Story: Buying the Farm

[Darren Tereos]

“I have a proposition to make.” Those were the words the air-gulper said to me. I wasn't in Brill this time. This time I was in Orgrimmar. I think I took the wrong zeppelin. But, it was a place and I could sit. So I was sitting. A number of Orcs walked by. Then one stopped. He said, “haven't seen you in a while.” No idea what that meant, but he was green and maybe I had seen him before. It was hard to tell. It was dusty. Kalimdor and everything the Orcs touch is that dusty red.

Dayari stopped at the last line and muttered to himself “No, that was the way it used to be. Before this Horde.” His quill, clutched by his bony fingers, then scribbled over the sentence. Momentarily placing his writing utensil down, he brushed his hands together, trying to shake something between imagination and memory from them.

“I have a proposition to make. Your past service to the Shattered Hand was useful, but times have changed and like a chameleon we too must change.” His beady dark eyes were like black marbles, soulless and without pity.

Again pausing in his writing, Dayari shook his head as if to shake the encroaching thoughts from his mind, another remnant of his living days. Then holding up the parchment, he held it over a candle, watching blankly as the licks of flame lapped at and blackened the page to a burnt cinder. He then promptly brushed the ashes to the floor of the Gallows End Tavern, where they joined the already thick piles of dust. The Forsaken then pulled another piece of parchment from his backpack and started again, writing rapidly.

Notes:
Get poison
Kill Gorehoof the Black
Don't get caught

“Get poison.” After collecting his belongings, Dayari stumbled out the window by which he sat. Landing hard enough to cause decayed sinews to groan, Dayari righted himself, from feet to the top of his head and loped toward the Undercity.

Several weeks later, Dayari reviewed one of his many notes. Finding nothing of importance, other than the reminder not to get caught, which always seemed a sensible plan, Dayari reversed the scroll and sat down in an empty park in Dalaran. Several paces away, the Forsaken could see the steady stream of comers and goers to one of the two banks in Dalaran. But, in the section he had found, there was preciously little other than some over-polished statue. Spreading the wrinkled parchment with a satisfying crackle of paper in front of him, Dayari again began to write.

Angellis gave me a present. I'm not sure exactly what's so exciting about it, but he gave it to me and I think that makes it a present. It's some sort of bug with needles. I didn't want to forget it, so I held onto it. The needles got stuck in my hand, in the fleshy parts. I think some are still there. It's supposed to hurt when that happens.

Dayari examined his hand for signs of the damage he had suffered from the “present.” Seeing nothing of concern, other than a quickly torn free piece of decayed skin, he returned to his writing.

I remember pain. It was sickness, when I was alive. It was getting cold, or I was getting cold; I don't remember. There was a farm that needed work but I couldn't do it. A harvest or something like that. Instead, I was alone in bed covered in blankets reeking of sweat and my own filth. Those few days were spent in fever-dreams and staring at the sun moving across a window I could see through blood-hazed eyes. The last night, the last night I hurt, I saw the moon rising a full hunter's moon. My bare feet on the dirt floor as I tried to get out of bed, trying to stand to go get help. Swaying in the moonlight, I remember throwing up what was surely my own innards. Then things began to spin and I collapsed head first, with everything ending in blackness.

That's when the memories stop. Not again until Deathknell. The rest are here, in notes and pieces. Reading them is supposed to be important. Angellis says I should write things down.