The wind assailed her hatefully, ripping away pieces of her soul while a baleful enemy charged in the distance.
Her command of the Nether, all the countless spells and incantations, useless here in this place well beyond the world of the living and the real. Here there was only spirit, a ghostworld where lost souls wail incontentedly awaiting what lies beyond. And so she wailed, but not as one who mourns.
Her shriek was long and loud. If the she-wolf was to be her end, or just another form of torture sent by her ancestors, she would mark them with her sound and scar their souls with her scream. She would remind them she was still an orcess, proud...fierce...and free.
A memory unbidden bubbled to the surface and ravaged her thoughts for just a breath's span. Her father standing above her on the lip of an earthen pit, sipping his bitter wine. She held herself against the rough-hewn wall of the hole while a hungry beast circled, sizing her up. She was barely in her teens at the time.
"I will not be satisfied with the beast's death," he had mentioned casually, sipping again, "If it lays one scar upon you I will finish what it started, for your form is to remain unblemished. Any mar in your perfection makes you useless to me, Djuun. Survive or die. Decide."
Thus had been one of his many lessons. Always the cruel, harsh teacher. Always the callous disregard for his own offspring. She howled at the memory of it, howled out her rage at the she-wolf approaching much too rapidly. No more would she lament the cruel circumstances of her birthing, of her upbringing, of her entire existence hatefully snuffed out. No more, she fumed. This far and no farther!
"I will have REVENGE, beast," she snarled at her approaching attacker, losing all sight of what it was that approached.
Their forms joined as water breaks over a rock. Without thinking her hands clamped vice-like over the beasts jaws, keeping them apart. She held her screaming maw next to the thing's eye and let free a noise to wake the dead. Again orcish ears paused in living Nagrand, unsure why, a fel voice on the wind. Shaman became uneasy. Mothers shielded their kin. Men gripped tight about their weapons.
Too easily the orcess was tossed aside by the thrashing form. The wolf snapped and darted at her, ripping away precious soul-stuff. Djuun paid it no mind and launched herself at the animal yet again, oblivious of her glaring disadvantage. Again her hands sought purchase upon the beast's form. An ear was gripped hard. The animal pulled away sharply as fingernails scratched at the wolf's eye.
Again Djuun was tossed aside by a flailing head, her body bouncing rudely off the spirit-soil, but still her hand clung to the animal's ear eliciting a howl. Heedless of her doomed struggle Djuun hauled herself back up and flung an arm around the wolf's neck, pulling with the strength of the vengeful dead. The animal began to thrash, jump and spin with mindless abandon. Against the savage wind of the spirit realm, the jerks and spins of the she-wolf, she held.
Had she muscles of a true kind she would have long given out for the struggle went thus for time uncounted. Hind paws lashed at her back, her flanks, anything they could gain purchase upon. Still she clung. The wolf rolled and thrashed as a crocodile drowning prey...still Djuun clung, even going a step further and sinking her own teeth into the wolf's thick hide. The gesture enraged the beast, adding new vigor to its struggles...still, she held.
All about the tree the pair struggled, and into the rolling grey plains beyond. Forms locked in hateful calamity, the orcess relentless, the she-wolf berserk.
"Is this...how we are to be..." the wolf snarled into Djuun's spirit. So enraged, the orcess barely heard the words.
"Until eternity itself collapses and the stars burn cold and black! Generations from now they will tell the tale of the orcess and the she-wolf, locked forever in struggle!" Djuun snarled back.
A howl erupted and the wolf steadily slowed its thrashing, ceased its pointless struggle.
"I am no tale to be told to children at a fireside!" the wolf fumed.
"Nor am I!" Djuun shot back, spiteful.
With a huff the wolf stopped its motion, stood stock still while the orcess took a moment to secure her grip ever tighter.
"Give in, orcess. You have lost and this is meaningless. Your ancestors spurn you, cast you out. You have offended everything."
"My ancestors! My ancestors were content to sit in idle judgment while a fiend sired me unwillingly! While my mother was sacrificed to dark powers! While my spirit was sold like a harlots lust, commerce to the empty soulless things of the Nether! Ancestors be damned!"
The she-wolf snarled anew but did not resume its struggle.
"Mar'grosh has paid for his crimes. As has Laz'naim. As have YOU."
