CHAPTER 15
Double checking the gilt card listing the tower, floor and room number of her accommodation, Idira turned the key in the lock of the blue door and walked into her dormitory room. Apart from two narrow beds with bare mattresses on plain wooden frames, a pair of bedside cabinets and two slim wardrobes standing just inside the entrance, the room was completely empty; no rugs, no curtains, no paintings on the wall. Above the bedside cabinets, a high, thin window stretched up to the cornice, tapering to a point. Idira wrinkled her nose, the walls must have recently been painted; the acrid tang of resin still lingered, faint in the air.
The furnishings had been laid out in the small rectangular room in perfect symmetry, one side a mirror image of the other. Setting aside the box containing her new dress, a fine linen the same colour as her eyes, she sank down on one of the beds' mattresses and looked around, shivering a little in the room's oppressive austerity. After the endless opulence she had observed as she followed the guard through the Academy's campus to the dormitories, she rather thought her living circumstances would be a little more luxurious and colourful. But no, it seemed for the apprentices at least, no such comforts would be provided. She leaned over the bedside cabinet, set under the ledge of the window, to find herself looking down a sheer drop from an incomprehensible height. She pulled back, trembling with vertigo. A female's soft laughter came from the open doorway.
"It takes ages to get used to that," the young woman, a little plump and quite a bit shorter than Idira, said. From her pretty, dark eyes, she regarded Idira, her expression open and frank, her face framed by thick, dark hair, falling in loose waves around her face and down her back. She moved into the room, holding out her hand in greeting. Idira took it, and let the other woman pump her hand up and down.
"First time I saw that, I puked," she said, laughing, her cheeks dimpling, the warm, infectious sound of her laughter filling the sterile room; her smile so warm and engaging, Idira couldn't help but smile back.
"I'm Wynn, and you are?" she asked, letting Idira's hand go and looking Idira over, curious and not in the least bit shy.
"Idira Northshire, from Westfall," Idira answered.
"Westfall?" Wynn replied, pursing her lips and screwing one eye tight as she looked up at the ceiling, far above. "Isn't that the notorious place of villains and gangsters?"
Idira blushed. "You could say that."
"Oh, how exciting!" Wynn plopped herself down beside Idira. "I would love to meet a villain or a gangster, so romantic! You must tell me all about them, are they all handsome and roguish, with battle scars and big, hard muscles everywhere inside their leather jerkins and breeches?"
Idira was so taken aback by Wynn's enthusiastic descriptions she burst out laughing. Wynn raised her eyebrows, waiting, expectant.
"Some of them are, I suppose," she said, thinking of Kip and even grudgingly of VanCleef.
Wynn screeched, throwing her head back and clasping her hands against her chest. "I knew it!" she exulted, gleeful, kicking her satin-slippered feet. "Father always said it was nonsense, just stories, but I always had a feeling that all the really interesting men ended up in Westfall."
"Oh, they were interesting all right," Idira admitted, shaking her head, incredulous anyone could find criminals, mercenaries or thugs appealing. Seeing the naive look of pleasure on Wynn's face, she decided not to tell her how bad they smelled most of the time, it seemed wrong to ruin her fantasy, and anyway, VanCleef hadn't smelled bad, or at least up until Myra died, he hadn't. Afterwards he only smelled of cheap rum.
She glanced at Wynn's dark green dress, the hem, cuffs and neckline had been embroidered with pretty golden flowers. Despite the neck being a little low and the bodice cut a little tight against her torso, it worked without looking indecent, accentuating her full figure to a very pleasing effect. Unlike all the other apprentices Idira had passed as she trailed after the guard to the dorm, Wynn's dress didn't look expensive, at least no more expensive than the dresses Idira had seen the women wearing in Stormwind. A tendril of hope ignited in her as she sensed in Wynn a kindred spirit, offering the tantalising possibility that perhaps not everyone in this intimidating, hierarchical place was, as Vanessa so scathingly called them, 'a societal inbred'.
"So did you ever get busy with any of them?" Wynn blurted out, her eyes dancing with mischief. "Don't worry you can tell me, I won't ever tell anyone, cross my heart." And she did, so solemnly that Idira burst out laughing.
"Oh please, tell me something. Anything!" Wynn begged, taking hold of Idira's hands and continuing in a mournful voice. "Nothing interesting has ever happened to me, my father kept me at home my whole life, tucked away at the back of the manor where no one but the servants, my mother and boring sisters were, and they only wanted to spend all their time in contemplation and praying to the Light." She rolled her eyes.
"I think I can see why he did," Idira said, wry, still smiling, imagining someone like Wynn around VanCleef's men. It certainly would have been a lot more lively around the house. "Well," Idira said, when Wynn jiggled her hands, urging her to continue, "I suppose some of the men could be considered handsome, in a rough and rugged way, and they were real fighters, even if they were drunk, they could sober up in an instant and fight like seasoned warriors."
At this, Wynn let out a ecstatic sigh, her shoulders scrunching up high around her neck in delight.
