"Realities," A World of Warcraft Fanfiction from 2009

[rcontroversy]

Realities
~or~
Portrait of the Artist As a Practical-Minded Orcish Soldier, Not Actually The Artist At All




The First Part: Shovel


“All hail Moragor Thundercall, hero of the Horde!” they say. I ride through the streets of Orgrimmar atop my trusted worg companion, Kranok, the titanium plates of his armor gleaming in the warm sunlight. It is an exceptionally fair day, and the wind brings the scent of roasted boar, freshly brewed ale and honeyed breads down from the awaiting banquet hall.

“Moragor!” the grateful people shout, lifting on high their offerings; the finest cloth, glimmering jewels, elegant blades. I make a show of turning these down.

“The safety of our people is all the thanks I need,” I explain, bowing my head. Yes, right now, they are all my people. My children. When I step into Grommash Hold moments from now and offer the head of Arthas to Thrall, I shall stand not even as his equal, but as the mighty Warchief's better. I know he will kneel to me in reverence. It will all be perfect.

Or rather, it would, if I were Moragor Thundercall, hero of the Horde. As it happens, I am Gurk Orlak, Dung Shoveler of the Horde. I have the crucial task of, you guessed it, shoveling up the waste our lovely, slobbering worgs drop in the makeshift stables here at our forward camp in the scenic Dragonblight. My captain, a stuffy Blood Elf named Siras Pallium believes me uniquely suited to this job as I apparently exhibit some immunity to this job's usual perils.

“It has come to my attention, Gurk, that the scent of worg manure would neither improve nor damage your natural odor,” is how he put it, I think. However it happened, I've been working the position since we first set up this ramshackle base about two months ago. I think I may be due for promotion, perhaps to Lord High Executor...of Dung Shoveling. Yes, I will take the worg stables and make them like unto a fiefdom of feces: a fiefdung.

I lapse into that particular daydream maybe four or five times during a given day of duty. It ranks among my three most frequent daydreams along with the hero thing, and the dream where I'm friends with this Eredar barber and I make meat pies from bits of hacked-up Scourge. Since the entirety of my day is spent cleaning up after the cavalry, it's really more fitting to divide time up based on what I'm thinking instead of doing, and those dreams make up three fourths of my time. The rest consists of trying to muster up the confidence to demand my due respect from the captain. I try to make him seem less intimidating by imagining him in a dress, but that doesn't really do much more than concern me, because he seems to cut an equally fine figure in both spiked saronite and fetching fuschia felt.

“I am the greatest dung shoveler this land will ever know!” I will say, voice booming with a confidence that shakes the very resolve of the Scourge surrounding us, with a power that ripples over his tasteful dress. He will pat out the wrinkles and ruffles awkwardly, apologetically, curtsying to me.

“Of course, Lord Orlak! All praise to he who wields the Cleansing Spade, for it is hefty indeed!”

A smack on the back of my head awakens me from my reverie, and I am back at our delightful little post, in the stables. The many offensive odors of unkempt battle-worgs flood my nostrils again, and I see the dopey grin of the one whose open palm tore me from my world of triumph.

“Hey, Gurk, where were ya?” the pleasant, vacant face asks.

“A bold, proud new world, Nerosh,” I tell him. Nerosh is a Mag'hari Orc with brown skin and a black tail of hair woven tight from the back of his head, the roots of which actually penetrate into his brain, interfering with its function and making him ever so tragically...dumb.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, not really sure what he's agreeing with. “So, listen, captain says a new guy's comin' in soon, some big famous lieutenant from Agmar's Hammer. I say we have ourselves a little drink and get a look at 'im. Never seen a hero before!”

I should be insulted, and I am. Never seen a hero? Why, what other sort of orc could do what I do with such dedication? Surely, after such a remark, the worgs will not begrudge me a drink to ease my nerves.

“Sounds good,” I say, setting my shovel up against one of the stable doors and following Nerosh out into the cold. The sun is bleak overhead, cold and crystalline. I lower my gaze for just a moment to look at Wyrmrest Temple. Its gilded domes glisten even in the weak, pale daylight, and though it is five miles away, we still live in its shadow. I've always hated that damn building, and I stop to shake my fist at it. Nerosh gives me a questioning look and shakes his head.

“Why do ya always do that? You got something against the dragons?” he asks.

