Unholy Resurrection Part Two

I went then from the throne room of King Bronzebeard and ran to my workshop. So excited was I, at the prospect of new adventure, that I teleported in small bursts the entire way there. Finally, I grabbed my staff and began to head towards the lands of Stormwind and King Wrynn. If I had been thinking properly I would have simply teleported myself to Stormwind or taken the tram. But I was not thinking – I was just doing, for the first time in some years.

I headed back to the great forge at the center of the city. The magnificent heat of that grand furnace warmed the ache from my joints and soothed the weariness from my bones. I should have stopped a moment to speak to the Gryphon Master there. I should have asked him what news he had heard. Perhaps I would have thought a second time about what I was doing. Instead, I carelessly flipped a gold coin towards him, hopped upon a gryphon, called out “To Stormwind”, and spurred the creature into the sky.

My mind reeled for a moment at the sudden lift of the beast and the dizzying motions it took to quickly navigate its way out of the city. But the moment the cold, glorious air of the mountains rushed against my face, and we passed out of the great gates of that city, I remembered my glorious days of dragon-slaying once more.

The lands of Dun Morogh passed below me as the gryphon soared through the air. I could see the snow-capped peaks that surrounded that land, I smelled the subtle scents of malt and barley that flowed from the brewery of Kharanos, and far to the west I could see the green fog that rose from the tunnels of my home. Gnomeregan: lost forever. I had ventured back once with a group of friends. For hours, we fought our way deep through its tunnels; but no matter what damage we did, the Troggs seemed endless. By the time we found the Dark Iron dwarves in the deep passages, we were exhausted and weakened from the effort. We turned back and escaped that place through a forgotten passage; though as we left, I thought I heard the mad cackling of the Mekgineer himself, coming from the lowest halls of our forsaken city.

My thoughts were shaken from such malaise when I passed over the scorched lands around Blackrock Mountain, scene of my greatest triumphs. And though the lands around it were still barren, flame-ridden desolation; and though the orcs still held that mountain stronghold; a smile crossed my face at the memories of dead dragons and fallen elementals.

A few moments later, marveling at the speed and grace of my ride, I found myself among the falls and rivers of Elwynn forest. Stormwind would not be far ahead, and the moment for my return was finally at hand. Passing over the forest it seemed still untouched by the advancing undead menace. Smoke rose from the mill to the east, and as I passed near Goldshire and the nearby abbey, there was little sign of disturbance.

The gryphon brought me over the Valley of Heroes and the glorious statues that pay remembrance to the champions of the Second War. Perhaps, if I had looked down among those statues, I could have seen some sign of the horrors that were assaulting that land. Alas, I was filled with the folly of regained vigor; and looking towards the west I could see the black, billowing clouds that rose from the burning lands of Westfall. And so, without even landing, I bucked my gryphon against its path and yelled out, “No, to Westfall. Sentinel Hill.”

My gryphon obeyed and after a swift circle over the valley, we were speeding off toward the smoke in the west. As I passed over Elwynn again, I began to notice how things were changing. I could hear screams below me, though my eyes could not pierce the canopy of treetops to see what was happening. I should have stopped the gryphon then and headed back, perhaps riding a mount to Westfall and seeing if I could help along the way. But my course was set and the gravity of atrocity was pulling me forward.

We passed from the forests of Elwynn and came out over Westfall. I had always felt a love towards that land. It was so different from the snowy peaks and frozen rivers of my own home: no steep valleys, no trolls or hulking wooly terrors to be found in caves. The way that the wind passed through the thick fields of wheat, turning the landscape into a glistening lake of golden currents and flowing scintillation. It was not a home to me, but it was still a place I had found myself often visiting for all its warmth.

The land I found myself flying over, however, was not the place I remembered. The fires had spread beyond Sentinel Hill and several farms were burning. The black storm that rose from the fields brought tears to my eyes; as much from the choking sting of it, as from what was being lost below me. Through holes in the smoke I could see that the undead were still terrorizing the lands as well. The sounds of breaking glass, bursting lumber, and the screaming of terrified families trumpeted the carnage happening below me. Flying above, I was powerless.

