Title: The Forsaken
Author: Link Worshiper
Pairings: 1=2, maybe some others if I feel like it
Rating: PG-13
Stuff: Fantasy AU, fluff, sap, language, adventure, WoW nerdiness Disclaimer: I own Gundam Wing action figures? Warcraft and its lore belongs to Blizzard Entertainment. Both things are being played with out of fangirl love.

Thanks to danse and Natea for the once over. Despite the fact this is part of Natea's birthday present, I still needed her to fill me in on the Alliance history they don't teach us on Horde, so thanks for that also =P

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Part V
The Sun and the Moon

++++ Before anyone realized what had happened, Heero, possessed by otherworldly evil, leapt upon the orc with teeth bared. He tore into the orc's neck with his blunt, human teeth, chewing down on his jugular until a fount of blood spurted across his face. The other orc grabbed for the battleaxe he wore on his back, ready to swing it as he charged towards his companion's attacker, but Heero was already dropping the first orc's carcass by the time the blade came whizzing at his face. He dodged it with inhuman speed and wrested it from the orc, turning it on him with brutal strength. All of this happened so quickly, it was still a few moments yet before the whole of Tarren Mill erupted into chaos.

The villagers that were present for the hanging all surged forward, enraged that some puny Ally had managed to take down two Orgrimmar captains, but anyone who got within grabbing reach of Heero ended up either injured or in the same state as the two orcs. Yells and screams filled the air, dotted with the sound of cracking bones and the thud of bodies against the dirt.

Trowa and Duo were still hanging back, each trying to deal with the situation in his own way. Duo was still a bit panicked, though obviously for different reasons now, and was busy trying to work out the best way to intervene. Meanwhile, Trowa seemed absolutely aghast, and he stood with his bow in hand like he meant to nock an arrow and end things in his own way. Noticing this, Duo flicked a hand and whipped a tendril of fire magic at Trowa's hand, causing him to drop the bow in surprise. "What in Azeroth was that for?" Trowa growled suckling on his burnt fingers. "We have to do something before he razes this entire town!"

Duo reached over and abruptly smacked Trowa upside the head with a thwack that could be heard above the nearby brawl. "You idiot, are you really that thick? I thought I explained this already," Duo snapped. "If the demon has already possessed him - which it clearly has - then killing him will just give it freedom from the magic that binds it and it will simply find another soul to feed upon. We have to find a way to quell this disaster - and how to keep Heero alive while we do it."

Trowa frowned back at Duo, far from convinced. "I sometimes wonder if it's really just this demon that keeps you so concerned about that Ally's wellbeing," he said, his eyes narrowed accusingly. His patience was wearing thin.

"You don't see me questioning your motives," Duo retorted icily. He then turned his back on Trowa and turned his mismatched hands inwards, twisting them around one another as he muttered a low incantation of summoning to call forth one of his own demonic minions.

Appearing from nowhere, the ghost-like apparition Duo had used to subdue Heero on their first encounter groaned, "What do you need?" He hovered beside Duo, pulsating with fel magics that swirled darkly at the core of his blue shape.

Duo wasted no time in issuing his command: "Bring me the human," he ordered; "Kill anyone who resists you."

"It is done," the blue genie rasped, flexing its scythe-like claws before sailing forward into the melee. Duo chased after it, brandishing a wand he had pulled from the depths of his giant sleeves to support his summoned voidwalker from the rear. Heavypaw charged after Duo, excited by the prospect of fresh meat, while Trowa reluctantly offered his support in the form of a well-aimed arrow or two when things got tight. It was in this fashion that they cut through the thick of the fight towards Heero, who still stood near the hanging tree, staving off anyone who came near with unseemly brutality. It took an unexpected blast of fire from Duo's wand to distract Heero long enough for the voidwalker to make a grab for him.

"Squeeze da life out'ta 'im," a nearby troll screamed at the voidwalker from the place where Heero had left her to bleed to death. "Show dat mangy wolf what we do ta da infected ones." Duo silenced her with another bolt of energy from his wand, his eyes glowing contemptuously as he let his own terrible magic fly.

