~ Author's Notes ~
If you can spot any continuity issues, please let me know. I got off the outline so I have to go back and write in two scenes that were suppose to have happened by now. I learned something about writing with this little exercise: Don't pile all your characters in one place and make stuff explode. Bad, bad, bad!
Iciness toned down for people who don't like that kind of purple prose.
~*~ Chapter 53 ~*~
Two abominations entered the gate. The little Druid had seen them in the plaguelands, in the distance, as they marched up and down plague-ridden scars in the land on eternal lookout for things to play with. For a long time the Priest had avoided telling her anything about them, as they obviously were not ogre despite being that big and having more than one head(1) and more than enough arms to wield half a dozen enormous weapons. It had horrified the Druid to find out they were made out of children. Too small to be useful fighters, for the Lich King's purpose at least, they were stitched together to make abominations. As loyal to their maker as children are to a mother and as childish as the beings they are made from, they will do anything suggested to them in order to "play".
The first and biggest - four heads total and five arms – was iridescent purple. Stiff white skin stretched over various cuts of meat. Large, jagged barely held most of it together, and failed to hold a a lot. Putrefaction had burst the guts causing them to the ground between it's legs. Loud and sick squelches bubbled from under it's miss-matched feet.
The first wave of fighters, led by Salira and consisting of both Scarlet and Forsaken, attacked in unison. Despite the rigor and discipline the Scarlet soldiers posessed,and many of the Forsaken having been Scarlet themselves, they met with one mace-wielding arm and were thrown back as one. Three of the six child's faces lit up in delight.
Living bodies hit the ground and rolled, armor and cries of pain fractured the air. The Banshee Queen scowled at the recklessness. "Don't die so easily," she suggested, "Try dodging the weapons."
"New toys!" A deeply masculine voice bellowed, arms whistling while they swung overly-large weapons at anything that moved. 'Kill It' was apparently a favorite pastime of all undead children. All the mouths moved, even if they were no longer connected to vocal cords, when any one mouth spoke. Civilians screamed and ran, panicking for no reason Surnamehere could see. His attempt to coral them to a safe place failed when the abomination veered right past the warriors and headed for it's fellow children.
The horror in their eyes made Salira and the Dark Lady to join forces in the counter attack. Salira took her two handed mace to both it's knees, tripping it onto all fours as arcane arrows pinned one hand to the ground and broke the offending weapon. However the luck was not to last. When grownups failed to appeal to it's sense of play a large cat proved successful. Mr. Meows appeared suddenly, running circles around the putrid mountain's feet. Upon noticing the "kitty" it began swinging its myriad weapons at the agile jungle cat. Mr. Meows lead it quickly away from the defenders. Salira made to go after it but the Dark Lady scoffed, saying the, "Mel'ody can handle one abomination on his own." If the abomination had been a giant ball of yard the feline would not have been happier playing with it. Caspin attempted to follow, peppering it with black,singing arrows though it hardly seemed to notice. His were not nearly as strong or as physical as the Banshee Queen's
Salira turned her attention to the second abomination, who was tackling her mixed band of fighters with some joviality. Despite balking at being in charge the Druid noted the woman had a serious knack for it. After forming her troops she had switched weapons with someone, donned a shield and lead the attack. Ducking under one sweeping arm she came up to ram her sword into the side of one knee. It staggered, sliding in the mud, but stayed on it's feet. The guttural screams from the many children's faces looking down at her were ignored by men and women who refused to look up lest they recognize someone. Scarlet discipline.
Nothing much got past the main gate after the abominations. As ordered the Frostfire slowed the advancing waves as much as possible. All the better to give the defenders time to dispatch the oozing nightmares. Ice shards rained down, pinning bones and cloakes and bodies to the floor. A second wave of ice froze the rain and slicked the ground. Mindless Scourge were unintelligent and not smart enough to counter attack the AoE which decimated their advance. No Master meant no one to tell them not to kill mindlessly.
They pressed forward, towards the Frostfire's guild master, the Quel'dorie child who's ice shards gave them the most trouble. One axe barely missed her head had a particularly large piece not knocked the soldier's arm right off. Right in the thick of it a black and green bear did work. Nekov and the Commander cussed, pleaded and threatened to get her back under the relic stand. She ignored them. However, the pain was not ignorable. Without a Master to mind them they had apparently forgotten He wanted her alive. Each blow was met with a swipe of her wide paw, four inch nails shredding armor and enemies alike.
She warbled a cry of pain into the belly of the nearest enemy and ripped his guts out with her teeth. The feel of the desiccated flesh between her teeth made her to gag. The sound of High Elf chanting preluded each wave of icy shards. The ground was getting roughter and rougher with each wave of bodies being frozen into place. She kept having to climb to meet the next wave.