“Other than the fact that they do not use their vast, godlike power to clean up any mess other than the ones they cause, but expect us to take their orders and help them with things they could solve just by taking a deep breath? Well, quite frankly, they all have mug problems.”

“Mug problems?” he puzzles, and for a moment I think I see that worg-tail of hair take a long draft from his skull.

“They are ugly, you see,” I tell him.

“Hey, and who says scribes aren't good in wars? You could talk the Scourge back into their graves!”

I wince a little at that, the whole scribe-somehow-became-manure-manager thing is still tender for me. You ask ten people, Horde or Alliance, what they think when they think of Orcs, whatever moral judgements they may make, they all seem to agree that your typical Orc is composed of rippling muscle with thick, pulsing veins. That is not me. I am as thin as an Orc comes, really, but apparently I had something worth noticing, because I was taken not long after my birth as slave and student to a scribe at the Arathi internment camp where I was born and raised. Under a harsh mentor I learned my letters. When the uprisings and the Third War had played out, I studied hard. Not more than a year ago, I finished my training. I can write fluently in six languages. I have a masterful grasp of many histories. I told the Captain on my first day. I got the shovel.

“Aw, toughen up, I didn't mean nothin' by it,” Nerosh says, slapping me on the back hard enough to smart through my leather tunic. We walk from the stables to the palisade wall, ascending the ramp onto the high planks to look out over the snow fields. Miles of snow in every direction, as always: snow, ice and rock. Further out in every direction, there are terrible things that hate us and want to claw, stab, smash, burn, rot or eat our faces and, quite possibly, the rest of our bodies.

As we lean over the wooden wall, he looks over his shoulder to make sure the captain isn't watching, then reaches under his furred cloak to pull out a ragged skin, handing it to me first. I remove the cork and take a swig of the foul grog inside, letting the burn take my mind off other things. What other things? I don't know. My mind is off them!

I wheeze and tear up a little, and hand the skin back to him, nodding approval before I look back out over the snow. The only actual dirt visible in this graveyard is the sad little road we keep dug out from the front of the camp for the couriers to come and for the riders to head out for patrol. Sometimes, all of us here at the camp hate that road more than we hate the Scourge, because it's where all our contradictory orders come from.
Oh! While Nerosh is going cross-eyed from grog, let me tell you a little something about this camp. We were set up here not long after a victory over a local pack of Magnataur and their kobold friends. We're on a small hill, the thirty of us, overlooking some of the Scourge digging operations, the ones they get their dragon bones from. We were set up by a joint order from Overlord Agmar and Saurfang the Younger, and so we take orders from both of them. Here's the problem: they're both of equal rank, and they each send us different, contradictory orders. How do we cope? Well, I have to give it to the captain on this one, he came up with the perfect answer.

“The solution is simple; we do nothing,” he said.

“Nothing?” all of us asked.

“Nothing. One set of orders very specifically directs us to attack the Alliance outpost east of us, while the other suggests we establish cooperation with them. To fulfill one would be a direct violation of the other, so we do neither.”

Instead, we return the couriers that come with a message that politely informs both leaders that we have seen Scourge movements in the area and are surveying them. Survey duty really amounts to sending the worg riders for a joy ride around the hill and staring out from the walls, though to be fair, the Scourge certainly do move from time to time. It is certainly something you could say that they do.

“Watch duty, huh?” a deep, rough Tauren voice asks from below. Huun, our resident healer, waves at us and approaches. It's a relief that he's coming, because as nice as he tries to be, Nerosh is not a dazzling conversationalist by any means, and Huun is a good deal brighter.

“Seeing anything interesting?” he asks when he reaches us. Truth be told, I am not a diligent scout. I've taken my eyes off the endless white carpet, and try my best to mask my relieved surprise when I focus upon it again and find it exactly the damn same as before. I scan the horizon for something to kill time over, and find a familiar-looking creature not too far north, shambling around near a huge boulder.

“Hazi's at work again,” I say, pointing at the thing.

“Still? Poor bastard,” Huun grumbles.

