A/N: This is a sequel to In a Dark Place and Joined Lives. You're missing background (and some smut- oh noes!) if you start here, but I can't stop you. :D This story does stand on its own, though. And as usual, I don't own WoW or anything Blizz created, just my own story and characters.

One note before I turn you lose- It was less obvious in my previous stories, but I've chosen to treat flightpoints as if they were exclusively a convenience of the game mechanics and not practical in a real world. Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy this one. Huge thanks to all the people who've reviewed my stories- it's nice to know when people are reading!


The nightmare came to her again. She turned her fel-green eyes up to Sarzuun and smiled in worshipful devotion. He took her on the throne there in the hall, torches dancing madly in twisting pillars of flame as she screamed her ecstasy to the cold stone walls. Again and again she came until she thought she would die in bliss, but Sarzuun melted away and the torches died to a feeble, sputtering glow. She was alone on the twisted black throne, but not alone in the hall. In a cage to her left was Galmak, hand stretching desperately toward her. She threw open the cage door and he stumbled out. She moved close to him, stroking and touching him until he groaned with the agony of his need, and finally she shoved him roughly to the floor and plunged herself down onto his manhood. Her eyes flared with demonic fire and her laughter echoed around the hall.

Hyara felt warm arms around her and she realized she was awake and sobbing. Galmak stroked his fingers through her hair and rocked her. She'd never told him much about these nightmares, but she didn't need to; he had some of his own to cope with occasionally, even now a few years after the events in Winterspring.

"It's alright, love," he whispered. "It's gone now. You're here with me."

She pressed her cheek to his warm, solid chest. He lowered her gently back down to the bedroll and pulled the blanket closer around them. She lay silently in his arms, staring up at the grey clouds swirling fitfully across the stars of the Blasted Lands. Tomorrow they would pass through the Portal. It loomed over them even now, spreading its eerie green glow across the small cross-faction defensive camp where they lay unobtrusively in the shadow of a command tent. Through that fragile magical barrier lurked demons in numbers unheard of on Azeroth for many years. Hyara had no doubt about what had triggered her nightmare again.

Galmak wiped her tears gently from under her glowing eyes. "You know we don't have to go."

She looked at him in surprise. They'd never talked as if not going to Outland were a possibility. "Yes, we do," she said. "You know we do… it's the world we're from. How could we not see the world we're from?" She settled her cheek against his shoulder and closed her eyes. "It was just the same stupid nightmare. I'm not going to let that drive my life. I will see Outland, and if we have to fight demons there, then we'll fight them and they'll die."

Galmak smiled in the darkness and kissed his wife softly on one horn.


Day dawned red and sultry. They had risen in the dark at the first stirrings of the camp and now Hyara and Galmak stood before the Portal with other members of their own factions. Hyara listened uneasily to the Alliance commander as he gave the briefing and tried not to keep glancing to where Galmak stood nearby in the Horde side of the camp.

"We've had reports since yesterday that some of the Legion activity seems to have reached a temporary lull," the commander was saying. "That most likely means that a caravan will be leaving soon from the Stair of Destiny. Word's been sent through that we've got you lot coming through today, so they'll be waiting to start off. Now I know you all know how things are on Azeroth between the Alliance and the Horde." He glared sharply around at the gaggle of adventurers. So green, so wide-eyed and ready. "Well, see that thing?" He jabbed a finger backward at the huge barrier of swirling energy. "Through there things are different. And you're all going to come to realize that sometimes that means it's better, and sometimes that means it's worse. Through there we all fight a common enemy and that can call for cooperation. But never forget for a second that they're still the Horde, they'll still kill you the second your back is turned. Now, that caravan I mentioned is going to have those Horde in it too. This is a case where cooperation is necessary to make it safely through the demon lands between the Portal and Honor Hold and Thrallmar. Just make sure you don't forget and you keep your eyes open."

With that, the commander walked back down the steps of the Portal and disappeared inside a tent. The group of adventurers looked around at each other for a moment, confused. The Horde commander had apparently left his own recruits in the lurch too, Hyara saw; they too were looking uneasily at each other as if they didn't know what was expected of them next.

The Alliance commander reappeared at the tent's entrance. "WELL? What are you waiting for!" he bellowed. The group jumped as one, but now they began moving toward the Portal. He chuckled nastily to himself. He loved doing that to these naive adventurer types. They'd soon learn how to survive in Hellfire Peninsula. Or not.

