For the first time since his birth, Cenarius did not comprehend the nature of the enemy he was facing.
With a massive, sweeping motion, the demigod cleaved two of the foul beasts in half. They had dared to defile his sacred grove, and he responded with the raw, untamed fury of the forest. In an instant, he willed the deep ancient roots of the nearby trees to surge violently from the earth, impaling and crushing a dozen of the snarling monsters where they stood.
All around the clearing, his daughters and the towering Ancients of the forest were locked in fierce combat with the very same unnatural horrors. Seeing his kin threatened by such a violently alien malevolence, the Wild God knew he could afford these invaders absolutely no mercy.
He called upon the power of the sun, bringing down dozens of searing beams of light that incinerated the monsters swarming the grove. Nearby, one of the two visitors brought by his disciple was hurling volatile Arcane magic into the pack of beasts.
"They are endless, Master!" he heard Malfurion cry out over the din of battle.
"Do not lose focus, Malfurion!" the demigod roared, his mind racing as he rapidly assessed the battlefield.
They had already slaughtered hundreds of these foul creatures, but just as his student had said, their numbers seemed truly infinite.
"There must be a portal they are using to cross into our world!" Cenarius bellowed. He swept his nature-blessed spear in a devastating arc, the sheer physical force of the blow sending a pack of the demonic hounds flying through the air.
"Begone, beasts!" Malfurion roared. The winds answered his call, whipping through the grove and sending the creatures flying, just as a barrage of pinpoint Arcane missiles struck them mid-air.
Cenarius closed his eyes, his senses extending through every blade of grass and twisting roots within his grove. But there was nothing. He felt no spatial distortions, no tearing of reality that would indicate a portal nearby. Could it be that these beasts had been summoned well in advance of their attack on his domain?
But that would mean the Kaldorei magi had completely ignored, or willingly allowed, such a massive spatial anomaly to occur.
The Well of Eternity? Cenarius's eyes snapped open, quickly pushing the dark thought to the back of his mind. The Well had been in a strange state lately. He could feel its boundless energies dangerously concentrating around the capital of Zin-Azshari. He had assumed it was simply the Queen and her Highborne once again attempting to dissect the Well's mysteries, but... perhaps he had made a grave miscalculation?
Then, he finally sensed it. A micro-spatial distortion flared for just a fleeting instant far to the north of his domain, and then abruptly vanished.
So that is how their numbers appear endless. Cenarius didn't waste a single second. He surged forward, rushing directly toward the source of the anomaly, cleaving through the demonic hounds as effortlessly as one might crush an insect.
–
Lunara was entirely unsure of what was happening. What she had initially assumed to be a minor skirmish against some new, twisted beasts bred by the Zandalari Trolls was rapidly proving to be something far more sinister.
Her new companion was an odd one, too. He was silent. Far too silent. She knew she could be a bit much sometimes, her father and her sisters were always quick to remind her that she needed to tone down her boundless cheerfulness around strangers. So, she had tried to do exactly that.
Even so, her newfound companion possessed the conversational skills of a stone.
She sensed something deeply unnatural lingering beneath his skin, though she couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. Yet, he possessed highly specific knowledge about these horrific creatures; he had known exactly to warn her about their mana-draining tentacles during the fight. No natural evolution on Kalimdor could have possibly produced beasts with such appendages, not to mention the vile, sickening energy they radiated.
But now, she was being pressed by those very same beasts all over again!
She easily dispatched the closest one, driving her spear straight through its chest as it leaped for her throat. She glanced over at Vorath, who was effortlessly carving through his own targets with that chilling, dark blade. He seemed to have drastically improved his fighting efficiency against them in less than an hour. It was baffling to her; did mortals really adapt and learn this quickly?
If so, she could finally understand why her father was so eager to teach some of them the ways of nature magic.
Cupping her hands, she concentrated raw solar energy between her palms and unleashed a searing beam of light that burned several of the snarling beasts alive.
"Are they endless?!" she cried out as another dozen broke through the underbrush, rushing straight for them.
"If we don't find the one summoning them, then yes," Vorath replied.
His voice was annoyingly monotonous, completely devoid of any breathlessness or fatigue, despite the fact that he had been relentlessly swinging a massive, heavy broadsword.
Does he not get tired? Lunara thought, panting softly. She would almost be jealous of the mortal's incredible stamina if not for the horrible stench radiating from him.
"Then how do we find the summoner?" she asked, readying her spear for the next wave.
"We head in the exact direction the hounds are coming from," he replied calmly, manifesting a jagged ice spike and casually impaling a leaping hound mid-air.
"And if this is a trap?" she asked as they pushed forward through the dense thicket, covering each other's blind spots whenever a hound got too close.
"It is almost certainly a trap set by the Burning Legion," he replied without missing a beat.
Tell me more about them then !? she thought, her frustration mounting. She wanted to pry his head open and shake the answers right out of him!
"And if you know it's a trap, why are we walking straight into it?" she shot back.
"Because we don't have the luxury of worrying about it," Vorath said, pausing just long enough to meet her gaze with his unnerving, glowing white eyes. "Do you want to stop this invasion or not?"
