The Traitor
Chapter Four
Morla played a game with Lo'jar that he had taught her, using only her hands. It was a sort of gambling game, all based on luck and a little psychology. She took two more chocolate beans from her pile and pushed them into the one between she and Lo'jar—the pool.
"Go!" he said, and they both put down their hands. Morla silently whooped. Her dinosaur symbol had conquered Lo'jar's snake.
They were camping in the southern Barrens, having stopped for the night. The camp was set between two big rocks on the slope of a hill, above the open area where thunder lizards usually roamed, and were now lying down and snoring away.
Lo'jar was discussing with them, as he and Morla played, what his plan was. "I figure that our little human will need some practice before we go to Thunder Bluff. There are always bounties lying around, especially in Taurajo or the Crossroads; we'll get information on a few, and see what you can do," he said, poking Morla in the nose. She snorted and shook her head as if trying to rid herself of his germs. Lo'jar made a distasteful sound and looked away.
"B-bounty hunting is ha-hard," Clef put in, having finished stomping out the fire. The moon was rather bright and kept their game well lit.
"I've got practice there," Lo'jar assured the tauren. "After my father died, that was all I did. There are enough troublesome Alliance and renegade Horde—especially those pesky undead—to go around. I already know of some that I was after before I ran into you two unfortunate people." He made a "tsk" noise with his tongue when he lost again, and Morla collected the pot of beans. She sat back, not wanting to give the half-troll a chance to win them back, and began to eat.
"Then," Morla signed, "I get some practice, and we go see Cairne?"
"Exactly."
--
But Achsbor was going to make it difficult for them.
The orc huntress was wanted for killing two goblins venturing to sell their wares outside of Ratchet. The drawing of her posted was a small orc with a light olive skin. Her head was shaved besides an untamed black and red mohawk, arranged in all sorts of strange ways, and tied off at the back so it hung down between her shoulder blades. It was a profile picture, and one could easily see the menacing growl hovering on her thick red lips. There was a pelt draped around her shoulders and the poster told Lo'jar that she had a giant spider for a pet. He shivered. The half-troll hated spiders.
He relayed this information to Morla and Clef. The girl thought over it only briefly before agreeing to find the orc woman and kill her. She was wanted dead—the goblins offered a reward of twenty-five gold. It wasn't much, but it would fill their pockets.
Lo'jar thought that any orc who could take on one, not to mention two, of the well-trained Ratchet goblins would put up a decent fight against Morla's demons, and then he would be able to see if the girl was truly worth his time.
The troll had an idea of where to look first. He had a cousin on his father's side that he had stayed with for a few weeks before he left for the Thousand Needles. The cousin had returned from hunting in the Echo Islands for tigers and had found most of them already dead and skinned; when he came back, he heard that a good number of skins had been sold to the tailor and the chiefs were worried about the tiger populations. He went back to set up possible protections for the creatures, and had run into the jaws of a spider living on one of the larger islands in a den previously inhabited by tigers. This was a fair clue, Lo'jar thought. He couldn't believe his luck.
When they crossed into Durotar after stocking up on supplies—all of which Lo'jar had to buy—the troll put Morla into a hooded cloak. She complained bitterly, gesturing with her hands, but the troll ignored her and Clef tried to placate her by giving her cold water. The cloak was almost too much for her in the already burning heat. A passerby looked at them strangely and Lo'jar gave the other troll a threatening look, and he skittered away.
It took them three days of hard travel to reach the coast outside of Sen'jin village. There, they waited until dark to cross the water, for Morla found it impossible to swim with the wet hood hanging over her face. Lo'jar and Clef stayed to either side of her, for their feet touched the ground below the water's surface when she floated aimlessly on top. Each holding one of the girl's arms, the troll and the tauren managed to find the first island before day broke, and they slept through until the afternoon on the beach.
Lo'jar planned out the attack in his head: they would find the den, isolate the spider away from its master, kill it, and then seek out the orc that was probably hiding from the midday sun.
