Conquest of the Horde

Tenacity Reclaimed

Sagi laid his head against the soft Duskwood grass, taking in the night. To him anyone who's ever called the night quiet or spoken of some great peace to be found walking under the moon and stars either lived in a peaceful place or never personally experienced the night, only regurgitating the lines of boring writers and poets. The night was alive – Sagi heard the howls of Worgen on the wind, saw spiders swarming in the trees weaving their webs, and even felt a maggot that had strayed too far from the cemetery crawling over his fingertips. Brigands pillaged and murdered while the citizens of Darkshire muttered and screamed in their sleep. The roads shook beneath the boots of Night’s Watchmen and the clattering hooves of their horses, either running to the next crime or away from a previous one. From his spot in the grass Sagi could feel the entire forest’s collective quivering.

But Sagi also knew the night was home to good, not just evil. Life was created and lived as much in the night as it was through the day, just as evil and death could often be found under the sun. In every light there was darkness and in darkness, light. Sagi even found light in himself despite his past crimes. Existence was exactly as Andra described it to him years ago: even Naaru become void, but eventually void begets luminescence.

Unfortunately that didn't mean the world was simple gray neutrality. Cycles meant dominance. The sun and moon have separate thrones and dominions. When void controls the Naaru it destroys and consumes. There was always hierarchy, a ruler and the ruled. And though for the past two years Sagi’s conscience served in the court of a good king, he sensed change. He heard whispers in the back of his mind, each a revolutionary with plans for conquest.

It all started with Deathwing. The black dragon’s arrival overturned the world. Azeroth was still trying to recover from the Third War – to so quickly throw battered soldiers back into battle against a new monster was more than disheartening, it was crushing. Fear and distress turned to despair, the perfect conditions for the Twilights to create a new generation of madmen and cultists. Whether traveling or staying still Sagi found himself in more danger than ever before. And due to the nature of his research settling down in some town wasn’t an option unless he wanted guards breaking down his door and throwing him in prison due to his questionable interests.

To make matters worse he never managed to recover Power. Sagi still held true to the Three Virtues but death robbed him of Power and left him afraid to fight. Without strength it was hard to survive in this new Azeroth, reforged in dragon fire. It was no surprise that the whispering had returned and sick new thoughts and plots pilfered away at his attention. Quieting the voices took more effort with every passing day, new despairs chipping away at his ability to resist them. Because the truth was that cruelty and wickedness were a part of his nature. And he knew how to grow stronger by giving into them. At the moment he could perhaps be called a good man, but weaklings with noble convictions always died. Saints and martyrs were only strong because we rewrote history to make them so and Sagi had no intention of dying ever again.

His mind was made up – if there was going to be war this time it would be fought on his terms.

Sagi let out a sigh. The night winds had finally calmed, leaving dark clouds to rest above him. Sagi never believed Azeroth was particularly special, just one of countless piles of dirt in the universe. But if the Tauren were right and Azeroth was sentient he thought it fitting that she found his plight humorous. At least to someone he was still just entertainment.

Hatter

It was late in the afternoon when Sagi finally opened his eyes. The sun was still above the trees but slowly making its way towards the horizon. Its rays made the usual Duskwood fog into a shimmering cloud, each miniscule particle of water a sparkle. Sagi watched them dance and knew that he was going to miss this forest. It was the only place left where he felt at home.

He spent a few moments getting the grass out of his hair before grabbing his things. At one point of his life Sagi prayed each morning when he woke. He gave thanks to Elune at sunrise for his life and happiness and asked for the continued prosperity of the Kaldorei. And even after he finally left the elven forests to see the world he still prayed for many years, though the nature of his devotion changed. Hopeful mornings became mournful pleas for peace of mind and understanding. He questioned Elune’s sense. Why allow so much suffering when her very presence stayed the sword and staved off the violent heart. Eventually Sagi saw Elune’s madness in his own reflection, and it took a long time for him to realize that Elune was his scapegoat – that he had neatly packaged all his turmoil and forced the goddess to bear those burdens alone to free himself from despair.

Now the only thing he did each morning was check the time. He always carried a gold pocket watch, one given to him by a clock maker he no longer remembered. It was a curious thing, a total of twenty-six hour ticks rather than the normal twenty-four. He flipped it open to see the hour hand on the seven while the second hand spun erratically as usual. He still didn’t understand how the watch’s enchantment worked, only knowing the twenty-sixth hour’s morbid significance: it was the hour of death. The greater his proximity to death the closer hour hand was to that fatal number.

The watch had correctly predicted the moment of his death once before and while he couldn’t be sure if it still worked properly – since then it had gathered quite a bit of wear, scratches, loose screws, and even he even once dropped it in a river – seeing it often comforted him. Or gave him reason to run as fast as possible.

