Don't Poke The Bear! (Warcraft/FurbolgSI)

"Honored Shaman… is it enough? Please take more if you wish! It would be the greatest of honor!" Placing a barrel down, I looked at the plump middle-aged female furbolg–she was one of our beekeepers–in front of me.

She was a bit of a nervous wreck. Was I that intimidating? I suppose so, but it wasn't the fear of a prey she was showing. It resulted from my actions and who I was. She didn't want to disappoint me. Silly, but it was what it was. And there were the usual pheromones I could care less.

For furbolg, there wasn't any higher than me regarding social standing besides the Bear Lords themselves. I was already at the top as a shaman and ursa totemic. It reached its apex when Ursol AND Ursoc acknowledged me.

The first took me under his wing soon after, and the second blessed me. It didn't happen since the War of the Ancients. And on a different note, it gave me a valid excuse for many of my actions and protection. The last was particularly useful regarding what I was doing in parallel to one of the roots of a certain tree.

It was impossible to ignore for anyone with a minimum education, and it was exacerbated for furbolgs.

To top it off, I could revive the recently dead and heal nearly everything in the realm of injuries that may happen in our environment, given it wasn't brain-related.

…yeah, they treated me as some kind of bear messiah. Not that it was an inaccurate observation, despite how awkward and arrogant it sounded to me. I desired to live, and so would they. It was pretty much in the definition.

I can't say I was a fan of how it did do some act toward me, though–it felt unnecessarily formal and submissive for people that knew me when I couldn't take a shit without help–but it gave power to my words.

Respect was better than any brawn, physical or magical, I might want.

I didn't lead anything, though. Chieftain Murgut was still the chieftain, and I wouldn't challenge him. Why would I? He did an outstanding job! The same was true for the Elder Shaman, Oakpaw, and the other shamans. My words weren't laws; they just were to be heard and considered.

And it wasn't limited to our tribe.

"Wouldn't want to damage the beehives any further now, do I? But thank you, Melia, for your assistance. I appreciate it. I can't say I'm an expert in cleaning honeycombs like you. See ya." I said. She brightened up and waved me goodbye, which probably made her day. Then I looked up at the two little shits way up in a tree on a stealing mission, "Hukar, Karhu, come down! Now!"

And they did, fast, clawing their way down the tree with Hukar, a piece of honeycomb with juicy larvas and honey in her jaw, and Karhu licking his chops and claws. I was thoroughly unimpressed, and they were thoroughly pleased with themselves.

"Next time, I will make you do this without the bees dreaming." I barked a laugh at their horrified faces as I picked up the three big barrels of beeswax on one shoulder. We were speaking of bees the size of a male night elf's palm, big girls.

"Brother! You-you wouldn't dare! Ma would be very unhappy if we're hurt!" Karhu, the cleverest of the twins, countered, and Hukar, with a mouth full of larvae inside and honey, nodded rapidly with wide eyes. It was a good argument. My mother, good ol' Ma, was someone I wouldn't want to piss off.

She couldn't do anything physically wise anymore, and I was emancipated, but she was family, and she had ways to fiddle with me, however… there was a critical flaw in his arguments.

"What do you mean 'hurt'?" I said, raising an eyebrow as I demonstrated my words through action. I used one of my new saber-like teeth, my first pair of upper canines that Ursoc's blessing resulted in–one big reason my second meeting couldn't be hidden–and I cut open my index finger paw pad with it.

Then I healed it before his eyes, realization flashing through them.

"Fuck!" He cursed, ears flattening behind his head while his sister gasped and hastily clasped his muzzle right after his bad word. I snorted at their antics. It was as if they insulted the ancestors, Ursol and Ursoc, all at once.

"I won't tell Ma, I promised." I teased, and Karhu glared as much as one like him could. Adorable. That, for a six-year-old, he wasn't exactly the biggest, but that didn't help his cause.

"Yeah, it's because you made us learn it! Hmph! What do you say to that, big brother?" He shot back, running before me with an accusatory claw and a winning smirk showing his many teeth.

"Yeah!" Hakur joined to support him. Alas, she was more of an emotional support bear than anything. I doubted she was really following the conversation. There wasn't much contemplation of the universe behind her big, adorable, bright eyes.

"True, true." I acquiesced with two small nods, enjoying their look of victory, and enjoyed it even more as I crushed it to smithereens, "But that won't be me to miss on honeyed salmon and a plethora of treats, does it? I can make them myself, and if you play nice, I can share. Now, enough of me bullying you. Have you ever made candles?"

And that's what we did.

It was a fun and straightforward activity of siblings bonding, but the matter was more serious even if it didn't look like it from the present of me walking in a cave, a bulging backpack slung on my shoulders.

