Richard A. Knaak - Stormrage

A blinding silver light materializing from the sky above enveloped both. Malfurion experienced a wondrous sense of rejuvenation. All his injuries and pain — save the emotional pain of having had to fight Remulos — faded away.

But for Emeriss, it seemed to do just the opposite. She roared.

Her body violently contorted.

In obvious pain, the dragon lost her hold on Malfurion. The archdruid immediately shifted into storm crow form. Wings spread wide, he descended.

And there he saw Tyrande, her face screwed up in concentration. The high priestess’s legs wavered, but she stood determined as Elune’s light surrounded the huge beast.

Emeriss veered around. The corrupted green dragon exhaled in Tyrande’s direction, but the light caused her deadly breath to dissipate. A look of incomprehension spread over the dragon’s ghastly countenance.

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” she shrieked at Tyrande. “I feel — I feel—”

Her body grew translucent and without definition. Emeriss became a vaguely seen thing, almost as if she had become a part of the mist itself.

Malfurion alighted near Tyrande. Changing form, he ran to her.

Just as her knees finally buckled, the archdruid gave her the necessary support. He choked up inside, relieved to have again not lost her.

Above them, Emeriss let out a gasp. She was now barely identifiable as a dragon. Before Malfurion’s eyes, the last of the behemoth dispersed.

Exhaling deeply, the high priestess let her hands drop.

“I did not know if it would…would work…and certainly not…not like this…”

“If what would work, Tyrande?”

She steadied herself. “I thought of what the corrupted had become and I hoped to try a different tact; I pushed Elune’s healing power to its utmost, seeking to strip away the taint…”

Malfurion looked up where Emeriss had last hovered. “I understand.”

“Yes…there was nothing left but the corruption…and when I tried to heal that…it left only emptiness…”

The archdruid would have replied, but he sensed renewed danger. “Xavius’s shadows come. Too many of them, I suspect. I need to take you from here.”

“But the ax!” She clutched his arm. “Thura lost the ax here—”

“We can’t worry about it,” he curtly answered. Instead, he ran to where the spear lay and, despite being aware of the pain it would cause, plucked it up. Then, with Tyrande near and the unmoving Remulos between them, Malfurion did as the corrupted forest guardian had.

A gap opened up right before them. Shifting to ursine form, the archdruid continued to hold the spear as he took hold of the heavy Remulos.

“Mal, think what you’re doing! We need to retrieve the ax! I know now! I know what—”

He roared for her to go through. With great reluctance, she finally obeyed.

Dragging Remulos with him, Malfurion followed.

The gap vanished.

The shadow satyrs faded away the moment that the gap did. For a time, there was silence. Then the shadow of the tree stretched over the area where the ax lay.

The silhouettes of the skeletal branches draped over the weapon but could not seize it. There was no hint of frustration on the part of the Nightmare Lord, though. Xavius could not touch it, but, where it lay, neither could it be of harm.

The low laugh of the Nightmare Lord echoed over the shrouded region. The shadow of the tree withdrew… and the mists covered the ax.

King Varian stood with the host, watching as the Nightmare flowed forth. There were things both distinct and indistinct within its murky airs, some recognizable, others not.

The gathered host awaited not only his signal, but that of Broll.

Varian was not so vain that he thought his command of the situation absolute; indeed, he thought just the opposite. Like everyone, he had expected Malfurion Stormrage to be the one through whom the druids and their allies would coordinate with his army.

But when Broll had briefly touched his mind, telling him that it was he who was to be Varian’s contact, the lord of Stormwind had not very much minded. The two had shared savage lives as gladiators and knew one another’s ways well. Thus, when Broll finally warned that the moment had come, the pair easily slipped into their old roles as comrades in war.

The dreamform army surged forward to meet the darkness. As the Nightmare converged on them, shadow satyrs formed in multitudes, their claws sprouting more than a foot long.

Yet just before the first of the fiends could strike, the druids and other spellcasters gathered began their own assault. The druids led the efforts, for they knew the Dream and the Nightmare best. Silver fire lit the landscape, sweeping across the infernal ranks. Shadow satyrs by the scores burned to nothing.

In the chaos, Varian’s followers struck. Their dreamform blades cut through satyr after satyr, but, unlike in the mortal world, the creatures did not re-form. Rather, like ribbons of sliced silk, they fell in tatters that were crushed underneath the encouraged defenders’ feet, hooves, and paws.

The druids worked with what still thrived in the little part of the Dream remaining. The seeds of trees became a rain of furious missiles that landed within the Nightmare, then sprouted. Within seconds, new trees molded by efforts led by Broll and the druids grew tall among the satyrs.

One satyr slashed at the nearest trunk. The tree spurted a thick sap. The shadowy fiend pulled back with a hiss as the sap splattered it, despite the satyr’s supposed incorporeality.

But it did not end there, for the areas touched by the droplets spread and as they did, they burned away the satyr. The shadow sought to flee what it could not. Within a few scant seconds, the sap had entirely eaten away at it.

The trees began to extrude sap from everywhere, especially their branches high above. A rain of searing droplets guided by the druids fell upon a vast swath of terrain. Shadow satyrs burned.

The collapse of the Nightmare’s first lines energized the defenders. Though they suffered losses, there seemed hope after all. Bitter enemies willingly fought side by side with one another, even shielding those left open. Not since the War of the Ancients had so many diverse forces come together. Indeed, coupled with the addition of the creatures summoned by Malfurion and the rest of the druids, it could be said that Azeroth was even better represented as one in this moment than ever before.

But Varian and Broll were concerned over what seemed too simple a battle. Remaining linked through Broll’s efforts, they passed on their wariness, their suspicions that the Nightmare was not to be so easily crushed.

And moments later their apprehension was vindicated. From the mist flowed the nightmare forms, as Broll had come to think of them

…the hideous, cursed dream selves of the Nightmare’s thousands of victims multiplied many times over. Drawn from the sleepers’ subconscious, they came in macabre versions of the innocents, which made them all the more horrific to the defenders.

“We must not let what they appear to be slow us!” Broll urged Varian. “They are only dreams!”

“I know…” replied the king grimly, already seeing multiple versions of both his son and the nightmare of his dead wife. Varian thrust forward with his sword and led the way, cutting at the first image of his son. Even though the visions of his wife helped remind him that this was not the true Anduin, he still cringed as Shalamayne cleaved through and the figure vanished.

And that, they all knew, was also a part of the Nightmare’s insidious intentions. Strip away the defenders’ morale.