World of Warcraft

by Steve Danuser

  “Never pick above your snout, else the darkness snuff you out.”

  Visions of Tallow being swallowed whole by inky blackness sent cold blood streaming through Twig’s veins. She stamped her feet, though she was shaking. “Many reason cave-in could come down. We waste time not looking for Tallow!”

  “Darkness take more kobold if we dig above snout! We lost one today—lose no more.” Papa Whiskersnoot caught Twig’s ear between his chipped claws and pinched. “Especially not to a no-such-thing Wickless Candle!”

  Twig’s eyes watered as she ground her teeth, surveying the cowering group before her. They were content to sit in the dirt and give up. “You all just too scaredy! I scaredy, but I still want help Tallow!”

  “Then darkness snuff you out too.” Papa Whiskersnoot turned on his calloused heel, ending the argument, and helped the miners seal off the ruined tunnel.

  From the back of the gathered crowd, Granny frowned at Papa. She started to hoist her pickax, but she fell into a coughing fit and tumbled to the ground. Twig ran to steady her, letting Granny lean against her arm for support.

  “If me weren’t so old and sick …” Granny cursed, then looked to Twig knowingly. She gave her a single nod and pressed the fallen pickax into Twig’s paws. “Twig knows there is more to kobold life than tunnels. Twig right to be brave and look for lost little Tallow. His candle still lit; me sure of it. Take me pickax, sweet Twig. Wickless Candle gave me light in me darkness: now you must be Tallow’s. Go, before Papa try to stop you.”

  Twig’s heart felt so full. She threw her arms around her grandmother and thanked her. After fixing her candle atop her chestnut head and pocketing Tallow’s string of rocks, Twig threw the pickax over her shoulder and quietly scampered off into the tunnels.

  With one mine already collapsed, she’d need to be especially careful. Twig picked her way through the serpentine tunnels, listening for signs of life. Careful not to disturb large rocks or sleeping cave spiders, she padded her way up in elevation alongside the ruined passageway. If she wasn’t cautious, she could easily snuff out her own candle—darkness, hunger, panic, or all three would consume her. Ahead of her, the tunnel was dim and growing dimmer. The only light she’d have going forward was from the one candle atop her head. Fear started its work early, prickling down Twig’s neck.

  “I’m scaredy,” Twig said aloud to no one. “But Tallow need me.” When she found just the right spot, she carefully positioned her pickax against a crack in the dull gray stone. The mine Tallow was trapped in should be just behind it. Her papa’s words buzzed mercilessly in her mind like a swarm of angry spelunker bees: “Never pick above your snout, else the darkness snuff you out.”

  She pulled Granny’s pickax back and swung.

  Bit by bit, rock came free from the tight alcove. With sustained effort, Twig chipped enough away to squeeze into the ruined tunnel. Her candle flickered across the mangled walls but illuminated only stones. No Tallow, not yet. For hours she waded through stone and dirt, up and up the tunnel, cutting in footholds as she went. If she was right, Tallow had made it very far indeed; otherwise, his body would have tumbled down to the mouth of the mine. Wax from her candle dripped down her snout, burning a warning: Continue on and your light too shall run out. The candle was half-spent and flickering. She was hungry and tired, but there was no remedy. Shadows closed in around her rapidly. She cupped her paws around her mouth and shouted, “Tallow! Tallow, me come to rescue you! Where are you?”

  Nothing. Swallowing the lump in her throat, Twig wiped her eyes and swung the pickax hard over her head. The metallic ring of steel striking stone clanged through the gaping passage and then transformed into a horrible rumble, tearing through the chasm like a snarl. The whole cavern began to quake. A crash like a scream and grinding rock overwhelmed Twig and threw her from the outcropping. She realized all too late that the scream was her own and the grinding rocks were the great gray fists of a cave-in much stronger than she. The falling debris struck her candle and her head, snuffing the flame out.

