Chapter Text
At times, Jadaar found himself wondering if it was possible that he was under some kind of a curse. Recent history, at least, would seem to suggest as much. It wasn’t that all of his plans went awry, but it did seem to him that he encountered entirely unreasonable amounts of adversity even in what should by all rights have been straightforward affairs.
Take this latest venture for an example: here he was, decades in the past, on a world that had not yet shattered - a world he had once called home - and he was able and more than willing to lend his skills and knowledge to its defense. With all that, finding a place to make himself useful should have been laughably simple.
It hadn’t been.
Of course, he could have made it much easier for himself if he didn’t insist on travelling with a certain blood elf. But as irritating as the little dandy could be, his presence had become non-negotiable to Jadaar over the years. Just as it had been sentimentality that had brought him to this Draenor of the past, it was sentimentality that now tied him to Asric, and he would not apologize for either. He still wasn’t sure what had motivated Asric to come, but as he knew for a fact that it couldn’t have been concern for the planet or its people, Jadaar had a few theories. The problem was that he didn’t quite know how to test them. Matters of attraction had never been his strong suit - and that was without the added complication of not really knowing anything about how blood elves approached the subject, if they were serious.
As for their current quest for glory, the main problem they faced was that the Horde and the Alliance were both running their own separate operations against the Iron Horde, with little to no overlap, and those locals that were ready to oppose Hellscream had already aligned themselves with one or the other. It left very little demand for the pair of them, neutral though they were about the ongoing enmity between the two factions. No matter how loudly or frequently they both swore that Asric was no more a Horde spy than he, Jadaar, was secretly out for orc blood, it didn’t do them any good. Everyone was either too suspicious of one or both of them to let them in, or, as one hapless sergeant had nervously explained, unwilling to take the risk that someone else would be suspicious enough to start trouble. Not an entirely unfounded concern, to be fair.
While Jadaar, of course, always had the option of trying to blend in with the locals, the same could not be said for Asric. Though the resident draenei of this time had no reason to dislike Asric's kind, Alliance forces were widespread enough that even local villages were about as welcoming to a blood elf as the Alliance outposts had been. Again, Jadaar’s attempts to vouch for his companion had fallen on deaf ears.
It had been something of a relief, therefore, to hear the news of Lady Liadrin offering her aid to the Auchenai. They had both agreed that this made Auchindoun the most likely place to accept both of them, and so their next destination had been decided.
They’d met the draenei travellers upon entering Talador. The group, bound for the city of Aruuna, had been travelling on foot, with two talbuk-drawn carts to carry their collective belongings. Reasoning that there was safety in numbers - and that such safety would be welcome since the roads had grown more perilous - the refugees had agreed to allow the two strangers to join them on their way. Jadaar and Asric planned to travel with the company as far as the outskirts of Aruuna, then part ways and continue on to Auchindoun by themselves.
At least, such had been the plan. But really, Jadaar should’ve known better by now than to think fate would be so kind to him.
It started with a gasp from a young man whose name Jadaar believed to be Mekeda.
“Smoke!” he shouted. “There’s smoke on the horizon! Look!”
Jadaar leaned towards Asric to provide a quick translation, but kept his eye on the pillar of smoke rising from the east.
“Aruuna?” Asric asked.
“Most likely.” Jadaar touched his fingers to the hilt of the mace on his back. “We may have run into trouble.”
As if on cue, someone at the front of the caravan shrieked “Arakkoa!” Jadaar barely had time to ready his weapon before the creature descended upon them, wings spread and sunlight glinting off its elaborate armor. It landed on all fours atop the front cart, and with its wing-feathers fanned out and one hind talon digging grooves into the wood frame, managed to look more like a battle-armored beast than the dangerously intelligent creature Jadaar knew it to be. Paying no mind to the terrified refugees who were slowly backing away from it, the arakkoa tore into the canvas covering of the cart, eager to get at the items inside. It didn’t even look up when a few of the refugees took off running.
