was beyond my help. Finding the poison was simple enough, to my senses it appeared as a separate organism, an intruder in the elf's body and it had caused her heart to stop.

I had seen enough, so I opened my eyes again.

"Well?", the guard asked.

"You were right. She was poisoned."

About ten minutes later, yet another guard showed up.

"I'm sorry sir, but it seems whoever was responsible for this has successfully escaped the town."

The guard kneeling over the body stood up.

"Hmph, too bad. Did anyone catch a view of them?"

"I did, sir. But the culprit was already far away, the only thing I'm sure of is that it was humanoid."

"Hmm, Seems like an assassin's work to me. Which way did he go?"

"I saw him heading east."

"Alright, I'll go send a message to Forest Song, maybe they'll catch 'em. The rest of you, find out who she is and clear up this mess."

With that, he turned to walk towards the door.

I stared at the dead woman's face, slightly troubled. Her clothes were common, with no obvious signs of affiliation or anything else to give away a public identity. It didn't seem to make any sense that a random person had been assassinated in broad daylight and nobody saw it.

About half an hour later, after being questioned by the guards more than once, we got to continue our journey north. The old druid seemed to be lost in thought. After a while, he seemed to finally notice the questioning looks I'd been giving him.

"I can guess what you're thinking, but no, I don't know who she was. I'm more worried about how it all happened in the first place."

For the first time ever I felt like he wasn't telling me everything, but over the years I had also learnt to read his expressions, and the one he had on his face at that moment was enough to signal me that asking questions wouldn't do me any good. At least not yet.

Several hours later, when the sun was already setting, the old druid began to speak again.

"Ah, we might actually make it to the sanctuary tonight", he said.

"The sanctuary?"

"Yes. It's a place where our fellow druids in Felwood operate from."

The idea of getting to see more of my kind was exciting, but also a little unsettling, as I didn't really know what to expect, despite all the old druid's lectures on the subject. Again he knew what I was thinking.

"They are usually pretty friendly, and I can handle the talking if you want. I'd be more worried about the environment we're about to step in, if I were you. Corruption is never a pleasant thing to see or hear. Especially so for a druid's senses."

"Why is that? Wouldn't it just be more quiet than a healthy forest?"

He gazed forward for a few seconds, looking like he knew what he was going to say, but didn't quite know how to put it.

"Well, yes....and no. It's not quite that simple."

He looked at me again and smiled.

"See, this is why I wanted to come along. To teach you what I can about the forces that oppose us. You've probably realized by now, that there are a lot of things you can't truly grasp until you see them yourself."

We walked on for some half a dozen steps before he continued.

"Corruption could be defined as a form of possession. It's like a parasite that clings onto an object or organism and attempts to bend that target's will and energy to it's own ill-willed purposes. Although it doesn't actually have a will of it's own, it often originates from such a source. You might say that what we call corruption, is actually just a method employed by demons and the like to manipulate or leech their surroundings. In other words, all corrupted lifeforms are still very much alive and do make a sound we can listen to. However, that's where it gets rather unpleasant."

"What do you mean?"

"While I don't want to intimidate you, I'd describe entering corrupted lands as a bit like walking into a graveyard where the souls of the dead beg bypassers for help, if you can imagine what that is like."

That silenced me for a good while. In fact, I had to fight off an urge to turn around on my feet and walk back and the whole trip began to seem like it had been a bad idea. And the fact that the old druid had never been so straightforward decisive about something negative certainly didn't help me to shake off my growing fear.

On the other hand, it had also started to feel like a test of courage for me, something I'd have to accomplish to prove my worth, if not to anyone else, at least to myself.

Soon enough, our surroundings began to look dimmer and gloomy, the harmony of sounds from the still healthy forest fading behind us. Just as I had managed to calm myself after what the old druid had said, another shiver of fear passed through me as we entered Felwood.


	13. Mythos Earthpaw

It started out as weak, distant humms and sighs. The further we traveled into the corrupted forest, the more omnipresent the darkness was. The old druid's analogy of a graveyard started to become more and more accurate with every step. The sounds were pretty much what he had described: desperate cries of help from all the creatures and plants that yearned to get rid of their curse. And then there was the smell. As if all the psychic abominations weren't enough, that horrid smell of chaos and corruption added a whole new level to it. Before then, I hadn't even come to think of why would someone, unable to sense what druids do, be so depressed in this place, but now I knew. In short, the death and corruption was forcing itself in through all your senses at once, and as you might guess, I had a hard time handling it as a first-timer.

We had been walking in felwood for barely fifteen minutes when I first felt like I just had to sit down and rest. The old druid stopped to wait, but didn't say anything at first, almost as though he had been expecting this to happen. Only after a minute or two had passed since we had stopped did he speak.

"I know what it feels like for the first time. But now you know what to expect of it, so you'll learn to handle it over time."

I stood up again

"Let's get underway then. The Sanctuary is a much more pleasant place to spend the night in", he continued with that cunning smile on his face again.

It was times like these when I wondered how he could take some things so seemingly lightly and found myself half hoping that something very serious would happen, so I'd get to see his reaction.

Someone once said that time slows down for those who count it. I don't know if that's true, but at that particular moment it sure felt like it. I couldn't tell how long it took us, but an obscure amount of time later the Sanctuary came into sight. It was quite a bit more than I'd have expected a felwood outpost to be. One large wooden building standing on a hill, right next to a steep cliff that was too wide to see all at once. A large, healthy area of grass and small plants surrounded the building, which in that environment, made the whole thing look like it had some sort of a glowing aura around it to repel the corruption. Two glowing lanterns decorated and illuminated the entrance to the porch and a large oak tree - the only healthy tree in sight - was growing next to it.

A strong-looking, aged tauren stood next to the tree with his eyes closed, looking like he was discussing with it somehow. He was wearing what looked like some kind of a thick robe made of leather and leaves, as well as a feathered headdress. I had read about tauren and I could instantly tell that he was a druid like us, but the tension I felt for seeing one of his kind for the first time didn't go away until the old druid gave him a most friendly greeting.

"Mythos! How are you?"

The tauren slowly opened his eyes and turned his head towards us. As soon as I was able to see his face entirely, he didn't seem as intimidating as he had before.

"Dalrith Cloudsky! I had almost lost hope of seeing you again since I was assigned here. So, what did it take to make you leave your favourite little house [i]this[/i] time?"

"So much for trying to convince you that I'm here just to see all the old folks again, eh? Mythos, meet Cailea Evergreen, my apprentice. Cailea, this is Mythos Earthpaw. We go back a while."

I had no idea what 'a while' meant here, since in this case it could be anything from a few decades to a thousand years. Since I was the younger person here, I thought I'd give him a quick bow and greeting, but to my surprise, the tauren was the first to do so.

"Always good to see more young druids join our ranks. As you can surely tell from the surrounding woods, the battle against corruption is far from over, even years after the war."

The old druid started another discussion as we headed towards the Sanctuary's entrance.

"So, you said you were assigned here?"

"Yes. Unlike you, I don't enjoy long hours spent with dusty tomes and books that much. I was almost eager to leave Moonglade."

"Always the adventurer. How are things looking around here then?"

"Oh, quite well actually. Might not seem like it when you look around, but over the past ten years or so, we've taken some major steps towards curing this land. What we've realized is that the nature of this corruption is slightly different from what we first assumed it to be."

The old druid raised an eyebrow at him as we entered the building. The wooden door squeaked as the tauren pushed it open.

The inside of the building was one large room with a second floor and spiral stairs leading up to it. In the back of the room was a strong-looking wooden door, much different from the one we had just entered through. Whatever was hidden behind it was to be kept safe, I could tell. To my surprise, I also found that the three of us were the only people inside, unless there was someone able to hide their presence from my senses.

The tauren had us sit at a table while he served a hot drink in mugs. It was some sort of tea, but not the same the old druid had often made for me.

"It all started when we made a most interesting discovery almost fifteen years ago", the tauren continued the discussion.

"At that point our scouts were able to accurately determine where the highest amounts of the legion's remnants were based here in Felwood. Eventually it was decided that a strikeforce would be sent to tear down the largest known bastion of demonic forces here, a large underground cave network known as Shadow Hold."

The tauren took a sip of his drink before continuing.

"The attack was mostly a success. Most of the demons and their masters were wiped out and a number of our missing scouts were found as prisoners and liberated. In addition, two fist-sized stones were recovered. At first, they were going to be discarded and destroyed as dangerous demonic artifacts, but then someone came up with the idea that they should be taken to Moonglade for research."

At this point, all three of us took a good long sip.

"Anyhow, about a year ago we received word from researchers in Moonglade that the stone that was taken to them was some sort of a magical device, that, with the right person controlling it, could be used to spread corruption and empower fel magic. Maybe more. With this information, we now knew that the corruption present here is not just an aftermath of the war. It's being upheld by these devices. Who knows how many of them could be hidden all around Felwood."

"You speak of yourself and other people. Where is everyone else then?" I asked out of the need to say something.

"Ah, I was just getting to see, with the information we had, we could convince Thunder Bluff or the Sentinels to provide reinforcements for an extensive searching of these devices. Our first messenger was sent to the sentinels' general who is stationed in Feralas. Due to the tension between the wider governments of your races, however, we dared not to request help from Thunder Bluff before we knew if any sentinels would arrive. While having both faction's soldiers on the task together would've of course been good for diplomacy, but too risky. To our slight surprise, we received message that the sentinels could not spare any troops for what we proposed. Two weeks ago, however, we got a positive response from Thunder Bluff."

The tauren got up to clean the table after us.

"You two picked an interesting time to arrive, as the reinforcements from Thunder Bluff should be here tomorrow morning if everything goes well and the first assault on a nearby demon den is scheduled almost immediately after that."

Both of us could guess what he was getting at.

"It could be an interesting experience for you to participate also, young Cailea. I'm sure Dalrith and I can keep you safe enough."

I could do nothing but sit still, my expression as unmoving as the large oak outside. Of course the tauren had no idea what he had just suggested that I'd do, he didn't know my story. I had been given the choice to confront demons. Demons. For a moment there, the inside of the Sanctuary didn't feel any less disturbing than the dark forest outside.


	14. Head on

After a silent moment, the old druid understood my thoughts and started an unimportant discussion with Mythos to give me time to think of my answer without having to reveal any discomforting facts about my past. A few more minutes spent sitting at the table while the druids were busy exchanging their recent experiences did nothing to help me figure out what to say. A blunt 'no' just seemed like it would be a little rude since I had only just met Mythos and I had no idea how he would react if I told him my tale. In the back of my mind I had this uncomfortable feeling that something evil would happen if I revealed my origins to too many people. And the worst part of it was having no idea why I felt that way.

Finally I decided to buy myself more time to think.

"I'm really tired. Mind if I think about it overnight?"

It took a few seconds for the tauren to shift his thoughts from his intense discussion with the old druid to what he had suggested earlier. Then he smiled with understanding.

"Not at all, young one. You'll find some comfortable beds upstairs. Sleep well."

As I went up the short spiral staircase I heard how the druids began their conversation again.

The second floor was much like the first one: one large room with many beds and several closets along the walls, decorated with three or four lamps emitting a dim, gloomy glow across the room.

Even as I laid down on one of the beds and let my muscles relax, I could hear how the druids downstairs went on and on with their conversation and I began to wonder if they were going to sleep at all tonight.

The combination of their monotonous voices and Mythos' question still fresh on my mind kept me awake for what must have been hours. And the fact that I had pretty much slept the last fifteen years outdoors, making the fluffy bed under me a bit of something new and strange didn't help.

I woke up when I heard footsteps. Heavy ones. And there were a whole lot of them. As I headed down the stairs I realized that Mythos' reinforcements had arrived. The old druid was drinking something at the table again while Mythos had stepped up to meet the arrivals. Three tauren wearing heavy armor and large axes were standing at the door and more stood outside. Leading the bunch was a night elf who clearly wasn't a druid. She was wearing, despite being made of metal, a set or armor that didn't look all so heavy or protective. Her turquoise hair was on a tight ponytail, two light axes were hanging on her hips and a sturdy looking longbow was crossed with a leather quiver on her back.

Judging by what was being said, any formal greetings had already been given.

"So you already briefed them on your way here then?", Mythos asked the woman.

"Yes. And we're well rested too since we took our last break less than an hour ago."

"In that case, we might as well go right now. Uh, Dalrith?"

"Yes?"

"Would you mind waking up your young...ah, there you are!", he said when he finally noticed me from all his enthusiasm.

"Good morning", I replied.

"I take it you still haven't made up your mind, have you?"

Before he could say any more, the old druid stepped up.

"Mythos, could you give us a moment please?"

"Surely you aren't planning to stay behind too, are you?"

"That's what I need to talk to her about. Would you mind?"

"Not at all. I'll go outside with the men and tell them to wait a few minutes in case you change your mind."

With that, him and the rest of the crowd left through the door.

I sat at the table where the old druid was seated. Once again, we were discussing the future over a round wooden table. To my slight surprise, the old druid didn't say anything until after a while.

"So, have you decided or not?"

This was the kind of thing that he could usually tell just by looking at me. It felt almost awkward to give him a verbal answer.

"No."

He took another sip of his drink before saying any more, as if expecting me to continue.

"I believe I understand when you're thinking of this. The choice is yours to make, but let me tell you something. Over the years, I've learned that some fears must be conquered before it's too late."

I could only remain silent while he emptied his cup.

"Besides, I have no idea how old or new Mythos' information is. For all we know, that place might have been abandoned already."

As he said that, he stood up and headed for the door, then turned around to look at me.

My thoughts were in chaos at that moment. Staying behind all alone didn't seem like a much better option now. If only just to expel the feeling of uncertainty, I got up and followed him outside.

"Ah, there you are", said Mythos as my eyes met his. "Shall we?"

The elf who had showed up that morning threw an ominous look at me as the band of about ten tauren warriors began to move behind her and Mythos, with me and the old druid following at the back.


	15. Inspection Interruption

I learned that "nearby" was a very relative term. That's how Mythos had described our target's location when we left from the Sanctuary. Yet, we had not reached our destination within an hour, nor two. On top of that, despite what one might think, the presence of all the others did nothing to help silence the sounds of the suffering forest. As a matter of fact, the presence of the tauren warriors only raised my alertness, not just towards them, but the surrounding environment as well. The best I could do to fight it was to stare at my own feet, making sure they were moving in the same direction as the old druid's, who was walking beside me. Even if focusing my vision at something did little to hamper my hearing, at least I could tell myself I was trying to do something about it.

Some time later the party finally stopped walking and I looked past the line of tauren in front of me to see our target. It looked like little more than an insignificant dirt mound on the ground, except that on this side of it there was a doorway, supported by a weak-looking wooden frame.

While the others pulled out torches and lit them, I stared at the dark cave we were about to enter. Somehow I hadn't expected an underground cave, despite Mythos' story last night. That's when he came to us.

"All right, it seems that the cave splits into two paths right up here, so we'll split up as well."

Hearing that stirred me up even further, but the tauren seemed to guess what I was thinking, much like the old druid always did.

"Don't worry about it, though. The three of us and the lady over there are going to stay together regardless of how many times it branches off to ensure safety.", he said while he pointed out the elf carrying the longbow.

When we finally entered the cave, I barely saw around myself anymore. Not because it was dark, since the old druid carried a torch, but because I had to use close to all of my concentration to avoid panicking. The rest I used to squeeze my staff for an additional feeling of safety. What I could make out, was that the path did split up enough times to leave just the four of us together.

Other than the remains of old burnt-out torches hung on the walls here and there, the caves looked like nothing more than an empty dirt tunnel to me.

Eventually we came into a larger underground cavern with a smooth floor made of large green stones and some fairly solid-looking walls, making it look more like a built room. The only thing that gave off the fact that the room was underground were the large stalagmites hanging from the ceiling.

The armored elf walked around the room to light up four braziers in the corners with her torch. As more light spread into the room, more details became visible and I began to feel a little better again, because somehow the size and man-made feel of the room made me forget that we were deep underground.

A muddy mixture of soil and drops of water coming down from the ceiling and filled the gaps between the green floor tiles.

A stone pedestal stood in the middle of the damp room. Whatever item had once rested on it was long gone, but it was the first clear sign that the place had been more than the result of somebody's curiosity of the underground. Mythos seemed to be much more interested in it than the rest of us, as he quickly proceeded to touch and closely examine it.

"How disappointing. One of those stones has definitely been here, the pedestal is similar to the one I saw last time, but it's been taken", the tauren quickly determined.

"Well, the place looks empty all around, so I'm guessing whoever was here didn't forget to take their things with them when they decided to move", the elf with the bow said.

"Still, I have to wonder why such a well-hidden place has been abandoned. Even all our scouts took a good while to find it."

"Perhaps your scouts weren't quite as discreet as you'd like them to be. Staying in place after you see the enemy sneaking around nearby is rarely a good idea", the elf responded in a rather disrespectful tone.

"There might be other reasons why -"

Then the elf's eyes suddenly focused on something on the other side of the pedestal, where she was standing, and I could see a hint of fear in them

"Get back!", she yelled and tackled Mythos away from the pedestal.

That's when I heard this weird mechanical click from it, followed by an ear-shattering blast bright enough to blind me for a second.

When the dust settled, there were stone shards, everywhere, pieces of the now disappeared pedestal. Mythos got up from the floor, looking a bit stunned and the old druid quickly ran over to the middle of the room. There, the elf who'd taken the brunt of the explosion's force, laid on the floor with several bleeding wounds and a stone shard sticking from her shoulder.

Then I saw something, someone from the corner of my eye. It was like the silhouette of a person turning around in the doorway and heading away. Mythos seemed to notice as well.

"Someone snuck up on us!", he exclaimed at the old druid.

"Then take Cailea with you and go!"

Then he looked at the wounded elf.

"I have to stay here, she needs healing. I will meet you at the sanctuary later. Go!"

Mythos gave me a quick look before sprinting back into the tunnel, me following in his wake.

Somewhere ahead I heard Mythos shouting: "Ambush! Warriors alert!"

The sudden events had raised my alertness and actually let me act without experiencing my claustrophobia as we ran up through the tunnels. Every now and then I would see the same flickering shadow-like shape disappear beyond the next turn. It was no shadow, though. It was like a nearly transparent glass statue of a person running away somewhere ahead of us.

I saw two tauren warriors with their axes raised approach the fleeing silhouette from a side tunnel, but then I heard another click and an ensnaring net was hurled - or fired - from the assailants arm, effectively blocking the passage.

When I was about halfway through the tunnels and still on the attacker's trail, I realized Mythos had fallen behind. I guess I was quite a bit faster than these older druids.

Then I saw the door that lead outside. My intuition told me that if the enemy got there, they could escape with ease, so I quickly turned into my panther form made a leap for it, hoping I'd be able to knock him down with me. In mid-air I knew I was going to reach him, but then something happened again. A shimmering arc of electricity originating from him hit me squarely in the chest. Pain surged through me and my muscles were paralyzed, causing me to crash on the ground uncontrollably. I managed to catch sight of the mysterious attacker making his escape outside while trying to manage the pain and slow down my heart that felt like it had gone totally crazy from the electric shock.

Then I heard footsteps approaching from behind. It was Mythos.

"Cailea! What happened? Are you injured?", he immediately asked when he saw me laying on the floor, shaking my head to try and clear it.

"I was shocked with something", I answered and looked out the door and saw nobody out there. "Looks like he got away."

"Never mind that, safety first. How are you feeling?"

"A little sore", I responded truthfully as I got up. "I'll be fine."

"Can you walk back to the sanctuary?"

"Yeah, but...shouldn't we wait for -?"

"Dalrith will be fine. But we need to go back right now, because I have a feeling I may know what's behind this plot, and we won't be able to stop it here."


	16. Suspicions and Stories

We were both somewhat exhausted from the chase and I still felt a little sore when we left off for the sanctuary.

"You said you had a hunch about this?"

"Well, more like logical reasoning, really. Someone must have known we were coming since they waited in ambush."

"So the elf who was injured was right?"

"Maybe. Sorelei tends to be a bit distrusting of everyone, but when the alternative explanation is that the information was a set-up from the start, a trap laid for me by someone nearby, I'd like to think she was right and the scouts just got sloppy."

"Uh...why would someone go to all that trouble to get to you? I thought you were just someone assigned to watch over the sanctuary."

"My thoughts exactly, Cailea. Which is why I've come to the conclusion that their target is not me, but something within the sanctuary. And to get to it, they needed a plan to lure me and the warriors away from there."

At that point, I started to get a little confused about it all.

"So what do you think they're after, then?"

"Remember that braced door inside the place? It's a safe of sorts. Inside is the other demonic stone that was brought from Shadow Hold."

"So...it's unguarded now? Why were you watching it alone in the first place?"

"Now that's an interesting question to answer. You see, when the stones were found, our first intention was to destroy them, as I told you earlier. So when one of the other druids came up with the idea to study them instead, he was lucky to have his suggestion approved at all. When he did, though, some of the higher members of the circle weren't too excited about the items and considered them low priority. Thus, they ordered the sanctuary to be watched by me alone, as the other druids were called to the larger cleansing operation up north."

"And now it turns out they're of more value to the enemy than you thought?"

"So it would seem. Or rather, of more value than the others thought, I might say. I always saw something rather sinister about them. What boggles me, though, is why the enemy would take a risk and follow us with the obvious intention of trying to kill someone."

"Demons are like that. They just destroy things for no reason", I said without thinking, out of old hatred, and quickly realized what it must sound like to him considering my position as the newcomer. Indeed he gave me this odd look and then fell into thought, probably pondering his question with more more criticism than I had shown.

Soon enough we arrived at the sanctuary. The journey back didn't take as long as the opposite had, since it was just the two of us and no marching order to follow.

Of course, we went inside right away.

The outer gate was still locked. As we entered, we saw that the braced door seemed untouched. The relief could almost be heard in the tauren's voice.

"Interesting. It seems nobody has even made an attempt to get in here. This mystery seems to get deeper by the minute."

In my mind, I was still half writing it all off to irrational bloodthirsty demons, but something was out of place, giving me this sinister feeling that I couldn't shake for the rest of the evening.

After he had spent a couple of minutes to check around, Mythos came to me as I was sitting at the table, trying to make some sense out of the day's events.

"I suppose the best we can do right now is wait for Dalrith and the others to return so we can put together all that we learned today. But in the meantime, I'm quite hungry after that little adventure. How about you?"

"Sure, why not", I responded absent-mindedly. What he said had shifted my thoughts back to the old druid. I was worried about him, and upon realizing that, I thought to myself: 'so, this way around for a change' and smiled at myself for a moment.

Mythos soon returned to the room carrying a large wooden tray containing a dozen slices of bread and various smaller treats to go with them.

After we had sat down to eat, it was silent for a while. I came to think of how long it had been since I had had a proper meal without the old druid sitting on the other side of the table, and my worry deepened.

"Why are you so worried about him?", the tauren eventually asked me.

"I don't know...it's just..."

"Well, if it eases your mind at all, I'm absolutely certain that he will be fine. We've known each other for longer than either of us can remember and been through things much worse."

"And those warriors are there too", I added, as if to save him the trouble of saying it, as well as to solidify my own will.

"Exactly. In fact, I'd be more worried about the two of us staying here if he doesn't come back soon. Proper treating of such injuries takes it's time, though."

Another silence fell, until he broke it again one and a half bread slices later.

"So, Dalrith told me last night that you're quite the shapeshifting talent. That's always been his weak spot, so I don't suppose you've satisfied your curiosity with his help."

"Well, we're actually on our way to Moonglade. He told me that I could learn a lot there. And I guess I wanted to get away from that cozy little cabin of his for a change, too."

Mythos chuckled.

"Yes, he's always been a bit of a hermit, keeping things to himself and leading a quiet life in some backwater nobody ever heard of. I must admit, seeing him arrive with someone else, especially a student was quite the surprise."

Hearing him speak that way felt quite odd. I had never questioned the old druid's motives of taking me into his house since that time in Darnassus when he had told me I had potential.

"Let's see...", the tauren continued. "I'll tell you how Dalrith and I met if you share your story of him with me. I'm very curious to hear how he ended up with you."

At first I was a little surprised to find that the old druid apparently had not told him about it. Or maybe he just wanted to hear my perception. I stopped to think for a moment. I didn't want to tell him any details of my childhood nightmare, even if he knew about it. It wasn't something I was ready to talk about with an essentially stranger. At the same time, I felt a deeper desire to find someone other than the old druid that I could trust and share it with, but decided to follow my first instinct that time.


	17. Something I Believe in

"I...was homeless. He found me in a fairly bad condition and offered me a meal. Then he said he wanted to teach me the ways of the druids."

"I see..."

He fell into his thoughts for a little while, looking like my short explanation had been a lot more informative to him than I would've expected. My guess was that he did indeed know something else about it, too. Then he looked back at me, as if expecting to hear more.

"From there on, it was really just staying at his cabin, listening to his words, and when I was older, reading his books."

The mention of the old druid's simple lifestyle made him smile again.

"I think I can imagine the rest without demanding to hear it from you. I'm sure it's nothing like one of those exciting campfire tales that go around the world. Come to think of it, there's a particular tale about a druid who was a master of the shapeshifting arts and It's always been one of my favorites. Would you like to hear it?"

"Sounds good, maybe it'll be one that the old druid didn't tell me when I was little."

"Well, it's more of a fairytale and legend than something to take seriously, so he probably didn't. Of course there are some who claim it to be true, but I've always thought of it as something to scare younglings away from trying to experiment with certain things. But here's how the story goes."

He leaned back on his chair to take a more comfortable position.

"Sometime in the past, it's not known precisely for there are very few details in this to give away the time in which it takes place, there lived an elven druid who developed, as I said, into a master of the shapeshifting arts. Probably an exxageration, but they say he was known to have two dozen different animal forms, all with their own subtle - or dramatic - differences. They also say that it was not uncommon for him to live more as a beast than the elf he had been born as. He would roam the woods, hunting prey just like whichever predator's form he had assumed that time and some say that he often helped travelers, who were under attack by bandits or somesuch, without ever giving away to them that he was actually a druid and not just an animal who had decided to be friendly."

He took a sip of his drink.

"Then there were those who claimed that the druid had trouble controlling his feral nature, that he would act like a vicious beast in any situation, even on the rare occasion when he wasn't transformed. It is said that those same people, who apparently knew him, were so worried about his mental health that they devised a plan to 'cure' him, force him to make himself sane again. They found a young female elf who was willing to help with their plan, because she wanted it herself...or so they say. The plan was to have this girl attract...or as some prefer to say, downright seduce the druid to fall for her. One way or another, the plan worked. With her around, the druid had to restrain his feral instincts, and when the two of them eventually got married, his worried friends thought their work was done and everyone could live happily ever after.

For a while it seemed so, but then things changed. The druid was so fascinated and obsessed with nature's beasts that he wanted to share his knowledge of them with his wife. Being a disciplined warrior, she knew next to nothing of druids and their affinity with nature and he felt that telling stories and talking of it was not letting his wife experience the wondrous things he had, which he wanted to share with his beloved.

So then came the day when he got this crazy idea. He only thought it would work because he was so good at his arts, but no other druid that I know of has ever tried something similar before, and there are no records of something like that ever having worked, either. You see, he thought that the only way to show his world to his wife was to let her be in it, too. Thus, he used his powers to try and infuse his wife with one of the animals within him.

It's not known whether that worked or not, and how exactly they managed it if it did work. Much better known are the events that took place afterwards, as the only explanation to them seemed to be in the druid's attempt to transform his wife.

As I said before, the time of the story is unknown, but some form of a war had begun some years later, and the wife was called to fight at the frontier, being a skilled and dependable warrior. Worried about her, the druid decided to socialize more in village events and such to sink his worries into something. Then, one night at a festival, he suddenly collapsed in the middle of everyone. They found him to be dead. No wounds, no sound, no toxins, no seizure of any kind, and he wasn't suffering from any disease either. It was as if his heart had simply stopped, or so they say.

Four days later, a messenger arrived from the frontier, saying he had an important message to the late druid. Turns out that the wife had fallen in battle, stabbed through the heart at some nightly ambush, four days ago."

He drank the rest of whatever he had in his cup.

"But of course, it's just a tale. I personally don't think it's true."

I was going to ask him something about the story, but I never got the chance to, nor do I remember what it was due to what happened next.

The two lanterns that were illuminating outside suddenly went dark, as if something had put them out like two little candles. Mythos stood up a lot quicker than I thought someone of his physical size would be capable of.

Then I felt something. Fear, uncertaincy and some of my horrible memories began creeping into my mind as the few candles and oil lamps giving light inside began to flicker and fade without any physical cause. Then there were footsteps. They approached, then stopped. After that, I heard some weird noises from the front door.

"Oh no..." Mythos said with a hint of fear in his usually firm and almost cheerful voice. "That is not Dalrith."

He turned to me with a steel-solid look in his eyes.

"Cailea. Listen very carefully. I want you to go upstairs and hide. No matter what happens, do not come down. If you hear someone other than me coming, find the small hatch in the back. It is a secret passage that takes you outside through the cliff behind the building.

The flame of the last candle inside faded into shadows. I was reluctant to do what he had asked me to. No matter how experienced he was, leaving him to face the source of such a powerful dark presence all alone did not seem right.

"Dalrith will never forgive me if I let something happen to you! Go!", he said in a much louder, almost angry voice. I obeyed and headed for the stairs. As soon as my foot landed on the last step at the top, I heard an all too familiar mechanical click from the door.

It felt like the whole building shook a little from the force of the explosion, but Mythos stood firmly in place in the middle of the room, holding his wooden staff in a defensive stance. I ducked on the floor upstairs and peeked over the edge of the staircase to see what was going on below. A cloud of smoke and sawdust covered the doorway for a good five seconds after the explosion, and splinters of the destroyed door were all over the room, some of them burning with a small flame or just smoking.

Then two people entered through the doorway. The one in the front was wearing black robes with blood-red ornaments decorating the sleeves and lining the hood that shrouded his face in darkness, only a faint poison-green glow emitting from underneath. He had broad shoulders like an orc, but the skeletal hands peeking from the sleeves of the dark robes belonged to someone who had already died once. Strapped to his waist he had a longsword with a jewel-decorated handle and a blade glowing with magical flames. On his back he carried a long metal staff with a glowing red crystal at it's tip. Two black orbs of some kind, also emitting a red glow, circled around the crystal at a steady pace. The dark aura was eminating from him.

Following him was another one in robes, except his were dark blue with golden decorations. Long greasy black hair framed his pale, dead face, on which he was wearing a pair of glowing green goggles that hid his true eyes. Strapped onto both of his arms were various little mechanical gadgets. One looked like a loaded miniature crossbow, another one had some sort of a metal part on it that was constantly rotating on it's own, and various other incomprehensible devices. All around his belt, except the front, he had various different explosives, or that's what they looked like to me, anyway. I recognized his stature immediately. Our invisible attacker.

"So, you tree-huggers still intend to try and stop me?", the warlock in the black robes said in an unnatural, hollow voice.

"I don't know who you are, but if you want the orb, you'll have to get through me first", Mythos said in a threatening voice. Tauren can be very intimidating when they want to.

"As you wish. It is always a pleasure to add another soul to my little collection. But first, tell me, do you even know what it is you're about to die for?"

"Something I believe in", the tauren responded without a hint of hesitation.

I watched in a state of paralyzing terror as the inevitable fight begun. Mythos quickly turned into a large brown bear and lept towards the warlock, roaring furiously. Some kind of a shadowy forcefield appeared around the warlock, flickering as Mythos' attack hit it. At the same time, the undead engineer disappeared in a flash of light, only to instantly reappear on the other side of the room, behind the druid. He hurled some kind of a blob of frozen energy that hit Mythos in the back, causing him to flinch at the sudden cold and slowing him down considerably. Flames burst from the warlock's hands and hit Mythos' face, forcing him to take a few slow steps back and turn himself back into a tauren. He immediately began channeling some kind of healing magic on himself, but was interrupted by a flaming blast from the mage that knocked him against the nearest wall.

The warlock then used some kind of shadow magic to form a visible flow of energy between himself and the tauren, but the energy was flowing away from Mythos and into the warlock's form. Slowly the tauren tried to get up again and mount resistance, but then the mage approached him with a freezing wind emitting from his extended arms, causing small icicles to form on Mythos' hairy chin and small blocks of ice to chain his feet on the floor. All the while, the warlock was leeching away his energy.

I stared in horror as the tauren soon collapsed on the floor and both of the attackers stopped casting their magic.

"Pathetic", the warlock insulted his fallen opponent.

It did not take long for the mage to rig another one of his explosives on the braced door and blow it open just as easily as before. From inside, he picked up a small black orb and gave it to the warlock. It looked exactly like the two orbs spinning around his staff.

"Excellent. At least this went well despite your failure to eliminate him and the others earlier."

"Which would not have happened if not for that druid girl who was supposed to have been killed in Astranaar two days ago", the mage complained.

That's when it struck me. The woman who had died in Astranaar did look a bit like me, but hardly enough to warrant such a mistake.

"Hmm, indeed. I shall have to find out the reason for that miserable failure and why it was reported a success. After all, I still need to acquire the last orb."

The mage suddenly grasped the side of his goggles and stared at the wall next to the destroyed front door, as if he was looking straight through it.

"Uh-oh. Looks like the cavalry is almost here."

"Then we shall take our leave."

With that, they headed out through the door. The mage stopped in the doorway for a moment and grasped his goggles again. He glanced at the ceiling and for a moment I thought he'd see me. Then he turned away, shrugging his head slightly and disappeared into the night with his companion.

I laid on the upper storey floor for what felt like several minutes. I was in a shock, too terrified and confused to move. In my head I could see the hairy demon and it's minions rushing into my room to kill my mother.

Then the old druid appeared in the doorway.

"No...!"

He quickly ran over to Mythos and kneeled beside him, but before checking on him, he started to look around in an almost panicked state.

"Cailea? Cailea!!"

Only then did I awaken from my trance a little and hurried downstairs, almost tripping over in the staircase. As soon as he saw that I was uninjured, he lowered his view to look at the tauren's face and gently put his hand on the druid's chest.

"What have they done to you, friend?", he asked in a quiet, desperate voice.

Then he raised his view and looked me in the eyes. An unspoken question and a million different emotions reflected in his eyes, a single tear rolled down his cheek.

"I....he...", I stuttered.

_'Dalrith will never forgive me if I let something happen to you!'_, Mythos' words echoed in my mind.


	18. Standing up to the World

Everyone has those moments when they feel like they should be saying something, but the words just don't come to mind. And if they do, you start to doubt whether you should speak them after all. I had never seen the old druid shed a single tear before. Seeing his ever-smiling face and patient attitude turn into that sorrowful look removed my last doubts of how cruel the world can be when it wants to, and made it feel that much less safer.

The tear seemed to have vanished from his face when he spoke to me again a good full minute later.

"Cailea...what happened here?"

"He...we heard them coming and...he...he told me to hide", I managed to say while still in a shock.

I guess that's when he first truly realized the state I was in, as he got up, walked over to me and gave me a long hug and a pat in the back. As my chin rest on his shoulder, the tension in my body was released and water rushed into my eyes.

"It was the undead who attacked us in the cave...and someone else...a w-"

"Shhh.... Calm down, child. We can speak more tomorrow. The beds upstairs weren't taken too, were they?"

"N-no", I answered to his slightly amusing question and smiled a little as he let go and stepped back. I quickly blinked a few times to expel the tears from my eyes and caught one that was escaping on my cheek with my hand.

"I'm so glad you're alright", he said with a bit of a smile on his face. "Why don't you go rest a bit while I do some cleaning and then you can tell me more about what happened, hmm?"

"Okay", I said in a quite relieved voice.

As I headed for the stairs again, I thought to myself how amazing it was that the old druid kept encouraging me even at a time like this, no matter what he must've been feeling himself.

Unsurprisingly, I was laying awake for hours that night. Everything Mythos and his murderers had said to each other kept repeating itself over and over in my head. I thought of it equally many times, looked at it from different angles, analyzed it, started counting how many moments there would've been where my presence in the room would've made a difference.

I kept telling myself that together we could've driven them off, kept repeating to myself that this would not have happened had I not obeyed him and hidden myself instead of helping. Eventually I got angry at myself for being a coward, like a scared little girl all over again. Sure, it was only my first few days in the real world since fifteen years ago, but letting the world already get the best of me was not the way to go, not the way to learn or achieve anything.

That night, I swore to myself I wouldn't run anymore. From there on, I would fight my own battles instead of watching someone else get killed before my eyes.

At some point, several hours later, I managed to exhaust my mind with my intense thinking and fell asleep.

The dreamworld wasn't about to let me rest that night, either. I saw a very weird, and in all it's mysteriousness, rather scary dream about what looked like the Auberdine of fifteen years ago, right after the attack. The buildings of the town were in flames, but there was no sight of the demons nor any corpses or other remains of the attack. I was being dragged - no, I realized - I was dragging someone towards the refugee ship that was still docked at the pier. That someone turned out to be the same blue-haired elven boy who had in reality saved my life, but in my dreams, the reverse was happening: I pushed him onboard the ship. Then it started to get very creepy. The boy struggled against my pushing arms, as if he was trying to run away from something that would surely end his life. No words came out, but his mouth clearly formed the words: _'No! Stop! Please, help me!'_

Then I watched as the boat slowly sailed away into the darkness of The Veiled Sea, with the boy reaching out to me over the side for as long as I could see him. Next, I turned around and walked towards the burning town. I saw my house, I saw the moonwell. I saw the tower with the bell, split in half, the bell itself lying somewhere in the bottom of the sea where the upper part had collapsed into. Then I arrived at the other end of the small town, directly away from the sea, where the forest was. I walked to where the first trees were growing, until I could no longer feel the heat of the fire against my back. Then I saw a small red glow approach from the darkness in front of me. As it came closer, the black hooded robes with blood-red linings revealed the warlock's form, the red crystal on his staff glowing bright red, except there were four orbs circling it instead of two. About ten paces in front of me he stopped. Ten furry satyrs appeared from the shadows of the forest and formed a row behind him like soldiers behind their commander. Of course they all looked the same to me, but in this dream of mine, I just knew they were the same demons who had raided the town.

I was suddenly holding the warlock's flaming longsword.

"Have you come seeking vengeance with the power of the blade, little druid?", he asked in his unnatural, hollow voice.

As if in response, for reasons incomprehensible to my conscious mind, I raised the sword to a position where it was ready for a powerful swing.

"Come then, let us see to it that only one of us walks away alive, this time", he said.

I charged towards him and swung.

I woke up to an echo of my own screaming voice. I was covered in sweat and my heart was beating as if it was trying to escape out of my chest. I sat up on the bed and buried my face in my hands to calm down for a moment. After a minute or two, when my heart had stopped it's mad rush, I got up and went downstairs, trying to forget my dream as I went, for I had a feeling an important conversation was about to take place and I'd need to pay my full attention to it.

The old druid was sitting at the table, which quite surprisingly was still intact after last night, considering it was smack in the middle of the room, and he had a cup of what I guessed to be tea in his hand. He was giving an empty stare at the back of the room where the braced door had been, sipping his drink every now and then without blinking. He clearly hadn't slept at all.

As I sat at the table and had myself a cup of the tea as well, I saw the morning sun through the window, or what little of it was ever actually visible in Felwood. The patch of healed ground around the sanctuary seemed a little smaller and the tree out there a little less lively. Unlike before, it gave me a creepy feeling that we were in a prison of silence, made to keep the sounds of the suffering forest somewhere beyond where the grass didn't grow, and us within it.

There were no splinters and shrapnel around the room anymore, but dust and other smaller remains of the fight were still scattered in the corners. The tauren was nowhere to be seen.

It took a good five minutes till he began speaking, although even then he did it without moving his eyes at all.

"There's something I need to ask of you", he said. The fact that he was asking something else than how I was feeling, for once, caught me by surprise. At the same time, it felt like the last straw that shattered my image of him as a beacon of light who could detach me and himself from the cold hard reality.

"Hmmh?", I mumbled in response, still not really finding any words to say.

"Would you travel to Moonglade for me?", he asked and finally his eyes started moving again as he looked at me.

"Look", he continued, "they need to know what's happened here, and I'm going to have to stay here for now, to take care of some... things. Besides, you travel a lot faster than me."

I looked down into my cup. It half felt like, after further examination of the scene, he had decided to blame what happened to his friend on me, and was now sending me away. Those thoughts quickly faded away when he continued.

"That's where you were headed in the first place, no? I just decided to drag my old bones along to slow you down and then got you involved in something you shouldn't have to have experienced yet. I feel I owe you an apology."

"And I feel I should be saying that. You weren't the one hiding like a scared child when..."

"He told you to, didn't he?"

"Uh-huh."

"Then I'm quite certain he saved your life by doing that. He was no fool, and didn't take you lightly, either. So if he told you to hide, odds are he already knew how the night would end."

A moment of silence took place.

"You said you saw the attackers?"

I described them to him as well as I could and told him what they had said, but it didn't seem to mean much to him.

"Where did the others go?", I asked upon suddenly realizing that none of the tauren warriors, nor the elf called Sorelei were in sight.

"I told the warriors to return to Thunder Bluff and report that nothing was found from the cave, apart from it turning out to be a trap. As for that mercenary Mythos had hired to lead the squad? She said she only agreed to join because she happened to be on her way south to meet someone, but was already running late. She took off as soon as she could stand up."

I took another pause to think about what he had asked. At first I didn't feel like going alone out into the corrupted forest, but then I remembered what I had told myself that night. It was time to show the world that I wouldn't back out so easily.

"Alright, I'll go. But will you be fine alone back here?"

That's when he smiled again, and seeing it warmed me up quite a bit as well.

"Definitely. If what you heard them saying about the orbs was true, then those two should have no reason to return. And I plan to return home in a week or so, anyway."

I got up and started checking that I had all my equipment, my herb bag, my staff, and the green gem he had given me a long time ago. I wanted to get underway while I still had the determination to leave.

"Just one thing, Cailea", he started while I was fastening the somewhat loose belt the herb bag was hung on around my waist.

"Hmm?"

"If that last orb they're after is indeed in Moonglade as Mythos told us, _they_ might be headed that way too. And while I don't have the heart to tell you to hide again in case you see them, at least make sure you're not alone if you run into them, alright?"

"Don't worry, I'll come back. I promise."

"Don't rush it. There's a world out there for you to see. Once my message is delivered, I suggest you take your time experiencing new things. I assure you, it's a lot more exciting than my bookshelf."

That made me smile.

"Okay then. I won't come back 'till I've been to Khaz Modan and back", I said from the door.

He chuckled.

"That's my girl! Have a good trip."

I had no response to that. Holding a solid grip of my staff, I walked out of the door and headed north, into the gloomy shadows of Felwood.


	19. Heading North

Being able to travel on four feet, at my own pace made a big difference in keeping my sanity amongst the sounds of the corrupted forest. For once, my physical activity felt completely natural to me and let me adapt a relaxed state, rather than being burdened with following someone else in their speed and movements, which in turn made the silencing of the sounds take much less effort.

As I trotted along the main road heading north through Felwood, the only thing that really had my attention and kept me alert and looking around was the thought of that warlock and his mage friend showing up from somewhere. I also started to finally feel fully calm again after last night's horrors and had been thinking over a particular bit the two of them had said earlier. That I was supposed to have died back in Astranaar. Up until then I had assumed the mage had been behind that too, with the aid of his cloaking device, but the way he had said it made it very clear that someone else had done it, and he was blaming them for the failure. Besides, the whole idea of an undead assassinating someone in the middle of a fairly large enemy town just didn't seem plausible, invisibility tools or not.

And the most intimidating and mind-boggling thing about it all was that I had been their target, when by the time it happened, we had set off from the old druid's house barely three hours ago. If they knew where that is, then surely they would have tried much earlier, during the night or something. And if they didn't know it's location, then the idea that they already wanted me dead only a few hours later made no sense at all.

Then again, the entire idea of someone wanting to kill me at all was quite ridiculous. I mean, pretty much the only people who even knew I existed were some shopkeepers in Astranaar that we had visited every now and then, and of course, the old druid. I wanted to think they were actually after someone else, but the fact that the mage had clearly seen me chasing him in that cave and then commented on it when they had attacked seemed to indisputably confirm that I was their target.

In the end, it all seemed to lead to only one possible conclusion, which I rather would have stayed away from at all costs: it had to do with something that had taken place before I ever went to live at the old druid's cabin for fifteen years. Auberdine.

I had been out of my long-term place of study and rest for two and a half days, and someone, or something from my past had already caught up with me? As if that thought in itself didn't already sound absurd enough, I had always thought that the demons' attack had been an event of random chance, a band of crazed monsters who just happened to be nearby. Even if it wasn't, what possible cause would one or more of the attackers still have to come for me after fifteen years? And why would any of them remember me in particular?

Not wanting to go deeper into that, I quickened my pace to a slow run to shift my focus from my mind to my body.

In Felwood, it becomes a little difficult to tell exactly what the time is, as you can barely see the sun at all, let alone judge it's position on the horizon. And even it's rising in the morning and setting down in the evening makes little difference to the shadowy ground level of the corrupted forest. I wondered what the forest had been like before the third war. Had it received the name Felwood for being so badly infected, or had it always been called that for some incomprehensible reason?

It was one of the many things the old druid had not told me when I was young, possibly because he didn't know either. Thinking of other such details that I would never have paid attention to if I weren't seeing them myself, it started to feel like the idea of exploring the world was indeed a good one, even if I had left the sanctuary feeling rather differently due to the events that took place there. But now, when it was already evening, or at least I thought it was, and I had made good progress towards Moonglade, I started to wonder where I could find a safe spot for some rest, maybe even a night's sleep if I should have to keep going for a while longer before I could stop.

As I was thinking of that, the answer attacked me head on. Literally.

A large brown bear rushed out of one of the roadside bushes. I hadn't been paying attention to my life-sensing abilities, so the beast caught me by surprise. Fortunately, it's attack was easy to dodge with my agility.

What I noticed as soon as I got a good look at the bear's face was that it wasn't one of the diseased beasts of felwood. In fact, judging by it's fur color it wasn't native to Kalimdor at all. As if to confirm my suspicions, I head a gunshot from the direction the bear had attacked from. I could hear the shot landing on the ground less than a foot away from me. Then my animal senses caught a sound of someone running towards me, then stopping. The mysterious attacker had taken position behind a nearby tree and was no doubt preparing to shoot again. I quickly dashed several meters onward to both leave behind the bear and place myself on the opposite side of the tree the attacker was hiding behind. While the bear was still trying to catch me, I took the moment of silence to move right next to the tree. Then I made my charge for it.

As soon as I had circled around the tree enough to get a straight line to the target, I made a leap for it. However, I hadn't expected them to be someone as short as a dwarf, and the jumping attack that was supposed to knock him down ended with me landing on his other side. While I turned around to face him, he took the time to take aim at me with his rifle. Upon realizing that he was indeed a dwarf, I decided to show him who I really was and transformed myself back into a night elf before he had the chance to land a fatal shot between my eyes. The bear arrived at his side as he blinked his eyes, looking like he was trying to make sure they weren't deceiving him.

"You ain't no good for dinner, you're a bloody elf!"

The dwarf was pointing at me with a relatively simple-looking gun that he held with both hands. He was wearing what looked like metallic armor at first glance, but a closer look revealed the metal to be merely bracings and platings on a leather suit. His long beard was a combination of bright brown and red, almost making it look as orange as carrots. On his back he carried a large battle axe that looked way too big for him to handle.

I was a little confused by the situation. He lowered his gun.

"Me apologies fer tryin' to shoot ye up lass, but Furball here seemed to have his nose set on somethin' tasty", he said and pat his bear on the head.

"Well I have to admit I've never been shot at by a stranger before. Nor have I been called 'tasty' before."

The dwarf chuckled.

"And I've never met a druid I'd mistake fer a beast before. Ye must have quite a talent for becomin' one, no? Thoraim's me name. Who might you be?"

"I'm Cailea. I'm heading north."

Before I could continue and ask him if he was coming from that direction and whether he had seen anything unusual, he interrupted me.

"Really? I'm headed north too. But it's gettin' kinda late an' I've got me dinner roastin' at me camp, a couple hundred meters off the main road. As my apology fer shootin' at ye, I'm invitin' you to join me there. What do ya say?."

"Will you be staying there for the night? I could use a little rest."

"That's the idea. Come on then, follow me lass."

I never bothered to ask him what dinner he was going to hunt me for if he already had some at his camp. Instead, I followed him and couldn't stop looking at the axe he had on his back. It was hanging so low it might get stuck on some rock he'd step over. And yet, it's highest point was a bit above his head already. That, and his general demeanor made him seem like a friendly, relaxed and rather amusing person, so I decided to trust him.

Thoraim's camp comprised of a small white tent and a campfire with something that looked like a chicken roasting above the flame on a stick.

"Ah, it's just right", he said as he inspected the cooked bird and lifted it off the wooden rig. Then he tore off a limb and started eating it.

I sat down on the other side of the fire, not really feeling like digging in to his meaty meal. It's not like I had a problem eating meat, just that the old druid had almost never had any, so it had been a long while since the last time I'd had some.

After making quick work of the limb he was holding, the dwarf noticed my reluctancy.

"Go ahead lass, there's plenty fer both o' us. 'Sides, you don't wanna keep me feelin' like I still owe you for that shootin' do ye?"

His cooking was pretty good, even if he had spiced it with some rather strong beverage. After a while of sitting and eating, I realised I'd have to ask some things from him before I'd feel comfortable sleeping in his camp.

"So, what brings a dwarf all the way here from Ironforge?"

"I'm doin' a favor fer an old friend of mine. Met up with 'em a couple days ago. He said he was busy with somethin' and was gonna need my help soon. Took off before I could ask any details an' told me to meet 'em up north, in Moonglade."

"Uh, not really any of my business, but he sure seems rather cryptic. Why did he leave without you if he needs your help?"

"I know it kinda sounds like he's havin' me chasin' him around like a headless chicken, but I know him, an' I know he's got his reasons fer actin' the way he does. Where're ya headed then?"

"I'm going to Moonglade too. Druid business. Not much else to say about it."

"Ha! Looks like you've got a way of bein' rather mysterious too. Don't worry about it though, I know when I'm sticking me nose in things that don't belong ta me. Maybe we can go together then? Ya could meet that friend o' mine, too."

"Actually I like traveling alone, but since it's not long till Moonglade, we might as well stick together until then, I guess."

"Sounds good to me. But now it's time to get some sleep."

He looked at his tiny dwarf-sized tent.

"Uh, I think yer gonna have to sleep under the sky tonight. That fine with ye?"

I had to hold back a laugh.

"Sure, it's nothing new for me."

I had no cloak or somesuch item to use as a wind cover, so I decided to sleep as a panther instead. Having fur does help a lot with warmth. Me transforming got Furball growling quietly a bit again, but only until it fell asleep, blocking the way to Thoraim's tent and snoring like a small earthquake.


	20. A Dream Come True

I woke up to a rather odd sensation, as if someone was gently poking my fur with a soft object. When I opened my eyes, I realized it was Furball sniffing me, as if to see if I'd taste good. I wanted to lay still for a while more, so I let out a menacing growl, hopefully scaring off the curious bear, or at least have his master call him off. Out of those two, the latter happened, since my growling only provoked the bear to respond in kind and reveal it's teeth to me at first.

"Now look at what you did, ya brainless fleabag", Thoraim scolded his pet when he saw I had woken up to it.

"Sorry 'bout that Cailea. Dunno what's gotten inta him, he doesn't usually act like this."

I got up to my four paws to scratch an itch around my neck, then turned back into an elf to speak with the dwarf of our plans for the day.

"Morning. Any idea how long I was asleep?"

"Uh, not sure. You were lookin' pretty tired, so I figured I'd let you sleep while I pack up the camp, but then Furball apparently got hungry an' woke ya up."

"Makes sense, I didn't really get much sleep the night before. And don't worry about me waking up, it's pretty late for that as it is", I said as I remembered my nightmare from the night before and saw that the sun was already up, somewhere above the shady treetops of the forest.

"Well then, ya ready to move already or should we sit 'round fer a little while?", he asked while picking up his axe and securing his bags.

I looked around to see that he had already packed his tent and the fire was only a pile of charcoal.

"Might as well start moving."

The fact that I was feeling quite refreshed told me one thing: I had gotten so used to sleeping outside at the old druid's hut that I actually slept better that way than in the bedroom of the sanctuary, or any other place for that matter.

As we started moving, I first thought that I'd need to slow down a good bit again because of Thoraim, but when I tested it by making way as a panther, the dwarf kept up surprisingly well and I was able to reach a comfortable traveling speed without having him fall behind. Of course I had heard of various well-known hunters and their ability to move quite fast from the old druid's stories, but I hadn't quite expected the claims to be so literally true.

After a few hours the northern cliffs of Felwood came into sight, and I began to wonder how we'd get past them into our destination.

I also remembered Mythos having said something about a cleansing operation in northern Felwood, but saw no signs of such a thing. It must have been somewhere off the road, but since I was taking the old druid's message to Moonglade, I didn't have time to stop explore too much, especially when I wasn't traveling alone anymore Besides, if I really wanted to see it, I could always come back after completing my current task.

Or so I thought, anyway.

One more hour later we reached them and I saw what looked like a tunnel through them. I was reluctant to go underground, thanks to my phobia of small spaces, and luckily for me, Thoraim stopped before we entered and said:

"We don't wanna go in there lass. These creatures called furbolgs are livin' in there, and even if you could sneak or talk your way past 'em, they won't be so kind to me. I've...gotten inta a lil' trouble with them before."

I looked at him, expecting him to come up with a different solution. He did.

"I know an alternate route inta Moonglade, but it's gonna take some climbin'. Ye up fer that?"

I nodded in approval.

"Alrighty then, follow me."

He led us to what looked like a very rough and difficult path up the cliffside. Then he started climbing it quite easily for someone with his physique. I thought of following him by leaping from ledge to ledge, but then got a better idea. I turned myself into a hawk again and flew up along the path. Somehere along the way I heard Thoraim laughing at me as I passed him. I landed on a smoother, flat path at the top of the ascent. It was a bit like a small canyon of some sort, with rock walls rising on both sides. After a few minutes the dwarf arrived at the top where I was already standing in my normal form.

"Heh, I shoulda known you'd have some trick fer avoidin' the hard part. Hafta wonder how you're gonna keep yer shape when you grow older."

"You'd be surprised to find how taxing flying can be on your strength, then."

"Bah! Like I'd believe that. Feathers don't weigh nuthin', even kids know that in where I come from."

"I'm telling you, there's more to it than just waving your wings like crazy."

We continued along the high cliff path while debating over the various aspects of flying.

After a while, the path started going downhill again and a wondrous view like a dream come true opened up ahead. Down below, at the end of the descending path was a vast valley that's borders extended somewhere beyond my sight. A large, sparkling, clear-watered lake that almost seemed to be glowing with reflections and light after the shadows of felwood covered most of the ground I could see from where we stood, and a lush forest of healthy trees extended to the west, further than I could see. On the far side of the lake I could barely make out the shape of some wooden buildings.

As we headed towards the glade I started to hear the tune of a healthy forest again, much like that of Ashenvale. Except this one seemed to be in complete harmony, like the whole place was playing one beautiful melody without a single mis-tuned voice in the choir. A true sanctuary of peace and tranquility.

We eventually arrived in the glade itself and I finally let go of the mental tension and protection I had been holding onto throughout felwood, significantly improving my mood and letting me focus on detailed perception and all kinds of small things again, like how good the grass felt under my bare feet after the hard cliff path and the scarred ground of Felwood. That's when I came to think of how long it had been since I had last had a bath. I decided to stop when we reached the lakeside.

"What are ya stoppin for? The town is still a little further", Thoraim asked while I was dipping my toes in the water to feel how warm or cold it was.

"Well, this looks like a fairly quiet spot, and I'd really wanna take a quick swim. How about you go on ahead and I'll catch up in a few?"

"Aight, but don't be too long. Don't wanna keep that friend o' mine waiting, if ye still wanna meet 'em."

"Don't worry about it."

After he had turned around and walked away a good distance, I dropped my clothes by a tree right next to the water and went for a swim that really topped off the feeling of refreshment I had had running through me the instant we had entered the glade. Half the time as an elf, half the time as a dolphin, I swam around and let my thoughts wander off for a moment, reaching a state that was almost like sleeping awake. I thought it was the best moment I'd ever experience.

I was wrong. It would take quite some time before I'd discover that, though.

Some fifteen minutes later, fully dressed again, I headed in the direction Thoraim had went into, while squeezing the last bits of water out of my shoulderlength hair, which I kept that way with my powers, as I had never liked the idea of cutting or tieing it up in any way, nor did I want to keep it very long or it would start to get in the way.

As I went, I realised the good feeling I got from the glade had almost made me forget what I was there for - the old druid's message. Maybe I was exaggerating the urgency, but I felt like I had been spending too much travel time just enjoying myself in this comfortable new environment. The thought of it hastened my steps a bit.

As it turned out, however, that wasn't nearly the longest delay I'd have on my way, even if I was only a mile away from my destination.

I soon found a small road to follow north along the lakeside, and after a while, I started to see elven buildings up ahead. Then I saw a small pier by the lake, a bit outside of the town, with Thoraim standing on it, waving at me and motioning me to come. It seemed like someone else was there too, conveniently hidden behind a tree frmo where I was standing.

As I got to the dwarf and saw around the tree, I saw that someone who was with him. All this time I had expected Thoraim's friend to be another dwarf, but I was looking at a night elf of about my age or a little older, somewhat taller than me, wearing a black leather suit, including boots and gloves. He was facing away from me, towards the lake, standing at the end of the small pier. Two curved swords hang on his hips and his long deep-blue hair was tied up to a ponytail. On the back of his belt he had a series of small bags, no doubt containing various small items and tools.

"There ye are. Meet a good friend o' mine, Valenor Moonscar", Thoraim started to introduce us. The elf, who I guessed to be a rogue of some sort, interrupted him in his deep but rather playful voice.

"Oh come on, you know I don't like that name. Call me Valen, miss..."

As soon as he turned around and saw my face, his jaw dropped to the floor, so to speak. So did the fishing pole he had been holding. It made a rather loud sound as it hit the wooden pier. Then silence fell.

The feeling was mutual, however. There was the water, there was a pier. There was him and then there was his fishing pole. My hair was still wet after swimming. We both had seen it all before. The only difference was that we were both fifteen years older. And I owed him my life.

Poor Thoraim didn't seem to have any idea what was going on with the long, silent stare.


	21. Awkward Introductions

We must have been staring at each other for quite a few seconds until I finally managed to speak up.

"Cailea"

"...Uh, what?", the elf calling himself Valen said in confusion and seemed to snap out of the hypnotic stare.

"You wanted to know my name."

"Oh, right. Sorry...", he said and bent down to pick up his fishing pole. "It's just..."

I gave him a smile to signify my understanding for his lack of words as he stood up again. I didn't know what to say either, other than answering his question like I had done.

"Do you two...know each other...or something?", Thoraim asked.

Valen looked at me for a moment, then back at the dwarf.

"Something like that", he said.

The confused dwarf looked at me, then Valen, and a couple of times back and forth.

"I've got no bloody idea what's with you two, but maybe you can enlighten me in town. I know a good place to catch some lunch there", he finally determined.

Now it was my turn to look back and forth between the two of them.

"Sounds good", I said since nobody else seemed willing to voice their opinion.

With that, we set off towards the town, my thoughts in quite the chaos. I didn't really care about the food, but anything that would give me an excuse not to say anything for a little while, giving me some time to arrange my thoughts, was most welcome.

The fact that I had just met up with the person to whom I owed my life, purely by chance as it appeared, seemed like an almost creepy coincidence, but at the same time was in it's own league in terms of arousing my curiosity. It felt kind of like meeting up with a fictional fairytale hero in real life, an opportunity to ask him all the things you wanted to know about his legendary powers.

On the other hand, his presence was a constant reminder of my past, something to neutralize all my attempts to bury it away, or trying to believe it never happened. Or maybe he would turn out to be a way to fight it off for good, so there would be no need to try and forget.

So many things to say, so many questions to ask, and yet I couldn't bring myself to utter a word. He looked like he was also thinking furiously, maybe also wrestling with the almost magical silence that lasted all the way to the small tavern-like building that Thoraim led us to. I looked back to see that we had pretty much come through the whole town, and I had been far too busy in my mind to notice any of it. The dwarf left Furball sitting outside the door, saying something along the lines of "I'll bring ya a treat or two" as we went inside.

"Why don't ya kids take a seat while I get us somethin", the dwarf said and headed for the counter at the back of the room that was littered with round wooden tables that had a lantern in the middle of - much like the place in Darnassus where I had shared my first meal with the old druid years ago.

I realized that Thoraim had presented me an opportunity to finally start a discussion as the two of us took a seat at one of the tables.

"Kids?", I asked Valen, remembering that the two of them were supposed to be old friends as far as I knew.

"No idea where that came from. Then again, he might be quite a bit older than me or you. I wouldn't know."

"I thought you two had known each other for a while."

"Yeah, we have. So?"

"Uh...It's just that one would think friends share something like that pretty early on."

"You want to tell me how old you are, then?"

I paused for a moment.

"Okay, I guess I see your point. What _can_ you tell me about him, then?"

"Well, the only thing you really need to remember to remain on his good side is to never call him short. Dwarves don't like that."

"He's seemed like a nice fellow so far. Not sure I like his bear too much, though."

"What's wrong with old Furball? He mistake you for a girl bear or something?", he asked as a completely random joke.

"Something like that."

"Excuse me?", he said and raised an eyebrow, while getting a rather amused look on his face.

"Uh, I'm a druid and..", I hurried to say.

He thought it over for a moment, then burst into laughter.

"Okay, I think I kinda get the picture now.", he said while settling down.

"Oh, here comes our lunch", he continued when he saw Thoraim approaching with three plates and mugs.

"How old are you again?", Valen suddenly asked him as soon as he had laid the good on the table but hadn't sat down yet. I had to hold back a laugh when I saw the stupendous look on the dwarf's face.

"Sixty-five. What ya askin' that for allova sudden'?"

"Nothing. Just wondering."

Thoraim stopped for a moment. Then he sat down too, mumbling as he did:

"Bah, if I'd known things would get all weird when ya too meet..."

The food he had brought was some kind of a long white bread with cheese and various other fillings. I liked it.

"Twenty", I said to Valen after having a few bites.

At first he looked a tad confused, but upon realizing what I meant he chuckled, then winked at me.

Thoraim scratched his head in confusion again.

"Alright, you two. Enough of the weird stuff. Why don't ya share with me what's behind this?"

"Well we -", both of us started at the same time. Then I let him continue alone.

"We were born in the same town. And...then said town was attacked."

It seemed that the subject of the attack on Auberdine was at least as difficult for him as it was for me, so I continued for him.

"He saved my life when it happened. I was only five. But...we don't really know each other", I finished for him. I could swear Valen looked almost a little disappointed upon hearing me say that. Still, sharing that out loud with him seemed to ease the difficulty of speaking about ourselves, for a bit at least.

Thoraim fell into thought and went silent. What had been said obviously told him a lot about something.

I had finished eating. In my mind I was already going through a number of things I could say next until, I remembered the old druid's request again.

"I've got something I need to do now", I said and stood up.

Thoraim didn't react, but Valen gave me a questioning look.

"Druid business", I clarified for him.

"Will you be returning?", he suddenly asked.

"Well I..." I hesitated. Quite frankly, I didn't know what I was going to do afterwards. I had no idea how the druids would react to my news, anyway.

Valen stood up and walked to me around the table.

"Cailea...I need to ask you something before you go."

"Hmm?"

"We're going to continue west to Winterpsring", he said and motioned at the dwarf, who was still sitting silent. "There's something I'm looking to do in that direction, and up until today I thought that I'd be the only one who would understand it, but...let's just say that it now involves you as well. That's why I'd like you to come with us."


	22. Frustration and Foreshadowing

_"There's something I'm looking to do in that direction, and up until today I thought that I'd be the only one who would understand it, but...let's just that it now involves you as well. That's why I'd like you to come with us."_

"Well I..."

"Or do you have other plans?"

"No, but..." I paused for a moment. "I'll think about it. Will I find you here in an hour?"

"I don't suppose you're going to let us follow you to wherever it is you're going to visit, so I guess you will."

"Then it's settled. I'll come back with an answer", I said and walked out of the building.

Even if I hadn't given him a proper answer yet, one thing was already clear. I wasn't about to let him run off before I had at least had a chance to somehow thank him for saving my life. As much of an insignificant thing of the past as it seemed like at first glance, there was something about it that made it feel a lot more important than that, like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to....something. I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

And then there was the ominous remark of me having something to do with whatever he was here for. Considering the only thing we had in common was our past, making it pretty much the only thing his objective could be about, I knew I'd have to find out more about it if I was to be at peace again anytime soon.

As I walked along the main road of Nighthaven, the only town in Moonglade, it's name being another thing I had learned from the old druid's stories, I realized I wasn't really sure what I was looking for. My first thought was to find a building that looked like a place for important people, with possibly guards at the door or somesuch. After following the road up a hill overlooking the lake from the north, I spotted a guarded building at the end of the road, tall enough to give anyone standing on the balcony a good view of the lake and most of the glade, should their eyesight be capable of covering such distances.

A pair of male tauren wearing leather armour and wielding some heavy axes were standing on either side of the open doorway leading inside. They didn't seem to pay any attention to me until I was only a few feet away from them.

"Can we help you, night elf?", the tauren on the right asked.

"I bring news for the Cenarion Circle. Who should I trust with them?"

"Sage Windweaver is inside. She will hear you."

I walked past the guards and entered. The ground floor of the building looked like nothing more than a very messy storage room for all kinds of junk that's purpose or last date of use I couldn't even begin to guess. In the middle was a wooden spiral staircase to the upper floor.

As I ascended towards the second floor, I heard a male voice speaking.

"...which is why I think we should -"

The, speaker, a night elf with a long green beard and hair, but not looking quite as old as the old druid stopped talking as soon as I came into view from the staircase.

The elf was standing next to a table with some kind of a map laying on it. On the other side of the table from where I was, an old-looking female tauren wearing beautifully patterned purple and brown robes raised her eyes from the map on the table. Behind them was a large open space that lead directly to the balcony and the rest of the room had a number of empty chairs scattered around, every one of them set to face the table, making the place look like a meeting room of some sort.

"You're new here, sister. Who are you?", the tauren asked me in a very neutral and polite tone.

"My name is Cailea. I'm looking for someone called Windweaver."

"Look no further, then. What can I do for you, Cailea?"

The elf who had been talking to her didn't look too happy about losing the tauren's attention, but seemed to get his emotions under control by the time I opened my mouth to speak.

"I have an urgent message from my mentor, Dalrith Cloudsky, who is currently in Felwood."

Upon hearing that name, the tauren raised an eyebrow and straightened up from leaning over the map.

"Go on."

"The Emerald Sanctuary has been attacked. The druid who was watching over it is dead, and the shadowy orb that was kept there has been taken."

That seemed to catch the elf's attention too.

"The other orb that was brought from shadow hold?", he asked.

"Yes."

"How have you come to know of this?", the tauren wanted to know.

I explained to them as well as I could what had happened after our arrival at the sanctuary, except for some of the personal discussions I had had with Mythos and the old druid.

"So you think they are looking to collect all the orbs, then?", the elf asked me.

"Well, it's what I heard them saying. That's part of why I was sent here. Mythos Earthpaw told me that one of these orbs is kept around here somewhere, so you should be prepared for..."

"Wasn't Watcher Earthpaw informed?", the elf suddenly asked the tauren, as if I had ceased to exist in the room for a moment.

"Apparently not", was her response. Then they both turned to look at me.

"What?"

"That orb you speak of...it is not here", the tauren said.

"Excuse me?"

"It disappeared mysteriously, three years ago. No one has been able to confirm it, but most of us think it was stolen, as it has been missing for far too long to have been simply misplaced by one of the researchers. And you're saying Mythos didn't know about this?", the elf said.

I was stunned by the response. It seemed like communication with the sanctuary had been even worse than Mythos had known. No wonder his plans had seemed to be full of assumptions and his taskforce a borrowed squad of soldiers from Thunder Bluff, led by a hired mercenary.

"He sure seemed like it. And quite frankly, the impression I got from everything he said was that he'd been pretty much forgotten altogether", I said, knowing full well that it might not a good idea to take such a tone, but the more I had discussed the matter with them, the more clearly I remembered Mythos' fate and found myself wanting to hear some kind of an apology for the perceived ignorance that seemed to have lead to his death.

The tauren let out a long sigh.

"It is unfortunate that a life has been lost because we couldn't predict this sudden activity concerning the orbs, but without knowing the enemy's identity or the location of any other orbs - if there are any more - and what the enemy plans to do with them, there's very little we can do about it. We will of course send assistance to ensure Cloudsky won't suffer the same fate while watching over the sanctuary, but that's about all we can do right now."

As much sense as she was making, her simple conclusion felt like a slap on the face after all I'd seen and heard. Something hot began to stir inside me.

"As for you, young Cailea, I would like to suggest that you meet a few people who can teach you a lot more about shapeshifting than Dalrith Cloudsky. I sense that the spirit of the beast is very strong within you. In fact, I have never seen such high potency for that particular art in a female druid, making you quite the _special exception_ among all those I've seen over the years."

What she was saying was important of course, but I was hardly paying attention to her words at that point. The quick change of subject was the last straw for me, and it took me a bit of restraint to be able to respond in a polite tone.

"Excuse me, but...I have to go."

With that, I made a swift exit from the building.

I was feeling angry and very frustrated. The mishandling of the orb business had been even worse than I had expected, an old friend of the old druid had been killed for it, and all the mighty druids of Moonglade could do about it was to sit tight and shrug their shoulders.

I needed to get some distance from all the druid business and get a breath of something fresh. The old druid's suggestion of finding my own adventure had never sounded better. And I knew exactly how to get things moving in the right direction.

Thoraim was feeding something to his pet and Valen approached me as soon as I arrived outside the tavern. He was about to open his mouth but I beat him to it.

"I'm coming. When do we leave?"

Of course I was being naive and impulsive, and ignoring the offer to get some more teaching was probably the dumbest move I had made in a while.

Then again, it's easy to say that afterwards. Had I decided to stay in Moonglade that day, I would have missed out on the best thing that ever happened to me....

as well as the worst one, the fiery nightmare that still haunts me. For it is not the one from my childhood, but something that happened much later, something worse.


	23. Nemesis

"Whoa, what's with the sudden determination? Half an hour ago you looked like you were trying to come up with a polite way of saying you're not interested."

"My business here didn't turn out too well. I'd like to get some distance from here."

He looked at Thoraim, who looked like he was packed up and ready to go.

"Well, you're talking to the right people then. We're about to get going. But...", he said and eyed me from head to toe.

"What?"

"Are you sure you're dressed for Winterspring? No offense, but...it does get pretty dang cold out there."

I looked at my leather vest and shorts. I had to admit I didn't really have much ground to argue on. On top of that, I remembered the old druid's words from when I had gotten my favourite outfit.

_"You better wear a cloak with that if you're planning on going to winterspring someday"_

"I've got a thick fur", I said after thinking for a moment. Then I transformed into my cat form to show him what I meant. Even though I had told him before that I was a druid, he seemed a little surprised to actually see me shapeshift. Then he eyed me from nose to tail. I heard Thoraim's pet growling at me again.

"Ookey, have it your way then. But don't tell me I didn't warn you, kitten."

Now it was my turn to be surprised. Did he have a habit of giving people nicknames they might not like?

"Let's go", he said and headed away with Thoraim, leaving me standing for a moment.

I reversed my transformation and followed them, with the intention of saying a few select words about calling me a kitten, but by the time I caught up, I decided to let it go. My getting angry at the druids earlier seemed to have exhausted my ability to do so again for the rest of the day.

As we walked back south through the town, I was actually paying attention to my surroundings, unlike last time. The whole town seemed like it was built over a shallow lake with wooden walkways going from building to building in a square pattern, even though the water didn't look deep enough to sink me up to my neck if I was standing in it. On the south side was a ten meters drop from a cliff down to the lake. The small hill the druid's building had been on was only a small increase in height from what the town already seemed to be hanging at.

The main road we were following soon turned south and started to go downhill, but before we took the turn, Valen suddenly entered one of the buildings on the side, without saying a word. I followed him in with Thoraim.

The building was obviously a shop of some sort: various hides and leather scraps were hanging from the wooden beams of the ceiling and the elf behind the counter was wearing a large brown apron, like most craftsmen who aren't afraid to get dirty in their work. Except that she wasn't a man. The smell of the various leather products and assorted smaller ingredients in the back room seemed to make the breathing air a lot thicker than outside.

Valen was already standing at the counter.

"My friend here would like a cloak"

The shopkeeper looked at me and Thoraim as we stepped closer. I was confused.

"Which one of them?"

Valen pointed his thumb at me.

"The good-looking one"

Thoraim grunted.

"Wait, I didn't say...", I started.

"I know. But you'll thank me later. Trust me."

The shopkeeper raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

"Uh...do you have something warm but light?"

"Not one for some heavy ironweave, are you? Alright, let me take a look what I have in stock", she said and headed into the backroom.

"I don't have any money on me", I said to Valen in a lower voice once the shopkeeper was out of sight.

"Wasn't going to let you pay for it anyway. This is the least I can do for someone who has volunteered to help me with my quest, considering what lies at the end."

Just in time to interrupt my attempt to ask him about where we were going, the shopkeeper came back, carrying a hooded cloak made out of some kind of thin gray leather. The inside seemed like it was coated with some kind of a woolen fabric, making it feel very soft as she wrapped it around my shoulders to try how it would fit.

"How's that?", she asked.

I felt it's edge between a few fingers.

"I...like it."

Soon enough we walked out of the shop and kept going in the direction we were headed.

"Good-looking one?", Thoraim asked while eying Valen from under his brimmed hat.

"I didn't say that, did I?"

"Musta been my imagination, then", the dwarf grumbled with sarcasm in his voice.

"What was it you said about something that lies at the end of this?", I asked to change away from the subject that had started to make me feel a tad uncomfortable as well.

"I'd like to know that too, now that you finally let me catch up to yer elusive movements", Thoraim added in.

Valen sighed.

"Well, the truth is....this isn't just a journey somewhere. It's a chase."

"A chase? What are we after? And what does any of this have to do with me?"

Valen sighed again and stopped, then turned around to face me.

"Look, I don't know nearly as much about it as I would like to, but...", he began and looked down. "....we're after the person who killed my family."

Silence fell. After about ten seconds, Thoraim spoke.

"So...that's what this is all about. You finally found out who did it, then?"

"Your family....they survived Auberdine?", I asked in a little bit of a shock.

"Yes. I helped my brother and my father on that same boat I got you on, but...", he said and swallowed a mouthful. Then he turned left towards the lake.

"Someone has been trying to kill the people who survived the attack, Cailea. I've been able to stay out of sight since I got my rogue training, but...Cailea..?"

He must have noticed the terrified look on my face as I began to realize what had been going on for the last few days.

"What's wrong?", he asked in a concerned voice.

"I...somebody tried to kill me, too. I don't know who the assassin was, but I know who sent them."

"You _what?!_"

Memories of my nightmare from two nights ago began creeping into my mind. It started to seem like the only possible explanation to everything, that _he_ had been there for real fifteen years ago, watching how _his_ band of demons were destroying my hometown. I could almost hear the warlock's hollow voice laughing in my head.


	24. A New Direction

"There were these two undead...they attacked a druid outpost I was staying at in Felwood. One of them was a warlock...he seemed to be in charge."

Now both Thoraim and Valen were looking expectantly at me.

"They knew about an assassination that had happened near me earlier...said I was supposed to be the target. The other one of them even made a second try at it, just before they attacked the outpost."

"So...you evaded them a third time at that outpost?"

"No...I don't think they even knew I was there. They were after this demonic artifact that was locked up in there. Some kind of an orb, a part of something bigger, as far as I could tell."

Valen went silent. I'm not sure if he was giving that stare at me or over my shoulder at something behind me. Then his eyes focused on mine again.

"So...now you know what lies ahead. Do you still want to come?"

"I...", I hesitated. All my life I had been running from my past, in my mind at least. Trying to forget, and live on like it never happened. Rushing headlong towards the very thing that might have been the cause for it all seemed like giving up the fight and letting myself get dragged back down into the darkness.

"Don't worry 'bout it lass. I've got a wife waitin' fer me back home in Thelsamar, and I ain't about to let some megalomaniac undead stop me from returnin' like I promised when I left off to help Valen", Thoraim proclaimed.

