(2021-02-15) Oranna and the Defias

Details

Author:	Athena
Summary:	Oranna considers the recent concerns with the Defias, and a threatening letter.
Rating:	T for Teen

1.
A loud crash of metal against wood sounded outside Oranna Stormbreaker’s door, followed by a woman’s voice yelling about “moving hallways,” and a young person’s giggle. The first time it had happened, Oranna had bolted out of bed, hand on her gun, and heart pounding like a bird flushed from cover by a wolf’s howl. This time, she simply groaned, and turned over in her bed, taking the pillow with her to shove against her head and muffle the sounds of the people in the inn’s hallways.
Moving around had been a mistake. Can’t Be Found, the enormous snow leopard who had been sleeping soundly on the floor, came immediately alert at Oranna’s stirring.
“Not yet, lass, please,” Oranna begged. For a moment, she thought Befound would listen, but no. An enormous paw pressed down upon the soft mattress with just enough force to show the tiniest hint of claw.
They were still a work in progress, the cat and her hunter. Oranna knew that time would see Befound better settled, and to have faith that her hunter would provide for her, and she’d leave her be until the dwarven hunter was ready. For now simply asking to be fed in this gentle, if insistent, way was the best Oranna could ask for. At least this time the leopard hadn’t urinated on Oranna’s socks. Again.
“A’right, a’right, I’m up.” Oranna sat up with a groan like the Frostriver’s old milch cow when it had died suddenly in the field. She tried to stretch out her neck, but it was as though it had frozen in the night; all it did was make little clicking sounds as she tried to move it side to side. Her lower back threatened to chuck the rest of her body off like a viper shedding its skin.
She gingerly sat up just enough to her hook a finger around a strap of her pack at the end of the bed. She took out the preserved meat she’d saved from last night’s dinner for Befound’s breakfast. With careful movements, she flicked her fingers in the commands for sitting and staying, and waited until Befound did so. Oranna slid the boar meat, a leftover from last night’s dinner, off the bed. Befound snatched it out of the air with an enviable smoothness.
Oranna turned back to her backpack, and sifted through the detritus looking for her own breakfast. Her back twinged a warning, and she cursed herself for a fool for thinking she could keep up with the spry members of Cobalt Company. Muttering about the way youth was wasted on the young, she unwrapped the last of her bread and cheese she’d bought in the human city Stormwind, and winced as her arm muscle protested the movement. She was still sore from fighting a gigantic hog in a pumpkin patch, and running from gnolls intent on pounding in her skull six days before.
It could have been worse, her first time out with the Cobalt Company, but not by much. Nothing she’d done before in her entire 92 years had prepared her for working with a company like this one, with youngsters half her age and with twice her power, trotting across the human lands like they could run for days, polish off a pound of toast and pumpkin butter, and do it again the next day. She’d been caught unready more than once while they’d been out investigating the strange gnolls, and had spent more time running in circles than firing her gun.
It had stirred up memories she’d long since buried, leaving them to gather dust and cobwebs in an untouched corner of her mind.
“Ora, you have to stop turning from the blow! You leave yourself wide open for the next strike. Take it on your shield.”
“I can’t. It hurts even with the shield!”
“A warrior doesn’t flinch from a little pain.”
“Then maybe I don’t want to be a warrior!”
The gasps of her mother and aunt, and the murmurs of her brothers. Everyone looking at her with various degrees of pity and scorn. Her mother steeling herself, her hand chopping through the air with her words, leaving no room for argument.
“That’s ridiculous. All Stormbreakers are warriors!”
Her eyes burning with unspent tears. The sword and shield thrown to the ground.
“Then maybe I’m not a Stormbreaker!”
Oranna had scooped the unruly memories up like skittering spiders, and locked them back in a box inside her mind. It had been one bad day, she told herself. She would learn, and do better.
When she had stumbled her way back to the tram and arrived in Ironforge, Oranna had taken one look at the road leading to the Coldridge tavern and inn that she had been staying at, and promptly marched her way to the inn in Ironforge.
She had once thought that nothing could have made her stay in the dwarven city again. It turned out having your shoes worn through and filled with pumpkin mulch, gnoll blood coating your leathers and sticking to your furs soaked through with your sweat, and a headache roaring like a crag boar in a rut, you found yourself highly motivated to take your rest wherever you were.
She would be lying if she had tried to say she had no regrets signing up. It had been a lot more than she’d bargained for. But, regret was an old friend, a steady, plodding mule that drifted along behind her no matter what she did, and Oranna was used to ignoring it.
