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Jeff Grubb: The Last Guardian

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Jeff Grubb The Last Guardian

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In the mist-shrouded haze of the past, long before the beginning of recorded time, there stood the world of Azeroth. Every kind of magical being strode the countryside among the tribes of man, and all was at peace—until the arrival of the demons and horrors of the Burning Legion and their baneful Lord Sargeras, dark god of chaotic magic. Now Dragons, Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Humans, and Orcs all vie for supremacy across the scattered kingdoms—part of a grand, malevolent scheme that will determine the fate of the world of . The Guardians of Tirisfal

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And what he saw there made him gasp. Despite himself, he turned away, breaking the locked gaze with the mage-warrior.

When Khadgar looked up again, the commander was nodding at him. It was a brief, almost dismissive nod, and the old man’s mouth was a tight frown. Then the snow-bearded leader was off again, bellowing at the warriors, entreating them to defend themselves.

Khadgar wanted to go after him, to chase him down and find out how he could see him when others did not, and what he could tell him, but there was a cry around him, a muddy cry of tired men called into duty one last time. Swords and spears were raised to a sky the shade of curdled blood, and arms pointed toward the nearby ridges, where flooding had stripped out patterns of purple against the rust-colored soil.

Khadgar looked where the men were pointing, and a wave of green and black topped the nearest ridge. Khadgar thought it was some river, or an arcane and colorful mudflow, but he realized that the wave was an advancing army. Black was the color of their armor, and green was the color of their flesh.

They were nightmare creatures, mockeries of human form. Their jade-fleshed faces were dominated by heavy underslung jaws lined with fanged teeth, their noses flat and snuffling like a dog’s, and their eyes small, bloody, and filled with hate. Their ebon weapons and ornate armor shone in the eternally dying sun of this world, and as they topped the rise they let out a bellow that rocked the ground beneath them.

The soldiers around him let out a cry of their own, and as the green creatures closed the distance between the hill they let out volley after volley of red-fletched arrows. The front line of the monstrous creatures stumbled and fell, and were immediately trampled by those who came behind. Another volley and another rank of the inhuman monsters toppled, yet their failing was subsumed by the advancing tide of the mass that followed.

To Khadgar’s right there were flashes as lightning danced along the surface of the earth, and the monstrosities screamed as the flesh was boiled from their bones. Khadgar thought of the warrior-mage commander, but also realized that these bolts only thinned the charging hordes by the merest fraction.

And then the green-fleshed monstrosities were on top of them, the wave of ebon and jade smashing against the rude palisade. The felled timbers were no more than twigs in the path of this storm, and Khadgar could feel the line buckle. One of the soldiers nearest him toppled, impaled by a great dark spear. In the warrior’s place there was a nightmare of green flesh and black armor, howling as it swept down upon him.

Despite himself, Khadgar backed two steps, then turned to run.

And almost slammed into Moroes, who was standing in the archway.

“You,” wheezed Moroes calmly, “were late. Might have gotten lost.”

Khadgar wheeled again in place, and saw that behind him was not a world of crimson skies and green monstrosities, but an abandoned sitting room, its fireplace empty and its chairs covered with drop cloths. The air smelled of dust only recently disturbed.

“I was…” gasped Khadgar. “I saw…I was…”

“Misplaced?” suggested Moroes.

Khadgar gulped, looked about, then nodded mutely.

“Late supper is ready,” groaned Moroes. “Don’t get misplaced, again, now.”

And the dark-clad servant turned and glided quietly out of the room.

Khadgar took one last look at the dead-end passage he had stumbled into. There were no mystic archways or magical doorways. The vision (if vision it was) had ended with a suddenness only to be equaled by its beginning.

There were no soldiers. No creatures with green flesh. No army about to collapse. There was only a memory that scared Khadgar to his core. It was real. It had felt real. It had felt true.

It was not the monsters or the bloodshed that had frightened him. It was the mage-warrior, the snow-haired commander that seemed to be able to see him. That seemed to have looked into the heart of him, and found him wanting.

And worst of all, the white-bearded figure in armor and robes had Khadgar’s eyes. The face was aged, the hair snow-white, the manner powerful, yet the commander had the same eyes that Khadgar had seen in the untarnished mirror just moments (lifetimes?) before.

Khadgar left the sitting room, and wondered if it would not be too late to get a set of blinders.

3

Settling In

“We’ll start you off slow,” said the elder wizard from across the table. “Take stock of the library. Figure out how you are going to organize it.”

Khadgar nodded over the porridge and sausages. The bulk of the breakfast conversation was about Dalaran in general. What was popular in Dalaran and what were the fashions in Lordaeron. What they were arguing about in the halls of the Kirin Tor. Khadgar mentioned that the current philosophical question when he left was whether when you created a flame by magic, you called it into being or summoned it from some parallel existence.

Medivh huffed over his breakfast. “Fools. They wouldn’t know an alternate dimension if it came up and bit them on the….So what do you think?”

“I think…” And Khadgar, suddenly realizing he was once again on the spot. “I think that it may be something else entirely.”

“Excellent,” said Medivh, smiling. “When given a choice between two, choose the third. Of course you meant to say that when you create fire, all you are doing is concentrating the inherent nature of fire contained in the surrounding area into one location, calling it into being?”

“Oh yes,” said Khadgar, then adding, “had I thought about it. For a while. Like a few years.”

“Good,” said Medivh, dabbing at his beard with a napkin. “You’ve a quick mind and an honest appraisal of yourself. Let’s see how you do with the library. Moroes will show you the way.”

The library occupied two levels, and was situated about a third of the way up the tower itself. The staircase along this part of the tower hugged the outside edge of the citadel, leaving a large chamber two floors high. A wrought iron platform created an upper gallery on the second level. The room’s narrow windows were covered with interwoven rods of iron, reducing what natural light the room had to little more than that of a hooded torch. On the great oak tables of the first level, crystalline globes covered with a thick patina of dust glowed with a blue-gray luster.

The room itself was a disaster area. Books were scattered opened to random pages, scrolls were unspooled over chairs, and a thin layer of dusty foolscap covered everything like the leaves on the forest floor. The more ancient tomes, still chained to the bookshelves, had been unshelved, and hung from their links like prisoners in some dungeon cell.

Khadgar surveyed the damage and let out a deep sigh. “Start me off slow,” he said.

“I could have your gear packed in a hour,” said Moroes from the hallway. The servant would not enter the library proper.

Khadgar picked up a piece of parchment at his feet. One side was a demand from the Kirin Tor for the master mage to respond to their most recent missive. The other side was marked with a dark crimson smear that Khadgar assumed at first was blood but realized was nothing more than the melted wax seal.

“No,” said Khadgar, patting his small pouch of scribe tools. “It’s just more of a challenge than I first anticipated.”

“Heard that before,” said Moroes.

Khadgar turned to ask about his comment, but the servant was already gone from the doorway.

With the care of a burglar, Khadgar picked his way through the debris. It was as if a battle had erupted in the library. Spines were broken, covers were half-torn, pages were folded over upon themselves, signatures had been pulled from the bindings entirely. And this was for those books that were still mostly whole. More portfolios had been pulled from their covers, and the dust on the tables covered a layer of papers and correspondences. Some of these were open, but some were noticeably still unread, their knowledge contained beneath their wax seals.

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