Ren would get funny looks sometimes. She was aware of it. Part of her enjoyed the attention, but part of her was ashamed. A hunter, out of the academy, without a furry or scaly companion wasn’t exactly typical. It didn’t make her arrows any less sharp, her aim any less godlike, her ego any less puffy, but it did cripple her tracking skills. Pets acted as a focus, keeping you attuned to the subtler, more primitive aspects of the world around you. It made you hear the still things, gave you an edge over the stealthy, brought you into their quiet world and made you master of it.
Something snot-faced, cheat-bubble paladins would never comprehend.
Sure, she trained with several different animals. While it was unheard of to enter the ranger academy already aware of your familiar animal, with a little training, almost everyone found attunement very quickly. Seemed like everyone and their grandmother had connections with giant cats or dragonhawks. But that made sense. Those two animals kind of represented the Sin’dorei spirit anyway. It fit her race.
Boring.
The individualists – what few existed – inevitably found kindred creatures among the spiders, bats, and turtles of the Ghostlands. Some even went as far south as Silverpine to discover their spirits aligned with the wolf or the bear. But her instructors frowned upon those, considering their essences base, inelegant, better suited to…other races of the Horde. Ren herself had spent her pet training time with a Silverpine she-bear, a hulking brown shield that would help her catch fish and occasionally steal the berries from her dessert. To amuse her classmates (and to spite her retard of an elder sister) Ren called her Bubbles, and early on she enjoyed the big-eyed looks when she’d pass by accompanied by a creature twice as large as anything native to her homelands. But then the insults came. The inevitable fat jokes, the accusations of incompetency – those went away after a few pet duels. And then some nobleman’s son had to go and crack about her brother’s choice of pets. Ren got a year’s suspension for putting an arrow in his buttocks.
But the bear wasn’t it. She was a sweet but also dangerous creature, majestic and noble – nobler than those prissy cats – but it was just a healthy respect that Ren felt. Not a connection. There was supposed to be a connection. That’s what Varedis had always told her. That she would know. That it was like knowing you were in love, only it hurt less.
But her brother wasn’t around to advise her now, and maybe it was just as well. Having exhausted every council-approved pet short of the exotic and expert-only Draenor varieties, Ren was beginning to wonder if she was defective. It couldn’t be her choice of profession. She was a hunter. She’d always known this. But there was the odd ranger incapable of communing with beasts.
It didn’t lend them to a successful career.
When she graduated the academy, she left Bubbles behind with her family. Her baby sister had grown really attached to her, and Ren had a sneaking suspicion they had another budding hunter in the family. She was crossing her fingers that Nissa was one the distinguished few that joined the academy pre-attuned…and to a bear, well…every time Ren thought about it, a huge grin spread across her face.
“What are you grinning about, twiggy?” an orc in her squad growled at her. “If you want to daydream you can go back to your shiny fairy city. I’m not babysitting defective elves.”
Ren clenched her teeth and willed herself not to snap back. Her squad leader tolerated belligerent orcs, but not belligerent blood elves. Who said racism was dead? So she just flashed teeth at her grumpy squadmate.
Thanks to her…situation, she’d been unable to attain a decent opening post with her own people upon her graduation from ranger academy. She might as well be missing a limb in their eyes. Not that she wanted to hang out with those losers anyway. So she’d applied with other divisions of the Horde (mostly Forsaken divisions), but apparently her race wasn’t the only one that equated pets with worth as far as hunters were concerned.
Petless? Worthless.
She would catch up to Sylvanas. She had to.
So the only assignments she was qualified for were the ones no one wanted. Like jungle duty. Getting hexed by leftover Zul’Gurub witch doctors and pummeled by ogres, hacking through poisonous plants, getting jumped by raptors, sniped at by pirates and overcharged by goblins – oh yeah, Stranglethorn was some prime real estate. At least the fishing was good.
Sometimes Ren wondered if there was a way to have a fish for a pet. But besides the obvious limitations, she’d probably end up just eating it anyway. Counterproductive to a long-term bond.
