WoW: Crossroads
Title: Crossroads
Fandom: World of Warcraft
Rating: PG13 for generalized unpleasantness of the sort associated with the living dead.
Disclaimer: All characters and concepts related to the World of Warcraft are the sole property of Activision/Blizzard Entertainment. I profiteth not. But, Activision? Unless you're ponying up some fucking royalties, my original characters belong to me. I don't care what your EULA says.
Author's Notes: Keldris Pellegrin enjoyed a traumatically near death experience after his touching reunion with Solivar during the siege of Orgrimmar; this is that story. AKA that ficbit where Krivulka Stonefist, badass orc granny great-aunt, decided she wanted to become a POV character. Features at least one completely non-canonical trollish loa whose entire existence I am choosing to blame on
incandescens for reasons that will eventually become obvious, at least to her. Also eventual angst and woe and storyline setup for things that are currently unfolding in Steadfast RP.
The siege of Orgrimmar was over.
Columns of smoke miles high rose from the red desert plain that girded the city, heavy with the ashes of the city's fallen defenders. The Earthen Ring, those who remained, had labored two full days and two full nights to give the dead the honor and peace they deserved, offering their flesh the gift of purifying flame on a dozen massive pyres and singing their souls home to their ancestors. The rhythmic chants still rose with the smoke, deep-voiced tauren and orc and troll joined with the Light-calling songs of the Sin'dorei priests.
Captain Krivulka Stonefist, wearier in body and soul than she had been in years, paused in her own wor
3375 / 2500 words. 135% done!k to listen for a moment, leaning heavily on the iron-tipped farming implement she was using to chop fire-blackened bone. The pit in which the clean-up crews were dismembering and immolating the abandoned remains of the invaders lay downwind of the higher plateau on which the pyres stood and the breeze called by the wind-talkers carried smoke and stray sparks and voices down to where they labored knee-deep in the no-longer-living dead. The death-song was not one she knew and over the long years of the wars she had learned many, from clans still living and clans long dust, but she strove to take comfort in its words nonetheless, its promise of cool wind and sweet water and a place by the ghost-fire of the ancestors for the souls of fallen heroes. Tried, and failed. Beneath the chants, the promises of peace and glory, she heard it too clearly: the wails of mate bereft of mate, of children shorn of parents, of battle-siblings and blood-kin torn and mourning without hope.
Oh, yes -- the siege was over, the battle hard-fought and bloody but, in the end, the Horde and the Argent Dawn had stood victorious...for all that victory was worth. The relentless undead tide of the Scourge had withdrawn. She could not say, even to herself, that they had been defeated for it seemed, even unto the last, that they were prepared to fight until every life in Orgrimmar had been extinguished, every drop of blood spilt, every soul enslaved, and they had seemed to possess the numbers needed to do it. She was not, standing ankle-deep in the ashes of unceremoniously burnt Scourge-corpses and flinders of their ground bones, even remotely certain that it was any act of the city's defenders that had finally driven them away.
Never, in all the long years of her life, had victory tasted more of ashes.
A low creaking rumble drowned out both chants and mourning-wails: tumbrels from the city bringing more Scourge corpses to be chopped and burnt, escorted by a detachment of the Warchief's Kor'kron. Krivulka found she lacked the physical and mental energy to offer more than an abbreviated form of the honors they deserved, though none seemed to take offense at the lack; they looked as weary as she, at the least, and a thousand times less accustomed to dealing with the unpleasantness of Scourge disposal. One of them, taller and more heavily built than the rest, split off and approached her, graying warrior-braids spilling from beneath his helm as he pulled it off.
"Hail, Krivulka Stonefist." The High Overlord of the Kor'kron greeted her with a smile and the gift of a mostly-full water skin.
"Hail, Varok Saurfang." She drank, the warm water doing much to wash the taste of Scourge-taint off her tongue, and handed the skin back to him.
He drank, as well. "You look to have seen better days, sister."
"We have all -- and it will be long before any of us see them again." She pushed herself to her full height despite the protests of aching muscles. "How many?"
"Too many." His smile, small to start, vanished entirely. "You?"
"More than 'too many.'" She closed her eyes, so she would not have to see his pity, the sympathy of one commander to another; she was not ready to accept such gifts. "But now you see. You know the truth with your own blade."
"I do -- but I also did not doubt to begin with. I remember what nipped at our heels the hour we took flight from Lordaeron."