"Well?" said Trowa, who had now turned his attention to trying to keep the rest of the angry villagers from trying to kill Duo and him also. "Now what?"

Duo barely heard him, already busy with putting together some kind of hair-brained spell that might actually do to calm the demon's possession of Heero. The voidwalker seemed to have a good grip on Heero, but that was only slightly comforting, as his struggling seemed to be wearing the blue ghost down quite a bit. Stowing his wand, Duo conjured a phial of vision dust from somewhere else in his sleeve, setting it to hover between his palms as he imbued it with an enchantment to ward shadow magic. Then, slicing his bony hand over the phial's stopper, he uncorked it and bade the enchanted dust to fly forth. It powdered across Heero's face in a cerulean cloud that sparkled with specks of holy light.

There was a moment where everyone in the vicinity seemed to hold his or her breath when they caught sight of what Duo had done. Clawing his face in what appeared to be pain, Heero threw his head back and let out a wretched scream in a voice that was not his. From his widened mouth shot a blast of dark energy that was no doubt the demon in a wraith-like form; it darted and swirled around Heero's body like an agitated mosquito as it streamed from his mouth, eventually throttling towards the sigil in Heero's hip pack. Inside the pouch, the sigil glowed with a nasty light that shone even though the thick leather as the demon returned to its prison, and Heero fell to his knees and promptly crumpled to the ground.

The moment Heero seemed to have lost his threat, the spectators tried to surge forward again, ready to tear him limb from limb, but Duo held them back with his staff. "He belongs to me," he growled at the Horde villagers, pushing them back as best he could while Trowa reluctantly checked on Heero.

"Then you should die for this atrocity as well!" someone in the crowd shouted, referring to the many that had fallen to Heero's hand.

"Well, that would be a relief, since I'm already dead," Duo rejoined smartly, not about to give in to idle threats. Deciding that scaring them with the worst-case scenario might work in his favour, Duo added, "Now, unless you want to see the rise of another Lich King, I suggest you let us go about our business." Just as he predicted, the mere suggestion of such a horrific thing was quick to shut them up, leaving Duo free to turn his attention back to Heero as they hurriedly dispersed.

"Well, in any case, it at least looks like he is physically well," Trowa informed Duo as the warlock approached the place where Heero had toppled over. "Though with him thusly unconscious, I cannot tell if that is the end of it."

Duo seemed subdued as he knelt beside Heero and gave him another examination to confirm what Trowa had said. Truthfully, he was more relieved than anything. Though no one would ever know, he had been terrified that they weren't going to make it out alive back there, especially since he had previously no idea what their first encounter with the Epyon demon would be like. It unnerved him to think they had less time to act than he had thought.

"Duo," Trowa said at length, still crouched across from him, on Heero's other side. He waited for Duo to acknowledge him with a grunt before continuing: "What you said to the villagers to make them draw back - about this human becoming another Lich King - is that true?"

A sigh escaped Duo's lips, though he was silent for a few moments before he looked up to meet his friend's concerned stare. "It is not an unforeseeable path," he murmured forlornly. "Just as the corrupted Treize was lured into fusing with the demon, Dermail, so the same could happen to Heero if we are not careful. Treize took up the cursed blade Frostmourne in hopes of saving his people from the Scourge, just as Heero found the Epyon sigil. Treize was undone by the very things that made him a champion of Lordaeron, and I fear what might bring Heero to his end." Brushing a chunk of clotted blood off of Heero's cheek, he whispered, "We are standing on the precipice of something foul."

It was this explanation that seemed to finally reveal the gravity of their situation to Trowa, whose contempt seemed to cull after Duo spoke. Trowa had firsthand witnessed Treize's invasion of Quel'Thalas at the betraying hands of a close friend, and he shuddered at the thought of echoing such dark times. "So what do we do next?" he asked, staring passed Duo's head to see if anyone from the town was still loitering. "I somehow doubt that we will find a safe night here anymore."

Duo twisted around to see what Trowa was staring at, and though there was nothing terribly out of the ordinary happening in the town square, he knew that Trowa was right. "Maybe we should just press on and make camp somewhere further down the road."

