The devastation that has been wrought on Darkshore defies belief. What’s worse, the sight of the charred, bloated bodies washed upon the shore; the bloody, defiled carcasses strewn across the churned ground; or the stench of smoke wafting in on the salty sea breeze, momentarily overwhelming the stink of the rot that has begun to take hold of the corpses and the more peculiar, putrid chemical smell that permeates the land? Any of those things alone would make her stomach roil, and the combination has forced her to stop on more than one occasion. There is no true reprieve, no safe space to let her eyes linger and no fresh air to suck into her lungs to push down the nausea eating into her soul.
Valeera has no choice but to press on, although she keeps her hood up to prevent the ash raining from the sky from settling into her hair, and to blind her peripheral vision to fire that still burns on Teldrassil. The less senseless carnage seared into her memory, the better.
She has long since ceased documenting the myriad of wounds she sees on the fallen. For each corpse her eyes land upon, she has just one question: Are you Broll? For most, the answer is obvious: not a night elf, not male, not a druid. But for the bears, cats, birds and other transformations, she can only guess. Would she even recognize him in one of those forms? Would she recognize him with his face burned or his head beaten into a bloody pulp? Would she want to?
She walks on, aware that she cannot possibly examine every body. But the only way she’ll know for certain is if she finds him. Or if he, still living, finds her. He must know that she would come looking, and surely he would not leave her to wonder if he could help it.
With her gaze fixated on the ground, Valeera almost doesn’t see the night elf standing in the closest thicket of trees. When she does, she startles so violently she nearly trips over the body she’s just nudged onto its back. She lopes forward, calling out as she does, “Hey! Are you okay?”
