The storm had come at a most unexpected time. The severity of it forced the goblins manning the Zeppelin to alter course. Unfortunately, nature spared no prey and the vicious hurricane was too strong for the Zeppelin's single propeller to push against. Amid the thunder and lightning, the turbulence of the winds struck the crippling blow that doomed the skycraft to the earth.
Among the very few who survived its crash into the high Barrens north of Orgrimmar were the odd pair of a human and a night elf. The goblins were either crushed by the engines they maniacally tried to save or consumed by the turbines they were so fanatically protecting. Everyone else was dead.
"Warden," the Traveler called, himself a scathed and bruised mess, brushing through the wreckage, "Warden!"
In the darkening distance, too many wolves chimed in unison. Their howls swept down the dry mountains to the debris spread out across ten yards worth of dirt.
"Maiev!"
She Blinked behind him and pulled him down. "Be quiet!" she hissed.
The Traveler looked her over. There was blood on her lips and her crescent had shown signs of fresh combat, notably the fragment of cloth and a piece of baked skin stuck to the rightmost serrated edge. "Marauders already?"
"I told you to be quiet!"
Almost immediately thereafter, the sound of hooves rebounded off the cliffside. The shadows of centaurs reflected against the fires from the wreckage. Their silhouettes moved against the massive stone spires, their deep voices slurring loudly enough to mute any soft footfalls.
"There are too many of them for us to handle," the Traveler quipped.
Maiev nodded, herself partly in a haze.
In an instant, an arrow pierced the rock they were hiding behind followed immediately by the hack of a massive axe over their heads. Maiev immediately Blinked away, leaving the Traveler to block the incoming blow of the raider.
Despite an injured arm, he managed to swing his sword out of its sheath to catch the axehead. The centaur pressed down on his grip, however, and he buckled back, tumbling down the ridge line until he felt the thorns of a cactus rip through his coat. The other centaurs wasted no time in converging down the slope.
"Maiev, I know you can hear me!" he cried. "Now is the right time to do that thing of yours—"
She did, Blinking right in front of him and startling the centaurs' charge. "Get down!" she ordered.
The Traveler dropped prone as the Warden spun, letting loose a flurry of jagged knives that covered a sizable radius. Most of the blades made their mark, forcing the cannibalistic horsemen back amid pained cries.
"We must move now!" Maiev hollered, pulling him to his feet. Coming face to face, she caught his eyes bulge and had her whole body forcefully pushed prone as a dart whistled overhead, embedding deep into the human's bare shoulder.
The Traveler stifled a curse and fruitlessly fought back the sedative which, to his surprise, took immediate effect. The centaurs were never this skilled with...anesthetic...compounds...
The Warden wedged her arms under his body, cushioning his fall. A more robust marauder took the opportunity to strike. With the axehead reversed, the dull edge crashed against the cone of Maiev's helmet. It would have been fatal to a bare head but the hardened steel had absorbed the force of the blow just enough to allow her to only lose consciousness.
When she awoke, her first instinct was to wiggle. As she expected, her hands were bound behind her. She fluttered her eyes to clear the blur until she could see the interwoven bars of steel that formed her cage. Crude but tight. She barely had any leg room at all but she could see below her.
She was suspended from a pole by a chain. Knowing the centaurs, she was well aware how long she had left before they prepared their pots for her to boil in. Though they had not stripped her of her armor, the strict confines of her cell made her feel painfully constricted.
And the smell... The stench was horrid. Far worse than even the dung of the wildkin or the rotting corpse thereof.
She made to move and the cage swung slightly. Her heart pounded heavily until she realized just how familiar this all was. Clearing her head as much as she could, she found that these confines were far less hospitable than her cell in Outland. But she preferred not to dwell on that thought any more than she would have wanted to.
"Glad to see you're not dead," someone weakly called from across the yard.
The embers of a dead fire still cackled in the roasting pit and provided just enough light for her to see across the centaurs' crude camp. The fact that night elves were gifted with the ability to see as far at night as during the day added to her ability to pick out the figures in the dark. The Traveler, apparently, had been left to hang upside down next to the skinned corpse of a pig; he was bound and prepped for flaying come morning.
"Quite the predicament we found ourselves in, don't you think?" he cackled dryly.
"How can you be so crass about this situation?" she snarled.
"Ah... It could be worse." He swung his tightly tied hands forward. "Look around you. The centaurs are asleep. All of them... Dumb cannibals."
Maiev crunched her nose. Her hands were now going against the rope. "How can you not stand this foul odor?" she had to ask.
"I was a Kul Tiras marine, remember?" He laughed haughtily. "Although I admit that the malodorous stench of a centaur is not among those that I miss about the Barrens. I wish they would have at least bound me against a totem than to have me hang like this. For Light's sake, if I pee in this state...that would be very, very unfortunate."
