Blood dripped from my teeth and tongue as I breathed hard on the headless corpse of Fandral Staghelm, still pinned to the World Tree.
The head was long gone and resting in my stomach to be crushed and digested; instincts and emotions, with my desire, pushed me to do so.
To eat, to devour until nothing remains.
I never did so until today. Fresh meat was food regardless of the source. But I never actively sought to eat kaldorei or anyone till now.
The reasons needn't be said.
And I avoided any sort of sapient-based food where death was inevitable, for that matter. It was for evident reasons that went beyond morality, not that furbolgs were revolted by the act.
I wasn't disgusted either; quite the contrary. But beyond culture, biting was a key component in my fighting style, and swallowing was faster than spitting each time I bit a limb off.
But eating someone whole? Never did I do that until now.
And the taste of this piece of elven trash as I yanked his body with my paw and chomped through the chest was something else.
The taste of vengeance, and it was gory and warm, but it was bitter.
It was almost a decade–close to half of my life–I had to deal with that pointy-eared cunt's ever-constant attacks and taunts about everything and anything I said and did.
I tried, I really did, but insufferable wouldn't begin to describe him. I should never have given him the benefit of the doubt that he would see reason.
Frankly, he almost had me. The Wild and its people would be all the better if he weren't such a perfect example of kaldorei pride and self-importance.
Loathing, frustration, and hate barely scratched the surface of our relationship. If one thing was to be taken out as good today, I was thankful for what Fandral did now.
Partly.
He gave me the excuse to rid the Wild of his petulant voice and influence permanently. His life, at the very least, was gone, but his roots ran deep and wide.
At what price… that I was yet to see. Groot was missing, and his state was a mystery, but he might as well be dead for all I could do.
I was fortunate to survive what I pulled off with him. And now there was a second World Tree; if any of the two were felled, the other would follow.
It was suboptimal, but there was little else to do but adapt, improvise, and overcome.
But most importantly.
'I avenged you, buddy…' Still, I thought as Fandral's blood dripped in thick crimson rivulets with organ bits and bone fragments from me ripping off the remains of his spine.
Vines were soon to come to my assistance, and there was no sign of a corpse in front of me soon after. My non-skin of plant and fungi absorbed the warm, life-giving liquid, saving me a long session of grooming his filthy blood.
Only the small amount of blood that managed to evade my grasp was any reminder of his existence as would be my shit in the coming hours.
Both are to be absorbed in the environment as the cycle of life intended.
"Thank you, oh mighty and wise ancestors," I mumbled softly, and the draw on my mana disappeared as they vanished.
What amazed me most was the final impression I received from them: burning pride. They felt honored to help me, bending their knees to me. It wasn't new… though it had never been so intense, and it felt a bit weird.
This kind of respect was for the Bear Lords, and I was seldom one of them.
It wasn't false humility, but the ancestral spirits were sacred, and virtually nothing was above them in day-to-day life.
But I shouldn't act surprised. There never was a furbolg like me or one who did what I did. Nothing I could or even should go against. I wasn't blind to what might happen.
It was just a lot.
Regardless, things didn't end with the replacement Archdruid's execution.
I breathed out, staring down at the crowd. More accurately, very few casualties were on each side after the battle.
Good and bad, but that was for later.
I didn't need to make more of a spectacle than this already was.
Yet a part of me enjoyed the reaction from the dissident elves seeing me climb down. It was not the fear per se, but the realization they fucked big time and were going to pay.
Ancestors only knew I would make sure of it. This was a betrayal of the highest order, and I was barely keeping myself from bloodying my paws again.
The lesson of Chen bore fruit as I repeated the various mantras to calm myself.
Meditation was hard when on the fly, even harder, but it centered me. This trick has been of great help with my new chaotic, mostly hyper-aggressive instinct.
Discipline was truly the only solution, and that was why ursa totemics never walked the path I took.
It had happened in the past, and it ended in bloodshed.
Anyway…
I studied the movement on the ground until my eyes landed on Tyrande with the mother of all scowls and grimaces warped into one ugly, severe visage.
"You killed him." It wasn't an accusation from her, merely a detached statement from a clinical observation.
"And you made sure I succeeded without ending him yourself. For that, you have my gratitude, Tyrande." I answered with a smirk, blood and viscera coloring my fangs, and she was as unimpressed as one could be.
