Chapter 29: Ambushed

"...and so I'll need everyone's complete cooperation," finished Lucethious, looking around at all the assembled magisters. "It is imperitive we work as a unit, for we are a strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Together we'll form a powerful backbone for the main assault."

There were murmurs of assent, and a few nodded their heads in agreement. Others merely looked bored or interested, but overall there was a fairly encouraging concensus that Lucethious Manadawn would take command of the magi. Throughout the small speech, Yulgash had skulked nearby next to a doorway with Belpep crouching semi-out of sight; ever since the repeated attacks from the Legion and Scourge, the imp had been keeping a low profile, but thus far none had attempted to attack him.

"There, that wasn't so hard now, was it?" said Yulgash with a slight smirk as the other magi returned to their tasks. Lucethious gave a small sight of relief. "Why were you so concerned about people opposing your new command, anyway? You mentioned something about personal experience...?"

Lucethious started slightly before relaxing. He took a deep breath and said, "When I told you about myself, I said I was the Noble of Northdale, correct?" Yulgash nodded, tilting his head to one side enquiringly. "But I never mentioned much about my family, did I?"

"You... said something about taking over the nobility from your parents when they deemed you worthy," Yulgash said slowly, frowning slightly as he tried to remember.

"Quite correct," confirmed the elf, nodding. "What I didn't bother mentioning was the circumstances surrounding my appointment. I... you see, I have a sister. A younger sister by the name Amelia. A human name, yes, I know. Amelia was younger than me by several decades - that's not a great deal in my people's time, of course - and was quite hot-headed. Fiery, a very fierce personality. That's not to say she was unkind, but she was always forthright about her wants and desires. I did not see her much due to my time at Dalaran, but she was my sister; I loved her dearly."

He paused, as though lost in memories, then continued, "Anyway, because I spent a great deal of time at Dalaran, Amelia was utterly convinced that she would inherit the nobility from my parents. I admit, I myself thought similarly, given I was away from Northdale for so long, but we were both wrong. My parents had informed me before I returned that I would be given the nobility, but apparently, whether purposefully or by accident, neglected to inform my sister. I returned to Manadawn Estate a full-fledged mage, and was promptly given the nobility, and Amelia... didn't like that. She was furious, she raged at my parents and myself before storming from the Estate. We never heard from her again."

Again he paused, this time to sigh heavily. Yulgash remained respectfully silent, allowing the elf some time to recollect his thoughts.

"My parents and I spent a great deal of time and money trying to locate her, to try and bring her back and talk some sense into her, but to no avail. She proved resolutely elusive. I heard all manner of rumour of her whereabouts; that she had travelled to Silvermoon and become a ranger, or that she had gone to Lordaeron and joined the court. I never believed any of them, and as far as I'm concerned, Amelia Manadawn is but a memory."

"I'm sorry," said Yulgash quickly, "I shouldn't have pried, I didn't mean-"

"No, don't be," Lucethious said heavily, "you're a good friend, Yulgash, I feel I can talk to you about this. It was before your time, anyway; probably before the time of everyone here," he added, waving his hand about the room. "But there you have it. That's my experience of taking up the mantle of leadership, and some of the hardships that it can bring."

He sighed again, but then looked up and smiled. "But enough of dwelling upon dark and gloomy memories, we have a battle to prepare for. As you yourself told me, things change and we must remain flexible to meet those changes."

Yulgash nodded, and together they joined the other magisters in their preparations.


"It's getting dark," Greshka commented.

"That could be a good thing," suggested Torgus.

"Indeed," agreed Sapph, nodding. "They may be settling down for the evening."

"Then we double our pace," Torgall said gruffly. "The sooner we find them, the better."

"Mmm... if we find them," said Greshka slyly. Torgall ignored her.

With the Skull of Gul'dan taken care of and the battle clearly left in the hands of the night elves and the Burning Legion, Torgall and his friends had quickly and quietly departed, having no desire to linger any longer. Their new course of action was to re-establish contact with Fenris, Kunasha, Meilosh and the furbolgs, and then return to the Alliance and Horde stronghold, as per the original plan.

The only difficulty, however, was actually finding them.

"We could be going in the entirely wrong direction, you know," Sapph said abruptly. "For all we know they could be over that way." She waved her hand off to the side.

"That's hardly the attitude we need right now, however," Torgall snapped, frowning at her. "I preferred your original suggestion of them not moving further away from us."

