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Book Two: The Darkened Tree
Part One - The Lonely Murloc
I
It was morning, and I was in bed. I felt groggy, as though I hadn’t used my mind properly in a long time. The air was warm, and dry, and smelled like citrus and firewood. My belly was stirring, as though I’d had quite enough for dinner last night, thank you very much, but could very much go for a big blood sausage breakfast now. There were twin, warm lumps atop the sheets, pressing against me, on either side of my chest. One of the lumps was purring.
I opened my eyes, squinting. The ceiling glowed the bright orange of aged, sunlit timber. The light streamed in around thin curtains, across the room, and I turned my head away from the light, pressing a horn into the soft mattress.
The purring lump stirred, and Ajax stretched luxuriously, walking up into sight to nuzzle my big nose. He stepped up on my face, reaching my other horn and biting it happily. I sneezed, and he leapt off, offended. I sat up. Where am I? I thought. Why aren’t I at home?
The other warm lump, lifting its head and blinking sleepily up at me, was a tiny, emerald, familiar-looking dragon whelp. He crawled to his tiny feet, shook his wings, and let out a tiny, groggy screech.
“Hi, Screech,” I said, without thinking. I looked at him, and cocked my head. “Your name is Screech.” I’d met him… in a field, by a fire. “You belong to M,” I said. Katy M. She was dead. But—
The bedroom’s door opened, and Katy M walked in, smiling, calmly, gently, but warily. “Hello, Horse,” she said, walking to the foot of the bed. “Welcome back.” Why warily? Did she not trust me?
And her griffin pitched backwards off the edge of the Ironforge Mountains, and fell away, into the green abyss: she’d died, and then returned, when I’d least –
I shook my head.
There had been a meeting, a long time ago… with a dead man leading it. I shook my head again.
And he had pointed at me, and said, “Book!” and I ran away north to find it. And Storm City had burned—Widget was dead. My landlord! I thought. Poor little guy. I guess that settles my rent debt.
And there was a cheetah in the North End, and a mansion… and back to the meeting. What was the dead man doing there? Rhy – what was Rhy doing there? She wasn’t there, and I shook my head again, but she – she was dead, too. She’d seen a skull and left Tidus alone in the burning city, and she’d gone north too! To find her home. She’s a zombie, I thought. She’s undead. Oh, god, I thought, but it was okay, wasn’t it? Because she was careful, and because we all have secrets.
And the Dwarf King Madoran had been there – I’d made him king. That wasn’t right… but I’d helped. I’d fought – and the whole battle of Ironforge came back to me, and the library – the Silver Sanctum, with its silver ceiling and silver stories on the walls, the story of the evil Dread Lord Varimathras, defeated by the Argent Dawn six hundred years ago and trapped in the Frozen Tomb at the top of the world, with only a black book between him and freedom. A black book and –
And Rayn was dead, and Sacara’s brother was dead. And Sacara, her smile was dead, and Uther’s Tomb was plagued and Madoran – had Madoran, and Luke, and Rhy, had they died too? And Allyndil and Anduin and Jayksen and the others, their home gone, if they were still alive, and the Dark Queen had fallen – and all to protect the book, from him—
Hannathras.
I’d seen the book. I’d almost held it, but the dark-eyed evil floating banshee demon wizard had taken it instead.
And all because of –
“Katy M,” I whispered.
She nodded. “What do you remember?” she said quietly. I closed my eyes.
I had slept, I remembered. The whole world had faded, and then… we were on a boat. Fang, the Tooth, the Fin of Storm City, he was breathing shallowly and muttering under his breath, and Katy M said, “He’s all yours.” I struggled for a moment, full of fury and grief, and then the Tooth was inside my mind, and I breathed easy, and sat up. It had been freezing, so cold, and I walked stiffly off the boat and onto a frozen tundra. The sun sat at the horizon, to my right, lighting up the wispy clouds above and the snowy sea-shore, hills and mountains, and behind me, the small, rickety wooden ship we’d arrived on bobbed in the gentle ocean waves.
Out of the glowing west came a squadron of spiders, of thick, man-sized, glittery black arachnids, and they hissed and skittered.
“Go,” said my voice, in a language I didn’t understand. “Tell your queen that it’s too late. He has the book, and he’s here - the Scourge Lord will rise again tonight. Tell her that you need to evacuate, or you will all be slaves again – flee to Lordaeron, and find your old ally Sylvannas. Good luck, friends. We’ll need you in the dark days ahead.”
The spiders turned, and skittered back into the west, the waning sunlight glittering orange and red off their shiny, hard carapaces. I turned and walked inland.
Ahead of me, towards the night, a great stiletto rose dark against the darker sky. It was the tower I’d seen in the Silver Sanctum’s frieze – Varimathras’ tower, his tomb at its peak. I stared up at the impossibly high apex, and at that moment it began glittering, reflecting bright white light. The beautiful light descended down the tower, and as it reached the bottom, the white, full moon rose in the east.
My legs carried me to the tower’s glittering base. A thin stairway curled up its height, and I stepped onto it and began ascending.
