Wanderlust

Author’s note: Ah shit, I let this get away from me again. I’m so sorry guys! But look! Another chapter! Kind of a boring one though I’m sorry to say. Enoki angsts, but perhaps he hasn’t considered his future as carefully as he thought!

Chapter 12

Enoki ran. He ran through the blazing red desert sunset blurred like a swath of blood over his eyes which burned with tears he refused to let fall. The towering behemoths of the Horde encampment whirred by him as grey and crimson streaks against the endless flaxen backdrop, voices from all directions called out his name worriedly, the hot and sandy wind stung his face, but the young Troll know only the searing pain in his chest. It was over. Jyota was gone. Jyota had never been there in the first place, but without him, without his dreams and his epic tale of love always in the back of his mind only a vast nothingness existed, spreading out in all directions with nowhere to turn. Though he loathed the Barrens, he hated being a soldier, and he despised everything about his life, he had nothing and no one else.

There was only the looming form of a supply hut rising from the earth to meet him at last and swallow him into its dark maw which he hurled himself into gratefully. The dark heat of the stuffy, musty hut closed around him and muffled the sounds of his own mind, leaving only the sound of his rasping, ragged breath. Enoki’s body trembled while his chest heaved and every muscle in his body twisted and went rigid to combat the abhorrent tears already welling in his eyes. Their humid mist made the languid ruddy light streaming in through the gaps in the canopy gleam and the floating dust motes sparkle like flecks of gold lost in gravity and time. The racks of weapons, sacks of grain, and piles of unused or broken armor that rose to the ceiling haphazardly were still, quiet and stately all around him.

There was peace at last there in the storehouse. There, he could partake of just one moment of silence in the wake of his fury. He allowed himself a deep, shivering breath that cleared his mind and finally allowed the thoughts and feelings bombarding his psyche to shatter the thin veneer of strength he imagined for himself. All that was left inside of him was rage; rage and a burning desire to take everything he knew and reduce it to nothing more than a smoldering pit in the ground while he walked away laughing his last laugh. That would get him arrested and court-martialed, Enoki knew for sure, so he settled for the next best thing.

With an unholy bellow of his twisted, churning ire and fury, Enoki swung his fist into the closest thing to him. The precariously stacked weapon rack that was the first victim toppled noisily to the ground and smashed with a deeply satisfying sound of breaking wood and screeching steel which only fueled the need to decimate anything he could. Enoki turned his rage onto the crates of various armor parts next, shoving them over and toppling them like a row of dominoes down the jagged, hastily packed line. Plated gloves, boots and harnesses flew from the splintering boxes and scattered over the storehouse floor. Enoki merely kicked them into the stone walls viciously with a strangled scream for each, his frenzy fully unleashed and the tears finally streaking unfelt down his cheeks.

The Shaman tore through the bags of flour and grain, throwing them clear across the room and spilling the white and yellow powders to the floor where they burst in a shimmering cloud around his feet. He tore down every weapon rack that lined the circular stone walls of the store house, broke every bow over his knee, violently dispersed the neat piles of cannonballs and tipped over the precious water barrels. The clear, pure liquid washed over the floor littered in the ruins of the stockpiles and swept the pieces against the walls, but the redhead’s typhoon of destruction blustered on. He picked up a length of aged wood that had once been the leg of a rack holding practice axes and simply began beating and smashing everything around him with it.

Clay pots lining the shelves and containing valuable healing and medicinal herbs exploded when struck and spewed their contents over the sopping floor. Hapless training dummies were knocked clear off the ground, beheaded and disemboweled with their straw innards filling the air already thick with flour, gunpowder and the sickly sweet smell of dried herbs. Nothing was sacred. Everything in the store hut had to be completely obliterated. Enoki sobbed ever louder as the supplies crumbled to ruin around him. He expelled his suffering in one explosively massive torrent of destruction until he raised his makeshift bat above his head to smash in the rest of the medical supplies, and a single rough and green-skinned hand darted out and snatched his wrist firmly in its grasp.

Startled, Enoki whirled around with his teeth viciously bared and his tear stained face pinched in hatred only to stare straight into the sternly stony glare of Commander Gor’rik himself. The sight was enough to shock him into stillness for a moment, but the fiery rancor just as quickly blazed back into his heart and he swung his free hand wildly at the Orc. Gor’rik dodged the blow meant for his gut, thanks to Enoki’s clumsy rage, and held steadfast to his wrist. The Troll continued to thrash at him and the two scuffled and struggled across the sopping, muddy floor.