Something in his carefully level tone sparked anger in her breast and she snarled, drawing every nearby eye. "Grom's pup."
"Yes." The look Saurfang gave her counseled silence, advice she chose to accept with so many young mag'har close to hand. "His attitude has been...adjusted. He now belabors the Warchief to send him to Northrend to avenge this unasked for assault."
"Good," Krivulka replied, baring her tusks in a gesture that held neither humor nor joy. "It would do him well to stand on a battlefield where the enemy does not know the name Hellscream -- nor would they fear it if they did."
Saurfang shook his head, and handed her back the water-skin; for a long moment they stood and simply drank it empty.
"Varok, I would ask a boon of you." Krivulka gazed out over the pit, and up at the pyres casting their smoke heavenward.
"You have more than earned one." Saurfang replied, heavily. "Ask it."
"We have lost...many. More than half of mine have mixed their smoke with yours." She caught his eye. "And not all of them warriors. I ask your leave to go among the folk of Orgrimmar and seek those who would take up the cause of the Dawn."
"I suspect that we are all about to take that cause." But he did not look away. "You have my leave -- and I will speak to the Warchief, as well."
"I thank you."
He reached out and took away her bone-splitter. "Thank me by sleeping before you fall where you stand."
"Softening in your age, Varok."
He grinned at her. "No softer than you, Krivulka. How fares your paladin?"
"He yet lives. For now."
Ashes. Even with the water, her mouth tasted of ashes.
♦
Though the threat of the Scourge had abated, the city remained under martial law, the curfew dusk to dawn, the streets heavily patrolled at all hours of the day and night. Not that there were many who ventured out: much, though not all, of Orgrimmar's civilian population had evacuated when the Scourge necropoleis had first appeared in the skies over Kalimdor, fleeing to the relative safety of the Horde outposts scattered throughout Ashenvale and into the wilds of Azshara, where many still remained, huddling in refugee camps as the autumn came on. A few handfuls had trickled back in at the urging of the Warsong outriders, who wanted their fortress on the banks of the Southfury back from the grubby peons infesting it, and those who had were immediately set to work on clean-up details, burial details, repair details, returning to their temporary quarters in the fully secured areas of the city. The Kor'kron and the remaining regular elements of the city's defenders and the Argent knights she had brought with her were still conducting building-to-building sweeps of the Valley of Strength and the Valley of Wisdom. It was only in the last day that the sweeper teams had begun finding more corpses than lingering Scourgelings -- who, in the absence of a powerful will to command them, had defaulted to their basic function of hiding and then killing any living thing that came near. Or at least attempting to do those things; hiding in Orgrimmar, with its twisting switchback roads and dead-end terraces and heavily shadowed nooks was the simple part of the equation and, in truth, more than a handful of soldiers had gone to their ancestors after the battle for the city had ended simply because they had not appreciated the amount of damage a single kill-crazed ghoul could do in close quarters. They appreciated it now, and most of the sweeper teams had at least one Sin'dorei member, its paladin, their innate sensitivity to the unnatural presence of the undead and their Light-granted power over such creatures making them the finest Scourge hunting hounds to be had.
Krivulka passed three such teams on her way back to the Valley of Spirits: stopped by one at the gate and sniffed over by an officious young Sin'dorei woman who proclaimed her clean of Scourge-taint, one just beginning the last sweep the waning daylight allowed of the Valley of Strength, and one emerging from the Drag, three of its members injured, albeit not critically. She paused to administer what aid she could and assisted them along the path that led to the Valley of Spirits, where the city's field hospital lay. The guards lining the heights saw them coming and a medical team emerged from the barricade restricting access to the valley before they were half-way up the rise, a quartet of burly peons clad in medical personnel tabards with field stretchers slung over their shoulders, and two Kor'kron she knew for a fact were not yet supposed to be on the walking wounded lists flanking the black-and-silver clad healer. Krivulka could not imagine that Ophila Ravenstadt had ever been a tall woman and undeath had shrunken her still further; among her assistants and bodyguards, she looked no larger than a child, though she was unquestionably in command. "Lay the stretchers out there. Wounded off the path and sit. Kor'kron, on guard."
