The Tale of Deneb Vir Part 2

Anyway, I was accepted into Dalaran, and spent a better part of my life there. I learned so much, and met so many people. I even met Prince Kael! In person! Archmage Antonidas was the current master of Dalaran when I came in, rest his soul. I met that young lady Jaina Proudmoore there too. I'm sure she's quite famous by now. It's a shame what happened to Dalaran. It really was a respectable human kingdom, which can't be said lightly any more.
I made a lot of friends there. One of my closest and best was a human named Sol. He was only slightly older than me, but considering the human-elf age gap, we were about equal in maturity. He had come to Dalaran with his older brother, Matar, to study my same focus as well – inner-light. Sol wanted to become a priest, perhaps ordained in the Church of the Holy Light. At first he was a quiet, shy fellow, but we were roommates. Inevitably, we learned a lot about each other. He was taller than me, but still beyond skinny. His older brother, Matar, well, I'll just say I wish I had more positive memories of him. Matar had come to study the arcane. At least, that's what his official files said. In actuality, he was one of the youngest members of the ever-growing part of the Dalaran community that studied the fel and dark magic of the universe. Black hair and tanned skin, Matar became quite the bully to us lower grades. Despite that, he was still highly protective of his little brother Sol, and of completely opposite personalities. They were so different, to this day I find it hard believing they were biological brothers, even though they would both always refute any claims to the otherwise.
They were both orphans I would eventually find out, from Stormwind, as it's now known. Their parents died long ago, and by begging and fund-raising of their own accord, they got enough money to travel to Dalaran and attend school. Sol's motivation was clear. By becoming a priest, he could prevent such things from ever happening to anyone again, aiding the impoverished and homeless, that is. Matar, however, had less obvious motivation. To this day, I'm not sure what exactly he was doing there. Considering his life, my best guess is he wanted some sort of… revenge… upon the human world, so he invested his time into studying the taboo subject of dark magic. Matar just had a lot of anger in him, but he was more than capable of warmth towards Sol. Matar will forever be a mystery to me.
Also in our room was Sabik, a dwarf dedicated to the practices of inner-light. Recently the dwarves had been expanding into human culture. Like Sol, we three became good friends. He was short and stout, like most dwarves, with bright orange hair, also like most dwarves. He was actually the son of a Wildhammer dwarf named Magnalorn and a Bronzebeard mother named Syrma. I got to meet them once when they came to see Dalaran with their own eyes, and boy they were a sight. Magnalorn looked like he was at least two-hundred years old, and held a very close bond to the earth. That was to be expected of a Wildhammer, but Syrma was too. She looked as if she was at the very most, half Magnalorn's age. I suppose that's not too uncommon among dwarves, and maybe even humans, but it's just weird. I guess I never got Magnalorn's actual age though. He could have just looked old. As for Syrma culturally, it wouldn't shock me if her husband had rubbed off on her over the years, but Sabik told me she had always been that way, hunting and cooking their food when he was a baby. Considering this, perhaps the biggest enigma was Sabik himself. I wondered what his interest was in studying inner-light, given that his mother was a Bronzebeard huntress and his father some sort of Wildhammer shaman or spiritual leader. He told me that he wanted to know "both sides of the coin." The Bronzebeards had been growing steadily closer to the human's Church of the Holy Light, while his father was very close to the elements of nature. He said from his father he had learned much, and would learn more, of the forces native to the land, but he had no parent to teach him of the light. He now sought out the inner-light, something which his father was not entirely unfamiliar, to learn more forms of magic to bring back to his people and better their society. Aye, there's not another dwarf, nor possibly person, alive that I've met as good a soul as Sabik was.
They weren't exactly commonly seen outside their homelands further south, but the gnome population at Dalaran was beginning to grow. Many people in Dalaran still couldn't believe how short they were! I actually found better friends in them than any other race attending school there. Gino was the first. He was a very shy young man, not unlike Sol, but obviously very short with white hair (a common color among gnomes, it would appear). The only major difference between Gino and Sol was that Gino didn't have Matar to protect him. I never knew him that well, but we had some classes together. His parents sent him there to study arcane magic, but he clearly did not want this. He seemed far more interested in the study of, you guessed it, inner-powers like I was studying. For a gnome, though, this was unheard of, and poor Gino was quite restricted in his studies. I'm sure this didn't help with his popularity, or lack thereof, at Dalaran.