What the dwarf said wasn't really making a difference to my decision, to be honest. In my mind I knew I wouldn't be able to get peace of mind in a long time, knowing that I had let such an opportunity to try and vanquish the horrors of my past slip by. And there was more to it than that. It was as if something someone had said or done that day had put the whole world off course, heading to a new direction where the road I had come from would no longer take me back to where I had been.

"Well...I did tell someone I'd go visit Khaz Modan someday."

"That's the spirit! Nuthin' like a lil' adventure to help both of ya stop worryin' about ghosts."

Valen didn't say anything, but his eyes spoke for him. They were saying "Thank you"...in a very strong manner.

With that, we finally set off to circle around the lake to the east, where Thoraim said there was supposed to be another mountain pass that would take us to Winterspring.

"How do you know we're heading the right way, anyway?", I asked Valen.

"I told you, I tracked our enemy going this way. Then I asked the Timbermaw furbolgs and they said some undead had passed through the hold to Winterspring."

Not much was being said after that, until we reached the pass Thoraim had spoken of. As it turned out, this one was just a steep rising path, no climbing required this time around. As we reached the high point, Winterspring opened up ahead. Or at least would have, if most of it wasn't hidden by what looked like a thick white mist, which turned out to be dense snowfall on a closer look.

"Uh-oh. Looks like we aren't getting very far today", Valen said as we begun our descent to the other side of the mountains.

I had never seen snow in my life, so I didn't really know what to expect, nor did I have any idea of why the weather ahead was going to keep us.

"Why so?", I asked. I must've sounded like an idiot.

"Because a weather like that could turn into a pretty nasty blizzard in just a few minutes, and that's when even Thoraim would start to freeze."

"Hah, ya just think so. Dwarves are made fer mountains 'n ice", the hunter said confidently.

"In any case, we should just get down there, find a nice quiet spot to set camp and hope the skies are clear by tomorrow."

As the path took us lower, a chilly gust of wind sent a shiver down my spine, and I wrapped my cloak a little tighter around myself. From the corner of my eye I thought I saw Valen giving me a "told you so" -look.

"So, tell me. How did the little girl from Auberdine become a druid? I had the impression they were all boring old geezers."

At first I felt a little insecure about sharing my story with someone I had met three hours ago, but that feeling quickly faded when I remembered that I was talking to someone who already knew the worst bits, so I told him a short version of how I had ended up from Darnassus to the old druid's. In the end, being able to tell it all to someone who had been there to see how it all had started was something quite unique...and also felt very good after all those years.

"So...what's druid training like? How do you learn to fight?", he asked after hearing me.

"Actually, it's mostly all about studying and a sort of...meditational learning of the environment. I don't actually know that much about..."

"...fighting? Great. _Now_ you decide to say that."

"Well I..."

"Don't worry. We'll figure something out."

A little later, the rock path started to feel very cold under my feet. By the time we reached the bottom of the descent, we were walking along a snow-covered path. Going barefoot in there was not pleasant. Even if I tried to make my steps quick and keep my feet in the air as much as possible, my toes started to get numb in no time.

I was quite relieved when we finally stopped under a cliff that would shield us from winds coming from the east and Thoraim started to unpack his tent. For once, I was eager to see a fire get started, but was rather disappointed when the dwarf said he needed to go look for something to burn.

For several minutes, I was just standing around with Valen, shivering from the cold.

"You know, I think I have an idea how to get you warmed up a little", he suddenly said.

"Hmmh?"

"Well...I could teach you a few things about fighting. Of course, I don't know a thing about druids' animal forms, or staves for that matter, but you seem like the kind of a person who'd be willing to try something a little different", he said and drew one of his two swords, then skillfully flipped it around in his hand to offer me the handle.

"I shouldn't..."

"What? Is this breaking some druid rules?"

He looked over both of his shoulders, then put on a mischievous grin.

"I don't see any of them here. Nobody has to know you tried it once. And if it bothers _you_, just think of it as an oversized dagger. Or do you wanna catch a cold on purpose?"

"I...."

_Well, the old druid did tell me to experience new things_, I thought.

Then I held out my hand and grasped the weapon.


	25. Blade and the Beast

I raised the sword upright in front of me, to get a feel for it's weight.

"Whoa, careful", Valen said and walked over to me.

"Here", he said and took the weapon from my hand, then replaced it there in a slightly different position, gently squuezed my fingers back around the handle and turned my wrist a little, so that the blade was a bit diagonally in front of me, rather than pointing straight up. Then he took a few steps backwards and looked at me like an artist taking a look at what their latest change did to the general look of their work.

"That's how you wield a weapon like this in a basic defensive position. You wanna hold it in a way that lets you parry incoming attacks with as little time and movement required."

"Okay...but how is standing around like this going to help me fight the cold?", I asked through clattering teeth.

"Haha, it isn't. But you have to start somewhere. Now then, let's see what you can do", he said, took a few more steps back and drew his other sword. "Attack whenever you're ready."

"What?"

"I said attack."

There he was, idly standing around, his weapon pointing at the ground like he wasn't going to use it at all.

"Let me get this straight. You want me to hit you with a lethal weapon when you're not even defending yourself?"

"No, I want you to _try_ and hit me. Or do you think you can actually hurt me on your first try?"

Not really sure of what I was doing, I made a simple, slow swing with the sword. He barely had to move to avoid it.

"You call that an attack?"

"Well, um..."

"You have to attack with determination. Stop thinking that you might hurt me. That won't happen, trust me."

"But...what am I supposed to be thinking then? About what I plan to do when I go home after the fight?"

"Heh, not really. I've been taught that there are two ways to arrange your mind when doing battle. One is to clear it out completely, focusing only on your physical actions. The idea is that you won't be as susceptible to fear or overconfidence when you just keep your mind clear. But...that way of doing it takes a lot of practice. It's one of those things even the masters continue to train themselves in."

"Alright...so I guess I won't really have time to learn that method on this trip, right? So...what's the other way?"

"The other way? Well...quite frankly, I can't really imagine you doing that. It's..."

"How would you already know what I can do?" I said and put my hands on my waist. "Try me."

"Well, in short, you might call it enraging. It means you tap into whatever grudges and hatred you hold against your opponent to fill your mind with fury, replacing any doubts and fears with a single-minded desire to defeat the enemy, to kill or be killed, as they say. It is said that only certain... more bestial species, orcs and trolls for example, have it in their blood to simply kick up a bloodlust from nothing but their own will, regardless of who they are fighting. For others, it takes...history... and emotions."

I noticed he put a surprisingly high amount of weight and seriousness to the last few words he said, considering the playful nature he had displayed so far, with the exception of our little reminiscing about our enemies back in Moonglade.

"Anyway", he started in his normal tone, as if he had awoken from a little bit of a trance. "We don't really need to go in-depth with that just to get you taking a few serious swings at me, do we?"

I took the ready pose he had shown me, this time without needing him to correct it.

"Okay. Now then, remember what I said about worrying for my safety?"

_I guess_, I thought to myself.

Then I made a much sharper swing at him, which he seemed to dodge just as easily as the first one.

"Again", he said as if nothing worth nothing had happened.

I made another attempt at it, a lunge this time. He swat my blade aside with his and returned it to the hanging position it started at in no more than one second.

"Keep going."

The same happened for about twenty more tries. With every attack I gained some confidence that I wouldn't hurt him, so I grew a little more aggressive after each try.

"Good!", he finally congratulated me for my latest attack and motioned for me to stop.

"Next, let's add some motion into this. A real enemy isn't going to be just standing around, either. I'll be moving around a little, so you have to use your legs and modify your moves to different directions. Ready?"

"Ready."

And so we began the continuous attacking again, with him taking steps back and sideways every other second. As I kept going, I hastened my motions with every attack, like before. But now there was something else to it, too. My heart rate went up and my muscles did begin to warm up from the exercise, but I also started to feel this strange new sensation, a fervor originating somewhere deep inside me, granting me greater speed and strength, than anything I had experienced before while in my elven form.

The training continued with renewed energy, and I watched how his expression slowly changed from the relaxed smile to a more occupied, and eventually an almost concerned look. It started to seem like he had to put a good bit of effort into parrying and evading my attacks.

Then, instead of simply defending himself, he made a very fast dashing attack towards me, which instantly knocked my weapon out of my hands. Before I knew what happened, he was standing right behind me, his left arm firmly wrapped around my midsection and the blade of his weapon hovering an inch or two away from my throat.

For a couple of seconds I stood absolutely still, listening to my beating heart and watching my chest move back and forth, in rhythm with the small clouds of vapor coming from my mouth with every breath.

Then he let go of me while saying: "Slow down, kitten."

"Where did that come from?", he continued while I went to pick up the weapon I had dropped, trying to ignore the fact hat he had called me 'kitten' again. Then I turned around to face him.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you're showing some real promise here. I don't think I've ever witnessed anyone doing that well on their first session."

"Thrill of the fight, I guess."

In my mind, I knew I was more or less lying. What I had experienced was not just an adrenaline rush. It had been almost as if the wildcat within had been somehow partially awoken, but not fully manifest to cause the metamorphosis. But I had no intention of trying to explain that to him. Not when I didn't even fully understand it myself.

The expression on his face was enough to tell me that he didn't take my response seriously, either.

"In any case, it looks like Thoraim has got us a nice fire started", he said while looking to the distance somewhere behind me.

I turned around to realize that our training fight had moved us a good hundred meters away from our previously chosen campsite where the dwarf was now cooking something on a fire.

I handed Valen's weapon back to him and watched as he started to head back towards the camp, but then, out of a sudden impulse, I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him for a moment. He aimed a questioning look at me.

"Thanks for warming me up."

A pleased smile visited his face as he turned away to head back for the camp, with me following in his wake. I was a little surprised about his subtle reaction.


	26. Campfire Contemplation

As we sat down around the campfire, I wasn't saying anything. I was far too busy contemplating what I had felt during our little training session. That feeling still lingered over me, like the sleeping beast awoken had gone back to it's hiding, but not back to sleep. Something in me had changed, possibly permanently. I tried to write it off as some new instinct, a new kind of awareness of my inner forces, which my first prolonged combat action had taught my conscious mind to recognize. Whether that assumption was close to the truth or not, it wasn't all there was to it.

What I was experiencing was not just a static state of mind and body, waiting for me to gain a better understanding of it. I felt like something was drawing me back to the action, a slowly but steadily growing desire to re-experience the best bits of it, in one way or another. But when I condensed that idea and told it to myself a few times over, it didn't seem to make sense. Even if fighting with a bladed weapon was a new thing for me, it's not like the other aspects of it, the feeling of a bestial force awakening inside me, or the feeling of freedom that doing physical exercise had a habit of giving, had been anything new to me. I wasn't going to believe that simply adding some cold steel to the mix would suddenly turn it into an addicting sport. There had to be a simpler, more natural explanation for it.

To sum it all up, as stated before there seemed to be more to this mystery than I could decipher at the time.

It was Thoraim's voice that returned me back to reality, the moment the three of us were sharing around the campfire.

"You want some food or not? Ya hear me, Cailea?"

The dwarf was waving in front of my face a roasted leg of his latest catch, a rabbit by the looks of it.

"Yeah, sure. Thanks", I said, took the offered food and started absent-mindedly chewing on it.

"Somethin's botherin' ya", he instantly determined.

"You do seem preoccupied", Valen agreed.

"Well, maybe I'm just thinking of some druid business again. What's it to you?"

"Just trying to help, that's all", the rogue replied.

"Aye, it's a good idea to learn to trust people ya end up travelin' with. Cause if ye don't, yer not takin' advantage of the circumstances, and you might as well be goin' alone."

I was little surprised by their reactions.

"Well, don't get the wrong idea. I wouldn't have come if I didn't trust you two. It's just that...this isn't something you can help me with. Are you willing to trust me on that?"

"Now ye have the right idea, lass. But lemme jes' tell ya somethin' from experience. Sometimes the answer to whatever problems ya may have can be found a lot easier than yer expectin'. Doesn't always take an expert to fix things, ya know?"

I wasn't too sure what he meant by that, but Valen seemed to take it pretty seriously, going silent for once, and staring at the campfire with an empty look in his eyes.

After a moment I decided to join him in doing so. That's when I realized what he must have been thinking of. For all I knew, what had happened fifteen years ago might have been even worse for him that it had been for me. I had been saved from my misery not too long after the nightmare, and brought to a place where I had the best chances of forgetting, as well as bracing myself against the memory.

Then he reached into one of his bags and pulled out what looked like a well-shaped twig. As he placed it sideways across his lips, I realized it was a flute. Valen closed his eyes and began playing. He was good at it. The tune he played was a simple but beautiful one. I couldn't help noticing that it seemed to speak of great sadness and longing, in a peaceful pace. As such, it was somehow oddly contradicting with everything I knew of his personality thus far, much like the whole moment of silent staring into the fire. Oh well, at least I had forgotten all about my own worries for the rest of the night.

After a while, everyone seemed relaxed and even rather comfortable as he played the last note, then promptly packed away the instrument. A minute or two passed in silence, until Thoraim spoke.

"So, what's our plan for tomorrow? Any idea where the enemy is headed?"

"Not really, no. But as I see it, Everlook is just about the only place around here that those two might be headed for. Unless they're looking to get to a serious fight with some giants down south", Valen answered.

"I'm not so sure", I said and caught all their attention instantly. "Remember that orb I told you about, the one they took from Felwood? Like I said, they said they were looking to get them all. They even said there was one more for them to get. I guess they might be just headed to wherever that last one is, but what if they don't know it's location? What if they're just looking around?"

"Then we'll just have to follow them around, I guess. But in case they are headed directly somewhere, they'll be going to Everlook. And I don't want to lose any time on them because we decided to look somewhere else first."

"I don't get it. Isn't Winterspring a dead end in that direction? How could going east to Everlook help anyone out of here unless you're planning to climb mountains?"

Valen smiled.

"You'll see when we get there. But right now I'm going to wish you two goodnight and get some rest."

"Night", Thoraim replied to him and went inside his mini-sized tent, with Furball guarding the entrance again, eagerly chomping on what remained of our dinner.

I then followed their example and wrapped into my cloak, then laid down and closed my eyes.

In the middle of the night I woke up to something that sounded like a scream. I quickly sat up and looked around, but saw nothing suspicious. Then I heard something again, from my right where Valen was sleeping a couple meters away. He was having a nightmare.

"No...please...no more!", he moaned in his sleep, rather loudly too. But all I heard from the direction of Thoraim's tent was Furball's massive snoring. The dwarf probably didn't have any idea what was going on.

"Stop!", the rogue continued his moaning.

I stopped to think for a moment. Then I reached out to him and put a hand on his shoulder, not quite daring to touch his head while he was moving it around.

After a couple of minutes had passed, it started to seem like he had gotten over the worst and was sleeping quietly again. I retired back to my own spot and laid back down, this time facing Valen.

_Is he really still haunted by that day, after all these years?_ I thought to myself. As I laid there watching him, I came to think that I might have just found a way to repay him for saving my life back then. But to rid him of his torment, I'd need to know more.

_Maybe Thoraim knows._

I fell asleep before I could come up with a plan of action.


	27. Hidden Things

The next morning was the beginning to a brisk, and if possible, an even colder day than the one before. Or the part of it we had spent in Winterspring, anyway. The weather seemed to have cleared up as expected.

As soon as I opened my eyes and sat up, loosening up my cloak around me, I started to shiver for a bit. Needless to say, I was happy to find that both Thoraim and Valen were prepared and ready to start moving by the time I got up. The last thing I would've wanted to do that morning was to sit around waiting for them to pack up their things. Whether the timing was pure luck, or them being considerate about me, I never got around to asking and never found out.

When we set off, I decided to try traveling in my catform again, something that I hadn't thought of the day before, for some odd reason. However, I soon found out that while having paws instead of bare feet did help a little with the freezing ground and snow, it wasn't nowhere as good as I would've thought. Since trotting around on four feet is quite different than doing it on two, it's a little difficult the explain exactly why, but you have to always have a couple of paws solid on the ground. At our walking speed, anyway, which had slowed down a good bit since Valen had joined. As a result, you don't get to keep your feet off the ground as much in total, and end up freezing them but a little slower than normally.

The fur did help with the occasional cold gust of wind, though. And as crazy as it may sound, the fact that I had now been wearing my new cloak before shapeshifting seemed to also make a little bit of a difference. It's not exactly a simple deal to explain what your clothes do when you change forms, but let it just be said that they do have an effect, and that they do still exist in a way. I'd gotten a lesson of that before, when one time I decided to dive in the pond at the old druid's while shapshifted, without undressing first, only to find that my clothes did get soaked anyway.

Soon enough we found ourselves following some sort of a main road east, no doubt heading to Everlook. With the rock path easing up a little on the freezing feet factor, I gave myself some time to listen and look around. We must have been going through the area where all the snowfall had been yesterday, because it seemed like everything, even the frozen bits that no doubt would normally glimmer in the daylight, was covered in a thick soft blanket of snow. My 'nature sense' was telling much of the same thing, with the sound of Winterspring being a healthy, but dormant one, like there were a ton of things that would be moving all around if it weren't all frozen and now buried.

I told to myself that when I'd come back, it might be an interesting idea to return to this particular area and really spend a bunch of days just trying to uncover all the hidden things beneath.

At first sight, from a longer distance, Everlook appeared to be little more than a smoking pile of random junk and machinery in the middle of an otherwise tranquil and snowy valley. Even so, it was all I needed to see to start disliking it already. As we got closer, sounds of rickety clanks and turning gears started to become audible. It wasn't quite like anything I'd heard before, but still chaotic enough to arouse my prejudice.

Eventually we reached the metal-braced gateway in the white concrete wall surrounding the town. Two armed goblins were standing on each side of it, not looking too happy about having to do so. No welcomes were being said as we walked in through the gateway.

The inside of the town was a collection of more white-concrete buildings chaotically scattered around a middle square. At the back there was also a metallic building that looked like a scaled-up engineering gadget, big enough for one to walk into and use it as a house. There was a bunch of blinking lights on it's walls and some kind of a moving part on the roof.

"Well, I don't see no undead out here", Thoraim said after turning his head a few times to look around.

"Not like we could do much about them in here, anyway", Valen responded. "The cartel likes to maintain a reputation of security in their towns", he added when I gave him an inquiring look.

"So what do we do?", I asked.

"First thing is to ask around and find out if they've been here."

"Any chance we could start at the tavern over there?", Thoraim asked and pointed out a flat, simple-looking building with a decorated doorway.

Valen chuckled.

"Hungry already? Alright, let's go there. You get yourself a meal while I do some business."

So we went into the building Thoraim had called a tavern. Here, the tables were long, narrow, and had benches on both sides. No private sections, no lantern-decorated smaller areas. The place looked like it was made to feed a very large amount of people at once, which was quite interesting considering the town was not a very big one and it was located in what most people would call "the middle of nowhere".

The lone troll sitting at one of the tables furthered this impression of the place having way too much capacity. He seemed to be wearing little more than a loincloth and a wide variety of wooden, leather and metallic jewelry. His body was so thoroughly tattooed and painted, that you could hardly tell what his natural skin color was. He had what looked like a bowl of soup on the table in front of him, but he seemed far more interested in stirring it with a spoon like he saw something in it, rather than actually eating it.

The three of us walked past the troll, to the counter where a red-haired human man was looking expectantly at potential customers. He had on a set of simple, plain clothes and a greasy used-to-be-white apron.

"Good, the shopkeeper ain't a goblin", Valen whispered me as we approached the counter. I didn't really know what he meant with that. Yet.

"G'day gentlemen...and madam. What will you and the lady have today?", the man started like he had said the first line of a whole speech he had written down and rehersed beforehand.

"Somethin' for the cold...and an fer empty stomach", Thoraim instantly responded and slapped a few coins on the counter.

"How about a couple o' pints and some freshly roasted chicken, then?", the man suggested in his salesman tone.

"Sounds good ta me."

"Comin' right up. Why don't you three take a seat somewhere and I'll bring it in a few."

Thoraim went to and empty table, but the two of us remained at the counter. Valen had his reasons, I was just curious to see his next move.

"Say...have you seen a friend of mine in town? Said he'd meet me with some important info", he started his slick talk to try and get some information.

"Pfff, you elves come and go every day around these parts. How am I supposed to tell which ones are friends of yours?", the man said while he was working on our meals on the stove he had in his workspace behind the counter. It was making sounds of crackling flames and roasting meat.

"This one isn't an elf." Valen peeked at the troll on the other side of the room, then lowered his voice. "He's a forsaken, but he's also a....you know...helping out SI:7. He's also a machine wiz, so he kinda stands out", he explained as per the description of our enemies I had shared with him the night before.

"Look around, smartmouth. This town is packed to the brim with all kindsa machines, gadgets and a disturbing smell of engine oil. One more in the mix don't make no difference. Besides, I just work the kitchen, so if they don't come here for food or a drink, I don't see 'em. Got it?"

"And here I was, thinking I'd bring 'em here for a whole round of drinks tonight. What a disappointment to not be able to do that", Valen acted in a loud voice.

The cook raised his eyes from his work for a moment, but didn't say anything. Then he looked back down at the chicken he was cutting up for serving.

After a moment of silence, I decided to jump in.

"What about another one, broad shoulders, black hood, red crystal on a staff?"

The cook's grip slipped and he cut his finger by accident, then winced at the pain it caused. After that, he gave the three meal plates he now had before him a somewhat hasty look and put them all on the counter for us.

"N-no. Haven't seen nobody like that here. Here's your meals. Enjoy", he said, then quickly vanished into the back room.

Even I could tell he was lying, but for some reason Valen didn't make a move to help me. Instead, we just gave each other a confused look, then took the food and went to the table where Thoraim was.

"Well?", the dwarf asked as soon as we had sat down.

"What?", Valen replied.

"Did ya find out anythin'?"

"Not much. The goblins train their employees to be as hard to bargain with as the little buggers themselves."

"They were here, tough", I added in.

"So it would seem, but we still need to find out where they're headed", Valen agreed.

"They be headed to Tanaris through da flash-machine in town, mon", a voice said from behind us.

We all turned around to see the troll having moved to sit on the bench behind us.


	28. The Flash-Machine

[i]"They be headed to Tanaris through da flash-machine in town, mon", a voice said from behind us.

We all turned around to see the troll having moved to sit on the bench behind us.[/i]

"Who the heck are you?", Thoraim asked the troll.

"Just a humble witch doctor."

"Why should we listen to anything you have to say, troll?", the dwarf continued to interrogate him.

"We may be enemies outside dis buildin', dwarf. But I be in da business o' helpin' da enemy of my enemy."

"And jes' what the heck is that supposed to -"

"Let's hear him out, Thoraim", Valen interrupted him. "You were saying?", he addressed the witch doctor.

The troll aimed a piercing look at me.

"I seen da shadow ya be lookin' for, girl. And da spirits be tellin' me he ain't no friend of yours."

"And he went to this....'flash machine'?", I asked him while feeling rather uncomfortable under his stare.

"Dat be correct."

"But...how can you tell that he's an enemy of mine, just like that?"

He put on a grim smile, like the look of someone who has just bested their opponent in combat.

"Da shadows be livin' in your heart, elf", he replied. Then he looked at Valen. "And yours."

Never before had I experienced as much of an uncomfortable feeling of being unable to hide things from someone you'd rather not know them. Valen's face was telling the same, but then he lightened up again.

"Well", Valen started. "I still don't see why we should trust you. For all we know, you could be just playing a prank on us by telling us to go to the other side of the world. Or directing us to a trap."

The grin on the troll's face melt into a somewhat hostile look.

"Big words for someone in your position, mon. But I tell ya this: da black one ya be seekin is not one o' ours. He be the kind of enemy da warchief wants to be rid of, so I be allowed to help ya out in findin' him."

The three of us aimed some confused looks at each other in an attempt to communicate without words, but ended up with little more than doubts all around.

"Ya give it a thought, will ya?", the troll said and stood up, then headed out into the cold without another word.

That's when the man from the counter arrived at our table to deliver our food. He seemed to remember our conversation as he made it a silent and swift visit by returning back behind his counter very quickly and not wishing us a good meal or any of the normal stuff you'd expect from someone serving you food for a price.

"So...what was that troll on about?", Thoraim asked as soon as he had stuffed his mouth full of food.

"As far as I can tell, that witch doctor just told us where the two undead went. As for why...not so much luck on that", Valen responded.

"I thought he was pretty creepy. But somehow I'd trust him", I spoke my mind.

"Oh yeah, what was that bit about shadows'n hearts anyway?", the dwarf asked me. I wasn't quite sure what to think or say about it and stayed silent, so he turned to Valen instead...but got no better of an answer.

I was fairly sure it had meant the terror that the demons' attack had seeded in me as a child, but it seemed twice as disturbing that a stranger had been able to see it just like that, even with the aid of these spirits he spoke of. Not that I didn't believe in such things, as I've always been an open-minded person thanks to the old druid's way of raising me.

"Uh...forget I asked", Thoraim took back after he'd observed our reactions for a couple of seconds.

A couple of minutes passed in silence.

"What are we going to do?", I finally asked after calming myself and having a bit of my meal.

"I guess our best bet is to use the machine he referred to and see if the enemy was seen on the other side. Not that big a deal to come back in case he was just pulling a prank on us", Valen responded.

"What 'other side'? Didn't he say something about Tanaris? What is that 'flash-machine', anyway?"

"Our way out of here", Valen said with a cunning smile on his face. "But let's enjoy our meal first, okay?"

Some fifteen minutes and a full belly later, we headed out into the town again. This time we headed towards a corner of it where there was a sleazy-looking goblin standing next to a weird contraption that I couldn't initially make heads or tails of, and he was wearing a whole assortment of different small machines and gadgets, reminding me a bit of the undead engineer-mage from before. The machine beside him was big enough for several people to stand in and my first guess was that it was some elaborate device to shower them with water from above, or something of the like, given the bowl-like shape of the bottom and the large disc suspended directly above it.

"Hello there, travelers! Might I interest you in some fine machinery?", the goblin asked as we approached.

"Perhaps", Valen answered. "What can you tell me about that teleporter you have there?", he asked while pointing out the big machine beside the goblin.

"Ahh, I'm afraid it is not for sale, sir. It's part of the Steamwheedle Quick-travel Network, giving customers fast, easy and comfortable passage between our fine establishments on Azeroth. Would you be interested in using it?"

"For a price, right?"

"Naturally. But that won't be a problem, now will it?"

"I guess not", Valen said and stopped for a moment. Then he lowered his voice and leaned forward a bit. "Listen, I'm kinda in a bit of trouble with a friend of mine. He said he was going to go through here, but he forgot to tell me his destination."

The goblin raised an eyebrow.

"He's that kind of a forgetful person, you see."

"If he failed to tell you that, he might just be deliberately wanting to get away from you...and that's none of my business. Besides, I'm not at liberty to discuss what trips I sold to whom...unless I have a very compelling reason to", the goblin hinted.

"Well it kind of makes sense that he might be running away...he does owe me some money, after all.", Valen said while he calmly dug through his packs for a couple of coins, then subtly handed them to the goblin. "I'd hate to be unable to collect, especially from a whacked out undead engineer like him. Might give us both a bad rep among our superiors, you see."

"And...did he come here today?"

"Yep."

"In that case", the goblin said while counting the coins he'd been given with a bit of a lust in his eyes, "my portal here might just be able to take you to him."

I saw from the corner of my eye that Thoraim had started to look rather annoyed by the dodgy exchange, and was clearly itching to get down to some honest serious business again.

"Now then, would you like to try out our fine transportation?", the goblin asked in a renewed tone, like nothing had just happened.

"That's the idea. Will it fit all three of us and the bear?", Valen asked.

"Certainly. It'll be two gold pieces for each. Then I just need to see your Engineer's Union membership card and we're all set to send you ahead."

This time Valen pulled up a white card of some sort with text on it, and put some coins on top of it before showing it briefly to the goblin. The goblin seemed more interested in the coins and only took a very quick look at the card under them.

"Alright, step in to the teleporter, if you will", the goblin said and stepped out of the way, then pointed us towards the big machine.

That's when I started to feel rather uncomfortable about it. Some part of my mind was telling me to refuse and stay back, as the idea of letting some machine do something to me was anything but a pleasant one. My companions noticed my hesitation and Thoraim gave me a pat on the back.

"Come on lass, it'll be fine. You can just close yer eyes and have me tell ya when it's over, if you feel like it."

With wavering steps, I followed them onto the machine's bottom plate and turned around to look at the goblin who was now doing something with a console next to the machine. Then he stopped fiddling around with the buttons and levers, looking like he was ready to turn the thing on. He cleared his throat as if he was getting ready for an important announcement.

"Please keep your hands and feet within the plate's perimeter at all times. We wouldn't want to send a part of you on the next go."

With that, he threw one more switch on the control panel and the machine started to humm loudly, like something was revving up to speed inside it. I felt Valen's hand grasp my shoulder.

"Hold on, kitten", he whispered to my ear.

Then everything vanished in one bright flash of white light and I got this odd sensation of a force causing my body to deform, kind of like when shapeshifting - except this time the force was coming from outside.


	29. From Cold to Heat

Slowly the blinding light faded and my body seemed to take it's original shape again. I felt Valen's hand grasping my shoulder again. Or maybe I should say _still_ grasping it.

The first sensation after that was a heavy temperature change, and another humming sound from the machine we were now standing in, but this one seemed to be slowing down and shutting itself off. The metal plate that was now under my feet was the opposite of the previous one in temperature: it was so hot I wanted to lift my feet off it as soon as possible.

As we stepped off the machine that looked like a replica of the one we'd entered, I looked around to realize we weren't in Everlook anymore. The architechture of the town was quite similar, with walls around a chaotic mess of flat, lightly colored goblin buildings. And there was a light powder everywhere. It wasn't snow though, but sand.

There seemed to be a lot more people in this town, too.

"Welcome to Gadgetzan!", another goblin engineer said from our left. I guess he was the teleporter's operator on this end.

"I trust all your possessions and limbs came through just fine?"

The three of us took a moment to check ourselves and generally glance around. I seemed to be just fine, except for the fact that it was uncomfortably hot. Although that was just the weather, so I didn't say anything about it.

"I think so. Thanks for the ride", Valen responded to the goblin.

Then we walked off the machine and wandered around the town for a little while, looking for any visible sign of the two undead. Every step I took buried my toes into the hot sand. It felt nice at first, but after a few seconds you started to feel just how hot it was and lifted your feet as quickly as possible. Still, it wasn't as bad as the freezing effect of the snow in Winterpsring.

I noticed a large dome-shaped cage in the middle of the town, with a large amount of people gathered around it. They seemed to be cheering at something, but their bodies were blocking my view and I couldn't see what it was they were so excitedly spectating. I soon as I paid it a thought, though, I figured it probably wasn't anything I'd have any interest to see.

After a while, Thoraim led us into the shadow of a nearby building. The dwarf wiped some sweat off his temple as he turned around to talk to us.

"Sheesh. One small moment in the sun an' I'm already feelin' like a roasted pig. Never thought I'd end up back in this place."

"You can say that again. Must be around midday since the sun is so high up and hot", Valen agreed.

Even if my outfit was scarce compared to those of my companions, I too felt like I could use some cooling. I could only imagine how they were feeling.

"So, did anybody see any sign of them?", Thoraim asked while pulling off his brimmed hat and using it to propel some air at his face.

Both of us shrugged in silence.

"Well, odds are we're a bit more than a few minutes behind, so they probably just left off in some direction before we arrived", Valen thought out loud.

"I s'pose."

"I think I'll go ask around a bit, see if anybody saw them. Should be plenty of talkative fellows around here."

"In any case, I'm guessin' you're gonna have us movin' again by sundown, so we should probably look fer a nice spot to weather the heat and get some rest, eh?"

"Moving again by sundown?", I was surprised.

The dwarf gave me a slightly amused look.

"What, ya think we can jes' cross the desert in broad daylight? Oh no, lass. No matter who we're chasin' here, we gotta look after ourselves too. And that means we're gonna spend the night travelin'."

"_If_ they indeed came through here and didn't just go right back", Valen added. "That's why I need to go find out as soon as possible. So what are you going to do?", he then asked me.

Surprisingly enough, my first thought was to tag along with him and observe his admittedly interesting way of doing business, but then I realized this might be a rare chance to talk to Thoraim about what I'd thought of the night before.

"A moment of rest sounds good to me", I responded.

"Alright, I'll meet you at that gate over there in three hours", Valen pointed out a metal-braced doorway leading outside the town's perimeter walls. Then he wandered off into the crowd around the cage.

"Well, no point standin' around doin' nuthin'. Since bookin' a room from the inn ain't gunna be worth it, how about we jes' catch a drink somewhere?", Thoraim suggested.

"I, uh...sure, why not", I responded with only half my mind on it, the other half still focused on the crowd Valen had disappeared into, regretting my decision to let him go alone. But then I managed to pull my thoughts together as I focused them on following the dwarf and his pet to the doorway of a nearby building.

We found ourselves in another one of those terribly dull goblin taverns with the long benches and tables. I refused Thoraim's offer to get a me drink, as I really wasn't feeling like it, so he only got one for himself. And so we were sitting at the table, with me wondering where to start.

"So...how long have you known him?", I finally began.

"Who? Valen?"

"Yeah."

"Lessee...", the dwarf said and scratched his chin with a thoughtful look on his face.

"Musta' been 'bout five years ago when we met."

"Umm...how was he, back then?"

"Whadda'ya mean?"

"Well....has he always been the same when you've known him?"

Thoraim seemed confused at my question, but after a moment he appeared as though he somehow figured it out.

"Now that you mention it...he has been actin' a bit different since that last time I saw him. But considerin' what I heard in Moonglade, I'd chalk it up to you an' that shared past o' yours."

"Well it's....really not all that -"

I was going to end the sentence in the word 'special', but something from within froze my lips before I could finish. I thought it over and realized that I would've been lying to myself, had I finished my sentence. On top of it, that urge to try out the swordplay again seemed to be rearing it's head, too.

Once again I found myself contemplating on something I felt deep inside, but didn't quite fully understand. Somewhere along the way, the combination of my deep thought, the exhausting heat that seemed to have followed us inside the building, and the subconscious thought of getting some rest before sundown had me slip into a light sleep with my head lying on the table.

I still felt a little drowsy when Thoraim's strong hand gently shook me awake sometime later.

"Time to wake up, Cailea. Valen oughta be waitin' fer us about now."


	30. Lurking in the Night

As we walked out of the building, I felt a cold breeze on my skin and once again made use of my cloak a bit more, thinking of how somewhat odd it was that we'd gone through so many large temperature changes within a couple of hours. The action around the town of Gadgetzan seemed to have subsided, with only a few shady merchants and other quiet people moving about, not so different from me and the dwarf walking beside me along with his bear.

As we approached the gate we'd agreed on earlier and I got a glance at the horizon behind the town walls, I saw that there was a crimson glow of a setting sun fading away in the distance, with the top of the sky already being overtaken by a blanket of stars and a crescent moon. It was almost like a poetic image of my life, which had been a constant act of seeking shelter under the moonlight, with a fiery glow of my past always giving a sinister glare from the distance, always watching over me like some hungry predator waiting for the right moment to strike.

And even though I was looking at a sunset, it felt like that flame at the edge of the sky was on the rise again.

We found Valen standing just outside the gate, looking like he was eager to talk to us.

"We're going the right way. They've been here", he said before either me or Thoraim could open our mouths.

"And...?", Thoraim inquired, knowing his elven friend had more to share.

"And I hope you got some rest back there, because we're going to Steamwheedle Port. If I'm guessing right, there'll be a boat there that we don't want to miss."

"Wait...you think they're leaving Kalimdor?", I jumped in.

"Can't think of much else they'd be up to in that direction unless they're looking to enlist on a pirate ship. And I was right about where they'd go in Winterpsring, wasn't I?"

"I guess...and we're going to follow them, right?"

"Well, if we're lucky, we might just catch them before any ships are involved. For all we know, they might have to wait for their ride long enough for us catch up. At any rate, for health's sake we have a sunrise to beat there, and I'd really hate to miss that boat in case I'm right and it's not waiting around."

With that, we headed east over the sand dunes, with the last glimmer of a setting sun fading away somewhere behind us. We had to beat it to our destination on the eastern coast, like Valen had said.

The somewhat cooled down sand made for a relatively comfortable walk at first, but after a little less than an hour's journey, the skin on my feet had become as dry as the desert they were treading. Needless to say, that's when walking stopped being nice.

One thing to focus my attention on instead was the sound of the desert. Contrary to what one's eyes might tell you, the nightly wasteland was crawling with all sorts of small animals and insects, just barely out of sight, or half buried in the sand for camouflage. By no means was it as loud and melodic as a forest, but it did have it's own interesting, unique feel, as if a whole lot of something was lurking somewhere beneath.

The perfect cover for what happened next.

At first I thought it was just the wind shifting a layer of sand across dunes, but then I saw several odd brown objects moving around us to cut our path. All three of us stopped and observed as the weird objects turned out to be humans wearing sand colored cloaks, now showing themselves and their drawn weapons to us.

"Damn it. We don't have time to fight a bunch of bandits right now", Valen whispered to me and Thoraim.

One of the bandits in front of us stepped up and spoke.

"I'm terribly sorry to have gotten in your way, but keeping these paths secure at night can be terribly costly with the goblins' equipment prices. I was wondering if you'd have a coin or two to contribute to the safety of yourselves and other travelers around here", the bandit said with a sneer.

"Ya want our money, thief?", Thoraim threatened him back, looking ready to pull out a weapon to back up his words.

"Oh, no no no, you've got the wrong idea. We're just here to secure the path between Gadgetzan and the port."

"Tough luck. We ain't givin ya no money", the dwarf responded.

"Well...", the thief said and glanced at his men, then turned his eyes to Valen, "...there is an alternative to your purses if you must pass tonight. You see, me and the boys have been itching to get to try what one of you elves would be like ever since we started seeing them around here. So all you have to do is leave the lady with us for tonig-"

There was a sound of weapons being drawn, and before I realized what had happened, Valen and the bandit who spoke were holding blades to each other's throats. He had this furious look in his eyes, like someone who was ready to completely disregard their own safety in favor of an objective.

"Too bad you had to say that. I was really hoping to make this trip without killing anybody along the way", he said in a menacing voice.

I guess Thoraim already knew what was coming, as he was sizing up the enemy with his eyes while digging his pockets for some ammo to load his gun with. There were six or seven bandits around us, I couldn't tell exactly because of their camouflage. Following his example, I took a better grip of my staff and got a solid footing in an effort to be ready for whatever would happen next. Furball was giving them a low, threatening growl.

"You seem like a reasonable man of the trade. Why don't we lower our tools before this gets out of hand?", the bandit suggested to Valen.

"Fair enough. But you better start running in about two seconds after that, or this is going to get ugly anyway. I might also point out that my friend here has got a gun with a rather long reach."

After a nervous, short silence, they both lowered their weapons simultaneously. The bandit slowly turned his back to us, but instead of running away, he tried a surprise swing at Valen while yelling: "We aren't afraid of you lot! Get 'em boys!"

Valen parried his attack, then quickly drew his other sword and lunged it straight into his opponent's gut. Somewhere behind me I heard Thoraim firing his gun and Furball roaring.

That's as much attention as I could pay to my comrades, as one of the bandits was charging towards me with his weapon up high. I could tell that my companions were busy with the others, leaving me about half a second to think about my next move.


	31. A Taste of Blood

It was necessity and survival instinct that let me put aside any fear and shock for being faced with a deadly foe for the first time in my life.

Even if I was a little slow to start, I managed to somehow duck under the attacking bandit's blade and trip him over with my staff as he passed by. While we was trying to get back on his feet, I quickly turned around and came up with an idea. I stuck my staff in the sand between my feet and used my powers on it. Making it grow roots underground and then sprout around the bandit on the ground to restrain him was a surprisingly simple trick to pull off at such short notice, but it did have it's downside.

Another foe was approaching me from the side, and with my weapon literally stuck on the ground, I figured the best thing to do would be to tackle him in my beast form. Even with my skill and speed in the area of shapeshifting, I paid the price of being somewhat unprepared and inexperienced and received a small but fairly harmless cut on one of my front paws from the bandit's first swing of his small sword.

He seemed a little bit thrown off by my speed, probably having expected to finish me in one simple hit, so I had a moment to rearrange myself before his next try. Interestingly enough, at that point I didn't even think of assaulting him head on with my claws and teeth, and kept dodging him instead, with a little more success from there on. After some dozen seconds of dodging and seeing that my companions were still busy, I started to realize that there wouldn't be a way out of the fight without drawing blood, something I had been subconsciously avoiding until then. So I went on the offense.

Getting past the opponent's swinging blade turned out to be somewhat easier than I had expected, by letting my animal instincts guide me. I suppose my moves managed to surprise him once again, as he had probably been expecting a simple, easy fight against a young, inexperienced elf. Then again, as far as he knew, I guess I might as well have been a hundred years old. Either way, I managed to pounce him to the ground, and holding him down with my weight, I plunged my teeth into his arm. I got exactly the result I'd been expecting.

With a scream of pain, the bandit dropped his weapon, while I got a taste of his blood. Bitter and distasteful at first, the warm liquid triggered something I hadn't been expecting at all - a lust for more of it. Before my opponent could recover, I lashed at him with my paw. I'm not entirely sure where it hit him, but he did go silent and stopped moving, so I figured I must've killed him.

Further fueled by the fatal blow I'd given him, I turned around to see the other bandit I had trapped with vines from my staff. He had almost cut himself free.

A leap on top of him, a quick slash with my claws to disarm him, and...

"Cailea, stop!"

Valen's shout froze me on the spot, leaving the terrified bandit staring at me, wondering if my teeth would soon be in his throat where I was aiming at, or not. Thoraim and Valen had come to my sides at some point, so I figured the other bandits were either dead or running for their lives.

"No point killing them all, kitten. Surely you aren't that angry over what they said?", the rogue persuaded me.

As the bloodthirst subsided over a few seconds, I rolled off my victim and reverted back to my elven self, only to find that the taste of blood, now bitter again, was still in my mouth. There were bits of flesh and cloth under my fingernails. Still lying on the ground, I spat a few times to expel the taste and wiped some of it off my lips with a hand, all with poor success.

Thoraim was asking questions from the bandit I had cornered, but I was too confused and unsure of what was going on to listen.

"You hurt?", Valen asked while I stood up. I didn't answer. He grasped my arm while I was about to walk past him to retrieve my weapon, and I felt a spiking pain in my forearm. Pulling it back quickly, I saw a thin stream of purple elven blood running down my arm from a thin cut just above my wristband - the same wound I had suffered on my front paw as a panther.

"I'm fine", I managed to respond while placing my other hand on the wound to heal it with my power. It only took a few seconds to completely close, leaving behind a tiny, barely noticeable scar.

Valen stopped me again as I was about to head for my staff.

"Calm down, there's no hurry. Why don't you finish healing that first?"

It took me a moment to understand what he meant.

"It's healed."

"Huh?"

I pondered for a second how to explain it to him.

"If you got a cut like that and bandaged it, what would it look like after a few days?"

"Probably something like that. What's it got to do with...?"

"You said it yourself. As far as nature is concerned, It's completely healed now. I just sped it up a little."

I left him chewing on what I had just said and finally got to pick up my weapon by severing it from it's underground roots. By then, Thoraim had already let the last bandit run away and had news for us.

"That was odd. Maybe he was just messin' with me, but that bandit said he an' his friends were hired by some shady figure to attack any night elves they'd come across on this road fer the next week or so."

The old, uncomfortable feeling of being watched started creeping back to me.

"I suppose that explains how they had the guts to attack us just like that, even after I gave them a chance to turn around and run. But it also goes to show that they know about us know", Valen pondered out loud.

"Goes to show that they're 'fraid of us, if ya ask me", Thoraim said confidently.

_But how did they know that we're after them?_, I continued in my thoughts

The speculation continued between the two of them as we continued our journey from the small pile of bodies in the middle of the desert. After determining that our enemies were intentionally hampering our progress, Valen had determined that we didn't have time to bury the dead, much to Thoraim's displeasure. It wasn't the first time the dwarf had come across as a very honest and straightforward person.

As we moved on, I wasn't paying that much attention to them, since the task of getting through my head what had just happened kept me occupied. And ironically enough, even more thirsty than before. For water, that is.


	32. Shadowdancing

As much as I thought it over, I couldn't quite get comfortable with the idea that my companions had had to yell for me to stop attacking back there. I wondered what would have happened, how far would have things gone if I was fighting an even battle alone, with nobody to watch what I was doing. I had read and heard of druids who could draw great strength from their animal instincts, but I was also aware that there were those who had trouble holding it back when necessary.

Was I to become such a druid as well? Or was all of it just something normal for a druid to go through?

It was the first time I had a moment of regret for not having stayed in Moonglade to learn more. It was also unnerving that we were likely headed off Kalimdor, which would significantly reduce our chances of running into someone to whom I could speak of my concerns as a druid.

But as soon as the thought of going back crossed my mind, I remembered another sensation I had had back in the glade. That feeling of the whole world being a bit off course, with the path behind me not leading home anymore had become stronger than before.

I guess I still had Thoraim's advice from earlier to count on, but the time didn't seem right for it.

After an hour or so, Furball began to slow down and growl silently, as if it was in pain. Thoraim walked over to inspect what the trouble was. After going through his pet's fur for a moment, he came to a conclusion.

"Damn, those bandits must've poisoned him. And we're not exactly at our destination yet, either."

"Let me see", I told him and approached the bear. As I got closer and extended a hand towards the spot Thoraim pointed out for me, Furball gave me a snarl. I stopped.

"Easy. She jes' wants to help ya", the dwarf tried to calm his pet.

I tried again, and this time the bear didn't seem aggressive, but kept up a low, menacing growl that put me on my toes. There was a small wound hidden under it's fur, at the spot Thoraim had shown. I put a hand on it and closed my eyes.

"I thought ya druids were supposed ta be good with all kinds o'animals"

I gave the dwarf a stare that said 'you want my help or not?'. He got the message.

"Sorry."

I focused again and quickly found that Thoraim was right. There was poison in Furball's veins. It's kind of like finding a foreign object in the target's body. From there on it's a matter of manipulating it's movement and forcing it back where it came from. But if it's too split up and spread all over, the task can be difficult and taxing.

Thinking of the incident back in Astranaar for a second, I managed to force the poison to gather up and come out. It felt like a bit of a redemption for only being able to sit by and watch back the first time.

As I opened my eyes again, I had to draw breath for a little. The cleansing had been more demanding on my strength than it had seemed like.

"There was poison, but I got rid of it", I let Thoraim know.

"Well, I guess I owe ya one then", he responded. "And you too", he addressed his pet.

Furball had stopped growling and didn't seem to be hurting anymore. It sniffed my arm in a cautious manner, then looked into my eyes. I think the two of us settled our differences that night.

Sometime later, the sun had slowly began to show a faint glow of itself again, this time up in front of us. At the same time, I felt something else that was familiar. The smell of the sea.

Sure enough, silhouettes of flat goblin buildings started to become visible up ahead. A little later I could also make out a pier by the shore. It appeared to be empty.

"I don't see any ships", I pointed out.

"Uh-huh. If we're lucky, that means the enemy is here. Be ready for anything", Valen responded.

"Wouldn't we get in trouble fer kickin' up a fight in town?", Thoraim wanted to know.

"There are ways around that, if you play smart."

Thoraim gave him another displeased look, but I was more curious than anything else about what the rogue had said.

A little later, when the crimson glow was much larger and brighter in the horizon, we made it to the first few buildings of the town. The buildings themselves were still but black silhouettes in front of the approaching sunrise, so visibility wasn't as good as I'd have preferred, considering that we might've been only a few meters away from the enemy, lurking inside one of the goblin houses. A cold shiver went up my spine as I peered around, fighting the fatigue of the journey behind. I tried to take in the now very strong scent of the sea to calm myself down and succeeded relatively well. On the downside, it began to bring into mind memories of my early childhood in Auberdine, and with the glow of the sunrise looking like a rainbow of fire above it all, I was ready to believe anything could happen every time I took another cautious step.

Only a few armed watchmen seemed to be out at that time, and the silence of the small town's streets made it all a bit more ominous, like it had all been arranged as an ambush for us.

In a few minutes we reached the pier, and the goblin standing in watch next to it. A few slick words were said, some coins changed hands, and soon enough the goblin told us what Valen wanted to know.

"The last ship departed three hours ago, and I think I did see a fellow in black and another dead one carrying a whole set of gnomish failures and deathtraps on him. They both got on board."

I finally relaxed my muscles and started breathing more freely again.

"Dammit!", Valen kicked the ground in anger.

"Where was it headed?", he asked after calming down for a second.

"That particular ship makes a whole load of stops in The Eastern Kingdoms. I couldn't tell where your 'friends' are going even if you paid me enough" was the goblin's short response.

We went back some dozen steps to discuss it among ourselves.

"Now what?", I asked.

"I'm gonna take a moment to cool off", Valen said and glanced at the shore.

"Aight, then I'm gonna go look around a bit and find a decent inn so we can get some proper sleep for a change. Sound good?", Thoraim reported.

"Fair enough", I answered.

"You comin'?", the dwarf then asked me.

"You go on ahead. I think I could use a little refreshment as well", I said while looking at Valen, who was already heading for some palm trees a small distance away from the pier, along the shoreline.

"Suit yerself."

As soon as I reached the tideline at the beach, I knelt down on the sand and washed my face with two handfuls of cool seawater. After the long desert trip and bloody fight, the water felt so good that I simply stayed there for a moment with my eyes closed, enjoying the refreshment as much as I could.

As I opened my eyes again, I felt an urge to go for a swim. From the corner of my eye I saw Valen sitting on the beach about a dozen meters away. He had taken off his dark tunic and his wet face and chest were glittering in the rising sun's light.

I suppose I shouldn't have had a problem with it, considering I had lived most of my life in the middle of a wild forest, but somehow the idea of stripping down and taking a dive while he was watching just didn't feel right. Maybe it was just me being a bit thrown off by all the things I had experienced in a matter of days, or perhaps it was something about him and his generally witty demeanor.

I saw him get his flute out again as he began playing the same melody as before. That gave me an idea, and I walked over to him.

He stopped playing when I got to him.

"What?", he asked in a slightly annoyed tone.

"What's that song?"

"This?", he gestured at his instrument. Then he aimed his eyes at the sea.

"It helps me relax", he continued.

"I like it."

"Wha? Oh...right", he mumbled in response, his mind obviously wandering somewhere far away and his eyes still aimed at the horizon.

I went closer and leaned over him to catch his attention for what I was going to say next.

"If you need something to put your mind into, I've got an idea", I told him.

It worked. He looked at me again.

"Hmm?"

I stood straight again and put my hands behind my back.

"Well...I was hoping we could try that sword practice again", I said in my best persuading voice.

He looked a little surprised at first, but I think I saw a bit of a grin on his face as he stood up.

"Caught your interest, did it? Alright, how about I teach you some defense this time?"

I couldn't help smiling as he handed his other sword to me.

I found out fairly quickly that defending myself was a lot harder than attacking, as I instinctively resorted to dodging and moving away rather than actually parrying most attacks, which quickly resulted in me getting overpowered and knocked down, ready to receive a fatal blow.

A few minutes later the sun itself had finally climbed over the horizon. Thanks to it's bright light, our clear, dark shadows danced on the beach, following our rhythm, falling down and rolling over every time I did.

Even after I'd managed to find that same feral power as the last time, I kept losing more than winning.

After a little while more, we both had begun to feel the fatigue from the trip behind us and started getting clumsy and making stupid mistakes. Eventually things got to the point where we were both laughing and not really paying much attention anymore. He tripped me over with a low kick to my legs, but couldn't keep his balance and fell over as well, landing right next to me, on top of my arm. It took me a few seconds to stop laughing and draw some breath.

"Phew, that sun is getting pretty hot again. How about you get off me and we go see how Thoraim's doing?", I suggested.

"I suppose we should", he said and got up with a bit of effort.

"After all, if we took too long, he might get the wrong idea about what's going on here", he said and put on his cunning grin again, then went to pick up his tunic.

For a moment there, I wanted to lash back at him, but by the time I'd gotten back on my feet and wiped some sand off my hips, I didn't feel like it anymore. I chalked it up to being a little too tired to care about it anymore.

As we headed back to the town, that invigorating feeling after the swordfighting was even stronger than it had been the first time, even if it was overshadowed by fatigue.

We met Thoraim by an inn in the middle of town. He said he had only been able to book us two small rooms, because there was some crew called the Darkmoon troupe staying in there too, and they had reserved all the others. The innkeeper had also insisted that Furball be accommodated in the same room as it's master, 'to minimize property damage from animals', the dwarf explained in an insulted tone. So I ended up sharing a room with Valen, even if I wasn't quite sure I liked the idea.

The room was small indeed, just large enough to fit a bed on either side of it and a tiny table between them, by the back wall. There was a tiny window over one of the beds, but it didn't give much light, thanks to the thick curtain hung in front of it.

Valen let me in first, so I of course went for the bed by the window. Then he followed me in and, to my slight surprise, locked the door behind himself.

"You didn't just lock us in, did you?"

"Nope. It's just a good idea to lock your door in a place like this, or you might wake up to find that the only things left in the room are you and whatever you're wearing", he answered.

I laid my staff against the wall and hung my cloak to the end of the bed, but didn't feel like removing anything else before throwing myself down on the soft sheets and blankets. Then I rolled to my side to look at Valen, who was sitting on his bed, pulling off his boots.

"So, where are we headed next?", I asked him.

"I'll sleep on that and tell you when you wake up, kitten", he said and laid down.

"Alright then. Good night."

His response was a short bit of incomprehensible mumbling. He must've been half asleep by then.

I on the other hand did not have nearly such an easy time falling asleep, even if I was just as tired. Having slept outside as long as I could clearly remember, with the exception of the night I spent at the Emerald Sanctuary, the soft bed and the small room quickly had me rolling all over and struggling not to start feeling claustrophobic. Neither the tiny excuse for a window, nor the fact that I knew the door was locked did anything to help. Not even after I opened said window.

One sweaty hour later I finally fell asleep. It didn't last long, though.

_'Come...'_

A whisper in the air, like a breeze that just happened to sound like a word from a familiar, hollow voice...

*SLAM*

I snapped my eyes open to see that the window was closed. It must've been just the wind, I thought.

Just as I had slowly closed my eyes again, I heard a scream. This time it was Valen.

"No...enough...", he moaned in his sleep.

I kept still for a while, hoping that he would stop soon. He didn't. In fact, he seemed to get even louder, sounding like he was suffering even more from his nightmare. I got up and walked over, then knelt beside his bed to put a hand on his shoulder to try and calm him down.

"I...I can't...", he kept going.

Then something else happened. There was another whisper in the air, incomprehensible this time. Then another one, followed by more and more until I could no longer keep telling myself that it was just the wind, or some other excuse. The air felt like it was getting thicker, and Valen began squirming around almost violently.

"No, please...!"

Leaning over him and holding both of his shoulders to restrain him, I started to feel something familiar. A shadowy presence of fear and despair, causing the thin ray of light from the window to slowly die out. I was just about ready to panic.

"Wake up Valen, WAKE UP!", I half yelled at him and shook him from the shoulders, with no success at waking him up.

"No...Astranaar...was not...a failure..."

At least in my mind, an ice-cold fist grasped my heart and squeezed it still, then let go of it, causing it to go completely haywire.

"No...not her!", he kept moaning in a very loud voice. I hardly noticed the sound of someone bashing the door. I was petrified with fear.

"NOOOO!", he screamed out loud and bolted up into a seated position, right in front of my face. There was an odd sound, like flesh being cleaved. For a split-second, we stared at each other's eyes.

Then I felt something odd around my torso and we both looked down to see him pull back his hand, revealing the handle of a dagger sticking from the middle of my chest. The weapon had punched a hole through my vest, and a thin stream of purple blood was flowing out of it.

I felt something warm spreading across my chest at an alarming rate.

I tried to breathe, but managed only an odd wheeze, and to my horror, no air got into my lungs.

Then came the pain. A massive paralyzing wave that felt like something had just set my guts ablaze, causing me to lose control and slump down onto Valen's shoulder.

As my perception was fading away, I heard someone kick in the door somewhere behind me.

Still desperately wheezing for air, I heard Valen's voice just before passing out.

"No! Stop! Please, help me!"


	33. Wounded Hearts

_'No! Stop! Please, help me!'_

I had the same dream again, where I was back in the flames of my hometown, pushing Valen onboard the ship instead of being on it myself. The ship departed from the pier, and he reached out over the side to yell for me.

_"You can't!"_

The flames behind me suddenly grew much bigger than before, reaching all the way to the pier, setting me on fire as they did.

_"Cailea, please!"_

I began to feel the fire burning me and screamed out of pain.

Then all the flames disappeared all of a sudden, but I still felt like I was on fire. The center of the invisible flames was pulsing with heat somewhere in my chest. Every one of the pulses made me shudder with pain and scream inside.

Just before I faded away again, I felt something press down hard on my chest, easing the pulses a little bit, but making it almost impossible to breathe in.

An unknown amount of time later, I slowly began to perceive something again. The first thing I felt was the pain again. It was a little more bearable now, but only marginally. Every breath took a massive amount of effort and hurt like a spike being thrust into me. There was still a strong feeling of compression around my torso, but at least that was manageable now. On top of it all, my mouth felt as dry as the desert and a stench of dried blood caught onto every breath I took through it.

None of my muscles seemed to have the strength to move, but I did feel that I was laying on my back on something soft, probably a bed. My eyes wouldn't open either, but then again, I wasn't entirely sure whether I actually wanted to see anything. Then I felt something cold and wet being placed on my forehead, and what felt like someone's hand touching my left cheek and shoulder for a bit.

I remember falling into a slightly more peaceful sleep after that.

The next time I became conscious again, the first sense that was returned to me was my ability to hear. There was a sound of steady breathing, like someone sleeping somewhere nearby. I could tell from the silence around it that I was still inside a room. My chest was still hurting, especially when breathing in, and there was still a feeling of pressure coming from outside, but it was all managable as long as I didn't breathe too deep or try to move around.

I started to wrestle my eyes open, and only saw a bright, blinding light at first.

"Hey, I think she's comin' around", Thoraim's voice said. The sound of sleeping stopped and something rustled a bit to my left.

I gained my vision to see Valen looking at me from a pretty close distance.

"Thank Elune", he mumbled and leaned back to the chair he was sitting on, next to the bed I was lying on. I saw Thoraim sitting in the opposite corner of the small room, the same one I'd apparently been in all along, with Furball at his side.

"I...I really don't know what to say", Valen started quietly and aimed his eyes down. He sounded very tired. "How does one apologize for almost killing someone?", he asked in a desperate, almost teary tone.

"What...what happened?", I managed to ask in a rather weak voice. Valen glanced at the table, where a dagger was lying. It's blade was coated in dried blood, and I recognized the handle immediately.

"I...I guess you deserve to hear the whole story from the start", he said after a moment of silently staring at the floor. Then he looked at me again, and I saw how his face looked like he hadn't slept for days.

"Fifteen years ago...well...you know most of it. Auberdine was attacked by demons. I helped you escape from it. I also helped my little brother and my father. He wasn't really thinking straight after he saw the demons kill my mother, who was one of the guards fighting the attack. That was before I came for you."

He took a moment to breathe, then continued.

"I was always a bit of a reckless kid, so after seeing you to safety, I went back to the town with revenge on my mind. I wanted to kill the monsters with the only weapon I had back then", he said and eyed the dagger on the table again. "It didn't take long for them to beat me down, but instead of killing me straight away, they decided to drag me to their leader, who had been watching the whole thing from the edge of the forest. He was a black-hooded figure with the hands of a skeleton, wielding a flaming sword."

"So it was him", I concluded.

Valen didn't answer. Instead, he continued his story shortly.

"I still thought I was going to end up dead, but instead of killing me, the warlock chanted something for a moment and cast some spell on me. It didn't feel like anything at all, but I'll never forget what he said when he approached me. _'Run away, child. Run back to all those you love, and you'll discover your fate.'_"

He went silent for a while again, looking like he needed a moment to calm down.

"The truth is", he eventually continued, "when I found my family again after a few days, they were fine. They were alive. But...when I left, they were dead."

Then he looked at me as if he was about to break down.

"No monster or demon did it to them, Cailea. I did. One second I was being hugged and told how much they'd worried over me, and the next...I was looking at their corpses with a bloody weapon in my hand."

After that, he buried his face into his hands, giving me a moment to take it in and think it over. I guess I should've been very suspicious, or downright scared of him, but I wasn't. Even though he'd displayed plenty of tricks and cunning before, something about his demeanor told me that this was no trick. The fact that Thoraim was calmly sitting in the corner of the room seemed to also prompt me to trust Valen.

After a while of thinking it over, I still wasn't quite sure what to say, so I went with something neutral.

"How long was I out?"

The rogue slowly raised his view again.

"It's been four..."

"Five days", Thoraim corrected him. Then he looked at me. "He's been here all that time, looking after ya. He refused to come out even when I demanded him to back off at gunpoint", the dwarf elaborated for me.

"I...I would've never forgiven myself if it had happened again. I had to do everything I could for you, even though it's a small wonder you pulled through at all."

"Hafta admit, his persistence probably did save your life."

Once again, I didn't really know what to say, so I peered around the room instead, and spotted a glass of water on the table next to me. I tried to reach it, but my arm ran our of strength before I made it.

"Here..." Valen picked up the glass and brought it to my lips, so I only had to tilt it a little to get a sip. Getting something to drink felt wonderful, even though swallowing was a little bit painful. When the glass was empty, he put it back on the table and stood up.

"You should get some rest. You're still far from healthy, but I think I might be able to sleep again now. We can talk more a bit later", he said and headed for the door with Thoraim.

The dwarf had already left the room when I noticed that the leather vest I'd been wearing earlier was now hanging at the end of the bed along with my cloak. I peeked under the blanket laid over me to see that the the only thing I was wearing on my torso was a thick, brown bandage, tightly wrapped around my chest at least a few dozen times, a large bloodstain decorating the front of it. I looked up at Valen.

"Did you...?"

He got a slightly embarrassed look on his face.

"Kinda had to. Besides, I wasn't sure if you were going to live, so I figured you wouldn't mind that much if you did make it."

"I..."

"Don't worry. Furball wasn't watching", he said, a faint smile visiting his face briefly.

A moment of silence was broken by a burst of laughter from me, which quickly turned into a couple of painful coughs as I felt a sting around my chest again.

"Well...Thanks for saving my life. Again."

"No, I should be thanking you for not dying on me and driving me insane for good."

With that, he left the room and closed the door behind him.


	34. Leap of Fate

As I was left alone in the room, I thought I had began to understand Valen a little better. That sorrowful side of his that had subtly displayed itself every now and then, his enthusiasm on his quest to find and destroy the warlock who was responsible for most of our nightmares, and even his normally witty behavior had began to make sense as a way of escaping his so-called 'fate'.

New questions had also risen from the answers. Questions like what had truly happened back in Astranaar, and how much had Thoraim known about all this when the three of us had met up in Moonglade.

Pondering these things quickly exhausted my mind, the only part of myself that I had the strength to use at the time, so I took Valen's advice and caught some sleep soon enough.

The next time I woke up, I was already feeling much better. The wound on my chest hardly hurt anymore and I felt strong enough to get up and walk at will. I didn't get the chance to try that out, though, as Valen and Thoraim entered the room shortly after I'd woken up. They had a tray of food for me, which they put on my lap after I had hoisted myself into a seated position.

"You really should eat something. It'll be the first meal you've had in days", Valen prompted me.

"Um...thanks."

I wasn't really feeling hungry, but then again, I guess nobody in my state would've, so I dug in and managed to gain at least a bit of an appetite while eating.

"There's something I wanted to ask you", I said after having some of my meal.

"Go ahead. You deserve to know anything I can tell you, after what my stupidity has put you through."

"Your stupidity?"

"I...ever since my family...", he started and swallowed a mouthful. "I had to be alone. I had to become someone who could stay in the shadows, someone who wouldn't make many friends and risk their safety to the curse..."

He thought for a moment, then continued.

"In any case, I hadn't felt it in a long time. I thought I could handle it even if it did come back. And with Thoraim and you watching each other's backs, I never thought something like this would...", he said, and then suddenly got this expression on his face, like something had just brought him back to Azeroth. "Sorry for my rambling...what did you want to know?"

I was a little confused over what he had just said, so it took me a moment to gather my thoughts.

"I...did you have something to do with that assassination in Astranaar? In your sleep you..."

He looked away for a few seconds, then back at me again.

"Some weeks ago, I managed to get on my old nemesis' trail again, after not having heard of him in years. I couldn't ignore it, but I also knew that it could be dangerous, so I asked Thoraim to help me."

"Yeh. We met in Auberdine, where both our rides from the Eastern Kingdoms ended up, but we didn't make it very far 'till Valen asked me to meet him up ahead, in Moonglade or thereabouts", Thoraim filled in.

"I knew we had gotten very close to the enemy, and I wanted to go alone, just so there wouldn't be anyone for me to hurt in case the warlock's presence would awaken my curse again", the rogue continued.

They stopped talking for a moment, and I did my best to understand what had been said so far.

"Going through Astranaar happened to be a shortcut to following him into Felwood, but...I never guessed I'd run into a familiar face along the way."

"Me?"

He looked away again, as if to buy himself a moment to think of what to say.

"Yeah", he finally continued again. "I'm not sure what happened...I guess I managed to fight it back a little bit, but ended up taking a life anyway. Being just another night elf to all the townsfolk, I at least managed to get away pretty easily."

_Killed in broad daylight and nobody saw who did it_, I reminded myself. It did seem to make sense at last.

After thinking for a moment, I realized what I was still missing.

"I think I understand...for a bit. But...why would the curse make you attack a random person you just saw? And how come did the enemies seem like they had it planned?"

Valen seemed quite distressed by the question.

"Sometimes...I feel like he speaks to me. In my mind, in my dreams. I think the curse may be more than what it seemed like at first. Maybe it's also got something to do with being near to him, since it seems like they had to lure me to you."

_That still doesn't explain how they'd have known of my existence in the first place, or why they seem to want me dead_, I couldn't help thinking to myself. The more I heard and thought of it all, the more uneasy it made me feel about it. It made me undecisive about the future, not really knowing what I should do next.

At least up until the two of them spoke again.

"You know...there's something else I wanted to tell you today", Valen began again. "We've been thinking what to do, and we've decided to head for Thoraim's home in Khaz Modan. A boat that takes us fairly close is leaving from here in half an hour."

"Me wife's a paladin of the light, ya see. So she might jes' be able to help him with this curse o' his."

"This room's booked for two more days, if you feel like you need the rest. After that, they're going to ask you to leave, but you seem well so that it shouldn't be a problem."

It took me a moment to realize exactly what they had just said. They were going to leave me behind.

"Look, I know what you're thinking", he guessed my thoughts, "but for both our sakes, I think it's better that we split up for now. Thoraim never triggered it before anyway, and frankly, he can defend himself better in case something happens."

Then they both stood up.

"Anyway", he said while heading for the door, "we have a boat to catch now. Take care, kitten. Maybe we'll meet again on a better day. I'm...really sorry...for everything."

They waited at the door for a moment, then left. I wanted to wish them good luck, thank him for teaching me some swordmanship, and for showing me a new part of the world, but no words came into my mouth until they'd already left.

Their sudden departure felt like a slap on the face, as they hadn't really given me a chance to argue. I guess I should've been somewhat frustrated and angry at the way they'd taken their swift leave, and happy for the fact that the next choice had now been made for me, and I shouldn't need to bother myself with it anymore.

I guess I was too, at first. But after some fifteen minutes, when I had finished my meal, those thoughts and feelings quickly dissipated, leaving me simply dumbfounded by the latest turn of events.

I sat there for several minutes, feeling like a child whose friends had just been taken away, wondering why it had happened and what I was to do now. The previously small room had suddenly started to feel all too big for me, and I got this overwhelming feeling of having misplaced something vital. That's when I knew I couldn't just sit tight and wait for it.

Half without even realizing it, I had raised a hand on my chest to finish healing what was left of my injury, then began unwrapping the bandages.

There remained a very visible, roughly circular scar in the middle of my chest, but it was conveniently hidden under my clothing when I was fully dressed again.

I got on my feet and kept walking circles around the room for a little while, wondering if the boat had already left, and on the other hand, telling myself that they had asked me to stay behind.

That feeling of the world being a little off course, unable to get me back where I was, had started to build up into a looming mass that was making it difficult to think, difficult to breathe...

After a few moments, I couldn't take it anymore. I quickly checked that I had all my possessions with me, then rushed out of the room.

Some mystical force coming from both within and outside seemed to have taken control of my motions. It was like something in my head was telling me that the rest of my life was about to take off and sail away without me. And that I had to do something about it.

I found myself running on the streets of the little town, headed for the shore. Then I reached the dock and saw the boat. It was already in motion, but it had barely made it a meter away.

That's when I saw Valen looking over the edge. I don't think he noticed me, but the sight of him leaving on a boat made me think of the dream I had had twice, and of all the things he had taught me. No matter what he was or what he had done, I still owed him my life, not just once, but twice.

Fighting back the stinging pain in my chest that exerting myself had began to bring back, I sprinted along the pier, towards the boat that was just about to get out of range. Some goblin along the way yelled something about unauthorized access, but he was far too slow to have any hope of stopping me from full speed, and I was far too determined to care about it.

The ship's deck was already three or four meters away when I reached the end of the pier.

I think I had slowly began to understand some of the feelings that my first lesson of swordmanship had awakened in me, and I wasn't about to let the chance to study them further just slip away from me.

Then I jumped forward with all of my strength.


	35. Waves and Worries

Although my bare feet landed solidly on the wooden deck of the ship, my forward velocity was so high that it made me lose balance and tumble forward. I ended up crashing into a pile of thick rope across the deck, which finally halted my motion.

I was out of breath and my head was dizzy. By the time I had cleared it up, there were about half a dozen people gathered up around me. There was a goblin and a human woman, who both looked like ordinary people just taking the boat somewhere. Then there were three, strong-looking men, who looked like sailors to me, judging by their worn, simple clothing. Except for the third one of them, who was wearing a long, decorated coat and a hat with a feather sticking from it. The last person in the row was Thoraim.

The man in the coat approached me.

"You better have a damn good reason for that little stunt, elf, because this ship ain't out of swimming distance from the port yet, and unless you speak up in about five seconds, you're gonna go prove that yourself or drown trying."

He was a fairly well-built human. A little bit taller than his two men and probably at least twenty years older than me, but as I scrambled back on my feet, I was just about as tall as him. Realizing that seemed to annoy him even more.

"Well?", he asked with a bit of a grin on his face, like he was quite eager to get to tell his men to throw me overboard, all the while I was giving Thoraim a pleading look, hoping he would understand what I wanted. He did, just in time.

"She's with me", the dwarf said and approached me.

The three men looked both confused and disappointed as Thoraim bluntly walked right past them and grasped my arm in a rather aggressive manner.

"I told ya the boat was leaving in fifteen minutes, but noo, yer jes' closin yer eyes again like ya didn't hear me!"

"But...", I said as he began dragging me away from the commotion.

"Oh, shut up! Just 'cause yer a night elf doesn't mean ye can stay awake all night and sleep the days. Not when yer travelin' with me, anyway", he kept up his ranting until he'd dragged me a good distance away, almost to the other end of the deck.

That's where he let go of me and stopped talking, only to start again in a lower voice and a different tone.

"Now...what the hell are ya doin' here?"

It took me a moment to get over my confusion of what had just happened.

"I'm coming with you."

"Didn't ya hear when we told you..-"

"I know what you said, but that doesn't mean I'm going to do so."

Thoraim took a deep breath, as if trying to calm himself down and not start yelling at me for real.

"I need to talk to him again", I continued. "Where is he?"

"He's at the back of the ship, lookin' at the waves or sumthin' ", the dwarf responded and then took a more calm and serious tone.

"Look...if ye wanna come, that's fine by me. I ain't gonna stop ya. But this whole curse o' his is all new to me too, so if somethin' happens again, ye can only blame yerself or him, 'cause I dunno what to do about it. I'll help ya with enemies we might meet, but yer gonna hafta watch yer own rear too, got it?"

"I understand", I responded, while the higher waves of the open sea started to rock the boat a little.

Thoraim headed for a door that lead inside the ship, but turned around after taking a few steps.

"And oh, if I were you, I wouldn't be surprised ta find that Valen might not be very thrilled about seein' you again, if ya know what I mean. Yer gonna hafta talk yer way to him if you wanna come with us", he added, then headed indoors again.

"Dwarves ain't made for sea", I heard him mumbling as he went inside, and also noticed that he wasn't walking straight.

I found Valen where Thoraim had said he would be, at the back of the ship. He was sitting on the deck, leaning his back against the railing and playing his flute.

He seemed to completely ignore me as I walked over to him and leaned on the railing, aiming my eyes at the shrinking coastline behind us. A little bit of water from the ship's wake sparkled on my face and arms. I thought it felt quite nice.

"I decided to come along", I started in an as casual tone as I could. He still didn't seem to pay attention, but after a few moments, he stopped his playing in a long, high note, then calmly put away his instrument like nothing had happened. I was about to speak again when he finally answered.

"The ship makes a stop at Theramore tomorrow morning, before heading over the sea. It's a bit of a long trek back to Ashenvale from there, but it is still a lot closer than Tanaris", was his blunt response.

Then he stood up, looking like he was about to simply walk away.

"That's handy to know, but it's not where we're headed, is it?", I stopped him.

"We? You're not coming with us", he said while facing the other way.

"Then stop me."

There was a loud noise as his fist banged on the railing and he turned to face me.

"Dammit, Cailea! Don't you get it? You're playing with your life just by standing there!"

"And you're overreacting", I calmly replied without changing my position.

"Overreacting? You've just recovered from a wound that was less than an inch away from your heart and certain death, and you're telling me I shouldn't worry so much about going nuts again and finishing the job?"

I took a moment to let him calm down a little before I spoke.

"You're not the only one here who's got a score to settle with that warlock. Nor are you the only one who still remembers the demons and the things they did like it happened yesterday. I didn't come along just to travel for fun. Besides...", I said and turned towards him, "...you're the one who asked me to come, remember?"

Now was his turn to lean on the railing and stare at the slowly disappearing coastline, looking like he was giving up.

"That's because I didn't think that this would happen. I...I can't take the risk that it'll happen again with a worse result."

He aimed his eyes down.

"You don't know what it feels like, to be afraid of something inside yourself taking control and making you do things that you'd never forgive yourself for, do you?", he asked in a desperate, fading voice.

I moved right next to him and assumed the same pose as him, aiming my eyes down at the water behind the ship. The time had come for me to lighten my heart about something.

"I've been told by several other druids that the bestial spirit is very strong in me. I didn't really understand what they meant at the time. But back when the bandits attacked us, something happened. At the first taste of their blood, something in me went completely wild, hungering for more. I felt like I wasn't really controlling myself, and I think I might've happily ripped them apart and eaten their flesh like a real, merciless predator, if you hadn't stopped me. Or maybe even worse, who knows."

Under the circumstances, saying it out loud didn't feel as bad as I had feared it otherwise would have. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the wind and the waves, as he thought it over.

"I don't know a thing about druidism...I really don't think I can help you much with that."

"And yet, you did. Sometimes the answer to whatever problems you may have, can be found a lot easier, than you might think. It doesn't always take an expert to fix things", I repeated Thoraim's words from Winterspring. "Or that's what I was told, anyway."

He looked like he was about to say something, but I continued before he could.

"And for better or worse, I've still got to repay you for saving my life. Twice. This seems like a good way."

What followed was a long while of the two of us standing side by side, watching the sea in silence. It must've been at least five minutes until he spoke again.

"You druids sure are persistent and patient about your stuff, aren't you?"

"Me, patient?" I chuckled. "You should see the person who raised and taught me."

I thought I saw a hint of a smile on his face.

"You know...", he began, then looked into my eyes, "...a part of me is really glad that you decided to be a stubborn idiot and come along anyway."


	36. Lesson of Tranquility

I wasn't sure if he'd just welcomed me back onboard, but I sure felt like he had. So instead of going on about the same subject, I took advantage of the long silence that followed, and closed my eyes to listen to the sea.

I had spent my first years at a seashore, but coming to it again as a druid felt like I was about to uncover some old secret I had always wanted to know as a child. There was a calm humm, a melody coming from somewhere far, far away, barely carried to me by the waves. And even though the ship seemed to be heading towards the sound, it never got any closer, always remaining distant, always coming from somewhere across the vast sea and never truly being present where you are.

I found it to be quite soothing, but there was also something familiar about it, as if I had heard it before...but then Valen interrupted my focus.

"One of your 'meditational exercises'?"

I opened my eyes and looked at him.

"Something like that, yes. Why?"

"Is that how you're so calm?"

