I suppose the spell could be renamed that, when used in such a way XD
Ahh, lesse. I’m still waiting on my beta to help me write the battle scenes here. However, some of us could use something entertaining after all the stuff that’s going on in the world right now, and in celebration of Rig’s final exam… I’ll go ahead and post.
The warlock and the mage leapt in one direction each to avoid the assault, and the doomguard aimed its blow towards Lloyd. It probably didn’t like the dark robe, reminiscent of its ex-master’s clothing. He managed to avoid the blow however, by throwing himself on the ground and rolling back up to his feet with surprising agility.
Rimtori launched a blast of magical ice from her hands. It hit the doomguard’s right hoof and splattered onto the ground, instantly freezing. Furiously snarling, the demon struggled to free itself and the ice let hear a worrisome, cracking sound. Behind it, Jonathan gently pushed Sarah aside and threw out his hands, rapidly muttering. A second blue flare shot through the air and caught the left hoof as well, leaving the doomguard violently trying to pull both its legs free.
“Sorry about that, mate,” Jonathan said when the demon turned its head and snarled at him, as the ungrateful little git he had turned out to be. “You’re just too big and angry for my tastes.”
Lloyd cleans up.
The doomguard crumbled, fading from the world by the second – though in the last moment it looked towards Patrick’s remains, and the final look on its face was one of triumph.
Cease fire OVER.
“Do you even understand your situation?” Lloyd snarled, pointing at what remained of Patrick.
“Yes,” Jonathan said, grinning and pulling his staff from his back. The crystals adorning the long, twisted cane flared up with magic. “Do you?”
“You killed Master Patrick!”
“And you’re not invited to the line dance on his grave,” Sarah said.
“Oh, but I’m going to have a ball, for all of us,” Lloyd said, voice lowering to a hiss, “telling Master Varimathras and Lady Sylvanas that you’ve betrayed the Society.”
“Really?” Sarah replied, slowly sidestepping together with Jonathan. “I’m going to tell Lady Sylvanas that there were a couple of bootlickers wanting to give Varimathras a pretty unpleasant spell.”
“No one likes a tattletale, girl.”
“Well, no sane person likes to dance to a dreadlord’s finger snapping, either,” Jonathan retorted. “I know I don’t want to do that again.”
Lloyd gets toasted, or at least broken up and beaten down.
“Wonderful job, princess,” Sarah said, clapping her hands. It sounded like a bunch of castanets rattling.
“Aw, you haven’t called me that in ages.” Jonathan rolled his shoulders and grinned.
Sarah gave him a sugary smile. Then she looked up at Rimtori, and her greenish lips drew back from her yellow and blackened teeth. Sharp, hard finger bent like claws.
Rimtori’s expression, on the other hand, wavered between fury and disbelief. She narrowed her eyes at the much skinnier undead woman, obviously thinking something along the lines of “she wouldn’t…”. Her hands rose to call on more magic.
Dor’ash could only watch, with a (half-guilty, because in all honestly it was plain [i]stupid[/i]) pang of vicious amusement. He knew Sarah. He knew she would.
And she did.
With a shriek she threw herself at Rimtori, shattering the elf’s focus and spell. The two of them went down cursing and clawing at each other. The fierce, if clumsy, wrestling left little room for focusing enough for spells, apart from fizzling sparkles of red and blue singeing one or the other briefly.
“Girls, girls! Play nice!” Jonathan cheered in the background, though he did so while casually leaning against a pillar with his arms folded across his chest.
Though Rimtori put up a fairly good fight, it showed that she was not at all used to direct combat, while Sarah knew every nasty trick anyone had ever invented. The undead catfight ended with Sarah sitting on Rimtori, pressing the hissing and twisting elf’s wrists into the ground.
“It’s not nice to call people ‘greenskin’,” Sarah said, smiling a few inches from Rimtori’s snarl. “Why don’t you be a good girl and take it back, hmm?”
