Author's Notes: I AM SO LAME GUYS. I've been swamped with Medieval Faire prep, and we are currently on day nine of puking hell. Nine people, one bathroom. Not cool. On the flip side, I already have the next chapter completely done, so I will try for a double update this weekend.
BTW look, it only took until chapter 25 for my main character to get a surname. /facepalm
Thank you SO MUCH for the comments! I don't want to be one of those writers that demand comments, and will only write if people comment, but it really is very motivating to see that there are people following this and emotionally vested in seeing the end. Group hug!
Replies: Feff: The character of Kelanaer was originally VERY different, but I needed to re-write him when I updated the chapter for the current changes. I ended up making someone that was really very interesting for a one-off. He was fun! And yes, poor Elf. As much as I love to torture Zara, I don't like to make poor Elf sad, he's such a good guy. In fact there were a lot of changes made to the end of this story specifically because I didn't want him to suffer too much (that's all the spoilers you get!)
Rock On: *pets your hand* It's okay, your tears fuel my writing *evil grin*
Roguekittiekat: Hi there! Welcome to the group! Thank you so much for following! And yes, Elf and Zara do re-unite eventually. You may cling to that one hope for now :D.
When morning dawned on the day of the cleansing, Zarabethe had already been awake for two hours. She lay there watching the breeze billow the curtains inward, her stomach tied up in knots. The past month had raveled her nerves ragged. She had flitted all over Moonglade in a persistent state of unrest. More than once she had almost left, but the temptation that the druids would miraculously finish their preparations early kept her bound to the Cenarian Circle's safe haven. What if they started without her, and she missed the event? She would have to start over from the beginning of this entire arc.
When the first rays of sun broke through the murky green overcast of the night, Zarabethe pushed the covers back and sat right up in bed. She barely spared it a glance as she got dressed and geared herself up for the day, but in the back of her head she knew the exact place where she had lain the needle and thread down last night and forced herself to sleep for a few hours. What had started as a once in a while thing, just something to take the edge off of her restlessness, had turned into a month-long obsession. The edges of her vest, the hem of her tunic, even a straight line down the side of her pants now held clusters of tiny leaves connected by swirling vines. One of the druids had caught her one day completely twisted into a pretzel as she attempted to stitch the last few inches on the back of her only shirt, and barely able to contain her smile, told her she was free to decorate her coverlet as much as she wished. It had turned into a marvelous tapestry of design: she had not planned it out at all when she started, just used it as a blank canvas to practice embroidering different tiny pictures. It was now nearly filled with different shapes of leaves: oval leaves, maple leaves, oak leaves, the straight smooth leaves of the trees inhabiting Moonglade, and any others she could think of. In between the foliage she intermingled different kinds of flowers: marigolds and roses, daffodils and peacebloom, until the entire coverlet looked like some kind of exotic flower garden. In one corner she had even started to practice writing letters and words, although they were a lot harder. Living things you could have a sort of artistic license with: letters and symbols had to be precise. The last part she had been working on was her name in the bottom right-hand corner: Zarabethe Shadowleaf. She had been decorating it with tiny leaves and swirls at the edges, but the name was still visible in the chaos of the blanket. All in all it was good that today was the day of the ritual: she was nearly out of space to embroider.
Zarabethe rubbed her thumb against her fingers before slinging her bow and quiver over her shoulder. There were new callouses there: raw spots that had quickly given way to rough patches of thick skin. She already had several callouses from her bowstrings, and her hand felt different as she did a practice draw on the string. She bit the side of her mouth in thought as she slipped the satchel over her head. Normally this wouldn't even give her cause for concern, but lately every anomaly seemed to upset her precarious perch on her control. She whistled to Spook as she left the small hut. She would just have to deal with it as it came.
The air was already thick with late summer humidity and Zarabethe shoved her damp bangs out of her face as she joined the crowd of Cenarion Circle gathered on the main platform in Nighthaven. Keeper Remulos was in the center, facing the peaceful green lake. At his hooved feet were the Nightmare Fragments. They had been taken out of their protective covers and were arranged in a diamond on the ground with the largest at the point. Zarabethe could feel the nauseating wave of corruption from where she was leaning against the fence away from the group, and she took several more steps away. She waited as the druids divided into smaller groups and put energizing buffs on each other. She was already familiar with the plan: Keeper Remulos was going to use the fragments to draw Eranikus through the dream to Moonglade, then trap him here while three groups of druids worked on channeling cleansing spells at him. The Nightmare Fragments were to be used in two ways: they would both amplify the spells by acting as a focusing prism, and they would create a kind of lock that would prevent the green dragon from fleeing.
Zarabethe checked her ammo, and paced up and down the walkway to the stations where the druids would be. She had stashed extra arrows at each location, and even a spare bow just in case. She had the hard job: keeping Eranikus trapped would draw creatures of the nightmare into this realm to attack the ones trying to cleanse him. She was in charge of keeping the shades at bay by any means necessary. If the druids fell or were interrupted, the cleansing would not be completed.
