Christie Golden - Warcraft - Official Movie Novelization

“Anyone else?” Gul’dan challenged. Those who had not already moved out of reach of the angry warlock stood, shuffling their feet. They did not want to stay, but neither did they wish to die as their comrades had. As Durotan had.

“And you, warchief!” Brimming with fel energy, Gul’dan whirled, his hand shooting out as he funneled everything straight into Blackhand. The warchief fell to the dead ground, screaming and writhing as his body was twisted and contorted. “You will take the fel,” Gul’dan shouted over Blackhand’s tormented cries, “and you will become stronger than any orc has ever been! And when the fel has remade you, you will crush the smallteeth!”

The green washed over and through Blackhand. Muscles swelled so large his armor popped off his body in places. Tendrils looking like veins pumping green blood twined along him, even down his metallic, claw-like appendage. Blackhand looked up, his eyes so bright with the fel that mist roiled from them. Orgrim turned away, sickened in body and spirit. It was too late for Durotan, and it was too late for Blackhand. But it was not too late for him, and the few others who had been forced to see with fresh eyes thanks to the sacrifice of the Frostwolf chieftain.

As he strode into the forest, away from the fel and its false promises, he heard Gul’dan screaming, “Now— claim my new world !”

The Black Morass, the enemy, and innocent prisoners awaited King Llane and his troops over the next rise. Beside Llane rode Garona, who had been casting concerned glances at him.

In silence, the small group crested this final rise, and Llane’s stomach turned to ice.

The Frostwolves will meet you on the way , Medivh had told him.

And so they had. Impaled Frostwolves lined the road, an obscene invitation to enter the vast encampment of orcs. Horror closed Llane’s throat as he looked from body to body. Some had pendants with the clan’s symbol dangling from their necks. Others had the Frostwolf banner stuffed into their mouths. There were so many…

Medivh had been wrong. The rebellion had been snuffed out. Their would-be allies had been reduced to gore-encrusted, stiffening corpses… or worse.

Llane took a long, deep breath. He forced himself to look past the horrifying spectacle, past the sea of orc tents, to the cages filled with prisoners. His people—still alive, for now. And beyond them—the Great Gate. The dark portal, which would shortly birth a flood of ravaging orc warriors. The Horde would descend upon Azeroth, slaughtering his people. The fel used to make them fierce would suck the life out of Azeroth, leaving it as dry and desiccated as the orcs’ own world. It was already happening. The Black Morass had been a swamp, but in the area around the portal, there was only parched earth, a grim preview of what was to come.

Unless, somehow, they were stopped.

“We few, then,” he said. Suddenly, a rain of fire and stone fell upon them, launched from hidden catapults. They had walked right into a trap—baited with hope, sprung with horror, and promising soon death for likely every member of the three legions who had followed Llane in this wretched folly.

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.