The Rewritten Epic
A world-ending apocalypse happening somewhere else versus your loved one about to bite the dust right in front of you?
Which one hits you like a freight train to the soul?
Hell yes, it's saving your family!
Having never personally witnessed the absolutely bat-shit crazy battle royale in Karazhan, although Llane was grateful to Duke both with his brain and his heart, the mental sledgehammer wasn't nearly as devastating as this current clusterfuck.
Somewhere along the way, Duke's young face had already merged with Medivh in Llane's mind. Just as sharp as a tack, just as good as gold, just as solid as a rock, swooping in to save bacon when everything's going to hell in a handbasket.
As time marches on, how many more years can both myself and my old war horse Lothar keep kicking ass and taking names?
Duke is a different animal entirely. Duke isn't just talented and powerful as all get-out, but he's only 15 years old! If he becomes the backbone of Stormwind Kingdom, Varian won't have to lose sleep over magical shenanigans or even business bullshit for decades to come.
For a hot minute, Llane's heart was chomping at the bit with excitement.
Unfortunately, there's another red-hot fire that needs putting out immediately.
Where the hell did those damned orcs crawl out from!?
This made Llane madder than a wet hen. Not only were all the South Gate defenses worth about as much as a chocolate teapot, but it also meant that Stormwind City's doom was now ticking down like a time bomb ready to blow sky-high.
Without fortifications, the casualty ratio between humans and orcs of the same caliber is three to one – and that's the real McCoy professional soldiers who've been through the wringer with long-term military training. Even if the farmers who were still plowing fields just months ago go toe-to-toe with fully armored orcs, the exchange rate is at least ten to one – a losing proposition that would make Vegas bookies weep.
There were less than 70,000 soldiers left in the entire kingdom. And the orcs... the latest intel reported at least 400,000 of the green-skinned bastards. This was a mind-boggling number that wouldn't be enough to kill even if every man, woman, and child in Stormwind threw themselves into the meat grinder.
King Llane's face twitched like he'd been hit with a cattle prod, and he spun around barking orders: "Luther, you lead your boys to hunt down those orcs, push them back to the city wall at minimum! Andrew, you get your men to take over Stormwind Fortress and clean house of every orc in that stronghold! Jamacha, you lead the city guards to mop up the city!"
Then Llane wheeled around and locked eyes with Duke, serious as a heart attack: "Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Duke. Although I'd love nothing more than to promote you to Duke faster than you can say 'jackrabbit,' we've got bigger fish to fry right now. I desperately need your brain power. From this day forward, I want you at every single war council."
Duke bowed smooth as silk: "The honor is all mine, Your Majesty."
"I'll be waiting for you in the meeting hall of Stormwind Fortress in one hour." Llane slapped Duke's shoulder and hustled off to check on his queen.
Duke knew that from this moment on, he had truly become a mover and shaker in all of Stormwind. Not just because he controlled the maritime lifeline that kept Stormwind's heart pumping, but also because of his balls-to-the-wall performance of courage and loyalty that finally earned Llane's complete seal of approval.
Especially this time around – if Duke hadn't been there, Stormwind Fortress, the crown jewel of Stormwind City, would've been occupied by the cream of the crop from Orgrimwood's elite forces. At that point, with enemies inside and outside working hand in glove, Stormwind City would've fallen faster than a house of cards in a hurricane.
Of course, all Duke managed to pull off was beating back the orcs' sucker punch. Lightning wouldn't strike twice in the same place – he wouldn't catch such a lucky break next time.
Even so, everywhere you cast your eyes, there are corpses and torched houses scattered like confetti after a particularly violent parade. The orcs' half-hour rampage through the city had dealt serious damage to Stormwind City. Not just the flesh and blood losses, but the spirit-crushing psychological warfare.
Right now, Duke could still faintly make out the terrified screams echoing in the distance.
"Stormwind City has been breached! Stormwind Fortress has fallen like a ton of bricks!"
However, these matters weren't Duke's circus, and those weren't his monkeys.
Just as Duke was about to go check on how Windsor was holding up, another squad of Stormwind soldiers rolled up. They looked no different from your run-of-the-mill Stormwind soldiers, but Duke clocked that the emblem on their left chest – representing their unit and chain of command – was a black badge with a hooded death skull dead center, and countless mage hands lurking ominously around the skull like vultures circling roadkill.
Well, I'll be damned!
Aren't these my people?
Duke was knocked for a loop, then spotted that the head honcho was his number one right-hand man, Makaro. At first glance, Duke recognized a whole mess of familiar faces. The hired guns who'd followed him to the Western Wilderness were at least wearing captain's stripes now.
"Master!" Although Makaro appeared to be sitting pretty in the eyes of outsiders, in front of Duke, he was still that same mercenary leader from day one. He remembered clear as day that all his glory actually came from the master standing before him – the one and only, absolutely legendary Sea King Duke.
