Redecorate

Duke knew, deep in his bones, that he couldn't play landlord of Karazhan forever. Out in the real world, Stormwind was under siege, and the green frenzy of the orcs was running wild, painting the entire continent in shades of blood and despair. From any angle, he had to get back to the action, and fast.

The thankless task of holding down the fort could only be entrusted to his trusty (and slightly bewildered) helpers: Khadgar and Michael, along with their newly minted spectral squad. While these 'Heroic Spirits' might be a step up from your average Stormwind elite soldier, fighting demons was a whole different ballgame than wrestling with orcs. Numbers meant squat against these hellish heavyweights. Unless you were a certified hero like Lothar, no matter how seasoned your elite soldiers were, they'd just be demon chow.

Then, a lightbulb went off in Duke's head. He suddenly recalled a particularly gruesome game he'd played before his cosmic detour, and, combining that with a dusty tome he'd unearthed in Medivh's library – a delightful little read titled "Compendium of Mechanical Traps" – Duke hatched a truly diabolical plan.

One hundred and eight spectral mage hands materialized, zipping across the first and second floors of Karazhan like a swarm of ghostly, industrious bees. They began dismantling the place with a cacophony of creaks and groans, effortlessly prying loose the wood Duke needed and even uprooting some of the sturdy pillars in the stable. Duke, with a mischievous grin, then injected arcane energy into the very earth, causing colossal stone bricks to defy gravity, floating into the air with their attached clumps of soil, like very large, very grumpy, airborne boulders.

Khadgar stood there, jaw practically on the floor, looking like he'd just seen a unicorn riding a unicycle. He watched, utterly flabbergasted, as Duke, who hadn't exactly been a master of arcane theory moments ago, began transforming the entire structural integrity of Karazhan's first and second floors as if he were playing with very expensive, very magical LEGOs.

"Blast it all, Duke!" Khadgar shrieked, his ghostly voice echoing with genuine terror. "Even if Karazhan is currently chilling in a temporal-spatial anomaly, you're going to make the whole damn tower collapse if you keep messing around like this!"

"What? Do you know something about architecture, old man?" Duke retorted, not even looking up from his work.

"Huh!?" Khadgar was a mage, for crying out loud, not some grizzled foreman from the Brotherhood of Stonemasons. He was immediately flummoxed by Duke's question. "You... you actually understand this stuff?"

"Of course," Duke replied with an airy wave of his hand. "As long as the supporting columns and load-bearing walls aren't moved, I could hollow out the first and second floors entirely, and it wouldn't be a problem. Besides, I've calculated the gravity here – it's only about eighty percent of what it is outside. I can move things with a lot more... oomph."

While Khadgar didn't understand a single word of Duke's explanation, he had to admit, it sounded incredibly impressive!

And so, Duke spent roughly twenty-four hours turning the entire first and second floors of Karazhan into a giant, elaborate death maze. Spike traps that would make a porcupine blush, asphalt traps that would stick you faster than a bad habit, arrow wall traps that would turn you into a human pincushion, spring traps that would launch you into orbit, blade wall traps that would slice and dice like a deranged chef... all combined with some strategically placed gaps that led directly to the swirling, hungry turbulence of the void. Duke even threw in a few push traps capable of sending a demon larger than a ton flying like a very angry bowling ball.

Everything was ready, except for the main event: the devils themselves.

Two days later, at the main entrance of Karazhan, the swirling red and black chaos of the void finally parted. A thick, unsettling green light, not too dazzling, but more like the sickly glow of moldy pea soup in a particularly unappetizing dark cuisine, illuminated the entrance to Karazhan.

In Duke's perception, an evil aura, thick enough to cut with a butter knife, pierced through the chaotic void, connecting directly to Karazhan from some unknown, hellish world.

A colossal crack was forcibly torn open in the fabric of space, and some dark magic was rapidly reinforcing the tear, making it permanent. A terrible, almost tangible, and utterly evil stench poured out from the portal, so potent that Duke, sitting comfortably at the end of the second floor, could quickly smell the unpleasant, brimstone-laced aroma.

Khadgar, who was hovering beside Duke, subtly shifted his spectral expression. After receiving a nod from Duke, he glided over to a crystal ball, crackling with arcane light, and pressed his translucent hand onto its surface.

