Zangarmarsh

“-The red, red wine that in the goblet glows, is hallowed by the blood that stains the ground on which it grows-”

Only a warlock, Miria thought to herself as she scowled and hunched down over her elekk’s head, would know so many songs that involve blood, death and dismemberment.

“-Drink! Drink! And as your hearts are warmed by its ruddy tide-”

“For the sake of the Naaru, please-”

“-Swear to live as free as your fathers lived, or die as your fathers died!” Kaster lifted his hand in an exaggerated flourish, his dreadsteed stamping in annoyance at his sudden movement. “It’s over. You know, you wouldn’t have to listen to my traveling songs if you’d learned how to fly.”

Miria pursed her lips. “Perhaps I would have learned to fly if someone hadn’t been hurling shadowbolts at me while I was trying to maneuver.”

“When the horde are shooting at you because you accidentally passed too close to their territory, you’ll thank me,” Kaster said. He sat up straight in the saddle and began another song. “In life three ghostly friars were we, and now three friarly ghosts we be-”

“Oh, don’t start!” Miria snapped.

Kaster glared at her, and she returned the glare with what she hoped was equal ferocity. She did not have much patience for people who chose deliberately to be rude, and Kaster was demonstrating that tendency more and more each day they traveled together.

They met no other adventurers on the road. Until now they had stayed away from the worn track, preferring to swing far south of Hellfire Citadel. Kaster assured her that the demons and fel orcs that once used it as a stronghold had been cleared out, but the memory of the six fel orcs who had ambushed the warlock kept Miria from wholly believing him. They gave the citadel a wide berth, picking up the road on the other side.

The citadel was a day and a half in their wake, now, and they were coming to the narrow mountain pass that led out of Hellfire Peninsula and into Zangarmarsh, the refuge of her people. This time, Miria was not foolish enough to build up her hopes. After seeing what the devastation of the planet wrought in the peninsula, she more expected a wasteland or a fetid bog than the place she remembered.

The first sign that they were passing into Zangarmarsh was the smell of water and wet plant matter entering the air. Miria began to see moss on the rocks in the pass, signs of life that were a welcome change from the barren desert. The first small mushrooms jutted out of the rocks only a few feet later. Cautiously, guardedly, Miria began to hope. Then her elekk’s broad foot landed on the ground with a squish, and Miria felt a smile stealing over her face as the pass opened up.

Stretched out before them was a forest of enormous mushrooms as tall as most trees Miria had seen on Azeroth. They gave off an almost ghostly blue glow, rippling off the standing water of the bog. Little inlets of moss and vegetation stretched their fingers through the shallow water. The road became an elevated wooden walk. Miria hoped it was stronger than it looked, or it wouldn’t hold her elekk’s weight.

On the immediate horizon, Miria could see the graceful arch of kaldorei architecture rising up out of the marsh. “We will head for the settlement,” she said. “I would like to check in with someone and see how the marsh has been faring.”

She urged her elekk on ahead, smiling despite herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see small sporebats playing in the shallow water, flicking it at each other with their long tails. Off in the distance she saw a fen strider, its long spindly legs consuming vast strides of land when it walked. She felt something warm building up in her chest and swallowed hard.

Kaster was watching her, his head tilted to the side, a grin on his lips. He looked like he thought Winter Veil had come early and Greatfather Winter had brought a special present just for him.

“What?” Miria asked, frowning at him.

“Nothing,” Kaster said. “You look pleased.”

“You’ve stopped singing.”

“I can start again, if you like,” Kaster said, his grin growing broader.

“No!” Miria said quickly. “No, thank you, let’s just ride in peace.”

It did not take them long to come to the settlement Miria had seen as they came down from the pass. It was a Cenarion Expedition refuge, and the druids there were almost as glad to see Miria as she was to see them. They may not have been her people, but she couldn’t think of anyone more qualified to give her an assessment on the state of the land than a druid.

In short order, she found herself directed to the druid in charge of this branch of the expedition. She was a night elf, a slender woman with shockingly bright blue-green hair. “Welcome to Zangarmarsh,” she said with a small bow. “I am Ysiel Windsinger.”

Miria returned it. “It has been a long time since I have walked in these bogs,” she said. “I am glad to be home. I am Miria, and this is my companion Kaster-clan-Raven.”

“Just Kaster is fine, you know,” Kaster said absently. Miria wasn’t sure when he’d stopped to summon a demon, but there was a felhound snuffling through the grass beside where he was. He seemed inordinately interested in a small cluster of glowing mushrooms. Miria was happy to let him be diverted with whatever took his fancy, so long as he didn’t start tormenting her again.

“A draenei and a warlock - now that is a strange pair,” Ysiel said.

“It is... complicated,” Miria said. “What can you tell me of the marsh?”

“Not much good, I am afraid,” Ysiel said. “Being sandwiched between Blade’s Edge Mountains to the north and Terrokar to the south, not to mention having the peninsula as a buffer, saved it from much of the world’s shattering. What harm it avoided then, though, was redoubled by the naga and their wretched steam pumps.”

“Naga?” Kaster asked, straightening suddenly.

“Yes, hundreds of them,” Ysiel said, her nose wrinkling like she’d smelled something foul. “I do not know what they intended to gain by draining the waters of the marsh, but while Vashj still commanded them, they worked tirelessly toward it. Water levels are down, and as a result the wildlife suffers.”

Miria closed her eyes, letting out a sigh that felt like it was dragged from the depths of her spirit. “What can I do to help?”

“We have an overpopulation problem,” Ysiel said. “The naga are fleeing, their numbers dissipating now that they have no leadership to organize them. The natural wildlife, however, has been thrown out of balance through hunting and the drop in the water level. The naga also introduced feral hydras into the environment, and they’ve been hunting the sporebats relentlessly. Sporebat numbers are down, marshfang and amberfly numbers are through the roof - not to mention the hydras.”

“I will do my part to decrease the hydra population, then,” Miria said. “What can you tell me of Telredor?”

“The draenei settlement up north? It remains - in fact, they seem to be doing well for themselves,” Ysiel said.

Miria felt hope leap in her chest again and shoved it down ruthlessly. She did not have the time to get sentimental, and she definitely did not have the time to spend putting the emotional pieces back together when that hope was shattered. “I will go to Telredor - I will keep an eye out for overzealous wildlife while I am on the road, and offer what assistance I can.”

“If you bring me back hydra skins, I will pay you two gold per skin,” Ysiel said, “as a reward for getting rid of the wretched creatures.”

Kaster, who had turned his attention back to the interesting collection of flora the druids were cultivating, looked up at that. He waiting to speak until they were back in the saddle, riding out toward Telredor. “Two gold per hydra skin, did she say?”

“You’re welcome to hunt them if you wish, but I make for Telredor. I have... I need to see - it’s personal business.”

Kaster smirked. “Someone you used to know lived here,” he said. “Your family, perhaps?”

“None of your business,” Miria said.

