Ecliptic Meeting
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
Zul'Aman was not supposed to be fallen. The temple fortress was not even supposed to be called Zul'Aman. Once the capital of the Amani Empire had stretched from the edge of what the humans called Darrowmere Lake to the shores of what was now the Forbidding Sea, so great and large as to be a kingdom unto itself. So few remained who even remembered the Zandali names of the land of old, let alone the majesty they once held. There were no great statues of gold and jade, no housing complexes adorned with silver and emerald fetishes, there for families to invoke the favor of minor Loa. Now...now the 'Temple City' barely stretched beyond the six temples it centered around. Now what was once the seat of the Amani Loa and their priests were known as little more than a bastion of wood and stone, nestled among the mountain peaks and the pine forests. What had been just the Great Ziggurat of old was nothing more than overgrown totems, crumbling walls, and wooden huts. The east harbor was gone. The barracks of Zul'Mashar was all but lost to the humans of Lordaeron. There was no sign of the pilgrim's path, which had once stretched down the coast to Jintha'Alor. It was as if the People of the Forest had never been anything more than a people confined to the mountain highlands.
Before the dead came, Zul'Aman had been a ruin. After, it was an abattoir.
The lakes and rivers of the city were filthy with blood and rot. Houses burned and guard towers lay toppled to the ground. The shrines were ransacked and ruined. The only reason dirt and grass were visible was that there were no bodies to hide them. The once-human prince and his necromancers had been meticulous when collecting the dead. Yet for all the destruction, the gates stood open and the walls were untouched by siege or assault. The last bastion of the troll empire had not fallen to the axes of outsiders, but to treachery from within.
The troll known as Zul'Jin growled as he looked over at his ruined home. His one remaining hand shifted its grip on his ax. There was still the phantom feel of his lost arm, imaginary fingers wrapped around another ax he hadn't carried in ten years. He stoked the rage within him, the indignation at the insult dealt to his people. He fed it, like a fire devouring all that touched it. He needed that anger, that fury.
It was all that kept him from weeping.g
Malacrass and his priests had sold them out.
The arts they had turned to in recent years were strange even for witchdoctors, but it had been worth it in the years after the Second War, with the numbers of their people so reduced. The elves were kept back and away from the mountain homes of the Amani. Every month another of the invaders' patrols had been sent home bloody and fewer in number. They were on the path to avenging seven thousand years of humiliation. And then the undead had come, and it had been almost perfect. They had just needed to wait, to watch as the dead broke Quel'Thalas and left the Holy Land open for taking. But now any hope for justice and restoration was undone.
How long had their corruption gone unnoticed? How long had it been since the Hex Lord had joined hand in hand with demons? How long had he plotted to seal the gods and steal their powers? What promises had he received to be willing to give aid to the demon and the dead? He had locked the gods away within a once-human prince and himself and traded the lives of his people for it. Was power more important to him than revenge against the elves?
With a roar, Zul'Jin buried his ax in a nearby tree. It didn't matter. The answers didn't matter. For as much as blame lay on the traitors and defilers, some part of it lay on him.
For ten years he had thought the quieting of the gods was because of him. That they refused to speak and perform all but the most basic of blessings because of the humiliating defeats and deaths the Amani had suffered. But now he wondered if Malacrass had had a hand in it. If Zul'Jin, in his stewing anger and thirst for revenge, had missed the signs of demons working their way into his people. Even now his thoughts were on the enemies who had killed his people and not on those left alive. As Warlord, were they not his responsibility?
"Zul'Jin," a voice said, and he looked up to meet the eyes of one of his Amani'shi. He was young, this child wearing the garb of a soldier. So young Zul'Jin half expected the tattoos to still be wet. Were there so few Amani left that they must draw on boys and girls just past adulthood? Even still, his tusks were longer than Zul'Jin's. The old troll had broken them in supplication to the Loa, begging for some sign so that they'd speak to the Amani once again. He had been met with silence.
"What do you want?" It was a struggle to speak just a growl through the memories of shame and anger. The boy was not the source of those things. He did not deserve his warlord's rage.
"Most of the scouts have returned with survivors," the boy said. He glanced at the Lake of Zul'Aman for a moment. "Many of them want to fight, although most are in no shape for it."
Zul'Jin blinked in confusion. He had sent out scouts for survivors? He didn't remember that.
After the Scourge had left (not retreated, left), he had been wroth with hatred and anger. Zul'Jin knew himself well enough to not trust his judgment at the moment. So he had given command to Daakara and went off to sulk. That had been three days ago, he realized.
He had spent three days mourning his people's lost greatness, nurturing his grudge against that boy prince who had defiled their bastion of refuge.
Zul'Jin chuckled, dark and bitter. Their bastion of refuge had just corralled the northern tribes into a trap. They'd been fish in a pond just waiting for the spears to come out. There'd been no warning at all, not even a notion that the Scourge had finished with the elves. That brought ill fortune for the northern holds and villages. Most of his people had pulled back to their walled fortresses and holdouts, but there were always those foolish enough to stay behind. Maybe more had survived hiding in the mountain forests than behind stone walls.
How many were left, he wondered. Come next year, would the children of Zul'Aman be so reduced as to all fit within the Shrinelands as neighbors to the Wildhammer? Would there be enough resources for them all? And if not, how could they ever hope to retake their ancestral lands?