It may have been unkind of him, but Jadaar couldn’t say he’d missed this variety of arakkoa after Draenor’s destruction had wiped them all out. He tightened his grip on his weapon, but otherwise made no move. From the corner of his eye, he saw Asric widen his stance by a fraction and slowly slide one hand under his traveling cloak, which Jadaar knew concealed an extremely sharp dagger. Jadaar shook his head in warning. Not yet. There was no point in needlessly escalating the situation if the arakkoa wasn’t going to attack anyone unprovoked, and he didn’t want Asric presenting himself as a target should the arakkoa unexpectedly change its mind. Asric gave him a puzzled look, but withdrew his hand.
Those of the travellers that hadn’t yet fled packed close together around the second cart, whispering nervously amongst themselves. If they had thought they’d be safer that way, they were proven wrong when another arakkoa, this one clad much less extravagantly in a loincloth and simple cloth wraps, came swooping down. With one precise slash of a chakram, it felled the person nearest to it before pouncing onto a terrified woman and pinning her to the ground. The remaining refugees ran then, leaving the poor woman to her fate. The bloodied edge of the weapon glittered in the sun as the arakkoa raised it again.
Jadaar decided he had to act. He charged at the creature and swung his mace with all the might he was able to muster. The arakkoa caught the movement from the corner of its eye and tried to dodge, but the blow still connected, catching it in its ribs and knocking it well away from its intended victim. The terrified refugee scrambled to take shelter under one of the carts. Jadaar spared a quick glance in the direction of the first arakkoa, but it was still preoccupied with its ransacking.
Satisfied that the creature was suitably distracted, Jadaar hefted his mace again and approached its injured accomplice to deliver the finishing blow, but far from defeated, the arakkoa sprang back so fast that he had no time to react. It flung itself at Jadaar with blind rage, and with enough force that both of his hooves left the ground. For a moment, he felt a piercing pain in his side, but on landing the back of his head collided with something so hard that it eclipsed all other sensations. As his vision blurred, he saw Asric throw off his cloak and rush forward, dagger in hand, and then the world slipped away from him altogether.
-
When he came to, it was strangely quiet. No sounds of battle or the shaken aftermath of one carried to his ears - not even leaves rustling in the wind. There was something soft under his head and a strange weight on his chest. His head hurt, and his eye felt like it had been glued shut. His other eye - the one he didn’t have - was throbbing, as it sometimes did when he overexerted himself. This phantom pain was a shadow of the raw agony he’d felt when he’d lost the eye however, and so he’d long since learnt to ignore it.
Careful flexing of his fingers revealed a slight soreness in the base of his right thumb, where he’d rested the hilt of his mace as he’d struck the arakkoa. His grip must’ve been off to leave an injury like that. Otherwise, both his arms seemed fine - and alarmingly devoid of clothing or armor - as did his legs when he shifted them cautiously, though the movement did send out a wave of dull pain from just above his hip.
When he finally managed to open his eye, he found himself staring at ceiling beams. To his left stood a wooden wall, and he could sense an open space on his blind side. He was trying to decide if it would be worth it to try to turn his head or if he was better off pretending to still be unconscious when he heard movement on his right.
“Oh, thank the Light!” a voice said, and a familiar face appeared in his field of vision. “The healing is taking.”
It was her. The woman he’d saved from the attacking arakkoa. Did this mean they were safe?
“Where are we?” Jadaar asked. His tongue felt heavy and dry, and somehow too big in his mouth.
“An outpost of the outlanders. They called it Fort Wrynn.”
Jadaar exhaled in relief. So they were safe. And now that he’d had a moment to make sense of his surroundings, he saw that the room they were in was likely that of an inn, furnished with only a desk, a chair, and the bed he was lying on. The softness under his head was a pillow, and the weight…he pushed himself up a little, though the movement was not entirely painless, and saw that it was a totem, laid across his bare chest, just above tightly-wrapped bandages that covered his abdomen. He assumed it was the source of the healing the woman had referred to. He also assumed it wasn’t hers. To his knowledge, there were no shamans among the draenei of this time, and in any case the thing had a distinctly dwarven look to it.