"Um...I'm not sure I understand...", I said in a truthfully confused tone.

"Even if you don't particularly care about the danger you're in while I'm around, I've been thinking...how come you trust me so easily?"

"I...what?", I asked, feeling even more confused. Valen aimed his eyes at the water again.

"Well, after what happened at the inn in Steamwheedle Port, Thoraim almost shot me when he broke into our room that night. I had five days to explain everything to him and let him think it over, while waiting for you to recover, and I'm still not sure if I really have his trust."

He stopped for a moment, then looked at me again.

"You on the other hand don't really seem to have a problem believing me after only twenty hours since you heard my story. To top it off, you're the one I damn nearly killed back there, something you can't say about our dwarven friend."

His question came like a blow from behind while you're expecting to see one in front of you. It was almost frightening to realize how I had completely ignored the chance that he might've been lying about many things in his story, just to buy him some more time for making an escape, or possibly another attempt at whatever his objective was.

"Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not trying to _make_ you doubt me. I appreciate your trust very much. This is just the way that people of my trade are taught to think. Always predicting other people's thoughts by asking ourselves why they reacted to something the way they did", he hurried to add after seeing my reaction.

Thinking closer, I did have my reasons. I had felt the warlock's shadowy power in the room that night. And the fact that he had told me his story without leaving anything out, like he had back in Moonglade, was a pretty good sign that he had been honest about it the second time.

Even so, I had to admit that I hadn't considered other possibilities as seriously as I perhaps should've. In the end, I didn't really have an answer for him. I didn't really know why. So I remained silent for a little while, to show him that.

"Maybe it's because I understand you a little better. Because I was there. I know that the attack on Auberine was true. And this curse that was laid on you...it sounds just like something that a sadistic master of a pack of demons would do."

"How would you know what someone like him finds entertaining?", he asked with a slight bit of surprise in his voice.

"I've read a lot of books in my life. Of course, most of them were about druids and such, but there were also many books on Azeroth's history, complete with observations on the enemies the world has faced over the centuries."

He didn't seem to have anything to say after that, so I decided to close my eyes and have another go at listening the sea.

It didn't take him too many minutes to interrupt me again.

"So...what exactly is it that you do when you...uh...meditate?"

"I listen."

"To what? The waves?"

"Sort of...but no, not really. Why?"

"Well...this might seem a bit ridicculous, but if you're going to come with us, I'll have to try anything I can to hold back the curse, in case it kicks in again. So I thought...maybe that would help me."

Again he had managed to surprise me speechless.

"I mean, your druid tricks seem to have done wonders for your mind and spirit since Auberdine."

I had to admit, he was correct again. For all I knew, I might've been as tormented as him, had it not been for all the years I spent in peaceful Ashenvale, learning the ways of nature. If I had even survived without the old druid's help, that is.

Still, the thought of teaching him to listen had me chuckle a bit. For someone with his nature to learn it...

"I know it probably sounds like a joke to you...but I did teach you how to use a sword and you did fine, remember?"

"Alright", I finally approved. He probably wouldn't grasp it anyway, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to let him have a go. Besides, there wasn't really anything that special to it.

"It's quite simple, really. All you need to do is focus."

"Um...okay", he said quite doubtfully, then closed his eyes. "What am I listening for, anyway?"

"That's where it gets a bit complicated. What you need to understand, is that every living thing and piece of nature has a sound to them. Not the one that you can hear with your ears, but one that your mind can hear."

"So basically...we're talking about being able to sense life?"

"You could say that, I suppose. But there's more to it. Things that you'll have to find out for yourself."

I guess I shouldn't have been quite so surprised at his understanding. After all, unlike him, I had been only a child when I was taught this.

A few minutes passed in silence.

"Are you sure there isn't something else I should know to succeed?", he asked soon enough.

"I know it gets a bit frustrating at first."

"Not really. I just have this feeling that you're playing a joke on me."

I couldn't help laughing for a bit.

"What, you don't trust me now?"

He didn't answer.

"It took me weeks to master it, and that was with a bit of luck on something. For all I know, not everyone can do it at all."

"That figures", he said and opened his eyes again. "After all, not everyone who stopped to think for a while at some point is suddenly going to awaken their inner druid, eh?"

I laughed again. His simple logic made my lesson sound like a bit more of a joke than I'd anticipated.

For a moment, he looked like he wanted to give me a pat on the shoulder, or some other physical gesture of gratitude, but he held it back a bit awkwardly and kept to words.

"Thanks anyway. Maybe it'll come in handy someday", he said. "I think I'll go see if they've got anything to eat on this boat", he continued and walked off.

That's when I knew he had just welcomed me back.


	37. Point of No Return

I really enjoyed spending several hours straight on the deck, just watching and listening to the sea. After all that I had been through back in Tanaris, I also felt a strong urge to dive in and have a bath for a change, but once again, it was the wrong time and place for that.

Valen returned to me some two or three hours later.

"How's it sound like?"

I opened my eyes to look at him.

"It reminds me of something."

For a moment, he looked like he wanted to continue on the subject, but then changed his mind.

"Look...I wanted to ask you something."

"Hmm?"

"After what happened...where are you going to sleep? It's gonna be two nights before we reach Menethil Harbor on the other side of the sea."

I thought for a moment.

"I've never been on a ship before. Where are you two going to rest?"

"In the cabins down below. Thoraim is feeling sick enough without coming on the deck and watching it go back and forth."

"So he did get seasick, then?"

"Yeah. And he's not being very good company at the moment, either. Anyway, how about my question?"

"Well...", I looked over the railing, "I really like it up here. You think they would mind if I sleep outside?"

"They generally don't care where their passengers are, so long as they don't get in their way. You think you'll wake up if we hit a storm?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well if you've never been on a ship before, I guess you haven't seen one of them, either. Let's just say that a sleeping elf ain't gonna stay onboard for long unless they're chained to something."

Of course I knew what a storm was, but I didn't really have a practical idea of exactly what would happen if we ran into one. I got a rather odd idea from imagining a giant wave sweeping across the deck.

"How about...", I put my staff next to the railing, then focused. Several strong vines began to grow from it at my command, entangling themselves around the railing, then around my legs, tying me, my weapon and the ship together. Valen seemed a little surprised to see me using my powers for such a purpose.

"Will that do?", I asked him.

He looked almost like he was holding back a laugh.

"I think so."

Eventually night arrived and Valen headed inside. I had to re-adjust my safety vines to get a nice, half-seated resting position on the deck.

The sound of the sea helped me fall asleep faster, too. But as I was closing my eyes, I couldn't help thinking of how the splashing of the waves would probably turn my dreams into nightmares about my hometown - the last place where I'd spent a night at a seashore.

Fortunately, I turned out to be wrong about it. No nightmares came to trouble me that night.

At some point, I woke up to a feeling of something cold stinging my face. It turned out to be raindrops. The ship was at a halt, tied to a dock nearby. The sky was illuminated by a pale morning shine, only to have large rainclouds cover it all. It was the sort of weather that I suppose most people would've called a gray, depressing morning. But for me, it was quite pleasant and homelike.

I hoisted myself into a better seated position and looked around to see what was going on.

On the right, there was nothing but the sea and it's endless waves, but on the left opened a view towards what looked like a very large island. There were massive stone walls all around it, with a sturdy-looking open gate leading inside the fortress from the docks where the ship was. Armored humans were watching every move that the sailors made while carrying their crates off the ship, and then some others back on it.

I remembered how Valen had said that the boat was due to make a stop somewhere on the coast of Kalimdor before crossing the great sea. Theramore.

I recognized the name as the humans' first foothold on Kalimdor, established sometime during the Third War or so, but had I not known that we would stop there, I would have had no idea what the place was by pure eyesight.

Even though we were still, as stated, on the coast of Kalimdor, the abundance of human soldiers, war machines and architecture made this island feel like an entirely different land. It didn't seem possible that I could reach Ashenvale on foot through this fortress.

That thought reminded me of the fact that I was effectively looking at my last chance to follow my companion's original advice by quitting the journey and heading back home, while we were still on this side of the sea. That's when Valen came out on the deck through a door. As soon as I laid eyes on him, that unbearable feeling of letting the world sail away without me started creeping back the more I thought of leaving. His thoughts turned at to be on the subject when he approached me.

"Nice weather, huh?"

"You like it too?", I responded without thinking twice.

"Um...no. I was being sarcastic there."

Feeling a little embarrassed by my dumb answer, I didn't say anything.

"Anyway, you do know where we are, right?"

"This is Theramore, isn't it?"

"Yep. I don't suppose you've changed your mind?"

"I still owe you, remember?"

"If you wanna return the favour that bad, I can always come find you after I've seen Thoraim's wife about the curse. Besides, it could take me a while to get back on the enemy's trail."

"It's just...", I started, but then this sudden feeling of not being able to look him in the eyes came over me. At the same time, I forgot all about what I was going to say. An odd warmth rose from inside me.

"At any rate", he interrupted, "if you're going to be onboard after this stop and it's your first time crossing the sea, I suggest you get down under the deck in a few hours.

"Huh? Why?"

"You know what The Maelstrom is, right?"

"I've heard of it, yes."

"Well, sometimes these crazy old sea dogs like to gamble it with their friends, who's got the nuts to sail closest to it along the way. If this captain here has got money to lose on it, the ride could get pretty rough sometime this evening."

"I'll keep that in mind", I told him, despite the fact that running into a storm still made me more curious than careful.

Valen wandered off again, leaving me to observe for about an hour more as the crew loaded the boat, then finally detached the ropes and let the boat drift off the shore and back on course. My last chance to back off had passed before my eyes, and I was feeling more confident than ever about where I was headed. Even though I had passed the point of no return, I felt like I was actually taking one step closer to where I was supposed to be. A few more, and the road behind me might just take me back home again.

A few hours later, I headed indoors as per Valen's advice, even though there was no danger in sight. It was hunger that was driving me there, but as soon as the door closed behind me, I started to feel uncomfortable. The boat was full of small, damp spaces rocking gently as the vessel sailed forward. The perfect thing to make me struggle with my claustrophobia.

Luckily for me, it appeared to be feeding time in the slightly larger dining cabin that I eventually found my way into. Valen spotted me as soon as I entered the room and got me a portion from the fat human behind the counter at the back of the room. There were a few others eating their food with us, but the typical happy chatter of a public dining and drinking room was nowhere to be heard. It was also odd not to see Thoraim joining us for a meal, as he was usually the first one of us to get hungry and would often eat the most, too.

However, as soon as I laid eyes on what Valen had gotten for me, all of my observations began to seem a little less unlikely. I didn't recognize the dish, assuming it even had a name. It seemed to me like some sort of grain, cooked along with water into a sticky lump. Even so, I found the appearance to be pretty much the best part of it once I had a taste. Valen looked at me with amusement.

"You'd think that they'd have something better on a boat that ferries paying customers across the great sea, eh?"

"Is it always like this?", I asked while playing with the food, not really sure if I could bring myself to eat it, but also wondering what he would say if I refused the meal he had offered me.

"Nope, some of them actually have some pretty good food. This just happens to be the cheapest ride to the Eastern Kingdoms that I could hitch for us."

I didn't really have much of an understanding on the value of gold and the things it could buy, as I had rarely had to deal with such things myself, so I didn't say anything.

After watching me for a few minutes, he finally caught onto what was going through my mind.

"I know it stinks, but that's all they have here. Not blaming you if you can't handle it, though. It was practically free anyway, and I think Thoraim could use some more if you don't feel like eating it", he referred to my meal.

"I thought he was seasick."

"He is. That's why I reckon he might appreciate another go at trying to eat something."

As if having received permission, I got up from the table.

"You sure you won't starve?", he asked me.

"Don't worry. I have a few tricks to feed myself", I truthfully responded and got a rather curious look from him. "I'm going back up on the deck", I continued and returned to said location.

It was funny how the same boat could contain such an uncomfortable place inside it, and still make me feel almost at home when standing outside in the wind.

I quickly retreated back to my favorite spot at the back of the ship to catch one final glimpse of the shrinking Kalimdor, while having my staff grow some fruit off it's tip to provide myself with a meal that I could stomach.


	38. Truth Uncovered

I guess I should've felt stronger about leaving the land I had spent my whole life in, but it seemed to have passed without much notice, constantly buried under other, stronger emotions that had been rising in me ever since the incident at Steamwheedle Port. It was as if I had stepped into something greater and more important, allowing me to ignore 'insignificant' things like the fact that every passing second set a new record on the distance I had ever been from Kalimdor.

The drizzle of the morning had passed three or four hours ago by the time it started again. And sure enough, as Valen had guessed, that rain started to get heavier and the waves higher as time and distance passed. The sky had become thick with rainclouds, darkening everything to the point where I wasn't sure what time of day it was anymore. Indeed, it all seemed to point towards an incoming "rough ride", as I had been warned.

However, instead of making me cautious or having me cover in a corner, it all seemed to have quite the opposite effect, filling me with anticipation and drawing me to it stronger than before.

I lost track of time somewhere along the way, but I reckon it must've been towards the end of the day when the waves had gotten high enough to wash the deck a little with every impact, and the first lighting bolts appeared in the sky, followed by a roar of thunder.

Crew members all over the boat had began to yell orders to each other with increasing volume and intensity, but their efforts at communicating were bested by the noise of nature's might every time they raised their voices a little more.

I guess most people who were at open seas for the first time in their life would've been at least a little concerned about the crew possibly no longer having full control of the vessel, I never really thought of it. Instead, the storm was getting me quite excited and I enjoyed myself, as if I was one of those hardy old sailors who had been through weather like this a million times already. Maybe it was my better understanding of the nature, knowing that it was merely moving on on it's course and wasn't out to get us like some superstitious sailor might've thought. Or maybe I was just that happy to be back at the sea, by which I was born and spent my first years at, even if it was a different sea on the other side of Kalimdor.

At some point, Valen showed up at my side again. I never noticed his approach.

"You seem awfully cheery", he had to say in a voice that was almost yelling, because anything more quiet would've been inaudible in the storm.

I hadn't noticed it earlier, but I was actually smiling quite widely at the rain that was beating my face.

"You don't like it?", was my response.

"As long as we get to our destination, I don't really care. But Thoraim sure doesn't like it."

"I can imagine."

"Anyway, it doesn't look like I can talk you back inside, so I'm gonna go back there myself and hope that you'll still be onboard tomorrow morning."

"Is it going to get a lot heavier than this?"

"Depends on what course the captain is taking. It could."

"I'll stay alert."

Valen didn't seem that confident about it, but he did drop the subject for a different one.

"You sure you won't catch a cold, standing out here in the cold wind and rain?"

I had to admit, of all my excitement and enthusiasm, I hadn't stopped to think of that, as it would only be a concern afterwards. A good example of how I sometimes lack foresight in such simple, practical matters. Judging by what he said next, my expression told him everything about it.

"We've got a four-bed cabin down under. It's the only size they have here. So there's one free spot even after Furball claimed one of the beds for himself. Why don't you come dry off a bit a sleep inside tonight when you're done here?"

"I'll think about it."

After that, he headed back inside, stopping to look at me for a moment just before entering, as if to make sure I hadn't already gone overboard as soon as he had turned his back.

It wasn't long after that when his suggestion began to seem like quite a reasonable idea. Even with wtih my cloak wrapped around me, my clothes started to feel pretty thoroughly soaked with cold rain- and seawater. After trembling of the cold for a few minutes, I finally gave up on further enjoying the storm and headed inside.

Dripping water all over the floor as I walked through the narrow main hall and fought back my claustrophobia, I at least found the right door pretty quickly, thanks to the directions I'd been given earlier.

To my slight surprise, I found that the door wasn't locked, so I entered.

The cabin was at least a little larger than I had expected, but not by much. A tiny oil lamp on the back wall gave a dim yellow light into the room. There were two beds on each sidewall, one above the other. Well, they were actually simple mattresses with a pillow and blanket, on top of some kind of metallic grates hung on the walls with chains. Furball was loafing all over the left bottom bed, raising it's eyes at me as I entered. Thoraim laid on the right, looking rather sick as expected. Valen sat on the bed above Thoraim. He was holding a bunch of embroidered paper cards, with more laid in front of him in an elaborate formation. After placing down one of the cards from his hand, he raised his eyes towards me.

"There you are. I was already wondering if you decide to go for a swim after all."

Coming inside had really made me shudder in my wet clothes, so instead of responding, I went straight for the back of the room, dropped off my cloak halfway there, then pulled the blanket from the unoccupied bed above Furball and wrapped it around myself as I sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall.

Valen watched me sit there with clattering teeth for a moment, then spoke again.

"You know, it would help a lot if you gave up the rest of those soaked clothes."

I let go of the blanket around me and pinched at the side of my vest. The bit of my skin that didn't touch the wet leather immediately felt a little warmer. Valen was right about what he had said, so I proceeded to unstrap my wristbands while eying him. For a few moments he didn't react at all, but then he got a sharper look on his face, as he'd just realized what I was about to ask of him and hopped down from his bed.

"Hrm, I'll just go catch a drink before bed. At least that tastes as good here as it does on dry land."

We both aimed a questioning look at Thoraim, who responded by grumbling something incomprehensible. I gave Valen a small nod and he left the room.

Then I stood up and started fingering the straps on my vest, while aiming a look at Thoraim, who was laying on his back.

"Um...", I began, not really sure of my intended choice of words.

The dwarf rolled over to face away from me.

"Don't worry 'bout it. I ain't lookin'", he said.

I decided to turn my back to him before continuing. Facing Furball instead made me feel a tiny bit more confident.

"'sides", the dwarf continued suddenly, "I'm a married dwarf anyway, so unlike him, I don't think o' you like that."

"What do you mean 'unlike him'?", I asked over my shoulder.

"Ye haven't noticed?"

"What?"

"Remember when I told ya back in Gadgetzan, how he was actin' a bit different than the last time I met 'em?"

"You mean Valen?", I asked him as I hung my clothes and cloak from the end of the bed above Furball, then climbed up on it and slipped firmly under the warm blanket.

"Aye. I think I know why, now. Like I said, I've already got me a wife back home, so from a bit of experience, I know a man who's got his eye on somebody when I see one."

For a moment, I didn't know what to say. As obvious as it may had been for quite some time, I had somehow ignored it all along...and sort of still wanted to.

"So...maybe he has met somebody back where he lives, who he wants to go back to when this is over. After all, that curse of his doesn't make it too safe for him to be around a person who he...", I tried to present a different explanation, but as I did so, reality hit me like a frenzied orc.

_'Run away, child. Run back to all those you love, and you'll discover your fate.'_

I had been in Astranaar the day when something had driven him to kill that woman.

I had been exercising with him before the night in Winterspring when I heard him having a nightmare for the first time.

And in Tanaris...

I didn't need to finish the thought. All the shadiness of Valen's explanation of the curse seemed to make sense now.

"Wasn't exactly gnomish science to figure that one out, was it now?", Thoraim said to break the sudden silence.


	39. A New Land

I pulled the blanket a little closer to my neck and laid motionless for a few minutes. The thought of someone having such...affection for me was a new and strange one, but more concerning were all the things that my sheer presence had apparently caused. Even if it had all been said before in a way, only now did I fully grasp the fact that the woman in Astranaar had actually died simply because I was there. It was either that train of thought, or blaming it all on Valen for not being able to fight back the warlock's curse. For some reason, however, the latter still seemed out of the question.

As for the idea of him being...attracted to me, it didn't feel uncomfortable, as I kinda felt like I had already known on some level of consciousness, but it did have me a little confused as to what to think of it. And alone the fact that I couldn't immediately dismiss the thoughts of it made me question myself, as to how did I really feel about him in return.

Valen arrived back in the room in a slightly cautious manner, as if wanting to make sure that I wasn't still in the middle of taking my wet clothes off, before really entering. Thoraim observed him and got a slightly amused look on his face, but quickly hid it when the rogue turned his eyes on him, then me. Valen yawned widely as he walked to the middle of the room, having left his boots by the door and pulling off his leather tunic as he did. Then he seemed to get some sudden idea and turned to look at me again.

"Since we're in this situation again, I've a favor to ask you", he told me.

"Um...", I glanced at where my clothes were hung on the wall, then sat up on the bed while holding the blanket to my chest. "What is it?"

He drew both of his swords, immediately catching Thoraim's sharp eye as he did. Then he proceeded to remove a small knife from around his left calf, and another one that he had hidden somewhere about his waist. Then the handed the small pile of weapons towards me.

"I'd like you to hide these somewhere up there. Don't give them back to me until morning."

I hesitated for a moment.

"Please. I don't know if it'll make you feel any safer, but I'm not going to get a moment of sleep tonight if I have any one of these in reach while you're sleeping in this room. So, for both our sakes."

"Why not give them to Thoraim?", I asked in a lower voice, hoping the dwarf wouldn't be able to make out what I was saying. Valen responded in a similar voice.

"Because if something happens, your bed up there is much harder to reach...and frankly..", he said and glanced at where my clothes were drying, "..it's also the last place in this room that I'd have the nerve to come looking for 'em", he said in an almost whispering voice, and a bit of an embarrassed tone, I might add.

That feeling of slight embarrassment, however, was more or less mutual as I took the weapons from him with a slightly awkward, one-handed motion, since my other hand was still holding the blanket over myself. As he turned around and hoisted himself to the other raised bed across the room, I laid down again and began looking for a spot where to hide the small assortment of blades, without having to feel their cold steel against myself. After a moment of figuring it out, I ended up tucking them in the side of my mattress, right next to the wall, where anyone reaching for them would literally have to get past me first.

"Besides", Valen continued from across the small room as he had laid down on his bed, "this way, you'll be able to stab me back this time, in case something happens."

Then he reached out to the oil lamp on the wall and darkened the room by putting it out.

I must've been laying awake for several hours, listening in on Furball's loud, stable snoring and any signs of Valen having another nightmare. Being cautious wasn't the only thing keeping me awake, however, as I couldn't stop thinking of what Thoraim had helped me figure out. But it seemed that the more I thought of it, the more unsure I was of my own position in the matter. Whatever feelings I might or might not have had towards Valen were well hidden under a mass of emotions invoked by everything I had seen and experienced on the journey so far.

Like so many times before, intensive thinking until I was mentally exhausted finally got the best of me and had me fall asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, one look around the room told me that I was the only one in there. Taking advantage of that, I got up and quickly dressed up before the others would return, then reached up into my bed to grab Valen's weapons, which were still there. Thankfully, my clothes had dried up pretty well overnight.

I found my companions on the deck, peering over the railing. It was almost strange to see Thoraim there too, as he had spent most of the boat trip indoors, probably lying in his bed. I went over to them and tried to see what they were looking at. In the horizon, there was a narrow strip of what looked like land. Before I could contemplate it any further, Valen had a request for me.

"I see you brought my tools. I could've gone to get them myself once I saw you were up, you know", he said and offered to take his weapons from me. I handed them over, but held on to one of the swords for a moment.

"I don't suppose we could...", I began while fingering the blade in a suggestive manner.

"Sorry kitten, but I really don't feel like pointing anything sharp at you after what's happened", he responded, so I handed him the sword with a bit of disappointment visible on my face. He seemed to catch on pretty quickly.

"Maybe I could teach you something else for a change?

"Like what?", I asked, a little embarrassed about how I managed to sound somewhat like a spoiled child who had just been denied her favorite toy.

"Well...", he began and eyed me head to toe, as if he was assessing what would best suit my physique, "I could show you how to work with leather, so you can fix your own garments the next time you get stabbed."

Up until that point, I hadn't even realized that the hole his dagger had punched through my vest had been missing ever since I woke up after the incident. I knew he had bandaged my wound, but I hadn't thought of this particular detail.

"Alright", I said, although inside I wasn't fully content with the suggestion. But I had seen before how the most seemingly boring subjects could prove very interesting to study.

"Whatever it is you're plannin', you better save it fer later. We're almost there", Thoraim suddenly interrupted.

"That's what made you come up here?", Valen asked him a teasing tone. The dwarf turned around to face the rogue.

"What? Don't tell me ya wouldn't be eager ta see yer homeland after a trip like this."

Valen hesitated for a moment.

"I...guess..."

The three of us watched side by side as Menethil Harbor came closer and closer. After about an hour, it was clear enough for me to see some of it's details. The town looked like a bit of a fortress compared to elven or goblin towns, but not as fortified and large as Theramore had been. There were plenty of smaller, cheaper-looking buildings scattered around a large central fort that seemed to watch over the town.

A little later, the odor of the surrounding marshland started to become perceivable too. I guess a lot of people would've disliked it, and while it did strike me as a bit of something new again, it didn't really bother me. It was simply a different atmosphere from what I was used to, but not really any less bearable.

When the ship finally came to a halt, Thoraim's expression grew ever more brighter. I didn't know exactly how close he was to home, but there was a definite sign of it on his face, and him having spent most of the sea journey feeling sick was little more than a bad, fading memory as the dwarf lead us across a few planks back to solid, dry land.

"Boy, it's good ta be back at last. I was startin' to catch a bit of a tan back in that damn desert. That don't look good on a dwarf."

Valen and I glanced at each other's faces, then back at Thoraim.

"Um...what do you mean 'catching a tan'?", I asked out of genuine curiosity.

The dwarf seemed surprised at first and looked at us for a moment, but soon covered his face with a palm.

"Oh, right...nevermind."

Valen did seem to know what the dwarf was on about, but he apparently preferred to keep it to himself and chuckle behind my back for a moment.

Even if I did feel safer on land, there was a certain, subtle feeling of leaving behind an old friend as we walked further inland, away from the sea, to look for a place to have a meal in. Or rather, let Thoraim take us there.

At the door of what looked like your average tavern, Thoraim spoke up.

"This here is Deepwater Tavern. The only place you'll find a finer meal is me home. But we ain't there yet, so this'll hafta do for today."

I had liked Thoraim's cooking before, but I had my doubts about a place he so openly praised.

As we entered the tavern, Thoraim and Valen headed for the counter at the back to place orders, but something I caught from the corner of my eye stopped me near the door.

"Aren't you that apprentice druid from Felwood?", a female voice said from my right. I turned to face the speaker.

She was a night elf, a bit taller than me, wearing a set of metallic armor. Not a very heavy or covering one, but no doubt just protective enough for her. On her back she had a quiver full of arrows and a longbow, and two light axes hung at her hips. I had seen her before. I had been told that her name was Sorelei.

"You're pretty far away from Moonglade, girl", she said as she saw my face.


	40. A Matter of Trust

_"You're pretty far away from Moonglade, girl"_, she said as she saw my face.

She was about the last parson I had expected to see on my first few minutes in the eastern kingdoms, so for a moment, I had no idea what to respond besides...

"Hello."

I had to think for a brief moment before saying more.

"I didn't expect to meet you here. Like you said, we are far away from Kalimdor."

"Well, I wasn't planning on being here until about a week ago, when something came up", she responded. "How about you, miss...?"

"My name is Cailea. And...I guess you could say that I'm just out to see the world."

"Oi, Cailea! Whaddaya want ta eat?", Thoraim shouted from across the room, catching a few more eyes than I'd have liked to.

"I see you're not traveling alone. A wise choice", Sorelei commented.

"I've heard that before. Excuse me...", I said and headed towards Thoraim, only to have her catch me with her words again.

"Before you go, might I ask you where you're headed?"

"To Thelsamar", I responded, remembering what Thoraim had said about where he lives, "why?"

"I'm headed in that direction, too. Even in this age and day, it's not every day you see one of our kind wandering around the eastern kingdoms...so I was wondering if I could accompany you."

She managed to surprise me again by asking that.

"Well I...I guess I'm not really the one to decide that. But I could ask."

"I would appreciate that. I've already had my meal, so I'll wait for you outside", she said and left the tavern.

I finally got a chance to go to Thoraim and Valen, so I did, even if I was a bit stupefied by the sudden appearance of a familiar face in such an unlikely location. Thoraim asked me again what I wanted eat, so I told him to just get whatever he would recommend. As we went to a table, my distracted behavior finally got my companions asking questions.

"Who was that elf ya were talkin' to?", Thoraim wanted to know.

"Someone I've met before", I gave him a short response as I sat down.

"Where?", Valen asked.

"I was told she's a mercenary who had been hired to help a druid I met in Felwood."

"So...you don't really know her, do you?"

"Not really, no. We never talked before."

My two friends glanced at each other, then continued asking me questions.

"What did she want with you then?"

"She wanted to know where I was going. Apparently she likes to travel with night elves. When I told her, she asked if she could join us. She's waiting outside for an answer."

"You told her", Valen repeated in a disappointed tone.

"Yes...?", I was confused.

"Cailea...", he began, "...people don't ask to hook up with complete strangers without a good reason."

"Bu-"

"It probably sounds to you like I'm just being really skeptical, but trust me, it's the way the world works these days."

Even though I hadn't actually made any decisions for us yet, his remark did make me feel like he didn't trust my judgment, taking my mood down a bit.

"I guess you really have been taught to think like that. I don't suppose you make a whole lot of friends, suspecting everyone at first glance", I snapped at him.

"Maybe, but it has also kept me alive so far", he responded in a slightly annoyed tone.

Somehow I just couldn't drop it yet.

"So you'd rather play it safe and live alone for the rest o-"

"Aight, enough! Both of ya!", Thoraim interrupted after listening to us.

"How about this", the dwarf began, "we have our meal now, with no more arguing over this. Then we go meet this elf and talk about it. Sound good?"

Neither of us gave him a verbal response, but there was a silence of agreement following his proposition.

My meal, when it arrived, turned out to be some kind of roast fish served along with a bunch of vegetables. I had almost never had any fish while living in the middle of Ashenvale forest, so it was a bit of a new thing. And as it turned out, Thoraim hadn't been kidding when he had praised the place - the food was delicious, at least after the boat ride we'd been on.

Valen and Thoraim were having different meals, but it seemed like they were enjoying them aswell, and by the time we got up from the table with full bellies, the nasty little debate from earlier had been forgotten and everybody seemed ready to have a rational discussion about the elf, Sorelei, wanting to join us.

We found her outside, as promised. She had her eyes on some sort of a scroll, but as we approached her, she put it away.

"Oh, there's three of you", she said. Apparently she had been only expecting me and Thoraim.

"Four, actually", Thoraim corrected her, pointing out Furball as he did.

"Well, greetings to you all then", Sorelei said in a much more friendly voice than what I'd previously heard her talking in.

"So...", Valen started with an interrupting hand gesture, "...who exactly are you? Cailea here told us where she met you, but as far as I can tell, you're as much of a stranger to us as that taverkeep back there", he continued and motioned towards the tavern where we had just come from.

"Just a fellow night elf looking for company to travel with", she responded, then paid closer attention to Valen's expression and continued: "you're free to doubt my honesty as much as you wish, but it would be rather rude to turn me down after asking me to wait here, no?"

Valen seemed dissatisfied, but Thoraim had already made up his mind.

"The lady's right, ya know. An' since it's not like there's much o' anythin' dangerous along the way, havin' more people around might make it a bit more interestin', eh?"

"Sounds good to me", I backed him up.

Valen didn't say anything, and his body language did not speak of approval, but he didn't argue when Sorelei spoke again.

"Good. Shall we go, then?"

Valen stayed behind a bit as we headed off towards the large stone gate leading outside town, so I took the opportunity to whisper into his ear: "don't worry about the curse. She doesn't know about it, and I'm not going to tell her. And whatever happens at Thoraim's home, we can probably hold it off until she leaves. It'll be fine."

I'm not sure if I had managed to improve his mood, but he did seem more neutral outside after that.


	41. Retribution

The first thing I noticed about the marshland was not it's sound, it was the smell. Strong and omnipresent, it made concentrating on my other senses almost as much of a challenge as Felwood had. The smell wasn't really a bad one though, just very noticeable.

As far as sounds went, there was plenty of noise even for those who didn't share my abilities. All kinds of insects and reptiles were swarming all over the landscape, only a fraction of their existence visible to the naked eye. This became even more apparent when I concentrated on my usual inspection of the land with my druidic sense. If Winterspring had seemed like there was plenty of dormant life hidden away somewhere, here it was all awake, but still mostly invisible to a traveler's eyes.

Well, except for one thing. I noticed after a while, that Thoraim seemed busy with swatting and chasing away a whole bunch of mosquitoes that seemed to bother him. Interestingly enough, none of us three elves seemed to even notice such a nuisance, myself included.

It was a few hours later when Valen finally stepped up to address our new companion.

"I didn't catch your name back there."

"Cailea didn't tell you? It's Sorelei", she responded in a slightly surprised tone, making me feel somewhat foolish about myself. "How about you two?", she then asked the men.

"Three", Thoraim corrected her once again, "name's Thoraim, an' this here is Furball", he pointed out his pet, seeming quite proud of it.

"You can call me Valen", the aforementioned finished the introductions.

With a bit of a tension still in the air, the next time any of us spoke was when the sun had begun to fade away and Thoraim suggested we'd spend one more night on the road, as we would be able to reach his house by the next evening. With no complaints voiced, the dwarf set up a campfire, just like back in Winterspring. He seemed to have a talent for always finding firewood, be it in a snow-covered valley or a wet-to-the-core swamp.

We had a small meal as dusk turned into a night and the fire in our midst grew seemingly brighter. Sorelei didn't join us in eating Thoraim's cooking, but decided to stick to her own supplies instead. As always, the stark look in her eyes reminded me of cold steel rather than a soft silvery glow like most of us night elves, and judging by that, she didn't have a problem with none of us really bothering to communicate with her.

After we were done eating, the silence started to get a little awkward, so I decided to get at least something going to avoid the feeling, and remembered something from earlier that might help me. I leaned closer to Valen to speak to him in relative privacy.

"Are you going to teach me anytime soon how to work with leather, like you promised?"

"Sure. How about now?", he responded, sounding relieved, like he had been waiting for just such an excuse to ignore the others without seeming rude.

"Alright."

"Okay then", he said and dug into the small bags he carried on the back of his belt, "I've got some needles and thread here, now we just need some leather", he said and offered me a large needle made of bone and a ball of strong-looking brown thread.

For a moment, I simply stared at the items he was holding out for me while eying me expectantly. It took me a second to realize exactly what he was asking for, and another to figure out a way around it, so to speak.

I obviously had no intent to remove my vest or my shorts, so I took off my belt instead.

"It's always been a bit loose for me. Maybe you can show me how to remedy that", I told him and took the items he offered.

"Don't see that many night elves around these parts. What's yer business in the eastern kingdoms?", I heard Thoraim addressing someone from the other side of the campfire. That someone turned out to be Sorelei.

"I'm on personal business. Something came up back in Kalimdor", she replied.

"Does that have anything to do with what happened in Felwood?", I asked her while watching Valen combine needle and thread so we could start.

"No, this is something outside me being a mercenary."

I was slightly disappointed, as I had almost hoped to gain some insight on the mentioned events from her.

"How'd ye become a mercenary, anyway? I've seen my share o' the world, and the only two night elves who work for money, that I've ever seen, are sittin' here with me", Thoraim asked her.

"Now that's a bit of a story", she responded and took a more comfortable seat by the crackling fire while Valen was showing me some basic stitching tricks.

"My family - me and my little sister - used to live in what's known as Felwood nowadays. I helped fight the demons in the third war, but she was always a bit too shy and sensitive for that kind of things, even at five hundred years of age. Some people never change."

"Heh, and here I was, talkin' like I was the veteran here", Thoraim concluded with a chuckle. Sorelei replied with a faint smile.

"The war that she wanted to avoid had finally come to us. After seeing it firsthand, she decided that she wanted to help in some way, too. She sought become a priestess, so that she could mend the wounded with Elune's light", she continued her story, then took a pause.

In the meantime, Valen was trying to show me how to handle a small knife designed to cut leather, but it was a bit of an awkward attempt, as he was reluctant to even touch the bladed tool himself. It was a bit of a shocking show of just how afraid he was of hurting me again. It also got me thinking again of what Thoraim had helped me realize back on the boat.

"Needless to say, having to abandon our house and start over when Felwood was lost was quite the shock for her", Sorelei was continuing her story, "so I decided to become a mercenary. That way, I could keep on tracking down and destroying the demons and their accomplices, who had caused so much suffering, while earning some coin to help my sister settle in her new home."

"Hm, seems like every other person I meet is motivated by retribution for something that happened because of the war", Thoraim thought out loud, followed by a wide yawn.

"I think I'll go ta sleep now", the dwarf said after a few minutes of silence and retired into his tiny tent.

After stinging my fingers a few dozen times with a needle, I figured I was also getting a little too tired to keep going, so I gave Valen his tools back and settled down to rest. He followed my example soon enough. Sorelei stayed up for a little while longer, making sure the fire would burn out safely. Or so I thought, anyway.

I didn't have any weird dreams that night, and I woke up around the time the sun was starting to glow in the horizon again, but from the first glance I took around, I knew something was wrong.

Thoraim was still sleeping in his tent, even though he was usually up long before me. The same went for Furball.

Sorelei was awake. She had a small, opened flask of green liquid beside her, and in her hands, she had a dagger. On a quick glance, there was nothing strange about it, but then I paid closer attention and realized that the weapon she was handling wasn't hers. It belonged to Valen. I knew this, because it was the same weapon he had stabbed me with.

"What...?", I began, but didn't manage to say more before Valen began to slowly wake up with a yawn.

I was a little too far away and still far too groggy to stop what happened next. I simply stared in confusion as Sorelei stood up and walked over to him with a completely calm look on her face. The dagger in one hand, she drew one of her axes with the other, then without warning, she thrust the dagger straight into his arm and put the blade of her axe about an inch away from his neck as he screamed.

"How does it feel to be on the receiving end of a poisoned blade, murderer?", she asked him with wrath glowing in her eyes.


	42. Crossing Lines

"What do you think you're doing?", I yelled and made a move towards Sorelei, but before I knew it, she had drawn her other axe and pointed it at me.

"You stay out of this, girl. It's between me and him."

"Argh...what the hell are you talking about?", Valen managed to spit out while in pain from the dagger stuck in his arm.

"Don't tell me you've forgotten what you did!", Sorelei yelled at him.

"I'm not going to let you just- ", I started.

"I'm not warning you again, druid. It's none of your business!", she interrupted me and made a threatening motion with the weapon pointed at me to back up her words.

"At least answer the question."

"I was passing south through Felwood and decided to help out your expedition on the way. I was headed to Ashenvale to see my sister, who was about to take on the full duties of a priestess of Elune, something she had been working towards since the war. After getting delayed by that ambush we fell into, I thought I was running late and would miss the ceremony", she elaborated, then turned towards Valen again.

"When I got to Astranaar, there was a ceremony for her alright, but it had nothing to do with her accomplishments. It was her burial. Only a few days before I had arrived, somebody had poisoned her to death in broad daylight! And now I've finally found that somebody."

"You sure? That's - augh - a pretty common poison among people of my trade", Valen tried to confuse her.

"She didn't hurt a fly in her life, and you have the nerve to play dumb about what you did!", she hissed at him through gritted teeth.

Hearing such accusations being spat on his face started to stir something inside me. Both my mind and my heart were plunged into a confused chaos, the only feeling I could interpret from the mass being this familiar feeling of the whole world sliding out of control unless I did something about it, prompting me to speak despite Sorelei's warnings.

"You know, you might as well blame me for it. I was there. I watched her die, because I was too slow and confused to do anything in time."

Both Valen and Sorelei turned to look at me.

"What did you say?", she directed her attention to me, while Valen was clearly mouthing "No Cailea, don't!" at me.

"In fact, she wasn't supposed to get killed that day. I was, but there was a mistake. Nothing would've happened, had I not been there that day", I said while subtly standing up with my staff in hand.

I managed to catch more of her attention to myself than Valen, just like I had hoped. But as soon as she properly aimed her steel-solid eyes at me, I could feel my courage beginning to falter.

"A mistake? I don't understand half of what you're saying, but it sounds like you have a problem with this killer being dealt justice. Why is that?"

"Because you don't know what you're doing! There's more to it than that, so I can't just let you kill him!", I yelled at her, not really sure of myself. As I did, the words made something inside me tingle, like I was spitting out lies, even though what I said was true. At the same time, I was nervously eying Thoraim's tent for any sings of movement after we had all been raising our voices.

"Don't count on him", Sorelei said as she noticed what I was looking at, "being the only one of you three skilled enough to have a chance of stopping me, I made sure both him and his pet are conveniently going to oversleep today. So if you want this rat's life saved, I guess you'll just have to stop me yourself", she responded and confidently pulled back the weapon she had pointed at me, turning her attention back to Valen who had managed to crawl away a few inches during the distraction, but not nearly enough to make a difference to the situation.

With that, Sorelei had just made it clear that I'd have to fight her unless I could watch Valen getting killed before my eyes. As I looked at the rogue again, seeing him moan in pain from the dagger stuck in his arm, as well as the poison that it was coated in began to stir my insides again, bringing back that feeling of having to help him, this time in a strong enough form to make me ignore a few hard facts, such as the fact that I most likely wouldn't have the slightest chance of besting the several hundred years old elven warrior who was threatening his life. Or convincing her to step back, for that matter.

Even so, my ridiculously small chances of success seemed insignificant next to the thought of letting her have her way. Enough so to make me attack her.

The swing of my staff that I aimed at her was easily blocked, after which she responded with a blunt blow to my left arm, causing me to lose half of my grip. In response, I transformed into my panther form, just in time to avoid a high swing. I then made a dive for her feet, only to receive a swift painful kick to the face, throwing me some three feet back and off my legs. Even if my natural agility had been complemented before, it was no match for her vastly superior skills.

"Have you lost your mind, druid?", Sorelei asked me as I transformed back to better reform and come up with a different approach. My head was ringing, my nose was bleeding, and judging by the aching jaw and the taste in my mouth, one of my teeth had loosened up considerably.

Sorelei didn't seem to continue her attack after throwing me down, so I decided to use my entangling trick on her, trying to make it look like I was simply using my staff to help myself back up. Unfortunately, the vines I called up only managed to wrap around one of her boots before she caught on to my move. I remember seeing one of her axes swinging towards me. Then there was a loud noise and a whole bunch of wood splinters in the air as her weapon cut through my staff. Instead of getting chopped clean in half, the enchantment it bore apparently caused it to break down much more violently.

The next thing I knew, I took another one of her kicks, this time squarely in my torso. It flung me sideways for a little, as I found myself lying next to Valen.

"I was hoping to watch him choke on his own concoction, but I guess I'll have to end this now, before you manage to get yourself killed over this", I heard Sorelei saying while I laid on the ground, holding my midsection, trying to catch the breath she had knocked out of me. Her words alerted me to look up again, where she was about to make a lethal swing at Valen.

With no weapon on my hands and less than a second to think, I went for the only thing in reach that could help me and pulled one of Valen's short swords from his belt. Even though I was holding the blade with two hands, I only barely managed to stop Sorelei's powerful attack and not drop the weapon out of the force of the impact. I was expecting her to keep pushing, but my move seemed to have caught her by surprise, as she didn't use her other weapon or apply pressure with the first.

"Why...?", she wondered with genuine confusion on her face, "why would a young druid like you risk her life protecting a murderer who has killed our kind and would be an outlaw to anyone who knew of his actions?"

"He's not as guilty as you think", I instantly responded, and then came up with more to continue. "I know you don't believe me, but think about this: if you want his life, you'll have to take mine, too. After that, who do you think the real murderer here will be?"

"You don't seem to realize, that by siding with him, you're crossing the lines of law as well. For all I care, I'll walk away having taken revenge on my sister's killer and his young, foolish accomplice. And since it doesn't seem like I can talk you out of it any more than you can make me change my mind, I might as well spare you the sight of me killing him by taking you first", she said and raised a weapon to strike me down.

*click*

"Ya do that, and her head won't be the only one taking a flight here!", Thoraim's voice interrupted her.

The dwarf was standing behind her, his gun pointed at her head at point-blank.

"I don't care what ya think yer doin' here, but nobody kills my friends an' walks away alive if I can help it!"

There was a moment of silence, the only audible sound being my heavy breathing after the short combat. Sorelei was frozen in place, and she seemed to have trouble figuring out whether her vengeance was worth taking a bullet to the head.

Then, after a long five seconds or so, she finally put her weapons back onto her belt.

"Looks like luck is on your side today. But you better pray to Elune that we never meet again", she said and slowly began to walk away, despite the gun still pointed at her. Instead of firing, Thoraim simply kept her in his sights until she had faded from view. As soon as she had, I opened my mouth.

"Thoraim! I thought she had given you something to make you sleep."

"Heh, that she did. But it seems that she hadn't done it to a dwarf before an' didn't know that booze ain't the only thing we can take a lot of before goin' down. Furball's gonna get a bit of extra sleep this mornin', though", he clarified for me.

"Aarrgh!", Valen yelled from outside my view. I turned my attention towards him to see that he had just pulled the dagger out of his arm. Without a second thought, I held out my hands towards his wound.

"Let me help. I think I can still get rid of the poison for you."

"Don't worry about that, kitten. It doesn't work on me."

"Huh?"

"I've got this antibody in me that makes it useless against me, something every other person of my trade does. Would be pretty unprofessional to accidentally cut yourself with something that can kill you just like that", he said with a bit of a smile on his face.

"Well, you've still got a bleeding wound here", I responded after a short moment of thinking his words through, and then I healed it for him.

After that, I gave myself a moment to look around and breathe, only to end up spotting the remains of my staff. The middle of it had been shattered into small splinters, and both of it's ends were now separate pieces of wood. I held one of them in my hand for a moment, and realized that I wasn't getting any sort of a response, like I did from living things. It seemed that whatever power had given it the property of behaving like living wood in my hands was now gone.

As I kept inspecting the pieces of wood with a bit of sorrow over losing an item with a decent bit of sentimental value, someone took a gentle grip of my arm.

"I'm really bad at this, but thanks for saving my life", Valen's voice said from my right.


	43. Something to Count On

"Cailea...you alright?"

As his hand let go of my arm, I snapped out of my stare at the remains of my old weapon.

"I...I'm fine, thanks. A bit roughed up maybe, but I'll live", I responded, managing to break a little smile to back up my words while getting rid of my nosebleed with a tiny bit of help from nature.

"Can't say the same for yer stick there, though, can ya? Guess you'll hafta find yerself a new one, eh?", Thoraim noted.

That's when I noticed something. Among the remains of the staff was a chunk of wood that had once been it's tip, and just like when the weapon had still been whole, there was a pair of leaves growing from it. I picked it up with renewed hope, only to find that, although there was a little bit of the item's former power still in the piece, it was far too weak to function anything like what it had been, let alone for the staff to be regrown with my abilities.

"I suppose so. But I doubt that I'll find one quite like it anywhere around here", I responded to the dwarf while I pocketed the small piece of living wood, just in case.

"Still, I guess it's a small price to pay for the fact that we're all still alive", I said in an attempt to raise my mood.

"Aye. No weapon's worth someone's life, if ye ask me", he agreed.

_Speaking of lives_, I thought to myself as a reminder and turned to look at Valen who hadn't said much.

He sat there with a thoughtful look in his eyes, like he was trying to get through his head everything that had just happened. Not a position I'd ever seen him in before.

Trying to think of what to say to him, he beat me to it.

"Well...I guess you'll need something else with which to defend yourself in the meantime", he decided.

"I've got plenty of sharp bits to aim at the enemy if I need them", I told him while holding up my right hand as if it was a claw to strike with, knowing he'd understand what I meant.

"I know that, but I'd feel much safer knowing that you have something to count on no matter what form you happen to be in", he said and proceeded to pick up the dagger he'd pulled out of his own arm a moment ago, the same one that I had been stabbed with back in Tanaris.

"Besides...", he continued while wiping the weapon quickly on a loose piece of leather from his sewing kit, "...it seems like a good excuse for me to part with this", he finished the sentence, then offered the dagger to me.

"But...", I said in surprise, "wasn't that your...?", I began to ask, remembering what he had said about it earlier.

"...one of my first proper weapons? Yeah, that it was. But just like with people, it's not what you are or where you come from, but what you do, that truly reflects you. And so far this has only ever been used against all the wrong people."

With more doubt on my mind than I felt comfortable with, I took the dagger and adjusted my wrist to it's weight while fingering it's blade with my other hand. Valen caught onto my expression soon enough.

"I understand if you don't want it either, but..."

"No, it's not that...", I interrupted him, "...it's just a little..."

"Huh?"

"...small.", I finally managed to speak my mind truthfully.

The confused look on Valen's face melted into an expression of amusement and surprise. A bit to my left, Thoraim burst into laughter.

"Well said lass. That lil' poker ain't gonna be much more help than a..."

"But thanks", I interrupted the dwarf, "I'll see if I can make better use of it than you did."

A compassionate smile came across Valen's face.

"I'm sure you will, kitten", he said while I stuffed the weapon between my belt and my hip, so that it'd be in the appropriate position to draw it from, even though I had no sheath for it.

It wasn't long after that when Furball finally woke up and both myself and Valen declared that we were feeling well enough to travel again.

As we proceeded further into the marshland, I noticed that we were slowly headed higher and higher, later evidenced by how the ground and it's plantlife began to seem drier and drier. I also noticed that the path was veering closer and closer to the mountains in the south.

It must've been at least a few hours past midday when the path suddenly took us straight to the mountains, where a large tunnel entrance awaited. I instinctively stopped at the sight of it, and upon realizing how odd it must've seemed, I pretended to be admiring the towering mountain before us.

"A lil' bigger than what you've seen back in Kalimdor, aye?", the dwarf noted. He was right, too, but the size of the mountain's exterior wasn't on my mind at the moment.

"I don't suppose there's a way to cross this without going under it", I said and caught a rather curious look from both of my companions.

"Ha! Last time you cheated yer way outta' honest climbin', an' now yer actually lookin' for the high way? Aye, there's a hard way to get across if that's what ya want, but yer trick ain't gonna work here. There's a reason why most birds don't fly that high into the cold mountains. Sides, that route would take half a week to get us where we want ta be. Maybe more if the weather up there's bad"

The look on my face must've shifted quite a few steps away from relaxed, considering how Valen addressed me next.

"Something wrong?", he asked.

"Well I...", I struggled to find the right words to explain myself without making too much of a fuss over it, "...I just don't like the idea of having a mountain between myself and the sky."

Thoraim looked genuinely amazed by the notion, as if he was having difficulty believing that anyone could possibly have an issue with going underground. Valen took a moment to think about it, then put on that cunning look of his once again.

"Well, I've never heard of any dwarven tunneling coming down on it's own without some serious provocation from a whole mess of war machines or something, but the way I see it, even if it does happen to cave in, as the tallest person here, I'll catch it and hold it up for you so you can get out. You've got nothing to worry about."

"Wha...", I started, then ended up chuckling as I fully realized what he had just said.

"I'm not sure if that helped, but I guess we don't have much of a choice, do we?", I decided and headed for the entrance ahead of them while fighting back my instincts, which were screaming for me to turn back.

Even with the determination and momentum I had managed to muster, I ended up stopping just below the archway where the walls of the tunnel actually began and not move until I could see my companions walking on both of my sides.

There's very little to say about what happened in the tunnel, since I was once again trying hard not to pay attention to where I was, but instead focus on listening. It didn't help that the inside of the mountain was one of the most silent places I've ever been to, in that respect. Aside from a few cave bats and stray insects here and there, the place was a huge mass of solid, silent rock. As far as physical sounds went, there were flaming torches along the way, but their crackling sound and the shadows of the cave were not a good combination on my mind, considering my past, so I did my best to ignore those too. I suppose it gives some people a sense of security to be surrounded by an unchanging wall of silence, but in it's own way, to me it was almost as disturbing of an observation as the cacophony of suffering in Felwood. The only slightly comforting factors were an unknown warmth that I could feel on my right, as well as the fact that I could tell from the fatigue in my legs how we were constantly heading upwards in addition to whatever horizontal direction we were going in.

I wasn't even paying enough attention to perceive any kind of a 'light at the end of the tunnel'. Instead, for all I could perceive, we simply emerged back under the sky at some point. I had lost all track of time and place, but one look upwards was enough to tell me that we had taken quite a few hours traveling through the mountain.

Thoraim sniffed the air eagerly.

"Ah, finally home", he said in an excited voice. Furball was giving a similar reaction in his own way.

That's when I finally lowered my guard enough to realize that I was holding Valen's hand, who was standing to my right. And judging by the way my hand felt after I quickly released my grip in slight embarrasment, I had been doing so for a good while by then.


	44. Homecomings

Named after it's dominant geographical feature, Loch Modan was a high mountain valley where the very large lake was feeding a surprisingly lively variety of flora and fauna. Having such a place in the middle of the cold mountains brought to mind a distant memory of Moonglade, and I was quite enjoying myself soon enough.

We followed a gravel road south along the lakeside as the sun slowly began to dim into a dusky red glow, reflecting quite nicely off the surface of the water and painting the green grass into various shades of brown and orange. It was not too much later that we made a turn off the main road to follow a smaller path that lead even closer to the lake, and I knew we were getting close. And sure enough, we arrived at our intended destination not too many minutes later.

From outside, Thoraim's house looked like little more than a porch, a door and a window carved into a random hillside facing towards the lake. Some ten meters away, at the waterline, there was a small pier and a rowboat, complete with what looked like fishing nets and rods loaded into it.

I saw a cozy light through the window as Thoraim lead us next to it to open the door into his home.

The house was comprised of one large room that we entered through the front door, and two more smaller rooms in the back. One of them looked like a kitchen, with a bunch of pots and pans hanging from the ceiling. The other room's door was halfway closed so I couldn't really see what was inside, but from the distinct lack of a place to rest anywhere else in the house, I guessed it to be a bedroom.

The main room was dominated by a large round dining table and a couple of wooden chests along the walls. The large oil lamp in the middle of it was giving out the cozy light as well as a smell that was far better you might've expected from something that had a flame burning inside.

"Millie, I'm home!", Thoraim called out to his wife.

There was a sound of rustling coming from the bedroom, and then the door opened, revealing a dwarf walking into the room through it. Thoraim's wife had about the build you'd expect any dwarf to have, although her clothing, which looked like a night gown to me, made it a little obscure. She had brown eyes and platinum blonde hair tied into two long pigtails that fell on her shoulders and then behind her back. The whole scene gave a disturbing feeling that we had just interrupted her going to sleep.

"About time", she replied in a rather unwelcoming tone while walking closer to us, "was wonderin' what kinda' trouble Valen would drag ya into, this time. I still remember the time ya two went to...", she started off but stopped cold as soon as her eyes hit me. In less than a second, the neutral look on her face melted into a slight smile, changing the tone of her voice to a more friendly one as well. "Hello. Who might you be?"

"My name's Cailea", I started with a little uncertainty, as I hadn't quite gotten along to the dwarf's sudden change of tone. "Im...well...I share some memories with Valen", I tried to explain myself briefly.

She got a slightly confused look on her face as her eyes quickly traveled several times between me and Valen. Then, all of a sudden, she got a wide smile on her face, as if she'd just figured something out.

"Oh, I see!", she said and then turned to address Valen. "Never thought youd fin-", the sentence was interrupted when she began to cough quite a bit, followed by a sneezing sound as she drew breath.

Something was telling me she had gotten the wrong idea, but I never had the chance to explain further as Thoraim went over to hold his wife for a bit.

"Have ye gotten ill while I was away?", he asked her in a voice that sounded like it wasn't ment for me and Valen, but I heard it anyway.

"Bah! Just a lil' flu. Nuthin' that's gonna stop me from greetin' our guests properly", she replied in an equally low voice. "Why don't ya go get something fer us all to eat an' drink?"

Thoraim looked a tad reluctant to leave her at first, but soon decided to do what she had asked and headed into the kitchen.

"Now then", she turned her attention back to us, "why don't you two tell me where yer comin' from an' how have ye been? I'd ask Thoraim, but he's got a way of..."

"...leaving out some bits from the story?", Valen finished for her.

"Aye, that he does."

It was obvious they had agreed on the same thing sometime before.

"Well...I really hate to bring this up now, since you're ill and all...", he began but got swiftly cut off.

"It's just a lil' flu, for cryin' out loud! If ya got somethin' to ask, spit it out!"

"Well, to make a long story short, I recently found that I've been bearing a pretty powerful curse for the last fifteen years. I hadn't figured it out until Cailea helped me realize how dangerous it is."

The dwarf seemed a little confused again.

"How does one walk around fer fifteen years with a 'powerful' curse on 'em without noticing?", she asked and raised an eyebrow.

"I...let's just say that my line of work hasn't really given it a chance to show itself. Not making many friends as a spy for Stormwind, and all that."

Millie pondered for a moment, then drew a chair from under the table.

"Aight, I'll see what I can do. Take a seat, I'll be back in a few", she said and headed back into the bedroom.

Valen sat down nervously, like someone who was waiting for judgment to be passed onto them. Then he pulled out his swords and his several backup daggers and set them all on his lap.

"Would you put these a safe distance away from me? I'm not sure what's going to happen here, but I have a feeling this thing isn't going to blow over without a fight. And that means I don't want to have any weapons on me."

The way he presented his thoughts made me a little nervous too, but I still did as he asked and put the weapons on a chair on the other side of the room.

"Thanks", he said as I returned to him, looking like he had something else on his mind, too.

"I really appreciate your help", he said, catching me a bit off guard, since what I had just done was hardly something to give any huge compliments for.

"I...I really have put you through a lot more trouble than you deserve, haven't I? First Steamwheedle, and then that mercenary who almost killed us both this morning."

"Both of which happened thanks to the spell on you. And that's what we're here to get rid of, right?"

"Yeah. It's just that...I keep thinking that a stronger mind could've resisted it and stopped those things from happening. That makes me wonder if I'm really worth this much trouble after all I've done."

"You haven't caused much trouble at all. Even if it was through you, _he's_ the one that's to blame."

The look on his face turned a little more cheerful.

"You really do believe me, don't you? How is it that you're still following along when I've already told you twice over to walk away and not endanger yourself further? And don't tell me it's because you owe it to me. Even I'm not going to buy that anymore", he said and managed to smile a little more.

As I searched for an answer, that odd warmth and vigor began to rise from inside me again, bringing the answer close, but clouding my mind enough to not let me understand it. At least not fast enough for Millie, who came back to the room just then. She had brought with her a golden necklace with some sort of a holy symbol hanging from it. She had also changed into a proper outfit to wear in front a strangers, a simple shirt and a skirt.

"Now then, hold still for me, will ye?", she told Valen, then closed her eyes and raised the holy symbol between them, as if she was trying to ward off something.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then she opened her eyes, which were glowing golden yellow, like she had some spell on them. She quickly eyed Valen from head to toe and back, then closed her eyes again, only to open them a moment later, looking normal once more.

"There's somethin' alright. A form of mind control, I think", she determined.

"Sounds about right. It seems to want to make me do nasty things in certain situations", Valen elaborated vaguely.

"That means this is going to get complicated. A domination spell is usually at least partially linked to the willpower of it's caster. And fer it to last this long, I'm guessin' there's a talisman involved, too."

"What does that mean? What talisman?", I asked her.

"A talisman in this case is an item that's been enchanted to upkeep the power of this spell, even when the person who cast it is looking the other way. As fer the other thing...well...it takes a thought to tell someone else to do things. Messin' with this spell means messin' with whoever cast it in the first place. If the worst happens, whoever tries to dispel this is goin' to hafta make direct contact with the original caster's will and kick them outta the cursed person's head."

A look of disappointment and slight fear spread across Valen's face.

"Damn, I guess I'm out of luck, then. I'll have to find another way to..."

"Hold it there, boy! I never said I couldn't handle...", Millie protested.

"I can't ask you to fight my battle, even if it's just on the mental side of things."

"Now listen here..."

"I don't care if you're confident about it. I'm not dragging any more people into this nightmare. I'll stick to my original plan. I'll find him and rip his..."

"You said it's a battle of minds. Can there be more than two?", I jumped in.

Valen stared at me in amazement while Millie was merely a little confused of my intentions.

"I could do that, yes. That'll cut down a bit on my capacity to help, but it should still be better than doin' it alone."

"Good enough. I'll help you", I responded, catching a familiar look from Valen as I did.

"Cailea, you can't..."

"He's my enemy too, remember?"

"Yes, but...why risk this? You don't have to, not for me."

I leaned closer to him and whispered into his ear: "Because... I want to."

"Ya ready, then?", Millie asked while I left Valen staring at me with a question still reflected on his face.

"Yeah."

She wore the necklace with the symbol herself, and then, at her command, the three of us held hands to form a circle. Millie closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, they had the same glow as before. This I only saw for a moment, however, because the next thing I knew, the whole world was spinning around me, turning into a whirlwind that sucked me towards a black hole in it's middle.

In some different time and place, I came to and opened my eyes.

The smell of the smoke, the heat of the flames, the cries of innocent people being killed, it was all there.

I was standing in the middle of a burning Auberdine.


	45. Mind Games

I stood still, staring at the flaming buildings, half expecting to see a demon coming around a corner to get me. Even though I knew that it was all an illusion of some sort, the horror had already began to get to me.

"This is Auberdine, I take it?", Millie's voice said from my left.

"Yes...but...it's just an illusion, right?", I ended up sounding far more nervous than I had intended.

"Yes...and no. This is the part o' Valen's mind that links him to the curse. What we're lookin' at right now is a memory o' his being visualized fer our minds to see."

"I had no idea..."

"...that it'd be somethin' like this? Ye never asked before jumpin' in to play a heroine. Fer better or worse, we're linked together here, so if ya lose it, I'll have to pull us both out."

Realizing that my presence was now turning out to be more trouble than it was worth, I made an attempt to steel myself.

"I'll hold it in...or try, anyway."

That's how long it took me to realize a few things. First, Millie wasn't wearing her clothes from before anymore. Instead, she was in a set of very heavy dwarven armor, probably something a paladin would equip themselves with when going to battle.

Second, I was looking at her from an equal height instead of above, like usual. That's because I was in my feline form, putting my eye level much lower than it would've been as an elf. The sensation of having a tail and standing on four paws instead of two feet, on the other hand, was something natural enough for me to go unnoticed till I paid some attention.

Lastly, Millie had been able to hear me despite my form. I chalked it up to the fact that we were actually just trading thoughts, so being unable to physically produce words wouldn't matter in that respect.

The thing that worried me the most, however, was the fact that I was unable to transform. There was no bestial spirit to let go of so that my body would revert to it's natural form.

"What's with this...?", I asked as I sized her up with my eyes.

"Our appearance? We are only manifestations of our minds in this place. What we were wearin' or how our hair was done before we came here makes no difference. In this place, our forms are actually projections of our minds - in other words - what yer lookin' at here is yer own self-image of sorts, drawn straight from the back o' your head."

I looked at my paws in confusion.

"But I'm a..."

"I'm guessin' you're a druid, yes?"

"I am."

"And you can take that form in the physical world?"

"Yes. But you said..."

"Look, I dunno how any o' that druid magic works or anythin', but if that's just one o' your forms and you're feelin' just like you should when yer like that, I'm guessin' you've got nothin' to worry about."

Not really being sure of what was going on in the first place, I decided to take her word for it.

"You seem to know a lot about these matters of mind. From what I've read, that's usually the expertise of a priest, rather than a paladin."

She let out an amused cackle.

"You've read? I think I'm startin' to see where yer comin' from, now. So here's a little practical fact fer ya to consider: what do ye think I started out as when I was still too much of a naive young girl to be swingin' around a sword or anything else sharper than my wit?"

A few moments of me feeling like a fool passed as I thought of something else to say.

"So...how do we go about doing what we came here to do? Find the enemy and beat him dead?", I changed the subject.

"Now that is a good question. Not to make you any more frightened than you seem to already be, but I wasn't really expectin' to be taken into a memory of Valen's. Fer all we know, this could simply be the enemy's means of fightin' us."

"You're saying this isn't where we're supposed to be?", I asked while trying ever harder to not panic about the situation that seemed to get more and more uncertain, and at the same time, threatening.

"That's not exactly true, either. Ya see, if this is something the enemy pulled up fer us to see an' get spooked about, he's doin' it at the cost of makin' himself easier for us to find. His will has gotta be somewhere in here too, to upkeep it. And to further analyze the situation, ye seem to know what this place is."

Once again I had turned out to be easier to read than I thought.

"Yes. This is...this is where me and Valen lived in as kids. Then this happened...and...from what I've been told, this is also the night he got cursed in the first place. But...", I looked around and realized something, "...something's not right. There were people here, fighting and dying for their lives. And demons, attacking them."

"That would be because this is a memory of Valen's. He can't exactly remember something he never saw in the first place. Was he here when this happened?"

"He was..." I began to recall Valen's story from earlier. Then I remembered how he said the demons had taken him to their leader who was waiting outside town, by the edge of the forest. So I headed into the direction I knew that place to be in, knowing that Millie would follow me there.

By the time we had made it past the moonwell, near the last building by the road leading out of town, I heard a voice from behind it.

"So...this little troublemaker decided to be a hero and slay the evil demons with this toy?"

Even though it wasn't as hollow and sounded slightly different from before, I recognized the warlock's voice immediately, making me hug the wall, unwanting to peek around the corner to see him. It took me a moment to calm myself down and trust my sneaking ability enough to take a look.

A familiar blue-haired elven boy was there. His clothes were pretty roughed up and he had cuts and bruises all over him. Two hairy, purple satyrs were holding him by the arms, while more demons formed a row in front of them. In the middle of this row was a figure wearing black robes that I had seen before. His flaming longsword was hung at his belt, and his staff was on his back, too. This time, there was only one shadowy orb circling around the red, glowing crystal at it's tip. In his left hand, he was holding Valen's dagger.

There was something different about him, too. His hands were not skeletal, but alive with dark green flesh. His hood still shrouded most of his face, but instead of showing just a glow, there was a green, bearded chin and a lower jaw with two fangs visible from underneath. I realized I was looking at an orc.

"I'm gonna kill you all!", the young boy shouted at him in a teary voice. A few of the demons gave a mocking grin, but their leader remained calm.

"You desire vengeance? But of course, such a good cause should have all the support it needs. Here, let me teach you a few things about killing, so you can keep that promise the next time we meet", he replied and walked closer to the boy.

That's when my instinct to protect children kicked in an bested the fear that was keeping me passive. I walked around the corner to show myself.

"Stop right there, monster!"

As if I was nothing but air and silence, the warlock proceeded to put his hand on young Valen's cheek and began quietly chanting a spell, while the demons stood in place, also completely oblivious to my presence.

"That's just the memory, Cailea", Millie whispered from my right. I was a little too emotional and confused to quite grasp what she was trying to say.

To make matters worse, not getting any kind of a response at all was almost worse for my courage and morale than being noticed would've been, as it stirred up an eerie feeling inside me, which in turn contributed to the slowly rising terror and panic that I was trying to hold back.

I could only watch as the warlock finished casting his spell and motioned his minions to release the boy, then said his fateful words:

"Run away, child. Run back to all those you love, and you'll discover your fate."

Young Valen looked a little confused at first, but then took back his weapon and ran away into the forest. Foolishly, against logical sense, I sprinted after him, but before I had gotten past the warlock, something happened that stopped me cold.

"Tell me, what is a stray beast doing here, yelling at me like it actually had the feelings of a person?", the warlock's cold voice asked. I couldn't see his eyes from under the hood, but I knew he was looking straight at me.

"We're here to stop you", Millie declared in a loud voice as she walked around the corner to show herself and came to my side.

"Ah, you're the one who's here to convince me to leave. An interesting idea to bring your pet along, but I'm afraid it isn't enough of a distraction to help you, dwarf. How did you teach it to think like a person?"

To my surprise, Millie chuckled.

"And here I was, thinkin' this would be hard. Cailea _is_ a person, you fool. I'm gonna give ya ten seconds to pull out and release yer curse before I fry yer mind so bad, you won't be able to think straight fer a week."

"Cailea...?", the warlock turned to look at me, seemingly ignoring Millie's taunt altogether. Then all of a sudden, he began to laugh like someone had just told him the best joke he had ever heard.

"You're...ha ha ha...you're the druid my little helper is so attracted to, that he has already tried to kill you twice? I was told these...'night elves' thought highly of nature, but..."

"And what is that supposed to mean?", I demanded.

"It's a mind game, don't listen!", Millie hissed.

"You really have no idea, do you...Cailea?", the warlock continued.

"Enough!", Millie shouted and pulled out the greatsword she had sheathed across her back. Her attempt at a charging attack was blocked by the warlock's blade, and then something very weird happened. From where he stood, the warlock calmly walked closer to me, while "another him" remained there, fighting Millie with his sword.

Everything around me and the warlock's form began to look blurred, like I was unable to focus on anything but him, even if I tried.

"Let me show you, then", the warlock's voice said in a strongly echoing voice, like there were a dozen voices speaking within a split second of each other, all the while his mouth did not move at all.

He held out his hand, as if expecting me to give him something. Then it began glowing faintly, and the flesh on it started melting off, slowly revealing the skeletal hand I'd seen before. Then there was a sensation of a cold hand grasping my brain somewhere inside my skull, but it quickly went away, leaving behind only a strong desire to follow the warlock and not attack him as he began walking south along the town border.

_"Cailea, stop!"_, Millie's voice tried to reach me in my head, but it was only a faint echo, and for some reason did not seem important at all.

We arrived at the graveyard at the south end of the town, where the warlock took me to one of the tombstones, then reached his glowing hand closer to it to illuminate it. Part of it was shrouded in the dark, but I could make out the following:

_EVERGREEN_

_Beloved daughter_

_'May your spirit find peace in the stars,_

_far from the war that took you from us'_

"Tell me now, how does it feel...to be dead?", the warlock asked in his horrid, echoing voice.

I looked down to realize that I had sunken up to my furry belly into the grave, being sucked further down by the moment.

That's when there was nothing left for me to do but scream in a helpless panic. Everything began fading to black and twisting around like a vortex.

The next thing I knew, I was curled up in a corner of Thoraim's house, shaking uncontrollably and failing to fight back tears of fear and panic.

"What...what happened?", Valen's asked somebody in a confused tone.

"He got to Cailea. She...", Millie's voice began, but was cut off by a sound of someone standing up and hastily walking over to me.

"Cailea? You alright?", Valen's voice asked from right beside me while I felt his hand landing on my shoulder, prompting me to open up and speak.

I did unfold my knees, but only to wrap my arms around him to hug him tight and let loose on his shoulder.

"It was Auberdine. He...I...saw things", I managed to say, sounding far more panicked than I wanted to.

Valen's reaction to it all was confused to say the least, but soon enough I felt his hand rubbing my back gently.

"Calm down, kitten. You're out of dreamworld and his reach now", he said in a low voice, like he was talking to a scared animal.

"And whatever you saw was probably just an illusion to scare ya", Millie's voice agreed.

After about half a minute, I had managed to calm down enough to sit up on my own again.

"Here, this'll help", Millie offered me a mug of something.

Without a second thought, I took the drink and downed it in two seconds flat. The resulting burning sensation in my throat had me drop the mug and cough heavily, but the heat that spread in me next seemed to make it worth the hurt.

"Easy there. That's some pretty strong stuff", Valen commented.

After a moment of dizziness, I managed to focus again, only to see that everyone in the room, including Thoraim who was back from the kitchen, was looking at me, and had no doubt just watched my cry, too. My thoughts must've been visible on my face once again, as Thoraim spoke.

"No need to be ashamed, lass. We're all friends here, an' we know what you've been through. Why don't we all jes' sit down and have somethin' to eat, eh?"

On the table was far more than I had expected an evening snack to be. It looked to me like there was more food there than the average dinner, but the sight of it also made my stomach growl as a reminder of how we'd all eaten practically nothing the whole day.

Needless to say, everyone but Millie was all too busy eating to trade any stories for the first few minutes, during which I also started to feel much better.

At some point, Thoraim eventually began to tell about our journey to his wife, with Valen jumping in occasionally to elaborate on something, or to make a joke. It was a good while until I got an opportunity to ask something I'd been wondering about.

"So...uh...what we did here tonight...I guess it failed?"

"Well...ya did complicate things a little, but we actually managed to accomplish somethin' too. It's all a lil' difficult to explain, but that curse shouldn't cause any trouble anytime soon", Millie replied.

"Wait...so I shouldn't have to worry about it now?", Valen asked, like he was hardly believing his ears.

"Well, you'll probably still hafta do somethin' about that warlock to ensure it never comes back, but fer now, it's sealed off good. He was pretty powerful, but I guess Cailea was enough of a distraction to let me do my stuff, after all."

I thought for a moment.

"I guess we'll still be hunting him down, then."

"We sure will, after all he's done. To me, to you, to Auberdine, and that druid you said he killed in Felwood", Valen responded with determination.

"But not tonight", Thoraim hurried to say, as if he was worried he wouldn't get to spend a night at home with his wife. Valen responded with a grin.

"Not tonight. For now", he started and raised his mug, "let's have one for all the memories we still _do_ like to remember."

We all joined the toast in voice and drink. The night had turned into quite the little feast.

A little bit later, I had started to feel a bit uncomfortably hot and the room had began to feel a little too small, which was nothing new if I stayed indoors for too long. I went outside, saying only that I wanted to cool off for a bit.

The air outside was quite chilly and quickly had me hoping that I wouldn't have left my cloak inside. I found my way to a big old tree atop a small hill, not too far from Thoraim's house. That's when I heard Valen's voice from behind me all of a sudden.

"I didn't thank you properly yet."

"You don't need to. I really didn't do much back there."

"I don't know about that. There's this little voice called conscience in the back of my head, and it wants me to ask you if there's anything I could do for you."

I chuckled as an idea struck me.

"Well, it is a bit chilly out here. Why don't you give me a sword and see what you can do about that. Test out if the curse is gone, too."

He smiled and did as I asked.

"How about I teach you a bit of something new again, then?"

"Alright. I'm listening."

"Well, as you've surely learned today, there's more to a fight than attacking and defending. There's the psychology. If you can get into your opponent's head and make them think that they've already lost, then they probably have."

"But if I clear my mind or go berserk, that shouldn't work too well, right?", I recalled his earlier lesson and took a readied pose.

"Yes. But on the other hand...", he started and then attacked me by surprise, forcing me to take a series of defensive moves backwards, each one putting me in a worse position than the last, until I had my back against the big tree, he had disarmed me, and was holding a blade to my throat.

"...it could all be just a part of another trick, called distraction."

For a few seconds, he was there up close, looking into my eyes. Then, out of the blue, he kissed me. It didn't last long or anything, and he backed off quickly, looking quite shocked.

"I...", he stuttered, looking like he was having a hard time deciding whether to try and explain or to simply run away.

Me, I felt a slight shock, but then something happened. A realization at last. The same feeling that had had me risking my life saving his from Sorelei, the same one that had had me sprint onboard the ship from Steamwheedle and do various other logic-defying things because I felt like I had to, now came back to me stronger than ever. Now it was telling me to not let him walk away, no matter what. It was telling me to do more than that.

I began to approach him with quick steps that were still ten times slower than my beating heart. He looked like he was expecting to get slapped or something of the like.

I could've tried to explain it, chalk it up to the fact that we had both had a drink and another one back in Thoraim's house, or some other excuse that made no sense in front of what I really felt like, but I didn't.

"What do you call this, then?", I asked, and before he could respond in any way, wrapped my arms around him and returned the kiss tenfold. I caught him off guard at first, but it didn't take him long to pick up and embrace me back.

If the world had seemed to go a bit off it's course back when we had met in Moonglade, that moment returned everything to it's rightful place, like it had all been waiting for it. Waiting for me to admit to myself that I had fallen in love.

It didn't stop there, though. Soon enough, I had gotten my back pushed against the tree once more, this time in a different purpose, until...

"'Ey, you two! Nobody gettin' stabbed out there, right?", Thoraim's voice interrupted us from the direction of his house.

For a moment that seemed like a small eternity, we stared at each other, still holding on, catching breath and wondering what would've happened had there been no interruption. If I had felt a little cold when I had come out, the opposite was true now, as hot pulses were passing through me, one after the other. Then Valen broke the silence.

"Hmm...maybe whatever you and Millie did back there didn't work so well after all."

"Huh?"

"Well...", he said and glanced at Thoraim in the distance, then back at me, "...I suddenly feel like killing an old friend of mine", he finished and put on a cunning grin.


	46. Positively Uncertain

There we were, laughing at a joke Valen had just made about the curse that had caused considerable pain and misery for us both in the last week or so. It was like an agreement that we both wanted to forget all about it, now that it wouldn't be an acute concern anymore. The moment of healthy laughter also seemed to put my thoughts back on a rational course that wasn't quite as colored by the emotions the moment had brought about.

My mind started working furiously, trying to come up with a rational explanation to what had just happened. At the same time, my heart seemed to be laughing at my brain's desperate attempt to find logical sense from something that simply had no such thing in it.

"Um..." was all I could come up with as we let go of each other and took some distance.

For the first time since the day he had stabbed me, Valen was at a loss of words too, looking like he was going over the exact same thing in his mind. Well, at least until he figured to change the subject completely.