Which pained him more? The lost life, or the lost chance of revenge?
Zul'Jin knelt next to the lake and ran his fingers through the bloody water. He was old. His hair had turned grey when the orcs first came. Now, the snow-white locks hung like limp vines over his face. His one eye glared at him, dark and accusatory over the shawl pulled up over his nose. There should have been tusks poking out from beneath the cloth. There should be another arm to go with his right. But it was right there was only the one eye.
The arm he had sacrificed to escape captivity. The tusks he had broken off in futile supplication. But the eye had been the price he paid for leading his people into that disastrous 'Second War.' A mistake he would always remember. Pfah, even the name showed how foolish it had been. The second war between Human and Orc, with everyone else just accessory to it. A desire for vengeance and a better future for his people had blinded him to the dangers. He had rationalized it, reasoned it as simply striking first at a foe his people had long fought against. Small comfort to all the trolls who had died before the elfgates. That foolishness left them even weaker now. Even if they tracked down and finished off the undead, so what? His people would be too weak to do any more, and by the time they'd recovered their enemies would have as well.
He wanted a future for his people. He wanted them to be safe, prosperous. He wanted at least some of the old glory to return to them. He wanted vengeance for the unjust dead. To go to war was to risk it all. But to sit and hide was to be whittled away by the passage of time.
"What will you have us do, Zul'Jin?" the scout said. Ah, he had forgotten the boy was here. He looked so unsure, so nervous. But there was bravery there, in his eyes. "If you bid us pursue the Scourge we will. If you say we hide with the survivors, we will. You are our warlord. You hold our people's fate. For whatever you desire, we will follow you."
The old troll with broken tusks, a missing arm, and one eye, breathed out as he rose to his feet. He had cast aside his name long ago. His title was all he was. He was Zul'Jin, a witchdoctor and a chief. He was the Witchdoctor of the Amani. He was the Warlord of the Amani. Just as he would tend to the sick and injured he would deal out death and destruction. Just as he would execute the will of the gods, he would bring glory to his people.
He would preserve his people and bring them some measure of justice.
He said as much to the scout.
The boy grinned, and when he spoke it was with a voice deeper and more ancient than anything Zul'Jin could imagine.
"Excellent indeed."
Nothing about the boy changed. His eyes were still blue. His tattoos were still of white and silver. His purple mohawk still rose proudly from his scalp. But suddenly it was as if a thousand thousand nightmares stood before Zul'Jin, wearing the face of a troll dressed as Amani'Shi.
"I am but a wisp of a fragment of a god long dead," the Thing That Was Not a Troll said. "Like all of the world before I am dead and lost. But I live still to see my Chosen defy existence. You will be an excellent champion." The thing grinned. "Go, oh Child of Luna. Defy the world that would not fit you, and show it the divine wrath and mortal kindness of the Lunar Exalted." And then it was gone.
Zul'Jin let out a shuddering breath. He hadn't even realized he'd been holding it.
He barely noticed the light that now surrounded him, distracted by a wholeness he had not felt in years. His tusks jutted out strong and proud from his face, and both his arms flexed with strength. He had thought them lost beyond the reach of troll regeneration and magic to heal. But now he was whole again, his injured body once more matching the troll he was.
He did not see the silver symbol that embossed itself in front of his forehead; a threefold image of a crescent moon, an empty ring, and a solid disc all coexisting within the same space.
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The mountains had stood unchanged since shaped by the Titans in ages past. The first to trod their lengths were the aqir, who had neither name nor record for them. The peaks did not serve as hive nor temples nor hunting ground, and so they were unremarkable. After, in the time of ancient Aman, that first empire of forest trolls, the mountains were called Zandwakorin, the East Wall Mountains, for they had been as walls between great Zul'Aman and the eastern Ocean. Even today, the steep and rocky cliffs still bore that name, even if they guarded against every direction. To the Quel'dorei they were Danithas'Thalas, the Forest Peak Home. To them, the pine-forested slopes had always been home to their most persistent foes. But still, the mountains stood unchanging, uncaring of the world as it shifted around them.
Even now, as troll and elf fought against the living dead, they did not care.
Even now, as a once-human prince roared with the power of chained gods, they did not care.
Even now, as the power of Sun and Moon made manifest waged war among their valleys, they did not care.
They were here when the world was shaped. And they would be here when it ended. But for those who had not been here when the land was crafted, and would not be here when it crumbled away to nothing, this moment was one to care for.
Sylvanas's bow lashed out. Arthas's sword caught on the arm and was forced to the side, leaving him open as Zul'Jin rushed in. The troll only had time for a few swipes of his arms before the prince recovered, and was then forced back by quick, jabbing thrusts. All he had gotten were a few light scratches on the prince and a cut on his own shoulder.
Zul'Jin fell back, a growl low in his throat. He barely looked like a troll anymore. Even crouched over, he was more massive than any troll she had seen before. His upper body looked like that of a bear's, covered in black fur with hands that ended in spade-like claws growing from his fingers. Beneath the fur was a layer of scales and feathers, extending out into two great dragonhawk wings that rose from his back. His head was a strange mix between the two creatures, fur and scale and skin painted into fearsomely beautiful features. He barely looked anything like the aged troll warlord. But Sylvanas saw his bearing, saw the scared right eye sealed shut forever, and knew on an instinctual level it was him.
