Raida and Flutashe flew west from Ursoc’s lair, having saved the Wild God from the clutches of the Nightmare.
Flutashe continued to wonder why the bear god would give her his fabled claws, a weapon that was a force to be reckoned with during the War of the Ancients. Back then, the claws ripped apart thousands of demons. The Legion saw Ursoc and his brother, Ursol, as threats to their invasion. It was unfortunate that the demons managed to take down Ursoc, but he certainly made sure they remembered him.
She also couldn’t help but wonder who this Keeper of Life was. The Wild Gods her people knew never spoke about someone like that. If they knew, then perhaps there was no reason to tell anyone. Ursoc said that she would meet her soon.
“Mulling over what Ursoc said, Flutters?” Raida asked. Flutashe nodded. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Whenever trouble comes, we deal with it. No sense worrying until then.”
Flutashe always admired her sister’s carefree attitude. When they were young, her attitude made the druid feel at ease, knowing that her sister was there to protect her. Now that they were older, it still gave her that sense of ease, even though she was fully capable of taking care of herself now.
After an hour of flight, the two hovered over the entrance to the Drakkari stronghold of Drak’tharon Keep. They noticed that trolls were fleeing the place in droves though some of them ended up getting captured by other trolls who looked like they had seen better days, given how rotted their flesh looked. There was no doubt that the Scourge was raising an army of undead Drakkari trolls.
They also noticed a middle-aged man throwing burning bottles at the undead trolls and setting them ablaze. The man looked inebriated so the two were pretty sure he wasn’t in his right mind for doing something that was likely to get himself killed.
As the troll zombies moved closer to the drunkard, Raida swooped in and breathed fel flame into the horde, incinerating many of them. Flutashe swooped in and grabbed the man in her talons, carrying him to safety. The man protested and shouted obscenities as he was being carried off.
They flew south and away from the trolls until Raida spotted a small camp with mostly humans and other races. They set the man down in the middle of the camp which got the attention of everyone there.
They were soon approached by a dark-skinned man with a bald head and wearing a red vest and black pants. “Thanks for returning him to us,” he said. “Name’s Samir, bad enough we gotta take care of Budd ever since whatever happened to him at Zul’Aman messed him up in the head, we don’t need Mack here going on one of his drunken escapades.”
Flutashe shifted back to her night elf form which caused some in the camp to recognize her. “Budd? What happened to him?”
“Dunno, after he pissed off some troll spirits by throwing ash into a burning hut, he got thrown in there, came out burning and put himself out by jumping in some nearby pool. Physically, he’s fine, but now he thinks he’s a troll. Anyways, nothing we can do about that. You two here for some troll hunting?”
“Actually, me and Raida were heading to Drak’tharon to clear the Scourge out. A lot of Drakkari were fleeing the place,” Flutashe informed.
“Best of luck to you then, the refugees will either end up captured and turned into undead or hunted down by the Alliance and Horde. We get ten gold per troll we capture.”
“I see…” Flutashe didn’t particularly like the idea of bounty hunting since it encouraged unscrupulous behavior but she did her best to not let it show. They had more important matters to deal with than lecturing the group.
“Alright sis, let’s get back up there and see what your new claws can do,” Raida said as she deployed her wings and took to the air. Flutashe shifted into her bird form and followed.
Once they reached the entrance to the keep, they followed the tide of fleeing trolls, who completely ignored them, until they found a passage leading into the keep. They followed the narrow passage for some time as it winded and twisted around. They soon emerged into a well-built, yet somewhat worn passage decorated with designs that the two guessed were typical for the Drakkari Tribe.
As they admired the aesthetics, the duo overheard a pair of panicked trolls heading their way. However, they appeared to be pursued. Just as the two soon-to-be victims turned a corner to see them, they were cut down by a zombie troll with a cleaver.