"I have never 'gotten busy' with any of them," Idira continued, warming to Wynn's rapt attention, "but I did see a few things, from time to time." Wynn leaned closer, her eyes widening, hungry to hear. Idira glanced out the open door and lowered her voice, recounting the time Myra had destroyed her room and VanCleef had come in, barging through the broken door and tossing Myra on the bed, detailing how Myra had at first resisted but not for very long once he started kissing her, his eyes so hot, they looked like they were on fire.
Wynn shivered, a beatific smile spreading on her face, her hands holding Idira's so tight, it was starting to hurt.
"I want that," she exhaled. "So much." After a beat, she let go of Idira's hands and jumped up, agitated. "I mean I know you have only just arrived," she said as she paced back and forth in front of Idira, "but just wait until you see what the talent is like here." She made a face, gagging. "They are all Mama's boys, all pampered and soft, with their chubby, well-fed cheeks and not a muscle to be seen anywhere. And their hands! Ugh!" She shuddered. "Girl hands. Bleuch! There is literally nothing worse, especially when their fingernails are longer than mine! Disgusting!"
Idira lifted her eyebrows, disturbed by the thought of men with long, taloned fingernails, when she realised Wynn's were cut almost to the quick.
"Well, I guess being a mage doesn't really require much in the way of physical prowess or strong hands," Idira answered, suppressing a smile, though her thoughts strayed, rebellious, to Khadgar, and how solid he had felt when she'd stumbled into him at the flower seller's cart.
"Huh!" Wynn scoffed. "You wait and see, it's depressing. I have literally left one wasteland of men and landed in another. My father sure did know what he was doing sending me here from boring old Redridge, where nothing ever happens, literally. We have rabbits and boars, and that's it." She plunked back down beside Idira and put her head on Idira's shoulder. "I'm never going to meet a real man. Ever. I'm going to die a virgin, I just know it. It's all so unfair!"
Idira had no idea what to say to such a confession so she just sat still, trying not to laugh, waiting to see what would happen next. As she expected, she didn't have to wait long. Wynn roused herself from her thoughts and looked up at Idira.
"You must think I'm a crazy person," she said, moving back into her own space and looking a little shame-faced, "the way I just barged in here like that, asking you all sorts of personal questions." She sighed and stood up, smoothing down the folds of her dress. "My father always told me I talked too much, that I have boundary issues."
"Maybe a little," Idira admitted, smiling, "but I honestly didn't mind. I find you a refreshing change to the kind of people I have met here so far."
"Oh that!" Wynn groaned, rolling her eyes as she turned and sat down on the bed opposite Idira. "Bunch of peacocks, full of themselves, rich kids, and I mean really rich kids, they can spend more gold in one day than my father earns on his manor in a whole year. They don't care one bit about us 'low-lives' as they like to call us, both to our faces and behind our backs. You'll get used to it."
"How long have you been here?" Idira asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
"Just over a week," Wynn nodded at the door across the hall, standing slightly ajar. "That's my room, I have it all to myself. There's loads of empty rooms up here because this is the"—she made quotation marks in the air—"'low-life floor'. Even though I met lots of other people on the gryphon landing who intended to join the Kirin Tor, it seems not so many of them have found the place to apply considering how empty our floor is. I got lucky, though, some woman in black found me outside the Pet Menagerie and led me right to the spot, for a hefty price, mind." She leaned back onto her elbow and crossed her leg over her knee, kicking her foot in the air. "Guess that's how you got in too, huh?"
"Um, yeah, a woman in black," Idira answered, vague. "So how many of us are there up here?" she asked, changing the subject.
Wynn smiled, her eyes lighting up. "Twelve now altogether, you, me, and ten others, four girls and six guys stuck right up here at the top of the dormitory tower, out of sight and out of mind, as my mother would say. Good thing for portals, would be a long climb otherwise." She waggled her foot for awhile, subsiding into her thoughts, then looked up, abrupt. "What did you think of Margot?"
"Margot?" Idira asked, perplexed.
"Yeah, the one who is taking the applications, all la-di-dah and condescension," Wynn scoffed, waving her hand in the air, pretending to be high and mighty. "Dark hair," Wynn continued as she lay on her side, her head propped against her hand, "smells like jasmine, angular face, arrogant, dripping with money?"
"Oh her," Idira muttered. "I hope I never have to see her again."
"Ha! Chance would be a fine thing!" Wynn said, scornful. "I heard from one of the rich kids that once Dalaran moves to the Broken Isles, she's going to be our tutor, assigned by the Archmage Modera herself with instructions to weed us out by making things so difficult for us we can't fulfil our obligations. And you know what that means? Expulsion."
"She can't do that, can she?" Idira asked, astonished. "Not after we have paid our fee and earned the right to learn alongside the others?"
"We'll see," Wynn said, darkly, lifting her eyes to the window to watch the clouds drifting past, wispy and ephemeral, "we'll see."
