by Greg Weisman
It was at this crucial moment—with the crowd hushed and eager for a kill—that Drella could be heard saying, “Yes. Thank you. That would be lovely.” She waited patiently for one second, two seconds, three. Then there was a ripple in the earth before her, and tiny sinkholes began to form. Perhaps if one held one’s ear to the ground, a low rumble might have been heard. Then again, perhaps not. The dryad raised her arms, and all of a sudden, thick vines burst from the ground, snaring and entwining Valdread and the female ogre—and even the unconscious Zathra and Throgg. This was so shocking that Murky dropped the squirming Skitter, but before the scorpid could skitter very far, the vines had caught her up, too.
The vines snapped off Valdread’s left arm and right leg, but otherwise he was held tight and immobile. They wrapped around the female ogre’s arm and the entire length of her sword, preventing her from even attempting to cut herself free.
Makasa, Murky, and Hackle all turned to look at a triumphant Drella, who said, “I am very helpful! In fact, I am impressive! I am Taryndrella the Impressive, daughter of Cenarius!”
“Indeed, you are, young one.” Makasa stared at the dryad, who no longer looked quite as young as Makasa remembered. Drella seemed suddenly older, more mature. “Are you … taller?” Makasa asked.
“Summer has come,” Drella said. “Or nearly.”
Baron Noggenfogger declared them winners. Much coinage was exchanged among the spectators. (Gazlowe, as always, seemed to have done particularly well, though, of course, no one did quite as well as Marin Noggenfogger, who collected from winners and losers alike.) Four silver pieces were even—begrudgingly—shoved into the hands of the four victors, who snatched up their weapons and rushed out of the ’drome, not waiting for Gazlowe, Springsong, or Winifred. And certainly not waiting for their enemies to be cut down from their green bonds.
Once outside in the cool night air, Makasa stopped them. With a touch of formality, she repeated her prior sentiment: “I am honored to serve on this crew with Hackle, Murky, and Taryndrella.”
“Taryndrella the Impressive!” the dryad corrected.
Makasa smiled and nodded and repeated the word, “Honored.”
Sensing the importance of this moment to Makasa—and to all of them—Hackle and Drella both said, “Honored.” And Murky solemnly intoned, “Uuua.”
Still smiling, Makasa said, “Come on. Aram will be wondering what happened to us.”
They ran off to Winifred’s …
None of them noticed the two entranced arakkoa, chanting quietly in the shadows before a trail of smoking red-rimmed blackness that snaked off toward Aramar Thorne …
Back at Winifred’s, the dark magic wrapped around Aram, binding him tighter than Drella’s vines. He was alone. Without Makasa. Without Thalyss or Hackle or Murky or Drella or his father or his mother or Robb. Never in his life had Aramar Thorne felt so alone—and so terrified.
A satisfied Malus advanced slowly, saying, “I gave you every opportunity, boy. You brought this on yourself. Like father, like son.” Malus had killed his father. And now Malus was going to kill him.
But Greydon Thorne hadn’t made it easy for Malus. He hadn’t perished without a fight. The least Aram could do was try.
Aram still had one arm free. It was the wrong arm, but with some twisting of his body, he managed to draw his cutlass and point it in Malus’s direction.
Malus rolled his eyes in contempt, and, oh, did Aram wish Makasa were there to see it and respond as she was wont. Almost languidly, Malus drew his own broadsword—as if it was hardly worth the effort.
And it hardly was. The ribbons of black, burning magic were constricting around Aram and pulling tighter. It was getting hard to breathe. He tried to sever them with the cutlass, but the blade was useless against this sorcery.
Malus flicked his wrist so quickly, Aram was disarmed—his cutlass clattering against the floor—without him ever really seeing any movement of the broadsword. Malus reached his iron-sheathed left hand toward Aram’s new shirt and the compass that wasn’t particularly well hidden beneath it.
Desperate for air—and just plain desperate, period—Aram grabbed for the only other thing he could reach: he pulled the hilt of the crystal shard sword out from behind him and brought it into view, with some vague notion of wedging it in between the magic and his chest.