Without Duke, he'd forever be that mercenary leader with about as much future as a snowball in hell.
"Well, would you look at that getup?"
"Well, according to the official paperwork, we're your noble private army, Master Edmund. It's just that Stormwind City is in deep shit and you weren't around, so battle-hardened folks like us got temporarily drafted by Lord Lothar. Lord Lothar gave his word to cut us loose the second you showed your face."
Duke grinned like the cat that ate the canary. He couldn't care less about such small potatoes, especially since the one calling the shots was Lothar.
"Windsor is hurt bad as a beaten dog. Makaro, please invite the best priest in Stormwind City on my dime. The rest of you follow little Makaro to clean up the remaining orc stragglers in Stormwind City."
Half an hour later, Windsor, who got the full treatment from the Archbishop of Stormwind City, managed to cheat death. The priest's healing magic works like gangbusters on physical injuries and can even patch up internal organ damage. Of course, the nuts and bolts of healing involves using divine power to light a fire under the human body's potential. Healing injuries comes at the price of burning through your life's candle – putting it simply, it's trading years for the here and now.
Without the present, there ain't no future. Everyone and their brother knows this cold hard truth.
Bedside, the pale-as-a-ghost Windsor looked at Duke with an expression sorrier than a wet dog.
"I'm sorry, Master. Am I completely worthless? I couldn't even take one hit from that bastard."
Duke smiled. Windsor was still green around the gills. He had heart and guts, but he was light-years away from becoming the iron-willed hero of later years who was ready to go down swinging.
"If you knew that the red-skinned orc swinging that sledgehammer was named Orgrim Doomhammer, and that he's considered the best warrior the Horde's got to offer, would that make you feel less like roadkill?"
"For real?!" Windsor perked up like a prairie dog, but then his eyes dimmed again: "Damn it, here I am secretly patting myself on the back for losing to the top dog. This proves I'm still not worth a hill of beans."
"Ha!" Duke busted out laughing: "Come on, in this whole kingdom, except for Lothar who can go toe-to-toe with him on equal footing, there really isn't a soul alive who can throw down with him."
"Master, you can't handle him either?"
Duke chewed on that for a moment: "If I get at least half an hour without any jackass interfering, I've got about a fifty-fifty shot of wearing him down to nothing."
Duke kept to himself: That's assuming I don't get a second chance if I bite the dust.
Suddenly, Windsor asked, "Will Stormwind get wiped off the map?"
"Stormwind will fall like a rock, but Stormwind Kingdom is destined to rise from the ashes like a phoenix after we send these orcs packing!"
Panic was spreading like wildfire and couldn't be stopped.
The capital of a country got invaded, and even Storm Fortress – which rolled the royal palace and fortress into one badass package – was lost for a hot minute. Even though the invaders got their asses handed to them by the timely arrival of Duke, the Sea King, it still couldn't put the brakes on the growing terror eating away at people's hearts like acid.
"We don't want to kick the bucket! We want to live to fight another day!"
"Please, for the love of all that's holy, let me and my kid get on that boat!"
"His Majesty Llane can't defend Stormwind City worth a damn anymore. Does he want us to go down with this ship alongside this useless king?"
Doom and gloom spread like the plague and couldn't be bottled up. A whole army of people stampeded to the dock with their families in tow, begging for a golden ticket to safety.
The bat-shit crazy crowds didn't give two hoots about the dock officials' explanations and tried every trick in the book to storm aboard the ships. Some people even wanted to rush aboard ships the second they saw them docked, before the military supplies on board could even be unloaded.
The scene turned into a complete three-ring circus.
Facing their own people, the Stormwind guards responsible for keeping the peace didn't have the stones to draw their swords at all. Before you could say "Bob's your uncle," a massive crowd rushed to the dock after getting all riled up by some troublemakers hollering "The city's been breached!"
If what happened next hadn't gone down, there might've been a tragic stampede with more casualties than a demolition derby.
A strong wind suddenly roared in from the dock, bringing bone-chilling cold air that could freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Every citizen could feel the terrifying power packed into this arctic blast like a punch to the gut.
A patch of sea surface suddenly froze solid as concrete, and a massive iceberg shot up from the ground, climbing higher and higher like Jack's beanstalk.
A young man wearing the robes of the Stormwind Royal Mage Order stood on top like the king of the mountain.
"Mage! Holy shit, it's a Master Mage!"
"Sweet mother of pearl! That's Duke the Sea King!"
The word "Duke" seemed to pack some mystical punch that went way beyond magical horsepower. When that name dropped, the crowd that had been raising hell and going completely apeshit suddenly went quiet as church mice.
Whether it was natural fear of wizards who dealt in the mysterious arts, pure admiration for this young spellcaster who'd become a heavy hitter in the kingdom, or rock-solid faith in the hero who'd sent the demon lord Sargeras packing.
