World of Warcraft

A slight movement in the opposite direction caught Eadrik's attention. The doe, acting only on her instincts and unable to meld those with common sense, had chosen an inopportune time to begin running again. The worgen lunged after her. Varian waited for a moment, then stepped from the tree. If Eadrik was here, the lord of Stormwind considered, then his master could not be far. The bow once again ready, Varian moved in the direction from which Eadrik had come. The worgen hunted as a pack to a point. Being also men, those like Genn would seek their individual kills. Varian retraced Eadrik’s path, moving through the brush as readily as the worgen. His eyes constantly surveyed the vicinity and his ears and nose sought signs of his prey. And at last he saw a worgen who could only be the Gilnean king. Genn flung himself after a massive boar with tusks so sharp and strong that, if the animal turned to face the worgen, Genn would truly risk death. At the moment, though, the boar thought only of flight. Genn, however, was fast gaining. He ran sometimes on only his legs, but other times used his hands, too. With a litheness that Varian had not even seen from the much younger Eadrik, the veteran ruler closed on the boar. Having measured the situation, Varian entered the fray. Although without the "benefit" of the curse, he moved with all the skill and pace of one who had survived more critical struggles than surely all the worgen combined. Yet, it was more than merely the reflexes of a former gladiator that served Varian now. Another force guided him, drove him in among the worgen as if he were one of their own and not simply a man. Others in the past had called him Lo'Gosh . . . and, at that moment, that name was more true of him than the one with which he had been born. *** In the wake of the Cataclysm, conflict has engulfed every corner of Azeroth. Hungering for more resources amid the turmoil, the Horde has pressed into Ashenvale to feed its burgeoning war machine. There, acting warchief Garrosh Hellscream has employed a brutal new tactic to conquer the region and crush its night elf defenders, a move that will cripple the Alliance’s power throughout the . . . *** Unaware of the disaster brewing in Ashenvale, the night elves’ legendary leaders, High Priestess Tyrande Whisperwind and Archdruid Malfurion Stormrage, conduct a summit near Darnassus in order to vote the proud worgen of Gilneas into the Alliance. However, resentment of Gilneas and its ruler, Genn Greymane, runs deep in Stormwind’s King Varian Wrynn. His refusal to forgive Genn for closing his nation off from the rest of the world years ago endangers more than just the summit: it threatens to unravel the Alliance itself. Varian’s animosity is only one of many unsettling developments in Darnassus. An uneasiness creeps over the once-immortal night elves as the first of them fall victim to the infirmities of age. While they cope with their mortality, tensions flare over the reintroduction of the Highborne, formerly the highest caste of night elf nobility, into their society. Many night elves are unable to pardon the Highborne for the destruction unleashed on Azeroth millennia ago by their reckless use of magic. When a murdered Highborne is discovered on the outskirts of Darnassus, Malfurion and Tyrande move to stop further bloodshed and unrest by appointing one of the night elves’ most cunning and skilled agents to find the killer: the renowned warden Maiev Shadowsong. Yet with all that is transpiring in Darnassus, the Alliance might be powerless to stop the relentless new warchief Garrosh from seizing the whole of Ashenvale.