c13

In Stormwind City...

Marcus sat alone in the High Priest's private study that night, wrestling once more with the words of the Tome of Divinity. A large, gilded edition of the great work sat open in front of him. The desk he sat at was larger and more ornate than that in his apartment's study. It had been commissioned as a gift to the Stormwind Cathedral by a noble family when the church had been rebuilt after the second war. The chair as well was sturdier, the padding more comfortable, and less likely to cause the pain in his back which his own had caused as of late.

But the sacred text offered him no comfort as he read and studied. The comfortable chair remained a reminder that he could not call on the Light to ease the pain his own caused.

So much has happened. He thought. So many compromises have had to be made. Where is the Light in all of this darkness? Why does it not answer or reveal itself to its faithful?

It grieved him that the Holy Light would still not respond to his supplication, and especially since being elected High Priest by his fellow clergy it was something he had to address. He felt strangely fortunate up to that point that he had not been challenged, or forced to display his own command of the Light since that ascension. In this, he was not yet alone within the Cathedral's clergy, but he was growing increasingly isolated as more and more of his subordinates chose to embrace the powers of the Void, if only briefly in order to heal. Like Laurena, he had not forbidden them under these extreme circumstances, but he had not embraced them himself either.

It was something that he had sworn to himself and to the Light that he would never do. He would not go down that dark road no matter who else might, and no matter what further tragedy would befall them. He refused to succumb to the temptation of the Void's power, even if the Light had abandoned him.

I am better than that. He told himself. I must be better than that. I must uphold sacred tradition even if no one else will. That is my role. The faith of the Church of Light must be defended.

There had been no weekly service of devotion to the Light the day before. How could there be? The whole Cathedral... No, the whole city was still reeling from the deaths and bloodshed. They were still in the process of investigating what happened and cleaning up from the slaughter. He was still trying to determine how to re-consecrate the church after the defilement on its floors and within its walls which had occurred. How does one use the Light to consecrate when the Light will not respond?

The recent massacre in the Cathedral's own sacred sanctuary had appalled and horrified him. Good priests and patrolmen had been slain by some unknown, dark force, their bodies torn and ripped apart as though by a monster. Lord Greymane, a man he had hoped would serve as regent in Anduin's stead had been found horribly murdered, drained of life and stabbed in the back. Pools of blood stained the marble and stone floors from wall to wall. King Anduin had been seen entering with them as well, but no trace of him had been discovered when the scene had been stumbled upon by one of Marcus' own. Without the Light's gift of resurrection, there had been nothing anyone could have done for any of the victims of what looked to be a senseless slaughter. The Council of Nobles had taken emergency oversight of the Kingdom of Stormwind with the king missing and no heir of the young man's to take his place. Marcus imagined that they had already sent out missives to the other Alliance leaders informing them of the situation and who they believed to be responsible.

The fragment of a white tabard had been found clenched in one of the patrolmen's hands. Most of it had been ripped away, but there had still been enough there to identify the crest upon it. It was a design he had never seen before, but someone else had identified it as the new symbol of the Forsaken. It had been meant to show the world their allegiance to the necromancer Jeshua in some twisted mockery of the Argent Crusade's own flag, the holy order of Paladins that controlled large swaths of the Plaguelands. Priests from the Cathedral had been given leave by him to patrol with Stormwind's own guards to watch for and identify anyone showing any sympathy or collusion with Jeshua's followers.

As he understood it, several arrests of those traitors to the Alliance had been made. People he never would have thought could be so deceived had been taken to Stormwind's stockade when they wouldn't denounce the fraudulent charlatan. He had been told SI:7 was handling their cases. The clergyman didn't want to know the details after that. The news which was brought him just kept getting darker and darker, and his heart could barely take any more.

Jeshua. He kept coming back to that singular young man. All of these troubles began with him and his heresies and illusions.

Marcus had heard nothing from either Lord Shadowbreaker or his squad of Paladins which he took north to fight against Jeshua's evil directly. Not one word. No one had heard from any of them for a week. Marcus did not know what that portended. Were they dead? Had they been captured? He could not conceive of a situation which would have seen them turn traitor against the Light or Stormwind. He felt he knew Lord Shadowbreaker and the other Paladins too well for that, but their silence was indeed deafening to him, and he wondered frequently at their fate.