Hazi, you see, used to be our engineer. He was quite a Troll, he was. Diligent, even-handed, thoughtful, deliberate, precise and sympathetic. In short, he was all the things the rest of us aren't. That was before we put the finishing touches on the camp's defenses about five weeks back. The actual planned layout of the camp calls for some additional walls and posts out from the base of the hill where the boulders provide good defense points. Hazi, being the hard worker he was and is, goes out early in the morning to take some measurements, make a few charts, and near as we can figure, a lone ghoul gets him, he kills it, but he's blighted. So, now he's a dead Troll engineer, and having a hard time letting go of the engineer part. He's presently looking up and down the boulder, scratching at his ragged little chart paper, then shambling over to the next boulder. He gets into it, he does, feeling the boulders with his rotten hands, trying to figure out how sturdy, how dense it is.

Nerosh and Huun and I watch him do this every day. It's relaxing in a strange way. He's gone, but not entirely. I think to myself that if he can carry on in death, Hazi will always be there to give us a little bit of peace and predictability in the face of this war. Yeah, whatever you may have thought, most of us soldiers would sooner be bored than dying in glorious battle. Most of us. I hear the jarring sounds of armored mounts; three worgs approaching on the road. The one at point looks suspiciously like my trusty Kranok! Atop his back, what looks like titanium statuary sits with a power and tension that's oppressive to look at.

“Is that the new lieutenant or a monument?” Huun asks, looking at that metal-covered monster. As the three worgs and their riders come further up the hill, the captain barks at us from below.

“You three, if you're not doing anything useful, open the gates for them. If you are doing something useful, shut up, because you're lying, and open the gates for them!”

We three exchange glances and head down, unbarring the gate and drawing it back, the riders barreling on through right away. As they dismount, the leader makes straight for me, worg in tow. His stride is powerful, his black-and-gray armor brutal and mighty, vastly more impressive than the captain's. A vicious axe, about as big as me, hangs on his back. This orcish colossus of steel descends upon me and hands me his worg's reins without a word, turning to the captain.

The mastery of it all! The aura of power and assurance! And is he a mind-reader? How did he know I was the worg stabler? His two comrades, a pair of Forsaken clad just as royally, pass their worgs off to Nerosh and Huun, then turn to follow their friends. Well, that's one out of three. Not bad! We take the worgs to the stables cautiously, slowly, as the lieutenant speaks to the Captain with urgency and a mighty voice. What about, we do not know, but surely, it is something heroic.

When we get to the stables and have found room for these three regal-looking hounds, I nearly spit up in my own mouth.

“Did you see that?” I shout. Huun and Nerosh look surprised, and they step back from me. “He and his worg and his friends there were wearing enough Titanium to pay off an entire Goblin regiment for a year!”

“Hah, jealous 'cause you've gotta wear leather and swing a cobalt axe like the rest of us?” Nerosh tries to joke after he thinks I've calmed down, and he nudges me in the ribs with an elbow. This is a terrible mistake, and I shove him away and storm out of the stables. I am mad as the Nether and I'm not going to take any more of this hero nonsense. I'm going to march right over to that lieutenant and suddenly Huun's strong hand has gripped my shoulder and locked me in place.

“Nuh-uh. None of that,” he says, turning me to face him.

“When you are a serf in my grand fiefdung, you will rue the day you interfered!” I snarl, well beyond being cogent.

“Right. So, what's got you all up in arms?” he asks.

“Heroes,” I tell him, without even waiting for him to finish.

“Heroes? What does that mean?”

“The ones who think we should kiss their hides for cleaning up the messes they make. The ones who always have to change things. Ones like our new friends.”

“Gurk, I think you're taking this a lit—”

I shake my head and sigh, looking at the lieutenant and his aides talking with Captain Siras, and even he seems to be irritated by this glorious champion, though he likely does a better job hiding it. Other soldiers from the camp are walking away from their duties to gather around the new lieutenant and fawn over him, and I really just want to hold my familiar shovel again.




The Second Part: Crutch


I have devised a new rule which I am intent on circulating amongst the fine soldiers of our nameless post, which reads as follows: Anyone whose armor would sell for more in a Gadgetzan market than your mother would ransom your life for is an irredeemable beast and should be shunned as a leper, yea, as a leper gnome!

