Anger chased out despair. Anger, and awe at the courage his troops were displaying. Llane pulled out his sword. “Trust in your training! Trust in your arms! Ride with me! The Frostwolves have fallen, but with the Guardian’s help, we can still destroy the gate and bring our people home!”
A cry of defiance rose up. Though it issued through a pitiful handful of throats, it was passionate and defiant. The king of Stormwind and his three legions charged forward, shouting their battle cry. They were met with an answering bellow, deeper, darker, and the orcish army met them halfway.
Gul’dan disliked how he had been played. Pushed to his wit’s end by the Frostwolf’s stubborn refusal to simply die, he had unwisely revealed his usage of the fel. He had lost some of his best warriors, Orgrim included. I should have known better than to trust a Frostwolf, the warlock thought bitterly. But they were gone, and soon enough, many times their number would surge through the great gate. His Horde.
More than once over the last several moments, Medivh’s chanting had been interrupted somehow, but interruptions did not matter. Every time the chant had resumed, and from his platform overlooking the battle below, Gul’dan could see that all was still going according to plan. Blackhand, fel-bloated and undefeatable, was down there now. As Medivh had promised Gul’dan, only a feeble three legions had arrived with the human king. Armed with weapons Gul’dan had never seen, yes, but they were outnumbered, and outmatched, and what did weapons matter when there were no hands to wield them?
And farther away still, the gate.
Earlier, before the ritual had begun in earnest, orcs could, and had, walked through it as if it were nothing other than an ordinary archway. But now… now, he could see Draenor. See shapes moving. Orcs. Ready, more than ready, to come through, to become engorged with fel, to take, to devour, and take more still.
It was time. Exultation flowed through Gul’dan. This was the moment Medivh had promised. This was the triumph of the so-called Guardian of Azeroth, of the fel… the triumph of Gul’dan. He marched to the cage of terrified humans, enjoying their fear for a few heartbeats before he splayed his hand hard and began to pull out their precious, sweet life energy. Their screams were music to his ears, and, grinning, he lifted his other hand.
“Come, my orcs,” he said, in a tone laced with affection, as of a parent to a beloved child. “Let the fel unleash the full power of the Horde!” His other hand shot out, in the direction of the distant portal. A flood of emerald energy, routed through him, exploded out in the direction of the gate. It raced over the ground, heedless of the fighting going on beneath it, of lives lost and blood spilled. Sped along by the chanting, it wanted only to reach the gate, to open a pathway so that more fel could enter, to claim more victims.
And the first small figures, shouting for blood and brandishing weapons, came through.
Medivh’s voice still sounded from the mouth of the clay man. It stretched out a massive, tree-trunk leg, stepping down to where Lothar stood on the story below, and Lothar hacked at it wildly. His sword bit deep, dragging through the heavy clay and he managed to sever the limb at the knee. The golem jolted. Lothar dove out of the way, but the cursed thing would not fall! He glared furiously up at it, frantically wondering how he could muzzle the monstrosity, and spotted something dangling from the golem’s shoulder: the tool that Medivh had used to shave off curls of clay—a length of wire held between two wooden handles.
Not muzzle. Bridle. Even better.
Lothar abandoned the sword. He climbed up the creature, digging in feet and fingers, until he had reached the thing’s shoulders. Seizing the wire garrote-like apparatus, he slung it over the golem’s misshapen head and yanked it into where its mouth was. Immediately it lurched, turning around and trying to strike the pesky thing perched atop it with its huge, obsidian hand. Lothar scrambled out of the way and the stone fist smashed through the wall of the Guardian’s chamber. The golem followed the movement, bending over and trying to shake Lothar from its back.
Lothar looked up in time to see Khadgar on the lower level, sprawled face down, covered in rubble. He didn’t move. Lothar had no time to fear for the mage, though. Medivh had turned and impaled his old friend with his glowing green gaze, and was drawing back his hand for an attack.
Lothar yanked violently on the wire. The golem was hauled backward by the motion just in time to take the Guardian’s attack spell full in its chest. It toppled backward, hurtling downward to smash through the lower-floor window. Half of the clay being remained inside, the other half—with Anduin Lothar clinging to it—dangled out the window. Lothar hung on grimly to the wire, then realized to his horror that the wire was now doing what it had been designed to do. It was cutting, slowly but inexorably, through the clay.
A second later, a huge chunk of the golem’s head was severed, hurtling down past Lothar’s own head to splat onto the earth below. Lothar scrambled to hang on, shoving his feet into the golem’s still-soft earthen back to secure his purchase. Dangling upside down, up to his calves in clay, he registered, barely, that the chanting had stopped.
But even with half its head and one leg sheared off, the golem still moved. It reached out a hand to the ledge, hauling itself and its unwanted rider back inside to the safety of the lower level. It leaned against the wall, and then attempted to reposition itself. It was about to pin Lothar between itself and the curving wall of the tower. For a moment, Lothar thought it would succeed. He unfastened his boots, freed himself, dropped to the floor, and rolled out of the way as the thing slammed itself into the wall.
When it did so a second time, Lothar realized that the creature was as of yet unaware that it no longer hosted a human parasite. He swore as he suddenly noticed that the chanting had resumed. He took advantage of the golem’s distraction to hasten to Khadgar, lifting books and debris off the body. To his relief, Khadgar looked shaken, battered, and bruised, but intact.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “Wake up!” Khadgar did not move. Lothar slapped his face. Khadgar jerked, eyes flying open, and his hand grasped Lothar’s wrist. “You all right?”
Khadgar nodded, blinking dazedly. He looked past Lothar at the golem. “Quick thinking, slicing its head off like that.”
“Yeah,” Lothar deadpanned, having no intention of disabusing the young mage of the notion. “Just how I planned it.” He hauled Khadgar to his feet. “What now?”
“The Guardian has to speak the incantation himself. As long as he’s doing that, we can get in close. Distract him.” Khadgar strode purposefully toward the lumbering clay creation.
“And then?” Lothar asked.
“Get Medivh into the font,” Khadgar replied. He took off after the golem.
“Is that all?” Lothar asked sarcastically, but even as he spoke the words he realized that this was the precise moment when he fully trusted Khadgar, as he began to climb up to the font level where Medivh stood, still chanting the horrible spell that would permit—perhaps was already permitting—thousands of bloodlust-enraged orcs to spill into Azeroth.
He moved slowly, taking his time although everything in him urged him to hurry, hurry. He paused, but the Guardian seemed far too caught up in his incantation to have noticed Lothar closing in on him from behind. Impulsively, Lothar spoke, still carefully closing the distance between them.
“Medivh… if there is something of you still in there, old friend… come back to us.” There was no response. Medivh seemed utterly oblivious to Lothar’s presence. Sorrowfully, Lothar reached with one hand to cover Medivh’s mouth.