Instead, they were ambushed as they packed up after lunch.
The spider, hairy and red, tackled the shaman to the ground, having dropped down from one of the great palm trees. Two arrows shot into Clef's side and he howled, prying one out of his ribs while the other stuck in his hip. Morla immediately ran to her companion's aid, where her head was barely missed by another arrow.
Achsbor waited in the water, aiming at the human girl kneeling beside the tauren warrior. The hood had fallen off of her and the huntress could see clearly that the human was trying to pull the second arrow from the tauren's side. She hissed and saw that her spider was evenly matched with the odd-looking troll shaman. Being hunted made her irritable. She was the hunter!
She stepped closer to the island, standing on the sand of a raised inlet. Her arrow sailed past the girl and stuck in the tree behind her. The human didn't seem to notice and continued helping her friend, who roared and turned to look at Achsbor with black, angry eyes. His face contorted and when his aid pulled the arrow free from his hip, he drew out his great axe and moved to stand in front of the little blond thing.
Now that the situation looked slightly more under control—Lo'jar was fending off the poisonous jaws of the spider with increasing success, and Clef was ready to use his warrior's charge—Morla took a hold of herself and calmed down enough to see what must be done.
It was painful this time to draw out Alrash from the ground. He struggled a little and Morla felt as if her eyes would burn out of her skull, but when he came up onto the surface, she immediately was soothed. The imp leaped forward from between Clef's legs and without hesitating he released a great ball of flame into the unsuspecting orc. She cried out and fell backward into the water, sending splashes and sand up and over herself. The fire went out but the skin on the front of her was slightly singed, and she looked to be in a decent amount of pain.
Lo'jar thought the situation looked handled, now, with Morla's powers in the battle—though he did question why she hadn't summoned her netherworld army. Looking at her face he realized she in fact held little control over whatever was happening, and her imp was wild and haphazard. A feeling of dread came over the troll when the spider he had nearly backed into a corner leaped upwards, and over him, directly on top of the fragile human girl.
Achsbor cheered when Ura, her spider, took over and distracted both the troll and the tauren from her. She took the opportunity to land another two arrows into the warrior's leg and one in the shaman's arm. Another arrow was loaded and aimed at the troll's head, but suddenly, the water around her feet began to churn and it drew her attention.
The waves around the little island had turned black. From the sand around them burst up great flaming beings, burning a deadly red and letting off little breaths of pitch-colored smoke. Their arms were bound with gold bracers and their ambiguous heads lolled about on their shoulders. Achsbor could only watch, petrified, as one of the creatures hurled itself at her, unaffected by the water. She let loose one, two, and three arrows into it, but they went through and fell harmlessly to the ground behind the renegade spirit. On the island four more of the demonic elementals surrounded Ura, who was being barely repelled from the pathetic human by her imp.
Lo'jar and Clef both stepped back, bleeding, and watched as the spider was ambushed by Morla's summoned creatures. The spider writhed beneath them and only with a valiant effort did it force them away; then, with a high-pitched scream, it leapt over them and into the water, rolling and pedaling with all eight legs. They saw the hunter follow her pet, and when the flaming beings looked to follow her, Morla stood up, rubbed her head, and they evaporated.
It had happened too suddenly for the troll to process. Morla gave a silent groan and sat down once more, her imp dancing around her. Clef pulled the arrows from his leg and tossed them to the ground. He made no noise as he took out a bag and began to bandage himself. Lo'jar raised his hands and used his magic to work his own wounds.
The troll had assumed Morla was uninjured, and thus left her alone while he tended to himself. After a moment, though, he heard her hiss and saw that she was leaned over, clutching her chest. There was an immense spider bite in her chest and it had begun to swell and turn a flaming red. The imp had disappeared. Lo'jar called over Clef and the two looked over the wound nervously.