Benedict was there too. He was a gnome studying fel magic, but far more open about it than most. He quickly found a position as Matar's toady, and as my rival academically and socially. Like Gino, he had white hair, but far more of it, and a far fierier attitude to boot. We didn't hate each other so much as we fiercely competed with one another over… many things. The most significant, though, by far was my dearest friend in my time in Dalaran.
Lucida, a gnome studying the arcane, was a young girl in Dalaran. Short and stout with almost buzz-cut short, pink hair, she was two grade levels higher than me and very welcoming and kind. As we studied, her hair grew steadily silver as her experience with arcane grew. At one point she had these beautiful silver highlights in pink hair that grew along with our friendship. And her eyes; her eyes were a lucky-clover green that always made me smile. She even always had the distinct smell of blueberries about her for some unspeakable reason. I'll never forget it. We became close friends. Nothing more, of course. At least, I don't think so. Benedict seemed to have a thing for her, and came to an insane conclusion that I was trying to "steal" her from him (even though she was never his to begin with). Our relationship never did exceed a friendship in appearance, sadly. Thinking about it now, and my feelings that still do linger, this is one of my greatest regrets in my life.
But what am I saying? A high elf and a gnome. Kind of crazy, huh? I suppose there have been odder pairings. I wonder what my parents would have thought of her? Bah, I guess such questions are irrelevant. I can't undo the past. What's done is done and what's lost is lost. Still, my feelings, and thoughts for her, still linger.
I'm sorry, I digress. My years at Dalaran were happy ones, generally speaking. Prince Kael was already an elder student by time I arrived there and I did not get to know him personally. He was far too occupied with other things, and not his studies alone. I speak, of course, of the young lady Jaina Proudmoore. I did get to know her a little bit, and she is why I am here now in Kalimdor. Considering what happened to Dalaran, she very well may have saved my life. For a time, she served as the very dean of my dormitory as well, and this is where I got to know her, to an extent. I felt it inappropriate to linger too long around her considering my own prince's infatuation with her. We still worked well together, and were somewhat like-minded. On many occasions, she defended us (me and my friends) from that retched Dean Arugal. No one really liked him, but he worked closely with Matar and Benedict, as well as the darker masters of Dalaran. A sniveling little whiner, Arugal grew a bitter distaste for my friends because of our odds with Matar and Benedict, not to mention his distaste for the inner-magic. It wouldn't shock me if it was because of our relationship with Jania either, but that's only speculation. I think he may have even been a little racist, myself. This, too, is only my perspective, however.
Sabik, Sol, Lucida and I were a close group of friends. Gino was often around, though too fearful, or perhaps unwilling, to join us. Matar and Benedict would tease us, but we always got around it, usually through the aid of Sol asking Matar to stop. They cared for each other, I suppose.
I learned a lot in my time there too. It wasn't all fun and games with friends. I got a chance to study the human doctrines of the Holy Light, my own people's rationalism, and began to study Wildhammer Naturalism. Each of these are still carried with me today. I have great respect for the self-discipline of all these belief systems especially. Even the humans respect the power to master one's own mind. The elves did teach me a lot about logic and rhetoric, which is the platform of all belief. I'm still kind of shaping my own about infinite matters like what we should think about "the light" or nature, but I do know that self-discipline and logic are the foundations of creating my own beliefs. My time with the Night Elves in Ashenvale and what I learned of the doctrines of the Wildhammer clan of dwarves still are part of me, but, well, I'm thinking on them. I mean, I didn't even finish my studies with the night elves before… all of this happened.
I could talk on and on about belief, but mine are still forming. I'm just not sure what to believe right now. Everything is so new. I've just been… reborn, in a matter of speaking, and I have to… it's almost like I have to re-learn everything. It's hard to explain. I'll just continue my story.
One day, the day came where the plague was spreading across the human kingdoms. I grew concerned, as my parents up in Silvermoon did. Little did we know how terrible the plague really was. Sure enough, most of the humans in the Alliance just swept it under the rug. The Kirin Tor of Dalaran were the only humans who truly began to understand the devastating power of the plague. My parents considered having me come home, but there wasn't enough time for them to reach that conclusion. They had mentioned it in a letter, asking me if I felt safe, or if I wanted to come home. I sent them a reply, saying that Dalaran was the safest human kingdom of them all. After all, I couldn't abandon my friends. Sol and Matar had no other home to go to, and it wouldn't be right to leave my best friend. I did tell them though, if they grew too concerned, I would return home, if they so wished. Sadly, though, they never received my response.