"Look...I better go back inside and let Thoraim know we're alright, before he comes in here, waving his gun again."

"Would you tell him that I'd like to sleep out here tonight?" I asked in response.

"Sure," he said and turned to leave, but then seemed to get a different idea and turned back to say one more thing: "Good night, kitten."

The nickname that had been a teasing joke until then sounded different that time. Or maybe I just had a different ear for it. Either way, I couldn't cough out a response before he had already wandered off.

Finally left all to myself for a change, I found my way to the lake and leaned back against a big rock that was there, stretching my arms backwards. As I did so, I noticed that a few of the straps on the back of my vest had come undone. I immediately knew how that had happened, and it made me pay some serious thought to what would've happened if Thoraim's voice hadn't stopped us and just how close I had been to...not spending the night alone, so to speak. I started to think of the whole thing as a burst of emotion, a result of me having held it back so long. Wherever that path would take me, I decided to start walking it more carefully and with consideration. I had to wonder how much time someone with a natural life expectancy upwards from eight hundred years should spend thinking about it before setting their heart on someone, or if it was always going to be the same, whether you were an elf, or a butterfly that only lives for a day.

As my pondering started to get closer to the meaning of life and other unimaginably large concepts, a completely different thought crossed my mind through some mental association. I remembered something I had said to someone about going to Khaz Modan. Having made it there, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the green jewel the old druid had given me when I was a child. I had never actually used it before, but the moment seemed right to try it out.

I inspected the stone in my hands, not really sure of what to do. I hadn't gotten any kind of instructions as to how to use it, which meant that the old druid had apparently assumed it was simple enough for me to figure out on my own.

So I did what my first thought was and took a firm grip of it in my right hand, then closed my eyes as I pulled it closer to my chest, as that made my grip on it feel even stronger. Then I simply began listening to it and sending an odd thought or two at it, hoping to hear a response...which happened soon enough.

"Cailea? Is that you?" a familiar voice asked me inside my head. Hearing the old druid's voice after everything I had been through put a smile on my face.

"You can hear me now?"

"Yes."

"Good. I wasn't really sure how to work this thing..."

"...but your curiosity and creativity got the best of it. I expected nothing less of you," his voice finished the sentence for me. "How have you been, child?"

"Well, I took your advice for not traveling alone and joined up with a dwarf and another night elf. It's a long story, but right now I'm sitting by loch modan, near my...new friend's house."

"Ah, you've already made it across the great sea, then. How has your journey been?"

"Eventful. We've been...tracking down someone from our...my past. And run into plenty of trouble doing that."

He went silent for a little bit, presumably trying to find the right words to discuss the subject with me, since he knew how I felt about it.

"I take it this...'someone' has something to do with what happened to you as a child?"

"Well he...he most likely caused it. And he's the same one who...killed Mythos. Well...him and his associate."

Another moment of silence ensued as the old druid thought on what I had said.

"How sure are you of this?" he finally asked me in a tone that sounded like he had just gotten some official report and was making a plan based on it.

"I'm sure. Val...um...the other elf who's been traveling with me is also from Auberdine. He was there too, and...I think he was hurt even more than me. He and I, we both have a score to settle with that warlock. And...it's been great, meeting someone who knows how things happened back then."

I could almost hear him giving that understanding smile of his, the next time he spoke.

"Sounds like there's more to it than that, but I'm sure you'll let me know on your own if you feel that it's any of my business, which it most likely isn't."

A warm tingle rose to my cheeks, as the old druid seemed to have once again read my mind, this time for a bit more than I would've liked him to. Still, he had kept to his polite, unintrusive demeanor, as always, so I suppose I didn't really have any proper reason to react the way I did.

"On this enemy of yours, though..." he finally continued after a moment of not getting a response from me, "...I have met a few of his kind in my time, but there isn't much I could tell you, as in the old days, quick disposal rather than a thorough study of their powers was considered the correct way to deal with them. Quite understandable, given the confidence we night elves had in ourselves and our powers before the third war. At any rate, the one piece of advice I can give you, is that the shadowy powers of their kind rely heavily on that which they are best at - affecting one's mind. As hard as it may be for you, given your history, if you can resist the enemy's mental side and illusions, you'll be well on your way to defeating him.

However, that is not to say that they don't also possess a considerable amount of raw destructive power, so if you see a fireball being thrown at you, don't wait for it to hit you, even if you're not sure whether it's real."

"Well...you're not making it sound any simpler, that's for sure."

"That's because it isn't simple," he chuckled. "But if your friends are capable and trustworthy, I see no reason why you would fail. And I imagine that the thought of shattering your fears of your past are motivation enough to grant you all the strength you need."

"I...thank you," I responded, as his words, or rather, speaking with him had given me new confidence about everything.

"Now, I'm sure you're as tired as I am at this hour, so I think I'll go catch some sleep. Contact me again anytime you wish...and good luck."

I felt the connection end as I opened my eyes and let go of the gemstone, putting it back into my pocket.

I then remembered the straps on the back of my vest, but by the time my hands reached them, I had changed my mind about what I wanted to do, and instead of fastening them again, I went ahead and undid the rest of them, then proceeded to take off my other clothes too, as I wanted to go for a swim. Sitting alone by the lake had reminded me of how many days it had been since I had last had a proper wash.

A little later, as I was wading back out of the water, I stopped halfway to take a look at the scar on my chest, another thing I hadn't had the chance to do properly since I had gotten it. Feeling it with a finger, I recalled how Valen had described the injury back on the boat from Kalimdor.

_'You've just recovered from a wound that was less than an inch away from your heart- !'_

Smiling slightly, I thought to myself in response:

_Maybe you hit it, after all._

I raised my eyes to look at a partially visible moon in the sky and continued the thought.

_I don't know. But I'll find out._

Though I slept well that night, the wakeup was far from pleasant. Valen's voice and hand shaking my shoulder woke me up.

"Get up, kitten! We've got a problem!"

I scrambled up in confusion.

"What- ?"

"It's Millie. Turns out she had caught a lot more than just a flu!"


	47. Against Fear and Freezing

I was still half asleep when Valen started dragging me by the arm towards Thoraim's house. He stopped just outside the door and looked at me as if to check whether I was awake and receptive, then spoke his mind.

"You cured poisoning before, so I'm guessing you can do something about this, too."

Still groggy, I had to make an effort to focus and give him an answer.

"Mmmh...it's a disease, right?"

"Yeah, and right now it's bad enough to not let her cure it herself. But you can help her, right?" he said and started to reach for the door handle.

"No."

My response stopped him cold just before he had opened the door.

"What do you mean 'no'?"

"I..." I started but got interrupted by a yawn that forced itself out, then continued. "I can't fight a disease with my powers. It's a little hard to explain, but...diseases are actually more like a part of nature, rather than an enemy. Since a druid can't tell nature's powers to directly combat themselves, and you obviously don't fight a sickness affecting someone else with physical prowess, either, I'm all out of options what to do about it."

He looked stumped, but without asking further questions, he came to a conclusion.

"Damn. In that case, wait here and I'll bring you a snack to get you going. Then we need to leave for Ironforge with all haste."

"Ironforge?" I repeated. Of course I knew it was the name of the dwarven capital, I was simply wondering why we'd need to go there since the town of Thelsamar was hardly twenty minutes away, from what I'd been told.

"The local physician already came by and gave her some medicine, but that ain't gonna cut it. We need to get her to an expert as soon as possible."

With that, Valen left me standing outside for a few minutes. I used the time to fight off my sleepiness and think over what I'd just been hastily told. As I wondered how bad the paladin was, a terrible thought crossed my mind. Could my failed involvement in the mind fighting the night before have something to do with it? Had my nemesis' curses claimed another victim because I had feared him too much to join the fight?

The very thought of possibly seeing the murder from Felwood getting repeated in a different shape raised a rush of determination in me, and made me feel angry at myself. I absent-mindedly let loose a self-despising kick of anger at the stony wall of the house, managing only to make my bare foot ache.

When the others finally came out after a few minutes - Valen hading me a snack as promised, Thoraim carrying his wife on his back, followed by Furball who sniffed the air eagerly like a dog waiting to go for a walk - my suspicions were left unconfirmed, but intact. None of us were able to tell the nature of the disease Millie had caught, and the paladin herself was sleeping soundly on her husband's back. I touched her forehead with a hand, half hoping it would be hot with fever, like it turned out to be.

"Off we go, then", Thoraim responded to my gesture. It was obvious Valen had told him what I had said about being unable to help through the use of any druid powers. So we headed off in silence like the hunter had called for.

The trip back north through Loch Modan seemed to take longer than it had taken us to come the other way the day before. It was already past midday when we reached the fork in the road that we took into a different direction this time, heading west instead of straight north back to the marshland. After continuing in the new direction for a while, I had already began to hope for an under-the-sky route to our destination, but as it turned out soon enough, we were looking at entering yet another tunnel through the mountains. And to make matters worse, this time we obviously needed the fastest route available, even more than before. I gave no arguments and only stopped for a few seconds before entering the tunnel. Even though the rapid pace I proceeded with didn't do my nerves as much of a disservice as I would've thought, I still ended up huddling to Valen's side, allowing his hand to guide me as I closed my eyes and tried not to think of where I was.

Walking like that for a few hours, with little perception besides feeling his hand and forearm entangled with mine, my thoughts unsurprisingly returned to what had happened outside Thoraim's house the night before. Not that I could replace any of my uncertainty with determination to just go ahead and give into it, but I did start to notice small things that I had been ignoring before, like how warm and comforting that solid grip of his actually was in the depths of that tunnel. It almost made me want to creep closer and have him put that arm of his around my back, rather than just holding my hand.

But then the stony floor under my feet turned into an ice-cold bed of something soft and I could feel the wind again, giving me a sure sign that we had made it out.

I opened my eyes to see a huge snowy valley all around us, with the mountain range reaching well out of sight on both sides. Just as the way we had passed from a green valley to a snowy one reminded me of Kalimdor, so did the freezing wind and steady snowfall that had me let go of Valen's hand and tighten my cloak once again.

The rogue wrapped his arms around himself and shuddered.

"Damn. Feels like Dun Morogh has suddenly turned even colder than Winterspring."

Thoraim gave him a slightly amused look.

"It always is, this time o' the year," the dwarf said, then put on a much more serious expression and glanced into the distance. "Some moment fer us to hafta make a trip like this, eh?"

"Can't argue with that. How's Millie doing?" Valen asked in response.

"Fine fer now, I think. Like I said, dwarves are made fer ice n'mountains...but we'll hafta make camp fer one night before we reach Ironforge, and I'm a lil worried..."

That's when I walked up to the dwarf and spoke in my best comforting voice.

"I know a few things about medicinal herbs and I've even got a few with me. It's not a cure, but it'll help. We'll all be fine," I said, trying to sound more confident than I really was.

"Heh, I guess it was a good idea ta let ya come along from Kalimdor, after all."

It wasn't too many hours later that we veered a little off the road and found a nice spot between a small cliff and a frozen river to set up camp, relatively well-protected from the wind.

Soon enough, Thoraim had started a campfire with his survival skills. As he started cooking the first and last warm meal we'd be having that day, I boiled water to make four mugs of the herbal tea that the old druid had often made for me and himself. Not only did it have a slightly easing effect on any pain or fever, and would also no doubt warm the rest of us up quite nicely as well, it was also the only thing I knew how to properly make when it came to cooking.

In the meantime, Valen was watching over Millie, who had been wrapped inside a small mound of blankets, playing his flute at the same time. It was the same, sad song once again. I wondered if he actually knew how to play anything else, but didn't voice that thought.

After a warm drink and a bite to eat, it was time to lay down and try to get some sleep. That proved to be more of a problem than I had expected, as minutes upon minutes passed with me curled up and my cloak wrapped around me, but my muscles still trembling from the cold and my teeth clattering against each other. I tried moving closer to the fire, I tried transforming to see if a layer of fur would be warmer than my clothes, but all of these means fell short after the first few minutes. I didn't have the heart to ask Thoraim to give up one of Millie's wrappings or the shelter his pet was giving him, either.

A few minutes into simply sitting by the fire, rubbing my arms and sides, I heard Valen's voice from behind me. He must've awoken to the sound of me rustling about constantly.

"That isn't gonna help you sleep."

I looked over my shoulder to see him leaning against a shoulder just enough to look at me.

"You can help me as much as I can help you. Come here, kitten."

I wasn't feeling well enough to argue, so I went over, laid beside him and let him into the shelter of my cloak as he wrapped his arms around me from behind and came as close as he could to share any warmth that we could generate between the two of us.

I don't know if any of that really helped, or if it was just fatigue eventually getting the best of me, but I finally managed to fall asleep after that.


	48. The Weight Inside

I'm not sure whether it was the smell or the sound that woke me up. The smell of food being cooked and the sound of a crackling fire, along with someone's deep, stable voice that seemed to come from behind me and resonate right through my body.

"I don't know. She said she can't cure it, so I wouldn't get my hopes up for that," the voice said. "Still, I guess you could always ask..."

The voice that turned out to be Valen was interrupted as he noticed me waking up. He was still holing me from behind for warmth, but he had now risen into a seated position and hoisted me halfway onto his lap in the process. The idea of shared body heat had worked over the night, but it also made it painfully obvious that my feet were a little too far away to enjoy the effects.

"Morning, there. We were just talking about you," he greeted me as soon as I was awake enough to make eye contact.

It took me a little while to register that I was being addressed, so I took the moment to quickly scan the surroundings. Thoraim was sitting on the other side of the campfire, which was lit again and had a pot hanging above it. Furball was lazily hanging his head on the dwarf's, who in turn stroked the bear's furry head. The sky was both clouy and sunny, creating the ideal weather to warm up the air a bit, and there were tiny snowflakes floating all over, looking like a white fog at a distance. With the surrounding mountains hidden behind the clouds and snow, and the land giving off the same kind of a dormant sound as in Winterspring, it was as if we were back there again.

"Hmmmh...what...?" I finally managed to respond.

"Well...it's just that we're only a couple hours away from Ironforge, an' I figured it might speed things up if we knew what disease we're lookin' fer a cure for. Sometimes it takes those professionals several days jes' to figure out which medicine to use," Thoraim explained.

"I...I can't help with that. I'm sorry," I said and aimed my eyes down at the fire.

"'Ey, don't worry 'bout it. 'Jest an idea, wasn't really expectin' you to," the dwarf responded when he saw my reaction.

A silence of several minutes ensued, and all the while I felt like something was a little out of place. Then I finally figured out what and voiced the thought.

"Should we be going then?"

"We're gonna wait a while," Thoraim responded shortly. Valen voiced no arguments, making me a little confused about it.

"I thought we were in a hurry to get help for Millie."

"We are. But when you're sick, you gotta make the most of any moment of rest ya can squeeze in. Constantly stoppin' and goin' at a rapid pace is about the worst thing ya can do then, so we're gonna wait a while more," Thoraim explained.

Yet another practical little thing I completely skipped in my mind, I thought to myself.

About an hour later, it was finally time to head for Ironforge again. That's how long it took me to realize that Valen and I were still enjoying each other's warmth, and that he was still holding me. I don't really know what the situation should've felt like to me, but I do know that I had never even considered asking him to release me so I might take a little distance. Not until we were all standing up to start traveling again.

Thankfully, the day seemed at least a little warmer than the one before. We were headed closer to the surrounding mountains, until an hour later we arrived at a fork in the road, and our path started to take us straight towards the northern mountains on a steadily ascending path. I kept hoping that the road would take us straight over the mountains, but I knew better than that, since I was aware that the dwarven capital was inside a mountain, not on top of one.

The road we followed seemed rather narrow for a main road leading into a large city, but as the steep cliffs on either side of it became higher and a cold wind began to blow, I started to understand why. An invading force would have a tough time getting all the way up, let alone mounting any proper assault against a defensive line without being simply swept off the side.

It was around that time that we finally made it to the top of the ascending road, where the city gates were. As silly as it seems, thinking back to it, I was expecting an entrance to a labyrinth of narrow tunnels that somehow make up a city. Instead, I found myself looking at one of the biggest structures I've ever seen. A massive piece of metal-braced masonry framed the entrance. On a closer look, the giant slabs were full of small holes, no doubt for defenders to shoot out from. Along the surrounding mountainside, I could make out vague shapes in the snowy fog that looked like numerous houses of all sizes built all over the mountain, even at some steep areas where it was a straight up cliff wall.

The gate itself, which was all the way open at the time, comprised of two very thick metallic doors that had decorative art all over them. I found it rather interesting that, of all the races on Azeroth, the smaller-sized dwarves had built a gate big enough for about two dozen people walking in side by side. The two heavily armored dwarves standing on either side of the gate looked a bit out of place next to the massive gate they were guarding.

As we passed through the gargantuan gates, that familiar started to slowly rise in me again when the sky wasn't visible anymore, despite the huge size of Ironforge's entrance hall.

Massive stone columns on either side of the hall were accompanied by various statues of important-looking dwarves that I didn't recognize, all crafted in at least fifty times the size of the original model.

More heavily armored guards were standing by the two inner gates to the left and right at the end of the hall, their shining weapons and shiels sparkling gloomily in the flickering light of the numerous flames illuminating the hall. I once again found that flames and underground places were not a good combination on my mind, and I couldn't really pay that much attention to the surroundings from there on in.

All I remember is that we passed through a number of other large stone halls, echoing with the sound of metal beating on metal and a stable, low humming sound, like some big machine in the distance.

Eventually, most of the more distant sounds died out as we entered a considerably smaller room, which turned out to be the local physician's house. I forced myself to pay a bit more attention, since I thought it would be well worth it to listen and learn what was going to happen next.

Like everything else in Ironforge that wasn't designed to move on it's own, the house, and even most of it's larger furniture, was made entirely of stone. A rug, a table cloth, and a variety of other small items that belong to someone's home turned what would've otherwise looked like an abandoned ruin into a cozy little home.

A black-bearded dwarf entered the room through a door on the opposite side and confronted Thoraim a few meters away from me and Valen. After exchanging a few greetings and concerned looks at Millie, who Thoraim was still carrying on his back, the dwarves motioned for us to take a seat and wait while they went into the back with their patient.

A few moments passed in silence until I opened my mouth.

"Did you get any of that?" I asked Valen.

"Get what? It didn't look like what was being said was meant for us, so I didn't listen," he responded.

I didn't really have anything to say about it, but felt the urge to keep talking anyway.

"I wonder how she is."

"Me too. She always has been a little too fearless for her own good, but this is the first time it's actually bitten her back, as far as I know," Valen answered, then aimed his eyes at the floor in front of him. "Should never have let her get into this mess," he mumbled to himself somewhat angrily.

I was a little surprised to hear that I wasn't the only one who thought that Millie's sudden falling to the illness might have had something to do with the mind cleansing that I had been doing with her back at Thoraim's house.

"And I shouldn't have been there to make it any worse for her," I joined the regrets, catching a look from Valen as I did.

"You did more good than harm in there. I know you did," he assured me in a stark voice that sounded like he didn't want to hear me argue against it.

_Or is that just what you want to think?_ I asked him in my mind, but never voiced the thought, and simply looked at him in silence.

_Am I clouding your judgement?_ I continued to inquire from him in my thoughts.

As if in response to my attempt at some logical thinking about Valen, a familiar warmth started to slowly rise in me as I kept looking into his eyes, trying to decipher what he was thinking.

That's when I heard somebody coming through the door at the back. The sound of him entering the room was all Thoraim needed to catch my undivided attention, especially after I'd seen the depressed look on the dwarf's face.

He understood our expressions and cut to the chase.

"She's good so far, but it could go ta any direction from 'ere."

"Any idea what it is she caught?" Valen started the questions.

"Not yet, but seems like it's just one of 'em ordinary things that got loose a bit too much thanks to stress or sumthin'."

Something heavy started weighing me down from inside.

"So this was because of...?"

Thoraim was quick to answer with a somewhat raised voice.

"Now, don't ya be thinkin' that this was any o' yer fault. Either of ya."

"But..."

"No buts, lass! When a soldier falls in battle, do ye blame the priest who couldn't patch 'em up, or the enemy that caused it in the first place?"

Neither of us responded to that.

"But..." the dwarf's voice lost it's enthusiasm again, "...I'll hafta stay here with me Millie."

Valen aimed a silent, disappointed look at his old friend.

"I'd like ta go with ya an' teach that scumbag o' warlock what it means to mess with my friends, I really would. But..." Thoraim looked over his shoulder at the door he had just come through, "...I can't. Not now."

The weight inside me was getting a little bit heavier.

Slowly, Valen stood up from his seat, and I followed his example after a second. I knew already that I was going with him, as did everyone else in the room.

"Then...I'm sorry. For everything. I'd like to stay too, but I can't let it go. Not after all this," the rogue said.

"An' I wouldn't let ya. Someone needs ta give a good smackin' to that undead fer all he's done," Thoraim responded, then turned to look at me. "Yer a fine lass ta have around, an' I bet you'll be a real beast at fightin' once ya learn a few more tricks."

_A beast indeed_, I thought to myself.

The closer we got to leaving, the heavier the weight inside me got. But I had learned my lesson from before and knew that parting with Valen would be a far harder thing to do. As the two of us headed for the door, Thoraim added:

"Come back ta my house when you've collected his rotten head, will ya? I'll make us a real nice feast."

Valen aimed a questioning look at me.

"Sounds good," I said with much more confidence than what I really had.

"An oh...!", the dwarf stopped us one more time in the doorway, "do one thing fer me, will ya?"

"Hm?" Valen turned to look at the dwarf one more time.

A grim smile spread across Thoraim's bearded face.

"Give 'em hell."


	49. Somewhere in Between

As soon as the door closed behind us, I started to feel a little cold and empty over leaving Thoraim behind. All substance in me seemed to have fallen down to my legs, leaving a cold void into where my heart and mind resided. What had seemed like a straightforward quest with it's ups and downs until then had turned into floating about in an empty space somewhere in between things.

At least it was a great distraction from the fact that we were still inside a mountain, I suppose.

"What do we do now?" I blurted out at Valen, and ended up sounding more dissatisfied than I wanted to.

"Now we get on his trail again, if we can," he responded, but then his tone and expression changed as he turned his view towards me and saw the look on my face.

"Look...there's no one I'd rather have at my side on this, but you don't seem very comfortable with it," he stated in a suggestive manner.

I aimed my view to the side.

"I'm not..." I answered truthfully, but as soon as I thought of parting with him, the rest of the sentence almost came out on it's own, "...but it's definitely the closest I can get to it," I finished and broke a small smile for him to back up my words.

No more words were said for the next few minutes, as we headed to a seemingly randomly chosen direction through the lasrge stone halls of the dwarven capital.

"Any ideas where to start looking?" I broke the silence after a good few minutes of walking around in the massive stone halls that had countless doors and windows all over the walls, like tall buildings on both sides of a street.

"Working on it," he responded shortly. "You?"

Just then, we passed a large doorway that reminded me of the city gates of Everlook, with all kinds of machinery and moving parts about it and behind it. That reminded me of something.

"Didn't one of the goblins back in Kalimdor say something about 'gnomish things' on that mage who travels with the warlock?"

"Yeah, I remember that. So?" Valen didn't seem too impressed at my idea.

"How would an undead like him get a hold of gnomish inventions? They wouldn't just give them to someone like him, would they?"

"Maybe he looted them from one. Maybe he stole some and reverse-engineered it to learn how to make more. And in the end, there aren't that many things that a few well-chosen words and a lot of gold can't buy in this world.

Having thought I was on to something, I was quite displeased at the dismissive response.

"You have a better idea then?" I snapped at him.

"Nope, not yet. And seeing where we are right now, we might as well go and see if yours can take us anywhere."

Seeing my suprise at his change of direction as we headed for the techologica doorway I'd seen a moment ago, he added:

"Don't hold your breath, though."

The mentioned doorway turned out to be the entrance to the gnomish district of Ironforge. Far less spacious than the rest of the city, complete with a dominant smell of smoke and engine oil, 'Tinker town' felt infinitely stuffier than the rest of Ironforge, which obviously did nothing to ease my mind as we walked further in. The cacophony of all kinds of mechanical sounds coming from within every wall around us didn't help either.

"What are we looking for?" I asked Valen, half hoping to hear him say that we'd come the wrong way.

"Despite the futility of the effort, the gnomes do have some people appointed to the job of making sure their trade secrets don't end up in Orgrimmar, or Gadgetzan for that matter. Even if it's pretty much impossible to stop the traffic, they do have a pretty good idea where it goes. If we're lucky, they might just know about our mage."

With that, we continued on for a few more moments, until Valen took a right into a room off the main hall.

The room we entered wasn't that different from the rest of Tinker town, but it did have one distinctive thing about it: a counter at the back that made it look like a small shop of some sort. Behind said counter sat a bearded gnome who seemed to have fallen asleep on and peacefully laid his head on the counter.

Valen approached and cleared his throat loudly, snapping the gnome awake in a slight shock.

"No! The transdimensional balance can't...!" the gnome started in a concerned tone, then looked around the room in confusion until he spotted us.

"Oh...hello there. Can I help you?" he said and straightened up his eyeglasses that had been tilted diagonally across his face.

"Yes," the rogue responded, "I'm here to report an exploit."

The gnome suddenly got a bored look on his face, as if he'd just heard something really disappointing as he pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen.

"Location?" he asked in a monotonous, official tone.

"Mobile. Followed 'em from Felwood to Tanaris."

"Race?"

"Undead. Not sure who's side he's on, though."

"Name?"

"Didn't catch one."

"What devices did you identify?"

"Well, he had an invisibility device."

"Stealth generator," the gnome mumbled to himself as he wrote down another word, then turned to look expectantly at us again.

"He fired electricity at me," I inserted.

The gnome wrote down another line with no visual emotions on his face.

"Anything else?" he then asked in his bored voice.

"Unless you've got something on this guy that you can tell me, no," Valen answered.

The gnome quickly read through what he had just written down, then responded:

"No, I'm afraid not."

Then he put the paper on top of a tall pile of similar documents on the side and continued in his official tone:

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. You report has been filed and -"

"Well, I'll be damned. You're about the last person I expected to see here, Moonscar," a high-pitched female voice interrupted from behind us.

I turned around to lay eyes on the most mismatched pair of people I've ever seen.

The speaker was a purple-haired gnome wearing an expesive-looking dress and a highly decorated dagger that looked more like a short sword in comparison to it's owner's size. The weapon's blade had an icy glow to it, which fit in quite well with her overall look.

Her hair was tied back with numerous shiny strings, revealing a pair of earrings that almost looked too big and heavy for her. Her pale face seemed to have some artificial colouring around the cheeks and eyes, which to me, looked amusing at best. All of that, as well as a shiny golden necklace and wrist bracelet were giving a very vain first impression of her, even if the plenthora of expensive items and fine jewelry made her look more ridiculous than elegant in my eyes.

Standing behind her left shoulder, or rather, towering over him, was a person who was about as different from the gnome as could be. He was a bald, dark-skinned mountain of a man, surely among the tallest humans I've ever seen. He had a simple and rugged look about him, with two muscular arms folded across his chest, displaying dozens and dozens of tiny scars all over them, and a simple set of clothing, a sleeveless tunic and a pair of simple long pants, that would've made him look like a homeless man off the street, if not for his imposing stature. At first, he seemed to be barefooted like I was, but on a closer look, I could see some sort of footwear on him, it just didn't cover the heels or toes, making it less visible.

Besides the distinct lack of any form of a weapon on his person, the most striking feature about his look was no doubt the bright white eyepatch strapped over his right eye, making him look a little more threatening, even if he had a quite neutral look on his face.

"Decided that life's worth living and the world worth saving after all, did you?" the gnome continued to address Valen, then aimed her eyes at me while her companion stood almost unnaturally still, intently staring at the back wall of the room.

"On second thought, don't answer that. I think I can guess," she added as she eyed me up and down.


	50. Cold Trail

Who are these people? I asked Valen with my eyes. The gnome must've noticed it as she addressed my questioning look herself.

"Morgan Cherryspark, pleased to meet you," she said and gave a funny-looking bow that probably wouldn't have been as amusing if it was done by someone taller than my leg.

"I work for the same crew as Valen here, if you know what I mean," the gnome continued.

I gave a slight nod of understanding, but I couldn't come up with anything to say when Valen had already taken over for me.

"What are you doing here? I thought you had already decided that the world outside your luxury estate wasn't worth your time and retired to work on your inventions," he started. "And what's with the henchman?" he pointed out the big man standing behind Morgan's shoulder.

The gnome folded her arms across her chest, but the man next to her seemed to ignore the discussion completely.

"You're one to talk, after wandering off on 'personal business' into who knows where. But if you must know, this here is my co-operative and personal assistant, Mr. White," she pointed out the man behind herself. "As for what I'm doing here, I'm SI:7's contact with this department here. They've taken an interest in misuse of gnomish technology, as well as the routes by which it reaches the wrong hands," she continued and walked right past us to trade a word with the gnome behind the desk, then grab a pile of documents before heading back for the door.

"And you're the one they appointed to run that investigation? Fitting." Valen responded in a tone that would've taken more insight into the matter to fully be understood.

"Quite so. But I am curious as to what you are doing here. Something about your 'personal business' again?" she interrogated Valen, obvisouly not thinking very highly of his problems, however much she knew about them in the first place.

"Yes. And I'm actually quite close to resolving the matter, thanks to Cailea here," he responded and pointed me out.

Seemingly ignoring me for now, the gnome took a sarcastic tone: "Close indeed, I'm sure", she said in a manner that suggested it wasn't the first time she had heard him saying the same thing as she headed for the door again. Just before exiting the room, she turned around with a more understanding look on her face this time.

"If your quest has led you here, of all the places you could be in, it's got something to do with gnomish technology, right?" she asked from the door.

"Yes," I went ahead to say, not really sure if Valen would've wanted me to do that.

"Well then," the gnome put a welcoming smile on her face, "why don't you two come over to my home and tell me more?" she suggested, then turned her attention back to Valen. "You had better report to headquarters for a change, anyway. Wouldn't be surprised if they've already put your name into the 'missing in action' box by now."

I aimed another questioning look at Valen, as I didn't really have any idea what we were about to get into, and if it'd be a good idea at all. He responded with a whisper into my ear:

"You probably want to get out of Ironforge, right?" he made an informed guess based on how he had seen me reacting to underground places before. I nodded slightly in response.

"Might as well take this opportunity then. Morgan lives in Stormwind City, and as you might know, that's a town where you can actually see the sky, unlike here," he finished, then turned his attention back to the gnome. "Fine, we'll come. I'll do some more explaining on the way."

As we started moving again, I couldn't help but notice that the big man alongside the gnome had been nothing more than a silent observer through the exchange, and remained that way as we walked further into Tinker Town. His stagnant expression kept me guessing whether he was blissfuly ignorant of everything going on around him, or if the man was somehow so sensitive to everything that he didn't need to raise a finger or blink an eye to remain aware of the situation. What made me even more curious was the fact that he didn't seem to notice at all how I had randomly chosen to make him the focus of my attention as a part of my usual way of avoiding my claustrophobia, as we walked through a number of tiny hallways packed with all kinds of gnomish gadgets that I had no interest to examine.

Eventually we took a right through an odd doorway that seemed to be rotating in place for no apparent reason, and the noise and chatter of the gnomish district started to fade somewhere halfway through the next hall, until we finally emerged in a slightly larger room, where our steps and the rustle of our equipment as we moved around echoed.

I raised my eyes to see a strange metallic room with two long, narrow pits carved into the middle of the floor, complete with several metallic seats facing towards them, as if there was something for an audience to see. The two pits extended into tunnels that seemed to lead out of the side of the room, into a tunnel that curved out of sight after a few dozen metres. There was also a large metal beam running along the ceiling over both of the pits.

All of my companions took a seat and I followed, having no idea what was going to happen. It would have made no sense for us to walk into a dead end, so I figured that the two tunnels leading to the side must've had something to do with what the gnome had in mind. Eventually she noticed the confused expression on my face.

"I take it this is your first time around these parts. Fresh out of Kalimdor?" the gnome asked me out of the blue.

"Something like that," I danced around the question. Considering what had happened with the last person who had quite suddenly decied to accompany us, I didn't really feel like answering any questions, even if this 'Cherryspark' was someone Valen actually seemed to know.

"You seem nervous. Not really a fan of fine gnomish engineering, are you?" she immediately continued, much to my displeasure.

"It's not that..." I coughed up and glanced at Valen, hoping he would react and figure out that I was hoping for him to step in, "...I just prefer the outdoors. A lot," I finished my intentionally vague response, hoping that the gnome would chalk it up to my race and not dig deeper. I never got to find out if it did the trick, as a loud mechanical sound began echoing out of the tunnel to the side. Some kind of a machine was clearly approaching. Fast.

"I'm just asking, because anyone remotely interested in science is going to love this the first time they see it," I barely heard the gnome's voice through the increasingly loud mechanical noise that's source now came into full view.

A set of contraptions large enough to fit several people each, hung from the beam in the ceiling, slid into a straight row into the narrow pit before us.

For a moment there, I kept hoping it was just a show that Morgan set us up for, to display the intelligence of her kind, or something like that. But when the gnome instead got up and walked into one of the carriages, I knew exactly what was going to happen, and could immediately tell I wasn't going to like it.

"Let's go, kitten," Valen voice said from my right as I watched the tall human get on the machine as well.

"This thing...is going to go back into that tunnel, right?" I asked Valen in a low voice, half hoping to get a different response than the one that I got.

"And that tunnel is a shortcut to Stormwind, worth about three to four days' walk up top," he did his best to divert me from my fears and to make it sound like the best option.

Fighting off all of my instincts, which were telling me to stay put and go back, I got up from the bench and stepped on the tram with Valen, making sure to get a nice, secure grip of his hand along the way.


	51. Planning Ahead

The metal seats on both sides of the carriage were quite cold when I first sat down on them. I could also feel a number of the bolt heads and rivets through my clothing.

As the contraption began to move some tens of seconds later, I was still holding onto Valen's hand, and quickly found that the most comfortable spot in the otherwise uncomfortable place was as close as I could be to his warmth and grasp, without sitting on his lap, either.

As the speed and noise of the tram began increasing, so did a familiar alertness and desire to be somewhere else that I could feel again.

From the quick look I stole at the others before starting on my standard panic-avoidance by focusing my attention on one of my toes, I saw that Morgan, the gnome looked quite relaxed and seemed to enjoy the ride as she eyed the papers she had taken from the gnomish office in Ironforge, while her big bodyguard sat silently and motionlessly, still showing no new expressions or speaking any words. Valen had a rather neutral look on his face, with a bit of...some sort of embarrassment in the mix that he was trying to hide. Even after all that had happened, it still took me a moment of thought to remember that he didn't feel exactly neutral about me. It also made me realize once again how instinctively and naturally I looked to him for safety and comfort again, for something to ponder while trying not to remember where I was.

The tram began shaking, making more noise, and generally feeling less and less steady as it still gained speed. It also seemed to be heading downwards, deeper into the underground tunnel. Knowing that didn't exactly help my concentration.

I was just about starting to be ready to close my eyes and try to get even closer to Valen when I heard the gnome's high-pitched voice though the noise of the tram.

"I looked through these documents that my colleague wrote about your inquiry back there. You're looking for some undead using an arm-mounted net launcher and a stealth generator, among a few other devices?"

"And here I thought he wasn't even listening to me. Yeah, that sounds like what we told him," Valen responded.

"Most of this stuff is pretty trivial, but the stealth generator has some rare components we could follow up on. I can't remember this sort of details offhand in most cases, but I do keep quite a few records in my house to help my investigations," she responded in turn.

"Taking your work to your home sounds just like you. You never were that excited to travel anywhere on a mission. I'm starting to see why you've taken up your current position even if it sounds like a bunch of dull, neverending paperwork to me," Valen teased at her, sounding almost like he wanted to laugh, and furthering my understanding that he knew the gnome quite well.

"I was stationed in Kalimdor for a good while until just a few years ago, you know. And quite frankly, observing you lot was quite a lot more boring, with not much going on," the gnome replied, sounding slightly annoyed. "Of course, you wouldn't know much about that since you're always somewhere on your...personal business," she continued.

With that, her attention shifted to me again, as revealed by her next sentence.

"You don't look very confortable with this...umm...Cailea," she struggled to remember my name, having only heard it once before. "Is it the tunnel, the tram, or maybe me?" she proceeded to ask me.

"It's the tunnel," Valen covered for me before I could say it myself, so I simply nodded in agreement.

"I...don't really like the machine either," I then added in a slightly shaky voice.

"Hmph. It's only the greatest technological marvel on Azeroth," Morgan replied in a surprisingly insulted tone. "But I guess a night elf who hasn't grown up around these parts like Valen wouldn't appreciate it much," she finished, then went silent for a moment before speaking again.

"Tell you what, Cailea. I'll strike you a bet," she blindsided me with such a proposition.

"Huh?" was all I could cough out in response.

"You tell me something you really enjoy doing back in Kalimdor, and I bet I'll have some gnomish invention in my home that does it better, or somehow improves the experience."

"Umm..."

I wasn't sure how to react.

"Think about it for a moment. This ride will still take a little while. Valen is going to have to report to headquarters once we get to Stormwind City, so if you can come up with something, we can keep ourselves busy while he's out."

She took a pause again.

"After all, you two are going to accept my offer for a night's stay at my home, aren't you?"


	52. Welcome to the City

_"After all, you two are going to accept my offer for a night's stay at my home, aren't you?"_

"Well, I guess it will take a while for me to tell my story at HQ, and a bit more to search your records for the info we're looking for. So...sure, why not," Valen replied to her, giving me a glance at the end to see if I was agreeing.

Even though I didn't cherish the idea of spending a night indoors in the middle of a busy city, Valen was making fair points that I couldn't really assess for myself, so I simply gave him a nod, then aimed my eyes at my own toes again to avoid seeing the tunnel that we were speeding through.

I tried to spend the rest of the tunnel trip pondering an answer to Morgan's bet of showing me a gnomish invetion I'd like.

As it turned out, the lengthy trip, the following long silence between us, the monotonous noise of the tram, and the constant downwards staring and focusing on relaxing myself eventually had me close my eyes and lean on Valen's shoulder after all, even if it was involuntary, simply dozing off for a bit.

I woke up to a gentle shake from Valen, who had his arm wrapped around me again. He seemed to have a habit of sneaking it there when I was asleep or simply not paying attention.

The tram was slowing down and heading upwards, leading me to think that we were about to arrive at our destination. I was right. Within a few minutes of me waking up, the tram came to a halt within another large metal room with seats and an obvious space for another tram to stop in.

As we stood up and left the tram, I saw daylight through the entrance tunnel and immediately felt eager to greet it closer and see the city we had arrived in.

I had read and heard about Stormwind City before, but much like other locations I had known something about beforehand, actually visiting was still quite different than one would think...even if that first impression I got was actually suprisingly negative this time around.

The cobblestone street we stepped on out of the tram station was a lot darker and uncleaner than I had expected. The main reason for this was the thick, brown-hued smoke and steam floating all over the visible area of the city. It made the sun barely visible somewhere above it, and gave the air a heavily polluted, industrial smell.

Tall, pale, fortified walls formed the far edge of visibility in all directions, much like mountains and cliffs normally did in most places. Other than the surrounding walls in the distance, a bit closer in one direction than another one, there were all sorts of buildings crammed next to each other, with the odd alley separating them here and there, and a few larger, major streets cutting through the cityscape in two or three major directions.

It was one of these larger streets that we followed for a little bit and then stopped.

"Well, I guess it's time for me to go make that report now," Valen stated in a rather reluctant tone. I knew then what would happen next and immediately started to feel a familiar, compelling desire to not let him walk away.

"You remember where my home is, right?" the gnome asked him while I focused on suppressing my emotions.

"Yeah. I'll see you there later," he replied and started to turn away to another street heading off to our side. He let his eyes linger a little on mine before he walked off, and as he did, I felt a tug in my arm as I had to let go, realizing in the process that I had once again been holding his hand without even noticing.

"You coming?" Morgan had to get my attention a few seconds later.

"Yeah..." I turned to face her and we started walking again.

"So...have you thought of anything?" she then asked me. It took me a moment to realize what she meant.

"Yes," I replied. I had decided to try and play her at her own game by both giving an honest answer, but also trying to think of something she would have difficulty coming up with. "I like to swim and bathe whenever I have time and there's a water source nearby," I dropped my thought-out answer.

Her reaction was rather dull and uninterested.

"Bathing? That's it? Well...I guess that's about what I expected," she replied in a disappointed manner and then suddenly turned to the side.

"Here, let's take a shortcut," she explained. I of course followed, with the big man keeping the rear as we headed into a narrow alley between some of the buildings.

As we walked along the dusty alley, the sound of an animal menacingly growling somewhere to my right stopped me in my tracks. We all turned to see a slightly poorly looking dog in a very cautious stance, as if it was preparing to attack, staring and growling at us. At me, to be precise.

A few seconds later, I heard Morgan chuckling behind my shoulder.

"That's kinda funny," she said amidst her chuckling.

"What is?" I asked.

"You're some sort of a druid, right?"

"Umm...yes. You guessed?"

"Valen told me on the tram, while you were taking a nap. Anyway, I thought druids were supposed to be good with animals, and yet, that one seems to take you for a threatening enemy like I've never seen before, and I've seen a lot of these stray city dogs."

"...funny."

"That's what I said."

"No...I mean...you're not the first person to tell me something like that about an animal I encounter..." I elaborated, my dealings with Thoraim's companion bear on my mind.

The gnome had no verbal reply to that. She simply shrugged and carried on. The dog started barking at me just before I set off to follow Morgan again. Even if I was curious, I figured I'd rather not get lost on the streets because I let the gnome out of my sights.

Soon enough we popped back to a wider street and headed for a relatively large building across.

The facade of the building was simple, but larger than any private home I'd ever been in. The same was true of the interior from the moment I stepped in. An entrance hall larger than I had expected from a gnome's home. The impression was furthered as Morgan led me through her home, apparently intent on showing me whatever gnomish inventions she was going to win her little bet with.

Every room in the house seemed to have several expensive-looking rugs covering the floors and walls, and there were decorative, shiny objects of all kinds on most tables and shelves I laid eyes on.

Besides the fact that Valen knew her to some extent from their line of work, there was one solid thing I had learned about the gnome: she was the wealthiest person I had ever met.

"You seem well off," I commented on my observation.

"Well, I have been working on it for a while," the gnome replied. "Inventing, working for SI:7...and a few other deals here and there," she elaborated with a hint of pride in her voice.

In one room of the large house, Morgan stopped to put away her weapon into a rack on the wall that had a number of other small blades on it, as well as a few...more mechanical weapons, from what I could tell.

At the same time, the big man, "mr. white", as Morgan had called him, left us and headed off somewhere else in the house.

Next, the gnome led me through a large wooden door into another room, which felt significantly warmer and more humid than the rest of the house. There was a bench all along the side wall of this smaller room, and a number of blunt hooks on the wall above it. The back wall had another thick-looking wooden door on it, and some sort of a switch next to it on the wall, which Morgan went over to use as soon as we entered.

"Give it a minute and our bath should be ready," she said out of the blue and sat down on the bench, leaving me quite confused as to what was going on.

It was only when she began removing her dress that I understood the idea: we were in a dressing room, and whatever was behind the next door was the invention she was about to demonstrate for me. Once we had both left our clothes behind, I got to see what the supposedly brilliant invention was.

As soon as Morgan opened the next door, steam began flowing out through it.

We entered a relatively small room where the air was full of steam that somehow smelled like fresh trees to me. Most of the round room's floor was taken up by an oval-shaped pool of bubbling, steaming water.

"I have to admit," the gnome started as she calmly stepped into the pool, "the original idea came from the dwarves who can create this sort of pools just from mining their volcanic mountain from the right spot," she continued and sat down into the pool, facing the centre and leaning her back against the edge.

"No such volcanic springs in this here city or most parts of the world, however. So I invented devices that can bring the concept here using the power of science," she ended her speech, sounding quite proud of it.

I immediately had my doubts about a bath where you simply sit tight, but decided to give it a try anyway and followed her in.

The water was hot, but not too much so, allowing one to get in without burning themselves. A few moments in the bath also showed me the purpose of the bubbles, which created a nice, constant motion to make the bathing seem a little less static than what it looked like.

A few more minutes in, I was quite enjoying myself, leaning back with my eyes closed, allowing myself to sink in a little deeper. I started to think of everything Morgan had told me so far, and thought of a question with which to strike up conversation.

"What did Valen tell you about me back on the tram, besides the fact that I am a druid?"

"Oh, not much. Something about you saving his life...and the other way around, too. The way you two look at one another tells me a lot more, though."

The notion made my cheeks feel a little bit warmer than they already were, even if it wasn't the first time someone was pointing it out for me.

"And there was one more thing," she continued, "he said you're interested in our trade."

"Well...knowing my way around a common weapon like a sword, as well as some leatherworking skills just seems practical," I responded somewhat evasively, not wanting to share with her the excitement that my sparring with Valen usually gave me.

"I could teach you a few things that he can't," the gnome replied. The suggestion, although quite random, got me instantly curious.

"Something he can't teach?"

"Yes. You said you've been learning from him for practical purposes?"

"Yes, so?" I kept up my half-honest charade.

"What I can teach you is exactly that."

"And...what is it?"

The gnome adjusted her position a little and changed her tone to a less casual one as she spoke again.

"When you're working the shadows of the world like rogues usually do, there are certain...advantages to being a woman," she began, then eyed my form through the bubbling water, "and I imagine it's even easier for one of your race than it is for me, for example," she continued.

"You mean...using my body to influence people?"

"Exactly. Although... she looked me up again as if to make a point "...an elf or not, you're not exactly ideal for it. I've seen a lot of your people and I'm not sure why Valen has his eye on you of all of them. Still, I suppose you do have quite the head start over me, at least."

"Other gnomes don't find you attractive?" I tried to intentionally veer a little off the subject to give myself some breathing room and time to think of my stance to her suggestion.

"You're missing the point. Whoever can...work with the widest variety of people regardless of their race is the queen of this art. That means meeting certain...common preferences, instead of only being interesting to a certain group of people."

"Uhh...I don't know..." I openly doubted.

"Don't worry. I'm not talking the extreme kinds of...'influencing'. Just wearing the right kind of clothing and having the right tone in your speech can get you a long way in this department. And on the flipside, knowing what to avoid can be useful if you don't want to be remembered or paid attention to."

"Well...okay. I guess." I replied as to not disappoint her. After all, I could always refuse later if I didn't like it, or so I told myself.

"Good. Let's start by getting you a few different clothes and see how you feel about it," she started and got up from the pool "I'll have your dirty garments washed, you won't need them tonight," she finished and headed for the door.

"You have servants around your home?" I picked up from the way she spoke.

"A bunch of machines that do some housework for me, yes. I don't invent for nothing. Speaking of which, how do you like the bath?"

"It's...nice. But...not really better than swimming in the sea or a lake, just different. You don't get that feeling of freedom here," I gave her one of my few completely honest answers of the day.

"Told you I'd have an invention you'll like," she pointed out victoriously, "Enjoy it as long as you want. I'll bring you something to put on once you're out of there," she replied and left me alone in the room.


	53. The Indirect Approach

After enjoying the bath a little while longer, I went back to the dressing room to find that Morgan had indeed taken my clothes somewhere and left me something different to wear.

Besides my dagger and my belt with the herb bag on it, which were still there, the gnome had left for me a light green, shoulderless, one-piece undergarment that was partially transparent around the middle, and as a main outfit, there was a pitch-black dress, also with no shoulder parts and a front just low enough to show off my scar while still being tasteful, a tight-fitting main body that was obviously designed to show off the wearer's figure and a hem just below the knee on one side, but diagonally cut to be above the other one.

The clothes were quite a good fit considering that Morgan had only measured me up by looking, but the fancy and impractical design, along with the fact that it had literally been years since I had last worn a dress or skirt of any sort, made me feel a bit silly and clumsy rather than confident and attractive like the idea apparently was.

Then again, maybe it was more about how others would react to me than how I felt, or so I told myself at the time and set off to find Morgan somewhere in her large house.

After wandering a little in the house filled with expensive-looking items, and as I now had time to notice, a wide variety of all sorts of gadgets, most of which I couldn't tell what they were for, I found my way into a larger room with a big table in the middle, Morgan, and to my slight surprise, Valen leaning over it, both looking at some papers.

As they heard me entering the room, Valen raised his eyes from the table.

"Oh, hello agai..." he was cut off as he laid eyes on me and let them stay there for a noticeably long moment before regaining his focus, "uhh...do join us. We were just planning out where to start looking for our mystery mage," he responded with an equally worked-up face as the one I had on.

I thought I saw Morgan winking at me in approval as I approached the table and took a spot across from her, next to Valen.

The papers on the table turned out to be some sort of a schematic for something. The gnome pointed out at a drawing of a large, round part in the middle.

"As I was saying, this is the most important component of the stealth generator, and just like I suspected earlier, it's a pretty good lead to start with.. It's a rare pearl that's not easy to find on Azeroth," she explained, then pulled into a sight a book with more maps and text. "The reefs around Stranglethorn Vale are one of the few places where you can find them."

"But...couldn't you just hire someone to dive them for you and have them shipped to whereever you need?" Valen questioned her.

"That's the thing. The special qualities of these pearls begin to deteriorate as soon as they are removed from the clams they form in. Some parts of the stealth device preserve the pearl a little longer, but any handling and transportation before that would seriously reduce their lifespan. What's more, is that the pearl continues to deteriorate even inside the machine and will require regular replacing if you want to keep the generator in working order."

"So,,,to make a long story short, there's a good chance that our mystery mage needs to regularly visit the shores of Stranglethorn Vale," Valen condensed the information.

"That's the jist of it," the gnome responded. "One more thing, though," she added. "the pearls are normally quite deep down on the seafloor. I imagine even an undead can't just swim down there without some sort of scientific or magical aid. That should give us some idea what to look for...but might also present a problem."

I caught on and stepped into the discussion.

"Maybe not. If you can point out a spot, I can probably get deep enough to look for leads, and back too."

The gnome took a few seconds to understand before giving her response.

"I see. Still, it may not come to that. Stranglethorn Vale is quite well known for deep, natural caves underneath the jungle. Some of them are even said to go deep enough to sustain marine life. Something like that would be an ideal place to get these pearls without much trouble."

"A bit of an indirect approach, but at least we now have some idea where to go look for more trouble. But right now, dinner would be nice. I'm starving," Valen suggested.

"Already done, follow me," Morgan replied and led us through the house to another room that already had a large meal set on a dining table. I suspected that the robotic servants she had spoken of but I had yet to see had something to do with having everything ready like that.

We were all hungry and all discussion stopped for a while as we sat down to eat. It was a little later, when we were beginning to be mostly done when Valen spoke again.

"What's with you and that big man, by the way? And where'd he go? I don't remember seeing him before," he addressed Morgan.

"Oh, he's back at SI:7 making his report. You must've missed him on your way here. As for who he is..." Morgan started and lowered her voice at this point, "from what I understand, he used to be with the bloodsail pirates, until the ship he was on got unlucky and sunk. After keeping him in the stockades for a while, somebody from SI:7 decided to enlist him for his experiece...and other skills. Now, he's basically under my watch, as the people up high don't really trust him yet."

"Hmh. He's pretty calm and quiet for an ex-pirate. Gives me the creeps," Valen responded.

"He knows his stuff. And he might know a thing or two about Stranglethorn Vale. We should definitely bring him along," Morgan insisted.

"If you say so," Valen nodded reluctantly, then stretched his arms back a bit. "I think it's about bedtime," he said from the middle of a wide yawn.

"I had a room prepared for you in the west hall. Last one on the right," the gnome addressed us both and pointed her finger at one of the multiple doors out of the dining room.

Having shared a room with Valen several times before, it didn't sound like anything out of place at that point. As we found our way to the room and closed the door behind us, however, things got a bit more awkward. Everything was fine, the room clearly was for two people...but we both stopped for a moment when we saw that, instead of two beds across the room, there was only one. Wide and big enough for two, but still only one.

_'I guess I gave someone the wrong idea,'_ I thought to myself.

After a small moment to set my mind on it, we shared a look at eaach other that clearly said "as long as it doesn't bother you", then proceeded in a silent, half-honest agreement.

True to my ways, I instinctively went for the side that had the room's only window on it.

As soon as I sat on the bed, I realized that the dress I had on was far too tight to comfortably sleep in. After taking a glance over my shoulder and seeing pulling off his boots and tunic with a somewhat uneasy look on his face, I got out of the dress and slipped between the sheets on my side, then froze there.

What soon followed was several minutes of awkward silence, both of us intently staring at the ceiling while trying to put it out of our minds with poor success.

I almost felt relieved when Valen finally broke the tension and silence after some very long minutes.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Mhm," I uttered in response.

"Why are we acting like two silly little kids here?"

That finally broke the tension completely as we burst into laughter for a moment.

"No, really," he started again as we settled down, "what really happened back there, outside Thoraim's place?"

"You know what happened," I danced around the question.

"You know what I mean," he persisted.

"I..." I began but lost my train of thought as soon as I tried to form the sentence further.

"Guess threre's no simple answer to that, huh?" he decided after a moment of no response from me. Another minute of silence followed before he spoke again. This time, I could hear him rolling over to face me and found the confidence to do the same myself.

"I'm just wondering...am I making you uncomfortable?"

"No, I..." I immediately replied, then had to think for a moment how to continue, "It's just...new to me. And...I've been thinking...do you remember what I told you about myself back on the ship from Kalimdor?"

"Umm...something about fearing that you might lose yourself to bloodthirst?" he recalled in slight confusion.

I nodded.

"I've thought...in nature, there are other...bestial instincts that might come over me if given too much opporutunity before I'm used to them," I finally managed to compile my thoughts for him.

The confused look remained on his face a while more, and then a smile of understanding spread across his face. At the same time, a familiar warmth rose to my cheeks as he began to understand my somewhat embarrassing confession.

"Okay...I think I get it. But...that doesn't really answer my question, does it?"

Having no words to elaborate further, I hoisted myself with one arm and leaned over to share a short kiss with him, then immediately retreated to my edge of the bed, facing away from him to better brace myself against the ensuing surge of blood pumping in my ears as I rest my head on the pillow.

"Good night, " finished the exchange without looking at him again.

"...not that you'd be the only one in uncharted territory here" I heard him mumbling some half minute later, unsure if it was meant for my ears.


	54. A Losing Battle

I woke up to this odd noise I'd never heard before. After opening my eyes and sitting up to look around, I saw the the source of the strange sound was a machine headed for the door of the room. To me, the thing looked like nothing more than a metal box with flashing lights and some moving parts on wheels, but I guess it did have some more elaborate purpose than moving around the house making noise. I had just missed said purpose by waking up just as the machine headed out the door.

Stretching my back and my arms for a bit, I saw that Valen was still asleep on his side of the bed. I also noticed that my own clothes had been brought in and neatly piled on the table across the room.

Cautiously glancing over my shoulders every other moment to confirm that Valen was still sleeping, and making a point of being quiet to not wake him up, I took the opporutunity to be rid of the borrowed underwear and change into my leathers again.

Feeling much more comfortable in my familiar garments, I was headed for the door when a different thought struck me.

I had almost never been awake before Valen, and taking a better look at him in a sleep that was peaceful for once, a warm feeling awoke inside me, causing me to smile at the scene and compelling me to do something besides just leave quietly. Thinking of what I had told him the night before, I walked over and carefully sat down beside him on his side of the bed.

For once, I had the opportunity to observe him and carefully measure how I felt, without having his gaze and voice getting me all confused about it.

I had to ask myself how much point there was in beating around the bushes like I had been doing. Everyone we had met so far had apparently had it easy to see that we weren't just two elves who happen to be traveling together, and it seemed that every time something did happen, it was all well and good until I started thinking too rationally about it, swimming against a current stronger than me. And every time I had lost a bit of ground and found myself closer to that waterfall that was sucking me in and trying to make me fall.

It was a losing battle that my reason was fighting against my instinct, and there wasn't much time for me to make a conscious decision before fate would do it for me, or worse, take away the opportunity altogether. Very soon I'd have to make a decisive move one way or the other.

Rejecting him seemed like the wrong move to make as soon as I thought of it that way, and I had to wonder why I was being so cautious when simply giving in seemed like the best way to relieve the tension. Even if I had compared it to the bloodlust that I had experienced in Tanaris, this wasn't about ending up hurting people or anything like that. The most I might end up doing was a thing most natural, no conflict whatsoever between that and my being a druid.

As I continued to quietly observe him, I noticed a tiny beginning of a beard just under his bottom lip that he hadn't had back in the beginning of our journey, and suddenly it didn't seem like a bad idea to get a bit closer after all.

Both to straighten up my own thoughts a bit, as well as to hopefully stop Valen from oversleeping, I decided to grant him a gentle, quick kiss before leaving the room for good.

I found Morgan in the dining room, already drawing some plans on paper, it seemed, while absent-mindedly chewing on some breakfast items she had laid on the table.

"Morning," she greeted me without raising her eyes from whatever she was looking at.

I ended up responding with a yawn while I took a seat across the table from her, then decided it would be rude to not say at least something.

"Got some new information there?"

"Nah, just catching up on some work before heading out with you guys. I actually have a schedule to keep with my work."

As I was about to take a bite from a fruit I had picked up from the table, I noticed how the gnome finally raised her eyes from her work and fixed them on something behind me.

"You look awfully cheery today," she said.

"Well, I slept well," Valen's approaching voice replied from somewhere outside my vision, "had this nice dream about kissing the girl of my dreams, if you must know. A real cute one, too," he continued with a subtle hint of actually meaning something a little different in his voice and making me feel a little oddly warmer than I should have been.

"Oh? I'm flattered," the gnome replied as an obvious joke.

"And a little too full of yourself, it seems," Valen stabbed back at her while taking a seat right by my side and immediately proceeding to wrap his arm around me while reaching out to grab some food with the other.

"It's my height, isn't it? A tauren, then?," the gnome continued her joking while standing up and collecting her papers from the table by rolling them up into scrolls.

"Very funny," Valen replied with a mouth full of food and swallowed before continuing, "I've found I'm more of a cat person," he concluded and gave me a subtle glance from the corner of his eye.

After the exchange that morning, I was once again a step closer to that fall I seemed to be inevitably heading for, but also felt a little safer about it.

We were stepping out of Morgan's large house some half hour later, and to my surprise, 'Mr. White' from earlier was already waiting for us right outside the door, almost as if he'd been able to see us right through it. What was not surprising was the fact that he still wasn't saying a word or giving any visible attention to any particular person or object.

The sky over the city was still covered by the thick, darkening smog, but as I found out when we walked further on, all that polluted air was actually limited to just the quarter of the city where the tram station and Morgan's house were. The skies were much clearer and brighter as we passed under a large stone archway and came upon an intersection of straight, stone-lined canals running though the city. Seeing the clear sunshine and a body of flowing water instantly made me feel a little better as the gnome guided us over a number of bridges and through another archway.

We arrived at a large market square next. It wasn't even midday yet, but the place was already packed with all sorts and shapes of people, most of who still had one thing in common: they all looked very busy. Lining the square was a wide assortment of stores and establishments, and somewhere in the middle of all the crowd were some wooden stands where fruit, jewelry and other small items were being sold by people who desperately tried to make their voices heard in the middle of all the hassle.

All in all, it was surely the largest number of people I had ever seen in one place, another point to add to my lengthy list of things that had broadened my view of the world since I had left Ashenvale. And to be quite frank, I was rather glad that we had no business there and thus could pass by without having to take part in the commotion.

The next archway we passed under was a much larger one and had several well-armed and armored humans standing guard on either side of it. It took us outside of the city's inner wall, even if it immediately turned out that there was an outer one too, at the other end of an open drawbridge over a large moat. My heart lightened yet a little more as soon as I saw my first glance of Elwynn forest right outside the main gates, and soon enough, we made it there.

Eager to listen to the sounds I could get from this new place that was a forest like home, but still very different, I closed my eyes and let Valen guide me by the hand, since he already had a grip of it anyway, that time around.

What I heard after concentrating for a few moments, was a mostly harmonoius sound, best described as being more a plain and laid-in-front-of-you song than the somewhat more mysterious and exciting tune of Ashenvale. It reflected the visible, physical difference of the two woods quite as I would have expected.

"Do you like it?" Valen's voice interrupted me after a while. Out of the people I was traveling with, he was the only one with some idea of what I was doing and how it worked, due to my earlier attempt to explain it to him.

"It's...nice. As unique as any other...but it doesn't really inspire any deeper thought," I elaborated for him. "I don't think I would trade Ashenvale for it," I added in a less serious tone, which caused him to chuckle.

"No place like home, huh? This is pretty much it for me, though."

I was a little suprised. Not at what he had said, but more about the fact of how little I knew about it considering how close we were growing.

"What was it like, anyway? To grow up around here and all that."

"Hmm...I'll tell you..." he started and got a sly look on his face, "...if you can beat me tonight," he finished and gripped the handle of one of his two swords with a motion that attracted my attention to it, then winked at me.


	55. Contradictions

Much later that day we came across a river, directly crassing and blocking the way we were headed in. I could already see and hear then, that there was something strange about the woods on the other side, but couldn't quite put my finger on it yet. Valen must've noticed my curious look as he addressed me.

"Have you ever been to lands tainted by the undead plague?" he asked me in a low enough voice to keep the discussion just between us two.

"Well...no, not exactly," I replied hesitantly, wondering if it was anything like Felwood had been.

"Duskwood over there is one, and it just so happens to be the shortest way to where we're going," he explained and nodded towards the woods on the other side of the river. "Still, I'ts pretty common for travelers to go around, keeping to this side of the river all the way till the bridge and guarded road that starts from Westfall down southwest. I'm actually a little surprised that Morgan's taking this route."

"Are there that many undead?" I asked in a somewhat concerned tone after what he had said.

"Not really. But they're there, and that's enough for most people."

"Hmm...maybe it has something to do with him?" I suggested and pointed out the ever mysterious 'Mr. White'. "If he's SI:7, he's got to have some skills that make him useful, right?"

"If he's really an ex-pirate, his knowledge on that subject is probably all he needs to be of use. I mean, I pretty much got in just because I'm a night elf."

"You did?" I tried to sneak for more information on his past, but he saw it coming.

"You'll have to do better than that to make me slip up," he replied and smiled triumphantly, "beat me first, remember?" he finished and motioned at the handle of one of his swords again.

Instead of simply swimming across, we followed along the riverbank for a little bit to find a shallow part with a number of rocks close to the surface. That's where Morgan directed us to cross. After making it to the other side, the gnome stopped us.

"We should make camp here. There are still a few hours of light left, but I'm sure we'd all rather take a break and make it through Duskwood tomorrow without stopping halfway through," the gnome decided for us, and we had no complaints.

After setting up a campfire I couldn't help noticing that, while the water had barely been up to my knees, since Morgan was a lot shorter, crossing the river had soaked her quite thoroughly, but she didn't seem too bothered about hanging up most of her clothes on a nearby tree to dry and sitting with us at the fire in just her underwear. I could only guess that she must've had quite a bit of experience and confidence about the sort of things she had tried to enlighten me about the day before.

I took that peaceful moment around the campfire to listen to yet another new area I had ended up in. The first thing I noticed was that Duskwood was awfully quiet. I knew from my studies that the infamous plague of undeath was an unnatural thing of magical origins, which made it silent as stone and thus essentially invisible to my senses. But even the trees and animals that were still untainted were more quiet than usual, as if they were all nervously hiding from something. You could say that Duskwood gave new meaning to the old, somewhat self-contradictory saying of something being a little too quiet to feel right and safe. That, and the shadowy sight of it kept me on my toes just about as much as Felwood had, even if it was completely different.

A small meal and a bit of idle resting later, with a hint from me, Valen and I got up and walked off a bit to have a nice space all to ourselves, and in a silent, mutual agreement, started expending our remaining energy for the day on our usual sword practice. This time, however, there were no instructions given to me beforehand. Valen merely handed me a weapon and asked if I was ready, then started off our sparring session.

A few minutes in, the practice had started to get more intense and genuinely competitive, especially when I remembered the challenge he had placed for me earlier that day. I actually started feeling heavy and fatigued, and even broke a sweat before the practice match finally came to a halt when the tip of Valen's weapon accidentally scraped a lengthy, but shallow and otherwise mostly harmless cut on my arm, as I had become too weighted down to dodge as quickly as I normally did.

"Sorry!" he immediately called out and dropped his weapon, a hint of the old fear of hurting me on his face before he realized it wasn't anything serious. "I'm so sorry. Did that hurt?" he continued and approached me with a concerned look on his face.

I was still holding on to my sword, and as he came closer an idea popped into my head. After he had taken one more step, I sprung forward, shapeshifting in mid-air and catching him completely off guard as I had hoped. My momentum was enough to topple him backwards, and as soon as his shoulders hit the ground and I landed on top him, I reverted back into an elf. I ended up sitting on his belly with my legs spread, my weight and my left hand holding him down while my right was aiming my sword at his throat at not too many inches away.

"How's that for a distraction?" I asked him in an excited and victorious tone after catching my breath for a second.

After listening to my own exhausted panting for a bit, I saw the surprised look on his face turn into a wide smile and laughter.

"You're starting to learn how to fight like a rogue. I'm not sure if it's approriate to be proud of someone having learned some of my dirty tricks, but I am."

As I turned my weapon away to stop threatening him with it, he added:

"Seems like today's lesson was an easy one for you."

"Huh?"

Just then, he took advantage of my surprise and quickly shoved me off balance, causing me to roll off of him and land on the ground next to him while he got up and collected his weapons.

"Tonight's subject was motivation. You were curious to hear more about me earlier today, so I deliberately made it into a prize for you to fight for."

"Why you..." I sat up as the realization of once again having gotten outsmarted by him dragged me down from the heights of accomplishment I had felt over besting him for once. I threw a friedly punch at his leg, only to have my fist caught by his hand. With that, he dragged me back onto my feet and concluded:

"Worked pretty well, didn't it?"

"So what about that prize then? I did win, didn't I?"

"Sure thing. I'll make sure to tell you the story someday."

"What?" I coughed out.

"I don't recall saying when, but you can trust me. I mean," he began and took a step back, "do I look like a guy who plays dirty and breaks promises for a living?" he said and spread his hands to his sides in an innocent manner with that usual cunning smile of his on his face.

I could only laugh out loud at his sarcasm and how he'd completely outplayed me despite my momentary triumph. Even if his tricks had gotten me a little annoyed, I couldn't help finding his rogue charm as attractive as ever. Trying to put that out of my mind, I aimed my eyes at the river instead.

"Any aquatic dangers around these parts?"

Despite my vague question, he figured out pretty quickly what I had on my mind.

"Nothing too big for you to handle. Unless you go a whole bunch back north and west along the river. Then you might find some hungry murlocks."

"In that case, I'm going to wash up for a bit before returning to camp. You go on ahead."

"Sure you won't need someone to watch your back for the infamous undead of Duskwood?" he suggested in a half-serious tone. Joke or not, it was a bold suggestion compared to everything else he had ever said to me, and my immediate reaction was a rush of blood causing heavy, involuntary blushing and a complete momentary confusion of my thoughts.

"Uhh...I'll manage. Just go," I managed to reply, but as soon as I heard myself speak, the feeling of embarrasment got even worse, as the tone of my voice said a lot more than the words I spoke.

Valen had this grin on his face that seemed to indicate he'd gotten exactly the reaction he'd been looking for and turned around to walk off.

"Just don't make me regret this," he kept teasing as he went.

As soon as he was out of sight, I made some haste undressing and getting into the water to cool off and clear my head. As I focused on washing the scratch he'd given me before letting nature mend it for me, I was both mad at Valen for his trickery and boldness, but contradicting that, also helplessly charmed by it. It didn't help when, after a little while, I found myself peering cautiously towards the shady treeline for any undead that I wouldn't be able to detect short of actually seeing them coming. Just for a moment, I thought it might not have been a bad idea to just let him stay, but quickly chalked it up to such thoughts being much easier to consider in retrospect. For better or worse, the time of having to either let myself fall or walk away entirely was even closer than I had thought.

Returning to camp, Morgan was already asleep under a blanket, Valen was playing that same old song with his flute again, and 'Mr. White' seemed like he hadn't moved at all since the last time I had seen him sitting in that same spot, staring over the now dying campfire in silence. I laid down to rest and hopefully fall asleep to the pleasant, if somewhat sorrowful tune Valen was playing, only to have him stop almost immediately.

"We should probably keep watch though the night while we're around this area," he pointed out to nobody in particular.

"Sounds smart to me," I mumbled in a tired voice while reluctantly opening my eyes again.

There was a moment of silence as we thought of it, until a low, deep and unfamiliar male voice spoke.

"I will take the first watch," it said. I hoisted myself an arm's length and looked about in confusion for a bit, until I heard the voice again. It turned out to be our silent companion having finally decided speak up.

"No undead will come close undetected," he declared confidnetly without averting his motionless stare into the distance.

"Okay..." Valen responded, sounding as confused as I was about the big man having suddenly participated after all that time.

"Shall I wake you up in about four hours then, miss Cailea?"

I thought it was an oddly formal way to address me, and I wasn't really expecting the question either, so my answer was rather sluggish.

"Oh...alright. But...just call me Cailea."

"My apologies if I confused you. And old habit from my sailing days."

"That's alright."

The man was very well-spoken for both his simple, ragged outlook, as well as the now confirmed fact that he had been a sailor of at least some description.

"What should I call you, then?" I couldn't help asking him as politely as I could, but ending up sounding more shy than polite.

"Out at sea, they called me Mr. White. Miss Cherryspark and the other people I work with now call me Mr. White. It has been a long time since anyone has called me anything besides that, so Mr. White will do fine," he gave his well-formed response, which I was a little more prepared for this time.

"Well, that settles that. Goodnight everyone," Valen said, sounding relieved, probably due to not having to wake up for a shift of watching the camp since I had volunteered.

I fell asleep pondering the irony of how the most dark-skinned human I had ever seen had such a contradictory name.


	56. Blind Luck

"Where have you been, Cailea?"

The tone of her voice was not the usual, friendly greeting I normally got after I'd been out playing.

"Outside."

She ignored my response and returned her attention to the bread dough she was working on.

"Your father said you weren't at the beach, or in town with the other kids. So where were you?" her tone became more serious. I could tell she was mad at me. Well, as mad as a good mother could get to her child.

Turning away from her work again and kneeling down to be down at my eye level, she drew breath to calm down, laid a hand on my shoulder and asked patiently:

"Were you out in the woods?"

I nodded submissively.

"Did you go through the cemetery again?"

I nodded again, even more cautiously this time. I knew what was coming.

"Oh, how many times do I have to tell you not to go there?" she raised her voice in frustration.

"But...you and dad always go there..." I muttered in a teary voice.

"It's..." she went silent and pondered before deciding what to say. This was the part where she always pondered, even though she ended up just saying the same thing every time. "...it's just not a place for children!" she ended up shouting the last bit with even more frustration and a bit of some other emotion audible in her voice.

"I'm sorry I made you mad again..." I replied as the first tears started running down my face.

"Oh, no!" she called out in a completely different, friendlier voice and hugged me warmly. "Mom's not mad at you, kitten. Just worried."

_"It is time to wake up."_

"Mom's not mad at you. But, could you just go to the beach from now on?"

_"Wake up, Cailea."_

That's when the other voice from the background finally made the dream fade and returned me to reality. I felt tired when I wrestled my eyes open and felt Mr. White's hand letting go of my shoulder as my vision slowly focused and revealed the shadowy border of Duskwood, looking even darker than it had when had gone to sleep.

"Not accustomed to waking up in the middle of the night?" Mr. White asked me from somewhere outside my field of vision.

I forced myself to sit up against the urge to go to sleep again and saw a sleeping Valen and Morgan, a pile of charcoal that had been our campfire, and Mr. White sitting to my left, exactly where he had been before.

"Somewhat amusing considering what your people call themselves, if I may say so," he continued in a tone that had only a slight hint of said amusement in it. All the while, his facial expression remained neutral and unchanged and he kept staring into the distance as always, even when talking to me.

"From what I understand, we haven't really been all that nocturnal since we became allies with people who prefer to sleep at night," I dug into my history lessons and yawned. "Not in my time, anyway," I finished.

Following that, there was a minute or two of silence. I knew what I had been asked to do, but I found myself sort of wondering if there was something more to it besides staying awake and keeping my eyes and ears open. Like many times before when I wasn't really paying attention, my eyes ended up looking at Valen, as if to check if he had started having nightmares again.

"It is the greatest motivation and reason to fight for most intelligent beings," the big man spoke out of the blue, "but also one of the most easily exploited weaknesses if known to your enemies."

"Huh?" I was confused at first, not really knowing what he'd been speaking of. A second later I realized it must've been another case of someone noticing the way I looked at Valen. Then I knew what the subject was. Even if I had accepted the fact a while ago, I was still too uncertain of it do discuss it, especially with someone other than Valen.

"Well I...I don't know. It's not really...", I hurried to cover up my tracks, or at least make it seem like something too small to be worth talking about. "What's happened to your eye?" I randomly directed the discussion to another subject. For a moment, the big man seemed like he was laughing silently.

"So, the eyepatch has fooled you as well," he said. I was somewhat surprised he even began to talk about it.

"What do you mean?"

"They wonder why one eye is covered and never realize, that the other is just as blind."

I few things about him started to make a lot more sense as he said that. Of course a blind man might seem quite passive in their reacting to things around them, and not feel as inclined to face whoever they were speaking to. Still, there were other things he had managed almost too well for someone who had no eyesight. Many things that, in turn, did not make sense now.

"There are other ways to see besides one's own two eyes, though," he added as he somehow perceived my surprise, then laid down to rest and left me to my watch.

The night was as disturbingly quiet as the evening in Duskwood had been. I kept myself going by thinking of the responsibility I now had, watching over my sleeping companions. It was nescessary to have such a motivation actively in my thoughts as to not fall asleep again. The first hour was, somewhat unsurprisingly, the hardest. After that, my body had adjusted itself to being awake, even if the time was a somewhat odd one for it, and I found it much easier to stay awake.

I never really saw the sunrise, as the dark woods in front of me were in the east, giving an effective cover against it's light for long enough for the others to start waking up one by one. There wasn't much talk between us that morning. Even Morgan didn't really have anything to say, even if she was the kind of person who seemed to like the sound of her own voice. It was an interesting situation, having everyone get silent like that, as we continued to follow the riverbank south, since the most silent member of our little group had finally traded a few words with me not too man hours earlier.

Further down the riverbank, the shady woods continued on our left, but on the right across the river, the otherwise simple looking plains started to get colored by fields and farms barely visible in the distance. I know from my books and other knowledge that there laid Westfall, a vast plain where the humans of Stormwind had chosen to base their agriculture. It was probably because I didn't understand the humans or their society that well, but the whole business of setting up such large farms seemed to me like an awful lot of work for food that they could've just as well aquired from the wilds, if they knew what to look for. Not that I personally had ever been very good at hunting, but then, I wasn't really a prime representation of my race in most things. In fact, it's always been more common for me to hear the opposite about myself.

Eventually we reached a road crossing across our path, complete with a sturdy-looking bridge across the river. Instead of taking a turn to follow the road, however, Morgan directed us to ignore it and keep following the river southward. Supposedly, there was another route into Stranglethorn, admittedly a more difficult one than following the road that would eventually go there, but I of course didn't mind a walk through a rougher part of land, as long as it didn't involve a whole bunch of caves and such.

Ironically enough, that's exactly what was up ahead. It was already late into the day when we reached the point where the landscape got much less smoother, until we pretty much ran into a cliff wall where the river had plown it's way through over the ages, creating a gorge into the jungle I knew to be up ahead somewhere.

We followed the river along the bottom of the gorge, using all sorts of ledges and shallows. I quite liked it, even though I guess most people would've just called it dangerous to tread on slippery stones next to a river that was slowly gaining speed and turning into white, foamy rapids.

It was around then that we came across this part where the path plunged below the running river beside it, protected by rocks that only allowed a small amount of the water to flow down to the path. And there, just behind that thin veil of water running down from the edge of the river above, there was the entrance of a cave that went straight into the rock below the river, and no doubt somewhere beyond. Morgan had us stop at that point.

"Well, this looks like a good place to start looking. We're not exactly at the coast and the reef yet, but knowing something about these parts, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the other end of this cave goes all the way there."

"It does. It runs under some of the old troll ruins in northern Stranglethorn and eventually end near the great sea, like an underground river," Mr. White spoke somewhat unexpectedly, "it should be deep enough to have a chance of containing the pearls, the local pirates have found caves like this to be some of the best places to hide their loot, and the horde basecamp in the jungle is only half a day's walk from the other end. It would be wise to investigate," he elaborated.

