Power: Big things, small packages.

[Gashuk]

"Power without abuse loses it's charm". - Acolyte of the Black Harvest

Wrapped tightly in linen, linen warded with runes written in dark orcish blood, tucked tightly inside of the Shadowmoon's ritual robes lay two shards of ore. To the blind eye the ore was nothing special. It shone in the light slightly more than usual, but had nothing out of the ordinary about it aesthetically. Yet this ore was certainly nothing to ignore. Even those with barely any affinity to magic could sense the energy emitting from it. It shone in more ways than one and the warded linen helped dim that from outsiders.

Gashuk, through no efforts of his own, had managed to acquire two shards of the ore in a matter of a week. The first had come from Karnna, a pilfering Nag'ogar with enough curiosity to kill a hundred cats. Picked from the Horde caravan that the Clan had been protecting when they were ambushed by the Alliance earlier that week. The second had come from Zouyo Rainclaw; a wandering Pandaren who returned from the deep south unconscious on the back of his Cloud Serpent; poisoned by the Alliance, clutching his shard tightly in his paw. Gashuk had simply been in the right place at the right time.

At first, in fear of the political repercussions, Gashuk had sought out the Chieftain, Wolfking Feraleye, and explained the situation and what he had found. The Chieftain had given him mandate to continue to study the ore and present his findings. Something Gashuk honestly hadn't expected given his current social status. It did dawn on him however that none left in the Clan had the ability to analyse what they had found aside from him, but the trust meant a lot regardless. The energies the ore emitted were not spiritual, they had no ties to any particular element, this was definitely not work for a Shaman. Gashuk, the Pariah, was the best the Clan had.

Almost immediately Gashuk went to work. His nights laying with Rhonya under the stars turned into nights experimenting with the ore into the early hours. He had deduced a few innate properties; firstly, the energy it emitted was definitely arcane in nature. The fear many had given it's location, is that the ore may have been a product of the mountainous sword that pierced Silithus. If it had been, it would have been cosmically fel without doubt. The name was rarely mentioned, but everyone knew who they saw in the sky; Sargeras, and nothing He created would be anything but. Secondly, Gashuk deduced that the ore was a-kin to blood in it's meta-properties. The way it held energy, the way that energy could be manipulated and tapped into. It felt very much like other blood weaving that the Ritualist had done in the past which for something as physical as ore, was an odd thing to attribute towards it.

Yet this wasn't the first time something as solid as stone had turned out to be blood. Rhonya had drawn the comparison to Saronite. An ore found in the reaches of Northrend, an ore that had turned those who mined it insane with crazed whispers. The blood of an Old God.

The comparison was well made; yet Gashuk's concern wasn't that the ore could be blood, but more that if it was, whose blood was it? That had yet to be answered.

Nevertheless, Gashuk continued to pry into the meta-physical nature of the ore, his notes growing ever so messy and disjointed as he got closer and closer to a discovery only to fall flat with pure assumption over any sound conclusion. It was important to get this right. After all, twice now, had the Alliance split blood over it. Twice now, had people he held dear, nearly lost their lives. Yet the closer Gashuk got to an answer, the more personal the quest became.

A long time ago when the Clan was still a Tribe, Gashuk had made a promise to himself. In the wake of the Siege upon Orgrimmar. In the presence of his new-found family, the Red Blades, he had promised to relinquish using Fel Magic, a promise that he found himself unable to keep. Years of dabbling in that Magic had it's toll. Sacrifice, life, fuelled it and Gashuk had made many sacrifices. It was innately corruptive and whilst Gashuk had the willpower to fight against it; his skin, like the rest of his race, had turned green and the Orc was rendered infertile by his continuous flirting with the Fel. Hailing back to his ritualistic roots; the Orc regularly casted his spellcraft with his own blood spilt as the catalyst and that over many years had it's toll. He may not have protruding horns or scaled hide, but Gashuk, was about as disfigured by the Fel as you could be, without falling into it's metamorphosis.

Gashuk decided then that enough was enough; he had first turned to the Spirits. Whilst they may never see eye-to-eye, Gashuk still remained faithful to them deep down. In his eyes they had been the reason he turned to Fel in the first place, perhaps they would be able to help him turn away from it. It worked, for a while, but it became apparent over time that the solution wasn't permanent. One of the consequences of using Fel for so long is that once abandoned, it left a power vacuum within Gashuk's psyche. The Spirits, ever fickle, filled that vacuum like a broken tap; dripping water into a sink that yearned to be filled to the brim. It had potential of course, the Spirits could if they so pleased empower a Shaman into realms of almost god-like nature, but such occurrences were rare and out of the Shaman's immediate control. As a result Gashuk felt de-powered by them. He found himself at the time surrounded by the alternate Shadowmoon Clan of Draenor and felt engulfed by their culture; one so close to his youth, yet so different. The Void was their tool and in time Gashuk learnt to associate that Void with the Spirits; in essence, by using the Void, he fixed the dripping tap and had the water flowing into the sink at a much faster rate. It was the Tribe that taught him how wrong he was by doing so, how close that was to Dark Shamanism and for the ever full of himself Orc, he eventually took their advice to heart and swore never to meddle with the Spirits in such a fashion again.

Then came the Burning Legion. Assaulting Azeroth on a scale never before seen. It was all too easy, and all too required of him, for Gashuk to fall back into his old habits. Fight fire with fire. And he did so, throughout the War since won, that blaze was extingushed; the Legion fell, and once again Gashuk is in a position to fill the power vacuum left behind when he consciously shuns the Magic that made him who he is.

To Gashuk, the shards of ore in front of him didn't just represent power for the Horde or the Alliance; but for himself. It represented freedom. It represented a future for him with Rhonya, a future without the shadow of his past hanging over him. A future without Fel. A big thing, in a very small package, if only he could learn what it really was.

He had enough rest in the Soulstone; it was time to go to work.

[Rhonya]

<3 Loved iiiit! Moar moar!

[Okiba]

This pleases me...!

...mildly...