“What are those?” Talanji asked, observing from Tze’na’s back while Thrall set the orbs down on the ground and twisted each of them. They began to click and whir, then shot out toward the bridge, rolling so fast they became three little blurs.
“Goblin seeker bots,” Thrall replied. “Be ready to charge.”
The orbs cracked open halfway across the bridge, each producing six tiny contraptions, shaped almost like men, that bounced their way this way and that. A red light on top of each of the bots blinked, frantic, then the first trap blew.
Smoke and chunks of stone exploded, and then another mine was triggered, and another, until they could see nothing but a haze of debris and fire. Thrall stepped back into his stirrup and, without another moment’s hesitation, rode toward the chaos. Talanji followed, squinting, Baine ahead of her and to the left. Tayo joined them on foot, bringing up the rear.
Talanji had no idea what to expect when they soared through the cover provided by the smoke. On the other side, Bwonsamdi towered above the Necropolis, gritting his teeth as he raised spirit after spirit and flung them toward his attackers. The rebels were easier to spot, the white flashes on their tunics standing out against the commotion. They had already suffered several losses, troll bodies littering the ground.
Nathanos, an armored dark ranger, and Apari stood at the altar before the Court of Spirits, Nathanos firing on Bwonsamdi, Sira fending off any spirit that came near them with her twin glaives, the witch bringing down the wrath of the storm on the waves of spirits conjured by the loa.
The traps and mines triggering drew their attention, of course, and Nathanos spun to discover Talanji, Thrall, Baine, and Tayo approaching from the Dreadmire.
“Nathanos Blightcaller and Sira Moonwarden,” she heard Baine rumble. “I do not recognize the troll.”
“That is an old friend,” Talanji told him. “But she must fall with the rest.”
“Ha!” the ranger, Sira Moonwarden, shouted toward them. “Is this all that you can muster? Pathetic.”
“Do not let them reach the loa,” Nathanos commanded. He left them behind, disappearing behind the band of white-and-black-clad rebels that rushed them. Sira put her head down, weapons flared to her sides as she led the defense.
“Do not underestimate her,” Thrall warned. “Wardens are formidable.”
Thrall swung his axe in wide arcs, sweeping aside the trolls that threatened to overwhelm them. It was good, Talanji decided, that the enemy assumed it was just the four coming to protect Bwonsamdi. It was not good, however, that they might be overrun and killed before the reinforcements ever showed.
Where are they?
She looked in desperation to the east, expecting to see the shaman and orcs sweeping toward them at any moment. Was the swamp booby-trapped, too? What delayed them?
While they had not yet shown, her army had. The Zandalari came pelting out of the lingering smoke on the bridge, spears raised, feathers and golden armor a bolstering sight.
The Zandalari, Thrall, and Baine took on the brunt of the rebels, Talanji supporting them with her death magic and glistening barriers that warded off any incoming arrows from the dark rangers. The glittering streams firing from Talanji’s staff left behind trails of shadow, the power of Bwonsamdi’s Necropolis imbuing her magic with darkness. Half of the red-eyed Forsaken elves had turned their sights on them, while the others continued to assault Bwonsamdi.
The loa. Her loa. Though the Necropolis empowered him, the spirits he summoned to his side came with less and less frequency. Could he hold just a little longer? And where were those damn orcs…
A blinding spear of lightning struck the barrier she had conjured around Baine, shattering her train of thought. The shield faltered, but she quickly refocused, finding a reserve of energy she had not anticipated, and then she saw the very source of the storm.
Apari.
She waded slowly through the throng of rebels trying and failing to knock Thrall and Baine from their mounts. Sira danced in and out, parrying thrusts from Thrall’s axe but never landing a blow herself. The chaos worked against her, bodies blocking a direct line to the orc. When fighting Thrall and Baine proved fruitless, she turned her attention to the Zandalari soldiers, picking them off.
Talanji did not flinch away from Apari’s searing gaze. It was as the troll Tayo described. Apari looked more corpse than living being, her skin grayish, her hair soaked in sweat. Talanji couldn’t help but sympathize, every inch of her was similarly aching and weak. They had once been like sisters, but now Apari limped toward her with a discolored leg, bloated with infection. She reached up and removed the gruesome bone mask covering her face, tossing it aside.
