Into the Woods

Of fucking course they have translation magic. Why even bother with having them start out without company basic.

"I'm sure you repay us somehow, when you can. My name is Gil, and this is Ireena." Gil answered out loud, "how did you learn to speak our language so quickly?"

"A spell developed by our people." Magelon answered. "We find that it smooths diplomacy greatly."

"I imagine so." Gil said with a smile. "How can we help? I'm afraid we don't have all that much more in the way of tea. We have a bottle of universal antivenom and some food, but we were quite caught off guard."

"I imagine my comrades will be gathering at the highest visible point." Magelon revealed. "That is our typical procedure. From there, we will hopefully be able to see whatever rally point has been selected and proceed accordingly. If you can spare food, I'm certain we will need it."

"Alright, not a completely terrible procedure if everyone knows it…" Ireena allowed, grudgingly.

"Could you go gather up our supplies and fetch Snow?" Gil asked Ireena. "everything set aside for today, but don't dip into our storage. We can only afford to be so generous."

"Fine." Ireena agreed, and started jogging back to the portal.

"I have a limited ability to detect where I am needed." Gil said, keeping his words deliberately vague. "If your people are gathering, I'd like to send my maid along with you with what little excess tea and food we have. If she's in your camp, Ireena and I will be able to find you afterwards. Do you know a woman named Candress?"

"I'm afraid not." Magelon said, shaking his head. "It is not a name for one of the Draenei."

"Your people are called the Draenei?" Gil asked gravely, receiving a nod in return. "Then I regret to inform you that at least one more person not of your kin is somewhere in the area. I'll look into it."

Snow came out with a repurposed plastic laundry basket full of pork and brown bread. She stooped slightly from the weight, which frankly wasn't enough to justify any difficulty. The princess gazed around the woods with open wonder, prompting Gil to do the same. He supposed that the area was quite pretty in its own way, filled as it was with a kind of ambient blue light.

Sometimes he wished that the sights he'd seen would be wiped away more completely. He couldn't remember details, but he knew in his heart that he'd walked through places far more fantastical than this. Visions of alien forests flashed through his memory, of cities lit only by neon, of islands floating through the sky. The memories weren't intact enough to really appreciate, but the shattered fragments were enough to make any kind of natural beauty easy to ignore.

"Snow!" Gil called. "I'm going to need you to go with these people. Help them any way you can, keep Blackpaw with you in case something goes wrong, and if you don't know what to do you can ask this man."

He pointed at Magelon, and the hulking, 7 foot tall blue man offered a reassuring smile. Snow stopped staring at the blue forest long enough to marvel at the horned man before her.

"He can speak to you." Gil explained. "I don't know if anyone else will be able to."

"I'll start sharing your language around once my strength has recovered." Magelon assured him. "The flows of arcane energy upon your world ebb and flow very strongly."

"This isn't my world." Gil corrected him. "I happened to arrive here shortly after whatever happened to you and decided to be a good fellow traveler. I'll have to move on before long."

"Then the Naaru have blessed us with fortune on this day."

"I suppose they must have." Gil agreed, knowing better than to argue theological points with strangers. "Come on Ireena. Let's get moving."

••••••••••

The duo made their way through the woods, following Gil's compass straight towards Candress. The scattered bodies of injured Draenei thinned out substantially after an hour or so of walking, which made sense. The portal had presumably deposited them near the crash site, so any Draenei this far away would have needed to be thrown extremely far.

More disturbingly, they started to stumble across Draenei men and women with their throats cut. Mostly people who seemed to already be heavily injured, but that didn't settle Ireena much.

"I doubt these people were mercy killed." She noted, checking the corpse. "This leg was seriously broken, but I think this woman was able to heal herself. She couldn't walk, but everything indicates that she was stable."

"Any clue who did it?" Gil asked, hopeful.

"No." Ireena sighed. "Whatever else this knight was, she wasn't a tracker."

"That's a shame." Gil sighed. "I need to get one of those."

"It still disturbs me when you speak about people as if they were livestock." Ireena noted, closing the horned woman's eyelids respectfully.

"We are." Gil told her, deadpan. "Your vampire lord probably keeps your people around as a food source. Most worlds are something similar for the gods I serve. Everyone and everything will only continue to be supported so long as we are of interest to them. After, they start to drift away into the darkness, and crumble into nothing."