Much later on, a servant wearing Kirin Tor livery arrived at Idira's room carrying a neatly folded pile of bed linens, blankets, and a set of pillows. On the top of the pile, a set of fluffy white towels embroidered with the sigil of the Kirin Tor lay tied together with a golden cord. The servant set the items down on top of the bed and waited, her hands folded in front of her, her eyes on the floor.
"Um," Idira said, uncertain. "Thank you?"
The servant didn't move or answer. She just stood at the end of the opposite bed, silent, and as still as a statue. Idira raised her eyebrows and moved away from the wall to sit on the edge of the bed, feeling a little uneasy. The woman, who looked a few years older than Idira wore a simple blue dress and a crisp white apron bearing sigil of the Kirin Tor emblazoned over its breast; her dark blonde hair had been tied back into a neat bun, and a little square blue cap perched on her head, her face bore no cosmetics and was as plain as a piece of blank paper, utterly forgettable. Idira waited some more. The servant still didn't more. Idira had no idea what was happening. In Moonbrook, the servants carried out their duties automatically, unobtrusive and near invisible. She'd never needed to talk to them. Wynn passed by the door, her head popped back around the doorframe.
"Oh," she laughed, coming in to lean against the jamb, her hand on her hip, "happened to me too, you have to say which bed you are planning to use, so they can make it for you. They can't talk. It's a silencing spell, it's so they can't gossip."
"What!?" Idira asked, utterly flummoxed. "Why ever would anyone want to work in a place where they are forced to become mute?"
"They get to see some crazy stuff," Wynn shrugged, "so I suppose it's worth it, plus I heard the pay is amazing. No taxes here, either, so they can retire when they are forty, go home and live in wealth for the rest of their days."
"But they can't talk ever again?" Idira asked, eyeing the poor woman as she pointed at the bed she wanted made up.
"Nah, they can talk again, once they leave," Wynn said as she came in to watch the servant work. "One year later, the spell wears off. I guess the Kirin Tor figure anything the servants would have to talk about would be old news by then, so it's okay."
"These Kirin Tor," Idira murmured, suddenly uneasy, wondering how Khadgar could be a willing part of such a political, hierarchical, abusive organisation, "they are not what I expected. At all."
"They aren't all bad," Wynn said as she opened the wardrobe, and looked at Idira's new dress hanging inside. "Pretty," she said closing the door again. "No, there's this one Archmage on the Council of Six, he's old but kind of important, what's his name again?" She looked up at the ceiling, snapping her fingers, trying to remember. "Starts with a K, I think."
"Khadgar?" Idira offered, feeling a tingle of pleasure just from saying his name.
"That's the one," Wynn said pointing at Idira. "Him. Well he's an interesting one. Ages ago, he saved Azeroth by closing off a portal to another invading planet, but then he got stuck on the other planet for some reason, I don't know why but anyway he stayed there a long time until the demons opened up a new portal again, so then he was able to come back, but then there was a bunch of other stuff that happened in between then and now so he was away a lot in another time-line trying to fix the past or something." She started to look confused. Idira raised her eyebrows, dubious. "Look, it's complicated," Wynn snapped, impatient, "I guess he just likes to spend his time in a lot of other places that aren't here. But what I'm trying to get at is, he's finally back and hanging around Dalaran a lot, like all the time, and now he's here he's seeing all the injustices and stuff and has been trying to fix it."
"I bet that's going down well," Idira muttered, glancing at the servant who was clearly listening to their conversation with great interest. A thought struck Idira, she dithered for a beat, then decided to take a chance, her curiosity overwhelming her. She moved nearer to the servant who was folding the most perfect sheet corners Idira had ever seen.
"Have you . . . ever waited on the Archmage Khadgar?" she asked, hesitant.
The servant ducked her head, but not before Idira saw the woman's cheeks flare up, bright red.
"I'll take that as a yes," Idira said, hiding a smile. "Is he nice?"
The servant's hands stopped moving and she stared down at the bed, biting her lip. For a heartbeat, Idira was afraid the woman would flee, unwilling to partake in 'gossip', but she turned and looked Idira right in the eye. She nodded, her eyes telling Idira everything she wanted to know. He's different. Kind. Good. Not like the others.
It was over almost as quick as it began. The woman returned to her work, her motions quick and efficient.
"Well," Wynn breathed. "Now we know for certain we have at least one of the Council of Six on our side."
Before Idira could reply, three blinding flashes of bright blue light flared in through the open door, one after the other, shearing into the room, as brilliant as lightning.
"Everybody down to the cellars, now!" a guard bellowed, storming up and down the hall, throwing doors open, uncaring of the shouts of indignation coming from within. "Into the portals with you. Go! Go! Go! There is almost no time left."
The servant moved so fast, slipping past them and out the door she was almost a blur. Slower to react, Idira reached the door just in time to see the back of the servant's dress disappearing into one of the three shimmering portals down the hall in the circular, central portal chamber.
