“So, if we do this right, we gonna kill a gronn without fightin’ it?” Farra’jin asked.
Talia glared at the shaman, not bothering to hide her annoyance. “Yes, Farra’jin, all we have to do is kill a few ogres and lure him into the trap. What part of that is so hard to comprehend?” Her irritation was based on the fact that the troll had asked that question five times so far.
“Sorry, it’s just that for all de trouble we went through ta kill four of de gronn, dis method feels like we gettin’ a lucky break. I ain’t lookin’ a gift horse in de mouth, I’m just sayin’.”
“Did you really have to use that expression?” Feloma complained. “We have been in these bodies for far too long and we’re going to be for far longer. I fear I will one day forget what I really look like.”
“That’s because you’re an airhead who likes to show off her body to every stallion and mare who gives you even the slightest attention,” Talia remarked, earning her a glare from the blood elf.
A few hours ago, they were near the arena going over their plan. Baron Sablemane gave them a special device that was made to unleash a burst of dragonfire that would be powerful enough to kill a gronn. Once they used the trap and the gronn was dead, they were to place effigies of ogre heads around him before they returned so they could make their final moves against the last two gronn.
The target that the trap was meant for was called Gorgrom the Dragon-Eater. It sounded like a repulsive name, but fitting for a repulsive creature.
Their journey took them through a Cenarion Expedition outpost on a forested plateau before they proceeded through the forest and across a natural stone bridge toward the next plateau.
It wasn’t long ago that the forest and the next plateau were occupied by a cult of black dragon worshippers who wanted to gain the power of the black dragonflight for themselves and become worthy dragonspawn or drakonid. Sablemane found the cult distasteful and had his assistant, Samia Inkling, work on capturing any black dragon eggs and whelps that she could find from the cult.
Because of recent actions against them, the cult had been decimated by adventurers and any eggs and whelplings had been captured so Sablemane could raise them himself.
Beyond the bridge, the group entered a cavernous tunnel that had a number of orc, human, broken and draenei corpses lying around that the Expedition was working on cleaning up. It made the group feel like the denizens of Azeroth favored death and violence a little too much.
Another forest awaited the group at the other end of the tunnel. The inhabitants were mainly large ravens and ancients wandering around. To their right, they passed by a large village of arakkoa. Of course, that wasn’t their destination.
They continued until they were in what was the northwesternmost part of Blade’s Edge Mountains. A small ogre outpost was their destination. The outpost was called Boulder’mok and it was owned by the Bladespire Clan.
However, their mission was short and simple. Talia had her felguard cut down and decapitate an ogre warrior while Farra’jin had his earth elemental impale another with rock shards before one took his head off. Lokosh quickly dispatched an ogre shaman and cut his head off.
Using the spears that Rexxar provided, Lokosh proceeded to place a head on each spear and had Feloma hold on to them, much to her disgust and Lokosh’s amusement.
It wasn’t long before they found the stone altar that was in the outpost. Talia set the trap atop the altar and waited.
And waited.
After fifteen minutes it was clear that they needed something to bait Gorgrom out of hiding. They decided to go around killing ogre after ogre, hoping that their death cries would have the intended result.
After nearly every ogre in the outpost was dead, a loud roar was heard from one of the buildings nearby. “Who dares disturb my slumber?” the voice yelled.
Gorgrom emerged from the building, looking groggy as he had just woken up from a nap. He looked at his altar and noticed that several ogre bodies were piled around near it. “Who defiled my altar?” He then walked over to it in an effort to move the bodies aside. However, the moment he stood near the altar, the trap was set off, exploding in a raging torrent of dragonfire that burned away his flesh. Given that a black dragon made the trap, the trap would have an effect on earth and earth-based creatures like gronn.
As the flames engulfed Gorgrom, he began to flail around in panic but the flames were especially effective and burned away his body within seconds, turning the brown-skinned creature black as charcoal.
The group stared at the scene for a few minutes in silence until Lokosh spoke, “Anyone else think that Stellaglim would have had a better chance at these things than we do? If black dragon fire can do that to a gronn, she could probably take out the last two easily.
“Let’s not waste our energy on wishful thinking,” Talia said. “Let’s get back to Rexxar and that pompous black dragon so we can get ready to take out the last two.”
After placing the grisly symbols of anti-gronn dominance, the party made the long trip back to the arena.
Once they were rested and prepared, Stella opened a portal back to the front of Tempest Keep. Everyone proceeded into the portal and back to the purple wasteland.
With two satellites cleared and the key to the Arcatraz complete, there was only one place left for them to go. Using whatever means of flight they had, the party ascended high into the sky and toward the red satellite ship that hovered well above the Botanica.
