(( Note: This entry contains references to locations and lore written by Blizzard Entertainment. I do not claim credit for any Azeroth lore referred to in sections of this post, nor any of the locations. All credit goes to Blizz. Another warning: This post contains some references to mature content, as well as some light gore. This post is not intended for anyone under eighteen. ))
August the Seventeenth
Another week, another storm… only this time, in a different part of the world altogether.
The thunderstorm pounded the pre-dawn darkness of the already-dark Darkshire, where a young woman sat at a desk, reflecting upon how her very first diary entry ever had started much like this – sitting at this desk, in this house, looking out the window at a storm much like this one, while a fire roared and crackled in the hearth on the wall behind her and too her left to keep the house warm, her head full of turbulent thoughts and emotions. The swirling, howling winds and the driving, pounding rain combined with the flashes of lightning and subsequent blasts of thunder to make for a chaos that mirrored that of the chaos within her own heart… much like it had that during that first entry.
Yet for all that, there were familiar comforts to ease the chaos. The simple things, like coffee with hazelnut creamer, the fireplace she’d spent so many years sitting in front of, staring into, during mornings and evenings of relaxation before moving to Pandaria, and still took lunches in front of when she came to town for her job. The familiar view of her hometown down the hill, however blurred by heavy rain it might be right now. The writing desk and chair she’d had since she was old enough to read and write. All the memories and nostalgia of this home she’d accrued over the years. And her diary, of course, and the mechanical inkwell that was an acquirement from Pandaria, from her new life.
These little things brought a small, comforted smile to her face, and the turbulent thoughts quieted down to a dull roar within her head. She poked the button on the inkwell that popped her mechanical pen out, took the familiar little writing implement into her hand, and applied tip to diary page.
Dear diary,
It finally happened!
I finally acted upon that dream I had that I wrote about way back on June the Eighth, the dream I have had once in a while for like ten years now, and have been having quite often over the course of this summer!
I was able to get my bestie Nah and my good friends Carilina Halverson (who wished us to call her “Mina,” as she was incognito for reasons that would take several pages to explain), Maya Maxwell, and Dame Annabelle Baker to go with me! They met me at the Mage Tower in Stormwind City, where we took a portal to the Caverns of Time. Our task could only be completed within a certain window of time in the years before the final invasion of the Burning Legion. I knew we’d never be able to talk a bronze dragon into sending us back in time, where we could potentially go mess everything up, but there IS that Timeway to the Culling of Stratholme open that was pre-Final Legion Invasion, yet post-Medivh death in the area we needed to go!
After that, we met near my house in Darkshire (where I’m at now, ironically enough), in disguise so that an older me wouldn’t be seen by the townsfolk (or past me), and we got started. The path my dream always takes me on, the hot, stuffy, dead place with the thick, still air, begins not far from my home here.
Our path was Deadwind Pass.
We saw the same awful things I always did in the dream, with the twisted faces in the trees, the dead, rocky land, and the corpses of men hanged by their neck, their wrists, or their ankles that never seem to rot enough to break and fall to the ground. The place stank worse than my dream, and was hotter and stuffier, too, which of course made it that much worse. The hike through was unpleasant, yet I wanted to follow the dream rather than fly through, because I knew that would be the only way to get it to stop.
Also as with the dream, our path didn’t take us straight through to the Swamp of Sorrows. It took us, instead, southward… toward Karazhan.
Medivh’s old tower rose high enough that we could see the peak several times as the path allowed a bit of a view toward higher points in the south of Deadwind Pass. Behind that was even visible the near corner of the walls of Zul’Gurub, ancient capitol of what was once the great Gurubashi troll empire that controlled the jungles south of Duskwood during its time.
We followed all the twists and turns of the path for some time, eventually coming to a turn in which, rounding the bend, the path took a somewhat steep ramp downward, and, upward, looming up high to the sky, looking impossibly tall to a person standing on the ground outside and looking up, there it was… the Tower of Karazhan.
The grey, dead land, the grey skies that never seem to let the sun through, and the grey tower itself all seemed like one horrifying, intimidating, daunting edifice of unwelcoming malice. Its domed top, the platform on one side and balcony on the other, each partway up, and the building housing a staircase to a backdoor halfway up the tower, and especially the front doors of the tower all seemed to house a malice that looked out at us and told us, silently, that we should not enter this haunted place.
Yet enter we did. My friends would not be swayed by me pointing out that this was our last chance to change our minds, and so, onward we pressed.
We entered the front door of Karazhan.
The quest I had come here for, the quest that I had tried to talk my friends out of assisting me with, was nothing more than a stupid, greedy, selfish power grab.
I wanted to reach the famous library, where Medivh kept innumerable books of history, fiction, mathematics… and magic. I wanted more magic. I have been well-versed in the specialization of demonology mastery as a warlock, trained from age twelve by my uncle Kanrethad, who specialized in the same for a long time before disappearing one day.
Once in the library, I could find books on Affliction and Destruction magic, I was sure. Medivh’s knowledge of demons alone was said to be absolutely staggering! I wanted to find a few more things on that subject as well, but mostly, I wanted to broaden my powers as a warlock to be more all-encompassing, and the recurring dream had been driving me to this for eons.
My uncle did warn me of this. He warned me that a taste of fel magic usually leaves a nigh-insatiable hunger for more power, more knowledge, more magic by the warlock, and that it was increasingly difficult to maintain control of one’s moral center when magics that depend on siphoning life off of living things leave one open to the temptation to use it on any living thing nearby. Just as it was difficult to dominate, subjugate, and enslave a fel minion of the Legion, dominating one’s own desire for the magic that nearby life provides would also be paramount. But, with his help, I had mastered control over that greedy thirst, and was always able to be around other people without issue.
The real challenge would be when I tripled that power.
Going from one specialization to three was going to triple the magical knowledge, and therefore triple the magical temptations.
Mastering that was phase one as we began our excursion inside Karazhan.
We immediately found ourselves at a three-way fork when we got inside… and beset by a malevolent presence that made me want to turn around and run far, far away. But we pressed on anyway, deciding that the stables to the left wouldn’t be the right way, if we wanted to make our way to the library. There was a stairway leading forward, upward, and to the right ahead as well, but the group opted for a third option – a door that lead off to the right immediately inside the front door of Karazhan that seemed to be a rather dour passage used by servants of the tower before its haunting became so severe.
It was immediately evident that these passages had seen no upkeep in many years. Parts of the walls were caved in, massive spiderwebs were everywhere, and rooms that served purposes we could only guess at now stood empty of all furniture or objects of any kind.
All the conversation before and after entering Karazhan was light-hearted and confident among Cari, Maya, and Nah, though Anna remained somewhat more quiet and serious. Anna’s Light presence and the confidence of my friends kept me going on, and for that, I’m thankful for them!
Even now, conversation was banter as we pressed through, wondering what the rooms had been.
All was seeming to go well, until, suddenly, the ghosts of two male men in servant’s garb appeared in one narrow stone hall in front of us! They seemed to be arguing, though we heard no words, and suddenly, one of them punched the other one right in the face! OH GOSH! The fight was on! One of them soon worked the other to the ground, pinning him there by the throat with one hand as he straddled his torso and incessantly pounding the poor man’s face with the other, reducing it to a bloody pulp. The man being pounded on looked terrified, as though he might be killed, and FLASH! There was a knife in his hand from his pocket! STABSTABSTAB! The man on top was already bleeding out heavily, and he went for his own knife, and SLASHED the other man’s throat! The man flopped around, hands at his throat, while the other man crawled to the opposite wall and sat slumped against it, bleeding out slowly as he watched the man with the slashed throat flop around for a few minutes, blood spraying the walls, until finally, they were both still, and then the ghosts – and the blood on the walls – disappeared.
OH MY GOSH! I was already in tears, horrified and sickened at what I had just witnessed. Even just as transparent ghosts, it was already too awful an image to shake! Nah was there in an instant for comfort, though the others looked a bit green as well. Shaken, we decided to press on.
We weren’t fast enough… the ghosts appeared again, approaching each other, beginning to argue, and, before I was able to make it around the corner, one of them punched the other right in the face! How long had their ghosts been doomed to relive their murders? How long WOULD they have to? This was just too terrible!
Composing myself, I got around the corner and caught up to the group quickly. Gosh, was I glad to get away from that hall!
Yet we had barely gone around a few more corners when two skeletons, corporeal skeletons wearing tower guard’s garb, approached! One had a sword and spear, the other a pike. The one with the sword and shield lunged forward without hesitation, slashing Cari in the arm. Maya went bear form, I summoned a few fel minions, and Anna and Nah had weapons drawn. The fight was on!
The skeletons seemed to somehow retain much of their combat training, as Anna, mace and shield in hand as she surged forward to defend us, traded blows with them. Nah practically danced in the shadows, so graceful was her knifework, and Maya raced forward in her bear form to defend us as well. Cari and I did our casting while Nah struck opportune blows from the shadows and Anna and Maya kept the skeletons at bay, and soon, the skeletons were overcome, though Cari’s cut needed healing, and Maya had taken a bash over the head from the shield skeleton. Dame Annabelle attended to them, healing them with her awesome skill in the Light, and we moved on.
Eventually, through many twists and turns, we found our way out of the servants’ passages and into a rather rich-looking, comfortable hall, much bigger, much more expansive, much better taken care of, and very well decorated.
But that’s not what made me gasp, nor made everyone stop dead in their tracks.
This hallway was filled with humans, Quel’dorei, and even the odd dwarf, and not a single one of them was wearing a single thread of clothing!
The debauchery in this hallway was on, as it was in every room in this hall, most likely, and it was so on, there was not even a measurement to describe the level of on-ness that was on. It was THAT on!
Cari had said many times on the path too, and through, this tower that Medivh’s parties of debauchery had been legendary among the Kirin Tor during her time of training in Dalaran, but even her warnings had not prepared me for this! I turned away immediately after coming upon the scene, not wanting to see any more of this.
Dame Anna immediately grumbled something about how Nat better not have come here because she had THIS type of dream, and the others, getting over their shock, immediately agreed that this was not the right way.
It was when I heard Cari say, “Oh, wow, she’s gorgeous… I never knew a spine could even bend that way…” that I completed a metaphorical transformation into a blood-red tomato and gratefully dashed after Maya when she pointed out a door immediately to the right that led out of the blushworthy hall.
We found ourselves on a lavish, ornate balcony, overlooking what appeared to be an area divided into two rooms below, on the far side. The scene here was far more tame. Everyone was richly dressed, gathered in several large groups, sipping wine, having conversation, appearing to be enjoying themselves. They were either oblivious to, or used to, the hallway behind us, and what went on in there.
