[the forsaken] 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 VI
The Circles of Binding

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It didn't take long for Trowa to figure out that Syndicate thieves were behind this new problem: they held many of the abandoned castles in the area as bases of operation, not to mention the fact that they had left signs of a characteristically sloppy ambush in their wake. More annoyed than anything else, he clambered over the hills and back towards the main path, all the while looking for clues as to which of the nearby strongholds this particular band of thieves might have taken his comrades. Part of Trowa wanted to just dash it all and keep on his way, but even he knew that there wasn't much sense in that without the main components of this entire escapade. Besides, he figured it would be smart to keep tabs on Heero if he was going to milk that priest friend of his for some kind of magic supply; he'd noticed that humans seemed to be annoyingly sentimental about such things.

He had no sooner thought these things before he found Heero sprawled across the path a couple yards away. Trowa hurried towards him and knelt at his side, a little frustrated to note that the human was still asleep under whatever curse the demon had left within him. "Useless," he grunted, moving to heft Heero over one shoulder. "Where the hell is Duo when you need him?"

At least Heero seemed a bit lighter this time, though Trowa was loathe to realize that it was because the pack he'd been carrying had been stolen. Trowa knew it wasn't Heero's fault that most of their supplies were now missing, but it didn't stop him from taking it out on his comatose body with a tight grip that dug ferociously into Heero's skin. He hoped he would come across Duo soon, if only to berate him.

Trowa soon got his wish as Heavypaw darted ahead and over towards a nearby fen that lay just off the pathway and down a short hill. The lion scampered up to a familiar body, which lay facedown in the swampy grass. His robes were tattered and his staff was missing, but at least he still seemed to be alright. Gracelessly, Trowa dumped Heero's body onto the ground once more and quickly appeared beside his pet, which was busy trying to drag Duo's body out of the bog.

The disturbance caused Duo to start coughing and sputtering as he regained his sense of place. Trowa supervised as Heavypaw deftly rolled Duo over onto his back and silently waited for him to gather enough of his wits to tell him what had happened.

Duo sat up, cracking many of the bones in his body as he did so. A shiver ran down the length of his spine as he shook the dampness from his matted hair. "Before you say anything," Duo began, pausing to spit out a mouthful of moss water, "it's not my fault."

Trowa rolled his eyes, which were burning green with displeasure. "Right, so then I'll blame Sleeping Beauty over there," he said, jerking his head in Heero's direction. "What the hell were you doing to allow yourselves to get ganked by thieves such as they?"

Duo was quick to turn the tables back on Trowa: "Yeah? And where the hell were you?" he rejoined, not about to let the blood elf push him around like that. "You were gone so long, I was beginning to wonder if you'd met some kind of end amidst the trees."

"I was indisposed," Trowa snapped ambiguously. "Either way, now we are without our inventory and buggered to boot."

"What are you saying?" Duo asked, shakily clambering to his feet. "So we lost a few coins and some equipment - big deal. There are ways around such things."

Trowa arched his eyebrows at Duo as he watched the warlock totter over towards Heero's crumpled form. Duo grumbled under his breath as he rolled Heero out into a more comfortable-looking position and started to pat him down to take better stock of what they'd lost. He wasn't too concerned until he removed Heero's hip pouch and started to root through it, for it was there that he knew Heero kept the demonic sigil. However, finding that it too gone sent him into a bitter rage. Hurling the pouch to the ground, he leapt back to his feet and whirled on Trowa: "Just wonderful! Now we truly are buggered," he fumed, displaying the same level of annoyance as Trowa for the first time since they'd set out. "Those idiots will do something stupid with that sigil, I know it. We have to get it back!"

"We have to get a lot of things back," Trowa answered icily. "I refuse to be pushed around by mere thieves. Now, where did they go?"

