Soo uh, sorry this sucks. There will be goodness for you tomorrow, so check back then. This is just stuff that needed to get done.

The Traitor

Chapter Eight

"This audience is an honor," the tauren said in his guttural voice, forcing the formality.

"Stand up, my friend," the orc replied, walking over to the table on the side of the small room. "Drink?"

"Always," Cairne replied, coming over to take the cup offered to him.

"So then, moving along, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

Cairne cleared his throat, and from his pocket he removed the little rolled-up note and the small, black stone. Walking over to the orc, who was of rather unusual and incredible size, Cairne gave him the two items and then stepped back once more. Thrall gave his fellow chief a quizzical look.

"I have in my possession a weapon of rather important power," the tauren explained. He gestured to the note, and Thrall opened it. He read quickly, and his brow furrowed. "The little human has been serving me and Apothecary Zamah for some time. She is an unusual creature."

"You've been harboring a human?" Thrall's tone was more irritated than incredulous.

Cairne only nodded his head and went on. "She has been loyally working for the Horde's purposes for some time now. I believe what this old woman said, for never has she been wrong in a prediction. I have also been informed that the girl may provide some clues to hidden activities by the scourge; I can give more details on this later, when you receive her."

The chief cleared his throat and waited for Thrall to respond. He was silent and looked over the note a few times, clenching the rock in one hand until his knuckles turned white. After a very long moment he took a deep breath.

"I wouldn't know what to do with her," the orc told his friend quite honestly, his expression changing from frustration to hopelessness. He threw both the note and the rock down on the table beside his throne chair and began to pace. He stroked his chin a few times.

"She is proficient at infiltration," Cairne began, "but there is much more to her than that. She was trained by Matheas Brownwater, the undead warlock." Thrall's head jerked up. "Yes, I know you recognize the name. He cultivated her. She is loyal to the Horde, and I believe she can become our best kept secret. The girl is still young in human terms. Train her right, and we could take out our enemies from the inside."

The orc sat down on his chair with a very heavy sound and rubbed his forehead. "This is going to need some thought." Cairne nodded. "I can't guarantee I'll take her off your hands. I will consider your offer." The two chiefs shook hands and when the tauren left, Thrall murmured something under his breath and hid away both the objects in a drawer.

--

Zamah was extremely satisfied with her protégé, but Morla only watched the apothecary in boredom until she was dismissed.

This was how the next few months went on. Every day she went to the pools and was taught a new recipe, and ordered to gather a certain type and amount of herb. She would be informed of her next mission, and Morla spent from one to two weeks creating the potion, disease or other type of alchemistic product she would need, gathering herbs from all over the world, until she was ready to leave. Not once did she return to the little village in the hills, though she was informed by Zamah that action had been taken on the part of the Mill and a good portion of the workers had been infected. Though none had died, the idea of diseasing the produce caught on and the forsaken worked ever harder to create the perfect plague.

Morla spent much of her time on the wyverns and bats, or the zeppelins and boats, trying her hardest not to think about how many lives she helped to take, how many lives she made miserable and hopeless. Slowly, she drew away from her people and Clef, and focused harder on her work. The tauren often awoke to the girl being gone, with a quick note left. "I'm practicing," she would say, and Clef found her those times behind the inn luring lions and wolves up onto the bluff for the purpose of obliterating them.

Though he knew he hadn't an incredibly sharp edge, Clef could observe, and he began to grow worried for his little human friend. She seemed to be with Alrash more than him recently, and she had come to signing what she felt less and less. However, her powers were growing again and this seemed to please her; when Morla was pleased, Clef usually was pleased, but he felt she had become dangerously engrossed in her self-improvement. When they were traveling, she often sought great opponents to test her abilities on, and never once did the tauren see her injured in battle. Though he should have been grateful for this, her aura of being untouchable worried him.

After a few months, Clef finally took the girl aside when they went downstairs for dinner one night. "I want to s-speak with y-you," he said, and Morla raised her eyebrows with worry. He shook his head. Rarely did the tauren stutter when speaking to her. "I think that y-you are t-taking this... this thing too seriously." Unsure of what to say, Clef rubbed his head and sat down on one of the big benches near the door of the inn. A traveler came in and spoke with the innkeeper, momentarily distracting him, until Morla retrieved his attention by placing a small hand on his arm. Clef cleared his throat.

"What I am s-saying is... is that I th-think that... that... you are being a-a-absorbed by it." He fiddled with his fingers. "T-take a b-break. There are m-more important th-th-things."