People stopped dead in their tracks and eyeballed the legendary young wizard standing proud as a peacock on the iceberg with expressions more mixed than a cocktail party, but mostly scared shitless.
Duke didn't waste time with explanations. He casually raised his hand, and suddenly a whole mess of Mage Hands glowing white as fresh snow appeared. They shot into the crowd like bats out of hell and yanked out several troublemakers.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing!?"
"Let me go! Cut me loose!"
"The wizard's going trigger-happy! Is there any law and order left!?"
These lowlifes, who looked like street thugs straight out of central casting, fought like wildcats, but against mystical magical power, their struggle was about as useful as tits on a boar.
Duke's sarcastic sneer carried in all directions: "Didn't you feel like hot shit just now when you were hollering 'The city's been breached'? Keep going! Why'd you clam up all of a sudden?"
With the naked eye, finding these bad apples with rotten intentions would be like finding a needle in a haystack. But with the system AI, filtering them out was easier than shooting fish in a barrel.
Of course, the people would chalk this up to the wizard's mysterious ways.
Everyone's minds got knocked for a loop, and they immediately realized these jackasses were the ones stirring the pot and fanning the flames.
"Son of a bitch! You lied to us!?"
"Dirty rotten liar! My boy almost got crushed to death in that mob just now!"
The people were simple as apple pie. They saw there wasn't anything seriously wrong, just a bunch of shitheads came to stir up trouble. They were all madder than hornets, but Duke had successfully redirected their fury like a master magician.
The next moment, Duke's magic hands grabbed the throats of the troublemakers dangling in mid-air like pinatas.
Duke raised his hand, and a gold-trimmed scroll materialized like magic: "Now hear the emergency decree of His Majesty Llane Wrynn – In light of the fact that the orcs have found the chinks in Stormwind City's armor, I have decided to evacuate the people to Southshore up north by sea in an orderly fashion over the next month. Anyone who screws up the order – gets their head chopped clean off! The final say on all maritime transport order belongs to Edmund Duke."
The royal decree was the real deal, and the soft-hearted Llane didn't actually use such harsh language. When chaos was about to break loose, Duke simply brought out the big guns with severe punishment.
Smoothly tucking away Llane's order, Duke cast an ice-cold stare at the troublemakers: "According to His Majesty Llane's order, you're now sentenced to death!"
Duke snapped his fingers, and dozens of mage hands tore these weak-ass punks apart in mid-air like they were made of tissue paper!
The next moment, all the bodies didn't even hit the ground. They got flash-frozen into one massive ice sculpture that crashed onto the sea surface closest to the dock like a wrecking ball. As long as you walked on the dock, you could see clear as day the gruesome deaths of these scumbags through the crystal-clear ice.
Then Duke waved his hand, and arcane light divided the crowd into dozens of massive rows neat as a pin.
"Now listen up, everyone! Line up according to the seven colors of arcane light (red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple) glowing on your bodies, and march over to the designated dock officials as family units to collect your evacuation tickets. Anyone who raises hell at the dock will get the same treatment as these lowlifes. Don't even think about trying to pull a fast one on my Mage's Eye. Under my watch, even if any wise guy sneaks onto a ship, they'll get tossed into the middle of the ocean to become shark bait!"
After that, hundreds of bizarre Mage's Eyes suddenly popped up in the air, blinking like Christmas lights, and everyone felt like they were being X-rayed down to their skivvies.
Under Duke's iron-fisted intimidation and the supervision of city guards who'd found their backbone again, the people fell back in line without knowing what hit them.
On the terrace of Stormwind Fortress, Llane and the Queen gazed toward Stormwind Harbor and listened to the commotion drifting from the distance. The blood-soaked stench of Stormwind Fortress, which had just been scrubbed clean, still filled their nostrils thick as molasses.
The elite orc soldiers under Orgrim's command had stormed in and slaughtered not just a shitload of guards, but also many trustworthy servants and maids. This made cleaning up the corpses and sanitizing the fortress slower than molasses in January.
Llane's frown was so deep you could lose a quarter in it.
"My dear, I'm afraid I'm about to lose this whole damn country." Llane's brow was clouded with gloom thicker than London fog. For the first time since this whole shitshow started, he personally admitted the country might be toast.
The queen gripped Llane's hand tight as a vise with both hands: "At least you still have Varian and me, plus loyal ministers like Anduin, Bolvar, and Duke, not to mention all those soldiers who'd follow you into hell, and the people..."
"The people!" There was crystal-clear heartbreak in Llane's eyes.
"Any citizen with half a brain will know this isn't your fault. Duke hit the nail on the head. This should be a crisis all seven human kingdoms face together."
"Dear, having you is worth its weight in gold." After planting one on his beloved, Llane turned and headed into the fortress, then got word from Duke about dealing with the port problem. Llane just responded cool as a cucumber to the following report.
"I know."