Another voice behind the zombie spoke out, “Don’t be so quick to escape! I have a parting gift…” The voice belonged to an elder necromancer who walked up to the dead trolls. He then began channeling dark magic into their bodies to reanimate them. “Rise my warriors and fight for your new liege!” Just as he finished, the necromancer spotted the two and pointed his scythe at them, directing his new minions to attack them. “Please enjoy their company, the Lich King sends his regards.”
Seeing as their adventure in the keep had officially begun, Flutashe decided to try out her new power here before she faced any tougher opponents with it. To her surprise, the Claws of Ursoc had altered her bear form to gain an anthropomorphic appearance like her cat form. If anything, she looked more like a furbolg than a bear now. Her form also felt bulkier from muscle mass. Her fur retained its dark gray color though with a thicker patch of black around her neck. A white mark on her shoulder showed a butterfly over a crescent moon.
Flutashe was able to deflect the ax swings from the troll zombies with one arm before she grabbed one and threw him into a wall so hard that he shattered into a number of body parts. She then grabbed another by the head and crushed him.
Not wanting to be left out of the fun, Raida quickly set the third zombie on fire. The necromancer was surprised by how fast his minions fell but before he could try to cast a spell he was quickly slashed into pieces by the demon hunter’s warglaives.
Following the trail of Drakkari corpses, the pair began leaving more bodies in the hallway with each troll zombie and necromancer they crushed. A quartet of zombies awaited them at the end of the hallway which left two for each of them.
They then found themselves looking at two paths to take. A little exploration found that the right path took them into a room filled with ghouls and abominations feasting on the Drakkari corpses while the other passage led to a dead end. With only one path to take, the two entered the next chamber to face the undead inside.
Meanwhile, from the entrance the duo came through earlier, a lone adventurer entered and poured some strange liquid on a nearby brazier. The image of a troll appeared before him with instructions to claim some liquid mojo from the keep’s remaining defenders before using them on the brazier atop the keep.
Back with the duo, the ghouls were roasted in fel fire. Flutashe tested her strength against the abominations who reeked of disease. Her body still had some resistance to it but she wasn’t about to test it out. Instead, she avoided the hooks and cleavers of the flesh golems and lifted one before tossing them into one of the bonfires that her sister had set in the area. Raida’s wrathguard, Truth, did the same to the other abomination.
The two looked at a set of stairs leading up to an upper level where a dire troll stood. He was looking away from them which meant that he either didn’t notice the fighting downstairs or he didn’t care. Seeing as the undead here didn’t notice him, the two figured that he was one of them.
As they reached the top of the stairs, they heard the troll speak, “So hungry! Need food! Need guts! Need blood!” He then shiffed the air and smelled fresh flesh in the two. He turned around and revealed his drooling, purple-marked face. “Food here!”
“We are not on the menu!” Raida replied. Flutashe charged in and punched his face to get his attention.
The druid avoided the dire troll’s slow punches with ease. Even if it was a new shape for her bear form, it wasn’t hard to learn how to move in it after training in her cat form, just slower and less reactive. She would train in her new form later.
A trio of Drakkari bat riders suddenly flew in from an opening in the back of the room and jumped off their bats before readying their weapons. “We gonna take Drak’tharon back from ya, invaders! We kill ya now, Trollgore!” one of the warriors declared. However, Trollgore turned around and easily crushed each one of them with his bare hands, leaving broken corpses on the ground.
Trollgore devoured two of the corpses before an idea popped in his head. He took the third corpse and threw it at Raida while channeling dark magic into it which caused it to rapidly swell up. The demon hunter suspected a bomb and flew out of the way just in time to avoid an explosion of guts and gore.
That distraction gave Flutashe time to grab the dire troll by the tusks and throw him over her shoulder and on his back. She then broke his tusks off before stabbing him in the chest with them.
Since he was undead, a chest wound wasn’t going to stop him. When she noticed that he was trying to grab her she pulled the tusks out and ran them into his eye sockets and into his brain. Trollgore stopped moving after that.
