But now the Trade District was too much a twin to the Old Town.
The mist hung over the shops, inns, and other buildings as if over a vast and intricate necropolis. Worse, bodies lay sprawled in greater numbers, as if many of the inhabitants had simply collapsed in midstep.
“They dead or sleeping?” Thura suddenly asked. The orc had kept silent throughout the journey. Her tone indicated an uncertainty she had likely been trying to hide. These were not dangers for which a warrior trained.
“No time to check or to care,” Mattingly replied. He pointed to a shadowed structure to the right. “That’s the building there.”
They reached the building — an inn — without any menace arising.
Broll and Tyrande exchanged concerned glances; their fortune had thus far been too good.
“Best if some of us guard the way down here,” the major suggested, eyeing the still street. The sounds of struggle were muted, as if Stormwind City’s last defenses were failing.
“I will find the room,” Tyrande decided.
“And I’ll come with you,” Broll insisted. “My shan’do would never forgive me for letting you go alone…and neither would I.”
Thura grunted. “I stay here, where an ax has room to cleave.”
“I’ll stay, too.” Lucan eyed the major and the orc and took up a place between them. Mattingly handed him a long dagger.
“We’ll hurry,” the high priestess promised. In truth, there was little the three could do to defend the vicinity; they served best as watchers.
The interior of the inn was marked by the body of a stout human who was likely a patron of the establishment. He sat in a chair, arms dangling at his side. His expression was contorted into such a look of horror that the night elves could not help but stop in their tracks.
Broll leaned close. The human was murmuring something. His brow tightened.
“We must go on.” Tyrande strode up a set of wooden stairs two steps at a time.
Broll eyed the man a moment more, for some reason finding this victim of particular interest. Then, still dissatisfied, the druid followed after Tyrande.
He reached the upper floor to find several doors already flung open. Far ahead, Tyrande shoved aside the one at the end.
“This is it…” the high priestess said.
But as Broll joined her, he saw nothing but a nearly empty chamber with several flowering plants — still fresh and well-cared for — and a bed that was covered with a woven green blanket.
“She’s gone…” the druid muttered. “They said she was asleep, like the others.”
Tyrande wordlessly stalked into the chamber, seeking the wooden wardrobe at the far end. She flung open one of the two doors, the creaking sound echoing ominously.
The high priestess prayed. The light of Elune came down and spread over the interior…but then focused most on one empty corner. Tyrande reached to that area.
She clutched something unseen. As the high priestess raised it up, the light restored the object to visibility.
It was the hearthstone.
“It looks old,” Broll commented.
“Brought by a survivor from Zin-Azshari,” Tyrande said with some distaste. “I would have had it destroyed merely because of its original ties to that accursed place, but creating a new hearthstone is even more monumental than changing an old one’s spell patterns…”
Long, oval and crystalline, it was covered with soft blue runes that glowed. Those runes were particular to the location to which it was tied and the one to whom the hearthstone had been given.
With it, they could travel instantaneously from any distance to the hearthstone’s origin point…in this case, Darnassus.
“Why did the ambassador have this?” the druid asked.
“To escape from here, if necessary.”
“Hmmph. Worked well for her, didn’t it?”
The high priestess said nothing, instead intent on the artifact.
Originally, it had been crafted by arcane means, but the Mother Moon had provided her with the power to alter it once already. She clutched the stone in both hands and began a prayer, hoping that the deity would grant her the ability to do it a second time.
“There’s something wrong here,” Broll whispered, looking around. “Something very wrong—”
Tyrande paid no attention. “The hearthstone is resisting. The ambassador is still alive, wherever she is…”
From the wardrobe there came a terrible howl.
Tyrande turned, but not in time to keep from being seized by a gaunt form that had somehow been hidden where even the light of Elune could not penetrate. It brought the high priestess to the floor.
The hearthstone went rolling free.
The maniacal creature lunged toward Broll. She was clad in the ruins of the robes of a high-ranking night elf, but it was a pendant tangled in her robes that definitively marked her as the missing ambassador.
“You’ll not take my children, demons!” she screamed. “You’ll not take them!”
Her eyes seized Broll’s attention, for they could not be seen.
The ambassador’s lids were squeezed tightly shut.
“She’s dreaming!” he warned.
And as the druid shouted, from without came a warning call from the major. There also came other screams that to the night elves were far too reminiscent of their attacker.
Tyrande prayed. Silver light from above bathed the other frenzied female before her. The ambassador seemed to calm —
But then a shadow passed over her face. Her mouth twisted and she began to scream anew.
On each side of her peeled away shadow creatures such as had attacked the high priestess in her tent. They lunged at Tyrande and would have seized her if not for the moonlight still near her.
The light shifted as if of its own accord, coming between Elune’s servant and her new attackers. The two shadows recoiled.
Struggling away from the ambassador, Tyrande called, “Broll!
The hearthstone! Take it up!”
He did as bade, but when he prepared to toss it to her, she shook her head. “You can use it now! It should be able to send you to Darnassus!”
“You want me to abandon you?”
“No! I want you to help us all by finding Malfurion! Go! I command it!”
She had never commanded the druid and he knew that she did not like ruling in such an imperious manner. Broll understood the necessity of what she wanted, though it pained him to leave her and the others in such straits.
“I’ll find him! We’ll stop this!”
He held the hearthstone and concentrated. The stone began to glow.
The shadow creatures focused on him. The line between nightmare and reality was slipping more and more and the druid had no doubt that these fiends were now capable of true and deadly violence. Broll knew that he had to keep his focus on the hearthstone and the location to which it was tied.
Silver light swallowed up the nearest of his attackers. The shadow let out a pained hiss and twisted into itself before fading.
The second turned to Tyrande, who struggled with the unfortunate ambassador. Broll almost pursued the creature, but Tyrande glared at the druid.
The hearthstone flared.
Broll vanished from the room —
— And materialized in Darnassus.
A Darnassus in the midst of a horror all its own. Broll was tossed up and down. He lost his grip on the hearthstone, which tumbled out of sight.
At first the druid thought that Darnassus was suffering an earthquake, but that was very unlikely here atop Teldrassil. Then his heightened senses revealed the terrible truth; it was Teldrassil itself that attacked the night elves. Branches assailed every structure. The huge ones upon which the city had been built were shaking, the cause of the quake. Everywhere, black, thorned leaves stormed down on the citizenry, piercing their flesh or leaving long, vicious cuts. Several bodies lay sprawled over the once beautiful terrain.