“Who…”
“There was a little bearded man here earlier, when they brought us in,” the woman explained. “He said he wasn’t really a healer, but he left the totem and told me that combined with my Gift, it might be enough. I’m glad to see he was right. You’ve been unconscious for hours, and for a while I thought you might not make it.”
Hours? “I hit my head that hard?”
“Your head?” she said, almost laughing, but soon sobered. “Your head was the least of your worries! The arakkoa tore your side open. You would have bled out for sure had help not arrived when it did.”
“Help?”
“A scouting party. Someone had seen the smoke and they’d been sent out to investigate. It was sheer luck they found us.” She bit her lip. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you’d died on me. You saved my life.”
“And now you’ve saved mine. You’re not indebted to me.” Jadaar wouldn’t have considered it a debt to begin with, but something about the way she’d said it had him thinking that maybe she had. “I’m sorry, but I can’t recall your name.”
“Tavara.”
“Thank you, Tavara.”
It was good to have all that settled, and Jadaar felt most reassured until Tavara’s earlier words finally registered. “Hold on, did you say Fort Wrynn? But that means it’s an Alliance base! They let Asric in?”
Tavara’s expression turned glum, and she looked away.
“I don’t know how much you remember of the attack, but when the arakkoa came after you and knocked you out, your friend… he had a dagger, and he attacked the arakkoa. If - if he hadn’t, I feel like you would have been beyond help, like poor Mekeda was. It’s possible I wouldn’t be here, either.” She swallowed, and blinked hard for a few moments before continuing.
“But then the other one - got angry, I think. It grabbed him and flew away.”
She did not say what she probably assumed Jadaar, being a draenei, already knew: if one of the flying arakkoa had taken Asric, then he was most likely dead, or would be soon. The Outcasts were known to sometimes take other races prisoner for reasons that were often known only to them, but their unbroken brethren, never. Non-arakkoa weren’t interesting or important to them, and if they did not kill you right away, it only meant they wanted to make you suffer first.
So that was it. He’d lost Asric. Worse than that, he’d brought Asric to this world to die. It had been Jadaar’s idea to come to Draenor, his whim, and Asric had only accompanied him - because of what? Habit? Lack of other options? A genuine preference for Jadaar’s company? He didn’t know. He’d been too unsure to ask, and now it was too late. He put a hand over his good eye, angry and ashamed. What had he been so afraid of?
Tavara placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her sympathy provided little comfort, but Jadaar allowed it. She was not to blame for his loss.
“Aruuna lies in ruins,” she said. “I have nowhere left to run, but Sergeant Vitasipe has offered to put in a good word for me to her commander in Shadowmoon Valley.” She indicated the Alliance tabard Jadaar only now noticed she was wearing, then hesitated. "If - I don't mean to sound callous, but if you need a new purpose too, I’m sure she’ll be willing to help."
Jadaar said nothing. It was true that he no longer had any reason not to throw his lot in with the Alliance, but at the moment he was finding it hard to remember why he’d wanted to come to Draenor in the first place. What he wanted to do right now was to go back to Shattrath, his Shattrath, find a reasonably dry spot in the Lower City to curl up in, and sleep until such time that he no longer felt like there was a curse hanging over his head. Alternatively, he wanted to storm the Spires of Arakk, to hunt the arakkoa there until he found the one that had taken Asric - an impossible task, he knew, and not just because he couldn’t reliably tell one arakkoa from another - or, as was far more likely, die trying.
His silence seemed to be making Tavara uncomfortable.
“I apologize,” she said. “I barely knew any of the people I was travelling with, but the two of you… you were close, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Jadaar said, slowly. For his own part, he had been very fond of the irritating brat of an elf, and he supposed Asric wouldn’t have have stuck around all this time if at least some of that sentiment hadn’t been returned.
Tavara removed her hand. “I really shouldn’t have dropped all of this on you right now, when you should be resting. It would be best if you went back to sleep and let the totem finish its work.”
Jadaar rubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know if I can sleep,” he said. “This is a lot to take in.”
She gave him a sympathetic look. “I may not be much good for emotional comfort,” she said, “but sleep - that I can do. Wait here.”
