The Scourge's Holy Light Nightmare

The undead are more sensitive to the breath of the living than a gnome is to the scent of fresh mechanical oil.

As for the sacred aura that restrains the undead most effectively, it can brutally overstimulate the few pathetic senses these walking corpses still possess - like throwing a flash-bang grenade into a bat cave.

More than two thousand weapons blessed by holy light, even if only temporarily, blazed with an effect no different from the Lighthouse of Booty Bay on the darkest, stormiest night. These weren't just weapons anymore - they were beacons of "Come at me, you rotting maggot-farms!"

It didn't matter where these paladins had crawled out from, but every single commander of the Scourge - from the mightiest lich down to the lowliest necromancer's apprentice - felt like they'd been slapped across their decomposing faces with a blessed gauntlet.

Human vision works through eyes receiving light signals from the outside world, transmitted to the brain through nerves - a luxury most undead had forfeited along with their pulse.

For the majority of middle and low-level undead, their blood had stopped flowing longer ago than most dwarves had stopped bathing. They'd lost their vision entirely, perceiving only the flickering soul-flames of the living and vague body outlines. Asking them to identify what kind of creatures the living were would be like asking a murloc to perform brain surgery - theoretically possible, but you wouldn't bet your life on it.

Whether holy light or dark power, both are essentially manifestations of mind and soul energy - the cosmic difference between a warm campfire and a house fire that's gotten completely out of hand.

The opposite of the dark atmosphere of decay and corruption is the sacred soul forged through relentless self-discipline and training - like the difference between a tavern after closing time and a pristine cathedral at dawn.

Orcs naturally don't spawn paladins like humans spawn tax collectors, but their noble willingness to sacrifice themselves for their race's survival burns just as bright. Just as when Anduin dueled Orgrim and ended up shattering Quel'Zaram - the blade itself recognized that Orgrim possessed a spirit nobler than most kings' bloodlines.

At this moment, these iron-willed orcs, clutching hammers blessed with holy light's power at Duke's command, appeared to the undead's senses as a veritable army of paladins. To the Scourge, they might as well have been carrying neon signs reading "DIVINE RETRIBUTION EXPRESS - NEXT STOP: YOUR FACE!"

The Paladins must die!

The undead creatures on the front lines rushed toward the orcs' center with all the subtlety of a rampaging kodo beast, their rotting instincts screaming louder than a banshee having a particularly bad hair day.

A lich drifted to the shore like death's own parade float, the frigid air around him forming a thick carpet of white frost that would make even Northrend seem tropical. Purple-blue soul flames danced in his hollow eye sockets like twin will-o'-wisps having a disco party in a graveyard.

Beside him stretched an ocean of zombies, with death knights occasionally thundering past on their skeletal steeds, hoisting black banners high like they were advertising some macabre medieval tournament.

From Lake Lordamere, the tide of undeath spread endlessly - an army that flowed from shore to horizon like the world's most horrifying flood, except instead of water, it was composed entirely of things that really should have stayed buried.

Snowflakes tumbled from the unnaturally gloomy sky. The distant battlefield reflected in the depths of those emotionless, glacial eyes like a twisted snow globe made in the deepest pits of hell.

He raised his withered chin, skin and flesh dried up like month-old jerky left in the Tanaris desert, and extended one pale, skeletal finger. Gripping his skull staff with the authority of death itself, he aimed its tip toward where the holy light blazed like a divine middle finger raised against the forces of darkness.

No password required. No secret handshake needed.

All living beings were enemies of the Scourge - it was really that beautifully simple.

On both sides of him, Death Knights and lower-level Undead Acolytes pressed their bony hands to their chests like they were pledging allegiance to the world's most morbid flag. The purple-blue soul flames, stimulated by demonic power, roared to life with the intensity of a thousand angry campfires.

Hatred of the living and obsession with destruction drove their souls like the world's most persistent and homicidal life coaches.

Like dominoes carved from tombstones, the Scourge commanders lowered their heads in sequence. When they raised them again, their eye sockets blazed with pale flames that flickered like candles in a hurricane - if candles were made of pure malice and lit with the screams of the damned.

The soul-deep roar that erupted could have woken the dead - which, considering the circumstances, was somewhat redundant.

"In the name of the Scourge, destroy the living!"

"For The Lich King!"

Accompanied by these bone-chilling battle cries, the massive black tide of death that had been gathering on Lake Lordamere's shore like the universe's most morbid traffic jam began pouring toward the orc army marching south, moving with all the inexorable force of destiny having a really, really bad day.

On Dalaran's north bank, Arthas - the frontline commander standing at the highest point of the entire Scourge like some kind of undead lighthouse keeper - gripped Frostmourne and raised his head with exasperation. "What in the name of the Frozen Throne is Ras Frostwhisper doing? I ordered him to attack Dalaran from the east, not chase after green-skinned warriors like some kind of frost-addled hunting hound!"

