The two Druids made their way west of Astranaar, to a small clearing protected on all sides by steep slopes. The area had once been the home of Ashenvale's furblogs, but after their failed attempt at destroying the lumber camp and the coming winter, they had packed their things and moved on, probably south into the vales of Stonetalon. Shiawase stood in the center of the clearing, while Cirrimor waited in a tree atop one of the slopes.
"Try to generate as much nature magic as you can without exhausting yourself. I know Andhol is somewhere around here. He'll show himself. When he does we'll try to subdue him, but if he can't be subdued he'll have to be killed."
"Killed?"
"He's a threat to the forest otherwise."
Shiawase swallowed. Was he about to kill a fellow Druid for carrying an illness that he himself was suffering from? "Are you sure there isn't another way?"
"Brother Andhol and I discussed this when we noticed his condition. It was his own wish that if it were to come to this, he would rather die than let his existence pervert the balance. Consider your own feelings brother. You know this to be the right way."
Shia thought of Astranaar. If he were to be a danger to them, he would want nothing less than to have someone strike him down. Clinging to that thought he nodded and began to settle his mind.
"Whenever you're ready brother."
Shiawase lifted his hands and began to reach out to the energy around him. A ball of green light burst to life between his fingers. Shia dug his toes into the dirt and imagined that they were roots, sucking up the life of the very earth itself and pulling it into his fingertips, like a tree drinks up soil for its branches. The energy grew and sparked until the force it took to keep it condensed began to let out a hissing sound like steam escaping from a kettle.
"He's coming. Get rid of it."
Shia didn't notice a new presence around him, but he let the ball energy shoot up into the sky, where without his hands to contain it it fell apart. Residual magic sprinkled down back into the earth.
A cold shiver ran through Shiawase's body and he spun around to where Cirrimor was standing. Cirrimor didn't bother to glance behind himself before he had taken the form of great white wolf and darted away from his perch. His feet had hardly left the bark before a solid mass of thorny roots shot up from the ground and rocketed towards the branch that had been occupied just a second ago, smashing it to bits.
Cirrimor landed at Shiawase's side, flicked his tail, and bounded off again for the opposite slope. The thorns disappeared into the ground as fast as they had arrived.
The cold in Shiawase's body was beginning to spread from somewhere deep in the center of his gut. It wasn't the sort of cold that came from diving into a lake or running in the snow. It was a cold that seemed to suck the heat right out of him so quickly his body started to ache and seize up. Shia thought of the cold that had gripped him in his nightmare, this was the same feeling.
"Deeproots!"
Shia blinked, a mass of roots were shooting at him from the slope face like a volley of spears. He threw himself to the side just in time to avoid catching them in the chest, but they immediately wriggled and whipped towards him. Morphing into cat form, Shia ran for his life.
A blast sounded from behind him. Shia veered to his right and realized the roots had collapsed to the ground, their connection with the earth off by Cirrimor's shot of energy. The area fell quiet. Shia kept himself ready to leap at a moment's notice.
The wave of cold came again. Shia tried to ignore it and immediately broke out into a run. The ground under him shook. A root as thick as Shia's waist broke out from the ground under him, sending him flying into the air. The entire indent of land seemed to shudder, and suddenly the ground under him was squirming in a knotted orgy of plant life. Shia was off the ground the second he landed; Cirrimor's shot of energy held back the tentacles of greenery that flew up to follow him.
"He's not coming out!" Cirrimor shouted. No time to reply, he was landing again. His paws had barely touched ground before he was off, scrambling up the side of the incline and dodging the roots that grappled at his feet.
"Damnit!" Cirrimor stamped his foot onto the ground, stretched out his arms, and closed his eyes. The mass of vines below Shia flailed around wildly, twitched, and fell limp to the ground. "He's hiding in the trees, flush him out!"
Shia left Cirrimor to struggle for control over the valley and dashed into the forest.
The trees seemed threatening, the air snatched Shia's breath away, and the ground sent uneasy tingles up his legs. An unnatural darkness stretched out into the distance. Shia's nose tingled and his eyes watered. Besides the distant rustling of the roots and vines he couldn't make out a single sound.
