Christie Golden - Warcraft

And there was blood—both the red of human blood and also splashes here and there of a thick, brown fluid. Lothar dismounted, removing his glove and touching the liquid, rubbing it between his fingers. Something very important was missing—bodies. Medivh and Khadgar, too, had dismounted. Medivh strode ahead, absently planting his staff in the ground. Khadgar caught it before it tumbled to the earth. The Guardian was staring at a burned tree trunk that gave off a sickly green smoke. Glowing embers in the blackened wood winked like emeralds.

“It can’t be,” Lothar thought he heard Medivh murmur.

He saw Khadgar’s attention shift to something behind one of the carts. “Here’s a body,” the boy said, then called out, “Guardian!”

There was a blur of motion. Lothar’s head whipped around just in time to see one of his knights go flying, his mail and chest crushed in by a thrown hammer a third as large as he was.

The hitherto silent forest was now filled with a terrible roaring sound, and the beasts they had been hunting poured into the clearing, exploding out of nowhere, dropping from the trees.

Giants—armed giants.

Wolves to carry them.

Huge, unstoppable beasts—

Lothar’s first, absurd thought was that the rumors hadn’t gone far enough.

“Mother of—” Sir Evran whispered. He, like the others, like Lothar himself, was frozen, rooted to the earth as the monsters charged forward.

Like the trolls, they were tall, had tusks, and adorned themselves with tattoos and bones and feathers. But they were not just tall, they were massive. Their chests were enormous, their hands large enough to envelop and crush a man’s skull without effort, and the weapons designed to fit such hands—

The biggest one of all silenced Sir Evran before he could even finish his sentence. Towering above the others, tattoos crawling over his hands, he sprang with the speed and power of one of Stranglethorn’s great cats, bringing an enormous hammer crunching down on the hapless knight. The gargantuan thing turned, and, almost casually, hefted a shrieking horse into the air and tossed it as if it were little more than a sack of grain. Two soldiers fell, crushed beneath its weight. A female, her skin more green than brown, laughed maniacally at the spectacle.

It all happened in the span of one heartbeat to the next.

Sir Kyvan roared in response, his voice sounding thin and high next to the bellow of the beasts. He brought his blade swinging up, knocking that of a greenish-tinted monster to the side. The creature grunted in surprise, then—it looked like he grinned as he engaged the brave Kyvan in earnest. Though the enemy was twice his size, Kyvan managed to hold his own until the creature almost casually tore a wheel off one of the carts and slammed it into Kyvan’s skull.

It looked up, grinning around those hideous tusks, only to stumble as Lothar’s shield bashed him in the face. The thing’s head jerked back, and Lothar swung his sword, slicing across the beast’s jugular. Blood as green as its skin spurted forth, and the creature fell—dead.

The rumors had been wrong about one thing, at least. The beasts were not unstoppable.

Khadgar gaped at the enormous thing that had hurled a fully-grown horse fifteen feet. Obviously the leader of the monsters, it rampaged through the clearing, reached for a battleaxe that was almost as big as Khadgar, and swung it in a wide, low arc, severing the bodies of two armored knights. Blood spattered everywhere, and the thing threw back its head and bellowed joyfully. All around him, wolves nearly the size of bears, white and gray and terrifying, were killing with the same speed, power, and ferocity as their riders.

Khadgar dragged his horrified gaze from the carnage to see what Medivh was doing, thinking he could help. His bowels clenched even tighter when he realized that what the Guardian of Azeroth was doing was absolutely nothing. Medivh simply stood, staring.

One of the beasts charged toward Khadgar. The youth shouted a spell, and a blast of arcane lightning shot from his hand. It struck the creature full in the chest and sent him flying. Khadgar shook himself and, speaking quickly and clearly, cast a protective circle about himself and Medivh. The air shimmered, encasing them in a small, shimmering blue bubble. If the Guardian wasn’t ready to attack, at least the former Novitiate would see to it that those things didn’t slice them both in half.

A shrill whinny behind them caused the young mage to whirl around—

—and come face to face with one of the beasts.

Lothar’s sword dripped greenish-brown blood as his gaze flickered over the scene. His knights outnumbered the beasts almost four to one—yet the monsters were overcoming them. Several good soldiers lay on the ground, either dead or dying, and—

Callan.

Callan didn’t see the axe that was about to—

Lothar was moving even before his brain realized it, lunging forward, using body, shield, and sword all as weapons. The beast was caught completely off guard and Lothar’s sword found its mark, plunging deep into the thing’s unprotected chest.

Callan stared gratefully up at his father. “Don’t try to take them on with brute force,” Lothar panted. He kicked at the creature’s corpse, rolling it off his son. “They’re stronger. Be smarter.”

He extended his free hand to his son. Callan reached up to take it. But even as Callan’s eyes flew wide in warning, Lothar felt something go around his waist that was as thick and strong as a tree trunk and he was hurled backward. He landed hard and painfully, his sword knocked from his hand, his own armor a liability as the monster, the leader of the whole horrifying group, advanced on him, leering.

The giant axe that had cut two men in half mere moments before was nowhere to be seen. The beast had thrown it, or abandoned it, or simply decided he didn’t want it any more. Lothar neither knew nor cared. Hot saliva dripped onto his face as the beast leader raised a hammer with an oversized right hand, reaching for Lothar with the other.

Refusing to accept the inevitable, Lothar put his hands down beside his waist in a doubtless futile attempt to rise. His right hand brushed something unfamiliar, and for a moment he didn’t realize what it was. And then, he remembered.

It’s a boomstick.

He’d stuck it in his belt and completely forgotten about it—until now. Lothar was able to get Magni’s gift out far enough to aim it at the descending hand. The beast’s enormous fingers clamped down on the weapon. Lothar squeezed the small movable part. The resulting blast almost deafened him, but the scream that followed was still audible. The beast staggered back, staring at the smoking ruin of flesh at the end of his arm.

The beast was huge, with brown skin and two yellowed tusks jutting upward from his oversized lower jaw. Two thick braids hung down on either side of his ears, the rest of the black length braided or flowing freely. Ears the size of Khadgar’s hands were pointed and pierced. Like the other beasts, this one wore primitive jewelry of bones and beads. He held an enormous axe in one hand. With the other, he touched, with surprising delicacy, the magical field that was all that stood between him and the mages.

His eyes were clear, brown, and calm. Behind those eyes, Khadgar realized, was an intelligent brain.

And that was the most frightening thing of all.

“Guardian!” Khadgar shouted, his voice climbing.