Nekov barely avoided getting his foot taken off by a flailing lower jaw. Cursing his lack of armor he begin to strip what bits and pieces of mail or plate he could find. Anything was better than just his soft leathers in the heat of battle. His prowess with the scythe had impressed his former commander as he took head after head after head which the ice shards failed to destroy. The commander's own two handed axe crunched over and over again, cutting threw rusted mail and cloth without much difficulty. They were dry and brittle from the long walk to Tirisfal. No doubt the fresher, stronger dead were being saved for ensuring waves.
The Quel'dorie shouted at them to move. Letting go of the pair of legs she was chewing on, the black bear bounded away quickly. Nekov and the commander followed quickly, the commander's axe still lodged in a twitching set of ribs. Just in the nick of time a wall of ice swept along the ground, freezing the mud and fuzzing the ice crystals into place. The Quel'dorie frost mage set her spell and crossed her arms, pleased with her work. The Scourge's ground troops were stalled. Temporarily.
Gargoyles and climbing things had no problem going over the walls however. Again, without the Will of their Master to coordinate their attack they chose their targets at random. Or so it appeared. Several of the winged monstrosities went strait for the white priestess upon the wall while the rest veered off and headed strait for the spellcasters. Ignoring the other undead completely they chose the living to attack instead.
Salira noticed this first, "They're attacking the living only, ignoring the Forsaken. Take advantage!" Swinging her red and gold shield up she blocked a blow from a smaller hook knife and attempted to disarm the weapon in the counterattack. Two other weapons had been disarmed and the smallest of them taken up by one of the braver civilians. A squirming, severed arm lay nearby.
The lone Scarlet archer shot a lucky bolt strait through one of the air-born Scourge's joint. Halfway threw the air the tip had burst into Holy Light. Upon piercing the creature it burned, dissolving half the wing. The vermin shrieked, dipped wildly and smash into the wall. The broken body rolled and fell to the ground. "For Loarderon!" The archer shouted. Victory cries rang out for each small victory reached as the battle waged. Two of the remaining three creatures veered off and shrieked their ghastly battle cries to initiate a counter attack upon the archer.
Serz Huzad, for his part, was fair out of luck with no demons remaining to do his bidding. Being a paltry excuse for a Warlock had always been his boon, though at a time like this his "civilian" status gave him nary an advantage. His bony hand snatched the next arrow away from the archer; soon it was suspended in the air between his palms. "Let me try something, shall we?" Concentrating like the world depended on it, he sought to infuse the arrow with the fiery magic of his warlock training. The archer stood by, ready to shoot his new and improved arrow...
… as soon as the Warlock's spell took...
Any second now.
The second mottle-bodied beast was upon them before the archer realized he wasn't getting any fel-fire arrows out of this particularly terrible warlock. In a split second Serz went from concentration to action as he grabbed the archer and yanked him out of the way. A flapping wing caught the side of the Warlock's face and sent him reeling into the mud. The claw that would have landed on the young archer's should her missed, however.
For a brief second the undead man's body lay, well, lifeless. A moment latter, feet firmly under him, flames flickering between wriggling fingers. Furious hands took hold hold of the gargoyls legs. The rabid brute realized only too late how quickly the tables had turned. Fel-flames quickly wound upward green and angry and burning with rage.
"This robe was brand new! Does no one in this Light-forsaken place appreciate a well-dressed corpse anymore? I can't be caught in wash-and-wear; Corrosa would kill me all over again!" The creature screamed in pain, flapped its wings and tried to fly away. The Warlock wound an arm around edge of the trinket stand and would not let go. The flames reached the belly and seemed to absorb into the flailing, wailing Scourged animal. "Some of us are missing parts, you know? We have to have everything custom made and there are so few tailors amongst us with an eye for anything that isn't half a century old and covered in fungus." The beast began turning red. It's eyes bulged, bloodshot and thick. The hair on it's back began smoking. It's thrashing legs looked as if they would pull the Warlock's arms off but Serz Huzad was a strong man. Stronger in body than his soul magic was. That didn't stop the creature from exploding half a second latter. Hot, steaming guts flew every direction, landing on everything and sizzling where they hit the cool ground.
"For Darrowshire! For Andorhal!"
The Dark Lady encouraged Serz with high praise, "You never fail to impress." Taking care of the third beast herself she resumed her position in the middle of the battle and directed the fighting. Her black glowing bow, so much like the Scout's blue glowing beauty, fired one after another, pinning the wall-crawling Scourge in their spots. The Frostfire took care of them by freezing and then shattering them in turn. The chunks of frozen Scourge raining down along the inside of the wall, added to the gore of the battle.
