Arrayed around him, in the larger circle that surrounded the first, were several of Gorefiend's death knights, the few warlocks who had survived Doomhammer's wrath, and a handful of his own Shadowmoon orcs. The latter group stood in the third and largest circle, facing outward, weapons raised. They were there for protection, while the others aided Ner’zhul in tapping the planet's power and performing the ritual.
They had already been casting for an entire day, since the moment the celestial alignment was right, and only the energy flowing through them kept the old shaman from collapsing from fatigue or hunger. As it was, his skin tingled and his hair danced about him as if carried high by an unseen wind.
They were nearing the end of the spell. The Alliance had crashed against the Black Temple's thick walls hours before, and were in danger of breaching its defenses at any moment. But they would be too late, Ner’zhul thought triumphantly. He raised the Scepter of Sargeras in his right hand, and the Eye of Dalaran in his left. Both gleamed brightly, inner light shining from the head of the scepter and dancing from facet to facet within the Eye's violet center. Those two artifacts focused the ley line energy, coalescing it into almost physical form, and then pulsed the strength into Ner’zhul's limbs. Now his entire body was thrumming, and he knew that he was no longer standing on the stone roof but hovering just above it as the energy lifted him from the surface.
"Now!" he shouted, touching the tip of the scepter to the center of the Eye and feeling the rest of their stored energy flash through his limbs and into his heart and mind. He knew his eyes were glowing bright, brighter than the sun, and he could see the lines of magic etched upon the world and through the air, see the souls of those surrounding him, see the connection between them and this world, and between this world and the rest of the cosmos. He could feel the curtains surrounding Draenor, separating it from other realities.
And, with a single quick, slashing gesture of the scepter, he tore through those curtains, shredding them as easily as he might slice through thin parchment.
The world shook. The ground trembled. The sky rumbled. A terrible grinding sound echoed up from far below and met an carsplitting shriek descending from above the clouds. Draenor screamed and thrashed in pain. The other participants staggered as the Black Temple shifted, many of them falling to their knees. Ner’zhul, too, staggered but managed to stay upright, buoyed by the power coursing through him.
He could feel the magic reaching across reality, like a fishing line cast into the void. It leaped forward, Draenor's own energies giving it vast momentum — and hooked onto something solid. Another world. The line grew taut, and with a twang that vibrated right through him a responding chord raced back down the line — and tore open a hole in their reality.
A rift. It was a rift. Ner’zhul recognized the feel of it, the raw power that frayed air and earth and nature, the throbbing link that bound this world to the next. Beneath the skull face paint, his lips split into a broad smile, and he closed his eyes, drinking in the heady feci of success. He had done it! He had opened a rift!
And not just one. He could sense other rifts appearing all across Draenor, like tiny bubbles emerging from the sea and bursting open when they touched the raw air, like lightning strikes from a storm that blanketed the entire planet. Each one burned in his mind like a new volcano.
He could send scouts through each rift, to report back on the worlds they found. Then he would choose the most likely and lead the Horde through to a better place. And. perhaps, to another after that. And after that as well, until his people had as many worlds as they wanted, as many as they could comfortably hold. Until each clan had its own world, if they liked. Then no one would be able to stop them.
Obris, one of the many who had been guarding the spcllcasters all this time, said, "This is our new world?"
Indeed, what they could see through the undulating rift was not pleasant. It was not much, but enough to be disturbing. Something fluttered and loomed up, then was gone. A sickly light surged dully, then vanished. "This doesn't look like anything we —
"Silence!" Ner’zhul cried, whirling to face Obris. "We—"
And in that moment of inattention, within his grasp, the Eye trembled. Ner’zhul frowned and clutched it harder. It seemed to writhe like a fish and before he realized what had happened, it leaped from his hand, flew through the air —
— and came to rest in the hand of a tall, broad-shouldered man with white hair and violet robes. A staff in one hand shone with power, and his eyes blazed with far more hidden deep within. A human wizard — and he had literally snatched victory from Ner’zhul's grasp.
