An: This chapter contains lots of elements from World of Warcraft, the other half of this crossover. I will get back to the events of the Avatar movie in the next chapter.

Kali was dreaming. She'd not been allowed to have these dreams for a long time. Not since the incident she'd had as a child. This is what she dreamed of now. The tree she lay below was slick with rain under her young feet as she scrabbled heedlessly up the trunk, toes and fingers digging into the wet moss for purchase. She wanted to see the canopy, to lay close to the top and listen to the water fall from there. So heavy it was that one could almost hear the thunder in that itself. Kali giggled to herself, finally reaching the apex of her climb and looking out over the entire sea of leaves.

She was nearly two hundred feet up when she broke through the canopy, and the thought was exhilarating even if it probably should've made her at least a little fearful. Kali lay back against the tree branches, proud she had pulled off a climb more seasoned Na'vi wouldn't or couldn't; especially in the rain. The sky felt infinite up here, stretching from one horizon to the other and Kali was surrounded by the open embrace; nurtured by the torrent drenching her face and body.

The child she was didn't even hear the creaking of the water-logged branch giving away to rot. She just knew she had climbed higher than she was supposed to and she had been brave to do so. Then she was plummeted with a thunderous crack, head over heels smashing into every branch, both gaining and losing speed. Face whipped and bloodied and stomach pummeled and windless, Kali hurtled to her death. She was only just slow enough to keep from snapping her neck on impact. There was a crunch in her hip and the arm she landed on. Her ribs were totally engulfed in a flaming, throbbing agony. Kali couldn't scream, just lay there wheezing and gasping airlessly like a fish. Soon she could taste the blood on her lips. There was too much pain to simply pass out, but also not enough strength to stand up.

Hovering in a hazy gray state, Kali struggled to do anything. Anything at all. Too small. Shouldn't have...

She drifted in and out of memories, thinking about her life, short as it was. The jolts of pure agony would occasionally bring Kali back to herself and she'd cry weakly through a dry throat. It took a full day before Kali accepted that she was going to die here, and it was going to painful the whole way. But when she finally did accept it, an odd peace came over. Kali stopped being afraid and instead focused on the space around her. Besides the coppery scent of her own blood, there was something else. Kali was unsure how to describe it, but old felt like a good start. Old and...not really malicious. It became less of a smell and more of a presence and Kali blinked blearily up at the shadow cast on her face. "Daddy...hurts...Please...Help me."

The hands that cupped her face weren't blue. They didn't even have skin on them, instead made up of skeletal fingers. "I'm not ya da, little one. But I'll be here anyway." It was thick, a voice dripping with the sound of some nation Kali didn't recognize. "I'll not be lettin' you go. Not again. You won't be dyin' today."

The hand on her cheek eased the pain and the figure was gone again. Kali could still feel him, knew that blurry skull-faced person was still there. Kali drifted, finally able to sleep. When the scientists left behind on Pandora would find her hours later, they would marvel at how she was still alive. A statistical impossibility, they'd call it.

x

Zekhan was roused from his focused study of the water spirits that lived cupped in the leaves of the tree by a familiar presence. He turned his gaze to where Kali was still curled in her catatonia to see a shadow hanging over her. It was a familiar shadow. "Bwonsamdi." A smile graced the shaman's lips.

The shadow chuckled. "Zappy Boi." It began to solidify into the loa he knew. "Ye find yourself in a strange place, eh? How is the bullet wound?"

Zekhan looked down at the hole in his side covered in dried blood and held up a rather long bullet that his racial regeneration had pushed out. "Their guns are a lot faster than than I'm used to, but I be okay." He tucked into a pocket. "We best not let the gnomes or rhe goblins hear about these...fast guns." When Bwonsamdi said nothing to this, Zekhan changed the subject. "What are ya doing here, Bwonsamdi? This is no longer Azeroth."

