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33. Battle on Two Fronts
🕑 Added 2025-02-18 20:00:08 +0000 UTCUnder the dense canopy of Ashenvale was a camp; its primary defenses took the form of Life, War, and Lore.
Their venerable forms, older than many mortal races, had awakened from their slumber to fight and defend the wild once more. With them were treants, standing guard or merged with the virgin nature. Or rather, what remained unsullied.
Night elves, dryads, fairy dragons, and more mingled among themselves where living wood buildings were grown, and tents were built to house all and tend to the wounded—soldiers and civilians alike. The line between the two was thinning every moment.
This camp within dangerous territory was merely one of many raised in response to the sudden and violent surge of demons and undead across the border of the ancient forest and deep in its heart. Razing villages and cities in mere days was the most favorable scenario, and hours were, for the least, with more certainty to follow.
It had happened less than a week ago without warning, seemingly materializing out of thin air from sickly green portals.
Undying monsters emerged from them, and the spawn of the Burning Legion poured forth like an endless, diseased flood, only seeking to destroy, corrupt, and consume their betters.
Armies of shambling corpses of every shape with gaping maws of needle-like teeth and dagger-like bones and claws raided cities and villages indiscriminately.
Hordes composed of the corpses of the elderly and young alike–men, women, even children–whose races of origin were of no consequence beyond morbid curiosity and the tel tale of their existential threat to Kalimdor.
Yet, they were naught but monsters hungering for the warm flesh of the living with hate of those very same in their glowing eyes.
Abominations, made of countless stitched-together corpses, giggled innocently like twisted imitations of children.
They gleefully lumbered on the battlefield on far too small stubby legs with their wrongly colorful, bloody, and pestilence-filled intestines and viscera dangling while their giant blades slung around wildly in their meaty hands.
Monstrous arachnids beasts from the size of a hand swarming and mindlessly devouring all in swarms to the giant hybrid abomination of humanoids and spiders commanding them.
Ghosts of the tortured possessing kaldorei, forcing them to commit the most horrific atrocities with only solace: the death of the vessel.
Large bat-like creatures of stone vomiting skin melting acid and sieges engines made of rotting flesh and bones using corpses as ammunition.
It wasn't all bleak; the undead horde was slow, clumsy, and predictable. The dead were little more than target practice for sentinels, rotting carcasses for priestesses to purify, and pests for druids to rip apart or burn.
And the force of the wild did just as much, righteous fury fueling their mission to eliminate this scourge.
The dead that shouldn't walk weren't in their domain and paid the price heavily. But they were endless, tireless, and fearless, ever hungering for blood and flesh to drink and feast upon with asinine purpose.
Most 'killing' proved inefficient when they could be used as raw material, reassembled or raised by skeletal mages–liches–to fuel the infernal flood of pestilence.
Worse even was that any death was used against the night elves in that similar nightmarish fashion. The ones caught off guard in their homes and couldn't escape or had bravely fallen in battle.
No matter who they were in death, they were equally defiled—equality in its most putrid form.
Family, friends, brother, and sister-in-arms remade into mindless waking cadavers to wage war against their own, against the wild and nature. Against all they had lived for, it was the most heinous crime repeated a thousandfold.
The demons were no lesser; if the raised dead were the ram, they were the puppet masters behind.
Their foul Fel was spreading, creatures of the wild mutated into feral beasts attacking all and the land, screaming in agony as it was despoiled. Their tactics honed through the annihilation of untold worlds, clever and vicious.
Yet, the night elves still resisted, fighting tooth and nail just as they did millennia past.
The solemn words of the brutal murder of Cenarius by Archdruid Fandral Staghelm didn't break their spirits—it hadn't been announced with that goal in mind.
It stroked the flames of rage, making them roar even stronger than they ever could in the kaldorei souls.
Grief wasn't wasted in tears and self-pity; it was an engine of war, of survival.