“So you were one of the lucky ones who escaped Outland when it was just breaking up,” Kaster said.

Miria felt a twinge of something like guilt. “I was on The Exodar, yes,” she said.

“Do you know what happened to most of your people who remained behind?” he asked, his voice all innocence. Miria’s gaze sharpened on him.

“What do you mean, what happened to my people? I assume they carried on, survived as best they were able. That is what we do. For many long centuries, we have survived - and we will continue to.”

“Oh yes, they survived,” Kaster said. He chuckled to himself, a disturbing noise that made Miria shiver involuntarily. Beside her, Naru growled low. Miria gritted her teeth and ignored the warlock, keeping her elekk’s head turned straight in the direction of Telredor.

Shattrath may have been the place she grew up when she was a small child, but most of her young life was spent in Telredor and the surrounding marsh, helping her parents tan hides and hunt marshfang. They had lived in a quiet home near the base of the giant mushroom Telredor was built in, living simply. In those days, Treize had already left to aid the Aldor priests in their attempt to retake Shattrath, leaving Miria alone with her parents. Every day they feared they would receive news from the front that Treize was dead, killed by orcs or blood elves or demons.

And now I am here, Treize is alive and well on Azeroth, and neither of us have heard from our parents since the land shattered. Miria could not help but fear they were dead.

Telredor rose out of the marsh abruptly, higher than all the mushrooms surrounding it. Miria dismissed her elekk, walking with Naru at her flank over to a set of stairs that led up to a platform. Shortly, another platform descended from far above their heads and came to a smooth halt in front of them.

“Step on,” Miria said, urging Naru onto the platform. Kaster followed her, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robes and his felhound still snuffling at his feet.

“Enchanted?” Kaster asked. “I would have thought your people to be as adverse to the arcane as the kaldorei.”

“Magic has always been a part of us,” Miria said, “but it is a tool like any other tool. It is dangerous when abused, and can be addicting. We guard ourselves carefully against those eventualities.”

Kaster yawned theatrically. “Boring. What’s the use of power if you don’t use it for yourself?”

“Not everyone is as selfish and childish as you,” Miria said tartly. The platform lurched into motion, bringing them up to the top of Telredor, where Miria stepped off.

The town was not as bustling as she remembered - or perhaps it was that she was grown now, and the other draenei did not seem to tower over her anymore. The more she looked around, though, the more she got the sense that these people were barely surviving. The fountain was in disrepair, full of stagnant bog water that would normally be filtered drinking water. The wooden deck was rough, boards peeling up in places. The benches sagged, propped up by bits of decking that appeared to have been ripped up from the corners.

“Cheerful place,” Kaster said. “I’ll leave you to your search. There are some hydras out there just begging to be slaughtered, and I think I found a new species of mushroom with some fel taint to it.” Miria looked back at him, alarmed, but he was grinning - of course. “Maybe I can find a practical application for it.”

Miria shuddered as he turned away to go back to the elevator, reminding herself not to drink or eat anything he gave her. She put her hand down on Naru’s head, digging her fingers into the bear’s fur for reassurance.

“Miria?”

Miria whirled around. She didn’t immediately recognize the voice, but she had grown a lot since she was last here. “Who... Idaar?”

The draenei who had called her smiled as he stepped away from his guard post. “I thought that was you - by the Light, Miria, look at you! You’ve grown so much!”

“Idaar, I’m so glad to see you,” Miria said, a smile breaking across her face. Her family and Idaar’s went back a long way - their fathers lived near each other on Argus, and served in the same section of the Tempest Keep. Growing up, Miria, Idaar and Treize were like an inseparable trio, getting into all sorts of trouble together. “When you weren’t on the Exodar, I feared the worst.”

“I stayed behind to cover the retreat, you knew that,” Idaar said. “I am lucky to have survived, but here I am, still among the living!” Idaar pulled Miria into a hug, thumping her on the back. “I am glad to see you are well.”

“I saw Treize on Azeroth, recently,” Miria said. “You will be glad to know that he is also well. He is travelling across the Eastern Kingdoms, telling our people that it is safe to come home.”

Idaar frowned. “I would not precisely call it ‘safe,’” he said. “We still have much work to do before Shattrath is the city it once was, and here... well, we have our own problems.”

“Yes I had noticed that Telredor seems to have seen better days,” Miria said, waving her hand at the stagnant fountain. “What happened?”

“We cannot spare any able-bodied persons to do things as menial as keeping up the fountain and the decking,” Idaar said. “The filthy naga have thrown the ecosystem into disarray, and the sporebat numbers fall rapidly. The Cenarion druids have warned us that we can no longer hunt them, or we risk extincting the population. With that, our largest food supply is off-limits. Everything is in shortage here.”

The more Idaar spoke, the heavier Miria’s mood grew. She had hoped to come home and find that things had gotten better, that the Legion had been driven back into the nether and her people were recovering. Now it seemed like they were worse off than ever. “Idaar,” she said, screwing up her courage, “have you heard from my parents?”

Idaar’s expression went carefully blank, but for Miria that was as good as if he had come out and said it. He shifted from one hoof to another, opened his mouth, and then closed it. He did not seem able to speak. “Miria...” he finally said.

“They are dead then,” Miria said, feeling a lump rise in her throat. “I feared it was so.”

“No,” Idaar said reluctantly. “They are not dead - but they... they’ve been changed.”

“Changed? Changed how?”

Idaar shook his head. “Many of our people were taken by... by a sickness, of a sort, that made them into less than what they were. It broke them, cut them off from the Light, made them bitter and afraid. We tried to care for them, but they could not see our compassion. They left us, many months ago.”

Miria swallowed. “Are they... still draenei?”

“I cannot say,” Idaar said. “I would still consider them to be my people, but they do not call themselves that now. They call themselves the Broken.”

“Where can I find them?” Miria asked.

Idaar hesitated for a long moment, his brow knit with sorrow and his glowing blue eyes avoiding Miria entirely. Miria kept her gaze fixed on him, her shoulders straight, biting her lip to keep it from trembling. Finally, Idaar sighed. “Go northwest,” he said. “Seek out the Orebor Harborage. That is what they call home, now.”

Miria nodded. “Thank you, my friend,” she said, and whistled for Naru, heading back toward the lift. She had planned to stay the night here, perhaps pass a few days of rest in the safety of Telredor’s canopy, but she could not impose herself on a people who had so little to give.

She looked around for Kaster when she reached ground level, but he wasn’t immediately in sight. She would have thought he had the sense not to go too far, but then again, he didn’t seem to have much sense at all. Miria bent down to find his tracks and picked out a set of round boot prints out of the dozens of hoof tracks left by draenei. The prints went west from Telredor toward the large lake in the center of Zangarmarsh. Miria followed.

Not three strides passed and she heard a wet pop and the cackle of delighted laughter. Overcoming her first instinct, which was to run in the other direction, Miria squeezed through a small copse of mushrooms to see what the warlock had done now.