We saw stairs going down to the left, a balcony wrapping around to the left above the stairs, and an ornate arch to the right that seemed to lead into an opera hall or theatre of some sort. The group agreed that down was backward, since we wanted to climb to the library, and the balcony around left came to a dead end over there, so we proceeded right, toward the arch.
We were nearly there when, suddenly, Maya just… DISAPPEARED!
We stopped in our tracks, wondering what was going on. Where the heck was Maya!?
“Oh gosh, POOFED!” I blurted out, much like when my Bestie Nah vanishes when she says her goodbyes.
Cari had the idea to see if Maya was within yelling distance. That was good thinking on her part, because she was! It turns out Maya had simply been teleported to the dead-end on the far balcony. We made our way to her, and found a very familiar ghost there…
It was my grandfather, my father’s father! He was standing there muttering about how foolish the nobles were for coming here, because they’d never get to see Medivh, and how he should have just stayed home with his family in Darkshire. Goodness gracious! We’d always wondered what happened to him when he came here when I was little and just disappeared. Now we know for sure that he met his end here. How sad!
We made our way back around the balcony, the group working to cheer me up. They were successful, after a fashion; I wouldn’t call being in a haunted tower with… weird things… happening in it prime conditions for being cheerful.
We barely made it into the back of the theatre when ANOTHER odd thing happened! The scene around us totally disappeared, and we were suddenly standing in the middle of an all-out BATTLE!
Stormwind knights and Gurubashi trolls were fighting, roaring, and dying all around us, and we were surrounded by battle and Stranglethorn Vale jungle and steel and spells! We were all yelling and dodging fighters and weapons and spells and trying to get free. It was terrible!
Cari then said this must be the Troll Wars, which took place eighty years before the Third War, she said. Maya asked if they really could hurt us, but no one was for sticking around to find out!
We dodged, ducked, twisted, and turned our way out of the battle, making our way to the edge of it, and relative safety. But only for a moment…
I was FOUND!
I was dragged from between two giant tree roots I was hiding between, kicking and screaming, by who-knows-who-or-what, and I was being dragged from the group!
The others leaped to their feat to come to my rescue, but then, the scene ended, and I was back in the back of the theatre again! But, the others weren’t there… what was going on!?
Soon thereafter, however, they burst into view themselves, having run through the same point in space in the jungle I had disappeared, according to them, and that got them out of the dire point in history in that jungle themselves. That was so weird!
I had read of this, I told them, and heard Father talk about it. Khadgar had apprenticed in Karazhan with Medivh at the age of seventeen, and apparently, he’d had this sort of experience himself in various parts of the tower, where he’d just turn a corner in a little-used hallway and suddenly find himself in another time and place altogether, witnessing one thing or another. I had never expected to experience that myself!
Cari was still talking of history, of how we must have been in the middle of the Troll War with the Gurubashi Empire, during the last ten years or so of King Barathen Wrynn’s reign, with Prince Llane Wrynn in charge of Stormwind’s knights. Goodness gracious, what a weird time-space jump to make!
We proceeded onward along the wall to the right, making our way around the audience’s sitting area and toward the backstage area. Down a ramp we went, under the stage, and up a ramp on the other side that led us to the actual backstage area. Meandering around, we found ourselves only just offstage, Stage Left, where a ghost introducing himself a simple “Barnes” told us we needed to hurry up with the show. But we weren’t performers! Yet he insisted, so we found ourselves in the middle of an intense scene!
We were in the middle of Little Red Riding Hood!
What’s more… GRIM appeared out of nowhere! We were so confused! I had JUST been wishing Grim was there with us, when POOF, there he was! He said he was just wishing he had made it on time himself, and then he’d just… found himself here! Something funny was going on in this tower, for sure… but I was glad that this time, the magic had done something positive, for once!
Nah didn’t know that play, Little Red Riding Hood, so I stage-whispered her lines to her… “Oh Grandmother, what big ears you have!” and the rest, and suddenly, the grandmother was a GIANT WORGEN CHASING GRIM! Only now, Grim was dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood somehow! Grim ran and ran, the worgen ever hot on his heels, but it was unable to catch my good buddy, thankfully! Eventually, Maya smashed up the worgen in her bear form, and everything on the stage just… disappeared! Ghosts are weird!
Stage Right opened up to us, which provided us with… another UPWARD path! We were on the right track!
Upward around the balcony we went, past fancy busts on pedestals and tapestries of mages wearing robes that Cari said were about three hundred years outdated. Bars laden with dishes of what must have once been fancy, expensive food and wines lined the walls in between ornate torches. Comfortable-looking tables and chairs sat in hemispherical nooks that jutted out from the balcony overlooking the stage every so often. It was clear that this is where the richest of the rich took their seats for Medivh’s actors to do their shows!
A ramp at the end of the balcony led upward to what turned out to be more of the same below, save for an entrance to the balcony with expensive-looking golden candelabra stands on either side of it. A fancy arch with fancy little pillars led into this side of the theatre as well.
Behind it, however, beyond an ornate stair with a particularly large and fancy trio of busts of a middle-aged woman and two middle-aged men, nothing was remotely ornate. As wrecked and run-down as the servant’s passages had been, this hall was the same. There was a door coming into the side, and it was clear this was the other side of the back door into the tower we’d seen from outside, the one about a third of the way up the tower that led from the building with the staircase in it across the bridge over a creek. Loaded with spiderwebs and rubble, this area looked utterly woebegone.
It was clear that this was another servant passage, especially beyond that side entrance. Shortcuts led here from the kitchens below so that the servants could provide guests with food and drinks as they dined and watched the plays. There was a ramp spiraling upward that had mostly fallen apart and seemed to be caved in, and a door underneath the bottom of that, a small, simple arch, that led out to a balcony.
With no other way to find our way up, we went out to explore the balcony.
The first thing the group did was to look up. We instantly wished we hadn’t; the top of the tower was still VERY high above us! Maya was swearing about the number of stairs we were about to have to climb, Dame Annabelle was guessing that there was a lift of some sort we’d likely missed, Nah was snickering about exercise, I was trying to distract myself from it all by looking out over Deadwind Pass from on high, Grim was saying nothing, just looking around at us, looking utterly unperturbed about the work in front of us, and Cari was trying to get over the fact that we’d come all this way only to find that everything we’d done had merely been just the LOWER floors!
Taking a break from climbing for a moment, we decided to make our way around the balcony, which went around the doomed roof of the part of the tower that extended out to one side.
It was there that we first saw HIM.
BOOM! Darkness! A Nether Portal opened, and a whole dang DREADLORD popped out!
He seemed to be rather angry that we’d come to this place, and was trying to intimidate us into leaving, but Nah, smirking told him we hadn’t come all that way just to throw it all away over a sudden fel minion popping out from nowhere. Cari and Maya were saying much the same, Grim had his swords out, ready for anything, and all were on the point of doing battle, when the Dreadlord, who had called himself Relthuras, said two simple words:
“Sleep now.”
The darkness intensified, and suddenly, all my friends disappeared! I looked around, trying to figure out where they’d gone, when suddenly, Nah reappeared. She was smiling as though nothing was going on, and reached out for me, and I felt instantly reassured and confident again. As long as I have my Bestie here, nothing can go wrong! She’d never let ANYthing happen to me!
We were talking, and Nah was being her usual confident, smirking self, and then, Dame Annabelle came, and Maya came in shortly thereafter, slinking in from the shadows, and Cari came in last, through a mage’s Blink spell, just appearing in the middle of us! We were all together again, and nothing, not even some weird Dreadlord’s spell, could keep us apart!
Smiling happily myself, I looked around. I’d already been to the library in this tower, of course, and had the knowledge I wanted. Affliction! Destruction! Their spells were mine! We were done, we could leave!
But first, I just wanted to try out a spell… gosh, the POWER! I couldn’t NOT use it!
I drew from life sources, which was the key, as with every time I fought a deadly enemy with my magic. I felt the power SURGE through me… Mastery of fel minions! Mastery of deadly afflictions! Mastery of the most destructive felfires imaginable! I cast spell after spell, reveling in the power, the power that was now MINE! NOTHING could stop me! I WAS POWERFUL!
I finally calmed down again, relishing the euphoria of wielding my new magics. I looked around. My friends were looking comfortable, resting on the floor, or leaning against the walls, smiling up at me in adoration, telling me how impressive my magic was, and that, no matter what, they’d always be my friends. How sweet of them!
Only…
There was something wrong…
Maya, in her worgen form instead of human, was missing all her fur. What was up with that? She sure looked funny without her – wait… she looked badly burned! So that’s what had happened to her fur! But how!? What had burned her!? And Nah… Nah looked… drained, there was no other word for it. She looked old, an elderly husk of her usually youthful-looking self. What the heck had happened to her? Cari… Cari was biting off her affirmations of lifelong friendship, clearing in excruciating pain, yet still smiling up at me. The powerful, usually stoic Dame Annabelle, a leader in the Church of the Light, and a steady, firm countenance, was pale, panting, barely breathing as she smiled up at me from where she sat against the wall.
What had happened to them?
Then I felt it.
Their life energies, their essences, I don’t know how to describe it, but… they were there, fueling my spells… spells that I had cast on THEM, just for no other reason than the greed for the power I was experiencing, power that I had drained THEM for...
HOW COULD I HAVE DONE THIS TO THEM!?
I fell to my knees, sobbing, begging their forgiveness, even as the light faded from their eyes, but, even with their last breaths, my dear friends told me not to worry, that they were happy I had achieved the thing I had wanted for so long, and they were happy to sacrifice themselves for this.
NOOOO!
There’s no way this was acceptable, that this was okay! I wanted them to rage, to storm, to scream at me, to attack me with their final breaths, but they didn’t!
HOW COULD I HAVE DONE THIS TO THEM!?
And yet I did… I did…
I fell to the floor, face down, sobbing into my crossed arms, begging the now-lifeless forms of my friends for forgiveness. Forgiveness I knew would never come…
WAKE UP!
The words blasted into my thoughts, and then strong hands were grabbing me, shaking me. This was it, I thought, this was the consequence of my actions. Someone, or something, was coming to end bad ol’ Nat…
“WAKE UP!”
The words were more insistent now, as was the shaking.
“Wake up, Bestie!” a voice came more clearly. “It’s just a dream; you’re just dreaming it! Wake up!”
I opened my eyes, looking around. The group was there, looking shaken, but no one was burned, drained, or harmed in anyway, and certainly they weren’t dead!
I couldn’t stop sobbing, however, even though it was plain to me that everyone was okay. Nah was there, trying to comfort me, and everyone told me that they’d all had bad dreams, and that I must have had one too.
Nah told me her dream first.