"Can we make it with the human like this?" Trowa asked as Heavypaw gave the still unconscious Heero a tentative nudge with the back of his paw.

Duo silenced Trowa's question with a menacing glare and said flatly, "Well, we're going to have to, aren't we." Then he launched into a volley of prompt directions that made Trowa's eyebrows twitch in annoyance. "You grab his arms, and I'll lift his ankles. And make sure we are covering our trail and that no one is following us. The last thing we need is to have our throats slit in the middle of the night."

And so, with Heero slung awkwardly between them, the pair slipped away from Tarren Mill as discreetly as possible. Heavypaw foraged the way ahead while Trowa kept his eyes trained on the road behind them. It never hurt to be too careful, but Trowa had a feeling that no one would dare try and follow them after the monstrous display that had just decimated Tarren Mill.

Heero was heavier than he looked, and there were a few times they had to stop for a rest, unwise as it probably was on a well-traversed path. Between carrying him and all the breaks, they were making very poor time, and the fact that they were traversing foothills didn't make their journey any easier, and there were a few times when the sheer ardour of it gave the banter between Duo and Trowa a somewhat unsavoury flavour. But when dusk started to settle in and Heero had yet to even bat an eyelash, Trowa had reached the end of his rope. "It matters not to me what you do, but I am through with this task," he announced at their next rest, holding his hands aloft in defeat. "We can either make camp somewhere around here for the night, or you can carry the human by yourself, but I am through being his porter."

"What, is such work too below your station?" Duo asked, pausing in his efforts to try and rouse Heero, whose sleep seemed more and more to be some kind of enchanted offset of the Tarren Mill incident. Deridingly, he hissed, "If you are going to keep roaming the world as you are, then you had better get used to the fact that your being a prince no longer means a thing. After all, what good is a prince who has abandoned his people?" He was stooped next to Heero's body, but one wrong word from Trowa, and it would have taken him only a mere instant to pull his wand back out of hiding.

For his part, Trowa fielded the insult rather well, though he was inwardly blistering at such ilk. He gripped his bow in an equally threatening way as he said in a tight voice, "I have not abandoned Quel'thalas; I am merely searching Azeroth for a means to restore the Sunwell to the way it was - for my people."

Duo pointedly ignored Trowa, as he was wont to do when Trowa got too high and mighty for his tastes. Even in life, though he was often trusted with great responsibilities, Duo had never been more than an acolyte of Elune and often found distaste in most upper class gentry. He supposed it might be strange that he and Trowa were actually quite good friends, but then again, they had bonded long before Duo found out exactly who Trowa was. And besides, Trowa had yet to do anything that threatened the delicately balanced calm in Azeroth, thus leaving Duo with no real reason to dislike him, despite previous experiences with such people.

Trowa was scaling a small hill in search of a good place to make camp for the night that was off the main road, leaving Duo to struggle with Heero's body alone. Hooking his arms beneath Heero's armpits, he dragged him across the ground, still amazed that Heero remained asleep. He wished he knew enough about the demon's magic to be able to tell if Heero's slumber was a good or a bad sign. "You better wake up soon," he grunted as he struggled after Trowa, nearly tripping over his long robes. "A cadaver will be of no use to me when we reach Stormwind."

"Is that all you can really think about?" Trowa asked as Duo and Heero tumbled down the knoll, nearly kicking out the small fire Trowa had started amid a circle of rocks. "You say you fear what this human might become, but your motives are even more selfish than mine, Duo Blackscythe."

Duo seemed slightly caught off guard by such a blunt statement, and instead busied himself with disentangling himself from Heero's person and rearranging his body across the grass. "Well, it wouldn't do to revive myself only to become undead again, would it?" he insisted as he removed Heero's cloak and wound it upon itself to create a makeshift pillow.

"You are a poor liar," Trowa said, rummaging through his pack for something to gnaw on. He was disappointed to find that all he had left was a few hard biscuits and a stale crust of bread. Standing and shouldering his bow, he announced that he was going to go and hunt down some dinner for the lot of them.