Wise, that. They were still inside the Valley of Strength, though above the abattoir the Scourge had made of its floor, and the sun was beginning to dip below the rim of the mountains. Krivulka unslung her axe and joined the Kor'kron on guard, a traditional triangular defense around the healer and the wounded, the shadows lengthening around them with every passing moment. Twilight, even moreso than full dark, was a dangerous time when fighting the Scourge, as it was the time many of the lesser creatures first stirred from their boltholes, disoriented and hungry; the two young Kor'kron, she was pleased to note, remained intensely alert despite the absence of an immediately discernible threat and the no-doubt painful distraction of armor laying over half-healed injuries. But, then, if they lacked discipline Varok Saurfang would not have suffered them to wear the name of his own. That did not, of course, mean that they lacked the impetuosity of youth -- the female of the pair, Nezha, had distinguished herself by charging into a fight that had been described as 'impossible verging on suicidal' by those who had witnessed it and had emerged sorely wounded but with the civilians she had endeavored to rescue safe if not entirely sound. It was impressive, even with the assistance of an Argent paladin, for a warrior of her age to have accomplished such a feat and Krivulka marked her as one to approach when the time was right.
"Done."
Krivulka glanced over her shoulder and found two of the litter bearers hoisting the most-wounded member of the patrol between them, the rest trickling up the trail to the Valley of Spirits in single-file. She and the Kor'kron fell back in formation, retreating behind the hastily erected but solid barricade that blocked the path that joined the Valley of Strength to the Valley of Spirits. Manned by the walking wounded who refused to keep to their hospital cots and what remained of her own forces, that barricade had held against both greater and lesser Scourge during the height of the siege, defending the escape route across the Southfury that the city's civilian residents had taken, and stood still, controlling access to the city's field hospital. The soldiers on duty snapped to attention as she crossed the threshold and she waved them down. "As you were. "
It took all her will not to look for faces among the defenders that she knew would not be there. The Argent Dawn had not sent babes in armor to defend the capitals of the Alliance and the Horde; the ones who had fallen were those she had served with for years, men and women whose skills and competence and presence would be missed dearly in the days and weeks and months to come. And they had but little time to grieve the loss.
"Captain." Krivulka looked around and down, finding Ophila Ravenstadt at her elbow, the Forsaken priestess a mistress of stealth in her field blacks and the gathering twilight. "A word, if I may."
"Of course. Walk with me."
Krivulka shortened her stride in deference to the priestess and set off for the hospital's mess, where she intended to take a cup of tea and something to eat, and to allow herself to be accosted by everyone who wanted something of her. It was her custom of many long years duration, as she kept no quarters separate from those she commanded, nor did she hold herself apart from their cares and woes, for she shared them.
"Mierin is...not doing well." Ophila murmured, casting quick, sharp-eyed looks into every hospital tent they passed. "After you left with the clean-up crew this morning, she tried to invite herself along on one of the patrols sweeping the Drag."
"I trust you intervened in this." Mierin Clearbrook and her brother, Bikona, were the only Kaldorei among the ranks of Light's Promise and now Mierin was alone -- her twin killed in the vicious fighting the Valley of Wisdom had seen.
"I did say 'tried,'" Ophila replied testily. "Fortunately, the patrol commander had the sense to send for me when she found herself confronted with a half-naked purple elf covered in war-paint and carrying a pointy stick to kill Scourge with. I made her come back inside to eat something and dosed her tea -- she'll wake up sometime tomorrow, no doubt cursing my name."
"Doubtless." Krivulka cast her chief of medical staff a dry look. "What do you suggest?"
"The woman needs time to bury her brother and work past the desire to join him." Ophila was, as always, blunt as a warhammer. "Give her leave to take him back to Astranaar and don't let her argue with you about it. Physician's orders."
"I will take that under advisement." Krivulka paused at the entrance to the mess tent. "What else?"
"I fear that Catlali has done something...rash."
Krivulka felt a pain beginning behind her left eye, and stepped into the mess tent, scooping up a battered tin tray as she went. "More rash than anything else he's done recently?"
"By several orders of magnitude, yes." Ophila, normally a stranger to the mess hall, followed and applied a steely no-eyed glare of Forsaken menace to the half-dozen others that immediately began making their way towards her. "He has been attending Keldris almost constantly -- "
Krivulka's heart contracted painfully, and for a moment it was all she could do to breathe around it. Her voice, when she spoke, was not as steady as she wished it to be. "How is he?"
