A/N: This chapter depicts slavery, torture and a mild amount of gore. Please keep this in mind when deciding whether or not to read on.

Just over five years ago.

The biting Desolace wind swept through the carved out mountain crevice, a light whistle tickling the ears of the still slumbering prisoners before dawn. One side of the narrow, oval-shaped crevice is walled off by the side of a mountain; the other by a ten-foot high ledge. The dark, cloudless sky formed a black blanket above, bathing the twenty reinforced thorium cages in darkess. Ten lining each side, twenty in total, though only seventeen inmates tonight. All of them sleeping, all of them waiting the start of another difficult, monotonous day.

The crevice may have begun as a natural feature of the side of the mountain, but it had clearly been excavated artificially to serve its purpose. The opening, which was ten feet wide, had perfect square sides that signified the work of a professional mason. The opening led to a winding mountain path with wooden steps embedded into the rock, though it twisted so much that only the curving mountain face through the opening and the sky above were visible to the prisoners. They were all from various races of the Horde, rather than members of the Alliance or neutral factions. This wasn't a public prison for normal criminals to be punished; this was where people were sent to be forgotten.

A thin, lanky jungle troll curled into the fetal position in the third cage from the left of the crevice's opening. His short mane and facial fuzz trembled as he shivered in the night cold, prisoner's rags and some wrapped fur boots serving as the only protection from the elements. While two of the other inmates had begun to stir, the scruffy troll along with the other fourteen inmates were all jolted awake by the sound of a Horde officer's whistle. Disturbed, all seventeen of them rose quickly and assumed 'the position': sitting up straight on the floors of their cages with their backs to the doors and their palms on the ground in front of them.

The nameless officer continued blowing the whistle as he entered the crevice flanked by a grunt and a headhunter as his backup. Once he reached the start of the cage rows, he let the whistle fall from his mouth and nodded to the grunt. Pulling a key from his belt, the grunt walked in a loop along the right row of cages first, coming back around to where he started on the left side as he unlocked each cage door without actually opening it. Once he had completed his task, the officer began barking out numbers without any sort of introduction or real instructions.

"Thirty-four! Thirty-six! Thirty-seven! Fourty-one!"

With each number, one of the inmates stood up slowly with his hands at his sized and exited the cage backwards, shutting the doors behind them. They would then move forward with their faces against their cages, not turning to face the officer. Once the process was done, both the grunt and the headhunter moved to the back end of the crevice and signaled to the officer that they were ready.

"Alright ladies, you know the drill! Fifteen minutes!"

Without a word more, the officer spun around and descended the twisting mountain path, the inmates all hurrying after him. They walked two-by-two, every one of them with their backs up straight - even the scruffy jungle troll with four-inch long knubs instead of proud tusks - as the grunt and headhunter aimed their weapons at the inmates' backs down the whole trail. Eventually the path wound around almost 180 degrees to another low crevice between a large, flat ledge on the mountain face below the cage crevice and the large jutting rocks that obfuscated the entire makeshift prison area from the view of the settlement proper. This crevice was wide enough to contain the latrines in the back and some logs in the front.

After fifteen minutes of waiting in line and washing up in wooden outhouses that doubled as both toilets and showers - all with the same drain - several grunts came by with large buckets of food. The meal was nicer than what many civilians in Kalimdor could afford - the one, single comfort during the prisoners' day. There were no utensils for safety reasons. The prisoners simply dug into the buckets with their hands and prayed that everyone had washed properly before touching the communal buckets. There were scrambled eggs (along with shell pieces), refried beans, fried oily dough, unpeeled whole potatoes and chunks of boiled fish which were supposedly deboned. Supposedly. The excess calories would be necessary for the day's work, and the inmates all ate quickly, silently and greedily. Four cups were passed out to and shared by the seventeen prisoners as they gulped down copious amounts of coffee and fresh water afterward. It was, without a doubt, the highlight of the day for many of them.

When the food and drink had been finished, the grunts that had been carrying the buckets left to inform the nameless officer, who was finishing up his smoke break. The prisoners remained squatting in the dirt obediently until the officer returned.

