The Fall

[Sadok]

The Fall



((Soundtrack for final few paragraphs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LyEvuULDFs ))

The rider pressed his wolf on at a leisurely pace, taking in the warm, pleasant summer’s evening. The sun was on course to set across a bold red Barrens sky; the hunter’s moon would soon creep from thick cotton-candy wisps of cloud to guard the night. The riding wolf padded its way dutifully through the lemon grass across the plains from Mor’shan Rampart to the Dry Hills. Though the distance was not great, it might as well have been a world away.

Sadok let out a pained grunt as he rode, clutching his chest and easing the riding wolf to a trot. There was another reason for his slow pace tonight. Earlier in the day, the tribe had investigated a corrupted druidic Barrow Den in the thick forests of Ashenvale, and Sadok had been wounded by his own magicks. He had gone long without practice due to a curse laid upon him, and he simply delved too far, too deep and too quick into the font of Nethermancy. His burnt flesh and uneasy breath were a constant reminder of that folly, and why he was being sent back to the hut by Rhonya â€" to rest and relax a time, as Mor’shan was deemed unsafe.

The hut. Nestled at the foot of rising mountains and hidden within a sparse forest of withered acacias, Sadok had made his home now for over five years. He had shared the humble stone-walled hut at first with Vashnarz, and later with Kyrazha. Now it served as a quiet refuge for Rhonya and himself, and moreover for their au pair Sukeenah, whose charge included no fewer than eight small children â€" the oldest Igurg and Skorm, the twins Mirek and Mira, and Altan and Zoran, the shy Vaala and the youngest, Iswer.

Sadok had fathered four, Rhonya had mothered four, and yet they had not produced any cubs of their own â€" though not for lack of trying, Sadok mused wryly to himself. Eight was more than enough, and they would become even more of a handful in the decade or so before the first came of age. Eventually, in perhaps fifteen years or so, Sadok and Rhonya would be left alone. “Then the fun begins,” Sadok chuckled softly to himself. In earnest, Sadok deeply loved all eight cubs, and had grown to accept Rhonya’s own as his charge to raise and cherish himself. He had been a competent High Blade, but the greatest challenge and largest honor of all would be to become a good father.

He had finally arrived at the hut, and he swiftly saw to dismounting and tying his riding wolf up by the hitching post adjoining its eastern wall. He peered thoughtfully across the way to Rhonya’s well-maintained herb garden, the wooden troughs and green plants ordered in their own deliberate fashion. In his vision a year ago, gardening had brought Rhonya much relief and pride â€" and so it was in reality, after he had spent some four weeks constructing the lattices and troughs himself. His heart would swell to see her working in the garden for long easy afternoons, humming contentedly or in quiet satisfaction.

His attention moved to the comely figure sat in the doorway. Another relic of his Vision Quest, Sukeenah had proven an unexpectedly dedicated childminder in the dream life with Rhonya that had been dangled before him â€" that he had resolved to make real. And so it had been that the wandering loa priest of Shadra had found an unlikely calling caring for infants, a duty she upheld without complaint. Even now into the evening she sat there, a stack of cub-sized clothes perched on her lap and a needle and thread between two of her three fingers. She was nimble with the needle in spite of her strangely-shaped hands, and Sadok got the uncanny impression of a spider spinning its web.

Sadok gave her a quiet nod and peered within the cool darkness of the hut to find the eight cubs asleep, curled up in their own furs and cots. Some cuddled one another, others shifted restlessly, but all were already asleep. Sadok shook his head in faint disbelief, peering down to the troll. “They asleep, aye? I don’t know how you do it. That Skorm boy is surly enough, and Igurg be so energetic that it must be a challenge to get either of them abed.” He gave her a playful toothy smirk and folded his arms, eyeing the clothes curiously. It was largely a front, for Sukeenah had her own perceptive way of pricking his pride when he erred, and he mustn’t talk about his earlier accident.

Sukeenah gave a light shrug and continued her work, patching up a miniature shirt with those spiderlike hands. “Just keep them busy enough during the day, it’s easy enough when you know how. They’ll drop like flies eventually.” Flies. The word hung in the air, the pun left unsaid as Sadok instead moved to sit by her awkwardly in the doorway. “No doubt shepherding that flock be tiring work. Yet the sun is soon to set and here you are, still sewing.” He looked up to the sky as if in confirmation, and found that a dark cloud had began setting in, covering that red evening sky. Strange.

“It is a good thing they’re with so many,” she spoke after a while, “they often just entertain each other. I tried teaching them today the difference between herbs and plants we don’t need. They can help Rhonya in her garden.” Sadok’s heart stirred again, a smile coming unbidden to his lips as he pictured Rhonya working with the young amongst the trestles and greenery. “Rhonya would like that, methinks. And I could teach them their letters and numbers. I have limited uses in this world, I may as well make the most of what I can do.” Sadok thought on that for a moment, something else coming to mind.

