Quel'Thalas

It was a feeling of utter despair, as if the very sky was collapsing around them, raining down chunks of pure, unadulterated doom. At this crucial moment, every minute, every precious second, was a matter of life and death, a frantic race against the clock to save countless souls. Who, in their wildest nightmares, would have thought that Duke, the linchpin, the grand strategist, would be dead drunk, facedown in a puddle of ale, at this exact, cataclysmic instant?!

Quel'Thalas?

All the Alliance generals, including General Seamus who had just rushed over, looking like he'd been dragged through a hedge backward, were utterly baffled. Hold on a minute, their expressions screamed. We just kicked the Horde out of the Hinterlands, making the Wildhammer dwarves' homeland safe and sound. And now you're telling us something's gone sideways in Quel'Thalas?

Duke, ever the enigmatic one, hadn't exactly spilled the beans about his uncanny prophetic visions to everyone. In the imaginations of generals like Windsor and Seamus, the Horde might double back to Hillsbrad, or maybe make a beeline straight for the capital of Lordaeron. Or perhaps they'd head north to round up those scummy trolls first, then play their cards. No one, not a single soul, had expected this particular detachment of the Horde to give the holy city of Stratholme, barely a stone's throw to the northwest, the cold shoulder and instead make a mad dash straight north to attack Quel'Thalas.

General Seamus shook his head like a wet dog, trying to clear the cobwebs and the lingering taste of dwarven firewater from his brain. "Lady Alleria," he managed, his voice still a bit thick, "are you absolutely sure that the main force of this tribe is heading for Quel'Thalas?"

"By the Light, I saw it with my own two eyes!" Alleria shrieked, her voice raw with a mixture of fury and desperation. "Only a handful of orcs and trolls remain here, nothing but scraps! The rest have turned north! At least fifty thousand orcs and trolls have blasted through the forests of the Hinterlands! They're crossing the mountains as we speak, pushing relentlessly towards the northern plains!" Alleria's gaze swept over the faces of the Alliance generals, her eyes wide with a nervous, painful intensity. "You mean you don't know this yet? Duke didn't tell you his prediction?"

For a moment, the Alliance generals – no, to be more precise, the generals from Stormwind – all looked like they'd swallowed a lemon. Their faces twisted into a knot of confusion, embarrassment, and a dawning realization that they were seriously out of the loop.

General Seamus, the grizzled head of the Griffin Legion and the deputy commander of the Alliance army currently stationed at Eagle's Nest Mountain, tugged at his beard. "First things first, Lady Alleria," he began, trying to sound reasonable, "since Lord Edmund saw fit to share his prediction with you, and you, in turn, left the Alliance in advance to race back to Quel'Thalas to warn your people, why didn't Quel'Thalas put up a fight? As far as I know, Quel'Thalas has been duking it out with trolls for thousands of years. Its fighting power shouldn't be so weak it can't even put a dent in fifty thousand orcs, right?"

Alleria's face went white as a ghost in an instant. She simply didn't want to think about the absolute train wreck she'd encountered in Silvermoon City.

That day, as fate would have it, was the very day the King was holding court with the esteemed Silvermoon Council. Alleria had burst in like a storm, a whirlwind of desperation and fury. Logically, she was merely a ranger general, not exactly on the VIP list, and certainly not permitted to enter without a formal summons. But her raw, guttural roar had scared the pants off the gatekeeper, who looked like he was about to faint on the spot.

"Nearly a hundred thousand orcs and trolls are bearing down on Quel'Thalas, and you want me to cool my heels outside the gate?!" She had absolutely blown the gatekeeper out of the water with her sheer reputation and the force of her will, leaving him a quivering mess.

Under the reluctant 'escort' of four stone-faced royal guards, Alleria practically burst into the parliament hall. The decorations in the Silvermoon Council Hall were, as always, breathtakingly beautiful – a lavish display of gorgeous gold and warm, fiery red, alternating between towering white jade pillars and walls. Every single decoration and curtain in that room was a priceless, exquisite work of art. If any of them were to somehow 'leak' out to the human world, all the nobles would fall over themselves for them, bidding them up to the moon at unimaginable prices.

