Timeskip: The Second War

[moonshadows]

As the warlock’s fingertips dug into my face, it occurred to me that I had been in worse situations, but not many.

Okay, only one.

Sitting on the back of the Bronze dragon Soridormi while she flew over the terrifying whirlpool the Well had become, the whisperings of mad gods scrabbling at my mind while I threaded the combined power of every dragon alive through the matrix of the spell that had turned the Well into a funnel through which the entire Burning Legion was pouring, with only seconds to find a way to shut the whole thing down and save my world, was worse. No refuge in Solaria there to insulate me from the cold anger of the druid I had once shared a womb with, no; the sheer magnitude of the magic surrounding me had caused my second form to flicker and fade out like a dying hope long before the great dragons had landed and offered to safeguard us. In my first skin, then, I’d made my father proud and found a way to flip the polarity of a key portion of that spell, a monster so complex it took a dozen Highborne to maintain and powered straight from the Well itself. With wind in my beard I’d watched as the summoning spell reversed, sucking back every demon within a broad radius or with an active tie to the Well. And when Soridormi said, “The Bronze Dragonflight know what you plan, and it is as it should be,” it was Illidan that she had addressed, not Solaria.

When Malfurion had stormed up with his posse and his arrogance, the new Well not yet complete but its budding power still more than enough to keep me in my first skin, it was an annoyance to be interrupted – although not entirely unexpected. Father was the one holding the vials, and the druid who called himself my brother never thought to search him, so I knew that whatever happened to me would only be an inconvenience. Nothing more than that, although centuries isolated in an underground cell did stretch the definition of the word. Once I’d escaped it was easy enough to return to what remained of my family and my people, and the discovery of a Quel’Serrar in the manse we’d claimed for our own had seemed a reward for my long patience.

My fingers tightened around Quel’Serrar’s hilt, the warlock’s other hand digging into my wrist. I wouldn’t be able to maintain this stalemate – my hands around his throat and my sword, his on my face and holding my blade away – for long; he was stronger than he should have been. I slammed his head back against the stone wall of the desecrated temple, but his grip never weakened. Then the energy – the dark, greasy energy a magnitude worse than mere demonic – started pouring into me from the orc’s right hand, the one digging into my face. My second skin was ripped away, my body changing as I became Illidan once more. In that instant, when my arm bulked beneath my opponent’s unsuspecting fingers, I twisted my wrist and took the warlock’s arm off just above the elbow. He howled in fury, hot blood burning me where it pumped from his wound, and my eyes were drawn to the deep, deep scratch on his cheek.

Suddenly, I remembered that infuriating Guardian woman and her assumption that she had killed the lord of the Burning Legion. No…Sargeras was not dead, merely biding his time, and he had found an unwitting, unwilling vessel for a portion of his might. Now, knowing only that he was dying, the warlock was attempting to save himself by pouring that eroding force into me, instead. I had to end this, I could feel it eating away at me, burning acid and poison etching a shape into my body, my mind.

Quel’Serrar stabbed in low; the warlock’s heart shuddered and was still. The hand dropped from my face, that terrifying shard of power still lodged in his cheek.

I cut off his head.

My blood boiled within me; I had to get out of here, had to get back to my forces where the priests could flush as much of this as was possible out of me. It wasn’t easy to remember the way out with my head pounding and my temples burning. I couldn’t concentrate enough to try to siphon it away, back into its failed vessel. All I could do was put one numb foot before the other until I stumbled out into light and the welcome worry in several voices as they called my names. The warlock’s head dangled from my left hand, Quel’Serrar from my right, and both were locked so tightly into fists that I could feel my nails dig into my flesh. The priests flocked around me, pure light pouring in, cleansing, pushing, flushing the demonic away. I channeled it back into the skull of the warlock. Then it was done, but the pain – the pain remained. They backed away as I thrashed and screamed, the evil already burned into my body having its way with me.

When it was done, I scrabbled to my new hooves, head and sword still locked into hands whose fingers now bore talons. I didn’t want to think about why my head felt so awkward, or the new weight from my shoulderblades counterbalancing my posture. I faced the orcs who, although all herded together by my forces, had separated into a larger and smaller group. Knowledge flashed behind my eyes – Stormreaver, Shadowmoon, where was Twilight’s Hammer? Black Tooth Grin, Rend and Maim.

Them, I ignored. For the moment, I faced the remains of Gul’dan’s forces and in their own harsh tongue, demanded to know what he’d come here for. Why he had raised the sunken ruins of Suramar, why he had sought the casket of a sleeping god. They didn’t know, only that he had promised them power.