To my right was my guide, Kano, a grizzled shaman from the Barkskin tribe, a medium-sized furbolg tribe dwelling North of Greenpaw Village in the upper level of the Barrow Deeps under Mount Hyjal. We usually traded honey, various flowers, and leather for scales of multiple animals endemic to here, spider fangs, mushrooms, and the like.

Well, it was, in truth, furbolg tunnels isolated yet juxtaposed with this very same Barrow Deeps; both worked as a description of where we were. As to what the Barrow Deeps was. It was an endless series of caverns–natural or not–stretching for roughly thousands of kilometers from my estimation by translating it into my poor man version of the metric system.

Fun fact: the deepest parts of it served as the kaldorei oubliette, where they threw their criminals, while the upper tunnels were where the Druid of the Claws napped. It was all extremely well-guarded.

It was itself a fraction of a larger cave network stretching all around Northern Kalimdor, most of it unusable, yes, but it was still fucking huge.

And since I didn't want to wander for hours–getting lost with my nose even with my bad sense of direction would be hard–I asked for a guide. Help was freely available, so why not take it?

I immediately knew we were here from the smell and sound of little clawed feet tapping on hard ground echoing in the cave. But my vision was plenty enough. The bright light of the bioluminescent mushrooms showed holes in the walls, ceiling, and ground while tools and pickaxe marks were everywhere, and the stuff lying around, notably candles, lit and unlit, were good indicators of kobold presence.

"We are here Chosen of the Twins to one of the fearful ones' endless burrows." My guide confirmed the obvious, though the unvoiced questions were blatant to me. He didn't know why I wanted to be here, but my answer will come soon.

With a mana pulse, I informed Groot, who was currently merged with my wood backpack, to do his part. He was a recent addition to it, which should have been evident in retrospect, but it wasn't as simple as it sounded. It required specialized traits and enchantments for both the backpack and him.

The treant opened it, and a wooden helmet with a large candle atop it crawled on my head. Probably making me look absolutely ridiculous in the process.

It was your cliché miner helmet but with a plant twist, and it was a tad too small for my head, but the roots held it together.

The Barkskin shaman was left utterly stunned and confused, not that he wasn't until now, but he went with it because I asked him.

"Your bag is wh-and a candle… on your head? Are you disguising yourself as them? Pardon me, esteemed shaman, I… don't understand."

"No, not a disguise, amusing as that sounds. No, it's sometimes different. Kobolds view candles with fanatical reverence. The bigger, the better, and with this big guy…" I tapped the roughly ten-kilo candle on my head, "I can appear friendly, kindred. I intend to befriend them after all. It won't have an instant result, but Ashenvale wasn't grown in a day. That's why I have plenty more, to get them to trust me that I won't nib them like the mouthpieces they are."

Cue me pointing at my backpack, where roots and branches took out candles and blocks of beeswax ready for use inside.

"Ursol's wisdom truly shines upon you." The shaman genuinely praised me, his eyes almost shining, and I internally sighed. I appreciated his encouragement, but it wasn't like my plan to befriend kobolds was any good. But with my body… There weren't many alternatives.

Well, that was merely the first step too. But it was worth a try. I would appreciate their assistance, and I was willing to go to great lengths to get it. I needed diggers by the thousands for a vital project tying to that root some druids got pissed about even with their Wild God agreement.

I was pleasantly surprised it didn't take long for tiny heads with long muzzles, large bucktooth, and rounded ears tentatively begin to poke out of the shadow, the light of candles shining on their features. And it didn't take long for hundreds of them to shily come out, staring at me with fear, apprehension, and curiosity.

Then was the candle on my head and the others I took out and placed before me. There was greed and jealousy, but mostly awe... and pride? They were oddly expressive, and their smells didn't show the opposite, but it was strange.

'Huh, they're kinda cute, bordering on the ugly but cute.' I remarked. They looked derpy with their small, scrawny bodies, oversized heads, and rodent features such as long, hairless tails.

Then, one that was braver than the rest walked forward–scratch that–was pushed forward, but the result was the same.

I extended a candle, a little stick of wax in my paw, and handed it to the kobold who, for her–by smell, I guessed her gender–tentatively grabbed my offering. For her, it was the size of her entire head, and she could barely hold it.

But that wasn't an obstacle. She triumphantly squeaked something in a mix of broken Darnasian and Ursine with a look of utter glee as she brought the beeswax candle above her head as if showing it to the heavens. Then her legs buckled, and she fell face first, and I couldn't contain the chuckle that left me.

This was how the alliance between kobolds and furbolgs began. Candles were the keys.

•••••

Ton Windbow was a proud tauren of the great Grimtotem, one among the most loyal to his mistress–Magatha the Elder Crone–handpicked among his siblings after centaurs murdered his father and mother. He rose to be one of her closest confidants.

