Notes1: I've been meaning to do a one-shot that puts a very narrow spotlight on how the Zandalari prelates deal with the aftermath of Rezan's death and their loss of powers as a result. The original idea was to have the main character come into contact with a blood elf warrior (who was male)...but then I thought, hey, maybe it'd work better if I replaced that warrior with a blood elf paladin (who is female, and, somehow, the prelate ended up being more austere than how he was going to be portrayed). I had briefly considered the blood elf to be a tauren, but what settled me on keeping the blood elf in was the fact that they've come to be known for being willing to help those (e.g. the Nightborne, through Liadrin) who have suffered just as they have. So while the Zandalari aren't going to withdrawal pangs as both elven races did, they are undergoing a similar recourse via religious crisis. I feel as though having the counterpart character be a Mulgore tauren wouldn't have the same effect as a blood elf would.
I can't say I like how the ending turned out from a written standpoint, despite the fact it was meant to end that way. On top of it being more somber during the brainstorming session, the story, quite unnaturally, took on a life of its own. I can't really explain why, but I just couldn't get the ending down the way I wanted it to be.
It doesn't feel right, walking around Dazar'alor anymore.
Mubiru walks out of the chamber, dragging his feet upon the cracked, warped stones that have been trodden by many a troll before him. It's a slow, almost drunken crawl, not proud and confident. There is nothing of the sort with which he carries himself: shoulders stooped, not like the tall, straight back and squared shoulders; hands loose at his sides instead of proudly clenched, ready to draw the dagger at his hip or the spear slung across his back; face slack and lifeless, bearing not even the cheeky grin nor the serious, tight-lipped frown when the situation called for either.
Even the light of drinking in Zuldazar's gilded arches and wild, untamed beauty—its palm trees, the scents of its exotic foods from the markets below, the sharp, clear tang of sea salt carried by the breeze—is gone from his eyes. Were he not blinking nor showed the telltale sign of his quiet, steady breathing, imperceptible in his movements, one would almost mistake him for undead, for his skin was the dark, mottled grey reminiscent of mighty Rezan and his children, and his eyes were so light a blue as to be almost white.
He comes to a stop at the lip of the walkway around the corner and beholds Zuldazar spreading out below him. From here, he can see the Banshee's Wail and the Rezan's Wake anchored at the port, where adventurers, Honorbound soldiers, and Zandalari—from the ambivalent fishmonger to the vigilant Rastari scouts upon their direhorns—make the rounds delivering supplies back and forth between Warport Rastari to the far west and up the stairs toward the Grand Bazaar and, several levels up, the Terrace of Crafters. The overlords will be putting their squads through their standard warm-up exercises and drills for all to see, whether they like it or not, and Mubiru can picture them in his head how many there and what kinds of troops are lined rank and file, dancing to their leaders' commands: Silvermoon sorceresses in crimson robes and Nightborne arcanists in loose purple silks, pandaren monks in leathers made from hardened tempest hides fashioned in the likeness of raptors and pterodactyls, Highmountain and Mulgore tauren shaman in high, feathery headdresses, and orcs both green-skinned and brown bristling from head to toe in red plated armor riddled with spikes that would make the tusks of full-grown sabertusks look like milk teeth. There are so many of the other Horde races down there, most of which being the Forsaken undead, the Trade Prince's goblins, and the Darkspear milling about either on the docks or somewhere on the ships.
It feels too...normal. So casual. It's as if they don't know—or, perhaps, don't care—that the King was nearly assassinated by his own Prophet. It seems as if they don't realize that they could have lost their chance right then and there to bringing his people into the Horde, if both he and the Princess had died.
Mubiru sweeps his gaze from left to right in a cool, calm arc. At this vantage point, the sun still manages to loom over the peak of the Golden Throne. The Crown Jewel of Zandalar, he's heard it called, for it is at noon where it always stands the highest and bathes all the Sliver, the Zocalo, and the Port Authority in its long, refreshing shadow. The sun would forever have Dazar'alor at her back; King Dazar chose well when he sited the location he would set the first slate of stone that would not only enclose around the Great Seal but mark the beginning of a glorious, everlasting empire, so very long ago.
The sun's rays are dim, hazy with wisps of cloud and humidity.
They don't seem to realize Rezan is dead. His light that has filled his chosen warriors with warmth and the assurance of a well-fought victory is gone. It was what brightened Zuldazar, made the Golden Throne its crown jewel, and banished the darkness that dared to creep over that invisible line that separated the barbarism native to Nazmir and the refined culture of civilization that is here in Dazar'alor.