Duo let out a frustrated moan, knowing that there were many potential places the thieves could have taken their loot, though it seemed likely they were following the path to their keep in Arathi. He pulled at the longish wisps of hair that fell around his rotted features, gasping, "Who knows what that demon will do if it reappears and Heero is nowhere to be found."

"And speaking of, what are we going to do with your little pet while we go overturning every rock between here and Hammerfall?" Trowa then asked, his flat tone reeking of cynicism. He arched his eyebrows at Heero's body, wrinkling his nose at the thought of how precious Duo was being with him. "I suppose we could just leave him while we search."

Duo's eyes narrowed as he blew an exasperated puff of air through the hole in his cheek: "Then we might as well just skip raiding those damned thieves at all. Having the sigil is useless without Heero; the demon will just rampage until he finds his human vessel again, and that could be disastrous for everyone. At least with both in tow, we can keep it in check until I find the things we need to save him from this fel enchantment."

Trowa's brow creased angrily, hardly bothering to disguise his frown. He did not care for the way Duo treated Heero, and it made him suspicious that there was more to this escapade than he was aware. Bitterly, he hissed, "I am not in the right spirit for any of your lecturing, Duo Blackscythe. We lost fifty and six gold coins to those thieves when they looted you and I refuse to go any further without it. So get your act together and fall in step, because I won't stand for any more of your tricks!" He said the last bit accusingly, carefully watching Duo's face for any sort of betraying flinch, and heavily disappointed to find there was none.

Meanwhile, Duo was still huddled on the ground, desperately trying to come up with a brilliant scheme to make ends meet. He knew it was stupid to send Trowa out looking for thieves while he waited with Heero, but it was still just as pointless to carry Heero between them while slinking around unfriendly territory. He desperately wished he had the power to undo at least this demonic sleep that had possessed Heero and tried his best to think of a hurried solution for the time being. Now plucking at the long grass that bent around his legs, he tried to assess what had triggered this state upon Heero at all in case it led him to any strokes of brilliance.

"I don't see why this ails you so," Trowa sighed at long last. He was kicking at the bog water, amusing himself with the way Heavypaw would cover his face whenever the water got too close. "A passerby would think him dead if they saw him lying here; I don't think you have to worry so much about his wellbeing - if that is what the case may be." Trowa shot Duo a knowing but wary glance, still carefully searching the warlock's face for the slightest betrayal of emotion.

He was pleased to find that this comment was able to get a rise out of Duo, who was quick to leap to his feet and hiss, "His wellbeing is the difference between life and death, not only for us, but for all of Azeroth." He strode towards Trowa and snatched a handful of his tabard with his bone fingers, dragging his face to level with his: "Imagine what would have happened if Milliardo Wrynn had been able to wrest that demonic power for himself, as was his intention? It would be just as he took the seat of Stormwind for his own, not for the good of the Alliance, but for his own selfishness!" Duo was really getting worked up, shaking Trowa this way and that as spittle flew from his throat. "So long as we keep Heero and that sigil with us, we can ensure the banishment of that fel beast and thus, another calm day." With that, he gave Trowa a hearty push, sending him stumbling backwards into the fen, where he teetered and fell with a splash. Neither one laughed.

Now drenched, Trowa glared up at Duo from behind his long bangs, hardly looking as regal as someone of his princely station ought. "Well, isn't it good to know that someone has been keeping himself brushed up on the underbelly of Alliance history," he growled, his displeasure now ten times what it had been prior.

Duo stood at the edge of the bog, his arms crossed beneath the huge folds of his sleeves as he glared down at Trowa unsympathetically, determined to stand his ground. "Until the day I died, such things were my life," he reminded Trowa bitterly.

"So were they mine," Trowa spat back with eager animosity, quivering with such rage that the water around him rippled like a boiling soup.

They remained at this ugly stalemate for quite some time, each trying to silently outweigh the other's history with just the power of his anger. It was a silly thing to argue over, really, since both their races were once formerly of the Alliance until tragedy drove each away from their roots and gave them cause to join with those who had once been their enemies. But with the way the tension had been building between the two of them since they'd set out, it was unsurprising that they would fall apart over something so trite.

