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Chapter Text

Their arrival to Tirisfal is less than auspicious, Garrosh finds.

It is known- perhaps not well-known, but known well enough- that in the days between the barley moon and the hunter’s moon, there was a standing invitation from the Undercity to its western ally, Orgrimmar, to come partake in the celebration of the former’s freedom. It was a relatively recent tradition, the Forsaken only having thrown off their shackles a little more than half a decade back, and only having settled down just enough in the last few years to even consider something so frivolous. But the Scourge had mostly been cleared away- mostly- within the bounds of the Tirisfal Glades, as had the Scarlets, and the remaining horde denizens, now comfortable again in their lodgings, with friends to West and to the North, began to feel the old human stirrings. A yearning for comfort and joy long since felt.

“A holiday,” Windrunner had said, just barely not sneering. She’d been in Orgrimmar to shore up support for her endeavors in the Ghostlands at the time, Thrall told him, and this suggestion had been tacked on at the end, as pushed by Windrunner’s retainers and the Undercity’s ambassadors. It was reasonable, Thrall had thought; Orgrimmar had invited the Undercity to partake in their Winter Veils past, and they’d been successfully festive enough. Only a handful of Forsaken had attended, at first, mostly Windrunner’s entourage when she had come, herself, but then, when the Zeppelin towers were finished, and the route for Lordaeron was plotted out, their numbers each following year increased exponentially. Now, it was very common to see Forsaken taking part in Orgrimmar’s festivities. Perhaps, it was because of this, that they were beginning to feel left out.

That had been two, no, three years ago. A year or so before Garrosh’s own arrival to Orgrimmar. Now, it was around and practiced well enough to be considered tradition. New tradition, but tradition nonetheless. And Thrall had attended each one- the first, a quiet remembrance for lives long lost, skipping the harvest festival of their living counterparts held around the peak of the barley moon in exchange for a long vigil held through the night. Then, for the hunter’s moon (allegedly the anniversary of their breaking free, Windrunner swears), a small celebration. Windrunner gave a speech, but would not budge on much else, Thrall told him, laughing a little. There was no wickerman that year- not yet.

The next year, however- Windrunner’s retainers got their way, as did many of the craftsman guilds, and a respectably-sized wickerman appeared in front of the gates of the old capital. 

“Could be bigger,” said the craftsman heading its construction. But Windrunner put her foot down- they were taking a risk by celebrating so openly as it was, and the scourge was still out there and the focus should be on them, and was grudgingly obeyed.

Masks were made, and sweets were handed out, despite the lack of children; the plague was… merciful, in this respect. More likely, Garrosh thought with no small amount of contempt, they were too fragile to be raised, and therefore unusable. But, with the addition of the wickerman, a fiery spectacle too tempting to resist, many of the Horde came across the sea to celebrate. Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren, all unfamiliar to the traditions of the hunter’s moon- the masks to scare off faeries, monsters, and boogeymen as they passed through the night when the veil between worlds was at its thinnest, sweets and candies to appease them if necessary- took to it quickly, donning disguises, playing at fear, and eating whatever sweets the Forsaken gave them.

Then, the wickerman- Windrunner gave another speech, and shortly after, one of the craftsmen, after making sure the crowd was a safe enough distance away, set the thing ablaze to a chorus of delighted shrieks. Even Windrunner, ever the humorless killjoy, could not hold back a smirk at this, apparently.

This, unfortunately, gave the craftsmen the support they needed to make the wickerman for the following year even larger, much to her chagrin. And a larger wickerman brought larger crowds, more masks, more sweets. The Undercity chamber of commerce certainly enjoyed it, even if Windrunner wasn’t particularly keen on it. Still, she seemed to have a good time, according to Thrall.

He hadn’t gone to Hallow’s End, prior to this; he didn’t need to. He didn’t even have time to, not really. That first year, the mag’har had still been maybe two steps off from dying of hunger or thirst, if not both, and the following year hadn’t been much better, even with help from the Horde. It wasn’t even until the following summer, this summer, when they’d had the first successful harvest in about five years of drought and the first successful year of raising talbuk to slaughter in a decade of thieving and pillaging. It was only then that the Horde had finished its many assaults on its various enemies, that they could again turn their focus to the Mag’har, and help them settle and secure their lands properly.

That brought them to now- Garadar’s summer harvests completed. The mag’har, the most stable they’d been in years. And the Horde- one more threat on the horizon, perhaps, but not enough of a threat to cancel Hallow’s End in its entirety. Certainly, it wasn’t enough to stop Thrall himself from coming, he thought grumpily, but just enough to prompt him to come earlier than he would have in years prior. Apparently, despite all the Forsaken’s work towards clearing out the glades of scourge filth, they kept finding nooks and crannies in which their enemy had hidden itself like the quiet creeping of a black mold. Something had been stirring them again, enough to try many failed, foolish attempts at attacking the Forsaken’s towns and villages, but what, they didn’t know.

For once, Windrunner and Garrosh actually agreed on something: it would be best for Thrall to stay home, and let the Forsaken deal with this themselves. But no, said Thrall, the Horde must help its ally in their time of need. Garrosh, of course, had come with, once he had heard of Thrall’s obstinance. He demanded to. Thrall might have not cared for his own safety, but Garrosh did. And so- here they were, despite all sense, and despite all objections to the contrary.

There were certainly more than enough people gathered around the village square to greet them as they stepped through the massive portal, but Windrunner was not among them- the first of many insults to the warchief. Thrall doesn’t appear to be bothered, taking it in stride, but Garrosh has nothing but disappointment and contempt for Windrunner, her failing to play host in even the simplest of regards.

The last of the kor’kron step through the portal, and the mage guard close it behind them. That was still something of a novelty for Garrosh; he’d never known the arcane as anything but trouble, only practiced by ogres, witches, and warlocks, but here it was so commonplace that hardly anyone batted an eye at it. Thrall certainly didn’t think anything of it when he stepped through, while Garrosh, sick to his stomach, was… getting used to it, still. Thrall even turns to the head mage and thanks her, inclining his head to the elf in question.

“Thank you, Lady Narinth,” he tells her. Briefly, but with the utmost sincerity. She can’t hold his gaze for more than a few seconds. She looks down, just barely not mumbling, “It is an honor, Warchief,” in reply. Thrall smiles at her appreciatively, and the tips of her long ears go very, very red, folding flat against the sides of her head. Beknownst to everyone except, bafflingly enough, Thrall himself, the man had this impossible, inscrutable charm that seemed to affect everyone he met. It was by no means malicious, or even deliberate, which really only added to said charm. Garrosh suspects it has something to do with Thrall having eyes as soft and gentle as a fawn’s, with eyelashes to match. 

Besides the mage guard running the portal, there’s a squadron of Deathguard to greet them, and standing at the front (in the space Windrunner should’ve occupied, Garrosh thought irritably) was a crooked man with long black hair and a busted jaw. Underneath his tabard lies a set of well-worn chainmail, and beside him stands another man, balding and wearing what once were the fine clothes of a nobleman. While the balding man is able to stand more-or-less the same as he could when he still had a pulse, the man with chainmail is… less so. He’s standing as straight as his spine will allow, but it’s clear that it’s causing him discomfort. Thrall, never one to brush off another’s pain, spots it immediately.

“Executor Zygand, Magistrate Sevren,” he greets, nodding his head to each of them in turn. “At ease,” he says gently to the crooked man. There’s an audible creak as Zygand slouches back down to a more comfortable position, as do many of the guard behind him. Thrall is far too kind to see this for the insult that it is, but the man seems to remember some sense of decorum, and puts his fist to his chest in salute.

“Warchief,” he greets, bowing his head briefly. Sevren bows deeply.

“The Dark Lady sends her apologies that she could not be here to greet you personally,” Sevren says, and Garrosh tries not to roll his eyes as Thrall nods along patiently. Interestingly, his Orcish is immaculate, and with none of the strange, sharp twinges underlying the sound, as it would have been had he just used the wind and arcane to translate his words for him. He had taken the time to learn it himself, and perfect it. “She will be here to speak with you as soon as her business is taken care of.”

“I understand,” Thrall replies. “We will be happy to do so as soon as she returns.” Sevren nods.

“In the meantime, your accommodations at the barracks are ready,” he continues. “I’m sure you’ll want to settle in.”

“Yes, of course,” Thrall replies. “Thank you.”

Zygand nods. “This way,” he says, turning about and beginning the walk towards the barracks.

While Brill wasn’t exactly a small town, the amount of people that came to see the warchief’s arrival made it seem closed-in and cramped. Garrosh doesn’t bother to hide his sneering, and the front-most members of the crowd take a few steps back as his gaze sweeps over them. Good, he thought. Maybe now they would learn some respect.

Thrall catches him quickly and shoots him a look, unseen by the others.

“Be nice,” he scolds under his breath, tilting his head in such a way that only Garrosh would hear. “They’re our people, too. You would do well to show them that kindness.”

“I know that,” Garrosh hisses back. “Where is Windrunner?”

“You know that she has her hands full right now,” Thrall tells him. “We knew this was a possibility. We’ll just have to meet with her later,” he continues patiently.

“I don’t see why the guard couldn’t have handled it by themselves,” Garrosh gripes.

“Garrosh,” Thrall says lowly; a warning. Garrosh harrumphs but doesn’t continue. Thrall in a foul mood was unbearable, and it was far too early on to be provoking him.

They reach the barracks in relatively short order. Sevren’s dogged hospitality is commendable but insufferable; it seems he had invited damn near every individual with even the most minor of acclaim to come meet their Warchief, and they’re kept from actually entering the Barracks for what felt like hours as Sevren brings forward and introduces each and every one, apothecaries and soldiers, farmers and craftsmen, aristocrats and clerics. And Thrall somehow has the patience for each and every one, and even some of the common rabble who are brave enough to approach on their own, even with Garrosh there to ward them off. The warm glow of his kindness never falters, not even once; it’s a trait that Garrosh doesn’t often wish for, but one that Thrall has made into something invaluable, even admirable. But he doesn’t let Garrosh’s thinning endurance go unnoticed, either; he knows just when to turn his attention back to his companion, utter a few words closely and softly enough that only Garrosh can hear, and draw laughter from him, a quiet chuckle that only Thrall would get to hear. Then, occasionally, a gently grasped hand around his own- wordless reassurance that yes, we’re almost done here, only a few minutes more. Garrosh, despite knowing damn well that no, it won’t just be a few more minutes, Sevren was going to keep them out here all day if he could, can’t bring himself to begrudge his friend, and covets the precious few moments they have in the in-between.

Eventually, Zygand puts his foot down and announces that the Warchief would now be retiring to the Barracks proper before Sevren can voice any protest. The magistrate sneers, a small, contemptuous little thing that flitters across his face so quickly it was almost never there at all, a tiny hiccup in his usually perfect composure. But he allows it, apparently grudging every moment they were not outside, greeting more guests. Zygand, now in his element, quickly takes control and sets about arranging the forces Thrall and Garrosh had brought with them amongst their own. Zygand is practical, his own Orcish accented but well-learned, and doesn’t mince words when he speaks with them, which, judging by the steadily souring expression on Sevren’s face, was an impertinence he deeply resented. Garrosh is going to get along with Zygand just fine, he thinks.

Thrall’s kor’kron quickly ingratiate themselves into the town guard, only a handful staying within the barracks and with Thrall himself, while the rest take their assigned posts around town. Garrosh oversees this himself alongside Zygand, Sevren, and Thrall, and by the time Windrunner deigns to show herself, they are discussing the security of Tirisfal as a whole.

Her arrival is punctuated by a handful of the red-garbed royal guard filing into the room they stood in, Windrunner herself trailing in once the first two take their posts at the entryway. More notably, she has foregone her usual lightweight ranger armor in favor of a set of heavy black plate, the helmet of which she carries under her arm. The surface is painted with delicate, swirling lines that reflect a bright, eerie silver in the light. Its sheen reminds him a little of the impossibly bright green seen only in the shadows left over from light too bright for the eyes to bear looking at. Runework, probably, but for what, he’s not sure. Additionally, her long, pale hair is pulled back into a braid, probably to better accommodate the helmet, and the cloth underarmor goes all the way up to the bottom of her jaw. It’s a worrying amount of precautions that Windrunner doesn’t typically take, even with all her paranoia, and the show of it now sets his teeth on edge.

She catches Thrall’s eyes, giving a short bow in greeting.

“Warchief,” she says respectfully, and upon seeing Garrosh, continues with “Overlord Hellscream,” a little less respectfully. Garrosh tries not to bristle. He tries not to, anyway.

“Lady Windrunner,” Thrall greets, bowing in turn. Windrunner relaxes- not visibly, guard perpetually up for show, but Garrosh can hear the slightest reflexive inhale, can smell the cold ash on her breath in the silent sigh after.

“Apologies for not arriving earlier, as we planned,” she starts, striding up to the large table they gathered around. “There was an attack on Deathknell this morning- the third in as many days,” she explains.

“They’re becoming this frequent?” Thrall asks, worried.

“The Scourge have been becoming bolder as of late,” she continues. “More so than when we last spoke. When it’s not Deathknell, it’s Cold Hearth, and when it’s not Cold Hearth, it’s Brill.”

“What are they planning?” Garrosh demands. “What do we know?”

“Thus far, nothing useful; they’ve been sending attacks so often, we’ve had neither the time nor resources to launch a formal investigation,” Windrunner replies. “Though I have an inkling of what they might be planning.” Windrunner turns to the table fully, scanning the map laid out before them as she gathers her thoughts.

“Recently, there’s been reports of increased activity near and about Shadowfang Keep. My guess is that these attacks are meant to keep us distracted from whatever they’re doing down there. We’ve made several attempts to investigate further, but what scouts we have managed to send come back with nothing we can use, if they manage to at all, and I will not continue to throw away my soldiers’ lives if I cannot guarantee their safe return,” she asserts, eyes narrowing. She goes quiet for a moment, stewing.

“Whatever it is, Shadowfang is at the heart of it. Our next step should be to investigate there.”

“And what of those attacks? Are those Scourge cowards to go unpunished for their insolence?” Garrosh argues. Thrall shoots him another look, but if Windrunner is bothered, she doesn’t show it. “How are we even to begin this investigation of yours if these assailants know they can come traipsing through whenever they please?” Windrunner squints at him, but Sevren speaks up before she gets a chance to.

“My Lady, if I may,” he begins. Windrunner nods at him, watching expectantly. “Overlord Hellscream brings up a fair point. While I understand that the original plan was merely to use the Warchief’s forces to bolster our own, it may be more prudent to put additional security measures into place. We had just been discussing implementing a curfew just before you had arrived.” Windrunner is quiet another moment.

“A curfew isn’t a bad idea,” she hedges. “But with this increase in aggression, I wonder if dividing our forces like this is.”

“What are you suggesting?” Thrall asks.

“If the attacks continue to mount in frequency like this, then it will only be a matter of time before what forces we have are overwhelmed,” Windrunner says. “But the Warchief’s presence… changes things. Perhaps, instead of dividing our forces for an inevitable fall, we could force them to focus their efforts on a single target.” Garrosh narrows his eyes at her.

“Are you suggesting that Thrall be that target?” Garrosh asks lowly.

“Of a sort,” she replies, infuriatingly vague. “They will learn of him being here sooner than later, if they haven’t already. Why not make it advantageous to us rather than them?”

“If we make Thrall’s presence here obvious deliberately, then we can choose how and when they make their next move. The Warchief of the Horde is too tempting a prize to pass up, I should think, and keeping their gaze fixed on him should be easy enough.”

“Absolutely not,” Garrosh barks, having heard quite enough. “I will not allow you to use the Warchief as live bait for one of your underhanded schemes.” Windrunner turns to look at him fully, measuring him. She appears to find what she’s looking for, and asks:

“Do you think you are unfit to defend him?” 

The sheer audacity of it is so abrupt that it almost leaves him speechless. Almost.

“Unfit to defend-” he starts.

“I have every bit of confidence that Garrosh is more than capable of protecting me,” Thrall says, cutting him off. “He has already proven himself time and time again in this respect; I am never safer than when I am with him.”

Garrosh is. Torn, at this. Anger not quite abated, but most of the teeth taken out of it. Certainly, Thrall’s words (and the deep, rich timbre of his voice) are incredibly distracting; he can focus on nothing else. So much so that he cannot come up with a proper response to Windrunner’s unwarranted insolence. But the moment passes, and she eyes him as she continues with, “Then the matter of your safety should be no problem at all.” And just like that, his irritation has sparked right back up.

“If I may,” Sevren starts again. “If we are to have all eyes on our esteemed Warchief, I have a few suggestions on how we may accomplish this.” There’s a barely-disguised eagerness hidden in the glint of his yellow eyes, and it’s making Garrosh (and Zygand) cringe a bit. Windrunner seems to share this sentiment, the corners of her mouth beginning to curl downwards. Regretfully, she cannot seem to stop herself from giving the wretch an opening, going “Oh?” in a polite, knee-jerk response. Sevren smiles. It is not at all a pleasant smile.

The dead man, now having gotten his way, immediately launches into a spiel extolling the virtues of “festivity” and “hospitality,” listing off all sorts of activities and events for their Esteemed Warchief to Publically take part in, all in a way that sounds suspiciously premeditated, and oh, of course they’ll have to invite more prestigious guests to help disguise their true operations, obviously, and that means they’ll have to organize more events, and involve more craftsmen and cooks and farmers-

Most of his ideas, regrettably, turn out to be damn good ones, giving Windrunner’s proposed investigation more than enough cover to operate as needed, all while keeping the Warchief, the Undercity, and all their towns and villages plenty of safety and security, because of course Overlord Hellscream can safeguard their beloved Warchief, and of course the additional kor’kron battalion will cover whatever the deathguard can’t, their capability was never in question my lady, all of this is merely a ruse, you see, all to keep the Scourge’s prying eyes away from our rangers, nothing more.

The discussion continues the rest of the day and long into the night, Sevren sending out missives and messengers back and forth for hours until they have a final arrangement nailed down. The only solace Garrosh takes in this is that Windrunner looks just as unhappy with this as he himself feels, disliking the action of having her arm twisted so that Sevren (and probably many other politicians, Garrosh suspects) could have the magnificent Hallow’s End he envisioned. Many, many coins would exchange hands in this, he’s sure. But they have a plan, and Thrall would be well out of harm’s way, and for this, Garrosh is very (grudgingly) thankful. By the time he and Thrall are able to return to their shared quarters, unpack, and ready themselves for bed, the night is dark and deep, and the waxing moon hangs heavy overhead, visible even through the heavy fog.

---

The very next morning found Thrall and Garrosh arriving at Cold Hearth Manor just as the sun crept over the horizon, too weak to break through the perpetual mist of Tirisfal. It was cold and damp enough that Garrosh could feel it even through his leather armor; he knew his boots would be soaked through before long and resigned himself to the misery of wet socks and chilly, wet feet.

Despite the careful (albeit last-minute) planning, the farm hands somehow were all still shocked to see them at their appointed time and place. Maybe what was shocking was the Warchief’s state of undress, Garrosh though idly.

While Garrosh wore light leather armor, ready for battle at a moment’s notice while still being maneuverable enough for hard work, Thrall, meanwhile, has opted for simple cotton clothing and heavy work gloves, his long, dark hair pulled into a bun, rather than his usual braids. The clothes they’ve found for him don’t quite fit; the largest forsaken man is still remarkably small for an orc, and Thrall towers over most other orc men. The cloth tries, certainly, doing its damnedest to stretch around the mass of his muscle, the pointed corners of joint and bone, and it even partially succeeds. In all fairness, it probably has a slightly easier time with Thrall than with other orc men; taller, he may be, but slender, never quite taking on the amount of bulk his kin carry. At any rate, if Thrall is uncomfortable, he makes no complaint, despite how closely the human-made cloth clings to him. It was probably better than Garrosh’s soon-to-be soaked-through, icy cold boots, at any rate.

The harvest was already in motion days before they had arrived, but it was late this year, and so was the harvest moon, the weather going cold long before crops were ready. Winter had been unseasonably long, and spring colder and wetter than it’d been in years, forcing the Brisboise family to put off planting later and later until more suitable weather had presented itself. There were, apparently, only two members of the Brisboise family left, according to the Magistrate- Bowen and Constance, a father and daughter pair. The rest had been culled or turned, and Bowen’s sister, Winifred, had married into the Winters family, no longer carrying the line. Garrosh isn’t entirely sure why he needs to know the minutiae of human politics and marriage customs, but it apparently mattered enough that Sevren felt the need to belabor it for several long minutes, and make several snide remarks about the uselessness of the Barov family, who apparently owned the farm, but who were so incompetent or traitorous that the two remaining heirs still bickered over it to this day, leaving the Brisboise family, the ones who actually worked the farm, to fend for themselves.