  When Twig finally came to, she was shivering from the cold. All around her, there was darkness so deep and inscrutable that she could not tell left from right nor up from down. Her head ached, and she felt bruised all over, but she couldn’t see her own limbs. And to make matters worse, she’d lost her grip on Granny’s pickax. Whimpering, directionless, Twig curled into a fuzzy, dirty ball, eyes wide and taking in no light. She’d be lost forever to this still, cold oblivion. “Me sorry, Tallow. Sorry, Granny,” she whispered, choking on dust and tears. “Twig’s been snuffed out too.”

  “Snuffed … out … too?” a voice in the darkness asked weakly.

  Twig sat up straight, turning her head aimlessly in the blackness. “Snuffed out too?” She repeated, staring down the void with puffy red eyes.

  “Snuffed … out … too …”

  As Twig crawled on all fours, hopefully in the right direction, her fingers brushed against a pathetic little lump half-hidden under the fallen rocks.

  It was Tallow.

  Summoning all her might, Twig dug the lost kobold free with her exhausted, scraped-up paws. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him.

  “Me sorry, Twig,” Tallow sobbed weakly. He fumbled for her arm and held on tightly once he found it. “Can we go home?”

  Twig couldn’t lie, but neither could she answer. They sat there for a while, in the total darkness, holding on to each other and a hope thinner than smoke.

  Crestfallen, with her eyes cast low, Twig suddenly caught sight of faint hints of silver: a stream of light was reflecting off something metal, pointy, and curved. Granny’s pickax lay a short distance away, illuminated like a beacon. Like a candle.

  Twig grasped Tallow’s hand, and they slowly made their way toward the pickax. Once closer, she could see a tiny pinprick in the craggy wall. A golden glow flowed from it, and Twig leveled her pickax. Tallow clung feebly to her as she hefted the ax high. She picked and she picked with every ounce of strength left in her.

  And then—she broke through, into the light.

  At first she could hardly look at anything. Her amber eyes squinted in the overwhelming brightness. While her vision adjusted, she felt the ground beneath her paws: it was oddly soft and warm. Plants sprouted beneath her and stretched farther than her stinging eyes could see. But even still, it was beautiful. A short distance away from where Twig had broken through the ground, a river of sparkling, clean water babbled playfully over red and purple stones. Peaceful flowers swayed above the verdant earth, such a pure white color Twig had never known existed. The air was astonishingly fresh, without the slightest hint of must. And above it all blazed an enormous yellow flame that needed neither wick nor wax.

  Twig pulled herself to her feet and stared up, mouth agape, at the great Wickless Candle. Even Tallow cracked open his eyes to stare in complete awe. Though it hurt to look at, she couldn’t pull herself away. After all those sleep times, begging Granny to tell her the tale her papa hated most, here she was, standing beneath the purest candlelight she had always believed in. But even as she marveled in the light, Twig had another realization: she must bring the Wickless Candle back to the Whiskersnoot clan, back to her doubting papa and her deserving granny. But how?

  Apart from the size of the flame, the Wickless Candle seemed to hang from an enormous blue ceiling that stretched on endlessly in all directions. She set Tallow down in a patch of white flowers and tried scaling the nearby boulders. Try as she might to scramble up them, she was still much too far away to reach the flame. A taller wooden structure looked promising, but even scampering up to the tippy top wouldn’t bring the Wickless Candle to her grasp. She swung her Granny’s pickax high as she could, but nothing connected. The Wickless Candle blazed on tirelessly and infinitely out of reach.

  Unwilling to give up, Twig looked around. If she couldn’t bring the Wickless Candle to her clan, she needed to entice them to come see it for themselves.

  “Twig!” Tallow calle
d, holding one of the white flowers. As he grasped it, all his scrapes and bruises healed before her eyes. How had this happened? And so quickly? Tallow brought the bloom to his snout and inhaled deeply. “Thank you, flower!”

  Twig stopped and stooped over the patch of flowers to admire them. As she did, her head stopped hurting, and her bruises faded away. “Thank you, flowers,” she breathed in wonder.

  Their golden centers and bright white petals reminded her of the shape of the Wickless Candle. Perhaps they would do instead. Gently she pulled a single white flower free of its roots and tucked it into her knapsack. It was still warm from the Candle’s shining light.

  “Follow me, Tallow.” Twig smiled and took the youngling’s hand again. “We go home and show proof of Wickless Candle!”

