The sun beat down in the main entrance to Razor Hill just an hour or so past noon. With most of Azeroth itself at a nearly unheard of period of peace, children were playing and families picnicking outside of the city walls. The guards - a rather eclectic mix of orc grunts, troll headhunters and tauren braves - were oddly relaxed as they joked with one another and even smiled at the ocassional visitor.

Though the orc and tauren at the main gate didn't notice, the troll guard scrutinized one of his own kind that was unfamiliar to all three guards, donning the armaments of someone respected but bearing the clipped tusks that marked a criminal.

"Hail, citizen," the slightly shorter, much skinnier Darkspear said in Orcish as he waved down Khujand in an obvious way so as to alert his two comrades. They acted natural but he could feel their eyes fixed on him.

"Just a free man lookin' ta greet a friend of a friend," Khujand offered as he sauntered through the city gate, trying his best to appear casual and unassuming in his demeanor.

The tauren - who had to look up to study the only slightly slouching visitor'a face as well - squinted his eyes and cautioned the troll guard with a motion of his hand as they let Khujand pass. There were now three sizeable inns at Razor Hill given the ever increasing trickle of people from the countryside to urban areas, but it was the newest one that interested him - one that tended to rent more comfortable rooms on a discounted but long term basis. 'Zork's Furnished Apartments' was the name his lawyer had given him, though the mascot Zork was apparently not a real person and the establishment was owned by a consortium from the Ghostlands in Lordaeron. Having married a high-ranking employee of a neutral goblin cartel, Khujand didn't find such arrangements strange.

Tucked between three clusters of shops stood the building some locals had directed him to. The inn was only three floors, and since it wasn't particularly wide there likely weren't many rooms. Given the low number of rooms and the low people traffic in the area area, Khujand guessed that it was the sort of place where everybody knew each other. Whether that would make them friendlier in general or suspicious of an outsider…well, having learned the limits of his atrophied social skills long ago, he no longer wasted time guessing how anyone other than other Darkspear (whom he still understood somewhat) or Kaldorei (whom he knew of from his wife and their best friend) would react to him.

Entering a rather non-descript reception hall, reading area and restaurant all rolled into one, he spotted a blood elf couple quietly arranging dishes and supplies on shelves behind what appeared to be both the reception desk and the bar. They didn't seem disturbed when he pulled two chairs in front of them to support his weight, and were even polite enough to speak cordially before he had even finished balancing himself in a way that wouldn't result in him either falling backward or crushing the chairs.

"We have a decent stock of beverages and some snacks," the female said in Orcish as she turned to face him, her eyes darting between the big blue patron and the cups she was stacking. "Rooms are rented for two-week intervals here, though currently you would need to split a room."

"Water," he answered in Common, causing the male to inspect him peripherally while continuing to focus on fastening bags of ingredients. "I'm just passin' through and wanted ta see a friend of a friend."

The female didn't skip a beat as she poured some fresh water into a cup behind the counter. Neither of them bore the haughtiness their people were often stereotyped for, and the odd fact that they both had hair the same shade of scarlet as Khujand's mane let him become just a bit too comfortable.

"Razor Hill has become quite a large place. Best of luck trying to locate whoever it is you're looking for." The redhead was about to turn away and busy herself behind the counter again before she paused for a little more advice. "The town hall has a registry if you need to look for an actual resident here."

"Actually, I kinda know where they were last seen."

From the corner of Khujand's eye, he could see the red headed man inspecting him out of the corner of his own eye. Since inns received all sorts of travelers, drifters and shady characters, he assumed that the two peach colored elves were experienced in fielding invasive questions and dealing with unsavory individuals. He couldn't fault them for their suspicion.

Remaining much calmer visually, the female Sindorei pretended to rearrange a few napkins on the counter. "And where would that be?" she asked, causing the male to tense up at what Khujand imagined he thought of as a can of worms being opened.

Loosening his shoulders to appear as non-threatening as possible, Khujand finally fessed up. "She was a tenant here, actually," he replied solemnly. "She passed on a while back."

The woman behind the counter immediately seemed to understand what Khujand was snooping around for. "Information about patrons is typically considered confidential," she stated in Common with a monotone voice but with an almost apologetic expression.