That was true. Without the ancient priestess' timely shot, Fandral would have likely escaped. He was fast, much too fast for me to stop alone without an ambush.
My crossbows weren't exactly that anymore–it's all new and to explore–and were limited in range. Nevertheless, precision, without Groot… they couldn't be. I wasn't an exceptional shot.
But he was not faster than an arrow from the Favored of Elune. And he would have been a far bigger threat; inklings from my past life painted Staghelm in an even darker taint than now.
He had been an unstable, ticking time bomb waiting to go off the deep end, with only his granddaughter as the tie to reality for him.
"It is only fair that the most affected have their rightful retribution." The High Priestess said it was as if she didn't wish to do the same as I.
If significantly less bloody and loud, but after tonight… no chance she wouldn't take drastic measures.
I doubted those measures would have been as effective as good old mauling. But this hypothetical scenario didn't matter. Fandral was as dead as one could possibly be.
Then she caught me off guard–pleasantly so–and spoke almost meekly, but this weakness vanished fast, "I should have heeded yours and Magatha's warning. Pride had not occluded me even with Elune's grace."
I grunted; a version of 'I told you so' wouldn't be out of place, but I wasn't in the mood for snark when she opened up like this.
And it was Hollowmaw that suffered the most.
I should have prepared better as well. I didn't see it coming. But for now, self-pity and excuses were unneeded. There was still fighting in the distance, but it was quickly dying down.
Among my people, Chen was doing his job, making sure no senseless death happened while also putting down any foe with brutal efficiency.
He played the pseudo-mediator; he wasn't neutral, but it would end poorly if a night elf were killed.
I wouldn't care, as it could be healed in a second. However, this entire fiasco needn't spread and cause more schisms in interspecies relations than it already did, even if kaldorei came with me.
And from the little I got from Leyara's interrogation, which had consisted of drugging her and a twinge of biomancy to round it up.
From that, I knew a sizable number didn't have a clue about what they were doing.
It wasn't even with any harmful intentions for them; it was evident enough in the shock presented. It was honest. Their smells didn't lie.
Innocents–knowledge-wise–were dead, as hard as it was to accept for me. And it was disdainful to the extreme. It wasn't about some kind of nebulous honor.
For the Twin Bears' sake, you don't use your own people like that! It was… it was wrong, despicable, and repugnant.
Chen was strong and socially adept enough for that task. It was the very reason I asked him to come.
Emotions were high, and the pandaren monk was best at confronting them.
"You have grown since I last saw you, Tyrande. There is no little girl to be seen." Came the gravely yet smooth voice of Ursoc, stomping toward us and earning the female kaldorei's undivided attention.
It was almost comical to witness the reaction she had, as if what he did before wasn't enough to affirm he was real.
"You are truly among us once more… but…." There was a genuine joy in her voice that earned an amused snort from the Wild God and the tilt of his head.
"Yes, you may thank my little brother for that. And my size, blame that petulant druid, and it's temporary." He let out, and there was that part again.
Just like he said when he emerged, and frankly, it felt good. And there was nothing else to add. It was like a mini-adoption, not that it changed much.
It wasn't as if I could make Ursoc see it differently, and it wouldn't be entirely wrong.
Ursol had been pretty cutthroat on how stubborn his twin could be, and in the few hours since I brought him back, I saw this much. Death wouldn't even make him budge.
"I will explain later, but in short, I have succeeded in creating a surefire method to revive Ancients," I confirmed, and the implications couldn't be more evident.
"Cenarius is to follow, then it would depend on what is best for the Wild, but right now isn't the time for such a… high-stakes discussion." That earned Tyrande attention beyond even the Bear of Might.
But reality settled without waiting in her eyes.
"That is… that is very welcome news, and to bring back many who sacrificed themselves defending the world… You have my support, for what it's worth. My love would have to be informed without delay, a necessity from the beginning, with the traitors in our fold. Scouring our ranks is a must." She said, the elation in her tone slowly shifted to grimness toward the end.
She glowered at a raging priestess getting pressed down by a female tauren and a kaldorei man.
I nodded, my eyes following where the High Priestess looked, a smirk growing on my snoot. It was an amusing sight. Clearly, they didn't hide themselves very well.
But they won't be all so readily noticeable. We didn't capture everyone here, even less the ones that weren't there.
There were pursuits, yes, but it was impossible to catch everyone. It was an infuriatingly unpleasant fishbone to swallow.