"On your feet! Line up, two-by-two!" His green face was already turning red, as though he enjoyed shouting simply for the sake of shouting. "March! Go!" He kicked the calf muscle of one of the inmates for no readily apparent reason as they walked on.

The winding path passed through another crevice with an artificial roof made from branches and coconut palm fronds. How palm trees could ever grow in this climate was beyond the inmates, but somehow the plants still thrived at the coastline. A rickety wooden door closed off the opening of this last crevice, and upon walking through the prisoners had entered Shadowprey Village from behind an isolated storage area. Working their way around the lonely buildings in the far north end, the chain of prisoners was now surrounded by six grunts, their weapons at their sides. Shadowprey was still a humble village at that point, perhaps not even a thousand permanent residents calling the place home. There were only two traveler's hostels, a single stablemaster, flightmaster and dockmaster and one lone blacksmith with two trainees in the corner jokingly called 'the Shadowprey special economic zone.' Only a few side streets led off from the main road, and the relatively quiet atmosphere gave the whole place a very village-y feel to it. One would never imagine, based solely on the appearance of its public area, that it was also a black site housing slave labor.

"Don't look any residents directly in the eye," lectured the grunt out in front as he had a hundred times every morning. "And smile if you see any travelers. DON'T say anything, or you taste the whip."

The seventeen inmates and six grunts - twenty-three people in total - marched in their mini-caravan out the brand new front gates of Shadowprey, all part of the elaborate show of the big plans for the settlement. Two large, plain wooden logs rose about twenity feet into the air to support a carved wooden arch fastened to the top of them with metal bolts. The singpost hung beneath, and the beginnings of ramparts north to the mountainside and south to capture more land for the settlement could be seen right next to the gates. Ditches had been dug further out in a line, demarcating where the wooden defensive walls would eventually be set up, engulfing a large swath of the coastal area to the south of the original village territory. A mixed-race group of four visitors passed the prison train on foot as the walked through the gates, leading their timber wolves by the reins as they passed by. They eyed the inmates curiously, and one of the grunts to the side took notice. "These are contract laborers for the expansion project," he beamed like a proper stage actor. "They are here to serve the Horde!"

The visitors smiled politely and waved before continuing on to one of the village's hostels. Every prisoner forced a fake smile, but none of them said a word. The prisoners were led on the main paved path out of town as they had been a hundred times before. They took the same dirt trail leading down an earthen embarkment off that main road as they had a hundred times before, and walked to the same half-cleared brush a few miles away for another twelve hours of hard labor as they had a hundred times before.


The peons were already to work on the trees with their axes as the prison train arrived, and without missing a beat the inmates were instructed by the grunts looming behind them to squat in the dirt beside a patch of rotting tree stumps. They observed as the peons took turns switching between long saws which required two workers to handle and the short chopping axes which allowed more precision. It wasn't long before a particularly large pine was felled with a crash and one of the grunts stepped forward. "Six fasteners! From you to you!" he shouted as he pointed first at a one-eyed, middle aged orc and then to a blue haired, tusked troll. "Now, you egg-sucking gutter trash!"

Two tauren, the troll, the one-eyed orc and two more uninjured ones ran like gophers to several piles of thick, weathered looking rope and hurried back over to the felled tree. Like clockwork, they fastened two ropes to each side of the tree at the front, back and middle. They turned to the same grunt for approval and quickly squatted back down in the dirt again when they received a nod.

"Six pullers," the grunt barked as he pointed at the tuskless, overly tall troll. "From you down to you!" The grunts finger ended down at an abnormally large, patchwork Forsaken. Without question, they hurried to the waiting ropes and slung them over their shoulders. A grunt and a peon moved out in front to direct them, and the six prisoners began dragging the pine, which must have weighed at least three tons, through the dirt patch in the direction of the dirt path.

The work was backbreaking. As long as they could keep a steady pace it was manageable, though when they had to move the tree from a ditch up the earthen embankment leading to the paved road to Shadowprey, they struggled for a few minutes. Once back on the road, they marched over the smooth, flat stones of its pavement in silence, the grunt and peon chatting with each other every few minutes.

"Oh, Loa..."

