Or rather, she tried to follow. Her foot caught on a root that the night elf was certain she had avoided. As Shandris moved aside, the root seemed to stretch from the ground, again catching her foot.
The Sentinel lithely twisted to avoid the root — and a branch caught her face. The force of it caused Shandris to fall back against the nearest tree.
The tree’s roots bound her ankles. Shandris reached for the dagger she always carried, intending to quickly cut her way loose and move on.
Another branch struck her hard on the head. Stunned, Shandris momentarily went limp.
In that moment, the craggy bark opened. Even through her daze, Shandris sensed herself being drawn into the tree trunk.
She struggled to regain her concentration, but again she was battered on the side of the head. The interior of the vast oak surrounded her. Through blurred vision, the general watched the bark seal itself again.
A darkness even her vision could not penetrate surrounded her.
Worse, a pressure was building in her chest. Shandris vaguely realized that the space she was in was too tight. She could not breathe —
The night elf passed out, aware in the last moment that death was coming.
Then the bark gave way again. The pressure eased. Fresh air stirred Shandris, though not enough to keep her from falling forward.
She landed in the arms of a powerful figure. Shandris struggled to recover, certain that her captor had come for her.
A musky scent assailed the night elf, shaking her into consciousness. She peered up at who held her.
It was a tauren.
Hamuul Runetotem gazed down at her with narrowed eyes. “So… it is you…”
19
AWAKE TO THE NIGHTMARE
There was no hope. In all his long existence, Malfurion had known such distress only once. That had been during the War of the Ancients.
The green dragon sent earlier by Ysera still carried him, Tyrande, Broll, Lucan, and even Thura from the catastrophe. Not only were the green dragons in retreat, but the defenders below, aware of what had happened, were also in complete disarray. Their morale was as low as Malfurion’s, perhaps even lower. They knew that they had slowly been losing, but now they saw that their efforts had actually been nothing but lies. The Nightmare had teased them, waiting for its opportunity.
With Ysera…it can do anything! Why did she risk herself for me? True, Ysera’s actual capture had been due to Lethon’s trickery, but she would not have been at risk in the first place if not for her inexplicable interest in making certain of Malfurion’s escape.
“It is gaining on us!” Tyrande called.
She spoke the dread truth. In his mind, Malfurion saw the gleaming shape of another druid in dreamform grasped not by the tendrils of the shadow tree, but by the previous victims of the Nightmare. The clawing hands rent the dreamform as if the night elf were made of flimsy cloth. He screamed as his very being was torn into a thousand pieces —
Barely a moment later, Malfurion saw the druid now at the forefront of the Nightmare’s monstrous throng. His dreamform was now darker and gaunt. Now corrupted, he stretched his twisted fingers toward the nearest remaining defenders seeking to make them join him.
Yet however terrible his failure, however impossible the odds,
the archdruid knew that he could not surrender to the inevitable. He could not let another fall to the Nightmare while he fled.
But as he again struggled to free himself, the green dragon shouted at him, “This is not the time! She did not give herself so that you would be lost again! My queen emphasized to us just before the attack that you are more valuable to Azeroth than even she and though we had trouble believing such, we must trust in her word now!”
“ ‘More valuable’?” Malfurion was incredulous. “Staving off the Nightmare for as long as she already had surely affected her mind!” He fought harder and finally felt her hold on his dreamform loosening.
Tyrande sensed what he was doing. She reached for the archdruid. “Malfurion! Don’t!”
Her hand slipped through his dreamform. Malfurion struggled to pay no attention to her. A part of him wanted nothing more than to stay with Tyrande, but his duty was elsewhere.
However, to his dismay, his surroundings began to fade away.
Too late, the archdruid realized that in seeking to free himself of the green dragon’s spellwork, he had begun something else.
“No!” Malfurion tried to stop the inevitable —
“No!”
The archdruid sat up with a start. Pain immediately wracked his body. He clutched his chest and rolled over.
He was back in his barrow den, the accidental result of his attempt. It should have come as no surprise, the bond between his body and his dreamform naturally strong.
But something was wrong. Clenching his teeth, Malfurion struggled against agony. Was this the result of being gone so long?
The archdruid let out a guttural sound as he fought. In the back o f his mind he became aware that he could not have possibly survived this long without the aid of others.
His body in general was in fair shape. That he could also sense.
He felt the touch of Elune, a force the night elf knew well through Tyrande. Malfurion had no doubt that his love had been the one to organize efforts to save him.
Yet, though he groaned loud, no priestess now came to his aid.
Slowly, he won the struggle. As that happened, Malfurion suddenly sensed something only his experienced, highly attuned druidic skills could have uncovered.
The source of his suffering — and what still sought to slay him — was a small, very small touch of powder. He readily identified the magically-enhanced herb used in its making. Morrowgrain.
Morrowgrain was rumored to be used in certain primitive curses.
But while the herb itself was potent, someone had not been satisfied with its innate power. The subtle spell around it should have been enough addition to guarantee Malfurion’s slow but certain death.