Breathing heavily for a few moments, Flutashe gazed upon the damage she had done while Raida placed a hand on her shoulder. After regaining her breathing, she verbally made a note to herself. “Apparently, these undead need to have their heads destroyed for any physical force to be useful in killing them.”
“Yeah, burning them is easier for me,” Raida replied.
Once they were ready to move forward, they saw one passage had collapsed so they took the one that had a lot of webbing and led into a chamber filled with spiders. However, the spiders gave the two a wide berth, as if they treated them like VIPs, or more like Flutashe was a VIP and Raida was her plus one.
“So even spiders bend to your will, huh?” Raida asked.
“All spiders are the children of Shadra, the Spider Loa. They won’t attack as long as they know you’re with me.”
“Good to know.”
After a brief passage, they entered another chamber that housed a lich like the one the two of them encountered at the Battle of Mount Hyjal. He appeared to be looking at the stairs for some reason.
“I can sense your approach. Come to embrace your end, have you?” the lich said.
“Nah, we came here because we thought it would be good fun to hunt a lich,” Raida quipped.
Flutashe quickly charged in but was thrown back when the lich wrapped himself in a dark barrier with four nearby black crystals channeling power into the field. Raida struck the shield with a Chaos Bolt but the shield completely absorbed it. She then targeted the crystals but they had their own protections. Neither of them could touch it while the lich, Novos the Summoner, laughed at their futile efforts to get to him.
“You know, we could just leave you and move on since you can’t seem to attack us either,” Flutashe said.
“You are half right, I can’t attack you, but my countless minions shall provide you with adequate entertainment,” Novos corrected.
As Novos said that, a stream of undead minions descended the nearby stairs. Countless numbers of human zombies, skeletal mages and wights were moving to swarm them.
Raida quickly activated her self-immolation spell and began burning down the undead while slowly pushing them back up the stairs. She took a moment to address her sister, “I’ll hold them off, find a way to get past this guy’s defenses.”
Flutashe had no idea how she was going to do that. Her sister was fighting what seemed to be an endless stream of undead where she was sure she would tire herself out eventually. Nothing in her arsenal was capable of destroying the crystals that had powerful defensive enchantments on them. What was she supposed to do?
Her answer came when an elder necromancer carrying a staff with a black crystal on it entered the room. Since he seemed intent on bashing her with his staff, she turned things around for him by ripping it out of his hands and slugging his head with it like a baseball bat. The impact destroyed the staff and the crystal attached to it.
To the druid’s surprise, the crystal fired a beam at one of the crystals protecting Novos and shattered it. Now she knew what to do. Though she had to hope more of the necromancers would show up soon like the first one.
Her wait paid off as another elder necromancer entered the room from another passage who was quickly disposed of and his staff crystal shattered which broke Novos’ second crystal.
The lich began to panic when the druid started slaughtering his crystal keepers and weakening his defenses. After two more of his keepers were crushed by the bear druid, his defenses fell apart. By that time, his supply of minions had run out and the demon hunter was free to face him as well.
Novos tried his best to defeat the duo using his frost spells and curses. He even summoned more minions to help him. However, his skills weren’t that much better than the average lich and the druid could break his curses. His end came when the demon hunter encased his head in black crystal and detonated it with fel magic.
“I’ll admit he had an impressive defense, but his overall power was nowhere near Rage Winterchill’s level,” Raida commented.
“From what Jaqueline told us on the boat, Rage was one of the more powerful liches in the Lich King’s service. All liches are formidable, but most of them aren’t quite as powerful as an archmage. The most powerful of them all is the Lich King’s archlich, Kel’thuzad.”
“He’s probably still aboard Naxxramas attacking Wintergarde. We will have to deal with him at some point.”
Flutashe nodded, “For now, let’s focus on our current mission.
The next chamber was occupied by a cauldron of bats and an undead troll bat rider. However, Flutashe’s presence gave the bats the will to turn on the troll and rip him limb from limb. This allowed them to proceed into an outdoor area where undead trolls were riding raptors who immediately turned on the riders.