The whole of the continent spread out below me as I ascended the frozen spike: dark-stone mountains, crowned with ice; deep, shadowy ravines; and to the west, black, ice-covered spires rose over the mouth of an enormous black cavern, out of which issued a stream of tiny, distant black specks – Nerubians, I thought, evacuating a Nerubian city. Their capital, replied Fang, in my mind. They ritualistically tear it down and rebuild it every hundred years: its imminent destruction will simply serve to remind them of the ritual’s meaning. Renewal from rubble.
The wind picked up, from the east, from the moon, as I climbed. It blew with me, then against me, biting into my eyes, then with me again as I spiraled up the tower. My legs ached, then throbbed, then burned with the exertion, but the willpower that kept them moving was not my own. The moon lifted off the horizon, rising slowly into the sky as I ascended.
I reached the tower’s cold peak – a wide, flat platform that rose into a jagged block of ice across from me, carved like a high-backed, jagged, crystal chair. Encased within and starkly outlined in the pale moonlight it was a dark figure, bent double, with what looked like a pair of jagged horns growing from its back.
Between me and the jagged crystal tomb, on a cushion of mist, facing away, floated Hannathras. Fear and hatred and revulsion flowed through me, from myself and from Fang, but in a moment it was quelled.
“Hello again,” hissed the banshee wizard, without turning around. There was a vague tickle at the outside of my mind, but this time it stayed outside.
My mouth curled into a smile, and my arm reached up and tapped the side of my head. “That space is occupied,” said my voice.
“So I see,” hissed the other. “Tell your friend that her help was invaluable.”
“She knows,” said Fang.
Hannathras turned and fixed his hard, black eyes on me. “You, too,” he said coldly. “You led me right to it, just like she said you would.” He raised his hand, and in it was the black, leather-bound book. I struggled against Fang’s puppet strings with sudden rage and guilt. A flicker of it must have spilled out onto my face, because Hannathras hissed and smiled. Eeeeasy, cow boy, Fang whispered in my mind.
“You sure tonight’s the night?” said my voice.
Hannathras smiled. “He is,” he said, and nodded at the crystal cask. He stared at it, into it, an inscrutable expression on his pale face.
“Well,” he hissed after a moment, “since you’re not here to stop me, stay out of my way.” I stepped backwards, a step back down the stairway. Behind me yawned cold, empty space.
The book floated out of his hand, and flapped open, pages turning, whipping in the wind. Hannathras stared down at them, motionless, reading. He looked up at the moon. It had risen by degrees, well off the horizon. Hannathras scanned the sky, and then, his black eyes locking, onto a star or a blank space between stars, began muttering. He lifted his arms up, palms open, pointing towards the dark sky to the west, and froze. He opened his mouth, and emitted a single, quiet, haunting, impossibly beautiful note.
I stared, taut, straining against my immobile body. There’s still time, I thought, still time to stop him. What fun would that be? replied the murloc in my head. No fun, I thought angrily. Just, the right thing to do. The edges of my mouth curled into a whisper of a smile. What do you mean by that word, ‘right’? Do you even know?
Hours passed. My hooves began to ache from the cold and the wind. Fang closed my eyes against it, and I drifted, with nothing in my head but the sound of the wind, and the voice of the wizard, and the bite of the cold, and the murloc.
I opened my eyes, and the moon was high in the sky. Hannathras hadn’t moved. I looked up, to the west, following his stony gaze. The stars shown brightly against the black of the great dark beyond, flickering white and blue.
Then one stood out, just a bit brighter, and orange, right where Hannathras was staring. Then two. Then a small cluster. I squinted at them – each one had a flickering tail.
The orange specks grew in the sky. The muscles along Hannathras’ arms were suddenly taut, as though he were holding up a great weight. He began to shake with exertion. I looked back up at the sky: the flecks had become balls of celestial flame. What’s going on? I thought. What are those? A rain of chaos, replied Fang. Demon rock and fire. They’re coming right for us! I thought. Not quite, replied Fang.
Hannathras began chanting under his breath. The balls of fire, arcing slowly up across the sky, grew large and bright as the moon neared its apex: the crystalline world below dimly reflected their orange light.
And one of the flames, the first and largest, flared suddenly, and then went out. Where it had been, a dark, glowing point of negative light pulsed in the sky, streaming silently upwards an warping the starry background as though drawing its force from the fabric of space itself. It constricted, then pulsed and leapt forward, directly at—
The moon. It struck the surface of the bright white orb, silently. A great plume of white dust rose, slowly, as though the moon were thousands of miles away. I shook my head.
Another waxing fireball flamed out brightly, and winked into nothingness. It pulsed and leapt across the sky, followed by others. They fell at the moon, striking it at its leading edge, as though trying to push it back. Plumes of dust rose from it, obscuring the nearby stars. I stared, utterly confused. What’s going on? I thought. We’re undoing a six hundred year old mistake, said Fang’s voice in my thoughts. Mistake?
