Welcome to another edition of Wrathgate Wednesday. We have a few posts* left before the end of Wildfire Riders collaborative fic project regarding the Wrathgate cinematic. Today we have one fic ad one italics post. Corspilla, a forsaken mage, experiences the terror of the Lich King. Then the Putress launches its devastating attack.

*Some of the last posts will be combined into one big post.

Pill

The moment she saw him, heard him, Pill turned her face away. Most of her gibbered with fear. Whispers and whispers of whispers crowded her. “Don’t look, Elena. Don’t you look.” She hissed to herself as she crept, low to the ground. “You don’t need to see.”

She had left Rashona some place in the snow and bodies. The druidess would be okay, the mage told herself. Rashona was a practical cow, stolid. She wasn’t Raga to turn to booze. She would be okay. Lies! Arguing with herself, she must be crazy.Coward, creeping off, scared.

“Course, I’m scared. You’re scared too!” And crazy. Crazy mage arguing with cowardly little girl. Cowardly little girl that wanted to go hide in a corner. But Pill wasn’t looking for a corner, even as she gave a whimper.

The blood and snow stained everything, would have chilled her skin had she still be alive. The battlefield had grown deathly still, with only HIS demanding, commanding voice to echo over it all. Despite it all, cowardly in her fear, she did not turn to look where she saw all the faces around her looking. She cowered, back to the one who stood outside his horrible gate. Instead she looked at the people who did not see her at all. All of them, eyes wide with horror.

I should be mocking them. Only now seeing what there really is there.

“Oh you hush, Elena. You was scared too. Scared when momma fell asleep, scared more when she woke up.” She passed by rider after rider, transfixed with horror, as they should be. She was scared with them, for them.

We should have looked for him harder in the army. Golden armor, shining ever in the sun, even in the dim sun of plagued lands. Stupid little girl dreams. She didn’t need them any more. She had let him go, let him slip back in with the living, with a blessing. A fond farewell. It was time to let that go. Papa, Jest she corrected herself ever so quickly, could not save her then, he would not have kept the fear away now. Look at all the shiny light wielders here. Faithful and not, brave and not. All were afraid. Darkness, she was afraid, hearing his voice, feeling his voice. Whispers, always.

She contined creeping, keep low and she would escape notice. No one paid attentionto Pill. Silly crazy little mage. No one important. She heard a voice, familiar in sound, though the sobs were not so familiar.

“No, we have who we need.”

Davien was right there in front of her, crying. Davien was scared too and that made it easier to bear. With a strangled cry, Pill curled herself around Davien’s legs. She still didn’t look , didn’t dare look. But she would hold Davien up. The smallest act of defiance against the dark, made out of pure cowardice.

Italics

It was almost a wonder no one heard the creaking and clanking of their slow-moving carts, packed in tight with barrels of liquid death. Liquid, of course, for a short time only. Once the catapults that lumbered behind the carts were in place, they’d let the vats fly, and the valley below would be filled with clouds of Putress’ plague as the fragile glass shattered and sent its contents splashing up and out.

Apothecary Seemah smiled to herself beneath her heavy mask. The glory of it! The sheer exultation! The choked-off screams of the dying would be the sweetest dirge.

As their be-goggled battalion paused at the top of the rise, the battlefield spread out below them and they saw what, precisely, had masked the terrible thunder of their own approach: Arthas Menethil himself, holding armies of Horde and Alliance alike in thrall in front of his dread citadel.

One of her companions snickered. “They think they’re frightened now.”

Seemah grunted in acknowledgement and looked down below. For her, there was no fear. There was only hatred. Hatred for those below who — for a few more minutes anyway — still had the gift of living flesh. Hatred for the Forsaken who had accepted this hideous state but not embraced it, the ones who fought beneath Thrall’s banner before deigning to carry the Dark Lady’s, the ones who still clung to fantasies of being welcomed by the living if only they atoned enough for their terrible rotted state.

But most of all — MOST of all — hatred for Him. The Lich King. Arthas fucking Menethil, who had made them all this way.

No, wait. Something else did share a room with hatred in the mansions of her mind:

Vengeance.

And she was here to be its Hand.

—

The Lich King’s gaze passed from them. The cold remained, and the terror, but as he turned his attention back to Fordragon, the irregulars on the hill felt their wills seeping back. The fear was still there, but there was more to the world than consuming terror and despair; in the absence of Arthas’s pummelling hate, there was room for hope. And Fordragon’s words lifted to them, hurled at the Lich King, but heartening all who could hear.

Surely, Arthas had a retort, but whatever he had to say to Bolvar was upstaged by a ground-shaking roar, one that rocked even the Riders’ line, and sent a few of them sprawling.

The screech of ungreased wheels and peals of malicious laughter drew all eyes to another rise, as the Apothecaries revealed themselves. They stood, faces covered in masks and goggles, loading barrels into the buckets of their catapults. One of them — the laughing one — stepped to the edge of the precipice. “Did you think we had forgotten? Did you think we had forgiven? Behold, now, the terrible vengeance of the Forsaken! Death to the Scourge! And death to the living!”

They could only stand and watch as the catapults were loosed. Tiny projectiles flung out over the field, and where they fell to earth, where they smashed open upon the ground, a sickly green gas began to rise. The screams that carried to the Riders weren’t merely panic. They were death-cries, torn from throats that rotted even as the sounds left their mouths. Those who could draw breath for a second only drew the sickness in deeper, hastening on the effects. They could only stare as the order came echoing through the smoke.

“Fall baaaaack!”

But there was nowhere to go, and what strength they had drained swiftly away. The gas rose, thick and roiling. From their vantage point on high, the Riders could no longer see Fordragon in the fog. But they could see Arthas, still, and the sweep of his cloak as he retreated into his citadel, Frostmourne howling at his side. The maw of Angrathar closed behind him, the Apothecary’s victorious declaration echoing off its clenched saronite teeth: “Now, all can see. This… is the hour of the Forsaken.”

The gas was rising, slow and sure, but they soon discovered it was the least of their problems.

They stared, stricken, at the carnage below, barely registering the Apothecaries’ retreat. Then the hollow clang of Angrathar’s gates reverberated in their bones, and hell was loosed a second time, right on top of them.

The Scourge, who had been content to chant their master’s name and tear at their own flesh, broke upon them like a wave of putrid water. They lost all coordination; whatever ranks they’d formed before no longer mattered. Now, rotted things swarmed like frenzied rats, scrabbling at — and, sometimes, through — their allies to get at the living. Abominations swung massive maces, scattering the ghouls that raced past them. Skeletons scaled the cultists who’d held them at bay, tearing the skin from their commanders’ outstretched arms as though trying to make them all the same.

Geists appeared, peeking over the edge of the sheer cliff wall, chattering excitedly. Someone kicked at them, sent a few of them plummetting, but the gap was filled in a heartbeat.

The Val’kyr and Vargul of Ymirjar saw the chance to garner further favor with their King, and charged the line as well, trampling any Scourge that got in their way as their boots churned the ground. Having their faces shoved into the dirt didn’t deter the ghouls; they followed in the Vrykul’s wake.

The line was broken. No amount of shouting or chivvying or rallying could get it back. The only thing there was left to do, while the narrowest of gaps still remained, was retreat.

No, retreat was too ordered a word.

Flee.

The gas wormed its inexorable way towards them, forcing them in the opposite direction. On every other side, the Scourge closed in.

And in the distance, beneath the chattering of the walking corpses and the screams of the dying, came the beating of leathery wings.

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