As if to punctuate that threat, two of the dragons flanking Deathwing suddenly flew closer, opening their mouths wide. The magi could barely put up shields in time. Streams of molten red and gold burst from their wide-spread jaws, striking the balcony and igniting curtains and scrolls in the room behind them. Antonidas cursed under his breath as he watched the other death knights climb onto the dragons' backs and then soar up into the sky, disappearing from view. He knew the mighty creatures would tear right through the wards he had enacted — he had never built them to withstand giants.
Antonidas felt a stab of despair. He and the rest of the Kirin Tor were charged with protecting the city and its people, and tonight he had failed them. He had always said that every mage should know his limits, and tonight, Antonidas knew that he had met his. He stared up at the sky, searching for any sign of the invaders, but they were gone. And they had the Eye of Dalaran, one of the city's most powerful artifacts.
I have what I came for, the death knight had said.
Antonidas knew what. The question was, why?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Fenris stared up at the clearly old edifice, confused. He had not been sure what to expect from the Tomb of Sargeras, but it was not this. What he had at first thought were carvings were in fact the shells and bones and spines of various sea creatures, attached to the building's outer walls from years of submersion. It was like seeing the bottom of a deep ocean, only raised up onto land and fashioned into a habitable structure. And the door to this odd building hung wide open. "This is where that artifact awaits?" Fenris asked, frowning. He was having a hard time reconciling this place's lumpy appearance with the earth-shattering item Ner'zhul had said would be here.
The death knight had no such doubts, however. "It is here," Ragnok insisted. "I can sense it, deep inside."
"Then let's go!" Tagar shouted. "Why are we standing around? The sooner we go in the sooner we come back out!'"
Fenris often found himself at odds with the Bonechewer chieftain, but he was right on that count. Fenris was anxious to be done with this job of courier. He signaled to his orcs and they followed Ragnok, Tagar, and Tagar's Bonechewer warriors inside. Everywhere he looked he saw signs that the building had spent hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years under water. Edges and corners were rounded, both from constant friction with the water and from moss and coral and shells that had attached themselves there. The floor was covered with mold and seaweed. Any decorations along the wall were either destroyed by all those years in the water or covered by just as many years of accumulation. Here and there some water had remained pooled, and was now long since stagnant. No light penetrated here — the strange building had no windows — but that was not a concern. Ragnok raised his hand and a burst of yellowish illumination appeared above him. It cast disturbing shadows about the corridor but at least allowed them to move steadily inward.
As they progressed deeper, Fenris noticed that the walls here were cleaner than they had been nearer the entrance, and not just less grimy but less degraded. The carvings that decorated every surface had not been worn away to the same degree, and he caught glimpses here and there of what this temple must have been at its height. It would have been magnificent, filled with a beauty and an elegance he had never even imagined possible, and Fenris felt rough and bestial treading its halls. He could see that the rest of his clan felt the same way. Tagar and his Bonechewer orcs seemed unaffected by the temple's beauty, but then they seemed to have little appreciation for anything beyond death and destruction. Ragnok appeared utterly focused on the task at hand.
Which might have been why it was Tagar who suddenly stopped and pointed at a spot on the wall near where it met the floor. "Look there!" the Bonechewer chieftain said. Fenris followed his gesture and saw a smear of something dark across the carvings. It looked like—"Blood," Tagar confirmed. He knelt by the smear, sniffed at it, and then touched his tongue to it. "Orc blood," he clarified, rising to his feet again. "Several years old."
"Likely the blood of Gul'dan or his warlocks," Ragnok said. "We're getting close!"
It was not a pleasant thought, even if it did mean that the end of their quest was at hand. "Be on guard," Fenris said to his orcs, and they nodded somberly.
"Are you scared, Fenris?" Tagar mocked, stepping up and shoving his face close to Fenris's. "Afraid of what we might find?"
"Of course I am, you idiot!" Fenris snapped, his tusks scraping the younger chieftain's cheeks. "Gul'dan was a traitor and a fool, but he was still the most powerful warlock the Horde has ever seen! And something in here killed him and all his followers. You'd have to be insane or stupid not to be afraid!"
"Well, I'm not afraid!" Tagar replied, drawing smiles and laughs from several of Fenris's warriors. Fenris himself just shook his head and wondered yet again why he'd been sent with such an idiot. But that's why, he answered himself. Because someone has to be smart enough to know what to do and when — and someone else has to be foolish enough to go on anyway, even when it's near-suicide.
"Fine," Fenris said, allowing himself a small grin. "You go first, then."
Tagar smiled and whooped, his war cry echoing down the hall. He strode forward, leading the way without a moment's concern. The others followed.
The condition of the walls and floor continued to improve as they descended farther into the temple. Its glory was breathtaking. At one intersection of corridors Ragnok stopped, apparently confused. He turned first one way, and then the other. Fenris frowned.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I—" The death knight hesitated again, then nodded to himself and strode firmly down one of the halls. Fenris shook his head, but followed.
The hallway ended in a wide room. The walls here were blank, surprisingly enough — clean and smooth and bare — and the sudden contrast made the room seem stark and dignified. At the far end a massive vault door of plain black iron filled most of the wall.
"This is it," Ragnok breathed. He swung the door open.
And froze in utter terror.
Beyond the door lay an almost impenetrable darkness, as if night had been condensed and hidden here where the light would never find it.
Standing in that darkness, just past the doorway, was a creature from a nightmare.
It towered over them, standing so tall it was forced to hunch within the room beyond. Its skin was scaled and covered in bumps that seemed to ripple, as if somehow its surface were fluid like water. Spikes jutted from the shoulders, the forearms, the chest, and various other places. The overlong arms ended in huge hands with long claws. The face was too narrow at the bottom and too wide at the top, with slanting eyes that glowed a smoky, roiling yellow and a tiny mouth somehow filled with an insane number of razor-sharp teeth. A long tail whipped about behind it.
In one of its clawed hands it held a long rod, almost a spear, with a wooden haft and worked silver ends. The top was a mass of spikes clustered around a large gem that glowed with a brilliant white light of its own, and it was that radiance that held the darkness in the tomb partially at bay. Small flickers of lightning burst from the gem as well, only to fade into the darkness again.
The Scepter of Sargeras — the artifact Ner'zhul had sent them to retrieve.