Once again, it comes down to a hunch.
Across Azeroth, he knows, the Resistance and those known as the Marked have gone forth to wage war with each other, Silvermoon City being nearly emptied of defenders connected to the Shielded Mind as the last day of the war drew to a close. At her family estate, he knows, Favrielle Emberdusk has gone to stand by her family, along with Dagorath Lightshield and Maedrys Dawnringer. He knows that he should either be somewhere in Silvermoon City, defending the helpless, or at one of the major battlefields, fighting against the Marked in final battle.
But Arryk Stormbane has a hunch.
The Company of the Deathless is assembled on the road outside of Silvermoon City, a mile from the Shepard’s Gate, nineteen strong, armed and armored, each astride their deathchargers. Sedestra and Zahen are at his side, Zahen again holding the banner of the Ebon Blade. They almost look, Arryk thinks, like they’re awaiting inspection. If he is wrong, he thinks, smiling beneath his newly forged helm, they’re going to look awfully stupid in the morning, but Arryk suspects that won’t be the case.
He hasn’t placed all his eggs in this one basket. Farstriders are scouting the area to the south, east, and west, each of them in comm contact with a Farstrider commander that is checking in every ten minutes to Arryk. A single warning can send the Deathless to any hotspot that erupts, but Arryk has his hunch.
His hunch is that the enemy he is expecting will approach the city from the cover of the Dead Scar.
Not entering the city that way; there are far too many rangers stationed near the walls of the city, and the guard has been doubled. The Shepard’s Gate, though, that is a more public entrance, one meant for open traffic amongst the citizens of Quel’thalas. An enemy who punches through there would run riot in the Royal Exchange and down the Walk of Elders.
So Arryk waits, his hands on the grips of his swords, hoping he’s got this right. Hoping the preparations he made when he visited his workshop at his home at Dawnstar Village on Quel’danas, preparations that had been meant to be the preliminary phase of his plans before time ran out on him, would be enough. Hoping he’s gotten this right.
It is just after the ninth bell, which he hears ringing in the distance, when Arryk is proven right.
Shadows begin to creep out of the distance, hooded forms, misshapen, their faces hidden by hoods. They make no pretense of stealth as they move towards the city out of the shadow of the Dead Scar, coming to within one hundred feet of the Deathless before stopping to assemble. Arryk stops counting them when the number reaches three dozen. How many covens, how many cults of the Old Gods, he thinks, have assembled here? How many of them have viewed the war between the Shielded Mind and the Collective and the Faceless, aligned with neither, yet waiting, waiting for the right moment to rise up against Silvermoon when the defenses were at their lowest ebb?
At the center of the mob, Arryk sees a shadowy form, standing perhaps ten feet tall, wrapped in a cloak and hood that seems almost a parody of the ones around it, and he hears Sedestra utter a low whistle. “A genuine Faceless One,” she whispers. “I hope you have a plan for that, because I wasn’t expecting it.”
“We’ll see. Remain here. I’m going to talk to them. Maybe I can make them see sense.”
“Old God cultists,” Zahen remarks, “aren’t much known for their sense.”
“True enough.” Arryk nudges Xaxil ahead with his heels, moving the crimson deathcharger into a trot that carries him to the assembled cultists. He comes to a halt and regards them as the Faceless One steps forward. “I figured it out,” Arryk says, without a hint of preamble. “You see, at first, I thought it was just Dawnforge that was operating on his own. Sleeper agent for the Old Gods who took it upon himself to support the Collective. The second attack, the firebombing, the snipers-they certainly looked right. Attacked just after the bombing on the Shielded Mind, mentioned the Handmaiden…they almost convinced me.” The Faceless One did not speak, just looked down on Arryk, its fierce and depthless intelligence almost a force in the air. “But.” Arryk raised a finger. “The suicide bomber. He shouted something just before he died. ‘Rejoice, for They rise!’ That was Dawnforge’s saying. And I suspect that means that they weren’t part of the Collective either. I suspect that them…that all of them…serve you. Am I right?”
