The Mojo Mask, Part 1

“Hey! Kar… Chris?” The human captain’s voice was garrulous from the shouting he dealt out to the recruits under his command, and even when speaking one-to-one with someone, he barked his words.

He also had that quaint human habit of being unable to appreciate the pronunciation or culture of different races. “Kar-EYE-is,” the shaman corrected the captain’s mangling of his name with a polite smile. The Draenei had been in the midst of one of his exercises, and he was sweated, shirtless, and somewhat out of breath. The exercise was a simple one, but certainly tested Kariis’ agility. Four pots of incense seethed sweet-smelling smoke into the air around the Draenei at the four cardinal directions, and through the faculty of swift movements of limb and weapon, Kariis aimed to create temporary designs with the smoke in the air. He stood still, now, his chest – slender by Draenei standards, beefy by human standards – rising and falling with deep breaths. The incense flowed upwards from each pot, calming from the eddies of air Kariis’ exercise had caused.

“Right. Car-is,” Captain Dummehel was already looking at a scroll he had in hand, reading it over with a cursory glance before half-crumple-half-rolling the parchment and shoving it at the Draenei’s chest, “Here. New orders.”

Kariis’ immediate feeling was one of relief. He had been assigned to this unit in Alterac as a “spiritual advisor,” a decision made by some higher command that Kariis was certain must have been made while the commander was drunk. Most of the Alliance human soldiers associated Shamanism exclusively with the Horde. At best, they treated Kariis with a distant respect for his martial prowess. At worst, they eyed him as a possible conspirator with “primitive, barbaric” spirits and a Horde sympathizer. Obviously, this made “spiritual advice” hard to dole out.

Kariis’ immediate relief was followed by almost instant suspicion. His next assignment might be worse.

The Draenei took the papers from Captain Dummehel and began to read the message when the human interrupted, “On yer way out, make sure ya clean up this… this stuff?” He indicated the milieu of the room with one circling forefinger, “We got us a holy man from Ironforge comin’. Want the place clean for ‘em. ‘Preciate it.”

The Shaman let his eyes narrow just a touch as the Captain left the room. He prided himself on his diplomacy and self control, but Dummehel had a way of crawling under his skin. Referring to his collection of totemic relics as some sort of trashy “stuff” was one more irksome comment on a pile of hundreds doled out by the Captain. Kariis smoothed a hand over his bald pate, and took a deep breath to calm his irritation before looking at the document. His blue eyes flickered rapidly over the text.

As the meaning of the words sunk in, all irritation flowed out of Kariis’ mind, and he grinned with excitement. It was a good thing this new order came now, in the morning; that left the rest of the day to plan for his trip to Light’s Hope Chapel.