Stormrage

26 NIGHTMARE WITHIN THE NIGHTMARE

King Varian stood with the host, watching as the Nightmare flowed forth. There were things both distinct and indistinct within its murky airs, some recognizable, others not.

The gathered host awaited not only his signal, but that of Broll.

Varian was not so vain that he thought his command of the situation absolute; indeed, he thought just the opposite. Like everyone, he had expected Malfurion Stormrage to be the one through whom the druids and their allies would coordinate with his army.

But when Broll had briefly touched his mind, telling him that it was he who was to be Varian’s contact, the lord of Stormwind had not very much minded. The two had shared savage lives as gladiators and knew one another’s ways well. Thus, when Broll finally warned that the moment had come, the pair easily slipped into their old roles as comrades in war.

The dreamform army surged forward to meet the darkness. As the Nightmare converged on them, shadow satyrs formed in multitudes, their claws sprouting more than a foot long.

Yet just before the first of the fiends could strike, the druids and other spellcasters gathered began their own assault. The druids led the efforts, for they knew the Dream and the Nightmare best. Silver fire lit the landscape, sweeping across the infernal ranks. Shadow satyrs by the scores burned to nothing.

In the chaos, Varian’s followers struck. Their dreamform blades cut through satyr after satyr, but, unlike in the mortal world, the creatures did not re-form. Rather, like ribbons of sliced silk, they fell in tatters that were crushed underneath the encouraged defenders’ feet, hooves, and paws.

The druids worked with what still thrived in the little part of the Dream remaining. The seeds of trees became a rain of furious missiles that landed within the Nightmare, then sprouted. Within seconds, new trees molded by efforts led by Broll and the druids grew tall among the satyrs.

One satyr slashed at the nearest trunk. The tree spurted a thick sap. The shadowy fiend pulled back with a hiss as the sap splattered it, despite the satyr’s supposed incorporeality.

But it did not end there, for the areas touched by the droplets spread and as they did, they burned away the satyr. The shadow sought to flee what it could not. Within a few scant seconds, the sap had entirely eaten away at it.

The trees began to extrude sap from everywhere, especially their branches high above. A rain of searing droplets guided by the druids fell upon a vast swath of terrain. Shadow satyrs burned.

The collapse of the Nightmare’s first lines energized the defenders. Though they suffered losses, there seemed hope after all. Bitter enemies willingly fought side by side with one another, even shielding those left open. Not since the War of the Ancients had so many diverse forces come together. Indeed, coupled with the addition of the creatures summoned by Malfurion and the rest of the druids, it could be said that Azeroth was even better represented as one in this moment than ever before.

But Varian and Broll were concerned over what seemed too simple a battle. Remaining linked through Broll’s efforts, they passed on their wariness, their suspicions that the Nightmare was not to be so easily crushed.

And moments later their apprehension was vindicated. From the mist flowed the nightmare forms, as Broll had come to think of them

…the hideous, cursed dream selves of the Nightmare’s thousands of victims multiplied many times over. Drawn from the sleepers’ subconscious, they came in macabre versions of the innocents, which made them all the more horrific to the defenders.

“We must not let what they appear to be slow us!” Broll urged Varian. “They are only dreams!”

“I know…” replied the king grimly, already seeing multiple versions of both his son and the nightmare of his dead wife. Varian thrust forward with his sword and led the way, cutting at the first image of his son. Even though the visions of his wife helped remind him that this was not the true Anduin, he still cringed as Shalamayne cleaved through and the figure vanished.

And that, they all knew, was also a part of the Nightmare’s insidious intentions. Strip away the defenders’ morale.

But under the king’s guidance, the dreamform legions continued to press. There were costly hesitations along the way, but they could not be helped. Varian and Broll could only pray that seeing one’s loved one madly attacking them over and over would not wear down the brave souls.

Then, a garbled cry arose from one of the defenders. Varian glanced to his side in time to see one of his own soldiers from Stormwind — his dreamform a paling green — clutch at his own throat. The stricken fighter dropped his weapon, which, also being a dreamform representation, faded away. With a last gasp, the soldier keeled over.

His dreamform dissipated before it could even strike the ground.

There was no doubt in Varian’s mind that the man had not simply woken up, but rather died…

A second fighter, a gruff orc warrior, grabbed at his stomach, then, like the human, tumbled over and faded away.

As a third perished, Varian desperately reached out for answers from Broll. To his surprise, however, a different voice, a different creature, touched his thoughts.

I am Hamuul, King Varian Wrynn…you must beware…the Nightmare now strikes against us in Azeroth in a manner that should not be possible…

What do you mean? the lord of Stormwind demanded. Two more of his army dropped. The others were beginning to take notice of the mysterious, debilitating threat in their very midst.

