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48. A Captain Never Abandon the Ship
🕑 Added 2025-04-12 15:53:33 +0000 UTC
"Filthy beasts, still parading as civilized…" Daelin Proudmoore, Grand Admiral of the Admiralty of Kul Tiras, spat as he walked down the vessel's gangway that had transported him from his flagship.
His leather boots thumped against the crude orcish port, his eyes scanning the scene unfolding. It was one of great destruction like many he had witnessed.
Yet unlike any of the past ones, this battle, along with the eight before it since his arrival in this faraway land, was incomparable.
The smell of fire and death, burned flesh, floating corpses, and exposed viscera with their putrid contents of bacteria and filth.
The sound of gunpowder and explosions as screams of terror followed the handful of buildings crumbling, crushing any underneath. It was a chorus of despair, fear, and incomprehension.
The taste of blood pooling in thick rivulets in the soil and dripping from blades was so strong that it made the tongue tingle from the coppery aftertaste. Revolting yet revitalizing in the same way a punch in the guts was.
The touch of the warm sea breeze against his skin and clothes as the wind stilled and rumbled all at once was the most subtle and grounding. The ground was shuddering as a byproduct of the ongoing massacre.
And the sight, illustrating the sensation from the four last in a harmonious tapestry that was the unbeautified face of the battlefield—the true visage of war.
Grimness, violence, and brutality. However, it would be more proper to call it slaughter.
It was why the Grand Admiral felt no uncertainty, fear, or anger as he once had in years past. Today and the past three days proved to give a novel perspective.
Those attacks were not the same desperate defenses that had unfolded against an overwhelming enemy that was the Horde of the Second War.
It was a methodical, calculated attack on the present Horde.
He felt contempt and a part of his old heart beaten in vindicated righteous elation.
The orcs had committed atrocities in quantities that entire libraries would fail to contain.
Countless innocents, humans, dwarves and gnomes, even high elves–little they had been–were murdered in gleeful massacres.
Brave men and women who had fought under the banner of the Great Alliance of Lordaeron were butchered as the green tide, with gusto, devoured all in its path.
They had taken mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, daughters, and sons… they had stolen Derek from him. Burned alive in dragon fire, creatures the Horde had enslaved.
And now, his daughter was in great danger from those monsters. If she was not already lost. But he dared not ponder that alternative for too long. But the Grand Admiral wasn't one for repudiating the evidence of her proverbial demise.
His dearest daughter… dead at the hands of the Horde after she went and saved what could be saved from the Scourge's skeletal grasp.
To find them prancing, playing theatrical by mimicking their victims' way of life was… it made the Grand Admiral's vision veer red.
Homes, family, fishing, and farming—as if their sole purpose of existence had not been to lay ruin to those very facets of life.
It was wrong, alien, insulting, sickening, and profoundly repulsive.
A beast whose only purpose of existence was carnage could be trained, and its behaviors would shift, but its heart and instincts for wanton death wouldn't change.
They were stealing what they had seen in the Eastern Kingdoms during their ravages. And it wasn't for no reason.
One quality the orcs possessed was their ability to learn and adapt, to survive like the stain they were on the surface of Azeroth.
They were licking their wounds and breeding to replenish their population like the invasive species they were.
And they would wage war once, continue their genocide where it met its end the first time.
However, unlike then, no one could stop them unless Daelin ripped the weeds from the roots before thoroughly bleaching the land.
This was more than vengeance.
It was a necessary culling.
One that should have happened years ago when they were still in cages—leeching of the Alliance to be little else than enervated bags of flesh and bone that hated them as much as they did.
Daelin would have to do what the dead King Terenas Menethil II, who had a far too weak of a heart and shortsightedness not to command.
His lips were a thin line, and his body was alert as he stepped forward.
His men, working like a well-oiled machine with the support of the ships' combined artillery, made short work of the hundreds or so orcs and their crude mud huts. Primitives and crudes.
The paltry number of warriors present was getting crushed without great effort. Oh, they had raised some defense and were in the middle of evacuating, but it was it.
Evidently, they were informed by the escapees of the last village, but boats riding the waves were faster than any runners or riders.
Kul Tirans boats even more so, and the ones Daelin Proudmoore had brought were among what best could be made by the island nation.
And the fickle whims of the sea didn't move them—the tidesages had seen it otherwise. The times used to render the land properly unusable, and refueling was no waste.
"Admira-" The lieutenant, speed walking to him with a splotch of blood on his green vest, stopped as a deafening sound enveloped the battlefield.