Shia made his uneasy way through the trees, looking for Andhol. Through the shadows in front of him he noticed a humanoid figure standing, arms outstretched and head turned towards the sky. Quickly, before he was noticed, Shia stretched out his will to the sky and swung his hands down together like a mallet, dragging the energy from the stars themselves down upon his target with as much strength as he could muster.
The force of the starfire blast seemed to stun the Druid, and the figure dropped its arms and began to turn around. Shia brought his hands up again and tried to summon the power of the land around him, but as he reached out to the trees it wasn’t a power that met him, but a soft, sick murmur. Shia flicked his fingers to brush the sensation off him and concentrated again on casting a starfire. The Druid in front of him had begun to move forward. His features were hidden by the dark that permeated the area like fog, but the nature of his spirit was blazing. This was something sick, something dangerous. Shia took an instinctive step back.
The power for another strike was in his hands. Shia brought it down again, roaring out loud with the exertion, but before the beam had landed its target was racing towards Shia in animal form. It closed the distance between them in a second and pounced, jaws open and gaping towards Shia's head. He could see in his mind the mouth of the rotting Cenarion as it had swallowed him whole in his nightmare.
Shia dropped onto his back and kicked up, pushing his enemy away with the force of its own inertia. As he tried to scramble to his feet the ground under him shifted and thorny roots shot up beside him. Shia pulled out his dagger. The first root he sliced neatly in half, but the second shot for his feet, and wrapped itself so tightly around his legs he felt his bones move to break.
Andhol had returned to his Elven form and stood before Shiawase, who for the first time could see clearly what his brother had become. His skin looked as if it had been blotched with white mold. His cheeks were sunken as his eyes stared out as if they were blind. Something thick and black dripped down his fingers from under his shirt. A cloud of some suffocating stench floated around him. Shiawase gagged and tried to backpedal, but his feet were stuck tight by the roots.
"You need not fight me, brother," Andhol said. His speech was slow and slurred. "We are the same. Come with me. We will cleanse the land of the mortal stench. We will remake this world as it was meant to be, with us as its masters." He extended his hand towards Shiawase, who noticed that the skin had started to peel. A worm like creature dropped from Andhol's sleeve.
"Brother Andhol, get a hold of yourself. Look at what you're doing!" Andhol took a lurching step forward.
"Brother!" Shiawase cried. Andhol leaned down and grabbed Shiawase by the front of his shirt. An icy cold immediately gripped at Shia’s chest and he gasped in shock, only to be overwhelmed by the smell of the air in Andhol's vicinity. The elder Druid lifted Shia up, off the ground, and the roots at his feet began to crawl up to his waist. Shia kept his arms held out from his body to prevent them from becoming entangled as well.
Face to face with the thing that Andhol had become, Shiawase could feel the shakes of blind terror stirring in his gut. The other Druid's skin wasn't mottled, there were white colonies of -something- wriggling on him. His Elven eyes, which when healthy would glow with what seemed to be an inner moonlight, now seemed to radiate a sickly purple fire that both repulsed and mesmerized the younger Druid. Looking into them was like looking into a pale tunnel, that went deeper and deeper, and the walls were lined with screaming figures...
With a shout Shia jerked back and brought the dagger in his hand up into Andhol's chin. The blade cut through the neck, sliced the tongue, and stuck itself into the bottom of his skull. Andhol let out a scream that sounded as if a monster inside of his gut had been slain, and flung Shiawase to the side with such force that the vines holding him ripped and the younger druid rolled across the ground for a number of yards before sliding to a stop.
Andhol yanked the blade out of his head and roared. The entire forest seemed to expand with his cry. "THEN DIE, KAL'DOREI!"
Andhol's entire body was engulfed in green vapors that spun around in a twister. The wind whipped up and sent Shia's hair flying into his face, and in the whistling of the air rushing past his ears he could hear distinctly the distant screaming of his nightmare.
"DIE!" Andhol repeated, and raised his hand. In it a blackened mockery of a Druid's Wrath was forming. Shia braced himself and prepared to roll out of the way.