"Do you feel weak?" the shaman asked her. She shook her head. "Then it may not be poisonous, though I don't want to leave that up to chance." He leaned over her, summoning a handful of green light, and applied it to the wound. It closed up, but Lo'jar still had a nagging feeling that there was more to it than that.
They stayed on the island again that night to consider how next they would approach their target. "We were surprised this time," Morla signed, "we shall surprise her the next."
"How do you plan to do this?" Lo'jar asked her. She only shook her head and the three thought about it all night, the tauren and troll taking turns watching while the other slept.
In the morning, Clef went to wake up the sleeping girl and he shook her shoulders. Her head bobbed and her mouth drifted open, but she didn't move. Curious, he shook her again, and when there was no response, he called over Lo'jar to check her.
"She's still alive," the troll said, pushing back some of her hair. He sat her up and she seemed to come to consciousness for a brief moment. "What is it? Is it from the bite?" She vaguely signed something that neither of her compatriots could understand. Clef kneeled down and took her face in his big hands, and she opened her eyes.
"P-p-poison?" She nodded her head. Clef looked at Lo'jar and narrowed his eyes. "Heal her, sha-sha-shaman. Heal her." The tauren grit his teeth and gathered up his girl in his lap. She lay there like a rag doll, and her eyes closed again.
"I don't know how to heal poisons," Lo'jar replied calmly. He paced around them for a brief moment. "At least, not on their own. If I can get a sample of the poison that was used on her, I might be able to conjure up an antidote." The troll took Morla's hand up in his and jerked on it, so that she looked at him. "You're not dead yet. If you can kill that damn spider, I can fix you." Clef gave Lo'jar a sinister look, but the shaman ignored him and focused directly on the little blonde girl. With some effort she managed to look back at him and slowly nodded her head.
Lo'jar looked around when he felt a kind of pressure on him, as if part of the world had changed. When he looked back at Morla she was staring at him, and the eyes that were once a deep brown had taken on a reddish hue, and the troll noticed that Clef was no longer moving. Or breathing. There was no wind and the little waves were frozen the way they were. There was a crab on the beach, a little one that had a claw in the air mid-snap in an effort to threaten the group of travelers further up the island. Lo'jar saw all of this at once, and Morla smiled at him.
"They're coming," he heard her say, though her mouth didn't move, and he thought her voice sounded rather like a bell, clearly ringing. The hum of it charmed him, and then everything turned red.
When time resumed, Morla was standing, her hands outstretched on the sand. This sudden change surprised even Clef, who quickly jumped to his feet and, standing beside Lo'jar, watched to see what the human was so excited about.
They could see another small island where they were, but neither of the men had paid it attention, until now. From Morla's palms burst little blue demons, wailing and writhing about in what looked like sheer joy. Beside her had appeared the fiery imp, and it jumped into the water. The two little demons followed him and they went quickly up onto the other island some distance away. Morla's eyes closed and Clef reached forward in case she might fall, but Lo'jar stayed his hand. "She has it under control," he told the tauren.
There was a high-pitched animal scream when the island exploded. Fire burst from it, sending sand flying everywhere, sprouting up into the sky like a geyser. It rained down on the trio and only Morla seemed untouched by it. Following the blast came another wail, and the tiny demons they had seen before hovered above the sand still remaining, immense, nearly fifteen feet tall. One howled and lifted some bleeding, black spider legs, while the other raised up the creature's gory body, which held only one leg and part of its head. The orc huntress was nowhere in sight.
From Morla then came a noise like a whistle, and the demons flew toward her, dropping their goods at her feet. One writhed while the other shrunk, and eventually they both disappeared. The imp returned to her side and began hastily talking. Lo'jar and Clef covered their ears, pained by the sound of the hell-speak, while Morla was riveted by it and was nodding her head with whatever the creature told her. She pointed off toward the island and Alrash danced wildly for a minute, and then ran off back into the ocean.