He stood on the shore of the lake, his robes splattered with gore. A hydra lay dead at his feet, its necks ending in bloody stumps where heads should be. The remains of the hydra’s three skulls and all the fleshy gobbets that were contained inside sprayed across the shore’s vegetation in a grotesque spray pattern. “What in the name of the Light did you do?”

Kaster had a wide grin on his face. His felhound slurped obscenely at the remains - it appeared to be rooting out the brain matter from the rest and eating it. “Fel mushrooms,” he said. “Did you know they interact with whatever compound the naga were putting in the water? Its heads exploded!”

He sounded positively excited. Miria wrinkled her nose at the felhound, still enjoying its meal. “I suppose you want me to skin it now,” she said.

“Only if you want the gold,” Kaster said mildly. “I have found an explosive compound. Further testing is required.”

Miria shook her head, bending to work with her skinning knife. Stuck in the middle of a naga-infested swamp with a psychotic warlock without a single moral bone in his entire body, she thought. I should have stayed in Azeroth. I should have gone to the war in Northrend. It can’t possibly be as bad there as it is here.

Honor Hold

To Miria’s dismay, she spent most of the first two weeks in Outland avoiding Kaster-clan-Raven. He seemed to have a perverse fascination with making her startle. Miria was hardly an unseasoned traveler; she’d been many places since she first left Azuremyst Isle to travel Azeroth. Still, it seemed that she jumped without fail every time she rounded a corner and found herself face-to-face with Kaster’s felguard, or his succubus, or his voidwalker. Every time, his delighted, cruel laughter came from not too far away.

It was with that in mind that Miria tried to spend her days outside of Honor Hold, from sunup to sundown if she could help it. There was never a shortage of tasks to be done - despite the legion’s nominal defeat, the shattered remains of their forces were still a rather formidable threat. Both the Alliance and the Horde sustained heavy losses in the Outland campaign, almost enough to match the demons’ losses, and so the struggle continued.

Most days, she was able to lose Kaster by giving him the slip at dawn when she rode out the gates. She had no idea what made her a target of his particular malice, but she had to leave with the first blush of the cold sun over the desert if she didn’t want him to follow her.

This morning she set out for another tedious day of culling felboars. She’d heard the Cenarion Expedition druids were having some luck reversing the fel taint from the boars, but their supplies were limited, and so was the success. To completely remove the taint, the druids had to come up with a way to prevent tainted vegetation from growing out of the tainted soil, being eaten by boars and tainting them in turn. In the meantime, the overly aggressive creatures had to be pushed back away from Honor Hold, or they disrupted the vital supply line.

Naru kept pace beside Miria’s elekk. She had not yet sought out flying lessons - that would require her to stay in Honor Hold long enough for that cursed warlock to find her. Miria and Naru had been partners for so long that the draenei liked to think she could read Naru’s moods. This morning the bear seemed grumpy and stubborn, snorting with force every time she sniffed.

“I told you this land was unpleasant,” Miria said gently. Naru growled in the back of her throat. Miria supposed that telling the bear was all well and good, but Naru was not a sentient animal no matter how well Miria could read her moods. She didn’t really grasp the future, and the span of her memory was not long. Miria shrugged at Naru’s response and tugged on the elekk’s reins.

They rode in a wide circuit through the small piece of desert the Alliance guarded as their base of operations in this forsaken place. The fortress’s commanders told her the felboar’s numbers were decreasing, and Miria believed it from the number of people who came through the gates at night hefting carcasses. Their tainted meat had to be boiled for hours in special herbs, and it ended up stringy and tasteless, but there was precious little else to eat here.

A felboar snuffled through a straggly patch of weeds on the path ahead, and Miria clicked her tongue at the elekk, stopping the animal in its tracks. She slid down from its wide back and pulled her bow off her back. “Get it, Naru,” she whispered.

Naru was getting better at hunting boars. She moved quietly, which would perhaps be surprising to anyone who was not a hunter. Bears were predators, capable hunters, it would not make sense if they were always the lumbering, snuffling creatures that made noise through the forest. That was simply how they moved when they were not hungry.

The boar’s head shot up and its eyes lit with an evil green phosphorescent light. It pawed the earth with one hoof, but by the time it lowered its head to charge, Naru already beat it. She barreled into the boar head on, her head lowered. She hit in the side of its neck, one of the few places where spines hadn’t sprouted from its skeleton.

Miria pulled her bowstring back and let an explosive arrow fly, followed by a stinging shot full of poison and another charged with shadow magic. The boar squealed, at the force of the bear’s charge and at the magic arrows. Its evil gaze swung to Miria, but before it could lower its head and gather itself for a charge again, Naru hauled back with one paw and gave it a mighty smack across the snout, roaring in its face. If that did not take its attention away from the hunter, nothing would.

Miria lined up her next shot carefully. Between the poison, fire and shadow of Miria’s shots and the mauling Naru was handing out, the boar was staggering under the assault. A lance of red coalesced into an arrow across Miria’s drawn bow, and she whistled sharply before she let it loose.

The kill shot streaked through the air. Naru leapt aside at the whistle, backing away, not wanting to be caught by her mistress’s arrow. It hit home in the boar’s eye, plunging into the maddened animal’s skull. The beast staggered once and then fell heavily on its side, dead.

Miria returned her bow to her back and pulled her skinning knife from her belt, squatting in the red sand beside the boar and beginning the painstaking process of skinning and butchering it. Normally, Naru would shove her head under Miria’s hands and make a snack out of the animal’s innards, but this time she took one sniff of the boar’s meat and growled, shuffling off grumpily to flop into the sand next to where Miria’s elekk waited patiently. “Do not worry, I will make sure you get some of the meat after it has been purified by boiling,” Miria said.

Naru snorted. Miria wondered if the bear had seen what the meat looked like after it came out of the giant boilers set up in Honor Hold’s kitchens. It certainly looked unappetizing, and it smelled rather pungent from all the herbs necessary to absorb the fel taint. Miria stuck to bread - she knew where that meat came from and had absolutely no desire to eat it. She couldn’t really blame Naru at all.

Miria was a quick skinner. Within minutes she had the hide separated from the boar. She laid out the skin like a grotesque picnic blanket and used it to keep sand off the meat she butchered. Gutting came first. She separated the lungs, liver and heart from the stomach, bladder and intestines - the former would make good soup base after they’d been cleansed, and the latter could be tanned. Pig bladder held enchantment decently well, and could be made into a traveler’s bag in a pinch. All traveler’s bags were enchanted to hold far more than it looked like they should be able to. Miria’s own pouches felt light enough to be empty, but were far from it.

Greenish blood turned her gloves sticky as she worked. Naru lounged to the side as she separated the boar into edible parts. Normally she would haul the whole carcass in and butcher it within the safety of the walls, but the first day she’d done that she’d caught hell from the priests in Honor Hold. They had been less than pleased with her spilling gouts of fel blood over the sand they had only recently purified. So now she butchered in the field, Naru keeping a weather eye out for any further threats.

