NOVEL NEXT Chapter 19: Setbacks
Malfurion was dead. Malfurion was NOT supposed to be dead. And yet, in direct defiance of that thought, the Archdruid’s corpse stands before them, staring at them all with its one remaining glassy eye. As Rognak stares at the sight in horror, everyone else around him reacts in their own way. For Thrall and Jaina and their forces, they merely tense up, getting ready for the fight they assume is to come.
After all, they don’t know Malfurion Stormrage. They might not even understand who this is. Though Tyrande’s screams will certainly have tipped them off. The Priestess of Elune, so very composed when she’d spoken to him just a couple days earlier, collapses to her knees now, a woman broken by the atrocity in front of her. Rognak does not begrudge her the reaction. It’s understandable, all things considered.
But then… how could this be? How had this happened? That niggling feeling at the back of Rognak’s mind gets stronger and suddenly, much too late, he finds himself remembering something from that other life of his, where all of this had been some sort of strange game. Retrieving Malfurion, waking him up… it was a mission of sorts. A mission with a failure condition.
They’d somehow tripped that failure condition. They’d taken too long and arrived too late to wake Malfurion from his barrow before the undead could get to him. But they should have had more time. This was all happening much too early and much too soon.
Except no. Because the time table had been moved up. The Defiler had accelerated his plans. Mannoroth’s gambit to reclaim the Warsong Clan and kill Cenarius hadn’t just failed, it’d failed so spectacularly that Mannoroth himself had been killed and sent kicking and screaming back to the Twisting Nether.
In response, the Burning Legion had acted sooner on all fronts. They’d moved up their gambits and Rognak and his allies had been too slow in adapting. In saving Cenarius and bringing the Night Elves and Orcs together against Mannoroth, he had made the situation Tyrande Whisperwind faced seem not quite so desperate. Oh, still desperate to be sure… but not so bad that she would ignore millennia of tradition and seek out her mate before the Lord of the Forest.
This was his fault. Rognak’s actions had caused this, however indirectly. He was to blame here. But even as he watched Tyrande blame herself, even as he knew she did so incorrectly… Rognak couldn’t dwell on it. Instead, he had to force himself to focus. The undead abomination that Malfurion Stormrage had become hadn’t made a move yet, but Rognak, just like all of the others, knew it was only a matter of time.
No one expected Tyrande to be able to fight the reanimated corpse of her beloved, but they would have to fight. Rognak’s gut clenches and churns as he imagines what sort of monstrosities an undead Malfurion could be capable of. What sort of-?
Just as the worst possible outcomes are all passing through the orc druid’s mind, Cenarius reaches out with a set of branch-like claws… and calls down the most powerful column of fiery light that Rognak has ever seen. He grunts, forced to cover his eyes with one arm to keep from being blinded by the Solar Beam, even as those who have made this journey with them are forced to do the same.
For eight long seconds, the Solar Beam burns away… and then just as quickly as it starts, it ends. Once he’s done blinking the spots out of his eyes, Rognak looks to where the undead Malfurion once stood… and finds nothing but ash. In those eight seconds, Cenarius has burned away his student’s reanimated corpse, removing the undead abomination from the world.
But… how? Surely a being as powerful as Malfurion Stormrage would make an equally impressive undead, would he not? Rognak was expecting a fight for their lives and instead… the Lord of the Forest ended it with one wave of his hand.
On the ground, held by Shandris, Tyrande lets out a choked sob at the destruction of her beloved. But before anyone can do or say anything else, Cenarius speaks up.
“Fret not, High Priestess, allies. That… husk was not my student. That was not Malfurion Stormrage.”
There’s a pause at that, as Tyrande lifts her head in confusion and orcs and humans alike shuffle from foot to foot. Rognak catches on to what Cenarius is saying only a moment before the Forest Demigod kneels his immense bulk at Tyrande’s side, placing a hand of branches upon her shoulder.
