“You must be taught your places…” the beast hissed as the glaive returned to Tyrande.
“Away from the portal!” Broll ordered. “Retreat from it!”
The pair backed up, trying to return to Ashenvale, but the energies of the portal spread to follow them. No matter how hard they pushed, they could not reach the mortal plane.
Then a mighty figure reached for them. Gnarl, half-submerged in the portal energies, grabbed Tyrande with one huge hand and Broll with the other even as the sinister dragon surged forward.
“You cannot escape… the Nightmare is all around and all within you!”
As he said that, from the very air surrounding the night elves there formed shadow creatures that made Tyrande gasp. Although only silhouettes, they bore the semblances of satyrs, their muscular legs akin to those of furred goats and ending in heavy, cloven hooves and their heads bearing sharp horns that curved back. There were hints of other satyr features, the long tails and beards, the torsos and heads bearing resemblance to night elves.
The outlines of their savage claws were quite clear. That they were shadows added some new dimension of horror to those who had faced the true fiends in the past.
Their numbers increased in rapid order, threatening to overwhelm the trio. Gnarl thrust the night elves behind him, then confronted the shadow satyrs. They leapt upon the ancient with eager abandon. They scratched and tore and bit with ebony fangs and claws. They tore through the hard bark skin. A deep brown sap dribbled from wounds all over the ancient, but Gnarl seemed unimpressed by the injuries he received.
The ancient seized one shadow and squeezed. The silhouette scattered into a thousand pieces of shadow. Gnarl plucked another off of him, then did the same.
But the pieces from the first then gathered again in different places. From the one destroyed shadow was born half a dozen more. The same happened to the fragments of the second.
Yet the ancient had bought his two companions time to plot their own counterattacks. The high priestess threw her glaive. The weapon became whirling death, severing shadow after shadow.
The moonlight surrounding the blades then burned away the cut silhouettes.
As for Broll, he transformed, again taking on an ursine shape.
The huge, dark bear fell upon the shadow satyrs. Claws ripped and tore at the silhouettes, claws aglow with wild, purple flames. The shadows fell by the scores as Broll let his animalistic instincts all but take over.
The dragon’s foul laugh drowned out all other sounds. He swept toward Broll. “Your little flames won’t hurt me!”
The leviathan opened wide and exhaled. A great cloud of utter darkness shot forth.
It enveloped the druid. Broll could neither see nor sense anything. Growling, he slashed and bit, but found no substance.
Father! Father!
The massive bear snarled in distrust and anxiety. Broll knew his daughter’s voice.
No, Father, no!
He knew that this was not real, that this was a nightmare of the dragon’s doing…but the cry felt so real.
Just for a moment, Broll caught sight of a female night elf. That strengthened his yearning for Anessa. The druid reverted to his true form —
The shadows pressed him…but out of them also came the figure he had glimpsed. She gripped him tight and pulled him with her.
“Broll! Wake up!”
He blinked, not certain when his eyes had closed. “A-Anessa?”
“No! Tyrande!”
“Tyrande…” The druid’s senses returned. He stood next to the high priestess, who had one hand wrapped around his waist while with the other hand she manipulated the huge, gleaming glaive.
Elune’s light still embraced the weapon, giving it power against the shadow satyrs.
“He comes again!” she warned.
Broll did not have to ask who, for the monstrous dragon already loomed over them. Of Gnarl there was no sight, and the druid also wondered what had happened to Eranikus. Had he led them to this point so that this other dragon could deal with them? No…that makes no sense! If he had, he’d be here, too, making certain of our deaths!
But what mattered most at the moment was surviving. The dragon dove down. His mouth opened wide and Broll feared another exhalation of dark nightmares.
Then, with a guttural roar, Gnarl reentered the scene. Bits of his bark skin hung from the ancient’s body and the sap dripped everywhere, yet Gnarl showed no slowing as he seized the reptilian monster.
“They will not be yours, Lethon!” he grated.
“You will all be ours…” the corrupted dragon mocked. “Azeroth and the Dream have been inexorably intertwined since the world’s creation… and thus you are linked to the Dream and what it is… You cannot hide from that within all of you…”
Lethon… Broll knew that name. “He was slain!” the druid told Tyrande as they battled to escape the energies of the twisted portal. “Lethon should be dead!”
“Then how does he exist here?”
The druid suddenly understood. It explained why the energies had reached out to the pair. “Only his dreamform still thrives! He’s a green dragon, one of those most bound to the Dream! Whatever corrupted him must’ve been able to keep that part of him ‘alive,’ but only so long as he stays from the mortal plane.”
“What happens if he does not?”
“We should try to find out,” Broll muttered. “Eranikus be cursed! If he knew about this… if this is why he left us to face the Nightmare alone…”
There was no time to say more, for the dark green shapes were converging on them again and, worse, Gnarl was finally losing ground to Lethon. Although the guardian was gigantic himself and embodied the power and sturdiness of the huge tree he resembled, Lethon was too strong. The dragon battled the wounded ancient down, then raised a paw that ended in massive claws.
