Notes1: This is my interpretation of the datamined dialogue Khadgar has with the player character in 7.3.5 after the quests in post-Wound Silithus, although Khadgar's conversation has been slightly altered and expanded on so I'm not copy-pasting exactly everything he says to a T. It also builds on his relation to the PC, whichever that may be; so here, in this particular fanfic interpretation, it's based around his friendship with Mishka, the high elf hunter, whom you may have read about in the notes of my Warcraft fics and who's mentioned in First Impressions.
Notes2: The original plan didn't have an info dump on her back-story, but since readers might not be aware of my OC (other than she's my main) outside of the old WoW/FF13 story, No More Retries, it was put in there to flesh her out. This Mishka is closer to canon material and thus has green eyes compared to NMR!Mishka, who has blue eyes but still identifies as a Quel'dorei. I know high elves/blood elves are more out of an ideological and political distinction (and let's face it, blood elves are just "high elves" with a name change; Alliance players are still getting the high elves they crave, they're just Void-infused now and discarded the Sin'dorei label), but I figured, should anyone raise any fuss, I always look at it like this: if Lanesh the Steelweaver from the Sunreaver Onslaught, a high elf (presumably), can identify as a blood elf and be Horde, I can see Mishka, having green eyes, identify as Quel'dorei - not in the way most Sin'dorei are called so to honor the fallen but because, really, everyone is cut from the same cloth no matter what they're called. It's not about the "integrity versus survival" aspect that is ingrained in the high elf/blood elf race. She'd be more akin to Valeera, a blood elf who doesn't swear allegiance to either faction but has pride in her people and nation. Mishka, on the other hand, is not patriotic like Vereesa, but, even though her loyalties are her own, doesn't hold the Sin'dorei in high regard as much as Valeera does. If anything, Mishka puts loyalty toward friends/family (blood relations and non-blood relations), and her own beliefs/values, into true neutral alignment (or somewhere close to it; she certainly isn't evil), although by the time of Battle for Azeroth, Mishka will be more at odds with the Alliance, Horde, and certain third-parties like Jaina Proudmoore.
Notes3: Regardless of how the dialogue may be interpreted, this isn't Khadgar/OC, nor is it Alleria/OC, although this can be seen as a childhood acquaintance that quickly grew into hero worship that ended up becoming romanticized the more time passed in lieu of Alleria's absence. Mishka isn't a self-insert nor my mouth-piece, but Khadgar's thought about finding the arrow in the Shadowmoon Burial Grounds during Warlords of Draenor came as a massive "holy shit" moment during the midst of writing this fanfic, and I like to think Mishka, Khadgar, and Armi (who knows about Alleria) experienced it to varying degrees, so that statement is based off that reaction. For all the shitposting the people at MMO-Champ and the official forums fling at each other (and seem to enjoy rolling in it), I can say that, when looking back on it now, this once-seemingly random fetch quest has been planned ahead of time (and I can say the same about Illidan and Xe'ra, no matter how much posters smugly puff their chests out, believing they had some influence in the direction it took).
Notes4: The title comes from the last line in the song "The Road Goes Ever On", from The Fellowship of the Ring novel of The Lord of the Rings.

"This is not how I imagined things to turn out."

"I don't think anyone did," Mishka says, and scratches Hati at a spot between the ears. It earns a pleased if absent grunt, the wolf's focus entirely on the massive sword protruding out of Silithus—out of Azeroth. Banchou, her quilen, sits at her left, straight-backed and unmoving as the terracotta statues the mogu shaped him from. "After everything she's been through, I'm surprised Azeroth didn't die."

"Even wounded, she is so much stronger than we take her granted for," says Khadgar, and sighs again, heavy and forlorn. "But this time is different. This time she bleeds from a wound more powerful than when the Well of Eternity was more, more heavily than the damage the Sundering and Shattering had wrought." He pauses and takes it all in: the orange-yellow sky that always makes one think it is caught in perpetual eventide; the windswept sands of a land that, in recent years, had been quiet and unassuming where battles and wars had taken place and united the world. It makes the heart lodged in his throat squeeze even tighter. "She is dying," he finishes, the word hoarse and rough at the edges. Then, a little more strongly, like fire sparking in a kiln: "And no one is going to do anything about it."

