I hate heat.

  That was my first realization after a few days in the windy, hot, and dry enviro of the Stoalon Mountains. It was an admittedly evident point, given several of my characteristics: a body unfit for thermal dispersion, yered with thick fat and muscle covered in a dense coat of insuting fur. It didn't o be an impossibly hot desert to leave me panting like a dog halfway to the afterlife.

  Bears oh–besides, I think one or two species–weren't known to appreciate high temperatures, and it didn't differ here. Furbolgs were no exception, more so since we could fortably live in climates not unfit for por bears, whom we were roughly the same weight and size. Regardless, we were a mix of Kodiak and por bears—hardly the type you would find in hot deserts.

  We weren't built for anything at least a minimum above tempered, whether hot, arid, or tropical. These mountaines weren't fully desertic; there lenty of vegetation and several rge perma bodies of water, but it was still sweltering.

  At certain times, even Ashenvale was unfortably hot for us! Well, until we molt, but it still sucked.

  It was why none of us were permaly settled here and lower down South Kalimdor. Why would furbolgs try to live in tropical forests, suffog ss, and different fvors of dry and hot areas posed of deserts, savannas, and mountainions? And Mulgore wasn't much better, cooler as it may be. It was a nd of green prairies, nothing of immediate worth to our species beyond the curiosity of it being the tauren's sacred nd.

  It was why I hated the heat so damn much.

  I was never a fan of it when I was a human being. My dislike was even stronger now, and I hought the ability to sweat was something I would ever miss.

  However, there were two saving grace. Depending oime and pce, like night and high altitude, it could get quite cold, so fortable for me, and my bloodwing bat form supported this pce's climate better.

  A use for shapeshifting and trol of one's body I never seriously sidered until then, and another reason why I must strive to tio uand and master them.

  This point aside, it was why I was walking in the middle of the night. The air was dry and windy, but at least it didn't feel like my ans were simultaneously boiling and shriveling. Not that it would kill me at that level; any damage would be nullified easily at the cost of a bit of mana, but despite many of my tendencies hinting to the trary, I didn't love to suffer.

  More so when it was a headache from heat stroke and unwellness in general, like extreme thirst, my magic stopped most of its debilitating effey health as long as I didn't push it beyond reason–I was still a living breathing being, cheating by magic or not–but that doesn't mean the sensation aal aspect of thirst and the like disappeared.

  Elixirs could help, too, but I preferred to use them purposefully.

  "Hm?" I hummed, croug down near patches of struggling bushes, my target growing from their bases in a mix of orchids, Indian pipes, and rafflesias, strictly appearance-wise. It didn't smell like corpses. Their tactic was essentially the same as the tter: parasitism, and I wahem.

  I unslung the backpack of living woods from my shoulder and took my old elven-made leather padded notebook from within, roots parting away at my and. I fiddled with the yellowish page by delicate cw flitil I stopped at a sketch of the pnt I was seeing with scribbling below.

  I was lucky I was marginally better at drawing than writing. Otherwise, I would be here for loranscribing my dirty writing of random shortcuts, arrows, highlights, underlines, abbreviations, and glued papers or thin pieces of barks for added spa an oddly orderly symmetry, not even I got the secret.

  Sometimes, things didn't ge, and the odern appliances didn't help. Feather pens were a bitd a half. My words were barely readable to me. But it had advantages.

  I wrote in Ursine, Darnasian, and my slowly rusting Frend English grammatically and speaking-wise. Even if my notes were somehow trahey wouldn't be uood easily, more so since I wrote like that all at the same time, depending on what was shorter.

  There were several important pieces of information, from what I recall of the lore to theories, pns, and research—the curse of not haviic memories.

  But most of the first three were absolute nonsense. I wrote everything I recalled of the pile of bullshit res and tras that was Warcraft lore. I did that multiple times, each iteration differing by little or a lot.

  "Scarlet trumpets, ah, finally found them," I smiled. My left paw glowed green with flickers of red as I stimuted both pnts while my right, with precisioraying its bulk, pyed the pollinator.

  A few mier, I ag everything up, new scratches from corrected data in my o two small beled crystal fsks filled with seeds and the other spores from the two spes of this one-sided case of symbiosis in the fort of a leather pouch.

  Colleg was one of the reasons I was here, even if it wasn't a focus. Mapping where and how they grow aing samples anisms, rare or absent from Ashenvale, was necessary. They were sometimes used as reagents and tools, even oral in bonus.

  It might seem miseous, and in a way, it was. Not everything I plucked had a clear purpose or potential, which didn't justify ign them. And it was rexing and satisfying, like pleting the Pokedex thing, and you never know, you might hit gold.

  tent with what I did, I took off, my arms being wings eg to my legs through the membranous skin as my body transformed. Then I swooped back down, grabbing the weirdly shaped leafless bran my jaws, and flew away.

