Warcraft: Exile

Chapter 6: Origin of an Enemy

They were banished. Hurled from their universe down to the temporal plane, the universe of mortals, and they were afraid. Afraid of aging as time passed, of creatures of muscle and leaves of green they could not feed on, of the soil and minerals they needed for sustenance unable to regrow and replenish itself.

At first glance they could be taken for a race of stocky, flesh bound little men on a sphere far off in the plane's black space. But where the dwarves of Azeroth were sinew and bone, these were granite, metal and crystal. Indeed logic would insist they be immobile, devoid of consciousness, but yet they moved, thought and felt. Accustomed to swimming through a sea of dirt and rock that cradled them their whole lives; these beings felt terror at leagues of open space, and a blue roof that none of them could catch induced panic.

They fled beneath. Finding caves in hills and mountains they took shelter from the agoraphobic surface world in tunnels made from flowing lava or tunnelling animals. Held in placed by terror, they seemed doomed to cower- at least in the beginning.

* * * Varien woke up on his bed, still wearing his armour. Having attacked the Shale Dwarves in their domain and rushing to return home to see Kurdan's state; he had collapsed from fatigue and been dragged to his chambers. He pushed himself to his feet and made for the exit.

There Kurdan was, talking to several of those who had fallen to the strange weapons of the Shale Dwarves. They looked vibrant, animated; and Varien could see they cast short shadows.

Suddenly he noticed other things. Singing could be heard over the hammers of the workshop. Labourers carrying sunbat guano laughed and joked among themselves, even the sun seemed to shine brighter.

The Prince was so caught up in the moment he failed to notice the horse until it almost breathed down his neck. Rushing to the side, he only half- heard the knight's apology, fixated on the winged reptile perched on the knight's arm. The knight had trained the beast the way he would have a falcon back home. The knight saluted and rode back to several of his peers who trained several reptiles of their own.

Varien stared at the 'falconers', then shook his head. At a loss for what he should do, the Prince finally decided to talk to Archmage Rogket.

* * *

Hidden from the frightening open space, they scurried through the caverns, avoiding the beasts or attacking them out of fear and anger. The touch of stonewall all around gave them scant comfort; the absence of light mercifully hid the sights of the life that grew here from them. Smelling the earth, they found deposits of clay, veins of metal and crystals. Iron, gold, rubies, they glutted themselves on the intoxicating minerals.

Their joy was short lived. Whereas in the Elemental plane of stone the soil and rock mingled and reformed from each other, here once consumed it was gone forever and they were forced to follow the veins to find further sustenance. But worse, they found competitors. Fleshlings, beings who couldn't possibly consume the minerals and yet sought to steal the iron from their mouths. When they tried to reason with the fleshlings, they were met with violence.

After several foraging attempts, most resulting in losses more Fleshling warriors came to guard the veins. The banished changed their tactics, watching the paths fleshlings took above ground; they raided the caravans taking as much as they could carry and still be able to reach their caverns in time.

It was only a matter of time before the fleshlings managed to cut off the banished from their lair. Outnumbered they fled through the caverns and ultimately became trapped in a chamber where a flat, regularly shaped pillar rested in the centre. Expecting the fleshlings to move in and slaughter them all the banished were surprised to find their enemies came no further. The faces of the closest fleshlings showed agitation, until the point where all of them abruptly turned and scurried off.

The banished regarded the stone pillar; aside from them it was all that stood in the chamber. One mustered the courage to touch it; on contact with the pillar visions flooded his mind along with a voice, angry and terrible. Something dwelt within the pillar, trapped they imagined, but its presence held the fleshlings at bay, the banished resolved to take shelter within the pillar's aura.

* * *

No matter how many times Rogket had tried to explain it to him, Varien could never see how the arcane sanctum took up more space inside than out. Dozens of rooms within a structure barely larger than a guard tower, frankly it made him nervous. Yet he still entered, a novice at the door directed him to the laboratory the Archmage occupied. Down the corridor, Varien thought he heard one of the smiths from the workshop. Opening the door the voice came from, he saw the engineer talking to an adept, who pointed at several calculations chalked on a stone board and a metal ingot on a nearby table.

"We can refine this metal from clay which is readily available," the adept explained, "It's not as hard as steel, but much more abundant and more importantly, much lighter. A cannon shell made from it might even be able to reach flying targets."

The dwarf nodded, "We would have to make sure the casing is not too soft or the shell might explode inside the cannon. Still the advantage of cannon towers taking down any flyers the Orcs might have," Varien closed the door and kept walking, the engineer and adept never noticed him.

His curiosity got the better of him a second time; peering into another laboratory he saw the skeleton or the Eredar demon he had slain underground. The lower leg he had cut off had been placed within a giant pestle surrounded by several magi, who seemed to be concentrating on the equally large mortar that ground the bones without any hands or visible devices moving it.

Varien wasn't sure he wanted to know what uses demon bone powder had, he turned away and finally saw the laboratory he had been directed to. Looking inside, he saw Rogket and three masters surrounding a table holding the body of a Shale Dwarf. The top of the creature's skull had been sawed off, its left arm had been cut open and 'flesh' peeled back to the 'bone'. Several dishes also lay on the table, one held what looked like a tongue, in the other presumably the creature's brain. Rogket spoke out loud to no one it seemed, the clockwork bird hovering over his shoulder held a pen in one talon and scribed what he said onto hemp paper. Varien raised his hand to knock, the door swung inward before his knuckles touched it. Neither the Archmage or his assistants seemed surprised by his presence; Rogket waved him forward.

