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Note: Sorry to cut it off like that! But it's going to be sooo good, hang in there…


Chapter 8: The Deathstalker

The walk across the Golden Plain to Bloodhoof Village for my initiation was the longest one I'd taken, yet. In the same way that I hadn't exactly quit being a Pathfinder when I was supposed to, I also hadn't embraced becoming a Paladin. Because I'd used the same amount of energy to make both decisions.

Exactly none.

Paladin was something I just… picked up. Yeah, don't ever tell any Lady Liadrin types I did that.

I honestly thought it'd be like leatherworking, if you can believe that. I mean, I wasn't being an idiot about it. My cousin was doing it and he kept bragging about it at dinnertime. (I have a hut in the mountains for fun, but I'd moved in with my Bloodhoof relatives, you know. I think I mentioned that.) Cousin Brunho, he's a gloryhog, but a good enough kid. I eventually got interested in the Paladin thing since he kept saying, 'No, it's a Sunwalker thing! It's way moo-cooler!' Moo-cooler… ugh, these kids. And so I decided to come along when he eventually offered. I was, indeed, impressed. Très moo-cool.

Pathfinder. I speak all kinds of languages, don't worry about it.

I got that the Sunwalkers were a new, spectacular thing. And the energy around that first talking circle, the stories that were told, the help those initiates were able to give each other... Mu'sha's golden Light at the tip of one's hands… saving lives… Donning a shield, taking on dozens of enemies at once… And then the glorious power of retribution at the tip of a spear-blade… War-paint, glory, saving lands, hearts and minds! It was something we Tauren were made for.

Yeah, I got all that.

But it also meant no more gun. Never again have a pet. No more grumpy hut in the hills pretending I didn't need anyone else, least of all a whole order of other Paladins. No more being old. I'd have to be young-ish, start over, go on strange, new missions… Well, it wasn't really that. I loved a good adventure, especially a long one. And I loved mixing in all over the Horde, seeing what people needed help with, like that time I spent in Lordaeron helping the Forsaken.

The thing was, being a Paladin meant I had to leave the worst parts of me behind, take vows—actual vows—and then start being perfect. Being good. I couldn't handle that. I've never been that kind of man. You just saw me running around after a crew of pretty little women, while hanging out at the Fitz in the Venture Co. mines secreted beneath the mountains of Mulgore. Sneaking around behind the backs of Baine and Queen Saturna Sunstrider. Hell—I've been trash-talking Kael'thas sunstrider this whole time! And I'm still looking up who Cokie Whitefeathers is, because I'm not beneath getting my hands on her, either. In fact, after this horrible mission in Silvermoon, I'm starting to think I'll be ecstatic to break the law and pay for her services at this point… Nutshell—I'm not all that nice.

So, even then, when I first started training as a Paladin, I knew. I was definitely going to fall on my face under so much pressure. I couldn't do it. I could learn up to making one [Embossed Leather Vest], let's say, but actually farming tons of light hide to cure? Are you kidding me! Let's just call it a day and sell the leather.

No leatherworkers in the house? I hope there are at least some. That was a good joke.

My second problem with it was this. I would have to leave Zoca far behind me. Her and all the other good… wolf spirits. Heh, you'd think I'd miss my mother, more.

Paladins don't enjoy being possessed by ghosts, you see. Paladins exorcise them.

Guess I'm finally being honest with myself about Zoca. For a long time, you know, I told myself it was the politics of working with other Paladins and putting certain things above the motherland, and wondering what Mu'sha's Light really meant to be used for, and I had all kinds of other excuses. But no. I was unusually comfortable with spirits. I couldn't imagine my life without that connection. The realm of the spirits isn't another world to me, it's in our world here and now. It is a forest that is always there, always handy to run off into and remember how beautiful or painful life is and be grateful for that gift, of knowing what else is beyond. Or, the dark gift of death, peace at last… No Paladin text that I have ever read said it was okay to think like that. Like animal spirits and the dead were my friends. I didn't want to run around slaying them all and exorcising them. I mean, there's the Scourge or course, but other than that, I wanted to empathize with them and co-exist with them. I'd already been doing it all my life.

So, this was what Baine and, ironically, Saturna the ghost-queen were pushing me into.