Hyara patted Gink, took a deep breath, and strode forward to the Portal. Galmak was approaching too from her right and she risked sending a smile his way. Just before they melted through the swirling magic his hand shot out and enclosed hers in a firm, reassuring grip, and they stepped through together into the world of Hyara's birth.

They stepped through and promptly ran into a small pile-up of people on the other side. Everyone had stopped to gawk in wonder at the world spread out before them. The Portal on this side was even bigger, its shimmering green light bathing a wide, tiered stone stair. Horde and Alliance defenders scurried everywhere across its surface, shouting orders, moving supplies, tending wounded soldiers. Beyond the Stair of Destiny lay a scarred, red land. Hyara could see no trees, no bushes, not even any water, only miles of red dirt gashed with deep chasms and jagged hills. Far away near the horizon a few plumes of yellowish smoke snaked upward toward the sky… The sky! Hyara gaped as her eyes finally took in the most startling aspect of this broken world. Filaments and bands of nether energy swayed and twisted across the sky in an eerie, languid light show. Enormous planets hung suspended as if brooding just out of reach, their surfaces ribboned with browns and reds and blues.

Hyara felt a gentle squeeze on her hand and snapped out of her trance. Galmak looked shaken, but his eyes and a slight jerk of his head told her that she had missed something. She saw now that she was the only Alliance member still standing before the portal; the rest had moved off to hear what one of the defenders was telling them about the caravan. The Horde had also started to drift toward their own side of the Stair. As she moved away from the Portal, the sound of its odd, chiming whisper faded. Hyara breathed in deeply and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to reorient herself in this wild, beleaguered world she'd crossed into. I was born here… What an odd thought.

A hand touched her shoulder and she opened her eyes. It was a human Alliance officer.

"Miss, are you alright?"

She nodded.

"Okay… so, our caravan will be leaving in under an hour. You can see it's pretty quiet now. Hopefully it'll stay that way long enough for us to get underway. Sometimes we've got pit lords and infernals galore raining down on us. Oh, right… the name's Darian, I'm stationed out of Honor Hold. Now look, we're going to be traveling with Horde, and anyone who causes trouble gets left to make friends with the demons. We do it like this 'cause it makes the most sense for defensive purposes. Anyone have a problem with that?"

No one said anything, and he strode off down to the next tier of the Stair where a motley line of Alliance and Horde mounts waited, strapped with various bundles and a few small crates. Hyara could pick out her own armored horse and Galmak's faithful riding wolf, sent through the day before so they could be loaded with supplies for Honor Hold and Thrallmar and ready to go by the time the adventurers came through the Portal.

She wandered down a few steps and sat to relieve her shaking legs. Could this world possibly have once been as Azeroth was, with towns, trees, people going about ordinary lives? Holy Light. Gheris remembers this place. She rested a hand on Gink's back as he sat next to her.

"It's not all like this, you know." She turned to see Darian looking at her with sympathy. "Hellfire's no joke, that's for sure, but there are places that seem almost… normal."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said, and closed her eyes. A long-forgotten memory shimmered into being, her last glimpse of Outland until this very day: she clung in terror to her father's neck and peered downward into an abyss of writhing nether energy before the walls of the Exodar rushed in to surround them and carry them to the world she would call home.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Galmak watching her with concern. She threw him a quick smile and stood as the commander bellowed the caravan's imminent departure. How could Galmak be so unconcerned, so unphased by all this?

He's not, Gink said, but he wouldn't say any more.


Hyara took a swig from her waterskin and smeared the back of her hand across her forehead, trying to wipe away sweat and grimy red dust. Next to her, Gink had taken on a coating of the stuff himself, transforming his misty outline into a reddish haze. The travelers on their mounts walked two-by-two in a short line, sixteen strong, down the broad road that spread west from the Portal. The Path of Glory, it was called, but there wasn't much glorious about it unless you cared for prodigious amounts of dust and heat. Galmak and Hyara had contrived to walk next to each other near the front of the line, but they didn't dare show any signs of familiarity beyond the occasional glance. And though they didn't like this arrangement with its need for secrecy, they dreaded even more what would inevitably come later in their journey: the time when the caravan would break apart and continue separately to Honor Hold and Thrallmar.

