(2025-12-13) The Jade Hunters

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Author:	Alli
Summary:	The destruction at the Serpent's Heart is not the end of Yu'lon's story. The pandaren are preparing to begin the work of repairing the statue, and Moira Thaurissan has arranged for a dwarven delegation to assist. Brannagen, Lireen, Marja, Oranna, Carrick, Fendrig and Fenella gather in the Jade Forest for the kick-off competition, a hunt for jade to be used in the work to come. A mysterious pandaren cub sends the dwarven team towards a special jade mine, perhaps more special than they'd anticipated. ~21k words
Rating:	T for Teen

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spiders, memory of the loss of a child and other loved ones, memory of romance, grief

A pandaren acolyte of the August Celestials once asked, "Did the land give birth to the celestials, or did they breathe life into the land?"

Her master chuckled knowingly, for he had pondered this very question. Yet time had granted him wisdom. "I have a much simpler question to consider—a question whose answer will solve this riddle of yours," he replied. "Which came first, sunrise or sunset?"
— The Scrolls of the Celestials

The job is simple: rebuild the Serpent's Heart statue. And yet, it has been months since the battle, and the pandaren masons are moving at a snail’s pace. Word of the effort has reached the Alliance, and various communities have begun to gather volunteers to help right this particular wrong.

With the backing of the Council of the Three Hammers, Moira Thaurissan has organized a dwarven team to be sent to the Jade Forest as a goodwill gesture. Rather than focusing only on her Dark Iron subjects, Moira has taken the opportunity to create a group that she hopes will foster bonds of collaboration between the three clans.

The leader of the team is the Dark Iron Fenella Darkvire, a dwarven woman with a fiery red braid and skin the color of dark stone. Though she is the daughter of the disgraced late architect Fineous Darkvire, she is also a mason, an engineer, and an accomplished architect in her own right. Her stone golem, Koveth, accompanies her. Now, under the bright sun of the Jade Forest, she seems uneasy in her role.

Then there is Carrick Irongrin, a burly Wildhammer with tawny skin marred by dozens of blue tattoos. A giant hammer hangs from a strap on his back. He’s a blacksmith and miner of legendary strength, one who can even speak to stones. He stands a few paces away from Fenella, squinting up at the occasional passing kites.

The next is Fendrig Redbeard, an extremely large Bronzebeard, two heads taller than the rest of his kind. As a member of the Explorers' League, he’s mined the depths of Uldaman,the Borean Tundra, Bael Modan, and many other dangerous locations. He also stands a few paces away from Fenella, his cool gaze on rocks in the Pandarian soil.

There is also Marja Magmaskin, a young dwarven woman with the black skin and red glowing eyes that distinguishes her as being born to the Dark Irons, and from certain places in her skin, her veins glow red as well. Her black hair is twisted up on top of her head in a bun. She is also wearing a cloak with the greens and purples and symbol of the Darkmoon Faire. Around her right wrist is a dark iron bracer engraved with runes, segmented into several bands that can be rotated around her arm.

Prospector Brannagen Stillwall of the Bronzebeard Clan is present, at least physically, though his mind seems to be miles away at the moment, his turquoise eyes aimed upward as though he is seeing through the branches of the tree he's standing under. His flame-red hair and beard are in more of a mess than usual from the flight he took to get here.

Lireen Cloudskimmer stands by Carrick Irongrin, occasionally leaning over to pick a scrap of leaf from his shoulder or straighten his lapel. There's a mingled air of pride, concern, and subtle possessiveness about her that, taken together with their dramatic age difference, makes the gray-haired Wildhammer's relationship to Carrick more or less obvious.

Carrick doesn't seem to mind the attention, but there's a kind of apprehensive distraction to his gaze. He might wish his task here involved skies and kites.

Oranna Stormbreaker stands next to Brannagen Stillwall, and not too far off from Lireen, somewhere between both Fendrig and Carrick. As usual, her exceptionally long brown hair has been braided to stay out of the way, and she wears a practical set of leather and mail that she can handle ore in, and any trouble. She doesn't look much like she's mined any depths of dangerous locations, at least not from the outside, and the worried expression on her face might suggest inexperience, or perhaps so much experience that she's nervous about what's happening now (it's the latter). An over-engineered rifle rests in a carrying holster, but she's unaccompanied by any signature snow leopard for today, a day anticipated to be spent mostly helping rebuilding and working on ore, not fighting.

The cluster of dwarves stands among a crowd of pandaren, here in a clearing at the eastern side of the Serpent’s Heart. Foreman Raiki, the lead pandaren mason, has called a meeting today. From the eager brightness in some pandaren eyes, it’s clear they’re hoping this will be an announcement of the work commencing. Raiki slowly makes his way to the center of the gathering.

"If we're going to rebuild that thing, we'd better get started sooner rather than later," Fenella frets under her breath.

"Think they've got enough jade?" Marja mutters back, her shoulders hunched.

Brannagen seems to reel his thoughts back in at the sound of voices. He turns to check that Oranna is still nearby, then makes crescent-eyes at her briefly before whipping out his journal to make some notes.

Fenella looks towards the center, and the scattered remnants of the old statue, and raises worried eyebrows in answer.

"You all know the task ahead!" Raiki bellows, gesturing to the debris field nearby.

An immense, circular stone pillar towers behind him. Around it lie the broken chunks of the Serpent's Heart, with spots of lingering monochromatic sha residue in the soil nearby. The statue had been built in the image of the Jade Serpent, one of the four legendary August Celestials. The Serpent's Heart had been destroyed when the Alliance and the Horde had gone to war in the region. Once the masons finish the reconstruction, the Jade Serpent will transfer her life essence into the statue and be reborn.

"We need more jade to rebuild," Raiki continues, unknowingly answering Marja's question. "That is why I propose a Great Jade Hunt!"

There’s a murmur among the pandaren.

“The hunt will begin now and end at sunset. The use of carts is prohibited; bags and satchels, however, are permitted. Good luck!" Raiki adjourns the meeting to a round of applause, and the pandaren begin to talk among themselves.

"I don't think we'll need any carts," Fendrig says, turning to the group and flexing his arms. "I can carry plenty."

"What's he got against carts?" Marja shakes her head. "If it's a competition, he's not offered a prize."

"The prize will be the goodwill we earn for Sh-Ironforge when we win," Fenella says, and pulls out a map as she looks over to Oranna and Brannagen. "Right, you two. Bronzebeards. You've been here a while. I've already asked around about mines, but I haven't had a chance to do the footwork. Have a look."

Oranna frowns hard enough to deepen the worry line between her brows. "Why nae a cart if the goal's ta repair the statue?" she mutters. "Probably fair enough that they dinnae trust us with carts yet. Mebbe waitin' to see if we can manage ta use bags together without knockin' over a priceless vase afore we get ta use carts."

Brannagen, whose eyes rolled visibly at Fendrig's flexing, adopts an amiable expression at Fenella's orders. He looks to Oranna.

A teeny tiny grey lizard crawls out of Marja's collar and perches on her shoulder. Marja scritches the lizard idly with one finger as she sneaks a look at the map herself.

The foreman plods over to the dwarven cluster as the pandaren masons mingle, forming into teams. Raiki overhears Oranna, and smiles cheerfully. "I wouldn't take it too seriously. The hunt is something of a tradition to get the spirits up."

"A Dark Iron never takes a minin' challenge lightly, lad," Fenella states matter-of-factly.

Raiki gives a good-hearted chuckle. "So I've heard. That's why I'm looking forward to seeing those famous dwarven skills in action." He glances at the other dwarves. "Do you and your team need any advice on mining spots?"

There’s a note of hesitation at "team." The tension between the dwarves isn't lost on the pandaren. They’re just too polite to prod Fenella about the problem.

"I know this forest like the back of me hand," Brannagen says cheerfully, waving his journal around. They can't see the maps you drew, Bran.

"Aye, tell us where we should or shouldn't go," Marja says, nodding to Raiki. "Don't wanna be taking pretty jade vases out of houses if we can take fresh from the earth instead. These mines? Still good?"

"Oh yes," Raiki says, and laughs heartily. "I would ask you not to take from household decor, if you can help it. But all the mines in the Jade Forest are fair game. For this, nothing is off-limits! And I see you already have a number of the most active mines marked."

Fenella nods her thanks, and says. "In that case, we'll manage."

"Good hunting, then. Jade Serpent watch over you." Raiki bows deeply and then departs.

Fenella spreads out the map and pulls out a piece of charcoal. "Time's a limiting factor, so we'll need to make a route between the known mining locations…"

A pandaren cub in a blue dress, obsidian hair tied up in two buns, approaches the team on silent feet. She catches Oranna and Bran’s eyes, and puts one finger to her lips with a sly little smile.

Bran beams delightedly back at the "little girl."

Oranna's face could not telegraph any louder that's something! than if she'd yelled it suddenly, but she scrambles instead to address Marja. "Oh! Ah, i-if ye see a jade statue of somethin' that looks like a person, a real person, that looks extremely lifelike, there's a very good chance that's actually a person who has been enchanted by a witch ta be a jade statue and not just an incredibly talented jade artist somewhere so…mebbe…bring them ta attention an' we'll try some… de-enchantin' afore we break them inta tiny person…pieces…" It's starting to get Morbid, so she trails off, like that's any better.

Bran probably should not chuckle at that. But he does.

"Is that a… very common problem in these parts?" Fendrig asks, staring at Oranna.

"Hello!" the girl cub says brightly, before Oranna can answer that one.

Fenella startles, dropping the charcoal and map. "Och," she says nervously. "Gave me a fright."

"You are the dwarves. From Ironforge," the cub says, curious.

"All dwarves are from Ironforge originally," Lireen calmly #wellactuallys them from over by Carrick. She also gives Oranna a little smile.

Marja straightens up, giving the 'child' a bow with a flourish of her cape. "Greetings!"

The cub giggles and claps at the flourish.

"You've a lot tae learn about dwarves, lass." Fenella leaves it at that. She turns back to her maps.

"Teach me, then," the cub says. "Teach me about dwarves."

Fenella sighs, and glances at Lireen. "A long time ago, we all lived in Ironforge. Then we got into a scuffle o' sorts an' went our separate ways. Now, we're all back in Ironforge. That about covers it, aye?" She waits to see if anyone will counter her telling of events. She is clearly leaving out the more "controversial" parts, such as how the Dark Irons had, until recently, been enslaved by the elemental lord of fire, Ragnaros, and pushed inexorably down a path of evil.

"Yer leavin' out a fair bit," Bran says. "About how the Dark Irons had until recently been enslaved by the— ye know what, it's fine."

The little lizard on Marja's shoulder skitters down the length of her arm, and Marja holds her palm up so the lizard can perch there. Her fiery eyes flash. "There's a lot to teach, kiddo, but we're about to go mining."

Oranna makes a few nnnghhh and mmmnngghhh? sounds. "Scuffle…aye? Family…fightin'. An' there's a bit of… managin' that. So it's… family's complicated, aye?"

The pandaren girl's brow furrows, and she nods seriously. "I see. I don't want to ask for a long, complicated story and make you lose the hunt." She cautiously steps forward and gestures to the map. "To that end, I can also tell you to avoid all those locations. They will be crowded with pandaren. And the jade there has been mined very low. But I know a good place where no one goes…"

"That so?" Fenella looks up, interested now.

"There." The girl points to a spot on the map, northwest of the Serpent's Heart. "The entrance is covered in weeds and stones, but you will find it if you keep looking. It is an ancient mine, filled with jade more beautiful and pure than anything the others will bring in."

Oranna looks at the map, and then looks up towards the south-ish. "Oh, aye?"

Fendrig clears his throat and looks northwest, helpfully.

The lizard starts trying to crawl off of Marja's hand, and she quickly deposits it back into her collar, muttering under her breath. She looks from the map to the child. "What's the catch? Why was it abandoned?"

Brannagen looks extremely excited by the prospect of an abandoned, forgotten place.

"Aye, why dinna the rest o' the miners go there?" Fenella follows up, gesturing to Marja.

"Oh, it's just been forgotten with time," the girl says with a grin. The light catches her eyes — strange eyes, ancient like elementium. "You've got a lot to learn about pandaren. They go to the places they know. Routine is comforting."

Oranna redirects her gaze Northwest, frowning. "Well, Cobalt's got a lot of experience with this sort o' thing, an' if we go, we'll be careful an' prepared fer if we need ta back away ta gather more help than we planned for. No one here greedy minded, all wantin' ta help more than win a thing. And we've all learned a recent lesson on breakin' artifacts already, aye?" She casts a narrowed eye on the lesser known dwarves, heedless of any sense of hierarchy or deference, as if everyone there's just a person.

Fenella's attention jerks to Oranna as she mentions Cobalt, but then she just takes a breath and nods. "We'll not be breaking any more artifacts. But watch for us come sunset, lass. Maybe we'll save some jade for ye."

"I hope you do." After a polite bow, the girl scampers off.

"Well, then," Fenella says, rising to her feet and gesturing to her golem, Koveth. She turns to the others, a touch of uncertainty behind her gruff expression. "Ye ready tae do some diggin'?"

"Woo hoo!" says Bran.

Marja blinks mildly at Oranna. "If it doesn't pan out, we can pivot to a different mine. I've never broken any artifacts, just to have that on record."

