Disclaimer: World of Warcraft, Tauren, Azeroth, Blood/High/Quel elves are all copyright Blizzard Entertainment 2005. In fact, so is anything else that doesn’t look like it was invented by me. Please don’t sue me.
This story is rated PG for minor swearing and violence.
The Wolf and The Tauren
A World of Warcraft fanfic
By Kristin Renee Taylor
Part Two -
"Do you suppose she's still here, somewhere?" Alexy said.
Liathano grunted absently. Most of her attention was focused on the distant figure of Galerunner, who had opted to range ahead of the trio as a lookout. The Tauren and her worg scrambled over fallen rubble with an agility Lia found surprising considering their size and, well... Gale's apparent lack of coordination.
The rest of her attention was busy trying to keep a rising wave of repressed memories from surfacing. Screaming hysterically was not quite how she wanted to go about finding her friend.
Unbidden, one rose anyway: Lia and Anri and the last time they had crossed paths prior the warrior's enslavement. The raven-haired thief, a full foot and a half shorter than the cursing Liathano, made riding bareback look as effortless as Lia made it look difficult and ungainly; the perks of being born noble.
"What's the
matter?" Anri shouts to be heard over the pounding of hooves and the
bellows of their pursuers. "I thought ya liked
horses!" Black hair traced with white flew unbound behind her in the winds
of their passage, a black banner.
Lia's response is
drowned out. It takes most of her attention anyway to keep from falling off her
own mount and breaking her neck. Finally she manages to shout, "Do you
have any idea how much trouble we're
in?"
Anri's grin flashes bright, dark violet eyes
sparking with good humor. "Stop worryin'! I
always get us out, don't I?"
Alexy was still talking. "Maybe the portal collapsed before she reached it. Maybe she joined the rest of the slaves and left through a different way. Maybe-"
"Maybe," Lia interjected in a low growl, "her fool self bit off more than she could finally chew and is paying for her myriad of crimes in some dungeon somewhere."
She managed to stalk forward a few more paces before she noticed that Alexy had halted. She turned to glare at the young woman. "What?"
The small, slender woman gripped her robe in her hands, bunching the white cloth nervously between her fingers. "You don't..." She trailed off. Dark brown eyes darted around nervously before resting on Liathano. "Do you think she is okay?"
Lia sighed. "She's fine. Now come on before that stupid Tauren gets herself wedged into some crevasse."
A soft snort of derision sounded behind her followed by a stream of Tauraje.
Alexy smiled and opened her mouth. Lia forestalled the translation with a lifted hand. "She's not clumsy, I get it." She shot the tall Tauren a look over her shoulder. "Did you find a way inside?"
Galerunner was crouched on a mostly demolished stone wall, a seemingly awkward position that she maintained with relative ease. At Lia's question she popped to her hooves and trotted down the road towards the tower. She beckoned to the two humans.
Pausing only long enough to make sure Alexy followed, Liathano hurried after her.
Galerunner had discovered a breach in the twenty-foot high wall surrounding the tower: a crack through the thick marble large enough for the humans and worg to pass easily but barely wide enough to allow the Tauren to fit. As Lia and Alexy approached, the Tauren was already stripping out of her armor and shedding her weapons in preparation for her upcoming squeeze.
Lia slipped through first with sword drawn, ducking her head and sliding sideways through the narrow passage, Galerunner’s worg trailing at her heels. She missed Alennius, the enchanted sword her father had made before his death, but the blade had been destroyed when Elan'dore had captured her. She wondered idly if the remnants of the sword were still somewhere in Quel'Dorras, if the weapon could be re-forged.
The other side of the breach revealed a dusty courtyard, empty of life but full of corpses. In the constant red-gold light of the sky, the bodies had a crimson sheen, as if she viewed everything through a light haze of blood. The air was dead, smelling only of age and dust and, beneath it, the sweet scent of decay. No insects droned through the air, no carrion birds existed in this place to pick through the bones of the fallen.
Lia moved along the corpses. The dry stale air of the pocket world had, instead of decomposing, desiccated the corpses into dry husks, parchment skin stretched tight over old and sometimes exposed bones. She could identify several races: Dwarves and Humans predominantly, with Orcs and even a few massive Tauren scattered amongst elf sorcerers and guards.
There were no Trolls, she noted. Nor could she discern any Night Elves amongst the remains of long-ended battle.
Here, if memory served her correctly, was where the slaves had begun their revolt.
