Phew, thank god I got this chapter up. You won't believe how busy I have been this week, with college, driving lesions and more. But still, I managed to get this one up. This is a self titled chapter, which you may see in all future fanfictions and what not. The title of the story, Flowers in the Dirt, is the name from Paul McCartney's '89 album (Bloody good one if I say so myself.) But the idea of the name seemed rather fitting with Nedia being the flowers and Jirus being the dirt. So before I bore you with anything else I say, here we go!
Part 4
Flowers in the Dirt
"It's not safe round here now since they must have found out about us after our attack." Thought the death knight.
Kogan kept looking round with Jirus for anymore Horde mobs as he headed west with Kogan. Jirus couldn't be bothered to even argue with the Dwarf Warrior, what seemed like six in the morning he had awaked him. Oh trust him to be the one that had to be chosen to go off with him for the morning.
"Something's not right," muttered Jirus.
"How come?" Asked Kogan
"It's all too quiet here…" Jirus halted his mount for a second to keep a look out before catching up with the warrior.
Jirus' mind though, to tell the truth, wasn't on looking out for Horde. All he wanted was to spend time with Nedia, the only person that seemed to thaw at his icy heart, though he didn't let anyone know about it. He did wonder what would happen after this mission if they all went back home in one piece. Maybe he could confess his love for her as soon as they got back? No too early, maybe get to know her more in some months and when the time was right, and then he could confess. Yes, that sounded better. Kogan shouting at him however interrupted His train of thought.
"Quick! Hide behind the trees!"
Without him knowing why Kogan needed them to hide for, Jirus quickly followed him behind the trees. Once they seemed safe from prying eyes and had quickly un-mounted, Jirus then could see, just through a small gap in a bush, a large mob of mounted Horde solders (about fifty of them) came through on route towards Felwood.
"Have you noticed that they've all been heading towards Felwood?" Asked Kogan in a hush voice.
"Maybe their next stage of attack?" Replied the death knight. He had guessed the thought up, but Kogan looked at him with a stunned expression. "…What?"
In just a few seconds, Kogan mounted up on his precious Stormsaber. "Let's follow them, who knows what they may be up too."
Mounting his own Turbostrider, though slightly slipped when trying to mount, followed after Kogan and the rest of the Horde Solders towards Felwood. They didn't follow them taking the road, but followed them through the trees just to make sure they didn't catch the attention of the solders.
Jirus did wonder why the Horde wanted Felwood, he hated it there if he remember so well before he became a Death Knight. "How long do we…great gods." Jirus and Kogan gapped at what they saw before them.
Blocking up the way into the Felwood was a large steal wall, like at Orgrimmar. The fort itself was not of Alliance built, but of Horde. So this was what their guild master had been wondering about what was going on at the entrance of Felwood, the answer lay before them.
"…We're going to need more guys for this," said a shaken Jirus after looking at the fort's strong defenses. Guards were everywhere on this wall, Jirus and Kogan took note that on the top parts of the wall, that harpoon type cannons were in a upright position, maybe to shoot down Griffon rides coming in or out of Felwood. Jirus and Kogan noticed that some Horde solders were mounted on Wyverns flying around the area, must've been to keep an eye out on anything going on in the area behind the thick steal wall.
Whoever was in Felwood in this moment in time would be trapped and with no way out.
"We must get back to the others," replied Kogan as he took chase back to their camp.
"He never stops now, doesn't he?" thought Jirus shaken his head as he followed him. "Perhaps there ain't no coming back, just death."
XXX
The two friends were still in shock thinking about what they had witnessed as they drew nearer to the camp. Kogan felt for the first time in ages his heart sinking in doubt. Jirus just seemed more concerned that he wasn't going have the chance to tell the Night elf huntress how he felt about her. When they got back to the camp, they were surprised of what must have been happening when they were gone.
Raer and Nedia were arguing about something, with Goilir and Brale sitting on a fallen log looking at them unimpressed. Judging by the spilt cooking pot, one of them (Presumably Raer judging how angry the Night elf looked) must've spelt it over. Kogan and Jirus were both surprised to see how furious Nedia looked; this wasn't like her at all to say the least.
Nedia's angry face soon softened when she saw the pair returning from their morning outing.
"What is goin' on here? " Asked Kogan, which the arguing pair turned to look at him.
"Raer ruined our food for the day!" Snorted Nedia.
"It wasn't my fault!" Raer retaliated, "I never saw the damn pot as it seemed to blend in with the ground!"