"Do as you please; I do not require such things," answered Duo, waving Trowa off casually. "Just be careful; we are approaching the highlands, and that is Syndicate territory. You are useless to me if you come stumbling back to camp stripped of all your things."

Trowa scoffed with insult, "Do you think I'm careless enough to allow myself to be mugged by mere thieves? You must take me for something far less than I am."

Duo just stared blankly at Trowa, who soon turned on booted heel and marched off into the nearby wood in search of game. Duo didn't move until he was sure Trowa had moved out of earshot and then allowed himself a heavy sigh. He scrunched his knees up against his chest and pressed his forehead against them. He knew Trowa was astute, and he wondered if he would really be able to keep the intentions he knew Trowa would disprove of under wraps for the duration of this journey. Once again sensing his master's discontent, Asahi crawled from the depths of Duo's decayed innards and tried to offer comfort as well as a roach could.

"Thanks, buddy. You did always stick around when things seemed the most bleak," Duo muttered at the cockroach, using a finger to toy with his antennae. He sighed again and went on, "And you have been my friend long enough to know the heart of all this." He smiled to himself, though it was a rather nostalgic one; it was pathetic that the only true friend he had managed to keep was an insect. "My soul has wandered the same ground for so long. I never thought I would be teased with such repose."

Asahi bounced empathetically on Duo's shoulder while his master stared forlornly at his sleeping companion, wishing desperately they could speak candidly with each other. "I suppose loneliness is another curse of death," Duo commented, watching Heero's chest rise and fall with each slow breath. "To be alone and forgotten."

So mired was he in his despondence, Duo was no longer keeping a keen eye on the surrounding countryside. He never heard the sound of feet coming over the hill or saw the shadows lurking behind until they were virtually upon him.

++++

Further off, Trowa sat atop a fallen tree trunk, his heart racing as he dug through his pack once more. Certainly he had every intention of hunting down something to eat, but before he did that, he decided he had to stop and drain the trinket he had stolen from Heero of its magic. It was a miracle he had already managed so long on his feet after going so long without a hit of arcane energy, and the mere knowledge that he had finally managed to steal something that would remedy his craving had been driving him mad since they had departed from Silverpine.

Pulling it out of his bag, he dangled the owl-shaped charm from its chain in front of his pert nose, chewing his lip in excitement as he reveled in the powerful energy pulsating across the silver. He lifted a hand and grabbed the trinket, drawing his long fingers across its surface. Unexpectedly, at his touch, the charm glowed a whitish blue that was so bright, Trowa had to squint and look away as an unfamiliar voice demanded, "Who are you?"

Trowa turned back to face the light, confusion written across his handsome features as he tried to discern what had happened. In the middle of the glowing aura that now hovered in the air before him was the face of a blond human male with the largest blue eyes Trowa had ever seen. He did not look very pleased to see Trowa from his end of the communication portal, which was cemented by his furthered agitation: "Where is Heero? How did you get his charm?"

Trowa's face was schooled with indifference as he said blandly, "I stole it."

This did not seem to sit well with the blonde, whose frown simply deepened at this information. "And what became of my friend?" the human asked, his voice coiled.

A sneer coated Trowa's face as he answered, "Why should I tell something like that to a nosy Ally like you?"

"Because I asked," the blond replied smartly. "Please tell me at least that, or I might find cause to send a search party out to Hillsbard to find you."

The threat was delivered in a rather well mannered tone, but there was something about the way the blonde human spoke that prickled Trowa's skin. It was probably the realization that Heero's friend was hardly a slouch when it came to clever tactics and that Trowa was going have to exercise immense caution if this discussion was to continue. He already found discomfort in the fact that the blond human seemed to know exactly where he was. Deciding two could play this game, Trowa said, "The one you call Heero is with my companion in our encampment nearby." He added ambiguously, "He is being... well guarded."

A concerned look crossed the human's face. "You mean, he has been taken by the Horde?" he wondered, clearly not relieved to hear such news. He was quick to regain his composure, however, and he pressed, "What will you do with him?"