When the darkness hit us, she hadn’t been able to see anyone else either. But then, shapes appeared out of the dark, taking form as a few familiar faces. It's... It's TASHA! Smiling happily up at her bestie, Tasha approaches, giving Nah a BIG OL' SQUISH! Then comes Maya and Xam, her soulmates! Coming to either side of Nah, Maya and Xam each take one of Nah's hands, smiling adoringly up at her. It's a happy scene, with some of the people Nah cares about the very most in the world all here to visit HER!
Tasha brushes a stray white hair behind her ear. Wait... white? Hehe, Tasha's already getting white hair! Oh, and there's another! And... Maya too! Huh... Maya's crow's feet are new. And... Nat's? And she has more white hair than before... her face looks more mature, more lined... Maya's as well! Tasha grunts a bit, holding a hand on her own back, which appears to be sore. Maya frees up a hand from Nah's to flex her fingers, where she seems to have some joint pain. Looking closer, Maya's fingers are more gnarled now than they were before. Looking back up, what the... Tasha's hair, and Maya's too, is completely white! Another look at their faces shows the wrinkles that come with being elderly. They're aging on the spot, right before Nah's eyes!
Xamaran, however, looks the same as ever, being of course a Ren’dorei, a Void Elf… save for perhaps something of a more mature face than before. Tasha and Maya, however, stumble forward into Nah. They're having trouble standing... THEY FALL! Still looking up adoringly at Nah, the two wrinkled, elderly women continue to age, finally becoming wrinkled husks that breathe no more, yet still have eyes for Nah. Xam seems to notice nothing. She runs a gnarled hand through her white hair, still smiling up at Nah, toddling forward to give her a hug. She, too, ages, though much more slowly, and soon, she can no longer stand either. She clutches Nah's ankles happily, heaves a deep, happy sigh, and breathes no more.
Nah turns, finding a mirror there. Her hair is still black, her facial features youthful and smooth. She hasn't aged a minute over the last couple of centuries since she met Tasha...
The tragedy of immortality, and even the supremely long-lived.
Cari told me her dream next… Cari, with the secret she hides from the Kirin Tor, which has driven her into hiding herself in Azsuna, where she maintains a farm and small homestead, and even a stall on the side of the little road there to sell her wares.
The blackness consumes the entire balcony, so much so that not even the cobblestone Cari stands on is visible. The floor seems to change in consistency, however, and next thing she knows, the blackness is lifting! She's at her farm now! Everything is right with the world! Her stall has visitors, customers! They have lots of gold! YAY!
Happily, the customers are taken care of, each one more satisfied than the last with Cari's produce. Her companion at the farm, Lady Bovina, strolls by, cowbell tinkling merrily, catching the sun with a twinkle at one point. The next customers in line look like they have even more money, too! Look at these rich purple robes, that violet eye embroidered upon the front! Today is a prosperous day!
The rich customers that bring up the back of the line look sternly at Cari, coming around the stall, friendly customers no longer. The wand that looks something like a tree, the secret she has kept so closely from these mages, is snatched from her belt by someone who can produce fire from one hand. The wand is BURNED! The others begin blasting with fire, too, as well as frost and arcane. BLAM! No more stall! FLASH! Lady Bovina is now a sheep! FWWWWOOOOOOOOOSH! The entire farm, farmhouse included, goes up in flames! The rich customers with the violet eye robes grab Cari, using a Mass Teleportation spell, and the blazing farm disappears altogether!
The brilliant swirls of arcane light dissipate, and Cari finds herself in... Dalaran! The rich customers are not being kind, however, dragging her along, shouting profanely at her as they all accuse her of various things, each one trying to shout over the rest of the mob. The procession proceeds around Dalaran, reaching the front gates of Violet Hold. They enter!
Violet Hold rises all around Cari now. Cell after cell after cell of magical monstrosity is visible all around, and Cari is led right to the back, down the stairs to the lower cells, and thrown into one. An arcane barrier is erected over the entrance, and there Cari will remain, forever imprisoned, until the end of her days...
Maya told her dream next, unflinching as she recounted the tale.
The blackness hides everything, and nothing is visible beyond a few feet of cobblestone on the balcony. But then... shapes appear. Humanoid shapes. It's... It's Nah and Xam! Moonlight and Starlight! The two approach Maya, standing side by side, reaching forward to both hug her at the same time. The longer-limbed Kaldorei reaches around Xam to hug Xam and Maya both at the same time, with a signature Nah-snicker. It's a happy time!
Nah pulls back, smiling adoringly at Maya. Xam, freed from Nah, does the same. Xam wipes her lip, her hand coming away bright red. She smiles at Maya as though she's the most amazing thing in the world, coughing as she does so. More quickly now, she wipes blood from her mouth. Nah does as well, falling to one knee. She raises her head with an effort, a happy chuckle issuing forth around a bit of choking. She spits a huge gob of blood off to one side, reaching a bloody hand out to Maya, her other hand over her heart. Xam falls to both knees, doing the same, reaching to Maya with one hand while covering her heart with her other.
Both Xam and Nah have a cascade of blood pouring forth from massive cavities in their chests. They reach out to Maya anyway, and Maya reaches for them again, wanting another hug, or to take their hands, but she can't, because she has their hearts in her hands. The hearts beat in unison as Xam and Nah smile up at Maya, before both collapse onto the cobblestone, rolling over to their backs to smile up at Maya. They don't mind that Maya's hands are now furry and clawed, and that she lost control of her worgen form for a Single. Instant. They'll love her anyway, forever...
Dame Annabelle Baker, high-ranking member of the church of the Light and revered throughout her homeland of the Redridge Mountains, slayer of many orcs invading from the neighboring Burning Steppes, found herself back home again once the darkness cleared, according to the dream she recounted to us.
The blackness consumes the balcony, plunging Anna into darkness. There is nothing visible but the cobblestone of the balcony beneath her feet, now. But... the cobblestone seems... lighter in color? Looking around, Anna finds she can see more of it. It's not the balcony... it's the floor of one of Redridge's churches!
A smiling, happy congregation is pouring through the door, cheerfully taking seats in the pews, looking up to Anna for a sermon. Anna opens a tome she finds before her, beginning to speak to them. BUT... only orcish can be heard!
The battle cries of orcs drown out Anna's attempt to begin speaking. It's an all-out invasion! Where did they all come from!? The orcish horde roars loudly, violently trampling all who are still outside, pouring into the church. Shrill screams can be heard from the mass slaughter outside, and now the same can be heard inside!
Anna tries to help, to heal, to defend, to attack, to heal again, but her efforts are in vain, as the orcs slaughter everyone in the church as quickly as they did the rest of the townsfolk. And now they come for Anna, too many to count, and she's cornered in the church. Flames and smoke rise all around Anna. This is the end of human civilization in the Redridge Mountains...
Grim spoke up next, recounting something similar, as he, too, was born and raised in the Redridge Mountains, and had lived something similar there, though his dream was located a little further away from there…
The blackness encompasses the entire balcony, limiting visibility to only a few feet, until Grim can only see a bit of cobblestone beneath his boots. But then... the cobblestone changes, a bit. It's more white! The darkness lifts. Grim is now in Stormwind City, right at the front gates, surrounded by the giant statues at the entrance!
Looking around, the happy, familiar white walls of the capitol city of the Alliance rise all around Grim. Beyond the walls, mountains rise to meet a blue sky filling rapidly with clouds. What a beautiful city!
But wait... those aren't clouds... it's all SMOKE! Stormwind City is on FIRE! Grim rushes into the Trade District. There, next to the fountain in front of the Auction House, are Nat, Nah, Lora, Cari, Maya, Anna, Jazz, and so very many others Grim knows. They're all tied up, down on their knees, surrounded by invading orcs!
But look! Grim's swords are nearby! Grim rushes to his swords, ready to kick some BUTT and free his friends from the orcs! He tries to lift his swords... but they're TOO HEAVY! Grim can't lift them to help his friends! Laughing at Grim, the orcs ignore him, loading all Grim's friends into wagons to drive them out of the burning city. Now they'll all be slaves, slaves of the orcs, forever, and there's nothing Grim can do about it...
Everyone was pretty shaken up, though we were all thankful that these were just dreams. Cari was the first to recover, as the scene of lots of people being at her farm was so far from what actually ever happened there, so she knew, even asleep, that something was off. The rest of us still needed a break to recover, however, so we stayed there for a bit to have some water and rest.
It was then that Grim just… disappeared! There was some sort of… something… however, that told us that Grim was just fine, and had simply found himself transported back home, just like how he’d been transported here, and that everything was okay with him. That was good to know! Not sure how we knew it, but… that was good to know!
Eventually, however, we got back up, knowing we needed to press on. We went back inside from the balcony, as there was no way up the tower from here, and decided to see what was up that mostly-broken ramp after all.
Dame Anna said that that ledge looked like a great view for a library, so, following that theory, we must be close! That was a hopeful thought, so we set off again, heading up that broken ramp.
Thankfully, there was a door there! Another balcony was outside, overlooking Deadwind pass like the other one, though this one didn’t circle around a domed ceiling. Instead, it was smaller than my Darkshire home’s bedroom, and it had another ramp heading upward to another door to go back inside.
What we found inside was worse than that broken ramp.
Much, much worse.
If we thought the ramp, the passage to it from the theatre, or the servants’ passages were bad, it was nothing compared to this broken staircase we found. A spiral staircase, set in a square pattern around a square part of the tower, with rickety, rotten boards, gaps in the stairs, and generally in a state of severe disrepair, all rising higher and higher over a very hard stone floor, was our next obstacle.
We made it across, going one at a time, up a few stairs, not putting the weight of more than one person at a time on each flight of stairs, until we came to one that looked like not even a cat could walk across it without falling through.
Cari didn’t seem to be bothered by the stair. Being a mage, she just… Blinked across it! Nah snickered, following Cari with a rogue’s Shadowstep ability. Maya tried walking across, and seemed like she might make it, but, halfway across, a board broke, and her foot got caught in the hole! Oh, NO!
Cari came up with the idea for the rescue: a short-range mage teleport! The wall was broken open from some disaster long ago, open behind her, with a view high, high above Deadwind Pass, so Maya was like, “Teleport? Uh, okay, but if you overshoot and I go over the edge, YOU have to tell everyone what happened,” and Cari was like, “You have wings, quit whining.” HA!
The teleport worked! Maya was across safely!
Dame Anna was able to hug the wall and use the supports on the right side of the staircase and quickly scamper across to safety. The paladin is a nimble one!
The rest of the broken staircase was navigated safely, and we made it up to the top!
Once there, we found yet another of those ornate arches with the fancy pillars, and this one led to a massive stone golem that towered high, high above us all, which Cari guessed to be an artifact taken straight out of the Uldaman digsite. It looked like one of the ones that defended that place!
Past that, we found lots of other historical artifacts, and we realized we were in a museum. Gosh, a theatre, a library, and even a museum, right in his own home? Medivh sure lived it up! But Maya said that this place gets nerdier by the room! HA!