Clef was morbidly fascinated with the girl's powers. When the fire had gone from her she immediately fell, and he only barely caught her with one outstretched hand. She stumbled backward and came to rest with her head on his knee. The spider body parts lay still on the beach, smoking and reeking horribly of a rotting thing. Lo'jar carefully went to it and using a knife, he cut open the bottom of the head that still remained and poured the liquid that came out of it into his hand. Sitting there, he drew up some energy in his other hand and swirled the black miasma. Eventually it began to coagulate and he cupped his hand up, so some dribbled out, while the rest pooled in his palm. The color became lighter and eventually he drew away his other hand.
The troll roughly pulled open Morla's mouth and tipped his palm over it so the light green liquid dropped onto her tongue, and then he closed her lips once more. She choked for a second and her eyes opened, rolling back into her head, before she swallowed. Clef pushed the troll away and drew her up against him so her face rested against the fur of his chest. After a few moments her eyes rolled back to normal and her mouth opened. She sat up and signed, "What an experience." Lo'jar laughed and Clef hugged her.
Alrash returned after some minutes and spoke again to Morla. She signed to her companions, "The orc is hiding out."
--
"I felt it," Lo'jar told the human girl, as they stood on the island, staring at one another. His goal was this now: he would train her to feel her powers, and use them. There was more to them than met the eye, the troll believed. "I felt it, when you called on them. Can you feel it yet?"
Slowly, Morla nodded her head, and began to sign. "That time there was a little thing in the bottom of me. I had to root around for it, but then it was in my hands and I pulled. Now I think I know where it is." Lo'jar smiled at her.
"Those are the words of a real magician," he said. "Can you do it now?"
Morla didn't move for a moment, still staring at him, and she signed, "I'll try." She stood back and closed her eyes, and for a few seconds she was completely still. Then, light built around her hands and arms, brightest around her fingers and tapering off to her shoulders. She looked at Lo'jar and he told her, "Try to harm me." At this, the girl's eyes grew wide, but he waved a hand at her and hit his head with a fist. "Don't worry, I won't break. I'm pretty strong, too, you know."
Morla nodded her head and raised her hands. In them, the light grew, and then there was a loud pop and the light erupted into flames. The human looked down and appeared frightened of them for a moment, until she realized they weren't hurting her, and then she smiled. Opening her hands wider, Morla concentrated on her opponent and the flames immediately responded, crackling and covering her palms, until they were ready. Then, she loosed them and on cue, the troll simply lit on fire.
He let out a brief cry and jumped, some of the flames singing his hair, others his clothes, but he easily resisted them and they dissipated. Morla hurried over to him, the light in her now gone, and wanted to know how he was. "Don't worry," Lo'jar scolded her, "Go back and try again."
Mouth bobbing open like a fish, Morla stepped back and gave him an indignant look. She didn't need to focus for long that time; the flames came without effort and they turned into eager howling fires, ready to lunge. Morla aimed them this time and instead of merely transferring, they flew in great balls. She braced for the impact, suddenly afraid for her companion, but he raised one hand and a little blip of green blocked both flaming projectiles. They dissipated instantly. Lo'jar grinned at her and the girl growled.
Without warning Morla's whole body shifted colors. The rosy hue of her skin became dark, and green and black swirled around her arms. Instead of fire she summoned fierce black, balls of which rotated around her arms like dogs, growling and hissing. Holding her hands out in front of her, Morla released the shadow bolt and it careened at Lo'jar with incredible speed, a trail of green and black, bubbling and gurgling, following it. The troll almost didn't raise his defenses fast enough; he drew his enormous sword from his back and placed it in front of him; a bit of the blast singed the sides of his hands, which were unprotected.
"Whoa there," Lo'jar called, nervously lowering his sword. "I didn't expect that."
"I can see that," Morla signed back. She shook her head and sighed, feeling a little exhaustion.
"Need some water?" the troll asked, walking up beside her. He offered her the water skin and she took it.
--
Without her pet, the huntress shouldn't prove much more of a task to the three fighters. Clef, with his well-trained defensive skills, would lure her out; Lo'jar would set up totems and Morla would summon her offense. "This is your test," the troll told her.
