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58. To the Razorfen!
🕑 Added 2025-05-17 15:18:16 +0000 UTC'Heat, how only Ursol knows how much I despise you…' With half-closed eyes, I glared at the rising sun, my leathery wings beating against the dry, arid air.
"Wishing death on the sun won't diminish its dastardly rays, my large friend." Chen Stormstout said in a merry tone before continuing to munch on his blade of grass.
I could listen as I grew an equivalent of a whisper phone, tying our ears and mouths so that the winds wouldn't cut off our voices.
It staved off the boredom and displeasure of staring at the arid land from this high up, where more and more structures and creatures of steel were popping like tumors of a nasty cancer.
Even if we avoided them as much as possible, they weren't all land-bound. Aerial traffic through various zeppelin designs was the main way the Horde transported virtually everything from troops to cargo.
We were still flying above their cruising altitude, though. It limited sightings.
"Say you, my passenger in the shadow," I said back, and he chuckled, the vine basket holding him shifting as he placed a paw on my fur.
"That is most correct. I may be freeloading, but frustration would lead nowhere. I can help, though." He let out, and I snorted. He chuckled again, making himself comfortable against me, and I felt a cool sensation travel from this point.
I let his Chi infused in the spiritual energies of wind and water flow through my muscles like the most delightful massages.
I growled in contentment; it alleviated most of the annoyance, and he was comfy.
Still, I would have preferred we move only at night, but the Scourge couldn't be left to fester. It wasn't a unique sentiment; Shandris Feathermoon had the same concern atop her hippogriff to my left.
We weren't just the three of us; that would do exceptionally poorly against a rather big unknown that could be a trap.
Vague, I remembered what the quilboars could become, and we wouldn't be caught off guard.
And it was a respectable force with fifty druids in flight, capable form, and the quadruple of that in a bit of everything from sentinels to shamans on hippogriffs.
And the laters weren't taurens or furbolgs.
The poor eagle-headed pegasus wouldn't be able to carry them unless they were females of particularly small build for any substantial length of time, which was precisely what was done here. This trip was a test of endurance.
It was a small army, and I would have preferred a larger force.
Still, it was the best we could do without drawing too much attention as we passed by. Truth be told, we would gather an answer from the Horde in some form, regardless.
The Barrens were a zone of war. And even if my focus in the past years had been on other things, I knew the general idea, more so as recently, as I had to learn.
The Wild highly contested it through the Grimtotem tribe, Wild allied taurens, against the Horde, and whatever other population, such as centaurs, and why we were here, the quilboars. Even if the Wild didn't attack the latter.
And while the war was centered on pushing back the centaurs, and annihilating anything Legion and Scourge-related. It wasn't limited to that.
Much of the efforts were concentrated on the taurens' goal to retake Mulgor, both the ones of the Wild and Horde.
Unsurprisingly, it was going well with Thunder Bluff as the neutral capital city for the taurens was taking shape.
The Horde targeted quilboars with the same violence as the centaurs though.
This situation wasn't as black and white; they were prickly literally and figuratively, but there was more to it.
The Wild's budding web of intelligence had remarked this much. This conflict initially started because of the quilboars' aggressiveness.
Our web was extensive, and with the Wild Hunt taking shape, it would only expand and become more effective.
Nobody would suspect a tree, bird, or rat spying on them. And with kobolds, there could be more than the large kind for both.
Magatha's briefing from all those sources painted a good enough picture.
The quilboars reacted like this to a rightfully perceived invader, and the Horde just escalated; after all… diplomacy was delicate to handle with the boar people.
They tried with multiple tribes, but each attempt ended with dead or gravely wounded diplomats or with the tribe reduced to a bloody, scorching shambles.
In recent years, only the Elder Crone got any result, and it was, for the most part, at best, a ceasefire with some trade.
It was born from constant effort and because the Grimtotem tribe had territories close to the quilboar capital, Razorfen Downs. And it was in a time of somewhat peace.
Quilboars and taurens weren't friends since the latter 'invaded.' Not that the quilboars were known for being accommodating, not since the Sundering or even before
But it was nothing compared to the culmination of the last centuries, with centaurs right behind the taurens.
Charlga's receptiveness to our daring proposition was all the more alarming for that reason.
However, the Horde wasn't something they should have headbutted, and they wouldn't be going back to peace.
It was a foe who possessed air, water, and ground war machines. And they weren't simply creations of goblin engineering.
There was a shamanistic influence on the machines' inner workings. The quilboars never held a chance and were decimated as soon as they were spotted in the open.
What caused Mount Kajaro's eruption seemed to have been a wake-up call to the goblins. Since the population that survived landed in Durotar. Thrall saving them only deepened that lesson.
And it shouldn't be surprising, but mining for iron with earth elementals as allies was more or less the same as a druid getting lumber. It was why this seemingly antithetical alliance worked.
However, one cared about the biosphere without fault.
Elements were a bitch and a half, and the Horde needed lumber, and its leaders cared little to the world at large. Cairne only cared if it directly affected his people, and the Darkspear trolls didn't differ in how things were progressing.