With enough effort, the ropes stretched and snapped, giving Maiev the freedom of her hands. "These cages are not even bound by any magic," she muttered. And before the Traveler could say a word, she disappeared behind the puffy flash of white, reappearing again outside her cage and directly in front of his head.
"That was quick," he said.
Maiev clasped the end of one of her daggers and cut him loose. He fell hard and when his ropes were finally undone, he flicked his head towards a heap of junk piled behind one of the huts underneath which two centaurs were sleeping soundly, surrounded by their own pack of flies.
"How long have you been suspended like that?"
The Traveler waved her off. "I'm fine, I'm fine! My brain hasn't drowned in my own blood yet." He pointed to the plunder. "Our weapons are there. If we could sneak passed—"
She was gone before he could finish. He sighed and waited, finding the surrounding presence of several sleeping cannibalistic horsemen oddly nostalgic. He heard the shuffle of metal and she emerged out of the dark with her crescent and his sword which she tossed to him.
Maiev eyed the path that lead out of the camp. Beyond it was an expanse of rock and jagged cliffs. They were on a plateau. "We should leave before they wake up."
"Good call." The Traveler tore a sheet off his shirt and wrapped it around his arm, the cut caused by the Zeppelin's debris crudely sown over and the dried blood licked clean by a hungry centaur.
"Are you able with that injury?" she asked. "I could not find any healing medicaments."
"I'm good. I've been through this before. I admit that I'm going to need your help though. Night was never my element."
In the darkness, Maiev allowed the faintest of a smile to curl at the end of her lip. This human reminded her of her more agile Watchers. Their faces dashing through her mind caused her minor discomfort and she willed them away to focus on their escape.
"This must be the way," she said, pointing to the winding path.
"Lead on, Warden," the Traveler goaded, following her near invisible silhouette.
Despite bearing strong similarities with the niches of Outland, the Barrens were a new experience for Maiev. The heat, she painfully discovered, was more punishing than the oven air of Draenor. Though there were potholes of water in and around Shadowmoon Valley, particularly in that backwater tavern in Shattrath, such a resource was not as easily accessible here. To the very least, the roads were not baking her feet with every step.
The sky was fading fast and the orange glow of the sun spread over the wilderness, coloring the landscape with hues of bright yellow and greenish brown. For every cactus that Maiev could see, she counted a dozen ways to squeeze out its juices for so much as a drink. And even they were growing scarce by the mile.
The Traveler waved his hand and planted his sword into the ground next to a towering spire so conveniently shaped by the elements of nature into a large claw that provided enough shade for a whole caravan. He bent over panting. "Care to rest?"
"Tired?"
"Of course. What, do I look like I'm eager to keep going?" he groused.
Maiev scowled. Sweat beaded down her lips and she turned away briefly to wipe her lower face clean. "How further on before we reach this checkpoint you are referring to?"
"If it's still there..."
The Warden stiffened. She rounded herself with a solid kick to his chest. He rebounded against the rock but her boot stayed over his chest plate, pressing him against it. "Do not tell me we are lost."
"I never said we were," he growled back. She released her boot and he dropped, choking for air.
"I don't know why I'm even with you," Maiev muttered.
"You dragged me with you. Why complain?"
The Warden stifled a growl. She was in no mood for anything now. With the desert around them and hydration becoming a problem, she was feeling far more exhausted than ever before. The sun had now ascended above the mountains and she prepared herself for what could very well be a severe heat wave.
"If memory serves," the Traveler blurted out of the blue. "We had traversed this road before. If we keep following this road, we might be able to catch the banners that we had put up. We had used that forward outpost to monitor the locals' activity...and most often there were skirmishes."
"You provoked the centaurs into attacking you by setting stone on earth that was not yours," Maiev snarled.
"They came at us first!" he snarled back. "Something had to be done to keep them at bay. Stomping our foot onto their threshold was the solution and it worked. Besides, these carnivores horsemen were far more belligerent than the wildlife of the north."
"Your campaign was an incursion into Kalimdor."
"We were no saints but that does not mean that your people are no different than us. War was never ours to make!"
Maiev buried her glaive deep into the stone inches above his bare head. "Do you want to argue with me, human?"
"Do you want me to cut you down right where you..." The Traveler bit down on his tongue and quickly exhaled, pressing his half-drawn sword back into its scabbard. He forced himself away from her. He waited until he could think more clearly. When he spoke, his voice was calmer. "The outpost should have tapped into an underground water reserve. There should be a well there."
Maiev narrowed her eyes. She breathed deep to snuff out her bubbling anger. After several deep breaths, she saw him waiting patiently ahead, his cloak now a turban wrapped around his head. This rabble would suffocate them both. She would rather expend her energy fending off predators than to harm the only hope she had of leaving the Barrens.
LAST EDITED: July 8, 2015