Haa'aji frowned as he examined the tracks on the ground. Elves had passed through Amani territory, recently. While he had at first wondered if perhaps it was merely that odd elven woman again, hell bent on making more trolls into anti-cannibals, he'd quickly realized that there were more than a dozen sets of footprints, all heading north.

"Trespassas," Gen'taji muttered, leaning over Haa'aji's shoulder and spitting on the ground.

Haa'aji merely frowned as he traced one of the small footprints with a finger. "But why dea be so maneh a dem, yeh?"

Gen'taji gripped his spear tighter. "Dey mus' be plannin' a attack. C'mon, le's—" he cut himself off as he hit Haa'aji in the shoulder only to get no response. Mirroring Haa'aji's expression, he squatted down beside him. "Wat?"

"Dea be tineh footprints, mon."

"Dey all be tineh—"

"Dese be liila ones. Dem runnin' from sumtin. Takin' dey familehs wit' dem."

"'n?" Gen'taji crossed his arms and glared at his brother. He'd always accused Haa'aji of being a little off, of sympathizing with those 'tiny, pale bastards.'

Haa'aji didn't care. He knew he was loyal to his people. That was what mattered.

"Maybeh we let dem go back north," Haa'aji offered, finally rising to his feet. "Ah mean, if dem be retreatin' from hea, dat be good, yeh? Dey go back north 'n maybeh dey stay dea dis time."

"If dey runnin' from sumtin, de second it be gone, dey be comin' back wit' a vengeance." Gen'taji snapped, no doubt trying to ground his brother in reality. "Maybeh dey be hopin' we fight dea fights fa dem. We be weakened fightin' whateva, den dey come back 'n off bot' us n' whateva else dea be." He drummed his fingers against his arm. "C'mon. We need ta tell de eldas."

~"~

Shadow sighed as he slumped down next to a few other druids, who were arguing over whether they ought to make a fire or if that might be a poor decision. There were eleven of them in all, six night elves and five tauren. While a few of the elders had wondered if they might be too distracted by faction conflict to work well together, they'd proven that such things were irrelevant when following their druidic code.

As Shadow considered just flopping back onto the poisoned, dead grass and sleeping as he was, he stopped when he saw Gracie had paced a few yards away from camp and was peering through the trees as though trying to see into the heart of the plagued area.

Honestly, their group was divided. Shadow and a few others were content that they'd seen enough. The plague was truly an unnatural disaster, but eleven druids would not be enough to fix it. He and the others wanted to go home, explain what they'd seen and make plans from there.

The other half of the group wanted to find out the full extent of the plague so that they could bring back a complete report to their archdruids.

Shadow didn't care. This was way beyond them. He wasn't sure that it could be fixed, even if every druid in existence came forward to help. However, as much as he would have liked to just turn around and leave—the group was beginning to consider splitting up, so as to give a preliminary report and then a more in-depth one later—he had made Gracie's father a promise.

As they'd been heading out, a rather panicked older tauren had stopped Shadow and begged him to talk some sense into Gracie. He'd told him that she wasn't fit for such an expedition and that he couldn't stand the thought of her getting in over her head.

Shadow had tried to convey to the man that he didn't really know Gracie all that well and that he was better off getting one of Gracie's friends to appeal to her better judgment, but the old steer had seemed intent that it be Shadow. He'd sort of hinted that Gracie was interested in him...

That couldn't be true, right? And even if it was, he'd been in love with Whisper since the two of them could walk, and it wasn't a secret that he was newly married. It bothered him that someone he'd never paid much attention to could be so infatuated with him.

However, he couldn't turn away such a desperate steer and had promised that, if he couldn't talk Gracie out of going, he would at the very least look after her. Perhaps he could set her up with one of their fellow druids, too.

Gracie had proven to be more stubborn a woman than he'd realized existed. No, she wouldn't go home. No, she wasn't interested in Leafwalker or Plainswhisper. Why did he care who she wanted to be around, anyway?

That had been awkward.

And he couldn't help but feel he'd given her the wrong impression. Surely she didn't think he'd taken an interest in her...did she? He could almost feel Whisper glaring at him, and his ears stung with unspoken chastises about leading on his fellow druid.

"Gracie, come back to camp," Shadow called after her, pushing his wishes to go home and for life to be simple from his mind. The tauren woman turned to glare at him before clomping back toward the rest of them.