"You have me," Mishka adds, and though she smiles it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "You have the Cenarion Circle and the Earthen Ring, too, and so many others that aren't going to get involved in this stupid war. Whatever you need, Archmage, I'll see it to it that the Unseen Path will provide you the resources to heal Azeroth."

Khadgar can't help but smile back, tiny and ghostlike as it is. He hasn't known her for very long, only a couple years, right after Garrosh escaped imprisonment and went back in time in a last-ditch effort to bring the planet to heel. Before that, he had heard tales of a pair of mercenaries that had left the Alliance and the Horde to pursue their own calling in life, young women discontent with politics and the unsettling turn the unending fighting between both factions was going in. Mishka was Horde, and a part of her, she told him once, was pained to disregard the blood oath all soldiers of the Warchief were sworn to make when her allies—some of which she called friend—endured Hellscream's descent into madness and delusions of racial disparity and orcish grandeur. She could not—did not—align with him, and so cast off from the waning safety of civilization and adopted the nomadic lifestyle adventurers often take upon themselves when they grow weary of faction conflict, treading forgotten roads and establishing connections with the beasts of the wild. There she had met Armi, disowned daughter of the Stormwind House Armitage, and in these past four years they had participated in one life-threatening event after another: Deathwing and the Shattering, the Siege of Orgrimmar, the Iron Horde and the reemergence of the Burning Legion that spanned all realities throughout the Twisting Nether.

She's come a long way, he thinks, from the woman struggling to find her place in Azeroth to leaving her mark as the Huntmaster of the Unseen Path planning assaults on demonic strongholds and removing their influence from the Broken Isles. There had been so much more, too, conducted by Armi and the other leaders of the neutral organizations in a coordinated effort with the Kirin Tor, the Illidari, and the Army of the Light, when the portal to Argus had been forced open.

He wonders what they'll do now—what King Anduin and Warchief Sylvanas will do, now that Sargeras has been sealed away and Illidan maintains his eternal vigil upon the Seat of the Pantheon. At the very least, it gladdens his heart to know someone is thinking along the same wavelength as he where Azeroth's safety is concerned. "Thank you, Mishka. That's…really all I can ask of you." He doesn't mention the fact that most of those resources were consumed throughout the campaign, and the munitions they acquired from sacking Legion camps and felsworn-held bastions in Suramar had been quickly depleted.

He doesn't have to tell her that the blood spilling from the Wound, this…Azerite…has the potential to usher in another arcane, industrial revolution not seen since the time of the Kal'dorei Empire and give birth to incredible, wondrous things as much as it has the potential to instill the germ of obsession and utterly annihilate them. It is a good thing that it hasn't become another Well of Eternity and that Sargeras is out of the picture—for good, this time.

But he can see it in her face, in the way her hand rests gently, protectively, on the back of Hati's head. In the way her jaw is clenched tight and how it has remained so ever since they entered Silithus and took great care avoiding the goblin mining camps and the shadowed dunes where SI:7 agents were wont to lie. Emmarel's told him how the girl journeyed to the Storm Peaks and, with help from Grif Wildheart and Thorim, reclaimed Titanstrike from the power-hungry vrykul. How the chaotic energy of the Thunderspark would have destroyed them, Prustaga included, had Hati not taken the brunt of the blow and absorbed as much as he could into his body.

It's thanks to Mimiron's suggestion that Mishka bind her spirit with Hati that the wolf is still alive today. She had been beside herself afterwards, Emmarel said, once they had returned to Talon Peak and had taken the oath of service toward the Unseen Path. She spent the rest of that day and the night alone, watching him, touching him to make sure he was still there, and Hati allowed her hands to be upon him until he had enough and grunted and nipped them away from him.

