Our world has changed so much in such a short time. War has ravaged the land, and brought once great nations to ruin. Yet none compare to the war we face against the Burning Legion, or so we thought. With the Alliance still recovering, and a small faction escaping to the shores of Kalimdor, along with the Horde, who chose to uproot themselves and find a new home for themselves within the barrens they now call 'Durotar,' many would believe that this was the greatest war we faced against the Burning Legion, but there was another war, the first war where gods faced demon lords, ten thousand years ago when the lands of Azeroth were whole.
I was there at our final stand, even I with my minor talents as a mage; I was called upon to defend our world, not our land you see. This was not a fight over something as petty as territory, but our very survival. To lose to the Burning Legion would mean the extinction of all life upon the planet.
The instinct to survive, of self-preservation is an astounding thing, and increased beyond imagining when raced with not only your own destruction, but that of your people, the lengths you will go to, to survive, the things you would do, unimaginable. It was only with this scythe to our necks that we stood as one, the Alliance, Horde, and night elves, together against the Burning Legion.
I was there at the end, a miracle unto itself. I watched as Archimonde stood before the world tree, his form gigantic, embracing it and the energies it contained, eager to make them his own. Yet his smile of triumph quickly changed to one of annoyance, and then fear, as the sound of a war horn crashed across the battlefield. Hundreds, thousands, and then millions of ancestral wisps, the spirits of the world, surrounded him, engulfed him in their light, and then performed the ultimate sacrifice, they unleashed their energy, along with the world tree, in a single explosion, and with that the war ended, and Archimonde was destroyed by the very energies he wished to control.
After the injured had been cared for, and the celebrations began to break out across the camps, I sat upon a cliff overlooking the battlefield, thinking, "How had it come to this?" How had we been driven to the brink by a foe we were so unprepared to face, and how had they come to our world? It was then that I noticed a figure standing beside me, and as if reading my mind her answered.
"Ask them." He said, pointing toward the high elf camp. "Ask them of the war of the ancients, and the cost the world paid for their greed, and desires!"
