The skies had just begun to turn orange from the setting sun and activity at the Frostwolves village was slowing in preparation for dinner and sleep when an old voice jolted Thrall and almost caused him to stumble into a fire pit.
“Thrall. We need to talk.”
Ignoring the looks from his clanmates, Thrall quickly rose up.
“Spirit?” he called out softly.
“Far from it. East. Just outside your village. Meet you there.”
With a sudden sinking feeling in his guts, Thrall began to walk, barely noticing the trail of concerned Frostwolves that followed after him. His mind was more focused on the reasons for his guiding spirit’s return. Has it come to finally judge him and his clan for its past?
If so, how would Thrall reply? For nights he wrestled with formulating a defense, but after learning that his people were invaders with so much blood on their collective hands, after learning of the shameful atrocities that Drek’Thar and the others had silently witnessed if not directly partook in as part of the Horde, Thrall couldn’t figure out a satisfying answer.
Steeling himself to face an angry spirit, either from this world or another, Thrall was completely surprised when he saw instead a human, a boy, waiting outside the village, with a small group of adults behind him in helmets or hooded cloaks. They were all armored to some degree, and all save for the boy were armed with blades and strange looking bows. The evening light cast the group’s stony features in a sinister light, and the Frostwolves behind him cried out in alarm.
“We are not here for a fight,” the boy spoke in a very familiar curt voice, causing Thrall’s jaw to drop.
“You!”
The boy that was not a guiding spirit gave him a glance. “Yes, me.” He then addressed the clan as a whole. “Lower your weapons, or never raise them again.”
Even untranslated, the tone of the message carried its intent through, riling the orcs up. Blades were bared and threats were hurled, but as the first orcs pushed past Thrall, the boy’s eyes lit up in a blue, misty glow.
“Wait! Stop!” Even as Thrall reached out to yank an orc back, the boy raised a hand. The advancing mob fell over each other and cried in surprise when deafening thunder and blinding lightning blasted into the space between them and the boy. Thrall could barely open his eyes to take in the sudden ball lightnings lashing out to vitrify the ground. And then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the lightning storm disappeared, leaving rising columns of fresh smoke and the wails of shocked orcs.
There was utter silence in the mob, and Thrall stared at the stern, still glowing eyes.
“I made sure to not catch anyone in that one. Next orc to take a step towards me, and I’m going to aim for a high score.” Impotent rage bloomed in the Frostwolves around Thrall, but nobody dared challenge the threat.
“Thrall,” the boy suddenly called out. “There are two archers behind you.” The words were deliberate and heavy with implications.
Hurriedly, Thrall turned about and quickly saw the two orcs who were slowly raising their bows.
“Lower your weapons!”
Drek’Thar beat him to it. The crowd parted for the blind shaman as he was led by Palkar to Thrall’s side.
“Humans,” the word was spat out with disgust. “Why are you here?”
“Drek’Thar,” Thrall muttered, “that is the voice that has guided me…”
The shaman stiffened, but his snarl did not waver.
The boy stepped forward, and Thrall noticed the frowns and shifting of concern from those behind him.
“I am King Kyle Daelam of Alterac, here to settle the matter of trespassers and squatters in my lands.”
“This is our home!” an orc shouted back.
“Since when?” Kyle shot back. “It’s not even two decades since you orcs invaded this world.” The boy raised a hand to gesture around him. “Not long enough for anything to be grandfathered in, not anywhere long enough to consider this sacred or ancestral lands.”
Tempers from the Frostwolves were rising, in contrast to the reserved concern on the other end as their young king stood in front.
The young king who now glared down the orcs that loomed over him and jabbed his finger groundwards. “This is, and has been for a damned long time, Alterac soil. And as king of Alterac, as acknowledged by the Alliance, the native people of this world, this is my soil. My realm. And I do not tolerate parasites infesting my kingdom.”
“You-”
Kyle’s glare snapped and focused onto Drek’Thar to cut him off. “Shut it. Unlike you cowards who are happy to hide away from the world, I have more pressing concerns to deal with. I should just raze this whole place and cut my losses, but unlike some humans and a lot of orcs, I’m not a brainless savage.”
The outrage this time was delayed as it took a while for his translated words to be spread throughout the Frostwolves, but for a moment it felt like the whole clan would charge at the king, consequences be damned. Thrall too felt the same affront, but it was tempered by recently gained knowledge about the dark history of his race. A history that Kyle somehow (now that Thrall thought about it) knew about when he guided Thrall here.