"Still alive." Ophila's tone was grim. "Still unconscious. And there's the rub. Catlali does not believe his insensibility is organic in nature but a spiritual affliction -- and has taken action accordingly."
The pain behind Krivulka's left eye sharpened several degrees. "I will speak with him immediately."
Fortunately, the evening meal was easily portable -- a hearty soup of rice, fresh vegetables, and flakes of smoked whitefish in a broth golden and savory with spices and fresh-baked herb bread -- so she scooped up two bowls of it, and two orc-sized mugs of tea, and made her way across the Valley to the tent of her somewhat wayward shaman, Catlali Mooncaller. Tucked against the shore of the Valley's small, spring-fed pond, it was easily the tallest structure in the hospital beside the lodge in which the troll magi made their residence, taller even than the largest of the medical tents, a pavilion of carven ridge and support poles, its ropes woven together with charms of wood and bone and amber, its walls layers of heavy waxed canvas dyed in abstract, swirling shades of blue and green that called to mind the spirit-voices of water and forest. Or at least that is what they called to mind for her, a memory made of equal parts grief and longing that she doubted would ever truly fade no matter how many years passed. Those walls were lit fitfully from within as she approached, flickers of radiance illuminating a pale-blue spiral here, a leaf-vein pattern there, and as she drew closer the tell-tale, rhythmic sound of the spirit-drum reached her ears, an endlessly looping patter like rain falling on broad leaves.
"Catlali?" No answer, and no pause in the rhythm of the drumming.
Krivulka set the tray she carried down and opened the door-flap of the shaman's tent. A gust of cool, rain-scented air rushed out to meet her, strong enough to lift the heavy length of her braid and set it swirling behind her; from deeper inside, thunder growled counterpoint to the drum and threads of lightning arced between an outer, defensive layer of totem-wards. In their glare she caught a glimpse of the shaman's broad, bent back where he crouched over his work.
"Catlali, I have brought food, and I must speak with you." Krivulka picked up the tray and let the flap fall behind her before any curious passers-by could peer inside. "Open a way for me."
The drumming did not cease, but rather changed its rhythm slightly and Krivulka felt, rather than saw, a subtle change in air before her: a gap in the shaman's defenses through which she might walk. The lightning still reached out to caress her with sizzling fingers as she stepped through it, but the pain was transitory, a way of knowing her, not an assault on her person. Within the circle of the wards the air was even thicker with rain-scent, leaf-scent, the breath of life itself, the essence of healing. In an instant, the weariness of her body was washed away, the aches of her own half-healed wounds eased. Moving carefully in the half-dark, she approached the shaman and the object of his attention, laid out before him on a pallet of furs. Her paladin was, indeed, still alive -- his chest rose and fell with regular, deep breaths, the breathing of a sleeping man not a dying one. Catlali's breaths, on the other hand, were shallow and labored, as though he had run without rest for miles and had miles yet to go. Swearing softly, Krivulka put down the tray and reached up for the lantern that hung from the ridgepole, a sudden fear gripping her heart.
Catlali's eyes slitted open as the lamp's light fell across his face and he inclined his head slightly in wordless greeting. For an instant, all she could do was stare wordlessly back at him in response. The troll shaman's skin, normally the rich dark blue of the eastern sky at sunset, had taken on a sickly grayish undertone, slicked with fever-sweat despite the cool of the air in his tent, his wide silver eyes sunken deep into their sockets, bloodshot and lusterless. The ritual scars that covered him from neck to ankles glowed from within, a cold phosphorescence that had nothing of life to it, the skin around them drawn tight enough to pucker. Keldris Pellegrin, their paladin, lay before him, naked but for the fresh scars of the wounds he had suffered in the siege and the spirit-marks the shaman had painted on him in bone ash and ochre clay and blood. Catlali's drum sat in his lap, its painted head covered in smears of blood both fresh and dry; he had played his hands raw, despite the healing breath that swirled endlessly around him.
"Catlali..." Krivulka whispered, resisting with all her might the urge to take him by the shoulders and shake him until his brain rattled, "...spirits of my Ancestors, what have you done?"
He did not immediately respond, gazing steadily, almost emptily, at her for a handful of long breaths. When he finally did speak, his voice was soft and hoarse and full of pain. "What I must."
"That is not an answer." Krivulka wrestled her voice back under control.
Insert More here!
For the record:
3375 / 2500 words. 135% done!