Behind the mage stood a man in full armor, carrying a hammer that glowed with a blinding white light. Ner’zhul realized this man was not just a warrior, but akin to a shaman — except that the forces he tapped were somehow on a grander scale than a mere planet's. The elven female who stood beside them had no such magical abilities, but her face showed righteous anger. She had an arrow nocked and aimed directly at him.
Ner'zhul trembled.
How dare they?
How dare they interrupt his moment of absolute glory! Ner’zhul realized he felt no fear, no worry — just absolute outrage.
"The Eye will not serve you when you are dust!" he cried, and let the outrage take him. It blazed through him, pure and hot and deadly. With a cry he lifted his hands. The tortured rock and stone obeyed in agony, cracking beneath the intruders' feet. Barely in time, the Alliance intruders leaped aside, rolling to come up with weapons at the ready. But Ner’zhul was not done. Not yet. He was just getting started.
The rocks that had cracked now rose up and hurled themselves at the Alliance interlopers. Wind and rain whipped around them, snatching them up to hover helplessly in the air before slamming them mercilessly down on the unyielding stone. Ner’zhul took great pleasure in watching them suffer. It was with effort that he turned back to yell, "Through the rift! Now! Glory and fresh worlds await us!"
Obris gaped at him. "Kill the Alliance and let us gather our Horde! You cannot possibly mean that only we few will escape? What about our brothers, who fight even now? Grom and the Warsong arc still in Azeroth. There are females and children scattered all over. We cannot abandon them! To do so would be the most gutless, cowardly—"
Something snapped in Ner’zhul. Something that had been holding him down, he suddenly realized. It was only now — now that he was free of guilt, of shame, of trying to still do good for his people — that he realized what a burden it had truly been. He had once accepted death as part of the cycle; then feared it; then realized he was the bringcr of it, and all the heavy weight that that implied.
No more. He was free.
He didn't even favor Obris with a retort. Ner’zhul extended his hand. Lightning balled in his palm and raced in a crackling arc toward the other orc, slamming into Obris's chest with a thunderclap and hurtling him backward. He crashed into the wall and slid down, a smoking black hole in his chest. He did not rise.
Whirling, Ner’zhul turned to those around him, who stared at him in shock. "The other orcs are lost. They have served their purpose. From this point on, all that we gain will be ours alone. I am the Horde, and I will survive. Choose me, or choose death!"
When they did not move, he growled and lifted the scepter. Now they did move, as if suddenly freed, rushing toward the flickering rift. It hovered a few inches above the roof's surface and rose to nearly ten feet. Ner’zhul went last, holding the rift open with his power and his will, then stepped into the rift himself.
He had just enough time to gasp before the rift vanished behind them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SlX
Khadgar's head swam, but he felt warm healing energy spreading through his body. He got to his feet, swaying, and swore. The rift was just fading from view, leaving a faint afterimage like a steam trail. And Ner’zhul and his orcs were gone with it.
"… we're too late. It's gone."
"Gone? By the Light, no!" Turaly
on was right behind Khadgar but apparently hadn't seen the rift. Then again, Khadgar had felt it with his other senses before he'd actually seen it. Although Turalyon too wielded great power, his facility with the Holy Light gave him no particular insight into arcane magic.
"He must have closed the rift behind him," Khadgar guessed as he and Turalyon stepped back onto the roof itself, Alleria right behind them.
"But you got the Eye of Dalaran back," Alleria pointed out. "That's important, isn't it?" Khadgar nodded. "Well, what do we do now?" She turned her head to gaze down from the Black Temple. "It looks like we're winning down there, at least."
"Any way you can follow him?" Turalyon asked.
