Hope from the Horde

Darkmoon_Knight, Thank you for your kind review :) I really appreciate it.

This chapter was difficult to write. Although I have in the past mercilessly tormented my poor toons, I haven't had a good reason to do so in some time. Anyaway, finally finished.

**~~**

The remains of Shadowed Acolytes lay everywhere, like broken dolls, in the posture that they'd landed in their death. There was a remarkable amount of blood on the floor. It really never ceased to amaze Calistera what other people thought 'blood everywhere' meant. She'd heard it a few times in towns, a mother yelling for help because her son had fallen and there was 'blood everywhere!'. She'd run into the house to see a decidedly not-deadly two or three inch laceration to the scalp that had leaked barely down the side of the child's face and hadn't even begun to spread onto the floor. Trying to hold in giggles at the mother's obvious panic, she'd healed the child, accepted the thanks of the mother, then walked out of the house with a set face trying to not-laugh until she'd reached a reasonable distance from the house. Blood everywhere indeed.

A battlefield, especially a battlefield in a stone keep, was a different matter. Neither she nor the remaining humans or dwarves (the only night elf in the party was awaiting resurrection) could walk up to the bodies of the Grand Widow Faerlina without tracking blood. Bloody hoofprints followed her as she approached the party's nominal leader.

"Yer damage left some ta be desired." The dwarf said snidely.

"Perhaps it was the fact that all three of your healers are dead." She responded. The last of the fight had used all of her mana in healing, although it had regenerated quickly.

She noticed the remaining five closing in on her as well, and her battle-trained instincts kicked in as she set her back to the platform the Grand Widow had been standing on. She wasn't about to threaten them yet and kept her hands neutral. Close enough to her weapon, although her specialty was elemental magic, and touching her weapon wasn't exactly necessary for either offense or defense.

"These deaths were yer fault." The dwarf accused.

"The fact that the rest of you aren't dead yet is my fault as well then." She wasn't willing to give, not even a little bit. Her voice had changed, and was no longer musical and pleasant, but flat, with no tone or inflection to read at all.

That alone should have warned them that what they had planned was a bad idea.

Looking at her, the dwarf drew his sword. "We'll be gettin' some of our own back on ye."

"And you're a Paladin?" Her response was coloured by incredoulous surprise.

"Get yer armor off."

The six advanced on her, all with the mad look of lust and violence upon them, and the Shaman did exactly what she'd always thought she'd do in this situation. She released chain lightning on them.

The first blast hit the Paladin full in the face, burning him and the two men closest to him. It made her more savage, not less, to realize quickly that this had been the plan all along, that three of their healers were planning to do the same to her shocked her to her very core. She was not, however, shocked enough to not unleash all the elemental devestation at her beck and call on those who were planning to abuse her. They were handicapped by wanting her to be alive during the experience, she wasn't working under the same handicaps. Three more of them littered the floor in odd, boneless postures with steam rising off them before someone got close enough to bash her in the side of the head and stun her long enough to make her stop casting. They took the opportunity and disabled her completely using the expedient method of punching her in the jaw and knocking her completly out. The next few minutes was taken getting the armor off the unconscious (and therefore completely unhelpful) Draenei (all things considered, however, she was probably more helpful than she would have been if she was awake.)

There were cruel smiles all around from the ones who were left as they tied the Shaman securely and waited for her to wake up. There would be no interruptions here.

**~~**

The two horde followed the trail of dead bodies through the necropolis, staying well back. They made it through several chambers when, inexplicably to them, the noise of battle stopped. There were still some of the soft chitters and sighs from some of the remaining Nerubians and other various spider-types. Feeling his skin crawling at some point, Nargsmarsh signalled at Serroc to stop.

"It's been too long," he whispered.

The Tauren only nodded at the Orc, realizing that any recognition of non-arachnid sound in this area would be deadly.

"What do you think is going on?" Whispered the Orc, insistently

"What we had a feeling was going to happen." Responded the Tauren, in kind. "But we can't go any faster. They didn't clear this, and there's still a possibility that we will run into hostiles." He mulled over something in his head for a minute, "Other than Alliance, of course."

The Orc's grin was bloodthirsty, but he could be forgiven for it. He was, after all, an Orc. "Of course."

The pair crept silently toward their goal, hoping that they were wrong, but afraid that they were right.

**~~**

Awakening was not a gentle experience for Calistera, she'd been bound extremely securely and been left to awaken on her own. The first noise that escaped from her was a groan, and the first motion an intense squirm to test the integrity of her bonds. Both of these were met with some measure of interest from her erstwhile companions.

