A sense of dread rising within him, Broll reconsidered his earlier choice not to fly directly to the town. He drew the idol out again, placing it down by his foot.

But as he raised his arms, he realized that he was not alone.

The flapping of wings immediately stirred images of Fandral in pursuit of the errant druid, but what Broll located in the sky was no storm crow, but rather the hazy shape of a hippogryph.

The beast had a rider, too. Although he could not make her out, there was no doubt in his mind that it was Shandris Feathermoon.

The figure was maintaining a low height, flying just above the trees. Indeed, she vanished from his sight before he could signal her. Broll doubted that Shandris was going to land directly in Auberdine; like himself, she would find a place just beyond the town. They were both being overly cautious, but it was a trait that had served Broll well in the past and no doubt had done the same for the general… and it made more sense with the odd lack of light.

Broll quickly finished his transformation, then, clutching the figurine, rose up into the air. Like the hippogryph rider, he kept low over the trees. The druid traced the other’s path as best he could, but Shandris was nowhere to be seen. That likely meant that she had already landed.

Auberdine was now not that far off. The low-slung, wooden buildings rose like shrouded tombs. At the very least, there should have been bridges and paths illuminated by lamps, but all Broll could make out were the arched outlines of what might have been a pair of the structures.

What’s happened in Auberdine? None of the druids at the convocation had mentioned anything amiss and surely at least a few of them had passed through or over the region. If anything had taken place here, then it had done so in the last day or two.

The druid descended. Shifting back into his true form, he secreted the idol, then moved to the outskirts of town. A deathly silence was all that greeted Broll. Indeed, even the woods lacked the cries of nocturnal creatures, not even insects.

Broll touched an oak, hoping to learn something from it, but discovered something unsettling. The tree was asleep and not even the druid’s prodding could wake it up. He went to a second tree, this one an ash, and found it the same way.

More disturbed, Broll finally decided to enter the mist-shrouded town. Curiously, the mist thickened as he entered. Even the sharp vision of the druid could pierce the veil only a few feet at a time.

The druid sniffed the air. To his relief, there was no hint of rotting flesh. He had feared that some disaster — plague or attack — had taken the population, but, for the moment, that did not seem the case. The wetness of Auberdine’s air, due in great part to the nearby sea, should have been enough to cause swift decay of any dead body. Several hundred bodies would have made quite a stench.

The architecture of Auberdine bore the typical curves of night elven culture and in general these would have been some comfort to Broll, but in the mist, the arched buildings began to resemble macabre structures made not of wood, but rather bone. Broll even went so far as to touch one just to make certain that some dread metamorphosis had not actually taken place. Yet the wood was wood…

Something moved further in. The sound was a brief one and not repeated, but Broll had caught it. Reflexes trained by his calling and honed by his years of fighting immediately enabled the sturdy night elf to leap into hiding behind a building. He did not think that the other had heard him, which gave the druid the advantage.

A brief grunt escaped the mist. It was no sound uttered by a night elf nor any similar race. The sound had a bestial origin.

Something very large prowled Auberdine’s stone and earthen streets.

Reaching into a pouch, Broll brought out a powder that mildly stung his fingers. Ignoring the irritation, he leaned around the corner.

A huge shape converged on his location. Whatever the beast, it had finally smelled him.

Broll threw the powder directly at it.

The beast let out an angry squawk and leapt up. Broll ducked, hoping that the creature would not land atop him. However, not only did it not fall upon the night elf, but the beast did not even alight on the path behind him.

Instead, it continued skyward, leaping atop one of the nearby buildings. Once there, it perched and began sneezing and growling.

At the same time a silver light ate away the mist surrounding Broll. He whirled to his right.

The light emanated from above, and bathing in its glory was clearly a priestess of Elune. Broll started to tell her to douse the illumination, then saw exactly who it was who approached.

“My lady… Tyrande! What’re you doing here?”

“Meeting you, though not as I originally planned.” Her eyes darted from one shadowed corner to the next, as if she expected other, less desired, companions to join them.

The druid gaped. “You told me it was Shandris who was to meet me! I expected her to come—”

“So did she. This had to be my quest, though… and the more I see of this place, the more I know my decision was the right one. If I’d told you then that it would be me, you might have refused and I could not let that happen. My apologies for the subterfuge.”

“High Priestess, you shouldn’t be here! There’s something terribly wrong going on in Auberdine …”

She nodded gravely. “Come with me and you will see just how wrong it is.”

Above them, the beast — her hippogryph, as Broll had suspected even before he had accosted him — made a low, angry squawk.

Tyrande whispered something to her mount. The hippogryph reluctantly descended, landing near his rider. He kept one baleful eye on the druid.

“What did you do to Jai?” she quietly asked, one hand running over the creature’s beaked countenance.

“An herb with stinging properties …”

The high priestess briefly smiled. “You were fortunate. I daresay if you had tried that anywhere else, Jai would not have flown from but rather through you. He knew, though, that I wanted a prisoner if possible. A live one.”

As Tyrande continued to pass her hand over the beast’s face, Broll commented, “The effects of the herb will pass in a few more moments.”

“We do not even have time for that.” A faint glow from above emanated over the hippogryph’s eyes. Jai shook his head, then seemed much happier. Nodding her satisfaction, the high priestess looked again to the druid. Her expression remained dark. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”

With the hippogryph trailing her, Tyrande led Broll to the nearest of the dwellings. She then shocked the druid by entering the domicile without any hesitation, a sign that things were even worse than he had imagined. He was filled with a sense of dread over what they would find inside.

The interior had some of the trappings of a night elven home, but the plant life within looked sick, weak. The mist that covered Auberdine permeated even inside the dwelling, adding to the feeling of imminent disaster.

Jai, too large to fit through the entrance, peered uneasily inside.

Broll watched as Tyrande glanced into the sleeping quarters.

Withdrawing, she indicated that Broll should look as well.

With much wariness, the druid complied. His eyes widened at the scene within.

Two night elves — a male and a female — lay on woven mats. The female’s arm was draped over the male’s chest. They were utterly motionless, which told Broll the worst.

“It is the same in the other places I have looked,” his companion solemnly remarked.

The druid wanted to approach the pair but held back out of respect. “Do you know how they perished?”

“They are not dead.”

He looked back at her. When Tyrande added nothing more, the druid finally knelt by the two. His eyes widened.