Her back, on the other hand, had sworn retribution and volcanic eruptions of fire against her. She’d spent the next two days in bed, moaning in pain, eating through the rest of her jerky, learning how to ignore the drunken stumbling of the inn’s other inhabitants.
Eventually, she had picked herself up, and gone to see about securing herself a companion. After filling out a truly Void cursed amount of paperwork, she had needed to demonstrate that she understood the basics of training animals. It had already been a long day, made longer by then stumbling about for hours in the cold looking for a snow leopard who was neither too young nor too old for her. At the last possible moment, Oranna had spotted Befound.
Now, although she was still sore in places (all of which had been aggravated getting the sleek leopard currently licking her paws), she knew she ought to spend the day ensuring she had enough spare food for Befound in her pack before she went out with the Company again. It would not do for Befound to get peckish around so many new folks.
It was early, the morning dew barely settled on the ground, and the light glinted off the snow in a false dawn, but it was for the best. Her back was still too sore for much hunting. Befound needed the practice with staying put, and watching for Oranna’s hand commands, and a day of fishing would see that time spent well, with fresh fish to use for rewards. With a pace that would have barely outrun a sick ox pulling a wagon filled with iron, Oranna set off to a fishing spot that came highly recommended by the innkeeper.
The morning passed in a pleasant quietude, although the cold did her neck no favors. The fish were plentiful and delightfully oblivious to the dangers of the lures, and Oranna was able to feed Befound her fill, as well as begin preserving a good dozen fish for the future days.
It was late afternoon when she finally arrived back in Ironforge, grateful for the smell of fish guts, salt, and smoke that coated her in a protective layer from the scents of the city. It was hard to be there sometimes, still.
The press of a shoulder against her own, the wall against her back, the sound of other’s panicked breathing all around her, the smell of volcanic gas strangling her. She can’t move. She can’t move. She’s trapped, and they’re all going to die, trapped.
But, when she was tired enough, even her old ghosts lay mostly quiet in her head, fading echoes of faraway birds’ caws, easily ignored.
The inn’s first floor was a small tavern, and lively during the day, but the rooms upstairs were blissfully silent. Befound curled up on the threadbare rug with a contended sigh, and settled in for a nap. Oranna considered doing the same, but she would need to change and bathe first, and she should be using the time to run her errands. Sir Elohad had sent pay in the mail earlier that week, and she intended to use it to buy better shoes. Ones that repelled pumpkin. And blood.
She changed out of her heavy furs, and went back out, heading for the mail boxes kept outside the tavern. She’d never had an official mail box before. On her great-aunt’s farm, the mail had been delivered to the door. Even when she’d moved to her little cabin, it had been too far out of the way to need her own box. She’d shared one with several others who lived in the mountains, situated in Coldridge for the occasional package.
There was still a strange delight to checking her mail, although she expected little. Oranna opened the box, and to her surprise there were two things inside: one small parcel, and a letter.
She opened the parcel first, and tried to hold back touched tears at the contents. The human lass Cressidha had sent along three bags. She had obviously noticed Oranna’s struggle with her pack when they had been out fighting the gnolls and the humans who had controlled them. Oranna had never needed to worry about traveling before, and had thought her backpack large enough for her needs. It hadn’t been, not by a long shot. She caressed the gifts gently, marveling at the tiny precise stitching, and the careful turning of the bags so they would cinch cleanly and securely. She’d wear them with pride.
The letter was small, and thin. Oranna squinted at the name of the person that sent it. Stingers? She frowned in concentration. Which one had that been? The names of all the humans had jumbled up a bit in her memory, but she hadn’t thought anyone had been named Stingers. Was that the human priest that had been in the barracks?
With a swift movement, Oranna opened the envelope. The paper was finely milled, not nobility levels high quality, but not the cheap stuff Oranna used for her journaling. The penmanship suggested an educated hand, and the lettering was careful. This had not been penned in haste.
“Continue with Cobalt Company, and even you won’t be able to escape the oncoming storm. The safe exit is NOW. And the door is rapidly closing. Try to support them, and you’ll end up forgotten alongside your family.”
Oranna stared at the letter until the words became strange slashes of ink staining the paper. A deep chill had settled inside her.
The very first time Oranna had feared for her life she had been only twenty years old.