Luckily for Gor’rik Enoki was still crying and his vision was blurred with both tears and raw ire. His strikes were powerful and deadly, but they were also careless, wild, and easily dodged for a seasoned warrior such as the Orc captain. It was a simple matter of a graceful waltz of battle and with a few deft steps and dodges, Gor’rik had the young Shaman’s arms pinned behind his back and his knee in the back of the Troll’s. Enoki succumbed easily and collapsed under the force of his Commander face first into the ground. Though he swore, sobbed, writhed, and spat, Gor’rik plopped himself down matter-of-factly into the small of his back with a sigh and cradled his scruffy chin in his palm. He waited, allowing the Troll to fight out the last of his rage, and only when he seemed too exhausted to fight any longer did he speak to him.

“Sheesh, now what did you have to go and destroy all of our stuff for, Enoki? Just because you’re feeling bad? That isn’t fair now is it?” he chastised the youth beneath him calmly.

Sated and soothed by someone finally containing him and speaking to him in a gentle tone, Enoki sniffed back his tears and shook his head.

“N-No…” he murmured bitterly in reply, “Sorry, Commandah… I sorry, I-I din’ mean-“

“No, you meant to destroy everything, that much is obvious, but I suppose I can understand why… Jyota was very important to you, wasn’t he?” Gor’rik continued in a lofty, mystic’s voice.

The name, as well as the use of past tense, made Enoki’s ears flatten down against his skull, his heart twist in his chest, and his shimmering emerald eyes slide upward.

“How did you-“

“How did I know? Well, the two captains you ran out on this afternoon made sure to send a runner back to tattle on you and fetch you of course! That… And the walls in the captains’ quarters are paper thin, I heard everything,” the Commander interjected amusedly.

Enoki’s face flushed a brilliant shade of scarlet and he ducked his head into his forearms with a groan.

“Shit… All of it?” he queried hesitantly.

“All of it… Every last angry, frustrated, bitterly delicious little word,” Gor’rik affirmed, smirking crookedly in his relish.

Enoki snarled in exasperation and buried his face deeper into the warm earth and the safe darkness of his crossed, lanky forearms.

“Aw fuckin’ hell…” he hissed angrily, “An’ now I suppose you here tah tell me tah deal wit’ it an’ get back in rank, eh?”

Gor’rik laughed robustly and gave Enoki’s flank an affectionate pat.

“Aw, cheer up my boy, it’s not as grave and military suck it upness as all that! I certainly didn’t come here to tell you to do anything,” he said, finally feeling confident that Enoki’s rage was quelled.

The aged Orc Commander shuffled up heavily off his young soldier, letting him free, and lumbered over to one of the remaining stacks of soft flour to perch himself. His bulky form thudded into the embrace of the burlap sacks and he reclined back to watch Enoki as he slowly lifted himself out of the dirt. The Shaman crouched down, looked over to Gor’rik questioningly, and the Orc smiled as he patted the sack of flour next to him. Confused, and having nothing to do but acquiesce to the silent request, Enoki got up and sat himself beside his Commander.

“So, if you didn’t come tah give me ordahs or nothin’,” he began at length, “Den what de hell did yah follow me for?”

Gor’rik laughed again and gestured to the decimated storage hut.

“Well, to stop you from doing this first of all, but looks like I was a little late. Secondly, to make sure you were alright. I can’t have any of my fine ladies or gentleman in a compromised state, it’s bad for morale and bad for unity! It’s like having one weak link in a chain, one rotten apple in a pie, one frayed rope on a catapult, one defective-“

“Alright alright I get it already,” Enoki laughed to stop the tirade he knew was coming, wiping at his face with a sheepish grin, “You was jes’ morbidly curious, wasn’t you?”

Gor’rik grinned a wolfish grin around his yellowed, chipped tusks that gave nothing more than a vision of a lecherous old man caught eavesdropping. His eyes, however, narrowed shrewdly at the young Troll.

“Am I that transparent?” he asked airily.

