The dragon’s foul laugh drowned out all other sounds. He swept toward Broll. “Your little flames won’t hurt me!”

The leviathan opened wide and exhaled. A great cloud of utter darkness shot forth.

It enveloped the druid. Broll could neither see nor sense anything. Growling, he slashed and bit, but found no substance.

Father! Father!

The massive bear snarled in distrust and anxiety. Broll knew his daughter’s voice.

No, Father, no!

He knew that this was not real, that this was a nightmare of the dragon’s doing…but the cry felt so real.

Just for a moment, Broll caught sight of a female night elf. That strengthened his yearning for Anessa. The druid reverted to his true form —

The shadows pressed him…but out of them also came the figure he had glimpsed. She gripped him tight and pulled him with her.

“Broll! Wake up!”

He blinked, not certain when his eyes had closed. “A-Anessa?”

“No! Tyrande!”

“Tyrande…” The druid’s senses returned. He stood next to the high priestess, who had one hand wrapped around his waist while with the other hand she manipulated the huge, gleaming glaive.

Elune’s light still embraced the weapon, giving it power against the shadow satyrs.

“He comes again!” she warned.

Broll did not have to ask who, for the monstrous dragon already loomed over them. Of Gnarl there was no sight, and the druid also wondered what had happened to Eranikus. Had he led them to this point so that this other dragon could deal with them? No…that makes no sense! If he had, he’d be here, too, making certain of our deaths!

But what mattered most at the moment was surviving. The dragon dove down. His mouth opened wide and Broll feared another exhalation of dark nightmares.

Then, with a guttural roar, Gnarl reentered the scene. Bits of his bark skin hung from the ancient’s body and the sap dripped everywhere, yet Gnarl showed no slowing as he seized the reptilian monster.

“They will not be yours, Lethon!” he grated.

“You will all be ours…” the corrupted dragon mocked. “Azeroth and the Dream have been inexorably intertwined since the world’s creation… and thus you are linked to the Dream and what it is… You cannot hide from that within all of you…”

Lethon… Broll knew that name. “He was slain!” the druid told Tyrande as they battled to escape the energies of the twisted portal. “Lethon should be dead!”

“Then how does he exist here?”

The druid suddenly understood. It explained why the energies had reached out to the pair. “Only his dreamform still thrives! He’s a green dragon, one of those most bound to the Dream! Whatever corrupted him must’ve been able to keep that part of him ‘alive,’ but only so long as he stays from the mortal plane.”

“What happens if he does not?”

“We should try to find out,” Broll muttered. “Eranikus be cursed! If he knew about this… if this is why he left us to face the Nightmare alone…”

There was no time to say more, for the dark green shapes were converging on them again and, worse, Gnarl was finally losing ground to Lethon. Although the guardian was gigantic himself and embodied the power and sturdiness of the huge tree he resembled, Lethon was too strong. The dragon battled the wounded ancient down, then raised a paw that ended in massive claws.

The night elves had no hope of aiding him. Indeed, they were not only driven back by the ancient, but were then separated from one another by the fiendish silhouettes.

“Away from me!” Tyrande roared, trying to fight her way back.

With the whirling glaive and the light of Elune, she cut a swath through the infernal ranks. The shadow satyrs before her melted away as if dew touched by the morning sun.

Broll returned to his bear form, using the magical purple fire to enhance his powerful blows. Yet the nightmares seemed without end.

Lethon, meanwhile, had returned his attention to Gnarl. The ancient had managed to rise up on one knee but could still not fend off his gargantuan adversary.

“I have you now!” Lethon cried with a savage grin revealing many, many teeth.

“I have lived long…I do not fear death…”

This caused the corrupted dragon to laugh more harshly. “Dead, you serve us no purpose…”

With one mighty paw, he swatted Gnarl toward the deep mist.

The ancient managed to bring himself to a halt at the very edge.

Clearly staggered, he nevertheless defiantly rose to resume battle.

From out of the mist came a dark, grasping hand. It was small, but it seized Gnarl’s leg with a ferocity that caused the ancient to look down. As he did, a second, identical hand seized one arm.

Other hands shot from the mist. They clustered together, as if all part of the same host. Gnarl growled and tried to pull away, but too many now had hold of him.

Broll roared a warning to Tyrande. The two night elves tried to fight their way to their rescuer.

Despite his titanic struggles, the ancient could not free himself of even one grip. More and more hands seized him. They grasped him as something starving might a morsel. Slowly they began to drag Gnarl back to the mist.

Lethon came between the giant and the druid. He swirled before Broll, the dragon’s chuckle sending involuntary chills down the great bear’s spine. Broll roared at the dragon as he tried to find some way past. Farther back, Tyrande struggled as the shadows renewed their attack on her position.

“You waste your breath…no one can escape…no one can flee

…you will belong to us…”

Gnarl was half into the mist. Even still, more and more hands clutched at his arms, grappled with his legs, and clawed at his torso. Others pulled back the brave guardian’s head and even sought to smother his voice.

But Gnarl managed one shout. “Escape through the portal!

Escape through the—”

The hands — shaped like those of night elves, humans, orcs, tauren, and other creatures of Azeroth — now all but covered the ancient. There were so many that Gnarl himself could barely move.

One foot was dragged into the mist. A shoulder joined it, then the entire arm. Gnarl’s head vanished into the impenetrable fog.

The ancient shuddered. He seemed to go limp.

The hands pulled the rest of him within.

Tyrande had been seeking a path on the other side of Lethon, but not until Gnarl had vanished did it suddenly open. So desperate to reach their ally, the high priestess took a few steps forward before realizing that not only was it too late for Gnarl, but that Lethon had let her commit herself in order to make her the next victim.

The first hands reached out, as hungry as ever. Forced to save herself from Gnarl’s fate, the high priestess turned from Lethon to battle the hands with both Elune’s light and the glaive.

A titanic bellow shook the three combatants. A glistening form appeared among them. Eranikus.

The emerald dragon’s closed eyes fixed on Lethon.

The corrupted leviathan suddenly roared. He twisted and cried out, “The trees…they close in on me!”

As he said this, Broll and the others saw what appeared to be soft, misty trees truly gathering around the corrupted dragon. To the druid, they seemed harmless, healing…but to Lethon it appeared as if their mere touch was poison.

But then Lethon shook his head. The trees of mist dissipated.

Lethon’s expression toward Eranikus was murderous. “I am beyond such petty dream attacks! Indeed, you dream too much, dear Eranikus…you dream too much and understand too little of what I have become through the growing power of the Nightmare…” The seared areas healed. Lethon leaned forward and though he did not stand as great as Eranikus, he was fearsome. “But you will understand again, when you are one of us once more…”

Lethon’s eyes widened…and as they did, they changed, revealing that what the party had seen earlier had been illusion.