Xibalbah curled lazily around the tree trunk, relishing the roughness of the bark and its slow scratching of her pelt. Being back in the swamp was a coming home on so many levels, and Xi finally felt her soul mending as her body was healing. She allowed herself to linger on this simple pleasure, lost deep in thought amidst the green mist so reminiscent of the Emerald Dream itself.

Not long ago, she had been trapped in a never-ending nightmare. Stonard was lost, Chaoseater was lost, and Xibalbah had stood motionless on the Rift of Aln, reliving the worst moments of her life, trapped by the Emerald Dream’s nightmare corruption.

She knew each minute, each second, of each failure intimately from every angle, from every “if only.” That was the easy part. So familiar in their rehearsal, such images came as almost a comfort, a reminder of all the sleepless nights she’d spent in the real world inflicting the same torture upon herself, each scene like an old friend come to tether her to reality.

No, this barrage of images was not the way to tap into Xibalbah’s weaknesses. Such visions only made her stronger, more resolved, more determined to escape the nightmare cycle that rendered her impotent and useless.

Little had she known that was exactly the point and she was playing her part perfectly. The more she struggled against her own powerlessness, the tighter the nightmare’s grip became. Xibalbah had no problem reliving her failures, taking responsibility even beyond what was reasonable, doing everything in her power to set things right.

Everything in her power.

That was it, really, the weakness that the nightmare was exploiting: Xibalbah’s intense drive to exert control over her world. The knowledge that she was stuck there, motionless, unable to help her clan, her world, herself even, was the dark force holding her in that place, and the more she struggled against her own powerlessness, the more she fueled the bonds that bound her.

There was nothing within Xibalbah’s power. Power itself was a mere illusion that could be turned to either dream or nightmare, light or dark, with the mere seed of a thought—the mere seed of a dream. So simple, so elegantly easy, and so devastatingly effective.

Xibalbah still couldn’t pinpoint when she’d stopped struggling, when she had simply surrendered to the truth of her own powerlessness. Indeed, she had trouble recalling much of anything as time held such little meaning within the Dream, where days, weeks, months blurred into one. What she did know was that her dreams had gradually started to change, almost imperceptibly at first, to become more accepting, less resistant. And as her dreams changed, so too did Xi.

Xibalbah finished her scratching and began to move with more purpose toward her destination: the small cave at the far corner of the swamp where she often came to work and think. She relished each step, the soft pad of her paws sinking into the moist ground, which felt like home—almost like First Home so many years ago during her trials. She let out a soft sigh as the memories flooded back, still so vivid after her recent ordeal.

Xi lifted her nose to the wind, nostrils flaring to catch whatever scent it had to reveal. Deep, earthiness with a fetid touch of stagnant water and decaying vegetation. She sniffed again and shifted to the shadows upon detecting the caustic stench of a venomspitter ahead. They had their job to do in the swamp, just as she did, she thought as she crept forward.

The swamp, too, seemed to be mending from the Alliance poison, whether from time or alchemy or the consistent efforts of the Mok’Gun, Xibalbah couldn’t be sure, but she suspected that the Grin’s return had something to do with it as well. The clan was tied to this land and the land, in turn, seemed tied to it. Stonard was in the Grin’s blood, and it felt good to be back in this place.

As Xibalbah rounded the corner into her little grove, she was overwhelmed by the number of restless water elementals roaming the springs that fed the place. Quickly, she dispatched one to take a sample of elemental water back with her, making a mental note to consult Ank’gra and the Grin’s other Shaman when she returned. If the Draenei shaman up at the Harborage were stirring up more trouble, Xibalbah would personally sever and snack on each of their heads. She might just do it regardless, she thought with a deep growl. The feeble Magtoor was a fool to side with that damned pompous Anchorite!