Hannathras’s hands, outstretched, continued guiding the demonic fireballs across the sky. I noticed new crop of them begin descending from the east. They flamed out as well, and leapt at the moon – but they didn’t impact it. A plume of blue dust appeared, seeming to come from behind the moon.
As the banshee wizard pushed and pulled, and the night sky lit up with orange and purple fire, the moon ceased its eternal orbit’s ascent and stopped, motionless, at the top of the sky. Hannathras’s face was strained as though his will was moving worlds.
The last of the flames winked out, striking at the great white moon. The night sky was black again, and the moon, scarred along its western edge, hung brilliantly among the stars, perfectly motionless above us.
Then, at its western edge, a tiny sliver of blue emerged. I stared at it as it grew, from a sliver to a slice to a great, glowing blue disc, born out of the white moon, smaller than it, but as bright. My god, I thought. Imagine how the rest of the world feels tonight, said Fang. I’ve missed it, he thought.
As the blue moon fully emerged from her white mother, a sudden, terrible thunderclap, like mortar fire, struck the night, echoing off the frozen wastelands below.
I looked at the sound’s source, and saw to my horror that the crystal tomb had cracked open. A cold mist tendril, like the mist on which Hannathras floated, snaked out of the crack. It caught the blue light of the new moon and reflected it, seeming to hold it. The dark form inside the frozen tomb, which had been bent double, now stood erect. I watched, terrified and entranced.
Hannathras, weakened by his tidal effort, began singing his ethereal hymn again, and the tomb’s mist, and its captive blue light, began to gather about his hands. As it intensified, he gritted in pain, and the skin of his hands boiled and peeled. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to keep singing, pulling in more of the moonlight, until his hands were surrounded by whirring, pulsing orbs of light too bright to look at. He inhaled sharply, his eyes flying wide, and then, in response to some unheard question, he cried, “Yes, knowingly!”
The blue light disappeared for a moment – his hands were now nothing but charred stumps – and the world was silent for a moment. Then Hannathras’s whole body began shaking, then glowing, and burning and boiling, his mist evaporating beneath him, and the blue light leapt from him in a bolt, striking the frozen tomb and shattering it utterly. Shards of crystal flew in every direction, off into the abyss below us and tearing through the charred body of Hannathras. I ducked away from them, and when I’d stood back up, Hannathras’s body had fallen to the ground. The black book fell from the air and landed, closed, atop his wilted robes.
The crystal casket was gone. In its place stood a tall, hulking, naked humanoid figure, facing away, his head bowed. His skin was sickly, almost perfectly white, with darker lines and gashes running up his thick arms and down his back. What I had thought were horns coming out of his back were a pair of black, scarred stumps – the remains of wings, I thought. In place of feet, he had – hooves. I looked down at my own.
His hands were enormous, and each finger was tipped with a long, razor-sharp claw. He flexed them, raising them to his hidden face and staring at them.
Then he turned slowly. Tendons stood out grotesquely on his neck, above his broad shoulders and chest, and his broad face was pallid, almost purple – the face of an old man, but twisted with ages and hatred. From his dark eye sockets – the same black eyes of Hannathras – a pair of black streaks slashed downward across his face, like dark oil tears. In the depths of his eyes glowed a pinprick of sickly, blue-green light. His ears were tall and pointed, standing nearly straight up from his head. Between them, pointing forward from the very top of his bare, white scalp, stood a pair of serrated horns. They ended abruptly, jaggedly, as though they had been broken off eons ago.
Varimathras? I thought. You need to ask? answered Fang.
The Dread Lord’s eyes narrowed, darting about shrewdly. He bent down, and plucked the black book from the ground, holding it easily in one enormous, clawed hand. He stepped forward, over the body of Hannathras. Looking down, he spoke, his voice deep and resonant, but casual. “Thanks, son,” he said.
He looked up at me. “And who are you?” he snarled.
My mouth opened, and a single word emerged unbidden: “Nemesis,” growled my voice into the cold silence.
Are you crazy?! I thought, panicking. Thoughts flew through my mind at lightning speed, compressed into an instant – ideas, not words. Look at him. Remember him. Remember everything you can, because right now it’s the most important thing to you, and to the world. And try not to die, said the murloc. What?! I thought.
And then my mind was empty. I was myself, alone, at the tip of a frozen crystal spike, with the Dread Lord, with nothing but the moons and stars above and a thousand feet of cold, ceaseless wind below.
“Don’t waste my time,” growled Varimathras. The hulking, naked Dread Lord flicked a finger at me, and a mental force, the merest shrug of his will, tossed me backwards like a rag doll, off the crystal spike and into empty space.
Through the night, a pair of enormous black crows rose to meet me, cushioning me, beating their wings against the darkness and slowing my descent, guiding me to a less-than-fatal landing in a field of snow. It knocked the wind out of me, and I lost consciousness for a moment. When my vision returned, Katy M was standing over me, her hand gently glowing green, and she whispered, “Sleep.”
“No,” I’d said, weakly, raising a hand towards her, and then the world had faded, and I’d slept.
II
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