As I neared Sentinel Hill I could see that the entire outpost was ablaze. The lumber mill was a raging firestorm; the humble inn there was lost in an ocean of dancing flames, the top of the tower itself the only visible island of safety amidst the inferno. Coming nearer to the blaze I found that my gryphon was bucking and turning violently. The heat from the fires was creating unpredictable wind currents that pushed the creature higher, and then pulled it down dangerously towards the flames below.

Finally, the gryphon let out a screech of protest and began to turn away – it would approach Sentinel Hill no closer. I struggled against its reigns, trying to force it to take me to where I had commanded it. Yelling, “No you stupid beast. Take me closer, NOW!” and at my insult the creature violently bucked and threw me from its back.

With a moment’s thought I lightened my body and though I was still falling, it was slow enough for me to land safely. The problem with landing was that I was still falling towards the flames below me. But I was close to the tower, close enough that with a small effort I teleported myself to its top.

The heat from the fires around me was nearly unbearable. The tower itself was not as untouched by the blaze as I had hoped. Looking down the stairwell within I could see that flames consumed the entire bottom floor and that tongues of fire were slowly licking their way up the stairs and the walls within. I thought for a moment, searching for a safe place to try to reach. I summoned my magic to me, focusing upon the cold and frosts of my homeland, then released a small burst of ice towards the fires in the field around me. Though it reached the flames and seemed to, for a moment, soothe some of the ravaging blaze – it did not last long enough to create a clearing. Letting my thoughts slip even further towards the icy embrace of the mountains, I channeled my energies into letting a blizzard of ice fall upon a small patch of the blaze.

It worked! I had created a clearing from the fires a small distance from the tower, close enough for me to reach. I smiled and let out a slight sigh, a job well done. And in that moment of triumph, that moment of peace amidst the ruins about me, that moment…I heard the scratching. I had not noticed it before, or perhaps it had not been there before, but suddenly I realized there was a sound as of a dagger’s blade scraping against rock. It was coming from below me, within the tower. A survivor, I thought, someone was in the tower still and they needed my help.

Turning from my victory amidst the flames, which had been brief as the fires began to close the small patch I had cleared within them, I began to head down into the tower. The smoke choked me and filled my eyes, shattering the world into a kaleidoscope of teardrop facets. Though I had spent a great deal of time studying the uses of magic to create flames, it was always different with natural fire. Descending that tower was like returning to the heart of Blackrock Mountain, the choking fumes and blazing heat of pure elemental destruction.

Squinting through eyes tortured by the flames, I searched desperately for the source of the sound. “Hello?” I called, “Is there someone here? Call out and I’ll help you.”

A sound did come, returning my call, but it was not a cry pleading for assistance. It was a low sound, a hollow sound. It had a certain sense of emptiness, a void that a human voice should fill. It was the shell of a voice, wrapped around a dark abyss. It was a moan, a hungry thing born from vocal cords twisted by plague. It was a ghoul cry, and it was terribly near. It was not a survivor – it was a victim, now a monster.

The thing rushed at me from the flames – somehow its form was still holding together through the fires. I did not stop to wonder at how it had survived, I leapt back from its advance and its claws tore chunks of rock from the step where I had stood. It rushed at me and without hesitation I acted, a lifetime of training and adventure coming back to me; it was instinct, reflex. Survival.

As the creature lunged at me, I spotted the steps below me, closest to where the fire had advanced. In a flash of blue light, its claws nearly tearing into me, I teleported myself through the creature, past it, to the steps where it had first emerged. Confused for a moment, but not fooled, it quickly spun about and began to run down towards me. I only had an instant, but I had to let it get as close as I could. Yellow slobber dripped from its jaws, I must have looked like an appetizer to it.