"Three portals? What's happening?" Idira cried out as a massive vibration shot up through the floor and into her body, numbing her legs. A vicious tug pulled on her, dragging her down, making her feel like she weighed a ton. For a wild panicky moment she wondered if Dalaran was falling from the sky.
"Boar's balls!" Wynn yelped, as someone pushed past her, knocking her against the wall in their haste to escape. "They're moving Dalaran already, it was supposed to be tomorrow!" Wynn grabbed Idira's hand, pulling her towards the portals. "Come on! We have to evacuate to where it's warded. Hurry!"
Lines of energy broached the floor, spreading into a crosshatch of blue light that swarmed into the hallway and over their bodies. The mesh slid upwards, inexorable, pushing its way through the ceiling. The drag increased on Idira, the pressure so intense she thought her head might explode. She tried to move. She couldn't.
"We're caught in the grid!" Wynn cried out, her eyes wild. Idira had no idea what the grid meant but it didn't sound good, and from the look of terror on Wynn's face, she suspected it was very bad.
Ahead, the remaining apprentices dodged the spreading lines and leapt into the portals, one after another. The guard stopped to look back at them, eyeing the lines shimmering over their bodies, holding them immobile. He shook his head, pity in his eyes and turned away into the nearest portal. One of the portals winked out, then another.
"Wait!" Wynn screamed, frantic, as the last portal vanished, leaving nothing but a shimmering white imprint of its previous existence behind, rapidly fading. Idira felt Wynn's hand tightening on hers, read the despair in her new friend's eyes. We're going to die.
The volume and intensity of the vibration increased, relentless, until Idira felt as if every cell in her body resonated with the vibration's insistent, hypnotic thrum, her self aligning to it, becoming one with it, until she couldn't tell where she ended and the power surging along the grid lines began. It was impossible to talk, and even if she had wanted to, she didn't think she could have moved her jaw, her entire being felt weighted down, crushed in the grip of a force she couldn't even begin to comprehend. Impossibly, the force increased. Though she didn't change, she felt as though she was shrinking, condensing, her body compacting into the tiniest, densest possible amount of space.
Pain came, beyond anything she could ever have imagined. If she could have screamed she would as the vibration tore into her, pulling her apart piece by piece, fragmenting her, shattering the layers of her being, delving past her physical boundaries and crashing into her mental, emotional and psychological barriers, disintegrating them, and her, until she couldn't remember who she was, what she was, if she was. Each ragged breath took a millennia to complete. The agony of her existence stretched out, tight like a skin pulled taut on a tanning frame. She longed for oblivion, for it to end, for silence, for death.
A glow of violet light ballooned out from her core, distorting in the dense space as it spiralled around her, surrounding her, billowing out so that it cocooned both her and Wynn within its soft layers. The pain lessened, then ceased. She could feel again, move again. Wynn looked up at her, still holding her hand, astonished, her mouth hanging open as she stared at Idira's face, incredulous. Outside their sphere of light, the grid lines began to move, sliding over their violet sanctuary, rotating faster until the structure of the hallway, the doors, even the central portal room blurred, distorted by the sweeping light of the grid. The grid lines spun on, speeding up, their thrum deafening, the violet sphere trembling as the lines reached a terrifying velocity, transforming the space outside the sphere into a blinding wall of light.
An explosion of blue light washed over them, impossibly bright, blossoming out, brilliant, the centre of a star. The sphere's light flared, shielding them from blindness, still, the backs of Idira's eyes burned, raw from the onslaught. The vibrations stopped. In the blast's wake, silence screamed into Idira's senses, her body juddered, spasming with relief. She sagged onto her knees, no longer captive to the grid's deep thrum. Stillness. One heartbeat. Two. Three. The light began to fade, slow, like the reverse creep of dawn. Her eyes watering, Idira squinted past the light of the sphere, trying to see. The faint outlines of the hallway coalesced, highlighted by the light of the grid lines as they slipped down from the ceiling, along the walls, and through the floor, sliding away, sinuous, back to wherever they had come from.
The violet sphere melted away. Clinging to each other, Idira and Wynn collapsed onto the floor, trembling. By degrees the hallway returned, solidifying, the central portal room coalescing. Natural light filtered in through Idira's window, illuminating the hallway's carpet beside Idira's head, touching her shoulder, warming it. The ordinariness of the sudden warmth of a shaft of sunlight jarring, yet reassuring.
Wearing an expression that flitted from suspicion to awe, Wynn examined Idira, her eyes narrow. "You," she croaked. She shook her head and cleared her throat. "Your eyes," she continued, still hoarse, "glowed. You saved us, somehow." She shook her head again, as though fighting her thoughts. "You alone resisted the combined power of the Council of Six. How did you—"
"I don't know," Idira interrupted, not wanting Wynn to continue down that line of thinking. Her throat ached, she really needed a drink of water. "That's why I came to Dalaran."