“I took your advice, when we last spoke. I spoke to Rhonya about my… hiding behind a mask with the tribe. She thinks it’d be good if I showed a more serious side to the tribe, especially since she be getting friendly advice from more than one orc that I don’t deserve her. I led the arrangements for the pyre tonight, I be sure that helped a little.” He grumbled insecurely to himself, gazing out to the ever-thickening dark cloud across the sky. Sukeenah seemed more curious than anything, smirking a little as she spoke: “Good choice. You should just be yourself. She chose you and no-one else, so trust in her more. You orcs and your complicated relationships.”

Sadok grumbled, remembering the fragments of what he knew about trollish couplings. Simpler but cruder and crueler, he surmised. Neither fair nor honourable, especially to females. He wanted to say that, wanted to mention that there was a reason Sukeenah was with ‘complicated’ orcs instead of her own kind. Instead he just motioned to the overcast sky and muttered. “Storm be coming. Let’s get under the roof, I hate rain.” As the pair moved inside, a distant rumbling could be heard someways above the clouds in the darkening sky. Not long after they settled within, their idle conversation was drowned out by a huge crack of lightning, the clouds lighting up bright green. The accompanying thunderclaps were booming and ominous.

Sadok’s eyes went blurry from the light, rubbing his eyes awkwardly. “That’s one fel of a storm out there. I’ve never heard the like.” He twitched as he thought on the word ‘fel’, and turned to Sukeenah, who had already narrowed her eyes in suspicion â€" “Keep them in bed, I don’t like this. It feels wrong. I can sense a kind of…” Everything turned white as the sky lit up again with another flash, this one closer. The cubs began to stir and whimper from the booming sounds, and Sukeenah moved to comfort the babbling children with hushing sounds. “What in loa’s name is going on, Sadok?” she demanded, and Sadok felt compelled to find out.

What once seemed like a distant rumble now sounded like coals crackling in an angry fire, and as Sadok woozily treaded to look outside, his jaw dropped and he let out a kind of throaty wail. The sky had been smothered by the encroaching dark clouds, projecting an unnatural darkness across the Barrens’ plains. Huge flaming rocks streamed from the sky, lit up in sickening green. Hundreds were streaming from the sky, and each time a meteor made impact with the ground, the whole world would flash blinding green and echo with the thundering sound of collision. “Spirits save us all,” Sadok muttered in disbelief.

Sukeenah poked her head out of the doorway, Vaala and Iswer in her arms. Skorm had ran from his bed to cling to Sadok’s leg, gazing out at the falling rocks with an oddly quiet expression. “What are those?” the spider-witch hissed. “It’s the end-times,” Sadok growled in response. “A reign of chaos, a rain of fire. I hoped it’d never come.” Sukeenah snorted indignantly, though the fear was plain in her eyes. She spoke something, but Sadok didn’t hear. A fiery meteor struck the ground close to the hut, and all turned to blinding light and silence before an eardrum-shattering sonic boom echoed out. The force of the collision sent Sadok and Sukeenah to their feet, the cubs cast to the floor like ragdolls. The stone walls of the hut held firm for now. All that could be seen now was an impenetrable black fog of smoke and dust, as burning ash began to fall from the sky, its very touch enough to scald the skin.

As Sadok came too, the first thing he saw were the cubs hiding under their furs from the onslaught, already beginning to cough and choke from the ash. He opened his mouth to cry out, but it was immediately coated in dry burning dust and he rasped painfully. He forced through the pain and began to incant loudly, his voice slow and breathless. A bright violet mana shield expanded outwards from his body to cover the boundaries of the hut, causing the ash to vaporise and clearing the air. “We’re safe, but only for now,” he thought. He was already weak and uncertain with the arcane, and he could feel the drain of maintaining the barrier. His focus and concentration was being depleted, and he heard Sukeenah’s voice faintly before she had to repeat herself louder.

She was busied with wrapping the cubs’ flesh in large pieces of cloth and fur, mummifying them to protect them against the ash. Some were putting up loud protest, but she calmed them by insisting they were “going on an adventure. Just like the tales of your mother and father, alright? Keep these around you.” She saw to tying a length of rope about their waists, and spoke of extracting them to Orgrimmar. Sadok shook his head, his attention half-occupied by keeping the shield up. “If the Legion have come, Orgrimmar ain’t safe. If it’s this bad in the middle of nowhere, imagine how hard the hammer falls in the epicentre.” His eyes went wide as he felt something clawing away at the edges of his barrier, threatening its integrity. Imps.

