Chapter 23

Sel'uen too got in a nap. When she awoke she found that nothing had changed. She took a tour of the defenses and resisted the urge to visit either Aethellion or the Shan'do on the roof. Some were catching naps as she had.

It was enough to make her wonder if they had somehow misinterpreted. If the Legion hadn't come yet, would it come at all? That hope was small and didn't stand up to even a passing examination. It was possible, though, that the Legion might wait them out. In fact, that might have been the most intelligent route, if she was thinking strategically. The blood elves might have been able to feed off the manaforge's fruits, but what about food and water? Again she wondered about the ability of magic to sate them. But surely the Legion would benefit from forcing their enemies to wait, twiddle their thumbs and wonder when doom was coming. They might even wait long enough to see if their quarry would consider whether or not they had been forgotten and would try and make a break through the storm or wait for the storm itself to pass.

But Sel'uen doubted that the Legion would let the storm pass. It provided them everything from cover to a psychological edge. The Legion might wait days, maybe even a week, depending on the size and fury of the storm. Drex had said it was a big one, maybe even the biggest he'd ever seen. The Legion had time to let them stew in its eye.

But the Burning Legion is not know for its patience.

The lookouts started calling sightings at around the same time the mages started muttering and sharing strange signs and gestures with one another. At first, the lookouts couldn't get much more than a vague shape out of the storm. Sel'uen took to the stairs to get to Karielle and her mages.

"What is it?" she asked when she reached them.

They barely glanced at her. Aethellion ignored her but Karielle said, "They're coming. And there are lots of them."

"How do you know? How many of them are there?"

Karielle's signature grin. "We can sense them, kaldorei. Same as you can smell a rotten corpse from a distance. As for how many… Well." She glanced at the other mages. A couple nodded. "I think there's enough."

Over the next hour, lookouts came in and out of their barricades, giving reports. A sort of command had formed on the second level, with Karielle, her mages, the Mechanician, Renarion and Sel'uen, who couldn't stay away, in attendance. The mages scried details out of the vague reports of the lookouts.

They pieced together that the demons had surrounded the complex just outside the barriers that kept the storm out. Sel'uen asked why the demons weren't being effected by the storm. Aethellion spoke this time. He chewed her out, saying that not only were demons more resilient than elves, but that they had their own magic-users who were perfectly capable of constructing much the same anti-storm barriers as they were, if not better.

"Well, if their magic-users are protecting them, then we could take them out," Sel'uen said. "Then their forces would have to deal with the storm."

"If you want to go out there and hunt them, be my guest," Aethellion said. "Besides, they'll just send more magic-users to replace them."

"By the gods, both of you shut up," Karielle snapped when Sel'uen started to counter. "It's a bad idea Sel'uen. We don't have the resources to go after their mages."

The demons continued reinforcing every point around the manaforge's barrier until, from from everyone's reports, it seemed to Sel'uen that the demons had surrounded them just by numbers alone, never-mind choke-points. When the numbers started to get so high that it was no longer meaningful except to discourage themselves, they started talking about demon types.

Sel'uen was a little unnerved at how familiar the blood elves were with demon-kind. They described the types of demons, their abilities and their weaknesses, with great detail.

Apparently, something called a fel guard was the average soldier-type for a Legion force. Karielle gave her an average height and build of the creature and Sel'uen felt weak in the knees. She imagined two Brims stacked on top of each other, well armed and armored.

That was an average demon?

A few of the mages stepped aside to scry with more intensity. Apparently, they weren't the only ones scouting out the opponent. Karielle wanted them to stay hidden as long as possible. When the mages came back, they looked ashen.

"What happened?" Karielle demanded.

"They have a nathrezim."

The color drained right out of Karielle's face. "What? Dreadlords don't command armies."

"I don't think it is. I think it might just be here to watch. We were trying to find out what was scrying on us and caught a glimpse of it, before…" The mage made a helpless gesture. "I think it wanted us to see it. Then it shut us out."

