You would be telling me my business, Sen’jin?
I be reminding you, great spirit, only of what you have long taught us to do in your service.
Other laughter, distant laughter, rippled gently through Vol’jin. Other loa. The high keening tones of one laugh and the low rumble of another suggested Hir’eek and Shirvallah were enjoying the exchange. Vol’jin took some pleasure in this yet knew he would pay for that liberty.
A growl rolled from Bwonsamdi’s throat. Were you so easily convinced to surrender, Vol’jin, I should be rejecting you. You be no true child of mine. But, Shadow Hunter, know this: the battle you face be more terrible than any you have known before. You gonna be wishing you had surrendered, for the burden your victory earns gonna be one that will grind you into dust.
In a heartbeat Bwonsamdi’s presence evaporated. Vol’jin sought his father’s spirit. He found it close by, yet fading. Be I losing you again, Father?
You cannot lose me, Vol’jin, for I be part of you. As long as you be true to yourself, I gonna be with you always. Vol’jin sensed his father’s smile again. And a father being as proud of his son as I be of you gonna never let that son get away.
His father’s words, though demanding contemplation, provided enough comfort that Vol’jin did not fear for his life. He would live. He would continue to make his father proud.
He would march straight into the terrible fate Bwonsamdi foresaw and deal with it in defiance of all predictions. With that conviction held firmly in mind, his breathing eased, his pain dulled, and he dropped into a black well of peace.
• • •
When awareness came to him again, Vol’jin found himself whole and hale, strong of limb and standing tall. A fierce sun beat down on him as he stood in a courtyard with thousands of other trolls. They had nearly a head’s height on him, yet none of them made an issue of it. In fact, none of them seemed to notice him at all.
Another dream. A vision.
He did not immediately recognize the place, though he had a sense that he’d been there before. Or, rather, later, for this city had not surrendered to the surrounding jungle’s invasion. The stone carvings on walls remained crisp and clear. Arches had not been shattered. Cobbles had not been broken or scavenged. And the stepped pyramid, before which they all stood, had not been humbled by time’s ravages.
He stood amid a crowd of Zandalari, members of the troll tribe from which all other tribes had descended. They had become, over the years, taller than most and exalted. In the vision they seemed less a tribe than a caste of priests, powerful and educated, quite apt for leading.
But in Vol’jin’s time, their ability to lead had degraded. It is because their dreams all be trapped here.
This was the Zandalar empire at the height of its power. It dominated Azeroth but would fall victim to its own might. Greed and avarice would spark intrigues. Factions would split. New empires would rise, like the Gurubashi empire, which would drive Vol’jin’s Darkspear trolls into exile. Then it would fall too.
The Zandalari hungered for a return to the time when they were ascendant. It was a time when trolls were a most noble race. The trolls, united, had risen to heights which someone like Garrosh Hellscream could not possibly dream existed.
A sense of magic ancient and powerful flooded through Vol’jin, providing him the key to why he was seeing the Zandalari. Titan magic predated even the Zandalari. It was more powerful than they were. As high as the Zandalari had been above things that slithered and stung, so were the titans above them—likewise their magic.
Vol’jin moved through the crowd as might a specter. The Zandalari faces glowed with fearsome smiles—the sort he’d seen on trolls when trumpets blared and drums pounded, inviting them to battle. Trolls were built to rend and slay—Azeroth was their world, and all in it were subject to their dominion. Though Vol’jin might differ with other trolls as to the identity of their enemies, he was no less fierce in battle, and vastly proud of how the Darkspears had conquered their foes and liberated the Echo Isles.
So Bwonsamdi be mocking me with this vision. The Zandalari dreamed of empire, and Vol’jin wished the best for his people. Vol’jin knew the difference. It was simple enough to plan for slaughter and far more complex to create a future. For a loa who liked his sacrifices bloody and battle-torn, Vol’jin’s vision held little appeal.
Vol’jin ascended the pyramid. As he moved up, things became more substantial. Whereas before he had been in a silent world, he could now feel drums thrumming up through the stone. The breeze brushed over his light fur, tousled his hair. It brought with it the sweet scent of flowers—a scent just slightly sharper than that of spilled blood.
