Alterac 6
Many of your warriors had actually been here before.
Thrall had rallied your people here after he'd broken the internment camps. It had been a haven for a season, but the land proved unable to support such a large number of Orcs, and as you understood Thrall had moved south, in the mountains above Durnholde Keep to set up another camp.
Others, perhaps some of the Warsong left behind when Thrall led the exodus across the sea, had been here to trade, and you heard exclamations of greeting as you passed the Iceblood Garrison, so called, you learned, because a warrior had to have 'ice for blood' to man the station. While the Frostwolves were used to the cold of Draenor's Frostfire Ridge, other tribes had hailed from thick jungles or temperate grasslands, and were unused to such conditions.
You looked around you as you rode in at the head of the column. The valley of the Frostwolves was wide, not so wide as the Pass behind you, but wide enough all the same. You saw watchtowers, cunningly hidden from the front by rock and tree, but exposed behind now that you'd ridden past them, you saw burrows and defensive lines, as if the land itself had risen up to form natural impediments.
But then, this was the home of Drek'thar after all, the Elder Shaman of the Horde. He was to shamans as your own father was to warlocks, the oldest and wisest of his kind, the most skilled, the most able to speak with the Spirits.
Drek'thar's power was well known. Your father respected him, even if Neeru scorned him, for Drek'thar was a Farseer, the height of a shaman's power, the elders of their kind could perceive events before they happened, not merely hours or days in advance, but potentially years. They could read the skein of fate and were the most respected position in Orcish society, for while a warrior might challenge a Warchief, he would never challenge a Farseer.
This was a place of significance for your people, a place of history.
The Frostwolf village was as you might expect. Most of the buildings were huts half-dug into the ground, and the warriors here wore furs that covered their bodies. Many wore wolf pelts, and wolves stood beside them, the same wolves which gave them their clan name.
There were others though. Some of the buildings were larger, clearly military in purpose. Rough-cut stones built up several towers, and spiked wooden walls were between them as you drew closer to the Frostwolf Keep. It was strange to see, for you knew the stonework wasn't Orcish, for one the stones were simply too small, they'd have been inconvenient to cut. Had the Frostwolves torn down Dwarvish towers? Or perhaps raided human settlements for the stone itself? That would seem a strange thing to do, but the Frostwolves had been here for many years after all.
When they left Draenor, the Frostwolves had been the only clan not to drink demonblood. They had a reputation, even before your people descended into bloodlust, for keeping their heads, denying themselves the rage that was your people's heritage. You'd sympathised with that, in your childhood, for you too had mastered that rage, made it your servant.
Durotan, the Frostwolf chieftain, had been one of Blackhand's lieutenants, but shortly after the destruction of Stormwind the Frostwolves as a whole had departed, and you assumed they'd fought their way north up to Alterac. Durotan had been murdered by Gul'dan's assassins, and the clan had been led by Drek'thar ever since.
You admitted you were a little hazy on some of the details of the history. Thrall had called all Orcs to join him on the journey to Kalimdor, and apparently Drek'thar had gone along too. Had they left some Frostwolves behind as they had some of the other clans out east? Or had the Frostwolves collectively returned to Alterac afterward? You weren't entirely sure, but you knew that the Frostwolves, once a very small clan, were now one of the few cohesive 'clans' left in the Horde, for many had become like your own, maintain traditions and culture through specialist functions in the Horde. The Blackrock didn't have a chieftain either, save perhaps Rend, son of Blackhand, and he was opposed to Thrall anyway, but the Blackrock still maintained their position as the shock troops and smiths of the Horde after all.
Yours was the first generation not brought up under the clan structure. Gul'dan and Blackhand had formed the Horde swiftly, and it couldn't have been more than a decade since the Horde was first formed, to when the Dark Portal opened. In that time the clan structures had been broken down, and the internment camps had broken them further. Clans had mixed, been destroyed, families broken, and then all renewed when Thrall liberated your people. In the modern Horde, a clan was complex, and there were many reflections of it through society.
Here then you thought you saw what the Orcish people might once have been. Small clans, weak clans. Subject to attack by ogres or arakkoa.
But it was also a structure that had seen your people survive for centuries among the larger threats of Draenor. A structure that had furnished your people with a dozen unique traditions
You felt a sense of melancholy as you dismounted, but you didn't know quite why. You hand touches a decoration on your saddle, a little metal wolf head worked in harsh iron.
White wolf and black wolf, they stalk in a circle. White leaps, black's blood upon the snow.
You look up, and see a blind shaman staring at you from the doors of the keep.
Even veiled as he is, Drek'thar can see you, and the blindfold is only there as a mark of his status. He is tall, but perhaps thin, once no doubt as powerful as any orc, now withered with age. Indeed, you suspect he is the oldest orc you've ever seen, and it's strange to see an elder such as he in a race as martial as yours.
He nods his head back to the keep, then turns away, two wolves following him as well as his guards.
Vark sidles up. "He'll be wanting to see you then? I'll see the warriors settled."
"Delay as much as you can without causing suspicion." you replied, still watching Drek'thar walking away. He'd perhaps a hundred paces from you, just up a rise leading to the keep.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Vark asks quietly, putting his hand on your shoulder as you pretend to fiddle with your own wolf's gear.