The sleepwalkers are attacking the slumbering bodies of those who make up your host…and somehow are causing your fighters’ dreamforms to perish at the same time as their physical shells…again, it should not happen so! The dreamforms should remain “alive”…

The king bitterly recalled the nightmarish figures assaulting his men prior to Malfurion Stormrage’s summons. He had feared that they would turn upon the still, helpless bodies of the defenders and no w that nightmare had come to pass, with results even more terrible than he had imagined.

What do you suggest?

We must continue to fight… replied Hamuul. We must continue to fight…

Where is Broll? Varian asked…but the tauren did not say.

Another orc warrior collapsed and vanished. Varian let out a growl of exasperation and did as Hamuul bade. He had no choice.

None of them had a choice.

Where is Broll? he continued to wonder as he desperately slashed again at his son and wife. And where is Malfurion Stormrage?

They stepped out into what was clearly not any land near Teldrassil and Darnassus. A corrupted Remulos had used his new master’s power to drag himself and Malfurion far through the Dream/Nightmare.

Tyrande peered around, stunned. “Mal, where are we? Where is this desolation?”

The archdruid did not immediately answer, instead seeing to the unconscious Remulos first. When it was clear that the forest guardian was still out, Malfurion shifted to his true form, then surveyed what he could of their surroundings. The mists of the Nightmare were strong here, but there was something vaguely familiar about where they had stepped out. He was not surprised to find them near this place, considering that it coincided with the area Remulos had brought him, and had actually wanted to reach it…but like Tyrande, the desolation struck him hard.

“Close to where we must be, unfortunately,” the archdruid cryptically replied. Indeed, now was the moment he had been waiting for, but not all those he needed — whether they wished to be a part of his plan or not — were where they had to be.

He looked again to Remulos. The catatonic presence of Cenarius’s son was something for which he had not planned.

“Tyrande, can you see that he is protected? We may have to leave him here for a time…”

Malfurion did not add that the last was based on the assumption that they survived what was to come. If not…it would not matter where Remulos lay.

The high priestess bowed her head and prayed. A moment later, Elune’s soft light came down, piercing the mists. It settled on Remulos, draping him like a protective blanket. The forest guardian was completely covered.

“This will do him as good as anything,” she solemnly promised.

At that moment, a voice he had been anxiously waiting to hear from briefly touched his thoughts. I have a pair of roving fools for you…

They are not fools…any more than you, Eranikus…

The green dragon’s tone radiated his disagreement with Malfurion. I was a fool long before you contacted me in secret while the cartographer rode upon my back! I was a fool to agree to any plan…and yet, I could not refuse…if only on the slim chance it could help rescue her…

The archdruid had to push beyond Eranikus’s selfrecriminations and fast. Each moment meant that Xavius might divine his plan. You have both Lucan and Thura with you…see now where I need them to go…

After a moment Eranikus responded with a mocking grunt, Ah, the irony! They were very near where you desired…indeed, the human still babbles about the “thing” in some fissure —

No more! Malfurion warned. I will speak with them…

The archdruid reached out to the pair simultaneously. They were both startled, though Thura only momentarily. There was much bitterness in her mind at how he had used her. Though he had not had any choice, Malfurion radiated his sorrow for not only doing that, but being forced to demand more of them now. He quickly explained what he desired, incorporating factors both good and ill that his original plan had not contained.

They accepted his words in part for the same reason that Eranikus had…because to not accept was to welcome the Nightmare’s victory. Still, there was courage behind that acceptance and Malfurion was grateful for it.

Only the green dragon was any question to the archdruid. Yet Eranikus promised to do his part…so long as the night elf proved himself able to do his own.

That left only Broll. It had taken mere seconds for all to pass between Malfurion and the others. Now he reached out to Broll, pulling him from the battle and leaving Hamuul in his place as guide between the Alliance and Horde elements that made up those led by King Varian and Azeroth’s druidic defenders.

I hear you, my shan’do… Broll replied.

You are beyond being my student anymore, Malfurion reprimanded. No student could I dare ask what I must ask you now!

I’ll do whatever you say.

Another who believed so much in Malfurion that it made the archdruid sad. Many had already died because of what needed to be done and many more likely would.

He explained what he needed and received immediate assurance from Broll. Hamuul could be trusted to keep matters coordinated with King Varian and the others. The tauren would make certain that the efforts by the defenders would not flag.

They dared not…not even though it was very likely that, by themselves, all those whom Malfurion had gathered would prove insufficient to stop the evil tide.

And so, with the others hopefully soon where he needed them, Malfurion at last knew that he had to tell Tyrande where they were.