Lireen gives Marja a Motherly Frown.

Carrick nods reluctantly to Fenella, and Fendrig gives a brisk nod.

Lireen gives Carrick a solid pat on the back, eyeing him with gentle concern but saying nothing.

The golem's eyes flare violet. "Affirmative."

Oranna's open expression reveals she's also never, personally, broken any artifacts, but her attention is diverted to the golem with a chuckle. "Ye know, I once read a fascinatin' book about a golem and a lady. Well, a… lady person, calling Jinx a lady is a bit of a — she was a normal girl, very normal, ah — Does he, er, she? Have a name?, the golem I mean?"

Bran turns with interest toward the golem as well, opening his sketchbook.

Marja eyes the golem curiously.

Fenella looks at Oranna quickly, and then clears her throat, looking down at the map. "What an interesting story I've… I've obviously never heard of before. And aye, his name's Koveth."

"This is Graham," Marja says, tapping the lizard at her collar. "My assistant." What does he assist with? A mystery.

Oranna peers more curiously at Graham. "Oh, aye, an assistant lizard," she agrees, and her clear reading face shows no sign of sarcasm; she seems genuinely interested, and intrigued. Her attention reveals that she's also obviously considering various ways that a lizard might actually be useful. "With his sort of heat and cold sensitivity, I bet he comes in handy a lot underground finding places with thermal vents an' the like." She aims a beaming smile at Graham.

Bran has no reaction to the exchange about Jinx and her golem - it is clear he is unfamiliar with the story and the reasons people might be familiar with it.

"Aye, and Koveth's mine," Fenella nods, packing up. "My assistant, that is. Right helpful, you'll find him."

"Still not used ta seein' those things on our side," Fendrig says with a shake of his head. "But they didn't seem tae think he counted as a cart."

Thus acquainted with one another’s assistants, the dwarven team heads for the mysterious and forgotten mine.

In the Cave

A dark chapter hangs over pandaren history—the mogu empire. It is difficult for us to imagine how much our ancestors suffered during that era. The terrible mogu trampled pandaren culture beneath their feet. They banned all worship of the celestials. Merely speaking their names was punishable by torture and death. In time, even those who had known the celestials best forgot their wise teachings.
— The Scrolls of the Celestials

With the cub’s instructions, it doesn’t take long to find the mine. Rocks and a tangle of thick thorny vines partially cover the entrance. A small green shape skitters across one side of the opening. Shale spider.

Fenella grimaces. The pandaren have an apt nickname for these nasty little critters: “nibblers." They could chew through and gulp down solid stone. The creature stops and rears at Koveth. Its mandibles furiously click together.

"Analysis: It wants to devour Koveth." The golem is to the point as always.

"Aye. But we aren't gonna let that happen now, are we?" Fenella says with a faint smile to her golem, the first she’s shown this expedition.

Koveth answers by lunging forward, crushing the spider with a precise punch.

"Lead the way." Fenella says, falling in behind Koveth.

The golem clears the rest of the vines and rocks with a swipe of his iron hand and then disappears into the yawning darkness.

Brannagen seems more than happy poking around in the creepy abandoned tunnels, regardless of any infestations that may be occurring.

Lireen seems more tense than those who know her are used to seeing, but all her tension seems vicarious in a sense - she is focused entirely on Carrick with a vigilant air as though she is ready to Step In in case of… who knows what.

As the team moves inside, Fenella pulls a small violet crystal from a pouch on her belt and knocks it against the wall a few times. The gem rattles and flares to life, illuminating the passageway with dim violet light. There’s no jade here yet, just a dark, narrow mining tunnel to follow.

Fendrig stares at the violet crystal for a moment, and then pointedly lights a little flame on his helmet. He’s not relying on Dark Iron sorcery for his vision.

Marja draws her circus baton and twirls it. Both ends light on fire.

At the flare of dim violet light, Lireen's attention snaps away from Carrick for a moment, and in that moment her tension seems more personal and less vicarious. But then she returns her attention to Carrick, following behind him like a benevolent shadow.

Fenella follows Koveth, picking their way through the tunnel in silence.

Carrick hunches his shoulders, grimly placing one foot in front of the other. He is tied up in enough of his own tension that he misses the brief change in Lireen's.

Fendrig spots Lireen's glance, and glares at Fenella's back.

Brannagen radiates such good cheer it's practically a light source of its own. He is loving every minute of this.

Oranna draws SUNBEAM, taking aim at shale spiders that skitter into nibbling range, paying more attention to the details of the place, and the others, like she's not really taking it in as a whole to start, but in snap shots that begin to put together a pattern that way.

Marja does not walk silently. "Is it just me or was that kid a little odd? Plenty of kids can be knowledgeable for their age, but her eyes seemed… old?"

"Oh aye," says Brannagen, grinning. "I noticed that too. Real interestin' wee theng."

Fenella glances warily at Bran's cheer. "Aye, and we're here on her say-so. That's nae a common eye color for wee pandaren?"

"Oh, ah, were her eyes old? An' uncommon?" Oranna asks? "That's, uh, maybe… sometime… in the future she'll seem a lot…younger. Fer some reason. That will happen, because sometimes, people who have been seeming older fer… a time, might seem… younger. Because… of… renewing reasons that… happen." Sure. Smooth, Oranna.

Brannagen is trying very hard not to laugh.

Fenella pauses in her steps, just to stare at Oranna in confusion.

"Jade." Koveth points to the ground, distracting from the conversation.

"She an illusionist, is that it?" Marja is clearly suspicious, but is distracted.

"I wouldn't call her an illusionist," Oranna says technically truthfully. "Oh! Jade!" Look! A distraction!

A dozen small objects are scattered on the floor, covered in a layer of dust. One is a figurine of the Jade Serpent. The others are the rest of the August Celestials: Xuen, the White Tiger; Niuzao, the Black Ox; and Chi-Ji, the Red Crane.

It takes Bran a moment to actually notice the little things, but when he does he makes a soft ohhhh of appreciation.

Lireen studies the figurines. "A… dragon? A saber… some sort o' bird…" She is clearly not up on the local wildlife.

"Well, we're not to take from household decor," Marja says. "That's worked jade. Someone left their things down here."

Lireen nods in agreement.

Oranna moves closer, peering at two of the celestials. "I recognize these two fer sure at least. This is Chi-Ji, the Red Crane," she says confidently. "He's real nice, and resilient. Perky, ye might say. And this is Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent. She's kind, an' very patient."

Fenella kneels down and picks up the Jade Serpent statue Oranna indicates. Not to pocket it, just looking.

“It’s warm,” Fenella says, passing it from one hand to the other. “A strange heat, enough I can feel it through my leather gloves. Do you think it's sorcery?”

“A Dark Iron would know,” Carrick says, eyeing her purple crystal, and taking a step back into the shadows. He draws his hammer, and a pale blue energy illuminates the area around him.

“My crystal’s no more evil than your stormhammer, lad,” Fenella says irritably.

"That so? Well, the word o' Fineous the Fraud's daughter is worth about as much tae me as straw stuck tae a gryphon's arse," Carrick says. “But if it’s jade sorcery we’ve found, I begin to think we might not ought to be here. Oranna was talking about witches before…”

"Carrick," Lireen says firmly.

"Quit yer yappin'," Fendrig's gravelly voice echoes off the rock walls. “We’re here by invitation, anyway. That pandaren lass… illusionist, or…”

Oranna doesn't add anything to the or. Nope, no adding. But she frowns at the distrust.

"Well, just don't drop it," Marja tells Fenella. She starts to continue on through the tunnel, flaming baton twirling to light the way.

"What? The rest o' ye must've been thinking it. What Moira was thinking, putting us with a Darkvire…" Carrick glares at Fenella.

Fenella just sighs, like she's used to this. She sets down the statuette carefully. "Whatever the lass is, she was tryin' tae help. She would nae have sent us somewhere we shouldn’t be."

Brannagen chuckles at Marja, and watches the twirling baton with amusement.

"I was thinkin' no such thing, Carrick," Lireen says sternly. "I was thinkin' what a good thing it is fer us to help the pandaren fix their statue."

"I was thinking about why this mine was abandoned," Marja says, rolling her eyes. "You coming?"

"Right," Carrick deflates a little. "Then let's get on with the jade hunting." He turns to follow Marja, but he keeps his stormhammer out.

"And I was thinkin' that it's a good thing there's a good many of us with so many different talents an' abilities an' the like that we're more likely ta be ready fer anythin' down here that's more than we're hopin' for," Oranna says.

Bran gives Oranna a cheery slap on the back. "Aye, tha's the sperret!" he says.

Oranna's eyes dart to the right and left in case Bran means literally — this is Azeroth — relaxing when she's sure he means metaphorically, and she laughs.

For a moment there’s a sign of unease on Fendrig's face as he continues into the tunnel, like dark soil peeking through late-winter snow. As soon as he realizes the others can see it, his features harden to cool nonchalance again.

The Door of Xuen

“It’s so quiet,” Carrick says, and his voice sounds angry.

“What do you mean, lad?” Fendrig asks, peering at him. “It’s a cave, should it no’ be?”

“I’ve always…” Carrick sighs. “Since I was young, I had the gift ta speak with the stones. They wanted me to be a shaman, but that wasn’t the life for me. I was always a miner at heart, and that gift made me one of the best. But these days…” there’s a flicker of pain in his expression. He does not explain further.

Lireen places a reassuring hand on Carrick's shoulder.

Carrick takes a breath, trying to calm himself. It doesn't really seem to be working.

The group emerges into a large circular room. Cracked and faded murals cover the walls, all depicting Xuen, the White Tiger. In one mural, Xuen is battling a giant armored mogu whose body crackles with lightning. In another, chains bind the White Tiger atop a mountain peak. The creature is struggling against his shackles, roaring in fury, his face twisted in uncontrolled rage. The mogu brute watches from afar, arms raised in victory.

Bran sketches frantically.

"That's rough," Marja says sympathetically to Carrick. She holds her baton up like a torch to illuminate the murals when Bran starts drawing. No more spinning and moving shadows around while art is happening.

"What is this place?" Fenella asks. She waves around the gem in her hand, casting a sickly purple hue over the chamber.

"Did ye nae think tae do a little research before comin' here, Darkvire?" Fendrig says, and walks over to a series of pandaren runes etched into the wall. He pulls out a long scroll tucked into his belt, the worn paper marked with similar-looking symbols. Next to those are Dwarven letters. He glances over at Bran's sketching with a little grin, and then gets back to the runes.

"We were told it was a mine specifically, and now there's art here," Marja points out.

Bran stop sketching to peer excitedly at the pandaren runes.

Oranna steps closer to the mural of the white tiger, brow furrowed deeply in an expression of sympathetic pain, examining the posture of the White Tiger with the sort of eye of someone who knows when she's looking at an animal versus a being with something like a humanoid sentience. "The pandaren dinna always separate everything so cleanly as only one place underground, mebbe a bit like us. It might be a mine, aye, but also might be a bit of a temple or library, too. This… this White Tiger's nae a tiger, not anymore than the crane's a crane. This is all the celestial beings. This is someplace about them, somethin' that happened ta them a long time ago."

"Doesn't look like it went too well for the celestial being," Fenella says, peering at the mural. "That's him bound there, aye?"

Oranna makes a sound. "Aye, well, from what we've learned, not much went well fer anyone back then."

"Yeah, this place is not what I expected," Carrick eyes the cipher. "What's it say, then?"

"Ye want tae know, ye do the legwork yerself," Fendrig says with a smirk, and then continues examining the runes.

Carrick opens and closes his hands in quick succession. For a moment, it looks like he might punch Fendrig, but the moment passes.

"Breathe," Lireen murmurs to him softly.

"Did you already forget the part when Oranna there said that us having different talents and abilities would be good for us?" Marja says pointedly. "Don't be a prick, Fendrig. Share with the class."

Brannagen trundles over beside Fendrig with an annoyed expression. "Ye dinna always have ta make the power play, ye know," he says to his fellow Explorers' League member in a tone that, while amiable on the surface, suggests enough familiarity to create ongoing friction. "Ye stand out well enough just by loomin' there like a bloody vry'kul, without hoggin' all the knowledge ta yerself as well. As it happens, I've spent months here an' can read those runes decently meself without a cheat sheet."

Brannagen clears his throat and stares at them for a moment, making a point of not looking at the scroll Fendrig is using. "It says… ye'r yer own worst enemy, or somethin' o' the sort," he concludes.

Oranna's too clearly on Bran and Marja's side with her face without saying anything. "It's… is it like one of those fortune cookies they started sellin' last year things?" she asks, peering over the corners. "'Ye'r yer own worst enemy.' 'Yer luck hasn't changed yet.' 'Ye will roll a 100 in the near future,' whatever tha' means."

Fendrig looks over at Bran in surprise and there's a flicker of contrition in his expression before it's back to cool nonchalance. "Yeah, that's what I was gettin' more-er-less. Figures ye've already learned the runes, Stillwall. I started readin' up on what we had, soon's I was put on the team, but… aye, a bit Darkmoon Sayge-ish, innit?"

Bran shrugs amiably, clearly pleased just to have shown the big guy up.

