(2021-09-27) Once Upon a Time, on Draenor...
Details
Author: Saaron
Summary: Azizia screams at nature, tries to save a dying person, and runs away from orcs. Your typical day on Draenor!
Rating: M for Mature 17+

Chain: Being Loved

Chain: Bizzy

Chain: Bottles

Chain: Diary of Dane

Chain: Druid Lessons

Chain: ECHO

Chain: Exes and Woes

Chain: Jo's Journal

Chain: Lena's Diary

Chain: Marigold

Chain: Morson

Chain: Northwatch

Chain: Old Magic

Chain: Orastan

Chain: Predators

Chain: Siarenne

Azizia
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The plate shatters as it violently hits the ground, pieces of it spreading around her hooves.
It has been a few weeks, now, that Azizia’s parents have left the camp in Nagrand. With just a few days of interval, both of them left the town in a confused state, never to be seen again.
She tried searching for them, really, really hard, but the elements were of no help. So her pain turned to anger against those spirits who refused to help her times and times again.

The Shaman knows that this situation can’t possibly go on for much longer. After all, she’s running out of things to break.

“Why?” she snarls at any spirit that would hear it. “Why didn’t you save them? I know, I know, you’ve worked with me to slow down their ailment until now, but why didn’t you guide them like Nobundo? I know you’ve got the power to save people like them!”
She waits for an answer as she clenches her fists and holds back tears.
“They weren’t good enough to save, uh?” she adds, almost calmly a slight smile appearing on her face as she utters these words. She knows deep down that it isn’t true. They were the ones rejecting the elements, not the other way around. She saw the way they looked at her, using these orcish practices trying to save them.
That was until their minds were too far gone to realize that it was shamanism that she was using to help them.

The room stays silent for a while as she waits for an answer. She stopped hearing the elements a few days ago already. She has been all alone for all this time, barely talking to the other Broken and Draenei in their camp.

“Stop it with the silent treatment already!” her voice breaks as she presses her clenched fists to the sides of her head, hurting more than the pain she feels inside does.
Azizia lets out a cry, grabbing one of her totems with both her hands, getting ready to destroy it; the physical manifestation of her failed attempts to save those she loved.
But something inside of her stops her from doing so. Instead, she grabs her bag with all the other totems and storms out of her home, out of the camp. She wanders aimlessly, like a Broken joining the Lost Ones. Her mind is racing with fury, hatred, and fear for the future. It’s only after walking for a while in the wilderness that a drizzle wakes her up from her raging thoughts. She’s still holding her Water Totem in her hands.
The Draenei sits down on the bank of a lake she reached on her hike and observes its waves. She closes her eyes, listening to the sounds of nature, trying to feel the spirits around her. She hopes to hear their reassuring voices, to have them explain why her parents couldn’t keep their sanity, why did they have to turn into Lost Ones and leave. As if being Broken wasn’t enough.

Still, no voice reaches her mind. She comes to the conclusion that her fits of anger over the past few weeks might have done more harm than good to her connection with the elements of Draenor. She wipes away tears in her eyes, but keeps them closed and whispers.
“Please, tell me, why couldn’t I save them? Why wasn’t I enough?”
The rain intensifies quickly and the wind rises. Maybe this is her answer. This freezing, heavy rain is nature telling her that she’s too weak, too insignificant. But she won’t budge. She stays put, sitting under the rain, her eyes closed. The elements will acknowledge her, no matter what. If it is by making the water rise and dragging her to the depth of the lake or by making fire rain from the sky, so be it, but until then she will keep asking her questions, again and again, and again until she gets a clear answer. Any kind of clear answer.

