Mei Lin met Kindrra outside a tomb full of dead things, which, looking back, was probably fitting for a friendship that would nearly get them both killed inside of an hour.
The Draenei was sitting on the steps of the Ring of Observance, legs stretched out, bow across her knees, scratching behind the ears of a lion. Not a small lion. A proper, black-maned beast with paws the size of dinner plates and fur so dark it swallowed the light. A rare thing. The kind of creature most hunters only heard stories about.
"That's a lion," Mei Lin said. Because observation was one of her many gifts.
Kindrra looked up. Grinned. The kind of grin that started in the eyes and didn't bother asking the mouth for permission. "That's Orion."
"You named your lion after a constellation."
"I named my lion after the greatest hunter in the sky." She scratched deeper behind Orion's ears. The lion's eyes half-closed and a rumble rolled through his chest, low and deep, a purr you could feel through the stone steps before you heard it. "He's earned it."
Mei Lin looked at Orion. Orion looked at Mei Lin. He yawned. Slowly. Showing every tooth. She liked him immediately.
"I'm Mist," she said, dropping onto the steps beside Kindrra like they'd known each other for years instead of seconds. "Guild sent me to help. You're the one who needs a hand in Terokkar?"
"I'm the one who keeps saying yes to everyone who asks for help and then wondering why half the forest is chasing me." Kindrra held out a strip of dried fish. "Want some?"
"Is it any good?"
"No. Orion loves it though."
Mei Lin took a piece anyway. It was terrible. She ate it all. First rule of making friends: eat what they offer.
They worked through Terokkar together for the better part of the afternoon. Kindrra was sharp. Not flashy sharp, not sharp that asked to be looked at. The quiet kind, the kind where an arrow was already in the air before Mei Lin had finished identifying what they were fighting. She'd whistle and Orion would launch forward, teeth bared, and put himself between Kindrra and whatever was trying to reach her. Always, always in the right place.
"He's fast," Mei Lin said, watching Orion close the distance on a fleeing arakkoa and drag it down before it reached the treeline.
"He's motivated," Kindrra corrected.
Mei Lin drove an earth totem into the ground to brace Orion's position while he held them in place, then sent chain lightning arcing between the clustered arakkoa, voltage leaping from feathers to feathers. When one broke free and rushed Kindrra, Mei Lin hit it with a lava burst that knocked it sideways in a trail of smoke. Kindrra's arrow finished it mid-stumble. She hadn't even looked up. It clicked fast. The Draenei had a rhythm, mark, shoot, reposition, and Mei Lin found herself falling into it without trying. Good partnerships are like that. You don't build them. You just notice they're already there.
Between fights, Kindrra talked. A lot. The good kind of a lot. The kind where the conversation never dragged because she always had something worth saying or something wonderfully stupid to add. She had opinions about everything. The quality of Outland water. Whether arakkoa were birds or just bird-adjacent. Why Orion deserved his own tent.
"He gets cold at night," she said, completely serious.
"He has a mane."
"A mane is not a blanket, Mist."
Mei Lin was starting to really like this one.
They'd circled back to the Ring of Observance when the Horde showed up.
Three of them. Coming up the path from the Bone Wastes, heading for the Mana-Tombs. An orc in plate so scratched it looked like he'd been using it as a cutting board. A blood elf with a staff and the expression of someone who considered breathing in the same air as Alliance members a personal inconvenience. And an undead. Thin. Held together by spite and stitching. Jaw wired on at an angle that suggested it had fallen off at least once and been reattached by someone who wasn't paying attention.
They stopped when they saw Mei Lin and Kindrra. The orc's hand went to his axe. The blood elf's lip curled. The undead just stared, the way the dead do, with eyes that had stopped caring about social consequences a long time ago.
Kindrra tensed. Bow hand twitching. Orion rose to his feet beside her, mane bristling, a low growl building in his throat.
"Easy," Mei Lin said.
The orc barked something in Orcish. Guttural. Short. The international language of move or I'll move you.
Mei Lin should have stayed quiet. Should have stepped aside. Should have let them walk past and into the tombs and out of her life.