Resolved to share this bold new moral construct as quickly and powerfully as possible with my comrades, I move with purpose to make use of our base's highly sophisticated intelligence services and promptly nail the parchment onto the inside of the lone outhouse's door. It is nailed directly over my previous crucial pamphlet expounding on the depravity of people whose names feature three or more incidences of the letters 'k', 'x', 'y' and 'z', and partially blocks the sheaf containing my unfinished novel, The Rain Forest, a scandalous tell-all about the quality of meat storage in our camp. Such is the new rule's urgency. As I nail it into the door, I think ahead to the future when the hero, having grown full of glory and enemy blood, rushes to the outhouse gallantly—heroes use the bathroom, right?—and upon entry, finds himself confronted with my crushing prose.

I wonder: in what feeble words will he grovel to be spared the wrath of this scribe's righteous quill?

“Hail, brother!” a mighty voice and strong, scarred face greets me the moment I turn from my work, and my body, compelled more by the gravity of my journalism than pure, concentrated fright, jumps backwards into the door and catches itself upright against the outhouse. I shake my head and attempt a more appropriate greeting.

“I didn't hear you coming,” I say in the most cordial manner possible, which really still sounds more like “Oh, hello there, I was just posting something sardonically defamatory of your person in the outhouse. What? Why no, I did not want you to be physically present for this, as in a fight outside the arena of writing, I find myself more in need of the aforementioned outhouse! This is actually my perfect nightmare, thank you for asking.”

For a moment, there is silence, and I begin to wonder if I said that entire part out loud. When he extends a gauntleted hand to me, I am somewhat stunned, half in relief, half by the audacity he displays by trying to bypass my thoughtless hatred for him.

“My name is Targash Blackaxe,” he says, nodding solemnly. “I want you to know that I will defend this place with my life. You can trust me, brother.” The promise is delivered with such assurance and calm that I begin to wonder if all that plating is meant to keep him aground despite the tendency of hot air to rise. I hide my hands behind my back subtly and begin to rack my brain for excuses not to take that unnerving Titanium hand. “My hands are soaked with ink from writing today” or “My hands are unsavory from working the worg stables” sound good, but I fail to bridge the gap and out comes:

“My hands are soaked with worg ink.” Rumble, rumble, rumble CRACK, rumble, CRACK, CRACK, rumble, rumble. That is the sound of this conversation going downhill and hitting a few sharp rocks along the way. I smoothly do an about face-into-the-outhouse-door, briefly consider the merits of my new edict when read from half an inch away, and stumble towards the stables, leaving a thankfully confused Targash Blackaxe to contemplate what had just happened.

When I get into the stables, I pick up my shovel and just...I go after it. In the back of my mind, I see Wyrmrest Temple collapsing as the dragons within go mad, ripping it apart, attacking each other. They are touched by my fury, and they shall not be the last. I grip the shovel tightly for a long time, and when my blind rush finally ends, I find my palms raw, marred by splinters.

Something about the hero type is just profoundly awful. When my human tutor back in Arathi would have me transcribe human folk tales, I would sometimes muster the nerve to ask him what was so great about the heroes in them. Why was putting the fate of an entire nation in one man's hands a good thing? He told me:
“Imagine you are carrying a very heavy stack of books, so heavy, in fact, that you will not be able to make it to the shelf where you need to put them. A hero is the man who comes along and carries the books the rest of the way for you.”

I think a more fitting analogy is that the hero is someone who comes up to you while you're carrying the books, breaks your knees and elbows, takes the books, and then everyone cheers for him. You could have carried those books. You may have dropped them here and there, sure, but you'd pick them back up and by the end you'd be a little stronger. Instead, the hero comes in and now every time you want the books carried, you have to rely on him because you're some sort of crippled librarian.

I pluck the splinters out of my hand, set the shovel back up against one of the pens and crack open the stable door to peek out at the sky. The sun's beginning to set, and the clouds gathering overhead are a dark blue-gray, which means Hazi will be up on the boulders now, assessing the surfaces that will serve as the watch-towers' foundation, and I can't miss that, of course. I sigh and shake out the last bits of tension, then make my way back up to the balcony seating for tonight's show.

When I get up onto the palisade planks with Huun and Nerosh, we turn to watch the pre-show entertainment. Lighting the torches around the camp is a Troll woman we call 'Pyro'—in large part because we can't remember her real name, but also because of fire, vis a vis her abnormal enjoyment of it. Supposedly, she's part of the fifteen-man cavalry detachment here, but she's always 'on sick-leave', which seems odd given that she never shows any symptoms, but Huun's our healer and he always deems her 'unfit for patrol'.

“Why is she off anyway?” I ask him.