We all were standing about silenced by his extensive knowledge for a moment, then Valen spoke.

"That's convenient. Guess we got pretty lucky then."

"I don't know..." I mumbled to myself, thinking of such a long and deep underground passage.

"I'll hold the ceiling for you if it decides to come down for some reason", Valen encouraged me with the same thing he'd said back when we had crossed to Khaz Modan from the Wetlands.

Black clouds had began to gather somewhere above us as we decided to head inside, and I could tell a storm was coming. Looking back to everything that ended up happening, that's actually quite an understatement.


	57. The Ultimate Sacrifice

My comfort against my phobia this time was the thin stream of water running along the floor of the cave, which kept heading slightly downwards all the time. In fact, that sound of running water proved to be quite good for my nerves, allowing me to actually pay some attention to my surroundings, even if it was mostly just damp, mossy rock all around us.

Morgan carried in her hand some sort of a small device that I couldn't accurately make out, because it was giving off a bright, bluish light, illuminating the way ahead. Another gnomish invention that even I could appreciate for it's function.

Besides the sound of running water, there was a constant echoing of our footsteps and our equipment rustling steadily. Something more to focus my attention on to not end up thinking too much of the dephths we kept going down to.

Some half-hour walk later, the constant soothing noise of the water was interrupted by something else. A terrible, gurgling voice echoing throughout the cave, followed by the sound of numerous, light footsteps approaching fom somewhere ahead.

Everyone immediately stopped walking and started getting ready for a battle instead. Valen drew his swords, Mr. White took a more readied stance as he didn't actually have a weapon to pull out, and contrary to what I'd have thought, instead of using the dagger she carried, Morgan spread her arms wide to her sides and made some subtle motions with her fingers while quietly murmuring something incomprehensible. The effect was that a small fire came alight on the palm of her right hand, while the left gained a white, arcane glow around it. That's when I came to understand that her outfit, which I had thought to be a dress of some sort, was actually a mage's robe. Having no weapon besides the dagger that didn't quite feel like sufficient protection, I immediately assumed my panther shape to face whatever was coming.

Glittering, large eyes came into view first. Next, I saw the slimy skins and the fins on their backs. A few carried spears, one had a two-handed sword, and the last two stayed behind to prepare spells. I knew what the fish-men were called from all the stories I'd heard, but I had never seen live murlocks before.

The first stone was a fireball hurled towards the murlocks by the gnome. It looked that she had aimed for the two in the back, but the spell ended up hitting one of the armed ones in the front, with lethal results regardless.

Valen stepped to the side to dodge a lunge from the first murlock that actually reached us. The creture's missed attack left it open for a well-aimed pouncing attack from me. The taste that filled my maw as I sunk my teeth into the creture to kill it was horrible, to say the least. I at least imagined it was probably like eating rotten fish, all soaked until soft and covered in slime.

About then, I saw Mr. White get this bright, yellow glow in his one visible eye as well as his left hand. He then swung the glowing fist across the air in front of him, which seemed like a pointless motion at first, but then I saw that at the same time, there was a flash of light about one of the murlocks in the back, like an invisible sword glowing with holy power was striking it down. The murlock next to that one was about to release a spell, but got it's gut impaled by one of Valen's swords before it could, while another of the armed ones fell to a mostly invisible but very effective and loud shockwave originating from Morgan's palm.

One last creature remained. It went berserk upon seeing that it was alone, and recklessly charged at Mr. White, only to have the man's big, strong hand grasp it by the head. The helpless creature tried to claw at the man, but then stopped all of a sudden. Mr. White got a more focused look on his face, and there was an odd noise, like a heavy wind blowing past us. The murlock in his grasp started to look absolutely terrified, desperately trying to fight itself free with motions that looked more like convulsions, while gurgling in panic. Then, just for a split-second, it seemed as though the man holding the creature became nothing but a shadowy silhouette of himself, while that odd noise spiked louder before dying out. After that, silence fell as Mr. White finally released the creature, completely limp and lifeless as it crumpled down to his feet.

A few seconds of the three of us looking around to make sure the fight was over, and Mr. White spoke up as I shifted back into my elven form.

"Anyone hurt?" he asked in his strong and stable tone, confirming what I had guessed from seeing him fight: the man was a priest of some sort.

There was another moment of silence as everyone quickly looked themselves over for any obvious wounds or injuries, only to come across none. We had survived the encounter unscathed, giving me some more confidence that we'd be able to make it all the way through the cave as long as we were together. Of course, just as I thought that, it turned out it wouldn't last for long. Morgan picked up her artificial light again and inspected the way ahead before giving us the word to keep moving.

"Looks like the path splits into two up ahead," she analyzed, "we'd best split up too unless we want to risk missing what we're looking for after getting potentially very close."

A generally uncomfortable mood arose among all four of us as we looked around nervously, as if there was a different solution to be seen somewhere on the damp rock walls.

"It may be that the paths converge again up ahead," Mr. White stated in his neutral tone that made the statement more of a blunt fact than any kind of encouragement.

"Maybe, but I still don't like the look of this," Valen commented.

"I would hate to walk back and forth in this place if there's a chance we can be through it quickly. If it's just going to be more murlocks at worst, I don't think it's too dangerous," I voiced my thoughts.

"Alright then," Morgan determined after listening to us, "splitting it is. I'm guessing you two want to stick together, so you better take a few things with you. Here," she explained and handed the artificial light to Valen while pulling out another device from her pockets. This one was a tiny metallic box, small enough to fit in someone's pocket. It had a tiny rod of some sort sticking from it, and as Morgan fiddled around with it for a moment, a single red light appeared in it's middle. Then she handed over the device to me.

"It may not look like much, but it should help us rendevouz later by telling you how close the other one is," she explained and quickly showed me that she had another one with her. "The light will start flashing more and more frequently the closer the two locators are, as long as they're both active. The simple design should also keep it waterproof."

"And...if it doesn't work?" I couldn't help asking.

"It will work!" Morgan replied, sounding rather insulted.

"Won't this help the enemy find us if they end up with one? The element of surprise is a nasty thing if it's not on your side," Valen was the next to doubt.

"That's why it would be a good idea to only lose it over your dead bodies. I know I'm not letting go of mine without a fight," Morgan kept defending her invention.

"If all else fails, we can arrange to meet in Booty Bay. Three or four days should be enough time before it's safe to assume that the others are not coming," Mr. White did a better job at giving me a satisfactory answer.

"The Salty Sailor, I assume?" Valen asked.

"That would be appropriate," was the priest's response.

"Along the way, we can all keep looking for those pearls or the enemy," Morgan added and pulled out another light for herself and Mr. White as we all began moving again.

The fork in the road was a mere few yards away, where Morgan had seen it.

"Pick your side," she said expectantly.

The water running along the floor only streamed to one of the tunnels, as the other path had a slight bump in it. Instinctively, I stepped towards the way of the water, both because of the soothing sound, as well as the fact that, at least by my logic, it was the one of the two ways that was less likely to be a dead end.

"Alright then, see you later," Valen said to our other two companions, and then we parted ways with the gnome and the priest.

The confidence that our well-handled encounter with the murlocks had given me sank away rather quickly as Valen and I continued without the help of our other friends. It didn't help either, that the tunnel kept going downwards and deeper underground, instead of making a turn upwards. To make matters worse, this continued for something like a full hour of walking, and once we finally came across something, it was just about the worst, and ironically enough, the best things we could've ran into.

The tunnel expanded into a medium-sized stalagmite cavern with another exit on the opposite side. There were large stalagmites and pillars of half-corroded rock all around the place, making it into a small labyrinth surrounding a more open central area. Behind one of these obstacles, a familiar sight emerged.

He still had the same, blue robes, the numerous gadgets strapped to his arms and belt, the long, greasy hair, and the glowing green goggles hiding his undead eyes. It was only his lopsided mouth that expressed surprise when he saw us. We immediately began nervously eying around for the mage's companion from earlier, our real enemy.

"You! How the hell did you two end up finding me here?", the undead shouted at us in his rough, undead voice coming from his partially rotten vocal chords.

Valen drew his weapons and I readied myself as well. Whether the mage was alone or not, it was clear from the start that there was a fight ahead. A much harder one than the murlocks.

"I could ask you the same thing. But I guess it doesn't really matter now, does it?" Valen responded. "I brought my friend and partner in crime, but where's yours? Too afraid to show his face?" he proceeded to taunt the mage.

This time, the mage's undead lips twisted into an expression of displeasure.

"Friend? That warlock you have observed me with is no friend of mine. I only helped him because I was deceived into thinking he would be of use to my queen. I was wrong."

"Your queen?" I asked him, even if I already had an idea of what the answer would be.

"Lady Sylvanas. I'm sure her fame has reached even your backwater woods, druid."

"And I'm guessing it would be asking too much for you to simply tell us where he is and what he's up to," Valen continued the exchange.

"Not really, but since it is my duty to the banshee queen to dispose of her enemies, I don't see why I should waste any more time talking to you before killing you."

That was the cue.

Valen started off trying to surprise him with a forward charging attack, but the mage disappeared in flash of light just before being cut in half, only to reappear almost right next to me. I had seen his teleportation move before, but I still wasn't quite expecting it, leaving me no time to try and attack him as I rolled to the side to avoid an icy projectile from him. The conjured spike of ice made a loud, echoing crash as it shattered against the wall behind me.

A throwing dagger from the general direction where Valen had hidden himself behind some of the obstacles made it's attempt to hit the mage, only to have him cast a spell that caused a small icy shield to appear between the dagger and it's target, shattering in the process, but managing to stop the potentially lethal projectile.

It was my turn to try to attack by quickly shifting to my bestial form and pouncing towards him. This time, his response was some sort of an icy blast that killed my momentum and caused me to get stuck on the cavern floor, in addition to feeling painful. The mage then snapped his fingers, causing an electric spark to appear between them. He was obviously about to give me another of his electric shocks, which I had already had a taste of back in Felwood.

Just then, Valen showed up from behind one of the rocky pillars and succesfully made a slashing attack at the mage's extended arm, apparently causing the electric spark projector to break down in a puff of smoke, as well as getting a gasp of pain out of the undead. The mage managed to step out of the way of Valen's next attack and fire his net at the rogue, pinning him to the pillar behind. I took that moment to shapeshift back, freeing myself from the icy shackles. It was a trick I had learned on my own in my youth, as I had discovered that the act of shapeshifting causes my body to deform at one point in the process, rendering most physical constraints and bindings useless.

However, by the time I had freed myself, the mage was activating another of his gadgets, causing his form to fade away into what looked like little more than a bubble in his shape. I saw him retreating somewhere behind the rocky obstacles. Trying to stay cautious and constantly looking around, I caught glimpses of that transparent ghost moving about the edges of the cavern, too fast and too elusive for me to pinpoint and chase down. For a moment I wondered if he would simply make a run for it, but he did not.

Instead, he took advantage of the fact that Valen was still busy trying to cut his way out of the net. The forsaken walked out into sight from behind one of the obstacles, causing me to wonder what he was planning. I found that out quite quickly as three more identical mages stepped out of the shadows and formed an arc in front of me. As all the illusions and the real undead among them began preparing a powerful spell, all aiming at me, I had to act quickly. I knew that as an undead he would be invisible to my druid senses. But then I remembered Mr. White's words from earlier:

_'There are more ways to see than one's own two eyes_', giving me an idea.

Taking the second I had left to move, I closed my eyes and let my bestial instincts and senses guide me. Even if he was fooling my eyes and was invisible to my druid senses, he would surely still smell like the smoke from his broken device, as well as the usual rotten stink of undead. My eyes still closed, I shapeshifted and picked a direction based on my sense of smell, then pounced forward, hoping for the best.

There was another gasp of pain from the mage as I collided with him, followed by a thud as he fell down under my weight. Immediately after, I bit the one of his wrists that hadn't been hit yet, causing more of his gadgets to get crushed between my jaws, as well as stopping him from casting his spell. As a last resort, he pulled out a dagger with his other hand and tried to use it on me, only to have me strike it out of his hand with a claw.

Just as I was aiming another strike at his face, I heard the sound of more weapons being drawn, snapping me out of the feral frenzy. Valen had come to my side, and was pointing one of his weapons at the mage.

"You can stop now, kitten. He won't put up much of a fight with both his arms crippled," Valen said to me, then aimed his view at the mage, "will you, now?"

I shapeshifted back into an elf again to take part in any discussion that would follow, but kept my weight on top of the mage, just in case.

"Now then," Valen began in a rather vicious and threatening voice, "how about that info I asked for? Where is he?"

The forsaken coughed out a bit of some putrid yellow liquid, which I assumed to be the closest thing to blood he had left in his undead body.

"Why should I tell you anything, night elf? We both know I'm not getting out of here alive."

"Who knows, maybe we will let you go," I tried to help with the interrogation, as well as try my hand at it.

"Heh, really now? After what me and that so-called friend of mine did to the druid back in Felwood? Just finish it."

Just then, Valen noticed something on the ground next to the mage and picked it up. I immediately recognized the shadowy orb to be one of the series the warlock seemed to have been collecting.

"Well well, what do we have here? How come do you have one of these if you aren't with the warlock anymore?"

"I stole it from him. Serves him right for turning out to be a doublecrossing son of a... Anyway, I suppose I might as well let you know that you can find your enemy by traveling south, all the way to where the world ends...after all, I came here to bury that thing so he wouldn't find it, but given how this turned out, I might as well bury us all here."

"Wha...?" we both said in unison and turned our views to the mage, but it was too late.

Somehow, he had managed to sneak his crippled hand into his robe somewhere under my hold. There was an all too familiar mechanical click, followed by a cry from the forsaken making the ultimate sacrifice for his cause:

"For the dark lady!"

A thundering roar was caused by a series of explosions going off all around the walls of the cavern. I was immediately startled off of the mage, only for him to be promptly crushed by falling rocks. After that, panic took over, and all I could do was cower in fear as the cavern was caving in around us.

I vaguely remember hearing Valen yelling something about exits and being trapped, but I was far too scared to react. I remember the shaking, the various rocks and stalagmites coming down with a rumble...and then there was the sound that finally pierced through my panic and had me raise my eyes again: a scream of pain from Valen.

Through the falling rocks and sand, I saw Valen sitting on the ground, a large stone slab immobilizing him by having pinned down his left leg under it's weight. The sight clenched my heart, but I still couldn't bring myself to move until a few moments later, when miraculously, all the rumbling and shaking stopped, along with the source of said sounds.

I began to hear him more clearly again as the situation calmed down.

"Please, snap out of it!" he sounded even more desperate than I thought he would.

Having finally regained my composure, I hurried over to him, and without trading a word with him, attempted to lift the rock that was pinning him down. My attempts were in vain, and to my horror, it quickly became clear that there was no way I could move the rock, no matter what I did. I also realized that Valen was rather quiet for someone in his position. I raised my eyes to meet his, and saw that he had this weak, defeated smile on his face.

"It's okay, kitten. You can stop trying to move it. We're trapped here anyway."

I stared at him for a moment, then looked around to realize that he was right. Half of the cavern had caved in completely, and both exits were blocked. The reality of the situation started to come down on me with all it's weight, as it had already done for him. Except it was worse for me. For all I knew, we had missed our chance to make it out because I had been too scared to move. My breathing suddenly became outlandishly difficult.

"Heh," he began in an almost hysterical voice, "to think it ended like thi..."

Just then, there was more noise. It was distant and barely audible at first, but started to become louder and louder, until there was a thundering roar resounding somewhere above us. Another large rock fell from the ceiling as a stream of water forced itself through with a mighty sound, starting to slowly flood what remained of the cavern. The look on Valen's face changed instantly.

"You...you can turn yourself into some kind of an aquatic creature, right?"

My confusion and shock delayed my reponse.

"Y-yes. But..."

Valen dipped his finger in the water and tasted it.

"This here is salty seawater. That means you can get out of here," he told me in an almost overly cheery, clearly makeshift voice.

My insides turned upside down and tears forced their way to my eyes as I slowly came to realize what he was suggesting, and how unavoidable it seemed.

"No..." I muttered quietly.

They say your truest feelings for someone come out only when you're about to lose them. I found that they are right. That old familiar feeling of not wanting to part ways with him came back in a rush, stronger than ever before.

Valen swallowed a mouthful as he forcibly kept up his smile, even while he began to tear up as well.

"It's alright, kitten. I gambled my chances chasing our old enemy, and I lost. I had a feeling something like this might happen."

"No!" I shouted out loud, making my voice shatter. I didn't want to hear any more of his goodbyes. I just couldn't listen to it.

The water had already risen just above my belly as I was kneeling beside him and made another desperate attempt to move the rock that was about to doom him to death by drowning, my tears flowing abundantly as I found that even a rush of adrenaline didn't make me strong enough. Then, Valen's hand gently touched my chin and raised my head so he could look me in the eyes. There were tears running down his face, too.

"Please. Don't make me watch you die here with me. I'd be lying if I said that wouldn't hurt me...even more than the idea of myself drowning...because..."

His voice faded away and turned to a silent stare into my eyes. Then he pulled me close, embracing and kissing me like never before. I returned his affections with everything I had. After all, it was going to be the last time we could do so.

Until that same, passionate embrace gave me an idea.

A mad idea.

One that would change everything, regardless of the result.

I broke apart the kiss but remained close to say into his ear:

"I...I think I just thought of something."

"Huh?"

The water had risen up to our shoulders by that point.

"I think I can get us both out of here. But I'll need you to trust me. Completely."

"What...what do you mean? What do I need to do?" he asked with genuine surprise.

"Just..." I pondered what words to use, as even I was mostly guessing. "...just hold me like this, and don't let go. This will probably feel quite odd, like something is trying to take over you. No matter what happens, don't resist it, or you might hurt me."

"Okay..." he sounded unsure.

It was a long shot at best, but in that place and time, I was ready to try anything.

The water was almost up to my mouth as I began to gather my focus, but then decided I wanted to speak once more.

"I...just in case something goes wrong..." I had to spit out some saltwater to finish, "I just wanted to say that I..."

"Shhh, save it," he interrupted me, "It'll work. You'll have another chance to tell me."

_Anything._

Searching for the spirit somewhere inside me was as easy as always, but this time I had to put my entire willpower into making it do what I wanted it to do. I struggled to keep my focus as the the water submerged us completely. Stretching my ability as far as I possibly could, and then some, I let loose the power, causing a familiar green glow to slowly envelop me...

...and then him.


	58. Song of the Sea

The power I had called up and willed to do things for me turned out to be like a snowball, brought into being and set into motion by me, but quickly proving to be beyond anyone's control. It was somewhat like my first ever transformation all over again, with me feeling like little more than a helpless bystander in the grasp of something far stronger than myself.

Then there was that critical moment, when all your perception fades for a split second before re-adjusting itself to whatever shape you've taken. That moment lasted longer than it should have, from my experience, and for a little bit I thought that I was just one more split second away from death by having failed to accomplish what I had tried to do.

Just then, the flooded cavern slowly came into my view again, as my other senses returned as well over the next few seonds. But there was more to it than that. There were other, alien emotions, thoughts and impulses that didn't belong. One of fear and confusion quickly overwhelmed the rest, and I could feel myself physically panicing, swerving and twitching about in the shape of a large fish. It was then I realized the situation and concentrated my own thoughts into a few simple words, thought out within my mind as loudly as I could:

_"Stop. Calm down. Breathe. It's only water."_

The motion stopped. After a second or two, I heard a familiar voice echoing in my mind.

_"I...I can hear you...in my mind!_" the voice of Valen's thoughts sounded both surprised and relieved. _"How did...what...?"_

_"We've become one and the same, only separated in mind and soul...at least for now. Look,"_ I thought out to him and turned...us...to look at the rock that had been pinning down his leg before. The piece of stone lay lonely on the floor of the now completely flooded cavern.

Another wave of amazement and surprise passed over me, even though the emotions were not mine.

_"I..."_ I could feel our combined form moving outside of my will again, and so did he. _"...sorry. This is just...so strange."_

_"I know. I may be a bit more used to the different physical body...but sharing it is new to me too. It's also putting a bit of a strain on my strength. Nothing too serious, but enough to know that I can't make this last indefinitely. Let's get moving,"_ I thought out to him in response and directed us into the tunnel where the water had come from.

_"Okay. I'll...try to restrain myself...and let you do the moving...if that makes any sense,"_ was his confused and somewhat embarrased reply.

Trading our thoughts like that, it was more than just a conversation. There were all sorts of emotions, mental images and other things being shared with every word traded out loud...and even just by being in that state together. Things that I couldn't begin to explain in plain text.

Because of this, there were no lies, half-truths or evasive statements, taken out of context to seem different, because with the thought came everything else, any hints of bad conscience being transfered along with the thought, immediately exposing it for what it really was.

Even if I hadn't known how it would be prior to the metamorphosis, my asking him to trust me completely had been most appropriate, in the literal sense. You could say the connection between us was something like two mindreaders simultaneously having a go at one another, with no possibility whatsoever to try and stop or even resist the other. The sky was the limit to how much we could find out about the other, with no mutual agreement required. Or rather, our sense of courtesy and respect for one another, as well as our ability to ignore those parts of the flow of thought and emotion.

But the harder we tried, the more there were small slip-ups and such, like trying to hold back flooding water with your bare hands, only to always have a leak somewhere, which quickly started to make the situation very awkward, to say the least. Eventually I determined that the best way to make ourselves more comfortable with it was to focus on something else, like actively and willingly sharing some more thoughts as I had us swim along the tunnel that just kept going.

_"It's funny...I'm not as afraid of the small space in this tunnel as I thought I would be."_

_"Well, I've never been that worried about not having much space around me...until now,"_ he replied.

_"Sorry."_

_"Don't be. I sort of appreciate the glimpse of what it's like to feel the way you do about it."_

There was a pause as we took a steep turn in the tunnel that proved to be anything but straight. Then he continued.

_"This seems like as good a time as any to tell you a bit about myself, like you were asking yesterday. I have a feeling you're about to find out anyway."_

_"Go ahead. Hopefully that'll keep you from interfering with the swimming, too,"_ I replied, feeling relieved that there was soon going to be a bit more of his mind and memories that I didn't need to avoid looking into, or feeling bad about it if I did.

_"I...used to sometimes watch you swimming...back when we were kids,"_ he started.

_"Did you ever actually catch any fish?"_ I blurted out the silly question that had been on my mind for fifteen years.

Both our statements ended up being good examples of how there was no such thing as leaving unsaid something you happened to think of. Without a significant effort, our silliest and most embarrasing thoughts were shared as soon as they came up...giving us even more reason to keep up the mental conversation, intentionally hurrying it up a bit, without stopping too long to accidentally ending up paying too much attention to the wrong things.

_"Heh. Yes, I did sometimes. I thought back then, that if I learned enough about fishing, I could make a fine living by being one of the few elves that actually did any fishing in Auberdine. I even had plans to set up shop, selling my catch every other day. Oh, the things a six year old kid thinks themselves capable of."_

_"That puts a one year difference between us,"_ another of my thoughts came out unintentionally.

_"After the attack...and what happened to my family afterwards...well, I didn't understand things at all back then. I was just a scared and confused kid who wanted to get away from all the trouble I knew I had something to do with. That's how I intentionally found my way to the first possible ride off of Kalimdor. It was pure luck that that ship happened to be heading for Stormwind._

_I felt guilty for whatever I had to do with my family's deaths and, like a kid, I used to think that I always needed to hide and not talk to people, because anyone might prove to be the one person who somehow knew about my past. When I also had to make a living stealing my food and finding my own shelter to sleep each night in, the whole sticking to the shadows business became more of a habit that wasn't so much about my childish fear of being caught for past deeds anymore._

_Of course, it was nearly a mathematical impossibility for a thieving street kid to run free forever in the alleys of Stormwind. When the day came when I was finally caught, it was the simple fact that I was a night elf child, a truly rare sight among the humans in those days, that ended me up with the career of an operative for the SI:7. Thing is, among the humans, we have a bit of a reputation for being really good at making ourselves unseen when we want to. It was barely a full day spent at the orphanage when the recruiters already came for me, eager to see if they could make use of the unique chance to train a night elf their way._

_They did give me a choice and all, but since I was still in the mood for trying to hide my presence from the wide world, a place where they would specifically teach me to do just that seemed like the best one for me. Later on, I also realized that SI:7 was a prime source of information for anyone looking for info on a specific person or odd occurrence. I made use of this fact by beginning my quest to track down the one person who might have some answers about what was done to me...and also needed to pay for what he did to our hometown, too._

_And then, one day, you came along. As you know, the way the curse made me react to your presence finally gave me an understanding of what it was...but more than that...you've made me realize something else. Between all the sneaky operations, spying missions and whatnot other risky deals, and my own bad memories, I never really had the one simple thing I always wanted._

_A little peace and quiet. A moment of tranquility, without the need to keep glancing over my shoulders while wondering if I can even trust the friedly smile in front of me. You've seen how am I whenever we meet someone new. I doubt them, think the worst of them first, like I've been taught._

_You...and what you've taught me...however little it may seem like, are the two things closest to that peace of mind I've always been looking for,"_ he confessed to finish his story, sending mixed waves of both embarrassment, but also some strong affection in the process.

Because of the connection we shared, he hadn't just told me his story. He had shared something of all those memories and emotions connected to it, trusted me with a small piece of his very soul...and making me strongly compelled to return the favour in kind.

Just then, the dark tunnel finally came to an end. The combination of how Valen had made me feel, and the magnificent, beautiful view opening before us would've been enough to bring tears to my eyes, if my current physical form had permitted it. All the while, I knew that Valen was aware of how I felt.

There was a vast, rainbow-colored coral reef covering the seafloor as we emerged out of the side of what looked like an underwater cliff, but on a larger scale, was actually the continent itself. Amidst the colorful corals, there were some old, sunken ruins here and there, as well as all sorts of aquatic lifeforms, from clams and starfish to some more murlocks, which paid no attention to us, presumably fooled by our appearance.

Not only was it one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen, it also sounded like it. It wasn't just a peaceful, harmonious tune like that of a wild forest in Kalimdor, but a colorful symphony of all sorts of sounds, some of which I had never heard before. And in the background of it all, there was that same, distant, unreachable and lonely song of the sea itself that I had heard before, and best remembered from our boat trip.

In a speechless, mutual agreement, I took us closer, had us swim through, over, between, and even a bit under the seafloor wonders of Azeroth.

_"Remember what I taught you about druidism back on that boat trip?"_ I had to ask him.

_"Yes, why?"_

_"I was wondering if you can hear that sound through me right now."_

That was the perfect excuse for me to completely open my mind for him, sharing some of my distant emotions and secrets, a small shard of myself, returning the trust he had shown me.

_"No...I'm afraid not. I guess even all this doesn't give me your full view of the world,"_ he eventually responded.

Hearing that made me feel a little bit sad for knowing what he was missing, but it also had the helpful effect of making me pay some attention to practical things again. Things like the fact that, it was time we went ashore and I reversed the metamorphosis...assuming I could.

_"I'm...sorry for doing this...but it was the only way to save you,"_ I began to let him in on my newly risen concerns as I directed us towards the surface, near where the land joined the water.

_"Why would you be sorry for giving me this amazing experience?"_

_"Because, truth be told, I've never done this before. I've never known anyone who has. For all I knew, I was chasing a fairytale, trying to shapshift us both. And...that means I'm just as unsure of how to end this, or if I even can. It could be that this was the last time I'll shapeshift into a fish, since I sort of gave it away to you. It could be that something goes wrong when I try to end this. We...could even be stuck like this."_

His response to such shocking news came surprisingly quickly.

_"I...maybe I wouldn't mind it that much, being stuck with you in a connection like this. And if something goes wrong and these are some of my last thoughts I'm sharing with you right now...I can't think of a much better way to go."_

I felt moved, and he knew it even before I gave my response.

_"I...Thank you. That's very sweet...especially since I can say the same."_

_"No. Thank you for making such a sacrifice to pull me out of a watery grave. After everything I've done, I feel underserving of all this."_

_"You saved me from the flames and demons back in Auberdine. Since Thoraim was really the one who stopped Sorelei from killing anyone, and sealing the curse was pretty much all Millie's doing, I figured I still owed you."_

_"Who's counting 'em?"_

_"I guess I am."_

_"Stubborn idiot,"_ was his final reply, full of affection, instead of what the words implied.

That's when we reached the surface and I finally released the grip with which I had held together the strange and unique metamorphosis. There was a rush of power flowing out of me, to such an extent that I thought it would end up sucking every last bit of life out of me...but luckily, it didn't.

It's possible I lost consciousness for a moment there, I'm not really sure. What I do remember is the moment I woke up again. I knew it couldn't have been too much later, because I could sense Valen also laying somewhere beside me on that sandy beach, and because the storm I had predicted earlier that day was now beating my face and shoulders with it's heavy rain from a dark, night sky. Thunder roared somewhere in the heights while numerous lightning bolts were making a valiant effort to tear apart the heavens. Even if our clothes were already completely soaked from the diving, the rain was so heavy, it almost hadn't made a difference to get out of the sea as far as staying dry went.

As I laid on the sand there, catching my breath, the wild storm started to have the same effect on me as it had had back on the boat from Kalimdor. I felt re-energized as all the powers of nature that were in the air that night began to slowly replenish my strength.

But as that was happening, there was something else inside me that the renewing energy awoke and slowly strengthened. A piece I didn't recognize, like a magnet lodged inside my chest, right under the scar, it started to pull me towards the origin where it had come from, getting stronger every second, until I finally decided it was time to stop fighting it.

I sat up and looked to my side. It only took one look into Valen's eyes to see he felt the same, and to gain a mutual understanding. It was like something about the end of the metamorphosis had gone wrong and incomplete after all, or that our mental trade had worked a little too well. The other magnet attracting yours somehow stuck within the other person. A realization of just how much of our minds and souls had been exposed to one another, and of how the associated, pure feelings that had also been shown were so far beyond any verbal expression, that they called for the one thing that spoke even louder: action.

It started with an embrace and kiss, but it wasn't too long when I was laying on the sand again, feeling Valen's hands undoing the straps on the back of my vest. I had no intention of stopping him this time, but a sudden thought that came to my mind did, just as he finished undoing the last binding. Holding the vest in place with one hand, I reached into my pocket with the other and pulled out Morgan's locator device. Feeling it with the hand I was holding it with, I found a single switch on it's back. It switched off the tiny machine, as I had hoped. Giving Valen a smile to make sure he understood the gesture, I tossed aside the device, then let go of my loosened vest, allowing it to fall off.

What followed wasn't just some hugs and kisses taken to the next level for pleasure. It was like a natural contiuation and a physical manifestation of what had already happened mentally during the underwater trip, a force of nature with it's own momentum, much like the storm that kept raging on, so that even the tallest waves that splashed ashore just far enough to momentarily drown us were powerless to make another interruption.

A good bit later in time, the sea had finally calmed, the storm had turned into little more than a drizzle, and we had settled down to rest as well.

As I lay peacefully beside him on the beach, his arm wrapped around me while I rest my head on his chest, I felt utterly exhausted from everything that had happened, but equally happy and content as well. My cloak had been pulled over us to serve as a blanket, but it was a wind cover at best, being as thoroughly soaked as the rest of the assorted pieces of our equipment and clothing scattered on the beach around us. Even so, there was enough warmth between us and the warm breeze from the jungle behind us to last through the night.

I was about to fall asleep, when I came to think of something silly related to the dream I had had the night before.

"How did you come up with the idea to call me 'kitten', so soon after we had met?" I voiced my thought drowsily.

"Huh? What do you mean 'how did I come up with it'?" he sounded genuinely surprised. "Wait a minute...you seriously don't know, do you?" he continued.

"Know what?"

"The word 'kitten' isn't something I came up with. Not really, anyway. It's what your name means."

I must've fallen asleep soon after that, as I don't recall trading any more words with him.

It was one of the darkest and stormiest nights I've seen, but for everything that came to pass, it was also quite possibly the best thing that ever happened to me.


	59. Reflection

The exhaustion and the pleasant way of falling asleep had done their job, and it was not a surprise that I woke up very late the next morning. The sun was already high enough to be shining at my eyes from somewhere in the south. It was this shine that caused me to start moving by shielding my eyes with a hand while sitting up to avoid being further blinded.

The previously wet sand on my back was now a dried layer raining off as I sat up.

There was a moment of awkwardness as I saw Valen sitting a few metres in front of me in his leather pants, already having set up a small campfire, while I had only my cloak to cover myself with. Two seconds later, the other half of my brain woke up, the one that stored my memories, like what I had been doing the night before, and immediately I felt more comfortable with where I was.

"Morning, kitten," he greeted me with one of the happiest expressions I had ever seen on his face. "Slept well?"

"Yeah...seems so, doesn't it?"I replied while still trying to shrug off some sleep and get used to the situation I'd never quite been in before.

"Thought I'd make us some breakfast, but it's not quite ready yet," he announced and pointed at a couple of fish he had roasting over the fire. I then also noticed that he had his fishing pole lodged between a couple of rocks, hanging over the water, with the line and hook in the water. Apparently he intended to catch some more while cooking the ones he already had.

Even though we had both nearly died the night before and we were on a schedule to catch up to our companions that we had split ways with, assuming they were still alive at all, everything felt almost bizarrely calm, comfortable, relaxed and safe that morning, as if we had already vanquished our main enemy and were now enjoying our victory. What little remained of the vengeace that had been driving me was completely overshadowed by simple happiness for where I was and how I'd gotten there. I couldn't help but smile widely and think of how to make myself even more comfortable.

The first thing that came to mind was getting rid of the rest of the sand that was still sticking to my skin. Embracing the confidence I had built up, I stood up, leaving the cloak behind as I headed for the water. Unsurprisingly, Valen's eyes happily followed me all the way into the water. Not that there was anything for him to see that he hadn't already laid his eyes on before by that point, and knowing that, I wasn't too bothered either.

Seeing Valen and his fishing pole on the beach as I swam around, even if one wasn't holding on to the other this time around, I experienced another moment of fulfillment upon realizing how it was all like a time lapse back to how we'd spent many days of our childhoods back in Auberdine, a chance to truly re-experience the so-called 'good old days'. Only, this was better than that, knowing that this time around we weren't just two strangers to one another, happening to be in the same place at the same time.

It also turned out that I was still able to use my aquatic form just like before, proving false the suspicion that I might've lost it in order to invoke last night's special metamorphosis. Even so, I knew from the get go that repeating the act from before was out of the question. For all I knew I had nearly died from the strain that saving us had put on my mind and body. Pondering further about how it had felt, I thought I began to understand why such an act was practically never heard of. Not only did it take a very talented shapeshifter to perform it, the other person involved had to be willing to fully succumb to the effects and trust the druid, and finally, there was also the matter of...motivation, as Valen would've called it. To do something like it, having the life of 'just a friend' at stake might not have been enough. It had to be someone you'd die for. Literally. After all, diving into it was a pretty much a suicidal act.

By the time I was done swimming and waded back ashore, it turned out Valen's gaze, though latched onto me again, wasn't quite focused on what I would've thought, as made apparent by what he proceeded to say.

"That scar...it's never going to go away, is it?" he pointed out and raised his eyes a bit to meet mine.

"Well...no," I replied as I walked over to pick up my cloak, "...but, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, you know," I continued as I wrapped the cloth around myself after using it to dry up a bit.

"I don't know..." he responded and let his eyes stare idly into the distance while I took a seat across the fire from him, "it reminds me of how you got it...and how close you were to dying that day."

"But I lived. Be it luck, fate, Elune's will, or whatever you'd like to believe in, after all that has happened, I'm still here. And so are you. Maybe that's what you should be thinking of when you see it." I said and took a pause to touch the scar with a few fingers, as if to show him that it didn't hurt anymore, as well as to give weight to my next words, "Isn't that what scars are for, anyway? To show the world, and yourself, just how many wounds you've recovered from, and to make you think, 'if I survived all of these, what are the odds that the next one kills me'."

"Whatever doesn't kill you just makes you tougher, huh?" he finished the thought for me and smiled a little. "I guess you're right. Somehow, I just couldn't see it that way with you."

"Says the very person who taught me to fight, survive and be determined," I couldn't help but chuckle.

A moment later we were both laughing out loud at my ironic remark, as well as from the sheer, simple happiness surrounding the moment, followed by a stare into each other's eyes.

It was the smell of the fish cooking on the fire that brought us back to reality, as he remembered them, took them off the fire and shared them with me. There were five of them. I didn't know what kind of fish they were, and it didn't help that they had lost their original colouring when cooked. What I did know, was that they tasted very good to me, as most fish in general seemed to.

After we had both eaten and gotten properly dressed again, we ended up taking some more time to simply rest on the beach and enjoy the sunshine, under the excuse of me needing more time to recover from the fused transformation. It was almost like one of those tales where a dryad charms the hero into leisurely enjoying themself instead of continuing their all-important quest, as we knew that we'd eventually have to move on and find out what happened to Morgan and Mr. White, but it seemed like such a distant problem at the time.

When we finally set off to travel again, there weren't too many hours of light left, and knowing that, we quickly came to a silent, mutual agreement, that our plan of action was to head straight for Booty Bay and meet the others there, as agreed. With a schedule of sorts clear in our minds, and Valen having a pretty good idea of how long we would take to get to Booty Bay, we decided to take our time getting there, something I was very happy for.

Our route took us inland to the jungle, away from the seashore, at least for a while. As soon as I had a moment, I once again let Valen lead me and closed my eyes to listen to the jungle.

There was a constant flow of wild energy pulsing through the jungle, like a dozen trolls beating on massive wooden jungle drums made out of hollow tree trunks somewhere just out of sight. All the while there was a constant, underlying tone, a sense of hidden danger behind every tree and under every shadow. To make a comparison to Ashenvale, the sound of Stranglethorn was like a doubly loud, active and lively version of it - my kind of a place. So strong was the pulsing flow of life, that it soon compelled me to increase my own pace and become a part of it, raising my perception to a whole other level, turning my steps into leaps and even to assume my bestial form for no other reason than to be more in sync with it all.

Even if I managed to contain my urge to follow along it, one thing was clear. If Felwood had threatened my self-control by making me withdraw into myself to escape the horror, Stranglethorn Vale very nearly gave me the opposite problem to deal with. That being said, it was all a very positive experience as long as I kept it under control, and I quickly began to think that the rogue beside me was not the only thing I had fallen in love with since the start of my journey.

A few hours further into the jungle, our pace slowed down to a halt as we came upon the shore of an inland lake and the perfect spot to rest for the night. The flow of energy from the jungle did not stop, however, and with our walk coming to an end, the excess energy won over my discipline and I could no longer contain my desire to let it out by hopping and skipping around aimlessly while Valen set us up another campfire, watching me and smiling happily as he did.

Seeing my energetic mood, it wasn't long before he suggested that we draw blades and expend my energy on some excercise. With no objections from me, we were soon engaged in our most intense practice fight yet, with me keeping up to his speed surprisingly well, which he noted on a little while into the fight.

"Wow..." he began and paused to draw breath, "I don't remember you being this fast before."

"Maybe I'm a fast learner, too?"

"Heh, maybe. But...this feels like more than that. It's almost like some of my experience in the art has brushed off on you overnight. Much more than I could ever simply teach you in this amount of time."

There would have been a moment of silence, if not for the sound of both of us breathing heavily, which we took to think about what had just been said. Perhaps there had been repercussions from the fused metamorphosis, after all. Or perhaps it was just all the energy of the jungle making me that much more powerful. At any rate, with neither of us being sure if something was changed or not, we decided to carry on with the practice.

The duel ended in a draw due to mutual exhaustion, with both of us sitting or laying flat on the ground and panting loudly. As I lay there catching my breath, I came to think of how, surprisingly, we hadn't managed to so much as scratch each other with our weapons, despite the realistic pace of the combat.

Covered in sweat and my muscles in need of unwinding, I opted to go for a bath in the lake we had conveniently ended up next to, once I was back on my feet again.

Not too long after I had found my way into the water, I was surprised by someone splashing water onto my back, then proceeding to give me a shoulder massage.

"Thought you wouldn't mind if I joined in," Valen's voice said from behind me.

"I..." I began in a surprised and somewhat embarrased tone, but soon closed my eyes to enjoy my surprisingly pleasant situation, "...not at all."

"Hm, kinda strange when you think about it," he continued after a short pause, "that only some two days ago you'd have never said that, would you?"

"Mmmhhhm... I guess so. "

"Does it bother you?" he said after another short pause and stopped the massage as he did, "seems like a lot has happened just because of how you chose to save me from that flooding cave. Almost makes it feel wrong, somehow."

I opened my eyes and aimed them a bit downwards to see my reflection on the water, as well as another, taller figure just behind me, gently wrapping an arm around my waist.

"It... may have sped things up a bit, sharing memories and spirit like that, but the rest would've eventually happened anyway, I think. So...no, it doesn't bother me," I openly confessed what I truly thought and felt about it.

"Relieved to hear that you think that way too," he replied.

"I'm actually kind of happy that things have happened so fast. I'm worried... no... I'm afraid of what will happen when we finally find and confront the warlock," I kept thinking out loud.

"Then we'll take him down for good and..." he assured me and moved close enough to speak right into my ear, "...find a good way to enjoy our victory and freedom from the curse," he said in a low, meaningful and highly suggestive tone.

Even though he did manage to stir up that familiar warm feeling inside my chest, my mind was still on the previous subject.

"I just..." I hesitated to let out what I was going to say next, "I just wish that this would be over already. That we could walk away with what we have right now."

I immediately regretted my words as he went silent. To try and make amends, I turned around to face him and continued:

"I know it's not fair for me to think like that. You're the one with the curse that could ruin everything for you should it ever awaken again. You're the one who's not only suffered because of his actions, but have also ended up with your own hands in blood. And yet..."

Seeing that he still wasn't giving a verbal response, I kept on thinking out loud so as to not give him the wrong idea.

"...I've never lived a day like this before. I don't think I've been this happy since I achieved my first transformation. Even though the hardest is still to come, it feels like I've already won everything I could possibly want, and it makes me wonder...is it really worth it to keep going?"

A strainingly long silence followed. I fully expected him to brush me off and walk away in disappointment, as I stared at his expressionless face. I was just about to open my mouth to say I was sorry, but surprisingly enough, he beat me to it.

"...sorry," he mumbled in half-voice.

It was my turn to stand speechless and wait for his next move.

"I'm sorry I've dragged you into this," he began, in full voice this time, "I don't want to put you in harm's way, and I don't want to force you to do anything you have doubts about. It kills me to ask you to follow me through this, but...it needs to be done. I need to be sure. For you."

He raised his view and locked it into my eyes.

"You're the one who's going to suffer if the curse ever goes off again. Never mind that my hand will be involved, you're the one who stands to lose the most if the worst happens."

_Especially... if I'm not the one who ends up dead_, I continued the thought in my mind, but didn't voice it this time.

"And frankly...even if we parted ways first thing tomorrow, your departure would just give me one more reason to go and plunge all my hatred through his rotten guts."

After saying that, he pulled me into a comforting hug.

"At any rate, you've forgotten one very important thing," he continued in a low, soothing voice, "we won't have to do this alone. Not unless something happened to miss shorty and mister one-eye, which I doubt," he playfully nicknamed our still absent traveling company, causing me to chuckle against his shoulder.

Having my confidence and happy mood mostly restored with his help, I became more aware of my physical surroundings again, and with that, my heart rate spiked up, and it quickly became immensely difficult to put together a coherent thought. By the time he let me go a few seconds later, I had no intention of letting him get any further away. Not until I had...thoroughly thanked him for the relaxing massage and the soothing words.

With no confusing aftereffects of a united metamorphosis, or any other particularly unique circumstanced involved that time, what ended up happening in that lake besides the bathing and the talking was like reassurance, that no matter how quickly things seemed to have moved on, no wrong moves worth regretting had been made.


	60. Just Out of Sight

They say that one who goes to sleep feeling safe, content and well aware of where they're going, is going to sleep soundly. I'm not so sure about that.

My dream that night was a dark, empty space with a warm glow, but at the same time, it had this subtle feeling of danger, something constantly lurking somewhere just outside my vision. The only source of light, as well as the mentioned warm glow, was a dim red light in the distance. It had a slow, steady pulse to it, not like the chaotic flicker of a natural flame, but like one of those carefully designed and controlled gnomish lights back in Ironforge.

On top of that, the light seemed to draw closer to me on it's own, bringing with it the warmth, the light and a strange noise that hadn't been audible at first. It was nothing like what you would've expected to hear near what seemed like some kind of an energy source, but a noise that didn't belong at all: like a number of very heavy metal objects scraping and pounding against one another. All in all, it seemed like a sinister entity to me, something I had to avoid at all costs. All that thought lead to, however, was the realization that I was unable to move. I wasn't strapped down or imprisoned in any sense of the word, but afloat in midair, as if the whole world was filled with invisible, immaterial water without substance to paddle or propel oneself from. I hadn't noticed at first, because any sensation of falling, or being propelled upwards for that matter, were both absent.

As the red glow and it's sinister sound began to fill up more and more of my visual and auditory senses with blood-colored pulses and cacophony, quickly found that covering my ears did nothing to shut out the noise, but closing my eyes did have a very strange effect on my perception. Instead of rendering me blind, my eyelids behaved more like a veil pulled over my vision, dimming and darkening the bright red glow, and causing other objects, such as my hands, which I had raised in a desperate attempt to stop the red orb of light, to appear as black silhouettes of themselves. Contrary to all logic, closing my eyes had also muffled both the noise as well as the slowly rising panic that everything around me had fed. A tiny moment of peace amidst the nightmare, which came to an end as soon as I lowered my hands thanks to the relative safety I felt.

There was a dark shape that looked vaguely like a small person with long, pointed ears, perhaps an elven child, standing straight ahead of me, just far enough to look blurred, yet close enough to seem potentially menacing. The most frightening thing about it, however, was the fact that for some reason, it seemed oddly familiar to me, an unrecognizable abomination of someting or someone I knew. I only had a split-second to float around with the tingling feeling that I was being watched, before the next turn of events took place.

A light touch, which given the circumstances felt like a child's hand, was placed on my right shoulder, and then an ice-cold young voice whispered into my right ear:

_'What have you done?'_

I snapped my eyes open to find myself back in the real world, thankful that the only thing that had followed me out of the dreamworld was an echo of my own scream. As soon as my overloaded senses and heartbeat began to give me pause within the next few seconds, I noticed Valen's face hanging over me, a concerned look trying to escape my notice by hastily changing into a compassionate smile.

"Hey there," he said.

I mumbled something incomprehensible in response, a part of my mind still trying to sort out where I was and why. That's when the beating song of the jungle started to flow through me again, this time having the nasty side-effect of making my head pound in it's rhythm as I sat up, eager to meet the new day and leave the dream behind as soon as possible.

"You okay?" he asked when he noticed the hand I was holding my head with.

"Yeah, just a little shocked," I replied while managing to ignore the headache and stop holding my head to back up my words.

Meeting his gaze with mine provoked a question of my own:

"How was I?"

"Like you never really went to sleep after the sparring last night," he kept masking his concern behind a playful smile before turning to put away his leatherworking kit along with a few other items I couldn't quite catch sight of. "I guess you weren't kidding about the whole 'being fueled by the life around you' -thing. And that means," he looked back at me, "you really weren't playing a joke on me back on the ship to Menethil," he concluded his thought in another smile, a thoroughly genuine one this time.

Thirty seconds. It took him no more than thirty seconds to take me from the horrid nightmare into smilng and chuckling, reminding me of all the reasons why I had come this far with him, and reforging my will to keep at it. His ability to brighten me up rivaled that of The Old Druid, but then, he had practiced the act of not dwelling on bad things most of his life, or at least looking the part. Thinking of the other positives that had come with my journey, such as the friends and aquintances I'd made, reminded me of something I'd completely forgotten, making me break the adoring look I was no doubt giving Valen as I began to go through my things on the ground.

A few moments later I found what I was looking for: Morgan's locator device. It had been off since I shut it down two nights earlier.

"They must be thinking we never made it out of the caves!" I exclaimed while hurrying to find the switch on the back of the device to turn it on again.

"It's possible. And we're on the third day already, so let's hope they notice the tracker coming back on before they find some convenient early boat back to Stormwind City and set off before we get there," Valen responded with shock and surprise at least equal to mine.

"Don't you think they'd give us a bit more time, though? They came here for us, after all, didn't they?" it was my turn to try and find a silver lining in the issue, while succesfully turning on the device.

"Maybe, but there's more. Remember what the mage down in the caves told us?"

"Something about traveling all the way south to where the world ends?" I recalled while observing the light flashing slowly as a sign of long distance between us and wherever the other device was.

"To find the warlock, that's right," he finished for me. "And whether that was another trick or not, I'd hate to miss his boat again, if that's what he's up to. Even if it looks like he won't be getting sanctuary in Orgrimmar any more than Stormwind anytime soon, this chase has gone on long enough."

I closed the conversation with a silent smile of agreement, only to start another one as soon as I had gotten dressed and ready to go.

"So, how much further to Booty Bay?"

"We should be there by sundown, but I'm not sure that's soon enough," he started but quickly got an apologetic look on his face.

I understood his hurry, however, and joined the hurry with an idea.

"I can think of one way we could get there faster. Something I'd usually never do for anyone."

"Not another risky, unorthodox druid trick, I hope?"

"Only if you give me bad enough directions to get us lost. Ready?" I asked and turned my back to him.

"Ready? For what?" he still hadn't caught on to what I had in mind.

Trying my very best not to sound risque or otherwise give the wrong impression, I looked over my shoulder and gave him his answer:

"Ride me."

Either I had failed to keep my tone straight, or he was simply still surprised by the whole idea, but I had enough time to turn into a panther and circle around him, toppling him over and forcing him onto my back, before he reacted by getting a barely holding grip of me as I dashed forth on all fours.

I would've laughed out loud if I could as he struggled to hold on over the first half-mile of the ride, knowing that I was ready to slow down and catch him even if he couldn't keep a grip, something that obviously hadn't occurred to him, judging by the almost scared look on his face.

Once he had had a little time to get used to the bumpy ride and seemed comfortable enough with our general heading, I decided to let loose and ride the rhythm of the jungle, further increasing our speed and getting another amusing reaction from Valen.

That wasn't the only reason, however. As I slalomed between the tropical trees and pounced over small cracks and foliage, something ugly started to creep into my mind, a subconscious fear that I might just see a flash of the creature from my nightmare standing in the shade under the next tree, or stalking somewhere just out of visible range. Keeping up a good pace and channeling both my thoughs and my actions towards a single direction seemed like the best way to combat the feeling, since my dream had left me with the impression that my old trick of sitting tight and closing my eyes wouldn't work this time. Valen seemed to rather enjoy the speed after getting used to it, aswell.

Admittedly, it was also a bit of an interesting experiment to see what kind of a speed I could keep up and for how long, with the extra load on my back. It turned out that I could go for several hours straight without having to stop, and when I did, it wasn't because I was tired.

We were following a path that had lead us back toward the shore. Upon reaching the beach, we came across a group of people who looked like pirates to us, and considering the time and place, most likely were that too. An orc, a goblin, and three humans were grouped around a sixth person, injured and being tended to by the others, or that's what it looked and sounded like. Must've been fairly serious, as the person lying on the ground wasn't moving or speaking.

"What happened here?" Valen greeted them as we came to a halt, somewhat to my surprise.

"Blackwater business. Keep moving, elf," the only woman among the three humans replied, sounding thoroughly reluctant to engage in further conversation. It was her behaviour that also shut out my desire to reveal my true form and offer my help.

"No problem. Me and my..." Valen hesitated for a moment upon realising that I remained in my animal form, even though he had already dismounted a few moments ago, "...faithful companion were just wondering if a friend of ours came through here in the last few days. About knee-high, purple hair, lots of jewelry, kinda looks like a gnome?"

The pirate woman seemed amused enough to give us a moment after all, even though she didn't spend many words in our favor.

"Nope."

"How about a fellow dressed in black, carries a flaming sword, likes to summon demons and burn people in his spare time?"

That got the woman to actually stand up and face us.

"Burn, eh?" She dropped her hostility and glanced back at the others to make her next point obvoius, "this is probably nothing, but our mate here does look a bit like someone tried to torch him with a spell or something. He'll live, but we haven't gotten a word outta him yet, so can't tell if it was your guy or not."

"Let's hope not. He already owes me a beating to death, and I'd hate to have someone else beat me to it."

"Then you better get moving. And if you get to him first, stick him one for us, just in case."

"I'll keep that in mind," Valen concluded the exchange and moved one, making sure that I followed.

Once we had gained a safe distance and then some, I transformed back to voice some of my thoughts, only to have him do it first.

"Nice move, making them think nothing of you. I can already think of a dozen uses for something like that in my trade."

"Well...it's not like you didn't know I could do that. And I don't think I would've, if not for them telling us they didn't want our help."

"Don't worry about it. They said the guy was going to live and none of them seemed concerned enough to make it a lie."

"I guess. They seemed quite peaceful for pirates," I finally got to say what I had been thinking.

"Would you be picking a fight with a badly injured friend to protect and no clue how good your opponent is, or how many there really are?"

Once again my own stupidity silenced me for a brief moment.

"No, I guess not."

"It's a good lesson for you, actually," he said and stopped walking to really make his point.

"The first thing to do to win a fight is to make sure you pick the right one. Preferably somewhere just out of sight, before they know you're there. Add in a bit of luck, and by the time you're done, they never saw what hit them," he finished, taking a short break before starting to walk again.

"Or that's what I was taught, anyway," he added as I shifted my attention back to my legs to follow him.


	61. A Different Day

I assumed we were getting close to our next destination, since we kept going on two feet each after leaving the pirates to tend to their comrade, even though Valen had clearly enjoyed the ride earlier. Whether or not that was the case, I decided to take the opportunity to close my eyes and open my mind for a bit again. It was rather a surprise when I found that I couldn't, as Valen beat me to it by asking me to lead him for a change.

Despite the terrible odds of success, he seemed bent on getting a result. Perhaps I should've made his chances more apparent to him, I thought to myself. Or maybe he was testing to see if there were more side-effects to our...united escape from the drowned cave. And perhaps I should've asked him for more directions before allowing him silence that I dared not interrupt once it had begun, instead of simply following the footpath we were on, crossing my fingers that it would lead us to Booty Bay.

It did.

Or to be more specific, the path had converged with others and broadened into a cobblestone road through the jungle, coming to an end at a goblin-guarded gate, the steel portcullis halfway raised to clear the way into the braced natural cave beyond it, while remaining quick and easy enough to shut from hostile intruders. A wooden plaque, nailed to one of the wooden support beams of the gate structure, but not quite straight at that, spelled out 'Welcome to Booty Bay' in shoddy, bland letters that barely stood out from beneath the dirt that had settled on the worn piece of wood.

I had to wonder if the facade was meant to attract visitors in a serious way, or to deliberately undermine the place's credibility, turning away all but the most determined, or desperate. Either way, I figured I should bring Valen back from his attempt at listening, as I'd surely take a little while just to find where to go once inside. And...admittedly, I was also looking to get a firm hand to hold mine through the entrance cave, not knowing how short or long it would turn out to be.

"So, how was it?" I asked him after giving him a good shake to get his attention.

"Silent, save for our footsteps," he said wearing a somewhat disappointed face, but quickly swapped it out for a happier one. "It was still a nice moment of peace," he added.

The way he had seemed intent on turning everything for the better for me that day was the next thing I wondered as we headed inside the cave, the guards on either side happily ignoring us.

Fortunately, the discomfort of the cave turned out to be very short, and the view that opened before us on the other side was quite something to look at.

The cliff we had just emerged from formed a very large half-circle bay. The town, or more like small city from what it looked like to me, was built in three or four tiers depending on where you looked, circling the bay, the top one built partly into the cliffside and the descending ones getting smaller in radius, with the one at the very bottom being more of a docking pier for a small armada of ships. What appealed to me the most, however, was the fact that the whole place appeared to be built out of wood, making me feel almost at home. Especially as we moved on and I got to tread the planks and boards with my bare feet.

With piles of crates and other cargo spread out just about all over the place, and nearly every visible doorway built to look like a shop or some other business of profit, I quickly turned to Valen with a question.

"Where do people live around here? Seems like the whole place is dedicated to moving merchandise one way and gold in the other."

"And loot being brought in by returning pirates. You can't tell it apart from all the legit stuff, though. There's even a saying about that here in Booty Bay. 'If it's not on board, it's for sale, questions are to no avail'," he immediately proceeded to add to my summary before answering my question. "You're right about one thing, though. There's almost no one in Booty Bay who's not here to make a profit or a name for themselves off of all the traffic. Just about all the permanent residents have turned their houses into some sort of a shop with their bedroom in the back, and the sailors either get a room in one of the inns until they're off to the seas again, or they might just live on their ship even while they're here. Only some of the higher-ups or ridicculously rich can afford the luxury of a private home around here, or so they say."

Something about his explanation didn't quite fit in my mind.

"Don't the pirates ever raid this place for loot they could sell somewhere else? How does an honest merchant get by with this army of outlaws swarming around them?" I voiced some of my toughts after a little while.

"They get by, because it's not quite that simple. The pirates and sailors need people who buy their cargo and sell them supplies when they return ashore. The merchants make money off of them and hire guards to keep an eye on travelers outside the exchange. And if something like a war ever came here, all the mentioned groups would probably have enough brains to stand together to protect their little corner of the world."

He let me ponder his words for a bit before continuing. Gold was something I had never had much interest or experience in. The few times I had actually handled a piece or two, it had been but a simple exchange for something as common as food or clothes. For someone who had never worn a single piece of jewelry and found the dress Morgan had allowed me to try back at her home in Stormwind impractical at best, a whole town busy with people, revolving mostly around the trade of luxury and rare items was an exotic thing indeed. And not in all the best ways either, despite how Valen's explanation of the dynamics of the place reminded me an awful lot of how various forms of wildlife interact in nature, as he had more to say about the influence of gold.

"Don't be fooled, though. Catch too much attention of the wrong kind around here, and you might find that most of the mercenary guards are...available for a temporary change of employer."

"You mean...?"

"You'd be surprised to know just how far the power of wealth can reach sometimes."

I felt like reaching our destination somewhere across town a little quicker after hearing that.

The Salty Sailor Tavern was located in what looked like, at least from the outside, the single biggest building in Booty Bay. The tall wooden structure spanned across all of the tiers of the town, and stretched two or three floors above them towards the skies. The topmost section had a peculiar feature in it: a ship's bow sticking out of one wall, and a matching stern out the opposite side. If the point of the decoration was to make you guess whether an entire hull had been stuck right through the building, or if it was just decoration, it worked for me.

It was well past midday and we had had very little to eat, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the smell of the food was the first thing that caught my attention as we walked into the Salty Sailor. The first sound I caught was that of three people who looked like sailors, two human men and a female goblin, singing in discord while dancing on top of a table by the side wall, probably blissfuly unaware of the real reason a number of patrons were smiling at them. Besides the temporary main attraction, there were all the usual makings of a tavern: a counter occupied by the barkeep on one side and several patrons on the other, a door into a staircase that I assumed would lead to rooms-for-rent, and of course, a number of tables with all sorts of diners and drinkers enjoying themselves. Our point of interest was a small round table, thankfully situated right beside a window.

It was occupied by a familiar purple-haired gnome. Alone, to my surprise.

"Where's the big guy?" Valen immediately picked up the obvious topic as we approached and sat down.

"Nice to see you too," Morgan replied with plenty of sarcasm in her voice over the proper greeting she hadn't been given. "Mr. White went off not too long ago to see his old pirate buddies to see if they know something useful that could help us. We figured we should keep working on it when your tracking signal popped back this morning."

"Sorry about that," I hurried to apologize, though for obvious reasons I cared not to elaborate why the tracking device had been off in the first place. I was either lucky or transparent enough not to be asked about it, either.

"What's he trying to find out?" Valen picked up on Morgan's words from a different angle.

"It seems that the local pirates were seen dealing with a certain broad-shouldered fellow in black robes carrying a flaming sword. Word is they're making a trade involving magical orb, stolen from the druids of Kalimdor a good while ago, and since then it has been travelling between various thieves and pirates who don't know what to do with it except to sell it to the next fool."

"They what?!" Valen nearly fell out of his chair.

For once, I was the one with the more calm and analytical response:

"I guess that explains much of this whole trip, as well as why the mage thought we'd find his old partner around here, in the south."

"What? You ran into him?" Morgan sounded surprised, as expected.

Taking turns to speak, we gave her a short account of what had happened in the cave after we had separated, mutually agreeing to leave out the part about how we made our escape, resorting to a generalization of 'I found us a way out'. By the time we were finished, I had given her the orb we had acquired from the forsaken, and she was busy inspecting it in her tiny hands.

"You know something about magic, right?" I added a question, eager to know more about the artifacts that our enemy was after.

"Give me a few days to a week and I'll tell you what it is," she went straight to the point, having guessed what I was getting at.

"What about the warlock? Do you know where he is?" Valen cut in.

"The short answer? No," Morgan replied and put away the orb into her bag. "We heard that he was last seen leaving town onboard a pirate ship. Mr. White then told me that the pirates often like to hide and bury their rarer and harder-to-sell loot on one of the numerous uninhabited islands that dot the south sea up to seventy miles off the coast of stranglethorn."

"I've heard of that. I've also heard that most of the closer ones aren't used because it would be too easy to find something on them. Even the farther ones tend to be quite the secrets, which is why Mr. Ex-pirate wanted to have a word with them in private and left you here. Am I right?" Valen continued smoothly off of where the gnome had gotten.

"True enough. So it'll take the warlock at least another day or two to get back from the trip," Morgan added.

"Why does that matter?" I wanted to know, having gotten the feeling that they both shared some idea I hadn't caught on yet.

"You told me that there were most likely four of these orbs in total, and that the warlock had three, including the one he claimed in Felwood, correct?" the gnome answered me with a question.

"Yes...so?"

Valen sat back on his chair and put on what could only be described as a victorious smile, before explaining.

"It means that if he's still hell bent on collecting them all, we can set a trap for him when he comes back, whether or not he knows that we have the last orb, because the ship almost certainly comes back to Booty Bay anyway."

I sat still in silent awe for a second. The idea of actually getting the upper hand on my lifelong nemesis and haunter just like that seemed completely absurd at first, slowly shifting towards the realms of unlikely and remotely possible as it sunk in and the conversation carried on. Another entry to add to the list of things that had gone differently that day.

"Quite so," Morgan agreed, "and even though we can plan for that regardless of what Mr. White turns up with, it'd be a good idea to hear what he has to tell when he returns, before we sharpen our blades."

"Any idea how long that will take?" I had began to feel some excitement as well.

"He told me he'd be back sometime tomorrow. Makes sense, considering a few drinks is a good way to get info out of your average pirate."

The three of us then sat there, unable to come up with much else to say, as we all wanted to refrain from speaking of what seemed like a likely victory before the deed was actually done.

One of the three drunken singers across the room came crashing off the table mid-dance, reminding me of the time and place I was in, and with that, gave me something else to say.

"Anyone else hungry?"

Morgan nodded.

"I'll get us something," Valen volunteered and headed for the counter.

He returned with only two meals in his hands, neither of which he claimed for himself.

"I'll go take care of some business in town. Be back in a little," he said without even bothering to sit down again, then proceeded out through the door.

"You look surprised," Morgan broke my slight shock of...well...surprise.

I turned to look at her and couldn't help but chuckle.

"Well, it's been a bit of a different day anyway," I replied shortly, hoping not to give her the wrong idea.


	62. Until the World's End

The mutual silence between me and Morgan continued as we dug into our meals. Plenty had changed and plenty had happened over the past few days when we hadn't been travelling together, but just about none of those events were things I wanted to share with anyone.

Far more unusual than my silence was the fact that Morgan didn't seem to have anything to say, either. At first, I chalked it up to the fact that she had food in her mouth every other moment, but when she kept it up a good ten minutes past when we had finished eating, I began to wonder whether she was that busy formulating a plan in her mind for the trap we had decided on, or simply nervous about the general fact that the mission she had joined us on was nearing it's end. Or perhaps it had something to do with whatever Valen had hurried off to do. I had barely gotten past that thought when said elf made his return. Even though he sat down this time, he had the look and act of someone who hadn't come to stay for long. That assessment turned out to be correct as soon has he had taken a moment to notice that we had finished eating.

"So, feeling up for a little hike?" he asked me.

"Huh? Where?"

He lowered his voice a little and leaned a bit closer.

"I want to show you something, since there's still a little time," he replied, seeming uncharacteristically careful in his choice of words.

"Alright," I agreed with growing curiosity and began to stand up along with him. Morgan interrupted us in the middle of doing so.

"You're not going far, are you?"

Instead of coming up with some witty way to avoid actually answering the question, Valen seemed oddly reluctant to say anything at all.

"I mean, it's none of my business of course," the gnome added in a very different tone that made it sound like she was going to apologize for something.

"You said Mr. White was supposed to be back sometime tomorrow? We'll beat him here," Valen took the opporutunity to give her a vague assurance of being on schedule.

To back up his words, he dug his pocket for a silver coin and slammed it on the table, right in front of Morgan, then pointed his finger at her.

"Ten to one we will," he challenged her.

"Your loss, Moonscar. You know I don't play fair," the gnome grinned, making the exchange look to me like some inside joke between friends.

I was still trying to figure out the dialog between them when I heard Valen calling for me from near the door.

"You coming, kitten?"

As I followed him out, I noticed he was carrying one extra bag he hadn't had before going out to his mystery business. At first I thought of asking him what was in it, but from the loose way the sack was put together, I guessed I was going to find out soon, anyway.

Without saying another word, he lead me out of the town, back through the cave-gate we'd come from. Once out in the jungle, he made a quick left off the main path back north. A few minutes later, we were walking along a quiet, sandy beach, watching the crimson sun's last rays disappearing behind the great sea to the west.

When our path veered back off the beach again and turned into a steep uphill made of jungle foliage and rocky ledges, Valen finally did what I had dared not, and broke the silence.

"Been quite an adventure, eh?"

"This walk here, or the whole journey from Moonglade?" I tried to dig out his usual playfulness.

"The journey," he replied, followed by a grunt as he climbed up a slightly higher ledge, then continued while offering me a helping hand to get up, "so much has happened, it's hard to believe that it's probably over soon."

"You're telling me," I agreed while trying to work out what he was getting at.

He went silent for a bit again, giving me opporotunity to observe how high off the beach we were. A minute later, the climb finally turned to flat area, an overgrown path between large rocks that blocked vision on both sides and past the next curve.

"Any idea what you're going to do when it's over?" he surprised me to a halt.

"I...don't know," I admitted, thought for a moment, then started walking again as words came to me. "I'll have to go back to see my mentor eventually, but from the way he encouraged me to adventure and see the world, I don't think he's holding his breath for my return for a while," I laid out my honest thoughts for him.

Valen replied with more silence, then spoke again after a moment:

"I've been thinking..." he began and took another pause, "...the reason I took upon this path of spying from the shadows was because I wanted to hide from my past...while tracking it down. I'm thinking this'll be my last job."

"You don't like it anymore?" I asked, even though I wasn't that surprised to hear him say that.

"Back in Stormwind, when I went to deliver my report SI:7, I thought about leaving my resignation along with it. But I wasn't sure then, so I didn't. After everything that's happened since then, though, I've learned and come to realize that there are better things in the world. Things that are more important to me."

Just as it had began to sound like he was finally getting to the point, some big reveal he'd been holding inside the whole day, the path came to an end at a large ledge. A natural spring made a wonderful, small but calm sound of flowing water by the rocks to the left, the water being collected into a rocky pool before overflowing and turning into numerous tiny streams that ran back down the hill we had climbed. The thing that truly caught my attention, however, was a cliff ledge to the front and right. Not the lethally high straight drop back into the shadows of the nightly jungle, but the wondrous, giant, crescent-shaped collection of yellow lights, their glow reflected and amplified by the water they surrounded, the image completed by the moon, which was seen in it's full glory that night, shining in the sky above.

Booty Bay, as seen from two or three hundred meters above it. That moment I learned that even a man-made settlement, founded and largely inhabited by thieves, pirates and other criminals, could look as beautiful as any of nature's own wonders. All it took was a new angle to see it from.

I managed to break out of my mesmerized stare some ten silent seconds later.

"It's a beautiful view. Thank you," I told him and sat down, carefully hanging my legs over the edge to show him that I was feeling safe, relaxed, and was truly enjoying myself.

He sat down beside me in a similar fashion, took my hand to hold in his, and gave me a smile, before we both turned to get another glimpse of the view. That glimpse lasted for a good few minutes before he spoke again.

"Tell me," he began and held my hand a little tighter, as if to ensure I wouldn't fall off the cliff when I'd hear what he was going to say, "if the unlikely happens and things go wrong with the plan, would you regret anything you have or haven't done?" he asked and loosened his grip a bit after delivering the question.

"I..."

Of course the possibility had occurred to me. It was the answer to his question that had me at a loss of words. I knew it was there, in the back of my head, but it kept eluding me. I almost caught hold of it a few times, but whenever that happened, I hesitated, unsure if I really wanted to let it out and dress it in words just yet.

Valen must have seen the conflict on my face, as he proceeded to stand up and gently pull me up with him by the hand he was holding, giving me pause from the mental struggle. Then he made a request that seemed very odd considering the circumstances.

"Close your eyes."

"What?" I instinctively asked and glanced at the view of Booty Bay once more before aiming my eyes back at his.

"I'm not going to push you off the edge or anything," he finally put on that familiar cunning smile of his.

I laughed out loud as I obeyed his request.

I heard something rustling for a bit. Then his footsteps walked around behind me. The next sensation felt like his arms reached over my shoulders, his hands converging and doing something on my front, just below my neck. A few seconds passed and then I felt the weight of my cloak being lifted off my shoulders as he moved back out of reach, probably holding the cloth in his hands.

A few moments later, something touched my back, put a very small weight on my right shoulder, after which I could feel the motion of his hands again, doing something against the middle of my chest.

"What are you doing?" I asked and let out a small laugh, both to show that the question was mere curiosity, as well as because whatever he was doing tickled me.

"Just a second", I heard his voice circling around to my front along with more footsteps.

There was an odd sound, like cloth sliding between more sheets of cloth, and I felt something gently squeeze in on my torso, diagonally across my chest and my back.

"There. I didn't pull it too tight, did I?" Valen finally gave me permission to look.

There was nothing different about him as he stood there in front of me. As soon as I aimed my eyes at myself, however, there was something to see.

There was a three inch wide leather strap fastened diagonally across my chest, the buckle resting in the middle where he had been working on it. The top half of the metal buckle had been decoratively crafted to look like a silver-colored crescent moon. The strap itself was made of a fairly dark brown leather. Gold-colored embroidery in the shape of tiny vines and leaves ran along the edges.

My mouth open from surprise and excitement, I followed the decorative pattern with my fingertips, upwards past my collarbone and over my shoulder, until I hit something that blocked the way. A few touches later I realized I was carrying a sheathed sword of some description on my back, it's handle sticking out, inviting my hand to grab it. I followed along and drew the weapon.

The sword was a bit shorter than your average longsword, but a little too long to be called a short sword, either. It's single-edged blade was attached to the hilt in a forward angle, curving backwards toward the tip, even a bit further than the handle. Measuring the weapon to be fairly light in weight, I came to the conclusion that it could only be described as a one-handed saber.

"I'm no blacksmith, but I knew they make some pretty unique and high-quality weapons in Booty Bay. And you almost caught me working on the sheath when you woke up this morning, if you recall," Valen explained as I admired the weapon.

The knob of the sword was an empty ring that looked like something was missing, and Valen hurried to fill me in about it:

"The blade is truesilver to give it the right bit of flexibility and the sharp edge has some thorium in it for extra cutting power and durability. And here's the real catch: the weapon is enchanted to draw all sorts of magical effects and energies from whatever is socketed into the knob."

I heard what he said, but I wasn't truly paying attention from my excitement. It was only after several practice swings through the air that my mind finally caught up with my emotions and put me firmly back on the cliff we were standing on. It was then I finally put the weapon back in it's sheath and realized I should thank him. After a few failed attempts to open my mouth and get a word out, I resorted to walking up and kissing him. Several seconds later we broke apart and I added:

"I don't know what to say."

"Oh? I thought you just did."

I smiled and stood there with my arms still around him, ready and willing for whatever would happen next. To my surprise, Valen merely paused for a bit, then spoke again, his smile fading a bit as he did, telling me he wanted to get a bit more serious about what he was saying.

"Happy to see you like it. And the view up here is nice, too," he summarized the evening so far and glanced at said view, then back at me, "but the reason I brought you here is because I have a question," he started a took a second to ponder his next words, "that metamorphosis trick you used to save my life...it's only been a bit over two weeks since we joined paths in back in Moonglade, but ever since you saved us with the transformation, it feels like it's been a lot longer. It was like a sudden realization that something, some part of you was present all along, ever since I helped you onto that boat in Auberdine."

"It...does. It does," I hesitated in my words. He had successfully voiced a feeling that I shared, but hadn't quite gotten into grips with yet. Not fully.

He gave me a relieved smile before continuing.

"I've been thinking of what happens when all this is over. I come up with all sorts of ideas I used to dream about doing if it weren't for this endless hiding and hunting. And yet, they all seem pointless, like there's more important things to commit to," his eyes rose up as he followed the flow of his thoughts, then snapped back to look into mine, "things like you."

Even though his words warmed up my cheeks, there was no sensation of being surprised by them. It was like he was voicing a subconscious, mutual agreement we had already reached a while ago.

"Now that you mention it...I don't think I ever really thought of it any other way, either. Travelling with you for a hundred or a thousand years sounds like a distant near-impossibility, but...I'd like to try it anyway," the discussion had helped me form my deeper thoughts into words, just as he had done.

That's when I found out what everything had been about. Valen aimed his eyes to the moon again, took a good few seconds' pause, then looked back at me.

"I can think of one thing I'd regret not having done if we all end up dead by this time next week. Asking you if you would swear that to Elune and the full moon up there."

I had once asked the old druid how come I didn't have any of those symbols and markings that I'd seen other women and some girls bearing on their skin. It was one of the only times he had answered my question by handing me a book instead of telling the story himself.

Since times ancient, the women of our people have always been the majority of our warriors and leaders. Thus it has been their honor and tradition to bear to battle the symbols that many of our enemies, and lately allies as well, often mistake for simple warpaint to intimidate the foe.

A few of them are just that, but the majority have a more profound meaning.

Some of the most common ones are symbols representing the warrior's home, family, or perhaps their bloodline. Symbols of their origin, the things they're fighting for, the message in clear view for friends and foes to see, one that even fallen warriors continue to display as long as their bodies are intact. And should the warrior fall into despair and doubt from a long, harsh war, they need only to glance at their own reflection to be reminded of the things they fight to protect.

My family never saw me grow old enough to be given any of these symbols, and the old druid presumably never felt justified to do so, nor did I ask him to, even after I learned of this.

Just about as common a sight are night elf women adorned with symbols representing the one they've chosen to spend their life with, their companion, the one they share their bed with, or whatever word or expression one wishes to use. For obvious reasons, being granted these symbols has little to do with age, unlike the other ones.

Traditionally, there is a small ritual ceremony involved when a warrior wishes to bear the symbols of her mate. And due to the permanent nature of these markings, most people of other races, especially our light-worshipping allies, very often consider this our equivalent to their engagement or marriage, as we do not separate the two, and they will often call it just that, too. Even if the ritual involved has pretty much no resemblance to the humans' grand and elaborate celebrations, the significance of the act, the pact of lifetime commitment and loyalty, is largely the same, making the comparison reasonably accurate.

This is what Valen was asking of me. A proposal, as the natives of the city he had grown up in would call it.

Of course anyone would say that such an act at a mere age of twenty and then some, between two people expecting to live several thousand years, is an extremely rushed and inconsiderate one. Of course it wasn't anywhere near the average age to do so among our people. But then, between the two of us there weren't that many traditions or old rules being respected to begin with. A female druid who only knew her home woods by hand, and the rest of the world through books and wild stories, and a rogue raised mostly by humans, who had barely spoken to one of his own kind since the age of six and a half.

And as our shared thoughts that evening had shown, the short time we had spent together was a flaw already corrected by fate's strange devices.

Finally, if there was anything that the journey had taught me time and time again, it was that the heart does not follow logic, it does not obey the mind but will happily conflict with it, and all you can do about it is to either heed it or ignore it, but regardless of what you choose, the heart will keep reminding you of what it thinks right, one way or another, until the world's end.

"Yes," I started in a small voice, then raised it to make my will clear, "yes I would. May the goddess know that I love you, Valenor Moonscar."

While the history and general significance of a warrior's markings were nothing out of the ordinary cultural lesson with the old druid, I would hazard a guess that the description of the ceremony between a warrior and her chosen companion was something he had wanted me to discover on my own.