“Fah! An’ old geezer like you? What bettah things he got tah do den listen in on oddah people’s private conversations tah get his rocks off?” Enoki snorted.

“Hah! Boy, are you kidding me? Gossip’s all there is to do for anyone out here in this Gods forsaken hell hole!” Gor’rik retorted.

The duo laughed together, Gor’rik slapping his gut and rolling back on his flour sack while Enoki rubbed the last of the tears from his eyes and hung his head.

“Ahhhh, yeah I got told dat pretty much first thing when I got here, guess now everybody gonna be talkin’ ‘bout me at dinnah again tonight,” the Shaman groused good-naturedly.

“Probably, but surely Jyota will be there too to endure it,” his companion quipped back, even though he knew he would not.

“Pfffft, you kiddin’? Jyota din’ even have de balls tah tell me he was leavin’. What makes you think he gonna face de music an’ come tah dinnah?” Enoki replied bitterly.

“Oh I see, so… First he hides one of the most important decisions of his life from you for a year, asks you to wait and won’t even entertain the idea of trying to take you with him, and then he leaves you to explain everything to that pack of wolves out there alone?” Gor’rik noted, thumbing his grizzled chin, “Sounds just like Jyota to me.”

Hearing his former partner verbally desecrated in nearly exactly the way he would, minus the more colorful oaths and vulgar adjectives, from one of Jyota’s closest colleagues barely registered in Enoki’s mind. He was so astounded by Gor’rik’s sympathetic assertion words completely failed him. No clever retort flew to his lips as it always did. Only his body responded with the instinctual rigid spine as he sat bolt upright, eyes wide and jaw falling slack.

“…Huh?” was all he managed to croak.

The old Orc Commander simply smirked.

“Sounds just like him to me, Jyota’s always been a man of duty, first and foremost. He lives for rules, he lives for his Gods, and he lives for the Horde. Love doesn’t really fit into that equation,” he elaborated kindly.

Enoki looked away and flattened his ears back against his skull.

“Oh…”

“Am I wrong…?” Gor’rik asked, raising a heavy brow with a sardonic smirk, “Or were you in here destroying our supplies because you were so happy Jyota finally proposed?”

“Hell no,” Enoki snorted, “Yah fuckin’ right. I always came second tah whatevah it was he had tah get done… Always! Our whole damn whatevah dat was was jes’… Jyota killin’ his damn self tah make it up tah me all de time. Jes’ feels like shit tah have tah say it sucked out loud. Rat bastard.”

“Don’t blame him entirely, like I said that’s just how his mind works. First is his duty, the grand scheme of things and his place in the universe, everything else comes second. Someone like you, someone who acts on his heart, can’t be expected to understand why he feels that way, just as someone like Jyota doesn’t understand how much that hurts someone like you,” Gor’rik explained, looking off and up as if he were just discussing the weather.

The Troll let his voice sink in and percolate through his mind. In so few words so much of his life had been summed up so perfectly and concisely. He had never understood Jyota, and it had become painfully clear that Jyota, while infatuated just the same as he was, had never fully understood him either.

“I guess. We jes’. He couldn’… An’ I didn’… It jes’... It jes’…” murmured Enoki after a short silence, only for Gor’rik to finish his sentence for him.

“Wasn’t meant to be?”

Silence was all that answered. Though Gor’rik watched the face of his young Grunt intently and saw the ripples of clarity spreading slowly like the light of dawn across his angularly feral features. Enoki needed to say nothing at all.

“I know it seemed to you to be this beautiful thing, this grand adventure. That Jyota had promised you the world and more. I saw it in you the day you came to the Crossroads to enlist. You looked as giddy as a bold little pup thinking he had found something magical, found his destiny, his path to being a hero that would be sung about around war fires for generations to come. But destiny is not so easy to find, Enoki. Destiny never changes, only the path we take to get there, and that is what fate is. Not some preordained thing written in the stars like Jyota thinks, fate is the ever twisting journey that can change at the whim of the great Spirits beyond,” the Orc drawled, weary, pleasantly crinkled eyes gazing up into the rafters of the hut.

As Gor’rik spoke Enoki slowly lifted his head to listen. His ears and eyes both turned to the gray, war torn Commander with a look of bewildered wonderment and need. Sensing the silent plea for him to continue, the Orc clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder and gazed directly into the viridian depths of his eyes.