By now all three of them bore the signs of combat, nicked and bruised and worn.
The troll glanced at her with his one good eye and snorted in disgust.
Sylvanas frowned. She didn't like him either. Too many elves had fallen beneath the axes of his trolls for her to feel anything positive.
Silver and blue light swirled about him as he circled Arthas, akin to the gold and red that wrapped around Sylvanas as she gauged the undead prince. Around the three, elves and trolls hacked away at the undead, trapping the monsters between them. They did not work together but did not seek to close with each other. The mutual loathing the races shared for the unquiet dead was clear to all.
It was enough to hold back their age-old grudge. For now.
Arthas moved to keep both Sylvanas and Zul'Jin in his peripheral vision. His lips stretched into a rictus grin. "Now isn't this a sight. Troll and Elf working together. I must admit I'm surprised. I'm flattered. In less than half a year I've overcome millennia of hate."
Sylvanas snorted. As if.
"Don't mistake this, butcher," Zul'Jin rumbled. When he spoke it was like gutter gravel crunching underfoot. "The elves will answer for their crimes, in time. You just get to go first."
"Lucky me then," Arthas grinned.
He lunged at Sylvanas, blade striking out in a dizzying pattern, leaving shallow, bleeding cuts across Sylvanas's arms. She had no choice but to fight defensive, feet dancing across the ground as she weaved between the blows she could not parry with her bow. Then suddenly he broke off, whirling to the side, and near half a ton of transformed troll barreled into Sylvanas.
She leaped over sweeping claws, kicking off Zul'Jin's back as he passed beneath her, almost clipping her legs against his wings. Her injured thigh flared with pain and Arthas struck while she was in the air.
His blade scored a deep cut along her shoulder, but he was already rushing past and she only had time for a single arrow that glanced off his shoulder.
She spun as she landed and was treated to the sight of Arthas closing in on Zul'Jin. They were in the melee for the briefest of moments, his sword striking the talons of an eagle, cutting into the troll's side again and again. Silver light flared, fur and scale-covered limbs blurred like quicksilver, and four limbs struck at the undead prince from impossible angles. He fought the attacks off with unnatural speed, strength, ferocity, and cunning, but a few blows still slipped through. With a roar he kicked his foe away, clearing more space with swipes of his sword.
Arthas glared at his foes, armor now rent and torn in places. But as distorted as it was his body looked barely worse for wear. The troll's flank, however, was covered in ruby fresh blood that dripped from three long, deep gashes in his side.
Whatever power had blessed Sylvanas and Zul'Jin made them more than a match for anyone else, but the stolen power of the troll gods made Arthas just as strong. Every exchange he came out the better.
"This isn't working," Sylvanas growled.
Zul'Jin scoffed. "What do you suggest, elf? Your people have never been shy of finding new ways to fight mine."
Sylvanas glanced at him, form shrouded in silver light, trollish nature barely visible beneath layers of fur and scale, and her vision changed for the briefest moment. A man who was as much a beast as he was not, fish and bull and human merged into a singular being of savage beauty, wrought into the image of Luna the Bloody Huntress. A soft layer of moon silver fur covered a chest of nut-brown skin, giving way to a back of rainbow scales. He glanced at her, and she saw kind warmth and furious anger under a brow of curving antlers and silver tattoos, an ally and friend who even now when all hope was lost, fought with her against the breaking of the world. Sylvanas blinked, and the sight of her partner was gone, leaving only a troll who was, only for the moment, her ally.
Ally. Her mind caught on that word.
Some part of her rebelled at the notion. The woman who read too many casualty lists over the centuries, whose own family was dead because of the forest trolls, recoiled at the idea of making common cause with them. But the general who had seen her army ground down to a bare few thousand in a matter of weeks, who had been all but shattered in that desperate retreat and reborn in sunlight, sat on those emotions.
There would be time. Time to doubt, to consider, to reconcile with that anger and grief shouting inside her head.
Once her people were safe.
"We work together," Sylvanas ground out. "Actually work together. Not just stay out of each other's way."
The troll stilled, the only sign of life the twitching of his muscles as he kept his eye on Arthas. The undead prince seemed content to let them talk. He was cautious despite how the fight had favored him. That meant it was closer than he liked to admit. She glanced around, and couldn't hold back the grimace. The dead still pressed against Amani and Quel'dorei, their bodies littering the ground. Or perhaps he just needed to wait them out.
"He's strong and skilled," Sylvanas shook off the doubt. It would not help her. She stepped forward so that she was near shoulder to shoulder with Zul'Jin. "But we are both near his equal. No one can hold out against two peer opponents working in concert."
"You would see him proved right?" Zul'Jin said. "To have elf and troll make common-cause with one another?"
"I would see the undead defeated and Quel'Thalas safe," Sylvanas almost snarled. "If those aims require that I work with trolls, then I will do so. Would you not want the same for the Amani?"
Zul'Jin's chuckle was as bitter as the sea. "It was such work to simply keep myself to attacking the undead." For a moment she thought he would leave it at that. "What do you need?"
"Get in close," Sylvanas said, "Don't back off. Refuse to let him put distance. Keep him from maneuvering."