We were most of the way across the tower when suddenly we all stopped in our tracks. Everyone was talking about feeling taller or shorter, and then, when any of us tried to take a step forward, none of us actually moved, but someone else did! And when we spoke, our voices came from somewhere else near us, and not from our own mouths! Then we started moving around… and we could SEE OURSELVES!
Not like with a mirror… we were seeing each other through each other’s eyes! Cari was just beginning to figure out that her view was through Maya’s eyes, even though she controlled her own body and voice off where her body actually was, and that the view she had was through a body controlled by Maya, so she found her point of view and stance changing often. Then the rest of us were trying to sort our own selves out the same way.
Maya, figuring out she was likely Cari, grinned wolfishly.
“I have never wanted to act like a dog more than I do right now.”
“Don’t you dare!” said Cari. “You better not be me!”
HA!
It was Dame Anna who figured out the solution. She said that we should all just walk toward a fixed point, even if we had to shut our eyes to do it.
It worked!
It was weird, walking and the view while walking not moving the same as we’ve always been used to, nor the pace. But, just like with the Gurubashi troll battle, once we got out of the affected area, things returned to normal! We looked back, and we were past the area we were, and we were seeing through our own eyes again! Gosh, what an odd spell that was!
From there, it was down a ramp, and then…
THERE IT WAS! FINALLY!
The biggest, highest, fullest, most beautiful library I had ever seen in my life, EVER! Even bigger than the one in Dalaran, and WAAAY more books!
There was a ramp that led to a room that had more ramps going out of it to higher levels of the library, way, WAY up high above us, and a gazillion books even just on the bottom floor where we were! Happily, I raced to one of the nearest bookshelves, nearly tripping and falling as I did so, of course…
This library was a mess, however. There were books and scrolls everywhere – on the floor, on tables, on the ramps, on top of bookshelves, stacked in chairs, EVERYWHERE! I sort out the library at work to end my workend each weekend, but… this one would take not so much as a workEND as a work YEAR! Goodness gracious, it was a WRECK!
Even so, I was happily looking over the books.
“Wwwwwooooowwwwww, cooooooooolllll,” I said as I looked them over. “Sciences… mathematics… history… MEDIVH HAD STEAMY ROMANCE NOVELS!?”
“Medivh had a wild party going on in that one hall,” Cari reminded me, making me blush again. “Steamy romance novels are preeeeeetty tame.”
Dame Anna had another good point then, too.
“Won’t the book feel all fel-y from afar?” she asked.
“That’s a great point!” I replied, and started trying to sense books on fel with more than just my eyes.
Cari had a great idea, too – looking for a sort of arcane steward for the library that Medivh would have implemented to help catalogue everything. As smart of an idea as that was, however, we found none – the Guardians of Tirisfal must have just had really good memories!
We did, however, find a ghost that actually responded to us for once, unlike most of the rest of them in this tower!
The ghost named himself Wravien, though he seemed annoyed at our appearance, as he was searching hard for something himself.
It took a while to get Wravien to stay on topic without his ghostly forgetfulness returning his mind to him not finding what he was searching for, but we did eventually get him to tell us that, if we climbed the ramps up to a landing with a wall of bookshelves on the left, we’d find a book on that shelf on Murloc Breeding Habits (!?) by Marik Lockhart the Third in the middle. Removing it would provide a door to what we sought, according to him!
We thanked the ghost, but he had already forgotten us, still muttering in frustration over what he was looking for, as though we had never come to disturb him to begin with. Ghosts sure are funny!
We began the long climb up the ramps. We found a landing with a wall of books to the left. This was it! We split up along the wall, searching the titles on the spines.
Maya found a book on Gilnean history, which distracted her for a bit, though she soon got bored with it and chucked it onto a nearby table.
“The Sordid Affair of Lady Griswold and her Twenty-Eight Secret Lovers,” Nah said near Maya. “Youch. Thaaaaaat’s… not it.” She thumbed through it, then… casually deposited the book into her Bag of Dirty Tricks. GOSH!
“Twenty-eight, and she’s keeping it a secret?” Cari boggled. “Girl, I respect that ability to juggle the flow of information!”
Maya pulled out another book that struck her fancy.
“Euch, a book on make-up – oh wait, it’s got a glitter section!”
Maya took that book too! Goodness gracious, stealing from a magic library! They better hope nothing bad comes of this!
Dame Anna and I were too small to reach the titles, as the bottoms of these bookshelves were up on high ledges.
Soon, however, Maya and Nah had been through all the titles, and had not found a single one on murloc… anything.
We pressed on.
Along more ramps we went, climbing higher and higher in the library, until another of the landings had a wall on the left lined with bookshelves. This time, all of them were in reach of all of us!
“Ten Ways to Please Your Kaldorei,” Maya boggled over one book, immediately becoming lost to the world. GOSH!
Dame Annabelle mumbled something about “mages” after that, looking down at the floor and bonking a boot with her foot, sending it skidding across the floor.
Cari giggled next, holding up a piece of paper she’d found folded up inside a book. It was a drawing of a completely nude woman, except she appeared to be part boar, part dragon, part robot, part orc, and part unicorn.
“Someone should frame this!” she laughed.
Not me!
I giggled over another title myself.
“Sinister Seeds: Secret Sassafras Seeds to Sap a Poor Sap With,” I read with a grin. “Sounds like something you’d like, Bestie!”
Nah snickered, grinning over at me. But, when her attention went back to the books, she smirked suddenly.
“Murloc Breeding Habits and the Horrors Behind Them, by Marik Lockhart the Third,” she read triumphantly. She began to pull it out, but it stopped halfway… and then the whole bookshelf moved, sliding off to the right! There was a secret passage back there!
“Heheh… score,” Nah smirked.
“BESTIE NAH!” I exclaimed. “YOU DID IT!”
“Heh,” Cari snickered. “Secret passage behind a bookshelf. It’s like the worst stereotype of a mage was building this place while checking off a list of tropes.”
We passed through into the secret passageway, and instantly, what Dame Annabelle had said earlier turned out to be true. I could FEEL the presence of fel back here!
The passageway went left and down a ramp instead of straight. We turned and followed, turning left at the landing…
…and finding ourselves looking into a spacious room with more bookshelves, though they were very small, which were topped with alchemical equipment and bubbling vials of sinister-looking liquids, sinister-looking black candles, and, in the middle, an enormous fel rune that took up most of the floor, surrounded by more black candles, and a quartet of absolutely towering black candelabras with row upon row upon row of black candles, all in the shape of a fir tree, one in each corner of the room.
“Okay,” I said. “That book is definitely in here. That old mage ghost was right!”
Dame Annabelle walked in with us, more reluctantly, instantly and obviously not liking this room one single bit. Her rosary was in her hands the next moment, and she was praying silently.
I felt drawn to the far side of the room, and, finding a black book with a felfire flame emblazoned on the front, knew that this was what was pulling me across the room. I lifted it, immediately opening it.
Nah, Cari, and Maya were instantly saying that that book was highly ominous and to exercise caution. Dame Anna was still praying.
The book was written entirely in Eredun, which was what the Draenei race was called before they renamed themselves the Draenei, which means “exiled ones” in their tongue. I began flipping through it, and a surge of power welled up in me! It was SO exciting! I could hear my friends warning me still, but I was barely hearing them. This book was on Destruction warlock magic! YES!
I took the book to the center rune, learning SO much new stuff! Rain of Fire! Cataclysm! Immolate! CHAOS BOLT!
I was pacing around the center of the fel rune, drawn there by its power, learning the spells significantly faster as a result, the Eredun my uncle had taught me growing up helping me learn quickly as well. Incantations, drawings of life magic from a source, channeling of magic into fel with those drawings, then BLASTING the insignificant little target with the fires of the Legion themselves! It was all mine, finally mine!
MINE!
I read on, grinning in triumph, learning more and more magic.
Before long, I found myself cackling at the top of my lungs with glee as the fel magics coursed through me. It needed an OUTLET!
“DEEEEEEEEESTRUCTION!” I found myself cackling with glee, unable to contain myself.
“Parn, maev lek refir… laz adare ze Amanemodas, zennshi ze… kazile veni adare… GULAR!”
FFFFFFWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSHHH!
All the black candles erupted with brilliantly green felfire flame, leaping high, high to the ceiling! And then…
“PATHREBOTH! NAZTHEROS! FARAMOS! MAEZ ARAKAL ZE KIEL!”
RAIN OF FIRE was showering green felfire flames down on the floor in a torrent, sending my friends running for cover! They were shouting at me, something, I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention, probably shouting at me to stop, but… I didn’t care… THIS POWER!
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YESSSSSSSSS! FINALLY! I’VE WAITED SO LONG…”
I became dimly aware, then, of my friends taking turns rushing me. A Nether Ward caused them to bounce off, but I barely put any thought into it, as immersed as I was in my reading, my learning!
I failed to account for the Light, however.
Suddenly, I felt a searing in my wrists, and I was unable to hold the book anymore. Dropping it, I looked up, finding Dame Annabelle channeling a spell as she prayed, binding me!
“Release me, Anna!” I pleaded. “I… I’m just testing!”
“If it were correct to release you,” Anna stated simply, “the Light would not have bound you.”
Irritated, I cast another spell, summoning an infernal, a rocky golem burning with green felfire, which fell through a portal overhead and crashed to the floor. I hesitated then, realizing what I had just done, and commanded the infernal to hold its position and not act.
“This isn’t testing!” Maya said, her eyes burning with intensity as she faced me. “Look around you! Destruction is winning! PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER!”
There was a ghostly cat, one I recognized as a mage’s shapeshift form, this one familiar as being Cari’s. She darted forward, and, with her cat speed, snatched up the book, and was gone before I could do a thing with it!
Meanwhile, Anna, still holding me bound, was preaching.
“Respect earned from glory and deeds, while good and valuable, can be fleeting when a time of peril comes. Respect earned from love, faith, and compassion will not run with a time of peril comes. Filling a shelf of award can never be as worthwhile as a heart of friendship. What good is power if it means you are alone?”
Suddenly, Nah just… appeared behind me! Shadowstep! She’d been looking for something in her Bag of Tricks before…
“Oi,” she said. “Your ‘testing’ is putting us all at risk, don’t you think?”
BOOM! Something connected with my kidneys that knocked out all the air from my lungs in a great WHOOSH! Falling to my knees, I realize that Nah had gotten me with a stun shot. I was in tears from the pain, but I couldn’t cry aloud; all the wind was gone from my lungs. I could also no longer channel felfire, trying as hard as I was to get my breath back.
“I am so, so sorry about that, Bestie,” Nah said with a deep, deep sigh. “That… didn’t feel good at all for me to do.”
