"The Undead are advancing again!"
Alicia instantly turned around to see an archer limping towards her, with the arm of an unconscious fellow huntress over her shoulder. The armour of the huntress was filled with cracks, and blood was oozing out from the holes between the metal plates. The archer's uniform was torn in several places, and scarring her slender body were injuries, one at her side bleeding so badly that the archer had to use her free hand to try to stop the bleeding. There were also cut wounds on her face, which was filled with panic and fear. Alicia recognized them to be members of a scouting team.
"The Undead… the Undead are advancing!" the archer repeated. Her voice echoed across entire outpost, attracting the attention around them. "They… they are coming this way!"
Alicia flinched at those words. Despite the fact that they had been victorious in the battle that day, her troops needed time to recuperate their strengths and lick their wounds. In fact, the outpost was more deserted than usual because most of the soldiers were at the foot of the cliff at the back of the outpost, where they let the healing magics of the Moon Wells there to tend to their injuries. If the Undead chose to attack now…
"Which is strange," the Warden thought to herself. The Undead suffered even more losses in that battle. They had just been decimated. How could they recover their numbers so quickly?
The archer suddenly slipped and fell. Alicia, throwing away the Dreadlord's bag, rushed to her and caught her frail body before it hit the floor.
"Quickly, someone take them to the Moon Wells!" Alicia ordered.
Just then, her sharp, pointed ears picked up the sound of rocks smashing onto the ground. Alicia looked up, and saw several groups of small skeletal forms circling the nearby short bulk of burning Ancient Protectors at the only opening of the dense bush surrounding the base, striking at the short trees with a frenzied speed. One of the Night Elf defense toppled and fell under the ghouls' relentless attacks. From the darkness beyond more ghouls appeared, slashing their long, sharp talons at anything Kaldorei.
"Oh no…" Alicia thought to herself. She looked around. There were only a couple of archers around: the rest were still healing themselves back with the Moon Wells. It would be almost impossible to defend the base with such little usable force. Alicia's mind instinctively thought of retreat, but her reason told her not to do so. Even if she issued an order to retreat, how far could her injured troops go? Besides, if this outpost fell, then the undead would be able to reach the heart of the Ashenvale Forest. She could never allow that, not when she was in charge. Alicia reached for her temple while her mind struggled with itself.
Meanwhile more ghouls arrived.
***
Looking down from his cliff, the glowing red eyes of a Dreadlord stared hungrily as his first wave of ghouls struck at the Night Elf outpost at the foot of the opposite cliff. His thin, leather-like skin stretched over his skull as his lips pulled into a cruel smile.
Just like the Nathrezim with the same name held captive at the outpost, Lord Algammon Venger of Northrend had the same sort of bat-like wings on his back and the two horns on his forehead, but the similarities ended there. Instead of wearing civies, this Algammon was wearing the traditional Dreadlord uniform: strong metallic armour for his upper torso, with two large flaps protecting his shoulders. Below the waist he wore shorts with two pieces of cloth covering his front and back. However, the largest difference between this Algammon and the captured one was the air they gave off in every breath, every action they took. While the Algammon in the Kaldorei base had an innocent, almost childlike manner, there was an evil aura rolling of this Algammon who was enjoying the sight of his minions tearing apart the Kaldorei outpost. There was no doubt about it: this Nathrezim was a symbol of everything of corruption and decay, everything that the one who Alicia captured was not.
Lord Algammon watched as his troops struck at the base wave after wave. The archers were fighting well, he mused, but he also knew that with most of their strongest troops healing at the back of the base, the Kaldorei army would not be as effective as back then in the morning. The evil demon smiled. All this was part of his plan. During the battle that morning, he personally had been supervising the building of another army in preparation for the final strike. When the new Undead Commander sent out his troops, he had already known that they would never come back. Their only existence was to wear down the enemy so that they would be too weak to put up much resistance against his attack on their base. With the vast backup resource from Northrend and expendable troops, the Undead were able to pull off such strategies of attrition. No resistance would be able to stand against this type of constant pounding.
Still smiling to himself, Lord Algammon turned around and disappeared amongst the trees and bushes. There was no need to help his minions. He knew they would win.