Without hesitating, Khujand murmured his mother's name and described her appearance to the Sindorei couple exactly. His tone was low and somber, and the female leaned in to listen a little more closely.

When he was done, both halves of the blood elf couple softened in their demeanor, and arcane runes burned into the male's wrist that Khujand hadn't even noticed before suddenly stopped glowing. That, however, the jungle troll most definitely did notice. Sighing both in relief and a measure of sadness, the female started to open up a bit.

"Even I barely noticed the way she flicked her wrist whenever she closed a door...but now that you mention it, I remember." The woman blinked a few times and shook her head to refocus. "Yes, she was here. What do you want to know?"

Fighting off a wave of sadness since he didn't know these people, Khujand swallowed a bit of saliva and tried to speak clearly. "Everything about her."

The male made no secret that he was trying to examine Khujand's face behind the wooden mask he was wearing, and he gave the female a nod without turning to her. Checking the door to be sure they were alone, the female spoke in quiet tones as she told him of the fallen, abandoned woman's final years. Almost nine years prior, the widow's only child caused a minor scandal due to involvement with an unmarked jail at the Mor'shan Rampart. At the time, it had been a big enough deal for Orgrimmar to send signed apologies to the military brass in Stormwind as well as an open disassociation from all those involved. Sen'jin City (then just a village) had been split over the confession their elders had received from the awkwardly tall, generally good-natured youth they had all known as Garot'jin, with equal numbers believing, rejecting or simply not caring about the news. The embarrassment at her only surviving progeny too much to bear, the woman vanished and never set foot in the village again; the only trace she left was a signed document (oral agreements were the norm among trolls; written agreements were quite rare among trolls and were taken very seriously) bequething her small hut to the local elders to use or demolish as they saw fit.

Within a few months the scandal was merely referenced in taverns during political discussions, and a few years later it was entirely forgotten - as was the mother of the escaped torturer who had evaded justice. She spent the remaining near decade or so of her life living on the third floor, sharing a furnished apartment with two other seamstresses as they toiled in their living quarters-slash-workshop weaving rugs and mats by hand, occasionally emerging either to help carry their wares to the shop next door for distribution or to shop for food with one of her two roommates.

She paid her rent on time, was polite to everyone and during her very rare emergences from her proverbial cave, there were even rarer instances when the two elven innkeepers swore they had seen her smile. By all measures, she was just another introverted widow biding her time until her expected death from natural causes during sleep. Such a person was by no means rare on Azeroth.

Both the male and female elf had moved directly in front of the imposingly large, intimidatingly armed and armored jungle troll as his body trembled with his breathing, his suddenly fragile gaze boring into the bar surface. Neither of them knew the man, but appeared touched as he silently listened to the entire story, only thanking the female shyly once she finished. There was a long pause as all three tried their best to remember the quiet woman and it was some sort of miracle that nobody else had chosen to enter the establishment the whole time.

Running his hand through his mane, the big blue-skinned and blue-mooded man looked back up. "Tell me about her son."

The female grew wide eyed as she seemed at a loss for words, looking over to her similarly kind yet less easily perturbed partner. The male's fel green eyes neither hardened nor softened as he considered the question. Khujand peeked in slightly, sensing that the man suspected nothing other than a vendetta but was still hesitant.

"I just need ta know tha location of her grave and of her son," he asked with a non-aggressive tone of urgency that clashed with his fierce tribal garb. "Ya not gonna hafta deal with me again after that."

The male elf nodded to the female, who promptly shut the door while the two men stared at each other cautiously.

"One day south of here," the male said in his low, gravely voice. "Leave the main road after one day mounted travel; there is nothing marking the point where you turn, so you must be exact. A second day of travel northwest will take you through a mountain passage that also happens to be flooded. There is a lodge of your people there who try to eke out a living hunting in the marshes. The drug den is a quarter of a day from there. Those hunters…they have lost many good, young men to the promises of Garot'jin. He ships his stuff through a further trail northwest that leads almost to the Southfury Watershed. It's so far and the operation affects so few people that the authorities don't bother, but…"

The male cleared his throat as his partner sat beside him. "Sorry, my sinuses. Anyway, those young people working for him, they're hooked on his stuff. They aren't bad, but they've done horrible things under his direction. The hunters at that lodge might help you."