"Don't shout. You'll attract something's attention."

A few other druids chuckled, and Shadow rolled his eyes. "Just stay with the rest of us, will you?"

Gracie looked embarrassed for a moment as she plopped down in between the two who had been debating the fire. They'd decided against it and were now shivering in their loose cloaks, cursing the unnatural cold that seemed to taint the air.

She picked at the dirt caking one of her hooves and shrugged her shoulders. "I think we should keep going. We could probably go for another hour before we'd need to stop."

"This area is safe," one of the other druids argued, using the term loosely. Rather, he meant that there weren't any undead creatures in sight, though they'd already learned that such lulls seemed short lived. And there seemed to be more of them the further north into the plagued lands they went.

Gracie's ears flattened, and she huffed once as she wrapped her arms around herself and glared at the grass.

Shadow wondered if he ought to comfort her, but decided against it. He was too tired to care, and he didn't feel like continuing a conversation when sound seemed to sometimes attract the undead. The rest of the druids seemed to be thinking along the same lines as they huddled together and tried to get some rest. They'd figure out where to go from there in the morning.

~"~

Haa'aji felt like he was going to throw up as he sat with the other Amani. There was a funeral banquet being thrown for some of the 'brave' warriors who had lost their lives fighting the elves.

It didn't sit right with him. Most of the elves had been unarmed...honestly, there'd only been about three armed warriors with them at all. They'd looked terrified and disheveled, as though they'd been traveling for days with almost no food or sleep. Like the tracks from before, they'd been a few families, with the slender, stick-like elven women clutching babies to their chests and holding little ones' hands. They'd had their belongings thrown together haphazardly onto rickety wagons, and he'd known that there was no way they were invaders.

One of the elves had tried to talk to Gen'taji in broken trollish—something about meaning no harm—but his brother had merely cut her down.

Haa'aji could understand the bad blood between them—they'd been fighting for generations after all—but he couldn't see the point in harming innocents. Perhaps the elves did kill civilians, but he'd never actually heard of it happening.

He'd always sort of assumed that both of their sides had at least enough honor not to cut down little ones or…

As the first elf's body had hit the ground at Gen'taji's hand, the rest of the elves had tried to band together and fight back, but there were too few weapons and even with their magic, most of them were untrained civilians.

Haa'aji could still hear a few of the children shrieking as they tried to outrun his brethren. During the whole of the attack, he'd just stood there, watching as the elves were cut down, watching as they managed to take out a few of their attackers, though it only angered the rest of the Amani. Haa'aji couldn't blame them, though. They'd just wanted to escape whatever horrors were coming from the south.

Rumors were beginning to spread of the walking dead.

He figured if a bunch of undead people were baring down on his home, his people would be sending the children and frailer members to safety as well. Their warriors were probably fighting back whatever it was, thinking that they were protecting their homes for the families they no longer had.

One of women had caught the look of disgust or horror or whatever it was that had been plastered to his face, and she had run toward him, begging in a language he didn't understand and holding out her child to him, like he would take the little creature and flee to safety. Even as tears had pricked her eyes, and she'd tried to speak a few sporadic trollish words, Gen'taji had slammed his spear through the back of her neck, spraying his brother with the elf's blood. The child—he doubted older than two, though he wasn't completely sure when it came to the little elves—had been gutted as an afterthought.

Haa'aji wanted to go back and bury them, in the very least. Why couldn't he have just reached out and stopped his brother from killing that first elf? Let them escape to wherever they were going. Perhaps they'd have remembered the act of kindness, and they would have worked toward some type of peace.

He didn't see how any of them could call themselves proud warriors when they'd just slaughtered a bunch of defenseless children...

"Haa'aji."

The troll blinked, slowly coming from his thoughts, though the sick feeling in his gut was determined to haunt him. His brother was holding out a plate to him with a small bit of meat on it. Haa'aji knew what was expected of him. Honor the dead heroes by taking in a part of their heart for their courage.

What courage?

"Nah tanks, mon," Haa'aji muttered and pushed the plate away.

The trolls nearest him all stopped and stared, eyes widening. His brother's jaw dropped open. It took him a moment to realize that eyes were on him as well. Gen'taji frowned, furrowing his hairless brow and pushed the plate toward Haa'aji again. "Now ain' nah time ta be finickeh. Jus' hona ah bruddas 'n—"

"Wat hona dey be deservin', hmm?" Haa'aji cocked his head. "Dey killed demselves a tree-yea-ol'. Good fa dem. Real ha'd kill dea." He pushed the plate away again. "Nah tanks. Ah nah be needin' dat malice in meh system."

