"Throw that thing away, now!" Aaron shouted at Stephen, bracing himself against a tree trunk.
"Why should I throw it away? I heard her talking to me..." Stephen's expression grew terribly stiff, his words slurring as he approached Aaron with utterly uncoordinated movements. He continued, "She promised me endless power, greater than the Holy Light..."
Before Stephen could finish, his eyes suddenly rolled back and he collapsed, flinging the dagger aside. A figure behind him reached out to catch him and helped him over. It was Nathanos.
Aaron looked down and saw that Stephen's toss had landed Xal'atath right at his feet. The dagger had now withdrawn the faint black glow covering its surface and looked perfectly ordinary and harmless.
"Isn't this just tempting me to pick it up?" Aaron crouched down and stared at the dagger, muttering to himself. "But I'm not going to just pick it up like that."
As he spoke, Aaron cast a Divine Shield on himself and reached out to grasp the dagger. The instant it touched his hand, a woman's whisper sounded in his mind. "I know your secret. I know everything about you."
"Fuck!" Aaron immediately knew what was talking to him: Xal'atath, the self-proclaimed fifth Old God, one of the three chatterbox artifacts, whom players called Miss Xal'atath, only for her to sell them out later.
This chatterbox dagger had caused untold disasters throughout Azeroth's history. Its most recent bout of troublemaking should have been the dwarves' War of the Three Hammers, which had turned Grim Batol into a cursed dead city and forced the Wildhammer Dwarves to abandon their capital and flee to Aerie Peak.
Aaron's first reaction to Xal'atath's whisper was to throw the thing away. Yet when he released his grip, he discovered that the dagger was stuck to his hand. He could not shake it off at all.
"Wait, that's not right..." Aaron had just thought the dagger had latched onto him when he realized that his own hand was actually holding it fast. Holy Light flowed continuously from the right half of his body into the dagger like water. Looking down, Aaron found that the entire right side of his body was almost turning into light.
"I... what... what the hell is this?" Aaron cursed inwardly. Sure enough, the being who had given him a body full of Holy Light was not very reliable. The Holy Light inside him had already gone out of control. Not only could Aaron no longer control it, he had even lost control of his own body. He could not so much as call out to warn the others.
"Did you think this would be enough to deal with me?" Xal'atath's voice sounded in Aaron's mind again. Her nonchalant tone showed that she was indeed handling this with ease, but Aaron was having no such easy time. The Holy Light surging through him made the right half of his body feel as though it were boiling, yet he could not control his body at all. He could only let that being behind the scenes use his body as a bridge in its ongoing struggle with Xal'atath.
That remark seemed to have provoked the being controlling Aaron's body. It made his other hand grasp the dagger's hilt as well, and an even fiercer torrent of Holy Light flowed from the book in Aaron's mind into the dagger. For a moment, Aaron's entire body seemed to have been made translucent, gleaming gold like glass.
Even under this enormous infusion of Holy Light, Xal'atath remained defiant. "Is that all you've got? It's nothing but..."
Before Xal'atath could finish, Aaron felt the flow of Holy Light inside him increase considerably again. But he had no time to think about any of that. A sudden pain struck the back of his head, and he lost consciousness.
In his unconscious state, Aaron seemed to fall into a maddened, disordered dream. He seemed to pass through several different times and spaces, or perhaps experience countless nightmares.
One moment, Aaron was fighting a tsunami-like tide of Undead in humanity's last bastion until a skeletal dragon's breath froze him solid. The next, he found himself walking through a palace built of flesh, surrounded by the corpses of all kinds of creatures from Azeroth. Countless insect people and tentacled monsters roamed among the bones, and Aaron himself had become one of the tentacled monsters.
Just as Aaron was about to end his own life, he abruptly appeared in a coastal fortress city. An airship bearing the Horde's emblem had already flown away overhead. Then a dazzling flash erupted not far from him. Aaron felt as though flames had seared him from the inside out, before a violent blast hurled him into the air and slammed him back to the ground. His entire body broke into pieces like a rag doll.
"Hah-what is it this time?" Aaron exhaled sharply and opened his eyes to look around. Bustling crowds surrounded him. The buildings looked much like those he had seen in Lordaeron, yet there were differences. Only when he saw the familiar lion banner did he realize where he was. But before he could do anything else, the ground beneath him began to shake violently. Accompanied by a dragon's roar from somewhere, several nearby buildings collapsed, burying Aaron beneath the rubble.
"Aaron, wake up! Hurry, wake up! We have to move." Aaron opened his eyes again and saw a familiar face. "Vereesa?"
Before Aaron could react, Vereesa dragged him toward a magnificent, glittering city, speaking as she ran. "Arthas is here. My sister has already fallen, and Silvermoon City has been lost too. His Majesty is organizing a retreat. Let's hope the strait can stop that monster."
"What?" Aaron looked back and saw countless High Elves fleeing in panic toward Silvermoon City with their families in tow. Before he could say anything, pain shot through his back. Turning his head, he saw an elven ranger with ashen skin and stiff movements nocking another arrow. Aaron only had time for that single glance before collapsing unconscious again.
"Will this ever end?!" After experiencing several apocalyptic scenes, each ending in a gruesome death or a fate worse than death, Aaron was on the verge of a mental breakdown. He could no longer react to the changes in his surroundings and simply kept complaining, "What the hell am I supposed to do?"
What Aaron, now close to breaking down, did not know was that the dagger clenched in his hands was also cursing incessantly. "What kind of monster is this? His mind is almost broken, so why won't this damned Holy Light stop?! Damn it, can't I just admit defeat?"
Another cold snort sounded in Aaron's mind. The thick book flashed with golden light, then fell silent. A black shadow darted from the dagger clenched in Aaron's hands, traveled up his arm, and entered his mind, where the great book promptly swallowed it. It only had time to let out a wretched scream before falling silent as well.
After Xal'atath was subdued by a certain unnamed, powerful being, Aaron, who had been trapped in an unending series of maddened dreams, found that the scenes before him had finally stopped changing.
Aaron now stood outside a tall, domed building, surrounded by a vast expanse of coastal waters. In the clearing before him, an enormous dragon struggled and wailed incessantly. The culprit behind the dragon's agony was a pitch-black monster with goatlike hooves for legs and two long, sharp black horns on its head.
As the change in Ysera's coloring from green to black and red came to a halt before his eyes, the monster named Xavius looked bewildered, then began wrecking the surrounding trees as though venting his frustration. Aaron felt inexplicably relieved. He was just about to get away from the frenzied monster when he discovered that the scene before him had suddenly frozen.
An unfamiliar, gentle voice rang out. "Wake up now."
Before Aaron could ask what that voice meant, he found that he had already left the dream. He opened his eyes, only to find an unfamiliar man's large face before him.
Stephen, who had been keeping watch beside Aaron's bed, immediately shouted toward the door when he saw Aaron wake up. "Cousin! Lady Vereesa! Aaron's awake!"