It was a rabble from the highroad that eventually quashed their spat, at least for the time being. At the unexpected sound, both Duo and Trowa were quick to duck for cover amid the boggy reeds, where from they spied upon the path for the source of the noise. Duo prayed that Trowa's assertion that Heero seemed as if a corpse would ring true.

Sure enough, there came into sight the very band of thieves that had had raided them, immediately given away by the fact that one of them carried Duo's stolen staff. There were only seven of them, but they seemed to have done very well that day in Hillsbard, for they were laden with other items and packs that did not belong to Duo or Trowa, and were drinking with revel from flasks as they ambled down the road towards Arathi. Their disagreement immediately forgotten, Trowa and Duo were already mouthing silent attack plans to one another, certain they wouldn't get another chance like this, even before the thieves took note of Heero.

"Wait," said the ringleader of this particular band of Syndicate ne'er-do-wells, holding up a hand. He glanced down the knoll to where Heero lay on his back, artfully arranged as if he had been napping there. "What ho is this?"

"'Tis a peasant, sirrah - an adventurer, methinks," slurred one of the other thieves as he knocked back another shot from the flask he was holding. "Probably dead."

"Yes, yes, probably," said the leader ponderously as he stroked his beard and stared down at Heero's body. "But he seems the same dead adventurer whose corpse we left behind half a league back. How ever did it find its way here?"

At this suggestion, the rest of the thieves all huddled around their leader, as if standing in his exact position would allow them the sight to recognize the body. If they all weren't so drunk, they probably would have had the sense to flee at such a suggestion, for anyone in Azeroth knew that the dead who walked were most likely in the service of the Lich King. They also might have been more attuned to the movement in the nearby underbrush before an arrow came whizzing from behind, embedding itself deep into their leader's skull. So drunk were they that it even took a moment for all of them to register what had happened before someone thought to panic and send the lot of them scattering. Such alarm was useless, though, for there soon came another arrow, and then a burst of flaming magic right before they were ambushed by Heavypaw and one of Duo's summoned creatures.

It wasn't until Heavypaw was sitting amid a field of fallen bodies, idly licking the blood off his fur, that Trowa and Duo emerged from hiding. Both feeling rather self-satisfied, they set to looting the corpses, even more pleased to find that they'd made profit by adding the other stolen goods to their inventory. They doubled their rations and tripled their coin, not to mention the discovery of some smaller items they thought would come in handy later. At the end of it all, Trowa smugly removed the missing sigil from the Syndicate leader's purse, reveling in its repossession until Duo snatched it back and slunk back towards Heero. "Nice try," he called back at Trowa as he replaced the sigil in Heero's hip pouch.

"You know," said Trowa as he squatted down on the edge of the path, amusedly watching as Duo struggled to lift Heero's body on his own, "we, too, will be passing through Arathi."

"Yes, so? What of it?" Duo wheezed, already exasperated by the chore of trying to haul Heero back to where Trowa waited on the path. He kept telling himself he would be allowed to punch the blood elf if he managed to get there.

Trowa arched his eyebrows, as was his way when he was particularly entertained. "They say it is steeped in magic," he said elusively. "That the very essence of the Earthmother is what breathes life into the rocks and draws the spirits of the land to the old enchanting circles built in her honour."

"For the love of Elune, stop toying with me and say what you mean, elf!" Duo grunted as he dragged Heero across the pebbly ground and began up the side of the hill towards the road. It was a miracle of the enchanted sleep that Heero did not wake and strangle Duo for such rugged care.

Deciding that he'd had enough fun for the time being, Trowa finally gave in and nudged Duo a bit more sharply: "Did you not once know a Tauren druid in your youth?" he pressed. "I seem to recall you telling me that she was your primary fount of knowledge about their culture when you studied in Dalaran."

