Verdancy: Prologue
They were sixteen in all; the product of Thoridath Greenstorm’s vendetta against stinging air and oil-slick waters. The druid order called them his Green Knights, but in reality they were always hers. Creeping vines transplanted in a ruined desert. They had joined the others within earshot of her staggering heartbeat only after their leader had given his blessing, when trials and training had cross-bred their abilities into something wholly new. They were saplings, stirring, and while Julrien Valebright wasn’t the first, he had grown into their finest. How to explain them without sounding insane? Thoridath was used to being called an extremist, and worse, for his ideas. But as the shrewd Kaldorei would tell it, something had long ago sliced up the land, their loyalties, and longings. Azeroth was made up of walls and warfare, where even belief, and the way you wielded your undeserved gifts, were cause for conflict. By this point, it was as if there was some great evil in meddling between the barriers. Schools and sources of magic, especially, were meant to be separate. Inviolate. Thoridath knew this was a lie, just as he knew that his student was born for this. He’d seen the fragile and devastating forces of Nature leap to Julrien’s call, with one undeniable truth: that even the most quivering, tenuous life, with leaves unfurled, was safe in his hands. But Julrien would never be a druid under Cenarion’s care. The boy’s adolescence had seethed into early adulthood, where he was forged into a vessel for the Light. His talents were honed in exacting retribution from their enemies- ‘they’ being the ‘Blood Elven’ order who made him. The Light was a blazing greatsword used to desolate those who stood against the ones he loved. Small wonder he’d struggled in the beginning. Thoridath had stumbled upon him in the cultured oases of the Netherstorm, those flashes of paradise illuminated beneath a crackling sky. That the boy had a gift for knowing was obvious; his volunteering with their land crew was a boon to them all that season. But there was more at work there, something primal and poised, like a summer storm taunting the rolling waves that surrounded his beloved Darnassus. Darnassus. Thoridath’s lungs ached to think of it, though the elder druid had not been present when the city died. In his weaker moments he imagined he had been, that he had roared at Mother Moon and leapt upon the flames. His arrogance told him there may have been a way to save what his people had built. But he had been sworn to Cenarion, and it was not his place to mourn for a city, so much as the living earth on which it stood. Nor could he look upon his Tauren sisters and brothers as though they were anything else. He would not build another wall. They were sixteen in all, then, wading into the thick lifeblood still seeping from Azeroth’s wound. The desolation was deep, and it pained him to see it on his students’ faces. The steely-eyed Laures, hard as the cracked earth, looked on in silence while her brother, Lucan, wept openly at the sight. Nothing they had seen in their Westfall home or beyond could have prepared them for this. Behind them, the Laughing Sister, Daphra, was propped up under Ather’s arm- Ather, whose secret kept him at a distance from the others, but who closed his eyes rather than watch them collapse. And then there was Julrien, without the luxury of impassive guise, whose white knuckles soon gave way to empty hands. Months passed, in dread and disarray. In quartet crews with a dedicated healer each, his Green Knights- hers, now, more than ever- fought to stem the bleeding. Nature was in their nature, tempered by a golden Light and primal order such as the paladins preached. But as they gained, they lost… at once sixteen, then fourteen, even before the Whisperer came. And now...
This was not the Nightmare. Their foe subsisted on sanity and shadows, its believers moving like oil on water as they gathered. Black clouds that blotted out the sun. It was time for his saplings to leave, to take to the forefront where the intersection of Light and Life manifested most. It had been some time since Thoridath had visited the Vale- not since he’d last taken a team of novices to share in the regrowth. And as he pulled back the heavy canvas door, ducking under stretching vines that sighed at the effort, he held fast to the image of fresh water, dappled gold.