Sagi turned his attention back to the fog. The gleam he was admiring just before turned into something unnatural. Bright blue sparks flung this way and that, each followed by cracking and popping, like fireworks. But the acrid scent of sulfur was absent from this show. Instead the air was dense with arcane. Then a portal appeared at the source of the popping. It spat out a chubby green goblin holding a black suitcase before the portal, sparks and all, dissipated into the fog.

“You really need to learn how to stick the landing, Jervis. Else you ruin the theatricality of your entrance.”

Jervis stood up, spitting grass and dirt out of his mouth. His usual spikey mohawk was a bit floppy today, most of it resting on the right side of his scalp.

“Sod off, Sagi. You know I hate making house calls, to you especially. Normally people at least have houses but not you Kaldorei. The best your kind ever do is mud and twigs.”

“Sorry, didn’t know you’d get so upset,” Sagi said, though he couldn’t hide his smirk as Jervis walked up to him.

“Yeah, right. Stop looking so smug. You know what, this is your last favor from me. I’m tired of putting up with your crap. When you were a big shot it was okay but now you’re just a bootlicker like the rest of us.” Jervis carried on, tossing insults as Sagi while he opened up his suitcase. Inside it was a plain black hat, a simple thing to most but for these two men it was quite the precious piece of headwear.

Sagi picked his hat up, putting it on with a satisfying grin. The hat looked crisper then the last time Sagi had seen it. Not a tear or even a loose thread to be found. “As always your repair jobs are worth the wait. It’s like new again.”

“Well maybe if someone didn’t keep getting his butt handed to him all across the Eastern Kingdoms I wouldn’t have to spend so much time fixing it.”

“I’ll try and keep that in mind.”

Jervis closed his suitcase and picked it back up. “Look, I don’t care where you follow that wanderlust of yours. Just don’t forget our deal. When you die the hat gets sent to me. I have a display prepared for her and everything.”

“If I die, yes– wait did you just give the hat a gender?”

“All fine hats are women. Why the hell would I want some dirty man hat in my shop?”

“Forget I asked. Can you help with the other thing I asked about?”

Jervis paused. He seemed heavier for a moment, his own heftiness dragged down by the moment’s gravity. “You were actually serious about going to Hyjal? Sagi, you aren’t the man you used to be and that war is no joke. There’s a damned good chance you’ll die.”

“I’ve made up my mind.” Jervis and Sagi were never particularly close, more so friends out of necessity and an appreciation for the finer hats in life. So to see the distraught on Jervis’ face at his answer was actually touching. Unfortunately, as most people learned at one point or another, Jervis never placed much value in other living people.

“I’ll never see that hat again, will I?”

“Darn it Jervis, are you helping me or not?”

“Fine, go die. Just don’t haunt me when you have regrets.” Jervis’s hands glowed with blue, crackling energy. Again as the popping intensified a portal appeared before the two of them. It was a strange disturbance in the air, a blurry interruption in Sagi’s line of sight.

“You’re certain this will get me to Hyjal safely?”

“Well, any portal comes with some risk. Hell, you could end up in the Twisting Nether. But I’m somewhere over fifty percent sure that won’t happen.”

“Comforting odds.”

“Stop being a whiner. You’ll be fine. Now go do what you have to and get back here safely.”

The two men locked eyes for a moment before Sagi nodded. There was nothing left to discuss. With one hand clenching the strap of his bag tightly and the other pressing firmly down on his hat he walked into the portal and vanished.

Silver Hands

A bring silver light engulfed Sagi’s body. At first he could only see silver in every direction, as if the entire world had gone bright with rays of moonlight. Then, slowly the light evanesced. Things came back one at a time – his torso, then hands, feet, and all the rest. Grass sprouted into the world tall and grown while the wall of a great tower appeared in the distance. Finally, two figures took shape by his side. One was a human with hands of solid gold and the other Kaldorei with hands of the same silver from his sleep.

Sagi jolted up from his spot underneath a tree, his head throbbing. He took in a breath and exhaled slowly. It was another dream about the day he came back. Years ago Sagi only found death in sleep. He was plagued by nightmares where arrows would come forth from the darkness as if summoned just for him. They would chase him down, curving around corners while whizzing through the air. They never aimed to kill, just nicked away at his flesh, leaving everything from grazes to deep wounds. He was a plaything for these somehow sentient razor-sharp shafts, and the game was to see how many holes they could leave him with before morning.

When those nightmares finally faded Sagi’s mind turned to his resurrection in his final moments of dreaming. But it wasn’t coming back that he was obsessed with, it was Cela’s silver light. The light of a true Kaldorei priest.

