A/N: This will hopefully be the last update before my baby makes his entrance. No worries about future updates, though; the story is all written and waiting. I'll find time to keep posting. Thanks for the nice reviews I've been getting!
Teyagah was in an unusually good mood the next day, a state which Galmak didn't find reassuring. She laughed and she praised his progress less parsimoniously than usual; she largely refrained from her customary scornful remarks or looks at Hyara. Var'kan shared her relative merriment, perhaps simply because he enjoyed seeing his mate in a good mood, or perhaps for other, more sinister reasons. Galmak tried to treat the day no differently and stolidly ignored any praise or banter they tossed at him. In here at least they had comparative quiet from the slowly disappearing runes outside the village. Hyara found that, just as she'd hoped last night, her exhaustion caught up with her and she was able to doze in peace for an hour or so.
When she did open her eyes again, she found it was Teyagah's foot that had nudged her awake.
"You aren't learning control for yourself by being asleep, lazy girl," the undead laughed. "Growing fat too, I see, from sitting around here. Amazing what a difference a few weeks can make in that belly!"
Praying that Teyagah wouldn't recognize the sudden fear in her eyes, Hyara hugged her arms across her front and pulled a blanket over to cover herself. She dropped her head as if in shame, but she could feel the undead's inscrutable amber eyes still staring at her. Galmak growled a warning across the room and the undead snapped back at him, but she turned on her heel and left Hyara alone and inwardly shaking. Her suspicious, worrying mind wondered if there'd been more than the surface meaning to Teyagah's comment. But the undead didn't even bother shooting another smug glance at the downtrodden draenei on the floor, and Hyara relaxed again for the moment. That is, until she caught the meaningful look that passed between Teyagah and Var'kan, which had gone unnoticed by Galmak, wrapped as he was in concentration once more.
Before Hyara could speculate or worry about it, Var'kan spoke up.
"Sit down and rest for a moment, young brother."
Puzzled, Galmak pulled his attention back into the room to see Var'kan motioning him downward to the floor in the center of the room. It was only late morning and he seemed to be doing better under the strain today, a detail which surely hadn't escaped the undead's notice, but he shrugged to himself and took the break they offered. Only at that moment did he sense inexplicable worry from Hyara and he assessed Var'kan guardedly.
"Am I finally going to learn why I'm here?" he guessed.
Var'kan grinned. "Oh, you are here for exactly the reason we told you – to learn the art of the Shadow. That is one of our two primary objectives for you here."
"One of two." Galmak didn't like the sound of that.
"Later stages of our plan, whelp. You remember we spoke of those," Teyagah interjected.
"You have reached such a point that we believe a later stage can commence," Var'kan nodded.
"That being?" Galmak growled, not caring for their caginess. Were they going to tell him or weren't they? It was making him edgy, and Hyara too, by the feel of it.
Var'kan's one eye regarded him for several beats, his head cocked to one side and a half-grin curled around his yellowed tusks. Then he said, "I imagine you'll remember quite some time ago, young brother, when I ventured that you would see undeath as a punishment rather than a reward. We believe the time has come when that is no longer the case."
For a moment Galmak was so stunned that his reaction wasn't entirely rational, and he laughed. He glanced to his left at Hyara and found that she wasn't half as amused. "You can't be serious. You actually think I'd accept that now? What's changed in your minds, that you think I'd want that? Have we gotten chummier? Have you treated us better this time around and shown me what a fun time it is being undead?" It really was funny. Couldn't Hyara see it? They couldn't possibly be serious; they must be angling for something altogether different.
But Var'kan, and for a wonder, Teyagah too, only stared at him in patient silence and let him wind down. Now Galmak felt the full force of Hyara's horror rising inside him and knew that it was his own too. They were serious. They meant to turn him into one of them.
"Thanks, but I'll pass," he said with a sorry attempt at levity.
"I think you won't," Var'kan countered with another of his horrible grins. "Because you love her." He waved a hand in Hyara's direction and Galmak felt an odd chill.
"What are you talking about?" the young orc growled.
"I believe we also discussed a long time ago that undeath means a kind of immortality, and I pointed out what your own mortality means for her. It means that your life, in terms of hers, will be like what perhaps one year would be to you. And do you know what that means, young brother? It will mean one of two things: she will forget you almost utterly after you have died. What will these few brief decades mean to her a thousand years from now, or five thousand? She will go on, fall in love and mate again, have draenei children. Or if you don't care for that possibility, then here is the other: she will remember you all too well and live in misery and loneliness for millennia. Which of those alternatives would you prefer for her? Or you may choose immortality in undeath and neither of those possibilities need come to pass. It's a remarkable gift we're giving you here, the power to decide."
