(A companion piece to Tziska’s Boots on the Ground, part 1.)
He felt it first: a shiver through the Nether as if someone dropped a walrus into a bathtub, the waves crashing outwards from the impact. One wave became several became the Nether and the leylines and the magic and the earth itself under his feet screaming at him. West. West. WEST. SOUTH AND WEST. South and west and more south. West! Everywhere!
Dropping the leather vambrace he’d been mending, Vy’thanis scrambled to his feet and over to the bookshelf between the bed and the bathroom. They didn’t have many books, but the ones they had were all very educational. His ears quivered as he heard a pounding on the door, but Zay could get it. He needed to find the geography book. He overheard the conversation distantly, muffled through wave after wave of tearing Nether in his ears.
“Are you Master Shadowspite?” Urgency thrummed through the visitor’s voice and there was a rustle of paper.
As a craftsman and son of a craftsman, ‘master’ was appropriate if never something Zayneth insisted on. “I am,” he answered the man at his front door.
“Formerly of Ash’anore Company, serving under Lanthrien Brightglen?”
“Correct,” the blond said in a tight, clipped voice.
“Then per Thalassian military protocol established by the Regent Lord, you are hereby called to answer muster with our forces at the Dranosh’ar Blockade in Orgrimmar. There will be a constant portal running outside the Court of the Sun. You have four days to prepare before you are expected to report to the docks in Orgrimmar.”
“What? I’m retired! Besides, I was never enlisted in the first place. Ash’anore was an adjunct unit, never sworn military.”
“Master Shadowspite,” the visitor replied flatly, “we don’t care. The Legion is here. We’re calling everyone we can.” He handed over some papers before his roommate shut the door in the man’s face.
“Abraaxas was right,” Zay murmured. “The crazy fuckin’ hobo was right. The Legion’s here.”
Vyth found the book he was looking for, thumbing rapidly past the index to the world map writ minuscule on one of the front pages. But the map was useless; there was just empty ocean there. Stretching his sense of the magic that filled the spaces between spaces, he triangulated another source of ripples: Orgrimmar. Another triangulation: Hillsbrad. “Not just here, Zay. Everywhere. They’re tearing through the Nether like tissue paper.” This wasn’t like when the land burst apart like a cracked egg to release the crazed remains of Neltharion, the screaming of the land so violent that Vyth’s mind overloaded and shut his body down. It was both worse...and much more familiar. The Nether tore again, ripples from the damage shivering down his spine. It was every foul portal ripped between the Twisting Nether and what he thought of as the Growing Plane, every sickly green slice in the fabric between worlds that tainted the Nether and turned the space between spaces into a doorway for demons. “This isn’t a foray, sightless one. It’s an invasion.”
“We’ve got four days. I need to go shutter the shop. You need to dig your armor out.”
Incensed, Vyth blew out a breath and snapped the geography book shut. “My hide is plen-”
“We aren’t going to be fighting this one alone, Vyth! I’m sorry to handicap you like this, but you’ve gotta do this the fire mage way. I want to be out by sunset tonight, but I need you to write a few quick letters for me. There’s things we’ve got to settle before we go.”
“Oh, I have something to settle!” Vyth snarled. Every wave that crashed in his head just pushed the urgency higher. There were demons out there and they wanted to take this Growing Plane away from him – away from all of them. “Hell if I’m going to let them.”
“I’m not stopping you, Vyth. I’ve got a bone to pick too. I’m going to go lock up the shop. Get your gear together. When I’m back, we’ll write the note. I’ll- shit, no, I can’t do it that way. Not if I want to leave a note for Kav at the shop. Notes first, then closing up. We’ll be through that portal by sunset.”
Vyth grabbed pen and paper and leaned over the kitchen counter as Zay spoke, taking dictation for notes for Cal, Kav, and the Tarts. By sunset, they were gone.
The return to battle was immediate. Even in late afternoon in Orgrimmar, warning drums sounded and armored orcs raced towards the gates. By now, they weren’t the only ones fighting in defense of the city. The rest of Horde was answering the call, soldiers and mercenaries alike pouring in from around the world. Vy’thanis Felbane had never been part of a large battle force like this. When the elves mobilized to Northrend, he’d been nursing his savior back to health. When the world burst apart, neither of them had been in any fit state to fight. When the Horde writhed and turned on itself like a trapped wyrm gnawing itself in half, he and Tziska had been drawing Zayneth out of his life of hoods and blindfolds. When they fought the demons, they’d fought alone.