  The idea to make a backpack out of living pnts I got from an old book–a few millennia of age–ure genius, well, for me. The inal idea for kaldorei had problems, notably i and the requirement of being a druid among less intelligent points; many saw it as a perversion, disrespect, and cruelty toward nature.

  But I mean… who cares? As long as you don't force things and avoid creating a subspecies that propagate and out-pete the flora–easily avoidable by fav traits against that–theive breeding for extreme results was fine.

  Despite the existence of spirits, sapient flora, and fauna, the bulks of the wild didn't give a flying fuless you messed up badly. It was why I supposed Wild Gods were ral for the most part; the well-being of their territory was their priority. Virtues held little survival value, even for furbolgs, really.

  You just have to keep things in the rules and on a trolble scale; one's morals and individual sensibilities py no necessary role. The anthropomorphization of flora and fauna was a bao eradicate; every being ied with the world in its unique ways.

  And frankly, as long as the aral spirits weren't unanimously against my a or unrespoo discussions, it was dandy.

  I uood the night elves' stan artificial sele, sidering what some of their hubris had resulted in–even after the Sundering–but it remained silly and hypocritical.

  They used nature a it to fit their view, not that it was wrong. Their houses were literally upsized bonsais made specifically for this purpose, but their funny, illogical rules didn't bother me. So... whatever floated their boats.

  Ta aside... my backpack, other than the process of finding the pnt aively breeding a variety I wanted. Right now, it rototype at best, ohat could be a makeshift armor if the need arose. Back at the home base, Groot worked on ging that while I was away. Trusty bugger that he was, my little grumpy assistant.

  This philosophy of selective breeding was, in essence, simir to my is in shapeshifting and healing: adaptability aility were what I sought. In fact, they were very simir.

  They were keys. Arguably the best aspects of Life. It's not the stro of species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but one most respoo ge, or so said the quote.

  I didn't look for destructive power.

  My goal since my rebirth never ged. It was to survive, to enjoy this new lease on life. Death was… it was something I didn't want to experience again. Remnants of it still haunt me, no matter how rare they are.

  And those were my thoughts as I flew until the sun started rising. I stopped a few times to expand my pnt pendium and che the map where I was. An utter pain in the ass to do, even with a pass equivalent and the help of the local spirits of the wilds. Let's say I often lost my dire.

  Eventually, I worked it out, and after a quick hunt on a young thunder lizard, I stopped not too far from my destination, the distinknown smell in the wind a clear indicator. But I was sleepy and unfit for what I had in mind.

  I didn't decide to go deep into these arid mountains at this time of the year fhtseeing, testing, and botany, even if I did a lot of the three. I had a purpose.

  I found a ing spot in the form of a fir tree big enough to support me.

  I attached my backpaear its top mid-flight and nded one of its rgest branches, still as a bat. My mana pulsed, and the needles and branches around slowly moved to cover me. It was slower and ed more mana than in my true form; as such, it was essentially unusable in fights, but it was very veo have in cases like now.

  Then I let myself fall head down, my toes and legs log themselves, and the exhaustion caught on immediately, my eyes on the incredibly vast size of Stoalon Peak above any other mountains far away in the distance as my mind drifted off to sleep.

  ?????

  The te m turning to early midday sunlight bathed the expansive range of the Stoalon Mountains, warding away the st shred of the cold of the night as the predators of the night slipped away from their harsh light.

  Today, Ahe sun–that had yet to reach its apogee promised to be blistering, but a pair of horned, hoofed bipedal creatures, taurens, ighis unworded warning. The first had short, light brown fur, was taller and far bulkier, and was a male. The sed was female by her lithe frame of dark grey fur painted with bright blood-red markings.

  Following closely behind them and held by a leash fuidance more than disobedie would do little in case of the rampage–ale green scaled lizard-like beast of burden: a kodo and a vital aspect of any tauren's life.

  In front of them was an immense fir tree, one of the region's rgest and most a. It stood out beyond its size by its odd shape, but the two taurens didn't pay much attention. The winds were strong, and they sculpted the trees here to their ever-ging whims.

  "Helka, your aunt is a great shaman, yes? Do you know why the elders suddenly told us to cut the old tree here instead of the one pnned? Earth Mother fives me, but I don't uand why we go for the riskier and harder options and why us two." Orthus, the male and far bulkier of the two tauren, asked with a heavy frown, attag the leash of the kodo solidly to a rock.

  "Hmpf, yes she is, remember that well," Helka uttered curtly and as unhelpfully as physically possible, barely paying attention to him as she went to check around for danger. Her dislike wasn't to him as an individual that she couldn't care less.