Mail couriers began to grow ambushed. Smaller towns began falling to a strange new army known as the scourge. Communication was almost impossible. Undead began to infest the surrounding human lands. Then, most peculiar, Jania claimed to have met a mysterious prophet who told her that the only hope for humanity was to travel here, to Kalimdor. After all that had happened, as I'm sure you know, she decided to do just that, and just in the nick of time.
She approached the people of Dalaran, and some from the nearby kingdom of Stormgarde, and asked people to come with her. They would be abandoning their homelands, but they were doomed to be lost with the ever-advancing armies of undead. Most humans dismissed her, too, as mad as the prophet. Still, her logic was sound. She had approached my group of friends and told us what the prophet had told her. We met and discussed the idea to figure out what we should do.
Logically speaking, we were dealing with an enemy army of a new race assaulting our lands. They did not have free will and were acting out of mindlessness, so negotiation was not possible. War was inevitable, and already underway. At first, some would think we could defeat them. The Alliance had them vastly outnumbered, the undead having only a few small towns, and had far more resources. The catch, the thing that I realized that sealed my decision, was that the undead did not kill their victims. With each city, town, house and person the undead claimed, their army grew. Plus, being undead, they did not need resources, save some weapons and armor perhaps, which they would gain when they claimed a town like any ordinary army. This also means that any direct battle with the undead would only further bolster their forces! Given the apathy of the King of Lordaeron, not to mention most other humans, the undead would chip away at Alliance forces until their army was equal to our strength, and then they would be over a hill and would easily spill over considering the rate in which their forces grow. Only if something was being done now would the humans have a chance, which, tragically, was not the case.
I realized this, and shared it with my friends. It was a grim realization. The silence of the sitting room in which we sat that late evening still thunders like an explosion in my mind. No one said anything, and we became fascinated with our shoelaces. That evening, we all realized what needed to be done. All in accord, we agreed to travel to Kalimdor, together. I had come to this conclusion and shared it with them. The responsibility was on my shoulders. It was all my…
Silence.
We set sail within days. We were with many Dalaran students; Matar, Sol, Lucida, Sabik, Benedict and myself, along with countless others from Dalaran and Stormgarde. The ship rides were filled with fear, both of undead and the unknown, of anger and frustration, of anxiety, of exhaustion and of grief. The tossing waves clumsily carried us to our destination on the shores of Kalimdor.
It wasn't long after arriving, though, that the worst tragedy of them all struck – a tragedy that I, as well as thousands of elves, to this day, carry with us. We didn't need a message, we didn't need a signal or warning – we just felt it. The undead scourge had pressed into Silvermoon City. Our race was being slaughtered. I still do not know what happened to my family. My father was a military man, and was certainly lost early on. Families, mothers with crying babies, elderly and enfeebled, the helpless and innocent were all slaughters not out of greed or anger, but of nothingness – the mindless undead chained to a non-existent being. It's mind boggling to comprehend. Everyone, possibly, even, my own family, were all laid to waste by the undead. The city was torn asunder, towers toppled, and a race, a culture, an essence upon the world, was decimated. This, however, was not the tragedy we elves felt shake us to our very souls.
The undead pushed to the Isle of Quel'Danas. The undead pushed to the Sunwell. The undead reached the top of Sunwell Plateau. With their leader, the traitor, the disgusting, horrible human, Prince Arthas of Lordaeron, the undead… destroyed the Sunwell. The fount of our eternal power, the essence that made us elves, the one thing my father promised me would always be there longer than he would, was no more. Our race was handed a death sentence not by the blades and arrows of enemy races, not by magical diseases of the undead, but through the slow, degrading starvation of our souls.
Elvin researchers in Theramoore speculated it could have been a physical absence of the Sunwell that we slowly began to die and fall ill. This was only a theory, though. The idea that there was a tether of actual, literal dependency upon the Sunwell was laughed at by many elves. The tales of the Sunwell being our essence and keeping us alive were thought of as mere fables and metaphors at best. The notion that we elves were dependent upon magic as if it were some sort of drug was downright blasphemous to many elves. These same elves managed to find new sources of energy, but slowly began to move further and further from our Elvin ways by turning to mostly human measures for medicine and belief such as the Church of the Holy Light or vast amounts of inner-magic. Of course, by embracing such lifestyles that were only reachable through great amounts of time spent in meditation and stoicism, Elves had to sacrifice their passion and almost emotion entirely, along with bits and pieces of their culture. More and more fragments of Elvin tradition and values seem to be vanishing from this new "breed" of High Elf, and I, personally, do not ascribe to such ways of thinking. There must be a better way.