For a moment he just stood there, head bowed. Then Sylvanas heard his breathing begin to quicken. His shoulders rose and fell faster and faster. His voice growled low in the throat. Claws tensed, wings spread wide, pulse raced. The light surrounding him intensified, silver whisps turning into streams of moonlight. Zul'Jin threw back his head and roared, voice underlined by the cry of bear, eagle, lynx, and dragonhawk.
"DA AMANI DE CHUKA!" The berserk troll threw himself on Arthas, limbs striking out with speed and fury.
The eyes of the undead prince widened, and then he threw himself into a desperate defense. His blue-glowing sword wove through its forms, a dancing cat moving to block or parry every strike sent at him. For all his fury, the troll could not land a single blow, even as the jagged blade slipped out again and again, cuts appearing one after the other to score wounds along his flanks. But he didn't back off. Where before there had been a rhythm of clash and separation, now there were just two bodies locked on the edge of a brawl
Again and again, Zul'Jin tried to grab his foe. Again and again, Arthas slipped away.
Sylvanas drew on her essence and let it fill her. It seeped into her body, suffusing every limb and muscle. White gold flared so thick around her that she might as well have been breathing sunlight. On her brow, the golden sunburst sprang to life. Behind her, the banner of light took the shape of the roaring phoenix above ranks of rangers. An arrow formed in her hand, and like so many times before, she nocked it to the bowstring without thinking and took aim.
Zul'Jin and Arthas were close and did not stay still. Hitting just one and not the other would be difficult even for a supremely skilled archer.
Sylvanas had first picked up the bow when she was a child. The simple length wood had fascinated her, despite her father's disapproval of the more martial arts. No, it was because of that disapproval she had gone down the path of a ranger instead of just dabbling in archery. The rest of her life had come from that. Months spent away from the Windrunner estate and the court of high society. Enlisting in the Farstriders under a false identity, then working her way up through the ranks until she was discovered. Staying with her brothers and sisters and arms despite the scandal it had caused. Serving in an almost ambassadorial role with humans and dwarfs. Repelling raid after raid of Amani soldiers. Rising to the rank of Ranger-General, and taking on the mantle of protecting all of Quel'thalas. All that and more made up Sylvanas
But before anything else, Sylvanas was an archer.
Sylvanas released the arrow. Like a knife, it buried itself into Arthas's armpit. He gasped, stumbling as dead nerves and necrotic flesh seared with pain. Then he screamed as Zul'Jin stabbed the wound, claws digging deep into his chest, all the way up to the troll's elbow.
A gasp rattled past the lips of the once-human prince, pale blue eyes staring down with incomprehension. Then he slumped and was no more.
The rest of the undead fell soon after.
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Pre-dawn hung heavy and peaceful over the Forbidding Sea in contrast to the name. It was calm and placid, with only small waves rising to bump up against the sides of the canoe. Malacrass wondered why the humans and elves called it that. Then again, maybe there was something more out there in the depths. The former Hex Lord of the Amani had never gone beyond the sight of land, and even with the Zandwakorin towering above that was not far.
The ghost hovering at the prow of the boat glanced south, back the way they came.
"Arthas has fallen," he said, voice barely a whisper.
Malacrass grunted and kept rowing, paddle dipping into saltwater on first the left and then the right side of the canoe. "Shame that. Your king had plans for him, right?"
"The Lich King has many plans," the ghost of Kel'Thuzad said. "Some of them involved the boy prince, yes. But any one of the Lich King's faithful may pass beyond usefulness. Plans can change, and my liege's goals will be met." On his ethereal, see-through form, the frown was barely visible. "Even if some of his servants need to be sacrificed along the way."
Malacrass chuckled. "Worried about your reward, necromancer? Should have been smart like me, demand payment upfront." He breathed in and felt the pulse of magic inside him intensify. The power of the Loa was a heady thing. The beating heart of nature and the world dancing among fog-shadowed trees and through misty graveyards. And there, underlying that winding rhythm of storm and forest was the sweet crackle of fel fire, binding the spirits and gods under his will.
"Oh?" The ghost looked at Malacrass. "You seemed reluctant to part with the Greater Loa. Do you not wish your demon masters had let you keep them for yourself? Did you not have plans for their potent power?"
Malacrass snorted. "The gods are not so easily kept. I could have fit one, maybe one and a half inside me. But no more. Akil'zon, Nalorakk, Jan'alai, and Halazzi don't play well even with themselves. I got the better deal."
"So you don't regret giving them to Arthas? No lingering disappointment that your fellow priests could not have them?"
Malacrass threw his head back and laughed. "My only disappointment is that such potential had to be thrown away now. Zul'Jin had no love for the elves. A few more years and he would have willingly trapped the power of the gods himself. Oh, what the Amani could have done then is beyond imagining."
"But the dreadlords forced your hand," the ghost noted. "They demanded you move now, and as you already had some of their power, some of the rewards they promised, you had no choice but to obey."
Malacrass frowned. His paddle stabbed deep into the ocean, kicking up a spray of surf.
"I know what you're doing, human," he said. "The demons may have had to buy my loyalty, but I'm no fool. It'll take more than dissatisfaction to get me to raid Bwomsamdi's hut. I have no interest in making the unquiet dead my master."