Then the grief had healed, gradually, and soon they were venturing into the wilderness of the Isles.

Khadgar takes another long, lasting look at the sword and can't fight the worm of sick, lonely dread crawling in his gut and wrapping around his heart. It doesn't belong there, in this beautiful, shattered world. It's wrong, and he can't think of any other way to remove it or cleanse the taint from it without circling back to that one conclusion he hopes against hope doesn't come to fruition. He can't imagine what Mishka would do to herself if it does and Armi, someone, isn't there to help her.

So he quashes the thought and averts his eyes from that wretched thing, keeps them low on the sand and the distant oil rigs the Bilgewater Cartel has set up. "I had hoped after defeating the Legion, we would set aside our differences and come together to rebuild what we have lost," he begins. "To begin a better, brighter future. But what unity we had has been severed; blades are being drawn, propaganda is manufactured, and old hatreds are rekindled. People thirst for blood and seek justice…vengeance."

Mishka scoffs. "If it's not one thing, it's another. World-ending events don't matter if they can't get one shot out at each other, and if they can't then they run away. Run and never look back."

Khadgar flinches, because he's well aware of whom she's talking about. He can understand where Jaina was coming, how upset she was for all the wrongs the Horde had done by her during the Pandaria campaign. What he can't is why she stormed off during such a crucial time, furious she had been outvoted by the Council of Six to allow them back into Dalaran (and even before that, he had been informed, when King Anduin suggested putting the safeguarding of Azeroth over finding the truth after Varian's funeral). Threw a tantrum, like a little girl not getting her way with things, and never returned, one year later.

But she'll show her face again; Mishka said so.

Mishka also promised to deck her at the first chance she gets, to hell with the consequences. And if she can't deck her, then Banchou or one of her pets will distract her long enough for Mishka to slip through and get one in.

No, Khadgar thinks, sighing internally. No, my friend, this isn't how I imagined things to turn out at all. "Still, after everything we've been through, I will not raise arms against you or against heroes on either side. I did not do so in Draenor and I will not do so here. There are just as many people like you who grow tired of the squabbling and bickering. Even if peace is just a short-lived dream, it is worth fighting for it."

"Even after they've been away for a long time?" Mishka gives him a sad, sweet smile.

He frowns. That's one thing he honestly didn't think would happen, given how much time has passed between the Second War and now. For Turalyon and Alleria, however, it has been a thousand years in the Twisting Nether, a thousand years fighting the Burning Legion in dimensions where time flows differently and makes little if any sense. But that millennium has changed them, for better or worse; Turalyon is bathed in the purity of the Light, still radiates it even with the Prime Naaru shattered and her remaining shards used to power half of the Netherlight Crucible, and Alleria—

Alleria was the biggest shock, second to seeing Sargeras himself manifesting almost right on top of the planet. She looked the same, sounded the same, her memory was still photographic of bygone, silly memories of their downtime spent drinking at the tavern, she can still hit her mark from a hundred yards right between the eyes.

But there's…not a sense of wrongness; that would be an insult to the memory he constructed of her and her lover since their time on Draenor. There's something different about her—bearable to be around physically, but stifling in the way the light bends around her form. The way the light knows she's there, knows she fills a space in this plane of reality but can't quite capture in its entirety and so it must accommodate to the best of its ability. It doesn't permeate off her like the Light itself does to Turalyon, but it's there, as though being vacuumed from within, and more than once Khadgar has noticed the way her presence is…not dark, but tinted. It's even in her eyes and it makes the blue slashes of tattoos on her face and arm stand to prominence on her fair complexion.

To use the Void in the same way the Ebon Blade use necromancy and the Illdari use the fel….

It had come to him more than once, but now the memory of finding one of Alleria's silver-lined arrows in the alternate Draenor's Shadowmoon Burial Grounds makes so much sense.