Did I send those good men and women to die? The thought haunted him, as he keenly felt the weight of his responsibility for them. They had all seen combat, they all knew what being a knight and a Paladin meant and what it could mean. Still, he had no desire to add their deaths to the list of tragedies.

Knock! Knock! The rapping came from the study's door.

"Enter!" Marcus called out as he rubbed his eyes from the strain of the reading he had been doing. He then unexpectedly yawned.

How late has it gotten? He wondered just then, realizing how tired he felt as he lifted his head to greet the newcomer. The oil lanterns hanging along the walls of his office still glowed as he looked around to them with bleary eyes, but he could tell the candles had burned down significantly even with his own increasingly poor eyesight which was the inevitable curse of all bookish men.

The heavy wooden door creaked open. A balding, bearded man Marcus recognized, robed in midnight blue, entered slowly and deliberately, a respectful, inquiring expression on his face, if not a humble one. The man's eyes were intelligent, a certain calculating cunning in them which he could not read. An ornate black dagger was sheathed at his belt. Everything about the man unsettled him whether he was a fellow cleric or not.

Marcus did not want to know to what uses that dagger had been put as he recognized the man from Laurena's funeral. He hadn't known that he had remained in Stormwind this long after that day. The question which immediately formed in his mind was, Why are you still here?

"High Priest. I had hoped to find you still awake at this hour." The Shadow Priest told him as he entered and carefully closed the door so that when it shut, it barely made a sound.

"Yes, I have been studying, trying to find some light in all of this darkness that has engulfed us." Marcus responded politely as he eyed the man who came to stand in front of him. The man's posture made him somewhat nervous and he gestured for the man to take a seat in a chair across the desk from him. The man nodded politely and accepted the gesture.

"The darkness is something to be understood and respected, but never feared. We study the darkness to understand the Light as well. In order to understand the nature of the Light, one must understand its absence as well." The Shadow Priest replied. "It is the balance between the Light and the Void that created the universe, and not either one alone. The Void is no more inherently evil than the Light is inherently good, but rather it is the character of the person wielding it that determines this."

The Shadow Priest's words were doctrinally sound, as Marcus well knew. It was the reason why the Shadow disciplines weren't expressly forbidden, though discouraged for the danger they presented to a Priest's mind and soul. Still, though, the idea of the Void as being anything other than dangerous and harmful did not sit well with the High Priest.

"I never did learn your name." Marcus said to him then, realizing his oversight.

"Sarvis." The dark cleric responded.

"Sarvis...?" Marcus then drew it out as a question wondering if that was his given name or his family name. Either way he had not heard it before.

"Just Sarvis." The Shadow Priest replied, and then added. "I suppose within my denomination I hold an equivalent rank to a bishop from yours."

Surprised at this revelation, Marcus then sat back reassessing the fact that this man could have very well been considered his equal and a peer if not for their differences in philosophies. But then, he considered, their theologies were not so dissimilar as he had believed, but emphasized different aspects.

"Bishop Sarvis, then." Marcus then addressed him.

Sarvis then dismissed his use of the title with a gesture. "My title isn't so important as my work, High Priest. That is why I have come to see you tonight."

"Oh? And what would your work have to do with me?" Marcus then asked.

"Tonight, I wanted to come to you as a concerned brother Priest and ask how long you can continue this charade." Sarvis asked him, his tone and expression sincere and even truly concerned for him.

"Charade? I don't know what you mean." Marcus replied, though there was a hesitancy and a fear in his voice precisely because he did know what the man meant. In truth, he had wondered how long it would take before one of his subordinates had come to him addressing the inconsistency of a High Priest with no command of the Light.

"Please, brother. You can be honest with me. The Shadow appreciates honesty more than you may think. It shows us uncomfortable truths and possibilities and lays them bare for the whole world to see." The Shadow Priest replied. "The Light has abandoned you, Marcus. How long until you see that?"