The urgency in the air was too great to resist, the pull to fight drawing him to the northern gates nearly the moment his feet hit the red clay. Fel magic drove spikes into the land and Vyth reacted unthinkingly to protect. He was running for the gate before he knew his feet were moving. His roommate didn’t try to stop him; no, the blond was right there with him, both men racing towards the shouts and roars and screams of battle enjoined.
There was no preparing for it, no bracing himself for the sights and sounds and smells of pitched fighting. Just outside the northern gate of Orgrimmar, hundreds of Horde soldiers of every stripe found bolt and blade and anything they could put hand to and call a weapon. The din was enough to obliterate the screams of the tearing Nether – or maybe those screams blended so well with the screams of pain and blood and fear and anger and adrenaline and battlelust and rage. Rage. RAGE.
Well after nightfall, he fought. A felhound leapt for his side, antennae seeking to pierce his flesh and steal his mana and then his soul. It burst into white-hot flame as he threw it back towards a doomguard, the flaming hound ruining its sight just long enough for a Tauren to duck beneath that giant sword it swung and lop off both of its arms. The scent of cooked flesh made his stomach rumble.
A cluster of imps cornered a Forsaken priestess against the arm of a catapult. “Jump!” Vyth shouted at her as he shoved a gout of fire along the ground beneath her feet, incinerating the vicious little creatures. She flashed a morbid grin at him before returning to piercing Legion brainpans with shadow spikes.
Over the heads of a terrifyingly efficient duo of goblins, Vyth spotted a ganarg sapper hit its fuse and start sprinting towards them. The screaming flows of Nether bent to the mage’s will and accelerated the fuse, blowing the demon up yards before it made it to the fighters. Heat blasted back across his face, singeing his hair and crisping his eyebrows.
Shrieking, a shivarra spun a whirl of bladed death through the fighters and Vyth’s fingers faded purple-blue at the tips as he reached into the Nether and used the space between spaces to fling soldiers out of its path like a disembodied hand shoving them in the chest. Zayneth realized what Vyth was doing and anticipated the next person to be shoved clear, ducking into the space they’d vacated and driving a pair of long, curved blades into the shivarra’s chest. When the blond fighter howled laughter at the spray of acidic fel blood instead of ducking away, Vyth knew it was time to pull his best friend back.
The first attempt didn’t work. Using his magic, he grabbed both of Zay’s shoulders and pulled him back from the demon’s corpse. A pair of spat words from Zay’s mouth shattered the spell, leaving Vyth to gape like a beached fish as the mana rebounded into his skin. His friend had never used his spellbreaking on him before!
The second attempt was nearly fatal. He’d fought at Zay’s side for years, but rarely in this mortal form. What worked as a wide wing sweep to bowl his battle-crazed buddy over was really just sweeping in low and curling his arm around Zay’s waist as an elf. In his blood fury, Zayneth twisted in the hold and brought his sword to bear on Vyth’s left side.
“Zayneth, it’s time to rest. C’mon.”
“There’s more of them coming!”
“I know. But you need to wash off that acid and drink something. C’mon.” The mage breathed a sigh of relief when his friend let him drag him off the field.
Once they were off the battlefield, it was easier to get Zay to stay still. Part of that could’ve been because the man fought so hard that when he stopped moving, he passed out. Vyth tucked his best friend into a bed in hastily erected barracks and squared his shoulders. He couldn't do this alone. It was time to bring in the only thing scarier than a dragon: Tziska Antaniel Shadowspite.
Night gave way to morning as Vyth sat on the roof of Ink and Spite, needing the height to soothe his nerves as the Nether screamed and the land wept and the echoes of unimaginable death lingered in his mind. Only once had he seen injuries such as the demons could inflict, and those wounds had nearly destroyed the strongest mortal he’d ever known. But in this battle... Women and men, elves and orcs, living and undead – they all fell indiscriminately, flesh searing, bodies broken.
And so many of them stood back up and spat their death in the Legion’s faces.
It was terrifyingly humbling to witness the fortitude of mortals en masse. He could only hope to be so strong, so he could claim Azeroth as his home too.