"Yeah, so?" Duo was having a hard time giving it proper thought while trying to drag Heero up to where Trowa sat.

"So," Trowa meandered with the thought, "did she not teach you their ways of communicating with the earth?"

"What, are you saying we should use a Tauren ritual to ask the Earthmother to wake Heero?" Duo asked as he finally reached the roadside, though it was still a struggle to keep his footing and not lose hold of Heero, whose furthered lack of cooperation was wholly unhelpful. "I suppose it's worth a try. A god would have more luck with this business than we would, anyway...."

Duo was too focused on his task to notice the way Trowa was shaking his head bemusedly at the entire display, proof of their friendship despite its jagged appearance. With a final yank and a gasp, Duo finally managed to deposit Heero beside Trowa, though the backside of Heero's jerkin had suffered the consequences for it. Flopping down on his back next to Heero for a rest, Duo stared up at the cloudy sky and said, "Sometimes I wonder if the Burning Legion sent you out for the sole purpose of torturing me beyond even undeath."

Trowa let out a laugh at this accusation, one of the few he'd allowed himself in the entirety of their journey. "They do say everything in life has a purpose, though we may not always have cause to know what that is," he commented sagely.

Duo frowned at the clouds, wondering what purpose theirs might be. "Lately, I feel as though mine is being teased," he said, his voice a little nostalgic. His body had felt nothing since he'd died, and yet, he couldn't shake the anxious feeling that had suddenly overtaken him. It was strange for him to imagine that he still carried some of the things he thought he had left behind in another life.

"The word for that is 'destiny'," said Trowa, assuming a similar position to Heero and Duo, though he took the liberty of folding his arms behind his head.

Duo turned his head towards his companion, unsure if he was being facetious or not, but found he was unable to read his relaxed face. He felt as if he had set out on this journey eons ago, but had since only been walking in circles to bide his time. He wondered if, at the end of it, he would find that he had managed to get anywhere at all.

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His ears were filled with the whispers of death. Around him, the blackened world in which he hovered seemed to be hung only with gray shadows that wafted as if they were being carried on a ghostly breeze. He blinked - or he tried to - but it was like he was seeing a world that did not require the power of vision. He paused and tried to breathe, wondering where he was and how long he had been there. O, but it felt like he had been laying there all his life, and could, for the rest of his life, there, remain.

However, he could not say that he was entirely ill at peace, despite the somber air his surroundings held. It was as if he were in some kind of realm between worlds, waiting for some kind of rite of passage to take place so that he might proceed onwards. Curiosity as to where that might be teased him a bit, but he was content to wait if waiting was what he ought to do. That was easy enough: it was like an order, and orders were something that he had built his life upon.

Then, beneath the ever-present mutterings of the dead, he thought he heard singing - a familiar traditional from the days when he'd roamed the streets of Dalaran. By the Light, he had not heard such a hymn in ages, and for the first time since he'd found himself here, he felt the will to move. No sooner had he made this decision did the bland scenery around him meld into that of beautiful Dalaran, with its elfin spires and abundant gardens. He looked around, enthralled; he had not been here in an eternity. As he walked, he found himself recalling snippets of his life past as if they were pieces of a fragmented dream.

But even as he wandered the streets, he knew it was somehow different - that this wasn't truly Dalaran. It still bore the grayish hues of this unearthly place and seemed devoid of all life, even as the sounds of the hymnal grew louder in his ears. It was then that he came to the realization that he was utterly alone, and in doing so, stood amazed that he had gone so long without noticing. He wondered where his companions had gone, or if they had at last abandoned him to whither away. The thought instilled another urge within him - one that demanded some sort of emotion, but one he could not put a finger on, for he then found himself somehow devoid of his ability to feel. Such a discovery made him want to be angry, but that, too, was unreachable. It was almost as if that part of him had been physically clawed out of his chest and hidden away, leaving him only able to rationalize questions such as who or why - or if there was something else he should be remembering that had somehow also been swallowed up in this netherworld. It was as if he were a mere toy in some grand scheme.