~"~

Shadow hated himself. The group had split up, with over half of the druids returning to Moonglade and only four of them staying behind. Honestly, he was half tempted to just grab Gracie and teleport them both back to Kalimdor, but the tauren woman seemed to be expecting such an ambush, for she was oddly alert.

All four of them had taken to their cat forms so that they could sneak past the increasing bands of rotting monsters more easily. It pained him to see that even the animals of these lands had suffered from the mysterious disease...well, it wasn't as mysterious as he'd like it to be. He and the others had seen the plague cauldrons and knew that whatever it was that now swept the area had been made by mortal creatures.

What more did they need for their report? It was foolish to continue on as they were, yet none of the others would listen to him. Damn the balance, he only needed Gracie to listen, but the other two backed her in such a way that it gave her confidence in her foolhardiness.

Shadow had tried playing the 'think of your family' card already, but she had just brushed it off, saying that they would be proud of her for all that she was doing. They were going to be heroes. He wondered if she really believed that. Would they be proud that she'd gotten herself killed?

However, what he hated more was that they had been right. By continuing their mission, they could now tell the others that the risen monstrosities walking the land were at least somewhat organized. Late that afternoon, they'd come across a small village—what was left of one—and had found that there were stronger, more intact creatures in plated armor who seemed to be directing the actions of the rotting corpses.

They had glowing blue eyes and an unnatural aura of death surrounded them. It made Shadow's fur bristle. The four of them had prowled the outskirts of the town and had been repulsed to learn that there were still some living creatures in one of the broken buildings, though they were well guarded. While Shadow didn't know their language, the wails that punctuated the putrid air were enough to convince him that those survivors wished they were dead.

Shadow sat with the others in a small alcove near the village. Everyone wanted to go home now, except for Gracie. She glared at the rest of them, her feline shoulders quivering with indignation. "We can't just leave them to be tortured...murdered."

One of the others shook his head. "We four can do nothing to save them. All we would do is add our corpses to the piles they have. I do not wish to speak on your behalf, but I would be loathe to be raised as such an abomination."

The other druid nodded. "We should take our report back. We can return with more reinforcements—"

"But they'll be dead by then!" Gracie hissed, trying to keep her voice a whisper.

Shadow cleared his throat. "For all we know, they already are. We heard them nearly twenty minutes ago. They could well be gone at this point. While I will not sleep well knowing that we left them behind, I think it is for the best that we return to Moonglade. We will not be able to help anyone if we join them." As Gracie scowled, he placed a paw on hers. "Think. If we do not return, they will send others. It will just be more bodies to this curse."

Her face twisted angrily, though even as she started to speak, she seemed to see truth in his words. Her shoulders sagged slightly, the fight finally draining from her.

"It wouldn't be good for more to come here, not knowing what to expect, would it?"

Shadow sighed.

Finally.

He could practically hear Whisper chiding him for taking so long.

Even as one of the other druids nodded, relieved, the earth beneath them abruptly erupted into decaying, seething disease. Three of them scattered away while the fourth was caught by strange purple arcs of energy and dragged through the air to the feet of one of the armored leaders of the undead that they'd seen before. Even as the druid struggled to twist onto her feet and run, several of the undead gripped her by her limbs and sunk their teeth into her flesh, tearing and clawing her to pieces.

As she shrieked in pain, their leader strolled past, and Shadow felt horror curling in his gut. Their attacker was a gnome. Her hair was pulled back into two dull pink dog ears, and her glowing blue gaze swept over them, apathy tugging her blackened, decaying lips into a bored frown.

Gracie growled and lunged toward the little creature, her claws extended. As she landed upon her enemy, Shadow found himself breaking out of his form to throw every heal he knew toward the foolish tauren. The gnome was faster than Gracie had realized. In a moments breath, the creature had swung itself up onto her back and was tearing at the druid's fur with her gauntleted hands.

The little creature cackled as Gracie tried to shake her off, only to trip when a hand shot out of the earth and grabbed one of her back legs. Her knee snapped, and she let out a sharp cry, though Shadow's magic mended her injury. With a sharp kick, she freed herself and then rolled forward into the grass, switching to bear form as she pinned her attacker to the earth in an attempt to crush the damnable thing. While the gnome managed to struggle free with her life, one of her arms had been crunched and hung awkwardly at her side.

