The world was black.

The world was black.

The world was black.

The world was black.

The world was black.

The world was loud.

The world was loud.

The world was warm.

Hmm...warm.

Sleep.

Sleep

Wait

No

Too soon

Too soon to sleep.

The warmth welcomed him into darkness.

He swam, suffocating as he broke to the surface of the black hole. It was nice and warm, but it was too soon.

No. Not yet.

"Hhhrrrrnnnn..."

He shivered, cold when he climbed out of the blackness. His whole body felt cold despite his eyes feeling hot, and he shook in the cold. This wasn't a normal cold; the ground felt temperate enough, but he was shaking all over. His muscles ached as if he'd been shaking for a long time, even in his sleep. He groaned again and tried to move, finding that the dull pain in every inch of his felt old.

When he realized which direction was up, he tried to lift his head and look around. His head didn't ache, though; it was hyper-sensitive to touch, ringing his ears every time he scraped it against the dirt, but it didn't ache. His forehead was burning hot.

At least he didn't have amnesia. Punchau remembered who he was. He remembered a relatively civil discussion with the humans in the kind of town he didn't mind visiting. They were nice, and he met a few of his own people there, too. There was a deer...he'd been hungry. He was hungry now to the point of physical pain. Then there was a loud bang and he drowned in the blackness.

A chittering sound calmed him at first, but then worried him by its lonesome tone. There should have been more.

"Heel," he rasped, not due to a sore throat but as if his voice box hasn't been used in a long time.

From a considerable distance, the four pointy feet skittered. His ravagers...four of them died in the final raid against the Burning Legion on Argus. There should have been two left with him on Azeroth, but only one of the insectoids rushed to him when he called. Loyal to the very end, the sizeable bug gently took his foot in its mouth and began to pull him out of a damp hole, displaying a surgeon's precision when it avoided piercing his aching hide at all. His vision was blurry, but he could see the edges of a ditch surrounding the hole, and he crawled out the best he could. Dry grass surrounded the wet ditch, and he assumed he'd fallen into a sort of midden.

Shivering so much that his teeth clattered, he tried to ignore the pain in his gums and skull. Even the clattering stung the sensitive flesh of his head; he began to worry. Overly sensitive skin meant one thing in his race.

"Look, look," he ordered the sole ravager he could hear, pointing to the area around them.

While the Outland insect skittered around searching for danger, Punchau rollled onto his stomach and fought to his hands and knees. He noticed that one of his hands was just as sensitive to touch, garnering another groan in his dry throat. A huge wave of chills ran up and down his spine. His temperature scared him, but the fear sent his heart racing so fast that he found the energy to turn into a sitting position. He had to figure out what the hell was going on.

Slowly, his senses returned to him, though it took the better part of an hour as he sat. He was freezing cold, but the air was warm. He'd been stripped to his underwear, which he'd soiled. The ditch smelled like dung, though not his, and entrails (also not his). He heard no sounds aside from his ravager and a few vultures, but the latter sound died down as the birds fled. There were other bodies in the ditch; two animals and two people who'd also been stripped. Aside from that, there was nothing; he could faintly see mountains over the horizon, but they were easily a few days walk from his position.

His ravager returned to him without indication of danger, but the bug engaged in a communicative dance and pointed toward the ditch with its slightly flexible head spines. Hugging himself and shaking with fever, Punchau leaned to the side to inspect the scene.

The bodies were all decayed and rotten; ants covered them, although he took note that there were no ants attacking him. The animals looked like deer, albeit gutted, skinless, and stained with blood and dirt for what must have been quite a few days. The people were both orcs in soiled underwear, but their corpses were too desiccated to be recognizeable. The blood covering them consisted of their own as well as the blood of humans; Punchau recognized the difference in consistency even in death. There were scraps of cloth, paper, a torn tent and sleeping bags, and his own head.

"What the fuck?!"

His head. Was in the ditch. With an arrow sticking in it. Staring up at him.

Bending over the ditch despite the shivering and pain, he felt a mixture of anger and disgust. And a jungle troll wasn't generally disgusted easily. His entire face stared up at him minus the eyes, which had likely been eaten by vultures. His ears and hair were there, though the back of his head was only partially intact. There was no other part of him there except his face, head, and part of his brain.

In shock, Punchau reached up to feel his face, ignoring the torturous sensation when he grasped at his facial features. Aside from the heat of his fever and his lack of hair, he felt normal. His scalp had a small amount of fuzz sort of like when he got a buzz cut and his hair was growing back, but his old decapitated head in the ditch had full hair. As he felt all around his current body, he noticed a difference in texture at the back of his head which matched the part of his old head in the ditch which was missing. If he could rip his new head off and stick the old one on the stump, it would be a decent (albeit decayed) fit.

His brain stem...the skin on the back of his neck which corresponded to that spot was just aching, not sensitive. His head might have been pierced by an arrow, but his brain stem and cerebellum had been left intact.

Troll regeneration left the regenerated part light colored and hypersensitive to touch for a few days thereafter. Did he...regenerate his head? Along with most of his brain?

Punchau looked down at his right hand - the similarly sensitive one. The color of his skin was about two shades lighter than his normal complexion. As hard as it was to logically accept, he must have suffered an attack while camping, lost his hand and head...and grown them both back.

He couldn't make stuff like that up.

He looked around him, remembering again that he and his last ravager (there was no sign of the other one) were in the middle of nowhere.

"Shit."