“This region looks much different now, but you must recall it.”

The high priestess had been studying their surroundings during his brief contact with the others. Her expression had grown more and more troubled.

“I cannot shake a feeling…” Tyrande looked into his eyes, her own growing as wide as saucers. “Malfurion, this is not where — but Suramar was taken—”

“Yes,” he murmured. “We are in Azshara…at the edge of what was once Zin-Azshari.”

The high priestess shuddered, then her resolve steeled. “Where do we go?”

The archdruid pointed to her right. There, some jagged hills could just be made out in the mist. The smell of the sea — the Coral Sea, they both knew — permeated the air and in the distance they could hear the crash of waves against the great cliffs overlooking the dark expanse of waters. Waters where far in the past the legendary night elf capital and the Well of Eternity had existed.

Tyrande nodded, then frowned. “He should have been pulled into the sea with the rest of it, Malfurion…”

The archdruid’s gaze narrowed in thought. “Yes…he should have been.”

Expression grimly set, she started toward the hills. However, Malfurion seized her arm. “No, Tyrande…this must be done differently.”

He threw aside the spear. Then, from his belt, the night elf removed what little bit remained of the branch that he had broken off. Malfurion had placed it there just before following Remulos.

To her surprise, he then sat down.

“Mal! Have you gone mad?”

“Listen to me,” he urged. “Watch me close. I must do something that may put me at great risk, but it needs to be done if the others are to play their part. Be wary…he could easily choose that time to strike us down.”

She eyed the mist. “It’s very quiet here.”

“And that is when the danger is greatest.” Setting himself into a meditative position, Malfurion shut his eyes. “If I do this right, it will take only a moment.”

Exhaling, the archdruid concentrated. Despite his concerns, he quickly began to sink into the state he required.

That which had once been the glorious Emerald Dream greeted him. Malfurion darted forward. His goal lay just ahead.

A shadow moved. It was not one of the satyrs, however, but rather that of the huge, wicked tree with the skeletal branches.

I have awaited your return…

He said nothing to the Nightmare Lord. Only a few yards remained —

The ground erupted. Malfurion’s dreamform was thrown back.

He kept his one hand tightly closed as he battled for balance.

The shadow limbs grabbed for him. Simultaneously, from the ground there issued forth grotesque figures, all of whom were recognizable to the archdruid as those whom he had known during the War of the Ancients.

Come join us…come join us… they echoed in his head.

Although he knew that they were phantasms, such was the power of his adversary that Malfurion had to struggle to remember that. Such visions had been what had initially set the night elf off guard enough for Xavius to capture him.

“Not this time,” Malfurion muttered. The archdruid clamped both hands together and molded what he held in his palms.

From Malfurion’s hands sprouted a long, silver staff. The shadow tree recoiled. Yet it was not the staff alone that caused the archdruid’s foe to be taken aback, it was that the staff had been formed from the very essence of the true tree that was Xavius, the Nightmare Lord. Malfurion, with his ancient knowledge and long practice, had brought a part of the physical world with him when he had entered by dreamform. It had taken much strain, but the need was there.

Raising the staff above his head, Malfurion spun it around and around. Emerald and gold streaks of energy flew from the tips. The streaks ate away at the mist.

“From what has stolen the Dream will come its salvation!” the archdruid proclaimed.

The macabre branches of the shadow tree receded further into the mist. Malfurion pressed toward it.

The ghastly visions of his past swarmed him, but the staff cut through them as if they were air. They vanished with terrible sighs.

He came within sight of the ax but did not go near it. Rather, Malfurion continued after the shadow of the tree.

But the Nightmare Lord was no longer retreating. Xavius perhaps sensed what Malfurion had known from the beginning.

One long, bony shadow darted forth from the tree. The shadow limb sought the archdruid’s chest. Malfurion had no choice but to defend. Staff and shade met in a brief, dark flash.

A tiny bit of the shadow fell away from the limb, immediately dissipating. Yet in the night elf’s head, Xavius chuckled. The Nightmare Lord knew that he could not destroy what had been drawn from his physical essence, but neither was it sufficient to cause him harm.

The end of this little drama draws near, Xavius mocked. And all you can do is fail and fail and fail, Malfurion Stormrage…

The shadow suddenly expanded over the archdruid’s view. The silhouettes of the skeletal branches again raked at Malfurion. One drew near the night elf’s chest.

Malfurion took the staff and drove it point first down upon the shadow. However, his strike missed and instead he buried the tip in the ground.

The branches sought to crush him in their grip. They failed, but Malfurion released his grip on the staff.

Xavius’s laughter came from everywhere. The shadows surrounded the archdruid.