Figured.

“You, Rend. You, Maim.” The two so named stepped forward, scowling and leering at the same time. “Doomhammer sent you after this piece of filth.” I gestured with Gul’dan’s severed head. “Why?”

“For honor,” Rend said slyly.

“He would lose his war against our people just to hunt down and kill this one for honor?”

“He betrayed the Horde,” spat Maim.

Suddenly, I understood why Rend was so pleased by this. Doomhammer had doomed the Horde with this, giving the brothers a chance to take back what had belonged to their father. I vowed that would never happen.

“Twilight’s Hammer,” I demanded to the combined orcish prisoners. “Cho’gall. Where did they go?”

“Fled,” one of the lesser warlocks spat.

“Some of their people fled,” I told my forces in our own language. “We’ll deal with them later. The leader of the orcs sent this group-” I gestured with Quel’Serrar to the Black Tooth Grin clan, “-to hunt down those-” gestured with the head at the remnants of the forces it had once commanded, “because they betrayed their fellows. There’s more to this than mindless destruction, and we need to find out what.”

“What shall we do with them, Lord Illidan?”

I debated it. Then I gestured the traitors away from the Black Tooth Grin. “Kill the smaller group,” I commanded. “Down to the last man. They are vipers we cannot allow to live. Then kill the two in front, the leaders of the larger group.”

Rend and Maim watched with bloody glee as the Stormreaver and Shadowmoon clans were decimated from a distance by a rain of arrows. They weren’t nearly so cheerful when the arrows pierced their own hearts, and the expressions on their dead faces were anger and confusion.

“Round the rest up. Disarm them, strip their armor. Tie them wrist and ankle. We’ll take them back with us.”

 

The Lion of Stormwind, last of the Arathi Kings, nodded grimly when I told him what had transpired since I left to chase down the orcs who had broken away from the main force surrounding Lordaeron. My second skin had been warped by the changes made to my first body; Solaria Sunstrider still had fingernails and teeth, but dainty horns curled up from my temples and my feet were a mere memory. Most disconcerting were the wings, but I remembered a promise I once made to my brother and vowed that I would learn to use them. Until that time, however, it was a simple enough thing to tuck them away, out of sight and out of the world.

“I’d like to capture their leader alive,” I told Anduin Lothar.

He shrugged tiredly. “You’re welcome to chase them down with us, Princess.”

“Lady Sunstrider,” I corrected yet again.

“You’re the daughter of a king. That makes you a princess in my book.”

“Even if the king no longer rules?” Dath’Remar had stepped down thousands of years ago for Aloris, who in turn had stepped down a few centuries back for his son. “I am the aunt of the current king of Quel’thalas, Lord Lothar.”

The reminder of elven lifespans made him uneasy, but he bore it well. “You’re welcome to chase them down with us, then…Lady Sunstrider. They broke around dusk and fled through the night, streaming back through the highlands, looting as they went.”

I frowned. “Where are they going?”

Khadgar, the young-old apprentice of the not-as-dead-as-we-would-like-to-believe Medivh, stepped boldly forward. “Wherever they came from my lady.”

Medivh. Guldan, order your warlocks to double their efforts. Sargeras.

“Where were the orce first seen?” I asked, but it was the mage I speared with my eyes.

“I saw them in the Black Morass,” he answered quietly.

The Black Morass. Swamp, air so dank and hot you could almost drink it, fading into rocky hills and thence…farmland. The soft and ripe lands of Stormwind. But from there…north, through a hotter, drier wasteland of rocks and dust to a single peak that rose out of the ground with near-artificial splendor, stark as it was. Doomhammer, thinking it an omen, leaving behind a good portion of his clan, claiming it for his own. Black rocks, Blackrock…

“I need a map.”

Heads snapped around, telling me that I had been lost in Gul’dan’s memories for some time now.

“A map of where, my lady?”

“Whatever’s north of Stormwind.” Impatiently, I pushed aside scrolls until I found one that had the area sketched roughly in. “There,” I breathed, stabbing the cone-shaped mark with one finger. “Blackrock Mountain. That’s where he’ll go.”

One of Magni’s people peered at the map and spat to the side. “Dark Iron territory,” he said. “Bad place. You sure about that?”

Khadgar was looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

“My battle with the traitor left me with some of his memories,” I stated calmly. There was no point in denying it or hiding it, and great possible benefit if those with the power to move troops understood where my information came from. “Their leader, their Warchief, claimed Blackrock Mountain for its symbolism: his clan name translates to ‘Blackrock’. That is where he will go to make his stand.”