Only, the tragedy of Lordaeron’s fall had left them with so few hands that they had trouble working the land, let alone protecting it, and while they picked up help here and there from various wayward travelers when they could, very rarely did they ever have help they needed consistently. And it was such a shame, Sevren emphasized, because think of the sort of festivities we could have if they just had a few extra hands to bring in the harvest! Warchief, it would mean so much to the forsaken for you to lend a hand, and so: here they were, Thrall and himself, towering over the baffled farm hands as a couple of Thrall’s guards began to patrol the perimeter, as planned.

“W- Warchief,” one finally manages, a man with messy, mousy brown hair and an exposed jaw. Thrall tips head at him in greeting. “I didn’t think that you- Let me get Mr. Brisboise,” he stammers, darting away into the farmhouse. Another one, a woman with chin-length blonde hair and pockmarked cheeks, breaks into nervous giggles as she watches her fellow farmhand literally sprint away from them, but luckily for him, Brisboise had already been on his way out, nearly colliding with his employer as the door opened. Garrosh tries extremely hard not to roll his eyes as the two of them make their way across the property to them in front of the main barn.

To be fair to the farm hands, the initial idea was just for Thrall to stop by and check in on the proceedings, but upon further communication with the famers, it quickly became apparent that they simply just did not have the resources to accommodate their visit to the specifications Sevren requested. So the suggestion then became, why not, while we visit, bring a few extra hands to help? And Thrall had agreed, yes, why not lend them a hand?

“How generous! Yes, I believe the Brisboise family would deeply appreciate sending a couple soldiers to help bring in the harvest,” Sevren had said, already gathering up the necessary papers to do so, and Zygand nodded along, a little more willing now that they had a little more room to spare said soldiers. Only, this hadn’t been what Thrall had meant, apparently. At this point in the conversation, Garrosh had been finding it more and more difficult to pay attention as it’d mostly been the Magistrate talking at that point, carrying most of it by himself, but Garrosh focused on Thrall easily once he spoke up again.

“No,” Thrall started, cutting him off before he could properly get going. “I meant that I, too, be among those that help. I... have some experience, in the area.”

There was. An audible pause.

This was not something he had expected from him- and knowing Thrall, it probably alluded to something deeply, inexplicably tragic- and was unsure of how to proceed. He briefly glanced at Windrunner, hoping she knew something in the amount of time she’d known Thrall before he did, and found her looking to him for answers as well, glancing between him and Thrall with quizzical eyes. But he had nothing, so he shrugged, and Windrunner grimaced a bit, both of them looking back to Thrall.

But the moment passed, and the magistrate recovered quickly enough.

“Warchief, don’t you think this is… a bit below your station?” he asked, his usual veneer of politeness not quite enough to cover his slightly disdainful confusion. Now, Thrall didn’t narrow his eyes at him- far from it, keeping his expression cool and collected. But he was very firm with his reply.

“No, I don’t,” he said. “If they need all the help they can get, then they need all the help they can get, and I will not be the one to deny them of it.” Sevren, to his credit, adapted quickly.

“Of course, Warchief,” he said, the mask of slime back in place. “We’ll just have to take some additional precautions.”  And that was that.

Bowen Brisboise had been an older man when he died, and thus was balding and had many wrinkles adorning his face and hands that lingered into his undeath. But he wasn’t so old as to be feeble, and some measure of strength still belied his now-crooked form. His was the body of a man hardened by back-breaking work, even now that his back was bent, and his spine and jaw exposed. He was a practical man, and didn’t waste any time on pleasantries- giving the respect Thrall was owed, but no more than that, immediately setting all of them to work on bringing in the flax from the western field. He doesn’t seem nearly as enchanted (or befuddled) as his farm hands that the Warchief himself has come to lend a hand, and is just grateful for the sorely needed help. It is a welcome reprieve from Sevren’s stubborn adherence to Human Manners and Human Society, and Garrosh is more than happy to get to work rather than play his impossible games.

Brisboise hands them off to Coleman Farthing and Janice Winters, the two farm hands that had first “greeted” them, and Farthing shows them the correct method to pull the plant from the ground by hand. He shows them how to group and bind them with twine, and how to stack them on the cart. He’s less nervous now that he’s in his element, and before long, they’re making decent headway in clearing the field. It takes Garrosh a couple tries to get it right without tearing the plant in half, but the broken flax was still usable, Farthing assured him. The handful of soldiers they’d brought with them to help do similarly, but Thrall takes to it quickly; gentleness had never and probably would never be an issue for him. They spend the whole day working that field, only stopping once for a lunch that Mrs. Winters had prepared for them. Venison, slow-cooked in a pot since early that morning when her son Marvin went out, caught, and butchered a pair of stags for them, as it was a “special occasion,” as the man put it.

It had been something of a surprise to learn that the Forsaken still ate and drank. One would think that their being dead would halt the need for that, and it apparently had, for a time; but, once they had broken their shackles, it soon became apparent that food and drink would once again be a requirement for their continued upkeep. Garrosh isn’t entirely sure how it works, exactly; something about needing fuel for the magic that had resurrected them and was still keeping them upright. And a Forsaken’s choice of food or meal was often strange, at best, or disgusting at worst. Many of them had begun experimenting with foods that their living counterparts couldn’t or wouldn’t consume, and the outcome of said experiments, when not outright poisonous, featured tastes and textures most living creatures could barely stomach, but the Forsaken seemed to enjoy just fine. So it was with a bit of trepidation, and surprise, when Mrs. Winters had called them in for lunch, and they were served something actually, well, edible.

The meat was so tender and juicy that it practically fell apart before it even reached his mouth, as did the potatoes, green beans, and onions it was cooked with, and the broth itself warmed him to his core after a cold, wet morning in the field. Thrall admonished him for eating it so quickly after the first cautious bite, but Mrs. Winters appeared to take it as a compliment, chuckling that it’d been a long time since someone had enjoyed her venison stew so much.

“I thought it might be appropriate to make something nourishing,” she said. “I made enough for everyone,” she continued, gesturing to the enormous cookpot still simmering on the stove, and then to Thrall’s posted guard, a few of whom staring with open hunger at said cookpot.

After lunch, they got right back to work, the guard eating their meals in shifts so as to have a patrol at all times. Predictably, word got around quickly of what they were doing, and there were more than a few curious onlookers throughout the day. None of them got close; the kor’kron made sure of that, but. It still made Garrosh wary. Not all of said onlookers could be seen, and as far as Garrosh knew, it hadn’t been too long since the Forsaken had laid claim to this farm again after taking it back from the Scourge. So he continued to keep an eye out. For what, he wasn’t sure.

---

It wasn’t even a week before something happened.

The harvest was still ongoing, and dutifully they showed up each and every morning at Cold Hearth Manor to do their part while Windrunner did whatever it was she was doing. There’d been no attacks from the Scourge while they were there, just as she’d predicted, but the stillness in between was making him antsy. The work did keep him occupied, and the amount of onlookers they had tapered off a fair bit, the kor’kron doing their part to be intimidating enough to warrant not tangling with them, but Garrosh could still feel eyes on them as they roamed the fields, more and more as the days passed. He’d told Thrall this, and Zygand and Windrunner, and while the latter two agreed with him that Thrall should sit out the remaining days, the man turned mulish and dug in his heels. So they changed up the patrol routes, and Windrunner turned her scouts loose on the Manor grounds. Predictably, nothing was found, save for a few animal tracks- deer, mostly, and what was probably a single, small bear.

They’d finished the western field about two days ago, and were working on the southern field now, far away from the main road and the prying eyes of the common folk, but Garrosh felt no safer here than when they were in the western field. This field consisted of wheat, and for this they were given sickles with which to harvest said wheat, and while it made Garrosh feel a little better to actually be holding some kind of blade in his hand, it’s still not the weapon he’d prefer.

Then, on the third day in the southern field, they were working near the treeline when the cart had finally been filled up and had to be taken back to the main barn. By this time, the soldiers they’d brought with them had been divided a little more evenly between the fields, and so, when a couple of them had gone back with the wagon to help unload it, there’d only been a handful left to clean up, including Thrall and himself. It was at the end of the day, and the sun had already begun its descent into the horizon. It was already dark and cold, and was only growing darker and colder by the minute. Today, more than any other, Garrosh could not shake the feeling they were being watched, and rushed to clean up and get them off the field. While it was true that they weren’t really alone, not by any stretch of the imagination- Garrosh had memorized the patrol routes, knew where each soldier was and at which post, and knew where each and every one of the farm hands was- if something were to happen, it would be now, when everyone was exhausted, and the light of day grew dimmer and dimmer.

Thrall had been oddly quiet most of the day; thoughtful. Garrosh wondered if he could finally sense what Garrosh had been detecting for days, now, but when he’d finally opened his mouth, it didn’t have anything to do with the matter at hand.

“This is a little different from what I was expecting,” Thrall said, a little haltingly. It was the first moment they’d had to speak to each other without fear of someone else hearing it in days, and Thrall had the habit of holding onto things for ages, picking right back up on conversations Garrosh had thought long since finished, and forgotten. It takes him a moment to even register that Thrall had said anything, and when he did, Garrosh had nothing to go off of. So he turned to Thrall, and waited.

“The Foxtons were put in charge of a small farm,” Thrall says, as if this immediately explained whatever profusely miserable things about his childhood that were about to spill out his mouth. “But I think they mostly grew barley? It’s different from what we’re harvesting now.” Thrall glances to the mostly-emptied wheat field around them, then to the tool still in his hand. He’d gotten pretty good with the sickle in the very little time he’d been using it.

“I was too little to use this, the last time I helped with a harvest,” Thrall continues. “I had to be seven or eight. It wasn’t very long before,” and there’s a pause here, right where the words before I was made into a child soldier to fight for a stinking drunk’s amusement should probably go, if Garrosh is guessing correctly, and he finds himself preemptively gritting his teeth at the anger rising in his belly on Thrall’s behalf. But Thrall, perhaps unwilling or unable to speak of his being taken, speaks no more of it, electing to continue before it sours the memory.

“I was nine,” he decides. “Tari just had her sixteenth birthday, so I had to have been nine. It was like this, where the harvest was running late, and the farmers were short-staffed, so Tari went to go help, and I begged to come with her. I think I mostly just helped pack the wagon.”

“But afterwards,” Thrall continues, and his eyes go impossibly soft and warm at the thought, the only things that held any light in the dim gloom of Tirisfal, “Tari took me to where she’d seen some blackberry bushes on the edge of the property, a little past the treeline where we were working. I wanted to see if we could find some while we were working, but… I guess we’re a little too far north for that,” he finishes, laughing a little.

“We’re also a little too busy for that,” Garrosh replies, raising an eyebrow at him. Then, for a moment: the shadows behind Thrall shift. The trees bend and sway in the cold wind that blows past, and Garrosh can see something moving along the ground, trying to hide its silhouette amongst the shadows and whispers of the rustling leaves. It is not a shape Garrosh can recognize; too large to be a wolf and yet too lean to be a bear, unable to see the ends of its long limbs and distinguish what paws support its impossible shape. He cannot distinguish any sort of tail, or face, but swears he can see two pale pinpricks in the dark, though they hold no natural reflection of light. But it moves towards them; this Garrosh knows.

Thrall is a little hurt at Garrosh’s reply, and gets part way through saying the words “But I wanted to show you,” before Garrosh shushes him. A half-moment’s glance confirms what he’d feared: the other farm hands have finished cleaning up, and have already started back to the barn. Thrall was annoyed at first with Garrosh’s brusque interruption, but notices his eyes scanning the treeline soon enough, and goes quiet, watching and listening for whatever Garrosh was seeing. The patrols were nearby, but the shadow had somehow avoided them, had found a single pocket where it would not be seen, and it was very likely they would have to deal with this by themselves.

As if to confirm this, the creature slinks away from the shade of the treeline, and Garrosh has hardly a moment to draw his axes before the wolf-thing is upon them, galloping to where he and Thrall stood in a flurry of gangly, mangy limbs. 

Now, Garrosh knows what a worgen is, in a purely academic sense; up until this point, he has never seen one, and despite being well and prepared for just such an incident, seeing one in the flesh is far worse than he imagined. He could not have been prepared for this- the long, almost skeletal limbs, the exposed muscle and sinew where its fur and flesh has sloughed off. The slavering jaws and dagger-like teeth. The pale, dead eyes. This is far beyond what he’d been told to expect. The creature’s shape and movement are so thoroughly alien to him that its screeching wrongness almost roots him right to the ground.

In the fractions of seconds he has before it arrives, Garrosh shouts, “Get behind me,” and shoves Thrall away from him, barely sidestepping a swipe of the wolf-thing’s dingy, black claws. He’s not so lucky the second time, and the wolf-thing closes its jaws around his forearm. The leather armor can only do so much, and while he cannot detect any sudden rush of blood, the sharp pain that streaks through him still sparks the numbing, heady ire of adrenaline. 

“Garrosh!” Thrall cries out, Doomhammer in hand.

“Stay away,” Garrosh growls warningly, right as Thrall makes his first and only abortive step towards him and their pursuer.

His knee finds its chest, and it’s with a wheezing gasp that it lets go, and Garrosh tightens his grip on his axes as it recoils, following it with an arcing slash that only lands a glancing blow. The wolf-thing snarls, swiping at him, snapping its jaws, striking at Garrosh with such speed and ferocity that he can hardly keep up with it. Garrosh snarls in turn, consumed with his fury, shoving it off of him before launching into blow after blow after blow of his axes. Garrosh knows he has slain the wolf-thing when one of his axes has buried itself in its skull, and the creature crumbles into a heap on the cold earth, its dark, oddly purple-toned blood pooling beneath its broken form.

Garrosh is a little out of breath as he turns back to Thrall, and asks, “Are you alright?”

Thrall scoffs, agitated with worry, and says, “I’m not the one covered in blood, Garrosh.”

Garrosh looks down. He is, in fact, covered with blood.

The wolf-thing’s approach and subsequent scuffle did not go unnoticed, apparently, as many of the farm hands walking back to the barn, including ones from other fields had rushed back to see what all the commotion was. The patrolling guard finally make their appearance as well, as Garrosh knew they would, as one of Thrall’s kor’kron and one of Windrunner’s deathguard stumble noisily out of the trees. They, too, are splattered with the strange, dark blood, and joining them out of the trees is one of Windrunner’s rangers, astride a skeletal horse, with Windrunner herself close behind. She must have been on her way back to town and then was intercepted. The heavy-plated Windrunner urges her steed faster, and overtakes her ranger, and the deathguard, and the kor’kron, the farm hands giving her a wide berth as she jumps off the horse before it’s even stopped completely.

“What happened?” Windrunner demands, tearing off her helmet. Before Garrosh can answer, she continues, barking out questions rapid-fire, “Were you bitten? Were any of you bitten?” first at Garrosh, then to the patrol, then the farm hands. There’s a chorus of no’s and shaking heads, and when Garrosh doesn’t answer immediately, Windunner turns her searing red glower back on him, immediately locking onto the arm bearing the most damage. His leather gauntlet is damningly punctured, but it holds its shape.

“Yes, but,” he starts, watching her rage skyrocket with those two words alone. “It was through armor. It didn’t break the skin.”

“Let me see,” she demands, and starts towards him like she means to tear it from him herself, but Garrosh pulls the grimy thing off before she can. His forearm is covered in sweat and blood, but otherwise unmarred. There are no cuts, no slashes, no punctures- not even a bruise.

“See?” he throws back, defensive. Windrunner’s eyes narrow scrutinizingly, scanning over his undamaged arm to the gauntlet and back again. She doesn’t appear to find anything, more irritated than when she started, but relents. She instead turns to Thrall, behind him, and Garrosh can’t help but feel a little agitated that her gaze loses most of its sharpness when directed to their mutual friend.

“Warchief, are you alright?” she asks, with nothing but the most dire of seriousness.

“I’m fine, Sylvanas,” Thrall assures her gently. “Garrosh made sure of that.” Garrosh is briefly vindicated when Windrunner’s frown returns for half a moment when he tells her this, but upon taking in Thrall’s (obviously) whole and unbroken form, she finally calms.

“That was too close. You could’ve ended up a lot worse,” she scolds, anyway, clearly not pleased with his lack of armor. Then, another patrol group emerges from the trees- on the far side of the field. Even from this way off, Garrosh can still see the pair of them are also covered in the strange, dark blood, and it’s easy to make the connection.

“This attack was obviously planned,” he says. Windrunner nods.

“Indeed. I’ve no doubt that when we meet with the other patrols, they will tell us no differently,” she replies. “We must return to the barracks.” And then, when the two of them don’t immediately hop to it: “Now.”

Unable to come up with a proper response, Thrall just sighs and nods tiredly. Windrunner hovers over them impatiently as they fetch Snowsong and Malak from the stables, hissing things in quiet, angry undertones to the handful of rangers that gathered on their location, and sending them off in all different directions. Garrosh is deeply annoyed but can hardly blame her; this is exactly what they didn’t want to happen, and it could’ve been far, far worse. He’s just glad that he was here to defend Thrall. He did not want to imagine what could’ve happened, were he not by his side.

When they finally return to the barracks, Zygand is there to confirm that yes, at least half of their other patrols were attacked by strange, atrophied worgen. Unsuccessfully, he adds with a note of pride, as no one had gotten bitten save for Garrosh. He lets Windrunner look at him, and he lets her doctors and apothecaries look at him, and they cannot find hide nor hair of the bite actually breaking skin, or of Garrosh having sustained any sort of damage. Granted, the average forsaken was quite a bit more fragile than the average orc, and Garrosh himself was far from the average they’d encountered; somewhat taller than most (and definitely wider), with nary an inch of fel green on him. But Windrunner put her foot down, and demanded that he wear a set of heavy plate, like she was wearing, like she would force Thrall to wear as well, although she did offer to repair his damaged gauntlet, after her apothecaries were done examining it for evidence, of course, and she did offer to prepare this plate for him herself. She also demanded that he preemptively take a number of medicinal cures: herbs and potions to consume, and poultices to be wrapped around the wound that wasn’t there. Garrosh despised every minute of it, but he suffered through it, if only to get Windrunner to shut up about it.

Despite their best efforts, Windrunner and himself cannot convince Thrall to sit out the rest of the harvest. They were nearly done, he asserted, and they needed the help badly. It would be wrong to pull away now when they were so close. Now, more than ever, Cold Hearth needed their protection. And while Windrunner was wary of another attack, they knew that while Thrall was here, the Scourge would almost certainly focus on wherever he was, regardless, the exact thing they had planned for and she had predicted would happen, and it wouldn’t exactly bode well for the upcoming holiday if one of their guests of honor was sequestered to the barracks, or worse yet, sent home. And besides, Sevren pointed out, Cold Hearth was one of the only larger farmsteads they’ve managed to reclaim that was completely functional; the harvest of Cold Hearth made up a very large portion of their food supply, and would be sorely missed. Windrunner could not deny this, and it made it very difficult for her to argue against their Warchief returning to work alongside the people he’d been breaking bread with for the past several days, though it didn’t stop her from trying.

Ultimately, they decided to pull the soldiers who’d been working in the fields and post them around the manor grounds instead, while also putting up a notice in Brill, looking for volunteers to help bring in the harvest. They would be fairly compensated, though the chance to work alongside their Warchief didn’t hurt, either. She let Garrosh stay with Thrall, conceding that yes, Garrosh was indispensable in protecting him, though she was not subtle in her interest in keeping an eye on Garrosh as well. He didn’t feel any different, he wasn’t in pain or feverish or disoriented, like someone experiencing the initial symptoms of the worgen curse might be, but Windrunner would not relent. The very minute he felt anything off or different, he was to report back to the apothecaries in town. She ordered him to. Ordered, as if she was in charge of him. But Thrall made him promise- please, Garrosh, it’s for your own good, he had asked, and Garrosh couldn’t hardly deny him anything, least of all, this. Promise me, Thrall asked, and he probably could’ve asked him for anything and Garrosh would’ve agreed to it. And so: grudgingly, but unable and unwilling to deny this man anything, he did.

Windrunner’s piercing gaze lingers on him long after everything was said, expression grim, as it always was, but unreadable. He’s sure that whatever dark things that occupied her thoughts meant nothing good for any of them.

Chapter Text

It takes them several more days to finish bringing in the harvest.

That isn’t much of a surprise, Thrall finds; it probably would’ve taken them this long anyway, Scourge or no Scourge, but it certainly made finding additional help harder, especially now that his soldiers have been added to the roster of patrols circling the property. That, and the labor itself was made a little harder by Sylvanas mandating that he wear his plate armor. It wasn’t undoable, but it definitely made it uncomfortable.

He thinks Garrosh only got out of it because he had no plate to wear; Sylvanas was still in the process of having his made, but Thrall doesn’t think it would’ve mattered much, as Garrosh was in a foul mood the remainder of their time there, one that only grew fouler every day they weren’t “hunting down those Scourge dogs and slaying them,” as he put it, though he probably would’ve been inconsolable either way.

The worgen, admittedly, had not been what they’d been expecting.

When he first discussed this with Sylvanas, first over letters, then over gossip stones, she had said they were mostly fighting ghouls and skeletons, and that while worgen weren’t out of the question, they’d seen hardly any of them since she’d employed a number of their champions to go and clear out Shadowfang Keep a couple years back. They’d see them from time to time in Silverpine, but only individuals, usually, and none so far north as the one they encountered at Cold Hearth. And certainly none as withered and decayed as that one.