Once they landed they noticed that the entrance was blocked off by energy beams. Of course, with the complete Arcatraz key in their possession, it was only a matter of Bella inserting the key into the appropriate slot and the energy door deactivated. She found that she could then remove the crystal without the door reactivating but nobody wanted to believe that the field would stay deactivated for long since this was a prison ship so they quickly entered.
As they proceeded through the narrow entry corridor, the group could hear fighting up ahead. They rushed ahead into a circular room that was filled with supply crates and spare weapons. Two pairs of blood elf archers were on the left and right side of the room with the guardsmen facing the doorway to the next room.
“Aren’t the guards supposed to be guarding the entrance from intruders?” Flutashe whispered. “Why does it look like they are watching the next room?”
She quickly got her answer as a swarm of white mutants invaded the room led by a larger mutant with black and red skin.
“Stay strong everyone, we must not let these parasites through!” one of the guards shouted.
“Don’t let them touch you lest you get infected!” another shouted.
Though they put up a strong front, Bella could see it in their eyes and Flutashe heard it in their voices. These guys were fighting desperately to survive.
“I’m guessing these guys played around with the prison cells and got more than they bargained for when they released a few of them,” Raida whispered.
“Damn Warden Mellichar to hell!” another guard shouted. “That madman unleashed a nightmare on us all.”
“...Or someone among them went mad for some reason and started setting dangerous prisoners loose,” Raida corrected.
“I can feel Violetta stirring from her nap, there must be some decent void corruption up ahead,” Mena whispered.
Raida sighed, “I hate to say this, but we need to help them.” The others nodded in agreement before they headed into the area.
The elves were taken by surprise by the intrusion especially as the intruders ignored them and began attacking the mutants. Bella stunned the large one with a hammer while Raida rapidly slashed at it with her warglaives. Surprise assaulted the mutant group as a whole with shadows that spread outward and seared them all. Flutashe grabbed a few of the smaller white mutants and crushed them in her paw or hurled them into other mutants. Her claws mangled even more mutants.
Stella spotted more mutants in the room ahead so she raised a firewall to prevent enemy reinforcements before she bombarded the large mutant with arcane energy to finish it off.
The elven guards and archers stared at the scene in confusion. On the one hand, they were intruders who were attacking one of their prince’s ships. On the other hand, they didn’t know who they should be attacking as the intruders were fighting those abominations and they would have preferred not to be eaten or infected by them and the intruders were doing the dirty work for them.
Once the wave of mutants were defeated, Raida turned to who she suspected was the last of the garrison force inside the Arcatraz. “If you value your lives, you will get out of here. We plan on dealing with the escaped prisoners.”
“You are enemies of Prince Kael’thas, our orders are to kill you on sight.” one defender said.
“We cleared out the garrison forces aboard the Botanica and the Mechanar not long ago. We’ve rested since then. Do you really want to throw your lives away fighting us?” Raida countered.
“If we don’t then Prince Kael’thas will kill us.”
“Then you have three choices: death by us, death by your prince if you return to him with your tails between your legs, or seeking sanctuary under Voren’thal of the Scryers. If you hurry, you can get out of Netherstorm before your prince finds out you defected.”
The guards looked at the demon hunter then at each other before the guard looked back at Raida. “Good point. Men, we fly for Shattrath.”
As the prison guards filed out of the entrance, Raida smiled slightly, glad that at least some members of Kael’thas’ forces had some common sense. The guard looked back at the party to give a warning, “As thanks for the assistance let me warn you about those creatures. They will infect you with parasites if you are not careful. If you see the corpses of my comrades, burn them. The parasites within their bodies will detect your presence and burst forth and attack if you get too close.”
Once the guards were gone, Stella lowered her firewall so the party could move forward.
The next room featured several packs of mutants, mostly smaller white ones with a couple of large black ones. Raida called on her demons to assist them in defeating the parasitic creatures. Stella used her red and black essences to burn any mutants near them while conjuring a fiery pillar to burn the more distant ones.
The path took a sharp right from the room and into a hallway with a pair of guard corpses within. Taking the guard’s warning to heart, Stella used her Flamestrike spell to incinerate the corpses with a pillar of fire. As the bodies burned in the pillar of fire, they began to twitch and writhe as if somehow alive. Then the corpses convulsed unnaturally before their chests burst open, each releasing a pair of parasitic grubs who were then directly exposed to Stella’s fire magic and quickly blackened.
Bella found a corner to throw up in while Flutashe looked away from the sight. “I do not know which is worse, Thanatas’ grotesque diseases or this.” Bella dry heaved as she said that.
“It’s probably going to get worse from here,” Raida remarked. “The naaru kept some dangerous prisoners locked up aboard this ship in their travels through the Great Dark. Be prepared for anything.”
