Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft, or I would have gotten more of the details right.
Ga'vik pressed them hard, desperate to get out of Tanaris. He hated the desert. He hated the unforgiving sun and the absence of any sheltering foliage. He hated relying on the next fresh kill to slake his thirst.
He hated the way the dunes seemed to suck at his feet, slowing his every step, and he hated the way the sand got in his teeth. He clicked them together and spat.
He hated the loa-damned insects that had swept over his life and killed Eikahe. He hated Eikahe for dying. He hated the girl for living.
He should have wheeled Jozala around as soon as they were clear of the swarm, headed for Gadgetzan, and completed his mission. Once he'd informed the goblins that they were all going to die at the hands of the Qiraji, he could have headed north to spend some time fishing in Thousand Needles.
They probably would have made him hand over the girl, but what did it matter to him?
He glanced over his shoulder at Jozala. The human was draped over the middle of her back, looking as boneless as the hyena skins and strips of meat. He relented immediately. How could he hate someone that slept like that? She looked so… ingenuous. Like a child. Ga'vik found it charming.
He had already decided not to take her back to the goblins, anyway. Eikahe always had noble intentions, but he counted on Ga'vik to come up with a plan, and the troll was certain that the soft-hearted tauren hadn't really meant to turn the human over to her slavers. Ga'vik would indulge Eikahe's last silly, merciful whim, and get the human somewhere safe - away from goblin territory.
That didn't really describe Un'Goro, but Ga'vik needed to get them out of the desert. By his estimates, they would reach the crater's edge in only two or three days if he kept up the pace - riding Jozala by night, and walking through the cooler parts of the morning and evening, with a quick nap at mid-day whenever he spotted a place to drape the skins for shade.
He worried constantly that they would come across another silithid swarm, but hoped the slaughter was focused mainly on the more heavily traveled route to the south. He tried to keep their path north of the Noxious Lair, probably the base of the silithids they had seen, and south of Sandsorrow Watch. He still had some friends among the trolls, but definitely not in the Sandfury tribe.
He walked, rode, walked, killed a hyena, ate, slept. Walked, killed, ate, rode, walked, slept. Walked…
Suddenly, it was there, in front of them. Sand, rocks, and then… a green abyss. Hooting with joy and relief, he jogged to the edge and looked down. The human slid off of Jozala to join him, looking aghast. She asked him something in her soft, rolling tongue.
"Un'goro," he explained waving his arm toward the crater. She rolled her eyes and nodded.
"Yes," she said, in her precise but limited Orcish, then shrugged dramatically, palms up in a questioning gesture.
"Don't worry," he said, "dere be plenty of ways to get down." Plenty of short ways with a surprise ending, he added to himself. Fewer ways that ended with all your insides and outsides in the correct order.
After glancing first one direction, then the other, Ga'vik clicked his teeth in decision and started north. Lujin followed easily along, walking so perilously close to the edge of the crater that pebbles plinked over as they were dislodged by her paws. She did not deign to notice. Jozala stayed well away from the edge, chittering nervously.
It was nearly dusk when he found what he was looking for. The initial lip of the cliff dropped as precipitously as elsewhere, but after a few metres the side wall became rougher and irregular with staggered ledges jutting out. Halfway down was a larger shelf with its own trees and a small clearing. The ground floor of the canyon was hidden in tree canopies and mist.
Ga'vik's mouth fairly watered at the thought of spending the next day in cool, blissful shade. He waved Litha over frantically, pointing and saying in Orcish, "Look at dat! Don't dat look beautiful?" The human looked warily over the edge and made a small, doubtful sound.
In response, Ga'vik flagged Lujin. For once, she responded quickly to his command, and lightly hopped from the top of the cliff to the first ledge. Glancing up to pin them with her conceited, golden gaze, she swished her tail briefly before continuing down toward the clearing. The black cat felt the pull of the cool, shady forest as powerfully as the troll did.
Ga'vik gave a similar command to Jozala, but the raptor edged her large feet back and gave a worried screech.
"You'll have to come down unless you want to stay in this loa-forsaken desert by yourself," he told her in Zandali.
When she only bobbed her head nervously in reply, he turned to the human. She was hugging the cloak tightly around herself, despite the lingering heat of the day. He did not recall seeing fear in those forest-coloured eyes since he had first found her under the burnt wagon. Resignation, at times, but not fear.
He felt suddenly tender toward her. "Come, I carry you," he said in Orcish, then turned away from her and crouched, gesturing with his hands that she should climb on his back. "Come," he repeated, a word he knew she understood.
The human looked down into the canyon a long time before coming tentatively toward him. With a little sigh, she wrapped her arms around his neck as he hooked his arms behind her knees and hoisted. She was still terribly light.
Ga'vik edged toward the crater, then turned and eased himself slowly over, pausing to scold Jozala again for her cowardice. He did not want to leave her behind, but they would all perish if he didn't find shade and water soon.
The going was slow, and Ga'vik had to release the human's legs as he sought hand and toe-holds to grasp between ledges. She wrapped her legs around his waist with surprising strength. Her arms, as well, held him in a vice-like grip until he tapped one of them with a choking sound, and she eased the pressure on his throat.
The failing light made the troll's task somewhat harder, and he was forced to navigate mainly by feel, tusks scraping as he pressed himself flat against the rock face. As the moon rose, he could feel the human shifting to look around, presumably taking in the view of the moonlit, forested crater beneath them.
She spoke to him in her own tongue, to which he grunted noncommittally in reply. She spoke again, using Jozala's name, but Ga'vik could not decipher what she was trying to say. Abruptly she turned and leaned back from her waist, holding his shoulders only lightly. He was dimly aware that she was calling up at the raptor, as he pressed himself hard against the rock and clutched with all six fingers to keep them from toppling backward into the chasm.
"Stop, hold on, fuck, stop it!" he gasped desperately, in Zandali, then even less coherently in Orcish.
When she leaned close again, reducing the leverage on his frantically clawing fingers, he managed to creep over to the nearest shelf before dropping to a crouch, panting and shaking. The human stepped away from him and wrung her hands, looking apologetic. She spoke again in her language. Ga'vik thought she spoke an awful lot.
After a moment, there was a muffled crash above them and a small avalanche of sand as Jozala launched herself at the first ledge. She peered down to their position and gave a screech before scrabbling to the verge and flinging herself dramatically at the next ledge. She was not as elegant about it as Lujin had been, but she was steady and sure-footed on her talon-tipped feet.
Ga'vik glared at the human, ruffling his hair with one hand to relieve the pounding of his own heart. "See? She be jus' fine. Jo don' need your help," he said.
Litha only cooed with relief at the raptor, clapping her hands and calling her name until Ga'vik grabbed her arm and tugged her around.
"Come," he said simply, and hunkered down to let her climb on again.
The rest of the climb was uneventful. The human held tight and did not lean back, and Ga'vik eased them slowly down into the canyon. The larger ledge he had spotted proved to be a fair place to camp, as he'd hoped, with little risk of being chanced upon by other travelers - though few were likely to choose this direct route down from the desert.
Pleased with himself, the troll stretched, sucked through his teeth, and spat the last grains of Tanaris from his mouth.