That presented its own set of problems; the thing was clearly already dead by the time it had run out of the woods and charged them, but according to Sylvanas (and several corroborating reports she’d sent over from various apothecaries in her employ), this shouldn’t have been possible at all, period the end. One of the very few positives to come out of the worgen curse was its curious resistance to the undead plague- that was entire reasoning behind Arugal’s ill-fated attempts to stave off the Scourge, after all, from what they could gather- and yet, clearly it was possible, because here they were with close to a dozen corpses, all clearly worgen, and all clearly dead long before they’d been slain, again.

It confirmed an already suspected outcome, that yes, someone had in fact taken up residence at Shadowfang Keep once again, and was damn near the only solid evidence they had, other than Sylvanas’ probably-dead scouts whose long absence was evidence enough that something was happening, even if they weren’t quite sure what. He had hoped, in his time here, that his own scouts and soldiers would be able to help Sylvanas’ find something, anything, but so far, nothing had turned up. He supposed that it hadn’t been that long since they arrived, and he shouldn’t be expecting so much this early when they’d been giving Sylvanas a difficult time for weeks before he’d arrived. But still.

He had also hoped the mage guard he’d brought with him might be able to assist Sylvanas’ mages, a now eclectic group of undead, elves, trolls, and orcs, but they hadn’t had any luck there, either. Currently, they were working alongside the town wizard Cain Firesong and his sister Larah, out of their conjoined rooms at the Gallows’ End tavern. Brill never had a formal mage’s tower built; being mostly a farming and mercantile community with the capital just a hop and skip away, it never needed one. Thus, in the town’s death and resurrection, whatever unliving mages that came to occupy it instead sought their kin in the town tavern whenever they were passing through. The Firesongs had set up a more-or-less permanent residence in one of the rooms upstairs after their family home burned down during the purge of Lordaeron, and were happy to work with any of the magically inclined passing through.

The sorcerer heading this part of the operations is a dead man named Dalar Dawnweaver. He’d been the one leading the charge the first time Arugal’s accursed brood had reared their heads, and so, in the wake of his success, had been chosen to lead it again. He was a highly competent mage of impressive skill and very exacting standards, and therefore was impatient, arrogant, and damn near impossible to work with if one was thought to be beneath him. He never bared his fangs at Thrall or Sylvanas, but Thrall saw how he talked to his fellow mages, and saw how he talked to his apprentices, and to the tavern cooks and busboys, and knew there wasn’t a single word he could say to shame him, because there was nothing the man did that he, himself, considered shameful, no matter how agitating Thrall found his disdain for his fellow man. He tries to keep this in mind as Dalar talks down to just about everyone except he and Sylvanas. Tries to.

Dalar had been called up from Silverpine to deal with this and was thoroughly annoyed with the entire situation, and made it no secret to anyone how he felt. It’d only been a day or so since they brought him in, and he was already sick of it. Arugal, apparently, was less reliant on casting, and more keen to use crafted or enchanted items to augment his natural, less than desirable “talent.” They were more consistent than his own shabby spellwork, as Dalar put it, and far more difficult to stop the effects of, since the items in question more often than not had to be destroyed in order to achieve this, and to which Arugal went to very great lengths to make sure nobody else got their hands on.

“Burying his headless body at the foot of that accursed fort should have been more than enough to stop that weak-willed, incompetent fool from ever coming back,” Dalar snarls. It was getting late into the evening, and he had most likely been working on this starting from the very minute he got here, but after an extremely long day at Cold Hearth, Thrall found he had very little patience for this. “How he ever got the position of Gilneas’ court wizard is beyond me. He couldn’t turn ice into water .” 

Thrall holds his tongue at this; he honestly knew very little about Kirin Tor politics, and from what he had learned (from Jaina and others), there was a longstanding, eminently false belief that the more naturally gifted mages- sorcerers, Jaina said- were somehow inherently superior to those who only came to wield the arcane through years of training and study- wizards. And from what Jaina had told him, and things he’d learned on his own, this assertion held no depth to it, had no solid ground or even solid evidence, and yet somehow, still lingered. It lingered, probably for the same reasons that high elf mages felt superior to human mages, or troll spellcasters, or even blood elf mages: it served their purposes. And Thrall had no interest in furthering these purposes, even secondhand. It was irritatingly similar to the same set of circumstances that kept certain outspoken members of the Alliance in the mindset that no peace could ever be reached with Thrall’s Horde, because the violent, savage orcs and their beastly kinsmen were physiologically incapable of peace. And Thrall had thought, with how intensely meritocratic the orcs had become, and the forsaken had become, that this mindset had more-or-less been stamped out. It was an infuriating but unsurprising disappointment to find that this was not the case. He would need to remedy this, and soon.

But Dalar was key to unraveling Arugal’s complicated, sprawling enchantments that gave them such trouble the first time around, and there was no doubt that they would need his assistance again. So Thrall kept his mouth shut, at least with this. But there was no reason not to toy with him, at least a little bit.

“No luck with scrying, then?” Thrall asks lightly. The sorcerer glowers at him, and Thrall takes the petty victory.

“No,” Dalar growls. “He’s using an entirely new set of wards, and apparently these ones are powerful enough that we cannot detect where they would even be hidden, let alone how to destroy them.” Sylvanas frowns at this. Cain, seeing her displeasure, speaks up.

“We have rough estimates, but not much else,” he explains, turning away from the desk he was standing over to face them. “All we know is that most of them are somewhere inside the fort itself, but there’s at least a handful across the bridge to the fort proper. And things being as they are…”

“We don’t have enough information to move forward, nor can we get more with the tools we have now,” Thrall finishes. Cain nods.

“Yes, exactly,” he replies.

“We’re trying to workshop solutions, but we’re not landing on anything that doesn’t involve making things of our own, and that could potentially take months,” Larah adds, plodding over to the main table where they stood in the center of the room with an armful of schematics. 

“We don’t have that kind of time,” Sylvanas murmurs, putting a hand to her jaw while she thinks. She looks over the map of Lordaeron spread out before them, glancing over the array of markers laid overtop it. Each of the attacks’ locations were marked, as were the points where her scouts had gone missing, and the current patrol route and trade-off points. He’s glad that Garrosh isn’t there to see this- the patrol route had since been updated early that morning shortly before he and Garrosh had left for the day, and the map was off slightly. Such a thing would have surely set him off, as more and more things were, as of late. Thrall tried to be patient- Garrosh was merely worried for his safety, afterall, and their encounter with the worgen was, in his eyes, utterly unacceptable- but there was only so much that his frustration could do, and inflicting it on every person that spoke to him would not undo what had been already done. So just before they left, Thrall had taken him aside and spoken to him, gently but firmly, that this was no excuse to be harsh with their soldiers, and that they were doing the best they could, given the circumstances, and Garrosh had replied with:

“That’s no excuse,” growling it half under his breath. “It should never have happened at all.”

“I know,” Thrall said, not unkindly. “But it happened, and there’s nothing we can do to change that, now.” Garrosh couldn’t seem to look at him, not truly. His eyes were on Thrall’s own, but they never seemed to meet them, lost in his own thoughts. Thrall knew then, in his heart of hearts, that Garrosh was almost certainly blaming himself the most.

“We are taking actions to rectify this, and make sure it never happens ever again,” Thrall assured him, but this only made Garrosh roll his eyes.

“I should be the one saying that to you,” he griped. “Not the other way round. I have failed you,” and at this point, Thrall could sense a tangent of self-loathing coming, and elected to cut it off before it happened.

“No, you haven’t,” he interrupted. “You protected me, just as you said you would. I would have no better guard, no better shield, than you at my side.” Garrosh went quiet, then, before meeting Thrall’s eyes truly for the first time that morning.

“If you say so,” he replied, uncharacteristically soft. Thrall knew it was a miniscule victory in the war against Garrosh’s misery-driven tendencies, but it was a victory, and he took it. Thrall smiled at him, then- he couldn’t help it. And Garrosh returned it, in spite of himself, it seemed, because he rolled his eyes again even while the corners of his mouth curled into a smirk. It was a good victory, then.

So: Thrall fixes the markers on the table, carefully nudging the patrol route into its proper place. Sylvanas watches him idly; Garrosh hadn’t too keen on letting Thrall out of his sight when evening had come and it was time to confer with Sylvanas and the mage guard, but hedged that Sylvanas was probably just as good a guard as he was, and would undoubtedly let nothing stand between her and their Warchief’s safety, because Thrall was, as Garrosh put it, “the only thing standing between her and her oblivion at the hands of those honorless Alliance curs,” which wasn’t. Untrue. But there was no need to say it like that.

As he finishes, he glances at Sylvanas, questioning. She says nothing, blinking at him slowly, apparently content to merely observe him. Clearly, something was on her mind, and she would speak to him when she was good and ready. That’s fine- Sylvanas tended to take a long time to calculate exactly what she meant to say, so it wasn’t unexpected, and she seemed to appreciate him giving her that time to do so. Thrall looks at the map again, tracing the route from Brill to Shadowfang and back again with his eyes. He thought for a moment, glancing about the room.

By this point, Cain has gone back to his work alongside his fellow spellcasters, an undead woman with no eyes and dark, wild hair, and an older orc man with long, black braids. Larah has rolled out a few of the schematics on the far corner of the table, and looking over her shoulder to see it are two troll men (a father and son, if Thrall remembers correctly, both with bright orange hair), and Narinth, the blood elf who had headed the portal operation for their arrival. On the other side of the room, another orc man is hunched over a small basin of water placed on the desk, and judging by the runes drawn around it, and his frustrated expression, he seems to be working on the latest in a long line of failed attempts at scrying. Despite their slow progression, Thrall takes some solace in the sight of all this- disparate peoples, coming together to form a unified whole. His hard work- their hard work- seem to be finally paying off, at least in this respect. Steeling himself, he turns back to Dalar, who has taken to viciously scrutinizing the map laid out before them.

“I have a question,” Thrall says. Dalar looks up at him, still frowning, and the others perk up a bit.

“All of Arugal’s works are rooted in the arcane, yes?” he asks. The sorcerer seems irritated with such a simple-sounding question, but he answers.

“Yes, quite,” he replies. “Despite all evidence to the contrary, he managed to attain the position of Archmage among the Kirin Tor, so it stands to reason that all of his workings are within the realm of the arcane.”

“Would he have any defenses against other realms of magic?” Thrall asks. Dalar glances between him and the other two orcs, who have turned their attention to them, fully.

“Fel magic, unfortunately, is something Kirin Tor magi are taught to defend against starting very early into their education. We’ve already discussed this with Grol’dar and Zevrost, but we haven’t had any progress on that front, either, despite our efforts,” Dalar explains.

“And what of natural magic?” Thrall presses. This seems to give Dalar some pause, and in particular, Larah seems very interested in this question. So, Thrall continues with, “Would my farsight be of any use?”

“...Perhaps,” Dalar allows. “However, this is not my area of expertise. I would defer to you, Warchief. Or, perhaps,” and there’s a certain element of satisfaction Thrall takes in this, as do the Firesongs, “Cain and Larah.” At this, Larah breaks into a grin, and Cain pads back over to the main table. The others soon join them, Grol’dar putting out the runes around the water basin with a flick of his fingers before he does so.

“If we were to pursue this route, what would be our next course of action? What would we need to do in order for you to use said farsight?” Dalar asks. Thrall thinks for a moment.

“The problem isn’t my ability to do it; the problem lies more in finding a way for everyone to be able to see what I am seeing. Additionally, using my farsight will leave me vulnerable while I am casting it. I won’t be able to defend myself until it is done, or until I am pulled from it,” he tells the group. Cain raises a hand.

“Yes?” Thrall prompts.

“Is it similar to scrying in that its accuracy is subject to weather conditions?” Cain asks.

“Yes,” Thrall replies, nodding. Cain grimaces.

“Not many windows of opportunity, then,” he continues, murmuring. He’s not wrong; it had rained on and off the last few days, and Tirisfal had somehow managed to become even foggier than it usually was this time of year.

“We need to take into account that, even if we get past the wards, Arugal might still see us,” Zevrost says. “And if that happens, it won’t be likely that we’ll be able to use farsight again.” Grol’dar nods in agreement.

“If he’s as thorough as Dawnweaver says, then we will likely only have one chance to do this before he closes that channel off with some other nonsense,” the other orc says, confirming Zevrost’s concerns.

“What if we head him off with some wards of our own?” Narinth suggests.

“Hm,” Grol’dar replies. “That might only delay the inevitable. But we’ll need every moment we can get if this can only be done once.”

“Would we be able to sniff out Arugal’s wards, doing this?” the younger troll, Uthel’nay, asks.

“I think so,” Thrall confirms. “Though I won’t be able to destroy them, like this.”

“That’s fine,” Uthel’nay says. “As long as we know where they are. We can figure something out from there.”

They spend a couple more hours like that, going over prospective time slots and weather reports and possible defenses they could raise to prevent Arugal from seeing them, what to do if they were seen, and what next if they weren’t. Sylvanas doesn’t say much, content to listen in and think quietly. Once they have a couple dates nailed down, they elect to convene the next morning to devise a ritual suitable to their needs- it was already very late, after all, and they had some time still before their first window of opportunity. The undead of their group would no doubt continue to work through the night, but the living needed their rest, himself especially.

Before they head out for the night, Sylvanas pulls him aside for a moment, as he expected. She steals him away into one of the Firesongs’ side rooms, away from the others as they begin to pack up and clear out. She still wears the enchanted black plate, though currently her hair is loose and unbraided; she felt safe enough for that, at least. She draws the curtains closed on the single window into the room, and bids her guard to stand outside the door, so it’s just the two of them. After so much noise and commotion of the crowded work room, the quiet darkness is a welcome reprieve, as is the familiarity of her footsteps as she walks from the closed window to a low table near the center of the room. A bit odd, on account of the clanking plate, but still unmistakably his fleet-footed friend. There’s a lantern there, he saw before the room went dark, and when light fills the room again, it is from that lantern, its handle in the clutch of Sylvanas’ black gauntlet. Her red eyes seem all the more striking in the dim light, the glow reflecting eerily off of the armor’s swirling, green-silver inlay.

“Warchief,” she starts, keeping her voice low.

“Yes, Sylvanas?” he asks in reply, matching her volume.

“Has there been any changes in Hellscream since he’s been bitten?” she asks, cutting right to the point.

“...I’m not sure,” Thrall replies. “He’s been more irritable, but that’s not unusual for him. Otherwise, no.” Sylvanas’ brow furrows, unsatisfied.

“No, I suppose it’s not unusual,” she allows, frowning. “Even so. We need to take further precautions.”

“What do you have in mind?” Thrall asks.

“I’ve taken the liberty of looking into some protective enchantments for you,” she begins. “To keep you from turning in case you get bitten as well.” Thrall arches an eyebrow at her.

“That can be done?” he asks, a little dubiously.

“At the end of the day, the worgen curse is just that- a curse. With the proper preparations, it can be guarded against, like any other curse. Though it is a bit more difficult than most,” she explains. Sylvanas reaches into her cloak and, seemingly from nowhere, pulls out a flat, smooth, teardrop-shaped pendant on a fine silver chain. At first glance, the pendant appears to be a shiny, jet black, but upon further inspection, the light plays on it strangely, as if it doesn’t quite know what to do with it, first reflecting white, but when Sylvanas pulls it further from herself, it then reflects a deep, blood red. Thrall swears, he can see something moving within. When he hesitates to reach for it, Sylvanas tells him:

“Wear this.” And then, when he still doesn’t reach for it, “Please,” a begrudging plea said through gritted teeth and eyes scrunched shut. So he takes it, carefully placing it around his neck. The chain is long enough that the pendant easily slides under his breastplate, hidden from view, which is probably just as Sylvanas wants it. It’s strangely warm as it sits against his chest, but there appears to be no other effect than that.

“Don’t ever take it off,” she instructs.

“Never?” Thrall asks.

“Never,” Sylvanas asserts. “It will only work so long as you wear it. And until we uncover what’s going on, your safety is of the utmost importance.” Then, there’s only a moment’s pause (though in shades of Sylvanas it might as well have been an eternity of awkwardness) before she continues.

“Be careful around Hellscream,” she tells him. “He may seem fine now, but there’s no telling what could happen to him, or what he could do.” The ‘to you’ is left unsaid, but Thrall hears it loud and clear anyway.

“I trust him, just as I trust you,” he says gently. “I know he won’t hurt me.” Sylvanas sighs, and he almost doesn’t hear it, hardly any breath at all to it save for the reflexive attempt to self-soothe her own ire. It reminds him, a little bit, of Taretha, when he was still smaller than her, but still able to get into all sorts of things a small boy should not be getting into. He remembers it very clearly- Taretha, no more than fourteen, trying dearly to keep a straight face when she had come upon him climbing onto kitchen counters to get the sweet, raspberry jam hidden on a high shelf. She was very obviously agitated, in the way that only comes from being a child in charge of another, smaller child, but even with her sour face, there was a curl to her mouth that almost certainly came from her willing herself not to laugh at the absurdity of the sight.

The breath seems to soothe Sylvanas, all the same.

“Don’t take it off,” she tells him, again, firmly.

“I won’t,” Thrall says.

---

The next morning, while the mage guard began to piece together potential rituals, Thrall and Garrosh prepared for their last day at the farm. The sun had actually come out for once, though Thrall doubted it would last very long. They still had quite a bit of work ahead of them, and the farmers would almost certainly have to continue without their help after today. They wouldn’t even be staying the whole day; at noon, Thrall had to go back to work with the mages, and Garrosh had to go back to work with Zygand and the town guard, no doubt to drive them half mad with his increasingly insistent safety precautions. But by this point, they were able to recruit enough help that Thrall wasn’t too worried. And the Brisboise family and their farmhands appreciated what little help they could give them today.

“Shame you won’t be able to stay the whole day,” Mr. Brisboise says. He, Thrall, and Garrosh were in the midst of packing up the last of the wheat for the wagon. It would be the last wagon that Thrall would get to help pack, and the thought is a little sadder than he expected it would be. These people are kind, and the work is fulfilling. He always took a certain satisfaction from working with his hands, and here, the fruits of his labor are made material each time he pulls the flax from the earth, each time he cuts the wheat from their stalks. There is a simplicity in it, very much unlike his usual task of navigating taxes and trade agreements, playing to the political pomp and circumstance of the Horde’s peoples, each with their own set of rules and points. As Warchief, most days he won’t see hide nor hair of his efforts until some far-flung future day that he only sometimes saw, in shreds and slivers of moments, in whatever miniscule victory he might’ve won that day.

“Winnie’s gonna cook up a big crock pot of corned beef and cabbage,” the farmer tells him, as if to tempt him. Thrall pauses mid-step.

“...It’s been a long time since I’ve had that,” he admits after a moment. Mr. Brisboise is not an arrogant man, but he is a proud one, and he does preen a little at this, the lines around his mouth turning the barest curl of a smile. 

Garrosh’s expression turns bewildered, and honestly a little disgusted. Thrall and Mr. Brisboise had switched to common at some point; Mr. Brisboise was still a little rough with his orcish, and Garrosh wasn’t fond of the spell they’d usually cast to translate. It “hurt his ears,” he’d told him, and his spoken common was eloquent enough where it wouldn’t be an issue. This, however- this was a foodstuff local to Lordaeron and Gilneas, and was borne of the old world and the old tongue, one prior to the common tongue that united the seven human kingdoms. Garrosh’s understanding of common was mostly utilitarian, and didn’t possess any of the local dialect of old Lordaeron, and thus none of the words from the old language that managed to survive by sneaking into the new one.

“What,” Garrosh says flatly.

“It’s salted cattle meat,” Thrall explains. He smiles a little. “Not like the grain.” This only makes Garrosh’s frown deepen.

“Why is it called that, then,” he complains, a little petulantly.

“It’s from the old tongue,” Mr. Brisboise says. And then he says a word that sounds almost like, but isn’t quite like, “kernel,” in an accent unlike his usual one that Thrall somehow recognizes. “It’s what we’d call the salt used to cure it.” The old tongue hadn’t quite left the farmer’s words yet as he spoke, lingering in the last whispers of the sound.

“You’ve had it before, Warchief?” Mr. Brisboise asks conversationally.

“Yes,” Thrall replies. “Though not since,” he starts, and then pauses. The last time he’d had it had been his tenth birthday, maybe a few hours before Blackmoore had come to collect him. He still remembers Taretha’s bitter, anguished tears, and her yelling and screaming, and the stunned, quiet shock on Mr. and Mrs. Foxton’s faces. As if they’d forgotten that this was part of the deal. Mr. Foxton tried to keep him, he thinks. He can’t quite remember. Probably best not to bring that part of it up, in all honesty. The food itself was good- Mr. Foxton had worked very hard on it, and was very proud of himself, and Mrs. Foxton had made sure to have picked fresh blackberries from the bushes near the treeline at the back of the house. They’d grown wild all over Lordaeron, in those days. He still has the book Taretha gave him, with the promise of reading it with him. He remembers that much, at least.