Khadgar shook his head. "I don't know the spell Ner’zhul was using," he admitted, "or how to find whatever world that rift took him to. So even if I could open a new rift here, there's no guarantee it would open onto the same world." His attention was caught by something else, however, and he frowned, stepping forward and walking to the triple circle inlaid in the roof
"What is it?"
"Power," Khadgar said absently. "More power than I've ever felt in any one place save Medivh's tower." He cocked his head to the side. "That's why," he muttered. "I'd wondered why Ner’zhul left Hellfire Citadel to us instead of defending it properly and casting the spell from there. But he couldn't. He had to be here. He needed the magic here to fuel his ritual."
"Does that help us any?" Alleria asked.
"I'm not sure," he replied. "Perhaps." He stepped into the center circle, and his head snapped back, mouth falling open in a silent scream. Such power! It poured through him like wildfire, igniting his veins, sending every sense into overload.
Ner’zhul was a shaman, not a mage. His magics came from the earth and the sky and the water, from the world itself. And that was what this place was, a focal point for the world's power. For Ner’zhul it would have been like tapping full force into something he had already broached repeatedly, but on a lesser scale — he would know how to handle it. For Khadgar, however, it was a completely new experience. And a dangerous one.
But Khadgar was not an archmagc for nothing. He had been a promising student at Dalaran, and had learned much during his brief apprenticeship with Medivh — and far more afterward. He was a master of magic, and while this form was new, it was still magic. And that meant it was still a matter of willpower.
And Khadgar had will.
Slowly he reined in his senses, forcing the new energy down until it was merely a background hum. Then he opened his eyes — and gasped. Standing here now, flooded with the power of a whole world, he could see what he couldn't see previously.
"Oh, no," he breathed.
"What is it?" Turalyon asked.
"The rifts… ," Khadgar breathed, barely able to find the words to encompass the scope of it. "Ner’zhul didn't just open one. He opened many — so many, all over this poor world." They flickered and glittered, looking almost like fireflies on a hot summer evening. "The scope of this … I don't think Draenor can bear it. It can't hold all this. Rifts are tears — and these tears are going to rip this whole damned place apart." And us with it, he thought, but did not say.
Turalyon and Alleria looked at each other. As one, they turned to Khadgar. "What do we do? And how long do we have?"
Even as he formed the words a shudder passed through the temple and the land around it. The volcano before it trembled, spewing even more of its noxious lava out into the air and creating a billowing green cloud. Then they heard a horrible crack and a deafening rumble from behind them.
Glancing over his shoulder, Khadgar watched as a mountain of rock cascaded down, literally. The Black Temple had been built up against the mountains that overlooked the sea, and those peaks were crumbling away. Most of the debris was falling into the waters, but some of it exploded toward them instead. Thinking quickly, Khadgar murmured a spell that shielded them from the onslaught, and the three of them stood untouched as rock and gravel and dust flew by on either side. A second spell protected the area directly below, where the Alliance forces were already mopping up the remaining Horde. Many of the orcs had scattered when the battle had turned against them, and the sudden avalanche only hastened their headlong flight.
Draenor, as he had realized it would be, was a beast in pain tearing itself to pieces.
And, Khadgar realized, Draenor might not die alone. “Azeroth is in danger!" he yelled over the din. "These rifts are links between worlds. And the Dark Portal is the largest and the only stable one." There was an odd silence as, for the moment, the earth stilled. Khadgar spoke quickly.
"Our worlds are connected. Damage here could leak through the portal and affect Azeroth as well!" He grimaced and stepped out of the circle, trying not to groan in dismay as his energy levels plummeted back to normal. It was like turning away from a bonfire and accepting a weak torch in its place. But he knew that to stay there longer would endanger them all. "I have to get back to the Dark Portal!"
"Do you have what you need to close it?"
"I have the skull. And the book is here, somewhere. I'll find it," he said with more assurance than he felt.
Turalyon nodded. "I'll rally the troops," he promised.