But it was Malus who briefly stopped breathing. He drew back his hand, froze, and hissed out, “The Diamond Blade!”
Of course, there wasn’t any actual blade. Or was there? Before Aram’s bulging eyes, a shining beacon emerged from the hilt, coalescing into a blade of pure, shining Light!
This shocked Malus out of his stupor. Recovering a bit, he reached for the hilt. But the Light just kept getting brighter and brighter, and eventually Malus had to use the hand he was reaching with to shield his eyes.
But Aram, trained by his dreams, did not need to look away. No matter how bright the Light became, Aram could still see. And hear. The Voice of the Light spoke inside his mind. Once, the Light was yours to bear. Now, you cannot bear the Light.
It took Aram a couple seconds to realize the Voice wasn’t speaking to him. It was talking to Malus, who groaned miserably.
Building on Malus’s misery, the Voice spoke again: You forfeited the Diamond Blade with your betrayal. You will never possess it again.
Malus began to growl. He struggled to raise his head, but the bright, bright Light blinded him. Moreover, it seemed to have substance that pressed down upon his head.
And yet the Light had no such effect on Aramar Thorne. He felt weightless within it. He could breathe again as the brilliance began to eat away at the dark ribbons of magic that had all but strangled him. As he had with his cutlass, Aram tried to cut his mystical bonds with this blade of Light—with much better results. The Light cut through the shadow magic like a white-hot knife through moldy black butter.
Better still, the Light continued to get brighter and brighter. Malus dropped his sword so he could use both arms to shield his vision. Again, Malus groaned deeply. And, again, the groan became a growl. The growl became a roar. And the roar became a scream of intense inner pain.
The Voice said, Tell your Master that the Light is not yet whole. Nevertheless, it possesses more than enough power to chase away these pathetic shadows. Within seconds, the dark ribbons were retreating as if even they were in excruciating pain.
Brighter and brighter. Brighter and brighter.
And Aram still had no need to look away …
By the time the Light had faded, Malus had recovered sufficiently to open his eyes, blink them furiously, and wipe the tears away. He found himself alone in the boardinghouse. There was no one there. No Aram, no Diamond Blade, no compass. Just an abandoned cutlass on the floor.
He felt exhausted, fundamentally exhausted right down to his bones. He couldn’t remember ever feeling quite this tired before. He staggered forward and slumped down to rest on the stairs.
But his strength returned rapidly—and with it, his outrage. He lurched to his feet and, knowing Aram would never come back to this place, staggered out of the boardinghouse and away.
He hadn’t given up. He wouldn’t give up. Not now. Not ever. He had been caught off guard by how much of the Diamond Blade the boy had already recovered. That was why he’d faltered. But Malus would be ready next time. He would be ready. He would be ready. He flexed his left hand beneath its iron gauntlet. The pain brought him some satisfaction. Next time, nothing would stop him. He would be ready.
Within two minutes of fleeing Winifred’s, Aram ran smack into Makasa, Murky, Hackle, and Drella. He rapidly told them what had occurred and explained why they could never go back to Winifred’s.
“Where to, then?” Makasa asked.
Aram thought about this. Then he pulled out the compass to see if its last reading had changed at all. It had not. Aram thought about this for half a second at most, before deciding with a firm and steady confidence exactly where they should head n
ext …
Malus loomed over Marin Noggenfogger. Even backed by a score of hobgoblins, the baron found himself leaning away under the captain’s threatening gaze.
And the goblin wasn’t the only one feeling threatened. Ssavra had lost some of her own bravado. She still couldn’t understand what had happened. She and her brother had cast their spell, and all seemed well. The shadow magic had raced forward after the compass. But some other magic must have countered it, must have plowed back along the course of their spell, tearing it asunder, until it had reached the two arakkoa and hit them like an iron hammer, knocking both unconscious.