I fell again, fell the rest of the way to the floor, curling up in the fetal position, hurting from the shot, but hurting even more now that I had calmed down and realized the danger I had put my friends in.
HOW COULD I HAVE DONE THIS TO THEM!?
I didn’t even try to use my magic to recover, to counter-attack. They were right and I was wrong. I knew this. I stayed and let the shot Nah took run its course. I deserved it.
Cari, with the book still in her kitty mouth, had run it far from me, over to where Dame Anna was standing. She sat next to her, nudging the paladin and purring.
“I don’t want it,” Anna said, looking down at the book. “It won’t respond well to me. Unless you want it destroyed.”
I looked over at Cari too, seeing the book.
“I-I promise, I’m okay now, Cari,” I reassured her. “I can handle the book now.”
“Bring it here!” Maya said quickly. “Don’t give it back!”
“Cari, quick!” Nah said, holding her hands up, as though to catch the book if tossed.
That was another devastating shot… my own dear, dear friends openly demonstrating that they don’t trust me. Yet, I knew I’d brought it upon myself…
“Why don’t we take it away,” Anna suggested. “Yes, that. Not here. Let her read it, not here. Not in a tower that has tried to kill us.”
“We can carry it back for you,” Maya said to me.
I climbed to my feet, nodding, wiping tears. I saw Nah, standing where she’d shadowstepped to, grief and guilt etched on her face for having hit me. I went over to her, arms open, for a hug, squeezing her tight as I could with how I was feeling from that hit. She squeezed back tightly as well. That felt good, after that debacle!
We made our way out from there, climbing the ramp, exiting the secret passage and pushing the murloc breeding habits book back into place, which closed the shelf over the entrance again.
“You said ‘Naztheros,’ Cari said thoughtfully, eyeing me as we walked, “while you were under… whatever that book was doing. It was a Nathrezim, a Dreadlord, that ambushed us while we were downstairs on that balcony. Anyone else think it’s weird that one of the ghosts was both hyper aware and had all this amazingly pertinent information?”
I almost stopped walking at that connecting of the dots, blinking a bit.
“I believe that room was a trap, yes,” Anna replied. “I believe her opening that book in that room was the desired outcome. Us taking it away, not what is wanted.”
They’re so SMART!
Soon thereafter, we came upon a much more obvious door on another landing. Inside were WAY more books! YES!
We went inside, looking around. It took a while, and then…
“Oh…” Cari’s voice came from across the room behind me. “That’s definitely Eredun.”
“WHAT!?” I said with a gasp, whirling around. “WHERE!?”
Cari suddenly grasped the book tightly, wrapping her arms around it, backpedaling.
“Nope,” she said. “Not after that last episode.”
I pleaded for a while, trying to point out to her that I felt fine now, but to no avail. I turned back to looking through books myself while Cari handed the book to Nah, who put it with the Destruction one in her Bag of Tricks.
FEL.
I felt the pull again, this one FAR more subtle than the Destruction one had. It also made me a little nauseas… could that mean this one was Affliction…?
I searched some other books near it first, to cover my movement, not realizing that the fel was taking over again, enough so that I didn’t even realize that I was being sneaky and dishonest around my friends as I looked through the other books around it.
“Hmmm…” I said. “Nope. Not interested in the origin of Tauren.”
“I kind of do…” Maya said. “Seems interesting. I might nab that.”
“Gnoll Wars…” I said next, looking over another title. “Nope.”
And with that… I could resist no longer. Before even making a move for the book this time, I set up another Nether Ward around myself, instantly drawing stares from the others. I lifted the book, grinning triumphantly.
“Nah…” Maya said. “…I might punch her this time.”
“This title…” I said, looking over the Eredun on the cover. “If it means what I think it means… ‘Mishundare Karaman: Modas i Rukadare re Revola Zekul Rikk.’ Or, in Common: ‘Afflictions Aplenty: Being a Grimoire on Magics of Tarnished Evil,’ roughly translated.”
I opened it immediately, finding spells my uncle said he’d never teach me.
“Oh, that one will be useful,” I said, grinning and beginning to pace as I read.
“Oh no…” Nah said.
“…Not again,” Cari finished.
“Oh gosh, Agony?” I read. “That would hurt…”
“This… we need to leave the library,” Anna said. “Why did we come to this room? This was a waste. We should have started to leave, make sure she was okay, now this, again.”
“Improved Corruption...” I read, not paying attention. “Oh, just twist it that way? I see… interesting…”
“Yeah,” Cari agreed. “She needs to get out of this tower, period.”
“Malefic… RUPTURE!?” I read, nauseated a bit more. “Who MADE this thing!?”
“I think we all need to leave,” Nah agreed. “There’s still a lingering threat.”
Maya, meanwhile, was talking about keeping a promise as well as she could, but an open palm would hurt a fel of a lot more. I didn’t know what she meant, and was too immersed in my reading of the spellbook to ask. I dimly registered that she had one of her druidic insect carapaces forming around her hands, which had apparently taken a burning from trying to get at me while I was in Anna’s Light bonds earlier. The carapaces healed her hands, I found out later!
It was this point I looked up.
“Oh, erm… hi, guys!” I said cheerfully, wanting to reassure them. “I promise I’m good!”
The voice of a dreadlord could be heard chuckling softly then. That wasn’t good…
“Oooh, Drain So--… and you just draw it out with a… and then… WOW…”
I was reading again already, and my uncle DEFINITELY didn’t teach me THAT one!
Then there was another person in the room. A kindly looking, older woman. She beckoned me over with a smile. She seemed really nice! I went to go talk to her.
“You’re learning a lot,” she said, “and you’ve grown to be so powerful!”
“Oh gosh, erm… really? Thanks, Miss Lady!” I replied.
“You are most welcome,” she smiled. “You’re going to need to need to draw from a source, a living source, now, to lock these spells into your memory. There is plenty of life around you, right now… Draw from them.”
“Golly,” I said. “That’s a lot to ask, though…”
“…A-Are you sure…?”
“Yes,” she replied. “And after that, we can go!”
“Oh, I dunno… erm… Go where…?
“…Hey, Bestie, who’re ya talkin’ to?” I heard my bestie Nah asking me. As if she couldn’t see the kindly woman standing right in front of me, helping me learn!
“Can you keep a secret?” the kindly woman asked, not acknowledging Nah.
“Sure,” I giggled, leaning in a bit. “I can keep a secret…”
“Your friends love you,” she said to me. “And they’re very self-sacrificing. If you ever want their help, just ask. Even if it means providing a life source for your magic.”
“Let’s get walking,” Anna said, also not seeming willing to acknowledge the woman right in front of me, as though she couldn’t see her or something. “Not allow her to stew in place.”
“Wow, really?” I boggled. “You really think so?”
“Yes please,” Maya was replying to Anna, talking over the woman I was trying to talk to. “I’d like to not have to think I need protection.
“Bestie?” Nah said, coming over and ruffling my hair. “Uh… hello?”
For some reason, it didn’t seem important to me that she was acting like she couldn’t see this woman standing right in front of me, or hear her talking to me.
“So you really think so?” I asked the woman. “You mean just… ask?”
“Yes, let’s get Nat!” Cari was agreeing with the others, also not seeming to want to acknowledge the newcomer in the room.
“Yes!” the woman said with a gentle laugh. “Your bestie Nah is the bestest bestie anyone could ever have, and you can go to her about anything!”
“Pick her up if you must, but this is not going to work out well,” Anna was saying.
At that, Nah was there, her right hand on her hip, smirking down at me, though there was worry and confusion underlying that smirk. I looked up at her with a smile.
“Oh!” I said. “Bestie Nah! We were just talking about you!”
“Oh yeah?” she said. “What’d they say?”
I chose to ignore the fact that Nah was pretending not to have heard a word the woman said.
“She said you’re the bestest bestie anyone could ever have, and that I can come to you about anything!” I replied with a giggle for my bestie. “I have always agreed on that note. Gosh, you’re so great and stuff!”
“I do strive to be,” Nah smirked down at me, returning a hug I was giving her. “But uh… who’re you talkin’ to? About?”
“Oh, erm…” I looked around for the woman, but she’d vanished! “I-I don’t know her name. She left, though.”
“She left?” Nah said.
“Yep!” I nodded. “She looked like Myrlia, my succubus, but less… w-well, you know… erm… i-in need of clothing…”
I blushed deeply, though inwardly I was annoyed that everyone acted like they couldn’t see the nice lady, or hear her. It didn’t occur to me that that was because they really, genuinely couldn’t.
It didn’t occur to me until it was too late, and the damage was done.
“She was dressed really nice!” I assured my friends. “She was a really nice lady!”
I turned back to Nah.
“So… so I can ask you a favor?”
“I strongly suggest that we leave,” Anna said, deadpanning at us, “lest we continue to have sanity drawn away.”
“Uh… sure,” Nah replied to me.
“Golly, Bestie! You’re amazing!” I said cheerfully. “I-I… I just wanted to ask, erm…”
“Try the door, Anna,” Nah said, wanting to make sure we could even make it out of this room now, with what was going on.
“You’re a great friend,” I was saying to Nah. “You know that, right?”
“Rrrriiiiiiight…?” Nah said slowly.
“So… s-so you’ll help me…?” I asked hopefully.
“Well, with what, exactly?” Nah said apprehensively.
“With… erm… well, that is to say… I…”
I blushed, taking a few steps in the other direction from Nah.
“I erm… I-I only need a little…”
“No more!” Cari said.
“That’s okay, right?” I said, barely noticing Cari.
I felt… utterly out of control as I asked this favor of Nah. Not like, RAGING out of control, maniacally casting felfire all over the place, like I had with the Destruction book. This one was… almost as though another entity were controlling my words, my actions. Little did I know…
“Just… j-just… h-hold still, Bestie…” I heard my voice say.
It was then that I cast Drain Life on my own best friend.
I was aware of two things in that moment. One was a maniacal laughter that was audible only inside my own head. The other was pure horror at what I was doing. I slowly came to the realization that the laughter was not my own, but the kindly woman’s laughter, the one who I thought had disappeared. The other, the horror, was my own.
What was going on!?
Was I possessed?
No…
More like…
Compelled…
There was something in me, some tiny part of me, the part of me my uncle always warned me about, the part of a warlock using fel magics that will become corrupted with fel greed and destroy everything near them to obtain more power if there isn’t enough control exercised over it by the warlock… That part of me… WANTED this… wanted all this pure life around me, wanted its POWER…
But, that was only a tiny part of me.
I’d always had control over that tiny part, the bane of warlocks, and kept it a tiny part. But now…
Now, the kindly woman had her finger pressed deep into that little wound… and was ripping it open!
