Wildfire Riders

We all know what happened at the Wrathgate... but what comes after?

He felt groggy. No, more than just groggy. He couldn't move most of his body other than minor twitches. He felt weak, barely able to even open his eyes. The ceiling was a blurr, dark at first, but as his eyes adjusted he could see the dark patterning. Skulls and other bones carved into the stone... wait, weren't those just bones?

"Good, you're awake."

He suddenly felt strength in his limbs. The voice was unfamiliar, and the movement that suddenly came to his body wasn't his own doing. He sat up, seeing the other bodies around them. They all seemed to be sleeping, some of them in more comfortable positions than others... Maybe they weren't all asleep. His body continued to move and came to a stand, forcing him to look at the fully armored knight in front of him. "Your master awaits you."

His legs took him around the edge of the dark rotunda. All around him there was death. Undead abomination constructs carried body parts or whole bodies to and from piles. Skeletons rushed about performing menial tasks. Knights in armor and runed swords sparred in the center of the rotunda. Fear overcame him as he suddenly realized where, or rather to whom his legs were taking him.

"Another knight to serve my army." The Lich King laughed. "Seek out Instructor Razvius for your training, I haven't sent any new recruits his way in some time."

He couldn't resist the movements of his own body. It was not his to control, only his consciousness, but even now he began to hear the whispers inside his head from the traitor prince.

Razuvius gave him a sword and a suit of armor much like the others he saw. He went through the training just as they did. He felt helpless, powerless. He suddenly felt a sense of deja vu, as if he'd done this before. That didn't make it any less terrifying.

Your first task, the whispers came to him, Is to carry out my will without question.

He was suddenly in front of a house in the middle of a barren land. His house. The world around him became very dreamlike and surreal. The door to his house opened. His wife was there at his feet, holding his child in her arms. Did he have a child? No, but he knew it was his.

He lifted his sword, feeling his own face curl into a wicked, sadistic smile.

"Harold, please, no." She sobbed, clutching their baby.

He lifted his sword, there was a scream as his sword came down. He shot up straight in bed.

---

"Recurring nightmares or in some extreme cases, night terrors, are the result of severe trauma. In some cases those suffering from them scream or yell out in the middle of their sleep. For some reason that we're not sure about, most that suffer don't remember having them at all. Some however, remember every last detail. They lose sleep, afraid to fall asleep. I've done mild dream alterations before but... I haven't dealt with any case as extreme as yours before."

Aleros didn't wear his ornamental headdress of feathers and trinkets. His hair was tied back in a tight pony tail, colored a deep blue. The man in front of him had bloodshot eyes and bags of skin beneath his eyes that could put a hound to shame. Other features, a slouched posture, wrung hands, showed his obvious exhaustion and lack of sleep.

"I can't sleep. I can't function." The infiltration Marshal sat before Aleros, hunched over in a simple wooden chair. Several candles flickered in the windowless room, although it was light outside. SI:7 had their own hand in the incidents at Wrathgate, but even their own agents had been affected by the atrocities carried out by what they thought to be Putress's hands. Aleros wasn't informed of the infiltrator's name, just that his code name was Fourteen.

Aleros's teeth shone, they were not perfectly white, possibly an off white, but the candle light accented the yellow tint to bring the color out. Fourteen couldn't look him in the face, the teeth showing through that wide grin almost seemed to him like a predator's. "I'll have to have a look see, and maybe I can tweak a few things while I'm in there."

"Here you are, bottled good dreams. Should be enough in there to keep you for awhile. Just use a dropper and put a couple of drops in your ear." He held the bottle out to the agent. He was even worse than the last time Aleros had seen him. Severe sleep deprivation was written across this man's face.

The man held the bottle between two fingers, turning it about and inspecting it. "This'll fix me? And not all that poking around you did in my head?"

"That's my hope. It seems like a temporary solution, but it should hold you over indefinitely, or until the trauma slowly heals out of you."

"And how long do you figure that will take?" He wasn't looking directly at Aleros, but at the bottle. He seemed wary of it but there was also a longing look of relief.

"Months, years, maybe never. If there's no side affects with the dreams, you can keep coming back to me for more." Aleros shifting in his seat across from the SI:7 agent. He had lots of confidence in these dreams, but they hadn't been tested yet either.

