"Go!" you call, making your fatal decision, "Go, I will delay him!"
"How?" Kartha exclaims in surprise, "One orc against a mountain!"
"There's no time!" you roar back, spurring your wolf forward, it's mouth panting, eyes wide with tiredness already. "Warn the city, if I die, I die, at least I do so with worth. Only I know enough about Forneus, you two between you can warn the Warchief."
Their protestations follow you down the scree slope as you steer your warg toward the river. With a bound your mount dives into it, paddling strongly as you swim alongside, long strokes with one hand still on the bridle. The water is foul and muddy, slow flowing as the silt of a hundred miles is carried along toward the sea and you almost feel as if the distraught earth is sucking you down before you finally reach the far bank and climb atop the wolf once again.
Where the Barrens have been set aflame, Durotar has been quenched. You ride amist the ruined hovels of harpy tribes, racing along the tops of massive ridges, now the new islands of the province. Already the floodwaters of the Southfury are draining away and in some places you see the marks of a higher tide, yet you still have to swim several more times, heading east across the old flats of the northern region. Forneus is ahead of you, rarely out of sight and some way off to your south and you know you'll be able to just about meet him while the giant is still slowed by narrow canyons and before he's able to get out onto the plains toward Orgrimmar.
Whatever you do, you have to delay the creature long enough for the capital's shaman to mount a defence. Whether they prepare some ritual to banish Forneus back to the Stonecore or whether they take some other course is useless to consider, you have too little understanding of Shamanism to even attempt an answer and truly even if you did, your mind wanders sluggishly as you barely manage to cling on as the wolf charges between stones and over the sundered landscape of the new Orcish homeland.
You can spend little thought on strategy on magic when every muscle aches, even your bones seeming to throb with pain as you ride on, sometimes filling your vision with blackness and once almost causing you to fall from your seat. After that you make yourself more secure, twisting the leather of the bridle around your hands so that in the short spaces the blackness returns you're still tied to the wolf.
The creature is hardly better. The animals of the Warsong are well known for their obedience and steadfastness but the journey is a taxing one for both of you and the wolf grows slower and slower, its mouth foaming, tongue lolling and when it tries to take some refreshment from a pool on the way you twist the reins again, having little time to waste, even if the pace kills the both of you.
And it almost does. The wolf's legs finally give out and it slows to a walk, then a pathetic shamble as you run alongside, shouting encouragement and at least trying to drag it back to strength, but ultimately failing. The fine beast slumps to the floor, eyes unfocused, it's breath coming in sporadic pants as you look on.
You turn away before it dies. You're far enough and you climb to the peak of a pillar of stone, naked but for the scraps of leather that you once wore as armour, battered and bloodied, exhausted.
Forneus is there. A immense triangular shape of crystal and stone, enormous geodes extruding from his body in apparently random projections, some perhaps possible to mistake for muscles and others utterly alien. In the dim light of soot-darkened sun the giant appears out of place, a creature from another world, some immense underground kingdom where he himself is a ruler, rather than an invader to the muck and dust of the overworld. His limbs are but suggestions amidst his massive bulk and had you expected merely a stony figure you'd find yourself mistaken when looking at this shining crystalline destroyer.
He looks at you. Or at least, many of the brighter crystals seem to face you, and although the ground shakes occasionally he appears still, perhaps he doesn't know what you are, you certainly wouldn't after all given your appearance.
"For-" you cough, your throat aflame, your lips cracked and bleeding, water denying itself to you. "Forneus!"
The mountain bows toward you, the crystals seeming to vibrate whether in excitement, curiosity, or merely anticipation of violence.
"Forneus!" you call again, "I am the one who called you! The Kolkar sent you here to face me! Can I purchase your departure with my death?"
You hadn't heard the voice of Proudpeak, rather you'd felt it in your boots, rippling up your legs and beating in your chest, the vibration of a spirit as great as your own.
This is different, this time you hear the grinding of boulders from below as the giant shifts, yet at the same time the crystals sing in elegant music as you hear the answer.
"Fleshling." the word comes as a brand, a disinterest and a distain from the being that could crush you as easily as breathing. "I come to serve my master, but no mortal calls me, from the noble to the base, whether elf or dwarf, not even the sons of demons."
Once again there's that phrase, the same the unnamed centaur shaman had used before his suicide. Were the Orcs truly so regarded?
"We are not the sons of demons!" you shout back, "We rose up from the earth, up from the Elements! The Forgers made us and we are their sons!"
Once again the crystals sing, this time in query. "Then name yourselves before me, name yourself before the earth."
Of all the things you'd expected you'd not thought to explain the history of Draenor. You'd thought you might perhaps try to gain a foothold on Forneus and distract him by climbing, or maybe even persuade him to retreat, offering your own life in barter. But no, instead you begin what is without doubt the most bizarre exposition of your life, standing bare atop this pillar as you speak of Grond and Gor-grond the Great, of the caves that spawned your people and the lines of Gruul the Dragoneater, of the Ogres of Highmaul and the burning of the Evergreen, of battles between Genesaur and Gronn and of your own place in the world.
Even if Forneus is uninterested you buy time. With each history as you speak you buy more time. A minute turns into ten, and ten to twenty and for each twitch of a crystal or wink of light you wonder how the Elemental perceives you.
"So why then, fleshling, do you stink of corruption?"
Again the crystals sing, this time in anger, in disharmony. You feel your chest constrict, the ground shaking beneath you and you fall to your knees, clinging onto the stone pillar as you shout back, bellowing the explanation, words streaming from your mouth as you explain the battle, the summoning of the Ur'zul and all that happened.
Then you look up, the crystals all around you like a cave. "All you do is futile, fleshling." the giant pronounces above you, "Not even if you lived ten thousand thousand years would you have seen the wonders I have. Not a single of your fleeting folk will ever matter. You scurry this way and that, your works utterly without meaning. All your kind have forgotten the Earth. I grant you your request, die now, die in failure, die forgotten."
The ground moves beneath you and without a moment to react you're falling. Rocks fall from above and though your abused body doesn't feel the impacts, your mind refusing to process the agony you know you should be feeling as blackness closes in.
You dream in the blackness. You watch as light leaps from the city, as Forneus swipes aside the great gate of Orgrimmar with a contemptuous hand, as shadows and fire leap from his form and all manner of creatures assail your people as the hallucinations grow more fanciful. You watch a great shadow stoop upon you like a doom.
The ground shakes and darkness takes you.