Ya can't feel it, either, can ya, Mubiru? the High Prelate asked him, a couple days after a special ops group journeyed into the heart of Atal'dazar and purged it clean of Yazma and the stink of undeath that crawled all over. One o' our most gifted, and even that is beyond your reach.
She had looked away from him then, preferring the company of the wall in front of them, the scones that gave off the crisp, heady heat of sea stalk and potpourri. Her hands were folded in her lap, knees pressed together and feet tucked neatly beneath her. Her back had been straight then, but it has been a week since, and Mubiru wonders now if her posture still remains the same. We are broken, she intoned, and in that moment he felt as though all the blood had been drained from him and all the bones in his body had shattered into glass. All of us. Who do we become now? She turned her face to him, and he could spy the haunting loss and confusion dwelling far beneath the stoic veneer of her eyes. Who?
I dunno, Lady Rata, he said to her, and looked down at the palms of his hands. Big hands, just like his father's, and just as rough and calloused with pink scars. Who are we?
He didn't have an answer back then...but now, here in this dim, false sunlight, he knows full well who he is—what he is, and, by extension, what the rest of his prelates are.
"I am Mubiru, for that is who I am," he says, clear but softly enunciated. "But what am I? Why, sweet Zuldazar, I am nothing."
"No. You're still Mubiru, a son of Zuldazar, just as I am a daughter of Silvermoon."
He whirls around, heart trip-hammering painfully in his throat. He doesn't have his spear on him, not even the dagger he keeps clipped to his belt. He grits his teeth at his foolishness of being naked and exposed, being caught off-guard, and clenches his fists.
He recognizes the blood elf perched like a dactyl on the banister next to him. Her shield, which bears the face of a bird that reminds him of the falcons that are captured and brought over from Kul Tiras, reclines by her feet. "You!" he cries, and his heart settles back down to where it belongs to beat a furious tattoo against his breast.
She nods. "Yes. Me. It's Narina, by the way."
"I know who you are!" he says, and points an accusing finger at her. "You're the one who went to Atal'dazar and-!" Mubiru chokes back the rest of the words and bites back a snarl.
"Yes, you're right. I lead the assault, as per the King's order." She appraises his finger with unfazed scrutiny. Her face shifts, ears twitching, and she adds as soberly as someone who has accepted they are going to meet the executioner's blade, "We went to him first. I...tried to make it quick."
"And ya think that's somethin' to be proud of, huh?! Take out one god, you'll want all the others! Blood for blood, no matter where it comes from!"
If she's insulted, she doesn't show it. "The Blood Knights are called as such to honor the people we lost, not out of a perceived absolute and mindless zealotry your neighbors in Nazmir are so fond of. No amount of spilled blood, be it from a Void-touched naaru or a loa twisted into undeath, is ever going to bring them back...just as whatever you will do won't bring back those who died to Zul's treachery."
"I know it won't!" he cries, and the words break and crack in his mouth as they fly from his lips. "But a well is not the same as a loa! What is there for you to worship when you cannot see what guides ya? What point is there in it when it can't even hear ya call for it?"
"The Light is not a deity, it's a cosmic force. It doesn't adhere to any sort of moral, ethical alignments. If your conviction is strong and you believe your actions are just, only then will it answer you." She gives Mubiru a searching look. "In a way, it really is no different than how you viewed Rezan."
Mubiru scowls. "Easy for you to say. You are just one elf; ya don't be knowin' the loa like we do. This is not just some problem that can be fixed overnight."
"No, it's not."
"It might not be able ta be fixed at all!" he says more loudly and fiercely, and it shames him to think this small, frail, knife-ears might have heard his voice pitch high and crack pitiably. Weakness, he thinks. I am weak. She has no right to see me like this. And then, It's impossible. Nothin' can evah replace Rezan. What she speaks of is nothin' short of a miracle.
Just the thought of never being close to Rezan and the warmth of his light for the rest of his life, the thought of fighting for an empire that is but a shadow of its glory (all but unspoken, but a message need not words; the lustful cries of the carrion birds and the woodsy scent of the bodies cremating is all that needs to be said)….
He looks at her—really looks at her, ignoring the way his stomach churns at the way she's staring back at him. She's supposed to be a blood elf, but her eyes tell him otherwise: they are not the tainted emerald that has come to be a hallmark among her kin and the orcs from their lackluster home of a wasteland, but gold. Gilded, just like the arches displaying their craftsmanship and dominance to all who behold them.