"In addition, your power will be all the greater," Teyagah added. "Living flesh constrains the Shadow in ways you needn't experience in undeath; our powers draw closer to those of even a few of the Legion's eredar like this."
Numbly, he tried to process what they said. Yes, he was being manipulated and he knew it. They were using Hyara, ironically, to attempt to convince him. He could feel her grief and terror across the room more loudly in his mind than he could hear her actual soft tears. The Shadow had long slipped out of his control but he could feel nothing but this new distress from her.
"Furthermore," Teyagah said softly, her voice like the hiss of a snake in his ears, "you have seen what this bond can do to her and I know you can feel her pain. There is no way to break it but one – your death could free her forever. Would you deny her that freedom when you have the power to grant it, whelp? Would you hold onto her selfishly to satisfy your perverted needs?"
"It wouldn't end there, though, would it?" Galmak snarled back. "You'd want my eternal devotion to the Legion. You wouldn't give me this 'gift' for no reason."
Var'kan waved a hand. "Perhaps. But then, perhaps not. I think that choice we would leave to you, young brother. Your power is too great to be wasted. If it takes you some years to come around to our way of thinking, we are willing to wait and take you when you are ready to come to us of your own accord. I think you will discover, though, that the Horde has little love for one of your considerable talent."
That they would leave the decision to him almost elicited a guffaw of disbelief. Why exactly did they want him as an undead, if it would make him so much more powerful? Did they still believe they'd be able to control him, or did they think they'd have him fully tamed by the time he'd finished his training? No, Galmak didn't think they'd bank on either of those wobbly solutions to a potentially big problem. On the contrary, he read a far more sinister explanation. Back in the cave in the Aerie Peaks, he remembered trying to reconcile this woman, Teyagah, with the grandmother his mother had told him about. She'd been strict and hard, brutal and bloodthirsty on many occasions, but Serlah had still spoken of her with love and grief at the loss. This woman did not match up, in many ways, with his grandmother. And the only reason for that that Galmak could come up with was that somehow undeath had changed her. This was exactly what they intended for him, and he sensed that they hoped his shock would chase any of these questions from his mind. They believed he would not be quite the same person when he awoke to his second life, that his goals and morals, in the course of whatever they would do to raise him, would somehow become aligned with their own. And how could he say it wasn't true?
"Galmak," came Hyara's voice tremulously from across the room. "If I have anything at all to do with this decision, then hear what I say now and don't let them do this to you. They don't know anything about us, love. Don't listen to their arguments."
He stared at her and their pain lanced along the bond like a bullet bouncing between them. He shook his head, turned back to the undead, but then Var'kan chuckled. Despite the laughter, there was a steel-hard set to the lines around his eyes.
"Don't think that she could not share your new life, young brother. Undeath would do nothing to quell your desire for her, if that's what you are worried about. But in addition… she could find a place of her own in the Legion, if you choose that path. I believe I mentioned before that a part-eredar was of interest to some? Yes. We are aware of a way by which the transformation could be completed. She would gain quite a new status among us, and doubtless you with her, I might add."
All Galmak could hear behind that was a horrible threat. Hyara audibly gulped a sob and covered her face with a hand. He clenched his teeth even as he forced his breathing to even out and the rest of his body to relax. "Do I have time to think about this?" he managed.
Now Teyagah showed her usual impatience with a growl and a petulant tap of her foot; Var'kan, on the other hand, gave one sharp nod.
"You will have some little time," he conceded. "Your training isn't complete, although we are ready, should you make the right decision. We will continue with your training for now."
After that, the day dragged along in a painful blur of Shadow magic and written runes, spoken and silent spells. His mind did its best to focus and remember, but his thoughts were tied by a short rope to the morning's revelations. They wanted him to die and they wanted to bring him back in service to the Burning Legion. They threatened him with guilt over Hyara's condition, sorrow for his short future with her, and fear of what they'd do to her if he didn't agree. And above all, what could he really do about it? They could decide to kill him any minute and he probably wouldn't be able to stop them. Then they'd raise him, and that would be that. He found himself thinking about the one hope that seemed to be left: the slowly disappearing runes outside the village.
His grandmother's patience, and her mood, had gone considerably downhill since he hadn't immediately embraced their offer. What had she expected, he wondered, as he made a better attempt at concentration just for the sake of pacifying her a little. She tended to take her frustration out verbally on Hyara in the form of occasional vicious little jabs or threats to modify the runes when she thought he wasn't trying in earnest. Today, though, Hyara didn't even seem to be hearing the insults, just as Galmak could barely scrape together any focus for his training. They discovered that they kept shooting looks at each other and exchanging little barbs of fear. How much time would he actually have before Teyagah ultimately lost patience, and would Var'kan keep her schedule or his own in deciding when enough was enough?