A soft pained grunt turned her head. Galerunner's head and shoulders had navigated the crack, but now she was caught tight, straining with her hands scrabbling for purchase against the smooth marble sides.
Galerunner flopped and threw Liathano a pleading look.
Liathano glanced around one last time before sheathing her sword. She shook her head as she made her way back to the Tauren. "One day, Tauren, just one day I'd love to go without you getting stuck in something." Galerunner's lopsided grin was pre-empted by Lia grabbing her by one shoulder, planting a boot on the wall, and heaving with all of her considerable might.
Galerunner squealed, there was a sound of something ripping, and the Tauren suddenly tumbled free of the gap so abruptly that Lia lost her balance and was taken to the ground along with huntress.
Lia groaned, stunned by the fall. Galerunner stood and picked the human up to carefully set her on her feet. The Tauren dusted her off. She looked apologetic. "Gol'main." One thick finger brushed a strand of Lia's golden blonde hair back into the ponytail it had escaped from.
Lia sighed at the drooping Tauren. She patted the hunter awkwardly with one hand. "I'm okay. Stop worrying." Galerunner visibly brightened, grinning broadly. She hugged Lia painfully tight before trotting over to the crack to help Alexy, where the human was struggling to haul the Tauren's armor into the courtyard.
Lia watched them solemnly. A Tauren, a priestess-in-training, and a cursed warrior. What a group they made...
High elves adored light as much as the Kaldorei loved the darkness. The hallway was lined with high windows, illuminating a path of gold carpet long stained with rust-colored blood. Brilliantly colored tapestries lined the walls, still bright after so much time.
The trail of bodies thinned and became fewer and further between.
With the worg pacing beside her, Lia walked the short hall to its terminus: a long rectangular chamber, large and grand. The ceiling stretched up so high it was lost to shadows. The carpet kept straight, to the far side of the chamber where a pair of ornate double doors hung askew, battered off of their hinges. Pillars flanked the carpet, twelve pairs in all.
Once, a structure had stood of the room. Lia’s mind recalled an apparatus of gold and marble, spheres and machinery. An orrery perhaps. It was mostly intact, if motionless now; the great globes that had once noiselessly moved in their orbits locked forever in place.
“What is this place?” Alexy and Galerunner had caught up. Galerunner moved past Lia to examine the chamber.
Lia walked towards the orrery as she answered. “The Chamber of the Sun. Elan’dore used the machine when she wove her portals and sent her soldiers to capture helpless travelers. See there?” She pointed to what appeared to be a gate set into the machine. “When the orrery was active, the gate would glow, like any other mage’s portal. People could be sent through it.”
“Then that’s the way you escaped.”
“Yes.” The scar on Lia’s throat made the word come out hoarser than she intended.
“There are no bodies here,” Alexy noted.
“I know. I did my job too well.”
Alexy looked at her curiously, but Liathano didn’t say anything further. In the end, Galerunner’s shout drew their attention. The Tauren had moved off to the sides of the room, and now she crouched examining something.
Alexy hurried over. “A body after all?”
“No,” Lia said. She followed more sedately; she knew what the hunter had found. “A statue.”
Ten statues, spaced between the pillars and braced against the walls. A few were toppled, long ago looted. Several were still intact. They all wore armor: a long hauberk of black mail woven so light and fine as to be made of cloth, with red paneled plate fitted over in sections to cover shoulders, chest, legs, arms and feet. Helms shaped like the faces of animals covered the head; the face beneath hidden completely by a black mask. A few of the remaining statues still bore weapons, a handful of swords that hadn’t been seized by the slaves.
Galerunner knelt next to a fallen statue, the helm on it shaped like an antlered stag. She fingered the hauberk with an amusing look of longing, but the armor was far too small for her.
“There are others,” Alexy said, looking up and down the row. “A bear, a large cat, a hawk... oh?” She walked a short distance away, bent, and picked up a fallen helm. She turned it over in her hands. “This one’s dented.” She held it up to the others, indicated the dent in the left side where the metal had buckled. “See? Someone must have worn it.”
Lia’s hissed in a startled breath. The helm Alexy held was shaped like a wolf.
The floodgates of the past burst open-
The orrery is in
motion.
She watches it with
empty eyes; neither the helmet or the mask that hides
her face from view hinders her sight. Her mind is blank, her thoughts vanished.
She is a watchdog, set to stand guard over the priestess’ prized possession.
Because
she is as still as the statues on either side of her, the presence of the thief
does not go unnoticed. Indeed,
the Wolf has been aware of the small human’s presence for several minutes now,
tracking the thief’s movements as she scaled first the outer wall and then the
inner wall with the supernatural hearing and smell her curse has granted to
her.