We'll have to put in some time here for our people, you know that. But I'll be damned if I want to stay in this place for too long, Gink said. Hyara knew the true origin of that thought and she smiled and sent a silent thanks to her faithful cat. He and Palla didn't like to do this very often, but once in a while they would help out with communication when nothing else was possible.

I know. We need to work out where and when to meet, she relayed to Gink to convey to Palla.

For the when, no longer than a week. For the where, I have absolutely no idea. We don't know a thing about this place yet.

Hyara squinted in the grit and glare to look once more toward the horizon. So far no demons had been in evidence, which had heartened them all despite the uncomfortable conditions. The yellowish plumes of smoke still rose in the distance, closer now. Forge camps, Darian had explained, where the Legion constructed its fel reavers and other mechanical instruments.

"Fel reavers? What are those?" a gnome had asked, his bushy green eyebrows twitching.

Darian had chuckled darkly. "You'd better hope you never find out. But here's a clue: if the ground starts shaking, it's time to get the fuck away."

A shadow flickered briefly in Hyara's line of vision, but much closer than where she was gazing into the distance. Her senses were suddenly tingling with alarm. At the same moment the troll Horde commander barked something she didn't catch, and Darian pulled his horse to a sharp halt. Hyara caught the human's eye and pointed silently to where she'd seen movement. Next to her Galmak held his bow, already strung and ready. Uneasy silence descended on the caravan, broken only by the soft whisper of steel unsheathing all down the line. A few mounts whinnied or growled nervously at the sudden tension of their masters.

All at once there was a whoosh of displaced air and a sudden searing heat as a green fireball erupted from behind an outcrop up ahead. The fireball struck a night elf in the chest, blasting him from his nightsaber and sending him sailing a full twenty feet away to land still and crumpled in the dust. People screamed, mounts reared and danced wildly.

"HOLD! Hold, fools! Separate and we're all dead!" Darian shouted along with the Horde commander. Hyara and Galmak, along with most of the others, slid off their mounts to crouch low to the ground. Gink's throat rumbled with a low, sustained growl. A human priestess crawled to where the night elf lay and began channeling a powerful healing spell.

Low voices began traveling up and down the line. "Where are they? Why don't they attack? Was that it?" Darian and the Horde commander were conversing in whispers where they crouched at the head of the caravan.

"Can you hear what they're saying?" Galmak muttered. Hyara shook her head. She didn't know what the commanders made of this, but she didn't like it one bit… it felt as if they were being toyed with. She told Galmak so, and he nodded in agreement. Carefully he crept the short way up the line and Hyara followed him.

"Is it the Legion's usual practice to play games with travelers?" the orc growled to the Horde commander.

"No, mon," the troll said. "Dis be unusual. Looked like a fel cannon blast, but der been none 'o dem along here befo'."

Hyara felt a tug on her arm. It was the gnome from the back of the caravan; he'd crawled up too and was trying to listen. "What are they saying?" he whispered.

"The troll just said that thing looked like a blast from a fel cannon, but they've never seen those here before."

Darian looked at her sharply. "Ah, someone else who speaks orcish. That'll come in handy."

"I could go look," the gnome said, squinting toward where the blast had originated. The heat haze made it difficult to discern what might be lurking behind that jagged outcrop, or even how big the outcrop was. Galmak was staring that way too, looking thoughtful. Hyara wasn't entirely sure she liked the look on his face.

"Can those things be disabled?" he asked.

It was Darian who responded. "Possibly. If anyone could get close enough to have a look at one. Only way I've heard of it being done is by brute force. I take it you don't mean that?"

Galmak shook his head. "I'm an engineer. I might be able to do something with it if I could get to it."

Darian looked at the gnome. "You an engineer?" he asked in Common.

The gnome spit in the dust. "Naw. We aren't all, you know."

Darian sighed and switched back to orcish. "Alright. We've got one stealther and we've got one engineer. Two separate people. And we don't know what's up there."

"We can't get down dis road wit dat cannon pickin' us off like fish in a trap, mon." The troll drummed his long fingers impatiently on the ground. "If dey go up roun' da side de'll be out o' line 'o sight fo' dat ting."

Hyara had been conveying the discussion to the gnome even as she felt fear rising in her gut. She gulped and said to the gnome, "You'll have to scout ahead for him, make sure it's safe. Make sure he can get there without being spotted."