When she had finally removed everything useful from the boar, leaving only its twisted skeleton, stray organs and its head, Miria pulled the legs of the skin together and bound them tightly with a leather thong, slinging the messy bundle over the elekk’s back. She scrubbed the blood off her hands with the red sand, scouring her mail with it and making faces as she tried to get it out from under her fingernails.

She was just clambering back into the saddle when Naru’s head went up. The bear climbed to her feet, her head swinging from side to side like she was trying to pinpoint a smell. “What is it, girl?”

Naru broke into a loping run and Miria nudged the elekk to follow. Her mount trumpeted softly, shaking its head. Its large ears flapped and its long trunk swung - the first time she’d loaded a sticky, revolting package of skin and boar parts onto the elekk, it had reared and shied, dumping the whole lot in the sand. Now it was used to the smell and the feeling of gummy blood against its side.

Miria had to urge the elekk on faster as Naru picked up speed. Now she thought she knew what had attracted the bear’s attention - she heard the faint sounds of shouting and clashing steel over the next rise. The back of Miria’s neck prickled. For the past couple of days, the only things she’d seen out here were felboars and sandworms, but neither of those things used weapons.

Her elekk topped a rise and Miria hauled back on the reins. “Naru!” she shouted, stopping the bear from charging into the fray that spread out below them.

This rise bordered a shallow ravine that led down into the wide, deep gorge below. From what she gathered from command, the gorge used to be crawling with demons and fel orcs centered on Hellfire Citadel, but most of them were wiped out in the campaign.

Apparently these fel orcs had not gotten that message. They looked like they’d cornered a human, backing him up against the wall of the ravine with a pike to his throat. Miria nudged her elekk closer - there were seven fel orcs, more than anyone could take on their own, but if the human was any kind of warrior...

Sweet Light. Do you enjoy tormenting me? Miria bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something sarcastically rude as she finally got close enough to get a good look at the human.

It was Kaster-clan-Raven.

Kaster must have seen her elekk’s movement, for his eyes broke contact with the orc in front of him and darted to Miria. The expression on his face mirrored hers, as if he was asking the cosmos why it had sent her of all people to help him out of this spot, but he nevertheless gave his head a small twitch to the side, indicating the three orcs that guarded his easiest escape route.

Miria got the message, but her lips pressed together thinly. She supposed she couldn’t go so far as to call Kaster evil. He had after all assisted with the exorcism of an innocent man, and he appeared to be just as sworn to the Alliance as she. And like it or not, her own moral code couldn’t let her turn her back and leave someone to certain death.

Rolling her eyes with a sigh, she dismounted her elekk and drew her bow. “Get them, Naru,” she said.

The bear roared, rearing onto her hind legs. It was the first noise the pair of them had made, and it made the orcs turn with a start. Miria pulled back her bowstring and Naru charged into the fray with another earsplitting roar.

Kaster took advantage of the distraction, throwing his head back and letting out an animalistic howl of pure terror. The emotion swept out from him like a wave, taking hold of the orcs around them, causing them to clutch at their heads, moaning, and run aimlessly in a random direction. One of them ran straight off the edge of the cliff, plunging into the gorge below.

While they ran in fear, Kaster pulled a purple gem from his robes - the same kind Miria had seen him create from demon souls. He crushed it, a flash of neon purple surrounding his hands, and without even a summoning ritual his felguard appeared from the twisting nether, hefting his axe. “Do not waste my time, lesser creature,” he boomed, his glowing eyes narrowed on Kaster.

“Ah, and here I thought you might like to slaughter something,” Kaster said, his expression blank. He shrugged, indicating the fel orcs. “My mistake.” Miria drew her bowstring back and fired. He was awfully flippant for someone who had nearly been dead a moment before.

“A paltry task,” the felguard rumbled, and hefted his axe, drawing back his arm to throw it at the closest fel orc. It struck the orc in the shoulder, embedding in his collarbone, and he howled, broken from his terrified stupor.

Miria’s attention shifted to the orcs who were now recovering from the terror Kaster unleashed on them, drawing their weapons and cursing blackly as they charged back toward the warlock and the hunter. Kaster smirked, gesturing to the felguard, who began to spin in a deadly whirl of blade and spiked tail, his axe slashing and biting at any orcs who came remotely near him.

Naru seemed to have taken care of the orc she first charged. She reared up on her hind legs and landed on his chest with all her weight. Miria heard the crack of bone and whistled, pointing at the next orc. They were showing far too much interest in Miria and Kaster, not enough in their respective pets - she would have to fix that.

Concentrating for a moment, she sent a trap sailing in a high arc from her bowstring. It hit the sand and fell open near an orc’s feet. As the orc staggered sideways, trying to avoid the deadly whirl of felguard, he triggered it. The sand under his feet exploded into a gout of fire, consuming the orc and spitting flame out over the sand. Three down, four to go.

Kaster laughed cruelly, and Miria shifted her attention for a bare second from Naru’s latest target. He sent a bolt of green and black magic down his fingertips, and Miria swallowed as it shaped itself into a smoky skull, impacting one of the orcs in the chest and compelling him to once again run in horror. Small bolts of shadow magic streamed after him from Kaster’s fingertips, each laying a curse on the orc as he ran. By the time he recovered from the spell, Kaster laid another on him and he turned to run the other way, covering his head and cowering as he went. Before this spell wore off, he fell face first in the sand and moved no more.

Miria swallowed, unloading into the orc Naru was mauling. She hit him with a kill shot in the throat and he dropped as well, leaving only two orcs. The felguard seemed to be toying with one, parrying his frantic axe blows easily and punctuating his swings with dark, unsettling laughter.

The last orc, seeing that his fellows had fallen before the combined onslaught, turned to run. He scrabbled up the side of the ravine toward Miria, pegging her as the weak link, hefting his axe at her. Miria fired a concussive shot from her bow, causing him to stumble, and leapt backward lightly, disengaging from the impending battle. Bolts of shadow hit the orc in the back as he ran, and Miria saw Kaster’s lips moving, his finger pointing at this orc and a twisted smirk on his face. Streamers of neon purple pulled out of the orc’s back toward Kaster, and the orc’s eyes went wide with terror - this time not a spell, but an instinctive reaction to the feeling of his soul slowly being wrenched from his chest.

The orc fell dead two steps from Miria, his formerly red skin ashen grey. Kaster had drained him of his soul. Naru charged the orc the felguard was toying with, knocking him down to where she could swing one mighty paw at his skull, crushing it neatly.

Miria lowered her bow to her side, watching as the purple energies from the orc coalesced into a gem in the center of Kaster’s palm. She crossed the sands to him reluctantly, physically turning her body away from the felguard, who was smeared in greenish fel orc blood.

Kaster’s mouth twisted under his short goatee. “I suppose I owe you thanks,” he said grudgingly.

“By all means, handle them yourself next time,” Miria snapped.