Wynn backed away, uncertain, respectful. "I never noticed your eyes before," she whispered. "Violet. Just like your new dress. You . . . You're not like the rest of us." With a soft groan, she lifted herself up onto all fours, and edged her way backwards to her room. "Thank you for saving my life," she murmured as she scuttled inside. With one last frightened look, she shut the door, quiet, in Idira's face.
When the dormitory's portal finally flared back to life, Idira was waiting for it. She slipped into it before anyone arrived, keen to escape the inevitable questions of how she could have survived Dalaran's move to the Broken Isles. She hurried across the grounds, expecting to find devastation and destruction, but the campus looked exactly the same as when she had last seen it, not even a leaf looked out of place.
From out of the buildings, residents of the Academy slowly emerged, blinking and hesitant, looking slightly dazed and disoriented but otherwise unharmed. At the Academy's gate, she collected a pass card from the empty booth so she could get back into the grounds, before hastening to make her way along the still mostly deserted streets towards the concealed grassy alley that led to the foul-smelling steps down to the sewers and on to the tavern.
At the bar, no one was around. She went into the back, searching through the blanket of greasy cigar smoke for her niece. She was just about to leave when she saw a plume of cigarette smoke curling up from the shadows of one of the alcoves.
"Looking for me?" Vanessa's familiar voice asked, though she sounded a little rough.
Idira let out a sigh of relief and rushed over to the table. "You're alive!" she said, sinking down onto one of the stools. "But how?"
"Stealthed," Vanessa shrugged, grunting with pain as she leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. "There was a warded place for us to go, we'd had flyers thrown down the stairs last week about it, but the date was scheduled for tomorrow. It happened so fast, there wasn't enough time to get to the portal. I was the only one in here who survived."
"Baxter?" Idira asked, suddenly sorry for the surly barman.
"Saw him go. Shrank down to a tiny speck. Vanished into a point of light," she grunted again, as she rolled her shoulder. "Not nice."
Idira shuddered, recalling her own experience. Vanessa got up, groaning, gesturing for Idira to follow her. At the deserted bar, Vanessa went behind the counter, pulled out a pair of shot glasses and a fat, squat bottle of something the colour of amber. She filled both glasses to the brim.
"Drink," she ordered, throwing back her hood and tossing the liquid down her throat, finishing with a hearty sigh.
Idira picked up the little glass and sipped. Fire burned over her tongue and down her throat, followed by heat, then a pleasant numbing sensation. It felt good. She tipped the rest back in one go.
"That's my girl," Vanessa murmured, bending down to rifle behind the bar. She stood back up, hefting an iron-bound money box. She opened it. The soft gleam of gold winked back at them in the candlelight.
"Jackpot," she smiled, closing the lid and tucking ithe box under her arm. "Let's bank this first. I'll split it with you fifty-fifty, then we may as well go and watch the show."
Idira had no idea what show Vanessa meant for them to see. She wondered if they were going to watch some sort of magical event, perhaps in the park while enjoying some more sandwiches from the Bagel Brothers. She soon realised just how wrong she was.
Outside the towering walls of the city, Idira found herself standing once more in the courtyard where she had gone to join the Kirin Tor. At a safe distance from the little courtyard wall, she gazed out at a changed world. The dull-grey mountains of Deadwind Pass were gone, replaced by a sparkling deep-blue sea. The whitecap-flecked surface stretched away to the horizon, a pristine expanse marred by the scar of a massive, charred island, completely devoid of any kind of vegetation, its surface torn ragged by rivers of churning, foul-green lava. At the island's far end, a vast, blackened structure towered up into the sky, its broken spires and decaying finials surrounded by pulsing jets of energy, lurid-green. Above the structure, the skies churned, a tumult of black clouds, seething, tortured, relentless, caught in a maelstrom of dark power, the vortex emanating up from the hold's centre.
Vanessa lifted her foot up onto the wall, pulled out her tobacco pouch and spread a rolling paper against her leather-clad thigh. "And so, the Battle for the Broken Shore begins. Front row seats, not bad, eh?" she said as she tipped a little tobacco onto the paper.
Idira didn't answer. Juggernauts appeared from underneath Dalaran, hundreds of them, slicing through the ocean's waves, moving towards the island's southern shore at full speed. One of the great ships pulled ahead of the others, opening the way. Though the distance was great, the sound of the ships' horns rose up, carrying across the sea to them, faint.
Close by, a sudden blast of horns answered back, startling Idira. Emerging from either side of the elongated curve of the city's walls, dozens of airships came into view, flying in formation, the heavy pulse of their propellers deafening as they swept past, cutting across the skies; to the right, the ships bore the insignia of the Alliance, to the left, however, other airships flew past, of a different design to the ones from the Alliance, their vast envelopes not blue, but red, or purple. Logan's words returned to Idira: We are going to bring the fight to the Legion's stronghold, all of us, friend and foe, fighting together as one. She examined the opposing faction's airships as they sailed past, curious. So these were the ships of the enemies of the Alliance, of the faction known as the Horde. On one of the ships she glimpsed a troll standing at its rear, dressed similar to how she remembered Unambi looked in his armour. Her heart lurched, for a moment believing it was Unambi she was seeing, and not another.