Marja chuckles. "The goal of a good 'fortune' if you don't know who it's going to is that it could apply to everybody, so anyone can read it."

Oranna glances nervously around the cavern again. "Aye… well, the last time we were in a cavern with some old scrolls and runes we were attacked by a lot of spirits bound by ancient chains tha' had kept them in the caves since ancient days so… it's, uh, well it's good that it's… quiet here, aye?" Yes. That is very reassuring.

Just then, Fenella curses and clicks her tongue, but it has nothing to do with the murals or rune translations or bound spirits. She crosses to the other side of the room, where she stands in front of a monstrous stone, chiseled into the shape of a snarling mogu face. It blocks what looks to be the only passageway that leads deeper into the mine. "The lass didn't say anythin' about this."

"No one's been in here fer generations. Probably didn't want folk snoopin' around," Fendrig replies. "We'll have tae break through. Maybe the mine part's further in."

Carrick inspects the boulder. “It’s Solid. Sturdy. We’ll have a hard time breaking through.”

Bran cracks his knuckles.

Oranna chews on her bottom lip, but she doesn't protest. "Just — be careful about anything that looks like it might be a scroll or a crystal sort of — the mogu like traps that suck ye inta jello molds ta suck the life out of ye. I dinna know that they'd put anythin' like that inta their own statues, but ta be honest, I dinna understand much about the mogu or their motives."

"Can we get the edges and roll it out? Looks like a head." Marja wanders over, spinning her baton again, and makes the same snarling face back at the statue. "Bleeeh, beware the - they're called the mogu?"

"Aye, mogu. Ancient race of an old empire, enslaved the pandaren, the hozen, the jinyu, the… sort of errybody. They're at it again, apparently. They can use magic, are obsessessed with the past and power they had back then, an' they're sort of 'ends justify the means' and 'safety protocols?? what safety protocols?! we laugh in the face of safety protocols, ha ha ha ha!' sort of people," Oranna explains, and then pauses, and it might clear from her expression that she might be comparing them to very evil versions of the Explorers' League people, and then trying to hide that thought. "Er, well. Mogu, aye. That's them."

"Seem quite the foes," Fenella nods towards the murals.

"Here, let me try it," Carrick says. "I've always been good at finding the weak points in stone. Anyway, maybe it's an actual door."

He draws closer and places his palm on the rock to give it a testing shove. When his skin touches the stone, he cries out in pain and alarm. Then Carrick stares at the stone as if seeing something completely different, something enraging. He twists his neck and stretches his arms. Muscles pop. He takes his great hammer in his hands and swings it forward, putting all his strength into the blow.

Metal hits stone with a thunderclap of sound and a blinding flash of light. Carrick loses his grip on the hammer, and it goes flying.

Lireen rushes forward toward him, nearly (but not quite) dropping her own hammer in her alarm.

Marja snatches the hammer out of the air with the ease of a juggler. She flips it up in the air and catches it, then offers it handle-first back to Carrick.

"Woo hoo!" cheers Bran at the display of dexterity.

Fendrig chuckles. "I can't tell if ye hit the stone or the stone hit ye." He casually hefts his pickaxe. "Let me show ye how it's done, lad."

"Ye won't break it either. I'll handle this." Fenella beckons Koveth the golem forward.

Carrick takes the hammer back from Marja with a distracted nod, and shrugs Lireen off. Then he whirls towards the others. "Back off!" He doesn't wait for their reply before taking another swing at the stone.

Then another. And another.

“No, no!” Carrick cries. “Dragonmaw!”

He loses his grip on the stormhammer again, but continues to flail at the stone with bare fists. He doesn't make a scratch, but this fact is lost on Carrick.

Marja backs off when told, standing too far back to catch the hammer a second time.

Carrick’s Memory of Anger

Before his eyes, the mogu face has morphed into something else. A hideous, scarred visage. A Dragonmaw orc. Carrick shakes his head. The orc remains. Seeing it there, his enemy staring back at him with beady stone eyes, challenging him, makes Carrick's heart race.

His anger roils within, molten hot, reshaping everything around him. Before long, he finds himself back among the green hillocks. Back in Northeron.

The smell of smoke fills his nose; the sounds of battle, his ears. Dwarven gryphon riders soar through the ash-choked skies, trading blows with orcs riding on their cursed enslaved red dragons. Carrick watches as a swarm of Dragonmaw descends on a smoldering village just down the hill. His village.

He has replayed these memories in his head a thousand times: rushing out of the mine when he received word of the attack, racing down the hill to his blazing home. But no matter how quick he runs or what shortcuts he takes, he can never make it back fast enough. This time, however, seems different. The memory is more visceral than previous ones, filling him with confidence.

"Ho there," a small voice says.

A young Wildhammer in a white tunic, a plume of brown gryphon feathers sticking
out of her red hair, approaches Carrick.

Can't be, he thinks. He rubs his eyes, but the girl is still there.

"Rhona!" Carrick picks his daughter up and squeezes her tight. In some corner of his mind, he knows this is an illusion. She’s never appeared in his other dreams or memories of this day. But he can feel her now. He can smell the hill daisy pollen in her hair.

"What ye doin'?" the girl asks after he sets her down.

Carrick looks to the base of the hillock, at that burning village.

"Tryin' tae make it," he says.

"It's too late." Rhona takes a feather from her hair and twirls it in her fingers.

"No. It's different this time. I can feel it."

"It's the same." Rhona laughs innocently, as if this was all some kind of game to her.

Something in Carrick snaps—something deep within that he has no control over. "Dinna say that!" he roars. The fury quickly ebbs, and guilt comes rushing in to take its place.

Rhona slowly backs away, tears welling in her eyes.

"I… I'm sorry." Carrick kneels and stretches out his hands. "Please, lass. Fergive me."

"If ye promise me somethin'."

"Anythin'."

Rhona comes close and wraps her arms around her father's neck. The smell of hill daisy pollen vanishes. The pungent odor of death, of burning flesh and a dream turned to ash, envelops Carrick. His daughter's tiny voice whispers, "Stop comin'. There's nothin' left fer ye here."

Rhona kisses him on the cheek and then dances away. The wind suddenly picks up, blowing the feather out of her fingers. She laughs and chases after it down the hill.

"Wait!" Carrick shouts.

—

Back with the rest of the team…

“What the–” Fenella stares at him for a moment, and then gestures to the others. “Help me pull him off. He’ll break his hands. I don't know what's got into him.”

"I… might…" says Lireen. "At least in part." She watches him with quiet resignation.

Oranna seems temporarily stunned, flinching away from Carrick, before some awareness sharpens. "Wait! Wait, dinna just pull at him — he's angry. It's a personal angry, deep. This isn't — he's not seeing whatever's in front of him. It's something Dragonmaw. He's — he's somewhere else. We're nae e'en likely here ta him. He migh' nae recognize us as us." She looks over to Lireen." Lireen? Ye know where he is, in his head?" Oranna asks, and there's no condemnation from the hunter; she's all too familiar with this sort of experience, or at least something a bit mundane like it. "Do ye ken how he comes out of it?"

Marja, having just been given two contradicting instructions - remains where she is.

Lireen gazes at Carrick calmly but sadly.

"I've never seen him in the thick of it like this," she admits. "We're not… as close, these days. But…"

She approaches a bit closer, not close enough for him to lash out at her directly, and says softly, "Ricky, c'mon, lad… Rhona wouldna want this. Can ye hear her still, somewhere inside ye? What would she say…?"

Oranna remains cautiously out of fist pummeling melee range, waiting to see if words reach Carrick at all.

Carrick ceases his punching and draws in a ragged breath. His knuckles are bloody and bruised. He stares straight ahead and says one word, heavy with grief, "Wait…"

Carrick blinks, and Northeron disappears. He’s back in that damn hole beneath Pandaria. Pain blossoms up his arms. Blood is pouring from his knuckles. His hammer lies a few feet away.

Brannagen sends a sparkly, festive wave of light in the direction of Carrick's hands while Lireen watches him with patient concern.

Carrick rocks back, sitting heavily.

"Oi!" Fenella says. "Ye gone soft in the head? Tryin' tae punch through stone?"

"What?" Carrick manages to say through a fog of confusion.

"What was that business about the Dragonmaw?" Fendrig asks.

"Ye were screamin' at 'em like they were here in the room," Fenella adds.

"I didna know how bad it had gotten," Lireen says quietly. "I'm sorry fer how we've… drifted."

Oranna releases her tension in slow, deep breaths, with Carrick's anger clearly not outwardly directed at unfocused targets, or at her in any specific way, and her sympathy is deep and forgiving. She's visibly unafraid as she approaches with a calm and ease of an animal trainer coming close to a wounded creature. "It seemed like ye went somewhere else fer a wee bit, in yer mind. An' there's nothin' wrong with that. It happens, an' yer back with us now. Ye'll be all right."

"Aye, it's nothing, it's…" Carrick’s expression starts to close off, back to the surliness of earlier in the day. But when he looks down at himself, sitting on the dusty floor, all the fire leaves his eyes. Instead, he opens his mouth to speak, and he tells them about the Dragonmaw attack. The words seem to force their way out, and he is too exhausted to stop them. It seems like they have been held in for far too long. Like water in a dam, they want to flow free. So, he lets them.

"Ever since that day, I haven't been able tae hear the stones," he says when he finishes the story. He looks over at the others nervously, clearly expecting derision.

There's none on Oranna's open read face, and neither is there pity. Understanding, and a soft sort of vulnerable forgiveness, like she's been somewhere similar, walked a path like it, known a breaking, even if the details aren't the same. She simply nods, listening, and feeling the pain with him, without trying to solve it or move on it, letting it exist.

"Damn," Marja says sympathetically.

Lireen simply moves to sit next to him, rubbing his back.

Carrick looks back at Oranna, and though there are still tears in his eyes, there's also relief. The comfort of exposing a wound, and learning that it might heal. He leans back into Lireen's touch.

Fenella looks on with a touch of sympathy in her expression, but she keeps her distance, like she's not sure how to reach him with it.

"Just wait there," Fendrig sighs. "I'll take care o' the boulder."

"No, hold on." Carrick dusts himself off and stands to approach the rock, picking up his hammer on the way. His voice is steadier when he says, “It still looks like a Dragonmaw to me.”

Lireen laughs softly and shakes her head, getting to her feet with surprising ease for a woman whose hair has gone almost entirely gray.

Oranna laughs with the sort of pressure valve release, but she has that sight of someone who can tell the difference when she's looking at a man who is visualizing a Dragonmaw and in control of his anger, and a man who is locked in a vision that's controlling him. She does glance at Bran though, just to be sure that if the rocks start to fly again, the healer's ready.

Bran looks ready either to heal more shattered fists or potentially to assist in bonking. Whatever is needed!

Carrick takes a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. He puts his palm against the stone and stares hard at the orc. The anger returns. The urge to wrangle those memories, to make them into something better, like stone quarried and prepped for shaping, overwhelms him. He shuts his eyes, fighting the desire, and lets the memories run their course. “I'm through with ye.”

Something moves against his skin. The boulder is vibrating, that old, familiar sensation of the stones singing. The pure rush of excitement and relief almost causes Carrick to pull his hand away, but he keeps it steady. He opens himself to the elements, letting them guide him as they once had. Every rock, every mountain, has a weak point. That is what they show him. When Carrick opens his eyes, the mogu stares back at him. His palm is touching a spot to the right of the carving's nose.

“There ye are,” Carrick swings his hammer, biting his lip from the pain in his hands.

CRACK.

Rather than crumbling, the giant rock rolls sideways, revealing a dark passage beyond.

"Woo hoo!" Bran cheers.

"Woah," Oranna says, peering around curiously, craning her neck to look down the passage. "Huh."

"Hey!" Marja bounces on her heels. "Would you look at that? You still got it."

Carrick smiles then, though it's a tired smile.

Oranna beams at him so brightly that some people might get an idea why some her gun's called SUNBEAM. "That was amazin'," she tells him with the same complete honesty. "Ye'll find yer way back. Maybe ye'll have ta get another trail than afore, an' mebbe ye'll nae be the same person or hear the same things, but ye'll hear somethin' again."

Brannagen is already trying to see what's down the passage.

"Aye," Carrick says, looking at Oranna. "I think you may be right."

"Well, we've got our path now," Fenella says, gesturing down the dark tunnel. "Koveth, after you?"

The golem trundles down the dark passageway, Fenella close behind.

Oranna waits for the others to pass by to take up the rear, keeping an eye on their exit, making sure it's clear.

Carrick gestures Oranna ahead, as the others file in. "I'll be right behind. I just need… a moment."

Lireen casts a glance at Carrick, but then leaves him be, seeming to trust him to know his own mind.

Marja follows behind Fenella with her flaming baton. The flames give off heat, but there isn't any smoke.

Oranna visibly hesitates… but she has no deep need to be last, so she nods with understanding. "Aye. It's all right if ye need a moment alone. Nothin' wrong with a bit of solitary ta… well. Jus' — if ye think ye migh' be going someplace again, or slipping strange? Call out, aye? There's no shame in it. Memories can be like that. Ghosts we all carry with us." With that, she heads down the passage to follow the others, careful.

"Aye, I will," Carrick says with sincerity, and watches her head into the passage.