"Nice shoulders," she called out to the orc instead. Pointing at the massive spiked pauldrons jutting from his armor like a pair of angry porcupines. "Do those come with their own weather system, or do you have to file a permit every time you walk through a doorway?"
The orc stopped. Turned fully toward her. His axe hand tightened.
Kindrra made a small sound beside her. The sound of someone who had known Mei Lin for exactly four hours and was already learning that this was going to be a recurring problem.
"And you," Mei Lin said to the blood elf, who was watching her with the kind of disdain that only blood elves could manufacture on short notice. "How long does the hair take? Honestly. Because I've seen waterfalls with less volume. Do you condition it with arcane dust? Is there a whole routine? I feel like there's a whole routine."
The blood elf said something in Thalassian that was probably very cutting and very eloquent and completely lost on Mei Lin, who didn't speak a word of it.
"Beautiful language," she said. "Very musical. Sounded like you told me to go die in a ditch, but it sounded lovely."
Kindrra grabbed her arm. "Mist."
"Hang on, I haven't done the dead one yet."
"You really don't have to do the dead one."
Mei Lin looked at the undead. The undead looked at Mei Lin. He had the patience of someone who had literally all the time in the world on account of being dead already.
"Question," she said. "Serious question. Do you eat? Like, does food go anywhere? Because I can see daylight through your ribs and I feel like that's a structural issue. Does soup just... fall through? Do you have to plug the holes first? Is there a cork system?"
The undead's jaw shifted. The wired side creaked.
"And the smell. I have to ask about the smell. Do you know? Can you smell yourself? Or is it like how you can't smell your own house after a while? Because I'm standing downwind and I want you to know, as a friend, as someone who cares, that whatever died is still dying. Actively. Right now."
Kindrra had her face in her hands. Orion had sat back down. Orion was watching the Horde group with the lazy, dark-eyed patience of a predator who had already decided they weren't worth the energy but could change his mind at any moment.
The undead looked at the orc. The orc looked at the blood elf. The blood elf looked at the ceiling of the sky like he was asking a higher power for the strength not to commit a war crime.
The orc decided for all three of them. He raised his axe.
"Oh," Mei Lin said. "So that's how it is."
Kindrra stopped having her face in her hands. The bow was up. Arrow nocked. Fast. Faster than Mei Lin expected. Whatever the Draenei looked like sitting on steps sharing dried fish, the person standing beside her now was something else entirely. Eyes sharp. Breathing even. Orion was already on his feet, black mane bristling, every muscle coiled.
The orc charged.
Mei Lin drove an earth totem into the stone and hit him with an Earth Shock that stopped him mid-stride. The ground cracked under his boots and he staggered, axe swinging wild. Kindrra's first arrow caught him in the shoulder gap before he recovered. Her second was already in the air.
"Orion," Kindrra said. One word. Calm.
The black lion hit the orc from the side like a shadow coming to life. Two hundred pounds of muscle and teeth slamming into plate armor, driving him sideways, pinning the axe arm. The orc roared. Orion didn't care. He held.
The blood elf was casting. Mei Lin could feel the arcane building in the air, that metallic taste that meant a spell was about to land somewhere painful. She sent a lightning bolt at him, not to kill, to interrupt. The bolt hit his hands and the spell shattered mid-cast. His eyes went wide. Offended. He started again.
Kindrra didn't let him finish. An arrow whistled past Mei Lin's ear and hit the stone at the blood elf's feet. He flinched. Lost the cast again. A second arrow grazed his sleeve and he scrambled backward, trying to find range.
"Keep him moving!" Mei Lin shouted.
"Already on it!" Kindrra was firing in rhythm now. Not aiming to wound. Aiming to pressure. Every arrow landing close enough to break concentration, never letting the elf settle into a cast. She was herding him. Pushing him toward the wall of Auchindoun where his range meant nothing.
The undead came at Mei Lin. She'd expected that. He was fast, faster than the orc, all long limbs and reach. But Mei Lin had already planted her air totem and the wind answered before he arrived. A gust caught him sideways and he stumbled, and she followed it with chain lightning that arced from him to the orc behind him to the blood elf trying to cast from the wall. All three of them lit up.