“You haven’t found your destiny yet,” Gor’rik rumbled fondly, “That’s all. Every time you think you’ve found it, trust me, you haven’t. Someone like you especially. I’ve watched you here, watched you with Jyota, and you always looked like a tiger in a cage, a tethered hawk. Out of place and lost… Eyes always on the horizon. This may seem like the tragic ending, but in the end you’re so young. You have your whole life ahead of you to find who you are and where you belong. Let’s face it. You always were a pretty piss poor excuse for a soldier.”

Gor’rik smirked fondly at the Troll and Enoki mirrored it. He took no offense to the statement at all. He was an abysmal soldier and he had made no efforts to remedy himself. He ignored orders, slept in, misused equipment and remained completely unapologetic. Enoki existed the way he decreed and by his own creed. He never felt bound to his duty the way Jyota did. His grunt work had always been an annoyance, something to endure, and a monotonous chore alleviated only by causing mischief. More than once he had been pulled aside, lectured, or sentenced to extra cleaning for his flagrant disregard for rules and order but the small shreds of fun he found in it had all been worth the punishments.

“Yeah, I know,” Enoki chuckled hoarsely in reply.

His emerald green eyes, clear at last, flicked longingly toward the door where the last vestiges of sunlight were disappearing. The horizon had all but vanished into the inky cover of night. He could not see where the sun had touched it last and bid his tiny space of the world farewell for the night, but he knew all too well where it always sank into the darkness. It lay in repose in the west, where the continent ended and the Great Sea began, touching the unknown wilds of the Eastern Kingdoms he had only heard tales about.

Gor’rik let the young recruit have his moment of silence and reflection and shared it with him. He witnessed a man at a crossroads and he could only hope that this time Enoki chose a better path.

“Good to know, but a soldier you still are and as your commander I think you need something productive to do,” Gor’rik said at last with a slap of both meaty palms on his thighs.

“Eh…? Productive? EH? Oy! Dat means work don’t it?! I thought yah said yah wasn’t here tah give me no ordahs! Yah lyin’ old fossil! Where do yah get off switchin’ things up on me like dat?!” the flabbergasted Enoki spat.

Gor’rik merely laughed as he hoisted his aching body up off of his flour sack perch and leaned heavily on a support column.

“Relax! Relax! I just thought of something you’ll enjoy! And think of it as your punishment for your… Stress relief, shall we say?” he said wryly as he gestured to the wreckage around them.

Enoki’s face immediately washed over in a blank, steel-jawed expression of guilt and his ears flattened back against his head.

“Oh right… Dat…”

“Yes, that. And you’re going to clean up the mess you made my hot tempered little friend. I’m sending you on a little trip first thing in the morning to Ratchet to replace what you destroyed. Whole damn port’s filled with Goblin traders, so you should be able to get everything, and whatever you can’t buy there you can still definitely order, got it?” Gor’rik said in his usual gruff, commanding baritone.

“Yes, sir…” Enoki replied glumly.

The Troll was seriously doubtful his little errand was something he would enjoy, but orders were orders and it would at least get him out of camp for a few days.

“Good! Meet me tomorrow after breakfast right back here at this supply hut, I’ll have a cart and two of our finest Kodo beasts for you as well as a list of what we need now,” Gor’rik continued as he made his way to the door in brisk, military step.

The Orc paused before his exeunt, however, and crossed his arms thoughtfully across his chest. His dark eyes closed and an almost mischievous grin played across his thick lips.

“Oh and when you come back,” he said casually, like an afterthought, “We’ll have to be sure and renew your enlistment. Official tours of duty only last a year. Paperwork, bureaucratic nonsense so we know how many warm bodies we’re supposed to have and all that drivel. It’s just a formality. Some damn good soldiers choose to just… Go on and do something else. Pity really…”

Gor’rik cast one final, unreadable smile over his shoulder at the still thoroughly bewildered Enoki, stepped out into the Barrens dusk, and was gone.