Her squad leader signaled for them to be quiet and sneaky. Ren could hear drums and chanting coming from up ahead, and silently cursed the resilience of Zul’Gurub voodoo. Despite their stronghold getting thoroughly raided a month or two back, the stragglers managed to hide out really well. Home advantage, and all. Only things more annoying than witch doctors were druids, Ren thought; but that sentiment tended not to go over well among the western Horde races. Her squad crept up towards the light of the bonfire. Figures danced around it, and though it was daytime this section of the jungle was dense enough for them to cast heavy shadows. Along with the guttural trollish chanting Ren could hear a woman’s voice, and the roar of an angry creature. Peeking through the foliage she saw maybe a dozen trolls hopping around a massive stewpot, which contained a soaking but still conscious undead. Ren knew she was conscious because she kept up a nervous commentary on everything the head savage added to the pot.
“There’s a severe lack of carrots here, dude. Do you have carrots? No, carrots aren’t native here, I know. Have you tried carrots? You need carrots. You should maybe, I don’t know, hold off till you get some, it would really add to – fadeleaf? Ohhhhh no hey, I’m allergic to fadeleaf – or I was – do you speak Common?”
They had several living creatures in cages, some dead ones strung up, but what caught Ren’s eye was the massive black gorilla banging away at the bars of its cage. She’d heard about gorillas – supposedly they were all over Stranglethorn – but they always seemed to disappear the instant you caught sight of one. She’d never seen one up close till now.
It was enormous. How could something so huge have so much energy and dexterity? And when it roared she could see its unexpectedly scary teeth. Weren’t gorillas supposed to be herbivores?
The thing was frenzied, beating dents into the bars, and a couple of the trolls were nervously poking at it with spears, trying to keep it from breaking its bonds. The voodoo priest standing over the soggy undead reached into one of the smaller cages and pulled out an animal that seemed to be all wobbly limbs, no bigger than a large cat, with a lot less fur. It made a pitiful squeak, and the gorilla – if possible – thrashed harder.
“Hey!” the undead objected, “No baby animals! Put that back!”
Then the priest pulled out a long knife and held it up, holding high the baby gorilla by its ankle. The other trolls let out a ferocious cheer. The firelight from below the cauldron gleamed in his eyes as the priest pointed the blade menacingly at the caged gorilla, snarled a dark sentiment, then raised it again to the squirming infant in his other hand.
There was an arrow through the priest’s neck before Ren even realized she’d strung her bow.
“Element of surprise, what?” she grumbled, as the other trolls yelled out in alarm.
“Bleeding huntard,” her squad leader snarled, then shouted, “Attack!”
Ren sniped another troll trying to hex one of their warriors that had leapt into the clearing – but that still made the odds two to one in favor of the trolls. She made a break for the cage on the other side.
“Redglaive! What the hell?” someone yelled.
She dodged a spear and kicked a troll out of the way, unsheathing her sword. She looked up at the snarling beast inside the cage, and still wasn’t sure it was a good idea when she sliced open the lock. The gorilla bounded out with a roar, banging on its chest. It grabbed the nearest troll by the neck and squeezed till its eyes bugged.
Ren grinned. “Mommy’s angry.”
“Hey!” the undead in the pot shrieked. “Little help!” The baby gorilla was clinging to her head where it had landed, squeaking plaintively. Ren leapt on top of the cauldron, feet balanced on opposite rims, and began firing volleys of arrows at the trolls battling her squadmates around the clearing. The gorilla roared as it smashed two trolls’ heads together.
“Things still sound dangerous!” the undead complained, her vision blocked by miniature gorilla.
“No need to thank me,” Ren snapped, dropping a troll with an arrow to the eye, but as she tried to twist around, her foot slipped and she landed in the pot, her head banging against the rim.
“Thanks,” she heard the undead say sarcastically, as she blacked out.
---
She was slapped awake by her squad leader sometime later.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not how you treat a concussion,” the undead said.