Raida couldn’t help but be a little freaked out when the raptors started bowing to her sister, but she kept herself under control and watched.
“Excuse me,” Flutashe began. “I heard that the Drakkari have started stealing the powers of the Loa, why is this?”
After listening to a series of screeches, growls and other raptor sounds, the druid nodded in understanding. “I see, it does make sense for the Scourge to drive them to this point. It doesn’t make it right, though.”
“You mean the Scourge has something to do with the Drakkari draining their Loa?” Raida asked.
Flutashe nodded, “The Scourge have launched an invasion of Zul’Drak and the Drakkari are slowly losing the war. They think that turning their prophets into super warriors using the Loas’ powers will help them turn the tide.”
“I doubt it will, the Scourge have numbers on their side and the Drakkari have the disadvantage of experiencing fatigue. Not to mention that the Scourge increases in number for every Drakkari who dies. Unless they can assault the Lich King directly, their defensive war is futile. It’s no different than fighting the Legion.”
After a couple of minutes, the raptors gathered near Flutashe with a devilsaur who appeared to be the leader of this pack. The devilsaur made a series of sounds as he spoke to Flutashe. “You want to help? I don’t know, it might be dangerous for you. We don’t know what lies at the keep’s summit.” More devilsaur sounds. “A Drakkari prophet? He sided with the Scourge? Then that’s all the more reason for you not to get involved. Let us handle this.” More sounds came from the devilsaur. “I guess I can allow that, just let us handle the prophet. Once you clear the way, flee from here. Find a safe place.” The devilsaur nodded.
Once the discussion was over, the devilsaur, King Dred, moved up a tall set of stairs with his pack of raptors. Flutashe and Raida followed after them. However, Dred soon realized that his massive size played against him with the terrace being too narrow for him to safely walk through. Instead, the raptors had all the fun attacking the trolls on the terrace.
The undead were currently trying to finsh off the last of Drak’tharon’s defenders. The raptors attacked them indiscriminately which led to a lot of pained shouting. They went up another level where five undead trolls awaited the pack. They managed to kill a few raptors but they were quickly overwhelmed.
The pack’s advance halted at the base of the next set of steps which told the druid and demon hunter that the way was clear.
Raida and Flutashe proceeded up the flight of steps and emerged onto the temple summit. The Drakkari prophet, Tharon’ja hovered over the summit in a giant skeletal winged serpent form.
“Tharon’ja sees all! The work of mortals shall not end the eternal dynasty!”
“We’ll see about that after we attack Icecrown Citadel!” Raida shot back, thinking that he meant the Scourge.
Tharon’ja attacked with a few shadow and fire spells which the two dodged easily. Flutashe also grabbed hold of the skeletal winged serpent’s tail and slammed him on the stone platform a few times before he managed to break free and shot another shadow bolt at her which she avoided. Raida called on her demons to assist in taking down the prophet so they could be finished with this place quicker.
At first, the two were beginning to think Tharan’ja was all spells and nothing else. However, Truth and Heartswell sensed imminent danger to the sisters and moved to protect them. That was when the serpent began channeling a beam toward everyone around him. All of the demons were struck but the sisters were protected.
A moment later, the demons were now living skeletons who continued to attack Tharon’ja who was now a serpent of flesh and scales. He was now firing lightning from his mouth as well as breathing clouds of poison around him which forced the melee oriented of the demons to back away.
Meanwhile, Raida and Flutashe were continuing their attacks. Flutashe shifted into her cat form and began raking her claws across his scales to tear him apart and make him bleed while Raida took to the air and delivered a series of rapid slashes that ultimately left the serpent with many bleeding wounds.
Seeing how his form was becoming disadvantageous to his situation, Tharon’ja returned the flesh to the demons and returned to his skeletal form.
