The Nightmare Ends

5/24 night

Tyrande hopped off of the hippogriff that had brought her to the front lines. She preferred going into battle mounted upon Ash’alah, but unfortunately the frostsaber had no easy way to travel as quickly as had been required. The green dragonflight were somewhat erratic allies, but rarely liars. From what Shandris had told her since she’d arrived, they had found no signs of deception thus far.

Dori’thur, her owl companion, had confirmed it as well. A corruption was spilling out of the portal, twisting the wildlife of Feralas into an army. That needed to be dealt with, no matter who the messenger was. Tyrande was still a bit sore over the dragons’ decision to largely sit out the recent war with the Burning Legion, but the Kaldorei were not a petty people. They had a mutual enemy, and the dragons claimed that they were already fighting on at least four other fronts.They also brought tidings from Malfurion. It had been easy enough to cleanse his signet ring with the light of Elune, and for a time they had been able to speak. Their time together always seemed fleeting whether it was minutes or years, and swallowed up with duties as often as not. He had confirmed everything save the miraculous jewelry that the dragons had devised to guard against the taint.

It made her glad to see the relief on her beloved’s face when she gave him the news that Ysondre and Emeriss, two dragons he was acquainted with, were alive and fighting in the waking world. If dragons as corrupted as poor Taerar could be saved, perhaps the tide could indeed be turned. At least now she knew why he was trapped in sleep, and something she could do to aid him.

Well. It was time to begin. As the Druids of the Claw began their charge, Tyrande called out to Elune and stars began to fall from the sky.

••••••••••

Ysondre looked over her troops. Esmeralda was officially in charge, but she would be focused upon subduing their primary target. Emeriss was still a bit erratic from her time corrupted, Talaada was a child, and Noboru was unfamiliar with aerial tactics. That left Ysondre to direct things.

The new dragons, all freshly transformed into uncorrupted greens, were ready to fight but had only a modest level of training in doing so. They were all proficient flyers and most could snatch prey from above, but those were the bare minimum requirements. Ysondre would never normally bring a group this young and untrained into a battle this dangerous, and warned them all to be ready to flee at her word.

The plan was simple; rely on Tyrande while flanking the enemy from above. Should Taerar attempt to engage with the sentinels, then he could be struck in the sides and back. If he hung back for fear of their forces, then the battle would swing in their favor. In the short term, they would systematically uproot the ancient protectors. They were too large of a threat to both the sentinels and dragons. Enemy dragons that willingly engaged with them outside of the ancients’ range would be the primary targets, of course.

••••••••••

Xylinnia was surprised when I appeared, though her unit took the appearance of an extra soldier armed with a moonblade as a good sign. I was a night elf wearing the Anduin armor instead of the Warden armor, so I would hopefully be taken for an eccentric dragon with an unusual weapon instead of a warden. I didn’t want to draw more attention than strictly necessary.

Xylinnia was going into battle as a rank and file archer; arcane magic wasn’t employed in battle by night elves, at least not at this point in the lore. Most of the people in her unit were only technically sentinels, armed and armored when there was a battle but generally brought along only as supporting fire. The team of bakers, cleaners, and craftsmen were happy to have an extra melee combatant along; they were mostly reliant on long daggers and running if the enemy got too close to them.

••••••••••

The enemy fell like wheat before the fury of the stars, at least at first. Against the enemy’s pawns, she cut a swathe of destruction. To maximize the effectiveness of Elune’s mightiest gift, she and her honor guard of Druids advanced steadily, breaking the enemy lines. Such as they were; the falling stars were mostly obliterating corrupted local wildlife. The sentinels could handily defeat such beasts without her intervention, so this was more a show of strength to improve morale and cut down on risk than a true lynchpin of their strategy.

When the starfall ended, cracks in their forces began to show. The Druids that had been sent by Fandral Staghelm were enthusiastic, but many outside of her own personal guard were young and inexperienced. Some had been trained after the battle for Mount Hyjal, and had never experienced war against an enemy of such pure malevolence. When the battle truly began, the great bears were unable to hold the line. Few died, as the bear spirit lent them incredible endurance, but they ended up clustered and fighting to survive while the enemy filtered through to the backline.

••••••••••

They had miscalculated; this was the first time Ony- er, Esmerelda had been exposed to the nightmare as a green dragon. She was wholly unprepared for it, and had built up absolutely no resistance. It didn’t seem to be affecting the Draenei half as much, so Ysondre suspected she was being specifically targeted.

“Dremuus.” She called for the first name she remembered was in a safe location. “Summon Esmeralda, and disable her for now. Call Vanessa if you don’t have the authority to alter her commands yourself.” She spent the rest of the battle keeping an eye on her companions. Emeriss and Ysondre were functionally immune, but the two of them were also hardly enough to fight three dragons and a dozen Ancient Protectors alone. She was a healer; she would monitor her flight’s condition and have them evacuated and quarantined as needed.

