AN: Erk. Sorry, folks. I didn't mean to have this linger like this for so long, but life kinda ran up and kicked me in the rear. Nevermind that I had a few other projects that needed updating before I could return to this. It's all good. There should be far more of this story coming in the next few weeks.

Brinella would also like to say that she doubts her skills with the few forms that she has now, and that seeking to learn to fly would be quite silly, as she is a worgen, and we all know worgen do not fly. Unless pushed off trees, apparently.

Days passed, and the rain refused to stop. Brinella became used to sloshing through mud and water quickly, taking great strides in her training where it could be afforded. She learned quickly when it was decided she would learn how to bind wounds with cloth instead of nature, but she still left something to be desired when it came to cooking. More than once, the other three would quickly volunteer to do the cooking for the night before letting her near the campfire. She spent the time they cooked doing simple fishing in the ponds and streams that had appeared when the land sundered.

Ninya and Lydros both told her all that they could about the land while they traveled. Even with their great knowledge, Sura's map filled with the new surroundings. More than once, they had followed an old path the two remembered, only to be met with little more than a collapsed mountain, or a new river. It left the two elves with bitter tastes in their mouths, to say the least. As the days progressed, Lydros spent more and more time out scouting, while Ninya brooded.

The ruins of Auberdine had been a brutal slap in the face to the young rogue. She had known people there, more personally than Lydros had. To see nothing more of them, except the bodies of those that did not escape, rent her heart in two. Where she had once been the bright spark of light for the group, it was as if darkness had moved in, and was slowly consuming her. The others hoped it was merely the rain.

A week after leaving the boughs of Teldrassil, Ninya woke to the scent of rain and wet foliage. The trees rustled about their makeshift camp, and she untangled herself from the warmth of the blanket that she and Brinella had curled under, grabbing her blades and moving from the small area. The rain had stopped, but to the slender-framed woman, something else was falling into the woods... a dark, promising voice that called out to her from behind the trees, like a lost friend to another. Without looking back, Ninya slipped between the tall evergreens, and vanished from sight.

"When did she leave?"

Brinella roused to Lydros' voice, fairly hissed between his teeth. Her eyes opened, squinting against the first clear light she had seen since they had come to the shattered Darkshore. With a grumble, the worgen pulled the blanket back over her head, curling gangly limbs up against her chest. In her mind, she could hear herself call for just five more minutes. It would have to be louder to drown out the rest of the conversation between Winnie and Lydros, who were about as good as keeping quiet in their fights as two seabirds were fighting over food.

"I dunnae know, man! The lassie lives and breathes in the shadows. I though' she simply went off ta fin' ye for some canoodlin' as ye two are prone ta be doin'!"

Winnie's voice was frustrated, but there was something more in it that Brinella's mind caught and wrapped around. Fear. That alone cleared her sleep-fogged mind, her eyes opened as she listened beneath the blanket.

"What we choose to do in our own time is hardly any of your concern, dwarf - ..."

"Dwarf! Ye lon' eared fancy pants! Mah name is Winnie, or Winifred, or Light be damned, ye can call me Flamebraid as the rest o' them do, but don' ye dare be lookin' down yer snout at me as you're doin' right now! If Nin didn't trounce off to get a good roll in tha hay with ye, then ye could say tha' instead o' actin' the ass!"

Lydros sighed, and there was a long pause before he spoke again, his voice trembling with the effort one took to keep their voice level when they were thoroughly upset. "You're right. I'm sorry. No, Ninya did not come to find me. Her tracks go the other way, deeper into the woods. I'm going to find her. You stay with the mutt - ..."

"Mutt! Lad, I care for ye dearly, but ye are a right damned jackass when ye get your knickers in a twist!"

"Stay with Brin - ..."

"Nay! Ye stay with tha lass. Ye were tha one who wanted to keep an eye on her, after all. Ninya will be back, as she always comes back when she wanders."

Lydros growled, his irritation clear. "Not this time, Winnie. No matter how many times she has wandered, she's never left without telling someone about where she is going. There are Twilight camps in these woods, and you've seen how dark Ninya has become these past few days."

"I'm not much o' a woodsman, Lydros." Winnie sighed, the shift of her armor sounding in the camp. "Thin's aren't what they seem here, not anymore. Give it until nigh'fall, lad. Ninya will be back, ye will see."

There was silence, the rustle of movement, and Brinella shot up from the ground as a resounding crash heralded the sound of something large falling to the ground. The blanket fell away from her, and she had to rub her eyes before she fully believed what she saw before her. Lydros lay prone along the ground with Winnie a few steps beyond, her hands on her hips. Beside the night elf was her hammer, glinting in the dawn's light.

"Ah, ye'r awake. Get up then. Lydros fell on his face, as ye can see. Do me a favor while I make breakfast up? Ninya seems to have slipped off in tha night. See if ye can't find her and get her back here?"

Brinella opened her mouth to ask a question, but she clamped her furred maw shut as Winnie's brows drew together in a glare. If there was one thing she didn't want, it was to draw the ire of an already angry woman. She dressed quickly, loping from the camp while settling her pack over her shoulder.

Winnie watched her go, turning her eyes onto Shade, who sat not far from his master with an accusing glare centered on her. "Wha? He tripped!" The dwarven woman trundled forward, taking up her mace and feeling the place her weapon had struck on the back of Lydros' skull when she had thrown it. "On tha other han', ye might wanna go and find a priest. May ha'e hit him – er... I mean, he mighta hit his head harder than I though'."

She remained out of her favored shift for the time being. The senses of a cat were keen, but she craved the ability to follow a scent that the worgen she had become seemed able to harness so easily. It did not take her long to find the scent of her friend, winding through the trees in so chaotic a manner that Brinella was not certain, for some time, if the rogue had not been fully intoxicated while trying to walk.