***
Algammon, foster son of Luthius, stared through his cage with his wide eyes, unable to believe what he saw.
Wave after wave those short, skeletal creatures tore down the large trees and wooden buildings with their long, sharp claws in blurring speeds. Wave after wave those eight-legged, spidery fiends spat out swarms of crawling insects, which crawled up the legs of the purple-skinned maiden warriors and bit and stung into the frail fresh beneath their armour. His sharp nose picked up the repugnant stench rolling off those large, fat horrors which cut into the lines of the women with their large cleavers held by three or more arms that looked as if sewn badly onto their bodies. Loud, flapping noises reached his pointed ears from above, and Algammon looked up, only to see the thin, decaying lizards with flapping wings soaring in the air, with cold, misty breathes coming out of their nostrils, freezing everything in their path.
Yet for some strange reason these walking corpses seemed to be ignoring Algammon. One of those shorter ones stopped at the front of the cage, its icy black holes on its skull staring at the Nathrezim. For a moment, Algammon's mind instantly concentrated on the long claws on its hands, and his muscles tensed in preparation for combat. However, much to his surprise, the zombie turned around and disappeared into the chaos of battle. Puzzled, Algammon could only turn his attention to the raging war around him.
Just like their buildings, one by one the purple skin warriors were cut down and killed, the lines of defense torn apart. It was evident that the purple-skinned warriors were losing, but the young girl in the middle of the chaos and battle, who seemed to be the leader, had not even issued an order to defend yet. Algammon saw her face twisted with concentration as she parried blows and attacked the half-rotting enemies, but it was also written with hesitance and conflict. The good Dreadlord swore to God that the girl was struggling with herself about what to do.
There could be nothing worse than a hesitant leader. That was one of the basic rules of history that Algammon learnt from his books. Whether it be a military campaign, or just a simple decision on foreign affairs, a slight hesitance would not only cost valuable time, but would very likely led to dire consequences. To Algammon, there were no greater mistakes in anything world than to be struggle with decisions. From that, Algammon concluded that this base would undoubtedly fall. Thus, he decided to make his move.
The Dreadlord bent his knees and let his entire weight fall upon his feet. His chest heaved up and down as Algammon breathed in the way that Xiburg taught him, and he could feel the warm energy of qi flowing through his body, and concentrated into his right palm. His left leg stepped forward and, with a quick turn, his unleashed the full strength of the qi at the bars. With a loud bam, the entire front part of the cage shot forwards, killing several of the rotting monsters at it slammed into the battle.
For a while Algammon just stood there stunned, for that was the first time ever he used his Iron Palm to hit anything besides water. Although he already had some idea about the power of the Iron Palm, he never expected it to be that strong. If he had hit a person with that…
It was about then the Dreadlord realized that behind him was the forest and, once he left the cage, he would be able to slip away unnoticed by the purple skins. As Algammon's hooves landed onto the hard ground, his eyes did not take off from the battlefield, which was beginning to look less like a battlefield and more like an abattoir. The female warriors were falling back, and more of them were either slashed apart by long claws or cut in half by the large cleavers. Even now, the leader, who was now pushed towards the far side of the base, had not yet issued a single order. In his heart he felt a surge of pity for them, but in he knew that even with his skills, there was no way he could save them from a horde of this size.
Or could he? As Algammon kneeled down to pick up his bag on the ground, the thought of what the Iron Palm did to the cage lingered at the back of his mind. If he could do that to something that strong, maybe he could save some people from this carnage. His reason still rejected the idea, saying that it was too dangerous and the correct thing to do was to get out of here and live to figure out how he could get back to the pocket cosmos…
Algammon blinked and shook his head. What on Earth was he doing? Now it was his turn to hesitate like that purple-skinned leader. He reminded himself, it was due to her hesitation that led her soldiers this… He looked up, and saw that she was being surrounded.
"No," Algammon thought and shook his head. He would never allow anything, especially people, to be slaughtered like that. Not when he was there.
Algammon rushed into the chaos and into the battle.
***
In the distance, Alicia fought for her dear life as the ghouls marched towards her. She swung around, her wheel of blades carving a path of destruction as it soared a deadly arc right through several necks. Her decapitated attackers fell down onto the ground as unanimated corpses.
