"Attack!" Rend bellowed, charging forward with his battle axe in hand alongside his warriors. "Kill these traitors!"
"Slay the traitors!" Maim echoed fiercely beside him.
"Go!" Cho'gall roared, shadow energy swirling in his palms. The power was so intense that a mere touch could wither life.
"Let their blood drench this land! (They shall all meet their end!)"
On the lava-ridden shores, the two armies clashed with thunderous force.
Weapons flashed and clanged, battle axes, war hammers, swords, and spears interwove in a violent dance, producing a cacophony of strikes and slicing steel.
Blood splattered in all directions, tinting the thick air with a crimson mist. Even the surrounding waves darkened as the battle raged.
The island's terrain remained unstable, rising and falling with the ocean's tides. Many warriors lost their footing and were slain the moment they hit the ground.
The battle was brutally intense.
Cho'gall's warriors fought with savage desperation, indifferent to their own survival. Their only goal was to inflict as much pain and death as possible upon the enemy.
The Blackhand brothers' forces, however, fought for vengeance and justice, to avenge Gul'dan's betrayal and the devastating consequences it had brought.
Both sides held fast to their convictions. No one considered retreat.
The only real difference between them was numbers.
Gul'dan had brought only two clans with him: his own Stormreaver clan and Cho'gall's Twilight's Hammer.
The Stormreaver was the smallest clan, though powerful, because every single member was a warlock.
But all those warlocks had followed Gul'dan into the temple, leaving only the Twilight's Hammer to fend off the Blackhand brothers' assault.
Rend Blackhand and Maim Blackhand had brought a large number of warriors from the Blacktooth Grin clan, one of the Horde's largest, even though it had split off from the Blackrock clan.
This placed Twilight's Hammer at a crushing numerical disadvantage.
Cho'gall was well aware of this and constantly attempted to bridge the gap with his spellcraft.
Yet as the battle dragged on, both sides suffered heavy casualties, and the disparity became increasingly obvious.
But the corruption from the Old Gods was strong. These fanatical Twilight's Hammer warriors refused to surrender, they had sworn to fight to the bitter end.
Every warrior who fell in the name of the Old Gods, who fought for the Twilight's End, dragged several Blacktooth Grin soldiers with them to the grave.
In the end, all of Twilight's Hammer warriors were dead, leaving only Cho'gall standing.
Two Blacktooth Grin warriors hacked into him with their axes, but the two-headed ogre warlock was far too powerful.
The blows didn't wound him deeply. Instead, he grabbed the warriors with his massive hands.
Shadow energy surged from his palms and instantly flooded their bodies, killing them from within.
"For the Twilight's End, I will not die here! (Twilight's Hammer will retreat!)"
A massive orb of shadow began forming in his hands. The Blackhand brothers tried to rush in and interrupt him, but it was useless.
The shadow energy condensed rapidly. Cho'gall was far stronger than they had imagined. In no time, the sphere burst forth, pulsing and streaking toward the Blacktooth Grin soldiers.
One look, and the Blackhand brothers knew this orb was dangerous. Even they had to hit the ground, barely avoiding it.
The next moment, it exploded like a bomb. Shadow energy consumed the surrounding warriors in an instant.
When Rend and Maim shakily stood up, Cho'gall was already gone, he had taken the chance to steal a boat and escape.
Though Cho'gall had long followed Gul'dan, he had felt the call of the Old Gods ever since arriving in Azeroth.
A master of shadow magic and a devout believer in the prophecy of the Twilight's End, he had obeyed the whispers of the Old Gods.
His abandonment of Gul'dan now was only a matter of time.
Now, before the Blackhand brothers lay devastation.
The shadow bomb had left a giant crater on the beach. Dozens of elite Blacktooth Grin warriors had perished in the blast.
But at least… no one was standing in their way anymore.
"Now," Rend growled, wiping the blood from his battle axe using the body of a fallen enemy.
Blood still gushed from the wound in the corpse's chest. "We go after Gul'dan. He will pay for this."
Gul'dan stood atop the foundation of the ancient Tomb of Sargeras. Moss, coral, and layers of deep-sea sediment clung to the temple's outer walls.
If Alaric had been here, he would've immediately recognized the architectural style, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the elegant, solemn patterns found in the high elven buildings of Quel'Thalas.
In fact, it had been the night elves, ancestors of the high elves, who built this structure before the War of the Ancients.
The temple, the sunken and now risen island it stood on, and the surrounding isles were once part of the night elven territory on ancient Kalimdor, until the world was shattered by the Sundering.
This underwater temple had once been a shrine to Elune, the moon goddess. Nearby, the Broken Isles still held other pockets of night elf habitation.
…
One of these was the druidic homeland, Val'sharah, where, ten thousand years ago, the Stormrage brothers and Tyrande had discovered Cenarius and become his disciples.
Another was Suramar, once a night elven city, now home to a group of elves calling themselves the Nightborne, a reclusive society still practicing arcane magic, cut off from their mainland kin.
This temple to Elune had once been magnificent and resplendent. Now, its exterior was crumbling, the entire structure dilapidated, covered in seaweed and silt.
But Gul'dan didn't care about appearances.
What drew him was the pulse he could feel, a powerful force calling to him. He could see the very structure tremble under its influence.
"Inside!" he ordered Drak'thul and the other warlocks. "We must go deeper."
In truth, Gul'dan had hesitated earlier, unsure whether to bring his followers into the temple.
He knew that Sargeras's tomb lay within, and with it, the Eye of Sargeras, an artifact of unimaginable power.
Should he go alone? Or share the power with the rest of the Shadow Council?
In the end, he decided to bring them along, because he had no idea what dangers might be lurking within this ancient ruin. If necessary, he could always kill them before they reached the tomb of Sargeras.
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