Fandom: World of Warcraft
Rating: PG13 for generalized unpleasantness of the sort associated with the living dead.
Disclaimer: All characters and concepts related to the World of Warcraft are the sole property of Activision/Blizzard Entertainment. I profiteth not. But, Activision? Unless you're ponying up some fucking royalties, my original characters belong to me. I don't care what your EULA says.
Author's Notes: Keldris Pellegrin enjoyed a traumatically near death experience after his touching reunion with Solivar during the siege of Orgrimmar; this is that story. AKA that ficbit where Krivulka Stonefist, badass orc granny great-aunt, decided she wanted to become a POV character. Features at least one completely non-canonical trollish loa whose entire existence I am choosing to blame on
incandescens for reasons that will eventually become obvious, at least to her. Also eventual angst and woe and storyline setup for things that are currently unfolding in Steadfast RP.
The siege of Orgrimmar was over.
Columns of smoke miles high rose from the red desert plain that girded the city, heavy with the ashes of the city's fallen defenders. The Earthen Ring, those who remained, had labored two full days and two full nights to give the dead the honor and peace they deserved, offering their flesh the gift of purifying flame on a dozen massive pyres and singing their souls home to their ancestors. The rhythmic chants still rose with the smoke, deep-voiced tauren and orc and troll joined with the Light-calling songs of the Sin'dorei priests.
Captain Krivulka Stonefist, wearier in body and soul than she had been in years, paused in her own wor
3375 / 2500 words. 135% done!k to listen for a moment, leaning heavily on the iron-tipped farming implement she was using to chop fire-blackened bone. The pit in which the clean-up crews were dismembering and immolating the abandoned remains of the invaders lay downwind of the higher plateau on which the pyres stood and the breeze called by the wind-talkers carried smoke and stray sparks and voices down to where they labored knee-deep in the no-longer-living dead. The death-song was not one she knew and over the long years of the wars she had learned many, from clans still living and clans long dust, but she strove to take comfort in its words nonetheless, its promise of cool wind and sweet water and a place by the ghost-fire of the ancestors for the souls of fallen heroes. Tried, and failed. Beneath the chants, the promises of peace and glory, she heard it too clearly: the wails of mate bereft of mate, of children shorn of parents, of battle-siblings and blood-kin torn and mourning without hope.
Oh, yes -- the siege was over, the battle hard-fought and bloody but, in the end, the Horde and the Argent Dawn had stood victorious...for all that victory was worth. The relentless undead tide of the Scourge had withdrawn. She could not say, even to herself, that they had been defeated for it seemed, even unto the last, that they were prepared to fight until every life in Orgrimmar had been extinguished, every drop of blood spilt, every soul enslaved, and they had seemed to possess the numbers needed to do it. She was not, standing ankle-deep in the ashes of unceremoniously burnt Scourge-corpses and flinders of their ground bones, even remotely certain that it was any act of the city's defenders that had finally driven them away.
Never, in all the long years of her life, had victory tasted more of ashes.
A low creaking rumble drowned out both chants and mourning-wails: tumbrels from the city bringing more Scourge corpses to be chopped and burnt, escorted by a detachment of the Warchief's Kor'kron. Krivulka found she lacked the physical and mental energy to offer more than an abbreviated form of the honors they deserved, though none seemed to take offense at the lack; they looked as weary as she, at the least, and a thousand times less accustomed to dealing with the unpleasantness of Scourge disposal. One of them, taller and more heavily built than the rest, split off and approached her, graying warrior-braids spilling from beneath his helm as he pulled it off.
"Hail, Krivulka Stonefist." The High Overlord of the Kor'kron greeted her with a smile and the gift of a mostly-full water skin.
"Hail, Varok Saurfang." She drank, the warm water doing much to wash the taste of Scourge-taint off her tongue, and handed the skin back to him.
He drank, as well. "You look to have seen better days, sister."
"We have all -- and it will be long before any of us see them again." She pushed herself to her full height despite the protests of aching muscles. "How many?"
"Too many." His smile, small to start, vanished entirely. "You?"
"More than 'too many.'" She closed her eyes, so she would not have to see his pity, the sympathy of one commander to another; she was not ready to accept such gifts. "But now you see. You know the truth with your own blade."
"I do -- but I also did not doubt to begin with. I remember what nipped at our heels the hour we took flight from Lordaeron."