"I don't know. But I saw something. An attack perhaps."
"Here?"
"I don't know. Just keep them ready."
Vark takes one look at your frown, then walks with exaggerated calm back towards Scorn.
You call for Sorek, give him the same instructions, though your banner-bearer is to accompany you to meet Drek'thar.
"They're orcs!" Sorek hisses. "They can't be planning to attack?!"
The aspirant blademasters walk surrounding you closely, Sorek and you in the middle of the knot of warriors. Only a dozen remain now, for you've taken losses to the Scourge in the months fighting against them.
"I know what I saw, but I don't know what it means." you reply quietly. The keep is close now. You can hardly draw your sword, it would be an insult. If you're attacked you'll dodge back, buy space and time for a draw…
You suppose you should be grateful at least that your warriors' trust in your own prophetic abilities is sufficient that you've not been questioned on it. Vark and Scorn will have travelled through the warriors now, spoken with the right people, and that should be enough.
Only you were permitted within the keep. It was rude, but not necessarily suspicious, with the Frostwolves being as cold as their homeland.
Frostwolf guards were surprisingly absent though, and you only saw a few there. That was good and bad, for you suspected it meant they were outside, and if that was too attack it meant they put their best where they'd do most.
Drek'thar sat on a throne, the image of a Farseer, his chest bare save for ritual markings, and richly inlaid bowls of reagents at his sides. Two wolves stood on either side of him, and when you entered they slowly padded around you to stand between you and the exit.
You had no patience for subterfuge though. It was dishonourable, this whole affair, but even as the fire built within you, you couldn't work out why…
"I have heard much of you, Blademaster." Drek'thar said, and like his body his voice spoke of withered strength.
"If you mean to attack me, have done with it at once." You replied, but still didn't draw your sword, even as the wolves behind you growled.
"You will fight." Drek'thar said, "I have seen it."
The Farseer stood, and rather than his staff he chose an axe and shortsword, drawing them from a rack at the side of his throne.
The fire in the ritual bowl burned, and the water in another rippled.
"But for the survival of our people, your clan must be destroyed…"
You felt them through the earth, a sudden movement outside the fortress, the attack on your people.
You felt them through the earth, the wolves leaping forward to hamstring you.
You felt them through the earth, Drek'thar's weight shifting, his feet lighter than they should be as he called on the Spirit of Air to speed his step.
You leapt.
High into the chamber, with wolf teeth snapping where you stood, with Drek'thar using his athame to cast a spear of ice as you soared, but then you came done.
The Fireblade blazed in the darkness, the pure fire outraged at Drek'thar's duplicity, outraged at the dishonour, and it blazed strong, cleaving through the spine of one wolf as you landed, springing forward.
Your blade bears down, Drek'thar blocks it, somehow getting to just the right angle for it, just the right angle to threaten you with his dagger, before you have to twist away dodging yet again as the remaining wolf almost bowls you over.
The Farseer opens his arms wide, imploring the spirits in their own tongues, calling on water and air to raise a mist with the chamber, and when you move to strike him the mist is like a wall, making your movements sluggish as if wading through a fast flowing river.
"I have seen it, I have seen your blade." Drek'thar intones, hurling spellfire toward you as he moves around the chamber in the mist, you only seeing the athame as he glows with each spell.
The room is cramped, and more than once you seem about to trip or be hit by a strike, before your own foresight warns you of it, a feeling at the back of your neck a feeling to-
You dart left, sword up, carving a deadly wound into the second wolf.
"I have seen the burning blade, thrusting into the earth, I have seen destruction, the Doomhammer sundered upon an iron hide."
Spell upon spell, the mist deadens your senses and movements both, and you shelter behind your sword, trying to feel out where Drek'thar is moving.
"Where once the future was bright, I see now only war. I see betrayal, I see fire, I see gifts that hide shackles."
The axe swings out of nowhere, a miasma of energy around it, and you meet it with the flat of your blade, shoving Drek'thar off back into the mist.
"Your clan is behind it, your clan will lead us into oblivion once again, and this time I will be there to stop it!"
With a cry the Farseer charges and battle roars in your heart.
For a man fifty years your senior, he fights well. You are more skilled, more powerful, but his foresight and instinctive control of his magic lets him match you.
"I will never allow that!" you growl in reply. Again you bash his weapons away, the greater weight of the Fireblade overcoming the Farseer's defences, yet you can't strike.
Do you hesitate to preserve his life? In the hopes that this is all some misunderstanding?
"You already have!" Drek'thar rasps, breathing quickly, for despite his admirable flexibility in dodging your blows, he is an old orc indeed. "Once I stood by, once I followed Darkness, but I will die before that happens again!"
"You begged Gul'dan to give you the Fel, you begged him on your knees!"
Drek'thar only bellows, and you see the ritual bowls surge with energy!
You must get away, but if you turn to try and retreat, Drek'thar will kill you.
Myzrael's bracer thrums with power on your wrist, and the pure flame burns in your heart.
You must get away, back to the warband, to retreat if you can.
You must get away.
Choose 1:
[ ] Call on the Pure Flame
[ ] Call on Myzrael