Varien tentatively approached the table, Rogket started to address him, "This is the one of the strangest creatures I have had the chance to study," the dwelf motioned the prince to his side, "The skin is a peel of stone, the skeleton it seems is mostly basalt reinforced with lesser amounts of granite," Rogket handed Varien a dish with copper wires in it, "That dish holds several strands of its hair.

"The blood had dried before the body was brought here, but enough residue remained for me to find copper where in a 'normal' dwarf, human or Orc there would be iron. The brain is a mishmash of various minerals, mostly silicon, something that makes a large part of sand."

Directing the Prince to put down the dish of hair, Rogket passed the Prince a monocle and pointed to the flesh of the exposed arm. Looking through the monocle it magnified the flesh of the arm to individual 'cells'.

Rogket spoke again, "As you can see they look like normal muscle fibres at first, but examine them a bit longer and they turn out to be-"

"Crystals!" Varien locked eyes with Rogket, "How could rigid crystals contract or expand like muscle?"

"I haven't learned that yet, and we will likely have to capture and study a live specimen if we are to at all." Rogket turned to another mage, "Freeze him for now, there are some questions I must ask the Prince before we study the internal organs."

Rogket pulled Varien aside; the mechanical owl flittered off and returned with a thick book opened to blank pages in one talon, and a piece of charcoal in the other. Rogket asked Varien to sketch the pillar that the hive was centred around.

Taking the charcoal Varien drew a rectangle standing on the shorter side and blacked in the shape, "That's how it looked when I saw it in my vision, when I saw it in person it looked like Kurdan and some or our people were trying to push their way out of it. Kurdan and the others-"

Rogket held up a hand, "They're fine. Our clerics examined them extensively and Kurdan grumbled and complained the whole time."

Varien relaxed, Kurdan sounded his normal self at least. Rogket added that the people 'claimed' by the Shale Dwarves remembered little other than feeling surrounded by darkness. He than told the Prince he suspected the demon was somehow contained within the pillar. Varien's brow furrowed, "Imprisoned?"

"I don't think so. I couldn't think of a reason why anything that could imprison a demon couldn't destroy it outright, which would probably be the wiser choice.

"I contacted the Elemental lord for questions. He refused to go into reasons for why he banished them from his plane, he did tell me that he peers in on them occasionally; they found the pillar and others like it on this planet and they seemed to them beings native to this world as 'offerings'."

"There are other sleeping demons on this world?"

"Many, possibly a thousand or more. And the Shale Dwarves have built their communities around them, pray to them."

"A thousand or more." Varien had an epiphany, "They're not prisoners- they're reserves! Demon warriors, sent to this world and kept on stand-by until they're wanted again."

"If that's true, than out there is a larger demon army, Azeroth could be in danger! We have to destroy these reserves before they can be recalled."

"That won't be easy, with so many having cities of them-" Varien pointed to the specimen, "Willing to protect their sleeping idols."

* * *

Making their home around the pillar, the banished renewed their raids; always retreating to the safety of the cave the Fleshlings feared to enter. But the pillar was more than repellent; when the banished slept they heard the dreams of the creature inside and it taught them much, of magic and knowledge of the stars, its language and terrible runes. Its presence comforted them, something immovable, stolid in a strange purgatory.

The war the banished fought with the fleshlings escalated until one fateful day. The Fleshlings' shah had come to personally challenge the banished and led the guard of the largest gold shipment the fleshlings had plundered in years. When the banished sprang their ambush he was waiting. Though weaker and softer, the Fleshlings had greater numbers and the Shah was a seasoned strategist. Within in moments more than half the banished in the attack fell and the rest routed, but as they started to flee one loosed a discus that arced through the air and struck the Shah dead.

This final act angered the Fleshlings so that they resolved to hunt down and kill the banished no matter where they hid. Workers and soldiers, women and adolescents took up whatever weapons were available.

The banished returned to their cave to see the pillar vandalized. One of them, having heard instructions from the entity in the pillar chipped pieces off its surface, each shaped like the hilt of a bladeless sword. He was scolded but convinced the others to take these fragments. When held in their hands, the stones extended a blade that appeared made from black, oily smoke.

Emboldened by the peculiar weapons, the banished took the fight to the fleshling army. Where the banished struck the meat creatures' bodies remained unmarked but they dropped their own weapons, did not speak or move, seemed oblivious to their surroundings and themselves. The banished struck down all the meat creatures with these weapons, and though bewildered by the results were still convinced the entity in the pillar had helped them, they took the arms the fleshlings dropped and returned to their cave- unprepared for the sight of their enemies' likenesses trapped in the pillar.

Several of the banished kept watch on the zombie fleshlings, while the rest watched the pillar to see what would happen now. As the night went on, the effigies of the meat creatures were absorbed back into the pillar one by one. When the last was withdrawn and consumed the pillar regenerated the pieces that had been chipped off, then streams of magma burst into the tunnel leading to the cave, immolating the Meat creature zombies, heat and air pressure baking bones to charcoal and then into pure diamond- the richest delicacy the banished could ever hope for.

This final act proved to the banished they were blessed, a great power that would protect and provide for them. And they would help it get the strength to do so by stealing the minds of the otherwise worthless fleshlings.