Enoki remained as he sat there on his flour sacks and finally remembered to breathe. Gor’rik’s words resonated in his skull long after the sound of his footsteps disappeared and the last of the light faded from the land, and mockingly failed to make any kind of reasonable sense. In the back of his mind he knew that he would have to renew his enlistment at some point. It was basic, inevitable procedure and he hadn’t given it much thought during the year he had been stationed at the Barrens. Why his Commander had chosen to remind him as such at that moment seemed to him out of place and strange. Enoki could scarcely imagine he was urging him to leave his troops, but the more he thought about it the more it sounded that way.

At least he had something other than Jyota to ruminate over, he thought as his wits returned to him and he remembered he had yet to partake of dinner. The Shaman finally rose from the flour sacks then and wiped his nose with a loud snort. He swallowed thickly through his tear tightened throat, coughed noisily to clear it and smoothed back his hair in an attempt to make himself look somewhat presentable and avoid perhaps a concerned query or two around the mess fires that night. Though he knew everyone would be asking anyway and Enoki found himself caring very little. The initial bite of anguish and the rift in his heart were numb for the soothing violence and for the seed of thought his Commander had artfully planted where the passion for Jyota had once thrived.

With the cryptic, puzzle of a statement still the foremost thought buzzing frenetically inside his skull Enoki finally walked on stiff, unsteady legs out of the hut and toward the center of the encampment. As he suspected once he arrived he was met with a hurricane of questions, hugs, slaps on the back and a combination of sympathetic assurances that it was true love that would find its way back to him and that Jyota had always been wrong for him and he could do much better. He barely even had a chance to speak or clarify before he was grabbed by the shoulders, shoved down to a log pleasantly near the roaring cook fires and handed a plate already laden with all his favorite mess style dishes.

Not exactly unappreciative, Enoki busied himself with ravenous eating. He satiated his deep hunger fueled by emotional turmoil and physical exertion, but mostly he hoped to deflect as much attention as he could. It worked for a time, but once he ran out of the excuse of a full mouth the Troll knew it was time to head to bed. He felt exhausted, drained, and wide-awake all at once and could only hope that sleep would come to claim him soon. Discarded clothes marked the trail where Enoki headed to his hammock, too weary to pick up after himself, and he sank down into its comfortingly uncomfortable embrace with his ears pinned back and his lanky body curled into a ball.

The redhead was the first one to turn in that night, and as the other soldiers began to file in as well, each contemplated waking him to offer their sympathies again, but each decided against it. Enoki needed his sleep, they decided, unaware it was feigned and the Troll was wide awake and listening. Being the object of such overwhelming sympathy felt flattering and annoying at the same time. While he was glad everyone was so concerned for him their incessant babying felt eerily like he was still with Jyota.

Enoki listened to the usual sounds of bedtime around him in the barracks, enjoying the routine of it privately, and before long he found himself drifting off to sleep himself despite his better judgment. It proved to be a blissfully uneventful, numb, and deep rest. The light of morning and the clamor of armor and the blaring sounds of reverie sounded as soon as he closed his eyes it seemed. He felt as if he could sleep the rest of the day away, but he forced himself up. Gor’rik had duty for him and he was about to be allowed to leave the compound and spend a good chunk of time alone on the road. After the night before, Gor’rik’s little shopping trip was sounding better and better.

Enoki swung his feet over the edge of his hammock and pulled himself up, running a hand through his tousled fiery red hair and yawning. Sleepily, he hopped down to the floor and gathered up his Barrens guard raiment to dress for the day. He pulled on the leather harness clumsily and fumbled with the straps several times before he could get it to fit right. His spiked pauldrons felt uneven and weighty on his shoulders and his gloves felt like they were on the opposite hands. The heavy armor sagged stifling and hindering on his body, but he trudged his way to the supply hut despite it.

True to his word Gor’rik was standing there waiting when Enoki arrived with two young, hale looking Kodo Beasts harnessed to an empty cart. The blocky, weathered contraption boasted a small seat in front of the gated cargo zone for a driver which Gor’rik waited upon, smiling and waving to greet his young Grunt.

“Throm-ka, Enoki!” he called, beating his fist over his heart and grinning toothily, “It is an excellent morning!”

The boisterous greeting drew an unconscious half smile over Enoki’s lips and he returned the warm gesture over his own chest.

“Mornin’, s’pose it is kinda nice, if yah don’ gotta play errand boy,” he joked.

“Now now,” Gor’rik chastised as he eased himself off of the cart, hit the ground, and dusted off his hands, “I told you, this is a favor, don’t take it so lightly! You’ll have fun!”