And then there’s the pointed fact that the king was standing here instead of just raining lightning on the unsuspecting orcs. Regardless of his hostility, Kyle had come to talk. He’d led Thrall here in the first place.
Eyes still ablaze with blue fire, the boy took a firm step forwards.
“Let me get to the point. Demons have returned to Alterac, and not the piddly ones that you orcs got into bed with.”
That got a reaction from the older orcs, mostly shock and genuine horror, Thrall noted. A glance downwards revealed Drek’Thar tightly clenching his hands.
“Battle lines will be drawn, corruption needs rooting out, and I cannot afford to let this little encampment grow at its own pace and potentially be a vulnerability in my kingdom’s defense.”
Kyle swept a glowing, grim glare across the assembled Frostwolves orcs. “Due to the lack of dark magic practiced here, the Frostwolf clan will have two choices: Bend the knee and accept the jurisdiction of Alteraci law… ”
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There was a soft commotion of shifting stances from behind Kyle as some of his people clearly disapproved of that. For his part, the king’s gaze hardened.
“Or be wiped out. The Frostwolves will either be subjects of Alterac, or fertilizer for its soil. Either way, you will serve the kingdom in some capacity.”
The roar of outrage from the Frostwolves almost drowned out Kyle’s last words, and a few finally had enough of civil courtesy. But Kyle’s voice suddenly rang in Thrall and probably every other orcs’ heads, turning the outrage into a near-panicked alarm. “You have until moonrise to decide. I suggest you think through your decision carefully as a clan.”
As Kyle’s voice lingered as an unsettling echo in Thrall’s head, images forced into his mind. He suddenly saw a barren wasteland, the cracked ground tinted with a reddish hue. The land felt…empty somehow. Dead.
The view suddenly shifted in jarring flickers, threatening Thrall with nausea as he was dragged about and towards a massive rectangular edifice. It was a massive gateway standing in the middle of nowhere, with foreboding hooded figures carved onto the columns, and set on a raised foundation. As Thrall’s vision zoomed closer, the gate grew impossibly bigger, and more details were defined. What he thought were a set of ramps revealed themselves to be steps, and what he thought were mere ornamental torch stands turned out to be massive towers in their own right. What he thought were debris littering the base turned out to be cages that squirmed with movement.
Before he could glean further details, the view flicker-shunted again, now downwards towards the ground. This time the images remained in his mind for long enough for him to register what he was seeing. It was not primitive cobblestone, as he had initially thought, but bones. Nothing but crushed and trampled bones, with skulls of a shape completely foreign to Thrall. The view spun about, confirming the dreadful feeling in Thrall’s gut that the trail of bones stretched out far wider than any road Thrall had ever traveled on, and went from the gate out into the lands beyond.
This was the Path of Glory, the monument to the Horde’s Fel-fed barbarity. Which meant that the gate he was now being forced to draw closer towards was the Dark Portal, the great threshold that connected the orc’s homeworld of Draenor to Azeroth.
The cages were suddenly in full view, and Thrall saw within wretched horned figures in bluish skin and strange facial growths, their arms poking out through the bars in desperate plea for mercy. The prisoners were clearly kept in a dismal state, and Thrall was forced to compare how his own life in chains paled in suffering to these poor souls. His disgust was complete when he noticed small figures held in some of the captives’ arms; their children too had been captured.
And then he saw their uncaring captors who simply stood at a distance: orcs, belligerent and cruel in their features, clad in leathers and crude armor and brutal weapons.
Then the images flickered so fast that they melded into a fluid single reminisce, and Thrall saw the orcs take a slow and deliberate step back, while the prisoners suddenly jolted with terror in their eyes. Their emaciated arms flailed in desperation, some breaking against the bars in the futile attempt to escape. Thrall was forced to watch their agony before they suddenly expired as one. Adult or babe, male or female, they all died with nothing but terror in their eyes.
He saw their last breaths flow out of them, and his vision followed after the coalescing energies that flowed towards the great gate. The lifeforce of tens of thousands of poor souls were dragged out and broken down into fuel to create a tear in space. The malevolent dark green void grew to fill the great gate, and the Dark Portal came to life.
“Invaders.” Kyle’s voice suddenly declared with disgust. “Defilers. Parasites.”
The vision then began to fade, but before he thought it was over, Thrall was snapped back to the Path of Glory, and this time instead of crushed alien bones, he saw orc corpses. He was then facing the cages again, but instead of the blue-skinned prisoner, he saw orcs in equally broken states.
Thrall snapped back to the present with a gasp, and he found he was not the only orc who fell to the ground. A glance to his side showed a trembling Drek’Thar barely held up by an ashen-faced Palkar, and most of the Frostwolves were in anguish or horror.