An anticipatory hush fell over the glade as the druids took their places and Keeper Remulos prepared the summoning ritual. Zarabethe took the moment to pin her hair more securely to her head and then stretch out her arms. She was ready. She had done all the prep work she needed to do weeks ago, and she had only to follow the rhythm of the fight. She bounced on her toes and wiggled her fingers. Unlike her nearly-disastrous venture at Forest Song, she had no fear, only the anticipation of victory. Even the soft flutter deep in her belly could not distract her today. She was prepared to reach the culmination of one-third of the hardest quest she had ever participated in, and she felt completely on her game. No doubts, only confidence.
Keeper Remulos's deep voice rang out through the glade. Zarabethe took position at the middle group of druids. They all held equal calm, prepared expressions on their faces, except one male Tauren. He was twisting his robe in his hands, but when he saw the night elf staring, he quickly dropped it and stood up straight. She returned her focus to the lake in front of them. She'd keep an eye on that one, but even with his nervousness he still looked capable.
The keeper's voice reached a pinnacle of sound, and above the lake the air started to look hazy. Zarabethe just had time to register how strange it looked, almost as if there were several layers of reality stacked in one place, like the skin of the sky was thick, when a collective gasp came from the druids around her. She stood up straighter as she saw it too: a rip in the fabric of reality, a horrible cut in the sky the darkest shade of green possible, one step from black. Some of the druids were whispering to themselves, and as Zarabethe glanced around at their horrified faces, she realized that they could feel the wrongness in tearing a hole into the Dream in this manner, and they were catching a glimpse of pure evil as it tried to force its way into this reality.
The hunter drew an arrow and held it loosely in her hand as she watched the hole grow in size. It was full of a pulsing darkness, a green ink smudge against the sky. The tension in the air was palpable, and Zarabethe reminded herself to keep her shoulders loose. This would be lesson in pacing herself, not going out guns blazing right away. A fearsome roar, distorted by space and time, came bellowing through the rip into the dream, and she heard the druids shuffle as they readied themselves.
Zarabethe had expected the drawing of Eranikus to be slow, forcing him to emerge into their reality bit by bit, almost like the sky giving birth to monstrosity, and she was taken aback when in one push, a massive green dragon roared into their world. He was huge, bloated with corruption and his own vanity, and the smell that came off of him was far worse than any of the minor dragonkin she had conquered before. She wrinkled her nose and set her feet: the mere smell of corruption would not phase her today. He was caught in the trap of the nightmare crystals almost immediately, and the bellow he gave as he thrashed about was angry and feral. Zarabethe watched as he focused one roiling eye onto Keeper Remulos, who spoke to the dragon by name.
"Eranikus, by the light of Elune, you shall be cleansed today. Fellow druids, focus your spells now!"
The first wave of the cleansing spells, enhanced by the nightmare crystals, hit the dragon in a stream of milky white energy. The sound that Eranikus made was deafening. Zarabethe cringed as a draconic scream, terrible and nonsensical, buffeted Moonglade. He was trapped secure though, and Zarabethe kept her senses about her. Now the shades would come to defend their master. She half-expected them to come roiling out of the lake, so when the very ground beneath her feet began to bubble and smoke, she jumped up on to a railing to watch the first wave come in. They were concentrated in a circle behind the keeper, in front of the cluster of druids, and Zarabethe dashed to intervene. The druids were all set up behind a flimsy barricade of crates, and two of the crates were hers: one held extra arrows and weapons, and the other a collection of traps. It was the second crate she reached into and taking a moment to set it, she slid a frost trap across the ground. It landed wide open in the center of the black boiling circle. She stayed back beside the barricade, and watched as the smoke billowing out of the ground coalesced into a group of nightmare shades. They made a hissing, unpleasant noise as they gained corporeality, and as they rushed to the first sentient creature, the trap released, freezing most of them in place. The ones that were hit with the wave of frost magic dissipated with a shriek. Zarabethe rapidly took out the three shades it missed. Apparently they only required one hit to return them to the Dream.
She did not pause, but grabbed another trap and headed toward another cluster of shades forming. As a rule, she did not use the arcane at all, and the druids forbade it in their sacred grove, but a hunter's traps were unique. It was a potion brewed with special frost plants from Winterspring the icecap, and then bottled inside a magic vial. It was like a Molotov cocktail of ice, worth only one shot and with a limited range, but extremely useful in certain instances. She had spent the weeks stuck in Moonglade making dozens of them, and as she trapped most of another group of shades and sent them back to the void they came from, she considered her time well-spent.
The fight was long and brutal. Zarabethe ran nearly the entire time, station to station: trap the shades, kill the extras, go to the next station. She was about halfway through her stash before she encountered a problem: she was chasing down spirits in the middle station, and she glanced up to see a black boiling circle form far to her right. Beside her Spook bit into a shade, and it exploded in a cloud of black dust. The sabre sneezed indignantly and shook herself. The hunter slashed through a spirit with her knife and yelled out to the right side barricade.
