Burning Dead Lands
Yichimet - November 20, 2005
Yichimet's wolf-eyes saw more than his Shu'Halo eyes could
lately. For instance, Snowfeather's hoof was radiating powerfully
amidst the huge gathering of Grim in Brill.
He nuzzled her with his snout, but was afraid to give himself
back over to his physical body. In that form, his mind, like his
eyes, grew clouded. It also helped him avoid the pulling feeling
coming from the corner of Kalimdor. Somehow, being a wolf
lessened the urge to sprint for the dense trees of Ashenvale and
beyond.
When the giant mass of Horde warriors strode off for the
Plaguelands, Yichimet whimpered briefly and pawed after them.
Dirt and rocks stuck in his pads. The land around was dead. That
should mean something to him: dead land, a broken heart,
Earthmother's hands shaking. He shook his head quickly to clear
it.
A celebration. Yes, a celebration: friends given
responsibilities. Fireworks and icestorms and explosions. And
none of it even half what he had seen: the raining hellfire like
leaves from the branches, demons sprouting like fruit and
dropping to the ground, torturing elven bodies first, then
claiming the rest of the world:
Purple legs, golden heart. Ivory carving of the moon becomes the
moon. Under the common light. Break, broken stag, open, opened
rib, blood to smear your face. Eyes have no meaning.
When he woke from the Vision, the black field clearing from his
eyes, Yichimet was alone in the dead land. He sniffed the air,
whimpering again, and bolted after his brothers and sisters.
Something tugged at him from the ground. He felt its pull,
imaging a roiling mass of fire and malice bubbling under the
crust of the earth, and he ran harder, hardly skimming the ground
with his paws.
And ran into a long-ear.
Yichimet called to his friends with his spirit in what sounded to
him like a sane message, but that meant nothing lately. The eyes
of the Kaldorei burnt, consuming fire with fire. Its teeth grew
and shrank, grew and shrank, into picks and fangs and daggers.
First its legs were eight, then twelve, then two again. The
Frostsaber under its groin grew wings, shed its skin, snarled
with a gaping void of a mouth. Laughing, the once-Kaldorei
pointed.
And when Yichimet found his friends, it turned and ran, once
again a blur of purple skin and white fur.
He was confused and lost among so many people. He trembled on
touching the dry, dead road. More explosions of magical power,
steel crunching bone and withered flesh. For mere seconds in the
next hour and a half, Yichimet came into his mind and knew the
people around him: the Butler calling for caution, for a
re-group; Yichimet in his own body again, watching Maledictus'
perfect speech and rage; a gnome breaking in two from the swing
of so many of his comrades' weapons.
The roiling feeling under the ground became too much at last.
Yichimet's spirit cowered with his body. The pull was too much.
His clouded eyes turned to the Tree, to Teldrassil. Words left
his mouth. They may have been words of farewell. He looked at
Snowfeather with tenderness, and then pushed his spirit and body
through the astral channels towards the Calling of his Vision.
The trees grew thicker and thicker the deeper Yichimet went into
the woods. His ghost paws padded silently on the layer of pine
needles and dust covering the ground. He sprinted across
clearings and hid for minutes, shivering and whimpering, under
the cover of trees. Still he was pulled in a direction he ought
to recognize but could not.
Even his wolf-eyes had clouded over. From the ground, flaming
tusks sprouted and bled blue ichor. Curling tendrils reached up
from the tainted mud. Voices whispered, distanceless, piercing
his eardrum with their thundering quiet:
Krast torin sto torin. Taegoson brom dor draek gi toro.
Another:
Grima gar-modi ghael-baros.
More and more voices in crashing waves of soundless sound poured
through the woods, then were gone. He howled at the moon and
growled, first at nothing, then at the tree in front of him.
Slowly it became something else: a face he recognized. A broken
horn, a near-toothless grin. Just as suddenly it was gone.
The dense green trees slowly thinned out to a forest less lively
and much darker. Had he been himself, Yichimet would have
delighted at the game running through the forest. He was thirsty,
and found a sizable creek to drink from, then rested on a mound
for a moment, shivering against the chill air. He found that he
was hungry too, and again sprinting and hiding in the trees he
made his way to the waves that crashed in the distance. After
catching a fish, he settled down with it between his paws and
ripped into it, growling.
Later, while naping near the carcass, a flutter of noise rose in
the tree above him and he looked up. An owl sat in a branch with
something tied to its leg. Somewhere in his mind Yichimet knew
that he should know what this meant, but he could not call it up.
Instead, he barked and scrabbled at the tree, scaring the owl
away. It called from a distance, a low and sad sound. He settled
again, circling in the grass, and napped for some more time.
* * *
He awoke to a nightmare. The sound of a bow being drawn tight and
a whispered command snapped him awake, but when he saw what he
faced he cowered. It could have been nothing but a demon. Its
purple skin grew snakes from its scalp. Its limbs were elongated
past the point where they drug on the ground. It had no eyes,
only gaping holes of light.
An arrow suddenly pierced his leg, and instincively, Yichimet let
go of his spirit form and called a frostshock at the thing. Its
companion was a jumble of wings and light, but he ignored its
screeching swoops and swung his hammer, connecting with the
creatures head. The thing collapsed to the needle canvas and the
screeching demon flew off. Yichimet, terrified, wasted no time
and called his spirit form back into being, fleeing as quickly as
possible. He ran away from the pulling, as much as it hurt him,
and soon was lost in the woods. Ahead, through the trees, he
could see a strange, shining structure and could hear mutterings
in languages he should understand.
He curled up next to a tree and buried his snout in his paws,
whimpering and shivering.