[color=92278f][b]"Your guess is a good as mine,"[/b][/color] Aran answered idly. She rubbed her thumb and fingers together. The pins and needles tingling of the portal effect was only just passing. [color=92278f][b]"Perhaps we are all here by accident. Or perhaps some greater power is at work."[/b][/color]

If this was some kind of divine intervention, that greater power had a lot of explaining to do.

She remembered the face of the Pandaren merchant who had sold her those faulty portal shards. Had that actually been a look of entrepreneurial smugness... or was it a knowing expression? She struggled to remember the conversation they'd had in the inn. She vaguely recalled saying something to the effect of how weary she was of fighting an endless enemy, and may have suggested she'd prefer to go anywhere but back to another pointless battlefield. 

She hadn't been in the best frame of mind at the time. They had just lost Ysera, tragically. She'd felt the blow of the great drakes passing as if she herself had been the one who cast the deathblow. In fact, it was quite possible she had- they'd been fighting for their lives against the corruption they had made of her. When Ysera finally fell, Aran had felt a devastation the like of which had been rivaled only by the loss of her family.

Maybe that merchant knew [i]exactly[/i] what he had been selling her after all.