The drumming pounded into him. His heart beat in time. Voices came to him. Shouts from below. Commands from above. He refused to retreat but stopped climbing higher. It seemed he might be rising through time as he would be rising through lake water. If he reached the top, he would be there with the Zandalari and feel what they felt. He would know their pride. He would breathe in their dreams.
He would become one with them.
He would not allow himself that luxury.
His dream for the Darkspear tribe might not have excited Bwonsamdi, but it provided life for the Darkspears. The Azeroth the Zandalari had known had been utterly and irrevocably changed. Portals had been opened. New peoples had come through. Lands had been shattered, races warped, and more power released than the Zandalari knew existed. The disparate races—elves, humans, trolls, orcs, and even goblins, among others—had united to defeat Deathwing, creating a power structure that revolted and offended the Zandalari. The Zandalari hungered to reestablish rule over a world that had so changed that their dreams could never come true.
Vol’jin caught himself. “Never” be a powerful word.
In an eyeblink the vision shifted. He now stood at the pyramid’s apex, looking down into the faces of the Darkspears. His Darkspears. They trusted his knowledge of the world. If he told them they could recapture the glory that was once theirs, they would follow him. If he commanded them to take Stranglethorn or Durotar, they would. The Darkspears would boil out of the islands, subjugating all in their path, simply because he wished it done.
He could do it. He could see a way. He’d had Thrall’s ear, and the orc had trusted him in military matters. He could spend the months of recuperation plotting out the campaigns and organizing strategies. Within a year or two of his return from Pandaria—if that was still where he was—the Darkspear banner would be anointed with blood and more feared than it already was.
And what be that gaining me?
I would be pleased.
Vol’jin spun. Bwonsamdi stood above him, a titanic figure, ears forward and straining to gather the pulsed shouts from below. It would gain you peace, Vol’jin, for you be doing what your troll nature demands.
Is that all we be meant for?
The loa do not require you to be more. What purpose be there in your bein’ more?
Vol’jin looked for an answer to that question. His search left him staring at a void. Its darkness reached and engulfed him, leaving him with no answer and certainly no peace.
• • •
Vol’jin finally awakened. His eyes opened, so he knew it was not a dream. Faint light came to them, filtered through gauze. He wished to see, but that would require removing the bandages. In turn, that would require him to lift a hand. He found this task impossible. He had so little connection with his body that he didn’t know if it was because his hand was tied down or had simply been struck off at the wrist.
Finding himself alive gave him impetus to remember how he had been hurt. Until he’d been certain he would live, the effort had seemed a waste.
Unbidden by anyone, and in gleeful defiance of what Garrosh’s wishes would have been, Vol’jin had chosen to travel to the new land of Pandaria to see what Garrosh had the Horde doing. Vol’jin had known of the pandaren because of Chen Stormstout and wished to see their home before the Horde and
Alliance war laid waste to it. He’d not arrived with any plan to stop Garrosh, but Vol’jin had once threatened to shoot an arrow through him, and he packed a bow just in case.
Garrosh, though in his usual foul mood, offered Vol’jin a chance to contribute to the Horde’s effort. He agreed, less for the Horde’s benefit than to be a brake on Garrosh’s ambition. Along with one of Garrosh’s trusted orcs, Rak’gor Bloodrazor, and a number of other adventurers assembled for the mission to Pandaria’s heart, Vol’jin set off.
The shadow hunter enjoyed the journey, comparing this land to those he had visited previously. He’d seen rounded mountains that were weathered and defeated, but in Pandaria they merely seemed gentled. Or jagged, angry mountains that here, though no less sharp, just appeared eager. Jungles and groves abounded with life yet never seemed to hide lethal menaces as they did, say, in Stranglethorn. Ruins existed, but only because they were abandoned, not broken and buried. While the rest of the world had been scourged by hatred and violence, Pandaria had not felt their lash.
Yet.