The High Priest felt as though he had been slapped, but it had been an honest slap painful though it was. "I... I am aware of this. It has abandoned all of our Priests here, and I have heard a rumor that the affliction has even spread to the Priestesses of Elune in Darnassus, though I have not confirmed it." He admitted. "I am constantly searching for the remedy. It was even the focus of my study tonight."

A gleam appeared in Sarvis' eyes as he then asked, "Do you even know why this happened to you and your priesthood? How can you know how to cure something when you don't even know the cause? What has the Conclave said about it?"

"I..." He didn't like being interrogated like this, but as he was forced to confront it the confession felt somewhat liberating. "I have not visited Netherlight Temple in some time since the end of the war. I have a strong disagreement with his holiness's political views in permitting the Forsaken and others of the Horde an equal place among us." He then asked, "What about you? Have you visited Netherlight? Do they know what is happening?"

"Oh yes. They are well informed of this issue and the cause of it." Sarvis responded, the gleam in his eye never leaving but appearing to change as though a madman just waiting to thrust a knife. "The Naaru there has not been shy about telling them."

"And?" Marcus then asked, a tinge of desperation in his voice, wondering why Laurena had not informed him of this before her death, unless she herself hadn't known. "Tell me please."

"You're not going to like what I have to say." The Shadow Priest then told him, overtly toying with him. "Are you sure you want to hear it?" It sounded as though a maniacal laugh just waited on the edge of his voice, desperate to come out when the punchline to his joke was revealed.

Marcus was taken aback by the sudden change in Sarvis' demeanor. He had not known many Shadow Priests, but knew that dabbling with the Void could addle one's mind and drive them further into madness. It was the reason he would never walk that road. Still, if there was any chance the man could shed light on the church's loss of the Light, he would hear it.

"Tell me." Marcus told him again, his tone just a little harder against the man. "Please."

"Jeshua." Sarvis then told him, maddening laughter quietly dancing in his eyes. "He is the reason why the Light has spurned you."

"This I knew." Marcus then sat back, sighing. Of course Jeshua had been behind it somehow, he just didn't know how, or how to counteract it. He then said as much adding, "You don't reveal any great mystery to me. Has the Naaru there explained how the charlatan managed to accomplish this? Is there a solution?"

And then the Shadow Priest cackled out loud, unable to contain himself. It was an unnerving laugh, and wholly inappropriate to the seriousness of their discussion. "Your grace, please. I see nothing amusing about any of this."

"Oh, but I do." Sarvis then told him, still laughing and barely attempting to control it. "You claim allegiance to the Holy Light and then did not recognize it when it stood in front of you! I don't know what could be more amusing!"

A cold sinking feeling developed in Marcus' stomach and wouldn't leave. "What do you mean? End this riddle and speak plainly!"

"If you don't have the eyes to see what's right in front of you, there's no way I could show it to you. What's even more comically tragic is that you've got it all backwards and don't know which end is up. You've already embraced the will of the Void and won't bring yourself to admit it. You've already been serving the Shadow so faithfully, why won't you just open your eyes and accept it?" Sarvis used his index finger to wipe tears from his eyes from his laughter, his tone of voice switching to one of a man trying to make a friend see reason.

Marcus found nothing amusing about his words though. Unwillingly they burrowed like a worm into his mind as he struggled to put the pieces to Sarvis' riddle together, but they just wouldn't fit. He had never succumbed to the Void, had deliberately avoided the use of its disciplines and abilities. He had remained faithful to the Light in spite of its rejection of him.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, and I think this conversation is over." Marcus then declared, standing up from his desk. "I will never be a servant of the Void."

The High Priest then made to walk towards the door of the study to open it and gesture for the man to leave.

Sarvis too stood up, but made no attempt to move from his position. Instead, his eyes were closed and he appeared to be concentrating on something.

"What...?" Marcus began to ask.

And then he heard the Shadow Priest intone in an unnatural voice, "Take my dagger from my belt and be silent."