Beyond that, a certain measure of mind control was in effect, and I was physically unable to stop myself from casting the spell. Combine the internal battles for control and battles for my mind, and the result was my own best friend doubling over, looking awful with the spell I was channeling on her.
The very next moment, Maya was IN MY FACE!
“You hurt her,” Maya was growling, “and friend or not, your life is MINE!”
“I-I didn’t do much!” I heard my voice reasoning with Maya. “She should still be fine… I-I only cast it for a second… someone as full of life as my bestie would take eons to actually hurt with that!”
I later heard that my face was blurred, from what my friends could see. Like there’s a woman, an intensely beautiful woman, there, standing in the same spot as me, who seemed to be silently laughing. The face seemed to blur mine mostly due to it merging, separating, and merging again with mine, in an endless cycle.
Cari, meanwhile, was wasting no words. A spell was shot at me from her wand, one I later learned was a sleeping spell, according to her.
I was beginning to feel the nausea I had experienced when getting close to, and then opening, the Affliction book, except now far more so, likely due to the presence battling with my mind.
Cari’s spell connected with me, but, rather than send me off to sleep… I think that’s when I regained total control of myself, and the presence departed, for good.
Looking over, I saw my best friend crumpled on the floor.
“BESTIE NAH!” I cried. “What happened to Nah!?”
“GET AWAY!” Maya snarled at me. I retreated a short way, startled. Since when had Maya ever had a reason to be hostile toward me?
I pieced together, from Maya’s defensive snarling over Nah, that it was ME that did that to Nah! I had been dimly aware, and horrified, while I was doing it, but now the full memory was coming back to me, now that I was free of the foreign, malevolent presence that had manipulated me into doing it in the first place.
“I can’t have done this to her!” I sobbed. “I can’t have!”
The beautiful woman’s laughter was now audible outside my head, and I could tell, from the reactions of the others, that everyone could hear her now.
Then, suddenly, I stopped crying. I felt so happy again! Happy because I saw CARI there!
“CARI!” I exclaimed cheerfully to her. “I’m so glad you’re here! You’re a great friend, you know that, don’t you?”
“You’re not my friend,” Cari said to me, glaring angrily. I was undaunted.
“Oh, you kidder!” I smiled. “Guess what I can do! Watch THIS!”
Feeling excited to share something fun with my dear friend, I cast a spell on Cari.
It was the Affliction spell, Corruption, and I cast it on one of my oldest and dearest friends.
Cari’s face was covered in a very rare expression, for her. The playful demeanor was gone, and her wand was leveled at me. She was quick to nullify the spell with arcane.
“Oh golly,” I said thoughtfully, but cheerfully. “That didn’t work, did it? Let’s try THIS one!”
I then cast Agony on my dear friend Cari.
“GAH!” she screamed, her face contorting as the spell hit her, every nerve in her body now on fire. She dropped to her knees.
“Isn’t that good?” I giggled at Cari.
Meanwhile, a puff of SMOKE erupted around where Nah had been lying, being healed by Maya’s druidic healing spells! She was suddenly BEHIND me, and I felt a sharp object pressed against my back.
“That’s my friend you’re possessing,” I heard her say.
“INFEST!” Maya shouted, her druidic insect swarm sending a cloud of the pests my way.
The beautiful woman’s visage was now visible again, off to one side of the room, and she was audibly laughing up a storm!
“Moonlight,” Nah said to Maya, using her pet name for her soulmate. “We’re druids. It’s time we used our magic to purge. Remove Corruption is the spell we need for this curse that plagues Natasha.”
“I’m not possessing Cari!” I heard my voice say, pretending to not understand Nah. “I’m just… I-I’m just practicing!”
Nah tried first, a Remove Corruption spell that instantly made the beautiful woman’s visage stop laughing, now snarling at Nah. Nah’s spell failed, however, and then Maya tried. That one failed as well, and the beautiful woman was now visibly enraged! Yet I wasn’t seeing it myself, and my own face was manipulated into a loving expression cast at Cari, who was still writing in Agony down on the floor.
I felt my attention whipped around after that, and my face twisted to smile up at Nah.
“Bestie Nah!” I said. “Would you like a hug?”
I smiled over my shoulder at Nah, and then said a word: “Revos.”
I cast Haunt at my own best friend.
Somehow, she resisted my spell. Was it because she was still trying to cast Remove Corruption on me? I don’t know…
From there, the beautiful woman’s visage twisted and became… hideous! It seemed she was actually a very ugly woman using a Glamour spell to hide her looks! She really appeared to be one of those horrible Drustvar witches, except far more petite. She was absolutely enraged now, and I found myself being extra sweet and wholesome while firing off Vile Taint and Seed of Corruption spells all over the place!
Spells were resisted or sustained, my friends were getting hurt, and the combined efforts of Remove Corruption from the Kaldorei and the Gilnean druids were beginning to work. The actually-ugly woman was now snarling in rage, her laughter now completely absent, and she was casting spells through me as fast as they could dispel them.
Cari, meanwhile, had blacked out from the Agony spell, though the Seed in her wand wouldn’t let her completely her die, thank goodness! I don’t know what happened next, but a counter-attack, a vast blue light, erupted from the wand and blasted at me even after Cari had blacked out! It was SO BRIGHT!
With that blast, combined with the cleansing spell efforts of the others, the… infestation, the whatever it was, of that ghastly woman was driven away!
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!” we heard her scream in rage. The ghastly woman’s voice faded away into the distance…
“Bestie N-N-Nah…” I began to sob uncontrollably. “Please…. I-I don’t feel good… please… help me…”
I fell to my knees, and Nah immediately rushed over… but first things first.
YOINK!
The book was yoinked away, added now to Nah’s Bag of Tricks with the others. But it was too late, the damage was done, the spells were committed to memory, and the damage I’d done to my friends surely unforgivable… that was surely why Nah had gone for the book first, and not me…
I felt heartbroken, the guilt, the shame, the loss I felt, because surely they’d never want to be friends with me ever again…
Then I saw Cari, blacked out on the floor. As before, though I’d been… aware of my actions, it was extremely vague, and so when I saw Cari, I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to her anymore.
“CARI!” I cried. “What happened to Cari? Is she sick too!?”
“I believe, Bestie,” Nah said, “that you were possessed. You afflicted Cari quite a bit, and me, and you gave Maya’s bugs quite a time.”
The guilt became stronger then, and I dragged myself in a crawl over to Cari’s still form. The wand with the magic seed was clutched in both her hands, and she was curled into the fetal position.
“Cari…” I sobbed.
Anna, who had gone to seek an exit route, came back then, and helped to heal everyone up. Cari’s eyes fluttered open, and she came to.
“CARI!” I exclaimed. “You’re ALIVE!”
There was a confused explanation of everything that had transpired while I was… out of sorts, and then a very, VERY long period of rest and recovery, and then, rather than leave... the group decided to press on.
There was a dreadlord that had now caused us a very great deal of sorrow and harm, and the group was out for BLOOD!
We surmised that the dreadlord would have continued to move to the top of the tower from there, and we set off in that direction, finding yet more ramps moving to the very top of the library.
Before we set off, Cari was still in need of a bit more time to mend, and Maya split off with her, helping get her to safety while the rest of us climbed the tower. Maya was shaking with rage; I don’t know whether she felt like she might lose control herself and the worgen within would burst out and hurt everyone really badly or what, but she was heading out with Cari, I guess to get her to safety.
Meanwhile, Nah was drawing something from her Bag of Tricks. It was a set of shackles, infused with a spell and reagents to block magic usage. I knew instantly it was for me.
I went to Nah, feeling almost grateful for this, though it was still heartbreaking that I had to resort to this to not hurt my friends, and that Nah’s level of trust in me had (understandably and rightfully so) been reduced to this. I held out my wrists for the shackles, and off we went, Nah scooping me up to carry me bridal-style, as more shackles had gone on my ankles.
To replace the loss in numbers, I used my warlock summoning spell, Ritual of Summoning, with Anna and Nah assisting, to draw in a shadow magic-powered summoning stone. From there, we were able to summon in the OTHER Anna, Annasana Moonblossom, the restoration druid worgen in our company. Back up to four people again, we set off up the tower, filling Anna in on the entire story on the way up.
We made it through one massive room with disappearing, reappearing specters in it without incident, but when we got up another ramp and onto another landing, we found ourselves in a room where the walls were mostly broken and the cloudy sky was visible outside, all around us, so high up were we now!
Only this time, the clouds started suddenly billowing into the room with us…
We found ourselves high in the sky, the floor beneath our feet gone. Instead, below us was a massive naval fleet flying the Kul Tiran flag! We barely had any time to react, however, when:
“RRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRR!”
A HUGE RED DRAGON appeared, swooping through the clouds, coming RIGHT AT US!
“Lok’tar ogar!” came a deep, roaring voice, and we saw a massive orc warrior astride the dragon! The dragon was trying to get in at the fleet to breath fire at it! Several ships burst into flames instantly, the sailors leaping overboard and swimming to the other ships.
“FER KHAAAAAZ MODAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!” screamed a dwarvish voice, and suddenly, from the opposite direction from whence the dragon came, a band of Wildhammer dwarves flew in on gryphonback, pelting the huge red dragon with stormhammers, screaming incoherently, and dive-bombing it with their gryphons, who tore at it with sharp claws and beaks! Oh gosh, it was a whole aerial battle going on!
“The tower’s tricks again,” Nah said, “like with the Gurubashi battle earlier. This must have been one of the more significant moments in the Second War.”
We watched the battle, not wanting to move while this high up in the air, and the dragon was driven off, to the tumultuous cheering and applause of the seemingly insane Wildhammer dwarves, as well as that of the sailors below.
Anna braved the walking away bit first, and, sure enough, when we followed her lead, we found ourselves out of the space occupied by that… whatever it was, and up a smaller ramp from the one we’d just been on when the clouds rolled in. This one led to another room, which was empty.
There were two ramps on the far side of this one. The one on the left went upward, and we found ourselves in a small antechamber of what was a huge observatory with a giant telescope below.
Wanting to avoid more tricks, Anna opened a case of something she’d bought at the Tournament of Ages last week, a magic powder that could detect magic in the air. She used a bit, tossing a pinch forward, and everything there turned that odd pink shade that arcane dust often takes. The whole room was packed full of arcane magic! Whatever was down there, I’m sure it would have been a lively puzzle to solve to get back out!
Regrettably, but wisely so, I’m sure, the others decided to give investigating that room a pass, since it was the dreadlord we were searching for, not cool puzzles. I reluctantly agreed, turning and following.
It was time to take that other ramp, the one that headed downward.
Another landing, yet another of many rooms of the library, this one just as trashed, with books everywhere. Another ramp led out of the room, upward and to the right. Back up we go!