“No, that’s how you treat suicidal idiots,” the orc snapped. “Huntard, I ought to kill you myself.”
“Is he ok?” Ren said thickly, still pulling her brain together.
“The undead is a woman,” he said dryly.
“That’s not what I meant…”
“You mean that thing on your arm? It’s fine. What the hell were you thinking?”
Ren realized something heavy was weighing down her left side and looked at the ungainly baby gorilla wrapped around her skinny arm. His eyes looked way too huge for his bald, wrinkled face. He hardly resembled a gorilla at all.
She blinked at him. “My hand is numb.” He just blinked back.
Ren stood up with a shock, and then wished she hadn’t, because she was now fighting dizziness and nausea.
“Where’s his mom?” she asked, bracing herself against a tree.
“The big one chased off the last couple of them. I’m not sure you heard me. What the hell were you thinking, letting loose a berserk ape?”
“I gotta find her,” Ren mumbled, snatching up her bow, and running off into the disturbed underbrush. The baby gorilla swung behind her, clinging to her shoulders like a backpack.
“I’ll see you discharged for this!” the squad leader yelled after her.
---
Ren stumbled through the jungle, trying to keep an eye out for snapped branches or squashed plants that might lead her to the mother. Unfortunately her vision wasn’t clearing as quickly as she’d hoped.
What was she thinking? Jeopardizing her entire military career for the sake of…sake of what? Something that wasn’t even sentient? Sylvanas would never do something this stupid. Tactically it was a horrible mess. It looked like no one had been killed or seriously injured – barring concussion – but that didn’t negate the fact that she had put her entire squad at risk to save the life of a…
She plucked the gorilla off her back and held him out with both hands, really looking at him.
A really, really ugly baby.
He squeaked at her.
Ren rolled her eyes. “Yeah, ok, find your mommy, yes.” She put him back over her shoulder and started moving again, when the undead ran up behind her, toting one of the trolls’ small wicker cages as she hopped over the underbrush.
“Hey!” she said. “Remember me? I probably look different, you know, away from the soup at all.”
“…Yeah.” Ren raised an eyebrow.
The undead blinked. “Dude. Eyebrows. I never get used to that.”
“I feel the same way about exposed jawbones,” Ren said, and kept walking. The undead followed, undeterred.
“Right. Yeah I just wanted to help you find Mommy Rage and you know, try to make sure she doesn’t kill you.” She fiddled with the lock on the wicker cage as she talked. “Kind of a hexus-interruptus-thank-you thing. Besides, I figure you find this place about as retarded as I do. I know like, the orcs and trolls and stuff feel right at home, but two northern nomads like ourselves – ”
“Not the orcs,” Ren interrupted. “Just trolls. Orcs aren’t jungle guys.”
“Right. The smell’s a dead giveaway.” She made a snorting kind of laugh. “That’s a joke. Can’t smell a thing. Cabelin, by the way. You have a name other than huntard? ‘Cuz that’s all captain dude called you while you were out.”
“Renegdhén Redglaive.”
“…any more options?”
“Ren.”
“Nice you meet you Ren. Hey, aren’t gorillas supposed to be, you know, all about fruit and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what’s with the teeth?”
Ren smiled involuntarily. “I’m hoping it’s just troll repellant. Speaking of – ” Ren looked down at the corpse at her feet. “This guy’s missing an arm.”
“Go mommy?” Cabelin laughed nervously. “Stupid lock…ah here we go.” She popped open the door of the cage and lifted out a large wood frog. “Ren, George. George, Ren.” And Ren could have sworn she saw the frog nod at her. Cabelin set the frog into a protective hollow in her huge iron pauldrons and pointed ahead of them. “Check it out, cave. That looks kinda…homey?”
The baby gorilla squeaked and dove off Ren’s back, awkwardly wobbling its way into the cave.
“Aww, look, it’s home. Let’s go.” Cabelin spun around, but Ren grabbed her bony arm.