Mishka accepted her—that is, once the shock and panic ran its course and the adulation returned. Tempered from childhood whimsies, she had made it her goal to track down any lead of Alleria once word had come in through the Unseen Path that the information the Silver Covenant wrung out of their demon prisoner was verified that, indeed, Alleria was on Niskara. The key word being was, because by the time Mishka and Vereesa had reached the place where she was being held only Thas'dorah, the Windrunner family bow, remained. She had held onto it for months thereafter, and when Alleria was shown to be alive and they had returned to the Vindicaar the first thing Mishka did was offer it back to her.

Alleria was surprised to see it intact, and was moved by the gesture…but in the end, she refused Thas'dorah. For now, she had said, for the Void was a weapon to be mastered, tamed, bent to her knee and not the other way around. For now, she had said, Thas'dorah—and Titanstrike—should remain in good hands. Cared for and untainted.

Just thinking of the word and all the negative connotations that come with it makes his stomach roll uneasily again. "Yes," he says. "Of course they will. Not everyone that is of a particular faction wishes to resolve problems with fighting. No matter what you may have heard, Mishka, the Alliance is different from what it once was in the days of Lordaeron."

"So is the Horde."

Therein lays another truth: Turalyon is returning to the Alliance, and so is Alleria, but the circumstances for this are...very concerning, and not without some suspicion. Khadgar is aware of the outburst she had made when Vereesa told her of Sylvanas and what came after her reanimation. What had become of the Quel'dorei once Arthas had thoroughly gutted them to endangering numbers and how far they had almost fallen to madness under Kael'thas's hunger for power and magic.

In life, Sylvanas would never join the Horde. Neither would the high elves.

Life, as Khadgar has always known, doesn't deal in absolutes. But it does deal in alternatives and nuances, and he wonders just how much—in what way—Vereesa has recounted to Alleria the past twenty-odd years she's missed.

On the other hand, neither Alleria nor Turalyon know any better of the Horde that has changed since the Blood Curse was purged from the orcs, nor do they know the trolls they are thick with are not the Amani. They know only that the Horde that had come to fight on Argus were not an enemy but an ally, a person with family born in blood and forged in fire and battle, knowing full well the likelihood of dying, of Azeroth at long last succumbing to the Burning Crusade, was very, very real.

Just because the Legion is no more doesn't mean demons have stopped existing. They are alive in a way Sylvanas can only hope to attain: truly immortal, never to be forgotten nor forgiven, dead…but not for long. "Yes," Khadgar says, and tries not to draw it out so it comes off as tentative. "So is the Horde. With great change comes adaptation. Advancement and personal growth."

Mishka doesn't speak, just contents herself to move her hand below one of Hati's ear so she can scratch it. Then: "You really think so?"

His shoulders slump. "I hope so. I hope they will be able to see reason and attend to what is most important to them."

"What's important is the Azerite," she emphasizes, looking away from her beasts to the sword again, "and something tells me it won't be front and center in their minds."

No. He wants to believe otherwise, but no, he doesn't think, after all this time, they will be too concerned about it as much as they will be about the state of the world now. If the Wound and the Azerite are to play any role in their lives, they will come second, and it is the last of the bitter pills of reality he—and Mishka, among so many others—has come to forcibly swallow. He wants to be wrong and hope that, later on, when they've had their questions answered, they will join in the effort to staunch the bleeding and do…something with the Azerite that is left over.

Anything is better than what he's heard through the grapevine, concerning not only the Horde's interests but the Alliance's.

"Things will get better, I promise you," Khadgar says, and adds quickly, just before Mishka can intercept, "but with the way they are now, they will get worse before then. I know this. That is why I'm going to go to Karazhan. Perhaps there is something in my master's old texts that will grant me the knowledge to heal this world."

"Take me with you." Mishka whirls on him suddenly, startling both Banchou and Hati from their vigil, and Khadgar's breath hitches. That look is intense, outwardly stone-like…but there are cracks at the seams, desperation shining bright in her eyes and the muscles around her mouth are pinched and trying, ever so vainly, not to loosen and collapse. There's nothing to suggest she's going to cry—Mishka told him once upon a time, in Zangarra, she's done enough of that in the years after the Fall of Quel'thalas—but he wonders just how long and just how much she's been bottling everything up, especially now Alleria has returned. "Please, Khadgar. I don't want to be stuck here, listening to war drums and empty promises of reclaiming lost honor. I'm not picking sides, no matter how much I…!" She pauses, visibly sagging as the heat and passion melt away. "No matter how much…I want to be with her."