She didn’t give the elf time to reply, but wrenched her over on her stomach and grabbed her dark hair, forcing Rimtori’s head so far back her neck might have snapped. Dor’ash looked on, with a mix of smugness and apprehension as the fine, but by rage and pain distorted face was forced in his direction.
“Apologize, I say!” Sarah hissed, giving Rimtori a shake for good measure.
A thick, almost black drop of blood slithered through the elf’s hair from where Sarah’s fingertips dug into her skin, sluggishly continuing down the brittle jaw and throat.
Rimtori winced and squirmed, but her face twisted further with an obstinate sneer.
“Go to hell, you ugly lich,” she snarled, yellow eyes rolling.
Sarah reached down and rapped her fingertips against the exposed throat, causing little red pinpricks on the skin.
“Last chance to die pretty.”
“Orc whore!”
“Yeah well,” Sarah said, moving her fingers to Rimtori’s cheek. “It wasn’t I who slept with one of them just to get hold of a few skulls.” She clapped her dirty, ravaged hand over the full lips to silence the snarl, smiling only a little less nastily than she had done when turning Patrick into a doomed sheep. “Now then… shall I string you up and play for a while, like you did to me? Hmm… nah.”
She changed her hold in an instant, plunging the fingers of both hands through Rimtori’s cheeks. The scream ended when Sarah changed the torture to a grip, and twisted hard. The elf slumped to the ground, bleeding flesh ripping free of Sarah’s fingers by gravity alone. Wide open eyes stared at nothing, the delicate face wrecked and bloody.
Whatever magic animated the undead, it had its strange similarities to life. Unless of course, Rimtori’s mind was still perfectly functional, but the twisted neck made it impossible for her to move her body for the time being.
But then she should have been able to move her eyes at least. Even so, a broken neck would only keep an undead down for a little while.
Dor’ash didn’t know whether to feel disturbed at Sarah’s sadism, or be grateful that she had not done anything worse.
Letting out a disgusted sound, she climbed off of Rimtori’s remains and rubbed her sullied hands against the grass. Jonathan took a few steps closer and leant over her, tilting his head curiously.
“What’s the matter? It’s just blood,” he commented.
“No,” Sarah grunted. “It’s blood and elf saliva.”
“Ah. Ew.”
He moved aside as she stood up and briefly turned to him.
“Burn the ‘locks,” Sarah said, waving at Jonathan while heading towards Dor’ash. “We still need Rimtori’s head. Keep an eye on her in case she starts moving again.”
With a grim nod Jonathan hunched down in front of Patrick’s remains, hands glowing deep red. Still, Dor’ash noticed how that look changed into a satisfied smirk just a moment before the orc’s full attention turned to Sarah.
She knelt beside him and felt around over the gag, causing a rattling sound as her dirty fingers tapped against it.
“Damn warlocks and their damn, damn- hmph…” She snorted and turned her head slightly, empty eye sockets staring straight into Dor’ash’s eyes. “Just a minute. I’ll have you free in a second, I promise.”
He laid still and bore her sharp fingertips against his cheek, relieved but still feeling a sizzling unease at what he had witnessed. He needed answers, to questions he could not voice yet. In the background two fires flared up, and a stench of burning, rotten flesh filled the air. Dor’ash pinched his eyes shut and tried to keep his stomach from turning. The flames faded after a few seconds, leaving only two piles of ash and the lingering stench. Even bones were easily and quickly destroyed in magical fire. Nodding, Jonathan stood up and looked towards his allies.
“Aha…” Sarah muttered.
She slapped lightly at the gag, and it dissipated. While she reached forwards to remove the spell holding his arms, Dor’ash worked his stiff jaw. A moment later the pressure on his arms disappeared too.
“Are you alright?” Sarah asked.
He grunted, watching the two of them warily as he climbed to his feet, carefully massaging his wrists. His right hand still stung from Lloyd’s spell, and he had troubles moving the fingers. Not to mention how much the wounds from the demon’s claws throbbed and burned. A healing spell should take care of it, but he was in no mind to work one. For now, he settled on trying not to move too much.