From his side he heard the roar of a bear, and Cirrimor came crashing through the trees, his gigantic white form racing towards Andhol like an avalanche. Without slowing he slammed his body into Andhol, and kept charging forward until he had slammed headfirst into a tree, crushing Andhol in between. Shia cringed as he heard the trunk crack at the base. Cirrimor stepped back. Andhol was flattened, his bones surely crushed to splinters. His skull was cracked and Shia could see what was probably brain mass seeping from his ears. The corrupted Druid blinked and moved to raise his hand again. Cirrimor roared, set his paws on Andhol's chest, and ripped the arm off with his jaws.
The two Druids waited before the broken body of their once comrade, wary of any movement betraying a fight still lingering in their opponent’s body. When Andhol had not moved for some time, and a green mist had begun seeping from his wounds, Cirrimor returned to his elf form and stared at his fallen companion. "This wasn't supposed to happen. Did he say anything to you? Druid, answer me."
Shiawase jerked at the order, "Ah, um, he told me to join him."
"Join him?" The green smoke was starting to disperse and rise into the air. "This isn't good at all." The Cirrimor flexed his arms and pulled from his robes a small staff with an emerald attached to its top. He pointed it towards Andhol's corpse. "You might want to step back brother. This could affect you."
Shia took five or six wide hops back. The emerald began to glow, and immediately Shia could feel a pulling on his chest. He clutched at his shirt. The green mist began to congeal and drifted towards the gem, as if it were a vacuum.
The mist was slowly engulfed completely by the gem, and with a sigh Cirrimor tucked the rod back into his robes and bent down to inspect what was left of Andhol. Shiawase remained where he was. The smell of rot was still eminating off of the dead druid.
"Give me your daggar brother." Shiawase forced himself to come over and hand his daggar to Cirrimor, who lifted Andhol's shattered head and cut it off from the base of the neck.
"Gather some wood. We'll need to burn the body." Shiawase looked around him. The forest remained hazy and darkened. The trees he realized had become a blacked soot like color, as had the ground. He yanked tentatively at one of the chared looking branches. It felt like a normal branch, and cracked like a normal branch, perhaps it would burn like a normal branch.
Shiawase and Cirrimor were setting the body of Andhol onto a pyre, with the dead druid's head placed in a bag to the side, when a screetching from above alerted them to the arrival of a gigantic eagle. The bird landed on the ground beside them, and at the next moment Stormrage was standing there, his face as set as ever. A second eagle landed beside him and warped into the form of another druid, the one Shia remembered had been called Thendil. Cirrimor acknowledged their presence with little more than a nod of his head, but Shia turned and bowed formaly. The bow was returned by Thendil, but Stormrage had already come up to the pyre and was inspecting it.
"We saw the fight from the Peak and thought there might be trouble, but it seems you have things taken care of."
"Taken care of for now Jakabi. Andhol has been put to rest, may Cenarius guide his poor soul, but as you can see whatever it was that had taken hold of him managed to extend it's influence to the surrounding area as well."
Stormrage ran a finger along one of the blackened trees. "It seemes that Darnassus has underestimated the problem."
"Again." Thendil added.
"Yes, again," Stormrage replied. "If Andhol can fall to this threat, then none of us are safe."
The two other druids nodded. Cirrimor made a quick round about the pyre before turning to Shia. "Light it."
Shiawase nodded and set to making the fire. The three elder druids moved aside and spoke to each other in low murmurs. The stench of Andhol's body was bringing tears to Shia's eyes. The sooner all of this was done with the better. As the fire sparked to life Shia made sure that it would catch and then moved as far away from the dead druid as he felt proper to do so.
Soon the smell of ash was overcoming the stench of corruption, and Shia was finding it much more easy to breath. The three druids had not acknowledged Shia's presence since they had moved aside to have their little conference, but as Andhol's body was slowly consumed by the flames Cirrimor turned around, pulled a pouch of something from his vestments, and threw it into the fire. Within seconds it had curled and broken apart into ash.
The stars were begining to fade by the first glow of daylight when the four druids took the pile of ash that had once been a blazing pyre and scattered the bits about the land like seeds. Cirrimor picked up the bag that Andhol's head was sitting in and the four Druids made their way back to Astranaar slowly.
