Tig remembers her oldest brother pinching her nose closed, forcing her to choke down Mannoroth’s bitter blood. The iron grip her older sister’s meaty hand had on the back of her neck, keeping her from squirming away from the clan’s duty as Blackhand’s words rang through their camp telling all to drink deep.
Tig remembers the fever that took hold of her, the way it lit her bones on fire. Hotter and brighter than any of her twelve summers under Draenor’s sun.
Tig remembers rampaging through the Dark Portal with the rest of the children old enough to carry clan-forged weapons but too small to stand with the vanguard. She remembers the heft of the axe handles they had tied to her hands with wires. The way they bit into her skin and made her bleed.
Tig remembers the skirmishes, the battles, the First War. She watched Stormwind’s gates crushed by orcish hands. She saw her kin rip and gnash and crush every human on their march to see their king.
Tig remembers biding time in the raiding camps, learning to hammer and smelt. Crafting her own axes. The hiss of hot steel in oil. Growing old enough to join a raiding party. The crunch of armor against her axes that echoed for years until the orcish horde’s defeat during the Second War that silenced them all.
Tig remembers the internment camps. The dark rooms full of the sick. The mud. The shit. The flies. The slack faces. The bears that snuffled and lumbered outside the rough timber walls, fat on the orcish corpses that the human guards flung outside of camp. The way the bears whined in the dead of night, the bloodlust rotting away their insides just like it had done to the orcs themselves.
Tig remembers when the gates flew open, when the one called Thrall called to the Blackrock and she did not answer. They dutifully shambled along behind him. She would not.
Tig remembers walking. One foot in front of the other. Each footfall landing because she wanted it to. Gul’dan wasn’t pointing a crooked finger at dormant Dark Portal, Doomhammer wasn’t barking orders, Blackmoore’s guards weren’t planting their boots on her back. She walked where she willed. East. Towards the rising sun.
Tig remembers the ships. Great galleons with red and black sails anchored in the deep water of the bay. The smell of saltwater and seaweed. The clinking of bottles in the wooden crates and the crews loading boats. The foreman calling to her, asking if she wanted to earn any copper or a hammock on board for a day’s work.
Tig remembers the salt air, the rough wooden deck under her feet, the ropes in her hands. The places she saw, the beasts she fought, the treasure she plundered. Quitting when her pockets bulged with coin, and charming a way back on deck when her pockets emptied. Watching whales and porpoises ride the galleon’s waves into port, feeling as free as they.
Tig remembers plucking the admiral’s hat off of her warm corpse, to the cheers of her new crew. A duel won as fair as any. Taking her new fleet wherever she willed. Wherever the plundering was best, the gold plentiful, the alcohol strong, and the women smiled the brightest.
Although her drive to plunder and pillage has given way to above-board adventures on behalf of warchiefs, queens, inventors, and apothecaries, because she remembers all of this, Tig knows she will never live under someone else’s command ever again. Her life is hers to direct and shape, and no one else will ever have a hand in it. If the pay and the prestige is enough, any job she signs on to will be done - but it’s always hers to choose.
If The Gilded Blade doesnt end with all my favorite characters happy, my crashout that will in fact ensue will be worthy of the classification of a category 5 hurricane
bruh not me waking up in the middle of the night last night with a VISION of a ring i remember i had at like six years old...it was a freaking infinity ring. THE infinity ring. and i got rid of it. i fear i will be haunted by this in the middle of the night for years to come