That was the soul crystal ball, capable of connecting to the spiritual seas of all the heroic warriors on the first and second floors.

"The guests have arrived! I repeat, the guests have arrived!" Khadgar announced, his voice echoing through the spiritual link.

As the words faded, a massive red gauntlet, the size of a small car, was placed on the edge of the portal at the main entrance. The very next second, a towering, humanoid demon, standing over five meters tall and sporting scarlet dragon wings, stepped out of the portal, looking ready to chew nails and spit fire.

He had explosive red muscles rippling across his entire body, encased in heavy armor. His head looked a bit like a particularly rough orc's, but he boasted enormous horns that no orc could ever hope to grow. His powerful thighs were like goat legs, not only folded backwards in a disturbing way but also ending in massive hooves.

Blazing flames wrapped around him, contrasting sharply with his colossal body, making this 'Doomsday Guardian' look utterly hideous and terrifying, like a nightmare come to life.

"Kill all the rebels here! Master Sargeras cannot die in a place like this! Search! Search them all! Even if this place has to be completely destroyed, we must find the passage leading to the master!" The giant demon roared at his subordinates in Eredun, the guttural demon language commonly known to humans.

Countless terrifying figures surged out from beside him, a tide of demonic nastiness.

There was a demon hound with a red, scaly body, crawling on all fours, sporting two long, black and white tentacles and two enormous horns, looking like a hellish chihuahua on steroids.

There were also demon guards with bare upper bodies, indigo skin, and chest muscles that looked like they could crack walnuts. Aside from their exposed torsos, the demon guards' arms and everything below their waists were encased in heavy armor, predominantly red with white edges. Long, wicked red horns sprouted from their heads and backs, giving them a particularly menacing silhouette.

And then there was a set of armor, its true body a shimmering void demon, an inverted triangle of dark blue energy, looking like a very angry, very stylish, floating pyramid.

They rushed forward in a chaotic, eager mass, pouring into the long, shadowy passage at the entrance of Karazhan.

Suddenly, the fastest hellhound, leading the charge, seemed to step on something. All that was heard was the ominous sound of metal grinding in the darkness. The very next second, dozens of razor-sharp spikes sprang out from the floor, piercing the hellhound's abdomen as if they were trying to turn it into a very large, very demonic shish kebab.

As the scout and vanguard of the demon army, the hellhound possessed an agility that Duke himself hadn't accounted for. In the split second before the spikes could fully impale its abdomen, the hound suddenly arched its back, coiling like a spring, and bounced into the air, a desperate leap for survival.

Unfortunately for the hellhound, without any warning whatsoever, a two-meter by two-meter square block suddenly plummeted heavily from the low ceiling. Before the hellhound could even yelp, it was slammed back down to the ground with a sickening thud.

"SWISH!" With a squelching sound, the sharp metal spikes finally ended the hellhound's miserable life.

Accompanied by a series of ominous "clacking" sounds, the spikes retracted back into the ground, and the ceiling block, which had fallen its deadly distance, was slowly pulled back up by stirring gears, quietly waiting for its next unsuspecting victim.

Of course, more than one hound had been caught in the deadly dance.

As the demons charged forward, there was a sudden "BANG!" A colossal demon, easily capable of flattening twenty elite human warriors, was abruptly launched into the air by a metal floor tile that had sprung up from the ground like a jack-in-the-box from hell.

The unfortunate brute was caught completely off guard, ejected with a loud bang, like a cannonball stuffed into the barrel of a gun and fired.

Demons aren't mindless beasts that only know how to kill. The bizarre, deadly situation genuinely surprised them. Their eyes followed the airborne victim's trajectory until the poor demon slammed into a wall and stopped, and then their pupils began to focus, trying to make sense of the chaos.

But before they could fully shift their focus, three sets of crossed, gigantic axes suddenly burst forth from the seemingly ordinary wall. These were exaggerated axe blades, so massive that even ogres would find them too heavy to lift.

The axe blades, each over a meter in diameter, were clearly designed for chopping demons, and could probably lop off a dragon's neck with ease if placed just right.

With a chilling flash of cold light, the demon only had time to let out a half-scream before the gleaming axe blades sliced clean through its body. On the wall, only a few deep, gouging cracks remained, along with the demon's blood splattering in all directions and scattered pieces of flesh that could no longer be pieced back together.

What in the blazes was going on?!