Even as the little gnome tried to hold her broken arm, a look of sheer hatred settling on her tiny features, the ghoul who had come up and grabbed hold of Gracie's leg earlier tackled the bear, biting and snapping with his broken teeth in an attempt to tear off her face.

Gracie switched back to cat form and darted back, frantically looking for more ghouls, like the ones who had attacked their fellow druid. However, the original ghouls lay sprawled across the ground, already rapidly deteriorating into dust.

Shadow felt a burst of hope, perhaps they could outlast the monsters. It seemed that the more they moved, the faster they fell apart...or at least...those others had. The gnome seemed intent on keeping her remaining ghoul alive and in her defense.

Throwing an extra rejuvenation on Gracie, he called out to their other companion to attack the gnome, though he frowned when he got no response. He barely heard the light crunch of frosty footsteps behind him before he felt a blade slam through his shoulder.

He heard Gracie shriek, though he wasn't sure if it was because of what was happening to her or to him. Kneeling, he tried to heal himself, only to feel some sort of magic close around his vocal cords and silence him. The blade went into his back again, and he looked over his shoulder to see a human man standing over him, holding a cruel looking sword.

Focusing his strength as the silence ended, he threw several heals on himself and brought one of his hooves up and smashed it into the man's face. His attacker staggered backwards, black blood oozing unnaturally from his broken nose. As the monster tried to gain control of itself, Shadow looked back to Gracie and cried out for her to come to him. She was still fending off the ghoul and the gnome, though he could see she was already trying to reach him. She'd switched out of her animal forms and was desperately attempting to keep herself alive long enough to make it back to him. He threw a few more heals to her.

The gnome had stopped chasing Gracie. Instead, she was screaming in some cruel language. Calling for help, no doubt.

Shadow breached the distance between he and his fellow druid and slammed his shoulder into the ghoul, sending it crumpling to the earth. "Run!"

The two of them shifted into their travel forms and took off into the woods.

They'd barely made it half a mile when Gracie let out a sharp yelp, and Shadow turned to see a hook had caught her in the side and was dragging her back. Even as her body thudded harshly into the ground, a giant cleaver slammed into her torso. Her whimpering fell silent.

Shadow whirled around and nearly tripped over his own feet as he stared back at the creature which had caught her. A true abomination, if ever he'd seen one.

The monster lumbered toward him, stepping on and crushing one of Gracie's legs as it moved passed her.

The woods were alive with the unholy creatures...ghouls, more of the giant constructs, and, in the distance, he could hear the little gnome's laugh.

As he resigned himself to his fate, he thought of Whisper, leaning against the tree near their house. He tried not to think of what she would do when he didn't come home. He shouldn't have taken responsibility for Gracie. He shouldn't have left Thunder Bluff. He should have stayed with Whisper, should have curled up with her as they talked about their future. He could see images of those daydreams that had been bouncing around in his head since he was a little thing, and he tried to hold onto them as the undead advanced.

He considered what Gracie had said.

Perhaps they would at least think they had died heroes.

~"~

Tinker frowned as she concentrated harder and gave one of Shadow's horns a final tug. With a triumphant laugh, the horn broke off in her cold grip, and she held it up toward the sky, as though to show the gods or light or nether what she had done.

She felt great. The voice in her head was praising her, and nothing hurt. The hunt had been worth it.

Shawn merely frowned and kicked at Gracie's corpse. "I think I hate druids. So hard to kill."

"Well, I got them at least," Tinker shrugged, still perched on top of Shadow's shoulder. She took his horn and seemed to consider impaling him with it, but instead just tossed it into the grass, frowning as she noticed Shawn was glaring at her. "What? It's not like you did anything useful except get your face broken."

He muttered something under his breath, but made no attempt to argue.

"You know what we should do?" she asked, suddenly grinning cruelly. "Let's take them back to Acherus. I bet these two would make great knights, hmm?"

Still in a sour mood, Shawn tested Gracie's weight before motioning for the nearest abomination to come carry her. "I'm more concerned about the one who got away."

Tinker laughed as several ghouls surrounded Shadow and heaved him up. "Oh, Shawn. What's the worst it can do? Get friends?"