However, regardless of his form, he was greatly outnumbered and underpowered to handle so many enemies at once. His enemies’ attacks soon shattered his bones until Raida and Flutashe ripped his wings off, forcing him to the ground where the druid grabbed his skull and ripped it off.
The skull stared at the druid in disbelief, even if he was incapable of expressions in that form. “Im…impossible! Tharon’ja is eternal! Tharon’ja is–” His ranting was interrupted once the druid crushed the skull.
“I think that takes care of this place,” Raida said. “Let’s head into Zul’Drak and see what we can do to help the Loa. By the way, those claws are so awesome, sis. You just became twenty percent cooler.”
Flutashe couldn’t hide her reddening face and remained silent as she shifted into her bird form while Raida deployed her wings. After dismissing her demons, she joined her sister in the skies and proceeded into the troll kingdom.
Meanwhile, the adventurer from earlier finally made his way to the summit. He spent some time admiring the scenery and the architecture of trolls as he made his way to the summit. He was surprised that he hadn’t encountered any enemies so far but counted his blessings that he didn’t. He wasn’t even supposed to be here without his party but the troll he met had insisted that he came alone.
After looking at the skeletal remains of a winged serpent, he ignored it and looked for a brazier that was supposed to be around here. He soon spotted it beyond the platform where he pulled out some flasks of mojo that he took from the bodies of several trolls from earlier who looked like they got savaged by beasts. Once he poured the mojo into the fire, the troll he was working with emerged from the blaze.
The troll stretched his arms as he admired the scenery. “Ahh, back in Drak’tharon at last.” He cast his gaze at the scenery of Zul’Drak for a moment. “Ya done well, mon…” He then placed a jewel that the adventurer had helped him acquire earlier on one of the arms of the nine-pointed star platform that marked the summit. “You surpassed my greatest hopes.” He placed another jewel on another point. “For your efforts, ya be gettin’ de greatest of rewards…” He placed a small tablet on another point, making sure all three were evenly spaced. He then moved to the center of the platform. “Revelation!” He then casted a spell from the center which caused a black gate to open. “Be still, friend, and behold de truth of things!”
From the black gate, Arthas emerged and stared down at the troll who kneeled before him. “Master, my mission be complete.” the troll continued. “With da help of dis mortal, dis region be cleansed of all who oppose us.”
“You have done well, Drakuru. Your betrayal of the Drakkari Empire has borne me a new army. Your army…” He pointed Frostmourne at Drakuru and channeled his dark magic into the troll. “Arise, and–”
Another black gate suddenly opened and a sword flew out of it which impaled Drakuru through his back and out his face. Drakuru choked and gagged as the sword pierced his brain. The sword vanished which caused blood to spray out of the troll’s body as he collapsed.
Arthas looked beyond the dead troll to find the woman who promised to be a thorn in his side emerge from the gate. Thanatas gave the Lich King a cheerful, innocent smile. “Woopsie, did I do that?”
“What is the meaning of this intrusion?” Arthas demanded.
“I did promise to be quite the nuisance for you this year, I am simply making good on that promise.” She spared a quick glance at the adventurer. “Besides, as interesting as it would have been to watch this loot-hungry fool run around disguised as a ghoul and making your newest patsy look like an idiot, I simply couldn’t resist embarrassing you again.” She then pointed her sword at the adventurer’s feet which opened a small gate that he fell through.
“You will pay for this!” Arthas threatened.
“Maybe, but it sure won’t be you who collects. Ta-ta!” She leaped back through the gate and it closed before the Lich King could point his sword at her.
Now left alone atop Drak’tharon and with nothing to show for it, Arthas screamed in frustration before he stomped back through his own gate.
Moments later, the adventurer appeared outside of Drak’tharon wondering what had just happened. He contemplated going back to see if he had missed anything when he literally stumbled over a pair of sabatons and a necklace. He spotted a note which he picked up and read.
For your troubles and the amusement you never got to experience.
-T.
Shrugging, the adventurer picked up the new items and returned to his friends to show them off.