The ornate bindings of a freshly summoned wind elemental dropped with a clatter at Saphrit’s feet. It was the remains of just one in an army of agitated wind elementals that had swarmed the Ruins of Auberdine. Grimly, Saphrit collected the elementals bindings scattered around him, pulled his scarf a little further up his face to stall the blinding bite of sudden gusts of wind, and made his way to Auberdine’s moonwell; the only surviving landmark in a town that had been reduced to rubble and splintered wood. At the moonwell, Tuathann and Aaron were waiting, the restless wind bristling the fur on their collective hides.
Aaron had shifted into his Worgen state in an effort to stay warm in the growing chill brought along by the incessant buffets of wind. He had chosen to stand watch for any other elementals that may wander too close to the moonwell while his companions tended to the elemental bindings they collected. It was a simple request on the part of the Sentinel leader back at the refugee camp: thin the ranks of the invading elementals, and dunk their bracers in the soothing waters of the moonwell to undo the shackling magic cast upon them and keep them from returning to the material plane. So far, the elementals weren’t putting up too much of a fight … then again, these were lesser elementals, intended to be summoned in large numbers. Of course, summoning was the only logical way for so many wind elementals to appear all at once and so suddenly. Aaron sensed that Saphrit and Tuathann were coming to that same conclusion – it would only be prudent to find whoever was responsible for this invasion, and soon.
Taking a moment to survey the landscape one last time before turning back to his traveling companions to discuss what their next course of action should be, Aaron sensed a strange wind blowing through the already agitated air. To the unfamiliar, wind was just wind, but to Aaron, this wind moved differently than the angry atmosphere the wind invaders brought with them. Following this strange wind, Aaron turned away from the moonwell again and noticed a lone house still standing amidst the devastation. Standing on the small stone porch of the house were two apparitions, a man and a woman that were both Kaldorei, and they seemed to be engaged in deep conversation. The man turned his hooded head toward Aaron and looked the Worgen in the eye with a wise smile, and after a moment, Aaron recognized the spirit right before it vanished with the wind. The woman’s spirit then turned herself to face Aaron, a patient expression on her face.
“Master Saphrit, Lady Heartglen,” Aaron called out over his shoulder. “I think you should see this.”
Saphrit looked up from the moonwell straight away and noticed the spirit of the Kaldorei woman standing at the door of that lonely house. “… Auntie Yalda?”
“Yalda?” Tuathann repeated, shifting out of her feline form and looking up as well. “She is still here?”
“Still … here?” Aaron turned to face Saphrit with a confused look. “Auntie? Is she related to your father, Master Saphrit?”
Saphrit shook his head with a slightly embarrassed smile. “No, no, Aaron. As far as I know, Auntie Yalda was no blood relative of ours, but her spirit had been around Auberdine for as long as anyone could remember,” the paladin explained. “Story is that she died fighting a bunch of murlocs that attacked Auberdine a very long time ago, and she decided to stick around to watch over her family and lead other spirits to the afterlife instead of passing on into the next life herself. As for the familial title, I personally picked it up from the younger residents of Auberdine had who taken to calling her Auntie simply because she’s been around so long.” Saphrit paused. “Why did you think she was a relative of An’da anyway, Aaron?”
“Simple, Master Saphrit,” Aaron explained, glancing back toward Yalda’s apparition for a noticeable moment. “I saw your father speaking with her.”
“… Light …” Saphrit breathed out upon hearing Aaron’s statement. “She might know more about what happened to An’da.”
“It seems she is expecting us, Master Crossdeep,” Tuathann observed, pulling her cloak tighter around her own shoulders. “We’d best not keep her waiting.”
The Dragon and the Worgen nodded in concert, and together, the ragtag group made their way over to Yalda’s dwelling, bowing in respect to the patron spirit of the town. Yalda bowed in turn, her expression grateful for their willingness to help. She had stood a helpless witness to the deaths of so many people she cared about, and as a result, Yalda had been very busy seeking out lost souls trapped on the mortal plane by the utter confusion caused by Deathwing’s wrath. After listening to Saphrit’s intentions for arriving in Darkshore, Yalda agreed to assist him in seeking out the answers he needed for finding his An’da; in return, they would help Yalda find the last few trapped souls within the Ruins.
