Chapter 60 Fishers and Fish

Early the next morning, Jace and Grider left the house early to head for the mountains.

Jace remembered the road that led straight up into the mountains, where after twenty years or so the Blackstone Orcs had gradually taken over the area, ambushing and squatting on the side of the road to watch for passing pedestrians, only now it was still manned by the militia of the town of Lakeside.

Farther and farther away from the town of Lakeside, and deeper and deeper among the dense forests of the hillside.

No matter where they looked from, though, looking farther and lower they could see the surface of Lake Stopper in the distance, as well as the stone fortress at the end of their vision, so they wouldn’t get lost as quickly as they had in the Elwyn Woods, so the two didn’t have any particularly strong feelings of nervousness.

“Give me the potion first.” Grid reached over and said, “If it hits suddenly, it’ll be too late to distribute the potion.”

Jace handed him the medicine, and Grider took the bottle and shook it back and forth, saying, “This medicine you boiled …… feels like an average level.”

“That’s awesome, Master Alchemist.” Jace grabbed the bottle and said, “Then you drink your own medicine.”

Grider took the bottle away in a flash and smiled, “Why are you still angry.”

Just as the two were bickering, the sound of muffled thunder came over the mountain.

“It’s going to rain.” Grider said, “I’ll tell you what, those people in town are still trustworthy, let’s head for the lake as soon as we can.”

Jace said as he followed him, “Do you remember what those fishing guys said yesterday, the fishers and all.”

Grid said, “We’ll just stay away from the fishermen’s dwellings. Those little straw houses they built on the shore can be seen from a few hundred meters away.”

The two ran to the shore about to come out of the woods when Jace called out to Grider and said, “Let’s not go any farther into the shore or there won’t be any cover at all, and wouldn’t that be close enough to be spotted by the orcs?”

Greed grabbed onto a tree trunk to keep from sliding further down the hill, where the hill was already steep and didn’t ease off until it reached the lake shore.

“Right.” He gave a thumbs-up upwards towards Jace, who wasn’t far away, and said, “We’ll have to be a little more careful from here on out.”

The two waited by the woods for a while, when the rain began to fall sporadically.

Jace walks over to Grid, holding on to one tree at a time, and after standing still, says, “Those militia, are they sure this orc is going to come out every time it rains?”

“I didn’t say for sure.” Grider said, “It’s just that every time I’ve seen him, it’s been when it’s raining. It’s a little ways off here, and those militiamen are guessing that he lives in that depression behind that big rock over there, and when it rains, he runs down to the shore of the lake to catch a fish to fill his belly, and we’ll go further on.”

The two walked a little farther, stopping at a gently wooded area, and Grid looked toward the lake, not noticing anything out of the ordinary.

The rain had come down so hard that Jace was nearly soaked through, and he was sitting on a rock looking out over the lake when a sudden flash of electricity illuminated the view and slowly darkened it again.

He seemed to remember something, something about how that orc caught fish.

“Have you ever heard of people like shaman priests?” He asked to Grid, who was leaning against a tree.

“More than heard of them, I know one.” Grid shoved a fruit yanked from a bush into his mouth and said, “Humans call him a shaman, but we call them sages. They are dwarves who can communicate with the earth and the sky, and in ancient times were the leaders and counselors of the Barbarian Hammer clans. They would bless our war hammers with the power of the storm, giving the hammers lightning and easily blowing up the wings of those bloodsucking bats. However, many say that before I was born, the Magi were not as powerful as they were during the time of my ancestors. So according to them, even though they were that powerful, they got weaker afterward instead.”

“Probably something to do with trolls.” Jace said.

Grid spits the fruit down low and says, “The Sage said something similar, that the trolls’ rituals affect their connection to the elements, their ancestors, and even the gods, but I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Jace said, “I guess so, in the past in Kazmodan elementals were familiar with dwarves, but Cintron was the land of trolls thousands of years ago, and the elemental spirits there have lived with the trolls for who knows how long, and they probably made contact with the troll witch doctors tens of thousands of years ago. In other words, the elementals there don’t trust foreign dwarves.”

Grider asked, “How do you know all this?”

“The library.” Jace says, “That’s not important, what is important is the possibility that the orc is a shaman priest?”

“What?” Grid asked with an incredulous look on his face, “That orc is a sage from a tribe? But according to you, isn’t it true that an outsider wouldn’t have the trust of the local elementals? Even if …… even if he knew the elementals there in Draenor, wouldn’t he still be an outsider when he got here? Won’t he be ostracized?”

“The humans here gave up elemental beliefs I don’t know how many years ago.” Jace said, “Nowadays, mages only use arcana to drive the elementals to their use, and if you ask me, the elementals are probably still hostile to humans, they’re even willing to work with the jackals! At this point it wouldn’t be surprising that the elementals would work with them if shaman priests who are already good at communicating with the elements, or at least the kind who know more about the elements than the jackals, came along.”

But having said that, Jace also found it a bit strange that the orc tribes that attacked Azeroth had all drunk demonic blood, they had abandoned the way of the elements, and it was reasonable to say that those who were tainted with demonic power would be shunned by the elementals as much as possible, even if they were once shaman priests.

Is he overthinking it?

Grid asks, “So yes, the native elementals have gone rogue? No, no, no, wait, what makes you think that orc is some kind of shaman priest all of a sudden?”

Jace explains, “You said that those men from the local militia told you that the orc recited a spell on the shore for a while during a rainy day, and the dead fish in the lake floated up on their own. Have you ever considered who could have done that, either a mage or a warlock? What magic could do that?”

“Let me think ……,” Grider made a pensive gesture.

Jace instantly interrupted him and said, “I told you straight out, there’s no …… way to do it, only electricity, only electrofishing!”

“Electric fish?”

“Yes, doesn’t that shaman summon storms on rainy days and direct the lightning into the lake, and don’t all the fish in the immediate vicinity get electrocuted and stunned and float up? That’s not a difficult task at all for a qualified shaman-priest, as long as the elementals are willing to help him!”

The Dwarf didn’t know what to say now, as he looked over to the lake, which had become incredibly gray in the rain, and the stone fortress in the distance and the town of Lakeside on the other side of the lake were no longer visible.

“What’s going to be done about him?”

“And deal with what.” Jace said, “I don t think we can deal with an orc shaman priest, not to mention his ability to manipulate the wind and thunder, shaman priests in the tribe are a high position of power, the orcs worship strength, even in close combat …… are you confident that you can defeat him? I don’t want to take this risk.”

“That …… that’s a long shot first, why didn’t you say so?!” Grid lifted up his own package and sword, turned around, and headed back.

“And it’s my fault?” Jace grumbled.

“Ahem.”

“Come on!”

When Jace turned around, however, he saw that high up in the forest, standing in a blur, a tall dark figure was looking this way.