And this very same Archdruid clutched an ever more enraging message between his fingers. The talon-like tip of his fingers shredded the high-quality enchanted paper no worse than leather like it was its flimsy counterpart.
It was a personally written letter by the one to have brought back her husband, his Shan'do, without even speaking to him about that personal matter three days ago.
Nor were any of the seldom awake archdruids, for that matter, but Fandral had been the leading one in replacing Malfurion when the latter was in the Emerald Dream. Even with lesser political reach than his teacher.
It wasn't the result of the action. Fandral agreed to it; Malfurion was needed, as was the rest of the Cenarion Circle that he hadn't awakened already.
But Tyrande's actions and underlying logic were the problem. It was a personal insult and more than a bruised ego. It was a large overstep beyond her authority boundaries and squandering that of the Cenarion Circle's own.
Staghelm wasn't surprised by this development. It was the way of Elune, or so the High Priestess would say, a variation of the same convenient spiels, twisting the Lady of the White Moon's words to keep her absolute seat of power.
And she just had done worse, oh far worse. It shocked even the old elf.
"This… What insanity ensnared her damned mind?! To free the Betrayer! Murder our people while at that! And that spineless fool didn't stop her! Raving lunatic, the two of them! And to send him to me!" Fandral bellowed in abject rage and horror; plant life rumbled, and light wavered in response.
The owl that had delivered the warped message flew away as fast as possible. It was a useless action if the old elf wished the nocturnal bird of prey dead.
It was hardly the only time the second strongest druid called either that. It was even why when he was the temporary leading Archdruid, the title authority that should rightfully be given was heavily restricted.
His weak-willed distant Shan'do was less so, but that was the by-product of rarefied interaction and his naturally composed and reasonable personality.
Whisperwind was a different story, and in recent years, with the rising bordering obstreperousness behaviors, the furbolgs under a certain Ohto of the Greenweald came to his mind.
The exasperating oversized, nearly pitch-black furbolg was intensely arrogant, acutely insolent, pridefully reckless, too young, strong, capable, and independent. And that would be the tree for the Forest.
The bear used magic he shouldn't have and was given an overarching authority none of his species has the right to possess through his influence over not one but two Ancients.
And the Greenweald cub had done much bordering on madness and heretical with no consequences.
With his ursine inferior form of druidic power, he did unrestricted selective breeding, creation of a World Tree by desecrating Nordrassil, refused to listen to reasons, and violated all laws of shapeshifting were among the most evident.
It was a tragedy written all over to happen. Ohto was extremely dangerous, and none would convince the night elf otherwise.
The furbolg–if he even was one–was better in a cage, and if reeducation was an impossibility, the death penalty was the way forward, if not straight-up execution.
It was shocking enough that this particular bear-man was relatively mentally stable, or his race's innate feral madness was already there and waiting to explode.
Be that as it may, Fandral was powerless to do any of that without paying a heavy cost he wasn't willing to pay. He had much to lose against a mortal beast somewhat favored over its kind than any reason for the second strongest archdruid to lose it all.
Tyrande and the Bear Lords would stop him—the two of the latter would respond with extreme physical violence.
It only spiraled downward further with their complex history, leading to the twin unfairly despising him for a mistake he could never have foreseen, and his words would fall on deaf here.
Worse, as apparently, Ohto was a protegee of them—they treated him as some kind of little brother.
Everyone was mad for not seeing that something was terribly wrong with that furbolg.
And the wise one of the Wild Gods brothers that had been present beyond any he had been Fandral ever recalled of considerable importance in recent time and whose prophecy was proven true.
The kaldorei man had known of its veracity. He was rational to see it, and the tyrannical hag was also on the same line of thought. Yet, against all logic, she proved to be a failure again due to the current chaotic state of the kaldorei.
She didn't prepare beyond killing the despicable satyrs, and that was hardly her alone. It was good but not enough. Refusing his ideas, repeatedly and without basis in reality. Again, it was madness and folly.