Kyle’s voice sounded out from across the stunned orcs instead of rattling inside their heads. “And that is not even the most violent fates gleaned from your Horde.” And with that, the boy turned and began to walk back to his retinue.
“Wait!” Thrall called out, and thankfully Kyle stopped to glance over his shoulder. “If...what will become of us if we…” He struggled to find a more diplomatic term to describe potential enslavement, but the boy answered the unfinished question.
“You will be subjects of Alterac,” Kyle said as he turned to fully face Thrall again, locking his gaze onto him. “Granted, with severe limitations, though those may be amended depending on future behavior. Still, laws will have to be followed. Responsibilities and expectations will be demanded.” There was a moment’s pause as Kyle seemed to exhale. “There will be no enslavement, no internment save for the isolation you orcs are already keeping to.”
“You will be subjects,” he repeated. “So long as you prove to hold more than just savagery and hollow honor, you will be entitled to the kingdom’s aid and protections as any law-abiding human, dwarf or gnome might. Right now, however you want to dress up as anything else, you are nothing but Fel-tainted invaders. Bend the knee, and you will be given the chance to earn a better appraisal.”
Kyle then shrugged. “Or just say your last farewells and refuse.” The boy king turned away again and walked away.
Thrall wanted to say more, to ask more questions, but the words couldn’t form. He eventually turned back to Drek’Thar, finding the elder shaman visibly shaken yet still with embers of defiant rage. It was the same with the rest of the Frostwolves. For a moment, Thrall feared that the clan as a whole would break into a charge, that all it took was one orc who decided that they’d rather die than to live under human rule.
“That human whelp has the audacity,” Drek’Thar began, but his outrage quickly deflated into resignation. “But the spirits speak of the powers of Kyle Daelam.” Thrall wasn’t surprised by the declaration, Drek’Thar probably had entreated with the elemental spirits back when the confrontation with Kyle was tense, ready to borrow their power in case a fight broke out.
“What do the spirits say?” he asked the old shaman, and Drek’Thar slowly shook his head.
“That we should fear him. The human has slain many, but his powers have yet to be fully revealed, and what is known is beyond their comprehension.”
Confusion overtook despair as Drek’Thar fixed his milky, sightless eyes onto Thrall. “Yet he has led you back to us.”
“It was his voice that guided me,” Thrall confirmed, equally perplexed and concerned about Kyle’s intentions.
“He led you to us, which means that he has known of our existence for a while. Yet he has left us alone up until now.”
Thrall nodded. “He said that demons have returned to this world, and wants to be certain about us…”
The shaman nodded grimly. “Demons… Whatever schemes he might have originally had for you, for us, we can only speculate. But presently, his intentions are revealed through the choices he has given us.”
To serve or to die…
Could Thrall trust Kyle to be a fair ruler as he claims and not a slaver if the Frostwolves submitted to him?
Would it be better for the clan’s last moments to be that of freedom and defiance despite the futility of it all?
Survival against principles. A chance at a radical new life versus upholding their legacy. As the humans looked on from afar, Thrall, Drek’Thar, and the rest of the Frostwolf clan fell into a debate among themselves. Ultimately, with the clan’s young ones also at stake, the decision was unanimous.
The moon had begun peeking through the mountains when Thrall, Drek’Thar, and some of the older orcs began walking towards Kyle and his entourage. The humans met him about halfway, keeping a distance of more than a spear’s lunge away between the two groups. The boy king regarded them with some curiosity.
“You have an answer?”
Thrall licked his lips before he answered on behalf of the clan. “We do.” He let out a soft sigh before lowering his head. “The Frostwolf clan will…submit to the authority of the king of Alterac.”
The bitter words uttered, Thrall slowly dropped to one knee, and the orcs with him followed suit with heavy reluctance.
Contrary to some expectations, there was no treachery, nor was there any intolerable contempt from the king and his retinue. If anything, the adults behind Kyle were surprised, while Kyle himself showed a flicker of relief.
“Good.” The king’s reply took on the familiar curtness that had guided Thrall through the wilderness for weeks. “I just have to set up something for tonight, and then we can continue discussions tomorrow or something.”
And with that, the Frostwolf clan now answered to the king of Alterac. The proof and reminder of their new allegiance were the giant crystal that hovered idly in the middle of their village, and the gilded but waterless pools with ornamental spires sticking out of them that surrounded the village. Not an orc doubted that there was more to the monuments than met the eye, and they avoided the structures as best as they could.