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Dota AllstarsDotA (Defense of the Ancients) is a very popular customized game for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. There are two teams of five players and each player selects one of over seventy heroes which they will use to try to destroy their opponent’s base, while protecting their own. As players accumulate money, they can use it to buy a large variety of items to enhance the strengths of their hero and provide additional abilities.
The Chronicles of Darchrow - Chapter 4: Odyssey and Renewal
It was nothing like he had expected, and even more surprising, it was painless.
Sometimes there were worse things than pain however.
As the darkness had spread like cancer all around him, he sensed his spirit project and tremble. He felt shot, like a living bullet, into the heart of that blackness, and could see nothing as he skid across...a floor?
He could see nothing, not even himself, but he felt like he was sliding across a smooth, grooveless floor, like the marble courts of Stormwind where Hokkee pucks slid soundlessly into the goal of an enemy grate, a thin disk of blackness that no eye could pierce. No longer a bullet, he was now a living projectile sliding across the dark ballroom floor of the macroverse. He felt like screaming, but could not without a voice or ear. He was spinning silently across a dark madness without an end.
Then suddenly, he stopped. The floor had given way, and now he was suspended, and could only gaze in wonder as the universe lit up around him. A nebula, the blue of the southern oceans, appeared somewhere to his right. A multitude of constellations manifested all around him like freshly fallen snow. A comet flew by, fiery tail burning across an airless black, but it was spectacular all the same.
Purist felt like weeping in the face of such beauty. It was by far the most incredible thing he had ever witnessed, and he could only gape as his mind tried to grasp it, but oh there was so much...
Then Darchrow himself came, his violet orbs like miniature suns in the dark that we call the nightside, and then it all began.
"So human, how do you enjoy gazing upon the canvas of creation?"
"It's beautiful. More so than I could have ever believed possible."
"Then have something I do not. In my eternity, I have never cared to conceive of beauty. I was a construct; hungering but never thinking upon what I ate or why. Mindless, I rolled and took in, but never gave back. Only now, in the beginnings of this ritual, am I open to these feelings."
"Is this what Chud truly is then?"
"This is far more than Chud could ever be. Did you really believe that I intended for you to die all the way out here? The hypocrite you know as Ezalor was willing to sacrifice you to appease me out of cowardice, but he missed the point of my proposal."
"If you didn't bring me out here to destroy me, then why did you kill Furion in the fucking first place!"
"He was a necessary, perhaps essential, sacrifice in my final stage of growth. If you believe that I drew him to the impact site of my coming on purpose, then you are a fool. I didn't choose him any more than he chose me. He came of his own free will, but I will admit that he did not agree with what happened afterwards. I am beginning to think that it was meant to be, though how a Prophet such as himself could not see his own death rushing towards him...."
"His own free will..."
"Yes. He was taken into my depleted vessel, and upon assimilating him, his memories and life force become welded, for lack of a better word, to my core, which in turn is made up of both what I was before and of the magic of your World Tree. From his last memories, I see that he was not addled in any way as he came to me. His thoughts were lucid as he entered into my presence, but then his own mind held him as I rose, hungry and unraveling, to take in the energy I sensed. I regret ending his life, and so I will fulfill his dying wishes in repentance. The Frozen Throne will fall and the Scourge broken, as he wanted."
"Then you were going to help us anyway! You didn't need to join the Sentinel at all!"
"No. I care nothing for your victory. If I set about my task alone, both the World Tree and the Frozen Throne will fall as I unleash myself on the fragile planet you call home. You see, my vessel is complete, yet unstable. To counteract this, I need a mortal creature to bind my essence to; your body's life force, while insignificant, will be enough to serve as a fulcrum for my wrath."
"You could have chosen any of us then! I'm far from weak, but there are even fallen gods who serve the Sentinel, and they are far greater than me! Why then, am I to be your fulcrum?"
"Because, Purist Thunderwrath, there is no-one else who can create the repelling barriers that you do. Your Repel is the perfect medium to take in my power, and it would protect your life-force so fully that in the event of my collapse, you would not be harmed."
"If I accept this, if that’s what Furion would want me to do, how will this binding be done?"
"Chud. There is only that, and nothing else. We will both return afterwards."
Purist, unable to see the glowing, shapeless form of his spirit as he and the Enigma stood suspended across from each other, sighed deeply. He was a holy man himself wasn't he? If others had gone through Chud successfully, then he was capable of coming out of it as well. Furion would have approved. Malfurion Stormrage, the closest person to a friend he had ever known.
And then, from nowhere, Purist heard his dead friend's voice, echoing through his mind faintly, yet full of power. Looking back on it later, he would never be sure if it had just been his imagination, or something else entirely...
There is only Chud and nothing else. I was taken into him through my own folly, it is true, but do not make the same mistake just because you find it easy to believe him. Do not hold your heart near those braced hands, and do not let him, an outsider, destroy everything we have fought so hard to protect. Become his vessel if need be, but do not lose yourself in the process.
And then it was gone, blown out like a candle.
Gathering his will, he locked minds with the tenebrous force of the Enigma's own, and gave his answer.
"If Chud is all there is, then let it be done."
