Disclaimer: Warcraft is not mine and neither is their copyrighted books or any other Blizzard games. If they were I wouldn't be broke.

A/N: The truth is I started typing this chapter right as soon as I finished uploading the last one. Excluding the fact that I've been reading Kin's MahiMahi in between writing a few paragraphs. I, of course, have to wait for you all to respond to my chapter so that I can take your suggestions and answer your questions. But now I can not.

And now I can. Look, here's some:

Geolord tee hee! No eating my liver though .:shields internal organs:. How come you are always so sure of yourself. Btw, you are a bad guesser…. So far at least.

And Kyn, I am really enjoying your story .:points to above:. And I'll be reviewing as soon as I reach up to the thirteenth chapter. Not a slow reader, just one with no time. Blame this story. Yes, Thralk was having a little anger time. He's sort of losing control of his whole nonchalant villain thing. It's too much for him. Down the dark path? Is it the dark side. Maybe the semi-half lit side. Wait till you see this chapter!

Thanks Old Guy I was hoping to hear from you. Ooo! A scoring system for my story. Oh I am pleased! Thank you very much! Hopefully I can develop my undead a bit further. I have trouble with them because I love to write characters with feeling. Maybe it will come clear.

And thanks to others such as Oreo, Starwolf Magic, and Samus who review but don't have questions. Thanks guys.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Collide

Something hard and cold collided with Thralk's head. The undead wasn't even sure what it was or how it had suddenly caught him off guard. He felt the bone axe slide from his hands and glide along the slick surface of the frozen water. Agony made his head pound and his shoulder's crumpled as they hit the wall of motionless wave. This would have killed Thralk if he had been truly alive. Now he just popped his spine back into place and wondered what had hit him.

"You alright Gwyn?" The voice infuriated the undead summoner. He spat in it's direction as he stood slowly. The troll prince was still trying to rouse a voice from the oracle. She was not faring as well as Thralk thought she would be. At first he thought that the axe had indeed found it's mark but he soon realized she was choking. The glassy water had tightened around her waist when she had tried to avoid the axe and was cutting off her breath.

"Go ahead Yawna," Thralk massaged the bones of his shoulders and looked up at the floating being above him. He was smiling maliciously. "Choke the life out of her. It will be funnier to see your face when I tell you that you were her cause of death."

Var'Jun was yelling frantically now. At Yawna, at Gwyn, at Thralk, and even at someone who's name the undead only slightly recognized. Kat was it? Yes, that human priestess whom had been so close to the troll. Thralk snorted. The troll was going mad.

The water suddenly shifted as if the entire thing had moved to the left rapidly. Thralk felt the liquid, once frozen fast as stone, soon begin to break apart like slush and sink into the ground slowly. The elf regained her breath.

Two small drops of something dripped onto Thralk's shoulder. He looked up slowly as he realized what it was. Blood from the wound of the undead rogue that he had tried to murder. The traitor. Surely the wound he had given him would prove too great to retain the power that kept his rotting corpse of a body moving. Surely.

But the rogue had done one thing. He had stopped Yawna. The tauren's face was stricken and she seemed to be listening to the soft words of the undead. Mekora was doing what he felt right.

"I will gut that traitor." Thralk promised himself.

The water melted away from it's timeless state and sunk into the ground which had gone dry and cracked now once again soft and spongy. Those who had been submerged in it dripped out onto ground and lay gasping for air. None had died.

Yawna was drifting down slowly towards earth. The troll and elf had stood quickly now, Gwyn supporting her bruised ribs and looked around for what Thralk could only guess was himself. The undead didn't move, it would be hard to discern him from the other undead that were groggily standing around him.

The wings at Yawna's back, or really the outline of feathers made from drops of water, dissipated as cloven hooves touched down on the ground. The undead in the tauren's arms was laid lightly on the ground before Yawna looked back up at Gwyn and Var'Jun. Her old companions were sight for sore eyes.

"Ah. Gwyn, Var'Jun, good thing you're here. There's so much I can't face alone." With that Yawna chuckled and remarked more softly, "And Thralk won't like having himself outnumbered."

The summoner balked. Yawna had known that he was there all along. The undead snarled and spit. She didn't fear him? He would make her fear him. Lacking a weapon now that the axe had been torn from him the undead leapt forward and seized Yawna by the throat from behind.

Gwyn and Var'Jun were quick to act but suddenly stopped as soon as they had started forwards. Thralk had begun to scream and writhe in agony. His hands were beginning to steam and he let go of Yawna's neck as if she was burning.

Thralk was propelled backwards at least twenty feet. He hit the solid figure of a wet tent that had withstood the wave. The undead howled with rage as he realized that he was paralyzed. His voice was not stopped though and the summoner crowed harsh commands to his stunned men. Their orders were clear.

Kill all but the tauren. Bring her to him.