Standing, Sarah raised her hands towards his arm but stopped and drew back.
“Don’t give me that look,” she said and stuck up what would have been her nose if she’d had one, “I had to wait for an opening to see if Jonathan was in on helping me, before I could make a move.”
“So you waited until he had called his demon, and I was tied up,” Dor’ash coldly said.
“I’m not psychic, you know.”
She turned away as he kept watching her.
“How should I have known what they planned?” she added defensively, kicking at Rimtori’s stained chest. “And there was no way that I would let her get a career leap after what she did. Good riddance!”
Dor’ash’s shoulders cautiously sank.
The lady didst protest too loudly about her reasoning. However…
“What did you think they planned? To just knock me out and run off?” he sharply asked.
For a moment she glared at him, quite a feat with no eyes. When she finally spoke, the first few words came out grudgingly, then the rest poured from her lips.
“Patrick ordered me to distract you for a few seconds. I didn’t know he would summon something like that. Well, you smashed my chest in. We’re even.”
That was the closest she would ever get to saying “forgive me”. He was about to let out a skeptic snort and leave it at that, when her face scrounged up in a grimace.
“I would never have let them kill you,” she grumbled, looking away.
Alright, so she [i]could[/i] apparently allow herself even closer to actually asking forgive. Huh.
Slowly, Dor’ash shook his head.
“Crazy girl,” he muttered, and Sarah gave him a weak, wry smile.
But he was far, far from at ease.
“Does lady Sylvanas support members of the Horde ‘disappearing’?” he asked, voice deep inside his throat.
Sarah’s smile died. She and Jonathan exchanged glances, but even as they did so, the latter was speaking. There was no pause for silent agreements.
“Lady Sylvanas, no,” Jonathan said. “I’m quite sure she would not be amused over the jeopardizing of our alliance with your people.”
Dor’ash began to speak again, but this time Sarah did put her hand on his lower arm. When he looked at her, she pressed a finger against her lips.
“We do not speak of it,” she said in a low voice. “I have not told you. There are those amongst us who serve Lady Sylvanas, and those who seek to gain Varimathras’ favor.”
After a moment he slowly nodded. Fools would always be drawn to dangerous power, and it was not as if the dreadlord was generally believed to be completely tamed. But that information hardly made him feel much better.
“And have there been disappearances of this kind before?” he demanded.
“I’ve been in the Apothecary Society’s research labs many times,” Sarah said. “There are test subjects, yes, but they are Scourge and monsters. I’ve never seen another member of the Horde there. Believe me, Dor’ash.”
“That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any,” he darkly said.
“True. But Lady Sylvanas is no fool,” Jonathan said. “If there are those who keep any of our allies as guinea pigs, they are to us what the Burning Blade is to you people.”
Dor’ash looked between the two of them. Deep down he suspected that there was something they didn’t want to tell him, but the first bit of relief had allowed the dam of exhaust to burst. Now it hit him in full force, when the most pressing things on his mind had been offered answers. Deciding if he believed those answers in full or not would have to be a thought for later.
He leaned against one of the pillars, wanting to rub his forehead but deciding not to due to his wounds.
This day had just been too much.
“I hope you don’t expect me to carry you down from here and all the way to the Barrens, now,” Sarah said, leaning forwards and gazing up at his face. “Dear me. Grema will rip my head off for letting you get this ragged.”
Grema…
The name promised a haven where he could forget all the stress and pain of today, but he pushed it off his mind for now. Thinking of that, when it was so far away, would only make him feel even more drained. There was still so much to do here before he could even allow himself to think about leaving Azshara.
He looked up at the sound of steps and watched Jonathan walk along the magical wall, running his hand over it as he headed for the part where the ground dipped towards the mainland.
“Not shabby,” Jonathan said, stopping by the beginning of the small path. “As I understand it, it can only be opened from inside. My guess is that she didn’t use it during the battle because she didn’t have a chance to stand still and focus long enough.”