  “But we have to go through the darkness again.” Tallow’s ears folded back fearfully.

  “Darkness didn’t snuff out Tallow or Twig. And we find candle that never burn out. We can be the light now and be brave.”

  Legs driven by renewed confidence and hearts pumping with excitement swiftly carried Twig and Tallow hand in hand through the collapsed tunnel, down through the darkness that could stop them no longer, and back to the familiar embrace of glowing mushrooms and the echoing scrapes of shovels.

  “Tallow is alive!” Twig cheered, scurrying down the halls. “Tallow is alive!”

  “And the Wickless Candle is real!” chittered Tallow.

  For a moment, Tallow’s presence was welcomed with surprise and relieved embraces, but the mood soon soured. Twig’s triumph was greeted by the solemn, mournful eyes of her papa as he stood with his paws folded before him. The rest of the Whiskersnoot kobolds hunched low and held their heads lower. While Twig was gone, Granny had fallen very ill. She was not long for this world.

  Twig rushed to Granny’s side, dropping her pickax as she knelt. Granny lay nestled with several blankets piled atop her thin body—and even still, her paws were cold as Twig took them in her own. The old kobold’s eyes barely broke open to acknowledge her granddaughter’s presence.

  “Granny,” Twig choked, feeling her courage slip out uselessly between her teeth. “Me did it—me found Tallow. And me found the Wickless Candle. Have proof that Granny’s story is real.”

  As if it would shatter at her touch, Twig tenderly lifted the peaceful bloom from her knapsack. “See? Still warm from Wickless Candle. Looks like it too.”

  Slower than sweet syrup running down the edge of a mushroom cake, Granny ran her fingers over the petals. “I want … to see it,” Granny choked. “Me wick is running low, low … but me still have enough flame for this.”

  In that moment, Twig felt struck with clarity. The flowers beneath the Wickless Candle had healed her and Tallow. There were plenty of flowers just outside the mouth of the tunnel she had created. Perhaps they would heal Granny too! Twig watched as Papa Whiskersnoot looked to his daughter and then to his dying mother.

  “She should see the Wickless Candle,” he said.

  Twig called a group of young tenderfoots to the center of the mine. “Friends! Tallow is back with us! Me know you doubted before, but me have proof of the Wickless Candle. And there are flowers that grow beneath it that saved Tallow and will save me granny! If trust me, and we all dig up together, we can save her quick-like. And you can all see the Wickless Candle for yourselves! Have courage, friends, have courage!”

  There was silence for a time as decisions were made in little fuzzy heads. Then the tenderfoots all cheered and held their pickaxes high, nodding and wanting to see the undying flame above them. Twig jumped and thrust her fist in the air triumphantly. “Onward, Whiskersnoots! We dig above our snouts, but we dig careful! We look out for each other, and we will see the Wickless Candle!”

  The youths speared their way through the rock and began to pick upward at Twig’s direction. Her original tunnel was far too twisting and small, but together they cleared the path to the Wickless Candle in no time. With some paws steadying the stone, others spotting for the diggers, and still more guiding pickaxes, they managed to avoid falling stones or cave-ins altogether. When they broke through the surface, they had made a sloping ramp up through the rock and into the shiny grass field wide enough for six kobolds to pass. Each of them was blinded at first by the brilliant light, but as their vision returned to them, they stood in wonder of the stunning world they had fearfully cast off for untold generations. Eyes finally unclouded by doubt, they admired the flowering fields, the pleasantly bubbling river, and the great Wickless Candle.

  Behind them, the miners and Papa Whiskersnoot pushed Granny up the chasm in a mine cart filled with moss and blankets. She clasped the tiny flower in her folded paws atop her chest. Loving paws lifted Granny high and then laid her on the soft ground. The band of young kobolds wreathed her in the blooms, some forming chains of stems and draping them around her.

  Eyes finally unclouded by doubt, they admired the flowering fields, the pleasantly bubbling river, and the great Wickless Candle.

  “We here,” Twig whispered to Granny. “Wickless Candle is here.”