"Have it your way, then," she said with a slight grin, and fell silent. Torgall did likewise, once more descending into brooding thoughts. He had led them astray, all for nothing, and now they were all the more vulnerable for it - without the numbers of Meilosh's brethren, nor Fenris and Kunasha's powers, they would be at a significant disadvantage should they encounter a full-sized patrol of demons or undead. Granted, the others had willingly chosen to come, but it was Torgall's insistence that had led them here in the first place.

He was determined, therefore, to make sure they all made it out alive.

One odd thing he had noticed, however, was the strange absence of demons, barring those guarding the Skull of Gul'dan. They had encountered - or avoided - Scourge scouts and stragglers here and there, but the demons had seemingly vanished. Torgall could only conclude that the reinforcement tactic had proven successful, and that the siege had been broken and the demons dispersed, but somehow that didn't seem credible; they all felt a similar feeling of foreboding that told them that the worst was yet to come.

A heavy flapping of wings startled them, and they all drew their weapons, looking for the source of the noise, but it was merely a large owl disappearing into the forest canopy - or that remaining which had survived the corruption. They stood there, tensed, as though expecting an attack, but it became clear that they were quite alone as silence pressed in from all sides.

"Getting jumpy, I see," said Sapph, slinging her claymore over her back.

"You drew your weapon just as readily as the rest of us," Torgus replied, punching her playfully on the arm, though still with enough force to unbalance her given she was of a much lighter build compared to an orc.

"Only because I knew you'd need me to cover all of you if we were ambushed," she scoffed.

"Bah, you elves wouldn't know an ambush if it bit you in the-"

"Enough," Torgall interrupted sternly, "we need to find the others as swiftly as possible, and it will do us no favours to remain in one spot too long; the Scourge could lurk at any shadow. We must remain ever alert."

"Maybe it's just me, but I've not really noticed much of a Legion or Scourge presence," Sapph said nonchalantly, leaning against a tree and frowning slightly.

"Seconded," agreed Greshka.

"Thirded," Torgus said with a nod.

"I agree," said Torgall, "but we must consider that we've still seen Scourge patrols - or as close to, anyway. That alone says they're still out there, somewhere. And the Legion, too; we all saw how many there were at the Skull, so surely there are yet others. We cannot afford to be complacent."

"I know," Sapph said dismissively, "but all the same, you can't deny-"

She fell silent mid-sentence, and Torgall immediately felt the usual sense of apprehension that he had come to assosciate with her and Greshka's silences. In this case, however, her orcish counterpart apparently could not see what she could, and was staring about in confusion. Sapph, meanwhile, had seemingly forgotten completely about their presence, instead reaching slowly for her claymore.

In one fluid movement, she had brought it slashing through the air, the runes flaring brightly. There was a rush of wind, sounding almost like a furious hiss, and the air before them suddenly darkened into a vaguely humanoid shape with a pair of glowing yellow eyes; it had long arms and spikes jutting from the shoulders, though from the waist downward it trailed away into shapeless smoke. The shadowy spirit abruptly coalesced into a ball of solid darkness, dropping to the ground with a surprisingly loud thud.

"A shade," Sapph said, her eyes conveying a sense of urgency, "invisbible spies and scouts of the Scourge. They know we-"

Again, she cut herself short, this time to roll backwards; instinctively, they all did likewise. It was in that moment that the ground buckled and heaved, as though a monstrous creature was burrowing through it. The assumption was half-right - rotting arms and heads erupted from the dessicated earth, pale-purple skinned with wispy hair ranging from green to blue to violet. They all gave cries of shock as reanimated night elves, jaws gaping and hands groping mindlessly, clambered from the earth.

"Torgus, break left!" Torgall barked, "Sapph, Greshka, cut your way through!"

They did as he ordered; Torgus spun to his left, his mace crashing into several corpses, crushing them utterly. Sapph and Greshka drew their blades, hacking a path through the fetid corpses. Torgall did likewise, unslinging his axe from his back and cleaving several of the reanimated bodies in twain, their lifeless husks falling silently to the ground.

However, this was no small patrol of Scourge; there were scores of undead night elves lumbering towards them from all sides, and for every one they cut down, another three rose up from the ground to replace them. Some still carried the tri-blades that the warrior women wielded, others had bows dangling from one arm. Despite these weapons, the mindless corpses simply attempted to bludgeon the orcs and their elven ally to death with their own rotting hands.

