Grim Views

Thunder rumbled across the distance and lightning crackled along the sky, illuminating the storm clouds that would never rain and the dead landscape beneath, scattered with the corpses of plants, animals, and people.  The only illumination in the wasteland of what once had been a forest known as Silverpine Forest, save the near incessant bolts of lightning, came from within a circle of stones each the size of a man's head and marked with runes of warding and protection.  Torches lit the area dimly, casting dozens of shadows in every direction. Within the circle worked two individuals, and outside of it stood fifteen.  Those outside the circle held their focus on the darkness at the edge of the torchlight, all battle-hardened veterans of numerous campaigns and battles.  Many still bore injuries from the last fight. The body of their healer had already been disposed of, having fallen to the plague and died in the night previous, but as the cycle was not obvious without the light of the sun, which hadn't penetrated the storm in a week, it was an unmade observation.

Within the circle was a device that was a never seen before hybrid of technology and magic, a doorway ten feet tall and wide enough for two to pass through abreast with ease.  The doorway was a haphazard construction of forged metal and marked entirely with runes. Surrounding the doorway in expanding concentric circles ending at the circle of stones.  An undead man tinkered with a box built into the base of the contraption, connecting wires to the series of clamps holding dozens of lightly glowing crystals.  A dark haired blood elf woman holding a staff that glowed with a cold light paced fretfully back and forth in an unfinished section of the circles, examining the ground and making a mark, then adjusting it, then referring to the book in her other hand, muttering, and adjusting again. 

A clattering of metal on bone attracted the attention of all, followed by an arrow being deflected by a previously invisible field of magical force, mere inches from the elven woman's head. The undead stood and nodded in the direction of the attack. Three of those outside knocked arrows and fired them into the sky in three different directions.  After a brief flight the arrows exploded into brilliant light, illuminating a horde of undead just past the previous edge of darkness.  "We've got company!" hollered the de facto leader, an orc with a missing arm and wielding a battle axe meant for two in his remaining.  "Hit them hard, men! We need to buy the boss more time!"  The group readied ranged weapons and spells, sending waves of carefully aimed death into the ranks of the undead, hardly making a dent, as for each slain, two more would step into view.  The undead at the gate swore quietly, hand clasping a pair of dice made of bone as if they were all that kept him alive.

"Hurry up, Qaro. We don't have time for perfection," he said, his voice lacking the typically happy edge it usually possessed. His yellow eyes quickly averted as one of his men outside was cut down by a corpse that got too close.  The corpse was quickly dispatched by the orc, but the damage was already done.  Qarosimae hissed quietly and made another mark in the ground, arcane energies glowing purple.  "Perfection is required, Inzema, if we want to survive, so be quiet and let me concentrate. Interdimensional travel is purely hypothetical!"  Inzema muttered quietly and ran out of the shield, a pocket on his chest glowing as he passed through. 

Outside the undead was a dance of death, axes and knives a blur, severing decayed heads and skeletal limbs with ease.  The orc's eyes lit up at the carnage and roared, letting his ancestral blood rage take over.  Two more defenders fell to the onslaught of the undead, but no ground was lost due to the offensive.  Inside the shield, Qarosimae finished the last rune.  She said a silent prayer to whoever might be listening in hopes that the gods, what gods that there might be, would look favorably upon the attempt and make it work.  Her felfire-green eyes lit up, twin infernos of contained arcane energy. Her mouth began uttering syllables of a long-forgotten tongue, calling forth the power required.  The runes around her pulsed and glowed, filling each circle with blinding light until completion, then the next, until the light blocked sight of the doorway.