“Can you open it?” Dor’ash asked, trying not to sound as tired as he felt.
Jonathan nodded.
“Just give me one minute,” he said. “But…” Grimly shaking his head he looked at the two of them. “We don’t know how many of the Forsaken out there were loyal to the warlocks. We better not let them know exactly what happened.”
Dor’ash rubbed his neck.
“True,” he said. “And if the non-Forsaken find out about this, they might decide to try to clear all of you out here. Let us say that Rimtori killed the warlocks and did something we need to report directly to the Warchief and Lady Sylvanas.”
“Agreed.”
Jonathan turned back towards the magical wall. He moved his feet further apart and pressed his palms against the barrier.
Straightening up, Dor’ash heard a few joints pop and winced. He was in dire need of a healing spell, but still thought better of casting one of his own. Not in his current state. Somebody else could do him a favor once they got outside the barrier.
But that did remind him of something.
“Sarah,” he said, looking around to see her still watching him.
“Yes?”
Knowing what would be next, he even managed to grin.
“Remember that bear, Fuzzik?” he said.
She tilted her head curiously.
“What about him?” she said.
“He’s down there, healing people.”
In the background, Jonathan chortled while Sarah raised her eyebrows.
“The bear? He’s a tauren too?” she said, suspiciously glancing at Jonathan.
“He’s a night elf.”
Sarah’s mouth fell open.
“No,” Dor’ash added. “You can’t kill him. He’s being helpful.”
“A goddamn nelf?”
“Serious faces, everyone,” Jonathan said, clearing his throat to seize control his own snickering. “I think I’ve got it…”
Dor’ash coughed, forcing his mind back on the more unsettling facts of the day. The grin faded. Sarah merely changed from disbelieving exasperation to grim exasperation by lowering her eyebrows. Jonathan nodded and faced forward again.
He muttered something, then slapped the barrier in front of him with both hands.
The walls shuddered and then faded away, revealing just about everyone in the entire troop standing on the slope and staring at the temple. The nearest ones lowered hands and weapons – some just inches from Jonathan’s face. Apparently they had not stood idle while the barriers were up. Even Fuzzik stood there, though a little bit behind everyone else, looking up with worry and confusion.
“What-?” one of the Forsaken priests, standing by the front, started.
Dor’ash opened his mouth, but Sarah stepped forwards, face set in stone.
“The blood elf witch fired off a trap,” she said, fists clenching at her sides. “Master Patrick and Master Lloyd are dead.” She motioned at Dor’ash, speaking loud to be heard over the growling from the other Forsaken. “And Master Coldbane needs a healer.”
The Forsaken priest stepped forward, scowling as he looked quickly between Sarah’s hard face and the wounds on Dor’ash’s arms. The uneasy snarls continued, glances exchanged all through the troop.
“What happened?” the priest asked, warmly glowing hand rising towards one of the rows of circular, bleeding wounds. “What stabbed you?”
Dor’ash firmly shook his head.
“The Warchief and Lady Sylvanas must hear about this before we can tell anyone else,” he said, letting all his fangs show. “I must ask all of you to believe us when we say so.”
The growling turned to an agitated murmur, but he silenced them by raising his voice.
“Somebody cut off the elf’s head,” he said, nodding at Rimtori’s unmoving body behind him. “She’s more dangerous than any of us anticipated.”
It took a moment, but then one of the trolls stepped forwards past Dor’ash and the two mages, drawing his sword with his face set in grim determination. It took a couple of swings, but then three blue fingers lifted the severed head by its blood smeared hair.
“I need somebody to go to Orgrimmar and deliver that to Belgrom,” Dor’ash said with a nod.
Hugg stepped forwards, though still looking concerned over the suspicious secrecy.
“I’m wounded, anyway…” the other orc said, studying Dor’ash. He got no clues from that.
“Allow me.” Jonathan walked back into the temple and picked up the rune of portals which Lloyd had given him. “She did want to make use of this one.” He added the comment while nodding at Rimtori’s head, sneering.