"A shame," Kel'Thuzad said. He turned, looking out north over the flat and calm seawater, to where a shadow was beginning to appear. "We are getting close. Are you prepared?"
"Yeah yeah," Malacrassed waved a hand. He didn't much care about old grudges of the Amani tribes, but it would be nice to see the Sunwell in person. "You do not need to worry about me. I know what to do. Still, you sure this is the right play? The elves care a lot about their little pool."
"Completely," Kel'thuzad said. "Silvermoon has not fallen, but the Quel'dorei have been too hurt to leave their kingdom for several years at the least. By that time our masters' plans will be complete."
Before the dead came, Zul'Aman had been a ruin. After, it was an abattoir.
The lakes and rivers of the city were filthy with blood and rot. Houses burned and guard towers lay toppled to the ground. The shrines were ransacked and ruined. The only reason dirt and grass were visible was that there were no bodies to hide them. The once-human prince and his necromancers had been meticulous when collecting the dead. Yet for all the destruction, the gates stood open and the walls were untouched by siege or assault. The last bastion of the troll empire had not fallen to the axes of outsiders, but to treachery from within.
The troll known as Zul'Jin growled as he looked over at his ruined home. His one remaining hand shifted its grip on his ax. There was still the phantom feel of his lost arm, imaginary fingers wrapped around another ax he hadn't carried in ten years. He stoked the rage within him, the indignation at the insult dealt to his people. He fed it, like a fire devouring all that touched it. He needed that anger, that fury.
It was all that kept him from weeping.g
Malacrass and his priests had sold them out.
The arts they had turned to in recent years were strange even for witchdoctors, but it had been worth it in the years after the Second War, with the numbers of their people so reduced. The elves were kept back and away from the mountain homes of the Amani. Every month another of the invaders' patrols had been sent home bloody and fewer in number. They were on the path to avenging seven thousand years of humiliation. And then the undead had come, and it had been almost perfect. They had just needed to wait, to watch as the dead broke Quel'Thalas and left the Holy Land open for taking. But now any hope for justice and restoration was undone.
How long had their corruption gone unnoticed? How long had it been since the Hex Lord had joined hand in hand with demons? How long had he plotted to seal the gods and steal their powers? What promises had he received to be willing to give aid to the demon and the dead? He had locked the gods away within a once-human prince and himself and traded the lives of his people for it. Was power more important to him than revenge against the elves?
With a roar, Zul'Jin buried his ax in a nearby tree. It didn't matter. The answers didn't matter. For as much as blame lay on the traitors and defilers, some part of it lay on him.
For ten years he had thought the quieting of the gods was because of him. That they refused to speak and perform all but the most basic of blessings because of the humiliating defeats and deaths the Amani had suffered. But now he wondered if Malacrass had had a hand in it. If Zul'Jin, in his stewing anger and thirst for revenge, had missed the signs of demons working their way into his people. Even now his thoughts were on the enemies who had killed his people and not on those left alive. As Warlord, were they not his responsibility?
"Zul'Jin," a voice said, and he looked up to meet the eyes of one of his Amani'shi. He was young, this child wearing the garb of a soldier. So young Zul'Jin half expected the tattoos to still be wet. Were there so few Amani left that they must draw on boys and girls just past adulthood? Even still, his tusks were longer than Zul'Jin's. The old troll had broken them in supplication to the Loa, begging for some sign so that they'd speak to the Amani once again. He had been met with silence.
"What do you want?" It was a struggle to speak just a growl through the memories of shame and anger. The boy was not the source of those things. He did not deserve his warlord's rage.
"Most of the scouts have returned with survivors," the boy said. He glanced at the Lake of Zul'Aman for a moment. "Many of them want to fight, although most are in no shape for it."
Zul'Jin blinked in confusion. He had sent out scouts for survivors? He didn't remember that.
After the Scourge had left (not retreated, left), he had been wroth with hatred and anger. Zul'Jin knew himself well enough to not trust his judgment at the moment. So he had given command to Daakara and went off to sulk. That had been three days ago, he realized.
He had spent three days mourning his people's lost greatness, nurturing his grudge against that boy prince who had defiled their bastion of refuge.
Zul'Jin chuckled, dark and bitter. Their bastion of refuge had just corralled the northern tribes into a trap. They'd been fish in a pond just waiting for the spears to come out. There'd been no warning at all, not even a notion that the Scourge had finished with the elves. That brought ill fortune for the northern holds and villages. Most of his people had pulled back to their walled fortresses and holdouts, but there were always those foolish enough to stay behind. Maybe more had survived hiding in the mountain forests than behind stone walls.
How many were left, he wondered. Come next year, would the children of Zul'Aman be so reduced as to all fit within the Shrinelands as neighbors to the Wildhammer? Would there be enough resources for them all? And if not, how could they ever hope to retake their ancestral lands?
Which pained him more? The lost life, or the lost chance of revenge?
Zul'Jin knelt next to the lake and ran his fingers through the bloody water. He was old. His hair had turned grey when the orcs first came. Now, the snow-white locks hung like limp vines over his face. His one eye glared at him, dark and accusatory over the shawl pulled up over his nose. There should have been tusks poking out from beneath the cloth. There should be another arm to go with his right. But it was right there was only the one eye.