Morla laughed then, a silent expression, enunciated by a little hiss of air escaping. "More important?" she signed to him, and Clef was surprised that he could detect sarcasm in unspoken words. When she opened her hand to talk once more, they were interrupted by the innkeeper, who had approached without either of them noticing.

"This is for you," the keeper said, holding out a letter to Morla. Furrowing her brows and completely forgetting the discussion at hand, she took the note and opened it.

"Dear Morla," it read. "I write to you from Grom'gol, in Stranglethorn Vale. I am currently being held in a cell here for supposed theft and attempted murder—counts which I can attest to being a falsity, for reasons I cannot explain in this letter. What they do want is money. They will not review my case if they are presented with twenty-five gold. This is asking a lot, but I don't know of anyone else.

"Please write as soon as you can. I have faith in you, little human." There was a signature in Troll that Morla had trouble making out. Before Clef could snatch the letter away from her, she folded it back up and tucked it into her back pocket. He gave her an odd look.

"What was it?" She shook her head, and tuned her expression to one of disinterest.

"Nothing," she signed, and smiled. Swiftly changing the subject, Morla told him, "You may go with me to Booty Bay, but I will have to travel completely on my own to the rebel camp. Stranglethorn Vale is too busy and hostile for us to be caught together. I can take care of myself fine there."

Clef opened his mouth to object, but looking at the new hardness in his girl's brown eyes, he knew it would be of no use. Instead, the tauren sighed, nodded his head, and got up from the table without saying anything more. He went up the stairs and Morla took out her money bag to look through it. Only five gold. She grinned wickedly and put it away.

--

Zamah called Morla in the day before she was set to leave for her next mission.

"I have a summons for you," the apothecary said, putting away some of her things on the desk. "Cairne would like to have a word with you. Privately." She gave Morla a funny look, and the girl responded in like. "Don't worry, you won't need to talk back. In fact, I discourage it." The woman tucked her hands behind her back. "This may be the last favor you do for me." Morla winced when she forced a thin smile, contorting her little half-nose, and gestured off toward the little entrance to the pools. The warlock only nodded her head and left. Zamah said nothing else.

It was a short walk across the bridge and up to the top bluff, where she found the chief's longhouse. After she went in, two guards effectively blocked the door, and Morla was a little unnerved by the dark of the room. Cairne Bloodhoof sat in his fur-covered chair, his head cocked to one side and supported by his elbow on the chair's wooden arm. When she came in, he took a moment to look up at her.

"Ah," he said, leaning forward in the chair to examine her fully. "We need to make this quick. I will be sending you from my care to that of Thrall, chief of the Horde in Orgrimmar. You will no longer continue your training here or with Apothecary Zamah. However, he has yet to accept my offer of your loyalty." He rubbed his chin and there was a nervous smirk lingering on his lips; worried that he might be sending the innocent creature to her death, but also satisfied. She was almost out of his hands, and they were still bloodless.

Morla made no movement and kept her eyes steadily on the chief. "I have encouraged your powers because it may eventually ensure victory for the Horde. But know this: you are human, and you are not one of us. Whatever amnesty that is presented to you will be very different in the world outside of Mulgore, and you will only be accepted as long as you have value. Your fate is a tricky one, and I have no words of advice, because it matters little to me. The great chief already has your things, and should he decide to have you, you will leave promptly and never return."

He ushered her away and Morla was removed once more by the two guards. Outside, she was too curious about what Orgrimmar had in store for her to feel like a toy thrown away. She never thought of herself as human. It was only a physical appearance to her. How would she survive in a strange and hostile city? What would they have her do? She looked up and saw the sun was tipping down; she was due to return to the inn, where she and Clef would go over their trip schedule. She wouldn't mention what Cairne had told her to her friend, but she had one thought in her mind walking home:

Where were they taking her?

--

Clef and Morla had two routes: they could fly to Orgrimmar and go by zeppelin, or go to Booty Bay via Ratchet. "It would be easier to go through Grom'gol, much closer," Clef surmised, drawing the projected location with his finger. "The camp is here, right?" Morla nodded her head.

"Didn't you want to sell those gold bars? There is a market in Booty Bay for that sort of thing," she signed then. Morla had a very definite ulterior motive: she couldn't have Clef knowing what she was going to attempt to do. She had to have him somewhere out of the way. "We could even go through the Undercity. There are lots of ways to get there." She gave him the most charming smile she could muster, and Clef rubbed the back of his head.

