Beyond the Dark Portal wow-4

by Aaron Rosenberg

  And this warlock's wound was mortal.

  Rexxar tried to step back but he was boxed in, the orcs and humans behind him too tightly packed for him to move. He growled instead and raised both axes, determined to cut down the warlock rather than die himself, but the orc gestured and suddenly Rexxar dropped to his knees, unbelievable agony racing through him.

  "What, no longer so sure of yourself?" the warlock taunted softly, stepping up close enough that his breath tickled Rexxar's skin. Rexxar crumpled and writhed in pain, too crippled by it to struggle. "Does it hurt? Do not worry. Soon the pain will be gone." He raised his hand, slowly, deliberately drawing the moment out, and Rexxar stared as the green-limned flesh inched closer. Already he thought he could feel his energy being drawn from him, and a wave of fatigue washed over him.

  A fierce snarl cut through the haze of torment and a large black blur slammed into the warlock.

  "Haratha, no!" With the warlock's distraction, the spell broke and Rexxar could move again. But he was too late. His devoted wolf companion had shoved the warlock away, but in the process the orc's hand had touched Haratha's thick pelt. Rrxxar stared, horrified, as his friend shriveled before his eyes, the powerful wolf shrinking in upon himself in an instant and then col­lapsing, his body turning to dust that the wind carried away.

  "Ah, that feels better," the warlock remarked, rising to his feet and brushing off his robes. The bloodstain remained but he now moved without injury. "Your pet just saved your life," he told Rrxxar with a nasty grin.

  "Yes, he did," Rcxxar replied softly, twirling both axes up and around. "But who will save yours?"

  With a snap of his wrists and a roll of his shoulders the axes came arcing back down, to drive deep into the warlock's chest on either side of his head. Rexxar had put much of his considerable strength into the blows, and the warlock crashed to his knees as the impact drove him down, the axes ripping through him and leaving him to collapse in pieces upon the blood-soaked ground.

  Rexxar stared at the body, panting, then turned to look at the spot where the wolf had died, the rage still roaring through him and thundering in his cars. He knelt and placed his hand, wet with the warlock's blood, on the dust for a moment.

  "You are avenged, my friend," he said softly, "though I would you were still by my side." He took a bieath, rose, and channeled his grief and rage into action, call­ing out for the Warsong leader.

  Grom looked up, saw Rexxar, and waved his axe to acknowledge the half-orc. One thing Rexxar had always liked about the Warsong leader — for all his savagery and violence, Grom had always given him the same re­spect he would show any warrior. He'd always shown Grom the proper respect in turn, but right now results were more important than manners.

  "The portal!" Rexxar yelled, pointing. "Something is wrong!" Grom glanced toward the portal just as a handful of orcs staggered through. At first Rexxar's heart lifted, thinking the Horde had sent them help after all. But then he saw that these orcs were already battered and bleeding, and that they were running rather than marching — running as if fleeing something. Something on the Draenor side.

  "Run!" one of them shouted as he barreled into an Alliance soldier hard enough to knock the man over, and kept right on going without even stopping to at­tack the prone target. "Run!"

  "What is going on?" Grom demanded, and Rexxar shrugged, just as confused. They were both still staring toward the Dark Portal as the scene it framed changed from the crazed landscape of a moment before to an utter maelstrom of swirling color and then to complete darkness.

  And then, it vanished.

  A heartbeat later, the stone framework that had en­closed the Dark Portal, the rift between worlds, itself began to creak and groan. The sounds increased, strain­ing, rising to a crescendo, and then the center snapped, the two massive halves toppling inward and colliding with a loud crack and a cloud of dust and rock chips. The support pillars fell next, knocked off-balance by the initial impact, and Rexxar ducked his head, pulling the edge of his hood over his mouth to avoid choking on die dust that billowed forth, orcs and humans alike were scatter­ing, trying to escape the confusion and the debris.

  "No!" someone was screaming, and other groans and cries filled the air. For his part, Rexxar was struck dumb, staring at the rubble that had once been a gate­way between worlds. The portal — gone? Didn't that mean they could never go home? What would happen to them now?