This was a distraction, Talanji knew it, but she could not let Apari continue to call down lightning while they fought, not when Bwonsamdi was already so vulnerable. A small, white shape zipped toward them, flying from somewhere over Apari’s shoulder. It smacked into Talanji’s face, but didn’t move, suctioned to her skin.
She tried to scream, but the creature attached to her muffled the sound. Talanji flailed, her barriers sputtering out. Tze’na tossed, and Talanji lost her balance, tumbling to the ground. Blood slicked the stones. She slipped trying to right herself, but the fall had dislodged the creature from her face. It bounced away, a disgusting dreadtick.
Baine had noticed her fall, and smashed his totem down on the tick, splattering it. There was no time to thank him. Talanji crawled to her knees and stood, pushed this way and that by the dizzying throng of rebels all trying to bring down Baine. The Widow’s Bite fell like a tide against Baine and Thrall, but each time they were driven back with a few left alive and standing.
The sky opened up once more, and Talanji saw the flicker of lightning there in the clouds, just a suggestion, before it came at her fully formed, snaking and hot. She heard Apari’s cry of triumph, saw her old friend laughing as she brought down the storm on the queen’s head.
“No!”
Talanji threw her arms wide, the glossy magic barrier deflecting the lightning strike just as the hair on her head began to bend toward it. Her spell did more than just protect her; the ricochet arced across the battlefield, punching Apari in the chest. Her screams ended, the blow shooting her back against a column decorated with skulls.
“Go!” Baine thundered. “End it!”
“Here,” Tayo held out her hand and Talanji did not hesitate to take it. “We can give her mercy together.”
Did she deserve it? They forced their way through the rebels, Tayo knocking them aside with her gauntlet. Apari had tried to poison her, assaulted the palace, kidnapped innocents, sacrificed Zandalari citizens, all in the name of revenge.
I should have helped her when the Alliance attacked. I didn’t help her then, but I can now.
Apari sat with her legs splayed out in front of her, a drip of blood speeding down her cheek. The impact of her skull had fractured the stone column. What was left of her childhood friend was unpleasant to look at, but Talanji knelt beside her, cradled her neck, and tried to smile.
“I’m sorry, Apari,” Talanji murmured. “The siege…My father was dying. I wanted to help him but I should have stayed to help you, too.”
“Ya can rest now, it’s all over,” Tayo added, producing a small dagger.
“It’s not over,” Apari whispered, her words mingled with bubbles of blood. “Not over…You should die for what ya did to me, to my mother. You should die, and Bwonsamdi, and P-Proudmoore.”
Talanji flinched. Of course Apari would hate her, too. Jaina Proudmoore had been the face of the assault on Dazar’alor, the Alliance leader that had sacked the palace and murdered the king.
“Vengeance will only take you so far,” Talanji told her gently, wiping the matted hair from her face. “You need more than that to survive. I did not help you then, my friend, but I will help you now.”
&n
bsp; Talanji held Apari’s hands and looked into her sad, terrified eyes. Though she trembled, though her spirit felt threadbare, she conjured a soothing spell for Apari, hoping it might ease a little of her fear and pain. Life had not been kind to the girl, to either of them, but when Apari was gone, her body would nourish the earth, and Bwonsamdi would keep her spirit from the Maw. Ironic that she wanted the loa dead, when he was the one who would now save her from everlasting darkness. Talanji squeezed her old friend’s hands, Tayo drew the blade.
* * *
—
Tayo did not stay to mourn after it was done. She hurled herself back into the fray and Talanji followed, her heart a little heavier than it had been before.
Thrall and Baine stood victorious, the rebel line broken and scattered. Those who survived fled, most simply tossing themselves into the swamp to swim away.
Sira Moonwarden, however, did not retreat.
She whirled at them like a hurricane, flashing her blades, almost impossibly swift, dancing in and out of range, slashing at Thrall and then leaping back, twirling, avoiding the heavy, slow swing of Baine’s totem.
“Nathanos!” Talanji heard the dark warden call. “The rangers! Send them to me!”