When everyone has gone, he leans against the wall for a while, every muscle in his body violently trembling. He looks as if he’d been carrying a sack of iron on his back and, finally, has found a place to set it down.

Some pandaren wished for revenge. They built their strength for the day when they could strike at the mogu. Anger was the motivation for every breath. But what is strength without control? These poor slaves soon became instruments of wrath, turning their hatred on everything and everyone. They had forgotten Xuen's most fundamental lesson: "The only enemy is yourself."
—The Scrolls of the Celestials

The Chamber of Niuzao

As the team travels deeper into the mine, following the narrow tunnels, Fendrig’s cool facade begins to crack a little. “How stable do ye think this place is? That is, what kind of safety measures do the pandaren take? These tunnels seem old, an’ they don’t seem like sticklers for… anything…”

"Dinna fash," says Bran. "The wee lass would nae have sent us here if it was gonna kill us."

"O' course, o' course yer right, Stillwall, like always," Fendrig says, eyeing the close stone ceiling by the flickering light of his helmet.

"Statements like that would be far more reassuring to me if I knew for sure that wasn't an actual child," Marja mutters. However, she doesn't actually seem uneasy herself.

Oranna is fashing, visibly, and then audibly. "Well, she might have thought we'd also exercise common sense, and nae do anythin' to get ourselves killed by poking unstable tunnels with sticks. I… the pandaren are more safety measures are fer people who want ta live long lives, and they like livin' good long lives, so… But, I'm nae sure the pandaren were the ones entirely in charge of this place, an' if the mogu were, remember, 'ha ha ha safety protocols.'"

"Ef et'll make ye feel better, Boomer," says Bran with a show of making a great sacrifice, "I will try nae pokin' thengs with a steck."

Oranna does actually look marginally relieved. "It would, aye, it really would."

From the front of the group, Fenella calls out, “Another chamber ahead!"

“Oh, oh good, a chamber,” Fendrig says, and takes a moment to compose himself, re-erecting the cool mask he’d tried to maintain earlier in the day. “I’m no’ a fan of these narrow corridors.”

The long rectangular room is much larger than the last one. Fortunately, there is a doorway at the other end, and it is open. The ceiling and walls are unnaturally level—finely crafted.

Brannagen lets out a long, low whistle as he surveys the chamber. He begins making sketches.

"At least this place seems pretty well made," Fendrig steps in, looking around. “I read about these sorts of chambers, but I never figured out their purpose. Something to do with honoring the celestials. But these runes… so far they’ve all just been old proverbs.”

A flat carving of Niuzao's head, the size of a warrior's buckler, is embedded in the floor at the center of the room. The ox's sapphire eyes glitter, reflecting light from the open flame on top of Fendrig's helmet.

Fenella steps on the disc as she crosses the room, the golem stomping behind her.

Lireen is distracted for a moment by the way the flame on Fendrig's helmet makes her own shadow flicker and dance on the floor.

Carrick enters the chamber and, after a brief inspection of the surroundings, follows after Fenella.

Fendrig barely notices anyone else. His attention is on one of the intricate murals worked into the chamber's walls. It depicts Niuzao, the Black Ox.

"Big ox," Marja says, and holds her baton steady while Bran draws.

"An' another 'nae an ox' ox. Somethin' like Yu'lon an' Chi-Ji," Oranna says.

Bran beams a wordless thanks at Marja.

“This is odd,” Fendrig says to Lireen nearby, staring at the mural. “I read about Niuzao, the Black Ox. He’s a mighty being, capable of standing against entire armies. But here, look… he looks anything but fearless.”

The Black Ox cowers atop a hill, surrounded by throngs of mogu warriors. On closer scrutiny, it looks as though the soldiers are fake—statues made of clay. The real mogu look on in delight at the scene from the borders of the mural.

Lireen nods, her silvered brows drawing together in an expression rarely seen on her face. She would appear to be fashing.

Oranna nods to Fendrig, frowning as she peers closer to scrutinize the details. "Are those…clay people?"

Not spotting any sign of jade, Fenella is already heading out of the room with Koveth.

Bran, not fashing, does his own little sketch of the mural in his journal.

"Aye, it looks like it… fake soldiers?" Fendrig peers at the mural.

Since Fendrig is providing them with light, Marja goes to catch up with Fenella.

Oranna, after getting her nose mere inches from the mural studying the clay people, backs away, rubbing at her nose and sniffling — dust — and nodding. "Aye. That's odd, right?" She glances over at Lireen, and does a double-take. She looks from the warrior to whatever Lireen is looking at, as if that will give an answer to what has her seeming worried.

Lireen seems to be gazing at her own shadow again.

Now Oranna is gazing at Lireen's shadow.

The shadow is flickering a little, because of the fact that it's cast by an unsteady light, but otherwise it seems perfectly normal.

Since the shadow is a reality and an accurate representation of the real world's reaction to light sources to all appearances from Oranna's perspective, Oranna's confusion deepens, and she looks back to Lireen, as if the clue for the worrying must be there, rather than in the direction of the source.

Lireen drags her eyes away from her shadow, seeming to look quite deliberately at the flame that was casting it. She takes a breath so slow and deep as to clearly be deliberate.

The air suddenly crackles with energy, and Fendrig hastily looks up to see some of the group has already left the chamber. "Oi! Where’d ye go?"

"Down the tunnel!" Fenella's voice echoes from the doorway. “No jade in there. Come on!”

Oranna offers Lireen a somewhat forced but attempted comforting sort of smile. "It's a bit of a day, aye? Strange place, an'… memories dug up afore we've even found much jade. Sounds like Fenella's found more of a place though. Let's go see?" She starts off towards the doorway, keeping an eye on both directions, watching the exit even as she crosses over the threshold.

“Aye, let's go, Cloudskimmer,” Fendrig says, hurrying towards the opening. His foot hits against a groove in the floor. He looks down and discovers he is standing on the emblem of Niuzao. The face of the Black Ox, once stoic, has taken on the same terrified visage as he had in the mural.

Fendrig leaps back as the disc turns and makes a full revolution before stopping. The roar of stone grinding against stone shakes the room. From behind the walls, Fendrig hears what sounds like wheels and pulleys—the creak of old wood and the strain of strong rope being pulled taut.

"Hold up, Nella," Marja says, going still as she listens.

Lireen, trailing behind the others, pauses, looking around. She should not have paused.

"What was that?" Fenella yells back from the tunnel, pausing as requested.

"It'ssss…" Fendrig can't get the words out.

The rumble grows deafening. Slabs of thick rock descend over the chamber's two openings with alarming speed. He takes a step, his legs like anvils. He trips and slams into the ground. His mining helmet clatters to the floor, the impact blowing out the flame that burns atop it.

Lireen, now trapped in growing darkness with Fendrig, falls to her knees as though trying to curl in on herself, to hide…

Oranna freezes, looking towards the sounds with a gasp.

"Fendrig! Lireen! Get through!" Fenella shouts.

Fendrig raises his head and sees the faint violet light of the Dark Iron's gem. The stone slab continues sliding rapidly down. Fenella rushes up next to Oranna, trying to find a way to brace it, but it’s unstoppable.

Marja flattens herself to the wall so that Fenella's golem can get through.

Koveth can't get a grip on the slab. The door closes.

The last sound that emerges as the door closes is Lireen whispering raggedly, "… my blood… "

Then darkness swallows them.

Lireen’s Memory of Fear

Lireen freezes in the dark. She feels the flutter of her gryphon Frostfeather’s feathers against her leg, and frowns. That doesn’t seem right, not in… where is she?

In a flash, she knows this place: Grim Batol. That’s right. She’s hiding in the shadows, calmly waiting to flank the enemy. She’ll swoop in when the war golems finish breaking down the door and face the Wildhammer army, exposing their back to her.

A violet light sparks in the darkness, and she sees Modgud is in sight below, at the head of a Dark Iron army before the gates of Grim Batol. Just before the door breaks, the Dark Iron sorceress slits her palm and cries, "Dark Blade Xal'atath, drink of my blood and I shall drink of your power!"

Lireen feels the earth under her grow cold, the shadows that were like a protective blanket suddenly see her and hate her. She grips the haft of her stormhammer. Tendrils of darkness reach for her; malevolent whispers tease the edges of her mind. She does not know how to fight an enemy like this. She attacks, but her hammer hits only air.

At this, Lireen panics. Her flanking plan is forgotten, and she only wants the safety of her home. Frostfeather is faring no better, but she still jumps onto his back, urges him to full speed, and dives through the great gate just as it finally crumbles.

For a moment, she breathes easier, soaring over the safety of her home, but then she realizes that the promise of safety was an illusion. She is surrounded by shadows now, and they are ALL alive. Every dark corner and crack in the city is now a writhing mass of hatred and malice.

The Dark Iron army is fighting through, but they seem to fare just as poorly against the malevolent shadows as the Wildhammers are. Lireen spots some of them stopping, screaming, clawing at their eyes, bashing their heads into walls…

Then Lireen isn’t watching the soldiers, because Frostfeather goes wild with panic. She struggles to get the gryphon under control, murmuring soothing words that she doesn’t feel in her heart. Frostfeather is not soothed.

Heedless in fear, the gryphon flies directly into a stone wall. There’s a sickening crunch of bone and then they both fall. Lireen feels Frostfeather slip away from her, and she flails out, searching for anything to catch herself on.

Lireen’s hand clasps onto a frieze, breaking some of her momentum at the cost of a dislocated shoulder, and then she loses her grip. The rest of the fall is breathless and terrified, and a sharp pain in her leg as she collides with the ground tells her that her leg is broken.

She can’t run. She can’t fight. The shadows close in, reaching and whispering, seeming to turn the blood in her veins to ice. For the first and only time in her life, she is so afraid, she wishes for death. Anything, to stop the fear and the pain.

“But ye didn’t die,” says a quiet voice, and there is someone else there in the shadows, someone she can’t quite make out. “Ye were right to be afraid, but ye survived all the same. The fear – it does not diminish you. Ye can leave it here, in this place. In memory.”

Somewhere in the distance, Thane Kardros calls a battle cry. The sounds gives her strength. It’s a reminder that the Wildhammers are still here, still fighting, in spite of everything…

Wait, no, that’s not Thane Kardros’s voice, it’s…

Fendrig’s Memory of Fear

In his mind, the din of grinding stone remains. It takes on a different sound. The sound of the world breaking, of a mountain and its ancient wrath crashing down.

"Fendrig! Where are ye, lad?" an unseen voice calls. He recognizes it. He hasn't heard it in over a year. Not since—

"CAVE-IN!" someone else cries.

Fendrig tries to stand, but his legs fail him. In the dark, he has lost all sense of direction. His lungs fill with an icy chill, and he knows exactly where he is. Coldridge Pass.

"No. Nae here… nae here…" Fendrig mutters to himself as he glances about. It is still dark, but he senses a new enormity to the chamber. He isn’t in Pandaria anymore; he is in that cavernous mountain tunnel tucked deep within dwarven territory. He had been working there with twelve other miners when the Cataclysm struck, when earthquakes shattered his world. Torchlight flickers around the room, the source indistinguishable. In the brief moments of illumination, he sees giant shadows falling, stones the size of wagons raining from the roof.

"Where's Fendrig?"

That voice again. Louder. A chorus of other familiar speakers follow it.

"Still in there! I'm goin' back!"

"I'm with ye!"

"No." Fendrig chokes the word out. "Save yerselves!"

They don’t listen. Their torches grow brighter. Closer.

"This way!" one of them howls. "He's—"

A sharp, sickening crash silences the voice forever. Still, the others continue on, calling Fendrig's name. One by one, he hears the great stones fall. He hears the miners scream, watches the glow from their torches slowly fade into nothingness.

And through it all, Fendrig remains frozen in place, too afraid even to stand or seek
out the dead and dying. Shivering but safe in a natural void formed by the falling stones.
Dumb, shameful luck. As suddenly as it has begun, the earthquake stops. All is silent.

Fendrig blinks, telling himself that this is just a dream. But nothing around him changes. The air is still bitter cold and dry in his throat, the dust of pulverized stone still thick on his tongue.

"Oi." A boot kicks him hard in the ribs.

Fendrig looks up, expecting to see the rescue party that had found him in the rubble of the pass. Out of the thirteen miners who had entered that day, only he came out alive, and not even on his own two feet. The rescuers had carried him to safety because he lacked the strength to walk.

This, however, is not the rescue party he remembers.

A group of vaporous forms, glowing with a faint, iridescent light, encircles him. There are twelve of them in total, all adorned in mining gear. The twelve bravest dwarves Fendrig has ever known.

Fendrig stares at the ghosts of the miners, wondering if they’ve come here for revenge. After all, what has he done to honor their sacrifices? Until Pandaria, he hadn't ventured into a mine. He'd lied to get out of such assignments. He'd spent his days telling stories of his past mining exploits, struggling to uphold his façade of fearlessness. It’s the only thing he’s good at anymore.

"What do ye want with me?" Fendrig hisses.

The phantoms don’t respond. They draw closer. Fendrig takes a wild swing at them.

"We ain't gonna hurt ye, lad," the ghosts say in unison. "We're here tae help ye up. Ye been lyin' down there fer far too long."

