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The Cackling Banshee

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2012 4:15 pm
by Ashenfury
Khorvis had already dismissed his advisers. His joints creaked as he sat down and stared at the map of Azeroth that was littered with teeth painted red and talons painted blue to mark the positions of the Horde and Alliance fronts.

The map was starting to blur under the strain of leadership and fatigue. Khorvis rested his head on his hand and slowly allowed his heavy eyelids to creep downward. The map was dissolving as he let go of consciousness.

Movement caught his eye. The map moved! He snapped awake and looked for the source of a gust of wind or a foot print in the dust. He was certain he was alone. It must have been his imagination. As he stood to seek respid in his quarters the map jerked again. Khorvis put his hand on the map. One of the red teeth that portrayed the Grim front in Pandaria was wiggling.

Khorvis squinted his eyes and stared at the tooth. It freed itself from the wooden table and went straight up into the air and then straight down onto another point in the map that was occupied by the Alliance. Khorvis knew that he was alone but he wasn't tired enough to admit that it was a hullicination. He waited for more movement. Nothing.

A tired Khorvis who had been standing at the map long enough to allow the hearth's blaze to burn down to coals stood unblinking. There was rarely even the crackle of wood now. It had to be a dream or a vision. Possibly the Valkyries themselves. He turned to finally head for his quarters.

As he let out a sigh he watched a chair get pulled from a table and thrown forward to where he had been planning the military movements. Khorvis blinked and observed. The chair creaked as if a great weight were upon it and then suddenly the table and the map both were subject to something unseen being slammed into it. The loud unexpected thud made Khorvis jump.

He stepped closer to the table and noticed that nothing had changed except that the alliance talon that the tooth had advanced to earlier was now cracked and pushed further into the wood. "What the fel?" Khorvis said to himself.

Before he could even venture a guess the guild hall boomed with deep hearty Orcish laughter. Each time the pitch would raise the low burning coals would breath and roar into a flame. The heat from the fire was intense and the laughter grew louder. The chair that had moved was now quaking and the entire room seemed to be shaking from the haunting cackle.

Then all at once it was over.

Re: The Cackling Banshee

Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 7:35 am
by Khorvis
Frostfire and Chaos bolts slammed into the Lion's Landing Tower, sending showers of debris across the beach head and into the tower proper. Operation: Shieldwall marines rushed the ramparts and fell in droves.

"Addikus and Anaie, get our marksmen a proper target in their command group or I'll have your Forsaken arses!" Khorvis shouted from behind a pillar as he cleaved a human vanguard from hip to shoulder. The fighting had been raging since sundown, when the Blight Serpents fell from the sky upon Lion's Landing. Khorvis gritted his tusks against the ceaseless onslaught and remembered the previous night as his fist became more and more penned in ...

...

"The fel?!" The orc warrior stumbled backwards, eyeing the apparently haunted table of maps. A massive tooth, doubling as a Horde troop marker, stood quivering in the parchment, having been driven into the woodgrain with disquieting force. The dying light of the fireplace grew the odd shadows in the command tower to strange and hideous proportions.

"What manner of spirits would come to me so," asked Khorvis to the crackling flames. "This land is fat and weak. It is but a matter of weeks until all of the continent is under our axe."

Only the quiet of Krasarang's night greeted the warrior's question. The distant sound of a smithy's hammer on hot iron echoed in the newly constructed chamber and the haunting cries of the swamp crane mocked Khorvis's solitude. Grumbling, the orc trudged back to his chair and fell into it with bone-weariness. He uncorked a hip-flask of rough pewter and took a long swig of something foul, wiping his jaw with the back of his unwashed fist.

"We all know that we are in for a long war. The pinkskins are dug-in and it will take more than a few fists to unearth that stubborn root." The fireplace sizzled and hissed as he spat a derisive wad into the flames. "We will just have to starve the curs out."

As the aging warrior began to doze once again, the flames leapt and grew, coalescing into the form of a small wolf-cub. Pawing its way from the hearth, it eyed the groggy orc with a playful air. Embers hissed and cracked against the damp earth as the spirit hopped onto the table. With both forepaws, it clutched the small rock identifying the Operation: Shieldwall Defense and squeezed tightly. Within a matter of moments, the stone exploded violently, launching shards of hot ghost-iron into Khorvis's exposed flesh ...

...

The bloody husk of a man slid from Khorvis's axe and into a stonewrought wall, twitching and then unmoving. Steeling himself for another wave, the orc waited ... and waited ... and popped open one eye, poking his head around the corner of the pillar. The sky had gone black as the Sha, and the Alliance forces withheld their onslaught.

"Ancestor, from whatever Clan you hail, do not fail me this day!" Khorvis roared, and charged toward the beach-head.

Re: The Cackling Banshee

Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2012 3:01 pm
by Atticus
Addikus turned to Anaie and shrugged. He slipped past the treeline at the edge of the beach, disappeared into the shadows. He moved north, past the front lines, seeking a target for the marksmen.