He did not hear her; in fact, he had pushed deeper into the Necropolis, vanishing into the swirling mists at Bwonsamdi’s feet.
Some of the rangers, however, heard her, and Talanji hurried to protect her allies while a hail of deadly arrows fell. A war horn echoed through the haze rising off the Dreadmire. Talanji was beginning to love that sound.
The ground quaked to the east, orc raiders and tauren shaman colliding with the small detachment of dark rangers firing on Bwonsamdi from the far side of the Court of Spirits. The rangers spun, trying too late to repel the onslaught of axes and cascades of lightning. They fell, swift, but not swift enough.
Sira Moonwarden fought harder, enraged at the passing of her kin. She slid to her knees, gliding across the thin lake of rebel blood, a nearly invisible strike opening a gash on Baine’s right forearm. The tauren tossed his great mane and horns, whirling, his pain or his fury granting him the necessary speed. At last, Sira took a hit, as the flat end of Baine’s totem, still covered in mashed bits of Apari’s dreadtick, caught her in the stomach.
At the sight of their lieutenant spinning to the ground, the dark rangers gathered near the altar dispersed, retreating to the concealing fog of spirits in the court. They liked their odds there better, firing indiscriminately into the silvery morass.
What little remained of the Zandalari forces circled Sira, trapping her. Miraculously, the dark warden climbed to her feet, battered but unwilling to surrender. She readied her blades, just in time for First Arcanist Thalyssra to arrive with her nightborne archers. Sira paused, red eyes aglow with the outrage of defeat.
“Put down your weapons,” Thalyssra warned, brandishing her crystal staff. “Or my archers will pin you where you stand.”
“Never!” Sira bellowed. While she twirled her glaives and glared at Thalyssra, Thrall slowly made his way around the Zandalari troops to encircle her. He gave the First Arcanist a subtle flick of the head and Thalyssra whistled, her archers forming ranks and marching quickly toward the Court of Spirits.
“Do not look at me with those gloating eyes!” Sira shouted, poking her glaive toward the nightborne. “Nathanos! Nathanos? No…No, I will not be abandoned again, not now. My goddess…No! I will not submit! You have accomplished nothing! Do you hear me? Nothi—”
The blunt end of Thrall’s axe cracked into her helmet, silencing her. Sira crumpled to the ground, her glaives clattering to the stones, her helmet slipping off her head and rolling away. Thrall broke through the crowd of Zandalari and stopped the helm with the toe of his boot.
“Bind her tightly,” he told the trolls. “I know exactly what to do with her.”
An unnatural cackle rippled out from the center of the Necropolis. Bwonsamdi. Talanji raced to the edge of the court, the loa beside himself with amusement as Blightcaller’s rangers fell, one by one, overrun by the orcs or fried by shaman lightning, some slumped against a wall, prickly with nightborne arrows.
At the center of it all, still stubbornly brandishing his bow, Nathanos Blightcaller raged against Bwonsamdi.
“I told ya, dead man, ya no match for my queen.”
Talanji nodded, grabbing her left shoulder as she circled the stone court and took the stairs down, going to join her loa. It felt like her heart had gone numb as she clutched it, her last reserve of strength long gone. She dragged herself along, unwilling to let Bwonsamdi face Blightcaller alone. They were connected, blood and fate twining them together, and if this was to be their victory or their end, she would spend it in the thick of battle.
He was utterly outnumbered, alone, the bodies of his defeated comrades surrounding him like a grim barricade of cold flesh. Talanji could get no closer to him, but that did not matter. She sank to her knees, closing her eyes, raising her hands and breathing in the cool, prickling mist that swirled at the bottom of the court. A loa’s power came from his believers, and though Talanji had no strength left to give, she had her words. She had her belief.
“Mighty Bwonsamdi, loa of graves, your strength is mine, my strength is yours.” Her voice grew louder, unnaturally so, echoing across the Necropolis with the thunder of a god’s. Bwonsamdi spoke through her, and she felt ice swirl around her, bracing her against the weakness that threatened to make her crumble. “Your enemies have fallen before you, their reward for doubting you is death.”
Either she laughed or Bwonsamdi did, a sound like chattering teeth, like knuckle bones clattering.
