Destiny

On a crisp autumn night in late November, Duke found himself sprawled on a rather questionable, homemade beach chair, gazing up at the sprawling, infinite tapestry of Azeroth's starry sky. He was utterly lost for words, captivated by the cosmic display.

This wasn't just different from Earth's sky; it was a cosmic tapestry unlike anything a city kid from his old world could ever dream of. He remembered the perpetual haze, the dull, muted glow where even on the clearest nights, most stars were just faint whispers.

Back home, only the brightest, zero-magnitude stars truly popped, and anything beyond magnitude six was practically invisible to the naked eye. In cities choked by exhaust fumes and air pollutants, you were lucky to spot anything brighter than a third-magnitude twinkle.

But Azeroth's starry sky? It was clean, clear, and breathtakingly, gloriously beautiful. Sure, the constellations Earthlings had mapped out were utterly useless here – Orion was probably a giant spider, and the Big Dipper was a goblin's broken shovel – but the sheer, glittering expanse was enough to make a hardened warrior feel like a wide-eyed child. The stars weren't just shining; they were like the very breath of the cosmos, winking into and out of existence, a celestial dance.

There was a small, rickety terrace on the very top of the wooden roof Duke had built for himself. It was barely big enough for a single bed, his own private slice of heaven. Or so he thought. Unfortunately, half of it had recently been annexed by the resident Arch-Diva, Alleria. His personal sanctuary was now a shared space, much to his internal grumbling.

At first, Alleria had just popped over to apply ice to her perpetually injured foot, a temporary, if frequent, visitor. But then, she became... well, casual. Alarmingly casual.

Especially after Duke's chilled okra with mustard soy sauce became one of the Arch-Diva's absolute favorite midnight snacks. He'd introduced her to gourmet alien food, and now she was hooked.

"A strange and natural taste!" Alleria had exclaimed, her eyes wide with delight, after sampling the time-traveler's exotic culinary creation. Duke just nodded, trying not to laugh.

Alleria looked up at the starry sky, her head tilted back. Under the moonlight, her beautiful face seemed to be ethereally luminous, glowing with an inner light. The brilliance of the stars and the moon outlined the charming, almost impossibly perfect curves on her face, illuminating her ivory-white and rosy skin. Finally, it seemed that all the starlight gathered into her emerald green eyes, making them sparkle like polished jewels.

She was a little intoxicated, lost in the vastness of the starry sky.

"Well, it seems like it's not bad to look at the starry sky from somewhere other than Quel'Thalas," Alleria mused, a rare moment of understated elven appreciation. Duke wanted to point out that the stars were, in fact, the same stars, just from a different vantage point, but he held his tongue.

Instead, he finally said, "Don't you have to go back to Quel'Thalas for the winter? You know, for your people, your duties?"

Alleria smoothed her bright golden hair, a cascade of shimmering silk, and said, "Oh, it's been thousands of years. I'm used to the scenery of my hometown. It's not bad to gallivant around for a good long while occasionally. Unless the Sun King or the Parliament orders us to give up the covenant with Emperor Thoradin, I'll have to play outside for a few years at least." A few years, she said, as if it were a weekend trip.

The elves, those long-lived, almost immortal beings, were utterly blasé when it came to the concept of time. It was no wonder they had always kept their distance from short-lived races like humans. To them, a human lifetime was barely a blink.

However, Duke knew, with a grim certainty, that if the general trend of history didn't get a serious kick in the pants, it wouldn't be long before the elves got a rude awakening to mortality. Their eternal life was on borrowed time.

Duke couldn't guarantee a damn thing anymore.

The long river of fate had long been shattered by Duke, kicked to pieces by his meddling. If the First Orc War had ended with the fall of Stormwind, it was at least in line with the historical ending, a grim but familiar path. But now, with the Second War, Duke felt like he was flying blind, his crystal ball shattered, his prophetic abilities reduced to vague hunches.

Although he had threatened the Barov family before, bluffing that the Horde would land from the Hinterlands, in reality this was almost impossible to do. It was a long shot, a wild goose chase.

This meant that the Horde's transport fleet had to pass through the narrow strait between the north and south continents. You know, this strait was flanked by towering, sheer cliffs, a hundred meters high, a natural choke point. And at Duke's strong suggestion, King Thoras had already begun to have the Stromgarde Corps of Engineers build a new batch of monstrous catapults along the cliffs on the north bank of the strait, ready to rain down hell.