Kaster raised his eyebrows. “It’s not as if I asked for your assistance,” he pointed out mildly. “You could have ridden on and left me to my fate. I would not be missed overmuch in the fortress.”

Miria gritted her teeth. “I take my duty to the Alliance seriously,” she said. “I would not - I could not leave you when you were outnumbered so.”

There was something sharp and delighted in Kaster’s eyes, something that frightened her. His twisted, unhappy expression split into a smirk and he bowed shallowly. “My thanks,” he said. “I dislike owing debts to anyone. Are you content to cull boars around Honor Hold for your tenure in Outland, or was there something you came here to do?”

Miria hesitated. It seemed like Kaster was at least trying to be grateful, but she still did not trust him. Especially when the felguard’s nasty chuckle reminded her that this was a warlock, a man who chose to treat with and summon demons, the exact kind of man that had turned her homeworld into a shattered wreck. “There is no debt owed,” she said shortly.

“Ah, but there is,” Kaster said. “If you had not come along, I would certainly be dead. Surely the draenei’s customs are not so different from the eredar - a debt owed must be repaid.”

His smirk was broad, like he knew that he was putting her back up simply by casual comparison to the eredar. She couldn’t help but glance sidelong at the felguard, and found that its glowing eyes were fixed on her with definite interest. She looked away, scowling. “If I attempt to turn you away, you will simply follow me until you I concede, won’t you? You’ve been following me quite enough over the past few days - it is what got you in trouble here, is it not?”

“Miria, my dear, it is only because you provide such amusement,” Kaster said, the wide smirk still plastered across his insufferable face. It was the first time he’d given any indication that he remembered her name.

Miria threw up her hands in exasperation and summoned her elekk, slinging the bag of boar parts across its back from where it had fallen in the sand when the mount disappeared. “If you insist, I suppose you may follow me to Zangarmarsh. I wish to see if the land of my childhood has fared as badly as this place.”

Kaster summoned his own mount, and both Naru and the elekk shied away from the dreadsteed. Its fiery mane blazed in the sun, bone spikes jutting from its shoulders and flanks. Kaster gave her another mocking half-bow from the saddle. “Lead the way, draenei.”

Miria flicked the elekk’s reins with a short whistle, urging it into movement, and found herself wishing for Necrothirst the death knight at her flank instead.

Howling Fjord

Kyladriss cleaved through the center of the Vrykul without any regard for how deep she was getting into enemy lines. Few of them were directly challenging her now that they had seen her fight. Necrothirst did not blame them. Kyladriss killed as often with her wicked claws as she did her blade, mauling some Vrykul to death.

He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the young knight Epyon, fending off the warriors who peeled away from the worgen’s assault. Necrothirst watched him with a critical eye as he dodged, parried, and slammed into the encroaching Vrykul with his axe.

“Make certain you do not ignore the importance of diseases in weakening your enemy,” he said, twisting Zin’Shalla around a Vrykul blade to strike its bearer in the heart.

“Right,” Epyon said, and a boiling circle of shadow swept out from his feet. Unholy and Frost Runes flickered over the curved blade of his axe as he sent the diseases of the Scourge into its blade, where they eagerly jumped to all enemies in the vicinity.

Necrothirst was vaguely aware that ballista were firing at his rear - they must have pushed the Vrykul back from the operators. “Your blade feeds on your enemy’s pain. Unleash it back to him.” Necrothirst’s sword glowed with the sickly blue glow of runic power, and he released it in a series of devastating strikes that temporarily cleared the space in front of him.

The other three death knights in their small squad let Necrothirst and Epyon take the brunt of the attacks. “You should train the boy at a time when we are not trying to catch up with that,” Tamasi said, pointing a slim one-handed runeblade at Kyladriss’s back in the thick of the fighting. She was a draenei, almost as tall as Necrothirst but willowy and quick on her feet. Frost runes streamed down her blades as she practically danced through the Vrykul nearest Necrothirst.

“Boy?!” Epyon protested, swinging his axe in a high arc above his head and bringing it down to cleave through a Vrykul warlock’s skull. He wrenched the axe free and swung it again.

“Compared to her you are so very young - that is the only reason she says such,” Saelessa said. Necrothirst’s teeth clenched involuntarily when she spoke. She was a night elf, and she spoke in the cultured tones of former Highborne. Either she fell prey to the Scourge very early after the Highborne migrated to the Eastern Kingdoms, or she was one of the very few who elected to give up the arcane arts as Malfurion ordered. He was glad she fought near Epyon and not at his shoulder.

“That’s not quite fair, she never calls me ‘girl’ and I’m younger than Eypon.” The voice of the last member of their company echoed up from Necrothirst’s knees, and he contained as sigh as he parried and forced a Vrykul back. Gnomes. Ridiculous creatures.

“You are not so young in death, Laiza,” Tamasi said. “Epyon is.”

“So I get treated like the rookie until I’m a few thousand years old? That’s ridiculous,” Epyon protested. Necrothirst watched up charge his axe with runic energy like he had a moment before and then expend it on the nearest unfortunate Vrykul.

“You are the rookie,” Laiza said - she sounded practically cheerful. It set Necrothirst’s teeth on edge. “Tamasi’s older than any of us are ever likely to get, just ignore her.”

Tamasi hissed something in Draenic and twirled her two runeblades overhand. “The worgen is still putting distance between us,” she said.

“Laiza, see if you can get to her - but do not try to stop her,” Necrothirst said.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Laiza said. She stabbed her runeblade, easily as tall as she was, toward the earth with an unholy rune chasing down its length. A rotted hand burst through the dirt as an old corpse climbed to life at Laiza’s bidding. The gnome and her ghoul slipped between the fighting Vrykul toward the swath of destruction Kyladriss had carved.

As they fought, Necrothirst kept an eye on the two women. When Tamasi and Saelessa fought they maintained a foot of space between their backs at all times, their blades charged with the deathly chill of frost runes. When one moved, the other moved in response, making sure they were each protected by the other. He had not had much time to evaluate the team while on their passage to Northrend, preferring to brood and monitor Kyladriss’s condition. Now, though, he was reluctantly impressed by the competence of the knights he commanded. Even Epyon, who was young in death and still learning, was more than capable. Tamasi and Saelessa fought like they’d been raised from death together, Laiza was small enough to run reconnaissance, and Kyladriss...

Kyladriss was effective, and that was her only redeeming quality.

They were running out of Vrykul to kill. Zin’Shalla hummed in bloody satisfaction in the back of Necrothirst’s mind, and the majority of their enemy lay dead or dying around them. Still Kyladriss fought, slaking her thirst for slaughter by advancing up the enemy embankment, getting dangerously close to what appeared to be the Vrykul’s village. No matter how bloodthirsty she was, there was no way she would survive charging into that many enemies.

Necrothirst could see Laiza’s silver head bobbing at knee level through the shrubbery and trees. She was hot on Kyladriss’s trail, but couldn’t do anything to the worgen if she wanted to keep her second lease on life.