The group split up to cover more ground. Aaron went to check the Hippogryph Roost, Tuathann headed to the town’s library, and Saphrit chose to comb the remains of the Last Haven Inn.
As Saphrit picked through the rubble, being careful not to further disturb the compromised remains that were still standing in spite of the depth and breadth of the destruction, he could hear the muffled shouts of someone calling for help upstairs. Not wasting a moment, Saphrit scrambled through the inn’s remains in an effort to reach the upper levels, only to be greeted by an angry gust of wind once he reached the top of the ramp.
Consecrating the floor was Saphrit’s immediate response, forcing the feisty handful of wind elementals that were guarding that upper room to disperse and flee from the sacred ground. Once the wind elementals had been either vanquished or chased off, Saphrit checked the room they had been barricading … and discovered a rather dishevelled and slightly cranky young dwarf woman in the back of the room, bringing down a makeshift hammer on a sturdy ball-and-chain secured around her foot. It didn’t take long for the young Dwarfess to notice Saphrit.
“Finally! Help!” she said, rather relieved. It took the Dwarven lady a moment to recognize the young paladin, and once she did, she added with an ornery tone: “Took yer sweet time, didn’t cha, laddie?”
Saphrit smiled as he too recognized the young Dwarven woman; she was Junior Prospector Hollee the last time he was in Auberdine, and an acquaintance of Archdruid Crossdeep. They traded a sentence or two about what had been going on, including what happened to the Archdruid and about Hollee’s promotion to a fully-fledged prospector and Archaeologist just a few months before, but it wasn’t long before Hollee and Saphrit decided it wasn’t going to be safe for very long in that upstairs room. Breaking the dwarf’s shackles was as easy as Saphrit bringing his crystal-forged runeaxe down on the poorly crafted chain, and Hollee could then use one her remaining hairpins to pick away the manacle around her ankle.
As they made their way back down to the lower levels of the Inn, Hollee noticed something on the rubble-strewn floor from the corner of her eye and predictably decided to go and investigate. With Saphrit’s help, she pushed aside a fallen chunk of one of the upstairs ramps, and then gasped in time with Saphrit’s quiet grimace upon finding and recognizing the corpse that had been pinned beneath the rubble. It was the bartender of the Inn’s in-house tavern, Taldan, and judging from how mangled he was, he had been drowned and crushed at the same time. At the least, from what Saphrit could see, the manner of his death had been near instantaneous.
“Oh … Taldan …” Hollee whispered, putting her hand over her heart in memoriam. “Ye served ye last drink, man. I’d toast ya, but there be no ale t’ send ye off proper.”
The young Dragon Paladin sensed the presence of a trapped spirit nearby while Hollee was paying respects to her friend, so he knelt down next to Taldan’s corpse and whispered: “Auntie Yalda’s looking for you, Master Taldan. I can lead you to her.” As if in response, Taldan’s spirit materialized in front of Saphrit and Hollee, and while death had rendered him speechless, the bartender quickly nodded, a sign that he was eager to escape from the mortal plane.
It was at this moment that Hollee, oblivious to the trapped spirit now tailing Saphrit, remembered the members of the expedition she came to Kalimdor with and rushed out of the ruined inn and out into the open …
~||~
Aaron stood up slowly from the fallen body of Caylais Moonfeather, silently prompted to face certain danger by the slightly frantic spirit of the night elven Hippogryph Master. The Worgen Druid turned to face a leering Troll perched on the remaining handrails that fenced the Hippogryph roost. The Troll looked certifiably mad, as if though he had seen things that would drive even the most blood-thirsty of the dark and unnervingly ritualistic Trollish race utterly insane.
“Ooohooaahhaahaahaa … what we got heeere, eh?” the Troll laughed coldly. “One o’ dem furry beastmen, ay?”
And why would my presence here concern you, barbarian?” Aaron growled, the hackles on the back of his neck standing up on instinct.
