The Homecoming

[Ulthanon]

The moments of lucidity were few and far between, and the haze always seemed to drift back into his mind just as he was about to make a breakthrough. Its onset was gradual; first, he would forget to search a particular location when he'd promised himself he would, then he would find himself checking a location that he had already cleared multiple times, and finally, he would forget entirely what it was he was searching for. Wandering off once more for weeks at a time until something clicked, some unknown neuron fired once again and he remembered the face of his quarry.

He could feel the eyes in the deep. They had long since been fluttering through the first stages of awakening, and though the hearts that gave them life beat but once in an age, they had been growing stronger once again, more rapid. Though a decade might pass between each pulse of action from the inky darkness, there was never enough time. The heartbeat was now thrumming in his head. He doubted the haze would fall over his mind again, but if he could not clear his thoughts fast enough, he might be too late to save...

...who?

He still couldn't remember who, but his feet drew him mysteriously southward. As he walked on, he got the impression he had done this many times before.

[Ulthanon]

The dreams were becoming more frequent now. He remembered them from months ago, but they had come and gone within a week. Now, he found himself having the same sequence repeated to him every night, followed curiously by seemingly random images. It would always start out the same- He would be standing in the middle of a city at war, the smell of burning rubble and charred flesh mixing with thick black smoke. He got the impression that this city was supposed to be his home, though he did not recognize it. As explosions from some unknown source drew ever closer, he continued arguing with someone. A man, but he couldn't ever remember his name. He got the impression he was familiar with this man, but he could not remember from where, and even during the dream he found it impossible to make out what either he or his companion were saying. All his words came out distorted somehow, though it appeared dream-him and the man understood one another and were becoming quite emotional over whatever it was they were discussing. Incomprehension aside, he could distinctly feel a great wave of heartache and pain wash over him at this point in the dream.

Suddenly there would be a flash of blue light, and from here the dreams would change.

Sometimes they calmed, and he was simply alone in the woods, though it was no forest he recognized. Other times he was in the desert, or in the mountains, or walking along some lonely shoreline, but again, these were no wildlands that he knew from maps. Other times the ensuing dreams were frantic, either running from some unseen enemy or loosing a hail of shafts at them; if he had the benefit of seeing them, the enemy changed. Orcs, elves, humans and demons, the nature of his quarry seemed random at best. Still other times he would be sitting around a fire, or a table, or in a prayer circle of some sort- again, the activity seemed random, and so did the people he sat with, but he again got the distinct impression that these people were his friends, his companions, his pack. If he was fortunate enough to remember the details of his compatriots into the waking world, even well enough to scribble a drawing down, he could not remember anything more about them except that they looked somehow familiar. All of these things seemed somehow known to him, and yet each night he awoke with no better idea on what he was seeing than the night before. There was something about that that terrified him, but again, he couldn't say what.

Once again, Ulthanon's eyes bolted open in the middle of the night, though his body lay stock still as though made of stone. Once again, he was covered in a cold sheen of sweat.

[Ulthanon]

He awoke in a new place again. Unfamiliar to him, his surroundings; snow-covered pines dotted the rolling hills as they had when he had slept, but their situation was different. The smells were different, alien. He could smell burning wood and coal, food and spirits. He could smell oil on the breeze, its sickly black fingers drifting on only every third wisp or so, reaching up from just beyond the mountainridge. He had to be in the land of the dwarves, just north of Ironforge.

Further, something told him.
He tried his best to ignore the fact that this was happening to him more often, that the distance covered seemed to be increasing. His best was not good enough, but regardless, he made his way south.

[Ulthanon]

Through the thundering hammerfalls of Ironforge's great craftsman he wandered, driven along some invisible path that looped and whorled back on itself like a river current or a knot of a tree. He would pass by this tavern and that, poking his head in only for a moment to the passing curiosity of its patrons, before both their eyes and his attentions wandered elsewhere. Then he would return in half an hour, five hours, a day- inadvertently triple and quadruple-checking his footsteps. But slowly, ever so slowly, he would make his way toward the Tram and into Stormwind, even if only for a single walk in a day. Then two, then three, and so forth until he was patrolling every canal and shop the human capitol had within its walls.

Curiously enough, he started wandering into a shady bar in a bad part of town- a place the locals called the Pig and Whistle.

[Ulthanon]

"What the hell is going on out there?"
"No word from the King's Ransom or any other ships that set sail within the past day, sir."
"All I'm getting over the box is static, I can't raise any of the garrisons in Kalimdor."

The cat made his way past squads of hustling soldiers, making sure to keep well out of their way. The armored men did not slow for the common citizen, bellowing at them to stand aside or be trampled. Most of the commoners and merchants knew better than to block their way, but the few that were to slow to move received an unapologetic shield to the chest that sent them crashing backwards. The soldiers did not slow their pace.
Through the winding streets of Old Town he once again walked, as if some long-forgotten song was just on the edge of his hearing; he would perceive naught but a line before the wind changed and he lost the melody. He strained to listen over the clamor of armor on cobblestone, over the din of growing panic for an unknown crisis.

"Portals are completely haywire, sir, we can't even form a stable bridge to Ironforge."
"The Tram is down, we're cut off!"
"Someone get a hold of Westfall, we need to know what's out there!"

Imprisoned, lies the greatest daughter,
So comes the death of rain and water...

There! But what was that song? He knew it from... somewhere. He knew the words in his very core but he could not bring his mind to remember them.
Over a wall of sandbags that now lay abandoned he leapt, past the shops and houses with windows and doors uncharacteristically closed for the middle of the day. Here and there someone would sprint by, hurrying home or to whatever place gave them comfort. From a hundred mouths he heard the same question- What is happening?, but from none did he hear an answer.

Peak and field alike will crack...
There it was again!
Displaying what our work was worth,
so comes the death of stone and earth...

He paid no heed to the darkening sky, or to the volcanic wind that had risen up from the sea; over the walls and through the streets it rushed, but he paid it no mind. The song was louder now, he could hear it coming in from inside that building up the street.

"By the Light, what- what IS THAT?!"
The nebulous panic that had been a simmer broke into a flash boil, sending citizen and soldier alike screaming for cover. The sky was the color of blood and the earth shook and trembled, but his entire being was focused on the song. He walked into the building -it looked familiar too, as if he'd been there before- and found another, an elf, sitting on the floor cross-legged, singing in that haunting minor key as if nothing was amiss outside the door.
He shifted out of his cat skin and approached the man slowly.

"You there."
The man either ignored him or did not perceive him, instead his song became more hushed and fell out of hearing.
"You there," the druid repeated, approaching again, "That song. What is that song?"

So comes the death of wind and air...

He could stand it no longer. He rushed forwards, even as air outside was split at the seams from a deafening roar, grabbed the elf by the shoulders and shook him as hard as he could.
"Yes, YES! The stars lament, in pity, cry / as zephyrs fail to move the sky!" I know the words, but what are they?!"
The elf looked up slowly, only now becoming aware that anyone was in the room with him. His expression looked as though he might forget his attacker's presence again even as he was being shaken, but his eyes kept tracing up, up the druid's robes , along his neckline and to his chin, and finally, to his eyes.
The gears in the elf's mind shuddered and staggered to life, taking the druid into account. Parts of his memory long abandoned flickered and flashed, tracing along pathways that had all but withered and died. His eyes, no longer dull and listless, drank in all the details of the druid.
"You..." the elf said, his voice only a whisper; barely audible as hell itself broke lose over the city of Stormwind...
"I know your face."