The Wild was not against selling lumber to them or even helping to heal wounded lands, particularly after what caused Jaina to retreat.
It impacted the Emerald Dream, minutes ago it may have been. But the Dreaming weakening directly resulted in empowering the Nightmare.
We didn't get pissed off about destroying forests, even if not ours for nothing.
But we didn't give enough.
We weren't the Horde's linchpins. We were doing a service to ourselves only when we knew it wouldn't be nefariously exploited.
We didn't repeatedly grow a forest for them to make coal out of it.
Some, but not exclusively, goblins thought themselves clever, and even faked natural disasters–honor, the most fickle of concepts–or accidents while mowing half of the forest.
But again, we had eyes and ears when they wouldn't expect them to be. They weren't the only ones with shamans, either. We can tell when something is artificial.
And we couldn't regrow where a factory was built, or a mine was dug. It was a source of friction among many others.
They were greedy, and the growing gears of their industry ravenous, and we weren't going to fuel them freely. I understood why Thrall was doing that; he wanted the Horde to be strong, but that didn't mean I had to like it.
Collecting lumber fell upon Dustwallow Marsh, and the quilboar thorns with whatever meager forest the Horde had elsewhere.
If they attacked Ashenvale or any of our domains, fights would spark, and it wouldn't take much to start a full-blown war.
Not that there weren't occasional disputes, there was a lot of tension and dislikes, and it showed when taurens were few. Until now, there was nothing worth wasting lives, but it wouldn't take much.
However, as did the rest of the Council, I didn't want a war. Be that as it may, this statement wouldn't be entirely accurate, particularly for Tyrande and Cenarius, but rationality won in the end.
However, if the Horde's eyes shifted to what was ours more than it did or truly plunged into foul things… my tune would change.
Luckily, the Warchief and his advisors' views didn't differ much from their ruthless policies on Fel and demons. But it was, for now; what the Warsong clan had done would never be forgotten or forgiven.
We were not friends; the Wild tolerated the Horde, but we needed our full power for greater enemies.
"What manner of beverage do you think the quilboars brew?" Chen asked, breaking me out of my fugue and making me snort.
It was very him to ask this.
"Probably from the thorns. They can grow and control them even without the Touch of Nature since it's from Agamaggan. I'll wager they integrated them into their culinary practice." I answered.
The discussion went back and forth until midday when we landed to recuperate in a Grimtotem outpost a fourth of the way to our destination.
Razorfen Downs was halfway across the continent; we couldn't fly that in one sitting. Perhaps if I were alone and pushed myself, but otherwise, no. Just no.
There was a lot of distance to travel; it seemed obvious, but it wasn't. It was the source of my insistence regarding the Dream Portals.
Mobility was key, and we wouldn't have an airplane's equivalent or a teleporting flying magic city. It was a must.
The good thing was that the Dream Portals were being worked on now. New ones were even being thought about, but the one already in Feralas remained, above all else, the priority.
We would have reached our destination by now, or close enough if the portal of the Dream Bough was up and ready.
But it was under the purview of the Green Dragonflight, and a permanent portal to be regularly used needed more than ample defense, inside and out.
And a more temporary mobile version remained on the drawing board and would be for some time. I wouldn't be able to do it myself, either.
Regardless, our stop had our hunger and thirst quenched, and we went to rest, not that going on under that temperature was wise.
Little else happened beyond sending papyrus back to the Wild regarding our situation.
It was the same for our next; nothing of note or interesting. I would have preferred it to stay that way, but life didn't agree.
At the penultimate point before our destination, we got a visit as predicted and noticed hours earlier. By the ancestors, we were ready for things to turn into a shit show.
Our visitor was an armored zeppelin larger than any I had ever seen, high above us. Not that I had seen much of the smaller variety.
It was truly massive. Two bloody red air balloons with the black emblem of the Horde painted on them. They held aloft a bigger, jagged armored hull with its multiple cannons that, at the ready, would aim and fire at us.
It was a gunship. And for all it was worth, I raised an armored eye ridge. I wasn't the only one unimpressed by seeing one from this close.
It was impressive and evidently not to be underestimated, but the problem was elsewhere. Bigger doesn't always mean better.
"What an utterly foolish design, a waste of nature's bounty. Fitting for a goblin construct." Shandris said, cold and with barely contained disdain.
She would shoot arrows armed with specialized quilboar thorn seeds in a fraction of a second if need be; ten millennia of experience mattered. And my creations would just make sure it stuck and popped the balloons.
Not that it mattered; we had already infiltrated the gunship.
Kobolds were inside. They were of Camowax's scouting team. Nobody would give much attention to a flock of vultures splitting with half remaining aboard.
It wasn't fool-proof; nothing ever was, but even a druid of the claw would take some time to spot the oddities.
Evidently, they were disguised as local species, too. Despite virtually nobody being able to tell the difference between most species, and even less so for their behaviors, there was no reason to be lax.
But there was someone on board who had the expertise to spot the strangeness. However, he didn't do anything if he did know, not that there was a lot he could do.