Moments later a shimmering hole opened in the air, displaying the orange and sandy brown colors of Orgrimmar, as opposed to the autumn orange of Azshara. Uncannily reminiscent of the portal Dor’ash had gone through only to lose Sarah – spirits, had that really been on this same day? He felt so tired that he could have fallen down right there, but pulled himself together. The pain in his arms steadily ebbed under the undead priest’s spell, at least.
Hugg grabbed the severed head from the troll’s hand, and walked through the portal. It closed behind him on Jonathan’s soft command, and the rune crumbled to sand in his grip.
That was the final end of Magus Rimtori.
Dor’ash looked around at the uncertain, grim faces around him.
“Well?” he said.
Murmuring amongst themselves, the troop moved apart. Many went down to the simple camp (Fuzzik did so quickly after catching the look on Sarah’s face), but the priest scurried over to Sarah and Jonathan as soon as Dor’ash’s wounds were closed. Some more of the Forsaken joined the three, and they muttered to each other in Gutterspeak. Many times agitated gestures were aimed at the temple and the two heaps of ash, which the wind was doing a good job on even as the Forsaken spoke.
By the tones, one could guess that there were questions asked, but they did not seem to receive satisfying answers. Dor’ash caught Sarah’s no-gaze and she nodded. She and Jonathan would deal with this.
Worrying took too much energy. Dor’ash walked down towards the camp, his legs feeling like they were made of lead.
‘-‘
It was about an hour later, that a very sheepish looking tauren approached the camp. By then the soldiers had regained their organization after the last shock, and the new project amongst those who felt like it was to snoop around the dead blood elves’ tents and packs for anything valuable or interesting. The smell of burning flesh had long been brought away by the ocean winds, and nothing remained of the blood elves themselves apart from a big, burnt patch on the ground some ways away from their belongings.
Dor’ash sat on a rock, staring out into space and resting his mind in a blissful state of no thoughts at all. Right then he felt as if a shaman’s training in meditation was the most valuable teachings he had ever received.
The sound of two hooves against the ground roused him however, and seeing who it was he stood up with a cold look on his face.
Deran stopped a few, cautious steps away and cleared his throat.
“I very much apologize for the trouble I caused.”
“Bah.” Dor’ash didn’t feel like saying anything else. Even if they had managed to save Sarah, get rid of the treacherous elves, and also killed a couple of turncoat warlocks, he was in no forgiving mood when it came to the idiot tauren.
“Uhm, well…” Deran looked around uncertainly. “I realize it’s uncouth to ask a favor, but have you possibly seen Fuzzik anywhere?”
Dor’ash was about to just grunt, but as he looked towards the simple camp he saw no trace of the purple-skinned man.
“He was here just now…”
“Oh, that silly bear,” Deran said, scratching his head.
Slowly, Dor’ash blinked twice. To hell with it, he had to know.
“You do know that he’s a night elf, I hope?” he flatly said, dreading that the answer would be yet another proof of the world’s stupidity.
Deran coughed into his huge hand. Tauren aren’t very good at being subtle.
“Of course I do,” he said, then winked with one eye. “But he doesn’t know that I know. Let’s avoid hurting his little elf pride, shall we?”
“Ah.”
Dor’ash tried to decide whether to just be relieved or laugh, though the latter would give the stupid calf a sense of having done something right. Right in that moment, however, a familiar looking bear bounded out from the bushes on the other side of the camp and quickly crossed the space. Since most of the soldiers were busy elsewhere, and not many other even bothered to look up, there was no comment – much to Fuzzik’s relief, certainly.
“There you are!”
Deran caught Fuzzik with an arm around his neck and playfully rubbed his knuckles against the furry head until the bear tore himself free with a huge snort. Looking Fuzzik in the eye, Dor’ash caught the please-don’t-tell-him-I’m-an-elf expression aimed at him. Using every shred of self control in his body the orc managed to keep from bursting out laughing, and kept a serious look as he gave a small nod.