Outside the wards the battle continued to rage. Four more defenders had fallen, two of whom had already been reanimated by necromancers within the ranks of the undead and cut down again by their former friends.  A string of explosions rocked the undead ranks, creating a gap between the reserve forces and those at the front, scattering dead flesh and bone to the four winds.  Inzema took the moment of confusion to destroy the five he faced with a grenade and a quick retreat to the edge of the wards.  Thunderous footsteps announced the arrival of flesh giants, and a scream brought his attention to gargoyles flying away with two more of his men.  Inzema swore, sighted, and threw a pair of knives, killing the men.  Death would not save them from anything but torture before undeath.

Inside, Qarosimae uttered one final syllable.  The blinding light of the circles died away, transferring to the box of crystals, then along the runes on the doorway itself. The contraption hummed loudly, and for a moment, the fighting stopped.  Even the sky was silent for several seconds, the only sound being that of the humming portal.

Then the portal was silent.  The lights died.  The battle resumed at the moment the mage swore.

A flesh giant crushed a defender, a second attempted to crush the orc, losing the arm in the attempt.  Inzema dodged an attempt by a third, activated boosters in his boots, and ran a burning trail up the giant's arm, stuffed an explosive into its gaping maw, and jumped free, tumbling to the ground as the explosion sent the giant tumbling backwards, crushing dozens of undead not intelligent enough to move.  A volley of explosive arrows toppled the first giant, and the loss of a leg toppled the second.  One defender screamed as her face began melting from a concentrated beam by a necromancer, falling dead shortly thereafter.  Another fell, coughing blood from arrows puncturing his breastplate.

Suddenly the doorway flared to life.  Qarosimae adjusted her glasses, shock spreading across her face as the portal showed the field they stood in, lit by the sun.  "It's open!"  She walked, leaning heavily on her staff as she did, to the portal, standing just outside of it.  She took a quick glance at the box of crystals and noted that the device was not holding up well to the strain of the energy requirements of maintaining the portal.  It wouldn't be long until it was closed for good.

Inzema looked back at the sound of Qarosimae's voice, saw the portal, then whooped with joy.  He hit a button on his belt, detonating a secondary ring of explosives to drive the undead back further.  One of the defenders was caught in the explosion, body flung by the force over the shield and into the undead on the far side of the circle.  Inzema ran for the shield, passing through ahead of the orc and simultaneous to the last, who fell through with a dozen arrows in her back. 

"What's the hold up?" he said as he stopped just behind Qarosimae.  She glared at him and with no further hesitation walked through the portal, disappearing into the shimmering image like a pool of water.  Inzema smiled, but it was short lived. With the mage gone, the wards died and a score of arrows landed around him. Five struck the orc, three more in Inzema.  Inzema pushed the orc through the portal ahead of him, despite his protests, and dropped a bomb on the crystal box.  He stepped through the image.

Colors distorted.  It felt like the world was spinning and not simultaneously.  Time stretched out visibly for eternity, and for a moment Inzema could see himself.  The experience was only a couple of seconds, but it felt infinitely longer.  Inzema, for the first time since he had died, passed out.

"Hey, corpse? Corpse?! Wake up, you undead lecher, or so help me, fel!"

Inzema woke to Qarosimae shaking him and a blue sky.  He grinned, lips spreading across sharp teeth, and said "Hey, tootsss. Misss me?"  Qarosimae's eyes flared brightly and she slapped the undead, who chuckled, along with the orc.  Qarosimae sat back, Inzema sat up, pulled an arrow from his chest nonchalantly, and looked around.  "We made it, huh?"  Qarosimae looked around and nodded.  "We made it, but to where is the question" she said, removing her glasses and cleaning them against her robe.  Inzema shrugged.

"Don't matter. We made it."

(( Nice story! Where's the follow-up?! ))

Qarosimae held her eyes shut, her face pinched into concentration.  She sat, runes of scrying carved into the ground in a perfect circle around her, the knife sitting at her feet.  Green light burned dimly through her eyelids, eyes tracking back and forth behind.  The morning breeze caused several strands of black hair to break free from her otherwise orderly ponytail.  The chirping of birds overhead mingled with the distant calls of the murlocs in their village.  Moss elementals tromped about nearby, maintaining good distance form the mage.  The one armed orc, Ontahk, sat fifteen feet, three inches away, sharpening his axe, whetstone grating against metal.  Each of these, by themselves or together, proved less distracting than the corpse hovering over her shoulder.

