And there was nothing the Aspect could do to stop their intentions. He barely could keep the chaos in check. He no longer even had the will to reach out to the others, assuming he could have even done so.
There was no other hope, then. Only the same one as ever and yet that seemed so slight, so insignificant now, that Nozdormu could barely take heart in it.
It is all up to them… he thought as the raw forces tore at him. It is all up to Korialstrasz and his human…
One
They could smell the stench in the distance and it was difficult to say which was strongest, the acrid smoke rising from the burning landscape or the incessant, almost sweet odor of the slowly-decaying dead lying sprawled by the hundreds across it.
The night elves had managed to stem the latest assault by the Burning Legion, but had lost more ground again. Lord Desdel Stareye proclaimed it a retrenching maneuver enabling the host to better gauge the Legion’s weaknesses, but among Malfurion Stormrage and his friends, the truth was known. Stareye was an aristocrat with no true concept of strategy and he surrounded himself with the like.
With the assassination of Lord Ravencrest, there had been no one willing to stand up to the slim, influential noble. Other than Ravencrest, few night elves truly had experience in warfare and with the dead commander the last of his line, his House could present no one to take his place. Stareye clearly had ambitions, but his ineptitude would see those ambitions crushed along with his people if something did not happen.
But Malfurion’s thoughts were not simply concerned with the precarious future of the host. Another, overriding matter ever caused him to look in the direction of distant Zin-Azshari, once the glittering capital of the night elves’ realm. Even as the dim hint of light to the east presaged the cloud-enshrouded day, he went over and over again his failures.