Disclaimer: The characters and settings created by Blizzard Entertainment Inc in this story are owned by their creators. I do not claim them as mine in any way, shape or form. I am not receiving monetary profit from this story and no copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter 29: Hellstorm, Part 1
This is so hard to recall. Mu'usha, have mercy on me.
Of the part I'm willing to tell, I remember…
Their summoning was loud. Loud magic. Have you ever experienced that? Not these flimsy spells that float around, sort of sail up like smoke. This stuff was somehow hard. Violent. Like being inside of an engine. A raging, Goblin engine. The very trees were rattling. Bark flaking off, leaves coming down here and there. Plucked off by this unnatural conjuring so opposed to life, to nature. It went backwards against life itself, it had my stomach in knots while I was lying there in the rut I found. A kind of natural trench at the edge of their camp. Some guy lay senseless beside me, a Human man, a cultist. I'd knocked him out with the butt of my rifle, right where he was standing watch. Then I took his place. Gun cocked, imagining all the bloody hellstorm that was going to come down on me when I stopped this.
I wasn't sure what they were doing—Kael'thas said they were somehow summoning Greatfather Winter? Or trying to? I didn't know if I could trust Kael's lies, not even now. But I did know that, as he said, Meydiri was there, holding up her arms. There was an altar, some offering burning up in the bowl placed at the center. I think… my eyes were stinging in the fast wind, grit flying, and my tears. Yeah, this woman had brought me to the very edge and I knew it. But that was the paper, the very letter from Greatfather Winter that Princess Anthene had shown us about a day ago. Meydiri had taken it.
Why? Maybe because it was something Greatfather Winter touched, something with his essence still on it. I guessed that far. So Meydiri had got close to me—and maybe that's what all that flirting was, back at Prince Belorim's estate—she took it off me, and then she went right to work. Mey didn't wonder… no, let me re-phrase that. Meydiri hadn't cared that I'd gone off in the middle of the night and not come back. She didn't care that my legs got broken by a bunch of Blood Knights, either. Her coming to that holiday party was probably to just keep up appearances, make sure I didn't get suspicious, or that the Horde leaders could see her being legitimate, out in the open, when everyone knew by now that she'd come to Quel'thalas to help me.
I guessed that if this summoning circle could have happened sooner, then the cultists would have done so, right? Then that appearance at the party was Meydiri buying time, keeping things cool until all her people arrived.
I took another glance over my shoulder. I wanted to confirm all the facts in my mind, gather myself, my conscience together before I started blowing heads off. There were Night Elf bodies, Sentinels, murdered in the dirt. Killed just that afternoon. The Twilight Cultists, and Meydiri too maybe, had gone on a killing spree and simply taken over one of the Night Elf spy camps. Easier than building their own magical infrastructure, I guess. I didn't know how that worked exactly. But everything else was just as Kael'thas had said.
Meydiri, she was absolutely one of them. Her mission, fatally compromised. And she had used me, thoroughly, to get what she wanted. I worried about the when and how—when exactly she decided to start messing with me. After my Sunwalker initiation back in Mulgore when I first questioned her about whether her mission was going alright? Or, before? Did she stroll into my initiation ceremony knowing that she was going to follow me to Quel'thalas, ruin me? Mey was asking way back then if she could come.
An explosion killed my thoughts. It shook the ground beneath my belly, rattled my teeth. No more time to consider, the time to pass judgement would be later. At a trial in front of the Warchief, the whole Horde. I was determined to bring Meydiri, the woman I loved, in alive if that was all I could do for her.
Was Greatfather Winter summoned, yet? Should I dare and let them finish and get him that way? It now seemed a stupid plan, to try to usurp their magic that was doing me in already, dark magic that I didn't understand. No, there would be no shortcut to this for me. I'd still have to find Greatfather Winter the old-fashioned way. And I was about to fix this whole mess the old-fashioned way, too.
That bright, loud explosion? It was also about the best cover I could hope for.