Sagi held out his hand. A soft golden hue surrounded it but his only response to its radiance was frustration. He tore away some of the grass from the ground and tossed it in the air, murmuring a few curses he picked up from spending too much time with Jervis. He was still not a proper priest of Elune. Not that it surprised him – repentance was a path that so far yielded no reward. Easier were the days when he fought for himself rather than forgiveness.

Hyjal might as well have been another world compared to Duskwood, but Sagi did not think that a compliment. Duskwood may have been a festering wound filled with sinister folk chasing villainous plots, but at least the truth was out in the open. Hyjal on the other hand was beautiful. The world tree was so great that even from his camp in the mountains Sagi could barely see its branches, never mind its top. And many of the Kaldorei shrines were still intact, even if there were skirmishes here and there between Twilights.

Everything was so scenic that he hardly believed this place to be a battleground. But then he would smell the sulfur on the wind and remember the fire-filled hellhole down the other side of the peak. The land’s dishonesty was off-putting. Though it was also familiar. Sagi once dreamt of a place surrounded my mountains quite often, an inner world where elementals raged and madness sat atop the throne, crowned king. Those where dreams he had succeeded in distancing himself from for a long time. And now, sitting beneath a tree while they flooded back, he couldn’t help but feel worried. It was proof of his changing inner cycle.

Mastering his light was the answer. With a mind finally at peace with Elune he just might be able to win his forgiveness.

Judgment, Temperance, and The Tower

Sagi sat in one of the many kaldorei taverns in Nordrassil. He found everything about Nordrassil strange. No matter where he stood, if he looked up he could see the World Tree's massive trunk piercing into the clouds. The branches were somewhere beyond the visible sky itself; that's how great Nordrassil was, yet in its current state it was only a hollow reminder of the tree his people looked to and called crown of the heavens thousands of years ago.

It was also a reminder of just how much the kaldorei had lost. Once they stood well above Azeroth as its greatest mages and minds; once the kaldorei were a race of immortal elves but the people Sagi saw now had long since fallen from grace. From a mighty empire of warriors to a bunch of huntresses struggling to defend the little patches of forest that the orcs hadn't taken already. Worst of all, his kin clamored this way and that, obsessed with protecting the symbol of a broken Azerothian power. They seemed to believe that when Nordrassil finally healed immortality would once again belong to the elves.

Sagi frowned. He picked up his cup of moonberry juice and took a sip. He knew he didn't have any right to judge them – after all he was currently on his own path to redemption. However, he chose to abandon one path for a bright new future; the kaldorei were trapped within tradition, forever seeking after a remedy that died many millennia ago. All of it just made him want to burn the tree down himself.

A few minutes later another Kaldorei joined Sagi's table. She was a fortune-teller, dressed up in gold and red with a cowl that came down over her face and kissed the edge of her upper lip. Sagi watched her shuffle a deck of cards and noticed her thin hands.

The fortune-teller placed the deck in front of him. "Split the deck."

Sagi put down his cup and did as he was told.

She pulled three cards from the deck and placed them before him. The depictions on each were strange. The first was of a man atop the clouds blowing into a golden horn that reached down to a grave of the risen dead. The second of a woman with wings of feathers pouring water from one chalice to another. The last was of a great burning tower, struck by lightening.

Sagi's mind wandered back to the tower where Cela and Anna resurrected him. When the other Heretics came to liberate him they destroyed that tower. His last memory of it was similar; flames closing in as the roof started to collapse. The blades of grass beneath his feet trembled as if they too were fearful and wanted to flee.

"Judgment," the teller said, "means, simply, that you were once judged and you eventually went through that and experienced a rebirth.

"Temperance means that, after this rebirth, you now seek balance. A purpose, perhaps. Something to keep you moving after your rebirth. A new meaning.

"However, tower is… foreboding, depending on how you take it. It refers to a great change, completely undesired. Either that, or more ominously, a disaster to come in your future. Perhaps of a result of your rebirth, or of your new meaning."

"The disquieted spirit trembles between hope and fear."
- Gregory the Great

Perpetual Disquiet

It would take months of fighting against the Twilights. Time and time again Sagi would learn that there could be something greater to life than risking his own neck for power; risking himself to preserve the lives of others. That's what being a healer was all about, giving a piece of oneself to another for their betterment. And with each life Sagi managed to save he felt a new warmth. There was some truth to the philosophy of Holy Light's teachings about kindness and good. The good he put into the world found its way back to him, reflected in every smile, tear, and utterance of affection.

