No more. He was free.
He didn't even favor Obris with a retort. Ner’zhul extended his hand. Lightning balled in his palm and raced in a crackling arc toward the other orc, slamming into Obris's chest with a thunderclap and hurtling him backward. He crashed into the wall and slid down, a smoking black hole in his chest. He did not rise.
Whirling, Ner’zhul turned to those around him, who stared at him in shock. "The other orcs are lost. They have served their purpose. From this point on, all that we gain will be ours alone. I am the Horde, and I will survive. Choose me, or choose death!"
When they did not move, he growled and lifted the scepter. Now they did move, as if suddenly freed, rushing toward the flickering rift. It hovered a few inches above the roof's surface and rose to nearly ten feet. Ner’zhul went last, holding the rift open with his power and his will, then stepped into the rift himself.
He had just enough time to gasp before the rift vanished behind them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SlX
Khadgar's head swam, but he felt warm healing energy spreading through his body. He got to his feet, swaying, and swore. The rift was just fading from view, leaving a faint afterimage like a steam trail. And Ner’zhul and his orcs were gone with it.
"… we're too late. It's gone."
"Gone? By the Light, no!" Turalyon was right behind Khadgar but apparently hadn't seen the rift. Then again, Khadgar had felt it with his other senses before he'd actually seen it. Although Turalyon too wielded great power, his facility with the Holy Light gave him no particular insight into arcane magic.
"He must have closed the rift behind him," Khadgar guessed as he and Turalyon stepped back onto the roof itself, Alleria right behind them.
"But you got the Eye of Dalaran back," Alleria pointed out. "That's important, isn't it?" Khadgar nodded. "Well, what do we do now?" She turned her head to gaze down from the Black Temple. "It looks like we're winning down there, at least."
"Any way you can follow him?" Turalyon asked.
Khadgar shook his head. "I don't know the spell Ner’zhul was using," he admitted, "or how to find whatever world that rift took him to. So even if I could open a new rift here, there's no guarantee it would open onto the same world." His attention was caught by something else, however, and he frowned, stepping forward and walking to the triple circle inlaid in the roof
"What is it?"
"Power," Khadgar said absently. "More power than I've ever felt in any one place save Medivh's tower." He cocked his head to the side. "That's why," he muttered. "I'd wondered why Ner’zhul left Hellfire Citadel to us instead of defending it properly and casting the spell from there. But he couldn't. He had to be here. He needed the magic here to fuel his ritual."
"Does that help us any?" Alleria asked.
"I'm not sure," he replied. "Perhaps." He stepped into the center circle, and his head snapped back, mouth falling open in a silent scream. Such power! It poured through him like wildfire, igniting his veins, sending every sense into overload.
Ner’zhul was a shaman, not a mage. His magics came from the earth and the sky and the water, from the world itself. And that was what this place was, a focal point for the world's power. For Ner’zhul it would have been like tapping full force into something he had already broached repeatedly, but on a lesser scale — he would know how to handle it. For Khadgar, however, it was a completely new experience. And a dangerous one.
But Khadgar was not an archmagc for nothing. He had been a promising student at Dalaran, and had learned much during his brief apprenticeship with Medivh — and far more afterward. He was a master of magic, and while this form was new, it was still magic. And that meant it was still a matter of willpower.
And Khadgar had will.
Slowly he reined in his senses, forcing the new energy down until it was merely a background hum. Then he opened his eyes — and gasped. Standing here now, flooded with the power of a whole world, he could see what he couldn't see previously.
"Oh, no," he breathed.
"What is it?" Turalyon asked.
"The rifts… ," Khadgar breathed, barely able to find the words to encompass the scope of it. "Ner’zhul didn't just open one. He opened many — so many, all over this poor world." They flickered and glittered, looking almost like fireflies on a hot summer evening. "The scope of this … I don't think Draenor can bear it. It can't hold all this. Rifts are tears — and these tears are going to rip this whole damned place apart." And us with it, he thought, but did not say.
Turalyon and Alleria looked at each other. As one, they turned to Khadgar. "What do we do? And how long do we have?"
Even as he formed the words a shudder passed through the temple and the land around it. The volcano before it trembled, spewing even more of its noxious lava out into the air and creating a billowing green cloud. Then they heard a horrible crack and a deafening rumble from behind them.
Glancing over his shoulder, Khadgar watched as a mountain of rock cascaded down, literally. The Black Temple had been built up against the mountains that overlooked the sea, and those peaks were crumbling away. Most of the debris was falling into the waters, but some of it exploded toward them instead. Thinking quickly, Khadgar murmured a spell that shielded them from the onslaught, and the three of them stood untouched as rock and gravel and dust flew by on either side. A second spell protected the area directly below, where the Alliance forces were already mopping up the remaining Horde. Many of the orcs had scattered when the battle had turned against them, and the sudden avalanche only hastened their headlong flight.
Draenor, as he had realized it would be, was a beast in pain tearing itself to pieces.
And, Khadgar realized, Draenor might not die alone. “Azeroth is in danger!" he yelled over the din. "These rifts are links between worlds. And the Dark Portal is the largest and the only stable one." There was an odd silence as, for the moment, the earth stilled. Khadgar spoke quickly.
"Our worlds are connected. Damage here could leak through the portal and affect Azeroth as well!" He grimaced and stepped out of the circle, trying not to groan in dismay as his energy levels plummeted back to normal. It was like turning away from a bonfire and accepting a weak torch in its place. But he knew that to stay there longer would endanger them all. "I have to get back to the Dark Portal!"
"Do you have what you need to close it?"
"I have the skull. And the book is here, somewhere. I'll find it," he said with more assurance than he felt.
Turalyon nodded. "I'll rally the troops," he promised.
But Khadgar shook his head. "There's no time!" he insisted, grabbing his friend's shoulder. "Don't you understand? I'm sorry, Turalyon, so sorry — but if I can't shut down the portal right away, when Draenor is destroyed it could take Azeroth with it!"
He saw the realization dawn in Turalyon's eyes, and hated the grim resignation he saw accompany it. But his friend merely nodded. "We'll take gryphons," he announced. "That's the fastest way back." Then he squared his shoulders. "I will speak to the troops before we go. However short time may be, they deserve that." He extended a hand to Alleria and together they ran down the stairs.
Khadgar barely noticed them depart. He'd snatched the Eye right out of Ner’zhul's hand, but he hadn't had time to locate the Book of Medivh before Ner’zhul had retaliated, it was here, he told himself — it had to be in order for the spell to work in harmony with the three constellations. Ner’zhul had still been clutching a silver-trimmed scepter when he'd disappeared, presumably the Scepter of Sargeras. Fine — far safer for such an accursed item to be well away from Azeroth. But where was the blasted book? He needed it to finish the job, and that job had to be finished right now, before it was too late for all of them.