This chapter is both late and jumble-y. I apologize for both things.
Explanations: laptop was broken and we are currently moving. It's fixed now.
2.I wrote half this chapter a month ago and no longer remember where I was going with it so the last half is only part of what I could recall. I know this chapter seems weird. Sorry. But it has to exist.
Also, if you'd like to see what the paladin looks like, you can see him on deviantart where I posted a couple quick drawings of him. My username is the same there as it is here.
People were everywhere. People of many races, of races you'd never seen before. All of them spoke Orcish but your ears failed to focus on the words they said. The paladin ran as he carried you and the world around you bounced and swayed dizzyingly. You clung to him with all your strength as you fought the urge to vomit.
"Out of the way!" You heard someone yell. Was it him? You couldn't tell... "She's got a severe head injury, among other things, she won't last long." The world around you suddenly brightened and the air turned frigid. You gasped, curling in yourself against the near-painful cold. You closed your eyes and sobbed through the shock, your body wracked by violent shivers as the cold wind met your exposed skin. You lost consciousness.
When you next awoke you were warm again, comfortably so this time, but the pain remained. You didn't dare move from where you lay. Steadily, as your eye adjusted, faces materialized above you, their mouths moving as words you failed to hear poured from their lips. You felt hands moving along your body and you shuddered at the unintentionally invasive touches until a sudden jolt of energy made you gasp. The familiar warmth of healing seeped into you from limb to limb. You watched as the four faces above you stared down with determination. The beings above you were so foreign. One turquoise-skinned man had tusks as long as your forearm, the woman beside him bore yellow hair, the being beside her was covered in fur with huge black horns and only three fingers, but the last figure struck the you most. An Orc with green skin...
You flinched as the flow of healing stopped and pain returned. Your remaining eye met the gaze of the the red-eyed, green-skinned Orc as he covered your face and your vision and consciousness drifted out of reach once more.
"Can you tell me your name?"
You were seated on a pile of furs, the paladin's cloak still draped around you again, a cup of warm stew held by your shaking hands. You clutched the heated wood of the mug and tried to still yourself. Failing, you took a careful sip and set it down on the stone table before you. Seated on the other side of the table was the paladin, armor discarded, looking even smaller than he had when you had first seen him. He held his own mug of stew and watched you quietly, a sympathetic smile still gracing tired features. You noted the circles beneath his eyes as he closed them and took a sip himself before speaking once more.
His voice was deep, just a shade higher than Father's, and though smooth it held a coarse quality to it, as though it were hoarse but naturally so. It rumbled from his throat in the form of short, guttural Orcish words as he asked you once more, "Can you tell me your name?"
You looked at him helplessly, mouth open slightly, as the ability to speak evaded you. You stared into the swirling stew and saw your eyes. The healthy one stared back at you, wide and tear brimmed, silvery blue as always. You tried to hide your shock as you looked over the destruction of your other eye. It stared back at you, iris now visible without the glow, grey-blue and empty, void of light or energy. It was ugly and shameful, a dark mark, a symbol of how you'd failed to save Kaurin. Your heart and your head throbbed in anguish, you closed your ruined eye as much as you could and covered it with your hand. This was all so sickening, you pushed the stew away.
"You know what?" The paladin suddenly said, rising from his seat and putting his cup down. "The questioning can wait, this is only just your first day among the free again." He came to stand at your side and offered you his hand. "You need rest and Time, for those are the best of healers."
You took hold of his waiting fingers. They were warm and strong, tan and weathered. Just like Kaurin's... You thought mournfully.
As he lead you out of the tent and into the snow, stopping to pull the cloak tighter around you, your thoughts traversed dangerous paths and ventured into the abyss of your mind. This was your fault. After all, you had been the one to fail in saving Kaurin. You should have tried again, even if he was past the time of reconnecting... There had been miracles before, surely... Surely. You had squandered the only chance you'd been given to save him, wasted the Light's gift to you. What good was there in possessing such power if you failed to use it? You should have been the one to fall, Kaurin would not have left your side. Even lacking the power you had, he would never have left you. Even injured as you had been, he would've carried your battered body from the mines, he would have demanded to have you brought with them.
You came to the realization of something; You were nothing like Kaurin.