The grunt looked back over his shoulder and made eye contact with the large troll, if only for a second. The prisoner's heart sank as he realized he had spoken out loud on the job.


After a grueling three-hour hike back to town, the prisoners had finally hauled the tree through the front gates of Shadowprey Village and across the vast, empty expanse between the rest of the settlement and the lumber mill on the empty coastal plain to the south. Mechanical saws blared as lumber was sliced and fitten, and a trail of smoke wafted up from the chimney on the roof of the second floor. More civilians were at work inside, cutting, measuring and packing wood of various shapes and sizes. The foreman - a jolly orc man with his hair in two braids - noticed the laborers hauling a tree and waved them over to the ramp leading up to the mill's foyer.

"Yes, right up here," the foreman said as he used his clipboard to motion to the exact spot he needed the tree to be.

The prisoners managed to pull the tree into place and had already started back to the half-cleared brush when the officer's voice was heard.

"Khujand, over here," he said as he motioned with his rolled up bull whip for the jungle troll to follow him behind a random, seemingly pointless defensive wall made of several large logs tied together. It wasn't connected to any part of the city and was isolated even from the mill, having been built even further south than the end of the ditch that would one day hold the town wall. The grunt and the peon continued leading the five other inmates back to work, not one member of the group making eye contact or even slowing down. This was par the course for talkers, and everybody forgot sometimes.

Before the troll could even start to follow, the officer had disappeared behind the wall. Keeping the officer waiting wasn't a good idea and the prisoner hurried after him. Further behind it was sand and small patches of grass, plains and jutting rocks and the wilderness. It was isolated though there was no one for the sound to be carried over to.

The troll sighed deeply and took his time trotting behind the wall with his head hung low as he stared at the ground in front of him. This wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last, but he dug deep to find what he needed to make it as difficult for them as possible. As he turned around the wall, he could see the familiar tall, thin pine trees behind it and the dirt patch they concealed. When he had reached the large, flat, slanted rock he had become so familiar with, the six prison guards wielding heavy mahogany rods wrapped in leather that were accompanying the officer formed a circle around the prisoner.

"You've been told about the rules, Khujand," the officer said sternly but without shouting. As always, his red and black chestpiece gleamed in the sunlight despite the fact that the village had never been invaded and that the steel must have been uncomfortable. The skin on his shaven scalp wrinkled as the muscles in his head flexed from his consternation. "You can use the latrine thrice a day, you get the food and shelter you need, but there is to be NO talking. What we've got here is failure to-"

Screw it, he thought. There's nothing he can do to get out of this; might as well go out with a bang. In a flash, Khujand picked the only tauren among the guards and sucker punched him in the eye as quickly as possible. The guard fell right back with a cry and landed on his behind, rubbing his eye as he scooted behind his comrades. Khujand's punishment was guaranteed anyway.

The officer stood back with his fists on his hips, his rolled up bull whip in one hand as the five other guards lunged, swinging at any limb or appendage they could hit without getting too close. As badly as they had beaten Khujand before, they were wary of letting him grab ahold of them.

"Don't let him grab it, don't let him grab-"

There was shouting as the troll snatched the rod from one of the grunts but fumbled, and the weapon was lost underneath the shuffling feet as more blows rained down on his forearms, shoulders, back and neck. He was knocked to the ground with a particularly heavy hit to his kidneys, forcing him to crawl as he grabbed for the guards' ankles and testicles, bruises already appearing on his arms as the entire group became winded. At one point, he was struck on his hairless left eyebrow and the skin was split open, blood seeping down into his eye. One of the guards managed to jump on Khujand's back and snake his weapon around the troll's throat, choking him while each one of the others grabbed ahold of the prisoner's limbs and the last guided his body onto the slanted rock. It was like trying to wrestle down a kodo, and all seven of them - the jailers and the jailed - knew that every muscle in their bodies would be tight and sore in the morning, possibly with some tears.

"Wrap it up, fellas. He's one man, he's just delaying the inevitable." The observant officer's tone and volume didn't change even as the sweat dripped down his brow.