THIS ramp led to the most trashed room yet! Books where EVERYwhere! All over the floor, all over the furniture, open, flopped face-downward, all the pages in disarray for the open ones and the closed ones alike. We ventured in, cautiously.
Instantly, all the books in the room TOOK FLIGHT! They bombarded us, flapping their pages in a torrent in our faces, bashing us with our covers, assaulting us from every angle! We powered through, running past the room to the other side, where the books did not follow.
But one of us was missing!
The druid, Annasana, was still in there, a cloud of books completely obscuring her from sight! She was clearly not to happy about that!
She got almost to the door, then the sheer volume of books ripped her back to the center of the room. It took assuming her bear form and absolutely charging through at full speed, barreling through books, to get through! Then, the very SECOND that she got out, all the books lost all signs of life, falling instantly to the floor in a noise shower of thudding covers and pages flapping in the rush of air as they fell. The ensuing dead silence of the room was practically deafening in its own right, after all that noise!
After that, we found ourselves going down another ramp, through a door, and down yet another ramp to another one of those ornate arches with the fancy slender pillars. Beyond that… ramps leading down to what else, but a GIANT CHESSBOARD!
It was in the center of the chessboard that Relthuras the Dreadlord reappeared!
He taunted us about our wits, receiving as much insult back from Nah as a result, and then he challenged us to a match. Nah made him make a deal: If he wins, we’re his. If we win… we get a taste of his POWER! What on Azeroth made Nah think of THAT!?
Oh… right.
I found myself thirsty for yet more power, even being blocked off from magic as I was with those shackles on. Nah led me down to the board and tossed me astride a charger, a warhorse in the place of a knight on the board.
The match began! Nah had King Llane’s visage, taking the place of a king on a Chessboard, of course, Annabelle took a water elemental in the place of a rook, and Annasana took a Stormwind cleric in the place of a bishop.
Pieces began to move all over the board. I found myself defending Annasana’s cleric so it could heal the king, which Nah had aggressively moved across the board as soon as she saw that the pieces would fight violently rather than use traditional Chess moves, thus allowing her to fight instead of protect the king like a normal game. Annabelle was firing spells from the water elemental. I lost track of the others soon after, as the charger I was on fell. I ran to the replacement charger, and it, too, eventually fell.
Then something happened that I did not expect, though I should have…
The dreadlord CHEATED!
Squares all over the board, squares our pieces were inhabiting, or were next to, suddenly just CAUGHT ON FIRE!
I ran to the other cleric and began using it to cast healing spells at the pieces that had been burned some, and then stayed with Nah on the king after that. Relthuras cheated a few more times after that, and the healing was needed!
With our combined efforts, however, the other pieces fell, one by one, until all that was left on the other side of the board, which was set up to look like the horde, was their own king piece, a huge visage of the old orcish warchief Blackhand. We ganged up on the warchief, and, soon enough, it fell! We had WON!
Relthuras was quite reluctant to follow through on his side of the deal, but there’s something weird about the Legion and the deals they make with mortals. They’re actually compelled to follow through with them, for some reason!
FWOOSH!
A round area under our feet erupted with felfire, though it didn’t burn us. It was, however, uncomfortably warm, and, when it subsided, everyone agreed that certain aspects of their abilities felt significantly stronger! WOW!
Emboldened, we set forth once more.
Up yet more ramps we went, this time into a room that was largely empty, but for an expensive carpet laid out over the center, and a slender, circular table resting upon it.
We got closer, and then… once more, the scene changed all around us!
We now found ourselves at Pinky’s Groggery in Upton Borough in Boralus, with the water all around one side, and the beautiful district all around us on the other side. There were many people here, but drawing our eyes first was a very familiar-looking head of fiery red hair… and the glossy, shiny black hair of the man sitting across from her.
Jaslyn Summersong and Grim’Un Oakenbloom were seated there at the little table in the corner, right next to the railing overlooking the water!
They were deep in conversation, and I could hear the Quel’dorei Jazz, as people call her, telling Grim about missions she had for the Whitewind Company, missions that effectively profiled as black ops, ones that came from SI:7, the Alliance High Command, the Stormwind Guard, all sorts of places! They sounded like one-nighters rather than full-on campaigns, though she gave no details on them. Grim was nodding and asking questions, though the questions and answers provided us with no exact details on the missions themselves, save for the first one: eavesdropping on some shady types in the Salty Sailor in Boralus to find out about something evidently bad that was going on deep, deep in Stranglethorn Vale. Gosh, I wonder what that’s about!
The conversation drifted to more mundane things after that, and soon, the scene faded away on its own this time, and we found ourselves back in the room beyond the Chess room. We proceeded onward, moving left, following Nah, and she led us up yet another ramp, this one curving up and left into an antechamber of what turned out to be the master bedchamber of the whole tower!
An ornate, enormous, comfortable-looking bed rested high on a dais with progressively higher rings rising to it from the floor, basically providing stairs. This was Medivh’s own bedchamber! Goodness gracious!
There were two transparent figures there, and the area immediately surrounding them seemed to be a room of Kul Tiran make. There, though we couldn’t quite see the figures, what sounds and words we heard made the activity of the bed’s occupants plain enough…
We knew Jazz and Grim liked to… hook up, on occasion, and had once after a game of Deathrolls with us there at Pinky’s in Boralus, but… ACK!
Annabelle immediately looked like she wanted to go home. Nah turned around and headed out of the room promptly.
“Nope,” she said. “Bail. BAILING.”
The rest of us were right on her heels! Goodness GRACIOUS!
Back to the ramp we went, back down to the landing where we’d seen them talking at Pinky’s, and out the other side of the room we went, making for a spiral staircase there. We ascended, finding a small doorway partway up. Going through it, we found the antechambers on the OTHER side of Medivh’s bedchambers, and, prompting turning around and getting the heck out, we headed up the staircase again.
This one led us to… the very top of the tower! We’d FINALLY MADE IT! WHEW!
We looked all around, over the railing, seeing a bit of Zul’Gurub and the Stranglethorn Vale, lots of Deadwind Pass, the Swamp of Sorrows off in the far distance, and Duskwood off in the far distance as well. What a view!
There was no dreadlord here, but there was another door. We went into it, finding ourselves in another broken-down old passageway.
When we came out the other side, we got the biggest surprise yet!
There, on the other side of the doorway, was a massive balcony for the tower, only… this door and this balcony opened up into the TWISTING NETHER!
The mysterious part of outer space in which fel forces dwell and evil people are sent to for penance spread out all around us, barren, dark, forlorn, and evil, with floating rock islands the only thing to see besides empty space anywhere, aside from being able to see the domed tip-top of the tower we’d seen on the other side of this passageway, a tower that descended into the rock we were on, melding with it.
But there was no dreadlord here, either.
What were we to do? Go back down and look for it elsewhere in the tower?
FWWWOOSH! FFFWWWOOOOSH! FWWWOOOOSH!
Great wings flapped overhead, and the dreadlord landed in front of us, now reaching his full height here in his own territory, towering like twenty or thirty feet over us! My GOSH, he looked so scary!
Relthuras started spouting some blather about how I was already becoming his, how I WOULD become his, and I’d be his minion, his slave, forever, but Dame Annabelle wasn’t having it! Even as Nah was coming up with a witty retort and Annasana was snarling in her worgen form at him (shackled and blocked from my magic, all I could do was hide behind Nah, who had moved to block me from view), Dame Anna was moving toward him with sword and shield.
SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!
Without a word, she had totally rushed and began laying into a whole dang DREADLORD! Gosh, she’s so brave! All my friends are!
The fight was on at that point. The dreadlord’s fury was startling, and his attacks relentless. There were periods where his onslaught would just go and go and go, and, before I knew it, my bestie Nah was snatched up in one of his hands, Annasana had been put to sleep with a sleeping spell, and Dame Annabelle was still smashing away at the feet and ankles of the dreadlord.
The dreadlord roared in fury when we fought back, and was already bleeding from the hand that had grabbed Nah and hoisted her into the air, as Nah was absolutely going HAM on that hand with her daggers! Oh gosh!
Then there were birds, crows, everywhere! A wave of carrion crows had been short forth by the dreadlord, and Annasana had awakened blocked me from it, and Annabelle’s shield had protected her from it, but Anna got the full blast. Poor Anna! The birds were really laying into her before the spell subsided!
Shortly thereafter, the dreadlord, who had seemed to realize why I wasn’t casting a single spell to help either way, started casting felfire bolts at my shackles! PING! The first one glanced off the anti-magic shackles harmlessly, but, determined, the dreadlord fired another. BLAM! The shackles melted off of my wrists and ankles. I… I was FREE!
Instantly, I began grinning. A nice, big, fresh target was standing in front of me, perfectly okay for me to wield my new magics against.
What I didn’t count on was how much more FULL of life the others felt than him…
The battle was on alright, us against Relthuras, but also me against fel corruption…
I… don’t know what happened next, exactly. Nah had been thrown HARD against the rocky cliff face behind us on the balcony, and had fallen over and not moved. Annasana got a Rebirth spell off on her, raising her back to her feet and back to consciousness, but the dreadlord had snatched her back up again! Annabelle was still smashing the feet and ankles and shins of the towering dreadlord, Annasana was casting Wrath and Starsurge and other druidic spells at it, and I…
I was casting Agony, Malefic Rupture, Unstable Affliction, spell after spell, enjoying it, reveling in the drawing of life to rot away life, reveling in the fel powers now roiling in me, bringing me to a euphoric state as I used them…
…against everyone.
Dame Annabelle Baker, one of the most pure-hearted people of any church anywhere, had an Unstable Affliction spell on her by her own friend. Agony and Corruption and Malefic Rupture were bringing no end of pain to the Dreadlord, but I’d also powered those spells by draining some of the life off of some of my own dear friends…
I’m STILL so ashamed of myself, so… mistrustful of myself… I don’t know HOW they forgave me… but…
The battle raged on, no one moving to attack me as I had attacked them, not even the dreadlord, who still hoped to bring me fully into his control. Yet between Nah’s daggers, and especially the Shadow magics many rogues use to vanish and stealth and shadowstrike being empowered by Nah’s deal with Relthuras over that Chess match, and the Light and Nature spells of the two Annas being similarly empowered, and my own warlock magics, the dreadlord was becoming quickly overwhelmed. Steel and spells were bashing, searing, and slicing him to pieces!
Annabelle took several hits, including one real crusher in which the dreadlord had brought his fist down from overhead and smashed it down onto her, Annasana being assaulted with felfire bolts and crows, and Nah having been crushed and smashed and even slammed down to the stone floor by the flat of the Dreadlord’s palm at one point, and so now, both sides look like either could fall first.
Oh gosh, it was looking so GRIM!