The new militia, fresh-faced and eager, would be responsible for monitoring the entire strait, their eyes peeled for any green-skinned intruders.

As long as the Horde transport ships dared to go through, Duke bet his last gold coin that the scene of the entire tribal fleet sinking in the strait and blocking it completely would be a truly magnificent, watery graveyard. A sight to behold.

The same was true on the coast on this side of Hillsbrad Foothills. Duke was leaving no stone unturned.

Duke was really just deceiving the enemy before, playing a long con, but not now. Before the last bunch of ripe wheat in the fields of Hillsbrad Foothills was harvested, Duke had already used the idle refugee labor of Stormwind Kingdom, putting them to good use, to build a group of formidable fortresses along the entire coastline.

"It is very likely that the kingdom will not be able to recover in the next two to three years," Duke had told the refugees, his voice grave. "In order to ensure the safety of our temporary residence, please do your best to help. Every shovel of dirt, every stone laid, is a step towards safety."

The refugees were still haunted by the war that had taken place less than a week ago, the screams and the fire still fresh in their minds. For safety, and to get extra food from Duke's work-for-relief program, the people sold their labor at extremely low prices, practically giving it away.

Under the cunning command of Naga, the murlocs were driving stakes into the shallow waters of the entire coast, creating a treacherous underwater obstacle course, greatly reducing the landing area. Duke's murlocs had already begun to station themselves in the shallow waters west of Dun Garok, their beady eyes watching for any unwelcome visitors.

After this winter, if the Horde dared to attack again, they would face a defense line that was less a line and more a literal meat grinder, spitting out green paste.

"Well, from which direction will the Horde attack next?" Alleria asked Duke, her voice breaking his internal monologue.

"Frankly speaking, I don't know," Duke replied, a hint of smugness in his voice. "In principle, I have blocked the Horde's three most obvious attack directions. They're pretty much boxed in."

"Oh?" Alleria raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

"Unless the Horde builds ships in the Swamp of Sorrows, southwest of the southern continent, more than 2,000 miles away, which would be a logistical nightmare, as long as they set out from the wetlands opposite Southshore, they can either attack Southshore or cross the strait and the Thandol Bridge. The last way is to go west to the cape opposite Gilneas, and then go north to the North Coast or the South Coast. All three roads must be paved with a red carpet of orcish guts."

"Why can't they conquer a sea route of more than 2,000 nautical miles?" Alleria asked back, her brow furrowed in thought.

"Because..." Duke deliberately kept the question in suspense, a mischievous glint in his eye. He took out a piece of chilled okra from the ice bucket, dipped it in soy sauce and mustard, and prepared to put it in his mouth, savoring the moment.

Who knew that Alleria, with the speed of a striking viper, would come over to snatch the okra right from his fingers.

Well, a small, perfect mouth, like a cherry, bit Duke's hand instead of the okra. Duke was determined to refuse, to hold his ground, but when the Arch-Diva was snatching food, her impressive... assets happened to sway in front of Duke's eyes at a close, distracting distance. It was a tactical maneuver of epic proportions.

This cute girl Alleria, utterly oblivious to the chaos she was causing, didn't even realize how lethal her action was to a little boy whose arm was about to explode from the sheer, overwhelming proximity, and she even raised her nose in smugness, a triumphant little smirk.

"Hey! Because of what?" she demanded, still chewing.

"Because there is a monstrous, ship-swallowing vortex to the west of the southern continent," Duke gave the answer in a daze, his mind still reeling. "Not to mention the orcs' flimsy ships, even the Kul Tiran ships will sink like stones if they go anywhere near it."

"Huh? So, the Horde can't even find a place to land?" Alleria asked, simplifying the complex strategic situation to its bare essentials.

"If the Horde doesn't mind starting from the Paladin Bay in the wetlands and being bled white, every step of the way, all the way to the South Flow Coast, they can still land," Duke conceded. "But how effective it will be is another matter entirely. They'll be walking into a slaughterhouse."

Duke had completely lost his "prophet" in terms of how the Horde would proceed. He was flying blind, his crystal ball shattered. In the original history, the Horde landed on a large scale and succeeded at once. He mobilized Lothar's army in Hillsbrad Foothills. Lothar was forced to fight a field battle with the Horde.

The result was a tie. Orgrim led the Horde army to the northeastern Hinterlands, and then went all the way north to commit a brutal, genocidal rampage against the high elves.

Now...it really depends on how Orgrim plays his cards. Duke could only wait and see.