Something in his carefully level tone sparked anger in her breast and she snarled, drawing every nearby eye. "Grom's pup."
"Yes." The look Saurfang gave her counseled silence, advice she chose to accept with so many young mag'har close to hand. "His attitude has been...adjusted. He now belabors the Warchief to send him to Northrend to avenge this unasked for assault."
"Good," Krivulka replied, baring her tusks in a gesture that held neither humor nor joy. "It would do him well to stand on a battlefield where the enemy does not know the name Hellscream -- nor would they fear it if they did."
Saurfang shook his head, and handed her back the water-skin; for a long moment they stood and simply drank it empty.
"Varok, I would ask a boon of you." Krivulka gazed out over the pit, and up at the pyres casting their smoke heavenward.
"You have more than earned one." Saurfang replied, heavily. "Ask it."
"We have lost...many. More than half of mine have mixed their smoke with yours." She caught his eye. "And not all of them warriors. I ask your leave to go among the folk of Orgrimmar and seek those who would take up the cause of the Dawn."
"I suspect that we are all about to take that cause." But he did not look away. "You have my leave -- and I will speak to the Warchief, as well."
"I thank you."
He reached out and took away her bone-splitter. "Thank me by sleeping before you fall where you stand."
"Softening in your age, Varok."
He grinned at her. "No softer than you, Krivulka. How fares your paladin?"
"He yet lives. For now."
Ashes. Even with the water, her mouth tasted of ashes.
♦
Though the threat of the Scourge had abated, the city remained under martial law, the curfew dusk to dawn, the streets heavily patrolled at all hours of the day and night. Not that there were many who ventured out: much, though not all, of Orgrimmar's civilian population had evacuated when the Scourge necropoleis had first appeared in the skies over Kalimdor, fleeing to the relative safety of the Horde outposts scattered throughout Ashenvale and into the wilds of Azshara, where many still remained, huddling in refugee camps as the autumn came on. A few handfuls had trickled back in at the urging of the Warsong outriders, who wanted their fortress on the banks of the Southfury back from the grubby peons infesting it, and those who had were immediately set to work on clean-up details, burial details, repair details, returning to their temporary quarters in the fully secured areas of the city. The Kor'kron and the remaining regular elements of the city's defenders and the Argent knights she had brought with her were still conducting building-to-building sweeps of the Valley of Strength and the Valley of Wisdom. It was only in the last day that the sweeper teams had begun finding more corpses than lingering Scourgelings -- who, in the absence of a powerful will to command them, had defaulted to their basic function of hiding and then killing any living thing that came near. Or at least attempting to do those things; hiding in Orgrimmar, with its twisting switchback roads and dead-end terraces and heavily shadowed nooks was the simple part of the equation and, in truth, more than a handful of soldiers had gone to their ancestors after the battle for the city had ended simply because they had not appreciated the amount of damage a single kill-crazed ghoul could do in close quarters. They appreciated it now, and most of the sweeper teams had at least one Sin'dorei member, its paladin, their innate sensitivity to the unnatural presence of the undead and their Light-granted power over such creatures making them the finest Scourge hunting hounds to be had.
Krivulka passed three such teams on her way back to the Valley of Spirits: stopped by one at the gate and sniffed over by an officious young Sin'dorei woman who proclaimed her clean of Scourge-taint, one just beginning the last sweep the waning daylight allowed of the Valley of Strength, and one emerging from the Drag, three of its members injured, albeit not critically. She paused to administer what aid she could and assisted them along the path that led to the Valley of Spirits, where the city's field hospital lay. The guards lining the heights saw them coming and a medical team emerged from the barricade restricting access to the valley before they were half-way up the rise, a quartet of burly peons clad in medical personnel tabards with field stretchers slung over their shoulders, and two Kor'kron she knew for a fact were not yet supposed to be on the walking wounded lists flanking the black-and-silver clad healer. Krivulka could not imagine that Ophila Ravenstadt had ever been a tall woman and undeath had shrunken her still further; among her assistants and bodyguards, she looked no larger than a child, though she was unquestionably in command. "Lay the stretchers out there. Wounded off the path and sit. Kor'kron, on guard."