Fendrig takes a deep breath to calm his nerves. He lets the shadowy forms grab him, the sensation like eddies of air pushing against his body. They lift him up until he’s standing.

"There we go."

"I'm sorry, lads." Fendrig casts his eyes down, too ashamed to look at the ghosts. "I should have come tae ye in the pass. I should have done somethin'. Anythin'. I… I was afraid."

"So were we. Difference was we didn't allow the fear tae stop us. High time ye did the same. We're gonna let go now." The phantoms loosen their grips, and a pang of terror spirals through Fendrig.

"No!" The word leaps out of his mouth. "I'm trapped in here. I dinna know the way out."

"All we can do is get ye tae yer feet, lad. Whether ye lie back down or stay standin' is up tae ye."

Fendrig swallows, his throat raw from the frigid mountain air of the pass. "I…" He tries to think of something to say, but he knows it is just an excuse to keep the ghosts at his side.

"Time tae start livin' again," they continue. "Ye ready?"

Fendrig's heart thumps in his chest. His breathing quickens. When his time comes
and he passes into the realm beyond this one, what will he say to the ghosts of the
twelve? He has often pondered that question. Will he tell them he's lived the rest of his
days in fear? Or that he's lived a life of purpose, eyes open, fire burning hot in his blood?
And now, here they are.

He clears his throat. "Do it."

The ghosts let go.

—

In the meantime, in the corridor outside…

Oranna shoulders her gun to instead take out a well made pickaxe, working at the seams of the door with a determination that seems in direct proportion to her earlier nervousness. "Carrick! Can ye tell where the weak points are?" she calls out even as she hits at the one she can see.

Carrick runs his hands over the slab, shaking his head uneasily.

“You all, try to find another way in. I’ll see if Koveth can break down the door,” Fenella says frantically. “We can’t leave Lireen and Fendrig in this trap.”

"We won't," Oranna says, and weighed against the stone slab versus her tone, anyone listening might be inclined to put money on the dwarf.

Marja holds her baton closer to the door, searching for gaps or cracks.

Koveth smashes stone fists against the slab, avoiding harming Marja, while Fenella looks it over from a few paces away.

"Why didn't they run when they had the chance?" Carrick mumbles from nearby.

Oranna hits the door sharply at a corner spot. "Sometimes. Running. Isn't the right. Choice. An' there was somethin' wrong afore. Lireen was… I think she was going somewhere in her head. I've ne'er seen here like that afore." She takes a pause, as she takes a breath, looking to Carrick. "Have ye?"

Carrick shakes his head. "I've nae kept in touch like maybe I should've, since the Second War, but she's always been so steady. What was it she said there at the end, somethin' about blood?"

Oranna's brow furrows deeper, and her mouth moves a few times. "'My blood,' mebbe? I… I think that's all I caught," she says and she presses closer to the door. "Ach, ye think she was injured?" She looks over to the healer. "Bran? Can ye — can ye tell through the door?"

Even without a response, Oranna lifts her pickaxe again, and sets it back into a place to try to jimmy wiggle, to get even a little piece off, something to start a progress.

Bran looks thoughtful for a moment, and his expression lights with curiosity as he heads toward the door. His demeanor would suggest that this is just an interesting puzzle or experiment, and not life or death for two people he knows well.

He leans against the door and closes his eyes, and then he makes a slightly surprised sound.

"Aye," he says. "I can feel them. Souls, there. Whole." He then steps back. "I could probably heal 'em from here if they were hurt, but - no injury that I can tell."

"She was spookin' at shadows a little, wasn't she?" Carrick asks, frowning. "She's usually hard ta spook — been through a lot. She was around for the War of the Three Hammers, even, when we all split up a'fore."

"Shadows," Fenella repeats, and she looks at the shadows cast by her glowing violet crystal on the dark stone wall.

Oranna stops again, going still, and this time it's clear she's thinking of something. "Shadows…" There, whatever she was thinking of, she caught the tail end of it. "I wonder — we, Cobalt we, and Bran and me specifically here we, were in Grim Batol last year, in the Highlands, on account of what Twilight's Hammer was about. The shadows got… righ' strange, even so many years later, an' with little enough ta power them. We had a human on our team, Bran knows him too, Shine — he couldn't work with the shadows there from how bad the taint was, and shadows had ne'er given him a trouble afore, and he's been fine since. But, with Pandaria's ways and the things it's stirred up… Ye dinna think… is anyone else sensitive ta shadows here sensing them off? Sensing them like a Grim Batol kind of off? I've never had a knack with them, one way or t'other."

"Grim Batol," Fenella says, as Koveth continues his thud-thud-thud against the door. "The shadows there — stories say the sorceress Modgud did somethin' there, that the place was cursed. It was before my time, so all I know's the stories."

"Felt like normal shadows in here to me," Marja says unhelpfully, and steps back to let the people with tools break through. She has not found any spots for Graham to wiggle through.

"It was mostly just really creepy, and the Twilight's Hammer hadn't improved it any," Oranna says. "It was afore my time as well. But one thing about it was the doors an' errything… it was weirdly quiet. I don't know if… well, Koveth here's at least making some noise, but mebbe we could — something that wouldn't be a thing ye'd have heard back then. When we were in Grim Batol, we landed on a sea shanty after. But, mebbe a dwarven tavern song. Something that if she's gone a place in her head, if she hears us… " Oranna shakes her head helplessly. "I don't know." She hits her pickaxe again at the door. "This thing's so tight. I cannae e'en get the tip in."

"She would ha' been there, back in those days," Carrick says, frowning. "It was where the Wildhammers went, after leavin' Ironforge. That's over two hundred years ago, though…"

"Doesn't help us gettin' them out," Fenella says, looking at Koveth's hands and the undamaged door. "Whate'er spooked her an' Fendrig isn't going to help us with that."

Oranna spends a few precious seconds probably, based on her expression, trying to think of a single cheery upbeat song. It is very obvious she comes up with zero (0) songs, and instead goes with, "LIREEEEEN!! LIREEEEEENNNNN~" in a tune that some would recognize as a very popular song about a woman asking another woman to not take her man.

On the other side of the door, in darkness, Lireen blinks rapidly. "Thane—? No…"

Fenella sighs and gestures Koveth back. "We need help tae free them, an' we won't get that until we find our own way out o' this place. We’ll need to get back with blasting powder, or maybe some help from the pandaren.”

"You are not going to leave them here," Carrick says, an edge coming back in his voice.

"They won't thank us for waiting till they've nae air," Fenella snaps back.

"If we can get them ta talk ta us," Oranna interjects. "Afore we start making plans fer how we just start blasin'."

For a moment Lireen is still in the darkness, listening. As the muffled voices resolve into very real ones she knows well, she blinks again and gives her head a little shake. She gets slowly to her feet, shuffling forward carefully a half step at a time, groping in the darkness until her hand lands on someone's head - Fendrig's.

"Come on…" she murmurs to him gently. "We have ta find some light…" She firmly but carefully tries to get him to his feet.

Fendrig sinks slightly and then stumbles back, struggling to keep his balance. Then, with Lireen’s help, he finds his footing.

Oranna leans closer to the door. "Wait, wait, did anyone — did anyone hear that?"

This time, from the other side of the door, clearly, there is no mistaking Lireen's voice as she calls out, "ORANNA!"

No song, though. Just the name.

Oranna sags with relief so intense she actually hits her shoulder against the wall. "LIREEN! WE'RE OKAY! WE'RE TRYING TA GET TA YE! KEEP YER FEET ON THE GROUND!"

A faint blue light begins shining from somewhere in the room. Fendrig sees the Niuzao carving nearby. The ox's sapphire eyes are glowing fiercely, brighter and brighter. Without looking back, he steps forward, planting one foot firmly on the disc.

Suddenly, there’s the sound of stones grinding behind them. Fenella turns to see the doorway to the Niuzao room sliding open. Cautiously, Fenella moves towards the doorway, allowing the purple light to illuminate the chamber.

Fendrig and Lireen are there.

Oranna says, "Oh. Ah. Well. There ye are." She laughs with a sort of sob of relief at the same time.

Lireen appears calm - she seems to have spent her one exclamation point for the year already. "Well," she says. "There ye are, dear."

"Heyyy." Marja twirls her baton in a flourish. "What happened? You two alright? I didn't know that door could shut until it shut."

"I think," Lireen says pensively, "it was somethin' akin to what happened to Ricky- er, ta Carrick before. Seein' things from the past as though they were happenin' now. Bad things."

Oranna puts her face in her hands, breathing shakily. All the determined surety has dissolved into wobbly shoulders and belated panic spiraling.

Fendrig points down at the engraving of Niuzao, where he was standing. "It's a trigger o' some kind. We must've tripped it when we came in."

Fenella eyes the disc with suspicion. “Aye, I did step on it when I walked through, but nothing happened. It’s just an engraving. But anyway, ye fine, then?”

"Might be a smaller pressure plate than the whole disc," Marja points out to Fenella. "Regardless, we'll keep our feet off of patterns like that now, aye? You need a minute? Oranna? Want a minute?"

“Aye,” Fenella agrees. “Feet off patterns, just in case.”

"Some kind o' test," I think, says Lireen, going to Oranna and attempting to rub motherly circles between her shoulder blades.

Oranna takes another breath, and wipes at her face. "No, I'm… I'm — I'll be fine. I'm a wee bit — I dinna like exits closing off a sudden like that meself. And I was worried. But it's, well, over now. And we're all … nae trapped an' no one's lost or spiralin' down inta terrible places in their heads forever until madness so, that's… a win."

"Just a wee bit o' spiraling," Lireen says gently. "But like any good gryphon rider I know how to come out o' one."

Oranna looks at Lireen, frowning in thought enough for that worry line to become a worry chasm between her thick brows. "A test? Why — what makes ye say a test?"

Marja pulls a face. "I don't care for exits closing like that either. Fendrig, you alright? Set to go?"

"The door only opened once both of us came out of our … memories," she says. "Just as the other passage opened once Carrick returned to us."

"Aye. Just… lost me way fer a bit," Fendrig looks over to Lireen, and then meets Marja's eyes. His earlier coldness is gone, replaced by something else. Something real. "I don't know why we'd be tested, but there's magic in this place. That's a fact."

"Well," Marja says, "Unless the kid who sent us here is actually an ancient pandarian Celestial who wanted us to be tested for some reason, hopefully there's some actual jade in this place."

Bran literally does the Nathan Fillion meme at Marja's comment. Then he goes back to frantically taking notes.

Carrick gives a short nod.

Fendrig strikes flint, reigniting the flame on his metal helmet, and then, his head held high, ready to head with his team deeper into the mountain.

Marja turns to Fenella. "I think we're all set, Nella."

"Let's get moving then," Fenella says, looking at the team a little warily. She doesn't bring up that she was about to flee to find help. "We still need to find that jade, after all."

Oranna looks guiltily at Marja. "Well, ah… an'… if the kid who sent us here is actually an ancient Pandaria Celestial who wanted us ta be tested fer some reason…?"

"What, is she?" Marja blinks at Oranna.

Carrick pauses, and turns to stare at Oranna.

"Huh, that sounds about right," Fendrig says, nodding thoughtfully.

Oranna looks at Bran, looks at Marja, and makes a squeaking sort of sound. "I — she… didnae want us ta say anythin'. She did a, shh." Oranna mimes the same finger to the lips. "But, aye. We've met her afore. That's the pandaren form of the Jade Serpent, Yu'lon, the Celestial whose statue we're, ye know, workin' ta repair, so she can take the form and renew. She wants us ta find that jade and repair the statue. Her existence definitely depends on it."

Bran nods. "I dinna think it matters if we say noew," he assures Oranna. "But aye, 'twas definitely the Jade Serpent herself."

"Oh!" Marja's expression softens faintly. "So it's her we're doing this for. In that case, there probably is some jade down at the end of this."

Fenella's eyes widen. "Aye, she would nae waste our time with her own statue."

"Absolutely!" Bran says. "An' I'm sure she doesna mind us knowin' it was her noew that we're doewn here. I think she just dinna like ta be fussed over, an' well, her real form would cause quite a fuss, aye? Also I think she's a bit playful."

Oranna flaps both her hands in some sort of gesture that might be maybe repairing a statue. "Exactly. I — I dinna know what's going on with all the… bad memories bein' stirred up. Mogu magic, mebbe. Mebbe it's somethin' about why she sent us here, because it's so dangerous, but the jade's worth it, but I dinna know… about a test…"

"Not a test in the sense o' judgment," Lireen says. "But more… like in trainin'."

"She did say that we had a lot to learn about pandaren," Marja says thoughtfully as she follows Fenella.

"It did nae feel malicious," Carrick says thoughtfully. "If it was a test, it was… maybe tae see if I could carry on. Let the past lie."

Fendrig nods quietly. "About gettin' back on my feet."

"That fear is nae the end o' the world," Lireen says. Then a bit wryly, "In Azeroth, half the time even the end o' the world is nae the end o' the world."

Fenella is surprised into a sharp laugh. "Too right, that."

Oranna laughs awkwardly, but a laugh nonetheless. Still, she gets out her gun again.

Bran just continues to take rapid notes, assisted by the light of Marja's baton.

