Of Claws and Totems

Chapter 30

History

Kalara and Blackheart meandered, arms linked, down the boardwalk, passing several shops and restaurants. The draenei could clearly see that some of the restaurants were advertising the fish and chips that Blackheart had mentioned, but he seemed to be hunting for something in particular. In fact it looked to her like he was letting his nose lead the way. It shouldn't have been all that surprising, given his wolf like nature, but it was still fascinating to Kalara when he would use his other senses besides sight to find something, especially in his human form.

A few moments more and Blackheart sniffed the air one last time before turning and looking at one of the shops. It was a small eatery, crammed in between two larger shops. It was old and worn down, though not dirty. It was a clean place, but seemed to have needed a new coat of paint for the last couple of years. The sign above the door read simply 'The Angry Keel' and had a faded picture of a boat on it.

Looking back and forth between the shop and the smile growing on Blackheart's face, she asked, "This is where you want to eat at?" Kalara had learned long ago to not judge something by its looks.

Nodding, he said, "Oh yes. When I was training and stationed here this was the best place, hands down, for delicious food. We also got a military discount which was pretty handy."

Kalara merely nodded and followed him in. Blackheart had never really talked about his military past, other than a bit of a mention of how his squad had met its demise. She supposed that there might not have been much to tell… but it seemed more likely that he just hadn't brought it up. The worgen had talked readily enough about his past when he was showing her the house he had grown up in, but other than a few snippets he hadn't really revealed much to her outside of his family and being at home.

She was still mildly concerned about the state of the restaurant… until the smells coming from the kitchen hit her. Whatever they were cooking up smelled delicious and she fully understood how Blackheart could follow his nose to such a place. There were several small tables arranged about the room and there were various pieces of ship adorning the walls for decoration. Blackheart chose a bench style table for them that was under a broken ship's wheel. As she took a seat next to him, Kalara saw a few other patrons sitting at the tables, most diving into their food.

They had just taken their seats and were waiting to be served when Kalara heard the door open and felt Blackheart immediately tense beside her. Looking towards the door she saw several of the new recruits that had been part of Williams' squad. Surely they wouldn't start something in the middle of a restaurant… right? She doubted that they would but under the table she formed a small ball of lightning in her hand, just to be on the safe side.

The group of recruits, five in all, spotted them immediately and made their way over. Blackheart held himself ready to jump to action, but otherwise remained perfectly still until their intentions were stated. He had thought that they, like he, had judged Williams to be a useless idiot… but you could never tell what people would inspire loyalty in those around him. Even Williams had admirers. As they approached he tried sniffing them out but, for the first time in his life, he was irritated that the smells from the kitchen were just too good for him to deduce their intentions through scent alone. So he did as he would have as a human... he watched and waited.

As the group approached the table they slowed down. The apparent leader started to step up but one of the other men grabbed him and pointed at the flickering light emanating from under the table. Seeing this the recruit's eyes widened a bit. He visibly swallowed, held his hands up in a symbol of peace, and slowly approached the table.

Timidly the man cleared his throat to speak. "Uhm… Mr. Bishop… we were wondering if we could join you, just to you know, talk a little bit. You're a bit of a legend at the academy. I mean with the troops… or well with the recruits anyway. Drill Sergeant Williams has tried to run your name through the mud but nobody listened to him. Can... can we sit down and talk to you?" He finished, looking back for the nods of his companions for encouragement. They did nod at him, glad someone else had been brave enough to approach the worgen.

Blackheart relaxed when he realized what they wanted. They were doing what recruits did best: gather around food and swap stories. If there was anything that was universal about military life, this had to be it. He motioned for them to sit down and they did so, three of them sitting on the bench across from him and Kalara with two grabbing chairs from other tables.

Before the last one had even sat down a waitress was out to take their orders. Blackheart started off, ordering the fish and chips for himself and Kalara. The others followed suit and the waitress smirked, noting how they all seemed to be just doing as Blackheart did.

"So, you're a legend huh?" Kalara asked the worgen, teasingly giving his shoulder a shove. "I can't wait to hear this."

Before Blackheart could answer one of the recruits said, "Oh yes ma'am. Mr. Bishop here still holds quite a few training records." He held his hand up and began ticking off on his fingers. "Only recruit to ever best combat instructor Jameson in a fight before graduation, fastest obstacle course completion time, record holder for most hand to hand sparring sessions won, and, my personal favorite, only recruit to escape punishment after pranking a senior officer."

"Pranking a senior officer? You?" Kalara was astonished. She knew that Blackheart had a sense of humor but he tended to be lean toward the serious more often than not. Hearing that he had pulled a prank on someone, especially someone that was above him in rank, was extraordinary. "I'm just not sure I can believe it."

Looking conspiratorially at the recruits sitting around them, Blackheart failed to suppress a smirk. "Well... we had this one drill sergeant. Clops was his name. When he wasn't around we would say 'Watch out, here comes ol' Clippity Clop'. Not the most imaginative name in the world, but you do what you can when you're in basic training. Anyway, Sergeant Clops was one of the worst Drill Sergeants I'd ever had. He would wake us up at 2:00 AM for a bit of exercise by sneaking into the middle of our barracks and blasting on his trumpet. You come to expect this kind of thing, except he would always do it after our hardest P.T. sessions or combat training, when we were all dead to the world. Now I can appreciate the value of being able to wake up and be ready to go after you're worn out, but he seemed to take a perverse pleasure in it. But the key was that trumpet. He loved that trumpet more than anything.