The undead shook it off. Came again. She hit him with a lava burst to the chest that knocked him back two steps and left smoke rising from what was left of his armor. He snarled something in Gutterspeak. It sounded like grinding bones.
"Sorry, didn't catch that," she said, already casting riptide on herself where his blade had found her arm. "Could you say it again? Slower? With fewer consonants?"
Kindrra whistled. A different note this time. Orion released the orc, who was bleeding from three places and breathing hard, and sprinted across the circle. The lion hit the undead from behind and bore him to the ground. Pinned. Done.
The blood elf saw it happen. Saw the orc struggling to lift his axe. Saw the undead flat on his back under a black lion. Did the math.
He lowered his staff.
Mei Lin kept her hands up. Lightning still humming between her fingers. Kindrra had an arrow trained on him but wasn't drawing further. Waiting. Giving him the choice.
The blood elf said something quiet. Not in Thalassian this time. In Common. Accented. Precise.
"We're done."
Kindrra lowered the bow. Mei Lin let the lightning fade. Orion stepped off the undead, slowly, making sure the point was made, and padded back to Kindrra's side.
The undead got up. Brushed the dust off his armor. Looked at Mei Lin. Looked at Kindrra. Looked at Orion.
Then he laughed.
A dry, rattling laugh that sounded like it was coming through a ribcage with too much air in it. He pointed at Mei Lin, made a gesture that needed no translation, you're insane, and limped toward the Mana-Tombs. One of his fingers fell off on the way. He picked it up without stopping. The orc followed, holding his shoulder. The blood elf swept past without acknowledging that any of them existed, which was probably the most blood elf thing he could have done.
Gone.
Kindrra exhaled. Lowered the bow. Her hands were steady but her breathing was fast and her eyes were still bright with the sharp focus that takes a few seconds to fade.
"What is wrong with you," she said.
"Many things. Most of them are entertaining."
"You started a fight with three Horde over a cork joke."
"And we won." Mei Lin grinned. "That's the important part."
Kindrra stared at her. Then she started laughing. Not the polite kind. The helpless kind. The kind where you lean against your lion and your shoulders shake and you can't stop because the adrenaline has turned into absurdity and there's nowhere for it to go but out.
Orion pressed his massive head into Kindrra's hip. She rested a hand on his mane. Still laughing. Still shaking.
"We make a good team," Mei Lin said.
Kindrra wiped her eyes. "We make a terrible team. We make the kind of team that starts wars over insult comedy."
"The best kind of team."
"The worst kind of team."
"Same thing."
Later, sitting on the steps again. Sharing more of Kindrra's terrible dried fish. The sun was sinking behind Auchindoun, painting the Bone Wastes in shades of amber and shadow. The air smelled like dust and old magic and whatever Orion had been rolling in.
Kindrra was quiet for a while. Not uncomfortable quiet. Settling quiet. The kind where someone is replaying what just happened and deciding how they feel about it.
"That thing you did," she said eventually. "With the Earth Shock. Stopping the orc mid-charge. That gave me the opening."
"That thing you did," Mei Lin said. "With the arrows. Keeping the elf from ever finishing a cast. That's what won it."
"And Orion pinning the dead one."
"And Orion pinning the dead one." She paused. "Pinning the dead. That's a sentence."
They looked at each other. Something clicked. Not the way it clicks in combat, where you find a rhythm by accident. Something quieter. The recognition that they'd just fought together for the first time and neither of them had hesitated. Mei Lin had disrupted. Kindrra had pressured. Orion had finished. No plan. No coordination. Just instinct.
"You do that a lot?" Kindrra asked. "The... Horde thing."
"Define 'a lot.'"
"More than zero."
"Then yes."
Kindrra nodded slowly. Looked at her bow. Looked at Orion. Looked at Mei Lin.
"I'm going to need more arrows."
Mei Lin grinned so hard her face hurt.
Grandmother always said you can tell the worth of a person by how they handle a fight they didn't ask for. If they run, let them go. If they freeze, help them. If they nock an arrow and start covering your flank before you've finished your first cast...
Keep them.
— Mist