  Fortunately, one orc kept his head. "We will re­group!" Grom shouted, slapping Rexxar on the shoul­der. "You gather everyone on that side, I'll get them from this side! Move toward the mouth of the valley!"

  Rexxar was jarred from his paralysis and nodded, hurrying to obey. He let the hood fall again once he was clear of the swirling dust. He could still feel the panic within but forced it back by concentrating on the task Grom had assigned him. Every orc he saw, he di­rected back toward the valley's front, and whether be­cause of his size, or the axes he wielded, or simply because they were desperate for orders, the orcs all obeyed without dispute. By the time Rexxar reached the mouth himself, Grom was back as well, and all the Horde members still on Azeroth were with them. Most of them looked as stunned as Rexxar felt.

  "Grom! The portal is gone!" one of them wailed.

  "What do we do?"

  "Yes. The portal is gone. And the Alliance regroups," Grom announced loudly, gesturing to where the hu­mans were gathering in front of what had been the portal just moments before. "They think we will be easy prey. They think we will be lost, and frightened without the portal. But they will be wrong. We are the Horde!"

  His glowing red eyes scanned the crowd before him, and he lifted Gorehowl. "We head north, back to Stonard. We discover what happened to our world. We tend our wounded. We survive. Then we'll regroup so we can face the humans on our terms rather than theirs." He growled. "The Al­liance closes in. Will they take us?"

  A resounding "No!" lifted from what Rexxar pri­vately feared was the last remnants of the orcish Horde. Grom grinned, tilted his head back, opened his black-tattooed jaw, and uttered his battle cry before he charged, his people following.

  That one. Grom marched up to the orc sitting huddled beside the fire as they camped in Stonard that night. He was not dusty or bloody and Grom knew all his war­riors. Grom clamped his hand down on the orc's shoul­der and yanked him backward, looming over the orc, whose eyes were wide with surprise. Beside Grom tow­ered Rexxar.

  As easily as if he were hoisting a child, Grom lifted the orc and held him in the air. The orc's feet kicked and flailed. The Warsong chieftain leaned in close.

  "Now," Grom said softly, a deep scowl on his face. "What in the name of the ancestors happened back there?"

  Shivering, the orc frantically told all he knew. The other orcs listened. The only sound was the orc's rapid talking, the crackle of the fire, and the omnipresent sounds of the swamp at night. When he finished, no one spoke. They simply stared, shocked beyond speech.

  Finally, after several minutes. Grom shook himself. "So," he growled, glaring at the others and half-shaming, half-intimidating them into looking away, shuffling their feet, and straightening up. "We pre­pare, then."

  "Prepare?" Rexxar cried, and Grom turned to face the half-orc, half-ogre warrior. "Prepare for what, Hellscream? Our whole world is dead, our people are dead, and we're trapped here forever. Alone. What in the name of the ancestors should we prepare for?" Rexxar's grip on his axes was so tight. Grom thought he heard the stone hafts creaking from strain.

  "We prepare for vengeance for the dead!" Grom snapped, an image of Garrosh leaping into his mind's eye once more. His son and heir. My boy, he thought; my boy. Dead, like all the rest. "We're all that's left!" he in­sisted, rounding upon the other orcs. "We are the Horde now! If we give up, it means the end of every­thing we knew, everything we cared about! Our race will not die unless we lie down and accept death like craven weaklings! If Ner’zhul's plans—"

  "Ner’zhul!" Rexxar shouted, leaning down so his face was rig
ht by Grom's. "This must be his fault! Who else could have caused a world to shatter so? He betrayed us all! He said he would save Draenor and in­stead he destroyed it!"

  "We don't know that!" Grom insisted. "We knew he was dealing with extremely powerful magic to open por­tals to other worlds. Perhaps something went wrong."

  "Or maybe it went perfectly right — for him!" Rexxar countered furiously. "Maybe he was just using us, all of us, our entire world, to further his own ambitions. That's what Gul'dan did, isn't it?" Many of the assem­bled orcs grunted or murmured or snarled agreement — everyone knew of Gul'dan's betrayal and how it had cost them the Second War. “And who trained Gul'dan?" Rexxar continued. "Who taught him? Ner’zhul! Clearly the fruit did not fall far from the vine!"