The arm he had sacrificed to escape captivity. The tusks he had broken off in futile supplication. But the eye had been the price he paid for leading his people into that disastrous 'Second War.' A mistake he would always remember. Pfah, even the name showed how foolish it had been. The second war between Human and Orc, with everyone else just accessory to it. A desire for vengeance and a better future for his people had blinded him to the dangers. He had rationalized it, reasoned it as simply striking first at a foe his people had long fought against. Small comfort to all the trolls who had died before the elfgates. That foolishness left them even weaker now. Even if they tracked down and finished off the undead, so what? His people would be too weak to do any more, and by the time they'd recovered their enemies would have as well.
He wanted a future for his people. He wanted them to be safe, prosperous. He wanted at least some of the old glory to return to them. He wanted vengeance for the unjust dead. To go to war was to risk it all. But to sit and hide was to be whittled away by the passage of time.
"What will you have us do, Zul'Jin?" the scout said. Ah, he had forgotten the boy was here. He looked so unsure, so nervous. But there was bravery there, in his eyes. "If you bid us pursue the Scourge we will. If you say we hide with the survivors, we will. You are our warlord. You hold our people's fate. For whatever you desire, we will follow you."
The old troll with broken tusks, a missing arm, and one eye, breathed out as he rose to his feet. He had cast aside his name long ago. His title was all he was. He was Zul'Jin, a witchdoctor and a chief. He was the Witchdoctor of the Amani. He was the Warlord of the Amani. Just as he would tend to the sick and injured he would deal out death and destruction. Just as he would execute the will of the gods, he would bring glory to his people.
He would preserve his people and bring them some measure of justice.
He said as much to the scout.
The boy grinned, and when he spoke it was with a voice deeper and more ancient than anything Zul'Jin could imagine.
"Excellent indeed."
Nothing about the boy changed. His eyes were still blue. His tattoos were still of white and silver. His purple mohawk still rose proudly from his scalp. But suddenly it was as if a thousand thousand nightmares stood before Zul'Jin, wearing the face of a troll dressed as Amani'Shi.
"I am but a wisp of a fragment of a god long dead," the Thing That Was Not a Troll said. "Like all of the world before I am dead and lost. But I live still to see my Chosen defy existence. You will be an excellent champion." The thing grinned. "Go, oh Child of Luna. Defy the world that would not fit you, and show it the divine wrath and mortal kindness of the Lunar Exalted." And then it was gone.
Zul'Jin let out a shuddering breath. He hadn't even realized he'd been holding it.
He barely noticed the light that now surrounded him, distracted by a wholeness he had not felt in years. His tusks jutted out strong and proud from his face, and both his arms flexed with strength. He had thought them lost beyond the reach of troll regeneration and magic to heal. But now he was whole again, his injured body once more matching the troll he was.
He did not see the silver symbol that embossed itself in front of his forehead; a threefold image of a crescent moon, an empty ring, and a solid disc all coexisting within the same space.
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The mountains had stood unchanged since shaped by the Titans in ages past. The first to trod their lengths were the aqir, who had neither name nor record for them. The peaks did not serve as hive nor temples nor hunting ground, and so they were unremarkable. After, in the time of ancient Aman, that first empire of forest trolls, the mountains were called Zandwakorin, the East Wall Mountains, for they had been as walls between great Zul'Aman and the eastern Ocean. Even today, the steep and rocky cliffs still bore that name, even if they guarded against every direction. To the Quel'dorei they were Danithas'Thalas, the Forest Peak Home. To them, the pine-forested slopes had always been home to their most persistent foes. But still, the mountains stood unchanging, uncaring of the world as it shifted around them.
Even now, as troll and elf fought against the living dead, they did not care.
Even now, as a once-human prince roared with the power of chained gods, they did not care.
Even now, as the power of Sun and Moon made manifest waged war among their valleys, they did not care.
They were here when the world was shaped. And they would be here when it ended. But for those who had not been here when the land was crafted, and would not be here when it crumbled away to nothing, this moment was one to care for.
Sylvanas's bow lashed out. Arthas's sword caught on the arm and was forced to the side, leaving him open as Zul'Jin rushed in. The troll only had time for a few swipes of his arms before the prince recovered, and was then forced back by quick, jabbing thrusts. All he had gotten were a few light scratches on the prince and a cut on his own shoulder.
Zul'Jin fell back, a growl low in his throat. He barely looked like a troll anymore. Even crouched over, he was more massive than any troll she had seen before. His upper body looked like that of a bear's, covered in black fur with hands that ended in spade-like claws growing from his fingers. Beneath the fur was a layer of scales and feathers, extending out into two great dragonhawk wings that rose from his back. His head was a strange mix between the two creatures, fur and scale and skin painted into fearsomely beautiful features. He barely looked anything like the aged troll warlord. But Sylvanas saw his bearing, saw the scared right eye sealed shut forever, and knew on an instinctual level it was him.
By now all three of them bore the signs of combat, nicked and bruised and worn.
The troll glanced at her with his one good eye and snorted in disgust.
Sylvanas frowned. She didn't like him either. Too many elves had fallen beneath the axes of his trolls for her to feel anything positive.
Silver and blue light swirled about him as he circled Arthas, akin to the gold and red that wrapped around Sylvanas as she gauged the undead prince. Around the three, elves and trolls hacked away at the undead, trapping the monsters between them. They did not work together but did not seek to close with each other. The mutual loathing the races shared for the unquiet dead was clear to all.
