World of Warcraft: Before the Storm

Chapter One

Stormwind

Rain fell on the somber throngs making their way to Lion s Rest as if even the sky wept for those who had sacrificed their lives to defeat the Burning Legion. Anduin Wrynn, king of Stormwind, stood a few steps back from the podium where he soon would be addressing mourners of all the Alliance races. He watched them silently as they arrived, moved to see them, loath to speak to them. He suspected that this service honoring the fallen would be the most difficult he had endured in his relatively short life not just for the other mourners but for himself; it would be held in the shadow of his father s empty tomb.

Anduin had attended far, far too many ceremonies honoring the casualties of war. As he did each time ­as, he believed, every good leader did ­he hoped and prayed that this one would be the last.

But it never was.

Somehow there was always another enemy. Sometimes the enemy was new, a group springing up seemingly out of nowhere. Or something ancient and long-­chained or buried, supposedly neutralized, rising after eons of silence to terrorize and destroy innocents. Other times the enemy was bleakly familiar but no less a threat for the intimacy of the knowledge.

How had his father met those challenges time after time? Anduin wondered. How had his grandfather? Now was a time of relative quiet, but the next enemy, the next challenge, doubtless would arrive all too soon.

It had not been all that long since Varian Wrynn s death, but for the great man s son it felt like a lifetime. Varian had fallen in the first real push of this latest war against the Legion, apparently slain as much by betrayal from a supposed ally, Sylvanas Windrunner, as by the monstrous, fel-­fueled creatures vomited forth from the Twisting Nether. Another account from someone Anduin trusted contested that version, suggesting that Sylvanas had had no other choice. Anduin was not sure what to believe. Thoughts of the cunning and treacherous leader of the

Christie Golden is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of nearly sixty books and more than a dozen short stories in the fields of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Her media tie-in works include her first novel, Vampire of the Mists, which launched TSR’s game line; more than a dozen Star Trek novels; the Fate of the Jedi novels Omen, Allies, and Ascension as well as standalone novels Dark Disciple and Battlefront II: Inferno Squad. For Blizzard Entertainment, she's contributed five StarCraft novels, including the Dark Templar trilogy, and the Warcraft/World of Warcraft books Lord of the Clans, Rise of the Horde, Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, War Crimes, Before the Storm and Exploring Azeroth: Eastern Kingdoms. In 2017, she was awarded the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers Faust Award and named a Grandmaster in recognition of thirty years of writing. She currently works full-time for Blizzard Entertainment, where she frequents Azeroth on a regular basis.

This is easily the best book in the World of Warcraft series, and I don t say that lightly. . . . It s so much more than a tie-in novel. . . . It s a beautiful book. Blizzard Watch