A/N - Blizzard owns Warcraft and all related characters.

Another sidestory to Through Hope Lost. It takes place around the same time as Kael is heading to the Hand of Gul'dan. In terms of the 'meanwhiles', it's a long time after Insufferable.

The nights were cold in Silithus. The day might be hot and the sun might scorch the skin after only a moment, but the nights could freeze faster than one could light a fire. It was a conundrum, another mystery of the ancient desert. Or, perhaps, simple geography.

Brann smiled to himself, despite the situation. A brilliant plan, really. Go off for a dander in the ruins during the night when the nasties should be asleep, decipher a few texts off the walls, and be back to camp by sunrise.

Except that the blasted bugs didn't seem to mind the cold near so much as their proper sized cousins, and had had him running laps around the walls and getting cozy with the cracks in them ever since.

Bugger.

With a sigh, he leaned back, pulling a notebook from his overcoat and flipping through it. The bugs tended to forget about him after a few hours, so long as he remained out of their sights. With a bit of caution and an eye on the patrols, he could translate at his leisure. The only problems that arose then were his depleted supplies. Fortunately, the dragons had been willing to help him with that.

Shocking, really. Finding out that the cluster of fellows secreted in one corner of the temple were actually the dragons who had given their freedom to seal the wall. He wondered how they felt now, knowing that their sacrifice was now in vain, the gate shattered in the hopes that a preemptive strike might prove fruitful. It hadn't, of course, Brann heard the screams every day, the screams of more men dying, the sand red with the blood of those to be sacrificed to the malformed deity that lurked below the temple. The old gods...naturally one of them would be involved. They had their grubby tendrils in every foul plot these days.

Outside the crevice, a wasp buzzed and the sand crunched underfoot of something far too small to be a warlord, but too big to be one of the lesser scarabs. Brann held his knife out at an angle, watching the figure in it's blade. Black chitin on a small frame was reflected back at him. He allowed himself a smirk as the being made several clicking noises and dashed along the wall towards the center of the compound. The wasp meandered after him, darting up occasionally to look over the wall.

With a quick glance around, Brann dropped out of the crevice he had been sitting in and inched along the edge of the wall. He knelt down and ran a hand over a footprint in the sand. The imprints were faint, their owner far lighter and more agile than should have been possible. Still, they were clear enough, and Brann felt he had observed the Silithid long enough to know that none had toes. He stood, and crept towards the direction the small form had run off too. There was another crack further up, where he could wait in ambush. The shadows hid him well enough in dark browns, and the patrols were lax on this side of the compound, owing to the fact that the mountains pressed against the wall made it near impossible to be penetrated by any attack. Nonetheless, Brann kept his wits about him. Tonight he was looking for something specific. Not a text, no. He had enough pieced together to know exactly what madness went on in the ruins. No, tonight he was looking for something he had merely glimpsed before, and that the dragons had only hinted at with a great sadness.

Tonight, he looked for the boy who thought he was a bug.