The precipitations get even denser and the wind turns deafening. Still, Azizia is immobile like a statue, harassing nature with her questions about why they wouldn’t help her and her family.
Eventually, though, the wind brings something else to her than its howls. She hears someone whimpering. She opens her eyes and looks around to see who is making those noises. A limping, hard to decipher through the rain silhouette slowly comes towards Azizia, the wind pushing it in that direction. Azizia gets up, wary, but soon realizes that the shape looks familiar. Long, swollen arms, hunched forward. It was a Broken, or perhaps a Lost One. Azizia stayed put, a hand on her mace, ready to fight, as Lost Ones have shown signs of aggression. Defining features of the stranger start to appear through the rain, and soon enough, the Draenei realizes that the person in front of her is someone from her camp, Sari, the cook. Blue blood drips from several wounds on her body, but the deepest one is on her stomach, which she presses with both of her hands drenched in her own blood.
Azizia runs up to her and helps her lie down, now pressing her own hands on the cook’s wound. A green liquid oozes from it. The blade that stabbed her was coated in poison. The Shaman needs to act fast.
“Orcs… the… camp…” whispers Sari through her short breaths before puking up blood.
Azizia doesn’t waste time talking, she understands. Everyone else is probably dead already. She stabs her Water Totem onto the ground next to the dying woman, puts her hand on the poisoned wound, and whispers.
“Come on, Water Spirits. I can’t let her die too! You have to give me the strength to save her, please!”
Her shaking hands hover over the wound, but nothing happens. She commands the spirits to help her once more, but still, to no avail.
“Fuck!” she growls, before taking Sari in her arms and taking her to the lake, both their already soaked bodies plunging into its waters, with only their heads emerging. She watches as her friend’s blood mixes with the water and floats around them.
“Honorable Spirits of the lake, I’m begging, you have to save this woman from the poison in her wounds immediately or she won’t make it!”

The only noise the water makes in response is that of the raindrops falling onto the water’s surface.
“Please, don’t leave me on my own, don’t let her die…” she whispers through her tears as if nature was going to answer her after all the time it spent ignoring her.

Sari coughs up some more blood. She slowly, feverishly, raises her hand up and gently strokes Azizia’s cheek. Suddenly, her body tense, her eyes show fear. Then, almost as quickly, all of her muscles relax and her hand falls limply back into the water.

“No, no, no, no!” screams the Shaman, as she gently shakes Sari to wake her up.
She slams her hand on the water’s surface, gnashing her teeth.
“If you’re not giving me the strength I need, I’ll find somebody else who will.”

She takes Sari out of the water and gently places her onto the ground. Azizia takes a deep breath, tears apart her own shirt, and covers her eyes with it, tying the piece of fabric around her head. She had heard of some of these orc shamans summoning the spirit of the dead to bring warriors back to life, and she knew that those spirits feared mortal’s eyes. Or maybe it was that dangerous spirits could take over your body through your eyes? Anyways, she knew that she needed to cover her eyes first before attempting such a thing.

Azizia raises her hands to the sky and chants repeatedly:
“I call upon you, Ancestral Spirits of the Astral Realm, to guide Sari back to her body so that this poor soul may live again and her destiny once more helm.”

For a while, nothing happens until the shaman feels cold, odd but familiar hands grabbing her wrists and pulling her away rapidly. All the sensations of the world seem to have disappeared. There is no more wind, rain, no more coldness, no more smells, not even the presence of the people who pulled her there manifests. Nothing but some warmth coming from a distance. Azizia feels compelled to run up to it, the blindfold still covering her eyes. Her hooves don’t make a single sound on the ground as she goes faster and faster towards the warmth. She feels as though reaching it is impossible as it keeps getting further and further away, but eventually her hand closes around something. A wrist.

The Shaman wakes up from her trance with a deep breath that it seems she has been holding all this time, her hands still trembling high up in the air. She removes her blindfold and looks down to see Sari, still lifeless on the ground.
Azizia barely has the time to grieve that the Broken wakes up with a gasp, most of her wounds having healed, and the Shaman throws her arms around the other woman’s neck and starts sobbing. Sari seems even more confused than usual, but slowly puts her arms around the Shaman, and begins to pat her back.
“There, there,..” she says.
Azizia’s joy of having saved her friend, however, quickly turns to horror as she realizes to what length she went to get what she wanted. It comes to her that she turned to these spirits she knows next to nothing about, and a feeling of fear runs through her body.

The fear intensifies, bringing a sense of urgency with it when the wind herald news of the orc’s coming through their voices, their smell. Azizia helps Sari get up and they start running through the heavy rain. As salty raindrops roll down her cheeks and fall onto the ground, she thanks the elements for covering their tracks.

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