Land of Withering

by Someauthoring

Cold winds sweep in from the north. The wolf's howl is struck dead in the night and where the trees wither, blood-stained fur lie on roads to new destinations, cut short as the path ends where the dead tread. Sylvanas, the one who fell, rise again from the ruins of Lordaeron and with a taste for vengeance the queen of the Forsaken takes the fight to the king of the damned.

1. Prologue

LAND OF WITHERING

Prologue

Like just another leaf tumbling down for its final rest she lay draped across the cold autumn ground, watching the clouds pass over Tirisfal Glades. There was an inquisitive look on her face as she contemplated the moon and the stars bestowing a gentle shimmering over the sleeping ravens in the trees. The last living beings on this dead soil.

It was a land of withering that he slender form of this ancient being rested against. Bathed in waves of silver light, the eternal night-sky above framed its mother Elune, exposed for mortals and timeless alike to bear witness. A sacred event to elves. Sacrilege to man.

On one hand she could count how many times she's felt the goddess intimate presence surrounding her like this, overpowering and humbling... Once each millennia... and it pained her to present her new corrupt form, wondering what she must be thinking.

How things have changed...

Heavy eyelids fell, sheltering silent reverie of both pain and sorrow over the years that's passed and loved ones who's passed along with them. She knew that neither sleep nor rest would ever alleviate her tortured mind, and yet she tried. Hoped that this hollow existence of sand and fire would be soothed for but one night.

Her cold lips opened to breathe in the putrid reek of the forest, a smell that's become as pleasant to her corrupted senses as the pollen of spring. The dense thicket of dark, withering trees loomed out of the corners of her vision: unnatural-looking but beautifully so. She mused, that if not for her living memories of how things ought to be, perhaps this new reality would not be so much of a torment and a curse.

The ancient elf of scabs and rot let out a tired sigh, feeling beyond exhausted, dismayed by the obstacles that lay before her and what she must do. Another sigh and she let her mind stray from such troubling thoughts. For she had promised herself that on this sacred night she would not let the burdens of being Sylvanas the leashmaster of the damned haunt her thoughts. She gazed towards the goddess once more.

Oh, how the world shrinks on the ancients and the divine, casting it aside to give way for the new order of death and desolation in the kingdom of mortals. Have all abandoned me, even you?

...mother above

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