A Dying Dream

Year 33, a few weeks after the Forsaken and human meet in the Arathi Highlands.

A candle served as the only light filling the dim room cloaked by the dead of night. Khadgar remained in the position he’d taken up many hours ago: quill intensely scratching upon parchment, ink spotted across the surface, an already sealed pile of scrolls building up on one side of the creaky desk. The chill from an open window crept in through waves of cold breeze, clinging onto the damp, bleak bricked walls of the circular tower but the Arch Mage didn’t even pause to give a shiver. His hands must have ached from the amount of writing he had produced over the course of the evening and now into the early hours. “King Anduin Llane Wrynn, highest regards upon you…”, “Warchief Sylvanas Windrunner, warm greetings…”. Endless streams of words strung together were printed in a messily handwritten flurry, the urgency of the matter boldly stated in his hurry to send them out. Khadgar was not naïve. This was his final effort to prevent an all-out warfare, a precedent that was at its breaking point. The young-old mage had already tried to meet with the leaders of the Alliance and Horde to try and extend the temporary ceasefire that had occurred during the Legion’s latest invasion, but was turned away at both attempts to speak with the respective leaders. Anduin had been absent and the stoic Greymane was not forthcoming with his current location, only bluntly stating that he would be gone longer than convenient to wait for him, almost moments away from ushering Khadgar out of the keep himself. Previous correspondence with a group of Forsaken, an elective party known as the Desolate Council, had slowly fizzled out over time, leaving Khadgar with great hesitation to try and be granted an audience with the banshee queen herself. Just a few weeks before this frostbitten night, Khadgar caught word of an undead and Stormwind civilian meet that had gone terribly wrong and he feared him being there as a human may be taken the wrong way. Sylvanas’ rumoured actions had been the catalyst for his obsessive writing sessions and attempted visits. While Sylvanas had made no solid moves, he knew the queen was hungry: hungry for power, hungry for a solution to her people’s decomposition dilemma, hungry for war. She died fighting, she was raised to fight again. And with the inability to harm Alliance members, she’d turned on her own people at the slightest signal of dissent. This made it clear to him: the factions would remain intact and at odds. He’d made a tiresome journey to seek the Darkspear Tribe, the troll of the Horde remaining leaderless since Vol’jin’s untimely demise. He’d been greeted by an elder crone: a frail female hunched over a gnarled walking staff with a fiery tongue. He’d hoped the lack of an appointed leadership may have left the trolls with more independence and willing to be swayed into a refusal to bear arms against the Alliance in a fruitless war. The troll elder had scowled, shook her head and took no measures to hide her displeasure at the mage’s presence in her village. “Ya be wastin’ ma time,” she’d growled, “I be listenin’ to no little mon when I should be communin’ wid da ancestors. Ya be on your way wid ya murka ass, assumin’ ya be able to advise us when de dead speak through me”. Evidently, she’d not taken Khadgar’s attempts to ward away potential conflict with kindness, rather with heavy insult. After a heavy failure of trying to reason with the trolls that resulted in indirect offence, Khadgar elected to discuss possible future events with those who understood the cost. Kaldorei, though a mysterious race, were one he had become fond of, for obvious reasons. They’d lived through it all: the War of the Ancients, the Great Sundering, all three wars, and they’d lost much because of it. The ancient continent as one became split into four; Nordrassil, though thank the Light it had recovered, was once destroyed in sacrifice of their people for the good of the world. They held a vast amount of knowledge and power yet also knew of what knowledge and power could do. How it could kill. Malfurion had been absent upon his arrival, gone to Silithus his student said, to see what could be done about healing Azeroth’s mighty wound. Tyrande too was not present. She had taken many of her sisters to nurse those who had been badly injured during the final battle of the latest war against the Legion. A druid elected to sit with Khadgar to listen to his plea. He knew of her before: the pine-haired, serpent-marked elf with strong restorative powers, the perfect individual to address his concerns and anxieties about what lay ahead. She was sympathetic, but her eyes glazed over with a sadness when he asked if her teacher would be willing to draw a line of peace between the two political