"As I have written, his right-hand woman is in custody, and I'll help with the interrogation. It won't unravel all, but that's as good a start as we can get." I rumbled, continuing to observe any showing signs of their true selves.
We couldn't have them roam free, or preferably even alive. Such liabilities were worse than any outside enemies. But the last point was more wistful thinking when I was calm.
I verily doubted they would partake with the Horde or Alliance. The two were ridiculous even to consider.
But what I knew led me to believe that many didn't have solid internal morality and wouldn't grovel to 'inferior mortal species,' leaving the door open to infinitely worse.
Azeroth had malevolent forces who would all too happily take advantage of that. Oh, it was an extreme, with only the most unhinged abandoning plunging into this, but it wasn't as impossible as it should be.
Regardless, there was much to do, and much was done in the weeks after that fateful day.
To say the least, Tyrande showed me how merciless she could genuinely be, and it wasn't just her alone.
It horrified and enraged more than one night elf to learn what Fandral Staghelm did and the scale. He was seen as a hero; I can admit I saw merit in that notion.
That was if I ignore that the War of the Shifting Sands was from him wanting to mess with the desert–a vital biome even without plant life–and unknowingly causing the Emerald Nightmare.
And those were two of the largest blunders for his nine millennia of life; his last stunt, however, was inexcusable. It wasn't a mistake that nobody could have reasonably predicted and readied for.
Clinging to what was lost and grieving what they would never have was one thing. It was common to various degrees of intensity but fairly unremarkable on average.
Never was it on Fandral and his ilk's level; it was kept ablaze and continually fed.
To orchestrate something that would potentially destroy the capital of their closest allies and kill any within was taken as expected.
It wasn't well received; the lesser Archdruid wasn't seen as a despot of the highest order, as was his poor attempt at a revolution, seen anywhere remotely positive.
Not that even if all worked as he wished, it would have been doomed to failure. Fandral was certain my teacher wouldn't have denied him a few words instead of a slow and painful death.
At least, it was the case in the open, and almost all that was private, and that was a major issue.
Tyrande was now fully grasping the scale and consequences of the past few years' cultural changes.
It was very gratifying to hammer their thick skulls with it continually. Now, they actually acted and didn't only half-listen. Age was just that, age, certainly meaningful, but it didn't equate to omniscience.
Why it took them this event to understand would never cease to disappoint me, but that was a personal grievance more than anything.
Alas, the shift in their people couldn't be handwaved or worked around with dumb brute force. It was a process, and thinking differently wasn't a crime.
Making this one would prove Fandral right and strengthen what he had constructed. Martyrdom was an utter pain to deal with.
His movement wasn't dead in any way.
Among his lieutenants, only Leyara was captured, and her daughter was gone as well. It all happened in mere hours on the same day.
It wasn't a chaotic retreat.
He foresaw the potential that his schemes could go wrong. Intelligent foes were of the most dangerous variety; luckily, arrogance made them weak.
It worked both ways, though. My defense was faulty against the threat posed by Nature magic, and it would be rectified. Or so I would try.
There hadn't been an execution, to my immense disappointment, for that reason. Well, not as much as I would have preferred.
It was normal; we were far from cleaning everything. Additionally, killing the sources of knowledge was short-sighted.
Be that as it may, punishment went from prison in the Barrow Deep to Life magic-based crippling down there. If I couldn't kill them, I would do my damn best, so they were the closest to it.
And it was Leyara's fate. Alas, it was nothing of the body horror variety. That would be unnecessary.
Eternal slumber and total body paralysis from rewiring her nervous system–outside her face and vital organs–was just as good, and it couldn't be healed.
It wasn't an injury or a disease to cure.
It was more acceptable than merging her with the wall, too.
I didn't do torture much. It was satisfying, and inflicting pain on that bitch would bring me great joy, but she didn't deserve my attention.
It was pointless at best, too; you will get what makes the pain stop and not what is genuinely true.
So to sleep, she went while being put in a simplified floral womb to barely keep her alive in her permanent coma, where she couldn't even reach the Dreaming—a limbo of sorts.
A new way of containment that became an instant hit with the Wardens for the most dangerous criminals, adding to what was already there.
It didn't give that mental and physical anguish combo, but that was a pointless thing for people who were to be sealed down there forever.
What were they going to learn when their sentences were virtually endless? I mean, it still could be made horrific, prompting nightmares wasn't hard.