Morla felt a certain sense of dread. She was not brave, she knew; in the face of danger, she ran. She didn't deny this simple fact. But she wanted to protect Clef, and to make Lo'jar proud of her. These seemed to matter more than anything else.
They stood in the water between the two islands, a space of less than a hundred yards. Clef held his great axe with one hand and pressed his other hand against his chest as he walked with small splashes. A few sea birds cawed, and there was a general ambience of waves rolling up onto the island beaches. It was near midday and the sun had climbed to its highest. There was blue sky and warm air.
Morla tensed when Clef walked up onto the beach of the enemy island. He stood and waited for a moment, and then looked around with his free hand covering his eyes to shield them from the sunlight. He appeared to see nothing and went forward again toward the den where the explosion had quite obviously occurred the day before. It would have seemed reasonable for the orc to leave the area after what had happened before, but they had kept a careful eye on the place and there had been no movement. Either she had remained, or the spider had been there alone. Lo'jar, the strategist, doubted the second.
Quite suddenly, Clef lurched, and looked down to see that he had stepped directly into a large metal trap. It clenched around his ankle with great teeth, buried in his flesh, and caused blood to gush from the open wounds. The trap failed, however, to bring him down, and he only stood with ox-like stability and stared at it in disbelief. Morla cried out to her friend and as she expected, no sound came out; she lunged forward to help him, but Lo'jar held her back with one big hand on her arm and she couldn't struggle past him.
Clef looked around and saw no movement. He didn't want to make himself vulnerable by leaning down to free himself from the trap, and his thick skin protected him more than he expected, so he waited instead for something to happen.
The tauren's well-developed, animal-like senses detected the huntress as soon as she appeared. She came up from the water on the other side of the island from Lo'jar and Morla, so they were invisible to her; the orc had an arrow aimed directly at Clef's head. With a shake of his ears he signaled his companions.
Lo'jar immediately summoned two totems, one of healing, and one of flame. He unsheathed his sword and indicated to Morla that she stay reasonably out of sight, and at a good enough distance to cast her spells. When the troll rushed in, she pulled up the little piece of herself and Alrash appeared in a puff of smoke.
"Yes?" Morla pointed at the orc, who was now firing arrows at Lo'jar while unsheathing her own axe. "It will be done."
The imp leaped at Achsbor, followed closely by two immense fire demons. The huntress was surrounded, it seemed, but she easily loosed an arrow into Lo'jar's side and rendered him momentarily harmless; she kept a reasonable distance from Clef, so his own axe was useless, and instead focused her efforts on the hell spawn that threatened her.
When the orc slashed at Alrash with her axe, she felt a pain in her legs, and then her back. She looked down and saw that she was on fire.
Morla had come up too far on the island and Achsbor saw her. As the human released a shadow bolt onto her enemy, the orc readied an arrow and without hesitation, it released. To Lo'jar and Clef, who watched, it happened in slow motion: Morla's eyes followed the arrow and its black tip, which embedded itself into her collar. It went directly through her and poked out on the other side, a little dark blood coating the sharp end as it protruded from her back. Morla then looked back up at the orc as she was obliterated by the great double fists of the two demons, having been rendered immobile by the shadow bolt. Her body seemed to implode, like she had swallowed dynamite, and it was the most violent death any of them had ever witnessed.
--
"Morla!" Lo'jar grabbed the girl, ignoring the arrow that was in his own side, and sat her down. Her mouth hung open and a little blood dripped from her lolling tongue. She was too young, he thought immediately. Too vulnerable. She wasn't cut out for this role.
"Th-this wh-whole idea is... is foolish!" Clef cried, loudly, stomping one great hoof. He had freed himself from the trap by breaking the whole stupid contraption with one blow of his immense axe. The tauren echoed Lo'jar's thoughts exactly. "She c-c-cant do th-this!" He stooped down and broke off the tip of the arrow, dropping it to the ground, and brushed some of Morla's hair from her face. Blood streamed down her back and front where the skin and muscle were penetrated.