The two guards that had been on Khujand's back quickly shifted to holding his shoulders. The two grunts holding his arms folded them at the elbow to restrict his grabbing power, while the two holding his legs folded them at the knee to prevent him from standing or kicking; all four of them sat down on his limbs, expending all they had to restrain the prisoner. They all crouched and stood as far back from his body as possible when the officer positioned himself to Khujand's left side and pulled the troll's shirt up to his neckline. The whip was unfurled with a menacing crack, its wielder reaching all the way back as he prepared his first lash.

"It's been almost a year here, Khujand. You should be beyond this by now." The officer was clearly annoyed, but not deterred by the troll's defiance.

Before Khujand had a chance to launch into another vulgar tirade, the officer pulled back his whip with a crack and sent it down into the flesh of the troll's back, leaving a deep cut that drew blood from the very first lash. Searing pain that couldn't even be compared to a razor gnawed at every nerve ending in the skin as he involuntarily arched his back and sucked air between his teeth, the guards struggling to keep him pinned down. The dark red liquid seeped down Khujand's back, resembling the color of his vibrant scarlet mane yet clashing with his light azure hide as it spilled out. Years of the same repetitive motion had rendered the officer an expert on how to make it hurt. The fact that this prisoner in particular refused to scream despite the searing pain frustrated the officer to no end.

"Ask ya moocow how his black eye be feelin," Khujand rasped defiantly.

The tauren was unshaken. "It feels a lot better than your back does right now!" The guards erupted with laughter as the second and third lashes came down in quick succession, the prisoner twitching and breathing through his teeth each time. The third was almost embedded in the troll's tough hide, and the officer had to pinch the end and peel it out of the skin. Khujand had slowed down his struggling now as the realization that there was nothing that could stop this, much to the relief of the now exhausted guards. The officer reached back again for even more lashes, feeling the need to make his point absolutely clear.

"You WILL understand, scum! Consider this an attitude adjustment plan!"


The inmates milled about as they were served dinner on the large, flat ledge on the mountain face below the cage crevice overlooking the ocean. Those last two hours before lights out were theirs, one of the few things they could savor during the day. They were allowed to socialize quietly - the keyword being 'quietly' - as they were finally allowed to speak. Some of them played tic-tac-toe in the dirt with twigs while others played a pebble balancing game. The record for the highest stack was four.

The tuskless, shirtless jungle troll limped up from his meal and hobbled over to the far end of the ledge, where he could sit alone and see the ocean. He was fairly sure that the ouside toe on his right foot was broken though the cut over his right eyebrow had stopped stinging and became merely a dull ache. Five large gashes lined his back from top to bottom, some of them intersecting each other. The pain was excruciating, though his regeneration ability had already caused the bleeding to stop. The blood had seeped down into the seat of his pants and turned a darker hue of brown than the fabric, though the cuts themselves were already starting to heal. He had been forced to skip lunch that day and the leftover rice, black beans, expired apple slices and fish heads actually seemed almost appealing.

With one hour left before lights out, Khujand sat on the edge of the ledge with his feet dangling off below. It was a forty foot drop to the jagged rocks down below, and they looked like a piece of art as the waves crashed upon them. The ocean was wide and open with an orange hue near the horizon. The red sun was finally descending and the scene was nothing short of breaktaking, wiping the pain on his back from memory. This was his time. His time to be alone with his thoughts, and the occasional, perhaps twice a year visit from his good side, his moral compass, the voice deep down inside him. Tonight was not one of those nights. He only had his conscious self to fill his head.

As the sun's brightness had lowered to the point where he could watch it set, it was his last hour to reflect over what he had done. It was all he could do to avoid descending even deeper into his madness, his titanic sense of guilt and shame crushing every bone in his body. He had spent the first year intentionally not thinking about his crimes against humanity (elfanity? dwarfanity?), only focusing on his surroundings. He could only count the number of bars on each cage and the number tears in the clothing of his fellow prisoners so many times before he even ran out of things to observe and think about. The monotony and isolation with his own thoughts were far more difficult than any of the whippings, labor accidents or prison fights he had been through.

