Parry. Riposte. The left side is unguarded, strike! The beast falls, he steps quickly into where it once stood, dodging an incoming attack from the next monstrosity.
A ball of flame, alight with a sickly, pale green hue, soars towards his head, but the elf does not waiver. He spares the projectile only a cursory glance before focusing on his next opponent. The blazing sphere comes within a foot of his person before it is suddenly stopped by a blinding flash. The creatures he faces flinch away as rays of the purest light emanate from what appeared to be a dome, absorbing the fire and causing fel creatures nearby to reel at its holy glow.
Seeing his opportunity, the soldier grips his great blade tighter, feeling a deep, familiar connection with the weapon. His inner strength, funneled into the broadsword, only to return to him tenfold. releasing a battlecry, he brings his blade back before swinging it in a wide arc. the edge cuts through three foes with ease but does not stop there. Flames of his own, but burning hot and pure with a radiant orange, dance across the blade before billowing out along the same arc, cleaving another half a dozen foes in twain before they fall to dust, the only sign of their ever existing a quickly dissipating cloud. Taking a moment to search for more targets, the elf found none and allowed himself but a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow.
That was when the shadows moved. leaping from the darkest corner of the infernal hall, a creature of shadow and malice emerged, moving silently and swiftly towards the unknowing paladin. Reaching out its shade claw to strike, there was nothing the holy knight could do against an unseen foe.
Arriving just as quickly as the shadow had, a titan made itself known. It lacked in the subtlety of the creature of darkness, a great warrior crowned with horns, carried by hooves, and clothed in steel. The floor beneath him trembled with every step as with a mighty snort he raised his shield in defense of the unwary elf.
A void-being should not have been troubled by such defense. Its claws could rend steel like paper, its jaws crush bones into dust. But troubled it was. Talons met the mightly bulwark and stopped dead, not a single scratch upon its darkly gleaming surface. If a creature of such primordial origins as darkness itself could feel surprise, the voidwalker certainly did. Giving pause for but a moment, the entity found itself thrown on its metaphorical heels as the shield struck back, to be followed by a savage downward strike by a sword of the same make as the shield.
As the shadows dissipated, the warrior stared for a few long seconds to be sure. The moment passed and releasing another snort of disdain, he relaxed his posture.
Looking back as the bracers clattering on the floor, the only sign of the foul creature's presence, the paladin simply smirked before looking up to the tauren who had stopped the would-be assassin.
"Thank you as always, Max."
"Hrmph," the bull grumbled. "Must you insist on defiling my name so?"
"Oi! And what exactly be wrong with the name? Plenty of me friends back home be proudly sporting the name o' Max!"
Rolling his eyes, 'Max' turned to the third voice, a short, stout creature, sporting a face full of orange hair and a cheeky grin. Under different circumstances, he might have given in to the urge to punt the dwarf as far is his considerable strength would allow, but sadly, they needed him.
"YOUR friends are human, and by their standards, it may be a fine name. My name is Primmaxxion Wintergrain, a name passed down through the generations of my ancestors. It is a name that I am proud of, and the fact that you would shorten it into nothing more than a pet name is an insult."
"Oh quit yer' bellyachin', Maxxie." The dwarf said, slinging his hammer over his shoulder, the silver hand imprinted on its side still alight with a heavenly glow. "It ain't a pet name, its a nickname! It's meant to be endearing!"
Primmaxxion stared long at the dwarf, wishing he could physically beat the word 'Maxxie' into a bloody pulp, before turning to the blood elf.
"Max will do."
Not giving the holy knights the chance to respond, the tauren put away his arms before moving to the end of the hall to rally with the rest of their team.
The dwarf let loose a deep, belly shaking laugh at his allies grumbling, shaking his head and slapping his knee, the fiery maned dawi did nothing to hide his humor. His companion, while not without a small smile on his face, handled himself with more decorum. Heaving his massive blade into its sheath on his back, he looked down on his friend and shook his head.