“...I think I was ten,” Thrall answers finally, with only minimal stalling.

“I see,” Mr. Brisboise says, very neutral in his tone. He seems to have realized he may have stepped in something he shouldn’t have, what with Thrall going faraway for a moment and Garrosh’s very abrupt, searing glare from across the way. The heat of it leaves his mouth dry in a way he cannot explain.

The reason for Durnholde’s fall had been public knowledge for some time now, after all, and so had Blackmoore’s keeping of him, in time. Garrosh might actually be growling, Thrall realizes. The nearby farmhands certainly think so, giving him a wide berth as he suddenly looms over their employer, somehow, despite being something like ten feet away. Mr. Brisboise isn’t bothered by it, if he notices at all.

“Well,” he continues, putting a hand to his chin while he thinks. “We could have Abe take you some tonight for supper. He’ll be heading down to the Barracks tonight anyway to work on your armor, Lord Hellscream.” Garrosh huffs, irritated, and Thrall shoots him a look.

“Ah. Yes,” is instead his stilted reply. It sounds like it was exceedingly difficult to say. Mr. Brisboise, apparently sensing that Thrall was shielding him from most of Garrosh’s nonsense, has the confidence to continue.

“I’ll make sure we pack some for you, too, Lord Hellscream,” he says, nothing but neighborly kindness in his tone, but there’s a spark of mischief in his eyes now.

“Yes. Thank you,” Garrosh says through gritted teeth. One of the farmhands- Mr. Brisboise’s own daughter, Constance, Thrall thinks- barely stifles a snicker while the others visibly cower away, and shows no fear whatsoever as she passes by him to drop a bushel of harvested wheat into the cart. The apple doesn’t fall far, he supposes.

“We would love that,” Thrall says sincerely. Mr. Brisboise nods approvingly.

“I’ll ask Winnie to make some extra for you two,” he tells him. Garrosh runs his hand down his face. His groan also sounds like a growl. Admittedly, this isn’t very unusual for him, either.

---

They end up leaving Coldhearth a little later than intended, what with Mrs. Winters insisting on packing them lunch, and when they finally do return to the Barracks, it’s with an irritated Garrosh in tow and an even more irritated Dalar Dawnweaver waiting for them. Zygand is apparently pleasant enough to be around, and his amicable nature is enough to soothe Garrosh’s temper for now, but Dalar prides himself on being a man not to be trifled with, and is not afraid to let Thrall have it when they arrive late.

“Warchief, there you are,” he greets, already in a tizzy. “Where have you been? We have very little time to waste,” he scolds, as if Thrall’s one of his students.

“It’s hardly a quarter past the hour,” Thrall points out, because Dalar is being a little ridiculous about this. Dalar winds up for a tirade, so Thrall cuts him off with, “I brought lunch for everyone. Mrs. Winters made it for us.” He lifts the heavy picnic basket the Brisboise family had sent him off with to show the sorcerer, plucking a cookie from beneath the handkerchief Mrs. Winters had packed it with. Thrall catches the faintest whiff of lavender as he does- she must have packed dried herbs, too, then. The cookie itself is decorated with flowers, cutely drawn in frosting atop it. He suspects that this was Mrs. Winters’ way of showing off, somehow, but he doesn’t doubt her skill, especially when it catches the dead man’s eye and stops him in his tracks.

Dalar stares at the cookie incredulously, and then very nonsensically says, “is that shortbread,” grumbling it resentfully as Thrall hands it to him, nodding. Mrs. Winters, oddly, had had some foresight about them arriving late, and had instructed Thrall to give Dalar something sweet as soon as he saw him, as anybody who had an affinity for the arcane tended to have an incorrigible sweet tooth. He can’t say he doesn’t believe her- Jaina has one, too, preferring honey and sugar in her tea, and cream in her coffee, and groaning whenever Pained reminds her to eat “real food” like meat, or vegetables. 

“Grandma Delma was a witch,” Mrs. Winters said. “All me and Bow had to do to get out of trouble was bribe her with jam. Raspberry was her favorite. Our mama didn’t much like that, though,” she explained, chuckling to herself. “Witch folk like her and Mr. Dawnweaver are easy. Just give ‘em something sweet and they’ll be wrapped around your little finger. Works every time.” And he smiled politely and laughed along with her, and again he didn’t not believe her, but it didn’t occur to him that this could actually, really be true until after sweets had exchanged hands. And… she was right, bafflingly enough, even with such a prickly man as Dalar placated almost immediately with just a cookie. 

He doesn’t particularly think Dalar would approve of being called a witch, however, and doesn’t bring it up.

“Hmph,” Dalar harrumphs around a mouthful of the shortbread, the rest still clutched in his fingers. The rest is devoured in very short order, and he motions for Thrall to follow him.

“Come, now,” he says. “We can’t waste any more time.”

Garrosh grudgingly lets his honor guard escort him across town to the Gallows End, and they’ve hardly made it through the Firesongs’ door before Larah is calling out, “Who has lavender? Give it to me,” and jumping up from her desk when she spots the picnic basket. Thrall gently places it on the table, and it’s scarcely rested a moment before Larah’s spindly, skeletal hands are delving into the depths of it. He wouldn’t call it tearing it apart, though the speed at which she does this would bely that, but instead watches with concerned fascination as she pulls out every single item in the basket individually and neatly arranges them on the table in such short order that Thrall can hardly see it the motion of it. Her brother Cain is sighing and shaking his head at her, admonishing her quietly under his breath, but this doesn’t appear to stop him from approaching and taking stock of what she lays on the table.

“You’re late,” Grol’dar tells them in lieu of greeting, an honestly impressive amount of spite for so few words.

“I know,” Dalar says, grinding his teeth.

“I brought lunch,” Thrall says apologetically. Grol’dar eyes the growing spread of sweets slowly taking over the table as Larah continues her frenzied search for the lavender. Among its contents are more of the shortbread cookies, a loaf of honey bread that smells like it hasn’t even cooled from the oven yet, various jams and jellies, links of sausage so dark and red they were practically black, and dried herbs for tea, including mint, chamomile, and yes, lavender, still unfound but scent practically palpable. And even with all of this, Larah continued to put more and more from the basket whose depths apparently rivaled that of the sea. He thinks she just pulled out an entire cake- packed with cinnamon and ginger, from the smell of it. Mrs. Winters had to be some kind of witch, too, Thrall swears.

“Hm,” Grol’dar says. “Is that blood pudding.”

“Yes,” Larah says without looking up. She finally finds the lavender and hisses with what is apparently glee.

“All is forgiven, Warchief,” the warlock says very magnanimously, to Thrall. For how small and shriveled a man Dalar is, it is staggering how much rage he can radiate to make it seem like he’s twice his size. He takes another cookie and eats it, quietly seething.

After lunch, when everyone has eaten their fill and then felt very much refreshed, Cain and Larah clear the table just enough to lay out the designs they had put together. The contents of the picnic basket still lingered on the table and likely would continue to do so for some time, the mages still idly picking at the food Mrs. Winters had so kindly packed for them. After he and Garrosh had gone back to the barracks the previous night, Anastasia Hartwell, the eyeless woman with dark, wild hair, had made the trip back to the city proper and come back with the various supplies they would need. Namely, a large, wide-rimmed bowl with a rounded indent cut out on one side, presumably to allow for the overflow of water. The vessel is large enough for Thrall to sit in, probably, but not very deep. He’s not sure how she brought it back by herself; he can’t quite discern its material other than some kind of polished stone, but it must surely be too heavy for one person to carry, let alone someone with limbs liable to fall off if too much strain is put on them. But here it sat, all the same. He wouldn’t call her a fussy woman, but she was very particular, and very pushy- had to be, Thrall suspected, to put up with men like Dalar Dawnweaver- and he suspected that she may have “volunteered” a number of her many apprentices to help her transport it.

When asked where she had acquired said scrying vessel, she had merely said, “From the ruins of the Capital Tower.” And then, very passionately, “You wouldn’t believe the amount of perfectly usable equipment the Scourge just left behind when that empty-headed, braying jackass-” Arthas, then, Thrall thought. “-razed the city to the ground. Absolutely wasteful. But that’s what happens when you put a spoiled brat who doesn’t even know the worth of a copper piece in charge of anything, I suppose.”

Cain gets them back on track by explaining how they had worked out a modified version of their usual method of scrying: instead of trying to put eyes on Arugal and Shadowfang, they would put eyes on Thrall. He would open himself up, and they would see what he saw in the scrying vessel. They still needed to test it, as the runework was a piecemeal amalgam of arcane, shadow, and the wilds, but Cain was feeling pretty hopeful about it, despite the clashing components.

“There’s not really a whole lot of difference between individual schools of magic, at their core,” he explains. “So as long as we take our time with this and we’re careful, we should be alright.” Dalar looks like he has Opinions about Cain’s first statement, but somehow has the good sense to hold his tongue, with that one at least. At some point, he had put aside his misgivings (grudgingly, mind) and was in full Project Mode, working alongside his peers cooperatively, though nonetheless expecting nothing less than perfection.

“Time is something we do not have,” he reminds impatiently. “What do we have to do to make this work?” Cain bites his bottom lip, a little frustrated with the other man, and thinks for a moment.

“Alright,” he starts. “To make this as efficient as possible, we’ll have to set up the final ritual space we’ll be using for this, and do both testing and execution there, preferably all tonight, if possible. We can make adjustments from there.” Dalar nods, then turns to his fellow spellcasters.

“Alright, you heard him. Everyone get packed up, we’re heading there now,” he barks.

The chosen location for the ritual space was the top room of the tall clock tower attached to the town hall. The glass panes of the clock face had been made so that none could see into them, but one could, from the inside of the building, see out of them, and it just so happened that on some nights the moon aligned with the tower just right, and passed over the clock face as it set and dawn rose. It was still daytime, and cloudy again, so they wouldn’t be getting much of either for a while, but that was fine- they would make it work.

---

Predictably, the first night doesn’t work out.

The sunlight had been fleeting, just as Thrall had thought, but even worse was when the clouds had not only come back, but started spitting and threatened to pour, fulfilling that threat right as the sun began to sink low in the sky, thereby ruining any chances they had of doing it that night. Testing had gone well enough, and the necessary adjustments had been made relatively quickly, but when it finally came time for the real thing, it’d already been pouring for an hour, with no signs of stopping anytime soon. They waited a couple hours, with Garrosh and Sylvanas meeting them in the clock tower to keep watch, but nothing could be done about it. They needed both the light of the moon before it began to wane and the cover of a starry, cloudless night for this particular ritual, and it would not work with just one or the other.

Thrall tried to speak to the sky, pleading with it to move the clouds and rain, just for a little while, but it would not budge. It could not be convinced to cease its mourning of the glades, weeping cold, bitter tears as it always did over the life lost here, and the unliving creatures now barely able to call themselves alive living in the husk of the forest’s former glory. There was nothing that would or could speak to him; the earth here was barely conscious and rotting in its bed, flinching away as soon as he’d reached out to it, and what little life there was tossed and turned in unnatural, fitful sleep, unknown if it would ever wake, again. Fire would not help him, not in the way he needed to be helped; fire hungered to purge and cleanse, to clear away the land’s sickness and leave behind fertile ash for new things to grow, and water wanted only to mourn until the depths of its despair consumed the land whole. 

“Unsurprising,” Sylvanas says irritably, when Thrall explains it. And then, quietly, so that only Thrall could hear the angry, trembling hurt underneath, “We’ve been rejected by all else. Why not this, too.” He leans in a little closer to her, almost imperceptibly, but Sylvanas receives the message, sighing silently. She doesn’t hold herself quite so tensely, now.

Across the room, Garrosh’s ear twitches in their direction, and his expression goes a little darker. That’s probably not good.

“The elements, unfortunately, tend to be very black and white in their approach to things,” he says apologetically. Grol’dar, seemingly unable to stop himself, laughs a short, bitter bark of a laugh, and Zevrost goes very quiet and still, thinking.

“I could’ve told you that,” Grol’dar says, and his smile is a sharp and angry thing, one that could produce a deep and bloody cut just by looking at it too hard.

“...Could we not somehow take their power and move the clouds ourselves?” Narinth asks, ostensibly trying to be helpful, but it doesn’t go over very well. Grol’dar’s sneer goes sharper still, and Zevrost looks like a very distinct sort of miserable.

“Not much to take,” Thuul, the older troll, says. “We could offer them something, maybe. Strike a bargain.”

“A bargain,” Dalar says flatly. “With beings that won’t even deign to listen to us, let alone speak?”

“No, no, he’s got a good point,” Cain defends. “It used to be common practice among the farmers, here, before the church really took over. We could try that.”

“Have you attempted to commune with the wind yet?” Zevrost asks, the older orc looking so much wearier now.

“No,” Thrall replies. “Not yet. The wind might listen. It is a capricious, contrarian thing, but perhaps it might listen, if only to spite its kin.” Grol’dar harrumphs grumpily.

“Then what do you suggest we offer?” he asks, calmer now but still snarly.

“Blood, probably,” Thuul suggested, pragmatic. “Or hair.” Narinth visibly cringed, but the Firesongs nodded along, as if this was all so very commonplace.

“Blood is water’s preference,” Larah points out. “Burning herbs might be more appealing to wind, who may consume the smoke. Or a song, if it prefers to consume the breath, or the sound.”

“I am not going to sing a song,” Dalar protests indignantly. Anastasia is on him immediately.

“You will if that’s what it takes to ensure that this works,” she orders. “Besides, you joyless cur, it will probably just want our Warchief to sing, as he will be the one communing with it.”

“No, it might want all of us,” Larah corrects. “The wind of old Lordaeron is very mischievous. All winds are.” Dalar looks like he’s going to scream, and Anastasia doesn’t look particularly excited for it, either. 

Garrosh, apropos of nothing, snaps his head towards the stairwell and growls, “Someone is here.” The atmosphere of the room shifts immediately, as if the air itself were lightning-charged. Garrosh moves towards the stairs in a way that Thrall can only describe as stalking, every line in his body reading as predatory, yellow eyes bright and striking despite the gloom. Which is definitely not good.

“Ah, hello?” someone calls up from the bottom of the stairwell. They’re a long way down, so it’s heard only faintly. How Garrosh heard their visitor before the rest of them did is beyond him, but Sylvanas’ gaze locks on Thrall and she stares at him accusingly, as if daring him to explain whatever the hell this is.

“Lord Hellscream? It’s Abe Winters,” Abe, apparently, calls again. “I’m here to take your measurements again for the armor?” A pause. “You weren’t at the Barracks and Executor Zygand said you were here.” Dalar groans frustratedly, running his hand down his face.

“We’re up here, Mr. Winters,” Thrall calls back. “You can come up.” Garrosh turns around and glowers at him, presumably for giving their maybe-intruder permission to join them. This only makes Sylvanas’ glare intensify.

“I brought dinner,” Abe says when he climbs the last few stairs. He glances around. “Not enough for all of you, sorry.” There’s a breath, and then he says, “We are going to have to go back to the barracks to fit the armor though. I have everything set up and ready for you, Lord Hellscream.”

Abe Winters was another man like Mr. Brisboise, hardened by a lifetime of hard work long before he had died and with the lines around his face to prove it, though he did unfortunately did not take to undeath as well as some of his fellows, gaining a busted jaw and particularly plague-ravaged skin when he had risen again, the mark of someone who had consumed the tainted wheat and become a ghoul if Thrall had ever seen one. His fingers, thick and talon-like, support this, though they apparently don’t do much to stop him from smithing. He had a natural shyness that contradicted his arguably rather frightening form, and carried himself through their conversation as if he were trying to make himself as small as possible. It made for a strange sight, as Abe Winters was not a small man to begin with, and becoming a ghoul had only made him all the more intimidating.

Thrall approaches Garrosh carefully, keeping his steps light and walking around the side of him so that Garrosh can clearly see him in his periphery, even if he won’t stop fixing Abe Winters with a withering stare. He’s not growling, but there is a very strong impression of hackles raised. Thrall doesn’t have the time to deal with that right now, despite Sylvanas’ increasingly maddened glares.

“We can take care of everything from here,” Thrall tells him lowly. “Go get your armor fitted. I’ll be alright.” Garrosh grunts at him, unhappy, but Thrall continues with, “I’ll be fine. There is plenty of protection here, and you know Sylvanas can defend me well enough. Just do it to get her off your back.” 

Behind him, Sylvanas huffs, unamused, but Garrosh does reply with, “Alright. I’ll go.” Thrall smiles at him in a manner that he hopes is gracious, but he’s not quite sure because Garrosh just grunts again and won’t meet his eyes.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Thrall tells him, bidding him a firm goodbye.

“See you,” Garrosh replies, rolling his eyes. He takes a step towards the stairwell, and Abe visibly startles when he does, trying (very, very awkwardly) to laugh it off afterwards. Thrall can hear a grudging, barely audible “Sorry,” come from Garrosh, so he’ll call it a win. It seems to satisfy Abe, at least, as he calms a bit and begins to talk to Garrosh about the armor as they make their way down the stairs.

“Now then, if you are quite finished,” Dalar starts, forcing them back on track. He seems to have gotten over his little fit, because the next thing he says, in all seriousness, is “What is our next step to commune with the wind?” And he’s turned to Thrall as he says this, perfectly attentive and ready to do whatever needed to be done to work through the issue at hand. He must have been a hell of a professor to work under when Dalaran still employed him. Thrall would’ve learned a lot from him, he thinks, despite his prickliness. He expected a whole hell of a lot from his peers, but he never begrudged their authority on subjects he himself had a limited knowledge of, and despite himself, always seemed willing to hear out all voices and their opinions, even if he didn’t personally agree with them. It’s unfortunate that his personality is just so deeply unbearable to be around.

“We’ll need the open air,” Thrall says. “We’re already pretty far up so that’s good, but we need to get some airflow, here, or go outside.”

“There’s a little balcony around the side,” Larah suggests. “Not much room out there, but it should be enough for one.”

“That’ll work,” Thrall replies appreciatively.

The next few minutes are spent taking the necessary steps to be ready. Reagents are gathered back up and put away, so are notes and diagrams and other such papers, though they do leave some blank parchment out as a very enticing thing for the wind to blow around if it were to grace them with a visit. They light some candles around the doorway to the balcony for the same reason, and the Firesongs gather some dandelion puffs they find growing outside- one of the very few things that do actually continue to grow here, despite everything. Sylvanas does not allow him to shed his armor, as is custom- too risky, she asserted, especially for something so fickle. But the Firesongs do anoint him with dandelion oil, something they long had prepared from their personal stores, smeared across his cheeks and forehead as he knelt down on one knee in order to allow this. The oil feels and smells warm, and fresh, and green, and hopefully should prove enough of a temptation to get the wind’s attention, at least.

They leave him alone on the balcony, though they and the rest of their party gather around the inside of the doorway, each with a dandelion puff in their hands- even his honor guard, and even Sylvanas, though that took some convincing. They’re as ready as they’ll ever be, so Thrall closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and listens for the whisper of the wind.

There’s the faintest of breezes, despite the persistent rain, so Thrall focuses on that, reaching outside of himself, matching his breathing to that of the breeze, drawing on it until it is the only sound he hears. He opens his eyes, and the world has gone off-color and saturated, not bright so much as the colors’ depth increased tenfold. His hair begins to move in the strengthening breeze, and so, he matches its sound, whistling lowly, then raising the note higher and higher to match the wind until it is howling, and his hair whips around him as if it were a hurricane. The blank parchment is flung around the room, the candles flicker and a couple even go out, and many of the dandelion puffs are robbed of their seeds, pulled from behind him and flying out the doorway. The rain comes to a sudden stop. They have the wind’s attention, now.

It drifts in front of him, immeasurably large and yet impossibly slight, visible only in the stolen dandelion seeds and blank paper twisting around its shapeless form. He looks on it directly, forcing it to take shape, and its form resolves into something almost humanoid. There are eyes, and there are arms, but there is no true face for him to focus on, nor truly does it have hands, the whole of it made from whirlwinds and thunder bolts. It doesn’t appear to have even cared to try to form legs; useless, certainly, when it is the nature of wind to fly. But there is a heart, and there are lungs, the outline of them barely visible. It speaks to them, and its voice rumbles through them like thunder, tasting of cloud and ozone. Green flashes behind his eyelids- the peculiar knell green of storms and tornadoes.

It has been a long while since menfolk have deemed to speak with us, it says. And longer still since we have been tempted with such an offering. It rips yet more of the dandelion seeds from their flowers, playful.

But never have we spoken with creatures such as you, it says, and Thrall can feel the pressure of its gaze with the heavy weight of unbroken black clouds that have yet to burst. He can feel a migraine forming behind his eyes from it.

What would you have with the likes of us, earth’s-kin? it asks, amused. And what of the orphaned dead? The long-toothed and long-eared? It looks over each of them in turn, and he suspects the others may not have been ready for the sort of all-consuming pressure it exerted, as he can hear a couple suppressed gasps and silenced cries of pain.

