Hey, my few-and-far-between Warcraft readers. Welcome to the second installment of my 'novelization' series, Legends of Maraudon. As you might guess, this one's Maraudon, of Desolace fame. From what I hear, though, Desolace won't be desolate much longer after Cataclysm is released... so we might as well enjoy hating it while we can!
Desolace.
A dead name for a dead land. Beneath the hazy sky, thin and scraggly creatures eked life from sun-baked mud flats and woody shrubs. When wasted energy could kill the victor of a fight as surely as the wounds it inflicted on the loser, Desolace creatures tended toward the economically deadly: spines, poisons, armored plates and piercing teeth. Nothing fostered innovation like war, and Desolace was a war zone, no doubt about it.
However, not even the largest Scorpashii ventured out into the midday sun. The low clouds in the sky did nothing to dissipate the heat; rather, they gave off a sullen sense of pressure, redoubling the torment. All of Desolace's creatures, and most of its travelers, were wise enough to avoid the extreme heat, taking refuge in dens and caves. The plains and mud flats were littered with the corpses of those who were not.
One such corpse, that of a human woman, lay spread-eagled on the top of a small hillock. She had obviously been dead a while; the skin stretched over the bones like paper, and small chunks of the body were missing – the fingertips stretched out into claws of bone, still stained with faded brown liquid. The armor was solidly made and had sat well on her, though a large rent was visible in the chestpiece, and several smaller holes were evidence that the plate had failed in its last, most precious duty. Her throat had been cut, neither cleanly nor well, and – most remarkably – the body appeared to have been desecrated sometime after her death: two thick strips of metal wrapped across the face, secured by large hobnails that disappeared into the sunken eye sockets.
A gust of wind blew up, stirring the corpse's lank green-black hair. The breeze carried a feather with it, the glossy black of a crow's, and the little bit of windborne debris danced across the sandy dust for a moment before bumping up onto the corpse's clawlike hand. It rested there –
And the hand blurred closed. The gruesome corpse sat up stiffly, groaning in tune with the creaking of tendons that accompanied the movement.
"Fell asleep again," Majire Barthis muttered to herself, patting the sand around her for her bag. She reached inside, felt several sharp pricks, and crushed the little scorpions that had taken up residence.
Gear taken care of, Majire peeled open her claw. The feather, a little worse for wear, nevertheless caught the wind, and it twitched between her fingers as she held it up to her face. "Piece of trash," she decided, but something stopped her from tossing it aside. Instead, she tucked the quill into #6, the small hole just to the left of her breastbone. It stood out like a battle standard, and she mock-saluted it as she stood.
"I should've been at the coast three days ago," she said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. "Goddamn this place." The omnipresent haze made it impossible to check direction by the sun; the land was suffused with directionless, continuous light and heat until night fell, when at best a single star was visible. Majire put a hand up to her forehead, blocking some of the light, and peered around. There was nothing remarkable in any direction – a fair description of the landscape she had seen over the past week. Just mud, bushes, vultures crowding around something–
Majire felt her fists tighten as the old rage bubbled up in her. She was hungry for something to kill, and vultures were not high on her list of things to spare. She drew her sickle-bladed axe, a grin slowly spreading across her features.
The vultures flocking around the crumpled form at the base of this large white pillar – a rib, perhaps, from some long-dead gargantuan kodo – were relatively unique among Desolace vultures. Not because of outstanding physical features, by being larger or smaller than the norm; neither were they oddly colored. These vultures' only claim to uniqueness was that, of five, only one was smart enough to fly away in a panic before the Forsaken woman leapt into their midst.
The first vulture perished immediately as Majire's axe separated its head from its body. The second was halfway into the air when her clawed hand stabbed into its chest, throwing its corpse back to the ground with ferocious intensity. The third and fourth fled skyward, and Majire discarded her axe, leaping onto the rib. Bone bit into bone as she scrambled upward; she caught the third halfway up, and slammed it viciously into the rib, letting the body fall. As she reached the tapered point of the rib – a flat surface about three feet square – she drew her crossbow, pulling the string back with her teeth and letting fly. The bolt sailed underneath the fleeing vulture, and she spat, sinking to a crouch atop the rib. The red fog in front of her eye sockets slowly dissipated, and she took a deep breath, feeling it rattle around inside her desiccated lungs.
There was a quiet sound down below, and she peered annoyedly over the edge of the rib; one of the vultures had survived, and it was thrashing around in the dust. She pulled the warhammer from her belt and let it drop, smiling to herself as she heard the dull thud. Then the sound repeated itself, and she belatedly remembered the dun-colored lump the birds had been harassing. A survivor, perhaps?
Majire dropped the twenty-odd feet to the dirt, taking care to retrieve and clean her weapons. As she put them away, she squatted by the figure. It was man-shaped and man-sized; that was all she could tell. Under the cloak, it could be anything from a Troll to a Human. She decided to hedge her bets.
"Hey, speak Common?" she said in that tongue. The words didn't roll off her tongue anymore, she noticed; months of speaking Orcish had pulled her out of practice. However, the figure twitched at the sound of her voice, and a single hand slid out of a fold in the cloak. Majire's lips tightened as she noted the purple skin; a Night Elf.
"Want a drink?" she asked. The tapered fingers twitched again, feebly, and she handed the hand a small water jug she had… appropriated… from a Gnome highwayman a few days ago. The lumped form shied away from her skeletal hand, and she barked laughter.
"You'll be fine; it's a dry rot," she assured it. The Night Elf snatched the flask quickly, retreating back inside the cloak to drink. Majire waited.