She halted, her hooves digging stubbornly into the dirt. "Of course I want to! It is my father's grove they are desecrating!"
"Then follow me and fight," he replied flatly, already turning his back to her to continue the march.
Argh! Lunara gritted her teeth, her grip tightening painfully around her spear. She had half a mind to spin around and buck him square in the jaw with her hind legs!
As they burst through the dense treeline, they arrived at a completely devastated clearing. Lunara stopped dead in her tracks, her eyes darting wildly across the scorched earth.
"N-no," she gasped.
Scattered across the blackened grass were the broken, lifeless bodies of her dryad sisters. Towering above the carnage was a massive, flaming demonic beast. It threw its head back and laughed, a sickening, guttural sound, as its fiery whip cracked sharply against the ground. In its other hand, a heavy, spiked flail came down, brutally crushing the skull of a fallen dryad.
"NO!" Lunara roared, pure, unadulterated grief and rage overriding all her senses.
She bolted forward. Her spear ignited with a blinding, monstrous concentration of solar light. Any felhound foolish enough to block her path was instantly disintegrated, pulverized to ash by the sheer magical force of her charge.
But the demon was faster than its massive frame suggested. It spun around in an instant, bringing its blazing flail up to meet her glowing spear. The collision of the two triggered a deafening explosion of light. Lunara felt herself become weightless as she was launched backward through the air. She slammed violently into the trunk of a massive oak tree, pain instantly erupting through every nerve in her body.
Her vision exploded into white stars. The last thing she registered before slipping into unconsciousness was the flaming demon's mocking laughter.
–
Fucking hell, couldn't she wait?! Vorath cursed internally as he broke into a sprint. And who the hell yells during a surprise attack?!
He slid to a halt, planting his boots firmly in the dirt to place himself squarely between the unconscious dryad and the towering monstrosity. He recognized the beast instantly from the lore.
Hakkar the Houndmaster.
But as Vorath looked up at the towering inferno of muscle, fangs, and hellfire, his knowledge betrayed him.
Wait, wasn't he just supposed to look like a standard, oversized Fel Lord model? Vorath gripped his heavy Mourneblade with both hands, staring up at the terrifying, flaming juggernaut in front of him. I'm fighting a fucking demonic Ghost Rider!
"Hahahaha!" Hakkar threw his head back and roared with laughter. "What a pitiful little mortal!"
His fiery whip cracked against the earth as a jagged green portal tore open behind him, disgorging dozens of snarling felhounds into the clearing.
"Go! Attack the grove! He is mine," Hakkar commanded the beasts, a twisted, sadistic smile splitting his skull from ear to ear.
As the demonic pack surged past them into the dense woods, Vorath exhaled a long, steadying sigh. "You're going to regret that."
The demon only chuckled. Then, in a blur of motion that seemed impossible for a creature of his massive size, Hakkar lunged. His heavy spiked flail swung down in a blinding, deadly arc.
Vorath brought his heavy Mourneblade up to intercept it.
CLANG!
The impact shook the ground, but the demon's monstrous, crushing strength was dead-stopped by the dark metal of the Shadowlands. For a brief, straining moment, the two stood completely deadlocked in a clash of raw power.
Hakkar's burning eyes widened for a fraction of a second in sheer surprise—a mortal elf had just blocked his strike. But the shock didn't last. A second later, the demon unhinged his jaw.
Vorath dove into a desperate roll, narrowly dodging a scorching torrent of Fel fire that erupted from the Houndmaster's mouth and turned the grass where he'd just been standing to glass.
Springing back to his feet, Vorath instantly channeled his anima, summoning jagged spikes of Maw-forged ice directly beneath the demon's hooves to root him in place. But the moment the frost touched Hakkar's superheated skin, it violently hissed and evaporated into useless steam.
Shit. Vorath's eyes went wide as he saw the demon pivot, violently snapping his whip straight toward his face.
Vorath brought the blade up to brace himself, but the moment their weapons connected, he felt his feet physically leave the ground. The sheer force of the blow sent him skidding backward, his boots carving deep trenches into the earth.
Desperate for breathing room, he channeled every ounce of anima he could muster, violently pulling a massive wall of ice from the ground to block the demon's follow-up attack.
The frozen barricade erupted between them, but the flaming juggernaut shattered right through it as if it were made of fragile glass.
Still, the momentary distraction was exactly what Vorath needed. He regained his balance and narrowly pivoted out of the way of Hakkar's devastating downward flail strike. The spiked weapon buried itself deep into the dirt.
Seizing the narrow opening, Vorath darted inside the Houndmaster's guard. He ducked under the demon's massive arm and drove his heavy Mourneblade deep into Hakkar's thick, muscular flank. The dark, cold metal of the Maw eagerly drank the demon's flesh, and thick, boiling Fel blood spilled out over the blade.
Hakkar let out an earth-shattering roar, but it wasn't just a cry of physical pain. The demon's burning eyes widened in absolute, primal terror as he felt the necromantic blade violently tearing directly into his immortal soul.
