For half a day, Zul'kresh limped along the grassy plain. He didn't even find a tree with branches thick enough to be used as walking sticks until after the first four hours. Contrary to what he'd hoped, walking when suffering from a fever didn't become easier as time went by; he couldn't simply walk off the pain and sickness. His ravager was a loyal companion pet and armored like a tank but not stout enough to help him walk, and he consigned himself to bouts of walking, uncontrollable shakes, and slapping himself to avoid passing out.
Eventually, the woods grew thicker and reminded him of his last moments. He'd been in Val'sharah; the Burning Legion had already fallen. He met the orcs at the town full of rustic humans with Gilnean accents. They were camping...he didn't remember why. There were deer, but he doubted they'd been camping solely to catch wild game. Everything beyond that was blackness, but he rejoiced in at least knowing where he was.
The woodlands grew thicker, and he was thankful that his senses had returned. He could smell blood and cut wood, so he must have been approaching other people. In his condition, he didn't have the luxury of wondering who they were. His ravager was surprisingly calm, giving him hope that there weren't any bandits or demons around, but he still needed to know who he was approaching. He'd have to rely on the kindness of strangers to survive.
After a few more agonizing hours of walking, he noticed the signs of civilization clearly. There were poorly covered tracks as well as trees which had clearly been cultivated for visual barriers and sap. The smells grew stronger even as the woods remained silent, signaling that he was alone.
His hopes rose after another hour when he saw a cabin in the woods. Despite his joy, he still had to hobble slowly as he shivered, granting him more time to observe the surroundings. The structure was well hidden even if the tracks and cultivated plants weren't, and though there wasn't a fresh kill, there was a platform outside for slaughtering wild game which he'd been able to smell for miles. Whoever lived there probably only recently tried their hands at survivalism. The fresh cut of the cabin's logs indicated that it was relatively new.
Unable to save himself with anything other than soliciting pity, Zul'kresh ordered his ravager to hide in the bushes while he approached the door slowly.
"Help," he rasped in Orcish, and then in Low Common. Nobody answered, so he tried the door.
The door was larger than a human but smaller than him. Despite the small size and simple wooden framework, he was too weakened by the fever to push hard, and he ended up sitting his weight against the door until the lock broke. He fell through, shaking so hard when he hit the floor that he almost started convulsing. Confident that he was alone, he caught his breath and waved his ravager over for a few moments before inspecting his surroundings.
The cabin looked quite cozy, though that was perhaps due in part to the fact that the ceiling, loft and all the furniture were designed for an orc-sized person. The Alliance banner cancelled out that possibility, however, and Zul'kresh assumed everything had been designed of medium size to fit people of many backgrounds. His companion pet skittered inside the cabin and entered what appeared to be a kitchen, feeling around with its head spines for food. Zul'kresh shut the door and jammed the broken parts of the door frame back into place before he dragged himself toward the back of the cabin under the loft. Latrines tended to be built into the ground in hunting cabins, and his one was no different.
The numerous stuffed animal heads that greeted him on his way into the basement implied that there might be stored meat in the cabin; he had a bit of experience hunting, and a blood elf comrade had introduced him to the concept of seasonal lodges. A hallway perpendicular to the kitchen led to a stairwell leading downward, and he tried to take a few steps down to check for provisions - again, as his sindorei friend had told him was the layout of such buildings.
Unfortunately, Zul'kresh was too heavy for the wooden steps, and the third one broke beneath him. As if his head wasn't already throbbing enough, he rolled over twice and bruised himself up even more when he hit the concrete floor. His ravager leapt down the steps to check for danger, nudging him to sit up again.
"Slow!" he ordered the Outland insect.
Waiting through another round of shivers, he tried to swat at his affectionate pet bug when it began pulling his leg to one end of the basement. Its insistent chittering eventually pushed him to glance at the corner, and he was immediately taken aback. Like a traveler lost in the desert, he'd found his proverbial oasis, and it was most definitely not a mirage.
Stocked right next to the latrine were the most important necessities in his journey: food, medicine, and toilet paper.
"Jackpot," he rasped while stumbling over to the shelves.
In spite of his fevered delirium, he retained the common sense to treat himself before anything else. A row of gnome-sized ancestral healing potions sat in a row with ridiculous price tags on them, and he drank half of them on the spot before retreating to the latrine. His underwear was useless but he was alone and ravagers didn't understand clothes, so he threw the soiled boxer shorts away and spent a good half hour washing himself with a water pump fueled by an aquifer. The medicine began to work by the time he was done bathing, reducing his fever enough such that he could gorge himself on the stored meat, cheese, and bread. He nearly passed out from overeating in the basement, only keeping himself awake due to his lingering worry over the Alliance banner he'd encountered upstairs.
Stark naked but slightly better rested, he climbed out of the basement and inspected the surroundings. The woodwork was human, but the cabin smelled like worgen. The building was well-stocked in alchemical and survivalist tools, including a few which looked so familiar that he paused in surprise. When he checked the main sitting room, he felt uncomfortable due to a dreadful sense of deja vu.
A few of the animal traps spurred a sense of jealousy in his heart that he couldn't explain. Desperate to understand what has happened to him, he felt the traps in his hands and imagined setting them himself. An acoustic guitar on a cushion between the couches filled him with a sense of sadness he couldn't explain. Images of an orc he couldn't remember kept flashing into his mind when he saw the guitar, teasing him with half-memories he couldn't grasp beyond visceral reactions in his gut. A kit of flint and steel, as well as a lantern, gave him such a possessive sense of connection that he took them off a mantle over the fireplace and moved them to a couch closer to him.
Hunched over and brooding, Zul'kresh felt frustrated at the choppy pictures in his mind. The rustic human city...Bradensbrook...it was full of Gilneans who were polite to him. He'd met other trolls in a bar, but they left separately. Those orcs...he remembered them only from that town. They weren't people he'd known, really, but he felt sad at their loss, especially when he looked at the guitar. One of them must have been playing it when they were doing whatever it was they were doing. There were scraps of sleeping bags where they'd been; maybe they'd been camping. But camping didn't usually end with two people dead and an arrow in the head.
Until that point, he'd remained calm and almost clinical when wondering about what misfortune had befallen him. His main concern had been living through the fever and possible infection he'd suffered in his regenerated head and hand, but with his condition rapidly improving as he finished most of the potions in the cabin, he was able to focus on an object that flipped his mood to the opposite pole.
In a matter of seconds, all his calmness drained out of him. Whatever sense of relaxation he'd achieved was depleted much faster than it had accumulated, causing him to leap off the couch and scare his pet ravager when he noticed the object in question. Growling and baring his tusks, he fell to his knees on the rug and began to put more pieces together, especially when he remembered that there was taxidermy equipment on a work desk in the corner. All of the pieces of the puzzle started to make sense now - his lantern, the guitar, his traps, the very nature of the hunting lodge...and the ashtray. Yes, the ashtray on the coffee table.
The ashtray was his own right hand.
Rage boiled up inside of him as he realized that whoever had tried to kill him had also cut off his old hand, preserved it with taxidermy, and used it to hold their nasty cigarette ashes. And now he was inside their cabin, new hand and new head and all.