Michael Stackpole: Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

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.