“There’s some heavy void stuff going on up ahead,” Mena said. She could tell that Violetta was waking up from sensing the high concentration of void energies.
Entering the room, they encountered gray and red variants of observer demons floating alongside large, horrific two-headed beasts with dark purple scales and one red eye on each head. They wore metal bracers on their forelegs and had small horns growing from the sides of their heads. On their backs were numerous tentacles with red eyes.
The group winced at the sight of the beasts with Stella giving Flutashe a hopeful look. “Maybe you can try to tame one of them?” she said with uncertainty.
“Not likely, that’s a void hound,” said a mysterious voice out of thin air.
“She’s awake,” Mena informed.
“Thank you for that late announcement,” Violetta said as she manifested, setting Raida to reach for her warglaives. “As I was saying, the reason Flutashe’s ability wouldn’t work on void hounds is because they are creatures of the void and outside the realm of life. As druids are aligned with the forces of life, her power allows her dominion over those who are aligned with that same force.
“Beasts aligned with the other five known forces, also known as death, chaos, order, void and light, would be outside her influence. Examples of such things she couldn’t control would be corpsehounds, felhounds, arcane familiars, void hounds and whatever the Light classifies as beasts of their alignment.”
“What about the core hounds?” Flutashe asked.
“Elemental beasts like the core hounds you encountered some time ago were affected by your power because elementals are still aligned with the forces of life, despite their destructive tendencies.”
“So why are you here?” Raida demanded, her weapons ready.
“I would think that Mena had at least hinted to you about all the void energies loose in this place,” Violetta answered. “You can’t expect me to keep smelling the alluring scent in the air and stay asleep.”
Violetta continued sniffing the air and the delicious void energies that saturated it. “Mmm…I smell a voidwraith, and a particularly strong one too.” With that statement, she vanished.
The group had no time to ponder on what the eldritch horror just said as a gray observer spotted them and moved to attack. It was the type to delay its attackers until it could hit them with a powerful spell but Raida’s attacks were too fast for its strategy to be effective.
The void hounds proved to be annoying due to their size and breathing fire from both mouths that imitated felfire. Bella and Mena’s light magic were effective against the void beast. The creature summoned red eyeballs which Bella quickly burned with the Light.
When the beast was weakened, several black tentacles wrapped around the beast’s legs before mouths grew from them and began devouring the creature’s flesh. The grotesque display of live consumption was as disgusting as ever.
The party dealt with a second void hound in a similar way before they cleared the room of observers and Stella incinerated any elven corpses in the room along with a few white mutants wandering around.
With the room clear, it was time to address the void creature in the room that Violetta mentioned earlier. The creature looked like a voidwalker but was taller and more narrow. There were also no bindings on this one like regular voidwalkers had. There was so much darkness around it that it was literally consuming the light around it.
The voidwraith moved toward them, intent on drawing them into its body. “Life energy to…consume…”
Violetta whispered the name Zereketh into Mena’s mind who parroted the name to the others in a questioning manner.
Zereketh began flinging parts of itself onto the floor which created zones of void energy that sought to drain them of their life energies when they stepped in them. The group made sure to avoid the black essence on the floor. Of course, Zereketh made things more complicated by attaching small pieces of itself to them which drained their life energy to the point that the fragments burst violently. It also periodically unleashed dark energy from its body which sent them flying back a few meters.
After its latest explosive burst, everyone was knocked away a fair distance from it. That was when it spotted something it wasn’t expecting, a trio of giant phantasmal eyeballs ready to fire beams at it. Zereketh backed away from the eyes only to sense the presence of several tentacles with gaping maws pointed toward it. Before it could react, the eyes fired their beams and the voidwraith was knocked into the range of the mouths which began to pull its very essence into them. Try as it might, Zereketh was caught in the suction and its body quickly unraveled and divided into several portions for each mouth.
As quickly as they came, the eyes and tentacles faded away.
Violetta appeared before the party once again. “Thanks for distracting it long enough for me to get ready. That voidwraith was delicious for the little snack that he was.”
“So what are you going to do now?” Raida asked warily.
“I’m gonna go back to sleep, with Zereketh in my stomach, the void levels of this place dropped significantly. There are some more void creatures up ahead, but they aren’t worth my time.” With that, Violetta vanished again.
“I still think she’s going to turn on us at some point,” Raida said.
“Perhaps, but it seems that her mother has her under control for the time being,” Bella said.
“That thing has a mother?!”
“Yes, and we will see her at some point in our adventures in Outland, no doubt.” Stella assured.
This filled the demon hunter with a primal sense of dread.
Regardless, the party proceeded up what appeared to be a crystalline ramp that curved toward the left and up to the second floor of the facility.