“Tamasi, Saelessa, take care of the stragglers!” Necrothirst said, hefting Zin’Shalla in both hands. “After bringing her all the way to Northrend I am not going to lose her now.”

The two frost knights lifted their blades, sending a wave of bitter cold sweeping out from their feet. All Vrykul within striking distance were immediately encased in thick ice, freezing them in their tracks and giving Necrothirst the opportunity to charge past the front line, running hard for Kyladriss’s position.

She was crouched on the edge of the village now. A Vrykul warg sniffed the wind and bared its teeth, stalking toward her. Its handler said something in their harsh language and more Vrykul joined the procession, following the oversized wolf out of the village. Necrothirst’s boots splashed through the small stream as he pelted toward her. He could see every line in her body tensing as if she was getting ready to pounce. Laiza looked back to see Necrothirst coming and waved him on frantically, as if he did not realize that their time to contain Kyladriss before she leapt into the middle of the fray again was rapidly running out.

The warg was less than three feet away from Kyladriss when she broke cover, standing to her full height and throwing her head back in another eerie, echoing howl. The warg bared its teeth and snarled, beginning to circle her like it would an unruly member of its back. Its Vrykul handler knocked an arrow, and the others who had followed him stood in a loose semicircle, their weapons at the ready. They appeared to want to see what Kyladriss and the warg would do before they attacked.

Suddenly, another howl echoed through the cold northern air. Kyladriss abruptly stopped her snarling, jerking up to her full height again, her head snapping around and her ears swiveling forward to the source. Necrothirst slowed his steps and stopped next to Laiza, gripping his sword.

“I think she’s gonna-” Laiza began, but before the gnome finished her sentence, Kyladriss dropped to all fours and ran, moving at a swifter pace than Necrothirst had ever seen any knight travel on foot. The Vrykul cried out in surprise and made a half-hearted effort to chase after her, stopping short when they realized that they could not keep up.

“After her!” Necrothirst shouted, raising his hand to summon his riding raptor. He leaned low over the raptor’s back and snapped the reins, feeling the muscles beneath its scaly hide shift as it broke into a run, its clawed feet digging up small furrows of earth.

The unique, hollow-sounding hoofbeats of a Deathcharger fell steadily to Necrothirst’s right, and he looked to find Laiza on an improbably small undead pony, her ghoul leaping along beside her as she rode hard to Necrothirst’s flank. “She’s headed north!” the gnome shouted. “You think that was another worgen she heard?”

“I cannot think of another reason why she would turn away from a fight,” Necrothirst said. He looked back over his shoulder. The other three knights were not following. Good, Necrothirst thought. It seemed as if they had some semblance of military sense, and would go report to the commanders in Valgarde rather than follow Necrothirst and Laiza on a wild chase through the Northrend forests.

And a wild chase it was - Kyladriss seemed to sense that she was being followed, or perhaps she heard the Deathcharger behind her, because she wove through the tall evergreens like a swift black shadow. Necrothirst was forced to watch the bouncing glow of the runeblade strapped to her back as she pelted through the trees, up an embankment and through a river that felt freezing even to his deadened senses.

“Who decided that we had to babysit the crazy worgen?” Laiza grumbled. It was the first time Necrothirst had heard her say anything that didn’t sound appallingly cheery. “I know it was your idea to let her out of the box we had her all nice and contained in.”

“You must not have seen the amount of Vrykul we no longer have to deal with because of the ‘crazy worgen,’ as you put it.” Necrothirst neglected to mention the word Kyladriss had spoken to him in the hold. With the amount of influence a runeblade had on its bearer, he was not certain that argued for any semblance of sanity.

“Oh, she’s a killing machine all right, but if we have to do this every time we put her up then she’s going to be more trouble than she’s worth.” Laiza nudged her pony with her heels, jumping a fallen log. The Deathcharger landed lightly on the ground opposite - Laiza’s ghoul, on the other hand, ran into the log with enough force to separate its decomposing head from its body. The headless corpse groped in the air for a moment until Laiza sighed, gesturing sharply with her sword. The ghoul fell into lifeless pieces. “Useless bag of meat,” Laiza grumbled. They rode on.

The sun had just risen to high noon, beating down on the forest from above. Despite the hour, Necrothirst did not feel even the vaguest hint of warmth as his raptor ran through the trees, still hot on Kyladriss’s trail. The worgen’s ears twitched around to point backward, and then she juked left, swinging around a small copse of trees and then skittering up a snowbank.

“We must be reaching the border of the mountains!” Laiza shouted. “She’ll be in Grizzly Hills soon if we don’t stop her!”

“If you have not noticed, she is as fast as we are, and we are not gaining on her,” Necrothirst said, teeth clenched. His raptor shook its head violently, the feathers along its trappings rustling as its broad feet dug into the snow.

Another howl sounded, this time much closer to their position. Kyladriss’s determination to shake off her followers seemed to double in response - she left the worn hunting track she had been following entirely and scrabbled up nearby rocks.

Laiza pulled hard on her Deathcharger’s reins, provoking the animal into a rear. “I can’t follow her up those cliffs,” she said.

“Keep pace alongside, then!” Necrothirst snapped over his shoulder as he passed. Kyladriss scrambled over the rocks, snarling low in her throat as she went. The terrain slowed her pace, but Necrothirst’s raptor could not manage the icy rocks either. Now he merely attempted to keep her within his line of sight.

“Necrothirst!” Laiza shouted, but even as Necrothirst looked to see what she was shouting about, it was too late. A furry body slammed into him and his raptor, knocking him from the mount’s saddle and sending both of them tumbling through the snow, rocks grating against his pauldrons. Hot breath washed over his face and a powerful jaw clamped down on his sword arm.

Necrothirst kicked out with both feet, catching the worgen in the chest and sending it skidding back in the snow. It was a large, black creature, similar to Kyladriss, only its eyes glowed an evil red. Saliva dripped from its fangs as it climbed to its feet, spreading its razor-sharp claws.

But as Necrothirst raised his blade with a smirk, ready to go toe-to-toe with the creature and pay it back in kind for the teethmarks it left in his bracer, it suddenly dropped back to all fours and took off, leaving Necrothirst standing in the snow with his runeblade, his raptor struggling to its feet and shaking the snow off.

Laiza rode up seconds later, reigning in the Deathcharger. “She went over one of those cliffs and out of sight as soon as the other one hit you,” she said. “I think it was a distraction.”

Necrothirst gritted his teeth. His first instinct was to respond to that blatant statement of the obvious by removing the annoying gnome’s head from her annoying shoulders, but he doubted that Thassarian would send him a replacement if he lost his temper and slaughtered any of the knights under his command. Instead, he merely returned Zin’Shalla to its sheath and mounted his raptor again, turning it back the way they had come. “We will return to Valgarde and regroup,” he said.

“If we lose her now-”

“There will be no finding her now that she has gone to ground in the mountains,” Necrothirst snapped. “I do not relish the idea of scrabbling over icy rocks when there are more of those creatures about. The five of us together are a formidable group, but even I cannot take on a full pack of worgen and return to tell about it.”