“Sukeenah,” he exclaimed drily, his throat still sore. “You’ll have to kill them from the outside, magic can’t carry through the shield! Break them before they break us!” Sukeenah snarled in response, grabbing a spiked ritual dagger and stepping outside of the bubble. The violet energies seemed only to reflect back Sadok’s own vision, but he saw bright green flashes before Sukeenah stepped back in, her eyes glowing green and felblood coating her dagger. Her skin was singed here and there and she looked enraged.

Sadok had the cubs close by, bundling the wailing infants tight tho his chest as he worked desperately to uphold his focus. “Stay by me… Mira, Mirek. Everyone… Skorm, you too. Everyorc stay by me, just stay here and you’ll be safe.” Sukeenah spoke of leaving now, but Sadok insisted she check for a viable route of escape before bringing the cubs out into the unknown. She slunk away into the fog, claiming that she knew a path through the hills to the Mor’shan Rampart. “Stay safe,” Sadok told her as she left. He hoped she would return soon, as the shield was already beginning to flicker and falter. He gritted his teeth hard, trying to maintain it at all costs.

But after some minutes she still hadn’t returned, and Sadok began to panic internally. He kept a brave face for the cubs, but they no doubt noticed him beginning to shake, and he frantically wondered what he’d do if Sukeenah had been killed. He heard continuing rumbling and saw the bright flashes through the fog-cloud, and soon he realised almost too late that he’d expended the last of his energy. The floor tasted of salt. He was face down on cold stone and ash was sweeping in. Had he passed out? The cubs were crying and coughing. They were dying. He would die too, if he didn’t do something quick.

Then he heard it whispering to him. Behind a shredded hammock laid the Sceptre of the Shaman-King, that he had been entrusted to keep these past four years. A fabled relic of Clan Redblade, it was said that the Thur-Ruk Oracles had sacrificed part of their own spirits to this weapon, allowing Mruthgor the Shaman-King to become the most powerful Spiritwalker of his age. A conduit to the Spirit Realm’s purest energies, it had fallen into the hands of the Twilight’s Hammer cult and the tribe had tracked it down to a temple of the Old Gods in Silithus. Sadok had long tried to unlock its secrets, but he had come to realise that its powers lay beyond any of the tribe’s spiritualists.

And yet now he was holding it somehow, and a stream of bright blue energies were gushing from its tip to eradicate the ash and purify the air. He felt very hot all of a sudden, and he could feel a strange burning in his eyes. He tried to cast it aside to tend to the cubs, but instead felt himself marching out of the hut and clearing the fog with a sweep of the Sceptre, as if it controlled the winds. His limbs were being animated by something eldritch, and Sadok soon came to realise that he wasn’t using the Sceptre. It was using him.

He trudged forward at the Sceptre’s behest, casting it from side to side to fell lesser demons with bursts of pure energy. He soon came to a deep crater with a deactivated del-portal and the corpse of a felguard. Sukeenah was stood over it, bleeding and burning from the ash â€" and in her sights was a terrifying thirty-foot tall terrorguard, drooling from its twin mouths and lashing a fiery whip. Sadok found himself hefting the Sceptre high, the weapon bathed in pale blue light, and as he swung it into the air, he felt its invisible power ripple outwards. The terrorguard’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, as if the very demonic life were sucked from it, and it stumbled clumsily to the ground. Dead.

Sadok found himself grinning toothily at Sukeenah, but he didn’t feel happy… he just felt very, very hot. Sweat was beginning to bead across his forehead, and he looked onto a bewildered Sukeenah who looked as if she’d seen a ghost. “What in loa’s name are you holding?” she exclaimed, and he answered in a voice that sounded different from his own. What he even said, he did not know. The Sceptre tilted towards her, and the burn-marks covering her skin suddenly began to disappear as if they were never even there. He felt his own eyes gleam with a blue fire, and shuddered to feel the pure energy flowing through his veins. But Sukeenah seemed wary, scowling. “Don’t use that magic on me, please.” The pair entered the hut again to retrieve the cowering cubs. They seemed terrified of Sadok for some reason and ran to the troll’s side, far away from him. “Come on, you lot,” Sukeenah chirped cheerfully, though her heart was no doubt full of dread. “It’s nothing to be afraid of. Follow the brightly-glowing papa, we’re going now. Hold each others’ hands.”

At that moment everything happened at once, and a loud whistling noise came overhead as something large and rocky came hurtling atop the hut’s walls. The ceiling erupted in bright green flame, crimping and collapsing like the houses of cards Sadok had once built to distract himself from Rhonya’s absence. Rock, ash and burning wood plunged to the ground, as the force of impact sent Sukeenah and the cubs hard to the floor. They would be crushed beneath the hut in microseconds, but time seemed to slow for Sadok as he remained perfectly straight and rigid, the powers of the Sceptre animating him like a marionette. He held the weapon high to the roof, and the flaming thatch, ripped leather and crushed stone all froze in mid-air, as if suspended in time. The walls collapsing, the roof imploding, and yet frozen in the air.