As I walked across the Golden Plain that day and I worried about the Paladin initiation ceremony just an hour or less ahead of me… the voices, they rose, again. They were like a breeze, then a wind rising above me, high over my horns. They pushed me forward. Or, they would, if I gave into them. I didn't know why they always found me. Maybe it was because of my mother the shaman or the work I had done in Lordaeron long ago. Maybe I amused them. Maybe I impressed them—no, I likely just amused the hell out of them. But I liked them and the dead, they liked me back. My eyes tried to focus, instead, on a lone ambercorn tree in the distance.

Trust me, I was about to need it. An lifeline, to keep me from going under.

And suddenly, even as I thought 'ambercorn', I was in a totally black and white world. White cloud swirled overhead, seeping into a black hole. That hole in the sky was the end of things. I didn't know, I just guessed. And all around me were other pale figures, as pale as Saturna was. Tauren, some goblins—the Venture Co., you know? Because they had died out here in Mulgore, too. All of us were eventually making our way toward that black Great End. Some spirits were eager to go, moving along as fast as they could. Others had their heads low. Some cried. Those were the freshly dead, unable to understand what a comfort it could be.

Wolves howled. Strangely in tune. A menacing chorus.

The wind came again. This wind had color. My eyes remained on the ambercorn tree, to center myself. It's like waiting out a storm, your mind holding on fast to something so that you don't get blown away.

Then it raged. Okay, so I knew that I needed to pass through this if I could. Usually, when something was really wrong in the world, it turned like this. Like when the Cataclysm happened… or… would a missing Greatfather Winter really cause this? And that was probably my fault that it wasn't resolved yet, which annoyed me to end. It was like the spirit world knew it too, and they were out to get me. Anyway, time to move. It could get so much worse.

I ran hard at that tree. I charged like I wanted to knock it down, I had to. Then—and I can never explain it—death itself sent me.

In the next moment, I was across that whole field (and it should have been an hour's walk). I was almost ontop of the tree, running at it, full on. How? Death sort of… folded the landscape, or else the fabric of life, I think, to send me across miles.

HURRY THE HELL UP, TURAHO! WE CAN'T WAIT ALL ETERNITY FOR YOU TO SAVE HIM, YA MUG!

You see, in my mind, Death, ruler of the impatient spirit world, he has a voice and it sounds a lot like a Goblin mob boss. I hear some Trolls out there think death sounds like Bwonsamdi. No… totally a gangster Goblin.

So, the spirits were in on this Greatfather Winter thing, too? The old folktales say he is one of them…

Aw, crud.

When I was done listening and panicking, I was able to stop myself just in time, before slamming into that old ambercorn tree.

I huffed, I shook my head and mane, then looked around. I wiped tears and sweat down my over my face and muzzle. I paused and felt the warm gold ring just over my lip, pierced through my nostrils. Warmth was me. I was the one who was warm. So I was still alive. I turned and looked across the plain, at the spot I had come from. As always, my shadow was still there. If I blinked again, I might miss it. When I looked down, at last, it had caught up, pooling around my big hooves again.

The one way I always knew it had really happened. Several ambercorns lay undisturbed around me. As if I hadn't just kicked through them in my mad dash over here. You see… I passed through them.

I leaned against the tree and felt nothing. I had never told anyone about my little… death-jogs. Don't laugh—what would YOU even call it?

I was always too defiant a kid to ever confide in my mother about it. And by the time I was grown, I didn't want… help. I didn't want any of my mother's stuck up, shaman séance friends involved and telling old Chief Cairne of all people. And then I definitely didn't want it escalated to some weird Royal Apothecary prodding me with a stick, through the bars of some cage. I still was a big stubborn kid I guess.

Well, we'll call it… 'death stalking.' Death letting me pass through, unscathed, but only if I came out of the other side, running. Charging like a mad bull. A stupid, dangerous game we played everytime something went wrong in the world or I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or walked through a danged haunted ivar patch that I didn't even know was there.

How could I ever take my rites without telling anyone about this! And losing Zoca and all the rest! It was insane. Gods above, that made me breathless all over again.

It was why I didn't notice the shower of pine needles at first. The fresh whiff of spilt resin, a sign that branches above were being disturbed. Why it took so long for the Night Elf face peering down at me to come into focus. He was sitting in the tree, right above me. Green and light just sort of flowed over his true form, like a vapor. That's how shadowmelding works. That's all it was, day in day out, for the last seven miserable weeks of my life in Ashenvale.

My mouth made the words, before I could realize that it meant my doom, "You're Alessandre."

Alessandre smiled at me. That scared me worse, somehow, that overly friendly smile on a killer.

He chuckled, "Hooo man… how the hell did you just do that?"