"I'll... I'll give them a go tonight. If they work, we'll work... something out for your payment." He thanked the druid, standing weakly, and nodding his regards. He left the small parlor and began to head for the little apartment that he called home. Just a small place in the canals. He wasn't high enough on the chains to be housed directly within SI:7. The light door gave the slightest creak as it opened, hinting at a lack of oiling on the hinges. He lit a single candle. Although it was the middle of the day his curtains were pulled shut and the room seemed dark as if it could have been the evening. "Two drops in the ear..."

He held the bottle up again, looking at the gaseous green liquid swirling about inside the glass. "Dropper..." He reached for the small medicine and aid drawer at his bedside table, pulling out the dropper. The apartment was very clean, as he'd kept himself occupied even in his sleeplessness. "Here's to hoping you're right." His head tipped to the side.

A few days prior...

"Oh go to sleep already!"

The blood elf cursed at Aleros in Thalassian. The two languages were derived from the same roots. While he was able to understand strings of it (along with the angry tone), much of it was lost on the Kal'dorei. Aleros sighed.

"You can go back as soon as I have what I need, just observation."

The slick ear calmed enough to stop cursing, glaring at the druid. They both stared at each other for a long few moments. Twilight was slowly ending and the first rays of sunlight were beaming over the tops of the trees. The two were in a grove, not far from Silvermoon City itself. Aleros sat cross legged, chin resting on his palm, elbow on his knee. The Blood Elf was tied up to a rather comfy looking (at least to the druid) pile of leaves. The only thing seemingly uncomfortable is that he was bound there by sets of roots on ankles and wrists.

"After 20 hours of thrashing about, screaming and cursing, I'd figured you'd be tired by now. You made me tired just watching you!" Aleros looked tired, but if anything else he looked impatient. He'd normally have taken two naps and a full sleep by now. Seylon might have wondered where he was, but it wasn't uncommon for him to be out some nights. He'd probably not hear the end of it if she knew what he was doing however. He pushed the thought out of his head.

"Thala'no sho'ral ei kai tala'ir anel!"

"Oh I know what that means, and that's just nasty. My mother's dead." He spoke in his own tongue, hopefully enough words in Darnassian (or their roots at least) were understandable. "If only you were an animal, I'd at least be able to force you to go to sleep."

Several more hours passed. Aleros was about to fall asleep himself when he noticed the Blood Elf was contentedly snoring. It had happened so fast, as the blood elf had only just been cursing, that he'd missed it. "Well, it's about time." He got up, going over to make sure his subject was asleep for sure. "You don't know it my friend, but you're going to be helping both me and SI:7. You'll probably never know. Now let's see what's in there."

Aleros's eyes closed, the faint yellow glow beneath the lids turned green. He concentrated intently, soon finding himself inside the other elf's dreams. He wouldn't make his presence known, that would surely cause an awakening. That's the last thing he wanted. The dreams were hazy, and went by at a seemingly normal pace, although he felt they were moving slowly, which meant time outside was moving faster than perceived.

"Fairly normal, nothing too different. It seems fel and arcane don't have any influence on dreams... that's just what I needed to know. Now..." He touched a dark spot on the outter edge of the dream, causing the visions to spin rapidly out of control momentarily. They fixed on another vision of the blood elf's mind's creation. He did this several more times, studying the dreamscape for any irregularities. "What's this now, I've never seen you. Or maybe I have come to think of it..." He took ahold of what appeared to be a dancing tendril. The tendril reacted and began to twine itself around him, although it did not squeeze. It was a familiar mist. "Now this is an interesting discovery."



The blood elf awoke, partially covered in leaves. He shot up. There were no longer roots confining him, just a hazy feeling, and the druid was nowhere to be seen.

Somewhere over Arathi, a storm crow flew southward with a bottle of green mist clenched in its talons.

"Two thousand gold?!" The little goblin seemed almost taken aback by the request. It wasn't even a request at that, just a message. The goblin grumbled about overconfident ninnies.

Aleros leaned forward on the table, chin on his palm. The difference in height between their faces was not nearly so much while sitting at a table, but the druid still felt somewhere in the back of his mind that he really shouldn't be upsetting this goblin. "She sent me back to you to get the money, says she didn't work cheap. I told her you said you'd take care of it."