Enoki shuffled toward him and craned his head over the well-traveled wooden vessel with an appraising eye. Though wearing its age in proud dents, splinters, and metal bracers, the thing looked still as if it could be piled high with supplies and still make the trip across the Barrens with jostling, bumpy ease.

“In dis t’ing…?” he asked in disbelief.

Gor’rik whipped his head back to look at it, quirked one heavy grayed brow and turned back with a deadpan expression.

“What’s wrong with it?” he queried simply.

Enoki closed his eyes with a chuckle and held his three-fingered hands up in the air, defeated.

“Ah, nothin’ nothin’,” he hastily assured his Commander.

“Good. Now it’s quite simple, I know you know how to ride, and the commands for these lovely fellows are much the same, here, watch me,” Gor’rik instructed, beckoning the young Troll to his side.

He showed him the proper way to control a cart animal in painstaking detail, which Enoki stopped paying attention to after about three words. He was confident in his abilities to command the beasts of burden and was more anxious to start his journey and escape the noisy monotony of his patrol duties. All nuances and facets of the barracks and the Horde hub of defense of their homelands were beginning to feel disturbingly nostalgic. Everything was hazy, distant, and awash in dreamy monotone colors; much the same way he remembered Aykwani village. It gave him the distinct impression that he had already left the only home he had known for an entire year behind, even though his emerald eyes still gazed upon the flaxen savannah and the towering red Horde canopies crowned in guardian spines.

All he could do was channel that restless energy and stale sentimentality into his constant, powerful desire to leave and boldly shirk Gor’rik’s meticulous instructions.

“Bah! Move! Dere ain’ dat much tah dis!” Enoki finally interrupted.

He snatched the reins from the Orc’s hands and swung himself nimbly into the stiff wooden driver’s seat worn smooth over the years into the perfect shape. A cocky grin flashed across his face and he lifted his long nose haughtily into the air with a hand thrust out expectantly.

“Slap de list’a supplies on me mon, Enoki got dis covahed!”

Gor’rik snickered and handed him a tightly rolled piece of parchment upon which the list of everything that needed to be replaced had been scrawled.

“Alright alright, I can see you’re eager to have this over with. Now don’t forget anything, check things off on the list as you buy them, and use that clever Troll brain of yours. If you see something we might need that’s not on the list, get it,” the Orc elaborated, patting Enoki on his russet head.

His opposite hand unhooked a burgeoning sack of gold pieces from his belt and he placed it carefully into a hidden compartment just beside Enoki under the driver’s seat.

“This is the money you are to use, but we expect change,” he continued with a smirk, “Though you are certainly free to spend your own stipend on anything you wish. We have provided enough cash to spend a night in the inn in Ratchet should you need it, as well as a meal or two, and… Uh, well-! Other than that, I guess you’re all set. Don’t dawdle, don’t break anything, and get a move on!”

With that, Gor’rik gave the cart a fond pat, stepped back, and raised a meaty palm in farewell.

“Aka’magosh, Enoki! Good travels!”

Enoki flashed him a bright grin and graced him with a crooked salute, saying nothing, for that was all the farewell he needed to give. The crisp crack of the reins sounded through the air and roused the Kodos into a chorus of eager bellows. Their powerful bodies rippled, hooves beat a rousing thrum against the dusty earth, and the rickety cart performed the wobbling, groaning symphony of the beginning of their journey together. Cart and rider bounced merrily through the Horde encampment and left a high plume of golden dust in their wake as they made their way out into the wilds of the Barrens toward the road that would lead them to The Crossroads and eventually to the Goblin port city of Ratchet.

Enoki sat back into his worn, wooden seat and settled in for the long journey with the reins in his hands and his feet propped up against the front rail of the vehicle. The Barrens stretched out in its infinity before him and beckoned him toward the distant, hazy line of the horizon which hid a new and exciting city like a seductive secret. He had never seen the ocean either, or bartered with a Goblin merchant, or seen the huge ships that were rumored to dock at the busy, neutral port, all of which titillated his insatiable curiosity which had been rather neglected in his mundane, daily military routine. With a renewed hope in at least getting to roam free for a few days and see new things, Enoki set out on his first real journey since the day he had left his childhood home behind.