To be honest, the cooking pot's blackish grey colour did seem to blend in with the slightly burnt grass, or perhaps Raer just was an ass as he always was to poor Nedia for running her meal; and judging by the wonderful smell, it would have been excellent.
"Forget the food," Jirus told them. "You won't believe us what the Horde have cooked up at the entrance of Felwood."
The rest of the gang, except Kogan, looked at each other wondering what it could be. "What did you guys find?" Asked Brale.
"The Horde have built a large keep there," Kogan replied. "Forces there are immense. No one can get in or out of there." The rest of the gang gaped in shock. Nedia covered her mouth with her hand; Goilir grabbed the sides of the log he was sitting while Brale nearly fell off the log backwards when they heard Kogan's words. While the rest of them couldn't believe what they heard, Raer seemed, to put it bluntly, to have a blank stare on his face.
"Well what were you guys thinking?" Asked Raer. "You do know that the Horde are always up to something, so this is no surprise if you ask me." The motley gang turned to look at him slowly with unimpressed looks on their faces.
"That's what you think," Nedia snapped at him. "Your attitude is really making my head rattle, stupid Gnome."
"Hey, hey, hey!" Raer spluttered slightly waving his hands up and down to try and calm the huntress down. "I don't need you to get on back just for ruining the meal." Nevertheless, the two of them broke into yet another argument. Kogan and Jirus looked on in slight amusement of the arguing pair, Brale cover his face with the palm of his hand. Goilir on the other hand looked like he had had enough.
"Look guys," Goilir suddenly spoke up, "why don't we just go out there and hunt for any animals?" Of course he said 'animals' with some reluctance, due to his wolf pet seeming to glare at him.
It did seem strange for Goilir to speak up like that as he would always follow orders from Kogan or some other high rank individual. His idea brought a silence to the camp as everyone thought about it.
"Alright then," Kogan said after the brief silence. "Jirus and Brale, go out there and bring back some grub for us. Goilir, come with me, I have an idea that we could do to bring down that wall. And you two…" Kogan pointed at Nedia and Raer. "Try and get everything ready when we come back without arguing."
Jirus did find it quite ironic that his son was left in charge, along with Nedia, to have the food cooked up when they'd come back with what they could find out here. Jirus did try and forget that one time some years ago when Raer was cooking a meal and nearly burnt down the house, but then again that is another story…
XXX
As Kogan wanted, Jirus and Brale headed out into the forest to try and gather up food, or in this case kill animals for the food.
Surprisingly for Jirus, Brale wasn't that bad for company, when he was sober that is. Brale was actually quite a decent guy that Jirus found comfortable to talk to. The gnome was happy to tell the human priest about how he became a death knight and that wonderful day when he divorced from that bitch of a wife he had (Well Jirus seemed pretty happy to talk about it which Brale on the other hand seemed a bit confused at the gnome's strange humor.)
"…And when she left the house," Jirus concluded as he got near the end of his story were they where sitting besides a small river fishing. "I must've been the happiest Gnome in all of Azeroth."
Brale just stared at him, not knowing if he should join in with the laughter with him. "…Did you find it hard to look after your kids?"
"Not really," Jirus calmed down after his laugh. "Things did turn out alright, of course there were some little moments here and there, but nothing too serious."
Rustle
The two comrades stopped talking and quickly looked around from where that sound came from, the bushes behind them. Jirus tightened his grip on his two-handed sword while Brale had his bottles of rum readied, for mana purposes (He had carried them with him 'just in case'.)
Rustle
Rustle
Rust-
Jirus felt a great force hit from the side knocking him off his feet, he hit the ground dropping his sword and turn up to look what had knocked him down. Looking up, he could see Brale hurriedly trying to heal himself, which he himself had been knocked into the shallow water, from the attacks of a large bear. One thing was for sure is that this didn't seem like normal bears around the forest, with it's larger shape and clawed marks all over, which Jirus almost swore that he saw a Horde symbol near its head.
Without a second to spare, Jirus quickly grabbed his weapon and made a strike at the Bear. Thankfully, this caught the bear's attention away from Brale; he could now focus his healing on Jirus. What surprised the death knight the most is how strong this bear really was, Maybe it must have been an escaped animal from somewhere round here and had been furious with where it must have been before. Jirus kept slashing his weapon against the bear's think skin, his death knight powers seemed to be the only way he could defeat this angry beast.