Finally, however, one last combined assault from all of us felled the dreadlord! He fell screaming and roaring to his hands and knees, taking too much damage, and began to shake. And then… he just EXPLODED!
The explosion caused a lot of skree to fall from the rocky cliff behind us, and that showered down upon us along with the gooey bits of exploded dreadlord. Oh gosh! That was painful!
But the battle was won, and, as was revealed during the final Legion invasion, a fel minion of the Legion can always regenerate in the Twisting Nether and return to Azeroth or another world, unless they’re killed there, in the Twisting Nether, or on a Legion-controlled world like Argus.
Thus, Relthuras was destroyed completely, utterly dead, and could never return again, ever! WOO!
Unfortunately for me, however, the damage was done to my friends, too… at my own hands.
The feeling of triumph passed quickly, and I looked to them all, looking on the verge of falling and exploding themselves, knowing that I caused a lot of that, and that even the dreadlord’s damage would have never been done to them had I not brought them to this awful place.
I sat and awaited my verdict…
CLINK!
On went another set of shackles! Good thing Nah had back-ups; I was still feeling it!
Everyone was vociferously wanting out, so we headed back out. I was heartbroken over all the Drain Life and other spells I’d used on my friends over the course of the fight, finally able to reestablish connection with my moral center now that the crazy surge of the magic was blocked from me by the anti-magic shackles.
But, despite all that…
The group got us out of there fast, and meanwhile…
My bestie Nah was… forgiving me!? Cracking JOKES!?
How could this be!? How was there a person alive who could let something that awful go, and maintain their care for their friend!? I was STUNNED!
We made it to Darkshire, and I got us a portal summoned to Theramore, temporarily freed of Nah’s shackles. From there, a gryphon ride from a flightmaster got us to Gadgetzan in Tanaris, and, a rented ride later, we were back at the Caverns of time, riding down, down, down to the bronze dragons, getting ourselves an instant lecture roared at us from a particularly angry one, then getting ourselves sent back to our own timeways… and even back to my house in Darkshire, to boot! I have no question of keeping my promise to that bronze dragon never to misuse the timeways like that ever again!
Once inside, the group took much healing from Annasana, the druidic healing-over-time spells making everyone right as rain in mere moments.
Then came the inevitable conversation with my friends… for, shockingly, friends they yet remain!
Dame Annabelle is convinced that the power of the tower was mostly what drove me nuts, what with its heavy shadow and fel presence and all. She thinks that, though I insisted I should retire from adventuring and never use my magics ever again unless it was life or death, that I could actually use them, away from that tower, and be okay. She has more faith in little ol’ Nat than I do!
Annasana Moonblossom said that me taking the first step to acknowledge that I had done wrong, instead of someone else having to say it, and me apologizing, showed clearly that I was aware that I had done wrong and that I’d be putting my best foot forward from then on to control myself.
And Nah… my best friend, whom I had done so much damage to that night… Nah told me that we were basically besties for life, that she forgave me, and that she’d help me get right with my new powers.
How could she care, love, trust, that much!? I hadn’t known much of this level of forgiveness in many people throughout my life. It meant the world to me that she could find it in her heart to do so!
She also had a dagger in her hand that she’d used on the dreadlord, then left the piece it was left in when he exploded, coated in fel blood for long enough that it now glowed green with it. What she meant for that dagger, who even knows…?
After the mental, emotional, and physical healing had been done, or at least taken a strong step in beginning, everyone agreed that it was mega-late and time to go home. I chose to stay on the side of caution, and would stay here in my Darkshire home for a while. I’d send a message to Celeste saying where I was, and that I’d be back as soon as I felt I’d be able, and then I’d explain everything.
I just did not trust myself to be around people again once Nah got those shackles off me before she left!
So here I’ve sat, crying, not eating, not sleeping, and now, just writing. Celeste sent me breakfast this morning, biscuits with sausage gravy, and some coffee. That made me feel better in my heart, and I was able to actually eat it. That’s a step in the right direction!
I’ve also spent the time since Tuesday night – that’s when we went to Karazhan – meditating and ensuring control over the tripled amount of fel knowledge, and… I THINK I have everything under control now. Celeste is coming to visit. We’ll see if she needs to teleport out or not, I guess…
Until she comes over tonight, the first one I’m going to go and see is Madame Eva, the kindly old woman that taught me to read the Tarot cards growing up. Her level of magical knowledge and control is astounding, even though she’s not a formal mage of the Kirin Tor that I’m aware of. If there’s anyone that can help train me in control of magical urges, it’s her!
If I can get through seeing her with no problem, then I should be able to try myself with Celeste after that.
If THAT works out… then I think I should be okay around people in general!
PHEW… what a week it’s been…
And yet it hasn’t been ALL bad… I don’t think…
I was also a little nervous about a call Celeste got earlier in the week to come to Ironforge and see the Explorer’s League officials. It seems they were ready to give their opinion of Celeste’s dig after all those trips into the site themselves to see everything!
"I'm telling you! A black dragon!" Celeste said in hushed tones to the two twins. who were eating their lunch of goat sandwich for one and fish sandwich for the other. The Cogswitches listened with avid attention, casting glances around the Tavern in the Mists every so often. "And sometimes... he likes to return here and takes away whoever is sitting in this inn to use as his own dinner..." Celeste continued, making an appropriately fearful expression. It was one of her tall tales, of course, but the twins looked like they expected a giant beast to rip open the mountain side and pick them up to eat as hors-d'oeuvres, from what Celeste had recounted of this excursion to me after work Sunday evening!
Suddenly, Huo placed a heavy hand on each one of the gnomes' shoulders and lowered his face between them, growling loudly!
"Graaaaaah!"
The twins shrieked and jumped so high, they nearly hit the rafters! The rest of the gang, whom Celeste had all brought here for lunch, laughed good-naturedly at the scene. The twins picked up the remains of their sandwich as they collected their wits. Celeste brought them a fresh pint of beer.
After my workend, work resumed at the digsite. This week, it involved packing up everything. The dig was done, finally done, and now there would be a report to write. The group would be disbanded after that, though Celeste hoped they would be free to participate in the unveiling of the Expedition as a whole in Ironforge some time soon.
I had myself quite a laugh at the story of Celeste and Huo scaring the twins! The twins were being good sports about it, so I didn't feel too bad about laughing, and the story was a really great one!
Back from the workend and ready for the minication now, I was ready to roll up my sleeves and get back to it!
I spent the day hanging out with Golbert, who, to my surprise, even though he'd revealed his high station, still came back to serve as my assistant in clearing up the tent and packing things away. What a great dwarf, to see things through to the end in this manner despite his rank!
Mail had arrived during the day the next day, and that’s when the worry for Celeste concerning her summons by the Explorer’s League officials that I’ve felt ever since began. Specifically, it was a summons for Celeste to report to the Hall of Explorers in Ironforge. The summons said specifically that Natasha Ebonlocke was to be responsible for the digsite in her absence. The result of the inspection of the digsite, no doubt. Celeste didn't seem worried when she kissed me goodbye, and she held her head high as she walked through the portal to Ironforge that she had opened. The rest of the day went by without any mishaps – it was only cleaning up and packing, after all – though the rest of the crew remained a bit on edge. Everyone present had grown fond of the team that Celeste had gathered. Most of all, they were proud of their work, and proud of their team leader.
Well, everyone was a bit on edge except for Golbert, who didn't say anything about the summons, but didn't look worried at all either. That was a good sign!
I felt worried, however, perhaps more worried than anyone. Not only was I worried about the summons for Celeste to Ironforge, but I also worried about being put in charge. I am very much a follower, and, especially with what I now knew to be the eyes of a League senior official being on me, I was seriously stressing over leading the team!
Luckily for me, it was all just cleaning, as I said, which was easy and familiar. I could manage that!
I shared the sentiment with the team, however, that I'd grown quite fond of them all, these new friends I'd made along the way. It'd been months and months of working with them, and it would feel odd without them around. But heck, that's what gnomish communicators and portals were for!
So, with any luck, Celeste’s review with the League officials will go well, all my digsite friends will keep in touch, Madame Eva will teach me to control the urge to drain life sources for magic, and to not use it on innocents, and I’ll have all my friends back again, just like nothing had ever happened! It’s a lot to hope for, yes, but… all signs point to it being a strong possibility anyway! YAY!
Nat smiled a bittersweet smile, dabbing at tears from her eyes, just as she had done through the entire diary entry, just as she had done ever since returning from Karazhan. Things would be okay. That’s what her bestie said, anyway. She had learned long ago to believe her bestie when matters were serious.
She slowly poked her mechanical pen back into her mechanical inkwell, and slowly closed her diary. Both items went back into her pack for replacing into their homes in her house in Pandaria, once she felt she was safe enough for other people to be around again.
She finished off her coffee next, staring out the window over her desk toward the town down below. Her attention went almost immediately to the fancy big house across the road from, but next to, the Scarlet Raven inn. Madame Eva was always there.
Composing herself, she got herself presentable and ready to head down the hill to that house and confess all to Madame Eva, and seek help. She only hoped that Madame Eva would still be receptive to her after hearing all she’d done, and that she wouldn’t get the urge to attack Madame Eva as well.
Her hopes came to fruition… Madame Eva was understanding, comforting, and wise on the matter. She was strict where she needed to be strict, soft and caring when Nat needed that the most.
Training took most of the day. There were moments when Nat felt she’d lose control again as she practiced, but spells were always blocked by Madame Eva’s own mysterious powers, a gentle, but firm reprimand always following. Progress was made after each mistake.
Soon enough, Nat felt she could be safe around people again. It had taken most of the day, but she had learned the spell of control Madame Eva was teaching her. It would take repeat visits before she’d master the control spell well enough to actively use her magics again, but for now, she at least wouldn’t lose control even when nothing dire was happening at all. Progress!
Nat promised to make future visits after that, spending workend lunch breaks there, visiting during the minication often, so that she could totally master the spell of control, and, one day, perhaps she could even adventure again without fear of her magic getting the better of her.
The remainder of the day was spent at home, with Celeste, now that she was sure she could trust herself. There was a lot of explaining to do to Celeste, and she wasn't sure how it would be received, but she resolved to tell the entire story, every single detail, tonight before her early bedtime for her early work morning the next morning. Hopefully it wouldn't drive Celeste away forever..
For now, however, she decided to retire from adventuring. It was too dangerous for her to risk it in this state. It was decided that she’d offer her position to the red-headed elf, Jazz, for Whitewind Company adventures, an offer Jazz was sure to accept, being fond of brawling as she was.
In the meantime, she’d take a leaf from Celeste’s book… retire to Pandaria! The peace, calm, and serenity doing so had granted Celeste seemed just the thing Nat needed. No more adventuring for a while, just… quiet retirement… with Celeste and Dordy!
Now that was something Nat could finally smile about!