Despite himself, and all that had happened, Dor’ash felt a little more kindly inclined towards Deran.
With a final apology and bow of his head, the tauren turned and walked off, Fuzzik at his side. Dor’ash watched them go in silence.
He looked to his right when he caught a whiff of dry rot. Jonathan stood a little ways away, gazing after the leaving pair. His sunken face turned towards Dor’ash after a few seconds.
They regarded each other for a while, until the mage shuffled over, pointedly returning his gaze to follow the tauren and “bear” again.
“People will tell people that you let a spy walk away,” Jonathan said as he stopped. By then the odd pair were just disappearing behind a distant hill.
Letting out a sigh, Dor’ash shook his head. It was true, he would have to explain himself more than once and face the consequences. But…
“I couldn’t, heh, bear killing him,” he said, and Jonathan snorted. “He was of great help.”
They fell silent, but the air metaphorically crackled with an unasked question. Jonathan’s fingers actually drummed against his staff, clattering on the metal. A sign of unease that was definitely rare for an undead.
Dor’ash looked around to make sure Sarah was out of earshot. He caught sight of her reclining against a tree by the slope, working her way through a loaf of bread.
“An elf disguised as a pet bear,” he finally said, his thoughtfulness so fake that it could have turned into a bat and flapped away.
Jonathan actually had enough decency to look guilty.
“Ah,” he said in a low voice, touching his own chest. “You saw that when the bitch almost ripped me out, eh?”
“And when were you planning on telling Sarah?” Dor’ash asked, smirk threatening to split his face.
“The day I feel the need to get burned alive and buried in sixteen different places.” Jonathan, utterly needlessly, cleared his throat. After a moment under the shaman’s amused gaze, he shook his head. One bony hand rose up and touched the torn remains of an ear. “I think something bit them off before I got killed. Or they rotted and fell off, I don’t know. What does it matter? We’re Forsaken now. She doesn’t need to know. Please?”
He might have been sweating, had he still been alive, as he peered up at Dor’ash. The orc nearly burst out laughing, again.
“You’re ridiculous,” Dor’ash said after a moment of composing himself. “All kinds of you.”
“My girlfriend turns people she doesn’t like into sheep and feeds them to their own demons,” Jonathan pointed out. “And she really, really doesn’t like elves.”
“True.”
“So you won’t tell her?”
“Of course not.” Dor’ash watched with much amusement as Jonathan let out a sigh of relief.
“I honestly didn’t know when I first met her,” the skeletal man said, shaking his head. “It didn’t come back to me until I went to Silvermoon.” He pulled a face. “Never going there again.”
Another thought struck, and the orc just had to ask.
“What’s your real name?”
“Medivh on a gnome walker, Dor’ash! Don’t do this to me.” A loud, disgusted sound and a slap at the air followed this groan, and the shaman laughed.
A moment passed, and Jonathan leaned on his staff. Finally he shrugged.
“Fine,” he said. “I couldn’t remember a thing at first, so I played around with some names and words until I got something that sounded alright.”
“Schiller?”
“Chilly.”
Dor’ash bit his knuckles to keep from laughing again. He saw from the corner of his eye how Sarah had stopped eating and looked in their direction. Best think of some lie to tell her about this conversation.
Leaning a little closer, Jonathan hissed:
“I swear that if you ever tell anyone I’ll rip out your eyeballs and stuff them down your throat. Galahandar Dawngreeter.”
A thin trickle of blood seeped down Dor’ash’s hand from where he bit down on his knuckles.
It ain’t quite over yet, but that’s a good place to end one chapter XD
Too bad I wasn’t born in the golden age of pulp, eh? Then again, then I’d be old and wrinkly by now, at best. Haha, I haven’t even seen the Indiana Jones movies, truth to be told. ducks I’ll go tweak the things as per your suggestions, as usual.
The rest of the stories about them will be a lot more serious, until the happy ending at least (I’m such a sap!).