Malfurion vanished — and woke.

But it was to find that the situation on Azeroth was little better.

“Mal! Praise Elune!” Tyrande cried.

All around them dark, massive tendrils thrust from the parched ground, racing toward where Tyrande had watched over a meditating Malfurion. They sought the archdruid and the high priestess like hungry leeches. Malfurion counted more than a dozen, with others adding to their number from the great fissures that now opened up.

Tyrande fended them off as best she could, the light of Elune having been shaped into a weapon resembling her favored glaive.

The agile warrior leapt between the seeking tendrils — some as thick as the trunks of oaks — and threw the deadly weapon. It sliced at whatever drew too near her and Malfurion, then returned to her for another expert toss. In seconds, several severed pieces lay scattered around her, yet the archdruid noted that none of the main tendrils looked impaired.

He saw why a moment later when she managed to cut off another piece. The tendril immediately sealed over its wound and regrew its tip.

“Pull back!” Malfurion shouted to Tyrande.

But in her determination to protect both of them, the high priestess finally made a misstep. One of the tendrils seized her leg and sought to drag her toward a steaming fissure.

Malfurion threw himself to her side, but the tendril proved stronger than both combined. Tyrande’s legs slipped into the fissure. She clutched at Malfurion as he tried to keep her from being pulled into the dark depths.

Slipping one hand to the offending tendril, the archdruid discovered that though it was of the plant world, it was also something more. He could not help but glance up in what he thought the direction of its true source. Even now it was impossible to see from whence what were not tendrils, but rather roots originated.

When Malfurion had been a prisoner of the Nightmare Lord, he had used his captivity to create roots that had stretched long enough to serve his purpose. Xavius, trapped as a tree for ten thousand years, had evidently done the same, only on a far more elaborate scale.

His roots stretched for miles around. Moreover, their mobility gave some hint as to how the tree could be where it was, instead of at the bottom of the sea where it belonged.

There was no time to cast a proper spell, no time to push against Xavius from a distance. Malfurion sought for assistance from Azeroth itself, but at first found only dead soil. There was nothing in it, no insects, no plant life…nothing. Xavius had fed on everything living in order to grow stronger, deadlier. The final, most visible part of the devastation had surely taken place only recently, though, for someone would have noted the dead land. The Nightmare Lord had been clever, likely eating his way up from beneath through his deadly roots, then finishing the rest when finally ready to strike.

And Xavius had been able to do all this in great part because of what he had been made into by Malfurion.

Both he and Tyrande struggled to keep her from not only being dragged under, but from the pair also being assailed by more roots.

Malfurion managed to deflect them, but knew that the Nightmare Lord was inexorably pulling the high priestess deeper.

The archdruid thrust deeper with his mind, seeking the life that had to be somewhere. He refused to believe that Xavius had made a wasteland of this entire region, especially having done so slowly and in secret.

But what Malfurion found instead was something even more shocking than what Xavius had done to their surroundings. It was an evil so intense, so monstrous, that it nearly caused him to lose his grip on Tyrande. Only his love for her kept the archdruid from failing. Yet another piece of the puzzle fell into place. Now it was clear how Xavius’s location had come to change.

Something welled up inside Malfurion. He sought again for Azeroth’s life forces and finally found them. The archdruid drew upon them.

Thunder roiled. The ground shook anew.

Lightning suddenly flashed farther ahead, in the direction the Nightmare Lord truly lay.

The roots released Tyrande. However, the ground began to seal shut. Malfurion barely tugged her free before her legs would have been crushed by the fissure’s sealing.

The pair half-dragged one another from the region of the tremor.

The ground shook and high hills were created by colliding ground and rock.

“What is happening?” Tyrande shouted.

“There are two forces battering against one another! One comes from the Nightmare!”

“And the other?”

He did not answer her, though he knew the truth. Somehow, Malfurion had stirred up Azeroth as he never had before. It was fighting back against the evil that was Xavius.

No…the archdruid frowned. That was more than Xavius.

They ran until they could run no more. Behind them, great upheavals of land continued. Now it was not merely the mists that obscured much of what lay ahead, but immense clouds of dust and vapor.

And still it went on.

But though Malfurion had raised up a force that astounded even him, he felt no sense of hope. In delving deep near the fissures, Malfurion had gone farther than he had thought. He had not only touched near Azeroth’s core, but also touched the place from which Xavius truly drew his sinister power. A place beyond both the mortal world and the Emerald Dream, but infesting both of them.

And in that foul place, he sensed something incredibly ancient — and somehow familiar — to him. The hardened archdruid shuddered.

There was another, darker force behind the Nightmare Lord…