Laiza scowled as Necrothirst nudged his raptor into a trot, staring at the last place she had seen Kyladriss, but after a moment she turned her Deathcharger after Necrothirst. The night elf ground his teeth together as they rode. Koltira was right - they never should have released Kyladriss from her captivity. Whereas before they had a somewhat useful tool for their enemy’s destruction, now they had let a rampaging beast loose in the forested hills of Northrend.

I should have listened to the damned sin’dorei.

Valgarde

“You’re certain that cage will hold her?”

Necrothirst looked down at the human sailor who leaned against the railing next to him. Unlike most of his crew, the captain seemed relatively unfazed by his passengers or his cargo. Necrothirst could respect his bravery, if nothing else. “We are fairly knowledgeable about how to hold our own kind, yes,” he said.

The captain raised his hands in a placating gesture. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, it’s just that her claws have been doing some damage to the bars, and I didn’t think that was possible with any creature alive- er, well. I suppose I answered my own question there.”

Necrothirst smirked under the shadow of his helmet. Despite the man’s bravado and his insistence that the death knights be treated no differently than any other passengers, Necrothirst could tell that the presence of undeath made him very uneasy.

“Where do you hail from?” he asked, more as a way to make conversation than anything else. The ship was closing in on the leg of its journey that would take it past the Maelstrom, and Necrothirst wanted to be thoroughly distracted when that moment came.

“Me? Well, my family lived in Lordaeron, but when the Scourge broke out across our lands we went to Stormwind.”

That explained his unease, as well as his determination to contain it. Surviving humans from the old kingdom had faced more Scourge in their lifetime than most - it would be a commonplace thing, to him. “The third war,” Necrothirst mused. “I must say I do not remember the fall of Lordaeron - I was much farther north, witnessing the fall of Quel’Thalas and fighting for Zul’Aman.”

The human shook his head. “I forget how long your people live, sometimes,” he said. “I was barely a man when it happened - I would have fought for Lordaeron, but my father forbade it. I suppose he didn’t want me coming home in a box, or worse, ending up...”

Necrothirst turned his glowing blue gaze on the human again when he trailed off. “Ending up Forsaken, or Death Knight, or Scourge. You will not offend me by saying such.” Truth be told, Necrothirst was rather hard to offend. His long memory wound back to the War of the Ancients. For one who had seen civilizations - including his own - rise, fall, and succumb to the ravages of time, the words of mortals were of little consequence.

“Yes, that’s what I meant,” the captain said, relaxing visibly. He pushed away from the railing. “Well, we’re approaching the Maelstrom and that means trimming sail. Nice chat.”

Necrothirst frowned. He could see a dip in the waters off the port bow, and heavy clouds swirled low over that spot in the ocean - all that remained of the shining capital city of his youth, thanks to their queen’s betrayal. Shouts rang out across the tops, and Necrothirst glanced up to see the sailors furling the sails. The winds and the waters were both choppy around this section of the sea.

Rather than stay on deck to see the reminder of his and Illidan’s failure growing ever larger on the horizon, Necrothirst turned and went below, the darkness and golden lamplight closing over his head as the first smattering rains from the Maelstrom began to wash over the deck.

A vicious snarl pulled him out of his thoughts, and Necrothirst grabbed a nearby stool before settling onto it in front of the large cage lashed down in the middle of the cargo hold. Kyladriss quieted down when he came into her field of vision - Necrothirst thought she might be getting used to his scent. From what Koltira and Thassarian said, this was the most contact she’d had with any thinking being since Light’s Hope Chapel. By his orders, Kyladriss’s runeblade stayed on the other end of the boat, wrapped in enchanted frostweave cloth to dull its call - without the precaution, Kyladriss would most certainly hear it in this proximity, and he didn’t want her any more insane than she already was.

His own desire to humanize the beast still confused him. It was true that he was not looking forward to the amount of supervision she would require on the warfront, and if he could help with her endless rage, one day she might be able to function as well as the rest of the death knights - perhaps with a quicker temper, but many of them had quick tempers. The fact of the matter was that he did not know how much of the viciousness was due to her worgen nature and how much of it was due to the thirst for blood and suffering all death knights carried.

“Batten the hatches! ‘Ware the current!” The shout from above decks was accompanied by the thump of the hatch closing, plunging the hold into deeper darkness. Kyladriss threw herself against the bars of her cage, letting out a bloodcurdling howl.

“I am still here,” Necrothirst said, not expecting that it would do any good. To his surprise, though, the howl cut off and Kyladriss’s nose twitched like she was sniffing for his scent. She settled back to the floor of her cage with a low growl in her throat. “You would do well to brace yourself.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the ship gave a mighty shudder and the deck listed to port. Necrothirst braced his feet and reached out with his hand to catch the wall - the stool he was sitting on tipped up onto two legs before he managed to steady it. Kyladriss’s cage didn’t move, lashed down as it was to the deck, but Kyladriss herself was flung to the side of her cage and yelped.

“I did warn you,” Necrothirst said, a smirk on his lips and dark amusement in his voice. “We will list to port until we can pass by, and then it will start to get much colder.”

It seemed rather counterintuitive to Necrothirst that they had travelled so far south from Acherus simply to take a boat north, but there were few ports that had the manpower or the ships capable of crossing the Frozen Sea, and Menethil was certainly closer than Stormwind.

“Thassarian tells me that you spoke Common at some point since you were raised,” Necrothirst continued, ignoring the side-to-side slosh of the boat. Kyladriss gripped the bars of her cage, her glowing blue eyes fixed on him in the dim lamplight. “He also tells me that you are perfectly capable of wielding your runeblade, although I believe your natural weapons would suffice as well.”

“Marwoleath.”

It was clearly a word, although not a word Necrothirst was familiar with. His hand fell unconsciously to his own runeblade, Zin’Shalla. Somehow, instinctively, he felt that the word the worgen spoke - the first word he’d heard her utter - was the name of her blade. “It is on board. You will have it in due time.”

Kyladriss snorted - to Necrothirst, it sounded remarkably like a sound of disbelief. He had guessed right, then, and she had asked for her runeblade. In words, no less. Perhaps some of her madness was receding with the change in location. Perhaps it was simply that none had taken the time to try and draw her out of it before.

Whatever the reason, Necrothirst watched as the worgen carefully released the bars of her cage and sat back on her heels, tilting her head at him like she thought he was particularly fascinating. He held her eyes for several long moments, no sound but the sloshing of the sea coming between them. Finally, she looked away, turning her back and curling herself into as tight a ball as she could with her armor on. Necrothirst got the sense that he’d won some kind of contest. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wood. He did not require sleep, but there was little else to do while closed off below decks, and if he kept his eyes closed long enough his mind did drift off into something like sleep.

Some hours later he was jolted out of his restful state by a sharp, snarling bark and the opening of the hatch. He stood, his hand resting casually on Zin’Shalla’s hilt until the person responsible for Kyladriss’s reaction came into view.