Other pandaren were stricken with terror. Merely hearing the name of their tormentors paralyzed them. This fear seeped into all aspects of life. They became afraid of every shadow, of every sound. They became afraid of life itself, content to waste away in a prison of their own making. If only they had remembered the mantra of Niuzao: "Fear seeks to diminish you. Instead, let it reveal you."
—The Scrolls of the Celestials

The Tunnel of Chi-Ji

On and on the tunnel winds. Murals of Chi-Ji, the Red Crane, shimmer on the walls to either side. The celestial flies over throngs of rejoicing pandaren slaves in the first few murals. But as the team continues down the tunnel, the depictions grow darker: mogu warriors capturing Chi-Ji, binding his wings with chains, and then parading the Red Crane among the pandaren, all of whom cast their eyes down and weep at the sight.

Marja scowls at the mural of Chi-Ji in chains as they pass it.

The number of mosaics gradually lessens, giving way to a sea of sparkling gems. Ruby crystals blanket the walls and ceiling, reflecting the glow of the dwarves' lights. They reach a kind of crossroads, where three tunnels meet.

When the rubies start appearing in the walls, Marja whistles admiringly.

"Wonderful," Fenella says quietly. “This is true beauty, not the forests and flowers that grow topside. These crystals, these stones, these are things that last the test of time."

Oranna's sympathy is deep, and her recognition is personal this time. The gems have some interest, but the way a dwarf has for a rock, more than a collector of wealth.

"Keep yer eyes open," Lireen says sternly. "There's probably somethin' here meant ta trap the mind."

Bran is sketching the gems.

Oranna keeps a little further back to keep the room as a whole in her scope, her gun out this time, ready. "Aye," she says, as she watches their exit, and where everyone is, to a point of obsessiveness.

“What’s this?” Fenella moves closer to a dark green spot on the wall. A large stone is wedged between two crystals. Fenella shines her glow gem across the ceiling and finds more of the strange, almost perfectly shaped rocks. Curious, she reaches out to touch one.

It shrieks.

Oranna's gunshot is a breath after, and her bullet precise. The spray causes the gems to scatter.

Bran startles, dropping his journal.

Lireen merely blinks.

Fenella lurches back as spindly legs unfurl from beneath another dark green stone that proves to be a shale spider's body. Its carapace rattles. A cluster of green eyes gleam in the darkness. The commotion rouses the other nibblers. Dozens of them spring to life on the ceiling and walls, their legs clicking and clattering.

"Koveth!" Fenella shouts. "Engage!"

"Affirmative." The golem strikes the nearest clump, smashing them against the wall.

There is the world's tiniest hiss from the world's tiniest lizard.

Oranna doesn't need any orders, as she backs up further to get better lines of sight on everyone and the cave walls lined with gems.

Bran scrambles to rescue his journal, looking panicked… oh, whew! Pages are just a little rumpled, not torn. He relaxes as spiders swarm the cave.

Carrick brings his stormhammer around to bear, and Fendrig also scrambles to the defense.

Marja pulls a pair of engineering goggles over her eyes to protect against crystal splinters. She twirls her circus baton and smashes it into a shale spider.

Lireen is in her element, calmly swinging her hammer with clean efficiency at anything that moves. It's at least partially clear how she's managed to keep her joints in good shape so long - her moves are balanced, minimal, relaxed - not a fragment more power exerted than necessary to get the job done.

The team dispatch many shale spiders, but there are more. They drop down on the dwarves, sinking razor-sharp legs into skin. Part of the ceiling crumbles, and a group of giant shale spiders, half the size of a dwarf, plummet to the ground.

"Too many!" Carrick swings his hammer, splitting the carapace of one of the larger spiders. "Run!"

A mass of spiders blocks the center of the crossroads, forcing the team to flee in three directions. Carrick and Fendrig flee back the way the team has come. Fenella tries to take a step towards them, but it's no use. Instead, she heads down the second tunnel.

"Koveth," Fenella hisses. "Defensive retreat!" The golem moves with her.

Lireen follows Carrick, and Bran follows Fendrig, so they nearly trip over each other in their haste to flee.

Marja is crushed beneath a falling spider, and she blinks to safety (as a mage does) in the direction of Bran, their healer.

Oranna's gun is loud, and decisively firing — until suddenly, it's silent. And where Oranna was, is now a wall.

"Well hello there," Bran says as a crushed baton-twirling Dark Iron appears (to his perception) completely out of nowhere. He gestures at her casually, and warm sparkly Light shimmies down her form.

"Mmgh," Marja says as her bones un-break. "Whoa. Thanks." She bounces back to her feet like an acrobat. Using Lireen as front-line cover, she launches a pyroblast at the central spider.

Lireen notices the wall and doubles back. "Well, damn it," she says, having already wasted her exclamation point for the year.

Bran beams a crescent-eyed smile after the bouncing-back dwarf, then returns to frantic note-taking. This kind of thing doesn't happen often. He is not failing to record it for posterity.

Marja rotates one of the rune bands on her bracer. There's a click, and an explosion of flame detonates in the central cluster of shale spiders. Marja smirks.

More spiders drop down from the ceiling. There goes the smirk.

Bran flings up a shield around her.

Carrick and Fendrig try to fend the spiders off, but are slowly pushed back the way they came.

Suddenly, the group might realize that the walls look noticeably unfamiliar. Did they change? The air hums with sorcery. And then… the tunnel appears to end behind them.

"Nella?" Marja shouts. "Walls're moving! Oranna?"

"Errr… that ain't right," Bran says. "That… it's all changed." He sounds more affronted than frightened.

There is no answer from the other side of the spiders.

"Ach, Boomer'll never find us noew," Bran says, fashing a little. "The pewr lass has a hard enough time knowin' which way's what when they stay the same."

Fendrig puts his back against the crystal wall. Hot blood pumps from the wounds on
his arms and soaks deep into his leather gloves.

Carrick stands nearby, teeth bared, fighting fiercely alongside his allies, Wildhammer, Bronzebeard, and Dark Iron alike.

"Here they come again!" Fendrig tightens his grip on the pickaxe.

"We hold until the walls shift again! Maybe they'll shift us out of here next!" Marja continues blasting.

Brannagen sends some sparkles Fendrig's way.

Ahead, a wave of shale spiders rolls toward them. Carrick hurls his hammer at the creatures. Jagged strands of lightning trailed off the weapon as it slammed into a particularly large spider, reducing it to a smoldering husk with an explosion of light and sound. The hammer arcs back through the air, returning to Carrick's hand.

But the spiders didn't pause in their mindless attack. No matter how many the dwarves kill, more and more of the critters crawled out of the nooks and crannies in this place.

"This seems bad," Bran says, slinging out another heal between frantic note-taking.

Marja sighs irritably. This is her life now. Infinite spiders.

Oranna’s Memory of Despair

Oranna’s hair clings to her neck and forehead, and her armor tries to suffocate her. The walls crush against her, squeeze the gaps closer, until there’s nothing left, no air, no way out. She’s scrambling, wheezing, reaching back. She can’t be – she needs – where is the –

Take a breath, Sunbeam.

Oranna breathes. Slow, steady, single breaths until the air comes back into the cavern, until her vision stops being spots and swarms. Space. There’s space. She goes to stone, becomes the stone, and it’s safe. She is stillness and quiet.

She turns back to flesh and sound and thoughts return. She waits for the rest of the rock to turn back to making sense, for it to be what it should be, what she knows it should be, but it doesn’t – that’s not an illusion of her mind. She reaches out a hand, touches it, and it’s real. Oh, no. It’s magic, and it’s shifted on her. The passage is gone, the way back is broken off.

She whirls around, searching for direction, for an exit, for anyone, and panic hits anew, a blow striking before she even thinks to get her guard back up.

Get your shield up! Her mother’s voice barks the command, faint but clearer than it’s been in years. Oranna flinches, her left cheek stinging with a remembered pain of a backhand decades gone.

Oranna left them, the others, her team, her company. She backed up so far that she’s safe, she’ll survive, and the others are facing whatever it is without her, holding the line to maybe die. Again. She’s done it again. How could she do it again? Her legs give out on her, her back sliding with a screech of metal against the rock as her armor protests her slump, shaking with the sobs she can’t stop.

Of course it happened again. She’s Oranna. This is what she does, who she is. Her mother knew it. Even Oranna knew it, and has known it all along. Weak. A liability. Her hands drop to her side. SUNBEAM rolls out of limp grip, hits the dust of the cavern floor, and the rocks slide around her in the water of her tears.

She’ll never find an exit like this. She’ll never get back to the others. She’ll be safe on this side of the wall. The doors of Ironforge. The walls of Pandaria. She’ll survive. Alone. They’ll all die. There will be nothing she can do.

It doesn’t matter now.

Her vision catches on something strange, a bend that doesn’t belong in the rock, a curve that isn’t right. It’s carved, and she blinks to clear her sight. She knows that arch; it’s a crane. It’s not any crane. She knows that one in particular. That’s Chi-Ji, the Red Crane. A thought stirs something in her.

I see what you mean about Chi-Ji, The Red Crane. That’s always a risk with languages. If I had a gold for every time I heard someone refer to the “Khaz Modan Mountains”, well… maybe I could support my ma’s tavern for a good long time.

A laugh breaks out of her, echoes in the empty halls, it’s small and weak, like Oranna, but for a breath she can see Thalstan’s eyes and the way he looks at her and the way he makes her feel and she can almost remember –

Her hand closes over Sunbeam, and she grabs at the almost thought again like a fingernail’s grip on a cliff edge she’s sliding over. Water streams from Chi-Ji’s stone carved eyes, great cleansing tears something somehow different and not entirely from Oranna’s own. Her chest thumps as she stares at the water, tracing it up to his eyes. They’re red, like spinels with that clarity, so intense and pure, and even so far across the way she can see all the facets reflecting images of herself in them.

She’s filthy, beaten and sunken down to the floor, a pathetic mess, hair tangled and caught with debris and dust until the brown has dulled into dusty, matted gray. Weak. Broken.

You’re a little smudged, Sunbeam.

The words are so clear she nearly hears them with her ears more than inside her head, a wave of grief sweeping through her lungs, compressing the air out to make space for the memory. Bargrimm had just been gravely injured by the harpies on their way back from Gadgetzan, and Oranna had been roughened up, knocked down from when Bargrimm had covered her with himself, taking the blow meant for her. Like always, like everyone, because Oranna can never save anyone, can never be the one to help.

For a breath, a darker thought sinks its teeth into Oranna, and tears into her, seeking a bone beneath, and then she is gripped by something else, something bright and strong and achingly familiar. “Now, there ye are, love.” The words are too loud to be in her head. Chi-Ji’s eyes are too bright, the reflections too real. Someone’s hand is on hers is too solid, and she knows the shape of it, knows it the way she knows SUNBEAM’S stock –

And then she’s in the freezing air of Ironforge’s large geometric mouth, the air ringing from the explosion of the bridge, and the air singing with the broken silence of heavy snow catching the sounds of an army clashing and gripping desperately as lives end with every second that passes.

Oranna’s head spins one direction, the rest of the world spins another, and the hand on her arm is Topa’s, dragging her towards the gates of the greatest, safest dwarven city in creation, away from the disaster of the Second War reaching Ironforge.

“Ora, we need to go. We have to go. The gates are closing.” Oranna’s veins are ice cold, and her vision is spotty, as the taste of beer and vomit crowd her mouth. Her gaze is fixed on the writhing mass on the other side of the now great chasm between the civilians and the mightiest warriors of the Stormbreaker clan as they hold off the Horde orcs to buy the most precious of time.

She knows this, doesn’t she?

“Ora! They’re already gone. We need to go.”

Yes, that’s right. They’re already gone. They’re already dead. The cold is numbing. Everything is ice slow. Oranna knows that soon a blow will land that will strike down the unkillable, undefeatable Irona Stormbreaker, her shield breaking under the onslaught of an orc three times her size, brought down by numbers as much as anything else. Oranna’s brother Copperun’s head will split like a melon encased by the best dwarven steel by an axe that will sing through the air, screaming into the cold mountains before the hot spray of life blood that will end a lifetime of a resented relationship never to be mended. Silvano, always the kindest of her brothers, eldest, will go down like a ship at sea, beneath a wave of orcs bearing him to the packed snow and bloodied earth. Malkah, the middle, caught in the middle by a spear that will puncture through the armor Oranna spent two months negotiating for that was the top of the line five years ago. Nikhail will get too close to the new edge, trying to hold a back line, and it will take only one terrible shove by an orc, and Oranna won’t know, but she’ll always believe he wouldn’t have even screamed on the way down, never went against his training, not even at the last. Aunt Zineka will fight to the last, her head severed and taken away as a prize in the end as a sign of respect for a dwarven warrior never buried the way her ancestors were.

And Oranna, she turns and she runs away, to leave them all to their deaths, to be safe behind a wall in the cavern with the crying crane.

“Well, now, that’s not quite right, is it, love?” Bargrimm says.

Oranna blinks, tries to find her balance, and Bargrimm’s hand on her arm is steady as a rock. There he is, just as she remembers him – no, better than she remembers him. Sharper and clearer than any memory she’s ever conjured. Every smooth orange red curl of his beard, and each precise crinkle around his dark green eyes, and all the intricacies of his tattoos, so vivid and alive that she can smell him, Wildhammer notes of pine, undercurrents of his gun oil and Keane’s wolf fur.