Yawna slowly collapsed. Her body gracefully arched and she hit the mud with a muffled thump. Beside her was Mekora, his un-life's blood still spilling from his back and across the dirt, mingling with the water and silt to form a reddish brown murk.

"I think that undead is gone." Var'Jun remarked. His back stooped as he quickly scooped up the bone axe, already heaving the body of the feint tauren over his shoulder. The troll's strength was amazing. In a few seconds he had secured the heavy huntress to him piggyback style and was looking nervously to the undead soldiers. They were coming out of their daze.

"No matter. Yawna might want the body." Gwyn lifted the light rogue and began to jog, shortly followed by a few of the more lucid undead. A dagger whizzed past her head.

"Shoot, they outnumber us." Var'Jun remarked unnecessarily. At that point in time an arrow from a well-shot bow nicked the troll's ear and chipped it at the bottom. The troll winced and growled angrily. "I'm going to end up killing someone and dropping Yawna right here."

"Don't please." Gwyn whistled quickly and smiled as something rustled in nearby bushes. "Ah, here we are." Something pushed a sleek muzzle through the branches and snorted with anticipation before removing a squared jaw and angular eyes from the cover of shadows.

"Is that a cat?" Var'Jun demanded.

"Fastest there is. I spent no time wasting Thralk's power for my own uses." Var'Jun mumbled something about crazy, psycho broads before he turned to the hissing noises that were emitting from the druids mouth.

"What are you doing."

"Securing our flight." Gwyn let go a final string of meaningless words that the troll couldn't recognize. Behind him Var'Jun heard a series of things break from the dirt. Muffled yells from rotting undead mouths told him the spell was successful.

The troll looked back quickly to see vines whipping their thorny sides over most of the undead. Those left untangled were slapped back by the vicious vegetation. The troll yelped softly as a curious vine tried to grasp his foot. It was quickly driven back as it recognized a friendly target.

"I thought those effing things only affected one target." Magic was an enigma to Var'Jun.

"I've been studying and practicing nonstop for the past two years. If I can't do things other druids can't by now I'm going to be mad." Gwyn smiled maliciously as Var'Jun paled. The elf scared him sometimes.

"Throw Yawna over the back of my mount and climb up yourself." Gwyn instructed him.

"I don't ride cats. Can it even carry that much? And where is the undead going to go?"

Gwyn ignored his first statement before throwing the undead across her back in the similar piggyback fashion Var'Jun was carrying Yawna.

"We'll soon find out and he'll go on my back." With that Gwyn's hands quickly morphed into small, delicate paws. Her face elongated into a gently curved muzzle and spots erupted along her skin. Fangs glittered from under her teeth until the transformation completed and a swift cheetah, slightly slowed by the scourge, went charging head.

"I don't like cats." Var'Jun squeezed his eyes shut and swung his leg over the saddle of the war saber. "This is wrong on so many levels."

Thralk was furious. He tore through the notes of prophecy and future that Gwyn had written for him. In his rage he began to light things aflame, his influence of the caustic powers of heat making the carefully written notes explode into a fiery mass. Thralk didn't care about the heat. He snarled and spit, throwing a temper tantrum and grabbing chunks of burning parchment. The smell of his own burning, rotting flesh filled the air. How dare that elf defy him?

Thralk was about to seize another sheaf of papers and burst them into flames when he stopped. A name had caught his eye.

"Katherine, Katherine, now where have I heard that before." The frantic voice of the troll prince returned to Thralk. He remembered the day two years ago that he had crouched at the side of a burning Murloc village and listened to that frantic cry.

"Kat, Kat!"

Thralk's dead eyes quickly scanned the paper. He smiled maliciously. This would certainly come in handy.

"Is she all right?" It was a simple question from Gwyn that seemed to require a less than simple answer from her troll friend. He crept slowly off the saber mount like a broken dog, arching his long spine and whimpering.

"Trolls are not meant to bow over the backs of your furry cat… thingies." Var'Jun sighed and eased the tauren off the patient feral feline while still babbling, "And another thing. Next time you go and have plans alert me beforehand. My butt hurts too."

"Lovely." Gwyn was studying the undead closely, "I don't need to know anything that happens to your body. Anything. Please do not update me." The elf sighed and repeated her prior question.

"I don't know. She's been out cold the whole ride but she's still breathing." Var'Jun glanced over, "Are you still carrying that thing?"

"Yes, Yawna apparently had some connection to him so he has to be somewhat important. You really don't like undead at all, do you?"

"One killed my mother thank you. I'm not sure I'm ready to accept any of them."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Do you think it'll survive. Not doing to well as it is."

"Maybe. I'm hoping so." Var'Jun and Gwyn turned to meet the now cool, spring green eyes of the tauren huntress. She smiled slowly, a cool smile like her eyes that cloaked the sorrow and guilt she was feeling and instead made her look thoroughly prepared for anything.