“Oho! Dis one got teeth in his bark!” The Troll grinned widely, his sharp yellowed teeth now framed by his tusks, then replied with an audible hiss in his voice: “You be tresspassin’. Da way you and ya friends be combin’ deese ruins, make metinks you be snoopin’ ‘round too much fa ye own good, doggie.” A spark of lightning was seen arcing between the Troll’s thick, long fingers. “We wind lords gonna hafta fix dat …”
Aaron barely dodged a bolt of lightning leaping from the Troll’s hands. “… Wind lords?” the Gilnean asked balancing onto his haunches in a crouch, his glowing eyes watching the troll warily for another attack. The Troll certainly looked powerful, and Aaron knew better than to take on a powerful enemy alone. “What manner of madness is this you speak of?”
“Fo' a windspeakah, you be plenty on clueless, doggie.” The Troll cackled, leaping off his perch with a front flip. “Tzu-tzu be guessen’ that don’ make ya much o’ a windspeakah, duz it? If doze big eahrs ah yours have been a-listenin’ to da wind like you oughta, you’d know exactly why we be here.”
“So there is more than one of you.” Aaron stated calmly, hoping to stall the Troll a little longer as he saw the brushes beyond the Hippogryph roost shuffle behind the Troll.
The Troll took the bait. “O’ course dere be moar dan one of us, wind-doggeh! Tzu-tzu be wise enough t’ come heah wit otha windlords when dere be big voodoo t’ be done. We windlords are the scions of Aetherion aftah all, and doze lesser ‘lementals you and ya friens banished just be da beginnin’ of what we plan t’ do!”
A feline snarl broke out from behind the Troll just as he finished gloating and a furry beast tore into the wind lord’s skin, only to get thrown off with a blast of wind and lightning. Tzu-tzu cackled madly, enjoying watching the cat he electrocuted writhe in pain and he reared up to do more damage. “Kitty save tha doggie? Oh ho hoaa!! You two will be makin’ fine sacrifices for celebratin’ Aetherion—”
Blasts of moonfire pelted the troll in the face, causing the wind lord to cry out in shock and pain. Aaron’s wolven lips pulled back into a very visible snarl as the Troll regained his stooped composure. “You talk too much,” the Gilnean growled to the wind lord as he quickly healed Tuathann enough to finish the fight strong.
Tzu-tzu only responded by glaring at Aarbron, the insane grin he had wore moments before having clearly been incinerated by the Worgen Druid’s Moonfire. He let out a tribal whoop and flailed into the fight in the dancing and whirling martial style of the Trollish people, his blindingly fast strikes imbued with the very essence of angered winds. The Troll’s hand-to-hand combat prowess was surprising enough for Aarbron to be forced to retreat a few steps. Once at a safe distance, Aaron began summoning the waters trapped within the earth, calling them to rise up in an earthbound blastwave, creating a magical localized typhoon that flung the wind lord back several yards. The blast shocked and stunned the Trollish wind lord, giving Tuathann an opening. She tore into the troll with a stampeding roar, ripping, shredding, and mangling the troll a good deal before he managed to disengage.
“Not so fast,” Aarbron snarled, coaxing the sleeping roots of the earth to rise up and entangle the fleeing Troll. Trapped and unable to retaliate, the wind lord was helpless as both feline and Worgen attacked in a furry blur of teeth, moonfire and claws.
“The Master’s will be done!” Tzu-tzu cried out, finally giving in to his fate. He struggled against the vines and the clawing and tearing one last time before giving into a crazed chuckle. “Tell dis to ya kitteh frien’ and dat clueless lightbulb dat come witcha. You be only delayin’ de inevitable, windspeakah wannabe! De elements be risin’ up and comin’ for ya all … UUAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA—!!”
Finally at the end of his meticulously trained-in calm and patience, Aaron ran up and ripped out the Troll’s throat with a single, swift motion of his Worgen claws, violently ending the madman’s jeering laughter.
“You talk too damn much.”
~||~
Aaron, Tuathann, and the spirits of Hippogryph Master Moonfeather and Sentinel Starbreeze made their way across the ruined town, following the trail of smashed up wind elemental bracers and muddy footprints towards the town’s central hall. Reaching the edge of a small chasm, they found a slightly flustered Saphrit on the other side, the young Dragon Paladin being tailed by another elven spirit, and both were trying to catch up to one rather feisty dwarf-ette.