Khujand had already stood up when the elf couple were eyeing his weapons, and they seemed surprised when he pulled an antique brass dragon statue about half a foot long from his pack. The male elf immediately pushed it away, almost seeming offended by the gesture.

"We don't know what you plan on doing," the male explained with a sudden formality and distance - though not haughtiness - in his tone. "But if you put an end to the pain that poor woman's son has caused to so many families, that's payment far more valuable than information and drinking water."

The truth in the male's words caused the jungle troll to stop for a moment before stuffing the statue back in his pack and moving toward the door. "One way or another, Garot'jin will meet his end before tha next week starts."

Before he could leave, the female blood elf called out. "I'm Gliondra, by the way. This is Kelthius."

Looking back, he expected to see the male shocked or angry at the revelation of their names, but only found the same look of concern in both their faces. "Khujand," the jungle troll said on his way out while thumbing his chest. "Khujand is the one who will end Garot'jin." Ducking under the doorway, he stepped back out onto the street, unable to shake off the ominous feeling that whichever version of Khujand survived would be seeing the couple again.

Stopping at the post office, he took his time writing two copies of a detailed letter in Common explaining everything they had learned up to that point before sending the first copy to Lorthiras in Orgrimmar. Taking the second copy, he added some personal details before sending it on to Irien, along with an apology for not yet having found an address she could write to and a prayer in Darnassian that she be aided were Garot'jin to follow through on his threat to damage their house. Half an hour from having left the inn, and he was back to the outskirts of town to help Cecilia finish packing and prepare for a painful goodbye.


An aged, lonely, berobed orc sat on a wooden log as he leaned against his shack, taking a long sip from his waterskin. The shade was just long enough to shield him, his broom and his shovel from the afternoon sun as he slipped his shoes back on. He hadn't heard the two riders approach, but he heard the large man with skin the color of the sky as he descended and tied the reins of the two raptors to a post outside the wooden fence.

Rising out of politeness despite his fatigue, the old grave digger brushed off his faded burgundy robe as the visitor approached.

Few words were exchanged, though the understanding look on the grave digger's face quelled any need. Reluctantly, he accepted the brass dragon statue as payment for retreating to his cottage around the bend for an hour and sufficed himself with a light pat to the downcast visitor's shoulder. Pretending that he didn't notice the second long-eared rider with a sentinel's armor, he downed the rest of his waterskin as his creaky bed called out to him for an afternoon nap.

The man's uncovered scarlet mohawk stood out against the dark brick red soil around him, marking him obviously despite the two tones technically being similar. He stood motionless, staring at the rows of small gravestones as he waited for his companion to join him. Her nearly waist length ponytail flapped in the wind slightly, almost but not quite matching the sky blue hue of the man's skin. He hesitated, almost faltering as he appeared to have second thoughts about their plan. She linked her arm with his and reached down with her free hand to squeeze his, leaning up to console him as she pulled hom forward, promising they would always be together each step of the way.

There were dozens of small gravestones lining the rows of plots with flawless symmetry. The popular practice among orcs was an eschewal of elaborate graves - everyone would be judged in the next life by their actions, not their material wealth. The attitude spread widely amongst the diverse races of the Horde, especially where orcs predominated, and locating the grave took some time since most of them bore only simple scrawled names.

Maneuvering between plots and taking care not to disturb any, the night elf led her jungle troll to the place of his mother's grave. Aside from the name and date of death, there was nothing else to distinguish the grave from the others; all had lived their lives, made their choices and now, had moved on, every single one of them engulfed by the same ultimate exit from the world - though not all entirely happy with the lives they had left and the sins they had picked.

The two knelt in the sand next to the grave for the better part of the hour of solitude they had. Aside from the occasional light burst of wind and the rumble of Khujand's lungs, there was silence. Cecilia kept her hand in his, tracing lines on the inside of his meaty palm. There was so much she wanted to say, but knew must be reserved for later. As she stared at the grave, there were so many sensations of loss. She felt guilty for her own sadness at a time when she knew her much younger, less wise husband was torn up inside, but part of sharing a single life with one another meant experiencing the joy and the pain at the same time.