While the cultists were still dazed, I ran in shooting. I charged, on my big Tauren hooves, yelling like I was an army and blasting that big rifle with one hand. I covered the whole camp with bullets. And, I found out fast that I could call down searing Light spells on anyone I spotted trying to lob a spell back my way. I got them all away from the altar, then I used that for cover. Of course that put me in the center. But it did get the summoning stopped for now. Big angry Tauren in the middle of things should do it. Well two, now. Meydiri was ducked down on the other side. I didn't see her get down but I could sense her sure enough.
We shouted at one another beneath a hail of my bullets, spells, and the very forest around us, breaking. Those cultists weren't fleeing, they were angry and starting to tear up the landscape in order to take cover, blasting up the dirt to make crude trenches, fast. They probably thought I brought King Kael'thas' cavalry with me.
As much as I hate the man, looking back on it now, he should have offered.
Meydiri cussed at me from her side of the stone altar. "Bastard! You really think you're strong enough to take us all on!"
"That's the first thing you say to me? After I loved you? After you betrayed me!" I hefted my gun up and let loose another round on my side. I needed to get these fools on just one side of the altar or the other. Right now, the ones I'd cleared were coming back, trying to surround me.
She shouted back, "What happened to broken hocks and your stomach messed up on what I gave slipped into what you ate and drank at the party? Why else do you think that happened? Oh so conveniently? Fool! You're so stubborn, I wanted you to live through this!"
"Is that what you're getting on me about woman—YOU'RE CONJURING A TITAN, Mey'diri! In a summoning circle! With the Twighlight Hammer Cult! Have you no shame whatsoever!"
Then I saw her Tauren face. She peeked around the stone at me, afraid to come out all the way. It wasn't supposed to be cute, like kids peeping at each other in the middle of a game of tag, but it was the woman I loved. So I guess it was. I also suppose that when I didn't blow her head off the moment she tried it, she got bold and tried to reach over and snatch at me. I swatted her dark, three-fingered hand away.
"Stop that!"
"Argh! Whose side are you on, Turaho?!"
"Where have I always been? I'm a Pathfinder first and foremost! And then I made myself a Sunwalker… I am the law, Meydiri."
"The law?" She laughed, and it was a proper villainess laugh. I only felt stupider for not seeing it all before. Damn me! "You're over here chasing women, playing bullfighter with Kael'thas to feed your ego. You call this a proper investigation?"
"We're in the midst of you… shitting all over yours! You were supposed to help end the cultist threat to the Tauren people, not join them!"
"Kalimdor is over! It is being torn apart by Night Elves and Orcs—you should know, you were there. You even resorted to working with a disgusting Kaldorei murderer to get things done out here, if you need proof. Even you! You, Turaho, are compromised. When I saw that happening, you talking to Alessandre in the middle of Eversong Woods like that was a thing! I knew then that there was no point in even discussing my feelings with you. Of course I wanted to try and… explain. Somehow. But I couldn't give you the slightest inkling when I saw that treachery. I had to act fast."
A pair of the cultist dogs came at me in the middle of us screaming at each other. I was expecting it. I kicked one with my hoof, that's enough to smash a man's face in you know, and the other one, a Troll, got a full round in the chest, along with the others charging up in his wake. That quieted my side for a while. But on Meydiri's side, they were starting to shout out orders, regroup. They must have realized I was only one man and they weren't dealing with Kael'thas' army, or some advance force paving the way for them. If I was going to get Meydiri out, I needed to do it now.
She raged on, "The whole world is morally decrepit. We can't rely on that flimsy alliance Chief Cairne made in haste with Orcs long ago, with Orcs of all the races to ally ourselves with! To protect ourselves from mere Quilboar? From the Centaur! There are greater threats to our mortal existence, Turaho. The Twilight Hammer wants to deal with it head on, and we will! We will dismantle the order of this world by using the power of the first ones, the truest, purest font of power there even is, and given directly to the mortals who prove worthy. A great and grand re-ordering! And then a new race, a greater race made of the chosen ones will decide who lives where, who starves! Justice will be served and all the silly squabbles of the world, settled. It will not be done by your selfish wars, the Horde against the Alliance! Only by sorting out the ones left living, from unworthy the dead!"
"Why do you sound like Sylvanas then, if you're so smart!"
Her attitude flared up, "What did you just call me—"
I knew that girl through and through. She stuck her head out all the way to sass me over something petty, and then I snagged her around to my side.
"Why you!"