Besides the few different phrases used to ask and accept, there are no words, songs, music, or just about any deliberate sounds involved. Despite what one might think, a priestess or preacher of any description is not normally present, either. It is a private ritual only for the two people involved, and with good reason. A common but not omnipresent custom was that the warrior was gifted a new weapon with which to honour the symbols she was about to receive. One thing that was virtually always true, however, was that the ritual takes place only on a night with a full moon out, as it is said to then be under the goddess' protective gaze and acceptance. It is also one of the few things that our moonwells are actually used for, even if outsiders often doubt the existence of such events altogether.

Of course, there was no moonwell in Stranglethorn Vale, so we had to make do with the pool of water under the spring, and my healing. Another little tradition partially broken, making it rather fitting for us, I thought.

The warrior would stand before her chosen mate in the middle of the moonwell, wearing her pride and the full moon's light, with her eyes closed. This had a threefold purpose. Firstly, it would allow for truly free adorning of her body and face, including the top eyelids that would otherwise be unreachable. Secondly, closing one's eyes and not being allowed to open them until afterwards would prevent the jugdging of an incomplete work and stop vanity from playing a part in the ritual. Thirdly and most importantly, it was the ultimate show of the warrior's trust in her companion to voluntarily put herself in such a position, as well as, understandably, a test of said companion's willpower and commitment to the promise and not their instinct. A nearly foolproof way for both of them to know that they were ready for it if all went as intended.

The markings are made with special dyes mixed from various rare ingredients I don't know much about, and a unique, sharp-pointed tool that's exact function I cannot fully understand, let alone explain.

As it turned out, the stories of virtually anything being for sale for the right price in Booty Bay were no myth.

When the symbols are complete, the mystical, restorative and empowering waters of the moonwell would be used to wash them, purifying them and curing the skin, effectively making the colours as much a part of it as a scar or a birthmark.

The final part of the ritual is the one with the most similarities between our customs and those of our allied races. Leaving the moonwell, the warrior would get carried on the arms of her companion into her home, or into her new home, as was often the case.

Even though Kalimdor was far, far away from us, there was a place nearby that felt very much like home for the both of us.

Never before in my life had I been carried into the waves of the great sea, or any other significant body of water.

As for the rest of the night...let's just say that our allies' culture agrees with ours on what to do with the remaining waking hours of the day of the ceremony.

You'd think anyone would sleep like a well-fed baby after something like that. I did not. I woke up on the sandy beach maybe three or four hours after I had fallen asleep, the full moon still nearly as high and bright as it had been, with maybe a hint of dawn's glow from beyond the horizon reflected on it.

Perhaps I simply had too much on my mind, like the general nervousness over the plan that had been made against our enemy, or how the old druid would receive me with my new...I didn't even know what I looked like after the ceremony!

Curious to know, I carefully left Valen continuing his sleep while I made my way to the waterline a few meters away to observe my reflection on the slightly rippling water.

There were two deep-blue shapes, like giant raindrops, slightly twisted and flipped upside down, making them look more like claws or fangs, the highest points just below my brows, curving around the outside corners of my eyes, reaching down just a bit further than my nose, the sharp tips pointed a tad wider apart than the corners of my mouth, the inner curves going back up across the cheekbones, crossing each eye through the horizontal middle, leaving the inner halves of both eye sockets outside the colour. There was a similar pair of symbols curving downward off of my collarbones, the tips pointed slightly outward rather than inward at the scar in the middle of my chest, and a third pair on my waist, shaped similarly to the ones on my face, but larger in size.

I remained there for a little while, getting used to my new look, admittedly admiring it rather than just neutrally looking. Relaxing myself, I instinctively began to hear the song of the sea, as well as the rhythm of the jungle somewhere in the darkness behind me. And then I heard something else. Something that didn't belong. Moving, coming towards us. I focused on it, tried to understand what it was.

My eyes widened out of shock and surprise as I realized what it was. Rushing back over to Valen, thinking that there wasn't going to be time to dress for decency. Barely enough time to pick up a weapon and proceed to shake him awake, hissing under my breath:

"Wake up, we're being ambushed!"

There were three, maybe four of them. I could tell from their motion and the manoeuvre to approach us from all sides that they both knew we were there, and that they definitely weren't coming just to say hello.

Valen was still trying to clear his sleepy head when the first glitter of their weapons began to show in the moonlight. I thought I had been very lucky to have my senses attuned at just the right time for a little advance warning, up until I saw something more. Some distance behind the mystery assailants, barely within visible range, slowly approaching as well.

_'No... it can't be!'_ I thought.

Even before the creeping aura of terror was within effective range, I knew all two well the owner of the crystal-tipped staff which that red glow was coming from.


	63. Circle of Fire

The first blow was struck with a cutlass, by a man leaping from the shadows, dressed like a pirate as far as I could tell. Still fighting back the shock and disbelief, I managed to make that blow the first one I ever parried with my sword. Ill-prepared in my mind, I had to fall back for another two attacks, the latter of which I managed to dodge with enough momentum gained to counter with a swift kick to the abdomen, causing the man to hunch over, at least for a moment.

The temporary success of getting a good blow on a real enemy, using the skills Valen had taught me rather than my druidic abilities was a small boost of morale, desperately needed too, as more of the assailants began to come into striking distance and the warlock's aura began to set in, telling me he was closing in.

Valen had woken up and realized what was going on, but was picking up his weapons a little too late for the female pirate who had stepped in from the shadows and was about to make a strike at him.

Instantly blinded to things other than ensuring he wouldn't receive that blow, I leapt in to block it. Though successful in stopping the attack, I had put myself in a bad and vulnerable position by stretching my reach in such a motion, and my punishment for having done so was instantaneous. A third attacker had reached us and successfully cut a sizable wound on the outside of my upper arm. The bearded, shirtless man was rewarded with a yelp of pain that escaped my lips and a sprinkle of my blood on his short sword. Even if my usual leather armour wasn't particularly protective, the hit I had taken demonstrated that fighting while not wearing it was still far more painful. It was my luck that my left arm had taken the hit instead of my right, as that would've probably disarmed me on the spot.

Almost immediately after the half-second it took me to regain focus after first hit, the first attacker whom I had stunned had made his comeback. After barely dodging the lunge he made at my torso, his other hand, clenched into a fist took me by surprise and smashed into my jaw from the left. The impact to my head was far more disorientating than the slash at my arm, causing all sound to turn into high-pitched ringing and making my balance waver. In my stunned state everything appeared to have slowed down into a crawl. Valen had managed to kill the female attacker whose blow I had blocked for him, but was busy contending with another two. He had a nasty-looking wound on his side and several bruises on his chest, but at least he was holding one weapon for each of his opponents.

The warlock had come into clear view, not far at all, but still unreachable past the other enemies on the scene. Instead of preparing a fireball to throw or charging in, he was dragging his flaming longsword along the ground, it's tip digging into the sand, leaving behind a trail of fire that was clearly magical, as he was able to draw it even on the shallow water as he slowly walked around the battle. There was one other thing about him that went much further in helping his aura of dread to get to me.

One. Two. Three. Four. There were four orbs floating in a circle around the crystal of his staff.

Not two, like he had had before taking the one in Felwood.

Not three, like he should've had in case he had somehow already returned from the treasure hunt he was supposed to have been on.

He had all four, meaning that the small object with a rapidly flashing light on it, tucked under his belt must've been...

My hearing must've began to return, as I heard a scream that averted my gaze back to Valen. My heart sunk when I saw that one of the enemies he'd been contending with had managed to relieve him of one of his weapons, a curved blade stuck all the way through his left arm, the blood-coated tip peeking out the other side.

That snapped me back into focus. I flew into a rage over the sight, transforming into a panther as I charged them, still using that same momentum as I pounced the one who had hurt him so badly, my jaws crunching into his neck by the time I had grounded him on his back.

The next thing I knew, there was a blunt impact to my side, powerful enough to fling me off of my victim. Even if the attacker quickly found that I had ripped apart his friend's jugular, putting them beyond any medical help as they bled out, the pain that flared up from my side was the worst one yet. Transforming back into an elf to better regain focus and make a quick assessment of my latest injury as I lay on the ground, my best guess was that the hit had broken two or three of my ribs. Then a flash of sharp steel in the corner of my eye told me it was time to move. I moved too slowly.

Rolling to the side, I was only a little shy of making it out of the descending hostile blade's way. Screaming loudly out of pain as it sliced into my right calf, I ended up rolling a bit further than I had first intended, in a somewhat desperate move to get out of harm's way at least a moment longer, leaving behind a trail of purple blood where my leg had moved, which in turn told me that the bleeding was fairly serious.

On top of that, my escape manoeuvre proved far less effective than I'd hoped. The bearded pirate showed up as I still laid on my back after the roll, unable to properly concentrate just yet after having received the bleeding wound on my leg. He sat down on top of my torso without a worry about breaking something in the process. I was forced to yell in pain again, from the sudden application of pressure on my ribs. It also caused me to lose grip of my weapon

The next thing I knew, the man reached out and something thin, sharp and cold was placed sideways across my throat.

The realization that I was about to get my throat slit open caused my mind to panic. As if moving on it's own, my entire body struggled against the hold, but the strength accomplish something of the like had already escaped from me.

My mind was already visualazing the first few images of me helplessly bleeding out, when the man holding me down suddenly jerked in place, his eyes wide open. He remained frozen like that for a second, then tumbled off to the side like a lifeless ragdoll, a dagger sticking out of his back. As his frame slid out of sight, Valen was revealed behind him, standing some three meters away, his remaining good arm still outstreched from the throw he'd narrowly saved me with.

Realizing that his team, save for the warlock who had accompanied them, was wiped out, the final pirate standing off to the side made a run for it, leaping over the magical flames the warlock had drawn on the ground like a scared animal being chased by a greater beast.

Just then, Valen's stature slumped down, revealing just how hurt he was too. Trying hard to stop the generous bleeding from his impaled left arm using his other hand, he had several smaller, yet noticably painful-looking wounds all around his torso and a couple of cuts on his face. The amount of time it was taking him to move over to me told it's own tale about his condition, probably as bad as mine as I wrenched myself up onto one knee.

That's when the warlock came back into my view. He had finished drawing a full circle of magical flames and stood right inside of it, like a combatant standing ready on his side of the round arena.

There he was, at long last, within our reach. Even if the assassins he had brought had failed to outright murder us in our sleep, the ambush had still taken a fatal toll. With both of us suffering from a number of proportionally smaller injuries, Valen having one of his arms useless, and me unable to stand on both legs or breathe too deeply without experiencing significant pain, my mind had decided that we didn't stand a chance, even if my heart refused to admit it just yet.

"Coward!" Valen coughed out his frustration at our hooded adversary, apparently feeling much the same way as I did about the situation.

"Interesting words from someone of your background. I hadn't realized I wasn't allowed to play your game against you," the warlock taunted him right back.

Hissing from between his teeth, then roaring out of anger, Valen gave up holding his injured arm with the other, instead using the still good one to draw his sword and charged.

The warlock calmly raised his skeletal hand to have the palm point at Valen, then conjured up a small, immobile green glow around it. At just about the same instant, a larger, glowing sphere of the same colour flashed in and out of existence around Valen's upper body, stopping his approach and dropping him to his knees.

I wanted to leap in to help, but then a feeling like a searing-hot mass struck me from the inside, rapidly expanding and forcing it's way out of my body like superheated gas, burning my insides along the way, until it finally found it's way outside my body, forming a green glow around me for a moment. The same spell had struck me, causing me to drop down to all fours out of sheer pain.

Then I saw something unexpected from the corner of my eye. The warlock stood still for several seconds, his hand still pointed at us, as if he had just witnessed something surprising.

"Now this is interesting," his words seemed to confirm my assessment. "Most interesting. Tell me," he continued and lowered his hand, "how did a druid and a rogue end up soul-linked?"

I raised my face to look at his and forced a smile on my lips.

"You wouldn't know a thing about it, would you? After all, you'd first need to have a heart to understand," I let loose with my words, seeing no other way to keep fighting, but refusing to give up either, for Valen's sake.

The warlocked laughed like he'd been told a good joke.

"Even you're not that much of a naive fool, are you? We're not in some fairytale where sleeping together and calling each other something soft grants you magical protection," he mocked me back and raised his hand again, this time aiming at me.

The result was similar, though I obviously got struck first this time, my eyes starting to get wet with tears of pain, despair and frustration. How? How had it come to this? He had taken us by surprise because of Morgan's locator and the fourth orb he possessed confirmed that he had gotten to the gnome, somehow.

His hirelings were pirates...and so was Mr. White. Or had been. I don't know. Had Valen been right again? Had the blind priest betrayed us all by giving false information for Morgan to relay to us, then somehow set up the gnome to be slain for the means to track us down and reward the warlock with one of the orbs he was after?

"On the contrary, your secret little trick, however you did it, is going to make this easier for me," the warlock came to a conclusion, then took a two-handed grip from his sword.

I stared in horror as I realized what he was about to do. A slash of the flaming blade, aimed at Valen, created a small fireburst of some sort as it connected, flinging my companion backwards all the way to me, near the center of the circle of fire. I was almost relieved to hear Valen grunt out of pain when he landed next to me, as it meant the slash had not been lethal.

The warlock then put away his sword and held out his empty hand instead, as if offering us an invisible object.

"I've wasted enough time cleaning up a mess I didn't make. It's about time I went to receive my reward. Farewell, little druid."

Then he clenched the open hand into a fist with a motion that spoke of finality as much as his words did. What happened next, I could only observe in terror.

With that, the circle of fire split into several sections that, conveniently missing the spot where the warlock stood, spiralled towards the center, like fuses burning along the ground, until the flames would reach the charge in the middle.

I saw a brief flash of something that looked like a giant pillar of fire, at least ten meters tall, rapidly expanding from the spot that had been the circle's center.

Then it hit me. Blinded, deafened, and feeling like I was on fire from the inside as well as outside, I lost all perception except that of excruciating pain in the form of burning. Seconds stretched into minutes, even hours, as one side of my mind was begging for the other to fall unconscious just to stop the agony. Which happened eventually.

There was water, splashing against my face in stable intervals. I was laying at the tideline, the waves splashing ashore submerging me for a moment, one at a time. The feeling reminded me of the first night I had shared with Valen, right after the special metamorphosis, laying at the tideline...

_Valen,_ my mind repeated as if to warn or remind me of something. That's when the pain returned. Though the feeling of outright being on fire had largely faded, I was still gravely injured, in more places than before.

Next to return was my sense of smell. I almost wish it hadn't. I smelled burnt flesh and blood, along with a bit of smoke, and the scent of the seawater buried beneath it all.

Then came vision and hearing. There was still fire crackling somewhere nearby, but I could only see the water that the explosion must've thrown me into. That is, until I turned my head to the direction where the land was.

The view that opened before me was one I will never forget. And believe me, I try to.

There were small fires, remains of the massive spell, scattered all over the sandy beach. The fact that they were still there, as well as the fact that the sky looked the same as before told me that I had been out for just a few minutes at the most. One of the flames was slowly dying out on top of a pile of equipment belonging to two elves who had had a rude awakening from their sleep. The warlock was nowhere to be seen. There were a couple of dead humans as well, the ones we had fought, and one other object. Something blue, covered in parts by ash and something purple.

My breathing halted involuntarily for a moment when I came to full realization of what I was looking at.

_'No!'_

He wasn't moving. Or maybe I just couldn't see it from afar.

_'Please, no!'_

That's right. I just had to get close enough, quick enough, and he would greet me with that cunning smile of his.

_'Don't let it be so!'_

All my own pains seemed to disappear, fade into the background as I hurried over to him. Of course I tried standing up first, only to remember I couldn't. I had to drag myself forward along the sand with my arms, except that my left arm was not only wounded, it had large burns on it, which had barely stopped smoking. It didn't matter.

My body was screaming every time I pulled myself forward, but none of that mattered. I had to keep spitting out both sand and tears that were trying to get into my mouth all the time, but I wouldn't stop for that.

It felt like hours had passed when I finally got close enough to touch him, and then on the next and final pull, close enough to take a look as I hoisted myself up to a seated position beside him.

He...

He had so much ash and sand and blood on and around him I didn't know where to start.

Perhaps it just looked bad. Perhaps the injuries under all the dirt and blood weren't really that bad. His torso was in one piece and his chest moved to show breathing. His legs looked normal, and his arms...his arms...

His right arm was fine, but the left...it was...it...

It wasn't there.

Instant shock and panic. I didn't care about the details. I didn't care about myself. I had to make something happen. Now.

I laid both of my hands on his chest and began to channel all the healing energy I could muster. As I did so, Valen took a deep, gurgling breath, like he had come back to his senses.

Then his right eye opened and looked at me, the other apparently too damaged to open.

"Kitten..." he said and managed to touch me with his right hand, encouraging me to try even harder.

The look on his face was surreal. It was as if he was completely unaware of his own state. It was comforting at first, to see that he didn't seem to be in pain, but extremely disheartening as well, as it could've meant he was already passing beyond.

"Don't speak. I'll fix this in a moment," I outright lied to him in a broken, teary voice, as my tears kept flowing.

Either he didn't hear me at all, or he saw right through what I had said, but he didn't show any sign of having received the message.

No, it wasn't a lie. I had already decided to succeed, even if I had to empty out every last drop of life I had in me and give it to him, even if I didn't have much left to start with after the disastrous explosion. As I focused on doing just that, my breathing started to become difficult, as I had to gasp for air every other second, and I felt my heartbeat going irregular, skipping beats there, taking a sprint here, only a matter of time till it wouldn't hold up anymore.

Then, all of a sudden, Valen's mouth widened into a happy smile, and his one open eye watered up.

"I can hear it..."

"Huh?"

The tear that had come to his eye escaped it and streamed down his cheeck, clearing a path through the black ash it was covered in.

"The sea. I can hear it, just like you said. It's..."

He turned his head toward me, aiming his eye into mine while raising his hand to gently touch my cheek.

"...almost as beautiful..."

I sat absolutely still as the hand touching my cheek fell off.

I was sure I was hallucinating when the silver glow of his eye faded, turned into a glass orb staring mutely at the sky.

The last few embers around us became silent as the green glow of my healing touch flickered and faded, disconnecting from what had gone beyond it's reach.

And then the sea stood still for me.

_Here's how the story goes._

With me no longer focusing on something of greater importance or making any effort to resist it, all the pain came back in a rush. It wasn't just all that I'd felt before, either. There was a cold spot on my chest, the shape of my scar.

_There lived an elven druid who developed into a master of the shapeshifting arts._

The cold spot expanded. An icy spike being thrust into me.

_He used his powers to try and infuse his wife with one of the animals within him._

A freezing shard plunging through the old wound, but this one hit the heart.

_The wife had fallen in battle, stabbed through the heart at some nightly ambush._

With my heart turned into a ball of ice, the freezing began to spread whereever my blood flowed, freezing it's flow as well.

_He suddenly collapsed in the middle of everyone._

I thought the warlock's spell had been the most painful thing imaginable. What I felt when collapsed backwards onto the sand was even worse.

_No wounds, no sound, no toxins, no seizure of any kind._

Helplessly lying on my back in agony, I stared at the full moon, praying to Elune for a quicker end.

_It was as if his heart had simply stopped._

Though everything faded into darkness quickly, my wish was not granted in full.

This is the fire that haunts my dreams, the one that made me into what I am. But it wasn't the end, it was just the point that connects it all.

If you're still reading this, hear the darkest part of my tale.


	64. Soul-Shaped Shadow

Auberdine, as it was fifteen years ago, immediately after the attack.

And yet, it wasn't.

The buildings were aflame, the belltower crumbled into the sea, and yet, something wasn't as it should've been.

There were no people. No demons. No bodies and no screams. Everything felt neutral, emotionless.

I stood in the middle, as a lone, black panther.

"Don't be afraid," a strangely familiar little girl's voice echoed from somewhere.

I wanted to look around to see where it came from, but an invisible force had bound me in place, preventing shapeshifting as well.

"Leave my daughter alone!" my mother's voice screamed from a distinguishably different, yet unspecific direction.

A little, green haired elven girl in a tattered dress walked around the corner of a building, into my sight. Her eyes were aimed at some invisible point of interest off to the side, somewhere above the next building.

"Your daughter?" she asked the invisible entity, sounding offended, then chuckled cynically. Too much so for just a child.

Then she turned to look at me. Her face, voice and body were mine, as a three- or four-year-old.

"Well? Don't just stand there. Say something," she addressed me.

"M-mother?" I found myself able to speak despite my animal form, though I was extremely confused at the scene playing out before me.

"No, silly," the child scolded me in a voice that suggested I was supposed to have known something already. "She's dead, remember?" she added and started walking towards me.

"So is mine. They're all dead, even me," she explained, making even less sense as far as I was concerned.

"Yours? But she is..."

"Shhh!" she shushed me with a finger at her lips, then hunched down a little, as if to get ready for some mystery enemy she had heard.

"Do you hear that? That's the sound of you dying, too," she said, looking excited, like a child who'd been given a new toy.

I heard nothing besides the crackling flames around us.

"Who are you?" I decided to play along by ignoring all my first impressions of the situation.

The child straightened up and smiled.

"You know me. You need me. Always did."

"I...need you?"

"Good!" the child seemed to be congratulating me.

Then she made it all the way to me, and leaned her face right in front of mine, looking like she was about to ask me to play with her.

"Now, who should we kill?" she asked me in the most innocent child's voice.

"What?"

She straightened up again and seemed to start making a plan all on her own.

"The warlock, for sure, and the traitor..." she started making a list out loud, then stopped and turned to me.

"Who betrayed us?" she asked.

I stared at her for a few seconds in confusion. I didn't like where the bizarre conversation was going, so I replied:

"Maybe the warlock just got lucky. I don't know."

"Of course you don't," she looked down disappointed.

A second passed, and then she seemed to suddenly get some great idea as she raised her finger to point up.

"I know! Let's kill them all! The dwarf too, just to be sure."

"What?! No!"

"Yes! And his wife, and that elf woman who tried to kill us, and..."

"I'll do no such thing!"

"No fair!" she cried out, stamping her foot to the ground. "You're always telling me what to do! My turn already!"

"I've never seen you before!"

That caused the child to freeze for a moment. Then she looked at me, and the angry look on her face turned into a twisted, malicious, downright scary grin.

"Yes you have. I warned you about this, remember? Besides, you're awfully uncompromising for someone who is about to die."

As I looked at her in that pose, I saw a flash of the silhouette of a child from my dream before, remembered the whisper from behind my shoulder.

"Warned me about what? What do you mean 'about to die'? I thought I already did."

"Oh, you sure wanted to, throwing everything at that poor boy like that and then failing," she said with a sneer.

I didin't like her tone, making a mockery of my tragedy.

"I tried to save him. I really did. I wanted..."

"...to kiss him again, to hear him play that song for you, even though he wasn't that good at either?" she rudely interrupted me.

Now it was my turn to take a moment of silence, breathe in, and get nasty.

"Don't insult him," I said in my most threatening voice.

"Can't have been that special if you reacted like..."

"Shut up!"

"You'd want to kill someone for what happened to him if you really cared about him."

"And I do! ...I mean...I..." she had me confused about myself, as well as a little scared about what I might end up saying next.

"Then get up and do it. 'Give 'em hell', like the dwarf said," she provoked me.

Not wanting to hear any more, I responded by aiming my eyes at the ground. At least the invisible force holding me didn't prevent that. That's when she started skipping around me in a circle, singing in a mocking voice:

_'Little kitty's scared again, another has died, 'cause she's hiding again...'_

"No..."

_'...afraid to live, afraid to die, 'cause she won't kill and she won't lie...'_

"Stop it!"

_'...little kitty's afraid to no end, oh look! She's lost another friend!'_

"Enough!" I kept yelling and struggled to move against the invisible force that still prevented me from doing so.

Instead of heeding me, she raised her voice and it sounded as though another voice, very much like hers, joined her to sing in a duet.

_'Of shattered souls and burned hearts you were made...'_

"Please...stop..." my will began to falter.

_'...isn't it time to fight back, little druid of the blade?'_

"I..." I closed my eyes, my mind spinning around just like the voices were.

_'...time to destroy them, end this cursed circle of fire...'_

"...yes..."

_'...to stand and fight 'till you have what you desire...'_

"Yes!" I called out loudly, thinking it was the one word that would make the singing stop.

It did. The voices stopped immediately, giving me a moment's peace. I saw the girl through my closed eyelids as a shadowy silhouette, just like I had done in the dream from before. She had stopped in front of me for a moment. Then she turned to face me, took a few more steps to come up close, where I could feel her breath as she knelt down in front of my face.

A fiery glow had appeared behind her, glowing around her head like a halo, the image reminding me of a solar eclipse, a phenomenon I'd read about but never actually seen.

"We can play now," she whispered, "just remember: don't be afraid."

I snapped my eyes open and took in a long gasp of air, like I hadn't been breathing for hours.

I was back on the beach, laying on the sand with Valen and the rest of the corpses, staring at a bright noon sun.


	65. Dark Matter

I was feeling uncomfortably hot, almost like parts of me were still on fire. That would've been the large burns covering my left arm and large parts of my right leg, hurting more than any other part of my body. And right then, that was a lot of injuries to compare them to.

No, take that back. The broken ribs hurt more as I began breathing normally again, after that first life-restoring gasp that had broken me out of the eerie dream. It got even worse as I tried to push myself up from the sand, using only my right arm. Not only did it take a lot of effort to get little results, something slipped halfway through the motion and I fell down onto my side. A drop of only my forearm's length, but the shock of the impact still caused a spike of pain from those ribs. Enough so to make me want to tear up, but there were no tears, only a small burning sensation on my lower eyelids, some strange pre-emptive reaction to the liquid that never came.

I really didn't want to just lay there and focus on breathing. It would give me too much time to think, to feel my aching body, to remember that there was another elf lying on the sand, right behind my back. I had to act, do something, anything, or I'd become as insane as the dream girl who wore my face.

Using my hand, I carefully looked for a sore spot on my side. That's where the damage would be. It didn't take me long to find, even if I did end up hurting myself when I touched it. I closed my eyes to focus and let healing energy flow steadily from my palm. As the pain in my side subsided, I kept my eyes closed for a little while longer, hoping that I'd start to hear his snoring from beside me soon. That when I'd look again, it would still be the full moon's night, just after we had settled down to sleep. The sea splashing ashore peacefully helped me form that image, but it only took a moment's distraction, me paying a second of attention to the heat of the sun, to remember where I really was and what had happened, and to be unable to deny or forget it.

It was then, when that last, almost believable image of my happiness slipped through my fingers, that the gaping hole that was left of my heart reconnected with my mind, my five minutes of emotionless, clear-headed thinking come to an end.

With allowance from my healed ribs, the full memory of his cruel fate fresh on my mind, as well as in reality, I started to shake uncontrollably. In my mind, I was crying, but in the real world, I still couldn't produce tears or make a sound, only let out bursts of air where there should've been cries of the deepest sorrow. Those tears and cries were headed inwards, see. Inside my chest, they gathered up into a big, black blob that kept growing and growing with them, until it started to squeeze my other insides, started to hurt me. Breathing became gradually more difficult and my heart had to work it's way through heavier and heavier loads pressing down on it.

It got so bad, I thought I was going to suffocate, literally drown in my sorrow, emotional suffering turned into physical pain worse than any of my still numerous wounds and burns. But I was not yet done letting the world know how I felt. I pushed myself up off the sand, managing to sit up, then smashed my fist into the ground while crying out at the top of my lungs.

Or that was the idea, anyway.

There was the thud from my fist hitting the sand, and then, silence. No scream, just silence, and a small increase in the size and mass of the black blob, making breathing ever harder. The survival instincts of my body took control, forcing me to sit there and breathe and wheeze like someone who had something stuck in their throat, leaving only a small hole to draw in air through. Even with my eyes closed, it took all my willpower and concentration to ignore the despair and sorrow conveyed by everything on the beach, including the sun's warmth, just enough to not completely drown in it. A good ten minutes passed before the feeling of something swollen blocking my airway began to slowly give way. As it did, however, my senses sharpened and the pain of loss came back again, and with it the silent cries and nonexistent tears, putting me in a struggle that seemed to never end.

Unable to overcome the sorrow that squeezed my insides, I began to look for ways around it. With my fighting spirit worn and withered away, the option of my choice was surrender. I would stop fighting, let it happen, and see what would happen, see what was on the other side of the edge I had dared not cross yet.

Steeling myself for the effort, I opened my eyes, aimed them at Valen, and thought of some parting words, my addmitance to my defeat against the cold hand of death that had taken him from me.

Then I opened my mouth to speak them, and out came...silence.

There was a small fire somewhere in the back of my head, causing a strange feeling in my face that scrambled the motions of my lips and tongue into barely visible, meaningless little flapping, and a black hole lodged inside my neck, it's pull holding the vibrations I was trying to make at bay, never letting that vital instrument of sound nudge one little bit.

I chalked it up to circumstance, the difficulty of such an act as a whole, and tried again, putting all my will into it, even risking turning the words into an incomprehensibly loud yell.

The fire grew a little bigger and more painful, and the black hole became strong enough to make my insides hurt from desperately trying to move and vibrate, all to no avail. More silence came out. Remembering my soundless crying from a few minutes past, that's when the realization hit me.

It felt as if someone punched their fist right into my guts, ripped out something vitally important and made off with it. I put a hand on my chest, desperately trying to look for that something I had lost, unable to find it. My eyes widened out of the shock and my breathing turned into hurried, desperate gasps for air.

Even if I had somehow lived through the night, Valen and I had both already chosen and spoken our final words.

My voice was gone. Mute. Silenced from the rest of the world, only audible inside my mind until even I would one day forget what I used to sound like. Worse yet, the fire in my head prevented me from forming silent words with my mouth, so nobody was going to be reading my lips, either. I imagine different expert physicians around the world would each have a different scientific term for the cause of it all. But whether they would call it mental trauma, another of the warlock's magical curses, or some sort of brain damage, I did not know or care to know. The hand I still held on my chest, and a little bit of trying to heal the damage to no result was enough to tell me that it was beyond any cure of nature. And that's all I needed to know to determine that it was permanent.

I thought I had already reached the bottom of the pit of despair and sorrow when I had first crumbled, but that turned out to be false. Only then, when I knew the full extent of my injuries, discovered that the biggest scar was on the inside, carved into my soul, that I truly knew how deep the black hole went.

That was the final straw that really broke my spirit and my resistance. I gave up trying to resist the overwhelming grief, gave up trying to get around it. One fiery tragedy too many to bear, one shock too many to feel. I allowed myself to fall back on the sand, no will left with which to move. My mind was in full retreat, refusing to receive any more abuse, leaving my body a limp ragdoll on the beach.

I didn't know how long I spent just laying there, moving, if possible, even less than the four corpses around the scorched beach. The only difference between me and them being that my eyes were open, their elven glow locked in a meaningless stare forward. That comparison in itself is a fairly good description of how I was feeling in my mind as well. That I might as well be dead, like the three dead assassins and Valen.

I think at least an hour or two passed, because the next moment something happened was when the sun had began to slowly descend from it's height at noon. This repositioning of the source of it's light caused it's rays to hit something in the pile of equipment we had never been given much of a chance to use against the ambush. There was a glitter amidst the leathers and tools and whatnot. That glitter caught my eye and started to slowly pull on my mind until it managed to catch my attention. It was the blade of my dagger, the same one that had caused the scar on my chest. Immediately, my shocked mind was put on a certain course. It started to formulate a little plan of it's own.

It would only take a little crawling to get to the weapon. I had enough reach not to have to actually move the last half meter of the distance. I could grab the handle, take a really firm grip, using my left hand too. I would only have to aim an inch or two to the left of the scar, a foolproof aim at my heart. It would be so easy...to just...

By the time I had started to better come to my senses, I was already there, reaching for the dagger, holding it in my hand, feeling with a finger that the tip would be sharp enough...

And then I saw the light.

A small red glow, half buried in sand, slowly flashing on and off and then on again. I remember tilting my head to the side slightly, to try and see it better, after which I dropped the dagger and reached forward to the light.

From the scorched sand, I dug out my locator device, the one Morgan had given me. The device wasn't important, but the light was. It meant the other device was still on, the one the warlock had. It meant I had a way to keep Valen's promise of vengeance for him...and make one of my own as well.

In an instant, a tiny flame was lit somewhere in the middle of the black blob inside me, radiating heat and energy, but it was all being held back by the dark mass, like a tiny light of hope imprisoned amidst a far stronger mass of sorrow and despair. Still, it was enough to put some motion back into me.

In a matter of seconds, I was scanning the beach with my eyes, looking through the scattered pile of damaged equipment for anything I recognized as mine, as well as anything else I could use to replace things I'd lost. As I proceeded to hastily go dig into the pile, my injured leg gave me a painful reminder of it's state.

I had to sit down to heal it, as well as my other numerous wounds. At first, I tried to hurry, but quickly found that healing my body would take it's time, even with nature's aid. I forced myself to be more patient, despite the feeling in the back of my head that told me to keep moving at all costs, to not stop until the warlock lay dead at my feet, because if I did, I'd fall to despair again. Such extensive use of my healing proved to have effects I didn't quite predict. Despite all my lessons and training, having to physically take deep breaths in between healing my numerous injuries was not the first thing that would've come to mind as a form of exhaustion from use of my powers.

As I sat there, filled with renewed determination, working through my wounds, burns and other injuries, I let my eyes wander and eventually rest on Valen. Barely able to give him a look without a complete breakdown, the sad sight of his broken body killed some other, tiny bit inside me. I couldn't face touching him. Not yet. But I knew I'd have to, soon enough. The last thing I wanted for him was to have his body rot amidst the scorched earth, all that was left of the white sand of the beach and the previously lush landscape of my soul. I owed him that much, at the very least. Thinking of ways to honor him as I kept on healing my body, I already had a plan of action in my head by the time I was finished with myself and ready to move on to doing something for him.

First, it was time to go and make a close-up inventory of which of our items and equipment were still usable, and which ones I might be able to repair, as the first thing I noted was that most of Valen's leatherworking kit and other small tools had survived. So, making use of that, and my meager skills at the trade, I set out to repair, and in some cases, even attempt to improve my own things, both because it was nescessary if I was to carry on by myself, but also because I wanted to play for time before I'd absolutely have to do something about Valen.

To make a long story short, I pretty much ended up spending the rest of the day fixing my equipment, and though the results weren't exactly professional crafting products, they seemed functional and practical enough for me. What I ended up with was a set of armour mainly based on the one I had had before, but with a few changes, mostly results of me not being able to do an accurate or delicate enough job on it.

My vest came out somewhat more covering and a little heavier than before, but still not quite all the way down to the belt or on to the shoulders. My shorts and the four bracers for my wrists and ankles were largely undamaged, not counting the fact that they had large, charcoal-black spots they had received from the fire, something that was true for all the other pieces of armor as well.

Next, there was the matter of my cloak. Out of all my old equipment, it was the most badly damaged piece, the cloth it was made of having apparently been much more flammable than the leather of the other parts of my outfit. It had several large holes through it, along with the same blackened areas that the leather equipment had. After looking at it for a while, I decided to cut it in half and make two things instead. The better-survived half I wrapped up to make a hood with enough extra cloth to cover my shoulders and flow a short distance off of them, to only one side though, kind of making the whole thing look like a very large scarf. The other half with all it's holes was a hopeless case on it's own, but then I got the idea of patching it up and reinforcing it with leather. What I ended up with was something that was a little too heavy to hang off my shoulders, so I tied it to the waist of my shorts instead. It was like a leather-braced skirt of sorts, with a fairly odd design, it's diagonal cut from around half-thigh to just below the other knee reminiscent of the dress I had tried on back in Morgan's house. The idea was to add a little bit of protection to the side I'd instinctively face my enemies with, while leaving the other as light and mobile as possible. It also served the same purpose as my heavily left-sided 'cloak', to hide some of the worst burn scars located on my left arm and right leg, as one thing I had learned from Valen was to always look for weaknesses in an opponent, including visible remains of past injuries, so it seemed like a smart decision to give my enemies a harder time doing so against me.

The black discoloration, as well as my sewing work, not exactly clean-cut straight lines and smooth stitches all the way through, gave me an idea hot to try and hide both. I decided to use a black dye on the entire outfit. Not only was it one of the few dyes Valen's leatherworking kit contained, I suppose it was also a fitting colour to symbolise my sorrow over what had caused me to rebuild the outfit, as well as picking up on one of Valen's tips on stealth being easier for one who has donned the color of the shadows, though that last point wasn't really what I had on top of my mind at the time. Especially since the coloration ended up a bit uneven anyway, which gave the overall end result a very common, rugged and weathered look right off the bat. Still, I suppose it was pretty good for someone with my meager experience in the craft.

As stated before, by the time I was done with the armour, it was already late dusk, or more like evening. The time just after the sun had disappeared beyond the horizon, it's light and warmth fading away as night began to fall, giving me an almost comforting moment when the moon took over the skies again. A single day past it's full glory, a small slice missing from it's side, it gave me hope for a moment, made me picture that perhaps my loss had also been just a small slice off the side.

That hope died the second I laid eyes on Valen again. But at least I now knew what I was going to do for him.

I had decided it was my turn to carry him into the waves. Even if it took a bit of effort from me, I managed to do it without dragging him along the sand or anything. I carefully set him down in the shallow water, where I proceeded to wash him of all the ash and blood that he was mostly covered in. Since nature's healing only works on living things, there was little I could do for his wounds and injuries. Thus, every time I uncovered another bruise, burn or a gaping wound, I felt a sting inside that made me shudder. Not as someone who hadn't seen blood and broken bones before, a false claim in itself, but as someone who felt each one of them as a stab at my heart, every serious injury another potential candidate for being the one that eventually claimed his life, guilty of slaying my dream of spending a lifetime with him. And for every one of those stabs, the pain inside me grew a little.

Once I was finally done washing him, I had to take action and finish what I was doing before that pain of loss would paralyze me completely.

I retrieved some long sticks and branches from the treeline above the beach, along with some vines as well. I lifted Valen on the sticks and tied the whole thing together with a bunch of strong vines. My idea was to have him float out to the sea, as that seemed appropriate and something he'd have liked. The floating device of my craft wasn't much, but it got the job done.

As I worked around him, I was forced to observe his wounds and injuries again in detail, which soon made the pain of my loss unbearable again, forcing me to stop and take a moment to try and cry it out. Still no tears or sound. The harsh lesson of that moment was, that the only thing worse than having to bury or otherwise send off the person you love the most, is to have to do so and not be able to cry tears, scream your pain out, or so much as say a word in their memory.

I gave him back his weapons and all the equipment and things I didn't need, the last thing being his flute, which I closed in his hands, but it wasn't enough to satisfy the pain that compelled me to do something for him.

That's when I remembered one thing with which I might just be able to grant him something special. I went over to my newly repaired armour and pulled out the piece of enchanted living wood I still had in my bag, pleased that it had survived the fire. At least a tiny piece of my old self had remained alive.

Then I went back to Valen and held the piece of wood a bit above him, closed my eyes, and focused. I didn't really know what I was doing, or indeed, what the result would be. I simply streamed energy at the enchanted wood and poured forth all the love and respect I had for him, laced with my sorrow and the pain of loss, an attempt to channel out all the mass of the black blob inside me. It seemed to work, as the pain and the pressure within me decreased as I kept on channeling, but not all the way, since by the time I was too exhausted to keep going, there was still just enough of that black mass to hold back the tiny flame of hope within.

I opened my eyes to see the results. If I had been able to tear up, the sheer beauty of what I saw would've made me do so. A grand, many-coloured coat of flowers and all sorts decorative plants had grown out of the enchanted wood, covering all of Valen's body, save for his head. There were all sorts of species native to both of Azeroth's main continents, and a few that I didn't even know by name, but I must've seen them somewhere since my heart had conjured them up. The moonlight from above made it all shine like it was magical, rivaling even the glitter of the surrounding water. I was finally satisfied with what I'd been able to do for him, if still a long, long way from feeling content or happy.

It was a most peaceful moment, when I touched his face one final time, while in my mind I thanked him for everything and repeated my sincerest thought for him once more:

_'May the goddess know that I love you, Valenor Moonscar.'_

I closed my eyes and gave him a small push, just enough to have him start floating away.

_'Now and forever.'_

I heard the song of the sea again. An unchanging, yet unreachable distance away like always before, but the tune was recognizable this time. Maybe it was a trick of the mind, or maybe the ability to hear it and nature's other sounds worked off of some mental association that I hadn't made before, but the song was the same and only one I had heard Valen play many times.

That provoked an instinctive, desperate motion to try and pull him back to me, which only served to tell me that he had floated beyond my grasp, just like the song was. And that's when the full weight of the loss came down on me. The undeniable realization that he was truly gone. And it was a heavy thing indeed.

I heard a splash as my legs gave up and my knees dove below the surface, hitting the bottom of the shallow water. The black blob was instantly bloated back to full size and beyond, turning the shaking of the soundless, tearless crying into what was more like violent convulsions, which I desperately tried to hold back by holding my sides with my hands. But it was already too late to stop it. It's power was enough to completely tear me apart from the inside, and though the pain only existed in my mind, it certainly felt about like what I imagined that kind of physical abuse to feel like. Then the black bubble reached critical mass. The consequence for having that black bubble-like blob burst and then implode were not what I had expected, though. The tiny flame that had been trapped in it's center instantly expanded to consume all the dark matter, spreading everywhere inside me as it did.

As it turned out, it was not the flame of hope. It knew many names, but that wasn't one of them. It was called rage. Wrath. The fury of the fallen.

I opened my eyes again and managed to catch a final glimpse of the shining bed of flowers floating along the moonlight bridge on the water. A tiny part somewhere in the back of my head was downright scared to realize that the sight did not cause more helpless sorrow anymore, it merely fed the fire that was now burning within.

When I returned to the dry sand, I was still holding the enchanted wood in my hand. By the time I was fully dressed in my new outfit, the last two things I held in my hands were that piece of wood, and my sword, giving me an idea that made me wonder why I hadn't come up with it earlier. The ring-shaped socket at the knob of the weapon was the perfect place for it. Or so I thought. The piece didn't fit.

But I wasn't that kind of an easily forgiving elf who'd look for another way around, not anymore. I was determined to get my way for a change, like the dream child had sung to me. A little touch of nature's power, and the piece of wood fit in nice and tight. And true to the magical properties the weapon was supposed to have, the wood immediately bound itself with the blade, growing out tiny vines that wrapped themselves all around the hilt, and even ran a bit of the way up the back of the blade. I sheathed the weapon, pulled my new hood over my head, and set off to finish my journey, a new kind of determination burning within and driving me forth.

The dead pirates I left unattended and unburied were but an omen to the things that were to follow, the first of them sooner than I would have guessed.

Some ten minutes later, as soon as I had made it back to the main path that lead to Booty Bay, which is where I was headed to see if I could find out something a little more specific than the locator's flashing light, I already found the very thing I was looking for, but not the one I was expecting.

As I observed from the shadows, the fire inside me demanded action by threat of more pain, gaining one more name for itself: revenge.

After all, for someone who was supposed to have defended the other locator device by violence if needed, Morgan Cherryspark looked like a very much living, unhurt and happy gnome as she walked along the road, heading back north toward her home city, wearing the look of someone who had met complete success. A fat purse of gold at her waist, I didn't need to know all the details to have my mind decide for me, that said purse contained exactly thirty silver coins, all coated in elven blood and the tears I hadn't been able to cry.


	66. Traitor's Fate

Was I absolutely, completely sure that the gnome was the one who had betrayed us? Looking back to that moment, I'd have to admit that the answer is no. However, I was still convinced enough to let the flame of fury inside me loose, so that by the time I would've been considering alternatives, I was already blinded by rage, the only thing that stopped me from making a mad rush at the gnome was my faint tactical sense telling me to be smarter about it. After all, one of the things I knew about Morgan, further strengthened by the perceived deception, was that she was an intelligent enemy, who would have more means than one would've tought for countering a direct assault.

That being said, such conscious planning was quickly losing to the fury that grew ever higher in me as I observed the gnome walking along the path. When it came right down to it, I had little choice but to trust in the element of surprise, the knowledge that, if I had things figured out right, I was supposed to be dead according to Morgan's plan.

There was a tiny, weak voice somewhere in the back of my mind, trying to warn me of something, perhaps a mistake in the making, as I pounced the gnome from behind in my panther shape.

I managed to rip the back of her dress-like robe and cause a few nasty cuts on her neck and back with my claws, but due to misestimating her size, my lethal jaws and fangs did not make their target. That gave the gnome enough time to spin around and aim an emergency blasting spell at me, just powerful enough to blow me a short distance away, but not enough to cause much pain or even make me lose focus, as I landed right back on my paws.

As I had expected, a look of surprise took over her face when she got the opportunity to look at me and identify her attacker.

"What the...?!"

She didn't recognize my bestial shape until I charged at her again.

"Cailea?"

Perhaps there was some recognizable feature about my fur or eyes or something that had given away my identity at a closer range. At least to someone who had seen me shapeshift before.

She made a strange motion with her arms, after which she disappeared in a bright flash of light. I had seen that spell before, used by another mage that I had fought. And if it worked anything like it for Morgan, I immediately knew I'd find her about twenty feet directly behind myself. Even with that knowledge, I wasn't quick enough to dodge the following energy blast that hit me squarely the moment I had turned around to face her again. This one had more energy behind it than the last one, making for more of an impact and managing to knock me off my feet.

Next, she conjured up a small fireball in her other hand, which she then hurled at me. That one I managed to evade by quickly leaping to the side, off the path. Looking for a moment to breathe, I turned back into an elf, as that was a far more convenient body shape to hide behind a tree from Morgan's point of view. Maybe I had even managed to confuse her as to my exact location, given the abundance of similar looking jungle trees around the area.

"Well now, what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be off somewhere, taking a stab or two to protect your heart's desire?" she taunted me from somewhere back on the open path.

Then there was the sound of another fireball hitting a tree, but not the one I was hiding behind. Either she didn't know that I was alone, I had confused her as to where exactly I was, or she was simply trying to fake me out by making me think either of the first two.

"Or was it his turn to do that for you for a change?"

Though the taunting might've seemed like an unintelligent move to an outsider, it wasn't that. Morgan knew what strings to pull to make it effective, all the while not quite admitting her guilt yet, putting me in a the difficult position of feeling compelled to act while carrying within a tiny bit of uncertainty as to whether I was right. On the other hand, it was that tiny doubt that allowed me of to act rationally and with some intellect of my own, rather than just rushing head on at her. I drew my sword while I put my other hand on the trunk of the tree I was using for cover, connecting with it and having it grow it's roots all the way under the path and the gnome's position, then having them sprout up to try and trap her.

"I guess he didn't make it since he hasn't stepped out to protect your honor yet," Morgan continued her taunting, this time hinting that she very much knew what had happened and thus was indeed responsible for the ambush.

Just as she finished saying that, the first of the roots popped out of the ground and spun itself around the wrist of her extended arm, catching her attention and causing the spell she was conjuring with that hand to be lost.

That was my moment to strike. I raised my sword, dashed around the tree at her, putting all my momentum behind the attack I aimed at her.

She had barely enough time to draw her gnome-sized short sword with her left hand to use it to block my attack, her grip already loosening from the sheer force of the impact. The result being that blocking my next attack as well caused the weapon to be flung out of her grasp and the almost relaxed look on her face to turn into a far more concerned one.

I thought I had her, until I noticed a little too late that the short swordplay had bought her other hand enough time to freeze the entangling root trapping it, allowing her to break free with a simple, strong pull. Then aiming both of her palms at me at point-blank range, a torrent of freezing air erupted from her hands with enough force to stop the motion of my next slash, while the cold was sufficiently powerful to threaten to freeze me completely unless I acted quickly.

"Aren't you going to say something if you're so mad about the way I do business? Perhaps tell me how it happened so I'd know exactly what you're trying to kill me for, hm?" her taunts kept circling around a full-on confession of her deed, to which I had already found her guilty by then.

The hardest part about stepping back to avoid the icy spell was to convince my mind to back off for a second, as the fury dominating it was telling me to push on like a raging beast. As soon as I made my move to get out of the danger zone, my mind was already working on ideas how to strike again without pause, coughing out the cold.

Hearing what my coughing sounded like, or rather, what it didn't sound like, as well as getting no response to her taunts must've began to give the gnome an idea of exactly why I was so silent. At least that's what I would guess in retrospect, considering her next move. Not the energy blast she followed up the freezing with, which I managed to evade with some sideways movement, but the mass of metal caltrops she pulled from somewhere in her robe and threw down to cover a large area of ground between us, before making a run for it, back south toward Booty Bay.

I wasn't giving up yet, though. A decision that I would end up paying a high price for, but I didn't know that when I thread through the layer of sharp spikes spread on the path, getting my foot nicked just once, a result that I thought of as quite good for the circumstance. The obstacle had given the gnome a small head start, but I was quite confident that, even with a slightly injured foot, I'd outrun her quickly as I turned into a panther to be less hampered by it.

Despite the badly aimed fireballs and hastily conjured energy blasts she hurled at me to try and stop the chase, my natural speed allowed me to quickly close the distance between us. Avoiding her spells did become harder the closer I got to her and she even made a direct hit with one of her energy blasts, but with almost all of her focus on trying to run away from me, the spell caused hardly any harm or impact force to speak of. Morgan even resorted to her teleportation spell a second time to just as I tried to pounce her, but even that only served to buy her a few more seconds, as it seemed that she couldn't use it again for a short while.

She yelled out something just as she knew she was about to get caught, but I was too enraged to hear the words for what they were.

A big mistake.

I pounced her, and just like I had done on one of my sessions with Valen, shepshifted back into an elf mid-flight, landing on top of the gnome with no regard to how hard she'd hit her head on the ground, my weapon already half-drawn, so she'd only be a second away from getting finished by the time she'd realize what happened.

For me, that was one second too much to finish the job.

I could hardly believe just how badly my narrowminded rage had blinded me to my surroundings. Coming back to my senses was also quicker than I would've believed, but that probably had plenty to do with the sensation of cold steel at my neck, and the clearly goblin-like male voice speaking from my left in a loud and clear, calm and commanding voice.

"Move a muscle only if you want to test if this here cutlass of mine is as sharp as that fancy saber of yours."

More people dressed like pirates emerged from the sides of my vision, surrounding us by the sound of their footsteps. One of them, a human man, loaded a simple gun that reminded me of the one Thoraim had and pointed it menacingly at Morgan. Finally, a human woman whose hat and demeanor singled her out as the leader of the bunch walked up to where we both could see her.

"You two want to explain what the hell you're doing, killing each other at the gates of our fair port town?" she demanded.

Only then did I realize exatcly where I was. A familiar cave-gate stood before me, along with the dirty, tilted sign that still spelled out the town's name.

'Wolcem at Yoom Ab', it said as far as I could tell, making no sense to me. My breathing came to a momentary standstill as I realized something horrible. A familiar feeling, like a small fire in the back of my head had flared up when I tried to read the sign. The same one that wouldn't let me consciously form words with my lips. It couldn't be. Had I completely lost the gift of words?

It was too much to accept. I refused and focused on the text again.

'Welcome to Booty Bay', I finally made out after taking the words in letter by letter, with large effort, like a little child who had just learned to read the day before. Having my ability to read reduced to that level was disheartening to say the least, but compared to losing it altogether, at least a small relief, allowing me to direct my attention to the men threatening my life.

Morgan turned out to be quite the actress as she put on a frightened face and answered the woman's question.

"This crazy elf here betrayed and killed my team!" she cried out as if completely terrified of me.

"Your...team?" the woman raised an eyebrow at the fake-panicking gnome, then turned to address me, "And you, put your weapon away. Slowly. I want to be able to understand what the gnome has to say without you hovering that blade over her."

"We're explorers, come to see the unique sea life around these parts," she began to explain, doing an admirable job hiding the fact that she was probably making things up on the fly, while I had no choice but to slowly sheath my sword as I'd been told to, getting the threatening blade off my neck in response.

"Then this...assassin decided to show her true colours by seducing the other elf who was with us, stabbing him to death in his sleep after having her fun with him."

_'You lying little..!'_

Again, she knew exactly what words to choose, blaming Valen's fate on me as a part of her made-up story, successfully provoking me to try and throw a punch at that pretty little powdered face of hers, which in turn had the result of someone strong restraining me by the wrists by forcibly pulling my hands together behind my back, all before I could touch Morgan as she spewed out more lies.

"And...you don't want to know what happened to the pirate who we had hired for a guide, when she got a hold of one of my gnomish flame-grenades..." she kept up the act.

"Pirate? You mean she killed one of ours, too?"

Morgan nodded in her faked fear, which was now fading as someone bound my wrists together behind my back using a length of rope or string, I couldn't tell exactly since I couldn't see it. The gnome took the moment to squirm away from under my weight, leaving the pirates holding me down on my knees before her.

"Well, I heard there was an injured pirate not too far from here. Not sure if he made it or not, but there was talk of burns. I'm starting to believe you, gnome. But first..." the woman summarized and turned to look at me again, "I'm not simpleminded enough to pass judgement without hearing what you have to say for yourself, night elf."

I had plenty to say, as every face present on the scene turned to look at me expectantly. The only problem was, especially with my hands bound, I had no way of conveying that to them, despite my best effort to try and overcome the fire in my brain as I had done with the reading. A victorious, malicious grin flashed across Morgan's face, as she realized she wasn't being watched, and knew full well that I could do nothing to refute her claims.

"Well then, that settles that," the woman decided after getting no response for several seconds. "Let's take them both to the ship and see that the gnome gets her reward from the skipper before we set sail again," she gave orders to the others, who put away their weapons and took a formation around me, with two of them holding me by the arms to make sure I couldn't run or struggle my hands free in case the bindings weren't perfect. Even if I shapeshifted to free myself and make a run for it, the sheer number of weapons, both close-quarters and ranged, carried by the people around me were enough to convince me that I wouldn't get very far.

I couldn't help but think of a detail that the conversation had brought up despite all the dishonesty, as the whole lot of us headed into the entrance cave and down toward the ships at the piers of Booty Bay once on the other side, with me being walked amidst them as their prisoner. It hadn't occurred to me before, that we had never actually identified the injured pirate Valen and I had come across the day before. If it had indeed been Mr White, also fallen victim to Morgan's deception, a job done rather hastily probably because of my late timing to turn on the locator device, and we had been that close to discovering it...

In light of that, it was painful to think of the devastating results of us having walked into meeting Morgan at Booty Bay, unaware of the lies she had prepared for us to set up the ambush, when the answer had apparently been that near. The seemingly lucky discovery of the forsaken down at the bottom of the cave had probably been her doing as well, and the following events merely her reaction to seeing that the locator was turned back on, meaning we had miraculously escaped her first trap.

We got on the deck of one of the ships that was docked on the town's lowest tier, where Morgan and the pirate woman proceeded to quickly recount what had just happened to a goblin who didn't look much like a captain to me, but must've been one considering the circumstances.

"A pirate-killer, eh?" the goblin captain replied after hearing the faulty story, "well, we're just about to set off on a route that goes past some deserted islands, so we know what to do with her," he finished with his eyes on me.

"Actually..." Morgan stepped in between us, "I have a more lucrative offer to make you."

Needless to say, such a line was a prime way to catch a goblin's full attention.

"Do you happen to know what the biggest bounty one can cash in at the Stormwind Stockades is, besides bringing in the warchief himself?" she proceeded to ask the goblin, who replied by shrugging his shoulders.

The gnome spun around and aimed a piercing, triumphant stare at me.

"A traitor to the alliance," she declared, then turned to face the goblin again, "I realize you don't want to just sail into the royal fleet, of course, so here's what I suggest: I pay you your cut up front if you take me and the elf somewhere close enough, from where I can get an escort to help me take her to the city, after you've left with your share. I could even put in a good word, see if I can get some of your old crewmen released from the dungeons, as your reward."

The whole, ugly truth about Morgan's wealth, as displayed on her person as well has had been in her home, was revealing itself to me and with that, her motives becoming clear as well.

If there exists an expression where one's eyes become filled with images of gold coins, the goblin had it on his face as he finished listening to the gnome's offer, then gave his orders.

"Alright, we'll need to work out some details, but for now, take the elf below and treat her like someone a little more valuable, but don't take any chances with her getting away. One of them's a rare find in these parts, so don't underestimate her."

With that, the two pirates holding me by the arms forced me to walk down some steps and through a door, into the ship. To make matters a little worse yet, my phobia started to gnaw at my self-control as we walked through a narrow corridor that ran the length of the ship just under the deck, though it felt weaker and not as crippling, like it had felt since the combined metamorphosis. A number of cabins were open, half-open or closed along the way on both sides, but we came to a halt at a closed door that was decorated with two crossed swords.

Next, one of the men holding me by the arms let go and walked around to my front, pulling out his short sword as he did, then pointing it at my chin just a couple inches away, while his friend reached around me from behind, unbuckling the leather strap that ran across my chest, then removed my weapon and it's sheath as a whole from me.

I stood still at the sharp end of the other pirate's weapon as the one carrying my weapon walked to the door and dug his pocket for a set of keys. I thought it a pleasant surprise that they hadn't noticed the dagger I had tucked under my belt, largely hidden by the leather-braced half-skirt that I had added to my outfit only recently.

That joy did not last, however, because by the time the man had unlocked and opened the door to what looked like an armory by it's equipment-filled interior, I felt a distantly familiar sideways jerk under my feet, telling me that the ship was on the move, making any escape attempt an unlikely success. What really put a stop to my formulating an escape plan, however, was the third pirate, the woman from before, emerging from the same direction we had come from, aiming an intent look at me, carrying a few indistinguishable items in her hands.

"Get in, all of you," she commanded as she passed us by and entered the room that had just been opened.

The two men obeyed the command, forcing me inside, after which one of them took a standing position next to the woman, while the other remained behind me to block the doorway after unbinding my hands, his weapon still drawn and pointed at me, for all I knew.

"Okay, elf. Here's what's going to happen," the woman began, "the gnome tells us you're some kind of an assassin or rogue or something, and we have a way of dealing with that kind of people around here. The only way to be sure. Your looks aren't telling me anything different either, and your word doesn't weigh much anymore, should you choose to let us hear what you think. But because you're apparently worth a fair sum to the cap'n, you're lucky enough to get the silk-gloves version. So..." she explained and shifted her weight, gesturing at the bundle of things she was holding in her hands, "...I'm going to make you a trade, and this is an offer that won't stand for long. We need to be convinced that you're not hiding any backup weapons, lockpicks or other escape trinkets somewhere under there," she elaborated and made a quick gesture at me. "I'm sure you can figure out on your own what you need to do to accomplish that, at least when I tell you that I've got your new uniform here, and the nicer, quieter and easier you make this, the sooner I'm going to give it to you."

The man standing beside her got an excited grin on his face as he spoke to her.

"Tell her what happens if she doesn't take your offer."

"I'm getting to that, Mr. Warren," she replied, looking like she was tempted to punch through the man's rotten, yellow grin, before turning back to me, "if you're not interested in the light-handed treatment I offered you, we'll just have to go for the usual, which means these two gentlemen are going to invite a few of their friends here to do for you what I just described, I will leave you here with them, and after that I don't care what happens inside this locked room as long as I still have a live prisoner to lock up down below, by sometime tomorrow. Got it?"

The man behind me took a few steps forward and I could feel the tip of his blade barely touching the back of my neck through my hood.

"Your choice. Make it quick," the woman finished and everything stopped still to wait for my next move.

_Some choice_, I thought.

I wasn't quick enough to do anything with my dagger or hands before the man behind me would literally cut me short, and shapeshifting would only get me so far on a moving ship full of people looking to kill me or worse. Realizing that the so-called treatment was at least as much about the humiliation and breaking of one's will, quite possibly a far more effective means of preventing escape attempts and general trouble, than the ensuring that I didn't have the tools to do so with, I closed my eyes for a second, drawing a long breath and steeling myself for what I had to do.

I thought of the brave, unyielding night elves of old, like Sorelei, who had demonstrated some of that legendary iron will and belief in her cause, an understandably common trait in warriors from many hundred or thousand years past. Bolstering myself with that same kind of proud determination, I raised my head high and aimed the strongest, most solid stare I had in me at my captors, while my hands went to work on reluctantly fulfilling the pirate's request, starting with the hood over my head.

Intent of showing them, and more importantly, to myself, that I would keep my pride and will no matter what happened, I put that same, determined fury into my motions as I removed all my things one by one, throwing them to the floor in front of me instead of laying them down nicely. They didn't dare to approach me even when I pulled out my dagger to throw it away too, either because I had successfully intimidated them, or because they were feeling comfortable enough about their advantage over me should I try anything aggressive.

I'm guessing it was more of the former, because while I made no attempts to hide or cover anything, my numerous scars and burns revealed from underneath seemed to keep any disrespectful looks off of the face of the man I could see in front of me, and probably the other one too, as I could hear him taking a step back.

The only one who seemed neither impressed nor surprised by the end was the woman, who quickly eyed me from head to toe and decided:

"Works for me."

Then she approached me, pulling out some kind of a metallic band with an odd, pieced together structure and a small blue light on it, then reached up to snap it closed around my neck. On the inside of it, there were two sharp bits of somekind that punctured my skin on both sides of my neck.

"A present for you from the gnome," she explained as I barely managed to not gasp out of the small but sudden pain.

Then she handed me the bundle of clothing she was holding and proceeded to collect my things from the floor.

"She called it a mana-feedback-something-or-other, I forget. Supposed to be some invention of hers that's never been tested on one of your kind before, but it's supposed to give us a much easier time with you," she explained while storing my things into a chest next to the wall.

Meanwhile, I reluctantly got dressed in what had been given to me, something that felt almost worse than what had preceeded it. The sleeveless shirt, though just wide enough to fit around my slender figure for a night elf, was obviously made for a human, judging by the length that barely reached my lowest ribs. The pants were similarly mis-measured for me, and neither piece of the tattered linen outfit had seen a wash for a while, it felt like.

Wondering what exactly the point of the collar I'd been given was, they had me walk back into the narrow corridor, which felt even worse now that the ship was on the move and stably tilting from side to side, and then down a narrow staircase into what looked like the hold of the ship.

In the corner of this space, right by a tiny, barred window, a little piece of fate's irony, there was a large, round wooden beam from the floor to the ceiling, with a chain wrapped and locked around it. One of the pirates slid this loop of chain up the pillar's length, and my right wrist was forced into a metal band that was tightly attached to this chain, then locked into it.

The pirates must've noticed that my attention quickly shifted to the window, as they left me there with a few choice words trailing their exit:

"Enjoy the view, elf."

Of course I had had a comforting thought hidden in my head to last me through all that with patient honor. I knew from before that the act of shapeshifting would free me from any physical shackles they'd put me in. I'd just need to come up with a plan to get to my equipment, then find Morgan, give her a piece of my mind using my blade, and make my exit, somehow.

But first, I needed to heal the wound on my foot that I had gotten from the fight against the gnome. Though insignificant in size, it had been enough to leave partial, bloody footprints where I had walked, and that was no good for stealth. I sat down, pulling the chain back down the wooden beam and reached my left hand towards the injured foot, then focused.

There was a strange, crackling sound, and immediately following, a jolt of pain originating from the top of my spine, travelling down along it and into the fingertips of my left hand, not only stopping my attempt to heal, but also causing me to have to take a moment to feel all the muscles of the left arm that had been momentarily paralyzed from the pain.

I didn't take me long to figure out that the collar I'd been given was the cause, and as I grabbed it with my hand to see if I could pull it loose, only to realize it was definitely far too tight for that, a horrible thought rose to my mind. A fear that I needed to deny or confirm right there and then.

I called upon the feline spirit, then let it come over me.

And just as I had feared, the only thing that came over me was a huge jolt of pain from the collar, spreading to every part of my body, powerful enough to knock me flat on the floor, only barely able to stay conscious.

While my heart struggled to get back to it's normal rhythm, I lay there on the floor with my eyes wide open, staring at the tiny barred window. The bars on it had just become a much more real thing, no longer a fleeting illusion I'd pass by quickly, but a true prison capable of holding me.

Once I could feel my body again, I panicked and tried to struggle free of the shackle on my wrist and the band around my neck in a desperate fury, managing only to bruise my body and drown my spirit, until I wore myself out and laid back down on the floor.

My heart, voice and my happiness had not been enough for my enemies. The facade of the brave warrior was long gone, because with my equipment that included mementoes of those I cared about, my freedom, and worst of all, my ability to shapeshift taken from me, even if it would only last as long as the collar was on, I felt like an empty shell, filled only with the kind of absolute and utter helplessness and desperation I hadn't felt since I watched my hometown burn from aboard the refugee ship.

Though the pirates hadn't broken my spirit, Morgan Cherryspark had once again proven to be quite the evil genius, pulling just the right strings to do what the pirates couldn't, with brutal effectiveness at that, forcing me to suffer a traitor's fate in her place.

_'Little kitty's scared again...'_ my own voice started to quietly lament inside my head.


	67. A Weird Sense of Humor

I didn't know how long I had laid there. Not being able to do anything but think had a way of stretching time for you, and with thouse thoughts being as inescapable and omnipresent as they were, I had lost all track of actual time before I even knew it.

It quickly began to feel like imprisonment was one of the worst fates imaginable for someone like me. More so than even I would've guessed before actually suffering it.

The thought of only ever being able to see the world through the tiny barred window, being doomed to withering away in a prison cell somewhere. never to hear the harmonious sound of Ashenvale or even any other place not so close to home, was such a horrible one it seemed impossible, unbearable. And yet, with all the despair it induced, utterly unavoidable.

Hunger had started to creep in over the seemingly endless hours my captivity had already seemed to last in my mind, bringing to light yet another terrible thought. The reality, that every day spent undernourished and chained to an immovable object would have my body wither away, disintegrating my muscles and destroying my hard-earned physique, stripping me of my strength and speed, the last means I still had of doing anything about my situation.

Thus, the hopeless circle of despair was complete and occupied my thoughts, making time seem even slower. And I still wasn't able to cry tears, not even for my own sake. Because as those tears that never made it out to my eyes headed inward, they fueled the fire of rage that had started back on that scorched beach where my heart and soul had been burned alive, and with no way to channel that rage into action, the fires would eventually grow strong enough to start melting and forcing their way through the barriers of my mind, in an attempt to force me to find new ways to release the heat. Those were the barriers that separated things that weren't meant together, and combined things that were. Their destruction for the sake of letting out the flames would only result in a chaos of the mind, a state better known by it's more common name, insanity. It didn't help either, that for all I knew, witnessing Valen's end had already put me partway there, as far as losing my sanity went.

To make a long story short, it would be fair to say that for all intents and purposes, ignoring the fact my heart would still beat long afterwards, I was slowly dying. I say this to justify the fact that, right there and then, one of the only thoughts of realistic action in my mind was how, by some physical gestures, I'd ask the next person coming to see if I was still there to bring me my dagger, not to put up a fight with it, but to do that which I had first thought of back on the beach, and spare everyone the trouble of watching me go slowly. And it wasn't just a moment's thought this time, either.

As if in response to that thought, I started to feel chilly and cold some time later, and there was a certain tingle around the small wound on my foot that I hadn't been able to heal. Combining those feelings with my one past experience of something similar, the only other time I hadn't been able to tend to a wound on my body within a couple hours of being injured, I realized pretty quickly what was going on. Taking a look at said wound confirmed what I suspected. Having very rarely dealt with an untreated wound, my body was highly susceptible to a certain kind of affliction, which from what I understand, our people used to be completely immune to back when they had been immortal, and thus didn't have much of an inherited resistance to, either.

The wound had rapidly become infected, probably from all the walking I'd been forced to do after my capture, and the fact that the space of the ship I was held prisoner in wasn't exactly the cleanest of places either. By that logic, the chilling cold was a rising fever brought about by some disease that had started to take root in me.

And as grim as it sounds in retrospect, somewhere inside myself I was smiling at this fate-given chance to die off a little quicker.

I laid on the floor, shivering more and more from the cold brought about by the rising fever and focused my thoughts on the tiny excuse for a window I'd been granted. I closed my eyes and sharpened what was left of my senses to pick up the quiet tune of the sea, barely audible from inside the ship in my rapidly weakening state.

In my mind, I was already thinking of what would be the first thing I wanted to tell Valen when I'd see him again in some better place.

Somewhere around that part of my thought process, I remember fading away, thinking that I died.

As it turned out, that wasn't the case.

"Storm, earth and fire, heed my call."

I didn't recognize the voice, and I wasn't even sure if I was still unconscious or actually hearing someone. For what it was worth, the voice sounded female, but it had a certain, coarse roughness to it, a bit like Millie's voice, but much, much more.

"Take her afflictions, cleanse them all."

For a moment, there was a sensation, like cold water washing over me, combined with a sound of roaring waterfalls and rapids in my ears. Then it ended, and with it, the feverish cold and pain was gone.

"It's done?" a different, male voice asked. This one sounded like a human to me.

"Yes. The rest is up to her will," the voice that had chanted the spell replied in a resentful tone.

"Good. No more shaman tricks then, remember?"

"No problem there, human. I didn't exactly volunteer to help her, if you recall."

"Keep talking back to me and the deal for your release is off before you can say your warchief's name. Now eat up. And remember to behave, ladies."

Maybe it was the mention of eating that provoked me to slowly force my eyes open again. Or perhaps the one about a warchief, because as far as I knew, there was only one person on all of Azeroth who held such a title. I caught sight of a pirate leaving up the stairs I'd been brought down. It took a turn of my head to see the other person present, the one sitting beside me.

She was clad in rags quite similar to mine in design, and no doubt origin. Besides the clothing, her green skin encased a body that had seen both healthy happiness as well as war weariness, as she had the scars and muscles of someone who had seen battles, but something about her hands and face told me it was more a necessity than nature for her. Her pitch-black hair was arranged in straight, braided rows that ran from the frame of her face to the back of her head, where they combined together into a single, long braid which almost reached the backside of her waist.

Though she was shackled to the wooden beam just as I was, she didn't have a device like the one I had on my neck. Instead, she wore a necklace of teeth and some sort of small, amber-colored beads.

Of all the things I had thought of as possible during my captivity, meeting a female orc up close was not something I had expected to happen.

At first, her eyes were aimed intently at the stairs that the pirate had just used to leave us by ourselves, but it didn't take her long to notice my confused stare.

"What are you looking at? I thought I made it clear that I didn't cure you because I wanted to, but because they did."

I aimed my eyes down, trying not to get into any trouble just yet. While I knew about the things the orcs had done during the third war, the old druid had always managed to keep his history lessons very much objective. He had never taught me to hate or despise any more than to love and cherish, for that matter. He had simply laid out the facts for me as he saw them, leaving me to draw my own conclusions.

And right there and then, I wasn't faced with a hated enemy, but with someone to be very cautious of, as chances and first impressions were, that she wasn't feeling quite as neutral about me.

Still, for whatever reason, she seemed content to only show her hostility in words. I assumed it had something to do with the 'deal for her release' the pirate had alluded to, and the fact that she probably wasn't looking to lose it by causing trouble.

It was the moment of relative peace that allowed me to divert my attention to the other thing I had made note of when waking up: the mention of eating. As I looked around, my eyes quickly hit a clay plate with five or six different tropical fruit from Stranglethorn piled on it, served in front of me. Though they weren't exactly fresh and in their prime, it still felt like quite the generous thing to grant to a prisoner, making me wonder just how much gold Morgan had promised the pirates for helping her take me to Stormwind City.

With no clue how long I had spent in the hold of the ship, all I knew about the passing of time was that my body was screaming for food, and gave me a reminder at the sight of it before me, in the form of having my hands shake and my head feel light, like I was completely drained of energy to do anything. That would explain why I had already stuffed myself with the first of the sweet and sour fruit before I even noticed the orc eying me somewhat jealously. There was another plate next to her, but it's contents were quite different. There was what looked to me like raw meat of some sort on it. I could only guess that she must've thought it some sort of an insult from the mostly-human crew of the ship to be served that while the elf beside her was given fruit. A few seconds after she'd noticed me looking back at her with my mouth still full, she looked away in a manner that communicated suppressed rage.

I'm not sure what I was thinking with my next move, perhaps the fact that it looked like I'd get to spend a good while chained to the same support structure as she was, but after looking a few times from her to my plate and back, I went ahead and slid the plate of fruit toward the orc along the floor, to show that I was willing to share if she wanted some. The act immediately caught her attention, but she obviously doubted my motives. Either that, or she was just plain confused as to why a night elf would be doing so in her benefit, regardless of the circumstances.

"What?" she asked and pretty much confirmed my assessment of her thoughts.

I gestured at the plate and her with an open hand, to show that I kept on offering to share the fruit with her. Then I picked up another one to start eating it and aimed a questioning look at her. The dismissive look on her face slowly melted away.

"You've gotta be kidding me. One of you high-and-mighty elves actually offering something besides a swift death to old Rhaine," she finally realized the nature of the situation with an amused smile on her face, "guess you do have enough brains to be thankful for getting your life saved. Here," she continued and pushed the meat plate toward me in turn, "you can have this insult of a meal the ignorant humans keep giving me day after day just because I'm green," she finished, then took the rest of the fruit for herself.

The grin she backed off with to enjoy the rest of the fruit seemed to suggest that she thought of the trade as a rude move that she had been happy to make against me. Like she was thinking 'surely the nature-loving elf woman wouldn't touch the raw meat' or something along those lines. Or that was at least the strong impression I got from the look of surprise that conquered her face next, upon seeing said hungry elf attacking the meat with just about the same enthusiasm as the fruit. Not that it tasted as good, but my sorry state had already driven me above worrying about the taste of anything edible I could get my hands on.

By the time I had eaten up the meat and my attention properly widened beyond the simpleminded desire to defeat my hunger, I noticed that the orc, this 'Rhaine' as she had called herself, was laughing at me.

"Okay, elf. I'll admit I didn't expect you to wolf it down like a starving animal. Guess there's always more for me to learn about the world. How about your name next?"

I stared at her silently, unsure if I wanted to tell her, even if I could find a way to do so. It turned out to be rather difficult for someone without the ability to speak, despite the seemingly dead simplicity that the act of telling one's name had once entailed.

"You've got a name, right?" Rhaine repeated her request and seemed to get more curious than angry at what must've seemed like arrogant ignoring of her question on my part.

For all intents and purposes, I still wasn't interested in getting into any trouble with her, so I came up with an idea to at least try and show her why I wasn't speaking.

I turned to face her and stretched the neckline of my shirt to show off the scar in the middle of my chest. Though unrelated, I thought it's position on my body might just give the right impression when I followed up with hand and face gestures that implied pain around the area between the scar and the lowest part of my throat, then covered my mouth with a hand and shook my head.

Rhaine tilted her head to the side in ever increasing curiosity.

"What are you trying to say?"

I started to feel somewhat frustrated at my diminished ability to communicate, but that in itself gave me an idea. I acted as if I was shouting at an invisible person somewhere past her right shoulder, trying my best to make it look like an angry howl, to contrast the lack of sound coming from my mouth so she'd notice it, then covered my mouth with a hand again and shook my head.

"Wait a minute," she seemed to get a grasp of the message, as her body language spoke of sparked interest and not a monotonous observation of something, "you're mute, aren't you? Lost your voice to one of your injuries, right?"

As I nodded to confirm her assessment, I felt like I was properly admitting it to myself for the first time, in the full context of the term 'mute'.

"Well I'll be damned," she concluded, then took a more amused tone again, "What are the odds? I finally meet some other denizen of Kalimdor here, on this blasted ship that's about as far away from there as can be, and then she turns out to be the one person on the planet who can't talk about it to help kill the time."

She kept laughing under her breath as she retreated what distance the chain binding her to the wooden support beam allowed.

"Always thought the spirits have a weird sense of humor," she concluded in a low voice that didn't seem to address anyone in particular and took a relaxed position on the floor.

As the orc became passive and seemingly uninterested in further exchange, I too pulled my chain as far as I could, something I hadn't realized I could do at all, and sat by the wall, right under the window with the bars. Perhaps it was instinct telling me to get distance to my fellow prisoner, or maybe I had in my mind from the start of the motion that I could hear the sea better that way, being at least a little closer to it. All I knew for sure was that I had managed to avoid conflict with the orc who had apparently been moved from a different location of detainment to the same where I was, so she could cure the disease that had been threatening my life, as unlike me, she seemed to have access to her powers. A shaman's, as I had gathered. With both of us being unarmed and unarmored, I might've been able to match her physically, should it have come to that, but with who knows what sort of elemental powers at her beck and call...

That's when the plan first spawned in my mind. It began from an idea, then grew into something more. I turned my head to look through the window and saw that it was almost night. We had been brought food as quite possibly the last thing of the day.