Seeming pleased to have a task she was confident she could perform, Tavara left the room with a newfound air of determination, and returned shortly with a satchel slung over one shoulder and a small bowl and a mortar and pestle in her hands. She set these on the desk and pulled a handful of herbs from the satchel. From his position on the bed, Jadaar couldn’t see which herbs she chose or what she did with them, but when she turned around she held out a bowl of something that put Jadaar in mind of the sludge that tended to collect in stagnant pools near goblin settlements. Still, she assured him that it would help, so he accepted the bowl and drank.
If he'd thought the appearance vile, the taste was even worse. He barely managed to get it down without gagging, and even then it took a few moments of intense concentration to keep it down. But once the nausea passed, his eyelid did indeed grow heavy and a languid warmth began to settle over him and seep into his limbs. As Jadaar laid back down, Tavara collected her equipment and bid him goodnight. Jadaar barely heard the door closing after her.
As promised, the concoction did help him fall asleep, but his dreams, when they came, were less pleasant than he might have hoped. He had troubling impressions of a shadowy army in pursuit - distant, but tireless - and of burning skies and crumbling stone. It was Auchindoun and it was Shattrath, and he ran without moving forward. The shadows marched on in the distance, neither gaining on him, nor falling behind, but there was something else here, too, and much closer. He could hear sharp claws scratching at the other side of every wall he stopped at. Whatever beast was stalking him, it would surely find a way through eventually, or else make its own opening.
Another scrape of the unseen creature’s talons, and the world shifted, rippled like water, and the flames began to melt away. The shadow army faded as well - but the Creature persisted.
Jadaar opened his eye and saw darkness. For a moment he was unsure of where he was, but then the shadows of the night resolved themselves into the same room he’d fallen asleep in, just darker. He blinked. Despite the unsettling dream, his head felt clearer, his limbs less heavy than before. His musings were interrupted by the sudden realization that he could still hear the scraping noise that he had in his dream taken for the claws of some unspeakable beast, and that it was coming from the direction of the room’s only window. Awake, he knew it was extremely unlikely that any hunting animal would be trying to climb in through his window, but other intruders were not out of the question.
Jadaar turned to face the wall, so that if someone did come in they couldn’t immediately tell he was awake. He stared instead at the wood paneling, where the moonlight shining in through the window cast a pale rectangle. In the middle of it, he thought he could see the suggestion of a shimmering shadow. The window creaked open and a cool breeze rolled in, accompanied by the soft padding of careful footsteps. Jadaar kept his eye on the patch of moonlight. It was probably an effect of the nightmare that his heart was beating so hard against his ribs and every muscle in his body felt tense, prepared to act. Hoping to, even.
The shadow grew sharper with every footstep as his uninvited visitor approached the bed, and at last he could hear the shaky breath of someone trying to make as little noise as possible. Jadaar took a deep breath of his own, and whirled around, reaching out with one hand. He pulled the figure down onto the mattress and rolled on top of it with one hand resting on his would-be assailant’s neck, the threat of impending asphyxiation communicated clearly where his fingers dug ever so slightly into the soft flesh. The sudden movement made him feel somewhat light-headed, but the wound in his side only put up a token protest.
The figure was slightly translucent - likely the lingering effect of a fading invisibility spell - which combined with the darkness made it hard to tell what manner of a creature had tried to sneak up on him. It was too small and lithe to be an orc, so at least it was unlikely to be an agent of the Iron Horde, and the lack of fur or feathers ruled out both arakkoa and saberon.
“There had better be a good explanation for this intrusion,” Jadaar growled, hoping that the ‘big scary mountain of muscle’ act would work as well here as it had on the few occasions that he’d fallen back on it during his time as a peacekeeper. “Start talking.”
Instead of trembling in fear as it rightfully should have, the figure heaved an enormous sigh. “I never would have thought I’d be this happy to be threatened with strangulation.” A pair of fel-green eyes looked up at him. “Though I should tell you, you don’t sound half as scary as you probably think you do.”
Jadaar could scarcely believe it, but there was no mistaking that smug voice. He’d been listening to it day in and day out for long enough.
“Asric?”