She had been out harvesting late autumn acorns, and had been letting her mind drift in thought. The light had been dimming, and she’d hardly noticed until it seemed that she blinked and all was shadows around her. Bewildered, she had turned around, looking for a familiar sight, and found the forest she knew transformed into an unfamiliar landscape. She’d stumbled through the trees, her heart thrumming like a thrashing fish upon the ground.
And had come face to face with an Iceclaw Bear.
The bear’s eyes had been a cold, metallic gold in the twilight, and Oranna had gasped in shock.
The bear had looked at her. Oranna, helplessly, had looked back.
There had been a strange surety in her mind that she was going to die, and she came to a place beyond fear into a tranquility of acceptance.
The bear’s nose had twitched and Oranna watched in numb horror as the bear’s fur rippled in preparation of a strike. It took everything she had to simply keep breathing, caught suspended in the spell of the bear’s eyes.
And then had been over.
The bear had huffed, and turned around, and meandered away. Oranna had collapsed shivering to the cold, wet ground, and tried to catch her breath. The fear had drained out of her, leaving a husk behind, and she had wept with relief.
The second time Oranna feared her life, her family had died, and a Horde of orcs had destroyed everything she thought her life would be.
She would be damned to the Void if this “Stingers” laid claim to a third time.
Oranna clenched her jaw around the anger that had rushed through her: a dark, cold river of a season’s first glacial thaw. She closed her eyes, and carefully folded the letter by feel into thirds, and tucked it back away into the envelope, her fingers nimble as a jackrabbit hopping through the brush. When she was done, she took a steadying breath, and opened her eyes.
Her gaze fell on the bags. A jolt rushed through her. Whoever this was, they had set their eyes on Cobalt Company. That was not just Oranna, nor even Sir Elohad, the man who had written back a warm welcome to her awkwardly formal letter of application. Oranna had liked the man instantly upon meeting him, for he seemed a steady sort, with sad eyes and a kind smile. It was clear that he looked upon the Company with hope and pride.
Her mind reeled with instinctive fear—not of Stingers or the Defias Brotherhood, but what it might mean if they began to hurt the Company, of what she stood to lose if they died.
A voice in her head screamed at her to get out, while she still could, to leave now before she started to care. If she cared, and one of the company fell to the Brotherhood…
She shook her head to herself, and picked up one of the bags. It would be perfect for storing the extra shot the gnome Jocoza had gifted her.
It was too late. She already cared. Now, it she would need to see that nothing happened to them.
For it was obvious that Stingers had not just set their scope on Sir Elohad. They had targeted the rest. The bright gnome with the kind eyes who had handed over bags of shot with ease. The human solider who had kindly praised her family’s old gun. The brave dwarven warrior who had taken blow after blow for the others. The human healer with her smiles and careful, gentle hands when she’d healed the wounds the gnolls and pumpkins had left on Oranna. The young human lass who had smiled shyly at Oranna’s jokes, and then gone home to stitch Oranna three bags.
Oranna gritted her teeth. How dare this Stingers threaten them.
She examined the envelope, running her calloused fingers over the material, filing away information. Well made. Commercially made, in fact. A standard issue, and the postage had been paid, not hand delivered. This was premediated in full.
She recognized it for what it really was: fear.
A Snow Leopard does not bare her fangs and growl at her prey. She strikes without warning, leaping from cover, before the prey even knows she’s there. But, when she encounters a pack of wolves, who she knows she might not best in an even fight? There she will cough and rasp and puff up her fur. Be afraid of me, she will say, because I am desperately afraid of you.
Stingers had bared their fangs, and sent out a howl meant to intimidate. But Oranna was no cub, easily frightened by another’s boasting song. And she had no need to growl back. She would see that Stingers understood that her pack was strong.

One Day Later

2.
Oranna limped her way back to the inn, cursing human’s long legs. The day had seemed to last an age, but it had ended well at least. Sir Elohad had gathered them in the slightly barren inn of Westwood, and revealed that the company had indeed been threatened. Some seemed more frightened than others, and Oranna had felt herself bristle on their behalf.
What became clear was that each letter had been as precisely tailored to each recipient as her own had been, and that they had been sent only to those who had been part of the mission to uncover the masterminds behind the strange behavior of the gnolls. They’d been watched, she’d pointed out. Sir Elohad had rightfully countered that the company had made no secret of their endeavors, and had acted in the open. It would not have taken a criminal mastermind to know who had taken down the Collectors.