Nearly upon me again, its hands grasping for me, I took a step back and released a ring of ice about myself that froze the wretched thing in place. I jumped then for the stairs that rose above us and grabbed onto one of them, just beyond the thing’s reach. Pulling myself up and looking back, I saw that the fires around us were quickly melting the ice that froze the creature; I had less time than I had hoped. I took a moment to bind the fiend with chains of magic, weighing it down – once the ice finally melted away it would be slowed by my spell. Hopefully, that would be enough.

I rushed back to the top of the stairs and quickly looked around the base of the tower. The flames were all around me, but worse – there were dark forms within the fires. More of the hideous undead creatures were approaching. Looking around, I saw that to the east, towards the forests of Duskwood, the fires were at their least dense. I summoned another storm of ice to fall upon a small patch about halfway between myself and the edge of the blaze. Just as it finished I heard a sound behind me and spun about; though slowed by my spell the creature was at the top of the stairs and quite nearly upon me.

Without a thought, I leapt from that high tower. The ghoul lunged at me, and tore at my cape. Only through the grace of its ragged claws, which ripped through my cloak rather than grasping it, did I continue to escape and not merely find myself strangled by that hideous beast. In another moment I had once more lightened my form and was slowly gliding toward the spot that I had cleared in the flames.

I landed amidst the fire and quickly realized that it was swiftly closing in upon me. The ghouls would reach me soon, but if I did not act quickly they would find their meal already well cooked for them. I summoned my magical fires about me to create a protective ward against the heat, and then ran into the blaze towards the east, towards the river. I was nearly there when I felt my magic begin to wane. The fires were eating through my shield and would soon consume me. I made one last desperate leap towards the edge, closed my eyes, and teleported as far as I could with a quick flash of blue light and the brief scent of burnt hair. I was on the edge of the river. Out of the fires. Safe.

Looking up, I realized I was not alone. I prepared myself to release a blast of arcane energy at whatever was around me, but fortunately found it unnecessary. It was not the undead that surrounded me, but instead I found the hulking forms of those who had come from that land beyond the Dark Portal, the draenei.

They barely took notice of me, for they had struggles of their own. Several of them were focusing, channeling great amounts of green energies, to focus on Azeroth and use the powers of the land. Waves, higher than the trees, rose up from the river and flowed past them to crash down onto the flames – and judging from the scorched land about them, they were winning the fight, but slowly. The other few draenei with them were clad in heavy armor and wielding the light itself to hold back the diabolic undead that attempted to devour them all.

One of the paladins was down on his back, a hulking undead monstrosity upon him. The draenei was flailing desperately against the creature but his weapon had fallen too far from his hand to reach. For a moment he looked up and saw me standing a short distance from him. I witnessed the terrible panic in his eyes and he quickly yelped, “Please. Help me!”

At least half a dozen more creatures were coming towards me through the flames, and I took a step back from the struggling paladin. “I’m sorry,” I replied, “I cannot.” I did not fully understand the look on his face at that moment, I would like to believe that it was an expression of understanding from one desperate hero to another; but I cannot help but feel that it would be more properly described as surrender or grim resignation. I did not have long to study the expression before it disappeared into the spit-flecked maw of the ghoul upon him. The other ghouls were quite nearly upon me as well.

Thinking quickly, I froze them all in place with a quick blast of magical ice – then I ran from them, heading north toward the borders of the Elwynn. The sun was finally setting as I reached the area where gnolls often patrolled the southwestern edge of the forest, and still the undead abominations were pursuing me. Without other option I draped myself in the arcane and slipped silently into invisibility. I ran because I knew that to do battle with them was to give them opportunity to infect me. And that was a terror too great to consider.

* * * * *

When I slipped into Elwynn forest I was greeted with a sight beyond imagination – the gnolls were locked in battle with the undead already. The moaning and unholy screeching of the ravenous unliving blight that descended upon them drowned out the yelping and giggling of the gnolls. I slipped past the scene quickly, hiding in the deep forest shadows, and noticed that the great gnoll Hogger stood atop a pile of ghoul corpses, his axe wet with green ichor, he was howling with frenzy. I did not pause to watch further, fearing that I might attract the attention of that terrible creature.