“Because this is a once-a-day thing. Doesn't have the energy for it if she rides,” he says, pointing to her as she makes the rounds, stopping at one of the large, pitch-covered torches, rearing back and slashing at the thing with her own, smaller torch. She grips it firmly in both hands, has an expression as grave as a channeling necromancer. Half the time the damn torch doesn't even catch. Eventually though, she gets the job done. We clap, toss copper coins to her, and get ready for the main event.

The camp's torches and the waning twilight illuminate the Blight just enough for us to see Hazi emerging from behind the largest boulder, where he rests. The one time we went out to see what he actually does back there, his rotten throat was trying its hardest to snore, and his ragged, damp chart paper was draped over his face. He knew we were there, but he insisted on taking his mid-day nap even though he's dead.

We love Hazi. We love to watch him. As he begins to scramble up the first of his stops, he treats us to something new and exciting. How will he arrange the four rocks that mark the bases of the watchtower's legs? Will the blue rock be at the front left? What is the fate of the highly cherished black shiny rock? For a brief while after Hazi was first turned, I would take bets on this sort of thing, and the whole camp was in on it, even the Captain. A few more conservative voices insisted we were sick, so the high-stakes, fast-paced world of Hazi-Rocks went just as dead as its bold pioneer, but without the continued movement. Still, watching him work, Huun and Nerosh and I laugh and smile and call to him. Sometimes, he turns and stares at us with his unseeing eyes. I remember the best moment of my childhood, when my owner took leave from Arathi to travel to Lordaeron, and took me along to a play where he shared a balcony with some minor lords.

Watching Hazi work tops all of that.

“What do you see, comrades?” Targash interrupts, sidling up to the wall alongside me. I clamp my lips shut, but Huun and Nerosh keep chuckling.

“Hazi, our resident engineer-turned-showman! He'll still be working well into the night, if you want to watch with us.”

“That Troll...he has the signs of undeath!” the lieutenant says with visible shock.

“Oh, yeah, ghoul got him a while back. Done this every day since,” Nerosh says, and as I look to see the heroic motive working itself out across Targash's face, I reach past Huun to grab my friend's worg-tail and tug it violently, damning it for compelling its victim to speak.

“For the honor of this valiant member of the Horde, I shall grant him rest. No one deserves the curse of undeath.”

I'm too busy playing out what's to come in my head to actually do anything to prevent it, and the hero flings himself adroitly over the wall, landing with a thud. He pulls his axe from its leather sling across his back. He walks with powerful determination towards Hazi, who takes notice of him when he shouts.

“Once-noble Troll! Brother in the Horde! I shall grant you release!” he says. Hazi just looks at him with as much confusion as a dead, half-rotten face can express, and then turns with what seems like a pleading expression up to me. It's too dark to see though, maybe he didn't really just...he couldn't have, being dead and all. The lieutenant draws near and raises his axe.

“He's dead already!” I want to say. “Honor doesn't matter to him anymore, just let him be!” I want to say. “You are a raging idiot and I hope your children are born on fire! Also, do not re-kill our harmless friend!”

But I don't say anything, and the axe comes down and splits Hazi in half. This isn't right. This is not how things should look from my balcony seat.

He walks back, triumphant, of course. Huun and Nerosh are silent enough for me to hear my stomach telling me in its curious bubble-based speech that it is time for dinner. I can't help but laugh a little, seeing what just happened, and my response is to be...hungry? In the time it is taking our hero to get back to the camp, I am convincing myself that after a snack and a brief intermission, I will return to find Hazi as he was.

Somehow, Huun and Nerosh manage to get me moving down the ramp and towards the middle of our camp, where everyone is gathering around the fire pit for some of our chef's sinister gruel. No sooner do I find myself repulsed by its odor—perhaps a higher dose of bile than usual? Maybe he got really creative and threw in some Harpy spinal fluid—than I am suddenly okay again. I see our heroic friend, looking reflective and dutiful, and I am alive.

“So, I don't know how it's done at Agmar's Hammer anymore, but we tend to pass the time at dinner with stories,” the captain starts, biting his lip for a moment as he carefully considers if he really wants to open the little box of horrors, “and since you three are new here, one of you should be the first storyteller tonight.” The captain is not my favorite person in the world, but I can sympathize with the desire for death by gruel that he must be feeling.