A few months into our training we had just been forced to have a mock battle in what he deemed a 'character building arena' which translated to a cow pasture right at the edge of the training camp. A very well used, disgusting, not-been-mucked-out-in-several-weeks cow pasture. The skirmish had to have lasted until after midnight... and we got destroyed. We were outnumbered, out equipped, and were just generally out maneuvered the whole night. Clippity Clop finally calls it quits after we had all been put down into the mud and the muck several times. I mean it was bad... we were all completely covered in cow manure and who knows what else. We head to the baths and I happen to be last in line. Because of the kind of day it was, I knew he would come into the barracks the middle of the night and play that damned horn and wake everyone up. Well... I decided that this time he wasn't going to do it without some retribution.

I watched him walking around, still yelling at us about our defeat until he got tired of that and went into the baths himself, cutting in line in front of everyone... that was when I made my move. I ran as fast as I could into the sergeant's lodgings, grabbed his trumpet, and ran out into the pasture where I filled it up with as much manure as I could get down the bell of the thing. I took the mouthpiece and made sure to swill it around in some unnamed pile of liquidy muck. I ran back and put it in his room and managed to get into line before he finished bathing. No one said a word, no one looked at me, and no one managed to act suspicious. They may actually have been too tired to notice. Once he was out of the baths he resumed his tirade, telling us about how incompetent we were and about how his grandmother could have beaten us. Finally we were all washed and bunked down when he parted with his usual 'good night ladies' and went to his room.

It was about twenty seconds after this that we heard him cry out into the night. It honestly sounded like he had been stabbed or had just found out someone he loved had died. He stormed into our bunk and started yelling at us... but everyone one of us to the man just laid still and quiet and completely ignored him. That was the last time he ever tried to wake us up again."

Kalara had listened with ever growing fascination. The thought that Blackheart could pull something like that off, and in fact would do it, showed her a new side of him she didn't realize existed. She and the recruits all had a good laugh once he had finished his story and she leaned on him as she burst into giggles. Maybe, she thought, when all this was over and things were more peaceful she would be able to see this unexpected side of him more often. The more humorous less serious side. Not that she didn't love the serious side, she completely did, but she looked forward to completely knowing him. Once she had gotten herself under control, she asked, "Didn't he try to punish you guys?"

With a smirk, Blackheart replied, "Oh sure he tried. He yelled and yelled at us and the next day he tried to make us rat each other out but no one would take him up on it. When he tried to punish us in with more p.t. the colonel over the camp actually forced him to ease up on us. Apparently he was just as tired as we were of being woken up at ungodly hours of the morning by his damned trumpet."

All of the recruits stared in awe at Blackheart. They had heard the story before, or at least parts of it, but never from the source. The food came out then and they all started chowing down. Kalara had to stop herself from laughing at how fast all of them, even Blackheart, were eating. It must be a military thing, she decided, being able to scarf your food or having the necessity to at least. Blackheart stopped wolfing down his food as he watched her take a bite. An odd look came across her face as soon as she bit into the fried fish.

"Do you like it?" The worgen asked.

After a few seconds of silent chewing Kalara said around the next mouthful of fish, "This is amazing!" She ceased talking and focused on eating. Blackheart let a smile cross his face, happy that she was enjoying one of his favorite meals.

The group spent the next couple of hours swapping tales with each other. The recruits seemed to grow more and more enamored with Blackheart as he and Kalara related some of their exploits. Kalara almost laughed at one of them as he had sat with a fork halfway to his mouth for at least ten minutes when they were telling about the massive tornado that she and Malfurion had closed. The recruit finally gave up on the pretense of eating and dropped his fork to listen to the rest of their story.

After a few more tales of their adventure, Blackheart's sharp hearing picked up the ringing of bells coming from the docks - usually an indication that a ship had arrived and was unloading or waiting on passengers. Bidding the recruits goodbye and good luck and receiving many thanks and well wishes himself, he and Kalara strolled to the docks.

Blackheart spotted The Lady Mehley unloading its passengers and calling for tickets. He and Kalara purchased tickets to Menethil and boarded the ship. After stowing their belongings below deck they went up to the prow of the ship and awaited departure.

"I really, really hope that this trip goes better than our last boat ride. Less dragons, less flying, less crashing... all of that good stuff." Kalara said, looking out over the ocean. A peculiar look came across her face as she watched the ocean lap against the boat. An ominous feeling, almost directly East of where they were. It felt like something was wrong with the elements. "I can feel something wrong out there... it must be the Maelstrom that I've heard of."

"Surely," the worgen responded, "Deathwing wouldn't attack us twice while on a boat. Neither of us like him but I doubt we are that big of a threat to him. As for the Maelstrom... it's been there quite a while. I imagine that this crew knows its way around it."

Kalara leaned against Blackheart as The Lady Mehley was cast off into the sea. "I can only hope you're right. On both counts. I'm thinking of siding with Miakoda on the whole 'no boats' thing." She turned to face him then. "And you," she punctuated by poking him lightly in the chest, "if you leave me a... a half widow or whatever it is because this boat also gets thrown through the air, I will chase you into the afterlife and haunt you. I don't know if ghosts can haunt other ghosts, but I will find out."

Blackheart took her hand in his and kissed it. "I promise - no dying and no flying boats."

Kalara turned back to look over the waters. Soon they would be in the Wetlands at Menethil Harbor. That was just one area away from the Twilight Highlands where the object of their quest, her sister, was supposed to be. She had no idea how on Azeroth she was supposed to save Miyara, or if she even could, but she knew she had to try... and with Blackheart beside her she knew that if it was possible, they would accomplish it together.

End of Book 1

**Author's Note**

Hello readers. New ones - thank you for reading my story. Old readers... please accept my deepest apologies for not working further on this story. I do not know if when or if I will ever complete this story. I just… ran out of creative juice and nothing I've written since then has been good enough to even start again. Maybe someday. Maybe not.