The singing escalated as he started to tear through the streets, heading all the while towards the Violet Citadel. He was a man possessed by the notion that there was something for him to glean from this vision, and it drove him to persist onwards. He stumbled over his own feet and fell forward, his hands barely saving his face the pain of colliding with the cobblestone roadway. But no sooner had he hit the pavement did he realize that the masonry was crumbling away beneath him, falling down like stone rain into the dark abyss that stretched out beneath the dream Dalaran. His eyes widened in fear to see that looming in the blackness was none other than the huge ifrit that had killed his guildmates; it hovered there, as if it were waiting for the rest of Dalaran to fall away and send him plummeting into its awaiting claws. Its eyes burned hungrily as it roared up at him with yearning.

He screamed.

All at once, Heero's eyes snapped open and he woke up, nearly blinded by the overwhelming sunlight that filtered through the clouds overhead. Afraid to even move lest he disturb what might have been some other kind of dream, Heero took in a few deep, heavy breaths, his fingers attempting to clench a handful of the stone slab he found himself lying upon.

"Heero?" The voice was tentative but familiar. Heero allowed himself to turn his head in the direction the voice had come from, actually somewhat relieved to see Duo leaning on his staff nearby. He might have been a bit groggy still, but he almost imagined that there was some hint of worry on Duo's flesh-eaten face.

"Where are we?" he wondered, shimmying into an upright position. Because the air here was damper and the scenery more mossy and green, he knew they were no longer in Alterac, but he was still a bit too disoriented to call up any sort of map in his head.

"In the Arathi Highlands," came another familiar voice, though it was a little less welcome than Duo's. Heero turned to see Trowa crouched on a nearby boulder, Heavypaw lingering around its base with his usual languid ease. "You have been an unhelpful burden since we left Tarren Mill."

And so they were, Heero noted, ignoring anything else that was said as Duo launched into yet another tiff with Trowa. Arathi had always been one of the most beautiful places in Azeroth, Heero thought: it was always a bit gray and rainy there, but it kept the grass all the more lush, and the huge stones that had been arranged in ritualistic prayer circles all over the landscape only added to the place's mystique. It was then that he realized that they were gathered in the middle of just such a prayer circle. For a moment, he thought to ask why they were lingering in such a place, but reason was quick to make sense of that... if the elemental spirits lingering around its perimeter were any clue. He nodded at them, a silent word of thanks.

For a moment, Heero wondered if he should tell either of them about his dream, but then thought wiser of it when he found he could not immediately speak up about it. There would be plenty of time to explain it if the need ever arose, he decided, silently watching as Duo uncouthly bit his thumb at Trowa. He found himself instead distracted by the notion of how human the pair of Horde allies was behaving. He wondered if it was something he was privy to because they no longer regarded him as a threat, or if he was starting to see something in them he hadn't taken the time to notice before.

Still, he couldn't help but wonder if there was something that they were hiding from him. Neither had bothered to explain exactly how they had ended up all the way in Arathi, when it seemed like only moments before, they had been in Tarren Mill. He remembered the orcs that had tried to have him publicly executed there, but nothing beyond that. He supposed they must have nearly had their way with him and he'd been incapacitated all through Hillsbard. That made sense, he thought; it would explain why Trowa had been complaining about being inconvenienced.

Duo seemed to have taken notice of Heero's silence, and, catching sight of the way Heero was examining himself from the corners of his eyes, stopped goading Trowa in order to turn his attentions on his human ward. "What's wrong?" he asked, though it was hard to tell quite where his concern stemmed from. "You're not missing something else are you?"

Heero's head snapped up, his blue eyes jagged with curiosity. "What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously.

