Richard A. Knaak - Stormrage

Malfurion did not let up in either realm, aware that to do so would possibly give the Nightmare a new foothold. Indeed, as the evil was pressed further and further back, its resistance grew. Malfurion felt some of the druids flagging and out of concern for them took on a larger burden. Tyrande reinforced him throughout it all, her determination matching his. This would end here…

But in the midst of it, Malfurion felt the evil behind Xavius for the first time exerting itself…and succeeding in pushing back.

It took a moment for the archdruid to understand why. The truth lay in the sleepers. They were now awake, but the horrors of their dread dreams were with them. Their fear still fed the Nightmare.

Malfurion and Tyrande sensed at the same time what had to be done. His left hand arced. The rain covering Azeroth altered, growing finer, warmer. It even took on a reddish hue, such as a rose might have. As this happened, Tyrande asked of Elune her help. The silver light of the Mother Moon came down, joining in concert with the rain.

As the astonishing rain touched the Nightmare’s victims, a sense of calm instantly overtook them. They began to forget much of what they had suffered or made others suffer as slaves of Xavius.

The resistance against Malfurion’s spell weakened.

Encouraged, he pushed…pushed until it reached the tree and its shadow.

Until it reached Xavius and could go no farther.

I will always be with you, the Nightmare Lord mocked. I am you, Malfurion Stormrage…

The archdruid made no response. He summoned up the energies of Azeroth and the Emerald Dream and cast them at the great and terrible tree.

They did nothing.

Malfurion turned his gaze to the Emerald Dream and the shadow of Xavius. There he saw what he already knew: Thura impaled and Broll fighting to keep from being snared by the smoky limbs.

The gathered energies struck at the shadow…with as little result as against the true tree.

So, this is what you want of me… Malfurion thought to his enemies. Very well…

Focusing within himself and utilizing the tremendous forces gathered from both realms, Malfurion separated his dreamform from his physical body in a manner that even he once would have never thought possible. Malfurion now stood as two separate beings, but still the same person. His physical body was not dormant. He stood and acted in both the Emerald Dream and Azeroth, something no druid had ever done before and what should have been impossible. Indeed, it was in part because of what the Nightmare had caused in trying to bring the two realms together that enabled Malfurion to accomplish this unique feat.

It was the only way by which his attack could be focused at precisely the same instant on both the tree and the shadow. He had to be of equal part to each, enough that they then became very susceptible to his powers.

But it was also what Xavius desired, for, by the same reasoning, Malfurion was now doubly susceptible to threats occurring in both realms. The shadow limbs assailed his dreamform. The wicked tree attacked with renewed effort his physical body.

However, as the Nightmare Lord attacked, Malfurion touched the mind of another. Broll…we must strike…

The druid gave a brief acknowledgment. Seen now as inconsequential, he gained that one second to bring his own powers into play.

Transforming into cat form, Broll used his mouth and seized Thura from the shadow’s grip. Her skin was cold to the touch, but the moment contact with the shadow was broken, her body warmed.

The orc stirred. Broll threw her forward.

A thousand shadowy branches plunged into Malfurion’s dreamform. On Azeroth, Tyrande clutched the archdruid as more agony than he had ever suffered as a tree himself tore through his system. The high priestess cried out as she took his pain and made it her own so that he could better concentrate on his own attack.

Malfurion gritted his teeth. The night elf now condensed the massive storm’s fury on but two places, one in Azeroth, the other the Emerald Dream. The Nightmare Lord’s tree and shadow bent under the added onslaught. The branches buried in the chest of Malfurion’s dreamform were at last ripped away by the wind. Those of the true tree were scorched by lightning. New ones sprouted in their place as the Nightmare Lord sought in turn to seize his foe, but Malfurion’s spell held sway.

And in the Emerald Dream, Thura reached the shadowed trunk.

She raised the ax, which glowed with the glory of the energies that the demigod Cenarius had ten thousand years earlier imbued in it for Broxigar.

Strike here! Malfurion told her, revealing in her thoughts an image of the critical spot.

With a crooked grin, the orc caught the shadow at the very point.

A shriek echoed over the Emerald Dream, a shriek whose twin erupted from Azeroth. The ax sank deep, as if biting into something solid.

The shadow wavered.

As Thura struck there, Malfurion increased his attack on the physical tree by a thousandfold. Emerald lightning hit true time and time again, setting vicious branch after branch ablaze.

My lord! Xavius abruptly shouted. Hear me!

But Malfurion felt the ancient darkness abandon its vile servant.

Although he wondered at that, the archdruid dared not lessen his efforts against Xavius; he knew too well that if any spark remained, Xavius’s evil would rise again…and in a form likely even more terrible. The entire terrible ordeal would begin anew.

Thura struck the shadow a second time and some of its outline faded. Malfurion continued to assail the true tree with lightning bolts, creating an inferno.

Xavius threw those flames back at his foes. Even though Tyrande did her best to protect Malfurion as he worked, the archdruid’s flesh burned.

Thura struck a third time. The fabled ax sank so deep into shadow that the head briefly vanished.

And then…as she pulled the magical weapon free…the shadow tree simply faded to nothing.

The Nightmare Lord shrieked.

On Azeroth, the true tree shook. It began to rapidly wither. The branches slumped. The great roots curled and shriveled.

The bitter, angry voice of Xavius, of the Nightmare Lord, thundered in the archdruid’s thoughts. Malfurion Stormrage! I will never leave you! I will ever be your nightmare! I —

The crown of the horrific tree crumbled.

Black ash marked its fall. The lower branches cracked off, powdering as they struck the hard ground. Even the trunk collapsed, huge pieces breaking away and scattering across the landscape. Malfurion deflected those that would have struck him and Tyrande. The blackened bark decayed rapidly.

In the end, only a rotted trunk — seemingly already centuries dead — remained when the last of the dust settled.

Xavius, once counselor to Queen Azshara, once first among the satyrs, once the Nightmare Lord…was at last no more.

Malfurion did not wallow in his victory. Rather, he pushed on, crushing what remained of the Nightmare, seeking to utterly eradicate it. The grafting from Xavius’s tree, worked into Teldrassil by Fandral, had given Xavius a tie to both realms — allowing the evil behind the Nightmare Lord to touch Azeroth and the Emerald Dream simultaneously. However, Xavius’s physical form had remained most dominant in Azeroth and without the tree to sustain that link, what was left of the Nightmare could not hold.

And when Azeroth was free of the taint, Malfurion — Tyrande standing with him throughout — focused then completely on the Emerald Dream, determined that it, too, should be cleansed. The Nightmare dwindled, receded…

But in one small corner of the Emerald Dream, in a vast, deep fissure, known to the druids as the Rift of Aln and believed to be where the magical realm itself first originated, even the combined efforts of the archdruid and the high priestess could not entirely end the struggle. The Nightmare held firmly in that place, which those of Malfurion’s calling believed bled into the Twisting Nether and the Great Dark Beyond. Gazing into it, Malfurion saw it as a bottomless chasm which radiated with primeval energies that even he dared not investigate. Indeed, the very rift itself seemed halfdream, for it had a surreal quality to its expanse and to the archdruid now and then seemed to ripple as if ready to fade or change.