The small cave was in sight now, and Xibalbah smiled to see that her things were right where she’d left them. Shifting back to her troll form, Xi quickly lit a small campfire and placed a stick of silversage incense in the ground to cleanse the area. Puffs of spicy, aromatic smoke wafted on the air as she drew a carefully-practiced circle in the dirt with one long nail. Xi began to chant quietly to the loa, clearing her mind and drawing a small, snakeskin pouch and hand-woven bowl from the worn, panther hide sack that hung always at her side.

Gently, Xibalbah poured the pouch’s contents into the bowl with a slight clatter of bone on bone and began to stir them with a single finger moving in rhythmic circles with her chanting. When she had finished honoring each loa, Xi closed her eyes and emptied her mind, beseeching the loa to fill it with their message. She swirled the bowl over her head for the ancestors to bless before tossing the contents into the sacred circle she had drawn in the earth. The ceremonial divining bones, crafted from an infant gnome years ago, landed with a muffled thump in the dirt.

Xibalbah had been reading bones for years, and the loa had always blessed her divining. This day she consulted them for wisdom in reading the dreams that had become more and more frequent since she had returned from the Emerald Dream. These dreamvisions, as she called them, had begun as nothing more than barely discernible cloudy snippets, shrouded in green mists that haunted the edges of her dreams. At first she had simply dismissed them as the lingering effects of her time in the Nightmare, but they were becoming more insistent and, she thought, clearer in shape.

Xibalbah opened her eyes to the bones that lay before her, concentrating on the message they would reveal. Meticulously she observed the relationship of the bones to one another—the long bone, the fat and hooked bones, the knuckles—their proximity to one another and to herself, noting the placement of minute details within the bones themselves and even the earth on which they landed.

The very air seemed to stand still as the thick incense smoke hung like a shroud around Xi’s head. The entire swamp seemed frozen in time as sound dropped away, the incessant noise of insects and birds falling to a hush; not a single splash of frog or alligator broke the silence as she sat suspended over the small bones for what seemed like an eternity.

Instantly, Xibalbah fell backwards with a sharp intake of breath as the hiss escaped her lips, “White Tigah!”

Xi regained her footing and sat in stunned silence for several moments more, contemplating what the bones had just confirmed. The dreamvisions that had been plaguing her sleep were, indeed, harbingers of truth. And what was more, they involved the new Chieftain of the clan in some unmistakable way.

Xibalbah spent the rest of the night in dance, meditation, and purification ritual. Her time in the nightmare had changed her, and she felt certain this change was the source of her new dreamvisions, but she didn’t know exactly how. All through the darkness of the night, Xi sought to understand the change more clearly, and each time she approached the door of illumination, she felt it lock more tightly to her, but she kept her frustration in check.

Or, not in check really. More specifically, she felt as if it were not really there at all, not really her—more a force of habit niggling at the edges of her mind for attention, little more than a gadfly sent to distract her. Slowly, Xibalbah emptied her mind more and more, exposing layers of ancient clutter and detritus she had carried around for so many years.

Chanting and dancing, she reached for the purespring waters over and over again, ladling them atop her head, allowing the cleansing liquid to cascade over her braids, her tusks and lips, breaking into tiny rivulets coursing down her flesh. Successively, layer by layer, she washed away the baggage of the past, letting go instead of gripping for dear life, and as she did so, she felt the space inside her becoming more and more expansive.

As Xibalbah expanded, she created room for the dreamvisions to reveal themselves, space for them to unfold and unfurl, tendrils of dreamy detail reaching like swamp mists into the recesses of her mind to whisper their truth. Without the blessing of the bones to consult the loa, Xi had distrusted these dreamvisions, fearing they might be the nightmare’s remnants haunting her thoughts. Now she had nothing left to fear, and she opened her whole self to the White Tiger and what it was trying to tell her.

By dawn, Xi was determined to speak with Hoober Stonefist without delay. The bones did not lie, and Xi had a deep faith that the loa had, indeed, confirmed the truth of her dreamvisions. But she required more information to interpret the dreams, and that could come only from the Warchief himself.