The night elf passed out, aware in the last moment that death was coming.
Then the bark gave way again. The pressure eased. Fresh air stirred Shandris, though not enough to keep her from falling forward.
She landed in the arms of a powerful figure. Shandris struggled to recover, certain that her captor had come for her.
A musky scent assailed the night elf, shaking her into consciousness. She peered up at who held her.
It was a tauren.
Hamuul Runetotem gazed down at her with narrowed eyes. “So… it is you…”
19
AWAKE TO THE NIGHTMARE
There was no hope. In all his long existence, Malfurion had known such distress only once. That had been during the War of the Ancients.
The green dragon sent earlier by Ysera still carried him, Tyrande, Broll, Lucan, and even Thura from the catastrophe. Not only were the green dragons in retreat, but the defenders below, aware of what had happened, were also in complete disarray. Their morale was as low as Malfurion’s, perhaps even lower. They knew that they had slowly been losing, but now they saw that their efforts had actually been nothing but lies. The Nightmare had teased them, waiting for its opportunity.
With Ysera…it can do anything! Why did she risk herself for me? True, Ysera’s actual capture had been due to Lethon’s trickery, but she would not have been at risk in the first place if not for her inexplicable interest in making certain of Malfurion’s escape.
“It is gaining on us!” Tyrande called.
She spoke the dread truth. In his mind, Malfurion saw the gleaming shape of another druid in dreamform grasped not by the tendrils of the shadow tree, but by the previous victims of the Nightmare. The clawing hands rent the dreamform as if the night elf were made of flimsy cloth. He screamed as his very being was torn into a thousand pieces —
Barely a moment later, Malfurion saw the druid now at the forefront of the Nightmare’s monstrous throng. His dreamform was now darker and gaunt. Now corrupted, he stretched his twisted fingers toward the nearest remaining defenders seeking to make them join him.
Yet however terrible his failure, however impossible the odds,
the archdruid knew that he could not surrender to the inevitable. He could not let another fall to the Nightmare while he fled.
But as he again struggled to free himself, the green dragon shouted at him, “This is not the time! She did not give herself so that you would be lost again! My queen emphasized to us just before the attack that you are more valuable to Azeroth than even she and though we had trouble believing such, we must trust in her word now!”
“ ‘More valuable’?” Malfurion was incredulous. “Staving off the Nightmare for as long as she already had surely affected her mind!” He fought harder and finally felt her hold on his dreamform loosening.
Tyrande sensed what he was doing. She reached for the archdruid. “Malfurion! Don’t!”
Her hand slipped through his dreamform. Malfurion struggled to pay no attention to her. A part of him wanted nothing more than to stay with Tyrande, but his duty was elsewhere.
However, to his dismay, his surroundings began to fade away.
Too late, the archdruid realized that in seeking to free himself of the green dragon’s spellwork, he had begun something else.
“No!” Malfurion tried to stop the inevitable —
“No!”
The archdruid sat up with a start. Pain immediately wracked his body. He clutched his chest and rolled over.
He was back in his barrow den, the accidental result of his attempt. It should have come as no surprise, the bond between his body and his dreamform naturally strong.
But something was wrong. Clenching his teeth, Malfurion struggled against agony. Was this the result of being gone so long?
The archdruid let out a guttural sound as he fought. In the back o f his mind he became aware that he could not have possibly survived this long without the aid of others.
His body in general was in fair shape. That he could also sense.
He felt the touch of Elune, a force the night elf knew well through Tyrande. Malfurion had no doubt that his love had been the one to organize efforts to save him.
Yet, though he groaned loud, no priestess now came to his aid.
Slowly, he won the struggle. As that happened, Malfurion suddenly sensed something only his experienced, highly attuned druidic skills could have uncovered.
The source of his suffering — and what still sought to slay him — was a small, very small touch of powder. He readily identified the magically-enhanced herb used in its making. Morrowgrain.
Morrowgrain was rumored to be used in certain primitive curses.
But while the herb itself was potent, someone had not been satisfied with its innate power. The subtle spell around it should have been enough addition to guarantee Malfurion’s slow but certain death.
But whoever had done it had underestimated the healing light of the Mother Moon. The work of the priestesses had been enough to keep Malfurion’s unoccupied body functioning, although eventually the poison would have done its work.
Malfurion fixed on the powder, gathering it back together from where in his body it had spread. He created of it a festering ball —
At that point the archdruid vomited.
He did not see the tiny sphere as it exited, but he felt its dire influence fade. Malfurion gasped for air as he slowly pushed himself up again.
Only then did he see the two priestesses. Both were sprawled on the ground of his barrow den. They were alive, but not conscious. Worse, they twitched and occasionally murmured fearfully.
The barrow den was also filled with tendrils of a sinister and toofamiliar mist.
Malfurion had intended to meditate again in order to return to his dreamform, but now he cautiously headed into the mist toward the entrance. There was nothing that he could do for the priestesses, a t least not for the moment. The archdruid needed to know the extent of the threat to the Moonglade.
But the tableau that greeted him as he stepped outside proved how wrong he could be. The Moonglade was entirely cloaked by the mist, giving it more the appearance of a graveyard. More disturbing was that there was not a sound to be heard, not even so much as a cricket.
Striding cautiously through the vegetation, the night elf came upon another barrow den. He slipped inside.
A still form in the familiar robes met his gaze. The hood obscured the sleeper’s face. Kneeling next to the other druid, Malfurion touched the other night elf’s wrist.
It was cold to the touch.
Malfurion quickly moved aside the hood.
The gaping mouth of the corpse sent shivers through the archdruid. The barrow den’s dweller had obviously sent his dreamform forth but had not been able to return in time. Malfurion wondered if the unfortunate had been one of those combating the Nightmare or if he had perished before that.
Unable at the moment to do anything for the dead druid’s remains, Malfurion retreated from the barrow den. He wondered how many of the other earthen dwellings had such bodies.
Knowing that he had more of a chance to help the living than the dead, Malfurion considered his best options. He no longer thought of meditation; the Moonglade had been tainted. To return to his dreamform here would be too risky. He had to go elsewhere, find the other defenders.
Most of all, he needed to find out what had happened to Tyrande and those with her. They had physically entered the Emerald Dream. To Malfurion, that meant a portal and the nearest to the Dream and the Nightmare was located in Ashenvale.
Yet barely had he determined to go there, barely had he begun to transform himself to storm crow form, than Malfurion realized that his efforts needed to be focused in a direction almost opposite to that in which he had originally planned to head. Although he had been long trapped, Malfurion knew that his people had been planning a new settlement to the west, an island off the coast. Even through the Nightmare, Malfurion had sensed the other druids’ powerful efforts to do — something. Unfortunately, in trying to keep his efforts hidden from his captor, he had not been able to discover the results of those efforts. He had hints and suspicions…