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.