“I am sorry, Tyrande. That was in fact Malfurion’s body. However… you know as well as I that while he slumbered, Malfurion’s spirit and soul were elsewhere. What the Scourge managed to pervert with their monstrous corruption was merely his physical shell.”
Tyrande’s breath hitches and hope shines through watery eyes, tear tracks visible on her cheeks.
“The Emerald Dream. He’s…”
Cenarius nods, even as Rognak finds himself listening closely, his mind reeling from the implications.
“Indeed. Malfurion Stormrage still lives within the Emerald Dream. Today was not his end. Even now, I can feel him. However…”
“Malfurion Stormrage was a child of the waking world, for all his power and all his connection to Nature. He was not a creature of the Dream as I am. He cannot survive in the Emerald Dream indefinitely and without a body to anchor him… his sense of self, his very soul, will eventually diffuse into the Dream. Over time, he will dissipate and lose cohesion, becoming one with the Emerald Dream. I am sorry, my dear.”
Tyrande trembles for a moment, before breaking down again, wailing as Shandris pulls her once more into a hug.
“S’all my fault… it’s all my fault!”
It wasn’t. But then, how do you tell someone that you changed their history? From what Rognak could glean from the other set of memories, Malfurion was not only supposed to survive this, but he was also supposed to continue surviving well into the future. He was never supposed to die in this place, nor in this time. If not for Rognak’s interference, Tyrande would have had many more years with her beloved.
It most definitely wasn’t her fault, and yet all he could do was stand there with everyone else, feeling utterly useless. Until suddenly, Cenarius rises and turns to fix him with an unreadable gaze.
For the briefest, strangest of moments, Rognak freezes in place under that gaze. It’s almost as though the Lord of the Forest knows. As far as he’s aware, Cenarius is not a mind reader… but in that instant, he can’t help feeling as though the Demigod sees right through him, sees his guilt and his culpability in these events.
However, before he can speak… Cenarius overrides him.
“We must spread out across the Moonglade and awaken the other druids… those that remain anyways. There are dozens of barrows all across these lands, and within them lie the druids of talon and claw. Any barrow that has been broken into by the undead is likely already lost to us, but I sense several that are still untouched… and many more that are under siege even now. We must move. Quickly!”
Right! Spinning around, Rognak grabs Wolfsong off his back and hoists the axe into the air.
“Warsong Clan! To me!”
Thrall does the same with Doomhammer, and Jaina raises her stave as well. Shandris does not leave her mother and Rognak doesn’t expect her to, but the Night Elf Sentinels that have journeyed with them all the way here also spread out across the Moonglade in response to Cenarius’ orders.
As they move, Rognak wonders if it was all just in his head. His own guilt made him see something in Cenarius’ gaze that wasn’t actually there. All along, the Demigod had merely been approaching him to get his ass in gear and see them all sent on this latest mission.
The Lord of the Forest directs them to the barrow dens still under siege first, and Rognak loses himself in the battle that follows. Killing Scourge is simple enough, especially when there aren’t any demons leading them. In the end, it’s just mindless, shambling corpses one and all, sent to kill sleeping Night Elf druids in their beds. The Legion and the Scourge weren’t expecting a fight here… Archimonde had known that the Moonglade would be filled with slumbering druids.
Obviously, Rognak had always known just how evil Archimonde and the Legion were. But knowing something and experiencing the depths of depravity first hand were two very different things. Even as they fight the undead off of the barrow dens still being attacked, they pass several more that have already been busted open, the druids within already lost to the Scourge.
His actions and the changes to the timeline that he’s made haven’t just cost Malfurion Stormrage his physical body. No, they’ve cost them hundreds of Night Elf druids. In the end, every druid of talon or claw that can be saved, they save. Some barrow dens are sealed entirely still, and those require Lord Cenarius and his Horn to unseal them and awaken the druids slumbering within.
But the sheer amount of death and destruction taken in by the time they’re done has Rognak clenching his jaw in grim realization. They have to make it worth it. They have to make all of this… worth it.