"I suppose I could do that..." He looked at her, and knew she would be all right. There was a kind of disturbing confidence about her that he recognized; it was the confidence of someone who wasn't bluffing about her power. She was dangerous, and she wouldn't hide it. With a deep sigh Clef shrugged his shoulders submissively.

So it was they flew to the Crossroads, and caught a caravan to Ratchet, a day-long trip that Morla found simply agonizing hidden beneath the heavy dark cloak. Once there, however, they got to sit on the boat for another long period of time, all of which Morla spent in their room, undisguised, working on making shards and potions. She gave some to Clef to sell when they reached the bay, and the rest she kept in straps on her belt. She would use her recruit clothes for this particular mission, for all of the men at the rebel camp were soldiers, sent by Stormwind to halt the movement of the Horde from Grom'gol into Duskwood, an ever-increasing problem for the Alliance.

Zamah had carefully outlined what she was to do. "We need to find these men's weakness. Kurzen has been corrupted; all that remains is to find the best way to attack the camp, and the most pervasive and least aggressive method is preferred. If we can get away without enraging the humans against us any further—and keep them in their little provinces—then find a way to do so. You will be using some of the battle strategy you have been taught, and I anticipate your best. I cannot tell you what to expect of these men." That was all Morla was given.

In Booty Bay, they separated without many words between them. Morla could not ensure the tauren when she would be back, and he didn't ask. She thought Clef looked rather like a dejected puppy when he went off, but there was really nothing she wanted to do about it.

She made it to the fork in the road without much incident. She had taken off her cloak and walked swiftly along the side of the road, lurking in the jungle of Stranglethorn like a practiced tactician, rather than the novice she was. The landscape was entirely new and when she saw an immense ape lumbering past, all her expectations evaporated with a little wail. Panthers hid carefully and a few attacked her, none of which survived the encounter. However, it was the ruins she caught glimpses of during her two day-long trek that worried her; great painted trolls roamed about them, looking simply brutish and uncivilized, carrying axes over their shoulders and speaking in a strange, unfamiliar tongue with one another. These areas she scouted around but made sure to not be seen. Morla kept a map, and referred to it often when she came upon landmarks or signposts; thus, she was nearly certain she was in the right place when she saw the little dirt path disappearing off the road and into the deep jungle.

During her travel there, Morla had been hammering out the details of her plan in her mind. It would be tricky to pull off, but she was fairly certain that she could handle everything, as long as Lo'jar worked with her and did what he was told. She found the outpost by mid-afternoon, and remained there, sizing up the guards outside as evening fell.

She had one impeccable element on her side: her minions. A demon summoned from the nether could be defeated—wherein he would disappear to the underworld once more—but such creatures were never truly exterminated. With a few spells and some coaxing, any demon could be resurrected and back in action easily. Alrash was disposable, and so Morla discussed her idea with him. The imp was bored when she asked if he wouldn't mind being a distraction. "What have I got to lose? Honestly," he harped.

It was settled. When night fell, for every two guards, one switched in at the next shift change. Morla had climbed up into a tree just above one of the far edges of the great lumber fences, out of sight of the nearest guard post. The sharpened logs presented a problem at first, until she found a space intended for shooting down intruders—though in reality, it was only for target practice on wandering crocolisks. The opening was on one edge of the L-shaped guard post, so one could see the head of a troll bobbing as he paced back and forth on the platform. With a nasty grin she looked down to where Alrash waited, hidden in brush in the far middle of the same section of fence.

With the signal, the little imp conjured a great fireball and unleashed it onto the top part of the fence without hesitating. The logs exploded, sending great pieces of wood and millions of splinters flying; as Morla had hoped, the guard standing nearby howled in pain as shards went into his face and eyes. Immediately, all heads were turned, and there came a great ruckus of shouting and weapons and armor clinking. Trolls called to one another in both Orcish and Troll, though none of the various structures in the camp seemed to rouse beside the bored guardsmen. They were underestimating, as Morla had expected. When there didn't come another fireball, they seemed even less inclined to summon reinforcements, and Alrash easily climbed up the fence while the guard there was straining his vision to look into the woods for the intruder, rather than right below him.

The guard that had been injured was cleaning his wounds and surprisingly seemed all right; another guard had abandoned his post to take up his friend's. Though it wasn't her guard, as Morla had wanted, Alrash was well-prepared and when he had neared the top of the fence, he clasped one of the logs in his little hands and with a cackle, it began to flame.