"Let's argue like we're married later. Right now, we're in the middle of a fight I'm going to win."
A lone shout from one of the leaders. Everything got quiet, all spell-fire stopped.
Meydiri narrowed eyes up at me. "Doesn't sound like you're the one winning, Turaho."
I snagged my arm around her neck to keep her still. I didn't want to, but I needed control over her, and the situation.
Meydiri managed to speak through it. "Think I'll make a good hostage? I… pale in comparison, to the true power that's needed to heal this world. But first it must break—"
"Shush." Then I shouted to the ones there, watching. "These are my terms! I want the girl, and I want you all to leave. Kael'thas' soldiers will be here any moment—"
Meydiri shouted over me. "Lies! He's no friend to King Kael'thas! They hate each other."
I snagged Meydiri in tighter. For my love of the girl, I'd let her breathe. Clearly, that was always a mistake.
"Tattle tale." I growled at her. Then, I tried shouting again, "All of the Horde knows that I am here and it is only a matter of time! And you slew a dozen Night Elf Sentinels, but do you really think the Night Elves themselves aren't on their way back here to finish you off? That this was all the lions of the Alliance had to offer out here? I know you saw those ships, moored to the south, in the mists. Those are their reinforcements, poised to attack! Do you really want to play that game with the Horde, or the Alliance? You stepped into the middle of our war and we will happily turn all our guns on you!"
Nothing, but my own voice echoing.
I shouted even louder, "This world is not yours, yet! The Twilight Cult failed to summon Greatfather Winter tonight! You'll lose worse!"
Or, was Greatfather Winter hanging around, doing his invisible thing, about to use some sinister form of holiday cheer to retaliate against his tormentors? Any time now, GW?
Damn, I had so hoped. Hearing my voice echo in those woods was so painful.
Meydiri pounded my arm with her fist. But she wasn't turning blue, I wouldn't do that to her. She was fine.
"I am walking out of here with my girl! Back off!"
It was risky as hell. I would be stupid to even try. But as my head throbbed with tension, my whole body cramped with the strenuous effort of riding down here, using all my strength to fight my way to that stone altar, I stilled the core of myself. I let that eerie peace, a quiet that belied them surely hooking up some spell to trip it and blow us to pieces or some such… I would use deathly silence that against them. I chanced a look up, at the true world around us. A whorl of white had appeared in the sky above me, in a sea of black. Then, blue forms, passing beyond the veil. I was deep in my own conjuring, then. Soon, I would be one with the spirits.
My body, my hands, unleashed a blast of golden Light. But my spirit became one with Zoca the wolf spirit. As Meydiri had warned me, the ground beneath us came apart, pierced with the cultists' strange power. The whole place began to unsettle, and we both knew it would blow apart, altar and all.
But the miasma of violent earth upturning, trees ripped apart, ancient stone flying, it was dulled against the veil of the spirit world I conjured. I used my wolf form and we passed through. Meydiri clung to me, I could feel her fingers digging into my fur, the sinew of my lupine form. Smoke and fire blossomed against the flat blue wall of power, of the afterlife, but could not touch us. It was like we were suddenly in a tunnel, passing safely beyond it all. And then, the trees sailed past. I took another bold leap on my four paws, and I pulled that old river past us, too. Soon, we were beyond, beyond, in a whole other part of the forest. We could just see the brink of golden trees, the edge of the very Ghostlands. I stopped us there. I didn't know what would happen to us, or to me, if I suddenly took a shortcut through the spirit world into the middle of the ocean.
I came to, on my back, panting hard. I let Meydiri go when she kicked at me. She had nowhere decent to run now, anyway.
"Bastard!"
"That all you can say to me? I saved your life."
"You've ended it! I'm a marked woman to them now, unless I kill you."
"An enemy to the cultists and in the custody of a Tauren Pathfinder, the good guys? I'd say you're on the way to right. You'll be down in a Horde prison cell, though. I can't help you with that."
"NO!"
Meydiri screamed and drew her hunting knife. On me. I barely had time for so much blue to become the strange ivy-green Ghostlands night in my eyes. The moon, the stars. Oh, the stars.
The woman I loved was holding the old hunting knife I once gifted her, to my throat.