He wondered how much the people he had jailed himself hated him. It was a given that they would; in their situation, they would need to focus their anger on something. At no point did he ever pity those he killed in battle down in Warsong Gulch. Those were soldiers on the field, and they knew what they were in for. But the real victims - the ones who had surrendered or been captured, the ones whom he was supposed to take care of - were those who haunted him every single night. Had his nightmares been flipped with his victims torturing him instead, it would have been a form of consolation - a way to convince himself that he was somehow atoning for sins for which there was no atonement. But no. His blood curdling nightmares, pushing him beyond the point of absolute terror every single night, were always true to his vile nature. His victims were never given a moment's respite, never granted the right to strike back...and that made it so much worse. He hated it, hated himself, for having violated other living beings with impunity. Even with all the trials of being used as slave labor in an unacknowledged prison didn't feel like atonement for him; he was only in prison because of what he did. His own victims...it almost felt pointless to replay it in his head again and again, yet it was his routine every single night.

But he tried so hard to convince himself of the fantasy that their anger was misplaced, that he was tricked, that it wasn't his fault. No matter how little he believed that, he wanted it to feel true to him so much, just to get rid of the screams that haunted his sleep every single night - screams that he caused.

Nokar, Bralag and Lorkus had truly been sent to the gallows. Tt was the former two who had pumped him up, made him believe his own hype, made him justify what he was doing. No, what they were doing. Yeah. They were responsible to because they *made* him do it. If he hadn't met them, he never would have chosen - been pushed into doing what he did. Or they did. Together.

"Exactly..." he mumbled out loud, no longer caring about appearing to be a crazy person talking to himself. He forced a fake smile as he fought back the waterworks, choking on the lie in his throat.

Since his fall, the Horde and the Alliance had started putting some rules of combat into writing to avoid any more scandals. A prisoner had the right to food and water, the right to quarter and shelter as long as they obeyed their captors and cooperated with direct orders, and physical harm wasn't necessary to discipline someone already in chains. Maybe...maybe those changes were even because of what he did!

The nausea turned over in his stomach in rejection of the embarrassingly hyperbolic sham he was trying to convince himself of. He wanted to much to be forgiven, to be understood. Couldn't they sympathize with his position? Surely if those whom he hurt knew that he understood that, they wouldn't hate him so much. If he could only find a way to reach out to them, to explain that it was all Nokar and Bralag's fault, that he truly felt bad and was sorry for what he did...perhaps they would understand his situation too.

Yes, his situation! He was just a man trying to support his family. Was that so wrong? He was tricked by promises of taking care of his kids. It really wasn't his fault at all.

"Not my fault..." he lied as he stared blankly into the setting sun dropping into the ocean.

And if they knew that...they would forgive him. They had to! It made so much sense. If they did hate him, it was really more of a misunderstanding than anything. He didn't really want to cause a defenseless prisoner harm, honest. In fact...he was a victim too! Just like them! He wrapped up all the immature selfishness he could and forced himself to swallow it like a psychotropic treat. He forced himself, in spite of his intuition and its malicious facts and logic, to believe that he wasn't the depraved, cowardly, worthless, downright evil piece of trash that had done such things. He dove wholeheartedly into self delusion, running away from the truth of what he had chosen to do, escaping the inevitable conclusion for just one more day.

"Not my fault..."

The sun was set now and he would only have fifteen minutes or so before lights out. None of the inmates stirred, though, savoring every last second they could have outside of the veritable tomb cut into the mountainside. Scattered groups of them were trying to polish pebbles into cubes to use as dice, tucking them into their shoes for safe keeping. It was the only way to avoid something dear being stolen. Rising from his ledge, the tall, lean troll stretched the tight muscles in his forearms and calves, all burning with a pain from literally lifting trees all day similar to the pain in the gashes on his back. He stood for a moment, taking one last look at the final slivers of red disappeared below the horizon.

As the whistle blew and the prisoners filed back into their cages, Khujand wore his fake smile with false pride, pretending to marvel at the feigned effectiveness of his escapist fantasies. Deep down he knew who he really was. As the door to his cage was locked, the tuskless troll curled into a ball again, bracing himself for the cacophony of abused, tortured souls that would stay with him until the next morning. He held is breath for a few moments and was finally able to release, crying himself to sleep.