Ras Frostwhisper - thanks to history's tendency to shuffle its deck in the most inconvenient ways possible, Sir Ras, a tormented soul who had died and sunk to Lake Caer Darrow's bottom like a very depressed anchor, had been fished out early by Kel'Thuzad during his recruitment drive for dark allies. He'd become Kel'Thuzad's star pupil and one of the Cult of the Damned's core members - essentially the teacher's pet, if the teacher happened to be a lich with serious boundary issues.

Controlling tens of thousands of undead single-handedly was about as manageable as herding cats - if the cats were all dead, extremely aggressive, and had a tendency to eat anything that moved. When Arthas had fallen to darkness, Kel'Thuzad - whom he'd killed the previous year in one of history's more awkward reversals of fortune - naturally became his ally. Kel'Thuzad's former subordinates were promoted to frontline commanders faster than you could say "ironic career advancement."

While Ras Frostwhisper's magical abilities were decent, they were only decent in the way that a tavern brawl is "decent" entertainment - fine for what it is, but you wouldn't want to bet your kingdom on it.

Ras Frostwhisper ranked equivalent to an Archmage among mages, but when facing Dalaran's magical elite, Arthas found him about as useful as a chocolate teapot in the Molten Core.

This death knight who'd proclaimed himself King of Lordaeron was beginning to miss Kel'Thuzad with the intensity of a lovesick teenager missing their first crush - an assistant with sufficient wisdom and magical power that could actually follow orders without getting distracted by shiny green warriors.

Arthas glanced at Darkmaster Gandling beside him, then surveyed the dozens of wizard towers surrounding Dalaran that sparkled with magical energy like a very hostile Christmas display, his frown deepening like a canyon in Desolace. "Since Ras Frostwhisper thinks those orcs pose such a dire threat, let him chase his delusions. How much longer until we completely drain Dalaran's magical reserves?"

Gandling calculated with the precision of a particularly morbid accountant: "Another three days, and we'll need to sacrifice at least 300,000 cannon fodder to pull it off."

Arthas sneered with the contempt of someone who'd never met a problem he couldn't solve by throwing more corpses at it: "Cannon fodder? The Hillsbrad Foothills are crawling with human settlements like rabbits in springtime - there's cannon fodder for days! If we run short, we'll just conscript more! Besides, those orcs would make excellent cannon fodder. Their sturdy bones will create skeletons tougher than a two-copper steak - a significant upgrade from our usual shambling collections of brittle human remains."

"Yes, my lord!" Gandling bowed deeper than a servant afraid of losing his head - which, given his employer, was a very reasonable fear - then retreated with the hasty steps of someone who'd learned when not to overstay their welcome.

Minutes later, fresh waves of undead crashed toward the orcs like a tsunami of teeth and claws. Now not only was the orcs' vanguard trapped in an ever-tightening noose, but their main force was being encircled faster than gossip spreads through Goldshire. Unless Thrall and Orgrim were willing to abandon the women and children among their people - and orcs would sooner abandon their own axes - they had no choice but to fight until their last breath painted the ground green.

"Ancestors preserve us! Where in the name of the Spirits did all these walking bone-piles crawl out from?" Thrall bellowed, already on his third war hammer of the battle. Not only was he suffering from a severe shortage of reliable weapons, but at this point in his life, he was essentially just an oversized berserker without any shamanic training - all muscle and fury, but lacking the spiritual connection that would make him truly formidable.

Orgrim was faring no better, forced to swing the Doomhammer in wide, desperate arcs while chasing Death Knights who circled the battlefield on their skeletal horses like the world's most morbid cavalry charge. These mounted nightmares treated the combat like some twisted game of tag where being "it" meant getting your soul ripped from your body.

Except for Orgrim and a handful of chieftain-level warriors, ordinary orcs possessed about as much power to resist Death Knights as sheep had against wolves - which was to say, virtually none, and what little they had usually involved a lot of panicked bleating.

The warhammers radiating holy light in their hands might have been more effective, but unfortunately, these orcs weren't genuine paladins - they were more like very enthusiastic volunteers with blessed equipment. Before their gleaming hammers could connect with a Death Knight's armor, they first had to survive whatever dark magic the Death Knight decided to hurl at them, which usually involved a lot of screaming and considerably less surviving than anyone would prefer.

The only small mercy was that these Death Knights weren't the cream of the undead crop. The original Death Knights crafted by Gul'dan had been powerful warlocks before their transformation, masters of dark magic who could flay souls with a gesture. Most of these newer models were converted from simple knights, more inclined toward hitting things very hard rather than melting faces with arcane power - essentially the difference between a surgeon's scalpel and a butcher's cleaver, if the butcher happened to be dead and extremely irritable.

Several stealthy figures materialized on the southern slopes of the Alterac Mountains east of Dalaran City, moving with the practiced silence of professional lurkers.

Peering through his spyglass at the fierce battle raging below, Mograine couldn't suppress a admiring chuckle: "Duke, you magnificent bastard, you've done it again. Only you could turn a potential massacre into a strategic masterstroke."