That morning, the three of them set off towards the main road. The previous night, Windy expressed her desire to leave.
"I must inform the council," she said. "They won't believe me unless they see it themselves. Some council members are stationed at Feathermoon Fortress. If they refuse to help, I'll visit every council outpost until I find someone willing to come with me."
"You want to capture him alive?" Sowema asked.
"That would be ideal, though I don't have high hopes. But I must get solid evidence. Letting Oyi disappear like this would be unfair."
"I won't wait for you," the orc said. "As soon as I have a chance, I'll kill him."
"Of course, I won't interfere with your actions."
Windy initially thought of saying, "You should leave this place too," but she gave up.
She made this decision because she didn't want to let anyone down. Since she borrowed the council's power, she was responsible to them. She had taken the purification box, so she was accountable to those who entrusted it to her. Additionally, she had to be responsible for herself.
Beyond that, there was an unavoidable issue. She called Sowema outside the cave to speak with him alone.
"After I meet up with the council members," she said, "you can leave."
"Why? But the contract..."
"The contract isn't that important. Stop following me, and go do what you want."
"I volunteered to be your guard, and this is what I want to do."
Windy could tell that Sowema had summoned a lot of courage to say this. It was as if he stood at the edge of a cliff, his back to the void, unable to turn around. He tried to speak loudly while avoiding losing his balance and falling.
"I'm used to traveling alone, after all, as a druid..." Windy realized that this excuse contradicted her decision to meet with the council members, so she stopped.
"So, it's because I'm too weak, right?" Sowema wasn't looking at her, but instead at a small mound of dirt to her left. "Yeah, you're always doing things alone in dangerous places... I almost forgot, back in the Western Plaguelands, you always went off on your own to search for those plant seeds. Who knows how many corpses and infected animals were in those rotten woods? Thinking about it, I must have been a burden to you all along. That day, if it hadn't been for the noise I made while chopping through the woods, I wouldn't have alerted those ogres and gotten you hurt."
"Don't think like that."
"Forget it, I've figured it out... It was wrong of me to stick around. I've known for a long time that I'm weak. I kept challenging the orc because, if I could manage just one move against a swordsman like him, I'd feel a little better about myself. But for him, it's probably more boring than playing with a child. You're much stronger than me; you don't need someone like me to protect you."
"Stop it." Soelma's self-deprecating tone made Windy uncomfortable, and he, oblivious to it, continued venting his self-loathing. Having known each other for over two years and traveled together for so long, Windy didn't want their relationship to end on such a note. But if this was Soelma's first step towards finding his own path, so be it.
"I'll leave after escorting you to Feathermoon Fortress," he said, pausing. "That's the best way."
Windy hardened her resolve and gave him one last push. "I'm glad you've figured it out."
This shook Sowema a little. After his long, overly sincere self-examination, he seemed restless and uncertain. In the end, he hurriedly said, "Well, I'm going back to sleep," and left.
Because of that conversation, Windy and Sowema had not spoken a word since leaving the cave that morning. The orc led the way, Windy followed in the middle, and though she hadn't looked back, Soelma's footsteps echoed in her mind repeatedly. They were familiar footsteps, the ones that had accompanied her through the plague-ridden mud, kicked through the cracked stones of the Barrens, and crossed the lush green borders of Feralas, endlessly repeating over hundreds of days and nights. Soon, she would bid farewell to those footsteps.
Midway, as unusual sounds emerged ahead, Sowema moved up to observe with the orc. That's when Windy noticed that Sowema now carried a simple, handmade short bow on his back, crafted from wood and animal sinew. A small bundle of arrows, tied together and stored in a cloth bag, had bone-carved arrowheads. She realized that Sowema hadn't slept the night before, spending his time outside crafting. This might be a good sign, she thought.
They reached the main road.
"I'll take you this far," the orc said.
Windy knew orcs didn't need many parting words, so she simply said, "Thank you for taking care of us. We'll be going now." Sowema added, "If I'm ever passing by, I'll come visit you, old man," which, though somewhat amusing, showed that his spirits had somewhat lifted.
"Take care on the road." The orc watched the two figures step onto the main road before turning back into the forest. It had been too long since he'd last interacted with others, and hearing himself say "take care" felt oddly novel. The past ten days together hadn't turned out to be the hassle he had imagined; in fact, he didn't mind it at all. The tauren girl was respectful, and her cooking was rather good—assuming his old, dull taste buds still recognized good food. The tauren boy, though reckless and unskilled, had a persistent urge to "challenge" him, which intrigued the orc. If time allowed, he wouldn't have minded teaching the boy a thing or two. But this moment of contentment wouldn't change his decision to live out his days alone in the forest. If he returned to the outside world, he feared that this brief pleasure of companionship would soon transform into something he once dreaded and fled from.
He hadn't walked far when he suddenly noticed a trail of blood crossing the path ahead. It must have come from dragging a full-grown body, judging by the thickness of the trail. Turning to his right, he spotted another blood trail, just as thick, ending at a tree. From the base of the tree to a meter up, the bark was entirely soaked in blood, as if a whole bucket had been poured over it. These hadn't been here earlier when he escorted the two along this road.
