A beginning to an end.

[Lucinther]

Lucinther watched from the shadows as tribe mate after tribe mate entered the citadel that was Naxxramas. This would be one mission that he would be unable to attend, not for lack of being capable, but there were other things that needed attending to. As much as he wanted to help free Sreng, he would sit on the sidelines, so to speak, knowing he would probably just get in the way and add to the confusion.

The rogue sighed and slipped further into the shadows. He pulled out his hearthstone, the only bit of magic the rogue possessed, and relocated himself back at the Stormspire in Netherstorm. When he was finally sure he hadn't lost anything in the process of teleportation, he summoned his Wyvern. The beast had always been faithful to him.

Mounted on the back of his wyvern, Lucinther flew to a deserted patch of land, dismissing the beast once they had landed. He smirked and set his pack down, shrugging it from his shoulders with little effort. He walked around the area for several seconds before stopping near the edge of the floating island. He glanced down, and then skyward, taking in the entirety of the twisting nether stretched out all around him. It was virtually a bottomless pit. There was no end nor any beginning to the nether.

He stepped closer to the edge, another step forward would cause him to plunge headlong into the black abyss that made up the twisting nether. A small gust caused his cloak to billow out to the side as he stood in thought.

He had come far since his days in Brill. He had accomplished many great feats. He was trusted. How many rogues could say that?

He chuckled under his breath as he recalled many of the missions he had been sent on and the times he spent with the tribe. He thought about the battles he had fought and those that had stood beside him in battle.

Finally, he sighed. One final thought crossed his mind. Dispaya would kill him, if she ever got her hands on him, for what he was about to do. He smiled at that thought. And with that final thought, he took a step.

[Dispaya]

The heavy iron door of her Sanctum swung open and then closed with a heavy "thunk." Dispaya crept in quietly and went right to her sarcophagus. It was time for a rest period...time to rejuvenate...for Forsaken do not sleep like the living...but they must rest or their energies become depleted.

The Battle at Naxxramas had taken a great toll her her physically and mentally. She was having trouble forming coherrent thoughts. Her magic was weak. She was drained. Heigan had tried to reclaim her. How many times would they try she wondered. Not likely again...not likely...not after the raid ....now they would settle for her true death...of that she was also certain...but she was safe for now.

Heigan's words echoed in her mind:

"How long until they know who you truly are White Lady? How long til they know...?"

Her servant Cadavera was there...and helped remove her cloak. The undead girl dressed in apprentice robes and spoke in a raspy voice.

"The battle was long and hard my lady?"

"Aye."

"I feared you would not return."

"That was almost so."

Warlord Sreng is safe?"

"Aye, safe enough for now."

"You musst resst."

"That I will do...please help me with my armor...tell any visitors I am not to be disturbed."

Cadavera removed the large shoulder epaulets from the small girls frame as she continued to speak.

"I have newss...of your friend...Lucinther. It came while you were away."

Dispaya suddenly realized Lucinther had not been there. She had thought of him, but in all the chaos she had lost track.

"Tell me of him." she sighed.

As Cadavera spoke Dispaya listened, but before she even finished, Dispaya collapsed in anguish to the cold floor of her crypt.

The tribe did not see her again for many days.

[Sreng]

Under normal circumstances, the troll wasn't a particularly sensitive person... not in the spiritual sense, anyway. When browsing for apprentices, the Darkspear witch doctors passed him over without a thought. He never really heard the voices of his ancestors, he couldn't hex anyone, and he shrugged dismissively at the herbs, oils, dolls, bones, and rattles favored by the voodoo priests.

But when he hunted, he was awareness incarnate. He could smell footsteps, and hear weakness. The thoughts of his quarry jangled through his soul, like a fly stuck fast in a quivering web. He didn't know when to stalk, when to stay still, when to attack, when to kill. He stalked, he stayed still, he attacked, he killed.

The troll crouched by the water's edge, beneath the moonlit sky. The waves rolled serenely, and they washed over his feet, up his calves, before sliding languidly back out. They lapped at the corpse beside him, as it lay cooling facedown, bleeding its life's warmth into the uncaring, eternal sea. Another troll, its throat slit ear to ear. The hunt still sang in Sreng's veins.

He knew, then, that something was wrong. His tribe, his pack, his people, were in pain somewhere. Had someone fallen? Was the lifeblood of his kin flowing freely away, spiralling into the beyond like that of Sreng's victim?

He rose and stood. The Hunt was over. Others needed him now.