The night elves had no hope of aiding him. Indeed, they were not only driven back by the ancient, but were then separated from one another by the fiendish silhouettes.
“Away from me!” Tyrande roared, trying to fight her way back.
With the whirling glaive and the light of Elune, she cut a swath through the infernal ranks. The shadow satyrs before her melted away as if dew touched by the morning sun.
Broll returned to his bear form, using the magical purple fire to enhance his powerful blows. Yet the nightmares seemed without end.
Lethon, meanwhile, had returned his attention to Gnarl. The ancient had managed to rise up on one knee but could still not fend off his gargantuan adversary.
“I have you now!” Lethon cried with a savage grin revealing many, many teeth.
“I have lived long…I do not fear death…”
This caused the corrupted dragon to laugh more harshly. “Dead, you serve us no purpose…”
With one mighty paw, he swatted Gnarl toward the deep mist.
The ancient managed to bring himself to a halt at the very edge.
Clearly staggered, he nevertheless defiantly rose to resume battle.
From out of the mist came a dark, grasping hand. It was small, but it seized Gnarl’s leg with a ferocity that caused the ancient to look down. As he did, a second, identical hand seized one arm.
Other hands shot from the mist. They clustered together, as if all part of the same host. Gnarl growled and tried to pull away, but too many now had hold of him.
Broll roared a warning to Tyrande. The two night elves tried to fight their way to their rescuer.
Despite his titanic struggles, the ancient could not free himself of even one grip. More and more hands seized him. They grasped him as something starving might a morsel. Slowly they began to drag Gnarl back to the mist.
Lethon came between the giant and the druid. He swirled before Broll, the dragon’s chuckle sending involuntary chills down the great bear’s spine. Broll roared at the dragon as he tried to find some way past. Farther back, Tyrande struggled as the shadows renewed their attack on her position.
; “You waste your breath…no one can escape…no one can flee
…you will belong to us…”
Gnarl was half into the mist. Even still, more and more hands clutched at his arms, grappled with his legs, and clawed at his torso. Others pulled back the brave guardian’s head and even sought to smother his voice.
But Gnarl managed one shout. “Escape through the portal!
Escape through the—”
The hands — shaped like those of night elves, humans, orcs, tauren, and other creatures of Azeroth — now all but covered the ancient. There were so many that Gnarl himself could barely move.
One foot was dragged into the mist. A shoulder joined it, then the entire arm. Gnarl’s head vanished into the impenetrable fog.
The ancient shuddered. He seemed to go limp.
The hands pulled the rest of him within.
Tyrande had been seeking a path on the other side of Lethon, but not until Gnarl had vanished did it suddenly open. So desperate to reach their ally, the high priestess took a few steps forward before realizing that not only was it too late for Gnarl, but that Lethon had let her commit herself in order to make her the next victim.
The first hands reached out, as hungry as ever. Forced to save herself from Gnarl’s fate, the high priestess turned from Lethon to battle the hands with both Elune’s light and the glaive.
A titanic bellow shook the three combatants. A glistening form appeared among them. Eranikus.
The emerald dragon’s closed eyes fixed on Lethon.
The corrupted leviathan suddenly roared. He twisted and cried out, “The trees…they close in on me!”
As he said this, Broll and the others saw what appeared to be soft, misty trees truly gathering around the corrupted dragon. To the druid, they seemed harmless, healing…but to Lethon it appeared as if their mere touch was poison.
But then Lethon shook his head. The trees of mist dissipated.
Lethon’s expression toward Eranikus was murderous. “I am beyond such petty dream attacks! Indeed, you dream too much, dear Eranikus…you dream too much and understand too little of what I have become through the growing power of the Nightmare…” The seared areas healed. Lethon leaned forward and though he did not stand as great as Eranikus, he was fearsome. “But you will understand again, when you are one of us once more…”
Lethon’s eyes widened…and as they did, they changed, revealing that what the party had seen earlier had been illusion.
Now came the dread reality.
They were pits, pits so dark that they seemed to want to swallow those upon which they were focused. There was in them the same hunger, the same horror, that the hands had exhibited. Yet in the dragon, it became a different evil, a personal one.
“I am only corruption now, Eranikus! It has consumed me and I savor that consumption…”
“Then…there is no reason for you to continue to be…”
Ysera’s mate glared at Lethon.
Broll noticed that the corrupted dragon did not cringe or fight.
Instead, Lethon waited…with anticipation.
“Eranikus!” the druid shouted. “Beware! There is another!”
Lethon’s head turned and the hollow eyes sought to tear out Broll’s very soul. The druid let out a gasp but fought the dread feeling.
The mist nearest Eranikus coalesced into a horrific form that was the Nightmare embodied. It was one of Eranikus’s kind, but only just. The great majesty that was a green dragon had been replaced by a thing so diseased that its flesh rotted. It was female, but only barely recognizable as so now. There were tatters in the violet membranes of the wings, and a stench of decay washed over the night elves.
Tyrande shuddered, reliving the initial war against the Burning Legion, when the land was covered in the innocent dead. Broll let out a rumble of pain as he watched Anessa perish again, along with so many others in the far more recent battle against the demons at Mt. Hyjal.