The path wove one way, and then another, and sometimes it fell back on itself and chose a completely different way to go. The woman had passed the same growth of briarthorn six times before she finally gave in and plucked it, if only to stop the feeling of helplessness that had begun to gnaw at her gut. It was only as she sat back on her heels and considered her options that she noticed the tree she leaned against smelled just a bit too familiar.

Now she knew why the trail had been so confused. Her eyes roamed upwards, and she saw how, far above her, the closeknit growth had tangled limbs together and created, in some way, a path. It went only one way that she could see from the ground, and after the rains that had been falling for the last week, Brin did not relish the idea of following the path her friend seemed to have taken.

So she followed what she could see on the ground, squirming between undergrowth that seemed determined to strip her of her fur for how it grabbed at her. Around a village of furbolg, past naga-infested ruins, and through another thick batch of trees before the scent picked up near her again, and Brin dropped to all fours as she followed it. Other scents mingled with Ninya's, unfamiliar and … sour? Brin's nose wrinkled with disgust when she crossed the path of these, the very smell making her stomach turn, and her fur stand on end.

Ninya's path melded into these others easily, and her pace became frantic as she followed what had once been a thin strand, and had now coalesced into a thick rope. Terrified of losing sight of what she had followed so closely, Brinella didn't notice that the trees were not so thick around her here, and that the land had become uneven, until she had nearly walked herself off of a cliff.

Below her, scores of people dug at the cliffs, pulling out rocks and piling them into wagons that were manned by even more people. Brinella watched the wagons move out towards the sea, some coming back in to take more of the stone and dirt away. Scaffolding had been erected at key points, including near the worgen herself. Her form shifted, the shadows embracing her as she stalked the clifftop and headed for one of the nearest constructs.

More became visable as she moved; groups of people talking together, more who seemed to be coaching those that dug into the cliffs, and even some who slept. Brinella touched lightly onto the floor, scurrying quickly under one of the wagons as a group of workers made their way up the scaffold she had just descended. Her eyes caught the color of clothing, of purples and blacks and the occasional red hood.

A flash of grey and silver among the milling violet and black caught her attention, and she nearly jumped for joy. Ninya stood in a line with several others, her attention on a large portal that hung in the air. It was flanked by two chanting figures, and Brinella watched with a feeling of growing dread as the first in the line stepped through...

… and vanished. The druid watched the second follow only moments later, and realized that Ninya would be leaving just as easily as they were. Glancing around quickly, the woman scuttled forward on her stomach, relying more on the general noise of the crowd than the shadows for her cover. It worked, allowing her to get within feet of the young rogue before she dared to call to her.

"Ninya?" It was like talking to a wall, for all the good it did. Ninya remained oblivious of her, and Brinella tried again as two more stepped into the swirling vortex. Once more, and then again, but the silver haired rogue never once looked away from the portal. Brinella couldn't understand why she was being ignored, except that with each person who stepped into the portal that Ninya was heading for, she felt more and more unease.

Unease that spiked into brutal pain as something large hit her side and sent her sprawling into a group of workers. Brinella groaned, her vision going blurry for scant seconds as whatever hit her loomed over her, and she thought that she was going mad. A huge, lumbering creature that smelled of something worse than death, and looked... Brin was in too much pain to laugh at what the image called up. A squid with legs, and thick tentacles as arms? She didn't know what they were, but she knew that whatever it was, hurt.

She had the briefest view of something behind the strange beast; a construct of immense design that was half-buried in the sand and mud. That was what they were digging out, she realized. Not the sand or even stone. They're digging that... thing up? Why? The worgen moved as the arm that struck her came down again, a cry going up around the camp as others began to realize her presence. Her side was aflame with pain, but she ducked between the tree-trunk like legs of the thing that had hit her, screaming for Ninya in her mind, and reached only a solid wall of silence more deafening than what had been there moments before. Terrified, Brinella glanced to the line of people that she had seen her friend in.

Ninya was gone.

There was no sign of the rogue, no sign even of the line that she had been standing in. Now it was only the worgen surrounded by miners with picks, and more of those otherworldly beings. The portal had been closed, and while Brinella hoped and prayed that it had been done to free the casters up for attack on her, she knew deep in her heart that it wasn't so. As the group advanced on her, Brinella turned and ran.

Literal fire scorched her fur, twisted magic ate at her, and she was certain she felt the sharp bite of blades on her flanks, lucky strikes that weren't repeated, before she managed to break past a line of gnomish guards and escape onto the beach that they had been lugging the stone and dirt onto. Her paws scrabbled at rocks as she climbed a pile that had been shoring up the water, dropping heavily over the other side.

She didn't look back as she ran, despite the cries that followed her up the beach. Murloc tribes scattered before her, barreled over by a hulking she-bear before she was once more the sleek and quick cat, leaving all behind. She didn't stop running until she could do so for no other reason than because her body had given out on her. The battered feline became the injured worgen, and while she mended the wounds that laced her, she reached for any sign of Ninya over the mental bond that they had developed over the week.

There was nothing. Not even the gentle pulse of life, the thread of light that bound the heart of the rogue to that of the worgen, the same thread that the four friends all shared among each other. It was as if Ninya had never been there, had never existed. When Brinella finally made it back to the camp that night, her fur matted with blood and her eyes bloodshot from tears she tried hard to hold back, there was nothing that needed to be said. Lydros, awake and ready to scold the rogue for running off, took one look at Brin's face and turned away, seeming to choke on words before striding out of the camp and into the forest.

Brinella dropped to the bed that she and Ninya had shared only that morning, pulling the blanket up against her bruised muzzle. When the tears finally fell, she felt thick arms wrap around her as Winnie tried to comfort her, before giving in to the sorrow and emptiness she felt as well.