However, wave after wave the undead pressed on, like a endless sea of horror as they slashed and cut and bit into anything living they found in their path. Long ago the maiden warrior realized that the outpost would fall, and yet it was already too late to issue an order for retreat. Anyway, she had to protect the injured ones until the Moon Wells had healed them reasonably well enough for a evacuation.
That idea soon had to be thrown away when the Warden saw, in horror, a line of her soldiers limping from the back of the outpost away from the large, skeletal Frost Wyrms behind them. This could only mean that they were attacked from both the front and behind. How could the Scourge mass to such numbers in such a short time Alicia could not fathom. Her mind was already on the verge of overloading as it struggled to decide what to do next. If she stayed here, the maiden warrior would surely perish. However, all around her were the undead. If she just Blinked anywhere, she might still found herself amongst those walking, foul-smelling corpses. That would make little difference.
Out of the corner of her eye she suddenly caught the sight of the glimmering blade of a large cleaver, and Alicia dodged just in time so that it hit the trunk behind her. She turned and sank the sharp edge of her wheel into the side of the abomination. At least twice her size, the blobbing monster turned clumsily and tried to cut the other cleaver into her shoulder. Alicia blocked the blow with her weapon, but the vibration caused her to drop her wheel.
Alicia's eyes looked in terror at the large, rusting blade aiming at her skull.
Then everything turned into a blur. One moment she was staring at the knife; the next she found herself staring at two large, bat-like wings. For a second Alicia was shocked to see that it was a Dreadlord. Then she recognized the vest and the shorts he was wearing, though she did not see his face.
It was the Dreadlord she captured.
The abomination looked surprised, and then its eyes glowed yellow with determination. Alicia thought for a moment why the cleaver had not cut the Dreadlord's skull into half. Then she realized that the Dreadlord had blocked the fist holding the knife with the back of his hand. It looked as if he was merely holding his hand up, yet the abomination struggled to push the cleaver down. As the huge monster turned to slice the Nathrezim with the other cleaver, its new opponent flipped his hand over and slammed the palm into its chest.
Alicia looked wide-eyed as the abomination was instantly thrown backwards, crashing head along into packs of ghouls, crypt fiends and other abominations. However, that did not even slow it down. The whole thing only stopped as it crashed into the foot of a tree, splashing bones, legs and gore at the roots and onto the ground. The tree wobbled, then fell crashing down onto the horde of undead, flattening everything underneath.
The Warden was completely stunned. Never had she seen anything like this, magical or not. In fact, she doubted that there was anyone in the whole of Azeroth had the power, or the skill, to kill dozens like this with one blow. She shuddered in fear at that thought. If he was on the side of the Scourge…
Then the maiden warrior saw a pack of nearby ghouls turning around, as if suddenly realizing this new and powerful threat. Like insects they crawled, closing in to the Dreadlord like they would before an attack. Yet the Nathrezim seemed to be unaware of this as he stood as still as a statue. Alicia realized that the Dreadlord was just as stunned by what he had done as she did.
The ghouls leapt at the Nathrezim, all of them held their hands back, ready to strike with the corroded yet sharp claws at the end of the rotting fingers. As if he suddenly grasped the situation, the Dreadlord ducked down and slipped underneath his attackers, making them slashing their claws at air. Alicia's eyes never caught up with what he did, but apparently he turned around and somehow thwacked them all with his four-fingered fists, sending them flying.
The Dreadlord turned around and helped her back onto her feet. "Are you all right?" he asked.
For a moment, Alicia was relieved to see that this Nathrezim, who was supposed to be her foe, was helping her. With his powers, she had no doubt that he would be a great help in the struggle against the Scourge. Yet, she knew that the undead army was too numerous and they would be eventually overcome if they should stay any longer. She looked around her, and found that all her troops were now scattered around, fleeing from the might of the undead.
"I am fine," Alicia replied as she picked up her wheel of blades. "Come on, let's go," she said, surprising herself with what maybe the first quick decision she made without hesitation.
The Dreadlord, however, only smiled. "Led the way."