The crystalline path soon led into another hallway with more dead guards hosting parasitic larvae. This time there was an arcane golem that looked battered and non-functional. The power core appeared to be leaking energy which would be dangerous to those who got too close.
To play it safe, Stella began to drain the leaking power core which prompted the golem to take action and try to attack the group despite its battered state, to the surprise of the others. However, it didn’t get far as Stella reacted by increasing the drain until the core became depleted.
“Oh wow, that was scary how that thing just acted like it was broken then just suddenly moved again to attack us,” Mena noted.
“There are so many things wrong with this place,” Raida commented. The others nodded in agreement.
Meanwhile, Stella disposed of the guard corpses so they could move forward.
The next room had a hexagonal crystal floor in the center and featured a number of voidwalkers and a few small mutants. Half of the voidwalkers were wearing armor while the other half were wearing a tattered cloth hood with a pair of lanterns on the sides of their heads which were hung by what looked suspiciously like part of a naaru except black and dark purple like the voidwalker’s body.
Attacking the voidwalkers proved to be tricky as the ones with armor opened rifts beneath themselves to feed off of the void energies coming from it to heal and empower themselves. The ones with the tattered hoods absorbed magic and threw that energy back at them.
Flutashe and Bella made sure to lure the armored voidwalkers away from the rifts so Stella and Mena could destroy them with their magic. When dealing with the absorbers, it was soon learned that they could only absorb one type at a time which made them vulnerable to the other types. It was also learned that the hooded voidwalkers couldn’t absorb fel magic, even more interesting was that Raida’s fel magic had actually made them physically unstable. Raida decided not to overdo it with her fel attacks as she really didn’t want to see what would happen to the creature with it being so close to the others.
It was as they were finishing off the last voidwalker that Stella suddenly picked up on traces of Khadgar’s magic signature in the room. She guessed that the void energies were cloaking the archmage’s magic. She sensed the magic coming from a nearby corner of the room and investigated. Sure enough, a canister like the ones she saw in the Shadow Labyrinth and the Steamvaults was sitting there.
After her previous encounter with the canister in the Steamvaults, Stella had an idea on how to dismantle the protective wards guarding the container. It took a few minutes, but she managed to undo the matrices protecting it. She figured that her actions would have alerted Khadgar to what she was doing but she was fine with that. She then walked over to the container, burning the guard corpses near it, and opened the canister, shaking out the prize inside, the third fragment of the key into Karazhan.
With the three fragments collected, all that was left was for Khadgar to restore the key.
However, this was only one of three objectives accomplished so they continued deeper into the prison. Stella burned another pair of guards at the doorway.
The next room was occupied by a trio of unusually large draenei except two had red skin and one had dark gray skin.
“Eredar…” Raida growled. “These guys might be tough, watch out for their dark magics.”
As they entered the room, the party felt a dark presence in the next room and that presence was slowly eating away at them. Bella focused on support and used her holy auras to counteract the dark aura that she suspected was coming from the three eredar.
Raida and Flutashe attacked the two red eredar with the gray one casting dark spells from afar. The red ones attacked the two with appropriately sized longswords.
Mena attacked one of the red eredar with holy magic while Stella blasted the other with fire, frost and arcane spells. Raida avoided her target’s swings and exploited the many openings that the demon left. The demon hunter left many deep cuts into the eredar’s flesh in a matter of seconds. Flutashe also left numerous deep claw marks into her opponent’s flesh.
As the red eredar began to waver in their attacks, Mena and Stella focused their magics on the gray one who stole some of Stella’s strength to bolster his own. However, Stella stole that strength back with her Spellsteal ability.
Once the two red eredar fell, the unholy aura that was slowly burning them faded and the party ganged up on the gray eredar who fell quickly after.
Stella noticed the few corpses in the room that didn’t react to their presence. She suspected that the demons’ dark aura burned the parasites from within their hosts. Still, as a show of respect she still burned the corpses.
The doorway at the south end of the room featured several more corpses and a pair of battered arcane golems that were leaking energy like the last one. The group could only guess that the guards made their main line of defense here when the prisoners started breaking out. Stella proceeded to drain the two golems before she used the excess arcane energies to obliterate the corpses and the parasites within.
Beyond the next corridor, the party spotted a felguard and two sayaad demons. Seeker appeared and warned her that there were two other sayaad in the room using their invisibility spells to ambush intruders.
Flutashe entered the room and engaged the felguard with the sayaad coming to help their ally. Raida quickly used her Spectral sight to locate the invisible sayaad before she shot them with a dark eye beam which caused crystals to form on one’s chest and the left hip of the other.
As they were fighting the demons, two more seemed to ignore them and bickered with each other like a married couple. “When I need someone to prance around like an overstuffed peacock, I’ll call on you,” mocked the shivarra in the back.