The lieutenant makes a note to appear as if coming out of deep, regretful reflection. His unwavering expression at once tells us, his audience, that he will carry the scar on his heart his whole life, but that he also knows it was necessary, and will carry on. He is a method actor.

“Very well then...hmm...there was once a mighty hero of the Orcish people, a bold adventurer whose heart belonged to all the world, and who was dedicated wholly to honor. As a child, he had great strength and was stronger than even the chieftan of his clan. When his people were beset by ravenous demons, the hero charged into battle and—”
“Single-handedly destroyed them all with lightning from his eyes?” I cut in, and the cut is deep, precise. He is silenced for a moment, and more than a few eyes look at me. Huun, sitting next to me, pats my shoulder gently.

“—rallied his people together, and united they drove them back. They lived in prosperity for many years, but the hero was not content to stay in his home for his whole life. He struck out for a distant land in search of greater honor—”

“Fame, you mean.” Huun's pat withdraws and turns into a nervous sideways glance, and I see the captain across from me, his cautioning look seemingly half-hearted even in the firelight. Targash lowers his head for a moment, clearly unused to someone not being captivated by him, and continues.

“—and hears the call of war to defend the world against a force as dark as death itself—”

“So he goes to a magical winter land where he turns everyone into a crippled librarian and then goes to a hole and kills their engineer to make him feel better and now we're never going to finish those outer defenses, you moron!” I spit. I am losing control of my mouth entirely and it is about time someone hear it, so I let it happen. “I mean, have you seen the designs he drew up? None of us have, because zombies can't draw, but I'm sure they were really good in his head, and now we'll never know!” Oh yes, that's perfect. It really articulates my concerns. It is so profound, in fact—not embarrassing—that I throw my bowl of gruel to the ground for emphasis. I stare at it for a minute, and while some may in retrospect say it looked like I was doing so with awkward uncertainty, it was raw intensity. Let me tell you here and now that I am infusing into this bowl a piece of the beast within, which will resonate with Targash threateningly when I walk away.

To my surprise, it is the captain who comes after me. I'm expecting another drawn out speech about the things I share with worg waste, but he just chuckles a little. I've never heard him chuckle.

“They sent him here to compensate for the fact that they can't tax us,” he says.

“...what?” I am still too woozy from my furor to grasp that.

“I'm saying that he's like a tax, meaning, a persistent nui—you know, nevermind. The point is, I know he's a pain. Think I enjoyed his three hour speech on honor and dignity? I don't like his type much either. Never been much for admiring suicidal idiots, but, we're stuck with him. Those are our orders.”

“What can we do about him?” I mumble.

“The same thing we do with all of our orders. Nothing. Agmar says to put him in charge. Saurfang says to keep him on a tight leash. So...”
“Nothing.”

Silence, and then...

“What was that part about a crippled librarian?”

It felt good to laugh.

I go to sleep not long after, feeling good about the derision I share with the captain for the hero. My condescending euphoria, however, does not mix pleasantly with what little gruel I did have, so I dream. I dream that I went out into the snow in the morning, and Hazi was back up in one piece, on his feet and able to talk! Still a ghoulish shape, mind you, but, he was really still our showman! He splits apart again, then puts himself back together and strikes a pose.

“Got ya! Now, for my next trick, I will remove the stick from your backside while keeping your spine intact!”

“What does that mean, eh Hazi?”

He never answers. I may be a scribe, but this life is not some fairy-tale. I am not the next great dream-seer. I wake up, and immediately refuse to let anything get to me today. It is time to shovel. Without Hazi, I can get my shoveling done earlier. I am a good, overqualified soldier who will one day receive his due. I do not look behind. I look ahead, to the glorious future, to my fiefdung.


The Third Part: Axe


The Scourge horn sounds early in the day, and it's not long before all thirty-three of us are lined up on the walls, looking North, bows on hand. From the horizon comes a quaking mass of flesh and bone, ghouls and abominations as far as the eye can see. There is no discernible reason why today of all days they should come in force to slaughter us, impale our corpses on twisted spikes and then use our fluids as the base for some sort of horrible new drink, the Gurk Orlak flavor of which would undoubtedly be the most popular. Unless...? I pause to consider if it is Tuesday. I have heard on occasion that that is the sort of thing people of the Scourged-persuasion like to do on Tuesdays.

