Aaron Rosenberg - Beyond the Dark Portal

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 right 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!"