She had awakened to Malus raging, “What kind of spellcasters are you?! Your magicks dissolve short of their target?! Can you find the boy or can’t you?!” Dazed as she and Ssarbik were, they could not answer, which meant their answer was, effectively, no. “Useless!” Malus had said, before entering the Thunderdrome to find his best lieutenants—the ones who were conscious, anyway—still struggling to free themselves from the grip of dryad-generated vines. Worse, the ogre Throgg was near death from the sting of the troll’s own scorpid pet.
Now, Ssavra glanced over at the swollen-jawed Throgg, pale as Valdread and unsteady on his feet. Ro’kull and Ro’jak supported him on either side to keep him upright. The Shattered Hand ogre had survived thanks to his massive bulk and to the fact that Skitter had apparently already expended much of her venom stinging Thorne’s murloc (to no effect). Thus, the dose Throgg had received was relatively minimal.
Ssavra was still surprised—and not a little relieved—that Malus had not made an example of them. She assumed because he didn’t want to kill all of his followers for their failures, he had therefore reluctantly chosen to kill none. The Hidden had been defeated at every turn that night. But one thing they now knew for certain was that Aram and his companions were hiding somewhere in the city.
So after the ’drome had emptied of spectators, her captain stood before the baron of Gadgetzan with the rest of the Hidden and the Elite arrayed about. Malus was no longer raging. He barely raised his voice above a whisper. Yet somehow that was even more terrifying. Terrifying enough that Ssavra was beginning to understand why the Master had chosen this human to lead them on Azeroth.
He said, “I want to make myself perfectly clear. I want Aramar Thorne. He is in your city. You will find him for me. You will bring him to me.”
Noggenfogger tried to rally his courage. “I am baron here. I do not take orders from you.”
“I am not giving you an order. I am offering you a choice. You can bring me the boy …”
“Or … ?”
“Or I will lay siege to this city. I have those you see before you now, and they include two arakkoa with the darkest of magicks.”
Ssavra thought, Malus might not have much faith in us, but thankfully Noggenfogger doesn’t know that.
Malus continued, “I have a ship full of the most ruthless marauders in all of Azeroth. And every day, more ogres pour into Gadgetzan from Dire Maul. I am their king, and I will use them—I will use them all—to lay waste to this town.”
“So not an order,” the baron said. “A threat. I don’t like being threatened, Captain. And Gadgetzan has fought off pirates and bandits before.”
“I am neither of those minor nuisances. And I thought I was speaking to a pragmatic individual.”
Noggenfogger chewed on this. He was pragmatic. In fact, he prided himself on his pragmatism. He believed this man’s threats were real and significant, and he owed no allegiance to any human boy …
A day out of Gadgetzan, aboard the vessel of his deliverance, Aram studied his maps. He worried a little—but only a little—about whether he had made the right choice. In any case, they had escaped Malus.
The Inevitable was at sea, closing in on the schooner Crustacean bound for Stormwind Harbor. Noggenfogger had tipped off Malus that the boy and his friends had booked passage upon it. Malus had suspected a lie. But Noggenfogger was able to show him a manifest and a receipt confirming everything. Malus now suspected Noggenfogger had intentionally waited to pass the information along until after the schooner had set sail, thus forcing Malus to leave Gadgetzan to pursue. But the baron hadn’t waited too long. The Crustacean would be overtaken in a matter of minutes. And this time, nothing would stop Malus from getting that compass and reclaiming the Diamond Blade.
It’s funny where your mind goes when you have a moment to breathe, Aram thought. I never did get to see Springsong change into a feathered moonkin. Oh well.
He heard shouting and stood up to see what was wrong …
Back in Gadgetzan, Noggenfogger was still not happy about giving in to Malus’s blackmail. The baroness could tell the thought disturbed her husband, and stroked his long ears to soothe him. He was indebted to her—his little Sprinkle—for these attentions, and also for being the source of their relief. Somehow she had learned about the Crustacean and had told her husband that the boy and his friends had booked passage upon it. He had passed this intelligence on to Malus to get that maniac to leave his town.
Sprinkle gave Marin a little kiss on his pate and told him not to fret.
