“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.