It was a rumbling of the earth akin to thunder but with the quality of an explosion. But it was in the air.
And it was stronger, far stronger than any gnome or goblin contraptions could ever hope to produce.
And it came from the Great Sea—a certain point within it.
Daelin felt it deep in his bones before the slight pressure in the air vanished with the resounding yet deafening boom as the cacophony of battle came back to the forefront.
He was confused first and worried second until his mind caught on.
He took a magical item from his pocket; it was a small golden sextant with a compass and runes carved over its entire surface. It wasn't a pretty trinket but a marvel of gnomish engineering and Arcane mastery.
It was a tool.
Pointing it using the sound's origin as a rough guide, he raised the Arcane sextant to the horizon: numbers, letters, and percentiles appeared utilizing the sun's position and coordinate.
A picture was painted with quick mental calculations and crude estimation from his knowledge of the known world to where he roughly was.
From it, multiple scenarios came to the forefront. Nearly all of them were thrown away.
"It's from Kezan…" The Grand Admiral muttered with a mix of emotions, many of displeasure but further of understanding.
It was why the tidesages were agitated and speaking of warning from the Tidemother about the coming chaos brewing in the depths of the sea.
It was why they would set a fortified camp base here instead of a more adequate location. Not that they had the freedom to be picky.
And it was beyond the necessity to rest on land; the journey here had been perilous, and a few nights to recuperate and repair was required.
The last three days since their arrival on this strange new land had been spent restocking water and food and familiarizing themselves with the terrain while killing orcs whenever possible.
It wasn't a choice, and Daelin knew to trust the priests of the sea's words.
Scouts had mapped the coast, and there were little better places that weren't too far from where the brunt of the storm would hit when they were taking their pants off.
Be that as it may, it singled out one eventuality and an uneducated man he wasn't.
He knew of the sea and its danger, but it wasn't limited to this realm of the world.
The ocean didn't exist by its lonesome.
And Kezan, outside of its goblin population, some would prefer to refer to it as an infestation, as it was a volcanic island.
The finer details were unknown to him, but it was accepted among scholars and mages that Mount Kajaro was among the largest volcanoes. And it was of the explosive variety, if he wasn't mistaken.
What followed was what happened when such a natural structure awakened.
The consequences were far from unrecorded; rare they may be, they tended to be noticeable and affected all parts of life.
And Mount Kajaro was far from inactive. Connecting the dots wasn't the endeavor of a genius.
"Admiral, what was this?" The lieutenant, who had been interrupted by the distant boom, asked, mirroring his superior but with greater confusion.
"The echo of an eruption, Benedict. We won't be able to go ashore safely for some time; it's the source of the coming storm. What did you wish to say earlier?" Admiral Proudmoore said with a scowl for the first part.
There wasn't quite a feeling of being stuck.
"Yes, Admiral, we've rounded up the orcs and await your signal to execute them."
"Do so. We don't have time for fanfare, but be clean and bury the corpses in a pit. We wouldn't want to poison our water or suffer the odor of decay." Daelin said, walking out into the poor imitation of a village proper.
Then his eyes caught a whimper. It was low, almost imperceptible, but his sharp ears caught it, and his head snapped to a crate. It was to his right.
'Slippery eel.' He growled and unsheathed his cutlass.
But as he held the curved blade forward, a young male orc that couldn't be more than five rushed out from the box.
He ran with a tear-stricken face filled with horror and terror. It was erratic and aimless, nothing more than a prey running away from a predator.
"No, you don't…" He raised his pistol, and the trigger was pressed.
There was a click and a bang, and the green-skinned child–like a puppet that had its strings cut–rolled on the ground with a soft thud, blood trickling from the back of his skull.
Without an additional glance, Daelin walked past, but his head turned to Lieutenant Benedict, staring at the body with a complicated expression.
The Grand Admiral frowned, but he wasn't angered. It was hard to kill creatures with that superficial aesthetic, but the correct choices were rarely easy.
It was an orcish child or countless human ones. The choice was self-evident to him.
"Focus, Lieutenant. Do not tell me you have second thoughts. This orc is one of hundreds. It's too late for a pity party, and we both know what he will grow into. Am I understood?" And with that soft barb, the younger man returned to the real world.
"Yes, Admiral!"
"Good man, I know it's not easy, but it is for the future, not only for Kul Tiras or the Alliance but for humanity. See what mercy has done to us."
•••••
Thrall's rage was palpable; the air was crackling with the energy coiling into the Doomhamer.