Lothar looked at me with a glint of appreciation. “You know what this means? We’re not just chasing him. We know where he’s going. We can get there first.”

“And then what?” I asked quietly, meeting his eyes and holding them. “They came here for a reason.”

“Aye, to wipe us out.”

“No. Listen to me. Put yourself in his shoes. He chose to be defeated at Lordaeron in order to preserve the honor of his people, to see the traitor tracked down and killed rather than ensuring victory. What would cause you to do the same, to invade another race’s lands and claim them for your own?”

The Lion of Stormwind paled. “Only the worst desperation. The complete destruction of my kingdom, and an absence of allies.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Light, what happened to them?”

“What are we going to do with them?”

Everyone flinched away from my question. I’d made them see the orcs as a desperate people rather than a mindless mob, and genocide was something no one was comfortable with.

“We capture as many of them alive as we can,” Lothar said at last. “If their leader can be reasoned with, we may be able to come to…some sort of arrangement.”

 

“You did your people no favors killing Anduin Lothar.”

Orgrim Doomhammer stared straight ahead, jaw set. He heard me, he understood me, but he refused to acknowledge me.

“We took most of them alive, but Lothar was loved by his men. They went into a frenzy when he fell.”

Still, the Warchief marched without so much as glancing towards me.

“I slew Gul’dan.”

The orc, not as big without his black plate armor or the massive hammer whose name he bore, stumbled in shock.

“You sent Rend and Maim to follow him. I followed them. They would have laughed to see you fall, you know.”

“I know,” he ground out reluctantly.

“I killed them, too.”

No reaction.

“I ordered the remnants of Stormreaver and Shadowmoon slaughtered. Twilight’s Hammer and Cho’gall fled before I got there. The Black Tooth Grin remain in a prison camp.”

Silence.

“Your people were tricked; you must know that by now.”

“What should we have done?” he spat with quiet venom. “Remained on our dying world when this one could sustain us?”

So that’s why.

“My people, too, were tricked. Many generations ago. The demons poured into this world as a flood, and countless died on both sides before their magic was turned against them and they were pushed out.” I paused to let that sink in. “This time, instead of sending his own demons to be slaughtered in droves, he sent you.”

I could see the rage he held in check.

“He will be infuriated that his plan failed. He may even send his demons again.”

“Is that why you do not kill us? You hope to turn us against your enemies?”

“Are they not your enemies, too? Do the souls of your dead not cry out for vengeance?”

He closed his eyes against some memory, and hastily I ransacked Gul’dan’s.

“Durotan, and Draka.”

“And their son. How do you know that?”

“When I fought Gul’dan, he was being…poisoned by a dark power. In desperation, he tried to pour that power into me.” Self-consciously, I rubbed my small horns. “In doing so, he also poured his memories into me. That is how I speak your language.”

“What is it you want?”

“Some way for our peoples to live in peace so that, when the time comes and he sends demons again, we can both avenge our dead by denying him this world’s death.”

He grinned at me, I grinned back, and for several minutes we walked in silence. Behind us, the Alliance army and the chains of orcish prisoners stretched for what seemed like miles.

“Why did you kill Rend and Maim?” he asked quietly.

“They would have let you die to take your power for themselves. I’d rather your people be led by a man who believes honor to be something worth keeping.”

“You faced Gul’dan, you hold some of his knowledge in your mind, and yet you feel my race’s honor to be worth more than the dust we tread upon?”

“There is more to me than meets the eye,” I retorted dryly. “I have faced demons and those of my own race who willingly helped them or joined them. I have suffered imprisonment by my own twin for daring to use magic he does not like-” orcish had no word for ‘arcane’ “-to save our people, and I have taught magic to students of many races. Your people are more than Gul’dan’s treachery and lust for power. Yes, they are tainted and corrupted, but that can be flushed from them, and then they will need a strong leader to remind them that they are more than the atrocities they committed.”

Orgrim Doomhammer stared at me. “You are a stronger warrior than you appear to be,” he said at last.

I shook my head. “I’m not a warrior. I’m just someone who wanted their destiny badly enough to walk into the unknown to get it, and who was willing to do whatever it took to keep it. If not for a chance encounter and a kind man, I could easily have turned out like Gul’dan – but I found something worth fighting for, and I learned the hard way that allies can only be judged by their actions. You were willing to listen to your friend, even disgraced as he was. That puts you above my twin.”

“I don’t think very highly of your twin,” the Warchief confessed warily.

I laughed. “Neither do I.”