The Long Vigil
Half a century of study under a master had taught him patience. He had tended scores of generations of plants for subtle changes. He had tracked the seasons and weather and stars for the right conditions, waited years for the single perfect bloom.
He thought he knew.
Returning to his homeland in the midst of its greatest devastation had taught him isolation. Wandering through the ruins of what had been Silvermoon for weeks in a state of shock, surrounded by nothing but rubble strewn with corpses too badly ravaged to identify who they were in life, showed him what it was to be truly alone.
He thought he knew.
His time in the Ghostlands had taught him cold. In a land now devoid of sunlight, where the parched earth leeched the heat of those unfortunate enough to survive, the safest place to sleep was a stone floor unlit by day's warmth in years.
He thought he knew. And Winterspring proved him wrong.
The Prophet-Slayer crouched atop a hill with snow frosting his hair and shoulders. His lips and ears had long since gone blue; ice clung to his maille in sheets that glinted in the sunlight and crackled when he moved. Even the fur of his cloak was frozen into spiky locks. How many days had he stood there, on that spot? He couldn't quite recall. It didn't matter. All that mattered was finding her.
Rak'shiri. The ghostly watcher. The scion of the frostsaber matriarch. The great cat whose eyes flashed fel-green, whose coat was the bitter blue of a corpse killed by cold. He knew of her...he had seen her once before, patrolling the cub-dens surrounding Frostsaber Rock. He would have her at his side when he stepped through the Dark Portal again.
But she did not come often.
So he knelt in the snow, and continued to kneel in the snow, watching through the eyes of birds for any trace of his companion-to-be. When the sun drifted beneath Hyjal and plunged the province into the bitterest, breath-leeching cold, he called on what little magic his heavy armour allowed (restrictive as it was on the precise motions for which his craft called) to heat snow in a mug for sungrass tea, and rubbed the fat from his kills onto his ear-tips - two small and unpleasant things to help stave off frostbite, and to keep him awake.
Awake...though exhaustion and cold turned every joint into lead and seized his muscles into aching knots. Though his eyes were sunken and his lids heavy...though the thought nagged at him that it would be so easy to burrow into the snow and sleep, to succumb to darkness, and never awaken. To allow himself sleep would be as sure a death as running into the fields below him.
For through this - through the cold and the dark and the pain - he was not entirely alone. The great cats of Winterspring stalked and skulked through the trees, paws making not but the faintest crunch nor leaving but the lightest tracks upon the snow. Some strode boldly with hides emblazoned with black stripes that stood out like blood amid the whiteness of the place; some blended into that same whiteness so well that not even daylight's glare would give them away until they buried their claws in a traveller's flesh. Too close to the dens, and the younglings would call for their huntress-mothers - or worse, the hulking pride-watchers. The goblins might claim Everlook, and the dragons might call the southern caverns their own, but the north belonged to the frostsabers. No measure of demonic aegis would protect him from their fury: he had only his wits, his traps, and his bow.
Others came and went. Fools seeking the matriarch Shy-Rotam; dwarves and kaldorei currying favour with Rivern Frostwind; they were little more than passing amusement, but the longer another humanoid remained there, the more paranoid he became. If any of them found Rak'shiri before he did...if they slew her...he couldn't bear to think of it. He hounded them like a madman, each and every one, never speaking but watching with mounting panic. When they left he'd nearly collapse from the sudden exertion and the searing pain it brought on...but he bore it, forced himself to go on, and skinned the kills left by their careless passage before returning to his vigil atop the hill.
Waiting, cold and alone.
Over time he fell into patterns. Making his breath and movement spare to conserve what heat he could...scrying in circles along what would be his quarry's path...watching the trails of each frostsaber, memorising their markings...shifting his senses to stand alert when a prowling cat would make his way across the hill. Through the freezing wind that clawed at him, and birdsong, and hunting-cries, the patterns of Frostsaber Rock began to coalesce in his mind. Music dwells in patterns and madness. By the third day he was breathing theirs.
The intrusion of a stout figure crashed through the rhythm eating at his brain with a great audible shimmer of maille and a pair of axes. He craned his neck - muscles screaming in protest - to see a dwarf charging headlong into what the Prophet-Slayer knew to be a gathering of cats, and his lip curled. The brute was clad in a hunter's gear but faced the outraged frostsabers in hand-to-claw combat. No traps, no distractions, no bow (Gun, he corrected himself, or whatever those little beasts use), no animal at his side. Blood flashed bright against the snow; a low growl grated out of his throat, lost to the wind, in anticipation of watching a fool's death.
In spite of it all the dwarf hacked his way through the frostsabers and continued rampaging about as if he'd taken leave of his senses. With a slow, disbelieveing shake of his head, the Prophet-Slayer turned his attention once more to the cardinals and titmice in the trees, and reached out to see through their eyes.
At first he thought he was hallucinating. Necrotic-blue fur rustled over muscles propelling the beast with a liquid grace belying its size - its fel-green eyes scanned level with the lesser frostsabers' withers. His chest cramped as both his heart and breath seized in the instant he realised she was real: Rak'shiri, for whom he had waited so long. She was here - she would be his!
He called on a burst of speed that made his limbs feel as though his bones had been replaced by bars of white-hot iron - dashed blindly through the same den he had just derided the dwarf for charging through - and threw down a trap without even thinking to shift the aspect he'd called upon. No time. She was here. It had to be now.
Rak'shiri's massive head turned, swordlike teeth bared, as a concussive arrow collided with her shoulder. She strained towards the source of the outrage even as a second arrow sunk into a forelimb; the poison lacing the tip worked swiftly and caused her vision to blur, leaving the trap unnoticed until it went off beneath her paw.
No time to spare. He extended a hand, half-offering, half-commanding, as his mind brushed against hers, but pain shot through his leg and side: his reckless dash had brought a prowler with him. With a swift feat of body language and a mad roar, he frightened the lesser cat away, and turned back to the one still caught in his ice-trap. She cracked free, shook herself off, and bellowed a roar of her own. Her claws caught the arm he held out to her, sunk into his flesh 'til the tips met bone, and dragged him closer - the bite would surely sever the limb - and stopped. The link was forged...she came to his side, furious but awaiting, and he laughed.
It was the sort of laugh that takes the place of a scream or uncontrollable weeping. He laughed as the cat he'd frightened off returned with three others. He laughed as he realised he couldn't outrun them, couldn't trap them fast enough, couldn't get far enough away to fire a concussive shot.
He laughed as they dragged him to the ground, and only stopped when darkness swept over him.
But it didn't matter. The wounds would heal, perhaps scar. He would thaw himself on the shores of Eversong. He would stride through the Dark Portal a master of beasts. It didn't matter.
All he cared for then was the sight and the warmth of her guarding him when he came to. "Nin darthanant," he whispered hoarsely through a mouth thick with blood. That broad, pallid head swung towards him again - not in anger this time, but inquisitive. He held out a mangled hand to her, buried his fingers in her fur. "You are Rak'shiri no longer. You are Darthanant...the long-awaited one."
She nudged him 'til he picked himself off the ground, and they made their way to Everlook - rewarded for his patience, soon to be out of the cold, and no longer alone.
Author's note: I don't even want to think of how long I spent camping that rare elite at-level. It was something like three solid days. Told myself NEVAR AGAIN and then WTF do you think I did when Loque'nahak showed up...!
Also, this is how Ori got those awful scars on his right forearm.