It was enough to hold back their age-old grudge. For now.
Arthas moved to keep both Sylvanas and Zul'Jin in his peripheral vision. His lips stretched into a rictus grin. "Now isn't this a sight. Troll and Elf working together. I must admit I'm surprised. I'm flattered. In less than half a year I've overcome millennia of hate."
Sylvanas snorted. As if.
"Don't mistake this, butcher," Zul'Jin rumbled. When he spoke it was like gutter gravel crunching underfoot. "The elves will answer for their crimes, in time. You just get to go first."
"Lucky me then," Arthas grinned.
He lunged at Sylvanas, blade striking out in a dizzying pattern, leaving shallow, bleeding cuts across Sylvanas's arms. She had no choice but to fight defensive, feet dancing across the ground as she weaved between the blows she could not parry with her bow. Then suddenly he broke off, whirling to the side, and near half a ton of transformed troll barreled into Sylvanas.
She leaped over sweeping claws, kicking off Zul'Jin's back as he passed beneath her, almost clipping her legs against his wings. Her injured thigh flared with pain and Arthas struck while she was in the air.
His blade scored a deep cut along her shoulder, but he was already rushing past and she only had time for a single arrow that glanced off his shoulder.
She spun as she landed and was treated to the sight of Arthas closing in on Zul'Jin. They were in the melee for the briefest of moments, his sword striking the talons of an eagle, cutting into the troll's side again and again. Silver light flared, fur and scale-covered limbs blurred like quicksilver, and four limbs struck at the undead prince from impossible angles. He fought the attacks off with unnatural speed, strength, ferocity, and cunning, but a few blows still slipped through. With a roar he kicked his foe away, clearing more space with swipes of his sword.
Arthas glared at his foes, armor now rent and torn in places. But as distorted as it was his body looked barely worse for wear. The troll's flank, however, was covered in ruby fresh blood that dripped from three long, deep gashes in his side.
Whatever power had blessed Sylvanas and Zul'Jin made them more than a match for anyone else, but the stolen power of the troll gods made Arthas just as strong. Every exchange he came out the better.
"This isn't working," Sylvanas growled.
Zul'Jin scoffed. "What do you suggest, elf? Your people have never been shy of finding new ways to fight mine."
Sylvanas glanced at him, form shrouded in silver light, trollish nature barely visible beneath layers of fur and scale, and her vision changed for the briefest moment. A man who was as much a beast as he was not, fish and bull and human merged into a singular being of savage beauty, wrought into the image of Luna the Bloody Huntress. A soft layer of moon silver fur covered a chest of nut-brown skin, giving way to a back of rainbow scales. He glanced at her, and she saw kind warmth and furious anger under a brow of curving antlers and silver tattoos, an ally and friend who even now when all hope was lost, fought with her against the breaking of the world. Sylvanas blinked, and the sight of her partner was gone, leaving only a troll who was, only for the moment, her ally.
Ally. Her mind caught on that word.
Some part of her rebelled at the notion. The woman who read too many casualty lists over the centuries, whose own family was dead because of the forest trolls, recoiled at the idea of making common cause with them. But the general who had seen her army ground down to a bare few thousand in a matter of weeks, who had been all but shattered in that desperate retreat and reborn in sunlight, sat on those emotions.
There would be time. Time to doubt, to consider, to reconcile with that anger and grief shouting inside her head.
Once her people were safe.
"We work together," Sylvanas ground out. "Actually work together. Not just stay out of each other's way."
The troll stilled, the only sign of life the twitching of his muscles as he kept his eye on Arthas. The undead prince seemed content to let them talk. He was cautious despite how the fight had favored him. That meant it was closer than he liked to admit. She glanced around, and couldn't hold back the grimace. The dead still pressed against Amani and Quel'dorei, their bodies littering the ground. Or perhaps he just needed to wait them out.
"He's strong and skilled," Sylvanas shook off the doubt. It would not help her. She stepped forward so that she was near shoulder to shoulder with Zul'Jin. "But we are both near his equal. No one can hold out against two peer opponents working in concert."
"You would see him proved right?" Zul'Jin said. "To have elf and troll make common-cause with one another?"
"I would see the undead defeated and Quel'Thalas safe," Sylvanas almost snarled. "If those aims require that I work with trolls, then I will do so. Would you not want the same for the Amani?"
Zul'Jin's chuckle was as bitter as the sea. "It was such work to simply keep myself to attacking the undead." For a moment she thought he would leave it at that. "What do you need?"
"Get in close," Sylvanas said, "Don't back off. Refuse to let him put distance. Keep him from maneuvering."
For a moment he just stood there, head bowed. Then Sylvanas heard his breathing begin to quicken. His shoulders rose and fell faster and faster. His voice growled low in the throat. Claws tensed, wings spread wide, pulse raced. The light surrounding him intensified, silver whisps turning into streams of moonlight. Zul'Jin threw back his head and roared, voice underlined by the cry of bear, eagle, lynx, and dragonhawk.
"DA AMANI DE CHUKA!" The berserk troll threw himself on Arthas, limbs striking out with speed and fury.