It explained who had been sent a letter. It had not explained how the writer had known so much about them all. She might have mused longer on that, but Sir Elohad had continued on to ask for assistance. In his own letter, he had not been the only one threatened. It had named a lad he knew, and who had been either pressured or enticed to join the growing band of the Defias Brotherhood. And then they had taunted Sir Elohad.
That had been a mistake.
The Company had readily agreed to help Sir Elohad, and had separated out to search. They had scoured the holdouts of the Defias looking for the boy. Sir Elohad had moved like a wolf relentlessly stalking a bleeding prey. He’d carved a path through the Defias as though they’d been made of nothing more than bewildered squirrels. As soon as one area was cleared, he would simply clench his jaws against the unspent rage, and order them on to the next. And, unsurprisingly, the Company had followed, motivated by either fear of the Brotherhood, or good will towards Sir Elohad.
Oranna had ignored the pain in her thighs, and marched on. She would have helped the lad for no other reason than he deserved a chance to know who he was fighting for, before they’d sunk their fangs so deep in him he couldn’t feel the venom any longer.
Oranna sighted down the scope. An orc, covered in mud and blood, came within her line of sight. She exhaled, and in the space between the exhale and the next inhale, squeezed the trigger. The orc fell. From so far away, she could not hear it, but she saw a nearby orc’s face distort in a tortured scream. The orc rushed to Oranna’s kill, and frantically turned the body over. Oranna swallowed hard, knowing she had not missed.
With another scream, the orc cast his eyes about for the one who had taken the shot. And though they were separated by a distance too far for him to see any more than perhaps the glint of her rifle, it was as though he met her eyes. There was a burning hatred there, a hate that promised a dwarf would die for this death: a life of her comrades for a life of his. An endless roundelay of death encompassed them both.
Yes, she knew all too well how a sense of righteousness could be twisted until all that remained was a need to fight for one’s comrades in arms.
It had been a relief to find the boy, bewildered by the truth of the Defias Brotherhood, but unharmed mentally or physically. Oranna had seen him settled in, and that Sir Elohad’s anger had cooled to something reasonable and genial. The boy would find a better pack with them, to satiate his need for belonging. This time, in a better place for his youthful mind. It had been a good end to the day.
A day that had been filled with evidence that the Defias Brotherhood had poisoned the land, chasing farmers out of their homes like bears crowding out helpless badgers from their dens, and a guard stretched thin to the breaking point trying to contain them. The Brotherhood was spread far and wide, and whoever pulled at their strings had set their eyes on Cobalt Company.
She had stayed calm in the inn, bidding the Company a quick farewell. She had been composed on her walk back to Ironforge, sitting on the tram serenely, one hand on Befound’s head to help the large cat stay unmoving beside her.
She entered the inn at Ironforge, and smiled gently at the innkeeper on her way up the stairs. She fed Befound steadily, settling the big cat on the rug near the bed, promising to brush her later. And she walked out of Ironforge, the chill of night settling around her, with the composure of a thane. She walked to one of the high cliffs that held no danger of avalanche, with well packed snow. She raised her hands to her face, and covered her mouth.
And then she screamed until her breath gave out.
When she finished, she took several deep breaths, waiting for the adrenaline to pass. As her breath steadied, she took out the letter, her hands as still as a murloc waiting in the muddy waters for its prey.
Forgotten alongside her family, it said. Those who knew that her family had perished in the Second War was a scant handful of people. This could only mean that the writer had asked about her, specifically, and kept asking until they’d found someone who had known. They had obliquely referenced the way she’d left Ironforge at the end of the siege. They’d learned where she’d gone, how she’d left. How she had exited when things had become overwhelming before. They had learned every vulnerability she seemed to have.
And then they’d done this over, and over, and over again, learning each and every member of Cobalt Company’s weaknesses and liabilities. They’d threatened their families. Their loved ones. Their lives.
It spoke of money and malice, of someone willing to pay untold amounts of gold and silver simply to maintain power: a power that they had obviously held through fear and intimidation.
But, they had made a critical error. They hadn’t paid attention to what had not been said by those who had known her past; they hadn’t learned who she was now.
With a flick of her wrist, Oranna sent the letter flying off the cliff.
It was a tiny target, moving erratically in the wind, in the near full dark. With a practiced motion, Oranna swung her gun to her arm, sighted, and squeezed the trigger. The letter exploded in a puff of paper confetti, shredded by the bullet. The pieces drifted gently down, and Oranna watched them grimly.
Let them howl and hiss their venomous words and threats.
They had threatened her with an oncoming storm, a storm of fear and rage.
Let it come.
She was a Stormbreaker.