The right concoction could be put in, and it worked its miracle. It softened the mind and couldn't be resisted, and Leyara, with inmates of her importance, got some of that.
Regardless of how close it was to the Twisting Nether on Azeroth, it wasn't a favorable death.
Outside of the metaphorical witch hunt and treatment of said 'witches,' the reception of the crime committed went as expected.
Evidently, it was handled carefully, but the reaction remained violent to what was rightfully seen as a despicable and depraved act.
It was a wake-up call like no other.
The comparison to the War of the Ancients only sealed the deal. Magatha's input on focusing on precisely that helped a lot. It was hubris in its purest form, just like their old queen and her court.
It wasn't Arcane magic–something still universally hated, even by me and furbolgs, given what it did to us–but the ugly reality was laid bare.
Far too many kaldorei were far too prideful, and within the Wild, it was unacceptable. And they were slapped in the face with it for those who didn't quite get the message yet.
This wasn't the Kaldorei Empire. It never was. This was the Wild, and the laws placed none above what they were born as.
We were of nature, and our goal was for Azeroth's life to bloom and persevere unmolested by any who wished to harm it, to harm us.
Only the most adept survived, and we would survive and thrive.
The different biologies among us, resulting in differing results, were undeniable; we weren't equal and never would be on that front.
It was obvious, and it could never be ignored. We were different species. Culture was the least of distinctions.
But to design a fucking caste system or anything looking like that in any way for that reason?
Elven sense of superiority within the Wild needed to be shattered, and this was its greatest blow to this day.
It didn't break the trust in the Wild. Our alliance wasn't so frail. But it had strained it; now, it was stronger, even if it was fairly recent.
And what reminder of it was Ashdrassil. The exact opposite of what was intended to be per its creator's twisted wish furthered that.
It was a monument to their sin, a reminder of what happened.
Ashdrassil remained far from hated by the elves; it remained a World Tree and, as such, was sacred. It brought more than one benefit to Ashenvale, too. I wasn't a fan of why it came to be, but I welcomed those with open arms.
Ashdrassil brought what Undrassil couldn't have: natural light. It was significant, to put it mildly.
Well, the Goldilocks helped in that before, but it was vastly diluted across the entire system; now, it was as straightforward as it could be.
Bioengineering, as much as I could push biology to its limit, sunlight wasn't optional in many cases. It was how Life was.
But it was why, after the Staghelms stunt, I could return to work in my laboratory so soon after. The World Trees recovered fast with our care, and sunlight only amplified this.
However, today, I wasn't alone, not that my companions here were assistants. I didn't have any… I had one.
'Focus.' I berated myself; I wasn't abandoning the fact that Groot could remain.
"Is this truly him, Ohto?" My round ears flicked at Malfurion's words and the barely contained joy that tinged his shock.
He had been furious when he woke up earlier this morning and learned what had happened. His wrath had been impressive to witness, even if he had remained steadfast.
It had made my fur stand on end. He was terrifyingly powerful. My anger wasn't tampered by this in the least, but this was a lesson for him; he was too weak, just not magic-wise.
It was a wake-up call. At least, that was what I wanted to believe.
What calmed my displeasure was his role.
His title was earned. And he wasn't awakened earlier due to the sheer importance of his place in fighting the Nightmare. He had been in the middle of a battle.
It was a problem now; I ate Fandral, and it would have been him who should have taken Stormrage's place.
It was an impossibility now. The solution was to send more druids, which wasn't what we lacked, but furbolgs were highly vulnerable to that dark disease.
It took a significant chunk out.
And even then, it was mostly a task reserved for skilled and strong-willed druids.
Yet there was a shining beacon, and that was what–or who–I was presenting to the handsome antlered kaldorei.
"In the blood and flesh, I was lucky to gather blood samples from where his body was stolen. Otherwise, I would have had to synthesize it from his children, and it could have taken several new moons." I confirmed, smiling, sharing the joy of the Archdruid.
The floral womb stood in front of us three, his mate silent in the background with a hand on her growing belly. Joy was even greater in her features.
Behind its translucent membrane in amniotic fluid was an infantile male chimeric creature with the lower body of a stag and the upper body of a kaldorei with hands made of bark.
Emanating from it was the unmistakable presence of a Wild God, and Cenarius wasn't to be the last.
There was much to be done.