Despite breath no longer being a requirement, he did so, loudly, air rasping across dead teeth, down a decayed throat, and into rotted lungs.  His hollow sockets bore glowing orbs of yellow light, focused intently on the back of Qarosimae's head.  When he shifted his weight, which was often, his boned creaked.  He tapped on his right knee with his right hand as he casually rolled a pair of bone dice in his left, the clacking of the bones making a ruckus in the morning still.  All of this would have been ignorable as well by the concentrating mage, who was proficient in stilling her mind even in the heat of battle, save for the fact that every thirty eight seconds the corpse would utter the same phrase.

"Ssso...you know where we are yet?"

Eight times he had asked, and this time elicited a twitch of the elf's right ear, her lips twisting slightly into a scowl.  An amused grin spread across the undead's face, lips pulling back across teeth filed to points and stained with blood.  There was an audible pop as arcane energy was released from containment by the mage, who opened one fel-burning eye.  The orc looked up, his whetstone ceasing movement.  A grin was already plastered on his betusked face, knowing well from experience what was about to happen.

"I would have scryed it by now, Corpse...if you would stop interrupting me."  Qarosimae spoke through clenched teeth, her temper on a knife's edge.  She removed her knife from the ground, returning it to the jeweled sheath on her belt.  Giving up her spell, writing it off as "not going to happen," she stood, stretching the kinks out of her muscles, acquired from sitting in such a rigid position.  She eventually met the eyes of the corpse, still grinning, and gestured for him to proceed.  Inzema frowned, tilting his head to the right, a quizzical expression taking over his pallid flesh.

"You already know, so out with it," Qarosimae said, frustration leaking slightly into her voice, causing her to speak slightly louder than normal or necessary.  Inzema grinned and gestured over his shoulder.  "Well, I just walked around, and guess what I found."  "A squirrel" came Qarosimae's immediate reply.  Inzema blinked, nodded excitedly, and produced the mangled corpse of the rodent from his cloak, half eaten, as if by some predator.  Or deranged undead.

"Guess what else."  It took several seconds, but when Qarosimae refused to play the game, Inzema mocked a sigh and looked to Ontahk, gesturing to the orc that it was his turn to play the game.  "Fenris Keep, intact, as it was before it got blown up.  Lordaeron ruins across the lake, still intact and visible from here.  Oh, and a huge crater where Dalaran was."  The elf's growing smile stopped on the last sentence, dropping to utter shock.  Inzema threw a knife at the orc, the hilt connecting with the massive shoulderplate.  "I told you to sssugarcoat it!"  Inzema caught the knife as it careened back at him, returning it to its sheath.  The orc shrugged.  The undead sighed.  "Ssso, yeah.  Good newsss, ssscourge haven't taken over.  Bad newsss, looksss like Dalaran isss ssstill gone.  Bright ssside, there are other librariesss out there!  Maybe the Ssscryersss are ssstill in Shhhattrath."  Qarosimae, still crestfallen, nodded slightly.  She took a deep breath, regaining control of herself.

"We will not find them if we do not head out."  Inzema grinned.  "That'sss the ssspirit.  Let'sss check out the Undersssity, put out sssome feelersss."  Qarosimae nodded.  Ontahk grunted, heaving his axe over his shoulder.  "I saw zepplins in the sky.  Maybe one will take me to Orgrimmar.  I think I will take a well earned vacation, boss."  Inzema shrugged, his shoulder popping, and turned northward.  He started walking, Qarosimae falling in behind, and the orc taking up the rear.  "Well jussst don't disssappear.  I ssstill owe you a drink."  The orc laughed.