“Then I’ll commit myself to ignoring you,” the wrathguard in the back shot back.
“What would you know about commitment, sheet-sah?”
“You’re the one who should be…” That was when the wrathguard noticed the intruders in the room, about the time when the other demons had fallen. “Wait, we have company…”
“Oh, don’t let them interrupt you, do tell me what you were going to say, Soccothrates.”
“Do stop embarrassing yourself by wasting the air in this room Dalliah, let us deal with these pests so I can get back to pretending you don’t exist.”
“I hope they kill you before I kill them.” The wrathguard, Soccothrates, and the shivarra, Dalliah, prepared their weapons and faced the party.
Truth and Heartswell appeared next to Raida with their weapons ready while glancing at their master.
“You don’t mind if we deal with these annoyances, do you?” Heartswell asked.
“The way they argue has been giving me a headache and I’m ready to take my frustrations out on them because of that,” Truth added.
The fight between the demons began with Truth attacking Dalliah and Heartswell facing Soccothrates. Raida’s shivarra made use of her six arms to deflect the sword slashes from the former prisoner and shadow magic to blast him when he was left open. Truth was less direct with his attacks and instead slashed at places on the prisoner shivarra’s body that she wasn’t protecting.
The prison couple counterattacked with Soccothrates knocking Heartswell away with a backhand while Dalliah began spinning around with her blades pointed outward to brutally slash Truth. Raida’s wrathguard wasn’t about to get caught up in that and instead jumped away and charged at Soccothrates, slamming into him and stopping his momentum. Heartswell noticed that Dalliah had stopped spinning and was now channeling a healing spell on herself. A Chaos Bolt from Raida’s shivarra put a stop to that.
As it turned out, unlike Dalliah and Soccothrates, who preferred to fight on their own, Truth and Heartswell were much better at teamwork as they covered for each other when the other was hurt. Of course, Mena and Bella contributed some healing as well to make sure the two stayed healthy. The prison couple might have considered going after the paladin and priest, but with them facing members of their own race, their pride wouldn’t allow them to take their eyes off Raida’s demons.
With Dalliah being unable to cast her healing spells, the two soon found themselves being worn down. She soon got her wish when her cellmate went down first when Heartswell deflected both of Soccothrates’ sword swings at the same time with one pair of swords then used her second pair to impale him in the chest while carving a deep gash down his body. She didn’t get to enjoy the sight for long, which was her downfall as his death distracted her long enough for Truth to dismember all six of her arms with a pair of simultaneous vertical slashes. The shivarra only screamed in pain for a brief moment before he ran his sword through her throat and his other sword through her heart.
As the two demons fell, each one dropped a crystal like the ones dropped by the two mo’args in the Mechanar. Looking around, the party quickly noticed a door to their immediate left with energy beams firing in two different patterns along with two slots like the ones used to access the Mechanar’s elevator.
As Raida congratulated her demons for their performance, Bella and Stella collected the crystals and inserted them into the slots, deactivating the field.
“I hope there isn’t much more to go,” Bella said. “Between disgusting worms bursting from corpses, having my life sucked out of me by a fiend of the void and the aggravation of listening to a pair of demons bicker, I am quite through with this place.”
Beyond the door was a long flight of stairs that took them to a third level of the prison ship. Atop the stairs, the path turned and led across a crystalline bridge where another pair of battered golems awaited them, pretending to be inactive. Stella quickly drained the golems before obliterating the elven corpses around the sentinels.
As they entered the next room, the group found themselves facing a group of ethereals pointing their knives at them.
However, these ethereals seemed to be in an interrogative mood. “Where did the void signature go? Did you have something to do with its disappearance?” one ethereal demanded.
“So what if we did?” Raida replied.
“Then we shall make you regret doing that. We shall slay all who deny us the ultimate power of the void.”
“How about this instead?” Raida then breathed a torrent of felfire breath which set the ethereals’ bandages ablaze. The bandages quickly turned to ash and the energy beings could no longer maintain their forms, dissipating into energy and leaving their mantles behind.
“Who were they?” Mena wondered.
“I can’t tell you much about them, but from what I heard, there’s an organization called The Ethereum,” Raida explained. “For some reason, they seem obsessed with collecting void energies for themselves. I’m pretty sure they went insane a long time ago.”
“Why would they be collecting something like that?” Bella asked. “I can’t imagine anything good coming from that.”
Raida shrugged, “Beats me. Like I said, they probably went insane in their quest for power.”
“Hey girls, I found someone over here,” Flutashe called from the other side of the room. The others walked over to see what the druid found. What they found was the corpse of a broken wearing a dull green hood and robes.
“What’s a broken doing here?” Stella asked.
“I’m not sure…” Raida mumbled while she thought about something. She and Flutashe suddenly gasped as they both realized the same thing.