Middle-aged elves of good health did not suffer too badly from this. The elderly and young, such as myself at thirteen years, did feel the pain worse than others. I was bed-ridden for days, weeks even, without a source of energy. Had it not been for the little knowledge I had of how to harness my inner-magic, I may have died. Some did die. They were terrifying times for us elves. Well, they were for everyone, facing legions of demons and undead, and all, but, on top of all that, us elves had our pain and mysterious new aliments to face.
I did not get to participate in the final battle of Mt. Hyjal. For one, I was too young. Even had I been old enough, I was in no condition to be there. That evening, I was in my infirmary bed, staring out the window at the distant foothills. I wrote my thoughts down in a diary, expressing my emotions and thoughts. The very battle for the fate of all life was raging atop a mountain almost within my sights from where I was, lying in a bed. I could do nothing to help. I had no way of knowing how the battle was going. It was nerve wrecking, fearing life could end at any moment. It was exciting, knowing I was alive at that time and becoming a small part of history. What spec of energy I had to spare that was not going to my unconscious functions or writing was spent praying – struggling to send my inner-light magic out to someone who needed it. People were out there dying to protect our right to exist, while I lay in my bed, waiting for news from the front, and nothing more.
Obviously, you know how the battle went. It's history now, I suppose. Soldiers returned victorious, but not unscarred. There was even a standing peace between the Alliance, Night Elves and Horde. It was wonderful. Had everything stayed within Kalimdor, I feel things would have held up a bit longer between our people, but the hatred and prejudices of the old world wriggled their way into our promise of paradise and destroyed them. Blasted humans.
The races of the world (at least those that banned together for the Battle of Mount Hyjal) shared uneasy peace, but peace nonetheless, with one another as they began to mend themselves. The High Elves, however, had far more mending to do than any other race. We were basically starting over from nothing. None of us had much of Silvermoon with us. We would have to rebuild from the ground up, on this most ironic of places for the High Elves to be forced to regroup. As for me, I was still gravely ill. The world itself had suffered from the battle, and the magical energies of the world had been drained slightly by the presence of such demonic beings and the over-use of magic to repel them. This caused many more elves to fall ill. Not deathly ill, but they became sick enough that it became a serious concern of the Alliance remnant in what became known as the kingdom of Theramoore.
The fact of the matter was this; elves had been drained of their spirit. Most elves began to tap into the arcane energies harnessed by arcane sanctums and those natural to the planet for strength. After using up so much energy to defeat the legion, however, and the tremendous demand an entire race placed upon these two mediums of magic, there simply wasn't enough magic to go around. Lightheadedness, nausea, vertigo, headaches and countless other mild symptoms became permanent for many High Elves. My people still are yet to find long-term solutions to their melancholy and lethargy. Some elves have turned to inner-magic, but that energy comes from within the person anyway. If the person is not well cared for on their own, then they can not be coordinated enough to harness this energy. Some chose to follow the Church of the Holy Light, which sewed the High Elves in Kalimdor even closer into the Alliance and the old world of the humans, not to mention further away from true elfish values. Most elves, however, chose to strip themselves of any unnecessary delights and experiences. Lower passion means lower energy consumed, and my people are beginning to shift to a highly stoic form of existence, as mentioned earlier. This is startling, because elves without their passion are no elves. What is the point of living life, if you don't actually live it? Nowadays elves spend hours and hours a day meditating, in a less-than-conscious state. Without meditating, their minds and bodies are too active in only their automatic functions on a daily basis and they grow ill. If my people cannot get over this unknown disease, my people will surely die.
Then what about me, you ask? How am I surviving so well today? How did I make it all the way out to Azshara, alone? Well, I've had some help, technically. I was growing very ill. For some reason, I was suffering far worse from arcane withdrawals than most other elves my age. I was not as well trained as most elves my age in the works of arcane because of my unique focus on inner-magic, but that alone could not account for all of it. I'm still unsure what caused my extreme sensitivity to the matter. My friends, Jaina Proudmoore included, did know, though, that something needed to be done to save me and quickly.