All too quickly for Vol’jin, the troop reached its objective. Rak’gor and two aides had taken to wing on wyverns to scout ahead, but Vol’jin saw no sign of them when the group reached the mouth of a cave. Large, vaguely humanoid lizard-beasts warded the entrance. The adventurers cut through them and prepared to plunge into the cave’s darkened depths.
Black bats shrieked and exploded from the cave’s hidden recesses. Vol’jin only faintly caught their cries—he doubted the others heard anything other than the flapping of leathery wings. One of the loa, Hir’eek, wore a bat’s shape. Be this a warning from the gods that no good gonna come going farther?
The loa gave him no answer, so the Darkspear led the way. A cold sense of corruption strengthened as they pressed forward. Vol’jin stopped and squatted, removing a glove. He scooped up a handful of moist earth and raised it to his nose. The faintly sweet rot of vegetation mixed with the sour stink of bat guano, but he caught hints of something else. Saurok, certainly, but undeniably containing something else.
He closed off his nose and shut his eyes. His hand closed halfway; then his thumb sifted the earth through his fingers. When it was gone, he opened his hand again and extended it. As light as a spiderweb, with the wayward, twisting aspect of a snuffed candle’s smoke, residual magic brushed over his palm.
And raked it with nettles.
This be a truly fel place.
Vol’jin opened his eyes again and headed along the ancient passage deeper into the caves. As they came to forks, the adventurers secured both. The troll, his right hand open and naked, didn’t even need to sweep through air to find clues. What had been spider silk had become a thread, then yarn, and threatened to grow to cord and rope. Each bit came with tiny needles. The pain grew no worse, but the stripe of it across his palm became wider.
By the time the magic grew to the width of a stout ship’s cable, they found a large chamber overseen by the most massive saurok they’d yet encountered. A steaming subterranean lake dominated the chamber’s heart. Hundreds of saurok eggs—perhaps even thousands—lay nestled about, warming as they gestated.
Vol’jin held up a hand to stop the others. A rookery at the heart of the magic.
Before Vol’jin had a chance to take in the full import of that realization, the saurok discovered them and attacked. The troll and his allies fought back hard. The saurok fought hard as well, and though Vol’jin’s company prevailed, everyone ended up cut and bloodied. Yet while his companions saw after their own wounds, Vol’jin felt compelled to investigate.
Silently he waded into the shallow lake and flung his arms wide. Closing his eyes, the troll slowly turned a circle. The invisible magic cables caught like jungle vines over his arms and twisted around his body. Wrapped in them, feeling their burning caress, he understood the place as only a shadow hunter could.
Spirits screamed in agonies ages old. The saurok essence blasted into him, slithering through his belly like the adder that had once writhed across the cold, stone floor aeons before. That snake was true to itself in nature and spirit.
Then magic had hit it. Fearsome magic. Magic that was a volcano to the ember that most magi could command. It flooded through the snake, piercing its golden spirit with a thousand black thorns. Those thorns then pulled apart, this way and that, up from down, inside from outside, even past from future and truth from lie.
In his mind’s eye, Vol’jin watched as the thorns pulled and pulled, stretching the gold into taut bowstrings. All at once the thorns shot back toward the center. The thorns dragged the golden lines with them, weaving them through an arcane tangle. Threads twisted and knotted. Some snapped. Others were spliced back with new ends. All the while the adder shrieked. What it once was had been transformed into a new creature, a creature half-mad from the experience, yet malleable and pliant in the hands of its creators.
It was far from alone.
The name “saurok” came to him—it had not existed before that first savage act of creation. Names had power, and that name defined the new creatures. It also defined their masters and pulled aside the veil on the magic used. The mogu had created the saurok. The mogu Vol’jin knew as faint shadows in dim legends. They were dead and gone.
The magic, however, was not. Magic that could remake a thing so completely came from the dawn of time, from the beginning of everything. The titans, the shapers of Azeroth, had used such magic in their acts of creation. The incredible power of such sorceries could not be understood by a sound mind, let alone mastered. Yet dreams of it fueled insane flights of fancy.