Silence. Only the breeze blows, scattering sand and ashes. Eyes downcast, she doesn't see so much as feel Banchou bump his head against her hip and Hati licking her hand and snuffling it with his nose. "I thought about it, you know," she says, softly. "Just seeing Alleria made me so happy. She doesn't scare me in the way Sylvanas did when she was alive and kept me company more often than Vereesa did when we were in the Academy. She's my hero." Then her face hardens, does not threaten to break again even though the temptation to do so lingers. "But I can't go to her, Khadgar. I can work with her, but I swore I'd never go back to the Horde or pledge myself to the Alliance. I don't want to be held liable for something I might do where people will associate me with either faction. That's why, wherever she goes, I can't follow. I have to go my own way. Besides, the damage has already been done." Her lips curl disdainfully, revealing the barest hint of fangs. "I may be an ally, maybe even a friend, but even I know the Windrunners always put their family above everyone else."

Yes, there is that. Ever since the Shattering, Mishka and Vereesa have always had a strained relationship. It was not so bad when Rhonin was alive, but Vereesa always carried that doubt with her—the doubt that Mishka would turn on them, in spite of the fel-touched eyes and her identifying as a Quel'dorei. Breaking away from the Horde didn't seem to help; in fact, it seemed to worsen. Perhaps Vereesa worried for her children's safety, that she would influence and corrupt them so as to imitate the 'cruelties' the blood elves were demonized for to a hyperbolic degree. But Mishka never did—had no intention to, for she loved the boys (having no younger siblings of her own but the nieces and nephews through her brother) as much as she had loved Rhonin. Theirs was a love that could not be reciprocated, a cool detachment that froze as the years waxed and waned…only to be burn brightly and hotly after Theramore had been bombed and Jaina let loose her wrath (and her elven attack dogs, a thought passed unbidden in his mind, and Khadgar suppressed a shiver) upon the Sunreavers in the Purge. They had got along in the Isles up at Talon Peak as much as professionalism and aloofness would allow.

Off the field and away from each other, however…Khadgar can't blame Mishka for avoiding her during the assault on Suramar City and the Nighthold. Just getting Vereesa to back off commanding her troops to fire on the blood elves and not the actual enemy with the subtle threat of booting them from Dalaran was more than enough to keep her in line. But for how long would that last, under the reign of the boy-king who was just now learning that peace was not inclusive to warfare?

What of Alleria? How much does she know?

"Mishka, you've done so much for this world—you, and all the others who love and care for it, no matter how big or small they may be," Khadgar begins. "Your place may be among the Unseen Path, but your place in Azeroth…I'm sorry, but I can't take you with me."

The look she gives him is wounded, affronted, bordering on betrayed. "Why not?"

"Because even if you were to come with me, you would not be content sitting around searching for answers when you could be out here making a difference."

"I could make much of a difference by being inside Karazhan and using whatever we learned from Medivh's texts to heal the Wound."

"You could…but you're not one to sit still. Not for long, anyway."

"But sitting idle might do more harm than good. Anything can happen while you're up there and I'm down here. Whatever happens, it might be out of our control."

"And that is why we must walk our own paths and find the answers ourselves. We must work in tandem if we are to protect Azeroth from the damages wrought during the war." He tries to smile benignly, assuredly, but while it works the tension from her body it doesn't show on her face. "We have to cover our bases to where we work best…and I know you, Mishka. You're apt to cause chaos just as you'll bring order, and I need you out here where you won't feel constrained." He says it kindly, is sincere about it, but it needs to be said and heard from someone who isn't going to lead up to her getting caught up in the rush of conflict or be…nudged in the direction to where she can vent her frustrations, and that is the last thing he wants to see befalling his friend. "Do you understand?"