I ran as fast as my short legs could carry me, back towards Goldshire, in hopes that the guards of Stormwind had aided the small town. All about me in the forest, I saw shadows moving, gibbering and gurgling their cannibalistic intent. I grew up in a land of few trees, a land blanketed in perpetual snow that even in dead night would reflect the moon to cast a fairy glow of snow-light through the darkness. The shadows of grim Elwynn struck me with the darkest dread. Everywhere were claws grasping for me, teeth gnashing and frothing to devour me, eyes glinting with the deathly pallor of hungry oblivion.

I tried to take the main road through Elwynn, but it was a road no longer. It was a path of devastation. Corpses littered the road, many of them gnawed upon, half-eaten things that twitched with the unholy energies that were brewing within them. I have seen battle; dead bodies do not startle or disturb me. But these were different, as you moved past them they moved as well; and in little time, they rose before you, their forms twisting and changing with the mutilations of undead rebirth.

The road was a vein of tainted undeath running through the forest; and to follow it was suicide. I escaped only through my magics and once hidden within the forest, I did not attempt to use the road again.

I came slowly, hearing the forest alive with death all about me, to the edge of Goldshire. My hopes were smashed in an instant. No guards. No armored support from Stormwind; only nightmare unending. Few citizens remained and fought against the undead horrors about them, but it was to little avail. I rushed past them, hurling spells where I could assist. But more often than not, my efforts were in vain and I watched as the people I tried to help were overwhelmed and dragged down by a flurry of teeth and claw.

I reached the road to the city, but saw it blocked by a great host of the hungry dead. Many of them were advancing towards Stormwind, but some instead looked back towards the town, towards me. I ran into the inn but the main room was in terrible disarray, tables and chairs broken and cast about. The fire, which usually filled that room with such heat that I had often fallen asleep in my cups, was only ash and rare cinder. Upstairs I could hear the heavy steps and scratching sounds of the undead – it was no safe house any longer. I could not remain there.

I turned to leave and only through that small fortune was I saved, for I turned to see a hungry pair of jaws nearly snapping shut upon me. I dropped down and leapt back, saved only by my short stature as the beast closed its maw just above me. I blasted a ring of ice from myself, freezing it in place, and jumped upon the bar. I had little time, but I had no choice. This ghoul stood between me and the only sane route for escape. I looked about the room: at the splintered wood, the dying fire, the stains of crimson splashed across the walls. I would not end up as the others had; I was stronger.

Turning upon the ghoul I first laid arcane weights upon it, to ensure enough space for myself, then began to pour my anger into it. I hurled great orbs of flames towards it, unleashed blasts of energy one after another – fueling my own desire to see it explode in a blinding pulse of arcane light. Its icy restraints shattered and it began to slowly advance towards me. I focused a moment on the powers of the arcane and fueled my spells with even greater energy, then reached into my pocket for a small trinket I kept there. It was a relic from the lands beyond Azeroth, a fragment of the power that had destroyed Draenor, and when I touched it I felt its power add to my own.

I looked upon that ghoul, coming closer to me with each moment. And in that instant I wondered who it had been. A friend of mine? Perhaps the keeper of the bar that I was perched upon? A town guard who won the fight but lost the war? It did not matter – it was a husk now, a shell for the terrible powers of the Lich King. I yelled out with a roar of gnomish fury and released a torrent of missiles made from pure arcane energies. As each missile slammed into the creature I saw it weaken, pushed back, and finally fall, crumpling beneath its own weight, and release one last unholy breath.

I took a moment to prod the thing with the end of my staff, but it did not move, did not flinch, did not make a sound. It was dead, for the last time. But, I had become careless, and I could hear several things upstairs begin to stir and move towards the stairway that separated me from them. I hopped down off the bar and quickly headed out of the inn once more. Back into the bleak night that had only recently arrived, but seemed as though it would never end.