Instantly, Marcus found himself unable to control his own limbs and muscles. He watched, his mind hazy and terrified as he walked over to where the Shadow Priest stood and silently drew the obsidian dagger from its sheath on Sarvis' belt. It was darkly beautiful in craftsmanship and design. Wicked in its sharpness and fang like curved blade, and obviously meant for only one purpose.

Marcus couldn't protest, couldn't cry out, and couldn't regain control of his own body.

"Now, walk back to your chair and sit down." Sarvis intoned again, and Marcus' body obeyed even as Marcus himself struggled futilely against his commands, mad laughter echoing within the confines of his own mind.

"If you will not serve the Void willingly, then your usefulness is at an end." The Shadow Priest declared. "Stab yourself between your ribs and into your heart." He finally intoned.

Marcus' own hands thrusted the blade into his chest hard and blood rushed out, staining and soaking his robes in crimson as his head slumped and hit the surface of the desk hard, cushioned only by the pages of the book he had been reading. A twisted look of terror and pain had been permanently etched on his face.

Sarvis waited until the blood flow subsided a bit and then carefully reached around and pulled his dagger free from the man's chest, cleaning it against the High Priest's own robes before replacing it into its sheath. The cuffs of his robes and his silken gloves became stained with Marcus' blood, but the Shadow Priest paid it no mind. It would not be the first time, and there were ways of removing the stains which could be purchased in the Mage's District the following day. No one would question why one of his order might want such a compound.

He studied the corpse for a few more minutes, contemplating what must happen next. He had maintained some hope for the man, and that he might see reason. But that's what insisting on being "righteous" will get you I suppose. Poor fool.

"Still have your nose stuck in that dusty old book, eh? Pity, what a waste of good resources. We could have gotten along quite well, I think. Oh well. I'll let myself out if you don't mind." Sarvis then told the dead body, and quietly left the chamber, opening and closing the door without a sound.

The next morning, Stormwind City would awaken to yet more tragic news. The High Priest, and two other revered brothers had all inexplicably committed suicide in the wee hours of the night in their private rooms. It would be another day of mourning and grief, and another day where the Shadow tightened its grip upon the city.

Sarvis smiled malevolently at the thought.

At the docks of Rut'theran village on the coast of Teldrassil...

The voyage from Stormwind had taken less time than Jacob remembered. The sailing had been smooth and the weather calm. Their ship, Azshara's Bane, had been given a tail wind the entire journey and they had arrived in the elven port on the literal other side of the world in half the time he remembered it taking two decades before, and this even with the extra stop made to drop off cargo and pick up passengers at Menethil Harbor up the coastline from Stormwind.

Surprisingly, his wife Martha had enjoyed the seafaring trip much more than he had expected her to. The Kaldorei crew had been very polite to the aged human woman whom many commented on how young she truly was considering they measured their own ages in terms of centuries and millennia. Martha had positively beamed at being described as one of the youngest people on board the ship during that voyage.

She had also made something of a friend in a bubbly "young" Night Elf sentinel, Elyssa Moonblade, who had been stationed as a kind of marine guard on board the ship. During the voyage, the Kaldorei woman with long, bright green hair tied back in a thick rope braid would often talk to Martha about her homeland in Kalimdor and the town of her birth, Nighthaven, in the protected Moonglade which had been the Night Elves capital for centuries until the third war. Martha had especially appeared to enjoy her comical stories about the animals she had known personally.

It had taken some of the burden off of Jacob's heart to know that his wife had found Elyssa on that ship. The truth was he hadn't known whether or not he was taking his wife out of the frying pan only to thrust them both into the fire by leaving Stormwind. He had hoped Daloren would still remember him, and given Elyssa's stirling memory in spite of being several millennia old, was almost certain twenty years would have been nothing to the Night Elf woodworker. But still, he and his wife would just be showing up on the man's doorstep, imposing on the hospitality of the dark azure skinned man for... for who knew how long?

He had somewhat put off thinking about it more up until the ship docked at Rut'theran Village. While his wife had been talking with Elyssa, Jacob had been engaging in good natured games of Hearthstone with some of the crew and other passengers. In so doing, he came to realize the magical card game really was more of a human and dwarven pastime than it was one for the Night Elves who saw it as an intriguing curiosity and fad among the younger races. He had done well with both sides placing small wagers on the outcomes of each match, almost doubling the gold he had boarded the ship with.