But whoever had done it had underestimated the healing light of the Mother Moon. The work of the priestesses had been enough to keep Malfurion’s unoccupied body functioning, although eventually the poison would have done its work.
Malfurion fixed on the powder, gathering it back together from where in his body it had spread. He created of it a festering ball —
At that point the archdruid vomited.
He did not see the tiny sphere as it exited, but he felt its dire influence fade. Malfurion gasped for air as he slowly pushed himself up again.
Only then did he see the two priestesses. Both were sprawled on the ground of his barrow den. They were alive, but not conscious. Worse, they twitched and occasionally murmured fearfully.
The barrow den was also filled with tendrils of a sinister and toofamiliar mist.
Malfurion had intended to meditate again in order to return to his dreamform, but now he cautiously headed into the mist toward the entrance. There was nothing that he could do for the priestesses, a t least not for the moment. The archdruid needed to know the extent of the threat to the Moonglade.
But the tableau that greeted him as he stepped outside proved how wrong he could be. The Moonglade was entirely cloaked by the mist, giving it more the appearance of a graveyard. More disturbing was that there was not a sound to be heard, not even so much as a cricket.
Striding cautiously through the vegetation, the night elf came upon another barrow den. He slipped inside.
A still form in the familiar robes met his gaze. The hood obscured the sleeper’s face. Kneeling next to the other druid, Malfurion touched the other night elf’s wrist.
It was cold to the touch.
Malfurion quickly moved aside the hood.
The gaping mouth of the corpse sent shivers through the archdruid. The barrow den’s dweller had obviously sent his dreamform forth but had not been able to return in time. Malfurion wondered if the unfortunate had been one of those combating the Nightm
are or if he had perished before that.
Unable at the moment to do anything for the dead druid’s remains, Malfurion retreated from the barrow den. He wondered how many of the other earthen dwellings had such bodies.
Knowing that he had more of a chance to help the living than the dead, Malfurion considered his best options. He no longer thought of meditation; the Moonglade had been tainted. To return to his dreamform here would be too risky. He had to go elsewhere, find the other defenders.
Most of all, he needed to find out what had happened to Tyrande and those with her. They had physically entered the Emerald Dream. To Malfurion, that meant a portal and the nearest to the Dream and the Nightmare was located in Ashenvale.
Yet barely had he determined to go there, barely had he begun to transform himself to storm crow form, than Malfurion realized that his efforts needed to be focused in a direction almost opposite to that in which he had originally planned to head. Although he had been long trapped, Malfurion knew that his people had been planning a new settlement to the west, an island off the coast. Even through the Nightmare, Malfurion had sensed the other druids’ powerful efforts to do — something. Unfortunately, in trying to keep his efforts hidden from his captor, he had not been able to discover the results of those efforts. He had hints and suspicions…
The night elf gazed around the barely seen glade. There was no hint even of Remulos. Surely the Moonglade’s guardian would have appeared upon sensing Malfurion’s waking presence. Malfurion reached out with his thoughts but could still not find Cenarius’s son.
Had Remulos also joined the other druids?
The irony that he was as alone on Azeroth as he had been when a captive of the Nightmare Lord was not lost upon the archdruid.
He started to ponder this — and then wondered why he was wasting more of his time instead of acting immediately, as he should.
Malfurion concentrated. Immediately, his surroundings wavered
…and only then did he discover the true danger.
He had been daydreaming. It had not been his doing. The Nightmare was so powerful that it saturated the Moonglade.
Caught up in his concerns for the others, the archdruid had not noticed when he had begun to slip into this half-slumbering state. It had likely been what had taken the priestesses guarding his body.
But the Nightmare had not been satisfied with that. Malfurion stirred to find himself under assault from the very glade itself.
The grass twisted around his legs, torso, and arms. The trees bent to smother him. They were all touched by the familiar dark corruption he had seen in the Emerald Dream…only this was the waking world. The Nightmare Lord had seized upon Ysera’s great power to break the final barrier between dream and reality.
For just a brief moment Malfurion considered giving in to his doom. He was responsible for the Aspect’s fall and for Azeroth’s danger. Yet that thought quickly faded as Tyrande’s trusting face formed in his thoughts.
The archdruid concentrated. This is not your nature, he reminded the grass, the trees. This is a perversion of what you are a part of…
He felt the grass begin to loosen. The trees, however, did not yet respond. They began to shake at their roots, as if seeking to free themselves while still striving to reach Malfurion. At the same time the bark shifted, forming a mockery of the night elf’s own bearded visage.
“This is not your nature,” Malfurion now said out loud, at the same time focusing his millennia of training on the flora. “This is a place of peace, of tranquility…this place touches the heart of Azeroth and is in turn touched by it…”
The grass released him. The trees suddenly stiffened. The images of his face vanished from the bark.
The Moonglade was calm again, if still mist-enshrouded.
Malfurion took a deep breath. What he had done was no small miracle, not against the might he had sensed at work against him.
The Nightmare Lord had focused especially upon him. Fortunately, the evil had underestimated the archdruid in this of all places.