After all, there was little to fret about. The pirates were gone, heading for a ship that held no one she’d ever met.
He said he was very grateful to her for always putting his needs first.
Hah! She smiled to herself and thought warmly of past loves.
Aram pushed open the door of the bridge to see what the shouting was about. It was Gazlowe and Sprocket, arguing at high volume over the most efficient steam quotient—whatever that meant—to keep their vessel moving at the optimal speed—-whatever that was.
Aram tried not to smile as he stepped back and quietly closed the door again. He moved to the edge of the gondola and leaned out over the side, his eyes wide with the wonder of it all. The zeppelin Cloudkicker soared far above the shining desert sands of Tanaris, with both the sparkling waters of Thousand Needles and the deep rain forests of Feralas in clear view from this astounding height. They were heading north to Gazlowe and Sprocket’s next MEGA event in some place called the Charred Vale. Aram had ridden a wyvern, but that hardly stole any thunder from what he was currently experiencing. A ship. A ship that flew through the air! What would they think of next?
“The view’s plenty spectacular, isn’t it?” said a voice behind him. “I would think it the kind of view a good artist would want to capture.”
Aram turned to smile at a smiling Charnas, who was fulfilling his duties as MEGA’s official artist by coming along for the ride with his cousin—yes, his cousin—Gazlowe.
The two artists leaned against the rail and began sketching. Aram sketched the view from Cloudkicker and then sketched Cloudkicker itself. He sketched the crystal sword hilt. And he even forced himself to sketch all his enemies together: Captain Malus; Baron Reigol Valdread, the Whisper-Man; the troll Zathra wearing her scorpid as armor; and the ogre Throgg. Not satisfied with that grouping, he sketched them all again, but this time added the bird-man; the female ogre; the ogre twins and the two-headed ogre; the potbellied ogre with the ram’s horn; the towering giant who was always yawning; and towering behind them all, the shadowy horned figure with the burning edges. Putting their images to paper seemed to exorcise his fear of them. Besides, he had left them all behind in Gadgetzan, and he doubted that even Malus could find a way to follow him now.
He put his sketchbook back in his pocket and stood up straight.
Charnas said, “I’ve been thinking about your uncle Silverlaine. I’m fairly certain that the last time your father mentioned his brother, he said something about having left him in the north.”
“Like … in Stonetalon?”
“He wasn’t that specific. But I’m fairly certain he was referring to northern Kalimdor and not the north of the Eastern Kingdoms—nor the far north of Northrend.”
“So maybe … maybe I might find him up this way.”
“You never know.”
Aramar Thorne mused on the possibilities.
Charnas interrupted the boy’s musings by clearing his throat. He said, “I’m considering a new project. A new book.”
“About MEGA?” Aram asked.
“Perhaps. In part. I’ll cogitate on it for a good little while. Let it play round and around my brain for a bit. Then I’ll let you know.”
“I’d like that.”
“Maybe you’d like to contribute some illustrations?”
“Are you serious? I’d really like that!”
“Well, we’ll see.”
Aram was practically floating—as if he could kick a few clouds himself—when he left Charnas to join his friends.
Murky, Hackle, Drella, and Makasa were all together in their cramped cabin. Makasa periodically looked out the window, shook her head, and grumbled, “Makes no sense. This thing doesn’t even have wings.” But when she saw Aram, she managed a smile.
Gazlowe had agreed to take the five of them north—for a minimal charge per head. Not all the way to Thal’darah Overlook. But the map Aram had studied indicated that the Overlook was little more than two days’ walk from the Charred Vale. That was close enough for this crew.
Aram pulled the compass out from beneath his shirt and glanced down at it. Its needle still pointed toward Lakeshire and home. Or rather, it pointed toward the next shard, which just happened to be in that same direction.
Nevertheless, Aram had decided that helping Drella was more important than returning home right now. Even more important than his quest for the Diamond Blade. He’d return to that quest eventually. He had to. But he had no regrets—and not simply because the path he had chosen might, in fact, lead him to his father’s brother, Silverlaine Thorne.