oppositions even with the tension at hand. “My shan’do desires harmony among all else,” she explained, “but should harm come to our people, my Arch Druid and my High Priestess would not hesitate to call to arms our Sentinels, our Wardens, our Watchers. I fear that with the Banshee on the throne, harmony is not possible, she has a military heart and values strategy where we value sanctity. We will not strike first but should such a threat come to our gates and Elune compels us to fight then the entire kaldorei people will side with Stormwind’s king and bring with them the full force of the night elven people.” Khadgar had left, unsure of whether to be comforted by her words, or even more disillusioned with his dream of unity. He knew that was ridiculous to request no retaliation against a hostile onslaught but the silence he received from the Warchief had dug into him, ripping into a constant panic of desperation. And so, he marched on. Meeting with as many races as he could to propose an infinite ceasefire. He gauged the same responses. Those wielding the banner of bright blue and gold helplessly reported the same sentiments of the kaldorei; that they would not allow their lands to be taken or their people harmed. Their Horde counterparts agreed, however were honour-bound to serve their Warchief. So Khagar returned home to continue spewing out letter after letter: if he could not see these leaders, he prayed he would at least hear from them. “That’s not how you spell ‘high elf’ in Thalassian.” A voice echoed out right behind Khadgar, his exhaustion so great at this stage that he didn’t jump, only flinching hard on his quill, snapping the pointed end off. He craned his neck behind to observe a pastel pink skinned elf; snowy hair glowing in the candle-light, ghostly luminescent eyes peering over his shoulder at his work. He’d been addressing Ranger-Captain Vereesa Windrunner and miswritten ‘quel’dorei’, making the ‘q’ a ‘k’ in his tired state. Peregrïn had entered silently to his study, cloaked in a thick woollen blanket that covered her night shirt, palms wrapped around a steaming cup of tea that she slid onto the desk. She slid off her knitted quilt and hung it over Khadgar. “I thought you would be cold.” Khadgar gave a fatigued half-smile to his bride. “Thank you, it is getting quite chilly, now the summer season is coming to an end. How was Darnassus? I assume your parents were well?” It had been seen to be appropriate for Perry to meet with her family after the dangers of the Legion. In times like these, one couldn’t be sure if you would see your loved ones alive again after your last visit. Khadgar had chosen to investigate the Silithus wound and negotiate peace with the factions instead and, evidently, was still hard at work on it from the time she left until just now upon her return. She gave a little yawn, the length of her journey catching up on her and she began to sense the need for sleep growing heavier. “An’da and min’da…” she paused, sleepily blinking and trying to find her next words with the ever-growing drowsy mind of hers, “they are well,” she finished, “I can’t remember the last time I stayed up so late.” Khadgar grinned. The couple spent most nights cuddled up by a crackling fire in their quarters, falling asleep side by side. Rediscovering the night life of the kaldorei must have brought her back several years to customs she wasn’t used to: night elves indulged in celebrating each full moon with an all-night feast. Stacks of tender smoked deer and roasted boar meat would be piled on top of each other; light cabbage, fluffy potatoes, sweetened turnips, all heaped onto sizeable bowls. Music would be played throughout a clear, starry night to honour Elune and her twinkling children in the heavens and the party would go on from the quiet hush of dusk to the rise of the brilliant sun. It so happened her visit coincided with these festivities. “They tired you out?” He chuckled. Perry scanned over mess of letters Khadgar had been working on. “Aren’t you tired?” she inquired, “We should sleep. It seems we have had long days.” Khadgar thought of the bed they shared: how warm and inviting it would be to slide in under clean cotton sheets and padded quilts, to let his head sink into big, feather-stuffed pillows, to cradle his worn out love in his arms. Wearily, he shook his head. “I cannot,” he grimly muttered, “I fear… I fear…” He needn’t have said any more. Perry nodded, knowing full well of the worries that plagued her dear’s thoughts. They both silently stared at the desk full of correspondence that, secretly, Khadgar thought would all be for nought. As they did so, the candle flickered, its wax nearly all burned away by the flame, dying out almost as if it sensed the fading of Khadgar’s faith as his dream became closer and closer to that: just a dream.