Add to Bookmarks
Here is the third of the winning entries in our Fan Fiction competition to win a copy of World of Warcraft Vol. One. Today’s short story is by JackShaftoe, continued after the break:
It was at times like these that it was best to leave things unsaid, rather than devote any energy voicing disgust over what was a necessity of life for Bonewyrm. Feefi had turned his back on the scene and was passing the time rolling an ice encrusted coin over his blue knuckles. Tombo was going through his quiver, making a quick count of his remaining Mysterious Arrows. The only thing mysterious about them was how the Scryer vendor managed to keep a straight face when presenting Tombo with the bill. Mittens had just finished heaving a fur ball, that contained the glittering remnants of a tiny cloak that had once hung around the tiny shoulders of a gnome mage, and was now arching his back and eying the coin moving fluidly in Feefi’s hands. Bonewyrm had nearly completed consuming the Elf corpse.
“I’ll be ready to go as soon as I’m done this hotdog!” Bonewyrm proclaimed as he slurped a loop of intestine into his mouth. The others ignored the remark and peered up the hill towards Honor Hold, where a regiment of nervous guards peered back at them over the ruined parapets. A few Allied heroes stood beside the guards, speaking in hushed tones that drifted down to the trio. The language was difficult to understand, but the few snatches that could be translated summed up what the Brigands had been hoping for. Allied reinforcements.
.
Over the last hour, Feefi, Bonewyrm and Tombo had conducted an intensive shakedown at Honor Hold, an Alliance Held bastion located on the fingernails of Hellfire Peninsula. The populace of Honor Hold was largely made up of Humans and Dwarves. Honor Hold was the entry point into the Outland. A number of human and dwarf merchants made a tidy living outfitting the intrepid Alliance that struck out into The Outlands. Until now, the presence of the Alliance regular guard was enough to leave these merchants, military officers and religious pilgrims unmolested. That is until Feefi had drifted past earlier in the afternoon and sized up it’s defenses.
“The three of us could easily have our way in there.” Feefi had concluded while in a brief meeting with Tombo and Bone.
“Why though? There’s no loot to be had. No trophies to carry out.” Bonewyrm had argued.
“Don’t you want to know what’s on tap in that dwarfish tavern?” Feefi had replied.
“I do. Alright let’s go. What’s Tombo going to do while we’re in the tavern? He doesn’t drink.” Bonewyrm questioned.
“He can keep an eye out for reinforcements while he’s grazing outside. Isn’t that right Tombo?”
“You know,” Tombo rumbled “I eat more than grass! For instance, I can’t get enough of those Lower City bagels!”
“Knock yourself out Fuzzy. Boney and I will hoist a few tankards with you in mind. Let’s go!”
With that, the trio of Bloodhoof Brigands took to the air. Feefi and Bonewyrm on muscular Netherdrakes and Tombo on a Nether ray that screeched it’s discontent at lifting a 700-lb armored Tauren and his anxious Tiger hundreds of feet above the ground.
Upon arriving at the Western Gate of Honor Hold, Feefi quickly landed amongst the guard in a nova of frost. The sluggish guard had no time to react to the shadow that slipped behind them. Bonewyrm moved quickly behind the guards plunging his daggers that reeked of poison into their kidneys. The guards were dead before they could lower their pole arms from their shoulders.
The Brigands advanced into the Hold. Tombo spotted three cavalry cresting a hill in the Hold quickly closing the distance between them. Tombo notched two more arrows into his crossbow and fired. The three arrows each found a mark in the riders. If the three cavalry weren’t alarmed by the arrow in their stomachs, they were definitely concerned about the pale tiger, which was as large as their horses, describing a perfect parabola through the air that terminated in their vicinity. After a textbook evisceration, Mittens returned to Tombo’s side who was currently setting box of vipers on the ground and arming it with a vicinity trigger. The cat pawed playfully at the box.
“We’ve got a Paladin!” Feefi hooted and pinpointed the Paladin’s presence with a lance of ice. The Paladin, who had been frozen in place by the mere sight of Horde within the Hold, was shocked into action by the impact of the razor sharp ice. The Paladin raised a glowing mace into the air, hefted a shield and began to pronounce, “For Love and Ligh…...guuugghhhhh!” Having the wind knocked out of him by Bonewyrm’s deft kick to the stomach, he doubled over, exposing a slight gap between the base of his helm and the top of his mantle. A tender vertebrae veritably shone before Bonewyrm’s borrowed eyes as he drove a dagger home.
A bolt whistled past Bonewyrm’s head. Had he a right ear, it would have been part of the bolt as it continued its brief journey into a second Paladin’s forehead. The Paladin teetered momentarily and quickly recovered herself. She cloaked herself in a bubble of energy and attempted to mend the damage wrought by Tombo’s well aimed shot. A trickle of ice pellets began to scatter off the top of the bubble. Her focus on both mending the wound and maintaining the bubble were deteriorated by the increase in tempo and size of the ice pellets. The pellets were now the size of murloc eyes and growing. In a calculated risk, she focused more energy on the wound and less on the bubble. The gamble cost her. The ice pellets were now large, vicious shards of ice, crashing through the field and crushing her mercilessly. The storm ceased and Feefi lowered his hands and pulled a flask from his robes. He drew deeply on the blue liquid then smacked his lips. “Thirsty work!” He shouted. “Where’s that damned tavern?”