Wise, that. They were still inside the Valley of Strength, though above the abattoir the Scourge had made of its floor, and the sun was beginning to dip below the rim of the mountains. Krivulka unslung her axe and joined the Kor'kron on guard, a traditional triangular defense around the healer and the wounded, the shadows lengthening around them with every passing moment. Twilight, even moreso than full dark, was a dangerous time when fighting the Scourge, as it was the time many of the lesser creatures first stirred from their boltholes, disoriented and hungry; the two young Kor'kron, she was pleased to note, remained intensely alert despite the absence of an immediately discernible threat and the no-doubt painful distraction of armor laying over half-healed injuries. But, then, if they lacked discipline Varok Saurfang would not have suffered them to wear the name of his own. That did not, of course, mean that they lacked the impetuosity of youth -- the female of the pair, Nezha, had distinguished herself by charging into a fight that had been described as 'impossible verging on suicidal' by those who had witnessed it and had emerged sorely wounded but with the civilians she had endeavored to rescue safe if not entirely sound. It was impressive, even with the assistance of an Argent paladin, for a warrior of her age to have accomplished such a feat and Krivulka marked her as one to approach when the time was right.
"Done."
Krivulka glanced over her shoulder and found two of the litter bearers hoisting the most-wounded member of the patrol between them, the rest trickling up the trail to the Valley of Spirits in single-file. She and the Kor'kron fell back in formation, retreating behind the hastily erected but solid barricade that blocked the path that joined the Valley of Strength to the Valley of Spirits. Manned by the walking wounded who refused to keep to their hospital cots and what remained of her own forces, that barricade had held against both greater and lesser Scourge during the height of the siege, defending the escape route across the Southfury that the city's civilian residents had taken, and stood still, controlling access to the city's field hospital. The soldiers on duty snapped to attention as she crossed the threshold and she waved them down. "As you were. "
It took all her will not to look for faces among the defenders that she knew would not be there. The Argent Dawn had not sent babes in armor to defend the capitals of the Alliance and the Horde; the ones who had fallen were those she had served with for years, men and women whose skills and competence and presence would be missed dearly in the days and weeks and months to come. And they had but little time to grieve the loss.
"Captain." Krivulka looked around and down, finding Ophila Ravenstadt at her elbow, the Forsaken priestess a mistress of stealth in her field blacks and the gathering twilight. "A word, if I may."
"Of course. Walk with me."
Krivulka shortened her stride in deference to the priestess and set off for the hospital's mess, where she intended to take a cup of tea and something to eat, and to allow herself to be accosted by everyone who wanted something of her. It was her custom of many long years duration, as she kept no quarters separate from those she commanded, nor did she hold herself apart from their cares and woes, for she shared them.
"Mierin is...not doing well." Ophila murmured, casting quick, sharp-eyed looks into every hospital tent they passed. "After you left with the clean-up crew this morning, she tried to invite herself along on one of the patrols sweeping the Drag."
"I trust you intervened in this." Mierin Clearbrook and her brother, Bikona, were the only Kaldorei among the ranks of Light's Promise and now Mierin was alone -- her twin killed in the vicious fighting the Valley of Wisdom had seen.
"I did say 'tried,'" Ophila replied testily. "Fortunately, the patrol commander had the sense to send for me when she found herself confronted with a half-naked purple elf covered in war-paint and carrying a pointy stick to kill Scourge with. I made her come back inside to eat something and dosed her tea -- she'll wake up sometime tomorrow, no doubt cursing my name."
"Doubtless." Krivulka cast her chief of medical staff a dry look. "What do you suggest?"
"The woman needs time to bury her brother and work past the desire to join him." Ophila was, as always, blunt as a warhammer. "Give her leave to take him back to Astranaar and don't let her argue with you about it. Physician's orders."
"I will take that under advisement." Krivulka paused at the entrance to the mess tent. "What else?"
"I fear that Catlali has done something...rash."
Krivulka felt a pain beginning behind her left eye, and stepped into the mess tent, scooping up a battered tin tray as she went. "More rash than anything else he's done recently?"
"By several orders of magnitude, yes." Ophila, normally a stranger to the mess hall, followed and applied a steely no-eyed glare of Forsaken menace to the half-dozen others that immediately began making their way towards her. "He has been attending Keldris almost constantly -- "
Krivulka's heart contracted painfully, and for a moment it was all she could do to breathe around it. Her voice, when she spoke, was not as steady as she wished it to be. "How is he?"