It had been up to him to implement the measure. The central priestess of the Sisterhood of Elune had complicated it.
And as of now, to a minor degree, the furbolgs categorically refuse to give access to Timbermaw Hold's tunnels, but without him, the toll on their people would be higher. Far higher.
And although Fandral recognized the furbolgs' help, they were allies, ultimately the night elves' lessers they may be. They fought and died for the wilds. They shared food, healed the wounded, and gave shelter outside their dens to any in need.
Outside of Moonglade, it was where the most civilians converged, thousands and counting. With the demi-god Ursol, it was assured safety if inferior to the ursine people's inviolable underground fortress.
None of which the High Priestess planned, it pained him to admit, but the furbolg target of his fears had by proxy done a greater service to the kaldorei than their Goddess-given leader.
Fandral's reading came to a brutal stop.
He felt something in the air; the hair on his neck stood on end, and his long, green, bushy eyebrow twitched. His even longer ears did the same soon after as the alarm rang, quickly followed by the rising commotion born from an attack.
An event he had disturbingly gotten accustomed to in the past week with how common they were. Waves after waves slowly whittled the kaldorei down, wearing their minds and bodies till they broke and were fruits to be plucked.
"Demons…" He growled, his fang-like teeth evidenced by his sneer, while his brilliant golden eyes shined ever brighter in rage. The large eyebags under them showed even greater proof that even one as powerful as him was rapidly wearing thin.
Controlling his fury to a manageable level, his muscular and tall frame for a night elf–feral almost as was befitting a druid of his power–became that majestic eagle with a plumage tinted with gold.
He took flight from his sparse abode, his speed making him no more than a blur to most. Even elite sentinels would find it hard, if not impossible, to keep up.
Anger fueled him as he landed on the frontline, and there was light as he brought damnation to the spawn of the Twisting Nether.
A small burning sphere of sunlight came into being from his raised hand. Then a second appeared until a dozen miniature suns, solar flares bumbling below their surface above his palm.
"Andu-falah-dor! Let the sun and stars bring you damnation, demons!" His warcry echoed, and the spheres shot to the dark midday sky. They traveled across the battlefield as if they had a mind of their own.
"Denalor. Burn." And at this dark whisper of sadistic glee, the concentrated balls of sunlight rippled, and there was light. Hundreds of thin white and yellow light beams shot down on the demons; it was a literal rain of the sun.
It was heat even the abominations against nature couldn't resist; they burned, for it was the Light in its rawest form. It had no will or righteousness; it was the diminished power of the sun clearing the way for the wrath of the wilds against the hellish tide.
But the natural might of the closest star was merely one method of Fandral's vast arsenal. It was one attack among hundreds, and it couldn't do all.
"Hold the lines!" He bellowed before calling the stars, and they eagerly answered. The intrusion of the day and unnatural smog had minimal impact on a druid as skilled and talented as he was.
The constellations coagulated into raw Arcane energies at the tip of his great wooden staff—the beastly head chimera of a horse and eagle as befitting a noble hippogryph coming to life as the starlight gathered in three heartbeats.
It was an innocuous bubble of scintillating light, dim and radiant ever-blinking sparks of white braiding a living tapestry on royal blue.
However, it was a destructible force, and the male elf reminded many why he was the War of the Shifting Sands hero.
There were many reasons why those lowly insects–qiraji–had rightfully feared him, and their only chance of success had been put into breaking him through the dismemberment of his son in front of him.
But it wasn't to happen anymore.
Never again, as such, he took precautions. His dear and sweet granddaughter was in the safety of Moonglade, as was his proud, talented daughter-in-law.
Not that either were defenseless damsels without being priestesses or sentinels. They were great students.
Unlawful and unorthodox as it may have been for him to tutor them in druidism in secret, he found kaldorei society's archaic obsession with sexual segregation dangerous.
They have clipped their wings and were paying it with their lives.
Shaking the memories out of his mind, Archdruid Staghelm flicked his hand holding his staff, but the beam of stellar energy shooting from the chimeric head was anything but a harmless trick.