Ireena shuddered.

"Every time you tell me more, I worry more about you." She admitted. "They sound awful."

"Sure. Doesn't change anything, though." Gil replied breezily, checking his compass. "I need to do my work, and in doing so I keep these worlds alive for a bit longer. I'm ruthless because if I'm not, that usually means I die and so does everyone I know in this life before too long. I need every advantage, because anything less just means this life is wasted. You understand?"

"Maybe." She said, pensive. "I don't like how cavalier you are, though."

"Then tell me when you're upset." Gil said with a shrug. "No reason you can't serve as a conscience. I won't necessarily agree, but I'll try to listen if you say something. By the way, did you see that moth?"

"Wait. What?" Ireena asked, thrown off by the radical shift in subject.

Gil pointed at a huge white moth clinging to a tree. It was easily as large as a German Shepherd, even with its wings folded. It seemed content to snooze for the moment.

"Bugs don't get that big in lower power settings." Gil explained. "And generally they are a lot more dangerous than their tiny equivalents. Keep an eye out, there's a good chance the local wildlife might attack us. I think we might want to get something that can fly; that's really damn useful to have on hand."

"I… guess?" Ireena asked, "why are you talking about that now?"

"Because we've talked about morality enough for now, especially when we might run into something dangerous." Gil chided, "keep an eye out, ok?"

He pulled out his tablet and selected a Beastmaster Sphere for purchase. He casually whipped the white and red ball at the big moth, which unfortunately burst out of the ball pretty easily.

"Huh. Well that practically proves it is worth catching." Gil said, picking up the ball as the moth threw away. "If we have to soften it up to capture one, then it's probably worth the trouble. We can just kill any that attack us, at least for the next hour or so."

"If they need to be weakened, why did you try it?" Ireena demanded, frustrated.

"Hey, having an extra body in the field is always good." He answered, "if I could capture a healthy one, we could put it to work immediately. I don't expect to get through today without a fight."

••••••••••

The duo managed to sneak up on a white haired woman that was crouched over a Draenei man. Ireena almost lunged forward to intervene, but Gil pointed out that the big blue man was already soaked in blood. They'd arrived just slightly too late.

https://postimg.cc/bZK0wxdY

The woman had white hair, and sharp ears. Even by elf standards, those things were long in Gil's estimation. Her eyes were a blazing green that stuck out sharply in contrast to her warm-toned skin. Gil studied her for a few moments and decided that it would be better to risk contact than keep sneaking around. If nothing else, he wanted to know more about the pretty lady.

"Hullo, friend." Gil called. "What's going on here?"

She whipped around, holding up her daggers defensively. One blade still glistened with fresh blood. Her faint pupils ran across Gil and Ireena, eyes narrowed.

"Simply dealing with a Legion incursion, human." She said eventually. "I trust you've heard tell of Lord Archimonde?"

"Not in any great detail, no." Gil said gamely.

"These are Eredar." The elf said, pointing at the corpse. "Nobles of the Burning Legion. I assure you, had this man been given the chance he would have killed all three of us and reveled in the opportunity."

It didn't seem to line up with Gil's experience with the Draenei. That probably meant one of three things. First was that this elf was wrong, and there was some kind of schism. She'd encountered evil Draenei before and assumed the worse. Second was that she was lying, piggybacking off of some kind of information a local human would be aware of to turn him against the Draenei. Third was that the Draenei were sneaky fucks, and he'd left Snow with them as a convenient hostage.

"Damn. Is there anything we can do about that?" He asked. "I'm a simple merchant, traveling with my wife, but I've seen what the Legion is capable of."

Ireena shot him a questioning look. She really needed to get with the program when he was lying if she was going to thrive in this fast paced environment.

The elf looked him over, then sniffed the air. She pursed her lips.

"Yes. I think you should come back with me." She said, "have you encountered any magical phenomena since the crash site? Unusual items?"

"Well we've seen some very strange creatures." Gil said conversationally. "They were a bit like squid, but much less well crafted. Big gnawing teeth."

"That's likely from the ship's radiation." The elf said dismissively. "Dangerous. If you encounter any glowing crystals, be sure to avoid them. Unfortunately, they aren't likely to be of much use."

"Good to know." Gil said, "so, may I have your name, Miss..?"

"Flamewing." She answered. "Zena Flamewing."