"Vol'jin," Vanessa said around her cigarette as she lit it, nodding at the ship as it sped by. "The Warchief of the Horde. A great warrior."
"Just like Unambi," Idira breathed.
Vanessa met Idira's eyes, though she didn't ask the question Idira feared she would one day have to answer. What happened to Unambi? Instead Vanessa said, soft, "Yeah, I thought so, too."
The sound of horns rose up again from the ships in the sea, answered once more by the deep, bellowing war-horns of the airships of both the Alliance and the Horde, the powerful reverberations of their long, harsh notes resonating up Idira's spine. She crept closer to the edge, her fear of heights dwarfed by her dread for what she was about to witness. Though the distance was too great to see anything in detail, it was clear enough that the blackened island seethed with demons, its surface heaving and shifting like a living thing. The juggernaut that had pulled in front of the others was fast approaching the rocky shore. Another blast of horns and it barrelled up onto the coast, slamming right into the beach: Logan's soldiers, tiny as ants leapt off the ship, hundreds of them, swarming up onto the beach, the glint of sunlight reflecting against their blades as they pushed their way into the boiling wall of demons.
Vanessa pointed her cigarette at the beachhead. "Those men right there," she said, her voice low and thick with respect, "those men are the real heroes of Azeroth."
Idira felt her fingers curling into fists, her fingernails cutting into her palms. Logan was down there, in the midst of them, fighting for Azeroth, for her. She leaned over, her heart in her mouth, wishing she could see more clearly, wishing he could know she was there, staying with him right to the end.
Other juggernauts were pulling in now, fast approaching the beachhead, riding the waves up to the shore, more soldiers jumped out, joining the fray. Idira's heart skipped a beat, hope filling her. Maybe Logan would survive, maybe—
Across the cursed isle, horns blared, deep, rough, and ragged around the edges. Out of the upper reaches of the tower, thousands of demons burst forth, unfurling their leathery wings as they tumbled through the air, their screeching, hateful cries tearing at Idira's ears, like daggers yanked against glass. They filled the skies, blackening it, blocking out the light of the sun as they swarmed over the airships, their talons tearing into wood and steel. The soldiers on the airships fought, valiant, but more demons arrived, slamming their vile bodies into the ships' envelopes, puncturing them, their flesh melting away, liquefying in the envelopes' gases. One by one, the airships in the vanguard staggered, faltering, tilting at crazy angles as the demons landed, clawing their way over the sides, hauling the soldiers overboard, sending them tumbling through the skies down to their watery graves.
"That's Varian's ship," Vanessa said, eyeing the one at the front, tense, no longer interested in her cigarette, burning to a stub between her fingers. Idira watched, horrified as the King's airship, swarming with demons, went down, its soldiers leaping overboard before it crashed into the waters, its deadly propellers still beating, steady and purposeful, throwing up vicious geysers of seawater.
Yet despite the overwhelming odds, the combined forces of the Horde and Alliance continued to push forward, determined, one boat out of four making it through the chaos to the shore, unloading their desperate cargoes of warriors, paladins, mages, warlocks, druids, shamans, priests, hunters, death knights and even the newly joined demon hunters, followers of the long dead half-demon himself, the Betrayer Illidan.
All across the shoreline desperate bursts of light flashed and glimmered as practitioners of the four schools of magic struggled to drive the demons back, fighting to maintain the foothold Logan's men had bought with their lives. A deafening crack filled the air, reminding Idira of the sound of lightning hitting a tree. A massive burst of blue spread out from the middle of the beachhead, its burning, hissing light clearing half the shoreline of the demonic filth. The nightmarish creatures howled in agony as they fell to their knees, writhing in flames of blue fire. Flashes erupted from them as they expired, the beach flickering to life, dotted with blossoms of lurid green as hundreds of fel-infested souls returned to the Void.
Vanessa let go of her extinguished cigarette, pointing with a tobacco stained finger at the ring of arcane power still spreading across the island, undulating, destroying every demon in its path as it disappeared into the distance. "That could only be Khadgar's work," she said, not bothering to hide her admiration. "He insisted on joining the front lines of the fight, although how long he'll be able to keep on casting spells of that magnitude is anyone's guess."
Idira couldn't see him, lost among the smear of men and women fighting for Azeroth, the beach littered with the dead and dying, both Azerothian and demonic, explosions of blue, green, yellow and orange light erupted, constant now in the wake of Khadgar's spell; a bizarre fireworks display of death, the screams of the dying carrying on the wind, the voices of the dead still living on in Idira's ears even after their last breath had been exhaled.
