Reinforcements arrived the next morning, and Ranith realized that their team had just been a scouting element… A full dozen teams, with support, had followed them from Exodar. This was a force large enough to hold an assault, proof that Velen had not given them up to a suicide mission.
"Fine. You're right." Alexei chuckled, after his eyes had measured the newcomers. He raised a hand in greeting, trotting up to the leader. The draenei reinforcements were not the only ones to arrive… Alliance and Horde reinforcements arrived over the morning, and parties from the neutral groups followed in the early afternoon. Ranith stood, and watched, straight down the path from the Portal. After awhile, Alexei stepped up behind her, silent and imposing. He said nothing, for there was nothing to say.
"Ranya." He breathed when the blackness in the gateway flowed, rippled, lightened. "Know this. You are my beloved." He punctuated his words by clapping his hand down on her shoulder. "We are draenei. And we fight today." She could feel the units coming up behind him, drawn by the change in the Portal. "Ranya, behind me." He ordered, and she allowed him to move her behind him, grasping his tail again.
The gateway shifted, brightened, and the first through was a felhunter, a doomguard on its tail. "Gooooo!" Alexei screamed, and she felt the bunch of his muscles as he readied to charge. "It is open!"
He yanked her forwards, into a moment of nauseating nothingness, and then the world was exactly as in Ranith's visions. The great demons, so much larger than those on Azeroth's side of the portal, strode towards the opening, and Alexei rocked back on his hooves. His weight set, he began casting. She felt the touch of the Light in this forsaken place as he brought down blessings, and she countered with her own. Again, the stakes were high and the activity was chaotic…and again, Ranith was not afraid. She stood behind Alexei, and he would keep her safe. And likewise, she would keep him safe. That was how it was supposed to be.
Take the fight to them. Keep them off of Azeroth. Stand here, on Draenor, where they already had a toehold. Stand here, on Draenor, Ranith's birthplace, Alexei's birthplace. Stand here, at the end of the Path of Glory, and do not give. She narrowed her eyes, focusing. Alexei was first, he must stay up. He must stay alive, and to keep him that way would require most of her resources. For the first time in her life, she cursed her lack of ability to heal… His own aptitude added to hers would just have to be enough, if he slowed down enough to heal himself.
He charged the closest of the great demons, ignoring the small flotsam bound for the portal. The forces on the other side, even as unprepared as they seemed, could hold doomguards…or so Ranith hoped. If they couldn't, it was a lost cause.
She began casting, fast and hard, running through power as if it were water flowing through her fingers. At this rate, she would be useless in moments, and Alexei would fall…. It would all be over. But if she slowed, if she stopped, he would fall…. No.
"Tap the blood within you, Rania'ath. Let it carry you, carry Alexei, through this."
Owe the man'ari…more than she already did. Ranith didn't need the congealing fear in her stomach, that part of her tied into the naaru's wisdom to advise against that. She already owed so much…
"If you do not, Alexei will die, and you will go down a moment later. You will be heroes. You will be martyrs. You will be dead. Your parents will mourn the loss of their only, and none will mourn Alexei."
No, not that. Anything but that. She tore open the power within her, the man'ari's true gift, the claw he had placed in her soul, and a world away, Velen, the Prophet of his people, raised his silver head and focused his eyes on an empty wall ofExodar. After a moment, he went back to his reading…. Destiny played out, as it had for ten thousand years, and he was often merely an observer.