Mubiru bites the insides of his cheeks. He can't stand those eyes, their prettiness and their softness, the alluring power that lurks within. He wants to rip them out, take one in each hand, and crush them into paste between his fingers. The light will die in that moment, he thinks, and when it does then she will know darkness. She will wander adrift in a sea of black and become lost, knowing only the voices that talk around her in their mundane absurdity.
Together, they shall stumble, and then she will understand him. Truly, wholly, and completely.
I don't need your pity, he wants to tell her. Stop giving me that look! You don't know what it's been like! How can you help me?
The sun is suddenly too hot on his back. The flies are buzzing too loud in his ears. His mouth is too dry, his heart beating too fast. The red heat that radiates off his gaze and swims through his veins grows colder, colder, plunging steadily, starting from his head and working all the way down to his toes.
His fists, which have been clenched, loosen, and he heaves a quiet, tired sigh.
How can you possibly help any of us?
She sees it, the war he wages inside. He will tell himself later that night, when he's staring into the dying embers of the hearth while the other prelates slumber and snore around him, she didn't...but Mubiru is not stupid. He knows just as much as she does.
(He's not sure now, just as he will not be sure then, if he's supposed to feel relieved or ashamed that it is an elf, the sworn enemy of the troll, who shows him compassion.)
Her expression hardens, but none of that untoward emotion is directed at him. "No," she says, perking him up. "That's where you're wrong."
"What?"
"I said, that's where you're wrong." With a huff, she kicks off the banister, bends over to pick up her shield, and slides her arm through the straps to pull over. "Rezan may be gone, but you still have your faith. Not just in him, but in your King. Your people. The animals and beasts of burden that carry your armaments and your resources.
"Have you forgotten your purpose already, Mubiru? Zandalar still stands." She stands tall and holds his gaze. "You are far from broken."
His breath leaves him, more on a whisper than a gasp. Her words are not a punch to the gut, but a caress, not too firm but far from gentle. It is not his father's hands now, who bore the spear that is now his when he was in his prime, but his mother's: worn but not too scarred as to be maimed.
It's...nostalgic. It reminds him of better days...days, he realizes now, they lived in laborious ignorance to the poison the Zanchuli were filling their King's ears with. His folks are gone, have died trying to keep the blood trolls from spilling out of Nazmir's swamps shortly after the Cataclysm and just before the Princess deemed them a threat that couldn't be ignored.
And they didn't even know about the abomination that's waiting to be unleashed beneath the Heart of Darkness. They didn't even know about Zul, their so-called Prophet, plotting to overthrow the King and sacrificing their sacred loa, all with a single burning desire to his dream empire, his kingdom of rot and blood, come to fruition.
Mubiru didn't know. No one did.
His fists clench—hard, until he's certain he feels his nails broke skin and that what's seeping under his fingernails is indeed blood.
Narina smiles. Or, at least, it's the ghost of one; it seems more like a borderline smirk that's full of triumph. He has to tell himself she's being neither condescending nor superior. Here they are two different sides to the same coin.
(They are the same, he will know later. Much later, but that is not for a long, long while yet.)
"That's what I thought," she says, putting one foot down on the step and another against the wall of the stairway. "You haven't given up yet. I hope you don't."
He shrugs. "Why in da world would I want to?"
She chuffs a single, soft laugh and reaches behind her. "That's good." When she twists back round, it's for Mubiru to see a winged helm he didn't notice before. "That's real good," she adds, and places it over her dark hair. The shade it gives her brow makes the gold in her gaze pop out a little more, like daylight dappling on the Sliver at its zenith. "It'd be a shame if you did. We could use more people like you."
Mubiru scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest. "Of course ya be needin' me," he grumbles lowly, looking away from her to survey the horizon. Still quiet, still unmoving, nothing out of the sorts. "You got a war to win, right? Ain't that what your Warchief be wantin'?"
"If you ask me," Narina says, coming to pause on the steps as she's about to climb down, and looks back at him over her shoulder, "I think there's a lot more that's at stake. But that's what she wants." She turns away to stare out at the sea. "That's what we'll all want, the longer this goes on." She starts walking away. "You'll find your purpose then. I'll make sure of it."
He watches her go, keeping track of the route she takes as she reaches the lower level and weaves in and out of the foot traffic.
A purpose, eh? His gaze returns to the sky, where the sun washes everything in muddled, hazy colors.
Was it possible?
He hums to himself and leans against the wall behind him.
Time would tell yet, he supposes.