"Still alive." Ophila's tone was grim. "Still unconscious. And there's the rub. Catlali does not believe his insensibility is organic in nature but a spiritual affliction -- and has taken action accordingly."
The pain behind Krivulka's left eye sharpened several degrees. "I will speak with him immediately."
Fortunately, the evening meal was easily portable -- a hearty soup of rice, fresh vegetables, and flakes of smoked whitefish in a broth golden and savory with spices and fresh-baked herb bread -- so she scooped up two bowls of it, and two orc-sized mugs of tea, and made her way across the Valley to the tent of her somewhat wayward shaman, Catlali Mooncaller. Tucked against the shore of the Valley's small, spring-fed pond, it was easily the tallest structure in the hospital beside the lodge in which the troll magi made their residence, taller even than the largest of the medical tents, a pavilion of carven ridge and support poles, its ropes woven together with charms of wood and bone and amber, its walls layers of heavy waxed canvas dyed in abstract, swirling shades of blue and green that called to mind the spirit-voices of water and forest. Or at least that is what they called to mind for her, a memory made of equal parts grief and longing that she doubted would ever truly fade no matter how many years passed. Those walls were lit fitfully from within as she approached, flickers of radiance illuminating a pale-blue spiral here, a leaf-vein pattern there, and as she drew closer the tell-tale, rhythmic sound of the spirit-drum reached her ears, an endlessly looping patter like rain falling on broad leaves.
"Catlali?" No answer, and no pause in the rhythm of the drumming.
Krivulka set the tray she carried down and opened the door-flap of the shaman's tent. A gust of cool, rain-scented air rushed out to meet her, strong enough to lift the heavy length of her braid and set it swirling behind her; from deeper inside, thunder growled counterpoint to the drum and threads of lightning arced between an outer, defensive layer of totem-wards. In their glare she caught a glimpse of the shaman's broad, bent back where he crouched over his work.
"Catlali, I have brought food, and I must speak with you." Krivulka picked up the tray and let the flap fall behind her before any curious passers-by could peer inside. "Open a way for me."
The drumming did not cease, but rather changed its rhythm slightly and Krivulka felt, rather than saw, a subtle change in air before her: a gap in the shaman's defenses through which she might walk. The lightning still reached out to caress her with sizzling fingers as she stepped through it, but the pain was transitory, a way of knowing her, not an assault on her person. Within the circle of the wards the air was even thicker with rain-scent, leaf-scent, the breath of life itself, the essence of healing. In an instant, the weariness of her body was washed away, the aches of her own half-healed wounds eased. Moving carefully in the half-dark, she approached the shaman and the object of his attention, laid out before him on a pallet of furs. Her paladin was, indeed, still alive -- his chest rose and fell with regular, deep breaths, the breathing of a sleeping man not a dying one. Catlali's breaths, on the other hand, were shallow and labored, as though he had run without rest for miles and had miles yet to go. Swearing softly, Krivulka put down the tray and reached up for the lantern that hung from the ridgepole, a sudden fear gripping her heart.
Catlali's eyes slitted open as the lamp's light fell across his face and he inclined his head slightly in wordless greeting. For an instant, all she could do was stare wordlessly back at him in response. The troll shaman's skin, normally the rich dark blue of the eastern sky at sunset, had taken on a sickly grayish undertone, slicked with fever-sweat despite the cool of the air in his tent, his wide silver eyes sunken deep into their sockets, bloodshot and lusterless. The ritual scars that covered him from neck to ankles glowed from within, a cold phosphorescence that had nothing of life to it, the skin around them drawn tight enough to pucker. Keldris Pellegrin, their paladin, lay before him, naked but for the fresh scars of the wounds he had suffered in the siege and the spirit-marks the shaman had painted on him in bone ash and ochre clay and blood. Catlali's drum sat in his lap, its painted head covered in smears of blood both fresh and dry; he had played his hands raw, despite the healing breath that swirled endlessly around him.
"Catlali..." Krivulka whispered, resisting with all her might the urge to take him by the shoulders and shake him until his brain rattled, "...spirits of my Ancestors, what have you done?"
He did not immediately respond, gazing steadily, almost emptily, at her for a handful of long breaths. When he finally did speak, his voice was soft and hoarse and full of pain. "What I must."
"That is not an answer." Krivulka wrestled her voice back under control.
Insert More here!
For the record:
3375 / 2500 words. 135% done!