The army of undead was still on the road between Stormwind and myself, it was no way to reach the city. I needed to find somewhere safe, at least for a few moments, so that I could focus and teleport to the arcane halls of Stormwind’s Mage Quarter. I knew of several other houses nearby, off the road, that I could likely hide within and find the time needed to transport myself.

I moved quickly, staying to the shadows in the hopes that the undead were as poor sighted as myself in the hideous yellow light that was cast by the bloated moon overhead. Everything seemed sickly, as though the sky and land themselves were taken by this plague. The stars seemed more distant than ever before, the darkness around them was cold and empty. The low moon looked jaundiced and fit to burst, spreading green infection across the whole of the land, remaking Azeroth into a world of putrefaction and moaning hunger.

I reached a house and took a moment to glance into its windows before proceeding. The main room was overthrown and torn apart, but there was no sign of any of the things that had caused such ruin. I entered the house and thought to teleport immediately; but I feared that some unholy beast might pass by and attack. So I rushed upstairs and leapt upon the landing at the top while releasing a shockwave of frost from around me, just in case there was anything lurking nearby. Fortunately, I was alone.

I went then into the master bedroom and found a great many bloodstains and torn sheets, but no bodies and no ghouls. I thought to teleport myself then but found that I was weakened, drained of energy and without the fuel for my spells. I had been running through bounds of teleportation and slipping into invisibility my whole way through the forest, slowly sapping my strength and the fight against the ghoul had finally drained me. I needed to regain myself.

I sat upon the bed, used the last of my energy to summon a small pouch of magical water, and began to drink. The liquid was cool and tasted slightly of lemon and honey. I felt its energy flow through me, filling me with arcane fervor once more. I was whole again.

While I drank, however, I came to notice that I was no longer alone. I jumped, at first, in a moment of shock when I saw the intruders, but realized that it was no ghoul. It was six children. My eyes opened wide in wonder as I saw them, how could they have survived this terrible destruction? It was a miracle, these children! Hope living in the face of cataclysm.

But then, one of them spoke:

“Stranger, you are lost in this place. You are not home. You are not safe. And the Lich King looks upon you – his servants hunger, and you are the prize.”

“What?” I said back. The child’s voice was low and hollow; there seemed an ache of age and disturbed graves just beneath it.

“King Menethil is returning to his people.” One of the little girls replied in a voice as cold and hard as a tomb, “He will lead them to the freedom of the grave. The peace of unholy serenity.”

“What are you?” I asked them.

“We are heralds,” another little boy answered, his voice like the sound of wind through a skull.

“We are celebrants in the ecstasy of oblivion,” the first boy added.

“We are those who watch the world die,” a second girl replied – her voice like the shattering of a mirror, “and scrape our teeth on its bones.”

“We are children born from atrocity,” a third boy intoned without moving his lips, his voice slicing inside my brain.

“We are the ones you couldn’t save,” the first girl said, “and we are the memory of the nightmares that will haunt you.”

“Get away from me,” I said, my hands balled into fists, encircled with flames. I have never attacked a child, not even the children of the horde or my enemies. I simply could not do it. But these things before me, they were not children.

“Go ahead to the city,” the last boy replied, his voice soft with subtle menace, “we won’t stop you. We do not partake. We bear witness. But know that the screams you hear are not of death, they are the birth pangs of a new world.”

I backed away from those diabolic children; their faces seemed to pretend at being alive, like masks or dolls. They watched me with eyes that had all the emptiness of the ghouls outside, their lips twisted in serene smiles. The moonlight coming through the window seemed to cling to their skin, bathing them in ghostly iridescence. I closed one eye to focus on my magic, but kept the other open to watch the children. They did not move, merely stood and watched in silent malevolence. As I completed the spell and felt myself fade away, pulled through a slipstream of arcane energy toward Stormwind, I saw them turn and begin to walk out of that room. I do not know where they went, but I have never since felt peaceful beneath the bowers of Elwynn forest.