Now that he stood on the docks with his wife, he was forced to confront the reality of their situation. He didn't actually doubt Daloren would welcome Martha and he into his home for a time. It was the length of their stay which he didn't know. He had hoped to gather news from Stormwind while in Darnassus during that stay in order to determine if it would be safe for them to return. But if weeks or months went by and things stayed the same or got worse, what then?

"Jacob, are you alright?" Martha asked him after a minute, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"What? Oh, yes, I'm fine, Martha. Why? Don't I look it?" He responded as he looked at her.

"Well I've been talking to you for the past five minutes and you haven't said one word in reply." His wife told him. "You haven't heard a word I said, have you?"

Jacob blinked his eyes blankly as he looked at his wife. He tried desperately to recover what she had been saying to him, any of it that might have entered his ears, but to no avail. Finally, he settled on an apology and the truth.

"I'm sorry, Martha." He told her. "I've just been letting things get to me. It's been a long time since I've been here too."

Martha's expression softened a little. "Well, I was just talking about the tree. The sight of it just about takes my breath away. You said the Night Elves made their city at the top of a great tree, but never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined this."

She then gestured to the scene in front of her and Jacob's eyes had followed her fingers. To call Teldrassil a "tree" was like calling Stormwind a quiet little village. It was indescribably majestic. The great roots of the tree, were wider around than any house he had ever seen, digging deep into the island in which it had been planted and plunging beneath the waters of the sea around it. The great trunk of Teldrassil encompassed miles in diameter, elven structures and housing built and magically grown into its base. That trunk reached for the heavens as it expanded into the sky and erupted into a network of thick branches and leaves which cast a cool shade around the base of the island keeping it in a perpetual twilight. It was awesome and beautiful to behold.

Jacob smiled at his wife's reaction. In truth, his had not been so different the first time he had seen the great tree home of the Kaldorei, grown as a refuge for their people after the third war. And then he smiled again as he told her, "Just wait until you see what's at the top. Darnassus is something special. There's a whole 'nother world up in those branches a lot of outsiders don't get to see."

"But I thought..." She had been looking at the trunk of the tree with its many structures woven in. "Darnassus is up there?" She questioned, her gaze wandering high above her child-like in awe. "A whole city up in the branches of a tree?"

"It's not just Darnassus, Martha. There are whole lakes, villages, towns, and I've even heard of another great tree called Aldrassil up there protected and hidden in its branches."

"Will we get to see them?" She asked hopefully.

"I don't know. Last time Joseph and I didn't go too far from the city, and we weren't encouraged to either." He responded, somewhat amused by his wife's sudden interest in the exotic and different. "Maybe we can ask Daloren if it's possible. The Night Elves are friendly, but they can be pretty insular and keep to themselves as well."

Jacob then noticed a lavender skinned Night Elf man with short, forest green beard and mustache and shoulder length hair not far from them standing on the docks. Like most of his people, he stood a full head taller than the older looking human. He would not have stood out there among most of the others on the docks except he was wearing plain brown linen robes and clothes of human make, and his feet were bare. The old carpenter hadn't seen him aboard the ship, but he supposed it might have been possible for them to miss each other. He too appeared to be gazing up at the great tree, his eyes searching and somewhat haunted.

He then felt the urge to talk to the man who looked somewhat lost among his own people. "Hello, friend." He greeted him.

"Greetings." The Night Elf then turned and greeted the man, a friendly smile on his lips revealing his sharp, elven eyeteeth. "How do you do this fine day?" He asked politely using a human expression, if somewhat awkwardly.

"My name's Jacob. Jacob Davidson. That lovely young woman there is my wife Martha." The carpenter told him, briefly gesturing towards his wife who then moved closer to his side as he tried to make friendly conversation. The Night Elf nodded towards the woman politely.

"It's a wonder isn't it? I saw Teldrassil twenty years ago, and it's still hard to wrap my mind around." The human gestured toward the trunk of the great tree.