“This is Seer Udalo!” both said together.
“Who?” Stella asked.
“Care to explain, darlings?” Bella asked.
“We were asked to find this guy by Akama back in Shadowmoon Valley,” Raida explained. “Apparently, he discovered something important about the Medallion of Karabor which would allow someone to infiltrate the Black Temple and bypass the outer defenses.”
“Doesn’t look like he can tell us anything now. He’s dead,” Surprise commented. “And given how much he’s smelling right now, I’d say he’s been that way for a while.”
It was unfortunate, but it appeared that whatever lead Akama was pursuing was a dead end. It wasn’t like they could converse with his ghost, after all.
Stella walked up to the body, glad that the parasites hadn’t gotten to him. “I need to burn this body, if only to prevent it from being desecrated by parasites.” Calling on her fire magic, the mage set the corpse ablaze. As rotten as the body had become, the remains burned quickly. Soon, only ashes remained.
As Bella looked at the ashes, she saw something unusual about the placement of the ashes. They appeared to be filling in what appeared to be scratches in the floor. Tracing the scratches, she discovered letters. She gasped as she traced the letters. “Could this be a dying message?” she muttered. “Let’s see…’A’...’T’...’A’...’M’...’A’...’L’...” She pondered the word for a moment before she gasped again. “Is he talking about the Atam’al crystals?”
“Maybe Akama might know more about this?” Flutashe offered.
“Maybe, but for now, we need to keep going,” Stella said. “We still need to rescue that gnome mage that A’dal mentioned.”
The next room appeared to host a number of demons including four satyrs, two ered’ruin doomguards and two of what appeared to be a strange variant of infernal.
“I’ve never seen infernals like that before,” Flutashe commented.
“They’re worse than infernals,” Raida warned. “Those are abyssals, a deadlier version of an infernal. Lord Illidan has a colossal abyssal guarding the main entrance into the temple.”
Given Raida’s warning, Flutashe and the others had a feeling that they shouldn’t tackle the other demons and the abyssal at the same time. Bella decided to try the careful approach and throw a hammer of light at one of the satyrs. As expected, the satyr called his fellow satyrs into battle with him.
The satyrs were not difficult to deal with as Stella kept the ones who casted spells under control while the other two, being archers, were quickly cut down by Raida.
Once the satyrs were defeated, Flutashe moved to attack one of the abyssals. Despite her bear form’s thick body, a punch from the upgraded infernal threatened to break a few of her bones. Thankfully, Mena was there to keep that from happening.
The abyssal erupted in flames and continued trying to punch the druid who resorted to dodging its attacks. Seeing that it wasn’t getting anywhere with its punches, the abyssal raised its arms in the air and conjured a blazing meteor to crush someone. Stella bombarded the meteor with ice spells until it froze. When the flames were extinguished, the abyssal lost control of the meteor and it dropped on its head.
Raida then finished it off with her black crystal laser and a Chaos Bolt which caused the demon to fall apart.
The group took a moment to catch their breath, but their reprieve was short lived as they were spotted by the two doomguards and the other abyssal.
The ered’ruin were not difficult opponents as they mainly focused on trying to strike Raida with their swords which were blocked. The other abyssal was dealt with similarly to the first one with Stella freezing its meteors. Raida’s experience in dealing with doomguards allowed her to quickly exploit their weaknesses and finish them quickly while Stella bombarded the abyssal with ice magic until its blazing body froze and fell apart.
With the demons dispatched, the group proceeded into the room where they spotted a lone elf casting a spell on one of the nine prison cells in the room, one of which appeared to be empty.
They cautiously approached the elf to find out what he was doing when Mena whispered to everyone, “His mind is being controlled.”
“How do you know?” Raida whispered back.
“Because, silly, he’s got weird black strings going to his brain from that cell he’s trying to open.”
Raida was confused by this as she saw no strings, even with her Spectral Vision. However, she decided to trust what the priest said.
As they entered the cell block, the elf had a surprised look on his face. “Master? What troubles you?” He paused for a moment then turned toward the group in surprise. Either on reflex or by the will of whatever was controlling him, he placed a powerful barrier around himself. “I knew the prince would be angry but I…I have not been myself. I had to let them out! The Great One speaks to me, you see.” That was when he realized that the group was not Kael’thas’ guards but a bunch of intruders. “Wait…outsiders! Kael’thas did not send you! Good…I’ll just tell the prince you released the prisoners,” he cackled maniacally.
“Listen, Mellichar right? I have no idea why you are releasing prisoners, but it needs to stop,” Raida reasoned. “Your actions threaten to release a nightmare on Outland.”