"You are awake." Var'Jun smiled despite the annoyance that he felt for the undead and Gwyn. All bad feelings vanished for now. Yawna sometimes had that kind of effect.

"And alive." Gwyn remarked. It was strange of her to comment on something so apparent but the elf was just that off guard. It was the first time that the group had been almost full in quite a while.

"Mekora." Yawna looked down at the undead, "He is-"

"We don't know." Gwyn looked down at the undead, "How would you tell if an undead is well… dead?" Gwyn prodded the prone form on the ground gingerly, her fingers barely grazing the rotting flesh of his shoulder. Her disgust was apparent.

"That's not how you tell if he's dead. You poke him with a stick, like this." Var'Jun began to raise said wooden implement which he had located under a tree before Yawna sprang up, surprisingly spry for someone who had recently been close to death.

"Stop that." Yawna kneeled down beside the undead. Both Var'Jun and Gwyn grimaced as she cradled him as one would cradle a child. Mekora was not bleeding any longer. The skin around the axe wound had rotted over. Yawna's knowledge of undead was extremely limited.

"Mekora, please wake up." Yawna's breath was ragged as if she had just run miles. Her hands slowly turned the undead over to see the wound on his back. Her lips tightened over clenched teeth.

"Who is he?" Gwyn leaned over Yawna's shoulder to scrutinize the undead closer. Her eyes were hard. Gwyn would feel no remorse for the death of the young soldier if he did in fact lose the strength to keep his life force 'running.'

"He helped me escape. He's not like the others."

Yawna's eyes began to glow a faint blue once more. Her hands were surrounded by a heavy green aura that sounded like wind through the trees. Var'Jun and Gwyn both stepped back, the taste of magic on the air like being in a pungent copper vein or sucking on a hard bit of steel.

The skin around Mekora's wound, the already rotting flesh and exposed spine, slowly began to regenerate themselves. The undead's body shuddered and he opened his eyes after a prolonged amount of time. When he spoke his voice was weak and rattling but seemed somehow… right.

"Oh good Yawna, you're alive. I was hoping you would be. You have a prophecy to keep alive, you know."

Over the next few days the small group gradually and painstakingly made their way away from the undead camp. If there had been scouts looking for them they had not found them, the members of the small rebellion kept hidden and safe.

Mekora was healing if not a bit jaggedly. At first he could only be carried from place to place by Yawna who seemed to have regained full strength and most of her memory. The undead was fed the berries and small amount of meat that the group could scrounge up (much to the troll and elf's annoyance).

Yet soon the undead was able to move around on his own. He rejected the food they gave him now and assured the tauren that he could find food for himself.

Yawna had stumbled upon him a few days after that just outside of their designated campground. The undead was hunched over some broken body of an undead, something mauled by what looked like bears or wolves. What those animals had not eaten he apparently was. Mekora's food source was his own kind, for the most part at the moment.

Yawna did not mention it or disturb him. She remembered how Thralk had eaten the flesh from the shoulder of the undead child years ago. Cannibalism ran a strong vein in the Forsaken race. Yawna wasn't one to judge. To each his own.

About a week had passed before Mekora had gained full strength. The group was now nestled securely at the tip of Elwynn Forest close by Stormwind. Being so close to the human capital, Var'Jun had said, made him uneasy. But it promised the absence of the Holocaust because they were not yet powerful to take on the capital.

"We need to take action." Var'Jun growled heatedly. He was arguing with Gwyn, something he had taken to doing recently.

"We need to plan, not just charge headlong into battle." Gwyn sniffed and turned her head away, "You need someone to keep you in check all the time! Like a little child."

Var'Jun snarled and regained his voice for another spurt of yelling. Both Mekora and Yawna looked up from where the tauren had been mending the rogue's armor. Fights between Var'Jun and Gwyn were often, but this one was particularly filled with spite.

"Well you seem to have no problem going out on your own. Except, maybe, when you need the help of Thralk and all the goddamn resources he offers you!"

"Well you always need some human hanging over your shoulder and waiting for you to catch up with her, don't you? Kat was the only thing tying you to earth and now you're useless!"

Var'Jun had no voice now. He seemed to deflate, the remark puncturing his ego and causing the troll to psychically collapse. His face paled.

"I.. I didn't mean that." Gwyn balked at the power of her words and sighed softly, "Maybe… Maybe I shouldn't tell you this. But I think you rather have the right to know. Still…"

Var'Jun didn't say anything. Yawna had stood incase the troll might launch himself into a Fury. Her Awareness picked up some sort of dangerous despair from the troll coupled with the strong desire to see the priestess again.

