Smash

Any living creature, unless it's been living under a rock, will naturally slam its eyes shut when blasted with a sudden, retina-searing flash of light. Taranis, for all his ancient wisdom, was no exception. He clamped his eyes shut, just for a fleeting, critical moment.

At that exact, split second, Alleria's double arrows, imbued with Duke's strange magic, found their mark. "Puff!" With a wet, muffled sound, the gooey payload on the arrows exploded directly above the dragon's eyelids, and a shimmering, strangely iridescent goo seemed to coat the ancient dragon's leathery skin.

In that instant, Taranis recoiled, his massive neck snapping back like a startled snake. He had no earthly idea what this bizarre gunk was, but every fiber of his ancient being screamed danger. His unparalleled, millennia-honed instincts, sharper than any dragon's claw, shrieked that this stuff could probably kill even the undead. He pulled back, a primal fear seizing him.

Alleria, watching her perfectly aimed shot, gaped like a fish out of water, an expression of surprise and utter, unadulterated regret plastered across her face. Her confident attack, her moment of glory, had been unexpectedly dodged by Taranis with a reaction time that defied logic. It was a near miss, a swing and a miss.

However, two glowing, ethereal wizard's hands, conjured by Duke with a flick of his wrist, suddenly materialized above the two exploding liquid balls. "SMACK!" The spectral hands, moving with the speed of a lightning bolt, slammed the two globs of sticky liquid directly onto Taranis's eyelids, a perfect, gooey bullseye.

For an ancient dragon, the passage of countless millennia allowed him to train, to evolve, to harden every single part of his being. The scales of a young dragon were soft, easily pierced, and even the most common human weapons could inflict fatal injuries. But as time wore on, those scales became harder and harder, transforming into an impenetrable armor.

After a mere thousand years, those scales were tougher than steel itself. Unless you wielded an epic, high-level weapon, forged in the heart of a dying star, breaking through a dragon's hardened scales was a fool's errand. The same went for dragon skin; the older the dragon, the thicker, tougher, and more resilient it became, like a living, breathing fortress.

This made the dragon one of the most terrifying, nigh-invincible creatures on the planet. To be honest, any mage who wasn't at the Grand Magus level, a true titan of arcane power, could barely scratch an ancient dragon, let alone inflict any real damage. In Duke's impression, all the dragon bosses in his old world's games required at least 25 invincible, over-geared friends, just like him, to even stand a chance.

So, how do you deal with an ancient dragon that's likely to go berserk, a creature that could level a city block with a single sneeze? It had become a truly difficult proposition, a head-scratcher of epic proportions. You couldn't defeat them by fighting them head-on, and you certainly couldn't kill them by simply delaying them.

The answer, when it finally revealed itself, was so absurdly simple it was brilliant: it's glue!

This brilliant, yet utterly bizarre, solution was discovered accidentally by Duke when he went to Ironforge at the beginning of the year, poking around and examining the works of those imaginative, often suicidal, dwarves. The dwarf who invented it, a particularly unhinged tinkerer, had named it "BBBBB Super Glue."

Duke, of course, didn't mind calling it "Sticky Situation Glue," because that's exactly what it created. It was incredibly effective, an instant-setting adhesive that could bond anything to anything else, faster than you could say "Lok'tar Ogar!" The dwarf had originally intended to use it to repair dwarf aircraft, but it solidified so quickly, faster than a goblin could grab a coin, that it was rejected by all the finicky dwarf technicians. As a result, Duke had bought a large barrel of the stuff for a measly five gold coins, a steal of a deal.

Now, it was Taranis's turn to experience its magic. The flash bomb had made Taranis close his eyes, a temporary inconvenience. And the "Sticky Situation Glue" would ensure the dragon couldn't open them again, at least not for a while.

Taranis had lived for countless tens of thousands of years, had seen empires rise and fall, but he had never encountered anything so bizarre, so utterly undignified. For a moment, he genuinely thought he'd gone blind, that his ancient sight had failed him. But the faint ray of light that still pierced through the tiny gap between his eyelids told him the humiliating truth: his eyelids were just glued shut, stuck fast.

"Help me!" A frantic magical message, laced with a rare note of panic, was sent straight to Antonidas, and the Kirin Tor Speaker, a master of arcane comprehension, immediately understood the dire predicament.

Taranis, momentarily stunned, stopped his fiery dragon breath and tried to fly higher into the sky, a desperate attempt to escape any further, unseen attacks. But he didn't notice that a massive ice ball, shimmering with frigid power, was forming at breakneck speed a hundred meters directly above his head, a frosty anvil waiting to drop.