[Ronx]

The sun was hanging low in the sky, throwing the last glaring light of the day out upon the world as well as long, serpentine shadows that turned the sight of the mountainous badlands into a strange visual tumult into the terrain. As light and the shadows wrestled before twilight and the extinguishing day came to an end, a single clasping hand grasped at the soil. It came up in large clods and clumps of damp soil. The one to whom the hand belonged to smelled the dirt with large and snorting inhalations, checking it's properties for insufficiencies, defects, contaminants, excessive quantities of minerals that you couldn't have or that you could as a luxury...

The deep smell of turned earth was stifling from how much he smelled of it now, and not as much as the clod in his hand with it's startling excess of myriad compounds in its form. Giving pause to only the slightest impulse, he had paused. It wasn't the only time, he had paused and seemed froze in place as he examined things in the past. But this time he had deliberately stopped and inspected the dirt clod: an insurmountably mundane object with an indefinite shape that conformed to his large palm, the abstract textures, the way it's loose extremity regions held it together in a mundane way.

The gust picked up in one brief moment, slicing through the mountains behind him and picking up a wall of dust that blew through the region before him. It caressed his ear, making a voice that sounded like quicksilver and at the same time voices he has known, voices of strength, voices of wisdom, voices of power. Voices of love, of hate, of bleak and stern indifference. Voices known, voices unknown. Voices that were known to him, voices he would know.

Voices he had desired to hear.

"Listen to the wind, for every creature that breathes speaks of one tongue or another, but they all speak the language of the wind for it is what gives them life." The Lesson was one of many that was ingrained thoroughly into his memory, and the memory of this one brushed his conscious mind as he had no time to pay attention to anything but the clod.

In the undefinable noise that carries the voices of all things was a single noise. It spoke, one quick word was all that was uttered as the wind whispered in his ear. It was all that was needed as it was said with crystal clarity, "Look!"

The wind had disassembled the clod quickly, waiting as his attention shifted to it before potentially dismembering it with the initial blast of wind. The pieces fell to the ground right below his hand. The wind didn't pick up the pieces. It hadn't needed to continue with it's message delivered.

The pieces of dirt fell to the ground in oblong shapes, ovals and circles and shapes that were unnamed. They formed more proper shapes in his vision as they fell to the ground. Shapes of thin, skeletal figures falling countless heights; shapes of ceremonies; shapes of floating islands being ripped asunder; shapes that translated happiness and peace whilst others that conveyed despair and coming storms. They fell into a pattern on the ground.

It was perhaps the most important sign of this prophetic moment.

He stared at the pattern, taking it in in minute detail, shutting out the rest of the world with uncanny effect. He stood there for what could have been moments or hours: time was one of the things that he tended to shut out in those involuntary moments.

"Home is where the heart is." A saying as old as time and his mantra in these days of wandering, and a saying that reminded him of where his heart was. He let out a long sigh and checked the position of the sun, noting how he had took only a few moments or that he had been examining that pattern in that same spot for a number of hours that had been a multiple of 24. He planted his hand next to the hole he had made what seemed not too long ago to get another sample. He had put it with the rest, sure that the proximity to the last wouldn't change the results. He was too daunted by the sign in front of him as he walked on. He knew in his heart it was the same Tribe that had helped him and had assisted him even in his darkest moment in spite of what he himself had been doing. But he wasn't sure that he was the same Ronx that they had known.

He had done again what he had been doing countless times for what seemed like years now. He picked a direction and started walking. He missed his heart; and with the images from his "vision" swimming through his head, he promised himself he would return home soon.

[The shade]

The shade watched the large tauren with curiosity. It had seen the druids and shaman act in similar fasion... but this tauren was no druid or shaman. It watched the large tauren warrior as he sniffed at the dirt. The bull glanced skyward as the shade stepped closer, nearly right next to the warrior. He examined the clod of dirt that was in the large tauren's hand.

The shade had no fear of being seen, as it was well hidden in the light. In the darkness, it was invisible. As the wind picked up and dirt began to fly through the air, the shade was not worried, as the flying dirt could cause it no pain. The particles simply passed through it, as if it weren't there at all.

Finding the tauren to be of no interesting note, the shade slipped away, unnoticed and unseen once more. It traveled quickly, as travel was no problem, the shade was like a shadow. Where a shadow could be found, the shade could be there. It took no effort. The shade simply was, and was not.

Once arrived at the Undercity, it made its way to the entrance of Dispaya's crypt. It did not enter, for it had no need to. The shade posted itself outside the doors. A lone sentinel in the night and in the day, hidden by the light and invisible in the darkness.