It was a thing of pure chaotic Arcane into an abrasive kinetic force ripping apart and flinging all away on its path.
It shaved off the enemy frontline in a large arc from the Archdruid position. Felhounds were crushed, felguards were flung and broken, and only the more armored and resilient, such as doomguards and infernals, resisted the blast.
Then, it wouldn't be without damage for the latter or heavy injuries in some form for the former. Alas, reality was unfair and cruel; it was a losing strategy against an endless army.
The only way forward was to cut the many heads until none could regrow. Fandral understood this point more than any other. He was no fool.
"Tor ilisar'thera'nal, we are kaldorei, charge! For the wilds, for Kalimdor!" He commanded as arrows, spears, raw Arcane, and artillery fire rained upon the crawling sea of demonic taints.
Then he moved, turning into a raptor in an instant once more as he took to the sky, weaving across the projectiles of friends and foes.
If it was unfeasible, his honed experience allowed him to wield the lights of the stars, moons, and sun at a lower intensity, shielding himself and clearing harm from his path.
Whenever he shifted to his elven form, he struck with surgical precision, bringing devastation and softening the demons' ranks. It was a masterful tenderization method and deadly dance where one miscalculation was the Archdruid's demise.
He wasn't rushing recklessly like a hotblooded greenhorn. His attacks bellied their savage appearance; they were methodical and purposeful. They gave the night elves and force of nature a way forward and guided them.
Fandral was never far from a retreat or an escape. It was a rhythm few could keep.
The destruction he wrought, great as it may be, wasn't from him alone, though.
Deep in the Burning Legion line, as he made his work the destruction of the Fel portals by boiling the inside of a giant squid-like creature with five eyes and a gaping maw of fang by searing its inside with sunlight, his gaze landed on a strange night elf.
The observer's agonizing death scream signaled its demise and caused the portal behind him to collapse, sending the two panicking inquisitors–eyeless skeletal creatures in cloaks–from the energy reflux.
Fandral Staghelm was unperturbed by it.
He had not lived through the War of the Ancients. He was born two centuries prior to the War of the Satyrs, but that face. That face. The Archdruid recognized it even through the blindfold where two baleful green eyeless sockets shined.
It was the visage of Malfurion Stormrage if it lacked a beard and was sharper from a lack of hydration and nutrition. There also were no antlers.
The same reasoning was applied to his body; it was thinner yet equally muscular, covered in bizarre alien markings. It was, yet it wasn't his Shan'do. It led to one possibility alone.
There was no doubt in the druid's mind of who this was and why he was here. It took Fandral entire being not to attack; those were orders he couldn't refuse, and he saw potential.
"You're the Illidan the High Priestess had sent then?" He questioned with an unhidden glower, his tone notably sharper at the Chosen of Elune.
"Indeed it is I, Illidan Stormrage, druid… I must warn you to respect your wiser. Tyrande had made her choice. Too late it may be, I will see her wish come to fruition." The Betrayer said, his voice roiling with frustration yet resignation.
None of which the Archdruid cared for. Madmen couldn't be read and understood nor deserved the privilege.
"Respect is earned, warlock‐" An infernal landed in an explosion to Fandral's right; he deftly dodged before continuing with an enraged sneer, "Let's continue when the battle ends!"
"Glad we have found ground for understanding." Illidan humphed, oozing satisfaction as they joined forces.
The tacit agreement and the necessity of the situation forced them to work with smooth efficiency. The irony of it all was lost to them as the demons were not prepared.
Comments
Mika Willems
Ohto is getting to be known by those in power, I foresee great chaos from this.
TITOO
Will see to that later, and I'm happy you like Fandral part, he is supposed to be extremely strong and tactically a genius.
Bat
Hmmm. Might suggest putting a space in between a few more starting sentences? It felt clustered in some parts but otherwise I loved Staghelm’s magic and fighting!