"One of these days, Stonebrow. One of these days he is going to follow through with his threats. Then we will see how far a dwarf can fly."
Finally calming himself, Khorvain Stonebrow wiped the tears from his eyes and looked on to their retreating warrior.
"Aww, he's too much of a softy for that. Underneath all that packed muscle and intense rage, he's himself a heart of gold, that one. You know he loves it!"
"Keep telling yourself that."
"I will! Now come on you, let's find the galls, wrap this up, and get outta here before one of these nasties throws a felblast your way that my divine shield DOESN'T catch! Can't have anything ruining that perfect face of yours, can we?"
"No, no we can't."
Stepping around the chard and smoking corpses of numerous fel-beasts, the duo made their way to the center of the carnage, a lone worgen, standing guard over the battlefield with her scythe at the ready, her back to a massive door, where the last member of their party was still hard at work.
Though considering the devastation around them, there was little reason to believe her continued vigil was necessary.
"I'm fairly certain you got them all, V. You can relax for a moment till Maribelle gets that door open."
"What, like you just did?" Asked the druid, though there was no trace of malice in her words. Her voice, soft on the ears for a worgen, carried only the barest touch of amusement, and the slightest twitch at the corners of her mouth where the only signs of emotion to be read off of her. "I think I'll pass, Lorven."
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
"I'm sure you don't," Velaya said with a twinkle in her amber eyes. "Luckily Primmaxxion here does."
"If you wouldn't mind quitting down back there, unraveling enchantments cast by a Greater Eredar Lord without blowing half of this hall to smithereens is much harder than it sounds."
The mage of the party, Maribelle Gudrig, grunted from the strain of her efforts. The spell itself was simple to learn, and she had enough mana at her fingertips to blast the door down with raw, arcane might. Probably most of the room behind it as well. The real struggle was controlling all that power. Aluneth was a fickle thing on most days, but... whatever it was that lay beyond this door had the staff, or rather, the entity inside it, acting up more than usual. As a result, the sorcerous had resorted to a slow, methodical approach to their final hurdle, rather than risking vaporizing them all in a nova of arcane energy.
Her efforts finally bore fruit, however, and at last, the sigils on the door lit the foul green of fel magic, before the runes were overpowered by the purple glow of her own magic, and then one by one, dissipated. With that, the mage let her shoulders sag, and she slowly reached down to grab her artifact of power from the floor besides her.
"More! More! More to consume, more to devour! Such power that I have not felt in ages! Come, child, come!"
Maribelle shivered as the voice echoed through her head. Normally such ranting from the staff would cause her no trouble, but this... Whatever awaited them behind this door had Aluneth... excited. She did not wish to know what that could be, but this was not the time to leave a job half done.
"Be wary," She said, drawing the attention of her team. "Whatever is beyond this final threshold has great power."
"Great power?" Asked Stonebrow, eyebrow raised and arms crossed. "Lassy, in case you have forgotten, a month past we killed a TITAN. And affore that it was that nasty piece of work Kil'jaeden himself! I doubt the last little Legion outpost on these cursed isles has anything we can't handle."
Having no response to that, the mage simply nodded, blocking out the call of the arcane atronach and preparing her spells and counterspells in her mind's eye.
Lorven, sensing a lul, moved to the front and turned to his companions.
"Alright friends, this is it. When we are finished here, the last of the Legion strongholds will be wiped from The Broken Shore. Their main force shattered, their command decimated and what remains of their armies scattered across Azeroth, this is their final real foothold in our realm. As Khorvain said, we have faced the worst these foul demons could muster, and it was not enough! Now, let's finish here, and when we return to Dalaran, the drinks are on me!"
"NOW your talkin' lad!"
"Let us be done with these wretches!"
"Ready when you are."
"You are such a ham."
Smirking at the worgen who couldn't let a good speech be, Lorven turned to Maribelle and gave a small nod. returning, the gesture, the human spoke her arcane words, and slowly, the door to the final chamber began to open.