"Cohesion! Cohesion! Gather again!" Antonidas chanted, his voice a low rumble, pouring his immense power into the spell. The magical effect of the Ice Crown magic circuit, a secret technique of Dalaran, was revealed in all its devastating glory at this moment. With the subtle, yet crucial, cooperation of Alterac Palace's arcane network, Antonidas and Duke's coordination was more pure, more seamless than ever before. Basically, Antonidas did the heavy lifting, and Duke, with his uncanny foresight, controlled the entire operation, a maestro of magical mayhem.

"Use sonic boom arrows to disrupt his senses!" Duke blurted out, a sudden command. Within two seconds, two ear-splitting explosions, like thunderclaps right next to his head, erupted in Taranis's ears. "BUZZZZZ——" The ancient dragon's five senses were completely scrambled, a chaotic mess of sensory input.

The dragon was the true overlord of the sky, and the sudden blindness had only a temporary effect, a minor inconvenience. But the wind-type sonic boom arrows, supercharged by the Storm Altar's power, were a different beast entirely. The sudden, deafening explosion of the arrows not only shattered Taranis's hearing, but also made him utterly unable to feel the subtle flow of the wind, his natural guide in the skies. It could be said that at this moment, his vision, hearing, and spatial senses were all temporarily disabled, leaving him flailing like a fish out of water.

Without hesitation, the huge ice ball, now a mountain of frigid death, plummeted from the sky. With a loud roar and unparalleled momentum, as if it had been calculated for millions of years to achieve the perfect impact, the ice ball hit Taranis squarely on the head as he thrashed his head around in pain, disoriented and helpless.

"BANG!" With a deafening crash, the ancient dragon was hit so hard that stars, not of the celestial kind, literally appeared in its eyes, a dizzying, painful kaleidoscope. It crashed to the ground with a thunderous THUD!

"Get out of the way!" The people and orcs below, who had enough wits to react, screamed, their faces contorted in horror as the colossal beast plummeted towards them.

The dragon fell.

In that moment, it seemed as if a terrible earthquake had ripped through the land near the crash site. The earth, which was supposed to be as solid as a rock, seemed to have its very bones and flesh pulled out. After a loud, sickening "BANG," a huge pit, at least ten meters deep, was gouged out by the rolling and thrashing dragon, a testament to its immense size and impact. The ground on both sides of the deep pit suddenly bulged up, like a monstrous bruise, and all the people and objects caught on it were launched into the sky like rag dolls. The surging shock wave spread in all directions, a silent, invisible wave of destruction, lifting even more people off their feet. Even Mograine himself, a seasoned warrior, was hit by this immense force and sent flying with his horse, only to fall heavily to the ground. The only thing he was thankful for was that he separated from his beloved warhorse in mid-air, which saved him from being crushed by the animal's massive weight.

Grom Hellscream, who was attacking fiercely at the front line, was also caught in the chaos. Taranis had chosen an incredibly unfortunate place to crash, right in front of him. As a result, the great hero of the Horde rolled backwards countless times, a green blur of flailing limbs, knocking over countless bewildered orcs in his wake, tumbling for about a hundred meters before he could finally stop his backward momentum, dazed and bruised.

The sudden, undignified fall of Taranis threw the entire battle line into utter chaos, a chaotic free-for-all. The flag of Grand Lord Mograine, a symbol of their resolve, fell to the ground, and the Grand Lord himself temporarily lost contact, which immediately sent the nobles behind him into a full-blown panic. The noble army they led, already shaky, dissolved into even greater chaos, a headless chicken running wild.

Although they were far away and suffered much less from the direct impact, they were still staggering and completely out of formation, their discipline shattered. At this moment, the orcs, seeing their chance, exerted their strength, their primal instincts kicking in. In the chaos of battle, the orcs' strong individual combat capabilities were almost infinitely magnified, turning them into brutal, efficient killing machines. Many orcs, before they even managed to get back on their feet, launched themselves at the humans with any weapons they could find. Whether it was a sledgehammer, a dagger, or at worst, just fists and fangs, they could still deliver fatal attacks to the comparatively weaker humans. Many human warriors were knocked out again before they could even stand up, falling heavily onto their comrades, creating a grim pile of bodies.

"Lok-tar, ogar!" The loud, guttural slogans were echoed by a hundred voices! A hundred voices echoed them back, a wave of savage triumph.

Mograine had no choice but to blow the bugle, a desperate, piercing blast, ordering his men to form small, desperate defensive formations nearby. As a result, the army was barely saved, a narrow escape, but at least 30,000 orcs, a massive chunk of the Horde, broke through the encirclement and streamed into the vast, unsuspecting forest of Tirisfal Glades, disappearing like shadows.

Taranis, temporarily blinded and utterly disoriented, struggled to fly away, a humiliated, dazed ancient beast.