Morla had to suppress a laugh when the whole damn fence lit on fire. The thatch spread from one guard post to the other as shelter from the frequent jungle rain, and it was prime tinder. The fire howled across the camp, billowing up when it reached the straw roofs on each corner. In the chaos Morla put on her fire cloak and waited for Alrash to jump. Once he had leapt over the top of the fence and landed on the guard's head, clawing at his eyes and lighting the poor creature on fire, she sprung from the tree and barely caught the opening she was aiming for with an immense animal claw she had tied onto a leather rope. Tugging on the rope to make sure it would hold, she began to pull herself up. She saw that the guard there had walked to the other side of the guard post to find whoever the little imp belonged to; Morla took the opportunity to deftly squeeze through the spot and, cloak over her head, she crawled down the ladder before the guard, a troll woman with a long, purple braid, could see her. Morla made sure that no one below was watching before she hopped down and began her most difficult task.

Alrash was making a fair nuisance of himself, having mauled one guard, and was blasting another with energy that Morla would have to reward him for later. Before even making it halfway up the ladder, the visiting guard was a singed corpse. Her imp looked hardly damaged, and Morla was pleasantly surprised to find she had very much underestimated her little minion.

Taking out the rather poorly-made dagger Matheas had given her their first day together, she walked up to the nearest creature she saw. She cursed him and while he gasped and moaned with pain, she stalked behind him and jammed the knife into his neck. She hadn't imagined herself to be much of an assassin, but this method seemed to be working out better than the one she had originally imagined.

However, the unarmed orc she murdered seemed to be one of a kind. While she looked around for the prison, or the building that might be housing it, she saw two heavy warriors run toward where Alrash was making an incredible racket, and Morla winced and hurried on faster when they sprung on her little imp. The demon howled and she saw him begin to fade from her inner vision.

"Got you," Morla heard a voice say, and instantly, she turned around. However, the tauren there was faster and caught her around the neck with one immense hand. "Think you're tricky, warlock?" The big grey beast was very little trouble—despite his physical superiority—and so she took the opportunity to look up at the building she had been standing next to when she was ambushed. It appeared to be a kind of town hall, and at once she knew she had gotten lucky. Lo'jar was here—she could feel him.

Morla looked up at the beast and grinned a very wide grin as the air to her lungs began to wear thin. She moved her lips to frighten the monster and when he was distracted, she stabbed him in the wrist. Surprised at her own agility, the warlock was dropped and bounced a few steps back, where she summoned the best shadow bolt she could.

Alrash winked out just as the ox fell to his knees, a green fog surrounding him as the bolt wove its way through his weak little nerves, boiling each one inside his thick-skinned body. From the wooden door of the building beside them came two more guards, both looking tired around the eyes and carrying crossbows. One stumbled, and the other was distracted by him; Morla took the opportunity to cast demon armor on herself, and just as the orc and troll trained their weapons on her, and the tauren recovered, all three of them exploded in flames.

There were howls of agony, but Morla rushed past them into the building. The guards seemed to have been the only two there, and she saw Lo'jar sitting behind bars in the very back of the main room, where there was one other empty cell and a desk on raptor bone legs. He stared at her incredulously, jaw slightly open, and she saw that his face had no makeup on and the silvery-purple markings on his face were clearer then, she mused, than the day he was born.

The half-troll lolled his tongue a few times before managing, eyes bulged out like saucers, "Why couldn't you just pay them?"

She shrugged her shoulders and signed, "I didn't have the money." She heard footsteps outside and hollers. "Fast" was all she could sign before she turned and raised one hand. It glowed a little and then there were more screams and shouts, some of alarm, some of pain. There was an explosion outside, and Morla quickly ran over to the cell and jerked on the barred door. When it didn't open, she looked at Lo'jar quizzically and he told her, "It's a jail!"

She seemed to understand this and ran back to the desk, where she rooted around for the keys. "I think one of the jailers had it," he called to her, holding onto the bars and rattling the door just for good measure. Rolling her eyes, she dashed outside, and just like she had asked, there they were.

The bracer on her arm vibrated a little with each movement of the two great demons. They were waves of destruction, obliterating anything that might catch fire and looking like they were swallowing their opponents whole. An orc tried to turn away from the battle, most dishonorably, Morla thought; the enormous flaming being simply ran through him and after it had passed, there were only charred bones.

She had a riotous feeling of victory when she found the corpses of the jailers and rummaged through them, picking out the key when she found it in a pocket. Before any of the panicked Grom'gol guards or visitors could see her, Morla went back through the wood door and handed Lo'jar the key.