He saw a shock of white hair in the alley and scrabbled to the edge of the roof just as Tziska unlocked her door and went inside. It took him a few minutes to get down off the roof and walk around to the door, where he knocked politely because that’s what elves were supposed to do is knock before walking in.
“The wards are down, darling. You don’t need to knock. Just come in.”
Vyth couldn’t help himself when he opened the door. “Aww, Ka, you haven’t called me ‘darling’ before. I’m honored.” The humor was so badly needed right now, and the way her lichfire eyes squinted at the corners and her lips turned up, he knew she was pleased to see him.
“Vyth! That ‘darling’ wasn’t meant for you and I’d prefer if you gave it back and never spoke of the matter again.”
When he pouted, she laughed and his nerves settled just a little more.
“Metaphor. Why are you standing in my shop? I thought the needles made you nervous.”
It was an understatement. Why so big a man was so squeamish over so small a piece of metal seemed to baffle everyone – even him – but every time he caught a glimpse of the tools of her trade, he got light-headed and queasy. “Oh, they do. I was up on the roof, waiting for you to get back. Once we’re done speaking, I am going to eat an entire boar, bones and all. I’m starving.” It was more than just starving, but Vyth was an expert at keeping himself together when everything was falling apart. He shoved a sun-browned hand into his blue-black hair. “We’re both here. Zay and me. Didn’t you hear about it?”
Tziska sighed. “I’ve been relic-hunting in Pandaria and wasn’t paying much attention to the chatter from that adventuring company.”
“Demons are invading Azeroth.” Just thinking of it made him want to roar and unleash Nether-tinged fire. After he'd tucked Zay into a cot, he’d sat and listened to some of the debriefings going on in the tent and the expanse of the invasion roused every protective instinct he had. “There’s felfire in the skies and Legion spires tearing through the Nether in Azshara and Hillsbrad. The Horde is calling muster as we speak, gathering an armada at the docks to sail for the heart of it. Off in the east, over the ocean, there’s a massive Legion breach.”
Vyth should have known she’d pierce straight to the heart of the matter, as precise and merciless as her needles. “You can’t stop him.”
“Like hell I can’t!” The death knight slid off her stool, her hands fisting at her sides. “You’re going to keep him off those bloody ships!”
“What if I want to fight too?” Vyth’s lips peeled back from his teeth as that anger flared. He’d die before he’d let the Legion take another home from him! “Or have you grown so blinded to our truths that you buy the act?”
Tziska stalked across the floor until she was nearly toe-to-toe with her little brother’s best friend, savior, and roommate. “I don’t care how much you want to fight. Or how much he does! He’s blind, for fuck’s sake!”
It was a low blow and it was everything Vyth could do to keep himself together against the disappointment of Ka’s dismissal. She still didn’t trust that they were capable of fighting now. “Not entirely,” he gritted through his teeth.
“Did you know that he picks out colors and facial expressions after we kill a few demons?” Did you know he’s not as crippled as you think?
That stopped Tziska in her tracks. She stared up at Vyth’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me there was a change in his sight? I could’ve modified the enchantments on the glass to augmen-”
“KA!” he roared. “You’re trying to shift me off the point so I forget about it. I’m not an idiot, and it hurts that you think I am.” A cripple and an idiot – he could hear it in her tone and with the battle still running hot in his veins, he wanted to roar fire and destroy everything she held dear in this shop. But Tziska was family. She was Zayneth's clutch-mate and that had to mean something, it had to mean she knew what to do to keep his friend from killing himself against the demons. Next time, he might not be able to pull Zay away.
Banked lichfire glowed in her eyes as she pressed her lips together in a tight line. When she finally spoke, that hollow lightless cold of undeath was back in her voice. “You are not letting Zayneth get on those ships. You are not going on those ships. If the two of you fight out there and someone figures out what you two are, they’ll throw you in with the demons. Azeroth will never embrace the Black Temple’s fallen. Isolated with an armada isn’t smart. Fight here, Vyth. Fight those spires back and save this city. Fight where if you have to flee, you can.”
“I’ve barely been able to hold him back, Ka. He’s practically mad with battlelust.” I need your help.
“You have to. I’ll answer the muster for the Shadowspites. After all, this sort of suicide mission is what the deathless were made for. There is no suicide when you’re already dead.”