Such interesting creatures, it says, oddly fond for something that doesn’t seem to care too much about how much its mere presence hurts them.

“Wind of Lordaeron,” Thrall finally says, finding his voice. He can hardly hear himself. “We would ask you to speak to the sky and rain. We would beseech that you clear the clouds when the moon is at its highest and heaviest, so that we may look upon those who mean to destroy us, to root them out and do unto them as they would unto us.”

The wind laughs, and it sounds and feels like the crackle of lightning and thunder, the high notes leaving his ears ringing, and the low notes vibrating through his ribs.

We had nearly forgotten the petty squabbles of menfolk, it says, its laughter still echoing. But such blunt, unhindered honesty I have encountered even less than creatures such as you. It is an admirable trait.

“You would suffer lies, wind of Lordaeron?” Thrall asks, and the thing laughs again, louder than before.

Such boldness! it cries, laughing. Such impertinence! Thrall’s head is pounding. He’s not sure how much more the rest of the party can take. It sounds amused, still, but the lingering rumble of thunder seems to bely its mood turning, and quickly.

“It is not our intention to be impertinent,” Thrall continues, pleading. “The situation is dire, and the consequences even more so. We beseech you-”

Hush, it says, and the sound is stolen from him, as is his breath, the silence deafening. His hand goes to his throat, as if he could pull the wind’s choking grip from him. 

Do not grovel before us. You were so interesting before you started groveling like so many sniveling menfolk before you. It stares at him again, and Thrall’s head aches. His heart pounds so hard he can feel it throughout his entire body. Does he gasp from it? He doesn’t know. His mouth makes the shape for it, but he can hear no sound. His eyes are watering from the pressure and the stinging cold. And then, unmistakably: the drawing back of a bowstring.

Do you mean to hurt us, long-eared dead thing? it rumbles, amusement in its voice again.

“Release him,” Sylvanas commands, her voice clear and strong, the banshee’s fury piercing through the silence.

Do you believe that you could? Laughing again, a low chuckle in comparison to the roaring thunder of before.

“I will destroy anything that would bring harm to us,” she promises, the threat of violence in every note of every word. “Including you. It doesn’t matter to me what you are. I will kill you. And if I cannot kill you, I will make you wish that I could. Release him. I will not tell you again.”  

And then, after a moment: 

The pressure lessens. His voice returns. He gasps, breathing heavily now that he can breathe at all again. It seems to delight in the sound. Not in his pain- just in his breath.

Such boldness, it coos approvingly. And such attachment. More chuckling. Tell us, dead thing- can a heart that no longer beats still be stirred by the strings of love? Can you hold it in your hands, keep it safe and sound, or are there too many cracks for it to escape- too many holes to count?

“Do not test me,” she warns, her voice a deep growl.

You’re no fun, it replies, play-sulking. But you are very charming, and we are very bored. It has been so long since we have had new company. Mayhap we will help you. But what would you give us in return?

“The wish-seeds of a lion’s teeth,” Thrall manages to gasp. “Flames to douse, and leaves to chase.”

All very good, it agrees. But what else? It eyes him hungrily. His head is pounding so hard at this point that he hardly notices the difference.

“Wood smoke,” he says, voice raspy. “A song.” This seems to please it.

We would have a song, it decides. We would add your voice to the chorus of our storms. Sing for us in the land’s old tongue.

“Will you move the clouds?” Sylvanas demands, not fooled for a minute. It chuckles again.

Sing for us, first, it insists, teasing. It has been so long since we’ve heard the voices of old. Will you humor us with this?

“I do not know the old tongue,” Thrall tells it wearily.

You know some, it says. It looks at him expectantly, and- oh. Oh no.

“...That one?” he asks, a little incredulously. It’s been a long night. “It’s just a drinking song. I don’t even know all of it.”

Yes, it confirms giddily. Its sheer joy is electrifying. That one. It has been so long. It is a favorite of ours.

“If that is what you wish,” Thrall allows, exhausted. “I will sing what I remember.”

Yes, it says, its voice harsh and shrill with excitement. Thrall sighs deeply.

He takes a moment to prepare himself. Takes another breath.

And then: a song. One note, then two, then three and four, one right after the other. The wind accompanies him in harmony, rumbling low tones as he strains to reach the higher notes. His own voice, lifted with the wind, by the wind’s hand. Lifted over the town. He did not know it could carry so far, and tries not to think about it so hard, lest the embarrassment stop him from finishing the song. They need this, he reminds himself. They very badly need this help. The lyrics are… much more salacious than he remembers, and by the time he hits the last note, his face is burning with shame. The wind of Lordaeron whistles with delight, whipping around him playfully. It does not bother to reform now that it has been released of the burden of being perceived.

Yes. Yes! it exclaims, joyous. Lightning crackles all around him. A good song. A good voice. We take your song. It joins the chorus of countless.

“The clouds,” Thrall reminds, just short of begging. “Please.”

A good song! A good voice! it laughs, loud and boisterous. It whips around him faster and faster until it is howling. The crack of lightning and thunder, right over top of them. And in the echoing rumbles, he can hear it. An echo of his own song, his own voice, joined by hundreds and thousands of others. And then: the wind is gone. It blows away, taking the last of the dandelion seeds with it. The rain returns, louder and heavier than ever. Thrall is soaked to the bone in under a minute.

Sylvanas drags him back into the clock tower, still furious, and Uthel’nay somehow manifests in front of him with a towel. He doesn’t seem particularly bothered, or even surprised, by the proceedings. Thrall rings out his hair before taking the towel from Uthel’nay and thanking him quietly, patting himself down. The others are clearly unhappy with the results, looking a little harried and wind-blown themselves. 

The room is a mess now, and Zevrost and Larah are already moving about to clean up, stacking up their notes again, setting furniture that had been knocked over upright again. There wasn’t much when they had first come up here, but apparently there was just enough to make it a huge mess if it were to, say, be scattered all over the floor. There’d been a few chairs, a few shelves, maybe a small table or two; it seems that the top room of the clock tower at some point had become another storage room for the town hall just below, as various office supplies littered the shelves. Well, they did litter the shelves. Now they litter the floor.

Cain appears to be sweeping up some kind of dried powder that spilled from a fallen jar; there’s no doubt that he’s lost some, and that the stuff on the floor might not even be usable, judging by his miserable expression. Anastasia, whose hair has somehow become even wilder, plods over to a little copper tea kettle someone had brought up, probably Cain or Larah, and hunches over it. Thrall can hear a faint scratching sound, and then a snap of her fingers, and suddenly the glow of an enchanted fire fills the room, emanating from the rune she’s drawn on the small table where the kettle sits. She places the tea kettle over the peculiar blue flame, and it just. Floats there, in midair. Completely unbothered by petty things like gravity.

“Well, that was a massive waste of time,” Dalar gripes.

“This is about what I expected,” Thuul hedges. “Not great. But dealing with spirits rarely is. We did well enough.”

“Did it work?” Narinth asks. She sounds hoarse; they all do. Thuul hums thoughtfully.

“We’ll just have to see,” he says. This is apparently not the answer any of them wanted; Sylvanas still looks like she wants to kill something, probably whatever that thing was, he suspects, and Dalar and Grol’dar start mumbling mutinously to each other.

“Come on, we have to get this cleaned up,” Anastasia says firmly, padding back over. “I’m pretty sure some of the town records are in there somewhere-” She gestures to the debris. “-and Sevren is going to be pissed if they’re ruined. I’ll set up a drying station.” Dalar looks haunted by the suggestion.

“Good lord,” he says, horrified. And then, very bewilderingly, he says, “He can’t see this. I am not dealing with that man’s temper tantrums.”

“Drying station it is, then,” Anastasia says wryly. She, Dalar, and Grol’dar (who is chuckling at Dalar’s misfortune) wander away, presumably to begin lugging the little tables over to the center of the room. Sylvanas, anger still lingering in every movement, in every line of her face, looks to him, demanding his attention without a single word. And he gives it to her, turning to her fully to face her, the now very damp towel still in his hands.

“Are you alright, Warchief?” she asks tersely. He nods placatingly.

“Yes,” he tells her. “I’m alright.” This looks like it’s a relief for her to hear, her ears no longer held so tight and taut against her head, but her brow only furrows further. Then, eyes on his, like she could pin him down with a stare alone, she asks, “Did that work?”

“I really don’t know,” Thrall replies, sighing. Sylvanas growls frustratedly, not at him, just in general, looking away so that he knows it’s not directed at him.

“It did take the song, though. And the other offerings. That’s usually a good sign,” he assures her. “But we won’t know for sure until tomorrow when the moon rises.” At this, Sylvanas’ mouth becomes a thin line, and she’s got something on her mind, he knows it. He gives her a moment.

“Any changes with Hellscream?” she asks after that moment, just as he expected her to. It didn’t make it any easier to answer.

“A little,” he admits. “But it’s still.” He trails off.

“It’s still not very much,” Sylvanas finishes. They’re quiet for a moment, glancing about the room to watch the others. 

Dalar and Grol’dar have worked exceptionally quickly in the few moments that he and Sylvanas weren’t looking at them, and already have the tables set up with as many books and papers as they can fit on them. There’s a few loose papers floating midair as the two of them trace circles in the air around them with hands made alight with blue and violet flame. Cain and Larah, ever practical, have rigged up a few drying lines using the roll of twine one of them found on the shelves. They’ve already got a couple pinned to the twine with clothespins, and Larah pads over to where Dalar and Grol’dar stand, scrutinizing the papers floating around them before finding what she’s looking for, snatching it right out of the spell circle, and walking back to pin it to the line. The orc and the dead man hardly notice, so deep in conversation as they are now. Larah comes back and gently replaces the stolen page with a book from the table, putting it in the empty spell circle as if she’s putting it back on a bookshelf. Anastasia has resumed hunching over the copper tea kettle, no doubt glowering at it and willing it to heat up faster. Thuul, Uthel’nay, and Narinth are ever dutiful, still picking up around the room, with Zevrost leading the charge.

“It’s too early to tell, but,” Sylvanas starts again. “I suppose that if Hellscream was going to hurt you, he would have done so already. There have been many opportunities for it, and he hasn’t acted on a single one of them.” Her face scrunches up as she says this, hating every word. This isn’t a surprise; Sylvanas despised even the slightest hint she could be wrong.

“But the full moon could change that,” Thrall says, knowing what she’s going to say next. She looks a little annoyed at this. He should’ve waited. “I will continue to be careful,” he continues, assuring her. “I still have,” and he pauses then, unsure how to say it with so many people around them, but Sylvanas seems to understand all the same, her brow unfurrowing the slightest bit as she nodded at him.

“Good,” she says, tired. “That’s- that’s good.”

“And I’ll keep on keeping watch over him,” he adds. She nods again, and this does appear to have some tangible relief for her.

“Good,” she says again. And then, exhaustedly, “Thank you.”

“I appreciate your concern, my friend,” Thrall tells her sincerely. She rolls her eyes at him. But still, she relaxes, even if it’s only marginally. Then there’s a small shriek and she tenses right back up again.

“It took the fucking chamomile,” Larah seethes, and this is about the only thing she says coherently, the rest coming out in a messy tangle of profanities in common, orcish, gutterspeak, and what might have been the old tongue but might also have been a language all her own. She apparently found the picnic basket, all by its lonesome in a corner behind a chair where it lay very damningly open and on its side, the contents spilled out. Cain swears under his breath at his sister, and the rest of them look supremely annoyed. Sylvanas looks. Extremely irritated.

“Tell him he can’t come to the ceremony if he doesn’t wear the armor,” she tells Thrall hennishly.

“He knows,” Thrall says, rubbing his temples.

---

When Thrall does finally make it back to his rooms at the Barracks that night, he somehow manages to wake up Garrosh while he’s doing it, which is a feat as the man slept like the dead. He’s sleeping on top of the covers of his bed- probably fell asleep there while waiting for him.

“What took you,” Garrosh asks groggily. Too tired to be petulant.

“It’s complicated,” Thrall tells him quietly. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.” And this seems to placate him long enough for Thrall to shed his armor in favor of his sleep clothes, and almost long enough for him to finish brushing out his hair.

“Wait, hold on,” Garrosh says. “I had the cooks keep your supper warm. You should eat something.” Thrall blinks at him, tired, cranky, and a little confused, and then he remembers- the corned beef and cabbage.

“Oh, right,” he replies tiredly. “I suppose so, yes.” Garrosh squints at him.

“No, you’re going to eat something,” Garrosh asserts, stubborn. He gets up from the bed and stalks toward him. Thrall tries not to think about earlier, the near-confrontation with Abe Winters in the clock tower, how bright Garrosh’s eyes shone in the dark. How brightly they shine now. Is that the moonlight, striking his irises at just the right angle, painting him a predator in what parts of his silhouette it doesn’t show, making him far more frightening in the dark of night? Are his teeth sharper, or do they just gleam with that same pale light? He doesn’t know. 

But then Garrosh passes into candlelight, and his wolfish visage dissipates. Garrosh is familiar again, familiar as he’s always been. His glare is the same glare it always is: worried for him, masked with irritation. This is hardly the first time he’s had to bully Thrall into taking proper care of himself. Perhaps Thrall is just being paranoid. Silly, even. It… has been a long night, after all. Perhaps he should eat. Clear his thoughts.

“Yes, alright,” Thrall says placatingly, and lets Garrosh lead him down to the kitchens to fetch his supper. The cooks let him sit right at their prep counter to eat, too tired to bring it back up to their rooms, and one of them grabs his plate from the oven. As promised, it is still warm. He thought maybe the cook would bring Garrosh’s plate over as well, but there’s none to be seen.

“Did you eat yours already?” Thrall asks. Garrosh makes a face.

“Yes,” he replies. “It’s. It was.” He can’t quite bring himself to, apparently, either admit he didn’t like it very much or lie through his teeth about it, and seeing him struggle is kind of endearing, actually.

“I liked the meat,” Garrosh says diplomatically. Thrall smiles, laughing a little.

“The cabbage isn’t for everyone,” Thrall says, meeting him halfway. Garrosh looks both disgusted, and relieved.

“It’s so slimy,” he complains. “Who came up with this? What is wrong with humans? Why are they like this?” Thrall laughs a little harder now, taking a minute to recover before trying to eat again. There’s a little spark of humor in Garrosh’s eye, now, though he doesn’t quite smile back. Thrall knows he’s having a good time now, all the same. It’s just a little harder for him than it is for others.

“I liked the potatoes,” Garrosh continues. “And uh.” He pauses, brow furrowing as he struggles to remember the word for it. “The uh. The long, green ones.”

“The string beans,” Thrall suggests. Garrosh looks annoyed that he forgot something so simple.

“Yes. That one,” he confirms. They go quiet for a moment, then, Garrosh merely content to keep him company while he eats his supper, rain still pounding on the roof. He looks like he wants to say something- eyes on Thrall when he’s not looking, then glancing away when Thrall tries to catch his gaze. Thrall finishes his dinner in the companionable quiet, and waits for Garrosh to say whatever’s on his mind, but he never does, at least while they stay in the kitchen. They make their way back up to their quarters, and have just about settled into bed, when Garrosh says:

“I heard your song.”

Thrall has to stop himself from groaning at this, embarrassment burning up his face yet again, but he can’t quite manage it.

“What? You weren’t bad,” Garrosh says a little defensively. Thrall is too tired to deal with this.

“That doesn’t mean I wanted all of Tirisfal to hear it,” he grumbles. Garrosh looks at him from his own bed across the room, sitting up.

“I liked it,” he tells Thrall. “I thought you were good.” Thrall was not aware his face could go any hotter, but apparently, it can. He groans again and flips over to face the wall.

“Stop being such a baby,” Garrosh grumps at him.

“Goodnight, Garrosh,” Thrall says very definitively. And then, a moment later: “Thank you.”

“That wasn’t so hard,” Garrosh mumbles, determined to get the very last word. Thrall groans again.

---

Thrall wakes up the next morning with a sneeze, rain still pelting the roof, and he would almost think that he’s caught a cold, until he looks at his bed, and sees the sheets have been dusted with dandelion seeds. Dandelion seeds, and chamomile petals.

He tries to take it as a good omen.

Chapter Text

What follows the next morning is. Interesting, to say the least.

He and Garrosh wake up at the same time they’ve been waking up the past week or so, and other than clearing the petals and florets from his bed, they get ready in roughly the same time, the only real difference being that, and having tea made from the chamomile petals rather than his usual coffee. The florets, he scatters to the wind outside, gathering them in one hand and blowing them out with a long, drawn-out breath. The wish-seeds stream from his palm far faster than they ought to, picked up by a sudden, whistling gust, and in that whistling, he can hear the faintest of echoes of his own voice, and the low tones that accompanied him, in spite of the rain. He tries to take that as a good omen, too, but still, it’s difficult not to worry, especially when seemingly everyone they come across that morning has something to say about it.

He first suspects that something is amiss when he and Garrosh take their first steps out of their room and down the stairs, and none of the guards on duty seem to be able to look him in the eye, and yet he’ll catch them staring at him when they think he can’t see them. Now, it had been very late and very dark when he had made his way back to his quarters the previous night, so he hadn’t seen many of the guards’ reactions, being too tired and waterlogged to do much of anything besides let his honor guard shepherd him back to the barracks. Thus, in the light of day, and in the safety of the barracks and Garrosh’s intimidating presence, he was now subject to their judgment. And that judgment, apparently, would have consequences.

Besides bidding them good morning, Zygand is quiet, and doesn’t feel the same trepidation that the others do in being caught staring, continuing to do so even after Thrall catches his eyes. Thrall raises an eyebrow at him, giving him a questioning look, and it was sometimes hard to tell when Zygand was about to speak, as his jaw couldn’t close completely, but this was not one of those instances. It was readily apparent that he had something on his mind, and Thrall had a pretty decent idea of what, and therefore no wish to engage with it. Zygand does not give him that choice.

“It’s been years since I’ve heard The Humors of Whiskey,” he says, with no preamble. Thrall doesn’t really know what to say to that, but Zygand looks a little lost, himself.

“Not since,” he continues, though not much more than that, pausing again and looking down at his fidgeting hands. Thrall doesn’t have to imagine what or when “not since” could be referring to, to understand. He nods at the dead man, waiting.

“Well. You know,” Zygand says, gesturing vaguely at nothing in particular. “It was nice to hear it again. Thank you, for that.” He pauses again- is he smiling? There’s a particular warmth forming in the curl of his mouth and the lines around it, though his jaw doesn’t quite want to allow for it. The air of mischief is palpable, however, and it’s making Thrall nervous.

“You know, Warchief,” he starts, and Thrall does not appreciate the laughter in his tone. “I could teach you the other verses, if you want.”

“No, that’s- that’s alright,” Thrall replies a little too quickly, cutting him off before he can say more. It is way too early in the morning to be getting picked on by his soldiers. Is he flushing already? Probably, judging by how quickly his ears started burning. “I appreciate the offer. No thank you.”

“If you’re sure,” Zygand says amiably, the bastard. “Because it seemed like you were struggling to remember it.” Smiles have broken out among the guards milling about, now lingering in doorways and peeking around corners. There’s no outright laughter, but there might as well be, cheer and genuine joy filling the room, an unmistakable change in the atmosphere.

“No, thank you,” Thrall says firmly, now completely certain that his face has flushed. It’s too early for this.

---

Luckily, they do not linger at the barracks for very long.

They both need to be in the city today- it was the night of the memorial, and while Garrosh needed to confer with the captain of the guard for security reasons, Thrall had to go to rehearsal for the memorial service.

Now typically, the memorial ceremony was held the night of the barley moon, at its peak, because when Lordaeron and its denizens yet lived, it had been when the last of the wheat harvests were happening, which had been, coincidentally, when their prince had come home for the first time since his stay in Northrend. True that the plague had started earlier that summer, and the first harvest had been when many of them had withered and died, but by the time their beloved prince had come back for the last harvest, they had somehow managed to get a handle on stemming the spread of the plague, at least by way of contaminated food. It would’ve been a long, hard road ahead, nobody was denying that, but things finally seemed to be looking up. And then, Arthas returned. So this, while not the first of their dying days, was the greatest and most terrible, and thus is what they chose to mourn and honor first.

The fact that it was a full moon did not escape Sylvanas’ notice, either; indeed, she suspected a number of things to happen, all attached to this, and her suspicions had the unfortunate tendency to be correct in the worst possible way. To start, worgen being a security issue for this event wasn’t new. Really, worgen were never Not an issue starting from the first day Arugal had decided to make his wolf brood everyone else’s problem, but obviously it was far more pronounced this year more so than other years past, and ergo, new security measures had to be taken. 

The main ceremony, the one which Thrall was attending, would be held in the Undercity, and usually that would be enough to stave off any potential threat. The Undercity was deep and winding and treacherous to most things, particularly the unwelcome living, but in light of recent developments, Sylvanas had the entire city guard equipped with silver-augmented weapons, and insisted on equipping his kor’kron with them, too. In the days leading up to the ceremony, while he and Garrosh finished the harvest, she also had every able-bodied spellcaster working day and night to enchant the armor of every soldier within city limits. And for the townspeople, she directed the Royal Apothecary Society to put together charms and poultices to hand out to everyone attending, in addition to the candles they handed out every year for the vigil.