Hollee paused briefly and checked the makeshift foundry her kinsmen had set up years before, noting the distinct lack of other Dwarven remains. She breathed a half-sigh of relief – at least there was a chance her friends and fellow expeditioneers were still alive somewhere. After a moment, she noticed Saphrit peering into the building, obviously wondering why the young Paladin was being so unnecessarily discreet about snooping around.
“Oi, lad!” Hollee loudly berated her young friend from the foundry. “What are ye doin’ thar!?”
Saphrit nearly jumped, and then shot Hollee a condescending look. It was at that point that Aaron and Tuathann arrived, the Worgen clambering over the other side of the chasm, slightly drenched from having to ford the water that rushed through the broken earth. Both druids unceremoniously shook the water out of their fur and quietly walked over to Saphrit, the spirits they had rescued in tow. Hollee also joined them, now a bit more discreet.
“What is going on, Master Saphrit?” Aaron asked finally, watching Saphrit peer into the building again as Tuathann shifted out of her cat form.
“There’s an Orc in there, a powerful dark shaman,” Saphrit answered quietly. “He’s gotten Master Windweaver’s spirit trapped, and that Orc is also wearing the colours of the Twilight’s Hammer!”
“Another one?!” Tuathann whispered, almost exasperated.
“There were others?” Saphrit asked, turning his attention back to his companions.
Tuathann nodded calmly. “They call themselves ‘wind lords’. I confronted a Tauren while I was aiding Sentinel Starbreeze’s spirit be released from her corpse. The Tauren almost got away, and she would have if she had not overshot her jump from the balcony while making her escape.” She nodded at Aaron briefly, and added, “When I caught up with Master Braun here, we confronted a second wind lord. A crazed Troll of all things.”
“Did you manage to learn anything from these felons before they got themselves killed?” the paladin asked, noticing the remaining flecks of blood on Aaron’s claws and Tuathann’s leather-gauntleted hands.
Tuathann answered first. “The Tauren mentioned a Seer in the employ of some madman named Riverswift Auberthoril. They arrived here on orders from Auberthoril that the Seer had passed onto them.”
If a truly close friend of the Dragon Paladin had been observing him keenly at that moment, that individual would no doubt have noticed the minute glint of steel that passed through Saphrit’s eyes at the mention of the name of the cultists’ employer. But the mismatched pair of Druids had only known him for so long, and he had his back to Hollee, who was far more occupied keeping tabs on their immediate surroundings than reading obscure emotions out of the young Blue Drake.
“The troll said that he and the other wind lords here were so-called ‘scions’ of a greater elemental that calls himself Aetherion,” Aaron reported next, rubbing some of the blood that hadn’t washed out in the river crossing out of his fur. “And that they were sent here as the start of something bigger.” The Worgen paused, as if he were considering saying something else, but decided against it. “I am just hoping it will end with this Aetherion fiend.”
“Let’s hope,” Saphrit nodded, sliding into a crouch and beginning to draw a diagram into the dirt.
“What we gonna do now, lad?” Hollee asked, noticing Saphrit scratching around in the bare earth.
“We’re going to need to deal with that last wind lord to rescue Master Windweaver’s spirit, and I’m betting that Orc is going to be very powerful,” Saphrit answered, not looking up from his diagram. “We’ll need a plan …”
~||~
The Orcish wind lord, Skylord Braax, gloated at this prisoner, the trapped spirit of Thundris Windweaver, as the greenskin prepared to cast the final incantation on the ritual orb floating over a runic circle of power. It was slow going at this point, as the Orc noticed that his fellow wind lords had stopped channelling the will of the winds in his direction. Likely, they had been delayed, or worse, done in by the intruders whom their elemental servants had spotted wreaking havoc just an hour or so ago. A minor nuisance. They’d show up to finish him off eventually … Braax laughed to himself. By then, it’d be too late, and he would be ready for those interlopers!