"We need to clear a path!" Torgus grunted, splattering oozing ichor everywhere as he brought his maul crushing down onto the head of one zombie. "They'll have us completely surrounded if we don't move!"

Torgall gave a monosyllabic reply of confirmation, unable to spare much breath beyond that, instead expending all his energy trying to keep the undead night elves from overwhelming him. He swung his axe in a huge arc, bisecting three elves with the one swing, but he barely had a chance to catch his breath when another five were upon him!

"There's... too... many!" Greshka cried, whirling her arms like propellors and mangling several of the corpses; she ignored the splatter of foul-smelling ichor, instead far more concerned about simply beating them back. Sapph, on the other hand, was spinning madly, a whirlwind of metal and decaying flesh. With each zombie she felled, the runes on her claymore glowed brighter and brighter.

"That way!" Torgall managed to gasp, at last spotting a break in the tide of zombies. Immediately they moved towards it, but as though commanded from an unseen force, the zombies surged together, starting to block off the gap.

"How do you feel... about a detonation?" shouted Sapph over the groans of the zombies, the clangs and thuds of metal and the squelching of dismembered body parts.

"Deton- what?" Torgall shouted back, bewildered.

"Just- just brace yourselves!" she cried. Torgall spun about, beginning to ask what she was about to do, but already she was lifting her claymore; she plunged it, point first, into the earth. The runes suddenly radiated a blinding blue glow, and Torgall dropped himself to the ground, Greshka and Torgus doing likewise.

Not a moment too soon.

A shattering shockwave erupted from the claymore, a blue-white explosion of pure energy that shredded and ravaged the already mutilated corpses, sending severed limbs and heads flying everywhere. Torgall wrinkled his nose slightly as ichor splattered them all, veritably drenching them in the foul-smelling liquid. As the energy in the air subsided, he straightened up cautiously, surveying the carnage.

Sapph was panting and leaning on her claymore, which was still embedded in the ground. The runes had faded, becoming simple engravings once more. He looked about at the startling damage her attack had wrought; dismembered body parts littered the small clearing, along with puddles of the putrid ichor. He looked down, shaking his head at the stains on his leather armour, as Sapph wrenched her blade free from the earth.

"How... how did you-?" Greshka asked weakly, but Sapph waved her to be silent.

"No time, run, just run!" she gasped, still catching her breath. Torgall raised an eyebrow but nodded in confirmation; they plunged into the undergrowth once more, running as fast as they could away from the overwhelming battle. They had barely travelled a hundred yards, however, when a shuddering brought them to the halt. At first, they thought yet another wave of zombies was going to emerge from beneath them, but they were wrong - rather, a tree was suddenly ripped free from the earth, to reveal an abomination. Torgus cursed colourfully.

"It's like sidestepping a pothole and falling off a bridge, isn't it?" Greshka muttered through gritted teeth; Torgall snorted slightly despite himself. If only to make matters worse, a number of skeletal warriors shuffled out from behind the stitched behemoth, their bones clattering as they raised their swords and shields in preparation to attack.

"Don't suppose you can pull that detonation... thing?" Torgall asked Sapph, though without any real conviction. Unsurprisingly, she shook her head.

"The runes need time to charge, and they charge when the blade is in use," she explained, "that's the cut-down explanation, anyway. I'll tell you more when we get out of this... if we get out of it, anyway."

"Ever the optimist," he remarked, managing to smile in spite of the situation. He was unable to comment further as the Scourge chose that moment to attack. The group's first action was to spread slightly apart, so as not to be barreled over by the abomination. Torgall slammed his axe into the shield of one skeleton, burying the axehead into the metal plate before wrenching it loose, bone arm and all. The skeleton barely gave the loss a half glance before raising its sword, but Torgall struck the skull clean from the reanimated ribs before it had a chance to attack.

Torgus, meanwhile, was spinning wildly, sending bones flying with tremendous force. The attack had a compounding effect - the bones became veritable projectiles, striking other skeletons and shattering them in turn. Sapph and Greshka, by contrast, pranced gracefully around the edge of the battle, nocking and firing with their unerring accuracy, arrows piercing clean through the skulls of the brittle warriors, whereupon they would collapse into piles of bones.