Trowa shrugged, "I don't much care. I am merely following to whet my magical appetite."

The blonde narrowed his eyes with displeasure. "I do not believe you, elf," he said darkly. "Heero has no use for magic; there is no way he possesses enough to satisfy one such as yourself."

Idly, Trowa started pulling off one of his gloves, one finger at a time. "My companion does not seem to think so," he commented idly, easing his hand out of his leather encasement. "Perhaps his enchanted remains will revitalize the Sunwell." Tossing his glove aside, he conjured a small bead of draining magic with which he would use to siphon the power out of the owl charm. "In the meantime, I will do what I can for my own campaigns."

"Wait!" the human cried, lifting a demonstrative hand as if it might actually stop Trowa's spellcasting. "Please don't abandon me in such a way. Heero is my oldest friend; I cannot let you just bear him away without a word."

Trowa clenched his fist around the siphon spell, glaring sharply at the human through the portal. "Why should I?" he wanted to know. "What will you do for me?"

The human seemed to be taken aback at such an abrupt demand, but it was something that probably should have been expected. "What is it you might need?" he asked cautiously.

Trowa arched his eyebrows, a rather sinister smile crossing his lips. "What are you, a priest? Are you powerful?" he asked lackadaisically. "Perhaps you could find a way to keep me sated with your magic."

The human's eyes darted away, fixated on something to the side that Trowa couldn't see through the portal. "I might be able to see after something like that," he muttered grudgingly. "But in exchange," he added quickly, his voice regaining its former confidence, "I must demand that you let Heero go!"

Trowa picked at a fingernail, hardly even gracing the human with eye contact. "If only it were that simple," he commented mysteriously.

"What does that mean?" the blonde pressed anxiously, far from consoled. "What have you done with him?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing," Trowa hummed, taking secret pleasure in how riled his ambiguous comments were making the human. "But I'm afraid he will have to stay in our keep for some time longer. It seems he has made a deal with my companion, you see, and it would not do for him to swallow his word. You would then find him a grave man." At this final comment, Trowa could hardly resist the urge to throw his head back and laugh, absolutely undone by the disconcerted expression that had overtaken the human's face.

"The world has darkened your heart," the blonde said tartly, a frown still adorning his face in a way that might almost be considered adorable. But admirably, he kept his resilience in the face of such contempt: "Still for the sake of my friend and his honour, I will do ask you have asked, Sir...." He trailed off, expecting to be filled in on the blood elf's name.

Picking up on the implication, Trowa said curtly, "I am Prince Trowa Sunbender, Lord of Silvermoon, ruler of Quel'thalas, the Sun King." The smirk returning to his face, he said derisively, "And you are?"

The human swallowed, though he refused to be intimidated by Trowa's royal status. "They call me Quatre Raberba Winner, High Priest of Theramore and chief advisor to Lady Relena Proudmoore."

Amusement rode across Trowa's face as he said, "Ah, so you are High Priest Winner; I have heard of you." He grinned, though it was hard to say what made him do so: "Who would have thought that an Ally thief such as your friend could have friends seated in such comfortable places. This might do well for him." He took up the owl charm again, and added with a note of finality, "You have two days to deliver the first of what you have promised me. If it serves, then I might leave your friend alone once his purpose has been filled." Then he gave the owl charm a rub, and with another flash of bright light, he was left alone in the woods once more, though far more satisfied than he had been before he'd accidentally spoken to the priest.

Pocketing the charm and replacing his glove, Trowa took up his bow and quiver once more, whistling for Heavypaw to come back to his side. But when the lion did not immediately come running from the woods, Trowa's mood quickly shifted to one of concern. Quick to fall back on his expert tracking skills, the blood elf prince followed the trail Heavypaw had left while romping through the nearby wood. It seemed that the lion had been amusing himself until something had cause it to stop and turn back towards their camp. Certain that Heavypaw had sensed something amiss while he had been distracted by Quatre, Trowa made haste for their campsite, preparing for the worst.

And lo, when he burst from the wood, he was almost unsurprised when he found that both Heero and Duo were nowhere to be found.

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