Fiercely, Duo clamped his open mouth shut and pursed his thin lips. It was easy to forget that despite the seeming camaraderie the three of them had forged, they all still had plenty of reasons to distrust one another. "You just seemed concerned about your person is all," Duo ground out, hoping he didn't sound too uncertain. He hadn't meant to let all that business with the thieves slip out so soon. Explaining what had transpired in Tarren Mill up to that point was something Duo was still privately fussing about, unsure what the best way to broach the subject would be.

Realizing what had caught Duo's attention, Heero answered with a shrug, "I thought I might have been injured, that's all."

"Not physically, anyway," Duo said before he had a chance to recant. He stared at Heero for a few long seconds, the ghostly light in his eye sockets flickering as he brooded over what to say next. Clutching his staff tightly in both hands, he glanced away, frowning at one of the large boulders that stood around the edge of the enchanting circle. "That is to say, I'm not even quite sure 'injured' is the word."

Trowa was quick to interject with his usual blunt air. "Can you walk, human?" He crossed his arms and waited for Heero to answer. Upon seeing Heero slide off the stone slab he'd been lying on and take a few steps away from it, he summed up with a shrug, "You see? Not injured. Let's go." He abruptly leapt from his own perch, landing in a well-balanced crouch next to Heavypaw.

"Hey, you calm down, Your Highness," Duo jibed derisively, unimpressed with Trowa's habit of wrangling control of the expedition away from him. He ambled over to Trowa, bending down to hiss into his long, elfin ear: "I think you're taking all of this a bit too lightly."

"And I think you're coddling that human," Trowa sniped back, not about to let Duo domineer their journey in a way he didn't approve of. "Cursed or not, I still think you gave your trust to him too easily."

"So what if I did?" Duo groused, sensing another row on the horizon. "It's none of your business."

However, Trowa wasn't about to be written off so easily, and he was quick to say, "Whether you want me here or not, as long as I am a part of this fellowship, it is as much my business as anyone else's. I won't allow you to make a fool of yourself or me because some conniving Ally had you on a leash." His tone was acidic, but there was a sincerity in his face that spoke of the concern he had for his friend in the whole affair. After a weighted pause, Trowa added, "Haven't you thought completely on the matter? We are leading a cub back to a den of wolves. Who knows what they will do to us when we get there."

Duo was exasperated by Trowa's inability to understand the whole arrangement and sourly wished he wouldn't have to keep repeating himself lest he end up telling more than he had vowed he would. "Look, I know that the world we live in is one where we all best ought to tread lightly, but...." He paused, glancing away as he absently fingered the leather stitches in his cheek. "Sometimes you just have to believe that there are still a few men who are as good as their word." His tongue poked out between the stitches in a manner that betrayed his anxiety.

The frown on Trowa's face didn't right itself, despite the earnestness in Duo's plea. He grudgingly acquiesced as much as he would ever be willing to on the matter by saying, "I will change my mind when I witness something that earns such a sentiment from me." He sent a sharp glare over Duo's shoulder to where Heero still lingered on the stone slab they had laid him on. "I've seen nothing to settle it yet."

Duo was really starting to grow weary of this repeated argument with Trowa, especially since they always ended up going around in circles with it. "You let bias clout your judgment of all this," Duo accused, not about to let Trowa have the last word. "For the first time in your life, just trust me a little, alright?" He then stormed away from Trowa, falling into step with Heero, who was awkwardly trying to get used to using his legs again. As if to spite Trowa, Duo offered Heero a steadying hand as they made their way from the craggy enchanting circle.

Trowa was quick to turn his attentions elsewhere when he saw what Duo was doing. He refused to acknowledge any of the motivations Duo had regarding the human that were not wholly self-serving, for it that sort of folly that had led stronger men astray. "No, Duo," Trowa muttered, squinting into the setting sun as he and Heavypaw led the way back to the main path, "it is you whose judgment seems to have been clouted."

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TBC!

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