“Bargrimm?”

He reaches out a hand to smooth out a tear around her eyes. “You’re a little smudged, Sunbeam,” he tells her affectionately.

“It can’t be you,” she counters. “Ye weren’t here.” It doesn’t make sense, and everything slips strangely, like cat claws scrambling on black ice. “I was scared of this happening. That somehow, ye would be here someday, that I’d love ye, and ye’d be taken away from me just like this, just like they were, but ye weren’t here.”

Bargrimm kneels in front of Oranna and she knows this has happened, something like it, this too is a memory, and she watches him take her hands just like he did that day when he told her about how Niris’ Keane died. “I promised ye that I’d never let you go through that, love.”

The wind howls, unsympathetic and dire, kicking snow around them both as Bargrimm’s orange hair is covered in a fine dust that gives him a ghostly aura. Oranna shivers and shakes with it.

“I’m sorry I broke that promise. I can’t tell ye how sorry I am, Sunbeam,” he continues, and that’s not quite right, not how the memory goes. He kisses her hands, and stands back up, his lashes coated with snowflakes.

The battle is thick and slow as a glacier, sliding around them on the other side of the great expanse. “Everyone’s going to die, and I’ll be alone again,” Oranna wails. “I need to get behind the doors. I have to run away.”

“Do ye? That doesn’t sound like my Sunbeam. It doesn’t sound like something ye have ta do at all.” It’s something he said before, in the Hinterlands.

Does it have to be this way? Somewhere, Oranna asks it, and she closes her hand around – SUNBEAM. She looks back to her family fighting on the other side. Back then, there wasn’t anything she could have done. She’d been trained – wrongly trained – as a melee fighter, and nothing else. She had no weapon; Topa had been the one entrusted with BOOMSTICK, and it was packed away in a bag, a relic, not prepared even if Oranna had thought to use it, and Oranna then would have never. Once she was on this side, her mother had cut off her options, and running for the doors had been the only thing to do. She had one path, and one path only.

It wasn’t like that anymore. Something powerful and overwhelming loosens its grip on Oranna, and Bargrimm smiles at her, quiet and understanding as his smiles always were, as he braces behind her. “Breathe,” he tells her. He doesn’t tell her how to shoot; he never did. He always trusted her to know how to do what she did, always believed in her ability to stand on her own.

Oranna takes her breaths slowly and carefully as she sets up, each motion smooth and unhurried. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and why, how to operate a complicated gun like SUNBEAM. When she’s ready, she times her shots according to her breath. SUNBEAM is meant for this sort of fight, with Oranna here at the long range, out of the main fray where she can focus on her steady shots, making every bullet count. She inhales calm, and exhales hope for her team. This is what matters, being part of the Company, being with everyone, not alone and solitary, fighting for something more than survival of herself.

“Ye find the right folks time to time, and well, there’s always a light in the distance once ye find it. There’s always a chance that things turn poorly, but ye have the right folks alongside ye, and that helps ye weather it,” Bargrimm says, a memory of words about Cobalt Company and friendship. She remembers them standing in Ironforge years later beyond this fight, the warmth of the forges drifting around them and lighting his hair, and she’s there, and she’s here. She swallows down the lump in her throat, and blinks back the tears that start to freeze in her eyes. Bargrimm steadies her arm gently. “Ye hang onto ta that. It can carry ye through a lot of dark times, when they come.”

“I remember,” she chokes out, as loads an explosive shot to take out the orc that would have killed her mother. There, a shot to an eye. There, a trigger pulled to a shoulder to disrupt the shove that would send an axe into Copperun’s skull. Then, a trick split bullet spray to the ones who would have overwhelmed Silvano.

Shot by shot, she saves them all. It’s all it takes to turn the tide of this one fight – not one warrior, cut off from the others, powerless and weaponless, but one hunter, trained and determined. She is enough. She has always been enough. Just a girl with a gun, maybe, but what she can do is amazing when she’s allowed to be who she was meant to be.

The din of the fight lessens like a stampede running its course, and finally Oranna lifts her head from her gun’s scope. Her family stands on the other side of the chasm, bloodied, but alive, staring at her. The snow falls quiet and soft between them, the gates of Ironforge standing strong behind her. As one clan, her family raises their arms, waving slowly to her, like tall pines that sway in the winds on mountains that breathe in their quiet stone breaths of centuries and slow pumps of deep thermal veins.

Snow swirls and carries the Stormbreakers away, leaving Oranna and Bargrimm there alone but in victory, not defeat. The world has been washed into clean snow and stone, the battlefield swept of its blood and worse. Bargrimm stands before her, so real that she grabs him with her free hand, shaking her head in disbelief of substantiality here in this place. He has weight under her glove, like the rock she called him, and when she squeezes there's the give of his leather, the thickness of his arm beneath.

“This is something, isn’t it? Am I trapped in some Old God dream, or worse?” she asks him. “A sha thing that’s tricking me?”

“No, no. Yer a tracker, aren’t ye, love? Find yer way back ta the others,” he encourages, and there’s something gently sad and yearning in his face, something amongst love and sweetness, and it seizes something in her.

“I don’t want to leave here if it’s leaving you,” she says, and it’s true, but some part of her knows that it’s also not true. She sees a flash of dark blue eyes, and a letter waiting, and a ping sets off in her heart. She doesn't want to stay here, locked away in a memory, forever. There’s a future waiting out there for her.

He sets his hands over hers gently. “Ye cannot know how glad I am ta know that’s not all true.” Something wavers. “Here we are, love. An’ always will be, in some way.” It’s a memory that speaks, that’s all. A memory of words he’s said before, a little different, but she knows those words.

Oranna weeps, caught in a whirlwind of memories and whatever dream this is, held in place by Rocks. He keeps smiling, even as tears leak down his face into the crags of the wrinkles he earned through the centuries of his life, a life that ended, while hers goes on.

“I – I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she says.

“Ye’ll figure it out, Sunbeam. Ye’ve always been smarter than ye give yerself credit for. Trust yerself. Trust yer instincts. Ye are the most radiant gem in all Ironforge, and always will be. I loved being with ye every minute, and trying new things, and discovering what’s about alongside ye. Ye weren’t just a sunbeam for th’ Company; ye were my Sunbeam, personally. It’s like I’ve heard it said recently, hope is the sun behind a stormy sky. Ever in the heart, but veiled to the eye.”

Oranna looks up to the sky, but it’s dizzying and strange, all wrong, like a dream sky, cloudy in a way that it shouldn’t be, oppressively so, like a cave ceiling. But, Oranna’s been in stranger places. She’s been in a dimension of stone, where the sky was a sky and a ceiling and stone and infinity all at once. She closes her eyes, and thinks back to before she was here, to where she was in the cavern, to the water, to the red stones in Chi-Ji’s eyes, to Thalstan’s letter words, and there it is again in her chest – a thump. Hope. Happiness. A heaviness clears like a sun breaking through a cloudy sky, as a growing sense of a path opening stretches out like a bird testing its wings. Awareness trickles back in, and the snowy mountains of Ironforge fade away until Oranna stands back in the cavern with its dark, now well known stone of Pandaria.

She opens her eyes, grief settling on her like a familiar weight she knows, a trail she knows how to walk, and Bargrimm’s memory is there still staring at her – the ghost of him that she carries with her. She smiles at him, her tears matching Chi-Ji’s water flowing down his face, both of their tears running clear now, even if pain still lingers in it, inevitable as salt in the ocean’s water, but not bad for being part of it. Sometimes tears clear the eyes from something caught in them so a person can see what they need to see.

“Thank you,” she tells her memory of Bargrimm. “I love you. Ye knew that. I know ye always knew that. I’m glad ye came south. I’m so glad that ye made it here, so I could meet you. Even with how it ended, I’m glad it started.” It’s another memory of another time, words she already spoke when he was alive, most of them. He beams back at her, and it’s strangely so real, as if he really is there, even though she knows he’s not. It’s a trick of whatever lingering spell has come over her.

“Aye, quite same. Glad I dinnae miss over meeting ye.” His hand hovering by her cheek is an achingly well worn track of a near ghost sensation of the rough patches of his fingertips from his engineering on the skin – as keen in her mind as her mother's backhands, for all the relative brevity of the sweeter touches of love by the power of it. It's so vivid now that she can smell the oil, and when he speaks, she can hear a slight break in his voice, can see the small cracks around his eyes, a smile of both great joy and pain. “Love, ye were perfect t’me. Always will be, ye ken?” He leans forward, and when he kisses her, she swears, she can feel a full pressure on her lips, cool as a breeze, a true touch of stone.

She blinks.

He’s not there. The cavern is empty except for Oranna, and Chi-Ji’s statue. Of course Bargrimm’s not there, not that way, but he’s also always there. She sets her left hand to her chest, sore and tight, and steadies her breath. When she’s sure she has it slow and smooth, she swipes off the tears on her cheeks, and brushes back her hair from her forehead.

With a firm grip on SUNBEAM she looks back to what she knows she saw before, but couldn’t think about from around the despair – Despair? – that caught her before: the two paths.

The one to the right, she can tell, will lead her back away from the others: behind a wall, back to the mountains, to solitude, to running away. The other, the left hand path: that gets her back to her Company, to the others. She jolts in surprise. The crane statue is still there, but it’s not the same as before. Chi-Ji’s posture is of a crane free and calm, his wings stretched out with feathers spread in relief, head tilted back in an expression of joy, his slender beak open to sing without sound, facing the left hand path.

Oranna sets her mouth in a firm line, remembers how Bargrimm loved her, thinks of how Thalstan believes in her, and reminds herself that the others are depending on her.

More than anything, she reaches somewhere in herself to trust in how to be a girl with a gun who can break, and still be repaired, as many times as it takes, to come back and try again to help, a Protagonist of a story that isn't done being told, not yet.

Fenella’s Memory of Despair

Fenella sprints, the sound of the golem's footsteps thundering behind her. She doesn’t stop to think of where she’s going or how long she runs. She continues until she reaches a fork in the passageway. A statue of Chi-Ji has been set high into the crystal walls. The Red Crane's wings are bound, and the celestial's head is turned toward the right tunnel, tears pooling in his eyes.

Fenella stops to catch her breath. Nothing has followed her save for Koveth, his iron
body marred by jagged gouges. A shrill cry rings out from the direction they’ve come from. A dwarven cry. Marja calling for her, maybe? Fenella's hairs stand on end. The air in the cavern suddenly grows suddenly warmer, tinged with a hint of sorcery.

Can't do anythin' fer them. The thought wells up in Fenella, crawling out from some dark part of her. If I go back an' all o' us die, I'll bring shame tae me clan. Moira put me in charge. Folks in Ironforge will whisper about how I botched the job, how I led folk tae their deaths. But if I go on me way an' live, a Dark Iron will have succeeded where the others failed.

The more she considers it, the more logical this line of thought seems. Carrick and Fendrig would do the same to her if given the chance. They must hate her. It is something branded onto the cores of their beings, something that neither time nor experience will ever expunge.

Fenella looks toward the forking passageway.

"Make me proud," Moira had said, to her in particular. This was what she meant, wasn't it? Why else would she have asked the daughter of Fineous Darkvire to lead this team?

Movement catches Fenella's eye. On the walls, reflected on each facet of the crystals, are images of herself. They’re waving at her, calling to her, urging her to take the rightmost fork in the tunnel.

Fenella follows the reflections, scarcely aware that Koveth is matching her strides. The tunnel spirals steadily downward, growing colder. She nearly trips over something scattered across the ground—bones. From the shape of the skull, it looks like the skeleton of a pandaren.

"Nothin' fer ye this way, lass. You'll end up runnin' in circles down here."

The voice is barely audible, a ghost of a whisper.

Fenella whirls, her heart pounding. "Who's there?"

"Och. Ye dinna remember yer own pops?"

Then she sees him. Fineous Darkvire, reflected on the surfaces of a dozen crystals. The infamous mason wears his favorite monocle and suit, dressed to impress, as had always
been his way. The last time she’s seen him was years ago, just before a band of mercenaries invaded Dark Iron territory, slaughtering the more nefarious members of her clan. Including her father.

Nae real. Fenella shakes her head, but Fineous remains.

"Ye gonna leave the others fer dead, lass?" he prods.

Fenella ignores him. She trudges onward. Her reflections are still waving, but their movements have grown more frantic and urgent—almost manic. Hurry.

"I gave ye a second chance, an' this is what ye do with it?"

Fenella spins in anger, opening her mouth to curse Fineous for his hypocrisy.

But he’s gone. In the crystals where he had stood, she sees a younger version of herself, fire-orange braids hanging down to her waist. This other Fenella creeps through the corridors of Shadowforge City, a bundle of schematics under her arm. She’s stolen them
from a number of prominent architects and forged her father's seal on them. Fenella watches her reflection slither through the Dark Iron capital and present the schematics to
the emperor, Thaurissan.

The clan's ruler had been so taken with the work that he quickly appointed Fineous
to the rank of chief architect. Rumors surfaced that he had not personally created the schematics. Thaurissan launched an investigation. Yet no one had ever been able to prove anything. Fenella had been sure of that. Her crime had been as solid and minutely honed as a thousand-cut diamond. And she had done it all of her own volition.