He was then consumed by fire, and facing him, Enigma pulsed, lines of fire drawing across his ebon form, cracks of lava branching along a sea of violet. Pain, waves of terrible, needling, pain, rushed into the Omniknight's eyes, face, chest, throat, and intensified with every passing moment. He screamed and screamed as the pain dug it's way through him, the crucifixion of his ka and soul climaxing as the Enigma's essence made it's way into him.
Excruciatingly and in repetition, the pain waxed and waned through the ritual another two minutes before the lines of fire extinguished themselves across Darchrow's suspended form. Incredibly, he was trembling visibly. Chud had hurt him as well. No matter, it was done and now it was time to return.
Purist was silent. Chud had rendered him catatonic, but Darchrow would not have that. It was time to bring him back to life. Melding his mind into the blank, idiotic abyss that was left of the Omniknight, he reached into the weave of his magic core and discharged it into his bondsmen.
Whiteness, a faint echo of the force that had created Darchrow, but blindingly bright nevertheless, passed through the paladin with the force of a supernova. In it's wake, his mind and soul had become renewed.
"Plenty to fight...lets go....Purist, leap!....are doomed to repeat it.....the inhuman mind breeds.....there is only Chud!!"
A thousand phrases, images, people, faces....all came back in a shattering moment of...of what?
"Of being reborn"
And then he felt himself shot again, a living bullet, across the nightside of the universe, back to Azeroth, back to life.
Darchrow, now fading, nodded.
Everything's eventual, and now it was all coming together. It was the last thing Purist thought before he fell back into the howling dark, alone.
The beginning, or perhaps the end, was now moving towards its inevitable conclusion.
The Second Interlude: Nightmare and Reprisal
Gasps and screams were heard aloud as darkness seemed to claw itself out of Darchrow's twisted form, spreading like smoke around the World Tree's base. Bradwarden grew fearful and nearly chopped off the head of Raigor, who in turn snorted angrily in a bullish manner and tensed to fight. Others were similarly confused, and although the darkness dissipated over the following five minutes, the chaos and paranoia that filled the hearts of the Sentinel's many champions blanketed thickly over them like a quilt.
Atropos, who's ephemeral muddy eyes saw through the dark as if bright sunlight streamed across the landscape, floated out from the shadow of the Ancient and into the midst of his enemies. Smirking, he spied to his left a familiar foe, who, stumbling in the dark, did not see him. The bitch who had nearly destroyed him as the Scourge's forces retreated two afternoons ago. Rylai was her name, and her frosty magics had left him battered to such a degree that it had taken an entire day of restless slumber to heal himself.
Now he would have retribution, and then the reprisal would begin for the rest.
Turning to face her, he calmed his spectral form into a state of stillness, and focused. A few seconds later, his eyes caught sight of what he needed to end her life; a blue, ribbon-like thread that seemed to twist itself like twine, flowing like a miniature river around her body. Up and down it went, squirming, turning like a spiral around her head, her neck, the curves of her robed body. Gathering his will, his ghastly claws slashed forward in strange gripping motions, flailing almost. Together, they snagged the blue, struggling thread in silence, and then the life cutting began.
The Crystal Maiden, stumbling and trying futilely to sense her surroundings through the dark smog that floated dreamily in , suddenly found that she was unable to breath. Her life was being strangled, and she began to gasp and choke in panic. She was in the Fiend's Grip, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Atropos, on the other hand, was enjoying this immensely despite the energy it was costing him to cut her lifeline. He pulled and twisted it, maneuvering his taloned appendages with terrible killing purpose. He pulled, pinched, rent and bent....
A few moments later, Rylai lay cold on the ground, eyes staring up sightlessly into the night. Her face was already blackening, and even in death it seemed to writhe in wordless terror.
The Bane Elemental, pleased but somewhat taxed by his work, then brought seemingly out of nowhere a scroll lined with viridian runes. Astral glyphs intertwined in an almost hypnotic fashion with these lines, and the overall effect was quite enchanting.
It was a Scroll of Projection, among the last of it's kind written. It was capable of teleporting an entire army from a chosen location to the caster's position instantaneously.
Yes, thought Atropos. It's time to end this war.
In his Frozen Throne, miles and miles from the Life Cutter's position, Ner'zul's mind held it's focus, fixated in time on this one moment. They would lay all to waste!!
As the shadowed mists of Darchrow dispersed into the western wind, Atropos unleashed, chanting in a screaming sort of zeal, the power of the scroll. The force of it rippled across the last of the fog, annihilating the last traces and drawing the gaze of the confused, drunken Sentinels to the now visible Bane Elemental.
He was no longer alone however. The scroll had teleported all of the Scourge's unholy commanders and centurions to the very heart of their enemy's base. Jakiro, screaming in outrage that his enemies had come so close to Nordrassil, flew down like some sort of monstrous bat and landed before them with furious hate burning in both sets of eyes. He loomed over the majority of them, only locking site with a large sea giant who stood back from the rest.
The Scourge, however, made up of demons along with a sea of undead horrors, were not intimidated.
They launched themselves from around the Bane Elemental in ecstasy, charging upon a dazed and unfocused group of champions. Jakiro himself, breathing fire spitefully, was pulled down into the mass of monsters and torn apart. The dragon now butchered in a growing pool of blood, they turned themselves back upon the rest and continued their march. Only Nai'x stayed behind to eat.
It became unspeakable, but it was no slaughter.
10/29/2007 10:00:20 PM
Category
The Chronicles of Darchrow
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