Michael Stackpole - Vol'jin - Shadows of the Horde

Chen nodded silently because there was nothing he could say that would touch the man’s heart. He realized that this was the end of Huojin in the eyes of most pandaren. Giving way to impulsiveness meant giving too little value to anyone and anything. A faceless enemy at a distance was easier to kill than someone a sword’s length away. Huojin, carried to the extreme, made all life valueless, and was simply the harbinger of evil.

But the reverse, Tushui, would logically lead to someone who spent so much time in consideration of everything that no action was possible. That would hardly be the antithesis of evil. Which was why the monks stressed balance. He looked at Tyrathan. A balance my friend is finding elusive.

The question of that balance remained on Chen’s mind for the rest of their trip back to the monastery. Chen sought his own balance point, which seemed centered on whether he should raise a family or continue his exploring. He found it easy to imagine doing both with Yalia by his side, allowing him to have the best aspects of life.

As they traveled, Tyrathan took reckonings using the troll’s journal. “It’s a rough guess, but they’re heading for the heart of Pandaria.”

“The Vale of Eternal Blossoms.” Chen looked to the south. “It’s beautiful, and ancient.”

“You’ve been?”

“I only know its splendor from attending my duties along the Serpent’s Spine wall to the west, but I have not trodden its soil.”

Tyrathan smiled. “I suspect that will change, and very quickly. That’s where we’ll find the Zandalari, and I have a feeling none of us are going to enjoy that reunion.”

“Understatement be overrated in a time of war, Lord Taran Zhu.” Vol’jin nodded to Chen and Tyrathan. “I’m glad you both be back.”

The man returned the nod. “Glad to have made it. And glad to hear your voice recovering.”

“Yes, very glad, Vol’jin.” The pandaren brewmaster smiled. “I can make some tea that could help further your recovery.”

The troll shook his head. He noticed some distance between Chen and the man, but now was not the time to explore it. “This be as good as it gonna be getting. For now. With all due respect, Lord Taran Zhu, we be needing to know about this place.”

“Do not judge the pandaren harshly, Vol’jin. Doubtless you will find flaws with how we have done things. You already believe our lack of a formal military, despite millennia without successful invasions, is a mistake. You may yet be proved correct.” The Shado-pan leader gathered his paws behind his back. “From what Chen has told me of the world beyond the mists, you, too, have been faced with catastrophes that could not have been predicted. You could argue that our logic in this matter is flawed, but for millennia it has been valid, so much so that it has become as much a truth as the sun rising with dawn and setting at dusk.”

“Your words be not terribly informative.”

“Save that it alerts you to your prejudices, which could impair your judgment about what you will see.” Taran Zhu nodded toward the map. “References are minimal, but the vale is not unknown. It is even populated, and refugees from recent incursions have been given sanctuary there. Still, we have no survey or tactical information of the sort that you desire.”

“It is as if you hoped, by keeping the vale hidden, you could insulate Pandaria from what lurks within.” Tyrathan looked at the map. “Hiding a problem does not eliminate it.”

“It does, however, slow those who would unleash the problem.” The elder pandaren drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “What I will show you has been passed from Shado-pan lord to lord, extending back to a time before the Shado-pan existed. I can show you only what I have been shown. I do not know if the fears and biases of my predecessors have shaded things. I do not know what has been forgotten or embellished. What I will share with you I have done so with no monks.”

His paws appeared again at his waist, then spread apart. Dark balls of energy crackled in the palm of each. He held one low and one high, both off to the side. A window radiating golden light appeared in the space between them. Within that window images began to move.

“This area is hidden within the Tu Shen Burial Ground. The Thunder King—the first mogu tyrant and the one with whom your Zandalari treated back in the dawn of time—had under him a circle of trusted retainers. His warlords were slain as their master was dying—perhaps to forestall their usurping his throne and plunging the empire into civil war. We do not know. What we do know is that there is a belief among the mogu that death is not always final and that the dead, or parts thereof, can be revivified for later use. I would guess this is the purpose for their invasion of the vale.”

Vol’jin peered closely, catching sight for the first time of a mogu—instead of just sensing them as he had in the cave. His mouth went dry and his throat began to ache. Taller than even a Zandalari, thickly thewed and merciless of expression, the mogu warriors might have been carved from a basalt dolmen. Vol’jin granted, as Taran Zhu warned, that memory might have made them more fearsome than reality. Even so, to reduce them by half would still make them formidable.

In the vision, they strode across Pandaria, using sword and fire to extend their dominion over subject peoples. The pandaren were reduced to a race of slaves. The lucky ones clowned enough to entertain their mogu masters. Those pandaren lived in stone palaces, and their lives knew relative luxury. But that luxury ended when a joke offended and only the snapping of a spine or the popped removal of a head could inspire more mogu laughter.

The vision shifted for a moment, and Vol’jin’s stomach knotted. He was back in the cave where he died, but it was more than a wet, moldy place covered in bat guano. Mogu sorcerers worked within. Clutches of lizard eggs, crocolisk, perhaps—Vol’jin couldn’t tell, but it hardly mattered—were sorted and buried in sands warmed through magic to very precise temperatures. And then when the creatures hatched, they were conveyed to another part of what the troll now recognized to be a rookery.

There, in the chamber where he died, the mogu touched the magic he’d felt. Titan magic. The magic that had shaped the world. In that place, mortals worked with the stuff of divinity to take simple creatures and transform them into the saurok. They used the lizard people as surrogate troops to maintain their empire, allowing the mogu to enjoy the fruits of their conquest.

The process was terrible to watch, yet Vol’jin could not look away. Bones snapped and stretched. Joints reset themselves and muscles ripped. As they grew back together, angles reorganized to provide more power. The saurok stood tall. Fingers grew and thumbs shifted. From lizard to scaled warrior in a matter of minutes—a testament less to the skill of the mogu than to the sheer power of the magics with which they played.

The troll shivered. Did the titan magic staining that place make it so I not be dying? The moment the thought occurred to him, he wanted to laugh. It would be just like Garrosh to plan his murder in the one place it could not possibly happen.

Laughter caught in his throat as the scene shifted again, to one of fire and blood, much darker than the conquest. The skies darkened over. Red lightning flowed from above like lava and splashed over the landscape. Magic warped reality as monks cast down their mogu overlords. Monks led the fight for freedom and valiantly won the day.

In the aftermath of the mogu empire’s fall, as the skies grew lighter and blood drained from rivers and streams, the pandaren took up their slain enemies and entombed them in the Tu Shen Burial Ground. The respect they showed the mogu warlords surprised him. Had Vol’jin met Tyrathan on a battlefield and slain him, he’d have mounted the man’s head on a stick and posted it at a crossroads so travelers would know of his victory.