Aaron Rosenberg - Beyond the Dark Portal

Some of the other orcs cheered his statement, and Grom used that energy to fuel his own fervor, whip­ping Gorehowl around over his head so its shrieking would add a backdrop to his words.

"Yes. the Alliance is hunting us," he shouted, "and yes, we are no match for them today. But one day, and that day soon, we will be! Here we can rest, recover, and strategize. Here we will launch attacks, as we have already been doing for the last several turns of their moons. We will grow strong again. We will become the predators once more, and the humans will quake with fear!" He jerked his axe to a stop and held it still above his head, lowering his voice so his words fell softly into the sudden quiet. “And one day we, the Horde, will rise and take our vengeance against the hu­mans with a true and final victory!"

The warriors cheered and whooped and shouted, raising their own weapons high, and Grom nodded. Pleased. They were all behind him again, all united once more.

All except one.

"You have been betrayed repeatedly, each time by another orc claiming leadership, and still you continue down that same path," Rexxar said softly, though his eyes burned with rage. "You have no reason left to fight! Before, we fought to protect our people by claiming this world for them. But they are gone! We no longer need this world! With the handful left, you could find a place the humans have never gone and claim it without shedding a single drop of blood!"

"Where would be the glory in that?" one of the other orcs shouted.

Grom nodded. "What is life without battle?" he de­manded of Rexxar. "You are a warrior — you understand that! Fighting keeps us strong, keeps us sharp!"

"Perhaps," the half-breed admitted. "But why fight when there is no need? Why fight just for its own sake? That is not fighting to save anyone, or to win anything, or even for glory. It is fighting from sheer bloodlust, from love of violence alone. And I am sick of that. I want no part of it."

"Coward!" someone shouted, and Rexxar's eyes nar­rowed as he straightened to his full height, the twin axes rising to shoulder level.

"Step forth and say that," he challenged, his voice an ominous rumble. "Step away from the rest, where I can see you clearly, and call me a coward to my face! Then see whether I shrink from a fight!"

No one moved, and after a second Rexxar shook his head, a sneer on his heavy features. "You are the cow­ards," he proclaimed, spitting the words down upon them. "You are too afraid to live truly, outside the shad­ows of lies and promises you have been bought with. You have no courage, and no honor. That is why you cannot be trusted." The half-orc's shoulders slumped. "From now on, only the beasts will I trust."

Grom felt a mixture of emotions as he watched the towering warrior depart. How dare Rexxar abandon them now, when they most needed to stay together? At the same time, who could blame him? He was not even part of the Horde in the normal sense, for the mok'nathal were ever reluctant to leave the Blade's Edge Mountains. To the best of Grom's knowledge, only Rexxar himself had responded to the Horde's plea, to fight during the First War and then again dur­ing the Second. And what had it gained him? He had lost his world, his people, and even his companion the wolf. Was it any wonder the half-orc felt betrayed?

"No one walks away from the Horde!" someone in­sisted. "We should drag him back by his cars, or kill him!”

"He insulted us all!" another pointed out. "He should die for his insolence!"

"We need his strength," a third countered. "We can­not afford to lose him!"

"Enough!" Grom shouted, glaring at them all. The dissenters fell silent. "Let him go," he ordered. "Rexxar has served the Horde well. Let him have his peace now."

“And what about us?" one of the warriors demanded. "What will we do now?"

"We know what to do," Grom replied. "This world is our home now. Let us live in it fully." But even as they nodded and returned to the fire, to speak softly in voices about plans and victory and supplies, Rexxar's words returned to haunt him, and a part of Grom wondered if they would ever find that which they had lost so long ago: peace.

Turalyon emerged from the rift, blinking. "Is … is this … Draenor?" They had escaped Draenor's destruction by stepping through into another world, one they could barely make sense of. Khadgar and the other magi had shielded them from the tremors passing through the rift, and once it had quieted they had returned, hoping to search for any of their comrades that might have sur­vived. But as his eyes registered what they saw, Turalyon jerked to a halt, staring. Only Alleria's tug on his hand reminded him to move out of the way so the rest could emerge as well.

"It is. What's left of it, anyway," Khadgar said. Tura­lyon recognized the rubble of the fallen Dark Portal be­hind them, with Honor Hold and Hellfire Citadel in the distance. The cracked red earth was the same as well. But the sky—!

It rippled with color now, and ribbons of light shot through it like multihucd lightning bolts that traveled across instead of ever touching the earth. The sun had vanished and the sky was a dark red, but he could see the moon hovering high above, looking far larger than it ever had before, A second sphere, this one rosy, was low on the horizon, and a third, smaller and a bright blue, floated just above that one. Wisps like tendrils of cloud drifted here and there.

And while the earth was the same in color and con­sistency, not far away Turalyon saw a small wedge of cracked ground — only it was perhaps a hundred feet up! It bobbed slightly, buffeted by the fierce winds that raged all around them, but otherwise stayed in place. Other fragments floated here and there as well.

"The damage has sundered reality as we know it," Khadgar continued. "Gravity, space, perhaps even time itself no longer function properly here."

Khadgar's words were swallowed by a tearing sound beneath them. Turalyon grabbed his arm with one hand and Alleria's with the other, instinctively tugging them both back toward what had been the rest of the land.

"Fall back!" Turalyon shouted, though he wasn't sure the men could hear him over the rending of the earth or the howling of the winds overhead. "Back away from the rift!" They could see him, however, and he gestured to the west, toward Honor Hold. They ran then, all order forgotten in their panic.

And not a moment too soon. As Turalyon pulled Khadgar and Alleria along, the ground beneath their feet began to crumble. They hurled themselves toward the ground beyond, barely reaching it before the ledge behind them collapsed, chunks of rock and earth falling away. Before, the Dark Portal had been partially encir­cled by mountains to the east, and beyond that had been the sea. Now most of the mountains had van­ished, and, shockingly, so had the waves. Only empty space waited to swallow the falling debris, as the world's remains now hung in a great yawning darkness shot through with ripples and flashes of light here and there.

"Sir," one of the men piped up. "Wasn't… wasn't that where the rift was?"

"Yes," Turalyon said. "It was." The rift through which they had first fled Draenor and then returned to it had indeed been on that ledge, and had collapsed when the earth beneath it had shattered, leaving be­hind only the remnants of the Dark Portal.

There was silence, and Turalyon sensed their grow­ing despair. "Look there," he told them, spotting a fa­miliar cluster of buildings a short distance away. "Honor Hold still stands. We built it to serve as our stronghold here on Draenor, and so it will be."

He turned to look at them — dusty, bloody, exhausted. "We knew when we came through we might not be re­turning. Light, we expected to die — but we didn't. The portal's closed. We did what we came here to do. What we do now — that's up to us. There are others still out there — we need to find them, bring them back. We'll ex­plore. Make new allies. Keep fighting the Horde, whatever's left of it here, so they don't ever try to do some­thing like this again. The Light is still with us. We still have a job to do. This world will be what we choose to make of it."