In experiencing the making of the saurok, Vol’jin grasped a core truth of the magic. He could see a way—just the glimmer of a path—he could pursue its study. The same magic that had made a saurok could unmake the murlocs that had killed his father, or cause men to regress back to the vrykul they clearly had been crafted from. Doing either of those would be a worthy use of such power and would justify the decades of study its mastery would require.
The shadow hunter caught himself. There, in thinking just that, he was falling prey to the trap that had doubtlessly ensnared the mogu. Immortal magic would corrupt a mortal. There was no escaping it. That corruption would destroy the wielder. And, likely, his people.
Vol’jin reopened his eyes and found Rak’gor standing there with the group’s survivors. “Be about time you caught up.”
“The warchief says there is a connection between these creatures and the mogu.”
“Dese mogu, dey be da creators. Dey workin’ wicked, dark magic here.” Vol’jin’s flesh crawled as the orc sauntered forward. “Dis be the blackest of magics.”
The orc offered a quick, feral grin. “Yes, the power to shape flesh and build incredible warriors. This is what the warchief wants.”
Vol’jin’s guts knotted. “Garrosh playing god? Dis ain’t what the Horde be about.”
“He didn’t think you’d approve.”
The orc struck viciously and without mercy. The dagger caught Vol’jin in the throat, spinning him away and to the ground. All around him his companions leaped into battle. Rak’gor and his allies fought with a reckless abandon, heedless of their own safety and dying for their efforts. Perhaps Garrosh be convincing them that his new magic gonna bring them back and make them better.
Vol’jin rose to a knee and waved his companions back. He pressed a hand to his throat, closing the wound. “Garrosh betrays himself. He gotta believe we be dead. It be the only way to get time to stop him. Go. Watch him. Find others like me. Swear a blood oath. For the Horde. Be ready when I return.”
He’d honestly thought, as they abandoned him there, that what he’d told them was true. But as he tried to stand, black agonies shot through him. Garrosh had planned in depth. Rak’gor’s blade had been steeped in some noxious poison. Vol’jin wasn’t healing as he should be, and he could feel his strength ebbing. He fought against it, against the fog that drifted through his mind.
And he
might have made it had more saurok not found him. He dimly recalled fighting them, blades flashing in the darkness. Pain from cuts that refused to close. Cold seeping into his limbs. He ran blindly, smashing into walls, tumbling down passages, but always forced himself up and to keep moving.
How he’d gotten out of the cave, and how he’d gotten to wherever he was now, he couldn’t say. It certainly didn’t smell like a cave. He did catch something hauntingly familiar in the air, but it hid beneath the scent of poultices and unguents. He wouldn’t go so far as to assume he was among friends. His being cared for suggested it. Or his enemies could be treating him well in hopes of ransoming him back to the Horde.
They gonna be disappointed with Garrosh’s offer.
That thought almost made him laugh. He couldn’t quite muster one, though. His stomach muscles tightened but relented from fatigue and pain. Still, that his body could react involuntarily reassured him. Laughter was something for the living, not the dying.
Just like remembering.
Not to be dying, that was enough for the moment. Vol’jin drew in as deep a breath as he could manage, then slowly exhaled. And was asleep before he finished.
3
Chen Stormstout, overlooking a courtyard of the Shado-pan Monastery, felt the cold but didn’t dare give any sign of it. Below where he’d been sweeping a light dusting of snow off steps, a dozen of the monks, all barefooted and some stripped to the waist, exercised. In unison, with a discipline he’d not seen in even the world’s finest troops, they went through a series of forms. Punches flashed by, blurry, and crisp kicks crackled through chilly mountain air. The monks moved both fluidly and strongly, with the power of rivers raging through canyons.
Except they didn’t rage.
Through these most martial of exercises, the monks somehow drew peace. It made them content. Though he’d watched them often, and hadn’t heard too many laughs among them, Chen had not detected anger. That certainly wasn’t what he expected from troops finishing training, but then he’d never seen anyone quite like the Shado-pan before.