Here is the second of the winning entries in our Fan Fiction competition to win a copy of World of Warcraft Vol. One. Today’s short story is by ptarn, continued after the break:
He felt lost. Always lost. Lost, alone and incomplete, as if a part of his soul had been torn from him. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell, couldn’t feel… Time had no meaning, life had no meaning. Every night he wandered the roads, always shrouded in shadows, shunning people, not wanting to be seen. If only he could find what he’d lost, if only… It is time, he decided suddenly, for the first time in months thinking coherently again, it’s time to find what I lost on that day. But in order for him to find out what he’d lost, he knew he had to go to the one place he had sworn never to go again: the place where Harukhana had died.
With his ailing body and fragmented mind, bordering on insanity, he started walking, an inner compass guiding him to the Blasted Lands. His cloak of shadows was shrugged off near the town of Booty Bay, causing a panic on the road he was planning to take.
“By the gods, where did he come from?”
“Guards, call the guards!”
“Get him, don’t let him get away!”
The words meant nothing to him, since he had stopped caring about keeping himself in shape since Harukhana’s death. But even though he looked horrible, with his cracked skin, oozing wounds and the stench of decay that followed him everywhere nowadays, his muscles were still as strong as they always had been. So, when some of the braver folks attacked him, he grabbed hold of his faithful hammer with both hands and deflected the curses and spells that were shot at him. The pain they inflicted meant nothing to him, pain had been his companion for more than two years. After the casters were dealt with, two warriors attacked him. He easily took care of them, without killing them of course. Just as she would have wanted.
.
She had made him understand that all life is precious, even his. That he should fight when needed, but never kill unless there was absolutely no other choice. Never before had someone spoken to him like that, never before had he felt so deeply about someone. When he returned to his ‘home’, which was sometimes unavoidable, he never spoke of her. Never mentioned her name, never talked about what she meant to him. They wouldn’t understand, just as he didn’t understand them anymore. His family… They shared blood and body, but they didn’t share their thoughts, their morals. Ever since his last return from ‘home’, he had tried his best to forget them, until she had said that he shouldn’t.
“They’re part of you, part of who you are and part of what you will become,” she had told him.
“To forget them would be to forget a part of yourself and then you wouldn’t be who you are now. Don’t forget them, don’t hate them for who or what they are. You were like them once. Maybe they too can change. You owe it to yourself to at least try. Just don’t forget them…”
And he didn’t. He didn’t forget them just as he didn’t forget her. When she’d died, his family tried to take him home, but he refused to go. He wouldn’t go, wouldn’t forget about her, about what she’d taught him, about what he had felt when she was still alive. And now here he was, being attacked by members of her family, with their green skin and fangs looking every bit as threatening as she could look to their enemies. I won’t kill them, he thought, I won’t. I have a promise to keep.
So he walked away. They continued their attacks and he defended himself when he felt in serious danger. Otherwise he just kept walking, in plain sight, the embodiment of their enemy. He didn’t care what they thought or did, he was following his heart. And her voice, which he had been ignoring for two years, awoke inside him and told him where to go.It took him the better part of two weeks to get to the Blasted Lands. The first week had been eventful, since everywhere he went – and he kept to the roads stubbornly – a few foolish fighters wanted to harass him. They slowed him down, but he kept walking. Finally his passive demeanor got noticed and he was mostly just stared at, like he was either a rabid dog that no one wanted to put down or a marvel of nature, chased by the occasional ‘oooh’ or ‘aaah’. But for the most part of that second week he was ignored and contrary to fact, he actually did go away after a short while. And now he had arrived at that dreaded place: the Dark Portal.
For reasons unknown to him a band of rebel Alliance members had chosen that particular day to visit the Dark Portal to slay every Horde member they would come across. The perpetrators had been caught and executed after a long and hard fight, but for Harukhana it had been too late. They had been caught unaware, minding their own business of searching for certain herbs. He had fought like never before, giving those bastards hell, but he couldn’t defend her. She was stabbed from behind and before he could rush to her aid, her body was incinerated by one of the mages. That mage had never been caught, he had made sure of that.
Now he stood on the place where her body had lain. In his mind he still saw her blackened remains, saw how he had picked her up and cradled her dead body in his powerless arms. He did now what he couldn’t do then: he cried. He slumped to the ground and let his tears flow freely, in memory of her life. Then he felt the light touch of a hand on his shoulder.
“Vozhun…” she said, “my dear Vozhun… Now you are truly free. You know love, you know loss, you know life… You are truly you, unique amongst your kind. Find your place in this world, in this war… And when you are ready, come to me. I’ll be waiting.”
Vozhun looked up and saw how Harukhana’s spirit smiled at him. And when he finally spoke, for the first time since he lost her, he said those once hated words with unconditional love, not as a pet but as a free demon.
“Yes… master.”