Yes, the idea might just work, I thought and closed my eyes to allow them to rest.

It was risky and dangerous, as there were factors I couldn't predict. But as for most anyone of my people, death in freedom was preferable to a life in submission or imprisonment. I hear that many of the other races of Azeroth sometimes use the death penalty as their ultimate form of punishment for crimes, but for someone expecting to live for several thousand years, the scales of elongated suffering against a quick end are balanced quite differently.

To this day, it is often debated that the sentencing of The Betrayer, one of the greatest offenders known to our race, to life imprisonment rather than death was in fact, not an act of mercy, but quite the opposite. Critics will point to how he was eventually set free to seek out a new path during the third war as something of an example of the advantages of remaining alive, while the other side of the neverending argument will remind you that our people were still enjoying immortality back when he was caged away, making his intended punishment quite literally infinite.

Another of the old druid's objective views that he had shared with me to decide for myself what I thought of it.

I leaned back and relaxed with every intention of letting myself fall asleep to the tune of the sea. I had made up my mind. The next day would mean death or freedom for me. And for best results, I'd need all the energy I could stash away from the sound of the sea and the food I'd been given.

I dreamed of the fire. Images of the exploding pillar of it, as well as the gruesome aftermath I had witnessed filled my dreams that night. I can only imagine Rhaine the shaman watching me stir in my sleep, making gestures at objects that weren't really there, trying to use my nonexistant voice to yell things. I guess there was some benefit to not having a voice then and there.

As has already been stated, it is that same nightmare that still haunts me today. It always ends at the point where I fall unconscious and seemingly lifeless on the beach, and though it is therefore not a very lengthy dream, by the time I wake up, it is always morning already. Or at least close enough to not allow me to fall asleep again the same night.

To my slight surprise, Rhaine was still sound asleep when I flinched out of my dream, back into the real world. After observing that there was really nothing new going on, I chose a random point on the line where the floor and the wall opposite to me met, aimed an empty stare there and waited.

Other than Rhaine waking up some time later, nothing worth noting really happened over the course of that day. The orc seemed uninterested to share her thoughts with someone whose responses were limited to little more than nodding and shaking one's head, so communication was pretty much nonexistent. For a good part of the day, she seemed to be excercizing some form of meditation, or at least that's what it looked like to me, as she certainly seemed to be communicating with someone somewhere by nothing but a focused look on her face.

The only other thing that got my interest in stable intervals was the window above me. I looked through it every now and then to see what time of day it was, as well as to gather what energy and morale I could get from the song of the sea.

The first sound of someone approaching the stairs to the hold was my cue to act. The moment of truth arriving on two feet at a steady pace, and I'd need to have everything ready by the time it would enter through the door.

I laid my fate on fortune's hands, made the short distance to the orc and punched her squarely in the face, an easier task than it sounds like, what with her sitting there with her eyes closed, doing her meditation again.

Needless to say, the shaman was beyond mere confusion when she recovered from the intentionally light hit and shifted her attention to her attacker.

"Wha...?" she had time to cough up before I proceeded to interrupt her with an open-handed, literal slap to the face.

My idea was to make her angry enough to hit me back, preferably a lot. Beyond that, everything would hang on timing and my luck in what sort of hits I'd end up suffering.

"Why, you...!"

The punch she landed on my belly wasn't holding anything back. That, or I had underestimated her strength. Either way, she knocked the wind out of me. I had barely enough time to hunch over from the pain when a kick to my shoulder threw me to the floor. And whatever was coming next, I'd have to voluntarily take it, too.

"You think I'd just let you practice your moves on me because you gave me some fruit?" the orc stormed at me.

I couldn't afford to take too many hits from her, so I made an effort to block the kick she aimed at me next with my forearms, an act that would've been much less painful had I had my bracers on. Following that, I wrestled myself back up to higher ground, so to speak, but being focused on that made me vulnerable to her next move: she went for a stranglehold on my neck.

That was about the best possible moment for the pirate woman from before to enter the room carrying our meager meals for the day. I was exactly where I had wanted to be: losing a fight against the orc in a fatal enough manner to force the pirate to intervene. She dropped the food plates and rushed to help me free myself from the orc's hold, then stepped in between us, facing the shaman.

"The hell are you doing? You want us to up the ransom for your release by causing more trouble?"

The orc aimed an intensive, wrathful stare at her. I only hoped she would be angry enough not to get in the way of my next move, the very thing I had set up for. With the pirate facing directly away from me with her full attention aimed at Rhaine, and with me being taller than the human woman, wrapping my chain around the front of her neck, then pulling it tight while using my own body as something solid to squeeze her against was almost dreadfully easy.

The pirate quickly learned exactly how strong a determined, reasonably fit, fully grown night elf was compared to a human of her roughly average build. I could feel her attempts to pull the strangling chain loose, but that was about all her struggling achieved. To the surprised orc observing the act, it probably looked like the human couldn't do anything at all.

It was only when I let her dead body slump to the floor that I fully realized who she was. The same pirate who had overseen my disarming and imprisonment. And sure enough, one of her keys fit the lock on the shackle around my wrist, allowing me to release myself.

As I rubbed my wrist, half to better feel it again, half just for the sake of being able to do so again, I looked back at Rhaine, who still hadn't gotten a word out since my true intentions behind our little match had been shown to her. I somewhat felt like I owed it to her to release her as well, but when I used the hand with the keys to gesture at her, the orc put on that same amused grin from before.

"Don't bother. My imprisoment will end soon enough as long as I don't risk it by going with you," she said. "Besides, I reckon you'll just get yourself brought back here before I'm even gone," she finished, sounding almost sarcastic about the last bit.

I was sort of relieved to be left alone to my task. After all, it had gotten rather personal, and I'd also have a better chance at stealth alone.

Much to my disappointment, I found that none of the pirate's keys could unlock the collar that stopped me from using my powers. Even so, my one opportunity at freedom had come, and I'd just have to try for it, even without my equipment or powers.

And at the end of the day, I had a pretty good guess as to exactly which evil genius held the keys to the collar. After looking through the window once more, making sure it was at least late evening, I headed for the door out of the hold.

It was time to give the gnome a lesson about nature. To remind her, that the only thing more dangerous than a predator on the hunt, was a wounded and starving predator cornered to fight for it's very survival.


	68. Predator

If the point of my imprisonment had been to break my will and kill the flames of revenge that drove me on since the night of fiery death, it had had only fleeting success at that. From thinking that my story had come to it's conclusion, I had risen back to a determined course, built up a new momentum to take me forward a mere dozen seconds after taking the pirate's life and unshackling myself.

Better yet, being forced to stay put for several days had given me a measure of control over the fire. It was no longer a chaotic mass spreading all over the place, making me similarly aggressive and reckless in the process. It had been condensed into a much smaller, focused thing. A pot of molten metal slowly bubbling at my core, patiently waiting for just the right moment to spill over the edge in just the right quantity whenever I made a move or reacted to something. And every time it did, the end result after giving off it's heat to fuel my actions, was a cooled clump of metal on top of the last one, granting me the power to reforge, rebuild myself from the ground up after having been destroyed by my enemies, every one of my choices casting into place another piece of solid, hard metal, the building blocks of my new self. Someone simple, unafraid and cold enough to push through everything my enemies could try without batting an eye along the way.

One could only hope that the boiling pot of liquid wrath wasn't too hot for it's own good, that I wasn't trying too hard, potentially making the finished structure an overly hardened, brittle one that would shatter upon it's first true test.

Before heading out through the door, I took a moment to calm my mind and close my eyes, listening for any signs of life in the main hall. I wasn't going to want to run into any hostiles before I'd get to my weapons. Contrary to what one might think, sensing living things on the move didn't become easier with the relative lack of a song of surrounding nature in the background. It became harder, as picking up movement was more a matter of hearing the change in the existing tune of any given environment, than about just knowing they were there, in the middle of silence. As if sneaking out to the ship equipped with nothing but the prisoner rags and the collar wasn't dangerous enough already.

I had to resort to opening the door slightly and peering through to see what was ahead.

Oil lamps emitting a dim, yellow glow were hung on the walls of the main hall, swinging from side to side a bit, along with the ship. Otherwise, the hall was dark and empty, with almost all of the doors along the way closed.

I opened the hold door a bit more, just enough to slip through, then carefully closed it behind me while tucking the set of keys I'd taken from the female pirate under the lip of my pants, so I'd have two free hands to use. Wearing clothes a couple sizes too small and tight for me had at least some use in that.

I snuck forward in a hunched stance, constantly peering for open doors from where someone might see me passing and listening for footsteps or anything else that spoke of people moving. While it was very much possible for me to overpower a human or a goblin I'd come across, an entire ship's crew worth of them would've been an impossible task, so I could not afford a general alert being given. Anyone noticing me would need to be silenced with utmost haste, before they had a chance to realize who or what I was. Not just because of a potential alarm they might give, but because fighting someone unarmed and unarmored, even with my advantage in size and physique against most of them, was a difficult and dangerous thing.

The thought of getting "the usual treatment" from the pirates if recaptured, as was most likely now that I had killed a crew member and gotten loose, was something I wanted to avoid at all costs, thus raising the stakes and straining my mind.

The suspense got my heart racing and accelerated my breathing, quickly making it the hardest part of the stalking to keep my head calm and my senses focused.

I reached the door with the crossed swords without incident, as my conscious choice to make my escape in the late evening had the majority of everyone on the ship sleeping in their cabins or the common room of the crew. The closest I had come to running into someone was passing by a partially closed door with loud snoring coming from inside.

I kept my guard up as I nervously fumbled with the set of keys, trying to find the one that would let me into the armory, since the door was locked, to no big surprise. Just then, I heard footsteps from the deck above, heading in the direction of the door down below to where I was relative to them. Holding back a rising panic, I shuffled through the remaining keys that I hadn't tried yet and gambled my chances by skipping a few and picking a random one. It fit.

I'm pretty sure I already heard someone coming down the stairs when I pulled the armory door open, slipped inside, then quickly shut it behind me.

Taking a moment to lean against the closed door behind me, I closed my eyes and calmed down my breathing again.

I had made it inside, and there was nobody in the room but me. I could claim my things back at last.

I went over to the chest where I knew I would find them. I thought it a mighty stroke of luck that the chest was not locked, despite the fact that it did have a lock on it. I could simply swing the lid open and find my leathers inside. And true enough, there they were.

Glad to finally be rid of the dirty prisoner rags, I think I tore the shirt a bit, pulling it off and casting it aside with such excited haste. The pants came off a bit easier.

Then it was time to get properly dressed and equipped again, starting with putting my shorts on, buckling my belt at my waist...and then I stopped still, as a realization hit me.

The keys that I had taken from the pirate earlier. They had been there, tucked under the waist of the prisoner pants. Hadn't they? I tried to remember. I had not needed them for opening the chest, as it had already been open. I backed away from it and began hastily scanning the floor from there toward the back wall of the room where I'd thrown the ragged linen pants, looking for where the keys must've fallen.

When I was already over a meter away from the chest and more than two from the door, my breathing halted with a gasp as I heard a metallic rustle and click from the door.

That's where I'd left the keys in my hurry to enter the room and avoid detection. In the lock, outside the door.

And now someone, probably the person I thought I had managed to elude was using them, turning the handle, making the hinges creak slightly as they began to open the door.

I was too far away to make an instant surprise attack upon the person coming in. Too far to reach into the chest and grab a weapon. And even if I could do that, I'd risk having the intruder to the room calling out an alarm upon seeing me on the loose and armed, dooming my escape for sure.

"Hello?" an unknown male voice called from the half-opened door.

With no voice, I couldn't fake a reply from the female pirate who lay dead in the hold, even if the thought did cross my mind. I had a mere split-second to decide on a course of action before the door would swing fully open and reveal me, kneeling on the floor at the back of the room.

I could only come up with one way to avoid an immediate alarm being given, and to possibly continue my escape. Morgan's way.

I sat down on the floor, facing the door and crossed my arms over my chest in an intentionally flimsy-looking attempt to cover myself, then put on my best 'scared and vulnerable' -look.

The door swung open to reveal who looked like your average human pirate. Simple clothes, the slightly darker-than-average tan that these men of the south seas tend to have, a red cloth belt and a headband that looked like an exact copy of the aforementioned in smaller scale, and a bush of curly brown hair spilling over the headband in all directions.

And of course, the most obvious thing to make a note of: a short sword at his hip, which his hand immediately reached for when he laid eyes on me. And while he kept the hand there, he seemed hesitant to draw the weapon and refrained from doing so in the end. A good sign from my unarmed and half-naked point of view.

"Well, what do we have here?" the man seemed to ponder his options out loud.

I did my best to influence him into thinking of me as a vulnerable, non-dangerous target. And sure enough, after scanning the room quickly with his eyes, he closed and locked the door behind him, pocketed the keys apparently completely ignorant of how they'd ended up on the door where he would've found them, and started slowly approaching me.

"Aren't you supposed to be locked up down below?"

I kept up the act, making sure to stay low on the floor and trying to look small, trying to avoid reminding him that I was actually taller than him.

The man stopped after crossing half the distance from the door to me. Then he crouched down and spoke to me like some child or animal companion who's trust he was trying to win.

"Are you scared? You really shouldn't be. I'm not allowed to damage the captain's precious, valuable cargo. So..." he said and stood up and started walking toward me again, "...as the common practice is in this part of the world, night elf, I'm gonna make you a trade."

My heart rate began to accelerate and my breathing started to become more rapid. The closer he came, the more I started to feel like this whole attraction business was a bad idea. At the end of the day, he was the only one carrying a weapon, and I couldn't just expect to be able to grab it and use it on him unless he was...severely distracted.

He crouched again in front of me, close enough for me to smell that he'd been drinking. All the better for my intenions, but increasing the risks if I made a wrong move at the wrong time, as well as making the whole of the act that much more distasteful.

"You don't want to see five of my crewmates coming here to take care of you together. And frankly, I don't want to share an exotic treat like you with them," he explained and reached out to touch my cheek with a hand.

It took quite a bit of self-restraint to allow him that and not respond aggressively like my instincts told me to. I couldn't afford to try anything too early and risk a far worse fate.

"I won't scream if you don't. I won't hurt you unless you make me. And if you can make it as nice as I think you can," he spoke and leaned his face right in front of mine to finish, "I'll even take you back to the hold before sunrise. Nobody will know about this little misadventure. You won't be punished for anything. You'll get away with something special here, something that prisoners don't usually get..." his voice grew more intent as he spoke, his hand sliding down my cheek and neck to my shoulder, making me shudder out of a suppressed desire to punch him.

When he next moved, I lost my nerve and rolled to the side along the floor, just in time to avoid getting kissed. I heard him draw his weapon, so I scrambled for the chest that contained mine, only to get tripped over forward as he grabbed my leg from behind, pulling me backwards along the floor just the crucial amount to stop me from reaching the contents of the chest, putting me under the threat of his weapon as I felt it placed on the back of my neck.

With his allowance, I slowly turned to face him, crossing my arms over my chest again as I did, retreating from his blade until I had reached a seated position with my back against the chest. Exactly where he had wanted to force me. He had figured out I wanted something from inside and reached over my shoulder to carefully and quietly shut the lid while keeping me staring at his blade from point-blank distance. Then he spoke to me again.

"Okay, no kissing on the mouth. I'll give you that one. But I can't have you spoil all the fun or try to run again, because if you've got nothing for me, I might as well call the others. Understand?"

I tried to look submissive. I had made a mistake and lost some ground. Now I couldn't afford to make another one, couldn't afford to lose his interest. I'd need to be willing to dangle the main prize a bit closer to his reach, but be careful not to end up actually giving it to him.

"Now..." he calmly set his weapon on the floor behind him, out of my reach but well within his, then put his hands on my shoulders, found my hands there, holding up my guard, grabbed them and started to pull, "...give me a reason not to call them."

My heart rate spiked and my breathing turned into little more than a series of short, hasty gasps for air as my whole being trembled from the monumental amount of effort it took to subdue my sense of self-preservation and allow him to pull apart my cover, pinning my hands against the chest behind me, wide apart on either side.

Powerless to stop his next action, which involved his face and pretty much the whole of my upper body - I couldn't tell exactly as I had already decided that feeling it was bad enough without keeping my eyes open to look at it too - I tried to find a silver lining in it all, and surprisingly enough, I found one.

As disgusting as the situation was, I really didn't stand to lose much in the long run as long as my belt was safely buckled up and I had my shorts on. Or his belt, for that matter. And by the time he'd try for either, he'd have to use his hands, releasing mine and giving me an opportunity to reach for a weapon from inside the chest. Until then, it was simply a matter of trying to keep a level head, clear of any aggressive, or worse yet, any further acceding thoughts which nature would eventually force. Quite the ultimate test of focusing one's perception inwards, as I can comment in retrospect.

And true to that idea, I imagined myself back in that small, dark pit in Ashenvale, with no way out and nothing to do about it but wait for the old druid to come lift me up, to wait for one or both of my hands to be released so I can end it, the motion I felt around me nothing but a cascade of autumn leaves floating down on and around me, brushing against me here, sticking for a bit there. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to feel repulsed of. Nothing to be aroused by, in any meaning of the term.

Still, as I struggled in my mind to keep my defensive instincts at bay for now, I couldn't shake the thought that it could all go horribly wrong in the end. What if he found a way to keep my hands tied without having to hold them? What he wasn't...preoccupied enough by the time I'd have to resort to violence, and he'd stop me? Just how far would I have to allow this to go before he would be?

My imaginary refuge shattered when I felt my right hand being let go of. It took me a split-second to realize it, slowly forcing my eyes half-open to se what the man was up to now, while carefully and painstakingly slowly trying to sneak my free hand in under the lid of the chest and reach for a weapon inside.

The nature of that motion changed to a barely restrained panic when he released my other hand as well, and following that, I felt him going for my belt buckle. My breathing came to a complete halt. I closed my eyes again and dove my hand into the chest as quickly as I dared, still having stealth on my mind, begging for forgiveness from Valen's ghost in my mind should this end badly, frantically feeling around for a weapon, a small knife, anything to help me, praying to Elune that that sliding motion at my hips wasn't my pants being pulled off.

The handle of my dagger.

One desperate move.

Then, silence, only filled by a feeling of warmth spreading across my body.

I opened my eyes and thanked the goddess that the warmth was merely the man's blood spilling all over me from his neck where my dagger was still stuck. Though things had gotten exactly as far as it had felt like, I had successfully stopped him from defiling me with anything other than the gaze of his now dying eyes, widened to their extreme as he tried desperately to draw one final breath.

It took me a moment of getting coated in his blood to fully register the situation, to step out of the mental shell I had put up and come to my senses again. When I did, my instinct immediately had me shove the pirate further away, then fold up my knees and tightly wrap my arms around them, as if to protect myself from something that I couldn't quite comprehend as not being a threat anymore.

I still shuddered and trembled, not from suppressing my instinctive feelings, but from releasing them. In the wake of their passing came a massive wave of relief as I finally started to understand that I had come out alive and untainted, washing away much of the lingering disgust over what had happened. Some remained though, so in my returning desire to complete my escape before it would be too late, I channeled the rest into more rage, adding to that bubbling pot of molten metal.

After calming myself down like that, I went for the prisoner rags I'd cast off in a corner one final time, using them to wipe off some of the blood that had spilt onto my skin, before heading back to the chest and slipping into my comfortable, familiar leathers at long last. All my belongings and weapons were there, from the vest and sword to the smaller pocket items I had had. All but one, anyway. The locator device was missing. Hardly surprising, I thought.

As I pulled my hood up to shroud the elven glow of my eyes, it would've been a big, fat lie to say that I simply wanted the keys to my collar and the means to track down the warlock back. Including what had just transpired, there was so much more I wanted to have a word about with Morgan Cherryspark. And though my voice was silenced thanks to her betrayal and it's consequences, my sword was more than capable of doing all the talking for me.

Making sure to actually keep the keys with me this time, as well as taking care to look both ways into the corridor outside before leaving the armory, I wondered how I'd find Morgan. It wasn't like I could just spend all night peeking into all the cabins left and right, hoping not to meet another pair of eyes still awake and open. And while a solid focus on listening for life might reveal to me which cabins were occupied and by how many people, I wasn't trained enough in the arts yet to be able to tell a human from a goblin or a gnome. To my senses, only someone strongly in tune with nature, like another druid, would be audible as someone noticably more powerful and vibrant. I stood there for a little bit, trying to come up with something, when one of the oil lamps on the wall died out, sending out a small puff of smoke that reached my nose, giving me an idea.

I remembered Mr White's advice on more ways to see than one's eyes, just like I had done before, and just like I had found that time and several others, the lack of being in my bestial shape did not make me any less the predator capable of tracking her prey by following the scent. Combining that with what I knew about my target, or my mark, as Valen would've put it in his terminology of the trade, I quickly came to the conclusion that I would find the gnome in the cabin that had the strongest smell of the various, overly sweet perfumes and other such things that the gnome's nearly compulsive vice of vanity forced her to wear.

With that in mind, the predator in the guise of an elf set out to prowl around, looking for that scent. I picked one up soon enough, but with my tracking not being a perfectly precise art, that first trail only led me into a cabin occupied by a sleeping pirate, the front of his shirt stained in a liquid that smelled the same as his breath: whatever he had had before bed, a whole bunch of something very strongly fermented and flavoured. Despite the stench being primarily unpleasant, it made my stomach remind me of how I was still starving for food, which I hardly had time to go steal right then, as much as I would've wanted to. Freedom was more important.

My second try led me into a small cabin that immediately looked the part. I had to wonder what the conventional purpose of the large dressing table on the right-hand wall was on a pirate ship, what with the big round mirror covering the wall behind it and the various scents and colours of a woman's vanity bottled and lined up on the table, next to an open book that looked like a journal, recently added to, the inkwell still open next to it.

Then again, a lot of those items were probably merely the belongings of the person sleeping soundly in the bed across the room from the table. The very gnome I was looking for. After all that I had endured, something about the very sight of her was enough to stir the the superheated pot of liquid inside me, giving it a feeling of something dangerous lurking beneath the surface, ready to strike at a moment's notice.

I noticed a window on the back wall of the room, large enough for me to fit through as a bird, and before I knew it, I had picked up the chair from in front of the table and lodged it under the door handle, contemplating a fitting punishment that I could exact in the amount of time I'd have between potentially getting heard and being forced the flee through the window to elude capture.

A blade in the night would be too quick and simple - I wanted her to know who did it and why. Poison might achieve what I was looking for, and I even knew how to make some from the herbal ingredients I carried in my bag, but then I remembered what Valen had said about SI:7 agents being immune to their own concoctions, and possibly some others as well, so I discarded the idea.

And at any rate, my first priority was to get rid of the collar, drawing my attention to the table in search of something that would help me do so. On that second look, I spotted the locator device on the table. The flashing light on it had grown a fair bit faster since the last time I had held it in my hand.

As I slipped it into my pocket, a few words jumped out at me from the journal-looking book on the table. I didn't have time to stop and read everything with my impaired ability to read, but I put forth the effort to pick up a few interesting bits off that last entry.

_'...Blackrock Mountain...from what the warlock told me...correct heading anyway...two birds with one stone...cash them both in...she's in on it...what remains of Felwood's corruption...a service to the alliance...'_

Even if it wasn't much, and even then I was left with a feeling that I had slightly misread something, it seemed that Morgan's notes might just provide some insight on my nemesis' intentions and heading. And since asking her wasn't exactly an option, especially since I had no intention of allowing her to see the next sunrise, the journal would be my best bet at studying what she knew, or thought she did, so I stole it.

There were a few lockpicks as well, something I might want to try my hand at on a later date, along with one other object that also looked like it was for unlocking something, but seemed far more specialized and complex. To my delight and relief, it turned out to be the key to the collar.

Being able to snap it open and peel off those sharp bits that had been dug into my neck was the most liberating feeling I'd had yet. More so than releasing myself from the shackles down below or wearing my own outfit again. I closed my eyes and took a long breath through the nose while I called upon nature's aid to take care of the tiny punctures the collar had left behind on my neck. All just to savour the fact that I could do so again. I felt a strong urge to take it a step further and assume my feline form, but a sound that the gnome made, stirring in her sleep for a bit, returned me to ground level where I had more pressing matters to attend to.

Having achieved everything but revenge, my full attention shifted back to sleeping Morgan. And then I realized I was still holding the collar, ready for use as soon as it would snap around someone else's neck.

The wicked smile that rose to my lips was more instinct than conscious choice.

I carefully pulled away the blanket she was sleeping under, then reached over, did a quick eye-measuring of the collar against her neck, and finally, snapped it on her.

Besides flinching awake from the collar's sharp bits piercing the skin of her neck, Morgan's immediate reaction was to aim both of her palms at me in a half-blind spell for warding off attackers, but all she ended up doing was getting a taste of her own device in the form of a jolt from the collar, which seemed to paralyze both of her arms for at least a bit.

"You!" she hissed at me under her breath after finally taking a look at who threatened her, while still trying to regain composure after the shock.

Unable to trade verbal insults with her and not in the mood to give her the slightest chance to pull another trick of some sort, I promptly took a one-handed grip of the collar around her neck and put all the strength of my right arm and most of my upper body to flinging the gnome at the mirror and table across the small room.

Wood splintered and the mirror shattered as the living, purple-haired projectile hit it's target with enough force to destroy most of it.

I thought I heard some painful whimpering from the pile of wood splinters, mirror shards and broken and scattered vanity items that had been left behind by the impact, as I slowly approached it after letting the dust settle for a few seconds. Morgan was laying there, some fresh cuts and bruises on her face, holding her right shoulder with her left hand. Said joint looked twisted, somehow, like it had gotten dislocated. Or maybe the whole arm had had it's bones shattered. There was fear visible on her face. And this time it was genuine.

"W-w-wait!" she pleaded me, "please, I can help you! I can fight the warlock with you! I know what he's up to! I can tell you..."

Her pleading was cut off as I grabbed her by the collar again, this time with my left hand, causing her more pain from her obviously damaged arm as I lifted her up and slammed her back against the wall. Then I used my right hand to reach for my sword's handle in an overly large and elaborate motion, just to make sure she would see me do it.

"I'll give you my word! I'll give you anything...all the money you..." she stopped two words too late.

Her panic had turned her wordplay against her. She had made the mistake of offering money to the very person whom she had sold out. As I released my hand from the handle of my sword, leaving it sheathed, I almost hoped she'd be able to see the world through my eyes right then. That she would see the red mist blur my vision and cloud my mind, removing all doubt and restraint over my next action, sealing her fate. Terror filled her gnomish eyes to the brim as they reflected the green glow of my shapeshifting.

If the shattering of the mirror and the table hadn't woken up half the crew, Morgan Cherryspark's continuous, ear-splitting screaming at the breaking point of her lungs surely did.

I was already flying outside the ship, observing a visible coastline nearby, by the time the door to the cabin would finally get broken down by the pirates.

As I dove down to swim ashore in the shape of a fish, I thought of the scene the pirates would find inside. Not the work of an assassin, but something else, something wilder. The predator's bloody pawprints still fresh on the floor, where they lead from the pool of blood to the open window.

I made it ashore and reverted back into an elf, thinking of how somewhere in the destroyed room they'd find the collar, unbroken, unopened, but never the less nowhere near the corpse of it's last wearer.

It wasn't just the foul stench that made me cough and gag violently out of utter disgust on the beach I had made it to. It was knowledge of the fact that there wasn't much of a corpse for the pirates to find in the room. Instead, they'd find a carcass, like carrion the predator had left for the scavengers of nature.

The remaining half of it, anyway.


	69. Grand Scheme of Things

Rhaine, the imprisoned orc had been right about one thing. The pirate ship had indeed taken me about as far away from Kalimdor, my home and origin, as I could get. Literally and otherwise. With my mate murdered and my mind maimed, my terrible vengeance against the greedy, scheming traitor who had allowed it all to happen did not make me feel satisfied or victorious. Right then, it was making me feel thoroughly disgusted, sick and nauseous to the core.

Even if my swimming escape had washed away a lot of the blood I had gotten all over myself, the revolting sensation inside me was inescapable, causing my body to attempt to forcibly expel it.

That wasn't the worst part, however. The worst part was the lack of guilt. The fact that most of my fragile, unbalanced mind saw no wrong in what I had done. It only recognized that I had succesfully freed myself from unjust captivity, which could've had devastating results on both my mind and body in the long run, and that I had provided myself with more sustenance, which I had been in desperate need of. And now it was telling me to close my eyes and will my body into adapting to this new kind of...behaviour.

It was only the voice of my heart, significantly weakened as of late, that was quietly weeping in some forgotten corner of my soul. Mourning and pitying my failure to avoid becoming the merciless beast that had reared it's head back in Tanaris, upon my first taste of blood. And as if to further accentuate that point, when my mind eventually won over my body and the feeling of repulsion subsided, the next thing I knew, I caught myself licking some of the remaining, half-dried blood off of my right hand, like the feline would lick it's paws after sinking them into something tasty. Like my physical form, elf or panther, made no difference anymore. The thin, separating line having become increasingly blurred until it had turned almost invisible a few miles back down the road.

I put my hands on the sides of my head and tried to hold it together against the turmoil within.

What was I doing?

Where was I going?

What the hell was happening to me?!

No. Wrong approach. One question at a time, or the chaotic flood might drive me even more insane than I already was.

I was on my way to avenge Valen's death and the people who were killed fifteen years ago in Auberdine.

I was...

I raised my eyes to look around and try to identify where I was.

Following the coastline to one direction, there were copper-colored mountains rising off the beach, as far as I could see. Due the opposite way, the same mountains grew taller and darkened into volcanic ash and burnt gravel. I remembered mentions of Blackrock Mountain from Morgan's journal. From my history lessons, I knew what the place was, and what it supposedly looked like. And suddenly, a number of things locked into place, completing a greater image.

The warlock had presumably been an orc in some previous life, before his undeath. He had spoken of night elves as a people he had yet to study properly, having 'been told things' about us, as he had phrased it. One of the few ways an orc would not have known about us was if he had already died before the third war, perhaps in a previous one. And Blackrock Mountain had plenty to do with the previous one, while night elves did not. The red flashing light on the locator agreed with the approximate distance of what I was guessing at.

It seemed that I was dealing with some fallen warlock of the old horde, presumably reanimated with the coming of the undead scourge and it's agents in the eastern kingdoms, then having undergone something akin to the forsaken in Lordaeron, perhaps even joining with them for a bit, which would explain his choice of ally. And yet, in the end he had chosen to pursue the mysterious, shadowy orbs from Felwood. One could only wonder what exactly was their purpose, if finding it out had managed to even turn his forsaken ally against him. And what had been the point of attacking Auberdine if he didn't even know much about us?

At any rate, it seemed that the ship had not been headed to Stormwind City. Not by the simple route, at any rate. From what I could tell, I had ended up on the eastern coast of the volcanic valley called the Burning Steppes. Combining that with what little else I had gathered from Morgan's notes, she had apparently been told something about the warlock's heading, she had tracked him with the locator, perhaps something she had had in mind when selling the other device to him in the first place. And by all the signs of it, she had planned to capture him along with me and 'cash us both in' at Stormwind, as it were. I'd need to study the journal further.

But first, my third question. To which I really had no answer to. I thought of the green gem in my bag, but withdrew the idea. The old druid had been kind to me all my life. I didn't want to contact him to disappoint him with my failures and injuries. I couldn't let him know that his little girl was no longer innocent in any meaning of the word. My heart was already broken to a thousand little charred pieces and that's as far as I would let the damage spread. All that remained was to seek out the warlock, give it my all to fulfill Valen's promise or die trying. Either way, I would disappear from the face of Azeroth afterwards, as to not burden anyone else with my fate. One way or another, I thought as I moved my hand to the handle of my dagger, I would be nobody's shame or burden after that.

There was something truly liberating about casting away one's fear of death, replacing it with inevitability instead. A whole new world free of most consequences and effects, where anything was allowed as long as I made it small and discreet enough not to reach the ears and lives of those who had called me friend. The only ones passing judgment on me were Elune herself, and perhaps Valen, watching me from the stars.

The thought of him diverted my eyes to the sea. From what I knew of Azeroth's geography, there would be no more water between where I was and where I was headed. This would be my last chance to bathe, to end my journey the same way it had begun: from the embrace of the sea to one more fiery nightmare.

I left my weapons and pocket items on the beach, but kept all my clothes on as I entered the water. Then I removed them one article at a time, trying to wash off some of the blood from each piece and setting them to dry up on the beach before it was time to move on to washing my body.

Accepting the idea that this could very well be the last time I would ever bathe, I took my time. The red color of blood came off my skin rather easily in the cool seawater, but soon as I closed my eyes for a bit, the stains were there again, proving far more difficult, if not impossible, to scrub off my mind and soul than my body. Opening my eyes made them vanish from sight once more, but in this instance, out of sight did not equal out of mind.

A bit later, I had started to feel the fatigue that had accumulated since my escape from the ship's hold had begun. I relaxed and allowed myself to be afloat for a bit, completely unresisting of whereever the flow of the water would take me. Closing my eyes, I listened to the song of the sea and comforted myself with the thought that, even here, at the far side of the world, the song was always the same one. The sad, distant tune that Valen was playing on his flute, somewhere past the visible horizon. I let my mind and heart wander, released them onto a little adventure of their own, heading toward the sound.

In my mind, I caught him. In my mind, it wasn't just the sea embracing me anymore, it was him. And it wasn't just the current of the water that I gave into, following it, allowing it, obeying it, granting it free reign over my emotions and actions.

When I returned ashore a little later, I did so with a body that was demanding rest and an aching heart, the pain underneath the scar on my chest making physical pain out of just how much I already missed him, giving me no other way out than to channel the pain into more fury, swearing an ever more terrible vengeance on the one who had taken him from me. With all my clothes still laid out to dry, I chose to lay down and sleep in the shape of a panther, the fur granting some protection from the cold sea wind and the very act of assuming that form a reminder of how I was a prisoner no longer, hoping that the nightmares would leave me in peace for just that one night.

One can always hope. I guess I would've been quite surprised had my wish actually been granted.

It was already the next afternoon when I woke up, feeling sick and nauseous under the uncomfortably warm, bright sun. I chalked it up to what I had done the past night, and maybe dehydration from not having had much anything to drink since forever. Perhaps even just a generic illness of the spirit, brought about by all my hardships, thorough enough to physically manifest. At least the sun had dried up my clothes, so I could simply get up, get dressed and get going without having to sit around waiting.

There was still Morgan's journal to inspect, but right then and there, I didn't have the will or the focus to get on it. After all, it would take a fair bit of effort to read it with my damaged mind.

Taking on my feline form again to make for lighter, easier travelling, I headed for the dark mountains, and luckily enough, quickly found a path that looked man-made, leading up to the mountains. An easier path to where I was headed. And if I was guessing right, I'd have a chance to get some last minute drinks and proper food before heading to my final destination.

Despite the smooth path, the climb felt both steep and taxing with next to no shade from the sun, and even less the higher I made it. The ground under my paws turning into volcanic ash didn't help forget about the heat, either. The worst part was, that the twisting and curving path, on a constant search for the best way to go amidst the rocks and cliffs, had a deceptive nature to it. If one were to look back downward, then one's progress vertically and towards the primary heading seemed demoralizingly small in comparison to the effort it had taken, what with the path having taken so many twists and turns along the way.

Eventually, I made it to a small pass into a larger, flatter area filled by what looked like a warcamp of some sort, built and run by humans. The armored soldier who was apparently supposed to watch the pass was sleeping in the evening sun, leaning against a sign that seemed like a bad pun of fate.

'Morgan's Vigil' it said, along with some smaller lettering that not only seemed less important, but was also largely blocked from view by the sleeping soldier's head.

I walked into the place somewhat cautiously, as I pretty much immediately identified it as a highly militaristic encampment made up almost exclusively by humans. On the right, there was a large, open area with a row of wooden dummies at the far edge, a whole bunch of arrows sticking from their battered and sliced forms. Most of the open area was full of tracks made by and as well as horse, the creatures the humans preferred to use as war mounts. I had not seen many of them as they were not a common sight in Kalimdor, let alone the dense forests I hailed from. The saber cats favoured by night elves were both agile enough to take advantage of a forest battlefield, as well as capable of effectively hiding in it's shadows just like the riders. Overall, the open area had the look of a training ground about it, and the pair of humans sparring with swords and shields, not too far away from one of the dummies, confirmed my assessment.

Directly ahead, there were two buildings. One that, by it's fortified structure and design, looked like a barracks, while the other was much simpler, flatter, and made of mainly wood, as opposed to the taller, brick structure next to it. I guessed it to be a tavern, or at least some sort of establishment of rest and relaxation for the local garrison. Still having thirst and a creeping hunger on my mind, I headed for said building.

On the left, there was a clear, wide view into the volcanic valley. A steep downhill path lead down into it from the encampment, it's well-guarded starting point placed between heavy wooden barricades and some of those mechanical artillery devices I remembered seeing near Ironforge as well.

As I travelled right through the middle of the camp, turning into an elf along the way, then keeping my head down and my hood up, I wondered how much attention I'd end up attracting in such a place. Even if I was headed into a tavern, I wasn't really looking to try and socialize with strangers with my diminished ability to do so, especially with the already significant likelyhood that a shapeshifting night elf woman might raise some suspicions by being in such a place all on her own.

Intent on keeping my face shrouded, I bumped into someone in the doorway to the tavern, by complete accident of not paying enough attention.

"Pardon me," a very strange male voice apologized to me in a manner which communicated that he was in a hurry.

I turned to look at the back of the stranger as he walked off without further words, and to be quite honest, I'm not entirely sure what I saw. He was a large creature, definitely not a human, as his voice had also suggested. Pretty much his entire form was hidden from sight by what looked like some sort of a black robe or surcoat from behind, and a round hat in the shape of a flat cone. On his right shoulder he had a long stick with something small hanging off the end. The way he carried it made me think of a fisherman carrying their fishing pole, but this one had no line on it. Just that small, round object. His left arm was wrapped around a wooden keg, which had some letters carved into the bottom of it, their positioning suggesting that it was perhaps the name of the keg's owner, rather than it's contents, as that would've surely been written on it's side or the lid.

But then again, 'Nehc' was not a name in any culture I'd ever heard of. Either I was wrong, or my mind hadn't been given enough time to read it correctly from the short glimpse that I'd been given.

By the time I noticed the gold coin he must've dropped on the doorstep when bumping into me, it was a little too late to run after him to try and give it back. Besides, as I came to realize while picking it up, I'd probably need it anyway, as the humans weren't going to just hand me a meal for free in such a place. I headed inside with the strangest feeling that, I had been a lucky recipient, gotten a fleeting moment of fame in some grand scheme of things far above myself.

Getting something to eat and drink in the somewhat noisy tavern turned out to be as simple as finding a nice, lone, candle-illuminated table in the corner of the room and handing out the coin to the busty, simply dressed, and rather worn-looking barmaid that came over to meet the place's latest customer. To point what I wanted, I nodded my head toward what another patron was having nearby. Not that I could actually see all that clearly what it was, but he had a large mug of something liquid and a plate with a warm meal on it, which is all the detail that I really cared about after what I'd been putting in my mouth lately.

After sitting there for a bit, I figured it would be as good a time as any to try and study Morgan's journal some more. After setting the book on the table before me, I pondered for a bit how I could effectively catch on any important things and not waste my limited energy and capability on a bunch of techical nonsense about her latest inventions that I really didn't need to know about. I ended up shuffling backwards to the earliest point where I'd find a familiar word, such as my own name, as that should be something easily identifiable, even for my mind, and it might just also be the chronological point where I'd met the gnome and we had made our enemies and plans known to her.

What I ended up coming across was enough to make me doubt whether my escape from the ship had really all been some surreal nightmare, and that I was actually still chained down in the hold. It almost made me hope so.

_'...Cailea Evergreen was her name, according to agent Moonscar. I do hope they didn't connect my slip-up on the tram about having been stationed in Kalimdor a few years back with that stolen orb they spoke of..._

_...almost made a mistake when I showed her my pool. Had she not liked it and left before me, she might've found the orb in my study. Wouldn't want a druid to find out that I'm the one who took it on my way out of Kalimdor..._

_...all adds up too well. First they talk about the orb, then they describe my forsaken contact in detail...surely they know more than they're letting me on. And then this girl he's got with her..._

_...checked for her background from my old records. I know the attack happened, because Moonscar was there too, but this can't be right..._

_...casualty report signed by General Feathermoon. Bah. I've been at this long enough to know when documents have been tampered with to hide something, even if the signature looks genuine. And it looks a little too perfect for a forged document. Hmph, maybe this is something the elves have also been practicing for ten millennia. According to this, an elven couple by the name Evergreen were lost in the attack, then buried next to their only kin. A young daughter who died during the third war, some seven years earlier.'_


	70. Cradle of Nightmares

You often hear people talking and complaining about how certain things always tend to happen to them, being unhappy about what seems like a self-fulfilling rule that fate has placed on their lives. There seemed to be one about my life too. It stated that, should I ever think to myself that things couldn't possibly get any more desperate, uncertain and generally worse than they are, I will be proven wrong within a day or two. First I survived the fire at the beach in Stranglethorn, only to be promptly captured and put in a position where dying had seemed like the easier way out. Then I get a lucky break and escape my shackles, only to end up nearly losing all dignity and virtue to a nameless pirate, then end up succumbing fully to the bloodthirst of the beast when confronted with Morgan. And now I was staring at a piece of text flat out stating that, I am apparently not who I thought I was. The downright funny part about it all was, that I had already thought to myself again, 'how bad could it get?' leaving just the question of what was going to go wrong next.

Now of course, I should've been in agreement with Morgan, the writer of the text, that such a document must've been a fake with my existence being living proof of that, because no matter what it suggested, it was absolute fact that someone somewhere had given birth to me. My childhood nightmare has painted a very precise image in my mind, of living in Auberdine with my parents and the rest of the townsfolk.

And yet, I couldn't deny that it wasn't the first time something similar had been suggested to me.

Of course I had written off the grave the warlock had shown me amidst Valen's memory of Auberdine as an illusion meant to scare me, just like Millie had reassured me. Of course the confusing and eerie child from a few of my dreams was just a dream, even if she had said something about already being dead, which seemed to go along with this new information in some, strange, intangible way. But what troubled me the most was the dream I had had in Duskwood. The one where my mother had scolded me for going through the cemetery, as if there was danger in me going there. Or perhaps something I wasn't meant to find? The impossible grave the warlock had shown me, that's existence Morgan's notes seemed to support?

Up until that point, all those things had been nothing but dreams and visions. Nightmares with no organized purpose, their faint connections nothing but an indication of the fact that they all went back to Auberdine and my mind, which had been balancing on the verge of insanity ever since I had watched everything burn down a second time over. And now, all of a sudden, the dream had spilled into the real world, taken shape on the pages of the book that was resting on the table before me as surely as the candle next to it.

It was strangely familiar to feel the world get displaced just a tiny bit from where it was really supposed to be. Just enough to make a crucial, visible difference if you look hard enough. I had been there before, looking back at my own tracks, suddenly finding that the path back no longer lead to the place where I had come from. I could see the turns and curves I had taken to get to where I was right at that moment, but tracing my steps far enough only had them turn into a blur. A black fog hiding the truth, as it danced in a circle around a red glowing thing, singing a familiar song about shattered souls and burned hearts in the voice of a little girl. The borders of what was real and what I was imagining were fading before my eyes and ears, momentarily turning my behaviour into paranoid, quick glances at the edges of my vision, until some part of my mind finally got a grip of my disintegrating sanity at the last possible moment and put through an order for my body to close the book. Having the brown leather cover hide the words from sight helped a little bit, but not enough to stop me from staring ahead with frozen eyes, afraid of what mental images would flash across my mind if I let my eyelids close for even just a short moment.

My meal had been brought to me somewhere in between my deep thoughts and illusionary fears. I hadn't noticed it until the scent of food reached my nose. It started a conflict between two parts of my mind, one of which recognized my need for nourishment, while the other reminded me of the unpleasantries of my last meal, making me nauseous just thinking about eating. In short, the food was better than almost anything I'd tasted since Thoraim's excellent cooking, but I was too busy focusing on actively swallowing and keeping it in to enjoy it much. As if that wasn't enough, the decently large portion, as you would expect from a place catering mainly to hard-working soldiers, left me feeling like I could still use some more. Quite a contradiction, considering that I spent a good ten or fifteen minutes after the meal fighting back the urge to throw up and hoping that the hood over my head would hide my indisposition and save me from any misplaced pity or opportunistic humiliation from the humans occupying one of the larger, long tables in the room.

All I know is that they never made an attempt at either, whether or not they had seen a chance to. And I decided to keep it that way by leaving as soon as I felt well enough to get on the move again.

Dark clouds of brimstone and volcanic gases all but hid the sky from view in the Burning Steppes, but even my crippled brain still had enough going on in it to figure out roughly how old the day had grown. There weren't that many hours left.

Then again, I thought and looked up again, what did it really matter when I could barely see the moon or the sun anyways? I still had enough energy in me to travel a little further, and if my next night was to be my last, I'd rather spend it out in the wilderness than within the barricades of a human encampment made of stone, steel and wood long since severed from the land that had once grown it. Even if said wilderness was not exactly a glade of greenery and humid air. At least my darkened outfit and black fur would help camouflage myself, night or not.

Guided by the red, flashing light of the locator device, I headed outside and down the path into the valley.

As it turned out, there was more life toward the bottom of the descent from Morgan's Vigil than one would've thought by a quick glance at the black mountains and glowing lava here and there. All sorts of reptiles from lizards and simple snakes to small dragon fledglings were quite numerous in the region, as the combination of hearing the life in them and turning my head to see what made the sound had me observe. There were a number of other creatures as well, which, from their number and size I figured to be insects. Plantlife was largely absent though, with only the odd firebloom here and mostly dried up shrub there, making the overall sound of the landscape a strange vacuum devoid of a continuous background noise. In turn, that made the present but scattered wildlife an unarranged, unpredictable thing, approaching from and disappearing to random directions at random times. And given the state of my mind at the time, it all played together to create an illusion of mysterious, hidden forces lashing out, trying to catch me off guard and ambush me at irregular, chaotic intervals. If I had been a bit more stably on the ground with my thoughts, I might've been able to find some measure of peace amongst even such a strange kind of local life, but with things as they were, no such thing was granted to me. Instead, the environment kept me on my toes, nervously looking around for any threats that might turn out to be real and not just traces of my crumbling sanity, like the dark silhouette of the dream child, who I thought I saw standing or dancing here and there, only to find that she had disappeared, voice and all, if I looked again.

It was only when my body gave up when I laid down to rest. I had worn myself out for the day, pushed my physical fitness and endurance as far as I could, hoping that there wouldn't be enough energy left for my mind to torment itself with, allowing for an easier time falling asleep. And maybe even hoping that the exhaustion would make my sleep deep enough to be out of the nightmare's reach.

Whether that was my mistake, or the fact that I continued to exhaust myself by making an attempt to read Morgan's journal further, as reading with all it's difficulties was quite taxing for my mind in it's maimed state, I should've probably known that it all would only make the nightmare worse, leaving me with even less with which to fight it or try to wake up from it, the voices and sounds from outside my mind and body spilling over into the already horrible dream of the night Valen died. The shadow was there as well, standing at the edge of my vision, the silhouette of her small form ominously observing the circle of fire come together and explode, doing nothing to help me drag myself back over to Valen. Calmly watching as we traded our last words, only making an approach when I started to get paralyzed and knocked out by the freezing pain in my chest, leaning down toward my face as I lay helpless on the sand, the elven glow of her eyes piercing the shadows covering her face as she spoke.

"Don't be afraid," her cold whisper of a voice said, startling me awake from the dream.

I woke up to strange sounds coming from all around me. People surrounding me, preparing to ambush me from somewhere beyond the edges of my vision. Then they appeared from four directions. Every one of them was me, wearing my armour, wielding my dagger. And every one of them looked dangerous, a vicious grin staring at me from under their hoods. I had no chance. I was struck down and stabbed a few dozen times within a much smaller number of seconds.

Then I woke up for real, the burning pain from the wounds I had sustained in the second dream lingering over me for a moment. I knew it was for real this time, because my screaming lost it's sound, turning into a panicked wheeze of outgoing breath.

A few minutes later, when I managed to stop myself from shaking all over, I checked the tracking device to confirm how close I was, stood up, started walking, and began to try and force at least some amount of focus and serenity into my mind. Even if I had little left to lose, my destination was less than a half day's walk away, and being already overcome by fears was the worst possible way to walk into my final confrontation with my nemesis. I aimed my thoughts forward, comforted myself in a vacuum devoid of any ideas except that it would all be over soon, one way or another. No more worrying about what I'd left behind, because it probably wouldn't have time to catch up to me anyways. No more thinking about what was ahead, except the weight of my sword, the grip I would use to hold it, and my best moves to pull off with it when the time was right.

Blackrock mountain came into view a few hours later. The colossal, obsidian formation was so absurdly big and it's top clouded in the fog above, that I would've probably written off the whole things as just another of my hallucinations, had I not known from reading about it that it was actually real. Even so, some part of my mind kept insisting with increasing intensity, that it couldn't possibly be that big, as the mountain drew steadily closer and the ash and stone beneath my feet started to become warmer.

As I reached a large stone bridge at the base of the humongous mountain, the other end of which lead into a massive steel door carved into the rock wall of the mountain, I stood still for a while, contemplating the visually accentuated insignificance of my own existence next to the size of the world and all it's peoples, my mind once again found some peace and comfort in the idea that my plausible defeat and painful demise would be just as insignificant to the world. Even better, the locator device indicated that my target was in fact, not inside the mountain, but somewhere just a little past it, just a bit around it. And sure enough, my eyes spied a smaller dirt path leading around the lake of lava that the bridge was built to cross, the trail leading upwards into an ascent past the left side of the mountain. It seemed that the final act of my journey would take place under the open skies after all. Just the right bit of confidence to give me one last nudge.

I put away the locator into my pocket for what I thought to be the last time and headed out to follow the smaller path.

The path started out as a downhill road curving to the right, before turning into a fairly steep ascent of stone steps, leading toward a narrow pass between Blackrock mountain and another one right next to it, to the left.

It was around then that I started to feel this strange, hostile presence. Not quite the warlock's aura of fear that I'd felt before, but not too far off, either. What's more, it was as though I'd been within it's sphere of influence for a while already, and was simply now reaching a close enough proximity to become consciously aware of it. And with the hallucinations and little scares all around me intensifying, everything pointed toward the next valley beyond the narrow pass containing something immensely far-reaching and powerful, the unknown source of many of my psychic distractions lately, and perhaps more.

I could just about count the number of stone steps leading through the narrow pass to the top, where something was glowing a faint red within a larger space of some kind. Around fifty, I'd say.

The very air around me seemed to become heavier at about forty steps from the top.

At some thirty steps to go, I seemed to reach a point where all the remaining sounds of life turned into utter cacophony due to the effects of whatever was up at the top.

Twenty steps left, I had to start consciously shutting out the noise, which was growing intense enough to give me a little headache and a paranoid feeling of being watched and followed with it's sheer volume and discord.

Just ten steps to go, and the warlock's familiar aura started to creep in, telling me exactly how close I was. I stopped for a few moments to breathe in deep, trying to center my focus and fight the feeling of my muscles already tensing up.

Putting together all the facts I had for one final time, I tried to make a few quick guesses as to what I'd find up there, what the source of all that chaotic influence was. Everything seemed to revolve around those shadowy orbs from Felwood, which had caused plenty of misery to anyone barring the warlock's way, or meddling in the plans of Morgan Cherryspark who, as it had turned out, had been in possession of the last orb she stole from Moonglade from the start. Her notes had only vague mentions she'd been able to get from the warlock, while selling us out to him, about the orbs having something to do with the source of Felwood's corruption or something to that effect. A general direction that the theories and stories of the late Mythos Earthpaw seemed to support. And yet, if the orbs were merely magical trinkets for spreading demonic corruption, the warlock had certainly gone to quite some lengths to obtain them, not to mention bringing them to one of the few places on Azeroth where there wasn't much to corrupt in the first place.

There had to be more to it.

What had the warlock himself said again, that fiery night on the beach? Something about receiving his reward? But...that implied the involvement of some other person or entity, something more powerful than him. It wasn't a pleasant thought to explore at the time, but then, I had left all pleasantness behind a good while ago. All that remained was to end this little tale one way or another, no matter what awaited me past the next corner.

If there was one thing that might just work in my favour, it was the fact that, by all accounts, I was supposed to be dead on that beach as far as my enemy knew. The fact that he hadn't bothered with destroying, shutting off or discarding the locator device seemed to support that assessment.

And perhaps the element of surprise was all I really needed on my side, considering the style of operating and fighting that I'd been taught over my journey, which was now coming to it's close, as I took a few sneaking steps to the top of the stony steps and observed what I was up against.

I couldn't rightfully tell if it was the heat of the lava lake taking up most of the roughly circular dead-end valley opening up before me, or the chaotic influence at it's strongest at the center of it that caused the very air to distort and ripple before my eyes. A single path like a land bridge across the lava lead to a round island in the middle of this cradle of nightmares and illusions. There, amidst a circle of stone pillars some ten feet tall, laid an old stone altar of orcish design. Painted clouds and lightning adorned the faces of this abandoned altar of storms, long since eroded from the passing of time and tainted by, as I was guessing, more demonic rituals than the one that was taking place upon it right then and there.

Floating above the center of the altar was a large, blood-red crystal. It appeared to be the indisputable center of all the forces at work around the site, and it's slowly pulsating glow seemed to stare at and react to it's surroundings as if sentient and aware.

An all too familiar, black-robed figure stood before it, thankfully facing away from my direction for the time being. His skeletal hand was holding up a familiar object: the red crystal that he'd been carrying around at the tip of his staff all this time. Separated from the shaft of the weapon and held up next to the large red crystal, the smaller one seemed perfectly shaped to be a fragment that had broken off, a shard of the bigger crystal, once upon a time separated from it's origin by a fracture and a compelling force. Now that gap was being closed by streams of energy between the two red stones. The four orbs were also connected to the center by visible energy, their steady rotating around the nexus of their motion perfectly in tune with the swirling distortions in the air all around, making me feel as though I was stepping into a colossal cauldron of a valley, the swirling energies contained within like a potion being mixed, nearing it's completion.

There wasn't much point in trying to sneak across the obvious, plainly visible bridge across the lake, but I tried anyway, hoping that the warlock would not turn around before I made it to him.

I guess I wasn't very surprised at all when, upon reaching the island with the altar, I heard whispers in the air, much like the ones I had heard in our room at Steamwheedle Port, just before I got stabbed. From the warlock's reaction, I deduced that he wasn't the source, but just another listener. The only difference being that he apparently understood the message that was incomprehensible to me.

By all accounts, it had been a warning, letting him know that I was standing behind him, at the entrance to the island altar.

"Cailea...was it?" he said in his hollow voice without turning around to face me or make any other move to acknowledge my presence.

"Tell me...why are you here?"

At least I had the advantage of being beyond getting confused in trying to come up with a verbal answer. Instead, I reached for the handle of my sword.

"Have you come to try and stop me?"

I thought I heard more whispers in the air, echoing the words 'stop me' as I clutched my weapon and subtly called upon it's enchantment to grow more vines, twirling them around my fingers and wrapping around my wrist, binding the blade to my hand in a next-to-inseparable manner unless I would will it to detach again.

He let go of the smaller red crystal, leaving it suspended exactly where it was, afloat by virtue of the visible energy binding it to the larger one.

"But then, you don't even know what is happening here, do you?"

I could no longer see the mountains surrounding the lava lake around us. The swirling vortex of chaos had intensified to the point where it blocked visibility past a circular radius a few yards wider than the island. The sound of me drawing my weapon from it's sheath seemed to finally alert the warlock enough to turn around and face me.

One moment he was there, empty-handed. The next, his flaming longsword had appeared in his right hand, leaving me with an inescapable feeling of having just gotten my eyes fooled, as if a full second had turned into just a fraction right before my eyes.

Somewhere under his hood, he seemed to take a few more moments to observe how I was equipped and armed.

"Have you come seeking vengeance with the power of the blade, little druid?" he then asked in his unnatural voice.

Once again, my motion was my silent response, louder than any word I could think of even if I could speak, as I took a readied pose and raised my weapon.

"Come then. Let us see to it that only one of us walks away alive, this time."

Whether my battlecry, sounding more like a wild beast than an elven woman, would've had any effect on him if I had had the ability to voice it out to the world as I charged, I'll never know.


	71. Fracture

As soon as my blade clashed with his, the idea of making my first move an obvious, high-momentum strike that would test his strength turned out to be a terrible one, as even if the blade of his sword stopped when it collided with mine, the magical flames licking the blade lashed out forward like a second, liquid strike that my sword merely cut in half through the middle, allowing both halves to come right through and hit me in a horizontal line across my front. The momentary, searing pain was enough to make me flinch backwards, but luckily not much more.

On one hand, I could plan my next strikes to take this newly discovered effect into account, but on the other hand, it had created just enough distance and space for him to use his magic, the one part of his arsenal that I feared the most, since there wasn't much I could do about it, as I had previously learned.

Thus, my best defense and chance of winning was a swift offense, which I proceeded to pursue.

Even though I was quicker than him, having to plan my moves with not getting burned again in mind was a major hindrance that evened things out for him. After getting about a dozen of my strikes blocked by him, I decided to go for something a little different on the next one to try and surprise him. I delivered a blow that was aimed with the intention of locking our swords together by the hilts for a bit, then pulled out my dagger with my left hand as quickly as I could, intending to try and have a stab at him with it.

For all I know, he was already in my head, reading my next move, since he caught me by the left wrist with his free, skeletal hand far too easily for him to have simply seen me going for it. With that, the stabbing motion of my dagger was halted a foot short of it's target, held there by the grip of his skeletal hand, which felt much stronger than it had looked like.

We remained like that for a few moments, both our arms locked in a deceptively motionless wrestle for control of the situation. Fueled by my rage, which was awakening a little more every moment I spent within striking distance of my nemesis, I managed to slowly start turning the wrestle to my advantage. That is, until he whispered something incoherent somewhere under his hood, which was still concealing his face from me, causing his left hand to gain a purple glow around it. The next thing I knew, a wave of pain starting from the wrist he held my hand by washed over me. It was powerful enough to force me to disengage and back off a good few meters, as well as to take a moment to regain focus.

By the time I had done so, my opponent was already in the middle of his next move, it seemed like. He had his arm extended toward the red crystals hovering above the middle of the altar with his open palm, or what was left of it in his undeath, pointed at them. Then he made a jerking motion with said arm and hand, as if pulling on an invisible string attached to something around the crystals. This caused a strange, circular pulse, like a ripple in the air.

Expanding evenly in all directions, it quicky passed over the entire island, accompanied by a low, booming sound. The aftermath of this effect and noise seemed to further intensify the swirling vortex around us, cutting visibility to where I couldn't see the surrounding lava anymore. Much worse than that however, it greatly amplified the chaotic noise that the thing had been giving out the whole time, to the point where it started to strongly remind me of Felwood. I could almost make out what the whispers among it were saying. But it was no time to be focusing on that.

The warlock appeared to pull out a string of flame from the blade of his weapon, before weaving it into a small, vertical circle in mid air, then making a thrusting motion through it. The result was a large fireball flying off in that direction. My direction.

Even if all the world around me was slowly turning into a distorted, illusionary realm, I remembered the old druid's advice from before and made an effort to dodge the oncoming projectile. For best results, I shapeshifted into my feline form before leaping aside just in time to avoid the burning orb that exploded against the stone pillar that had been behind me, causing a fair bit of damage to said structure as it did, sending a good bit of stone fragments all over the place as well.

The spell might've seemed like an excessive amount of force all loaded into a relatively inaccurate attack, but from being at the receiving end of it I can tell it was a well-planned move that threw me a little off-balance due to the motion that had been required to avoid the sizable impact of the fireball. My opponent knew how to play my superior speed against me and wasn't wasting any time or effort on words as he followed up with more magical attacks.

Repeatedly swinging his flaming sword through the air in front of himself, arcs of flame lashed outward from each motion in a variety of angles, forcing me into what must've been quite a display of a feline's agility as I aimed to close the distance he had created. Between his relentless assault and the chaotic cacophony that seemed to attack my mind if I lost my bullheaded determination for even a moment, I couldn't exactly afford to retreat or stop to draw breath, either.

Several swift moves later I made it close enough to take a swipe at his side. While I did manage to shred through the side of his robe with a claw for one swipe, he seemed to barely notice. Then again, I suppose undead aren't usually too bothered by having their already rotting flesh take a few hits here and there.

Still, the succesful hit was all the invigorating success I needed to pick up the pace and go for that well-aimed, deadly blow that I was going to need to stop the warlock.

Continuing to move past him after the attack, I took full advantage of my shapeshifting skills to turn back into an elf without losing my momentum, and with that same force still behind me, spun around to deliver a powerful blow with my sword.

As I suspected, he wasn't quick enough to block my attack with his weapon. Instead, my blade stopped shy of it's target on that same shadowy shield I had observed in use against Mythos back in Felwood. The warlock seemed to be holding said shield together with the force of his will, channeled through the palms of his skeletal hands once he had visibly turned to face me. That being the case, he appeared to be unable to use his hands for anything else simultaneously, putting me in a position to freely test my strength against his will. Or so I thought.

There was another one of those strange pulses from the red crystal hovering above us, and this time it had the effect of even further distorting my perception in a number of unpredictable ways.

I'm not sure of most of the following in terms of what actually happened, but I will do my best to describe what it looked and felt like to me.

One moment I was pushing against his shield with all the fury of the beast put behind the two-handed grip I had on my weapon, and the next, my opponent seemed to have gained a second, ghostly pair of arms out of nowhere. The whole world appeared to have slowed down as the ghostly arms extended toward my forehead, then projected a purple orb that's center was nothing but a black hole somewhere between them and my eyes.

A half-second image, complete with the sounds of the moment in question flashed in my mind. For that split-second, I thought I was back on that beach from my nightmares, desperately crawling my way to a dying Valen to try and save him. There was also something very wrong with the image, but I couldn't tell from the short flash what it was.

At any rate, the mental image was powerful enough to cause me to flinch backwards once more. After taking a second to regain focus, I looked around to see that I very much couldn't trust my eyes anymore. Not after that last pulse from the crystal.

As I looked up to face my enemy again, I saw him standing on the other side of the cicular altar that had become the arena for our duel. His burning sword was there too, the flaming blade moving about, preparing and measuring it's next move...all the while not being held by the warlock, but instead floating a good meter and a half away from him, toward my direction. Then the pair began to slowly approach me. All the while the world, or my vision of it at least, was veiled in strange ripples, like everything was happening underwater, without the water being there. As if I wasn't already confused enough about what was real, what to avoid and what to try and attack.

Still, giving him space and time to use his slower, more powerful spells was not an option, so I charged forth anew.

The floating sword, as it turned out, was a considerably more difficult opponent to cross steel with, now that it was free of the constraints of the arm that was holding it before. Free to swing in all directions, seemingly freed of all laws of gravity and momentum, it quickly turned my idea of dodging right past it to reach the warlock into an intense and exhausting show of swordmanship and acrobatics, both elven and feline: stepping, jumping, dodging and blocking along with shapeshifting back and forth as well. Even putting all my skills and best moves to use like that, I couldn't avert getting hit every now and then by the arcs of flame lashing out past my guard and beyond what would've otherwise been the weapon's furthest reach.

So intense was the combat that I even forgot for a moment where my true foe was. And that moment was all it took.

I could swear that wasn't where he'd been standing a moment ago, but I still ended up bumping into him back first. Too confused and exhausted to act quick enough, his skeletal hand gripped the wrist of my sword arm while the other clamped tightly over my mouth. Instead of trying to suffocate me, however, said hand over my face gave off a magical glow for a split-second, and then my mind was flooded with more images.

I saw Morgan's cabin on the pirate ship from a very skewed angle and a perspective outside of where I had actually been at the time. Fresh blood from the act that I saw myself committing was flowing in the wrong direction, as the world spun around and gravity twisted everything into a horrible mess of a nightmare.

For a second or two, I was back at the altar of storms, struggling to free myself of the enemy's grasp, observing the floating sword approaching, readying itself for a final, decapitating blow. Then I was taken away into another vision. This one was of me crawling up to try and save a dying Valen, just like a few minutes earlier, except that I realized the perspective being shown was that of the shadow child from my dream earlier, watching from the edge of the smoldering remains of the battlefield. And again, I couldn't help but feel how something was amiss with the image. A red flash covered everything for just a tiny fraction of a second. I thought I saw an image of something other than a wounded elven woman crawling toward Valen before another red flash returned me to the previous image. And somewhere in the background, a faint echo barely identifiable as the voice I had once had was yelling in a fearful tone, as if in grave, imminent danger.

Somehow managing to channel the gripping terror of the moment into strength and willpower, I managed to return back to reality, back to the altar, rip myself free of the warlock's grasp and roll down onto the stone floor just in time to avoid the flaming blade that had crept close enough to take a swing at my neck while I had been trapped in my own nightmares.

Barely able to have any kind of focus at all after the visions, instead of hearing the sound of the warlock's weapon hitting it's master, I only heard a familiar, hollow laughter echoing through the chaotic noise that seemed to have further intensified. And looking at where he should've been, I saw nobody there.

With my mind and body nearly spent and the chaos weighing down on me with ever increasing force, I mentally scrounged up all that was left to build up for one last try, while utilizing my old trick of trying to smell him out through his illusions, however much room my own exhausted breathing left for it.

"Impressive. Your courage has carried you further than I expected," his voice taunted me from somewhere behind me.

At first it might've seemed like he made a mistake, breaking his silence at last, while giving me a sound to try and locate. As it turned out, however, it was merely yet another clever distraction, as the direction he actually appeared from a mere second later was the opposite one. Fortunately, I was still vigilant and aware enough to block the incoming flurry of three or four attacks that he delivered before vanishing amidst the intensifying visual distortions again.

"Then again, I suppose anyone's heart would be hardened by what you've been through."

His taunt was an effective one, as it served to point out how his illusions and terrors had been slowly getting to me throughout the fight. The very thing I had been instructed to resist weighing down on me with enough force to make my time limited before he'd crush my will and seal my fate.

Again he appeared from a different direction to strike at me. Or so I thought, until I realized that it was just the floating sword this time. The warlock himself had been smart and crafty enough not to go for the exact same trick twice, and appeared simultaneously on the other side of the altar instead. While I contended with the disembodied weapon, he stood at a safe distance, raising his palm toward me, then twisting his hand around by the wrist. This seemed to cause a small vortex of energy to spin along with it, and as his skeletal hand turned, the entire world seemed to tip over and go upside down. Of course, in retrospect I'm quite sure that's not what actually happened, but it sure seemed like it at the time.

His weapon flew back to him, then vanished again along with it's master, leaving me struggling with the thoroughly twisted perception of the world that I now had, as the world didn't merely turn around, but kept twisting and twisting on it's own, making it exponentially more difficult for me to focus on being ready for whatever would come out next, let alone on trying to make an attack of my own. The dizzying spinning quickly made me stumble and trip over my own feet, leading me to choose to close my eyes. A predominantly stupid move for anyone participating in intense combat, but right then, my eyes weren't doing me much good anyway. It was also a marginally comforting throwback to those moments back in the pit in Ashenvale, where my lifelong journey as a druid had first truly began.

"Tell me, little druid...do you consider yourself a heroine? A liberator on a justified path of vengeance, is that it?"

Another vision of myself crawling on that beach flashed across my mind. This time, an out-of-place glitter that moved in tune with my wounded form caught my eye, but my mind was already determined to discard the image as a last-ditch effort from him to falter my will.

"And what does that make me? Some unfathomable evil that you're here to rid the world of? A nameless monster no one will remember by tomorrow?"

I pulled out my dagger with my left hand again, did my best to tune my remaining senses to try and filter out the chaotic noise, and waited, channeling all my fury into controlled, focused energy – the pot of molten metal within ready to pour out everything at my command, knowing that the next few moves would decide the end of my journey. I thought I felt a touch of something cool and wet, like a single raindrop on the tip of my nose.

"I think you will find nightmares a little more persistent than that."

And then I heard him coming for me. Not with my life-sensing, of course, since he was undead, but with my own ears.

My focus worked well enough for me to catch his first attack and even get away with enough momentum to not be immediately forced on the defensive this time.

Taking quick peeks just long enough to fortify my confidence in my general heading, I went for a head-on, relentless flurry of blows at him. A small storm of my own making, made up of blades, daggers, claws and fangs. Knowing this to be the final struggle, I pushed right through the flaming slashes instead of even trying to avoid them anymore. I was determined enough not to flinch at their touch, the flames that had claimed my companion fresh enough on my mind to not mind a few more burns that felt like little embers by comparison.

Sure enough, his defense slowly faltered and buckled under my superior physique, and then I cut through. It was finally his turn to flinch backwards from the serious blow he'd taken. Amidst my self-induced frenzy that seemed to go against what Valen had told me about the limitations of berserking once upon a time, even I wasn't sure what I had hit.

Then the warlock's left arm fell off below the elbow, leaving only half the sleeve of his dark robes, along with the upper arm hidden somewhere in there.

For just a moment, he seemed as shocked as me, as the moment brought to my mind an image of how Valen hadn't been so different in his dying moments. Now, all that remained was to deliver the same fate in full. And with both of my weapons in my hands, there was no way he'd stop me.

Going for that intentional clashing and locking together of our swords again, I rushed him head on. Steel met steel, another wave of flame swat me around my chest, and then I plunged my dagger directly at where his face should be under his hood.

For once, the distortion of the world around us seemed to be in my favour, as everything slowed down to a crawl, allowing me to get a perfect aim to go for the killing blow on this undead who, for all I knew, didn't have a beating heart in his chest to stab at.

That's when I saw her. Standing at the edge of the altar, passively observing as ever before. The silhouette of the child who could only be described as a disturbingly skewed mirror image of myself as a little girl. Only her glowing elven eyes pierced the darkness that hid her form. I could swear that they were staring directly at the dagger in my hand.

_'Of shattered souls and burned hearts you were made...'_

Her song was as eerie as ever. And with it, everything plummeted into yet another vision of those moments on the beach, as seen from the sidelines.

_'...isn't it time to fight back...'_

I had finally made it to Valen's side. Sitting beside him, my hands already laid on his chest, ready to try and heal him even if it wouldn't end up saving him...

...except...there was something else there. Something else in my hands.

I raised them, revealing the familiar dagger they were holding, it's bloody tip facing down toward the dying elf that the blade had just slipped out of.

_...little druid of the blade?'_

As I watched myself plunge the weapon down again, another quick image of that time I'd lost control back on the quest into Valen's memories flashed over everything else. I remembered the cold grasp on my mind, and the warlock's voice which had sounded like many at once.

Back on the beach, I raised the dagger yet again, spilling blood over myself.

_"Tell me, how did a druid and a rogue end up soul-linked?"_ the warlock's voice from the past invoked a memory of me fusing myself with Valen in the flooding cave, as if to answer the question asked.

Then I was returned to the beach, where I could do nothing to stop the vision of myself repeatedly stabbing downward, as if in a crazed frenzy. Looking closely at my face, it looked as though I was smiling, my tongue peeking out to taste the blood that had spilt onto my face.

_"I'm guessin' there's a talisman involved, too,"_ Millie's voice echoing from my memories completed the circle of mental association, taking me back into Valen's memories, where I saw the moment of the curse being cast on him. The warlock was holding the dagger that child-Valen had brought to try and kill him with, the toy, as he described it, before giving it back and sending the boy on his way, just as I remembered seeing before.

_"Run away, child."_

And then, back on the beach, those frenzied eyes of mine slowly tilted upwards, along with the dagger that came up with them, cutting the image between the two eyes with it's blood-soaked blade, until I was staring directly at myself, so to speak.

_"Run back to all those you love, and you'll discover your fate."_

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I screamed out of sheer, uncontrollable terror. That steel structure that my rage had forged inside me turned out to be too brittle after all, the piercing scream causing a visible fracture in it. A fracture that tore it apart.

Just like the red, floating crystal I found myself staring at, back in reality.

Of course, it could've all been an illusion. A clever suggestion crafted by stringing together a convenient chain of coincidences, created for no greater purpose than to break my will. Either way, I had no way of knowing for sure. And as it turned out, uncertainty over something like that was an even greater terror than the act itself. The unknown turning out to be the most potent and persistent nightmare of all, just as he had promised.

"Who's the monster now, little druid?"

Completely paralyzed, breathing and all, I couldn't move a muscle, couldn't move the dagger one bit...couldn't help noticing the warlock's seemingly one-armed appearance, just like someone else...

I saw was a brief flash of something bright.

And then it was over.

An explosive force knocked my paralyzed body limp and flung it across the air. Somewhere along the way, I lost grip of my dagger, and even my sword was merely hanging on by the vines I had conjured up before the fight. Then I crashed back first into something hard and vertical, probably one of the stone pillars around the rim of the altar. After that, my body slumped down to a pile on the ground, both unable and unwilling to move.

I don't know how many minutes I spent lingering at the edge of consciousness after that, but the first thing I remember sensing was another of those tiny, small and cold pinches at my skin, this time on my arm, followed by another on my cheek, and then another and another. The stone altar under me felt warm by comparison. Most of the chaotic noise had died out, and there was a peculiar, rhytmically hissing sound in the air. It made me curious enough to wrestle my eyes open one more time.

Sure enough, most of the visual distortions had stopped, with just the general, large vortex of energy swirling around the altar. I could see the lava lake around the island once more. And I could see that the cold pinches were indeed raindrops. It was a very light rain, but a soothing one none the less, making the hissing sounds as water vaporized off the surface of the lava.

"It is almost a shame, don't you think?" the warlock said as he walked into my vision, hanging his sword back on his belt as he did.

"You are quite a capable little thing, I'll give you that. But then you had to go and do this to yourself," he gestured at me with his remaining hand.

"What is it with all of you self-righteous defenders of some superficial sense of justice or balance or whatever other nonsense that makes you determined to always get in the way, no matter how many chances you're given to simply walk away?"

I thought I felt myself bleeding on the stone floor from some wound I didn't have the strength to locate nor treat.

"Oh, but that's not it. That's not what you were doing, is it? Not quite the clear-hearted tree-priest on a mission of bettering the world, were we?"

I tried to move a finger, just to see if I could, but failed. I was beaten beyond doubt and he knew it.

"Vengeance...such a compelling force," he sounded almost delighted to say, while pulling out a familiar locator device with a light now constantly on to signify that mine was in it's immediate presence.

"The irony, of course, is that even that is only half of why you're here," he said and switched off the device in his hand, giving visible evidence that he did know how to use it.

The greater implication being that he had deliberately guided me to himself.

My catatonic stare forward was interrupted by him lifting me up to a seated position by the shoulders.

"It is quite a shame, don't you think?" he repeated his earlier phrase while standing up, placing himself halfway between me and the glowing crystals, then extended his good arm toward me, while what remained of the other raised up to point at the crystals. A flickering, green orb the color of life appeared onto his hand.

"Even you shouldn't have to meet the end of your existence without knowing the truth of it. But it can't be helped now."

I was hardly listening to him. My mind still lingered on the things I had seen a few minutes ago and the inevitability of my own fate.

_I'm sorry..._

The light rain caused a sting in my heart, as it once more brought to mind the person I had shared some of the best moments of my life with.

The green orb floating just above the warlock's hand intensified. It seemed to stare at me. Then I felt a rush of moving energy, as a green band of force was created between me and the orb. The flow of the current was outward, my essence being sucked right out of my body, carried across the spectral band to the warlock, who seemed to conjure up another stream of energy from himself to the mystery crystals behind and above. The intended final destination for my scarred soul.

_I'm sorry for everything..._

The leeching was almost painless, contrary to what one might've thought. Maybe that was up to the warlock, I don't know. Or maybe it was due to the fact that I wasn't resisting it. I had intended to not live to see the next full moon anyways, and the things I had seen during the encounter, whether true or not, made it that much easier to surrender my life.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the vines binding my weapon to my hand wither away and crumble to dust, as the life that had been feeding them left my hand, consequently causing me to drop the weapon.

My sight began to fade away and breathing became more and more difficult, causing the first, minor bits of pain amidst what had felt like somewhat of a peaceful release thus far. I did my best to not struggle and end up causing myself more pain.

My breathing stopped as I lost the rest of my eyesight. Even thinking started to become difficult, but sounds were still there, faded into distant echoes, but still audible for a while longer.

"You deserve my respect for one thing, little druid. Not many would feel so open-minded about having their soul drained."

My last wish was to finally be able to shed a tear. Just one would've been enough.

And then...