But he had to keep going, the reasons for that being clearer now than ever.
"No," Teyagah snapped at him when he stumbled over one of the words in a more complex incantation. "Even your little draenei whore would know that word. It is not so hard; barely even Demonic!"
Galmak snarled out the correct wording viciously this time and aimed the spell straight at her. The Shadow blasted violently outward from his hands and for a split second he wondered if Teyagah would survive it, but then, with a thunderous crack and an explosive burst of light that left him seeing ghost images for a few seconds, the energy of his cast splintered like a goblin rocket car running full speed into a stone wall. He staggered backward and fell, cursing the runes, only to look up to Teyagah's and Var'kan's laughter.
"A valiant effort, young brother," Var'kan chuckled as he shook his head in rueful amusement.
"Rather good, in fact," Teyagah said, rubbing salt in the wound.
Hyara felt like screaming at them. She slapped an angry palm against the floor and said with a murderous glare, "My people's spirits should have killed you when you came here, before you enslaved them!"
"Idiot girl," Teyagah laughed. "They couldn't have harmed a hare. They were weak and directionless when we arrived here, exactly as they were intended to be. Completely trapped in their own misery and utterly powerless. Even now, they will do nothing without our direct orders."
A few beats passed before Hyara ventured in confusion, "…As they were intended?"
"Of course. Why would we come here in particular, stupid girl? We knew what we came to find. We were in the army that killed these defenders, and we were in the group of warlocks assigned to make their downfall more painful and insulting. We kept them from dying in their precious Light. We bound their souls to this village."
Reaching to the table behind her, she lifted the lid of a polished wood box and plucked out a pebble very like the stones they'd used around the blood pool. This one, however, was covered in a dry cake of dirt. Hyara could faintly make out the bluish pulse of a rune below the grime.
"These were simply scattered throughout the village to entrap any draenei souls that died nearby," the undead continued, noting with malicious glee the look of anguish on Hyara's face. "We've had difficulty finding them all, but we have found most of them, I believe. Those we've found we can take wherever we wish outside the village, along with the companion runestones your mate supplied for us." She fingered the blue vial around her neck and snapped the lid shut on the box of stones.
"So that's how you plan on moving your army," Galmak said grimly, and Var'kan shrugged.
"Perhaps when we are ready," he answered noncommittally.
Desperate fury burst so suddenly in Hyara's mind that Galmak didn't even recognize it until she was already moving. With a cry, she shot up from her nest of pillows and sprang across the room toward Teyagah. Unbalanced by the suddenness of an attack from an unexpected direction, the undead threw up her hands at the last minute and managed to catch Hyara by a horn before she could be bowled to the ground. Sharp fingernails sliced down Teyagah's pallid face and drew three beaded lines of black fluid. The undead screeched, more a sound of enraged annoyance than of pain, and twisted her body barely in time to avoid a kick from a razor-edged hoof. By this time Var'kan's smooth façade had cracked and Galmak felt the hiss and lick of a spell welling into the undead's hands. He threw himself into the fray with a roar at his mate, in the way of Var'kan's anticipated cast.
Teyagah, however, had only taken a few brief seconds to come to herself. With unnatural strength, she shoved Galmak off balance and sent him to the ground for the second time in a few minutes, grabbed Hyara's other horn, then slid out a foot with lightning speed and kicked the much taller draenei's hooves out from under her. Hyara thumped jarringly to the stone floor on her tail, wheezing for breath and holding her belly.
Teyagah, still gripping the draenei by her horns, looked calmly to her mate. "No magic," she said coolly. Reluctantly, with his one eye narrowed to a burning slit, Var'kan let the spell drain away and lowered his hands. Galmak scrambled to Hyara's side.
"Let her go," he snarled.
Teyagah held the horns a few more seconds with an unfathomable look at her grandson, then slowly removed her hands and stepped back. She touched her fingers to her cheek and wiped at the oozing fluid. Already the pallid green skin beneath had begun to knit with dark magic. She stared down at Hyara coldly and her fingers seemed oddly stiff at her sides, as if she held them so to keep her fists from clenching.
"Get back to your corner, you disgusting, hoofed animal, and do not interfere again. Your kind calls us barbaric beasts, but I have seen you in the heat of battle too. My mate's blood stained the ground as dark as any draenei's blood." She paused, and Hyara, regaining her breath now, marveled to see the undead face mottled dark with emotion just as any living face would be. Teyagah leaned close and gathered the front of Hyara's shirt in an uncanny grip. "Think what other lives you endanger," she hissed, then hauled the draenei up and tossed her backward like a doll.
