Into the depths

“My Lord! The Crypt fiends are attacking again! And the scouts report that their numbers are thrice our own!”
The lieutenant’s voice can hardly be heard above the sounds of battle drowning the valleys of Icecrown. The tremor in it and his wide eyes are a clear sign of the feelings that are about to overwhelm him.
“Stand true, Soldiers of the Argent Crusade! Fear has no place among us! We will face these fiends and send their pieces back to Arthas, so he may choke on them!”
The first words coming out of the mouth of Tirion Fordring are enough to spark the fire of courage in the hearts of the lowliest cowards. As he moves among his men, eyes shine, teeth snarl, voices cheer, nerves are calmed, fears are shattered like the ice that covers the land.
“Second and third battalion are to move to the east of the front. Flank them and overwhelm them! Strike fast and true, for the brethren that have fallen before us demand vengeance!” Tirion turns to one of his messengers and lowers his voice. “Go find any freelance adventurers you can in the area, and tell them their fee will be tripled if they are here yesterday. Go!”
The undead form a sea of rotten flesh and bone, a true macabre wall. Among them crypt fiends move fast and deadly, and at the rear, crypt mages hurl shadow spells on the soldiers of the Crusade. The attack is as fierce as the ones before it, and Tirion has managed to stop all before. He whispers a quiet prayer, that the light help him repeat the feat once more.
As the two sides collide, the ruckus multiplies tenfold. Men and orcs and draenei and tauren side by side face the march of undeath and stop the tide that seems to be willing to swallow everything under its pass. Casualties are unavoidable, but it seems this fight will be won once more.
A shrill shriek tears the air, and the hammer of battle horses pounding the earth shakes the ground rhythmically. Tirion looks to the north, but he knows what going on. He expected this a long time now… Deathknights.
Comrades fallen under the Scourge attacks, bodies never retrieved, warriors that gave their life so that Death will not win the day, are now turned against their own. Reanimated and granted deadly powers, blindly true to the Lich King, they are attacking the Argent Crusaders with a fierce strength, wreaking havoc and breaking the lines.
At the grimmest of the fight, as Tirion prepares to get into battle himself, a roar sounds from the back. Fearing an attack from behind, Supreme Commander Fordring turns around, and his heart skips a beat. He knows that the hearts of his soldiers are doing the same.
A large group of fighters approaches the battle from the south side, keen on reaching the point where the Deathknights are reaping the bodies of the Crusaders. They look an uneven lot, dressed in several colors, without any lines or formation, but Tirion knows that they are the reinforcements he needed.
In a mighty clash, the group of adventurers meets the Deathknights. Frost spells are countered with fire and lightning, shadow magic meets shadow magic, runeblades are stopped by shields and hammers and swords and daggers and axes. What seemed like a lost battle now looks like a huge stew of bodies and colors that mingle together in a million different ways, making it impossible to see friend from foe. Yet the attack is repelled. Deathknights fall by the hundreds, and the undead stand no chance against the people of Azzeroth.
“My Lord! Skybreaker reports that a huge Crypt Lord is moving this way!”
The messenger is panting. He must have run all the way from the command post, to give the news.
“Alert the goblin squads! Pull all soldiers back! Fall back to your stations! Fall back!” Tirion had expected this as well. The Crypt Lords are a huge enemy, hard to deal with, but he has his own surprises for the army of Arthas. As the huge spiderlike creature approaches, the soldiers make their way back to their defense stations, holding the lines against the undead that keep pressing.
“A little more… more… wait… FIRE!!!” At his command, a goblin standing nearby turns a small switch. At first nothing happens. The goblin grunts and turns it again, and a deafening explosion shakes the ground. The howling wind needs only a minute to clear the dust that has risen, and reveal a huge hole in the ground, right where the Crypt Lord was standing, along with hundreds of the Scourge.
A cheer rises from a thousand mouths, and Tirion smiles faintly. He had expected that the ground of Icecrown wouldn’t be solid, from eons of nerubians digging tunnels below and frost cracking it above, but he was not certain the trap would work. He turns around to return to the command post; a million things await him there, decisions for movement of forces, information from scouts, logistic issues…
“My Lord! My Lord! Look!” Tirion turns around and sees a spiderleg rise from the hole. A second one follows – the Crypt Lord has managed to hold on to the surface!
“The cannons! Aim the cannons to it! Don’t let it get out! Hurry!” But he knows that the cannons are turned and configured to fire long range shots, and the hole is only a few hundred meters away. It will take time to reposition them, time he does not have…
From the lines of the adventurers that had fallen back behind his soldiers when the Crypt Lord appeared, the cry of a dragon comes.
“ARCHEMOROS! TO THE SKY!”
A nether drake rises swiftly from the ground, large diaphanous wings flapping strongly, a shark’s tail guiding it as it sweeps over Tirion’s head. On his back rides a night elf clad in leather, and as he passes, he makes a gesture towards the soldiers, as if taunting them to follow.
“What is that crazy elf up to?” Tirion wonders loudly, and his lieutenant answers in a stunned voice: “I think he’s going after the Crypt Lord”
The fiend is almost half out of the hole, when dragon and rider reach it. “FOR LIFE AND THE RED QUEEN!!!” shouts the rider, the dragon spits netherflame and they both hurl themselves on the still staggering giant. The Crypt Lord tries to fend them with a leg, but it loses its grip, and the collision half tumbles it back in the hole, yet it still clings to the surface.
“Get out! Get out!” All soldiers say the same, as if the nightelf could hear them.
When the nightelf realizes that his attempt to overturn the fiend failed, he quickly climbs towards its head from the back. The nether drake, one wing torn in half by the flailing Crypt Lord, claws and bites at any part of it he can. As if standing a meter away, Tirion can clearly see the rogue take out his daggers and stab them again and again in the eyes of the monstrous fiend. A roar of pain is the answer. For a second, the Crypt Lord maintains its grip and then undead, dragon and rider plunge into the hole. The last picture that remains in Tirion’s mind is of a tall, leatherclad figure waving goodbye with a hand that is holding a long dagger.