"M-my soul! How?!" Hakkar roared in a mix of agony and disbelief.
Driven by sheer panic, the towering demon threw his arms wide and unleashed a massive, blinding explosion of blistering Fel fire directly from his own body.
Vorath's eyes widened as a wall of blistering heat washed over him. His newly mortal body burned, agonizing pain erupting through every nerve. He cried out, desperately trying to dull the searing agony by forcefully circulating the cold, deathly anima through his veins, but it was no use against the sheer intensity of the Fel fire.
He felt himself hit the ground with a heavy, breathless thud. His vision blurred, and a terrifying numbness crept in; he couldn't even feel his right arm anymore.
"You little worm. I will destroy this wretched weapon right after I devour your soul!" Hakkar spat with unbridled fury, charging toward the fallen mortal who had dared to wound his immortal essence.
"You will do no such thing, monster," a deep, resonant voice echoed from the treeline where the hounds had disappeared.
Hakkar stopped dead in his tracks. Survival instincts honed across countless conquered worlds suddenly screamed at the demon lord to exercise extreme caution.
From the shadows of the ancient woods emerged a towering figure, a massive, male counterpart to the half-elf, half-stag mortals Hakkar had slaughtered mere minutes ago. The sheer, overwhelming aura of Life radiating from him made the very air hum.
Instantly recognizing the godly power standing before him, Hakkar pushed the wounded mortal to the back of his mind and focused entirely on the new threat, channeling his chaotic Fel magic through every muscle in his massive frame.
"Are you the master of this forest, worm?" Hakkar sneered.
Receiving no verbal response from the stoic demigod, the Houndmaster pooled his dark mana high above the canopy.
"Then feel the power of the Legion!" the demon roared. Tearing a massive, blazing meteor straight from the Twisting Nether, Hakkar sent the apocalyptic fireball plummeting toward his opponent as he charged forward, his spiked flail raised for the kill.
Cenarius's eyes widened at the strange display of magic. He commanded every root in the earth to rise and bind the demon, while simultaneously concentrating the raw power of the sun into the palm of his right hand. The blinding light of the resulting beam rivaled the most flamboyant, devastating flame spells that the Highborne magi of Zin-Azshari could ever muster.
Hakkar's burning eyes widened in shock as the searing beam streaked toward the Infernal he had just summoned, utterly vaporizing the meteor's rocky fel-infused body before it could even impact the ground.
The Houndmaster roared in sheer frustration. Looking at the Wild God, he knew with absolute certainty that he was not making it out of this forest alive.
He frantically swung his flail, trying to shatter the thick roots binding his legs, but to no avail. For every vine he tore apart, another instantly took its place. He was quickly brought to his knees by the crushing weight of the nature surrounding him.
Cenarius looked down at the defeated demon, his glowing eyes narrowing inquisitively. "What are you, monster?"
Hakkar simply sneered at the demigod. "Kill me," he spat, thick fel blood landing just inches from Cenarius's hooves.
Cenarius's hands tightened around his spear with righteous fury. He raised the blessed weapon, fully intending to impale the demon where he knelt. But as he looked down, he caught the twisted, victorious smile playing on Hakkar's lips, and the Wild God hesitated for a fraction of a second.
In that exact moment, the jagged tip of a blade erupted violently through the front of the demon's skull.
Hakkar let out a piercing, agonized roar. Cenarius watched in stunned silence as an unfamiliar Night Elf stood behind the beast, both hands tightly gripping the hilt of the dark sword.
The demon's massive, muscular body shriveled almost instantly. A sickly green mist was violently ripped from its flesh and absorbed directly into the glowing runes of the jagged blade.
Soon, a heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the devastated clearing.
"So long, fucker," the Night Elf exhaled shakily. He slowly looked up to meet Cenarius's gaze, his glowing white eyes betraying nothing short of sheer, unadulterated fear at the sight of the towering Wild God.
Cenarius's piercing gaze flicked over the stranger's battered form. The elf's right arm hung at a grotesque angle, the shoulder visibly dislocated from its socket. Yet, as the demigod watched, the muscle and sinew seemed to shift, slowly pulling themselves back into place. It was a silent regeneration, completely devoid of any recognizable aura of Life or Arcane magic.
Cenarius quickly analyzed the stranger. The elf reeked of a disgusting, unnatural magic. He reeked of absolute Death, feeling less like a living creature and more like a fresh corpse being piloted by a wandering spirit. Under any other circumstances, the Lord of the Forest would have struck the abomination down without a second thought.
But then, Cenarius's gaze drifted past the trembling elf.
He saw Lunara, his eldest daughter, breathing heavily where she lay out cold against the trunk of a shattered oak. And then he saw the others, the broken, lifeless bodies of his other daughters littering the scorched earth.
Grief and duty warred within the demigod's heart. He tightened his grip on his spear, the wood groaning under his strength, but he did not raise it. The Wild God had far more pressing, heartbreaking matters to attend to than striking down the strange, death-tainted mortal who had just helped avenge his children.
–
Hope you liked the chapter.
See you soon