  Granny’s eyes opened, and she stared up into the light of the great Wickless Candle. A gasp of awe escaped her lips, and tears welled in her eyes. Twig watched as all the years of endurance and rejection melted into a justified smile. She seemed to relax for the first time in Twig’s entire memory. But on the bed of peaceful white flowers, Granny’s breathing was still harsh, and her paws still quaked.

  “What’s happening? Why no heal Granny?” Twig asked aloud, already looking to her right and left for more of the flowers. But Granny’s gentle paw turned Twig’s snout to face her. With a tear rolling down her long face, she was smiling wider than Twig had ever seen. Granny held her hand as tightly as her ailing muscles would allow.

  “It is me time to go, Twig.” Surrounded by the glistening white petals, she was radiant. “Me life has been full, and fuller yet for loving Twig. Me wick has run out—me wax spent. But that only bring me closer to the Wickless Candle. Me can rest beneath its warm light, thanks to Twig.”

  Twig held Granny Whiskersnoot’s hand long after her breathing had stopped. The Whiskersnoot kobolds gathered around Granny, pawing at her fur and brushing their cheeks against hers. Above them, the Wickless Candle burned brighter, bathing them all in its comforting embrace.

  Even though Granny’s candle had gone out, Twig was grateful for Tallow’s safety and Papa Whiskersnoot’s newfound good faith. Every day, she would climb out of the darkness of the mines and sit beneath the Wickless Candle, thinking fondly of her granny. She watched the brilliant flame float about the blue ceiling, moving from one edge of the horizon to the other, never flickering or fading. Twig wondered where it was going, what adventure it was on with her granny. On a particularly stunning morning, courageous Twig set out to follow the Wickless Candle. With Granny’s pickax in hand, she took to the hills, plateaus, and mountains of Azeroth, scaling the tallest peaks she could find. Each pick above her snout brought her closer to the Wickless Candle, closer to her granny, and out into the light.

  hronormu stirred with the first glimmer of the rising sun. He yawned and stretched and smiled upon the wonders of the waking world. A frigid breeze blew a dusting of snowflakes into his roost through the open arch that framed its entrance. Here, nestled high upon the mountainside, the cold was welcoming, familiar. Chronormu walked sleepily to the ledge and looked out upon the endless fields of snow and ice that stretched all the way to Wyrmrest Temple, the grand spire rising far in the distance. As if to greet him on this new day, the glowering clouds parted, and rays of sunlight shone down to warm his bronze scales.

  It is a good day to be a dragon! he told himself, as he did every morning. And yet, something in his otherwise happy heart squirmed, a nagging bit of discontent that left him feeling rather out of place.

  A shimmer in the heavens caught his eye, small at first, growing larger as another bronze dragon approached his roost. Chronormu smiled when he recognized h
is dearest friend.

  “Zidormi, good morning! Have you brought breakfast? Please say yes.” Just the thought of food caused a rumble in Chronormu’s empty tummy.

  The elegant bronze landed with a graceful flourish upon the ledge and grinned, offering a playful toss of her head. “No, silly. I came to hear your decision. Tell me what form you will be choosing!”

  All at once the rumble turned to knots. Chronormu’s brow furrowed into an embarrassed frown.

  Zidormi’s jaw fell agape. “Chronormu! It is less than a fortnight until your Visage Day! You mean you still have not decided on a mortal form?”

  It had been such a cool, bright, beautiful morning that the thought had simply not entered Chronormu’s mind. Well, of course it had, but he paid it no attention in the hopes that it would flitter away and leave him in peace. And for a few precious minutes, it had obliged. But no longer.

  Chronormu slumped, his long neck craning downward as his head came to rest upon folded claws. “Oh, Zidormi, I can’t make up my mind! There are so many possibilities, and just when I think I’ve made a decision, a different choice pops into my head. And what if I make the wrong choice? Please, tell me what you would do.”

  “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to choose how others see me, when I’m not even sure how I see myself.”

  Zidormi sighed and allowed the corners of her mouth to curl into a comforting smile. “We both know that I cannot choose for you. My own Visage Day is still several seasons away.”

  Chronormu chuffed, a plume of pale smoke rising from his nostrils. “I bet you already know what mortal form you’re picking, don’t you?”