Take care Noctus maybe we will see you in a few months.

Icecrown citadel.
Horde scout post number 29.
2nd day of the 3rd month.
Afternoon.


“It’s been two whole days since this place became quiet. Too quiet, in my opinion.” The tauren shook his head disapprovingly, his single horn swiping a big semicircle.
“Yeah! There’s not been any fighting for days! It’s as if the undead decided to sit on their eggs for once. How can a true warrior find honor in battle, when there’s no battle to fight?” The green skinned orc spat as he quickly sheathed and drew his sword, showing off to his fellow scout.
“Typical. Orcs are always looking for a fight, or any sort of trouble. You can’t appreciate the value of peace, can you, heh?”
“Typical. Taurens always bla…” the sound of a horn from the south covered the words of the orc, and both scouts turned to look south. Towards the gates of Icecrown.


More horns followed the first, their shrilling sound filling the afternoon sky. Then a gong sounded, a rasp rhythm that the Horde warriors had heard all too often the last 6 months. It is the sound of the Undead Alarm ringing, to awaken the spiders and creatures of the Lich King to his bid. They’ve heard it every time they’ve tried to breach the Citadel, with brute force or with cunning and stealth, and every attack has been hampered and stopped dead… literally.
“Hm… no one told us about an attack… it seems the Alliance is trying their worst.” The orc smiled and licked his lips. “Poor bastards have no chance to break in where the Horde’s mightiest men find trouble”. The orc laughed loudly with obvious contempt, but didn’t stop watching the small gate facing their way.
“Truth be told, I’d rather the Alliance made some progress. That would mean the Lich King’s powers are weakening…” the tauren said skeptically.
“Bah! We don’t need their puny attempts. We’ll break through soon and Thrall will send the King of the Undead to his rightful home… the cold grave!”
The tauren narrowed his eyebrows and looked towards the small gate through his Goblin Longsights.
“This is weird… I would say that the commotion is actually coming only from the tower defending the gate we’re supposed to watch. The rest of the Citadel is quiet and dark, but all windows on the tower are lit. Do you think we should warn the Chieftain?”
“I think we…”
The sound of a glass shattering stopped the orc’s tongue, as a huge body left the tower a hundred paces high and crashed down to the ground with a yell.
“That was a… What in Molten Core was it? What could have caused it to jump?” wondered the orc.
“I wouldn’t say it jumped… more like… thrown out”
The ruckus in the tower continued and started to get louder.
“I’m pretty sure the Warlords need to hear about this. Let’s take our mounds and get there as soon as we can”.


The two warriors turned around to walk to their mounts, a black wolf and a huge brown kodo, when an explosion behind them threw them to the ground, as their skulls rang and their hearing was completely hampered.
When they got up, they looked to the gate to see only a pile of ruins. Something or someone had managed to successfully attack that gate, and destroy it, along with the tower… making their watch useless and destroying one of the possible back doors to the citadel.
And now, that someone was walking towards them slowly. Through the dust, a pair of figures appeared, one slim and tall, belonging to an elf or a very tall man, and one the unmistakable figure of a dragon. They were moving to the general direction of the watch care free, as if it wasn’t undead territory and all kinds of alarms weren’t ringing throughout the Citadel. As the ringing in the head of both Horde warriors subsided, they were able to hear a male, strong voice talk.
“I told you the goblin mine was intact. It worked fine, only went off 3 seconds early. You don’t have to make such a face about it!”
The answer was a loud hurrumph coming from the dragon.
“So you’re gonna rub it on my face all day long? So stubborn…”
“Stop where you are!” shouted the orc. “You are under arrest, in the Name of Chieftain Thrall, and you will remain so until we verify who you are and what your connection with the Scourge is!”
As the dust settled down, a crooked smile appeared on the face of the elf. One could now see he was dressed in leather, but everything on him seemed “wear and tear”. His hair must once have been deep blue, but soot and dirt now turned it black, and his face showed tiredness and lack of sleep. Still smiling, he placed his hands on the hilts of his daggers and said:
“You got to be kidding me…”


Icecrown citadel.
Horde scout post number 29.
2nd day of the 3rd month.
Early night


2 corpses are lying on the ground, one an orc, one a warrior. Stabbing wounds all over their bodies tell the tale of a fight. And on the back of the orc’s shirt, a message is written with blood.


Your restful nights have come to an end. I’m back

N.N.