Faint lightning flickered across the weapon's ornate surface under the heavy rain.
He could feel the world, the unrest of the elemental spirits on the other side.
And it wasn't the source of his anger, but it was an opportunity to channel this emotion and avenge those who were murdered.
He had sensed the muted roars of fulminant rage and patient stubbornness from fire and earth as they became one for one instant in the sea.
Thrall wasn't alone; Drek'Thar had the same even earlier than him, and more shamans followed.
Then the waves of that explosive union rippled across the spirit realm, and water and air responded in kind to the affront of the first two.
This one was less potent, but it wasn't without wide impacts, some of which were useful.
The Horde hadn't gathered its entire might, but it would be unnecessary and impossible from the beginning.
Roads were still being built. Many places needed an armed presence, and zeppelins were exceptionally scarce in both number and capacity.
But the Warchief had made sure it was enough. He wouldn't have it any differently; too much had been lost from his slow reaction, and it would stop tonight.
That, he swore on his honor.
They would make full use of the elements' movements to, if not claim victory, rid the invader of Durotar and cripple their potential to continue this campaign of slaughter.
With that, the human fleet would lose its greatest strength—its naval force, mobility, and firepower.
That didn't make them clawless and toothless, however. Neither were they defenseless, as what they constructed from the ruins of Ata'ko they destroyed wasn't flimsy.
And this wasn't the entire Kul Tiran navy that came here; it was merely the largest where their Grand Admiral was seen.
Capturing or eliminating him would largely suffice, in Thrall's opinion.
Then it was to Rexxar. If the mok'nathal doesn't return or his words show that the younger Proudmoore wasn't innocent, it would escalate.
He dearly hoped it wasn't to be.
"We are awaiting your command to attack these bastards. Bin mog g'thazag cha, brother." Grommash Hellscream called to his right, a bloodthirsty grin splitting his face as he held the still-nameless axe made from Gorehowl's remains on his shoulder.
It was a far cry from what it once was, in a way fitting better than any weapon could ever hope for the old orc.
It was a well-crafted war axe, its blade sharper and stronger than most from the metal used.
And there was nothing more to ask from it.
His Warchief, from the height of his direwolf, didn't answer with words. He raised the legendary warhammer to the heavens, and the sky of dark roiling clouds thundered.
The world was bright from the snaking bolts of electricity snaking through the storm by the thousands, deafening the deluge and waves slamming against the coast.
Shamans behind the young farseer did much the same—calling to the thunderstorm itself. The first lightning bolt slammed into the Doomhamer, as did the second and third.
Moments later, hundreds of lightning bolts struck the shamans present. Yet none were harmed, and the elemental energy surged back into the black clouds, now more potent than ever.
But most importantly, it had intent, a target upon which to free its wrath.
With a growing rumbling and snaps of the air, the lightning gathered above the human base camp, bathing it in flickering blue light.
Then, with a resounding thunderclap, the concentrated thunderstorm was unleashed upon the Kul Tirans.
It awakened every last one of them at once, but it changed nothing; they could only watch and take cover.
Its frightening power destroyed all in its path, the zigzagging patterns coursing from the black sky across the moist wood and metal, turning entire buildings to smithereens.
Yet, the results weren't as impactful as they should have been.
The human version of shamans was to blame, and their efforts to counter the thunderstorm were showing as the Horde's shamans weren't controlling it anymore.
They deflected and diffused the destructive elemental energies with no lesser skills than the Horde's. Redirecting the bolts of deadly electricity to the sky, away from their armories, tents, and towers.
But it was insufficient. The seafaring humans couldn't stop an assault of this scale, even as it gradually diminished to its natural state from their efforts.
The echoes of the explosion from tons of stored gunpowder followed, and the falling of stones were the signs of those inevitable failures. Yet it wasn't time to stare.
The opportunity couldn't be wasted. The Horde cover was blown from that first attack.
"Lok-tar ogar! Let us avenge our brethren! For the Horde!" Thrall bellowed; his voice carried and amplified by the wind across the force of the Horde. And they answered it with equal rage and excitement.
"LOK-TAR OGAR!"
"FOR THE WARCHIEF!"
"FOR THE HORDE!"
And so, orcs by foot or riding kudos and wolves, with taurens and trolls in taw, fearlessly charged forward.
The muddy ground and downpour had minimal effect on their advancement. The dozen hundreds of meters separating them from the human bulwark were quickly crossed over.
Their charge went unperturbed; the gunners and their machines that would have killed hundreds in quick succession were unable to operate.