He couldn't attack the balloons. And Camowax was probably twirling her whiskers like a scheming villain to that in the safety of her tunnel.
"Deadly regardless, if they crash, it's right in our snout. I can't heal someone from a limb. Let's not mirror their intimidation attempt." I said that, but I found it hard not to think it was hypocritical.
It was as natural as breathing to me to be intimidating; it was something animalistic and primal.
"That would do poorly, indeed," Chen added. He was a bodyguard here and an emergency diplomat. "They have come to speak, now if peace is achievable… that… I fear it is not our choice to make."
The General of the Sentinel Army nodded, as did I. We would reach Razorfen Downs regardless, Agamaggan would be reborn, and the Scourge purged.
And a part of his jaw was allegedly there, a fact I highly doubted. But I couldn't risk it being lost, even with most of his skeleton in Razorfen Kraul, and it might not be here.
Then, from the lower deck, a hatch opened, and a smaller machine rolled out.
It was reminiscent of a helicopter with a metal and wooden frame and three spinning fans. Below the pseudo wings were two mounted cannons.
And piloting this flying contraption was a female goblin who landed in front of us in the clearing we chose for that purpose.
The symbol of the Wild swayed softly behind.
It was the verdant green shape of a tree representing Nordrassil above and Undrassil below as it roots while on a deep royal purple background with silver contour. Simple, impactful, and symbolic.
We wished to speak. But the small greenskin wasn't our interest.
There were two passengers: a bear, female by the look of it, and a light brown-skinned orc.
He was far larger than even the Fel-enhanced one straight up from Mannoroth. But he didn't share the sickeningly bulging muscles, nor the glowing red eyes.
He wasn't an abomination, merely a hybrid of orc and what, by smell, I presume is ogre, explaining the more prominent tusks and more impressive physique.
And there was no of the foulness regular orc carried from the Blood Curse.
If it were another time, I wouldn't have minded staring at that, more as he wore little. But the time wasn't for those thoughts; it rarely ever was. I wasn't a hormonal cub.
His expression was hidden, masked by a dark cowl, mimicking the face of a beast as he walked toward us.
Confidence was in his silent, measured steps, those of a predator, though his demeanor wasn't so. He was here to talk and wanted no violence. It was unmistakable.
There was more hesitation in the brown-furred bear whose surprisingly intelligent eyes never left me, ready to sacrifice its life as it followed its master.
Neither showed nor smelled much of fear; oh, it was here. It was the most primal of instincts. Fear could be tamed and tempered, but only death would destroy it. Fear was inseparable from life; only a dead mind could not fear.
Yet to control it like this…
'Impressive…' I thought, my gaze bearing down on the half-ogre, half-orc. He was tall for what he was, but was as breakable as a gnome to me.
His bear was even more impressive for holding its ground. And the 'it' might be ill-fitting depending on how clever she was; sometimes, sapience was reached.
It wasn't for no reason; magic and spirits were the most obvious. She might just be a descendant of a magically inclined bear, not necessarily the Twin Bears or any Wild God.
She didn't smell of them, or any from the Kalimdor or Northrend bear population. It might be why she wasn't exactly deferential, and I could tell it wasn't effortless on her part.
It earned them more than a modicum of respect.
The mok'nathal wasn't a nobody. I knew who he and his bear companion were, too.
He didn't lead the ogres of the Horde any longer, but he remained some kind of hero of theirs and a trusted ally of Thrall. Or so our web of intelligence had led me to believe.
I knew where Rexxar's allegiance lay, and his goals here were simple to deduce, and he should be competent. It didn't matter if he wasn't officially part of it.
However, my experience with Grommash led me to keep my expectations low. Once bitten, twice shy, even if it was me who would bite.
And he was the one to engage in dialogue, the wisdom of language of the ancestors I cast and shared with Shandris and Chen, letting us understand and speak to him.
Orcish was now part of the ancestors' library of knowledge. It just needed our shamans to study the language and share it with the spirits, and Ursol smoothed out the whole process.
"Well met, noble warriors of the Wild, I'm Rexxar, Champion of the Horde. I have come to speak. The Warchief knows and worries about your rapid military advance in the Horde's territory. What is it you seek?" Rexxar said, baritone voice gruff but respectful.
Yet his body was ready to spring into action, and his eyes were alert, shifting to each of us but never leaving mine for too long.
Well, that was an improvement from Hellscream, at the very least.
Comments
Asura
Thanks for the chapter 👋🔥
TITOO
Noted, I cut off some of the parts mentioned, but other are necessary.
ThatGuy
That's way to much exposition we didn't need that in depth. You'd be at razorfen by now you cut it out! Didn't need to hear thoughts on the zepplins, didn't need most of the stuff written before Chen speaks up, Centaurs and Tauren situation was more in depth than needed, you could cut the parts about Horde diplomacy and simply respond quillboars ate the ambassador's so that door is closed. Alot of things that could be handled in 4-6 sentences get dragged into 4-6 paragraphs. Needs some serious trimming.