Then, suddenly, it dawns on me. Yesterday, the lieutenant chopped Hazi. What if...what if Hazi wasn't trying to finish the defenses, but was really checking to make sure that he didn't build them before he was turned? But then why take weeks to...he was being very sure that he didn't build those defenses, so that his new Scourge allies could have absolute certainty in their attack plans. Without him, they must act on the information they have, but they are ready. Yes, that must be it!

Hazi, you bastard.

But seriously, I'm standing here on the wall wondering how my best friend in the whole world, the charming Targash, is keeping so cool when this army is going to come and open up this tiny camp like you'd open up a blemish to drain the puss from it. You know, the kind you get on your face when you're young, or on your back when you're sweating and wearing something that straps over your shoulders? I have to believe that the Scourge know that's how this is going to happen, too.

Some necromancer is undoubtedly nudging another necromancer and saying “Hey, we're going to open up that tiny camp like you'd open up a blemish to drain the puss from it.”

“Like the kind you get on your face when you're young?”

“Yes, or the kind you get on your back when you're sweating and wearing something that straps over your shoulder.”

“Oh, haha, yes, I can relate to this analogy because it is a universal concept which we Scourge share with living things.”

“Haha, indeed!”

Oh ancestors, I'm going to die. We are all going to die. Agmar doomed us by sending us a hero instead of more no-names like us. He will single-handedly crush the army, but not after every last one of us has been torn apart to make his victory costly. This means that I, being the naysayer in this hero's story, will die first, and in the most brutally visible way! Oh damnable literary cliché! You are a cruel master!

It starts and I have to stop myself from running my mouth to try and put this whole thing at a distance from me, because the ghouls are pretty quickly closing the real distance between them and the hill. We all fire at them, our arrows actually obeying their constraints. The wind knocks some shots off course, some of the others are just badly made, imbalanced, and go flying wide. Only Targash finds a target for every shot, and somehow, don't ask me how this works, certain arrows hit two or three Scourge at once.

It doesn't matter though. He doesn't matter. They start scrambling up the hill and we start to drop our bows and come down from the walls to ready a last stand at the barracks. Targash stays, readying more shots with stoic determination, and Nerosh is still up there with him, watching him, imitating him!

“Nerosh! Get down from there, you damned idiot!” I shout, but he doesn't hear me. There's some shouting from the other side of the wall, and next thing I know, Targash is alone up there, because Nerosh is crashing down at me. I'm too scared to catch him like I should. He hits the hard, frozen dirt with a loud thump, and I drag him until Huun notices and picks him up. We run for the barracks. I have never run this fast in my life. Nothing has ever smelled so bad as Nerosh's body does right now. Maybe the chef's gruel. I try to remember that one to tell him when we get to the barracks. I can't remember anything. What's going on? There goes Targash. Wow, he's sprinting. Scourge are breaking down the walls.

We get into the barracks and bar the front door. The barracks is the only structure in the camp made with any stone and metal. It will hold just long enough for me to brutally satirize this situation, which will win the day for us. The Scourge will cower before the dry wit that I marshal in my defense. I am defenseless, and the whole stick-and-spine thing from the dream makes sense now.

While Targash is barking at everyone about honor and glory, Huun is laying Nerosh down and I'm kneeling next to him. God, he's even uglier than before. Somehow, a bolt of necrotic energy did what I thought impossible. The skin over his stomach and ribs is rotting away, and it's spreading. His face has lost color entirely and is contorted in pain. I try so hard to remember the joke I had.

“Hey, Nerosh,” I say, trying to look sly because it's the first and only thing I know how to do.

“Y...yeah?” he asks, expectantly, trying to smile.

“You uh...yeah, you smell like...hey...now I know what the chef's gruel is made of.” I don't know how to do anything.

“That's harsh...” he rasps out. His throat's starting to go. “I'm gonna be—” There it goes.

“Okay,” Huun says with a slow nod. The last bit of Nerosh's neck strength goes into nodding, but Huun knows and I know and he knows that it's a straight lie, and it's all very abruptly the last thing he knows at all, because he just dies very unceremoniously despite all the courage he showed right at the end, he just dies and it's every bit as ugly as anyone else dying, and in that moment I know for sure that I don't want any part of this, I just want to live, oh ancestors I just want to live for all my little life is worth, I'd rather have it than nothing.