The rain made gunpowder largely unusable, limiting the Kul Tirans' abilities to fire outside of the limited angle of their ingenious, if simple, walls of stones and woods.
The suddenness of the assault and darkness of the moonless and starless sky were together the twisting knife in the open wound. However, firearms and artillery weren't the only defense.
Magical sentries came to life and periodically shot precise beams of raw Arcane energy from glowing crystals.
But they were few, the thunderstorm having put down a number of them, their ranges limited as were their fire rate, and they were weaker than cannonballs.
By their lonesome, they killed, flesh warped, and bone shattered from the kinetic blast, but they were few, and the towers were overwhelmed.
The handful of humans outside was effortlessly mowed down in their panicked retreat. And the ones atop too exposed had spears impale them and lightning bolts cook their organs.
The storm made it impossible to use bats and manticores, and getting past the wall left few options. But it wasn't the tall and broad wall fortress that stood for centuries.
The wall was to gain time and stop smaller forces. It stood no chance as ladders were placed, and gates were broken open by kudos and taurens.
Waterproof goblin explosives and shamans broke the wall with the assistance of the ground from which it grew.
Injuries and death accumulated for the Horde were minutes and of no consequence to their violent entry into the human base where the battle truly began.
Here, blades began to clash, and magic flew. The tunes didn't change for the humans, even with the support of mages and those same strange shamans.
Pistols, muskets, and more were unusable and heavily armored; the Kul Tirans weren't.
No matter their craftsmanship, cuirasses, and chainmail proved to be poor protection against the much physically stronger and bigger orcs in a frontal confrontation, and it worsened with trolls and taurens.
Training, experience, and discipline can only do so much when paired with the above.
It was a downward spiral for the humans, who could only retreat and die trying. The irony couldn't be any greater.
Among the orcs was Grommash, and the old blademaster was fighting to his heart's content. Blood was pumping into his body as he bathed in the slaughter, the burn of the curse thrumming in his veins.
But he was in control; he had a goal, a target, and it wouldn't escape. Alas, to get to it, many would have to die, and he was more than pleased to make it a reality.
And with the Horde's progress, it wouldn't take much longer.
Blood spurted as Hellscream cleanly separated the head of a mage. He studied the port where the humans ran to keep their worthless little lives.
The sea was as stormy as the sky, and the boats docked were rocking, water drowning their decks and any chamber underneath.
The sealed sails, wearing in the wind, taunting anyone to free them, and they had it answered as the cowards embarked, knowing there was no possibility for victory.
The old blademaster didn't know what this 'Grand Admiral Daelin Proudmoore' looked like; after all, for him, humans hardly differed.
But personal effects were as good of an indicator as any. It was a gift of the spirits the older Proumoore hadn't been teleported away with that infuriating magic of theirs.
It was no different to the movement of the crowd escorting the Admiral.
Or the man himself, who was painted in gore with a visage of visceral wrath like few other Grommash ever saw. And it was more than anger; it was deeper and something intrinsic to him.
At this moment, Grommash knew this human wouldn't fall back or ever stop his crusade until his last breath.
.
"Good…" Hellscream hummed with a feral grin, his eyes drifting to his back where Thrall was, his visage set into stone.
"Go, Grommash, I will watch over you. We cannot let him escape." Without missing a second, the Blade of the Warchief was gone.
The ground below molded for his passage. Hands formed under the Kul Tirans, crushing them, while pillars came as defense and offense for Grommash and his illusion.
Earth mounds and stone barriers forced the formation to break beyond what the other did as the human leader was singled out.
No legendary duel ensued, nor were lengthy exchanges of words sent back and forth.
Daelin Proudmoore, Grand Admiral of the Admiralty of Kul Tiras, lost his life at the first clash.
His cutlass slashed the blademaster's illusion, and he realized what it was the instant his blade touched the false axe.
Be that as it may, it was far too late for him to understand what had happened, let alone for him to react in time appropriately.
He had lost.
His mouth was open in a silent scream of rage and sorrow, his eyes widened as the world spun, and the darkening sight of his falling, headless body was his last.
Comments
Bat
The cycle of hate continues. The Admiral died being the monster that will be told to horde children in stories.
Jeremy
I know a couple of other events already have... but this will definitely have some interesting butterflies.
Asura
Thanks for the chapter 👋🔥 Well deserved death.😌
Sarratugga Rites
Ah nothing like merciless hypocrisy to restart a war that could have been avoided
Mika Willems
And here starts the 20 year long hatred between the factions.
