Duality Risen

Three

Mardruk stumbled backward, crashing down onto his backside and scrambling back from the warlock as the blood elf stalked forward a few steps. The warlock stretched his hands toward the sky, hands moving over his face, those long tapering ears, through his white hair as if trying to see if everything was there in its proper place. Those green eyes glinted dangerously at the young orc, the sharp point of a canine revealed as the warlock grinned at him.

“Thank you, little warrior.” The warlock said, his voice cold as ice and just as smooth. “I can’t begin to express my thanks to you. Those rocks were all too stuffy, an unsuitable grave for one such as myself. Though, I can’t complain – those thieving rats were afraid of me. Just as you are.”

Mardruk’s back hit a rock shelf and he shivered. “Who are you?”

“Who am I?” The warlock asked, an innocent note in his voice. “Do the elders no longer teach you children history?” He paused, green flicking up and down Mardruk’s form. “Well, you are an orc.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?!”

“My dear child, it has everything to do with anything. You’re an orc, which stands to reason you wouldn’t be told the history of the Quel’dorei, the Sin’dorei rather. And I don’t see any further reason to educate you.” The warlock stepped forward, the small body situating itself between Mardruk’s legs, the blood elf’s hand pointing at Mardruk’s throat. “Suffice to say, I’m letting you live, boy. I’m letting you live as a favour, as part of our agreement. I helped you, you brought those strong young human boys to me. Because of you, I’m free. Because of you, I once more walk the land of Azeroth. Thank you, boy.”

Mardruk stared, violet eyes wide at the warlock. He felt it then, the familiar heat of anger, of hatred, of being used and cast aside. It was a hatred that had been in his bones since he was small, since he watched his mother walk away with a group of orc and leave him behind. It was a hatred he’d felt since he grew up, always unwanted, always unclean, as if it was because of him his mother had left him at the doorstep of Orgrimmar and had walked out of his life. That anger drove him to lash out at the warlock, his fist flying toward the Sin’dorei’s head as quick as a striking snake. The Sin’dorei just kept smiling, and Mardruk’s offending wrist snapped back, slamming into the rock, held there by a tendril of arcane energy. The warlock’s eyes narrowed slightly, his lips turning up into a friendly little grin.

“Don’t mistake this for mercy, child.” The Sin’dorei said. “I’m letting you live as payment. That was our deal. If you continue this idiotic behaviour, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you the same way I killed those human boys, and I’ll make it twice as painful for you. But you can’t afford to die here, now can you?” The elf’s eyes slid to the path where the charred bodies of the human knights lay. “Don’t you have someone you need to see to?”

Mardruk’s breath left him in a harried gasp. “Goran!”

The warlock stepped back as Mardruk jumped to his feet, the young orc bolting down the path, nearly stumbling over the charred bodies of the human knights as he went down. On the wind that chased him down, he could hear the vicious laughter of the warlock.


Mardruk ran as fast as he could. His lungs were burning, his legs felt leaden, but he still kept running. That plateau disappeared behind him, the young orc just bolting to the road where he’d left Goran. The orc warrior felt to a jog, then a walk, panting as he stared at the blood-smeared dirt, the corpse of one of the humans and the corpse of his horse, and the scuffmarks where movement had been hurried and vicious. He could see Goran’s heavy boot-prints in the dirt, stepping and pivoting, avoiding the six horsemen and cutting them down as he moved. He was an expert fighter, a master at his creed. Goran wouldn’t allow himself to be killed so easily. Mardruk stepped in Goran’s footprints, following the trail and mimicking his master’s steps, his heart hammering in his chest. All thoughts of the warlock, all thoughts of his anger, all thoughts that weren’t important and weren’t of his master fled his mind. He had to find Goran. He had to find the old orc and prove he was still alive.

But there was so much blood.

Mardruk crossed the road and came upon the corpse of a horse and its rider, the animal’s head nearly severed from its neck and the human in just as bad a shape. The human hadn’t been given a clean cut like the horse. It was a gloomy amusement Mardruk gleaned from the grisly sight; it was just like Goran to have more sympathy for an animal than an orc, or in this case, a human. He found more boot-prints, Goran’s and five sets of smaller prints, surrounded by arcs of blood. Mardruk kept moving, finding another human body. This man’s face was shorn in half, bloody teeth sticking out of the bottom half of his shorn jaw. Mardruk shivered and moved on, finding a place where Goran had been forced to his knees. A human arm lay in a pool of red blood, a human leg over there, a hand still gripping a sword there. Each limb was human and Mardruk began to breathe a sigh of relief. Goran was still alive.

Then he found an orc hand. Goran’s hand, clenched tight around a sword. A human body lay near it, still breathing harshly. Mardruk stared at the human knight, not getting too close to the man. Three human casualties out of five men attacking, and Goran had lost a hand. Mardruk continued to follow the dance, seeing more and more blood that he slowly came to realize the blood was more and more orc and less and less human. He found one more human body before he found Goran.

The orc was on his back, a sword run through his gut. Near him lay the last human, the man sitting in the blood-soaked dirt, legs splayed before him as he stared at his opponent. He never saw Mardruk. The young orc bellowed loudly and swept up one of those knights’ swords, and before the human even realized his life was in immediate danger, Mardruk was upon him. The orc swung the sword in his hand so hard that he actually lost his grip when the sword broke through the human’s fragile neck, the head and blade going flying away. Mardruk stumbled to his knees, collapsing down in the dirt.

“Stupid brat.” Goran choked out. “I told you to fucking… fucking run.”

“Goran!” Mardruk scrambled to Goran’s side, kneeling over the broken orc’s frame. “You’re alive!”

Goran laughed, then choked up blood as his stomach muscles twisted around the sword impaled in his gut. “I told you to run, boy.”

“Yeah, I know. I did. And then I made it to this plateau and, Goran, there was a warlock up there!” Mardruk sat back on his heels as Goran swiped at his face. The older orc’s thick fingers curled in the collar of Mardruk’s chainmail and pulled the boy down close. “Goran?”

“Warlock.” Goran gasped out. “What warlock?”

“A Sin’dorei.” Mardruk didn’t get to say more, Goran releasing him with a loud curse.

“You fool! You’ve released him?! You stupid, son of a gutter whore! I ought to kill you! Pull this sword out, lop your own fool head off!” Goran coughed up more blood, the old orc’s rage giving him the strength to swat Mardruk upside his head. The young warrior stared wide-eyed at his mentor, violet eyes bright. “Why? Why, Mardruk?”

“I didn’t know.” Mardruk whispered. “I didn’t know what it was. There was a voice, it said it’d help me, and I agreed. Who was he?”

Goran grunted. “Get this sword out of me. Build me a fire and give me some of that beer.” When Mardruk had done what Goran had demanded, the old orc took a long swig of the alcohol and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “That warlock you released up there is a plague upon Azeroth. That warlock is Aljei Indoniniel, Aljei the Cruel.”

Mardruk looked confused. “Who?”