She's quiet and looking to Banchou and Hati, whom look back at her, and Khadgar knows better than to repeat himself, knows to let her work it over while she distracts herself.

Finally, she looks to him, smiling…and it's a smile fit for one who can only lie to herself. "Yeah…Yeah, I understand. When do we start?"

"Preferably I would begin as soon as possible…but we need the time—and, hopefully, the resources—to extrapolate the knowledge we need. According to my sources, Magni has been spotted west of here, on the other side of the Wound by Hive'Zora. If he is still there, I want you to deliver this letter to him. There is information on there that may prove useful to him." From the folds of his robe Khadgar retrieves a sealed envelope and passes it to Mishka, who takes it; Hati rises on all fours and puts his head forward, light blue nose twitching at the scent of drying ink on parchment.

Mishka turns it over in her hands, one long, feather-thin brow arched. Then she smirks, tight and bittersweet."It's as good a starting point as any, I guess. I'll see that this gets to him."

"I trust you to be careful," Khadgar says. "But…should you confront the Alliance and the Horde..."

"Don't worry. I won't go picking fights. The last thing I want to do is piss off the upper echelons enough to put a bounty on my head." She deposits it in the leather pouch hanging from her utility belt and gives the Archmage a long look. "Be careful, old man. I don't want to have to come back to Dreadwind Pass and find out Karazhan got turned into a smoking crater." Banchou barks once, deep and gravelly, as if in agreement—and he probably is; he was there when they went to go browse every nook and cranny for information on the Pillars of Creation.

Khadgar knows she's not being mean about it, knows it's just her masking her worries with that dry wit of hers, but he can't help but crack a grin at the statement. "Believe me, Mishka, I will be more than prepared this time around and make sure not one book is out of place nor one page in my library goes unturned! Some of these books are first editions, you know." His grin softens into a smile, then the smile softens into a thin, gentle line, and then that line becomes subdued, drained of emotion. He has to force the words out of his mouth. "I had best be going. You be careful, as well. For all the good each have done, do not let the Alliance or the Horde turn you away from what you want to do." Not even your leaders or your heroes, he wants to say…but that would be like kicking her down even more. He's not a cruel man, and he's suddenly reminded of a similar turn of phrase Illidan had voiced to the special ops forces as they delved deeper into the Tomb of Sargeras: "Let nothing stop you from doing what needs to be done!"

"Until next we meet, farewell." He taps the base of Atiesh against the ground. Just once, and with a spark of arcane magic his body morphs, shifts, changes into the black raven that, once upon a time, flitted between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, calling upon the wayward races of the world to stand together against the Burning Legion that sought to scorch and glass everything in the name of Sargeras and his fel Crusade.

Three times they have tried and three times they have failed. Now all that remains is the day when the Old Gods make their next move…but it is a threat no less immediate and dire than what the people of Azeroth are going to do to their sleeping titan once the Azerite has been excavated, processed, and set to manufacture.

He caws once, twice, and with beating wings takes to the sky, heading north to Tanaris. From this bizarre, top-down bird's eye view, he can just catch Mishka turning westward, where Hive'Zora lies, pulling up her dark chainmail hood to conceal her long ears and bright blonde hair from prying eyes. A smart move, but she cuts a recognizable figure. He can only hope her beasts and gut instinct will guide her to and keep her in safety.

Khadgar hopes for a lot, and he himself hopes it's not too much to ask that, for once, maybe the Alliance and the Horde will come around one day (someday, when their grievances, legitimate as they are, will be buried and put to rest when the blood has been washed away in a cathartic rainfall, power has been exchanged, and the borders have been drawn and marked) and look to rebuild and nurture Azeroth as they were meant to do. What they're meant to be: protectors, enforcers, healers, providers.

What they are at this time, what they have always regressed to since the First War, is far from the ideal.

What they will be in time, if at all, even he cannot say.