“Me threaten? No, no, no, you are the ones going around threatening all of Outland by releasing all these creatures. At least, that’s what I’ll tell the prince. He’ll believe me and I’ll get off scot free. Yes, yes, it’s the perfect plan.”
It was clear that the warden was beyond reasoning at this point, likely due to whatever was controlling him. “Clearly you have some screws loose, buddy. Right now, it's just you and us and I’m pretty sure your little barrier isn’t going to hold forever.”
“Yes, you being alive would certainly be an inconvenience and cause the prince suspicion and I can’t have that.” He clearly wasn’t listening to Raida anymore. “The naaru kept the most dangerous beings in existence here in these cells, let me introduce you to one.”
Mellichar pointed a red crystal at one of the prison cells to the group’s left and it began to shift around and open up. An enhanced version of the imp, a fel imp, slid down to the floor.
The imp had no idea what was going on but since one of his potential targets was protected by a shield, he decided to throw fireballs at the party. However, Raida put him into a stasis cell before decapitating him.
Mellichar growled, “Useless creature! No matter, the next one will surely be more effective than that pitiful imp.”
He then pointed the crystal at another cell which opened up to reveal a dark yellow lizard-like creature with teal markings and spikes on its back. It had a clubbed tail.
“What is that?” Stella asked.
“A warp stalker,” Raida explained. “Exposure to nether energies gave them the ability to phase in and out of the astral plane. They’re a real menace to spellcasters.”
Despite all of this, Flutashe moved in front of everyone before she gave the warp stalker a look that seemed to calm it. As the creature approached her, Raida got her weapons ready. “That won’t be necessary, sister,” she scolded. Flutashe then allowed the warp stalker to move close enough for her to stroke his head. Her touch was pure bliss to him. “There, there, don’t worry, you’re safe now. The naaru won’t lock you up again.” The warp stalker then nuzzled the druid.
Mellichar dropped his chin as far as it could go. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He grit his teeth before pointing his crystal at a cell on the other side of the room. As it unlocked, his frustration and anger grew as a gnome exited from the prison cell.
“Where in Bonzo’s brass buttons am I? And who are–” The gnome’s eyes suddenly widened before he clutched his head in pain. “Yaaghh, that is one mother of a headache…”
Mellichar screamed in anger, “A LOWLY GNOME?! ARE THE NAARU’S STANDARDS FOR PRISONERS SO LOW?!”
Out of frustration, Mellichar began opening all of the other cells except for the largest cell behind him. To his satisfaction, an air elemental, a flamewaker and two drakonid emerged from the cells.
The gnome didn’t take the insult well, “‘Lowly?’ I don’t care who you are, friend, but nobody refers to the mighty Millhouse Manastorm as ‘lowly’!” Millhouse then looked at the group who were clearly opposing the elf and figured they were allies. If not, he figured he would blow them up too. “I have no idea what goes on here, but I will gladly join your fight against this impudent imbecile!” He then glared at the elf who insulted him, “Prepare to defend yourself, cretin!”
Of course, Millhouse didn’t join the battle right away as he ended up spending a significant amount of time preparing. “I just need to get some things ready first. You guys go ahead and get started. I need to summon up some water…”
Stella rolled her eyes at the gnome, this was clearly not the best time to be conjuring refreshments since they were in the middle of battle. Bella and Mena faced the air elemental, Stella engaged the flamewaker and Raida and Flutashe each engaged a drakonid.
Bella kept the air elemental busy by burning it with consecrated ground and slashing and bashing it with her holy weapon spells. Mena bombarded it at range with her light spells until Surprise took over and ended the fight quickly by using her Shadow Blade spell to destroy the elemental’s bindings, destabilizing it and dispersing its form.
Stella found that the flamewaker was really a weaker version of Gehennas as all he really had going for him were curses and a Rain of Fire spell, the former she could easily break and the latter she could easily dodge. Her frost spells chilled the serpentine fire elemental before a Spellfrost Breath gave him a deadly case of hypothermia. She finished it by freezing him and shattering him with a lance of ice.
Millhouse was still making his preparations as the fight progressed. “Fantastic! Next, some protective spells.” He placed some enhancement spells and some protective wards on himself. “Yes, now we’re cookin’!”
Flutashe faced off against a black drakonid. Using her cat form, the two engaged in a fistfight. Of course, being trapped in a prison cell for who knew how long tended to make one’s combat skills rusty. This had the effect of making the drakonid’s attacks telegraphed and easy to dodge while the druid slashed away at the scales on his body, leaving deep scratches. The drakonid tried breathing fire on her but Flutashe countered the attack with an uppercut to his jaw which sent him on his back. Before the drakonid could recover, Flutashe bit into his throat and ripped it out.