Then, finally, Sagi claimed his silver light. An orc cultist went for the killing blow against one of his comrades and Sagi launching a bolt of energy through the air. It glowed like a little piece of the moon itself brought down to earth before shattering his opponent, smiting the orc with brilliant rays of silver. From that moment own Sagi knew that he finally believed in the truth of Elune, that he no longer had so stand behind her, cut off from the other Kaldorei priests. He felt he finally won and the dark whispers in his mind were again banished to its farthest reaches.

But ego is never so easily dismissed. Both a killer and a healer can be afflicted by ego in equivalent ways. Their powers allow them to hold the life and death of another person in their hands. For the killer it is the craft of execution that fuels his arrogance; for the healer that fuel comes from saving lives. Sagi found a new pride in his ability to rescue life from death. The silver rays of light that came from his hands blinded him to the pomp with which he now carried himself and all his newfound compassion faded behind the new version of a similar narrative. Tenacity had led him to Power in the form of silver light, and that new strength gave him a new vision for the mastery of Death.

Sagi tricked himself into thinking he finally became good, truly good. That dominance had been established in his mind by the Light, not the Shadow. But as he was to learn, darkness only craves power.

He stared at himself in the mirror one day. His hair was cut short, his black pants and vest replaced with a proper priest's robe of white with silver embroidery. He already had packed up his old staff, its wicked spikes now contained in a long steel box laying against one of his room's corners. And his hat was sitting next to a hatbox, ready to be packed away. It was time to cut his ties to the old Sagi forever.

Sagi reached down and picked his hat up. He put it into the box and closed the lid.

"There," he said. "I'll send you back to Jervis and finally leave it all behind."

"Do you think it's that simple," rang out a voice in his head.

Sagi looked around the room, though he already knew it was empty. Years had past, he could never forget the voice that he suffered constantly once. The sound of his inner darkness, calling out to him as if he were a child, belittling his every attempt to grow stronger. Sagi turned back to the mirror and saw his face within it smile. Then he heard the voice again.

"Been something like four years since you heard me so clearly, hasn't it? And what, you think mailing away your hat and staff seals the tomb on your old life, now?"

"I think you're just using what strength you have to say a final few words before I shut you out forever. You haven't spoken for so long, but you pick now, of course, when I've finally won to give me crap one last time."

Sagi watched himself laugh in the mirror, though no sound came from the glass. The cacophony of cackling remained confined to his head.

"You're right. I'm here to say goodbye. You won and I couldn't be prouder. Mastering light to increase your power? Using compassion to enthrall your former foes and potential enemies? You've done well for yourself."

"I'm not going to be brought down by silly mind games over my motives. I don't care if you say I'm only in it for the power, it's irrelevant. This new path has led me to doing good for others."

"My dear Sagi, it's not about good and evil. Its about means and ends. Our rulebook says the ends always justify the means and for you and I the end is power. It never mattered how you climbed, only that you were willing to get to the top and do everything to never fall. And now, finally, I see a Sagi who can reach the summit. Your control over light is matched by an equal power over darkness. Combined with your desire for power? You're ready to finally reach for Death.

"I came now to spare you from repeating your mistakes. Last time you grew to arrogant and forgot Respect. There is no salvation for those who haughtily charge forward, nor is there reward for those who let their fear cripple their tenacity. You must maintained equal measures of both, walk the line between hope and fear. That means don't toss away your old power because you think its beneath you."

Sagi looked back to his hat, and then to his staff lying in the corner.

"Be forever vigilant. Guard your position. Watch your enemies behind a wall of false compassion while you grow in strength. Never let on that there have been tricks and deceptions. Then one day the time will come and you will drag them all into the abyss. The key is patience. I will return before that day comes."

After Sagi finished serving in Hyjal he moved to Ashenvale officially, though he spent most of his time fighting in Kaldorei lands and ministering in the broken lands of Duskwood and Westfall. Amongst the Kaldorei he focused on increasing his reputation, and slowing inching forward his status as a healer. When amongst the citizens of Duskwood and Westfall Sagi felt closest to man in his darkest state. Poverty, a loss of dignity, famine, and every other evil imaginable afflicted their souls. In part he studied darkness when with Humans, as well as the conditions that created desperation. It would always remind him how far the fall would be should he make a mistake.

But mainly Sagi went to see the looks of hunger on their faces. They had a willingness to do anything to make it. While the conditions of poverty were too burdensome for most, Sagi saw the best of them as powerless bodies infused with unbelievable tenacity and beaten by the full force of respect. Just a taste of power was often enough to make one of these individuals achieve heights that the average man never could, and even the wealthy man, surrounded by the trappings of power, rarely did so much. He needed to live life with the same tenacity always.