The Faceless One is silent for a long moment, then speaks, its audible voice a guttural roar of consonants, but whispering in Arryk’s mind. “They served me, yes. They have long heard my whispers in the darkness, my voice as I lay in deathless slumber, beneath the waves. Even as I slept, I planned, I calculated, I watched. We are patient and eternal.”
“Yes. When the children awakened the Tree, when they came to the Master’s Glaive to honor and venerate Them, I was awakened, in my cavern beneath the waves. Such attention, such focus, on this city, it brought me here. I assembled my children over the past weeks, my Court, even as my will forced those already in hiding in your city into action. Our time has come, little death knight. While the children play across this world, we come to bring madness and death to your city. We come to share the gift of Old Night to your people. We will deny you victory. We are the Court of Night Unending, and we will not be stopped.”
Arryk lets his hands fall again to his swords. “I said, when I came here, that I would not let this happen to my city. I thought I merely spoke of the Collective and the Faceless. But that goes to jumped up opportunists who think they can just crash into the middle of this story like you. I am Scourgelord Arryk Stormbane of the Knights of the Ebon Blade, and you will not enter my city.”
“Little death knight,” the Faceless One chuckled. “Your bravado will fall before our numbers. We will tear you apart and spike your undead skulls on the walls of Silvermoon to watch as it falls to us.”
“That,” Arryk says, “is an impressive threat. Or, you know, it would be if I didn’t have a plan.”
“What plan could you have that would overcome this?”
Arryk grins ferally behind his helm as he triggers his comm. “Whenever you’re ready, Indizzle.”
For one brief, horrible moment, nothing happens, and Arryk thinks that this will be a terrible way to die. Then a bright flash of light erupts in the sky overhead as a circle of pure white light slices through the skin of reality, a wormhole appearing, and through it flies the bipedal form of a goblin shredder, the arms replaced with weaponry mounted and wired to the body, weld marks still visible. From inside the cockpit, the familiar voice of Indizzle Sparkvolt-goblin rogue, inventor, engineer, and one of Arryk’s closest friends, who arrived two days ago and helped Arryk rebuild the shredder into a war machine-crackles across the comm. “Ready ta rock, big guy.”
“Light them up,” Arryk calls, even as he spurs Xixal away, towards the Company of the Deathless.
And the world behind him lit up with explosions and screams.
Arryk and others in the Resistance had been given plans-remarkably clever plans-that had been meant for anti-Faceless weaponry, powered by a combination of arcane and Titan power cores. Arryk had particularly been struck by a design that converted goblin shredders into remote controlled weapons systems. He and Indizzle had been tinkering with a shredder that they had captured from Blackfuse mercenaries during the Siege of Orgrimmar, and Arryk had called Indizzle to come from Draenor to rebuild it as a prototype for the remote controlled weapon. Time had simply run out for them, and the modified shredder-with a wormhole generator Arryk had built, attuning it to his comm frequency, built into it- was all they had.
From the sound of it, it was working wonders.
A beam of bright light erupted from the left arm, the power of the Light and Titan energy fused into one, and Indizzle flew the shredder across the assembled enemy as it stabbed downward, shearing off one of the Faceless One’s tentacles and ploughing a furrow in the ground as its energy tore apart anything in its path for the few seconds that it could fire. Indizzle banked neatly in the air and raised the other arm, opening fire with the belt-fed gun that they’d installed there. The design had called for titan-power infused elementium bullets, but the few titan cores Arryk had available had gone into powering the shredder and the beam weapon.
It had been tricky in the time allotted to manage-and the shredder only had the one two hundred round belt-and had caused him to deplete his supply of the metal he’d brought back from Northrend, but titansteel rounds, the propellant supercharged to deliver high kinetic energy, worked as a decent substitute. Indizzle made two passes over the group before the belt ran out, blasting bodies into pieces and scattering the enemy, and he called Arryk. “Weapons out, big guy. Got about half of ‘em. All yours.”