  The mutterings were louder and angrier now, and Grom knew he had to stop them before the group of warriors devolved into an angry mob.

  "Do you not see that it doesn't matter?" he stated, cutting through Rexxar's anger by projecting calm. "Shall we decide what we do based upon rumor and worry? Shall we pine for what could have been or fret about what might have happened? Is this how the mighty Horde behaves?" He looked from orc to orc. in­cluding them all in this conversation, and was pleased to hear the murmurs die down as they waited to hear what else he had to say.

  "We have survived! We are on Azeroth, a world full of life and food and land and battle! We can restore the Horde and sweep across this world once more!"

  Some of the other orcs cheered his statement, and Grom used that energy to fuel his own fervor, whip­ping Gorehowl around over his head so its shrieking would add a backdrop to his words.

  "Yes. the Alliance is hunting us," he shouted, "and yes, we are no match for them today. But one day, and that day soon, we will be! Here we can rest, recover, and strategize. Here we will launch attacks, as we have already been doing for the last several turns of their moons. We will grow strong again. We will become the predators once more, and the humans will quake with fear!" He jerked his axe to a stop and held it still above his head, lowering his voice so his words fell softly into the sudden quiet. “And one day we, the Horde, will rise and take our vengeance against the hu­mans with a true and final victory!"

  The warriors cheered and whooped and shouted, raising their own weapons high, and Grom nodded. Pleased. They were all behind him again, all united once more.

  All except one.

  "You have been betrayed repeatedly, each time by another orc claiming leadership, and still you continue down that same path," Rexxar said softly, though his eyes burned with rage. "You have no reason left to fight! Before, we fought to protect our people by claiming this world for them. But they are gone! We no longer need this world! With the handful left, you could find a place the humans have never gone and claim it without shedding a single drop of blood!"

  "Where would be the glory in that?" one of the other orcs shouted.

  Grom nodded. "What is life without battle?" he de­manded of Rexxar. "You are a warrior — you understand that! Fighting keeps us strong, keeps us sharp!"

  "Perhaps," the half-breed admitted. "But why fight when there is no need? Why fight just for its own sake? That is not fighting to save anyone, or to win anything, or even for glory. It is fighting from sheer bloodlust, from love of violence alone. And I am sick of that. I want no part of it."

  "Coward!" someone shouted, and Rexxar's eyes nar­rowed as he straightened to his full height, the twin axes rising to shoulder level.

  "Step forth and say that," he challenged, his voice an ominous rumble. "Step away from the rest, where I can see you clearly, and call me a coward to my face! Then see whether I shrink from a fight!"

  No one moved, and after a second Rexxar shook his head, a sneer on his heavy features. "You are the cow­ards," he proclaimed, spitting the words down upon them. "You are too afraid to live truly, outside the shad­ows of lies and promises you have been bought with. You have no courage, and no honor. That is why you cannot be trusted." The half-orc's shoulders slumped. "From now on, only the beasts will I trust."

  Grom felt a mixture of emotions as he watched the towering warrior depart. How dare Rexxar abandon them now, when they most needed to stay together? At the same time, who could blame him? He was not even part of the Horde in the normal sense, for the mok'nathal were ever reluctant to leave the Blade's Edge Mountains. To the best of Grom's knowledge, only Rexxar himself had responded to the Horde's plea, to fight during the First War and then again dur­ing the Second. And what had it gained him? He had lost his world, his people, and even his companion the wolf. Was it any wonder the half-orc felt betrayed?

  "No one walks away from the Horde!" someone in­sisted. "We should drag him back by his cars, or kill him!”

  "He insulted us all!" another pointed out. "He should die for his insolence!"

  "We need his strength," a third countered. "We can­not afford to lose him!"

  "Enough!" Grom shouted, glaring at them all. The dissenters fell silent. "Let him go," he ordered. "Rexxar has served the Horde well. Let him have his peace now."

  “And what about us?" one of the warriors demanded. "What will we do now?"