The goblin was not looking at the druid, rather off to the side as if annoyed at some yipping dog beside his chair. "Yes yes, and a goblin is true to his word." His eyes shot to the druid. "And don't think that I'll try to find some way out of this, I'm not like those other Goblins that try to swindle you!" His gaze lowered to the table, shuffling through some papers. "You've helped us out and I'm true to my word." He procured a blank document, although it was made of some sort of intricately designed paper, and seemed to have a magical enhancement on it. After a minute of scrawling on it he snatched it off the table, holding it at arm's length to the druid. It might have been because his arms were just short so the reach was necessary, but it also seemed as if the paper itself stung his hand. "Just take it, I'll work it out on my end. Maybe put in a word or two with Mathias not to hire overconfident little shits."

Maybe the goblin was more like his counterparts than he thought. Or maybe there was just a disconnect within SI:7 somewhere. Either way, 2000 gold was a lot to pay for a piece of paper.

---

It was not a lot of money for a deed to a shop. Aleros didn't want something obvious, a piece of prime property within the Trade District suddenly being owned by a druid selling dreams might have looked a bit strange, especially to the previous owner. However, in the Park District there was a run down shop that had been owned previously by a night elf that tried to sell scented oils and candles. It had done fairly well, until the citizens of Stormwind began growing hair in undesirable places, and not just a few strands. Large thick mats of hair would pop up on a lady's bosom overnight. The healers and doctors quickly linked the cause to the scented oils, where they found out the shopkeeper was cutting costs by using kobold oil. When she went out of business, it wasn't really clear just who owned it, but a quick altering of records now had him as the proper owner of the little corner of Stormwind.

Preparations for the shop went quickly, especially with Seylon there to help and Khallar in a little baby pen in a safe part of the shop. Sky stopped in every now and then, mostly to threaten destruction. The shop was cleaned and prepared and things began to slowly fill shelves. Things from Aleros's workshop. Dream catchers, bottles of all sorts, charms and trinkets, most of which contained some sort of magical enchantment, purpose or function.

On one side of the shop were decorations and trinkets, as well as potions. Intricate dream catchers with more function than just wall decoration, able to ward off dream interference and nightmares. Only the most skilled at dreamwalking could go around a dream catcher with a green dragon scale woven into the middle. Various other charms to be put under pillows, worn around the neck. Jewelry and gems. Among the potions were sleep aids, things that could normally be found at any potion shop. Some of the more specialized potions were elsewhere in the shop.

Various bottles decorated the shelves in another part of the shop. All containing what appeared to be a swirling mist of liquid, the color green or some variation thereof. These are the main attraction of the shop, the dreams. On one end of the shelves, there were larger amounts of bottled dreams all bundled together, labeled together. Most of these were suggestions of good dreams. By using them the person could be guaranteed a good dream for that night. Others in this section included dreams that could surface forgotten memories, or invoke a certain mood for a dream, each listed under their own moods. Further down the shelf were more dreams, but they became more specific. Instead of many bottles all being placed under the same label, these were more individual and a good deal more expensive. Specific dreams, a set out plot. Towards the lower shelves were children's dreams. Princes and princesses, knights, lords and ladies. He expected these would only popular among the merchant's children, but there would be demand for them either way. Further up were dreams for the older; romance, politics, victories over great enemies of the world. He'd been hard at work making all sorts. For some of the even more mature dreams, one could find those in the back room.

Stormwind buildings often had expansive cellars and storage spaces downstairs. Even this small shack was no exception, boasting a store room beneath ground even more extensive than above the shop. Here, the druid had set up many down beds in his dream workshop, where a price could be negotiated and the druid could go into one's dreams and tweak aspects of it. Like a commissioned painting, he could go in, set a dream, and then extract it for later use. This was of course even pricier. It was also here that some of the more "Special" dreams were kept. Also, some of the rare potions and concoctions were stored down here as well. The druid's limited supply of dreaming lotus potions for loa exploration, he only kept about half of these at his shop.

And of course, he was expecting a visit from the Cenarions at any time.

The Little Shop of Dreams.