_"Drain this, ya sonuva rotten trogg!"_

Even my faded hearing could pick up the thundering boom of a gunshot that followed the shout by the unmistakable voice, lifting what was left of my spirit somewhere inside to make the next thing clearer to hear.

"I don't care what ya think yer doin' here, but nobody kills my friends an' walks away alive if I can help it!"

I didn't need to see in order to sense him standing there, over by the bridge leading to the island, already reloading his gun by the sound of it.

That's when I felt this massive rush of energy into my body, kickstarting my breathing with a gasp and a cough. A strong but gentle, large hand was gripping me by the right arm, accompanied by a familiar, neutral tone of voice coming from the same general direction.

"I have much to atone for after my fateful failure in Stranglethorn. I thought a helping hand – or several – would be the least I can do for you, Miss Evergreen."

My sight was returning by the time the next hand grasped me by my left arm, further increasing the rush of incoming, restorative energy. This hand was covered in cold steel and seemed intent on pulling me back up to my feet in an almost violent motion. Millie's eyes, glowing golden with the holy power of the paladin looked at me from behind my left shoulder.

"Get up, girl. Ya let this rotten scumbag beat ya now an' I'll be bringin' ya back from the dead just to smack ya around for it myself."

The warlock's life-leeching spell had stopped with Thoraim's gunshot, and the two were staring at each other menacingly, as Furball roared at the dwarf's side.

"You are too late! You are all too late!" the warlock shouted in rage, seemingly having lost his chilling composure for the first time ever. He took a few steps back as he shouted, then raised his arm toward the crystal in a hasty, almost desperate-looking motion.

"You have no idea what you're trifling with here! Let me introduce you to _him!_" he exclaimed, only to get interrupted by an arrow that sunk somewhere into his gut.

"It is you who should learn one more name before your demise!" a solid, commanding voice said loudly from the direction of the projectile's origin.

Vengeful wrath itself stood there, clad in the same, light metal armour as before. Sorelei's tied-back hair and pale blue skin was already getting visibly wet from the light rain as she readied another arrow onto the string of her longbow and took aim again.

"Sindrell Starwind, the innocent woman who was probably just another easily forgotten victim of your schemes to you, but for me, the most important person in the world. And I will see her fate repaid to all who caused it!"

Just as she was about to shoot again, the red crystal sent out another pulse, surprising everyone present, save for myself and the warlock. Then there was another pulse, and another, until it all started to feel like an earthquake. The world rippled and distorted again as everything turned into total chaos in a matter of seconds. Demonic whispers filled the air and a rapidly expanding red glow from the fracture between the two crystals flooded my eyes.

Somewhere amidst it all, I saw a pair of massive, glowing eyes snap open, floating in the middle of nothing, looking directly at me.

"And so it comes to this, at last," a low, rumbling voice like a colossal monster under your feet said, giving me the inescapable impression that I was being spoken to.

Then everything turned into a twisting vortex, sucking everything toward an empty black hole in the middle, followed by stillness and silence. An effect identical to one I'd been a part of before, when Millie took us to visit another's mind. Except it wasn't her doing it this time, as visibly evident.

And sure enough, when I opened my eyes to break the darkness that had claimed everything, I was there again.

Auberdine.


	72. Like a Rain of Tears

Not quite over the chaotic, confusing mix of my crushing defeat, the shocking visions that had lead to it, and the turnabout from nowhere that had followed it, the burning town from my childhood seemed almost like a relief after everything that had just happened. That is, until the focus of my attention properly shifted to my current, perceived surroundings a mere few moments later, causing fearful feelings and tenseness from the past to start creeping in slowly.

I guess being stuck in the form of the panther wasn't much of a surprise this time around. It wasn't like it was the first time anyway. Neither was the abnormal lack of the people and fighting that should have been there.

For one who doesn't know my story, it might sound very odd that the thing that creeped me out the most, besides the terror-filled memories associated with the scene laid out before me, was the fact that I was able to move freely. Regardless, I stood around for a bit, fully expecting and downright hoping for some more mysterious events and visions to sweep me away, or perhaps for the others who had come to my rescue to turn up, but nothing happened. Save for the fires burning, all was silent.

What all of this implied was the same thing that the vortex that had brought me there did. That I was actually exploring someone's mind, which for whatever reason had placed me on the scene of that attack fifteen years earlier, rather than being shown another potentially untrue vision or abstractly distorted dream.

The only thing out of place that caught my eye eventually, was that the sky seemed to somehow be of the wrong colour. But then, that might've been just the glow of the flames painting the smoke to look like a burning sky. I thought I saw a glimpse of a large bird flying up there, it's shape visible against the orange glow of the sky above, just for a second or two.

I started carefully prowling forward, trying to stick to any shadows I could mask my dark fur in. Not that trying to be physically stealthy would do much good in what was presumably a journey of the mind, but it gave me a certain feeling of security and rightness to know I was doing something about it none the less. As I made slow progress toward the town square, where the moonwell was, along with good visibility in all directions, I worked furiously in my mind to try and understand exactly whose mind I was exploring. For all I knew, it could've been the warlock's and not mine. He knew this event too, after all.

And perhaps more importantly, why was I there? It's not like Millie or any of the others who had come to my aid had sent me anywhere. From all I could tell, it was the warlock who had done something to invoke this.

What had he said again? Something about introducing us all to someone? The crystal...? It was...some..._one?_

Even so, why was I back here, in what looked like a memory of the past? Why was it just me, either? Apparently the object of the warlock's schemes had something to do with what happened to Auberdine back then. Not exactly a surprise in itself, but enough to make me curious to discover the details.

Confident that things couldn't exactly turn out much worse for my shattered mind, either, I carried on to look for answers.

Town square was as quiet as everything else. In the larger, open space, the sound of the flames faded too, bringing to the forefront the quiet sound of the stream running through the town. The subconscious idea of water then attracted my attention to the moonwell. I felt this strange tingle as I neared the moonwell, causing me to get cautious and slower about my motions. The stone rim felt cold as I put my front paws on it to take a peek at the water inside.

From the lightly rippling surface, my reflection looked back at me, yellow eyes, whiskers and all, tilting it's head as I did. Nothing wrong there. Or so it seemed at first, until I noticed the faintly glowing, red pulsing light somewhere behind my reflection. I knew that light.

In a quick motion, I aimed my eyes up to see what was being reflected, but there was nothing there except the sky.

Thoughtfully lowering my eyes again, my breathing halted for a moment when I saw that beside my reflection now was a familiar, shadowy silhouette, glowing eyes making it identifiable as the same one that I'd been seeing everywhere lately.

Heart pounding like a dwarven steam engine, I turned to my right, and there she was. The little girl in the tattered dress. It seemed that only her reflection carried the veil of shadow. She sat on the rim of the moonwell with folded knees, looking into the water for a few more moments before turning to look at me. All as if she saw nothing wrong or surprising about the scene.

"Do you hear that? He's coming," she said to me in a voice that sounded concerned.

I heard or saw nothing different. Just the red, pulsing light that apparently existed below the surface of the water, at some physically impossible depth.

"Who are you?" I exercised my ability to speak despite my muteness and bestial shape. Being a mental representation of yourself made it possible, as I had previously learned.

"You know me," she half ignored my question and aimed her eyes at her knees, getting a somewhat reserved look on her face as she did, then spoke again:

"We can't play together anymore when he's here."

"Why not?" I tried to play along for some clearer answers.

"Because he's going to take me back," she muttered her reply, clearly scared of the idea.

"Back where? Why?"

"But I don't wanna go back! I don't!" she cried out almost before I had asked my questions, apparently having ignored them completely.

A fearful, tearful look conquered her face while she rubbed her upper arms, as if feeling shivers.

"It's so cold and dark and...small," she uttered in a lowering voice, almost swallowing up the last word. It still caught my ear.

"Wait, what did you just say?"

"I don't like small."

I thought for a bit, tried to think of a different approach.

"Why does he want to take you back?"

"Because he doesn't believe me," she replied and raised her eyes to look directly at mine.

She had this sincere, begging look on her face.

"I didn't mean it to happen, but he doesn't believe me," she elaborated.

"What? What happened?"

"I...broke it. But...I only just touched it! Just for a bit, and it broke."

"Broke...what?"

"I didn't mean it! I didn't know it would break! I didn't even take the piece!"

My mind was giving me pause in my speech, as it was working so hard at trying to make sense of what I was hearing, while simultaneously coming up with more questions that wouldn't lead me into another dead end with the conversation.

"Where?"

She looked out toward the forest, east of town.

"I found it in the woods, near the bad forest that's up high. I think it fell down from there."

I took another moment to think.

"Is it there now? Can we go look at it?" I asked and gestured towards the forest.

"What a silly question to ask. Of course not," she replied, looking almost as if she was feeling sorry for me for having asked my last question.

Then she aimed her eyes down at the water in the well, which naturally compelled me to follow her example. I couldn't help noticing that the red light was now more intense than before, as if it had come closer.

In that moment, I heard an echo. Like a voice from another world, too foggy and distant to recognize as anything other than a vaguely familiar voice yelling in a tone that seemed to place the shouter right in the middle of some intense action.

It was like a reminder, that there was a real world somewhere beyond the veil of nightmares that had been pulled over my eyes, shaping my perspective on things and making me think of the question that I apparently should've been asking the whole time, considering the chain of events it lead to. The interesting part was, it was more of a thought out loud aimed at nobody in particular, than anything else.

"Why are you here?"

"I hide here," the little girl responded to me after a small delay.

"From...him?" I asked the seemingly logical question without truly knowing the object of it.

"He knows I'm here. So I hide from everyone else instead," she replied, her voice becoming increasingly wavering and teary again. Then she aimed her eyes at me again.

"You've been here too. But you can't stay. It's what he wants, but I won't let it happen. I won't let him get to me," she kept going, sounding increasingly distressed with each word.

Then she mixed things up by getting off the rim of the well and back onto her feet, taking a few subtle steps backward as she yelled at me in a voice full of the frustrated fury of a child who thought themselves unfairly treated.

"Then you had to go and open the way for him! You let another in and he followed! You let him get to me! All to save that stupid boy who made your pulse rise!"

I wanted to interrupt her for what she had yelled out so far, but she kept going in a manner that didn't leave me any room to respond.

"That's how he crept up on you! That's how you ruined everything! That's...that's why I got mad at you. Why I scared and confused you, tried to make you stop. But he was here too. He made me tell you other things...made me tell you to follow the red light and not be afraid," she kept going until she winded down, the fury melting away from her face, leaving behind the absolute, tear- and panic-inducing fear that had been the true, driving force behind her outburst.

While she kept backing off further and further with fumbling steps, her entire being trembling with terror, which nervously eying the growing red glow from the moonwell seemed to cause her, I heard more of those echoes like before coming from an unspecific direction.

_"Forget...shielded! Help me...get to Cailea!"_ I could make out this time, the voice sounding somewhat like Millie's.

The little girl literally backed into a wall, as one of the town houses blocked the way she had been going. She didn't seem to mind or even notice the flames licking the building just a few feet above her head, as she kept her eyes and attention glued to the moonwell. And sure enough, the ground started shaking a bit, and then some more, and more and more as seconds passed. As if the source of the approaching red light needed any more announcing of it's impending arrival, the smoky clouds in the sky also turned into a swirling spiral, along with all the world outside the town.

"It's...it's all over..." the girl stuttered through her tears, "he's here. He's going to take me back...and...and... they are going to let him! They have no choice! Then..." she finally seemed to break out of her deranged trance just enough to look back at me again, "then they're going to release him, make him whole again. All just to save us. Because they care about us. Because they don't understand what he is. Because they think they can fight him later.

They don't know the scope of his power. Like all the world, they think he was destroyed, and will mistake him for someone other. Someone they actually stand a chance against. Someone they can actually run or hide from. But they..." her predictions of doom came to an abrupt end as the shaking and swirling all around intensified and I could just about sense something rising from the waters of the moonwell before I was even looking back that way.

Unsurprisingly enough, that something was the glowing, red crystal of nightmares, now whole once more save for the shining scar of a fracture between the pieces that had previously been separate. This time it was also accompanied by that same, demonic cacophony from one of my dreams about it and the little girl, as well as an undeniably strong, shadowy presence surrounding it, like some spirit dispersed into a thin cloud, attempting to slowly re-condense itself.

Then a part of that cloud appeared to reach out toward the child. For a short moment, I saw a motion of energy away from her and toward the shadow, before she screamed, got up and ran around the corner of the house she had previously pressed herself against.

As if in response to this, the crystal, the shadow, or whatever that thing was, began to emit something of an all-consuming aura of absolute darkness that seemed capable of killing all light and reflections from within it's moderately quickly expanding radius.

It seemed that there was little I could do against the entity at the time, so I dashed after the girl on all fours instead. I didn't see where she had gone, of course, but if my guess as to what she was was anything near correct, I had an idea or two where I'd find her.

As I made my way throughout the part of town between the moonwell and the seashore, I noticed the clouds in the sky getting pierced by strange rays of light here and there, which in turn appeared to make the air around them ripple and distort, as well as causing me to hear more of those echoing voices from outside, somewhat clearer than before.

_"...have to stop the spell...can't get through all that,"_ I could make out from what sounded like something Sorelei's voice was shouting.

Just as I had suspected, the door to my old house was wide open, as if the demons had just barged in not too long ago. Of course, they were nowhere to be found here, and neither was my father, who should've been lying somewhere by the door.

As soon as I entered, however, I heard something from my old room. My heart raced as I entered there, wondering what I would find.

There was a bloodstain on the floor, where my mother had been murdered. The bedsheets were all curled up in a corner, like someone small had been trying to hide there. That someone no longer being present, though. Just an open window, with the breeze that should've been greeting me through there replaced by the overwhelming cacophony from the dark entity that was closing in.

I hastily looked around once more to make sure I hadn't missed her hiding in some other corner of the room instead, all to no avail. The only obvious clue to follow was the open window, so I leapt though it in one, sleek motion.

Back outside, everything had gotten even more chaotic. I could no longer see the town square back toward the east at all. It had all disappeared into the black hole that the glowing crystal, the only visible thing amidst the darkness, was generating around itself. That being the case, the only logical direction for one to escape was toward the docks to the west.

The skies had gotten more turbulent as well, with the piercing rays of light colliding with the darkness halfway down to ground, as if desperately trying to push it back. The visible energy being expelled from the collision caused the air to ripple and distort in such strong and visible ways that even the faint of heart would've recognized the place I was in as a mental image and not a physical realm.

As I dashed for the docks, there were more voices from the world beyond the one I perceived. The first one sounded like a dwarven curse bellowed by Thoraim, followed by Mr. White's always stable tone having turned into a more worked-up one for once, as he said something about 'it' being too powerful.

Keen to escape the rapidly expanding darkness, I had just about forgotten what I had been after when my paws hit the first wooden planks of the main pier. I thought I noticed a splash in the water, a few meters away, like a large fish jumping out and falling back in before I paid proper notice. I didn't have time to think on that, however, because the next thing I knew, a familiar voice from behind and to the left, an angle that I hadn't paid attention to in my hurry, stopped me cold.

"No, stop! Please, help me!"

My reaction was to turn around far slower than the situation warranted. There was a familiar fishing pole on the ground, looking like it had just been cast aside by it's owner, who my eyes caught sight of next.

Valen was there, in his black leathers and full physical health, from what it looked like. He was down on one knee, his arms gently wrapped around a familiar little girl, who was sobbing on his shoulder.

And he was looking at me.

"I..." I started but couldn't say any more.

An unreal image or not, my mind had just blacked out of any rational thinking at the sight of him. Even as he turned his pleading gaze away from me and toward the child who said something that I couldn't quite hear through my shock, I found it immensely difficult to do anything, least of all approach him to do as he had asked. It wasn't until several seconds later that I even started to hear what the child was saying.

"...don't let him take me! Please don't let him! Please!" she kept going, deathly afraid of whatever she thought was going to happen to her.

"Shhh, I won't," he tried to calm her, "we can send him away. We can be rid of him without letting him take you. I can keep you here. Trust me."

Then he turned to look at me again.

"Tell her."

Following that, the girl looked at me too.

Still trying to half shake off my shock and not really having the faintest idea of what I was really looking at, I listened to my heart and went by the promise of a friendly face.

"You can trust him. We can trust him."

The embrace of the two loosened as the girl's panic seemed to subside.

"Ready to run then?" Valen asked her.

She responded with a small, shy nod through her flowing tears.

"Come on then," he began, then finished by looking at me again, "we have a boat to catch."

"Wait!" my heart compelled me to interrupt him, "I...what...why...how are you here?" I stuttered out.

"Just a little bit, remember? Just a shard off the side to share with you. Let's hope it's enough," he replied very cryptically, then started to run along the pier, as fast as the little girl he was dragging along allowed him to.

Realizing that the darkness had pretty much enveloped all of the solid ground and was now eating away at the pier, I followed the two of them.

The enemy seemed to still be closing in, the shadows licking at our heels as the demonic whispers followed along with it. Even the sea itself had disappeared into the shifting shadows. There was just the three of us and a piece of the pier, which ended at a small gap between it and a lone ship, just starting to disembark from where the pier ended.

With my feline speed, I was the first to make the leap onboard the already moving vessel. And almost contrary to what I was expecting, Valen soon followed me on. But as soon as his boot hit the deck, something strange happened. It was like the whole world, tiny and chaotic as it already appeared to be, started moving at only half the normal speed of things, the little girl in mid-air above the gap between the ship and the pier as the shadowy entity reached out for her again. I could almost see something wrapping itself around her, resulting in her being suspended in the air by the dark entity trying to pull her back while Valen was holding onto her hand. After a few seconds of the struggle which, for some reason did not seem to physically hurt the girl at all, as I noticed Valen's hand actually holding onto what could be best described as a ghostly, ethereal version of the girl's hand, he glanced at me for a bit and yelled:

"Help me!"

A little unsure of what I was doing, I grabbed onto the girl's other hand with my jaws, careful at first not to bite down too hard, but upon realizing that I too was latching onto some spirit form of hers rather than her physical arm, strengthening my grip to pull harder.

Everything but the slice of the ship's deck that we were on had drowned in darkness as we struggled together to...I wasn't really sure what, but it sure seemed vitally important, especially since those massive, monstrous, disembodied eyes that I had seen just before the start of the mental journey snapped open somewhere in front of us, accompanied by the same, low, rumbling voice that seemed to come from under your feet.

"I cannot let you do that. She does not belong there," it announced, and I could swear that the monster's pull on the girl strengthened immediately afterwards.

"It isn't even natural. Shouldn't you elves be worried about that?" the voice spoke again, apparently at least pretending to know something about elven philosophy, even if I wasn't quite on top of the subject matter.

"Oh yeah?" Valen talked back to...it. "Never mind that it was your presence that caused all this in the first place. Because from where I'm standing, it looks an awful lot like the only unnatural thing here is you, demon!"

"The fracture was simple bad luck on her part. And you two have proven yourselves sore losers in fate's game of chance," the demon, as Valen had called it, insisted.

"Can't very well be losers since she already beat you."

In the moment of silence that followed Valen's decisive declaration, I noticed how the little girl's spirit form, which we were still holding onto, seemed to be getting slowly pulled apart from her physical body, which in turn appeared to have started dissolving into dust, each and every fragment getting instantly sucked into the hungry darkness that was trying hard to steal back all of her.

Then, Valen spoke again.

"It's almost funny, don't you think? That after all that talk by your pawn about how it's not a magical weapon nor a mystical shield, it still turns out to be the reason you lost. The one thing you didn't account for. I'm here to take your place and save her from the fate you insist upon her because she brought me here. All because she couldn't watch me drown. All..." he turned to look at me before finishing,

"...because she loved me."

A bright shine from the girl's spirit becoming more and more visible from being pulled out of her physical body, which then dissolved completely, blinded me for a moment.

In that moment, I suddenly found that I was no longer holding onto anything. I was no longer standing on anything, touching anything, smelling, tasting, hearing or physically feeling anything. Not even my own form.

For a short bit, I fell into a completely helpless panic, an inexplicable feeling, like all my energy, my very thoughts and emotions were leaking out, dying out as they were getting dispersed in all directions, until I simply wouldn't exist anymore. Next I felt relief, as after a short delay, the feeling stopped, as some outside force seemed to embrace me from all sides, helping me condense and focus myself again.

My vision returned and I found myself in a strange, soundless, lifeless, empty place. Some sort of a limbo between planes and forms of existence. I existed as a shining, orb-like spirit, a wisp with no corporeal form to inhabit. Nothing but the very essence of my being, completely stripped of any flesh or other matter that would normally encase it.

"There, it worked. You're stuck with what's left of me now, instead, but I guess we already established that neither of us minds it," I heard Valen's voice speaking straight into my consciousness.

I wanted to respond to him, ask him the many questions on my mind, but lacked the ability to do so in any way.

"The rest is up to you. Stop the summoning before he gets out, or everything was for nothing. Stop the spell, kitten."

As he finished speaking, a vortex opened up before me, creating what seemed like a funnel of sorts, leading back into the real world, with a familiar red light glowing at the end.

And just then, a familiar, foggy, black entity floated past me and toward the opening ahead. The light was some distance away, however, and after everything I had seen and heard, I had every intention of beating this thing to the finish.

A race of spirits ensued, the dark, smoky one of this...demon...against my bright orb of shining light. As we hurtled and spiraled toward the exit looming ahead, I could hear the chaotic whispers the demon was still trying to dissuade me with, apparently unaware of how the words and visions of my beloved had already fortified my will against further trickery. My rage awakened once more by the thought of him being lost to me in all but the faint glimpses of a spirit, back there somewhere.

Even when I turned out to be the faster one and passed by my dark opponent, I knew that it wasn't going to be that simple. I'd have to get far enough ahead to close the doors of reality before the demon's essence would follow me out into the world.

As the end drew closer, I could tell that it wasn't just the glowing crystal at the exit, but the warlock, still casting his spell of summoning that was keeping the portal open.

While making that observation, my lost senses started to come back, as my physical body began to reappear around my bared soul, hiding and protecting it from the harsh reality that was drawing closer, as it's purpose was. It was a formless mass at first, prompting me to will it into one of the physical shapes available to me. Needing all the speed I could get, I willed myself into the form of the panther once more.

As I covered the last few meters of imaginary distance to my target, I thought I saw my elven self, fully grown, scarred and clothed, existing somewhere beside my feline self for a bit.

It seemed that this other me continued to accompany me even as I emerged from the portal, back to the stone altar, and without taking a moment to look around, I pounced at the warlock. He seemed to take notice, as that ghostly "extra arm" of his projected a familiar barrier of energy to stop my momentum. That's when something strange happened. There was the sound of flesh being cleaved, followed by the tip of my sword peeking out from the middle of the warlock's front. My next breath in seemed to drown everything in green light and cause my form and senses to dissolve once more.

When I came back a split-second later, I was back in my elven body, my right hand tightly gripping the handle of my sword, as I stood behind the warlock with him skewered on my blade. Somewhere in the background of the scene I was looking at, swirling masses of chaotic energies and spectral creatures in vague, humanoid shapes were holding my allies back. And directly in front of me and the warlock was the portal, the demon's black essence already seeping out and slowly arranging itself into some kind of a very large, bipedal, winged creature, alerting me to the fact that the spell was still going.

I tried twisting my sword in the wound, but that only caused the warlock to taunt me in a voice that was certainly suffering, but apparently not enough to lose focus:

"...never...stop me...little druid."

That nickname brought to mind all the things he had done, all the people he had killed. With that, I found a new way to channel out my vengeful wrath, as I thought of the enchanted wood I had combined with my sword a while ago and proceeded to pour all my hatred at it.

With the weapon already punched into him, the tiny vines that grew along my blade's sides and back were there as well, as they began to slowly grow, branching out dozens and dozens of times as my wrath gave them the necessary force with which to carve right through the rotten form of the undead from the inside, so that the warlock's gurgling voice from under his hood wasn't the only noise the process was making.

While I was ripping him apart from the inside out like that, the spell began to finally waver and get disrupted, the warlock's elevated arm falling back down and disconnecting from the crystal it had been magically manipulating. For one little moment, all the swirling energies and other abnormalities on the scene seemed to freeze in place, as the demon seemed to get a mixed expression of shock and rage on it's not yet fully formed face. Then the entire world, save for the stone altar and the people standing on it, seemed to implode toward the crystal in the center. The disrupted portal becoming a black hole, sucking back everything that had come out with massive force. The demon's half-made form disintegrated, as it too got sucked right back into where it had come from. The massive implosion ended with the portal closing and seemingly getting drained back into the large red crystal, now whole once more. Then the demon's repaired prison lost it's glow, fell silent and motionless, save for falling to the ground like an ordinary rock, as did the four orbs that fell down with it, as they had stopped circling it. No lights. No explosions. Just the quiet sound of the light rain still falling down, now far more noticeable with the scene returned to it's natural state.

The warlock had stopped struggling as dozens upon dozens of the tiny vines I had had carve their way out through him had surfaced all over his body, which now appeared to be stiff and overgrown with them. I tore out my sword without a care for whatever else would get ripped by that motion. It caused him to get pulled backwards several feet. Following that, I gave him one more swift kick to the chest, to have him stumble further back and topple backwards off the edge of the altar into the lava.

I had my back turned toward my allies as I watched my nemesis slowly sink into the lava and the layer of foggy mist that the rain vaporizing off the former had created right above it. My own exhausted breathing was the loudest sound I heard as the last traces of my enemy sunk out of sight, bringing to mind the purpose of my having come to that place with vengeance on my mind, the lost love that I had come to avenge, and a taste of everything else that had happened.

I raised my face toward the rainy skies and closed my eyes.

_"It's done."_ I thought to myself, hoping that the person I had done it for could hear me.

Waves of exhaustion passed over me, as the rage that had begun on that beach in Stranglethorn came to the end of it's intended course.

That's when I felt this sting around one of the smaller cuts that I had gotten on my cheek. It made me realize that there was more than rainwater washing over my face.

There were tears! Sweet, bitter, blessed tears, I concluded as I caught one with a finger and tasted it.

For a moment there, I think I was smiling at the skies, as the realization set off an unstoppable chain reaction.

There was a metallic clang from my sword hitting the stone floor of the altar. I hadn't even realized it had slipped from my grasp until I heard the sound.

With my wrath having died out, no longer there to mask the presence of that old, painful bubble of black matter inside me, the massive force of it finally finding a way out overran all the was left of my will and self-control in the blink of an eye, forcing every muscle in my body to dedicate themselves to first sobbing, and then soundlessly crying out my pains and sorrows.

All the tears I hadn't been able to cry back on that beach, all the pain that I had been through since then, all the guilt, no longer hidden in the shade of blind rage, that I felt for many of the things I had done, it was all coming out in a rush that I couldn't do anything about. Nor wanted to.

With the mute crying getting even heavier, downright violent, I started to feel drained and weak. My legs soon gave up, as I fell down to my knees and proceeded to try and hold my sides with my hands.

I may have been the one left standing of the original two that had dueled on the altar, but I was no winner. Not after everything that had happened, after everything that I had lost. Even my allies somewhere behind me seemed to recognize this, as the only sound they made was a bit of rustling at one point, like someone getting up from lying the ground. Besides that, there was only the sound of the rain and my mute, helpless sobbing and crying.

As I got progressively weaker and eventually toppled over to the side, leaving me curled up on the cold ground, the heaviest of my cries winded down to some lighter sobs, giving a brief, partial moment's pause to my thoughts again.

That's when I realized something else, looking at the mist the rain vaporizing off lava was creating from that angle.

It wasn't natural. No wonder it looked so odd, when there shouldn't have been a rain there. Not in that part of the world. The geography of the area, as well as some residual power from the magics that had once been used to mold Blackrock mountain and surrounding areas prevented a natural rain there.

A rain was the start of a storm, one of the greatest shows of nature's wrath. And this one could've only been brought where it was by the will of a druid.

The only druid present on the scene, whose wrath had finally won out over her fears.

What should've been a joyful achievement now felt like nothing more than a manifestation of my failure, proof of how I had completely lost what I once was. Powerful enough to return me right back to the abyss of my endless crying.

Nothing but a further extension of my pains and sorrows, like a rain of tears.

It kept going, all the way until I had become so weak that the old idea of crying oneself to sleep became reality.

Well, I guess I'm not really sure whether I was asleep or just plain unconscious. I would guess at the latter, simply because I don't remember having nightmares. Or maybe I was just so utterly exhausted in mind and body that there wasn't enough left to create the dreadful dreams from.

All I have is a faint memory of being carried along some vague, dark road somewhere, surrounded by the footsteps of more than one person.

When I came to, or woke up, whatever you prefer, I was feeling as sick and nauseous inside as ever before. On the outside, everything was soft and warm. Shuffling about just a little bit made me aware enough to feel that I was lying in a bed, covered up to my armpits in several clean sheets, wearing something that felt different from my own leathers. Lighter and smaller, like some kind of simple underwear.

Overall, the mixed feelings left me with an impression that someone was trying very hard to make me comfortable, despite knowing how I felt inside.

Then I finally found the determination to open my eyes.

I had never seen this particular room before, but from the style I could tell it was dwarven.

"Ah, there ya are, finally awake again," Millie's voice alerted me to her presence.

Back out of her armour and in a simple, plain shirt and skirt, she seemed like she was busy in the middle of something, as she set down my own outfit in a neatly folded pile on a small table beside the bed. My weapons and other possessions were already there, next to a glass of water.

"Someone's already waiting jes' outside, wantin' to see ya. I'll let 'em in now if you don't mind."

I was a little relieved about not having to show Millie that I didn't have a voice with which to reply to any questions about how I was feeling, but at the same time, whoever was going to come in would force the same situation anyway. Thinking of how it would no doubt be Thoraim, wanting to know what happened to his friend since we parted ways, unless Mr. White had already told him, and he merely wanted to hear the details from me, I closed my eyes to hold back tears that tried to come out as I thought of how I couldn't face that conversation.

"I told everyone I wasn't gonna let ya get bothered while yer still restin' but he insisted," Millie said from the direction of the door, sounding like she was somewhat opposed to the idea of letting anyone in, before opening it and letting in the sound of approaching footsteps, while leaving the room herself, from the sound of it.

I tried not to think of anything as the footsteps ended and someone sat on the edge of the wide bed, closer to my feet than my face.

"You don't seem to be very well, child. Allow me to help you."

The voice of the only person I wanted to meet even less than Thoraim had me shut my eyes even tighter, but tears still spilled onto my cheeks, making me give up the futile attempt and open my eyes again to see the old druid sitting before me. His expression was both concerned and confused.

I used the ensuing moment of silence to think of how he had found his way to what I guessed to be Thoraim's house, and soon figured it out. Thinking of how he had all the patience in the world to wait for a reaction from me, I decided give him one.

The confusion and surprise on his face grew even greater as I pulled myself up to a half-seated position, revealing the scar on my chest and the wide, white band of cloth wrapped around me just below it for modesty and support, then reached for the green jewel on the table.

My strength wasn't quite what I had expected it to be after so many motions right after waking up, so my trembling hand ended up knocking the glass of water on it's side as I took the gem and pulled it closer to myself. Neither the old druid nor me seemed to care about the water spilling all over the table, as all his attention was focused on me.

It didn't help with trying to keep some kind of a composure, when I realized that forming words in my head while holding the jewel to converse with him was almost as difficult and stuttering as reading was.

I'll never forget the look on his face when he heard it.

_"H-h-hhello."_


	73. Heart of the Wild

Disbelief.

Another one of those emotions that I never thought I would see on the old druid's face, but there it was. Besides the look on his face, he reacted by grabbing his staff with his right hand, which he was already holding by the side of the bed with his left.

Maybe that's how he listened to the voice of my mind when I used the gem. If so, the gesture looked more like he was taking a better grip because he was unsure if he had heard right, unable to quite believe that I had just sounded like what I had.

Maybe he was simply holding onto it for support after the latest revelation about the state I was in, as if to brace himself against the blow that the realization struck at his old heart.

Maybe a bit of both. Or perhaps neither was it. I couldn't tell.

Either way, he spent a good few minutes just looking at me, probably trying to piece together the story I wasn't going to be able to properly tell him, nor did I really want to. Or need to. After all, it was quite literally written all over me, in the blue symbols that Valen had embedded into my skin, the burns on my left arm, the scar on my chest, the tears running down my face, and the lack of a vocal reply from me. And then there were the items on the table. The leather outfit that had changed in it's general colour and condition, the tragic dagger unknown to him for it's original owner and colorful history, Morgan Cherryspark's journal, and of course, my sword.

A symbol to my story of how a piece of nature and a fine blade had become one, but at the cost of that piece of nature having first shattered to the point where only a much smaller piece remained, the tiny vines clinging on to the blade and hilt like the one thing that still kept them alive.

After looking around a while from where he was sitting, he closed his eyes thoughtfully.

"I...spoke with the others while I waited," he began and opened his eyes again to look at me before continuing, "I have to admit, I was hoping that some of the things they knew to tell me would turn out to be either misinformed or exaggerated once I actually got to see you again, but..." he closed his eyes again and swallowed up the rest of whatever he had been trying to say, while his shoulders gained a bit of a tremble and his closed eyes were laced with a bit of a liquid glitter just underneath them.

At least he was more successful at holding back his tears than I had been.

It hurt me inside to see him like that. While I didn't know exactly how he felt about the girl he had raised to adulthood over only fifteen years of however long his life had been before that, it was clear that there was more to this than there had been to the death of his old friend Mythos back in Felwood. And taking into account that I was still alive, it really gave new light to what the importance of my well-being was for him.

All of these thoughts compelled me to reach out for his hand with mine, as if just to remind him that it was still warm with life. My touch did have him open his eyes and aim them at me again, while taking my hand and holding it in his.

He calmed himself quickly and the look on his face slowly turned into a light smile, as if my gesture had conveyed the intentions behind it to the letter. He still seemed to know his way around my thoughts without much effort, as further reinforced by his next words.

"Yes, I suppose I should get back down to the simple things and start by being glad that you're still here after everything you have been through."

Interestingly enough, the act seemed to have the opposite effect on me, accentuating the fact that actually being in my position made it far more difficult to find comfort in the one thing I still had, next to all the other things I had lost. It especially reminded me of someone who wasn't here anymore, causing me to pull my hand back and place it on the scar on my chest, as if to try and hold back the heartache that my thoughts once again ended up in.

Observing my reaction for a bit seemed to finally give the old druid something to strike up more of a talk with. But rather than repeating the obvious about the reason of Valen's absence or giving his condolences for the sake of etiquette, he jumped straight to a different point of view.

"I'm told that you took quite a liking to the art of swordmanship during your travels together," he started and took a pause before continuing, "you always did have an adventurous spirit and a curiosity for new things, even after growing up into the young woman you are now. Then again, I wasn't exactly discouraging it, either," he tried to steer things toward a happier, lighter mood.

But all I could think of was the memories he had brought up and the scolding I'd be getting next for having broken the tradition of druidic weapons.

_"S-sorry."_

Hearing the voice of my crippled mind seemed to still have the power of stopping him for a second, a tiny shock to recover from before he could continue.

He picked up my sword from the table, drew it out of it's sheath and inspected it in his hands.

"You have an interesting weapon. A fusion of things often thought to be more incompatible than they really are. While many rules and traditions are what they are for a good reason, I am glad to see that you've kept an open mind about things and discovered for yourself how one might combine two things already revered separately among our people. It may be something to attract plenty of criticism, but hardly anything world-splitting to truly warrant action against it.

It's not exactly the cheapest or most common kind of a sword, either. So if I'm guessing right where you got it from and how..." he took a brief pause to re-sheath the weapon and then set it down on my lap, seemingly ignoring my surprise altogether, but paying a bit of special attention to the symbols on my face, as if to make a point,

"...I would keep such an item close to the heart and honour it by putting it to it's intended use, if I were you. After all, it is not every day that someone makes a promise to stay at your side for the next thousand years or more by virtue of their undying affection."

I squeezed the weapon's handle with my hand to help fight the tears and the sting of pain within that his words brought up. In the meantime, he patiently waited for me to take a minute to come into terms with that latest wave of sorrow before continuing in his calm manner, which had now started to bring back that tranquil air I remembered him by.

"I do not wish to burden your spirit with any more memories of the two of you and your story, nor will I ask you to share it with me, but there is one detail I would like to bring up."

I used my eyes to let him know that he had my attention.

"The tall man with the eyepatch seems to be the most knowledgeable person on the later parts of your journey. He and the dwarven paladin had made some interesting observations about your mind and spirit while using their powers to help you recover after bringing you here, as well as during some mental encounter you had participated in earlier."

Not really knowing what his point was just yet, I hurried on to try and communicate something about the one thing that I thought he was trying to ask about.

_"I...sh...shape...shifted...two. T-two...beca...became one,"_ I stuttered out.

From the look on his face, I could tell that wasn't what he had been going to ask me about. And thinking about it, it would've made little sense indeed for Millie and Mr. White to have been able to know about it and tell him, either.

I could also tell from his face that, for the sake of not straining my mind, he was resisting the urge to ask me for details to help him understand.

"I see," he concluded after a moment of thought, "I can't say I was expecting to hear that. But at the same time, it doesn't surprise me quite as much as you may think, all things considered."

Even if his reaction was unexpectedly mild, it was only the next thing that he said that truly caught me by surprise.

"I am starting to see the gravity of my mistake in all of it's consequences now," he said and then closed his eyes while leaning on his staff again, giving a visible reaction far beyond what I had been expecting.

"I can only hope that I am not responsible for as much as it seems, and that you can someday forgive me for the rest," he muttered out in an almost teary voice.

I could only keep my questioning stare fixed on him as he took a short moment to calm down, then raised his eyes at me again.

"Cailea..." he started out, but then seemed to hesitate a bit before continuing, "...do you remember the day I taught you to shapeshift?"

I nodded, appreciative of how he had chosen to ask a binary question that I didn't need to try and answer in words.

"And do you remember the question I asked you at the start of that lesson, about if you had felt something of an animal spirit inside yourself before?"

I nodded again, confused as to what he was getting at.

He looked away, as if in shame, when he next spoke.

"That question had another, perhaps even greater purpose than to get us started on the subject of the day."

He aimed his eyes downward next, as he dug out the following memory.

"When Mythos and I took our first steps in the art of shapeshifting, I took me an entire week to get in touch with and unleash my first animal spirit into a transformation. Mythos, being the more skilled one of us in the area, did it after two days. And as you may recall," he said and aimed his gaze at me for the last bit, "you took all of seven seconds to call up yours, even if you did hesitate with letting it loose the first time, which puts the question I asked in a whole new light, doesn't it?"

It certainly did at that when you thought about it, even if I wasn't really sure where all this was going. It didn't help that the next thing he said seemed to shift into a totally different, unrelated subject.

"The day we first met, when I found you outside the gates of Darnassus. Tell me..." he started and then aimed a focused look at me, as if to point point out that the next bit was a vitally important one to pay attention to, "...have you ever wondered why it took almost three days for someone to stop and offer to help you? Have you asked yourself, how was it possible for a lone, little girl to ride a boat across the veiled sea and wander right through the capital of our people without having anyone pay enough notice to ask if you're lost?"

The honest answer to both of his questions was 'no', but I was too busy in my mind to do anything about it except stare quietly forward with my mouth wide open. You see, him bringing it up had made me realize something. It had found for me a missing piece of a puzzle I had been working on for a while, setting into motion a theorized sequence of events that played out in my mind, while the old druid proceeded to present one of his own at the same time.

"It was my first time visiting Teldrassil that day, if you can believe it."

_A little elven girl wandering in the familiar, misty forests of Darkshore. She is very young and isn't walking very quickly or securely._

"After many lone years spent in Ashenvale, I was curious to see this new tree that the other, more involved druids had planted and grown over just a few years, after the third war."

_The girl sees a glowing, red light somewhere ahead. The color is not a natural one to see in the area, so she becomes curious to see where it's coming from. The source turns out to be a large red crystal by the cliffs near Felwood, which has seen battles of the third war not more than a few days ago._

"To get there, I have to pass through Auberdine to get on a ship that goes there. The coast town is badly damaged which, along with passing talk I pick up, reveals that there was an attack a few days ago. I'm lucky enough to still find a ship that takes me where I'm going, but left feeling somewhat depressed over what I had just witnessed."

_Unaware that the glow is the essence of a very powerful demon trapped within the stone only recently, the curious child touches it, perhaps just to feel if it's warm. Already straining to contain the creature within, the crystal fractures at the light touch and a piece breaks off. Part of the demon's essence spills out as well, seeking for the nearest thing it can latch onto so as to not simply dissipate into thin air. The girl's body can't handle it._

"Darnassus was quite something to see as well. I asked around a bit, got acquainted with the layout of the city and found myself something to eat as well. But I soon realized that the elven people were the same folk out there as anywhere else, and determined that there wasn't much to learn in the city, so I headed off to see the rest of Teldrassil."

_A few days later, she is found dead, or at least seemingly so. Her mourning parents thus bury their only child in the cemetery on the outskirts of their hometown. Auberdine. A grave is an awfully cold, dark and small place indeed._

"It had been two days since the attack on Auberdine had happened, but I still had the aftermath of it that I had witnessed on my mind, so I guess I was sort of thinking of some way to help as I walked out onto the main road leading out of the city, knowing that I'd have to go back the same way, eventually. Or at least that's what I like to think, rather than just crediting it completely to luck that I noticed you."

_Some years pass, and an unknown event takes place. The exact nature of it will no doubt remain a mystery forever, but from somewhere, a creature with the soul of that girl emerges and heads for the town and the house it remembers and recognizes as home._

"I suppose it made sense for something that dark to go unnoticed, lying in the shadow of a large tree not too far off to the side. The truth is, and I am merely telling you what I saw, that there was no little elven girl starving in the shade of that large, old oak. Instead, it was a small panther cub, almost perfectly masked by it's black fur. It took me a moment to realize as well, that there was far more to the little feline than it's looks would've made you think. And sure enough, politely asking if she wanted my help was rewarded with a small miracle taking place before my eyes, as the animal's shape changed into that of a little, green-haired girl, barely five years old."

_The parents, still remembering and mourning their lost daughter, receive the guest to their house like any night elf: appreciating the curious little creature like any living thing of nature, but with little hopes of the occasion being able to soothe their hearts. And as if the goddess herself has heard their cries, the impossible happens as the small feline before them turns into a child who looks exactly like their daughter. Perhaps it is the sight of mother and father that causes her to inadvertently invoke the change into a shape that they will recognize. Perhaps she even calls out to them as she remembers them, causing them to break into tears of joy and happily adopt her._

"My amazement went a step further when, after a bit of consoling, I asked for her name and she told me."

_Remembering the almost supernatural way the girl had come into their lives, and not wanting to dishonour the memory of the daughter they had mourned for several years, no matter how much they treated the girl as that same child, they gave her a different name. One that was descriptive of the first form they had seen her in._

_Cailea._

"Cailea."

_"...kitten."_

The old druid almost smiled at hearing me communicate that last word to him in my thoughts.

"I always wondered how much you knew, just how much of your memory had been blurred or wiped away by the shock of having just lost your family and home. And when I saw no indication of any shapeshifting or you knowing how to, I asked you that question about it the day I taught you the technique. To probe if time had brought back anything."

I shouldn't let myself be misunderstood, though. It still holds true, what I wrote at the start my of story, that I remember pretty much nothing of my first three years. My mind merely combined a bunch of loose threads to make up an elaborate guess as to what the truth of my origin might be. I might've been partially or completely mistaken about it.

"My mistake, as it now seems, was not telling you about this during all those years you stayed at my cabin and grew up as time passed. Many times I would use some time on my regular trips to Astranaar to ask around and do some research on how it was possible for a small child to do what I had witnessed you do and not know about it afterward The only thing I discovered that way was an official, yet somewhat vague document. A casualty report, I believe. The owner of this journal had apparently seen it too," he pointed out to Morgan's journal on the table, "have you read her note on it?"

I managed to respond with a nod, despite my rather shocked state. He had known?

"Eventually, the day came when you said you wanted to go out and see the world, as I knew it would after all those stories I had shared with you about it's wonders. Unaware of what would transpire in Felwood, I made the gentle suggestion that we head for Moonglade for the purpose of, as I truthfully stated back then, helping you learn more about shapeshifting.

Even after we had set off on our journey together, I kept the information from you, but went ahead and brought it up with Mythos once you had gone to bed, that first night in Felwood."

And that seemed to explain the aptly timed, warning of a story about shapeshifting that the tauren had told me the following evening. As well as his strange, vague questions about whether I knew why the old druid had chosen to take me in.

"Mythos' dead body was a discovery in itself, but far more shocking was the idea that I might've lost you before I had the chance to share this with you. Even after it turned out that you had lived the attack on the sanctuary, the possibility of what could've happened really gave me something to trouble myself with the following night, especially knowing that I'd have to send you ahead by yourself and stay behind to look after the outpost for a while."

After that confession, he gave me a long pause to think about it. While the revelation he had given about the day he found me was probably only half as surprising as he thought, the idea of him having known all along was fully new, and not an entirely comfortable one at that. The one, still living person that I thought I could always trust, as it turned out, had been hiding things from me. I could describe in more detail how I felt about it and speculate on his reasons for doing what he had done, but as the old druid proved once again to be one step ahead of my thoughts, I need only repeat what he said about it next. I must've given quite a visual reaction to provoke him into it.

"It is not an easy thing, to doubt the very nature of one's existence. It is even harder to break someone else's existing idea of themself, when that someone is a person you truly care for. Someone who already struggles to make peace with their past. I knew that all my knowledge would do little to rebuild the world this young girl had began to build around the safety and solitude I offered her, should I choose destroy it for her. Alas, I found myself unable to do so.

Whatever pains and worries this may have caused you, I am truly sorry for."

I buried my face in my hands and thought about how he was right about it not being an easy thing, especially when the wisest person you know is the one to bring it up as such. My version of what my beginnings could've been was an incomplete answer with a major blank spot in the unknown event that it involved. And even then, the whole of it was little more than the result of a guessing game based off of a bunch of dreams and mental imagery, which could all be just more tricks with which my enemy had tried to drive me insane. Just like the vision that had shown me finishing off the man I loved myself. Another thing I could neither prove nor disprove, since even the dagger or I were afflicted with the curse, it would surely have ended with the demise of the warlock who cast it in the first place.

The old druid soon interrupted my sailing on the seas of doubt, after apparently once again seeing right through my body language into what I was thinking.

"The others seemed quite eager to meet you as soon as I would be done here. And I'm sure you'll want a moment to yourself before you go meet them. But before I leave you to your well-deserved moment of contemplation, I would like to share one more thought, if you're willing to listen, as it may help clear things up a bit."

I took a lengthy moment of several dozen seconds before finding in myself the will to listen to whatever he would say next. When I did, I let him know by raising my gaze to look at him again.

"It wasn't just compassion that kept me from telling you earlier. Due to your curious nature as a child, always wanting to listen to the next story and then read some more about it, I saw another, better way to bring this to light. It was a little risky, in a way, but I couldn't think of a better way. It may just have been the mistake I spoke of. That will be up to you to decide.

You see, due to that inquisitive nature of yours, I knew that you would eventually want to go out and see the world I had told you so much about. As I had planned it, this discussion was always supposed to take place upon your return from having been out there for a bit. When you contacted me from outside this house here, many of the things you told me about and the things I read in between the lines were looking promising. And though I neither wished nor expected you to end up like you now have, there is perhaps something good in even that."

He re-adjusted his position on the side of the bed before continuing.

"You see, the thought I want to leave you with is this. No matter what your origin, now that you've been out there and seen a bit of the world, have you not been amazed and scared by it like anyone else? Have you not made friends and enemies with varying opinions of you? Have you not experienced joy, sorrow, love and hate like anyone else?"

He took another pause to stand up, looking like he was ready to leave.

"Or if you prefer, ask someone else how they feel about you, what they see when they look at you. Ask the dwarf, who tells me of how you saved the life of his loyal companion bear. Ask the blind man, who barely knows you, but already respects you enough to feel in need of redeeming himself over not being able to stop the one who betrayed you.

Or think of the elven man, just about as young as you and with as many years ahead if not for his unfortunate fate, who already promised to spend those years with you and had you feel the same way about him. Because that's how much he loved you as you are. Because that's how strongly he believed, that he literally would not come to regret it in a thousand years."

He then took a thoughtful little pause before adding one more thing.

"And because I can tell that just from what I've seen and heard, even though I never met him."

Then he finally headed for the door with every intent of leaving me to contemplate and rest in peace. He already had his hand on the door handle when I used the gem to stop him one more time.

_"What...am I...t-t-to you? What do...do you...see?"_ I communicated to him with more tears running down my face after what he had just said.

He thought for just a second before responding.

"I see someone seeking a rest and a safe place in the shade of a large old tree. She has come there, because the world has been unkind to her, even cruel. She has known love and safety, but it all seems long gone now, leaving her feeling hopeless and wondering if there is yet a place or purpose for her.

And I find myself wanting to approach her, wanting to let her know, that it isn't like this wise old oak and the other trees around it wouldn't mourn her, if that's where she chose for her story to end."

And then he left me to rest.


	74. Stained Glass

It was as if the old druid's tranquil presence in the room had kept me from seeing some of the negative sides of the things we had communicated about. And with him back out of the room, the full extent of the disturbing possibilities seemed to hit me.

With him having confirmed not just the existence of the document mentioned in Morgan's journal, but also the fact that there had been something unusual about me from the start, combined with all those seemingly illusionary things I had been through that only I knew about, the possibilities of what the real truth was were many indeed.

At best, I was simply an adopted child not related to the dead girl in any way but the people who had called me their daughter, with my gift for shapeshifting manifest at such an extremely young age due to the shock horror of the attack that had happened, compelling me to hide from the world in a different form, until the old druid saw through my guise, causing me to release it and forget about it for several years afterward.

At worst, however, it could be that I was the result of some unnatural, necromantic event caused by the involvement of the demon's essence, which would explain why it seemed to know about me, as well as give cause for it's attempts at my life by the will, word and hand of the warlock, who himself had seemed less than interested to have to deal with me.

As evidence against the latter, unlike any animated undead I had ever seen, I was made of live flesh, flowing blood, a beating heart and...every other sign of natural life, as Valen could attest to, were he there.

And speaking of him, there was the other uncertain matter of the truth of his last moments. As much as I wanted to believe everything the warlock had shown me to be another mind game to confuse me, none of the visual and auditory evidence he had put together around the supposedly false image of the scorched beach were false by themselves. It was only my faith and the clear memory of how I at least thought the moment had played out in reality, that I had to go by in my mental struggle to deny the warlock's suggestion.

And as anyone knowledgeable in the ways of nature could tell you, there aren't that many possible outcomes when so many forces moving in two opposite directions meet, all in one small space.

While it seemed on the outside, that I had my first moment of some true silence and peace for quite a long while and I probably looked the part too, staring mutely ahead like a lifeless doll, on the inside there was a small storm going on. A churning feeling around my center, constantly threatening to strangle out the little piece of serenity cowering in the eye of the storm with every false move I made. And right then, that seemed to be any move. Especially the next one.

I looked at the door out of the room and thought of getting back on my feet, and the raging whirlwind moved a little off-center with every following thought of the people who were presumably expecting me in the next room. I had barely moved, and yet, I had already gone too far. I discarded all thoughts of going anywhere, laid back down on the pillows, pulled the sheets back over myself and held tightly onto them, like I held onto that little piece that had gotten grazed by the winds, unwilling to let it slip though my fingers. Unwilling to lose the last of myself to needless haste inspired by false courage.

The old druid's encouraging ideas were powerful enough to have me deny the lure of a blade to my own heart, but even they couldn't make me come out of the little safe spot that I had found, couldn't make me speak again after a few spoonfuls of warm soup. Not this time.

I aimed my eyes at the window which, luckily enough, was located right above the bed, allowing me to see the sky. The familiar view not only confirmed that I was indeed in Thoraim's house, but also told me that the weather was cloudy, with the sun shyly peeking from between the white and grey formations every now and then as they slowly moved along.

I made an agreement with myself then. An agreement to try and forget, to direct my thoughts forward and try not to worry about any part of the past unless it came back for me in person. To try and find balance in the present, in each passing moment, like all those differently shaped clouds going in and out of the sun's spotlight one at a time. And like them, I'd need to take it slowly.

The people in the next room were too big a thing yet.

The clouds, on the other hand, would be fine for a little while longer.

Their steady passing across the skies would first show me that the world was still moving on it's intended course. They would have me adjust to their calm speed, giving me confidence that my moves would be in rhythm with the world, that I wouldn't step on the sapling that was my last chance to regrow myself after the shattering of the cast-metal structure that I had forged from the molten metal of wrath. It would take a little while, and then, only then, could I move on to bigger things like facing the people in the next room.

Yes. The clouds would be just fine for a while longer.

As it turned out, it was all a bit of an exercise in focus as well, as I made a point of not falling asleep, knowing the nightmares the surely awaited right across the border of physical reality.

I guess it was the sun going down, painting the sky crimson and making the clouds eventually just about invisible, as well as my old claustrophobia creeping up on me with my attention sliding back toward the room I was in, that had me start moving again. That, and the almost alien sensation of motion in my stomach. My body letting me know that I was hungry, I quickly deduced.

Maybe a bit of warm soup wouldn't be such a terrible idea.

With smooth, careful motions, I slid out of bed, placing my feet on the floor and slowly standing up in anticipation of a distinct lack of strength in my legs. If there was one, I had taken things slowly enough to not notice it. Just as I had guessed, another, wide band of white cloth, like the one I started removing from around my chest, was wrapped around my loins, as I was able to see.

I don't think I've ever taken quite as long to get dressed in my own, familiar outfit. Still holding to the slow, steady pace I had adopted from the skies as I carefully aligned each piece of leather to sit comfortably, fastened every strap with enough care and patience to make sure nothing squeezed in too tight and made a point of not pulling my hood over my head at the end of it all, I'd say I took a good half hour to finish.

From the feel of it, I could tell that the outfit had indeed been washed clean since I had last worn it. Another of those little things I found myself able to appreciate again. Even my own skin felt as though someone had given me a bath. And from what I had seen so far, all traces led back to Millie. And as I soon came to notice, they would continue to do so.

Taking a few more deep breaths at the door before proceeding, I put my hand on the handle, clearing my mind of any predictions of what I would find on the other side, wanting to face the rest of the world as it was. And then I entered.

I had almost forgotten that the large dining table in the main room of the house was round. And as I had just about expected, there was already food set on it. From the look of things, the others had already dined while they had given me all the time I had wanted to take to get up and get dressed. No doubt both the old druid and Millie had something to do with that.

Mr. White was staring idly forward as usual, for reasons I better understood now than I had initially. Thoraim was sitting on the opposite side of the table, giving the bottom of his mug a depressed stare. From the bearded dwarf's general outlook and lack of reaction to my arrival, I was guessing that his mug had seen quite a few refills over the last several hours. Different from the above two, the old druid, also seated at the table, was actually looking at me. He had this half-turned gaze at me, like he was letting me know that he was present and aware, but would stay on the sidelines as a passive observer, unless asked to step up.

Millie was the only one standing up, already taking a few steps toward me, but then stopped, as if someone had told her to hold back her natural urge to walk up and start fussing about how I was feeling and if she could do anything to help. No doubt another of the old druid's arrangements to give me space to come into terms with how the world looked after our exchange.

I found myself to an empty seat between Mr. White and the old druid, across the table from Thoraim. That seemed to be Millie's cue to be allowed into action.

"Here," she said and started to load food onto an empty plate, before setting it down before me, completely ignorant of the fact that I might've been able to do it myself.

Then she did the same with the drink, before finding her way to a seat next to Thoraim.

"Eat up, girl. Yer gonna need it after all the time you were out cold," she finished her motions with.

I had a sip from my mug and started eating. That nauseous feeling started to rise up again slowly, but I found that I was able to keep it to a minimum with my calm and slow way of doing things.

As it turned out, Millie couldn't hold her tongue for too many minutes at a time. Not that it bothered me.

"Lemme know if ya need anythin'. Ya feel anythin' odd or just wanna talk, I'm here. Ya hear me?"

Talk? Was it a figure of speech or had she not been told?

Then again, thinking about it, it made perfect sense that the old druid would've left it up to me to decide the time, place and method of letting everyone know. And it wasn't like they could've figured it out when I had been 'out cold', either.

"How's the food tastin? Any good?" her next question after a few more minutes pretty much confirmed my suspicion.

By the time I raised my gaze from my plate to give her an approving nod, there was already a thin stream of something running down my left cheek again. Just the one this time, though, I reminded myself to try and see the slow progress I was making. Still, it was enough to leave her looking somewhat confused about it.

"Sure yer okay, lass?"

I deliberately stalled a few seconds before giving her another nod. I guess she must've noticed how that one was only a half-honest one.

"Hm, I guess...I guess ya wouldn't be. But listen. I can't bring 'em back any more than anyone else, but are ya sure I can't do anythin' else fer ya?"

I swallowed what I had in my mouth and took another few seconds of pause before raising my eyes to look at hers. I was going to move my head again, but stopped before I did and simply stared at her for a bit instead. Even Thoraim had taken interest by that point.

Remembering the resemblance of everything that had happened since my waking up to that day when the old druid had found me outside Darnassus and gotten me a meal, I tried speaking just for the heck of it. This was the point where I had talked the last time, after all.

Unsurprisingly enough, my voice was still gone and that fire in the back of my head was messing up my attempts to form coherent words with my mouth. Even so, the attempt had apparently been visible enough to have the dwarves realize the reason for my silence. Or so it seemed, from the looks on both of their faces.

I looked down and got back to my meal before they had a chance to respond with anything other than that first stare, slowly filling up with understanding. I guess I wanted to show them that it wasn't such a shocking thing for me anymore, to let them take comfort in that fact. Even if what I displayed was actually giving a more calm image than what I really felt like inside, after having seen their faces just then.

And instead of aggressively getting right on top of the matter, Millie was able to give it a moment's thought this time. It probably had something to do with her giving this slitghtly disapproving gaze toward his husband, who banged the table with a fist once, before helping himself to another refill of his mug, everything about his demeanor speaking of how he was probably reciting in his mind all the dwarven curses he knew, scolding himself over an 'if only I had been there' that I could just about make out from his lips.

Speaking of timely rescues by Thoraim, it was only then that I realized something so obvious it made me wonder how I could've missed it. Sorelei was nowhere to be seen, even though she had been at the altar of storms.

"I guess you've already tried healing it," Millie was still on the previous subject.

I gave her a quick nod before proceeding to look around in slight confusion, wondering where my previously sworn enemy had gone.

"Even the light can't heal everything," Mr. White said from my left, his words apparently aimed at the dwarf.

He could've said more, elaborated on the seemingly spontaneous statement he had made, but being who he was, he really didn't need to. His presence was quite enough to fill out the rest.

"Something missing?" the old druid was the first one to finally pick up on my apparent confusion over the missing person.

"Oh, right. Ya wouldn't know about it, would ya?" Thoraim grumbled from under his beard. "There was another one with us out in the mountains. She left before ya got here," he elaborated for the old druid.

I aimed my eyes at Thoraim, hoping for a bit more of an explanation.

"Stubborn b-" he mumbled instead, drowning the last word in his drink instead, obviously quite displeased over something that had happened with the elven mercenary.

Mr. White was the next one to respond to the air of confusion that remained.

"For all of the journey back from the steppes, she seemed a bit nervous around you, like she constantly had something on her mind.

After we brought you here and Millie here took over taking care of you, the elf, Miss Starwind, was visibly the most enraged person over the fact that Millie was letting nobody in the bedroom to disturb you.

Eventually she stormed off, looking like someone who hadn't gotten their way, mumbling something under her breath as she did. I believe 'enemy of my enemy', 'temporary arrangement' and 'nothing is forgiven' were among the phrases she used, in roughly that order as well."

I guess some people and their ideas had remained constant. Ironically, I almost smiled at myself, hearing what had just been said.

"And in case you're wondering, she took the crystal with her. She said she would take it into a safe place. A millennia old prison that's previous occupant made it a very appropriate place to lock this particular demon in. I'm afraid I'm not quite familiar enough with your history to know what she meant by that."

I couldn't make a whole lot of sense out of all that, either. But then, I wasn't really trying to. I was more keen to forget all about that crystal and everything else that had something to do with it.

"I'm afraid I don't know much about whatever else she might've said or done around here, as I took a bit of time to go and visit Stormwind City while you were recovering. I had a report to make on the traitor who had been assigned to investigate a leak of secret gnomish technology into all the wrong hands, only for her to turn out to be that leak.

You see, she had been under suspicion for some time, and I was the one assigned to watch her. I'm guessing she told you that I was the untrusted one due to my past, as per the cover story I had been given. An obvious mystery revealed to hide the real one never fails, much like my eyepatch. Or so I thought. And I guess we all know by now what happened after that misjudgement of mine."

His tone suggested a hint of guilt and reservation, like he was expecting me to get angry at him. But I didn't. I had decided not to. Instead, I aimed my gaze at the lantern in the middle of the table, trying to drown that sensation of tears running down my face somewhere under the radiating heat and light.

"That is why – let it be said again – taking action to help you as soon as I could was the least I could do to make up for my grave error. Luckily enough, Miss Cherryspark had a spare one of those locator devices in her home. Since the shortest path to trace your heading went through the tram and into Ironforge, I took a moment to see if those friends of yours agent Moonscar had mentioned earlier would be around to be found."

"And sure enough," Millie stepped in, "he found us just as I had gotten better an' we were gettin' ready to go home."

"As for the elf, she had apparently more or less been tracking the larger half of the broken crystal the entire time. I got the impression that the demon within it had done something to her home in the past. At any rate, she seemed quite surprised and pleased to meet us in the heights of Khaz Modan, heading in the same direction as she was," Mr. White continued to lead on with the story.

"Pleased my ass!" Thoraim interrupted him, "she had probably figured out all the wrong parts of what we tried to tell her before, and was probably spying on the altar to see if Cailea or Valen would show up, so she could kill them along with the warlock," the dwarf claimed loudly and belched at the end, invoking a disapproving silence into the room for the next few seconds.

"In any case," Mr. White continued after the pause, "when we brought you back here and you were discovered to be in possession of Miss Cherryspark's journal, the sort of item containing sensitive information and proof of her crimes that she would never have willingly parted with, I guessed that she had met her fate at your hands.

So I took that proof to show at headquarters, along with the rest of my report. And just as I had hoped, it was concluded that you deserve some kind of a commendation as well as official condolences for your part in dealing with the traitor. They were going to offer money first, but I suspected that that wasn't going to be a very good idea, all things considered. So I suggested something different instead."

At this point, he picked up a small wooden box from somewhere next to his chair and handed it to me. Well...in my general direction, anyway.

"This is agent Moonscar's personal lockbox from the headquarters. It should contain all personal items of his that he might've left behind, as well as any records of his activities that he might've kept to himself. I'm told that, due to his troubled youth, agent Moonscar was in the habit of writing down a lot of his thoughts to clear his head of them for the benefit of whatever mission he would take on next. As such, I suspect the contents may make for an interesting read for you.

And do not worry about anyone coming looking for it. A bogus box is filling it's spot back at SI:7 HQ. That box contains a certain set of four orbs, safely hidden out of sight and off any records, as well as far away from the crystal which should be well on it's way back to Kalimdor by now."

I put the box on the table after holding it in my trembling hands for a few seconds, like a truly valuable treasure that I wasn't quite sure I deserved to have. I also wanted to free my hands for the purpose of wiping away more tears, which had become a fair bit more abundant over the last minute or so.

"There is also this," the big man continued before I had time for more. He pulled out a small item that I could quite make out until he had set it on my hand. It was a small, golden ring with a tiny, carved symbol in place of any diamonds.

"This is his insignia ring. Anyone carrying one of these can be identified as a member or a trusted contact of the agency. Normally a new ring would be crafted to the person being granted this, but I thought you'd want to have this one, as it turned out that agent Moonscar had left it behind during his last visit to HQ, along with expressing a desire to resign from the service and find himself a different life somewhere else. Though nothing was formalized in documents at the time, he was sure enough of his path to have left his ring behind."

That was too much to hear. I squeezed the ring in my hand and couldn't help but break down into crying openly. I had recalled the discussion I had had with Valen during that bath we shared. The one where I had told him that despite the fusion we had undergone, we would've eventually been drawn to each other and a common path anyway, and that the fusion had merely sped up things that would've happened anyway. It was true then. He had thought that way too. He had already made up his mind about asking to travel out to the world with me before our escape from the flooding cave had even happened. The fusion and the moments we shared afterward then escalated that request into him asking me to undergo the ceremony with him.

I really had been 'the girl of his dreams' then, like he had jokingly said back that morning in Morgan's house.

It also brought to mind many of the other nice and sweet things he had said. And right then, sitting at that table, it reminded me of one in particular.

Barely having calmed my breathing after crying a few minutes, I grabbed my mug and raised it up into a toast. I had no audible words to go with it, of course. Only my flowing tears, through which I managed to squeeze a small smile as I looked at the others expectantly.

Millie was the first one to join the toast, true to her promise of doing whatever she could to help me feel better.

The sound of our two mugs gently hitting each other must've alerted Mr. White to what was happening, as he was the next to join in.

The old druid looked a tad confused at first, but then joined in as well. Whether he did so out of manners and courtesy, or a genuine understanding of the scene, I really don't know.

I then turned my gaze to focus on Thoraim who, besides myself, had seemed like the most depressed person in the room. More and more tears flooded over my eyes and flowed down my face as I kept my gaze solidly fixed on my dwarven friend, causing my vision of the world to slowly turn into stained glass. All the while I forced a smile through it all, my trembling lips straining from the act.

And then I finally got him to join in too.

He knew the words. The ones that I had wanted to say when I had raised my mug.

And so, when his mug collided with ours, he said them for me.

"To all the memories we still _do_ like to remember."


	75. Beacon

Epilogue.

Some say that writing down your thoughts helps you forget.

I've...had some time to think about it since I finished writing about my journey. And while I still don't think that it's exactly true, there's another point among the words I started with that now proves to be a lie.

Or, well. I guess I did mean it when I wrote it. But now I think differently.

Let me use this final page to tell you what I mean.

Mr. White took his leave the same night he had given me the box and the ring, but Thoraim and Millie insisted that the old druid and I stay as their visitors for two more weeks. We weren't in a hurry to go anywhere, so we agreed, and got to enjoy Thoraim's excellent cooking for those two weeks. That, and a generally courteous hosting all around. I almost had to fight Millie to have her understand that I preferred to sleep outside, rather than keep reserving the bedroom. She seemed particularly caring, or rather, overcaring about my well-being, and I wasn't really sure what that was all about.

When we eventually took our leave and found our way back to Menethil Habor, where we caught a ship back to Kalimdor, the dwarves even kept us company all the way to the docks, where they waved us goodbye and asked me to come visit again.

The sea voyage had some strangeness to it as well, but...I'll get back to that in a minute.

As you would have it, the destination of the ship, upon reaching Kalimdor, was Auberdine. It seemed almost impossible that I had not actually seen the town in person since before I had met the old druid, despite all the dreams and visions of mine that it had been a part of. There was a certain comfort in seeing the town alive and well for a change, instead of repeated visions of the attack and the fires. Especially with a bit of rain in the air upon our arrival.

The ever-melancholic mist veiling the town was picture-perfect from my better memories of the place.

Just a few steps off the deck of the ship and onto the pier, I fell to my knees from a sudden wave of emotion sweeping over me. Full circle. Not many other ways to describe the feeling. And as always, the old druid's patience seemed infinite, as he let me take all the time I wanted to. Sitting down on my knees, I closed my eyes and listened. And there it was, the song of the sea. The same tune that it had been in the opposite corner of the world.

By the time I opened my eyes again to stand up, I was smiling widely.

We took a quiet stroll around town. I lead the way without even really thinking about it. Many of the buildings where a little different than I remembered, no doubt because of how they had been repaired after the attack. My old home looked pretty much the same as before, but someone else was living there now. We didn't disturb them, as I knew there was nothing for me there. Instead, by no significant surprise, our idle walk ended at the cemetery, on the southern border of town.

I had never seen what my parents' graves looked like, but I knew where to find them. And sure enough, next to them, there was a third grave. The stone marking this one had fractured a few inches above ground, and most of it was missing, nowhere to be seen. For what it was worth, the base of it that remained did look the same as the one the warlock had shown me. The rest of the grave seemed untouched.

I guess I hadn't seriously been expecting to find answers. I found myself wanting to laugh at the very idea of having hoped for something more.

Having already largely been in a mindset of not discovering anything more, it was surprisingly easy to accept what I saw. I knelt down before the middle on the three graves – my mother's – then bowed my head, closed my eyes and recited my respects in my mind.

At some point while I was doing that – or so I'm told, as I was rather deep in thought as well as listening to my surroundings and, for the first time in a long while, to myself – an elven man approached us. The old druid took it upon himself to handle the discussion that followed.

From what I'm told, the man had approached us because he too was there to remember someone he had lost. Not exactly a surprise in itself, but it also turned out that he was doing so for the last time. Apparently some brave adventurer had returned to him some possession of his beloved, whom he had been grieving for quite some time. Apparently the act was proof that the spirit of the woman he had loved was free, and after holding onto it for some more years, he had found a measure of peace and was ready to move on. I didn't understand it all too well.

The important part, as it turned out when the three of us left the cemetery and went to the inn for a hot cup of tea, was that the man was intending to leave town, leaving behind his residence and the duty that had been his pretty much since the third war. I gave the old druid permission to answer him some questions he had about me, as he seemed curious about my story. He seemed to take particular interest in two things: the fact that I was a druid and, interestingly enough, the fact that I was having nightmares about my lost love, as the old druid too had witnessed over the last few weeks.

To make a long story short, the man sympathized with the few things he was told about my story, and before the day was done, I was standing in the open doorway of the building that had been his place of residence, holding the keys in my hand, without even catching his name before he had wandered off. And that's how I ended up here, where I am right now, writing these very words.

I chose to stay for three reasons. First, because Auberdine really did still feel like home after all the years I had been away. Secondly, because of a discovery I had made about myself back in the cemetery. And thirdly, because the old druid approved of the idea, seeing it as a chance for me to soothe my soul after everything I had been through, as well as to keep on developing my druidic connection to nature.

And looking back to it now, he was right. Being the keeper of the lighthouse is all about keeping my vigil, constantly watching and especially listening, with all that mist preventing one's eyes from seeing all that far, so that I would be ready to sound the alarm by the very same bell that had struck the first notes of my journey, if needed. The bell, and of course, the beacon up top do all the communicating that is necessary to do my duty, as my voice, even if I had one, would be insufficient to reach the town proper from the small tower that stands on a tiny island of it's own, about a hundred meters off the shore.

A place of peace and solitude amidst the waves, at the forefront of every storm and rain that comes this way, it has been a blessing to spend my days here. I start every average day by going down to the small patch of clear, sandy ground around the lighthouse, wearing a few light clothes and my sword in it's sheath. I then engage in a practice fight against invisible opponents, to keep honing my skills and keep myself in shape. To honor the blade that I had been gifted, as the old druid put it. Sometimes I'm sparring with Valen again, other times I'm facing multiple, faceless opponents. If it's the former, I lose every time. In the case of the latter, the opposite is true. In either case, a good bath in the sea is always in order afterward.

I have a small boat with which to row to town if I need to, but most days I just return inside for rest, or lay outside on the sand. The height and the elven architecture of the tall building allows me to feel free and never too enclosed, and the spiral staircase leading up to the bell and my quarters above it has yet to get the best of me...except for that one time, of course.

The beacon that is located on the top floor is actually a stone of sorts. A bundle of everliving roots grow from it, making it something akin to the piece of enchanted wood that powers my sword. Underneath it is a basin of water, drawn from the moonwell. Making the roots grow long enough to drink it causes the mystical energies to flow into the stone, giving it the bright, silver glow that guides ships to where the dock is. Doing the reverse, of course, stops it from radiating as the glow dies out after a few minutes. It takes a druid to use it, which probably explains the previous keeper's interest in my being just that.

But just as that beacon acts as a guide to ships and sailors from near and far, as they search for safe port in the misty nights of the veiled sea, there is a light that guides me as well. The main reason why I chose to stay and make my home here, instead of following the old druid to Ashenvale.

The one thing that keeps me sane amidst my nightmares. It gives me all the motivation I need when I swing my blade down at the beach below. And though I had already accepted my nightmares as punishment for my less than honorable deeds, it is powerful enough to inspire me to try and rid myself of the haunted dreams. The flaw in the introduction of my story. The lie that I will hereby correct, about this text not being for anyone's eyes. Because if there's anyone in the world who deserves to know the full story, it's you.

Writing is still as difficult for me as it has been since that fateful night, but for you, the colossal, painstaking effort that it has taken to tell my story in written words is more than worth it.

Because that's how much your mother loves you.

No. I lied again. It's not even close. It only compares to a fraction of my affection. But it's a start. I don't really have a whole lot more.

Right now, as I'm writing this, I'm cradling you with my left arm. The one with the burns on it, which makes for quite a contrast next to you. I just fed you a little while ago, and now you've fallen asleep. And as always, I find myself wanting to sing to you, to hum the tune of the sea that is always present here. But I can't. I never will. Carefully rocking you from side to side will have to do once again. It is the motion of the waves. The song, you'll have to imagine.

It is for you that I've told my tale in written words, as I will never be able to tell it in voice.

It is the story of how I met your father and travelled with him. It tells of how we pursued a common enemy and fell in love, of how you were conceived against all odds and how you somehow survived through my darkest days and weeks immediately afterward, earning you the nickname of 'tough little bugger' from my friend Millie, who helped deliver you. Somehow, she had known. That's why she was so concerned over my health, why I felt nauseous weeks after the enemy's defeat, and why I falsely appeared to be seasick on the way back to Kalimdor, even though I had always enjoyed the waves.

It is a story about the old druid who taught me many important lessons, and about the friends who helped me make it through to where I am know. It even tells of the mercenary Sorelei, who swore vengeance against me and apparently never forgave me, though I have not seen her since the battle at the altar. It is her innocent sister's name that you now have, in memory of her unfortunate death before my eyes, and in hopes of you growing up to be as sweet a person as she apparently was.

It is the story of my blade, one of fear and desire, the tale of why my dreams were made of nothing but tears and fire.

It tells of the origin of all my doubts and fears, and now, of the answer I have found, as well. Where I really come from or how I came to be seems irrelevant next to the fact that I am now the birth mother of a perfectly healthy little elven girl who sleeps on my lap. Whether the final blow against your father came from my hands or not, I can at least now dedicate my life to our daughter. All of it, with sincere happiness, if you so desire.

That's why you are the real beacon around here. The light that gives me purpose and direction. The near-impossibility of your existence a small miracle of nature, reminding this one of it's humble listeners that I can still do my part, even without ever again having a voice of my own with which to join in the grand symphony. I look at you, and I remember what I heard at the cemetery, the day I returned to Auberdine. I realized, that the life in me still had a sound if I just stopped to listen to it, making the irony of living my life as a mute druid that much less painful.

You have a sound too. It was just a small side tone back then, and it's still a small one for now, but I can listen to it all day with ease. And a voice, as I could tell from your first cries when you were born. I wonder if any mother on the face of Azeroth has cried quite as many tears of joy upon hearing that cry for the first time.

My final lesson about druidism, at least for now, being that the only thing that grants greater fulfilment and joy than tending to and protecting existing life, is nurturing a new one right from the moment of it's birth. The feeling is so powerful, I can't help but think that perhaps this offers an explanation to the lack of female druids in ages past. Perhaps they often became too preoccupied with this to have as much time and attention for the trees as the men did.

Just a thought.

There is one other reason why I chose to pick up the pen once more and write this epilogue. Some say writing down your thoughts helps you forget, and like I said, I've had a bit of time to think on that since I finished writing how my journey ended with the toast in Thoraim's house.

Or rather, I've had time to sleep on it. While I have not forgotten, my dream last night, while curled up around you to keep you extra warm with my fur like I sometimes do, was not of fire anymore.

In the dream, I was a little girl again, swimming around at a familiar shore. An elven boy with a fishing pole was sitting on a rock nearby. Eventually, he turned to look at me and smiled.

I noticed a change in the air, and at long last, I was able to smile right back.

Some say that writing down your thoughts helps you understand.

That part was true.

I dreamed of a gentle rain.

* * *

_And that's all for today folks. I hope you've enjoyed the ride as much as I have, as the knowledge that at least somebody besides myself has been interested is what kept this going all the way into it's pre-planned ending._

_Now more than ever I would also appreciate knowing what you thought about it, and especially, if you found a lot of things wrong with it or not._

_Special thanks to my friend who prescreened the five-chapter ending for any major plotholes and loose ends for me. Here's hoping he didn't miss many ;-)_

_Thank you for reading!_

_ -Daniel Icefrost_

_'What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us'_


End file.