"Let me," Lo'jar commanded, pushing the great brute out of the way. With a little more care he held the girl by the neck with one hand to steady her, and pulled out the arrow shaft with the other fist. She cried out silently and lurched forward, more blood rushing out her mouth. "It probably went by her throat, too," the half-troll said with a grimace.
"H-heal her, then!" Clef told him, giving him an incredulous look.
"I don't know how much I can do," replied Lo'jar calmly, hoping to rein in the beast. "Hold her up, so the wound doesn't get in the sand." Clef obeyed and wrapped his arms around the small human's waist, lamenting again and again that she hadn't the same thick skin as he. If she died, he wouldn't know what to do. Would he go home? Would he train harder? He remembered the bag he kept with him and wondered what was inside it. Would he look? Clef felt Morla's warm blood coat his chest and he closed his eyes, struggling to keep himself from panicking. It would be the end, if he freaked out now. His heart thundered in his chest and pumped blood past his ears, but he ignored the howling voice in the back of his mind and focused on the girl in his arms.
Lo'jar positioned one hand over the wound and funneled his life energy into it. He felt some of his own drain away and he gasped, now doubly aware of his own wound, but knowing that still, he would survive; the human's future wasn't as certain, and so he allowed her to take even some of his own life into her. She heaved, the muscle repairing and the skin trying to knit itself together, but still blood came through and still her breaths grew shorter and shallower. Lo'jar thought that besides his mother, he hadn't cared for the welfare of another being this much. He hated humans. He hadn't known this one for more than a few months, but he looked at her thick, black eyelashes and smooth, creamy skin and knew that there was something about this creature that needed to be kept. She had importance, and someday, he would be rewarded for his heroism.
The troll gagged as Morla's body seemed to reach out to him and draw in what he offered. The muscle was fixed and the blood flow stopped; her eyes flew open and Clef had to draw his hands away at the burning heat coming through her. Lo'jar had to hold her, instead, when she fell against him and passed out.
Carefully they carried her back to the camp and laid her down in the tent, leaving her there. Lo'jar pulled out the arrow and made sure it wasn't poisoned before bandaging himself, too weak to even attempt healing. He rummaged through his bag for a potion and found none, so he went to his own tent and sat there for a time, making sure the bleeding stopped before he tried to sleep. Clef sat and waited, and when neither of his friends awoke, he went out and caught fish for dinner. He put them over the spit, and started the fire, and listened to them crackle and simmer as the afternoon wore on into night.
--
Morla signed nothing when she came to the next morning. Lo'jar had gone to the other island and luckily the orc's body hadn't drifted away into the ocean, so he took off the head and put it in a bag, tying the top shut tightly. In silence they swam back to shore, with Clef carrying Morla on his shoulders. They wrapped her in the cloak and she didn't complain.
Though Lo'jar had healed her, the wound seemed to still bother the human. She often clutched it with her hand and her breath would hitch, but her companions said nothing, for there was nothing they could do.
The travel to the Crossroads was short but the heat seemed to wear on all of them, and by the time they arrived, all three were pale in the face. Lo'jar turned in the bounty, with the head in the bag, to the man who had posted the warrant. They only got half of the money.
"We did as the poster asked," Lo'jar said, "dead or alive, preferably dead!"
"Did you read the fine print?" the stout, pug-nosed orc asked. Looking weary, Lo'jar shook his head. "The family wanted the statuette she had stolen from the two goblins, as well. You didn't bring that, and so you only get half of the reward."
The troll was too tired and irritated to argue, and he didn't want to be put in jail himself, so he took the money and left.
They stayed for a night at the inn and tried to nurse themselves back to health; only Lo'jar and Clef succeeded. The troll hoped that whatever bargaining chip Clef had with him would work on the tauren chief, so the girl could get some proper medical attention.