Once they were outside, Lo'jar was struck anew. He hadn't the faintest before; now, the creatures ran amok, boiling water in the open jar beside the door merely with their presence. "Can't you call them off now?" he said, very quietly into Morla's ear as they stood, without moving. She watched for a moment longer and the half-troll saw in her faintly rosy face that she admired her work, and was loathe ending it. When he didn't remove his head, and breathed deeply into her ear, the girl sighed and the demons turned, bowed, and disappeared.

Morla gave him an indignant look and signed quickly, "We'll go. Up that ladder, over top. Go." She waved her hand and pointed. After a brief moment of silence he went, turning his back completely to flee up over the fence. Making sure no one was following, she put on her hood and went after him.

--

Lo'jar licked his lips of any debris and put down the can. It was some sort of meat soup, but he couldn't taste it. As always Morla was quiet, but even the half-troll hadn't exercised his natural talkativeness.

"I got you out, didn't I?" she said with her fingers, hardly moving them enough for him to make out the words. He almost thought she said, "cheese," but knew that couldn't be right. He could only nod his head and keep his eyes down on the empty can.

He didn't know quite what to say. She had gotten him free, but killed dozens of his kinsmen in the process. It was a massacre. He hadn't an idea of the repercussions of her actions.

They didn't exchange words again and eventually, Morla put out the fire by stomping on it, and then lay down on the thin roll-out pad she put down on the rough jungle floor. Lo'jar only had a bit of grass under his head; he had no trouble being comfortable in the wild, and he was asleep quickly.

There, he had a dream. Rather, a nightmare: a thin troll woman stood on the edge of a cliff, and Lo'jar went towards her. Her ears were longer than most trolls' were, and she had very fine hips and thin legs. Her hair was of an unusual color, as well, and he was surprised at how vivid the light on her appeared. When he came closer, however, she turned to him and he saw it was a human woman. She had brown hair and dark eyes, and the same creamy, yet bronze-colored skin as his girl. His girl. Mostly Clef's girl, but a little his. The woman held up a little black stone and he recognized it. The woman's mouth opened and after a moment Lo'jar realized she was talking, but he couldn't hear her: her voice was only a faint, strange whisper. She dropped the stone and began to stomp on it, so it was buried in the sand, and then she walked right off the cliff.

The half-troll awoke, breathing more rapidly than he remembered doing in the dream. He also felt something on his throat, but it was soft and didn't alarm him. When he looked down, he saw that Morla had curled up to him and was softly stroking his collar.

"You were calling something in your sleep that I couldn't understand," she signed to him without looking up. There was a faint warm feeling in his belly, and he wanted to touch her hair, which he knew would be so soft, and stroke her unblemished skin. She didn't say anything else, and lightly Lo'jar put his hand on her shoulder. He took the top of her shirt and drew it down low enough that he could see the scar there.

"I think it's best that we go different ways in the morning," he said then. Morla only nodded and got up, readjusting her shirt. Her face was turned away and she kicked her pad so it was a few more feet away. There, she laid down once more, her back to him. When Lo'jar fell asleep, he slept deeply and without dreams.

--

Lo'jar woke up and everything was gone, even the remains of the fire. He felt a sense of bitterness in the breeze that blew through the heavy trees, and he tried to forget the previous day when he went back to Grom'gol. He couldn't imagine what would happen to him there, but nothing did. The zeppelin tower was still functional and he went home—wherever that was.

Morla fixed her disguise and walked into the camp. They knew what she was there for immediately and it wasn't too much of an issue that she couldn't speak, though the captain there admitted that he didn't know why they would enlist a mute to begin with. She only shrugged her shoulders. "You look strong enough," he said. "Hidden power, I guess." She would have laughed at the irony if she could, but Lo'jar's words weighed her down too much. She only smiled weakly and nodded her head.

She worked at the camp for two days, and that was enough. Many of the men there had come down with a sickness they called "jungle fever," and she managed to relay that she was returning to her original outpost for fear of being infected. They didn't much blame her, and she said she would try to send another recruit if she could. By her knowledge, the original recruit had been murdered coming out of Darkshire and the undead rogue who had killed him took his badge, his note, and hid his body. Both objects had reached Zamah and Morla had used them as her proof when she arrived.

"We know that Kurzen's men have a cure for this," the captain told her. "We are sending two men right now to try to get them back, but they are unreliable adventurers and won't be arriving for a week. We just hope this little illness doesn't turn deadly by then." Morla only nodded her head.

It was simply perfect. Zamah would be pleased. Morla didn't care.