Jacob then realized how awkward he had sounded in talking to the man who must be at least ten times older than he, if not a hundred.

But if the Night Elf had been offended, he didn't show it. Instead, he smiled once more and replied, "Yes, it certainly is. It has been a long time since I too have looked upon it. It is truly majestic, though Nor'drassil was much more so before the third war. It reached so high into the sky that you could not reach the top most branches without losing the ability to breath."

A hint of melancholy entered the man's voice as he once again turned his gaze towards its branches, making no attempt to move from the docks. "It has been a long, long time since I have been home. I never thought I would be able to return to be honest, and now that I am here... But forgive me, I am called Syloren."

Jacob's heart went out to the man. He couldn't imagine what kinds of things might have haunted behind the Night Elf's eyes. Being a tradesman and not very good with any kind of a weapon, he had never gone to war, but he had known plenty of men and women who had. Syloren's eyes had that same look, but something more as well. There was a kind of peace mixed into it that had been missing from many of those Stormwind soldiers that had come home.

"To where are you traveling in Teldrassil, Jacob Davidson?" Syloren then asked him. "Perhaps we could travel together as fellow sojourners. I could use a friendly face to talk to along the way to be honest."

"Well, we were planning on visiting an old friend of mine in Darnassus for a while. After that, well..." Jacob told him honestly.

"I had intended to go as far as Dolonaar." Syloren then told him, his expression somewhat disappointed. "I had hoped to see if my brother still resided there before I continued on with my work."

"You know," the wheels in Jacob's mind began to turn as he called to mind his recent conversation with his wife, "it's not set in stone that we have to visit my friend first. It was kind of a last minute vacation. The truth is he doesn't know we're coming anyway and Martha had hoped we'd be able to see the interior outside of Darnassus."

Syloren then smiled again broadly. "I would welcome the company friend. In truth, I have spent more time among humans than my own kind these last two months. I would be honored if you and your wife would accompany me. The Light, it seems, has blessed both of us in unexpected ways today."

The three of them then began walking towards a large gazebo at the end of a road at the base of the great tree. A rose colored light danced in and around it. Near it were several nests of Hippogryphs and a Night Elf dressed in dark feathers and leather tending to them.

"So what work do you do, Syloren?" Jacob asked since the man had mentioned it.

"I have come home to teach the ways of my shan'do." Syloren replied.

Shan'do. Jacob knew the Darnassian word, and had heard it many times. It referred to one who was considered an honored teacher among the Night Elves. More often than not, when one referred to the shan'do, they were referring to the co-ruler of their people, the High Archdruid Malfurion Stormrage. But it could also refer to someone much less known, but well respected for their mastery of their discipline.

"Oh?" Jacob asked, curious as to whom Syloren was referring. "And who is your honored teacher?" He asked, no irony in his use of the term.

"Jeshua Lightborn." Syloren answered, his tone reverent. "The man who freed me from the demon's blood and gave me back my life."

Jacob and Martha then stopped in their tracks when they heard their grandson's name used. "I'm sorry, friend. Did you say Jeshua was your shan'do?"

"He was and remains so." Syloren responded. "For many, many decades I was possessed of the demon blood in order to hunt down and destroy the Burning Legion wherever they might be found. It had finally consumed me and taken over when the shan'do found me and purged me of it, showing me the true power of the Light and the path the Holy Light wants of each of us."

"You knew our grandson?" Martha then asked, surprise and emotion filling her expression. "You knew Jeshua?"

"You are his grandsires?" Then it became Syloren's turn to be surprised.

"I helped change that sweet little boy's diapers when he was still nursing." Martha told him, a grandmother's look in her eyes. "It tore me apart when he left home, even more so with all the nasty things being said about him. I just can't believe any of it was true."

Syloren's expression became one of compassion as he looked on the woman. "Then let us travel together, you and I, and I will tell you of the great human shan'do of the Light whom I know. I believe it will set your mind at ease as to what kind of a man the child you knew became."

"I would like that, sir. I would like that a lot." Martha replied, her eyes misting over.