Disclaimer: I obviously do not own any bit of Blizzard. If I did, I might have a better understanding of the Warcraft lore and where the hell they plan to go with their characters.
Redemption: Prologue
*****
Tap tap tap tap
Water drained from the sky. The cool, misty serenity of Terokkar broke with the shock of red hair and panicked strides of the young elf.
Tap tap -- splat!
She tripped over a root and landed in one of the many sand pits, cringing as the small bits of glass and stone scraped her arms and face. A fireball seared her back and she cried out in pain.
Heavy footfalls closed in on her from all sides. She was trapped.
A foot collided with her jaw, sending her careening backwards, her shield flying off her back into the brush. Blood mixed with bile in her mouth. A hand grabbed her throat and she felt what little mana remained in her body drain into her assailant's.
She cried out in agony. The man laughed, throwing her to the ground and pinning her there with his foot. The others took their time to kick her, cracking her ribs and bruising her flesh. After what seemed like hours, the beating stopped, but any hope of release she could have found was quashed as they began removing her armor.
*****
She awoke with a terrible ache in her stomach and back. Once her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized she was in a bare stone room. A thin bright glow outlined what must be a door. And she was alone.
Before she could decide whether that was a good or a bad thing, the door swung open, blinding her with the sudden rush of light. A blood elf stunned her, knocking her over the head and dragging her by her hair into the hall. She tried to struggle but her muscles refused to obey. Instead, she trailed, helpless, after her captor.
He threw her into a rough wooden box, and as she held her throbbing head in her hands, she was once more bathed in darkness. All she knew was a steady shaking until the box lurched, tilting unsteadily, and she suddenly felt weightless -- until the sudden stop.
Her bruised body cried out immediately at the pain. The force of what must have been a fall had managed to break her box and probably a few more ribs.
But as a taloned hand pulled back a piece of the wood, she wished she was already dead. Yellow eyes met her spring green ones, the red face breaking into a cruel, feral grin.
She had been deposited in the middle of a fel orc camp.
As he dragged her from the box, sinking his teeth into her shoulder, calling over his companions, the pressure in her chest built and built and finally burst.
She screamed.
*****
He walked along the forest floor, resting his tired wings, trusting that after so many days of torrential downpours, few inhabitants of this forest would dare venture out of their warm, dry homes to see him.
Even as his body had badly withered with the removal of the Eye of Sargeras and the Skull of Gul'dan from his form, his strength also waned with the lack of a suitably potent magic source. The fel orc warlocks, once his allies, proved sufficient for his basic survival, but their demonic energies felt strangely foreign, sickening to his stomach, and he wondered whether they did him more harm than good.
It was with such distracted introspection that he stumbled over the bloodied, unrecognizable form of some humanoid creature. Either an elf or a troll, as he noticed the long, tapered ears. Or at least, one was long and tapered. The other was missing quite a bit of its tip.
The creature's hair was long and bright red, though he couldn't tell if the color was natural or from all the blood.
He knelt down, carefully lifting the still form and carrying it to the river. At the very least he could clean some of the wounds and leave the thing somewhere near a healer.
A quick washing of its face revealed the exotic facial markings of a night elf and the sharp, achingly beautiful bone structure of a high elf.
She was some kind of crossbreed.
She must have been an outcast, much like he was now, thanks to that bitch Maiev. He felt a flare of anger at her attackers -- how dare they harm someone who obviously must have already endured such pain! -- but it melted away and left nothing but a strange sympathy for the poor girl.
He lifted her from the water, drying her with a patch of his cloak, then wrapping her in it completely when he realized she wore no clothes. Pushing his little remaining strength into his wings, he flew her up to his makeshift hope, setting her softly on the straw bed the arakkoa left behind when they moved out, no doubt due to the growing mass of fel orcs to the east.
The girl's breathing was labored, and thus not very conducive to healing. He frowned, struggling to remember the healing energies he had learned at the start of his failed druidic training, willing them to his fingertips, touching her shoulder lightly -- and the wound there seemed slightly shallower. He moved his hands down her sides, calming when her breathing evened out.
But his addiction to magic fed on his mana as he expended it, leaving him dry and trembling, and the girl still in a rather damaged state. He sighed, curling up inthe corner as he drifted off to sleep. Once he had the strength, he would hunt something for them both to eat.
She was still asleep when he woke.