  No, it was deeper; he was an unimpressive member of a band of cowardly weaklings whose only survival methods were hiding, running, and begging. It was a stain on their noble and mighty race's honor. It was maddening and sacrilegious. There were numerous reasons why her tribe was successful, and none of them were represented in that meek and feeble bull.

  There were a few seds of silence, ending with a snort from Orthus.

  That had been pointless; it was a moot endeavor he learned on the walk here, but at this point, he uood there was no point in trying anymore. Sighing, he carefully picked the a ceremonial axe csped on the kodo saddle to cut the tree, but as he turned around, his eyes widened.

  The of the fir unfolded, blooming like a flower, and from it, a massive shadow swooped down just paces away from his fellow tauren.

  Broad, tall, and muscur with fur as dark as coal, whose utern was repeatedly broken by a shade of light brown in the chest and head and by bright greenish and reddish white glyphs.

  Its paws ended in long, sharp, bde-like cws with a metallic shine, and its golden eyes were sleepy yet distinctly aware and predatory. It could and would inflict harm and revel in it. Yet it wasn't a mindless beast. It, no, he from the smell.

  He was intelligent, with a loincloth of skilled craftsmanship, a gilded leather pouumerous pieces of jewelry of woods, bones, aher clothes ly worn, proving this wasn't a beast to rea an uncivilized manner.

  Or that was what Orthus thought as the bear-man yawned, revealing sharp teeth of a sheen irely dissimir to the cws. But Helka, the closest to the strange walking bear, had reached a dramatically opposite clusion aed in a way fitting a threatened or slighted Grimtotem. Violence was her response, causing his eyes to widen in horror.

  With a bellowing warcry, she fearlessly charged, her totem mace held high above her shoulder for a mighty ruthless sm upon the defenseless head of the unprepared bear.

  "Nooo!" He rushed his mind with the singur goal of stopping the ining bloodbath. No matter who was the winner, violence was entirely unwarranted and unnecessary in this text.

  However, he stopped dead on his traot of his own volition, as roots busted from the dry soil, f a dense wall in front of his shell-shocked eyes. But his gaze shifted right back to the fight. If what he was witnessing could even be called that.

  The mace that would have fractured the bear creature's skull was held with barely any visible strain into his meaty paw as flickers of verdant green dissipated from the other. It was like a father stopping the hit of his young calf.

  Then, in one swift, practiced movement, this very same paw was smmed into the space between the ribcage and belly of Helka, her liver. And that sighe brutal and anticlimactid of this battle.

  She fell to the ground, all strength leaving her body as she let go of her ons and curled up. Soon after, her mi into unsciousness, her hands over the faping puncture wounds of her stomach. The distinct coppery smell of blood began to permeate the air.

  The bear-man smirked in satisfa and spat on his downed adversary as she was unworthy of any sideratiotered something short, a mix of grunt and click of tohat, unknown to Orthus, meant the equivalent of 'worthless suicidal bitch'. What followed deeply fused the already shell-shocked tauren while debating whether to flee ht.

  First, the bear carelessly flicked the blood away from his paw and lifted a finger whose green glow was impossible not to notice. Orthus' heart hammered at the sight, but it was for nothing as the living wall went bato the ground, giving him ways to get closer or walk away, whichever he wanted. Not that roots would have stopped him, but they would have impeded his movement, which could have spelled his doom.

  Sed, he spoke. This time, Orthus uood despite how guttural, broken, and ated the Taur-ahe was.

  "Me pead talk. Wait." After that, the bear-man closed his eyes for ten seds, ten very long and tense seds where the young tauren remained frozen. He knew how to fight, but he wasn't a brave–a warrior–he knew how to hunt and the basics of fighting, but it wasn't his path in life.

  Against peared to be a strange shaman with the strength seemingly eclipsing nearly all warriors he ever saw from how zily the hit from one of the most skilled Grimtotem brave–elite warriors trained from calfhood to kill and avoid restraint while doing so–was stopped. Female or not, it should have had an impact, yet it didn't appear so. And that was terrifying.

  "Do you uahe bear-man spoke again. This time, his voice was closer to the echoes of multiple others. Orthus blinked and dumbly he bear smiled and yawned again, amply stretg all the while.

  "Good, I'm Ohto, a furbolg, and I have flown from Asheo meet your people," The newly named Ohto said, simply finishing his st stretch with a groan of satisfa and low mutters about bat sleeping position and spinal cord.

  "Oh, and don't worry about… her." He poi the unscious Helka before the male tauren could ask what was going on, "I will heal her in a bit; she won't bleed out. Now, what's your name?"

  The_Bip_Boop2003

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  [colpse]