With one swipe at the creature's eye, he'd thought that'll be it. The bear roared in agony as blood poured from the deep slash mark over the bear's eye. Incredibly, the bear continued to attack them, despite being blinded in one eye. Thinking desperately now to kill it, Jirus muttered some strange words barely heard by anyone else. Releasing a bolt of purple energy from his hand that hit the banks of the shore. Out from the ground from where the energy hit, a rather grim looking ghoul minion saw it's 'master' under attack, and immediately came in to attack the bear. To Jirus, Brale looked like he was about to pass out with the amount of rum he had been taking for his mana.
All of a sudden, the bear, with such incredible strength, attacked Jirus causing him to fall into the middle part of river, Jirus' ghoul though did stop the bear before it could do anymore damage to the gnome. When his ghoul seeming to keep the bear's attention on the shoreline, Jirus grabbed his sword, which he had dropped into the shallow river, and charged at the large bear. Just as he was about the strike the damn thing down, the creature suddenly turned its head to look at him. Jirus though didn't stop, even if it was charging itself at him!
"Just fucking die!" Jirus spat out angrily. With one heart stopping moment, Jirus struck his now slightly cracked weapon up its mouth, as it was about to have a bite at him.
The large bear let out a terrible roar of agony in its final moments. Right after Jirus pulled out his weapon from its large mouth, it only stood up weakly for a few seconds before falling onto its side into the river, with the blood now running down the river.
Jirus panted gently looking at the bear's corpse, before placing his sword in its holding package on his back. His ghoul and a stunned Brale walked forward, never minding at getting the lower parts of his robes wet, looking at the dead bear.
"You t-think we should…" Brale asked as he hiccupped, "take it back to the camp for the meal?"
Jirus just shook his head at the now drunken priest. "Not really, two things really. One, your dripping the last of your rum on it." Brale looked down and saw what he meant, he had accidently spilt the rum on the corpse. "I don't think either of us would want a bear tasting of rum for dinner, ok maybe Raer would…"
Jirus' ghoul tilted its head at him, waiting for what he was going to say next. "And the other thing is that this is not a normal bear, it's a Horde bear," he pointed at a barely visible Horde symbol on the bear's forehead, clearly showing that it must have been sent to kill them. "Anything Hordish is bound to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth." He gave a small grin to the priest.
"…So we go out and look for something else?" hiccupped the human, still clearly tipsy.
Jirus nodded, rubbing a few specs of blood on his face. "Of course, we should split up though, the Horde sent this damn thing on us so we better split up to lose them." Jirus then turned to look at his ghoul minion. "Don't worry though, Spinesnapper here will keep you company."
Brale stared at him dumbstruck. "W-What? What about you?"
"I'll be fine, just tell ol' Spinesnapper what to do and he'll follow on." As he said this, the ghoul waddled up to the human, giving him a seemingly bemused look on its horrid face.
"What's with the name?" Asked Brale as he turned to leave him.
"What? Spinesnapper?" Asked the death knight as he headed up on to the bank of the river. "Just one of many death knight names we give to our ghouls," he brushed of a few bits of mud and blood on his guild tabard. "I could go on all day of the names I've giving to all of the ghouls I've had."
Brale didn't seem to listen to Jirus' words; instead he went on, with Spinesnapper, by his side. As they were not too far away from the camp, mount weren't needed so they would have to make the hunt on foot. As the human left the gnome by the shore, the death knight let out a small sigh and sat himself down on the ground.
"I felt weak there," Jirus thought. Ok, Jirus may have not been the best death knight in the world, but his weak performance on the bear was defiantly not like him. "Was I expecting to be save from her?"
The death knight just contented with himself thinking if what he thought was true or not. But to be honest with himself, he did need her, Nedia. He didn't really relies that he and Kogan would have been killed in that attack with those Horde solders yesterday had she'd not saved them. Jirus knew he couldn't keep in these feelings for her inside him forever, he needed to find a way to express his gratitude for her, but with what?
He groaned, placing his head in his hands, before looking around for inspiration. However, he did. Just up on a muddy section of grass to his right, was a set of flowers in the dirt. Normally Jirus hadn't anytime for flowers or anything, but he couldn't help but be somewhat surprised by this pair. Now sitting up, he walked over to the flowers. The flowers themselves were of a blue colour, which strangely seemed to remind him of being the same tone of blue that matched Nedia's long blue hair.
For some reason as well, he thought of himself as the dirt and Nedia as the flowers strangely enough. No matter how ideas Jirus could come up with the flowers, he grabbed the bundle of flowers there and set of back to the camp. If any of his former death knight comrades were there seeing him holding a bunch of flowers, no doubt that they would have been more than surprised to see him like that.
