Beyond the Dark Portal by Aaron Rosenberg & Christie Golden

Author:Aaron Rosenberg & Christie Golden [Rosenberg, Aaron & Golden, Christie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Video & Electronic, General, Science Fiction, Games, Fiction, Media Tie-In
ISBN: 9781416550860
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2008-06-24T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ner’zhul sat upon his throne in Hellfire Citadel, the brooding, nightmarish fortress the Horde had built shortly after the clans united.

He loathed this place.

It was hideous, a disturbing, disjointed creation of jagged angles, dark stone, and corridors and walkways that twined in and over one another like a maddened snake. If it bore any resemblance to a traditional orc village, which was a collection of small buildings, huts, and short towers, it was only the most twisted distortion of such a wholesome thing, much as the orcs themselves had become twisted and distorted. Whereas orc huts were fabricated from green branches and covered in bark, these buildings were dark stone banded with rough iron. Strange support pillars rose around them, topped with gleaming steel spikes, as if colossal clawed hands were erupting from the cracked ground to grip the structures. The twisting, connecting paths extended from one roof to the next, more as if the buildings had melted and shifted than as if the paths were intentional. At the back rose a taller tower with a peaked roof. It was here that they had shaped a throne room for Blackhand, the Shadow Council giving a puppet ruler a pretend throne. Now that throne belonged to Ner’zhul, the new Horde leader in truth, and the rest of the abomination that was the stronghold with it.

Ner’zhul did not glance out through the arching windows toward the portal. He had no desire to be struck, again, by how desolate his once-fertile world had become. But really, there was no avoiding it, was there? Absently his fingers went to touch the white-painted skull on his face. Death. The death of his world, the death of his people, the death of his own idealism. Blood was on his green, gnarled hands; the blood of so many innocents. The blood of orcs who had trusted him, whom he had inadvertently led astray.

You must stop thinking of it that way, came a voice inside his head. He ignored it. It was easier to ignore the voice of the dead Gul’dan when he was not in physical contact with the skull. Yet even as he vowed not to give it heed, he cast a glance at it now as it sat on a small table. Torchlight danced off the yellowing bone. He found himself speaking to it, as if Gul’dan could hear him. Which, in a way, was true.

“We did much harm, you and I. Deathbringers, doom callers, both of us. But now we can try to save them. And your skull, my old apprentice…your skull will be part of that. Dead you are better use to the orcs than you were alive. Back you have come, to your old master. Maybe together we can give them a new chance.”

But that’s not what you really want, is it, my master?

Ner’zhul blinked. “Of course it is! I have ever sought to aid my people! That I have become death to them…it sears me. It is why I wear this.

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