The first pieces of airborne debris hung still above Sukeenah’s head as she rose, and saw Sadok stood there with the Sceptre pointed to the destroyed roof, shaking and covered in sweat. His eyes were burning an intense blue and his face was drenched in sweat. He shook violently against the rigid position he had been locked in, and he snarled out in his voice. “Sukeenah. Get them -out- of here. Now.” She looked uncertain, but began ushering the cubs out as Sadok watched on with a sad, brave smile. The sweat was rolling down his face and soaking his clothes now, and he could feel the fire in his eyes steaming. He just tried to concentrate on breathing in and out.

“You can let it go now,” Sukeenah called to him. “Come on, we need to move!” Sadok continued to breath tensely, just stood completely rigid with the Sceptre pointed to the sky. His hands squirmed around the shaft and his feet tried to shift, but he seems frozen too no matter how he tries. As still as a statue, his eyes begin to well up with years and he begins to hyperventilate and panic. “I can’t let go… it won’t let me. Go. Without me.” Sukeenah gave him a look of horror. “I can’t just leave…” she began, but a few of the cubs tugged in terror at the onslaught around them, and she resolved to leave. “Get out of here, Sadok. I don’t care how you do it, just do it. I’ll see you later when I have dropped these off.”

Sadok watched them leave and struggled again, his fingers loosening slightly then tightening around the Sceptre. “Bring help,” he pleaded in a half-wail, but he wasn’t sure if she had heard. He was alone now. He began to shake and sob now, crying pathetically at the top of his lungs but remaining utterly frozen, the ruins of his hut a second away from collapsing atop him. Rhonya’s herb garden outside had burnt to ash, his riding wolf had bolted from the burning hitching post, and his only company now was the distant slumped corpse of the terrorguard, laid in the crater so close to his home.

He felt himself growing numb, and knew that soon not even the power of the Sceptre could keep him conscious. This was it. He reached out desperately through the soul-link he shared with Rhonya, steaming tears in his burning eyes, and tried to choke out a goodbye. It shouldn’t have ended this way. He had wanted to remain by her side forever, his one greatest love â€" his soulmate. But it was over, he’d failed her and now he would pay the ultimate price. “I’m sorry, Rhonya.  I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you I love you I love you iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouâ€"“ His strength at last failed him, and he passes into unconsciousness, the blue flame snuffed from his eyes. He fell to the ground, fingers still tightly wrapped around the Sceptre… and the rest of his hut follows. The burning wood, the heavy leathers and the crumbling stone make a horrifying crunching sound as they smash against the ground.

Sadok is crushed beneath the ruins of the life he worked to build and the future he had planned. All fades to black.

[Sadok]

Two Months Later



"Has it been such a long time since we parted, or does it seem just like yesterday? Have you missed me as much as I've missed you? Has it left a gaping hole that cannot be filled, or have the wounds already healed?

Do you know how much you're still in my thoughts and my heart? When I watch over you, can you see me? When I talk to you, do you hear me? When I reach out and try to touch you, can you feel me?

Do you still think about me, and if you do, does it make you feel happy or sad? Or both? Do you remember the memories we've made, the places we've been, the many nights we've shared, and the struggles we've endured? When you picture me, am I whole and healthy, or have the flames seared my skin and the rubble crushed my body?

Can you recall what you promised me as I lay dying? Did you have to move on and forget it all to be strong and not let the grief break you? Can you remember your final words to me, and are they still as true as when you spoke them?

Do you think I'm finally at peace here, and that my long travels are over and my many worries have been shrugged aside? Do you suppose I spend the long days reminiscing on happier times? Or that I fill them with sport, hunting and the company of ancestors? Do you imagine if one day I'll grow tired of these things? Do you wonder if I'd trade them all for you?

Is any of what lies before me real -- the ground, the grass, the skies? The others I encounter both strange and familiar? Do they see the same plains that I do, or is it all a matter of perspective? Do only the honourable fallen end up here, and am I deserving of their company? Have I been here before? Did I once know the answers to this and more, or was I only ever hoping against hope?

Do you imagine that we'll ever see one another again? And if things can ever be the same as they were? And that if they aren't, if that's such a bad thing? And if they are, will it be forever this time?

Does anything lay beyond these Eternal Plains, when one day even the fallen must lay down their weary heads and wake no more? Will I one day give up waiting for you? Will you give up waiting for me? Have you already?"