"What I always do." The eyes glowing behind the loa's mask glinted with something unfamiliar on his visage. Is that regret? No...shame? Maybe it be...apologetic? The loa kept talking. "I be watching over my littlelest Darkspear." He was looking at Kali when he said this. "She won't remember this, and it was before your time but she be the last sacrifice made in my name by that...traitor." Bwonsamdi spit. "Innocent as she were, I used what influence I had to see her reincarnated as quickly as she could be."

"She was a child. A toddler." Zekhan had heard stories growing up about the day Bwonsamdi appeared before the shamans and other spell casters to take away the child's soul himself. It was the day he forbade any more sacrifices, ritual or otherwise to be made in his name. It was a stain on the history of his peope and some of the older Darkspear still whispered of the nightmares they had about the child's cries and pleas.

"I not be craving death." The loa quietly agreed. "You know they see me. Ya also know the truth of it. It wasn't the little one's time." They both looked at Kali, deep in her stillness. "I not be knowing why she's so soothed by me and my domain but she is."

"She said she was on her spirit quest." Zekhan looked at the death loa next to him. "She be looking for you, even if she doesn't realize it. Looking for her answers."

x

Kali woke in agony. She couldn't move anything that was on her left side, not even her pinky toe. It was understandable, given the cast covering that entire side up to her collar. Her father was by her side in an instant, shoving one of the scientists out if his way. "Kali! No, don't try to move." His eyes swam wirh a volatile mix of emotions.

"M-mommy." Kali choked, struggling to speak. Her chest felt like there was an iron band pulling tighter with every inhalation and closing in more with each exhalation.

"Calm yourself, Kali. You'll go into shock." Jake took her uncast hand, gently squeezing her fingers and rolled them between his. "Your mother is getting the tsahik and bringing her here." He seemed to hesitate. "Is there anything you need to tell us?"

Kali, pained but unafraid nodded the best she could. "I wasn't...alone."

"Eywa holds all her children." Jake was trying not to cry, she could tell. Kali tried to sit up and was kept down.

"No." Kali said with certainty. She alone knew the truth of her experience, but it didn't have to stay that way. She could tell the other Na'vi that Eywa wasn't the only one there was watching out for the planet's peoples. "Dad, there was something else. Someone else. He cupped ny cheek and stood over me that whole time, even when I couldn't see him. He eased my suffering. Made it less. Helped me sleep. He kept me from dying."

"Demon." Said a Na'vi tongue from the doorway. Her mother was pushing her way in with the tsahik. "A demon had our baby." She looked at their tsahik who was already on the floor mixing a poultice.

"A spirit of death. A creature shunned by Eywa's light. She is marked. It will take her as its own in the afterlife." The tsahik fixed the little girl wirh a determined gaze. "Unless we stop it." She rose to her feet, holding the bowl of intensely bitter smelling herbs. "Jake, Neytiri, hold her down. Keep her mouth open." Her parents did as they were asked and Kali struggled.

"No, stop! It wasn't a demon!" There was something prickling a the edge of Kali's awareness. She had once begged someone else just as desperately to stop... something she couldn't remember.

"This will stop you from dreaming until his hold weakens enough for Eywa to creep back in. Please swallow it, child."

x

Kali was groaning now, moving in her memories. Bwonsamdi sighed. "It won't be long now till the girl wakes. She'll remember now what they tried ta hide."

Zekhan was quiet, still trying to absorb the knowledge tht Kali had been a victim of ritual sacrifice and used to look a lot more like him. When he finally spoke, it wasn't really to Bwonsamdi or Kali, even. "How... horrible to block someone's spiritual path." Zekhan turned his head to his friend. "She faces a trial in the coming days then. To defend her second home and reconcile the knowledge of where she truly came from."

"She not be doin it alone." They shared a nod and Bwonsamdi dissipated into swirling, dark smoke. Zekhan stood and went to where Kali was sleeping still.

"Time to wake up, Kali Sully. I have things to teach you."