He was far from the greatest warrior nor the most successful hunter; many considered him soft outside of jealousy if not for what was after. He had a talent for shamanism, but he was not the strongest either. But those traits, while vital, weren't favored by the Grimtotem matriarch. Particularly the first and second.

The one she favored secondary only to loyalty was intelligence—cunning, cleverness, and the ability to learn, adapt, and improvise. A trait absent in many of the Grimtotem, to Magatha's dismay. Knowing when to and not to do so was better than hitting well.

A task Helka failed and was disowned for, though it hadn't been a surprise. The Elder Crone was wise and, with the spirits, had foreseen much.

This led to Ton's current position, panting and wildly looking around after plunging for the first time into the strange realm known as the Emerald Dream and awakening an aspect of his being fundamentally changed.

"Hn, the Touch of Nature reached you, excellent. I didn't mess up. It's my first time doing it after all." The rumbling, deep bass voice of his teacher echoed—a terrifying teacher in all aspects.

But it was his temperament–his willingness to escalate–that the Elder Crone feared if his wrath was raised. There was little that could horrify a Grimtotem, but the state of the harpies' corpses after his passage tended to give an impression. And they weren't enemies of his, merely toys.

They were all dead, but clearly by how their limbs and various organs were rearranged and fused into twisted chimeras... all under freshly grown idyllic little parcels of life. It gave an impression.

It was brutal. The furbolg was akin to an unstoppable force of nature passing by and showing how insignificant all was before him. What he did to the foolish ones who challenged him showed this much.

Yet fear wasn't what must be acted upon. A mace wasn't dangerous; only where it was aimed would be smashed. Ohto of the Greenweald was an opportunity that needed to be grasped and held on to for as long as they walked upon the Earthmother. And it started with druidism.

The Touch of Nature blessing was not independent of the golden-eyed furbolg. Ton's descendants would bear the potential of this gift that had long disappeared from their race, but Ohto could very well shatter this future.

The power of the living wouldn't be taken, but the chain can be broken.

The monstrous bear-man had been crystal clear on the matter. The method of this blessing was a secret–unknown to the tauren; it was taught by Ursol to Ohto, requiring the highest order of druidic affinity and ability–one to be discovered but not for now.

He was alarmingly aware of many things, and Magatha warned Ton of this much and more. Predictably, she was correct on all accounts.

She quickly discerned this aspect after the first contact and found that this furbolg was not average. And compared to the furbolgs Ton had met since arriving at Greenpaw Village, he could only bow to her perception, not that doubt was ever held at her words. It only reinforced his faith in her.

It was why there was no plot beyond seeding and growing amicable ties with the Greenweald and learning of them: their culture, strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, world, and foes. But notably their allies, the night elves.

It was one of his roles in this diplomatic mission personally given to him by the Elder Crone at the second meeting with Ohto of the Greenweald nearly a year after the first. It was one distinct from any he had in the past, with tauren and rare quilboar tribes open to peaceful interaction.

"How do you feel? Draw on your mana. I can sense it, but I want to see it. It should be easy. You are, well, was a shaman from tauren's view. You can still be one, but there would need significant re-training." Ohto trailed off, and the tauren blinked at the spurge of words.

Ton wasn't shocked by what was said. He knew the risk before going here. He understood the price to pay by following his mistress' will to be the de facto test subject selected to be a druid.

He did as asked. He closed his eyes, putting himself in a meditative position, and looked inward. The change he had been intimately aware of until now became even more so. His mana had changed, but that was seldom the only difference.

"I cannot hear the air's whispers… It is muffled." He let out with a discontent frown appearing on his face. It was his element he was the most attuned to; however, it wasn't a loss. The connection to the elements remained, it was just distant now.

But there was something else, something greater than he. Ton focused on the tree they were in and reopened his eyes, "But… I can sense the tree's roots digging in the Earthmother's rich soil… its branches moving in the winds and its leaves bathing in the pale light of Mu'sha."

Otho waved one of his massive black-furred paws with those long and supremely sharp metal claws, an act for the tauren to continue. The gesture of his teacher all the while sending spikes of instinctual fear in him, but he squashed everything down.

The Grimtotem tauren flinched regardless as he did as demanded.

The next moment, he stared at the green light appearing from his palm in fascination, as was Ohto, sharp eyes beyond his age critically scrutinizing the dull emerald energy. It reminded him of his Lady, the sharpness and focus to understand.

There was no doubt, even not being of the great tauren, why Magatha would grant him the honor to stand equal to her.

"Interesting… I suppose differences in species would lead to that… not impure but less clear? To explore later." The bear-man mumbled before refocusing on his student.

"You may rest. I will call you as usual, oh and Ton, congratulations. You are the first 'druid' tauren in millennia to walk on Kalimdor." Ohto said as if it was something noteworthy but minor in importance. Then he walked away, leaving behind the first tauren able to wield Nature magic in twenty generations lost in his thought.

*

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