Her home was burning. No, not her home. Her home was in Suramar where she had spent the past 10,000 years in a time anomaly. But she saw things, experienced possibilities and alternate paths. She remembered giving up magic after the Sundering and then learning it again in the bough of Teldrassil when the Cataclysm came. Fighting against the Twilight’s Hammer. Meeting the woman who would be her wife.
More cries for help snapped Darque out of the strange dream-like memories. They weren’t real, but this was. Teldrassil was burning and the night elves, her people, were in danger. She ran in the direction of the screams, blinking the last several yards into the midst of a family trapped by the flames. She tried summoning a portal but the heat and smoke around her broke her concentration.
Another memory. Fighting Mogu on Pandaria. A water elemental fought by her side. She had abandoned her arcane talents for–
Snapping out of the memory she stretched out her hand again, this time not to summon a portal but to call upon a burst of frost magic to extinguish the flames in a path to the Temple of the Moon. An icy wind blew from her outstretched palm, killing the flames and briefly leaving a layer of frost on the bridge before the heat of the surrounding area melted it.
“Go,” Darque told the family, “there’s a portal to Stormwind in the temple!”
They were running for safety almost before she finished speaking. They weren’t the only ones left. She had to find more. There could still be hundreds in the city. She ran past a familiar mailbox, one she used often in the other life. Her home was near here. She could see it one more time before…
Sentinels with water buckets were attempting to get to a crowd of people in a building. Again she summoned the ice to push back the flames and the civilians ran out to the Sentinels. The mage had enough time and clear space to summon a portal.
“We were trying to clear the market but the flames cut us off,” one of the sentinels coughed as she ushered the civilians through the portal.
Darque could see now, a wall of fire blocked the view of everything beyond. Whether it still stood or if it was already gone, she couldn’t tell. The thick smoke made it impossible to see. She tried to extinguish the flames but they were too intense.
“Come on, the whole place is coming down!” she heard the sentinel yell but she assumed she was still talking to the civilians.
The ice wasn’t dulling the flames fast enough, she couldn’t break through the barrier of fire. She tried to push through anyway. She could swear she saw someone on the other side. She had to squint, the heat was too much for her eyes but she pressed forward. Flames began to lick at her robe. The figure on the other side of the flames was becoming clearer now. Elven, shimmering white hair, a white dress. She was kneeling down holding a fallen night elf in her arms. The woman didn’t seem bothered by the flames, or even react to them at all.
The crackling sounds of the burning city seemed to fade away and only one sound came to Darque – the elven woman was singing. The words were lost on Darque but she knew they were ancient, and they filled her with a sense of peace.
Darque was suddenly pulled backward by the sentinel who had her arms wrapped around her waist. She looked one last time before she was pulled through the portal but the elven woman was gone.
Darque thought she might cause a whirlwind with how quickly she was breathing in the fresh air on the other side of the portal. She was in Stormwind, near the docks. All around her were the refugees she and others had saved and at her side was the Darnassus sentinel who had saved her at the last moment.
“How many made it out?” Darque asked her.
The sentinel coughed and sucked in another lung full of sea air before replying, “Not enough.”
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