"Jeff Grubb - Warcraft - The Last Guardian" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grubb Jeff)

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the authorтАЩs
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To Chris Metzen,
Who Kept the Vision


THE LAST
GUARDIAN
Prologue
The Lonely Tower
The larger of the two moons had risen first this evening, and now hung pregnant and silver-white against
a clear, star-dappled sky. Beneath the lambent moon the peaks of the Redridge Mountains strained for
the sky. In the daylight the sun picked out hues of magenta and rust among the great granite peaks, but in
the moonlight they were reduced to tall, proud ghosts. To the west lay the Forest of Elwynn, its heavy
canopy of greatoaks and satinwoods running from the foothills to the sea. To the east, the bleak swamp
of the Black Morass spread out, a land of marshes and low hills, bayous and backwaters, failed
settlements and lurking danger. A shadow passed briefly across the moon, a raven-sized shadow,
bearing for a hole in the heart of the mountain.

Here a chunk had been pulled from the fastness of the Redridge Range, leaving behind a circular vale.
Once it might have been the site of some primeval celestial impact or the memory of an earth-shaking
explosion, but the aeons had worn the bowl-shaped crater into a series of steep-edged, rounded hillocks
which were now cradled by the steeped mountains surrounding them. None of the ancient trees of
Elwynn could reach its altitude, and the interior of the ringed hills was barren save for weeds and tangled
vines.