Within her breast, Idira could feel her own Light stirring, awakening, itching to join the fight against the demons; as though having tasted their deaths back in Westfall, it hungered for more. She watched as the forces of Azeroth moved further into the island, pushing fresh onslaughts of demons back, relentless, until the Azerothians were almost at its centre. For a wild moment, it seemed to Idira that they would win, would overcome their foe, when suddenly, everything seemed to go wrong. The Azerothian forces split into two and just as each side began to press forward once more towards the terrible, seething citadel, thousands more demons arrived, far more than the men and women of Azeroth could possibly handle. They fell, hundreds of them, maybe a thousand within mere heartbeats. Horns blared, sounding the retreat, an airship bearing a purple envelope arrived. A ship of the Horde. From high atop a hill their survivors fled, a mere handful. Left alone, the forces of the Alliance carried on fighting, though they faced a rapidly losing battle.
"Why don't they retreat?" Idira cried out as hundreds more fell, scythed down by the single blade of a dreadlord, as tall as a cathedral spire.
"Help is coming, look," Vanessa pointed at an Alliance airship approaching fast, veering in from the beach at a crazy angle, cannon fire erupting chaotically from its sides. Rope ladders tumbled out, their dangling ends quickly seized upon by those still alive below. Caught in the ship's reeling evasive manoeuvres, the survivors struggled up the ladders, looking like beetles, clinging onto the knotted ropes as the ladders snapped, violent, from side to side.
The ship tilted, its propellers roaring, and hurtled away. Still, the fighting continued, a knot closing in, surrounding one warrior, fighting on, alone.
"They left one behind!" Idira screamed. "Go back!" She waved her arms, frantic, at the ship racing past Dalaran. "Go back!"
"They can't hear you," Vanessa said, cold, her eyes riveted on the one left alone, fighting, valiant, demons falling around him, left and right.
"Who is that?" Idira breathed, her heart trembling, wondering if it might be Logan.
Vanessa reached into her tunic and pulled out a slim tube, keeping her eye on the one left behind, she pulled on one end of the tube. It extended out to the length of Idira's forearm. Vanessa brought it up to her eye, closing her other one.
"No," she breathed. She handed the strange item to Idira, who took it, clumsy.
"Look through the lens," she ordered, impatient as Idira lifted it, uncertain to her eye, "it brings things far away up close. Hurry up, before it's too late."
Idira pressed the tube against her eye. At first she couldn't see anything, just black, and then the sea, the white caps frothing, up close and in detail.
"Hurry!" Vanessa snapped.
Idira slid the lens along the shore, following the path of the dead to the centre of the island and up towards the gates of the dark tower. In her haste, she skimmed over the demons gathered around the solitary warrior too fast, and had to go back, slow.
Then she saw who had been left behind. It wasn't Logan after all, but she wasn't sure she felt any less terrible as she watched King Varian, a glowing sword in each hand, slaughter the last of the demons gathered around him. His chest heaving with exertion, he approached a bent and hooded creature, standing on the steps of the tower. It waited, arrogant, leaning on a staff encrusted with skulls. Around the creature's neck another assortment of skulls dangled. Idira caught her breath, she had seen these creatures before, in her books. An orc, male. He looked up, amused, and sneered at Varian who strode towards him through the churning, sickly, green-tainted light. From under his hood, the orc's eyes glowed a malevolent red. They flared bright. He said something, brief, his lips curving, smug, around his sharp incisors as he lifted his staff and pointed it at the King of the Alliance.
Foul green light burst from the staff and slammed into Varian, sliding over him and into his body. His eyes and mouth opened wide, the light tearing him apart from the inside out, fragmenting him, pouring out from between his armour, blistering out from his eyes and mouth, beams of green fire. He fell to his knees, his arms open wide, as though imploring to the Light to aid him, in this, his final ordeal. The sickly light within him throbbed, pulsing, building in strength. He sank to all fours, his chest heaving. Blinding waves of foul light emanated from him, surging with an incomprehensible intensity. In total silence an explosion of yellow-green light burst away from him, so bright Idira turned away. A heartbeat later the filthy light washed over her, reaching all the way to the walls of Dalaran behind her. The light retreated, racing back across the distance, it slammed into its epicentre, who used to be Varian, it pulsed once, then faded away. Idira lifted the lens back to her eye. Nothing remained of Stormwind's King. Where he last stood, his fallen swords lay forlorn and lost, the magic within them fading. One by one they winked out, following their master's soul to the Light. With a satisfied smirk, the orc turned and walked away, sweeping back up the steps of the dark citadel, his cloak billowing out behind him. The demons followed after him, their hooves treading over Varian's swords, burying them into the blackened earth, shattering them, leaving them in unrecognisable pieces.
Idira lowered the lens, her hands trembling. They had lost. The King was dead, the great hero, Varian Wrynn gone, and so easily overcome by that orc. She lifted the lens back up again and searched the beachhead, trying to find Logan, but there were too many fallen, bodies lay heaped one on top of the other, not all of them intact. It was impossible. She would never find him. She handed the lens back to Vanessa, who slid it down into its compact size and tucked it back into her tunic.
"Well," Vanessa said, after a long silence. "This changes everything."