“Go to high cover and keep an eye out for runners.” Arryk drew both of his blades and turned to the Company. “Company of the Deathless! WE KILL FOR THE LIVING!”
The Company echoed the battlecry and charged into the fray, their blades glowing with necromantic light as they began to reap a terrible toll, running down the hooded forms, revealing them to be hybrids such as Dawnforge had been. The Company had not yet been unleashed in full battle yet, and certainly not in a cavalry charge against foes that had no weapons to deal with it-no pikes, no spears, not even firearms. Clearly they had expected to plunder an undefended city, but the Deathless have other ideas.
Arryk sees the Faceless One, its cloak and hood gone, one tentacled arm a stump from the beam weapon, trying to limp back into the darkness. Oh no you don’t, he thinks, frost erupting from his body as he spurred Xixal into a gallop. On reflex his blades slashed out, decapitating two of the cultists as he passes them, and then he is on the Faceless One, bounding from Xixal’s back even as he dismisses the deathcharger back to the netherworld it came from. He brings down both blades into the Faceless One’s back, and the howl of pain and anger in his head nearly disorientates him. He lands, the Path of Frost fueling him, the cold certainty of winter, and he slashes out horizontally with both blades, aiming for the knees of the creature. Hamstrung, even an eldritch horror finds it hard to run, and the Faceless One crashes to the ground, tentacles flailing. Arryk roars and his blades remove the other arm at the shoulder, the foul ichor of its blood staining the grass beneath it.
The Deathless have dismounted now, working in groups as they slaughter their way through the hybrids. The battle will eventually claim two of them, their bodies torn apart to such an extent even necromancy cannot repair them. As the battle continues, as Arryk stands over the Faceless One, there comes a moment when, for one second, the forces of the Court pause as something-some force-passes through them, something even the death knights feel.
“The mark,” the Faceless One whispers. “The Marked. Their power is broken. We are broken. It is over.”
To Arryk’s dismay, the Faceless One dissolves into wisps of shadow that pass into the ground. His blades stab into the ground, finding nothing. “Bastard,” he growls, turning towards the battle, which, in truth, is now more mopping up. He has a feeling that he will meet this Faceless One again.
None of the Court of Night Undending escape. The last few stragglers that manage to fight free of the battle are cut down by Indizzle, the beam weapon having had enough time to recharge for one last shot. The Deathless work throughout the night, collecting the bodies and putting them on wagons to be driven to the Plaguelands and burned there, far from the sight of Silvermoon City. Zahen leads them away, the Company of the Deathless departing in secret with the dawn, taking with them as well the two fallen knights. In the end, only Sedestra and Arryk remain, standing beside of the now-powerless shredder, Indizzle tinkering with it. Only a few burns and craters from the weapons of the shredder, along with bloodstains, even hint that the battle took place. “Not interested in glory, I take it?” Sedestra asks.
“Let it be rumour,” Arryk says. “Let any cultists who even heard of this wonder how we won. Who was here. How many fought. Let it be a rumor of the power of Silvermoon. A reminder that this city refuses to fall, no matter what.” Arryk pulls off his helm, still acutely aware of the missing part of his left ear. ‘We won. Let others have the glory. That’s all that matters. I just want to go home.” He regards Sedestra for a moment. “The Deathless are yours, now.”
“Until we need you again, Arryk. And you know we will.”
Sadly, Arryk realizes, they will. But that, he muses, will be another day.
((And so, Arryk’s part in this closes. As it turns out, he actually wasn’t IN the Collective story, his was actually something else running parallel to it. I’d like to send a shout out to…ack, I am not entirely sure I linked the right person before since it autofilled based on a guess, my bad-but at any rate, the person who sent me the amazing ideas for anti-Faceless weaponry that, much like Arryk, I simply didn’t have time to utilize, and that my prototype version of which simply didn’t do justice to. Those ideas rocked.))
@the-handmaidens-collective @we-the-faceless @the-shieldedmind @chorusofcontention (for mentions, really, as Arryk kind of went off on his own tangent inspired by all of this. Event was awesome, guys!)
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