I killed her. Me and my big mouth.

Not literally. But I might as well have.  t was enough that she died because I left myself vulnerable when Grebo attacked. But Grebo just BEING there was my fault.

I had to go yammering on in guild chat about where I was going with her. Not even thinking about who might be there listening in. How many times do I have to run into people pretending to be something they’re not on the internet before I get it through my thick skull? And so, there they were, Varian Wrynn and Jaina Proudmoore, right there in my own guild, soaking it all in. I might as well have sent them fucking invitations and enclosed a poisoned blade. And lo and behold, a pack of humans turn up out of nowhere.

It’s the only thing that makes sense. That’s the only time I talked to anyone about where we were going, other than my mother herself and a few of the guards we passed leaving Orgrimmar and traveling through Ashenvale.

I know what you’re thinking – how to account for Grebo. He’s still an orc, right? So why would he be working with humans if that’s who’s behind this? And see, that’s where you’re just looking at the surface. Grebo WAS an orc. That thing that attacked me in Demon Fall Canyon? That was Grebo’s reanimated corpse. I’ve been talking to Draz’Zilb out of Brackenwall Village – he’s no stranger to necromancy, and he tells me that when someone is resurrected, there’s a whole range of possibilities as far as how much of the actual person is still there. Maybe it’s the entire being come back whole. Maybe it’s an empty shell, walking around wearing the original person’s face. Maybe it’s any of a million points in between, any combination of memories, motivations, personality, will…anyway, he tells me it wouldn’t be much of a stretch at all to rig things so whoever you’re raising is going to be perfectly cooperative, whoever you happen to be.

No shock to anyone, I’ve been going over and over this in my head all day. I ended up needing to get out of my war room and get some air, so I took Mortimer for a ride around Durotar. I was planning just to fly around some and hopefully clear my head, but on one loop around we passed over Tiragarde Keep. And I happened to look down.

Humans.

So I landed. An hour later and I was still there. Not even rushing around, just taking my time, wandering through the keep, cutting down any humans I could find.

Usually we’ve been content to leave this human outpost alone – it doesn’t pose any real threat, and the humans there are weak even by human standards, and in a way they’re handy to have around as a training exercise for some of our up-and-comers out of Razor Hill. Send the young blood over, have them take out some easy human pickings, we keep the cockroach population under control and the kids feel like they’ve accomplished something. Everybody wins.

Not today. Today I’m in no mood to humor them. Today I’m done tolerating their presence, these pathetic vermin daring – PRESUMING – to claim a foothold in our lands. These two-legged rats from Theramore (THERAMORE), sitting here almost within eyeshot of Orgrimmar… I’m done with them. They’re like animals – every action I’ve ever known them to take shows it. WORSE than animals, even – at least a dog understands loyalty, and a wyvern has some instinctive sense of honor. Like animals, but less. So I slaughtered them like animals.

It was a good afternoon. While it lasted.

A long time ago I swore I’d make the humans regret the crimes they’ve committed against our people.  Somehow I let those words become just that: words.  Got lazy, grew complacent, contented myself with sitting around on a throne made out of the skull of an enemy I didn’t even kill myself and puffing out my chest like I’d done enough.

No more.

Legionnaire Nazgrim finally returned home to Orgrimmar last week after extended duty in Vashj’ir. I’m promoting him to General and putting him in charge of the initial stages of what comes next. I’ll be laying out our military plans in the next few days, but I don’t plan on wasting much time before we get to work. I’ve already wasted enough. It’s time I got to work doing what I should have done long ago.

Kill them all.