The gryphon squawked in obvious pain and plummeted, its wings furled tightly around it. At the same time, its rider convulsed as well and toppled out of his saddle. The gryphon managed to shake off its injuries and spread its wings just in time, turning a dead fall into a choppy glide and then beating hard to rise back up above the lower branches and into the shadows. Its rider was not so fortunate. The dwarf slammed into the ground and lay unmoving. Gorefiend was already sprinting toward the body, as was Kilrogg, and Ner'zhul joined them.
This was the first dwarf Ner'zhul had ever seen up close, and he studied the strange little figure intently, taking in the stout muscular build, the craggy features, the long braided beard and hair, and the tattoos that covered most of the dwarf's flesh. The Wildhammer was bleeding from several gashes, but his chest still rose and fell regularly.
"Excellent," Kilrogg commented, pulling a leather strip from his belt pouch and tying the dwarf's hands together behind his back, then doing the same to his feet. "Now we have a captive." He lifted the bound dwarf to his feet, and bellowed, "Begone, winged pests, or we will slaughter and devour your leader while you watch!"
The Wildhammers apparently decided they had had enough. The gryphons cawed and clacked their beaks, then wheeled and flew up beyond the trees, disappearing from view. Only Kilrogg's captive remained behind.
But that couldn't last. "We need to assess our losses." Kilrogg pointed out after the Wildhammers had gone. “And we should post scouts to check on the rest of the Alliance army".
Ner'zhul nodded. "Take care of it," he said absently. He would die before admitting it, but he found himself surprised by his own power. It had come so easily, and was so strong. And produced such impressive results. It felt… good.
"We lost a full quarter of our forces," Kilrogg reported some time later, stepping back up beside Ner'zhul where the shaman waited against one of the larger trees. "Those dwarves know how to attack quickly and effectively, and they used the trees to good advantage," Ner'zhul could hear the grudging respect in the aging chieftain's tone. Kilrogg was too good a strategist not to appreciate sound tactics, even if they were from the other side.
Then Gorefiend joined them, "The rest of their army is still racing toward us," he confirmed. "Clearly they sent the dwarves on ahead to wound us and slow us down." The death knight bared his teeth at their captive, who lay on the ground near Ner’zhul's feet. He had groaned several times but had not yet regained consciousness.
"How far behind us are they?" Ner'zhul demanded.
"Still a day, perhaps two. And in our current state we cannot stand against them."
Ner'zhul nodded. "Then only one course of action remains," he stated. "We must go to Auchindoun."
Kilrogg started, his eyes bulging, though he must have known this was coming. "N-no!" he stuttered. "We cannot! Not there!"
"Do not be such a whelp." Gorefiend sneered at him. "We are out of options! That is the only way we can hope to survive the Alliance army and reach the Black Temple!"
But the one-eyed orc shook his head hard. "There must be another way!" He grabbed Ner’zhul's arm with one hand and Kilrogg's with the other. "There must be! We cannot go to Auch — to there! It will be the end of us!"
"It will not." Ner’zhul replied coldly pulling his arm free and staring at the orc. “Auchindoun is an unpleasant ruin, and a reminder of an ugly time in our past. Nothing more."
It was more, of course. Much more. Auchindoun had been well over a hundred summers old when Ner’zhul himself had been only a baby. It had belonged to die draenci then as always, hidden away deep within Terokkar Forest. The old shaman had told them that it was a sacred place where the draenei buried their dead and then returned to commune with their spirits, just as the orc shaman communed with their own ancestors. As youths Ner’zhul and his clanmates had crept through the forest to study the strange place, staring at its towering, chiseled stone dome. They had challenged each other to enter, to race through the tall doorway carved into the arching stone block that marked the dome's front, touch something within, and then return. None of them had dared attempt it. Ner’zhul had gone farther than most, creeping up to the entryway and running his hands along the rough stone that formed its massive doorway, but he could not bring himself to go farther. According to his clan's shaman, no one ever had. "The draenei dead protect their own," he had said.
Then the war had come. The orcs had banded together, setting aside their clan rivalries. As a single mass they had attacked the peaceful draenei and slaughtered them. Ner’zhul tried not to remember the part he had played in that destruction, or the fiery creature who had given the order to destroy those quiet, unthreatening neighbors. And when Ner’zhul had refused to subject his people to such an outsider's control, when he had resisted that stranger's grandiose plans, he had been replaced. His own apprentice, Gul'dan, had willingly given himself to the stranger, binding himself to the creature's will and gaining immense power in return. Gul'dan had fed the Horde's bloodlust, transforming the orcs into the savages they were today. Then they had crushed the draenei and their entire culture. Only a few had escaped, and those had fled into Auchindoun, hoping the orcs would not pursue them there.
They had been mistaken. Gul'dan's lust for power knew no limits, and his new master had promised him untold might if he wiped the draenei from the face of the world. So Gul'dan had sent agents, a group of warlocks from his Shadow Council, which controlled the Horde warchief Blackhand from behind the scenes. They had marched into Auchindoun, confident in their victory and already imagining the power they would wield from the artifacts rumored to be buried there.
But something had gone wrong. They had found an artifact, to be sure, only to discover that it contained a strange entity — a being they had freed, though whether deliberately or through careless arrogance no one could now be sure. Because the creature's exultant escape had shattered Auchindoun itself, the great stone dome crumbling, the massive temple within it torn to pieces, and the coundess underground tunnels that housed the draenei dead exploding outward into coundess fragments. The impact had destroyed the forest for over a league in every direction, and littered the now-barren ground with bones from the draenei who had once lain at rest within Auchindoun's catacombs. Only a few of the Shadow Council members had survived and escaped, fleeing back to Gul'dan to report the grave-city gone but any draenei within assuredly killed as well. No one had ever returned there, and to this day orcs avoided the Bone Wastes, as the area around Auchindoun had been named.
Until now.
"We have no choice," Ner’zhul reiterated, fixing first Kilrogg and then Gorefiend with his gaze. "We must go there. Some of the tunnels must survive, at least for a short length, and within them we may be able to defend ourselves. Without such protection the Alliance forces will kill us all, and our race will die with us."
Kilrogg sputtered something unintelligible. Gorefiend stared at him contemptuously, red eyes narrowing. "Ner’zhul is right. We've no other choice. But we must proceed with caution. I've no wish to waken something we can't defeat."