The new terror had sinister black orbs whose centers were a chilling bone white. She seized upon a startled Eranikus, sinking skeletal claws into his forelegs.
“Have you forgotten dear Emeriss?” the macabre dragon asked in a voice that literally chilled. “We yearn to have you back with us, Eranikus…”
“No! I will not let the Nightmare take me again!” He turned his stare upon her.
She spat. A putrid green substance covered Eranikus’s eyes.
He roared and tried to wipe the foul stuff away, but she held him tight. Worse, Lethon now joined her in the attack.
“We have missed you so much…” Emeriss cooed. “Do not fight our embrace…accept the inevitable…”
“No! Never! I cannot! I will not!” Yet, despite his protestations, Eranikus could not prevent the pair from beginning to drag him toward the mists. There, the hands reappeared, grasping at the air in anticipation of the struggling leviathan.
Neither Broll nor Tyrande could do anything; they were barely able to hold their own as the shadow satyrs renewed their eager assault.
Crimson fire from behind Ysera’s consort bathed Emeriss and Lethon. Startled and enraged, they released their hold and retreated to the mists. Eranikus immediately fled the portal, in his anxiety utterly forgetting his two companions.
But other aid came to them. Two great hands made of soft, red energy swept away the dark throngs, then gently lifted the druid and the high priestess as if they were toys. The hands withdrew, pulling them to safety beyond the portal.
The dark emerald forces immediately after returned to their normal state.
Eranikus lay sprawled far to the side, Ysera’s mate panting. His gaze was turned from where the night elves and their savior stood.
Their savior…yet another dragon.
A red dragon.
A very, very large red dragon, one who dwarfed even Eranikus.
Two massive horns thrust back from a proud, reptilian head.
Most of the behemoth’s body was of a stunning crimson, but the chest had a great patch of silver to it, as did the paws. Small webbed patches extended from each side of the head.
Yet what set the dragon apart from any of the others — aside from the immense size — were the eyes. They were not the glittering orbs of Eranikus’s flight, but rather a smoldering golden light that, despite the night elves’ previous predicament, brought calm and hope.
When the dragon spoke, her voice was commanding but soothing. “They have fled. They did not expect me. Sad to say, I did not expect them, either, or else I would have been ready to aid you from the beginning.”
“You…are an Aspect…” Tyrande solemnly declared. “You are—”
The gargantuan dragon bowed her head. “I am…Alexstrasza.
And I know you, Tyrande Whisperwind, from both that long-ago struggle now called the War of the Ancients and the blessing of Nordrassil soon after it.”
“Alexstrasza…” The high priestess stirred at the thought of another name related to the Aspect, that of a second valued ally.
“Krasus! Is he here also? Does he still live? He would have some answers for us—”
The dragon shook her head. Her gaze grew troubled. “There are many sleepers, Tyrande Whisperwind… and he is among them.”
The female night elf frowned. “I am sorry for you.”
The Aspect cocked her head, startled. “You are sorry for me?”
Alexstrasza glanced at Broll, who hid his curiosity as best he could.
Like most druids, he knew of the two magi Krasus and Rhonin, very active in these times, who were said to have played a part in Malfurion’s growth as a druid some ten thousand years before.
How that could be, his shan’do had never made clear. “And is he, also?”
“He does not know. I know because of Malfurion.”
“As is just, considering your part in so much, Tyrande Whisperwind.” To Broll Alexstrasza said, “And it is just that you also know. My consort Korialstrasz and the mage Krasus are one and the same.”
&nb
sp; “One and the same?” It explained so much, yet Broll knew that he would have never made such a connection himself.
The great dragon rose up on her hind legs and folded in her wings. As she did, she began to shrink. Her wings shriveled, quickly turning into nubs, then nothing. Alexstrasza’s forepaws became arms and her legs twisted outward, resembling more those of a night elf.
Now barely twice the height of Broll and only a fraction of her former girth, the Aspect continued her remarkable transformation.
Her maw receded into her face, becoming a separate nose and mouth. The horns dwindled and lush hair sprouted. In another blink of an eye the change was nearly complete, and a figure who was and was not any sort of elven offshoot stood before the druid and his companion.
Lush tresses of fiery hair — and, indeed, there were licks of flame constantly escaping the wild mane — cascaded down her slim shoulders. Alexstrasza was clad as a warrior maiden, with long, armored boots rising to her thighs and a breastplate that accented the curve of her feminine body. Her hands were shielded by intricate gauntlets reaching almost to the crooks of her arms and a crimson cloak that resembled a membraned wing in form fluttered behind her. What had been her horns were to Broll’s amazed gaze either an intricate headpiece well-placed atop her head…or still smaller horns.
Crimson, violet, and touches of blue-black — all framed with gold edging — were her garments’ colors, and her skin was a soft brownish red. Her face was rounder than that of Tyrande or any night elf, almost as if mixed with human traits. Her nose was smaller and her mouth perfectly curved. Her hair formed a widow’s peak and then framed her face on both sides.
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