Alleria, however, couldn't care less about the décor. Her mind was a raging storm. She didn't give a hoot about the huge red kite-shaped shields of the four guards surrounding her, nor the slender, double-headed curved blades in their hands. She had no intention of watching the reactions of the members of the Silvermoon Council, those pompous, stuck-up high elves who considered themselves the rulers of the world.

Many of the high elf rulers, startled by her unceremonious intrusion, actually rose from their gilded chairs, their expressions a mixture of shock and indignation. Alleria's eyes were glued to one person and one person only: Anasterian Sunstrider, King of the High Elves.

"What in the blazes is going on here?" Anasterian demanded of his chief guard, his voice a low rumble.

The chief guard's face was like a smacked bottom, and he could only clench his jaw and shake his head, utterly helpless.

The High Elf King was ancient, even for an Elf. His hair was as white as fresh snow, and his skin was as pale as parchment, as dry as a log. He looked frail as a dried leaf, but his piercing blue eyes still packed a punch of authority, and so did his voice. Alleria instinctively wanted to cower from his wrath, then she remembered why she was there, and a surge of defiance straightened her back.

"I am Alleria Windrunner," she announced loudly, though she knew most of the council recognized her. "I have served as a vassal to the children of Emperor Thoradin, at the behest of our Lord Sunstrider. I have fought alongside the humans in countless battles in the Hillsbrad Foothills and in the Arathi Highlands. I have returned with news of the gravest kind."

Alleria tried to use the most serious, dire tone she could muster, hoping to get the councilors to pull their heads out of the sand. Unfortunately, she frowned, sensing their blasé attitude, their couldn't-care-less expressions. She could only grit her teeth and press on: "The Horde that humans warned us about is real, and it is incredibly powerful. Most of them are hulking orcs, eight feet tall and weighing over four hundred pounds, but there are other creatures too, like forest trolls."

Alleria's words finally elicited some reaction, a chorus of gasps and muttered curses. Anger was a natural response, of course. Perhaps few of the arrogant high elves truly knew what orcs were; in fact, even Alleria herself hadn't known before the Battle of Southshore. But that wasn't the important part. What was important was that every member of the parliament knew what a troll was. Many of them, including His Majesty Anasterian, had personally participated in the Troll Wars that had lasted for hundreds of years, four millennia ago.

But the 'Troll card' seemed to have backfired spectacularly.

"You said the trolls have joined that Horde?" A great lord burst out laughing, a booming, condescending sound. "That's fantastic! Let the trolls follow your 'Horde' to fight against humans! I hope they stay far, far away from us! Maybe the humans will do us a favor and kill them all!"

"Hahahaha!" Unbridled laughter bounced off the opulent walls of the entire parliament hall. Many elf councilors laughed their heads off, clapping like seals to show their agreement.

"You don't understand what kind of disaster is unfolding on the continent right now!" Alleria shrieked with fury. She recalled Duke's chilling deduction, his precise calculations, and spat out the words directly: "The Horde is not some distant problem we can ignore and laugh at! Their chieftain has personally led at least fifty thousand elite orcs to the north of the Hinterlands, five hundred kilometers away! They are planning to conquer the entire world of Azeroth! And that includes us, right here in Quel'Thalas! What's more, the orcs have a pact with Zul'jin! They will come! Within a week!"

Alleria slammed her fist on the polished round table of the parliament, the booming "THWACK! THWACK!" finally wiping the smirks off the councilors' faces.

"Then let them come!" another elven wizard lord, Dar'khan, sneered, his eyes gleaming with condescension. "Nobody gets through the forest's rune stones alive!"

"But the warlocks of the Horde..."

"Enough! Alleria Windrunner!" Anasterian brought his fist down on the table, a sharp crack echoing through the hall. "The rune stones are still standing! If the enemy you mentioned truly exists, they are still hundreds of kilometers away! We cannot allow our people to run around like chickens with their heads cut off because of your wild guesses. I promise to pay attention to this matter, but you – hit the road, Jack!"