They left Galmak alone for a while afterward. Hyara cried into his shoulder very quietly, although she wanted to howl and rage at their entire situation. She was furious at the undead, who had conspired to torment her people even after they'd been massacred, and furious at herself for losing control and taking a hot iron to the thin ice they already walked on. She was furious too for her tears now and the weakness they showed to utterly unsympathetic beings.
By this time, Galmak had found that he was simply very tired and a little numb. They were at the end of the line, backed into a tight corner once again. Something had to be done and he was the only one to do the job. Hyara and the twins depended on him.
"Love, I'm going to sleep while I can," he whispered gently. She was quiet now and only nodded against his shoulder. Shifting to rest his head on a pillow, he closed his eyes. The ancestors favored him today and he fell almost instantly into deep sleep.
***
It was his turn to be rudely prodded awake by Teyagah's foot.
"It's time for you to be walked and fed," she sneered as he opened his eyes with a yawn. Hyara was awake and sitting with her knees hugged tightly, staring across the room and pretending as if Teyagah were nowhere nearby. Var'kan was gone from the room again and Galmak wondered if he might be out hobbling through the village in search of more of the shades' old binding runestones. He stood, helped Hyara up, and then something made him look Teyagah in the eye. For a few seconds he searched her face, realizing that he was almost desperate to find something of the woman she might once have been, the woman his mother had known so many years ago, who had given her life for the slim chance that her daughter might escape the misery of the internment camps. But he saw only the usual glare and the lips thinned by cruelty; the amber eyes had once been brown like his own but the old expressiveness was long gone, replaced by the fathomless yellow glow.
"Was it death that made you so bitter, Grandmother?" he asked, not knowing what made him say it since it would probably only enrage her. He dropped his eyes again and headed for the door where Lahgga or Jas'ka would be waiting outside to take them into the ruins.
But a steely grip caught his arm and he stiffened against an attack as he turned around again. Teyagah's eyes blazed steadily at him. Her fingers relaxed, then fell away. "Not death," she spat. "There is no harm in dying when the time is right." She strode forward and flung open the door, then barked down the hallway as Jas'ka appeared to herd them outside.
Just as he'd feared and hoped, the Shadow howled stronger than ever through his mind as he stepped from the room. He was ready for the onslaught and swept it swiftly into his mental grip before Hyara had even come out of the room behind him. He was afraid to gauge the power of it today, afraid he might lose his grip and then everything, including their one chance at escape, would be lost, but he tentatively tested the feel of the magic. It coursed through him in a barely manageable flood, dark and cold, wearing relentlessly at the strong but ductile walls he'd learned to build in his head. He sensed that there was very little standing between him and full power now; Palla and Gink must have accumulated quite a pile of runes by this time, perhaps had even stepped up their collection. Only a few more, he urged his wolf, even though she couldn't hear him at this distance. Maybe two more nights. He'd have no choice but to try then anyway. Their time was almost up.
Hyara led the way to their customary distance from the sentry tauren and troll – not too far, but far enough that they would have some privacy for a conversation – and sat on the stump of a fallen wall with her back turned to their prison. Her eyes, blank with absence from the narrow world they'd inhabited for too long now, traced the familiar view of the village spread before them down the short stretch of terraced stone.
"I need you to be ready any day now," he said quietly. He didn't sit but he brushed her long hair aside and laid a hand on the nape of her neck. He stroked his fingers gently down the delicate tendrils behind her ears, fearing the weary numbness he felt in her.
She nodded, let her head droop. Her voice was very small and tired when it finally came out. "I'll be ready for whatever happens. I only wish the twins could be born already and safe back with Kereth at Karkun Kamil. Galmak… what do you think will happen to them if… if I die here."
"You're not going to die, love."
She barely seemed to hear him. "They're half-draenei. I don't know where they'd go."
Then he realized what she meant and his legs felt a little weak. He finally sat beside her. "They wouldn't stay," he promised earnestly, and prayed his hardest that it was the truth.
"But I would," she said, and smiled faintly. "At least you could come visit me. Then maybe someday you'd find my rune…" She was crying silently, tears sliding down her cheeks in droplets turned green by the sickly light. "Here. Maybe this is it." Into his palm she pressed a dirty black stone, rough, flat, and rounded at the edges with the weak but unmistakable shimmer of magical lines etched below the grit of decades. He stared at it and realized she must have picked it from some cranny in the wall they were sitting on. There was no knowing how many of the things might still be scattered throughout the ruins, or how many hadn't yet found a draenei soul to keep them company.
"You are not going to die," he repeated in a rumbling growl and folded her inside the protection of his arms.
But the words seemed to hang in the air afterward and wouldn't leave his mind in peace.