Christie Golden - Warcraft

“The Guardian has to speak the incantation himself. As long as he’s doing that, we can get in close. Distract him.” Khadgar strode purposefully toward the lumbering clay creation.

“And then?” Lothar asked.

“Get Medivh into the font,” Khadgar replied. He took off after the golem.

“Is that all?” Lothar asked sarcastically, but even as he spoke the words he realized that this was the precise moment when he fully trusted Khadgar, as he began to climb up to the font level where Medivh stood, still chanting the horrible spell that would permit—perhaps was already permitting—thousands of bloodlust-enraged orcs to spill into Azeroth.

He moved slowly, taking his time although everything in him urged him to hurry, hurry. He paused, but the Guardian seemed far too caught up in his incantation to have noticed Lothar closing in on him from behind. Impulsively, Lothar spoke, still carefully closing the distance between them.

“Medivh… if there is something of you still in there, old friend… come back to us.” There was no response. Medivh seemed utterly oblivious to Lothar’s presence. Sorrowfully, Lothar reached with one hand to cover Medivh’s mouth.

Without even pausing in his chant, Medivh shot out his hand, seized Lothar by the throat, and lifted him up. Lothar’s hands went to his neck, trying desperately to pry Medivh’s fel-strong fingers from it. Effortlessly, Medivh moved him until Lothar dangled directly in front of him—and directly above the sickly green font.

The grip on his throat was tight, the fingers digging in, but Lothar could still breathe. Still speak.

Why? Why not just crush his windpipe and be done with it?

“Medivh,” he rasped, his eyes pleading.

Medivh hurled him away. Lothar sailed clear across the font to land hard on the other side of it.

Lothar gasped for air, fishlike, his lungs initially refusing to cooperate. Gritting his teeth against the fresh pain, he clambered to his feet, swaying drunkenly. Below him, Khadgar was attempting to trap the lumbering, half-headed golem. Lothar didn’t know why. He didn’t know much right now, only that he had to— had to—keep trying.

“Come on! Kill me. I’ve got nothing left to live for now, anyway,” he shouted once breath had returned to him. Medivh ignored him. He simply stood, implacable, continuing that damnable chanting. “After all, life is just fuel to you, isn’t it?” He was trying to goad the fel-thing into losing its focus, into attacking him. Killing him, if need be, if it would silence the chant. His voice was raw with pain as he thought of his boy, dying so brutally, shredded by the monster’s claws while his father had been forced to watch.

And then he thought of Llane. His friend. His brother, truth be told, by law and in his heart. “But Llane,” Lothar said to Medivh from across the pool of fel, “he believed in you. Don’t kill your king. Don’t kill your friend.”

Medivh paused in his chanting. His eyes changed color, from sickly green to coal black. A cold fear twisted Lothar’s gut. “Whatever is you plan to do, kid,” he called to the unseen Khadgar, “do it now!” Even as he spoke Medivh stepped into the font.

It was exactly what Khadgar had instructed Lothar to attempt to do. Lothar sagged in relief. They’d done it. He’d reached Medivh. The Guardian had stepped into the powerful magical font, and—

—began to grow .

Taller, bigger, wider—everything about Medivh grew larger. Muscles layered themselves upon him, taking his fit but ordinary build and transforming it into something that looked more like an orc than a human, and more like a demon than either. His skin took on a green tint, and green mist began to pour from his eyes. With each step, some new horror twisted Lothar’s old friend into a walking nightmare. Twin sets of horns sprouted from Medivh’s forehead. Jagged shards of what looked like obsidian daggers speared upward from his shoulders, for all the world as if the raven feathers that had trimmed Medivh’s cloak had turned to black crystals.

“Now,” Lothar said, horror swallowing the words. The thing that had once been the Guardian of Azeroth continued to advance, continued to grow, to reshape itself, and its terrible gaze was fixed on Lothar.

“Now!” he shouted to Khadgar. “Now, now !”

There was a shimmer of pale blue energy directly above Medivh’s head, and then the massive clay golem, all eighteen feet and countless pounds of it, came crashing down onto the demonic figure in the felpool.

It was as beautiful as Gul’dan could have imagined. The orcs charged through, from a dead world into verdant one, and the Horde bellowed a welcome. The humans despaired, and died, and Gul’dan was glad. Then his smile faded.

The green glow around the interior of the portal flickered. The image of the rest of the Horde on Draenor, waiting to come join their brethren. Such had happened before, but his great ally had always resumed. So Gul’dan waited.

Silence.

The images continued to fade even more. Still, the chant did not resume. “No,” murmured Gul’dan. “No, no …!”

A final flicker, an image of orcish silhouettes that would remain burned into his mind’s eye, and then they were gone. For a long moment, Gul’dan stared, aghast, and then he cried out till his voice was raw with rage. He whirled on the nearest cage, crammed with shrieking humans, and grasped the bars with his hands. He looked at their ugly, soft faces, then with a mighty wrench, shoved the entire cage off the platform, taking only the faintest pleasure in watching it smash to pieces and pulp far below.

“So be it!” he growled. “Our might alone will take this world!”

Khadgar hurtled down along with the golem he had teleported, landing in the font and looking tiny beside the two unnaturally sized figures. The boy gasped, and Lothar saw with horror that the fel was beginning to work its dark magic upon Khadgar as well.

Green energy crackled around Khadgar as he turned to face Lothar. He extended a hand in the commander’s direction, fingers spread wide, and Lothar braced himself for a ball of fel magic to hurtle toward him, to drain him of life and leave only a contorted shell. Instead, the air around Lothar shimmered, then formed a blue-white dome. Through the green mist that surrounded the boy, he smiled, reassuringly. And Lothar realized that far from attacking him, Khadgar had cast a shield spell around him.

The youth moved forward, kneeling beside Medivh’s enormous, horned head. He reached out a trembling hand and clamped it down on the demon’s forehead.

“You’re stronger than he is,” Lothar said, and realized that he believed every word. Khadgar had not faltered, and was not doing so now. “Get rid of it, kid!”

But Khadgar wasn’t getting rid of it. He was harvesting it. The fel whipped around Khadgar and Medivh, a storm of livid, sickly green. He was siphoning it from Medivh, pinned under the broken golem and bellowing as he tossed his horned head. He was pulling it from the font, draining it dry. All of it was funneling directly into Khadgar. Green energy roiled off Medivh in waves. Lothar realized that Khadgar, that wet-eared boy, was using himself as a living conduit to expel the fel taint from Medivh.

And it was working.

As Lothar stared, riveted, both horrified and hopeful, Medivh’s demonic form began to shrink, slowly returning to its original size and shape. The tossing head lost its horns, and Medivh’s long hair once again flowed from his scalp. Khadgar released him and turned his attention to the font itself, plunging his hands in it, his face, drawn and tight, screwed up in concentration.