As soon as I rise, Huun knows, and I know that he's going to stay, because he's stupid, and because he wants this. It occurs to me as I start to run for the hatch that leads down into the hill and out onto the southern side that I don't even know why he wants this, why he joined this war, or why Nerosh did. We were never brothers in duty or glory or anything, just soldiers, just nameless soldiers and I am nameless but destined to live as I fling open the hatch and race down that dark tunnel. I can hear what sounds like Targash roaring as I descend, but it doesn't matter. Not he nor the Scourge nor honor can stop me from living now.

I reach the end of the tunnel and I run for my life. If this really is one hero's fairytale, than I've actually saved them all! Back at the barracks, right now, the following scene plays out: the Scourge forces relentlessly besiege the barracks until finally managing to smash down the door, whereupon their lead necromancer steps forward, currents of shadow ringing his fingers.

“FOOLISH MORTALS! YOU THOUGHT TO DEFY THE MIGHT OF...uh...hm. Where's that guy? The naysaying one? Because, you know, we have this sort of...narrative obligation, really, to kill him before we can kill any of the rest of you.”

“He's long gone,” Huun is saying, and Nerosh, who was actually just pretending to be dead but can't actually be because I'm not yet, nods. The necromancer bites his lip, scratches his chin, maybe sighs as he removes his sinister cow-skull hat and runs his fingers through his hair.

“Um, all right. Well, is he coming back? Is there a better time to do this?”

“Nah, he's pretty much gone.”

“Aahhhhhh, okay, well, that's a problem. We really need to kill a naysayer first. Principles, you know. Do any of you say nay?”

“Well, sometimes I say 'neigh' when I'm pretending I'm the prettiest pony. I've done that before, secretly” Siras will say, revealing to all a dark proclivity which I have known about for a long time.

“Yeah, that's not really going to cut it. Look, let's just call it quits for now. Let's see if we can get some nay said and come back to this later. See ya.”

But in my mind, their gratitude is certainly not expressed by Targash descending on me in a snarling rage with bleeding wounds all over he and his worg as is presently happening. Did that idiot actually charge through the Scourge to come after me just so he could get his worg and ride it? He did!

“COWARD!” he bellows at me with the fury of a champion scorned. “I will slay you and leave you for the Scourge for this dishonor!” It has what I can assume is the desired effect. I stumble and fall onto my back. I am still going to die. This hero killed me and killed us all. I crawl backwards as his worg closes in on me and he leaps from its back towards me, a stunning move for posterity. After he finishes his work here, the seated-worg-leap-into-a-bloody-murder maneuver will end up in the songs.

~How beautifully, how gracefully he flies (Fliiiiies)
Now comes the part where Gurk dies (Diiiiiies)
Targash's mighty axe in the traitor's head (Mighty aaaaaaaxe!)
“Blargh, I am a coward and now am also dead!” (Dead indeeeeed!)

Heroically, he barrels down on me, gore-covered Titanium armor flashing. With legendary prowess, he hefts his great axe on high and brings it crashing down on my prone form, but I, being the cowardly fiend I am, roll out of the way, which only allows him to get his axe stuck in the frozen ground very triumphantly. I weakly jump to my feet by the will of my traitor's instincts, and as he struggles in epic idiom to pry his axe from the ground, I smash my closed, dastardly fists into the back of his noble head, which falls and splits itself masterfully against his own axe.

I fall on my hide. I've seen two good orcs, two heroes, die today. Their skin, their muscles, their blood, their bones are the exact same as ours. Their death isn't any better. There's no added nobility to it. More people will cry at their funerals, but they will still be dead, and that's that. Their honor does not continue to mean anything.

“Oh, I'm sorry, it's just...” the Orcish maiden sniffs as she wipes a tear from her eye. “Targash was just so honorable!”

“...uh, lady, you going to buy this pineapple or not?”

The honored dead cannot savor the succulent pineapples. The honored dead cannot rule a fiefdung! ...The honored dead are my friends. The honored dead...I may have to think about the honored dead a bit. Oh good, here comes the captain, riding like a madman. He sees me, sees Targash, and just nods slowly as he dismounts next to me and picks me up. I'm just going to take a nap and we'll come back to this later.

Oh, and before I forget, for all my prospective serfs...the fiefdung is not going to be in scenic Dragonblight. Maybe back home...in Arathi, where they...know me...