"Ah, you're awake." Said one of the humans, a sallow-faced mage whose simple being filled Calistera with revulsion. "Now we'll be able to start our fun!" He smiled at her and caressed her face gently, and she turned her head toward his hand. For some reason, he allowed it, thinking perhaps that she'd become more reasonable. Nothing could have been further from the truth. She sunk her teeth into his hand and held on. There was blood in her mouth and running down her face before they were able to get her to let go by the expedient method of choking her until she passed out again. The Mage glared at her unconscious, naked form and contented himself with kicking her a few times. The other two pulled him off.

"You want to kill her before we've had our fun?"

The mage glared at the hunter, but desisted. He shot an angry glare at the other mage as well, who shrugged.

"Dunno if we should let 'er live or not." The dwarf mage said.

"I think we should just leave her in here when we're done." Said the other human. "If she can get herself out she lives, if she can't she dies."

It was with that that the hunter picked her up by the throat and slammed her into the wall. Glowing eyes met angry human ones. "My pet is dead because of you."

She didn't bother to answer him, but simply spit in his face. Her intent at this point was to try and anger them so much that they would beat her to death, or at least beat her so much that they left her for dead. They had failed to notice that her healing totem still stood, and once the beatings stopped it would eventually keep her alive long enough to escape. She hoped.

It made the hunter pretty angry. He beat her with his mailed fists enough that the other two hauled him off her after a few minutes, and he was giving the mages evil looks. She gasped for air and rolled on the floor, blood from small lacerations staining the stone beneath her. The final looks the men gave each other gave her some comfort. There was death in all the pairs of eyes but one now, but he was the one that approached her.

He pulled her up by the horns and dragged her to the nearest research table. There was nothing she could do but follow, a design flaw in horns she thought, oddly. He forced her onto it, her upper body coming in contact with dried fluids from a thousand failed experiments on undead bodies, and perhaps even a few successful ones. The iron rings that held the undead were attached to her wrists, and then the bonds that held her cut.

"Now," the third man said, "for revenge."

He pulled out a whip from his robes and began to beat her. He was more careful than he thought she deserved, but he wanted her alive, not dead from blood loss, when the culmination of the festivities began. She held her cries in for a long time, but after a while, all she was capable of was screaming.

**~~**

It was the Tauren that stopped, that understood what the sound of a whip on flesh was. They couldn't go any faster, having to check and recheck both in front of them and behind to make sure nothing was stalking them.

"If we're going to find her alive, we have to hurry." He whispered to the Orc.

The Orc simply nodded, and started forward again. But they were moving more quickly. A high pitched scream that could only have come from a female throat spurred them onward.

**~~**

The mage straightened from his task, and the Draenei writhed. Finally, he pulled away from her as blood and semen spilled down her legs.

"That is how you make them pliable." He said, gesturing for the next man to take her.

The mage with the injured hand stood, and adjusting his robes pulled his already hard member from his pants.

"It's like that, is it?" The dazed Draenei screamed again as he savagely buried himself in her anus. "I'm glad someone finally figured out how to train a goat."

She finally regained enough mental focus to do the thing that she'd always thought would be her last opportunity for escape. She sent her mind inward, and outward in a weird twisting flight into the nether where one could talk to the Naaru. And it was there, in the company of the Naaru, that she was able to recieve reassurance and comfort that she had done the right thing, and that she could stay there as long as she needed to, that her soul would be safe among the Naaru.

The hunter, thinking her finally submissive, took his turn, and it was at that moment that two fresh Horde, spoiling for battle over the imagined abuse of a Draenei who had been friendly truly saw what was going on. There was no mercy. The mages fell at almost exactly the same time, their heads still wearing the surprised looks they had in life, though several feet from their bodies. The hunter's body, still buried inside the Draenei's unconscious form fell forward onto the abused female's body. The hunter's head flew a score of paces away, his body spurting blood onto the female's. The Tauren pulled him off savagely and threw the body, uncaring of where, or in what position it landed. The Orc savagely broke the chains holding the Draenei, and the Tauren wrapped her in his cloak.

"There's her armor." He said, pointing with a horn. The Orc gathered it up.

It took a lot less time to get her out of Naxxramus and onto the Tauren's flying mount. They flew back to Dalaran and took her into the Horde Inn without too many questions being asked, and into their room, where they laid her on a bed. The Tauren sat with her as the Orc went for a healer.

Now all they could do was wait.