Having overtaken two-thirds of the compound the magic fire lit up sky like daylight. It would only be a matter of time before it spread to this area as well.
"We may need to evacuate," Salira was saying between bouts of blocking and charging. The loud clanging of weapons on weapons on shields on armor, the angry cries and half-mad screams ran together in a symphony that heated her battle lust. "We win or we die. There's only one gate out now and they're blocking it!" The angry souls within the fire sought revenge and hot blood. There would be no quelling it without more mages.
All around her the battle waged but the little druid headed none of it. The Commander to her left and Nekov to her right urged her to return to the safety of the relic stand. She heard it all and ignored more. Her place was not in the back. It was not her turn to be guarded, to be protected. It was her turn to fight, to shine, to prove them all wrong when they said she should have taken a different path with her Druidic teachings. She would show them that a Druid of the Wild was a guardian of the balance of nature and a preserver of the natural state of things. All life was sacred; not just the parts and pieces that are pretty. The dead things and the dying things were just as sacred as the living things. It was not in her to sit back and watch or stand aside and cast. It was not her calling. The Priest had been wrong. Her teachers had been wrong. The idol she had been gifted by that Highbourn lady was still in her dresser at home, long ago discarded as a useless thing that would not help her feral forms. The image of Elune the Restorer did her no good as a bear and so was useless.
The Razorwings skated on the ice, long ago perfecting this dance with the Frostfire. Flying over the smooth surface with such grace gave them their name. Waves of Scourge broke the rize, climbing and clamoring over frozen brethren with ghoulish intentions,. The Frostfire and Razorwings in turn froze them in place and hacked them to pieces. Wave after wave after wave. Soon the very door was blocked by the writhing bits and pieces of undead foot soldiers.
"How long do you thing that'll hold em, Ms. Nir?" Michael's wiped Shaver clean with a bit of scrap fabric pulled from a kicking severed leg. He caressed the blade like an old lover, a mind that had seen decades of undead war housed in a body that died before it's tenth year. He would never touch a real woman that way but it did not stop a matured mind from finding something else that did like his touch (2).
The Quel'dorie child, busy rotating her exhausted frostt mages, barely heard him. "First wave. Plenty more where that came from. Rest your warriors. Round two comes shortly." Not nearly as old as Michael, she nonetheless had her own understanding of battle. The fire mages took their stances and got to work lighting the mass on fire. The plague had already started to pull flesh and bones back together. The steady heat of the flames poured from both ends of the compound. The fetid air of the battle zone danced in the heat. Thirteen angry faces roared, demanding penance.
Michael glanced over at the druid. The Commander and Nekov were frustrated, scratching their heads and wondering how to unroot a druid who did not want to be moved. "That's not fair!" Nekov's complain was seconded by the Scarlet warrior by his side. Firmly hooked into the ground – rather the ground was firmly hooked into her – she stared intently at something on top of the wall. Four long legs wrapped around the top, as if someone had hooked a massive undead spider onto the outside. "Why have they stopped?" Michael asked, "If it can come over, why hasn't it?"
"It's waiting." Nekov took his scythe in his hands and held it, swinging it slightly as if testing if the tool would make it the distance to hit the legs or not. One of the Frostfire saw him and understood. Her tiny little firebolt shot forth and struck the leg. It quivered but stayed. A second set of legs appeared. Then a third. The Druid backed up. They were huge. Way bigger than any spider she had ever seen and she had seen some very, very large spiders.
Shifting into her upright form she asked, "What kind of spiders does this kingly lich posses?"
"Not spiders, girl," the commander said, "Crypt fiends. Those are defiantly crypt fiends." His voice shook slightly, as if remembering something in a nightmare. Ever so gently he touched the side of his face, rubbing at a host of unsightly scars.
Kayas had no doubt what that missing eye of his last gazed upon. "Crypt fiends are bad?"
"Yes." The Scout's arrows weren't being wasted on the legs of something that was just hanging onto the wall. He'd wait till the head or torso came over so as not to waste the magic. "I havn't seen any in Tirisfal Glades before, though there are quite a few in the Plaguelands and Quel'thalas. They can't be tamed."
You... tried to make one of those your pet? She would dearly loved to have seen that.
He glanced over and saw her expression, flushed pink in embarrassment. "They're spiders, I didn't know!" The Druid shifted back into her bear form. The Scout's voice was accusing. Surely he didn't mean to blame his lack of knowledge on her, but he defiantly blamed her people. If he had been raised with other Kaldorie he would have been trained to be a proper hunter. He would use real arrows. He would have bonded with an animal companion and be able to direct it. He would own the pet instead of … instead of whatever he and Mr. Meows.