"Throw the trap!"
She had talked several of them through the process of of defending themselves, but these druids were all chosen for their devotion to Cenarius, and their ability to cleanse. They were not fighters, and Zarabethe cringed as she watched one of them, a male night elf with a bristle of bright green hair, delicately take a trap out of the box and almost drop it. She took out another spirit and tried to draw the rest toward the right side of the platform. The druid threw the trap wildly, and it almost missed, successfully trapping only three of the spirits. Zarabethe broke into a run and started firing as soon as she was in range. Behind her Spook continued snapping at the shades in her wake. One, two, three, the shades fell in rapid succession, but some of them were getting close to the barricade. One of the elder druids, the one outputting the most on his cleansing spell, realized what was going on and stopped casting. Shaking his arms out from the constant channeling, he drew thorny vines up from the ground and trapped the remaining shades. Zarabethe caught his eye and saluted him as she reached the barricade, and he nodded sagely at her. He renewed his spellcasting and Zarabethe heard another tortured scream from the dragon trapped above the lake. She sliced through the shades trapped by vines two and three at a time, and got a nose full of black dust. She shook her head, wiping at her face with her forearm, and tried to snort it out of her nose. It smelled of charred corruption, and made her eyes water.
Off to her left she heard a collective cry from the far barricade. Zarabethe turned and cursed loudly. This time a fumbling druid did drop the trap, and managed to freeze all of his companions behind the barricade. Zarabethe's lungs burned as she took off as fast as she could. Most of the druids had stopped casting in shock at their legs being encased in ice, and thankfully two of them were breaking the others free. Meanwhile the nightmare shades were converging towards Keeper Remulos.
"Stupid...useless..." Zarabethe panted as her boots slapped against the boards of the middle platform. Somehow, she put on a burst of speed, and in one motion, grabbed a trap and flung it as hard as she could toward the keeper. It exploded directly in the center of the shades, and Zarabethe only had to pick off a couple that escaped it. One of her arrows passed directly through the shade, and embedded itself in the post beside the keeper. Oblivious to the chaos behind him, he shouted out encouragement over his shoulder.
"Continue your casting, druids! The healing is almost complete!"
Above the lake, Eranikus growled and shook his massive head. The sound he was making was different than earlier, and for a moment, Zarabethe glanced up at the massive drake. Lines of green-grey smoke were billowing up from his scales, and he seemed to be shrinking in size. As strange as that was though, what captured her attention was his emerald eyes. They were no longer as feral looking as they were earlier, and whorled in a hypnotizing spiral. Forgetting about the entire platform of druids that was indisposed, and the nightmare shades boiling up out of the ground, she stumbled forward a few steps toward the green dragon. He was looking back at her, she suddenly realized. The satchel grew warm at her side, and in that moment, she felt that he was drawn to her as much as she to him. Her feet took her closer until she was standing near the keeper, right at the edge of the platform. Eranikus was completely focused on her, and in a voice that was deeper than the ocean, he spoke.
"You. You are the one that calls me here."
Without warning he lunged for her against the restraints of the prism. She jumped backward, broken out of her reverie, as Keeper Remulos shouted and rallied the druids.
"Now! Focus the cleansing now!" Eranikus screamed, a horrible, inhuman scream of the corruption dying inside of him. He trained his swirling, pained eyes on her, and again lunged against the trap that held him.
With a sound like a hurricane, a tidal wave of corruption flooded out of the green dragon. Zarabethe only had time to register how fast it was moving before it slammed into her, lifting her up off of the ground and knocking her on her back. She cried out as all the air left her lungs, and adrenaline forced her to scrabble immediately back to her feet. She stared, breathless and in awe, as Eranikus, now free from his prison and from the corruption that bound him, shrunk down into a night elf before the crowd. He had wild green hair that matched the tone of his draconic skin, and he stumbled as he landed on the platform.
Zarabethe's legs shook as her vision gained a green cast. There was a rushing pounding in her head, and she pressed her hands to her eyes to try and clear it. There was an explosion of excited chatter in front of her, and she opened her eyes to see Eranikus catch sight of her and walk her way. His face was transformed into a mask of gratitude, and he held the green crystal shard in his hands. Zarabethe tried to make her feet work, to walk up to him and accept it, but there was something increasingly wrong with her body. Blackness crept in along the edges of her vision, and the only sound she heard above the rushing in her ears was the thud of her body against the platform.
Hmmm, I already gave you guys my favorite preview from Ch 26 on the previous one, so here's something soul-wrenching instead.
Elforen.
If a thought could be a whisper, barely acknowledged by the forefront of her brain, then one would have had to set one's ear on her lips to hear his name. A whisper, but a powerful one. It drug its nails across her heart, burned its bitter loneliness onto her tongue, blew its acrid despair into her eyes. She wrapped both her arms around herself and tried to hold herself together.