••••••••••

The front line broke disturbingly quickly, which is very bad when your army is overwhelmingly focused on ranged combat. The sentinels weren’t helpless, but they would have been using an entirely different strategy if they had known the Druids of the Claw couldn’t hold the line. Hit and run tactics with their mounted huntresses, judicious use of their innate ability to fade into the shadows, and a general doctrine of constant skirmishing and guerrilla warfare was what they tended towards normally.

They were, at least, highly professional when everything went fubar. Shandris had trained her troops well, and what could have been a general melee instead became an orderly rearrangement of forces. There were losses, many losses, but it could have been far worse. At least the priestesses of Elune were doing their jobs; each was around as effective in their role as healers as Sadie.

I, for my part, looked far cooler than I actually was. Every twenty to sixty seconds something aggressive would stumble upon where I was hiding with shadowmeld. I swiped at them with my moonblade, Archaeus would delete the poor fool, and I’d either follow up briefly or blink away and hide again, depending on how secure my position was. Occasionally I would play hero if someone was about to have their throat ripped out right in front of me, but I was mostly playing it safe.

I saved Xylinnia several times; that was honestly how I used most of my time as people died all around us. She seemed to be actively targeted by the nightmare creatures, and I suspect it was because of her amulet. The nightmare knew of my retinue, and hated us.

The death of corrupted creatures all around me, some of them even because of my own actions, got me tons of experience, but each level cost more than twice as much as the last. Level two and fan of knives came after only a few minutes of combat, level 3 and my first upgrade to blink was less than thirty minutes of brutal grind later. I was more comfortable being proactive at that point; blink’s 10 second cooldown was intact, but the cost became trivial. With Anduin’s armor bolstering my mana regeneration, I could do this all day. I wasn’t turning the tides, but I was contributing and looked cool while doing it. Thanks to Stud Service, that second part actually mattered.

••••••••••

The sentinels were winning their battle, and the dragons were holding their own. Tyrande did not know why they were winking out of existence one at a time, but she assumed it gave her troops a time limit. The uncorrupted dragons seemed to be playing defensively, primarily working to keep the corrupted from assaulting the sentinel lines. Unfortunately, the ballista crews were too pressed to properly put down the ancients and decisively turn the battle in Ysondre’s favor.

Tyrande was going to kill Staghelm, but that came later. For now she was on the hunt. The dragonspawn needed to be put down; Shandris and Tyrande’s teams were the only ones that could do so without heavy casualties. She signaled Shandris to focus on retaking the ballistae; with those in play, this battle would be all but assured.

••••••••••

Talaada was getting tired. Horribly, horribly tired. She had learned all she could of healing from Lady Paletress, but stamina takes time to build up and training was not her primary duty. She wasn’t a warrior like her father or uncle, and she was one of the smaller dragons present. She was keeping some of the pressure off of Ysondre, but soon she wouldn’t be able to do that anymore. She cast about for some way to stay useful, and she only had one idea.

She flew up out of the range of the thrown boulders, and waited for one of the two drakes to get close enough. When he did, she let loose the one spell she had left. “Soothe,” she whispered, and plunged them both into a sea of tranquility, allowing a cackling Lividia to loop a necklace onto him before he regained his bearings. He managed to snap Lividia’s spine before the paralysis order went into play, but the balance of power shifted quite nicely at that point.

••••••••••

The battle was brutal, but in the end we won. We had a slight numbers advantage, were generally more coordinated, and we each had roughly equivalent big guns. Taerar didn’t make it; when Tyrande was able to close in enough to try to purify him, the shock to his system was too intense. He died as the corruption was seared away. To hear her tell it, there was hardly anything left of him but the corruption.

Despite that, she was more than willing to allow Ysondre to take the body away, and we managed to capture the other two dragons. Three new high end dragons for me was definitely a win in my book, even if I needed to use my resurrection scroll for Taerar. My retinue had one more contribution to make, as well.

Sally Whitemane was a bit surprised to be woken in the middle of the night, but she instinctively recognized me and accepted my orders as divine mandate. With repeated innervation, multiple mana potions, and as much moonberry juice as she could drink, she was able to resurrect more than half of those who had fallen. Anyone with a reasonably intact body, essentially. Those whose skulls had been caved in or who had been ripped in half were beyond Sally’s powers, but what she *could* do was more than enough to earn the sentinels’ reverence.

All that was left was to gather up my rewards and go home for a nap and a morning full of bookkeeping. I quietly passed something to Ysondre as she went to meet with Tyrande. I overheard the most important words coming out of her mouth with a smile, as she spoke into the horn for the Reward For Service.

“Of course. We were happy to help. All that I ask in return is that you and your people trust and cooperate with my organization for so long as our mutual enemies threaten Azeroth.”