“I canna’ believe they talked me inta this …” he heard a lilting voice mumble at the door. For a moment, the Orc paused, squinting hard at the meek, feminine Dwarven silhouette peeking around the doorway. He sneered. Another pesky survivor. With little ceremony, he hurled a dark bolt of corrupted lighting toward the door, hearing a shrill ‘eek!’ and the satisfying sound of thunder cracking wood. Certain the Dwarf was still alive, the Orc fired another bolt of dark lightning, muttering the words of the orb’s incantation under his breath. The wind was too … calm. Something was wrong—
Claws dug into the Orc shaman’s back, making him spurt out blackened blood and scream out in shock and pain. The purifying fires of the moon were called down upon him, searing his greenish-black flesh, and a blast of holy light broadsided the wind lord and knocked him to the floor.
“Don’t let him get up!” a gruff voice shouted in the flurry of activity. A bluish-grey blur of fangs and fur tackled the Orc, its unnatural talons glowing with the wrath of nature itself.
Braax roared an ancient Orcish battleshout and suddenly summoned the strength to hurl aside the beast pinning him down. He followed his counter with the concussive force of thunder, blowing away both the cat Druid and a Paladin who was attacking in tandem, thus blocking the opening their Worgen companion had wrestled for. Slightly mangled now from the surprise attack, Braax decided to even his odds a touch and summoned several wind elementals to his aid. These interlopers were cunning! He could not afford to underestimate them.
Wasting little time, Braax began to chant the final incantation into the orb while his elementals distracted the interlopers. The final component was a trapped soul, and Thundris’ spirit was just what was required by the ritual. All he needed was a few more moments, as compelling a soul to approach the ritual circle required all his available focus. It was now or never.
Slowly, Braax held out his hand to Thundris’ soul, grinning madly as the spell grew closer and closer to completion with every eldritch word spoken … then a blue blur sang through the air and sliced Braax’s hand clean off his arm.
The wind lord screamed in pain and disbelief as he watched his severed limb skitter across the rune circle on the floor, spoiling the spell with a trail of his own brackish blood marring the delicate patterns he had laid down over the past few days. The shock of losing a limb was also enough for him to lose control of the elementals he had summoned, immediately banishing the creatures to their own plane. Staring at the bleeding stump that was his hand, Braax noticed too late the Worgen and the cat Druid charging at him at full tilt. The dark shaman was unable to brace for the impact this time – once he was down, they pinned him to the floor long enough for the Paladin with the crystal-forged axe to walk up and look down upon the broken wind lord. Judging from the look in the Paladin’s eyes, it almost seemed that the golden-haired young man pitied the last scion of Aetherion. … Pity, eh? It was sure sign of naïveté and weakness.
“Little more than children, all of you!” the wind lord spat as he struggled against the combined strength of the Paladin’s bestial friends. “You may have succeeded in stopping the ritual to expedite the coming of my patron, but you are too late to stop his arrival! What has been done here will be heard in the upper echelons of the Twilight’s Hammer, regardless of our failure!” The Orc grinned, almost triumphantly. “Summoning Aetherion is just practice, child … the Seer has seen what we have done, and he will add the knowledge of our work to the final opus that Lord Auberthoril commissioned him to do! Glory to the Old Ones! To Cho’Gall! TO THE END OF ALL THINGS!”
A flying pickaxe to the chest stopped Braax’s gloating laughter before it even started. Hollee stood at the door, an unreadable expression combined from a dozen different emotions playing across her usually cheery Dwarven face. She had thrown the axe.
“I’ve ‘ad enough o’ them nuts,” was all she managed to mutter before going silent again.
Braax still had one last thing to say, slowly losing the capacity to breathe due to the pickaxe lodged in between his ribs. He glared at Saphrit, as if possessed by an unnatural force, before speaking once more.
“In the mercurial twilight is the one you seek, Paladin,” Braax rasped. “As long as the Seer lives, you will have a chance to find him. If you do not tarry, you will find him in time. Do not stray from the path, as the hours are precious … lest you lose more than just your light and your wings. … So speaks N’zoth… I’a… I’a… Ahahahahhhh—”
Saphrit paused to think over what he was just told, and let the Orc laugh with his dying breath. Then the paladin stepped forward and beheaded the brute with one calculated swing of his massive axe.
After the Orc’s head had been sent rolling across the water-soaked floorboards, Saphrit glanced briefly at Thundris, the night elven spirit regarding his history student with a grateful nod. Saphrit then turned his attention back at his companions and said only one thing.
“Auntie Yalda’s waiting for us. We’d better go.”
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