"Kat is alive." Gwyn paused, "She's in a small refuge village nearby in Elwynn, a hiding place of sorts that's guarded by a few strong men. I.. I located her just after the fire, they took her in and now she's some kind of healer there. But-"

"Which way is this town?" The troll interrupted strongly. His voice was commanding… edged. He could hardly believe what she was telling him but hope had soared, a phoenix from ashes of despair. The troll was adamant.

"Er… It's South a bit but- Hey! What are you doing, troll?"

"Going to get her." Var'Jun replied simply. His bittersweet smile had returned, "You going to stop me?"

"There's something you should know- Stupid! Come back here."

The troll had taken off running. His disappearing braid, now trailing down his back in a lavender coil, whipped out of sight behind a tree as the troll ran off.

"Trolls are fast." Mekora remarked.

"We'd better catch him, he's in for a nasty surprise." Gwyn mounted the nearby saber and sniffed before looking down. "Elune help us. How are you two supposed to keep up?"

"There was something we used to do back in Holocaust camp." Mekora began, "Won't take long…"

The heavy black mount's muscles pounded. Gwyn rode in the saddle, night elf lightness keeping the cat not so weighted down. Behind the steady saber a small litter was trailing. The hastily made wagon dragged along on runners of smooth branch, the base of the pulled burden was a jumble of leafy twigs much like a bird nest. It was all held together with sap, Gwyn's extensive knowledge of the wilderness differing from what Mekora had in mind, but still fair. It would not last any longer than the trop to the nearby refuge and slowed the mount extensively, but it served it's purpose.

"We're almost there." Gwyn called back to the undead and tauren who sat atop the trailer. The two nodded as Gwyn hopped off the mount and was quickly followed by her companions. The cat halted, mouth open to catch air.

The night elf was the first through the bushes. Yawna came behind her and was immediately confronted by the close by clearing in which the sanctuary was situated. It was not as small as Yawna had expected, quite a few permanent houses, some half built and some much more sturdy, dotting the area in between some temporary houses. Yawna could even see a few stores and vendors.

"The people are trying to make the best of things. They probably don't even know Stormwind is that close by, and if they do they might be a little apprehensive of big areas. Their old town burned down quite a while ago. They must fear large targets." Gwyn hissed this while looking around, "Now where has that crazy troll gone?"

Yawna spotted Var'Jun towards the end of the town. There were guards around but not what she would have suspected. They were at least fifty feet apart, four of them on either side of the people. At the very end of town was a building, one of the permanent ones with heavy logs creating it's walls and a thatched roof. Children played around it, some straying close to the edge of where the dirt came to bushes and moss. A slim woman in long robes was guiding them back to what seemed to be a school or orphanage. She had gingery hair piled in an elegant bun on the top of her head, strands straying into her face.

"Kat." Yawna breathed out.

Var'Jun had apparently spotted her as well. His face broke out into a smile of pure joy. Breath caught in his throat and he stood slowly. To the children he was a devil, the tall troll with his long, wild mane of hair that was tied back into a hasty and loose braid. His face was tattooed with it's usual light marking of tribal symbols. He was dressed in heavy leather and one of his long ears was pierced through with a couple of small gold hoops.

One child screamed and came running into the school house at top speed. The troll ignored the little human, his face split through with a grin that lit his face.

Kat looked up quickly. Her heart caught in her throat. She took a step backwards in disbelief, mind numbed down.

"Oh Kat." Var'Jun's breath shuddered and shattered the air. He almost seemed to trip forwards, grasping the priestess's shoulders and drawing her close to him while he buried his face in her shoulder. She felt his tusks, a light pressure on her collarbone.

Kat screamed.

"Troll!" She hollered while pushing him off her and screaming frantically, "There's a troll attacking the school!"

"What?" Tears of surprise and sting caught in the trolls' eyes, "Kat it's me!"

"Get away from me you foul creature!" The priestess summoned a burst of blue fire to her hands and shot it off, narrowly missing the troll's head. Var'Jun was not stupid, he knew enough to turn around and run as the guards starting pouring in to the frantic female's cry. His heart was bleeding.

The troll ran headlong into Yawna and Gwyn as he fled. The humans had not followed him, choosing instead defense than the offense the warrior had suspected. Broken sobs ripped from the prince's throat.

"She pushed me away…. She tried to kill me." The troll looked ready to collapse.

"Don't you understand?" Gwyn roared, her teeth clenched angrily, "Kat has lost her memory, every account of time she spent with us. She remembers none of it! I tried to warn you."

"She hates me." Var'Jun was shaking violently, "I… I-"

He was cut off quickly as Mekora began to breath raggedly and hissed softly, "Thralk is here. I feel him. There's a lot of undead somewhere nearby!"

I am evil! Pure and spiteful evil. Sorry about that guys! Just when you thought you had it all down! And now I turn on you like this. Shame on me! R&R I can't wait to see the comments for this!