That settled one matter for Malfurion. He had to return to the Emerald Dream — what was left of it — before it was too late. The green dragon assigned to carry him off had said something about Ysera feeling him more important to the situation, important enough to risk herself.
Malfurion let out a growl of frustration at himself. He was hardly more important than the mistress of the Emerald Dream! Still, he owed her for her sacrifice and owed Azeroth for what his capture had permitted the Nightmare Lord to do.
He wondered why the Nightmare had not already engulfed the world. Its master had Ysera; why then wait? Was there something preventing his captor from ultimate victory?
If there is, I will not discover it standing here! he angrily reminded himself. Any answers lie elsewhere…
Without further hesitation, the archdruid transformed into a storm crow. Taking to the air, Malfurion soared from the Moonglade. Malfurion’s wings beat hard as he rose higher and higher —
But then, at a place among the clouds, he suddenly hovered.
Sharp eyes drank in a sight below that made the storm crow cry out. Perhaps he had been wrong, after all. Perhaps his hope that there was still some chance to salvage victory had merely been one last nightmare thrust upon him by a mocking foe.
The mist did not merely cover the Moonglade. It covered the land beyond it and beyond that.
In fact…it covered all of Azeroth that Malfurion could see.
“Malfurion!” Tyrande shouted. She looked to Broll. “What happened to him?”
“He must’ve cast himself back into his body! He should be all—”
The green dragon carrying them suddenly had to bank, for, without warning, the mists of the Nightmare erupted around them.
A horrific winged form materialized.
“The Nightmare desires these mortals…especially the female night elf…” the foul dragon Emeriss cooed. Her diseased and decaying body filled the air before them. “Come accept the inevitable…Azeroth and the Nightmare are now one…”
“You shall not have them!” the other dragon countered. She exhaled.
It resembled fire, but fire that was more ghost than real. Yet when it struck Emeriss, the corrupted dragon howled in agony and her body glittered as if suddenly covered in a million fireflies.
Ysera’s servant did not wait. She dove around her struggling foe.
But an angry roar indicated that Emeriss had already shaken off her pain. A moment later the corrupted leviathan soared toward them.
“She flies too swiftly and I fight against forces that I cannot see but that slow me!” the dragon informed her charges. “There is but one thing I can do!”
The magic surrounding the mortals flared so bright that the night elves in particular were forced to shield their eyes.
“Find your Malfurion Stormrage!” their rescuer shouted to them.
“My mistress would not lie!”
And with that, she cast them ahead.
Surrounded by her spell, they were protected from harm. Broll saw what she intended before the rest did.
“The portal! She’s sent us toward—”
Before he could finish, they flew through.
The magic dissipated the moment that they were back in Azeroth. Yet the green dragon had not intended for them to be injured in their landing. They emerged from the portal mere inches from the ground and when the spell vanished, the four simply came to a rest.
All but Lucan immediately leapt to their feet. However, as Broll approached the portal, the energies within…froze.
“Not possible…” he muttered. The druid jumped up to the portal and thrust a hand toward the magical gap.
It was like striking an iron door. Broll grimaced at the brief pain caused by his impetuousness.
The high priestess joined him. “Can we not get through?”
“No…either she sealed it after us…or something sealed it so that she couldn’t follow…”
; Tyrande shook her head. “She sent us to safety at her own expense…and all for Malfurion!”
The druid looked over his shoulder. “It’s even a question whether she sent us to safety at all…”
They turned to face Thura. The orc had Brox’s ax ready in her hands. She eyed the other three with wariness.
“Where is he? Where is Malfurion Stormrage?” she demanded.
Her question caused Tyrande to stride toward the husky, greentinted warrior. As she neared, the high priestess glowed with the light of Elune. “He is beyond your petty reach, assassin!”
Thura met her glare…and then, to everyone’s surprise, the orc lowered the weapon. She looked extremely weary.
“He is the one who made me chase him…he tricked me. Why did he wish to die?”
The night elves looked at one another. “He wasn’t seeking death, not truly, anyway.” Tyrande told her. “Your ax was needed to break the spell, I think…”
The orc slumped. “So…my purpose is false…I am nothing.”
“Excuse me,” Lucan interrupted, causing heads to turn to him.
“Was he supposed to come through with us?”
The others looked to where he pointed. It was Broll who recognized the towering figure first.
“Gnarl!” he roared with joy. “You—”
“Get away from him!” Tyrande shouted, dragging Broll back.
The ancient of war let out a nerve-ripping laugh. As he stepped near, the fungus covering his body became evident. His leaves were filled with rot and his eyes glowed black.
“He wishes you to return…” the towering figure rasped.
His eyes were on Tyrande.
“Keep back!” The high priestess started to pray.
Gnarl’s great arm swept toward them. Broll shoved the others back, taking a glancing blow that was still mighty enough to send him to his knees.
The ancient reached for the fallen night elf. Tyrande cut in front of Broll, her expression grimly set. “I’m sorry, Gnarl…”
The light of Elune struck the corrupted ancient dead-on. Gnarl stumbled back…and then righted.
“He is too strong for you this time,” Gnarl mocked. “Azeroth is his…finally…”
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