The land was draped in a wet, festering substance that bubbled.
The beautiful emerald shading had become the putrid color of rot.
What trees there were had become deformed parodies of themselves. Their leaves were black, sharp, and filled with poisonous stickers. Small dark vermin crawled over the scabby bark, often pausing to dine on the thick, odorous sap dripping from cracks in the trunks.
“Cenarius, preserve us…” the druid rasped. Still eyeing it all in disbelief, Broll took a step forward. A crunching sound beneath his feet made the druid look down.
The ground was covered in small green-black scorpions, sinewy millipedes, finger-sized cockroaches, spiders with bodies as large as fists, and more. A thick, sticky tar now coated the underside of Broll’s sandal, the results of crushing several of the creatures with his step.
“They are everywhere,” Tyrande breathed. “They cover the ground for as far as the eye can see…”
“Not for long,” the green dragon responded with much determination. He breathed over the ground. It was as if Eranikus had exhaled flames. The crackle of thousands of tiny bodies burning to a crisp filled their ears, and even the dragon shuddered at the sound.
The land Eranikus had razed was now charred black. He nodded at his handiwork.
But from the crusted forms there came movement. Out of one burnt roach carapace burst a number of segmented legs. A new cockroach as horrific as the last emerged from its predecessor.
And to the dismay of the three, the act was repeated from every ruined corpse. Whatever Eranikus had destroyed was replaced…
Tendrils of mist played around the macabre scenery, as if seeking to regain the air Ysera’s consort had cleared. The green dragon let out another burst, which pushed the mist away again
…for the moment.
“It is monstrous…” the high priestess said, trying without success to carefully pick her steps. Each footfall was followed by more crunching and the sound of the thick tar oozing from the shattered bodies. Worse, the moment that she stepped away, the hideous rebirth of her victims began.
“This is only part of it…” Eranikus muttered, the gleam of his eyes muted in this place. “I sense that the Nightmare has strengthened, worsened more than I could ever have believed…”
And as he spoke, they all became aware of movement at the edge of the mist. Shapes that were almost seen…but not quite.
“The shadow satyrs have returned,” Tyrande decided.
Eranikus said nothing. Instead, he exhaled again, bathing the closest of the vaguely seen forms. As with the fiendish creatures beneath their feet, there immediately came the sound of burning.
But then, frantic and pleading shrieks all but deafened the trio.
Stunned, the green dragon quickly cut off his attack. Broll and Tyrande clutched their ears at the terrifying sound. These were not the cries of monsters vanquished.
“May Ysera forgive me!” Eranikus managed as the mist burned away and his victims lay revealed.
They were — or had been — night elves, humans, orcs, dwarves
…members of all the mortal races. What remained after Eranikus’s merciless attack were charred bodies that continued to quiver, that sought to reach out for help or at least an end to their suffering.
Ignoring the vermin, Broll raced to the nearest, Tyrande at his side. Eranikus remained where he was, the green dragon clearly shaken by the harm he had done.
“The sleepers…” Broll realized. “These are the sleepers…”
“I may have slain all of them in Azeroth as if I had stood over the bed of each and scorched them with fire!” Ysera’s consort growled. “Unable to escape their dreaming, they would have suffered as they have here!”
“You don’t know that,” argued the druid. “You don’t—”
The brittle bones of the night elf over which he had been kneeling shifted.
A blackened, fleshless hand gripped his wrist and a skull with two ruined eyes bent up toward him.
The ruined corpse shrieked its agony again. It reached with more ravaged fingers.
Broll tugged as hard as he could. “I can’t free myself!”
Tyrande readied the glaive, then hesitated. Instead, she prayed.
The shrieking subsided. The skeleton faded away.
But other victims renewed their mournful cries. Tyrande continued her prayer, using one hand to spread the power of her patron across the visible landscape.
The ravaged bodies disappeared. Only when the last had gone did the high priestess cease her efforts. By then, she was shaking.
Broll and Eranikus were not much better. “They were suffering!”
the druid spat. “They were really suffering!”
“I did not know!” the dragon retorted defensively. “I would do no harm to the innocent! It is the Nightmare,” Eranikus reminded them.
“It knows what hurts you the most, what you fear the most…and it feeds off that…”
Tyrande took some hope from that. “Then, is this all illusion that we face?”
“No…the greatest nightmare that the Nightmare offers is its growing reality.”
That settled it for Broll. “We must find Malfurion and quickly…”
He looked into the mist, for the first time realizing the enormity of what he suggested. “But…which direction?”
“I will find where he is,” the high priestess declared with utter conviction. She looked haunted. “No one, not even you as a fellow druid, know him as I do, Broll.”
He did not deny that fact. “But I have a thought as to how to search, also. I—”
The landscape abruptly shifted. The night elves were tossed to the infested ground. Eranikus chose to rise up over the trouble.
However, even there he was buffeted.
At last things calmed. Tyrande pushed herself up, quickly wiping off those millipedes and other carrion creatures that still stuck to her. Broll murmured a spell, but the vermin would not listen to him.
They were not like the fauna of Azeroth. Like the high priestess, he resigned himself to brushing them away.
Eranikus alighted. The high priestess eyed him reprovingly.
Surprisingly, the green dragon looked away in guilt.
“What happened now?” Broll asked Eranikus. They were now in a hillier region, with ominous, shadowed paths that disappeared into the infernal mists.
“This is the Nightmare; ask me not the reason for anything that occurs here save that it is not something we should want!”
Tyrande peered ahead. “There is a castle or some structure ahead. On that third hill.”
Both the green dragon and Broll shook their heads, the druid saying, “There’re no buildings anywhere save the Eye.”
“Then whatever I see must be part of the Nightmare.” Before she could add more, there was yet again movement in the mist.
The high priestess did not waste time, illuminating the vicinity with the Mother Moon’s light.
But what she revealed was not what any of them expected.
It was Lucan Foxblood.
“You!” Broll rumbled. He seized the human before anything could separate them. Lucan stared at him with eyes as wide and as hollow as death, but was clearly no phantasm.
“You’re real…” he whispered. A faint, somewhat mad grin flickered across his drawn face. “It’s you…” He looked to Tyrande and his grin grew a little calmer. “And you…” Then he saw what loomed behind the night elves and his growing relief vanished.
“We are all your friends,” Tyrande reassured him.
Lucan settled down. “Real…all of you…” His eyes darted to the side. “I tried to leave, but something held me here…I tried to leave, but something wanted her to keep on…”
The druid seized hold of the last part. “‘Her’? The orc, you mean? A female?”
“Yes…yes…”
“You know as well as I do that there is little difference between a female and a male orc when it comes to battle,” Tyrande pointed out to Broll. “One should never underestimate either.”
“I wasn’t thinking that. Just wondering who she might be and why she happened to be here.”