It had occurred to the little Druid some time ago that the giant black jungle cat did not belong to the Scout. Instead it ran where it wanted and, instead of taking orders, took messages to get back to that person latter. Watching the Scout and the cat fight the abomination was chaos, organized. They didn't work together so much as compensated fluidly for whatever half-second of planning the other had undertaken before their next move. Kayas had a friend back home who had a white and black spotted feline he was closer to than his own family. The creature was his pride and companion, his heart and soul. She felt sorry for Caspin and Mr. Meows; no matter how well they fought side by side they were not fighting together. They would never get to stop compensating for not being a true bonded pair. The Scout did not understand the shame of it at least, seeming to appreciate the companionship alone. Not to mention the hundreds of pounds of angry, armored feline distracting the abomination so he could pepper it with searing black magic arrows.
Black magic arrows could only have have been a warlock's teachings.
Kayas ground her sharp teeth together and threw her anger and rage at the second wave of Scourge. Stupid warlock! Stupid idiot warlock! Stupid spell caster, magic using human idiot trying to teach a Kaldorie how to be Kaldorie! The more she though about those black magic arrows, something only an ignorant elf would have dared to learn, the more damage she wrought. The more damage she wrought the more reckless she became. The more reckless she became the more pain she faced. The more pain she endured the more her healing spell rolled and rolled and rolled, plague tainted flesh and bone knitting together as fast as the natural magic in the untainted ground could feed her.
"They're breaking through!" Salira had disarmed almost all of the abominations weapons. Half a dozen frozen and broken flying creatures lay on the ground, pulled down by the Frostfire. The wall of burning Scourge had ceased to writhe. However, something was pushing the mass of tangled body parts out of the way. Something began digging through the corpses. Salira landed the killing blow to the towering monster, finally cutting out it's rotten heart and lopping it in two. The living and dead warriors aiding the attack had already hacked off each arm in turn and blinded as many eyes as possible.
The stillness as it staggered once, twice and finally fell to the ground was almost weightless. In an instant the silence was broken by the helmed warrior's battle cry, "For Loarderon! For the Scarlet Campain! Victory, or DEATH!"
The wall of bodies crumpled, pushed aside by magic which could shape and manipulate the dead. "I shall gladdy oblige you." A long necromancer stepped through the opening. Her black robes, if such as skimpy outfit as that could be called robes, cut down to her navel in the same fashion as the traitorous priestess. It was old, shredded up past the knee from disrepair and lacking the usual ornamentation gifted to higher ranking necromancers. She may be powerful, as indicated by her larger-than-life size literally swelled with evil, but there is someone in her circle even more powerful than she. This is her chance to prove herself.
"Master wishes me to bring Him the night elf. I shall do as He commands!" Kayas, upright and attempting to heal the worst of Salira's wounds, stood side by side of the scout who was guarding the weary warriors from the last of the winged threats. They stared at her blankly. "There are two? No matter; I shall bring them both to You!"
The commander and Nekov had something to say about that. Nekov attacked from behind, the commander from the front. The pale, gray skinned woman didn't even flinch as both the panting men beat relentlessly at her invisible shadow shield. Her hollow voice bespoke excitement at doing her Master's bidding, "Master wants the one who made the dorie trees. A night elf druid to champion the Scourge. I shall deliver." A swift move of her arm sent both men over backward in a wave of shadow energy.
Kayas found it odd that this 'master' would want her alive. Did he want more trees as well. Trees who's sole purpose is to absorb the plague and turn it into holy energy, thereby destroying the plague...?
Nekov guffawed as he retrieved his weapon, "A druid would never work for the likes of the Traitor Prince!" He spat on the ground, "Arthas can look elsewhere for champions; this one belongs to the Queen of the Forsaken."
"You mean that Druid belongs to the Scarlet Campaign," the commander corrected. To the necromancer he growled, "You can have my druid when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!" The commander lobbed his two handed axe at the necromancer. It bounced off an invisible shadow shield and clattered to the bone pile.
The necromancer's gray chin tilted to look at him from under thin lashes, "You have no idea how many champions the Master has acquired by prying them from cold, dead hands." Her eyes flickered up to the seething elfin banshee, "Isn't that right, Ranger General?"
~ End Chapter ~
(1) Some aboms have one head, a few have more than one. Raid bosses tend to have multiple. These have multiple for similar reasons.
(2) Not unlike "The Doctor's Wife", complete with stitched abominations, reanimated corpses and lots of running.