Millhouse’s preparations continued. “And of course I’ll need some mana. You guys are gonna love this; just wait…”
The drakonid that Raida faced was an unusual one. His scales shimmered between red, blue, green, bronze and black. She had never encountered a dragonkin like this before. He even tried to attack her with fire, acid, frost, sand and magma. She skillfully dodged each attack as she cut into the creature’s scaly body. Now that she thought about it, Stella seemed to display such abilities every now and then, but she never had scales that shifted like that. Then again, she had never seen a drakonid with wings before. She really needed to catch up on things when they had the time. She quickly ended her fight using both blades to decapitate her foe.
Coincidentally, or perhaps purposefully, Millhouse had finally finished his preparations and was ready to get into the fight just as the remaining prisoners were taken down. “Alright! Who ordered up an extra large can of whoop-ass?”
Mellichar was beyond furious at this point, he had hoped that the prisoners would be enough to stop them but he set his expectations too high. A whisper into his mind ordered him to open the large cell so the creature within could deal with them. Mellichar complied and opened the cell.
To everyone’s surprise, the occupant of the last cell was a reminder of a place they visited not too long ago. The creature bore the same insectoid features as the others that they encountered in that place, the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj. A mantle of segmented insect shells, antennae like a cockroach’s, six tarantula-like legs, and a robe for clothing.
A qiraji prophet.
“It is a small matter to control the mind of the weak, for I bear allegiance to powers untouched by time, unmoved by fate. No force on this world or beyond harbors the strength to bend our knee…not even the mighty Legion!” the prophet monologued.
“Welcome, O great one. I am your humble servant,” Mellichar said.
The qiraji felt that the elf had outlived his usefulness and was about to execute him before something else did the job for him. A black phantasmal eyeball with a purple iris fired a beam that pierced the elf’s barrier and his head, killing him instantly.
“What is this?!” the qiraji shouted.
Everyone heard the sound of slow clapping as a familiar figure faded into view. “Nice speech you made, Skyriss. Did you have fun playing with your little marionette? I know I had fun when I broke him.”
Skyriss gazed at the newcomer. He could sense the power of his master within her but he had no idea why that was the case. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Why does my master’s power course through you?”
Violetta cackled, “I guess you were captured by the naaru by the time Skeram made his final prophecy. It spoke of one who would hunt those who landed on Azeroth before she would move from world to world, devouring the others. Your master, C’thun, fell before me and the other three will soon follow. Your master’s power is mine now.”
The eldritch horror could sense the qiraji’s fear. Dropping a few names that he might have been familiar with would have either unnerved him into thinking that his home was destroyed or he would think that she read his mind, the latter she doubted because prophets were confident about the security of their minds.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about lady, nor do I care. Let’s just obliterate this overgrown arthropod and be done with it!” Millhouse impatiently shouted.
“Yes, let us send this prophet back to his kin, in the Shadowlands,” Violetta said.
Before Skyriss could respond, a giant phantasmal eyeball appeared and turned red. A near blinding crimson laser fired from it and engulfed the colossal qiraji as well as the cell behind it before leaving a gaping hole in the back of the Arcatraz.
This scene led to mixed reactions between the group and Millhouse along with outside parties who were remotely watching the scene unfold. Flutashe, Mena, Bella and Stella were hardly surprised by this because they had already seen C’thun’s power within the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj. Raida and Millhouse stood there with their jaws wide open with the difference being a sense of dread from the demon hunter and a sense of awe from the gnome mage.
Twilight and her fellow observers had the same sense of dread as Raida but fortified in the knowledge that this was only from one Old God. There was no telling how powerful she would get once she absorbed the other three.
From the Tempest Keep bridge, Kael’thas’ eyes widened when he saw the display of power. The blast was all he saw though as any means of scrying the inside of the Arcatraz had failed. He could only wonder what was going on inside the prison ship.
Once the shock had worn off, Stella turned to Millhouse. “It looks like we’re done here, can you teleport out of here?”
Millhouse snapped out of his shock and looked at the mage in elf form. “Huh? Oh, yes, I should be able to get out of here easily now that I’m no longer in that confounded stasis cell.”
“Then let’s get out of here.” Stella conjured her portal to Shattrath and the group entered and left the ship behind.
The only ones left were Millhouse and Violetta. The former walked up to the eldritch horror, looking like he wanted to ask her something. “You want me to teach you how to wield power like mine?” Violetta asked, reading his mind.
“Umm, yes, I n-need that kind of power for...s-something important,” Millhouse stuttered.
“I can read your thoughts gnome, you just want something to help protect you from your wife’s wrath. But I’m feeling up for making a deal with you, I will let you borrow a small portion of my power and in exchange, I want you to infiltrate a certain cult on Azeroth.”
“And which cult is that, m-ma’am?”
“What do you know about the Twilight’s Hammer?”