The Last Hours of Teldrassil: Shadowgrace

Smoke clogged her throat, stung her eyes.  It was hard to breathe, but she couldn’t stop.  She had to keep going.  There were too many people there, too many that couldn’t escape without help and there would not be enough help.

She abandoned us.

It had been a blip on a subchannel, word that Tyrande had reached Stormwind with Malfurion Stormrage.  That, if nothing else, would have driven her to at least try to reach the city before all was lost—for she knew in her heart of hears that all was lost—but she still had to try.  Someone had to try, as their high priestess had seemingly abandoned them.

Elune, light and love incarnate, watch over your children as we face the darkest shadows of our lives.

Her eyes stung as she wrapped a strip torn from her cloak over her mouth and nose to help mitigate the smoke.  Her ribs ached and she knew she was bleeding—the last moments as they grew close to Rut’theran before it was obliterated by a falling limb of the great tree had not been kind—and for a second Roiya was glad that the cloth was still damp with saltwater from the sea.  It would help for a time, at least.

Why had they been so keen to follow her into this hell?

Goddess have mercy on them.  Goddess have mercy on me.

She sucked in a breath, barely managing not to cough, and plunged deeper into the billowing smoke. Her boots echoed hollow on the stones, the sound muted by the roar of flames, of heat-driven wind, of the screams of the trapped and the dying.

Burning was a terrible way to die.

She dropped her shoulder into a burning door.  The wood splintered, ash and embers spiraling around her, melding with the shadows swirling around her.

I am shadow, your hand in dark places.  Elune, watch over me and help me to save your people as I walk in the shadows of Your light.

“Come!” she barked at the family huddled inside, reaching a hand out to them.  “Hurry!  There are portals at the temple.  Hurry.”

They hesitated for a moment too long.  She plunged deeper into the cottage.

“You need to go,” she said urgently.  “There is no time.”

“You’re Shadowgrace,” the elder of the three women inside said, her voice a raw but hushed whisper.  “What are you doing here?  Our world is dying.”

“Elune commands, and I obey,” Roiya said, gentling her tone and swallowing the cough that threatened.  “Our people are dying.  Where else would I be if not saving them?”

The woman’s eyes glimmered, tears there not only from the smoke.  She swallowed, nodding hard, clutching a girl of perhaps ten against her chest.

“Go,” Roiya whispered, her voice almost lost to the crackling and the screams, the rushing wind and the sound of falling debris.  “Please.”

The woman nodded, gathering her child, the others with her fleeing out into the plaza in her wake.

Her own eyes stinging, Roiya coughed once, then again, hard.  For a second, her vision dimmed.

Elune, please.  Do not forsake me—do not forsake us.

The cottage creaked.  A whispered curse escaped her lips as a beam came down in a cloud of embers and sparks like fireflies in the summer air.  The sound of its crash left her ears ringing and she stumbled out into the streets of Darnassus, into the streets of a dying, burning city.

There would not be time to save them all, but she would die trying.