However, the biggest threat still remained - the abomination kept them moving at all times, dodging its clumsy blows or simply attempting to avoid being crushed under its monolithic weight. Worse still, despite their best efforts, the skeletons continued to come at them, whether raising from the earth beneath them or melting forth from the shadows.

And then several things happened at once.

First, snaking roots emerged from the earth, winding their way around several of the skeletons nearest them before pulling the bones out from underneath them, allowing their upper halves to fall to the ground with a clatter. At the same time, several bolts of lightning arced out from the trees, charring a number of the bone warriors and reducing them to charred cinders. During these displays of nature magic, the earth shook and trembled, toppling the unwieldy abomination and causing some of the skeletons to stumble, yet leaving Torgall, Torgus, Greshka and Sapph unharmed; and lastly, a pack of furbolgs, led by none other than Meilosh, burst from the undergrowth, followed closely by Fenris and Kunasha.

With the sudden arrival of these new combatants, the Scourge found themselves beset from all sides, and were quickly pushed on the defensive. The huge stone maces wielded by Meilosh and his brethren crushed the brittle skeletons with ease, grinding the yellowing bones to dust in a single swing. While the Timbermaw set about clearing the skeletal warriors, Fenris and Kunasha converged on the abomination alongside Torgall and his companions.

The lumbering Scourge hulk attempted to rise, but Kunasha shouted words of praise to the Earthmother, and yet more roots burst forth, shackling the thick limbs to the ground. With a mighty effort, it managed to tear its arms free, but not before Torgall and Torgus began hacking and crushing it, Sapph and Greshka piercing it with arrows from afar. Fenris called forth the Spirit of Fire to sear it with lightning, charring the rotted flesh. The abomination gave an awkward swing with one of its cleavers, as though trying to swat one of the battlers aside, but it was easily avoided.

It came to the point where, with a fierce cry of victory, Sapph triumphantly lifted her blade as she had before, plunging it into the abomination's open mouth. The runes lit up for the third time in barely fifteen minutes, though the ensuing blast was far smaller than earlier - but enough to rupture the abomination's head entirely, at which point it finally lay still.

"Do I even want to ask how you found us?" Torgall shouted as he slammed his arm into a skeleton, knocking it apart in a clatter of bones.

"Fight now, explain later!" grunted Fenris, striking a skeleton with his totem with the force of a cannon, causing the bones to explode outwards forcefully.

"Fair enough!" Torgall replied, kicking out the legs from under a skeleton. However, as it was, there was not a great deal of fighting left to do; with the abomination gone and the arrival of their allies, it was not long before they had overwhelmed the Scourge ambush, reducing it to several large piles of bones and an enormous, fetid corpse.

"So," said Torgus, inspecting a skull closely before tossing it aside casually, "exactly how did you know-?"

"The animals of the land prove to be fruitful allies," said Kunasha with a smile, extending her arm - from the trees, an enormous owl emerged and settled down gracefully onto it. The same owl they had seen earlier.

"You mean to tell us that that vulture told you where to find us?" Sapph asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow at the avian.

"An owl," corrected Fenris, "and yes, he told us where you were. We weren't expecting you to be in battle though; it seems we arrived just in time."

"You can say that again," said Greshka, "you didn't even see the number of zombies we had to fight our way through... would have been overwhelmed, too, if she-" She jerked her head in Sapph's direction, "-hadn't pulled some detonation explosion bruahaha."

"Detonation explosion what?" Meilosh repeated blankly.

"Well, it's just a detonation, really," Sapph interjected, "all I did was release the stored energy within my runes... to an... explosive effect," she added with a smirk.

"We can show you the aftermath, if you like," Torgall suggested snidely.

"That won't be necessarily," said Fenris graciously, "I think the bigger matter of import is determining how we explain our absence and newfound allies to the Horde and Alliance."

Silence greeted these words as they all looked at each other and shrugged.

"No one?" Fenris sighed, covering his face with his paw.

"I was... thinking we could cross that bridge when we get there," Torgall suggested half-heartedly. Fenris sighed a second time and shook his head.

"Well, your abrupt decisions to rescue Torgus and then to attempt to retrieve the Skull of Gul'dan didn't end in failure or death, so perhaps this spur-of-the-moment plan might succeed as well... if you can call not doing anything a plan," Fenris said exasperatedly. Torgall grinned.

"Third time lucky, then?" he said, "Let's just do it; we'll camp here for a few hours, recuperate, and then see what fate has in store for us."