The smell was an overpowering stench of several creatures' blood mixed together. Even a battle-hardened orc like him held his breath as the blood vessels on his forehead throbbed in tension. Was this a warning? A show of power? Or just another one of Oyi's chaotic slaughters? Just as he stepped forward to examine the blood for more clues, a powerful impact struck his back. He felt coarse fur and claws digging into the muscles of his spine, followed by a roar that made his right ear ring incessantly.
His first reaction was to reverse his grip on his blade and slash backward. The heavy weight on his back briefly jumped away, its point of force pushing him forward, almost making him stumble. He managed to steady himself with his blade, though he couldn't see his back, he knew it must be a bloody mess by now.
The orc turned around, hearing the sound of his own blood dripping onto the grass, and saw Oyi several meters away. Its yellow eyes gleamed with an inscrutable light, lips curled on either side, revealing dark red gums and saliva-coated fangs. The orc understood: it was a trap. A trap of blood. Oyi had used the overpowering stench of blood to mask its own scent.
The orc let out a roar—a symbol of life-or-death combat. Though he knew Oyi wouldn't care about the formalities of one-on-one duels, the orc needed to mentally enter that state. The moment he had long awaited had come. The silent yet noisy forest of Feralas was the perfect witness to this duel. Blood surged through his left arm, and his fingertips tingled with heat. A bird with blue tail feathers flapped its wings and took off from the treetops.
Oyi couldn't speak. Though the tauren girl once claimed she could hear Oyi's thoughts, the orc heard nothing. But that didn't mean he couldn't communicate with his opponent. In battle, every step, every attack, and every defense was a form of dialogue. Muscles stretching and contracting created the sound of speed and force, and every drop of spilled blood struck the battlefield's score like a note on a musical sheet. The orc was old, but not too old to follow the rhythm of this song. His blade would carve out a merciless final note.
Since losing his right hand, the orc had become increasingly reliant on offense during combat. With only one arm, his strikes lacked the power they once had, but defending with one hand was even harder, as it required absorbing the enemy's force through the blade. However, Oyi wasn't an enemy he could overcome by mere brute force. It performed unpredictable low jumps and deceptive spins, aiming for the orc's weak spots—his right side and back—before launching attacks. Its claws were also strong enough to intercept the blade by striking its side. While mid-range combat had once been the orc's specialty, now he had no choice but to take the dangerous risk of closing the distance.
He timed Oyi's mid-air pounce and braced his large blade before him, charging forward to close in on its abdomen. The close proximity slowed his swing, and before the blade could cut deep into Oyi's flesh, its barbed tail whipped the orc's side, sending him staggering backward. His back collided with the rough bark of a tree, igniting a sharp wave of pain.
Oyi, bleeding from its abdomen, charged at the orc again. Its evident rage had caused it to lose the precision of its earlier evasive maneuvers. The strike was fierce but reckless. Enduring the searing pain in his back, the orc severed Oyi's left forelimb in one swift motion, but this didn't halt the beast's frenzied assault. With its two-toed right forelimb, Oyi pinned down the orc's left arm and lunged for his throat with its teeth. The orc shifted his body just enough to sacrifice his right shoulder to those sharp fangs.
Both were running out of strength. Oyi's abdomen and severed forelimb continued to bleed, and its grip on the orc's right shoulder wavered several times, loosening and tightening again. The orc's left arm was trapped, leaving him with no other means of attack. They were locked in a stalemate—the one to succumb first to blood loss and pain would be the loser.
Moments later, the orc heard a sharp sound. Then a second. Oyi's body shuddered. After the third, its fangs loosened, and its massive body collapsed to the ground. The orc saw three arrows embedded shallowly in Oyi's back. From the gap in the trees ahead, Sowema stood with a bow, Windy at his side.
Oyi growled low and sluggishly turned around. The arrows had only pierced the surface of its hide, not a significant injury, but the sudden assault had drained its remaining strength and judgment. The orc raised his left arm and cleaved Oyi's body in half down the middle, leaving his entire left side drenched in blood and gore.
Sowema lowered his bow. For him, releasing the first arrow had been the hardest. Oyi's massive frame had almost entirely obscured the orc from his view, making it an easy target. Besides, his handmade, crude arrows wouldn't penetrate deep enough to accidentally harm the orc. But Soelma's fingers had hesitated after drawing the bowstring tight. "I was the three-time hunting champion," he silently recited to himself, "One, two, three. Three arrows for three championships." With that mantra, he loosed the three arrows into Oyi's spine.
Windy stepped forward. It was she who had heard the orc's roar and smelled Oyi's scent. She glanced at the exhausted orc, then knelt down.
In front of her lay not the dying black beast, but Oyi Nightsong, the night elf with long pale violet hair and skin. She didn't know if others saw the same vision, but the eyes before her shifted from their corrupted yellow back to their rightful silver, before finally dulling into darkness.
In that moment, Windy heard nothing at all.