It was one of the other death knights Thassarian had sent north with them. There were five of them in all - the Knights of the Ebon Blade were spread thinner than ever now that the Argent Crusade was preparing for an offensive on the Icecrown Citadel, Arthas’s stronghold. “We’re coming up to Valgarde,” he said. He was human, and much younger than Necrothirst in both life and death. “They appear to be having some trouble - you’d better come above and see.”

Necrothirst could feel Kyladriss’s eyes on his back as he mounted the stair that led out of the hold, and as soon as he vanished from sight she started up an unholy racket, howling that sounded like a shuddering banshee wail. Necrothirst kicked the hatch closed behind him and the echoes from belowdeck turned into muffled, inconsequential noises.

“Damn, just when I thought that beast had settled down,” the captain said. “Maybe she smells trouble?”

Necrothirst said nothing, coming back to the port-side rail of the ship. Sheer cliffs rose on either side of the boat as the crew steered it through the deep gorge leading into the middle of Howling Fjord. High above them, Necrothirst could hear shouts in a strange, rough language. He looked up and spotted the winged shapes swooping overhead. They looked nothing like the dragons he was used to interacting with - those were sleek, streamlined shapes, and these were stocky and batlike.

“What kind of dragons are those?” the human death knight followed Necrothirst’s gaze into the sky, frowning. Necrothirst wracked his brain for a moment to remember the soldier’s name.

“Proto-drakes,” the captain said. “The dwarves think they may have been the precursor to our modern dragonflights, but I can’t see it. They don’t look much like ‘em.”

“Neither do kaldorei look much like our troll predecessors,” Necrothirst said quietly. The captain and the death knight - Epyon, that was his name - glanced at him in surprise. “We were Zandalari once. It is not common knowledge - nor is it something kaldorei leadership is eager to admit.”

“Huh,” Epyon said. “Never would’ve guessed.”

“Have the worgen’s cage brought up to the deck,” Necrothirst said. “I smell trouble.” Epyon saluted and gestured sharply to the other two death knights on deck. They all vanished below while the crew worked to open up the larger cargo hatch.

Trouble, in fact, was looming on the horizon. Some of the proto-drakes appeared to be little more than wild beasts, but the vast majority of them had riders armed with spears. The riders looked human - at least, they were humanoid - but even from this far away Necrothirst could tell that they would easily make a human look like a dwarf.

“Vrykul,” the captain said. “We took Valgarde from them, but only because it was a surprise attack from the sea, and they didn’t expect us to be as well-armed as we were. They also make a habit of killing each other off to prove who is strongest - it does us the favor of reducing their numbers, but the downside is that the ones that do come at us are their best.”

As the ship pulled up alongside the dock, Necrothirst got a clearer picture of the trouble plaguing the stronghold. Valgarde was under siege, that much was plain from the barricades erected in the northern part of the port. Necrothirst also saw flaming harpoons stab into buildings and earth from the opposite cliff face, although the Valgarde soldiers appeared to have formed a bucket brigade to take care of that.

A human paladin from the docks came running aboard as soon as the ship dropped anchor. “Death knights,” she said. “I never thought I’d say this, but thank the Light. The Vrykul are making a push to recover their port, and we’re running out of reinforcements to hold them back. Who is in command here?”

“I am Necrothirst, and these knights are under my command. Our orders are to make for Light’s Breach in Zul’Drak, but we must travel overland - we have cargo that cannot be flown.”

As if to punctuate his words, the hatches to the cargo hold finally fell open, and Kyladriss’s endless eerie howling broke the air around them. “What in the Light’s name-” the paladin said, but her words trailed off into stunned silence as the crew began hauling Kyladriss’s cage up from below. The worgen, either enraged by the movement or inflamed by the sounds of death and battle around her, was throwing herself bodily against the bars of her cage.

“Kyladriss!” Necrothirst snapped. “You will have your opportunity to kill them in a moment, cease that pointless racket.”

The worgen snarled at him, glaring frosty daggers. Necrothirst held her eyes, unwilling to look away until she did. He remembered that nightsabers used that particular form of body language to establish dominance, and he was willing to bet the same was the case for worgen.

“What on Azeroth is that?” the paladin asked, taking her shield and her mace in hand.

“A worgen death knight,” Necrothirst said. “I believe she will be a most effective solution to your Vrykul problem.”

“You cannot mean to tell me you can control that monster,” the paladin said. Her face was pale, almost as pale as Epyon’s when the second death knight came to stand beside her, offering a salute to Necrothirst.

“We can have her runeblade brought up from the captain’s cabin whenever you are ready to unleash her,” Epyon said.

“Good. Do so,” Necrothirst said, and Epyon saluted again.

Necrothirst watched as Kyladriss was lowered onto a wagon that sat on the docks. He disembarked, the other death knights and the paladin close behind him, walking with the wagon as it rumbled through the town. The closer she got to the battle raging at the edge of Valgarde, the more energy Kyladriss put into trying to escape her prison, hurling herself bodily against the door to the cage and howling like a mad wolf.

Epyon came jogging up behind them with a bundle in his hands, held carefully and with a hint of distaste. His own runeblade had to be screaming at him - they were very possessive of their masters, and did not take kindly to being replaced. Necrothirst took the bundle from him and walked to Kyladriss’s cage.

Saliva and foam flew from her fangs and her hand shot through the bars, scrabbling desperately for her sword. Necrothirst set it down on the ground in front of the cage and watched in detached fascination as the worgen promptly began trying to squeeze her body through the bars, a hideous whine climbing up through her chest.

“I would advise standing behind the cage when we open the doors,” Epyon said dryly, and Necrothirst stepped back, heeding his advice. He reached one hand around the side of the cage to the locking pin, gripping it firmly.

“Kill them all,” he said to the worgen, and then pulled the pin.

The cage door burst open in a flurry of black fur and plate. Kyladriss’s clawed fingers closed around the hilt of her runeblade and shook it out of its frostweave wrapping viciously. She raised it to the sky with a wailing howl, a shield of floating bone forming around her the second it met her hand. Necrothirst tensed, pulling Zin’Shalla from its sheath on his back as she turned her head to look at the gathered Alliance forces at her back.

“The enemy is that way,” Necrothirst said mildly, pointing his sword at the encroaching Vrykul.

Kyladriss bared her teeth. It might have been a smile. She turned and flung herself headlong into the mass of Vrykul soldiers, swinging her blade and her claws in a whirlwind of deadly fury. Necrothirst echoed her merciless smile and raised his runeblade above his head. “Ebon Blade, charge!” he shouted, and followed the worgen into the fray. Zin’Shalla whispered evil delight in his mind as he hacked into the first Vrykul unfortunate enough to come near him, and a band of tension that had been strung tight in his chest since boarding the ship snapped abruptly.

He laughed, blood spattering across his face, hearing Kyladriss howl in delight nearby. This is what they were made for.