Main thread: Classic - BFA Era Stories: Oh, the places they'll go
Wasn’t able to post the last “lost” sequel as a reply so…here it is:
Paths Forsaken
And so now, here I stare, with a heavy—yet eternally uplifted—heart, upon the not yet cooled ashes of Teldrassil. In that moment—the only moment—on bloodsoaked beach, my heart broke for my Queen. Not because I failed to appreciate the horror of what she had done, for the screams of each and every Kaldorei child burned alive within the boughs of the World Tree would forever join the cacophony of spirits that haunt me, but rather it broke for her precisely because I could appreciate the horror of what she had done so fully that I knew no other heart would ever again have room for her in it.
I wanted nothing more than to embrace her in this moment, to tell her that here, even here—even after what she had done and what she would no doubt do next— she is loved by the True Light that dwells within the Heart of Darkness—that no matter how far down she goes into that pit of death and despair, even to the point of killing the Light of Life, hope and love Itself—as she had just done—that It would still embrace her fully, unconditionally and eternally.
Yet, I knew that until she saw this with her own eyes—that until she had fully appreciated what it truly means to kill hope, just as I had on that most appropriately named battleground in the Eastern Plaguelands nearly eleven years ago—that she would be unable to accept my words or my compassion and would instead take them both as a challenge to claw her way even deeper into the bottomless abyss of Shadow.
And so I stood by her and prayed that the Dark Light of Love, born of the very violence I had just witnessed, would find its way into the void of her undead heart, just as it had my own, and I will continue to stand by her, without approving of nor enabling her wicked actions, doing all that I am able, in my humble limitations, to protect those that I can from her violence, just as I and the honorable Lord Saurfang tried, though ultimately failed to do here, while also showing my Queen that at the very moment that hope fails, that life dies and that light is extinguished—in the moment of the consummate fulfillment of her ravenous privations—is also the moment that the Dark Light of Love triumphs completely, unconditionally and eternally over the Shadow of hate, death and despair.
My heart broke for my Queen in that moment, but it will not rest until the icy void of her heart is set aflame by the Heart of Love in an inferno far exceeding the ferocity of the one caused by her hatred. For unlike the frozen heart of darkness —which, despite its emptiness, has room for none—the Passionate Heart of Light, like mine that was reborn of it, will always have room for all—even her, even now, even here, on the beaches of Darkshore.