"The only crime I admit to is being the pawn of greater powers, wolf. No longer! I am beholden to none! Not to my distant and judgmental ancestors! Not to the machinations of those that coil and dwell serpentine in that orcish clan! Not to Mar'grosh and his designs! And not to you!"
She sank her teeth anew into the wolf's hide for emphasis, making the animal twitch and pace a bit uncomfortably. A sniff at the air followed, the beast turning back a bit to get a better scent.
"Hmph!" it spat, "Your bloodline runs true in you, orcess. There is no turning your mind. And I will not spend eternity as a footnote to your sad tale! Still I wonder about your soul...how much of it can you truly say is your own...how much belongs to the Enemy, that which burns still in the Nether-"
"My soul is my own, beast!" the orcess spat, relinquishing her own jagged bite-hold, "Whatever was brokered with my birth, with my youth, with the designs of Mar'grosh - away with such things! I need no accounting of shards and splinters to speak to me of my own desires! I am free, wolf-thing! Do you hear?!?! I AM FREE!!!"
Again Djuun assailed her foe with a howling shriek that made hairs stand on end, a scream from beyond the grave. The face that had stolen away the hearts and minds of so many helpless to her ravaging beauty now contorted in true and proud orcish rage.
"So be it," the wolf muttered, "There is...an alternative."
Djuun said nothing, her breath coming in ragged gasps, nostrils still flaring with unquenched fury.
"Death," it intoned reverently, "Be not covetous, at least in our world. This gray spirit-realm is but a cave. Stay here if you wish...or return."
The orcess' grip loosened almost imperceptibly. She was listening. The she-wolf went on...
"I have been here for memory beyond count, little orcess. When it came my turn to be hunted, when I had grown old and no longer fierce enough to stifle the whims of the others in the pack. And so I left. I don't know when it was I passed into this realm. The world has been changed many times over since I came here. I grow weary of this place. I want to feel the wind in my fur again. I want to taste the thrill of the hunt!
The ancestors of your people forbid it. And thus I torment their miscreants..." the wolf paused at the mention, inclining her head just so to the orcess, "...and cling to hollow hope that someday perhaps they will show me the way back."
"So, you lie...you don't know the way back..."
"Hmph! I know A way back. There are many. I will say nothing more...without a bargain."
Djuun scoffed but continued to listen. We come to it finally, she thought, grim and pensive.
"You are a worker of Nether-magic. You have ways to bring the dead back from the spirit-realm-"
"I would need to be alive again to do so, wolf-thing. I...died. Sometimes I feel the weight of earth upon me...the restless churning of a boiling land..."
"Yes. I know where you died, Djuun. I saw it when they brought you here. I can return you to that place and once there...if you truly wish it...you can return to the world of the living."
"There is no coming back..." the orcess sneered defiantly.
The wolf barked, derisive. "If you believe that then stay here. Eventually, I will find some way to throw you..."
Djuun tightened her grip, again. Her mind assailed her. She was justly ended, and justly punished for her deeds in life. Again her mind reminded her she must not assume her actions, and her convictions, were her own. Ever was her soul and body a vessel and plaything for elder powers. Ever was she an empty slave.
A second chance! her mind teemed. Would she make the same mistakes again, though? Would she simply collapse under the endless torment of Fel whispers and fouler suggestion? NO! she raged. Here she sat in the spirit realm itself bereft of all demonic taint, just another grey image in the cold of the afterlife.
Was it possible, though? And then a thought came to her, clear as crystal chiming. Akhania. When they had met 'khani was a freed knight of dark powers, an ebon weapon of Acherus. She was dead and yet lived, a 'gift' from the darkness that slew her. She...had returned. As a shade. An abomination.
Djuun was startled at her own memory, at the clarity of it. Akhania was no walking corpse in Shadowmoon. She reclaimed her birthright, something she had spoken once would be impossible because she had renounced the elements, had become an undying weapon of destruction. Thus...it was not so very true that there was no coming back, the orcess began to turn at the notion.
The thought expanded. Those wielders of the Light who place their will and their faith in a formless brightness and code of conduct...many times had they restored life to those Djuun had cruelly murdered in the Basin. Shaman, especially...she had seen tauren, Darkspear, even her own people rise after a telling blow had ended them. They were not the walking corpses bound to the Forsaken Queen or the Scourge.
There WAS a way...
"Let us waste no time, then, wolf-thing..." Djuun whispered.
Without warning they were as wind in the afterlife, the whole of Nagrand passing them as rainshowers in summer.