The rogue just glared. "Duh," he said. He motioned for Galmak to follow, then his small form faded until only faint stirrings of the air and the barest spider-web's trace of movement showed his passage. Palla whined unhappily, but she stayed where she was as Galmak followed the gnome in a crouch. Hyara touched a hand to Gink's side and he prowled off at the orc's heels. With his ghostly shape coated in the red dust he was nearly invisible. They made their way cautiously back down the road a short distance, keeping low and mostly concealed by the shallow embankment at the side of the path. By watching closely Hyara could see stirrings of dust and rocks shifted ever so slightly by the rogue as he turned off the road and began to creep up the rise to where he could peer around to the other side of the rocky outcrop that formed a low, natural wall stretching for several dozen yards near the southern side of the road. The gnome must have given some signal, because Galmak suddenly flattened on the ground and Gink instantly froze, one paw raised. There was an unidentifiable noise from behind the rocks, a scrambling sound, and Galmak leapt up and disappeared around the outcrop. Hyara realized her hands were pressed to her mouth and her tail was lashing in fear. Another ball of green fire erupted from the rocks, but this time the aim was off and it blew chunks of dirt and rock out of the outcrop and high into the air.

Come, hurry.

"They need help!" Hyara dashed off in response to Gink's summons. She rounded the rocks in a frantic skid, followed closely by Palla. A huge felguard stood with its axe in hand, swiping the air as Galmak dodged and tried to parry with his own axes. The gnome clung to one of the demon's armored legs; he was lashing out frantically, his daggers whirling, but the demon ignored the blows. Gink was also clawing and biting to little effect, jumping around to avoid being crushed by the thing's heavy feet. Hyara raised her bow and took aim at an unarmored spot on the demon's upper arm. It howled in pain as the arrow buried itself in flesh, and the demon charged her. Someone shoved her aside, she lost her footing, and she rolled down the embankment halfway to the road. She looked up to see an undead raising a shield to block the blows now raining down on him.

One felguard didn't stand a chance once the entire caravan had converged on it. Now the demon lay dead by the road. The commanders were picking over it carefully, examining it for any information it might have carried about the Legion's activities. Galmak was over at the fel cannon with Hyara sitting near, watching as he removed a few panels for a look at the thing's inner workings. She hissed as he moved his arm and she caught sight of a long scratch.

"You're hurt." She reached out and caught his arm.

" 'Hurt' is hardly the word. It's nothing." He made as if to pull his arm away but she tugged it back and channeled her Gift of the Naaru. "Thank you, love," he said quietly, and wished he could kiss her. He loved to see her use that simple healing spell, loved that beautiful glyph that floated above her beautiful face.

Hyara tore her eyes away from Galmak's and began examining the inside of the cannon as Darian approached. "What have we got here?" the commander asked in orcish.

Galmak looked up. "This thing seems practically unused. Probably wouldn't be a stretch to say that the blast that hit that night elf was the first time it'd been fired."

Darian's brow furrowed. "New fel cannons… I don't like the sound of that. And why the hell is there only this one, with a lone felguard on a rampage?"

"Now, I can tell you about that." They all jumped as the gnome materialized behind Galmak. He was sitting in the dirt leaning back easily on his hands, and he seemed thrilled that he'd startled three people at once. "See way down there toward that drop? There's a whole camp full of those guys set up down there right under the lip of the chasm." He gestured toward the dead felguard and scratched his bald head. "And guess what they're doing? Yep, making these things. My guess is that they're planning on lining this stretch of the road with them. Maybe this guy got a little overzealous and decided to test his out ahead of schedule. Nobody ever said felguards were the brightest."

Darian swore vigorously and dashed off to find the Horde commander. The gnome shook his head and muttered something under his breath, then he too walked off toward the road.

The rogue's news of the felguard camp lit a serious fire under the pants of Darian and the Horde commander. They bellowed and blustered until the whole group, including the injured night elf and the battered undead warrior, were mounted up and trotting along again at double time. The group grumbled a bit about wanting to rest and eat something after the fight, but only half-heartedly; no one wanted to stay long on this sweltering, unprotected road, especially now. And everyone understood clearly the importance of the news they now carried to Honor Hold and Thrallmar. The Legion could not be allowed to cut off the only access to and from the Dark Portal.

And Hyara and Galmak couldn't help but worry a little about how long that gnome had been sitting there before unstealthing.