When Khujand finally spoke - there must have been a good half hour where neither of them so much as shifted or blinked - his voice was quiet and higher in pitch than usual, but not as weak as she had expected. Over the year and a half of their relationship, she had slowly observed him gain better control of his emotions as her once overly sensitive drama queen boyfriend transformed to a slightly manic, just-right level of sensitive husband.

He spoke of the way his mother looked so proud the day he joined a caravan headed to the northern Barrens for patrolling the Gold Road. Of the way she was so overjoyed on the day his daughter was born. Of the way she insisted - for the first and only time in his life - that he sit on his deceased father's chair at the head of the dinner table when he visited home with news of his promotion with the Warsong Outriders. And then he spoke of the exact moment when he signed a confession of his war crimes addressed to his mother as part of his identity swap deal to evade execution being the only time his hand ever experienced writer's cramp. Of how he imagined her life would have been as the stereotypical 'abandoned spinster' in male-dominated societies like his, and how someone as strong and proud as his mother would have dealt with such a fate in the twilight years of her life. Of how someone so extroverted and outgoing could have remained locked up in what was both sleeping and working space, emerging only to deliver rugs to the building on the left or buy lettuce from the building on the right. Of how, even with the development he felt within himself as a person, he still lacked the courage that day to speak directly to her two roommates about how she had lived.

But through his choked, uneven sobs, Cecilia still heard him finish his mourning by taking an entirely different direction. He spoke of how strong his mother had been when his father's condition finally caught up with the greying but physically active spearman. Of how she didn't shed a tear at the funeral, but merely accepted that what was meant to be had come to pass. Of how his mother taught him that if fate had decreed something, not the entirety of the universe and every dimension could change it; and if fate had decreed that something would not ever come to pass, then not the entirety of the universe and every dimension could make it happen. He spoke of how that sincere belief made her so much calmer than anyone else, even when the Darkspear were first driven from the mainland of the Eastern Kingdoms to the tropical island not far from the lands of the Bloodscalp, to when they were driven from even that to the Lost Isles across the ocean, to when their island sank and they sailed with the orcs before settling in the Echo Isles, to when Zalazane drove his people even from that onto mainland Kalimdor.

He spoke of his earliest memory, from a time when a child's mind shouldn't be able to retain knowledge of experience yet. But he spoke of it with such sincerity and vividness that Cecilia knew it was real. When he was two years old - already old enough to walk, but still wanting to be carried when tired - his mother held him up and hugged him close when waking him up from a nap. And when she did, he tucked his head in to the point where her neck met her shoulder, closed his eyes and nearly fell asleep again. And every time he met his mother after having left, whether it was when he took a brief leave after surviving the Battle of Mount Hyjal or simply on vacation from guarding trade caravans on the Gold Road, he tucked his head into the same spot when he hugged her despite the height disparity, and every time he nearly fell asleep again.

They waited again for another indiscernable amount of time. Cecilia brushed the sand away from the etching on the gravestone to read the poor Orcish handwriting and even poorer etchwork as she saw her now deceased mother-in-law's name for the first time.

"Sharimara," she repeated with a surprisingly accurate pronounciation. "It's beautiful. I want a daughter with that name."

Seeming to have calmed down, Khujand turned his head to the side, looking at his wife expectedly.

"Issinia. Issinia Swiftfoot. She was from the first generation of true night elves, of those that were neither dark trolls nor the transition phase when the Well of Eternity mutated my people into whatever is in between trolls and elves. She and uncle Elindir were the first to earn that surname for the family."

He smiled with both warmth and sadness, pulling her into a hug they both held on to. "We can have another named after ya mama, too."

"And you're no longer balking at the little army I want to raise?" she asked with an exahheratedly raised eyebrow.

"No, no. Five or six like ya were askin' for before. This is our new life now."

"Good, because most of my life is behind me and looking at graves is a reminder that I'm closer every da-"

"Cici! Stop doin' that!" He glared into her mischevious, almost tartish expression.

"Just trying to keep us focused on more grave matters," she answered half-joking and half-serious. "Come on, we still have a crazed drug dealer kidnapping young people and threatenung your two other kids. Once it's over, we'll be able to head on to my homeland and relax and reminisce."

The two giants stood and looked at the grave of Sharimara of the Darkspear one last time before they left. Mounting their raptors in silence, they both rode off to the south, remaining in view of the main road while they traversed the desolate yet eerily beautiful wastes.