"What's a nathrezim?" Sel'uen asked. She felt it safe to ask. Renarion and a couple other mages looked baffled as well.

"Puppet masters," Karielle muttered. "Sorcerers with powers we don't fully understand." Sel'uen could tell she was making an effort to not look shaken. She waved it off. "If it's not going to fight then fuck it. Did you see anything else before it threw you out?"

The mage shrugged. "Some shivarra. Doomguards. Mostly felguards. And something else. Something really big."

"Big like what?" Karielle demanded.

"I don't know. Like I said, I think that nathrezim only let us see what it wanted us to see. I think—"

They were interrupted by the sound of panic running through the barricades on the first level. A lookout sprinted up the stairs, spreading the bad news like plague. He was pointing frantically outside. "The barriers!" he cried. "The storm!"

Eyes turned outside. They still didn't have a physical sighting of demons yet, but the landscape looked different.

Then Sel'uen realized what was happening. The landscape was smaller than it had been before. And it was growing smaller still.

The storm was closing in.

"Shit," Karielle whispered. Without a word to the council, she pulled her mages over and started speaking in rapid-fire Thalassian. They gathered together and started casting.

Sel'uen looked to the Mechanician. "How are they doing that?" she asked.

His eyes were fixed outside. The barrier was fast approaching. "The barrier is static," he explained. "It's run on energy gathered by the forge. We have a few mages check on it every few weeks." He looked grim. "They're undoing the spell. They're going to let the storm clobber us."

Smart. Then she realized it was even smarter than that. The barrier continued advancing until it had swallowed other structures on the grounds. The sound of explosions and howls filled the air.

So much for Karielle's traps.

Cries of terror and despair filled the air from below. The storm got to their very doorstep, and the sound of its screaming wind tearing at the outside of the building filled the air.

Then, minutely, the storm backed up. A ragged cheer went up. The storm wavered, went back a bit, then retreated a few feet to stop in place, yards from the front door. It had been like watching a tug-of-war. It seemed to be over, but when she looked over at the blood elven magi, Sel'uen saw they were still locked in spellcasting.

Sel'uen shared a look with Renarion and could tell he was thinking the same thing. Even the Mechanician's grim expression hardened.

The Legion had occupied their magi. They were going to have to fight blind. And they were going to have to do it without arcane magic, of which they had almost bottomless reserves. All of it now useless.

She found herself glaring up the stairs. Where was the Shan'do? Couldn't he help with the storm? Hadn't that been what he was doing?

"I'm going up to see him," she growled, not even really realizing she had said it out loud.

Renarion stood in her way. "We need you here," he said. "Our powers are that much more important without them," he indicated to the magi. "You—"

"What is he even doing up there?" she yelled at him. "He said he would control the storm! He's giving up Renarion! You saw it! If we can't get him to fight—"

Her voice was drowned by a deafening squeal. She clutched her ears and Renarion did the same. She looked around blearily, then caught sight of the main doors.

They were bending. They were being forced inwards by some irresistible force. The blood elves below started shouting again. The doors were being bent on their hinges.

It was then that it became real to Sel'uen. Even before she saw a single demon, before she saw her first friend die, the reality of where she was and what was about to happen entered her heart.

Doors the size of trees, made of adamantium, bent forward like putty in the hands of some titanic child. The hundreds of horror stories she'd heard about the War of the Ancients, about the atrocities of the Third War, about the monsters she'd discovered as her childhood fled from her and the world ran to greet her with a maniacal, razor-blade handshake; she remembered all the stories and survivor accounts with impossible detail and clarity.

The doors buckled, leaned back like an acrobat and collapsed. A flood of grey iron and metallic red gushed into the antechamber.

"Come on!" Renarion roared, and he took off at a run down the stairs. Sel'uen, somehow, followed him, even though her limbs had been flooded with a cold numbness and her stomach had plunged sinking, sinking down to her nether parts.

How could she not join the horror? Death had come to her doorstep. To ignore it would be to invite something far worse.