Fineous had not been angry when he found out, but she remembered seeing something flash in his eyes. It was not specifically regret, guilt, or sadness. It was an amalgamation of the three, some mixture of emotion that had clawed through the darkness that ruled his heart.

"Never told anyone what ye did." Fineous's reflection reappeared. "Took the blame an' the scorn. In the end, I died a villain. I'm nae complainin'. I wasn't a good dwarf; ye know that. But fer a moment, a part o' me was. I had it in me tae do somethin' good. Tae give ye a future."

Fenella can’t meet Fineous's eyes, even if he is just a reflection or some product of sorcery. The truth is, a day never passes when she doesn’t think about what she’s done, what he did for her. Whenever she hears talk of her father around the anvils, his name dragged through the muck, the guilt hits her full force. She realizes, once again, that she has done nothing to change herself, nothing to honor his noble act.

But what alternative is there? To try was to open oneself up to failure. To try means she will need to put her trust in others and have faith they will put their trust in her. There doesn’t seem to be a point to that, when in the deepest part of her, she knows that no matter what she does, she will always be that thief slinking through Shadowforge, ready to deceive a nation.

"I'm a Darkvire," she says.

"Name's nae an excuse. Thing is, I never had much o' a choice tae change. Ye do. All it
takes is one step, lass. Strange that ye can't do somethin' so simple, when ye've accomplished so much else.” Fineous steps back. “Well, that's about all I've got tae say, lass. It was good seein' ye again."

Slowly, he fades away.

—

Back in the spider battle..

Lireen continues her dance of battle, remaining calm despite the apparent futility.

"Do ye suppose anyone would ever find this journal doewn here if we all get squashed?" Bran muses as he steps aside moments before almost being crushed by a falling spider. "Or will it stay abandoned forever? Surely the Serpent would send someone else eventually, aye? So someone would come pry the book out o' me cold hands?"

Just as Bran asks, a bullet pierces through a shale spider going for that same notebook. It's followed by another rapid shot as Oranna moves in closer between shots, so deep in focus and precision that she's actually managing to shoot faster than the wave of spiders can form to make a path for herself. "Aye, she'll send me," Oranna jokes, in between a shot. "Afore they're cold, a'course."

"WOO HOO!" Bran cheers. "What an entrance! That's goin' in the book!" True to his promise, he immediately begins writing it.

Then a brief flare of violet catches Fendrig's eye. A monstrous shape emerges from the darkness.

The Dark Iron golem charges through the spiders, crushing scores of them beneath his feet, smashing others with gigantic hands. The nibblers converge on this new threat. They scramble up the golem's legs, chewing through his iron hide with ear-shattering screeches.

"Quick!" Fenella calls, stepping up to stand by Oranna's side. "He'll keep 'em occupied."

"Of all the things to save my old hide," Lireen mutters softly.

"Thanks, Koveth!" Oranna calls out, moving quickly towards the others, shifting her aim to try to get another angle on the spiders. "Where are we?"

"Why are there so many? Is there a broodmother up in the ceiling or something?" Marja remains behind Lireen, taking a moment to drink a mana potion.

"Thanks fer makin' me picture the broodmother!" Bran says cheerfully.

Lireen just frowns slightly, looking up.

"I lost track," Carrick admits. "I don't remember this part o' the tunnel from before."

Marja scans for any escape tunnels at all now that the walls have shifted.

Oranna is semi-distracted by also picturing a broodmother, and she sweeps her scope repeatedly looking for said brood mother. "Good news or bad news, depending on how ye might take it, I don't see anythin' I'd call a broodmother. But I also… I dinna see anythin' of how they're still comin' like this. But I can tell ye, the walls shift. There's somethin' wrong down here about them, but Chi-Ji's got a bead on it. Or… a beak on it, if ye will," Oranna says. "He pointed the right way fer me. Not — not the — he, the bird, he — the — a statue. A statue bird Chi-Ji. It changed. An' it pointed towards the right way."

"Koveth can hold them long enough for us to move," Fenella says, looking over the team for serious injuries. "But not for very long."

"Then let's move." Marja lights up her baton and rushes after Fenella.

Fendrig and Carrick need no further encouragement.

Oranna doesn't either; she seems sharper somehow, more focused, and clearer, even among the chaos of the fight.

The team follows down the passageway, and just before they get to a fork in the tunnel, they find a heavy stone slab door to pull shut, blocking the influx of shale spiders. In the crossroads, a giant carving of the Red Crane towers above them, wings stretched over the two paths ahead. Chi-Ji's head is turned to the left, his slender beak open wide as if he is singing.

“This was nae here before,” Fendrig says, eyeing it.

"What about the golem?" Carrick asks Fenella, concerned.

"Can't risk waitin' or goin' back." Fenella's voice is strong as steel, but there’s a glint of moisture in her eyes. "This is our only chance."

Carrick lowers his head. He makes a fist and places it reverently on his chest, in a Wildhammer salute. "We ain't outta the fire yet," Carrick says. "We dinna know which passage tae take."

"Left," says Bran without looking up from his book.

Oranna doesn't hesitate either, "Left."

Bran beams at her, crescent-eyed.

Oranna beams back like, well, like a sunbeam.

Marja pats Fenella's shoulder and continues left.

”Still other pandaren saw the mogu as an undefeatable enemy. They lost all ambition. They became numb to every emotion, wrapped tight in a chrysalis. It is said that these slaves even lost the power to dream. For what would be the purpose of dreams, when their doom was already decided? But they had only to open their hearts to see that this was not so. As Chi-Ji is wont to say, "Hope is the sun behind a stormy sky. Ever in the heart but veiled to the eye."
—The Scrolls of the Celestials

The Final Room

The narrow passageway gradually ascends, the slope steep but steady in its inclination. There are few twists and turns; the way is relatively straight. Before long, the dwarves come to a threshold. A coiled Jade Serpent, carved in stone, frames the doorway.

Then the team enters a vast cavern. Deposits of jade sprout from the floor and walls. Even unworked, the stone is lustrous and deep green. It glitters in the heavy darkness as if it thrummed with a life force all its own. A trail of glowing sapphires arc across the ceiling in a jagged pattern that resembles lightning.

"Woooow," says Bran. For a moment he is too dazzled to even sketch.

Carrick whistles. "That little lass wasn't lyin', was she?"

Marja touches a pillar of jade. When she is not swarmed by spiders, she grins.

In the center stands a large circular pillar, etched with pandaren symbols. A long cut of bamboo, thick as a dwarf’s arm, rests against it.

Bran races over to check out the symbols.

Oranna blows out a very obvious breath of deep relief. "Oh, everyone else also sees the giant pile of jade, too. That's… that's very relievin'."

Lireen gives Oranna a pat as she walks by. Her mining gear is already ready. It's business time.

"Yep," says Marja. "I see the giant pile of jade, I see the giant lizard… kidding."

Oranna slides a look at Graham.

Graham looks back at her. He's just a tiny little guy.

Bran cackles at Marja, then peers inside the large tube. "Ach," he says. "A scroll!" His tone is similar to the way most would say, "a huge motherlode of high quality jade!"

Oranna evaluates Graham with an eye of someone who knows her animals, and seems satisfied enough with she sees. "Ach, well. If that changes, or if the jade starts talkin' ta anyone, or — wha' kind of scroll? Are ye… thinkin' about anything in yer head or memories when ye touch it?" Oranna asks warily as she wanders closer to Bran.

"Aye?" Fendrig says, looking over with curiosity. "What's it say?"

"Gimme a minute…" Bran says. He studies it, so deep in concentration that he hardly seems to breathe. There is a LOT of text.

Oranna gives him a minute, but she's watching him like she's expecting to watch him descend into a memory and need to be physically and emotionally pulled back out. Just in case, Oranna puts a hand on Bran's shoulder.

"Sorry about Koveth," Marja says to Fenella. "Do you have his schematics?"

Fenella blinks rapidly, clearing tears, and smiles at Marja. "I do. I can build another, though… it feels like he won't be the same. Still, we can't build more dwarves. I'm glad we all made it out safely."

Marja smiles at Fenella. "Yeah. He was a good lad."

"He was," Fenella says, her smile wavery. "I'm glad ye all got to meet him."

"It's about the history o' the celestials, the rise of the mogu empire, and hoew, when that terrible era occurred, the pandaren had become broken, lost to anger, fear, despair, an' doubt," Bran says distractedly. "It's real long… but I can read it to ye, if ye like."

Oranna frowns and mouths, anger, fear, despair, doubt. And then again. She starts to say something, frowns harder in thought, stops, and then starts again, "Aye. Bran, aye, I think ye should. 'Lost ta anger, fear, despair, and doubt. Anger. Fear. Despair. And Doubt. All exactly the sha that we've encountered. That's… this could be important. In the details, Bran, the details could matter someday. An' the pandaren don't have them fer us, so… maybe that's why Yu'lon thought we should come here and see fer ourselves. An' hear fer ourselves. I know I do."

"The celestials, each in their own way, tried ta help the slaves," Brannagen says. "But this drew the fury o' the Thunder King. One by one, the mogu emperor overpowered the meddlesome celestials until only Yu'lon, the Jade Serpent, remained. She'd begun spreadin' her wisdom ta the miners o' the Jade Forest, causin' some to abandon their duties fer the pursuit o' knowledge. Durin' one o' her journeys to a slave camp, the Thunder King hurled a bolt o' lightnin' through the sky, piercin' her side. Yu'lon crashed down into the thickets o' the forest an' knew no more.

"When she awoke, she found herself deep below the world. Pandaren miners had spirited her away ta their most sacred place—chambers hidden from their mogu overlords. Inspired by Yu'lon's recent teachin's, these pandaren had built a refuge ta worship the celestials in secret. The Jade Serpent, so moved by what she saw, imbued the place with her magic ta help the miners find the wisdom, hope, fortitude, an' strength they had lost in life. Then, she made a request—"

"Fer a hundred years, generations o' miners toiled. All the while the Jade Serpent, still wounded frae the Thunder King's attack, drew closer ta death. At the moment when the work finished, she breathed her last breath. The miners wept. They thought they'd failed ta save her. But just then, the statue moved. Its eyes opened. Its tail coiled. It had become a new Jade Serpent. This reborn Yu'lon looked out over the weepin' miners an' said ta them, 'There is but one certainty—every end marks a new beginnin'.'

"These miners would go on ta spread the wisdom o' Yu'lon, instillin' in other pandaren the great traits o' the August Celestials—enough, at least, fer them ta survive until the day when the legendary slave Kang, the Fist o' First Dawn, rose up an' led his people ta freedom. Many years later, when Emperor Shaohao taught all pandaren how ta overcome their fear, doubt, despair, an' anger, the offspring o' the miners would build immense temples in honor o' the celestials an' found an order dedicated to upholdin' their teachin's—the order o' the August Celestials."

Bran looks up then, a twinkle in his eye.

"An' at the very end it tells where the exit is ta the surface from this room. But since I had ta wait fer it, so did you." At this, he guffaws loudly.

Carrick sighs. "Would've been nice fer the lass tae tell us about that."

Light flares in Marja's burning red eyes as Bran reads. "They helped the pandaren resist their masters," she says approvingly.

Bran nods, carefully rerolling the scroll and putting it back in its case.

"An' it cost her," Fenella says with a nod. "But she didn't stop, even then."

"Because they were her children," Lireen says softly.

"I'm a free dwarf because other folks stuck their necks out for my people," Marja says. "You gotta respect that when you find it."

"Aye," Fenella says. "We have a future, because of those who gave of themselves to secure it for us."

"Just because ye break, doesn't mean ye canna come back. It doesn't mean yer story ends. Breaking and repairing are part of life," Oranna says.

"Well," Fendrig says, looking around. "Ready tae get some jade fer the Jade Serpent's rebirth?"

Oranna closes her eyes for a moment, and steadies herself. "Aye. Aye, ready, an' I bet so is she. As my friend Elo once said, no one's story is one unbroken line."

Epilogue

The contest is long over by the time the dwarves return, and night has set in. A team led by a pandaren named Hao Mann has won, hauling in five bulging bags of jade. From the way the masons celebrate, however, it is impossible to tell whether there have been any winners or losers.

Foreman Raiki is speechless when he sees the rocks the dwarves have brought. He gathers the other pandaren around, and the revelry stops momentarily. The masons gawk at the lustrous jade, mouths agape. None of them have ever seen a stone so beautiful. Amid the congratulations that follow, the dwarves spy the pandaren girl across the camp.

"Look," Fenella nods towards the cub. "It's the lass. Or, I should say, the Jade Serpent. Figure we should thank her?"

Before anyone can do so, she scampers off to the north. The dwarves weave through the pandaren masons, but when they reach the edge of the construction site, the girl is gone. Only an empty hill stretches out before them.

"Where'd she go?" Fendrig asks.

Suddenly, something flits through the air overhead. The Jade Serpent peers down at the dwarves, with eyes ancient like elementium. They stand there for a long time, silently watching the celestial ascend higher and higher, a vein of jade against the diamond sky.

Oranna waves.

Graham gazes upwards at Yu'lon with awe. Surely he can become a great Celestial Lizard like her one day.