To his surprise, Thrall comes to him after the emergency rescue efforts are all finished. After every single barrow den has been cleared out, one way or the other. The Sentinels look after the surviving druids, while the Horde and Jaina’s human forces make camp. And in the midst of all of this, Rognak feels a hand fall upon his shoulder and turns to see Thrall gazing out upon the area, same as him.
“I am sorry for your loss.”
Rognak blinks, a little taken aback by the other orc’s words. In response, the corner of Thrall’s mouth curls up in a sardonic grin.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice? You were looking forward to meeting these elven druids, weren’t you? And now the greatest of them is dead and only a small number ultimately survive.”
The Warchief shakes his head and sighs.
“I know that there are others who might have greater claim to sorrow in this moment then you or I… but there is no limit to heartache, Chieftain of the Warsong Clan. Grief is no finite resource, that you cannot feel it and I cannot comfort you in the midst of it.”
That’s… surprisingly deep. Or maybe it shouldn’t be, this is Thrall that he’s talking about. Of course, the shaman has sort of done the equivalent of reaching the correct answer with the wrong formula. Rognak does feel like shit. He does wish that things could have been different. But it’s not because he was looking forward to meeting Malfurion or the Night Elf druids or anything.
In hindsight, it would have been interesting to trade tips with them, but Rognak already had Cenarius as a teacher, and so he hadn’t exactly been seeking out a replacement. No, Rognak felt like shit because he felt like he was at fault here. The Night Elves had lost a great many of their people today, of those among them with the greatest connection to Nature at that. What sort of long-term ramifications would this have on their future? On the future of Azeroth?
Malfurion Stormrage was an important figure in the events that would plague Azeroth in the coming decades. And now he was gone. Or if not gone, at least confined to the Emerald Dream until whatever time he had in the Dream finally ran its course and he ‘lost cohesion’ as Cenarius had described it. The point was that things Malfurion was supposed to do in the future, he would never do now. And some of them very much needed to be done.
Rognak would have to figure that out, and he doubted he’d be able to do it alone… but for now, he was simply feeling the loss most keenly and left wondering what next.
“It shouldn’t have been like this. This shouldn’t have happened…”
Thrall grunts at that, and only then does Rognak realize he said that out loud. The Warchief is quiet for a moment, perhaps mulling over his words, before he gives Rognak’s shoulder a squeeze.
“We cannot rely on ‘should have beens’, Rognak. We can only rely on ‘what is’. This battle might feel lost, but we have still managed to avert complete defeat. And… the war is far from over. Demons roam these lands, perverting what is right and corrupting what is natural. I for one will not stand idly by and let them do as they please. Will you?”
Rognak’s jaw clenches. As far as peptalks go, that wasn’t half-bad. It helped that Thrall was right of course. Still, it was easy to see in moments like this why the other orc, despite being the same age as Rognak, had become Warchief of the Horde.
“Of course not. Archimonde will not have his way. Not while I still draw breath.”
Thrall grins and gives Rognak one final pat on his shoulder before beginning to step away.
“Good. Though as much of a threat as this Archimonde clearly is, don’t set your sights too high. Our enemies are seemingly as numerous as the trees in this forest. We will all need to band together to stop those that lurk in the shadows and aim to take our new home from us.”
Rognak blinks as Thrall parts ways with him on those words. Those that lurk in the shadows. He’s sure that Thrall is talking solely about the Legion and Scourge that have been ambushing them all the way up to the Moonglade until now… but for Rognak, the words take on a different meaning. Suddenly, he has an idea. A way to perhaps balance the scales so to speak.
Malfurion’s death was never supposed to happen, but it did. And the loss of him and all of the other druids who had been slain in their barrow dens would be keenly felt in the days to come. But maybe it didn’t have to be all bad. Cenarius still lived, right? Rognak had to prove that he could change things for the better, even now. Even if he was only proving it to himself.
Straightening up, he finds himself sending a silent bit of thanks towards Thrall’s back as the other orc continues walking away. Then, he turns and starts seeking out Cenarius. There’s something he desperately needs to talk to the Lord of the Forest about.
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