Nathanos was not foolish enough to fight on. He simply glared up at the loa, his hands and coat splattered with blood, his hair uncharacteristically mussed. His plans had failed.
“I will swing the axe.” Talanji’s voice boomed across the Necropolis again, emerging as if from the massive loa hovering above her. “For what he has done to my people.”
“Many will wish to see his demise,” Baine called down to her from the edge of the court, a hand clamped over his bleeding arm.
The combined forces of the Horde inched toward Blightcaller, hemming him in, his last free moments spent in speechless fury. Unlike Sira, he gave them nothing, no taunt, no mockery; he simply shouldered his bow, pulled a vial from his coat, uncorked it, and bowed his head.
At last he spoke, strange coils of black smoke seeping out from between his fingers where he clasped the vial.
“My queen,” he said, clearly enough for all to hear. “My lady!”
It was no blast of lightning that struck him, but a liquid tendril of purple and black that emerged from the sky, enveloping him and twisting around him, swallowing him whole…
“No!” she heard Thrall shout. “NO!”
The orc chieftain raced for the steps, axe at the ready, but it was too late. The tendril recoiled back into the sky, leaving behind nothing but a few wisps of shadow where Blightcaller had been.
“That magic…” Baine growled. Talanji had covered her mouth with both hands, frozen, still on her knees in the mist. Nathanos was gone. But how? She stood, feeling, at last, like some of her vigor was returning. “Sylvanas used something similar at the mak’gora. Ancestors watch over us, her power is growing…”
“Ah, the dead one slipped away…” Bwonsamdi seemed unconcerned, shrugging. “He be tricksy indeed, just like ya old friend Bwonsamdi. I, however, plan to live a lot longer than him.”
Talanji watched as the Horde warriors, shaman, and archers realized, gradually, that they had won. The skies had cleared over the horizon, the storm abated. Sira Moonwarden squirmed on the ground, captured. The wounded were gathered, the dead having found their end in a place already thick with graves. Talanji drifted away from the worst of the carnage, climbing the stairs to her left and joining her allies agai
n.
“Don’t look so sad,” Bwonsamdi chided, wagging his finger at Thrall. “Ya came for me, and here I am. Whatever the Banshee Queen had planned here today, ya stopped her.”
“He’s right.” First Arcanist Thalyssra strode down the stairs to join the crowd forming in the Court of Spirits. “The Horde stood together as one behind our ally.”
Talanji took Baine’s offered arm, the uninjured one, and went to gather with Thrall and the others. “Not just an ally,” she said as they amassed, friends finding each other and clasping hands, warriors standing with mingled disbelief and pride.
“I wish to take my place on the Horde Council, it is where I belong—speaking for my people, and listening for them,” Talanji stated, to a resounding war cry. “Our armies must be rebuilt, our city secured, and the trust of the people won, but we will emerge stronger than ever.”
“It would be our honor.” Baine Bloodhood bowed his head. Thrall had recovered from the disappointment of losing Nathanos and added his solemn nod to the chorus.
“Very touchin’.” Bwonsamdi pretended to wipe a tear from his eye. But Talanji saw the undeniable gleam of mischief in his bright blue eyes. Not just mischief, but relief.
“Now,”—Talanji turned back toward the south, where beyond the swamps, jungles, and mountains of Nazmir, the golden city, Dazar’alor, waited—“I believe I owe you a feast. No assassins this time.” She smiled. “You have my word.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Stormwind
Mathias Shaw had never sailed a Zandalari ship, but he learned damn quick. He had never been so happy to be back on the sea, and that was saying something. But what he had learned, and what he brought, was needed urgently in Stormwind.
He watched with a full stomach and fuller heart as Stormwind City rose up from the horizon, a white beacon, a more than welcome sight. The Horde leadership had let him go, no strings attached, introducing him to a crew of merchants willing to smuggle him quickly to familiar soil. His initial reaction was one of suspicion. A spymaster never accepted anything at face value. He searched the ship, the hold, and his bags for traps, explosives, and anything strange. To his everlasting surprise, they had kept their word.
Shadows Rising (World of Warcraft Page 24
