Before the World Broke — A Vegetaone Story
A year had passed since the guild shared that spring fire at Stonewake and agreed to take the next road together.
Vegeta remembered it while checking the straps beneath his Destroyer Breastplate.
He had left them for forty-one days.
He had returned with five matched pieces of armor and a friend.
The rest of the year had belonged to escorts, repairs, northern departures, southern homecomings, and letters that made distances easier to cross.
The guild had not spent it waiting.
Neither had Reddbull.
They were in Mulgore when the world broke.
The journey had been arranged before the latest tremors. Their wagon carried replacement tools and cloth for a small camp near Bloodhoof Village, and a bundle of letters Reddbull had promised to deliver farther up the road.
He met them at the turning with his shield, his axe, and a smile that disappeared when Envy stopped moving.
The lioness's head turned toward the hills.
Super felt the first movement through his boots.
“Off the wagon.”
The earth lurched.
Vegeta caught the driver as the front wheel slid into a widening crack.
Behind them, the road rose in a hard fold. The camp's water trough tipped. One hut leaned against the next with a sound like a giant drawing breath through broken teeth.
People ran toward the wagon because it was the strongest-looking thing in the clearing.
“Away from it!” Vegeta shouted.
War was already moving toward the huts.
Luvz seized the wagon's rear frame and held it long enough for Super to pull a girl off the loading step. The Death Knight's hooves dug into the dirt. Iron strained beneath his hands.
“Clear!” Super called.
Luvz released it and stepped back.
The wagon dropped forward.
Its axle broke.
Vegeta did not look at the tools spilling from it.
He had finally learned which part of a load to count first.
The second shock brought down the hut nearest the trough.
Reddbull ran toward it with his shield above his head.
A woman knelt in the doorway, trying to lift a beam from a child's leg. War reached her from the other side and cut the roofing cords that were pulling the wall inward.
“Hold this side,” she told him.
He put the shield beneath the falling edge.
The wood settled against it.
His shoulders shook.
The child's leg was bleeding below the knee.
Reddbull could reach it with one hand.
He could not reach the beam without taking the shield away.
“Vegeta!”
The orc came through the dust with his swords sheathed.
He lifted the beam.
War and the woman pulled the child free.
Reddbull backed out with them, keeping the shield above their heads until the roof fell behind him.
They gathered on the firm rise beyond the camp.
Super counted people. Envy stayed close, her body pressed against his leg whenever the ground trembled again.
War went back with two uninjured workers to check the far huts.
Luvz tore a fallen fence rail free and used it to brace the split bank where the last family was climbing out.
Vegeta knelt beside the child while Reddbull held a clean cloth against the wound.
The bleeding had slowed.
It had not stopped.
The nearest healer was at the village, on the other side of a road they could no longer trust.
Reddbull looked toward the light breaking through the dust.
He had spent months learning not to treat a prayer like an order.
Now he had no polished words.
Only a child beneath his hands, and the conviction that the strength he had been given must serve this moment if it could.
He bowed his head.
Vegeta felt warmth before he saw it.
A soft gold spread beneath Reddbull's palm, distinct from the daylight around them. It lit the damp cloth from within.
The child's crying changed.
The pain had eased enough for him to breathe.
Reddbull's hand shook.
He almost pulled it away.
“Stay,” Vegeta said.
The Tauren looked at him.
“With him. Stay.”
Reddbull lowered his gaze again.
The light lasted only a few breaths.
When it faded, the wound was still there.
The blood was no longer soaking through the folded cloth.
Vegeta checked the child's breathing and held the bandage while Reddbull recovered his grip.
Neither claimed the boy was well.
They had time to bring him to someone who could help.
The village sent a healer and carrying poles after a runner reached it.
By then, the guild had brought everyone out of the damaged huts. Two people had broken bones. A third needed stitches. The child's mother walked beside his stretcher with her hand around his.
She thanked Reddbull.
He tried to answer.
Nothing came.
Vegeta put a hand against his shoulder.
They watched the stretcher go.
Across the clearing, Luvz stood with the runeblade on his back and dust caught in the red ribbon beneath his wrist guard. War was helping the driver check the families against Super's list.
They were all here.
The road was gone beneath the wagon.
They would have to find another.
News arrived in pieces over the following days.
Coasts struck by enormous waves.
Roads broken across distant countries.
Elemental violence where there had been ordinary weather.
Then the name carried by messengers whose faces made disbelief difficult.
Deathwing.
The catastrophe had a cause larger than any fight they could see from the camp.
The work before them remained small enough to take in hand.
Water.
Shelter.
Bandages.
People who needed to reach one another.
Vegeta distributed the cloth they had brought for the camp. Super sent the tool inventory to the village so the useful pieces could be recovered when the earth settled. Luvz and Reddbull helped move a roof beam without asking who was strongest.
War checked the approaches and returned to tell them what she found.
Nobody went looking for a dragon alone.
Reddbull sat outside the temporary shelter that evening with his shield across his knees.
The people they had pulled from the camp were under a healer's care. The boy with the injured leg was alive. Reddbull knew those things, and still he kept looking at the hand that had held the cloth against the wound.
Vegeta sat beside him.
“You saved him time,” the Orc said.
“I don't know how I did it.”
“Then you can learn.”
Reddbull thought of the letters from Mulgore, of Aponi Brightmane, Tahu Sagewind, and the questions he had begun asking about An'she. He had wanted to understand how his strength might serve something beyond the next battle. For a handful of breaths, he had felt an answer. It was not an answer he knew how to summon again.
“I'll have to go back to Thunder Bluff,” he said.
“When the roads are safe enough,” Vegeta replied. “And when these people have what they need.”
Reddbull nodded.
Beyond the shelter, Super was counting the remaining supplies. War and Luvz were helping a family raise canvas over a patch of unbroken ground. Envy rested beside the children, who had finally stopped flinching at every sound.
The guild stayed with the survivors while messengers carried news of the broken roads and burning coastlines. There would be more calls for help. They did not yet know where the next one would take them.
Vegeta looked at the full Destroyer armor he had set beside his bedroll. It bore marks from Blade's Edge and from the shattered camp. He had gone after those five pieces wanting to look like the warrior he imagined.
Now he knew what he wanted the armor to be for.
Reddbull set his shield beside it. There was no new emblem on its battered face, only the repaired line left by the people he had protected.
That was enough for tonight.
Tomorrow they would find out who still needed them.
End of Before the World Broke