Your thoughts lingered in the empty stillness of shame that clouded your mind as you and the paladin came to another tent, larger than the one you'd just been in. He lifted the flap for you and you found yourself noticing just how small the paladin really was in comparison to you. He stood a good one and a half feet shorter than your seven foot self, yet his hair- silvery white in color- hung straight and much longer than your own. His narrow green eyes were expressive and bright, kind even despite the intimidating, shadowy green glow that sent tendrils of energy swirling into the air like smoke every time he blinked. Spidery scars ran across both his ears, as if someone had tried to remove them at one point. His cheekbones were high and his jaw strong, another scar crept across his right cheek and onto the bridge of his nose. Yet despite such prominent features, his face was much softer than that of any man you'd ever come across. There were no rigid horns, no large nose or huge eyes, no protruding chin or heavy brow, no tusks, no tendrils. For such a small man, he was well muscled. His arms bulged and his shoulders could've rivaled Kaurin's in terms of broadness. His body was all brawn, but he stared up at you with such sincerity that you knew there was so much more lurking beneath his rough appearance.
Without meaning to, you blurted out the question, "What are you?" And in horror you waited for his face to contort at the blunt question but it never did.
He simply smiled once more, "I am what others, the Draenei people included, would call a 'Blood Elf'." He said "I could explain more about my kind after you rest and we sort everything out, if you would like?"
As you stepped into the darkness of the tent, you gave a nod. Anything to distract you from the torment inside of yourself, anything to give life to your desolate heart.
The night was long and you found yourself surrounded by fellow ex-slaves, some of which were slightly familiar. Your bed was the upper level of a bunkbed and the heat from a fire pit in the center of the large tent-like building made it impossible for you to rest. It reminded you of the mines, the stifling heat and the scent of smoke and ash and something eternally burning. You tossed and turned on the furs. Even though your old miner's clothes had been replaced with a soft new shirt and pair of pants, and you had been washed by the healers in your unconsciousness, you felt uncomfortable and dirty again- just as you had in the pens.
For a moment you drifted off, only to feel the ghost of familiar arms wrapping around your midsection and holding you close. You sighed and lifted your hand in search of the security that Kaurin's body offered, but found only empty air. Your eyes stung, both of them, and you wished you could blame the smoke that rose steadily through the opening in the tent's roof and into the night sky for your tears. Of course you knew the truth behind them, and desperate to escape the suffocating confinement of the tent, you wrapped the paladin's cloak about yourself fled into the open night air.
You gasped at the cold again, your breath clouding in the frigid air before dissolving into the slight, chilly breeze. You shuffled your way out further into the night, feeling off balance with half of your vision so suddenly taken from you. You willed yourself to ignore what was missing in favor of distraction and looked up. Above you one million stars stared down and the moons cast light over the snow and made it sparkle as if the sky and the ground had become one and the same. You found yourself unable to look down. Memories of brighter, happier, simpler times twinkled through your head. How many times had you stared up at this same sky? Millions of times, you were sure. So why, then, did it seem so foreign to you now?
There was a sudden shuffling from the left of you, the crunch of ice and snow under someone's foot. Your head whipped around to see a man- a Blood Elf as you'd learned they were called- standing a few feet away. At first glance you almost mistook him for the paladin but now that you saw beyond the green glow of his eyes, you realized that he looked almost nothing like the man who'd saved you. The newcomer was decidedly male and stood as tall as you, maybe taller, with a hair the color of sunsets in Talador tied back so that half was up and the rest fell to frame his face and shoulders before hanging all the way to his thighs in length. He was slimmer than your rescuer, that much you could tell even from beneath the armor he bore. His skin was pale under the light of the moons and you'd never seen a person with such long ears before. He looked so alien standing there under Draenor's familiar skies and you knew he could not possibly be from your world. A brief pang of curiosity made you long for the company of the paladin and his promises of explanation.
You locked eyes with him for a moment and felt yourself nearly shrink under his gaze of complete, unarguable dominance. You fidgeted where you stood and began to turn toward the tent again when his gaze faltered and for a moment the hardened shield of dominance fell away to reveal emotion. Sadness, hopelessness, anger, and fear darkened his gaze and this time he was the one to fidget where he stood as his feelings were exposed. In that moment you recognized him for the honesty in his eyes, for they held a gaze like your own. He bore the eyes of someone who had lost everything. In that moment you wondered what he'd lost, who he'd lost. You wondered if he saw the same in you.
There were more footsteps and you scrambled from the path as they came closer. A green-skinned Orc rounded the corner from behind another tent and stopped to salute the silent man who stood out alone in the snow. "Evening, Commander Jaerim."
The Blood Elf merely nodded in return and the green-skinned Orc continued on his way, sparing a glance in your direction as you disappeared back into the tent- unable to sort through your thoughts.
Eventually exhaustion over-ruled discomfort and you dreamt of smoke and fires, rock and stone crumbling down onto your head, green-eyed aliens, and Kaurin's lifeless body that refused to breathe. You awoke screaming.