Back in her dorm room, Idira gazed out her window at the distant, dark smear of the Broken Shore, its ruined reaches a sullen blister on the ocean's pristine horizon. Logan was dead, she was certain of it. Long after he'd landed, hundreds of others had fallen on the ground his men had claimed, soaking the beach in their blood.
She rubbed her hands against her hips, distracted, thinking of when he said what they had experienced in Westfall had only been a taste of what awaited them on the Broken Shore. At the time she hadn't believed it could possibly be any worse, but it was; even her worst imaginings hadn't come close to what she had witnessed that afternoon. With the battle lost, and the demons still holding the island, she realised no one would be able to return to collect his body. He would never be buried or properly mourned, instead he would lay there on that wretched beach in his rusting armour, the sun rising and falling over the skies of Azeroth, following its endless, uncaring cycle while he succumbed to the decay of his flesh and rotted alongside the thousands of others blanketing that dreadful shore, friend, ally and foe.
A timid knock came to her door. Idira turned as Wynn pushed the door, already ajar, open. She looked in, shy.
"Can I come in?" she asked, diffident, glancing at Idira's eyes, furtive, then down at the empty bed.
"Of course," Idira answered, grateful for the company. She sank down onto her half-made bed, waiting while Wynn settled herself onto the bare mattress opposite and smoothed down her dress.
"It's just," Wynn began, her eyes sliding up the wall past Idira to roam along the cornice, tracing out its intricate design, "today I met one person and then they turned into another one, a really scary one, with an awful lot of power. I know you saved my life and all, and don't get me wrong, I'm really grateful but now I don't know who you really are, and I told you all that stuff about me, but I don't know anything about you except you're from Westfall. I mean, maybe you're a Kirin Tor spy, and now I'm going to be in big trouble for all the things I said."
She inhaled as she finished, catching her breath after saying everything so fast, her words so quick at the end they blurred together. She peeked at Idira, then down at her hands, her fingers folded together, her knucklebones standing out, white.
"I am the one you first met," Idira said, gentle, "the other part only happens when my life is in danger, otherwise my power doesn't do anything, apart from making my eyes this colour." Idira decided not to mention the dreams or visions, no need to complicate matters.
"Oh?" Wynn said, glancing at Idira, hope igniting in her eyes. "So like a defence mechanism?"
"You could call it that," Idira said, finding a wan smile for her friend.
"So . . . you're not a spy?" Wynn said, scrunching up her face like a child who'd been caught with their hand in the pastry tin. She looked so ridiculous, Idira burst out laughing.
"No. Not a spy. Not by a long shot."
Wynn exhaled, relief spreading over her face. "You do have weird eyes though," she said, blunt. "Margot's going to give you a lot of hassle about them I bet."
"I expect it won't take much for her to persecute any of us," Idira scoffed, glancing back out the window, another arc of pain slicing through her as she thought of Logan laying alone and forgotten on the beach.
"I didn't see you at dinner," Wynn said, looking out the window, following Idira's gaze. "There's been a bit of a to-do, everyone's talking about it, did you hear?"
Idira looked back at Wynn, curious. "No, I haven't," she answered. "I suppose it's about what happened today?"
"Sort of," Wynn shrugged. "The Council of Six had a big fight, the Leader, Jaina Proudmoore wanted to kick the Horde out of Dalaran because she blamed them for King Varian dying, said they abandoned the Alliance on purpose for their own ends."
Idira raised her brow, knowing that from what she had seen, Jaina's twisted version of what happened wasn't even close to the truth. She didn't have time to say anything, though, because Wynn was on a roll.
"Anyway," Wynn continued, "Khadgar tried to calm things down saying Azeroth needed to be united to fight against the Legion but Jaina kept saying, no she wanted them out immediately. I don't know if you know but more than half the students and tutors here are from the Horde, orcs and everything!" She wiggled her backside across the mattress until she could lean back against the wall, her feet waggling over the edge of the mattress. "Well, then Jaina got really mad because someone was disagreeing with her, apparently she really hates that, so the Council decided to call a vote. It was close but she was outvoted by one, Khadgar's vote. So guess what she did?!" Wynn leaned forward, gleeful, her heels drumming against the mattress, impatient.
Idira shook her head, she literally had no idea.
"Ha! I knew it!" Wynn exulted. "Well, she threw a little temper tantrum and said—and this part Wynn recounted in an annoying, whiny falsetto— "'If the Horde will be a part of the Kirin Tor and Dalaran then I want nothing to do with it' and then poof, just like that, she teleported out of the Council chambers and left the Kirin Tor!"
She nodded once, meaningfully, eyeing Idira as she leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest, looking like the cat that got the cream.
"So, that's the big to-do?" Idira asked, perplexed, not really understanding why what the Council did had any relevance to Wynn's life, or her own for that matter.
"Ah no!" Wynn slapped her hand against her head. "I missed the best part!" She scuttled to the edge of the bed and leaned in close, lowering her voice. "Because this is what really matters to us: the new Leader of the Kirin Tor is none other than, guess who? Khadgar!"