XXX
Thankfully for Jirus, no one saw him carrying the bundle of flowers in his hands right up to when he got to the camp. As he was expecting, Raer and Nedia were not arguing this time, but keeping their distance from each other, must have been though the aftermath of another argument. Jirus knew that he had to do something the break the silence, but he didn't to be seen with the flowers, so instead, he tucked them in his belt.
"Hey guys," Said Jirus casually, which did get their attention. "…Did I miss something?"
"None of your business," Raer snorted, clearly in a stroppy state from whatever Nedia and him were up to.
"Where's Brale?" Nedia interrupted.
"Don't worry, he's ok," Jirus replied. "He's got Spinesnapper with him."
Raer blinked at his dad. "Who the hell is Spinesnapper?"
"My ghoul minion."
"Where do you get all these names from, Dad?"
"Never mind that, want to do something useful?"
Raer looked over to the huntress, who was fixing a few things with her new staff that she found in one of the Horde troop bags that they fought yesterday. "Anything to get away from her."
"Well go out there and try and find something for us to eat." Jirus explained.
"But I thought that was—"
"Beat it."
Raer let out a nearly inaudible sigh as he walked away from the camp, with him muttering 'lazy sod' or something.
After the gnome warlock left the camp, Jirus turned his attention to the Night elf. "You ok?" Asked Jirus in a helpful tone.
"Yeah I'm ok," Nedia replied. "How can you stand that gnome?"
"Sometimes I wonder myself," the death knight muttered rolling his eyes. " I had to live with him for many years until he moved out."
Nedia let out a small giggle after what he said. The night elf's giggle made the hairs on his neck stand up. "But why'd you come back?"
The gnome rubbed the back of his head. "Well me and Brale were attacked from this bear, not anyway bear let me tell you, but one that was sent from the Horde on to us. To prove that, there was a small Horde symbol on its forehead."
Jirus then looked away from Nedia towards the forest. "I told him to split up, the Horde would want both of us killed so if we spread out, we could confuse them."
The huntress stared at him as he said this. "But…I came back for something for you." He felt nervous for what he was going to do.
"For me?" She asked.
"Yeah, for saving Kogan and my lives yesterday." And looking down to the ground, not wanting to see her face how she might react to what he was doing, he brought out the bunch of flowers from out of his belt and presented them to her. To him, everything slowed down at the moment. He didn't know what she was going to do next, but when she did, he had a shock.
One moment he was standing there, the next, he found himself close to her in a bone-crushing hug from her. "Oh my…" he thought in amazement.
"Thanks, Jirus." She smiled at him after Jirus pulled away from her, looking at each other. "I'll keep you safe."
"And I…erm," Jirus found himself struggling for words. "I'll do the same for you."
The huntress looked down at the flowers admiring them, while Jirus mounted on to his Turbostrider mount. "I'll be back before dusk," Jirus called at her as he left.
"Take care, Jirus," she called back, waving at him. Once he was out of sight, a strange thought entered her head. "Did he really meant to give those as a thanks to me, or something else?"
As she thought, she placed the flowers in her small bag. "Could it be? No it can't…does he really care about me?" The night elf felt her heart flutter just about thinking about the death knight. Nedia then smiled at the thought, with the gnome seeming to be nicer to her than all the others in the group, the gnome was in love with her.
"Maybe once this is all over…"
XXX
By the time everyone else headed back to the camp, the sun had just gone down and nighttime would begin. Kogan and Goilir had returned from their investigation of the keep, with Goilir thinking how the hell he was going to blow up the wall with explosives, yep that was the plan. Brale had returned with a large chunky dead wolf; help of course by Jirus' minion, Spinesnapper. While everyone else had returned, someone was missing.
"Does anyone know where Jirus is?" Asked Nedia looking around her in case he turned up at that moment.
The rest of the gang looked around for the death knight. "Hope he's ok," Kogan muttered. Just as they all looked around, there came a mechanical noise heading their way, looking to were the sound was coming from, they saw Jirus' Turbostrider, clearly battered with oil marks all over it and weakly walking to them, but there was no Jirus on it.
They nearly all gasped when they knew what had happened. Jirus had been captured.
Uh oh! Cliffhanger! What has happened to Jirus, well if you review or favourite this story, we'll soon see. On another note, this is the longest of the chapters so far, hopefully the future chapters will be longer, I hope. Until next time, catch you later.
