Ancient Rites

An’she kissed the high plateaus of the mountain range that surrounded Mulgore, His gaze casting long shadows across the Barrens beyond. Het’heru stood at the threshold of the Great Gate in the center of the road that once led to Camp Taurajo. Almost wearily, her hooves carried her forward, one plodding step after another; grim, determined, resolute in their purpose.
 
In her hands she carried a censer filled with fragrant herbs, allowing the smoke to permeate the air around her as she went. It was meant to call to the Spirits of Wind, to bring them closer to the village and the souls of the departed that might yet linger there. As she passed into the village proper to the large grassy knoll between the inn and the main lodge – at least, it had once been a grassy knoll. Now it was a burnt out patch of scarred land that the intervening years had still not seen fit to revitalize. The fires had burned too hotly, the ground soaked with too much blood.
 
Here, she impaled the staff of the censer into the ground so that the fragrant incense might continue to burn. Only then did she draw forth the torch, lighting it to ward away the encroaching shadows cast by the waning sunset. This would call to the Spirits of Fire, to remind them that once Taurajo was filled with vigor and life, the warm hearthfires of camaraderie and family.
 
As she walked the ruins holding the torch aloft, she could still see the skeletal remains of the smithy where once Tatternack Steelforge had designed and made the weapons for each of them just before the Great Hunt. While it was long gone, she could still remember seeing Krulmoo Fullmoon’s body sprawled across the floor. He had attempted to rouse the camp when the Alliance struck, defending those he could with nothing more than a Skinning knife. Such had been the fiery spirit of Taurajo that even outmatched and outnumbered, they still fought to save one another.
 
In the center of the ruined blacksmithing hut, Het’heru took out a waterskin and poured the contents out onto the dry, rotted floorboards, only a few of them remaining. This called upon the Spirits of Water, to soothe any souls that might still linger and to remind both people and land that like water they would move past any obstacle, finding a new path for themselves in spite of everything.
 
Abandoning the smithy, the tauren Sunwalker made her way to the center of the village once more, kneeling in the dry, dusty road still marred with ashen scars of those ill-fated days. Here she took a small handful of earth blessed by a shaman in Thunder Bluff. This she rubbed into the blackened cobblestones. It called to the Spirits of Earth, to remind them of what had happened here so that the Earth itself would remember and Taurajo never be forgotten. To ground those souls that might still yet linger so that they could find their way and return to the Earth Mother as intended.
 
She stayed that way long after dusk and An’she’s golden eye had given way to Mu’sha’s pale gaze. It wasn’t until she heard hoofsteps near her that she lifted her head. Not far from here, Jorn Skyseer stood, his spear held in one hand.
 
“Every year you come here, Het’heru, to perform the rites that have long since been done. There are no souls left here to shepherd, yet still you come and still you go through the rites. Why?” He asked.
 
“To remember. And to never forget.” She intoned gravely, rising to her feet with the soft clangor of platemail settling back into place. “The world may have moved on from Taurajo’s travesty, but I have not. I will not. So long as I draw breath, I will bring woe and ruin to the Alliance for what they have done.”
 
“This is no path for a Sunwalker to take. You should forgive, Het’heru, and allow your wounds to heal.” The old hunter said.
 
Het’heru looked toward the north, her single eye focusing on something in the distance. “These are still called the Fields of Blood is that how we choose to remember this place? Once, your thriving village was called Vendetta Point, have you lost that nerve, then? That want to settle the score?”
 
“The world is changing, Het’heru, and we must change with it.”
 
The paladin shook her head. “Change is inevitable, that much is true. Taurajo changed me, its massacre changed me. If the Earth Mother looks to change me again, then it will only be in death.”
 
“Shashona–” Jorn began, but the hot glare from the Sunwalker’s singular eye made him stop whatever protest he might have made.
 
“Never speak of them to me again, Jorn.” Het’heru cautioned. “I do not need reminding. Their names are engraved upon my very soul, their deaths stain my heart as much as the flames of the Alliance scarred my face.” She lifted a hand to her ruined cheek and its equally ruined eye. “I will never forget.”
 
The taureness made her way down the dusty road, heading toward the east and the Northwatch encampments that still lingered there.
 
“And I will never forgive.”