This night also happened to be their last chance to employ Thrall’s farsight before the moon waned, which made things. Complicated. It’s their best chance, and at this point, their only chance, but that didn’t make it any less hectic. It was still doable, to have their ceremony and scrying both in one night, it would just be an extremely tight schedule to keep. It wouldn’t be the first time Thrall’s had to pull an all-nighter, and would almost certainly not be the last.

Garrosh was deeply unhappy about all of this, for all the same reasons that Sylvanas was deeply unhappy about it, but probably also because his commissioned plate armor was finally finished, and Sylvanas would not allow him to do anything, least of all attend the ceremony, without putting it on. Garrosh, who had mostly worn leather armor his entire life, and would likely return to it the moment he was allowed to, deeply resents the very concept of the plate on principle. Thrall suspects he likens it to being forced to wear a collar and leash for all that he snarls about it, and well. He’s not entirely wrong.

Abe Winters shows up to rehearsal not very long after Garrosh does, and Garrosh had arrived mid-morning after meeting with Donald Adams, the captain of the Undercity guard. His bad mood had only grown worse the longer he spent in the depths of Undercity; Thrall had already spoken to him beforehand, about how to be sensitive towards the Forsaken and their plight, but that didn’t make the air down here any less stale, didn’t make whatever odors there were any less foul, and didn’t make the stone walls any less closed off from the surface. Now, Garrosh didn’t actually comment on any of this, but he didn’t have to, to make what he thought of it crystal clear. His sulking was nearly unbearable.

To be fair to Garrosh, Sylvanas’ staff weren’t making things any easier. Father Lazarus, the priest heading the rehearsal, had been relentless in making sure everything went perfectly, and wasn’t afraid of correcting Thrall or Sylvanas if he found fault in them. That included posture, pace, rhythm, oration- if their presentations were not completely flawless, he had them do it again, and again, and again, until they got it right. Thrall has had very limited exposure to priests, admittedly; the Foxtons weren’t really the church-going type, not that they could bring him even if they were, and under Blackmoore, the only interaction he had was when they had very, very begrudgingly mended his wounds. It would be fair to assume that the sort of priest that took payment to play nurse to gladiatorial slaves probably wasn’t the best example of what was considered typical for priests; perhaps this amount of pomp and circumstance was considered normal when the whole of Lordaeron yet lived. But still, this felt. Excessive.

It isn’t as though he’s unkind about it- the most frustrating thing about this whole experience was probably that he very, very pointedly isn't. Every “my lady, if I may,” and “my lord, if you’ll allow me,” that comes out of Father Lazarus’ mouth is more maddening than the last. It arguably hasn’t even been that long since they started, but every second was slowly becoming an agonizing eternity, and Abe Winters’ arrival interrupting the rehearsal is a welcome relief.

Thrall and Sylvanas had been practicing stepping in time with each other down a small set of stairs in a side chamber off the main temple in the Magic Quarter for the better part of an hour (which as it turns out gets old after the first five minutes) when who but a deathguard and damn near the entire Winters family plus the family mule come wandering in.

“Remember, you must glide down the stairs,” the priest tells them. “Only the lightest of steps, each part of one fluid motion.” He and Sylvanas had been taking this in stride pretty well for the most part, but Sylvanas isn’t really one to hide when she’s losing her patience. She eyes Lazarus, grumpy, but has no chance to speak before the Winters’ deathguard escort spoke up.

“Apologies for the interruption, my lady,” the deathguard says. “Your commission of Lord Hellscream’s armor is ready.”

“Excellent,” Sylvanas replies, halting mid-step and trotting away to meet them. Lazarus isn’t upset, exactly, but he is a little put out by this. Thrall wonders when the last time a ceremony as large as this one had been held, for him to want to put as much effort and pageantry as he is into this one.

Garrosh’s armor is carried in bits and pieces, far too large for any one person to carry by themselves, and so in Abe’s hands are pieces of the chestplate, ready to be assembled, while more were carefully packed in a heavy-looking bag on his shoulders. His son Marvin carried the heavy boots, with what is probably a tool set slung over his shoulder in a canvas satchel. His daughter Janice leads the mule, which upon closer inspection is in fact undead, surprisingly well preserved but for the eerie yellow eyes standard of most freed undead, and the less standard, disconcertingly large, sharpened teeth poking out of its mouth. The mule is mouthing curiously at Janice’s shirt sleeve, probably looking for potential hidden treats, and its saddlebags are packed full to the brim, no doubt with the rest of the armor.

“Lord Hellscream,” Sylvanas calls, beckoning him over. “Come here. Let’s see how it fits.” Garrosh has been skulking in the far corner for the most part, and very visibly does not appreciate being called. He looks to Thrall angrily, but acquiesces upon seeing his unamused expression. He rolls his eyes, but he does come as he’s called. The mule, oddly, does not appreciate this, either, whinnying a little and starting to pull against Janice’s easy grip. Janice shushes it comfortingly, stroking its head and muzzle while its ears fold back.

“I’m sorry, Lulubelle’s not usually like this,” Janice apologizes. “Something must have spooked her.”

Sylvanas turns around to stare at him, and the look she gives Thrall is absolutely withering. Possibly the most withering look he has ever been on the receiving end of. Thrall is exhausted.

“I’m not good with animals,” Garrosh says gruffly. “Sorry.”

“Well, it’s a busy time of year,” Janice says in forgiveness. “Everybody’s a little on edge. Mules can pick up on that stuff, you know. They’re real smart.”

“Hm,” Garrosh grunts in reply. He’s. Trying, to be agreeable, at least. Janice pulls something out of a side pocket; it’s small enough to fit in her palm so he can’t see it, but it’s apparently something Lulubelle likes, as her ears perk forward again and she starts snuffling at her handler’s closed fist.

“Here, give her this,” Janice says, holding out her still-closed hand. “That should win her over.” Garrosh looks disbelievingly at it, but still obediently holds his hand out to take it. Janice delicately places a little nugget of something into his hand- oats, probably, baked into something a little more appetizing for the mule in question.

“Hold your hand out flat or she might take a finger,” Janice says. Garrosh looks at her- no, no she is not joking, she is emphatically not joking. So she brings Lulubelle forward again, the mule still a little wary, but upon seeing Garrosh’s outstretched palm, approaches without complaint, delicately picking up the treat and beginning to chomp.

“You could probably pet her now, if you want,” Janice suggests, giving Lulubelle a few reassuring pats. “Under the chin, like this,” she continues, in response to Garrosh’s questioning expression, and demonstrates as such. Garrosh copies her movements, and Lulubelle seems to like it, snuffling at his hand before stretching her neck back out and touching his chest with her nose, silently requesting more pets. Garrosh, weirdly, seems satisfied with this, and continues.

“Yes! See, we can be a good girl,” Janice says encouragingly, to the mule. It is deeply unmooring to hear a dead thing with ghoul claws baby-talk to another dead thing with fangs as long as human fingers that has definitely tasted flesh.

“Jannie, the armor,” Abe reminds tiredly.

“Ah! Yes,” Janice says, startling a little. Abe hobbles over (understandable, considering that the claws on his feet probably made it a little more difficult to walk, and the forsaken as a whole tended to have bad knees) to a long, spare table lingering near the wall and starts unpacking the armor pieces, carefully laying them out while his children follow suit shortly after. Lulubelle has to be convinced to go to the table instead of getting more pets, but Garrosh stepping along after them seems to work, as does Janice holding another treat in her hand. Lazarus sighs.

“Go on, I’m sure you want to help,” he says, shooing Thrall away with the sort of gentle, put-upon patience one would expect from a grandparent. So Thrall quickly steps across the floor to join them, and Lazarus fusses over the makeshift rehearsal set.

Garrosh has already started peeling his leather armor off by the time Thrall gets there, one arm bare and the other in the process of being unlaced. Sylvanas made good on her promise to repair the leather gauntlet; it was the first to come off, and sat on the table, along with the plate pieces waiting to be put on. Marvin and Janice swing around to help him unlace and unbuckle the rest of it, which he mostly tolerates, their helping hands purely utilitarian with no lingering or stumbling, despite the length of their talon-like fingers. Thrall remembers Mr. Brisboise talking about his niblings, and how they often helped their father with his work. Marvin is shaping up to be an excellent blacksmith himself, he says, and Janice an excellent saleswoman. It was nice, to hear him speak of his family like that- particularly when they were within earshot and he was taking great pains to embarrass them, as any uncle worth their salt should. Thrall... misses that, he realizes. The easy teasing and camaraderie of people who had grown up together, and known each other their entire lives. It’s something he misses more dearly than he’d like to admit.

They finish removing the leather armor, and Garrosh stands there sullenly in his under armor, waiting for them to start putting the plate on him like a dog waiting to get looked at by the vet. Abe does him one better, showing him how to put on each piece as they strap him into it, and very patiently showing him multiple times upon request. Thrall pays attention to this as well; while he’s obviously very familiar with wearing plate, that didn’t mean all plate was alike. The armor he wore, while good and sturdy and would probably outlive him and whatever children he might have, was already very, very old. Abe Winters clearly was using newer, more advanced techniques, and Thrall didn’t quite recognize how all the pieces fit together at first glance. It was also very likely that he would get roped into helping Garrosh put on the plate more so than anyone else would (as Garrosh already did for him), so he might as well cut out the middle man.

As if on cue, Abe motions him over as they go to put on the chest pieces, something that even he had difficulty with doing by himself, and quietly explains to him where each piece goes where and why and how, and soon enough, is letting Thrall put them together on his own. Marvin and Janice have backed off a bit at this point. It’s obvious that Garrosh is a little more tolerant of Thrall’s touch than he is of theirs, and so they busy themselves with neatly arranging the discarded leather set on the table, then Marvin begins to lay out his tool set, and Janice flits back over, circling around he and Garrosh and giving help when needed. Sylvanas now idly pets Lulubelle, who at some point had wandered over and started investigating her for treats, and thankfully, everyone is very careful to not say a damn word about it. Sylvanas’ bad moods were even worse to navigate than Garrosh’s, and she was twice as prickly about her soft spots.

They have a little bit of trouble when putting on the gorget, not because it doesn’t fit, but because when Abe starts to fasten it in place around his neck, Garrosh starts growling. Loudly. It does not sound like any noise an orc should be capable of making, and yet, here they were, Garrosh sounding every bit like the snarling beast Sylvanas suspected him of being. More than that, there was a weight behind it, as if he could exert a thunderous pressure from the sound alone. But it dissipates quickly.

“Stop that, you’re scaring Lulu,” Janice scolds, putting her hands on her hips. And it’s unexpected enough that it surprises Garrosh into skipping a note in his growling, then tapering off after a moment, it apparently taking real effort to stop. Thrall knows without looking that Sylvanas is glaring holes into the back of his head.

They finish strapping him in soon enough, Garrosh cooperating grudgingly but dutifully. He is. Still extremely unhappy about this. He doesn’t look bad in it, though; Abe had been very attentive to shaping it to suit his form, and the deep, burgundy color of the metal complimented Garrosh’s brown hair and skin, and the runes, while eerie, were minimal enough that the glow of the arcane blue produced a pleasant contrast against the red metal. Abe circles around him, tapping at pieces, pulling at others, making sure that it’s neither too snug nor too roomy.

“How’s it feel?” Abe asks. He seems a little less timid now that he’s in his element.

Garrosh looks like he has a lot of things to say about that but, after a moment and his expression shifting rapidly between different shades of irritation, proceeds to say none of them.

“It’s fine,” he grits out between his teeth, instead.

“Are you sure?” Janice asks, pressing. She was either fearless or had no self-preservation instinct whatsoever. “It doesn’t sound like it’s fine.” Possibly both. Thrall looks at Garrosh expectantly, in a way that he hopes is patient.

“...It’s a little tight around the chest,” Garrosh says finally. Janice takes a closer look at the area in question, inspecting the various straps and buckles before making the necessary adjustments.

“How’s that?” she asks.

“Better,” Garrosh replies grudgingly. Janice smiles at him but he doesn’t appear to appreciate it.

“Hm, I thought this might happen,” Marvin states. Marvin managed to be even shyer than his father, typically, so it was surprising he spoke up at all. “First time we’ve ever made anything for an orc.” He doesn’t say anything after that, and his sister quickly takes over in the ensuing silence.

“Marvin still has to look over it one more time, but otherwise you should be good,” Janice assures him.

“Excellent work,” Sylvanas tells Abe. All three Winterses bow graciously to her.

“Thank you, my lady,” Abe says politely. Sylvanas nods approvingly.

“Just need to make some final adjustments,” Marvin says. “Shouldn’t have to keep you from your rehearsal any more.” Sylvanas doesn’t quite cringe, but it’s clear in how her lips go flat and thin at these words. Thrall isn’t particularly excited about getting back to rehearsal, either, but Father Lazarus, having finished resetting his layout, is now shuffling towards them.

“Yes, of course, the rehearsal,” she says, through teeth that are absolutely not gritted at all, not even a little bit. Garrosh snorts, choking back a laugh that definitely would’ve had a vindictive glee to it if he had let it leave his mouth. Sylvanas sneers at him none too subtly, but he doesn’t appear to care.

“Shall we, then?” Lazarus says. Sylvanas looks like she’d rather be doing literally anything else. But still, she nods, and follows him back over, fixing Thrall with a stare that bade him to do the same. So he did.

---

They manage to get through the rest of rehearsal without a hitch, though the patience of everyone involved is tried very thoroughly. Sylvanas declares it done a few hours before the ceremony, citing other preparations had to be made. Father Lazarus grudgingly lets them go, but not without quickly running through each part of the ceremony one more time. Afterwards, she went to deal with other matters, and let Thrall and Garrosh return to the barracks to get ready, with the help of Lady Narinth. At this point, they didn’t have very long before the start of the ceremony, and Garrosh was having difficulties putting on armor, having tried it on all of once before. So, Thrall offered to help him.

“I can’t move in this,” he grouses. “It’s too heavy. I can’t breathe.”

“You’re just not used to it,” Thrall tells him patiently. “That’s what it was like for me, when I first started wearing plate armor. It will get easier.” Garrosh opens his mouth, probably to say something very uncharitable about the situation which prompted Thrall to start wearing plate armor at barely thirteen years old, and then, in a moment of uncharacteristic wisdom, closes it again.

“Hmph,” he harrumphs, instead.

“Elder Winters worked very hard on this for you. You should write him a thank-you note,” Thrall continues. It always felt strange trying to translate Common titles into Orcish honorifics; there is no one-to-one conversion for “mister,” but “elder” feels too… formal, and too old. Still, it’s the closest he could think of, and it’s more about the respect that Abe Winters deserved for doing this than anything else. Seeing that some stray hairs had gotten caught between the armor pieces, he begins to gently tug them out. He hated that, and he knows Garrosh won’t tolerate it, either.

“More human rituals?” Garrosh says derisively. “No. I refuse.”

“He waterproofed the boots for you,” Thrall says lightly, and this seems to give Garrosh some pause. Thrall doesn’t hesitate, continuing with, “After Marvin told him what a horrible time you were having in the fields with wet boots.”

Garrosh doesn’t freeze up, exactly, but there’s the slightest stiffness to his posture now, and a hint of a grimace that wasn’t there before.

“I will show my appreciation by enduring the endless indignities Windrunner keeps pressing on me and wearing the plate armor,” he replies, defiant even as he’s conceding a point. At Thrall’s pointed look, he continues with, “And I will hunt for them and provide a suitable feast.” And then, very, very quietly, “Thank-you notes. Hmph.”

Thrall does the last buckle on Garrosh’s pauldron and straightens out his cloak so it doesn’t get caught on anything. Garrosh, in the funerary custom of the Warsong (and Blackrock, Thrall thinks), has already painted his face with ashes in long, curved strokes from his temples to his chin. Thrall can already smell the burning of herbs and incense from the Kor’kron taking up residence in the barracks, and the sweet-smelling bundles of black and purple lilies hung above many of the doorways in the building, no doubt from the forsaken themselves. One of the orcish cooks has taken it upon themselves to prepare a staggering array of food for the soldiers returning, and the last time Thrall saw them, was stubbornly bullying all of them, but particularly the forsaken soldiers, into eating. Many of the kor’kron are painted in the same ashes that Garrosh is, and the undead soldiers bear black ribbons, tied loosely to the handles of their weapons. Garrosh, in solidarity, has pinned a black ribbon and a sprig of silverleaf using the badge holding his cloak in place.

“Do you still need help with your hair?” Garrosh asks. Thrall is already mostly dressed, in a mix of clothing pieces he’d brought with him and pieces Sylvanas had made for him; a long, fine black tunic, done in the old style of Lordaeron noblemen, with polished silver buttons and dark, patterned embroidery that shone silver when light was cast on it, lined with the softest wool he’d ever touched, black dress pants, and tall, black boots. Sylvanas was practical, so they were as sturdy and comfortable as they were nice-looking, and almost certainly enchanted and warded to all the twisting nether and back. With it, he wore a dark, pine green cloak, the majority of which was dyed wool but the collar of which was made with soft, grey fur, and a large metal pin bearing the horde’s emblem, the same as Garrosh’s. He, too, has adorned it with black ribbon and silverleaf. The cloak and pin are his, as are the silver earrings, and the bone and silver ornaments meant to go into his hair alongside the crown of woven silverleaf Sylvanas had commissioned for him. He’d yet to get started properly on that, and would almost certainly need Garrosh’s help for it if they wanted to be there on time.

“Yes, please,” Thrall replies, grateful. Garrosh brings the chair from the single desk in their joined rooms over to the side of Thrall’s bed, and motions for Thrall to sit, which he does. It’s a little small for him, but that’s fine; he was the slightest bit taller than Garrosh, and this would probably be helpful in giving Garrosh access to all of his hair without too much trouble. Garrosh sits down on the bed behind him and begins to section off his hair in order to braid it properly, wordlessly instructing Thrall to hold pieces as he works on others, and asking which of the metal and bone ornaments went where. Contrary to popular belief, Garrosh is quite capable of being careful, even gentle, and Thrall is happy to see this side of him, to know the tenderness of his strong, work-roughened hands. They had grown very close in the relatively short time they’d known each other, and now he considered Garrosh to be one of his dearest friends. If not, his dearest.

Garrosh finishes the last braid, and his hands linger another moment, fastidiously adjusting and tweaking each piece of woven silver and bone, no doubt to make sure it would stay in place and they made their procession through the city, and his hands ghost over Thrall’s shoulders, lingering one more moment as he pulls back and stands up. He offers Thrall a hand, and pulls him to his feet when he takes it.

“We should get going,” Garrosh says a little gruffly. Thrall nods, smiling a little, and Garrosh can’t hold his gaze for long, grumbling. He hasn’t let go of Thrall’s hand, yet, and probably won’t, Thrall hopes, for some time, still.

---

After they fetch Snowsong and Malak from the stables, the travel to Undercity with Thrall’s guard is done in very short order. He and Garrosh hand off their respective wolves to the stable-keepers, Anya Maulray and Michael Garrett, the first of whom was used to such creatures, but the second one, the city’s head bat-handler who’d been brought on as extra help that night, was very much not.

Upon their approach, his already slack jaw somehow goes slacker, still, and while for Ms. Maulray this was all very hum-drum, Mr. Garrett’s eyes go wide, and when they grow closer, he breaks into nervous laughter. The other stable hands milling about don’t take much more than a passing interest, apparently veterans at handling all manner of living creatures and therefore unimpressed.

“Holy shit,” he says, barely under his breath. Garrosh raises an eyebrow at him.

“We’ll take good care of them,” Ms. Maulray says, ever professional. She takes the reins from the both of them and hands Snowsong’s off to Mr. Garrett. This is probably the correct choice; Malak hardly tolerated anyone besides Garrosh, and bit hard enough to draw blood just as a first warning. Snowsong is considerably more agreeable, and placidly goes with Mr. Garrett without complaint. She is interested in his apparent excitement, however, and starts sniffing his hands, tail slowly wagging.

“She’ll probably let you pet her,” Thrall tells him, smiling. The idea of this is apparently very tempting for Mr. Garrett, who now stares at Snowsong. Snowsong is busying herself with licking his fingers. Mr. Garrett experimentally scratches under her chin, and is rewarded with the full weight of Snowsong’s entire head dropped into his hand. Snowsong is not a small animal, and her head by itself probably weighs about as much as Mr. Garrett’s entire body. He stumbles a little bit when she does this, and lets out a very surprised, silly-sounding noise. Ms. Maulray is unamused.

“I trust you have the situation under control,” Thrall tells them amicably.

Once they reach the magic quarter, Garrosh splits off to confer with Zygand and the head of the city guard, and Thrall meets with Sylvanas in a small, side chamber towards the front of the temple. Once again, they are alone as Sylvanas temporarily banishes her staff from the room.