“Feefi!” Tombo shouted “Perhaps we ought to fall back a bit. We seem to be drawing a crowd.”
Indeed a crowd was forming. A battalion of alliance regular guard was stumbling from their barracks. A hunter, of the Night Elf race, had appeared with an irritable looking scorpid at his side. It’s claws clacked noisily at the air. Along with the elf was a Gnome mage and warlock.
“Alright.” Feefi called out “Fall back to the west gate. Where’s Bonewyrm?”
Bonewyrm had noticed a young human enter from the North gate by horseback. The human’s chest armor was steaming and bore a hole roughly the size of a Fel Boar tusk in the side of it. The human was from a warrior caste and was obviously new to The Outlands. His armor was composed mostly of dragon scales. A fine material back in a world where islands didn’t float in the sky. Greatly under equipped for Hellfire Peninsula. Bonewyrm stealthed through the shadows cast by the outer walls and neared up to the warrior as he dismounted before a blacksmith’s forge and staggered inside.
“Golly! Am I glad to make it back here in one piece!” The warrior announced when he saw the blacksmith. The blacksmith lowered his hammer and went to meet the warrior to help him out of his armor.
“Holy Mackerel those boars mean business!” the warrior continued. “Why they’re nothing like the quillboars back at home! My goodness look at the hole! He punched right through that dragonscale like it was nothing. Do you think you can hammer it together for me Smithy?”
The blacksmith had just raised the chest piece over the warrior’s shoulders and was lowering it to examine when he caught the green glint of eyes over the warriors shoulder. The blacksmith had no time to cry out a warning when the ends of two daggers exploded through the warrior’s stomach. The astonished warrior grasped the blacksmith and looked up into the smithy’s eyes, which were as large as saucers and fixed firmly on the spot where Bonewyrm had dissolved back into the darkness.
Bonewyrm slipped back into the courtyards of the Hold to see a noisy procession of Alliance guards and heroes following a shimmering cloud of frost. Ice-caked bodies were dropping in time to the steady thrumming of a crossbow. From time to time, Mittens could be seen lunging amongst the mob, raking viciously at whoever was close enough. Bonewyrm ran swiftly behind a block of crumbling buildings. He rounded the final building, near the West gate, and came upon Feefi and Tombo. Feefi was inching backwards casting lances of ice as quickly as he could conjure them. A giant scorpid had fastened itself to Tombo’s boot. It’s stinger jabbed at the air in front of Tombo’s face. Tombo had dropped his crossbow and now had hefted a large axe above his head. Fire crackled from the axe’s head as he brought it down on the scorpid. Despite the scorpid’s dense exoskeleton, the axe cleaved clear through it’s body and came to a rest inches into the ground. Tombo grunted and pulled the axe free, kicked the claw from his boot and recovered his crossbow. A piercing cry emanated from the Night Elf, who had watched the demise of his pet. Delirious, he ran towards Tombo, unleashing arrows from his bow. Tombo staggered backwards, past the box of vipers. The Tauren bent over, pulled a lever on the box and joined Feefi in their careful extraction from Honor Hold.
Presently, Bonewyrm appeared beside Feefi. His timing, usually impeccable, failed him now as one of the Night Elf’s arrows struck him in the heart. Bonewyrm blinked at Feefi and grew even paler in the face.
“Ouch” he muttered. Black blood speckled from his lips.
“Are you OK?” Feefi asked.
“Oh yeah. I mean the heart really doesn’t do anything. It’s not like I need blood pumped through this body. I’m not any more dead than I was an hour ago, But I will have to attend to this at some point.” replied Bonewyrm as he narrowed his focus on the night elf, who was at this time, howling despairingly past Tombo’s trap.
By some reasoning known to only a few skilled engineers, the trap burst open as the Night Elf passed. A knot of colorful vipers dispensed from the box and did now what they had failed to do when Tombo had coaxed them into the box earlier in the day, strike out with venomous fangs. A dozen had thrust forward and scored hits on the Night Elf’s lower body. The severity of the situation suddenly dawned on the Night Elf. He now reconsidered his plan to blindly rush the trio of Horde. Instead, he turned to make for the inner sanctum the Hold to find someone with knowledge of anti venom treatments. The poison was crippling. The Night Elf slowed to a stop and watched colorful globes pop before his eyes as the venom wreaked havoc on his central nervous system. The vipers had quickly lost interest in lashing out at moving targets in return for spending a socially awkward afternoon crammed into a box with other strange snakes, and slipped under the slabs of fallen wall.
Bonewyrm moved with astonishing speed and caught the Night Elf under the armpits as he sagged to the ground. The advancing Alliance guard was fast losing the zest for battle as they saw serpents disperse and the Elf being dragged out of Honor Hold by the Undead rogue. They quickly decided to call the counter-attack off when a high pitched keening erupted from behind them and Mittens leapt through their ranks with the gnome mage disappearing into his mouth. Crackles of arcane energy lit Mittens skull and the scream of the gnome waned as Mittens rejoined Feefi and Tombo on the other side of the West Gate. Two parallel lines were defined in the ground by the Night Elf’s heels as Bonewyrm continued to drag it’s corpse to safety. Once out of bow shot, Bonewyrm dropped the body on the ground and began to regenerate the energy he had lost to the arrow wound. Feefi wrinkled his nose in disgust and fished a coin out of his pocket.