  "We know what to do," Grom replied. "This world is our home now. Let us live in it fully." But even as they nodded and returned to the fire, to speak softly in voices about plans and victory and supplies, Rexxar's words returned to haunt him, and a part of Grom wondered if they would ever find that which they had lost so long ago: peace.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Turalyon emerged from the rift, blinking. "Is … is this … Draenor?" They had escaped Draenor's destruction by stepping through into another world, one they could barely make sense of. Khadgar and the other magi had shielded them from the tremors passing through the rift, and once it had quieted they had returned, hoping to search for any of their comrades that might have sur­vived. But as his eyes registered what they saw, Turalyon jerked to a halt, staring. Only Alleria's tug on his hand reminded him to move out of the way so the rest could emerge as well.

  "It is. What's left of it, anyway," Khadgar said. Tura­lyon recognized the rubble of the fallen Dark Portal be­hind them, with Honor Hold and Hellfire Citadel in the distance. The cracked red earth was the same as well. But the sky—!

  It rippled with color now, and ribbons of light shot through it like multihucd lightning bolts that traveled across instead of ever touching the earth. The sun had vanished and the sky was a dark red, but he could see the moon hovering high above, looking far larger than it ever had before, A second sphere, this one rosy, was low on the horizon, and a third, smaller and a bright blue, floated just above that one. Wisps like tendrils of cloud drifted here and there.

  And while the earth was the same in color and con­sistency, not far away Turalyon saw a small wedge of cracked ground — only it was perhaps a hundred feet up! It bobbed slightly, buffeted by the fierce winds that raged all around them, but otherwise stayed in place. Other fragments floated here and there as well.

  "The damage has sundered reality as we know it," Khadgar continued. "Gravity, space, perhaps even time itself no longer function properly here."

  Khadgar's words were swallowed by a tearing sound beneath them. Turalyon grabbed his arm with one hand and Alleria's with the other, instinctively tugging them both back toward what had been the rest of the land.

  "Fall back!" Turalyon shouted, though he wasn't sure the men could hear him over the rending of the earth or the howling of the winds overhead. "Back away from the rift!" They could see him, however, and he gestured to the west, toward Honor Hold. They ran then, all order forgotten in their panic.

  And not a moment too soon. As Turalyon pulled Khadgar and Alleria along, the ground beneath their feet began to crumble. They hurled themselves toward the ground beyond, barely reaching it before the ledge behind them collapsed, chunks of rock and earth falling away. Before, the Dark Portal had been partially encir­cled by mountains to the east, and beyond that had been the sea. Now most of the
mountains had van­ished, and, shockingly, so had the waves. Only empty space waited to swallow the falling debris, as the world's remains now hung in a great yawning darkness shot through with ripples and flashes of light here and there.

  "Sir," one of the men piped up. "Wasn't… wasn't that where the rift was?"

  "Yes," Turalyon said. "It was." The rift through which they had first fled Draenor and then returned to it had indeed been on that ledge, and had collapsed when the earth beneath it had shattered, leaving be­hind only the remnants of the Dark Portal.

  There was silence, and Turalyon sensed their grow­ing despair. "Look there," he told them, spotting a fa­miliar cluster of buildings a short distance away. "Honor Hold still stands. We built it to serve as our stronghold here on Draenor, and so it will be."

  He turned to look at them — dusty, bloody, exhausted. "We knew when we came through we might not be re­turning. Light, we expected to die — but we didn't. The portal's closed. We did what we came here to do. What we do now — that's up to us. There are others still out there — we need to find them, bring them back. We'll ex­plore. Make new allies. Keep fighting the Horde, whatever's left of it here, so they don't ever try to do some­thing like this again. The Light is still with us. We still have a job to do. This world will be what we choose to make of it."

  Alleria stepped beside him, her eyes shining. He squeezed her hand tightly. Turalyon glanced over at Khadgar, who nodded, his young eyes crinkling in an approving smile. The paladin again looked toward his men. They were still worried. Still unsure. But the de­spair and panic were gone.

  This world will be what we choose to make of it.

  "Come on," Turalyon said, and pointed to Honor Hold. "Let's go home."