After a time, she stood, walking over to one of the ubiquitous bushes and hacking it apart with a few practiced swings. By the time the cloaked figure sat up, a cheery if smoky fire was burning, and the reddish light of sunset had been replaced with the blue-gray half-light of twilight. The man was a dignified-looking Elf, Majire had to admit; words like 'leonine' and 'aquiline' were appropriate for his brows and his nose, respectively. Unfortunately, even had she not been dead, the word 'purple' was also appropriate, for his entire body.
Majire doodled in the dust with a fingerbone as the Elf drank. Eventually he lowered the flask; Majire looked up at him, and he spoke. "Forgive me," he said, in elegant – flowery, Majire snorted inwardly – Common. "I have never met an undead – or a living Human, at that – that would give a kal'dorei clean water," he chuckled, his voice strengthening as he drank.
Majire raised a scraggly eyebrow. It had been clean water, assuming the highwayman had intended to drink it himself, but… "How can you tell it's clean?" she asked. In reply, the Night Elf pointed upward, to the darkening sky.
"Purity in nature is the foremost concern of my… patrons," he said, reaching into his shirt. He pulled out a thin black panther's claw on a simple leather thong, then bowed from the waist, letting it swing back down around his neck. "I am Raziel Starbreeze, Druid of the Claw. It is my pleasure."
Majire snorted, but inclined her head. "Majire Barthis, vengeance-driven whirlwind of fury," she replied in kind. "How did you come to be collapsed out here alone, Raziel Starbreeze? Aside from stupidity?"
Raziel was inspecting the purple flesh of his arm, feeling gently around an ugly beak wound. He muttered to himself, and green light surrounded his first two fingers, which he laid gingerly on the wound. Sucking in a pained breath, he leaned back against the rib as the emerald glow seeped into the injury.
"I've been investing most of my power into tricking the vultures into thinking I was inedible," he explained tiredly. "What I have left… is barely enough to sterilize this wound." He reached into a pouch around his waist, drawing out a length of cloth bandage, and began wrapping his arm.
"Didn't answer my question," Majire observed from across the fire. Raziel looked up, met unreadable iron bars, and sighed. He took another drink.
"I do owe you," he noted, almost to himself. "Well then. I've come to Desolace to study its creatures."
Majire snorted. "Seems like you've done a fine job so far."
"The basilisks, mostly," Raziel continued doggedly. "I have a suspicion they may have migrated north from the deserts of Silithus and Tanaris. They may even have traveled through Mulgore; I'll be heading there next."
"Better the Tauren than the Orcs," Majire replied. She frowned around the bars on her face as the Night Elf yawned. "Traveling during the day, were you? No wonder you were nearly dead," she remarked. "Get some sleep. I'll keep watch."
Raziel frowned. "Why would you keep watch for me?"
"Do you want me not to?" Majire snapped. "The only reason I offered in the first place was that your worthless hide lured in some vultures for me to kill. Don't tempt me to bring in more by killing you."
"You could have killed me at any time tonight," Raziel pointed out. He stood shakily and walked over to the concave side of the rib, in anticipation of the morning sun, and burrowed a hollow into the sand, pillowing his head on his arm.
Majire huffed at the Night Elf, realizing he was right. She scrambled back up the rib and sat. The night would soon grow much cooler, and Desolace's larger hazards – roving packs of hyenas, the basilisks Raziel had spoken of, even ancient and careless kodo – grew more active at night, unwilling to brave the heat of the day. At the edge of the eastern horizon, below the cloud cover, the White Mother – the larger of the two moons – was visible, and it cast stark shadows across the landscape. The Blue Daughter, the handmaiden of the east, was yet invisible, but would rise in time.
Majire scooched her way around the circumference of the rib, keeping an eye out for movement; not even a breeze stirred, and she felt herself relax. It wouldn't tire her to stay on high alert the whole night, and she had many times before; but it might tense up her muscles.
The magic His will had imposed upon the Forsaken upon their birth was powerful. Flesh could be rent, muscles torn, but nothing short of a broken bone would hamper movement. Still, in some odd way – not physical discomfort – Majire felt the minor ailments of her body. Call it the final vanity.
She felt her mind wander, and pulled it back with brutal force. Even in that brief instant, He had been too close – she had felt the icy tentacles of His absolute will invading muscle and flesh. She shuddered, seeing her features go slack in a moment of introspection, then her eyes flashing ice-blue, her mouth opening in a feral, ragged-edged shriek. For the Forsaken, rumination led to far worse than madness.
The Blue Daughter graced the horizon now, and by its light Majire remembered her death. Her fingers traced the livid line across her neck; a bloody bauble, one surprisingly poetic Ogre had called it. The name amused Majire, if only because her blood had bubbled there for the few interminable moments between the cut and the time the stabbings had begun.
"This is a familiar situation," Raziel remarked from below, his voice drifting up from the pillar of shadow that stretched from the base of the rib. "At least this time, I'm not dead."
He made a small sound. Majire was just about to ask him what had happened when he continued: "Oh, Elune. My apologies; I didn't mean to –"
"Don't worry about it," she replied, speaking conversationally. Those ears had to be good for something. "It's been a long time since my response to the word 'dead' has been a weeping rant about the fleeting nature of life."
"I see," the druid said quietly. After a few moments, he spoke again: "Do you… remember how you died? What it felt like?"
"Weren't you going to sleep?" Majire called back, just a hint of an edge in her voice. The sound of cloth shuffling on sand reached her ears, sounding somehow apologetic, and she smiled grimly, turning around on the rib again. Movement caught her eye several hundred yards away, and her grin widened.
Something had to die, and if she wasn't careful it would be Raziel.
Don't worry, the next chapter will introduce more characters. Or is that the third chapter...? Anyway, they'll be around. Please look forward to it.