But Khadgar shook his head. "There's no time!" he insisted, grabbing his friend's shoulder. "Don't you understand? I'm sorry, Turalyon, so sorry — but if I can't shut down the portal right away, when Draenor is destroyed it could take Azeroth with it!"
He saw the realization dawn in Turalyon's eyes, and hated the grim resignation he saw accompany it. But his friend merely nodded. "We'll take gryphons," he announced. "That's the fastest way back." Then he squared his shoulders. "I will speak to the troops before we go. However short time may be, they deserve that." He extended a hand to Alleria and together they ran down the stairs.
Khadgar barely noticed them depart. He'd snatched the Eye right out of Ner’zhul's hand, but he hadn't had time to locate the Book of Medivh before Ner’zhul had retaliated, it was here, he told himself — it had to be in order for the spell to work in harmony with the three constellations. Ner’zhul had still been clutching a silver-trimmed scepter when he'd disappeared, presumably the Scepter of Sargeras. Fine — far safer for such an accursed item to be well away from Azeroth. But where was the blasted book? He needed it to finish the job, and that job had to be finished right now, before it was too late for all of them.
He extended his senses, but there was too much magic in the air for him to sense anything clearly. The book could be right beneath my nose or miles away. Damn it! he thought in frustration.
Khadgar caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, ready to defend himself. One of the bodies had moved, just a little. Its midsection was badly charred, and Khadgar realized that this was the orc Ner’zhul had attacked just before going through the portal. The one who'd called Ner’zhul a coward for leaving the others behind. Again, Khadgar was grateful he'd brought the ring that had enabled him to understand other languages, and he lowered his hands, watching closely.
The orc heaved and grunted, obviously in tremendous pain. It reached for something and, with great effort, held it out to Khadgar with an arm that shook. It was a large, heavily embossed rectangle with carved metal edges. Khadgar caught his breath as he recognized it.
The Book of Medivh.
"I am no… shaman. But Obris is smart enough to know… that this will be of use to you, will it not?"
Khadgar hesitated. The orc was a few steps away from death, but it could still be some kind of trick. "Yes," he said at last. "Why do you give it to me then? I am your enemy."
"You at least are an honorable foe," Obris growled. "Ner’zhul betrayed us. He re-formed the Horde, and forced my Laughing Skull clan back into the fold. He promised us a new start. But as soon as—" He coughed and then continued in a ragged voice. "As soon as he found safety, he fled. He and his favorites live… . The rest of us … we are nothing to him."
The eyes flashed with a final spark. "It would please me to know my last act… was to defy him. Take it. Take it, curse you! Take it and make him pay for his treachery."
Khadgar moved toward the dying orc and gently took the book from his blackened, bloody hands. "I promise you, Obris. We will do everything in our power to stop Ner’zhul."
The orc nodded, closed his eyes, and went still.
The vagaries of fate, Khadgar mused, quickly undoing the clasps and opening the book to glance through its pages. He remembered first seeing this massive tome back in Medivh's library only a few years ago. So much had changed since then; it felt like a lifetime. Then, he had been terrified of the book but overpowered by curiosity. Fortunately, its wards had prevented him from even turning the cover, or else the magics contained within might have destroyed him. Now Khadgar bypassed them with case, and skimmed the book's contents with growing excitement. As he expected, the book contained details about how Medivh and Gul'dan had worked together to create the rift. Armed with these necessary details and the still-lingering power in Gul’dan's skull, Khadgar was confident he could now shut down the Dark Portal for good. But could he do so in time?
He glanced up at the sound of beating wings. Several gryphons were circling the roof, wings spread as they prepared to land. Khadgar spotted Kurdran, and another Wildhammer was gesturing to the mage. Nodding, he threw the book in his sack, handed the precious bag up, then gripped the Wildhammer's outstretched hand and swung himself onto the gryphon.
"Where are Alleria and Turalyon?" Khadgar shouted to Kurdran.
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