“Are you wearing it?” Sylvanas asks, tone quiet and a little short. Thrall nods, beginning to tug on the chain of the black pendant hiding neatly and quietly under his tunic before Sylvanas hurriedly continues with, “No. Don’t let it be seen. Does Hellscream know?”

“I haven’t shown him; I don’t think he’s seen it,” Thrall replies, glancing about. There’s an image of a crossed-out eye messily scrawled over the frame of the door in a dark, inky substance Thrall doesn’t quite recognize, and doesn’t really want to. It glints a strange, deep red in the low light.

“Good,” Sylvanas says. “Don’t let anyone see it. We don’t know who could be watching.” She looks him over once, then gestures for him to bend down so she can reach better. When he does so, she immediately sets about meticulously putting away every flyaway hair he had, real or not, and fusses over the placement of the ribbon and silverleaf pinned to his cloak. She produces another flowering sprig, this one long with brightly saturated purple bells lining the stalk, and places this one right next to the silverleaf already there. And. He knows what the plant is. But it still seems so. Obvious, so deliberately unsubtle, that it’s very unlike Sylvanas, and he just has to ask-

“Sylvanas,” Thrall starts. She doesn’t say anything or even look at him, hellbent on placing the stalk just right, but her long, tattered ears curl slightly towards him, listening.

“Is that wolfsbane,” he asks flatly. She glances at him briefly, and the way her ears fold back is very catlike, feeling pinned down but still acting thoroughly unimpressed with his question.

“Sylvanas,” he asks again, pressing.

“Just another precaution,” she finally replies, having finally gotten it to behave. “And a flower whose meaning is now precious to my Forsaken.”

“I see,” Thrall says. This, Thrall knew also. There was a time, not so very long ago, that the children of Lordaeron would still be told stories to keep them out of the dark, and out of the woods. One in particular, to beware a tall poisonous flower growing in the meadows dotting the mountainside. Thrall remembers Mrs. Foxton telling Taretha and himself not to touch it should they ever see it, that it would make them very, very sick if they did.

She told them that it was borne of the bloodshed and snarling rage of a great, monstrous wolf as it had been hunting, and then been hunted in turn. As the wolf fell for the last time, the flowers sprung up wherever its blood and spit had touched the earth. She told them if they touched it, they, too, would know the wolf’s hatred, fear, and madness, and that it would come back and gobble them up, bones and all. She came to regret telling them this, because at the time, Thrall was seven, and it gave him nightmares for weeks.

Caution, misanthropy, and death- this is what the flower became known for, beyond its use as poison, usually by farmers looking to keep large predators away from their flocks. And then, when the forsaken rose again, its poison was one of the few things consistently able to take down larger scourge monstrosities without needlessly endangering forsaken lives, and so became a necessity among their scouts and rangers. And it was greatly rumored, though Sylvanas had never confirmed this herself, and probably never would, that their Banshee Queen’s black, poisonous arrows, the ones she had used to overpower Arthas, their prince and betrayer, had been treated with a concoction using wolfsbane. Some had even begun to call it “queen of poisons.” So now, amongst the forsaken, the flower had taken on new meaning- rebellion, rebirth, and the will to keep fighting. 

Finally satisfied with how the flower sits on his collarbone, Sylvanas leaves it and smooths out his cloak, doing some very-last-minute fussing. She seems to have been convinced not to wear the black plate for the ceremony, and though Thrall is sure that must have taken considerable effort, he’s also sure that her current garments have been enchanted to hell and back and probably offered the same protections. She also wore a long, black tunic similar to his, though this and her plum-colored cloak seemed to be more inspired from old Silvermoon fashion rather than Lordaeron. Long, delicate swirls and rose blooms were embroidered along the edges of the fabric, in violet and silver- the Forsaken’s colors. While her cloak has a hood, she does not wear it, and her hair has two braids that wrap around either side of her head and around the bun at the nape of her neck. And atop her head: a crown of woven silverleaf, just like his own.

She produces another sprig of wolfsbane from some hidden corner of her cloak, affixing it to the clasp of her cloak with black-gloved hands in the same way she had done for him. It’s sitting a little crookedly. Thrall pulls his leather gloves from his tunic pocket and after putting them on, gently coaxes it into behaving. Sylvanas, interestingly, lets him do it without complaint.

“Make sure you have those cleaned,” she tells him. Well, maybe one complaint. “Just the residue won’t be enough to kill you but it could be enough to make you very sick.” Thrall nods appeasingly.

There’s a moment, then, in the peaceful quiet of this small, dim room, where they are content merely to regard one another, and bask in the companionship of each other’s presence. Thrall’s eyes have long since adjusted to the dim light of Undercity and its eerie glowing, and he can see quite clearly now. Sylvanas is very beautiful like this, which is redundant. Sylvanas is always very beautiful, and to make a note of it feels as obvious as saying that the sky is vast, or the sea is treacherous, and she is beautiful in much the same way. She is beautiful like a wolf is, or a great bird of prey. She is a fiercely willful and wild thing, and it is in her nature to be. To see her play at tameness now is fascinating, to say the least. But she doesn’t often give herself time to be content, or even to rest, and it would be remiss of him not to make sure she felt safe in this moment of contentment, as her friend.

“You look very handsome tonight,” he tells her. She blinks at him, apparently feeling safe enough to let the surprise show on her face. She wasn’t expecting the compliment, much less the Thalassian, but it passes quickly. She scoffs, probably at him mostly but a little at herself. The undead were notoriously allergic to compliments such as this, but he can see that she can’t help but preen, at least a little bit. Her efforts, no matter how difficult or futile it must have felt, have been rewarded.

“As do you,” she replies, rolling her eyes at him. But there’s a curl of a smile, small but too real and sincere to be denied, especially now that she replies in her native tongue.

“Handsome,” she repeats. “Absolutely ridiculous. Are you quite ready yet?”

“Yes,” he tells her. “After you.” He motions towards the door with a gentlemanly flourish.

“Ridiculous,” she tells him again, with feeling. But she’s still smiling when he opens the door for her.

When she passes through the doorway, however, her usual mask of grim seriousness is back in place, before any other sentient creature has a chance to see her vulnerable. Two banshees, one of them Sylvanas’ left hand, Sharlindra, and the other one of the church leaders, Aelthalyste, escort them back down the narrow hallway leading to the main altar outside, stopping just before they hit open air. Or at least, what could be considered open air down here. Her right hand, Varimathras, is already waiting in the wings for them, as is Father Lazarus and a handful of other priests. Thrall doesn’t particularly like the demon here but Sylvanas tolerated him well enough, and he seemed to grasp the seriousness of the situation enough to not greet him as he usually did, with a smug little smirk and sneering eyes, as if daring him to say something about it. He merely nods, now, and Thrall nods in return, agreeing to this unspoken truce of keeping the peace. Garrosh arrives moments later, ushered in by yet another altar hand, and greets Thrall with a tip of his head, doing the same for Sylvanas. They, too, regard each other with a quiet sort of begrudging acceptance, but no words, however incendiary they might be, are exchanged.

Sharlindra floats a little higher than she normally does, drifting up to reach Varimathras’ own crown, and straightening it. He behaves himself, standing still while she fusses over it. Aelthalyste and Lazarus meanwhile are busying themselves amongst the other priests and altar hands, doing headcounts, making sure they’re in the correct order of appearance, straightening out their frocks, and wiping away whatever specks of dust have somehow appeared since the start of their preparation. Aelthalyste drifts over and hands out candles to each of them, preparing his and Sylvanas’ with silver-handled holders. When they each have one, she lights them with a flick of her fingers. They probably have a minute or two before it’s time to go.

They’ve moved a large brazier onto the main altar space, centered up front where the gathering crowd can see it. It looks like it was rescued from the ruins of the main cathedral up on the ground level of the capital; it’s a large, stone bowl surrounded by seraphic figures with hooded faces, their wings encircling the bowl itself while they themselves were sculpted to be shouldering the burden of holding it. It’s an older piece, he thinks; the stone is not in great shape, and while that can be explained away fairly easily, the wings, feathered things only sometimes and batlike other times, all adorned with eyes, cannot. More damningly, the bowl itself has winged serpents and winged, spinning wheels carved into it, and the seraphim appear to be standing on the roots of a great tree. Not much of the paint survived, though there are flecks of it here and there. 

He suspects that it might have been scrubbed off decades prior by some well-meaning priest in an attempt to make it more suitable for everyday church use. The eyes were probably a little disconcerting in their full, garishly bright color. This was fairly common practice when the cult of the holy light and the blessed shadow was first becoming the dominant religious practice in Lordaeron, if he remembers correctly, taking the place of the previous reverence for the land, and the wilds. The brazier looks pretty similar to a couple pieces Taretha had shown him in one of her books. A history book, he thinks, and a rare one with hand-written pages that had survived the ravages of time. He was not permitted to touch it, or even look at it, without Tari’s explicit permission, and even then, only with her supervision, and only if she turned the pages for him. He thought it unfair at the time, but being probably five or six, that was probably a good call on her part. That was the age of perpetually sticky fingers, and if the book was as old as she said it was, then it was probably for the best. It probably didn’t help that he hadn’t quite mastered reading just yet, either, and needed her to read some of the more difficult words for him.

The brazier is filled with coal, unlit as of yet, but when it would be, the glow of the flames should be visible to the people gathered on the steps to the altar, and at the bottom. A sea of black finery fills the halls of the magic quarter, uniform but for the silverleaf, in sprigs and crowns and bouquets. The candles, too, are a deep, pitch black, almost unseen in the crowd’s many clutching hands, but for the tiny, flickering flames. There’s a sort of chatter amongst the crowd- markedly subdued, as this was, by all accounts, a funeral procession- but they quiet down easily enough when it’s time to begin.

“My lord and lady,” Father Lazarus says softly, turning to them. “It’s time.” Sylvanas nods, first to him, and then to Thrall, steeling herself when Thrall returns the gesture in kind.

First comes the royal guard, clad in red as they always are, but now with mourning veils crowned with silverleaf, marching out onto the altar and taking their places on either side, lining the stairs. The pale leaves fall wherever they step, looking very faintly like snow as it first starts to drift down from the clouds. A common plant in Lordaeron, and one of the few hardy enough to survive the land’s turning. Hope, perhaps, that life would return again, one day.

Then goes Sharlindra and Varimathras, Sylvanas’ left and right hands, standing at attention on either side of the brazier. Aelthalyste and Father Lazarus each light their respective censers, and start the procession down the steps, each with a line of priests behind them, lit candles in their hands. Two priests to a step, one for either side all the way to the bottom, with the banshee joining Sharlindra, and the dead man joining Varimathras. Then, finally, Sylvanas and himself, with Garrosh close behind.

He and Sylvanas each circle one side of the brazier to stand directly at the front, peering down from the top of the steps. Garrosh steps in behind him, though not so close as to draw attention. The hall is utterly silent. It seems to go on for an indeterminable eternity before finally, Sylvanas begins to speak.

“The harvest moon falls on us once again,” she starts, her voice carrying across the gathered crowd in a way that could not be natural. “As it did before, the night that Arthas had returned, for the first time since his venture to Northrend. The morning of that day, many of you were making preparations to welcome back your lost prince. You rang the bells to greet him, you gathered in the streets to celebrate his return, and you laid for him a path of rose petals to lead him back home. When the sun rose that morning, it was over the capital’s splendor. And by the time the moon rose that night, it was over the smoking ruins of what Arthas left in his wake.”

There’s a pause, as Sylvanas gathers her thoughts. Though they had practiced, and Thrall had heard this speech many times already, there is now a troubling heaviness to it. Now, as it happens before his eyes, a forlorn melancholy lays itself over him, and many others, it seems. Despite the many attending, there is a certain stillness spread through the whole chamber, and the cursed dead are now as statues, grey and unmoving, a pantheon carved in grief.

“Of the many who fell, then, and of the many who gather here, today, there are still countless others lost to us,” she continues. “Whether that be to the war that followed, the famine and pestilence that preceded it, or those that fell for the final time. Those that could not be saved, from Arthas, from the rest of the Scourge, or from the mindlessness that seeks to consume us all.” Then, as they practiced, he and Sylvanas blow out their candles, and each priest down the line follows suit. The banshee and dead man begin to swing their censers, incense smoke spreading through the room, and one by one, the candles among the crowd begin to flicker and go out. The ensuing silence is daunting. They sit there in the still dark for a moment, and not a word is said. There is no sound, and no light. And then: the deep toll of a bell, emanating from the inside of the temple. One strike, then another, once every half-minute until the fifth strike, the longest of all, echoes through the chamber and goes silent, again.

And then: light. The brazier goes alight with a low, peculiar blue flame building up slowly as if from nothing, and filling the chamber with a stark, pale blue glow.

“For every toll, a thousand-thousand of us have fallen,” Sylvanas says. “We are all that remains of Lordaeron. The old ways- our old ways- are dead and gone. Let us not mourn who we were, or what we lost, but instead look to what we could be. There are many who fear and revile us, but we are not monsters. We are not dogs of the Scourge, nor are we the playthings of the supposed king of the dead. We are justice, and vengeance, and we will not rest until the blood debt has been repaid, and Arthas meets his final death at our hands. This, I promise you: justice for the fallen, and victory for the Forsaken.”

There is no applause, at first; only the eerie blue glow of the brazier, the haze of the smoking incense, and the quiet dark that has seeped into every corner. Then, after another moment, the room fills with noise, and it almost startles him with how it seems to come from all directions, bouncing off the stone walls and echoing eerily through the corridors. Clapping becomes a strange sound under forsaken hands, the hodgepodge mix of tissue and bone creating a cacophony of clacking appendages. The sound is brief; after a moment, Sylvanas takes a step back, and Thrall a step forward, the crowd quieting quickly. He begins to speak.

“The tragedy that befell Lordaeron- that has befallen all of you- was a disaster unlike any other,” he starts. “Even now, years down the line from it, we still have yet to make an indent on repairing the damage that has been done. And the unfortunate reality of this is that it will most likely continue to be a slow-going, difficult process, until we bring the Lich King’s reign to an end.”

“But I did not come here to speak to all of you about what you already know. Truly, the noblest trait of the Forsaken is your resilience, and it is certainly a virtue to be admired. However,” and he pauses here, shoring up the strength to continue, “This is not something any of you should have had to do. My heart aches for the pain you all have suffered, and for the trials still to come. So tonight, on the anniversary of your most terrible of days, I would like to comfort you, and reassure you: You are not alone. Not anymore.” 

Thrall finds himself becoming more emotional than he expected or liked; despite the rehearsal, despite the practice, despite the many, many times he had written and rewritten and recited this again and again and again, now that he was here in the dark with them- his heart ached for them. He meant that when he said it, and when he wrote it, with every ounce of him, but now, especially so. Now, the wound has been opened again. A wound that wasn’t even rightly his, but that didn’t stop the pain or sorrow that now filled it.

“The burden you bear is a great and terrible weight, but no longer must you carry it by yourselves. I cannot pretend to understand the depths of the pain you suffer, but I can at least promise you that you no longer have to walk this path alone. The Horde stands with you,” he continues. “If you hunger, then we shall sate that hunger. If you thirst, then we shall slake that thirst. And if you tire, then we shall carry your burdens for you. And if we cannot carry your burdens, then we shall carry you. Never shall we leave you, for you are our allies, our friends, our family. For you are Horde, and the Horde is family. Many disparate pieces are we, battered but not broken, coming together to make a stronger, unified whole.”

“I stand with you. The Horde stands with you. Now, and forever,” Thrall proclaims. And again, the discordant applause of many skeletal hands. There is no joy in this, no celebration, but there is solidarity, of a sort. He’s not sure that he would ever truly understand their plight, but it being their plight and not his will not stop him from keeping them safe. He can promise that, at least.

He steps back, and the crowd quiets once again. Aelthalyste floats forward, her voice echoing through the hall.

“We now invite you to partake in the lighting of the candles,” she calls over the crowd. “Our old lives may have been snuffed out before their time, but we have been made alight again, burning as brightly as ever we did before.”

Thrall and Sylvanas take their candles, and hold them up to the brazier until the eerie blue flame catches the wicks and sets them alight. From Sylvanas, Aelthalyste lights her candle, and from Thrall, Father Lazarus. Sharlindra and Varimathras move in to light theirs from Sylvanas, and Garrosh from Thrall. Aelthalyste and Father Lazarus light the candles of the altar hands at the topmost step, and they begin to pass the flame down the line. Then, locking arms, Thrall and Sylvanas step in sync down the stairs, candles held in the hands not held. For each step they take, the altar hands on that step light theirs as well from the hand before them, on and on until they reach the bottom. The altar hands move down the stairs in twos as each step completes its ritual, and begin to line the edge of the crowd, forming two lines of blue lights on either side of the parade path.

Once he and Sylvanas touch the bottommost step, the altar hands turn to the crowd and offer their flame to all who surround them, and the flickering blue lights begin to spread across the room. They do not cease in their stride, moving forward as if gliding. Their candleholders, beacons, cloaks trailing behind them as the banshees, the dead priest, and the demon join them in their solemn march. Garrosh slides in behind him, as close and silent as his own shadow, and it almost startles him enough to twitch out of place. He stamps down on the impulse, heart fluttering; there’s no need for this fear, it’s only Garrosh. He had merely forgotten that the warrior was an accomplished hunter, first, and could choose to walk in the quiet of night like any creature that haunted its shadows. It’d been so long since he’d seen this side of him; not since he’d first come to Orgrimmar, at least. 

It wasn’t long after that, that he’d become louder, more boisterous; certainly just as surly but not nearly as shy, his peculiar charisma finally shining through. He had wondered at times if it was just a front, especially with how easily the hunter’s silence came to him, now. His… rowdiness only ever seemed to surface during particularly frustrating council meetings, and at every diplomatic summit Thrall had ever taken him to. He adored his friend, but he could not deny that Garrosh could be pushy, loud, and rude at the worst of times, with a curious tendency towards acting up in response to perceived slights against Thrall’s honor. He could never understand why. Did Garrosh think he was incapable of fighting his own battles? And his silence now- a welcome, but still worrying development.

They continue their march down the center path of the Magic Quarter, crossing the bridge over the canal in shadow and silence. The whole of the city had gone dark and quiet, despite the throngs of cursed dead lining the sides of the parade route. Most light comes from behind them, a soft blue glow created from dozens of flickering candles. Silverleaf falls in their path, fluttering down from the upper levels of the necropolis, and while Thrall doesn’t dare turn his gaze upwards to check, he knows that Forsaken lean out of alcoves and over balconies to watch their procession, tossing white ash and silverleaf from their perches. The sea of flickering blue is beginning to overtake them, the crowds spreading its reach of their own accord, the only sound the swinging of the censers behind them, the fine silver chains clinking and chiming with each movement. The moving of their many bodies, a low, deep rumble, not heard so much as felt.

They keep to the canalside, walking Undercity’s middle ring. In the reflection of the murky liquid, its typically nauseatingly green tone looking black as pitch in the dark, now appears as though the night sky has somehow broken through the stone ceiling and now looms overhead, for how many little lights move across the surface. The shape of them- all of them, he, Sylvanas, the cursed dead- is barely visible, lost in the canal’s depths. All their silhouettes together looking for all the world like a court of ghosts or fey, the shapes of he and Sylvanas taking the role of the reigning monarchs, silverleaf crowns glinting and mercurial in the sludge. Painted in the inky shades of night, with stars and galaxies but no moon to be seen. Would that be enough, he thought, to hide Garrosh from the moon's maddening gaze? To keep him from turning as they’d feared? He hopes so. For Garrosh’s sake. He has no doubt that he, himself, would live- Sylvanas would make sure of that. But she would not hesitate to cut down his friend, if the need arose. That, he thinks, he fears the most. But the hour is late, and still he has not turned, so perhaps their efforts are enough. Perhaps they have been granted this one mercy.

Amongst the crowd, he is surprised and pleased to see other members of the Horde scattered throughout, orcs, trolls, and tauren wearing black ribbon and silverleaf, and many forsaken adorned with various trinkets bearing the Horde’s emblem. Far more than he expected, anyway. It’s reassuring, knowing that his words haven’t rung hollow. Though dead, though mourning, the forsaken are no longer alone. He chances a glance towards Sylvanas, and while the dead queen wears grief like a black shroud, it does not stop her from standing tall, and moving forward. She knows she’s being watched before long, and glances back his way out of the corner of her eye. He doesn’t turn his head, but he does give her what he hopes is a gentle, reassuring squeeze, pressing the arm wrapped around his arm closer to his side for just a moment. Her mouth goes thin, a little annoyed at the gesture, but she does return it, her grip around his bicep tightening for a moment. She lets herself have that little moment of weakness, sighing through her nose so quietly he only barely hears it, though there is hardly any space between them. She seems tired- redundant, as she’s always tired- but the black shroud seems a little lighter now, a little less smothering. He’s glad to have helped with that, at least.