Cabelin let out a rattling sigh. “Or we can make sure junior’s all tucked in.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
They stepped cautiously into the cave, Cabelin insisting she go first “on account of the shield thing.” They heard squeaking as the passage wound around.
Ren couldn’t explain it. She just knew it in her chest. Felt it like a poisoned arrow.
“Hey wait!” Cabelin said, seeing the look on her face.
Ren raced to the back of the cave and stared down at the motionless heap of black fur and the ugly little baby that clung to it, and swallowed. “Shit,” she breathed.
The baby pulled at the fur on his mother’s face, squeaking pitifully.
Cabelin caught up and looked somberly at the scene. “Too many wounds,” she said softly.
“Shit!” Ren yelled, and it echoed around the cave as she sat down and covered her face with her hands. Maybe if she'd been faster. Maybe if she hadn't been a clumsy idiot and gotten herself knocked out -
Little fingers pulled her hands back from her face. The baby had crawled into her lap and now he wrapped his skinny arms around her neck.
I’m sorry too, little guy, Ren thought, hugging him back. There was the weirdest feeling, kind of warm and seeping through her nervous system. Everything was sharper…
He didn’t belong here. He was all arms and legs and completely uncoordinated. He didn’t look or behave like what he was. His protector was gone. And she was aware of the correlation.
Cabelin shook her head, a bittersweet smile on her rotted face. “I think you’ve inherited a very clingy orphan.”
“Oh crap,” Ren said lightly, patting the gorilla on the back and standing up.
“And he is uuuuuuugly,” Cabelin laughed as they made their way out of the cave. “He looks like this kid I knew in Lordaeron, puny, annoying kid; why his parents gave him a big buff name like Brock, I’ll never know. Ever notice how the wimpy ones get the badass names?”
“Maybe they hope they’ll grow into it,” Ren smirked. “Like gorillas do.”
“Could be. Oh hey, I wouldn’t worry too much about you know, that whole ‘discharging’ thing. I’m pretty sure I can swing some clout with the big brass if I mention that you, well, saved my life.”
Ren raised her eyebrows. “What, are you like royalty or something?”
“Eyebrows…uh yeah. I mean, no, not royalty. Just vaguely heroic. Cabelin Rhys.”
Ren blinked at her.
“Kids these days…well I’m sure you’ve at least heard of George Ambeth.”
Ren scoffed. “Uh, yes, of course I have.”
Cabelin pulled the frog out from under her pauldrons. “George Ambeth.”
Ren laughed so hard the baby gorilla was startled. “I like you,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Oh man, you are hilarious.”
Cabelin, however, looked even more serious than when she was in the stewpot. “Why do you think I’m wandering around this Forsaken-forsaken jungle? Trying to get my head shrunk? I’m here to find a cure for George’s…amphibian affliction.”
Ren snorted. “This,” she pointed at the frog, “is George Ambeth.”
The frog nodded.
Ren jumped back. “That’s a neat trick,” she said, eyes huge.
The frog rolled his eyes.
“George doesn’t appreciate your complete lack of faith,” Cabelin said, and the frog nodded again. “Hey, ever been to the Undercity?”
“Just the zeppelin outside,” Ren said, feeling like a complete loser.
Cabelin looked at her curiously. “You are a weird elf. You’re sorry you haven’t seen the toxic sewers of the undead capitol? Man. Ok well, this jungle is tapped out. That was my last lead. Interested in popping home with me? The world of private adventuring is an expanding field of opportunity, you know. Plus people are more likely to talk to an elf than a dead chick.”
“You want me to go to the Undercity with you.”
“Yeah, unless you feel like explaining to your squad buddies that you’ll be toting Brock-o around on patrol. Personally, I don’t see that going over well.”
“His name is not Brock,” Ren said sourly. Stupid human name.
“Whatever,” Cabelin waved a hand dismissively. “What say you?”
Ren's shoulders drooped. “Anything to get out of this freaking jungle.”