The eyes of the undead prince widened, and then he threw himself into a desperate defense. His blue-glowing sword wove through its forms, a dancing cat moving to block or parry every strike sent at him. For all his fury, the troll could not land a single blow, even as the jagged blade slipped out again and again, cuts appearing one after the other to score wounds along his flanks. But he didn't back off. Where before there had been a rhythm of clash and separation, now there were just two bodies locked on the edge of a brawl
Again and again, Zul'Jin tried to grab his foe. Again and again, Arthas slipped away.
Sylvanas drew on her essence and let it fill her. It seeped into her body, suffusing every limb and muscle. White gold flared so thick around her that she might as well have been breathing sunlight. On her brow, the golden sunburst sprang to life. Behind her, the banner of light took the shape of the roaring phoenix above ranks of rangers. An arrow formed in her hand, and like so many times before, she nocked it to the bowstring without thinking and took aim.
Zul'Jin and Arthas were close and did not stay still. Hitting just one and not the other would be difficult even for a supremely skilled archer.
Sylvanas had first picked up the bow when she was a child. The simple length wood had fascinated her, despite her father's disapproval of the more martial arts. No, it was because of that disapproval she had gone down the path of a ranger instead of just dabbling in archery. The rest of her life had come from that. Months spent away from the Windrunner estate and the court of high society. Enlisting in the Farstriders under a false identity, then working her way up through the ranks until she was discovered. Staying with her brothers and sisters and arms despite the scandal it had caused. Serving in an almost ambassadorial role with humans and dwarfs. Repelling raid after raid of Amani soldiers. Rising to the rank of Ranger-General, and taking on the mantle of protecting all of Quel'thalas. All that and more made up Sylvanas
But before anything else, Sylvanas was an archer.
Sylvanas released the arrow. Like a knife, it buried itself into Arthas's armpit. He gasped, stumbling as dead nerves and necrotic flesh seared with pain. Then he screamed as Zul'Jin stabbed the wound, claws digging deep into his chest, all the way up to the troll's elbow.
A gasp rattled past the lips of the once-human prince, pale blue eyes staring down with incomprehension. Then he slumped and was no more.
The rest of the undead fell soon after.
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Pre-dawn hung heavy and peaceful over the Forbidding Sea in contrast to the name. It was calm and placid, with only small waves rising to bump up against the sides of the canoe. Malacrass wondered why the humans and elves called it that. Then again, maybe there was something more out there in the depths. The former Hex Lord of the Amani had never gone beyond the sight of land, and even with the Zandwakorin towering above that was not far.
The ghost hovering at the prow of the boat glanced south, back the way they came.
"Arthas has fallen," he said, voice barely a whisper.
Malacrass grunted and kept rowing, paddle dipping into saltwater on first the left and then the right side of the canoe. "Shame that. Your king had plans for him, right?"
"The Lich King has many plans," the ghost of Kel'Thuzad said. "Some of them involved the boy prince, yes. But any one of the Lich King's faithful may pass beyond usefulness. Plans can change, and my liege's goals will be met." On his ethereal, see-through form, the frown was barely visible. "Even if some of his servants need to be sacrificed along the way."
Malacrass chuckled. "Worried about your reward, necromancer? Should have been smart like me, demand payment upfront." He breathed in and felt the pulse of magic inside him intensify. The power of the Loa was a heady thing. The beating heart of nature and the world dancing among fog-shadowed trees and through misty graveyards. And there, underlying that winding rhythm of storm and forest was the sweet crackle of fel fire, binding the spirits and gods under his will.
"Oh?" The ghost looked at Malacrass. "You seemed reluctant to part with the Greater Loa. Do you not wish your demon masters had let you keep them for yourself? Did you not have plans for their potent power?"
Malacrass snorted. "The gods are not so easily kept. I could have fit one, maybe one and a half inside me. But no more. Akil'zon, Nalorakk, Jan'alai, and Halazzi don't play well even with themselves. I got the better deal."
"So you don't regret giving them to Arthas? No lingering disappointment that your fellow priests could not have them?"
Malacrass threw his head back and laughed. "My only disappointment is that such potential had to be thrown away now. Zul'Jin had no love for the elves. A few more years and he would have willingly trapped the power of the gods himself. Oh, what the Amani could have done then is beyond imagining."
"But the dreadlords forced your hand," the ghost noted. "They demanded you move now, and as you already had some of their power, some of the rewards they promised, you had no choice but to obey."
Malacrass frowned. His paddle stabbed deep into the ocean, kicking up a spray of surf.
"I know what you're doing, human," he said. "The demons may have had to buy my loyalty, but I'm no fool. It'll take more than dissatisfaction to get me to raid Bwomsamdi's hut. I have no interest in making the unquiet dead my master."
"A shame," Kel'Thuzad said. He turned, looking out north over the flat and calm seawater, to where a shadow was beginning to appear. "We are getting close. Are you prepared?"
"Yeah yeah," Malacrassed waved a hand. He didn't much care about old grudges of the Amani tribes, but it would be nice to see the Sunwell in person. "You do not need to worry about me. I know what to do. Still, you sure this is the right play? The elves care a lot about their little pool."
"Completely," Kel'thuzad said. "Silvermoon has not fallen, but the Quel'dorei have been too hurt to leave their kingdom for several years at the least. By that time our masters' plans will be complete."
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