The grip on his arm becomes a little more secure, a little more sure of herself, as they continue their march. Though her hands are disconcertingly cold, as most undead are, even through her fine gloves, he doesn’t mind- the longer her hand stays on him, the warmer it becomes. If he can give his friend even the smallest of comforts, then it will all have been worth it.

Once past the War Quarter, they make the turn into the center ring, into the heart of the city. Here, he can see each level of the Undercity, full to the brim with Forsaken, with any and all Horde that could come, three tiers painted in black and silver. It’s brighter here; being the main hub of the city, they could not, in good conscience, dim the lights without it being a safety issue, and so they didn’t, though the usual torchlight was swapped out for the eerie blue of the arcane fire. So when they pass under the archway, the light feels cold and blinding, and Thrall can’t hardly see anything until they’ve reached the stairway around the center pillar, below where the bank is.

Some of the altar hands break away here, making the journey up the many staircases to spread the flame farther and higher. By the time they have circled around the city bank, a flickering blue is spreading quickly through the second and third floors. The incense smoke drifts high above them, now, and the clanging of the chains echoes all around them. With how much silverleaf is being showered onto them, it looks as though the first snowfall has swept over them, leaves and petals fluttering through the smoke and dust as the land prepares itself for its long slumber through winter. And here, too- all remains silent, but for the almost rhythmic thumping of their footsteps, steady as a heartbeat.

When they cross through the archway on the other side, towards the Rogue’s Quarter, the world goes dark again, though it only takes a moment for Thrall to adjust. They make the turn towards the Apothecarium, sticking to the canalside once again. The crowds have begun to move with them, pressed right up to the line where the guards will no longer let them pass. Here in the dark again, their illusion of night has taken over completely- stars in the water, stars in the air, stars all around them. It is a forlorn, aching sort of beauty, blue and silver lights twinkling in and out of sight as their funeral procession moves towards its end. Ghosts and fey, real and material for now, to be made immaterial again once the night was over. 

Thrall tried not to listen, most times he was down here, but the catacombs were filled with as many real spirits as it was imaginary, and their memory made up every brick and stone of this place. There were shadows in the water that reflected no body walking the canal’s edge, and wisps of smoke that lingered too long, that morphed into shapes no fire would naturally take, took too many leaves for a place that no breeze blew through. Lights with no candle, movement with no form to make it. Though they were never loud, they were always present, and always aggrieved, and always looking for a sympathetic ear to join them. It was best usually not to humor them, as it wasn’t always clear if the companionship they sought would be a temporary arrangement or a permanent one, and they were always, always lonely. For now, though- for tonight- they seem tranquil, in their collective grief. Happy for the company their misery has brought them, however brief.

They cross the second bridge back over to the outer ring of the canal, starting the final leg of their journey. The number that follows them seems countless, and impossible, but Thrall knows better than to draw attention to any of their visitors. It would be unaccountably rude to single out any one creature’s grieving, after all, as this was a funeral, and all could attend. Sylvanas’ red-robed guards are there to greet them as their procession makes its way into the royal quarter, and they know to keep their eyes averted from the spirits that have elected to accompany them. Though the yawning corridor ahead is dark, the stars of their false night follow them here, too, and each step they take forward is another filled with starlight. There are whispers all around them, now. Low enough to be incomprehensible but undeniably present, and Thrall tries not to look too hard at the faint shapes and outlines of unlit candles drifting close to Sylvanas and his own, taking part in the offering of their flames. Sylvanas at some point has gone stiff and tense, her grip on his arm feeling more and more like the only lifeline she has. He squeezes her hand between his arm and his side once more, taking a deep breath, and she mirrors it in kind, breathing out as she steadies her grip. The cursed dead, he’s been told, were more perceptible to their whispers than most, and no doubt they would take a special interest in her, queen of the cursed dead.

He steadies his own breathing, knowing fully well that she could hear it even without the aid of the oppressive silence, and deliberately spaces out his breaths as they climb the ramp to the throne of the royal tomb. It’s not easy, having to do this while walking uphill, but it seems to give her the strength she needs, and Garrosh is there with a firm hand shortly after he starts, placed on the small of his back, underneath the cloak. He keeps pace with Thrall easily, and isn’t shy about staring at the spirits drifting around them until they leave well enough alone. His eyes carry that strange gleam from before, in their quarters, when there was no light to hold them but they were no less bright and striking. His usual sunshine gold has started to turn the cold, eerie green reflected off the inlay of Sylvanas’ black plate. Thrall wants to hope that it’s the blue light all around them altering his friend’s visage, but it’s becoming harder and harder to deny what feels more and more obvious. Are his ears sharper, are his teeth? Is it merely the shadows that paint him in a wolf’s colors? Is that a growl, under the rumble of their many feet, warding away the unseen creatures that dare to approach? Are those thick claws, pressing into his back, or the harsh angles of the metal gauntlet? He cannot turn to check, and the uncertainty haunts him.

But. But he hasn’t tried to hurt him at all, hasn’t tried to hurt anyone , he’s only ever been trying to protect him, and shouldn’t that count? Shouldn’t that count for- for something?

Thrall forces himself to focus back on the task at hand- riling himself up like this wouldn’t be of any help to anyone, and they didn’t. They didn’t know for certain. There could still be some chance. And anyway, now is- now isn’t the time.

They’re nearly to the top, now, the entrance to the main room coming into view over the ramp, and a couple altar hands slip past them into the room itself, each accompanied by a red guard. They’ve just finished placing themselves at their points around the edge when Thrall, Sylvanas, and the rest of the procession take their first steps inside, forming a circle of silver swords and blue-wicked black candles. When they approach the dais, only the two of them continue forward, still in arm and in step with each other. At the top, in the center- another brazier, waiting to be lit. The unseen guests are oddly respectful of this gesture, waiting patiently at the bottom step, on the walls, in the shadows cast by the flame- still and reverent, wherever they lay. Letting Thrall and Sylvanas approach the brazier alone.

Did he imagine it, that Garrosh pressed his hand a little firmer to his back, before pulling away? Reluctant, perhaps, to let him go? No, it- it must have been nothing. There’s no time for this.

There are three, perhaps four, footsteps between them and the unlit fire. He and Sylvanas break apart finally, taking their places on either side. He glances at Sylvanas, waiting on her command. He says nothing of the dark and newly glistening wet streaks trailing down her face, grief permanently etched onto her visage. She shows no other sign of it- her expression though tired, is determined, and her hands, though stiff, are still and unshaking. She must have some considerable willpower indeed to not be utterly consumed by it. 

Sylvanas nods, blinking gleaming red tears out of her eyes that turn black as soot as they follow the path of the tears before them, and the two of them take the three steps forward, and lift their candles to the brazier.

It doesn’t light at first, the blue flame lingering on their wicks just long enough to make Thrall worry, but it does catch after a few moments, spreading sluggishly through the brazier. The blue fire, the same blue as the eyes of the cursed dead when the Lich King had them under his shackles, slowly turns a vibrant violet- the same violet as the wolfsbane. The same violet painted on every banner and every flag that carried the emblem of the Forsaken. Violet light fills the throne room, banishing the shadows from the walls, and one by one, the candle flames turn to this color as well, the light from the brazier bleeding into them from some unseen link. It streaks down the long hallway, where the procession had become so full that there was no more room for them in the throne, standing in wait there on the ramp. Thrall has no doubt that it spreads to the rest of the city even as he and Sylvanas stand perched at the top. They turn towards the edge, facing the entrance again, and Sylvanas takes his empty hand, raising it high between them.

“Victory!” she cries, consumed with an electrifying fury Thrall has rarely seen surface. “Victory or death!” Her voice echoes as if layered by countless others, and the thrill it sends up his spine is one he knows only from the frenzy of battle. He reciprocates the banshee in kind, crying out from a heart filled to the brim.

“Victory or death! Lok’tar ogar!” he calls, his own voice deep and loud as thunder. And there’s maybe half a breath before Garrosh, his voice filling every corner of the room, replies with his own “Lok’tar!”

This seems to dispel whatever hesitance left among the crowd, shouts and cheers for victory rising from those gathered around them. The sound, too, carries down the hall, and soon he can hear in the distance the city joining them, their shouts echoing back up to the throne room. It is not joyous, not in any sense, but he hopes that the kinship he feels for them right now is a shared experience. He looks to Sylvanas as they lower their hands, and there’s hardly any time before she returns his gaze. Her face is still wet, but no more tears glimmer in her eyes. She’s tired now, he doesn’t think she has the capacity to be happy right now, but she looks tranquil, at least.

Thrall takes a chance, and carefully wipes the tears from her cheeks, the black residue smearing onto his thumb. The tear tracks remain, seared onto her at the moment of her death, but they are dry now. He can do this much for her. And she lets him, oddly enough, blinking at him slowly while his palm cups her jaw. He can feel her sigh onto his hand, and tension bleeds out of her, at least a little bit. He doesn’t push his luck, withdrawing his hand before too much attention can be drawn to it, and wiping it on the edge of his tunic.

She doesn’t say the words “thank you,” but she nods at him, and that’s enough.

---

With the procession over, most of the public disperses, returning to the city proper and resuming their mourning all throughout. It’s not so quiet now, but it is peaceful, and their spectral guests seem satisfied, trailing along the canal’s edge, along the water, and along the ceiling, a playful imitation of the completed ritual. They still hold the immaterial shapes of candles in their unseen hands, now lit with violet to match the image of the material ones still held by many forsaken who wandered the city.

The throne room still stays relatively crowded, which is a bizarre sight. Sylvanas didn’t exactly keep it closed to the public, but it was kept orderly, so now to see it used for revelry was. Different. Even for revelry so muted as theirs. There is talking and laughter now, though quiet, sharing stories of the old times, the old ways, before their lives were lost. The red guards and altar hands stay at their posts, no doubt to be on watch for the rest of the night, but Father Lazarus comes and finds him afterwards.

“You did wonderfully,” he praises, overcome with emotion. “What a beautiful ceremony. Everything went perfectly.”

“Thank you,” Thrall replies graciously, tipping his head at him. Lazarus chuckles, pleased with himself. He’s quiet for a moment, and then:

“I used to arrange weddings,” he says, apropos of nothing. That seems to be the Forsaken’s wont, when it comes to things like this. “For the church. It was always a lot of work, but it was work I took satisfaction in. It’s been so long since I was able to do anything like this.” Thrall nods at him peaceably, letting him talk.

“I know I wasn’t easy to work with,” he continues. It’s not an apology, and it’s not even particularly remorseful, either. But it’s something. “Thank you for humoring an old man.”

“My pleasure,” Thrall replies automatically. Lazarus chuckles again.

“You don’t have to humor me, now, I know it wasn’t,” he says with a wry smile. Thrall laughs a little.

“Fair enough,” he says.

Thrall doesn’t do a whole lot of talking, afterwards. Lazarus wanders away to join Aelthalyste, and Sylvanas is speaking in hushed tones with a few rangers who seem to have spontaneously appeared where she stood. He enjoys the quiet, though, and takes a moment to look around, watching the people around him. He knows it will be done soon enough.

As if on cue, Garrosh approaches him, slipping away from the crowd easily, unnoticed despite his size and stature. He seems. Quiet, now, almost contrite. Thoughtful. His eyes are gold again, and his tusks no sharper than they are normally, nor his ears. Thrall has no idea how he could’ve mistaken them for anything else, feeling rather silly.

“How much time is left?” Garrosh asks first, low and terse.

“We still have a little left,” Thrall assures him. Garrosh nods, hesitating, and Thrall can’t leave the quiet well enough alone.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks gently. Garrosh’s brow furrows, thinking.

“I knew the Forsaken had suffered, but,” he starts, a little apprehensive. “I hadn’t any idea that it was to this extreme. To have lost that many, and at the hands of their chieftain’s son…” He trails off. Thrall has explained kings and princes and royalty to Garrosh before, but he had to admit the cultural differences were rather stark, especially to one who hasn’t really experienced such things. Orcs had familial lines, true, and chieftains that followed those lines, but they somehow weren’t so set in stone as wealthy human men with allegedly divine rights. Garrosh had sneered at the concept when he told him, and he had to admit, despite being raised under it, it was a bit odd when he sat down and thought about it.

It had been a bit of a learning curve for himself, as well, but in reverse; learning the nuances of orcish bloodlines and leadership probably would’ve been much more painful if not for Grom’s oddly gentle hand in teaching him. The man didn’t pull his punches in many things, but this, apparently, he could do for Thrall. And so: Thrall passed that along to Grom’s son, paying that kindness forward, and teaching him what he could. Garrosh hadn’t taken it well at first- Thrall was younger than him, first of all, only a little over halfway through his second decade alive when they’d first met while Garrosh was already in his third, and after a lifetime of war, disease, famine, and death, the younger Hellscream had a hard time believing that this starry-eyed little upstart could ever know the suffering that he had known, that the Mag'har had known, but- they came to understand each other, soon enough. Garrosh still held onto that pride, the kind only known by those who had suffered extensively, and would likely hold onto it forever. But it was a suffering not unfamiliar to Thrall, nor the members of Thrall’s Horde, and Garrosh had eventually accepted that, however grudgingly. Perhaps the procession had brought an element of intimacy to that knowledge, one that he knew all too well.

Thrall nods at Garrosh, sighing through his nose.

“It can be hard to grasp the true size of it,” Thrall replies gently. “The fallen’s numbers should not be so large as to be unimaginable, and yet, they are. How many can say that they know what it truly means for their homeland to be dead, to have been present while it happened, unable to stop it? No one creature should be burdened with the knowledge of how many of them had been cut down, how cruelly it was done, or how few of them are left, but it’s something the Forsaken have to grapple with every moment they still walk this earth.” Garrosh nods solemnly at this, his brow furrowed low. Thrall decides to take another chance.

“I know you and Sylvanas don’t always get along,” he starts, maybe a little too diplomatically with how Garrosh snorts derisively at him in response. “But the two of you do have a lot in common. Far more than you would think.” Garrosh is quiet another moment.

“Perhaps,” he hedges. Quiet again; Thrall has no doubt that the words are difficult, painful even.

“In any case… I have misjudged her,” Garrosh continues, and this admission is… a little begrudging, but no less sincere. He seems so far away as he says it, and growing farther.

“I have much to think about,” he says lowly. And Thrall is about to ask if he’s alright, the words halfway out his mouth, before a dark ranger approaches them, making herself known by lightly tapping him on the arm. He knows she’s only doing this for their benefit, and she could probably appear from nowhere if she wanted to.

“It’s time,” the ranger says to Thrall. A stilted pause, measured in fractions of seconds, as he and Garrosh look at each other. He feels oddly bereft; they had not yet finished their conversation, and he knew they wouldn’t have had the time for it anyway, but.

“Garrosh,” he starts, anyway.

“Go,” Garrosh says. It’s not a goodbye, but it certainly feels like one. “We have work to do.” Thrall nods, a little put out.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says stubbornly. The dark ranger- Anya, he thinks- already has a hand hooked around his wrist, ready to pull him away. Garrosh huffs, a short little laugh of a breath, and the corners of his mouth curl ever so slightly up. He thinks Thrall is being ridiculous, but. His eyes, ever-golden, are warm and bright when he looks at him.

“Yes,” Garrosh replies, the laugh still on his breath. “See you tomorrow. Now go.”

Thrall says nothing else, and has no chance to; Anya takes Garrosh’s final words as permission to proceed, and she does, pulling Thrall over to Sylvanas and the other rangers. Garrosh fades into the crowd, out of sight.

He wants to believe that things will be alright. He has to. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever get along, otherwise.

---

The Undercity, for all that it is dark and dank and cold, is far from quiet. At least, it’s not the dead, eerie silence Garrosh had been expecting upon their arrival.

He knows he’s sensitive to it- had to be, growing up in Outland. Smell and sight and sound were all necessary skills to hone just to survive there. It meant the difference between being able to eat that day and dying the slow, horrible agony that only extended hunger provided, or being ambushed by demons and slain without a second thought. So he will not deny that his tolerance for the various attacks on his senses while he was down in the bowels of the city was… low, at best. But even here, though overwhelmed, there’s. Something in the distance. Some kind of sound, and one that he can’t identify. He tries to ignore it, tries to keep to his word that he’ll stay in the city, he’ll “behave,” as Windrunner infuriatingly put it, but it’s so, so much. He needs. He needs a minute. Just a minute to himself in some hallway off to the side, and then he’d make his way back. That’s all he needs.

No one appears to notice his passing; odd, considering the garishly red plate Windrunner has put on him, but he’s not complaining. It’s easy enough to slip through the crowd back to the end of the corridor, and easier still to stalk along the canalside unseen. The crowds have mostly broken up out here, and it’s far more open. As open as a stone hallway can be, anyway. Nothing will ever be so open as the night sky above him, stalking through the grassy plains of his home. Stars singing through the dark expanse, a riot of color painted onto a black canvas. So much closer to the shattered pieces of Draenor, to him, than they were to Azeroth.

It’s been. So long. Since he’s been home. He didn’t realize, until the spirits had come down and joined them, putting on their pageant of night and stars. So much closer to his own night sky, and the splendor of its heavens moving around them. Azeroth is so stable, unmoving and unknowing of this splendor. He finds, more and more, that he can no longer stand it. And that distant sound. Louder now, away from the crowds.

There are no notes, no tune, no words, and yet: a song, just on the edges of his hearing. A call.

This is no sigh on the breeze, no roll of thunder or patter of rain; Garrosh may not have the talent for communing with the spirits of this world or of nature, but he was not so ignorant or foolish to not recognize its presence. This… this was something else. Something older, from before there was earth or water, fire or air. A sound and scent without a breeze to carry it, a fire that did not burn, beginning to writhe behind his eye sockets and under his skin. One that only grew more insistent the longer he stayed in this dank, low place, amongst the dead unearthed from their sunken, broken beds. 

He just- he just needs a minute.

The spirits of Lordaeron seem to be continuing the pageant without them, playing along the canalside and dancing over the filthy water. Little lights, adorning bodies of shadow and mist. There is no danger to be had from them. Not a lick of ill intent among them, and keeping their distance from him if pressed. He doesn’t know what Thrall is talking about- he has no trouble making them stay away from him. And their whispers- hardly anything. Nothing compared to that wordless, noteless song. Ringing in his ears at an impossibly high pitch, making no sound at all. It’s making his head pound. Fresh air, he reminds himself, fresh air will do him some good.

So he keeps wandering, down darker and narrower tunnels, away from the noise and the smell of the city and towards that noiseless sound. Every direction he takes only seems to make it all the louder, ringing all around him. A few of the more adventurous spirits tag along as he makes his way through, blinking in and out of sight just beyond what he can see. The shadows almost have a human shape, though it never holds for very long, bending and warping as they travel along the wall. Candle flames flickering with no wick, no wax. Wearing dust and mist as mourning veils. How many of them were Lordaeron’s fallen, he wonders. Felled by one of their own.

What a tragedy it was, to be pulled from the roots of their sleep, to be severed from life’s thrumming pulse. He has never been closer to it than he is now, wandering the ruined tunnels of their tomb while it pounds loud and deep between his ears. Head, heart, and body- all aching with grief. With love. With hunger.

Somehow, some time later, he emerges from the stale, stagnant air of the tunnels and into the blessed dark of night, clear and crisp, the first scent of frost on the breeze. The call is as loud as he’s ever heard, yet growing louder, demanding, bidding him to walk further into that shadowy veil. Was it night itself calling him, then, guiding him through the tunnels and between the trees? There is no song as sweet, no howl as dreadful, as that of night’s, its inky blackness all-consuming, each star a pinhole into a veil not meant to be uncovered by mortal eyes. He has no use for light now, just a blight on his senses as he crawls deeper and deeper into the dark woods. The spirits will follow him no further, it seems; lingering at the edges of the wood before slinking back to their tomb. No matter. Let them rest. There is work to be done, before he returns.

He sloughs off pieces of himself as he goes- the choking red plate, first, nothing more than witch-hexed shackles keeping from the night-song, all except that damnable collar which stays firmly, infuriatingly fastened in place, no matter how he tears at it. It hardly matters; enough is gone that he can no longer be fettered by it. His boots, next, and the gloves of his underarmor, but he can’t quite get the closures for the gambeson, for some reason- his fingers feeling too big, his nails too long. Was it always this much trouble? He can’t remember.

He’s not sure what happens, next- one moment he’s struggling with the closures, the next he’s somehow shrugged off the underarmor, and the cotton shift underneath that, and is shrugging off the shift of his skin, flesh sliding off as easily as if it was never his at all. Dissolving into mist before it could hit the ground.

He’s in a clearing, now. The trees around him are black as pitch, the leaves and pine needles turning blue under the moonlight. The night sky looms overhead. As dark and vast as the sea. The moon- a pale, pupil-less eye. Staring down at him.

Was the moon always so bright? Did it always weigh so heavily upon him? The night-song roars in his ears, a bellowing, howling thing that deafens all other sounds. He responds in kind, his voice lifting over the trees. The dissonance of their harmony leaves his ears ringing, his head pounding. He can no longer see himself. But it hardly matters.

There is work to be done.