The thief appears
at a window slit, a lithe shadow pausing just long enough to sight the ground
before she drops to the floor in a near-soundless jump. Unaware of the Wolf
watching, the thief moves to the nearest pillars to survey the room for guards.
There are none; Elan’dore has full confidence in her champion.
Dark hair feathered
with white pulled back into its trademark ponytail. Dark grey leathers oiled
for stealth, and a mask that conceals the lower half of her face. A distant
feeling of recognition tugs at the edge of the Wolf’s awareness but the matter
of her duty overrides it.
The thief is an
intruder. Intruders must die.
The thief crouches
on the Wolf’s side of the chamber, a scant few feet from where the Wolf stands,
waiting. Seeing no one, not aware that one statute of the ten is not a statute
at all, she rises from her position.
Her armor, too, has
been designed for stealth attacks. Her swords were already drawn and in her
hands. The first drumbeats of a berserker’s violence begin to hammer a rhythm
against the Wolf’s temples. The curse of the beast, laid on her bloodline
generations ago, was the reason Elan’dore had chosen her. Tonight, it would be
the thief’s doom.
The thief walks past
the Wolf.
She strikes: the
long sword in her main hand carving a perfect silent arc towards the thief’s
exposed neck.
Perhaps it is luck.
Perhaps she was expecting it. Perhaps she had known the entire time. Either
way, the thief moves faster than the sword swings, ducking low and drawing her own weapons in the same swift motion. Her own short
sword thrusts at the Wolf’s exposed belly and is parried by the main gauche, a
long knife, wielded in the Wolf’s left hand.
They face each
other, sizing the other up. The Wolf has the greater reach and strength, the
thief the greater speed.
The thief flees.
She pursues.
The thief leaps and
spins. A knife flies from her hand, aimed unerringly at the Wolf’s face. She
knocks the missile from the air with her knife, counters with a lunging thrust.
The thief slides to one side, the blade slicing clean through the leather above
her right hip. Before the Wolf recovers from the overextension, the thief pivots
into a roundhouse kick. The heel of her boot smashes into the left side of the
Wolf’s helmet.
The Wolf staggers.
She tackles the thief and together they hit the ground, rolling and struggling,
weapons lost from their hands. Somehow, the thief winds up below and somehow
she has retained her grip on a knife. As the Wolf moves in for the kill, she
hammers the hilt of the blade against the wolfshead
helm once, twice, three times into that same spot over the Wolf’s left temple.
The third blow is the breaker: the metal dents sharply.
Lights explode
behind the Wolf’s eyes as the thief hammers at her a fourth time. She sways. A
desperate surge of strength from the thief heaves her onto the floor and the
thief scrambles away into a defensive crouch.
The Wolf tries to
stand. Fails. The ground will not stay even. She
reaches up to haul off the helmet, tossing it aside. Dark golden hair, free of
its confines, spills down across her shoulders. A warm gush of blood follows
down the side of her face, dripping onto the floor, blinding her left eye. This
time, when she stands to face the thief she remains steady.
The thief’s eyes go
wide. The knife is limp in her hands. “Li-Liathano?”
There is no
recognition in the Wolf’s eyes. Teeth bared, the Wolf lunges.
A change, a cold
fatality enters the thief’s gaze that would have chilled the Wolf, had she the
leeway to feel. She steps to one side, into the Wolf’s blind spot, and vanishes
from sight.
The Wolf halts. She
turns, scenting the air, searching. Too late, she hears the scrape of leather
on stone and turns her head to see the thief’s kick coming for her face.
-Lia snatched the helm from the Alexy’s startled grasp, spun, and hurled it away with all of her strength. It clanged loudly as it vanished down the chamber.
Lia squeezed her eyes shut to block out the startled looks of Alexy and Galerunner. Her breathing was shallow, she was almost hyperventilating. Her entire body shook. She hugged herself tight.
A faint buzzing pierced her inner darkness. <Wolfspirit.> Galerunner’s hands settled on her shoulders. <The past is past.>
<I know.> With difficulty, she regained control of herself. Galerunner released her before she could shrug the Tauren’s hands off. “I know,” she said hoarsely. She opened her eyes and smiled faintly at Alexy. “Sorry.”
Alexy smiled back gently. “No need to apologize. The ghosts of the past are strong in this place.”
Galerunner and
“Senet.”
End Part Two