Velen: Prophet’s Lesson

The Seat of the Naaru's soaring energies inspired inner peace from the most bloodthirsty of warrior pilgrims, awe from even the most jaded of Azeroth's inhabitants. The figure floating before the Seat had long taken comfort from this column of Light. Velen looked out from his meditation chamber, seeking insight... in all the connections, great and small, where he might perceive the lines of the future. For the past several months, those lines had increasingly felt fragmented.

As the Prophet of the draenei meditated—his legs crossed beneath him, his hands resting on his ancient knees—the crystals that reflected his energies glowed and pulsed and swirled around him, not in patterns but in chaos. And the visions, the endless possibilities of tomorrows, assaulted him.

A weary, bedraggled gnome pulled a strange contraption through the dusts of Outland, leaving twin ruts that snaked endlessly in the dunes behind her. Ethereals, their energies wrapped in cloth, simply watched her struggle, neither helping nor impeding the gnome's hard-fought progress.

Vindicator Maraad battled an unseen foe with his gargantuan crystalline hammer and then fell to his knees, a lance of blackest darkness thrust through his chest, oily, diseased smoke trailing the weapon's edge.

The sky-filling, armored form of Deathwing flew across a burned world and landed on a charred, broken tree so vast it could only be Nordrassil, while supplicants draped in dark-purple robes lined up and threw themselves into a volcanic crack in the earth.

Med'an—the Guardian of Tirisfal—wept, the tears out of place on his orc-tinged features, his eyes so vulnerable and hurt that the sight of them would have broken the heart of any other.

But not Velen.

The Prophet had long ago learned detachment from his visions lest they drive him mad. The third eye of prophecy had been with him so long that having premonitions was like breathing. The ata'mal crystal shards had transformed him into a sentinel of alternate universes without end, sometimes down to their very eclipses in darkness, or ice, or fire. Velen didn't sorrow for these futures or mourn their extinctions or shout in exaltation at their triumphs. He merely read them, watched their woven tapestries, looking for the roads that led to ultimate triumph, where life and the Light battled back the dark and saved everything from annihilation. What mattered the minor events prized by most mortals—even his own draenei—measured against the awesome responsibility of ensuring the survival of creation?

Velen searched among the debris of the rapidly moving images, trying to seize onto something, find a marker for the path. But it eluded him.

Anduin Wrynn knelt in the soft earth, his hands resting on a lasher, one of the few remaining mutations resulting from the Exodar's crash on Azeroth. Two draenei flanked the creature, restraining it for the prince, their gentle might keeping it from wriggling free and fleeing the channeled Light in the young boy's hands. The draenei had once made it their mission to mend the damage their destructive appearance in the world had wrought, but when the majority of the work had been completed, they'd found their powers were needed elsewhere—first in the war against the Burning Legion, then in the march on the Lich King's icy domain, and now... in the aftermath of the Cataclysm.

Some of the twisted monstrosities had been overlooked in the confusion, tragically wandering in madness and pain, diverted from their original purpose by a terrible accident. The first time Anduin had glimpsed one, he'd felt not disgust but sorrow. I have to help. I have to try. At the first break in his lessons with Velen, the prince had raced off into the wilds of Azuremyst Isle, his draenei escorts rushing in his wake. Now they served as crude bonds while he beseeched the Light to heal the mutant, to calm its madness. Anduin didn't understand what was wrong with the thing. He didn't need to.

The Light knew. Its power moved through the young prince, using him as its channel to set aright the creature writhing under his hands. The act of healing always made Anduin feel like the key in a lock, the tool applied to its proper use, and he'd proven his talents to himself in his time with the draenei. His confidence had waxed under the tutelage of the ancient race, particularly under the instruction of the Ageless One, the Prophet. Whether or not you see it, Father, I was right. Magni was right. This is my calling.

***

The thought saddened him. He loved his father, but the gulf between Varian and Anduin, both in temperament and experience, was too great. Why can't you see, Father? I'm not like you. And what's wrong with that? Isn't there something to be learned from our differences? From me?

For his part, Anduin regretted their falling-out. His father insisted on treating him like a child, when the Prophet, Magni, and others clearly saw him differently, acknowledged his budding worth. Anduin and his father had argued during the Alliance summit at Darnassus, and Varian had laid hands on him, hurting his arm with a vice-like grip. The proudest moment of Anduin's life had followed when, in the aftermath of that argument, the Prophet had spoken to him in his soft preternatural tones, inviting him to study at theExodaras his ward.

Why couldn't you see I had to go, Father? Why didn't you see the honor in this invitation?

Anduin wrenched his attention back to the present, away from distracting self-pity and toward the need of the lasher. He made a vow to himself in the next heartbeat that he'd never lose his awe of this experience. Healing was too often seen as a commonplace thing, a miracle made mundane, but Anduin knew the Light, healing's source, didn't see it that way. Every life, every life, a miracle.

Before the prince now was a beautiful, broad-petaled plant-creature, purple and green, upright and strong. The draenei released their hold on it. One of them bowed in recognition of what the boy had done.

Anduin heard a disturbance behind him and started, awakening fully from the healing trance to realize he was sitting on his royal behind in the mud. Very dignified, Anduin thought. Father'd be thrilled.

The prince sprang to his feet. Facing him was a heavily armored, tall draenei—a Shield, one of Velen's personal guards. "The Prophet has asked to see you, Prince Anduin," was all he said.

The refugees had arrived in lost humility at first, in ones and twos, by leaky boat and makeshift raft, risking the unknown to flee the horribly known. Rumor had spread that the draenei withstood the breaking of the world, that refuge could be found on Azuremyst Isle. And rumor was better than the reality most of these exiles faced. In the beginning, the draenei had aided as they could, giving the refugees a place outside theExodar, healing them, and sharing food and water. But then the outcasts had begun sending out word to find their friends and families, and the call echoed throughout Kalimdor: The Prophet holds Azuremyst safe. The Prophet foresaw the Cataclysm and will make everything right. The ones and twos became tens and twenties... and then hundreds. Now, the refugee camp boasted a thousand exiles, and the draenei found that the need had outgrown their will and capacity to provide.

The whispers in the camp eventually took a darker tone.The Prophet won't see us. The draenei keep him hidden in the vaults of their ship. They look like hoofed demons, do they not?

Anduin had spent time among the refugees, healing as he could, encouraging faith in the eternal Light, counseling and leading in quiet ways that often left adults astounded in his presence... and a little disturbed when he wasn't around. The prince had asked many times why these wayward souls failed to seek the protection of his father, of the strength of Stormwind. They would answer with sideways eyes, naming his father a great and true king but saying he lacked the Prophet's ability to see the future. No offense intended, their tone said, but your father's just a man. The Prophet is more than that. After a while, by piecing together many discussions as if he were solving a puzzle, Anduin realized the refugees' actions were not simply predicated on reverence for a prophet they'd never met. These people were from the edges of society. For them, the rightful order of government was something to be feared rather than sought as a protector. Eventually, the prince stopped asking questions.

And so, he was a familiar face as he was escorted through the camp to his audience with Velen. Familiar and yet not one of them. He felt the distance, a gap born of his royal blood, his strength in the Light, and the trauma of his childhood. Sometimes, he was a little wistful that he wasn't more... normal. But he was beginning to sense, as he rushed toward the challenges and strange energies of puberty, that the differences were necessary. He had a unique role to fill, that of leading and protecting his people, and it was neither a privilege nor a font of personal power. It was a duty.